Jan. 15--"Every word spoken in this film was written by Sam Fuller," his daughter says in the prologue to her documentary "A Fuller Life" (playing at the Siskel Film Center Saturday and Monday).
That's an unusual approach when a film's subject is no longer alive but a wonderfully effective one in this instance.
Instead of stitching together a series of interviews from friends and colleagues, Samantha Fuller's portrait of her father -- whose filmography includes 1951's "The Steel Helmet," 1953's "Pickup on South Street," 1963's "Shock Corridor" and 1980's "The Big Red One" -- relies on verbatim excerpts from his autobiography. It is a first-person account of his own life, read (performed, really) by a lineup that includes James Franco, Tim Roth and Bill Duke, as well as Chicago natives Jennifer Beals and William Friedkin.
Each person was filmed inside Fuller's office, a dark warren of bookshelves he called The Shack, located in a refurbished two-car garage at his home in the Hollywood Hills (where his daughter resides). Cozy and crammed with books and knick knacks -- an empty Johnnie Walker bottle next to the typewriter, stacks of old suitcases, World War II-era German army helmets -- it has remained undisturbed since his death in 1997.
"He was born in 1912 and had me at the age of 63," his daughter said when we spoke. To mark his centennial, she looked for a way to bring his words to life; the resulting film is drawn from his memoir "A Third Face: My Tale of Writing, Fighting and Filmmaking," which was published posthumously in 2002.
Larger than life and garrulous, "he wasn't one to talk about himself that much," she said. "He loved storytelling, but he had been reluctant to write an autobiography." That changed in 1995 after he suffered a stroke and lost his ability to speak; his doctor suggested he start writing his memories down as a form of therapy.
"He started taking notes, and by the time he passed away, he had over 2,000 pages" that were eventually edited into a 600-page book. As a documentary filmmaker, "it was great to have that because we have his life in a package right there."
The Beals segment focuses on Fuller's early career as a hard-driving crime reporter in New York City. An old black and white photo shows him sitting on a swivel desk chair next to a typewriter, wearing a fedora and a three-piece suit, his thumbs hooked into the armpits of his vest. Several pens are stuffed into his breast pockets, and his hat sits at a jaunty angle. But what stays with you is the massive smile on his face. He looks all of 14.
In truth, he wasn't much older. He began as a newsboy, eventually finagling a job writing for the paper by the time he was in his mid-teens, "slipping sticks of chewing gum to the desk sergeants in exchange for something newsworthy." Later he started giving them cigars: "That worked much better."
He recalled '"hanging around the morgue so much that my clothes stank of formaldehyde, the fragrance of death clinging to my threadbare suit," and was mentored by an older journalist who offered this piece of advice about covering murder trials: "If the guy ends up frying in the chair at Sing Sing, then write it so strong that the reader can smell his flesh burning."
Fuller eventually found his way to Hollywood, where he wrote screenplays and experienced his first pangs of frustration when he saw directors making a mess of his scripts (in his mind, at least). He took a break from Hollywood, enlisted in the Army and was deployed to Europe during World War II, where he saw heavy fighting and was part of a regiment that helped liberate the German concentration camp Falkenau -- an event he captured on film with a 16mm camera that he had with him throughout the war.
Some of that footage is spotlighted in the documentary (it also shows up in another 1988 documentary called "Falkenau, the Impossible") but there is also mundane footage of Fuller and his Army buddies during relaxed moments.
"He always thought the important footage was what he shot at the camps," his daughter said, "and he put all the remaining reels in a box under his desk. This is so strange, but I didn't know about the other footage until we started shooting the film and I found it. It was like his voice was saying, 'Hey, if you're going to make a movie about me, you better include this.' For me, personally, they were very important because it's him featured in the reels."
Director Wim Wenders narrates the section set in Germany, wherein Fuller recalls meeting Marlene Dietrich backstage at a USO show; after informing her that that they shared the same agent, he asked her to deliver a message: Send cigars. (Fuller was rarely without one.)
As he reads from Fuller's account, Wenders himself is sucking on a cigar. It's a performance all its own.
"When my father passed away, he had this big standing ashtray in his Shack filled with his old cigar stubs," his daughter told me. "I had placed a few new cigars in the tray with some matches next to each person who came in to read and said, 'You're welcome to light up a stogie if you're in the mood.'
"And Wim hadn't smoked in 30 years. He looked down at the ashtray and saw a little stub in there and he said, 'Gosh, is that really Sam's stub in there?' And I said, 'Yeah!' And he said, 'Can I light that one?' And I said, 'Are you sure, Wim? It's really stale.'
And he said, 'If 'm going to take a puff off a cigar, it's going to be your dad's.' It's so funny because even though my father's body isn't present, his spirit is. You can see it in how Wim felt compelled to light that cigar and chomp away at it."
"A Fuller Life" screens at 6:45 p.m. Saturday and 6 p.m. Monday at the Siskel Film Center. Go to http://www.siskelfilmcenter.org/afullerlife.
Indie double feature
"You get some crazy ideas that do not necessarily have anything to do with art," filmmaker Dan Sallitt told me in a 2013 interview about the premise of his film "The Unspeakable Act," a nuanced, quietly funny story of a teenage girl wrestling with feelings of incest towards her older brother. Two of his earlier films screen Friday, courtesy of the Beguiled Cinema series at Chicago Filmmakers.
The lineup includes Sallitt's 1998 debut "Honeymoon" (platonic friends in their 30s suddenly decide to marry, with less than successful results in the bedroom) and 2004's "All the Ships at Sea" (two sisters, a Catholic theologian and a recent escapee from a religious cult, convene at the family lake house and debate who is more messed up). With a post-show Q from film critics Ignatiy Vishnevetsky and Ray Pride (and possibly Sallitt himself via Skype). The films screen at 7 p.m. Friday at Chicago Filmmakers. Go to chicagofilmmakers.org.
nmetz@tribpub.com
@NinaMetzNews
