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A Fuller Life (2013)
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Who was Sam Fuller? He was a teenage crime reporter. Then a hotshot Hollywood screenwriter who gave up a life of ease to join the United States Infantry. He was the only soldier to have ever stormed the beaches of Normandy on D-Day who went on to re-create the battle on film. He was a prolific fllmmaker with a bold style, a magnet for controversy, a poet of the American idiom. Sam Fuller was my father. Before he died at the age of 85, he wrote about his life in a memoir titled A Third Face. In this film you'll see friends and admirers of Sam reading from his memoir. You'll see clips from his movies. But not only that. Last summer I found over 100 16-millimeter reels of film under the desk in this office -- home movies and footage he shot on the front lines during World War II. Many of these films have never been seen before. Every word spoken in this film was written by Sam Fuller, my dad. -[whistle blows] -[Fuller] Quiet! All right, roll it. - Speed! -[clapper board claps] [gunshot] Action! [man] Well, you started in as a copyboy, I see. [Fuller] Yeah, when I was 14. [man 2] Freedom of the press means freedom to tell the truth. [man 3] The Liberty pedestal fund! Extree! Read all about it! Extree! [man 4] If you ask me, it's news. [man 5] Every man wants to get to the top of his profession. Mine is winning the Pulitzer Prize! If this story doesn't do it, nothing ever will. -[man 6] He's a newspaperman. -[man 7] And the best! [man 9] What about you, Griff? You gonna be a cartoonist for a big newspaper or somethin'? [Griff] Mm-hmm. [man 10] That's my book. I wrote it, baby face. [man 10] it's the Big Red One. [man 11] Aw, be smart. There's nothing like the infantry. [man 12] You're lucky you never got hurt where it doesn't show. [man 13] All of us got hurt where it doesn't show. -[man 14] It was legal. -[woman] It was murder. [man 14] Don't look at it that way. [man 15] Nobody knows where we are except the enemy. [man 16] He was a GI retread from World War ll. Fought through North Africa and Sicily and all through Europe up to Czechoslovakia. [man 17] There are two kinds of men on this beach -- those who are dead and those who are about to die. [man 18] When you lead, you have to hurt people -- the enemy, and sometimes your own. [man 19] If you die, I'll kill you! [man 20] All right, everybody, on your feet. If you can breathe, you can fight. [man 21] War's been over for four hours. [Buck Henry as Fuller] By the end of the '40s, I decided that I could direct my yarns as well as anybody else, maybe even better. [man 22] I got a great part for you in my next picture. -[boy] Bullet in head, yes? -[man 23] Bullet in head, no. [man 24] it's tragic to remain a living legend. People only respect the dead. Often I feel guilty for taking such a long time to die. [man 25] Every girl is beautiful, until they kill somebody. [man 26] I'll say one thing -- he sure knew how to die. -[man 27] That's a white dog! -[man 28] Julie, you got a four-legged time bomb! [man 29] They tried to brainwash me, but I was a bad subject. [man 30] Give the man a cigar. -[woman 2] So long, tiger. -[man 31] Good luck, muffin. [footsteps] [Franco] "New York City in the early '20s seemed like a human beehive to my 11-year-old eyes, with hustling, bustling people everywhere urging you forward, vendors shouting, taxis, double-Decker buses, trucks, and horse-drawn carts jockeying for position on cobblestone streets. Subways roaring underground, elevated trains overhead. New York made me dizzy with expectations. We settled in an apartment my mother found for us in a modest neighborhood on the Upper West Side not fer from the Hudson. We all found jobs to pull our weight and support the family. In those days, kids of all ages sold newspapers on busy corners. I asked a boy on the street where I could find out about becoming a vendor and getting one of those official wooden buttons that said 'newsboy.' 'Park Row,' said the kid. I made it down to Park Row, the heart of the newspaper business in Manhattan not far from the Brooklyn Bridge. Kids were everywhere, getting their allotments of evening newspapers to take out into the streets to sell. I felt right at home. For a penny apiece I bought copies of five dailies with the change I had in my pocket. I got back on the subway and found a street corner near Grand Central. At two cents each, the newspapers sold out before I knew what had happened. From then on, as soon as school let out every afternoon, I'd hurry downtown to Park Row and get all the dailies I could carry in my shoulder pouch. Any street corner would be good enough to hawk my papers. When I sold out, I'd rush home to give the profits to my mother, have dinner, and collapse into the bed I shared with my brothers. Still shy of my 13th birthday, I shoehorned my way into the heart of the newspaper world. On Park Row, surrounded by adults in the high-energy pursuit of news, I was growin' up fast, mostly learning about the darker side of humanity. I was burning inside to be a crime reporter, only going through the motions of school to please my mother. One day I pleaded with my illustrious boss to put me on the street and let me cover crime stories for the Journal. 'You're much too young, my boy,' said Brisbane. 'You have to be at least 21 for that kind of job. It would be irresponsible for me to let you hang around precinct stations or go to prisons to interview criminals. Crime reporting is tough work. You're far too young for it.' 'But I've tagged along with reporters. I've been to murder scenes. I've been to the morgue. I've watched how they talk to the police, to witnesses, how they get their stories. You know how fast I am, Mr. Brisbane. Just give me a chance. I can learn. Please.'" John, you've got to be crazy to want to be committed to an insane asylum to solve a murder. Even if I don't crack this case, honey, my experiences alone will make a book, a play, or even a movie sale. Every man wants to get to the top of his profession. Mine is winning the Pulitzer Prize. If this story doesn't do it, nothing ever will. The last reporter I had on this floor was Ben Franklin. - That egghead gave me more trouble than -- - Come on, Mr. Barrett. Born phonies, all you newspapermen. You came at the "make friends" hour. "A hell of a lot of time as a crime reporter is spent with cops, either at the crime scene or at the station house. The police were essential sources of information, though sometimes unwilling to give reporters a lead on a breaking story. I used to walk from one precinct to another, slipping sticks of chewing gum to the desk sergeants in exchange for something newsworthy. After I started smoking cigars, I'd give out cigars. That worked much better. When I first met him Gene Fowler was in his late 30s, one of the most well-known journalists on Park Row. I was 18, still a copyboy, and he took me under his wing. Hell if I know why. Maybe because he saw in me his own early passion for the newspaper business. " Any chance of a replay? Any chance of a bonus? Any of these make the cover, you'll get a cigar. "Fowler was there for me when I made reporter. I desperately needed a father figure. Home had become hell. My mother and I were in constant conflict about my lifestyle and career choice. My coming home night after night looking less and less like a reporter and more and more like one of the criminals I'd been covering was a continual source of anxiety and disappointment for the poor woman." How 'bout a ride to the morgue, Pete? "I'd been hanging around the morgue so much that my clothes stank of formaldehyde, the fragrance of death clinging to my threadbare suit. 