News

You're unlikely to find a more companionable DVD audio commentator than San Francisco-based Eddie Muller, 47, a novelist and author of several books on the movie genre film noir -- sometimes defined as crime films with dark psychological undercurrents.

The DVD commentaries for recent theatrical films, done by the filmmakers themselves, tend to laud their imagined achievements and the difficulty of making supposedly great entertainments.

For older films the commentaries may be stuffy and professorial or exceedingly hyperbolic or, if done by surviving cast members, poorly researched and only superficially informative.

Muller knows his stuff and speaks with observational skills about movies he has spend decades examining. Listening to him is like having an insider in the room who speaks with authority, but with the relaxed vim of a close friend. Sometimes he'll note incongruous moments and illogical developments. His balanced perspective gives him credibility.

Muller may have several weeks or as few as three days to prepare a commentary for a company such as Fox Home Video or Warner Home Video. (Technically, he's hired by independent DVD producers who in turn work for the studios.) With sufficient time, he may be able to do supplementary research at the Motion Picture Academy in Los Angeles. Or not.

"First I watch the movie again," Muller says. "If it's on a video or a DVD they've sent me, it may have a time code (imprinted near the top of the image) so I can make notes on how long a sequence lasts and figure out what will fit where."

The idea is to portion out background and inside information on the content as well as on the filmmakers and performers but at appropriate moments, as when an actor in on camera. Or when to tell a pertinent anecdote. Finessing all of the possibilities is part of the job.

Action sequences, he's found, provide a good opportunity to slip in some general background.

His candor is as welcome as it is surprising.

"They do not care if you pick apart the movie as long you're thoughtful about it. It's tricky. The producers of these DVDs will trade my objectivity for my enthusiasm. They seem to like the fact it isn't all scripted but conversational.

"I think that even when I'm critical I show a certain amount of respect for the filmmakers. If the filmmaker were in the room, I'd ask him how something could have happened."

He does his commentaries in a single take so it requires no more time than the length of the movie, although one company, he says, takes a three-minute break midway through any recording session for equipment adjustments.

"I'm sitting in a stiff-backed chair in a recording booth wearing a headset and generally watching on a TV (monitor). It's very different when you do a commentary with another person (such as Susan Andrews commenting on father Dana Andrews' participation in 'Fallen Angel'). You have to be concerned about how it's going to flow. You don't get a chance to rehearse."

If the co-commentator is James Ellroy, who wrote the novel "L.A. Confidential" and who worked with Muller on the forthcoming DVD of "Crime Wave," "his knowledge of L.A. in that era (the early '50s) is immense. Just hold on to the reins and let him run."

Perhaps the trickiest part of commentating is assessing how to tailor explanations of people and events to a monolithic listening audience that brings all shadings of awareness - of lack thereof - to the movie.

"If I'm going to mention Howard Hughes, how much background on him are most people listening to this going to need? Some just know him as the guy Leonardo DiCaprio played (in 'The Aviator')." Or not even that.

"You're either doing this (commentary) for people who think it's a celebration of when movies were better, in which case you're preaching to the choir, or you're reaching people who know nothing about it, but you could influence their thinking and open their eyes and explain why these movies worked the way they did.

"I tend to come down on the side of being as informative as you can because that's how you can engage people so they'll be interested. You want to spark people's interest in this stuff, (but) it's better to be accessible than definitive."

So is his wife, Kathleen, into noir?

"Not at all. We've been married for 20 years. The noir thing took her by surprise after we'd been together for seven or eight years. That's when it turned into this big thing. She likes (the films), but she does not share my obsession."

The "thing" includes noir film festivals he conducts regularly, writing novels and books on noir, encouraging the restoration of neglected movies for 35 mm and DVD, as for "The Window," one of his favorites, and "enticing younger people to watch ANY older films.

"I think (the DVDs and the festivals) are among the ways to show people there is an historical continuum in movies. What's happening this week in theaters is not the be-all and end-all."

• Most Read
• Most E-mailed
• Latest News