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Talk:Go Away! Trinity Has Arrived in Eldorado

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Discussion during review at Articles for Creation

[edit]

@Flickyard: Hello, Flickyard. I've just done a review of your submission and have made a few copy edits to it (so that it better conforms with the style used in other film articles). But I found several issues that merit discussion.

  1. The sourcing has a few serious problems. First, although it is permissible to use a film as a source, it is not enough to simply give the name of the film and its director. If a book were being used as a source, we would insist on you providing the page number for the particular information being cited. The same is true for a film -- you need to tell the reader where (in terms of minutes and seconds) the relevant material can be found. Second, I understand that La Révue du Cinéma was a monthly magazine, yet you give only the year of publication. You also do not provide a page number or the name of any author that might have been credited with writing the review. If the reason you didn't give that information is that the quote was taken from another source that was quoting La Révue, then the reader needs to be told this (and, of course, needs to be given bibliographic details on the source that you actually did use).
  2. A more serious problem -- and one that will prevent me from accepting this draft even if you fix the sourcing issues -- is the accuracy of the claim that this film was directed by D'Amato. This is a major point on your part, as you mention it right in the introduction as the first film that he directed. But did he? Our article on D'Amato doesn't say he did. And more to the point, neither does the Weisser text that you are using to source several statements in the draft. The Weisser text says that Demofilo Fidani was the director. Indeed, the extended quote that you use in the "Reception" section is actually Weisser talking about Fidani's work in general, and is not at all about D'Amato. And so I'm left with the question -- do the reliable sources disagree about who directed this film? If so, then the draft should make this clear in the "Directorial Credit" section, by stating the discrepancy and identifying which sources are taking which positions. But if the sources are not in disagreement, we are still left with the question of why this draft is contradicting one of its own sources on such a basic matter.

I'll be happy to discuss these matters with you. In the meantime, I'll leave the "Review in Progress" banner at the top of the draft. That banner has a sentence that cautions against editing the article while the banner is there. Feel free to ignore that statement, because I'm leaving the banner there just to let other reviewers know that I'm looking at the draft. Feel free to continue editing it. NewYorkActuary (talk) 20:19, 27 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@NewYorkActuary:Thank you for your detailed and helpful feedback on my draft! ad 1: Will change that as soon as I have access to my sources again. ad 2: Joe D'Amato claimed to have been the director of this movie, and that it was his first one, on two different occasions. It is not likely that he claimed it for fame's sake because he has a low opinion of the movie. Fidani is thought to be the director by Weisser and some others because another film actually directed by him uses the same pseudonym, Dick Spitfire. The pseudonym was therefore associated with Fidani; it is, however, a pseudonym for producer Diego Spataro and does not tell us who the director was on either of these two films. I should and will state that more clearly. These are, however, my OWN conclusions and might hence represent original research, whose inclusion I know is frowned upon. Is there a way to avoid collision with this wikipedia rule in this case? Flickyard (talk) 08:50, 28 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

As a sidenote, I'd still like to cite Weisser for both the plot summary and his view on humour in "Fidani", which I believe pertains very much to this film since it is the only thing he mentions in his discussion of this film in particular. Flickyard (talk) 15:01, 28 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Flickyard: I think the best way here to avoid "original research" is to simply present the conflicting "facts" and trust the reader to be as smart as you are. And what facts do we have? Well, we know that the film itself credits the director role to Spitfire, a pseudonym used by Spataro (and by the way, how do we know this is a Spataro pseudonym?). We also know that Weisser believes that the directing was actually done by Fidani. Plus, we know whatever is in the other sources, to which I don't have access. By presenting these various facts, the reader is put on notice that reliable sources disagree as to who actually directed this film. They are also told how those reliable sources have resolved the confusion. The only thing that they won't get -- and, indeed, should not get -- is Wikipedia's opinion on how the confusion should be resolved. Under this approach, the infobox would not opine on the identity of the director (it would just give the pseudonym that actually appears in the credits). Also, the final sentence in the introduction would be modified to summarize whatever the "Director Credit" section ends up saying.

Allow me to add some of my own unsourced commentary to this discussion here. D'Amato was some twenty years younger than Fidani. Might D'Amato have been working as what is often called an "assistant director", and the later statements in interviews were simply examples of bad memory or loose language? Or how about another possibility -- what if D'Amato and Fidani were each acting as directors on two separate projects, neither of which came to fruition? And what if Spataro later cobbled together scenes from those projects to create Go Away? If this is case, then Spataro really was the director of the final version of the film and D'Amato and Fidani were each relegated to the roles of "assistant directors". I have no evidence to support either of these two "what ifs", but they are each so plausible that it makes me hesitant to do anything other than simply repeat (in the article) only those things actually being said by reliable sources.

