HE to Larry Karaszewski: Paul Newman aside, Cool Hand Luke (‘67) was an ensemble thing, and if you ask me the six…make that seven standout supporting players are George Kennedy, Strother Martin (“failure to communicate”), the icy prison guard with the reflector shades, Jo Van Fleet, J.D. Cannon, Clifton James and Joy Harmon, the soapy blonde who was washing the car.
I know Dennis Hopper was in it but I don’t recall him saying or doing anything especially stand-outish.
I recall young Lou Antonio’s face from the film, but he didn’t have any stand-out dialogue or business that leapt to the forefront. He’s 88 and apparently in a wheelchair — hope he’s feeling okay and everything’s cool. Is there any video of your discussion? Love to listen in.
Steven Soderbergh‘s Behind the Candelabra, which opened on 5.21.13, wounded up earning $23 million, or two million less than it cost. Not in the U.S. but Europe, where it played briefly.
According to a calculus passed along by costar Matt Damon, it would’ve cost another $25M to market it for a domestic theatrical run. Plus half the revenues (or $12.5 million) would have been pocketed by theatre owners.
This is how Damon laid it out, in any event. HBO saved the day, but without HBO the producers (Gregory Jacobs, Susan Ekins, Michael Polaire) would’ve taken a bath.
“Candelabra Counts“, posted on HE on 5.21.13: “Of all the major directors of the past 20 years, Steven Soderbergh has always seemed the least emotional. So it doesn’t sound like much to call Behind The Candelabra (HBO, 5.26) his most emotional and touching work. And I don’t mean it lightly.
“This HBO movie truly touches bottom and strikes a chord. It’s a sad (but not glum or downish), movingly performed drama about a kind of marriage that begins well and then goes south after five years.
“Richard LaGravanese‘s script is complex, fleshed-out and recognizably human at every turn, and performed with considerable feeling and vulnerability by Michael Douglas (easily the top contender right now for a Best Actor prize) and Matt Damon.”
Joe and Jane Popcorn presumably weren’t all that enthusiastic about Behind the Candelabra because they didn’t want to see a movie that was at least partly about Damon being fucked in the ass by Michael Douglas. It was about much, much more than that, of course, but Joe and Jane can be simplistic and stubborn.
“Wokeness has permeated so deeply into the ethos of Hollywood.” — Joe Rogan on unsubstantiated suspicions that the new Game of Thrones and Amazon’s forthcoming Lord of the Rings have woked themselves up.
It was reported yesterday that Gary “wild man” Busey, 78, is facing sex crime charges stemming from alleged groping incidents that happened earlier this month at the Monster-Mania Convention in Cherry Hill, New Jersey.
“It was about contact,” Cherry Hill lieutenant Robert Scheunemann told the Philadelphia Inquirer. “It was about touching.” Three women have filed complaints.
Today video surfaced of Busey sitting on a beach in Malibu’s Point Dume Park last Saturday with his pants down. The video allegedly shows him “putting one hand down the front of his pants and looking around to make sure no one was watching before committing a lewd act” — presumably jerking off.
Two possible scenarios: (1) Busey has become a proverbial dirty old man due to dementia, and is acting in weird sexual ways because he’s unaware of what he’s doing and simply has no self-control. Or (2) he’s pulling a Vincent “Chin” Gigante move — publicly pretending to be crazy and demented in order to persuade New Jersey authorities to go easy in terms of possible disciplinary action over the Cherry Hill thing.
It’s time for Racquel Welch, now 82, to step up to the plate and explain what happened a half-century ago during the making of The Last of Sheila (’73). Is she going to let the statements of costars James Mason and Ian McShane go unchallenged, or does she have fresh information that might alter the classic narrative?
According to an 11.12.72 Chicago Tribune piece titled “Raquel Plans Suit Against Director”, there were also complaints about Welch’s behavior. Welch announced she was suing director Herbert Ross for assault and battery as a result of an incident in her dressing room. She claimed she had to flee to London during the shoot “to escape physical harm”. Warner Bros later issued a statement supporting Ross and criticizing Welch for her “public utterances”.
Excerpt: “Shooting the monastery sequence just off Cannes proved to be troublesome for Welch. Gale force winds and rain disrupted the night shoot, and Welch was reluctant to leave her Venice hotel for fear of getting stuck in the storm.”
