Cinema Society (2025)

24/07/2025

"Actually, I think the average voice is like 70 percent tone and 30 percent noise. My voice is 95 percent noise."

The original Broadway production of "Torch Song Trilogy" by Harvey Fierstein opened at the Little Theater in New York on 10th June 1982, and ran for 1222 performances, until it closed on 10th May 1985. The play won the Tony Awards in 1983 for both Best Play and Best Actor in a Play; Fierstein recreated his stage role in the 1988 movie version.

The person living next door to the doorway used for the sequence at the end of the movie where the actors are performing in front of Fierstein's Arnold's doorway did not give permission to film outside his home. When the director would shout, "Action," the resident would either put his radio or television really loud, or open his door, thus ruining the shot. The crew got really fed-up with his antics so they nailed his door shut, which caused a law suit to be filed against New Line Cinema.

"I'm happy that we made it. Is it everything I wanted it to be? Is anything ever? I fought with [director] Paul Bogart because I had based the entire third act on a song by Big Maybelle. When we went to make the movie, Paul refused to put it in the movie. We used a beautiful Ella Fitzgerald recording of 'This Time the Dream's on Me', which is very pretty, but it doesn't have that emotion. But to Paul, it did. It's life. I really am a theater person. That means you put something out there, and you let it go. Tomorrow night is a new performance."

Estelle Getty originated the role of Ma Beckoff on Broadway. She was unavailable filming "The Golden Girls" as Sophia, Dorothy's mother, to reprise the part for the movie so Anne Bancroft was cast instead. Bancroft and Fierstein worked together in "Garbo Talks" (1984), which was Fierstein's first film; however, they shared no scenes in that film,(IMDb)

Happy Birthday, Harvey Fierstein!

24/07/2025

Moving to Los Angeles at age 19, Sandra Bernhard paid her rent by working as a beauty salon manicurist to the stars as she tried to make a semi-name for herself in such L.A. haunts as The Comedy Store. As she grew in stature, the girl with major attitude was soon getting noticed for TV. She, along with other up-and-coming comics such as Robin Williams and Marsha Warfield, was cast as a regular player on "The Richard Pryor Show," a musical variety show. Her cutting-edge humor seemed like a natural fit in an atmosphere provided by a daredevil like Pryor, but the censorship staff and a turned-off audience had the show taken off the air after only five shows. A gifted talker and raconteur, she started making news on the night time talk show circuit for her pungent comments and observances.

Bernhard was allowed to improvise most of her lines in "The King of Comedy" (1982), as she had no formal acting training, and Martin Scorsese wanted her to be as natural as possible. This was Bernhard's second appearance in a live-action movie, after "Nice Dreams" (1981) with Cheech and Chong, and the first one where she has dialogue.

"I haven't seen the movie in a long time. How many times can you watch yourself, you know? It's uncomfortable. I am curious to see it again all cleaned up and restored. The film was so representative of an era in filmmaking when people would take their time in a scene. It wasn't a case of rush, rush, rush onto the next moment. You had room to breathe, and I think that in itself made people uncomfortable because the topic was so weird and out of left field at the time. Now, expectations of fame and desire run so extreme that the film almost seems tame in comparison, but there's still something about 'The King of Comedy' that's very disarming and offbeat and something you'll never see again. And so those are the emotions I feel. It was very evocative."

"At one point, Jack Black wanted to remake it, and I was like - I mean I love him, he's fabulous, don't get me wrong, but I don't think it would have worked. It's too late to remake it. We're here and there's nothing to really predict. It's just an ongoing conversation you have every day of the week like, 'Can you believe he's famous?' There's nothing to say about it. We're in the middle of it." (IMDb)

Happy Birthday, Sandra Bernhard!

24/07/2025

The picture that Miles (Paul Giamatti) looks at when at his mother's home in "Sideways" (2004) is actually a picture of Giamatti and his father (former Yale University president and Commissioner of Major League Baseball) Bart Giamatti.

Giamatti admitted to faking every bit of wine knowledge, and not understanding why anybody would care about it. He also claims he was shocked that he was cast in a lead role and initially thought it was a practical joke.

Most of the wine used in the wine-tasting scenes was non-alcoholic. The actors wound up drinking so much of it that it made them nauseated (and had to periodically switch to the real thing to clean out their palates). Thomas Haden Church estimated that grape juice or non-alcoholic wine was what they consumed 95 percent of the time. Conversely, Giamatti claimed the actors drank real wine, and that he was actually very drunk after shooting a dinner scene.

