PITFALL – The American Dream…Well, maybe not.

"Pitfall," with Dick Powell and Lizabeth Scott (noir icon) and Jane Wyatt (mom on “Father Knows Best”) will be on Turner Classic Movies Monday 9/2/13 at 1:15 Pacific Time. Raymond Burr also shows up as the heavy, no pun intended.

 

"Pitfall" is a pretty good noir film, though I find the ending undermines much of what has come before. Other people see irony there, and there is. That said, I still think it just takes too much of a turn. I'm not being more clear because I don't want to give away spoilers. But all in all, it's a decent noir and worth watching.

MORE STARS THAN THERE ARE IN HEAVEN – MGM: HOLLYWOOD'S GREATEST BACKLOT – PART II

We're back for Part II of my interview with Steven Bingen, co-author with Stephen Sylvester and Michael Troyan of MGM: HOLLYWOOD'S GREATEST BACKLOT. If you missed Part I scroll down and catch up on it before reading Part II. Enjoy:

Welcome back, Steve. What are your and your co-authors backgrounds? Tell us a little about your personal as well as Hollywood backgrounds. 

There are 3 credited author's on this book, "MGM: Hollywood's Greatest Backlot."
Years ago our agent was told by a publisher that there could never be a "unified vision" on a book with 3 perspectives. That publisher didn't understand that we all felt exactly the same way about Hollywood's backlots and shared exactly the same odd obsessions. Whatever the book's virtues and flaws, I defy anyone to figure out where one of our voices stops and another's starts. Our collaborating was just like the production of most Hollywood movies. The book's very existence is a sort of 2-Dimensional denial of the auteur theory. Creativity by committee, if you will.

Mike (Troyan) and I both came out of Warner Bros. Corporate Archive – although his background is more academic than mine. I have a background rooted in film production while his is more literary. Mike is the author of "A Rose for Mrs. Miniver," about MGM star Greer Garson – which I can't recommend highly enough, by the way.

Steve (Sylvester), my other partner is in possession of vast amount knowledge and a vast collection of materials relating to MGM as a physical place. He's the only one of us who was actually able to boast of visiting the MGM backlot before it was all destroyed. In some ways, in visiting the studio he was able to do what I've aspired to do for my whole life. Because I was too late to see the place, the studio always seemed almost mythical, like Shangri-La or Camelot to me. But it was real and Steve was there. I wanted that perspective in the book. It just seemed like a good fit for the three of us to coauthor – and it was.

Who have you contacted (MGM old-timers, etc.) and have they been willing to help?

I don't know if it was a conscious decision, but we tended to avoid talking to movie stars because their stories have been told so often, and because their worlds at the studio were so insulated. Elizabeth Taylor was at MGM for decades, but her experience on the backlot would have consisted of being driven through the sets in a limo to her particular location. I doubt if she would have had much opportunity or interest in exploring a place which wouldn't have seemed at all unusual to her because of the odd circumstances of her life. It would be like asking a coal miner what was extraordinary about a mine shaft!

On the other hand we spoke to a lot of "regular people," some of whom worked on the lot for their entire careers who had amazing stories to tell, and who realized, even at the time what a bizarre and wonderful place MGM really was. Some of our best stories were from people who grew up near the studio who used to climb the fences and explore inside as children. I really do envy those people.

How many backlots were there? Where? What did they have on them?

MGM wasn't a single lot. Lot One contained the soundstages, corporate offices and post production facilities. The backlot was literally at the rear, or back, of the plant. As the studio grew it expanded across the street onto a property known as Lot Two. Lot Two contained a small-town street, residential districts, railroad stations (with working trains) – the largest of which replicated New York's Grand Central Station. It also had European and Asian villages, a jungle with a bridge, man-made lake, gardens, pools, castles, Southern and English estates, and a half dozen blocks, built full scale, replicating New York City and all its Burroughs – right down to the last street sign, man-hole cover, and fire escape.

Up the road a few blocks was Lot Three, which was even larger and contained three distinct old westerns settings, two more waterfront districts, a tropical rainforest, rock formations, winding roads, a Mississippi steamboat, a circus set, military bases, a POW camp, a vintage era New York Street, farms, ranches, an Arabian Knight districts and the world's largest process tank for shooting miniatures.

Lot Three was itself surrounded by the satellite lots; Four, Five, Six and Seven – which collectively housed zoos and stables, more sets, storage sheds, partial fleets of aircraft and locomotives, a peat farm…. whatever there wasn't room for anywhere else. When L. B. Mayer, the boss, took an interest in horse racing in the 40's, people used to suggest that the Santa Anita racetrack should perhaps be rechristened Lot Eight!

What are your philosophical thoughts about the loss of the backlots?

I've always been haunted by and interested in Hollywood's backlots in general.  The idea that there exists places in the world where there are entire phantom towns constructed to mimic the real world – and yet where no one has ever lived, could ever live, is fascinating and mysterious and a little creepy.  Backlots are supposed to duplicate our lives, our homes, and the city streets we move thorough every day, and yet although they can be as familiar to us as places we've lived in our actual lives, they remain unknowable, untouchable, just out of normalcy and of recognition.

