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      This Movie Season, It’s a Black-and-White Boom

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      “Passing,” “The Tragedy of Macbeth” and “Belfast” are just a few of the movies that forgo color for a more classical approach.Do not adjust that dial. Over the coming months, whether you’re watching new films on a streaming service or at the multiplex, more than a few of those movies are likely to be in black and white.Films as varied as “The French Dispatch” and “Being the Ricardos” employ several black-and-white sequences, while “Passing,” “Belfast” and “The Tragedy of Macbeth” are shot almost entirely without color. These are all period movies that use the old-fashioned format to evoke a bygone era, but even “C’mon C’mon,” which takes place in contemporary times and has Joaquin Phoenix as a radio journalist crisscrossing the country with his nephew, was filmed in monochrome.Is this all a coincidence, or a natural next step after recent black-and-white stunners like “Roma” and “Cold War”? To understand why everyone is going grayscale, we talked to the cinematographers behind three of the season’s most striking black-and-white features.‘The Tragedy of Macbeth’Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand set against the film’s austere atmosphere.A24For his new spin on Shakespeare’s “Macbeth,” the director Joel Coen wanted to strip the play down to its barest essence. The result is a fast and ruthless reimagining leached of all color, shot not in wide-screen but in a claustrophobic 4:3 aspect ratio rarely used since the 1950s.“It’s meant to bring theatricality, and to lose temporality,” the cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel said. “It’s not about the 1700s, and it’s not about Scotland, either. We’re giving an abstraction, but a very creative one.”For Delbonnel, the creative limitations of black-and-white proved intoxicating. “I pushed the envelope even more,” Delbonnel said. “I said we shouldn’t have any furniture, and we pushed this very far: There is only one bed and a couple of tables, and there is no practical light.”All that austerity makes a striking visual impression, but Delbonnel said it was simply in service of the play’s language. The same creative rules applied to the actors Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand, who could tackle their roles as Shakespeare’s most fearsome power couple in the most unadorned fashion.As Delbonnel put it, “You say, ‘Denzel, this is the room. There is no place to sit because there is no chair. There is no glass, so you can’t drink. There is nothing you can do, so it’s all about your body language and the way you deliver the lines.’”Still, don’t get the wrong impression: Though this “Macbeth” was made in the spirit of minimalism, Delbonnel often brought in the boldest lights he could muster.“The whole movie is lit with theater light, like you’d see at a Beyoncé concert, which has very, very hard shadows,” he said. “In color, it would be unbearable, but in black-and-white, it looks amazing.”‘Passing’Negga, left, and Tessa Thompson are framed in a boxy aspect ratio for “Passing.”NetflixWhile he shot Rebecca Hall’s “Passing,” the cinematographer Eduard Grau was so committed to the film’s monochrome aesthetic that he took all the color off his iPhone, too..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-m80ywj header{margin-bottom:5px;}.css-m80ywj header h4{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:500;font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.5625rem;margin-bottom:0;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-m80ywj header h4{font-size:1.5625rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}“Even when I was taking photos, they would be in black and white,” Grau said. “You do things like that to see the world without color, to train your brain to forget about that green or pink wall and only look at the level of brightness or darkness.”Based on the 1929 novel by Nella Larsen, “Passing” is about two light-skinned Black women: Irene (Tessa Thompson), a well-respected but restless doctor’s wife, and Clare (Ruth Negga), her childhood friend who has been passing for white. A chance meeting in a hotel tearoom reunites the two after years spent apart, and Grau chose to flood that initial encounter with a striking amount of white light.“This is the brightest I’ve ever done a scene in my life,” Grau said. “You don’t see that a lot, especially in dramas, to have such a bright scene without a lot of detail in the whites. It also came from the fact that we didn’t want to clearly show to the audience at first whether our characters were white or Black or mixed race. Everything is so bright that it’s difficult to tell.”Like “The Tragedy of Macbeth,” “Passing” is filmed not just in black and white but also in a boxy aspect ratio that recalls some of Hollywood’s earliest feature films. (It may also remind the viewer how limited those movies were when it came to race, a thorny topic that the color scheme of “Passing” serves as a meta comment on.)Grau couldn’t have foreseen similarities with other current films when he made “Passing,” but he said he welcomed this winter’s bounty of black-and-white stories.“I think it is a coincidence, but this is also about love of film, and they are all true filmmakers,” Grau said. “It’s a strong starting point when a director chooses that, a good indication. Strong, powerful visions from directors make for good movies.”‘Belfast’The new film “Belfast” is about Buddy, played by Jude Hill, a young Irish boy coming of age in the turbulent 1960s.Rob Youngson / Focus FeaturesOver 15 years of shooting movies with the director Kenneth Branagh, the cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos has come to see color as both a blessing and a curse.“Color is so brilliantly descriptive in film, and even the color of someone’s eyes gives you so much information,” Zambarloukos said. “But I often find that when I’m making films with Ken, we’re trying to remove information for the audience and present them with what we want them to see.”Their new film, “Belfast,” about a young Irish boy coming of age in the turbulent 1960s, doesn’t eschew color entirely: It’s bookended by two color montages of modern-day Belfast, and whenever our young protagonist, Buddy, goes to the movies, the films he watches come to life in vivid color.But for the most part, whether Buddy is wooing a girl at school or trying to make sense of the conflict that grips his parents (Jamie Dornan and Caitriona Balfe), “Belfast” is shot in shimmering silvers.