Haynes 2

1. Intertextuality is used to refer to other works. Pulp Fiction points to film genres and plays off of them, creating an original product. Safe uses allegory in have an element of the story stand for a greater social meaning, specifically AIDS.
Understanding the allegorical nuances of Haynes' style allows for a greater conceptual comprehension of his work. His use of allegory instead of straightforwardness allows the themes in his material to be relevant in more interpretive ways.

2. Carol's home is always the more prominent element in the frame. Her environment envelops and minimizes her appearance in almost every frame. The reference to Sirk comes in the visual statement that American suburban life stifles the individual and that appearances are often given more importance than humanity.

3. By setting it in the suburbs of the San Fernando Valley, Haynes comments on the side of society which typically chose to remain quiet about the AIDS crisis. He uses irony by implementing the same silence given to AIDS toward Carol's sickness.

4. He guides the audience through the film as a character who knows just as much as we do. He participates in the music scene the film explores. He also serves as an additional protagonist in his coming-of-age story.

5. Arthur's search of identity is highly influenced by Brian. Arthur's fantasy is a typical quest of finding "self" and using the factors around him to form a notion of who he is. Brian's fantasy is about self-expression after having already found who he is.

6. The gaps of time between 70s glam rock and the gray period of time depicted in 1984. In relation to Haynes' other works, AIDS discussion or reference is also curiously missing from the 80's portion of the film.

Haynes 1

1. Stan Brakhage's work interested him in experimental film. Apparatus productions was started to encourage putting genre elements to use in experimental filmmaking.
Superstar's structure is very formulaic of the biopic but the use of dolls gives it an experimental side.

2. Haynes' quote suggests that he is a proponent of the theory that an author's work is simply a recombination of the elements and factors around him to create a sort of personal voice. Citation and expected knowledge of other works which interest him are a part of his creative process.

3. Pop culture in the 50's was largely comprised of duality. Lucille Ball's character and Douglas Sirk's explorations of leading a public life and a private life separately were of intellectual interest to Haynes in his college years.

4. Genet's Un Chant D'Amour was a direct influence to the Homo section of Poison. Kenneth Anger's Scorpio Rising is also cited as an influence in Haynes' work. The controversy was that the American Family Association was in opposition to the National Endowment for the Arts financial support for the film, claiming that the subject matter should not be supported by public money.

5. Haynes uses the coldness and detachment of postmodernist characterization along with the overt emotion found in melodramas to counterpoint actions and character.

6. Fassbinder, Almodovar, Haynes, and Sirk. Postmodern melodrama utilizes the emotional current of melodramas and places it within the context of the cold postmodernist characterization of people.

7. Haynes uses illness to mix melodramatic pathos with postmodern characterization. Illnesses are typically depicted as environmentally motivated.

8. It was Genet's last fictional work concerned with homosexuality. Genet could not identify with the Gay Liberation movement since homosexuality was illegal and he could not understand why coming out of the closet was necessarily positive.

9. "Horror" parodies 50's B-films. A science experiment goes wrong, causing the protagonist to become a monster.
"Homo" is inspired by the stories of Jean Genet and their explorations of homosexuality. It also employs techniques seen in Hollywood melodrama.
"Hero" is an faux-documentary about a 7 year old boy who shoots his father.
The stories use each other to create an overall message and relative theme.

10. If put in a specific order, the three short films appear to be commenting on homosexuality and the views surrounding it in the early 90's.

February 22

1. By the end of the 80's, many independent distributors had overextended themselves into financing pictures with larger budgets and eventually went under. The term "indie-blockbuster" refers to movies made with on a smaller scale that are meant to replicate box-office performance and marketing strategies of large scale Hollywood films. Every major studio created or purchased at least one specialty division meant to produce these kinds of movies.

2. First, they chose movies that would be considered to be quality "art" movies (Pelle the Conqueror, The Thin Blue Line). Second, they selected nonclassical movies containing unconventional subject matter. Third, they used savvy marketing strategies to appeal to the public. Limited spending and continued search for new acquisitions instead of producing their own movies.

3. RCA/Columbia and Virgin. The title suggested the possibility of a low-quality movie shot on videotape, which led producers to think it would not do well with audiences. Miramax recognized the tremendous marketing potential sex, lies, and videotape had in both subject matter and the title.

