WATCH: Roman Polanski: Wanted & Desired-Opens July 18, 2008 At A Theatre Near You...

On Clowns & Coulrophobia: The Terror Of Bozo

"There is nothing laughable about a clown in the moonlight." -Lon Chaney, Sr.

Coulrophobia is defined as an extreme fear of clowns. Coulrophobia was conceived during the 1990s and originates from the Greek words Koulon (limb) and Kolobathristes which translates as"one who goes on stilts." The central fear trigger is the clown's appearance which masks the identity of the wearer and suggests a hidden and/or potentially sinister personality.

- VioletPlanet, Image: -Larry Harmon as Bozo The Clown (Mr. Harmon was one of a few Bozos but not the original. Bozo The Clown was created by Capitol Records executive Alan Livingston for recordings in 1946. The late Vance "Pinto" Colvig was the first person to play the clown and Bob Bozo Bell was one of the most popular and prolific Bozos. -International Clown Hall Of Fame/AP).

Fritz Lang: Metropolis Rediscovered...

Last Tuesday Paula Félix-Didier traveled on a secret mission to Berlin in order to meet with three film experts. The museum director from Buenos Aires had something special in her luggage: a copy of a long version of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, including scenes believed lost for almost 80 years. After examining the film the three experts are certain: The find from Buenos Aires is a real treasure, a worldwide sensation. Metropolis, the most important silent film in German history, can from this day on be considered to have been rediscovered.

Fritz Lang presented the original version of Metropolis in Berlin in January 1927. The film is set in the futuristic city of Metropolis, ruled by Joh Fredersen, whose workers live underground. His son falls in love with a young woman from the worker’s underworld – the conflict takes its course. At the time it was the most expensive German film ever made. It was intended to be a major offensive against Hollywood. However the film flopped with critics and audiences alike. Representatives of the American firm Paramount considerably shortened and re-edited the film. They oversimplified the plot, even cutting key scenes. The original version could only be seen in Berlin until May 1927 – from then on it was considered to have been lost forever.

Those recently viewing a restored version of the film first read the following insert: “More than a quarter of the film is believed to be lost forever.”

In 1928, Adolfo Z. Wilson, a man from Buenos Aires and head of the Terra film distribution company, arranged for a copy of the long version of “Metropolis” to be sent to Argentina to show it in cinemas there. Shortly afterwards a film critic called Manuel Peña Rodríguez came into possession of the reels and added them to his private collection. In the 1960s Peña Rodríguez sold the film reels to Argentina’s National Art Fund – clearly nobody had yet realized the value of the reels. A copy of these reels passed into the collection of the Museo del Cine (Cinema Museum) in Buenos Aires in 1992, the curatorship of which was taken over by Paula Félix-Didier in January this year. Her ex-husband, director of the film department of the Museum of Latin American Art, first entertained the decisive suspicion: He had heard from the manager of a cinema club, who years before had been surprised by how long a screening of this film had taken. Together, Paula Félix-Didier and her ex-husband took a look at the film in her archive – and discovered the missing scenes.

Among the footage that has now been discovered, according to the unanimous opinion of three experts, there are several scenes which are essential in order to understand the film: The role played by the actor Fritz Rasp in the film for instance, can finally be understood. Other scenes, such as for instance the saving of the children from the worker’s underworld, are considerably more dramatic. In brief: “Metropolis, Fritz Lang’s most famous film, can be seen through new eyes. The material believed to be lost leads to a new understanding of the Fritz Lang masterpiece.

-ZEITmagazin (Zeit.de, 7.2.2008. Image: -Jósef Bottlik, "Metropolis," UFA poster, designed for film's release in Hungary, Berlin, 1927).

Orson Welles & Howard Koch: On Mars..."Isn't There Anyone On The Air?"

"ANNOUNCER: I'm speaking from the roof of the Broadcasting Building -- I'm speaking from the roof of the Broadcasting Building, New York City. The bells you hear are ringing to warn the people to evacuate the city as the Martians approach. Estimated in last two hours three million people have moved out along the roads to the north -- Hutchison River Parkway still kept open for motor traffic. Avoid bridges to Long Island -- hopelessly jammed. All communication with Jersey shore closed ten minutes ago. No more defenses. Our army wiped out -- artillery, air force, everything wiped out. This may be the last broadcast. We'll stay here to the end.

