Cinema Society (2025)

01/07/2025

One of Jim Backus' teachers in grade school was Margaret Hamilton, who would later play the Wicked Witch of the West in "The Wizard of Oz" (1939). When he attended the Kentucky Military Institute, one of his classmates was future fellow actor Victor Mature.

Backus was acting on radio as early as 1940, playing the role of millionaire aviator Dexter Hayes on "Society Girl" on CBS. He had an extensive career and worked steadily in Hollywood over five decades, often portraying characters with an "upper-crust," New England-like air, much like his best-known role, Thurston Howell III on "Gilligan's Island." While typecast in roles as "rich types," Backus broke the mold when he portrayed James Dean's father in the classic "Rebel Without a Cause" (1955, below).

Backus was the voice of the nearsighted cartoon character Mr. Magoo. Years later, when Backus was a frequent talk show guest, he would recount the time Marilyn Monroe urgently beckoned him into her dressing room. Henny Backus, Jim's wife, recalled the story: "Jim was in the 1952 film 'Don't Bother to Knock,' with Marilyn Monroe. He came home one night during the filming and told me that Miss Monroe in her most seductive breathy voice asked him to meet her in her dressing room. His curiosity got the better of him and he went. Once there, she exclaimed like an excited child, 'Do Mr. Magoo!' And Jim did."

"Mr. Magoo's appeal lies in our hostility toward an older generation. But he's not only nearsighted physically; his mind is selective of what it sees, too. That is where the humor, the satire lies, in the difference between what he thinks he sees and reality as we see it."

01/07/2025

"The experience of 'Tootsie' (1982) taught me to never work with an Oscar winner who is smaller than the statue."

Vanity Fair: "Was "Tootsie" a happy experience for you? Did your vision end up on the screen?"

Larry Gelbart: "'Tootsie' is my vision, despite Dustin Hoffman's lifelong mission to deprive anybody of any credit connected with that movie, except for his close friend, the writer and producer Murray Schisgal. I say that because Dustin appeared with James Lipton on 'Inside the Actors Studio' in 2006 and declared that the 'Tootsie' idea sprang from Schisgal's intestines. I don't know much about gastroenterology, but I do know that the central theme for 'Tootsie' came from me. And the central theme was that Dustin's character, Michael Dorsey, would become a better man for having been a woman. That was the cornerstone of the film. All of the other details are just floating around that idea. Without that central theme, 'Tootsie' would have just been a movie about cross-dressing. It had to have some deeper meaning to it."
"When I was asked to work on this picture, I thought, 'Have I really got the chutzpah to try doing a better drag comedy than the classic Billy Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond did? The answer came back, You may have the chutzpah, but you don't have the (guts) to do another version of 'Some Like It Hot' (1959). So I thought about what this picture had to reflect upon, other than the clumsiness of men in high heels, and that was the contemporary consciousness of gender and the roles each one plays. And 'Tootsie' was my take on that."

VF: "It seems that your experience with film has been—"

Gelbart: "Spotted. Frustrating. When it comes to movies, in the beginning there was the face. It's not the word. In Hollywood, they hire writers by the six-pack. If you're not willing to do what the executive wants, then another writer can always be paid to be willing. It was very difficult for me with movies. In films, I wasn't a producer, I wasn't a star, and I wasn't the director. I was a writer. But it's not all bad. You meet a nice class of snail at the bottom of the totem pole.

30/06/2025

In 1973, Peter Sellers introduced George Harrison to Denis O'Brien. Soon after, the two went into business together. In 1978, in an effort to produce "Monty Python's Life of Brian," they formed the film production and distribution company HandMade Films. Harrison explained: "The name of the company came about as a bit of a joke. I'd been to Wooky Hole in Somerset...[near] an old paper mill where they show you how to make old underpants into paper. So I bought a few rolls, and they had this watermark 'British Handmade Paper'...So we said...we'll call it HandMade Films."

Their opportunity for investment came after EMI Films withdrew funding at the demand of their chief executive, Bernard Delfont. Harrison financed the production of "Life of Brian" in part by mortgaging his home, which Idle later called "the most anybody's ever paid for a cinema ticket in history." The film grossed $21 million at the box office in the US.

