Gloria Stroock, who played Rock Hudson’s secretary on McMillan & Wife and appeared in films including Fun With Dick and Jane, The Competition and The Day of the Locust, has died. She was 99.
Stroock died May 5 of natural causes in Tucson, Arizona, her daughter, Kate Stern, told The Hollywood Reporter.
Stroock was married to Emmy-winning writer-producer Leonard B. Stern (Abbott and Costello in the Foreign Legion, The Phil Silvers Show, The Honeymooners, Get Smart and much more) from 1956 until his death in 2011 at age 87.
Her late younger sister was Geraldine Brooks, a Tony nominee and Warner Bros. contract player (Cry Wolf, Embraceable You).
Stroock recurred as Maggie, the secretary of Hudson’s San Francisco police commissioner Stewart McMillan, on the final three seasons (1974-77) of McMillan & Wife, the NBC series created by her husband.
She portrayed the wife of Richard Dysart’s art director in John Schlesinger’s The Day of the Locust...
Stroock died May 5 of natural causes in Tucson, Arizona, her daughter, Kate Stern, told The Hollywood Reporter.
Stroock was married to Emmy-winning writer-producer Leonard B. Stern (Abbott and Costello in the Foreign Legion, The Phil Silvers Show, The Honeymooners, Get Smart and much more) from 1956 until his death in 2011 at age 87.
Her late younger sister was Geraldine Brooks, a Tony nominee and Warner Bros. contract player (Cry Wolf, Embraceable You).
Stroock recurred as Maggie, the secretary of Hudson’s San Francisco police commissioner Stewart McMillan, on the final three seasons (1974-77) of McMillan & Wife, the NBC series created by her husband.
She portrayed the wife of Richard Dysart’s art director in John Schlesinger’s The Day of the Locust...
- 5/14/2024
- by Mike Barnes
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Rereleased for its 70th anniversary, Elia Kazan’s classic exploration of corruption and whether or not to squeal is made all the more viscerally powerful by his own Huac testimony
‘The Romans found out what a handful could do, if it’s the right handful,” says Karl Malden’s priest Father Pete Barry to the crowd of sullen, nervous New Jersey longshoremen he’s persuaded to come to his church, like the early Christians hiding in caves; they are wondering whether to stand up to the crooked union mob boss Johnny Friendly, played by Lee J Cobb. Meanwhile, ex-boxer Terry Malloy, played by Marlon Brando, sits at the back of the church, smirking and eavesdropping; midway between Judas and Jesus, he is the washed-up fighter who gets cushy dockworker jobs from Johnny in return for shameful dirty work, his stevedore’s hook hitched over his shoulder. It’s same kind...
‘The Romans found out what a handful could do, if it’s the right handful,” says Karl Malden’s priest Father Pete Barry to the crowd of sullen, nervous New Jersey longshoremen he’s persuaded to come to his church, like the early Christians hiding in caves; they are wondering whether to stand up to the crooked union mob boss Johnny Friendly, played by Lee J Cobb. Meanwhile, ex-boxer Terry Malloy, played by Marlon Brando, sits at the back of the church, smirking and eavesdropping; midway between Judas and Jesus, he is the washed-up fighter who gets cushy dockworker jobs from Johnny in return for shameful dirty work, his stevedore’s hook hitched over his shoulder. It’s same kind...
- 4/3/2024
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
Steve Lawrence, the charismatic Grammy- and Emmy-winning crooner who delighted audiences for decades in nightclubs, on concert stages and in film and television appearances, died Thursday. He was 88.
Lawrence, who partnered in a popular act with his wife of 55 years, the late Eydie Gormé, died of complications from Alzheimer’s disease, a publicidst announced.
With his boyish good looks, silky voice and breezy personality, Lawrence broke into show business when he won a talent competition on Arthur Godfrey’s CBS show and signed with King Records as a teenager. The singer chose to stay old school and resist the allure of rock ‘n’ roll.
“It didn’t attract me as much,” Lawrence once said. “I grew up in a time period when music was written by Irving Berlin and Cole Porter and George and Ira Gershwin and Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein and Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart and Sammy Cahn and Julie Stein.
Lawrence, who partnered in a popular act with his wife of 55 years, the late Eydie Gormé, died of complications from Alzheimer’s disease, a publicidst announced.
With his boyish good looks, silky voice and breezy personality, Lawrence broke into show business when he won a talent competition on Arthur Godfrey’s CBS show and signed with King Records as a teenager. The singer chose to stay old school and resist the allure of rock ‘n’ roll.
“It didn’t attract me as much,” Lawrence once said. “I grew up in a time period when music was written by Irving Berlin and Cole Porter and George and Ira Gershwin and Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein and Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart and Sammy Cahn and Julie Stein.
- 3/7/2024
- by Chris Koseluk
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
“I’ve seen Paris, France, and Paris, Paramount Pictures,” Ernst Lubitsch said, or so they say, “and on the whole I prefer Paris, Paramount Pictures.”
The great director’s preference for the Hollywood city of lights over the French one expresses a common enough affinity for illusion over reality, but the studio in question was not chosen for alliteration alone. If gritty Warner Bros. specialized in mean streets and threadbare apartments and glitzy MGM spent big on grand hotels and emerald cities, Paramount transported moviegoers into realms of dreamy exoticism, allegedly set in Vienna, Budapest or St. Petersburg, but conjured with better-than-the-original costuming, set design, lighting and dialogue. In an age before jumbo jets, who was to quibble over verisimilitude?
A new version of Paramount looks to be a-borning: Controlling stakeholder Shari Redstone may put her company on the auction block. Whatever conglomerate or mogul buys the assets, it’ll...
The great director’s preference for the Hollywood city of lights over the French one expresses a common enough affinity for illusion over reality, but the studio in question was not chosen for alliteration alone. If gritty Warner Bros. specialized in mean streets and threadbare apartments and glitzy MGM spent big on grand hotels and emerald cities, Paramount transported moviegoers into realms of dreamy exoticism, allegedly set in Vienna, Budapest or St. Petersburg, but conjured with better-than-the-original costuming, set design, lighting and dialogue. In an age before jumbo jets, who was to quibble over verisimilitude?
A new version of Paramount looks to be a-borning: Controlling stakeholder Shari Redstone may put her company on the auction block. Whatever conglomerate or mogul buys the assets, it’ll...
- 2/29/2024
- by Thomas Doherty
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Spike Lee Reflects On 9/11 At TIFF, Shows Episode From HBO Docuseries ‘NYC Epicenters 9/11-2021 1/2’
When Spike Lee was asked by TIFF to head to the festival, he was fully aware on what date he’d be there — that being Sept. 11.
So he did the right thing.
“It didn’t take me long to think about what I wanted to show,” said the Oscar-winning BlacKkKlansman filmmaker.
And in a proper reflection on the day when New York City’s World Trade Center towers were destroyed in a terrorist attack, Lee decided to show off to the crowd here at the Glenn Gould Theatre an episode of his 2021 HBO docuseries, NYC Epicenters 9/11 to 2021 ½, which dives into the similarities and differences between Sept. 11 and the Covid crisis in New York City two decades later.
The episode begins with a Port Authority video about the construction of the edifice in the late 1960s and a placard shortly thereafter reading that 60 people died during the building of the 1,360-plus-foot towers.
So he did the right thing.
“It didn’t take me long to think about what I wanted to show,” said the Oscar-winning BlacKkKlansman filmmaker.
And in a proper reflection on the day when New York City’s World Trade Center towers were destroyed in a terrorist attack, Lee decided to show off to the crowd here at the Glenn Gould Theatre an episode of his 2021 HBO docuseries, NYC Epicenters 9/11 to 2021 ½, which dives into the similarities and differences between Sept. 11 and the Covid crisis in New York City two decades later.
The episode begins with a Port Authority video about the construction of the edifice in the late 1960s and a placard shortly thereafter reading that 60 people died during the building of the 1,360-plus-foot towers.
- 9/11/2023
- by Anthony D'Alessandro
- Deadline Film + TV
Years after his death in 2003, two-time Oscar-winning director Elia Kazan remains both an influential and controversial figure, respected and reviled in equal measure. Let’s take a look back at 15 of his greatest films, ranked worst to best.
Kazan started his career as a stage actor, soon transitioning into directing. He mounted several landmark productions, including the original run of “A Streetcar Named Desire.” Throughout his career he received three Tony awards for Best Director of a Play: “All My Sons” in 1947, “Death of a Salesman” in 1949, and “J.B.” in 1959.
He transitioned into filmmaking with “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” (1945). Two years later, he won his first Oscar for Best Director for “Gentleman’s Agreement” (1947), which also took home Best Picture and Best Supporting Actress (Celeste Holm). A taboo-shattering drama about antisemitism, the film established Kazan as a director drawn towards contemporary, hot-button topics.
Kazan scored his second Best Director...
Kazan started his career as a stage actor, soon transitioning into directing. He mounted several landmark productions, including the original run of “A Streetcar Named Desire.” Throughout his career he received three Tony awards for Best Director of a Play: “All My Sons” in 1947, “Death of a Salesman” in 1949, and “J.B.” in 1959.
He transitioned into filmmaking with “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” (1945). Two years later, he won his first Oscar for Best Director for “Gentleman’s Agreement” (1947), which also took home Best Picture and Best Supporting Actress (Celeste Holm). A taboo-shattering drama about antisemitism, the film established Kazan as a director drawn towards contemporary, hot-button topics.
Kazan scored his second Best Director...
- 9/1/2023
- by Zach Laws and Chris Beachum
- Gold Derby
Barry Newman, who propelled a supercharged Dodge Challenger across the American West in Vanishing Point and portrayed a defense attorney on the NBC series Petrocelli, has died. He was 92.
Newman died May 11 of natural causes at NewYork-Presbyterian Columbia University Irving Medical Center, his wife, Angela, told The Hollywood Reporter.
After appearing on Broadway and starring in The Lawyer (1970), the Boston-born actor was up for a change of pace when he was offered the role of a man tasked with transporting a car from Denver to San Francisco in the action-packed Fox film Vanishing Point (1971), directed by Richard C. Sarafian.
“This was very unique,” he said. “I had just done this film about a lawyer, a Harvard graduate, and I thought this is a different kind of thing. The guy was the rebel, the antihero. I enjoyed doing that very much.”
Newman’s taciturn character, Kowalski, was a Vietnam veteran, former...
Newman died May 11 of natural causes at NewYork-Presbyterian Columbia University Irving Medical Center, his wife, Angela, told The Hollywood Reporter.
After appearing on Broadway and starring in The Lawyer (1970), the Boston-born actor was up for a change of pace when he was offered the role of a man tasked with transporting a car from Denver to San Francisco in the action-packed Fox film Vanishing Point (1971), directed by Richard C. Sarafian.
“This was very unique,” he said. “I had just done this film about a lawyer, a Harvard graduate, and I thought this is a different kind of thing. The guy was the rebel, the antihero. I enjoyed doing that very much.”
Newman’s taciturn character, Kowalski, was a Vietnam veteran, former...
- 6/4/2023
- by Mike Barnes
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
On November 20, 1945, in Nuremberg, Germany, once prime real estate for torchlit Nazi pageantry, currently reduced to ruins by Allied bombing, the International Military Tribunal, an unprecedented experiment in transnational jurisprudence, convened in the city’s Palace of Justice, one of the few buildings left standing. The four victorious powers — the United States, Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union — had hauled the loser, Nazi Germany, before four judges and a global jury to be held accountable for violating a series of recently devised additions to the criminal code — crimes against humanity, crimes against peace, criminal conspiracy, and war crimes.