People are holding service here below us in the cathedral. Now I look down the harbor, all -- all manner of boats, overloaded with fleeing population, pulling out from docks. Streets are all jammed. Noise in crowds like New Year's Eve in city. Wait a minute, the -- the enemy's now in sight above the Palisades: five -- five great machines. First one is crossing the river. I can see it from here, wading -- wading the Hudson like a man wading through a brook. A bulletin is handed me: Martian cylinders are falling all over the country -- one outside of Buffalo, one in Chicago, St. Louis, seem to be timed and spaced. Now the first machine reaches the shore. He stands watching, looking over the city. His steel, cowlish head is even with the skyscrapers. He waits for the others. They rise like a line of new towers on the city's west side. Now they're lifting their metal hands. This is the end now. Smoke comes out, black smoke, drifting over the city. People in the streets see it now. They're running towards the East River, thousands of them, dropping in like rats. Now the smoke's spreading faster. It's reached Times Square. People are trying to run away from it, but it's no use.

They're -- They're falling like flies. Now the smoke's crossing Sixth Avenue...Fifth Avenue...a hundred yards away...it's -- it's fifty feet....

OPERATOR FOUR: 2X2L calling CQ. 2X2L calling CQ. 2X2L calling CQ. New York. Isn't there anyone on the air? Isn't there anyone on the air? Isn't there anyone...2X2L --

PIERSON: As I set down these notes on paper, I am obsessed by the thought that I may be the last living man on earth. I've been hiding in this empty house near Grover's Mill -- a small island of daylight cut off by the black smoke from the rest of the world. All that happened before the arrival of these monstrous creatures in the world now seems part of another life, a life that has no continuity with the present, furtive existence of the lonely derelict who pencils these words on the back of some astronomical notes bearing the signature of Richard Pierson. I look down at my blackened hands, my torn shoes, my tattered clothes, and I try to connect them with a professor who lives at Princeton, and who on the night of October 20th, glimpsed through his telescope an orange splash of light on a distant planet. My wife, my colleagues, my students, my books, my observatory, my, my world -- where are they? Did they ever exist? Am I Richard Pierson? What day is it? Do days exist without calendars? Does time pass when there are no human hands left to wind the clocks?

In writing down my daily life I tell myself shall preserve human history between the dark covers of this little book that was meant to record the movements of the stars. But to write I must live, and to live, I must eat. I find moldy bread in the kitchen, and an orange not too spoiled to swallow. I keep watch at the window. From time to time I catch sight of a Martian above the black smoke. The smoke still holds the house in its black coil, but at length there's a hissing sound and suddenly I see a Martian mounted on his machine, spraying the air with a jet of steam, as if to dissipate the smoke. I watch in a corner as his huge metal legs nearly brush against the house. Exhausted by terror, I fall asleep."

-Howard Koch ( Radio Adaptation of H.G. Wells classic Sci-Fi novel,"The War Of The Worlds," directed by and starring Orson Welles with the Mercury Theatre On The Air. CBS radio broadcast began at 8:00 PM, Halloween Night, 10.30.1938. Image: "Sunset On Mars," Photograph taken by the Mars Rover on the planet Mars. Mars Rover Exploration Mission, NASA/JPL/Texas A&M/Cornell, 5.19.2005).

THE HOAX: Thousands of people were fooled into believing that Invaders from Mars had landed in New Jersey. They mistakenly believed the show was a factual newscast. "Contemporary newspapers reported that panic ensued, with people fleeing the area, and others thinking they could smell the poison gas or could see the flashes of the lightning in the distance. Studies by unnamed historians "calculated" that some six million heard the CBS broadcast; 1.7 million believed it to be true, and 1.2 million were genuinely frightened. Within a month of the broadcast, there were up to 12,500 newspaper articles about its impact, while Adolf Hitler cited the panic, as "evidence of the decadence and corrupt condition of democracy." -Wikipedia.

Welles's adaptation is arguably the most famous radio dramatic production in history.

HISTORY: Celebrity Body Snatching: Charlie Chaplin's Stolen Body Found...

"The coffin containing the body of Charlie Chaplin - missing since his grave was robbed 11 weeks ago - has been found. It was dug up from a field about a mile away from the Chaplin home in Corsier near Lausanne, Switzerland. The legendary comedian died on Christmas Day last year, aged 88. He was buried two days later in the village of Corsier in the hills above Lake Geneva.

