The Robert MacNeil Report

lena lena the peak weekend good evening the christmas season is a time when the year's final blotted new movies has released in time to be eligible for the academy awards and to attract a holiday audience it the trade publication the chance film box office receipts is estimated that nineteen seventy five will be another record breaking year at the box office one million eight hundred and fifty million dollars paid by americans buying tickets to the movies it's hard to talk about movies without mentioning money for this has been the year of the blockbuster with jaws earning some forty million dollars in one year more than three times

what gone with the wind has earned in its lifetime it's also hard to talk seriously about movies without mentioning pauline kael one of the nation's most thoughtful and provocative critics of the movies since nineteen sixty eight pauline kael is written from criticism for the new yorker she's passionately cared about movies for much longer are collectible the criticism reaches a history of popular culture after three books i lost it at the movies kiss kiss bang bang and going steady the scales for deeper into movies was a winner of the national book award soon should publish her fifth collection for the year seventy two to seventy five it's entitled really in a forward to that new book she's written the movies i like samples swath with swastikas swatches i beg your pardon of cloth of the period in which they're made in the heat of the night long she says to the lyndon johnson cage as clearly as a dirty harry belongs to the heyday of the nixon era because pauline kael simply enjoy as these sometimes escapist always sensual

experience of movie going she's brought with her tonight someone who occasionally goes to the movies with their his name is woody allen has drawn much like going to the movies with pauline kael well it's it's absolutely fine chichi a guy sits there and scribbles little notes on the paper you know which because i i disapproved completely as as a filmmaker i mean i think the critics should come and see the movie and just over it wash over them in and enjoy it and and not really get it dumb enough to preoccupy the details of fun but she's really a sick man from taking my little notes all the time on and so forth for someone who makes them it's an appropriately our night and nerve racking well we like a lot of the same movies but then there are certain amount that we we said we don't agree on what you're going to see one of your lives i would sure oh sure we've we've agreed and disagreed on and i'm on my own movies as well as a seventh on charlotte what's the most

powerful figure we'll think is the powerful in one way that's pretty wordy and a spot on it i should say that it's possible to go to movies with woody there are too many people a critic can go the movies with easily and very few people who are connected with the industry but it's easy to go with woody because he's such an open attitude toward discussing his own work i could tell them for example that i was not really crazy about love and death and he could still smile and talk to me i get to do that with to many directors and his own attitude is so disciplined about his work he wants to hear exactly what you're saying he may disapprove of those little notes i scribbled but he's interested in the results i mean he wants a very analytical view of his own work and he doesn't like to discuss details of other people's work that that in the end defense of criticism of

an occupation i should say that the movie does wash over me even though i'm also scribbling things ok well what movies of washed over huge issue around and i would literally get washed away but what kind of the year of seventy five in the movies and your opinion oh it's been a very very good year but not this latter part of that not the christmas specials a year that has movies such as jaws which i think is the greatest movie of its tight ever made their reasons for that spectacular box office gross it's really a marvelously witty and well made movie one of the reasons well i would say that's the kind of movie that most of the started to go to movies for it's a movie that you get a tremendous visceral reaction to at the same time you're laughing at yourself all for responding so violently you're really having a good time being scared it's a very funny movie and it has tremendous houston

and energy in it that the young director has a real feeling for for the different age groups and how they respond ought to fear so that he has several heroes in it all responding different ways i think in a way that richard dreyfus represents the spirit of the un director and that partly the bill succeeds because you feel that the director himself has his has his own alter ego protagonist on board what films of the shooter nor your isn't discrete and now i i mean the good films i would say i don't know how many of them would he have seen or or if he would agree that the good ones i've seen i'd say would be odd nashville jaws dog day afternoon which it does marvelous movie and one flew over the cuckoo's nest of the american ones there's also the magic flute from abroad the ingmar bergman film art and but not too many good films from abroad have had open get on the story of the day ok the marvelous truffaut

films just coming now but yeah it was that many good films as a pretty good year unfortunately right at the end where getting the big studio films the ones they were holding back for academy awards and christmas releases and so we're getting the most of the letters you had a bit of advice on what we should look forward to what you say in the preface to your new book chung there are films that typified the lyndon johnson year there are films that typify the richard nixon era are there films that typify the gerald ford here yet yes i think so i think there is a confused suspended attitude in certain movies that and not knowing how to appeal to the public and so taking a very crude means i get lucky lady which is a very bad film may indicate some of the kind of confusion in the country now very often bad films typified here is as much as good ones do dog day