Backlots are like the purest form of architecture.  They really are designed just for aesthetic reasons.  The backlot architect doesn't have to worry about service elevators or building codes or faulty wiring.  A backlot just has to look good and to set a mood in order to do its job.  There are no real world considerations involved. Find an architect and ask him where else in the world that happens?

During the writing of this book it occurred to me that Hollywood's backlots are responsible for an awful lot of the defining non-movie architecture of the last century as well.  Think about it.  If Hollywood hadn't started designing sets to suggest moods or foreign settings would we really have shopping malls, or theme parks, or places like Las Vegas today?  All of these places, for good or bad, came out of backlots and the people who designed them.

I used to give tours of Warner Bros. Studio in my capacity as historian for the company. Once I was showing the family of some executives an artificial lake out on the backlot and describing how that lake had been dressed as India for a film which I'd seen shot there. I was going on about how the set had looked exactly like the real India when all of a sudden it occurred to me, and I told my bemused guests this, that I'd never personally been to India at all. That my entire idea of what India is, in fact came not from the real thing, not from India at all, but rather from movies, some of which had undoubtedly been made right where we were standing right at that moment!

You should talk to my wife, she grew up in India for a time – but yes, she does have an American birth certificate.... But changing elephants in midstream now, What is your next project?

I can't speak for my partners…but…I will.  Honestly, I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to shake off the current project!  After all, I'm doomed to see the MGM backlot every time I sit back to relax and turn on the TV!

We'd love to make this book the first volume in a series about all 7 of Hollywood's major studio lots – the Seven Sisters.  I'm just not sure if logistically, and legally it's going to be possible to do so.  To look at it from the viewpoint of the other studios I can't really blame them for not wanting someone from the outside to come around and start rooting around in their past.  We were able to "do" MGM because so many different hands have been running the company and the people who owned the copyright on the materials we needed weren't the original owners. But I don't know if that set of circumstances could come up again in regards to another studio. We'll see…

"MGM: Hollywood's Greatest Backlot" is available in bookstores and at Amazon. Click here:

Thank you, Steve, for joining me here at Cafe Noir. And good luck with the book.

MORE STARS THAN THERE ARE IN HEAVEN – MGM: HOLLYWOOD'S GREATEST BACKLOT – Part I

Only one studio in the golden days of Hollywood could claim as its motto "more stars than there are in heaven" and actually mean it: MGM – Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Not only did MGM have more stars than in heaven it also had more backlots – the place where dreams were made. In Culver City, CA, besides the main studio lot, were eight backlots, depending on how one counts them. I have the distinction of being one of the last people to have shot a film on MGM Backlot #2, one of the two main backlots and the last one standing, which is an interesting story in itself, but for another time.

Because of that, I was contacted by Steven Bingen, an archivist at Warner Brothers, who, along with Mike Troyan and Steve Sylvester have authored a book for Santa Monica Press called MGM: HOLLYWOOD'S GREATEST BACKLOT – with a foreword by Debbie Reynolds.

Unfortunately MGM ain't what it used to be and, in fact, the main lot, the only lot left, is now owned by Sony. All the backlots met with the wrecker's ball and made way for condos or other developments.   "They paved paradise and put up a parking lot," as Joanie Mitchell once sang. Luckily the photos, memories and stories of people who remember the backlots have been collected in this book.

What follows is Part I of my interview with Steve Bingen about the book and the backlots. Please note that the interview was done before the book was finalized and released so that is reflected in the interview's wording.


Thank you, Steve, for coming to Cafe Noir. What gave you the idea for this book – what was your inspiration?

There have been books written about MGM before, and I recommend them all. But there was always a major part of the equation, maybe the major part of that equation missing on each and every one of them. All of these books would inevitably contain one aerial shot of the lot – usually the same one – and a single paragraph, maybe, about soundstages and backlots at the studio. And that would be it!
This struck all three of us as mysterious. It always seemed to us that if you were writing about a place, and MGM was indeed an actual physical place, then why would an author choose to tell us what amounted to virtually nothing about that place? People always describe Hollywood's studios as "dream factories." Well that phrase isn't bad for what it is, and anyone who was there will tell you that life in those dream factories was if anything, even more interesting than the product the factory was producing. Yet no one had ever talked about that factory. Ever.

What we wanted to do with our book, was to zoom in on that single aerial photo in everyone else's book, to climb the fences of one of those dream factories and look around a bit.

Tell us about the book and what makes it unique.

Let me just say that the book is formatted as a "virtual tour" of MGM Studios.  The text mostly consists of a walk around the lot, circa 1960, with every major set and department described and illustrated.  We've included hundreds of unseen photos of the place as well, many of which were saved from catacombs and basements and archives which no living person has accessed in decades.  I'm not sure about the "not living" people.

What did you learn about MGM and/or the various backlots that was new or really interesting?

