Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1525212
56 C I N E M O N T A G E B O O K R E V I E W It wasn't cheap (the final cost is said to have been about $32 million), but it was all beautifully filmed. "I looked at Dick Tracy comic books, and that became my kind of palette," said cinematographer Stephen M. Katz, who used 14mm lenses to achieve depth of field. "I wanted everything in the world . . . to be in focus. It's a style. It's the way comic books are." The shoot was ardu- ous ("At times, during those long weeks in Chicago, the 'Blues Brothers' shoot came to resemble a montage of car chases"), attention-grabbing ("Nearly every 'Blues Brothers' scene would play out to an im- promptu audience" during the filming), and decidedly under the influence, as when Carrie Fisher, as Jake Blues's homicidally inclined ex-girlfriend, was so "spaced out," as cinematographer Katz put it, that she was hardly able to get a word out when filming a scene in which h e r c h a r a c t e r s c r u t i n i z e s a flamethrower manual: "She and Penny Marshall had dropped acid before the shoot," De Visé writes. When editor George Folsey Jr., ACE put the pieces together, "The Blues Brothers" had a run- ning time of about three hours. "Landis hoped to screen his ac- tion musical-comedy saga with a Broadway-style intermission," D e Vi s é w r i te s, i nv o k i n g t h e example of old-school epics on the order of "Ben-Hur." Universal prevailed upon Landis and Folsey to trim 20 minutes, then another 10 to 15 minutes, until the final running time (133 minutes) was attained. "The rhythm was gone," griped Landis, but the verdict was in: Even though the still-generous, two-hour- plus running time meant fewer bookings, audiences embraced the picture, its soul, its sound, its sight gags. "Landis's car chase musical earned nearly $1 million that week in Chicago alone, where it played in only sixteen theaters," De Visé writes, referring to the opening weekend. Like the film itself, this book can be unfocused and ungainly, but at its core is a terrific story. L i k e D e V i s é 's b o o k o n " T h e B l u e s Brothers," author Glenn Kenny 's book on the 1983 version of "Scarface" suffers from its own case of overabundance: In "The World Is Yours," Kenny sets the stage for his behind-the-scenes account of the making of the movie by first attending to, among other things, Prohibition, the rise of organized crime, and the genre of the American gangster movie—all of which provided the template for the original 1932 Howard Hawks-Howard Hughes pro- duction of "Scarface." The making of that justly celebrated film, starring Paul Muni as mobster Tony Camonte, is also dealt with in detail, though the most interesting passages are those in which Kenny, a for- mer film critic at Premiere, adds his own perceptions. Although he finds some of the original film's devices "quaint" and "corny," he rightly perceives the film as Hawks's most visually adventuresome. "[Hawks] and [cinematographer] Lee Garmes luxuri- ated in the shadows of criminality's Night World, and brought in a fantastic recurring visual emblem: most times a murder is committed in the film, a giant 'X,' either in the local architecture or in shadow, appears on screen," Kenny writes, noting that, in this case, "X" stands for death. Even after Kenny works his way up to the 1983 "Scarface," he spends far too much time setting up the movie and its assorted participants. It is perfectly well and good to be reminded of lives and careers of star Al Pacino (as mobster Tony Montana), producer Martin Bregman, and director De Palma, but, eventually, isn't it time to start discussing, you know, the movie they all got together to make? Finally, once Kenny gets around to the task, the book picks up some steam. We learn how Bregman, cast- ing about for the right approach for a new "Scarface," turned to screenwriter Oliver Stone and director Sidney Lumet, the latter of whom influenced the setting and focus of the final film: the film would not be set among bootleggers in Chicago, but drug lords in Miami. Speaking with his own bi- ographer, Andrew Yule, Lumet said, "I also wanted to introduce political ramifications, exploring the CIA's involvement in drugs as part of their anti-Communist drive. I didn't want to do it just on a gangster or cop level." When Lumet read Stone's screen- play, however, he realized the film was becoming less political, more melodramatic. "Sidney reacted badly to my first draft, which was pretty close to the final draft—it was violent and vulgar, all those things—and it was too much for Sidney," Stone said. Bregman apparently realized this called for a director unafraid of violence and vulgarity—name- l y, D e P a l m a , w h o h a d b e e n involved in an earlier, pre-Stone, pre-Lumet incarnation of the r e m a k e . N o w h e w a s t a s k e d with bringing to fruition Stone's glossy, overblown vision. "When Brian's making a gangster film, he wants it to be big," Stone says. "He wants it to be like a Sergio Leone kind of gangster film. He wants it stylistic. He wants big scenes, a lot of suits, a lot of clothes, a lot of costumes, jewelry." Co-starring opposite Pacino's Tony Montana was Michelle Pfeiffer as his eventual spouse, Elvira—whose pres- ence in the film is a virtual embodiment of Stone and De Palma's glitzy, extravagant approach. Yet, as Kenny rightly notes, De Palma— the director of such lurid entertainments as "Carrie," "Sisters," and "Dressed to Edward Zwick. P H OT O : P H OT O F E S T