'Why can't you get a job with a more respectable paper with normal working hours?' my mother asked. 'Why do you have to be out all night, chasing around after criminals, following the police, hanging around the morgue?' 'Because this is my work, Mother,' I said curtly. 'You're like a vulture.' 'I like being a vulture,' I said, slamming the door on my way out. To her, I was wasting my life at a sordid job. To me, I was fortunate enough to spend my days and nights at the most scintillating profession on earth and get paid for it. Gene was not only giving me firsthand lessons in his incorrigible zest for life. He was giving me valuable pointers on being a good reporter. 'Writing is easy,' he used to say. 'All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead. You're on the right track now, my lad,' Fowler said. 'But when you cover a murder case, give your articles more spice. Spend time alone with the criminal. Get some personal stuff. A story from his childhood, anything that connects the reader. No matter how violent the crime, if the bastard has a pet canary or sends love poems to his mother -- some human interest angle. Then follow the trial step by step, never letting up on the heart-tugging details. If the guy ends up frying in the chair at Sing Sing, then write it so strong that the reader can smell his flesh burning, even if the criminal is a woman.' To watch a gruesome spectacle turns all your insides upside down. The first execution was followed by one after another, until after half a dozen more of those revolting, state-approved killings I couldn't take it anymore. I begged my editor to send somebody else to Sing Sing. 'You wanted to be a crime reporter, didn't you?' he said. 'This is how society makes murderers pay for their crimes. You've got to cover them, Sammy.' 'Give me anything else, even a hanging,' I pleaded. 'Get a job in another state. Here the bastards get the chair.' "I knew plenty about big-city crime and state executions... at Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, and everywhere in between. Just names on a map to me. I figured I could hit the road and work my way across the country as a freelance reporter. One of my heroes, Mark Twain, had made his business to know about the people and places that made this country great by sailing the Mississippi. [steamboat whistle blowing] It was time for me to get a little firsthand American experience too. I started by hitchhiking rides on a truck or a freight train. I was going my way, my typewriter tied to my backpack with a cord. I ended up spending most of my time with people who had no real home. Everywhere I traveled, the poor were trying to make the best of a nasty situation. Even those with homes and steady jobs lived in miserable conditions, almost impossible to understand with the level of affluence we have in America nowadays. This was the low point of the Depression, before anyone had heard of rural electrification, Agricultural relief, or Social Security. [scoffs] I wrote articles and drew cartoons about so many different Americans -- coal miners in West Virginia, cowboys in Oklahoma, crab fishermen in Louisiana, cotton pickers in Georgia, milk farmers in Illinois, rail road workers in Florida. My stuff was published regularly. A decent check would be waiting for me at the local newspaper office in the next city, along with my itinerary. 'To Samuel Fuller. Freelance.' I was connected to my country like never before. Young people, if you want to understand America, get off your asses and go see it for yourselves. It's a big, breathtaking place. My travels took me across the country to the West Coast, ending up in San Francisco. There I found a temporary job as a crime reporter at the Chronicle and stayed for a while. I was in Frisco in 1934 when the general strike was called. It grew out of a labor dispute on the docks and spread like wildfire as the strike date approached. Food supplies trickled into the city, then ceased being delivered altogether when trucks, trains, and ships stopped running. Hospitals closed their doors to the sick. Garbage piled up on the street corners. Public transportation ground to a complete halt. Public order had totally broken down. As a reporter in New York I'd seen a race riot in Harlem with people looting stores for food, but that was nothing next to the panic and desperation of the 1934 strike in San Francisco. I saw corpses in the streets that weren't even picked up by the city morgue. My articles for the Chronicle described the hunger, the violence and anarchy I saw firsthand. There were many angry reactions. People thought the scenes like those I described just couldn't take place in America, but they did. It was the first time I realized how much human behavior was controlled by the belly, not the brain. When people hear the growling of their empty stomachs in their own homes, it will soon turn into screams heard in their own cities and, finally, a roar throughout their country. At the root of a social upheaval was poverty and hunger, breeding discontent and hatred. Hatred... was also born of fear. For a real eye-opener... there was nothing that could surpass the Ku Klux... Klan meetings I covered in Little Rock." What's that? A sign of the invisible empire. That's a cyclos, from the Greek word kklos. Means "circle." This baptizes a new organization -- the Ku Klux. - Sounds good. - No. Ku Klux Klan. Sounds more mysterious, more menacing, more alliterative. Ku Klux Klan. Say it. "Ku Klux Klan." - KKK. - KKK. It'll catch on quick. "My editor at American Weekly had sent me to the cradle of the Klan to write a firsthand report about their strange rituals. I got to Little Rock and was tipped off where the Klan held their secret meetings. One night I found myself surrounded by 30 KKK members wearing white sheets and parading around a burning cross. It was an overwhelming spectacle that left me depressed and disillusioned that... this could happen in America. In my article about the KKK I wrote about their hate-filled speeches, contrasting their rancorous words with the spectacle of a woman in a Klan costume nursing her newborn baby. The woman's face was hidden under that ridiculous pillowcase with holes cut out for a nose and eyes. She slowly opened the robe to put her breast into the mouth of the little baby, the Ku Klux Klan members screaming radical rubbish while the mother gave sweet sustenance to the infant. My editor at the American Weekly cut that part of the woman's nursing her baby because it sounded so farfetched. When I saw the published version of my article, I was so upset that I -- I called him to complain, making sure the operator reversed the charges. 