"Charlie would have thought it ridiculous."
-Lady Oona Chaplin

Swiss police have arrested two men - a Pole aged 24 and a Bulgarian aged 38 - and say they have confessed to stealing the coffin and reburying it. Names of the accused have not been released, but police say they are both motor mechanics. They were traced after police kept a watch on 200 phone kiosks and tapped the Chaplins' phone after the family received ransom demands of £400,000 for return of the body after it went missing in March. Sir Charles' 51-year-old widow, Lady Oona Chaplin, refused to pay up saying: "Charlie would have thought it ridiculous." In further calls the kidnappers made threats to harm her two youngest children.

The family kept silent about the ransom demands and various rumours circulated about the missing coffin. One Hollywood report suggested it had been dug up because Sir Charles was a Jew buried in a gentile cemetery. Lady Chaplin, daughter of playwright Eugene O'Neill inherited about £12m after the death of her husband. The couple and their eight children have been living in Lausanne since 1952. A spokesman for the Chaplins said: "The family is very happy and relieved that this ordeal is over." Superintendent Gabriel Cettou, the head of the Geneva police, said the two men would be charged with attempted extortion and disturbing the peace of the dead.

-BBC News (On This Day, 5.17.1978. Image: Charlie Chaplin's Exhumed Coffin, 1978).

Percy & Denham: "Why Does God Always Take Pity On The Wicked?"

"Louisa Creed: I hate the dark. It frightens me.

Sister Theresa: It shouldn't, my dear. Don't you believe we're watched over?

Louisa Creed: Oh yes. But I'm never quite sure who's watching us.

Ellen Creed: Hell is like the kingdom of Heaven. It's within."

- Edward Percy & Reginald Denham, (LADIES IN RETIREMENT,1941). "Based on a famous murder case which took place at the end of the last century, this play has become one of the most successful and most frequently performed in the modern repertoire. An eerie atmosphere of mystery is evoked in a dark, lonely house on the marshes of the Thames estuary. The characters, presented with great psychological realism and the strong vein of earthy comedy invest the play with a liveliness unusual for such a genuinely horrifying murder play.

Adapted for the screen in 1941, directed by Charles Vidor (King's brother) and starring Ida Lupino, the New York Times described the film as “an exercise in slowly accumulating terror,” This comes mainly from George Barnes’s moody camerawork and the solid acting of the principal cast. Top honors go to Ida Lupino, a bold and strong-minded actress who became a prolific film and TV director in her own right starting in the late 1940s. Although in the stage version Ellen was sixty years old, Vidor gambled that 23-year old Lupino could look 40 with the right makeup and strong lighting to wash the softness from her face. It worked. Lupino seems almost ageless in the part, playing Ellen as a tightly coiled bundle of nerves, seething with determination beneath her generally calm appearance."-by Mikita Brottman and David Sterritt (Turner Classic Movies Review). Image: Ida Lupino, Publicity Shot, 1940s.

Gods & Masters: If Greatness Existed...Again

"Something happened in 2007, something ended. Old gods stumbled and fell. New ones sprang up. But they sprang up in their thousands. That’s the point these days.

Technology, hype and the sheer profligacy of the arts when confronted with a large, hungry and wealthy audience have created a climate of excess — just too many artists, too much money, too many works and too much noise. Who knows who, now, is great? Even if greatness existed, how would we find it? Do we want greatness, or would we simply prefer choice?

The further, more troubling question is, what is greatness? The climate of excess is also a climate of uncertainty and tribal dispute. When Ingmar Bergman died, many said he was just a solemn old bore — a startling, almost unbelievable dismissal of one of cinema’s greatest artists. As with leaders of the Lib Dems, in the arts, when you’re out, you’re out. And artists are being pushed in and out all the time by a cultural hype industry that has increasingly infected the ranks of what should be the independent-minded. The carefully cultivated “buzz” about some artists can be so effective that I — like, I am sure, you — actually find myself questioning my own intuitions or, in extreme cases, sanity. And the “buzz” feeds on change, novelty. The very idea of an old master, an artist who endures and grows, is rapidly becoming incomprehensible."

-Bryan Appleyard (EXCERPT:"Twilight of the Greats", The Times UK, 12.30.07, Image: Pablo Picasso)

Hitchcock: We All Go A Little Mad Sometimes...

"Norman Bates: She just goes a little mad sometimes. We all go a little mad sometimes. Haven't you?

Marion Crane: Yes. Sometimes just one time can be enough.

Norman Bates: You know what I think? I think that we're all in our private traps, clamped in them, and none of us can ever get out. We scratch and we claw, but only at the air, only at each other, and for all of it, we never budge an inch.

Marion Crane: Sometimes, we deliberately step into those traps.

Norman Bates: I was born into mine. I don't mind it anymore.

Marion Crane: Oh, but you should. You should mind it.

