Jonathan Poritsky

Stand at either end of a New York City sub­way car and look straight ahead of you. Then watch the “Santa Fe” num­ber in the film adap­ta­tion of “Rent” and you will imme­di­ately under­stand what a tech­ni­cal feat it is to set some­thing like that on the sub­way, assum­ing you know how many cables and peo­ple it takes to oper­ate a 35mm cam­era with 1000 foot mags.

Chris Columbus is up there with the most suc­cess­ful film­mak­ers of all time. He has very few films to his credit. A mere 13 as direc­tor in the last 20 years. But his suc­cesses, which are a great per­cent­age of his work, are mon­u­men­tal. But he has man­aged to stay away from the spot­light for the most part as a char­ac­ter him­self. When he burst on the scene there was no one dub­bing him “the next Spielberg”, though I think he may fit the bill bet­ter than, let’s say, a Shyamalan.

A Tisch alum, he first broke in by writ­ing the script for Spielberg’s (–cough cough– Joe Dante’s) “Gremlins”, a film that changed our busi­ness for­ever by impress­ing the PG-13 rat­ing on the pub­lic and rein­vent­ing the crea­ture fea­ture. Then came his direc­to­r­ial debut, with a young Elisabeth Shue hang­ing off a sky­scraper in “Adventures in Babysitting” in ’87. The film is a romp that I grew up on and still love to this day.

But his fate was sealed in 1990 with the first film phe­nom­e­non I ever expe­ri­enced. I grew up in the town of Holland, PA, about 250 miles from Columbus’s PA home­town Spangler (what a great name, right?), and we would travel a few miles to thee clos­est nearby mul­ti­plex (it had 4 screens), the Eric in Feasterville. We went to plenty of movies there when I was lit­tle, but there’s one night above all oth­ers that stands out in my mind because it was so ludi­crous and sur­pris­ing. the line to see “Home Alone” actu­ally went from the box office inside out through the lobby and about halfway through the park­ing lot. We must have waited an hour or so. And this wasn’t a mid­night screen­ing or any­thing, this was just an aver­age show­ing of the film, and peo­ple were wait­ing! I was amazed by the line itself as an impres­sion­able 6 year old, but then I saw the film.

This $15 mil­lion com­edy made over $285 mil­lion in the US alone. It was a jug­ger­naut, and for good rea­son. The film is a great com­edy with some fine act­ing, and of course the dis­cov­ery of Macauley Culkin. If Derek Jones ever reads this, I hope he’s think­ing “Fuller, easy on the Pepsi”. Who among us hasn’t slapped their hands to their cheeks and screamed to imi­tate the film. It’s the result of real comic genius, and John Huges’ script is a big part of that suc­cess. I would wit­ness this phe­nom­e­non again with “Mrs. Doubtfire”.

I’ve gone off point again. I’ve got to get bet­ter at pay­ing atten­tion when I write.

Ah yes, here’s the point. Columbus is still busy. He directed the first two Potter films, and he was also a major force in get­ting the project off the ground. It seems as though the films could just make them­selves, and the high­est bid­der would get to put their name on it, but it’s really not that sim­ple. We know that the films never needed to be made for the book was suc­cess­ful enough. The busi­ness of book rights for film can be an ugly one. We know that more often than not, it’s because our friends in the literry busi­ness choose to sell the rights instead of starv­ing. Writing is a much more cut­throat form of dis­tri­b­u­tion with a much lower return, so peo­ple sell ideas to the (uncre­ative) stu­dios to turn a buck. But JK Rowling had more money than any author could imag­ine in a life­time, and she was hell­bent on retain­ing the purity of the writ­ten word.

Under Columbus, Hogwarts came to life, beloved char­ac­ters had faces, and magic spells were visu­al­ized. He set up the way the fran­chise would play out, and while I don’t believe that his films were the best of the lot., they cer­tainly pro­vided and tal­ent set of direc­tors with a wide range of tools with which to work. That is commendable.

And of course, “Rent” was a phe­nom­e­nal adap­ta­tion. Some of the con­cepts for the num­bers were so amaz­ing, from a mov­ing cam­era along a fiery street to the great sub­way scene. For those who love cam­era gear, the sub­way song “Santa Fe” employed the Alien Revolution, a wicked play on the Steadicam.

Perhaps another day I can give a more coher­ent account of the man’s work. Let’s lis­ten to the pseudo-Spielberg talk!