Making Movies

Hey, it’s one of them paper thingies. Like a script, but without stage directions, and written entirely in prose.

Seeing as Making Movies is considered one of the holy texts of the film world (and I had it on loan temporarily), I managed to burn through this over a couple sittings. I had originally been holding off until I had seen more of Lumet’s work (Dog Day Afternoon and 12 Angry Men being the only two I recall watching with any clarity), but turns out that shouldn’t be a barrier to entry. True to its reputation, the value of Making Movies is pretty universal to any film fan, as it offers an insider’s perspective on the day-in, day-out, honest-to-god work that’s required to make movies.

Or, was, anyway. Released in ’95, a fair few years removed from Lumet’s best work, the industry has changed quite a bit since. The word “digital” pops up occasionally like someone in Game of Thrones hearing rumors of a dragon overseas, so what of Lumet’s experience still practically applies to today’s Hollywood is a bit of a mystery. Despite opening the book by stating it will not be a laundry-airing tell-all, Lumet is just as engaged talking about stars and industry people as he is craft. He sounds pained to ever say a bad word about anyone, even when not naming them, and his constant stream of praise, be it for actors like Pacino, or tireless studio bigwigs like Margaret Booth, is endearing.

Making Movies is a vital text for film lovers not just for how effectively Lumet takes you through every stage of the filmmaking process -helpfully defining jargon where necessary and using his own films as examples regularly-, but for how clearly it makes you understand the effort and passion required to make even bad movies. Audiences, myself included, often take for granted the sheer number of hands and hours that go into developing even the most minor details of a production (following a difficult and limited location shoot, Lumet describing his lighting coordinator discovering a bad setup while watching rushes for The Wiz is almost heartbreaking).

Perhaps it’s that digital beast that’s made it easier for us to slip into cynicism about moviemaking more readily, seeing as everything these days increasingly feels like it was made on a computer. There’s romanticism for “the good old days” about the book, some problematic elements of which Lumet himself readily acknowledges. His superlatives are never more exhausted than when talking about Spielberg, whose Schindler’s List is frequently cited as the best work to come out of the (then) modern era. In that respect, I’d like to see Spielberg write his own Making Movies at some point, and have him share his experience with modern Hollywood the way Lumet has for middle age Hollywood. Overall, Making Movies makes for a brief but enlightening tour behind the scenes as led by one of the greats of a bygone era.