Twenty-one Nazi leaders were in the dock, defendants whose names most Americans had become familiar with in the years since 1933. The accused included Reich Marshall Herman Göring, Hitler’s brutal second in command; Joachim von Ribbentrop, Minister of Foreign Affairs, who in August 1939 negotiated the pact with the Soviet Union that ignited the conflagration; Rudolf Hess,...
Twenty-one Nazi leaders were in the dock, defendants whose names most Americans had become familiar with in the years since 1933. The accused included Reich Marshall Herman Göring, Hitler’s brutal second in command; Joachim von Ribbentrop, Minister of Foreign Affairs, who in August 1939 negotiated the pact with the Soviet Union that ignited the conflagration; Rudolf Hess,...
- 2/4/2023
- by Thomas Doherty
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
If a picture speaks a thousand words, then the power of film to convey an idea or feeling is simply boundless. Filmmakers for the Prosecution, a new documentary directed by Jean-Christophe Klotz and produced by Sandra Schulberg, examines the search for celluloid to convict the Nazis at the Nuremberg trials. Ahead of the film’s opening on Holocaust Day of Remembrance, January 27, in New York at the Dctv Firehouse Cinema courtesy of Kino Lorber, we’re pleased to exclusively premiere the first trailer.
Adapted from Sandra Schulberg’s monograph, the documentary retraces the thrilling hunt for film evidence used to convict the Nazis at the first Nuremberg Trial. The searchers were two sons of Hollywood––brothers Budd and Stuart Schulberg––serving under the command of Oss film chief John Ford. The motion pictures they presented in the courtroom became part of the official record and shape our understanding of the Holocaust to this day.
Adapted from Sandra Schulberg’s monograph, the documentary retraces the thrilling hunt for film evidence used to convict the Nazis at the first Nuremberg Trial. The searchers were two sons of Hollywood––brothers Budd and Stuart Schulberg––serving under the command of Oss film chief John Ford. The motion pictures they presented in the courtroom became part of the official record and shape our understanding of the Holocaust to this day.
- 1/11/2023
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
By the time of Humphrey Bogart's final film performance, in 1956's "The Harder They Fall," the movie star had fallen gravely ill. His years of smoking and drinking climaxed with what would become fatal esophageal cancer, which cast an unmissable pall on his performance. And yet, he still brings his star-making qualities: the toughness and bitterness, the anger and wry sarcasm.
Because "The Harder They Fall" is just one of many noir-era movies about the boxing underworld, it gets less respect than Bogart's many classics. He hadn't even wanted to be in the movie, focusing his remaining energy in vain on another movie with his wife Lauren Bacall, according to Stefan Kanfer's Bogart biography "Tough Without a Gun." He had many reasons for not being interested in the movie, but the cast was a big one.
"The Harder They Fall" is unromantic and cynical, with Bogart, reduced...
Because "The Harder They Fall" is just one of many noir-era movies about the boxing underworld, it gets less respect than Bogart's many classics. He hadn't even wanted to be in the movie, focusing his remaining energy in vain on another movie with his wife Lauren Bacall, according to Stefan Kanfer's Bogart biography "Tough Without a Gun." He had many reasons for not being interested in the movie, but the cast was a big one.
"The Harder They Fall" is unromantic and cynical, with Bogart, reduced...
- 9/4/2022
- by Anthony Crislip
- Slash Film
Dressed in a red Fdny shirt and matching cap, Spike Lee recalls over Zoom his earliest memory of the World Trade Center: “My first thing was the bombing in 1993.” After a beat, he goes back further. “They were shooting ‘King Kong,’ and there was an ad in the Daily News. They needed extras for the final scene and I was there.” Lee appears in the Dino de Laurentiis-produced 1976 film as one of the 5,000 extras who see Kong fall to the ground from the towers.
Decades later, the director would shoot a documentary with his own vivid memories of the fateful day in 2001 when a terrorist attack brought down the twin towers, killing thousands.
The finale of Lee’s new four-part documentary series for HBO, “NYC Epicenters: 9/11 – 2021 1⁄2,” will air on Sept. 11, the 20-year remembrance of the World Trade Center attacks. (He doesn’t like to use the word “anniversary.”) The work...
Decades later, the director would shoot a documentary with his own vivid memories of the fateful day in 2001 when a terrorist attack brought down the twin towers, killing thousands.
The finale of Lee’s new four-part documentary series for HBO, “NYC Epicenters: 9/11 – 2021 1⁄2,” will air on Sept. 11, the 20-year remembrance of the World Trade Center attacks. (He doesn’t like to use the word “anniversary.”) The work...
- 9/10/2021
- by Jazz Tangcay
- Variety Film + TV
The director of Palmer helps us kick off our new season by walking us through some of his favorite movies.
Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode
Bloodhounds Of Broadway (1989)
Salvador (1986)
True Believer (1989)
Palmer (2021)
Wonder Wheel (2017)
A Face In The Crowd (1957)
On The Waterfront (1954)
No Time For Sergeants (1958)
The Confidence Man (2018)
Lolita (1962)
Dr. Strangelove (1964)
The Ghost Of Peter Sellers (2018)
The Marrying Man (1991)
The Ruling Class (1972)
The Krays (1990)
Let Him Have It (1991)
The Changeling (1980)
On The Border (1998)
Murder By Decree (1979)
Bigger Than Life (1956)
The Night of the Iguana (1964)
Fat City (1972)
Angel (1984)
Animal House (1978)
My Science Project (1985)
Lucía (1968)
Paper Moon (1973)
Sullivan’s Travels (1941)
The Great McGinty (1940)
I Married A Witch (1942)
Do The Right Thing (1989)
Raging Bull (1980)
Once Upon A Time In America (1984)
The Rider (2017)
The Mustang (2019)
Nomadland (2020)
Murmur of the Heart (1971)
Sweet Smell Of Success (1957)
Mr. Smith Goes To Washington (1939)
Apocalypse Now (1979)
The Conversation (1974)
The Godfather (1972)
The Godfather Part III (1990)
The Magnificent Ambersons...
Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode
Bloodhounds Of Broadway (1989)
Salvador (1986)
True Believer (1989)
Palmer (2021)
Wonder Wheel (2017)
A Face In The Crowd (1957)
On The Waterfront (1954)
No Time For Sergeants (1958)
The Confidence Man (2018)
Lolita (1962)
Dr. Strangelove (1964)
The Ghost Of Peter Sellers (2018)
The Marrying Man (1991)
The Ruling Class (1972)
The Krays (1990)
Let Him Have It (1991)
The Changeling (1980)
On The Border (1998)
Murder By Decree (1979)
Bigger Than Life (1956)
The Night of the Iguana (1964)
Fat City (1972)
Angel (1984)
Animal House (1978)
My Science Project (1985)
Lucía (1968)
Paper Moon (1973)
Sullivan’s Travels (1941)
The Great McGinty (1940)
I Married A Witch (1942)
Do The Right Thing (1989)
Raging Bull (1980)
Once Upon A Time In America (1984)
The Rider (2017)
The Mustang (2019)
Nomadland (2020)
Murmur of the Heart (1971)
Sweet Smell Of Success (1957)
Mr. Smith Goes To Washington (1939)
Apocalypse Now (1979)
The Conversation (1974)
The Godfather (1972)
The Godfather Part III (1990)
The Magnificent Ambersons...
- 2/2/2021
- by Kris Millsap
- Trailers from Hell
The annals of film history have a lot of unmade, lost, and forgotten projects. A veteran filmmaker like Spike Lee, naturally has lots of them (we recounted 10 of them in 2013). One of those projects is an unmade boxing movie called “Save Us, Joe Louis,” about the friendship and rivalry between boxing heavyweight champion Joe Louis, and German heavyweight boxing champion Max Schmeling. Two of their fights are legendary in boxing history, and there’s even an intensely-detailed Wikipedia page dedicated to these fights and the surrounding dramas.
Continue reading Spike Lee Vows To Make ‘Save Us, Joe Louis’ Boxing Drama & Promised Screenwriter Budd Schulberg To Make It Before His Death at The Playlist.
Continue reading Spike Lee Vows To Make ‘Save Us, Joe Louis’ Boxing Drama & Promised Screenwriter Budd Schulberg To Make It Before His Death at The Playlist.
- 1/1/2021
- by Rodrigo Perez
- The Playlist
A celebrity sociopath fools all of the people some of the time on his way to political office. Sound familiar? Elia Kazan’s lacerating portrait of a down home demagogue has never lost its disturbing relevance. Anchored by a ferocious performance by Andy Griffith, Budd Schulberg’s media-savvy satire, based on his story “The Arkansas Traveler”, has survived countless attempts to remake it over the years, largely because its 50s-centric setting is the perfect background to expose the pernicious effect television has had on the US political system. Vita-Pig says, “Is it election day yet?” Lee Remick is memorably lubricious in her film debut.
The post A Face in the Crowd appeared first on Trailers From Hell.
The post A Face in the Crowd appeared first on Trailers From Hell.
- 7/24/2020
- by TFH Team
- Trailers from Hell
That Spike Lee remains one of the true provocative soothsayers of cinema should come as no surprise, yet it’s an epiphany for those reconsidering the prescience of his undervalued masterpiece from the turn of the century, Bamboozled, which turns twenty years old as the world plunges into discord. That the film is dedicated to scribe Budd Schulberg, who penned the 1957 Elia Kazan classic A Face in the Crowd (also a recent Criterion addition), one of the film’s several timely inspirations, feeds similarly into the savage subconscious of America’s significant socio-political race and class divides (others influences being the dietetically mimicked Network as well as the Mel Brooks satire The Producers).…...
- 3/31/2020
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
Stars: Marlon Brando, Karl Malden, Lee J. Cobb, Rod Steiger, Eva Marie Saint | Written by Budd Schulberg | Directed by Elia Kazan
The opening tells us everything. We can visualise the shipyard before we’re shown a single image. Leonard Bernstein’s horn-heavy score sounds like the song of ships. It’s almost peaceful. Then a piano strikes like military drums.
1954’s On the Waterfront is a furious, blue-collar political drama, sandwiched between A Streetcar Named Desire (also starring Marlon Brando) and East of Eden in the filmography of its director Elia Kazan. The film takes place amongst the largely Irish American community of shipyard workers in New Jersey. Manhattan can often be seen, tantalisingly, across the water, visible through prison-like iron railings, or from the rooftop where Terry Malloy (Brando) cares for a dead man’s pigeons, like a form of repentance.
The dead man is Joey Doyle (Ben Wagner), murdered by local gangsters.
The opening tells us everything. We can visualise the shipyard before we’re shown a single image. Leonard Bernstein’s horn-heavy score sounds like the song of ships. It’s almost peaceful. Then a piano strikes like military drums.
1954’s On the Waterfront is a furious, blue-collar political drama, sandwiched between A Streetcar Named Desire (also starring Marlon Brando) and East of Eden in the filmography of its director Elia Kazan. The film takes place amongst the largely Irish American community of shipyard workers in New Jersey. Manhattan can often be seen, tantalisingly, across the water, visible through prison-like iron railings, or from the rooftop where Terry Malloy (Brando) cares for a dead man’s pigeons, like a form of repentance.
