Coppola's _The Conversation_

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."

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

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