Hugo - What is Old is New Again

(upper) Asa Butterfield as Hugo Cabret in Martin Scorsese's Hugo and (lower) Harold Lloyd as The Boy in Fred C. Newmeyer and Sam Taylor's Safety Last!

From Turner Classic Movies:
In the 1923 silent film Safety Last! - "The clock face stunt was inspired by Bill Strothers' performance of a similar human fly act, discovered by Lloyd while walking in Los Angeles one day. Strothers' grand finale to the stunt involved him riding a bicycle along the rooftops edge and then standing on his head on a flagpole. Lloyd was deeply impressed by the event, remarking, "It made such a terrific impression on me, and stirred my emotions."

Lloyd immediately placed Strothers under contract at the Hal Roach studio, and cast him in Safety Last! as "Limpy Bill," the Boy's lovable roommate and construction worker who also has human fly capabilities.

Many of the interior scenes for Safety Last! were shot at the L.A. department store Ville de Paris, which was owned by a close friend of producer Hal Roach. Each evening when the store closed the crew would set up their equipment and then work during the midnight hours."

Director's Early-Early Work: Kubrick, Nolan, Scorsese and Spielberg

On Wednesday, December 14th at 8:00 pm (ET) TCM will broadcast one of Stanley Kubrick's earliest directorial attempts - Fear and Desire (see above). Movie critic and historian Leonard Matlin (who is featured in These Amazing Shadows) says of Fear and Desire: "Kubrick's elusive, shoestring-budget feature-film debut is an existential antiwar allegory centering on four GIs (including a very green Mazursky, in his film debut) stranded behind the lines of an unknown enemy and fighting a fictitious war in an unidentified country. Long suppressed by Kubrick himself--who also photographed, edited, and cowrote with poet/playwright Howard Sackler--the movie contains some striking imagery and shows the germs of budding talent, but generally comes off as an arty and pretentious student film."

This got us thinking about other directors early work. We often think of directors appearing as full formed geniuses/auteur/dictators, but often what you find in their early work is a clunky style that only remotely suggests their future potential. Thank goodness they find ways as young directors to experiment and evolve without crashing and burning in the public eye (although strangely that sometimes happens in the middle of their careers: Spielberg 1941, Bogdanovich At Long Last Love, Scorsese New York, New York).

Christopher Nolan: Doodlebug (1997)
A man waits patiently in his apartment to squash a bug, but he could be hurting himself more than he realizes.



Martin Scorsese: It's Not Just You, Murray! (1963)
Now middle-aged, mobster Murray looks back at his humble beginnings as a bootlegger and his rise to becoming wealthy and highly influential.


Steven Spielberg: Firelight (1964)
Menacing UFOs attack citizens of a town. 
NOTE: Be patient with this video - it is very rough. If you stick with it you'll see some familiar images from his future movies.

Martin Scorsese - Great series of photographs and captions from The Hollywood Reporter

Detail from The Hollywood Reporter gallery on Martin Scorsese.

Take a look at a fascinating series of photographs (and equally good captions) of director Martin Scorsese that is featured on The Hollywood Reporter website. It's really good - and is part of the hype building for the Blu-ray release on April 5th of the Scorsese classic, Taxi Driver. The Blu-ray evidently contains tons of extras.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/gallery/martin-scorsese-past-171267