Blizzard Disrupts Williamstown Film Festival
Jeff Kleiser and Dori Berinstein’s Carol Channing Documentary
By: Charles Giuliano - Oct 30, 2011
An unprecedented late October blizzard walloped the final Saturday program of the two week long 13th annual Williamstown Film Festival.
While a sold out audience braved the unseasonable elements for a dusting on Thursday night the turn out was thin for the noon and 2:30 pm screenings when the festival wound down yesterday.
When the festival die-hards exited Images after the final afternoon screening the snow was coming down hard. Many with long drives were headed home skipping the final evening of A Salute to Sidney with ceremonies for the Christopher and Dana Reeve Audience Award. It was planned as a tribute to the late Sidney Lumet and the wrap for yet another superb program by Steve Lawson.
Exiting Images I asked Lawson if there was an update on the weather? “I don’t want to know” he said. “I’ll get too depressed.” He indicated that the planned event at the Clark would go ahead as scheduled.
It was a white knuckle drive home where we hunkered down with three episodes of BBC’s superb The Hour. This morning there was an amazing foot of snow.
When Lawson planned the festival over the past year who knew there would be a blizzard.
It is the nature of festivals that some segments are stronger than others. Both of the slots we attended on Saturday were awesome. What a pity more folks didn’t get to enjoy them.
Noon Program: Seminar with Jeff Kleizer
A regular feature of WFF is a luncheon seminar. Usually that means off site at a restaurant and mostly a talking format. This time it was held at Images with an illustrated lecture/ demonstration by special effects wizard Jeff Kleiser whose company Synthespian Studios has been a long term tenant of Mass MoCA.
We were given shopping bags with a choice of wraps, bottled water, and fruit.
The presentation proved to be as tasty and nutritious, indeed food for thought, as the lunch.
For the past two years, with a disclaimer of “never again” Kleiser worked on special effects for a Bollywood film Ra. One featuring India’s most popular star Shah Rukh Khan.
At $31 million it was the most expensive film ever shot in India. According to Kleiser, for the complicated stunts and special effects involved, the film was severely underbudgeted requiring enormous effort and creativity to complete.
The special rubber suits worn by the hero and villain, for example, were a complete disaster. They were crafted at the staggering but ineffective cost of $1 million. During the filming they just fell apart and in rushes looked more like rubber suits than state of the art, robotic armor.
It was Kleiser’s assignment to cut and paste every frame of the action sequences of the suited actors. This proved to be an amazingly complex and labor intensive process. This started with a full body, laser scan with minutely precise digital measurements. He discussed how a better solution would have been for the actors to wear leotards with sensors to which the animation could be attached. But too much of the film had been shot to go back to the beginning.
Actually Kleiser’s was but one of ten special effects firms working on the film in addition to a staff of 800 in India.
Much of what was intended for the Indian film is rather common place for American action films with ten times the budget. With irony Kleiser described how Bollywood is all about imitation of American blockbusters.
On location he shot numerous stills of the work in progress. This entailed daredevil stunts not just for the actors and stuntmen but, it seems, for a particularly courageous Italian camerman. As an actor seems to walk down the side of a moving train we see the wires and rig. Kleiser commented that later “We will paint that out.”
I asked if that is like Photoshop? And is it done frame by frame or is there a program that eliminates unwanted detail? In layman’s terms the answer is somewhere in between. First there is a clean shot of the setup and then the one with the actors is layered over that. The editing then goes back and forth.
With a relatively low budget they tried to cut corners. One attempt entailed mounting 16 cameras set at different angles on the front of the train. That didn’t work. Another involved using multiple cameras set at 70 frames per second rather than the norm of 24. This was used for the one time only destruction of an elaborate model of a train station. Again, it did not go according to plan, and required numerous hours of post production to get the intended look for the shot.
When asked if he would work again in India the answer was an emphatic no. He would rather spend two years working in another region of the globe accepting new challenges. For the time and headaches involved, though never stated, it appears the money was not that great. Plus, Kleiser stated that he had enough of the heat and don’t invite him any time soon to an Indian restaurant.
He talked about how for a very hot country the sets and studios were poorly ventilated. Add to the natural heat all those hot lights during fifteen hour days. He commented how the sweat just poured out of Khan while wearing that god awful rubber costume.
A plot point involved the robotic action characters literally growing out of thousands of morphing cubes. This required programming some 200,000 individual elements not to collide with each other while forming precise configurations. It was mind boggling to see how this was achieved.
As we know from the last Star Wars prequels it takes more than nifty special effects to create a spell binding movie. There has to be some form of compelling plot. Which is not a strong suit for Bollywood films. In its first three days of release, however, the film earned $25 million. Coming soon to a megaplex near you. It is hoped that Ra. One Bollywood will crack the vast American audience.
