Tuesday 14 July 2015

A Thousand Clowns (1965 Fred Coe)

Reviewed last here.

The bicycle riding sequence, with its beautiful multiple overlaps, is - as John Torode would say - a lovely thing.

What happened was that the writer Herb Gardner was very disappointed with the rough cut - "It was still too much like a play" and the director agreed to hand over the whole thing to him and Rosenblum. Then Herb brought in various favourites bits of music (marching, circus, Dixieland, Handel's Messiah) and made Robards re-record the ukelele. This is where the second cameraman Joe Coffey comes in. Herb took him out one morning and shot the crowds going to work, then added marching music. "..and they started walking to the music". Then came the additional filming of the bike scene - '"it make you remember for the whole next hour of the movie that these people care for each other." Then the whole Chuckles scene was reshot with Gene Saks... Eleven months later...

I love the long list of names that Nick has adopted over the years (my favourite being Raphael Sabatini). Barry Gordon has ended up exclusively on TV, working steadily since,

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