Category: Celebs

21 Things We Learned from “The Taking of Pelham One Two Three” Commentary

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Rob Hunter and Film School Rejects present 21 Things We Learned from The Taking of Pelham One Two Three Commentary.  Here are three of my favorites…

7. The novel doesn’t spend much time at all with the transit cop character played here by Walter Matthau as Lt. Garber, and the book actually has a separate character named Garber as well. The actor loved the script, written by Peter Stone — who had written two previous films co-starring Matthau — and once he expressed interest they began beefing up the role.

19. Sargent recalled it being a “golden safety rule” during filming that no one get close to the electrified third rail despite the mostly confident belief that it was powered off by the transit authorities. There was apparently always a risk that someone might turn it back on again by accident or because they were unaware that it was off for a reason.

20. They rightly point out that today’s action films would rarely allow the villain to take his own life. “He would have to be shot eighteen times by Walter Matthau, and then fall and then a train would run him over, and that would propel him into the street where he’d get hit by a bus.”

 

9 Tough as Leather Facts About “Rawhide”

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Me-TV presents 9 Tough as Leather Facts About Rawhide. Here are three of my favorites…

EASTWOOD WORE HIS ‘RAWHIDE’ BOOTS IN ‘UNFORGIVEN.’
No need for a wardrobe department when it comes to Clint. To bookend his career as a cowboy, Eastwood wore his same Rowdy Yates boots in his Oscar-winning 1992 masterpiece Unforgiven.

LOADS OF SOON-TO-BE-FAMOUS FACES APPEARED ON THE SHOW.
That’s Bewitched star Elizabeth Montgomery taking aim in “Incident at El Crucero,” in a guest role that would foreshadow her gig as Mrs. Sundance. Star Trek crew members Leonard Nimoy and DeForest Kelley appeared on the Western, too. Sitcom legends Buddy Ebsen, Barbara Eden, Alan Hale, Jr., June Lockhart, Gavin MacLeod, Marion Ross and William Schallert also pop up — just to name a few. Then there’s Martin Landau, Frankie Avalon, Anne Francis, Peter Lorre…

TWO EPISODES WERE SLAPPED TOGETHER TO FORM A MOVIE, UNTIL EASTWOOD PREVENTED ITS RELEASE.
Rawhide finished its run in the first week of 1966. By that year, Eastwood was a star of small and big screen. The classic Spaghetti Westerns A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965) and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) revolutionized the genre. To further capitalize on Eastwood’s fame, Jolly Film, the studio behind A Fistful of Dollars, pieced together a couple old episodes of Rawhide, primarily “The Backshooter” with Louis Hayward and Slim Pickens, and labeled the flick The Magnificent Stranger, the original shooting title for A Fistful of Dollars. However, Eastwood sued and had the 1967 film withdrawn.

21 Things We Learned from Rob Reiner’s “Misery” Commentary

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Rob Hunter and Film School Rejects present 21 Things We Learned from Rob Reiner’s Misery Commentary.  Here are three of my favorites…

2.  James Caan was not his first choice for the film, and he instead was turned down by Robert Redford, Warren Beatty, William Hurt (twice), Richard Dreyfuss, and others. “But at the end of the day you can’t imagine anybody else playing the part.”

13.  Bates was stage-trained and preferred excessive rehearsals while Caan is more “instinctive and naturalistic,” so they had to balance the rehearsal time to make it less than she wanted and more than he wanted.

18.  The novel has Annie chop off Paul’s feet and cauterize the stumps, but they opted to simply hobble him instead by having her break his feet with a sledgehammer. Their thinking was that they wanted him to be victorious in the end, and losing his feet would be too high of a price. “It was pretty darn painful to look at, so I don’t think we compromised it too much.”

 

 

Ric Flair Faces the Music with Regret but No Excuses

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Odds are, pro wrestling fan or not, you know that the photo above is of the “styling-and-profiling, limousine-riding, jet-flying, Rolex-wearing, champagne-drinking, kiss-stealing, wheeling-‘n-dealing, dirtiest player in the game,” Ric Flair.

Yahoo Sports!, Dan Wetzel has written an excellent profile – Ric Flair Faces the Music with Regret but No Excuses – and it is well worth a read.

20 Things We Learned from the “Atomic Blonde” Commentary.

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Rob Hunter and Film School Rejects present 20 Things We Learned from the Atomic Blonde Commentary.  Here are three of my favorites…

3. The man seen running through the street in the opening is the film’s stunt coordinator, Sam Hargrave, “who’s also a good actor” and plays the soon to be dead James Gasciogne. He does various stunts throughout the film including the car flip.

