In the wake of the Oscars, you may still be under the impression that Hollywood is a star-studded realm, a world of glitter, glitz and cosmetic surgery.
“The studio celebrity machine needs to keep the viewer at a distance in order to keep selling glamour,” writes Michael Lee Nirenberg in his new and enlightening book, “Cinematic Immunity: An Oral History of New York Filmmaking as Told by the Crews that Got the Shot.”
Nirenberg has worked as a scenic artist in television and movies for two decades. He has interviewed dozens of the people who are “just beyond the spotlight,” people such as first assistant director Chris Soldo, who says, “Filmmaking isn’t antiseptic (but it’s) sloppy and challenging and difficult and full of adjustments and mishaps due to just being in the real world.”
Nirenberg takes us behind the scenes of 50-some movies. We visit just a few duds, such as 1985’s “Death Wish 3,” but mostly we are in the presence of great movies, going back as early as 1954’s “On the Waterfront.”
For decades, Nirenberg writes, New York was “home to a small, freewheeling community of motion picture technicians… (an era) that was wild, pre-gentrified, dangerous.”
You will naturally be drawn to the stories of movies you have seen and, unless you’ve been energetically anti-movies, you’ll have seen most of those in the book. “The Godfather,” “Sophie’s Choice,” “When Harry Met Sally,” “Do The Right Thing” … and on and on across the book’s nearly 400 films.
You will be pleased to find director William Friedkin. Before making it big in Hollywood, he was born and raised in Rogers Park and worked as a director for WGN-TV, having started in the mailroom fresh out of Senn High School. In 1962, he made a documentary titled “The People vs. Paul Crump,” which won awards at film festivals and attracted the attention of Hollywood executives who launched Friedkin’s estimable career. Three of his movies pepper this book: “The Exorcist,” “The French Connection” and the controversial 1980 film “Cruising,” which starred Al Pacino as a New York City cop who goes undercover in the rough-trade bar scene to try to discover a killer targeting gay men.
“(People) were always protesting, ‘Hey, ho, hey, ho, movie crews gotta go!’” says assistant camera operator Gary Muller. ”We had police protection, and we would have to park our cars, like, 15 miles away.”
There are movies with Chicago ties, such as 1992’s “Glengarry Glen Ross,” written by David Mamet, and 1986’s “Manhunter” starring our own William L. Petersen and Dennis Farina. There are some TV stories from “The Sopranos,” “Oz,” and the “Law & Order” empire.
There is a glossary that will give you the meaning of such biz words as “cookies and cutters” (“Shapes put in front of the lights to mold and bend the light”) and “Martini” (“The last shot of the night”).
Covering roughly the 1950s into the early 2000s, the book’s final chapter offers some less-than-hopeful opinions about changes in the movie business.
Says Bruno Robotti, a scenic artist, “It just got worse as time went on. There were accountants who came in and took over, so everything is about money.”
Says Beverly Miller, former union president, “There’s less of a feeling that you’re working for somebody who cares.”
Says Susan Kaufman, a set decorator, “I have stepped back, because television for a set decorator is less about the creative aspect as it is about keeping up with the notes … doing the budget.”
The book comes from Feral House, a provocatively unconventional publisher based in Milwaukee. I have written about some of its previous books: “Mother Chicago: Truant Dreams and Specters Over the Gilded Age” by Martin Billheimer, “Good Time Party Girl: The Notorious Life of Dirty Helen Cromwell 1886-1969,” and a “Compliments of Chicagohoodz: Chicago Street Gang Art & Culture” by James “Jinx” O’Connor and Damen “Mr. C” Corrado.
Feral House was founded in 1989 by Adam Parfrey, who died in 2018. His sister, Jessica, remains with the company as emerita editor-at-large, and since February, the company has been owned by Christina Ward, who has been working for Feral House in a wide variety of roles for over the last decade.
She is bright and passionate and tells me, “Independent publishers like Feral House exist to do what larger publishing houses increasingly cannot: take the time to nurture authors and support books that don’t chase trends or quarterly returns for venture capitalists and fat cat shareholders. As the new owner, I’m not interested in softening the edges or chasing trends. What we do best is publish work that other publishers won’t, work that is grounded in independent research and real voices from all walks of life.
“I’m not interested in the mainstream. My job is to keep finding sharp, incisive stories from unexpected places and people. And, of course, reach readers who actually want books that challenge, inform and surprise.”
“Cinematic Immunity” fits that bill, and in an email exchange, she explained why: “This book shifts the story of film history away from directors and stars and toward the crews — the electricians, designers, builders and camera operators — whose labor actually made these films possible. What emerges is not just a new angle on familiar movies, but a documentation of work, as father-of-us-all Studs Terkel keenly observed: the politics, the egos, the collaboration, the improvisation and the endurance required to get anything made. In a culture fixated on visibility, it is a reminder that what appears effortless on screen is the product of people doing difficult, often invisible jobs.”
rkogan@chicagotribune.com