'The way I wrote it was just the way it was,' I said. 'Should've taken photos of the woman with the baby,' said the editor. 'I'm a newspaperman, goddamn it, not a goddamn photographer! ' My editor was right, though. A picture... would have made my words believable. In fact, a photo of the Klan woman nursing a baby would have been more powerful than all my words." [chuckles] Free, white, and Christian, huh? Burning crosses and hiding under pillowcases and terrorizing families. Free, white, and Christian? I don't know anything about that, sir. Oh, yeah. It's always the other fella. "Then and there I found... a cheap camera -- [chuckles] In a pawnshop and began taking pictures to accompany my stories, and I -- I was beginning to realize that I could better convey emotions... with words and images. And not just any image, but the precise image that captured a multitude of emotions in a frozen instant." "What I really wanted to do was turn out a book. I'd started writing fiction while I was on the road. I was about 22 when I finished my first novel, burn, Baby, burn! As Clare Booth Luce once said about the '30s, 'Anyone who isn't thoroughly confused isn't thinking clearly.' it was a time of chaos and bewilderment that helped me discover in myself a profound and unwavering commitment to democratic principles. Smack in the middle of the period's upheavals, Hollywood came calling. I had plenty of yarns up my sleeve, so I decided to take a trip out to the West Coast and finally take a serious dip in Hollywood's seductive waters. A few days after my arrival I had an invitation to have lunch with Gene Fowler, who was now at RKO. 'You oughta do fine around here, Sammy,' he told me. See, by 1941 I was doing pretty well in Hollywood, selling stories and scripts one after the other. Yet I considered my stay in Hollywood as temporary. Deep down in my heart I always dreamed of being an editor-in-chief " - Know what I'd do if I had a paper? - Ah, here we go again. "It always seemed that I had one foot in and one foot out of the movie business. The way they rewrote my scripts made me increasingly dissatisfied with just being a screenwriter. I no longer could watch a film without questioning the director's judgment. " Hey, cut down that wind. I didn't ask for a hurricane. "Figuring out how a particular shot could have been improved. Wondering why the hell the director didn't yell 'Cut!'" - Cut! -[men shouting] "Early Sunday morning, December 7, 1041, I was driving my car in Los Angeles listening to the radio. That's how I heard the news about the attack on Pearl Harbor. My novel, the scripts I was doing in Hollywood, my plans to try directing, all of it suddenly seemed unimportant. I went down to the US Army draft office and got in line with all the young men waiting there. At 29 years old I was much older than the average guy who decided to enlist. Luckily they needed plenty of soldiers, so there was no bias against old volunteers like me. There was a required interview with a recruiting officer. I requested a few weeks before being sent off to boot camp in order to finish up a draft of my novel. The officer gave me extra time. Then he asked me why I wanted to go to war. Hell, I certainly wasn't enlisting with the idea of becoming a hero. I asked if I could level with him and he said, 'Yes,' so I told him that sure, I was inspired by Roosevelt's call to arms against the aggressors. However, the prospects of military life -- being in uniform, marching, carrying a rifle, fighting -- didn't really give me a hard-on. What kept going through my brain was that I had a hell of an opportunity to cover the biggest crime story of the century, and nothing was gonna stop me from being an eyewitness." "I heard my mother shudder when I told her I was going to be a soldier. 'My country needed me for a while,' I reassured her, 'and everything was going to be all right. ' The army sent me to Fort MacArthur, near San Diego. Like every other draftee, I had to take a battery of standardized tests and answer a hell of a lot of stupid questions. When I told them about my background in journalism, they sent me over to the communications department. An officer there offered me an assignment on the staff of the Armed Forces newspaper. I turned it down flat. I'd joined the army to be in the thick of the action, not behind some goddamn desk. They marched all the draftees to a rail road station. Never had I seen so many men in one place, at one time. A train was about to pull out of the station, packed to the gills with soldiers. Ignorant and impatient, I walked up to the captain. 'Where are these men on the train going?' I asked. 'Infantry! ' shouted the captain. 'I want to go with them,' I said. 'Get your ass on the train! ' he yelled, glad to be rid of me. In my naivet, how could I guess the horror that lay ahead of me and my fellow passengers? My precipitous leap into the infantry train was one of the most decisive steps of my entire life. For Chrissakes. The infantry. Guys who joined the infantry, I discovered, came back from the war in one of three ways -- dead... wounded... or crazy." "Since we were all treated like shit, a healthy camaraderie developed among the recruits, an affinity that went beyond social and educational barriers. You name the ethnic background, we had it -- Irish, Jewish, Italian, Latino, Armenian, except black. At that time blacks got sent to their own regiment. We were all equal, military speaking -- the lowest of the low, a real melting pot. When we weren't crawling on our bellies, marching or shooting, we got bombarded with patriotic propaganda, slogans,music. Everywhere were those 'We Want You' posters, Uncle Sam's fierce eyes staring at us, reminding us that we were sweating our balls off for the home of the free and the brave. We were put on a long train and shipped to lndiantown Gap, Pennsylvania. It was about midnight when we arrived there, the middle of nowhere, cold as hell, a moonless night. A sergeant on the platform started yelling commands at us as we got off the train. 'Listen up! You are now members of the First United States Infantry Division. It's the Big Red One! ' He was wearing a dark steel helmet. Thanks to a solitary light in the train yard, I saw a red '1' reflected off the sergeant's helmet. Soon we'd all be issued helmets like his, wearing them like another part of our skull, sleeping in them, fighting in them, dying in them." [book closes] "One day a jeep with two soldiers from the 18th Command Post drove up to our camp looking for me. The sergeant sitting next to the driver had orders from Colonel George A. Taylor to bring me to his headquarters. What could the commander of the 16th Regiment want with me, a recently promoted corporal in the 26th? 'Corporal Fuller reporting as requested! ' I barked it out. 'What kind of cigars do you smoke?' asked Colonel Taylor. 