Making Movies
Sidney Lumet
Language: English
Pages: 218
ISBN: 0679756604
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
From one of America's most acclaimed directors comes a book that is both a professional memoir and a definitive guide to the art, craft, and business of the motion picture. Drawing on 40 years of experience on movies ranging from Long Day's Journey Into Night to The Verdict, Lumet explains the painstaking labor that results in two hours of screen magic.
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personnel. We don’t want to wait until ten minutes have gone by to find out that somebody’s late. Andrzej heads for the coffee, Burtt to the soundstage, and I walk to the makeup rooms to say good morning to the actors. Generally we just have a quick hug in the makeup room. I may say that rushes looked good, but I don’t necessarily talk about rushes. I don’t want the actors to expect automatic praise. They have to trust me, and squandering praise destroys its meaning. By 8:25, I’m on the set. I
was edited. It might look badly edited, but because of how poorly it was shot, it may in fact be a miracle of editing that the story even makes sense. Conversely, the movie may look well edited, but who knows what was left on the cutting room floor. In my view, only three people know how good or bad the editing was: the editor, the director, and the cameraman. They’re the only ones who know everything that was shot in the first place. As good as The Fugitive looks (and it looks terrific), I don’t
function was to provide the state of grace from which to fall. The Pawnbroker had as complex a score as I’ve ever worked on. In the opening scene, Sol Nazerman, a Jewish refugee from Germany, is sitting in a suburban backyard, soaking up the sun. His sister asks for a loan so she and her family can take a vacation in Europe that summer. To Nazerman, everything about Europe is a cesspool. He says, “Europe? It’s rather like a stink, as I remember.” The next sequence shows him driving into New York
sung by Astrud Gilberto. However, as the picture progressed, it slowly turned into one of the most exciting melodramatic scores I’d ever heard. It proved the power and importance of musical arrangements. The theme stayed the same, but its entire dramatic meaning changed as the arrangements changed. Most composers farm out the arrangements. But Quincy did these himself. Again, it was a major contribution. I’ve talked about Richard Rodney Bennett’s score for Murder on the Orient Express. At our
letters on a black background, Scene missing. He said the audience laughed and went right on enjoying the picture. I told him I hope he kept the scene out, since it obviously wasn’t necessary. So I’m sitting in a first-rate screening room, with comfortable upholstered seats and state-of-the-art sound and projection. I’ve flown out to be here when the executives screen the movie for the first time. Often a preview has already been scheduled for that same night or the next. Present are the head of