[Don’t miss Part 1. In Part 2 of the SunBreak’s Eddie Muller interview, the Czar of Noir elaborates on the story behind one of his favorite undiscovered Film Noir vehicles, the role of women in the genre, and some of the screen legends with whom he’s rubbed shoulders.]
Eddie Muller
You’ve unearthed a lot of overlooked movies over the years. Is there one that stands out in particular for you?
Woman on the Run. Have you seen it?
No.
It’s absolutely fantastic. It really is one of those undiscovered, great films. Sometimes, you find these things and it’s like, “Well, it’s good,” but you know why it’s not a classic. But Woman on the Run really is a terrific film. Universal [Pictures]…had to go physically look for the film, because it was an independent, and it wasn’t in their database. They looked [in their vaults], and said, “I’ll be damned! [laughs] We do have this film.”
We had to sign a letter of indemnity in order to show it; saying that if the rights holders were still existent, they would sue me and not sue Universal for showing a film that they didn’t have the rights to. I said, “Fine! Bring ’em on.” It was Howard Welch’s company, and he’d be, like, 97 years old. If they come out of the woodwork, I’m fine with that. Hey, I made a thousand dollars on this screening, you want half of it? Fine, I don’t care! [laughs]
When [Universal] sent the film, it was one of those great moments where the projectionist said, “Can you send Eddie up to the booth?” I was thinking the worst; that it actually isn’t projectable. This was at the Castro Theater in San Francisco. And the projectionist says, “I just want you to see this, because this never happens.” He’d taken the film out to inspect it, and he said, “This is the original band that was put on this film when it came from the laboratory. It has never been taken off this film; this film has never been projected.” It was amazing! So we actually had the thrill of showing that print of that film for the first time ever.
So here’s the deal: It came time to ship the film back. I said to myself, this film is really great. I can’t, in good conscience, send this back without making a copy of it first. So I took it to a guy I know who runs a lab in San Francisco. I said, “I know this is against the law, but I’m asking you, as a steward of film history, to make a digital copy of this film–a Digi-Beta copy of the film.” I couldn’t do a 35 millimeter copy–I don’t have that kind of money. I paid for this out of my own pocket. This is not the Foundation: This was before the Foundation existed. It was one of the things that led to the creation of the Film Noir Foundation. I couldn’t send the film back, knowing that it could get lost in the bowels of the company, without making a copy. Not that I intended to do anything with it. I just wanted to know there was a copy somewhere else. So we did it.
I put the copy in my closet. For six years I sat on it. And then Universal had that big fire on June 2, two years ago. I waited a week or two because I knew what pressure these guys were under, and then I called. This was seven months before the next big festival in San Francisco. I was asking about the titles in the festival, and Universal said, “Don’t worry about it–we’ll make good on all of them because we have all the negatives. We’ll just make new prints of everything.”
So I asked them about Woman on the Run, which I had implored them to deposit at the UCLA Film and TV Archive. “You don’t have the rights to it, you shouldn’t be holding it. You should ship it to UCLA and let them keep it. They said they were thinking about doing that, but before they did they had the fire. So I sent an email saying, “Here’s the deal: I’m going to tell you guys what I did, because you did not have the rights to that film and people want to show it; and now I have the only copy.” I told them that I copied it when I had the print in my hands.
Paul Ginsberg, the VP of distribution at Universal, said, “You sonovabitch, how can I ever trust you again?” And I said, “I’ve had it for six years, and I’ve never shown it. It’s never been out of my closet. That’s why you can trust me. And I would never do this with a Universal title. But you guys did not own the rights to this film.” I sent the same email to the Bob O’Neill, VP of Asset Management–the guy who actually runs the archive–and he wrote back a two-word reply: “Good stewardship.”
People don’t understand that this is for real. The films are perishable, and there are actually people that are in charge of maintaining them. I’m trying to help everyone involved here. I’m a lobbyist for the films, so I try to shine a light on what [the studios] have. They may not know that what they have is viable commercially.
