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Eddie Muller recently hosted "Noir City," the 4th Annual San Francisco Film Noir Festival which by all accounts is their best-attended festival to date. The following is a brief interview with Mr. Muller.
TCM: How did the Noir City festival begin? Can you give us a brief history of it?
Muller: I'd already been involved in programming and hosting the Festival of Film Noir at the American Cinematheque in Hollywood for four years before bringing a similar festival to San Francisco, my hometown. Honestly, I did it to promote my first novel, which was a noir-style story set in San Francisco in the late 1940s. The series was successful beyond anyone's expectations, and it just took off from there. San Francisco is a city of incredible movie-lovers.
TCM: How do you go about tracking down and securing 35mm prints for your festival? It must be difficult to find and obtain an acceptable print for screening of something like The Man Who Cheated Himself.
Muller: At the Castro Theater, where we held the festival the first two years, I worked with Anita Monga, the programmer there for 17 years. She really loves film noir, so between us we got very enthused and diligent about tracking down films that had seemed to slip between the cracks. The key is having the right connections, knowing what to ask for, being incredibly persistent, and proving to the studios that there is value in resurrecting a "forgotten" film. If the studio no longer has the rights to the film, which is the case with The Man Who Cheated Himself, then it gets trickier; we were lucky to uncover it in the UCLA Film and Television Archive.
Studios tend to overlook "marginal" films that don't have big stars, which is how terrific films like Losey's M, "Too Late for Tears, or Try and Get Me fall off the radar. But I think that with the success on DVD of Warners' boxed Noir Collections and the Fox Film Noir series, it's being understood that it's the genre itself that's popular, and it doesn't matter who the stars are.
TCM: Your interest in the film noir genre is well known to the reading public from your own novels as well as your excellent overviews of the genre ("Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir", etc.) What first hooked you on these films? Was it a particular movie or a pulp fiction?
Muller: Thieves Highway was the film that made the biggest impression when I was a kid. I'd cut school to watch "Dialing for Dollars" on TV -- but only if the films had Big, City, Street, Night, or Dark in the title. And, of course, from that grew a fondness for crime fiction -- which I share with a whole generation of writers and readers. Hammett, Cain, Chandler, Woolrich, Highsmith, Thompson, and many, many fine writers who've followed in their wake.
TCM: I saw your interview on the DVD of Too Late For Tears and noted that the releasing company was Dark City (released through Image Entertainment). Is that your own label and do you intend to release other noirs on DVD?
Muller: No, it's not my company. It just co-opted the name from my book. We'll see about putting out films through the Film Noir Foundation; it could happen if we're able to track down some of the more esoteric films and clear rights. Truthfully, I'd rather cooperate with the studios to help them appreciate what they already own. I'm a writer, not a film distributor. I keep telling myself that, every day.
TCM: Do you believe that a film noir has to conform to a certain look, tone or climatic resolution to qualify as a true noir? For example, do you think a noir can take place in the bright sun or even have a relatively hopeful ending such as Pitfall? What qualifies a film as a noir?
Muller: I consider noir from the writer's perspective, so while I chersih the look and feel of "classic" noir, I don't believe that it's surface appearance that qualifies a story as being "noir." I use the expression "an empathetic dive into existential darkness," to describe my take on noir. These are crime stories that empathize with people trapped by fate or desperate schemes of their own design. They dare to offer worst case scenarios, and invite the viewer/reader to participate vicariously. In the festival we just concluded, Sean Penn came out and talked about his film The Pledge in the context of the film noir tradition. So clearly, I see it as an ongoing evolution of a particular kind of story.
TCM: What, in your opinion, are the holy grail films of the genre? The ones you would make mandatory viewing for someone unfamiliar with the genre but interested in sampling some?
Muller: I think any crash course in noir starts with Double Indemnity and Out of the Past. If you'd only seen those two, you'd still have a pretty good grasp of what constitutes classic noir.
TCM: In planning your film festivals, are there any particular titles which have remained elusive and possibly lost which you have tried repeated to find and exhibit?
Muller: There are dozens! A clean 35mm print of Too Late for Tears is my particular obsession. ANY 35mm print of it! I'd love to show that on a big screen with a huge audience, like we did with The Man Who Cheated Himself in San Francisco. We had almost 1,000 in the house for that, and it was great. The next night we showed the only print Warners has of The Breaking Point with John Garfield, but only about 350 people saw it. I wished we could have switched audiences -- The Breaking Point is an incredible film and really deserves to be released on DVD. Warners? You listening?
TCM: Your lineup for this year's Noir City festival was particularly impressive, especially in the area of live appearances - Sean Penn, Charlie Haden & Quartet West, etc. Do you find that the guests you contact for appearances are familiar with your festival and share the same affinity for the genre?
Muller: Yes and no. Sean has a sense of history about him, and I think he enjoyed having The Pledge presented in a historical continuum. Plus, he's just a nice guy and wanted to help out. James Ellroy was a great guest; we like to riff off one another. The "vintage" stars, like Farley Granger and Coleen Gray, appreciate that their work is being enjoyed by a new generation. It's fun, that's the thing -- when my first book on the subject came out, Paul Schrader offered a blurb: "Eddie Muller seriously takes film noir not too seriously." I appreciated that, and I've tried to maintain that approach ever since. I'm not an elitist -- I like movies. I think the success of the NOIR CITY festival is based entirely on its appeal to both cinephiles and people just looking for an old-fashioned fun time at the picture show. We provide context for the films, but we don't overwhelm you with it.
TCM: Have you ever considered doing a noir series of international films with key French and British titles?
Muller: Absolutely. That's something I'm developing right now.
TCM: Can you describe a little bit of what goes into sponsoring a yearly film festival like this and how many people help you pull it together?
Muller: You'd be amazed how small the core is. I've kept it really, really tight -- like a commando unit -- to ensure that things would be done a certain way and that the festival would have a personality different than big corporate-sponsored events. Now that it's established, I'm hoping that the sponsors who come on board will appreciate what we've got and not try to turn it into something else. Nobody's making a living off this thing -- it's just an organic event that comes together out of the shared enthusiasm of the organizers and the audience.
TCM: What's next for you after the festival? Working on a new book? Are you featured on any new DVD commentaries?
Muller: I really hope that I can keep a hand in NOIR CITY while returning my attention full-time to writing fiction. I've got several novels in the works, but really need to dedicate time to them. I've done more DVD commentaries for both Fox and Warners, and I really hope that Sony and Universal will ask me to get involved in mining their excellent archives for more noir.
That's the mission of the non-profit I founded, the Film Noir Foundation -- all the proceeds from the NOIR CITY festival are used to unearth "missing" films. It's very synergistic: audiences support the festival and the box office receipts are used to find more rare titles for them to enjoy the next time around. It makes the audience a vital part of the process, which encourages them to get away from the TV for awhile and actually come out to the movies. People love to see these films on a big screen, as they were originally presented. There's magic in that.
TCM: I hope we can attend next year's festival!Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us.
Muller: Thanks for the opportunity!
Interview conducted by Jeff Stafford
* The photograph of Mr. Muller is credited to David Allen Studio
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