I know… I know… as you’re reading this you are probably wondering if I ever go to any author readings or if I’m just on the sidelines when movie directors come to town.\u00c2\u00a0 As a matter of fact, I get to do both; I just haven’t been to an author reading in a while.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
Last Friday I saw Milos Forman’s first American movie, Taking Off<\/a>, at the Wexner Center for the Arts.\u00c2\u00a0 He was there to introduce the film and afterwards he participated in a discussion.\u00c2\u00a0 I had no idea what to expect from the evening and I must say it was amazing.<\/p>\n Going into the event, I had no familiarity with the movie but I knew the basic plot.\u00c2\u00a0 It was a very funny movie.\u00c2\u00a0 Early scenes led into later jokes.\u00c2\u00a0 It was a bit like life in that respect.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n Milos’ English wasn’t very good yet and after every scene he would look at Buck Henry.\u00c2\u00a0 If Buck Henry nodded his head, Milos moved on to the next scene.\u00c2\u00a0 If Buck Henry shook his head, then Milos complimented everyone and asked for another take.\u00c2\u00a0 When asked if Milos considered himself an independent filmmaker his response was, “I don’t think so… I have a wife and four children!”\u00c2\u00a0 After much laughter he continued, “Other than that… yes.”\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n Someone from the audience asked him which films or filmmakers influenced him.\u00c2\u00a0 Prior to the war, he’d only seen two movies.\u00c2\u00a0 The first was Snow White<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0and sadly, he didn’t name the second one.\u00c2\u00a0 It was a silent black and white movie of Czechoslovakia’s most famous opera.\u00c2\u00a0 The lights went down, the movie played on the screen and everyone around him was singing it.\u00c2\u00a0 He thought everyone went to the movies and sang.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n Milos shared\u00c2\u00a0why James Cagney agreed to do the part in Ragtime<\/a>,\u00c2\u00a0seeing Hair<\/em> performed for the first time on stage, and how it’s preferable to have a Communist government ban a film for life (though it was only twenty years in actuality) than to have the studio heads edit and release a film.\u00c2\u00a0 It was very much like listening to a beloved uncle or grandfather.\u00c2\u00a0 The pictures he puts in your head from his stories are even better than what he puts on film.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I know… I know… as you’re reading this you are probably wondering if I ever go to any author readings or if I’m just on the sidelines when movie directors come to town.\u00c2\u00a0 As a matter of fact, I get to do both; I just haven’t been to an author reading in a while.\u00c2\u00a0 Last… Continue reading Milos Forman<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[23,25],"class_list":["post-36","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-event","tag-film","tag-milos-forman","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}