So, on a purely non-initiate, neophyte level…everyone loves lists, and I was wondering what your Film Noir 101 Top Films would be. Five or even ten movies that you could point to, that best summarize the genre and what it’s all about.
Double Indemnity has to be number one. And if you’ve seen Double Indemnity, I don’t think you have to see The Postman Always Rings Twice…they’re kind of the same movie in a way. Out of the Past, Criss-Cross with Burt Lancaster and Yvonne DeCarlo–Criss Cross is like the pinnacle of Noir in a lot of ways; I really like The Asphalt Jungle; and my personal favorite is In a Lonely Place, which is not what people expect out of a Film Noir, but I can’t leave it off of any list. It’s my favorite film, period. That pretty much does it. Of course, there are other great films…I absolutely love Sunset Boulevard, for one…but if it’s only five films, I don’t want to put two Billy Wilder films on the list [laughs]…
You’ve interacted with some wonderful, legendary figures in these movies. I wanted to ask you about some of them…
Don’t ask about Lawrence Tierney! [laughs]
Damn, he was on my list…
Well, you can read about that on my website. That’s a long, vulgar story that leads you on a detour that we probably don’t have time for.
What was Ann Savage like?
Ann was great. We were very dear friends. She was a lot like the women she plays in the movies, but I really believe that that’s true of a lot of actors. They have to have a basic thing within them that’s exploited on the screen, for them to be really effective. I don’t buy the notion that, if you’re a good actor you can play anything…. Yeah, you can play it, but how convincing are you gonna be? I’d rather cast a person like Lawrence Tierney, who actually is insane and could probably go off at any moment. The menace he is going to project onscreen is going to be far more convincing than any menace Laurence Olivier is going to convey onscreen. Guaranteed…so Ann was very very sweet, but she had the Ann Savage Streak in her, no question about it.
I found it fascinating that you had a crush on her when you were a kid…
…Which is weird, I realize.
I think it’s kind of cool, actually. She was hot like a pistol.
Exactly. I confess, I always had a soft spot in my heart for those types of women…
You’re preaching to the choir on that one.
Same thing as Ann…she was so exciting, because she was so unexpected. She was awesome.
This brings up the roles of women in the genre; how tough and resilient these characters are, and how much more complex they are than most of the females you saw in studio films of the time.
Yeah, I totally agree with that. I always say, Film Noir was where women were allowed to be the equal of men–equally tempted, equally corrupted, equally guilty [laughs]. It may not be the kind of equality you want, but they were allowed to be completely human in these films; whereas in other films they were virginal angelic figures…which is really interesting.
But I do find that in Noir, there is a misreading of a lot of the women’s roles in these films, where there’s a fantasy that most Film Noir has a femme fatale in it. Most of them really don’t. Of course, we’re talking about that elastic definition–some people would define Film Noir as having to have a femme fatale.
But Pitfall‘s a classic example. You brought it up earlier; neither of those women is a femme fatale.
Nope. Absolutely not. And I also think that in Noir is where you see the Good Woman as very interesting; more interesting than a lot of the Good Women in other films of the period. If there’s one thing I could say with certainty, one thing that was espoused in all of the [Noir] screenplays, it was that almost all of the varied writers in Film Noir seemed to believe that professional working women were the salvation of American society. There is not a female working character in these films who is depicted as being conniving, or evil. They are always the woman who wants to save the fallen man. And they are presented as the antithesis of the femme fatale, who basically is a woman who wants something without working for it. That’s basically what that femme fatale is. She’s gonna use someone else to get what she wants. Why? Because she doesn’t want to work for it.
The women who work for a living are, without question, the heroines of all of these pieces. This is virtually without fail in these movies. I think in one of the DVD commentaries I did, I really had a chance to go into this in some detail…. It was Angel Face, where the nurse–Robert Mitchum’s girlfriend–is clearly the woman he should stay with, and Jean Simmons plays the heiress who does nothing but sit around in her mansion all day and play the piano and scheme ways to murder her parents…this is not the woman he’s supposed to be with. But she looks like Jean Simmons, whereas the nurse looks like Mona Freeman! [laughs]
There’s a wonderful scene with the two women together, which you don’t get often enough in Noir. And it’s really good, terse dialogue where they really recognize exactly this point I’m talking about. The working girl says, “You think you’re entitled to everything, you don’t think you have to work,” and the femme fatale basically says, “Well, I have ways of getting what I want.”
