I like M Night Shyamalan’s work. He’s a very capable writer-director. What’s more, I like The Happening, which almost everyone seems to despise. But he does tend to waste a lot of money. I think his films would usually be better if he had less to spend. And this was very much on display in the Jeep crash scene from that film. I couldn’t help but compare it to the notorious meathook scene from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

Now, you may think this is unfair. After all, this is one of the greatest scenes ever created for a movie. But I think it is still worth doing. This is a scene that cost almost nothing to shoot. It involves two camera setups. It was probably shot in an afternoon. Yet it is visceral in its impact.

This is exactly the opposite of the jeep crash scene in The Happening. It relies on motion-controlled cameras, computer graphics, stunt workers, and doubtless cost hundreds of thousand dollars — if not more. Yet it has no real impact on the viewer. It doesn’t even need to be in the film except to provide the film’s heartwarming epilog.

Meathook Scene: Shot by Shot

There are many things that make this scene one of the most frightening in movie history. There’s the excellent acting, the incredible music, and the context coming right after Pam (Teri McMinn) flees the “chicken” room. But I want to focus on the shots, which may be brilliant, but only in their simplicity.

1. The first shot is from above and behind a row of two meathooks. One is prominent in the foreground — slightly out of focus. We see Leatherface carrying Pam, who is screaming and struggling, into the room. He carries her toward the hook.

2. Cut to the reverse angle, from floor height. Leatherface continues to carry Pam to the hook, lifting her up as if to impale her on it.

3. Cut back to the first angle. The hook is in the foreground, Pam’s back is brought down toward the hook. This shot is very short — perhaps a quarter second.

4. Cut to the second angle but swifted so that the camera is directly in front of Pam. Leatherface releases her body, which comes down starply, apparently impaled on the hook.

5. Axial cut to close-up of Pam screeming.

Why the Meat Hook Scene Works

I think one big reason the whole film works is that it comes across as cinéma vérité. Yet as this scene shows, it is nothing of the sort. But it does have a certain documentary simplicity. The camera is always on a tripod here. It never pushes in, zooms, or even pans.

What’s probably most important here is that the movement of Pam is seamless. As the second shot ends, Pam has been lifted as high as Leatherface can manage. Throughout the third shot, he lowers her. At the start of the fourth shot, she is coming down and then is dropped. To the viewer, it seems like a single shot.

Of course, it is in that fourth shot when Pam is dropped that makes it seem real. This is doubtless because Pam actually is being impaled. Gunnar Hansen really is putting the harness that McMinn is wearing on that hook. There’s even a little natural bounce that sells it.

To some extent, this is an example of practical effects being easier. That whole final “hooked” shot would be hard to make work if it had to be animated. But other than wearing the harness, there really is no “movie magic” in this scene. It’s doubtful it could be any simpler.

Jeep Crash Scene: Shot by Shot

I can’t really do a shot-by-shot analysis of the Jeep crash scene because it is all done in one shot. That is the problem! Let’s go through it.

1. It starts with a medium shot of the Jeep from the side. As the Jeep accelerates forward, the camera tracks with it.

2. The camera falls behind and pans with the Jeep as it drives into the tree.

3. The camera stops panning as the Jeep hits the tree and we see the driver fly out the front windshield.

4. John Leguizamo exits the Jeep while the camera zooms in and follows him.

5. The camera continues to zoom as he sets down and cuts his wrist.

A Technical Achievement!

There is a 10-minute documentary on the DVD that goes over the process. Basically, they use motion-controlled cameras. Then they composite them into the final scene.

Why did they do this? They spent a lot of time and money to make the scene happen in one shot. It’s 16 seconds from when the Jeep takes off to when we see Leguizamo leave the car. I doubt many people even notice it is in one shot. If they do, I don’t see how they would care.

The biggest problem here is that the most important part of it is in long-shot. Two people are thrown from the Jeep but we only barely see the second and that is after the body has landed. And despite 30 additional seconds of zooming, we see no detail of Leguizamo cutting his writs.

This is a perfect example of filmmakers pleasing themselves rather than the audience. Getting this scene was a technical accomplishment. But it deprived the audience of a great moment in the film.

