Popcorn and pop culture

Influences Part 3

There are a lot of “Greatest Movies” lists out there. In a Time Magazine article from August 14, 2023, movie critic Stephanie Zacharek wrote “There’s no right or wrong in movie love.” Her essay begins: “If you’re like most people, you probably freeze when someone asks you what you think is the best movie of all time.”

I’ve been making movies for more than 50 years. I’m not a feature film maker. I define movies as pictures that “move”. I did work in the medium of film, then moved to tape, and now digital. I like digital. It’s so much easier, and it offers me many more tools with which to work. As I write about movies that have influenced me, however, it isn’t about what I think is the best, or my favorite, it has more to do with what I saw and heard in the story telling, direction, production design, soundscape, and whatever it is that makes me watch a movie over and over.

TV and books were my first influencers simply because I didn’t really dive into movies until I was a teenager. I rarely left my neighborhood while living in Ohio. As far as I remember, the first movie I saw without my parents was “Kid Galahad” starring Elvis Presley. Sure, we probably went to a drive-in occasionally — to see whatever my parents wanted to see (something they could watch with kids): “The Nutty Professor”, “The Shaggy Dog”, “The Absent Minded Professor”, “Please Don’t Eat the Daisies”. Those movies were entertaining but not inspirational.

I didn’t get to see influential movies of the 1950s and 60s, “The Bridge on the River Kwai”, Lawrence of Arabia”, Doctor Zhivago”, (David Lean); “Dr. No”, “From Russia With Love” (James Bond); “High Noon”, “Shane”, “Rio Grande” (Westerns); until much later than when they were originally in the theater. I did at some point see almost all of those movies on the big screen. 

Movie theater going didn’t really start for me until I moved to Albuquerque. The big difference: I had a car. Just as my bicycle gave me the freedom and mobility to expand my neighborhood in Ohio, my car made all of Albuquerque accessible. I had a job, therefore I had disposable income (no bills to pay, food was plentiful and cheap, gas was 29 cents a gallon.) I must have seen plenty of movies on TV — The CBS Thursday Night Movies (1965–75) The CBS Friday Night Movies (1966–77) The New CBS Tuesday Night Movies (1972–74). I didn’t mind the commercials. I didn’t know then about pan and scan. So, I didn’t know what a big screen experience truly was. 

The first really big movie I saw was “Ice Station Zebra” in 70mm at the Fox Winrock.

It was mind-blowing! I ran to tell my movie-making pals Michael Quinn and Dan Joelson. Alas, they had already seen it. But we all shared the excitement. It was truly unlike anything we could have imagined. In the years since, I’ve seen other 70mm and iMax movies: “Lawrence of Arabia”, “2001 A Space Odyssey”, “Dunkirk”, and “The Hateful 8”, probably others. All but “Hateful” were amazing. They used the 70 mm with great love — wide screen vistas, huge important moments of drama. In my opinion, Tarantino wasted the format by shooting mostly inside one location. Sigh. (I actually did like “The Hateful 8” but a discussion of wide screen takes me beyond the influential movies topic.) 

The movies that inspired me to make movies were silent films. Mostly because I was making movies in that genre. As kids we couldn’t shoot synchronized sound. 

Charlie Chaplain was one of my first exposures to Silent Films. His movies were already legendary and readily available. Next came D.W. Griffith. Today his movies are being reexamined. Even in the early 1900s “Birth of a Nation”, originally named “The Clansmen” was controversial. A writer for the Washington Post called it "the most reprehensibly racist film in Hollywood history”. “Birth” promoted the “Lost Cause” Southern ideology. However, when I first watched it in the late 60s, I was mesmerized by the movie making. It was (and is) epic. Huge battle scenes, beautiful closeups, history, Lillian Gish, “The Ride of the Valkyries”! I had heard and seen nothing like it. Griffith became my silent movie guru. I tracked down and watched everything by him I could find. That search lead me to watch many other silent movies, I can’t recall them all, but westerns and comedies were (and are) my favorite genres.