afternoon yes very good movie typifies a certain urban spaces mine are certain kind of divisiveness about what's going on around us are and yet at the same time responding to the human qualities of the and the people trapped within it i think sidney lumet directed it really caught the urban flavor as of this moment but there's that chaotic thing that that lucky lady catch is that that sense of oh say reading mean spirited end and confused in the country are the picture treats us all like hicks otters if we were dummies who would be turned on and wildly excited every time we heard an obscenity there is a sense that people really don't know what they believed in anymore and say you really try to punch them and is is are the dynamics of the forty or so just it is because they are creating the films or other films influencing the year

waste and you think well sure of one flew over the cuckoo's nest are really comes almost ten years after the the era it was really part of i mean it was the leader in the sixties era art so that now it has to have a different spirit now it's no longer that we really believe that the rebels are saying are an authority is crazy but that where we're uncertain and in that movie you're not really certain that the rebel is so sane and you're not really quite sure how to react to the relationships within the institution and i think that shows a change like that woody allen to resist can you see movies reflecting certain political eras that we've just been through and this one moment and i can see when you lose any thought at all and but i can see that the movies reflect afford

you're in such an era actually exist at this point the mud i'm not sure i'd have to think about it i don't know offhand i have to think in my mind you know about you know review all the movies that came out of that time and it not only i don't give much thought it was it was really your thesis a lot more money than johnson and nixon well let's let that the nixon area so recently passed and that it's easy to say i mean this isn't a mysterious process it's that the producers and directors really jumped right into the zeitgeist and nine they they really shaped domes in terms of certain kind of nixon era start clint eastwood is really that the nixon era big star magnum force and dirty harry and those movies in which the tough guy in the name of law torture cleans

out the rats in the city are almost like a comic strip version of what nixon was saying in the political arena but i got it i really use that all forward or green card i'm sorry anyway but what happens is that the producers of jump ahead they're planning the films it won't be out for several months or even for year and they go in terms of the mood of the moment ah a picture like a lot of the charles bronson films also typify the nixon era now charles bronson has a different persona if you see him in hard times he's not a tough guy who's cleaning the rats out he's a depression hero a working man a local who tries to get some kind of sense of justice within his community i mean mostly starch change change their faces with the mood of the time and part of it is a deliberate

shaping part of it i think is just responding to what's going on in the culture i don't trust <unk> that i've read you believe that the the audience is is changing for for movies you wrote last summer that a number of people you could uncover let how many but a significant number of people who were who were passionate moviegoers before no longer when you do and i wish they would i think this you know the interesting thing about movies to a critically for a critic to write about them is that we've always taken high culture very very seriously but we haven't taken popular culture that seriously and in recent years we be don't understand that perhaps popular culture affected people even more deeply than high culture because at the movies or watching television you reacted such an instinctive level that it let all his fantasy materials so into you whereas if you're reading this site all star you're thinking about it consciously and so it really doesn't soak into you in the same way

while it in recent years i think that some some movies really fulfill the needs of both high and pop cuellar culture like the godfather and a movie like mean streets these movies operate on more than one level i mean they are they are really brilliant works and yet older people still have a slightly condescending view i still bump into people who say oh i wouldn't go see the godfather and they say that is if they expected moral approval for it as if it really were a crummy part cultural event and they are somehow keeping a high moral character by not going actually they're missing one of the key experiences of our time i think that made my larger audience going to the movies you know because of the high culture people still tend to go only to very special events they tend to go to the ingmar bergman films are very they do not take chances

on films are they don't go to mean streets a film that doesn't have big name stars in it they don't go very often anymore are they need to watch more television than a picnic so i think it has problems and that was and that i was told would indeed do you get there wasn't an appalling does that the audience is changing for the film's can you see this in religion during that time i can't i have no contact you know with without audiences i don't really know i'm told that the audience is for films have become more youthful you know but i don't really know there's an enormous tendency to to make generalizations based on a tiny bit of information on that you know people will will pass by the lines of tears and say to me on well i saw a line for your picture the other day a medal young people on it and from that they infer that young people are my audience or young people or

