Reading Response for April 12th

1. Rhodes places a distinction between intertextuality and allegory by defining them as such: intertextuality is a mode of consumption where filmmakers make references to, name, or point to films or styles of the past, such as Tarantino's Pulp Fiction with its clever references, but allegory is not just a means of consumption.  It is also a mode of production in filmmaking, which means it is ingrained into the filmmaking process itself as a way of making films not just consuming them.  Allegory allows for metaphorical representations within films, such as the AIDS epidemic in Haynes' Safe, which is accomplished by means of recombination, as we've learned about with both Soderbergh and Van Sant.  Allegory is important to Haynes because it is the way in which he makes films.  It allows his films to be more serious and complex while still making references to other films/filmmakers of the past through recombination.  

2. Haynes uses elements of the mis-en-scene to alienate Carol from her house.  False beams on the inside of the house and sectional sofas within the house act to isolate Carol from her own living space.  The house gets the overhand because it is meant to be overpowering in the shots where Carol is composed within it or around the outside.  This is similar to Sirk because he used similar tricks in his films.  Sirk's domestic spaces, meaning houses, were more disorienting than overpowering, however.  Haynes' use of the overpowering house is an allegorical reference to Sirk's disorienting domestic spaces of the past.

3. Rhodes means that using the allegorical filming method is the only way that Safe could have efficiently and effectively represented the AIDS epidemic it was meant to discuss.  Haynes uses a demographic (white, middle class) that is not usually thought to be plagued by the AIDs epidemic.  The differences and similarities in Carol's illness, as it is compared to AIDS in the viewer's mind, brings about thoughts of the epidemic as well.  Haynes adds little touches, such as the year in the film being 1987 (an integral year in the fight of the AIDS epidemic), in order to keep the audience thinking about the allegory he has constructed.  Had Haynes just come right out and discussed the AIDS epidemic directly, he probably would not have been able to reach his audience in the ways that he really wished to reach them.

4. One: The free-indirect surrogate for Haynes as a storyteller and the audience as fact-finding spectators.  Two: A full participant in the glittery genderfuck and  camp identity aspects of the film.  Three: He is the beacon of sexual coming into being within the film.  Arthur is similar to Thompson in Citizen Kane because they are both investigating the backgrounds of their subjects of interest.  They are different because Arthur takes an active role in the investigation while Thompson remains solely an outsider.


5.  The dialectal relationship of Arthur and Brian within the film and their inter-relations are connected through the film's narrative.  Brian influences Arthur's dress and make up as he enters into the world of glam rock.  They're linked when Arthur becomes sexually aroused and masturbates to a picture of Brian.  Their connections to the media through Brian's glam rock background and Arthur's journalism background connect them, as well.  Experiences by one character influence or are similar to the narrative/visual aspects of the other character.  They are further connected dialectically through fantasy.  Brian's character represents the performative fantasy and that of impossible fabrication.  He does not define himself in contradiction.  Arthur is simply a more subtle version of Brian.


6. The links and filler for gaps within the non-chronology of the sequences and shots.  There is no content to explain the intervals of time.  The information about the time between seventies glam rock and eighties corporate culture is lacking as the film transitions between the two, even with the historical markers that the film presents to the audience. 

Reading Response for April 5th

1. Haynes claims that most of what he learned about experimental and avant-garde film was learned during his film education at Brown. There, he studied under experimental filmmaker Leslie Thornton and the other people he met there during his time as an undergraduate. Prior to college, he was exposed to Stan Brakhage films, as well as experimental films made by Michael Snow, Ken Jacobs, and James Benning. These allowed him to learn from the classics while seeing how the people he worked with and learned from used their knowledge of making experimental films, which was mainly them using their knowledge for teaching purposes and making their own films on the side.

Haynes' Superstar played with the idea of trends in experimental filmmaking in the 1980s.  The filmmaker considers the film to be an experimental film, and its use of dolls as characters would support that, as it is not a convention of Hollywood to use dolls as main characters instead of actors.  The film can best be thought of as a hybrid.  It was a hybrid in that it followed the rules of narrative structures while still experimenting with Hollywood conventions.

2. This quote from Haynes directly relates to the article by Janet Staiger that we read earlier in the semester.  When Staiger spoke of minority authorship, she directly cited the idea of recombination.  Gus Van Sant recombined images, ideas, and cultural influences into stories with characters that mattered to him in order to make his own works.  While Haynes may not feel that his works are original due to this recombination, there is still a clear mark of authorship based upon which cultural stimuli he chose to use in a particular film and the ways in which he incorporated those images.  So, like Van Sant, Haynes could be taking these supposedly unoriginal works that really and truly say something because of the fact that he is recombining the images with his own viewpoint.

3. One observation that Haynes explicitly makes about the popular culture in the 1950s and 1960s is that of the duality of popular figures at the time, specifically Lucille Ball.  On set, when he met her, she controlled the production "like a general," but her on-screen personality was that of a "child woman."  This duality was something that Haynes could relate to in that he had a different real life and a fantasy world that he moved between as one person -- his own duality.  As far as Sirk films, Haynes finds the melodrama to be incredibly unsatisfying at times.  However, he appreciates the fact that the characters are unable to change all aspects of their lives, though he does admit that some of Sirks backgrounds are completely unrealistic and that other aspects are over the top.

4. Jean Genet's Un chant d'amour and Kenneth Anger's Fireworks are discussed in relation to Poison, though Jean Genet receives most of the discussion time for his use of a prison to show an erotic romance between two prisoners in a completely radical way.  Jack Smith's Flaming Creatures was also mentioned for its trouble with "moral guardians."

Thanks to a faulty review by a critic from the Hollywood Reporter, the film was mislabeled.  Instead of being merited for its three parts, the film was reviewed as if the whole film was the "Homo" section and was simply about anal sex in a prison setting.  The American Family Association found out about the film, and several senators even ended up getting involved in the cause against the film.  People were claiming that the money from the grant, paid by taxpayer money, shouldn't be used to create something deemed "public art that might offend American sensibilities."  The argument turned out to be more about the public funding artists instead of being an opposition to the film itself.

5. "The death of the subject" speaks of the supposed/theoretical "death" of individuality, or individual agency.  This death is due to the systematization of social organizations.  Haynes' characters represent a wide spectrum of "dead" subjects.  The way in which his characters and stories maintain a corrosive, mordant detachment has earned him the title of a 'post-humanist' filmmaker.  The tension between this idea and his interest in “the status of emotion in the formation of cultural identity” is that these dead subjects would be emotional zombies, and the current culture would not understand that.  So, he must create characters that still register emotionally with the general public so that his films can be received by those audiences, or at least by the audiences that he wishes to reach outside of the avant-garde film sphere.


