That's How It Happened

The Guardian ran extracts this weekend from Ten Bad Dates with De Niro and My Last Supper , two forthcoming books that look highly entertaining. Ten Bad Dates asks various film makers and writers to compile idiosyncratic lists regarding their favourite films. "Five films we'd like to see remade, by Ethan and Joel Coen", "Five films to avoid on medication, by DBC Pierre", and "One great film, by Steven Soderbergh", in which he plays fast and loose with the footnotes:

Let me just say that I'm sick of people digging up obscure masterpieces designed to make me feel like a philistine; or, worse, arguing that an acknowledged masterpiece isn't, in fact, a masterpiece at all, but the beneficiary of some collective cultural hypnosis. I'm going in the opposite direction: I'm going to call attention to a classic that, in my opinion, is even better than we all think it is:

Chinatown (1974)

If you really analyse a great film, it can teach you how to make a film, and Chinatown may be the best blueprint of all. It has: a compelling and/or entertaining subject, explored through a well constructed narrative (Robert Towne's screenplay brilliantly fictionalises the true story of Los Angeles' battle for a water supply)¹; a great cast, doing career-defining work (Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway both look and act better than they've ever looked or acted)²; an appropriately distinctive visual scheme (the sets, costumes and photography are painfully evocative, and Roman Polanski never puts the camera in the wrong place)³; and, most crucially, smart editing and scoring (the macro-editing has just the right press and release, the micro-editing is seamless except when it's not supposed to be; and Jerry Goldsmith's melancholy score - a last-minute addition - wraps the whole film in an intoxicating perfume of dread)⁴.

Of course, it also follows that bad films contain the reverse DNA, showing you what not to do. But, in general, I like to watch good films, because bad films make me sad. Actually, Chinatown makes me sad, too, mostly because it reminds me that I began watching and making films at a time when the movies really were just as great as they seemed to be. Oh well. At least I wasn't imagining things⁵.

1 This is a good moment to comment on the cottage industry that has sprung up around How To ... screenwriting manuals. I think of this because Towne's script is often cited as a great template (which it is) but, invariably, with no understanding or acknowledgment of the role film editing has in shaping a finished work. So any discussion that omits this issue shows a palpable lack of experience in the actual making of films on the part of the scriptwriting teacher/author.

2 I'm not kidding, Nicholson and Dunaway are fucking spectacular in this. His smile and her cheekbones? Come on.

3 Like I say, there's everything you need to know to direct a movie here. There's a huge difference between being economical and being cheap, and Polanski shows you the difference over and over again. You might not have noticed that he basically shoots the whole film with one lens; and check out the multiple-destination camera moves, which are invariably hidden within the actors' moves. Plus, there's nobody better at knowing when to pull the camera off the dolly and go hand-held.

4 This is a good moment to say that, currently, I think editing on a micro-level has never been better, and editing on a macro-level has never been worse. I leave it to you to decide why this is.

5 Oh no. I've officially become a bitter, nostalgic fuck. How did this happen?

link to extracts

The extracts from My Last Supper are great too. Disappointingly the online version fails to reproduce a photograph of a naked Anthony Bourdain, with a only a large pork knuckle preserving his modesty. Ferran Adria gives the most considered answer to what his last meal would be:

What would be your last meal on earth? A tasting menu that featured a variety of seafood, prepared in many different ways, and inspired by the cuisine at Kiccho restaurant in Kyoto, Japan. Bamboo with assorted sashimi; prawns with tuzu; clams, sesame and nori seaweed soup; roasted fugu; scallops with miso and a clam tart; daikon turnip with abalone and sansho lettuce; kuzu tagliatelle with freshly grated ginger; and mountain potato stuffed with sweet beans and yuzu. I'd finish with fruit from the Amazon that I had never tasted before.

What would be the setting? Kiccho - the restaurant is a Japanese house with a beautiful Zen garden, and bears no relation to a classic restaurant. It has an incredible atmosphere: very Zen, decorated with floral designs and little else. I have enjoyed many meals during my life, some of them so marvellous that without a doubt they could be considered as artistic an experience as any museum visit or dance performance, but I had this feeling the most at Kiccho.

What would you drink? Champagne, because when I drink a great champagne, my soul is happy.

Would there be music? I would listen to fusion music, and the same Berber music that they have at Yacout restaurant in Marrakech, Morocco.

Who would be your dining companions? My wife, my family and my friends.

Who would cook? Auguste Escoffier. For me, when we talk about gastronomy, Escoffier is the icon.

link to extracts