film audiences and you know so but i don't really i don't really know i'm not sure that anybody really has any yeah now haven't united rating services and nielsen's during her during the demographics where do we have to do i don't know it's i don't you know but i always hear conflicting reports from phone companies from produces from hackers who go around and promote their pitches and so it's very hard to to make any characterization that let's discuss another another of your ideas rich rich and just make edits very tough nowadays you say to get an audience for a movie unless it is a creep media created an event unless the advertising has been so engineered in the media is then reinforce that the audience thinks it's an event before they go and go and say wow you know saturation advertising particularly on television makes all the difference and a small budget movie generally simply can't get that because television advertising very expensive

and so an enormous campaign will be put behind the big films the towering inferno kind of film and all the audience seems to be how swell up from that in a film like the great gatsby which everyone seems to have agreed was very poor nevertheless did quite well because there was such a media campaign behind it because it was inexpensive mood a rare as a very very good movie that had the press behind it without that big campaign without the big advertising simply doesn't do as well in the case of woody i think it's it's taken him quite a while to develop the audience he he's got now i mean it's taken several pictures for him too to do that i think now he's got a cross section of the american public cause kids love his work at older people respond to him he's very unusual in a comedy director star to get that wide an audience it once i don't hear the same kind of

response to the other comedians work at it you know you have your films and a group of us have your films have that kind of mass advertising orleans talking about or have they had to commend themselves by word of mouth and by smaller they've had an adequate amount of advertising i mean i don't think that them some companies have shorted me an advertising not have any of the films than the type that that one would promote in the sense that one promotes the great gatsby or or ms demick a brick phone and the films have made a certain amount of money not a gigantic amount you know but they've been profitable for everybody and it's a certain level i agree with going to that that that are that it it does take work to try and go over a series of pictures trying build up an audience that will follow you hopefully through the pictures that are not as good but also i don't think

they really do frankly but isn't this girl that jerusalem is catastrophic is that one hopes that that one could function in films and do great many films and different types of experiments around and different films and that that sometimes audiences will respond enjoy themselves and sometimes a common and they may not enjoy them so much so but that they will come again you know and that you have a relationship with him that's that sort of healthy and creative but unfortunately it doesn't always work that way do you think your own films reflect anything in the times we live in as we were discussing a moment ago or is it just your own individual personal development it is when you're walking a cockroach because you couldn't afford to it to an ugly they probably reflect them you know the times but quite accidentally i mean all oh i'm doing when i make a film is just try and make a film that i think it's funny about subjects that interest me personally that day reflect

the times in some way is inevitable and also i think accidental what does what he represent in this flow of a lot of his own artistic development and then in that period well i was a professional opinion about alcoa well it i think his comic character is enormously appealing to people partly because he's he's the smart irving guy who at the same time it is is intelligent is vulnerable and somehow by the intelligence he triumphs and bad aspect of his character appeals i think did people in the audience who all who also feel a vague there's tremendous identification with woody in a way say they're there couldn't be with mel brooks because he's so manic you can't trust him where's with woody you can trust him as a basic decency and intelligence and he's showing ooh ah did he fall sugg i mean that he's doing the same kind of foul ups that you do that everybody knows he does when he gets

nervous but it's it is that decent city in him and and the fact that we all feel like small people in in an urban are set up that there are there is that helplessness i wonder if you've considered the problem however creating a comic character now are in that in the days of chaplin and keaton the speech paul had a stationary set up the works a chaplain could work a year on the movie keeping this at keeping his cast they're keeping the technicians having as per minute you added a love of stunt man of get riders of everything now mel brooks paul gosar ski woody allen and gene wilder tried to make comedies that are comparable to the old comedies and yet they're working with pickup casts they have no permanent crew are they may have to go to england are you this lovely or where ever to shoot it they may have to do the whole thing and thirty six days so it isn't that planning an

end working over again for weeks until you get it right which that all comedians could do so in a way it you have to extend a lot of goodwill to the central characters to compensate for the fact that there isn't that perfection and timing and the amazing thing about what he is of the public does give him that goodwill so even when a gag is slightly fumble might think they go along with it are you conscious in this persona that develops from one field or another you conscious of deliberately trying to portray song thing that identifies with what many people in the arctic in the audience you are you are you shaving some particularly on that i mean that's it's an interesting about how helpful he knows as a critic would discredit and how i would describe it because she read it she naturally goes there right to beat the analysis of the of the details in the parts to me i would say they like because i'm making them laugh and i let it go it that i

