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Monday January 20, 2025

David Lynch (1946-2025)

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.

Posted at 08:34 AM on Monday January 20, 2025 in category Movies   |   Permalink  

Tuesday December 31, 2024

Teri Garr (1944-2024)

  

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.

Posted at 09:15 AM on Tuesday December 31, 2024 in category Movies   |   Permalink  

Sunday December 29, 2024

Olivia Hussey (1951-2024)

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.

Posted at 02:41 PM on Sunday December 29, 2024 in category Movies   |   Permalink  

Sunday November 17, 2024

What is Jane Russell 'Known For'?

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.

Posted at 08:06 PM on Sunday November 17, 2024 in category Movies   |   Permalink  

Sunday October 27, 2024

What to Call the Fourth Indiana Jones Movie?

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.

Posted at 03:59 PM on Sunday October 27, 2024 in category Movies   |   Permalink  

Saturday October 12, 2024

What is Edward G. Robinson 'Known For'?

Per IMDb and its dipshit algorithms:

All good movies. But when Robinson (née Emmanuel Goldenberg) died in January 1973, The New York Times ran an obit on page one below the fold, which read:

Edward G. Robinson, 79, Dies; Famed as Films' 'Little Caesar'

Fuckin' A. A few other newspapers put that role in their headlines, too, while most merely said, “Hollywood Tough Guy” which is the same thing. Here's UPI's example:

“His greatest role.” Sometimes the culture changes, of course, and the hidden is elevated and the celebrated lowered, but I don't think that's happening here. I don't think IMDb is tapping into any culture. As the man said: I don't see any method at all. 

Mother of mercy.

Posted at 10:03 AM on Saturday October 12, 2024 in category Movies   |   Permalink  

Sunday August 25, 2024

What is Sean Connery Known For?

Yeah, no, not that. 

“And you are...?” “Mason. John Patrick Mason.”

We do get one James Bond in there, the first, the one that made all the rest possible, rather than, say, “Goldfinger,” which grossed the equivalent of $600 million in 1964, or “Thunderball,” which grossed the equivalent of $700 million in 1965. Does the KFA (Known For Algorithm) take into account box office? Shouldn't it on some level? Particularly since Amazon owns both Box Office Mojo and IMDb? And it indicates, you know, popularity? Known-forness? BTW, I still need to write the piece on the ways Amazon has screwed up Box Office Mojo. The site is only about 20% usable now.

“Untouchables” makes sense, he won the Oscar there. “Name of the Rose”? I guess. I'd look for a place for “The Man Who Would Be King,” which has a 7.8 rating with 56k votes. “Hunt for Red October” maybe? “Robin and Marian”?

But you begin with Bond. Every obit on Connery led with that. It was in the headline. If someone ever asked you, “Who's Sean Connery?” you'd probably respond, “Well, he was the first James Bond,” rather than “He was in 'The Rock' opposite Nicolas Cage.”

Me, I'd go:

  1. “Goldfinger”
  2. “Dr. No”
  3. “The Untouchables”
  4. “The Man Who Would Be King”

But what do I know? I'm not an algorithm.

Posted at 09:13 AM on Sunday August 25, 2024 in category Movies   |   Permalink  

Sunday August 18, 2024

What is Burgess Meredith Known For?

Here's an obit of Burgess Meredith that ran in 1997 in newspapers across the country. 

If you know this game, the IMDb “Known For” game, you know neither of these roles will be the No. 1 answer. See if you can't think what the No. 1 answer might be. 

Most of the obit headlines for Mr. Meredith, by the way, don't mention any role. They talk up the length and breadth of his career. “Character Actor Burgess Meredith... ”Star of Stage, Screen and TV...“ That kind of thing.

I first knew him as the Penguin, of course (”Waugh, waugh, waugh...“), but I would've led with ”Rocky.“ He got an Oscar nom for it, and it was the No. 1 movie of 1976, spawning sequels that are still being made more than 50 years later. I also associate him as the first screen George from ”Of Mice and Men,“ opposite Lon Chaney Jr. That was his sixth screen role. He would reach 185 such credits. The bookworm ”Twilight Zone“ episode wouldn't be a bad way to go, either. 

Instead:

”Clash of the ...“?????

