Zapruder

Watching BBC Four's season on TV Arts programmes last night, they repeated an old edition of The Late Show, which dealt with the fascination and the aura that surrounds the brief 21 seconds of 8mm film shot by Abraham Zapruder along Deeley Plaza in Dallas on 22nd November 1963.

Various dramatic reconstructions have been made of Lincoln's assassination or the sinking of the Titanic, because of the public's demand (one might say insatiable need) to see such a momentous historical event for themselves. But in the case of John F. Kennedy's assassination, the unfortunate Mr. Zapruder had the dubious honour to have his camera pointed in the right place at the wrong time. He therefore gave the world a grandstand view of the moment when the President was blown apart by an assassin's (or should that be assassins?) bullet.

Oliver Stone and others have made great headwork in saying that this piece of film evidence points toward the fatal bullet being fired from the grassy knoll (and not the Texas Schoolbook Depository) as is popularly conjectured.

Before and after I'd seen the film JFK I felt there was credence to this assertion, especially in view of the Warren Commission's farcical "magic bullet" theory. A documentary shown on the BBC more recently however, re-examined the original evidence (using the dubious method of computer analysis) and took the establishment view that Lee Harvey Oswald's gun pinpointed Kennedy's head at such an angle that it would scientifically allow for Kennedy falling "back and to the left" as shown in Zapruder's film.

I don't buy it really. The whole affair has tried to fit debatable theories round the facts. A key phrase mentioned by Zapruder during the assassination was "they're shooting him". Who were "they" one wonders? The system? The mob? The Communists? I least suspect the latter.

But when I reflect on recent nonsensical conspiracy theories about the September 11th terrorist attacks being the work of the US Government, I have to remind myself that, not being around in November 1963, I don't have the emotional perspective to be able to form my own opinion. That therefore might make me more gullible to the various wild conspiracy theories behind JFK's assassination.

Good Things No. 14

Land of My Fathers, especially when sung at Welsh rugby internationals at Cardiff.

A word to the wise

...and I'll say this before the event: is it really such a good idea to Bring Back 'Star Wars' (ITV1 Sunday, 9pm) as I hear the original cast members are to be reunited.

They've all moved on now - haven't we all (or shouldn't we have by now)?

Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher and others have enjoyed the prestige, and grudgingly accepted the fame and the recognition, but if I hear they or Harrison Ford make one derogatory word about George Lucas or his saga, then I don't think I'll be bothering to watch too many Harrison Ford films in the future.

I'm programming my video with clenched teeth.

Anyway, if Star Wars is being "brought back", when exactly did it leave?

Ed Murrow meets...

During George Clooney's excellent black-and-white drama Goodnight, and Good Luck about the clash between Edward R. Murrow and Senator Joseph McCarthy on live television, one aspect of Murrow's broadcasts that was briefly covered in the film was his occasional interviews with famous celebrities, which "pay the rent" as Murrow (David Straithairn) jokes.

Watching some of these original "Person to Person" interviews from the 1950's, I was struck at how down-to-earth Murrow tries to make them seem; although such a thing is impossible with someone as glamorous as Marilyn Monroe, she does nonetheless come across as someone who could just be a person in an ordinary job like anyone else, and a young Marlon Brando also comes across as a likeable sort of person who enjoyed his Hollywood lifestyle, before his colossal ego and even bigger waistline got the better of him years later.

This interviewing technique of making the subjects feel at home (which indeed they were) was hardly the most penetrating, but it's certainly much more interesting and "realistic" than Oprah or the like, and Michael Parkinson benefited by following a similar style in his celebrity interviews.

10 great credit sequences

Chatting with Craig Stevens and others recently, we discussed how Star Wars was the first film to have no opening credits - beyond a simple "Twentieth Century Fox/Lucasfilm presents" intro followed by the explosion of the title onto the screen.

George Lucas got into some trouble 3 years later with the Directors' Guild when he reprised this technique with The Empire Strikes Back (they weren't so bothered back in 1977 because Star Wars wasn't expected to be anything big), and as a result he pulled out.

I pointed out however that there had been some exceptions to this rule, before 1977. Steven Spielberg tried the trick that same year with Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and another of that group of filmmakers (often referred to as "the Brat Pack"), Francis Ford Coppola, introduced The Godfather with no opening credits.