As a reward for his help, Harrison appears in a cameo appearance as Mr. Papadopoulos, "owner of the Mount," who briefly shakes hands with Brian in a crowd scene. His one word of dialogue (a cheery but out of place Scouse "'Ullo") had to be dubbed in later by Michael Palin.

The first film distributed by HandMade Films was "The Long Good Friday" (1980), and the first they produced was "Time Bandits" (1981), a co-scripted project by Monty Python's Terry Gilliam and Michael Palin. The film featured a new song by Harrison, "Dream Away," in the closing credits. "Time Bandits" became one of HandMade's most successful and acclaimed efforts; with a budget of $5 million, it earned $35 million in the US within ten weeks of its release. (Wikipedia)

30/06/2025

Neil Jordan on "Interview with the Vampire" (1994): "It seemed to me to be about guilt. It was the most wonderful parable about wallowing in guilt that I'd ever come across. But these things are unconscious: I don't have an agenda. I'm neither a bad Irish Catholic nor a good one."

Jordan was approached by Warner Bros. to direct after the huge success of his movie "The Crying Game" (1992). Jordan was intrigued by the script, calling it "really interesting and slightly theatrical," but was especially interested after reading Rice's novel. He agreed to direct on the condition that he be allowed to write his own script, though he did not gain a writing credit.

"It's not very often you can make a complicated, dark, dangerous movie and get a big budget for it. Vampire movies were traditionally made at the lower end of the scale, on a shoestring, on rudimentary sets. (Producer) David Geffen is very powerful and he poured money into Interview. I wanted to make it on an epic scale of something like 'Gone with the Wind' (1939):

Jordan also cited "Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula" (1992) as an influence: "Up to that point, Francis Ford Coppola with 'Bram Stoker’s Dracula,' he introduced opulence and theatricality. Normally, before that one, I always thought of vampire movies as cheap, cobbled together, brilliant use of minimal resources. Francis made it this epic, didn’t he? So when I was given the opportunity to make 'Interview with the Vampire,' I thought, '"Oh, it would be really great to expand on that epic sense of darkness and to give these characters huge, kind of romantic destinies and longings and feelings.'"

A few years removed from the production, Jordan went on to say, "There have been too many vampire films lately. The extraordinary thing is it now appeals to young teenage girls. If Anne Rice's vampires symbolized the spread of AIDS, the creature of the night has become something altogether more 'strange.' When I saw the first 'Twilight' (2008), I thought, 'OK, well now it's become this allegory about chaste love between teenagers. How weird!'"

30/06/2025

Godfather Day, part III...

“I was 15, going on 16,” said Giovannina Bellino, who goes by Gio. Her father, Pasquale “Patsy Ryan” Eboli, “a reputed capo in the Genovese crime family,” according to The New York Times, got a call from his brother-in-law Al Lettieri, who was filming the part of Virgil "The Turk" Sollozo in "The Godfather" (1972). “How about if I bring some of the cast over for a nice dinner?” Lettieri asked. Eboli said sure; after all, his brother, Thomas “Tommy Ryan” Eboli, the head of the Genovese family, had granted permission for Lettieri to get involved with the film in the first place. So Gio’s mother, Jean (Lettieri’s sister), prepared some of her Italian specialties, set the table, and put on some music.

The doorbell rang at seven p.m. at the family house in Fort Lee, New Jersey, right across the Hudson River from Manhattan. “I opened the front door and there was Marlon Brando, James Caan, Morgana King [who played Don Corleone’s wife], Gianni Russo [who played Don Corleone’s son-in-law, Carlo], Al Ruddy [the film’s producer], and my uncle Al [Lettieri],” recalls Gio. “We all went downstairs into the family room, where the table was set and where we had the pool table and the bar.”
Gio was shuttling between the kitchen and the family room, serving food and wine as the cast became acquainted with the family. “Marlon Brando loved my mom’s eggplant parmigiana,” Gio says. “I remember sitting with him on the basement steps and watching this little drip of olive oil going down his chin and him telling my mother, ‘Jean, this is the best eggplant I’ve ever eaten!’ It was a wonderful, relaxed, and casual evening—I danced with James Caan all night.” She laughs. “I’m sure the Fed who was parked up the block—this guy that was always tailing my father—got a big kick out of it.”