The dead man is Joey Doyle (Ben Wagner), murdered by local gangsters.
- 12/2/2019
- by Rupert Harvey
- Nerdly
The AFI Conservatory, one of the crown jewels of the American Film Institute, celebrated its 50th anniversary in style Thursday night at the place where it all started, the fabled Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills. One of the first “colleges” for filmmakers (there were only four at the time), it opened at Greystone in 1969 and stayed there until 1981 ,when it moved to Griffith Park, where it still stands at the former Immaculate Heart campus.
The students — or fellows, as they are called for that first class — included future Oscar- nominated legends like Terrence Malick, Paul Schrader, and cinematographer Caleb Deschanel, the latter among many alumni who returned to the original campus for a class-reunion-of-all-class-reunions Thursday. Others attending included three-time Oscar nominee and 2019 Honorary Academy Award winner David Lynch from the class of 1970, Pieter Jan Brugge (Class of 1979), Jay Cassidy (1976), Susannah Grant (1991), Liz Hannah (2009), Marshall Herskovitz (1975), Mel Jones (2010), Matthew Libatique (1992), Melina...
The students — or fellows, as they are called for that first class — included future Oscar- nominated legends like Terrence Malick, Paul Schrader, and cinematographer Caleb Deschanel, the latter among many alumni who returned to the original campus for a class-reunion-of-all-class-reunions Thursday. Others attending included three-time Oscar nominee and 2019 Honorary Academy Award winner David Lynch from the class of 1970, Pieter Jan Brugge (Class of 1979), Jay Cassidy (1976), Susannah Grant (1991), Liz Hannah (2009), Marshall Herskovitz (1975), Mel Jones (2010), Matthew Libatique (1992), Melina...
- 9/21/2019
- by Pete Hammond
- Deadline Film + TV
Stars: Patricia Neal, Andy Griffith, Walter Matthau, Anthony Franciosa, Lee Remick | Written by Budd Schulberg | Directed by Elia Kazan
In a tiny Arkansas town, local radio reporter Marcia Jeffries (Patricia Neal) makes a visit to the local jailhouse to do a story on the inmates. She’s expecting anecdotes and maybe a song or two. What she finds is Larry “Lonesome” Rhodes (Andy Griffith), a bawdy and brilliantly charismatic drifter, who steals the show in any room he occupies.
Marcia offers Larry a slot on her radio station. He’s soon a local celebrity, whipping the locals into a frenzy, inciting them to take action against the mayor and his cronies. Via a calculating agent named Joey (Anthony Franciosa), Larry gains the attention of the big networks and advertisers. Before long he’s hit the big time, with his own show in New York, through which he sells pharmaceuticals to a national audience,...
In a tiny Arkansas town, local radio reporter Marcia Jeffries (Patricia Neal) makes a visit to the local jailhouse to do a story on the inmates. She’s expecting anecdotes and maybe a song or two. What she finds is Larry “Lonesome” Rhodes (Andy Griffith), a bawdy and brilliantly charismatic drifter, who steals the show in any room he occupies.
Marcia offers Larry a slot on her radio station. He’s soon a local celebrity, whipping the locals into a frenzy, inciting them to take action against the mayor and his cronies. Via a calculating agent named Joey (Anthony Franciosa), Larry gains the attention of the big networks and advertisers. Before long he’s hit the big time, with his own show in New York, through which he sells pharmaceuticals to a national audience,...
- 5/7/2019
- by Rupert Harvey
- Nerdly
“There’s nothing as trustworthy as the ordinary mind of the ordinary man,” is the haunting mantra scrawled in leering monogram on the façade of the monolith created for overnight celebrity, Lonesome Rhodes, an exemplification of the terrifying end result of America’s perverted worship for the cult of personality.
As the grandiose anti-hero of Elia Kazan’s 1957 classic A Face in the Crowd, there are reasons the character and title are not as revered as other subjects from Kazan’s filmography, who reunited with his Oscar winning scribe Budd Schulberg from 1954’s Best Picture winner On the Waterfront and was fresh off equally seminal or noted titles East of Eden (1955) and Baby Doll (1956), a salacious Southern drama of sexual hysteria starring Carroll Baker (from a Tennessee Williams screenplay).…...
As the grandiose anti-hero of Elia Kazan’s 1957 classic A Face in the Crowd, there are reasons the character and title are not as revered as other subjects from Kazan’s filmography, who reunited with his Oscar winning scribe Budd Schulberg from 1954’s Best Picture winner On the Waterfront and was fresh off equally seminal or noted titles East of Eden (1955) and Baby Doll (1956), a salacious Southern drama of sexual hysteria starring Carroll Baker (from a Tennessee Williams screenplay).…...
- 5/1/2019
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
While I do not own a 4K Blu-ray player, it’s hard to imagine Criterion’s new release of Elia Kazan’s A Face In The Crowd looking any crisper. Its very timely 2019 arrival into the Criterion collection feels almost coincidental given that the film -- Kazan’s best, depending on who you ask -- could have easily been Criterionized at any point since the collection’s laserdisc inception in 1984, beginning with the release of the spiritually similar Citizen Kane. I suppose another way of looking at it is that A Face In The Crowd is becoming an increasingly glaring omission. A Face In The Crowd, Kazan’s second collaboration with screenwriter Budd Schulberg, is something of a cautionary Frankenstein tale aimed at the still young ‘television age’ and...
[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...
[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...
- 4/29/2019
- Screen Anarchy
Elia Kazan never stopped making great pictures, but much of his output after 1952 was politically defensive in nature. This powerful indictment of American media madness is a genuine classic, but it also points up the need for ‘good folk’ to sometimes betray their associates. The target this time around is the most kill-worthy monster in the history of sardonic satire: Lonesome Rhodes, a faux-populist master manipulator of the pushover public. Kazan and Budd Schulberg’s premise has come to pass in real life, but their silver bullet of truth has lost its power: even when unmasked publicly, some media monsters thrive.
A Face in the Crowd
Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 970
1957 / B&W / 1:85 widescreen / 125 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date April 23, 2019 / 39.95
Starring: Andy Griffith, Patricia Neal, Anthony Franciosa, Walter Matthau, Lee Remick.
Cinematography: Gayne Rescher, Harry Stradling
Art Direction: Paul Sylbert, Richard Sylbert
Film Editor: Gene Milford
Original...
A Face in the Crowd
Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 970
1957 / B&W / 1:85 widescreen / 125 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date April 23, 2019 / 39.95
Starring: Andy Griffith, Patricia Neal, Anthony Franciosa, Walter Matthau, Lee Remick.
Cinematography: Gayne Rescher, Harry Stradling
Art Direction: Paul Sylbert, Richard Sylbert
Film Editor: Gene Milford
Original...
- 4/16/2019
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
With his exaggerated visuals, eye-popping color and frantic characterizations, Frank Tashlin has been promoted to a genuine ‘fifties icon. This freewheeling comedy hits on the Top Tashlin fetish subjects: Hollywood glitz, Madison Avenue neurosis, dynamic women, wimpy men and… and… bosoms, dammit. As the bubbly yet calculating sex symbol Rita Marlowe, Jayne Mansfield places career issues way ahead of anything to do with sex. Tony Randall receives his first leading film role as a Mad Man who’ll jump through hoops to keep an account. But the surprise is Betsy Drake, who more than anyone represents the conflicts facing the pre-feminist ’50s woman: she defines success her own way.
Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter
Blu-ray
Twilight Time
1957 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 93 min. / Street Date Feb 19, 2019 / Available from the Twilight Time Movies Store / 29.95
Starring: Tony Randall, Jayne Mansfield, Betsy Drake, Joan Blondell, John Williams, Henry Jones, Mickey Hargitay.
Cinematography: Joseph MacDonald
Film...
Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter
Blu-ray
Twilight Time
1957 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 93 min. / Street Date Feb 19, 2019 / Available from the Twilight Time Movies Store / 29.95
Starring: Tony Randall, Jayne Mansfield, Betsy Drake, Joan Blondell, John Williams, Henry Jones, Mickey Hargitay.
Cinematography: Joseph MacDonald
Film...
- 3/9/2019
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
A celebrity sociopath fools all of the people some of the time on his way to political office. Sound familiar? Elia Kazan’s lacerating portrait of a down home demagogue has never lost its disturbing relevance. Anchored by a ferocious performance by Andy Griffith, Budd Schulberg’s media-savvy satire, based on his story “The Arkansas Traveler”, has survived countless attempts to remake it over the years, largely because its 50s-centric setting is the perfect background to expose the pernicious effect television has had on the Us political system. Vita-pig says, “Is it election day yet?” Lee Remick is memorably lubricious in her film debut.
The post A Face in the Crowd appeared first on Trailers From Hell.
The post A Face in the Crowd appeared first on Trailers From Hell.
- 2/8/2019
- by TFH Team
- Trailers from Hell
Michael Ovitz was ever the master of both confession and concealment — the shared confidence that really wasn’t, or the backdoor whisper that had to be denied. When I was pursuing him, in a reportorial sense, for a 1986 Wall Street Journal profile, for instance, he struck a pose of complete resistance. But he also had a certain highly placed studio executive spend two hours of expensive office time answering 50 or 100 detailed questions. Responding by proxy allowed him to say that he hadn’t helped, a fiction he maintains to this day. “Though I’d declined to cooperate with the Journal, I thought the story could help our business,” he writes on page 194 of his new memoir, Who Is Michael Ovitz?, from Portfolio/Penguin.
So it’s hard to know what to make of a book that purports to come clean about perhaps the most complicated and consequential career in modern...
So it’s hard to know what to make of a book that purports to come clean about perhaps the most complicated and consequential career in modern...
- 10/1/2018
- by Michael Cieply
- Deadline Film + TV
Elia Kazan would have celebrated his 109th birthday on September 7, 2018. Years after his death in 2003, the two-time Oscar-winning director remains both an influential and controversial figure, respected and reviled in equal measure. In honor of his birthday, let’s take a look back at 15 of his greatest films, ranked worst to best.
Kazan started his career as a stage actor, soon transitioning into directing. He mounted several landmark productions, including the original run of “A Streetcar Named Desire.” Throughout his career he received three Tony awards for Best Director of a Play: “All My Sons” in 1947, “Death of a Salesman” in 1949, and “J.B.” in 1959.
He transitioned into filmmaking with “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” (1945). Two years later, he won his first Oscar for Best Director for “Gentleman’s Agreement” (1947), which also took home Best Picture and Best Supporting Actress (Celeste Holm). A taboo-shattering drama about antisemitism, the film established...
Kazan started his career as a stage actor, soon transitioning into directing. He mounted several landmark productions, including the original run of “A Streetcar Named Desire.” Throughout his career he received three Tony awards for Best Director of a Play: “All My Sons” in 1947, “Death of a Salesman” in 1949, and “J.B.” in 1959.
He transitioned into filmmaking with “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” (1945). Two years later, he won his first Oscar for Best Director for “Gentleman’s Agreement” (1947), which also took home Best Picture and Best Supporting Actress (Celeste Holm). A taboo-shattering drama about antisemitism, the film established...
- 9/7/2018
- by Zach Laws and Chris Beachum
- Gold Derby
“Black Panther” filmmaker Ryan Coogler has made no bones about his affection for fellow director Spike Lee’s sprawling filmography, including using a post-screening Q&A of his own boundary-breaking Marvel film to heap praise on both Lee’s “Malcolm X” and “Do the Right Thing,” and now the Brooklyn mainstay is returning the favor. During an hour-long conversation at the Tribeca Film Festival on Tuesday evening, Lee was asked by an audience member if he’d seen Coogler’s film and what he thought of it.
