Movies posts

Wait, who's Frank Tuttle? That would've been my question last week.

Tuttle was a director in Golden-Age Hollywood, mostly at Paramount, mostly doing genre stuff, who got tagged as a communist after WWII and was blacklisted. He was tagged as a communist because he was a communist—at least he was a party member for about 10 years—but in 1951 he named names before HUAC. Didn't help. Then he went to France and made movies there. Then he returned to Hollywood. He died in January 1963, age 70. His obits often begin the same way:

Frank Tuttle, noted movie director who gave Alan Ladd his first starring role and who directed other big filmland names, died yesterday.

(I love “filmland names.” Gonna have to use that.)

Among the movies he directed that wound up in the obits? “Hell on Frisco Bay” with Ladd, “The Big Broadcast” with Bing Crosby, and “The Great John L.” Also that first film with Ladd, “This Gun for Hire,” an early noir with Veronica Lake.

So—back to the original question—one assumes Tuttle might be known for one of these movies? Unless times have changed?

Something's certainly changed. Here's IMDb's answer:

Sure, “The Cradle Buster,” a silent classic starring Glenn Hunter and Marguerite Courtot. Who doesn't talk about that?

Everyone. Everyone doesn't talk about that. But I guess IMDb's algorithm went with it because Tuttle not only directed it but he's its sole writing credit. Of his 14 other writing credits, he's sharing credit or uncredited. So, since he did more for this one, he must be known for this one. That's the logic. Or illogic.

Again, IMDb might just want to look at the intel on its own website. Here's Tuttle's top three movies by IMDb user rating:

1. Dangerously Yours: 8.3
2. A Kiss in the Dark: 7.4
3. This Gun for Hire: 7.3

Except the first two are based on very small sample sizes: just 18 and 26 votes, respectively. So do any of Tuttle's movies have, say, a high number of user ratings? Which might indicate engagement and known-for-ness?

Yes! One does:

1. This Gun for Hire: 11k
2. Manhandled: 1.2k
3. The Canary Murder Case: 1.1k

As for where “Cradle Buster” ranks among number of user ratings? That would be ... let's see ... tied for LAST. With zero. Zilch. Bupkis. Nada. Nothing. In the entire history of IMDb, no one has seen it and bothered to vote for it. But that's what they say he's known for.

It's the illogic that gets me. It's the lack of caring about their own fucking website.

“On March 1, 1956, a radical procedure began. It went on for nine hours. The esophagus was entirely removed, along with two lymph nodes and a rib. The vagus nerve, which controls digestion, was cut. Humphrey's stomach was attached to his gullet; food would have a shorter way to travel, he would fill up rapidly—too rapidly—and would never really enjoy eating again. ...

”Humphrey convinced himself that the treatments were working, and in that optimistic spirit he started smoking again, this time filtered Chesterfields. Save for the time spent in the hospital, his liquor consumption never stopped. ...

“Dressed in slacks and a red smoking jacket, he managed to get himself downstairs every evening to receive the special friends Lauren invited for a drink, usually between 5:00 and 7:00 p.m. But as the disease moved into the final stages, he was forced to make his way around in a wheelchair. He weighed a little more than 80 pounds. The dumbwaiter was turned into a makeshift elevator; a butler lifted him from the wheelchair onto a stool, and the contraption brought him up and down as desired.”

-- from “Tough Without a Gun: The Life and Extraordinary Afterlife of Humphrey Bogart,” by Stefan Kanfer. Bogart died January 14, 1957, aged 57.

Redford had “the gift of an observer,” according to the man he's portraying here. It's a gift that celebrity took from him. 

No movie star was bigger in my lifetime.

There was a saying in his heyday—and I wish I could find it because I'm screwing it up—that a movie was in concept when someone was talking with Redford, in development when Redford was sent a script, and greenlit when he said he liked the script—the point being that, for a period, everything revolved around him. Mary Richards on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” couldn't say his name without stammering. There's a story that screenwriter William Goldman tells at the beginning of his book “Adventures in the Screen Trade” that's worth repeating. Goldman was working the Redford-George Segal vehicle “The Hot Rock,” on location at a prison, and standing with a prison guard who was contemplating Redford. Out of the blue, the guy says: “My wife would like to fuck him.” Startled, Goldman attempts to assuage him, saying “You don't know that,” but the guard isn't angry about it, just matter-of-fact. Plus he has the receipts: “She said to me today, my wife, that she would get down on her hands and knees and crawl just for the chance to fuck him one time.” Consider it X-rated Mary Richards.

