I’m heading to the Fairbanks Center for Motion Picture Study for my third day of research for my thesis. Stumbled across a 1926 letter from DW Griffith to Adolph Zukor, complaining for 10 pages about scripts being forced on him and changes he’d been bullied into, then ending with “no ill feeling.” Zukor took 10 days to send an unbending note back; Griffith followed up immediately with another long treatise. Ten years earlier he’d revolutionized the film industry, making long-running pictures with an astonishing level of artistry, but by 1926 he was getting the brush-off. His letters show he wasn’t taking it well.
This only has tangential connection to my thesis, I admit. But archival research is so much fun! And some things — like the elaborate Paramount budgets, written in pencil — are concretely related.
Meanwhile, Stop Smiling magazine talks to David Milch, the creator of Deadwood, for their gambling issue. In the excerpt online, they never get to Faro, which is the gambling that would have been played in Deadwood. Faro is in my thesis (and it was there before Deadwood, thank you very much), and I think it’s the strangest game of chance ever. It’s sort of like card-based roulette — you bet on a card or cards, and wait for the dealer’s draw to match yours. No skill at all — just guess and wait. And it was so insanely easy for the house to cheat at Faro, it’s a wonder anyone played it. But it was massively popular. Maybe Milch gets to it in the print version.
All of this seems to indicate that my MFA thesis is a work in progress. Indeed. My coursework is finished, but the thesis is due later this sumer.
Yes, it’s hard to believe that Faro was popular…
Equally hard to understand are the bucket shops found in established cities (on the East Coast!) during the same time… See “Remniniscences of A Stock Operator” – an excellent book…