You also struck up a friendship with Audrey Totter. She’s one of my favorite leads in some of these Noirs. I love her in The Set-Up, and have you seen her in The Unsuspected?
Oh, yeah! She’s great. Now, she is the example of an actress who’s the complete antithesis of what she plays on the screen. She was by far the sweetest, most conscientious, nicest of the women I interviewed for Noir City Dames. They were all very nice, but Audrey was extremely nice.
What were your observations about Colleen Gray?
Politically, we are not on the same page, let’s put it that way. But she is very devout. She puts her money where her mouth is. She’s not one of these cheap dimestore evangelicals that just talk and talk and talk…. She has a ministry, she goes to prisons and works with sex criminals, to rehabilitate them…I mean, she’s extraordinary. I would not go to prison to rehabilitate these guys, so I’m not the least bit critical. She stays in touch with me, and she’s a really wonderful person. We just don’t agree on things politically.
A lot of the key figures in Noir have been dissected and analyzed to death. But are there any specific figures in the genre–actors, directors, writers, cinematographers–who you feel are truly overlooked?
The first four films of this festival were written by Bill Bowers. I don’t think that anyone really knows how great a writer Bill Bowers was, and how significant he was during this time…I’ve done a little bit to try to rehabilitate Ben Hecht as a screenwriter: I just think that his contributions have been overlooked. Actually, a lot of screenwriters’ contributions have been overlooked, and I will do what I can to bring that out.
As far as directors go, Michael Curtiz–you mentioned The Unsuspected–Curtiz is not given credit for being as great a film director as he really was. A friend of mine is actually writing a biography of Curtiz now that I hope will go some ways towards rectifying that. But that guy made some really, really great movies. And it’s funny that the guy who directed the most popular movie ever made, Casablanca, is not given his due as a filmmaker. People think of him as a studio hack, but…he wasn’t. As interesting as John Ford, Howard Hawks, or Orson Welles were, I’ll be damned if Michael Curtiz didn’t make just as many good movies as any of those guys. The Breaking Point, his adaptation of the Hemingway story, is unbelievable.
I really hope Warner Brothers does the right thing and releases that on DVD. I’ve shown the hell out of their one 35-millimeter print, to the point where it can’t be shown anymore. I tell each projectionist to include a note with the film saying that the studio should strike a new print of it, but it hasn’t worked yet [laughs]. They said, “Well, we’re gonna have it out on DVD soon. You can just show the DVD.” And in many cases, the studios are switching: “We have a good DVD, just show that.”
It’s a tough call, because, facing facts, in ten years, I don’t know if we’re gonna even be showing 35-millimeter film anymore. When you consider the cost of shipping it, and how little money the revival cinemas are making anyway, it’s hard. I wanted to show a film called Suspense at the San Francisco Festival, I’d shown it in 35 millimeter three times in the last ten years. And when we asked for it, they said, “We don’t have the film.” But I’ve screened it! “Oh, don’t worry about it; just show the DVD. We just put it out on On-Demand DVD.”
So what films would you hold up as benchmarks of modern Noir?
Mulholland Drive. That’s my favorite film of the new century. I also really like David Lynch movies. Inland Empire tested my patience, but I will go back and watch it again, because I just think he’s a really interesting filmmaker. I think he understands film. He never references films the way that Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino do, but he clearly knows what he’s doing. When he made Eraserhead, he screened Sunset Boulevard for the crew and said, “This is the feeling I want to get.”