And the amazing thing? This anecdote is before he really became Robert Redford. “The Hot Rock” was filmed in the summer of '71, when he'd yet to find his post-“Butch” footing. He'd done “Downhill Racer,” “Little Fauss,” “Willie Boy”—all OK but unmemorable. Then he became, as I said, the biggest movie star in my lifetime. This was the string that did it: “Jeremiah Johnson,” “The Candidate,” “The Way We Were,” “The Sting,” “The Great Gatsby,” “The Great Waldo Pepper,” “Three Days of the Condor,” “All the President's Men.” Good god, look at that. “Gatsby” notwithstanding, that's one good movie after another, along with two great films, “The Sting” and “President's Men,” the latter of which is an all-timer, something I've seen a dozen times, a movie that defines its time. Back then, we thought it defined it by delineating the time's corruption, but since then it's become a touchstone of what was good about America. Two scribes took down a corrupt president! Is anything more American than that? Today, we look back at it wistfully, like an old man contempating mountains he used to climb. We used to be able to do that.

Redford was in on “President's Men” from the get-go, too. And I don't mean from the beginning of production, I mean as events were actually unfolding. In the summer of 1972, doing press tours for “The Candidate,” he read articles on Watergate, then nothing, and he asked reporters what happened and would the truth ever come out? They said no. They felt Nixon was probably behind it, but he was Tricky Dick and wouldn't get caught, and what are you gonna do? But a few papers kept at the story, The Washington Post in particular, and he kept seeing Woodward and Bernstein's byline, so he phoned them. He met them. This was at their low point, after the Haldeman accusation, and he realized that it would make a good movie, particularly since the two men were such opposites. When they began the book in the third-person, Redford told them to go first person. The story is you guys, he said. He was thinking low-budget, black-and-white, with unknowns, but after Warner Bros. paid a lot of money for it, they added, “You are going to star in it, aren't you?”

He did more than star in it. “The gift he brought to me and Carl and All the President's Men was the gift of an observer,” Bob Woodward says in Michael Feeney Callan's book, “Robert Redford: The Biography.” “He had a skill to hover above the project and cut to the key elements with amazing acuity. That degree of analytical skill enhances everything he does.” It was nominated for nine Oscars, including picture and director, and won four: supporting actor (Robards), screenplay (Goldman), art direction, sound. And even though the movie was about a subject everyone was tired of, Watergate, old news by 1976, it still finished in the top five in annual box office. Redford was top of the world.

And then he went away for three years.

“With every peak of achievement came an act of withdrawal,” writes Callan. He was an isolationist. Moviegoers often complained about the distance in him, the unknowability, but was that part of the appeal? He didn't let us in. Growing up, he was everywhere and nowhere, talked about but never on TV the way others turned up on TV. He never did “The Tonight Show,” for example. Not once, not even early. Paul Newman was on “The Tonight Show” seven times. Newman did “Cavett,” “The Barbara Walters Special,” “Mike” and “Merv,” and was hilarious on eight episodes of “Letterman.” But Redford? On IMDb, he has 243 credits listed under “Self,” and none are American talk shows. He's got some Brits—David Frost in '69, Melvyn Bragg for a half hour in '76—but not a Johnny or a Dave. Most of those credits are film featurettes, docs about colleagues, and docs about nature and Native Americans in which he's often narrator and producer. He did a lot of wolf documentaries. The Arctic Wolf as seen by the lone wolf. 

He contained multitudes and contradictions. He disliked politics and was forever involved in politics. He chafed at Hollywood yet was its king. He didn't like sitting still; he needed to move. He often played the very embodiment of America: the champion athlete who didn't know why wanted to be champion; the charismatic politician who loses his way; the great pilot who missed his chance. “A golden boy with a darkness in him,” is how longtime friend, and seven-time director, Sydney Pollack, put it. “He was like the country he lived in: Everything came too easily to him,” is how his character, Hubbell Gardiner, puts it in Pollack's “The Way We Were.” That's from Hubell's prize-winning short story, “The All-American Smile,” which he turns into a novel, “A Country Made of Ice Cream”; but it doesn't work, because he is too much made of ice cream. He writes beautifully but backs off. He melts. Redford had his choice of roles and he chose these roles. It was the times, certainly, in which characters could win but lose, like Michael Corleone, and like “The Candidate”'s Bill McKay, both of whom win the day but lose their souls. But Redford could've gone the Eastwood route and made wish-fulfillment fantasies. And yes, later, he did a few of those. What's Roy Hobbs if not that? But it's telling that even with a story of triumph like “All the President's Men,” he had it end at that Haldeman low point for Woodward and Bernstein. It catches people off guard. It did me in 1976.

