Hal Ashby’s Harold and Maude (1971)

The first time I saw Harold & Maude was a film editing class. My teacher told me that this film represents everything you need to know about life, death, and everything in between. >

At first glance, Harold & Maude's premise sounds more disturbing than enjoyable. Harold, played by Bud Cort (The Life Aquatic of Steve Zissou), is a young teenager obsessed with death. He commits fake suicides that look surprisingly real. When asked by a psychiatrist about how many he's committed he replies "A rough estimate? I'd say about fifteen." He also attends funerals where he has no business being and drives a hearse. We never really are given any straight answer about why Harold finds himself intrigued with death, but we can guess. He lives alone with his commanding mother, who shoves off his suicides with little care.

But when he meets Maude, played by Ruth Gordon (Rosemary's Baby), at a funeral, he and the audience learn the real celebration of life. Maude, a woman who’s "seventy-nine years young," lives each day to the fullest. She has no respect for any authority as she has almost in a way given up on life. In one scene, she completely abuses a cop in a hilarious way.

It's these ideas of life and death and how similar they end up being. By the end of the film, we have celebrated death, celebrated life, and once again celebrated death.

Many people list Harold & Maude as a classic 70s film. With its hip and spunky characters, great music, and 70s look, the film kind of sits as one of those classic 70s cult films that are hard to ignore. Others compare it to Wes Anderson films (He has called it his favorite film before) as it easily compares to the feel, both narratively and visually, of Bottle Rocket and Rushmore.

In the end Harold & Maude is just a wonderful story about issues teenagers face. Do we want to choose life? Or does our interest in death create a more compelling situation? The questions are up to you to answer.

Peter Labuza
Film Club

An Evening with Coleman Miller

USO JUSTO
An Artist's Statement

Throughout my filmmaking career I have made a conscious effort to remind the audience they are watching a film. Uso Justo came about from an almost ridiculous idea I had to make a “foreign film”. After viewing an old 1950’s Mexican dramatic film I realized there was gold in this footage that had to be mined. I started with virtually no story and simply wrote new subtitles for my own entertainment. My only objectives were to make it smart, incongruous and funny.

It was while working on a separate project, 27 Short Videos About Film, that Uso Justo began to develop. I was constructing a series of short chapters all interrelated by the filmmaker’s quirky takes on working in video and film and how the two affected each other. After editing some of the Mexican narrative scenes into this longer piece I realized that Uso Justo began to standalone. It was stronger and more to the point of what was on my mind at the time - which was showing a film that is keenly aware of itself. I wanted to make people laugh at the same time they were getting thrown concepts from left of center. For instance, the film dicks telling two characters early on in the film, “Well you better start telling a story quick or we’ll be back.” This is a direct result of my desire to develop my narrative storytelling after years of purely visual filmmaking. I enjoyed revealing the film's intents and processes, and therefore my own, to the audience.

Later in Uso Justo, the doctor takes the nurse into an experimental film world – this section is a good example of many of the films I produced while working as a film printer in San Francisco in the 1990’s. Many of the elements used in that particular section are taken directly from some of those films, in particular Step Off A Ten Foot Platform With Your Clothes On (1990). At that time I was turning film around on itself in a purely visual way – showing the sprocketholes, edge numbers, dirt and frame lines, etc. Attempting to reveal the film through narrative dialogue, for me, is a natural progression. Also, using my own work within my work is self referential, and a parody of myself and others in the experimental genre.

I was deeply inspired by Bruce Conner and in particular his short film Take the 5:10 To Dreamland. His use of found footage from various educational films along with his editing style of using black in between these seemingly unrelated shots was deeply inspiring to me. At the time I was shooting a lot on super 8 and blowing it up to 16mm. I was using sound in a very contrapuntal way. Examples are the sounds of children playing over shots of a car driving too fast down the road and cricket sounds over the shot of an empty rocking chair rocking.

I have found that I use whatever tools are given me. While working as a printer in a film lab in San Francisco I was able to use equipment most filmmakers didn’t even know existed. Use of a continuous contact printer, which I used every day (and on weekends I was given carte blanche to use them as I saw fit.) was particularly inspiring. The film lab turned into a ten-year experimentation fest. I was able to invent many new printing techniques, which I continue to build on today. By manipulating found footage I was able to create a body of work which turned the medium of film back around on itself.

Since leaving the lab I have had to find new tools. Fortunately, I have found these tools are everywhere. I love finding ways to use ‘non-film’ tools to make film. While working as a temp I used a microfiche printer to make animation pieces. Xerox machines, I found, could print directly onto film for beautiful results. Currently, my tools lie in the digital realm, but I still think of non-traditional methods to produce films by manipulating these tools. History is not forgotten, though, as found footage, sprocketholes, edge #’s, and framelines continually appear and reveal themselves freely in my work to this day. In this way my art thrives on the unexpected. The joy in the discovery for me is as important as the finished product.

Coleman Miller
Film-maker. Director. Writer. Producer. Editor.

Hettie Macdonald's Beautiful Thing (1996)

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