By Lee Pfeiffer

In Clint Eastwood's generally underrated 1975 thriller The Eiger Sanction, the macho actor/director took an admittedly neanderthal view of gay men. The villain of the piece, played by Jack Cassidy, is subject to every type of ugly stereotype imaginable. Although I haven't seen the film in years, I also recall Eastwood's character, in a cringe-inducing sequence, referring to a gay man as some sort of diseased miscreant. No word on whether Eastwood now regrets filming those scenes, but his views have evolved over the decades. In a recent interview with New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, Eastwood demonstrates he has a far more nuanced view of homosexuality. He favors gay marriage ("Why not?"), cites the importance of the Stonewall revolt and says that the modern definition of a gay relationship is no longer confined to sex acts. Eastwood also discusses his sensitive treatment of J. Edgar Hoover's alleged homosexuality. He doesn't believe Hoover ever consummated the act with his long-term male secretary, but believes they were genuinely in love. He also laughs at recent revelations that he was once considered to be a vice presidential running mate with the first President Bush. To read click here

On the Huffington Post, Zaki Hasan interviews Amanda Silver and Rick Jaffa, the married couple who wrote the screenplay for Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Click here to read

 

In a frank and illuminating interview in the Irish Times, Harrison Ford reflects on his life and career. With typical bluntness, he explains why he gets second billing to Daniel Craig in Cowboys & Aliens: "I'm not a leading man anymore. I'm a character actor. I've had my time." Ford's no-nonsense approach to evaluating his own career extends to clearing up myths about his early days in the industry. He was no pal of George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola: “I just worked with them a few times. I’ve only ever spent very small, finite periods of time with any of the people I work with.” Ford also says he's no film buff. He enjoys watching movies occasionally but isn't committed to the format in the way a fan would be. It's claimed his wife, Calista Flockhart has never even seen Star Wars. For more click here

By Harvey F. Chartrand

MICHAEL MORIARTY, who starred in such classic films as Who’ll Stop the Rain and Pale Rider, exiled himself to Canada in 1995, following a nasty confrontation with U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno in a Washington, D.C. hotel room. Moriarty was invited along with network television executives and producers to hear Reno’s views on censorship of TV violence. Law and Order, one of the least violent shows on television, was cited as a major offender. Incensed by Reno's campaign to “forcibly end violence on television and trample on rights of free expression as guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution,” Moriarty quit the series and left the U.S. in protest. He has been a landed immigrant in Canada ever since. Why the fateful encounter with Reno led to a radical (and seemingly overnight) transformation of Moriarty’s political views from soft liberal to hard-core conservative remains unexplained to this day. The onetime Manhattan über-liberal’s sudden shift to “gun-toting” arch-conservatism proved to be too much to fathom for his socialite wife Anne Hamilton Martin, and their seemingly ideal marriage ended after almost 20 years.

Moriarty was an up-and-comer in the early seventies. In 1973, he drew lavish praise for his back-to-back performances as a baseball player who befriends a dying teammate in Bang the Drum Slowly and as a cold-blooded Marine Duty Officer in The Last Detail. That same year, Moriarty starred in a TV-movie adaptation of Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie with Katharine Hepburn. Moriarty's role as the Gentleman Caller won him an Emmy Award for Best Supporting Actor of the Year. Moriarty then nabbed the 1974 Tony Award in the Best Actor category for his role as a young London homosexual with a blistering razor-sharp tongue in Find Your Way Home, beating out heavyweight competitors Zero Mostel, George C. Scott, Jason Robards and Nicol Williamson.

However, Moriarty’s bid for big-screen stardom was a complete failure. In 1975, he was cast as a rookie detective who unwittingly kills an undercover policewoman in the Serpico-like drama Report to the Commissioner. The film (now hailed as a masterpiece) was shredded by the critics, especially the influential Pauline Kael of The New Yorker, who dismissed Moriarty’s acting as unbridled hysteria. Roger Ebert described Moriarty’s performance as manic: “During whole stretches of the movie, (the rookie detective) seems to be in the grip of incomprehensible tensions and fears, and Moriarty makes these so obvious we wonder why he isn’t sent in for observation. Underplaying, providing just the slightest suggestion of inner terrors, would have made the performance more convincing.”

By necessity, Moriarty made the switch to television, appearing in series like The Equalizer with Edward Woodward and starring as a German SS officer in the landmark television miniseries Holocaust, which won him another Emmy. Moriarty was also unforgettable as an aggressive professional hockey player in The Deadliest Season, one of the greatest TV-movies about hockey ever made.

Through the 1980s, Moriarty started turning up in increasingly lurid fare such as Larry Cohen’s Q: The Winged Serpent, The Stuff, It's Alive 3: Island of the Alive and A Return to Salem's Lot. In 1986, Moriarty starred in the fantasy science-fiction movie Troll, playing the role of Harry Potter, Sr.! In the decades since, these films have all become cult classics. Moriarty is especially proud of his involvement in The Hanoi Hilton, a harrowing true story about the ordeal of American prisoners of war in North Vietnam’s most infamous prison during the Vietnam War.

Yet the role that Moriarty is still best remembered for is that of Assistant District Attorney Ben Stone in the first four seasons of Law and Order (1990-1994). Stone is an essentially humorless man of unflinching rectitude who believes in maximum enforcement of the law, but is open to plea bargaining if conditions warrant.

“In early 1994, I quit Law and Order and announced my departure in the Hollywood Reporter and Daily Variety,” Moriarty told Cinema Retro. “My employers, the mainstream press and even Wikipedia like to say that it was (executive producer) Dick Wolf who fired me and not the other way ‘round. People say: ‘Oh, well, no one fires Dick Wolf!’ Well, I did. At any rate, I had become an American dissident. I left for Canada not too long after that.”

After shedding his sleek Ben Stone persona, Moriarty moved to Toronto (and later Halifax and Vancouver) and became a radically different person – some described his behaviour as crazy or bipolar. At age 52, after a lifetime of discipline and abstemiousness, Moriarty began drinking and smoking heavily. The years of hard living were evident in the thickening of his features and a noticeable weight gain. His smooth-as-velvet voice became raspy from the constant intake of nicotine. The onetime exemplar of virtue on television even got into a few scrapes with the law. He was thrown into a Halifax drunk tank in 1997. In November 2000, Moriarty was arrested for assault after slapping his former girlfriend and manager Margaret Brychka during a drunken argument in a Vancouver bar. The charges were later dismissed in court.

The dark years passed and, through rigid adherence to the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and his abiding faith in the Roman Catholic Church, Moriarty was able to lay his demons to rest. He says he has been clean and sober since 2003.

“Canada’s AA fraternity and their infinite faith in the power of God have brought me to a calm and utterly sober joy in life I had never thought possible,” Moriarty said.

Until 2006, Moriarty continued his acting career from his home base in Maple Ridge, British Columbia, where he lives with his lady friend Irene Mettler. Since relocating to Canada, the former star of Law and Order appeared in a steady stream of movies and TV shows, notably the hard-edged police drama Major Crime, Psi Factor: Chronicles of the Paranormal, Emily of New Moon, Crime of the Century, Courage Under Fire, Children of the Dust (with Sidney Poitier), The Arrow, Earthquake in New York, James Dean (Moriarty won an Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie as Dean’s father), Taken (in the UFO TV mini-series premiere episode directed by Tobe Hooper) and director Larry Cohen’s Pick Me Up episode of Masters of Horror.

Now 70, Moriarty is semi-retired from acting, mainly due to health concerns following open-heart surgery and the lingering effects of serious injuries sustained during a savage beating at a Maple Ridge tavern in 2002. Moriarty’s last completed film to date is the still unreleased The Yellow Wallpaper, in which he plays a mysterious realtor. Lensed in Georgia in 2006, The Yellow Wallpaper is loosely based on the famous horror story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

 

Here's a link to an insightful article from January that appeared in the Los Angeles Times: Kim Darby and Glen Campbell recalling their experience working on the original 1969 classic True Grit with John Wayne.

 

 

Stephen Bowie, who runs the excellent retro web site The Classic TV History Blog, has a fascinating interview with character actor Harry Landers, who worked with Hitchcock and DeMille, as well as featured in countless memorable TV series. Click here to read

Paramount Home Video has released Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments in a restored, Blu-ray edition. Painstakingly restored by Ron Smith and his team, the film has been can now be seen in its original magnificence. Cinema Retro Editor-in-Chief Lee Pfeiffer discussed this project and other aspects of Charlton Heston’s career with his son, filmmaker Fraser Heston.

Cinema Retro: The year 2011 is shaping up to be a great time for Charlton Heston fans. There are some very high profile releases of his major films. What do you attribute that to?

Fraser Heston: Much of it is due to my own hard work trying to get some of these titles out. In all seriousness, The Ten Commandments and Ben-Hur are both coming out in April. I think it’s a coincidence that the new technology has come around so much that it allows you to go back and restore these films in such a manner as to allow you see these films in ways you haven’t enjoyed them before. For example, Paramount really broke new ground with The Ten Commandments. It looks great.

CR: The credit goes to Ron Smith at Paramount and his team.

FH: Yes, they have done stuff at high resolutions that has never been done before with more lines per frame than anything like it. I saw it projected on a very large screen at the Egyptian Theatre and it looked phenomenal. Obviously, the colors looked great and it was pristine. The grain in each shot was very fine. I’d like to think the restoration looks like the answer print that C.B. first screened for Paramount. Even when you see a first-run movie in a theater, you’re not seeing a print made from the negative. You’re seeing a print made from an inter-negative, which is several generations down the line. So, in essence, the restoration allows you to be virtually sitting next to C.B. looking at his first answer print.

 

CR: It must give you satisfaction to see your father’s legacy so much in the forefront recently.

FH: It does. You know somebody asked me the other day if I was ever disappointed that he was primarily associated with The Ten Commandments and Ben-Hur. The answer is no. Those films became a major part of our family history and we’re very proud of those films and I know dad was, too. They made his career and I think it’s wonderful that we can see these come out again. The same sort of technology can be applied to his other films like Antony and Cleopatra, Mother Lode and Treasure Island and the Bible series that we’re also coming out with next month.

CR: I’m happy to hear that because some of these films like Mother Lode, I haven’t seen in many years.

FH: Neither had I. When I watched Mother Lode and Antony and Cleopatra the other day, I was blown away. We did the frame-by-frame restoration of both of those films from the original negatives and I got take part in that process. I sat there for every single frame. It’s amazing what they can do. I haven’t seen the Blu-ray versions yet, but even the standard DVD version is so much better.

CR: Although your father won the Oscar for Ben-Hur, would you say that The Ten Commandments was the film that was most important because it elevated him to major stardom?