'Optimos,' I said. 'Only thing I can get ahold of over here.' 'Everything else is in your file,' said the colonel. 'I've been reading about you. Impressive stuff. Reporter, novelist, movies.' 'Yes, sir.' 'Now youre gonna write for us.' 'Write what, sir?' 'A full report after every battle. I want you to record exactly what you've seen in your own words. I want a detailed description of this regiment's actions -- every combat, every movement, every victory, every error. Complete honesty.' 'I don't want that responsibility, Colonel,' I said. 'Hell if I care what you want,' he replied. 'I'm giving you a great opportunity, Fuller. You get to observe the entire operation. No damn corporal has ever had the opportunity to see a combat plan, participate in it, then report on its execution.' 'You asked me for honesty, Colonel. I'm giving it to you straight. After a battle, all I wanna do is laugh with the other guys, get a little drunk and celebrate, if I'm still alive.' I felt free to refuse Colonel Taylor's offer because I was about the lowest grade in the army. If they demoted me, there wasn't a long way to go before hitting the bottom. 'Look, young man,' said Taylor, 'from now on you're part of my regiment, the 18th.' 'But, sir --' I began. 'But nothing!' said Taylor. 'You were transferred to the 16th the minute you got into that jeep that brought you here. Maybe you'll change your mind about writing for me. Meanwhile, I want you here at all times, Fuller.'" "On November 8, 1942, our outfit boarded the landing craft that took us into Arzew Beach. We were part of General Eisenhower's campaign to invade Africa. Code name.. Torch. This would be the first Allied assault of the war, attempting to force the enemy off land it had usurped. I found myself eyeball to eyeball with my first vision of the horror of war. One of our guys was hit by a mortar charge and was blown apart, his head severed from his body. It landed near me. I had a close-up view of his shocked face, his bulging eyes filled with fear and surprise. I'd seen a lot of corpses in city morgues, so I didn't turn away. I stared almost hypnotized by the soldier's head, forgetting where I was. The shell bursts snapped me out of it. To this day that first face of death is imprinted on my mind like a leaf in a fossil, never to fade away. The Big Red One continued to move towards the Tunisian border -- Ousseltia Valley. We'd become much tougher, thanks to the battle experience. War itself is organized insanity. Both sides are trained to kill, and everyone is a potential enemy. We were given rules of conduct, but -- [chuckles] the rules were hypocritical as hell. When you see an enemy pissing, it's still your choice whether to shoot him or not. Civilized wars just don't exist. I began a journal in North Africa. If I survived, I was gonna write about my war experience someday. Ah,the journal wasn't much more than a small calendar book full of quickly scribbled notes, drawings, random thoughts, and ideas for characters and stories. I jotted down the names of dogfaces. Many died before I could find out much about them. As often as I could, I wrote my mother a letter on V-Mail stationery or any piece of paper that was handy. Mostly I sent her cartoons and wrote quips about the lighter side of infantry life. I avoided talking about anything violent or sad. Telling her where we were or describing our actions too precisely was impossible. Survival was the one thought that held dominion over everything else in a doggie's universe. In that vein, we worried about simple, but basic things -- dry socks, edible chow, fresh water, the runs. I never saw anyone praying to God, except in some Hollywood movies after the war was over, imagined by screenwriters who'd never been near a battlefield. See, there's no way you can portray war realistically, not in a movie or a book. You can only capture a very, very small aspect of it. If you really want to make readers understand a battle -- [chuckles] A few pages of your book would have to be booby-trapped. For moviegoers to get the idea of real combat, you'd have to shoot at them every so often from either side of the screen. Casualties in the theater would be... bad for business. I had to kill a man for the first time. The act begets the most basic revulsion. I couldn't believe it was me pulling the trigger. Left me feeling hollow inside. But a soldier must overcome that disgust if he is to survive. - Afterward, when you kill -- -[gunshot] You're shooting the same man over and over and over again. Your will to survive surprises you, eventually kicking abstract thoughts like remorse or mercy out of your brain. The reality is, you're glad the other guy is dead and you're still alive. You become... a killing machine." "In July of 1043 the entire First Division was put out to sea. That's when we found out our target was Sicily. The North African landing had been kindergarten next to the invasion of Sicily. We were in Europe now. This was home turf to the Duce, backed by Hitler. There were 300, 000 Italian and German soldiers occupying Sicily. Each battle was going to be fought tooth and nail. We'd faced the enemy, but never this many. For cryin' out loud, we were in their goddamn backyard. Psychology is an essential weapon in wartime. That's why we had trouble fighting against Italians. We didn't have the same venom for them as we did for the Nazis. In every outfit there were Americans of Italian descent. A few could even speak the language. We had one dogface from San Francisco who was intent on locating his Sicilian grandmother near Caltanisetta. And for Chrissakes, he did. The Sicilians usually welcomed us. After an assault, when all the enemy soldiers had been killed or driven away, the villagers -- mostly women, children and old men -- would bring out the wine, pasta, fruit, flowers. All the young men had been called to fight for the fascists. Many were never coming back. It was hard to feel contempt for civilians, even though we knew they'd been saluting Mussolini just a few days before our invasion. It was a question of survival. One day we passed a little farm behind a stone wall. The entire family was outside the place -- mama, grandma, grandpa, bambinos -- chanting, 'Mussolini no good! Mussolini no good!' We were paranoid, suspicious of everyone and everything. So we stopped to check out the farm, searching the house for weapons. There was nothing irregular. However, when we went through the barn behind the farmhouse, we found a young woman, about 18, hiding in one of the donkey stalls. She was small and shapely, with a pretty face, dark eyes, and black hair. We dragged her outside, kicking and screaming. One of our Italian-American dogfaces told her she had nothing to fear. She started yelling profanities at him. 'What's her problem?' I asked. The dogface explained that she wanted us to kill every fascist in Sicily and burn Mussolini alive. 'l think it's all bullshit,' said our bilingual doggie. The girl understood his drift and exploded with more epithets of hate. Suddenly she stopped and opened her blouse. Instead of a bra, she had soiled medical bandages covering her breasts. 