Eyes Half Closed
A few weeks ago, LA Weekly published a teaser from a new book called "The Conversations", in which Michael Ontdajee, author of "The English Patient", interviews Walter Murch, long-time editor for Francis Ford Coppola on films like The Godfather Trilogy, Apocalypse Now, The Conversation, and others. The coolest comment Murch makes: he believes that story telling in film is in the same stage today as music was before they figured out how to articulate sounds in the form of sheet music, and that he looks forward to the day when someone develops a similar kind of notation for motion pictures. Of course, this gives the engineer in me a warm-fuzzy. Years ago, I saw Delroy Lindo interview Spike Lee, where he said something similar - i.e. we haven't seen a Duke Ellington or Miles Davis of filmmaking yet, but it's coming.