Jose Saca – The Typewriter, the Rifle, and the Movie Camera (Eighth Post)

The Typewriter, the Rifle, and the Movie Camera is a documentary released in 1996 and directed by Adam Simon. The film looks at the life and films of Samuel Fuller, a filmmaker active in the ‘50s, ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s whose influence inspired directors such as Quentin Tarentino, Jim Jarmusch, and Martin Scorsese, all of whom are interviewed in this film. The film provides a candid look at Fuller through a one-on-one interview with Tim Robbins, who visits Fuller in his home in Paris.

The following post will argue how Simon’s film is both a talking heads and self-reflexive documentary.

Simon’s film sparsely uses narration to guide the viewer through Fuller’s repertoire, which are usually simple films with a muscular, unsubtle bent. These include classics such as Shock Corridor (1963), about an undercover reporter’s descent into madness after faking a mental illness to get an inside story on a mental institution, The Steel Helmet (1951), about a group of American soldiers fighting in the Korean War, and The Big Red One (1980), a semiautobiographical film about the 41^st Division of the United States infantry that fought during the Second World War, of which Fuller was a part of.

Fuller’s film never attracted a big enough audience to make him a household name, but his influence has not gone unnoticed. Talking head interviews with Martin Scorsese and Jim Jarmusch supply a good amount of information on Fuller’s influences in their films. An example of this is in a scene where Martin Scorsese admits to lifting an effect used in The Steel Helmet for a fight sequence in Raging Bull (1980). The referenced scene is when the main character of Zack is fatally wounded and dies a slow, near poetic, death. Scorsese mentions how Fuller used a smoke effect to create disorientation in the scene, as if to suck the audience into the death of their beloved protagonist. He goes on to say how he used this same effect in Raging Bull in one of Jake LaMotta’s many fights with Sugar Ray Robinson by placing flame bars near the camera to create the exact same effect.

Scorsese is not the only talking head active in this film. Independent director Jim Jarmusch talks candidly about his friendship with Fuller. In one particular scene, Jarmusch mentions how, in a particular conversation with the director, Fuller told him how much detested word-of-mouth descriptions on events or occurrences. In Fuller’s view, you were either there or not. And if you weren’t, you have no right to go on talking about any event or occurrence. What Fuller appreciated more than anything else, Jarmusch concludes, is real life experience. Evidence of this is presented at length in Fuller’s films, many of which are semiautobiographical (his war films in particular include events that Fuller actually experienced or saw firsthand when fighting in the Second World War or during his days as a copy boy and crime reporter in New York City).

Simon’s film delves into self-reflexivity when discussing Fuller’s filmic and creative process with the man himself. Fuller, by that time elderly but still active and full of life, tells interviewer Tim Robbins of his start in film, when began when Fuller’s mother sent him a movie camera to capture images when he was in Europe fighting for the US. Fuller’s camera was one of the first to capture the aftermath of the atrocities that occurred in German concentration camps. Footage is shown in the film of bone-thin individuals being nursed to health, while in other sections we see similar looking bodies tossed into what look like burials. Indeed, it’s suitable for Fuller that his start into the filmic foray was no picnic.

Further into the filmic process, Fuller makes parallels between film and journalism. Fuller was a journalist before becoming a filmmaker, so he appreciated the power of simplicity of directness. He compares the power of a close-up to that of a headline, in that both make powerful statements in “bold-faced print.” Fuller furthers this point when discussing a particular scene in The Big Red One. The scene, which features an American soldier stumbling onto a confrontation with a German rifleman in person, creatively uses the close-up to illustrate Fuller’s point on the latter’s impact in film. With both soldiers pointing their rifles at each other, visibly scared, Fuller uses dual close-ups on the eyes of each soldier to illustrate the fear and overall tension embodied in this type of situation. An abrupt cut to the American soldier shows how he scores the shot in the confrontation. In discussing this particular close-up, Fuller goes on to say that the only thing a soldier sees when confronting an enemy gunman are his eyes.

Simon furthers his film into self-reflexivity in scenes shot in Los Angeles involving Tim Robbins and popular director Quentin Tarantino, himself an unabashed Fuller fan. Both visit a garage that stores Fuller memorabilia that includes props from his films (such as THE steel helmet from the film of the same name and bayonets used in the film Fixed Bayonets! (1951)) and equipment he used to make movies, including his very movie camera. Tarentino in particular shows a heartfelt side little seen in the many interviews he’s given in the past, reflecting on past experiences he has going to Sam Fuller films when he was a boy. He particularly references The Steel Helmet and The Big Red One as personal favorites in this segment of the film. Amid digging in the garage, Robbins finds Fuller’s wartime diary, which reads like a cut-up poem that utilizes terse, journalistic language to describe life in a time of war. Both men are indeed at awe when seeing the memorabilia and connecting it to each particular film in Fuller’s repertoire. Unfortunately, Robbins does not mention this visit to Fuller himself in the documentary (perhaps the Paris interviews were shot before the Tarentino section).

Throughout the film, Simon effortlessly uses talking head interviews to inform the viewer about Fuller and his life. At the same time, Simon manages to bring a conscious dialogue on the art of filmmaking by visiting and analyzing the filmmaking process of this great director. The directorial pedigree given by names like Tarentino, Scorsese, and Jarmusch only add to the depth of the documentary’s self-reflexive themes.

Here’s hoping Fuller’s films find a wider audience.