“In this case, I think we’re using a strength of black and white, which is not to tell you how a person or place looks but how they feel,” Zambarloukos said. “It has a transcendental quality to be of the past and the present. It’s realistic, but it has a certain magical sense to it as well.”Zambarloukos cut his teeth on the format while shooting Branagh’s long-delayed “Death on the Nile” (due in February), which opens with a 10-minute sequence in black and white. But now, after having filmed all those “Belfast” close-ups without color, he admits it will be hard to go back to reds, yellows and blues.“If I saw the same portrait of a person in color and in black and white, most of the time, I would tell more about that person from black-and-white,” Zambarloukos said. “It doesn’t create anything that isn’t there, but whatever is there is so amplified!” More

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      Paul Newman Will Tell His Own Story, 14 Years After His Death

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      Knopf plans to publish a book next year based on hours of recordings the movie star left behind, as well as interviews with family, friends and associates.Decades ago, the actor and philanthropist Paul Newman, frustrated by all the unauthorized biographies and coverage of his life, recorded his own oral history, leaving behind transcripts that for years were forgotten in the basement laundry room of his house in Connecticut.Now his family has decided to turn those transcripts into a memoir, which will be published by Knopf next fall.“What he recorded, and in essence what he wrote, was so honest and revealing,” said Peter Gethers, an editor-at-large at Knopf who will edit the book, which does not yet have a title. “It showed this extraordinary arc, a guy who was very, very flawed at the beginning of his life and as a young man, but who, as he got older, turned into the Paul Newman we want him to be.”Newman — known for his blue eyes and 50-year acting career in movies such as “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” “Hud” and “Cool Hand Luke” — died in 2008 at age 83.The book began more than 30 years ago as an oral history project put together by one of Newman’s closest friends, the screenwriter Stewart Stern. Stern, whose 1968 film “Rachel, Rachel,” was directed by Newman and starred his wife, Joanne Woodward, spent several years interviewing people from all corners of Newman’s life, including his children, his ex-wife Jacqueline Witte, close friends, and actors and directors who worked with him. This produced thousands of pages of transcripts and convinced Newman he should do his own version. Stern peppered him with questions, Gethers said, and they created recordings that are a mix of interview and Newman speaking without prompts..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}The recordings, completed about 10 years before his death, describe Newman’s early life, including his difficult relationship with his parents, as well as his troubles with drinking, his shortcomings as a husband in his first marriage, and his flaws as a parent. It is candid about his sorrow when his son, Scott, died of a drug and alcohol overdose at 28.One of several photos of Newman and his family that will appear in his forthcoming memoir.via KnopfThe book also delves into Newman’s insecurity in his younger years, exploring his jealousy of peers like James Dean and Marlon Brando when they were all working in Hollywood.“He said that his mother did not so much think of him as flesh and blood, but as a decoration,” Gethers said. “He says that if he was not a pretty child, she never would have paid attention to him at all. It’s a devastating thing to read, and clearly forms so much of his life and his insecurity about being an actor.”The memoir will also cover his marriage to Woodward, which Gethers called “remarkably loving, affectionate and sexy,” as well as his acting career and racecar driving.The book was purchased at auction this spring, Gethers said. It will be about 80 percent memoir, with the remaining part based on the recordings Stern made with people close to Newman. It will also include previously unreleased family photographs.The transcripts were given to Knopf, which was then charged with turning it into a book. (After the publisher bought it, more transcripts were found in a storage unit in Connecticut, in a banker’s box marked “PLN / HISTORY,” Gethers said.) Stern died in 2015, so Newman’s daughters are participating in the editing process, in essence as an author would, approving changes and drafts.Gethers himself is the author of 13 books and several screenplays, and has produced movies and television shows. He said that while wooing the Newman family during the bidding process, he told them that his father, a TV writer and producer, wrote one of Newman’s earliest starring roles in 1956 on a show called “Rag Jungle.” Gethers also mentioned that he had two cats named for Newman roles: Harper and Hud. More

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      ‘Isolation’ Review: Dispatches From a Different Pandemic