6. The characteristics of post-modern melodrama are the death of the subject/"a waning effect" of the subject/characters, but through melodrama, a character might continue to feel, so they cannot be deemed truly dead.  At times, it can be considered a metanarrative, which is a story about a story.  For Haynes, this means that the suffering comes across as realistic instead of over the top works of other times where the melodrama is over done and true character feelings are left behind.

Filmmakers mentioned in reference to this idea are: Sirk, Fassbender, and Pedro Almodovar.  Sirk is said to be a post-modern melodrama filmmaker because of his use of melodrama stories while emphasizing distanciation over the standard melodramatic techniques.   His characters are often lifeless and without emotion for the audience to connect to at all.  Fassbender and Pedro Almodovar are mentioned in reference to this idea because of the way they use pathos while draining the genre of melodrama while going through the paces of the performances of the characters.  They do not really stay true to the genre of melodrama itself.

7. Illness plays an important part in Haynes' films because it easily illustrates the interplay between the ideas of post-modernism and the ideas of melodrama.  A character might be emotionally/almost physically dead, but the drama presented in the melodrama of the illness they might be facing as characters may spark their emotions to evoke some kind of pathos.  

8. On the surface, this film is an important turning point for Genet because it was created during his absence from literary works, meaning between the first and second period of his work as a writer.  This film showed his ability to take himself out of the text.  It was a sign of his evolution as a creator.

The Gay Liberation Movement of the 1960s and the 1970s was all about accepting and publicly acknowledging ones status as a gay man or woman.  All homosexuals were urged to come out of the closet and embrace the fact that they were the way that they were so that the general public would have no choice but to acknowledge their existence and learn to accept them as a part of the community.  Genet found issue with this because he could not come up with a positive image of the gay community in his film.  He refused to be taken by the movement, even though he allowed his films to become immersed in the subject matter of homosexuality.

9.  The film Poison is structured in three parts: "Horror," "Hero," and "Homo." In "Horror," the story is that of Dr. Thomas Graves.  He accidentally takes a serum that can harness and reign in the sex drive.  In "Hero," the story tells of 7 year-old Richie Beacon.  According to the boy's mother, Richie shoots his father and then takes flight through a window.  The lighting is flat, and the framing is that of just people's heads that give them the appearance of floating.  "Homo" is told from the perspective of prisoner John Broom.  He is having homosexual feelings for a fellow prisoner.  This part of the film has the feeling of typical Hollywood melodramas at times, as it was sometimes shot on sound stages.  The stories go in and out of each other like Haynes' earlier experiments and Genet's stories that contained many elements of parallelism with stories.

Parallel editing is one of the main traditions of montage used in Poison so that the film's three stories can interweave themselves in the way in which Haynes wants them to work.  Secondly, the relation of each shot when placed by another shot provides a meaning instead of just looking at one individual shot for meaning, as in Soviet montage techniques.

10.  This allows the film to be coherent and come together in a way that an audience outside of Haynes' head can make sense of.  All of these attributes make up the typical Hollywood film structure, at least from a narrative standpoint, so that audiences can make sense of the film as a whole.  It unites all three stories with the philosophy of the filmmaker, meaning the homosexual views in the film unite with the stories and come across to the audience as such, according to Laskawy.

Reading Response for March 17th

 1. The multi-plot structure of Traffic leads to a reversal of traditional ethnic hierarchies and a weaking of the traditional hero-centered narrative by making the characters of the film “all subordinate to the plot and the problem of drugs.”  There are multiple characters within the film that are trying to stop the drug problem in the United States and Mexico, and these characters come from many different national and ethnic backgrounds.  However, no one character rids the world of a drug problem by themselves.  They all have some level of success, but no character is completely successful.  Only Javier Rodriguez Rodriguez is seen as a possible hero in his story, as he does his job, remains incorruptible, and in the end asks only for something to give the children of Tijuana a safer place to play baseball at night.

In terms of traditional ethnic hierarchies, the wealthy white man is not in charge as he normally would be.  Instead, he falls victim to the “drug war” as his daughter becomes a drug addict, and he must lower himself, in his eyes, to associate with drug dealers in order to find his daughter.  He is also clueless as to what is really going on in Mexico’s drug trade cartels.  Instead, the real characters of power within the film are the African-American DEA agent and his partner, the Latino DEA agent.  The white-middle family is “dysfunctional,” and this puts them at a disadvantage to the other races.  All of the main characters, regardless of ethnicity, are given a story with their own points-of-view.

2. While the film’s main drug trafficking takes place in Tijuana, Mexico, the author argues that the “good” Mexican characters are only put into place there to detract from the fact that all of the major drug cartel leaders are Mexican men.  The “good” Latino also works to try to counteract this negative portrayal of Mexican and Latino men, as the distributors are “primarily Latino.”  Lastly, the dealers are all African-American, so the “good” African-American DEA agent plays against that negative stereotype as a good member of the law enforcement community who is trying to get drugs and drug dealers off of the streets.  

3.  Different tones are used to show the change in narrative and locations.  Color coding allows the audience to know where they are at all times while also giving information about the location.  Shaw explains that the “blue metallic tones” used to color the Wakefield scenes represent industrial America.  Completely opposite of that industrialized feel is that of Mexico, where the sepia tones are used.  The geography looks scarce, yellow, “sun drenched,” and desert like, which Shaw states shows lack and poverty.  California is then shown as a sunny, conventional manner.  This furthers the distance between Mexico and North America in terms of looks as representations of wealth and poverty levels.  Shaw argues that the sepia-toned point-of-view shot through Wakefield’s binoculars simply furthers the images of Mexico as poverty-stricken and underdeveloped while blaming Mexico for its own problems and placing none of the blame atop North America’s shoulders.

4. General Salazar represents the entirety of the institutional corruption within Mexico.  He is the man in charge of the Federal Drug Forces in Mexico, but while he goes out of his way to wage war against the Tijuana cartel, it comes into light that he is actually working for the Madrigal cartel under the control of “The Scorpion.”  He is “sadistic and power hungry” like many villains of the Hollywood screen have been in the past.  Javier reinforces common Hollywood representations of Mexico as a country in need of guidance from the United States because he is only able to bring results to Mexico when he gives information to the DEA and lets them take care of the corruption and drug problems within his country.  The film suggests that he could not have done this alone.