Regarding your second posting, I agree that the quote is too good to throw away. In a few minutes, I'll take a shot at re-writing the way it's presented. Feel free to revert if you don't like it. NewYorkActuary (talk) 16:17, 28 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@NewYorkActuary:Spataro gets interviewed himself on "Joe D'Amato Uncut" as far as I remember. I will revisit that documentary and document the statements made there, including indication of minutes and seconds. Your "what if" of Spataro putting this together seems unlikely to me, but possible. "Bad memory" is not to be excluded of course, though "loose wording" is; both statements by D'Amato on this matter are careful and detailed, no discrepancies; I will transcribe them.

In assessing the staff credits on these smaller spaghetti westerns, it seems that one has to rely on statements in interviews, since credits on these are sometimes bogus. The reason D'Amato gives for not taking directorial credit on this one, which I put into the article, seems plausible to me, on its own and since it is similar to his practice of crediting a producer's pseudonym as director in his "Alexander Borsky" adult films. Crediting the producer seems to have been a practice employed by directors who didn't want their names tied to the work for one reason or the other.

That "Dick Spitfire" was a pseudonym of "Diego Spataro" is plausible due to its phonological similarity to the actual name and D'Amato's statement, in which he explicitly mentions the pseudonym tied to the producer.

Still, I think it is best to represent the "Fidani" side present in the sources, too, as you suggest; I would like to add to the article that Weisser indicates no other source for his "Fidani" assumption than the identity of the directorial credit with the other film credited to "Dick Spitfire" and supposedly directed by Fidani, though some sources seem to indicate Luigi Batzella as the director on that one. So Weisser's assumption might simply be based on wrong facts; I'm also guessing he didn't know D'Amato's interviews.

Personally, I don't see any reason for crediting Fidani other than the facts that

  • some footage of one of his films was reused in putting together Go Away, namely Lobo the Bastard (visually identical in parts),
  • that Fidani's western town was used for the shoot - as it was for many productions, though -,
  • and that D'Amato was working as DP for him at the time and was credited as DP on this one, too.

The latter fact is one I could state in the article, I guess; the other ones are my personal observations and not documented well enough in the sources as far as I can see.Flickyard (talk) 06:12, 29 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Flickyard and NewYorkActuary: I went ahead and unmarked the draft as being "under review", since this discussion appears to have stopped nine days ago.  I dream of horses  If you reply here, please ping me by adding {{U|I dream of horses}} to your message  (talk to me) (My edits) @ 05:45, 8 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • @NewYorkActuary: I am done with going back to my sources. Especially the "directorial credit" section should now be a detailed account of which information I could find, without passing judgment on it. I also removed Joe D'Amato as director from the credit list and instead put "Dick Spitfire", pointing to the "directorial credit" section. I also took the liberty of changing your wording on the relationship to the Trinity films to what I feel is more accurate, also pointing out the origin of the comparison, namely D'Amato. The thing is that "Go Away!" should not be considered a true sequel; it just uses the name "Trinity" to feign some connection, which in truth does only exist in that it is a comedic western as well.Concerning the French "Cahier", I do not have access to information on the page number and thus added "page number unknown". Is there something else I can do?

I do own the Italian DVD release of the movie with a booklet which I could cite from in addition if additional citation are needed.Flickyard (talk) 08:15, 12 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Flickyard: Thank you for putting the extra work into this. It was a great improvement. But as you can see, I've done a substantial re-write of much of the draft. In some cases, I simply wanted to tighten up the language and avoid ambiguity. But I also wanted to clarify the question of the directorial credit. I've kept all of your main points, but re-structured the discussion to better highlight the two points of view. On some other specific points:
  1. I removed the literal translation from the introduction, because it reversed the sense of "who went to who". Playing around with Google Translate left me with the feeling that either ordering might be acceptable and I decided to address the confusion by simply removing it.
  2. Again in the introduction, I wasn't all that sure what you intended by "anticipate". I re-wrote the sentence to conform with what I thought you meant but, if I got it wrong, feel free to correct it.
  3. The Weissner quote gave me some concerns, because he's really talking about Fidani's work in general and you've done a good job of casting doubt on Weissner's assumption that Fidani actually directed the film. I managed to salvage the quote, but had to relegate it to a footnote.
  4. I assume that Bruckner didn't specify what job was being done by each of Fidani, D'Amato and Spataro. If I'm wrong about that, then the final sentence of the "Directorial credit" section needs to be corrected.
Regarding the Revue quote, I've placed a {{full citation needed}} tag on it. I have no problem accepting this draft for publication even with that tag. But if I'm right in believing that the reason you don't have the full information is because you've gotten the quote second-hand from some other source, then the appropriate thing to do is to simply tell the reader where you read it.
If you feel that I've changed too much, I'll be happy to discuss this further. But if you're okay with what I've done, let me know and I'll accept it for publication. NewYorkActuary (talk) 19:05, 12 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]