FH: It certainly started him on that path. I was re-reading his journals for a documentary we’re preparing about my dad. So I went back and scanned those journals day-by-day back to 1957. (Note: Heston kept a journal of his experiences on every film set. The journal was published in book form as The Actor’s Life.- Ed.) I went back to his original pages, so there was a lot of stuff I hadn’t read before. He felt The Ten Commandments hadn’t quite put him in that stratosphere yet. That was surprising to me, because it was one of the most successful films of all time. It certainly helped him get the role of Ben-Hur, which he won the Academy Award for. That certainly cemented it, if you will.

In a terrific, in-depth interview with entertainment writer Brad Balfour, the legendary Robert Duvall talks about his career-topping performance in Get Low (which Oscar inexplicably snubbed), running his independent production company and his dream of playing Don Quixote for Terry Gilliam. Click here to read

If you haven't seen the remarkable film Get Low, click here to order from Amazon

 

In one of his most in-depth and interesting interviews, Clint Eastwood talks to London's Daily Mail about viewing life at age 80. He admits he thinks more about the frailty of his life nowadays, but it doesn't slow him down. His latest film Hereafter is just opening in the UK and he is about to begin work on a big screen biopic of J. Edgar Hoover. Among his observations:

• He was raised as a church-goer, but eventually gave it up, preferring meditation to any established religion.
• He jokes about his age, saying that there would be no point in going to a school reunion because there wouldn't be anyone else to show up.
• He's somewhat conservative and voted for John McCain, though paradoxically he has nothing against Barack Obama and opposed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
• He says people still want him to revive the character of Dirty Harry
• He recalls his early days in show business and his friendships with Elvis Presley, James Dean and Steve McQueen.

Eastwood also elaborates on the bizarre offer extended to him to play James Bond (he wisely turned it down):

‘I love London,’ says Eastwood. ‘I guess it’s in my genes. My dad was Scots/English and my mother was Irish. It’s funny, but years ago when Sean Connery left the James Bond pictures the producers contacted me and asked if I would like to be James Bond.

'I’d been doing all those Westerns, so it was flattering to be asked, and they offered quite a bit of money. But I told them I thought they should have a Brit; I was so associated with Americana. I said, “I don’t think that’s good casting.” It would have been fun to do it once but it would have been a very bad move." To read click here 

 

 

For decades, Richard Chamberlain was the quintessential romantic leading man as well as a star of action films. He was the first actor to portray secret agent Jason Bourne and he made women swoon with his leading role in The Thorne Birds. There had been rumors in the industry for many years that Chamberlain was secretly gay but it wasn't until he was in his sixties that he confirmed that fact in his autobiography. In a revealing interview with the gay-themed web site The Advocate, Chamberlain discusses how progress has been made in some areas in terms of actors being able to come out of the closet. Tellingly, however, he still advises that it probably is a poor career move in terms of getting meaningful roles as a leading man. And by the way, Chamberlain is still offering a reward to anyone who can prove that his boyish good looks are the result of plastic surgery! Click here to read.

 

With the 25th anniversary DVD of Back to the Future in release through Universal, actress Lea Thompson spoke to the New York Times about her role in the original film and its sequels, playing the goody-two-shoes 1950s teenager who confronts her own offspring before he is born.

Click here to read

 

The BBC Radio program Last Word interviews author, filmmaker and Cinema Retro writer Matthew Field about the life and career of screenwriter Tom Mankiewicz, who passed away last week. James Bond producer Michael G. Wilson also reminisces about working with Mankiewicz on several 007 hits. Click here to listen. (The Mankiewicz segment begins at approximately 5:50 in the program)

 

Cinema Retro columnist Steve Saragossi has launched an exciting new film-related blog, The Screen Lounge. Steve already has a coup: an exclusive interview with acclaimed character actor Ed Lauter, whose talents have enhanced such memorable films as Magic, The Longest Yard, Hickey and Boggs, Executive Action and so many more. Click here to read

In a revealing and candid interview, legendary film critic Roger Ebert's wife Chaz gives insights into how the couple has thrived despite Roger's life-threatening illness. Click here to read

Laurie Broder of the web site About.com interviews Cinema Retro contributor Tom Santpietro about his acclaimed book Considering Doris Day. Click here to read

Click here to watch a recent British Film Institute interview with director John Landis, the man behind National Lampoon's Animal House, The Blues Brothers and An American Werewolf in London.

In a fascinating article on The Huffington Post, writer Patricia Zohn interviews legendary dancer Marge Champion, who, as a teenager, was one of the living models hired by Walt Disney to inspire his famed group of artists who were working on the land-breaking Snow White feature film. Marge, who went on to marry Gower Champion, is now 90 years old and provides fascinating, first-hand insights into the process of making this masterpiece. Click here to read.

By Lee Pfeiffer

There have been precious few film critics with the reputation of Richard Schickel. If he seems an omnipresent aspect of virtually every classic film discussion, it's because he represents the Golden Age of movie criticism. Schickel's long and impressive career has made him a legend in his own right, but his talents extend beyond writing. He's also an award-winning filmmaker. Schickel has occasionally found inspiration in his long-time friendship with Clint Eastwood as the basis for documentaries. His TV special that chronicled the making of Unforgiven was the first in-depth look at how Eastwood approaches filmmaking. Now, Schickel has created a new documentary- The Eastwood Factor - that is available as part of Warner Brothers' new DVD collection dedicated to the iconic star and director. The set contains every film Eastwood has made for Warner Brothers and Schickel's documentary provides the perfect companion piece. The film takes Eastwood on a trip down memory lane, with visits to the Warner's studio lot where he made so many movies. To commemorate the release of the documentary, Warner Home Video arranged an exclusive interview with Richard Schickel. 

CR: When you first saw the Sergio Leone trilogy in the 1960s, you weren’t very impressed with the films or Eastwood…

RS:  When I first saw those films, I didn’t care for them but I now care for them very greatly. Historically they became incredibly important in the western film genre. I also just like the movies:  they’re smart, they’re funny, they’re weird. They’re extraordinarily good movies, but I didn’t notice that at the time because in those days I was a traditionalist.

CR: When did you first meet Clint Eastwood?

RS: In 1976, after the release of The Outlaw Josey Wales. The friendship just developed the way friendships do. There was nothing magical about it. When I first saw Josey Wales, I thought it was a terrific movie.  I liked the theme of the movie: the rescue and reconstruction of troubled and hard-pressed people. I had missed the whole Dirty Harry factor initially after Pauline Kael had said it was fascist.  I think I was kind of misled by that.  Instinctively, I liked the movie, but then I thought “I shouldn’t like this movie!” (Laughs). I revisited the film not too long after that and found a lot of virtue in the character.

CR: Ironically, in recent years, you’ve become sort of a Boswell to Eastwood’s Dr. Johnson.

RS: I don’t know about that. I just like the guy and he likes me. We get along in a casual, male bonding sort of way.  That isn’t to say I don’t admire many of his films. Unlike most actors, he greatly expanded his range and work in films like Tightrope and especially with Unforgiven. He also did movies that were not very commercial like Bird and White Hunter, Black Heart. More recently, he’s undertaken movies that most directors of his age wouldn’t think about undertaking – even if they were able to. It’s a classic example of an older man doing his best work.  It’s certainly unusual in the movie business. Most older directors fall into silence or irrelevance.  Eastwood doesn’t just screw off. He chooses fairly difficult topics. He proceeds with them in a rational way.  He’s not subject to “celebrity follies” of one sort or another.

CR: It’s interesting that, like John Ford,  Eastwood has acquired somewhat of a stock company he prefers to work with.

RS:  Yes, Joel Cox has been editing for him for twenty years. The same with the cameraman Jack Green.  Eastwood talks about that. He says it’s much easier to work with someone you’ve known for many years. You don’t even need to communicate verbally- you just point your finger or give a nod and the guy knows what to do.  When you’re on one of Clint’s sets, you’re not aware of him doing any heavy duty directing.  He’s there for the actors, if they have a question or something like that. He believes that if you have the right person in the part, you really don’t have to do very much.

By Lee Pfeiffer

It's rather ironic that the most impressive and insightful Quentin Tarantino interview we've seen in a long while should come on MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show. Maddow generally doesn't deviate from her nightly opinion program about political issues - and she admits to Tarantino that she's never seen one of his films in its entirety because of the violent content. Nevertheless, Tarantino, who is deprived of his penchant for dropping four letter words, is far more articulate and interesting than when he does indulge in that habit. In an extended and intelligent discussion of Inglourious Basterds, the Oscar-nominated director traces the origins of the film to the days of the Old West. He explains that he has been fascinated by the concept that a much smaller group of fighting men can terrify large armies if they use sufficiently brutal tactics. He cites the Apache's ability to fight the U.S. Cavalry to a standstill for years using this method. He also says he watched many Nazi-era propaganda films produced by Goebbels in researching his movie. He correctly points out that, while some of these contained horrible anti-Semitic messages, the majority were feel-good, Hollywood-like musicals and costume dramas because the Nazi propaganda minister fancied himself a major film talent. To watch click here

An alert from reader Wes Britton:

On Tuesday, Feb. 2, Bill Marx will be the featured guest on KSAV’s broadcast of “Dave White Presents.” Bill will discuss life with his famous father (Harpo Marx), his famous mother (the girl with the “Million Dollar Legs”), his legendary uncles (Groucho, Chico, Zeppo, Gummo), not to mention Bill’s own musical career which included working with his Dad. And, of course, we’ll talk about Bill’s new book, Son of Harpo Speaks, now available as an audiobook Bill read himself for Bear Manor Media. You don’t have to be a Marx Brothers fan to enjoy this one—Bill Marx is more than entertaining in his own right!

Competing with Bill for your smiles and laughs will be one Dave White who promises to be more “predictably unpredictable” than usual, if that’s possible. We’ll hear a new “Poor David’s Almanac,” comic songs from years past, and new products from Dave’s questionable sponsors. 

Altogether, this will be a very special occasion not only due to our guest of honor, but because, for the very first time, listeners can catch the debut airing of the 90 minutes of variety entertainment at one of two times. Starting with this program, “Dave White Presents” will air at 7:30 p.m. EST and then later at 7:30, Pacific Time over—

www.KSAV.org

As always, if you’re busy Tuesday evening, the program will become available for 24/7 download access on Wednesday, Feb. 3 at—

www.audioentertainment.org/dwp

So there’s no reason to miss this one—you bet your life!

(Click here to read Nick Thomas' exclusive interview with Bill Marx for Cinema Retro)

Cinema Retro is proud to present the concluding part of writer Kris Gilpin's 1988 interview with director Monte Hellman. 

