Coppola's _The Conversation_

Another one I rented the other night and forgot just what a great film it was: Network. Perhaps the best, mainstream black comedy of the 70s.

Jack - an appalling sentimental film I believe made because a nephew of Coppola's had this incredibly rare condition of growing up to be Robin Williams - or something.

Coppola's commentary comes through again! I don't recall all the exact details, but he said he was building off the theme of the convention and how with conventions there's usually a chance for people who, say, haven't seen each other for a year to let their hair down, go do something 'crazy,' stuff like that. Which is true enough, based on my one or two English lit academic conference experiences. So it's there for a reason, as well as advancing specific plot points [more details about Caul's previous case that has left him so guilt-ridden, the eventual theft of the tape] and outlining Caul's character some more -- at once private and open, swinging from complete control to semi- tearful confession to manic showoff and back again. That sudden tight camera shot when he realizes he's been bugged with the pen while off- screen you can hear laughter and merriment from the other partygoers = brilliant.

i think it's a terrific film about how a certain kind of smart person turns into a jerky mcjerk idiot — which i don't think is a sepcially deep theme, tho i do think it's a good one — that THINKS it's a revelatory film about THE POLITICS OF HOW WE ALL CANNOT UNDERSTAND ONE ANOTHER EVERYTHING IS AMBIGUITY and DECEPTION BLAH BLAH. You're right abt use of sound, depth, everything in terms of fab physical sensual experience; it's as watchable as either godfather — and even more confused.

(Blow-up btw I think is garbage. Antonioni is a four-star clown.)

Basically I think deep is a TRAP!! And FFC fell for it like the cokehead megalomaniac he was heh.

I really really wanted to be able to big up Bram Stoker's Dracula, but k-blimey o dear.

blow-up is a stinker. fucking mimes! led zeppelin jr's cameo was good though.

You should be duct-taped to a fire-hydrant favored by weak-bladdered dogs and forced to watch "Booty Call" until your eyes bleed, you slack-jawed heretic.

this explains the "adjoining hotel rooms" visions, i guess.

according to IMDB, his name was meant to be "Call", but homynyms & Freudien slips are funny, ain't they?

Michael Bay did more harm than he'll ever know.

Hmm, true. Less a shout out than a beery fart, likely enough.

(xpost)

It's pretty good but no classic; haven't seen it in awhile, but the church confession scene particularly annoyed me. SEE, HE'S FULL OF INARTICULATE GUILT.

I prefer Tucker: The Man and His Dream.

watching enemy of the state--solid fuckin flick, holds up well

i think the slowness is just frank aiming for 'serious auteur' art-movieness.

This is a deeply irritating statement, but never mind.

ive probably mellowed in the intervening seven years (dats a pretty typical ilx thing to say, c. 2003), but it's not my favourite failure-of-communication movie. probably should give it another go, since i haven't seen it since ooh 1998.

watching enemy of the state--solid fuckin flick, holds up well

― rip dom passantino 3/5/09 never forget (max), Sunday, June 7, 2009 11:47 PM (8 months ago) Bookmark

^^^ also kind of an ilx thing to say. don't really agree with this tho.

best eugene hackman movie

yeah. great haskell wexler opening shot.

remember this as wonderful, kind of afraid to go back to be honest. lotta films like that from the student days, though.

i still prefer 'blow up' but maybe it's because im a londoner.

kingston-upon-thames is in london right?

blow-up has way more hotter chicks that's for sure!

huh I guess I should see this eh

blow-up has way more hotter chicks that's for sure!
this is true, but young teri garr in the conversation ain't bad.
love Harrison Ford in this. He shoud be more like this in other movies.

yes!

he is in the movie star bizness, no characters plz

very ILX of everyone above to be so allergic to something "deep."

anyway, aside from all that, i think what will stick with me from this movie is yes the editing but also some lovely moments--that strange slow swooping movement the camera makes (i think) three times as Hackman gives that monologue to the blond woman in the green dress. and him riding the subway alone with the recurrent musical theme.

this flick owns

Seeing it (again) tonight as part of the Toronto Jewish Film Festival. I was baffled too...Coppola? No, don't think so, and Harry Caul's a devout Catholic. It's David Shire, the composer, who'll be talking and performing afterwards.

