[lbo-talk] John Ford

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Mon Nov 27 13:33:03 PST 2006


On Nov 27, 2006, at 4:20 PM, Miles Jackson wrote:


> The documentary "Lost in La Mancha" about Terry Gilliam's attempt
> to film Don Q. is a great example of this. Film is not the product
> of a single artist; it's a collaborative effort, and if any of the
> collaborators fall down, the film falls down. --If your perfectly
> cast Don Quixote develops a hernia and can't ride a horse, you're
> not able to make the movie you wanted to make, no matter what kind
> of a directorial genius you are.

I was talking with Liza's cousin, who's a young assistant film editor, over the holiday. As he told it, the editors have a lot of influence over the final product, but I doubt one in a thousand viewers ever thinks about that. Often the director is absent when the film is edited, and only gets involved when the process is near its conclusion. Seems like the whole auteur school was about trying to assimilate a collaborative, and often highly corporate, process to received notions of the heroic artist.

Doug



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list