Don't Make a Scene: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)

The Story:  This week, George Smiley from 2011's extraordinary adaptation of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. TTSS had the ghost of the multi-hour mini-series starring Alec Guinness (directed by John Irvin) to contend with.  When it was announced that Peter Morgan had done a draft for a new movie version of Tinker..., there were already raised eyebrows—John Le Carré's thick, intricate, character-driven book is immense and covers a lot of ground, internationally and over time. How could one cram all that into a single two to three hour film?

Director Tomas Alfredson managed to do it, and with scriptwriters Peter Straughan and the late Bridget O'Connor even managed to touch the highlights while adding a quiet depth to the characters, mostly without dialogue, and with a different style than mini-series and book.

Take this scene. In the book, it's a description over dinner; the miniseries does it in flashback. Not here. The dialogue is mostly the same.  But the location and the way it's told is different. The setting is Smiley's HQ for his investigation into double-agent treachery in Britain's secret service; the scene between Smiley and his "player on the other side," Karla, is described and mimed for the benefit of Peter Guillam, solely as a drunken reverie overlain with regret by Smiley. It's haunting, peculiar and is much more effective than the earlier presentation. There, Karla is very real, played silently and cynically by Patrick Stewart (before his career hit warp-speed) and is a fairly powerful presence, still with an air of inscrutability—an unknown quantity.

But in the film version, he's an empty chair, a memory, unseen (as he is throughout the film, his only sign of presence being the lighter that Smiley obsesses over, here—Karla's trophy from their earlier encounter that provides inside information for his plot to infiltrate "The Circus"). Unknowable, not even distinctive enough to remember (although one suspects Smiley may be obfuscating), he is a phantom, much more powerful in the not-knowing...and in his influence.

The Set-Up: Asked by the Home Secretary to look into the matter of a "mole" (a double agent) high up in the ranks of "The Circus" (code name for British Intelligence), George Smiley (Gary Oldman), former No. 2 man under "Control" (John Hurt) is leading an investigation for the traitor in the ranks. His "inside" man is Peter Guillam (Benedict Cumberbatch), who has just risked exposure stealing documents from the Circus records room.  Under suspicion from "The Gang of Four" heading the Circus (Ciarán Hinds, Toby Jones, Colin Firth, David Dencik), Guillam begins to suspect that their chief source for information, Ricky Tarr (Thomas Hardy) might be lying to them. Smiley, sensing Guillam's doubts, fills him in on some background that might prove useful—and painful—to Guillam in the near-future.

Action!

150 INT. HOTEL ISLAY - SMILEY’S ROOM - NIGHT 150

The two men are finishing off a bottle of Scotch. Unusually, Smiley is drunk - a result of the alcohol and the lack of sleep.

Guillam lies on one of the single beds, staring at the PHOTOGRAPHS of the four suspects Smiley has pinned on his chessmen.

PETER GUILLAM I’m sorry.

SMILEY What for?

PETER GUILLAM I wanted to believe Tarr was lying. (Beat) All this time, thinking I’m fighting a war. It’s a sham. Karla won years ago and we didn’t even know it.

Smiley watches Guillam, estimating how badly all of this is affecting him.

SMILEY (Beat) I met him once. Karla.

SMILEY   Karla.  In fifty-five. 

SMILEY   Moscow Centre was in pieces. Purge after purge. 

SMILEY   Half their Agents were jumping ship and I travelled around signing them up. 

SMILEY   Hundreds of them.

Guillam raises himself up on an elbow, listening.

SMILEY (CONT’D) One of them was calling himself Gerstmann. 

SMILEY He was on his way back to Russia, and we were pretty sure he was going to be executed. 

SMILEY Plane had a twenty-four lay over at Delhi, and that’s how long I had to convince him to come over to us instead of going home to die.
Smiley stares at the room around, projecting his memory of the Delhi cell onto their present surroundings.

SMILEY (CONT’D) Little room...I’m sitting here...he’s sitting there...

He points to an EMPTY CHAIR in front of him.

SMILEY (CONT’D) The Americans have had him tortured.

He holds up his right hand.

SMILEY (CONT’D) No fingernails.

SMILEY It’s incredibly hot. I’m very tired and all I want to do is get this over with and get back home.

SMILEY Things weren’t going well with Ann.

