Hellman at Work

From: "hotlove666"
Subject: Hellman at Work

I just ran into Monte at Riteaid, and he invited me over to look at rushes from his new film - a 30-minute ghost story called "Stanley's Girlfriend," about a strange episode in the early life of Stanley Kubrick. It's part of an omnibus film produced by Dennis Bartok of the American Cinematheque, "Bottled Ashes," with other sections by Ken Russell, Joe Dante and 2 others. For complicated reasons, Monte goes back to Vancouver in the spring to shoot another episode that will only be on the DVD, about a family heirloom and the problems it causes thru the generations. A Hellman double, like the two westerns and Backdoor to Hell/Flight to Fury.

The footage is a pleasure to see even in rough form - lots of lovely compositions in depth, great natural(-looking) lighting, spare camera moves, all shot in 3 1/2 days on a set he only saw the day before he started shooting. I found out that he never replaces dialogue. He's sensitive to the aural qualities of performances, and he doesn't like what happens when you loop afterward. Being an editor he always knew he could use one actor's line from another take to sweeten a scene where another actor was at his best, etc., like a French director.

It's all unknown actors: Stanley (who is never called Kubrick, but obviously is), Stanley's girlfriend and a young writer named Leo that he befriends in 1957, when most of the film takes place. John Gavin plays Leo in the epilogue, set in 1999. Monte showed me his last close-up and said: "I told him not to act here. Isn't he wonderful?" There's also an historical "document" filmed in black and white in a graveyard, which is Monte Does Mario (although I suspect he was thinking of the beginning of Great Expectations, one of his favorite films). His new favorite director is Tsai Ming-liang - he has posters all over his office, and he's over the moon about The Wayward Cloud, which "has more things in it to offend everyone than Iguana!"

He has been picking shots on his laptop and mapping out a paper cut, so he should finish his rough cut in one day with the editor on Monday, leaving him four days to play around with some sequnces using superimpositions and montage. "Bottled Ashes" will have a lot of effects, which are being done by Bob Skotak, but they are going to try to have it ready for Cannes.