KG: Now to my favorite: Two-Lane Blacktop.  Like author Rudy Wurlitzer, you’ve used the road-movie or searcher motif in many of your films.  From where did you get this affinity?

 MH: I don’t know; when I was a film student the only book I read which had any lasting effect on me was Kracauer’s Theory of Film, Or the Redemption of Physical Reality.  He makes a case for the Road Movie being the only valid form of cinema; any film that takes place within four walls without any relationship to the street outside is a play, not a film.  So for him La Strada is the ultimate film.  That was an idea which stuck with me.  I didn’t choose Beast from Haunted Cave – there was a basic idea which existed before I became involved with it – but it’s a road movie; it’s a trek across the mountains on skis – a band of robbers escaping from a mine robbery with the loot on a ski trip.  So that was a trek; the two Westerns are treks; the two Philippine pictures are treks; Two-Lane Blacktop is a trek; Cockfighter is not a trek a circle – they go around [in a circle] from one cockpit to another.  Iguana is not a trek, but it is also a circle.

KG: After Easy Rider, the industry was selling Two-Lane as the second coming, what with the screenplay publication in Esquire and all.  Do you think it was a case of over-hype which caused its initial “failure” at the box office?

MH: No, it was a case of a different philosophy.  I think Easy Rider was a film which was not offensive to the status quo because what it put down was a part of the status quo that everybody condemned.  It wasn’t critical of the way studio executives live their lives; it was critical of Southern bigots, so everybody could get behind that.  Two-Lane Blacktop was critical of middle-class morality – for want of a better term – it was critical of the way the average person lived his life, and the studio executives were offended by it, and they killed the film.  It didn’t die a natural death, it was murdered.

KG: By the lack of publicity, right.  I was shocked to read in Danny Peary’s Cult Movies that Laurie Bird (who played The Girl) had died; I didn’t know that.  When and how did she die?

MH: She died in, I guess, ’79, of an overdose of Valium.

 

.

KG: What was Dennis Wilson (as The Mechanic) like to work with?

MH: Of the whole group, I think Dennis really was the most instinctive actor.  James [Taylor, who played The Driver] was very serious about the work, as he is with everything in his life, and very dedicated it and very professional, but Dennis may be, I think, the only actor I’ve ever worked with who’s totally unaware of the camera; he was absolutely at home [in front of the camera].

KG: Totally unpretentious?

MH: It wasn’t even unpretentious; he was just unconscious of it, unconscious of the fact that he was performing in a way, and he would get into a scene and he would just start living it.  He would get lost in the reality of the moment and you can see it in his face; you can watch him and the way he’s watching what’s going on in a scene, and he’s totally transfixed by it.  He became it; it’s just an amazing thing.  I’ve never seen anything like it.

KG: It seems to me that the majors (Two-Lane was a Universal picture) would rarely make a character-based film like that today, unless there were cute little, flying aliens in it or something like that. 

MH: The films that they make today are so full of artificiality and shtick, they don’t bear much resemblance to any of the kinds of films that were made in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s.

KG: That must also, obviously, be one of the reasons you take the time to try and find the projects that interest you.

 MH: Well, I have a lot of things which interest me but most of the things I like don’t interest distributors and producers. 

KG: Two-Lane ends with a famous optical shot, in which the film slows down, and is then made to look like it gets caught in the projector before it breaks down and burns.  Was there any intent behind that other than it’s being a neat optical effect?

MH: Well, basically I’m a very instinctual, emotional kind of director; I’m not an intellectual in most of what I do.  In that instance, I let my intellect impose a choice that was purely intellectual, that I hoped would be transformed into an emotional affect on the audience; I didn’t know that it would be and I was very hesitant about using it because of the way that it evolved.  But what I was trying to do was make a relationship between the speed of cars on the road and the speed of film going through the gate of a projector; I hoped it would work and I guess it did, because a lot of people are moved by it, as I ultimately was, too.

KG: Was that Rudy Wurlitzer’s idea or yours?

MH: That was my idea.

KG: Why isn’t Two-Lane out on video again?  I still see that question in video magazines all the time.

MH: Well, for the same reason a lot of other films aren’t; it’s because of music rights.  At that time they didn’t anticipate video, so they didn’t specifically put video into the contract, so in order to put it on video all those songs would have to be renegotiated, and it would cost a fortune.  I think it’s very unlikely it’ll ever come out.

KG:  God, that’s a shame.  It’s doubly ironic, too, because as I was first watching the film I got an eerie feeling that something was off-kilter or missing, and slowly I realized it was because there was no background music, no mood music in the film, not by Taylor or the Beach Boys or anyone.  The only tunes were incidental, playing on a car radio or jukebox in a scene, and when the scene cut away, so did the music.  I thought that was a brilliant tough of verisimilitude.

MH: I did the same thing in Iguana, as a matter of fact, with one exception, which was the opening and closing credits, in which we used a song [sung by Joni Mitchell] that was not source music.  But in every other place it was all source music.

KG: How did Corman recut Cockfighter and why?

MH: He added two 20-second segments of dream sequence; it was something that had nothing to do with the movie- cop cars getting blown up and naked girls.  The reason was, he wanted to have material for a trailer and he didn’t want to cheat, so he wanted it to be footage that was in the film.  It was very offensive, and he cut the three-minute porch scene.  [It caused a rift between us] at that time.  [Eventually] the uncut version came out probably because – although I don’t know for sure – [L.A. cable channel] the Z Channel insisted on it, which meant that the video in general became that version, and also the version that’s played on cable. 

KG: Warren Oates was mute through most of the film; was his character that way in the book, not wanting to speak until he won the big fight?

 MH: Yeah, that’s the character.  Warren pretended like it was the easiest job he eve had; he said, “Wow, I don’t have any dialogue to learn?  Fantastic!   They’re overpaying me.”  [Smiles]

KG: How do you think it stands up today?

MH: Well, it’s no secret, I guess, that it’s one of my least favorite of my films and the reason is, it’s the only time I haven’t been able to do the work on the script that I would like to have done.  In every other film I’ve made I’ve been able to create the script that I wanted; in that case it was Roger’s baby and he hired me to do it with the production already in place, with a start date and everything.  I told him I wanted to do some work on the script and he said, “O.K.” and I hired Earl Mac [Buckaroo Banzai, Wired] Rauch to come in and work on the script.  We worked for a week and Roger saw a sample of what he was doing and he became panicked; he thought we were ruining his baby, so he said, “O.K.  You’ve just got one more week and that’s it.”  I’d planned to go through the script methodically from beginning to end, and Mac worked on the first 10 or 15 pages; at that point, when Roger pulled the plug, I decided to have Mac, in the remaining week, just do the key scenes that I thought needed the most work.  So he basically did everything relating to Warren’s relationship with his girlfriend in the film.

KG: What are your thoughts today on China 9, Liberty 37?

MH: I like it.  When you start making analogies between one film and another, I think that every film is different and that, essentially, my style changes with the nature of the material.  I think China 9’s certainly the most romantic film I’ve made, and I like it.

KG: What was it like directing Sam Peckinpah in a small part in that film?

MH: He was [laughs] very difficult to work with.  He wouldn’t finish a sentence; we would say three words and then stop.  I literally had to piece his performance together.  He was ornery as hell but we were very good friends without really ever spending a lot of time together; there was a great affection between us, and he was an amazing man, really amazing.  I think he was one of the great American directors for sure.

KG: How were you involved with his Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (also written by Rudy Wurlitzer)?

MH: I was the original director and I developed the project, and had worked out with Rudy Wurlitzer the basic idea of the film, which was unique I think in Billy the Kid stories, in that it dealt with the only period in the history of Billy the Kid that nobody knew anything about.  He literally disappeared from the time he escaped from jail until the time he was shot and so, rather than repeat any of the known history of Billy the Kid, Rudy and I decided to develop a picture that could be completely fictional because it was about a time [of] which nobody knew the real story.

As Cinema Retro 'regulars'  know, we have occasionally been able to find unpublished or rarely-seen interviews with legendary film personalities and provide them for our readers. In issue #1 of the magazine, Steve Mori provided an unseen interview Steve McQueen from 1968 and in issue #15, Steve did the same with a fascinating 1974 discussion with Lee Marvin. Now contributing writer Kris Gilpin has been kind enough to share with us with a 1988 interview with director Monte Hellman, whose work is revered by some of the great directors of our time. Please keep in mind that the text and events that are discussed in this interview took place in 1988 and have not been amended. (This is part one of a two-part interview.)

INTERVIEW WITH MONTE HELLMAN

By Kris Gilpin

Born July 12^th, 1932 in New York City, writer-director Monte Hellman’s work is miles above typical American drivel; while working in various traditional genres (war, western, road film, etc.), he has produced a series of very personal character studies, while still remaining true to the genre within which each film is set.  And his films have a definite European flavor to them; in fact, he still has a huge following in Europe – with Monte Hellman film festivals constantly being held there – despite the fact that his last feature (the western China 9, Liberty 37, starring the late, great Warren Oates, Jenny [An American Werewolf in London] Agutter and Italian superstar Fabio Testi) was released a decade ago.

After studying theater at Stanford University and film at UCLA, Hellman spent three years acting and directing in summer stock before landing his first gig in film, as the assistant editor on the Richard Boone TV series, Medic.  He quit that job to return to directing plays for a theatre company he founded, then accepted an offer from B-movie mogul Roger Corman (who had invested in his theatre company); Hellman’s first film, Beast from Haunted Cave, was shot back-to-back with Corman’s Ski Troop Attack in North Dakota, using the same cast, crew and locations.  He then helped finish a number of films for Corman, one of which was the infamous The Terror, starring Boris Karloff, Jack Nicholson and Dick Miller, a film they all made up as they went along.

Next, Hellman shot two films back-to-back in the Philippines, Back Door to Hell, a war story with Nicholson and country singer Jimmie Roders, and Flight to Fury, a film noir starring, and written by, Jack Nicholson.  (Hellman, who always edits his own pictures, was cutting Back Door at night, while directing Flight during the day.)

His international fame came in 1967, with a pair of westerns filmed in Utah (once again back-to-back): the existentialist, purposely vague The Shooting (with Nicholson and Oates) and equally existential Ride in the Whirlwind (with Cameron Mitchell and Nicholson, who once again wrote the script).  Four years later I first saw Hellman’s subtle cult masterpiece, Two-Lane Blacktop (which featured Oates in a superb performance, the late Beach Boy drummer-singer Dennis Wilson and songwriter James Taylor, in his only starring role), and I’ve been in love with road movies ever since that day.  The film’s screenplay, by Rudy (Candy Mountain – another road film – and Walker) Wurlitzer and Will Cory, was so impressive it was published in its entirety before the film’s release in Esquire magazine.  This was followed by Cockfighter (aka Born to Kill), again starring Warren Oates, this time with Harry Dean Stanton; the film was recut by producer Roger Corman and not seen its original form until several years later.

