Movie Speak: How to Talk Like You Belong on a Movie Set
Tony Bill
Language: English
Pages: 107
ISBN: 2:00080600
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
When is "groucho" not a comedian? A "seagull" not a bird? A "banana" not a fruit, and a "taco cart" not a food stand? What's the "Castle rock rule" and when should you call for a "buff & puff"? And why expect trouble when the A.D. (assistant director) knowingly mumbles "Gone With the Wind in the morning, Dukes of Hazzard after lunch"? An oral tradition gathered and passed down for more than a hundred years, the language of moviemaking, like other secret lexicons, is the only accepted way of communicating on a set—and is all but unknown to the outside world. Technical, odd, colorful, mysterious, the working language of movies sheds light not only on the hugely complex process of making a film, but on the invisible hierarchies of a set, the unspoken etiquette between cast and crew, and the evolution of a process that's endlessly fascinating.
Movie Speak is a book about language, but through language also a book about what it’s really like to be a director or a producer or an actor or a crew member. An Oscarwinning producer (The Sting), actor (who worked with Spielberg, Coppola, and Sydney Pollock), and director (Five Corners, Flyboys, My Bodyguard, and more), Tony Bill has been on sets for more than 30 years and brings a writer's love of language to this collection of hundreds of film terms. A futz. A cowboy. A Brodkin and a double Brodkin (a.k.a. screamer). Streaks ’n tips, a Lewinsky, Green Acres, rhubarb, a peanut, a Gary Coleman, snot tape, twin buttes, manmaker (and why you can yell for one if needed for a grip, but must whisper if it's for Tom Cruise)—these are the tricks of the trade.
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Directors are well advised to stay out of these split looks skirmishes until absolutely certain that one side has made the most sensible argument, and even then to proceed cautiously. Better still, immediately announce that you’ll shoot it both ways, thus saving time, on-set harmony—and face. spo The optimum viewing spot in a theater. Always in the center and usually about halfway between the projection booth and the screen. Spo first came into usage during the mix of Francis Ford Coppola’s
get it right in as few takes as possible. And she needed to maintain her concentration while the crew had to stop and reload the camera. The camera rolled, the director called “Action!” and she was on: It was showtime. As Katharine Hepburn once observed, “I think you either can do it or you can’t do it . . . I don’t think it requires any special brilliance.” Now here’s the twenty-first-century actress: She walks on the set, she’s relaxed because she knows that there’s no film in the camera, and
movies about people who need other people—or think they do—to take care of something for them, as well as the need we all have to take care of other people. Big hits like The Sting and Taxi Driver are nice, but I’m always, always extremely pleased and not a little bit amazed that movies like Five Corners, Untamed Heart, and My Bodyguard have intensely devoted fans. People think that you get tired of hearing that they love one of your little, modest movies, but you never do. At least I never do.
uniforms. Armed. One of them has a briefcase at his side. But not just any old banker’s Naugahyde job—this one is made out of mahogany, varnished, and handcuffed to his wrists. “Are you Tony Bill?” he asks. “No,” I’m thinking, “the receptionist buzzed someone else, and I was hiding back there all morning just so I could jump out and impersonate myself.” Thought it, didn’t say it. Wimped out and just said, “Yes.” “Can I see some ID?” says the one without the attaché case. “Wait a minute. You know
remember your manners. Please. “Tact in audacity is knowing how far you can go without going too far.” —JEAN COCTEAU The Writing Stuff So much has been and is continually being written about writing screenplays, that I hesitate to even comment on that art and craft. But I have such definite—one might even say dogmatic—views that I need to get them off my chest. For the past thirty-five years or so (yikes!), I have been producing and directing feature films and cable movies. Almost
