October 1989 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000A59PO2?ie=UTF8&tag=doc06-20&link... Watch the full program: http://thefilmarchived.blogspot.com/2010/08/making-of-point-of-order-1989.html
Film footage courtesy of Turin Film Corp.: http://www.youtube.com/user/TurinFilmCorp
Point of Order! is a 1964 documentary film about the Senate Army-McCarthy Hearings of 1954. The hearings were broadcast live on television in their entirety and also recorded via kinescope. Made without narration, the film was compiled from the kinescope recordings and reduced to 93 minutes out of 187 hours.
The Army-McCarthy Hearings came about when the Army accused Senator Joseph McCarthy of improperly pressuring the Army for special privileges for Private G. David Schine, formerly of McCarthy's investigative staff. McCarthy counter-charged that the Army was holding Schine hostage to keep him from searching for Communists in the Army.
Point of Order! contains the most famous exchange of the Army-McCarthy hearings, when Senator McCarthy attempts to accuse Army counsel Joseph Welch of having tried to get a lawyer he characterizes as a possible former communist appointed as a counsel to the Committee. The exchange culminates with Welch asking rhetorically of McCarthy, "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"
The film ends with a scene that stands as a metaphor for McCarthy's rapidly crumbling influence on the nation. It shows a heated exchange between Democratic Senator Stuart Symington and McCarthy that occurred near the end of the hearings and late in the afternoon, when the hearings were about to adjourn for the day. Symington sharply questions the handling of McCarthy's secret files by his staff. McCarthy calls this a "smear" against the men on his staff, and as Symington starts to leave, McCarthy accuses him of using "the same tactics that the Communist Party has used for too long." Symington returns to the microphone and says: "Apparently every time anybody says anything against anybody working for Senator McCarthy, he is declaring them and accusing them of being Communists!" Symington leaves and the hearings adjourn. McCarthy continues his passionate but repetitious defense of his staff and his attack on Symington, speaking to an increasingly empty chamber.
Point of Order! was produced by Emile de Antonio and Daniel Talbot. David T. Bazelon served as editorial consultant. While the Internet Movie Databse credits the film as being written by poet Robert Duncan and de Antonio, Duncan is not mentioned in the book that was issued at the same time as the movie. There is no commentary or narrative in the documentary, so crediting writers seems unusual.
In 1964, W.W. Norton & Company published the book Point of Order! A Documentary of the Army-McCarthy Hearings, in book form. The 108-page book featured still photos captured from the kinescopes of CBS. David T. Bazelon wrote the introduction and epilogue.
The film has been deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry in 1993.
Pull My Daisy (1959) is a short film that typifies the Beat Generation. Directed by Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie, Daisy was adapted by Jack Kerouac from the third act of his play, Beat Generation; Kerouac also provided improvised narration. It starred poets Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky and Gregory Corso, artists Larry Rivers and Alice Neel, musician David Amram, actors Richard Bellamy and Delphine Seyrig, dancer Sally Gross, and Pablo Frank, Robert Frank's then-young son.
Based on an incident in the life of Beat icon Neal Cassady and his wife, the painter Carolyn, the film tells the story of a railway brakeman whose wife invites a respectable bishop over for dinner. However, the brakeman's bohemian friends crash the party, with comic results.
Originally intended to be called The Beat Generation the title Pull My Daisy was taken from the poem of the same name written by Kerouac, Ginsberg and Cassady in the late 1940s. Part of the original poem was used as a lyric in David Amram's jazz composition that opens the film.
The Beat philosophy emphasized spontaneity, and the film conveyed the quality of having been thrown together or even improvised. Pull My Daisy was accordingly praised for years as an improvisational masterpiece, until Leslie revealed in a November 28, 1968 article in The Village Voice that the film was actually carefully planned, rehearsed, and directed by him and Frank, who shot the film on a professionally lit studio set.
Leslie and Frank discuss the film at length in Jack Sargeant's book Naked Lens: Beat Cinema. An illustrated transcript of the film's narration was also published in 1961 by Grove Press.
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Emile de Antonio on the Making of "Point of Order!" (Part 2)by thefilmarchive1,803 views
Yes, indeed. But who is behind thefilmarchive? I will delve...
freeto20 11 months ago
Wow. Where did you find this? I admire de Antonio immensley. A completely underappreciated artist.
bapyou 2 years ago