Now Monte Hellman is back with Iguana, the story of Oberlus, a sailor from the early 19^th Century who is persecuted due to the lizard-like scales, which deform half of his face and neck (Oberlus is played by Everett [Quest for Fire, Silver Bullet] McGill).  He flees to a desert island, where he declares war on mankind, capturing castaway sailors and cutting off the fingers and heads of the “slaves” who disobey him.  When Carmen (Maru Valdivielso), a beautiful/sexy Spanish libertine, comes to the island, the two of them eventually play out a twisted version of Beauty and the Beast (the film also features Fabio Testi in a supporting role).

Hellman was kind enough to give me a friendly, long interview on Saturday October 29^th, 1988, in his Los Angeles home.  I met his pretty daughter, Melissa, and marveled at the framed stills and lobby cards adorning the walls and bookshelves (early stills of Nicholson, John Ford [with Hellman], Sam Peckinpah [who acted in Hellman’s China 9], Martin Landau, Millin [The Shooting, Ride in the Whirlwind] Perkins, the late Laurie Bird [from Two-Land Blacktop, as the hitchhiker who unknowingly breaks up the cross-country race between Warren Oates and James Taylor, and she was also in Cockfighter]; a foreign lobby card for La Sparatoria [The Shooting], a Japanese lobby card for Two-Lane, etc.  And you can still hear the loss in his voice when Hellman recalls his old friends Oates and Bird).  Many thanks to Monte Hellman (who has always been a favorite filmmaker of mine) for giving me such a complete interview that day.

 

Empire On-Line has a rare interview with iconic director Nicolas Roeg, who reflects on his most famous films and discusses his plans for future productions. Click here to read. 

By Spencer Lloyd Peet

In 1977, Clint Eastwood was cast as himself; not in a Hollywood blockbuster movie but as a life-size portrait sculpture.  Renowned sculptor, Doreen Kern, immortalised Eastwood in bronze on the request of his then wife Maggie Johnson who asked for it to be made as a surprise gift for the Hollywood superstar.  During her stay at the Eastwood’s home, Kern vigilantly studied Eastwood’s face and expressions making notes as he went about his daily business.  Eastwood suspected nothing as the ladies chatted amongst themselves.

Kern first met Johnson, a former swim-wear model, in 1974 when she came to London.  Because Johnson didn’t really know anybody in London, but a mutual friend of theirs, Connie De Nave, who was in the music business working in New York at the time, suggested the two ladies should get together.  “I spoke to Connie on the phone,” remembers Kern, “and she said ‘A friend of mine, Maggie Eastwood, is coming to London and I think it would be nice for you to meet up with her.  You know, Maggie Eastwood, Clint Eastwood’s wife.’ I hope it doesn’t sound detrimental, but I really didn’t know who Clint Eastwood was back then.  When I told my children they said, ‘Oh, mother, what planet are you on?’  Anyway,” continues Kern, “I spent some time with Maggie and took her to the theater.  We had a really enjoyable time together.”  Eastwood was directing The Eiger Sanction, at that time and he also played the main character, Dr. Jonathan Hemlock, a former professor of art and an assassin who is forced out of retirement to track down the killer of an old friend.   Much of the filming - in which Eastwood performed his own stunts - took place on snow-covered mountains and involved some risky mountaineering.  During her visit, Johnson told Kern that Eastwood was extremely upset by the death of David Knowles, a stunt-climber who, within a few days of shooting, was killed instantly after being hit on the head by a falling bolder. Eastwood wanted to quit production but was persuaded to carry on filming by the other professional mountaineers who were working on the film.

Interview by Nick Thomas

 

It’s been 60 years since the Marx Brothers – Groucho, Chico, Harpo – officially appeared together in their last feature film, Love Happy. Although fans have little “love” for it and the brothers were not “happy” making it, the film did provide some enjoyable moments showcasing Harpo’s silent talents.

Along with brothers Zeppo and Gummo, the five Marx Brothers grew up in New York. Gummo dropped out of the act and the four brothers traveled the country as stage performers before taking Hollywood by storm, starting with Cocoanuts in 1929.  Straight man Zeppo eventually bailed too, and the three remaining brothers went on to become arguably the greatest comedy team ever.  

Between them, the five brothers raised a dozen children and a few went into the entertainment business. Now 72, Bill Marx (one of Harpo’s four children; see www.sonofharpospeaks.com) had a successful career as a musician, composer, comic, speaker, and writer. He talks at length about life with Harpo and his brothers, concluding the interview by paraphrasing his Uncle Groucho’s biting sarcasm! 

 

You recently published a book, “Son of Harpo Speaks!” What’s it about?

It’s not really a book about the Marx Brothers. It chronicles my relationship with my dad and our working together for 12 years.  My stories have never been told before and I guess I’m one of the last people left who actually worked with the Marx Brothers first hand. I’m just finishing up an audio book of Son of Harpo Speaks! that should be available soon. It contains material that nobody’s heard before. 

Tell us about your career.

I’m what you’d call a sit down - stand up -sit down - stand up comic! I sit down, play the piano, then stand up and tell stories, then sit down again and so on. Then I do Q&A sessions. I’ve been a composer and jazz pianist most of my life - doing film scores, symphonic writing, and arranging. I’ve played with many of the great jazz artists of the twentieth century.

Did Harpo influence your musical career?

Absolutely. When I was 2 years old, he recognized my musical ability, but he never forced anything on me. I was not a disciplined young musician - I hated scales and lessons. I wanted to play baseball! 

The two of you worked together, correct?

Yes. When I was 16, I wound up as his personal arranger and conductor. We did two albums together for Mercury Records. When he appeared on TV programs like The Lucy Show, he often played the harp and I did all the musical arrangements for him. I was only in my late teens then, so he helped validate me as a composer and musician.

Do you play the harp?

No. Dad used to say “one harpist in the family is enough!”  I have written a couple of concertos for the harp and did all the pop arrangements for my dad later in his career.

Did Harpo play the harp at home for the family much?

Not really, he’d play to practice. He loved to practice; he’d do it for 2-3 hours a day whether he was working or not. He just loved the harp – its feeling, its sensuality, the vibrations, and the harmony and sounds of the chords. The harps you see in the films were his personal instruments.

What happened to his harps? They would be priceless Hollywood memorabilia today.

When he passed away, my mother and I went to Israel and donated them to the Rubin Academy of Music [now the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance]. Students are still playing them, which is wonderful. 

What about his other old movie props, have they been saved?

I have a lot of stuff – his prop chest, his coat, his hat, wigs. I’m looking for a place to have it all displayed. I turned down the Smithsonian because I don’t want it stored in a vault. These are pieces of American film history and they need to be on permanent display somewhere.

What happed to his famous walking stick with the honker?

My sister has that. But it doesn’t work any more because the bulb has worn out over the years.

Do you have a favorite Marx Brothers film?

It’s Go West, only because I thought dad was phenomenal in it. It was written by a great friend, Irving Brecher who just passed away. He was one of the funniest guys ever. I recommend reading his book, The Wicked Wit of the West, which is full of delightful stories. I also love Monkey Business and A Night in Casablanca. The Big Store was the first Marx Brothers movie I saw when I was 4 or 5. I love the scene where dad is playing the instruments in front of the mirrors. It’s very charming.

 

If you missed this interview from September 2008, here is Robert Vaughn on The O'Reilly Factor. He discusses The Man From U.N.C.L.E., The Magnificent Seven and his working relationship with Steve McQueen. O'Reilly's questions are intelligent, but once again one of his celebrity segments is undone by the awful, rapid-fire editing in these segments that accentuates film clips and leaves the guest talking in brief sound bites. Click here to view 

THIS ARTICLE WAS UPDATED ON AUGUST 24

Cinema Retro London correspondent Mark Mawston recently caught up with director John Landis to discuss his classic horror film.

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Friday 26^th June 09 was a sad day for many as they woke up to the news of Michael Jackson’s untimely passing. Although tributes were many and were omnipresent on TV and radio, the image that seemed to represent the high point in the singer’s career and resonate with fans and general public alike was his epic ‘Thriller’ video. Probably the most famous and influential music video ever, the landmark film was directed by the incomparable John Landis. On the day of Jackson’s death, Landis was in London to attend the Curzon Soho’s ‘Midnight Movies’ tribute to him with a rare screening of An American Werewolf In London. As usual, the Curzon staff had made a splendid effort, this time creating a theme at the cinema’s bar around the Slaughtered Lamb pub which features in the film, as well as dressing as having characters from the film on hand, too.  The ticket-holding attendees again showed that an Englishman (or woman) never need to be asked twice to dress up, as several of the films most memorable creations seemed to be present and correct. There was even a fully blown lycanthrope that appeared to be stalking the aisles and dancing to the house band in the foyer as the ‘Nightmare Demon’ in full trench coat (on one of the warmest nights of  recent years) prowled the bar looking for American tourists with backpacks (see Mike Strick’s site just to see how much goes into the creation of these monsterpieces).

As the band played, Landis signed a limited amount of copies of the new book detailing his career, which includes essays on such cinematic gems as Animal House, Kentucky Fried Movie, The Blues Brothers, Trading Places, the hugely underrated Into the Night and the aforementioned ‘Thriller’. Kim Newman was on hand to ask the questions in his own inimitable manner, and we were also graced by the presence of John’s wife Deborah and the ever-glamorous Jenny Agutter, who was the female lead in American Werewolf. One of the high points on the night for this writer occurred when Agutter turned up to the strains of ‘Moondance’ by Van Morrison, still looking as though she had just slipped out of the nurse’s costume that many hold so close to their heart. Despite John Landis’ enormous success as a director,  it’s wonderful to see that he is still a fan boy at heart. He was just as enthused about my story in Cinema Retro #14 regarding clearing Ray Harryhausen’s garage as he was about answering the questions about movies he’d made.  

Of course, it was the stories behind his wonderful films that we were all interested in and it was a fascinating experience delving into the Landis treasure trove of iconic cinematic moments. He confirmed that it felt surreal to be sitting in The Curzon which borders Piccadilly in the heart of London where the famous finale to American Werewolf in London had taken place (Ironically, the musical of Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ plays a few doors down). He said he had very fond memories of the area, especially the sequence from the film that was shot in a nearby cinema in which the decomposing Jack visits his friend David as the wonderful parody of a British 70’s porn movie plays (it’s title See You Next Wednesday is a trademark of  Landis which appears in most of his films). Landis told me, “I spent a great deal of time at that cinema when I was over here as one of the fourteen or so writers on The Spy Who Loved Me. I would disappear and head for that cinema as they showed a lot of Tex Avery cartoons, which I’m a big fan of. Cubby thought I was insane!”  

