The Night The ’70s Died

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Initially posted on 6.17.22:

Joseph McBride to Hal Ashby after early Star Wars screening: “Your kinda days are over, Hal.”
Ashby to McBride: “What about yours, film critic?”
McBride to Ashby: “The difference is I know it.”
Ashby to McBride: “All right, so we’ll all turn in our Arriflxes and Avid editing machines to the Academy, and we’ll all go to work at Pink’s. Is that it?”
McBride to Ashby: “Not quite yet. [turns to George Lucas, standing nearby] We haven’t heard from your friend here.”
Lucas: “I wouldn’t push too far if I were you. Our fight ain’t with you.”
McBride: “It ain’t with me, Lucas?”
Lucas: “No, it ain’t, Joe.”
Ashby: “I wouldn’t pull on Lucas, Joe. [to Will Atkey] Will, you’re a witness to this.”
McBride: “So you’re George Lucas.”
Lucas: “What’s that mean to you, Joe?”
McBride: “I’ve heard about you.”
Lucas: “And what’ve you heard, Joe?”
McBride: “I’ve heard that your movies are injecting an infantile serum into American commercial cinema, and in so doing are helping to destroy a cinematic golden age. You and Steven Spielberg, I mean.”
Lucas: “Prove it.”

Artist/Creative Types Going Through A Spiritual Crisis

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In yesterday’s Jay Kelly thread, HE commenter “We’re Totally Fine” said the premise of this upcoming Noah Baumbach film seems to belong to a favored sub-genre — films about Hollywood guys who’ve run out of gas, are going through a bad patch or have otherwise lost their way.

HE additions to this list:

(a) Vincente Minnelli’s Two Weeks in Another Town (‘62), which is about an alcoholic, burnt-out actor (Kirk Douglas) trying to get back into the swing of things while assisting an old director friend (Edward G. Robinson) in Rome.

(b) Federico Fellini’s 8 1/2 (‘63)…obviously. I don’t want to even glancingly mention Rob Marshall’s Nine (‘09), but it’s closely wedded to the Fellini so I haven’t much choice.

(c) Paul Mazursky’s Àlex in Wonderland (‘70) — another 8 1/2 descendant.

I’m not including Tim Burton’s Ed Wood (‘93) because except for that one gloomhead scene with Orson Welles in Musso and Frank’s, Johnny Depp’s titular protagonist doesn’t behave like a filmmaker who’s lost his way — he’s actually a relentless optimist.

Totally Wrong Actor Will Portray James Stewart

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In Otto Preminger’s Anatomy of a Murder (‘59) James Stewart and Ben Gazzara were about as opposed and disparate as they come.

Gazzara was an urban, method-y, dark-eyed “ethnic” type with a sassy, laid-back personality, and Stewart was an American heartland beanpole type (i.e., tall, corn-fed, blue-eyed, non-ethnic) with an upfront manner and an improvisational, half-gawky manner of speaking.

And yet the curiously named KJ Apa, a half-Samoan Gazzara look–alike from New Zealand, has been cast to portray Stewart in a forthcoming feature.

Stewart in heaven after reading Marc Malkin’s Variety story: “All right, now wait a minute, just hold on…this swarthy Apa guy just isn’t my type…hell, I grew up in Pennsylvania and never even visited Samoa…he doesn’t even look like a cousin of mine…plus I was 6’ 3” and he’s 5’11” so there goes the beanpole resemblance. Plus he has a heavy beard-stubble thing going on.”

Idea: What If Collegiate Sex Kittens Were Transies?

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A former vaudeville theatre, the RKO Mayfair (719 Seventh Ave. at 47th Street — 1735 seats) was converted into a movie palace in 1930. Karl Freund’s The Mummy opened on 12.22.32.

Contrary to what you may have heard or assumed due to his representation by Henry Willson, Guy Madison (aka the star of the hit TV series Wild Bill Hickock between 1951 and 1958) was straight. Madison was no one’s idea of a gifted actor, but he did a little better, career-wise, than Rick Dalton. His only serious A-level film was David O. Selznick and John Cromwell‘s Since You Went Away (’44). Madison died from ephysema in 1996, at age 74.

This Is Demonic

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Let’s all celebrate the AI transformation of Leonardo da Vinci’s painting of Italian noblewoman Lisa del Giocondo, dated between 1503 and 1506…let’s all cheer the degradation of this fascinating 16th Century woman into a banal shopping-mall Zoomer, posing for a selfie.

“Wicked, evil, up to no good” — Roger Thornhill, 1959.