Response to discussion of the ethics behind the production of Apocalypse Now

Looking into the Heart of Darkness:

The ethical considerations of filmmaking from a producer-director’s perspective

Upon conclusion of our viewing of Hearts of Darkness: A filmmaker’s apocalypse, We engaged briefly in a discussion on the ethics of Francis Ford Coppola’s directorial methods. Many in the room seemed to take a stance believing that the ends justify the means; that the resulting film was worth any risk. While I can understand this viewpoint- Apocalypse Now is widely considered to be one of the greatest films ever made- I feel that a deeper examination of this subject is warranted. I am of the opinion that Coppola’s methodology was unethical. I believe this to be true for a few key reasons: 

1. 1. His “figure it out as we go along” method was irresponsible and needlessly wasteful. 
2. The incompleteness of his creative vision caused undue risk to himself, his cast, and his crew. 
3. The stresses and struggles that Coppola brought upon himself created in him significant psychological difficulty.

First, Coppola’s “figure it out as we go” method was irresponsible. I believe that his excitement to seize upon the ongoing Vietnam war and utilize it to somehow examine the depths of the human mind undermined the pre-production process. Many of the problems we saw develop with the production were caused directly by the lack of advance preparation, and those which were not caused directly thereby could at least have been better mitigated by a more thorough preparatory period. Yes, I see the merit in the argument that desperation breeds creativity. Perhaps in the solving of these problems Coppola spontaneously improved the film in ways that could in no way be planned. I argue, however, that many, many great films have been created without shooting for nearly 300 days and editing for three years. Having a clear idea of what one hopes to accomplish, as well as a completed script, will go much further to serve the creative vision than constant problem solving and impromptu changes.

Because Coppola had an incomplete vision of the film, his methods of producing the film generated large amounts of undue risk for himself and all involved with the production. His cast and crew faced physical danger- they shot is typhoons, with hungry tigers, and under the influence of various substances. Martin Sheen nearly died. But the risks were not all physical. A considerable amount of money was invested in this film. Were the film to fail, Coppola would be destitute. He would have lost his home and his business. I know that as young college students with no dependents we can sometimes underestimate the ramifications of this loss, but having a bit more experience and being a bit further down the path with a wife and a house, I can better appreciate the gravity of this risk. We aren’t just talking about someone’s artistic vision not being realized here- we are talking about children going hungry and homeless if this project were to fail. There is also the professional reputation of everyone involved to consider. Think, for a moment, what the professional impact on the cast and crew would be if they spent nearly a year to create a flop. This industry, for better or worse, is incredibly reputation driven. This film failing could have had major professional ramifications for everyone involved.

The most important consideration, I believe, and what really drove home to me the unethical nature of Coppola’s methods, is the psychological impact on Coppola himself. I did not miss the irony of a man making a film based on Heart of Darkness (a novel about a man who goes into the jungle and goes slowly insane) going into the jungle and going slowly insane. In the pursuit of his art, Coppola opened himself to the risk of major mental illness. We heard, on numerous occasions, his impassioned discussions of his suicidal thoughts. I have looked into that darkness myself, and I can tell you no artistic endeavor is worth the artist’s own life. We might not truly appreciate the struggle he was facing as the producer and director of a runaway multi-million dollar production, but no matter the size or scope of the endeavor suicide is not a solution. The fact that Coppola got to such an incredibly dark and vulnerable mental state only serves to reinforce to us that his methodology was not sound.

It does not take great risk to life and limb to create a great film. It does not take the slow descent into madness to create great art. It does take great vision, preparation, and an incredible amount of hard work. Problems will always arise. Things will always go wrong. That is the nature of art and the nature of life. Those problems will need to be solved, but to begin a creative process without a clear vision of the art to be created and to consequently put yourself and others in danger is inherently unethical. In this case, the ends do not always justify the means.

In review of Django Unchained

This is a review I wrote for my English class at GRCC. It's the only college course I've ever taken. Enjoy!

Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained is a brutally violent, two hour, forty-five minute cinematic masterpiece. Blending truth and fiction, Tarantino carefully and craftily weaves a compelling narrative that quickly catches hold of the viewer’s attention and refuses to let go. Not for the faint of heart, Django is gritty, dirty, and bloody- easily earning its R-rating- but woven throughout is a thread of charm that offers relief from the darker moments in the film. The story is compelling, the cinematography is spectacular, and the acting is masterful. Django Unchained is an example of cinematic craftsmanship at its finest.

Set mostly in the Deep South in the years just prior to the American civil war, Django is very much a film highlighting the brutality of slavery in the United States. Race relations and slavery are perhaps the two most sensitive issues to address in United States history, but Tarantino doesn’t hold back at all in his depiction of the treatment of slaves. This was a risky decision, and, were it not done well, could have ruined the film. It was done well, however, and provides a sense of realism that underlines the fictional narrative being told. There no gratuitousness to the depiction of brutality by slave owners, however. Each time the viewer sees a slave being tortured or killed, as happens in a handful of occasions throughout, it is to serve a specific narrative purpose. In each case, there is something revealed to the audience either about one of the characters or about the story itself.

There are two scenes that may cause a viewer to feel compelled to look away: the scene in which two slaves fight to the death and the scene in which a slave is killed by dogs. While some may find the intensity of the violence in these particular scenes to be objectionable, the violence in these scenes is a very important aspect of this film for two reasons. First, they introduce and then reinforce how evil the film’s antagonist, Calvin Candie, is. In both cases, these acts of supreme brutality are perpetrated at his command and in both cases he directly observes the violence taking place. Second, it is by confronting his audience with such graphic depictions of violent brutality that Tarantino forces the viewer to consider the way slaves were treated. It is only by taking the audience to such an uncomfortable place that the truth of slavery can be made real to the viewer.

The acting in this film is superb. Christoph Waltz command of the quirks of German dentist turned bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz to quickly seize the audience’s interest and curiosity and drive the story forward in the first act. Jamie Foxx is wonderful as the titular Django and does a great job handling the extremely difficult emotional toll that Django undergoes as he transitions from slave to free man and as he studies bounty hunting under Schultz’s guidance. Waltz and Foxx make an excellent team portraying an unlikely partnership of outcast bounty hunters determined to rescue Django’s still-enslaved wife, Broomhilda.  Leonardo DiCaprio portrays her new owner, the villainous Calvin Candie, a plantation owner who forces slaves to fight to the death, with an over-the-top grandiosity that fits the character and the film just perfectly.

From a technical standpoint, Django Unchained is a masterfully shot film. Django is simply beautiful. Director Quentin Tarantino and Director of Photography Robert Richardson clearly have a deep understanding of film as a visual medium and each scene is meticulously shot. A perfect example is a scene in a saloon near the start of the film. Dr. Schultz and Django find themselves alone in a saloon and Dr. Schultz decides to pour them some beer while explaining to Django what a bounty hunter is and why he needs Django’s help tracking his current target. A lesser director would possibly have shown this scene in one or two wide shots while the actor talks. Tarantino and Richardson do it in 11. There’s a long shot as Schultz walks to the bar, a medium shot on Schultz as he pulls on the tap, a tight shot of his hands on the tap, a tight shot of the beer filling the glass, a tight panning shot from his hands on the tap down to the stick he will use to scrape the head of the beer off the glass, a tight shot of his hands doing so, and then it repeats for the second glass, all while Dr. Schultz is delivering a monologue. It is a masterful way to prevent the film from stagnating while large amounts of expository dialogue are given. There’s also the expert use of slow motion at dramatically significant moments, such as the scene in which Dr. Schultz shoots a wanted man off the back of a horse. There is a brief slow-motion shot of his bright red blood spraying the white cotton in the field of the plantation. It’s details like these that take Django from being a good movie to being a great one.