If you sort his credits by number of votes (which the ”Known For“ algorithm supposedly factors in), ”Rocky“ is on top with 637k. Then it's various forms of ”Rocky“: ”II,“ ”Balboa,“ ”IV,“ ”III,“ ”V.“ Then it's that ”Twilight Zone“ episode, and then ”Grumpy Old Men.“ And THEN it's ”Clash of the Titans.“ In ninth place. With 46k votes.

If you sort by the rating of his movie credits, it goes: ”The Crazy-Quilt“ (1966 indy at 8.4, 66 votes), and then ”Rocky“ (8.1), ”The Living Sands of Namib“ (1978 doc he narrated), ”Of Mice and Men,“ and ”Advise & Consent.“ We get a bunch of Hollywood docs in there, and then, in 11th place, ”Rocky II“ (7.3), followed by ”In Harm's Way,“ ”A Big Hand for the Little Lady,“ ”State of Grace,“ ”G.I. Joe“ (the 1945 one, with Meredith as Ernie Pyle), ”Rocky Balboa,“ more docs, ”Grumpy Old Men,“ ”San Francisco Docks,“ and ”Rocky IV.“ And then, finally, at 6.9, ”Clash of the Titans.“ In 24th place.

Is he the star of it? That's supposed to matter. Billing. But of course not. He's Burgess. He's never, or rarely, the star. In ”Rocky,“ for example, he's fifth-billed. ”Big Hand for the Little Lady“? Sixth-billed. And ”Clash of the Titans"? Tenth

All of which, of course, adds up to the No. 1 answer to the kids at IMDb.

Waugh, waugh, waugh...

Posted at 10:01 AM on Sunday August 18, 2024 in category Movies   |   Permalink  

Wednesday June 26, 2024

Craig on Donald Sutherland

“I've been hesitant to write about Donald Sutherland since the news of his death crashed on the shore of the world. This modern phenomenon of folks digitally dropping their heartfelt testimonials like singles, memorializing the lost in tidy packets suitable for sharing, seem all too often to be more about them than the deceased, and — perhaps I'm wrong — aren't especially in keeping with the spirit of Mr. Sutherland as I experienced him. ...

”What provoked me to finally embarrass myself in this way was a clip from a 60 Minutes interview someone posted on X in which Mr. Sutherland told the story of how his mother, confronted by her son with the question, 'Mother, am I good looking?', responded: 'Your face has character.' Anderson Cooper soon followed up by asking Mr. Sutherland if he thought he was ugly, and he said, 'Unattractive, I think, is the gentler way to put it,' and that's what sent me running to my computer just now, because that lilting little sentence — which carries with it, in its vocabulary, syntax, punctuation and rhythm so much information, so much implicit wryness, wisdom, humility and grace — made me miss him so much and want to be with him again, so here I am.“

-- Craig Wright, on his Substack ”Fancy!" Read the rest here.

Posted at 05:38 PM on Wednesday June 26, 2024 in category Movies   |   Permalink  

Monday March 18, 2024

Norman Jewison (1926-2024)

Yeah, I thought he was Jewish, too. It was the name, the fact that he directed “Fiddler on the Roof,” the kindly disposition. Go know.

He was nominated best director three times without winning, though one of his films won best picture: “In the Heat of the Night.” Jewison lost out to Mike Nichols, who'd directed “The Graduate.” Did that make it better for Jewison ... or worse? I assume the former but it's got to stick a little, particularly since that was a rare schism back then. The last time it had happened was 1956, I think: George Stevens got it for “Giant,” but “Around the World in 80 Days” won best picture. The Academy gave it to the old hand and the new tech. In 1967, they gave it to the new kid and the traditional fare.

His three nominations were in three different decades: 1967 for “Heat,” “Fiddler” in 1971, “Moonstruck” in 1987. What's his best? “Fiddler” is his highest-rated on IMDb (8.0), followed by “In the Heat” (7.9), then “The Hurricane” (7.6) and, oddly, “And Justice for All” (7.4). I say oddly because the day Jewison died, January 20, before we'd heard the news, we were watching “And Justice” and couldn't finish. We got halfway through. It just seemed too over-the-top to be interesting. 

