Mouse Around the World

October 29, 2020

1973, directed by Herbert Ross

Now, we are in full lockdown mode, and I can’t even leave my building. Luckily I lived in one of the tallest buildings in Lisbon, and we had a great view from the rooftop terrace. This was also around the time that I stopped editing these movies in iMovie on my iPad and switched to using Movavi on my Windows laptop. It allowed me a lot more precise control over crossfades and sound editing, but you can still see some errors (like my cutting off Leslie Bricusse’s last name). The Rainier Club was also closed for most of this season, so everything was done over Zoom.

1942, directed by Preston Sturges

Ah, the Covid season! I recorded this after the first lockdown, when things were starting to open back up, and I had a grand plan to film each of my intros in a different historic location around the city of Lisbon. I started with the Gulbenkian Museum, where I arrived at opening to have the place mostly to myself and try to film some (completely unauthorized) footage for a “tour” of the museum. This was the original plan for this season: spend five minutes talking about something historic, and 5 minutes talking about the movie. Sadly, the next (much longer) set of lockdowns put an end to that.

2014, directed by Damien Chazelle

I remember that I was a little worried about showing this film. Most of my movie selections were family-friendly and relatively upbeat. This was the first R-rated movie I screened for The Rainier Club, which I why I added some warnings to the end of the intro. Once again, Derek is serving as cameraman, and once again, I’m using my iPhone microphone to record the sound (trying not to have too much wind on the track). As far as I know, people enjoyed the film. I enjoyed getting to show a clip of the infamous Oscars “wrong envelope” debacle.

1992, directed by Nick Broomfield

This was the first intro I filmed in Lisbon, near where we used to live in the Parque das Naçoes area of town, which was built for the 1998 World’s Fair. For this video, I had a little fun with the audience by starting out with a Cookie Monster sketch from “Sesame Street.” Spalding Gray is one of the greatest storytellers who ever lived. I remember that I had tickets to see him at the Moore Theater in Seattle, but the show was canceled at the last minute and never rescheduled. Only later did I learn that this was due to the about the near-fatal car crash that was the beginning of the end of his life. Sadly, I never got to see him perform live.

1949, directed by Carol Reed

This was my first time filming an intro in Porto. We weren’t actually living here yet, but my work paid for an apartment here for a month since I indicated that this was where I wanted to live in Portugal. It would take another year before we finally moved from Lisbon to Porto for good. In this case, I had a friend of mine who was visiting from the US serve as my cameraman. This was filmed at Jardim de Morro, which is one of the busiest viewpoints of the city. I remember it took a lot of takes to get some relatively clean audio.

1960, directed by Vincent Minnelli

My favorite movie musical of all time! I filmed this intro while on vacation with Derek in Brussels. For quite a while, I pressed Derek into service as my cameraman for these videos (until I eventually got a tripod, along with some other equipment). He’s just holding the camera steady in his hand, so it’s amazing it came out as stable as it did (not withstanding the part where I go entirely out of frame). Also, there’s an iPhone microphone dangling from my ear because that was my only way to record my voice without getting all the crowd noise as well.

1971, directed by Elaine May

I was introduced to this movie by my mother. She had a wonderfully sophisticated sense of humor, which I like to think she passed on to me. Starting with this season, I made a pointed effort to always include at least one film by a female director each year. I never mentioned it to anyone explicitly, but I think that the film series was better for it. This video starts with the New Year’s fireworks at Disneyland Paris. This was a stopover on my emigration trip from the US to Portugal. You can’t bring tripods into Disney theme parks, so I had to hold the camera in my outstretched hand for the whole video.

2001, directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet

My first filmed introduction was born of necessity. I was travelling in New Zealand at the time, so I filmed this (unfortunately backlit) video from my hotel balcony and sent it in since I was unable to be there in person. In a way it was the “proof of concept” for what came later. This video also features a “signature cocktail” that was created to accompany each movie, and the trailer for the next month’s film (“The Parallax View”), two features that would eventually go by the wayside.