Guillam flinches a little, but Smiley doesn’t notice, lost now in the past.

SMILEY (CONT’D) I give him the usual pitch... Come to the West and we can give you a comfortable life. After questioning. Or you can catch your plane and fly home and be shot, like Bykov, Shur, Muranov...

He stares at the CHAIR as if expecting an answer, and slightly drunkenly Guillam finds himself turning to the CHAIR for a response.

PETER GUILLAM (Beat) What did he say?

Smiley doesn’t answer - STARES AT THE CHAIR - the silence stretching - it’s all becoming a little surreal.

SMILEY (To the chair) Think of your wife. 

SMILEY You have a wife, don’t you? 

SMILEY I brought you some cigarettes, by the way.

He mimes placing cigarettes on an invisible table, between him and the chair.

SMILEY (CONT’D) Use my lighter.

He mimes placing the lighter beside the cigarettes.

SMILEY (CONT’D) “We could arrange for her to join you, we have a lot of stock to trade. If you go back, she’ll be ostracised. Think of her. Think about how much she...”

He breaks off in sudden impatience with himself.

SMILEY (CONT’D) Kept harping on about the damn wife! 

SMILEY Telling him more about me, than... 

SMILEY Should have walked out, of course, but for some reason...it seemed important to save this one. (Beat) So I go on. 
“Know you’re a chain-smoker, help yourself,” 

SMILEY “We’re not so very...

SMILEY ...different you and I..”

He makes a vague “Etcetera” gesture, stares at...THE EMPTY CHAIR... something unsettling about it, as if somehow it is acquiring the GHOSTLY PRESENCE OF KARLA.

SMILEY (CONT’D)(To the chair) Look, we’ve both spent our lives looking for the weaknesses in one another’s systems. 

SMILEY Don’t you think it’s time to recognise there is as little worth on your side as there is on mine?

Silence. Smiley sits back, dropping the game.

SMILEY (CONT’D) Never said a word. 

SMILEY Not one word. 

SMILEY Next morning he got back on his plane, 

SMILEY ...gave the pack of cigarettes back to me, untouched - 

SMILEY ...this was a chain-smoker, 

SMILEY ...mind - and flew off to what he presumed would be his death. 

SMILEY He kept my lighter. 

SMILEY It was a gift - “To George, from Ann. 

SMILEY ..All my love.”

Guillam is still staring at the chair, a little awe-struck.

PETER GUILLAM That was Karla? 

PETER GUILLAM And he flew back to die rather than give in?

SMILEY Yes. (Beat) And that’s how I know he can be beaten. 

SMILEY Because he’s a fanatic. 

SMILEY And the fanatic is always concealing a secret doubt.

PETER GUILLAM What did he look like?

SMILEY That’s the thing. (Beat) I can’t remember.

He stands up, crosses to the window, embarrassed by what he has to say next.

SMILEY (CONT’D) After today, Peter... 

SMILEY ...you have to assume they’re watching you. 

SMILEY If there’s anything you need tidied up... 

 SMILEY ...now’s the time.

Guillam stares at him, realising what he’s talking about.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Words by Bridget O'Connor and Peter Straughan (and Peter Morgan and John Le Carré)

Pictures by Hoyte Van Hoytema and Tomas Alfredson

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is available on DVD from Universal Home Video.

The same meeting from the BBC mini-series
Karla (a "Pre-card" Patrick Stewart) and Smiley (Alec Guinness)

The Pride and the Passion

The Pride and the Passion (Stanley Kramer, 1957) Not the easiest production to direct with all the backstage drama going on, but Kramer did his best to keep this adaptation of a C.S. Forester* novel picturesque and fulfill his duties to the studio, United Artists.

You can't go too far without mentioning the casting. The story takes place during the Napoleonic wars and the attempts of a British captain (Cary Grant) to take possession of an outsized discarded cannon before it can be seized by Napoleon. His orders take him to a Spanish guerilla, Miguel (Frank Sinatra) who has a personal aim to capture the town of Avila from the French...and the cannon would be a loud and persuasive way of doing so. While the two men grouse at each other about their differing missions and the logistics of getting a huge hulking cannon across rolling hills and across rivers to their respective targets, they also compete for the affections of Juana (Sophia Loren), a Spanish dancer and Miguel's mistress.

