We asked our friends at @criterioncollection to send us a list of some of their favorite Criterion curiosities, behind-the-scenes filmmaking stories that you’ll want to explore more deeply or share with others. Enjoy!
1/ Leon Russell invited Les Blank to make doc about him, but A POEM IS A NAKED PERSON (’74) wasn’t the film Russell was expecting, and he prevented it from being released for more than 40 years except in private screenings. In 2014, as Les’s health was failing, his son Harrod Blank gently, persistently persuaded Leon to allow the film to be shown in theaters. In 1972, when Harrod was nine years old, he had spent the summer living on Leon’s property in Oklahoma with his father. When he first wrote to Leon, he included a drawing (shown above) he had made at that time. That may have been what finally broke the ice.
Leon was very happy when the film came out in 2015 and found an appreciative audience. Here are Leon & Harrod outside the Film Forum on the night of the premiere:
2/ Did you know that Pierre Etaix was also a visual artist who drew many of the original, iconic Jacques Tati posters? Etaix also did the cover design for Criterion’s edition and all the artwork inside (including the one on the theme page for the Etaix series). Etaix drafted the first drawing on a napkin while at dinner with the Criterion team.
3/ The blood spurting at the end of SANJURO (‘62) shot up from an underground tank powered by a big manual pump. Akira Kurosawa’s right hand, Teruyo Nogami drew this picture of the set-up:
4/ One of the creepiest scenes in MULHOLLAND DR. (2001) has an interesting story about the performance. When Justin Theroux’s character goes to the corral with the “cowboy,” a role played by Lynch’s friend and producer Monty Montgomery, the non-actor couldn’t remember his lines, so the crew taped the lines to Theroux’s face and chest so Montgomery could read them. The result is one of the most memorable performances in the film.
5/ THE IMMORTAL STORY (’68) had been planned to be one installment in a series of as many as five short story adaptations from Isak Dinesen, a writer that Welles loved almost as much as he did Shakespeare. In fact, Welles once traveled to Denmark to try to meet with her, but lost his nerve, stayed in his hotel room and went back to the airport.
6/ During the editing of THE BLACK STALLION (’79), sound designer Alan Desplet found inspiration for the sound of the sinking ship from an old toilet in the bathroom at the studio. As director Carroll Ballard remembered, if one didn’t flush the toilet just the right way, it emitted the sound that Desplet later used to recreate the sound of the ship’s chambers collapsing from the weight of the water.
7/ Albert Maysles had barely operated a camera in his life when he took the famous shot of Kennedy entering through a crowd in PRIMARY (’60). D.A. Pennebaker put a wide-angle lens on the camera and told Maysles to hold the camera high over his head and just follow the candidate. The resulting shot is such a virtuoso piece of work that it shows what a natural Maysles was.
8/ Although filmmaker Ronald Neame is best known for directing THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE (’72), he was a key figure in the development of British Cinema and David Lean’s directing career, in which he served as his producing partner on Lean’s early films, including BRIEF ENCOUNTER (’45), for which Neame co-wrote the screenplay. When Neame died in 2011 at the age of 99, he was the last surviving founding member of BAFTA.
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