During an emotional scene in the film, Miles talks with great passion about Pinot Noir. After the release of this movie, sales of Pinot Noir wines rose by more than 20 percent over the 2004-05 Christmas/New Year period, compared to the same period the previous year. A similar phenomenon was experienced in British wine outlets. Miles is deeply disparaging, in a different scene, about Merlot, and sales dropped after the film came out. Ironically, Miles's prized bottle of wine, a 1961 Château Cheval Blanc, is a blend of Merlot and Cabernet Franc, another grape Miles disparaged.

"The Sideways Wine Club," the licensee of Fox Searchlight Pictures, was started in April of 2005 and became the fastest growing wine club in the United States. It originally featured many of the wines seen in the movie then expanded to include similar wines from all over the world.

24/07/2025

On this date in 1968, Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan.

In many ways, writer and director Emilio Estevez felt that he was fated to make the film "Bobby" (2006) all of his life. Just six years old when Robert F. Kennedy died, Estevez vividly remembers that night through a child's eyes, and seeing the horrific announcement that the Senator had been shot on television, and rushing to awaken his father, Martin Sheen, a long-time Kennedy supporter, with the shocking news. Soon after that, Sheen took his son to visit the spot where Robert F. Kennedy had delivered his final speech at the Ambassador Hotel, a heartfelt, impromptu call for American unity and action in the face of escalating rifts and violence. Estevez recalled, "I remember my dad holding my hand as we wandered through those grand halls, and I remembered my father talking about what we had lost."

At one point during the script development, after developing a case of what Estevez called "paralyzing writer's block," he set the script aside. Later, he checked into a remote hotel on the Central California Coast, near Pismo Beach, to work on the script. When he checked in, the woman at the desk recognized him, and asked what he was doing there. "I'm writing a script about the night Bobby Kennedy was killed," he told her. Tears instantly welled in her eyes. "I was there," she replied. Estevez interviewed the woman, who had been a volunteer for Robert F. Kennedy in 1968. He turned her personal story, which included marrying a young man to keep him out of Vietnam, into the Diane Howser character, played by Lindsay Lohan. Estevez said, "She really helped me crack the spine of the story and give it a beating heart. After that, it just started to flow."

Rather than attempt to search for all of the people who were in the Ambassador Hotel that night to request their life rights, Estevez decided to take a novel approach. Estevez would merge the basic facts of the evening with his own imagination. Turning the story completely inside out, he chose not to focus on Kennedy and Sirhan's movements, which are widely covered in a myriad of books and documentaries, but instead on a widely varied group of ordinary people whose lives were profoundly changed in those few terrible moments. Estevez began to weave a web of diverse characters, each of whom brings their own individual struggle into that catalytic night in June 1968, as events build, conversation by conversation, to the piercing moment of change. Estevez would use the Ambassador Hotel as a microcosm of what was happening in the country at that time.

The first cast member to be cast, and set the ball in motion, was Anthony Hopkins (below with Estevez) , who still had a profoundly strong memory of Kennedy's death several decades earlier. Hopkins recalled: "I remember exactly where I was. I was sitting in a make-up chair in a London studio when the news came through. I said: 'They've gone insane. The world's gone mad.' We had J.F.K., Malcolm X, Dr. King, and now Robert Kennedy. I thought it's coming apart at the seams, and it was."

24/07/2025

As president of the Oxford University Dramatic Society, Tony Richardson directed such plays as "Peer Gynt" and "King John." Richardson graduated from Oxford in 1952 and joined the BBC as a producer. In 1956, he became associate director of the English Stage Company. That year, he produced his first play, John Osborne's "Look Back in Anger." The following year, the production moved to Broadway under producer David Merrick with Richardson directing.

In 1959, Richardson co-founded Woodfall Film Productions with Osborne and producer Harry Saltzman, and, as Woodfall's debut, directed the 1959 film version of "Look Back in Anger." Osborne insisted, against resistance from Saltzman, that Richardson was the right man to direct the film (his film directorial debut). The original backer, J. Arthur Rank, pulled out of the deal because of the choice of director.

The film's backers insisted that a name actor be cast in the lead, over the unknown Kenneth Haigh who had been so successful in the stage version. Richard Burton (below) agreed to take on the part at a much lower fee than his usual Hollywood salary.

Richardson originally intended to cast John Fraser as Jimmy Porter, and Fraser was even sent to the Cannes Film Festival, where his casting was announced to the press. However, when Osborne happened to meet Burton in New York, Burton told Osborne he would kill to play the role, and Burton was subsequently cast instead.

