n the mass audience. movies were playing catch-up, but they were also freed from making movies that were all things to all people. from the beginning, movies were all rated "g." then that "g" audience was gone and the movies had the right to a kind of a freedom of expression. tv is radicalizing the viewer in america stylistically, (muffled voice on tv) telling the viewer that life is larger than a window frame. (muffled voice on tv) it's introducing a new possibility into film itself. (narrator) john cassavetes came of age as an actor in live television. as a filmmaker, he brought to the screen an edginess and improvisation he learned in the tv studio.

hey, i got the money! i got the bread! yeah, i got the twenty. wait a minute... (charles champlin) in the early '60s movies began to show the influence of television itself. there was almost a proscenium feeling of being very close and not -- the film was no longer necessarily larger than life, but maybe the film was the same size as life. that was one of the things john cassavetes pioneered in, going against conventions, going against the norms, just saying that life is chaos, life is strange. life is full of ambiguities and maybe there's a way to get that on film as well as boy-meets-girl. we talked facts and figures until we went out of our mind. losses, gains, ratings, schmatings. you can lose your mind if you keep analyzing things. is that so? i think it's dishonest. it's honest, but it's a good piece itself.

and so, we're a little nervous about hitting you with this. no, i have insomnia and i stay awake all night looking at pictures, worrying about pictures. i walk all over the place. let's see it, j.b. i'd rather hear him talk about it again. he'll talk about it later. j.b.? all right, otto. roll it! (gena rowlands) i said, "how do you know when the light is right?" and john said, "you know the light is right when if you're in the audience, you want to reach through to touch the face ofhe person that you're looking at." and i thought, you know, that's how immediate the characters in the audience, how intimate they were. and i don't know. for some reason, i always found that enormously touching. (narrator) john cassavetes collaborated with a close circle of friends, including his wife, gena rowlands,

to explore a world of emotional chaos outside the standard hollywood fare. (gena rowlands) every time you break a rule in anything a certain number of people are going to be disturbed. and people were not used to being disturbed in the movies. john didn't write a logical, intellectual, well-crafted script from beginning to end, which everyone is always comfortable with. (gena rowlands) he'd write a very full script, but when he gave you the part, that was yours. now you! you let me finish! you're a man who doesn't say what you mean very well. what you meant was this was a wonderful evening and you enjoyed my house and you liked me, but, like you said, you're crude. he didn't give a damn how much you suffered, how frustrated you were, how bewildered you were, how confused you were. he didn't care. he was not gonna help you because sooner or later

out of all that frustration and bewilderment and confusion, something would come out that would be close to you. (peter falk) and he didn't care how he got you off balance, but he would take away all your defenses. and i still don't know how, but he always did it. (man) i love you! joe! i'll lay down on a railroad track for you. if i've made a mistake, which i did, i'm sorry. but so what? what's the difference? i love you! now relax! come back to me! be nice to me! get outta here! i'll kill you! (ranting) nick, i need your help now. these would be films challenging the establishment in every single way, including established form,

and this would creep into main studio productions. it put a premium on movies that would be doing something a little different from what they were getting on tv. i think they were just suffused with sitcoms and that stuff, and i think that there was a market, an audience that was more sophisticated. of the screen. (p.a. announcement) (robert altman) and i tend to be sloppy, not slick and clean. i think of films in terms of painting and i think in terms of murals, they carry lots of information. i may have the idea for the mural and i may kind of sketch in where to put the horses, or this or that, but then you start. the actors become the pigment that you put on there

and so you put the paint up and it starts moving on its own i say, "wow, the red is gettin' over there next to the blue." and so i invent something else and finally i find that i'm following this phenomena around. i'm filming what they're doing rather than have them do what i want them to do. (narrator) robert altman's early days in episodic television helped him develop the quick reflexes he would use as a feature film director. his use of sound, action, and camera creates a spontaneity that frees his actors to react, as well as perform. (gene siskel) i think he's a real rebel, a real troublemaker, but he thinks that most films are calcified. what's his overlapping dialogue all about? he hears overlapping dialogue in life. he's making films about life. why do we -- he thinks there is something false in

"i-talk-then-you-talk, you-talk-then-i-talk" that there's a stodginess, a phoniness in that that says, "you know what? the reason why you probably start talking when i stop is we've rehearsed this." (gene siskel) and he would believe that that could be communicated across a lens. this is a catholic chaplain. and here's captain forest. (overlapping dialogue) (robert altman) had i made the film in the way that the tv series was made in, the film would have failed. the audience saw in "mash" something they'd never seen, an attitude in texture, and so it was exciting for them. it expressed a political idea they were ready for in 1970.

how altman does what he does is sometimes very mysterious because he does it so effortlessly. listen, i wanted -- could i ask -- would it be all right if i asked -- (charles champlin) i mean, it's like he's not so much filming a scene as spying on a scene. i know him. that's eliott gould. yeah, he's a really well-known actor. oh, yes, eliott gould, curly hair. yeah, he was married to barbra streisand. that girl that sang "people." i just shook his hand like he was somebody off the street. now, you go over there and bring him on over. yes, sir. (woman) oh, delbert! (robert altman) i don't trust documentary films very much, but i think you can use that technique of real people to make a fictional drama that reflects the truth.