“I loved it! My brother, I’ve seen it four times,” Lee answered. (Lee just so happened to be in attendance at that same screening where Coogler named his most influential films, so we’ve long known he’d seen the film at least once.)
Lee continued, “I will say, I look at the world now differently, before ‘Black Panther’ and after ‘Black Panther.
“I loved it! My brother, I’ve seen it four times,” Lee answered. (Lee just so happened to be in attendance at that same screening where Coogler named his most influential films, so we’ve long known he’d seen the film at least once.)
Lee continued, “I will say, I look at the world now differently, before ‘Black Panther’ and after ‘Black Panther.
- 4/25/2018
- by Kate Erbland
- Indiewire
Welcome to “Playback,” a Variety / iHeartRadio podcast bringing you exclusive conversations with the talents behind many of today’s hottest films.
Filmmaker Aaron Katz has been making movies for 10 years in the independent space. He lived in New York for most of that time, cranking out projects like “Quiet City” and “Cold Weather” before the award-winning “Land Ho!” opened even more doors. His latest film is “Gemini,” a stylish, Hollywood-set neo-noir that, for Katz, was partly a way of wrangling with a love-hate relationship with the City of Angels.
Listen to this week’s episode of “Playback” below. New episodes air every Thursday.
Click here for more episodes of “Playback.”
“One of the reasons to make this movie is to confront my conflicted feelings about it and sort of live in the tradition of movies and books that both celebrate and have a lot of trepidation about Hollywood,” he says.
Filmmaker Aaron Katz has been making movies for 10 years in the independent space. He lived in New York for most of that time, cranking out projects like “Quiet City” and “Cold Weather” before the award-winning “Land Ho!” opened even more doors. His latest film is “Gemini,” a stylish, Hollywood-set neo-noir that, for Katz, was partly a way of wrangling with a love-hate relationship with the City of Angels.
Listen to this week’s episode of “Playback” below. New episodes air every Thursday.
Click here for more episodes of “Playback.”
“One of the reasons to make this movie is to confront my conflicted feelings about it and sort of live in the tradition of movies and books that both celebrate and have a lot of trepidation about Hollywood,” he says.
- 4/19/2018
- by Kristopher Tapley
- Variety Film + TV
The aftershocks of white nationalist rallies and their violence are still felt in Charlottesville, which hosted the 30th annual Virginia Film Festival this weekend. At the entrance of the fest’s marquee venue, the Paramount Theater (located on the idyllic main street that became a conflict zone August 12), the state pressured festival organizers to install metal detectors. Even as the festival decided to focus on the theme of “Race in Film,” out-of-town white supremacists started making their presence felt in Charlottesville as court appearances stemming from “A12” (the locals’ term for the horrific events this summer) began.
Against this backdrop, Spike Lee came to Charlottesville this weekend and screened his 1997 documentary “4 Little Girls,” about the 1963 murder of four young African-American girls in the bombing of the Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama.
“I think terrorism is terrorism whether it’s Isis, the Klan, it’s all terrorism,” said Lee introducing the...
Against this backdrop, Spike Lee came to Charlottesville this weekend and screened his 1997 documentary “4 Little Girls,” about the 1963 murder of four young African-American girls in the bombing of the Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama.
“I think terrorism is terrorism whether it’s Isis, the Klan, it’s all terrorism,” said Lee introducing the...
- 11/13/2017
- by Chris O'Falt
- Indiewire
Just because you’re a well-established director with award-winning hits and/or commercial successes doesn’t mean you can make any movie you want. Just ask Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee, Sofia Coppola, Darren Aronofsky, and more. All these auteurs have had passion projects over the years they’ve had to kill or put on indefinite hiatus for a variety of reasons, which is a shame given how incredible all of them sound on paper.
Read More30 Essential Directing Tips From 30 Master Filmmakers
Christopher Nolan taking on Howard Hughes. Spike Lee making a boxing epic around Joe Louis. Kathryn Bigelow resurrecting Joan of Arc for a female warrior saga unlike any the big screen had ever really seen in the 1990s. We’d buy a ticket for all them years in advance if we knew they were definitely happening.
With many of our favorite auteurs currently in production on new movies,...
Read More30 Essential Directing Tips From 30 Master Filmmakers
Christopher Nolan taking on Howard Hughes. Spike Lee making a boxing epic around Joe Louis. Kathryn Bigelow resurrecting Joan of Arc for a female warrior saga unlike any the big screen had ever really seen in the 1990s. We’d buy a ticket for all them years in advance if we knew they were definitely happening.
With many of our favorite auteurs currently in production on new movies,...
- 7/28/2017
- by Zack Sharf
- Indiewire
TCM will re-broadcast “A Face in the Crowd” on Friday, January 20 at 5:45 p.m. Et. It was supposed to be a cautionary tale, but as usual, we didn’t listen. All the way back in 1957, when TV was black-and-white and served up in an unwieldy box, writer Budd Schulberg and director Elia Kazan (fresh off their collaboration for “On the Waterfront”) tried to warn us about the power of the small screen to create personalities who would lead us to places we didn’t want to go. And now we have President-elect Donald Trump. A film that stands alongside “Network” as an eerily.
- 1/16/2017
- by Alonso Duralde
- The Wrap
Warners knocks us out with a beautifully remastered Rko noir. Nicholas Ray's crime tale is like no other, a meditation on human need and loneliness. It's a noir with a cautiously positive, hopeful twist. On Dangerous Ground Blu-ray Warner Archive Collection 1952 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 82 min. / Street Date October 11, 2016 / available through the WBshop / 21.99 Starring Ida Lupino, Robert Ryan, Ward Bond, Charles Kemper, Anthony Ross, Ed Begley, Ian Wolfe, Sumner Williams. Cinematography George E. Diskant Art Direction Ralph Berger, Albert S. D'Agostino Film Editor Roland Gross Original Music Bernard Herrmann Written by A.I. Bezzerides, Nicholas Ray from the novel Mad with Much Heart by Gerald Butler Produced by John Houseman, Sid Rogell Directed by Nicholas Ray
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
The Warner Archive is known for pleasant surprises, but this one is a real thrill -- one of the very best Rko films noir, reissued in a much-needed beautiful restoration.
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
The Warner Archive is known for pleasant surprises, but this one is a real thrill -- one of the very best Rko films noir, reissued in a much-needed beautiful restoration.
- 10/8/2016
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
“Hey, you wanna hear my philosophy of life? Do it to him before he does it to you!”
On The Waterfront (1954) screen this Friday through Sunday (June 24th-26th) at Webster University’s Moore Auditorium (470 E. Lockwood, Webster Groves, Mo 63119). The film begins each evening at 8:00.
More than 60 years after its original release, On The Waterfront, Academy Award®-winning director Elia Kazan’s classic tale of crime and corruption among unionized dock workers in New York and New Jersey, returns to the big screen when it plays at Webster University’s this weekend. Movie buffs can experience the second collaboration of Marlon Brando and Kazan, following A Streetcar Named Desire, along with the acclaimed performances of Eva Marie Saint and Karl Malden, and a still-searing, Academy Award®-winning screenplay by Budd Schulberg.
Filmed in just 36 days on-site in Hoboken, New Jersey, On The Waterfront tells the story of struggling...
On The Waterfront (1954) screen this Friday through Sunday (June 24th-26th) at Webster University’s Moore Auditorium (470 E. Lockwood, Webster Groves, Mo 63119). The film begins each evening at 8:00.
More than 60 years after its original release, On The Waterfront, Academy Award®-winning director Elia Kazan’s classic tale of crime and corruption among unionized dock workers in New York and New Jersey, returns to the big screen when it plays at Webster University’s this weekend. Movie buffs can experience the second collaboration of Marlon Brando and Kazan, following A Streetcar Named Desire, along with the acclaimed performances of Eva Marie Saint and Karl Malden, and a still-searing, Academy Award®-winning screenplay by Budd Schulberg.
Filmed in just 36 days on-site in Hoboken, New Jersey, On The Waterfront tells the story of struggling...
- 6/20/2016
- by Tom Stockman
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
My guest for this month is West Anthony, and he’s joined me to discuss the film he chose for me, the 1976 comedy-drama film The Front. You can follow the show on Twitter @cinemagadfly.
Show notes:
Not sure what happened to the audio in the introduction, apologies! The Hollywood blacklist is a term for the treatment of people in the entertainment industry who refused to name names to the House Un-American Activities Committee from 1947 to 1960 For a more in depth take on the blacklist, check out the latest season of the phenomenal You Must Remember This podcast WonderCon is a comic book convention that was held annually in Sf until it was cruelly moved to the La area in 2012. Yes I’m still bitter about it. West also recommends the Gabrielle de Cuir directed Thirty Years of Treason by Eric Bentley Among the people famously blacklisted were Lillian Hellman, Lionel Stander,...
Show notes:
Not sure what happened to the audio in the introduction, apologies! The Hollywood blacklist is a term for the treatment of people in the entertainment industry who refused to name names to the House Un-American Activities Committee from 1947 to 1960 For a more in depth take on the blacklist, check out the latest season of the phenomenal You Must Remember This podcast WonderCon is a comic book convention that was held annually in Sf until it was cruelly moved to the La area in 2012. Yes I’m still bitter about it. West also recommends the Gabrielle de Cuir directed Thirty Years of Treason by Eric Bentley Among the people famously blacklisted were Lillian Hellman, Lionel Stander,...
- 6/2/2016
- by Arik Devens
- CriterionCast
This month, On The Waterfront makes a thrilling cinematic come-back as part of Fathom Events and Turner Classic Movies (TCM) year-long TCM Big Screen Classics series. For two days only, April 24 and April 27, catch Marlon Brando in the Academy Award® winning, mob-boss thriller.
More than 60 years after its original release, On The Waterfront, Academy Award®-winning director Elia Kazan’s classic tale of crime and corruption among unionized dock workers in New York and New Jersey, returns to movie theaters as part of the Fathom Events and Turner Classic Movies TCM Big Screen Classics series.
For just four screenings only — two each day — in more than 600 theaters, the TCM Big Screen Classics series gives movie buffs nationwide the chance to experience the second collaboration of Marlon Brando and Kazan, following A Streetcar Named Desire, along with the acclaimed performances of Eva Marie Saint and Karl Malden, and a still-searing, Academy...
More than 60 years after its original release, On The Waterfront, Academy Award®-winning director Elia Kazan’s classic tale of crime and corruption among unionized dock workers in New York and New Jersey, returns to movie theaters as part of the Fathom Events and Turner Classic Movies TCM Big Screen Classics series.
For just four screenings only — two each day — in more than 600 theaters, the TCM Big Screen Classics series gives movie buffs nationwide the chance to experience the second collaboration of Marlon Brando and Kazan, following A Streetcar Named Desire, along with the acclaimed performances of Eva Marie Saint and Karl Malden, and a still-searing, Academy...
