regards
harsel gibs
______________________________________________
watch west wing | watch lost | watch one tree hill

That’s fine. Please don’t worry about it!

I’m sorry to say I’ve never heard of Marty Rubin. And don’t recall ever reading any of his writings. He sounds like someone whose criticism I would enjoy.

Anyway, you are being a real gentleman about this. Thank you!

The first person I remember drawing a link between Raoul Walsh’s visual style and Russian Constructivism was Marty Rubin, my old film professor at SMU over 20 years ago, in a lecture about the Constructivist influence on everybody from Walsh and Busby Berkeley to Orson Welles and Fritz Lang. I did read your piece as part of a run-up to recording the commentary track, though, along with a couple dozen other pieces, and at that particular moment when we were rolling tape and I was yammering on, I couldn’t remember your name or my professor’s, so I said, “Many” as a half-assed way to let viewers know that I didn’t invent this line of thinking. Now I wish I’d asked Kevin to stop recording so I could had collected my thoughts and done a proper citation.

What happened to you has happened to me on a few occasions — reading my own observations in an article, a blog comments section or on a message board, prefaced with a phrase like, “I was reading somewhere that…” — and it’s always irritating.

The weirdest such incident occurred a couple of years ago, when my old colleague Armond White reviewed “Apocalpyto” in NYPress and quoted Quentin Tarantino declaring that “The Passion of the Christ” was ” the most visual movie by an actor since Charles Laughton made The Night of the Hunter. ” I made exactly that observation in a NYPress column about “The Passion of the Christ” back in 2004. Either QT and I had the same thought in more or less the same words, or I was being quoted without attribution twice removed. Either way it sucks.

Sorry, Mike.

I haven’t seen STRAWBERRY AND CHOCOLATE but Alea’s MEMORIES OF UNDERDEVELOPMENT is one of my all time favorite Latin American films. Latin America is admittedly one of my weaker areas in world cinema. There’s certainly more to it than Bunuel’s Mexican output, which the TSPDT 1000 would have us believe is the best that Latin American cinema has to offer.

Kevin

But I do want credit for my ideas.
My reputation is all I have as a scholar.

Thank you,
Mike Grost

I was watching the first video essay on “They Died With Their Boots On”.
It talks about geometric forms, such as rectangles, circles and cones in the film.
The commentator (Matt Zoller Seitz) says that “Many critics have noted the relationship of Walsh to Russian Constructivism”.

Actually, as far as I know, there is only one critic who has said such things: me.
My web site has long been full of articles that analyze geometric forms in Fritz Lang, Vincente Minnelli, Edgar G. Ulmer and Raoul Walsh. I have also posted on these subjects at a_film_by.

My Walsh article has for many years contained this comment on “White Heat”:

Rounded Objects and Constructivism

In addition to circles, Walsh also loves rounded objects. These especially include car windows, tops of cars, and hoods. These objects are not purely circular, but they have strong rounded components. Walsh often puts such rounded regions at the top of his compositions. They form frames that surround the characters. For example, he likes to shoot people through car windows. The rounded top of the window will be at the top of the screen. It will form an arch through which we see the characters. It makes a very graceful climax to the composition. It will be the most visible and emphasized part of the composition. It adds a note of visual gracefulness and beauty to the proceedings. Walsh always wants everything to look beautiful. There is a sense of elegance and joy, an attempt to give pleasure to the audience.

Walsh employs his own Hollywood version of Constructivism in his shots. Everywhere, there are numerous geometric objects in Walsh’s images. These include rectangular regions, circles and rounded objects. Walsh will also include cones and pyramids. For example, at the gas station, we see a conical extension going off the rear portion of the truck cab. It is quite prominent in the composition. So is the truck’s circular side mirror. In the background, a building with a pyramidal roof is prominently featured. Such geometric objects are the key building blocks of Walsh’s image.

Other geometric objects: the truncated cone used to track radio broadcasts in cars. This is a neat cone, with another circle below it, and an arched arrow going up the side of the cone. It is one of Walsh’s most complex geometric features.

(end of quote).

I’ve never written about “They Died With Their Boots On”. The comments in the video essay on that film are original. And I’m glad to see my ideas influencing other writers.

But shouldn’t I get some credit for my ideas?
I am not “Many critics”.
I am an individual film scholar.
Can’t your team give me credit for my ideas and thinking?

Thanks,
Mike Grost