'Was she hit in the chest?' asked our sergeant. 'No. She said a fascist raped her and bit off her nipples.' All of us froze, sickened at her plight. 'She's lying,' said our translator. 'Why don't you buy her story?' 'I know about these ass-kissers. When Mussolini was riding high they were crazy about the bastard. Now they figure he's licked, everybody hates him. We're supposed to believe that fascism never caught on in Sicily. The hell it didn't.' He ripped off one of her bandages. The girl screamed. We stared at the teeth marks on her mutilated breasts. In place of a nipple, there was an ugly black-and-blue wound. We paled and stepped back from her. Our sergeant gently took the girl back to her family and gave her fresh bandages and antiseptics. We stood speechless. 'Okay,'growled the disbelieving, shocked soldier. 'So I was wrong.' Ashamed of himself, he walked up to the girl in front of her family. 'Signor, per favore, sono molto desolato. Molto, molto."' "Our outfit boarded a British troop ship one night in mid October and shipped out of Sicily. No one would tell us where we were going. The ship was taking us back to Britain, where we were to spend many months in secret preparation for another amphibious assault. We didn't know it yet, but we had an appointment on the beaches of Normandy on Tuesday, June 8, 1944. Real ammunition was being used in the training sessions. That was another good reason to concentrate. Plenty of dogfaces were wounded or killed in training. I always wondered about their families back home. How would you react if they found out that the killed-in-action telegram they received was only half true, that the bullet shrapnel was friendly fire? 'You've been rehearsing hard for this operation,' said Colonel Taylor. 'You know your jobs by heart. Intelligence tells us that the people of Normandy have fraternized with the enemy. They did what anyone else would do to survive four years of occupation. Now we will be the invaders. What they call liberation is good for newspaper stories. We aren't liberating anything. We're turning things upside down. What you've gotta tell yourselves is that Omaha is not just a beach. If you threw a light on it, that light would shine all the way into Germany. It's our doorway to the enemy. The Nazis have had it their way for a long time. You have to kill them like they've never been killed before.' We'd fantasized that the first or second attack waves would be the most dangerous. We'd even joked about it. But the joke was on us. The first and second waves had hit the beach with at least an element of surprise on their side. By the time we were coming in, the Germans were alerted to the invasion and had time to adjust their artillery. I swallowed a ton of saltwater mixed with American blood and struggled like crazy not to drown while making our way through those metal death traps and around all those floating bodies. Mortar shells started to fell like hail. It was 200 yards from the landing craft to Omaha Beach, the longest distance I'd ever traveled. Being vertical on Omaha was an invitation to death. God, how I ran. In all my years as a copyboy, my legs never moved that fast. The dead and the wounded lay everywhere, bodyparts strewn across the sand. I saw a man's mouth -- just the mouth, for Christ's sakes -- floating in the water. I got hit by a bullet in my chest as we fought our way towards Saint-L. Everyone got hurt one way or another. You pretended that your wound was nothing more than a little hole in your body. If you were as lucky as I was, the bullet missed the vital organs, and you survived. Advancing towards Mons, we moved cautiously into Belgium through the countryside on September 3. I really didn't know about the Belgian border crossing until that night because there were no markers in the forest. In Mons we mopped up small enclaves of enemy troops and continued moving east. On one of the supply trucks from France was a care package from my mother with a fresh supply of cigars -- manna from heaven in that inhospitable place. She wrote me that The Dark Page had won some award as the best psychological novel of 1943. She included a letter from my agent, Charlie Feldman, who was talking with Howard Hawks about buying the book's movie rights. Looking around our camp, I couldn't help smiling. It didn't seem possible that Hollywood could be on the same planet, much less in the same goddamn galaxy as that rain-soaked Belgian forest. The news from the West Coast made me feel lucky. I'd been through three amphibious assaults and somehow survived. The war had to end someday. Maybe my luck would continue and I'd survive to write more books. Especially one from the point of view of a lowly infantryman." Ah, be smart. There's nothing like the infantry. You're in a plane, and you get hit. What happens? You still gotta fall. Two strikes against you. You're in a ship, you get hit, you can still -- you can still drown. In a tank, you can fry like an egg. But in the infantry, you get hit and that's it. One thing or the other -- you're dead or alive. But you're on the ground. Get wise. Nothing like the infantry. "Pushing through the breach in the Siegfried Line, the stage was set for the final assault on Aachen, the first German city we'd attack. Aachen was in a rich valley, surrounded by wood-covered ridges that bristled with enemy mortars, artillery, snipers, and machine guns. The plan was to surround the city in preparation for a coordinated invasion. So the nearby towns had to be taken. One by one, they fell. But in each one, we ran into heavy resistance. Our next objective was the Ruhr River crossing east of Aachen. We began a nonstop marathon that was not to end until the Rhine had been reached. Miraculously, our outfit was invited one cold and rainy night for a USO show that was in the area. Exhausted, dark faces suddenly forgot all about weather and weariness because the mistress of ceremony that night was the one-and-only Marlene Dietrich. When the show was over, I ran around to the stage door entrance. An MP stopped me. Backstage was off-limits. I told him I had to speak with Miss Dietrich about a professional matter. 'Forget it,' the MP snarled. 'Get back to your outfit.' He wasn't getting rid of me so easily. I rushed over and stuck my head in the half-open door. ' it'll only take a minute, Miss Dietrich.' [chuckles] Surprised but cordial, she invited me into a cold, damp dressing room. The only light came from a bare light bulb dang ling from the high ceiling. I apologized about my appearance. I looked like hell. I was unshaven. My uniform was filthy. My boots were muddy. I must have stunk too. But Dietrich didn't seem to mind at all. Shed probably seen worse on her tour of frontline troops. 'Miss Dietrich,' I told her, 'I'd like you to take a message from me back home.' 'Impossible,' she said. She explained that she'd met many soldiers who wanted her to phone their mothers and their girlfriends. But she just couldn't do it, and she told everyone the same thing. It was really impossible. I said I didn't want her to phone my mother. I wanted her to deliver a one-word message to Charlie Feldman in Hollywood. 