A Visit to the Imaginary Landscape of Harrison, Texas: The Filmed Stories of Horton Foote
1989; Salisbury University; Volume: 17; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0090-4260
Autores Tópico(s)Cinema and Media Studies
ResumoThe past decade has shown an enormous growth in regional theatre. Why not a similar growth in regional films? At the moment . . . American films are polarized; they are made in Los Angeles or New York, with perhaps a brief stop-over in Chicago . . . A story indigenous to Texas, made by Texans, can be shown and understood in Northern Michigan. A story rooted in northern Michigan . . . might possibly be better made by indigenous Michiganders than by a team from Hollywood that moved into the area with its pre-formed script and preconceptions. What I'm arguing is a that recognizes the multiplicity of this vast country . . . (Knight 340). In brief hindsight, it is clear that Arthur Knight was sensing an important undercurrent in American moviemaking when he first composed the above conclusion to the second edition of his one- volume history of the movies, The Liveliest Art. For more than a decade, the Hollywood establishment has continued a trend of on-location shooting throughout North America and overseas to a point where three out of every four American movies are now made outside the confines of southern California. Although this progressive move towards runaway over the past fifteen years is a growing drain on the localized economy of the golden state, the mainstream movie business in general has benefited both financially and stylistically by its increasing willingness to go elsewhere to shoot its motion pictures. The most important consequence of this development, however, is a corresponding upswing in independent and video work across America. Encouraged by this influx of on-location production activity and capital, the growing number of qualified support personnel in every region of the country, and the relative success of a few early role models, indigenous filmmakers are now flourishing throughout America in such reborn or newfound and video centers as Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Minneapolis, Nashville, New York, Pittsburgh, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. A vast array of independent moviemakers, such as Lizzie Borden, Joel and Ethan Coen, Joyce Chopra, John Hanson and Rob Nilsson, Jim Jarmusch, Spike Lee, Gregory Nava, Victor Nunez, George Romero, John Sayles, Joan Micklin Silver, Wayne Wang, John Waters, and Claudia Weill, just to name a few of the more prominent and successful so far, are fueling a resurgence in America's narrative cinema that is just now gaining momentum and starting to be recognized and properly understood. In many ways, the most intriguing and remarkable member of this renaissance is Horton Foote. Born on March 14, 1916, he is the movement's elder statesman, and along with John Sayles, its most prolific and accomplished practitioner. Where all the other American independents working today are part of the so-called film culture generation that first came of age during the 1960s and 1970s, Horton Foote has been a celebrated writer of stageplays, teleplay s , a novel (The Chase), and screenplays for nearly five decades. In contrast, his contemporaries are either a vital part of the Hollywood establishment, or are no longer making motion pictures. The independent nature of Foote's films is, therefore, unique when considering his age and generational perspective; his work also exhibits a richness and integrity that is a vivid indication of how much can be achieved when a talented artist is attuned to his instincts and can focus his intentions and resolve. The Early Years: On Becoming a Writer Agnes De Mille took me aside quite casually, Did you ever think about writing? And that was the furthest thing from my mind so I said, No, I never did. And she said, Well I really think you have an instinct and a sense of place, which is a phrase I never heard before I started writing, but I've heard it often since. - Horton Foote1 The sanctification of the local landscape is a fundamental function of mythology . …
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