 

Here's a real gem sent to us by reader Graham in the UK: Clint Eastwood in 1967 promoting the UK release of his "new" Italian western, A Fistful of Dollars. Click here to view

The American Archive of Television has a fascinating recent interview with Robert Culp in which he recalls the filming of the classic I Spy series. Click here to view

Cinema Retro has received the following notice regarding guests on Dave White Presents, a web-based entertainment program:

Star Trek visual effects supervisor Ron B. Moore will be a special guest on this week’s edition of “Dave White Presents” airing over KSAV Tuesday, June 23.Trek fans know Ron’s work on Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: Enterprise. So, in his conversation with Wes Britton, Ron talks about creating the models, gadgets, aliens, and starships of the 24^th Century and how new technology has helped shape what we see on the screen.Ron’s career also includes work on Ghost Busters, Fright Night, Moonstruck, 2010 . . . and on top of all that, he’s the guitar player in the Enterprise Blues Band, a unique congregation with musical comedy for Star Trek fans live and on CD. We’ll play a few gems for you. In fact, Ron has so much to say that this special interview will be a two-parter broadcast over our next two shows.

Of course, the name of the show is “Dave White Presents,” and Dave has cooked up his usual “predictably unpredictable” menu. He’ll present part 3 of his very popular talk with author Steve Cox about his very popular book on the Three Stooges. Dave’s own comic—hopefully—bits include a new “Moral Compass” and “News from Clancy’s.” All this will first air over

www.KSAV.org

this Tuesday night at 7:30 p.m. Pacific, 10:30 EST. On Wednesday March 24, the broadcast will be available for 24/7 access at

www.audioentertainment.org

Be sure to beam on board!

   

By David Michael Brown

Summer is here which can only mean one thing: the Hollywood blockbuster has arrived and, in particular, the much maligned bête noire of all right-minded cinema goers, the big budget remake is rearing its ugly head. Brad Silberling’s Land of The Lost is a new look at Sid and Marty Krofft’s much loved 70s television show that followed Dr Will Marshall, originally played by Wesley Eure, as he travelled back in time to a land full of dinosaurs and cavemen. The film had its world premiere in Sydney and we were lucky enough to have a few words with Silberling and the new Dr Marshall, comedian Will Ferrell on the red carpet.

“It was such an insane mash up of ideas that only the Kroffts could do,” explains the director. “It was the bravery that comes from innocence. Sid Croft in particular is an incredible puppeteer, he’s very innocent, he’s kind of child like which prevents him from questioning the combination of elements together which should have never have been in the same show. You’ve got dinosaurs, aliens, a banjo; only Sid could do that without thinking twice about it. It’s like a little bit of Willy Wonka, he liked that flavour, he liked this flavour so he included them all.  It’s why it stayed with the audiences in the States.” Those flavours in the new film have been transformed into a fabulous CGI rendered T-Rex called Grumpy, slow moving extraterrestrials called Sleestacks and a cavemen called Chaka in a surreal land that fuses the past, present and the future as a backdrop for Ferrell to work his comic madness.

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A mutual love for the show brought the director and Ferrell together for the project. “It was Will. At some point Will was talking to a couple of friends and he, like I, was an original viewer of the show. His manager and producing partner Jimmy Miller tried to sort out how to get the rights to the show to potentially adapt it. It was just circumstance that I got involved; Will and I have known each other for a very long time but have never worked together. I was writing a piece and had a role in mind for Will, we were just having lunch. He said 'OK, I want to talk to you about Land of the Lost.' He wanted to make the movie and there was also a threatened SAG strike. I had been an avid watcher but hadn’t set eyes on the show for thirty five years. It was fantastic when he told me, I just started cracking up. My memory bank immediately refilled with the images that stayed with me. The concept of taking a comedic sensibility and then selfishly harnessing the elements of the show that we remembered was kind of fantastic.” Ferrell adds his own side to the story, “It actually had already got started before I got signed on but when I heard it was going to hit the works I thought, ‘Oh, that is going to be so much fun because I love the show.’ When I heard the premise that they were going to ignore the kitsch style special effects and go for the realistic ones and play the comedy off of that, it sounded like a lot of fun to me.”

 

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By Eddy Friedfeld

“I never worked with a stinker- how great is that?” Mitzi Gaynor said as she recalled working with the likes of Frank Sinatra, Gene Kelly, Cole Porter, Rogers and Hammerstein.  Probably because the legendary actress, singer, and dancer never worked on any project that she did not make better.

In New York City celebrating the 50^th anniversary of the release of the film South Pacific on Blu-Ray disc, Ms. Gaynor was radiant, charismatic, and vibrant, still possessing all the energy that could “wash that man right out of her hair,” recalling her iconic character, Nellie Forbush.

Filmed on location on the Hawaiian island of Kaua’i, the classic and enduring South Pacific is about a young American nurse from Little Rock (Gaynor) who meets the handsome and mysterious French planter (Rossano Brazzi) on a South Pacific island during World War II.  They fall in love against the backdrop of the war and a classic Rodgers & Hammerstein score. 

“The film brought in $17,000,000 on its domestic release,” writes Laurence Maslon in The South Pacific Companion, “making it the third top grossing film of the 1950s.  In England, they went absolutely mad for the picture.  It was the greatest money earner in the United Kingdom until Goldfinger.”

“The minute we got off the airplane, off came the girdles and the stockings and on came the Mumus.  And then the next day we suited up for shooting.”

“Nellie Forbush was one of the first feminist characters and she didn’t know it,” Gaynor said. “She was just a little girl from Little Rock.  A nice girl from a nice family- brought up right. Nellie was college educated in her twenties, a trained nurse.  She’s never been away from home and winds up on an island in the Pacific, surrounded by servicemen.  She meets a man with an accent she’s never heard before who offers her a brandy and a plantation.  She initially can’t get over her own prejudices- he was married to a black woman and has Polynesian children, which to her are black. ‘Before you’re six or seven or eight, you’re taught to hate everyone your family hates’ were the lyrics.  But Nellie overcomes what she was taught as a child, and when her great love is killed in action, Nellie commits to raise his children as her own.”

“The best part of making South Pacific were Rosanno and Lydia Brazzi- two treasures of my life. Rosanno would walk around so in love with himself- “Mitzi Gahnor- I’m so gorgeous- could you imagine not having a good time with someone like that.” 

“Few people know that if it weren’t for Frank Sinatra I wouldn’t have gotten the part,” Gaynor recalled fondly. “I was doing The Joker’s Wild with Frank and he took me to meet director Josh Logan who shook my hand and said “Hello Nellie.”  I met Richard Rodgers the next day They then wanted me to meet Oscar Hammerstein, but Oscar was only available on a particular Thursday, which was the day of the big casino scene in The Joker’s Wild.  I asked the director, Charlie Vidor, for a few hours off.   Charlie turned to Frank and said, “it’s your call.” Frank said, “We’ll shoot around you, honey - go get the job.” Someone else would have said are you crazy?” Frank never got the credit he deserved for all the good things he did for people.”

I sang for Oscar Hammerstein.  All he said was “Thank you, Miss Gaynor.”  I finished Joker’s Wild and then started Les Girls with Gene Kelly.  It was lunch time, it was raining, and cold. I was in my dressing room when my phone rang.  “How are you?” Jack (Jack Bean, Gaynor’s beloved late husband and manager of 51 years) asked.  “My fanny hurts, my leg hurts, my ankle hurts, and I’m coming down with a cold.  But other than that I’m fine.  “I wonder what the weather is like in Kawaii in August,” he said.  “How in the world would I know,” I responded.  “Because you’re going to be there, you got the part.”  And here we are 50 years later.”

The new DVD features a special “Road Show Version” of the film, a feature-length documentary “Passion, Prejudice and South Pacific: Creating an American Masterpiece”, Mitzi Gaynor’s screen test, and vintage excerpts from the original Broadway stars, and Diane Sawyer interviewing James Michener, author of Tales of the South Pacific, upon which South Pacific was based.

“Dancing is still the hardest profession.  Gene Kelly said dancing is a man’s game.  Women have to do the same thing in heels, and have to sing and smile at the same time.  Professional athletes don’t even have to do that- and they get to wear sneakers.  You break your knees, ankles, and toes.  The first lesson is not to step on your own feet or anyone else’s. Dancers are always falling down offstage and tripping.  Probably because they’re not paying as much attention.”

Gaynor also recalled running into Sid Caesar in the vitamin section at Trader Joe’s in Beverly Hills and immediately lapsing into a German accent and matching banter as Caesar’s shifted into an equally faux German voice.

On the connection between music and comedy:  “I’m a Hungarian Virgo- I see everything skewed. You cannot see the forest through the trees- you just see that little hole of what’s missing- and that’s where the comedy comes from.  There’s a big difference between a Hungarian and a Romanian- both will sell you their mothers, but a Hungarian is honest- he’ll deliver.”

Cinema Retro Contributor Eddy Friedfeld is the co-author, with Sid Caesar, of Caesar’s Hours and teaches The History of Comedy in America at Yale and NYU.

 Click here to order the new South Pacific DVD discounted from Amazon. Click here to order the DVD Mitzi Gaynor: Razzle Dazzle, The Special Years. Click here to order The South Pacific Companion book.

Cinema Retro recently caught up with Dr. Wesley Britton, author of numerous books about spy movies and TV series, including his latest work, The Encyclopedia of TV Spies.

Britton, who runs the highly entertaining web site www.spywise.net, shared his thoughts on his love of the spy movie genre.

Q: For those who haven’t heard about The Encyclopedia of TV Spies, what can readers expect to find in it?

A: Most of this book describes over 200 TV series from the U.K., the U.S, and even Canada from 1951 to the present. This isn’t an episode guide or a directory of cast and crew, but rather each alphabetical entry provides basic facts about the shows along with behind-the-scenes information to hopefully give readers some flavor of what each show was all about. It covers a wide range of series from Adam Adamant Lives to They Young Rebels, so the scope is very inclusive. It includes miniseries like Robert Ludlum’s Hades Factor, “reality” shows like Spymaster, cartoons, children’s shows, and docu-dramas based on historical events. There are also appendices discussing soundtracks and tie-in novels. The book is 520 pages long, if that gives you any idea how detailed it is.

Q: Why would readers want a book like this when so much information is on the internet?

