This Is How We Do It: Reading Sidney Lumet’s Making Movies

Making Movies by Sidney Lumet
Trade Paperback: Vintage Books, 1996 – eBook Available

In case I’ve never mentioned it before, I never went to film school. I don’t know a key grip from a best boy. OK, that’s not entirely true, but there are many details of the filmmaking process with which I’m not all that well-versed. I understand some of the theory, and much of the artistic merit, but have often found myself ill-versed with the mechanics of what’s involved in getting a film from script to screen.

The ideal would be to sit in as a film was getting made, but I might as well wish for a pony if I’m feeling this starry-eyed. Alternately, I could always pick up a filmmaking text-book, but they are often dry and technical.

This past week though, I was given a crash course. I was taken through every piece of the process, and offered a glorious understanding of how everything comes together to create a finished film. My professor for this piece of education was a man I hadn’t thought all that much about in the past, but whose work I will now be seeking out with great vigour.

The book that taught me everything I would need to know about filmmaking (and more!) was “Making Movies” by Sidney Lumet.

For the unfamiliar, Sidney Lumet is the director of touchstone pieces of cinema like 12 ANGRY MEN, NETWORK, and DOG DAY AFTERNOON.

Every chapter in the book is dedicated to one step in the filmmaking process; from the script stage right through to testing and marketing a completed film. While it’s difficult for me to say if Lumet is more or less hands-on, I can say that he has a deep understanding of every single step of the process. He walks us through a project’s entire life, and pulls examples from his filmography about what works and what doesn’t.

He speaks with great candour about the vast collaboration that is the filmmaking process, and sometimes leaves one marvelling at how so many people with so many points of view are able to come together to create a project with a singular vision.

When it comes to a book like this, what makes it work isn’t so much what’s being said as how the person is saying it. By this criteria, Lumet is a gem.

Lumet is able to articulate every step in a way that allows a layman a great deal of understanding, and likewise doesn’t speak down to the reader. Time and again he gives the basics, and then turns our attention to moment after moment where the task at hand went right or wrong. It doesn’t hurt that his memories involve legends like Katherine Hepburn, Henry Fonda, Al Pacino, Marlon Brando, Faye Dunaway, Ingrid Bergman, and Michael Jackson. Lumet wisely balances stories where he was in awe of these talents, and moments where he had to push them.

Besides all of the step-by-step, there are, of course, the desired anecdotes about Lumet’s experiences. He doesn’t brag about the fact that Pacino’s two confessional phone calls in DOG DAY AFTERNOON were one-take shots, instead choosing to underline why he believed it was important that they be caught in one take. Later, he has a great story about Marlon Brando trying to nail a monologue in THE FUGITIVE KIND. In recapping the experience, Lumet reveals how so many things can conspire to make such a piece of filmmaking seemingly impossible, and what it takes to finally pull it off.

What makes Lumet’s recounting of the filmmaking process so valuable, is the way it marries technique, understanding, and vision. With every passing year and every new blockbuster, Hollywood movies seem to be playing out as if they were helmed by committee.

Lumet, and many current directors like him, are invaluable in the way they continually ask themselves what story they are trying to tell. Sometimes they can even recognize that the answer to that changes as the film makes its walk through pre-production and post-production. What remains important is that one person walk along with it, and continue to ask “What story are we trying to tell?”.

In asking this question, an understanding of the art is key, as is an artist willing to be challenged.

As I return the book to the shelf, I found myself a little saddened. Lumet passed away two years ago, which means that we’ll never get any more of these intricate human stories to chew on and stew over. The only upshot to a world without Sidney Lumet is the fact that his final feature, BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOUR DEAD, is a such a well-crafted film to offer up as one’s swan song. To be clear though, I wasn’t only saddened that I will never see another new Sidney Lumet film.

What saddens me is that Lumet will never be able to write a follow-up book that talks about the process in a digital age (“Making Movies Now”?). Digital filmmaking was but a dot on the horizon when Lumet penned this book. Now, almost twenty years on, there are completely different processes to many of the steps he details in this book.

Considering how well-versed he is with every step of the process, I’d love to hear him weigh in on the pro’s and con’s of each step. Are filmmakers better off, or was there something the old ways achieved that cannot be replicated? The debate has bred both curmudgeons and revolutionaries.

Something tells me Lumet would have been the rational one in the middle, and able to explain it all in a way that the rest of us could easily understand.

One last anecdote; In my introduction I made mention of film education. It bears noting that this particular copy of “Making Movies” was once a text-book – and it belonged to my wife. If ever I was unsure which of Lumet’s points were important, I needed only look at which passages were highlighted by my better half. Of course, the flip side came during moments where I read parts of the books that landed for me, but weren’t highlighted.

Dif’rent strokes, right?