Golden Age of Hollywood Book Club discussion
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message 51:
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J.J.
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Feb 15, 2022 04:21PM
Hi Barbara when you said The Lone Ranger from the 1990s are you talking Klingon Spillsbury? What ever happened to that guy?
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I remember seeing Heaven's Gate at the theatre and like it. Since then I've seen it about a half dozen times, it's one of those films I like to watch every few years and it keeps getting better and better with each viewing. Still can't see what all the hub-but was about. It's one of my favorite westerns.
J.J. wrote: "Hi Barbara when you said The Lone Ranger from the 1990s are you talking Klingon Spillsbury? What ever happened to that guy?"I don't know what happened to him but I remember reading that his dialogue had to be dubbed. One of the Keach brothers (Stacy or James) supposedly did his voice.
"Portnoy's Complaint."Ernest Lehman wrote some classics, i.e., "North By Northwest," but he produced, directed and adapted "Portnoy" and had no one to tell him when he was going off the rails.
I haven't seen the film but will take your word for it and avoid it. Thanks for the tip.
Waterworld is shockingly awful. It is SO BAD. The Wiz is a guilty pleasure. That film gets too much hate. MJ is still the kid we know and love.
Waterworld had pretty good sfx but otherwise was pretty much a stinker.I was interested in a comment made in #51 and #53 about Klinton Spillsbury, so I looked him up. His dialogue was dubbed, as Barbara said, and he got the annual Razzie Award for Worst Actor. It appears The Lone Ranger was the only lead role he had and maybe the only role he ever had. He drank heavily, lied about his past, and was generally a bit of a "nut case". He has disappeared and it was once rumored that he did some modeling in Europe, which may or may not be true. There is practically no information about him, so who knows whatever happened to him.
Ugh, I have to say, THE LONE RANGER (2013) with Johnny Depp. was up there as one of the biggest flops I actually paid money to go see in the theater. I took my nephew to the movies, and that one was BAD.
I hate to admit this, Laura, but I didn't even know about that film. By the sounds of it, it is just as well that I haven't. That appears to be the second Lone Ranger film made and both were flops. I'm sure that the original Lone Ranger, Clayton Moore, would have been thrilled!
I meant to put up this film earlier and am just getting around to it.....At Long Last Love (1975). It is as bad as they get and flopped big time at the box office.
Just because you put some popular stars in a film along with Cole Porter's timeless rhythms, it does not a movie make!!! This is one great misfire and frankly the actors embarrass themselves in their attempt to make this worth watching. They may have been having fun but viewers were not. Burt Reynold, Cybil Shepherd and somebody named Dullio Del Prete (rising from and sinking to oblivion with one film) attempt to sing, dance and generally make merry to the songs of the 20s and 30s............and fail miserably. To add insult to injury, director Bogdanovich decided not to post sync the "singing" (I use the term loosely) and being out of breath does not add to one's tonal quality. I won't even mention the "dancing" (again, I use the term loosely). Well, maybe just to say "inept".
Cole Porter wrote some of the finest popular songs in American music and the great sin here is that they had to be the linchpin of this dog of a film. Mr. Porter is probably spinning is his grave. For that matter so are Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.
I vaguely remember that when it came out. Not being a Burt Reynolds fan, I can't imagine wanting to see him 'sing' and 'dance'. Was that around the same time as his infamous photo with the snake?
I can't even remember why I watched it. It is not the type of film that appeals to me necessarily. I must have been having a bad day which got worse after seeing this fiasco.