A: My first answer to that is, because so many obscure and short-running series are included, readers will discover tons of shows they wouldn’t have known to look for. Doomwatch? The Piglet Files? Frederick Forsythe Presents? I think that’s one great pleasure from the book. I’ve already heard some readers are now seeking out DVDs of series they never knew existed because the descriptions intrigued them. I’d also say to be careful about what you find on the net. Interviewing some of the participants, I picked up a number of errors repeated all over the place. In addition, I’ve already done that research for you—along with interviews, books, rare articles, you name it. For many series, all you can really find are episode titles and lists of cast and crew. I wanted to go beyond that, Again, trying to provide some flavor of each series thinking those who like certain types of shows will get interested in seeing programs new to them.

I’ll admit that if you’re looking for information about major series like I Spy or The Avengers, there’s no lack of other sources you can explore. In an encyclopedia, my discussions of these series have to be limited because of space. But I do have my own spin on things. For example, I include shows like The Adventures of Zorro and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and explain how they do, believe it or not, connect to the spy genre.

Robert Vaughn is back in London to promote his autobiography, A Fortunate Life and to film the new season of the hit caper show Hustle. In an interview with The Telegraph newspaper, Vaughn recalls two of his best films, both coincidentally starring Steve McQueen: The Magnificent Seven and Bullitt. Of the former, Vaughn concedes that, not only did the cast not believe they were working on a classic, but, in fact, felt the film would be a turkey. The script was being rewritten only hours before each day's shooting would proceed and the feeling was that the movie might derail the up-and-coming careers of it's young stars. By the time Bullitt went into production, both Vaughn and McQueen were major international stars - but Vaughn repeatedly turned down McQueen's pleas for him to play his antagonist in the movie. Vaughn relates he tried to talk McQueen out of the project because the script was too confusing - but after McQueen kept raising his salary, Vaughn joked that it suddenly all made perfect sense. For more click here

By Graham Hill

Welcome back to my visit with producer Robert E. Relyea, who continues to share with us some more anecdotes from his remarkable career. If you remember from part one, the principal wooded exterior location for the Elvis Presley picture Kid Galahad (1962), was the small mountain community of Idyllwild, California, near Palm Springs. Relyea had kept the location in mind for his next film, The Great Escape (1963). As hard as it is to believe, director John Sturges and United Artists were all set to shoot right there in sunny southern California, building the POW camp in the California hills with only some second unit shots done on location in Germany. This strategy would have obviously ensured that the movie was shot on a relatively low budget.  Relyea told Sturges “It’s not exactly the Black Forest, but it does have a few trees”.  Relyea advised Sturges they could hire locals to play the large number of POWs – all they would need is a waiver from the Screen Extra’s Guild.  In this pre-production stage, their best-laid plans fell apart. The Guild insisted they bring out the hundreds of union extras each day from Los Angeles.  With a prohibitive cost like that, Germany suddenly seemed rather appealing and a lot simpler.

This revelation gives you a sense of how Hollywood studio brass thinks and acts, which is not always in the interest of art over commerce. However, in this case, we have to thank the Screen Extras Guild, long since merged into the Screen Actors Guild, for unexpectedly playing a role in the creation of a classic. Thanks to the Guild, The Great Escape benefited from the kind of authenticity that you could only get from shooting in Germany itself. The unit shot at the Bavaria Studios in Geiselgasteig near Munich, with the camp set and railway station stunningly constructed in a real forest setting right behind the studio lot.  As assistant to John Sturges, Relyea got the necessary government permission to clear some 400 trees and the permission from the German railways to shoot those crucial scenes.  In addition to personally helping Sturges, Relyea also was second-unit director and even performed one of the film’s most dangerous stunts. Remember when the German plane James Garner and Donald Pleasence escape in crashes into the trees short of the Swiss border? The regular stunt pilot did not want to deliberately crash the single engine, two-seater vintage Bucker Bu 181. Having a license to fly and not wanting to hold up production, Relyea simply went ahead and did it himself. It is quite a story that Relyea relates in detail in his recent autobiography Not So Quiet On The Set.  The crash caused him some considerable pain, but like a true professional, he did not allow it to interfere with getting the picture made. Speaking of stunts, the famous iconic jump was indeed performed by Steve McQueen over that barbed-wire fence – only not in the film. McQueen was frustrated that the insurance company wouldn’t allow him to do the stunt on film – so he secretly did it on his own time in secret just to prove he was up to the task. Still -as every devoted fan knows- on screen,  it was his close friend and motorcycle enthusiast, Bud Ekins who performed the classic stunt. McQueen still performed all the other bike sequences, even - through the magic and skills of editing - chasing himself dressed as a German soldier. Relyea directed the actual jump, not Sturges, and even though on screen it was only a very few celluloid seconds, it would go on to become an iconic sequence in film history. Another interesting fact is that, because Sturges refused to work at night, the task of filming the actual escape from the tunnel sequence fell to Relyea.  Sturges simply told him, “Don’t shoot it like I would –surprise me!”

By Graham Hill

For those of you out there in Cinema Retro Land, who are not familiar with the name Robert E. Relyea –well how about I drop a few other names… ? The Magnificent Seven, The Alamo, West Side Story and Bulllitt for starters – all films on which Mr. Relyea has served as a valued member of the production.  Whether he was in the role of Assistant Director, Assistant to the Producer, Unit Production Manager or even Executive Producer, Relyea played an important part in the making of those great, iconic pictures. At 78, he’s still as sharp as ever and for the first time , he has decided, at the bequest of son Craig, to document his career in the recently published autobiography Not So Quiet on the Set –My Life in Movies During Hollywood’s Macho Era. As a film historian, I highly recommend his book, especially if you supplement it with two other volumes that also came out last year –Escape Artist: The Life and Films of John Sturges  by Glenn Lovell and  I Thought We Were Making Movies, Not History by Walter Mirisch. These books offer their own unique perspectives, something I hope to capture in this article. So if everyone’s ready –we’ll call action!-  and go for a take!

It was a beautiful sunny January morning, when I drove out to Westlake Village northwest of Los Angeles to visit a man I felt I already knew.  Growing up back in London, England, I kept seeing his name coming up in the credits of so many of my favorite movies.  Now I was driving through this classy suburb that once used to be where the cattle grazed and stampeded on TV’s Rawhide.  In a magnificent corner home complete with white picket fence, I was greeted by the 6ft. 3in. retired studio executive himself.  Having spent a few hours on the phone weeks earlier, we were already on the same page - although he did surprise me and say that his and his lovely wife Dorothy’s favorite movie genre was horror films.  Of course, if he had cloned himself, he could have worked on Hitchcock’s Psycho in-between making The Alamo for John Wayne and The Magnificent Seven for John Sturges. Those are among the honor roll of famous names Relyea has worked with – in addition to William Wyler, Robert Wise and Richard Brooks.  The first of these legends to recognize talent in the young 29 year old Relyea was the Duke.  Wayne was looking for a First Assistant Director for his upcoming lifelong dream epic The Alamo. Relyea’s successful work on that high pressure film saw his salary instantly doubling, along with a rise in his reputation within the industry. Upon returning home to LA from Texas on Christmas Day 1959, he got a present that was far more rewarding than anything under the tree: an offer from action director John Sturges to work in Mexico on something called The Magnificent Seven..

In a rare interview, Dick Van Dyke recalls his memories of making Mary Poppins. He said that Walt Disney didn't hire him because of his singing and dancing skills - but rather because he had read a comment made by Van Dyke decrying the trend away from family entertainment. Van Dyke also good-naturedly jokes about the ribbing he takes from the Brits about his less-than-convincing Cockney accent - and he's also written to First Lady Michelle Obama thanking her for saying that Mary Poppins is her favorite movie. To read click here

Lisa Marks is our favorite British ex-pat freelancing in Hollywood (how many other chicks do you know who would actually send you a Christmas card depicting Steve McQueen's motorcyle jump in The Great Escape?) Lisa has a fascinating new article for London's Guardian newspaper site in which she interviews actress Yeardley Smith, whose main claim to fame is providing the voice of Lisa Simpson in The Simpsons TV series. Although Smith concedes she has the dream job of a lifetime (she's paid $400,000 per episode!), there is a downside. She's one of the most recognizable voices in pop culture, but her face is virtually unknown. Smith and her boyfriend Adam Carl have produced an independent film titled Waiting for Ophelia which Smith has financed herself. Despite her reputation in the film industry, however, she suffers a fate common to most independent filmmakers: she can't get the film screened, let alone distributed. To read Lisa's interview, click here

CNN.com has a new interview with Clint Eastwood in which the screen legends expresses his views on acting, directing, his latest film projects and his impatience with today's politically correct society. Click here to read

Sean Connery takes in the action from the other side of the lens on location in Morocco for John Huston's The Man Who Would Be King in 1974. For Roger Ebert's 1975 interview with John Huston, click here

RAY HARRYHAUSEN - MASTER OF THE MAJICKS

New 3-Volume Comprehensive Career Biography

Interview with author Mike Hankin

 

By Neil Pettigrew

 

Think of fantasy films and think of the 1950s, 60s and 70s and one name looms very large – that of Ray Harryhausen, the legendary stop motion animator. Over a forty-year career, Harryhausen created such iconic images as :

 

• A thrilling battle with seven living, sword-wielding skeletons in JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS;

 

• A horde of dinosaurs menacing Raquel Welch in a fur bikini in ONE MILLION YEARS BC;

 

• A terrifying encounter with the slithering half-snake Medusa in CLASH OF THE TITANS.

 

Ray Harryhausen is now the subject of a major three-volume book published in the United States by Archive Editions, RAY HARRYHAUSEN - MASTER OF THE MAJICKS, the first volume of which will be out in September. British author Mike Hankin, a longtime fan and friend of Harryhausen, has had access to information and visual material never seen before. As a big Harryhausen fan myself, I was keen to find out more about this tantalising project and I interviewed Hankin in June, 2008.

 

NP: I understand the book will be in three volumes. Why is that?

 

MH: Originally it was going to be a normal, single volume but over time we found we had such a mass of information that it kept getting bigger and bigger. And we were thinking ‘We’re going to have cut some of this out’. But we didn’t want to cut anything! There was so much good material that we didn’t want to discard anything. Volume 2 has ended up being 404 pages alone! So, a decision was made to break the book up into three volumes. Thus—

           

• Volume 1 will start at the beginning: Ray’s birth, through his early life and up to around 1947, with a slight overlap into the 1950s, during which time he started his first professional work on George Pal’s Puppetoons, and also his own series of 16mm Fairy Tales.

 

• Volume 2 covers the feature films MIGHTY JOE YOUNG, THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS, IT CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA, THE ANIMAL WORLD, 20 MILLION MILES TO EARTH and Ray’s final American feature film, THE 7th VOYAGE OF SINBAD in 1958.

