A Third Face [antikvár]

Foreword It's been said that if you don't like the Rolling Stones, then you just don't like rock and roll. By the same token, I think that if you don't like the films of Sam Fuller, then you just don't like cinema. Or at least you don't understand it. Sure, Sam's movies are blunt, pulpy, occasionally crude, lacking any sense of delicacy or subtlety. But those aren't shortcomings. They're simply reflections of his temperament, his journalistic training, and his sense of urgency. His pictures offer a perfect reflection of the man who made them. Every point is underlined, italicized, and boldfaced, not out of crudity but out of passion. And outrage—Sam found a lot to be outraged about in this world of ours. For the man who made Forty Guns and Underworld U.S.A. and Pickup on South Street a.ná Park Row, there was no time for mincing words. There's a great deal of sophistication in Sam's movies, but it's all at the service of rendering emotion. When you appreciate a Fuller film, what you're responding to is cinema at its very essence. Motion as emotion. Sam's pictures move convulsively, violently. Just like life when it's being lived with real passion. I'll never forget the first time I met Sam. It was in LA in the early '70s, right after a screening of Forty Guns that I'd organized. When the picture was over, we started talking, and we couldn't stop. We talked for hours, but it seemed like a matter of minutes. When it was time to leave, we kept talking as we walked to our cars. When we got there, we were still talking. Sam would start telling a story, which would lead to another story, which would then lead to a whole other story—a quality that's reflected beautifully in this book by the way. Eventually, we had to be physically separated. We could have talked all night. Sam was one of the rare people who could both "talk" a great movie and make one, too. Many people can do either one or the other, but Sam could do both. 1 remember once when he and Christa came over to my house for dinner. Sam started talking about an idea that he'd had for a movie about nothing but objects, and drawing the emotion out of the objects—as an