Читать книгу Being Hal Ashby - Nick Dawson - Страница 14

Norman

Hal Ashby was, without doubt, the most committed editor I ever worked with. Over the course of my next three films, which I did with Hal, we would bond as close as brothers.

—Norman Jewison

Had Ashby known what lay ahead, he might have thought better of his decision to work on The Loved One; in a letter to Ashby, the film's creative assistant, Budd Cherry, referred to its production period as “the Great Trauma of '64.”¹

In 1964, Tony Richardson was the hottest young director in town. Just a few months before The Loved One started shooting, his film Tom Jones (1963) had won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director for Richardson, from its ten nominations. However, when MGM, with whom he had a multipicture deal, refused to reward his Oscar success with an improved contract, Richardson was determined to make them regret their decision. The Loved One began shooting in late July 1964 and was supposed to be done after ten weeks, but it was December before Richardson wrapped, by which time he had doubled the budget. Richardson banned producer Martin Ransohoff (whose company, Filmways, was making the picture for MGM) from the set, blew money on unnecessary location shooting, cast stars in cameos and unknowns in the lead roles, and spent huge amounts of Metro's money on Dom Pérignon and canapés and screening dailies at the exclusive Beverly Hills Hotel. Not only did he shoot an enormous amount of film (the first assembly ran to five hours), but his treatment of Evelyn Waugh's already scathingly satirical take on life and death in Beverly Hills aimed to shock. (There were allegedly three versions of the film: “rare, medium and we'll-sue.”)²

Ashby was collateral damage in the general havoc that Richardson wreaked. After Ashby and his team had finished the first cut, Richardson took the film back to England to complete it with his usual editor. In his autobiography, Richardson wrote: “I hadn't been happy with the editors I worked with on The Loved One (one of them, Hal Ashby, went on to make a good career as a director) and I wanted to transfer the film back to London where I could work with Tony Gibbs.”³ He was most likely oblivious to the effects of his actions. Ashby already had a black mark against his name for the way he had left Stevens, and now the job he had risked his reputation for had been prized away from him. “It was a bad time,” Ashby wrote later. “Depression and paranoia ran rampant. In short, I was on the super bummer of the year.”⁴

In Ashby's eyes, it was Norman Jewison who saved his career.

At the time, Jewison was in a transitional period as a director, just as Ashby was as an editor. A Canadian expat who began his career in live television and graduated to making inoffensive comedies for Universal (including two Doris Day vehicles), he had just been brought in to take over The Cincinnati Kid (a movie based on Richard Jessup's poker novel), another Filmways production for MGM. The film's original director, Sam Peckinpah, had shot a riot with hundreds of extras that was not in the script and a controversial nude scene involving a black prostitute, prompting Martin Ransohoff to relieve Peckinpah of his duties after only a week. His experiences with Richardson had left Ransohoff in no mood to work with another loose cannon.

Though Jewison was an unlikely candidate for a film that was essentially a reworking of The Hustler (1961), with cards instead of pool, John Calley and Ransohoff desperately needed a director immediately, and he was perceived as a safe choice. Jewison accepted the job on the condition that he be given two weeks to rework the script with Terry Southern, the screenwriter on The Loved One and Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964).

It was around this time that Ashby and Jewison first met. Ashby said that Calley set up a meeting between them, but Jewison recalls that he was wandering around MGM with Southern, whom Ashby had befriended on The Loved One, when they passed his cutting room. At the time, Ashby was still working on the first cut of The Loved One, and Jewison heard him laughing at the outrageous footage. Ashby invited him in, and the two began to talk. “There was something about his sense of humor and his kindness,” Jewison remembers.⁵

Ashby caught Jewison's attention early on when he proudly mentioned his apprenticeship under Bob Swink, working for Wyler and Stevens. Wyler was one of Jewison's heroes, and he and Ashby ended up talking about him for hours. Jewison began hanging out with Ashby as he cut The Loved One, “watching the changes, smoking a little of Hal's pot and joining him in helpless laughter. The sicker the movie got, the harder we laughed. And despite the laughter and the pot, it became obvious to me that he was meticulous and fiercely passionate about his craft.” By this stage in his career, Ashby's aptitude for editing, his ability to absorb and retain information about the footage he was working on, was remarkable. “His old Moviola was surrounded by hundreds of feet of film in bins or hanging in clips from lines strung between walls,” recalls Jewison, “but he knew precisely what shots were on each clip.”⁶

During Ashby's dark hours after he was fired from The Loved One, Jewison asked him if he wanted to edit The Cincinnati Kid. “Oh, man, that would be great!” Ashby cried, and that was that.⁷ For the rest of the 1960s, Jewison's presence in Ashby's life guaranteed him not only regular, secure work but also devoted friendship. Over the course of six films, the two would form a rare personal and professional relationship that was closer and more creatively productive than any either would experience again.

From the very start they were, as Jewison put it, “simpatico,” united by a genuine love of cinema and a belief that films should make a difference in the world.⁸ They shared the same political views, and both saw themselves as rebels within the system. Each represented something that the other wanted to be: Jewison was doing what Ashby had dreamed about for ten years, directing films; and Ashby had an unaffected cool that the rather straitlaced Jewison aspired to.