I should see “Moonstruck” again. It's a helluva oeuvre. He started out doing '50s TV, and not even the television playhouses. More musicals and glitz. Then he graduated to romcoms with a '50s veneer (“Send Me No Flowers”) before breaking bigger, or more serious, with Steve McQueen in “The Cincinnati Kid.” His mid-70s outpout is all over the place: from “Jesus Christ Superstar” to “F.I.S.T.” Meanwhile, Hollywood kept going to him, a Canadian, for movies about race in America: “In the Heat of the Night,” “A Soldier's Story,” “The Hurricane.” He was tapped for Malcolm X's story, too, but Spike Lee said nuh-uh. He kept getting entrusted with new stars: Stallone in '78, Nic Cage in '87, Robert Downey Jr. and Marisa Tomei in '94. Sometimes it worked.

Posted at 07:27 AM on Monday March 18, 2024 in category Movies   |   Permalink  

Thursday February 22, 2024

Schindler's Gist

The Hollywood Reporter has posted an oral history on the making of “Schindler's List,” which is both fun and sobering. Here's a sobering quote from Ralph Fiennes:

FIENNES I was getting ready to do a scene. I was standing, not shooting, but I had my SS uniform and coat on, and a little Polish lady came up and said something, smiling. I had at that time befriended a lady called Batia [Grafka], who was the head of props and was Polish. This woman said something, and Batia's face clouded over. I said, “What did she say?” Batia said, “She said, 'The Germans weren't such bad people.'”

And here's one that's touches the heart. Steven Spielberg talking about his friend Robin Williams:

SPIELBERG Robin knew how hard it was for me on the movie, and once a week, every Friday, he’d call me on the phone and do comedy for me. Whether it was after 10 minutes or 20 minutes, when he heard me give the biggest laugh, he’d hang up on me.

The Williams one reminds me of this great story about Mel Brooks. The Fiennes one reminds me of Faulkner's line: The past isn't dead; it isn't even past. 

Posted at 01:21 PM on Thursday February 22, 2024 in category Movies   |   Permalink  

Saturday February 03, 2024

Carl Weathers (1948-2024)

When I lived in Taiwan in 1988 I was friends with a guy named Karl F., a Black American, and during that summer we had some interesting discussions about race. At one point the movie “Action Jackson,” starring Carl Weathers, came up, and Karl was 100% behind it. He exuded such pride in it, and in Weathers, that it made me a little jealous. Because I didn't have anything like that. Because I had everything else. Most movie leads were white men like me (or not at all like me), so “white” wasn't just a meaningless distinction, it wasn't a distinction at all, and I didn't see myself in any of them. I certainly didn't have pride in any of them. For Karl, there was just Carl Weathers, and so, yes, he was his guy. And sure, Eddie Murphy was one of the biggest stars on the planet at the time, and Denzel was on the rise, but Weathers was the one who'd just joined the Sly/Arnold/Chuck pantheon. As he should have much sooner.

He became a star at the wrong time, didn't he? He played professional football for a few years, first with the Oakland Raiders, and then, after he was cut, with the Canadian Football League, but he had his eye on acting, and began with a bang: In 1975, he appeared in 10 filmed roles, mostly TV. I might've seen him on “Good Times” as the jealous husband of the sexy neighbor that wants J.J. to paint her in the nude. I definitely saw him in that all-football episode of “Six Million Dollar Man,” when Steve's friend Larry Csonka gets kidnapped before the big game. Weathers was busy in '76, too, appearing in episodes of “McCloud,” “Starsky & Hutch,” “Barnaby Jones,” and ... what was it again? Oh yeah. A little thing called “Rocky.” It was filmed in the spring, released in late fall, and became a phenomenon. It was also the first time I'd ever heard the word “sleeper” applied to a movie. Initially I thought it was an insult—a movie that made you fall asleep—but my father corrected me.

The Times obit has a good story on how Weathers got the part of Apollo Creed. He was reading with someone introduced as a non-actor, and felt he didn't do well enough. “They were quiet, and there was this moment of awkwardness — I felt, anyway,” he said. “So I just blurted out, 'I could do a lot better if you got me a real actor to work with.'” Except the guy he was reading with was Sylvester Stallone. Rather than be insulted, though, Stallone was amused, and liked Weathers' fire, and felt it would be good for Apollo. He wasn't wrong. “Rocky” was not just the No. 1 box-office hit of 1976, it was nominated for 10 Oscars, won best picture, and basically remade what movies would be. Happy endings, Hollywood endings, became de rigueur again. Post-triumph, Weathers graduated from episodes of “Delvecchio” and “Streets of San Francisco” into co-starring roles in films like “Force 10 From Navarone.” Seriously, check out that poster. Is there a more late-1970s movie cast? It's post-“Jaws”/post-“The Deep” Robert Shaw starring with post-“Star Wars” Harrison Ford and supported by post-“Rocky” Carl Weathers and post-“Spy Who Loved Me” Richard Kiel. Toss in some internationals (Edward Fox and Franco Nero), add a pretty face (Barbara Bach), and you've got your WWII movie. And Weathers is there. He's on the poster. He's on his way.