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      In an anthology of nine short films made during the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, people around the world fight to survive.Given that horror films tend to reflect our anxieties back at us, manifesting them into solid, solvable problems like zombie hordes or possessed houses, it makes sense that movie lovers have turned to the genre for comfort during the coronavirus pandemic. Filmmakers have likewise mined this moment for terrifying inspiration. Last summer Shudder released “Host,” a collaborative horror film made entirely over Zoom. Now “Isolation,” a collection of nine short horror films set all over the globe, offers stories of survival created under the limitations of quarantine. Though there are a few standout creations, the anthology is mostly muddled, privileging a heightened version of 2020 over a reality that was plenty scary on its own.In “Isolation,” each short is set in a specific city in a world upended by a mutating virus. Economies are crashing and food supply chains have halted, resulting in mass civil unrest. “Pacific Northwest,” directed by Bobby Roe, follows two children as they outrun murderous escaped convicts who have been inexplicably freed from a nearby facility. This hovering between real-world horror and tacked-on scares results in more confusion than it does poetry.For instance “The Dread,” directed by Dennie Gordon, artfully depicts a woman’s anxiety as her husband slowly dies in their bed — but the film ends with gunshots and explosions as unknown vigilantes ransack the Hollywood Hills. Two films about conspiracy theorists, “5G” and “It’s Inside,” only compound confusion. Without consistent information about this slightly different world, it’s impossible to tell if these characters are totally unhinged or if their paranoia is justified.The gimmick of this collection is its main draw. Seeing what the filmmakers have pulled off at the height of quarantine, with only at-hand resources at their disposal, is fascinating. Drone footage abounds; family members and friends play starring roles. Some films are meditative, while others go full-on slasher. But the bizarre 2020 that “Isolation” presents — exactly like ours, except when it’s not — is ultimately a hobbling distraction.IsolationNot rated. In English and German, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 44 minutes. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      Lawyer for ‘Rust’ Assistant Director Says Checking Gun Was Not His Job

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      The assistant director, Dave Halls, had previously told a detective that he should have more thoroughly checked the gun before Alec Baldwin handled it, according to an affidavit.A lawyer for the assistant director on the film “Rust” — who law-enforcement officials said had handed a gun to the actor Alec Baldwin before it discharged a live round that killed the cinematographer — said in an interview on Fox News Monday that it was “not his responsibility” to check the weapon.The assistant director, Dave Halls, had told a detective shortly after the fatal shooting that when the movie’s armorer had shown him the firearm to inspect its rounds, he “should have checked all of them, but didn’t,” according to an affidavit released by the sheriff’s office in Santa Fe County, N.M. According to another affidavit, Mr. Halls had called out “cold gun,” indicating that the gun did not contain any live rounds, and handed it to Mr. Baldwin.But Mr. Halls’s lawyer, Lisa Torraco, contended in an interview with Martha MacCallum on Fox News that the main responsibility for checking the gun was with the film’s armorer, claiming that it was “not the assistant director’s job.”“What I can tell you is that expecting an assistant director to check a firearm is like telling the assistant director to check the camera angle or telling the assistant director to check sound or lighting,” she said in the interview. “That’s not the assistant director’s job. If he chooses to check the firearm because he wants to make sure that everyone’s safe, he can do that, but that’s not his responsibility.”The film’s director, Joel Souza, who was wounded in the shooting, later told a detective that the firearms were checked by the film’s armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, and “then the firearm is checked by the assistant director Dave Halls, who then gives it to the actor using the firearm,” according to another affidavit released as part of a search warrant application.Larry Zanoff, a veteran armorer whose past films include “Django Unchained” and “Fantastic Four,” said it was common practice on a film set for the first assistant director to be one of the people responsible for inspecting guns on set, including checking to make sure a gun is empty before the armorer hands it to an actor.The shooting on the set of “Rust” killed Halyna Hutchins, an up-and-coming cinematographer.Since the shooting, public scrutiny has been largely focused on Mr. Halls and Ms. Gutierrez-Reed, because investigators reported that they handled the gun shortly before the incident. In an affidavit released by the sheriff’s department, a detective, Joel Cano, wrote that he learned that shortly before the shooting, Mr. Halls had picked the gun up from a gray cart that had been set up by Ms. Gutierrez-Reed and had taken it onto the set, where he handed it to Mr. Baldwin and yelled “cold gun.”.css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-m80ywj header{margin-bottom:5px;}.css-m80ywj header h4{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:500;font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.5625rem;margin-bottom:0;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-m80ywj header h4{font-size:1.5625rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Ms. Torraco disputed that chain of events in the Fox interview, saying, “This idea that my client grabbed the gun off of a prop cart and handed it to Mr. Baldwin absolutely did not happen.” Ms. Torraco said she has heard differing accounts from crew members on set.She did not directly give her client’s account. “My client went through something that was such a freak accident that he’s in shock,” Ms. Torraco said. “He’s having a hard time sorting out what happened.”Mr. Halls has not responded to several requests for comment; Ms. Torraco’s office declined to comment last week and has not responded to several requests for comment this week.Mr. Halls has been the subject of complaints on previous film productions. In 2019, Mr. Halls was fired from a movie, “Freedom’s Path,” after a gun discharged unexpectedly on set, causing a minor injury to a crew member, its production company said. Ms. Torraco did not respond to a question in the Fox interview about the previous complaints.No criminal charges have been announced in the case, but the district attorney overseeing it, Mary Carmack-Altwies, has said that her office has not ruled them out. As details have emerged around a series of errors on set that preceded the fatal shooting, how a live round got into the revolver that Mr. Baldwin handled remains unclear. More

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      The ‘Jaws’ Shoot Was a Drama. Now It’s a Play.

