The_Film_That_Changed_My_Life

268 Frank Oz
Tell me about that distinction. To me, great film is great film, but what
makes it not a great film but a great B-movie?
Oz: Let’s see, what makes B-movies? It was melodramatic. He didn’t have
much time to shoot and you could see that. B-movies have melodrama as
opposed to honest drama. But I think he pushed that in every way. From
the lighting to the shots, everything was overly dramatic. He pushed the
envelope of B-movies even further to make it an ode to B-movies. The melodramatic
aspect of B-movies to me is what makes them unique.
There’s this great opening sequence that was restored—a three-minuteand-eighteen-second
tracking shot.
Oz: Yes, true. Here I go dropping names—Orson invited Jim Henson and
me to dinner at Mon Maison years ago, after The Muppet Movie. It was
amazing to hear him, but he was saying that the take they used was the very
last one, because the guard kept on fucking up at the end.
He said, “Don’t say a fucking thing; just move your mouth. I’ll dub it
in later.”
Oz: [laughs] So that was staggering. If you look at that whole front section—
that shot and the shots afterwards, a couple scenes later and scenes throughout
the movie—it’s very bravura filmmaking. With all these cars and the
lights and the movement and the people and the streets. I mean, that’s really
bravura. He took major chances.
On your commentary track for The Score you talk about the direct
influence—
Oz: Absolutely. Essentially, I said to my DP [director of photography], “Look,
I want to make this as close as possible to the Touch of Evil lighting because I
felt that would make this really work.” And so we couldn’t really do it because
it’s color. The value of color and black and white is all different, but we got
close to the Touch of Evil kind of feeling. That’s exactly what I wanted.
How did that manifest itself?
Oz: Dark and light. Not being afraid of black, about not seeing people’s faces.
If you look at some of the scenes, my God, the ideas you got. The traditional