(singing in spanish) (robert altman) some people went down to see "nashville" the other night. they called me up at 11:00 at home. he said, "listen, why did that guy kill the singer? we're having an argument about it." "gee," i said, "i don't know." "come on, you can't say, 'i don't know.'" i said, "i certainly can. i don't know why he shot her. i'm just showing you that he did." (cheers and applause from the audience) (four gunshots) (man) i'm all right. (man) you get him. you get him. (robert altman) we had 4 assassins incarcerated and had for years. there's not one person alive, nor has there ever been,

who can sit and really tell you why any of these people did the act they did. (gunshot) so my assassination was politically inspired, but it was not a political assassination, because i'm saying it doesn't make any difference. okay, everybody, sing! somebody, sing! (screams from the crowd) (narrator) in 1968, haskell wexler used the riots surrounding the democratic national convention in chicago as a backdrop for a feature film. "medium cool" employed real and fictional elements to explore the impact of tv on the 60's traumatic event. (screams and commotion from the crowd) the title "medium cool" is derived by marshall mcluhan,

who spoke of television as being a "cool" medium. (haskell wexler) what was happening was happening in the street and there were other cameras shooting. i had a camera where my actress was involved in the situation. (crowd chanting) people in the streets recognize that their validity would not be certified unless it was on television. when it was on tv it existed, because if tv ignores you, if tv does not present you to the people, then it does not exist in our world of image control. (narrator) in 1976, sidney lumet and paddy chayevsky examined the colliding worlds of fiction and documentary tv. the result was the darkly comic film,

"network." i would like at this moment to announce that i will be retiring from this program in two weeks' time because of poor ratings. since this show was the only thing i had going for me in my life, i have decided to kill myself. i'm going to blow my brains out on this show a week from today. (woman) ten seconds to commercial. (newscaster) so tune in next tuesday ... what we are is mosaicists. we take one little stone and we polish it and hope we get it the right color, and another little stone and polish it and 600 little stones, 800 little stones, i don't know how many -- whatever number of set-ups you've got in a movie and the number of times you use them. and it's not until you start pasting them up there together that you either have something or you don't have anything. (charles champlin) i've talked to a lot of people out of that live tv generation and there's no question that a kind of creative freedom

that existed in television no longer did. and i think it was a protest about the medium that lumet and chayevsky loved had in a sense betrayed them. i want all of you to get up out of your chairs. i want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, stick your head out and yell, "i'm mad as hell and i'm not going to take this anymore!" i want you to get up right now, get up and go to your windows, open them, stick your head out -- (sidney lumet) chayevsky, who was a magnificent writer, wasn't just talking about television as television; he was talking about the whole mechanization of society. they're yellin' in baton rouge. get up! get up!

how about this! we struck the motherlode! (todd gitlin) the peter finch character in "network" understands tv's not just an instrument of political power, it's not just an instrument for selling; it's an instrument by which people's view of the world is consolidated. television is much deeper in the american soil, in the american sensibility than was thought before, in ways that are maybe much too complicated to understand. i'm mad as hell! i'm not gonna take it anymore! (todd gitlin) this is post-watergate when people are fed up, thinking everything is corrupt. and people have become aware that there's become a blur, there's developed a blur between entertainment and news. there's no cavalry to come and rescue you because the cavalry is also watching television. five-four-three-two-one. ladies and gentlemen, let's hear it! how do ya' feel? (group) we're mad as hell

and we're not going to take it anymore! (announcer) ladies and gentlemen, "the network news hour" with sybil, the soothsayer. (sidney lumet) everybody kept saying, "what a brilliant satire," and paddy and i kept saying, "it's not satire. it's sheer reportage." it would be milder today because almost half the things predicted in "network" have come true. entertainment and news are the same thing now. finally tonight, as if things weren't confusing enough with a dozen candidates criss-crossing new hampshire trying to sell themselves to voters in tuesday's primary, now there's an added starter. as brit hume reports, it's a case of art imitating life. (brit hume) they have all been in new hampshire lately, bush and dukakis and dole and tanner ... tanner? that's actor michael murphy, who's presidential candidate jack tanner in a movie, airing on primary eve, on hbo. it's the story of a democratic congressman who jumps into the 1988 race after gary hart drops out.

no movie has ever blended fiction and reality as much. (robert altman) we created a candidate and put him out on the road and so it says you're doing a documentary film following gary hart around; we were following mike murphy or jack tanner around. and we put a staff around him and we operated as if that's the way it was happening. no, i think it's going to be you and me in the final stretch if i can hang on that long. good luck see ya in november. (robert altman) we had a fictional character that we were passing off into a world of real people. where i seem to feel i get the best results is by finding what the arena is and then set up that event and let it happen. i'm trying to give the audice a sense that,

"oh, this is really happening maybe." and i'm trying to just break that fourth wall out. so our techniques became the same way. our lighting reflected that. we didn't want any good movie lighting because you say, "well, how could they get that with hand-held videocams?" so suddenly we were -- the medium was the message. (haskell wexler) whenever there's a device which has a recordable image, we're seeing reality filtered through human consciousness. and it can be artful. it can be devious. it can be truthful. it can be lying. but it is not -- reality has literally disappeared from modern world. when i showed up at the restaurant to do the scene from "the player," burt and i were allegedly doing a breakfast interview.

burt, larry levy. i hope you don't remember me. and if you do, no hard feelings. i worked for caster then. altman explained very roughly the plot was going on behind us and that the two principals would stop to say hi to burt. he asked what to say, i said, "i can't tell you." you're not a character; you're playing yourself. you have to represent yourself. here's the situation i've got. here's the arena. you behave any way you want." take care. who's that? an executive over at fox. until this breakfast, anyway. good morning, mr. mills. hi, susan. (charles champlin) as the villain of the piece stopped by ... hi, burt. griffin mills. hi, griffin. good to see you. (charles champlin) and burt turned to me, and unscripted said -- asshole. (charles champlin) but the minute he said it, i said, "that scene will stay."

i trust my instincts. that's all i have to trust and hope that ever 4 or 5 years i intersect with an audience and we connect. and when we connect, it's terrific. i mean "the player" connected. we were at the right place at the right time. had we done it two years before or two years afterward, it would have been the biggest dud of all time. same with "mash." same with "nashville." (music playing) (narrator) today, with movie attendance at 20% of what it was in 1946, a movie's theatrical release is just its first step in an increasingly long journey through an entertainment world. a theatrical run is followed by a pay-per-view release, a cable release, a home video release, and eventually by broadcast on network or syndicated tv.

the main effect of tv now on a movie seems paradoxical. some television is imitated in the movies. some television is evaded in the movies, but television is sort of the subtext. it's the unspoken alternative for all the movies. and all the movies take up a position in relation to tv. television is sort of the big force. it's the oxygen. it's always there. what's more interesting now is how technology refines tv. ♪ a whole new concept ♪ in tv society ♪ new shapes ♪ new sizes ♪ new convenience ♪ baby of the family ♪ (charles champlin) the irony is that what tv did to the movies, which is to fractionalize the motion picture audience, television's doing to itself. it's now fractionalizing itself

thanks to its cable technology and cassettes. ♪ on big, rubber ♪ carpet wheels ♪ i think we're on the verge probably of a media revolution comparable to the arrival of television itself. ♪ it silently glides ♪ from room to room ♪ (haskell wexler) this is the age of images. it's that way because of tv. so television has given people an acuity of image retention that is incredible. and movies, of course, have to deal with that. what is slow in movies now was considered fast before. so just the pace of image multiplication has been enhanced because of television.

you're going to have big home entertainment centers. there's no doubt about that. and who's to say you won't be making films directly for that? when you see it in close-up and you say, "oh, that's a video" or "that's film," there's quite a difference. i also think there might be something in video that's a little different from film, when the electricity's shut off there's nothing there. and when it's turned on, there's movement. so that stuff is moving. those little molecules are moving all the time. how do i know they aren't changing? i don't know what it is, but it's a different -- it's got a different basic philosophical feeling for me. (robert altman) i think eventually that film will disappear, strips of film.

i think it will all be done electronically. and i can't edit that way because i'm old-fashioned. i mean i have to sit in there and run my film back and forth and move my soundtracks around and all that. but i don't think -- i think that'll be -- i think i'm doing something that will shortly be archaic. ♪ we loved ♪ we laughed, we cried ♪ and suddenly, love died ♪ the story ends ♪ and we're just friends ♪

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