Edge of Midnight: The Life of John Schlesinger

Edge Of Midnight: The Life Of John Schlesinger is the authorized biography of the filmmaker whose most famous works include "Midnight Cowboy", "Bloody Sunday", "Marathon Man", and "Day of the Locust". Written with the full cooperation of Schlesinger, his family, and his companion of 36 years Michael Childers, as well as with complete access to tapes, diaries, production notes, and correspondence, not to mention interviews with the actors, crew members, friends and colleagues who knew Schlesinger, Edge Of Midnight accurately traces the singularly amazing career of a dedicated and visionary man. Highly recommended for professional cinema researchers and intrigued lay readers alike.

Writing this book has been, obviously, a labor of love for William Mann, whose earlier books convinced me that henceforward, everything he writes is to be treated as the work of an immensely serious, politically committed and ethical scholar. And yet when all is said and done, and a hell of a lot gets said in this book, I remained singularly unconvinced. Unconvinced as to Schlesinger's talent--sure, he made some great movies, but he'd have to have made CITIZEN KANE for the scales of justice to swing back to normal in light of MADAME SOUZATCHKA or THE BELIEVERS. Unconvinced about the frame story, for it seems so pathetic to dwell and dwell and dwell on the miseries of Schlesinger's life after his debilitating stroke when he could hardly speak and seemed miserable in every encounter. Unconvinced even about the title, which seems to have been chosen to echo Schelsinger's greatest success, MIDNIGHT COWBOY, but in that acse why not just call it MIDNIGHT COWBOY? And then in the long run he seemed like a miserable man in every respect of life, looking back, he was never very happy nor does he seem capable of radiating either good will or basic charity. Added to this the contemptible misogyny which, in a Balzacian scene, Mann summons up by asking Schlesinger for his final, considered opinion of the late Penelope Gilliatt. It's unprintable here, and unpleasant even in context of whatever crime she was supposed to have committed. Are authorized biographies ever a good thing? What's the point of advertising them in that way? And yet taken as a whole the book is a splendid piece of work, and in giving us the extremely varied picture of a lot of filmmaking atmospheres, from the Angry Young Men scene of the late 1950s in England, to the New American Cinema that MIDNIGHT COWBOY may be fairly said to have begun, to a later day when stars and producers and test audiences made movie making difficult for directors, Mann excels. It's panoramic in sweep, extremely detailed. And maybe the "authorized" label encouraged many in Schlesinger's circle to speak with Mann, including--well, it seems just about everyone. A great story about Madonna's affectations begins the book, which I won't spoil here but it involves her belief that she had a shot in securing the lead role in MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA. Enough said, go for it! Two lapses in sense made me doubt my hero Mann for a moment. In discussing the Austin Powers phenomenon, he pronounces that "We've come so far that rebels now go BACK in time rather than forward, when the youth culture borrows relics of the past and jumbles them together into a pastiche of expression and attitude." Surely this has been an attribute of youth culture at least since WWII? Blue jeans weren't invented in the 1960s, they were retrieved from a workingman's past in the 19th century. And look at this sentence, which touches on the critical reception of MIDNIGHT COWBOY. "Stanley Kauffman in THE NEW REPUBLIC adored the film, using a

William J Mann is interviewing famed movie director John Schlesinger at his home in Palm Springs. John has just had triple bypass operation followed by a stroke which has left him paralyzed on one side, confined to a wheelchair, and almost voiceless. Although his brain is far from crippled and he can nod, shake his head, and sometimes answer questions in a brief, unexpectedly pointed whisper. They spend their days together looking out at the mountains which edge the city, and William sometimes talks with Michael Childers, John's lover and partner for many years. Friends of John's occasionally pop in for a visit - Julie Christie, and Brenda Vaccaro, all tearful and upset at John's seemingly hopeless condition. Mann uses this sense of immediacy to great effect in Edge of Midnight: The Life of John Schlesinger. Each chapter begins with a sense of how John is declining and how the author is racing against time to find out as much as he can. By interweaving the present with the past, Mann traces richly varied accounts of John's early struggles and glory days. The end result is of man who has led a creative, and artistically fuelled life, with Mann offering a poignant contrast between the figure who sits staring at the mountains beyond the window, adrift in silent internal exile, with the sound of his laughter on recorded tapes. John's creative energy and intuition, his penchant for mischievousness and naughtiness, and his willingness to take risks and really push the cinematic envelope for more than twenty years, are highlighted with a candid and sincere accuracy. And John Schlesinger also gave us Julie Christie, whom Schlesinger chose for the character of Liz in Billy Liar. The world of cinema would indeed by dull without the gorgeous Julie. Much of the narrative talks about the tremendous international success of Darling, and how the movie, not only cemented Christie's stardom, but also allowed John to go on to make even riskier movies. Mann talks about why Darling was so historically significant and the part it played in the cinematic sexual revolution, which in turn greatly affected the changing sexual habits and attitudes in much of the West. John was determined to raise the bar with onscreen frankness, and he often found himself stymied by the Hollywood old guard who were determined to promise their audiences "real stars looking glamorous in beautiful gowns in beautiful sets, no kitchen sinks, no violence, no messages." But it was Midnight Cowboy and Sunday Bloody Sunday that really pushed the cinematic envelope: Sunday Bloody Sunday, with film's first same sex kiss, boldly rejects "moral" judgment in its account of the middle-class London doctor and the professional woman's feelings and presents both kinds of love as equally natural. In Midnight Cowboy, Jon Voight's naive hustler from Texas foresees a future for himself in New York as a stud for affluent lonely ladies, but failure plummets him to the city's harsh and seamy undersid