- 4/12/2016
- by Tom Stockman
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
The Audubon Society battles plumage poachers in the Everglades, circa 1900. Legendary director Nicholas Ray suffered an on-location meltdown filming this early ecologically sensitive epic, but the finished product is still one of his better pictures. Burl Ives, Christopher Plummer and Chana Eden give top 'Ray' performances. The eccentric supporting cast includes Peter Falk, boxer Two-Ton Tony Galento and none other than the real Gypsy Rose Lee. Wind Across the Everglades DVD-r The Warner Archive Collection 1958 / Color / 1:85 enhanced widescreen / 93 min. / Street Date October 6 2015, 2016 / available through the WBshop / 21.99 Starring Burl Ives, Christopher Plummer, Gypsy Rose Lee, George Voskovec, Tony Galento, Howard Smith, Emmett Kelly, Pat Henning, Chana Eden, Curt Conway, Peter Falk, Sammy Renick, Cory Osceola, MacKinlay Kantor, Totch Brown, George Voskovec, Sumner Williams. Cinematography Joseph Brun Film Editor Georges Klotz, Joseph Zigman Art Direction Richard Sylbert Original Music Paul Sawtell & Bert Shefter Written by Budd Schulberg Produced by Stuart Schulberg...
- 1/19/2016
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Continued from this article
Part I. Denazifying Leni
After World War II, Leni Riefenstahl couldn’t escape the Fuhrer’s shadow. Arrested first by American, then French troops, her property and money seized, she endured interrogations about her ties to the regime. Riefenstahl argued she’d been coerced into making propaganda and wasn’t aware of Nazi atrocities. The image stuck: three denazification tribunals acquitted her (one cautiously branding her a “fellow traveler”), and Riefenstahl began the road to rehabilitation.
More diligent investigators challenged her self-portrait. In 1946, American journalist Budd Schulberg interviewed Riefenstahl for the Saturday Evening Post. Riefenstahl claimed she didn’t know about Nazi concentration camps. Later, asked why she made Triumph of the Will, Riefenstahl claimed Joseph Goebbels threatened her with a concentration camp. Disgusted with Riefenstahl’s self-serving contradictions, Schulberg labeled her a “Nazi Pin-Up Girl.”
Then the German tabloid Revue published a damning article in...
Part I. Denazifying Leni
After World War II, Leni Riefenstahl couldn’t escape the Fuhrer’s shadow. Arrested first by American, then French troops, her property and money seized, she endured interrogations about her ties to the regime. Riefenstahl argued she’d been coerced into making propaganda and wasn’t aware of Nazi atrocities. The image stuck: three denazification tribunals acquitted her (one cautiously branding her a “fellow traveler”), and Riefenstahl began the road to rehabilitation.
More diligent investigators challenged her self-portrait. In 1946, American journalist Budd Schulberg interviewed Riefenstahl for the Saturday Evening Post. Riefenstahl claimed she didn’t know about Nazi concentration camps. Later, asked why she made Triumph of the Will, Riefenstahl claimed Joseph Goebbels threatened her with a concentration camp. Disgusted with Riefenstahl’s self-serving contradictions, Schulberg labeled her a “Nazi Pin-Up Girl.”
Then the German tabloid Revue published a damning article in...
- 7/18/2015
- by Christopher Saunders
- SoundOnSight
This week marks the 10th anniversary of the release of "Crash" (on May 6, 2005), an all-star movie whose controversy came not from its provocative treatment of racial issues but from its Best Picture Oscar victory a few months later, against what many critics felt was a much more deserving movie, "Brokeback Mountain."
The "Crash" vs. "Brokeback" battle is one of those lingering disputes that makes the Academy Awards so fascinating, year after year. Moviegoers and critics who revisit older movies are constantly judging the Academy's judgment. Even decades of hindsight may not always be enough to tell whether the Oscar voters of a particular year got it right or wrong. Whether it's "Birdman" vs. "Boyhood," "The King's Speech" vs. "The Social Network," "Saving Private Ryan" vs. "Shakespeare in Love" or even "An American in Paris" vs. "A Streetcar Named Desire," we're still confirming the Academy's taste or dismissing it as hopelessly off-base years later.
The "Crash" vs. "Brokeback" battle is one of those lingering disputes that makes the Academy Awards so fascinating, year after year. Moviegoers and critics who revisit older movies are constantly judging the Academy's judgment. Even decades of hindsight may not always be enough to tell whether the Oscar voters of a particular year got it right or wrong. Whether it's "Birdman" vs. "Boyhood," "The King's Speech" vs. "The Social Network," "Saving Private Ryan" vs. "Shakespeare in Love" or even "An American in Paris" vs. "A Streetcar Named Desire," we're still confirming the Academy's taste or dismissing it as hopelessly off-base years later.
- 5/6/2015
- by Gary Susman
- Moviefone
Along with fresh interviews with Martin Scorsese, Don Hertzfeldt, Olivier Assayas and Bong Joon-ho, we post links to the Paris Review archive of great conversations with the likes of Woody Allen, Billy Wilder, Jean Cocteau, Michael Haneke, Susan Sontag, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Terry Southern, Tom Stoppard, Wallace Shawn, Tony Kushner and Budd Schulberg. Plus, a 1960 BBC interview with Orson Welles, Noah Baumbach's 2012 conversation with Brian De Palma, a New York Times profile of Orphan Black star Tatiana Maslany and the Hollywood Reporter's interview with Claudia Cardinale. » - David Hudson...
- 4/4/2015
- Keyframe
Along with fresh interviews with Martin Scorsese, Don Hertzfeldt, Olivier Assayas and Bong Joon-ho, we post links to the Paris Review archive of great conversations with the likes of Woody Allen, Billy Wilder, Jean Cocteau, Michael Haneke, Susan Sontag, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Terry Southern, Tom Stoppard, Wallace Shawn, Tony Kushner and Budd Schulberg. Plus, a 1960 BBC interview with Orson Welles, Noah Baumbach's 2012 conversation with Brian De Palma, a New York Times profile of Orphan Black star Tatiana Maslany and the Hollywood Reporter's interview with Claudia Cardinale. » - David Hudson...
- 4/4/2015
- Fandor: Keyframe
“I miss my dear friend Budd Schulberg... We got along great, and I promised him that I would get our project Save Us, Joe Louis made and I will make good on that promise.” Words from director Spike Lee after screenwriter Schulberg's death in 2009. Lee had been working with Schulberg on a film about boxer Joe Louis when the writer passed away - a project that was announced some 9 years prior, and which Lee has never been able to make. Might today's news present that opportunity? In brief, the producing team behind recent sports-related Broadway shows - like "Lombardi," about the Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi, and...
- 6/25/2014
- by Tambay A. Obenson
- ShadowAndAct
(Ed. note - Cc writer Ian Alterman writes about two of his favorite film classics.)
The Naked City
Two years after making The Naked City, director Jules Dassin would find himself on the Hollywood Blacklist, and move to Europe, never to return to the U.S. His first film made in Europe, Rififi (1955), would become his most influential, beloved and, arguably, greatest film. And there are already signs of the naturalist style used in Rififi in The Naked City, though the former is a classic (maybe the classic) heist film, while the latter is a film noir police procedural, complete with narration (which ends the movie with the famous line: “There are eight million stories in the naked city. This is one of them.”)
Centered around the murder of a young model, and the police investigation that ensues, the film’s visual style was famously influenced by the work of the photographer,...
The Naked City
Two years after making The Naked City, director Jules Dassin would find himself on the Hollywood Blacklist, and move to Europe, never to return to the U.S. His first film made in Europe, Rififi (1955), would become his most influential, beloved and, arguably, greatest film. And there are already signs of the naturalist style used in Rififi in The Naked City, though the former is a classic (maybe the classic) heist film, while the latter is a film noir police procedural, complete with narration (which ends the movie with the famous line: “There are eight million stories in the naked city. This is one of them.”)
Centered around the murder of a young model, and the police investigation that ensues, the film’s visual style was famously influenced by the work of the photographer,...
- 4/8/2014
- by Ian Alterman
- www.culturecatch.com
On the centennial anniversary of the birth of Oscar-winning On The Waterfront and A Face In The Crowd writer Budd Schulberg, his widow Betsy Schulberg has signed with Gersh to rep his estate. He died at 95 in 2009. The agency plans to steer several adaptations of his novels and reboots of his classic works. Schulberg wrote the Oscar-winning script for Elia Kazan’s On The Waterfront, and the novels What Makes Sammy Run?, The Disenchanted and The Harder They Fall. The son of a powerful Paramount exec, Schulberg had a boisterous and highly eventful life with his share of controversy. He famously became a friendly witness at the House Un-American Activities Committee, testifying about his time as a member of the Communist Party and naming eight Hollywood colleagues who were also members. He also served in the Oss in WWII and reportedly compiled evidence against and arrested Nazi propagandist director Leni Reifenstahl.
- 3/26/2014
- by MIKE FLEMING JR
- Deadline
Susan Kouguell speaks with director Aaron Brookner on his journey of re-mastering and re-leasing the documentary on William Burroughs, Burroughs: The Movie (1983) directed by his uncle, Howard Brookner, and Smash the Control Machine the feature documentary that tells the story of Aaron Brookner’s investigation into the mysterious life and missing films of Howard Brookner, who died of AIDS at age 34 in 1989 on the cusp of fame. Howard Brookner’s films also include Bloodhounds on Broadway (1989) and Robert Wilson and The Civil Wars (1987).
Born in New York City, Aaron Brookner began his career working on Jim Jarmusch’s Coffee and Cigarettes and Rebecca Miller’s Personal Velocity before making the award-winning documentary short The Black Cowboys (2004). His first feature documentary was a collaboration with writer Budd Schulberg (On the Waterfront), and his film, The Silver Goat (2012) was the first feature created exclusively for iPad, released as an App and downloaded across 24 countries, making it into the top 50 entertainment apps in the UK and Czech Republic.
The re-mastered print of Burroughs: The Movie will have its premier University of Indiana’s Burroughs 100th birthday event on February 6th, 2014.
Susan Kouguell: On your Kickstarter site you wrote:
“Howard Brookner directed three films before his death in 1989 from AIDS at the age of thirty-four. In the final year of his life he wrote:
If I live on it is in your memories and the films I made.
It was this quote that inspired me, Howard's nephew and enthusiastic Burroughsian, to search for the missing print of his first film, Burroughs: The Movie. After a long search I found the only print in good condition and embarked on a project to digitally remaster it and make it available to the public.”
This has been both a personal and artistic journey for you. When did this journey begin?
Aaron Brookner: It probably began when Howard died, originally. My lasting memories of him were of watching him make his final movie Bloodhounds on Broadway on the set, hanging out together and rough-housing, walking around downtown, the secret handshake and spoken greeting we had, the cool toys from Japan he brought me, messing around with video cameras, trips down to Miami, and oddly enough the Rolling Stones 3D halftime show during the 1989 Super Bowl.
But I also had seen him in a hospital bed. I had been to the AIDS ward. I was over at his apartment quite a bit during his final few months of life. Watched his funeral. And I was seven. Kids know everything that’s going on around them even when they don’t. I guess this was the case and that making Smash the Control Machine is some sort of way to articulate my childlike perspective on the story, as an adult. It’s also a way to satisfy my curiosity.
Howard, I’ve found out, in some weird cinematic way, left clues all over the world really, which show how he lived, and what he lived. He documented everything.
A few years ago when I started the search for the Burroughs: The Movie print, I started to find all these pieces to his puzzle. Not to mention his films! So I went all the way and committed to gathering up everything and telling his story, which has brought me into contact with the people who knew him best -- and survived him -- who each knew a completely different yet same Howard. It’s amazing to watch Howard come to life in the eyes of someone that knew him, through the stories they recall.
