{"id":67313,"date":"2013-04-23T13:03:01","date_gmt":"2013-04-23T17:03:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=67313"},"modified":"2024-10-27T19:21:20","modified_gmt":"2024-10-27T23:21:20","slug":"ebert-fest-2013-haskell-wexler-qa-use-available-light-the-thousand-mile-stare-of-linda-manz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=67313","title":{"rendered":"Ebert Fest 2013: Haskell Wexler QA: “Use available light”; the thousand-mile stare of Linda Manz"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"daysofheaven\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\nFollowing the Days of Heaven<\/i> screening on the first night of Ebert Fest, Chaz came back out onstage to introduce the special guest Haskell Wexler (the entire festival was dedicated to him). Haskell Wexler hadn’t been the principal cinematographer for the film, but he had come up to Alberta, at Malick’s request, to film a lot of stuff, and his contribution was so significant that he got his own credit title. By the time he got up there, filming was already well underway, so he just needed to fit into the Malick style already set. Malick, of course, has a style and sensibility so recognizable that you could pick it out of a lineup, but at that point, he had only made one short and one feature (the brilliant Badlands<\/i> (1973). Days of Heaven<\/i> came out in 1978. And then, of course, there was a famous twenty-year gap in his career, before The Thin Red Line<\/i> in 1998. Since then, his pace has just kept accelerating, which is a bit of a miracle for those of us who fell in love with Malick from the get-go, with Badlands<\/i>, and have had to learn PATIENCE when waiting for his next film. <\/p>\n

NY Mag<\/i> TV critic, Malick expert, and friend Matt Zoller Seitz was then brought out onto the stage by Chaz, to interview Haskell Wexler. I had known Matt would be there, but hadn’t seen him yet. In fact, I hadn’t seen any of the friends I knew would be there – Steven Boone, and others. It was a bit of a madhouse in the VIP section of the house that first night, although we all got into a groove by the end of the festival, and I made good friends with some folks I saw every day. It was great. So Matt came out onto the stage, and I felt very excited for him, and excited about the conversation we were about to listen to. <\/p>\n

Haskell Wexler is a long lean glass of water, sharp as a tack, funny and completely present, despite his 91 years of age. He described Malick as a “weird guy”, and said that when he arrived on the set in the middle of the Canadian prairies, the shooting was well underway. So it was a matter of fitting himself into the process already in place. The entire shoot was about using “available light”, which, as is obvious in the final product, gives the film its sweep, scope, and almost unbearable beauty. Most of the film was shot during the “magic hours”, when the sun is on its way down (or up, I suppose, but mostly down), and everything gets that almost unearthly glow to it in the final rays. Magic Hour. There was very little artificial light in the film, even in the interiors. Haskell Wexler said that he likes to film what is actually in front of him. The images before him tell him how to shoot, and the images before him are so perfect that in some cases all he has to do is turn the camera on. Of course there is so much art that goes into a moment like that, you have to be damn good, and ready for the surprise moment. Malick would often tell them to shoot something spontaneously, if a certain image came up that was perfect and fleeting. <\/p>\n

\n\"days-of-heaven-3\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\nMatt did a wonderful job of crafting the conversation (his questions were excellent).<\/p>\n

Roger came up repeatedly (and also deliberately: everyone wanted to talk about him, every guest shared a Roger story – it was really this rather extraordinary collective experience). Ebert was a Malick champion from the start, and, of course, his final review was of Malick’s latest, To the Wonder<\/i><\/a>, which is strangely fitting. As Matt was talking to Wexler, he took out Roger’s review and read the following bit, about the voiceover, which captures perfectly what I was trying to express the other day<\/a> (and which will be instantly recognizable to anyone who has seen the film, and listened to Linda Manz’s unique voiceover): <\/p>\n

