Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

Frankenheimer Rides a Blimp To a Big, Fat Comeback

Frankenheimer Rides a Blimp To a Big, Fat Comeback
Credit...The New York Times Archives
See the article in its original context from
April 10, 1977, Section D, Page 19Buy Reprints
TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers.
About the Archive
This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them.
Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions.

LOS ANGELES AGoodyear blimp armed with thousands of lethal darts glides into the Super Bowl chased by an Israeli agent dangling at the end of a helicopter's rope. It is the climax of “Black Sunday.” In three minutes, the $7.8 million picture will be over.

The studios which make such movies call them mass jeopardy or disaster films. Hundreds of people die or are threatened by skyjackers, exploding bombs, flooded ships, defective airplanes, snowstorms, hurricanes, towering infernos, and maniacal snipers. And the important thing, the essential thing, says John Frankenheimer, director of “Black Sunday,” is not to confuse the audience. “They must know where the scene is taking place, who the characters are, and what the stakes are.”

Frankenheimer is a tall man with a square face, and the demi‐tasse cup he is holding seems too fragile for his huge hand. In “Black Sunday,” his 20th movie, the scenes are taking place in Lebanon, Los Angeles and Miami; the characters are Israeli agents and Black September terrorists; and the stakes are the lives of the 80,000 people who are watching the Super Bowl. After the first screening of the film for theater owners last September, 47‐year‐old Frankenheimer's price as a director doubled. He was hired by Dino De Laurenti is to direct “Brinks” this summer and given an exclusive five‐year contract by Paramount. He is happily “taking the cookies when the cookies are offered.” He can remember when MGM was plastered with immense signs for his “Grand Prix” and wishes that he had allowed himself to savor that moment of success. “Grand Prix,” his last commercially successful film, was 10 years ago.

“Black Sunday” seems assured of commercial success, though the critical opinion has been divided. Some critics were troubled by the fact that a serious world problem—terrorism—was being used for melodramatic purposes. However, most critics praised the technical aspects of the picture and Frankenheimer's direction.

In 1962, Frankenheimer directed “The Manchurian Candidate,” the only picture, he says wryly, “that went from being a failure to being a classic without ever having been a success.” In 1964, he directed “Seven Days in May,” one of the earliest of the‐plot‐to‐takeover‐the‐Government films, “My style of directing a suspense film hasn't changed,” he says. “I wanted the audience to look at ‘Black Sunday’ and think we found the picture, not made it. I wanted it to look like the 6 o'clock news, wanted it to look like Pontecorvo's ‘Battle of Algiers.’ Everything was staged. But the bombs looked like real bombs.”

Frankenheimer ran “The Battle of Algiers” for every important crew member at least three times. One of the most effective sequences in “Black Sunday.” the Israeli commando raid at the beginning of the film, is chillingly effective partly because the bombs set by the commandos go off within five seconds of being set. “The attention to detail is one of the most important things. Burt Lancaster had to really know how to build a birdcage for ‘Birdman of Alcatraz’ or the audience wouldn't believe his character. Bruce Dern had to know how to fly the Goodyear blimp for ‘Black Sunday.’ The handles he pulled, the way he used the wheel were absolutely the way it's done. He was really flying that blimp.”

Frankenheimer's verisimilitude extended to his choice of actors. “I couldn't allow ‘Black Sunday’ to have an unreal moment in it. I picked Robert Shaw for Kabakov because he's strong and because I didn't want an American actor putting on an Israeli accent. All the Israelis I know learned their English in England or from Englishmen. In ‘The Horseman’ I made the mistake of casting Leigh Taylor Young as an Afghan gypsy and no one believed it despite the fact that she looks like an Afghan gypsy. In ‘Seconds,’ I couldn't get anyone to believe Rock Hudson as an old man grabbing a second chance.”

Frankenheimer was equally careful not to cast an American actress as the Palestinian terrorist who is Shaw's adversary. “Any American actress would seem to be playing a role. But, because of the plot, I couldn't pick someone who looked obviously Arab.” His final choice was Marthe Keller.

Because the intelligent, capable adversaries in “Black Sunday” are, respectively, Palestinian and Israeli, the picture will undoubtedly be seen as a political melodrama. Both Frankenheimer and the picture's producer, Robert Evans, are quite obviously frightened by this, possibly because political pictures rarely do well at the box office. “It was Henry Kissinger who gave me the key on how to make the picture,” says Evans. “He told me, ‘You can't make it a political picture. You can't take sides. You can't make it anti or pro anyone.'”