Overall, Django Unchained is an excellent film. It tells a compelling story against a backdrop of the darkest period in American history. It is well written, beautifully shot, and superbly acted. Quentin Tarantino demonstrates through Django Unchained he is uncompromising in his desire to tell his stories and he is unafraid to tackle even the most controversial topics to do so. Django is humorous, brutal, charming, violent, challenging, and is a cinematic experience well worth having.

It's been a while!

My goodness I have been busy! So much has been going on in my life and, I'm ashamed to admit, for a time I forgot I even had this blog to write.

I've been writing a lot, but nothing so far that I'm nearly proud enough of to post publicly. I've got a few screenplay ideas I've been mulling over and trying to write on. I'm working on a sitcom idea, a fantasy time travel sort of idea (I need a better log line for that one...) and still thinking on an writing on my King Arthur Zombie movie.

Now that we are in the depths of winter, I haven't been getting a lot of shop time. It's too darn cold out to build in the garage these days, and I've given half of the garage back to K to park her car. Chivalry isn't quite dead.

The most exciting thing to have happened since my last update, creatively speaking, is that I've discovered a love for shooting and editing videos. I think I'll be writing a separate post about that, but if you want to see the videos K and I have made so far you can click on this link to our YouTube page.

Now here are some photos of projects I've been working on:

This is the set of shelves I made for K's bead supplies

A birdhouse for the backyard

The birdhouse in the backyard.

Sadly, nobody's moved in yet

This is a tripod mount for an iPhone 4 that I designed

Very helpful for taking time lapses

(I now have an iPhone 6 so I need to build a new one)

As always, I have quite a few irons in the fire, so I'll do my best to update more regularly. I'm pretty terrible at it, I know, but I'll try to do better.

An update

You may well have noticed that I haven't been publishing much on this blog in the past several days. I haven't given up on my daily writing goal- far from it, in fact. I'm doing a fair bit of writing every day. The reason I haven't been posting any of that writing is because I am working on a particularly long document that is very fluid right now.

I've started writing a screenplay! I'm not doing this because I hope to move to Hollywood and chase some dream of working in film or because I think I will ever be able to sell a script. I'm doing it because I love films and I think it's a great medium to really push myself creatively. It's certainly a challenge to write a screenplay well.

The plot I've come up with is basically this: a zombie apocalypse type event occurs in 7th century England and King Arthur and his Knights are the only ones who can stop it.

Not exactly high concept, but I've got some ideas for some deeper meaning and character development.

Anyway, I'll update about the screenplay as often as I can and I will continue to post other writing here as often as it gets written.

Super Heroes, pt 2

Iron man, who is Marvel Comics’ Batman equivalent, operates in a similar manner but has a different motivation. While Batman is driven by a desire for revenge, Iron man (Tony Stark) is driven by a desire for redemption. Stark, a billionaire genius, owns a multi-national conglomerate centered on defense contracts and arms dealing. After being kidnapped by a terror group in the Middle East, Stark is confronted by the reality that the arms his company makes and distributes are causing more harm than good. Tony stark puts his exceptional engineering skills toward building a suit of armor to make him nearly invincible. Stark uses this suit to fly across the world and attack the terror cell that held him and destroy their arms cache. What is particularly interesting to me about the Iron Man story is what Tony stark chooses to do with the suit he has invented. Rather than distribute the suit to American soldiers to keep them alive and further the defense of American interests, he chooses to keep it to himself and to personally fight America’s enemies as well as his own. This self-centered approach speaks to Stark’s motivation. He is more concerned with personally righting the wrongs he and his company committed that he is in administering justice and enforcing peace.

This is illustrative of some of the larger issues I find with super heroes as a genre of popular media. With the exception of Superman, who I still don’t quite understand, all super heroes are motivated by a deep personal emotional need, usually some form of guilt. Their actions are devoted to suppressing the guilt, not to actually making the most meaningful contributions to solve the problems they claim to fight. The popularity of the self-centered, vigilante super hero is also reflective of one of the self-centered, vigilante gun culture that has permeated the United States.   