I haven't even got to Sundance yet. He turned his love of Utah, and his desire to stay there, into a film class, a film lab, and a showcase for independent film. He turned it into a mini-Hollywood. His film festival became world-reknowned, and helped make Steven Soderburgh, Quentin Tarantino, Ryan Coogler, Paul Thomas Anderson. How crazy is that? The fact that he was the biggest movie star in the world was only the second-biggest mark he made on cinema.

Mark Harris, as always, gets right at it.

That Mount Rushmore line is so good.

My favorite Redford actually story came from Mark Harris' “Pictures at a Revolution,” about the 1967 best picture nominees. Director Mike Nichols is searching for someone to play Benjamin Braddock in “The Graduate,” who, in the novel, is a blonde-haired WASP, and for a time Nichols was learning toward Redford for the role. The two had worked together in “Barefoot in the Park,” and he thought what Redford brought to Broadway he could bring to this movie. But one night when the two men were playing pool he realized his error: Ben Braddock was a loser; Redford couldn't play a loser. Redford, being Redford, insisted he could. “Look at you,” Nichols responded. “How many times have you ever struck out with a woman?” Redford's response? “What do you mean?” Nichols: “He didn't even understand the concept. To him, it was like saying: How many times have you been to a restaurant and not had a meal?”

About 10 years ago, Scott Raab wrote a great piece on Redford, and in it there was a story about Pauline Kael, who was forever criticial of the actor. Others were mentioned in the story, Pollack, George Roy Hill, Paul Newman, and then Raab mentions that none of them are with us anymore: Kael died in 2001, Hill in 2002, Pollack and Newman in 2008. To which Redford says, “We're all heading to the same station. ... There's a great line by T.S. Eliot: 'There's only the trying. The rest is not our business.' Just keep trying. Do what you can, but don't stop, and particularly don't stop at that sign that says success. Run that light. Run that light.”

FURTHER READING:

• “Robert Redford and the Perils of Perfection,” by Anthony Lane, The New Yorker
• “Robert Redford, Obituary,” by Ronald Bergan, The Guardian
• “Free at Last: The Robert Redford Story,” by Scott Raab, Esquire
• “Robert Redford, Screen Idol Turned Director and Activist, Dies at 89,” by Brooks Barnes, The New York Times

Per IMDb's algorithm, of course.

Liam Neeson is probably best known for ... “Schindler's List,” right? No? How about “Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace”? “Batman Begins”? Or “Taken” and its famous line “I've got a set of very special skills,” etc.? Or “Clash of the Titans” and its cheesy “Release the Kraken!”?

None of those? Surely they don't go with the new “The Naked Gun” movie.

They don't.

Right. A week doesn't go by when someone isn't yakking about “Kinsey” at me. 

Not only is this not the answer to the question, it's not the answer by IMDb's own data:

• Per IMDb user rating, “Kinsey” ranks 47th among Liam Neeson's 137 movie credits (“Schindler's List” is first).
• Per number of ratings, “Kinsey” is 48th (“The Dark Knight Rises” is first).
• By U.S. box office, it's 56th (“Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace” is first).

So was Neeson nominated for an Oscar for “Kinsey”? No, just “Schindler's.” How about a BAFTA? Nope, just “Schindler's” again. Golden Globe? Yes! ... along with “Michael Collins” and “Schindler's.” 

He did get more nominations/critics awards for “Kinsey,” 11, compared to 7 for “Schindler's,” so there's that. But that's all there is.

To prove to myself I wasn't crazy, I asked ChatGPT what Liam Neeson was known for and got this response:

You know how everyone is concerned generative AI will replace our jobs? I can think of one job it should replace. 

At the end of June, at my nephews' urging, I participated in that New York Times' Top 100 movies of the 21st century thing. I forget how it went. The Times have their 100, you contribute your 10 ... and it counts toward the 100? Or only if you're a name? I think only if you're a name.

We all did ours and this was mine. 

I miss “Summer Hours” here but it's not a bad list. I went with the movies I admire, that resonated, and that I'd like to watch again right now. “Call Me By Your Name” resonated, particularly Michael Stuhlbarg's speech at the end, but I don't necessarily want to watch it again. (Though I could listen to that speech forever.) But these? Yes. If I had to go with a No. 1 I'd choose Jacques Audiard's “Un Prophete.” That's the first one I put down. The Times have “Parasite,” which didn't make my top 10 for that year, but maybe I was overreacting to the outpouring of love it was feeling. “Un Prophete” is 35th on the Times list.

Yeah, where do mine land?