My interest in history, especially the civil war, driven in part by “Birth of a Nation” lead me to my other huge influence: Buster Keaton. “The General” is Keaton’s masterpiece. It is a love story — a man’s love for a girl and a train. It is about how he is supposed to choose between them, although the train gets the best of the situation. The comedy keeps the dangerous situation entertaining. Again, I tracked down and watched everything by Keaton that I could find.

In those days, watching a silent movie meant getting a 16mm copy and projecting it yourself. Luckily, I had access to projectors and film catalogues as a member of the Audio Visual Department at high school. Even better, I became the President of "La Société du Cinéma” the film club at the University of New Mexico.  (my tenure at La Société begins about half-way down the linked page — in 1970.)

"La Société” gave me the opportunity to really explore movies in a way I could not have imagined. Connected to a film studies class, our club became the venue for showing a slew of foreign and “art” films that played at the UNM student union building (SUB) theater. We played: De Sica’s  “The Bicycle Thief”, Kafka’s “The Castle”, Bunuel’s "Un Chien Andalou”, Fellini’s “81/2”, Godard’s “Breathless”, Kurosawa’s “The Seven Samurai”, Melville’s “Le Samouraï”, and “La Nuit américaine” (“Day for Night” in English) by Francois Truffaut. 

“Day for Night” is a movie about movie making. When I saw it, I knew that was what I wanted to do and be. Truffaut directed and plays the movie director in the film. I wanted to be him. I tracked down and watched everything… 

Griffith brought me into filmmaking as a visual artist. His movies taught me how to see things and how to bring that story to life using closeups and long shots; lighting and filters; and acting as a story telling tool without relying on words.

Lillian Gish on REAL ice floe at the end of “Way Down East”

Keaton took me in many different directions and showed me how the lessons I learned from Griffith could be nuanced (I’m using that word as a verb) and to pay close attention to everything. “The General” took a dramatic situation and turned it on it’s head, adding an element of humor — in Keaton’s inimitable style — without breaking into a smile.

Truffaut was part of the French New Wave, “Nouvelle Vague”, a low budget, realistic, art film movement that eschewed traditional filmmaking while also holding in high esteem movie directors like Charlie Chaplin, Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, Howard Hawks, John Ford, Sam Fuller and Don Siegel. They were called by critics, “auteurs”, filmmakers with unbounded personal control. Many of my later influences fall into that category. (In a separate posting I will present a list of auteurs and movies that fall into that “favorite” category.)

At the same time we were showing movies at the SUB, there was an world cinema movement going on all over Albuquerque. While most theaters played the typical fare of current Hollywood movies, there were also multiple theaters running movies from Europe, Asia, Russia, South America, India, and beyond. All that was mixed with movies that later were considered “classic”. A list I recently discovered from the website of Ranjit Sandhu (the website mentioned above in La Société du Cinéma) is chock-full of films that played at UNM from 1940 to the 1980s. 

(And a quick history here of art houses in Albuquerque)

I learned from that list that my tenure at "La Société du Cinéma” most likely began on the day I turned 18; Monday, September 21, 1970. I’m sure our club advisor Franklin Dickey picked the movie: “Day of Wrath” (Vredens Dag) a 1943 drama by Carl Theodor Dreyer. By October I may have had more to do with the film choices when we played “Grapes of Wrath” and “The Bicycle Thief”, two of my favorites.

I dove in deeply the following spring and summer semesters by getting up on stage to lead the discussions after the movies played (with historical and academic input from Dickey). 

At about the same time, Michael Quinn became the manager of a theater across the street from UNM, Don Pancho’s Art Theatre, owned at the time by Art Theatre Guild of America, Inc. Pancho’s was one of the theaters in Albuquerque that had been playing “art” and foreign films for more than a decade. When Quinn stepped in, he was just out of high school, probably hired to be a projectionist but was soon managing. 

We took full advantage of that, by watching everything for free (which we were already doing at UNM) and by projecting our own films during off hours. 