“If I wanted to make a film about the Mideast crisis,” says Frankenheimer, “I wouldn't make this movie. It's no more a film about the Mideast crisis than it's a film about football. The author of the book, Tom Harris, was an AP reporter who sat down to write a best‐seller. This isn't a political movie. I've made a lot of political movies. For Bobby Kennedy. Their goal was to get Bobby Kennedy elected President of the United States. ‘Black Sunday’ is a film about terrorism.”

Despite the disclaimers and genuine efforts of Evans and Frankenheimer, the picture will appear to some moviegoers to be taking sides. The filmmakers have weeded out a great deal of the Arab‐Israeli conflict that was in the book and have added a scene in which Robert Shaw goes to an Arab ambassador for help (an at‐least‐weare‐both‐against‐terrorism scene). But the story's hero is David Kabakov, an Israeli agent who is bone‐tired from the 30 years he has spent killing, only to achieve “the same world, same wars, same enemies, same friends.” And there is one moving scene in which everything one needs to know about Kabakov comes through the few answers Robert Shaw gives to a nurse who is taking his life history. Although Frankenheimer “did not want to make an Israeli propaganda film” and although he thinks “there are two sides to the Mideast crisis,” the audience must inevitably root for the Jew against the Arab—however tragic her childhood—who is trying to blow up 80,000 Americans.

Evans and Frankenheimer—although they try not to show it—may be worried about something else. They are riding the tail‐end of a cycle. For the last few years theaters have been cluttered with every conceivable kind of natural or man‐made catastrophe including, most recently, a trainful of plague victims in “The Cassandra Crossing.” Most frightening of all, another picture about mass jeopardy in a football stadium, Universal's “Two‐Minute Warning,” was an unexpected failure at the box office. Evans took the gamble of allowing “TwoMinute Warning,” about a sniper at a professional football game, to be released first, although he could have rushed “Black Sunday” into the theaters at roughly the same time. “I didn't want to get into a spitting contest with them,” he says. “We don't have a formula film with lots of soap opera stories. We have a classy film.” In return, Universal agreed not to include in its movie any scenes inside a blimp. The Goodyear blimp, which is hired—in the movie as in reality—to take television pictures of sporting events, was the key to “Black Sunday.” “The whole cast of ‘Black Sunday’ cost me less than Dustin Hoffman did in ‘Marathon Man.’ “ says Evans. “Because the story was the star. The story and the blimp.”

Despite its success, the novel did not sell quickly to the movies because of the difficulties of trying to get the necessary permissions from Goodyear, the Super Bowl, the Orange Bowl, and the city of Miami. Richard Brooks almost bought it, says Evans, then decided that he would never be able to get all the permissions. Evan's purchase of the book and his choice of Frankenheimer as director were, he says now, “dumb luck.”

“I'd rather be lucky than smart,” Frankenheimer says. “If you're out of favor in Hollywood, you have to be very lucky to get back because you're not offered good things.” After five years of box‐office disasters (including “The Extraordinary Seaman,” which was cut by MGM and dumped onto TV, and “The Impossible Object,” a picture that was never even released), Frankenheimer was hardly offered anything. “I wanted to do ‘The Day of the Jackal.’ I was sitting in my Paris apartment looking through my window at the scenes where the picture would take place. The producer wouldn't even see me. I wanted ‘All the President's Men’ and lost it. I got ‘Black Sunday’ because Bob Evans liked ‘French Connection II.’ And I got ‘French Connection II’ for all the wrong reasons. Not because I was a good director but because I spoke French and they wanted to make the picture in France.”

Frankenheimer's luck in getting to direct ‘Black Sunday’ was equalled by Evans’ luck in choosing Frankenheimer. Frankenheimer had contacts with Goodyear that went back to 1967 and “Grand Prix.” When he went to Robert Lane of Goodyear, Lane said, “You're the only person I've ever worked with who was kept his word.” “Black Sunday” could have one of Goodyear's five blimps if Frankenheimer would agree to three things. The picture must make it clear that the pilot did not work for Goodyear. The final explosion of the blimp must not come out of the word “Goodyear.” And the blimp must not be used for gratuitous violence, such as people being churned up by its propellers. With permission secured from Goodyear, there remained only the Orange Bowl, the National Football League, and Miami. Joe Robbie, president of the Miami Dolphins, took a liking to Frankenheimer and executive producer Robert Rosen and eased their way. They were given permission to photograph the 1976 Super Bowl.