5.  The representation of drug trade in Traffic reflects larger assumptions about American foreign policy by showing America as trying to fix its drug problem by trying to fix the drug problems of other nations.  Many countries, as well as individuals within the United States, see this as America’s tactic for solving all of its problems.  The United States pulls “good” members of foreign communities into their own structures in order to take out “bad” members of foreign communities and nations, as shown by Javier being pulled in to help the US DEA take out the Mexican drug cartels.

6.   Soderbergh brought many key lessons away from the Richard Lester project.  He realized that being a filmmaker meant not only appreciating and enjoying his own works but to enjoy and appreciate the works of other filmmakers in the industry.  It was during this time that he also came to appreciate the story about the average individual.  Lester also taught him to work quickly and to let instinct take over at times.  He describes this as “tossing things off.”  With The Limey,  Traffic, and Erin Brockovich, especially the latter, Soderbergh showcased stories of the “ordinary individual.”  In Out of Sight, he claims to have felt “light on [his] feet,” which allowed him to be much more free and instinctual about the project instead of nitpicking over every detail.  

7.  Erin Brockovich represents a key change for Soderbergh’s views of “personal filmmaking” on many levels.  For one, the story is simply about her and her interactions with the people along her journey to what she becomes.  Secondly, it’s a linear storyline about one person trying to make a difference, and the linear aspect of the narrative is totally unlike anything he has done before.    However, the biggest change was that he no longer wanted to make stories about himself.  Instead, he wanted to make films about other people’s experiences through his vision, and that was what Erin Brockovich allowed him to do.

8. The “run-and-gun” technique of having Soderbergh as the director, the director of photography, and the camera operator for Traffic allowed him to be on set at all times.  Not only did his vision come through in performances, but he was able to make that vision come through two-fold by capturing the image just the way he wanted it captured.  In terms of performance, he was able to shoot the script very quickly with his actors able to run entire scenes with only very short breaks (around two minutes to set up different angles).  Instead of waiting around on set for their scenes, actors were often working all day long.  It allowed the actors to stay in character and really begin to feel the emotion as if they were experiencing it themselves, and this allowed for more realism than a traditional filming style would have allowed for, especially when it came to Michael Douglas and toning down his movie star acting style for the realism that Traffic required.

"sex, lies, and marketing" response

1. 1989 was considered a transitional year for independent distribution because, regardless of the "video market," many of the independent distributors overexerted themselves in the production of larger budget films and nearly resulted in the death of the entire independent production distributors altogether.  However, while many of the distributors were filing for bankruptcy, other distributors, such as Miramax, were able to make a major impact on the overall structure and look of independent filmmaking in the late 80s and through the 90s.  In economic terms, an "indie-blockbuster" is, by definition, a film that, on a smaller scale, replicates the exploitation marketing and box-office performance of the major studio high-concept event pictures.  The industry responded to the "indie-blockbuster" by having each of the major studios purchase a specialty division in order to take advantage of the niche-based distributions that the "indie-blockbuster" played into.

2. The criteria that guided Miramax's  acquisition strategies in the 1980s were exploitation marketing tactics to promote their movies and a positive public image.  Miramax staged publicity stunts, such as Claudia Ohana posing for Playboy for promotion of the film Erendira.  Many film historians are unable to find out which events were staged and which events were actually real.  Also, during the 1980s, Miramax focused on securing distribution rights for films produced outside of the company.  The films had to be "quality" films while promoting a director's unique vision.  Miramax also sought out films that were nonclassical in nature and covered subjects that would be deemed unconventional by Hollywood.  They tried to cover as many niches as possible.  Additionally, the Weinstein brothers limited their spending, chose to continue acquisitions instead of producing their own films, and restricted their release schedule in order to continue beating out the other distributors who were going bankrupt.

3. sex, lies, and videotape was co-financed by RCA/Columbia House Home Video and Virgin.  RCA/Columbia was not happy with the use of the word "videotape" in the film's title and asked for it to be changed.  When the film became too controversial and made its way into the film festival market, Miramax was able to pick the film up and market it as best they could.  Miramax pursued the rights to distribute sex, lies, and videotape so aggressively because the Weinstein brothers saw the film as a potential independent blockbuster powerhouse.  They marketed the film in ways to get it out of the "art house" niche to reach a larger audience, and the distributor also played itself up as the "primary force" behind the films development in order to enhance its image.

4. Some of the key promotional strategies for Miramax's advertising of sex, lies, and videotape were a trailer cut to fit the market that the film would best fit into, a one-sheet that would reach multiple niche markets, and a press kit that would promote the film as though it were a Hollywood blockbuster.  The markets it appealed to simultaneously were: the art-house audience and the youth audience.  To reach the art-house audience, Miramax included all of the film festival awards the film had received and the press responses from some of the most well-known newspapers and magazines on the film's one-sheet.  To reach the youth audience, Miramax focused on two aspects of the film through text on the film's poster: one of the best films of 1989 and a focus on how edgy the film happened to be.  "Finding the high concept in low budget films" means to find a way to have the film reach as many markets as possible by finding aspects of the film that might interest people the film was not intentionally made for, meaning the supposed "indie" audience.

5. Miramax eventually released the film on 350 screens while opening the film slowly to let the appeal build on positive reviews and word of mouth.  The film was released over six months.  This is different from "saturation booking" where films open in nearly every theater in major cities and some minor cities in an attempt to reach as many audiences as possible to get as many bodies into the theater seats as possible regardless of what the reviews might be.

6. Malin's comments were prescient for two reasons.  First of all, Malin's statements not only showed the possible demise of niche films but also explained why the middle-level studio films were not as successful, meaning they did not have as big of a market abroad as the action packed, event blockbusters carried.  Secondly, Malin's "exploitation of the rhetoric of quality" was a reason for his supposed foresight.  His words depicted the independent films as something special to be set aside from the rest of the products coming out of the film industry.  So, he showed that it wasn't the niche film that was struggling but that the film industry itself was suffering with the poor showing of the middle-level films and its dependence on overseas marketing to make money.

