Coppola's _The Conversation_

Thought there was more--that's the whole thing.

But the hero is a very thin conceit (a one-dimensional control freak)

Travis Bickle, Scottie Ferguson, maybe even Charles Foster Kane (the control freak part, anyway)--you could simplify lots of characters this way.

it also doesn't fully fit hackman's character.

after rating this film 55/100

How dare he!

I'm a control freak myself. At least two dimensions, though--occasionally I throw in a third one just to confuse people.

I don't find those three characters you brought up one-dimensional -- esp Scottie, you've gotta be kidding.

only at the end do we hear it as it actually is

This is on a level with "I meant Vader KILLED THE PART OF YOUR FATHER that was a Jedi" bullshit.

I don't find Harry any more or less one-dimensional than Scottie. (I'm fibbing, of course--I find Harry much more interesting.)

How is rendering something subjectively through the ears of an excessively paranoid guy "bullshit." I mean, we could argue about this forever--you're taking subjective responses to a film and treating them like fact. Some people love The Conversation, some people love Vertigo. That's just the way it is.

changing the emphasis of the line, especially in such a technoworld-set film, is a cheat to me.

I know what you're saying, and way back when I first saw the film, I think it bothered me too--think I even mentioned as much on an ungraduate paper. (I'll check tonight.) But I think it's a perfectly valid interpretation to say that through the whole film, where we're always looking at the conversation through Harry's eyes and ears, as he's hunched over his editing table, that we're hearing what he wants to hear (an expression of his guilt, a desire to save someone, lots of reasons). When he sees Williams and Forrest at the end, it's like he snaps out of his paranoia and hears the conversation as it is, for the first time. You may not agree, but I think that's a valid way to look at it. I mean, I don't think it was accidental or sloppy on Coppola's part--I'm sure he was aware the two recordings are different.

Clemenza at 19, 1980:

"A point should be raised about the transformation of emphasis from 'He'd kiss us..." to 'He'd kill us..." It is not the same recording--we have not misinterpreted like Harry. It is two distinct recordings, the change occurring because the first time we're hearing it through Harry's ears--a neat, if slightly unfair, trick by Coppola on the audience."

The paper (also on Save the Tiger, The Long Goodbye, and Mean Streets) was written for a guy who went on to make loads and loads of money producing Stripes, Ghostbusters, and other Ivan Reitman films. He gave me a checkmark there--very, very proud.

I actually wrote a second paper on (just) The Conversation three years later:

"Nowhere in The Conversation is Coppola's distrust of language better explicated, than in the transformation from 'he'd kill us if he had the chance' to 'he'd kill us if he had the chance'."

Haven't a clue what I meant by "distrust of language" (Coppola?), and I didn't know how to punctuate, either, so I'll just take a pass there.

It almost seems silly to play The Conversation and Vertigo off against each other, as they've got so much in common. (Someone once wrote that those two plus Petulia make up the great San Francisco trilogy of alienation or paranoia or something like that.) Harry and Scotty are both plagued by guilt over recent work-related deaths, they're both implicated in plots they don't understand until it's too late, both are exceptionally austere films by directors with great popular successes nearby, etc., etc.

Ahem--"kill us" way up top. The transformation wasn't quite that drastic.

the great San Francisco trilogy of alienation or paranoia or something like that

I don't see Philip Kaufman's Invasion of the Body Snatchers in this trilogy.

Knock off The Conversation. That'll make room.

The paranoia and the locale, yes, but it's too funny. (Though Allen Garfield really makes me laugh in The Conversation.)

Have to watch Petulia again to see that. It's been seven years or so.

The Conversation is circles to me, the recordings, the shots, scenes, the equipment, the thoughts... which always reminded me of the song The Windmills of Your Mind and The Thomas Crown Affair and explains why I am left wanting to watch The Thomas Crown Affair after The Conversation.

c'mon dude, alienation and paranoia are funny, you've heard the Watergate tapes.

not as funny as the "Windmills of Your Mind" lyrics tho.

Remapping The Conversation: Urban Design and Industrial Reflexivity in Seventies San Francisco

...Though Union Square itself pre-dates modernist planning, the panoptic, bird's-eye perspective aligns the camera with the totalizing, top-down viewpoint that has been closely associated with modernism and what Martin Jay has called the "scopic regime" of modernity. From this opening sequence onwards, the planner's gaze of modernism is strongly associated with technologies of surveillance and control, and by extension, the potential erosion or disappearance of cohesive public space. The trope of the plan recurs several times during the film, particularly through the use of various maps and models, from the scale reproduction of Union Square that Harry Caul discovers at the wire-tappers' convention to the replica of the new downtown and waterfront in the Director's office (figs. 5 and 6). This trope consistently foregrounds the importance of the city to the structure of the film, and it also invokes the notion of planning and the planner's gaze figured in the opening scene. The selection of Union Square is significant too. In its urban design framework, the City Planning Department singled out Union Square as one of only three open public spaces remaining downtown and accordingly set out explicit principles for maintaining its character. Throughout the 1970s, attempts to redevelop buildings surrounding the square became the focal point of struggle between developers and the design panel. From this perspective, Union Square represents an older form of built environment threatened by the advance of urban renewal and corporate reconstruction.