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      The hit movie’s set was plagued by malfunctioning sharks and drunken feuds — perfect material for a night at the theater.LONDON — When Ian Shaw was 5, he did something to make any movie fan jealous: He visited the set of “Jaws.” On location on Martha’s Vineyard, an assistant pulled back a huge sheet and young Shaw found himself staring into the gaping mouth of the man-eating shark that would soon become a cinematic icon.“I was terrified!” Shaw, now 51, recalled in a recent interview.Shaw was on set because his father, Robert Shaw, was starring in the movie as Quint, the psychotic shark hunter who, by the film’s end, has been bitten in two. Shaw said he visited many of his father’s sets, and the “Jaws” shoot seemed like any other. But what he didn’t know back then was that the shoot was one of movie history’s most notoriously dysfunctional, plagued by technical problems and cast feuds.The production’s three mechanical sharks kept breaking down, and shooting was often delayed: Steven Spielberg, the film’s director, took to calling the special effects team the “special defects department.” At one point, a boat they were filming on sunk, sending two cameras down to the sea floor. (The film inside the cameras turned out to be safe.)Shaw’s father — who died in 1978 — brought difficulties of his own to the production. He drank heavily during the shoot, and clashed with a co-star, Richard Dreyfuss. The elder Shaw repeatedly belittled and tried to humiliate Dreyfuss, making off-putting comments seconds before the cameras rolled, or goading Dreyfuss into performing silly stunts, like climbing a ship’s mast and jumping into the sea.Roy Scheider, the movie’s other star, was stuck between the feuding pair.In “The Shark Is Broken,” the three main characters are stuck together on a boat as tensions wax and wane. Helen MaybanksThe younger Shaw didn’t learn the full extent of the chaos on the set of “Jaws” until decades later, he said, but he realized that they had enough the drama for a play. Now he is winning rave reviews in Britain for “The Shark Is Broken,” a comedy three-hander running at the Ambassadors Theater in London’s West End through Jan. 15. In it, Shaw plays his father, stuck on a boat with Dreyfuss (Liam Murray Scott) and Scheider (Demetri Goritsas) as the tensions wax and wane.In a recent interview, Shaw talked about the difficulty of portraying his father’s darker side onstage, and whether conflict can spur creativity. These are edited extracts of that conversation.In the play, your father clearly dislikes “Jaws.” Did he ever take you to see the movie?I saw it when I was very young, in a screening room somewhere, and was absolutely terrified and couldn’t go in the swimming pool afterward. I remember having nightmares, imagining sharks around my bed and calling for my dad to come and save me. Even though I knew that in the film he got eaten, I was able to suspend my disbelief about that.From left: Roy Scheider as Martin Brody, Robert Shaw as Quint and Richard Dreyfuss as Matt Hooper in the film “Jaws.”Universal StudiosFrom left: Demetri Goritsas as Roy Scheider, Ian Shaw as Robert Shaw and Liam Murray Scott as Richard Dreyfuss in the play “The Shark Is Broken.”Helen MaybanksWhat made you come up with the idea to turn the movie’s problems into this play?I once had to grow a mustache for a part, and looked in the mirror and thought, “Oh, I look like Quint.” That’s what started it, but it seemed a very silly and foolish idea because I’d spent my whole career avoiding association with my dad.Then I read Carl Gottlieb’s “The Jaws Log,” and watched documentaries, and saw there was this really interesting relationship between Robert and Richard and Roy — this triangle which makes for great drama. And you only need three people, so it’s affordable!I toyed with the idea for years, because I felt it could be very embarrassing — potentially disrespectful to my dad and to the movie “Jaws,” which I love. To step into my dad’s shoes, and to paint him as an alcoholic — do I have the right to do that publicly?Did you know he was an alcoholic at the time? He died only a few years after making “Jaws” when you were still young.I did used to see him drink. I was often playing under the table in the Irish pubs when he would be having a session. But it didn’t seem a problem then. It actually seemed kind of normal.I feel that generation, especially the more working-class actors like Richard Burton, had a little discomfort with the profession in terms of putting on tights and makeup. So their way of asserting their masculinity was to be hard drinkers, the sort of Viking method of proving themselves.What made you get over your fear of disrespecting him?When I started writing the play with Joseph Nixon, we quickly saw it wasn’t just about “Jaws.” Joe’s father died very sadly, and it became a little bit more about fathers and sons, about addiction, about making movies in general. There were these other themes that meant it wasn’t just a stunt.The “Jaws” shoot used three mechanical sharks. They kept breaking down, delaying the production and ratcheting up tension on the set.Universal Studios, via Everett CollectionYou show your father continually antagonizing Dreyfuss, often seemingly just for fun. Why do you think he behaved like that?He really didn’t want to do “Jaws,” because, at