Siff Quiz, Cheat Sheet #1

In the Alleys of Love (1991), directed by Khosro Sinaie, was the only Iranian film at SIFF in 1992; the following year there were none, but there were two from Hungary, and two from South Korea. "Well to do as others do."--Alec Guinness, Damn the Defiant. The Northwest Film Forum was incorporated September 1, 1995. BBS' Easy Rider (1969) was partially financed with profits from the Monkees' TV show and records; Phil Spector plays the coke dealer. Initially charged with five felony offenses, only one of which (unlawful sexual intercourse) was not dropped, Roman Polanski served three months in Chino for mandatory psychiatric review of potential sex offenders in 1977-'78. Jean Eustache (director/ writer of The Mother and the Whore, 1973) committed suicide 11/4/81, exactly 47 years after the birth of Czech cinematographer Miroslav Ondricek. Brendan Fraser and Jean-Luc Godard share a birthday (12/3), 38 years apart. William Cameron Menzies was the first person to receive a production design credit, for Gone with the Wind. Peter Hyams and Steven Soderbergh have both acted as cinematographer on films they have directed. Moshen Makhmalbaf. Volker Schlöndorff. The soundtrack of Antonioni's Zabriskie Point contained a song by the late John Fahey (as well as music by Pink Floyd and the Grateful Dead). Jean-Pierre Leaud starred as Antoine Doinel in five films: Les Quatre Cents Coups (400 Blows) (1959), Antoine et Collette (1962), Baisers Volés (Stolen Kisses) (1968), Domicile Conjugal (Bed and Board) (1970), and L'amour en Fuite (Love on the Run) (1979). "I encourage you to support the companies who appear in the program guides."--Nancy Kennedy, SIFF marketing director, 1988-1999. "Bicycle Thieves" is the accurate translation of Ladri di Biciclette. Aki Kaurismaki directed La Vie de Boheme, Leningrad Cowboys Go America, and the latter film's sequel, in addition to 18 other features. "Queer bird, even for an American."--Alec Guinness, Bridge on the River Kwai. The Neptune theater opened in 1921. Stranger Film Editor Andy Spletzer was once barred from the Secret Festival. The Stranger's first film editor was named Matt Cook. Matty Rich has had only one film at SIFF. Julia Sweeney was in Pulp Fiction, directed by Quentin Tarantino, who co-wrote It's Pat, starring Julia Sweeney, who later wrote and starred in God Said, Ha!, which was executive produced by Quentin Tarantino, who later directed Jackie Brown, which featured Michael Keaton, who was born Michael Douglas, who starred in Disclosure, which was set in Seattle, where Julia Sweeney used to live. Bert Lahr, the Cowardly Lion, was in the original Broadway cast of Waiting for Godot; Wallace Shawn plays John Lahr, Bert's son--who writes for The New Yorker, which Shawn's father, William, used to edit --in Prick up Your Ears, which is an anagram for Prick up Your Arse. Brian Dennehy has been in 109 films; Charles Durning has been in 126 films. Only one of those 235 films features them both --Girls in Their Summer Dresses--and it was made for television (starring Jeff Bridges). Chantal Akerman's Window Shopping (also known as Golden Eighties) is set in a hair salon. According to the American Film Institute, Forrest Gump is the 71st greatest American film of all time. "You are mercifully free from the ravages of intelligence."--David Warner, Time Bandits. In Pola X, a fully erect Guillaume Depardieu is seen vaginally penetrating the actress who plays his half-sister (Yekaterina Golubyova); the film is an adaptation of Melville's Pierre, or, the Ambiguities. "What are you, bourgeois?"--Sunday, Bloody Sunday. Cinema Seattle was incorporated May 16, 1990, 14 years and two days after opening night of the first Seattle International Film Festival. The van with the "YESCA" license plate in Cheech and Chong's Up in Smoke is made of "fiberweed." Timothy Carey, Jack Nicholson, Dennis Hopper, and Frank Zappa appear in Bob Rafelson's Head, alongside Micky Dolenz, Michael Nesmith, Peter Tork, and David Jones. Michael Powell, Stanley Donen, Paul Verhoeven, Ken Russell, Bernardo Bertolucci, Nicholas Roeg, David Lean, Robert Wise, Erich von Stroheim, Rainer Warner Fassbinder, John Schlesinger, Bertrand Tavernier, and Robert Altman have all received SIFF tributes, while Krzysztof Zanussi, Fons Rademakers, Alan Rudolph, Martin Donovan, Denys Arcand, Peter Greenaway, Jean-Jacques Beineix, Ang Lee, Rolf de Heer, Bryan Singer, Danny Boyle, Bill Condon, and John Sayles have all won the Golden Space Needle award for best director. The complete cast of actors with speaking roles in Louis Malle's My Dinner with Andre--a film that contains the line, "Are you really sure you want to hear all this?"--numbers four: Wallace Shawn as Wally, Andre Gregory as Andre, Jean Lenauer as the Waiter, and Roy Butler as the Bartender. "What I owe you is beyond evaluation."--Alec Guinness, Lawrence of Arabia.