Salzman recalled it was "a monumental miscalculation" to have cast then 33 year old Burton in the part of a 25 year old, as he was "too old anyway" and "looked as if he could handle himself so capably that he'd lay anyone he hated out flat."

According to Burton biographer Paul Ferris, Salzman screened the film as a courtesy to Jack L. Warner, who put up the money for the picture. After a few minutes, Warner asked sarcastically what language they were speaking. When Salzman told him it was English, the studio chief replied, "This is America!" and walked out.

24/07/2025

Mark Wahlberg agreed to appear in a Seth MacFarlane movie after seeing a caricature of himself on "Family Guy." That movie would be "Ted" (2012).

James Bond producer Barbara Broccoli traditionally never allows any Bond theme to be used in other movies, but MacFarlane wrote her a letter asking for permission to use "All Time High" from "Oc*****sy" (1983), as it was his mother's favorite song. Broccoli made a rare exception to her rule, hence Wahlberg's character gets to slaughter the tune in a performance in front of a dismayed crowd.

"In my movies, I'm not trying to erase any old image of myself, really. And also I'm not trying to imitate anyone or follow in their footsteps, because I know, Burt Reynolds was just one of the people that told me this, I know how you can only last in this business if you got something special to offer, just by being yourself. Imitators don't last, and I'd like to last. (IMDb)

Happy Birthday, Mark Wahlberg!

24/07/2025

During all the horrors that proceeded while filming "Poltergeist," released on this date in 1982, only one scene really scared Heather O'Rourke: that in which she had to hold on to the headboard while a wind machine blew toys into the closet behind her. The young actress fell apart. Producer Steven Spielberg stopped everything, took her in his arms, and said that she would not have to do that scene again.

Drew Barrymore was considered for the role of Carol Anne, but Spielberg wanted someone more angelic. It was Barrymore's audition for this role, however, that landed her the part of Gertie in "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" (1982).

Originally, as director Tobe Hooper, Spielberg and the screenwriters were plotting out the screenplay, Carol Ann was going to be killed in the first act and then haunt the house in the second. They eventually decided this was too dark, and opted to have her kidnapped by the ghosts.

Though on-screen credit goes to Hooper, a wealth of evidence suggests that most of the directorial decisions were made by Spielberg. In fact, Spielberg had wanted to direct the film himself, but a clause in his contract stated that while still working on "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial," Spielberg could not direct another film. Hooper, though, had developed the film with Spielberg, and if Spielberg had wanted to wrest the film away from Hooper, it would have caused a rift between the filmmakers. Members of the cast and crew, including Executive Producer Frank Marshall and actress Zelda Rubinstein, have stated that Spielberg cast the film, directed the actors (though this has been often contested by several other performers), and designed every single storyboard for the movie himself (although Hooper has maintained he both collaborated on and did fully half of the storyboards). Based on this evidence, the DGA opened a probe into the matter, but found no reason that co-director credit should go to Spielberg.

24/07/2025

The son of a day laborer, William Boyd moved with his family to Tulsa, Oklahoma, when he was seven. His parents died while he was in his early teens, forcing him to quit school and take such jobs as a grocery clerk, surveyor and oil field worker. He went to Hollywood in 1919, already gray-haired. His first role was as an extra in Cecil B. DeMille's "Why Change Your Wife?" (1920). He bought some fancy clothes, caught DeMille's eye and got the romantic lead in "The Volga Boatman" (1926), quickly becoming a matinée idol and earning upwards of $100,000 a year. However, with the end of silent movies, Boyd was without a contract, couldn't find work and was going broke. By mistake his picture was run in a newspaper story about the arrest of another actor with a similar name (William 'Stage' Boyd) on gambling, liquor and morals charges, and that hurt his career even more.

In 1935 he was offered the lead role in "Hop-a-Long Cassidy" (1935) (named because of a limp caused by an earlier bullet wound). He changed the original pulp-fiction character to its opposite, made sure that "Hoppy" didn't smoke, drink, chew to***co or swear, rarely kissed a girl and let the bad guy draw first. By 1943 he had made 54 "Hoppies" for his original producer, Harry Sherman; after Sherman dropped the series, Boyd produced and starred in 12 more on his own. The series was wildly popular, and all recouped at least double their production costs.