It’s been a very interesting journey, and still is. It was a hard one to start, obviously, because of the awful tragedy looming at the end, and I was sensitive to not want to stir this back up for the people who really suffered his death, but the feeling has really changed. There is so much life and joy of living and making movies that transcends through Howard’s work which I’ve discovered, and in the people who knew him best; that this feeling of life and art really trumps death and AIDS, and a lot of the political bulls--t that fueled that fire, and this is a good feeling, and sort of what I hope to bring out in my film.
Sk: You successfully raised more than the requested budget with Kickstarter to fund your film. Talk about the pros and cons of using this crowdsourcing resource.
Ab: A big pro is that you skip all the gatekeepers, which saves a lot of time. You go straight to the audience and in the case of remastering Howard’s Burroughs: The Movie film there was pretty straightforward thinking behind it. I thought if enough people know about this film and want it back, or if they want it for the first time, they’ll help me deliver. If not, so be it.
A con, and I don’t know if I’d call it a con or just the reality, is that you’re never getting something for nothing; you’ve got a lot of work to do to run a crowd-funding campaign. It’s great if there’s an audience for your project, but how are they gonna hear about it?! My partner, Paula Vaccaro, and I spent months working on this day and night, not knowing if we’d even succeed. A little stressful...but overall I think it’s amazing that crowd-sourcing exists, and that it can work. It’s also a pretty great exercise in clearly communicating what you want to do and why, and what’s the plan for how.
Sk: Smash the Control Machine, the film you are making on Howard’s story and the search for his lost work was selected in its early stages for the Berlinale. What was that experience like for you?
Ab: In a lot of ways it was like the Burroughs: The Movie Kickstarter experience, in that first of all, it was a great endorsement and support to have, and that it certainly helped to streamline the concept and see what worked and what didn’t.
We were specifically selected to the Talent Project Market at Berlinale as the only documentary of 10 total films from around the world. It was a few very intense and focused days like a workshop on all the different angles around your film, that as a creator you might not be thinking about -- like what your pitch is going to be and how to pitch for that matter -- to what are the comparable going numbers around and how an international co-production might work. It’s great to learn this because then, after the workshop days, you’re sitting at a table where film market people are coming to meet you and talk to you, and you kind of understand where they are coming from, so you’re confident in talking about your project, and knowing what’s good or not good for it.
Sk: Do you have any international partners with whom you are working?
Ab: The main production company for the film is Pinball London, which is mainly based in London, UK, our other partners are of course the executive producer of the film, Jim Jarmusch, producer Sara Driver in New York City, the Berlinale Talent Campus and the Talent Project Market, (who have been invaluable allies of the film) the Jerome Foundation, Media Program (the European Union’s main audiovisual development program (http://ec.europa.eu/culture/media/index_en.htm), the Independent Filmmaker Project in NYC, which runs our fiscal sponsorship campaign and supports the film with knowledge and an amazing network, and the generous support of other partners, such as the Arnie Glassman Foundation and private individual donors. We’re currently having conversations with other co-producers, distributors, transmedia partners, as well as sales companies from Us and EU but I can’t go into more details at this stage.
Sk: Film director Jim Jarmusch, who worked with Howard, is your executive producer. His features Permanent Vacation and Stranger Than Paradise, were influential works not only to the downtown New York City art film scene, but to the wider independent/art film movement. You mentioned that through this filmmaking process you have been exposed to the art and film created during this time and its staying power. Please elaborate.
Ab: New York City in the late 1970s was really the last place and time where two generations of artists overlapped and met and fed off each other. They lived in the same neighborhood, did the same drugs, went to the same clubs, and in some cases slept with the same people. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, much as they were artistic innovators for the way they completely broke the rules of literature, were also pioneering in the way they were open about their homosexuality and the way they put in their work.
Writer Brad Gooch, Howard’s long-time partner, told me that his and Howard’s was the first generation who really got to live openly when they got to New York. All the first love straight people get to experience in high school, gay men (and women) were experiencing at age twenty-five in downtown NYC against this epic backdrop of all sorts of art and space and time to create it. This sexual liberation really fed into the art scene. It was political without having a message, just by being.
The films that Jim Jarmusch and others were making at this time, they sort of applied the total lack of respect for rules that Burroughs and Ginsberg had laid in literature, and applied it to cinema. They took what they saw around them and put it in their work. And in the case of Howard making Burroughs: The Movie, with Jim and also Tom Dicillo who was doing camera, he went straight to the source. Howard decided not only am I going to apply the lack of rules, rule to movie-making, I’m gonna turn the camera on this moment in time as it’s really happening. I mean it’s incredible. They’re filming Burroughs at home, working out his speech to protest Proposition 6 in 1978, which Burroughs then incorporates into his reading at the Nova Convention -- to a packed-to-the-rafters theatre filled with 20 and 30-year-olds. Howard and his crew actually shot this.
There is just so much truth that shines through this work, and the work of that time like in Jarmusch’s films, and I think it’s because you had new artists’ energy directly side by side with the source. It was exceptionally rare, I think, historically, where one generation of artists so directly influenced another, only with the newer generation using a different medium, which of course was film.
Sk: You discovered more than 35 hours of film Howard shot from 1978-1983 that was stored in Burroughs’ bunker for 30 years. These reels include footage of Andy Warhol, Burroughs and Howard in the Chelsea Hotel, Allen Ginsberg, Frank Zappa and Patti Smith. How did you learn about this footage?
Ab: James Grauerholz, who was very close friends with my uncle and co-produced Burroughs: The Movie, who is William Burroughs’ heir, early on when I was looking for a print of the film sent me a detailed inventory of everything Howard had stored in the bunker (Burroughs’ NYC residence). I looked at the list and my jaw dropped. Howard had finished Burroughs: The Movie with the BBC (who provided completion funds) in 1983. Sometime later they shipped back these giant trunks of all of Howard’s rushes, outtakes, workprints, and negative rolls. Howard didn’t have a permanent residence at that time because he was traveling the globe making his next film on theatre director , who was preparing six different international plays around the world to all come together for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. So Howard got these trunks of his films and asked Burroughs if he could stash it in the back room of the Bunker. And there it sat undisturbed for 30 years! After Burroughs died, John Giorno, who lived above the bunker, decided to keep it as a sort of museum to William. And of course along with Burroughs’ hat, canes, and spices from 1978, are Howard’s films.
Sk: What condition are the reels?
Ab: The negatives look great. The work-prints are all kind of pink, which happens to color film over time, but this is fixable with a good colorist as per example:
There’s a tiny bit of shrinkage, as photochemical film will shrink over time, but it is very minimal considering 30 years with no climate and humidity control. Only one roll was lost completely to severe water damage. It’s very fortunate really so much of it survived. It was a race against the clock. Film is a living breathing organic material.
Sk: How were you able to access them? Where was/is the bunker?
It was a complicated battle. I fought, with support, a dedicated fight that lasted for well over a year. It was extremely anxiety-provoking, as every day there was a potential risk these precious films could have been destroyed. For all I knew there could have been vinegar in the cans, which happens to deteriorated film. There was a lot of faith involved, a bit like the Kickstarter campaign. You can image what Hurricane Sandy did to my nervous system. It was indeed a race against the clock with all sorts of obstacles, and so stressful I had to document it to cope, and because it really illustrated an issue that’s central to my film, which is: What happens to the work created by artists when they are gone? And this is key to artists who died of AIDS as they generally did not have the time or resources to prepare for their legacy. So, now that is a part of my film. There was a more or less happy ending. But you’ll have to see the film to get the story! The Bunker is on the Bowery in NYC.
Sk: With some of the clips you’ve shown me, this is quite a treasure trove that captures an important history.
Ab: There is a definite staying power of the art from that time because of its authenticity, and also because of New York City; these film rolls capture what New York City was like! So much space. Desolate downtown streets. Gritty details. It’s just pure beautiful decay. No one watching you. It looks like artistic paradise. And I’ve seen Howard’s rental contract for his loft on Prince and Bowery: $100/month!
Sk: Film preservation is vital, and as you mentioned, it’s a race against the clock before more films are lost.
Ab: This is a huge issue. Hundreds of thousands of films that maybe aren’t necessarily directly on the Hollywood radar are really in danger of being lost forever. You got time working against you because film deteriorates. You got money working against you because it costs a lot to keep climate and humidity-controlled vaults. Traditionally, labs all had vaults, but labs are closing. If not very nearly all closed. So it comes down to institutions and their funding, space and ability. You also got technology working against you. How many people out there know how to fix a film splice or thread a projector, or read camera roll code? And how many people will know this in 30 years? Who’s going to know how to fix the old film machines that stopped seeing use decades ago? It really needs attention because we’re looking at a century of film facing extinction.
Robert Wilson is a majorly important figure in the theatre and art world. Most people don’t know about Howard’s second feature documentary, which took the audience inside Robert Wilson’s creative process, and emotional process of making his work. I know this because I found part of these original film rolls packed into unmarked Igloo picnic containers stashed in the supply room behind the toilet in an archive in Hamburg.
Sk: When and where will Smash the Control Machine have its premiere?
Ab: The film is currently in early production and there is a very strong element of unpredictability in this story, making deadlines pretty impossible. But, Berlinale really gave us great support at a very early stage, and it would be a very nice honor to premier the film with them in 2015. But we will need to keep working and see what unfolds. There is a long year ahead.
Sk: What are the distribution plans for Burroughs: The Movie and Smash the Control Machine ?
Ab: For Burroughs: The Movie, we’ll be unveiling the remastered Dcp (Digital Cinema Package) of the film at University of Indiana’s Burroughs 100th birthday event on February 6th, followed by other Burroughs events throughout the year, such as at the Ica in London and the Photographer’s Gallery for their William Burroughs/Andy Warhol/David Lynch show.
The New York City premier will happen next fall at the New York Film Festival -- where the film first screened in 1983(!) -- possibly followed by a theatrical re-release and DVD/Blu-ray sale towards the end of the year. (Those who pledged for a DVD through our Kickstarter campaign however, will be sent their own copies of the film shortly.)
I’m also putting together a video art/sound installation piece from some of the never before seen material, that will show along with the film at Bafici in April, and likely in New York and London if not elsewhere. And we’re putting together a record with All Tomorrow’s Parties, using much of the never before heard audio from Howard’s Burroughs archive, to be sampled by select musicians.
For Smash the Control Machine: There are various plans I can’t discuss at this stage. What I can say is that our distribution will be tied to other impactful activities and events. I am working closely to build partnerships with those who care about the subjects of the film and the themes. Gentrification, Gay history, art legacy lost to AIDS. There are many great ways to distribute this film along these lines, as well as having a commercial release. My producer, PaulaVaccaro, and I are working hard to make sure this is tied up with whatever the film will do out there.
Sk: What advice do you have for aspiring documentary filmmakers?
Ab: Sometimes the best story for a film is right under your nose!
Breaking News: We are now working together with Janus Films and Criterion Collection for the distribution of Burroughs: The Movie. We are still creating a plan for the film although we know we will do a theatrical run in the Us sometime after the re-launch at the Nyff
See the Trailer Here
Award-winning screenwriter and filmmaker, Susan Kouguell teaches screenwriting and film at Tufts University and presents international seminars. Author of Savvy Characters Sell Screenplays! and The Savvy Screenwriter, she is chairperson of Su-City Pictures East, LLC, a consulting company founded in 1990 where she works with over 1,000 writers, filmmakers, and executives worldwide. www.su-city-pictures.com .
