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Motion Picture Pioneers of America 74 All of us, including Hal Ashby, although we didn’t share some ideology or some political party, we did have strong feelings about what America was and what we could be, and we felt our responsibilities as artists and citizens. —Haskell Wexler Back in 1963, Jewison had bought the rights to Nathaniel Benchley’s The Off-Islanders, a novel about a Russian submarine that gets beached off the New England coast. He had engaged William Rose, the writer of Genevieve (1953) and The Ladykillers (1955), to adapt the book, but it was Christmas 1964 before Rose delivered his first draft. Jewison could not interest any of the studios in a film that they felt was, as he put it, “about a bunch of communists,” but he set it up as part of his threepicture deal at the Mirisch Corporation.1 Run by brothers Walter, Marvin , and Harold Mirisch, the company had already attracted top-line directors like Billy Wilder and William Wyler by offering them complete creative control. Jewison and Ashby saw an opportunity to make an antiwar film that stressed the similarities between the opposing sides in the Cold War and would humanize the Russian sailors whom the Cape Cod residents mistakenly believe are invading their little island. As soon as The Cincinnati Kid was ready for release, Jewison went upstate to Mendocino County, California—which was doubling as Cape Cod—to begin shooting the film, now called The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming. When filming began on September 9, 1965, Ashby was back in Los Angeles, and every day new footage was flown down to him. Despite what one might expect from a future director, he was happier being away from filming, as it allowed him to focus entirely on the material. “I didn’t want to know what the problems were,” he said. “If it took you 7 Motion Picture Pioneers of America 75 eight hours to get this particular shot because of this and that, I didn’t care; what was important was what was happening on the piece of film. You put the film together and tell the story in the certain way you feel it from the film you have.”2 They spoke on the phone every night to discuss the dailies, and even though Jewison had J. Terry Williams, his editor on the Doris Day picture Send Me No Flowers (1964), working alongside Ashby, it was Ashby he most depended on. “He was my rock,” recalls Jewison. “He was totally supportive. Everything I shot, he loved. Whatever I did, he would fix it.”3 The understanding Ashby and Jewison achieved in their working relationship was remarkable. “It was the most productive partnership imaginable,” Ashby wrote. “From in front, Norman always gave me good film. Then, to top it off, he trusted me and my instincts. He never stood behind me in the cutting room. He let me select, and cut his film as I felt it. It was an editor’s dream.”4 On December 6, location filming on Russians ended, and Jewison and the company returned to Hollywood to shoot a week of interiors. Around that time, it was announced that Johnny Mandel—who a few months later won an Academy Award for Best Song for The Sandpiper (1965)—would write the score for Russians. By chance, Ashby and Mandel, both excelling in their fields, ended up working together. As Ashby settled into his work, he found that the material posed some unique challenges. A particular problem was the inconsistency from shot to shot caused by the fickle Mendocino weather. As the production designer, Robert Boyle, remembered, there would be “six kinds of weather every day,” including “absolutely dense fog, heavy rain, bright sunshine,” and this made cutting scenes together difficult and allowed very little editorial leeway. Boyle recalled that in dealing with this problem, Ashby displayed “an editorial genius. He was just marvelous. He would take pieces of film from the end—sometimes the wardrobe didn’t even match—but if it worked he could put it together.”5 Ashby’s main challenge, however, was how to structure the film; with five or six separate plotlines, it could have been cut together in an infinite number of ways. Ashby created version after version, turning the film inside out and then back again as he worked to find the most watchable and logical sequence of scenes. The difficulties, however, seemed only to fuel his...

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