A Third Face: My Tale of Writing, Fighting and Filmmaking Read online

  ALSO BY SAMUEL FULLER

  Cerebro-Choc (Brainquake)

  Pecos Bill et le Kid Cavale (Pecos Bill and the Soho Kid)

  Quint's World

  The Big Red One

  Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street

  144 Piccadilly

  Crown of India

  The Dark Page

  Make Up and Kiss

  Test Tube Baby

  Burn, Baby, Burn

  A Third Face

  A THIRD FACE

  My Tale of Writing, Fighting, and Filmmaking

  SAMUEL FULLER

  WITH Christa Lang Fuller AND

  Jerome Henry Rudes

  Contents

  Foreword xi

  Introduction X111

  PART I

  i. A Stroke of Good Fortune 3

  2. Plunging in Head First 7

  3. Mama's Boy I z

  4. Manhattan Explorer 17

  5. Run Sammy Run 25

  6. Flash Like a New Comet 39

  7. World of Nevertheless 54

  8. Westward Ho 64

  9. Chaos and Bewilderment 77

  io. Added Zeroes 87

  i1. Forget About Greatness 98

  PART 11

  12. The Big Red One io9

  13. Husky 122

  14. Just Stand There 135

  15. Impossible to Feel Blessed 147

  16. Send a Photo to My Mother 162

  IT Detailed Description 176

  18. Death Rained Down 178

  i9. Eggs Off a Woman's Belly 190

  20. A River of Tears 200

  21. Falkenau 213

  22. Earthquake of War 219

  PART III

  23. The Bubble Will Burst 233

  24. The First Adult Western 244

  25. Earning Some Clout 251

  26. Pursuit of Happiness 267

  27. A Little Black-and-White Picture 279

  28. Don't Wave the Flag at Me 291

  z9. Wide-Screen Sub Picture 307

  30. Cherry Blossoms and Whirligigs 314

  31. Mato Grosso 324

  32. Where's Your Pride, Ma? 332

  PART IV

  33. Grab 'Em. Slap 'Em. Shak' 'Em Up. 345

  34. Stuffed with Phalluses 355

  35. I Used My Own Voice 365

  36. Los Angeles, Mon Amour 375

  37. Breathing Revenge 382

  38. The Smell of Truth 391

  39. Tempted by Television 398

  40. Love Your Country Despite the Ulcers 403

  41. Want to Be a Lindy? 415

  PART V

  42. Two to Tango 427

  43. Sharks 440

  44. Lean Times 446

  45• Off the Radar Screen 450

  46. Turmoil and Waste 456

  47. Making It All Worthwhile 464

  48. The Unmaking of a Klansman 471

  49. Let Them Judge for Themselves 475

  50. Four-Legged Time Bomb 484

  PART VI

  51. A Third Face 497

  52. Breadwinner in France 505

  53. Half Full, Not Half Empty 512

  54. Sons and Sonsofbitches 518

  55. Being Serious Without Taking It Seriously 526

  56. Still Burning Inside 530

  57. Metamorphosis of a Melody 537

  58. Long, Long Thoughts 543

  59. State of Peace 550

  6o. Kiss Me, Baby 556

  Notes 563

  The Works of Samuel Fuller 569

  Bibliography 575

  Acknowledgments 577

  Index 579

  Foreword

  It's been said that if you don't like the Rolling Stones, then you just don't like rock and roll. By the same token, I think that if you don't like the films of Sam Fuller, then you just don't like cinema. Or at least you don't understand it. Sure, Sain's movies are blunt, pulpy, occasionally crude. But those aren't shortcomings. They're simply reflections of his temperament, his journalistic training, and his sense of urgency. His pictures are a perfect reflection of the man who made them. Every point is underlined, italicized, and boldfaced, not out of crudity but out of passion. And outrageFuller found a lot to be outraged about in this world. For the man who made Forty Guns or Underworld U.S.A. or Pickup on South Street or Park Row, there was no time for mincing words. There's a great deal of sophistication and subtlety in those movies, and it's all at the service of rendering emotion on-screen. When you respond to a Fuller film, what you're responding to is cinema at its essence. Motion as emotion. Fuller's pictures move convulsively, violently. Just like life when it's being lived with genuine passion.