A Better Jeep Crash Edit

I’m not a film editor. But I think it would have been more effective to eliminate the single-shot and get into the action. Following the crash, this would work better:

1. CU on Leguizamo as he stares emotionless.
2. POV of the dead bodies in front of the Jeep.
3. Medium on Leguzamo as he calmly opens the door.
4. Follow him as he notices something on the ground.
5. POV of broken glass.
6. CU on Leguzamo has he sits.
7. Tilt down to his hand holding a glass shard as he cuts into his wrist and blood flows.
8. Cut to other group.

Pretty standard idea there. It could probably be done with half the shots. But that would cut together in an effective way. The only problem: it wouldn’t have given the crew a tech boner.

Audience First

Financial limitations often bring out the creativity in people. But that isn’t what’s going on here.

The people who made The Texas Chain Saw Massacre were just trying to make an effective film. The Happening was made by a bunch of jaded professionals. So why not have some fun with a technical challenge?

The problem is that after they spent the cost of a nice house on this technical feat, they had to use it in the film. And the film is worse for it.

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Screen captures from the two films are used under Fair Use.

I visited my sister over the weekend and we went to see Bohemian Rhapsody. It wasn’t a thrilling idea for several reasons. I don’t like biopics. I rarely like big-budget Hollywood films. I’ve never been a huge Queen fan. But going to lame films is something I have always done for my family. (They have learned not to reciprocate because of long — For Them — painful experience.)

The film turned out to be far worse than I had expected. The main reason biopics usually suck is because they are redemption stories. Admittedly, redemption stories can be fantastic; for example, Ikiru is one of my favorite films ever.

But in Bohemian Rhapsody it is the total cliche: artist finds success; artist goes on tilt; artist finds redemption by not going on tilt. For anyone who cares, there is an episode of Behind the Music about Queen. And it has the major advantage of ruining only 45-minutes of your life. Bohemian Rhapsody is well over 2 hours long. And it feels much longer. (Dunbar in Catch-22 would have loved it!)

But the main thing that struck me while watching the film was not that it was bad. Not that there wasn’t much badness to strike me. Although I once admired director Bryan Singer, it has been many years. He is now a typical Hollywood hack. Things might have been better if Peter Morgan had been kept as screenwriter, but instead, Anthony McCarten was brought on board — likely to pacify the remaining members of Queen who seem to have been determined the movie be as inoffensive and boring as possible. The whole thing is typical Hollywood nonsense, so I can hardly complain that my experience of the film was alternating boredom and outrage.

Noticing Technique

The main thing that bugged me was how technically I watched Bohemian Rhapsody. I was constantly taken out of the film by this or that directorial flourish. And I have always hated that! Any time some critic or other film enthusiast makes a big deal about the technical side of a film, I know that they are not worth listening to.

And this is what Hollywood is all about. The studios are convinced that people come to their movies to see the spectacle. This is not my experience at all. I can’t speak for teens, but adults want to see a good story well told.

There was one very impressive shot toward the end of the film. Queen is playing at Live Aid. The camera starts under Freddy Mercury’s piano. It is then pushed forward between his legs and over to Brian May. Finally, it tilts up to a shot of May’s guitar. It took me a good minute to figure out two ways to recreate what I will admit was a very pleasing shot.

The Thousand Clowns Paradox

If anything, the shots like this ruin the rest of the film. (Or would have done so if the rest of the film had been good.) I call it the Thousand Clowns Paradox. After the first cut of the film, the screenwriter Herb Gardner was horrified. He had first written it as a play. When he wrote the screenplay, Gardner tried to expand it for the screen, but ultimately, A Thousand Clowns looks like a play on film.

So Gardner worked with editor Ralph Rosenblum (both were also co-producers) to create more cinematic scenes using stock footage and music. And they are sublime! But in the context of the film, they only serve to highlight just how boring the other scenes are.

Without those scenes, the viewer isn’t unsettled. They are able to appreciate the exceptional story.

Technique Isn’t Storytelling

So it bothers me to be reminded that I’m watching a film. It bothers me even more that I do appreciate technique. But I fear that is something I’m just going to have to live with given how much of a film geek I am. And it will only get worse.