I thought it was fascinating and haunting how many famous movies and television shows shot on that lot for which no one ever suspected that what they were watching was a backlot at all. Even if audiences were watching a set they had already seen in hundreds, thousands of other films, people seemed to accept that a curved European street was Paris one week and Transylvania the next just because a visual cue, a street sign or an establishing shot told them it was. Something like a fifth of all the movies made in the United States, historically were made somewhere on the MGM backlot! Sadly, and decades after the fact, this only proves how successfully these facades were at doing what they were designed to do. Even today in an era of wide-spread location shooting and so-called digital backlots, Hollywood's few surviving actual backlots manage to succeed in constantly fooling today's "sophisticated" audiences time after time. I recall watching the Super Bowl on TV recently, and counting at least 4 commercials during the broadcast which replicated real locations using current LA backlot sets which every single person in that game's vast worldwide audience had seen hundreds of times before. I can't help but wonder how many of those people, besides me, have ever suspected that was the case? 


What were some of the movies shot on them?

In the book we came up with a list of every major backlot set with the titles of films shot on that set listed underneath. I'm not sure how much of that list is going to be published, and in what form, but as it stands now those lists alone, in reduced print, equal over 40 pages of text, and frankly are not even close to being comprehensive! It amuses me that people write books about, and make pilgrimages to, locations where their favorite scenes from their favorite films were shot. You know, Griffith Observatory in the Hollywood hills where a single scene in "Rebel Without a Cause" was recorded for example. Well, that location pales in significance to any single inch of any single movie studio – which has probably hosted hundreds, thousands, of films across the decades. I sometimes drive though those vast anonymous subdivisions which were built where MGM's Lot Two once stood, and I can't help but wonder if the people in those tract homes on that land, know, or care, how historic their property really is. Movie-wise that real estate is more important than any single block of Hollywood Boulevard ever was! 

Anyway, I think it's kind of fun to hopscotch through these lists and realize how versatile these sets were, and how much of our shared movie memories were created on them. 

How and why did you hook up with me?

Now that's an interesting story.  I don't know if readers of this blog are aware of this but Paul directed one of the last movies ever made on the MGM backlot.  That 40 page chronological list I mentioned of films shot at the studio ends with his name on it.

I didn't know any of this. I had noticed that there were a few very tantalizing stills floating around on the internet of the studio in its very decrepit very last days.  I couldn't figure out what film these stills were from or what movie was seen in production in them.  I started asking around on the sites where these "holy grail" shots had been posted and that finally led Paul and I to a meeting where he was good enough to loan me some of these same stills and describe the strange production history of his picture "Show Biz."  I'm not going to tell that story here because I can't do so as well as he can, but needless to say it is in my book, and hopefully some of those pictures will appear there as well.  (The photo selection is still being assembled [at the time of the interview]). Let me just say that the history of Paul's movie quite a tale.  Ask him to tell it to you…

MGM: HOLLYWOOD'S GREATEST BACKLOT is a fun read and jammed full of great photos.  Anyone interested in MGM and Hollywood history should have this book.  It is available in bookstores and at Amazon. Click here:

In Part II find out about more about MGM. Stay tuned.

What do writers and actors have in common?

They're both searching for their characters.

I once had a producer tell me that character is "picking your nose with a .38." He meant the pistol, of course, unless he had something else in mind, which I'd rather not know about. But character is not "picking your nose with a .38;" it's not wearing a fedora or a handlebar moustache, driving a tricked out Mini or even carrying a .44 Magnum, "the most powerful handgun in the world". Though many people, like this producer, seem to confuse superficial attributes with character.

Character is the decisions and choices the character makes. But to get to that you have to ask yourself and your character some basic questions. What does your character want and/or need? And why? To what lengths are they willing to go to get it? Will she choose X over Y? What is he willing to sacrifice to get what he wants? Plus other questions such as these and the usual basic backstory questions about everything from their background to their eye color.
Even in Dirty Harry's case the Magnum is only a character attribute or "tic," if you will. But it isn't Harry's character. Harry's character comes out of the choices Harry makes, choices to defy the system, do things his own way and get justice at any cost, not giving a damn about the legal niceties.

But how do you get to know your character? One way is to get to know your character's backstory. And that backstory will guide you to your character's decisions and make him consistent. Actors, like writers, want to know their character's backstory so they can know how and why the character reacts this way or that in a certain situation and thus how to play the part. Writers and actors have a lot in common. The main thing is that they both have to find the heart and soul of their characters.

And even though actors are handed a script most scripts are like a blueprint for a building. The basis for the building is there but right now it's just lines on a piece of paper or a computer screen. In this sense writers and actors have a lot in common and they can learn from one another. Not too long ago I did a review of "The Right Questions for Actors" by acting coach Jeanne Hartman. In it she asks fifteen questions that actors should ask themselves when considering their character. Some of these can help us writers see our character's secrets, while others will help in seeing the power relationships (who's dominant and submissive) between characters, etc. Most, if not all, of these questions are good things for writers to consider when writing our characters. Spiral bound and with worksheet pages, it's not a bad guide for writers as well as actors. And it might also be good if we put ourselves in the heads of our characters the way an actor might.

The bottom line is that we can both learn from each other's crafts. Even if we're not writing for the visual arts, stage, screen, television, the art of the actor can help us get into the heads of our characters.