In August of 1971, my one year at UNM abruptly ended when I received a draft notice. At the time there was a lottery. They picked birthdays out of a (Bowl? Hat? Computer?) and the earlier your date was picked, the more likely you were going to the Army and most likely Vietnam. My number was 16. I was doomed. So I went into the recruiting office and volunteered. Thanks to my high school audio/visual advisor, Retired Colonel Jack Atkins, I knew a few things about the Air Force. I passed all the tests and they were impressed enough to guarantee me a job as a motion picture cameraman. But I had to sign up for 4 years, rather than just 2 if drafted. Hmmm, 4 years learning how to shoot movies — or dying in Vietnam? I quickly joined the Air Force. Little did I know at the time but the word guarantee is not in the military vocabulary (unless it applies to getting shot). I ended up as a Chinese Linguist.

Along with me leaving UNM, "La Société du Cinéma” also became defunct for a few years until Quinn’s photography teacher Ira Jaffe revived it. Meanwhile, back at the Don Pancho’s Quinn and Dan Joelson and our friend Ron Kay, kept the movie dream alive. As a school project, Quinn put together a movie called “Chino Takes A Gamble”

Somewhere along the line, Joelson put together another project called “Garden of Delights”. As far as I know “GoD” (as it was unaffectionately known) was never shown anywhere publicly. “Chino” premiered at a big party at Don Pancho’s but never played again. All but a few moments of “Chino” is lost to the big film vault in the sky.

My memories of Don Pancho’s are mostly from weekends when I would return home from Cannon AFB in Clovis, NM where I was stationed in the mid 70s. It was about a 3 hour drive to Albuquerque and I would spend every moment I could with my old movie making pals. 

Ranjit tells the story in his Don Pancho’s chapter of the first time he ever saw a projection booth.

“Though I had learned a bit about the technical side of movies from reading Bill Everson’s books and a few other books as well, I had no clue what a projection booth looked like and I had never seen professional film equipment. The first time I ever saw a booth was on Saturday, 11 May 1974, at Donald Pancho’s, just after a double feature of The Public Enemy and Each Dawn I Die. I saw a young guy descend the miniature spiral staircase and, somewhat timidly, I started asking about the equipment. “Do you have sixteen em em?” I asked, not even knowing how to pronounce mm properly. ‘We have 35,’ he replied. That took my breath away.” 

That young guy descending the miniature spiral staircase may have been me. I was most certainly one of us (Quinn, Joelson, Kay, Friend). After a short talk about movies and projectors I invited him up to the projection booth. 

I know we were there that night because we had worked together earlier to put the name of the movie onto the marquee. This was done by putting letters one by one onto the marquee board, that hung above the entry. 

That day, Joelson had climbed the ladder and played a joke. He put “The Public Enema” instead of Enemy. Good old teenage humor. Quinn quickly fixed it and we all went about the business of hanging around in the theater. 

Ranjit goes on to say, “There were three guys in the booth and I assumed that they were all projectionists, that it took three people to run a show.” No— Quinn could do everything himself except sell tickets — that job belonged to Lela Abbin, who had been there for more than 20 years. 

We were just there to watch movies, eat popcorn, and plan our next adventure.

A quick wrap up to this discussion of influences ends with the thought that our time watching movies in the 1970s will probably never happen again. Movie theaters are focused on making money, because movies cost a lot of money to make and to distribute. In April 1974, at Don Pancho’s tickets were $1.50 Tuesday - Sunday. 99 cents on Monday! We got to see them all for free! 

Later I watched a lot of movies on Cable TV. Turner Classic Movies was (and is) a treasure trove of great cinema. Before that I could rent almost anything at a Video Store. VHS tape was a magnificent invention. I could even tape old movies from my TV. DVD was even better. How good were those TV versions? Horrible. But it was all there was — cheap and easy to obtain. I still have a large collection of Western DVDs, but I rarely pull them out to watch. 

I’ve decided to split my movie discussion into two parts.

This chapter: How movies entered my life and influenced me.

And next: a list of movies by auteurs and genres that I recommend.

Stay tuned.