2. Day For Night
People who have never actually made a movie before - whether you're shooting with a professional film crew in Hollywood, CA, or with a bunch of their friends on guerrilla locations - have no conception of what it's like. They think you show up well rested every morning, have a clear idea what you're going to do; that the actors know their lines, you run the scene like a play, photograph it flawless, and then go home (probably to sleep with the script girl). Francois Truffaut knew better when he made his 1973 masterpiece Day for Night. Working with a film crew is like living with a great, big, messy family, one where nothing ever quite goes right. Your aging actress had a few too many drinks trying to relax herself before her big scene, and she can't remember which door she's supposed to open; that cat - that
damn cat - doesn't care that there are fifty people waiting on it, it just doesn't want to eat the breakfast the prop man has set out; you're losing the light, you need to find a new location, you're rewriting scenes the night before...and suddenly your lead actor dies, and you have no third act. Day for Night was made long after Truffaut had become a cinematic legend, and in many ways it plays like an open invitation to his fans to come see the master at work. Here's how we make a movie! Here's how we work with actors! Here's how we stage a stunt, pull off a bit of sleight of hand, make it look as though a stuntman went over a cliff in that car or an apartment building is standing in the middle of a parking lot or it's snowing in July! What Day for Night gets very, very right is the fact that, on some strange level, the actual movie being made is almost secondary. Meet Pamela, the movie being shot in the film, looks like a fairly risible melodrama, but whether you're making art or swill, filmmaking is about a collective experience, about a group of disparate personalities who come together for a brief time to make something sort of miraculous. No wonder the script girl in Truffaut's film says, in astonishment at another character's behavior "I'd leave a guy for a film - I'd never leave a
film for a
guy!" Ludicrous as the process is, for those who love it, there can be no higher calling than making movies.