Movies Til Dawn

"Jackpot" (1975) starring Richard Burton, James Coburn and Charlotte Rampling was one week away from being completed when it shut down due to lack of funds.  The unfinished film was, according to this article , about a once famous but now forgotten actor who "suddenly wins an Academy Award".  Or was it? According to this article , Burton played an actor who "fakes a grave illness in order to cash in on an insurance scam." Directed (almost) by Terence Young--he of the best three Bond movies and "Guns Of Navarone"--the movie was abandoned due to "financial difficulties". Or was it? Here's an article that says the movie finally got finished. So where is it? At some point Robert Mitchum was involved but he split early on (perhaps the financial difficulties had already begun?) to be replaced by Coburn while all the while Burton sat in a Vodka daze in his hotel room. Or did he? In the above very nice profile on the director, Young ...

Above I've posted an incredibly creepy video. It's a tour of Vincent Minnelli's abandoned and vandalized home on Sunset Blvd. in Beverly Hills. Truly a case of Hollywood Gothic, the video is all the more creepy given the circumstances it was made under; whoever our hosts are trespassed on the property to shoot the video. I don't know about you but one of my worst nightmares is the one where I realize that the house I'm walking around in doesn't belong to me and I've broken into somebody else's home. I both admire the commitment of the videographer who captured the Minelli disaster and am appalled by his nerve. Below I've reprinted a post I did a couple of years ago about the house and its sad journey: 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 did...