• “Kung Fu Hustle”: n/a
• “20th Century Women”: n/a
• “Pain and Glory”: n/a
• “The Tree of Life”: 79
• “Up”: 50
• “Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood”: 44
• “Yi Yi”: 40
• “A Serious Man”: 36
• “Un Prophete”: 35
• “The Royal Tenenbaums”: 21

Surprised “Pain and Glory” didn't make the cut. The only Almodovar was “Volver” at 80. Amused that my highest-rated is “Tenenbaums.” Them's the rules.

Jordan's list: “Y tu mama tambien,” “Hot Fuzz,” “The Wolf of Wall Street,” “The Lobster,” “Phantom Thread,” “Memories of Murder,” “The Social Network,” “Ratatouille,” “Time,” “Inside Llewyn Davis.”

Ryan's: “School of Rock,” “In the Mood for Love,” “Y tu mama tambien,” “The Dreamers,” “Marie Antoinette,” “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers,” “The Social Network,” “Tiny Furniture,” “A Serious Man,” “The Incredibles.”

I like the kids movies on their lists since they were kids for much of the century. This is their century, born in it, tempered by pandemic, disciplined by a bitter and dipshit electorate, etc.

What my list doesn't have? Any movie that, for a time, I almost needed to watch, over and over again, like a disease, like I did with “The Godfather,” “Annie Hall,” “The Insider,” “All the President's Men,” “The Maltese Falcon,” “Chinatown.” I'm curious if I'll get one of those this century or if you age out of it.

Per IMDb's bio:

“Perhaps best known for playing Superman...” Got it. And here's IMDb's “Known For” algorithm:

I guess it did say “Perhaps...”

I don't know if any actor in the last 30 years could show up on screen and make me go “Uh oh” more than Michael Madsen. There was a vibe, man, and as iconic as he was, I don't think he really took advantage of it.

Didn't even matter who he was playing. He was the good boyfriend in “Thelma & Louise,” the good brother in “Wyatt Earp,” the good soldier (the one who can turn the key) at the beginning of “WarGames.” I never saw “Free Willy” but he plays the dad there, and a good dad, but I'm sure if I'd seen it I'd be like ... Get away from him, kid! Don't you know that's Mr. Blonde? He'll cut your ear off!!!!

Yeah, Madsen will always be known for that. It's such an iconic, horrifying moment that no one ... Oh, for fuck's sake, IMDb:

Shit, he's even third-billed in “Reservoir Dogs”! Where is he in “WarGames”? Zillionth?

Fuck 'em, the rest of us know. We'll never forget. It's not just cutting off the ear, it's the dance beforehand (a little like Trump's schtick, isn't it?); it's how he matter-of-factly toys with the cop, jokes, taunts, talks into the ear he's cut off, while Stealers Wheel's “Stuck in the Middle with You” plays on the transistor radio. Tarantino then takes it to another level but having the camera follow Mr. Blonde outside, to get the gas can from the trunk of the car, and in that moment we lose Stealers Wheel and see it's just an ordinary afternoon in LA, with cars driving by. This horror is happening in the middle of this ordinary fucking day. Can't somebody stop it? But everyone keeps moving. And Mr. Blonde returns to the room, and when we hear Stealers Wheel again it's like Alex DeLarge hearing Beethoven in “A Clockwork Orange” after he's been programmed: nauseating. Fucking brilliant. 

That character, ultimately shot to death by Mr. Orange (Tim Roth), the undercover cop, had a name: Vic Vega. In those days Tarantino was imagining a noirish/pulp fictiony version of the world of J.D. Salinger, who included members of the Glass family in different short stories before he brought them all together in “Zooey” and “Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters.” For Tarantino, for example, Vic was supposed to be the brother of “Pulp Fiction”'s Vincent Vega. And the guy he originally wanted to play him? Madsen. But Madsen was busy playing Virgil Earp is Lawrence Kasden's “Wyatt Earp” and couldn't do it. He's called it the biggest mistake of his career since the role went to John Travolta and remade him a star. But here's the thing: Would it have done that for Madsen? Would he have brought what Travolta brought? To be honest, I'm not seeing it. I can't imagine him flirting with or hanging with or doing the twist with Uma Thurma's Mia Wallace in the same goofy, breezy manner. Not seeing it. Sorry, bud. Could be the ear still talking to me. I still haven't gotten over the ear.

He was Virginia's sister. I never knew that until reading the obits. And he was the guy who reprised the role of Mickey Rourke's Boogie from “Diner” for the Barry Levinson-directed TV movie? That makes some sense. Show didn't catch on so he had to play Bump Bailey, the most charmless prima donna ballplayer ever in “The Natural.”