I don't mean to defend 'At Long Last Love', but I do have a lot of time for Bogdanovich's first 4 (or 5) films. By this own he'd got caught up in his own hubris. After 'Targets' (which is a pretty dang good first film) he had three wonderful (mega)-hits in a row, 'The Last Picture Show', 'What's Up Dog?' and 'Paper Moon', all three successfully blend his love for classic Hollywood cinema with more contemporary sensibilities. In short, they are three great New Hollywood films. Bogdanovich was an interesting fellow, a huge film buff who managed to get into the good graces of all the old Hollywood directors who by the 60s were out of style. He famously interviews and championed people like John Ford, Howard Hawks, William Wyler etc. But his fame brought out a very arragant strain in him and he left his wife Polly Platt (who probably did more than 'merely' do the production design on his early films for Cyril Shepherd, his discovery for 'Last Picture Show'. He then made 'Daisy Miller' with her, his first and much maligned flop (I saw it last year for the first time and rather liked it, but it helped that I went in with low expectations). After that came 'At Long Last Love' for which he'd been hoping to get Ryan O'Neil (from Paper Moon and What's Up, Doc?) and Elliot Gould, both of whom had some musical training and experience, but they both declined.
The idea was to create something new using classic means as in the previous films, but it just didn't work.
HIs next film Nickelodeon, again with Reynolds and O'Neal, was an hommage to silent comedies. It's a little better, but no shakes compared to the earlier trilogy of films.
Interesting information ,Magnus. I wasn't dissing Bogdnovich particularly, just the film. I was fascinated by his Targets (1968), a very unusual film; and also liked Paper Moon (1973). But good directors all have their turkeys and At Long Last Love was his. I think, at one point, he actually admitted it.
Oh, Bodanovich had more than one turkey in him. In fact, his career never recovered properly. Some would argue he never made a great film after the first lot, although 'The Mask' (1985) has its defenders and restored his career somewhat. He was also involved in the reconstruciton of Orson Welles' 'The Other Side of the Wind', played the shrink's shrink in 'The Sorpranos' and made 'The Cat's Meow' about the murder onboard Hearst's yacht which involved Marion Davies and Charly Chaplin. His last film (he died last year, I think) was a documentary about Buster Keaton.
I think I am one of the few that never liked Bodanovich style. There are so many directors that people just make you feel pressured to fawn about and love, and I always walk away going, "is there something wrong with me? Bodanovich is one of those. Also, Allen, Altman, and Lynch are some others. I just feel there are so many better directors who create much more interesting (and deep) stories.
Cleopatra was truly a stinker. Family Plot (1976) was Hitchcock's last film and, unfortunately, it was bad. The Prize (1963), a Paul Newman flick, boasts a huge celeb cast, but is stupefying in its execution.
Mod
Whereas yea, 'The Prize' or 'The Silver Chalice' are definitely bow-wow.
I rather liked 'Cleopatra', but haven't seen the others. That's the great thing about movies; just because they're panned doesn't mean you can't enjoy them.
Mod
Peer-pressure to admire these directors is misplaced because everyone forgets how humble they all began. Woody Allen's early comedies were harmless, clumsy, and innocent.
Same with Bogdanovich. His first few films are puppyish, easygoing, and self-effacing.
Altman: began in TV and carved out new terrain in film dialogue, but he took a long time to catch on. Again: no pressure. Anyone who applies peer-pressure is in the same camp as everyone else who belatedly realized his intent.
Lynch: another celebrated weirdo, but one who initially experimented widely --and very uncertainly --to find his groove. No one today hails him for 'Elephant Man', a flick where he tried to be normal and floundered. As in: he had nothing very unusual to offer at first. He had just a couple twisty things like 'Eraserhead' but his attempt at straightforward filmmaking ('Elephant Man') fell rather flat.
Bottom line: the 'bandwagon' for many wunderkinds is usually boarded too late for anyone to cop an attitude about it.
I think tons of people hail Lynch for The Elephant Man. And it really isn't at all "straightforward filmmaking." You might say that about The Straight Story, but that one's so normal that it ends up being weird.
Mod
Yes, EM was very critically esteemed by adults at the time of its advent. Its solidly intellectual, historical, and character-based storytelling; with sensitive adult emotions like compassion and sacrifice.
But among popcult-gobblers and popcorn-munchers today, I haven't heard anyone mention it in years. Whenever Lynch's name arises --his fanboys are certainly all still agog over all of his "twisty", "mind-bending" stuff. They will list everyone of his "mind-bogglers" first, and only as an afterthought, recall EM.