Today I got an email from Susan Andrews, Dana Andrews’ daughter. She lives in San Francisco and we’re pretty good friends. I don’t know why she brought this up, but she told me about this really funny story. She said, “I have to tell you this funny David Lynch story, where we took Dad–this was pretty late in his life–to lunch at Dupar’s on Fairfax in Hollywood. And as we were leaving, somebody was asking Dad to sign an autograph or something, and as they were leaving, David Lynch was coming in with a group of people…Lynch with his breakfasts and his endless cups of coffee. They were going, “Oh, it’s David Lynch,” and they noticed that [Lynch] was going, “Oh, my God,” and staring back. And they said, well, what’s he looking at? Well, he’s looking at your father, is what he’s looking at! Lynch was like, “That guy was in Laura!” It was very cool that he was starstruck by a sighting of Dana Andrews. But I like David Lynch most of all, I think…
Some of the more obvious ones that come up are Memento, L.A. Confidential…
Well, yeah, but you never know. Movies about cops; you don’t always know if they’re Film Noir or not. Fortunately, [James] Ellroy writes about really dirty cops, so L.A. Confidential qualifies. It’s amazing how many bad movies get made from Ellroy’s books. L.A. Confidential is the exception. It’s really, really good. Curtis Hanson’s a really good filmmaker. And he did–what’s the Curtis Hanson feature he did early on that’s really Film Noir–oh, Bad Influence, with Rob Lowe and James Spader. That’s a total Noir.
If you want to know one weird confluence here: You know that I wrote the Tab Hunter autobiography…
Yes…
Did you know that Tab Hunter was the star of Curtis Hanson’s first movie?
No…
It was originally called…
Wait…Now I remember! Sweet Kill!
Yes! It was originally called A Kiss from Eddie. Then it was called The Sweet Kill. Then Roger Corman said, “We’re reissuing this as The Arousers!” It’s a psycho movie about a guy who’s a sex killer. Understand the brilliance of this, casting a famous Hollywood beefcake icon who is gay, as a man who kills women as soon as they try to be intimate with him. How bizarre is that when you actually know Tab’s story?
And that was years before John Waters tweaked Tab’s image with Polyester…
Yeah. And Tab doesn’t look like Tab at all–he’s got long hair–and it’s not a bad film. The last time I saw Curtis Hanson I said, “You know, I wrote all about one of your films,” He was like, “Yeah, I read that you wrote all about L.A. Confidential.” No, this was The Arousers. He was like, “Oh, my God! You’ve SEEN that??” [laughs]
As for Chris Nolan: I wish he’d stop making Batman movies…
Although I thought the second one was great…
Oh, I liked them both. It’s just that I don’t like the idea that your reward for being a good filmmaker is that you have to make a colossal epic spectacular movie, like, “Let’s give this guy all the money in the world…”
…As though you need blue CGI giants with pointed ears…
Are you referring to that colossal epic film that we all must slavishly agree is the greatest thing ever made…
…That I have still not seen?
[laughs] I still have not seen Titanic!
I saw it on cable late one night. I’m proud to say that I did not pay to see it in a theater.
I got through about ten minutes of it and said, you know what? The boat sinks. I just couldn’t figure out why anyone would want to watch this movie. It didn’t interest me. But be that as it may…
The thing that’s really cool about the Noir City festivals is that there aren’t many opportunities anymore for this communal movie-going experience, where a bunch of people sit together in a movie theater and watch a film, and share the experience at the same time. I heard Terry Gross on NPR say something a couple of weeks ago that really struck me. She said, “We no longer have shared experiences: We have sharing experiences.”
Because of the internet, it’s like, “Oh, did you see this?” And people send stuff around and share these things while they’re in isolation. So they say, “Have you experienced this great new viral video?” But nobody is actually experiencing these things simultaneously. They are sharing experiences, not shared experiences. And I do think there’s a real difference.
People send me stuff all the time on the ‘net. And I really don’t know why I’d want to watch five or six of these in a row. What am I getting out of this? I feel like I’m wasting time. Whereas, when you go to a movie, it’s a commitment. I’m going to experience this with these other people. I still think there’s great value in it as a social experience.