Born in New York City, Aaron Brookner began his career working on Jim Jarmusch’s Coffee and Cigarettes and Rebecca Miller’s Personal Velocity before making the award-winning documentary short The Black Cowboys (2004). His first feature documentary was a collaboration with writer Budd Schulberg (On the Waterfront), and his film, The Silver Goat (2012) was the first feature created exclusively for iPad, released as an App and downloaded across 24 countries, making it into the top 50 entertainment apps in the UK and Czech Republic.
The re-mastered print of Burroughs: The Movie will have its premier University of Indiana’s Burroughs 100th birthday event on February 6th, 2014.
Susan Kouguell: On your Kickstarter site you wrote:
“Howard Brookner directed three films before his death in 1989 from AIDS at the age of thirty-four. In the final year of his life he wrote:
If I live on it is in your memories and the films I made.
It was this quote that inspired me, Howard's nephew and enthusiastic Burroughsian, to search for the missing print of his first film, Burroughs: The Movie. After a long search I found the only print in good condition and embarked on a project to digitally remaster it and make it available to the public.”
This has been both a personal and artistic journey for you. When did this journey begin?
Aaron Brookner: It probably began when Howard died, originally. My lasting memories of him were of watching him make his final movie Bloodhounds on Broadway on the set, hanging out together and rough-housing, walking around downtown, the secret handshake and spoken greeting we had, the cool toys from Japan he brought me, messing around with video cameras, trips down to Miami, and oddly enough the Rolling Stones 3D halftime show during the 1989 Super Bowl.
But I also had seen him in a hospital bed. I had been to the AIDS ward. I was over at his apartment quite a bit during his final few months of life. Watched his funeral. And I was seven. Kids know everything that’s going on around them even when they don’t. I guess this was the case and that making Smash the Control Machine is some sort of way to articulate my childlike perspective on the story, as an adult. It’s also a way to satisfy my curiosity.
Howard, I’ve found out, in some weird cinematic way, left clues all over the world really, which show how he lived, and what he lived. He documented everything.
A few years ago when I started the search for the Burroughs: The Movie print, I started to find all these pieces to his puzzle. Not to mention his films! So I went all the way and committed to gathering up everything and telling his story, which has brought me into contact with the people who knew him best -- and survived him -- who each knew a completely different yet same Howard. It’s amazing to watch Howard come to life in the eyes of someone that knew him, through the stories they recall.
It’s been a very interesting journey, and still is. It was a hard one to start, obviously, because of the awful tragedy looming at the end, and I was sensitive to not want to stir this back up for the people who really suffered his death, but the feeling has really changed. There is so much life and joy of living and making movies that transcends through Howard’s work which I’ve discovered, and in the people who knew him best; that this feeling of life and art really trumps death and AIDS, and a lot of the political bulls--t that fueled that fire, and this is a good feeling, and sort of what I hope to bring out in my film.
Sk: You successfully raised more than the requested budget with Kickstarter to fund your film. Talk about the pros and cons of using this crowdsourcing resource.
Ab: A big pro is that you skip all the gatekeepers, which saves a lot of time. You go straight to the audience and in the case of remastering Howard’s Burroughs: The Movie film there was pretty straightforward thinking behind it. I thought if enough people know about this film and want it back, or if they want it for the first time, they’ll help me deliver. If not, so be it.
A con, and I don’t know if I’d call it a con or just the reality, is that you’re never getting something for nothing; you’ve got a lot of work to do to run a crowd-funding campaign. It’s great if there’s an audience for your project, but how are they gonna hear about it?! My partner, Paula Vaccaro, and I spent months working on this day and night, not knowing if we’d even succeed. A little stressful...but overall I think it’s amazing that crowd-sourcing exists, and that it can work. It’s also a pretty great exercise in clearly communicating what you want to do and why, and what’s the plan for how.
Sk: Smash the Control Machine, the film you are making on Howard’s story and the search for his lost work was selected in its early stages for the Berlinale. What was that experience like for you?
Ab: In a lot of ways it was like the Burroughs: The Movie Kickstarter experience, in that first of all, it was a great endorsement and support to have, and that it certainly helped to streamline the concept and see what worked and what didn’t.
We were specifically selected to the Talent Project Market at Berlinale as the only documentary of 10 total films from around the world. It was a few very intense and focused days like a workshop on all the different angles around your film, that as a creator you might not be thinking about -- like what your pitch is going to be and how to pitch for that matter -- to what are the comparable going numbers around and how an international co-production might work. It’s great to learn this because then, after the workshop days, you’re sitting at a table where film market people are coming to meet you and talk to you, and you kind of understand where they are coming from, so you’re confident in talking about your project, and knowing what’s good or not good for it.
Sk: Do you have any international partners with whom you are working?
Ab: The main production company for the film is Pinball London, which is mainly based in London, UK, our other partners are of course the executive producer of the film, Jim Jarmusch, producer Sara Driver in New York City, the Berlinale Talent Campus and the Talent Project Market, (who have been invaluable allies of the film) the Jerome Foundation, Media Program (the European Union’s main audiovisual development program (http://ec.europa.eu/culture/media/index_en.htm), the Independent Filmmaker Project in NYC, which runs our fiscal sponsorship campaign and supports the film with knowledge and an amazing network, and the generous support of other partners, such as the Arnie Glassman Foundation and private individual donors. We’re currently having conversations with other co-producers, distributors, transmedia partners, as well as sales companies from Us and EU but I can’t go into more details at this stage.
Sk: Film director Jim Jarmusch, who worked with Howard, is your executive producer. His features Permanent Vacation and Stranger Than Paradise, were influential works not only to the downtown New York City art film scene, but to the wider independent/art film movement. You mentioned that through this filmmaking process you have been exposed to the art and film created during this time and its staying power. Please elaborate.
Ab: New York City in the late 1970s was really the last place and time where two generations of artists overlapped and met and fed off each other. They lived in the same neighborhood, did the same drugs, went to the same clubs, and in some cases slept with the same people. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, much as they were artistic innovators for the way they completely broke the rules of literature, were also pioneering in the way they were open about their homosexuality and the way they put in their work.
Writer Brad Gooch, Howard’s long-time partner, told me that his and Howard’s was the first generation who really got to live openly when they got to New York. All the first love straight people get to experience in high school, gay men (and women) were experiencing at age twenty-five in downtown NYC against this epic backdrop of all sorts of art and space and time to create it. This sexual liberation really fed into the art scene. It was political without having a message, just by being.
The films that Jim Jarmusch and others were making at this time, they sort of applied the total lack of respect for rules that Burroughs and Ginsberg had laid in literature, and applied it to cinema. They took what they saw around them and put it in their work. And in the case of Howard making Burroughs: The Movie, with Jim and also Tom Dicillo who was doing camera, he went straight to the source. Howard decided not only am I going to apply the lack of rules, rule to movie-making, I’m gonna turn the camera on this moment in time as it’s really happening. I mean it’s incredible. They’re filming Burroughs at home, working out his speech to protest Proposition 6 in 1978, which Burroughs then incorporates into his reading at the Nova Convention -- to a packed-to-the-rafters theatre filled with 20 and 30-year-olds. Howard and his crew actually shot this.
There is just so much truth that shines through this work, and the work of that time like in Jarmusch’s films, and I think it’s because you had new artists’ energy directly side by side with the source. It was exceptionally rare, I think, historically, where one generation of artists so directly influenced another, only with the newer generation using a different medium, which of course was film.
Sk: You discovered more than 35 hours of film Howard shot from 1978-1983 that was stored in Burroughs’ bunker for 30 years. These reels include footage of Andy Warhol, Burroughs and Howard in the Chelsea Hotel, Allen Ginsberg, Frank Zappa and Patti Smith. How did you learn about this footage?
Ab: James Grauerholz, who was very close friends with my uncle and co-produced Burroughs: The Movie, who is William Burroughs’ heir, early on when I was looking for a print of the film sent me a detailed inventory of everything Howard had stored in the bunker (Burroughs’ NYC residence). I looked at the list and my jaw dropped. Howard had finished Burroughs: The Movie with the BBC (who provided completion funds) in 1983. Sometime later they shipped back these giant trunks of all of Howard’s rushes, outtakes, workprints, and negative rolls. Howard didn’t have a permanent residence at that time because he was traveling the globe making his next film on theatre director , who was preparing six different international plays around the world to all come together for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. So Howard got these trunks of his films and asked Burroughs if he could stash it in the back room of the Bunker. And there it sat undisturbed for 30 years! After Burroughs died, John Giorno, who lived above the bunker, decided to keep it as a sort of museum to William. And of course along with Burroughs’ hat, canes, and spices from 1978, are Howard’s films.
Sk: What condition are the reels?
Ab: The negatives look great. The work-prints are all kind of pink, which happens to color film over time, but this is fixable with a good colorist as per example:
There’s a tiny bit of shrinkage, as photochemical film will shrink over time, but it is very minimal considering 30 years with no climate and humidity control. Only one roll was lost completely to severe water damage. It’s very fortunate really so much of it survived. It was a race against the clock. Film is a living breathing organic material.
Sk: How were you able to access them? Where was/is the bunker?
It was a complicated battle. I fought, with support, a dedicated fight that lasted for well over a year. It was extremely anxiety-provoking, as every day there was a potential risk these precious films could have been destroyed. For all I knew there could have been vinegar in the cans, which happens to deteriorated film. There was a lot of faith involved, a bit like the Kickstarter campaign. You can image what Hurricane Sandy did to my nervous system. It was indeed a race against the clock with all sorts of obstacles, and so stressful I had to document it to cope, and because it really illustrated an issue that’s central to my film, which is: What happens to the work created by artists when they are gone? And this is key to artists who died of AIDS as they generally did not have the time or resources to prepare for their legacy. So, now that is a part of my film. There was a more or less happy ending. But you’ll have to see the film to get the story! The Bunker is on the Bowery in NYC.
Sk: With some of the clips you’ve shown me, this is quite a treasure trove that captures an important history.
Ab: There is a definite staying power of the art from that time because of its authenticity, and also because of New York City; these film rolls capture what New York City was like! So much space. Desolate downtown streets. Gritty details. It’s just pure beautiful decay. No one watching you. It looks like artistic paradise. And I’ve seen Howard’s rental contract for his loft on Prince and Bowery: $100/month!
Sk: Film preservation is vital, and as you mentioned, it’s a race against the clock before more films are lost.
Ab: This is a huge issue. Hundreds of thousands of films that maybe aren’t necessarily directly on the Hollywood radar are really in danger of being lost forever. You got time working against you because film deteriorates. You got money working against you because it costs a lot to keep climate and humidity-controlled vaults. Traditionally, labs all had vaults, but labs are closing. If not very nearly all closed. So it comes down to institutions and their funding, space and ability. You also got technology working against you. How many people out there know how to fix a film splice or thread a projector, or read camera roll code? And how many people will know this in 30 years? Who’s going to know how to fix the old film machines that stopped seeing use decades ago? It really needs attention because we’re looking at a century of film facing extinction.
