A closer look at the making of "Klute" (1971). The project follows the complex shooting on multiple locations in New Yor | dG1fVkxYMEtGRFRWcnM
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Short filmTranscript
00:00 [MUSIC]
00:08 New York.
00:09 [MUSIC]
00:14 The giant shaking itself begins to stir, even though it never really sleeps.
00:19 [MUSIC]
00:23 Ten million live and work around here.
00:25 Actress Jane Fonda used to be one of them.
00:27 Well, New York has changed a lot since I lived here.
00:30 I lived in New York up until ten years ago.
00:32 This is the first time I've been back for any length of time, and I find it very changed.
00:38 I think anyone who comes here for the first time is initially appalled.
00:41 Actor Donald Sutherland has never lived in the city.
00:44 The air is impossible to breathe.
00:46 There are too many people, and it's compressed too tightly.
00:49 And I was awestruck by the areas of degradation and alienation and squalor, and afterwards you start to see all the marvelous microcosms that are within the city.
01:03 New York is a city where one can get a more intense view of our society than any place in the world.
01:09 Alan Ficula looks at the town through the eyes of a movie director.
01:13 So this morning he leaves for work like a lot of New Yorkers.
01:16 Today he'll go to Harlem.
01:23 Donald Sutherland rides uptown.
01:25 He'll join Alan Ficula to begin a new motion picture called "Klute."
01:32 Jane Fonda is also on the road to Harlem.
01:35 She's returned to the city to join the cast.
01:38 After you've been in New York for a month, you become tense and nervous and alienated, and consequently you don't notice it so much in other people.
01:44 It's been very difficult for me to relax here.
01:47 Eight o'clock, and Harlem is on the streets.
01:50 In its four square miles, there are one million people.
01:58 On 127th Street, Alan Ficula's crew has checked in at a film studio, the base of operations for the production.
02:04 This morning they're moving all the equipment to a street of run-down brownstones in East Harlem.
02:10 After Alan Ficula, Donald Sutherland and Jane Fonda arrive and start work on the first scene.
02:15 They get down to the business of shooting a story about a specific subculture in a city like New York.
02:21 Sutherland explains his role among the people in the sub-world.
02:24 The character that I play comes from Pennsylvania.
02:27 He's a small-town policeman, and he comes to New York looking for his best friend.
02:32 My friend has been missing for a year.
02:34 The only well of information that I have is Bree Daniels, who's played by Jane Fonda.
02:40 Bree is a girl from a middle-class family who's had at least a couple of years of college.
02:47 It's relatively realistic. It's a very subtle thing. It's a very interesting thing.
02:53 In the movie, she helps to pick up the trail of the missing man.
02:56 They've backtracked over all the places he's been known to have touched, and all the people who may have touched him.
03:02 A tip has led them here.
03:04 Kathy!
03:06 Arlen, it's Bree!
03:08 Kathy, is it you?
03:09 It's all right.
03:11 Bree, honey, I'm waiting for someone.
03:15 You've got to help us. We've got to ask you some questions.
03:18 It's very important.
03:20 Arlen, get them out of here!
03:21 I'm begging you.
03:22 It's very important, please. Give me a description of him, anything at all.
03:26 Kathy!
03:28 Kathy, don't slip!
03:30 Kathy, go run! Kathy, go run!
03:33 The world Bree Daniels knows best is a side of New York seldom seen in broad daylight.
03:49 So one afternoon, the movie company answers a call for a sequence to be filmed in an abandoned Westside church.
03:56 The trail has led to this discotheque.
03:59 Bree seeks a girl who has had some contact with a missing friend.
04:02 One they are told hangs out in this after-hours place.
04:06 What?
04:07 Hi, Bree!
04:09 The new lead in the case is played by actress Rita Gam.
04:12 How are you?
04:15 Oh, great, how are you?
04:17 This is John Clute.
04:20 How do you do, Mr. Clute?
04:22 Bridget. Bree, Mr. Clute.
04:24 Trina, he just wants to find Arlen.
04:27 Arlen Page. Why? Do you know anybody that's seen her at all?
04:31 As far as I'm concerned, she's dead.
04:33 And cut.
04:35 Arlen Picoula's cameraman on this movie is Gordon Willis.
04:39 I started the film saying to Gordy, "We're doing a film about people in a closed-in, locked-in world."
04:45 In most cases, he had as much of an idea of what I planned to do with this story in the film as I did.
04:52 Within that, we both improvised.
04:54 Very often I'd say, "I'd like you to do this," and he'd say, "I know what you're reaching for."
04:57 But I think we can do it in a different way.
05:00 The style of Arlen Picoula's directing draws a reaction from Jane Fonda.
05:14 I am an actress who needs direction.
05:16 I make many mistakes, and I do need a director.
05:19 Arlen has, in some ways, more than any other director I've ever worked with, given me confidence.
05:23 He gives me confidence in my instincts, and that's a very important thing.
05:27 Just be brought up like that.
05:29 Is he going to be there?
05:33 Roy Fyder!
05:35 Oh, is this my mark?
05:38 # Take me higher
05:40 # Let me see me, baby
05:42 # Up to the moon
05:44 # Ooh, hold me
05:46 # Move me on soon
05:48 # Further and further into the night
05:51 # Fly me on to the stars in the light
05:54 # Take me higher
05:56 # Take me higher
05:58 # Take me higher, my desire
06:01 # Take me higher... #
06:06 Another day, another location, another side of New York.
06:10 The company moves to Fifth Avenue, just outside Central Park.
06:14 A pattern for mounting the production has evolved.
06:17 We have never, since the beginning of the movie,
06:20 come onto a set which has been lit and told where we go.
06:23 We come on, we discuss it, we rehearse, we change, we improvise,
06:28 and then the crew comes on and lights it and sets it up.
06:32 When we do a scene here in this film, Jane and Alan and Gordie Willis and I,
06:37 we do it. I say, "This is possible for me and this is not possible."
06:42 We make balances and adjustments.
06:45 Finally, of course, it is Alan's picture.
06:47 The scene they're shooting is a climactic moment in the story.
06:51 The two have searched the respectable and unrespectable sides of New York
06:55 but failed to turn up the missing man.
06:57 Their relationship begins to strain
06:59 and the meeting in the park is touched with frustration.
07:02 She's dead.
07:03 Hey.
07:04 Your tapes.
07:10 Tell me, Clute, did we get you a little, huh?
07:14 Just a little bit?
07:15 Us city folk?
07:16 The sin, the glitter, the wickedness, huh?
07:20 Oh, that's so pathetic.
07:25 [♪♪♪]
07:28 Director Alan Vekula perhaps sums up best
07:33 how New York is dictating the shape of the script and the movie.
07:37 New York really functioned for us in many ways.
07:40 I think if we had shot it within the confines and protections of a film studio,
07:44 protected from all the inconveniences,
07:46 all of the street pain you see
07:48 and all of the discomfort and the agonies,
07:51 the picture might have had less intensity and less immediacy,
07:55 certainly for all of us concerned in making it.
07:57 It's a tough city.
08:01 It's a tough movie.
08:03 It's Clute.
08:05 [♪♪♪]
08:08 [♪♪♪]
08:11 [♪♪♪]
08:14 (upbeat music)
08:16 [BLANK_AUDIO]