Against this backdrop, the story is told in a curious way. We do see key emotional moments between the three adult characters. (Bill advises Abby to take the farmer’s offer. The farmer and Abby share moments together in which she realizes she is beginning to love him, and Bill and the farmer have their elliptical exchanges in which neither quite states the obvious.) But all of their words together, if summed up, do not equal the total of the words in the voiceover spoken so hauntingly by Linda Manz.
\nShe was 16 when the film was made, playing younger, with a face that sometimes looks angular and plain, but at other times (especially in a shot where she is illuminated by firelight and surrounded by darkness) has a startling beauty. Her voice tells us everything we need to know about her character (and is so particular and unusual that we almost think it tells us about the actress, too). It is flat, resigned, emotionless, with some kind of quirky Eastern accent.
\nThe whole story is told by her. But her words are not a narration so much as a parallel commentary, with asides and footnotes. We get the sense that she is speaking some years after the events have happened, trying to reconstruct these events that were seen through naive eyes. She is there in almost the first words of the film (“My brother used to tell everyone they were brother and sister,” a statement that is more complex than it seems). And still there in the last words of the film, as she walks down the tracks with her new “best friend.” She is there after the others are gone. She is the teller of the tale.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n\"doh\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\nNow. One side note on Linda Manz. I first saw her when I was a kid in a 1979 TV movie called Orphan Train<\/i>, starring Jill Eikenberry (and Glenn Close has a cameo). This movie, about a do-gooder who takes a bunch of street urchins out west in the late 19th century to find them homes on farms, knocked me OUT. It had everything I loved: orphans (for starters – I loved Everything Orphan), women in high-collared old-fashioned dresses, kids living by their wits on the streets, and, best of all, a little girl who dressed up as a boy. I was in HEA-VEN. DAYS of heaven? How about MONTHS of heaven, just dreaming about that movie, obsessing on it. I was so obsessed that I wrote it up as a novel<\/a>. Let’s remember that this was really before VCRs were in vogue, at least in my house. So I saw the movie once, and wrote up the novel version from memory. I now own the damn thing on VHS and I have to say: IT HOLDS UP.<\/p>\n

\n\"orphan-train-jill-eikenberry-vhs-cover-art\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\nLinda Manz plays a young girl who lives in a brothel (which I didn’t really understand at the time), and she is obviously being groomed to work there. She steals from the men who frequent there. There was something about her face that stuck in my head. She was so interesting-looking, so tough, and yet so open. She has instant authority and authenticity onscreen. She seemed to come from another time. I had no idea that she had got her start the year before in Malick’s Days of Heaven<\/i>. All I knew was that she was the emotional center, in many ways, of this movie that transported me into a world of fantasy. I will always have a soft spot in my heart for Linda Manz because of that. <\/p>\n

What a face. It’s like an old photograph of a miner, or one of those pictures of the people fleeing the Dust Bowl, looking for work, living out of their jalopy. Her face belongs in Shorpy’s Kids gallery<\/a>, even though she is a child of the 1970s. It has a thousand-mile stare. It has known hardship. But it has no self-pity. Great movie face. <\/p>\n

\n\"188152-linda_manz_large\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\nSomeone stood up at the QA and said to Wexler, “Your work in Days of Heaven<\/i> reminds me so much of the paintings of Andrew Wyeth. I wondered if that was deliberate.”<\/p>\n

Wexler said, “Any time anybody compares me to a famous painter …” <\/p>\n

He left it unfinished, but it was clear his sentiment. Andrew Wyeth? Sure, I’ll take that compliment, man. Bring it on!<\/p>\n

\n\"christina\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\"days<\/a><\/p>\n

\nHeartwarming stimulating night, exciting. Made my way back to the hotel, gearing up for Day 2.<\/p>\n

\n\"8670722846_7eb7ca8b8c_z\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\"8669621611_e94ece7601_z\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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Following the Days of Heaven screening on the first night of Ebert Fest, Chaz came back out onstage to introduce the special guest Haskell Wexler (the entire festival was dedicated to him). Haskell Wexler hadn’t been the principal cinematographer for … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[1225,2533,1209],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67313"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=67313"}],"version-history":[{"count":28,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67313\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":194988,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67313\/revisions\/194988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=67313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=67313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=67313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}