 

• Volume 3 continues at the point when Ray moved to England for various reasons and covers THE THREE WORLDS OF GULLIVER, MYSTERIOUS ISLAND, JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS, FIRST MEN ’IN’ THE MOON, ONE MILLION YEARS BC, THE VALLEY OF GWANGI, THE GOLDEN VOYAGE OF SINBAD, SINBAD AND THE EYE OF THE TIGER, and CLASH OF THE TITANS.

 

NP: I’ve heard that the first volume to be published will be Volume 2. Isn’t that going to confuse people?

 

MH: Several people who read early versions of the manuscript for fact-checking purposes all said that even though the first chapters are full of all sorts of fascinating material, they just couldn’t wait to get to “the good stuff” —the feature films. It’s the feature films that most people are really interested in. So we’re starting off with a bang with Volume 2 and MIGHTY JOE YOUNG in 1949, the film that won an Oscar^® for special effects. Volume 3 will follow, because again, this will cover the classic films including JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS and VALLEY OF GWANGI and the others. And then finally Volume 1.

 

NP: When will the follow-up volumes be published?

 

MH: Volume 3 should be out at the end of this year, and Volume 1 will come out the early part of next year. The best way to obtain them is through the publisher, Archive Editions. There is plenty of information about the books on the website (www.archive-editions.com) and one can sign up on the mailing list to be kept up-to-date via e-mail announcements.

 

NP: Before I ask you about the book in more detail, perhaps you could tell us how you first got interested in Harryhausen’s films.

 

MH: The first film of Ray’s that I saw was MYSTERIOUS ISLAND, released in England in 1962. Like most kids, I’d always been interested in fantasy films. I saw the trailers for MYSTERIOUS ISLAND and it looked like a great adventure film full of monsters, plus it was on a double-bill with a pirate film, PIRATES OF BLOOD RIVER! When it opened, I went to the first showing. I arrived at the cinema at one o’clock in the afternoon and didn’t leave the cinema until 11 o’clock that evening! That got me into trouble with my parents, but I just wanted to see the film over and over again. Despite the ticking off from my parents, I went again the following day, and I went every day that week, watching it at least twice every day.

            Of course in those days, I had no idea how all the effects were done. The jungle, the giant crab, the bees —to me it was all wonderful stuff. And my interest in music started there, too. I had no idea that it was by Bernard Herrmann, but I knew that I liked it. I was age 13, exactly the same age that Ray was when he first saw KING KONG, which hugely influenced him. So 13 must be the key age in terms of films having a big effect on you.

 

In an interview with MTV.com, Clint Eastwood discusses his involvement with Dirty Harry, confessing he only recently saw the film on the big screen again for the first time in 37 years. He also said he's only seen it one other time - ten years ago when he showed it to his wife on laser disc! He reflects on how he took over the role from Frank Sinatra, who was supposed to star in the film and how the original script had a team of snipers on the trail of the villain Scorpio. To read click here

To order the new Dirty Harry Ultimate Collector's Edition DVD set click here

Screen legend Ernest Borgnine is in Pennsylvania starring in a new film about a troubled WWII veteran. The 91 year-old actor has a soon-to-be released autobiography, as well. In an interview with the news site Lancaster On Line, Borgnine discusses his latest movie as well as his respect for fellow tough guys John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Clint Eastwood and Charles Bronson. To read click here

(Look for an exclusive interview with Ernest Borgnine in a future issue of Cinema Retro)

Reporter Geoff Boucher has an extraordinary interview with Clint Eastwood in the Los Angeles Times in which the iconic star reminisces about Dirty Harry and reflects on how the character was received in the 1970s and how he would be received today. Seeming to put the nail in any remaining rumors he might revise the franchise, Eastwood jokes about the scenario saying, "Harry is retired. He's standing in a stream, fly-fishing. He gets tired of using the pole — and BA-BOOM! Or Harry is retired and he chases bad guys with his walker? Maybe he owns a tavern. These guys come in and they won't pay their tab, so Harry reaches below the bar. Hey, guys, the next shot's on me ..." To read click here

Click here  for another extensive Eastwood interview in the Guardian newspaper of London in which Eastwood takes on Spike Lee and calls the rumors of his return as Dirty Harry the work of "some idiot".

For more on the new Dirty Harry DVD Collection

click here

Author and film scholar Dr. Peter X. Feng talked with Cinema Retro Editor-in-Chief Lee Pfeiffer about Turner Classic Movies' series of movie presentations, Asian Images in Film which launches on June 3. The film festival explores the way Asians have been portrayed in Hollywood productions from the early days of the industry until the present time. Dr. Feng co-hosts the introduction to each movie with Robert Osborne.

CR: How did the idea for this film festival originate?

PF: Charlie Tabesh, the head of programming for TCM, initiated it. He specifically wanted to do Asian Images in Film. In the process of his research, he came across my work and contacted me.

CR: I recently helped host a film event at Pinewood Studios in London and interviewed Burt Kwouk. We chatted briefly about the fact that Burt was one of the first Asian actors hired to play an Asian part. Until that time, most of the major Asian roles were played by caucasians. Why was this the case?

PF: Not to put too fine a point on it, but I would say it was racism. It's understandable that from a studio standpoint, they'd want to use actors they were already familiar with. It's also understandable that they wouldn't want to invest money in developing actors if they weren't going to develop roles for them. The larger issue is not being interested in Asian themed stories except as a backdrop for American and British characters. Once you're not interested in developing those stories, then there's no incentive to develop an Asian American star. As a principal, I don't have a problem with a white actor playing an Asian character. But until there's equity in the sense that a studio would cast an Asian actor to play a white character, then it's not fair.

CR: It seems to me that it's more permissible to have actors play characters of different races in theater productions, but when you see absurdities like Rex Harrison playing the King of Siam in a film, you have to wonder if there weren't any qualified Asian actors to take that role.

PF: I think you're absolutely right and in theater they have cast people of color in white roles. In theater, there's more playing with illusion. Somebody's hand can be empty but you understand they're supposed to be holding something. You can get away with that in theater. I understand that the film industry is a business and as soon as it becomes profitable to develop actors, they will. Of course, we're starting to see that now.

CR: Who would you say were the first actors and actresses to beat the system by being cast in Asian roles?

PF: Way back in the silent era we have Sessue Hayakawa and then Anna May Wong, of course. Then it wasn't until James Shigeta and Nancy Kwan in the late 1950s and early 1960s, who were the first ones to really be developed and nurtured and given a variety of roles.

CR: Would you say Hayakawa was more a character actor than a leading man?

PF: No, not until later in his career with The Bridge on the River Kwai. He was a matinee idol before Rudolf Valentino. He had a big fan following and women were really interested in him.

CR: What is your opinion of the Charlie Chan films which were so successful, but which featured European actors in the title role?

PF: To me, that's the issue. On the one hand, Charlie Chan is certainly a hero and the lead in the seriesand that was a huge step forward in how Hollywood represented Asians. But I still find Charlie Chan to be a limited characterization. He may be the smartest man in the room, but it's still clear he has to know his place. For me the ironic thing about the casting of caucasian actors as Charlie Chan is that they always cast Asian actors as his kids. Number One Son and Number Two Son are really important in the series, so there's that strange disconnect.

CR: It was the same dilemma black actors faced to a certain degree -being subject to bizarre casting choices. I noticed that you unearthed this rare short film from the Spanish American War in which the Phillipinos are played by black actors. Since this was made in 1899, it shows that if blacks were subjected to prejudices in the industry, then Asians were below them.

PF: Well, they were probably cast simply because they were available. It was shot in New Jersey, which is where the early film industry was based and there weren't that many Asian Americans living on the east coast. The other thing that should be said about casting white actors in Asian roles is that Hollywood was always very interested in romance plots and was always interested in flirting with interracial romance. But the production code at the time forbade them from really developing these plots. The American public was kind of fascinated by it, but uptight about it also. One of the things that casting a white actor in an Asian role allowed you to do was have the characters be of different races but if they're kissing or something, then everyone knows they're really of the same race.

CR: In watching your intros with Robert Osborne, I was intrigued by your opinion that Japanese were placed on a higher level of respect in films than Chinese were. What do you attribute that to?

PF: I attribute it mostly to the political clout of Japan internationally. Japan was a powerful country, a relatively rich country compared to China which is obviously a big country, but was less developed industrially and technologically. It just wasn't a player on the world stage. I think that's the main reason.

CR: The outbreak of WWII set the cause of racial equality in films back for years, obviously. The first major film I recall seeing that was sympathetic to Japanese Americans was John Sturges' Bad Day at Black Rock in which Spencer Tracy plays a government agent who tries to bring to justice the racist killers of a Japanese American farmer. It was ironic, because the Asian character is never seen - he's already dead when the film starts.

PF: I think you're right- that was certainly a high point. We're showing another film, Go for Broke that's about the WWII regimental combat team made up of Japanese Americans that was made before Bad Day at Black Rock but it wasn't as a big a film.

CR: As a child, when you went to the movies, what Asian characterizations used to grind on you the most?

PF: That's a good question, because now I think a lot of them are silly- you know, Katharine Hepburn in Dragon Seed, for example. I would have to say it was the villains, because I wasn't thrilled with those characters anyway - Fu Manchu in particular, you know, Lon Chaney and Boris Karloff.

CR: Have you seen the Hammer films with Christopher Lee as Fu Manchu?

PF: I have. His daughter was played by Tsai Chin, a British actress who is also in The Joy Luck Club. She had also played Suzie Wong on the London stage. But we're talking now about the 1960s and I think there was a little bit of the camp aspect to it. Everyone knew that the idea of a megalomaniacal villain trying to conquer the world was kind of a joke, whereas originally, the character of Fu Manchu expressed a lot of anxiety about what it meant in London that there were so many Chinese there and the popular fear about the opium dens, which of course was unfounded.

CR: How do you feel about Samuel Bronston's 55 Days at Peking about the Boxer Rebellion? It at least attempted to present the Chinese frustration at having the European powers dominate their country in the early 1900s.

PF: I haven't seen it in many years and I agree with your assement. You're right in that it did portray the issues, but it was still a backdrop for the story involving Charlton Heston and Ava Gardner. That film came along in the 1960s during the Civil Rights Movement. The first time the phrase "Model Minority" was used was in a Time or Newsweek article in reference to the Japanese American community. It said that here was a community that was interned in WWII and they've risen in economic status and they've done it by being a model minority- by keeping their head down, by not complaining. It's clear they were supposed to be a model to other minorities. The message was: blacks are militant are asking for things and demanding things rather than just putting their head down and working hard. I would put 55 Days at Peking in that context. It may be a favorable representation of one group, but it's kind of a message to others that says, "We will help you. We will take care of you. Just stop complaining about whether you get to ride in the front of the bus."