And then not. In the four years from 1975 to '78, he'd done roles in 24 different productions. And in the seven years from 1979 to 1985? Five—and three of those were reprising his role as Apollo Creed in Rockys II, III and IV. So only two other roles in seven years. What happened?

I assume he was hoping to star in movies. I assume he was looking for good roles. “I'm looking for longevity in my career,” he told journalist Vernon Scott, in a July 8, 1979 UPI piece. “I aim high and I'm doing my damndest to get where I want to be.” But then we entered the Reagan years, our one-step-back years, and I guess the roles, certainly the “aim high” roles, dried up for Black actors. In 1981, he was fourth-billed in the Charles Bronson/Lee Marvin movie “Deathhunt”; four years later, he was the titular “Braker”—a TV pilot about a Black cop that never made it to series. That was it.

In 1986, Weathers redid “Defiant Ones” for TV, played “Fortune Dane” for six episodes, then joined the ultra-macho cast of “Predator.” Apparently that led to “Action Jackson,” which didn't do poorly at the box office: $20 mil, 49th best for the year. It was also the biggest movie for its producton company, Lorimar Film Entertainment. So why no sequel? Lorimar went under that summer. Weathers couldn't catch a break.

In the '90s he did a lot of TV: nine episodes of “Tour of Duty,” 44 episodes of “Street Justice,” 28 episodes of “In the Heat of the Night.” Then he was tapped by Adam Sandler, a big “Rocky” fan, to play Chubbs, the one-handed golf mentor in “Happy Gilmore.” Since, he played himself on “Arrested Development,” Combat Carls in “Toy Story 4,” and Greef Karga in the Star Wars series “The Mandalorian,” for which he was nominated for an Emmy. It was his first. An entire film franchise, “Creed,” was also borne out of a supporting character he created. How often does that happen? Never, I'm thinking. 

Posted at 08:55 AM on Saturday February 03, 2024 in category Movies   |   Permalink  

Friday January 26, 2024

Talking Clint, Sergio and Ennio with IMDb's Known For Algorithm

Me: I've been on a bit of a Clint Eastwood kick lately, probably because TCM/HBO has been on a bit of a Clint Eastwood kick lately. It's been fun.
IMDb's Known For Algorithm: Clint ... ? Oh, the guy who played Frankie Dunn in “Million Dollar Baby”!
Me: Um, sure? Not where I would've gone, but yes. He also directed the movie. 
IMDb: He's a director, too? 
Me: Yeah. Kept getting nominated for Oscars for it. Won three, I think.
IMDb: Huh. I guess I don't know him from that.
Me: But Frankie Dunn...
IMDb: Totally!
Me: As actor, I guess I tend to associate him more, you know, Dirty Harry.
IMDb: In what movie?
Me: Um ... “Dirty Harry”?
IMDb: Sorry. No.
Me: Also “Magnum Force,” “The Enforcer,” “Sudden Impact.” [Bad imitation] “Go ahead ... make my day.” Reagan quoted that in a speech, that's how big that was.
IMDb: Hm.
Me: On HBO, I've been watching the spaghetti westerns again. The Sergio Leone stuff.
IMDb: Ah, the “Once Upon a Time in a ...” guy!
Me: Yes!
IMDb: The writer.
Me: Huh?

IMDb: Sergio Leone. He's a writer. That's what he's known for.
Me: He may be a writer but I think he's pretty well known for being a director. “Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” etc.
IMDb: Hm. Don't know that one.
Me: You don't know Sergio Leone for “The Good, Bad and Ugly”? C'mon! It's got that iconic Ennio Morricone score: Denenenene ... wuh WA WA.
IMDb: Morricone? Ah, “The Hateful Eight” guy! Also “The Best Offer” and “The Legend of 1900”! Great stuff.