4. Miramax placed the film in Cannes, in which it won the Palme d'Or; rejected Soderbergh's "arthouse" trailer for an audience-friendly one. The poster appealed to both the arthouse audience and the youth audience. They used well-known critics' reviews and film festival honors for the arthouse people and played on the films "edgy" mystique for the youth audience. "Finding high-concept in low-budget films" means identifying what aspects of a low-budget film are of capable universal appeal and marketing the film based on these aspects.

5. They realized that the film had to compliment major studio pictures. Instead of outdoing the big-budget marketing of financial investments, they relied heavily on word-of-mouth and counter-programming strategies. They allowed it to build its prestige on positive reviews for almost six months. Hollywood blockbusters are meant to make as much money as possible in as little time as possible and then repeat with the sequel.

6. Studio fare would be less cost effective, relying mostly on stars and stories. Big event movies are based on special effects, super effects, and simple marketing hooks. Star-driven films, even when they didn't make money domestically, would still perform well abroad.

7. It was a marketing tool for studios to attract one of two audience preferrences: niche or high-concept. Ironic that all of the "independent" films were produced by subsidiaries owned by major companies. The two Hollywoods had similarities in their search for niche films, minimizing the distinction between the two. Films that may have previously been produced by independent distributors are now handled by subsidiaries of major studios. Independent filmmakers are currently struggling due to the lack of actual independent distributors and the distributors are suffering because everything is bought by major studios.

February 8th

1.On Good Will Hunting and Finding Forrester:
Van Sant says he was not worried about selling out and wanted to experiment with a type of filmmaking he'd always enjoyed but never done before. He liked the human dramas of the 70's was intrigued by the Good Will Hunting script. He wanted to experience what it would be like to be hired out to do a film as a "stand in director" for a studio. The Good Will Hunting success led him to want to try that sort of filmmaking again. After being constrained to studios and producers in Hollywood, he claims that doing films like Gerry and Elephant are liberating in that they are free-form and don't require a screenplay.

2. Van Sant considered traditional screenplay formatting restricting. Taking a page from Cassavetes, he filmed Elephant with little to no scripting prior to filming, leaving room for improvisation and naturalism. Adding to this, he uses long patient takes to build to a quietly explosive release when the violence begins. The long takes add a level of intensity and focus around the characters that remove you from a typical film-watching experience and into a more organic one. He creates a web of characters that meet throughout and even have a role in the repetition of scenes. Van Sant manages to avoid emotion and sentimentality in his utterly cold portrayal of such a sensitive subject.

3. The second act may have been the complicating action. This structure doesn't apply to Elephant since it is composed in a different way than Classical Hollywood filmmaking does business.

4. The long, unbroken takes give the audience a sense that the events are happening in real-time. Again, this adds to Van Sant's naturalism. The final act contains as many shots as the first two combined, meaning that the pace is much faster and ultimately builds upon itself.

5. The psychological motivations are left out of the equation and Van Sant paints a broad picture of high school as a social function and explores the way different groups interact with each other. The shooters are not given a purpose, but shown from purely objective lenses. The focus is not on the individual but on youth as a whole and all the dysfunctions that may come with it.

6. Heath gives directors credit for their work, but claims that looking at films as products of auteurs is one-dimensional in that it ignores the audiences and the social conditions in which it is made. Edward Buscombe suggests augmenting the theory with an attention to "the effects of the cinema on society... the effect of society on the cinema... the effects of films on other films." It relates to our discussions on Van Sant because it is concerned with whether or not authorship is significant in filmmaking and what effects it has on cinema and its audience.

7. Without authorship, the viewer is free to create his/her own meanings and come to conclusions purely subjectively. Meskin questions whether or not authorship really is restricting. "Limitations and exclusion of meaning are good things." He also adds that meanings vary from culture to culture.

8. One argument claims that due to the large crews that often work on Hollywood films, giving one person credit is wrong. The counterargument is that the director has creative control and therefore is the creative source behind the art. It relates to our discussions on Van Sant because of the exploration of the meanings of authorship and whether or not the collaborative nature of filmmaking nullifies that idea.

9. It questions whether film interpretation should be concerned with author's intention or the text itself. The collaborative process of filmmaking is not the same as a single author writing a novel. Van Sant's intentions in his films are an unknown, but can be inferred through repeated motifs found throughout his body of work. Whether or not his "authorship" is help up even when he makes a Classical Hollywood film like Good Will Hunting is up to debate and challenges the concept of authorship even further.