The Super Bowl was only the fourth and last of “Black Sunday's” natural highs. “We knew we had certain highs,” says Frankenheimer. “The commando raid, the test of the bomb, and the shootout in Miami. I couldn't afford to let any of those peak higher than the end of the film. You must save your best for last. In ‘The Horseman,’ I was guilty of giving the audience the best I had—that Bushkazi game played on horseback with the body of a dead goat—too early.” Frankenheimer did not intend to repeat his mistake. “Structuring a suspense movie is like writing a musical composition. As we approached the Super Bowl, the music got louder and the cutting quicker. There were 181 cuts in the threeminute sequence between the time the blimp entered the stadium and the end of the picture. Some of those cuts were only four frames—one‐sixth of a second. Subliminal cuts. I wanted the audience overwhelmed. I wanted them part of the crowd. I wanted them to feel a total sense of panic.”

All 181 cuts were planned and drawn on paper weeks before the scene was shot. “I draw out every shot in every action sequence,” says Frankenheimer, whose fanatic pre‐planning probably comes from his years in live television, where any accident meant chaos. Four cameras were used to photograph the climax of “Black Sunday.” Each camera operator had copies of production illustrator Nikita Knatz's drawings. “Each operator knew what his camera had to shoot and the lens to use and I stayed in radio contact with each camera. I even had a television monitor on the camera in the blimp. I don't want any accidental changes. I don't want anyone improving it.”

The shootout in Miami was equally pre‐planned, but the desired effect was different. “I wanted the unexpected. To me violence is very fast in life. I've been in a barroom fight where a guy is wiped out in 30 seconds. I wanted something to erupt on the screen used a long lens. I didn't want people to have time to react. I wanted it to be over before the audience and the people on the Miami streets realized what had happened.”

The scene was set up with cameras concealed in garbage cans, flowerpots, hotel windows, and parked cars. The actors walked it through several times, each accompanied by an assistant director with a walkie‐talkie so that Frankenheimer could transmit instructions. Then he let it erupt for the cameras. “I knew I would have to get it on Take I, like 95 percent of my action scenes. I knew I'd never be able to get that surprise again.” The only accident was a man who drove his car into the scene and then quite sensibly hid on the floor until the shooting was over. Since the car was prominently featured, the company had to pay an exhorbitant fee for the use of the car for the next three days in addition to driving the man daily to his job as a cook at McDonalds.

Yet the most difficult thing in the picture, Frankenheimer says, was neither the shootout in Miami nor the aerial battle over the Orange Bowl. “I knew I had to do a picture with three‐dimensional characters in the foreground and action in the background. But the author of the book simply overlooked the fact that Kabakov doesn't kill the girl when he has a chance to during the commando raid. There was no way to use words to explain his reason. I knew I had to do it with the camera. I had to make the audience see Robert Shaw thinking, ‘She's probably just a tramp and why one more killing?’ I realized I needed three close‐ups on each of them, each close‐up getting tighter and tighter. And I repeated those six closeups exactly at the end of the picture.” As to why he chose those exact closeups, he answers with a cooking metaphor. He is a master cook, having taken 18 months off from making movies seven years ago to study at the Cordon Bleu and apprentice himself to the chef, Michel Guerard. “How long did I cook that meat? Long enough.”

Frankenheimer sits in ills Malibu beach house 10 days before “Black Sunday” is scheduled to open in 487 theaters. Three years ago there were $100,000 worth of bills he couldn't pay, and he is “not quite out of debt yet.” The worst moment, the bottom moment, came in Marseilles in 1974, the morning after one of his continual fights with Gene Hackman, his star in “French Connection II.” He had finished breakfast when the concierge brought him Time magazine and he read the devastating review of his picture, “99 and 44/100 percent dead.” “Breakfast didn't stay down very long because I knew a copy had been delivered to Hackman and he was sitting in his room reading it.”

Frankenheimer expects no such humiliation with “Black Sunday.” “The Iceman Cometh,” which he directed for the American Film Theater in 1975, gave him back his confidence. “French Connection II” gave him back his credibility in Hollywood. Already preview audiences “have gone beserk” over “Black Sunday,” and he has been told “to expect rave reviews in Chicago, Denver, Boston, Minneapolis, New Orleans, Cleveland, and Los Angeles.” But he is still too insecure to taste the success in advance. “I've been there before. I've been a director for 23 years and I'll wait until people pay their $3 to see it.”

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT