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Editorial - Michael Frediani “Those
who fail to learn from history — George Santayana (1863–1952) I believe everybody has seen the quote written above—even though there is no question mark at the end of it, I think I have the answer, which I will reveal at the end of my column. I love quotes and anecdotes—they are easy and breezy, like fast food for the mind. Some of the best quotes have come from the typewriters of studio contract writers, freelancers and common folk whose words over the decades have found their way onto the screen, whether it be silver, CRT, LED, LCD, DLP…oh well you get the picture. It’s often said that we should read between the lines. That can be both good as well as bad. In our case it’s often what is between the lines that allow those of us above and below the line to create the images that enhance “the lines,” i.e. the script. Perhaps Will Rogers said it best: “In Hollywood the woods are full of people that learned to write but evidently can’t read; if they could read their stuff, they’d stop writing.” Very witty. But then, without writers where would we be today? If we are not where we really want to be, on the set that is, then don’t you think it is incumbent upon ourselves to find the place where we’d truly be happy in life? Ever get the impression that some people are just a pit stop away from pursuing the career they really want? As Edward Norton said in Fight Club, “This is your life, and it’s ending one minute at a time.” So with time ticking away I would add what Orson Welles once said: “Visions are worth fighting for. Why spend your life making someone else’s dreams?” We are on the set to do our jobs and do them well enough so that we can parlay them into the next one and the next one after that. We are led to believe that we are “only as good as our last job,” which is a little bit of paranoia injected into us to keep us on our toes perhaps. I’d like to think that we are as good as our body of work accomplished over the years, and that experience should rule the day. However, Hollywood has always been a bit of an enigma as Oscar Levant quipped, “Strip away the phony tinsel of Hollywood and you find the real tinsel underneath.” As I mentioned in last month’s column, change is a necessary thing. I’m reminded of this quote from You’ve Got Mail: “People are always telling you that change is a good thing, but what they’re really saying is that something that you didn’t want to happen just happened.” I talked to a DP recently who mentioned that some years back he was reviled by someone who he replaced due to the lack of experience of the younger, less accomplished cinematographer, who was negatively impacting the production—and that was during the prep! What the younger DP said at a later date was, “…so they replaced me with some old cameraman!” As it turns out the “old guy” had years of experience and expertise, (with a beautifully shot HBO movie now playing) and really didn’t want to be in a position to replace another DP in the first place. He mentioned that in his earlier years he was considered by producers to be “the flavor of the month in this business—not so much now.” That, he says, is less important than “protecting the integrity of the image day-in and day-out on the set.” Of course it’s not only the so-called below-the-line people on the set affected by “-isms.” Goldie Hawn says, “There are only three ages for women in Hollywood—Babe, District Attorney, and Driving Miss Daisy.” Oh, I mentioned that I would “reveal the answer” to the Santayana quote at the top of this column: Sequels.
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