In the summer of 1969, my parents bought a Hanimex Super 8 camera to record the first year of my sister's life. It was, or at least it seemed to us, the very latest in modern technology - even though you couldn't record any sound. You bought the film at the camera store -- you remember those -- and we dropped the film off at Star Market in East Providence to get it developed. The film came in three minute rolls, encased in a small black cassette. It took a few days and then you went back to the supermarket to pick it up. We had a Bell & Howell projector, and we'd set it up and watch the movies that we shot.
We got a little better at it, and I don't remember our parents ever telling us not to shoot this, or don't do that -- in terms of wasting film - so we pretty much shot whatever we wanted.
I'm guessing this film is from 1972 or 1973. There is a shot with my sister in it -- she's wearing the red and white coat -- and she doesn't look more than 2 or 3 years old so the year seems about right.
It seems very quaint and cosy to me. The look of the cars. The umbrella the woman is carrying as she walks down the street. The ancient snow plows. It has gone from being a contemporary glimpse into the world to a snapshot of a time that seems long ago now.
The background music is courtesy of Mr. Dean Martin.
Shannyn Sossamon in Monte Hellman's "Road to Nowhere."
By Lars Trodson
Here's a fantasy: Monte Hellman's latest movie, "Road To Nowhere", gets submitted to film festivals. Juries hail the new direction this audacious talent has taken. Major studios bid for its distribution. It's released nationally. The performers in "Road To Nowhere" go off to busy Oscar-nominated careers and everyone would be asking: what will Hellman do next? Best of all, the meanings and merits of "Road To Nowhere" would be debated in the newspapers and the coffeehouses around the country.
But back to the reality: We don't live in the 1970s and these aren't terribly curious cinematic times.
And so Hellman's movie, finished in 2010, has not found a mass audience. It is the latest, but no means last, effort by the justifiably revered Hellman.
With "Road To Nowhere" Hellman adds a new color to his canvas. There is no stamp of the director's earlier, earthier works (seminal westerns with Jack Nicholson in the 1960s; "Two Lane Blacktop" in 1971) and little to connect it to the paint-by-numbers product Hollywood is happily and profitably offering up these days. It is its own animal. Hellman allows his movie to continue down its tunnels of dark possibilities.
Lars Trodson: There’s a moment in "Road To Nowhere" when Peter Bart from Variety asks the director Mitchell Haven “do you feel rusty?” and so, did you, after more than two decades away from making movies, feel rusty?
Monte Hellman: I always feel rusty in the sense that whenever I start a movie I don’t remember anything about the process. I have a panic attack several days before, but as soon as I get on the set - it’s kind of like you think you don’t know how to ride a bicycle, but when you get on it’s okay. That’s what happens. I get on the bicycle and sure enough I don’t fall off. That’s what happens everytime I make a movie.
LT: Technology has changed since you started making movies. I thought the way you shot this film was fascinating. (It was shot on the Canon 5D Mark II. The director of photography was Josep Civit.)
MH: The technology had been changing. It changes so fast you have to keep up with it everyday. But I had been into digital film photography for 20 years and so I had already decided in my mind that digital was better if only because you have more control. Every movie director is a control freak, and I’m no different. So when I saw that in still photography I could make much more precise adjustments and control the color much more accurately than you ever can when you’re dealing with chemical baths and the difference in temperature from one bath to another. It always drove me crazy when movies would shift color from one reel to another - so this way it’s consistent. I discovered that HDP is better. It’s almost like three dimensional when you see it.
During the Republican debate that was broadcast on CNN a couple of weeks ago, I began to wonder what message the network was actually trying to convey. Was the debate an opportunity for the candidates to get their views out to the viewing public? Or was it a chance for CNN to tell the world that it was the most patriotic company Ever?
I was asking the question because, as my attention drifted away from what the candidates were saying -- nothing even the most casual observers of politics had not heard before -- I became mesmerized by the set.
Look at that thing! It was a massive display of the stars and stripes. Fields of blue! Stars! America!
Now I am old enough, and interested in politics enough, to have some memory of debates going back to at least the mid-1970s, and I was thinking I had never seen anything quite like this. I didn’t even know if I had seen such a display just four years ago (or was it just three?).
A quick tour of the images from past presidential debates was illustrative. From the first debate in 1960 between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy until the 1990s, the decor behind the candidates was actually rather subdued. We’ve compiled a little slideshow for you here.
I know that advancements in digital technology has made a lot of this possible. But, as they say, just because you can doesn’t mean that you should.
The “debates”, as we all know, are a joke; a weak framework for moderators and politicians to strut their stuff, each to their own whims, demonstrating their general disregard for substance and heft.