7. By the mid-1990s, the term "independent" actually functioned as a "discursive tool" for the press and the film industry.  With the bifurcation of the industry, the "independent" film sometimes came across as merely a label placed upon a film even though the term no longer held any real definition.  The fact that all of the "independent" films in the 1995 Oscar race were released by subsidiaries owned by major media corporations is the ironic part of 1995's "Year of the Independents."  The repercussions of the bifurcation of the industry were: the development of an interrelated but fundamentally distinct aesthetic by each industry (superstars and super explosions vs. well-known actors with "explosive" stories) and the development of films for clearly defined niches as a result of coming out of one of the two different sides of Hollywood from specialty divisions. 

Reading Response for February 8th

1. With Finding Forrester and Good Will Hunting, Van Sant found himself making films that he wanted to make regardless of the fact that some people might see him as a sell-out.  Fearing that he was too dependent on underdog characters, he tried to just stand in as a director when on set.  Both films maintained marginalized characters from the "bad" side of town, meaning they were not wealthy, so Van Sant was still able to maintain two of the aspects we have discussed in reference to his contributions as a film author.  After reading his opinion of the scripts and the films experiences themselves, I now understand why Good Will Hunting did not feel like a Van Sant film, other than the aspects that we looked for in class, but I can appreciate the film more as a part of his canon after getting his opinion on it.


When it comes to the comments about Van Sant's vision in relation to the heterosexual white male directors, I felt like Taubin was kind of out of place in the way the question was posed to Van Sant.  It almost seemed as though the assumption being made was that just because Van Sant is a homosexual white male that his films automatically had to be viewed with a homosexual slant towards the actions taking place, and while I do believe that homosexuality does play a part in most of his films, I do not think that it's as big a part of his authorship as Taubin tries to make it out to be.  As we read earlier in the semester, it's just one of the many issues that Van Sant likes to bring up in his films.  Yes, he likes to put a sexual stamp on the films that he makes, but it is not always homosexual in nature.  However, I feel like Van Sant handled the assumptions in such a way as to defend himself without attacking Taubin's statements.  Instead, he simply says that it might be the audience "reading into the film."


The first time that I viewed Elephant, the kiss scene definitely caught me by surprise.  Not because it was two boys kissing, but I just didn't see it coming.  However, upon multiple viewings of the film, Van Sant's statements do make sense.  The way in which the two boys interact throughout the film show their close friendship with one another in a way that almost makes it look more intimate than just a casual friendship.  Van Sant explains his reasoning behind it as what he feels kids who spend a lot of time together do together, especially as these two characters are about to go into a life or death situation.  He used the kiss to make the boys "human," instead of trying to demonize them, which is something that I find to be very interesting.  When making a film about a school shooting, most people would try to demonize the people doing the killing, however Van Sant brings it upon himself to add a human element to most, if not all, of the characters he directs.  


Though we discussed his re-make of Psycho in great detail in class, I did find Van Sant's reasoning behind re-making the film to be very interesting.  I never really thought of making a film as an "appropriation exercise," but I appreciate his reasoning behind it.  Instead of trying to "rob" older, forgotten films of their integrity and character, he wanted to re-make something that everybody would know.  It was a challenge that had not been done before, at least not to the extent that he did it with the nearly shot-by-shot re-make, but it was really just an exercise for him as a director, and I think that's the way that people should view it instead of trying to compare the old version and the re-make to see which one is "better."  Obviously, the first film bears Hitchcock's fingerprint and he films it in a way to give it critical acclaim, but that does not mean that Van Sant's version is any less worthy of being appreciated as what it is, a director taking a film and making it into an exercise for himself.


2. Van Sant considered the traditional screenwriting format to be restricting because it did not allow for any real freedom during the film production phase.  Instead, it was merely a translation from script to screen.  Everything in the script was seemingly set in stone once the ink hit the paper, and that was how the lines would be delivered and how the scene would be set up.  With Elephant, Van Sant got rid of scripted dialogue and allowed for what he called "ordinary conversations."  Instead of his script being set in stone, the lines of the script worked as a filmmaking "map" for him to follow.  He also used non-professional actors so that the conversation would feel more "ordinary" and less scripted.  For non-professional actors, not having to memorize lines from a script would allow them to shape the characters in the film themselves, with the help of Van Sant, and it would become more about how conversations were handled than what was said.  To develop the narrative, Van Sant follows the lives of various students in the school instead of just focusing on the perspective of the shooters.  While there's a good chance that many people watching the film would know what was going to happen, we are able to connect with the other characters before the shooting occurs, and we, as an audience, barely see the shooters in relation to the other characters until the killing actually begins.  Though the actions seem to take place within a certain day and a certain time, the audience is left to figure out exactly where they are in time and space, as the film follows various characters from many different points throughout the film. 


3. The second act of Elephant is different from other films with a three-act structure because it does not follow conventional standards for a second act.  Usually, the protagonist would be faced with multiple obstacles, problems, and other things to keep him/her from his/her goal in the narrative.  Instead, the film covers what went on during the previous day and follows a different character.  Elephant does not have one clear-cut protagonist, so the second act is not able to function as it normally would, not that Van Sant would have allowed it to function that way with the way in which he styled and structured the narrative of the film.


4. While many people recognize that Elephant had no defined time frame, other than taking place during twenty-four hours spanned across two days, what most people don't realize is how Van Sant plays with shot duration to show more of the action within those twenty-four hours.  The audience is actually exposed to a lot of the action that took place between many of the characters over that twenty-four hours period instead of focusing on the actions of one character, even though John does take over a prominent role in the films.  The shot duration nearly acts as though the actions were happening in real time, and in the third act, when the shooting spree for Alex and Eric begins, the real-time feel continues and the film "nearly approximates the actual time frame of the events of the Columbine shootings, which occurred over... fifteen minutes."  Elephant's shooting sequence lasts nearly twelve minutes.


5. The big difference between Elephant and Hollywood and most independent films is that Elephant does not follow one character in particular.  While John does seem to become the film's main focus at times, the narrative still spends a great deal of time getting to know each of the characters as the camera follows them through their actions taken on the day of the school shooting.  In fact, other than the school shooters who are constantly being traumatized in their school setting, the audience barely has any information to connect to any character that would be a true "protragonist," other than John, who has to deal with his alcoholic knowledge and the fact that he saw the shooters going into the school and made no efforts to stop them.  The tracking shots used to follow the characters give the audience a long time to look at the characters, but they never really penetrate beneath the surface of the characters.  These strategies allow Van Sant to show the disconnect between the student-to-student relationship and the student-to-authority figure relationship.  None of the characters are really connecting with one another, and in a way, the audience is unable to connect to any of them as well.  In a way, it's just like every awkward phase that any high school student has ever had to go through.  Teenagers feel as though they don't belong, and Elephant depicts that in a way that feels true to the high school experience.


