Concern for the Science Fiction genre

[Satsuki Murashige]

I re-watched 'Ghostbusters' (1984) again a few nights ago, and one of the things that struck me is how much it is a love letter to New York City. Even knowing that most of the interiors and some of the exteriors were shot in a studio in LA, the film still has a specific perspective on the city and it's residents that I think adds a special charm.

 

One of my favorite sequences is when Louis Tully gets chased into Central Park by a giant supernatural dog and ends up trapped against the big glass windows of a fancy restaurant full of rich patrons. From inside the restaurant, we see Louis bang on the windows and scream for help. The customers turn to look at him briefly, then realizing he's just a normal New York street nut, turn back to their meals as he gets attacked and possessed.

 

It's a wry, observational kind of humor that doesn't break the fourth wall and immediately dissipate story tension the way slapstick humor frequently does. Scenes like that really made me want to visit New York as a kid, and I really miss those moments in a lot of newer films. Granted, New York is probably a lot less colorful now than it was then, but it still seems like a missed opportunity for the re-make to ground the story in some kind of reality.

[George Ebersole]

An interesting observation Satsuki. I hadn't really looked at it like that before. I always hear that it's Woody Allen who's giving NY lots of good exposure because of his love for the city. But I guess Ghostbusters does it in its own special way as well. Ghostbusters (orig, as I haven't seen the new one) seemed to deliver a lot of New York culture and attitude; i.e. "Let's show this bitch how we do things downtown..." sort of thing, or Annie Potts answering the phone "Ghostbusters! Whaddaya want!" Yeah, it is a kind of love letter.

 

Mackis; I hope that's not the case, but I'm thinking you could be right. I'm going to have to go check out the movie and see what it's all about. My curiosity is poking me now :)

[Tyler Purcell]

As a filmmaker though, you'd want to show the rest of the world what NYC is like, wouldn't you? I mean there are dozens of movies shot in NYC which have the same attitude about the city.

[Satsuki Murashige]

As a filmmaker though, you'd want to show the rest of the world what NYC is like, wouldn't you? I mean there are dozens of movies shot in NYC which have the same attitude about the city.

Movies that have a specificity of locale are usually that way because the filmmakers have something personal to say about it, consciously or not.

 

'Taxi Driver' is probably the ultimate example of that - Paul Shrader has said in interviews that he started writing the script to express his weariness of living in the city and how it mirrored the dark place he was at in his personal life. I think Travis's inner monologue probably reflects a lot of what Shrader was feeling at the time. Of course, Scorsese, DeNiro, and Michael Chapman are all native New Yorkers and had their own unique perspectives to add to Shrader's script.

 

I can't help but think that this kind of personal touch is hard to add to a blockbuster re-make when many of the core elements of the production are already set in stone. So often these days, the locale is simply a backdrop for a story that could happen anywhere. To me, this is one of the reasons why a series like 'The Wire' was so memorable; the locale was integral to the story.

 

Similarly, I can't imagine 'Good Will Hunting', 'Heat', 'Do The Right Thing', 'The Commitments', 'The Conversation', 'Ronin' or 'The Warriors' either being re-made in the same locale by someone who doesn't have any strong feelings about the place, or being set in a random city that just happens to offer the cheapest tax breaks. That just can't make for good cinema.

[David Mullen ASC]

It's funny you mention "Taxi Driver" because being about the isolation from humanity that driving a car affords one, it has a quintessential Los Angeles element to it -- which makes sense when you read that Paul Schrader wrote it while living in Los Angeles:

 

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2006/jul/06/features.geoffreymacnab

 

"At the time I wrote it [Taxi Driver], I was in a rather low and bad place," Schrader says. "I had broken with Pauline [Kael], I had broken with my wife, I had broken with the woman I left my wife for, I had broken with the American Film Institute and I was in debt." For several weeks, he drifted around LA, living and sleeping in his car, eating junk food, watching porn. Eventually, when his stomach began to hurt badly, he went to the hospital and discovered he had an ulcer.

"When I was talking to the nurse, I realised I hadn't spoken to anyone in weeks ... that was when the metaphor of the taxi cab occurred to me. That is what I was: this person in an iron box, a coffin, floating round the city, but seemingly alone." He claims he wrote the script, which he dashed off in under a fortnight, as self-therapy, to "exorcise the evil I felt within me".

