Word: celluloids
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...Hollywood's heyday the films were only celluloid, but the cinemas that showed them were marbled citadels of fantasy and opulence. From coast to coast, Paramounts and Paradises, Orpheums and Roxys enfolded audiences in some of the most exuberantly romantic architecture ever conceived in the U.S. As Cinemogul Marcus Loew insisted, "We sell tickets to theaters, not movies." Indeed, from their razzle-dazzle marquees to their wondrous Wurlitzers, from soaring, Sistine ceilings to ankle-deep carpeting, the great old houses were themselves worth the price of admission...
...could be almost any Ivy-league school, possibly almost any college. The year is 1973, but the subject matter of this film is as important as it ever was. If we ignore hair length and style of clothing, we could easily believe that this 53 minutes of celluloid just left the darkroom today after being shot yesterday...
...some producers and editors have begun to run the film backward, a process similar to watching spawn swim downstream to salmon. An idea is "developed" by film executives, a writer is recruited to amplify the notion into a novel, and then the book is converted to celluloid. The trend has become widespread: Simon & Schuster Editor David Obst recently moved his offices to Hollywood, and Bantam Books has established a film-production company in Los Angeles. Its acquisitions editor Charles Bloch regards the cinema-literary process as "a sophisticated methodology of people who have an interest in both books and movies...
...course it all takes patience, years of it--days of drawing the same tiny figures on the same background until the artist gives up and changes his mise-en-scene with the flick of his Bic. It is almost incomprehensible how many thousands of drawings must be transferred to celluloid for one short animated film. Michaelangelo might have preferred to paint the ceiling of Madison Square Garden rather than make an animated short...
Contrary to cliché, Hollywood does not manufacture dreams; it preserves them in strips of celluloid that promise eternal life. Hollywood embalms desire. Hollywood is a necropolis lined with deities made to appear more beautiful and menacing than they really are. Hollywood, In short, is a good read, even when encountered in Moviola, an overwrought, eulogistic novel about the film business. The book is a greenhorn-to-mogul saga with cameo performances by great stars of the distant and recent past. There is even a bit part for Thomas Alva Edison, without whose inventive genius...