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About Medford mail tribune. (Medford, Or.) 1909-1989 | View Entire Issue (June 2, 1963)
; it!"--; I raft t- ' " - i a Z3 n "" ' KING SIZE ""3 AeItI j I 1 Why Can't the Movie Be (Continued from page 7) THE CIGARETTE WITH THE NEW MICRONITE FILTER Refines away harsh flavor... refines away j rough taste. . .for the mildest taste of all! j THE FINER THE FILTER. THE MILDER THE TASTE I . . I , l ' . I . i I n I , (Mil. UrilM O.I m Director George Englund (left), a man with an abiding interest in international politics, gives Marlon Brando some pointers during filming of "The Ugly American." haste and with some anger and it showed. - But we believed in the book's indictment of America's per formance overseas. As a result, it has some impact, and we wanted that impact in the picture. We finally sold the property (a book is never called a book in Hollywood) to Universal-International largely because we were impressed with George Englund. He is a young, restless producer-director; a man more hand some than most actors and more interested in world af fairs than most professors of international relations. He has traveled n good deal in Southeast Asia and knows lit tle quirks of Buddhist religion, Malay personality, and Communist politics, which we thought would add au thenticity to the book. Englund also has a scalding sense of honesty. "As drama, this book is a mess," he said during the negotia tions. I winced. "Too many characters, too many lectures, too many episodes. Don't," he said with a grin, "expect the movie to be like the book." ' Nearly four years later, I saw the "rough cut" of the movie. Englund had been right But now I knew some of the reasons I had learned a great deal. I sat in on the first story conference between Engiund and Stewart Stern, a tall, quiet script writer who has the reputation of never working on something in which he does not believe. They went through the book, cutting down characters with an odd mixture of piety, enthusiasm, and efficiency. It went on for hours. When I came out of the conference, I was reeling slight ly. I had learned a lesson: in a novel, you can write, "Jamie felt a white-hot flash of passion," but in a movie, you have to show it and in three dimensions. A novel, even a good one, can have characters who are as thin as the paper on which their names appear. The novelist can tay something is so and order the reader to believe it On the screen, you have to persuade your customer. Somewhat later I learned that Marlon Brando was going - rmiiy Wttkly. Jim 1. 1 Ml '
