Undervalued Silver: A Filmmaker Discusses Her Career and Supports a Vital 35mm-Centric Series

Manhattan's IFC Center finds itself in the deep end of a glorious celebration of cellulose-based cinema, cryptically entitled Celluloid Dreams. The connection puzzles.

Tonight they host King Vidor's seminal silent masterwork THE CROWD, selected and hosted by critic/historian/author Farran Smith Nehme. Last month IFC hosted a 35mm screening of a 70's cult classic, Joan Micklin Silver's CHILLY SCENES OF WINTER, which found itself accompanied not only by the filmmaker herself, but also star Mary Beth Hurt and producer/cameo-thief Griffin Dunne. A partial transcript follows:

Moderator: I'd like to talk about the book, how you discovered it. You both (Silver and Dunne) had come to it separately, is that correct?

Silver: Yes, I'd read the book and thought, "This is my next movie". I'd already made two, and in the second I'd worked with John Heard. So not only did I love the book but I had the perfect actor for it. I tried to get the rights and found out that Griffin & Amy Robinson & Mark Metcalf (who'd played Ox in the film), these three young actors had the rights to the book.

Dunne: Out-of-work actors.

Silver: So we met and they insisted John Heard had to play the lead. So we had a great relationship from the start.

Dunne: Amy, Mark and I were all struggling actors. We optioned the book using Mark's money. He'd just played Niedermeyer in ANIMAL HOUSE. He was the only guy we knew who'd actually gotten a job. We developed the project, and I got it to Claire Townsend at Fox. I mean, we didn't know what we were doing, but it was all sort of effortless. Claire got it to Joan, and the script just sort of flowed out of her.

Silver: Because of you three (Dunne, Robinson, Metcalf), I didn't need a casting director. They knew all the actors who'd be right for the characters. One of the most fun things was casting Gloria Grahame. At that time Million Dollar Movie (the then WWOR's classic film program) used to show the same classic film back-to-back on weeknights. They aired one of her films. We all saw it, and the next day we all said, "It's gotta be her. That's the mother!"

Moderator: Was there a lot of competition for the book? Ann Beattie was becoming a big literary star at the time.

Dunne: We heard she was teaching at Harvard. The three of us got into a car and drove to Cambridge. We called her, she was listed, and she let us come up to talk. I don't know why she let these three strangers into her home. We told her we wanted the rights to the book. She made some drinks, we drank a lot. She said, "I'll let you have the rights if I can be in the movie, in a beehive hairdo, playing a waitress." And that's her in the film, in the diner scene. She had this big-time lit agent who'd handled, y'know, like Faulkner and Hemingway. She was kinda looped and called him up and said, "I'm gonna let these kids option my book for a thousand bucks!" You could hear him yelling through the reciever across the room!

But she stuck to our agreement. We've remained great friends since.

Silver: I want to say something about Ann: she was remarkable. After the film wrapped we agreed to speak in Baltimore to a group of the book's devotees. They wanted to compare the novel and film versions. Someone complained about the some of the changes and additions I'd made in the script. They asked her how she felt about them. She responded, "I'm fine with them, I just wish I'd thought of them, I'd've put them in the book."

Moderator: I'd like to get into the film's somewhat abnormal yet ultimately triumphant history. For those that don't know it was initially released under a different title in 1979. Which we need not speak.

Dunne: HEAD OVER HEELS.

Hurt: Remember the discussions they had over what the title should be? Because we were told a movie that had the word "Chilly" in the title wouldn't sell?

Dunne: And "Winter"!

Silver: The real truth was they didn't like the movie. So even after we relented and allowed the title change they dumped it into general release with no fanfare. I think it played at the bottom of a double feature. They just didn't like it. They didn't respond to it. You'd think since they put all this money into making it they'd try to get something back out of it. They didn't. They just wanted to get rid of it. And I thought that was that.

About two years later, though, the studio, United Artists, started up a Classics Division.

Dunne: Ira Deutchman, right? Who's sitting right there? (Points to Mr. Deutchman)

Silver: Stand up, Ira!

Mister Deutchman stands, and the audience applauds him.

Silver: He called and said, firstly, we had to change the title back to CHILLY SCENES OF WINTER, and that made us happy. The second thing, by that time, I wanted to change the ending. (Spoilers ahead) In the original cut Laura does come back after the entire ordeal, somehow she comes back to Charles. She comes to his home and it ends on a happy scene. But I'd screened the film a number of times and since had realized the natural conclusion was not having her come back, it's him getting over his obsession. Once we lost that scene the film felt stronger, more solid.

Moderator: The movie had developed a cult following in the meantime, it was three years between release and re-release. It's almost unheard of for a film to be re-released such a short time later, with an ending less happy than initially planned. Yet it was successful the second time around.

Silver: Well, it's a romantic comedy at its core, but it does travel the darker routes of romance. I think that's what built its cult and what audiences responded to the second time around.

Moderator: Joan, I'd like to talk about some of the unique challenges you faced up to this point in your career. Looking at the history of women in film, the number of women who directed studio-released films in the 70's , you can count them on one hand. It's really depressing. Basically there's Elaine May and you.

Silver: I have to quote my favorite person. I tried desperately to get work, I had made several educational films for schools. I could get work as a writer but not as a director. I finally got a meeting with a top studio exec, and he said to me, "Look, feature films are expensive to make and expensive to market. Women directors are one more problem we don't need."

I couldn't believe anyone would actually say that out loud to me. I got really depressed and really lost hope. My husband was in real estate, and he got very angry about my situation, which is always a more productive emotion than depression. He provided me with a number, and said if I could make a film for that amount he'd finance it. So I made HESTER STREET.

Then we couldn't find a distributor. I'd gotten to know John Cassavetes around that time, and he said, "Well, you should distribute the film!" I knew about movies, but I knew next to nothing about film distribution. He recommended some people he'd relied on for his own independent work. We met and we made a deal. And from there it went. It was like a miracle.

King Vidor's THE CROWD screen tnight at IFC Center as part of the Celluloid Dreams series. Joan Micklin Silver's body of work isn't readily available*, but treasure is worth expedition. Seek it out.

For more info on these and all NYC's classic film screenings in December '14 click on the interactive calendar on the upper right hand side of the page. For the monthly overview and other audio tomfoolery check out the podcast, and follow me on SoundCloud! For reviews of contemporary cinema and my streaming habits (keep it clean!) check out my Letterboxd page. And be sure to follow me on both Facebook, where I provide further info and esoterica on the rep film circuit and star birthdays, and Twitter, where I provide a daily feed for the day's screenings and other blathery. Back tomorrow with a brand new Pick, til then safe, sound, make sure the next knucklehead is too!

JoeW@NitrateStock.net

P. S. We're fully entwined in winter's embrace, and believe it or not some of our fellow NY'ers have still yet to be made whole in the wake of the 2012 storm. Should you be feeling charitable please visit the folks at OccupySandy.net, follow their hammer-in-hand efforts to restore people's lives, and donate/volunteer if you have the inclination and availability. Be a collective mensch, Stockahz!

*Joan Micklin Silver's HESTER STREET is readily watchable on HULU, and will be presented in its initial BluRay iteration this coming this March, courtesy Kino-Lorber. Shame on ye should you skip this flick.