  I'll never forget the first time I met Sam. It was in LA in the early '70s, right after a screening of Forty Guns that I'd organized. When the picture was over, we started talking, and we couldn't stop. We talked for hours, but it seemed like a matter of minutes. When it was time to leave, we kept talking as we walked to our cars. When we got there, we were still talking. He would start telling a story, which would lead to another story, which would then lead to a whole other story-a quality that's reflected beautifully in this book by the way. We could have talked all night.

  Fuller was one of the rare people who could both "talk" a great movie and make one, too. Many people can do either one or the other, but Sam could do both. I remember once when he and Christa came over to my house for dinner. Sam started talking about an idea that he'd had for a movie about nothing but objects, and drawing the emotion out of the objects. It was absolutely mesmerizing. If anyone could have made such a movie, it was Sam.

  The first Sam Fuller movie I ever saw was his first, too. I was six years old, and I'd seen a preview for I Shot Jesse James. I wanted to see it just because of the title. When the day finally came, I remember sitting on the bus with my father on our way to the theater. I was so excited that I couldn't understand how everyone else around us could just go about their business-didn't they realize that I Shot Jesse James was playing? It's a feeling many of us have as children, and we're usually a little let down-the things you look forward to and fantasize about as a kid rarely equal the image you've built up in your head. But this was one time that the movie more than lived up to the image. I ShotJesseJames is a film about betrayal, and it goes right to the heart of it-the way it feels to betray and to be betrayed. I was really struck by the moment when Jesse is taking a bath and Ford aims a gun at his back: Will he shoot, or won't he? I've never forgotten this image, or many others from the movie. I've had them in my head since I was six years old. To this day, the film never fails to move me.

  Sam's films had a force that blew all the cliches away from whatever issue they were dealing with. There are no cheap thrills in his work. He was always trying to fathom the unfathomable, whether it was a subject as broad as the inhumanity of war or the injustice of racism, or, on a more intimate level, the thirst for power or the infectiousness of paranoia. In Sam's movies, there's no difference between the personal and the political-both are part of the continuum of human experience. I think he was one of the bravest and most profoundly moral artists the movies have ever had. That's why his war films-The Steel Helmet, Fixed Bayonets, China Gate, Merrill's Marauders, and The Big Red One-are the truest, the least sentimental, and the toughest I've ever seen. I only hope that someday, The Big Red One is restored to its original form.

  The kid finding his father's body in the alley and vowing vengeance as he makes a fist in Underworld U.S.A. The unbroken tracking shot that follows Gene Evans out into the street as he beats up his opponent in Park Row.
The sad, lonely death of Thelma Ritter's stoolie in Pickup on South Street. These are moments of pure, raw emotion, unlike anything else in movies, created by a unique artist. I loved Sam Fuller as a filmmaker, and it's impossible for me to imagine my own work without his influence and example. I came to love him equally as a friend. This wonderful book, filled to the brim with his passion for life and for cinema, goes a long way toward keeping the memory of this precious man alive and well.

  Martin Scorsese

  Introduction

  Sam and I started talking about doing his memoirs together several years before we actually went to work on them. He was reluctant because he felt he still had lots of good yarns in him about other characters. I convinced him that his greatest yarn might be his own life. He didn't like writing a tale with "I" as the central character. But forever young at heart and ready for any new challenge, he quickly adapted to this unique writing mode and relished the job.

  Then in 1994, Sam got sick in Paris. We thought we might lose him, but he fought back. The following year, he was well enough to return to our home in Los Angeles. We were already at work on his life story, I typing and he guiding me as best he could. Many of the episodes in Sam's life I had heard recounted over our thirty-three years of living together.