Grant's captain is familiar with the cannon and its capabilities, firepower and the precise means of producing its full potential without it blowing up in people's faces, whereas Miguel doesn't have a clue about what to do with it, merely with its promise of how such an ultimate weapon can be used against French battlements. But, both men need the other, and it is just as well to get it to Avila as to keep it out of French hands. And if it can be used against them...well, so much the better.

One could make a point about cannon envy here as there is a lot of pointless bickering over who's the alpha male and whose aims have priority, despite the fact that neither man can accomplish their personal missions alone, and Juana is just a representation of both men's single-minded and covetous natures underneath the brio and the sense of duty. Loren is basically an ornament here, as she was in too many films that didn't know what to do with her.

Now, Grant "works", maybe—he was, after all, British, and when did he not work?—but he was never at his best in historical parts, always more comfortable as a man of his times, no matter what his age. But Sinatra as a Spanish loyalist? And Sophia Loren, as well? It was Loren's first role in English, so any burbling of lines is understandable. But Sinatra, as good as he can be in other films, is horrible here, with a terrible kind of "Jou Gringko" accent. And it's apparent that he's marking time and not going for an Oscar this time.

I've never been one for gossip, but The Pride and the Passion was very much a project of other interests for the stars than picking up a pay-check. The troika of stars seem very distracted: Grant by Loren with whom he would fall in love, and Sinatra because he only took the job to be close to Ava Gardner who was filming The Sun Also Rises in Spain. That did not go well, and Sinatra decided to go back to the States, asking Kramer to get his scenes taken care of early to do so. How this affected the finished product is hard to say, but Kramer seems to be doing his best work where the stars aren't involved, making far better use of statues and architecture and crowd set-pieces than his above-the-title players.

And that's where the movie is at its most fascinating and more succesfful, far more than the squabbling in the love-triangle which doesn't generate any real sparks, positively or negatively. But, the challenges of that big old hurking cannon and moving it through unforgiving open country and unrelenting French forces make for interesting location filming and viewing (and, in particular, one overnight hiding of the cannon in a city's least likely location) and makes The Pride and the Passion rise above the conventional issues raised among the human actors...rather odd in a war film, where the human aspects usually are of the most importance. I don't think they planned it that way.

* Quick reference: Forester wrote the "Horatio Hornblower" books and the novel on which The African Queen was based.  Hollywood was paying attention to him during the 1950's.

In a World (2013)

Written at the time of the film's release.

The Cult of Non-celebrity
or
Lies, Damn Lies, Statistics...and Marketing

Lake Bell's comedy In a World (she wrote, directed, stars in, and wins The Welles Award for over-achievement this year) is a funny, funny look at the L.A. studio scene, or at least the LA studio scene of a few years ago.* She gets the nuances right of the bubble-verse that a lot of folks get into, and the sexist nature of the industry—female voice-overs for commercials have broken the glass recording booth ceiling, but movie trailers are still reliant on the paternalistic "Voice of God" to "sell" the image the studios want.

Bell stars as Carol Solomon, a periphery actress, semi-content to act as a vocal coach to other artists (like Eva Longoria because her cockney accent makes her sound "like a retarded pirate."), carrying around a mini-recorder to capture any vocal inflections to add to her collection (a habit that has more than one irritation and complication in the film) and generally do The California Hang Out, professionally waiting for the big break to happen.

That big break translates to not telling others how to do voice-work, but doing it herself, whether voicing commercials, or, even better, movie trailers, the toughest nut in voice-over work to crack. The reason?  Women don't "do" voice-overs for trailers. How does she know? Her father (Fred Melamed) does voice-overs for movie trailers, and is only too happy to tell her that it's a man's market, and that she can't possibly break into it because 1) women don't do voice-overs and 2) she can't do voice-overs because she's not as talented as he is and he does voice-overs. 

In any industry there are out-sized egos, and the voice-over field is no different.** Most have a healthy sense of perspective and a genuine gratitude for being paid to (as one voice-over guy described it) "talk out loud for a living." But, there are those (and sadly, you don't know who you are) who see it as "art" and their every syllable is "golden." Carol's dad is one of them, and despite his extraordinary ego, he still sees himself following in the wavelengths of the King of Trailers, the late Don LaFontaine, who, "legend" has it (or at least Don had it), "created" the "in a world" tag-line, and who, in his honor, the line has been retired since his death.***  

However, there's a new chic-lit-based "quadrilogy" movie series coming out, and they just might be using that "In a world..." line for their trailers. Carol's father, in his largesse, bequeaths it to up-and-comer Gustav Warner (Ken Marino), who's lost a couple of gigs to "some chick" over a throat ailment, and the two chortle about how they can screw her over—not realizing that "some chick" is his own daughter.