6. Stephen Heath's criticism of cinematic authorship states that authorship could exist but that the critical approach to a film should not just be focused on the work of the director.  Instead, there should be an approach that allows for the analysis of all of the work put into a film by various crew members that add to the sense of authorship often labeled only under the name of the director.  Only focusing on the director's creative input distracts from audience reactions and discounts any views that might merely be interpretations of the viewers and were not actually placed into the film by the director himself.  Many hands play a part in how a film is received.  Focusing on a very narrow aspect, like just the role of the director, would also take away the impact of social situations and culture have on a film.


This plays a significant role in our class because we are looking at Van Sant films from an authorship perspective, and while many of the "marks" we claim he places on a film could be accurate, there are many creative moves made by other members of his crew that we might be attributing to him when they were not his ideas.  Furthermore, the way the film is made could be entirely dependent on the crew that he is working with and their ability to execute the directorial vision that he has.  Also, Van Sant is very big on playing up societal standards and cultural roles his characters might have.  Poverty, and other social issues, are big story points for him.


7. Barthes demands "the death of the author."  Foucault also tried to predict a time when "the author function will disappear."  Neither Barthes nor Foucault see the merit in having an authorship based criticism of films, and they seem to think that the only way for it to stop polluting the field of film criticism would be for the idea of authorship in filmmaking to disappear completely.  While Meskin seems to agree, to some extent, that the idea of directors as authors of films is outdated, in a way, and somewhat romanticized, while also saying that there are not enough parallels being made between novelists and filmmakers as authors for it to stand its ground as a critical concept, he does not feel that such a radical step as "death" for the idea of authorship needs to take place.  Instead, he argues for a better definition of the author concept while also arguing that it is not even clear which stance Barthes and Foucault even have on the supposed existence of authorship.  Meskins simply finds their arguments unpersuasive.


8. Many of the arguments against solo-authorship in mainstream filmmaking deal with the fact that so many people work on a studio film set that it does not make sense for the director to be handed the label of the author of the film simply because he is the end all, be all of filmmaking decisions on that set.  The arguments for solo-authorship in mainstream filmmaking, however, go against this idea completely by comparing the process to a peer review process for an academic journal or to the editing process of a novel.  Many people give their input into how the project should come together, but it is the "artistry" of the director that allows for the project to truly come together.


This relates to Van Sant because we are looking for particular ways in which he places his thumbprint on his films.  However, with some of his more mainstream crossovers, especially with his re-make of Psycho, one has to wonder just how much of his thumbprint is visible on those projects.  His independent works notably show his filmmaking style, but does the veiled appearance of his thumbprint on more mainstream works make those films any less than a Gus Van Sant film?  That's what our course is meant to evaluate.


9. The motivations for the shift from "actual authors" to "author constructs" by some critics are that there is no denying that, while there are some real fictional authors, there are also authors that are implied within the film.  While the director may not have written the story for the film that he created, he is still an "author construct" because he is the implied author of the translation of the script to the screen.  One argument in favor of the implied author is "the suggestion that recognition of and appeal to the author construct provides the best explanation of the apparent unity and coherence that many films present us with," us being the audience and critics alike.  However, Meskin feels that this argument is flawed because it implies that the markers of one individual creator can create a sense of unity.  However, the use of "author constructs" could "distort our responses to cinema" if one author, implied or otherwise, was assigned to a film.  This explanation seems muddled, and Meskin explains that the motivations for the shift are questionable at best.  People who support "author constructs" often refer to the "frequent apparent mismatch between the character or the personality of the real person(s) who made a work and the character or personality expressed in the work."  The actual person(s) who made the film should be of no true importance, then, as their stances are not reflected in the films. 

“Hitch Without Hitch” & “Gus Van Sant vs. Alfred Hitchcock"

1. The four ways in which Leitch argues that Van Sant's Psycho is unusual are: 1) Van Sant's decision not to update, readapt, or rethink the original's source material in any way, 2) the audience would lose the sense of surprise gained when the film's heroine dies almost exactly halfway through the film because of the original film, 3) the remake's textual closeness to the original, and 4) Van Sant sticking to the same filming conditions, including the same shooting schedule, that Hitchcock used with the original film.

Logistically, Van Sant had to deal with the artistic status of a remake.  Due to having to make the film in the 1990s, Van Sant took advantage of the color film available to him and was forced to update the cast with current stars.  The time period changes forced the differences from the original to be totally noticeable to the public, so any homage/aspects of the original film was marred by the unique touches that Van Sant placed upon it.

2. The key difference between the two shower scenes is that the Van Sant shower scene in which the heroine is killed is totally expected by the audience.  This is different from general genre expectations and conventions inspired by Hitchcock’s Psycho because it completely eliminates the element of suspense and surprise that Hitchcock prided himself in being a master of.

3. James Naremore has many objections to Van Sant's take on Psycho from the casting of Robert Forester as the psychologist and the effect that has on how Norman's diagnosis is perceived to how the close-up of Marion Crane's dead eye "spoils the mood of one of the most famous dissolves in movie history."  In the areas of casting and performance, Naremore had objections to Vince Vaughn not being able to make the character of Norman Bates into his own character.  Instead, Vaughn is forced to copy the performance of Perkins to mimic the original performance and, in this way, gives the audience no more than a "stale" performance with none of the payoffs (pathos, boyish humor, etc.) that the original performance provided.  However, he disapproves of Anne Heche's take on Marion Crane because she loses almost everything that could be construed as the essence of Janet Leigh.

The Royal Cook is about about a cook who is fated to die due to his inability to recreate the exact taste of a mulberry omelet at the orders of his dying king.  The explanation states that, even with a close examination of all of the same ingredients involved in the recipe, the royal cook cannot recreate the moment in which the previous omelets were eaten because the experience is entirely subject.  In reference to Van Sant's Psycho, this means that no matter how hard he tried to make an exact duplicate of Hitchcock's film, he would have been entirely unable to do so because the audience for the film is entirely different.  Psycho, and any other films like it, is no longer "cutting-edge."  Modern audiences expect different things from their horror films.