Well, I guess the score is quite central to it, but yeah, a tad tenuous.

He was great--lots of stories, and he sat and played The Conversation's main theme. Didn't even clue into the fact he was Talia Shire's husband, nor did I realize that he did the piano work on Zodiac (hired because Fincher had The Conversation in mind), and that it's him playing overtop that amazing overhead Library-of-Congress shot in All the President's Men.

interesting stuff here from an interview with Terri Garr http://www.avclub.com/articles/teri-garr,2390/

man, that's a great interview. thanks, piscesx.

They're showing this at a beer theater in Portland in the next few weeks. Should be good.

weird, just watched this for the first time a couple weeks ago

like it? i think it's kind of the perfect 70s movie.

This is sort of the inverse of what Fassbinder did in his adaptation of Nabokov's Despair, where the main character thinks another character is his double, when we the viewers can see that they don't look especially similar. In the novel, their dissimilarity isn't revealed until the end, because we only have the main character's perception to rely on.

...until that point.

Didn’t other people in the film hear the tape the same “erroneous” way that Harry did?

That's a good question, and I'd have to check. (One of those films I've seen so many times, I basically stay away now; last time was 10 years ago or so, with David Shire speaking.) My guess is that we don't know how they're hearing it, but if you're right, there goes my theory.

Can you give me an example of a continuity error in one of the Godfathers, Josh? I can't think of one off-hand, but maybe you're right. ("The scene where they refer to him as 'Skinny Clemenza,' and Coppola forgot to fix that.")

(Is there anyone other than Stan who hears the recording?)

I stand corrected on The Godfather!

https://www.moviemistakes.com/film544

Favorite: "When Luca Brasi is practicing his speech he is wearing a square faced watch. When he gives his speech to the godfather he's wearing a round faced watch."

Stan plays the tape to the whole roomful of people at the party at Harry’s workshop, though I’m not sure if he plays *that bit* of the tape before Harry angrily stops him

Pretty sure I can answer that from memory: when it gets to the key line, Harry and Meredith are dancing in another room. She hears it, but pretty sure she doesn't comment.

Anyway, all our answers are here. Seems like the line reading was an accident, but it was definitely left in purposefully. (Love listening to Murch--he's like George Martin talking on the Beatles.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2RRaw08og8

Dumbest reader comment, #6: "Idk man both sentences means the same thing."

Interesting. The implications of Meredith hearing the line, which I didn’t notice (and which on a first viewing one would never consider), are intriguing.

i think the only time I saw it in the theater (as opposed to numerous times on VHS or DVD) was a festival screening where Murch did a talk and Q&A at the end). His book on editing was required reading in grad school.

Didn’t other people in the film hear the tape the same “erroneous” way that Harry did?

This really has me interested right now, something I'd never thought about, so I'm going to give this another look. I think I messed up my recollection of the Meredith scene above, too ("Pretty sure I can answer that from memory..."--wrong), although what I'm remembering might happen during the night, after they've slept together but before she steals the tapes and leaves.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_qJatkqdAo

I’ll always welcome an excuse to see this again.

So: You hear the key line four times in the film, the first three times as "us," the last as "us."

1) Harry alone in his workshop; Stan has just cleared out after their argument. (Stan never hears the key line.)

2) With Meredith, the night of the party. Not like I described above, when they're dancing; it's after everyone else has left, after Harry gets angry at Moran's pen-recording. Meredith is coaxing Harry into bed, agreeing with everything he says; there's nothing that indicates how she's hearing the line (if she's paying attention at all).

3) With the director and Martin Stett, when Harry picks up payment. Early on, the suggestion is that "us is how Stett and the director hear the line too--the director's "You want it to be true" only makes sense if he thinks he's the target--but when the line actually comes, and Harry asks what he's going to do to them, the director doesn't respond; he doesn't say anything that indicates he's hearing the line differently than Harry.

4) In Harry's mind, after the murder, as he pieces everything together.

I don't think there's anything that contradicts the interpretation I give above. I think that's the only logical interpretation, underscored by that Murch clip. I don't know why Coppola second-guessed himself; thematically, it'd be a less interesting film if the same inflection were used the whole way through.