A few weeks later, Gio’s mother made linguine with clam sauce for another special guest: the impoverished young actor Al Pacino. “I remember he was very quiet, and we had to pay his cab fare,” says Gio. The role of Michael Corleone required the New York–born Pacino to speak Italian in several scenes, and he had come to the Eboli house with Lettieri to work on his Italian for the famous sequence in which Michael guns down the double-crossing Sollozzo and the crooked police captain, McCluskey, played by Sterling Hayden. “My dad and Uncle Al spoke Italian fluently,” Gio says. “They drank plenty of wine that night. My brother joked at the time, ‘How’s this kid going to get the lines down after they go through six bottles?’”

That brother, Pat Eboli, was on the set later for the pivotal scene. “Pacino was definitely struggling with the Italian,” says Pat. “I remember Hayden saying, ‘If I have to eat any more of this spaghetti, I’m going to explode.’ Eventually, they decided to rework the scene.” Michael looks over at the cop—who’s busy with his spaghetti and obviously not paying attention—before turning to Sollozzo and breaking into English to tell him, “What I want, what’s most important to me, is that I have a guarantee: no more attempts on my father’s life.”

30/06/2025

February 24 is known as "Godfather Trifecta Day."

Abe Vigoda was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Russian Jewish immigrants; his father was a tailor on the Lower East Side. He made his first stage appearance at the age of 17 and plodded away in small theater shows for over 20 years. For the majority of film-goers, Vigoda first came to prominence in "The Godfather" (1972) as the double-crossing Tessio, pleading with Robert Duvall to get him off the hook "for old times' sake." He also appeared in its 1974 sequel.

According to Francis Ford Coppola's commentary on the DVD's widescreen edition, Vigoda landed the role of Tessio in an "open call," in which actors who did not have agents could come in for an audition.

“I’m really not a Mafia person,” Vigoda told Vanity Fair magazine in 2009. “I’m an actor who spent his life in the theater. But Francis said, ‘I want to look at the Mafia not as thugs and gangsters but like royalty in Rome.’ And he saw something in me that fit Tessio as one would look at the classics in Rome.” To prepare himself for the role, a high-ranking mobster, or capo, who runs a crew of his own, Vigoda frequented the Lower East Side and other New York neighborhoods that are backdrops in the story. He told Vanity Fair that he “practically lived in Little Italy during the shoot.”

Vigoda had roles in a few nondescript TV films before landing the plum part of Sgt. Phil Fish on the sitcom "Barney Miller." Perhaps his best known role, Sgt. Fish proved popular enough to be spun off to his own (short-lived) series, "Fish."

"I got the role because the producer thought I looked tired. But I looked tired because I had been jogging earlier that day. He said to me, 'You look tired, Abe.' I said, 'I am. I was just jogging five miles.' He said, 'You also look like you have hemorrhoids.' I said, 'What are you? A doctor or a producer?' And he said, 'Well, I'm a producer and you know what? You've got the role.' Just like that."

30/06/2025

Marjorie Main began playing upper class dowagers, but was ultimately typecast in abrasive, domineering, salty roles, for which her distinctive voice was well suited. She repeated her stage role in "Dead End" in the 1937 film version, and was subsequently cast repeatedly as the mother of gangsters. She again transferred a strong stage performance, as a dude-ranch operator in "The Women," to film in 1939.

Perhaps her most famous role is that of Ma Kettle, which she first played in "The Egg and I" in 1947 opposite Percy Kilbride as Pa Kettle. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for the part and portrayed the character in nine more Ma and Pa Kettle films. Main was never under contract to Universal Pictures when she appeared in the "Ma and Pa Kettle" series of films. She was on loan to Universal by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

In 1921, Main married Stanley LeFevre Krebs, who died in 1935. By her accounts, the marriage was happy, but not particularly close. Her biographer, Michelle Vogel, quotes a late interview in which the actress related: "Dr. Krebs wasn't a very practical man. I didn't figure on having to run the show, I kinda tired of it after a few years. We pretty much went our own ways, but we was still, in the eyes of the law, man and wife." Other sources indicate Main was, in actuality, devoted to her husband long after his death in 1935. IMDb states that, until her death, she often had "conversations" with her late husband, occasionally interrupting a scene in a movie. She would then let the director know it was okay to continue the scene, which she did as if nothing happened.

