Tom Barnes's Blog: Tom's 'RocktheTower' Blog - Posts Tagged "art"

Let’s go to the Movies

David Selznick had some sleepless nights mulling over his vision for the final cut of his Gone With the Wind film. Not only did it involve the length of the picture it involved the grand scope of every frame. Could they make a larger than life picture within the confines of their back lot? The answer was a resounding NO.
Selznick tackled the problem and alluded to a partial answer in a memo dated March 9, 1939 directed to Ray Klune, his production manager,
Selznick complained about the exteriors being shot outside Tara and compared them to other films such as ‘Robin Hood’ and ‘The Great Waltz,’ and he wasn’t pleased with what he saw…’Frankly, I’m now terribly sorry we didn’t build Tara on location…I’d like you and Mr. Menzies to get together immediately to make sure that out remaining exteriors, such as the exterior of Twelve Oaks, and the shot in which Gerald talks about the land being the only thing that matters, have real beauty instead of looking like B picture film…This is quite apart from the photography – I don’t see how the greatest cameraman in the world could get much beauty out of what we have given him for the exterior of Tara. (I am not speaking now of the set itself but of the landscaping, the line of trees etc…Incidentally, I would also like you to consider whether your second unit should go immediately to Georgia, or any other place, to pick up some shots for the opening sequence…’
Well, that memo sparked an increase in location scouting and eventually second unit film crews moved off the Selznick Studio back lot and began shooting GWTW’s exterior scenes in the great outdoors.
James Fitzpatrick (‘Travel Talks’ short subject producer) was hired as a second unit director and dispatched to Georgia to get an authentic sense of the land and the Georgia environment.
Second unit camera’s cast and crew’s traveled from Culver City to locations at Agoura Hills, Big Bear, Calabasas, Chico, Malibu Lake, Pasadena, San Bernardino National Forest, Simi Valley, and probably several other locations.
Some of the directors involve in that location filming were Sam Wood, Yakima Canutt, Chester Franklin, and the aforementioned James Fitzpatrick filmed Georgia scenes, some of which were used in the title sequence of the film.
The second unit work on those exterior scenes was well worth the effort as they gave the film an openness that would otherwise have been missing had Selznick not had that great vision.
Some of the outdoor scenes that added real life and continuity to the film include Big Sam’s ‘Quittin’ time’ scene with men coming home from the fields.
Gerald O’Hara’s horse riding and jumping sequences, Gerald and Scarlett’s walk and his talk about the land.
Scarlett’s ‘As God is my witness’ scene in the open field gives us a few moments of true movie magic.
The cotton field scene with sisters Suellen and Careen as well as the returning veterans and the long shot sequence of Ashley coming home from the war are all effective.
And when you consider that this film was made long before modern special effects became a part of moviemaking is hard to believe they actually pulled it off. But the test of time alone proves that their hard work was rewarded and that Selznick’s vision had been right on target.
The industry recognized the quality of the film immediately and gave awards to Lyle Wheeler for best interior decoration and William Cameron Menzies for outstanding achievement in the use of color. (Those are just a couple of awards; Gone With the Wind almost swept the Academy Awards in 1939 – a year of great films. More later on 1939 films and awards.)

Hitler’s Stolen Art Still in the News
The irony is in the timing. While America was waiting for the opening of ‘Gone With the Wind’ Europe was preparing for World War II. .

BERLIN (AP) — Two paintings that the Nazis forced a Jewish art dealer to sell off in the 1930s have been returned to his estate, and its heirs said Wednesday they were working hard to recover hundreds more.

‘Tom Barnes has tapped the headlines into Nazis stolen art and crafted a spellbinding mystery.’ Julie Burton, playwright and author of “Consider the Tulips.”
‘The Goring Collection.’
Jacob Meyers is stunned to see his father’s Pissarro – taken by the Nazi’s in 1945 – among the paintings up for sale at the Old World Auction House in Manhattan. He questions management and while he reads a phony provenance, the Pissarro is withdrawn from sale and mysteriously disappears. Jacob, head of an intelligence group, alerts Interpol and joins their ongoing investigation into the underground world of stolen art.
Two suspect paintings, a Manet and a Cézanne sold by an international cartel in Berlin as copies, are tracked to the Berghoff Gallery in Chicago where they are auctioned off as originals. An accidental shooting at the gallery exposes the cartel’s shell game and leads to blackmail of a Las Vegas odds maker, murder of a San Francisco politician, and the assassination of a former matinee idol in West Virginia.
Link to stolen art display: Click Here
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/20/art...

Writers Notebook:
On Internet Blogging:
Think of blogging as a community bulletin board.
Simply put you blog to share information with others and you can blog about anything Aunt Suzie’s favorite recipes, politics, pop art, gardening or fly-fishing.
The political classes are having a field day in the blog world.
My ‘RocktheTower’ blog reflects many of my personal experiences as writer, actor and hurricane hunter.
Most writers have files filled with stuff (and some is just that – stuff) we’ve written in the past articles, essays etc. If you’ve written a book you’re in good shape because you have lots of material to fall back on. Use excerpts to promote your book or make a point.
You set your own schedule and deadline to post. My idea is to work with consistency in order to make that deadline. One of the incentives I use is that at the end of the day I will have accumulated enough material to edit into a book about storytelling on the blog.
Twitter is something you might look into, it will give you another way to generate new ideas and feed your blog: something to think about.