Plenty to chew on here!

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/540b22a1e4b0d0f549866135/t/58fe57799de4bb6494158e2d/1493063553867/The_Conversation_SCREENPLAY.pdf

my favourite part was

CLOSE VIEW OF THE MUSICIANS 4
on!Q& hem puts down his instrumen and does a ?
ro licb.ng tap dance. DllNGeK o« D1tNcG D itriEC rDlf ·

Just skimmed that screenplay--looks like the order of things was radically changed.

The American Zoetrope-related films had a real murderer's row of film editors!

Use to have a friend, or acquaintance at least, that worked there for a bit/pvmic

No saxophone playing in the final shot of that screenplay!

I think there's a thread on ILM somewhere for movies with playing-records scenes; I can rattle off a dozen or two. Add The Conversation; first time Harry plays sax in his apartment, there's a shot of his turntable and the record he's playing along to.

That scene does appear in the screenplay, it seems stranded without the "payoff" at the end.

If only they'd had the technology back then Murch could've done a Yanni/Laurel thing with the key line

"He'd kill us if he had the chance... MACLUNKEY!"

What was happening outside the window behind Caul, when he’s gotten home and is calling his landlady? This is near the beginning.

Saw this again on the big screen tonight.

It was a different film this time (this was the 4th or 5th time I saw it and the second time in a theater) - more about a wounded man trying so hard to control and hide himself from the world around him that the world wounds him (as opposed to a sinister conspiracy or a surveillance fable).

Poster I made up for my second attempt at launching a Film Night in my small town. The first night--Sweet Smell of Success--one person showed up! (Me plus one other person, just to be clear.)

https://phildellio.tripod.com/conversation.jpg

great movie, and very cool you’re doing that! i’d suggest using an image from the movie though. at first glance this flyer looks like it’s advertising social media platforms

Thanks. I did one with the original movie poster, too--with the screening details in a little box in the corner--and that's the one I posted around town. This was just an extra thing I linked to on FB, trying to explain why I thought the film was a relevant as ever.

It's really hard to launch this kind of thing in a small town. This Thursday I have to compete with the annual library book sale and a small get-together for the tennis club (which will be attended by all of 10 people or so--but cost me two people who said they'd be there).

If you go from an audience of one to an audience of two, is that incremental or exponential growth? It's both--I love math!

Having seen this so many, many times, something I think I noticed for the first time tonight (and only because it's the first time I've ever watched it was captions--it'd be easy to miss otherwise): Nixon is mentioned by name once, at a crucial moment.

was = with

Just noticed it was #72 on the directors' list, so that's heartening.

Nixon is mentioned by name once, at a crucial moment.

Oh yeah ... I remembered that bit from the first time I saw it, but then I kinda associate this film with Nixon and that era of "paranoid film" ... I think I probably saw it for the first time in a thematic week along with All the Presidents Men so ... (I think I've only seen it 4-5 times though)

The image flashed by quickly, but I think it might have even been Coppola himself who says it (although not having come across mention of this before seems unlikely).

hey clemenza, thanks for your email! I appreciated it!

You knew what thread I'd open for sure.

From Sam Wasson's The Path to Paradise: A Francis Ford Coppola Story (which I'm not especially liking--for the 57th time, Coppola the crazed genius lost in the jungle):

The first cut of The Conversation was extremely long, close to five hours.

I usually name The Conversation as the closest any film has ever gotten for me to perfection. There's one of Elizabeth MacRae's lines that always sounds off to me, otherwise there isn't a line or a moment elsewhere I'd change. So in no way would I expect longer to be better, or even close. But if this cut still exists--highly doubtful--I sure would love to have a chance to see it.

Half the cut footage is different readings of <the line> and the other half is Gene wailing on sax.

I saw a bunch of people on Twitter saying how unnecessary the sax scene at the end was and finally lost my last bit of faith

I'm thinking of "These pretzels are making me thirsty from Seinfeld"; every possible permutation of "He'd kill us if he got the chance."

Yeah, that's bizarre--that final scene is so crucial. Makes me think of Google/Facebook when I watch it now.

Move that end quote...