'Charles K. Feldman?' she asked, suddenly intrigued. 'My agent? You know him?' 'Yes, Miss Dietrich,' I said. 'He's my agent too.' She stopped dead and gazed at me. 'He's your agent too?' 'Yeah, he is. He sold my book to Howard Hawks. A novel called The Dark Page. The message for Charlie is easy, Miss Dietrich. One word -- cigars. Just say cigars to Charlie when you get back to Hollywood, okay?' She laughed and poured us both a good brandy. 'What's your name, soldier?' 'Fuller. Samuel Fuller.' She asked me to write it down. I refused. 'My name's not necessary,' I told her. 'Just say cigars to Charlie. He'll know what it is.' 'Okay, soldier,' she said, clinking glasses with me. A box of good cigars arrived by APO from Charlie Feldman that spring. Dietrich had damn sure delivered my message. In '53, I'd run into Marlene Dietrich once again under very different conditions. I was in New York at a nightclub. At a table across the big room was the legendary producer Sam Spiegel. He waved at me. I went over to say hello. Sitting next to Spiegel was Dietrich. He introduced us. I told her we'd already met. She was very polite, but she shook her head, not remembering me or where we'd run into each other. 'Too bad,' I said. 'That's life.' I turned and started back to my table. All of a sudden, Marlene Dietrich was right behind me. 'Hey, soldier,' she said, her eyes twinkling. I turned and grinned at her. She put her arms around me. Tears were running down her cheeks. She'd heard so many stories about all the men killed in our outfit, yet here I was, alive. She was genuinely pleased to see me again. -[men cheering] - Hello, boys. She'd given over 500 shows for GI's during the war, but there was only one little corporal trying to squeeze some cigars out of Charlie Feldman back in Hollywood." [chuckles] "By the end of April, 1045, we'd advanced all the way into the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia. Six years earlier, in 1030, Hitler had first shown his true colors as an empire-building, nation-crushing tyrant. Nobody discouraged Nazi aggression at the time. Now the war to stop Hitler had come full circle, back to its birthplace. The cease-fire of May 7 was universal. We moved into Falkenau that night and were slapped in the face, first by hordes of Germans streaming into town from Karlsbad, fleeing the Russians in order to surrender to the Americans. More than 45, 000 POWs moved through Falkenau in the next three days, creating the monumental job of hand ling all those people. The most profound shock awaited us as we entered the front gate of the Falkenau concentration camp only a few thousand yards from the town. There were a few die-hard SS at the camp who didn't know the war was over. They fired at us and tried to make a break for it in the command car. One of our doggies hit the car with a bazooka, ending their escape in a fiaming mushroom of fire and smoke. We ran down the remaining Nazis and disarmed them. What had been happening in that concentration camp was beyond belief, beyond our darkest nightmares. We were overwhelmed to come face-to-face with all the carnage. I still tremble to remember those images. of the living hunkered down with the dead. The stench of rotting bodies welled up in your face and made you want to stop breathing. One final vision of horror awaited us. The crematorium. When we burst into that building, smoke from the grenades we'd thrown through the windows filled the room. Silent now, the row of steel doors to the ovens stretched in front of us. I stared at the ovens and then looked into the first one. When I saw the remains of the cremated bodies in there, I couldn't control my revulsion. I vomited and wanted out of there at any cost. But I couldn't stop myself from looking into the second oven, then the third, mesmerized by the impossible. For Chrissakes, people had actually been cooked in those ovens. The incontrovertible proof lay right in front of my own eyes. Captain Richmond ordered a delegation of townspeople to appear at the gates of the camp the next morning to face a firing squad. Richmond was going to make sure that these people found out what had been happening only a few steps from their front doors. Richmond knew my mother had sent me a handheld Bell and Howell 18-millimeter movie camera. The captain wanted me to position myself the next day on a wall overlooking the concentration camp to film the gruesome spectacle. I was about to make my first movie. The ending of all hostilities was a quiet shock. I couldn't believe I didn't have to sleep with my hand on my rifle anymore, that every noise wasn't the start of an enemy attack, that I could light a cigar at night without worrying about a sniper putting a bullet through my brain. We'd be going home soon. Rejoining civilization was all we'd ever been talking about, joking about, dreaming about. But reentry was scary too. How could we tell the world about what we'd experienced, about what we'd witnessed? How could we live with ourselves? I have few regrets about my life, but one of them concerns the Nuremberg Trials. Behind each Nazi prisoner at Nuremberg was a guard. Those guards were soldiers from my outfit, the Big Red One. The military was screening candidates for that assignment, and I went off to Paris to visit my brother Ray. I'd already promised him that I'd meet him in Paris, and there was no way in hell I'd let him down. But what a missed opportunity. I could have watched the Nuremberg Trials in person. " "Our troop ship finally sailed from Marseilles, docking in Boston in late September, 1045. I took a train to New York to see my mother for the first time in four years. Though it was good beyond words to put my arms around her again, it became quickly evident that my homecoming was burdensome for me and everyone around me. I spent a hell of a lot of time in bed, but couldn't sleep for long stretches. Horrible nightmares kept rattling my head. Everyday sounds made me jump and shake uncontrollably. I was a textbook case of war hysteria. " Right after the war, I nearly fell apart every time I heard a cup rattle a dish. "I needed to somehow start earning a living again. By the end of the '40s, I decided that I could direct my yarns as well as anybody else. Maybe even better. Sure, I was still happy working behind a typewriter, but now I started looking for an opportunity to direct a picture of my own, using a motion picture camera to tell the tale. All I needed was a producer who'd put his faith in me, and just when I needed him, Robert L. Lippert showed up in my life. In 1949, I made I Shot Jesse James for him. And we closed the deal on a handshake because he liked my yarn. When the movie unexpectedly made some dough for Lippert, he shared the profits with me exactly as we'd agreed. And we went on to make several pictures together. Now the offers came streaming in from the majors. I met with all the studio heads. When I first met Darryl Zanuck, he was already a mogul. The only mogul who didn't talk about money. 