Madsen also went deep into crap. He has 327 acting credits, 17(!) upcoming, and so much of it is straight-to-video or straight-to-the-garbage-can awfulness (“DinoGator”? “The Wraith Within”? “Demon Pit”?) that you wonder if he didn't have gambling debts or a drug addiction or just bad judgment. But he deserved better. Someone needed to tell him that. Or he needed to hear that. He deserved better. 

Mother and children reunion

An ordinary-looking man with extraordinary talent

I should have written this months ago, but I kept waiting for more info on the circumstances of his death and then life kept getting in the way. Plus I was a little intimidated by the length and breadth of his career. But I couldn't ignore this one. 

As a kid in the 1970s I wasn't into Gene Hackman. He represented the grown-up world in a way that didn't seem palatable with how a weak kid like me might navigate it. He implied it was dangerous in a decidedly unromantic way, corrupt probably, a little mean, exhausting, and amoral if not immoral. And those were his heroes.

I remember seeing “Bonnie and Clyde” in my early 30s and being struck by how genuine he was. Warren Beatty's Clyde was basically doing Beatty schtick, and then Hackman's Buck Barrow shows up and you go, “There's your fucking gangster.” He was so no bullshit. He was life as it is not as you want it to be. Life without the pretty face. He kept showing movie stars the way it was: Robert Redford in “Downhill Racer,” Willem Dafoe in “Mississippi Burning,” Will Smith in “Enemy of the State.” At the same time, he played the perfect comic foil, schlock movie producer Harry Zimm in “Get Shorty,” who trots out Chili Palmer's “Look at me” line on Ray Barboni but can't sell it because he's not really looking at Ray. He is looking at him but his eyes are elsewhere. They dim, they don't announce. I don't know how Hackman did this but it's genius. Particularly since those are the same eyes that announced themselves with such authority in every other movie.

He won his Oscars for grit and toughness (“The French Connection,” “Unforgiven”), but man his comedies. What a triumverate: “Superman,” “Get Shorty,” “The Royal Tenenbaums.” That's a master class. Add on his great cameo as the blind man in “Young Frankenstein,” and you wonder why he wasn't cast in comedies more.

I keep looking at his oeuvre and going, “I want to rewatch that ... and that ... and that.” I've seen “Hoosiers” only once. That seems wrong. When Hackman died at the end of February, Joe Posnanski wrote a nice piece that included an aside on why his Lex Luthor was the perfect supervillain (“they need charm and charisma and the ability to convince people that they're actually NOT supervillains”), but the brunt of the piece was about “Hoosiers” and one scene in particular. He called the piece “My Team is on the Floor” but that's not the scene. It's not when his best player disobeys him and gets benched, and then another player fouls out leaving only four, and he still refuses to let the best player on the court. He goes with four. That's when he says the line. But the scene, Posnanski writes, is the next day, when some townies outside a barbershop razz him: “You gonna play with three next time?”

There's something in the way he smiles and ignores them that feels profound to me. This is a coach who has already seen it all, one who understands that fans will be fans, and that it's his job as a coach to acknowledge them with good humor but never let them think their opinion is worth more than it is.

My father interviewed him in 1984 in Chicago, part of Hackman's first press tour in 10 years. Dad relayed some of Hackman's then decade-old wish list back to him—how he wanted to direct, to return to the theater, to act in musicals and comedies—and Hackman was no bullshit in response:

“You get locked into the Hollywood deal,” he explained, placing a cowboy boot on the edge of a coffee table in his hotel suite as he chose his words carefully. “Not really, but you do get lazy. It takes so many years to get successful, and when it happens, you don't want to to give it up. You're afraid it may go away.” 

It didn't go away for Hackman but it took many years to get successful. He was friends with Dustin Hoffman at the Pasadena Playhouse, where, infamously, they were both voted least likely to succeed. This was in the 1950s when the Troy Donahues of that troupe didn't see the 1960s and '70s coming. Both men wound up in New York, along with Robert Duvall, scrounging around for gigs. It was the worst of times and it was the best of times. “Simpler and easier to deal with,” Hackman told Dad. “Dusty had a job as a salesman at Macy's, so we'd do improvisation in the aisles. I'd come up and pretend to bother him on my lunch hour. Things like that.” 

At 16, he was so bored with high school that he quit to join the U.S. Marines. This was in 1947. He wound up stationed in China and was there when Mao took over. It was his job to destroy leftover Japanese weapons so the communists didn't get them. You see the former Marine in him in many of his roles.

I can't think of another actor like him. I'm glad we had him for the time we had him. Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to go watch “Hoosiers.”

