{"id":2198,"date":"2004-12-17T12:08:41","date_gmt":"2004-12-17T17:08:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=2198"},"modified":"2024-10-27T17:05:43","modified_gmt":"2024-10-27T21:05:43","slug":"lumet-appreciation-day-what-is-the-movie-about","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=2198","title":{"rendered":"Sidney Lumet: What Is the Movie About?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Excerpt from Making Movies<\/a>\"\":<\/p>\n

Sidney Lumet:<\/i><\/p>\n

Having decided, for whatever reason, to do a movie, I return to that all-encompassing, critical discussion: What is the movie about? Work can’t begin until its limits are defined, and this is the first step in that process. It becomes the riverbed into which all subsequent decisions will be channeled.<\/p>\n

The Pawnbroker: <\/i>How and why we create our own prisons<\/p>\n

Dog Day Afternoon:<\/i> Freaks are not the freaks we think they are. We are much more connected to the outrageous behavior than we know or admit.<\/p>\n

Prince of the City: <\/i> When we try to control everything, everything winds up controlling us. nothing is what it seems.<\/p>\n

The Fugitive Kind: <\/i> The struggle to preserve what is sensitive and vulnerable both in ourselves and in the world.<\/p>\n

12 Angry Men:<\/i> Listen<\/p>\n

Network<\/i>: The machines are winning.<\/p>\n

Long Day’s Journey Into Night:<\/i> I must stop here. I don’t know what the theme is, other than whatever idea is inherently in the title. Sometimes a subject comes along, and as in this case, is expressed in such great writing, is so enormous, so all-encompassing, that no single theme can define it. Trying to pin it down limits something that should have no limits. I am very lucky to have had a text of that magnitude in my career.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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