Notes with Wenders

[collected from Q+A's over the weekend]

- Wenders was interviewing Sam Fuller in the early 70s and Sam gave him his number and told him to call if he was ever in L.A. A few years later Wim has written and gotten ALICE IN THE CITIES financed but before production begins he goes to a press screening of Bogdanovich's PAPER MOON. The screening completely discouraged Wenders because he felt like he had just watched the film he was about to make. Completely disillusioned he ends up in L.A. and decided to call Fuller who, to his surprise, actually answered and invited him over. After noticing his rather depressed demeanor Sam asked what was wrong and Wim told the situation. Outraged, Sam jumped on all the different furniture in his apartment, each time he lands giving Wim a variation of the story that he could produce to be completely different to PAPER MOON. After hearing so many suggestions in such a short period of time Wim realized he could still make this film and began production. ALICE was the film that convinced Wim he was a filmmaker because his prior films had been influenced or based on something else (SCARLET LETTER the novel, THE GOALIE'S ANXIETY AT THE PENALTY KICK Hitchcock, and SUMMER IN THE CITY Rock&Roll) In other words, it is thanks to Sam Fuller that we have most of Wenders oeuvre.

- The last shot of ALICE with Philip and Alice looking out the window of the train was done in a helicopter using Wenders' suspenders to stabilize the camera. It was Wim and Robby Müller's first time trying to shoot in a helicopter and neither of them realized how shaky helicopters were and had to makeshift someway of stabilizing the camera.

- Wenders realized he would have to shoot most of WINGS OF DESIRE in b&w and the only DP he wanted was Henri Alekan who had already retired.  Wenders goes personally to his home and talked to him about the film, convinced him to come out of retirement,  much to the dismay of his wife, to shoot the film. Alekan then shows Wenders all of his b&w gear, specifically this one filter that consists  of Alekan's grandmothers stocking that was used to shoot all of WINGS (except the scenes in color).

Win Wenders: Portraits Along the Road continues at IFC Center.

Fuller hammett wenders

Lighting Over Water (Nicholas Ray and Wim Wenders, 1980)

Quick observation: countless documentaries, especially about artists, end-up being talking head documentaries which can provide intriguing insights into the artist but have no cinematic value. If these were turned into written interviews the effect would be exactly the same.

"There was theatre (Griffith), poetry (Murnau), painting (Rossellini), dance (Eisenstein), music (Renoir). Henceforth there is cinema. And the cinema is Nicholas Ray."
- Jean Luc Godard

If Nick Ray is cinema, a documentary about him certainly should have cinematic value (the opposite of talking head docs). This documentary manages to maintain purely cinematic; and perhaps one of the greatest films of all-time. A blend of reality and fiction (or simplystaged reality) that would be possible in no other medium.



Brilliant cutting between (raw, documentary) video [pictured above] and (highly aestheticized) 35mm film [pictured below] in a shot/reaction-shot.



An incredible look into the artistic process and the mind of a mad genius.

"Would you kill somebody for a great shot?" One of the last distinguishable quotes said in the epilogue by one of the students right before the end credits.