the time, he was offered [the remake of] “Brief Encounter,” or was certainly in the running for it. He would have rather have done that, to break away from this macho image. He kind of felt handcuffed to “Jaws” to provide for his family.Then the shark’s not working, so they’re hanging around. And he liked to drink. But also Dreyfus genuinely did wind him up and so he thought he needed a bit of a slap down. He dared Dreyfuss to jump off the mast from the top of the ship, and I think he fired a fire hose in his face. There’s so many stories, and a lot of them are true.In the play, your father says he’s needling Dreyfuss to improve the movie. Their characters are meant to dislike each other. Did you consider that he might just have been trying to create a mood?Personally, I think it was both because he was annoyed with Richard, but also he did think it was getting some good work done between them. The acting is so good in the film, so it probably did help.You once auditioned for a role in a production Dreyfuss was directing. How did that go given his past with your father?He was directing “Hamlet,” and I went in and mentioned that I was Robert Shaw’s son and he looked, ironically, like Hamlet seeing his dead father. He just sat down and looked slightly ill. I was really taken aback at the time. I’d been expecting him to go, “Wonderful!” then give me a big hug. But he was very professional, because we obviously went through the audition.Did you get the part?No, I didn’t!“The Shark Is Broken” isn’t just about “Jaws,” Shaw said; it became “more about fathers and sons, about addiction, about making movies in general.”Lauren Fleishman for The New York TimesGiven that “Jaws” experienced so many problems, did you have any of your own making “The Shark Is Broken?”Not that I remember. When I had the first ideas on paper, I did wake up with cold sweats at three o’clock in the morning thinking, “This is really bad idea,” because I was really worried that I would offend my family. But in terms of the writing process, I really enjoyed it.Do you think “Jaws” would have been a better movie without the problems?No, because the problems meant they all hung around and developed it. It allowed them to improvise. “You’re gonna need a bigger boat” was a piece of improvisation from Steven Spielberg. And the delays allowed my father to rewrite the Indianapolis speech, which is a big moment. All sorts of things in it were devised while they were hanging around waiting.So disaster is a good recipe for creative success?Well, it can be. More

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      ‘Maybe I Do Have a Story to Tell’: Kal Penn on His Memoir

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      Starring in the buddy stoner comedy “Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle” is good material for a memoir. One might think that serving as a staffer in Barack Obama’s White House is good material for another memoir, by a different person. But the actor Kal Penn writes about both experiences in “You Can’t Be Serious,” which Gallery Books will publish on Tuesday.The book has attracted early attention for its most personal detail: Penn is gay, and engaged to Josh, his partner of 11 years. Their relationship is conveyed in one chapter that is mostly about their earliest dates, during which they seemed comically mismatched.Penn also writes about growing up in suburban New Jersey and fully catching the acting bug while performing in a middle-school staging of “The Wiz.” He is candid about his fight against the entertainment industry’s tendency to cast actors of color in stereotypical roles. And he recounts the “sabbatical” he took after establishing a Hollywood career to campaign for Obama and then serve in the public engagement arm of his administration.Below, Penn talks about finding the story he wanted to tell, the self-loathing he first felt while writing it and the filmmaker who inspired his career.When did you first get the idea to write this book?The first idea, which I rejected, came the day I left the White House. My manager called me. I describe him in the book as like every character from the TV show “Entourage” in one person. Heart of gold but also a lion..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}And he said, “You need to write a book. I’ll set you up with meetings.” I said, “Dan, what am I going to write a book about?” He said, “There aren’t many actors who have been in politics.” I said, “The governor is literally Arnold Schwarzenegger.” And the reason I took the sabbatical was not to write a book. I don’t like the optics of that and, more importantly, I don’t have a story to tell.Later I thought, maybe I do have a story to tell: I’d love to write a book for the 20-year-old version of me. There was never a book that said, “This is how you navigate the entertainment industry as a young man of color.” And I’ve met a lot of people who were told they’re crazy for having multiple passions. We’re in a society that just doesn’t encourage that kind of thing. So I thought maybe my experiences might make somebody smile or feel a little more connected, and I had a chance to put it together and write it during the pandemic.What’s the most surprising thing you learned while writing it?There was a point three months into writing it when I felt the kind of self-loathing that I haven’t felt since