Hue's Blog

The Inferno

"Midway in the journey of our life
I came to myself in a dark wood,
for the straight way was lost."

- The Inferno, Canto I

The Inferno, by Dante Alighieri, was my writing inspiration for Saint John of Las Vegas.  My friend and Dante scholar Robert Hollander urged me to capture the poem's spirit, rather than to try a literal adaptation.

The Inferno is about a man who gets a brief guided tour through hell.  At each level he stops and talks to the damned.  He gives them his sincere attention, and in exchange he gets information.  At the start of the poem he is confused about how he should live.  By the end he is clear.

In the beginning of Saint John of Las Vegas, our hero John is in denial.  He meets characters who would rather live in a hell of their own making than conform to society's "heaven."  Instead of judging them, he empathizes with them, and in exchange he gets information.  At the end of the movie he is content with who he has been, all along.

The poem's influence extends deeper into the film.  The individual characters, Virgil's race, and the abruptness of John's "love" interest come from Dante.  But mapping that out seems academic.  If there is any value in highlighting The Inferno's influence on Saint John of Las Vegas, it is to draw attention to the beautiful, lyric and surreal nature of the poem itself.

Harold Pinter

In his essay "Writing for the Theatre" Harold Pinter writes about talking and silence.

There are two silences. One when no word is spoken. The other when perhaps a torrent of language is being employed...The speech we hear is an indication of that which we don't hear. It is a necessary avoidance, a violent, sly, anguished or mocking smoke screen which keeps the other in its place...One way of looking at speech is to say that it is a constant stratagem to cover nakedness.

I thought about this while writing Saint John of Las Vegas. At one point John surrenders to his gambling demons, in a minimart.  Embarrassed, he launches into a tirade.  Instead of saying "I can't believe how weak I am" he says (to the counter girl):

You gotta be lucky...luc-ky...are you lucky?  That’s a dumb question.  I know you are.  I can feel you...no, not like that, I mean you feel lucky, it feels lucky...in here...whew!  But it is hot...does that bother you?  That they keep it hot in here?  Maybe it’s good for the food...keeps it fresh...although you’d think it’d be better cold...for freshness. (beat) Fresh-ness.

William Eggleston

At war with the mundane.

The photographer William Eggleston was our cinematic inspiration for Saint John of Las Vegas.  He famously said "I am at war with the mundane."

This isn't photo-journalism, or cosmopolitan pity.  It is a kind of exaltation.  To war with something is to elevate its importance.  The humor here comes from severity.  In Saint John of Las Vegas, auto insurance is the mundane subject, but the characters involved are at war.  That is what makes it funny.

These images are dye-transfer prints from Kodak reversal stock.  We shot 35mm negative film and then adjusted the image via a digital intermediary (which, for non-filmmakers, is like photoshop for movies.)  Unfortunately, reversal film and negative film look very different.  Even if we had used reversal film, Eggleston shot these pictures in the 1970s and Kodak no longer makes the development chemicals he used.  Dye transfer printing also creates a different look than normal printing, even when using the same negative.  So we couldn't use Eggleston's film stock, his chemicals or his printing process.

We asked dye transfer printer Guy Stricherz and fashion photographer Raymond Meier for advice on how to replicate Eggleston's look.  They both said the same thing: resist the temptation to electronically sharpen or increase contrast.  To quote Raymond Meier "it’s extremely hard to fake the beauty of a real imperfection."  Instead, our DP Giles Nuttgens concentrated on emulating Eggleston's framing and lighting decisions.  We made contrast by juxtaposing colors in the frame, so we wouldn't need to enhance contrast digitally.  And we relied on modern lens technology to create all the sharpness we needed.

Our colorist Julius Friede used a wonderfully light touch in the digital intermediary process.  In the end, I think we succeeded in creating a look which pays homage to Eggleston's spirit, even if the film stock, processing and printing weren't the same.

 

 

 

 

             

Mondrian

Production designer (uncredited)

Saint John of Las Vegas had a limited production design budget.  We decided that it was best to pick a single source of inspiration for the whole film.  Our hope was that simplicity and focus would have the biggest bang for the proverbial (and literal) buck.

Our production designer Rosario Provenza chose the paintings of Piet Mondrian (wiki) because he felt the clean lines and block colors resonated with the mind-set of the main character.  We used this design scheme to blend sets with carefully chosen locations.  As a result, Saint John of Las Vegas has a surprisingly stylized look for a lower-budget film.

   

 

Loves Of A Blonde

We don’t need no stinkin’ master shots.

Basic film coverage involves a master shot and closer detailed shots.  The master shot captures all the action, and all the characters in question.  In confined quarters, the only way for the lens to capture the full range of action is to put the camera in the corner, high and pointing down.  You may not be able to visualize the shot, but you’ve seen it before.  It’s a “nothing” shot – unmotivated by story or feeling, purely expositional.  It lets the air out of the tires, and leaves you flat.

Milos Forman had other ideas for Loves Of A Blonde.  In the classroom scenes, in the dorm room scenes, and amazingly in the dance scene, Forman did not “establish” the space.  In fact, he opened the dance scene by shooting an empty piece of the floor!  Shooting a scene with no master, with no safety net, without any guarantee that the shots will cut together, is a risk.  But on tight schedules, with limited set-ups, it can pay off, and save time on lighting a whole room just to put the camera high up in the corner.  Giles Nuttgens (cinematographer) and I were emboldened by Loves Of A Blonde to shoot several scenes in Saint John of Las Vegas with no master, and it worked.

Links: Wikipedia | IMDB | Netflix | Amazon