30/06/2025

On this date in 2008, at the 80th Academy Awards, Marion Cotillard was named Best Actress for her role in "La Vie en Rose."

Director Olivier Dahan came up with the idea for the film in 2004, when he was in a bookstore and found a book of photographs of French singer Édith Piaf and began to look at them. "I didn't know about her very early years and (there was) a photo that really made this first impression for me. It was a photo of her in a street when she was something like 17 years old and she really looked 'punk' (in terms of her) clothes and everything (and her) attitude. This photo was so far from the iconic image that I had (of Piaf when she was older). I just started to imagine something very quickly — what was in between that very early photo and the iconic image of her in the black dress and everything. That's the first impression (I had)", Dahan said.

Cotillard was chosen by Dahan to portray Piaf before he had even met her, and he wrote the script with Cotillard in mind. Dahan said she was cast because he noticed a similarity between Piaf's and Cotillard's eyes after seeing a photo of Piaf. Producer Alain Goldman and casting director Olivier Carbone accepted and defended the choice, while French distributor TF1 reduced the money they gave to finance the film because they thought Cotillard was not "bankable" enough an actress. The producers originally wanted Audrey Tautou for the role, and reduced $5 million from the budget after Cotillard was cast. Dahan insisted that he would not make the film without Cotillard. Tautou's agent, Laurent Grégoire, said he had set up a meeting between Tautou and the film's producers, but when Tautou was informed of the film's premise, she responded: "Who is going to be interested in a film about Édith Piaf?", and the producers lost interest in casting her, so Grégoire suggested his other client, Cotillard, for the role.

Dahan met Cotillard for the first time at the end of the writing process, and he gave Cotillard some books about Piaf because he did not want to make any rehearsal nor any reading with the actress, because he did not have time to do it, so they just started working together during the shooting.

To better resemble Piaf, Cotillard shaved back her hairline and shaved off her eyebrows, which were later penciled back in. She also spent up to five hours in the makeup chair to achieve Piaf's older look. Cotillard is a foot taller than Piaf, who was only 4 ft 8in tall, and had to contract her body in order to make herself look shorter. She also wore shortwaisted dresses and worked in bare feet while the other actors wore stacked shoes. Oversized tables and chairs designed to make Cotillard look smaller were also used on set.

Dahan wanted to shoot Cotillard in tight close-ups and ended up arguing with both the film's director of photography and the makeup artist, who did not believe that it would be possible to make Cotillard – who was 30 years old at the time – look older in close-ups. Cotillard said that Dahan pushed them to find a way.

30/06/2025

On this date in 2019, at the 91st Academy Awards, Rami Malek was named Best Actor for his role in "Bohemian Rhapsody."

"I never thought that I could possibly play Freddie Mercury until I realized his name was Farrokh Bulsara, and that was the most powerful message that was sent to me from the beginning." (Malek's parents were Egyptian, and he has also said that he has "an eighth Greek" ancestry)

When Malek was contacted about playing Mercury, he had only a casual knowledge of Queen. To embody Mercury, Malek had to work many intense sessions with a movement coach (as well as learn to talk with prosthetic teeth). Malek's protruding teeth were crafted by artist Chris Lyons.

Besides examining Mercury's movements, they also watched footage of Liza Minnelli, who was an inspiration to Mercury's stage moves. Malek took singing and piano lessons and had an accent coach. He said, "I had to re-create things he did on the fly, onstage. There were many days I said to myself, 'This is a lost cause.'" After finishing the film, Malek said that he became a "Queen super-fan", specifying, "I see Freddie as the best performer of all time... I never ceased to be astonished by this man."

While Malek sang some parts in the film, producers inserted vocal stems from Queen songs as well as filling in parts with Canadian vocalist Marc Martel, a winner of the Queen Extravaganza Live Tour auditions.

Malek on performing the Live Aid sequence in the film on the first day of shooting; "It's considered one of the greatest rock performances of all time and in my mind [Freddie Mercury] is the greatest front man that has ever graced the earth, so you can imagine my heart, how fast it was beating on that day. You come out and see that piano that is just shiny and glossy, it has the Pepsi cups on top and everything is recreated so accurately, it's almost surreal, the closest thing to an out of body experience. It was the greatest adrenaline rush you could ever imagine."