I know that CNN has been called “liberal” -- which is another way of saying that you are anti-American.
But, really, fellas, you protest too much. I am not the first, nor will I be the last, to ask if there has got to be a better way for us to listen to those running for office.
A good first step, it seems to me, is to not dwarf candidates for the presidency of the United States in a blinding storm of digital patriotic peacock feathers.
With Halloween fast approaching, we wanted to share an encore presentation of "The Palmstone," an original radio drama written and directed by Lars Trodson and performed by The Radio Players of the Seacoast.
"The Palmstone" aired live here on July 31, 2007, and was serialized over four days.
You can listen to all four parts now, by clicking here.
Trodson said of "The Palmstone" in 2007, "I had been looking for a ghost story to write, in part because I was interested, at the time this project came about, in writing strictly genre pieces. I had written an art heist play -- produced at a local theater -- and written and produced a romantic comedy called “Family Trees”, which was an independent movie we made in 1997. And so I thought one of the things I should try was a ghost story. And a radio play seemed the best way to exercise that desire.
But I couldn’t come up with a good story. Every idea I had I Googled, and discovered I had unintentionally cadged someone else’s story. Frustrated, I started to read old, forgotten ghost story texts in search of inspiration. Anything that would spark a good idea that I could turn into my own.
It was during that time I first read “The Monkey’s Paw.” I was completely enamored of the story, and it is no secret that “The Palmstone” is an adaptation – or, in the parlance of today -- a reimagining of that original story.
I wrote several scripts simply retelling the details of “The Monkey’s Paw” – none of which were satisfactory. Simply put, “The Monkey’s Paw” tells the story of a couple who has in their possession a severed monkey’s paw, a talisman, that allows them three wishes. They use those three wishes, and the results are much more complicated, and horrific, then they could have ever imagined." (You can read more about "The Palmstone" here.)
It’s a beautiful morning on September 11, 2001. On the 70th floor of the World Trade Center, a stockbroker is on the phone ordering tickets to that night’s Yankees and White Sox game. A newly hired executive assistant clutches a small peace lily plant, a Coach bag stuffed with family photos, and a desk lamp from home for the late nights ahead, all destined for her new desk on the 90th floor. An analyst on the 79th floor wakes up on a couch, as he often does after a rollercoaster day in the emerging markets, and remembers he missed his son’s football game again. A courier meets a new friend on the stairwell of the 88th floor. Her friend will admit, finally and suddenly, that their friendship means much more.
While none of these stories may be real, they are likely. There were thousands of similar stories unfolding within the walls of the World Trade Center on 9/11 in the moments before the first plane crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center, at 8:46 a.m.
For most of us, the story of 9/11 begins after that attack. The stunning and important accounts of survival, rescue and tragedy continue to be told on the eve of the 10th anniversary of 9/11. They should be.
When we set out to make our short film, “Tuesday Morning,” we only knew we wanted our story to acknowledge the thousands of stories that will never, can never, be told. Those stories unfolded simply and without attention, as do most moments in our lives.
During a question and answer session after a screening of the film at the Red Door in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Lars Trodson, who wrote the film, said, “We had heard from the survivors. We had certainly heard from people on their cell phones to loved ones after the plane had hit, which are terrifying to hear, and we heard from the police and fire departments, which is completely appropriate. Those moments dedicated to life before anyone knew what was happening, we haven’t heard, we wouldn’t hear. We knew there were moments of grace and happiness in the building that day. We thought we would try to capture that moment.” (You can hear the entire question and answer session with the filmmakers here: http://qik.com/roundtablepictures)
Our story, which began as a stage play by Trodson, changed in many ways over the two years that culminated in the film you see here now. However, the reason the film exists remains its constant: to celebrate those stories of grace and happiness that will never be told.
Of course, we wouldn’t have been able to tell a story that demands such grace without two actors who understood that goal from the beginning. Whitney Smith and Teddi Kenick-Bailey breathe life into this picture. Their performances are simply beautiful. Real. I say “breathe life” because this is a story about life, foremost. It also suggests that life is meant to enjoy, savoring those moments that define us, because life can end abruptly.
In addition, we had a small but spectacular cast and crew to help shape our story: Jonathon Millman, Stanton Barker, Christine Long, Jason Santo, David Steffen, Alex Knuuttunen, Andrew Bohenko, Judy Levine, Mark Dearborn and Casey Mitchell.
So, as we commemorate the 10th anniversary of the terrible attacks of 9/11, we wanted to share our own small tribute to the untold stories of that day. We hope you find a little love and happiness here, amidst the wreckage and destruction.