February 1st

1. Van Sant does not attempt to update the original, but simply pays homage by doing almost everything exactly the same way Hitchcock did. The shock of Marion dying in the shower was lost since audiences knew what to expect. As a remake, it is incredibly close to the original text. Van Sant put himself and his crew under the same pressures Hitchcock was under, as far as budgeting and scheduling went.
The first "yawning fallacy" is the fact that Van Sant, as an artist, did nothing to add to Hitchcock's work. If art students copy Rembrandt paintings stroke for stroke, it does not make them Rembrandt. The second is that the more he tried to stay faithful to the source, the more he called attention to himself.

2. The shower scene is not a shock in the remake.

3. Naremore criticizes Vince Vaughn's impersonation of Anthony Perkins and Heche's direction for Marion. The Royal Cook illustrates how it is impossible to recreate something exactly because changes appear in everything over time.

4. Rothman claims that Van Sant's use of the camera is no match for Hitchcock (Hollywood's first auteur filmmaker) and his sense of storytelling with careful cinematography and movement.
Leitch says Van Sant is saying with his own voice the same thing Hitchcock did.

5. Hitchcock is considered Hollywood's first auteur filmmaker. Naremore's viewing showed the lack of originality of Van Sant's remaker, Leitch argues that venue is everything and that a film seen in a classroom is likely to be thought of as academic.

6. Because Van Sant plays on the audience's expectations of the film and allows suspense to build around it. He highlights what is easily accessible or recognizable in Hitchcock.

7. Dysfunctional youth, sexuality, and the romanticized view of escaping to the road. He manages to work it into Psycho with the characters' sexual repression and Marion's escaping by car.

8. Inserts of blue skies and clouds at moments of emotional release. In Psycho, it relates to Marion and Aborgast's stabbings.

9. The heterosexual and macho Vince Vaughn playing Norman Bates contrasts the homosexual Anthony Perkins' portrayal. Marion is played by the openly gay Anne Heche, changing the femininity of the character. Julianne Moore's Lila is a much stronger, more independent woman than Vera Miles.

January 25th

1. According to Davis, "Van Santized Shakespeare" consists of mixing Elizabethan dress with recent fashion and taking Shakespeare's dialogue and adapting it to fit the world of the Portland hustlers. Dialogue changes were made to suit the tone of the film. For example, Shakespeare's Henry IV reads, "How long is 't ago, Jack, since thou sawest thine own knee?" and Van Sant's adaptation reads, "How long has it been, Bob, since you could see your own dick?"

2. Chimes at Midnight's influence comes in that Van Sant's film tells the story of a "knight lowering himself", most clearly represented by Bob. However, Davis says that both Bob (as the knight) and Mike (as Scott's companion) are Van Sant's depictions of Falstaff.

3. Van Sant claims to have used Shakespeare to outline the "timeless" nature of the story. The main difference is that there isn't much "lowering" for Bob to do, since from the beginning of the film, he is already a hustler. Davis says that Scott's rejection is more cruel than Hal's because of the way modern politics work. Being a politician's son does not guarantee Scott as a future elected official, unlike in Shakespeare's time when power was inherited and a person's past would not effect their chances of ruling. Davis argues that Scott is doomed to fail in politics if he maintains his hustler companions. It can be seen that Van Sant certainly aligns himself with Falstaff through his storytelling. The movie focuses on Mike's character and his journey. It is much more sympathetic to Mike than to Scott, who leaves the film when he separates from the hustlers.

4. Scott is shown to be insincere because he leaves his friend and his mentor in pursuit of a political career. He leaves Mike, the protagonist of the film, which immediately takes much audience sympathy away from him and his actions.

5. Independent film and music is given its name by an audience's perception that the film or artist they consider to be "indie" stand apart from the mainstream. This is because it is nearly impossible to define what independent filmmaking, as a genre, really is. The tension is the filmmakers wanting to create something that goes against the mainstream, made with authenticity and a distinct voice expressing something real instead of a marketing ploy while at the same time creating this undercurrent of "independent film" as a marketable genre.

6. Youthful, hip, offbeat, character-centered, noncomformity, and independence are some examples of the meanings associated with "indie." The VW commercial he describes caters to the youthful audience, even making it seem like having no life was a positive thing ("It fits your life. Or complete lack thereof."). There is an obvious attempt to stray from mainstream American consumerist sensibility by a seemingly apathetic way of selling product. Indie filmmaking has created standards of separation from Hollywood, and those formulas of presenting fresh visual and thematic affronts to the mainstream are to expected. Financial success, in some cases, is even looked down upon.