middle school. I texted a bunch of my writer friends, and they all either said, “Yeah, buddy, welcome to being an author,” or “Why do you think so many of us drink so much Scotch?” Just a sea of those types of responses.Up until that point, I’d written fiction, essentially scripts and characters. It’s very different when you’re creating a character or a plotline: That’s not you, you can take a break from it. With this process, it’s “Oh my God, there’s no escaping my own brain.” I was not prepared for it.In what way is the book you wrote different from the book you set out to write?I was sure that I wanted to share two stories: one about my parents and their upbringing; and the story of how Josh and I met. He showed up with an 18-pack of Coors and turned my TV from “SpongeBob” to NASCAR. I thought, “This guy’s leaving here in 40 minutes with 16 beers.” So the fact that we’re together 11 years later is funny because so many people have stories of dates that went awry but now they’re married and have kids.In the book’s outline, there was no ending. I always struggled with that. I thought there was going to have to be some kind of a positive wrap-up, a story of triumph after years of typecasting and racism. And then “Sunnyside” happened. I sold this show after I had already started writing the book. There’s a chapter I write about how it’s truly my dream show: a big network [NBC], a diverse, patriotic comedy that would hopefully bring people together and make them laugh.And then it slowly unraveled. With everything else in the book, I have the perspective of time. This was still raw. I ended up putting it as the last real chapter because it’s a perfect example of how much has changed and how much has yet to change.We often think of goals as: Everything has now been fixed, so end of story. In reality, everything is a constant mess of back and forth.What creative person who isn’t a writer has influenced you and your work?I always say Mira Nair, and I would have said this years ago, before this book was ever on the table. Her second film, “Mississippi Masala,” came out when I was in eighth grade. It was the first time I’d seen South Asian characters onscreen that weren’t stereotypes or cartoon characters.They were deeply flawed, deeply interesting humans. They make love, they have financial problems. And that happened around the time “The Wiz” happened, so she was one of the people who inspired me to pursue a career in the arts.So when I got a chance to work with her on “The Namesake,” it meant a lot to me. And “The Namesake,” the novel — Jhumpa Lahiri’s writing was introduced to me by John Cho, from “Harold & Kumar.” All of those influences intersecting are very meaningful to me.Persuade someone to read “You Can’t Be Serious” in 50 words or fewer.If you want to feel like you’re having a beer with somebody who smoked weed with a fake president and served a real one, whose grandparents marched with Gandhi and whose parents certainly didn’t move to America for him to slide off a naked woman’s back in his first film. More

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      Talking About ‘Attica,’ the Newest Documentary on the Prison Uprising

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      Fifty years after the fact, the filmmakers Stanley Nelson and Traci A. Curry reflect on the bloody standoff and what it accomplished.On Sept. 9, 1971, hundreds of inmates took over the Attica Correctional Facility near Buffalo to demand better conditions. “Attica,” a new documentary directed by Stanley Nelson and co-directed by Traci A. Curry, recounts the occupation and the massacre that followed on Sept. 13 when armed law enforcement officers stormed the prison and 39 inmates and hostages were killed under sustained police gunfire and tear-gassing.Holding more than 40 prison staff members hostage, the inmates set up tents and latrines and allowed journalists to enter as crowds massed outside the walls. The prisoners’ grievances ranged from violence and overcrowding to political rights abuses and insufficient toilet paper (one roll a month, according to a report in The New York Times). In negotiations with the prisoners, Russell Oswald, the state’s commissioner of corrections, had reportedly agreed to nearly all their demands, but after the death of a hostage, Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller, in consultation with President Richard M. Nixon, ordered state troopers to take over the prison. For the anniversary, Nelson and Curry dug deep, speaking to former prisoners and figures who had been on the scene, such as the TV journalist John Johnson and the negotiation intermediary Herman Schwartz, a law professor. (Former guards had initially agreed to participate, Curry said, but later declined.) Curry, Nelson and I spoke by phone about recapturing the lived reality of Attica and its enduring importance. These are edited excerpts from those conversations.What does your documentary show us about Attica?STANLEY NELSON Attica is the largest prison rebellion in the history of the United States. The big thing is that the prisoners held over 30 guards as hostages, and invited in TV cameras and reporters. And if you let camera-people loose, they just film! There’s a fantastic moment where the prisoners say that they’ve been watching [Russell] Oswald, the commissioner of prisons, say something different