Hugs and condolences for the friends, colleagues and fans of Martin Landau, who’s suddenly gone at age 89. He was a bit of a testy guy in person, I must say. He didn’t suffer fools, or at least didn’t seem all that delighted with journalistic inquiries the two or three times I ran into him during the ’90s. But that goes with being a ferociously committed but somewhat frustrated actor, I guess.
Landau spent much of his career making swill, but he was gifted and lucky enough to hit grandslam homers with two great roles — Judah Rosenthal in Woody Allen‘s Crimes and Misdemeanors (’89 — that scene when he goes back to his old home and speaks to his family during dinner, and especially the one with Jerry Orbach in the pool house) and Bela Lugosi in Tim Burton‘s Ed Wood (’94 — Lugosi tangling with the fake octopus in the pond).
My Landau favorites after these two, and in this order: Rollin Hand in Mission: Impossible (’66 to ’69), sleek and effete Leonard with the “woman’s intuition” in Alfred Hitchcock‘s North by Northwest (’59), Rex Harrison‘s loyal Rufio in Joseph L. Mankiewicz‘s Cleopatra (’63), and Lieutenant Marshall in Lewis Milestone‘s Pork Chop Hill (’59). These are the only ones that have stuck in my mind.
George Romero, director of Night of the Living Dead (’68) and creator of the walking-dead zombie apocalypse genre that still plagues us today, has left the earth at age 77. Hugs and condolences. I own a Bluray of Night of the Living Dead but my all-time favorite Romero flick is Dawn of the Dead, which was largely shot at the Monroeville mall, which locals referred to as “mall of the dead.” In ’81 Romero directed Creepshow in the Monroeville area, and I visited the set to do a New York Post interview with Stephen King. (The best-selling author was playing an overall-wearing farmer.) Romero’s other films included Day of the Dead, The Crazies, Knightriders, Martin, Monkey Shines and The Dark Half. I always enjoyed that Romero was in The Silence of the Lambs for about 35 or 40 seconds. “They’re coming to get you, Barbara!”
From Variety critic Joe Leydon: “While attending Loyola University in New Orleans back in the 1970s, I attended an evening screening of Night of the Living Dead in a large campus auditorium. The crowd (including me) was impressed and attentive. Indeed, at least one of my fellow students may have been a little too impressed and attentive.
“The first time a group of the shambling undead appeared, a shriek rang out from the darkness: ‘Don’t let them get me! Don’t let them get me!’ I figured someone was goofing off, or encouraging some kind of audience participation. (Only a couple years later such behavior would become commonplace at midnight screenings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.) But then it happened a second time. Louder. And a third time. Louder still. By that point, it was quite obvious that whoever was screaming was totally, unabashedly, nearly-scared-to-death terrified.
“After the third outburst, two people — friends? faculty? security personnel? — more or less lifted this frightened fellow from his seat and carried him (gently, as far as I could tell) out of the auditorium. But not before the guy had managed to make some of us (again, including me) even more uneasy while watching Romero’s masterwork.
“Maybe his fear was a natural reaction, maybe it was, ahem, chemically enhanced. But, either way, that fear obviously was contagious. And how do I know this? Well, here’s the thing: None of the other people in the audience laughed when he screamed the second and third times. Come to think of it, as I recall, no one told him to shut the hell up, either.”
Wells reaction: The “don’t let them get me!” guy was either an asshole, a wimp or mentally challenged.
Remember the Cool Hand Luke sand-shovelling scene on that hot country road? When Paul Newman inspires his chain-gang homies to cover the tar with sand as fast as they can, and they all get into it and shovel so quickly that the tar truck runs out and drives off, and the prisoners have nothing to do but relax for a couple of hours?
In the mid ’70s I worked as a tree-trimmer in Connecticut (ropes, saddles, chains saw, pole saws), and a couple of times I tried to apply the Cool Hand Luke approach to some jobs. The salesman (always an easy-going smoothie in a nice car) would point to a couple of trees and explain what we had to do, and then he’d say “I’ll be happy if not surprised if you can finish by the end of the day.” Then he’d take off, telling us he’d return by 3:30 or 4 pm.
As soon as he left we’d say to each other (me and the other climber and the clean-up crew), “Hey, let’s get this done fast so we can relax the rest of the day.” So we’d all double down and get the job done ahead of schedule, sometimes even shaving an hour by skipping lunch. We can do this!
The salesman would return at 3:30 pm and say, “Whoa…you’re done already? You guys are amazing!” And then he’d think it over and say, “Jesus, we’ve got another couple of hours. Let’s load up and head over to the next job!” Me: “Wait, whoa…the next job? You said if we finished this job here we’d be good for the day.” Salesman: “Yeah, but we can’t just sit around so c’mon, put the stuff on the truck and follow me.”