Dad's Hackman article. He wrote the article not the hed.

And I dreamed I was dying
I dreamed that my soul rose unexpectedly
And looking back down at me
Smiled reassuringly
And I dreamed I was flying
And high up above my eyes could clearly see
The Statue of Liberty
Sailing away to sea

-- Paul Simon, “American Tune,” 1973

That's not this, but it might as well be. The screenshot is from a 1921 short “Charlie on the Ocean,” detailing Charlie Chaplin's first trip back to Europe since his sudden, unprecedented stardom. People today don't quite understand this—I didn't when I was young—but fame wasn't quite a thing when the 20th century began. Royals were famous, presidents, poets, writers, etc., but on a small scale, and not on sight. Movies changed all that. And no one was bigger in the movies than Chaplin.

The sadness of this photo, the irony, is that 30 years later, the country that said “Give me your tired, your poor/ Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” kicked out the little tramp who represented all of that. That's always been our problem—that reactionary impulse. It's worse than ever now. It may end us.

“California, Max.” I could've listened to these guys forever.

I thought Tony Roberts was in every Woody Allen movie in the 1970s and not as much in the '80s but it's actually the other way around. He reprised his stage role in “Play It Again, Sam,” and played the wonderful Rob/Max in “Annie Hall,” and that's it for the '70s. But in the '80s? “Stardust Memories,” “A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy,” “Hannah and Her Sisters” and “Radio Days.” Maybe he loomed larger in the '70s because the roles were bigger, or because those '70s movies loomed larger for me. I do love his “Hannah” role—the family friend they go to for sperm when Woody's Mickey is diagnosed as sterile. The look of astonishment, honor and pride in his face, which Mickey then undercuts by reminding him he won't actually get to schtup Mia Farrow's Hannah, he'll just jerk off into a cup. Then the great joke later of all of their kids with Tony Roberts hair. Like a lot of Woody, it's the joke that later proved true. Witness son Ronan Farrow's shocking resemblance to Frank Sinatra. 

But it's Roberts' '70s roles that do it for me, particularly Rob, the great shallow friend of Alvy Singer, two men forever walking through New York and nonsensically calling each other “Max,” as apparently Woody and Tony did in real life. When Alvy complains about anti-Semitism (“Jew eat? Not did you eat but Jew eat?”), Max tells him he's paranoid. He also tells him “California, Max,” the promised land. “Oh, I did Shakespeare in the Park, Max. I got mugged.” He winds up doing TV sitcoms with laughttracks that aren't funny: “That's why this machine's dynamite.” He winds up being one of the weirdos he and Alvy used to poke fun at—going hazmat to keep out the sun's rays. 

Woody and Tony met on Broadway. Woody had a play that needed casting, probably “Don't Drink the Water,” and a producer suggested he go see Barefoot in the Park “with an actor who had taken over when Robert Redford left. [He] found Redford's replacement funny and an ideal Broadway romantic comedy leading man.” That was Tony Roberts. They didn't become friends/Maxes then; that was later, Woody says, when he cast him in “Play It Again, Sam”: first stage, then screen. Per Woody's memoir, Roberts was something of a ladies man, and he often cast him as such.

The rest of Tony Roberts' CV ain't no slouch, either, including “Serpico” and “The Taking of Pelham One, Two, Three.” The Times obit is good and thorough.

Roberts says one of “Annie Hall”'s most underrated and poignant lines. Annie, Alvy and Rob go back to the old neighborhood and are witness, via the magic of film, to a 1940s-era argument between Alvy's parents. At one point, Alvy says, not incorrectly, “You're both crazy,” to which Rob, solicitious, says to him, “They can't hear you, Max.” Gets me every time. 

Say hi to Chris for me, Max.

David Lynch would've turned 79 today. He shared a birthday with Federico Fellini and me. That old triumverate.

Did he really only direct 10 feature films? His presence was outsized. His films made noise even when they bombed. I'd say particularly when they bombed, per “Dune,” but nah, “Blue Velvet” didn't bomb and that made a ton of noise when it landed. Because it landed. Not to mention “Twin Peaks” on television.

Here's his oeuvre, champ:

1. Eraserhead (1977)
2. The Elephant Man (1980)
3. Dune (1984)
4. Blue Velvet (1986)
5. Wild at Heart (1990)
6. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992)
7. Lost Highway (1997)
8. The Straight Story (1999)
9. Mulholland Drive (2002)
10. Inland Empire (2006)

He was only 60 when he made his last feature film? That seems so wrong. I just checked: Guess how many features Clint Eastwood directed after he turned 60? Five? 10? More? Yes, more. He directed 25 feature films after he turned 60, and he won two directing Oscars. Unfair. On the other hand, his name didn't become an adjective for a type of film style. No one sees a clip and says “That's so Eastwoodian.” 