  My objective in taking on this challenge was to allow my husband the chance to tell his own version of a long, colorful, and complex life. So much has been written and said about Sam Fuller-the man and the artist-that was biased, exaggerated, simplistic, or just plain untrue. My husband fed the rumor mill, unwittingly or not, with his sometimes incendiary remarks. He was good at being controversial. He loved nothing better than provoking a good debate. "Culture, smulture!" he liked to say, playing down his own profound attachment to scholarship and enlightenment. Proud yet humble, complicated yet primitive, combatant yet peaceloving, Sam was full of contradictions. I am proud to have been the instrument for his own tale, a fascinating story about an admirable, ethical human being.

  Our good friend Jerry Rudes has been an invaluable partner in this enterprise, organizing, checking, and editing the manuscript meticulously. Founder of the Avignon Film Festival in France and the Avignon/New York Film Festival in the States, Jerry was very close to Sam. They loved each other like father and son.

  This entire project was one of love: Sam's love for the truth, for his country, for his family, for his colleagues, for the art of storytelling and moviemaking; and my love for this extraordinary man, whom I met in 1965 and didn't separate from until October 30, 1997, when he died in my arms.

  For me, Sam is still very much alive. His spirit surrounds me. I feel his presence every day, smoking a good hand-wrapped cigar, laughing his inimical laugh, dreaming up stories, characters, and unusual camera angles, yet finally at peace after fighting so long and so hard for what he believed in.

  I know Sam would approve of my dedicating this book to our new granddaughter, Samira. He didn't meet her on Earth, but he'll be following her proudly from his vantage point high up on the mountaintop where men who forged the twentieth century out of guts, hard work, and integrity now reside.

  Here's a great man's great yarn, a love song to democracy, a hymn to independence, originality, and endurance.

  Christa Lang Fuller

  Los Angeles, 2002

  PART

  0

  I was about seven years old when I donned a navy uniform the first and last time.

  A Stroke of

  Good Fortune

  1

  Hammer!"

  Hell if I know why that was the first goddamned word that came out of my mouth. Even more of a mystery is why I hadn't said anything until I was almost five years old. My brothers and sisters and, above all, my mother, Rebecca, were very worried about my abnormal silence. They suspected I was mentally retarded, or, worse, just plain stupid. It was a joyous occasion for my entire family when I finally uttered those first two pugnacious syllables.

  In the eighty years since that summer of 1917, I've more than made up for my belated introduction to talking. I'm a storyteller. My tales were usually drawn from my own experiences. Other yarns were adapted from newspaper articles printed under big, bold headlines. Many stories I concocted from imaginary situations dreamed up over the cranky keyboard of an old typewriter as I smoked a good cigar. Even when I made up my characters, they were emotionally honest. Whether my yarn involved a whore, a general, an informer, or a cop, I tried to write them real, not heroic, nor patriotic, nor lovable, but real, meaning true to their background and longings.

  To iron out the wrinkles, I used to tell my stories to just about anyone who'd listen, sometimes gabbing nonstop for hours. Storytelling made me forget about eating, pissing, sleeping-all body functions except smoking cigars. All that talk over the years must have raised my blood pressure and could be partially to blame for the stroke I suffered in 1994. We were still living in Paris then, having moved to a modest walk-up apartment in the Twelfth Arrondissement, a working-class quarter not far from Place de la Bastille. It was a beautiful autumn Sunday morning. Christa and I took a walk down rue de Reuilly to our favorite boulangerie to get a couple of those delicious croissants with almonds I loved. Then we strolled back arm in arm to our place at Number 61, past all the markets, bistros, and cafes.

  We decided to have our breakfast at a little picnic table in the enclosed courtyard downstairs from our apartment, a picturesque place with cats lolling about, wet laundry fluttering in the wind, and friendly neighbors coming home with baskets of groceries. Christa made the cafe au laic and served it. Suddenly, I fainted dead away. The great French firemen, les pompiers, answered Christa's emergency call and rushed me to nearby St. Antoine Hospital.