15. The “one-take” stairwell fight scene features multiple hidden (or digital) edits including the motion blur of Lorraine throwing a guy to the floor at 1:12:04 and a handful of whip-pans that follow.

10. The book holding the cassette tapes at 32:53 is also in John Wick.

 

“The Thing” Got the Cinephilia & Beyond  Treatment.

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John Carpenter / Horror fans are going to love it that The Thing Got the Cinephilia & Beyond  Treatment.

Click on the link and you’ll find…

  • the Original Script
  • John Carpenter interviewed by Erik Bauer, Creative Screenwriting, January/February 1999.
  • Dean Cundey ASC discusses the making of director John Carpenter’s 1982 sci-fi horror classic.
  • STARLOG 060—JOHN CARPENTER DIRECTING THE THING
  • STARLOG 058—BILL LANCASTER ON SCRIPTING THE THING
  • STARLOG 059—AN INTERVIEW WITH DP DEAN CUNDEY
  • JOHN CARPENTER WITH ENNIO MORRICONE
  • FANGORIA—THE THING ARTICLES
  • The Incredible Effects of The Thing, Cinefantastique issue
  • THE THING: STORYBOARDS
  • and much more!

13 Intriguing Facts About the 1962 Graveyard Smash the “Monster Mash”

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Me-TV presents 13 Intriguing Facts About the 1962 Graveyard Smash the Monster Mash.  Here are three of my favorites…

THE CRYPT-KEEPERS FEATURED SOME KEY FIGURES.
“The Crypt-Kickers” band behind the original “Monster Mash” recording featured Gary S. Saxton, who wrote the 1960 smash hit “Alley Oop” that Pickett said inspired his song. The flip side of the record featured Leon Russell (whose “A Song for You” has been covered by more than 200 artists) on “Monster Mash Party.” Russell played piano, which he also did on songs for bands like the Beach Boys and Jan and Dean. Elton John calls Russell a mentor. Considering this track record, it makes even more sense why the “Monster Mash” single took off.

THE BEACH BOYS LOVED TO PLAY IT LIVE.
Several successful cover versions of “Monster Mash” exist, including a memorable version by the Beach Boys. They made it a feature of their live show, where Mike Love came out of “his cage” to step up on vocals and the audience would flip out. Later the punk band the Misfits would revive the song again for audiences in 1997, as it was a favorite childhood song of the band’s bassist, Jerry Only, who said the decision to cover it was a “no-brainer” for the heavily Halloween-themed band who performed on the holiday every year. We wonder whose fans loved it more. Hear Beach Boys fans lose their minds screaming in response to the song below. (Click over to see the video of the Beach Boys playing the Monster Mash.)

PICKETT APPEARED IN FILMS OF VARIED CLASSIC GENRES.
When Pickett wrote “Monster Mash,” he was also an aspiring actor. He went on to appear in a handful of films that matched his heavy sense of genre, including the beach party movie It’s a Bikini World (1967), a foray into biker culture in Chrome and Hot Leather (1971) a horror movie (of course) Deathmaster (1972), and a novelty sci-fi film, Lobster Man From Mars (1989). Additionally, he wrote a bunch of musicals like Frankenstein Unbound.

 

10 Things You Never Knew About “Maverick”

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Me-TV posted 10 Things You Never Knew About Maverick.  Here are three of my favorites…

GARNER PLAYED BRET MAVERICK IN THREE DIFFERENT ‘MAVERICK’ TV SERIES.
It is the rare actor who can claim two iconic television characters and a successful big-screen career. Garner became a household name thanks to the witty and fun Maverick. The gambling Bret Maverick proved to be so beloved that numerous reboots followed over the decades. In 1979, a TV movie led to Young Maverick, an incredibly short-lived sequel that hardly featured Garner. In 1981, Maverick was dealt another hand in the series Bret Maverick. NBC surprisingly canceled the solidly performing show after a season.

THERE WAS A MASSIVE CROSSOVER EPISODE WITH OTHER WESTERNS.
The madcap season four episode “Hadley’s Hunters” trots out numerous cameos from other Warner Bros. Westerns. You can spot John Russell and Peter Brown from Lawman, Clint Walker from Cheyenne, Will Hutchins from Sugarfoot and Ty Hardin from Bronco. In addition, Edd Byrnes from 77 Sunset Strip also pops up — combing the mane of a horse called “77 Cherokee Strip.”

“SHADY DEAL AT SUNNY ACRES” WAS GARNER’S FAVORITE EPISODE.
Perhaps some of this had to do with the fact that Garner got to spend the episode comfortably whittling in a rocking chair. It’s also a flat-out brilliant piece of television, which carries many similarities to the classic film The Sting. Like we said, the outings with both Bret and Bart Maverick working together are quite special.