Weekly Triple Feature

Films About Making a Film

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THE FILMS: State and Main (2000, David Mamet), Hearts of Darkness (1991, Fax Bahr, George Hickenlooper, and Eleanor Coppola), Man Bites Dog (1992, Rémy Belvaux, André Bonzel, and Benoît Poelvoorde)

THE CONNECTION: Three films where the story revolves around making a (real or fictional) film.

THE THINKING: Films are fantastic. And the industry that makes them is a fascinating one full of creatives, masters of their craft, and . . . personalities. Each entry in this week’s triple feature uses its own technique to tell a story about this incredible world. Whether that’s through a fictionalized film set, a gritty documentary about a film set, or a real-time documentary satire, just about every angle is covered.

Something that comes through in each of these three stories—aside from the fact that money is always an issue—is that it’s downright difficult to get an idea all the way to a screen. Each represents a unique struggle that’s met with determination and choices good or bad that serve the final product. As Paul Thomas Anderson once said about filmmaking, “it’s a miracle anytime one of them gets made.” In this triple feature we get to see a few ways in which it actually does happen.

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Weekly Triple Feature

Everybody Knows: Towns with a Dark Secret

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THE FILMS: Midsommar (2019, Ari Aster), Hot Fuzz (2007, Edgar Wright), Bad Day at Black Rock (1955, John Sturges)

THE CONNECTION: Films in which a group fights to keep a secret from someone trying to uncover it.

THE THINKING: The town-with-a-dark-secret trope is a fun one which usually consists of a protagonist who thinks something isn’t quite right, and then a whole bunch of people try to stop them from figuring out what that is. That’s not always the case though, as this week’s triple feature proves. But there’s always something dubious under the surface and as the viewer we figure it out almost in real time along with the hero.

The three films in this week’s triple feature are an interesting collection of variations on the trope. Midsommar tackles it through the lens of horror and might be the exception to the formula; It’s a story of a secret that isn’t necessarily being covered up as much as it is perpetuated by unsuspecting visitors. Hot Fuzz brings a stylistic and humorous approach in the form of a buddy cop satire where a locals carry on with a secret behind the scenes for what they consider the benefit of all the townspeople. And Bad Day at Black Rock is a pot-boiler of a neo-western about a town with a secret they’d all like to leave in the past. Each brings its own flavor to the topic and is a lot of fun.

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Weekly Triple Feature

Happy Birthday, William Castle

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THE FILMS: Macabre (1958, William Castle), Rosemary’s Baby (Roman Polanski, 1968), Matinee (1993, Joe Dante)

THE CONNECTION: These films all mark important moments in William Castle’s career and how he left a lasting impact on film and pop culture.

THE THINKING: Today is William Castle’s birthday, so this week’s triple feature is a celebration of the man and his contributions to Hollywood. If you ask critics, most of his films were B-level at best. But if you ask the audiences that lined up around the block to see them when they were released, they would have said that nobody created a better moviegoing experience. In-theater gimmicks like “Percepto” and “Emergo” were the tools Castle used to turn okay stories into immersive theme park rides which had young people everywhere talking about them. And today, nearly fifty years after his death, an entirely new audience is making his work as relevant as ever through revivals and retrospectives—oftentimes complete with the marketing stunts that made him so beloved.

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Weekly Triple Feature

Single Shot Films (More or Less)

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THE FILMS: Rope (1948, Alfred Hitchcock), Russian Ark (2002, Aleksandr Sokurov), Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2013, Alejandro G. Iñárritu)

THE CONNECTION: Films that are—or appear to be—a single long take.

THE THINKING: The single-take film is an ambitious undertaking that not many have attempted. A few have succeeded and others faked it through clever edits and software. This week’s triple feature takes a look at three films from the 1950s through today that use whatever means were available at the time to give audiences a one-shot experience. Of particular interest is how Birdman uses technology not to create that one long take, but instead to modernize some of the tricks Hitchcock used in making Rope way back in 1948. These three films don’t have much in common thematically, but they all share a thread of ambitious filmmaking that is as fun to learn about as the final products are to watch.

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