4. According to William Rothman, Alfred Hitchcock was a master of choosing a camera angle or a specific shot in order to convey a certain meaning within his films.  By copying Hitchcock, Van Sant was unable to replicate those meanings.  Instead, Van Sant's subtle changes to the shots completely.  They no longer have the power of Hitchcock's shot, and it does little to do the originator justice.  The audience no longer feels trapped by Van Sant's camera angles and shots.  The original meaning no longer exists.

Leitch raises the question of why.  He wants to understand why Van Sant's shots lost the "force of gesture" that Alfred Hitchcock's had if they were, in fact, the same shots.  Basically, the fact that Van Sant is not, in fact, Hitchcock himself should not alter the meaning if the film is an exact duplicate, however, the intertextual markers and other audience aspects change the film.  Timothy Gould disagrees with Rothman because he states that the average moviegoer must be able to rise above the simple act of "commonplace viewing" and be able to acknowledge "Hitchcock's authorship."  The audience should be able to make observations, regardless.

5. Alfred Hitchcock was Hollywood's first auteur filmmaker.  While he was not the first to make some of his films, he was the first to make a film, put his filmmaking thumbprint on it, and make the film into something easily recognized as one of his works.  Leitch even claims that Hitchcock might be the "last auteur."  In Naremore's recollection of his first viewing of Psycho, he was genuinely horrified by the film.  Van Sant's version of the film was more of an academic study then a genuine "film going" experience.  However, for students watching Psycho in an academic setting, the film lost the original scare factor.  The setting in which a film is viewed can have a tremendous effect on the way it impacts the audience.

6. Leitch suggests that maybe Van Sant "out-Hitchcocks Hitchcock" because Hitchcock was considered the master of suspense.  He felt that making the audience feel suspense was always greater than merely surprising them.  In this way, Van Sant's shot-by-shot remake of one of the most horrifying scenes in Psycho, the shower scene where Marion Crane dies, is not scary in the same sense, as the audience knows the death is coming.  However, the level of suspense is elevated because the audience knows the murder is coming and are on the edges of their seats as they wait to see how Van Sant plays the scene out.

7. The thematic concerns that Schneider associates with Van Sant films are: his character types as examples of dysfunction (hustlers, junkies, troubled geniuses, etc.) and his ability to explore subjectivity at the level of the narrative and on a visual level, which helps to explore the dysfunction of the previously stated character types.  He also romanticizes the idea of leaving home and then heading out on the open road in order to escape repression.  

In Psycho, the two main characters are incredibly dysfunctional and fit right in with Van Sant's ideas of dysfunctional, troubled individuals.  Norman Bates suffers from mental illness as a result of living with, and his subsequent murder of, his overbearing, repressive mother.  Marion Crane is desperate to leave her repressive life in the city and wishes to start her own life with Sam, so she steals money, leaves home, and heads out on the road in order to try to start this new life, a sentiment that works very well with Van Sant's romanticism of the road and the journey it represents.

8. Van Sant likes to insert images within important moments of his films, and Psycho is no different.  While he tries to keep the film identical in a sense of a shot-for-shot remake, his own stylistic markers slip into the film.  For instance, images of blue skies and clouds are cut in with Marion Crane's murder scene, and the same happens when Arbogast is being murdered in the Bates house.  The use of time-lapse sky and other intercuts happens often in Van Sant films when characters are undergoing "altered states of consciousness."  This is visible in scenes of orgasms, narcoleptic seizures, and drug-induced hallucinations in other Van Sant films.

9. Marion: By casting an openly homosexual woman, or so Anne Heche was at the time of the film, Van Sant altered the expectations of the character.  Janet Leigh, the original Marion Crane, was heterosexual.  Instead of committing a crime, such as theft, to get out of her trapped lifestyle in the city, the casting of Heche could lead the audience to believe, as Schneider puts it, that a "radical change in lifestyle" could be exactly what she needs.

Norman: The original character of Norman Bates, played by Anthony Perkins, was incredibly effeminate.  Perkins himself was a gay man, so the character's ticks and his leaning towards being more feminine than masculine were far more easier for the audience to accept.  Casting Vince Vaughn gave the character a much more masculine, macho build, and it became more difficult for the audience to accept any signs of femininity from such a "man's man."  By choosing to have Vaughn's character masturbate to Marion Crane's image through a peep hole, Van Sant cements his heterosexuality and eliminates the homosexual character type that Hitchcock had once played up in his own film.  It also changes the meaning of her murder from one of his mother's jealousy to Norman's own jealousy in Marion not showing any interest in him.

Lila: Julianne Moore's portrayal of Lila Crane is one that comes across as more "butch" and independent than her sister, Marion.  She also comes across as more "butch" and independent than the woman who had played her previously, Vera Miles.  Schneider equates her to the same level of liberation as the lesbian cowgirls in Even Cowgirls Get the Blues   because she actively participates in the capture of her sister's murderer.  

“Shakespeare, He’s in the Alley” & “Indie Culture: In Pursuit of the Authentic Autonomous Alternative”

1. Some broad characteristics of "Van Santized" Shakespeare are are costumes meant to "evoke Elizabethan dress" fused with more current fashions, script elements reminiscent of current slang and Shakespearean dialogue which are used in scenes that are traditional in nature while still bringing about certain aspects of Portland.  More specifically, Gus Van Sant had to change the tone of the dialogue to better fit into the landscape and feel of Portland.  He makes the characters into street hustlers.  Shakespearean characters, such as Hal, were changed to fit the new setting of the life of street hustlers in Portland, like Hal becoming Scott Favor, the son of Portland's mayor who spends his time upsetting his father by hanging out with the street hustlers.  Other characters in the film also have commonalities to Shakespearean characters while being shaped to fit into the location of Portland.

2. The characters of Mike and Bob both represent different avatars of the Falstaff of the original story.  Mike represents the younger version of Falstaff who "cavorted" with Hal as a brother before the time of the original play.  Bob, however, fulfills the traditional role of Falstaff in the original play.  Seeing both aspects of Falstaff's relationship with Hal allows for the story to be re-examined and looked at from a different perspective.  Chimes at Midnight becomes a frame of reference for Van Sant's retelling of Henry IV in My Own Private Idaho because it follows the story of Falstaff directly while adapting five Shakespearean plays to tell his story.  This makes the film very important as Van Sant splits Falstaff into two characters, Mike and Bob, and must truly understand the journey that the character takes while seeing how to successfully adapt Shakespeare for the big screen.

