Dropout

Variety, Wednesday, 17 June 1970, p 26:

Tinto Brass, whose “The Shriek” also reps Italy at Berlin, is now filming “Drop Out” on location in London with Vanessa Redgrave and Franco Nero.

Variety, Wednesday, 15 July 1970, p 27:

DROPOUT (Started June 1 in London)....

Variety, Wednesday, 23 September 1970, p 26:

On a more ambitious plane, Colt partnered with film author Tinto Brass and his Lion Productions to film “Dropout” with Vanessa Redgrave and Franco Nero entirely in England for Medusa release in Italy and for Titanus International for foreign sales.

Variety, Wednesday, 23 September 1970, p 31:

TINTO BRASS—Withdrew his last film “The Shriek” at Cannes and entered it at the Berlin Film Festival instead. While Berlin reached its chaotic finale, Brass was in England filming “Dropout,” the story of an Italian immigrant in London who escapes from a lunatic asylum and runs off with a married woman.

Sally K Brass [no relation], “Director’s Quest for Reality,” The Los Angeles Times, 2 September 1970, p H13.

...Still on the right side of 30 [sic; he was 37], Tinto has made his name in Europe and is fast attaining the reputation as the Antonioni of the 70s....

Tinto laughed when I asked what [the budget] was.

“I won’t tell you,” he hedged affably. “If you know what we spend you won’t write the film up!”

Vanessa Redgrave, who has turned down more parts than there are script writers on the dole, looked amazed when asked why she agreed to participate in the film (both she and Franco Nero are acting for nothing but a stake in the production).

“I saw his last film,” she said simply. “He is a fantastic director. It’s the first film I’ve been around which is on every level that I am concerned about and that we are all concerned about. It’s Tinto’s own story and the writer’s, Roberto Lerici’s.” (Italian scenarist Franco Longo has also collaborated on the script.)...

“In Italian movies it’s very good, you don’t work along the Anglo-Saxon principle that it is film acting. It’s filming. We are part of what goes together just as paints and brushes are part of an artist’s canvas. And there is an element in it — we are that element and you put yourself into it as an element in the director’s hands.

“With this kind of filmmaking you can see that the actors revolve around the camera. It’s the first time I have worked with these principles. When it works, it works very fast....” (Their shooting schedule is six weeks.)

“We have used a lot of real people there,” said Tinto.

“The other night I saw some rushes from a scene we did in a hideaway under Tower Bridge. It was with a lot of drunks. They were meths drinkers — we gave them not real meths, just some alcohol colored like meths. It is incredible how they played this scene. More true than if I took an actor.

“The truth is that they didn’t play it at all. They helped and gave suggestions. I knew the area where they hang out, also I went into two or three doss houses and mercy houses, but once you have found one you have found the lot because the rumor goes around.”

For one of the few attractive settings in the movie, Tinto had moved his all-Italian crew into a private, elegant house in the outlying suburb of Putney. This was one incident where Italian nerve and sheer chutzpah had to be seen to be believed.

Even Antonioni and Fellini take over disused houses and refurnish them, or rent a house standing vacant when they want an authentic interior. But the money wouldn’t stretch that far.

Tinto asked around his pals. One of his crew had a friend living in Putney. They knocked on the door, asked if they could work there, and promptly moved their equipment up the rose-covered drive and into the luxurious sitting room.

“We always do this in Italy,” said Tinto. “It’s how films are made. We are not a rich country.”

from          Chris Davies
date           Wed, May 21, 2008 at 4:16 AM

Did you find a copy of Dropout? I believe I’m in it if they kept the scenes in the old warehouse with the hippies & skinheads.

Thanks,

Chris Davies

to              Chris Davies
date           Wed, May 21, 2008 at 7:03 AM

Hi Chris,

Great to hear from you! No, Dropout is one of the few Tinto movies I have never been able to see. Franco Nero misplaced his copy. Vanessa Redgrave is impossible to contact. I imagine, though, that if I can get to Rome again, I could convince Tinto to run it for me.

What was your rôle precisely? Tell me everything you can remember! By any chance might you remember a part-time costumer by the name of Lee?

Please keep in touch.

Ciao!

from          Chris Davies
date           Wed, May 21, 2008 at 9:36 PM

Hi RJ,

I was only a 5-pound-(10-dollar)-a-day extra but I should be visible. I was a hippy playing the guitar and then I was arrested by the police. Lee rings a bell but it’s going back a loooong time. Both Franco and Vanessa were in the scene. We were sitting around playing guitars and pretending to be stoned. Some were of course and one guy, an American who called himself Martin R. Gas, was really whacked. When the skinheads ran in and pretended to beat us up and Vanessa or Franco got hit with a fake bottle, Martin went nuts and ran around the warehouse screaming, “Peace! Love!” and waving his arms (as you would) and we all thought “What the f**k?” and didn’t know whether to laugh or whether we were really being attacked! Then the Italian crew ran in dressed as English cops and started arresting everyone and chaos reigned supreme. The whole scene could have been great or a complete dud because it could have looked very real or really hammy. If they kept it in, I think I’d have been in it because the cameraman gave me a thumbs up for my tussle with the cop. Who knows? Maybe he was just being nice. Anyway, it was a fun couple of days,

Chris

PS : I do know that a print was doing the rounds of the English Universities in the late seventies.

to              Chris Davies
date           Thu, May 22, 2008 at 12:05 AM

Hi Chris,

My this is exciting! Five pounds a day? That was a third of the budget of the entire movie! This all sounds fascinating. There was a print floating around in the late 1970s? Oh how I wish I could have seen that. Alas....

Would you mind if I include the bulk of our exchange on my web site?

Let’s see: Oscar Cosulich, who knows Tinto and is a fan of his movies, was stunned when I told him that I had never seen Dropout. “But you must!” he exclaimed. “It’s the BEST!” Franco Nero called Tinto a genius and told me that Dropout was better than La vacanza — and I think La vacanza is one of the five or ten greatest movies I’ve ever seen. Radley Metzger saw Dropout probably about the time it was released in Europe, I guess, and he found it fascinating, but he told me that it was “very much of its time,” so psychedelic that “I don’t think it could play today.”... For 29 years now, I’ve been searching for this movie. It’s one of those rare elusive treasures that eludes my grasp every time. It’s nearly as frustrating to me as the alternative versions of the Marx Brothers’ Paramount films, which I saw decades ago, and which were noticeably different from anything available now; and it’s nearly as frustrating to me as Harry Langdon’s Heart Trouble, which seems to have vanished, and which I would give my right arm to see.

Ciao!

from          Chris Davies
date           Fri, May 23, 2008 at 8:41 PM

Hi RJ,

Feel fee to use the conversation. I find it frustrating too since it might be my 5 minutes of fame, ha ha.... Nice to talk to you,

Chris

PS: I reckon there were about 30 extras and we were all “real” hippies and skinheads. Also if you see it, watch out for a blonde whose clothes suddenly change. We were there 2 days and she forgot to wear the same clothes on the second day!