A serious, sensitive, adult story from him (or arguably any other modern director) doesn't get an nth of the fad-ship his 'Dune' does. Kids rave about Lynch and the Sixth Sense guy in the same breath, in all the same discussions, and for the same reasons.
You could casually gauge this by doing a keyword-search on some juvenile-oriented site like Reddit. Test for yourself.
[The reason Reddit comes to mind is that I just spent the last six months or so there, wasting time on their dingbat movie boards. I never saw anyone speak of it even once.]
Returning to the original point: if anybody out there is applying "peer pressure to admire David Lynch" -- it's not driven by 'Elephant Man', but by all his other stuff.
Interesting to know that newer fan-boys have forgotten about EM. For once I probably concur with them. While I haven't watched it in eons it'll always be less impressive than his most original creations (for me Twin Peaks, Mulholland Drive and Lost Highway) in my mind. Since I don't read Reddit I'm obviously out of the loop because in my older film books EM does indeed get a lot of praise.Re peer pressure' and fanboys, I probably find them more annoying than most but let's face it, the movie industry needs them. Whether they support overrated Guy Richtie/method acting/Oscar worship/superheroe/place-your own-beef-here rubbish, they will always exist; they will always get on our nerves; and the production companies are grateful that they exist.
Mod
Prior to that, movies never needed kids. Most movie-goers (1930s-1950) were adults. Flicks were relaxation and leisure-time distraction for working men & women. Emphatically a past-time for grown-ups, first and foremost. Only as the post-war decades passed, were flickers additionally made accessible to children. It all began with serials like Flash Gordon, Tom Mix, etc.
Part of the brilliance of the studio system of course, was that anyone of any age could enjoy any movie. Kids in the 40s and 50s could --and did --attend 'grown-up' movies (dancing, romancing) along with pirates and cowboys.
Sometimes tykes enjoyed the sneak-peek they got of the adult world along with their own; sometimes they didn't. But in the mid-century era, the industry took genuine pride in making films which all ages could savor. It was the Lion's Roar.
Those studio execs would have been astonished at the way today's Hollywood kowtows to children as the #1 driving economic factor they are now.
A few years ago, both Spielberg & Lucas expressed regret at the monster they helped create. They now predict the kiddie-centric industry will sooner or later implode. The business model is unsustainable and unstable.
Me, I ain't so much blamin' Hollywood; just pointing out that it whole-heartedly followed the money-trail. With reckless abandon. What I do blame Hollywood for is not keeping the field level and balanced. LA "gave up" on adults.
Btw I probably meant fan-boys in a more generic way, not literally 'boys' as opposed to grown-ups.Do they churn out movies (and TV) for eternal infants? Sure they do. But like you said yourself, post-war (that is, post WW1) serials from the 20s and 30s (and 40s and 50s) were squarely aimed at the younger unes. They have been catered for all along. Later, thanks to the post-war (baby) boom they gradually acquired more buying power. And the advent of the televison came along. To fight the fact that people began staying away in droves, new, expensive family-oriented widescreen entertainment was created.
If we go back further to the years of Nickelodeons and such, the entire cinematic enterprise would have floundered if producers had created 'content' (to use a term from today's lingo) exclusively for older generations with mid- to high-brow tastes. Film was considered to be frivolous, beneath the attention of thespians from the 'legitimate stage'.
Hollywood has always been about the money. Yes, there have been mavericks, but making movies is expensive so nobody can operate at a loss over a long time which is something the moguls of old understood all too well. They catered for families because they grossed more if they sold four tickets (parents and two children) rather than just two for grown-ups.
More mature themes in movies were a) not encouraged by the Hays Code and b) arose mostly after WW2 in Film Noir and psychogical westerns when they perhaps mirroed the post-war psyche (a gross simplification but you know what I mean).
