by Brendan Foley
Two Cents is an original column akin to a book club for films. The Cinapse team will program films and contribute our best, most insightful, or most creative thoughts on each film using a maximum of 200 words each. Guest writers and fan comments are encouraged, as are suggestions for future entries to the column. Join us as we share our two cents on films we love, films we are curious about, and films we believe merit some discussion.
The Pick
Does knowing the technique ruin the trick?
Stars Wars has been such a cornerstone of pop culture for so long, it becomes easy to think of it is as something that emerged wholly perfect, a magical strip of celluloid that appeared in theaters one day ready and able to rewrite the world.
That’s not the truth, of course. Star Wars, like all art, is the product of hundreds of people working diligently for weeks, months, even years to try and wrestle something onto the screen. Oftentimes the images that became emblazoned in the hearts and minds of millions of little boys and girls were the result of incredible frustration against impossible situations, heavily compromised from what was intended by he-of-the-neck-flap, George Lucas.
What Jamie Benning sought to do with his Star Wars Begins ‘filmumentary’ was show the process behind the magic. Assembled from behind the scenes footage, outtakes, alternate takes, and narrated by voice over from a variety of the talent involved from a variety of time periods (there may be no more jarring feeling in the world than hearing Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford’s current voices juxtaposed immediately against their late-1970’s selves), Benning crafted a living document of the creation of one of the great modern myths.
As millions of theater-goers flock to the movies for the latest chapter in that saga, the Two Cents team went back to the beginning to watch just how techniques both old and new were used to bring the stars (and/or wars) to the big screen.
Did you get a chance to watch along with us this week? Want to recommend a great (or not so great) film for the whole gang to cover? Comment below or post on our Facebook or hit us up on Twitter!
Christmas Pick:
Bill Murray already made an indelible impression on Yuletide traditions with his work in Richard Donner’s Scrooged, but it seems that the great trickster figure of American pop culture needed another go-round with the Christmas season.
Re-teaming with Sofia Coppola, who directed Murray to his still-career-best work in Lost in Translation, Murray appeared in A Very Murray Christmas. Streaming on Netflix, the special boasts a guest cast that includes Miley Cyrus, Chris Rock, George Clooney and many, many more. Join us as we join Mr. Murray in celebrating that most wonderful time of the year.
Would you like to be a guest in our Christmas Two Cents column? Simply watch and send your under-200-word review to twocents(at)cinapse.co by Wednesday, December 23!
Featured Guest
The Two Cents team, and all of Cinapse, are extemely grateful to filmmaker Jamie Benning for reaching out and offering to add in some additional thoughts on his film, Star Wars Begins. Jamie’s series of ‘filmumentaries’ and treasure trove of behind-the-scenes information can be found at his website here. For now, read on as Jamie talks us through his investigation into the creation of Star Wars. Thanks to Jamie for joining us on Two Cents!
Jamie Benning:
Cinapse: Star Wars Begins was notably the last of the trilogy that you completed. How did that sequence come about?
Jamie Benning: Well, I knew Empire would be the biggest challenge of the three. So it was a matter on proving the concept by tackling that one first.
Cinapse: You’ve got a few of these Filmumentaries under your belt now. Has the process gotten easier?
JB: I think so. Each project is very different and brings its own challenges. It’s been a little while since I did one. Dying to get stuck into another.
Cinapse: What’s your favorite discovery you’ve made in researching these many films you’ve covered?
JB: I liked the interview in which Mark Hamill talks about having to stop filming because it was lady bug mating season. As he goes on to say, that’s “not the usual thing you hear in making of documentaries”. Also it was pretty cool to track down every element and assemble to human Jabba deleted scene. [This sequence is featured in Star Wars Begins, re-assembled from various clips of widely different quality, showing the Jabba scene before pre-CG element was added. -Ed.]
Cinapse: Have any home video distributors or disc producers shown an interest in working with you in an official capacity?
JB: I had a near miss with Warner Bros last year. I am currently talking to another studio about an ongoing franchise. I am hoping that will get greenlit in the new year.
Cinapse: What else is cooking for you, or for the Filmumentaries series?