There are already plans for Ra.Two but Kleiser made it clear that he’s not interested.
Afternoon program: Dori Berinstein's documentary on Carol Channing
Before viewing three time Tony award winner Dori Berinstein’s documentary film Carol Channing: Larger Than Life there was so much that I didn’t know or appreciate about the over the top, now 90-year-old, legendary actress.
For a woman who has made a career as a gushy, saucer eyed, raspy voiced dumb blonde it turns out that Channing is brilliant, and sharp as a tack. Plus, it seems, a really nice person.
Everybody on earth just loves the woman who created Lorelie Lee in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Dolly Gallagher Levi in Hello Dolly. Particularly the drag queens who impersonate her which Channing regards as flattery.
Introducing the documentary Lawson stated that Berinstein is an alumna who returns to the festival every two or three years with a new film. Her last, Gottah Dance, is currently being developed as a Broadway musical. When I asked her she indicated that it will take another couple of years. She said there are other projects she is working on but offered no details.
As a Broadway Producer, her productions include: Thoroughly Modern Millie (Tony Award - Best Musical), The Crucible, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (Tony Award - Best Revival of a Play), Flower Drum, Golden Child. Additionally, she produced Fool Moon starring Bill Irwin and David Shiner (Tony Award 1999 - Special Theatrical Event) each of its three times on Broadway. Her 11th Broadway Show, Legally Blonde: The Musical, received 7 Tony Nominations.
What is richly conveyed by this compelling and carefully crafted documentary is that Channing is the real deal. On stage and off, as the title suggests, she is indeed Larger Than Life. It’s just hard to believe and takes some getting used to.
How could anyone be like Carol Channing? This is exactly what a guy who encountered her in Vegas said. Assuming that he was in the presence of yet another female impersonator the fan gushed “You’re the best Carol Channing drag queen I’ve ever seen. Who are you and where are you from?” Batting those trade mark, windshield wiper, false eyelashes she responded deepening her voice “I’m a truck driver from Cleveland.”
She grew up in San Francisco the daughter of Christian Scientists. From there she left for Vermont to study the arts at Bennington College. Carol Channing a Bennington graduate! And fluent not just in French but medieval French as well. In addition to a true gift with languages she is an incredible mimic. Again, revelations upon revelations.
In one of the most hilarious sequences of the film Channing recreated how she burst into the office of the president of the William Morris agency with a spontaneous audition of first a couple of medieval French songs. That got her nowhere. Then one in Yiddish. That clinched the deal.
No matter how talented nobody is an instant sensation. There were tough years of paying her dues. That meant four marriages including being reconnected with her high school sweetheart Harry Kullijan. They married in 2003 and their love story is a wonderful bonus for this loving tribute.
She certainly deserves this late life happiness after the disaster of 42 years with Charles Lowe who was her manager and publicist. He left her broke including selling off all of her possessions and memorabilia. Lowe died while she was in the process of finalizing their divorce.
Of course her greatest success came from Hello Dolly which ran from 1964 to 1970. She left the show in 1967 followed by a string of other Dollys. It was interesting to learn that she show was originally written for Ethel Merman who declined. But after Channing she had a run as Dolly.
Famously, Channing was screwed by Hollywood when Barbra Streisand was cast as Dolly. They also passed on its director Gower Champion as Marge Champion recounted during the post screening dialogue.
During Channings run with Dolly on Broadway she was edging in on a record 5,000 performances. Her friend Yul Brynner was also racing toward that benchmark in The King and I. They were friends and he asked her to back off.
They simultaneously hit the road with their musicals. While Channing is described as an actress who made no special demands that was not the case with Brynner. One of his requirements was that, even on the road, his dressing room must be painted brown. With a witty scatological reference she quipped about following him from dressing room to dressing room. She added that now that he is dead, and will take no offense, she beat him to that Broadway record for consecutive performances.
We learn from one of her very patient understudies that Channing told her “Don’t worry you’ll never have to go on.” She actually missed just one show because of a bout of food poisoning. Later she was diagnosed with cancer. She would fly into New York for chemo on her day off then jet back to join the show.
While she has retired from performing she appeared in an AIDS benefit not that long ago. There were remarkable tributes from her former Dolly boys. Tearfully they recalled her concerns for one of them who died of AIDS. It was richly evident that they truly adore her and were thrilled to perform together one more time.
Following the screening it was wonderful to hear Berinstein and Champion talk so warmly about their great friend Carol Channing. We were pleased to learn that there is now a distribution deal with both theatrical release and DVD.
More than a great tribute to a remarkable woman and performer it is also a stunning example of documentary filmmaking. For Berinstein the incentive was to weave together a complex life, great performances, and the kicker, that truly inspiring love story.
It just doesn’t get better.
Until next year.
Never Stand Still
Lewis Black on Caris's Peace
Astrid Hiemer Review