Warren Beatty mugs with fellow Oregon filmmaker Jack Nicholson (Lauren Bacall assists). Reds, Beatty’s only Oregon film, was his second film as director, third film as writer, fifth film as producer, and sixteenth film as actor.

In Reds, writer-director-producer-star Warren Beatty zeroed in on a signficant detail. John Reed, who achieved world fame as a journalist, was a frustrated poet.

Throughout much of Red’s 194 minutes, Beatty’s Reed tries and tries to finish a poem to Louise Bryant, his wife.

Perhaps Beatty was thinking of this poem, by Reed.

A Letter to Louise

Rainy rush of bird-song
Apple-blossom smoke
Thin bells water-falling sound
Wind-rust on the silver pond
Furry starring willow wand
Wan new grasses waking round
Blue bird in the oak…
Woven in my word-song

White and slim my lover
Birch-tree in the shade
Mountain pools her fearless eyes
Innocent all-answering
Were I blinded to the Spring
Happy thrill would in me rise
Smiling half afraid
At the nearness of her

All my weak endeavor
Lay I at her feet
Like a moth from oversea
Let me longing lightly rest
On her flower petal breast
Till the red dawn set me free
To be with my sweet
Ever and forever…

Louise Bryant, played in Reds by Diane Keaton, was also from Portland (more precisely, Salt Lake City by way of Portland). Historians agree the scene where Bryant invites Reed to visit her writing studio is largely accurate. Where the invitation was extended is a matter of some dispute. The studio is still standing. It is located across the street from the downtown library, at 1033 SW Yamhill.

Louise Bryant, thinking about John Reed

John Reed, writing about Louise Bryant

Not one inch of Reds was shot in Oregon. Some of the Portland exteriors were shot in Seattle. Nevertheless, because it is based on the grand love affair of two Oregonians, John Reed and Louise Bryant, I claim it as an Oregon film.

Read here an impassioned defense of Reds as an underrated masterpiece.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I hereby claim Reds as an Oregon film based on the two Oregonians who inspired it.

In 1971, actor-director Tom Hill took time off from skewering propriety in Portland’s Storefront Theater productions to play one of the townspeople of the fictional town Presbyterian Church, Washington. A classic lillypadder, Hill arrived in Portland to pursue his career, and left it for the same reason.

Hill plays a character named Archer. Maybe he is in the card game, above.

Based on Robert Altman’s decision to cast a Portland actor in a supporting role, I hereby claim McCabe and Mrs. Miller, one of the darkest Westerns ever made, as an Oregon film.

]]> http://www.talltalestruetales.com/2009/02/mccabe-and-mrs-miller-1971/feed/ 0 http://www.talltalestruetales.com/2008/10/separated-at-birth/ http://www.talltalestruetales.com/2008/10/separated-at-birth/#comments Thu, 23 Oct 2008 00:08:39 +0000 Anne Richardson http://mufilmfest.episodecreative.com/?p=141

The creative team behind Oktyabr (1928).

Which is John Reed, the Portland journalist who lived in Greenwich Village, wrote for The Masses, and was played by Warren Beatty on the big screen?

Which is Sergei Eisenstein, the Soviet film genius whose theories of Mickey Mouse are almost as revered as his mastery of film montage?