JB: Just waiting for the studio I am chatting with to say “let’s go!”. In the meantime, I have been producing some shorter form documentaries. I’ve done one on Jabba and another on Biggs. I’m hoping to complete another on Yoda early in the new year. (@jamieswb | Support Jamie’s Work on Patreon)
Our Guest
Joshua Wille:In Star Wars Begins, as in all his filmumentaries, Jamie Benning synthesizes a remarkable amount of behind-the-scenes material, including audio taken from interviews, production outtakes, storyboards, concept art, and documentary footage, as well as various bits informative text that he inserts into the black gutters of the letterbox that act like notes scrawled in the margins of a page.
Benning’s filmumentary is a reflexive audiovisual hybrid of documentary and subject, an alternative experience of a film that is enhanced by the reminiscences of those who made it. Although traditional home video commentary tracks focus almost exclusively on the voices of the director and top-billed actors in extended sessions, a filmumentary goes beyond these conventions. In Star Wars Begins, we see and hear scene-specific excerpts from a myriad of artists who contributed to the film.
Fan edits are increasingly relevant to the revisionary history of film media, so it’s great to see Star Wars Begins acknowledge the excellent work of a fan edit like Adywan’s Star Wars Revisited. Because of its catholic scope, its personal investment in its subject, and its recombinant construction, Jamie Benning’s filmumentary is perhaps the best kind of retrospective film for the remix era. (@JoshuaWille)
The Team
Justin:I’ll start with a controversial Star Wars related opinion. The prequels don’t suck. Moreover, Episode 1 is magical if you you watch through the eyes of a child. Don’t believe me, watch it with a four year old for the first time.
Now that I’ve enraged the masses, let me talk about this documentary (or filmumentary, as it were). About 10 minutes in, I realized that I’d seen it before. But a rewatch a couple of years later was more than welcome.
Any SW fan and/or film geek needs to watch this film and the others in this series. They provide insight, evoke nostalgia, and break down a lot of questions. For fear of spoiling this for anyone reading, I’ll just say that some of the interviews and unused footage made me geek out really hard, in fact I must have done so audibly because my wife inquired what was going on from a room away.
The magic continues this weekend… and remember that Han shot first! (@thepaintedman)
Brendan:There was a long period of time where I genuinely hated Star Wars, George Lucas, and what I thought Star Wars and George Lucas had done to the film industry. I sneered at my memories of the original trilogy and rolled my eyes at even a mention of the prequels.
Nowadays, well, I still roll my eyes at those fucking prequels (especially whenever people from my generation try to mount heartfelt but still wrong defenses) but the original trilogy once again occupies a place in my heart as true-blue Hollywood magic. Lucas imagined a huge, complex world and built a window with which he might share that world with us.
Star Wars Begins does an exceptional job of capturing the craft of that journey, something that does not get enough attention in this day and age. And in a time period in which “green screen” is the answer to every query of “How did they do that?”, there’s something truly invigorating about seeing how handmade every piece of Star Wars was.
Movies, at their best, are an invitation to share in a dream, but those dreams are the work of incalculable hours and efforts. Star Wars Begins is a wonderful tribute to the earthly demands that were suffered to build the stars. (@TheTrueBrendanF)
Austin:Audio commentaries are an amazing way to experience a film in a new way, but what Jamie has done with his Filmumentaries series is create assemblage commentaries that pool together endless clips, interviews, alternate takes, set footage, storyboards, deleted scenes, and extra bits that create a whole, vast, new creation. I can only image what a staggering amount of work these must be. Editing together a feature-length assemblage patterned after the source is only one small part of the equation. The amount of research and collection of video and audio, some of it quite rare, is just mind-blowing.
There was a specific moment that really registered for me on this viewing, though. A bit of levity on the set in which a young George Lucas, directing what would become his life’s best known work, smiled a big goofy smile and adjusted his glasses up the bridge of his nose. And in that moment, he was just skinny, dorky little George again and I just felt a lot of affection for him for the first time in years. I mean, I still resent him deeply for his latter-day crimes against cinema, but I’ve gotta thank him, too. Yeah, the prequels suck. The special editions suck. But when you come down to it? Star Wars rules. (@VforVashaw)
Did you all get a chance to watch along with us? Share your thoughts with us here in the comments or on Twitter or Facebook!