Just for the record, I generally do subscribe to the idea that the 70s blockbuster (Exorcist, Godfather, Jaws, Star Wars etc) made producers more greedy, a concept that was excerbated by Reagan's 80's.
But I'm also saying that crap has always been existed.
Dune is generally considered one of his worst. Elephant Man is more a fave of his rabid fans, cinemaholics, film majors, etc., but it's well-liked. Not as much as Mulholland Dr., etc. or even Eraserhead, but it's hardly forgotten. rateyourmusic.com does not provide the same kind of results as reddit, for example, but it's a fair average between film snobs and the general public. Here are the Lynch ratings: https://rateyourmusic.com/films/david...
I really liked Elephant Man. It was such a tragic story. I thought the acting was terrific.
Mod
H'mmm. I still wouldn't go so far as to say movies were ever designed for kids "from the very start". Nickelodeons didn't show 'kiddie' fare. The 1910s - 1920s were focused on crime, western, romance, and melodrama for adults. The great age of slapstick --those were made for all ages; but the moviegoers who had the money to attend them, were grown-ups. Kids were lucky to be able to view Chaplin or Keaton on a regular basis.
The 1930s movie landscape was sharply delineated by the Depression. All the musicals and comedies depicting the country's wealthy elite, those were aimed at adults. 1930s children had no pocket money for movies; life was just too tough. If you were a kid in the '30s, your free time was probably spent working (newsboys, delivery boys) to bring more income into the house.
Thus: radio was the dominant form of media for the first six decades of the century. Radio was free; it was safe; it ran around the clock; and could be enjoyed in any situation where the family was too poor to go out.
Yep, there were some movie products which were always aimed at children. For example, Fleischer Cartoons. Or, the early Walt Disney cartoons. Those began in the '30s.
But in the inner city, the "big movie palaces" weren't built --and didn't thrive --on children's pocket money. Children didn't attend 'star-studded' movie openings wearing tuxedos and minks.
'Childish' products (either cartoons, or Flash Gordon type action serials; Rin Tin Tin, or Tom Mix) weren't Hollywood's 'A' product until after the war. All cartoons and all serials were 'B' products. Anything which was 'too childish' was a 'B' product; rather than studios' primary money-maker.
An example of an 'A product' might be "The Thief of Baghdad" or the Gary Cooper/Cary Grant 'Alice in Wonderland'. 'The Wizard of Oz'; films like 'The Yearling'; 'Captains Courageous', or full-blown Disney movies like 'Bambi' all of which could be enjoyed by adults as well as kids.
In the '40s & '50s --even in a small rural town --parents could send their kids to the Bijou and kids could watch matinees and double-features all day long. Both kids and adults usually attended the theater twice per week even if they'd seen the movie before; which happened quite a lot in those days; since movies stayed in theaters longer.
Not until the advent of suburban sprawl, single family tract housing, the G.I. bill; automobiles and interstate highways and 'white flight' from the cities; did things shift. Peace and security, large families with multiple toddlers laying around the living room or the den with weekend free time and weekly allowance-money. That was the first big demographic shift which TV took advantage of, (prior to the '70s).
Whereas from 1910 through the 1940s the primary movie-making revenue was from adults. Why? In the first half of the century children were not demographically dominant. There were no baby booms. American adults themselves struggled to survive the Depression, WWI and WWII. Life was harsh.
Most people then lived in the City; households were small; and children were too expensive to feed and raise. Kids also faced diseases like TB and infantile paralysis.
So --for a long time --there was little spare money for leisure; and what there was of it, kids didn't have in their pockets. Kids played in vacant lots or on the street itself where parents could 'keep an eye on them' from the kitchen window above.
In the downtown, you couldn't drop your kid off at a 'nickelodeon' machine for the whole day. Initially, those were found in taverns and poolrooms.
To sum up: only when suburban kids came along, did the studios make the major changes in their strategy.
References available for any of these remarks I've just made.