to reporters outside the gates from what they negotiated inside.In addition, the New York State Police were videotaping on very early video cameras, Portapaks. They were up on the prison towers shooting through the cross hairs of a rifle scope, using it as a Telephoto lens. They left the mic open, so you can hear them talking about the prisoners and what’s going on.What shocked you most about the events?NELSON The whole thing was shocking but it’s the overt racism that is so evident, from the guards and law enforcement yelling “White power!” to the state police, who are talking about the “ugliest, blackest Negro gentleman” they’ve ever seen, to Richard Nixon on the phone with Rockefeller, and his first question is “Is it the Blacks?”And one thing that’s never talked about is why the prisoners rebelled. It’s almost like we as nonprisoners feel, well, of course they’re mad — they’re in jail. But the prisoners had specific reasons. They went from small mistreatments to complete brutalization and beatings. The prisoners had 30 demands, and the prison system had agreed to 28 of them. They were close!TRACI A. CURRY I think the most shocking was what happened on the day of the retaking: the wanton violence and the brutality, and the fact that it continued long after the prison was secured and there was no legitimate reason to think that these people were a threat anymore.What was it like talking to former prisoners and family members of guards?NELSON Traci Curry did the interviews. The ex-prisoners were so vivid and their memories were so intact. And we always knew that we wanted to talk to the family members of guards, because so many of the families were also devastated by what happened. Their loved ones were killed or in some cases emotionally destroyed.CURRY Even 50 years later, the memories and the emotions were just beneath the surface, whether it was rage, sadness, or disbelief. I saw my job as creating the safest space possible for them to tell their story in their words. There’s no voice of God “Morgan Freeman” that comes in to fill in the blanks.How does the movie resonate with today’s issues of racial justice?NELSON It’s law and order carried to its extreme, and I think it’s the start of a whole different turn in American history. You can’t see the film without thinking about where we are today. There’s over 2 million people incarcerated. The headline in The New York Times today is about Rikers Island. And part of the unspoken truth in the film is that we want to put people in jail and forget about them.CURRY I’m sitting in my apartment where I made most of this film, and there were days where there were George Floyd protests moving outside my window and I saw police officers descend upon protesters. I think we all saw the way that people in prisons were treated at the peak of the pandemic. We all saw the former president attack protesters outside of the White House and then use that attack as a political opportunity. Those parallels were so resonant for me, and it crystallized for me that this is a story about what happens when people challenge the state’s abuse of its power.What was it like filming at Attica?CURRY There’s a lot of emotions around how people there want to frame this narrative. I spent weeks getting all of the necessary permissions from the Corrections Department of New York State to film. But once we got up there, it was a very different thing. We had a couple of encounters with law enforcement. We were stopped and told that we were reported as a suspicious vehicle. I had an angry resident screaming at me in my face calling me a liar. It was a very intense period. More

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      James Ivory, Famous for Buttoned-Up Films, Is Frank About Sex and Much Else in His Memoir

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      The movie director James Ivory is most closely associated with decorous period pieces, paeans to inhibition like “Howards End” and “The Remains of the Day,” so I wasn’t expecting his memoirs to be quite such a “Remembrance of Penises Past.”At young Jim’s elementary school in Klamath Falls, Ore., after formative comparisons at the urinals, he watched a playmate stick his “cherubic (and uncircumcised) member” in the hillside dirt to demonstrate adult sexual congress. In high school, he encountered “a dangling pink foreskin that I still recall, shaped like the ones on ancient marble statues illustrated in our copy of Will Durant’s ‘The Life of Greece,’” and heatedly observed the private parts of identical-twin male cheerleaders, Ted and Fred, turning “a deep purple” in a tanning booth at the gym. Granted a closer look at Ted’s “heavy, charged-looking” equipment, of the “garden-hose variety,” he felt his “mouth go dry” and his “hands shake.” Furtive orgasms began to abound.Though Ivory was a 118-pound teenage weakling uninterested in athletics, an approving steam-room glance from his father, who ran a lumber company, assured the son that his own endowment (cut, a distinction of some socioeconomic preoccupation) was more than adequate. By film school, at the University of Southern California, Ivory was assessing with a connoisseur’s air a pal’s “very shapely American frat-boy” arousal, “to my eye the best of the national norm.” How did the English travel writer Bruce Chatwin, a later lover, rate? “Uncut, rosy, schoolboy-looking,” like