CR: How were the films selected for the TCM festival?

PF: Charlie gave me a big list of all the films that were already in the Turner library. I also made a wish list of other films I hoped we could get the rights to. Of course, Charlie took care of the budgeting aspect and came up with the best way we could get the most bang for our buck. We got almost everything I wanted. There were a handful of films I would have loved to have gotten, but I'm really happy that we covered the topic with other films that were available.

CR: I see they're going against tradition by showing a couple of relatively recent films like Rush Hour II and The Joy Luck Club.

PF: Well, Charlie wanted to bring the stories as close to the present day as possible. I think that's really great. I thought we'd end the series around 1960.

CR: Do you think there has been sufficient progress in how Asians are portrayed on screen today?

PF: We still have a long way to go. There's still not many opportunities for Asian American actors. There's been an influx of actors from Hong Kong like Jet Li and Chow Yun-Fat but they're not Asian American roles. The stories are generally set in Asia or it's the hero comes to the United States to solve a problem and it's clear he's going to leave. So they don't deal with the kind of social issues such as the fact that we live in a multi-racial society. They still engage in this fantasy that Asian Americans are temporarily here.

CR: How do you feel about the emergence of the Asian cinema as a major force in the film industry?

PF: If all we see are action films and horror films, that's still a stereotype. When I was a kid on the playground, everyone called me "Bruce Lee", but people didn't see me in a more rounded way than that. It occurs to me now, with all these horror movies from Korea and Japan, they all seem to feature an Asian kid in a bowl haircut and I worry that people are going to freak out when they see an Asian kid because that's the only thing they ever see him as. (Laughs)

CR: Is there one film in particular you would recommend our readers tune in for during the TCM festival?

PF: Walk Like a Dragon isn't widely seen. It's not available on DVD. It's a film I put very high on my list because I hadn't seen this film, only excerpts. I'm really excited about it. It's set in California in the Old West and Jack Lord from Hawaii 5-0 finds out there's a slave auction of Chinese women and he intervenes and purchases a woman from the auction with the intent of setting her free. But it doesn't occur to him that setting her free isn't enough. Where is she going to go? She doesn't speak English and she's just going to be exploited by somebody else. It's a film about this problem and a character of good intentions who gets in over his head. James Shigeta plays a recently arrived Chinese immigrant who refuses to walk with a bowed head. He walks down the center of Main Street with his head held high and gets beaten up. It's a film that is really complex and rich. The character is not a saint. The answer to these depictions is not to create characters who are morally spotless, but to create real characters - and this is a character who is flawed. It's a really interesting film.

CONTINUE READING FOR THE TCM PRESS RELEASE AND SCHEDULE FOR ASIAN IMAGES IN FILM

Cinema Retro correspondent Gareth Owen was invited by Warner Brothers to join a select number of journalists to interview famed film critic and documentary producer/writer/director Richard Schickel for the official Cannes Film Festival press kick-off of his five hour history of Warner Brothers, You Must Remember This: The Warner Brothers Story. The documentary, for which Clint Eastwood is executive producer, will be broadcast this September on TV and a 550 page coffee table companion book will accompany its premiere. The following questions were compiled from those asked by Gareth and other journalists during the interview.

Q: When did you begin work on the documentary?

RS: We did our first interview for it in the fall of ’06. We started the cutting a year ago next month (June 2007).

Q: Was it a daunting assignment?

RS: Sure it was daunting! But it was also irresistible. I always wanted to do a studio portrait. I had come close once before but somebody else got the job. But patience is always rewarded because Warners has always been my favorite studio and the one that most interested me – the films they did, the stars they had, the directors they had. That goes back to when I was a little kid, ten years-old looking at Saturday matinees. Somehow at that time, I noticed there was something a little different about Warner Brothers that appealed to me. They were kind of tough and they took up subjects that somehow interested me as opposed to MGM which was glamour. There was an edge to them, a toughness about them.

Q: What films influenced you the most?

RS: Back then – the early 1940s? I would say Air Force was one. Casablanca, certainly. Yankee Doodle Dandy, certainly. Those were the big movies I remember from that time. I was born in 1933, so it was mid-War before I was allowed out of my house to go to whatever I wanted to see. So some of those war-time movies were the ones that kind of hooked me.

Q: What is the status of the Warner Brothers documentary, You Must Remember This?

RS: It’s a five-hour project. Two hours are finished and the third hour is just about finished. We’re starting on hours four and five now. Getting it finished on a deadline basis is fairly difficult. People think these things are easy, but they’re very difficult. Documentaries are one of the more difficult forms of filmmaking. If you’re making a fictional film, you can go back and reshoot the scene. I can’t reshoot the scene from Casablanca. It’s there. You have to live with it. It’s difficult to link the movies to star and director careers and to the studio’s general history. You know, Harry and Jack Warner fighting with each other all the time, for example. It’s a question of balancing. There are lots of things I’ve had to cut out of this film that I would have preferred to have in the film, but there are time constraints.

Q: Has Warners pressured you to present a rosy picture of the studio?

RS: Not in the least. That’s where Clint, as executive producer, has been very helpful. When we first talked about doing this, I said, “I want you to be in on this."... He said, “Yeah, I’d like to do it – but only if it’s not a puff piece.” We didn’t want to just say “Warner Brothers is a great studio. They never made any mistakes. Everything was just great. They never did anything stupid” So with that kind of understanding behind you, they really just left us alone and that’s been very pleasurable. I interview who I want, play the movies I want. It’s that kind of a deal. In the course of doing all the films I’ve done, I’ve never really been interfered with. Only one time, that I can think of, and that was a network I was making a picture for. A particular person got to be a real pest. But we stumbled through it and I don’t feel I compromised in any important way. I’ve had a lucky filmmaking life. I haven’t had a lot of contentiousness with studios.

Q: What were some of the most surprising and most disappointing things you found on this project?

RS: In terms of surprising, lots of little movies from the pre-code era like Heroes for Sale, a Bill Wellman movie about exploited veterans that’s a wonderful picture. I also found clips from a movie – I forget the title now- but Pat O’Brien is a telephone repair man and he has to go into people’s houses to fix the plugs and what have you. And it’s very sexy because he’s intruding on women and there’s a lot of funny cross-talk there. Then there’s Three on a Match, which I was aware of but wasn’t as aware of as I became, a wonderful movie about drug addiction, among other things. I wish I had a lot more of Warren William, who was wonderful and very amusing playing slimy characters. He had a picture I really wanted to get in but couldn’t, called Employee’s Entrance. It’s a terrific little movie but I couldn’t figure out a way to get it in. I would have liked to have done something about John Garfield. I would have liked to have done something about Ann Sheridan, who was a special favorite of mine when I was a kid, as was Garfield – a very interesting, New York-kind of actor. Joan Crawford surprised me. She’s pretty good. She’s not an actress I though that highly of at the time. But there’s something about the intensity of her work in those pictures as a young woman trying to rise in the world, particularly in Mildred Pierce. The surprises are always kind of nuanced. There’s another movie and, again I can’t remember the name of it, but it has Kay Francis in a really sophisticated movie about gambling addiction that was made around 1935. But these surprises haven’t made me change my mind about Cagney, Errol Flynn or Bette Davis – people I’ve always loved. I think the era from the beginning of sound through, roughly, White Heat (1949) was a great era and Warner Brothers was the greatest studio. It was very fractious. Everyone was always yelling at each other and going on suspension. Warners was kind of like a rat’s nest. Everybody hating Jack Warner and him trying to keep all these people working and doing what he wanted them to do, and they didn’t want to do it. But I think that out of that kind of foment came the qualities of the studio that I admire. Jack Warner was a really cheap guy. He wanted his pictures to be low-budget, to get done on time, to have the actors he wanted in them, and if they didn’t want to do it, he’d try to make them even if he couldn’t. It’s a wonderful story of that kind of activity at the studio. I think in some ways Warners was better than some of the more smoothly-running studios. I mean, MGM really was a factory that turned out that material without a lot of apparent difficulty with the personnel.

I’m not saying Warners made all terrific movies. They had their share of turkeys but the average was pretty good. There was an attempt to go being Warner Brothers in the fifties. They did make a few socially conscientious movies, but the pictures got bigger, they got slower, they got longer, and the sprightly energy the studio had in the thirties and forties started to disappear. They were fighting television, which was a huge challenge to that system. The studio, I think, revived itself in the seventies. There was a new management. Steve Ross had bought the studio and he had John Calley as head of production and they’d just do anything and everything they wanted to do. So, the studio was re-energized in that decade or decade-and-a-half after Ross bought it. It again became the most interesting studio in Hollywood during that period. That’s when Clint came there. That’s when Stanley Kubrick started his relationship with the studio. They were making All the President’s Men. They were making The Exorcist. I mean, these were kind of exciting movies. The studio was stirred again in that period.

If the new big screen version of Get Smart turns out to be a turkey, Mel Brooks can't pass the buck. In an interview with the L.A. Times, he says he has been consulted on every major aspect of the movie - unlike the previous ill-fated movie based on the series, The Nude Bomb (1980) which Brooks criticizes for not linking the name of the famous series to the title. For the interview click here

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Author Wes Britton, who runs the great spy movie web site www.spywise.net has a revealing interview with Whitey Mitchell, a prominent sit-com writer who worked on some of the best episodes of the Get Smart TV series. Among the "top secrets" revealed is why Don Adams didn't star in the show's take-off on Ice Station Zebra and why Bill Dana had to take over for him. To read the interview click here

In this era of 12 producers per movie and studios run by committee, and driven by marketing analysts, it is well worth remembering a time, not that long ago, when studio heads relied on their own instincts and trusted their own taste in material instead of that of a research firm. There are two producer in town who can say they saved a studio. One is Richard Zanuck, a prince of Hollywood royalty, rescuing a nearly bankrupt 20th Century Fox with “The Sound of Music.” Dick Zanuck is still actively producing, his recent films include a long association with Tim Burton, including last year’s well-received musical, “Sweeney Todd.” FOR INFORMATION ON THE EVANS TRIBUTE CLICK HERE

AT A RECENT SEMINAR, ROBERT BENTON, THE OSCAR-WINNING SCREENWRITER OF BONNIE AND CLYDE AND DIRECTOR OF KRAMER VS. KRAMER DISCUSSED THE INFLUENCES ON HIS LIFE AND CAREER. HE CHATS ABOUT THE FRENCH NEW WAVE CINEMA, THE LOW EXPECTATIONS WARNER BROTHERS HAD FOR BONNIE AND CLYDE AND HIS AMUSING VISION OF THE JAMES BOND MOVIE HE ALWAYS WANTED TO DIRECT. TO READ CLICK HERE