@NewYorkActuary:Thank you very much for the rewrite! I feel it is most helpful since it makes the text much easier and clearer to read. Still, here are some concerns I still have with the present version:
ad 1: The point of including a literal translation of the title was exactly to point out that the order is erroneously reversed in the English title. In the film, "Trinity" is the name of a town, and "Eldorado" is the name of the general. I've only recently seen the film twice, in both its English and Italian dubs, and can confirm this. Looking at the film's plot, the Italian title makes sense, whereas the official English title simply does not fit. I do not know why Google Translate would let you allow ordering it differently, other than that it is automatically interpreting "Eldorado" as a place name...much like the original translator of the Italian title into English must have done. Perhaps the reversal should be pointed out in some way? I am, however, also ok with leaving out the literal translation altogether, although it must be confusing to someone who reads the synopsis and tries to make sense of the title.
ad 2: Thank you! Makes things much clearer.
ad 3: Perfect!
ad 4: I checked again. Actually, Bruckner puts down all three of them ("Demofilo Fidani, Aristide Massaccesi, Diego Spataro" as directors in the list of credits he provides on the same page.
Regarding the "Revue" quote, I had access to the original source and was not quoting from somewhere else.
I'm still not comfortable with the sentence "However, that same pseudonym had also been used by Demofilo Fidani when he directed Django and Sartana Are Coming... It's the End." I feel the sentence should reflect that it is, in fact, unclear who directed that movie, and that it was just Weisser's assumption that Demofilo Fidani did so. It also sounds as if Demofilo Fidani had used Spataro's pseudonym as his own pseudonym, which I doubt. I just believe Weisser did not know that "Dick Spitfire" was not a pseudonym for Demofilo Fidani, but for Diego Spataro; hence, he assumed that if Demofilo Fidani directed the movie, this must be HIS pseudonym - not taking in account the possibility that he had simply refrained from taking the directorial credit himself, which instead went to Diego Spataro who then used his OWN pseudonym.
As far as the "Trinity" connection is concerned, I believe the the wording perfectly mirrors the intent behind D'Amato's quote.
Thanks again, and I hope this is helpful.Flickyard (talk) 21:43, 12 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Flickyard: Yes, that was very helpful. I should know better than to trust Google Translate and I appreciate you clarifying the odd English title. I've restored the literal translation, and added a sentence to the Plot section to point out the correctness of the Italian title. More importantly, thanks for clarifying Weisser's treatment of Fidani. I hope the re-write better conforms to the actual situation. Other changes made were for minor typographical errors and the correction of the Bruckner material. I hope this addresses all your concerns and look forward to hearing your response. NewYorkActuary (talk) 22:59, 12 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@NewYorkActuary: Thanks for doing the final corrections! I am very comfortable with the article now, and it was a pleasure to collaborate with you on this.Flickyard (talk) 05:46, 13 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Flickyard: In a few minutes, I'll be publishing the draft and you'll receive an automated notification when that happens. One last point that I noticed when doing final copy edits -- the actual names of the cast members (as opposed to their pseudonymns) probably should be sourced. It's typical to add the pseudonyms (and the sourcing) in the Cast section, along the lines of Stelvio Rosi (credited as Stan Cooper) — Jonathan Duke III. I assume that there'll be nothing controversial about the real-life identities of the cast members, so I'm happy to let this be done after publication. I enjoyed working with you on this. I hope you'll stick around Wikipedia to work on some more articles. NewYorkActuary (talk) 06:40, 13 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Weisser wasn't present when or where these films were made. Joe D'Amato's personal statement that he directed this film should be seen as a very strong PRIMARY source. I'm sure D'Amato was certain that he directed this film, since it was apparently the first film he ever directed. How could Weisser's assumptions possibly supersede D'Amato's own recorded claim? Not to mention Weisser's book is riddled with many errors and inaccuracies, especially regarding variant titles on these westerns. His book has since been supplanted by more current (and correct) research tomes,and should at this point only be referred to as a last resort.68.129.15.71 (talk) 18:23, 2 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

D'Amato may claim certian things, but it would better to have a third-party source back it up (i.e: someone else on the set). Andrzejbanas (talk) 19:52, 2 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Well, author Weisser wasn't on the set. I'd rather believe D'Amato than Weisser. I would think D'Amato would know what his first directing job was. That interview with D'Amato is PRIMARY evidence, not second-hand assumptions like Weisser's comments.68.129.15.71 (talk) 19:56, 2 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

If Weisser has doubts, you have to respect them and wait for further confirmation. Andrzejbanas (talk) 20:02, 2 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
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