Taxi Driver was set in New York, but this wasn't a city Schrader knew especially well. His screenplay was riddled with geographical errors. When they were preparing to shoot, Scorsese used to make sardonic remarks to him: "Sixth Avenue doesn't run downtown. What are you going to do? Have them change the traffic?"

--

The new "Ghostbusters" has some good New York jokes in there, like the fact that the same firehouse building in Chinatown (from the first movie) today would cost $21,000 a month to rent (in the original, Harold Ramis described that neighborhood as being like a demilitarized zone). And I think it's a deliberate joke that when they drive out of their Chinatown location in the Ghostbusters mobile, they drive by landmarks like the Manhattan Municipal Building near City Hall and the New York Public Library in Bryant Park, etc. without any regards to the actual route you'd take -- it certainly got a chuckle out of me. I think it's great for younger audiences to see a movie where women who are scientists and engineers (in a comedy way) go out and kick some a--- together as a team.

[Tyler Purcell]

I was thinking 'Taxi Driver', but I knew David would come down on me like a ton of bricks, because as he points out, it's very much focused on Travis.

 

I was thinking about a film like 'Midnight Cowboy' or 'Leon'.

[David Mullen ASC]

I like movies that capture the unique qualities of its location, and there have been plenty of films set in New York that have done that. But New York keeps changing and the view of it as seen in "The French Connection" wouldn't work today, not in the same locations near Times Square or Fort Greene in Brooklyn, or the area in lower Manhattan near the South Street Seaport today where the car is abandoned and watched during the stake-out. If the new "Ghostbusters" looks a bit cleaned-up compared to the original, that matches what has happened to Manhattan.

 

Though I will say that for a comedy, the original version is rather gritty-looking at times even for an 1980's movie.

[Satsuki Murashige]

It's funny you mention "Taxi Driver" because being about the isolation from humanity that driving a car affords one, it has a quintessential Los Angeles element to it -- which makes sense when you read that Paul Schrader wrote it while living in Los Angeles:

 

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2006/jul/06/features.geoffreymacnab

 

"At the time I wrote it [Taxi Driver], I was in a rather low and bad place," Schrader says. "I had broken with Pauline [Kael], I had broken with my wife, I had broken with the woman I left my wife for, I had broken with the American Film Institute and I was in debt." For several weeks, he drifted around LA, living and sleeping in his car, eating junk food, watching porn. Eventually, when his stomach began to hurt badly, he went to the hospital and discovered he had an ulcer.

 

"When I was talking to the nurse, I realised I hadn't spoken to anyone in weeks ... that was when the metaphor of the taxi cab occurred to me. That is what I was: this person in an iron box, a coffin, floating round the city, but seemingly alone." He claims he wrote the script, which he dashed off in under a fortnight, as self-therapy, to "exorcise the evil I felt within me".

 

Taxi Driver was set in New York, but this wasn't a city Schrader knew especially well. His screenplay was riddled with geographical errors. When they were preparing to shoot, Scorsese used to make sardonic remarks to him: "Sixth Avenue doesn't run downtown. What are you going to do? Have them change the traffic?"

 

Good catch David, I haven't heard that interview in awhile so my memory was hazy on the specifics. I guess Scorsese was responsible for the majority of the New York flavor then.

[George Ebersole]

The few times Iv'e been to NY it's been a mixed bag of an experience. This was in the 70s and 80s, and a couple of times in the 90s, but what I remember most were seeing piles of garbage or refuse from construction projects sort of scattered here and there. One city block would look fairly clean, the next wouldn't. A real hodge-podge of social enclaves. I think I could live there, but I really wouldn't want to.

 

Screenplays and movies are created to show us criminal activity, so that we can spot it, or if we've ever fantasized about it, then to release that fantasy through a vicarious film experience. Make of that what you will, but to get back on topic, it's why when I crank out a script it's usually a more traditional sci-fi venue with perhaps a dash of action. Something like the original Ghostbusters, minus the setting and premise. Because it had a decent story to tell about a group of phonies to deal with the second coming of some deity. But doing so with high-technology and a NY attitude. What could be better? :)

[David Mullen ASC]

The reason you see piles of garbage bags on the sidewalks of New York is that the commissioners of the famous 1811 "grid" master plan forget to put alleyways in their design, so the front of the buildings is the only place for deliveries and garbage pick-up.