Feliks wrote: "Magnus wrote: "If we go back further to the of Nickelodeons and such, the entire cinematic enterprise would have floundered if producers had created 'content' (to use a term from today lingo) exclu..."I would concur with about everything you wrote in this post. I guess I was confused by your use of 'fan boys'. To me the term refers to people of pretty much all ages behaving in a childishly obsessive way, the 'geeks', the 'anoracks'. And of course serials in the pre-TV days were B-movies, not prestigious A-products. My point is, studios have always catered for (their concept of) 'all tastes'. Before 'The Jazz Singer' it was the very Rin Tin Tin movies that kept Warner Bros. afloat. And in the post-war boom years there was more disposable income, hence more product for those markets. Often the 1955 movie 'Blackboard Jungle' is used as an example of watershed when the youth market became a real player.
Mod
Movies for a long time certainly were suitable-for-all-ages because it made very good business sense. There was no ratings system back then; because anyone of any age, might be found spending some time in a theater on any day or hour the theater was open. People went to theaters sometimes just for the air-conditioning or for Kino games. Teens went to the balcony to neck. Married couples made dinner-&-show their 'evening out'.
Theaters were the only game-in-town other than actually attending a baseball game (which was also a very frequent activity).
Therefore, Hollywood A-movies always had to be engaging for every mentality. No politics, no religion, no sexuality. Just brisk, efficient genre-based, star-studded storylines which had something for everyone.
re: 'fanboys' --no, by this I specifically mean the 'perpetual juvenile' mentality that arose with the Lucas (and especially Spielberg) blockbuster/FX/franchise era.
The first taste of it was probably 'Planet of the Apes' but once 'Raiders' arrived it was a new phenom we've been saddled with ever since.
William Goldman talks about this in his Hollywood books; and Stephen Bach talks about it in his book on "Heaven's Gate".
Bach was an exec at UA. He reminds us that in the 1970s, a good adult movie could be made for $10m and become a huge critical and commercial hit. Which is why when Heaven's Gate clocked in (at what, $140m?) it rocked the whole coast.
Heaven's Gate killed American arthouse cinema and 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' convinced Hollywood that the youth market was where their future lay.
Thus, the new era of fanboys. A specific kind of delinquent. That's how I label them, anyways.
BTW, thank you Magnus, for kicking this topic around. Glad to hear your opinions.
Mod
Mod
I have never seen or heard of that one but it sounds like ridiculous casting.
Has anyone seen THE ASSASSINATION BUREAU, with Diana Rigg, Oliver Reed, and Telly Savalas? El Floppo!
I saw it years ago, but remember nothing about it except that I thought Oliver Reed wasn't bad-looking at the time.
I haven’t seen it, except parts on tv when I was younger. I may want to see it at some point. Two of the main cast of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service are in it. Oddly enough, according to producer Albert R Broccoli, Oliver Reed also would have gotten the part of Bond in the film, except apparently insurance or something was a problem because of his behavior and drinking.
Mod
is the 'proto-' Bond, & 'proto-' Avengers flick OHMSS fans should seek out
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_Planes
meanwhile, fans of Terence Young should discover:
'The Valley of the Eagles'
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valley_...
much of the colossal outdoor action shot by Young himself while vacationing in the wilderness depicted in the plot
Laura wrote: "Has anyone seen THE ASSASSINATION BUREAU, with Diana Rigg, Oliver Reed, and Telly Savalas? El Floppo!"Yeah. Interesting. I love her, but she didn't make much of a splash in the film world. It's not awful, but IDK. A strange flop.
Mod
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candy_(...
Richard Burton, Marlon Brando, James Coburn, John Astin, Walter Matthau, Ringo Star...
Script by Buck Henry & Terry Southern. Inexplicable how this failed.
Mod
Let's see --off the top of my head, I believe it starred Jason Robards, Timothy Bottoms (?), James Keach. Solid talent.
However, I can't recall who replaced the indigenous native part originally played by Sabu or someone like Sabu.
But the female lead --awk --Mia Farrow. For me, one of the least appealing modern stars.
Farrow is not on par at all with Dorothy Lamour even though a much better actress.