7. Television. Indie bands expose themselves to wide audiences through advertising on mainstream networks. This is not seen as "selling out", but an overtaking of the mainstream.

8. "Indie is at once oppositional and privileged; it asserts its privilege by opposing itself
to the mainstream. It is antiestablishment like the avant-garde at the same time that it
is bourgeois, serving a prime social function of maintaining status." Independent film and music is marketed to the social elite with supposed higher taste that the average American consumer.

9. Happiness attracted much critical attention in the festival circuit, meaning its indie cred was already established, but the film's difficult subject matter was hard for mainstream studios to directly be involved with. The black comedy aspect was marketed for audience appeal.

10. Newman claims that the indie wave is simply another aspect of what is mainstream. It caters to its own audience and narrowly defines itself as something apart from the ordinary. The irony is that this is said while in their world, there is almost a formula for being authentic. The two cannot exist exclusively, since one needs the mainstream to act against it.

January 20th

1. After the 1947 Paramount Decree, many Hollywood players started their own production companies. Through these companies, they made films meant to be distributed by the major studios. Avant garde filmmakers were also "independent" in that their films were not meant to be widely distributed, nor were they in search of the type of finance a feature length narrative would be. In the 50's and 60's, John Cassevetes made films outside of Hollywood out of his frustration with the studio system and its conventions.
Independent cinema of the 80's and 9o's is typically characterized by different (and sometimes less dramatic) stories, lack of starpower, special effects, or genre elements, distinctive styles of
camerawork, editing, or narrative organization.

2. New Line, New World, Vestron, and Goldwyn all tried to exploit the video rental market. The continuum he describes is about putting together very different kinds of films under the same heading of "independent production."

3. Soderbergh's sex, lies, and videotape (1989) and Pulp Fiction (1994) were the two defining moments after winning the Palme d'Or at Cannes. This blurred the line between mainstream Hollywood productions and the "independent fringe." The Hollywood industry took advantage of Pulp Fiction's critical and commercial success by the acquiring smaller studios under their name and branding films as independent as commercial appeal. Miramax was bought by Disney,
New Line/Fine Line were taken over by Turner Broadcasting, which was taken over by Time Warner.

4. Since its starting out in the 80's, Miramax made increasingly larger profits until Pulp Fiction finally put them over the $100 million mark. Owned by Disney, Miramax has had the financing available to produce high-budget films and savvy marketing strategies to sell them. A film like Pulp Fiction, with stars like John Travolta and Bruce Willis, would not typically have been considered "independent", but due to its bold subject matter and storytelling, Miramax benefited from the unconventional, non-studio appeal of the film.

5. He calls it the incorporation into the mainstream. He reassess this point by illustrating Van Sant's return to his "indie roots" with films like Gerry and Elephant.

6. Post-classicism is characterized by "auteurs and the media conglomeration of the film industry" with high-concept being perhaps the central development within this cinema.
Thompson disagrees and says that what Wyatt is describing is an "intensification" of Hollywood's conventions. A film like Jaws is an example of how Hollywood's strength in telling a good story with fast-paced action and characters with clear psychological motivation was used to make New Hollywood work.

7. Unity: A series of causes and effects which the spectator can easily follow, unified narratives, story motivation, character traits which cause those motivations, characters' desire, a series of question to develop momentum, deadlines.
Clarity: Opening scenes with distant framing to establish time and place, compositions usually favor the main characters in scenes, quick-editing for action sequences, "dialogue hooks".
Films use motifs to reinforce central themes which help unify the story as one clear idea.

8. Set-up: Initial situation is established, protagonist makes goals. Complicating action: Protagonist pursues goal but is presented with a need to change tactics. Development: Protagonist encounters main conflict in pursuit of goal. Climax: Asks whether or not protagonist will achieve goal. Action is straightforward progression to the resolution.
Thompson analysis of Terminator 2 as being structured in 4 parts more clearly outlines the plot-points as being more than just a series of chases. The 4 part structure allows Thompson to look closer at the Terminator's transformation as being the central focus of the turning points.

9. Setup: Sissy's birth-defect, her discovery of hitchhiking, meeting Julian, and the Countess sending her to The Rubber Rose.
Complicating Action: The cowgirls act in order to save the crane.
Development: Sissy and Bonanza Jellybean fall in love, Sissy gets a normal thumb but finds that her hitchhiking abilities are weakened.
Climax: The third vision comes, Bonanza Jellybean is shot, whooping crane leaves.
Epilogue: Sissy decides to be a cowgirl.