Robert Wilson is a majorly important figure in the theatre and art world. Most people don’t know about Howard’s second feature documentary, which took the audience inside Robert Wilson’s creative process, and emotional process of making his work. I know this because I found part of these original film rolls packed into unmarked Igloo picnic containers stashed in the supply room behind the toilet in an archive in Hamburg.
Sk: When and where will Smash the Control Machine have its premiere?
Ab: The film is currently in early production and there is a very strong element of unpredictability in this story, making deadlines pretty impossible. But, Berlinale really gave us great support at a very early stage, and it would be a very nice honor to premier the film with them in 2015. But we will need to keep working and see what unfolds. There is a long year ahead.
Sk: What are the distribution plans for Burroughs: The Movie and Smash the Control Machine ?
Ab: For Burroughs: The Movie, we’ll be unveiling the remastered Dcp (Digital Cinema Package) of the film at University of Indiana’s Burroughs 100th birthday event on February 6th, followed by other Burroughs events throughout the year, such as at the Ica in London and the Photographer’s Gallery for their William Burroughs/Andy Warhol/David Lynch show.
The New York City premier will happen next fall at the New York Film Festival -- where the film first screened in 1983(!) -- possibly followed by a theatrical re-release and DVD/Blu-ray sale towards the end of the year. (Those who pledged for a DVD through our Kickstarter campaign however, will be sent their own copies of the film shortly.)
I’m also putting together a video art/sound installation piece from some of the never before seen material, that will show along with the film at Bafici in April, and likely in New York and London if not elsewhere. And we’re putting together a record with All Tomorrow’s Parties, using much of the never before heard audio from Howard’s Burroughs archive, to be sampled by select musicians.
For Smash the Control Machine: There are various plans I can’t discuss at this stage. What I can say is that our distribution will be tied to other impactful activities and events. I am working closely to build partnerships with those who care about the subjects of the film and the themes. Gentrification, Gay history, art legacy lost to AIDS. There are many great ways to distribute this film along these lines, as well as having a commercial release. My producer, PaulaVaccaro, and I are working hard to make sure this is tied up with whatever the film will do out there.
Sk: What advice do you have for aspiring documentary filmmakers?
Ab: Sometimes the best story for a film is right under your nose!
Breaking News: We are now working together with Janus Films and Criterion Collection for the distribution of Burroughs: The Movie. We are still creating a plan for the film although we know we will do a theatrical run in the Us sometime after the re-launch at the Nyff
See the Trailer Here
Award-winning screenwriter and filmmaker, Susan Kouguell teaches screenwriting and film at Tufts University and presents international seminars. Author of Savvy Characters Sell Screenplays! and The Savvy Screenwriter, she is chairperson of Su-City Pictures East, LLC, a consulting company founded in 1990 where she works with over 1,000 writers, filmmakers, and executives worldwide. www.su-city-pictures.com .
- 1/29/2014
- by Susan Kouguell
- Sydney's Buzz
10: Gentleman’s Agreement
Perhaps a bit tame by today’s standards, but Kazan’s message drama was an extremely important film in 1947, marking one of the first times that the word Jew was explicity used in a Hollywood picture. Kazan was known throughout his career as a champion of social causes, and Gentleman’s Agreement earned him the first of two Best Director wins (out of five such nominations). Agreement follows a respected gentile journalist (Gregory Peck) hired by a magazine publisher (Albert Dekker) to write a gutsy expose about anti-Semitism. In order to deliver a true, honest and powerful story, he decides to present himself as Jewish everywhere he goes. Gregory Peck gives unquestionably the second best performance of his career. His strong, steady portrayal earned him a Best Actor nomination (although not a win).
- Ricky D
9: Wild River
Set during the early 1930s when American...
Perhaps a bit tame by today’s standards, but Kazan’s message drama was an extremely important film in 1947, marking one of the first times that the word Jew was explicity used in a Hollywood picture. Kazan was known throughout his career as a champion of social causes, and Gentleman’s Agreement earned him the first of two Best Director wins (out of five such nominations). Agreement follows a respected gentile journalist (Gregory Peck) hired by a magazine publisher (Albert Dekker) to write a gutsy expose about anti-Semitism. In order to deliver a true, honest and powerful story, he decides to present himself as Jewish everywhere he goes. Gregory Peck gives unquestionably the second best performance of his career. His strong, steady portrayal earned him a Best Actor nomination (although not a win).
- Ricky D
9: Wild River
Set during the early 1930s when American...
- 6/1/2013
- by Ricky
- SoundOnSight
This revival of the 1974 adaptation of Mordecai Richler's novel proved a wonderful shop-window for the young Richard Dreyfuss
Just a year shy of its 40th anniversary, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz has been proudly spruced up and reissued; an act of reclamation, in some level, for a film that back in the early 70s, was one of the first Canadian features to make an international impact. Adapted from Mordecai Richler's 1959 novel set in a Jewish area of Montreal about a bustling young man furiously angling to get ahead – the missing link, if you will, between Budd Schulberg's What Makes Sammy Run and Philip Roth's Goodbye Columbus – Duddy Kravitz is an affectionate picaresque detailing the push-pull impact of the new world on émigrés from old Europe. Clan loyalty contends with ruthless self-advancement; expediency with tenderness; ambition with gullibility.
The film also provided a tremendous showcase for a mid-20s Richard Dreyfuss,...
Just a year shy of its 40th anniversary, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz has been proudly spruced up and reissued; an act of reclamation, in some level, for a film that back in the early 70s, was one of the first Canadian features to make an international impact. Adapted from Mordecai Richler's 1959 novel set in a Jewish area of Montreal about a bustling young man furiously angling to get ahead – the missing link, if you will, between Budd Schulberg's What Makes Sammy Run and Philip Roth's Goodbye Columbus – Duddy Kravitz is an affectionate picaresque detailing the push-pull impact of the new world on émigrés from old Europe. Clan loyalty contends with ruthless self-advancement; expediency with tenderness; ambition with gullibility.
The film also provided a tremendous showcase for a mid-20s Richard Dreyfuss,...
- 5/24/2013
- by Andrew Pulver
- The Guardian - Film News
Chicago – Few movies are as timeless as Elia Kazan’s amazing “On the Waterfront,” recently released in a Criterion Blu-ray edition that stands among the best classics-in-hd releases I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen a lot of them. With amazing special features, including an interview with the legendary Martin Scorsese about how the film influenced him, and not just one but three HD transfers (for the three aspect ratios in which the film had to be shot simultaneously), along with a movie that actually gets better with age, “On the Waterfront” is the best Blu-ray release of 2013 to date.
Rating: 5.0/5.0
First, a word on aspect ratios (that is further detailed in an excellent visual essay on the first disc of the Blu-ray). “On the Waterfront” went into production at a time when studios were nervous about the encroachment of the television on the country’s entertainment dollar. And so widescreen was born.
Rating: 5.0/5.0
First, a word on aspect ratios (that is further detailed in an excellent visual essay on the first disc of the Blu-ray). “On the Waterfront” went into production at a time when studios were nervous about the encroachment of the television on the country’s entertainment dollar. And so widescreen was born.
- 3/4/2013
- by adam@hollywoodchicago.com (Adam Fendelman)
- HollywoodChicago.com
Longtime Hollywood literary agent Mickey “The Cowboy” Freiberg died yesterday at his West Los Angeles home after a three-year battle with brain cancer, his family said. He was 72. Freiberg represented numerous award-winning clients throughout a 40-plus-year career, including the late Budd Schulberg who won a screenwriting Oscar for 1954′s On The Waterfront, author Homer Hickam whose book Rocket Boys became the basis for the 1999 film October Sky, and Ron Powers, who co-authored Flags Of Our Fathers, the book on which the 2006 Clint Eastwood-directed war film was based. He also represented Joe Pistone, the former FBI special agent who worked undercover as Donnie Brasco, The Bonanno Family (Mafia Marriage) and the late Bill Bonnano, co-author of The Good Guys with David Fisher. One of Freiberg’s proudest projects was the David Permut-produced film Youth In Revolt, based on the novel written by C.D. Payne and brought to Permut by...
- 12/8/2012
- by THE DEADLINE TEAM
- Deadline TV
Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: Feb. 19, 2013
Price: DVD $39.95, Blu-ray $49.95
Studio: Criterion
Marlon Brando and Eva Marie Saint star in On the Waterfront.
Marlon Brando (A Streetcar Named Desire) gives the performance of his career as the tough prizefighter-turned-longshoreman Terry Malloy in the classic 1954 film drama On the Waterfront.
A masterpiece of urban poetry and a raggedly emotional tale of individual failure and institutional corruption. On the Waterfront charts Terry’s deepening moral crisis as he must choose whether to remain loyal to the mob-connected union boss Johnny Friendly (12 Angry Men’s Lee J. Cobb) and Johnny’s right-hand man, Terry’s brother, Charley (Doctor Zhivago’s Rod Steiger), as the authorities close in on them.
Driven by the vivid, naturalistic direction of Elia Kazan (Viva Zapata!) and savory, streetwise dialogue by Budd Schulberg (A Face in the Crowd), On the Waterfront was an instant sensation, winning eight Oscars, including for awards for best picture,...
Price: DVD $39.95, Blu-ray $49.95
Studio: Criterion
Marlon Brando and Eva Marie Saint star in On the Waterfront.
Marlon Brando (A Streetcar Named Desire) gives the performance of his career as the tough prizefighter-turned-longshoreman Terry Malloy in the classic 1954 film drama On the Waterfront.
A masterpiece of urban poetry and a raggedly emotional tale of individual failure and institutional corruption. On the Waterfront charts Terry’s deepening moral crisis as he must choose whether to remain loyal to the mob-connected union boss Johnny Friendly (12 Angry Men’s Lee J. Cobb) and Johnny’s right-hand man, Terry’s brother, Charley (Doctor Zhivago’s Rod Steiger), as the authorities close in on them.
Driven by the vivid, naturalistic direction of Elia Kazan (Viva Zapata!) and savory, streetwise dialogue by Budd Schulberg (A Face in the Crowd), On the Waterfront was an instant sensation, winning eight Oscars, including for awards for best picture,...
- 11/16/2012
- by Laurence
- Disc Dish
Elia Kazan Week! begins at Trailers from Hell with screenwriter Josh Olson introducing Elia Kazan's brilliant and bitter showbiz sendup "A Face in the Crowd," starring a never-better Andy Griffith as charismatic, monstrous media sensation Larry "Lonesome" Rhodes. Elia Kazan's lacerating portrait of a down home demagogue has never lost its disturbing relevance. Anchored by a ferocious performance by Andy Griffith, Budd Schulberg's media-savvy satire, based on his story "The Arkansas Traveler", has survived countless attempts to remake it over the years, largely because its 50s-centric setting is the perfect background to expose the pernicious effect television has had on the Us political system. Vita-pig says, "Is it election day yet?" Lee Remick is memorably lubricious in her film debut.
- 11/5/2012
- by Trailers From Hell
- Thompson on Hollywood
Andy Griffith and Ernest Borgnine were early, trend-setting examples of stars who made the transition from movies to television, often (in Borgnine’s case) oscillating between them. And because they both jumped mediums, Griffith and Borgnine, who died within a week of each other (Griffith on July 3, Borgnine on July 8), had fans of every phase of their career who didn’t necessarily overlap. Yet during this last week or so, as I thought back over the many, many decades of pleasure that both these actors had given us, I kept returning to what were, for me, their two greatest performances.
- 7/18/2012
- by Owen Gleiberman
- EW - Inside Movies
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