PR has subverted much of our lives, making unconscious acolytes of those who once might have operated outside the pack. The drumbeat of crap movies with big promotional budgets, mostly from the US, is incessant. The US market share of cinema box-office takings in Britain is more than 70 per cent; the small UK share is mainly for US co-productions. Films from Europe and the rest of the world account for a tiny fraction. Ironically, in the US, quality film-making has absconded to television.
The hype of public relations – Edward Bernays’ euphemism for propaganda – is now regarded as truth. The medium has become the message. John Pilger, article October 2013, ‘Why Bad Movies Keep Coming Out and What to Do About It’
Are you going to bark all day, you little dog you, or are you going to bite? The Wolfpack, brothers re-enact Reservoir Dogs in New York apartment, Sundance 2015
I write down the lines of the entire film, what each character says. ibid.
If I didn’t have movies, life would be pretty boring, and there wouldn’t be any point to go on. ibid.
We were kind of shut off, always living in this apartment in New York, lower east side Manhattan. ibid.
We got like 5,000 movies … There’s another world out there … The movies helped us create our own kind of world. ibid.
Our dad was the only one who had the keys to the front door. ibid.
We decided to go as a group together alone for the first time. ibid.
There were probably more rules for me than there were for them. ibid. mother
Swat teams … put us against the wall and handcuffed every member of our family. They had a search warrant. For possession of weapons. ibid.
I just can’t talk to him [father] any more. ibid.
Let’s give it up again for Robbie Parker and the rest of the cast of Sandy Hook for their best ensemble win. JoyCamp: Oscars: Best Propaganda Film
102,401. This year’s nominees for the best propaganda in a motion picture are: FARGO, a sweeping romance between Hollywood and the CIA … The Avengers … Lincoln … Zero Dark 30 … Hunger Games … and the winner is Zero Dark 30. ibid.
The Shining: I said to my friends that movie was about the genocide of the American Indians. Room 237, 2012
Why a German typewriter? … I began to see the number 42 appear in the film … You get the holocaust … Subliminal messages … The photograph of Stanley Kubrick in one frame airbrushed into the clouds … Those tourists dissolve into the suitcases … A movie about the past … It is the labyrinth … The Minotaur poster … He deviated into those exact questions: what was it like to make a deal with the US government? … He [Danny] stands up and he’s wearing the Apollo 11 sweater with the rocket taking off … Room 237 in the film represents the moon landing stage where he worked … ‘The site is supposed to be built on an Indian burial ground’ … 42 shows up in other places … They no longer exist … How the past impinges. ibid.
The Alien: ‘OK fan out, we’re running out of ammunition. Here’s the plan: you head up to the upper deck and get killed stupidly. You go down to the lower deck and die even more stupidly. And remember, stick to dark places where you can’t see a thing and no-one can help you. I’m going to stay here and strip down to my underwear.’ Spitting Image: The Spitting Image 1987 Movie Awards
Jessica Lynch: her story received massive publicity … The Washington Post and the BBC reported that Lynch’s rescue was an army stunt … The army and the movie’s producers spent a long time discussing the controversies surrounding Lynch’s story. Hollywood and the Pentagon: A Dangerous Liaison, Youtube
Most American war movies made since World War II have had direct help from the American army. ibid.
You wanted to know the story of Fitzcarraldo. It’s a strange story, a little bit Sisyphus-like story, a story of challenge, of the impossible. Burden of Dreams, 1982
In November 1979 Herzog builds a camp for cast and crew in the dense tropical rain forest close to the Ecuadorian border … Peru and Ecuador are building up to a small border war. The jungle is full of soldiers and the Aguaruna Indians. ibid.
Mick Jagger plays Fitzcarraldo’s sidekick. ibid.
‘I live my life or I end my life with this project.’ ibid. Herzog
‘We have had enough trouble.’ ibid.
Despite Herzog’s high technology the jungle is winning. ibid.
‘We had access to too much money, too much equipment and little by little we went insane.’ Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, 1991, director, 1991
In February of 1976 Francis Coppola went to the Philippines to shoot Apocalypse Now. Based loosely on Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness, the film is set in the Vietnam War. ibid. caption
Coppola’s wife Eleanor accompanied him and shot documentary footage covering the 238 days of principal photography. ibid.
‘The war was becoming a psychedelic war.’ ibid. director
‘They were just snatched up and used as cannon fodder for this war.’ ibid. Laurence Fishburne
He realised Marlon [Brando] never read Heart of Darkness. ibid.
The movies are like a machine that generates empathy. Life Itself, Ebert, 2014
I was born inside the movie of my life … I don’t remember how I got into the movie but it continues to entertain me. ibid.
The blood is on so many hands that history will weep in the telling. ibid.
My blog became my voice, my outlet. ibid.
Kael’s influence shaped how critics looked at movies and how people read them. ibid.
What is the goal of the life? It’s to create yourself a soul. For me movies are an art – more than an industry. And it’s the search of the human soul. (Science Fiction & Films) Jodorowsky’s Dune, 2013
An eerie soundtrack, diffused lighting, and dream-like sets provide an intense and mesmerising atmosphere in Kubrick’s last film, finishing the final edit five days before his death. The Hidden Messages in Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, Youtube Bad Max 2014
It is about the group that rules this modern world, a secret elite … the Illuminati. ibid.
The phrase Eyes Wide Shut relates to one of the methods the Illuminati employ to hide their crimes and nefarious activities. ibid.
Conceptual thinking and those who are ready to break the rules, who are ready to learn from me how to pick a safety-lock, how to forge a document: you see a film like Fitzcarraldo would never have been possible without a massive forgery. At that time Peru was a military dictatorship. All of a sudden a military build-up along the river where I had to move my ship. I was stopped, shot at. And I demanded an explanation and I didn’t get an explanation. I was only told, Where is your shooting permit? And I said, of course I made it up, It’s in Lima, it’ll take me three or four days to bring it to the jungle. So four days later I come with a very elaborate beautiful document written in antiquated Chancellory sort of fictional Spanish and Notary paper and it says, El Presidenté de la Republica – The President of the Republic … a complete fake … and looks at the document and salutes and says, pass on. Werner Herzog, interview Hardtalk, BBC 2017
‘You speaking to me?’ Rich Hall, How the West Was Lost, Shane, BBC 2008
All Westerns start the same: a man or men on horseback against a sweeping backdrop … All Westerns are about individualism versus evil encroachment. ibid.
The West is far more than just a place: an idea … a myth. ibid.
Bush [George W] claims that his favourite is High Noon. Of course it is. (West & Films) ibid.
One third of all studio releases in 1952 were Westerns. ibid.
‘Out here a man settles his own problems.’ ibid. John Wayne to James Stewart
Good evening and welcome to the charity gala premier performance of the new motion picture GLC [Greater London Council]. The Comic Strip Presents s4e3: GLC: The Carnage Continues, BBC 1990
My name’s Benn. Tony Benn. ibid. Lee van Cleef
In a 60-year career that began with hand-cranked cameras and silent movie stars and ended with wide-screen technicolour and method actors Hitchcock would taste both success and failure. Reputations s6e4: Hitch: Alfred the Great, BBC 1999