Norman Bates: Oh, I do

Norman Bates: but I say I don't."

********************************************************

"Norman Bates: Mother! Oh God, Mother! Blood! Blood!"

-Joseph Stefano (PSYCHO, 1960)

"Of all his movies, Hitchcock took the most pride in Psycho, because with this one he was able to create a blockbuster through what he called,"pure film". Made for a cheap-even-at-the-time 800K, Psycho somehow keeps the audience tagging along despite its dearth of likable characters, its homely and oddly shaped story, and its lack of A-list sheen that typified the films Hitchcock had make with Grace Kelly, Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman. For once the star of the show was Hitchcock himself. "I feel it's tremendously satisfying for us to be able to use the cinematic art to achieve something of a mass emotion." It wasn't a message that stirred the audiences, nor was it a great performance...They were aroused by pure film...It's the kind of picture where the camera takes over. Like Edgar Allan Poe, whom he revered as a young man, Hitchcock gave ordered shape to the thick mental glop of his own neurosis and obsessions."

-Jim Windolf (EXCERPT: Vanity Fair, March 2008)

Stanley Kubrick: On Doubling...Some Shine & Some Don't

"Well, you know, Doc, when something happens, you can leave a trace of itself behind. Say like, if someone burns toast. Well, maybe things that happen leave other kinds of traces behind. Not things that anyone can notice, but things that people who "shine" can see. Just like they can see things that haven't happened yet. Well, sometimes they can see things that happened a long time ago. I think a lot of things happened right here in this particular hotel over the years. And not all of 'em was good."

One aspect of Stephen King's novel, "The Shining" which impressed Kubrick was the way the reader was misdirected:

"It seemed to strike an extraordinary balance between the psychological and the supernatural in such a way as to lead you to think that the supernatural would eventually be explained by the psychological: 'Jack must be imagining these things because he's crazy.' This allowed you to suspend your doubt of the supernatural until you were so thoroughly into the story that you could accept it almost without noticing...It's not until Grady, the ghost of the former caretaker who axed to death his family, slides open the bolt of the larder door, allowing Jack to escape, that you are left with no other explanation but the supernatural."

In preparation for writing the script, Kubrick and co-screenwriter, novelist Diane Johnson, read Freud's essay "The Uncanny":

"The theme of the ‘double’ has been very thoroughly treated by Otto Rank (1914). He has gone into the connections which the ‘double’ has with reflections in mirrors, with shadows, with guardian spirits, with the belief in the soul and with the fear of death; but he also lets in a flood of light on the surprising evolution of the idea. For the ‘double’ was originally an insurance against the destruction of the ego, an ‘energetic denial of the power of death’, as Rank says; and probably the ‘immortal’ soul was the first ‘double’ of the body. This invention of doubling as a preservation against extinction has its counterpart in the language of dreams, which is found of representing castration by a doubling or multiplication of a genital symbol. The same desire led the Ancient Egyptians to develop the art of making images of the dead in lasting materials. Such ideas, however, have sprung from the soil of unbounded self-love, from the primary narcissism which dominates the mind of the child and of primitive man. But when this stage has been surmounted, the ‘double’ reverses its aspect. From having been an assurance of immortality, it becomes the uncanny harbinger of death."
-Sigmund Freud (EXERPT: "The Uncanny,"1919)

Of working in this genre, Kubrick said:

"There's something inherently wrong with the human personality. There's an evil side to it. One of the things that horror stories can do is to show us the archetypes of the unconscious: we can see the dark side without having to confront it directly."

Screenwriter Diane Johnson spoke of archetypes:

"A father threatening his child is compelling. It's an archetypal enactment of unconscious rages...the material of this novel is the rage and fear within families."

Dick Hallorann: "Some places are like people: some shine and some don't."

-Stanley Kubrick & Diane Johnson (THE SHINING, 1980. Novel: Stephen King-"The Shining" was the first widely read novel to confront alcoholism and child abuse in baby-boomer families, especially the way alcoholism, a will toward failure in one's work, and abusing one's children are passed down from generation to generation. The heart of the book is not an evil hotel but a pair of father-son relationships: Jack and his father, Jack and his son. This was both daring and insightful for its time, long before "dysfunctional family" was a cliché).

Judy Garland: Tried Like Hell

"I wanted to believe. I tried my damnedest to believe in the rainbow that I tried to get over and I couldn't...SO WHAT!"

-Judy Garland ( on audio tape and drunker than hell from her unpublished autobiography for Random House Publishing, 1960s).

Genius.