In a shrewd business move, Boyd gambled big when he leveraged nearly everything he owned to purchase the rights to the Hopalong Cassidy film library and name. The decision would prove valuable beyond any estimate. With the advent of television Hopalong Cassidy films were broadcast and the character became massively popular. But the release of Cassidy films was only Boyd's initial step. In 1950 a Hopalong Cassidy tin lunch box was made by Aladdin Industries, and was the first lunch box to bear a licensed image. The subsequent frenzy for Hopalong Cassidy merchandise led to more than 100 companies manufacturing more than $70 million dollars worth of Hopalong Cassidy products. It is estimated that more than 2500 products were merchandised under the Hopalong Cassidy name, or the name "Hoppy's Favorite."

Products were not only marketed to kids, such as Cassidy western outfits, six-guns and holsters, lunch boxes, toys, and much more, there were also products marketed to adults such as motor oil, tires, eggs, and milk. No other celebrity had utilized merchandising on the level of Boyd, and he took this responsibility seriously. Boyd selected Hoppy merchandising very carefully, and certain products were not endorsed because Boyd did not think them appropriate. One of the most interesting of Boyd's merchandising refusals was bubble gum, which was never endorsed by Boyd as he did not approve of it. (IMDb)

Happy Birthday, William Boyd!

24/07/2025

On this date in 1883, the first regularly scheduled Orient Express departed Paris.

Agatha Christie had been quite displeased with some film adaptations of her works made in the 1960s, and accordingly was unwilling to sell any more film rights. When Nat Cohen, chairman of EMI Films, and producer John Brabourne attempted to get her approval for "Murder on the Orient Express" (1974), they felt it necessary to have Lord Mountbatten of Burma (of the British Royal Family and also Brabourne's father-in-law) help them broach the subject. In the end, according to Christie's husband Max Mallowan, "Agatha herself has always been allergic to the adaptation of her books by the cinema, but was persuaded to give a rather grudging appreciation to this one." According to one report, Christie gave approval because she liked the previous films of the producers, "Romeo and Juliet" (1968) and "Tales of Beatrix Potter" (1971).

Christie's biographer Gwen Robyns quoted her as saying, "It was well made except for one mistake. It was Albert Finney, as my detective Hercule Poirot. I wrote that he had the finest moustache in England — and he didn't in the film. I thought that a pity — why shouldn't he?"

Christie later said that this film and "Witness for the Prosecution" (1957) were the only adaptations of her books that she liked.

Cast members eagerly accepted upon first being approached. Director Sidney Lumet went to Sean Connery first, saying that if you get the biggest star, the rest will come along. This was not Connery's first ride on the train line: he famously rode the Orient Express as James Bond in "From Russia With Love" (1963).

24/07/2025

On this date in 1998, "The Truman Show" was released in the United States after a June 1 release in Los Angeles.

Andrew Niccol completed a one-page film treatment titled "The Malcolm Show" in May 1991. The original draft was more in tone of a science fiction thriller, with the story set in New York City. Niccol stated, "I think everyone questions the authenticity of their lives at certain points. It's like when kids ask if they're adopted."

Producer Scott Rudin purchased the script for slightly over $1 million. Part of the deal called for Niccol to make his directing debut, though Paramount executives felt the estimated $80 million budget would be too high for him. In addition, Paramount wanted to go with an A-list director, paying Niccol extra money "to step aside." Brian De Palma was under negotiations to direct before things fell through, and other directors who were considered after De Palma's departure included Tim Burton, Sam Raimi, Terry Gilliam, Barry Sonnenfeld, and Steven Spielberg before Peter Weir signed on in early 1995, following a recommendation of Niccol.

Robin Williams was considered for the role of Truman. Still, Weir cast Jim Carrey after seeing him in "Ace Ventura: Pet Detective" (1994) because Carrey's performance reminded him of Charlie Chaplin. Carrey took the opportunity to proclaim himself as a dramatic actor, rather than being typecast in comedic roles. Carrey and Weir initially found working together on set difficult (Carrey's contract gave him the power to demand rewrites), but Weir was reportedly impressed with Carrey's improvisational skills, and the two became more interactive. The scene in which Truman declares "this planet Trumania of the Burbank galaxy" to the bathroom mirror was Carrey's idea.

Joel Gold, a psychiatrist at the Bellevue Hospital Center, revealed that by 2008, he had met five patients with schizophrenia (and had heard of another twelve) who believed their lives were reality television shows. Gold named the syndrome "The Truman Show delusion" after the film and attributed the delusion to a world that had become hungry for publicity. Gold stated that some patients were rendered happy by their disease, while "others were tormented." One traveled to New York to check whether the World Trade Center had actually fallen—believing the 9/11 attacks to be an elaborate plot twist in his personal storyline. Another came to climb the Statue of Liberty, believing that he would be reunited with his high school girlfriend at the top and finally be released from the show.

