Movies Til Dawn

I believe Duke Ellington (one of my three cultural heroes, the other two being Orson Welles and Billy Wilder) would have been 115 years old today (had he not been thoughtless enough to die in 1974, that is). In honor of that fact, here's a rare clip of the 1930 Amos and Andy vehicle "Check and Double Check" which was Ellington's first foray into Hollywood. Though the band isn't really visible until three minutes into this six minute clip, there are some nice views of what white society people looked like when dancing. I like the perversity of posting this shamefully racist movie (A&A were white guys in blackface) as the NBA burns all around us. Perhaps I'll be forced to sell my team...   Subscribe in a reader

Yesterday I screened  Don Siegel's "Invasion Of The Body Snatchers"  (the original 1956 version) for my almost ten-year old son who has developed a real fascination for period sci-fi ('Twilight Zone", "Dr. Who", Ray Bradbury stories). Needless to say it got under his skin as it did mine when I saw it at the tender age of twenty-eight. Shot in nineteen days on a less-than-zero budget (a Siegel specialty), the film features many interesting views of mid-fifties LA--though its set in the fictional northern California town of Santa Mira, Allied Artists was not a company to allow a production out of their sight. Bronson Canyon and the little town square of nearby Beachwood Canyon (both in Hollywood and the latter pictured above) are prominently used as are some nice, still scrubby and unbuilt-upon chunks of Mulholland Drive. But the most famous scene in the film--the terrifically filmed and acted climax on the highway as Kevin McCarthy tries to stop cars t...

Don Siegel's first film with the star who would make Siegel a name director after forty years in the business, Clint Eastwood, was "Coogan's Bluff" . Filmed in 1969 on many actual locations in New York City, the film is primarily remembered for a scene in a famous New York City discotech of the era, "The Pigeon-Toed Orange Peel". On a number of occasions I've heard this place referenced by pop-culture historians, chroniclers of the music scene of the period and assorted other journalists of miscellaneous junk pop-culture. The problem is, it doesn't really exist. The club was in fact photographed on a sound stage at Universal, back in good old North Hollywood, California. And not just any soundstage, but the one that the Lon Chaney's "Phantom Of The Opera" was shot on in 1925. According to Siegel in his quite amusing memoir "A Siegel Film",  the weather in New York turned nasty and, facing a possible blizzard, the decisio...

As the inescapable fact becomes clear that "Rob The Mob" is fading from theatrical view and moving into its next cable/DVD/online phase, I hearby publish the last of the interviews I did promoting the film,  a rather garrulous but occasionally interesting talk about the reasons for making the movie. I'm delighted we got a theatrical release in today's incredibly difficult theatrical market and am greatly pleased with the reviews and attention we got. I'd be lying if I said I was entirely pleased with the distribution companies efforts to promote the film, which were undernourished to say the least. We had an audience movie--which we knew from testing it with real-people audiences--and they ultimately released it as an 'art film' (which means spending 'art film' money on ads--for which read as little as possible ). I'm pretty sure that with a little more swagger and confidence and a lot more showmanship they'd have made some real money o...

From a long ago Howard Stern show, here's a sampling of Jackie Martling's grab-bag of racist jokes that he performed in his club act. Does anyone remember hearing about the Stern group appearing at a place in Long Island called Club Benet (pronounced--and maybe even spelled--BENAY) back in the late 80's/early 90's? What about Susan Bezerkowitz (actually Berkeley), the traffic reporter who was so frazzled by the contempt with which she was treated that she actually quit on air? I'm talking vintage early K-ROCK Howard here. I spent way too much time listening back then and am spending way too much time recently finding this stuff on Youtube and reliving my lost (and very happy) twenties.   Subscribe in a reader

Here's Don Siegel, ("Dirty Harry," "Invasion of the Body Snatchers", "Escape From Alcatraz" to name his three best known films though I admit I considered going the snarkier route and naming "Spanish Affair", "Count The Hours" and "China Venture" instead) discussing how much he dislikes directing. If you'd shown me this twenty years ago when I'd only directed a short or two, I'd have thought he was kidding or drunk. But it really is as dispiriting a job as he says and I like the laconic, wry ease with which he patiently explains the reasons for his antipathy to his profession. This was shot in 1974 while he was in London, shooting a movie I've barely heard of called "The Black Windmill". I'd love to see the rest of this interview but the below minute is all that seems to exist on Youtube. I tried looking up Siegel's house address but could find nothing other than this  cool reminiscence ...

Why does Frank Sinatra make the strange nasal noise before singing the word "Downtown" in his recording of--er--"Downtown"? Is it a tribute to Jackie Gleason? Or is it Frank copping a feel of the trend du jour (circa mid-sixties) which was to make up weird noises when singing? I like to picture the guys in the booth while Frank is singing...the subtle but embarrassed looks at one another as the Chairman continues making the weird noise...the hushed conference about asking him for a take without the "nasal effect"...the drawing of straws to see who would actually take on the dreadful task of telling Frank he sounded weird...the final shrug of all present who decide: fuck it. If Frank likes it, we like it...   Subscribe in a reader

Here's a mini-doc (or excerpt from a longer one?) on the making of the famous final shoot-out in Sam Peckinpah's "The Wild Bunch." Among other things, it tells of how Peckinpah took a one line description of some action in the script and, thinking on his feet, developed one of the films truly iconic sections--the "long walk" taken by the principals. When people wonder what a director really does, I try to point to examples such as this. Directing is about looking deeply into the material at things that appear merely functional and finding ways to give them size--visually, metaphorically, thematically. I've also posted the final shoot-out itself which makes even more fascinating viewing than usual after watching the description of its making.   Subscribe in a reader

Here is an exceedingly rare view of the great director Rouben Mamoulian ("Love Me Tonight", "The Mark of Zorro", "Silk Stockings") speaking from his home in Beverly Hills in 1986, age 88.  Beside his innovative and still stylishly fascinating film work, Mamoulian also made theater history, directing the original productions of two seminal musical works of art, "Porgy And Bess" and "Oklahoma". And he's all but forgotten today. Jesus! I had the great good fortune of meeting Mamoulian in the early eighties at the home of film critic Arthur Knight. He was old-school gentlemanly, attired in jacket, scarf, hat and wielding a cigar. I remember asking him about several of his films and his saying one thing that particularly stuck with me. It had to do with "Silk Stockings", my favorite Fred Astaire film post Ginger Rogers. I don't remember what the question was but it must have had to do with process because I recall hi...