I am lying in the sun in Hollywood and I have just devoured this splendid John Schlesinger biography. I recommend it to every movie fan the world over. It is a lovely book and worthy of its subject. Being north of forty, it would be impossible to underestimate the importance of John Schlesinger's influence on my life as a gay man. Midnight Cowboy and Sunday Bloody Sunday were seismic movie going moments for me. Truly great movies in their own right, both have fully-dimensional gay characters as well as homo-erotic moments that lodged in my young brain and stayed. Jon Voight is a luscious Ken Doll in Midnight Cowboy. And Murray Head could be the poster boy for sexy 70's male in Sunday Bloody Sunday. Glenda Jackson watching Murray's perfect physique as he showered was thunderous for me because every day in Catholic high school I stood next to beautiful boys in showers and I couldn't stop staring and also could not forget none of them would ever be mine. And thank you John Schlesinger for Julie Christie! The movie-going public will be forever in John's gratitude for giving us Julie. They say that the music one listens to in our teenage years becomes "our" passion music-wise for our entire lives. Certainly, my life-long allegiance to Joni Mitchell and Aretha Franklin attests to that. I feel the same way about Julie Christie. I was too young for Billy Liar and Darling when they came out. But both movies mean a great deal to me now. As do McCabe & Mrs. Miller and Shampoo and Return of the Soldier and Afterglow. I love watching this creature on screen. Julie is sexy to me even though I have no desire for her. And I am as much a fan now as I ever was when I first laid eyes on her. More of a fan probably. Bravo to William J. Mann for painting a vivid portrait of one of our greatest film directors. And bravo John for your illustrious career!

The writher Michael Cunningham (THE HOURS) said that seeing SUNDAY BLOODY SUNDAY "saved" his life. Peter Finch (on the same movie) remarked that when he did the close-up "liplock" with Murray Head that he just closed his eyes and thought of England. When Princess Margaret and her then husband Lord Anthony Snowdon saw SUNDAY BLOODY SUNDAY, she said within earshot of both Schlesinger and his lover Michael Childers, that she thought the movie was "horrific. . . "Men in bed kissing!" (This from a woman who had an affair with a man 18 years her junior and was caught on film topless with him-- while married to Snowdon.)This film, the director said was his most personal and was about his own affair with a young man; but he labeled THE DAY OF THE LOCUST his "greatest achievement, something that few critics, however, would say. Bob Dylan wrote "Lay, Lady, Lady" for MIDNIGHT COWBOY but didn't get it finished in time to be used in the movie. Schlesinger hated exercise and opined that when he thought about it, he just lay down until the moment passed. Although he lived for many years in the U. S. he felt that many Americans lacked manners, particularly when they went to movies. "'Audiences talk incessantly. . . They run up and down and eat all the time, because that is what they are used to doing at home.'" (We all can tip our hats to this gentleman for that attitude.) Mr. Mann's robust biography of John Schlesinger is chock-full of these and similar details. He had access to everything about this great director: tapes, diaries, family and friends and Mr. Schlesinger although only after he had had a stroke. Although Mann's work is the "authorized" biography, he assured both Schlesinger and Childers that he would tell the whole story, the "low points and highs." Be that as it may, about the worst thing we find out about Mr. Schlesinger is that he had a temper and often screamed at actors. Mr. Mann most obviously is besotted by Mr. Schlesinger and why shouldn't he be? A lot of us are. When no one else was doing so, he directed films that we had not seen before-- MIDNIGHT COWBOY and SUNDAY BLOOD SUNDAY. Never before had the subject of men loving men been shown so naturally and without shame. An astute critic, Mr. Mann gives his own reviews of practically everything Schlesinger ever directed: movies, opera, television. He attempts to be objective, noting in much detail the faults of THE NEXT BEST THING, the film starring Rupert Everett and Madonna. According to Mann, Schlesinger attempted to change the script so that the two principals decide to have a child, rather than having an "drunken, unplanned sexual encounter." He was vetoed by Mr. Everett, who gets to live with his bad decision. For years Mr. Schlesinger attempted to direct another gay-themed movie to no avail. He turned down directing Armistead Maupin's TALES OF THE CITY but for a time considered Larry Kramer's THE NORMAL HEART. He also toyed with the idea of doing something with the novelist David