At about this time, anybody with a few movies under their eye-lids is going "Oh, he'll find out it's her, feel remorse, and turn over a new leaf..." Bell's movie isn't that easy. In fact when he hears that she might get the gig, he decides that he'll audition for it himself ("Auditioning," oh, the humiliation. Don't they know who he is?), in a fit of ego and competitive envy. That's surprising. But...I gotta say, not out of the realm of reality.  

If the movie were all that, it would be a thin script, indeed. But Bell complicates this world, with others in the fringe—Carol's sister, Dani (played by Michaela Watkins) a concierge, whom Carol has to crash with when her Dad tosses her out so his 30-something girlfriend (Alexandra Holden) can move in with him, thus messing up the lives of her sister and her husband (Rob Corddry, proving he can play a normal guy, for once), a reality television editor. Then there are the studio crew, including her engineer-friend (Demetri Martin) who promotes her work, enabling him to keep burning the torch he has for her. The repartee among these players is refreshingly spontaneous-sounding, with half-finished sentences, colliding overlaps and repetitions, stray asides, floating exiting explanations, and general discomfiture, making great use of actor/comedians for improv/mumblecore cred—the difference being that it's actually funny here, and not just awkweird.

There's a line from In a World... that does raise a point, despite it coming from one of the most insufferable characters: "a great voice isn't just a blessing, it's a choice." Bell takes it somewhat seriously, she was/portrays a vocal coach, and makes it a point several times to decry the up-inflected "sexy baby voice" that seems to be "the rage" these days, after it's been perpetuated by reality-show denizens and nondescript and untrained readers, like the kind that fill up "This American Life." She has a point, but a narrow one. The commercial world reflects the real world, but not very far, and certainly without any degree of real innovation, as it's always art by committee. And once the mad men discover a trend, they do it "to death," until it passes into the cliche mode and stops making the short-term money. But, I found it a little disingenuous for Bell to be on her soap-box about how people talk, because, as the line implies, we can't all be blessed, nor can we all afford vocal coaches.  We work with what we have, whether it fits into an "acceptable" niche or not. In a World does a good job of turning its eye on the chauvinism in the marketplace, but it's blind to it in its own little bubble-verse.

Easy for her to talk. 

A compilation of movie trailer cliches as voiced by Hal Douglas, Peter Thomas, 
Dom Morrow and (three or four times) Don LaFontaine


Hal Douglas can't say 'In a World...'


A rare female voice on a trailer...Melissa Disney (featured in In a World) for Gone in 60 Seconds

* "In a world" of DSL lines, fiber-optics transmission, satellite feeds and home studios, the voice-over business is not quite as concentrated in Los Angeles as it used to be.  It's where a lot of production is done, but a lot of the voice-over artists now do things from their own home and "travel" when the technology demands it (or the egos of the producers do).

** During one session in my memory, one well-known national voice-over talent was told by the writer-producer that he'd "fluffed" a line and the response was "Fluffed?!  FUCK YOU!"  And then there are those famous out-takes by Orson Welles and William Shatner.

*** This is bull-shit.  The line has certainly been used (and probably too much in the past few years since LaFontaine's death) as a pop culture cliche—an easy go-to  laugh  among the most dull of hipsters.  And it's also bull-shit because LaFontaine was only one of the voice actors who did that style of "read" (the most prominent probably being Hal Douglas), but spent the last year of his life (sadly) promoting himself as the "In a World..." guy.  THE "In a world..." guy.  And the only way he got away with it (and the man was dying, so the industry let him) is because so many people have a tin ear and can't tell the difference between LaFontaine and the other dozen or so voice-actors who "do" trailers. One wonders, besides marketing, why he did it.  The ones who did the news stories and puff-pieces did it because...well, they didn't know any better and bought the hype for a good story.  LaFontaine had great pipes. 

 But he was no Ken Nordine.