Filmmaking is a collaborative business, but when film critics and writers talk of film they focus on the the director, as auteurism has taken us over. Yet Hollywood brims with men and women instrumental in making certain classics, to such a clear extent that when they part company the director never makes another decent film and the assistant producers or DP or art director make plenty.
The recent HITCHCOCK showed how Alfred's wife Alma shaped his masterpieces, a worldly class and taste he lacked on his own. Let us now speculate on some others:
With Peter Bogdanovich - TARGETS, LAST PICTURE SHOW, WHAT'S UP, DOC?, PAPER MOON
Her then-partner Peter Bogdanovich is the designated auteur on the films they worked together on, but clearly her eye for historical detail and grounded presence surely held his indecisions and crassness in check. For example, as I recall reading in Easy Riders Raging Bulls, his casting of short, unimpressive leading men against his love Cybil Shepherd in the post-Platt Daisy Miller indicated to all concerned his feeling very threatened and insecure having lost his better half in favor of some midwest baton-twirling Lolita who is in turn ready to disappear backstage with some young German strongman and leave him cuckooing with a face full of egg any second. Just look at his decision to cut the swimming pool schlong in Last Picture for the expanded DVD! Don't we in the end earn all the heartbreak we dish out? For his sins, Bogdanovich pealed out of the sanity parking lot with a series of similar situations, culminating in his Dorothy Stratten connections.
In addition to Daisy Miller, the post-Polly Peter made At Long Last Love, They All Laughed, Saint Jack. Platt worked on unflinching termite-cool shit like Bad News Bears, Terms of Endearment and Bottle Rocket. She may have been listed as producer or production designer, but there's an edgy bravery to all these films that is so rare you look for a common denominator. Notes Leonard Klady:
Her career credit list rarely fully reflected what she did. Her contributions to such films as The Last Picture, Paper Moon and Terms of Endearment were considerably more substantive than costume or production designer that were officially listed. That didn’t make her unique in a town that extends and withholds true contributions. But those who were on the ground knew that a lot of things simply would never have gotten done without her prodding and persistence. (7/29/011 - more)
AMERICAN GRAFFITI, STAR WARS, EMPIRE STRIKES BACK
Funny that the only two Star Wars films that are actually good movies are produced by Gary Kurtz, who, the legend has it, fought a lot with Lucas to keep all the things wrong with the later films out. All of us original Star Wars fans, the casual ones I mean, knew--if we were old enough by then and most of us were--The Return of the Jedi had jumped the shark (of course the shark was being jumped over on Happy Days was an attempt to link up with our still insane passion for all thing Jaws). Shall we take a look?
The films with Kurtz are moody, adult, dealing with big issues in ballsy ways. The first two have no CGI, or endless expository dialogue and kiddie show nonsense. If not for Kurz's influence, I can see Star Wars becoming just another hyped up dud ala the Di Laurentiis King Kong remake that came out the same year. I remember seeing a poster for Kong on my way up the escalator after seeing the first Star Wars in 1977, on the day it came out, before it had any hype... I ran around trying to explain to everyone how unbelievably cool it was, but no one believed me... the pinned as just another B-picture for the kids, but King Kong was supposed to have a giant robot Kong! Well, we all knew real quick was a fake that turned out to be and that Kong remake was almost as big a disappointment as the Bo Derek Tarzan of the Ape Man! If Kurtz hadn't been around to battle Lucas's more self-sabotaging moments, Star Wars might have been filed among them.
Kurtz didn't produce too much after Star Wars--who would need to?-- but what the two major films he produced afterwards have such surprising mythic darkness for children's films they deserve mention: The Dark Crystal and Return to Oz. Both are underrated sleepers in that they treat their child audience like adults, something Lucas clearly doesn't grasp as evidenced in his cuddly ewoks and childish kowtowing in later films. Kurtz knew children don't need ewoks and hand-holding and spazzy rasta elephant eared aliens talking pidgin English... they can handle the dark, dark places even better than some adults. Maybe in the end, it's because these hidden auteurs are adults that they're not constantly grabbing credit and attention, preferring instead to hone their craft and remain always passionate about cinema instead of falling into the thresher of fear (not making money, getting laughed at), and desire (falling into cheap sentiment and needy fame)