So after this happens a couple of times you learn. Never work fast, never exceed expectations, don’t drag ass but always work at an even keel.
I knew where Newman’s house was located in Westport back then, and I occasionally imagined that I’d run into him and tell him this story and he’d laugh and say, “Yeah, if only life was like the movies.”
Obviously I’ve been in the tank for Luca Guadagnino‘s Call Me By Your Name since last January’s Sundance premiere, but no more than any of the other big HE favorites in recent years — Manchester By The Sea, 12 Years A Slave, Zero Dark Thirty, A Separation, Birdman, Silver Linings Playbook, et. al. Naturally I’ve been expecting to see this landmark film play the Telluride Film Festival. Everyone regards TFF’s annual offerings as pretty much the finest distillation of early-to-mid-fall smarthouse or award-friendly cinema, so how could Guadagnino’s film not begin its award-season adventure there?
If a really good film starts its journey in Telluride or for that matter Venice (like Alexander Payne‘s Downsizing will), it will automatically radiate a special tingle vibe or savory aroma throughout the season. A Telluride debut is a gold-seal thing whereas a Toronto premiere is…well, lively and certainly welcome but without that special aromatic lift.
Which is why I went into a state of catatonic shock yesterday when I learned that Call Me By Your Name has been heave-ho’ed by Telluride’s Tom Luddy and Julie Huntsinger. Not due to a lack of admiration or respect (or so I gather) but because of organizational egos and politics. CMBYN‘s apparent sin was having had its world premiere at Sundance ’17 plus a European premiere the following month at the Berlinale. Telluride has screened only three Sundance debuts in its entire history, I’m told.
Yes, Manchester By The Sea was shown at Telluride ’16 eight months after debuting at Sundance, but that was because Telluride mounted a special tribute to Casey Affleck. The Affleck tribute, of course, was just an institutional ploy to sidestep Telluride’s own edict or disinclination to show Sundance films. Had they been so inclined Tom and Julie could have easily justified screening CMBYN by running a special Luca Guadagnino tribute.
I’ve watched Henry Hathaway‘s North to Alaska at least 10 or 12 times, but I’ve never seen Irving Thalberg‘s Grand Hotel. I’ve never seen D.W. Griffith‘s A Birth of a Nation, and I don’t think I want to either. (See, p.c. banshees? I can dismiss a film for being having grotesque racial attitudes as well as you can.) I’ve never seen Andrezj Wajda‘s Kanal, but I’d like to. I’ve never sat down with George Cukor‘s The Women or Sylvia Scarlett.
I tried watching None But The Lonely Heart but I couldn’t get through it, so you might as well say I’ve never seen it. All my life I’ve avoided almost every film starring Claudette Colbert, the exception being It Happened One Night, Cleopatra and Since You Went Away. I’ve caught just about every film Robert Duvall was ever in, but I’ve strangely never seen The Apostle. I’ve never seen Ernst Lubitsch‘s Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife. Nor have I ever seen Francois Truffaut‘s The Wild Child. I wouldn’t watch Parnell, the 1937 Clark Gable film, with a knife at my back.
I’ve never seen Jerry Schatzberg‘s Puzzle of a Downfall Child or Johnny Depp‘s The Brave (which costarred Marlon Brando), but I’m very, very sorry that I saw Don Coscarelli‘s Bubba Ho-tep.
Rather than ask for films that readers haven’t seen, how about switching the topic to strange attractions — i.e., films you know are shallow or not very accomplished or certainly marginal, but which you’ve seen numerous times over the years because there’s something fundamentally likable or comforting about them? One of my guilty pleasures would be North to Alaska — what’s yours?
One thing I’m having trouble determining about Filmstruck and Criterion Channel, which are now finally available on the Roku player. Is it safe to assume that any film shown on Filmstruck / Criterion Channel will stream in 1080p hi-def, or are there some titles (like, for example, Andrzej Wajda‘s Kanal, which was offered on a 2003 Criterion DVD at 480p but doesn’t appear to have been remastered in high-def) being shown only in musty 480p? I’ve searched and searched this vaguely infuriating site and have found nothing that answers this question in a clear, concise and unambiguous way. Postscript: I’ve inquired about this through official channels, but whenever I ask about anything the least bit technical (Ultra HD 4K vs 1080p vs. 480p resolution, say, or anything to do with aspect ratios) p.r. spokespersons always say “uhhm…I’ll get back to ya.”
