NEIGHBOURS HELP HIM TO DIRECT FILMS

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 3, Issue 206, 30 August 1940, Page 2

NEIGHBOURS HELP HIM TO DIRECT FILMS

Favourite critics of director William Clements' films, he declares, are his non-professional neighbours. Clements believes everybody in pictures is too close to his work and too concerned with details which hardly count in the final analysis. So he seeks advice from people who know nothing about" pictures, except as fans. The script of "Calling Philo Vance," his latest Warner Bros picture, in which James Stephenson, Margot Stevenson, Sheila Bromley, Ed Brophy, Ralph Forbes and Henry O'Neill appear, was tried out on Clements' neighbours. The director saw the point in all but one of their suggestions. "Naturally, I don't blindly accept suggestions from these critics, but I do take my cues from their reactions,,"' he explained. "Ihey call things to my attention —things I have been too closely concerned with to see in proper perspective. Then I can stand off, view the suggestion critically, and either take it or leave it." Several families who live near the Clements home form his critical board,. Ages range from eight to eighty, and their tastes, the director thinks., are thoroughly representative of the general public at large. "I'll not give their names because they suffer enough as it is" he declared. "I read scripts to them, try out gags, take them to see roughcuts and previews.," Now he is thinking about buying projection and sound equipment and .fixing up a small picture theatre in his home, chiefly for the purpose of letting his critics see "rushes."