Ideas

Atomic notes. One observation, claim or connection each, grouped by the film it comes from. This is where the trivia and the disputes live.

After Hours (1985)

• Close-ups for no reason After Hours cuts to big close-ups of light switches, keys and locks that turn out to mean nothing. It is Hitchcock's grammar used as a prank on an audience that has learned to read it.
• Five set-ups a day became sixteen Scorsese drew every shot of After Hours in the script margins and found he had about 500 of them. At his usual pace that was impossible. Michael Ballhaus said he could do it.
• Michael Powell wrote the ending The director of The Red Shoes, by then married to Scorsese's editor, saw a cut of After Hours with Scorsese's father, hated the ending, and suggested the one in the film. He also mentioned Kafka, whom Scorsese had never read.
• Paul was nearly born on the West Side Highway One planned ending had Paul climb inside June to hide from the mob and be born again, naked, on a Manhattan street. David Geffen, who was paying, asked if they had lost their minds.
• The first half hour came from a radio monologue The diner, the bagel paperweights, the $20 out the cab window: Joe Frank had broadcast them in a radio piece called Lies. The screenwriter admitted it decades later, and the settlement was about $30,000.
• The keys nearly killed Griffin Dunne To get the point of view of a set of falling keys, the crew dropped a camera platform four storeys on climbing rope and stopped it just above the star's head. The footage was out of focus.
• Tim Burton stepped aside Before Scorsese, the producers of After Hours wanted a Disney animator with a six-minute cartoon to his name. They could not raise the money with Tim Burton, and then Scorsese's big film collapsed.

Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974)

• Ms. Magazine and the twenty-five per cent Alice's warmest feminist review ran in a magazine part-owned by the studio that made it — reception and commerce in one fact.
• The $85,000 backdrop The Alice prologue set cost $85,000 of a $1.8M budget and shot for one day — five per cent of the film spent on announcing what the film is about.
• You'll Never Know, then Mott the Hoople Two songs across one cut: 1943 crooning smashed into 1974 glam — the whole backstory of a life told in an audio transition.

Mean Streets (1973)

• Corman offered to make it Black Roger Corman would fund Mean Streets for $150,000 if every character were Black. Scorsese nearly said yes, then couldn't see them in church.
• New York was Los Angeles The definitive Little Italy film was mostly shot in Los Angeles, with garbage added to the streets. What couldn't be faked were the hallways.
• Nobody agrees whether Johnny Boy dies A gunman played by Scorsese empties a pistol into the car. Critics have him killing Johnny Boy, sparing him, or leaving it open. The film doesn't say.
• The hand in the flame Charlie holds his fingers over a flame three times in Mean Streets: a votive candle, a match, a kitchen grill. It is his private theology, and it recurs in Taxi Driver.
• The jukebox is the score Mean Streets has no composed score. Every note of music comes from a jukebox, a car radio or a window, and most of it is ten years older than the film.
• Too much red In 1975 Michael Powell wrote to Scorsese to say Mean Streets used too much red. Scorsese had got the red from Michael Powell.

Psycho (1960)

• Herrmann scored the shower against orders Hitchcock asked for the murder to play unscored. Herrmann wrote the strings anyway, and Hitchcock conceded on the spot.
• Killing the protagonist at minute 47 Psycho spends its first act building a protagonist by the book, then murders her at the mid-point of act two.
• Norman among the birds The parlour's taxidermy is the film's thesis statement in set decoration: predators, prey, and a man already stuffed.
• The first flushing toilet Psycho is generally credited with the first toilet flushed on screen in a mainstream American film — and the flush is a plot point.
• The money dies with Marion The $40,000 sinks into the swamp wrapped in newspaper, and no surviving character ever learns it was there.
• The shower scene is built from 78 setups Commonly cited: about 78 camera setups and 52 cuts in roughly 3 minutes — and the knife never enters flesh on screen.

Taxi Driver (1976)

• Bickle sees through glass The windscreen and the rear-view mirror are the film's two apertures. Travis is a viewer before he is an actor, and the film is careful about which passengers he is allowed to see.
• Bresson's hands, Travis's guns The gun-handling sequences copy the pickpocketing in Bresson's Pickpocket. The debt is Schrader's; Scorsese admits he finds Bresson hard to watch.
• Chapman pushed the night stock Taxi Driver's wet neon look came from over-developing night-rated Technicolor stock — a 1970s laboratory habit, not a lighting package.
• De Niro wrote in the margins De Niro's annotated shooting script rewrote Travis's dialogue, and the changes reached Schrader's final draft. The film's most quoted line has no screenwriter.
• Herrmann finished the score and died that night Bernard Herrmann took some persuading to score a film with a title he disliked. He completed it on Christmas Eve 1975 and died the same night.
• In every city there's one man Columbia sold Taxi Driver on loneliness, not violence. Scorsese expected audiences to reject the film outright.
• Overhead shots are the priest's-eye view Scorsese's flat overhead inserts come from watching a priest lay out the implements of the Mass on an altar — not from any film.
• Schrader and Scorsese disagree about the ending Ritual suicide or tabloid item? The writer and the director give incompatible accounts of the same scene, and the film supports both.
• The red tint over the bloodbath The muted colour of Taxi Driver's massacre is regularly praised as a stylistic choice. It was the price of an R rating.
• The Wrong Man taught the camera to be paranoid Scorsese names one Hitchcock film as the source of Taxi Driver's camera moves — and it is the documentary-flat one, not the famous ones.

The Craft (1996)

• Manon was invented so nobody could call him The Craft's deity is fake by design. The witchcraft consultant refused to put a real one in a film teenagers would copy.
• Nancy is the only poor one Three of the four girls want something about themselves changed. Nancy wants out of a trailer. The film punishes her hardest.
• Rochelle plays the spell wrong on purpose When the hair falls out, three girls cackle and one is horrified. Rachel True made that choice, and later explained why.
• The chant is a metronome, not a spell Light as a feather works because four people lifting together carry 15 kg each. The rhyme's real function is to synchronise them.
• The Craft got better as it got older Mixed reviews, a surprise hit, then three decades of reappraisal that inverted which half of the film people take seriously.