Mason said that Welch “was the most selfish, ill-mannered, inconsiderate actress that I’ve ever had the displeasure of working with”.
McShane: “Raquel Welch isn’t the most friendly creature. She seems to set out with the impression that no one is going to like her.”
A press release has gone out about Rian Johnson‘s Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (Netflix, 12.23). The film, partly set on the Greek island of Spetses, will star Daniel Craig as Detective Benoit Blanc and costar Edward Norton, Janelle Monáe, Kathryn Hahn, Leslie Odom Jr., Jessica Henwick, Madelyn Cline, Kate Hudson and Dave Bautista.
One of the two photos in the Glass Onion press release is a shot of director-writer Johnson and Monae. Which suggests that Monae, Craig aside, has the lead protagonist role. Which means she’s probably playing an equivalent of the Ana de Armas role in the original Knives Out — a pure of heart, relatively innocent, non-white woman up against a demimonde of scurvy, slimy skunks and serpents.
Norton, I’m guessing, has the Chris Plummer role, except given Glass Onion‘s Mediterranean vacation vibe…well, let’s just use our imagination and presume that Norton’s character is at least partly inspired by the cruel, manipulative James Coburn character in The Last of Sheila. Or something in this vein. Why hire the rapscallion Norton if you don’t want him to play edgy and a tiny bit wicked?
Sheila, which played with the same kind of Agatha Christie “whodnit?” formula that the Knives Out films are modelled upon, was shot along the French Cote d’Azur.
Which reminds me: how come Johnson and his producers chose Spetses for their Greek location when Maggie Gyllennhaal and Olivia Colman‘s The Lost Daughter shot there only a couple of years before? Of all the hundreds of exotic Greek island locations they chose the same damn island?
Netflix paid $468 million for rights to both Knives Out sequels, but the actual production budget (per Wiki) was only a little more than $40 million with over $100 million in fees paid to Johnson, Daniel Craig and producer Ram Bergman for their work on both productions. (Nice payday!) That totals out to $140 million and change, maybe a bit more. Call it $150 million.
That leaves roughly $318 million in expenditures for the second sequel. What is Johnson going to shoot in that second sequel? Will he sink a 300-foot yacht a la Titanic and then stage a battle between the cast and the Kraken from Clash of the Titans?
Sorry but I’m only going by the numbers in the Wiki page.
The $468 million paid by Netflix (a result of a bidding war) is humungous, historic. Last year a well-placed source toldVariety‘s Claudia Eller that “the math doesn’t work…there’s no way to explain it…the world has gone mad…it’s a mind-boggling deal.”
Most Zoomers haven’t a clue who these guys are; ditto a fair percentage of Millennials. The saga of the turbulent Fondas (Hank’s emotionally frosty vibes in the ‘40s, absent mom’s suicide, Jane’s constant emotional insecurity, Peter’s “I know what it’s like to be dead”) is familiar only to boomers, for the most part, and older GenXers.
I’m guessing this was taken sometime around mid ‘63, at which time Hank (58) was on screens in Spencer’sMountain (don’t ask), Peter (23) was appearing in TammyandtheDoctor (ditto) and Jane (26) was taking bows for her starring role in the light-hearted (if barely watchable) sexcomedySundayinNew York.
Two things got my attention — one, the Kennedy-era Fondas, enveloped in obvious financial comfort, knew how to present the right kind of well-tended vibe in front of well-connected photographers, and two, Hank was still the most attractive of the three — slender, radiant eyes, ruddy complexion, broad shoulders, good taste in sporty golf shirts.
I’m relating because my family was also moderately miserable. Or I was, at least.
…when some Facebook guy asks if readers “like” a long-dead screen legend.
EarthtoFacebookguy: Whether or not readers “like” Bette Davis or Errol Flynn or Cary Grant or Wallace Ford or Joanne Dru or Edna May Oliver or John Ireland is, no offense, totally and completely beside the point.
The lore and reputations of these performers were carved into eternal granite a long time ago. Due respect but nobody of any consequence gives a damn if you “like” them in a present-tense context. The question can only be “do you understand their histories within the context of their heydays and do you get what their accomplishments amounted to in the long view?” If you don’t, fine — maybe you’ll tune in down the road. Or maybe you won’t. But 2022 social media “likes”? Go away now.