Me: Wow. And I thought you cared about film. 
IMDb: I do!
Me: But you think Clint Eastwood is best known for playing Frankie Dunn, Sergio Leone is a writer, and Ennio Morricone isn't known for composing iconic spaghetti western scores.
IMDb: Exactly. You've got to get off this spaghettios kick. Nobody knows that shit.

SPLAT! ... Wuh WA WA.

Posted at 09:13 AM on Friday January 26, 2024 in category Movies   |   Permalink  

Thursday January 11, 2024

Herman Raucher (1928-2023)

I came across this obit recently in The New York Times:

You get similar thoughts doing a Google news search. Everyone knows Raucher from “Summer of '42”:

Everyone, that is, but IMDb:

Cue face palm.

What is this monstrously titled “Heironymous Merkin” movie? The Times' obit explains:

He then collaborated with [Anthony] Newley on the script for “Can Heironymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness?” (1968), which was a notorious failure. Mr. Newley, who was also the star and director, plays a singing star simultaneously making and showing a movie about his self-indulgent life.

And here's what IMDb's own numbers say about current interest in the two movies:

Movie Rating Votes  User Reviews
Summer of '42 7.2 8,933 124
Can Heironymous Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness? 4.9 410 28

Let us now leave IMDb to appreciate the life and work.

I don't think I ever saw all of “Summer of '42”—just bits on television. I remember the Mad magazine satire, but there was no soups-to-nuts watching of it. I was 8 when it came out. Jennifer O'Neill dazzled, of course, even at 8, and I have a dim memory that this is when I learned about apostrophed years. Something about being confused by the title until my father told me that the apostrophe meant Ninteen forty-two. I definitely didn't know it was autobiographical—based on young Herman's experiences as a teen with a war widow in Nantucket—until today.

“'42” was such a huge hit—the fourth-biggest movie of 1971, ahead of “Dirty Harry” and “Diamonds are Forever”—that Raucher wound up doing hazy, nostalgic stuff for the rest of the decade: the Jennifer O'Neill-less sequel, “Class of '44”; a TV movie “Remember When” with Jack Warden, about the war years; “The Other Side of Midnight,” about a WWII-era love affair between lantern-jawed John Beck and French actress Marie-France Pisier. IMDb gives Raucher an uncredited credit for helping write “The Great Santini,” but Wiki quotes him saying that was never him; he tried to adapt it for a TV show but he didn't work on the movie. 

Before Hollywood, he was a “Mad Men”-era adman, writing copy for Disney, while also working on plays and TV scripts for “Alcoa Hour” and “Studio One.” One of his plays was apparently adapted into an early 1960s Elvis movie? That's odd. He adapted his own work into “Sweet November” with Anthony Newley. That led to “Heironymous Merkin.” After that, he wrote the seminal “Watermelon Man” but clashed with director Melvin Van Peebles. That's when Robert Mulligan took to his “Summer of '42” script that had been kicking around for 10 years. 

Godspeed. Say hi to Chris. Ignore IMDb on the way out.

Posted at 02:01 PM on Thursday January 11, 2024 in category Movies   |   Permalink  

Saturday November 11, 2023

Dixon Redux, or Afterbirth of a Nation

Victory! Yours, mine and ours. On IMDb, our preeminent movie website, Thomas Dixon, the man who wrote the book and play upon which “The Birth of a Nation” is based, is once again known for writing the book and play upon which “The Birth of a Nation” is based:

Here's how it looked last year and most of this: “Birth” was nonsensically, idiotically, fourth.

This was always the most egregious of IMDb's algorithmic “known for” idiocies, so I'm glad they fixed it. Sadly, it looks like a one-off. Everything else is the same. Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks are still best known as producers, Bernardo Bertolucci is best known as a writer, and Peter Bogdanovich is best known for playing “DJ (voice, uncredited)” in “The Last Picture Show.” Boris Karloff isn't known for “Frankenstein,” Bo Derek isn't known for “10,” and Henry “The Fonz” Winkler isn't known for playing the Fonz of “Happy Days.” 

Plus “Gods of the Machine” is still up there for Dixon—a movie that's been “in development” for several years now, by a man who's never made a feature film, but who apparently uses some of Dixon's characters in this probably never-to-be-made movie. And yet it's the third-most popular thing Dixon is known for. Because algorithm.

Posted at 04:31 PM on Saturday November 11, 2023 in category Movies   |   Permalink  
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