http://post45.research.yale.edu/2014/06/remapping-the-conversation-urban-design-and-industrial-reflexivity-in-seventies-san-francisco/

Just read one music writer praise another music writer as such-and-such, and the words "Since when did William P. Moran of Detroit, Michigan, become 'pre-eminent in the field'?" immediately crossed my mind.

Still a marvellous romp.

romp? really? all singing, all dancing gloom and guilt?

Well, the red red robins do go romp-romp-romping along in it.

Brian De Palma interviewing Coppola in 1974 abt The Conversation:

https://cinephiliabeyond.org/francis-ford-coppola-brian-de-palma-conversation-two-great-filmmakers/

Thank you for sharing that. Great, very insightful interview.

Looking forward to reading that this weekend.

Thx for this! P fascinating

Was at a rep screening tonight. Noticed that Zodiac quotes a couple of bars from the score--makes perfect sense for a variety of reasons, the most obvious being the locale.

Close to a perfect film. The one line from Elizabeth MaCrae about how she bumps her head all the time and doesn't mind at all, that line always strikes me as a little off. Nothing else--and especially not how the key line is transformed.

The Blu Ray is classic; Harrison Ford screen test shot in the actual park, Coppola’s dictations of the script etc. Hours of extra fascinating bits.

"Noticed that Zodiac quotes a couple of bars from the score--makes perfect sense for a variety of reasons, the most obvious being the locale."

Well, actually the most obvious reason might be that it's the same composer...

I don't have the Blu-Ray, but a friend gave me a two-disc DVD--it's possible some of that stuff's on there.

I thought this revive might be about the facetime bug being a lot like the alleged phone bug in the movie.

Didn't know what you meant, so I looked it up...That's great; William P. Moran, new products for a new century.

Came across these two items, too. 1) Had no idea someone turned The Conversation into a play: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/theater/reviews/23conv.html. 2) This book, by one William B. Moran: http://www.amazon.ca/Covert-Surveillance-Electronic-Penetration-William/dp/0915179202.

RIP Allen Garfield

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

I got no time, Delbert--I got no time.

Wow Alan Garfield was fantastic in this; such a believable performance, a fine actor indeed. RIP.

Saw this on the big screen today. Definitely noticed the “cheat” in the crucial snatch of dialogue. I think it’s an excellent film with which I still have quite a few nitpicks

I'll stand by what I've said more than once on this thread: it's not a cheat if you accept that earlier in the film, you're hearing it through Harry's ears, hearing what he wants to hear, what allows him to take on the role of Cindy Williams' saviour.

OK but why would he want to hear it that way (I.e. the wrong way) if he has no preconceived notions about what he’s listening to. The John Cazale character even makes a point about this, asking him why he doesn’t care what these two people are talking about.

I think he does care, though, and deeply. He puts on that show of not-caring for himself and for Stan, but he carries around so much guilt--for the murder his tapes occasioned previously, for his treatment of Terri Garr, for pretty much his whole life--that he's looking for some way to redeem himself, almost like Travis in Taxi Driver. And I think he projects all that onto the tapes.

As I posted above, I'm not saying I'm right, but I do think it's open to interpretation, and that that particular interpretation is valid.

And I find it so hard to believe that Coppola, a well-know control freak, would leave two different recordings in the film because of sloppiness, or because he figured no one would notice or just wouldn't care.

Eh, there's tons of sloppy stuff in his movies, iirc, especially the two Godfathers. Continuity errors and the like. Right?

Oh, I have no doubt Coppola was aware of the two different recordings, and purposely used the first one first (and repeatedly throughout the bulk of the film) and the second only at the end when it was too late to function as a clue for the audience. But I do think that’s sneaky, even though you may be right about the psychology of Harry. Didn’t other people in the film hear the tape the same “erroneous” way that Harry did? I guess I’d have to watch it again to be sure of that

My memory is shit, I’ve seen this movie a handful of times and loved it every time, but don’t recall what you all are specifically talking about. Whatever the “cheat” was it didn’t register as such.

Should say it either went unnoticed or seemed purposeful. It’s been about a decade.

“He’d kill us if he got the chance” vs “He’d kill us if he got the chance”

***SPOILER ALERT***

The emphasis makes all the difference wrt whether Cindy Williams and her pal will be the victims of a murder or the perpetrators of one.

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."