This is not what film-viewing and filmmaking should be. There is a common saying about editing a picture: you have to kill your darlings. The idea is that because of the filmmakers’ love of a scene, it stays in the edit, even though it is creating problem for the film as a whole. Usually, this is a matter of pacing. But I think this is also because of the Thousand Clowns Paradox. Sadly, fewer and fewer filmmakers hold to this.

Big-budget movies are made by huge egos. And that results in over-long movies filled with beautiful but worthless shots. It explains why I would rather watch any Howard Hawks or Russ Meyer film than almost anything at the local multiplex.

I have had various connections to Hollywood in my life. And I’ve come to see it as an awful place. It is offensive that “normal” (non-Hollywood) people get so excited about celebrities. I was once a minor celebrity, so I saw it from the inside. And it was pathetic. These people thought I was super cool, but I was just the same loner nerd I had always been.

So I thought that people in Hollywood would be lackadaisical about stars and directors and such. No. It’s the opposite. They are even worse than people outside that dysfunctional environment. If David Foster Wallace can be believed, the porn industry is much more mature. And most successful stars and directors (and studio heads and on and on) are very much in agreement. They’re great!

Normal People vs Hollywood “People”

But I never got that from Herschell Gordon Lewis or David F Friedman, men who actually changed the way films were made. They have a humility that’s, well, human. (They’re also assholes, but that’s another issue.) Maybe those people who believe in alien lizards living inside human “suits” are right. If they are, all those alien lizards live in Hollywood.

There are so many examples I could use, but today I want to talk about James Cameron because it really shows off not just his horribleness but also his conviction that he is never at fault. He’s like God, if it’s good, he gets credit. If it’s bad, it’s on someone else — maybe all of us.

It Came From a Commentary Track

I am something on a connoisseur of commentaries on films. Of course, most are quite awful because they are done by directors who are surprisingly ignorant of how movies are made (at least big-budget Hollywood directors). Generally, I would rather listen to a writer or a historian discuss a film. But when it is a director, you often get to see what jerks they are.

(I recently listened to John Carpenter do a commentary on the great In the Mouth of Madness with cinematographer Gary B Kibbe, and Carpenter was so nice about including Kibbe, it was charming. But then, Carpenter isn’t a Hollywood kind of guy.)

Enter James Cameron

Many years ago, I listened to the commentary for Terminator 2: Judgment Day. It includes Cameron and screenwriter William Wisher. And during it, Cameron really shows the dick of Hollywood legend that he is. It is amazing to listen to Wisher play omega to Cameron’s alpha. I know they are friends. But that makes it even more sad, because Wisher is as much a professional in his field as Cameron.

I felt sorry for Wisher but mostly it just made me think that James Cameron was an awful person.

Cameron Blames Bad Actors

One moment in the commentary really stood out.

Cameron mentioned that there was a deleted scene at the end of The Terminator where two guys from Cyberdyne Systems pick up a chip from the remains of the terminator.

He said (more or less) that the scene was deleted, “Frankly, because the acting was terrible.” My first reaction was (and I’ve had this with many directors), “Doesn’t he fear that the actors he’s talking about will hear about this and feel bad?” In Cameron’s case, of course not! Who in the world matters but James Cameron?

My second reaction was: I’ve got to see that deleted scene. I had to see what God James Cameron thought of as terrible acting.

The Bad Acting Cameron Had No Control Over

Well, here it is, all 33 seconds worth:

He’s right: the acting is weak. But it isn’t bad. And I certainly don’t present it as, “Hey: look at the bad acting!”

Acting on film depends upon a whole lot more than just the actors. And most actors get it wrong a lot more than they get it right.

How the Acting Could Be Improved

This scene strikes me as awkward more than anything else. Certainly a few more takes and, you know, some direction, and a perfectly acceptable performance could have been squeezed out of these actors.

Notice something else about the scene: the blocking is terrible. The whole scene, in addition to everything else, is boring.

I think the problem is that James Cameron didn’t care about the scene and didn’t really try. The fact that he wants to blame the actors makes him a terrible person and it really makes me question him as a director. I get the idea he depends a lot on other professionals (especially editors) to make his films work (when they do).

Afterword

A similar dynamic is going on in a deleted scene from Remains of the Day. But James Ivory is enough of a man to place the blame on himself. He admits that he didn’t want to shoot the scene and only did it because Anthony Hopkins insisted. As I recall, he said, “I didn’t really try.”