My first David Lynch movie was “Blue Velvet,” which is a little like being tossed in the deep end—but I guess you could say the same about any of his movies.*  I was a student at the University of Minnesota, and everyone was talking about it, so I saw it and liked it enough. I thought it was like a Sherwood Anderson story with sex and violence: This is the town's pristine image, this is what lies beneath. I remember being disturbed not by the fact of the sex and violence but its type. Hollywood usually makes those palatable and this wasn't. I wasn't attracted to any of it. It felt askew. Why does Isabella Rosselini's character want Kyle Maclachlan's character to hit her? Why does this drippy '50s music make the villain cry? I was an innocent, like Kyle Maclachlan's character. I feel like I need to see it again. 

(*Except “The Straight Story.” I remember seeing “Mulholland Drive” in a theater with a friend, and afterwards, as we were leaving and she was disgruntled by its Lynchian aspects, she said, “Well, I guess I now know why he called his last movie 'The Straight Story.'”)

Even so, I was there on Sunday, April 8, 1990, for the premiere of “Twin Peaks,”  and it blew me away. I was in-between Taiwan stays and living at my father's house in South Minneapolis. He was away at a party, so it was just me and the dark and Lynch. And Lynch was darker than the dark. The scene where Grace Zabriskie as Laura Palmer's mother intuits what's happened and just screams. I got chills. It was like nothing that had ever been on television. Everyone talked about it. Oddly, I thought the show was set in Michigan rather than—where I ended up living a year later—the Pacific Northwest. I even wound up working at the place, University Book Store, where Laura Palmer's diary was supposedly purchased by a member of the production crew. And I loved Dale Cooper. He was my guy. He was one of the original hero-nerd-wonks, wasn't he? He was cool by being engaged rather than disengaged. He loved deeply what he loved: Douglas Firs, coffee, detective work.

I became the world's first binge-watcher because of “Twin Peaks.” Have I told this story here? I left for Taiwan before the first season ended so my father mailed a VHS of the final, like, two or three episodes to me in Taipei. He was recording the second season for me when he announced that he and Ingrid would be married in late December, so rather than mail that tape to me, I just had it waiting when I returned for the wedding. I was sleeping on a pull-out couch in the living room, and one night I popped in the tape to watch an episode. And then I watched another. And then another. I kept thinking, “OK, just this one,” but it would get to the end and I'd think, “Wait, what happens next?!” and kept going. I thought there was something wrong with me. How can someone watch like five or six episodes of a TV show in a row? Turns out, I was just ahead of my time.

The show made such an impact on me that disappointment was inevitable. First I was disappointed that everyone stopped talking about it and the show was canceled. And then I was disappointed that Lynch's subsequent feature film, “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me,” which was supposed to answer everything, didn't answer anything; it just gave us more questions. Lynch, I felt, was like a hydra: cut off one question, two more popped up. I'm reminded of my later disappointment with George W.S. Trow, and for the same reason: I felt sure this guy was going to give us the answers to everything.

But I liked all his next films, particularly “Mulholland Drive.” Lynch had a real talent for casting stunning women, didn't he? That “Twin Peaks” triumverate of Madchen Amick, Sherilyn Fenn and Lara Flynn Boyle may be unmatched, and then add in Sheryl Lee's Laura Palmer, as well as Peggy Lipton and Joan Chen. Their careers never quite took off, though. A few A-list parts here and there before things petered out. Ditto Laura Haring.

My nephew Ryan is a huge fan. He wrote this tribute last week, the day Lynch died, and it's better and more complete than anything I could say.

Even in an early episode of “McCloud,” Garr's personality, her smart-ditziness, shines through.

On a press junket in the early 1980s, Teri Garr talked about the acting niche she often found herself in: partnered with seemingly crazy men whom her character supported (“Young Frankenstein,” “Oh, God!”), abandoned (“Close Encounters of the Third Kind”), or simply clashed with (“Tootsie”). During this time, too, she went from love interest in “Young Frankenstein” to problematic other woman/friend in “Tootsie,” and apparently during the press conference she lamented her looks. But one of the reporters spoke up for her. He told her she was very pretty. That reporter was my father. Afterwards, a female journalist for The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel told Dad he should ask her out. “She really brightened when you said that,” she said.