3. Some of the effects of Falstaff being changed from a "knight lowering himself" to a street hustler in Portland are the fact that Scott's rejection of both Mike and Bob comes across much more harshly than Hal's rejection of his mentor in the plays, with Scott's father only being a mayor and not merely a king, Scott cannot merely ignore parts of his past in order to ascend to the throne his father one held at the time of his father's death, and by having both Mike and Bob be hustlers who share in a gay relationship with Scott before he becomes a "sellout to straight society and its corruption," Van Sant is able to issue challenges of status and place.  This, in effect, leaves the audience with more of a sense of guilt as they bear witness to the downfall of both Mike and Bob at the film's end, and the characters are meant to be "remembered and memorialized" regardless of their lower station in life.  Van Sant, then, shows the damage caused by the Scott Favors of the world and aligns himself with the street hustlers.

4. This changed context, with two Falstaffs, Scott's rejection of the homosexual street hustlers, and his supposed selling out to "straight society and its corruptions, changes our perception of Scott Favors by painting him as a guy who rejects no one but two friends for his own ascension in the society in which he lives while completely rejecting the lifestyle of the street hustlers.  The focus of the end of the story is not on that of the new life of the "glorious king."  Instead, it focuses on the damage done by Scott Favors' selfishness.

5. Newman believes that "indie" is a distinction not determined by an industrial definition because the independent films, music, etc. being produced and distributed by major labels from the supposed indie labels of the past did not "diminish its salience" in our culture.  Instead, it "amplified" the salience of independent media in our culture.  The alternative discourse remains integral in "indie" appeal by producing media outside of the mainstream norm.  Instead of hurting the independent film and media community, the co-opting of "indie" media by mainstream media turned the mainstream industry into competition for itself as the studios struggled to get the "niche" products out to as many people as possible who might be satisfied by such forms of media.  "Indie" media criticizes mass culture while perpetuating the ideas that promotes the ideals of the social elite.  The "tension at the heart of indie cinema and culture between ideals and realities" is: "an oppositional formation that sees itself as the solution to an excessively homogenized, commercialized media" and "a form of expression that is itself commercial and... serves to promote the interests of a class of sophisticated consumers."

6. One big meaning of the term "independent" is the ability of its audience, a subculture all their own, to form their own identities from the perceived authenticity of the medium and its supposed distance from the mainstream, such as seen in the music industry.  "Indie" can be seen as opposition, as distinction, more authentic than the "mainstream" culture.  These definitions, or meanings, span across music, film, literature, and any other media that circulates within a cultural community.

7. The “major shift in the popular understanding of “selling out” and its relation to alternative credibility was the "upsurge" of popular music being used in television commercials in the late 1990s.  Instead of being met with opposition, the alternative community and fans welcomed the use of the songs by these popular artists because it allowed an outlet for music and artists that would not be given enough exposure without the use of television, since radio and music television stations, such as MTV, were only willing to use the safer, mainstream artists' music.  Allowing mainstream media, in the form of television networks, to use their music was no longer seen as "selling out" in a bad way as much as it was a means of survival for bands who were unwilling to sign with a major record label for fear of compromising their music.  Also, this allows for these "indie" artists, filmmakers, etc. to "subversively" infiltrate the mainstream world as a means of justification for taking the money and still staying credible.

8. With a statement like, “Like traditional high art, indie cinema appeals to an audience who has the wherewithal to appreciate it, which is to say knowledge and interest, and a community of like-minded people," Newman needs to back his statement up.  He supports this statement by first comparing it to American indie rock and how it used to be known as college rock in the 1980s.  This allowed for a connotation of not only a "college" level of education but as a social class.  In order to keep people out who might not be "like-minded," indie cultures, or subcultures, creates exclusionary boundaries or radical ideals to set themselves apart from others.  

9. Newman suggests that Todd Soldonz's Happiness “reveals how the indie scene attempts to have it both ways: it seeks autonomy but also profit, authenticity but also a marketing push, art without the taint of commerce but enough commerce to make the art pay” because as the film ran the film festival circuit, it gained a notoriety for being explicitly outside of the Hollywood mainstream by playing an oppositional role to many of the films that had already been released by major studios in the film industry.  When it made the theater circuit, it wasn't given a rating by the MPAA, so many theaters would not play it and many advertisers would not give it any publicity.  When the filmmakers refused to recut the film to gain an R rating so that the film could reach more audiences in more theaters, the film was dropped from distribution.  Critics really gave Universal a hard time for dropping the film and said that the studio not picking the film up only helped to make the film more authentic by keeping it distanced from the studio system of Hollywood.  By rejecting the film, Universal actually played a hand in helping the film to gain popularity when it was finally distributed domestically by Good Machine because many film critics already knew of the controversy and were, therefore, already familiar with the film.  

While Happiness did end up with quite a following and would have been critically known after its success on the festival circuit, it stands to reason, or at least be questioned, that the film could not have become famous by standing on its own if it wasn't for being picked up and then dropped by a major film studio like Universal, therefore, it questions how successful artistic autonomy can really be, especially as the film's producers blamed the lack of commercial success on Universal and that their second distributor was not experienced enough to market the film effectively.  They were unwilling to alter the film to get Universal's marketing push, but they still wanted to make money off of the product.

10. Some critics still condemn the mainstream co-opting of indie culture, and Newman draws this conclusion about their point of view: “A central problem with this perspective is that it gives too much uncritical credibility to the “authentic” subculture, failing to identify its function in maintaining class distinction. It also, crucially, misrecognizes the relation of indie culture to commercial culture as one of actual autonomy—as if such a thing were possible.”  This is an issue because it allows those critics, as well as those people who do not associate themselves with the mainstream mentality, develop a condescending, elitist outlook on those who enjoy mainstream media.  Consumers of mainstream culture are only seen as "passive victims."  However, many of the consumers of indie culture, meaning those who are not elitists, do not see accepting indie to infiltrate parts of the mainstream culture as "selling out" or being a bad thing.  Instead, the culture's participants are the ones who are truly able to decide what is credible or what is not credible "within the context of their experience."  Therefore, the critics do not have the authority to defend or attack the credibility of the mainstream culture or the "indie" subculture which they are criticizing. 