certainly i don't i would never try to develop i kept a deliberately old a groove going completely in that one emerges inevitably you show up on the screen and you behave i'm quite naive in the sense of how you feel about things and trying to be funny about them in and out in a way that the his use of the creative guys you know and then and people go away after watching two or three films in and they have an impression of you that's not deliberately were necessary certain that my case deliberately created i also wanted it just had two opponents and coach i also i agree with i think it's much tougher now to make films for some of the reasons that she said and also because i am we have to talk and that that's an enormously complex problem that i don't think anybody has any grasp of of of the enormity of of how complex that

gets in and you can see it from the illustration of the chaplain what he had to talk to a chaplain had to talk he would have had to be in his in his great picture i think of talking pictures were not really too interesting to me that he would've either had he was an intelligent man and he would have had the talk into like an intelligent man what prefabricate some kind of a soft voice and persona with in their character which would've been strange and an that his problems in terms of presenting itself an audience would have multiplied that would've square to kill themselves or something cause it's really i am a lot more difficult when you're not in the abstract world of silent comedy so samuels of the good will and the audience really appreciated i mean you know any intelligence that they give us one which i make these funny films you know is necessary and we're going nowhere near you to just finished making a serious film about the blacklisting period in television <unk> from which is coming out

sometime a few months i got to know you go into serious just an aberration i just add took an acting job i mean i didn't direct the film not that i write it so no one and doing comedies but but mahdi rick the director presented me with a lot of projects that seem worthwhile to me and i thought that i would try it because i thought it would be interesting in and refreshing to try something different than and then you know if it works great info and something permanent that doesn't you know i just give them the shot i could but it was i felt it was worthwhile can't think certainly i'll be making comedies myself because some kind of muffled quick to make anything else that this was just to aggression and i hope things work you when you say that nobody understands know what contemporary hero heroes and contemporary heroin should they are how they should relate to each other how does that appear in his films are wealthy actually i think what he probably comes as

close to being the contemporary hero or for young audiences i think he's one of the few odd that their audiences really can accept is a hero because he doesn't pretend that he stands for high mortality he doesn't pretend that he can do a lot of things he says well i mean you know you cant take people like clint eastwood very seriously and you know you no longer take the heroism of the robert read kurds and paul newman's that seriously i mean they're they're marvelous oh i can if they can parody heroism but they no longer really stand for anything somehow those values which here is used to stand or have become undermined and suspect in actual you distrust someone who says he stands for the right but someone who admits that he's puzzled is trying to do the best we can without hurting anybody make it makes very good sense to an audience you know went when you talk about the promise of a

love of talking in comedy eyes thinking that that when you watch those prints of chaplin in the gold rush with chaplin narrating it you get that distance traveler cultivated english voice in addition to the tramp and we can't quite put them together whereas what you're doing is really putting them to get there because you're this intelligent man and his intelligent voice is commenting on your own weaknesses because you're always smarter than what you're doing the comedian is affecting you make you make a movie it's a it's a prefabricated job in the city we say one thing to do not hear an analyst well you know you were doing that groucho was doing i mean you're you're making fun of yourself and yet you're showing it there you know that there are problems there that that we all share those problems that you can make a joke about what you yourself are doing and still

fall into the trap let me end in conclusion just ask through career advice to the reasons they just for christmas dinner what should they go and say over the christmas season if its inner cities that you would consider good oh well the magic flute would be a perfect christmas tree sowell it's tremendous fun the same time i don't think it's a high culture film in the way say the scenes from a marriage law were some of the other burton film star i mean this is when you can go to which your children a few seconds to listen to more i think i don't the afternoon if you haven't seen it odd and and all parts of the west as charming for a holiday film it's not a great film but it's a lovely charming comedy whitson flaws in the picture doesn't have to be great it if it has something there i think almost any odd of the films of the last few years if they're returning now that that were made by certainly the key

directors such as altman co less gray says the brian de palma it is a travesty that they're going to lower sentence woody allen thank you mr abbott will be back tomorrow evening and robert macneil thank you merry christmas