Here's what I don't get: How did she not get a rash of great roles after her turn as Inga in “Young Frankenstein”? Leading up to it, she appeared in TV sitcoms and variety shows (“M*A*S*H,” “The Odd Couple,” “The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour”), did her roll in the hay as Inga, which was one of the biggest box-office hits of 1974; and then, while costars Gene Wilder, Madeline Kahn and Marty Feldman went on to greater things, often writing and directing their own comedies, Garr went back to appearing in TV sitcoms and variety shows (“Maude,” “The Sonny and Cher Show”). Feels like a missed opportunity, Hollywood.

She's been called the master of the smart-ditzy blonde. Francis Ford Coppola loved her but might not have been the right director for her light-comedic touch. He cast her in a small role in “The Conversation,” as the mother in “The Black Stallion” (which he produced), and as the romantic lead in “One From the Heart,” one of the big box-office bombs of the early 1980s. A lot of her early '80s output I've never heard of—“Honky Tonk Freeway”? “Witches' Brew”?—and as the decade progressed she was increasingly cast as the mom, either work-obsessed in “Mr. Mom” or boyfriend-obsessed in “Firstborn.” The ones who brought out her best may have been talk show hosts. She was on “The Tonight Show” with Johnny Carson 42 times between 1977 and 1992, and, more memorably for me, 30 episodes of “Late Night with David Letterman” in the 1980s. She was also perfectly cast as Phoebe's long-lost mother in three episodes of “Friends.”

In the late 1990s she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and became a spokesperson for MS research in the 2000s. In her 2005 memoir, per the New York Times, she wrote of the disease, “I really do count my blessings. At least I used to. Now I get so tired I have a woman come once a week and count them for me.” She died in October.

Hussey, age 16, in the most famous love story of all.

Franco Zeffirelli's “Romeo and Juliet” premiered in March 1968, was released in the U.S. in October 1968, and was shown in high schools across the country throughout the 1970s and '80s, where the boys quickly fell in love with Olivia Hussey. I was one of them. I still feel the tug 50 years later. Yes, there were jokes about her name, and yes, there was hullabaloo around the post-coital scene where you got a flash of something they don't normally show during school assemblies, but I didn't pay either any mind. To me, her face was enough. That's why you fell in love.

Shockingly, she was only 15 when she was cast, 16 during filming, and 17 when the movie hit the big screen. I believe that's what Zeffirelli wanted: actors whose ages approximated the ages of the title characters. So where does one go after playing the most iconic tragic heroine in the most iconic interpretation of the generation? Her first post-Juliet role, in “All the Right Noises,” played off her age in a way that hasn't aged well. “A married theatre lighting technician with two small children has an affair with a teenage actress,” is the IMDb descripton. Its tagline: “Is 15 1/2 too young for a girl? Is one wife enough for one man?”

It feels like she got some bad career advice. She made a couple of Italian movies with Robert Mitchum's son, Christopher, was one of the leads in a musical remake of a 1930s classic (“Lost Horizon”) that bombed with both critics and audiences, did a well-received horror flick (“Black Christmas”), then played someone even more iconic that Juliet: the Virgin Mary in the TV miniseries “Jesus of Nazareth.” She did ensemble murder mysteries (“Death on the Nile”), classics (“Ivanhoe”), and dystopian thrillers (“Turkey Shoot”). In the '90s she acted in some classic horror franchises: “It” and “Psycho IV: The Beginning.” In the latter she played Norma Bates, the mother who birthed a maniac, another iconic role. Maybe that's the trivia question from her career: Who has played Juliet Montague, the Virgin Mary and Norma Bates?

Hussey married three times, to Dean Paul Martin (1971-79), Akira Fuse (1980-89), and David Glen Eisley (1991-her death), and had a child with each man. She died two days after Christmas, age 73, from breast cancer. Time to repeat some Shakespeare: Death, that hath sucked the honey of thy breath/ Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty.

I know: It sounds like the setup for a Bob Hope joke. Instead, it's just another IMDb joke:

“The Outlaw,” kids. She's known for “The Outlaw.” Good god, know your cultural history.

Per Brian Jay Jones' “George Lucas: A Life,” these were some of the options they considered over the years, particularly as Lucas and Steven Spielberg debated whether there should be aliens in the thing (Spielberg was against it, initially), and if so, how much?

• Indiana Jones and the Saucermen from Mars
• Indiana Jones and the City of the Gods
• Indiana Jones and the Atomic Ants
• Indiana Jones and the Destroyer of Worlds
• Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls

Eventually they singularized the last one and went with that. Shame. The first and third options have a fun 1950s vibe to them. All that schlock Lucas and Spielberg grew up on, then regurgitated back to the masses with A-production values.