“US Independent Cinema since the 1980s” & "Modern Classicism"

1. Since the 1947 Paramount Decree, the term "independent" in American cinema has come to mean many things.  Directly following the Decree, the term was used to label those films made by major Hollywood players, such as Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas, who formed their own production companies and made films with more freedom outside of major studio production companies with the expressed intention of making films for distribution by the major studios.  Films like Salt of the Earth (1953) were made outside of the studio system, but they were still made by Hollywood filmmakers.  The filmmakers simply had to make their films outside of the studio system due to being blacklisted.  Avant garde films became popular among "independent" filmmakers, such as Stan Brakhage, beginning in the 1940s because they did not need to seek out finances in order to make the films, which were rarely feature-length to begin with.  In the 1950s, "independent" filmmakers, such as John Cassavetes, began making films to showcase what was wrong with the Hollywood system.  The 1960s and 1970s saw Hollywood struggling, and even the major studios distributed films that were considered "innovative" in an attempt to make contact with whatever audience still remained.  This allowed for more innovative and cavalier filmmakers to make their way into the American film industry as the control in the industry shifted.  In more modern terms, the "independent" films of the 1980s and 1990s have taken on certain criteria in order to fit into their category: they're usually feature length films of fictional narratives made "outside" of the major Hollywood studios with relatively little star power.  These stories, however, are often about subject matter that is more risque than major Hollywood films, but they are less reliant on special effects or anything flashy that might make for a larger budget.  Instead, the films might focus on a particular camera, editing, or narrative style to make the film stick out, whether it be for a "niche" audience of just for the mainstream Hollywood market that they hope to find distribution within.

2. Cable television and home video rentals allowed for "independent" cinema to find a more economical outlet for distributing its films, as the major studios did not take advantage of the two markets until later.  During this span of time, many distributors and studios, such as Cannon, Vestron, New Line, Goldwyn, and New World, emerged to take advantage of the new markets.  As for the "continuum" that Hillier describes explains a wide range of film types and a differing level of involvement with the major studios.  Some studios, like Castle Rock, are more in-tuned to the major studio system and compete for some of the same market, but other studios, such as Miramax, were at the opposite end of the spectrum with more art house-like films.  Still, other studios dabbled somewhere in between with a wide array of film genres and styles.

3. The two consensus "defining moments" for American independent cinema in the 1980s and 1990s were the "triumph" of Soderbergh's sex, lies and videotape at the Sundance Film Festival in 1989 and its winning of the main prize for best film at the Cannes Film Festival as well as the success of Pulp Fiction in 1994.  The consequences of these films, especially with Pulp Fiction, was the blurring of the lines between mainstream Hollywood films and the independent cinema.  Due to their closeness to the mainstream studio system, these films represented what would become the "hybrid" of major and independent studios and the near dissolution, or a supposed transformation, of true independent studios.  Many of the independents were also taken over by major studios.  Miramax and Castle Rock were two subsidiaries of major studios which were associated with independent film production.

4. The evolution of Miramax helped to blur the lines between "independent" and "studio" productions by acting as a major studio would with the purchasing of "art house" films.  These "art house" films would then be distributed in order to turn a profit which Miramax would share a good portion of.  When Disney purchased Miramax, there was suddenly a major studio backing the independent purchases.  Of course, as often happens with Disney, they put restrictions on what films Miramax could distribute and which ones they could not.  Even though the films being distributed were still "independent" in style and genre, they were being distributed and chosen by a major studio, and therefore, the lines between the "studio" and "indepenent" productions became blurred.

5. In his first evaluation of Gus Van Sant, Hillier described him as a filmmaker who was leaving behind his art house roots to make mainstream films for Hollywood, such as Good Will Hunting.  However, upon looking at Van Sant again, Hillier states that, as a filmmaker, Van Sant has returned to independent filmmaking in some aspects.  Other critics, such as Lalanne, claim that this supposed backtracking to "independent" films is just a part of Van Sant's style as a filmmaker rather than him simply going back to his independent roots.

6. According to Kristen Thompson, post-classical films were structured differently than narratives of the Classical Hollywood style and abandoned the cause/effect pattern that was popularized in the era of the Classical filmmaking.  Instead of developing character and having a strict narrative structure, there was an emphasis on the auteur theory.  Films today, however, stray from this label because they have a narrative structure that can easily be identified.  Jaws uses the cause and effect style of filmmaking that the Classical Hollywood style used.  The action progresses throughout the film because of other actions taking place.  If the shark would not have attacked the small child on the beach, then the hunt for the creature would not have been as large scale as it was, etc.  Characters are developed to the point of knowing Brody fears the water and the background of other characters, as well.  There is a chance to get to know what makes the characters tick, and therefore, the audience learns what characters would and would not do in certain situations in order to understand how the characters are developing, which would probably not happen in a post-classical film which would emphasize a break from the Classical system.

7. Hollywood narratives use many specific techniques to achieve clarity and unity within a film.  As mentioned in the previous answer, there is a cause and effect style within the narrative to make the story easy to follow.  Each action is motivated by a previous event.  Shot-reverse shots and the 180 degree rule helped to maintain a sense of space within a scene and kept the audience members from becoming confused as to where people actually were within a certain space.  While the main character has a want or need that drives the story forward, the story itself is told in a style called continuity editing which allows the story to unfold in a sequence that makes sense within the time and space of the film.  Everything is laid out for the audience to easily understand.

8. The four parts of Thompson's breakdown of Hollywood narratives are: the setup, the complicating action, the development, and the climax.  By stepping away from the typical "three-act structure," Thompson is able to break the film down into more digestible chunks and more action within the narrative.  With this style of narrative breakdown, there is more of an opportunity to discuss other aspects of the films, such as humor, romance, etc., that Fields does not allow for in his more constrained breakdowns of films.  

9. Even Cowgirls Get the Blues:

The Setup: The introduction of Sissy as a child and the reveal of her unusual thumbs that lead to her love of hitchhiking at a young age, which allows for her to meet the Countess. 

The Complicating Action: Sissy arrives at Rubber Rose ranch and finds herself in a loyalty tug of war between the cowgirls, who she begins to associate with, and the Countess, who helped her early on in life.

The Development: Sissy becomes more loyal to the cowgirls who seem to understand her sense of struggle more.  A romance begins with Jellybean that breaks Sissy away from the Countess.

The Climax: When Sissy returns to Rubber Rose after getting surgery on one of her thumbs, there is a war going on between the Countess and the cowgirls.  Jellybean is shot and killed when she tries to talk things out with police who mistake her trying to place her guns down as her about to open fire.

The Epilogue: Sissy goes to visit the Chink.  In the end, she stays a cowgirl, and the ranch is re-named in honor of Jellybean.