Revolution Diary: What a Way to Go!
A bearded Paul Newman having the time of his life, playing a mad, pretentious artist, in What a Way to Go! Shirley MacLaine assists.
Reading Mark Harris’s amazing Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood, I’ve been struck by more than a few ideas — and I’m only in the seventh chapter. What strikes me most acutely is that film history is as complex and arresting as military history, with the relative advantage of (a) few to no casualties and (b) plenty of beautiful women. The hugely collaborative filmmaking process is so bewilderingly vulnerable to contingency that it is astonishing that any movie is actually completed.
Pictures at a Revolution tells the story behind the making of the five Best Picture nominees of 1968. The narrative begins in 1963 — with, among other details, Warren Beatty thinking about producing and starring in an adaptation of Charles Webb’s new novel, The Graduate. Yes, you read that correctly.
At the same time, producer Arthur P Jacobs was struggling to secure the rights to the Dr Doolittle books. When I read that his most recent production at that time, What a Way to Go!, featured Margaret Dumont — still at work in 1963! — I picked up the phone and had the video sent round at once. I expect that I’ll be seeing a number of pictures in this spontaneous manner as my reading continues.