[George Ebersole]

That's interesting. I had no idea. It does explain a great deal.

[Satsuki Murashige]

The reason you see piles of garbage bags on the sidewalks of New York is that the commissioners of the famous 1811 "grid" master plan forget to put alleyways in their design, so the front of the buildings is the only place for deliveries and garbage pick-up.

It's especially lovely in the summertime...

 

There's something similar that happens in San Francisco's Chinatown. Since many buildings have no dumpsters or elevators, garbage men collect late at night to avoid traffic. The garbage cans are stored on each floor by the stairs. They run up the stairs with sheets of burlap, empty the cans, wrap them up into bundles, and run back down with the burlap bundles over their shoulder. It's pretty insane to see.

[David Mullen ASC]

It's funny when you watch "West Side Story" which had a lot of location photography in New York City -- I think when you first meet Tony, they show the front of a store he works at and then they cut to an alleyway set in Hollywood for the conversation. I had to laugh a little because before that moment, they had mostly been shooting the opening on the streets of New York, but as soon as they needed an alley, they went onto a soundstage.

[Phil Rhodes]

I like New York. It's like London, only bigger and better in every possible way - especally the sandwich shops.

 

Last time I was there, I took a scrappy bit of handwritten notepaper into one of them and expected to have to explain everyone's handwriting to the people who worked there. Everyone had ordered at least a sandwich, something to drink, and often chips or a cookie, with many requested variations on the standard menu items. The paper was snatched out of my hand, there was a brief (very brief) flurry of activity from the enthusiastic and motivated staff, and with a brief clap of displaced air a row of eight little paper sacks had appeared in front of me. The food was excellent and there were no errors in the order.

 

I can thus thoroughly recommend the Liberty Deli on East 49th Street, just off Madison Avenue.

 

P

[Satsuki Murashige]

It's funny when you watch "West Side Story" which had a lot of location photography in New York City -- I think when you first meet Tony, they show the front of a store he works at and then they cut to an alleyway set in Hollywood for the conversation. I had to laugh a little because before that moment, they had mostly been shooting the opening on the streets of New York, but as soon as they needed an alley, they went onto a soundstage.

They probably pushed as many scenes as possible to soundstage work in LA. Probably helped to cut down on their location shooting budget.

[George Ebersole]

Were there any ray guns or spaceships in West Side Story :angry: *harrumph*

 

Seriously, I thought the whole thing was shot on stage except for the opening credits. Wasn't that a period when studios were selling off their lots and starting to shoot more stuff on location?

 

I know there's a lot now, and quite a bit in LA (as I guess there's always been), but in SF things are pretty tight traffic wise. I'm surprised SF lets anyone shoot on location in the downtown area.

[Satsuki Murashige]

I know there's a lot now, and quite a bit in LA (as I guess there's always been), but in SF things are pretty tight traffic wise. I'm surprised SF lets anyone shoot on location in the downtown area.

 

It's not nearly as easy to get permits to do lock ups in SF as it is in LA, but it happens for big movies, tv shows, and car commercials. I remember one time I was 2nd'ing on a Korean car commercial where we were shooting from the roof of a big hotel on California and Montgomery. We humped the camera and lenses up to the roof and set up a long lens shot looking down toward Market St. They shut down about 6 blocks of Montgomery in the middle of a Sunday afternoon and the director was losing his poop because he wanted a perfectly empty road, but pedestrians and cyclists kept leaking around the PAs and cop cars doing lock ups about a mile away. I think we were 2 hours into meal penalty at that point.

 

You can also shut down the Bay Bridge for a few minutes at a time on weekends early in the morning or late at night. That's how they get those car commercial shots with an empty bridge. The working crew vehicles park at the Caltrans Depot at the Toll Plaza, and then the highway patrol does a rolling stop for a few minutes while the arm car and picture car go get their shots. It's surreal when it's a process trailer instead and you're riding in the open air on a completely empty bridge. So it happens, but I'm sure it costs an insane amount of money to do.

[David Mullen ASC]

The opening dance number for "West Side Story" was partially shot in the streets of Hell's Kitchen since the neighborhood had been emptied, scheduled to be demolished that year in order to build the Lincoln Center near Columbus Circle. But Jerome Robbins took so much time shooting his musical numbers, and so many takes in the expensive 65mm format, that the producers fired him and director Robert Wise had to finish without him, though Wise has correctly said that best dance numbers were directed by Robbins. The producers also said that they would never shoot in 65mm again after that.

 

The film is a mix of location work and stage work.

 

These sites have some interesting facts about the NYC locations -- I hadn't realized that the playground used in the opening dance was on the East Side of Manhattan:

http://onthesetofnewyork.com/westsidestory.html

http://www.popspotsnyc.com/west_side_story/

 

From Wikipedia:

Veteran director Robert Wise was chosen to direct and produce because of his experience with urban New York dramas such as Odds Against Tomorrow (1959). Since he had no experience directing a musical, Wise agreed that Jerome Robbins, who had directed the stage version of West Side Story, would direct the musical and dance sequences. After about one-third of the movie had been shot, the Mirisch Company, concerned that the production was running over-budget, dismissed Robbins. According to Saul Chaplin, Robbins nearly suffered a nervous breakdown during the time he worked on the film. The remaining dance numbers were directed with the help of Robbins' assistants. Recognizing Robbins' considerable creative contribution to the film, Wise agreed that Robbins should be given co-directing credit, even though Wise directed the greater part of the film.

[George Ebersole]

I've driven by other people's setups, but only ever did a couple of location gigs in SF itself. The rest was studio work or location interiors. I still don't see why more people don't shoot on location inside the houses in SF. That's economical and also really compliments the footage. Most of the setups I've seen have been around Steuart Street. They like that building next to One Market Plaza for some reason. LA crews also like the Chronicle building for some reason ... or they did.

 

David; Wise's handling of Trek felt like he was treating it like a big movie, and that he thought that people wanted to see the Enterprise and all kinds of space stuff and shots. The beauty shots of the Enterprise in Motion Picture, to me, were a little gratuitous, but I think he was right for that segment to show off the ship so fans could see how sleek the new vessel was.

 

But the whole "entering V'Ger" thing, I felt, could have been cut by a few minutes, or replaced with the crew trying to scan and / or brainstorm how to make contact or get inside and what not.

 

That is to say he knew what West Side Story needed and what it was about. I don't think he had the same comprehension for Trek, and misfired a bit when he directed that film. Still, it sounds like he was a standup guy. I wish I had met him.

[Satsuki Murashige]

I still don't see why more people don't shoot on location inside the houses in SF.

 

We do it all the time. Since most single unit homes have been turned into flats or condos, they are dark and cramped, have lots of stairs and no elevators, limited window views and lots of street noise, white walls, and a small number of circuits. Plus there are a lot of parking issues.

 

Simply put, it's a pain. Especially on smaller budgeted shoots that can't afford to permit the whole block for parking or shuttle crew from crew parking. By and large, most SF homes are not an ideal location for anything other other than a skeleton crew. The North Bay, East Bay, and Penninsula are all much easier to work in.

 

LA crews also like the Chronicle building for some reason ... or they did.

 

I just shot in the Chronicle Building a few months ago! We turned one area into a police station. That place is difficult to work in as well - you have to load in from the crack alley around the back, lots of security restrictions. It was worth it though.

[George Ebersole]

Years back I worked as a dolly grip in an art studio in the SOMA area. Nets, flags, a mobile lift rolling around, dolly track ... the whole nine yards. And when we looked at the dailies, to my then amateurish eyes, I couldn't see the control of the lighting in the footage. I almost came to the conclusion that Bay Area gaffers were flag happy. And I often wondered if shooting in a SF loft would be better served with natural lighting.

 

I may experiment.

 

And I'll throw in a space monster to keep in tune with the thread. :P

[David Mullen ASC]

I shot in real locations in San Francisco for "Big Sur":

 

 

 

 

Biggest problem was mainly getting a condor with an HMI on it for day lighting on a second floor window because of the hilly streets and the power lines running along them.

[Mark Kenfield]

Lovely stuff (as always) David. Do you recall the focal lengths you used for those wides? The perspective is really engaging.

[David Mullen ASC]

I often used the 18mm and 21mm Zeiss Master Prime for the wide-angle shots.

[Mark Kenfield]

Thanks David.