"You Made a Real Picture, Kid"
PR stunts, Billy Wilder, Howard Hawks, Barbara Stanwyck, Edith Head, censorship, my Dad’s stance on nepotism, broken toes, Us Weekly in the tabloid aughts heyday, a run in with Keanu Reeves and more…
Dearest STARF⭐️CKERS,
Thank you for subscribing & supporting thus far. To my VIP & HARDCORE STARF⭐️CKERS an extra big juicy 💋 & thanks for helping make my Substack a bestseller this month! To thank you all for your support - I’ve made this post free.
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As I continue to spill bts of my first film & book, “Pretty Things,” and the world of burlesque stripping which is all about a peek, a flash, a slight reveal…I though it fitting to give you a little tease of what I’ll be covering in the coming months … more sex, drugs, KIDS (the movie,) NYC in the mid-late 90s, Hollywood wellness journeys, ancestral patterns, GHOSTS, English eccentrics, porn & politics and much more …
Xoxo Liz
People ask me all the time why Pretty Things isn’t (yet) available for streaming. The short answer is that clearing the music and archival film rights make it difficult to broker a deal without upfront expensive additional post-production. This is where movie making —especially documentary filmmaking—is complicated. I remember Al Maysles telling me that it had taken 25 years for the Maysles Brothers classic Grey Gardens (1975) to be released even on DVD (in 2001 by Criterion Collection.)
Some of the music I used — like David Bowie’s Oh! You Pretty Things— was relatively easy to get approved. Bowie kindly gave me personal permission to use his song for free (although I did have to pay his publisher for the master rights.) I had a crash course in how the music industry profits off of artists when we were finalizing the music licenses; and how artists often don’t earn a dime when it comes to their work being sold for use in films or commercial purposes. Based on observation and the career paths of some of the directors I was inspired by back then, I decided that I wanted to outright own my first film (extremely rare and not something I would advise other filmmakers at this point.) So when HBO was negotiating with my legal team for the licensing deal, I decided to hold back the DVD rights (there was no streaming at that point.)
When it came to clearing archival photo and film clips, it was a mostly smooth process, with one exception: I had to get permission to use a clip from a film my grandfather made in 1941, Ball of Fire. Guess who owned the rights that wasn’t going to make it easy for me? My dad.
A little backstory….
Ball of Fire was directed by Howard Hawks from a script by Billy Wilder and starred Gary Cooper as an absentminded professor and Barbara Stanwyck as a nightclub singer with a knack for streetwise vernacular. Initially, however, it was intended that Stanwyck’s character was to be a burlesque stripteaser.
I went deep into the Goldwyn archives at the Motion Picture Academy of Arts & Sciences Library to research the making of the film, as one of my burlesque queen stars, Betty Rowland, was the original “Ball of Fire.” The first time we met in person, she told me about how her moniker and costume were used as inspiration for the movie. I’d never heard about or seen the film before she told me about it, and it remains one of my favorite screwball comedies of the era.
In screenwriter Billy Wilder’s treatment for Ball of Fire, I found the original description of Stanwyck’s burlesque queen character: “He stops to look at the billing in front of Minsky’s Burlesque. Miss ‘Babe’ LaBranche, ‘The Blonde Blitzkrieg,’ is featured in her own rendition of the bubble dance, ‘Sexy Suds.’ Before he realizes it, he has been steered inside by the ticket-seller and ushered to a seat directly under the runway, which comes out over the audience. When ‘Babe’ appears, he is overwhelmed both by her devastating misuse of the English language and by her total disregard for the conventional use of clothing.” The Hays commission (known then as the Production Code Administration, or PCA) nixed Wilder’s plan and Stanwyck’s character became gentrified in the process. It was deemed inconceivable that an audience could relate to a woman who took her clothes off for a living.
The PCA’s censorship cuts to the script were quite detailed. For example, in a letter to Samuel Goldwyn dated August 21, 1941, the PCA suggested the following changes: “In the material so far submitted, we note a number of items . . . which seem to be overly sex suggestive . . . and also highly dangerous from the standpoint of official censorship everywhere. Page 75: We note that two or three times throughout the script you use the word ‘stripper.’ Inasmuch as we cannot, of course, under the Code, approve a ‘strip tease,’ we suggest therefore that you change this expression.” By the time Howard Hawks began filming, Miss “Babe” LaBranche had become a dancer in a nightclub and her name had been changed to “Sugarpuss O’Shea.”
Sugarpuss wears a particularly fetching costume to perform her “Drum Boogie” number, designed by notorious copycat costume designer Edith Head. Fifty-odd years later, the real “Ball of Fire,” Betty Rowland, explained to me that Barbara Stanwyck’s costume was a replica of her own self-designed stage attire. My grandad’s archives also contained letters from the PCA about the necessary changes to this costume, for decency’s sake. After the film came out, Betty publicly brought a lawsuit against my grandad, but, as she admitted to me, it was part of a publicity stunt, there were no real grounds (at least back then) for the case. Eventually Betty’s lawsuit was dropped for lack of evidence. In Howard Hawks’ deposition, he mentioned going to the Follies theater in downtown Los Angeles with my grandpa Sam and grandma Frances to see Betty perform.
Cut to: 2005. Pretty Things is about to premiere on HBO in a few months and the only permission left to clear is for Ball of Fire which is being held up because my father (not David Bowie nor any of the other award winning filmmakers or musicians who granted me permission to use their work) is insisting on being shown a rough cut of the film before considering the request. AND he won’t deign to come into the cutting room to watch a version, he’s just too busy (insert eye roll emoji) so I have to export a copy for him to watch at home.
This guy… god bless him for the “I’m not going to make your way any easier just because you’re my daughter and a Goldwyn” anti-nepotism stance but he really did take it to the extreme. Upon the final credits rolling, he turns to me and says “well, you made a real picture, kid. You know what I’m gonna do for you? I’m only going to charge you a hundred bucks to license the clip.” I literally started laughing, I mean…$100 wasn’t going to make a big difference to his pocket but it was the principle of not giving me a free ride.
When the premiere rolled around, in New York at The Public Library at Lincoln Center, my dad stood proudly posing for photos. Although it was the first time my parents were in the same room together since my mother had left my dad a year before, they even took a few shots together. I could hardly enjoy my success because of the bar I’d set for myself. I snuck out of the screening with my husband and associate producer and headed back to our hotel to smoke a joint and change for the after party, where I could finally let loose. The next morning I broke two toes on a glass table while running to grab the phone, late for an interview.
A couple days later, still hobbling around on my black and blue foot, I took a flight back to Los Angeles. I was running late for the airport from an interview, so the film PR organized a wheelchair to bring me to the gate. I had a copy of Us Weekly, my guilty pleasure tabloid for the plane. There I am at the gate, bandaged-foot and the tabloid open on my lap, looking at photos of Keanu Reeves and a lady friend dismounting his motorcycle when a man’s voice politely asks me if I need any help getting on the plane. I look up and —I shit you not— it’s Keanu Reeves. My face goes from the photos to him and back again and I turn bright red. That was the last time I brought a tabloid on the plane. It was also the beginning of learning how vicious the press—and the internet—could be.
MORE BURLESQUE QUEENS:
Your documentary sounds incredible and kudos for doing all the hard yards yourself. I'm in the midst of making a similarly archival heavy documentary project and want to keep it independent and unanswerable to anybody but gee it's a lot to navigate!
you made a real picture, kid <3333 Your last time bringing a tabloid on a plane hahahahaha