'What story you want to make next, Sammy?' he asked me. Holy smokes, that was a question I'd been waiting to hear. More than any other studio head, Darryl loved stories. That made me love the guy from the first moment I met him. Darryl would act out scenes with me. He'd even get on the floor when there was a body in the script. lf he said, 'Okay, let's do it,' your picture was in production. My deal with Darryl was for six pictures. Half a year, I'd work for Fox. The other half, I could do anything I wanted. A new period of creativity and accomplishment was dawning. Throughout the '50s, I got offers to direct big movies, adapted from best-selling books with major stars attached. One after another I turned them down for a variety of personal and professional reasons. In general, making less expensive movies meant maintaining my independence, avoiding the studios tampering with my scripts, imposing their casting and editing choices." [announcer] Gene Evans as America's great fighting editor in the first terrific struggle for the most famous street in the world, Park Row. "Maybe it was a fatal career flaw, but small-budget independence was more appealing to me than all the thunder of major productions. In Hollywood, the artistic climate was appalling. Studios were factories grinding out safe movies like bland sausages, anxious to please right-wing review boards, scrutinizing all material for suspicious ideas." But you wouldn't sell him to a Commie. What do you think I am, an informer? "In 1950, the McCarran Act led straight to Hollywood's front door because the infamous Senator Joseph Raymond McCarthy of Wisconsin exploited it to uncover Communist influence in the arts." What's the matter with you? Playing footsies with the Commies. [scoffs] You wavin' the flag too? "The FBI chief, J. Edgar Hoover, was very perturbed about Pickup on South Street and wanted to see Zanuck and me about it. A lunch meeting was set up at Romanoff's. The FBI chief told me he didn't care for The Steel Helmet or Fixed Bayonets, but that Pickup on South Street had gone much too far. First of all, he didn't like the hero doing business with both Communists and Americans. 'How could an American think only about money at a time like this in our history?' Hoover asked. 'He doesn't give a damn about history,' I explained. 'He's an outlaw. The guy's only motivation is to score.' What Hoover hated the most was the scene when the FBI agent asks the pickpocket to cooperate. " if you refuse to cooperate, you'll be as guilty as the traitors that gave Stalin the A-bomb. Are you waving a flag at me? "Said Hoover, quoting from the script. 'What kind of thing is that for an American to say?' 'That's his character,' I replied. ' if it were another character,' I explained, 'he might say, By God, I'd do anything for my country.' Hoover was like some of the biased critics I've run into over the years. They look at everything exclusively from their own perspective. If a movie is in line with their position, it's good. If it's out of line, it's bad. Hell, a writer has to write from a character's viewpoint. I explained to Hoover that if I write believable dialogue for an unpatriotic character, it doesn't make me un-American. It's not me talking. it's my character. The power that Hoover wielded back then was incredible. The truth about the formidable FBI chief wouldn't be known until many years later. And there he was, questioning my integrity and honesty, while he was blackmailing people to keep himself in power." [Constance Towers] "My tale is full of human foible and confusion. With many pictures under my belt, now established as a writer-director in Hollywood, I should have been sleeping peacefully under those silk sheets in my big house in Beverly Hills. Nothing could have been further from the truth. I tossed and turned all night long, wracked by horrific nightmares. Music was my immediate remedy. I got up, went downstairs, and immersed myself in Beethoven, Bach, or Mozart. See, music is an essential part of every picture I make." [Beethoven's Fifth Symphony playing] "Before photographs and movies, people were listening to music and getting strong emotional messages. When I write, I visualize what I want to happen on the screen and imagine the accompanying music. I can actually see the action and dialogue better by adding music early in the script." [Beethoven's Fifth Symphony continues playing] [gunflre] "There is no end in art. Every accomplishment is the dawn of the next challenge. Seize your audience by the balls as soon as the credits hit the screen and hang onto them. Smack people right in the face with the passion of your story. Make the public love your characters or hate them, but for Gods sakes, never -- never leave them indifferent. Maybe you do a picture to exorcise old demons. Then your yarn makes you start grinding your teeth all over again, tormented by images that you've concocted. I was lucky. At critical moments in my life, role models like Terry Allen and John Ford took me under their wings and kept me from derailing, showing me how to be a mensch. I was afflicted early on by an irresistible longing to roam. Even today, no matter how luxurious or cozy the roof over my head, I'd leave it behind in a flash for the chance to travel to some exotic locale, especially to make a movie. Hell, I guess I'm really a goddamn tramp at heart. Packing up my cigars and my Royal, I was on my way. It was late September, 1985, when I arrived in Paris. " I'm an American film director. My name is Samuel Fuller. I'm here to make a picture in Paris called Flowers of Evil. "During the day I worked on my Flowers of Evil script. In the evening I met Christa. She really knew her way around Paris. " Don't you wait for a man to open the door for you? The last time a man opened the door for me, we were going 60 miles an hour. [Towers] "I was getting invited to all kinds of openings, parties, and cultural events. Christa was constantly at my side. She enjoyed the socializing. All the attention being showered on me was flattering at first, but it began to wear thin. When I got back to Hollywood, reality came hurtling down upon me. People think Hollywood is a heartless and a destructive place. I don't believe that crap. The studio boys could take a movie away from me, but they couldn't take away my optimism. I was chock full of ideas, determined to do whatever was needed to support my young wife. Blaming the motion picture business was useless. Jotting down ideas constantly in a little notebook I kept with me day and night, I continued writing new stories, researching current events, reading history books, coming up with ideas almost every day. I had over 100 titles registered with the Writers Guild, some with entire scripts already written, some based on stories or treatments, and some... just titles for future development. Developing a piss-cutter of a movie from scratch... was what I loved doing most." "By the mid-'80s, America's mood changed drastically. Our society was in upheaval. For crying out loud, it seemed like a perfect time for me and my ballsy yarns. Of course, life doesn't always work out the way you think it will. Rather than prolific, the '60s turned out to be tough going. I resorted to my tramping ways, going wherever in the world a producer would back one of my projects. Even then, I didn't make half the movies I wanted to. One of the tricks I've learned is to tap constantly into my creative juices, no matter if there's a producer to finance a movie or not. When you're least expecting it, one will show up. You damn well better be ready to pull a script you really love out of your desk drawer. You see, I had to keep making movies. It was in my blood, after all these years. Now, I was a tough guy to be married to, but somehow we made it work, realizing right away that it takes two to tango. One day I ran into Lee Marvin. 