There were certain individual examples throughout the years of other notable films with no opening titles: Fantasia, Citizen Kane, Around the World in Eighty Days, West Side Story, and in later years The Godfather Part II, Apocalypse Now (with not even a title), Gandhi, The Abyss, and quite a few others.

My personal preference has always been for credits to be left for the end of the film, to transport the audience straight into the story, without unnecessarily reminding them that it's actually all been made with certain actors and technicians. But having said that, there are some great credit sequences to set the mood for films over the years, so here are some of my favourites:


Around the World in Eighty Days
End credits actually, but they're still great fun, by the legendary Saul Bass (see below).

Casino Royale (2006)
Although I thought this one slightly antiquated at the time, on reflection it's pretty punchy and gives the most accurate impression of the film of all the Bond title sequences I've ever seen.

Fahrenheit 451

Monty Python's Life of Brian

Naked Lunch

Psycho (and other Hitchcock/Saul Bass sequences such as North by Northwest and The Birds)

THX-1138 (scrolling downwards)

Walk on the Wild Side
The credits had very little to do with the film, if anything they upstaged it.



See also this.

Soccer, Shakespeare and Star Wars

What with one thing and another it's been a pretty intense week or so. Hard on the heels of the Colchester Cricket Week came the unexpected bonus of a local derby cup tie between Ipswich Town and Colchester United. Having missed the last four occurrences of this fixture for one reason or another (when - until this season - the two teams were in the same division), this time I made sure I wasn't going to miss out again.

The Carling Cup however, is not the sort of football competition nowadays to set alight the imagination of even the likes of comparatively humdrum clubs as Colchester or Ipswich, so it left me plenty of room to get in this time (with sister Catherine and her fiancee Michael - a Colchester fan), and I correctly guessed that the attendance was something in the region of 17,000.

Revenge was on my mind after Town's humiliating 2-0 defeat at the late, lamented Layer Road back in April, and honour was being restored a little hesitantly this evening, but Ipswich, as they have done so often before, complacently treated their nearby neighbours as "junior" opposition, and arrogantly substituted their two goalscorers. As a result they allowed Colchester back into the game with a goal, but hung on to win 2-1. It was the first time I'd been to Portman Road to see a match in nearly 5 years, and from the evidence of Tuesday evening, neither side I expect will be lighting the fires of promotion firmament this season.

Two days later came an evening of Shakespeare recitals at "The Love Bistro" in The Minories with myself and five friends, organised by local performing arts guru Dorian Kelly - a neighbour of mine. I confess I find reciting from a script occasionally annoying and frustrating, and tried to learn some of the lines (as too - contrary to his own instructions - did Dorian), but we all had fun doing some excerpts from the Bard's most famous - and not so famous - works, and I must say I didn't expect I'd be playing Romeo in my late thirties! Hamlet was fun to read too (with Jason Cattrell as the Ghost.) I fear I was enjoying it too much, as it's not a role I would necessarily like to essay in full, all five acts and four hours of it.

The day after that, my old mate Bob Cole came down to Colchester with his Mum for the weekend, and among the delights he savoured was the chance for him (and me) to be shown around the sights of the town on an open top bus. I never realised that Colchester was such a WIIINDYYYYY town, if the Sightseer vehicle we were sat on top of was anything to go by - enough to rival Chicago! Bob found the ride akin to riding on a rollercoaster.

Sharing a joke with Bob on the bus.

Finally, to round off an always eventful August and usher in autumnal September, there was a nostalgic chance to look at the original Star Wars trilogy (see link), with some interesting feature-length Super 8 versions. I confess I sighed at the prospect of seeing all three films in one go once again - I've seen all three of them (Episodes 4, 5 and 6) on four occasions now, the first being in 1994 (a memorable day at The Venue in Elstree when all three original films were shown for the last time), and then two further occasions when the "Special Editions" came out in 1997 (on General Election day), and again in 2000 as part of the Barbican Centre's Elstree Studios season - coincidentally the day after Alec Guinness died.

Fourth time round therefore, I think I could be forgiven for watching the films on auto pilot, but I find the experience is still an invigorating one - especially with such surprises as seeing the opening title crawl for The Empire Strikes Back in German - Das Imperium Schlagt Zuruck(!) As I grow older I enjoy Return of the Jedi all the more (because of its maturity), and conversely I adore Star Wars every time I watch it, because it reminds me of when I was younger.