We’re all familiar with a certain Howard Hawks quote, the one that says a good movie (or a formidable Best Picture contender) always has “three great scenes and no bad ones.”
An hour ago i was reading a Vanity Fair excerpt from “My Name Is Barbra,” Barbra Streisand‘s forthcoming autobiography. It was a chapter about the arduous and complicated making of The Way We Were.
A few paragraphs in I read a slight stunner:
So Hawks has competition? I’d never read Lean’s version before and was immediately suspicious. Just to be sure I spent a half-hour Googling it….nothing.
If the quote is genuine, Lean seems to be saying that even if a film has three or four great scenes, it isn’t quite enough. It needs a full five, he’s saying, which I think is overly demanding.
I also like Hawks’ quote better because of “and no bad ones.”