'Sammy,' said Lee, 'when are you gonna do The Big Red One?' Marvin knew about the precious movie that I'd been working on all those years. I'd kept him in the loop. 'You'll be my sergeant,' I said, making a promise I'd never break. There were just two projects I wanted to focus on now -- the baby that Christa was about to have and The Big Red One, the movie that I had to find a way to give birth to. Christa's pregnancy went to term without a glitch. At the age of 83, I'd become a father for the first time. I'd never felt more ambitious or energetic. Nothing and no one could ever get me down. I wanted my little girl to be proud of her daddy. The Big Red One was an official entry at the 1980 Cannes Film Festival. Even in its drastically cut version, critics called it one of the best war movies ever made. But my problem in Hollywood was that power and money never gave me a hard-on. I'd put my life on the line to stand up for democracy, fighting fascism because it was antagonistic to the Jeffersonian principles that all men are created equal. I was one of the first directors in Hollywood to use actors of color in intelligent, complex roles. The black medic in The Steel Helmet. Nat King Cole's sensitive soldier in China Gate. Hari Rhodes' twisted college dropout in Shock Corridor. James Shigeta's detective, who gets the gal in The Crimson Kimono. After depicting the little guy and his right to be different in movie after movie, no matter what economic status or race, I thought I'd made my position on equality crystal clear. " I understand you're an "I-talian," Vinci. How come they let a wop in this man's army? I don't think a wop's gonna flight a wop. I think all you'll do is drink dago red and sing "'O Sole Mio." [laughs] 'O sole mio [men joining in] La-la, la-la "To my amazement and consternation, rumors began to circulate that my upcoming film, White Dog, was a racist movie, even before the picture had been previewed in public. Paramount hadn't set a release date yet. A meeting was called. As soon as I sat down in their conference room, they dropped the bomb. They were gonna shelve my film. I was deeply hurt. The studio had used me as a scapegoat for their lack of determination and courage. Nightmares made sleeping hellish." I have the nightmare all the time. "In my bad dreams, I became characters in my movies. Sometimes the old Indian in Run of the Arrow, who is scorned by the young braves. Sometimes the commanding general in Merrill's Marauders, trekking through the jungle with his soldiers. Sometimes Johnny Barrett, trapped in an asylum in Shock Corridor. I woke up before dawn, soaked from my own sweat, as if I'd been running from a vicious white dog. [growling] [gunshots] I became like a foreigner in my own country. In France, by contrast, I was always treated with esteem. I loved strolling in Paris, where every corner, square, and quarter was steeped in history. And what a violent history it was. My long life had run parallel with most of the 20th century, intersecting with some of the memorable characters and momentous upheavals. I'd seen my fellow Americans at their best and at their worst. Their enthusiasm, ingeniousness, and sheer industry are truly remarkable. Yet into the fabric of my times have been woven devastating world wars, poverty and ignorance, social rifts based on race, and wealthy, psychopathic hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan. " - Keep our schools white! - Keep 'em white! That's right! - I'm against Catholics! - Hallelujah, man! Hallelujah! - Against Jews! - Hallelujah! - Against niggers! - Hallelujah! Hallelujah! There's one! Let's get that black boy before he marries my daughter! - Hallelujah! Hallelujah! - Hallelujah! [shouting] "For me, the hate-mongers and reactionaries are the most loathsome thorns in the eye of a great democracy. Every generation will have their own, and they must be fought and defeated. I've never lost my ardor for history and its illuminations. Nor have I ever mislaid my optimism. Living on the edge of Hollywood for so many years, physically and spiritually, I remain, to this day, an outsider. As for life, I always plunged in headfirst, without worrying about failure. If there's one reason to recount my personal history, something inspirational that I'd like my life experiences to offer you, be you young or young at heart, then it would be to encourage you to persist with all your heart and energy in what you want to achieve, no matter how crazy your dreams seem to be to others. Believe me, you'll prevail over all the naysayers and bastards who are telling you it just can't be done. Okay, now, all you voices. Let yourselves be heard." [Fuller] Cut! Did you get it? [inhales] [door closes] [no audible dialogue] [no audible dialogue] [no audible dialogue] [no audible dialogue] If I had to pick an adjective to describe Sam Fuller, it would be "exuberant." Sam, Sam, Sam. There wasn't a moment in any film I did with him that I didn't feel him thinking with me, talking to me, being as much a part of the emotion as I was. You're still with us, Sam. There is no keeping you down. Not the naysayers, you know, no matter who they may be. You have helped a lot of young people already give voice to their dreams, Sam. And with what you've written here, there'll be many more, I'm sure. [man] See, you've got three faces The first you're born with The one in the mirror That feels Mama's kiss Papa's ruby cheeks Thin lips like me A set of crooked chops From your genealogy The second is created by your ingenuity The one that shows passion And your sensitivity Downcast when times are rough Cold with confusion Charming and sweet When seduction is the treat New York, San Francisco Plenty good yarns he had in store That's what he lived for That's what he lived for Then there's the third face No one can see Not in the mirror Not lovers, just me Privy to your deepest fears Hopes and dreams Guarding secrets for all eternity The third remains hidden From your dearest loved one A mystery of life Ill ponder till I'm done That's how we survive Glory and pain A piece of yourself always to remain New York, San Francisco Plenty good yarns he had in store That's what he lived for That's what he lived for That's what he lived for [song ends] |
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