Tom Barnes -- Actor, Writer and Hurricane Hunter.
Check out my website for books, blogs, western legends, a literary icon, reviews and interviews. Also my novels The Goring Collection and Doc Holliday’s Road to Tombstone along with a non fiction remembrance of The Hurricane Hunters and Lost in the Bermuda Triangle.
www.tombarnes39.com
www.RocktheTower.com

Let’s go to the Movies
Part 15
Victor Fleming returned to work and Sam Wood stayed on to help.

According to David Selznick Sam Wood did an outstanding job filling in for Fleming and in one of his memos he stated that there was no loss in picture quality during that period.
Fleming was back on the set the second week of May and Sam Wood agreed to stick around and help out where ever he was needed. By that time in the production the working script was in place and Selznick’s idea was to drive forward and complete filming as soon as possible.
To accomplish that goal he wanted to have as many as five units shooting various scenes on the same day. And as a means to that end Selznick would take Sam Wood up on his offer and then add several other second unit directors to shoot various location scenes.
Previously mentioned second unit directors Yakima Canutt and James A Fitzpatrick were already on the list.
Fitzpatrick was in Georgia shooting background scenes from the actual Tara area.
In order to have enough directing talent available Peter Ballbusch, a solid utility director was added to the second unit director’s list.
B. Reeves Eason had a wide range of experience as actor, writer and director also signed up as a second unit director.
Chester M. Franklin was hired for his experience dating back to the silent days.
William Cameron Menzies the present production designer and art director of GWTW was pressed into service as a second unit director. The versatile Menzies was also a film director, producer and screenwriter.
Menzies would later add to his resume the film ‘Around the World in 80 Days’ where he shared producer credits with Mike Todd and Kevin McCloy.

The Kentucky Derby
This week’s sports pages all over the world will be filled with stories about Saturday’s Kentucky Derby. Horses, trainers and owners will all get their moment of fame. Some of the stories will be original and insightful while most will be boilerplate rhetoric you could have read the week before any past derby. And some of the best stories may be overlooked this week simply because late in the afternoon on the first Saturday in May at Churchill Downs the Kentucky Derby will be run. And sometimes a star is born.
But once the winner gets that blanked of roses, be it favorite or unbelievable Longshot a new cycle begins with talk in the Sunday morning sports pages about the 2009 race for the Triple Crown.
Back in 1919 a star and a tradition was born.
The big story coming out of the 1919 Kentucky Derby was that Sir Barton was not in the race to win, he was entered as a rabbit to go out fast and wear down the favorites giving Sir Barton’s stable mate Billy Kelly a chance to come from behind and take all the marbles. Well, it didn’t work out that way because Sir Barton didn’t tire; he just went on to win the race.
Sir Barton was immediately put on a train and shipped to Baltimore where only four days later he won the Preakness. Then a couple of weeks after that race he took New York by storm and won a race at Belmont, which was later to become the Belmont Stakes.
And that was the beginning of a horse racing tradition known as the Triple Crown.
(To be continued)

Nazi Stolen Art
Excerpt from ‘The Goring Collection.
Jacob Meyers, head of the Founders Group Intelligence Division, hooks up with Interpol’s international art investigation. Two suspect paintings, a Manet and Cézanne, are sold in Berlin as copies and tracked to the Berghoff Gallery in Chicago where they sell as originals. The paintings came from cache plundered by the Nazi’s now controlled by Cartel.
FGI Operatives investigate and report a flurry of Cartel activities in Chicago, Atlanta, San Francisco and Las Vegas. Accidental shooting at the Chicago Gallery, two murders in San Francisco, political blackmail in Las Vegas and a rogue group within the Cartel dealing drugs in West Georgia. That hodgepodge of crimes makes no sense until Jacob gets a tip from informant giving him date and place for Cartel’s upcoming grand auction. But the real bombshell comes when Cartel member – ex Senator Tripp Farrell – is linked to San Francisco murders.
A task force made up of FGI, Customs, DEA and a local sheriff quashed the Cartel’s multi-million dollar auction and shut down the drug trafficking operation. But the hunt for Cartel’s main stash continued and leads to Europe where FGI, Interpol and a Danish Partisan group team up to search for the Goring Collection.

Writers Notebook:
A lesson from Hemingway’s ‘A Moveable Feast.’
‘…good and severe discipline.’
‘It was in that room that I learned not to think about anything that I was writing from the time I stopped writing until I started again the next day. That way my subconscious could be working on it and at the same time I would be listening to other people and noticing everything…’
‘Going down the stairs when I had worked well, and that needed luck as well as discipline, was a wonderful feeling and I was free then to walk anywhere in Paris. If I walked down by different streets to Jardin du Luxembourg in the afternoon I would walk through the gardens and then go to the Musee du Luxembourg…’ ‘I went there nearly every day for the Cézanne’s and to see the Manet’s and the Monet’s and the other Impressionist’s that I had first come to know about in the Art Institute in Chicago…’
‘But if the light was gone in the Luxembourg I would walk up through the gardens and stop in at the studio apartment where Gertrude Stein lived at 27 rue de Fleurus.’

Another example of what the writer observes is what eventually goes onto the printed page. And Hemingway believed that those observations after passing through the subconscious was the way to build from, ‘that one true sentence,’ he talked about so often.
Tom Barnes -- Actor, Writer and Hurricane Hunter.
Check out my website for books, blogs, western legends, a literary icon, reviews and interviews. Also my novels The Goring Collection and Doc Holliday’s Road to Tombstone along with a non fiction remembrance of The Hurricane Hunters and Lost in the Bermuda Triangle.
www.tombarnes39.com
www.RocktheTower.com