“Hal was always cool, man,” says Jewison. “Hal was always the coolest.”⁹ Ashby's appearance particularly set him apart from others on the Goldwyn lot: the beatnik goatee that he had sported in the 1950s had now been replaced by a full beard, his beatnik garb and sharp shades traded in for beads, sandals, and loose-fitting Indian cotton clothes. Though his image would later be described by journalists as “hobo chic,” Ashby was clean and tidy to a fault. Ian Bernard remembers: “His penchant for neatness compelled him to arrange the contents of [his] briefcase every day until everything was just so. Each item assigned to a spot. Combs, pens, notepad, etc.”¹⁰ “He wasn't unkempt at all,” Jewison echoes. “He was clinically clean. Everything had to be in the right place and the editing room spotless. He hated dust.”¹¹

Jewison became a mentor to Ashby, and working alongside him gave Ashby a master class in how to operate as a director, starting with the way he stamped his authority on The Cincinnati Kid. Jewison insisted on having creative control—as he distrusted Ransohoff and all other producers—and then started making the film his way: he brought in script doctor Charles Eastman to work with Southern, scrapped Peckinpah's black-and-white footage, and announced that he would shoot in color on location in New Orleans. He also insisted that Ashby cut the film, saying he was “someone who would look at a scene and see the same possibilities in it that I saw.”¹²

Jewison upset Ransohoff by shooting scenes that were not in the script, prompting the producer to send a telegram reading: “Shoot the script. Stop improvizing. You're behind schedule. Return to L.A. at once!” “If I have to come back to L.A. now, I'll leave the picture!” Jewison replied.¹³ Ransohoff, who had lost $750,000 on the shutdown after Peckinpah's departure, backed down. (When they returned to Los Angeles, Jewison would hide when Ransohoff came on set, much to the amusement of the Cincinnati Kid himself, Steve McQueen.)

Ashby was instrumental in helping Jewison with a different problem, this time involving his star. McQueen was infamously selfish and insecure as an actor and was worried about acting opposite the legendary Edward G. Robinson, who was playing “the Man,” whose throne McQueen's Kid is trying to win from him. Early on, McQueen asked to look at the dailies so he could see if he was “ahead” of Robinson. Jewison knew watching himself might throw off his performance, so he asked McQueen to trust his experience. However, a few weeks later Ashby cut together a short reel capturing McQueen's character that convinced the actor that his director was looking out for his best interests.

Given his track record since completing his apprenticeship, it was crucial that Ashby demonstrate his editorial prowess, and The Cincinnati Kid offered him ample opportunities to do so. The key sequence was the climactic card game in which the Kid plays the Man, and it was Ashby's job to make it as exciting as possible—“a gunfight with a deck of cards,” as Ransohoff put it.¹⁴ “The deeper we got into the game,” Jewison says, “the more I began to feel confident that I could make it dramatic. The photography and editing were key. I counted on the creative talents of [director of photography] Phil Lathrop and Hal Ashby to help me pull it off.”¹⁵

The film's finale is beautifully cut, slowly ramping up the tension, and Ashby pulled it off despite the problems of how to convey the passing of time in the all-night game and eye-line complications caused by the round poker table. Both the final game and the cockfight—another memorable scene, one that establishes the relationship between the Kid and predatory temptress Melba (Ann-Margret)—are cut at a brisk pace, and Ashby's decision to end the latter scene on a shot of an exhilarated, blood-hungry Ann-Margret in the audience, rather than the birds tearing each other apart, was an inspired and effective one.

Ashby had no preconceived ideas about how a film should be cut. “The film will tell you how to edit it,” he said. “The film will tell you what to do in the end.”¹⁶ And just as Jewison kept Ransohoff at arm's length, Ashby let Jewison know he needed space in order to edit effectively.

“I was always very rebellious and I fought real hard,” he confessed later. At one point, Jewison asked Ashby whether he should come to the editing room so that he could possibly help him “pick some takes and things.” “Well, Christ, if you don't trust me,” Ashby retorted, “why don't you get somebody else? You go fucking cut the picture!” They would look at the film together, he explained, when he'd finished editing it.¹⁷

Even after this outburst, Ashby still had to fight for his autonomy. During his years in television, Jewison had picked up the habit of snapping his fingers where he felt there should be a cut and would irritate Ashby by doing this while they were watching dailies. After three days of putting up with this, Ashby snapped his fingers just as Jewison was about to. They laughed about it, but Jewison knew never to do it again.

The importance of The Cincinnati Kid in both Ashby's and Jewison's careers cannot be overestimated. Jewison said the film “really kind of saved me emotionally” and called it “the one that made me feel like I had finally become a filmmaker.”¹⁸ As for Ashby, after his anguish over The Loved One, working with Jewison on The Cincinnati Kid revitalized him: “I also got my head together at the same time. I was feelin' good, and from there on, things really happened.”¹⁹

The Cincinnati Kid opened on October 15, 1965, to generally very positive reviews, particularly in the trades. Variety said: “Jewison early establishes the rightful mood for the story and he draws top performances from his entire cast.…His tempo is aided by the sharp editing of Hal Ashby, whose shears enable quick change of scene.”²⁰ The Hollywood Reporter waxed lyrical about the film, dubbing it “thoroughly satisfying…in every way” and one of the best of the year, and saying that “Jewison's direction stamps him unmistakably as an important movie director, daring, imaginative, assured.” Ashby's editing also drew praise for ensuring “the tempo never slackens from the opening shots, though it is never hurried or brusque.”²¹

The Loved One opened the same week to a decidedly mixed reception, gaining the notoriety that Richardson no doubt had hoped for. The Hollywood Reporter's reviewer feared that “its sick, sick message may be taken to heart and purse by younger audiences,” while Variety felt it was “so way out…—frequently beyond all bounds of propriety in an attempt at brilliance—that its appeal probably will be restricted to circles which like their entertainment weird.”²² Critics found it more black than comic, audiences were more confused than amused, and—despite its all-star cast and MGM's high hopes—the film underperformed at the box office.

Conversely, The Cincinnati Kid was a big hit, earning $6 million domestically and $10 million worldwide, and guaranteeing Jewison a bright future. Ashby found himself best friends with a young(ish) director on the up who wanted to take his editor along with him. And by the time The Cincinnati Kid opened, filming on The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming was well under way.