24/07/2025

On this date in 1940, the Dunkirk evacuation ended; the British Armed Forces completed evacuation of 338,000 troops from Dunkirk in France. To rally the morale of the country, Winston Churchill delivered, only to the House of Commons, his famous "We shall fight on the beaches" speech.

"Dunkirk" (2017), written, directed, and co-produced by Christopher Nolan, depicts the Dunkirk evacuation of World War II from the perspectives of the land, sea, and air.

Nolan conceived the film in the mid-1990s, when he and his future wife Emma Thomas sailed across the English Channel, following the path of many small boats in the Dunkirk evacuation. Nolan considered improvising the entire film instead of writing a script, but Thomas convinced him otherwise. In 2015, Nolan wrote a 76-page screenplay, which was about half the length of his usual scripts and his shortest to date. Its precise structure necessitated fictional characters, rather than ones based on eyewitnesses.

"This is an essential moment in the history of World War II. If this evacuation had not been a success, Great Britain would have been obliged to capitulate, and the whole world would have been lost, or would have known a different fate. The Germans would undoubtedly have conquered Europe, the U.S. would not have returned to war. It is a true point of rupture in war and in history of the world. A decisive moment. And the success of the evacuation allowed (Sir Winston Churchill) to impose the idea of a moral victory, which allowed him to galvanize his troops like civilians and to impose a spirit of resistance while the logic of this sequence should have been that of surrender. Militarily, it is a defeat. On the human plane, it is a colossal victory."

To convey the perspective of soldiers on the beach, for whom contact with the enemy was "extremely limited and intermittent," Nolan did not show Germans on screen (several Germans who take Farrier prisoner are out of focus). He omitted scenes with Churchill and generals in war rooms, as he did not want to get "bogged down in the politics of the situation."

After first-hand accounts of the evacuation revealed how young and inexperienced the soldiers had been, Nolan decided to cast young and unknown actors for the beach setting. He was also adamant that all of the cast be British.

The scene in which Farrier's (Tom Hardy's) Spitfire lands on Dunkirk beach was real, done on-location with an actual Spitfire in flight, and was the first time a plane landed on that beach since 1940. After the scene was completed, however, the Spitfire became stuck in the sand. There was subsequently a frantic rush to get the valuable Spitfire off of the beach before the incoming tide could damage it.

According to Kenneth Branagh, roughly thirty Dunkirk survivors, who were in their mid-90s, attended the premiere in London, England. When asked about the movie, they felt that it accurately captured the event, but that the soundtrack was louder than the actual bombardment, a comment that greatly amused Nolan.

24/07/2025

The stage play "Auntie Mame" opened at the Broadhurst Theater in New York on October 31, 1956 and ran for 639 performances. Rosalind Russell, Yuki Shimoda, Jan Handzlik, and Peggy Cass were in the original cast, and reprise their roles in the 1958 film. In her autobiography "Life Is A Banquet," Russell opined that it was a nice idea to allow Handzlik to reprise the role of young Patrick, but that he had really grown too old for the part by the time filming began.

Reportedly, the character of Auntie Mame was based on Patrick Dennis's real-life aunt, Marian Tanner. A good-natured eccentric, who lived to be nearly one hundred years old, Ms. Tanner's advice to those seeking a more interesting, adventurous life was to never be afraid to try a new experience and to keep an open mind about everything and everybody.

Russell broke her ankle in the first take of the scene where she comes flying down the stairs in the gown with the capri pants - shooting had to be delayed until she recovered.

Director Morton DaCosta maintained a theatrical feel to the film's visual style throughout, including his choice to use the artistic touch of blacking out the set and fading out on Mame's face at the end of each scene. This technique was known, according to author Richard Tyler Jordan, as a "Flanagan Fade," named after chief electrician at Warner Bros. Frank Flanagan, who came up with the unique flourish.

Russell was nominated for an Oscar for Best Actress for her role, but lost to Susan Hayward for "I Want to Live!" (1958). After the awards ceremony, Russell reportedly said, "Well, I have to admit that nobody deserved it more than Hayward. If it had to be somebody else, I'm glad it was Susie." (IMDb)

Happy Birthday, Rosalind Russell!

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