Siff Quiz, Cheat Sheet #2

“Film is truth, 24 times a second”—Jean-Luc Godard. For Barry Lyndon, the Zeiss camera company built special camera lenses so that Stanley Kubrick could shoot scenes lit only by candlelight. The Lights of New York was the first feature film with all synchronous dialogue. In The Thief of Baghdad, the Persian prince is played by Mathilde Comont, a girl. John Cassavetes’ A Woman Under the Influence is designated as a national treasure by the Library of Congress. E.T.’s face was modeled after Albert Einstein and poet Carl Sandburg. The Empire Strikes Back had its world premiere at the Seattle International Film Festival. In Goodfellas, the word “fuck” (or variation thereof) is used 246 times. Professor Borg Recordings is a Seattle record label (www.professorborg.com) named after a character played by Wictor Sjöström in Ingmar Bergman’s Wild Strawberries. Bob Rafelson’s film Head (1968) contains a snippet of dialogue from Edgar G. Ulmer’s film The Black Cat (1934)—starring Bela Lugosi as Dr. Verdegast—which contains the following dialogue exchange—“Man: Sounds like a lot of supernatural baloney to me! Verdegast: Supernatural? Perhaps. Baloney? Perhaps not.” Satyajit Ray (1921-1992), most famous for the Apu Trilogy (Pather Panchali—1955, Aparajito—1956, and World of Apu—1959), worked as his own sound mixer on his later, lesser-known films, Sikkim (1971) and The Inner Eye (1972). In Tapeheads (1987), John Cusack and Tim Robbins play two inept video directors who worship a vocal duo called the Swanky Modes, played by Sam and Dave. The following films make their world premieres at this year’s SIFF (title, director/country): Animal, Sergio Bizzio/Argentina; Dirt Boy, Jay Frasco/USA; Exploding Oedipus, Marc Lafia/USA; Farewell to Harry, Garrett Bennett/USA; Final, Campbell Scott/USA; Finder’s Fee, Jeff Probst/USA; Ghost World, Terry Zwigoff/USA; Investigating Sex, Alan Rudolph/USA; Jackpot, Michael Polish/USA; O, Tim Blake Nelson/USA; Out of the Closet, Off the Screen: The William Haines Story, Fenton Bailey/USA; Rennie’s Landing, Marc Fusco/USA; Second Coming, Darren Campbell, Steve Rees/USA; Strictly Sinatra, Peter Capaldi/Great Britain; Tortilla Soup, Maria Ripoli/USA; Treading Water, Lauren Himmel/USA; Viva Las Nowhere, Jason Bloom/USA; WillFull, Rebel Penfold-Russel/Australia; A Woman Is a Helluva Thing, Karen Leigh Hopkins/USA. Lawrence Kasdan’s Grand Canyon is the worst movie ever made. Actors Bill Pullman, Mickey Rourke, Lukas Haas, and Viggo Mortensen were all cut out of Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line. Krzysztof Kieslowski. The Seattle Times recently quoted SIFF director Darryl Macdonald as saying that Thailand, a country prominently featured in this year’s Asian Beat segment of the film festival, is “the new Hong Kong of Asian filmmaking.” The following directors began their careers as assistants to other directors: SIFF Closing Night director Alan Rudolph (Robert Altman), Bernardo Bertolucci (Pier Paulo Pasolini), Budd Boetticher (Rouben Mamoulian), Mike Hodges (Jean-Pierre Melville), and Rakhshan Bani Etemad (Rasul Sadrameli). The original title for Polanksi’s Cul de Sac (1966) was If Katelbach Comes. The cemetery orgy girls in Easy Rider were Toni Basil (who was also in Head and Five Easy Pieces) and Karen Black (who was also in Five Easy Pieces and Nashville). Jean Luc Godard’s Une Femme est Une Femme (1962) features a digression in which the camera follows a letter sent via Paris’ archaic pneumatic tube system; the sequence is called “pneu-ma-tic.” The only gunshot heard in Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H (1970) is from the referee’s pistol during the football game. Jennifer Jason Leigh has filmed sex (or rape) scenes with three of the four Baldwin brothers: Alec in Miami Blues, William in Backdraft, and Stephen in Last Exit to Brooklyn. Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein used the same sets and props as the original 1931 Frankenstein. A stunt man was not killed during the chariot race in the 1959 version of Ben Hur, but rather, the original 1925 version. Conrad Hall was cinematographer on the 1965 film Incubus, the only movie ever filmed in Esperanto. The Rolling Stones were once considered to play Alex and his droogs in A Clockwork Orange. Rosemary’s Baby was directed by Roman Polanski, whose pregnant wife Sharon Tate was murdered in 1969 by the Charles Manson gang, who marked the crime scene with the words “Healter Skelter” [sic] after the 1968 song “Helter Skelter” by the Beatles, a member of which was John Lennon, who resided at, and was murdered in front of, the Dakota apartment building in Manhattan, which was where Rosemary’s Baby was filmed. Steven Soderbergh’s Schizopolis, in which Edward Jemison plays a character called “Nameless Numberhead Man,” also features a character named T. Azimuth Scwhitters, who is the founder of a philosophy known as “Eventualism.” Friday Foster, Sheba Shayne, Alabama, Mamawi, Coffy, Blossom, Foxy Brown, Jackie Brown, Gozelda, and Ayesa the Panther Woman are all names of characters that were played by Pam Grier. In Ozu’s classic I Was Born, But… (1962), the sons are embarrassed to discover that their father has been sucking up to his boss, whose son was too dumb to make it in their gang—they believe that in life, advancement should be based on merit, not status. God what a fucking great movie. Allen Garfield and Charles Durning appeared in the early Brian DePalma film Hi, Mom (1970) under the names Allen Goorwitz and Charles Dunham; the same film contains an extended black-and-white cinema vérité segment in which a group of white, middle-class theatergoers are abused by an African American guerrilla theater company performing a show called Be Black, Baby. The secret missing ingredient used by Richard Pryor to make synthetic kryptonite in Richard Lester’s Superman III is tar. Roberto Rossellini’s immortal Il Generale Della Rovere, starring Vittorio de Sica, shared the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1959 with Mario Monicelli’s La Grande Guerra. “Film is a lie, 24 times a second.”—George Lucas.