30/06/2025

Dakota Fanning: "When I go on a movie set, I'm learning about movies. I learned 100 lessons a day from Steven Spielberg. I always think I might not have this opportunity again, so I try to cram a lot of information into my brain."

During the filming of the underwater scenes (where the ferry capsizes) in "The War of the Worlds" (2005), Spielberg played a prank on Tom Cruise and Fanning by playing the dramatic music from "Jaws" (1975) (also one of Spielberg's films) through the massive underwater speakers on the sound stage.

One piece of Fanning's costume that takes on a special importance is her lavender horse purse: "I wanted her to have something that made her feel safe, some little thing that she could sleep with and put over her face," costume designer Joanna Johnston noted. "That was the lavender horse purse. We tied it up on a ribbon and Dakota hung it on her body, so it was with her at all times."

Spielberg praised "how quickly (Fanning) understands the situation in a sequence, how quickly she sizes it up, measures it up and how she would really react in a real situation."

"I've always wanted to be an actress, ever since I was a little girl. I've always played the mom and I play my sister as the daughter. I wanted to be an actress on television and movies instead of just around the house."

30/06/2025

"I never liked acting. I don't like to be told what to do and what to say and how to say it. I'm grateful to it as it provided me with the money to do other things such as I'm into now, but as a profession, it's a bore."

Of Swiss and Tahitian ancestry (Hall's father, Felix Locher, was a former world skating champion turned actor and his mother was a Tahitian princess.), Hall was the nephew of author James Norman Hall who wrote the book on which his star-making role in "The Hurricane" (1937) was based. Although he had made several previous films using his real name, Charles Locher, the actor officially adopted "Jon Hall" as his professional name for this movie, in order to capitalize on his real-life relationship with the book's co-author.

Samuel Goldwyn originally intended contract player Joel McCrea to be in the leading role, but he balked at playing the role as he believed he would be unconvincing as a Polynesian. The problem was solved when Goldwyn became convinced that McCrea was right and traded his services to Paramount in exchange for Dorothy Lamour, who played Marama in the film.

Director John Ford insisted that no actor could possibly recreate the pain of a real flogging. Hall agreed to undergo the real thing, finding himself horsewhipped until his back bled. Unfortunately, his quest for verisimilitude went unnoticed as the censors found the sequence to be far too realistic and insisted that it be cut from the final film. (IMDb)

Happy Birthday, Jon Hall!

30/06/2025

Peter Fonda wore the Captain America jacket and rode his chopper a week around Los Angeles before shooting for "Easy Rider" (1969) began, to give them a broken-in look, and to get used to riding the radically designed bike. The American flag on the back of the jacket, and on the gas tank of the bike, caused him to be pulled over several times by the police.

Fonda got the idea for this movie after seeing a picture of he and Bruce Dern on their motorcycles. He got Dennis Hopper (who was planning to get out of the acting business and become a teacher at the time) involved when he promised him he could direct the film. Hopper and Fonda did not write a full script for the movie, and made most of it up as they went along. They didn't hire a crew, but instead picked up hippies at communes across the country, and used friends and passers-by to hold the cameras, and were drunk and stoned most of the time.

For the famous soliloquy that Fonda does in the cemetery while tripping on acid, Hopper, the director, asked Peter to talk to the statue as if he were talking to his mother, who died via su***de when Peter was ten-years-old. Peter didn't want to do it, as he had never confronted his feelings about his mother. But Hopper insisted, which is why you hear Peter call the statue "Mother," and he states that he both loves her and hates her, which expresses his conflicted emotions. This scene persuaded Bob Dylan to allow the use of his song "It's Alright Ma" in one of the final scenes, which contains lyrics referencing su***de. Peter told Dylan, "I need to hear those words," and he agreed to its use.

In an interview with Daily Camera, Fonda described his father Henry's reaction to the film: "I had him come down and look at an early cut. We had to get Dennis out of the room to get it below four hours. My dad watched it and then I went over the next day to his house. He was very serious. He said, 'Look son, I know you have all your eggs in this basket, and I'm worried about it, because the film is inaccessible. We don't see where you're going and why? I just don't think many people will get it.'

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