Three Reasons: Island of Lost Souls (by criterioncollection)
The last plea to George Lucas
This times 1000. Even if I didn’t care about this issue as a fan of Star Wars itself, I would care about it as an issue of film preservation.
Here’s something I’ve been meaning to get into for a while, and this seems like as good a time as any. A new fangasm of whiny, impotent rage has bubbled up across the internet because Darth Vader says “no” now instead of just silently chucking the Emperor down the pit. This latest “crisis” is but the most recent demonstration of how vain, self-serving, dim-witted and ultimately self-defeating the Star Wars fan base has become.
All the nauseating whining about this issue, like all the nauseating whining before it, is such fundamental navel-gazing that it would be well beneath discussion, were it not for the fact that this high-pitched fanboy keen has done a startlingly effective job of drowning out the real issue at the heart of the Star Wars Special Edition debate. It has done such an effective job drowning out the debate, in fact, that there is no debate at all. And there should be.
The true issue at the core of all this is very simple: there are three landmark motion pictures whose negatives have been destroyed by their creator, and which are now almost completely unavailable in screenable form anywhere in the world.
That’s it. That’s the whole problem. And instead of addressing this, ten million fanboy geeks are spending their time crying about Greedo.
"One time Orson Welles was waxing eloquent to me on the subject of the divine Greta Garbo, whose mystery and magical artistry he adored. Of course I agreed but, I said (still being a bit pedantic), wasn’t it too bad that, of all her more than two dozen silent and sound films, she had acted in only two really great pictures. Welles looked at me for a long moment, then said quietly, “You only need one…"
— Peter Bogdanovich - Blogdanovich
Three Reasons: People on Sunday (by criterioncollection)
![oldhollywood:
Louise Brooks in publicity still for Pandora’s Box (1929, dir. G.W. Pabst)
During the filming of Pandora’s Box, [G.W. Pabst] asked Louise Brooks, as Lulu, just emerged from taking a shower and coming into the living room to greet her lover, Alva (portrayed by Franz Lederer), “What do you have on under that robe?”
“My slip,” answered Miss Brooks.
“Go back in the bathroom and take it off,” said Pabst, which she did.
When she returned, wearing just the robe, she asked her director, “Mr. Pabst, why did you make me take my slip off? The audience won’t know that I have nothing on under my bathrobe.”
“That’s right,” he replied. “The audience won’t know, but he’ll know,” he said, pointing at Lederer, “and he’ll play the scene with you differently, knowing that, than he would if he didn’t know it. And that’s what I want, that difference.”
Miss Brooks told me this story and I think it underlines the point I’m trying to make that the director must do everything he can think of to feel that the scene is ready to be played to the maximum that he can feel. If he feels it, the audience will feel it. Ergo - the director as psychologist.”
-Herman G. Weinberg, excerpted from The Complete Wedding March (1975)](http://27.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lnl1k6WRCd1qzdvhio1_r10_500.jpg)
Louise Brooks in publicity still for Pandora’s Box (1929, dir. G.W. Pabst)
During the filming of Pandora’s Box, [G.W. Pabst] asked Louise Brooks, as Lulu, just emerged from taking a shower and coming into the living room to greet her lover, Alva (portrayed by Franz Lederer), “What do you have on under that robe?”
“My slip,” answered Miss Brooks.
“Go back in the bathroom and take it off,” said Pabst, which she did.
When she returned, wearing just the robe, she asked her director, “Mr. Pabst, why did you make me take my slip off? The audience won’t know that I have nothing on under my bathrobe.”
“That’s right,” he replied. “The audience won’t know, but he’ll know,” he said, pointing at Lederer, “and he’ll play the scene with you differently, knowing that, than he would if he didn’t know it. And that’s what I want, that difference.”
Miss Brooks told me this story and I think it underlines the point I’m trying to make that the director must do everything he can think of to feel that the scene is ready to be played to the maximum that he can feel. If he feels it, the audience will feel it. Ergo - the director as psychologist.”
-Herman G. Weinberg, excerpted from The Complete Wedding March (1975)