The wonderful New Yorker Magazine journalist Jane Kramer has written a wonderful New Yorker magazine piece about "Rob The Mob". It posted today in the on-line edition (which apparently outstrips the print edition by double the amount of readers--which doesn't bode well I'm afraid for the good old print edition) and I'm delighted to post it here. I'm especially pleased by this exposure because The New Yorker has been an important part of my life since I was a kid, but for mysterious reasons they've paid little or no attention to my films, barely reviewing them (except for a negative David Denby review of "City Island"--which didn't unduly depress me since Denby is almost always one-hundred percent wrong on every movie he reviews). But I've collected old New Yorkers for many years, going back as far as late 1920s editions, which are of particular interest to me. Just reading the nightclub and theater listings of the period (to say not...

Thank you, Kansascity.com, for this very good notice on "Rob The Mob". Will this movie play in Kansas? I wonder. Why not? Interest in the mob and in criminal activities in general are not limited to the denizens of the five boroughs. And, as we've opened in Seattle, the Seattle Times has weighed in . Ditto Boston, who has welcomed the film warmly (for the most part). And "Love and the Gun", the movie's "theme song" (music by Stephen Endelman, lyrics by yours truly) is in rotation on New York's WLIW AM station, soon to be branching out to FM and beyond this hemisphere. Here's the vid:   Subscribe in a reader

Below I've posted the full ninety-minute live television broadcast of "The Comedian", written by Rod Serling (based on a 'novelette' by Ernest Lehman), directed by John Frankenheimer and starring Mickey Rooney. The show was originally broadcast as part of the "Playhouse 90" anthology series on February 14th, 1957. In it, Rooney plays a wildly egomaniacal star TV comic who rants, rages and browbeats everyone around him. The show, which also features Mel Torme as Rooney's brother (!) as well as Edmond O'Brien and Kim Hunter, is a fascinating period piece rich with views of how early television worked and looked. Frankenheimer's staging and direction is wildly elaborate--even if the show hadn't been 'live' a lot of his set-ups, dollies and crane moves would have been hard to achieve. That the whole thing was accomplished in what amounts to a single ninety minute take is truly impressive. But I would be lying if I said that Roon...

A couple of extra press thingies that have been out their dangling for the last few days. Here's a radio interview I did (via cell phone)  with Andrea Chase. This piece is long but rewarding and is from Technology Tell. Dig this from the SF Gate . San Francisco? San Fernando? Sam Francis? They're not telling. And here' s a very nice review by Jackie K. Cooper that appeared on the Huffington Post. Mr. Cooper is not the same Jackie Cooper who became a child star due to his ability to cry very effectively. But I like the synergy of his name coinciding with the passing of another one-time child star Mickey Rooney. I guess it's as good a time as any for me to tell my Mickey Rooney story.  Here goes. It's the year 2000 and my film "Two Family House" has been invited (along with me) to the Deauville Film Festival, easily the most charming film festival I've ever been to. The Mayor Of Deauville traditionally gives a party for the filmmakers and s...

A fresh pile of 'Rob The Mob' reviews. Dig: This from the Philadelphia Daily News. And this from the Georgia Sentinel. Dig this from the San Francisco Bay Guardian. And finally this, from the all-too-appropriately named blog 'Way Too Indie'.   Subscribe in a reader

"Rob The Mob" expands to many more theaters this weekend--click here and go to the "tickets" section to see all the new venues. And a few new reviews are in. Dig Newsday's review . Long Island came through for us. And the San Francisco Chronicle rather likes us as well. The San Francisco Examiner has some quibbles, but I'm putting this in the plus column anyway. And in Miami, the internettishly-named Miami.com gives us four out of five...dots? coms? Here's a review that's worth a glance from Cinema Viewfinder. And dig this from the curiously named Moviesharkdeblore. Here's a nice gallery of photos from the movie from Mercury News. One of the real pleasures of having a movie with a 78% Tomatometer rating is finding the occasional isolated pan. As I generally only print reviews with which I agree (and fortunately that's been the case with most of them with this film), I hearby make the exception that proves the rule. Mee...

Committed readers of this blog (both of you) know of my penchant for exploring the residences of well-known filmmakers of the past. Previously I've taken you to the homes of, among others, Fritz Lang , Sidney Lumet, Billy Wilder and a host of others too numerous to mention (which means, of course, none--zero--that's it).  Today we will investigate the home of the great MGM musical (and dramatic) filmmaker Vincente Minelli, father of Liza, ex-husband of Judy. For many years I would drive by a large, dilapidated house that sits on the corner of Sunset Blvd. and Crescent Drive--the house is angled so as to be literally facing the Beverly Hills Hotel across the street--and wonder why the hell somebody didn't buy it and fix it up. Deep research on my part (in other words, screwing around on-line one afternoon) revealed to me that it was Minelli's home, purchased by the director in 1956. He died there in 1986 of emphysema (a very popular disease for old directors--thi...