notes on a fine wine.Born Richard Jerome Hazen and renamed as an infant by his adoptive parents, Ivory is now 93. There is a wistful defiance to his sexual frankness as a Protestant gay man who came of age in an era of intense repression, as well as the Depression (his mother regularly fed “tramps,” he writes, on the family’s back porch). Throughout his career he felt compelled to underplay the most important romantic relationship of his life: the one with his gregarious producing partner, Ismail Merchant, a Muslim from Mumbai whom he met on the steps of the Indian consulate in New York. Why isn’t there a plaque commemorating this, wonders Ivory, the recipient of several Oscars, most recently for the screenplay of “Call Me by Your Name.” Despite his laurels, Ivory nonetheless seems to have a chip on his shoulder about reductive assessments of the couple’s variegated oeuvre, like the oft-repeated scoff that they came from the “Laura Ashley school of filmmaking.” (All critics are a “lesser form of life,” he once declared at a luncheon party.)James Ivory, seated, with Ismail Merchant and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, in 1995.Everett/ShutterstockMerchant and Ivory, normally working with the writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, were one of the most dominant cinematic forces of the late 20th century, rolling out luxuriously appointed adaptations of E.M. Forster and Henry James novels, with the occasional more contemporary anomaly like Tama Janowitz’s “Slaves of New York.” Merchant died in 2005; Jhabvala in 2013. After decades conjuring the Anglo-American aristocracy clinking cups in gardens and drawing rooms, Ivory, the survivor, is ready to spill the tea.He spills it not in the typical big autobiographical splash but in dribs and drabs: letters, diary entries, tumbling sense-memories of fashion, food and furniture (and the other F-word), with scores of appealingly casual photographs sprinkled throughout. An established master of the slow reveal, Ivory serves gossip with a voile overlay. Contrasting with the homages to men that got away, “argyle sweater, erections and all,” are the chapters devoted to Difficult Women like the bombshell actress Raquel Welch, who had the temerity to resist a forceful lovemaking scene; the politically active and litigious Vanessa Redgrave; and the intellectual Jhabvala, whom Ivory saw as a civilizing “preceptor” but never forgave for dissing Merchant-Ivory’s adaptation of Forster’s homosexually themed novel “Maurice.” It also seems to irk the author that Jhabvala (a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany and mother of three) didn’t do housework — “Ruth never lifted a finger, except to her typewriter” — which, excuse me, but: goals.I kept thinking that “Solid Ivory,” which was edited by the novelist Peter Cameron, amounts to more of a scrapbook of finely wrought prose sketches than the fully carved self-sculpture suggested by its title, whose touching origin story I won’t spoil. Then, after a little night Googling, I discovered that the bulk of the material was originally published — bound in antique silk, naturally — by Cameron’s private press, Shrinking Violet. About a quarter of the material also previously appeared in various publications, from Sight and Sound magazine to a Christie’s catalog.It’s all very effectively spliced together here, but with occasional lapses in continuity, as they say in the movie biz — like a journal entry about The New Yorker writer Lillian Ross that fails to footnote her death, in 2017, as if she is still filing “Talk of the Town” pieces from heaven (honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised). Ivory’s account of hanging out with Ross at her son’s christening is one of the more enjoyably chaotic in the book, with cameos by a cranky J.D. Salinger, that annoying friend who refuses to pose for pictures commemorating the occasion, and William Shawn, the famously subdued editor and Ross’s longtime lover, who convulsed with sobs during the ceremony.We are admitted into the elegant homes of Stephen Tennant, the tarnished Bright Young Thing who was an early proponent of working from bed (“like some outlandish work of art that you cannot put anywhere,” Ivory describes him, “but which has its own terrible integrity”); of George Cukor, an early mentor from the Golden Age of Hollywood; and of the itinerant Ivory himself. “What the hell is Susan Sontag doing in my bedroom?” he forehead-smacks in Paris one night, watching her leaf with presumed judgment through his night-stand reading after a dinner party. And at his Claverack, N.Y., manor, a uniquely Merchant-Ivory storage problem: “Does anyone need a gondola?”This book does tend to skirt over or even coldly aestheticize unpleasant truths, like the “half-burned bits of bodies” floating past a film crew in the river Ganges; or the fact that Chatwin died of AIDS, not specified here; or even a chauffeur’s offer of a handshake refused by the vestigial “nobles” with whom Ivory, blackballed by college fraternities, found himself consorting after his success. I can’t quite work out his position on snobbery, and I don’t think he has either. But I now look at the famous scene in “A Room With a View” that so embarrassed me as a young teen, naked men splashing full-frontally at a swimming hole, in a new and dappling light. More