  I still can't remember very much about the next couple of months. Bless the French doctors and nurses who cared for me. They are wonderful men and women. We'd been paying social security taxes in France for over a decade, so my stays at St. Antoine and then at a rehabilitation center outside Paris were fully covered by the admirable French health care system.

  How I survived the stroke I don't know. It just wasn't time to die yet. I'd had other close calls, like the wound in my chest from a stray bullet fired by a Nazi Luger during World War II. Five years before the stroke, I'd suffered an aneurysm in my main artery. Only a few months earlier, a doctor had discovered an abscess on one of my lungs and treated it. There I was in a Paris hospital, somehow still alive, but due to the stroke's brain jumbling, my tongue wouldn't form a single intelligible word. I was unable to speak, just like when I was a little boy back in Worcester, Massachusetts. I love the wonderful little ironies of life! As the French say, plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose. The more things change, the more they are the same.

  I shared my hospital room with a very kind black man-he was from Senegal, I believe-who liked reading the Bible aloud. This man helped me with my food at mealtimes. He held my arm so I could walk to the bathroom. He passed me soap and warm water to wash myself. He was wonderful to me, and, holy cow, I don't even know his name! At the time, I couldn't even remember my own. But I will never forget him nor the compassion he showed his fellow patient. He began every sentence with "non anu " in a deep rich voice. I've had many good friends in my long life. My nameless Senegalese roommate was one of the best.

  Christa and my daughter, Samantha, were so distressed. They came to visit me every day at the hospital, shocked as much by my speechlessness as by my flaccid legs, now thin as matchsticks. They feared I wasn't going to make it. Even though I was quite a mess, I don't remember once thinking I was going to die. Nor did I ever tremble at the thought of what would happen to me if my time on Earth was actually up. Death is just the next part of our adventure. Subtly or overtly, our culture tries to manipulate us with anxiety about our own mortality. Death comes when it comes. Meanwhile, I'm eighty-five years old, feeling no qualms at all, just gratitudethankful for having survived so many years already, thankful for having a loving wife and daughter, thankful for
such a rewarding, creative life. Rather than making me fear death, my illness offered me a fresh vision of my good fortune.

  After the stroke, my first thoughts were of my beloved mother, Rebecca, my brothers, Ray, Tom, and Ving, and my sisters, Evelyn, Tina, and Rose, all gone now. The rest of my life slowly began to reappear like images on photographic paper in a bath of development chemicals. My mental faculties came back, but my speech has remained impaired and the taut muscles that used to power my legs have become as fickle as a flophouse floozy. Nevertheless, I'm delighted to be alive. Having danced remarkably close to death's dark threshold, what a pleasure to smell the roses once more! Every day is like a gift from Heaven. That's what twenty-four hours really is, though we may not always realize it. There's nothing like a close brush with death to show you the truth about life.

  To aid my recovery, we decided to move back to California after our self-imposed exile in France. In my mind, I'd never really gone away from America. No matter where I resided, my soul remained steadfastly American. We'd hung on to our little house up in the Hollywood Hills, hoping every year to come back. But film and writing projects kept happening in France and other parts of the world. More importantly, our daughter was being treated for Hodgkin's disease in Paris, so we needed to stay close to the Marie Curie Hospital and its competent doctors.

  Affectionately, I referred to our home up in Laurel Canyon as "the Shack." I'd transformed its garage into a peaceful getaway lined with bookshelves, chock-full of books, press clippings, photographs, files, scripts, war mementos, and humidors. Other than some mouse-eaten scripts and a shattered globe broken by books toppled in the '94 earthquake, my office looked about the same as when I'd left it. It seemed I'd just gotten up from the cluttered rolltop desk and gone off for a coffee break that happened to last for thirteen years. Holy mackerel, it was so damn good to be back home! Our cherished dining-room table, which had once belonged to Samuel Langhorne Clemens, was steady as a rock, ready for long meals with family and friends. The spirit of Mark Twain was never far away.