Re: John Ford
On Nov 27, 2006, at 4:20 PM, Miles Jackson wrote:
The documentary “Lost in La Mancha” about Terry Gilliam’s attempt
to film Don Q. is a great example of this. Film is not the product
of a single artist; it’s a collaborative effort, and if any of the
collaborators fall down, the film falls down. –If your perfectly
cast Don Quixote develops a hernia and can’t ride a horse, you’re
not able to make the movie you wanted to make, no matter what kind
of a directorial genius you are.
I was talking with Liza’s cousin, who’s a young assistant film
editor, over the holiday. As he told it, the editors have a lot of
influence over the final product, but I doubt one in a thousand
viewers ever thinks about that. Often the director is absent when the
film is edited, and only gets involved when the process is near its
conclusion. Seems like the whole auteur school was about trying to
assimilate a collaborative, and often highly corporate, process to
received notions of the heroic artist.
Doug