Super Heroes, pt 1

In popular culture today super heroes are everywhere. There have been several big-budget blockbuster films, ranging from Christopher Nolan’s “Dark Knight” Batman trilogy to the seemingly endless stream of “Avengers” films. There have been TV programs, such as Gotham and Daredevil. Super heroes appear across all media, but are they truly heroes at all? What does the prevalence of this type of mythology in our society tell us about ourselves?

I believe a super hero is an individual who:

1.    Possesses extraordinary skills or supernatural abilities

2.    Claims to act on behalf of justice and/or morality

3.    Uses his skills or abilities to administer his perception of justice and/or morality directly and without respect to or in direct defiance of traditional law enforcement agencies and procedures.

4.    (Generally) Operates under a pseudonym or complete anonymity.

While I believe a hero is an individual who:

1.    Displays courage and selflessness

2.    Acts voluntarily to help others in spite of increased risk to his own property or life

3.    Acts within the law, so far as laws are just

4.    Operates openly

At first glance, these may seem to be very similar qualifications. Using Batman as a case study illustrates the key differences. Batman is a character that wears a costume and mask at night and uses his elite training in martial arts to attack and incapacitate criminals in Gotham. His stated objective is to “save” Gotham from the criminal element by which it is overrun. Nearly always portrayed as a vigilante, Batman cooperates with police agencies only when it suits his objectives. In fact, he is often at odds with law enforcement. His actions and motivations appear just and moral, and while his methods are far from orthodox, he seems to be accomplishing his goal.

But I argue that Batman is misguided at best and intentionally allowing the criminal underworld to thrive at worst. Batman’s alter-ego is Bruce Wayne, the wealthiest and most powerful business magnate in Gotham. He is a multi-billionaire with connections. Bruce Wayne has the capital and the influence in Gotham to affect a meaningful, systemic change to the city through the political system. It is demonstrated in The Dark Knight that Bruce Wayne essentially has the power to get anyone he wants elected. Why doesn’t he form a PAC and finance candidates that will change the city from the top down, with sweeping legislative changes? Would this not be better than spending all night every night in fisticuffs with mafia bosses’ goons and mentally disturbed criminals?

Bruce Wayne doesn’t actually want to fix what is broken in Gotham. The reason he became Batman in the first place was due to his parents’ murder when he was yet a child. In various animated iterations, Batman identifies himself by saying “I am vengeance. I am the night. I am Batman!” When asked by Alfred, his butler, why he chose a bat as his symbol, Bruce says “It’s time my enemies share my dread”

Batman needs a fight. He needs to frighten his enemies. He is vengeance. Batman is not actually interested in doling out justice or in saving a corrupt city. He is looking to live an absurd revenge fantasy rather than confront his own pain and guilt surrounding his parents’ death  

-continued tomorrow-

   

Brief Making Update!

I’ve been doing a lot of work in the old workshop lately. I’ve got all my most useful hand tools on custom made tool holders on a French cleat system running the length of the wall. I’ve built an outfeed table/workbench for my table saw and I’ve built a scrap wood sorting rack. I finished a birdhouse a while ago that I’m pretty proud of and I’m working on a pretty neat project now for the house. I’m building a calendar. It’s a 2ft by 1.5ft oak plywood board with a sheet of plexiglass held in front of it by a aspen wood frame. The plexiglass has the grid for the calendar painted on the back side so we can write on the plexiglass with dry erase markers. It’s a pretty neat project. I’ll post some photos of all this stuff sometime soon so you have some idea what I’m trying to describe.

One upcoming project that I’m particularly excited about is building some work stations for K’s bead studio room. She’s making do with a cheap computer desk for now, but I’m planning a pretty deluxe set up with cupboards and drawers and a big countertop to work on. She and I are working out the details of that plan so we can get started. Along with my daily writing, there’s a lot going on! I’ll post photos along with a proper “State of the Workbench” post very soon.