On December 4th, Reservoir Dogs gets a one-night only screening in theaters across the country, celebrating the 20th (!!) anniversary of its release. (For screening locations, check www.fathomevents.com.)
The now-classic violent crime film catapulted writer/director Quentin Tarantino to fame. Reservoir Dogs is now considered a classic heist-gone-wrong film; Empire Magazine once named it the best independent film ever made. Here are some behind-the-scene facts behind one of the most influential films of the past 20 years:
1. James Woods was wanted by Tarantino for the film. The filmmaker, who was looking to cast the intense actor as "Mr. Orange" (played by Tim Roth), called Woods' agent with five offers. The agent never even alerted Woods--the offers were way below what the actor normally commanded. A few years later, Tarantino met Woods at a party, and he told the actor how he tried to hire him. Woods fired his agent the next day.
2. Shooting and final editing came very close to derailing the film's premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. The film's final version was completed a mere three days before it unspooled at Sundance.
3. There are no women in the movie. Not one speaking part. In the DVD extras, however, Nina Siemaszko has some scenes as "McClusky."
4. It's a typical Tarantino film: the "f bomb" is dropped over 270 times.
5. The film's budget was so long that in many scenes the actors raided their closets and wore their own clothes.
6. Michael Madsen has that unforgettable sequence where he tortures a cop and cuts off his ear, all to the soundtrack of "Stuck in the Middle." But Madsen had grave concerns about the scene, and was so disturbed by the violence that he couldn't finish it in one take. He missed take after take because he would get too choked up to continue.
7. The film was originally set for a down-and-dirty 2 1/2 week shoot with a budget of $30,000. One day Tarantino came home and got a voicemail from Harvey Keitel, asking if he could be in the film. On Keitel's name alone the director was able to raise $1.5 million in less than a few weeks.
8. The film was a modest hit in the U.S., grossing $2.9 million. But in Europe it was huge, including a whopping $12 million dollar (U.S.) take in Great Britain.
John Frankenheimer was responsible for one of the greatest political thrillers ever made--The Manchurian Candidate. But, just in time for election day, you should watch another one of his great thrillers, Seven Days in May. And this one is scary, because it's just plausible enough to happen.
Questioning the checks-and-balance system of American government, Seven Days in May asks the unthinkable: Could there be a political coup coming from in the Pentagon?
Veteran actor Fredric March plays the President, who is on the verge of signing a total nuclear disarmament treaty with Russia. But there are numerous naysayers in the Pentagon, suspecting the country is leaving itself open to a nuclear attack. One of the Joints Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General James Scott (Burt Lancaster), plots to overthrow the President. When Colonel Martin "Jiggs" Casey (Kirk Douglas) stumbles onto the plot, he alerts the President...and the game's afoot.
Seven Days has a brilliant script by Rod Serling, who made it a point to show that real power occurs behind closed doors, in the shadows, away from the public and the press. It's another great teaming of Douglas and Lancaster, although Frankeheimer butted heads with Lancaster while making The Birdman of Alcatraz. Douglas eventually convinced the director that no one else could portray General Scott.
The film has a dazzling supporting cast, led by Ava Gardner, who plays the General's ex-mistress--a woman with a lot of secrets to hide. Also in the film are Martin Balsam, who got annoyed when the director would shoot off a gun during his scenes, just to make him more jittery. And Edmond O'Brien won a well-deserved Oscar nod as an alcoholic Senator who stands on the President's side.
How realistic is the film? The Pentagon wouldn't cooperate at all in the making of the film. President Kennedy thought the film had to be made. So whenever Frankenheimer needed to shoot around the White House, the President made sure he was away at Hyannisport on weekends, and the crew was given permission to shoot. Seven Days in May is a thought-provoking thriller that still resonates today...and is still in the realm of possibility.
The studios can spin the numbers all they want. Truth is, less people are going to the movies than ever before.
According to box office tracker Exhibitor Relations, this summer's take ended up at $4.27 billion, down from last year's $4.4 billion. Actual admissions were 526 million, down over 100 million from the summer of 2002.
There's no doubt that the summer was blockbuster driven, with The Avengers grossing $1.5 billion worldwide and The Dark Knight Rises earning nearly $1 billion. Still, there were an awful lot if disasters--both critical and commercial. Battleship, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, Dark Shadows: all of them bombed.
The Labor Day weekend closed out with the clumsily-named Oogiloves In The Big Balloon Adventure, which managed to gross an anemic $885,000 in its first six days of release. Problem is, the film cost roughly $40-50 million to make, proving that even four year olds are getting blase about movies. (It never struck the producers that you don't introduce a new line of unknown characters by releasing a major film on a holiday weekend?)
Has your movie going dropped since the advent of superior HDTVs, streaming, and Netflix? Did sticky floors, rude moviegoers, and poor theatrical presentations drive you from the theater screaming? Or are you like me, and unwilling to take out a small business loan just to see an IMAX presentation? Comment and let's get the conversation started.
With Universal's 100th anniversary in full swing, and a one-night big screen showing on Wednesday, September 19th, Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds is attracting attention again. HBO will soon premiere The Girl, a look at the relationship between the director and the star Tippi Hedren. The Master's 1963 thriller still produces shudders among grownups (myself included), and like any great film, there are quite a few stories behind it:
1. The movie is adapted from a story by Daphne du Maurier (Rebecca), but is also based on fact. Hitchcock noticed a 1961 newspaper story about a group of disoriented seabirds attacking people in California's Monterey Bay. (Their behavior was attributed to eating poisoned plankton and squid.) Hitch thought it would make a good idea for a movie.
2. It wasn't supposed to be Rod Taylor and Tippi Hedren starring. Hitch had the screenplay written with Grace Kelly and Cary Grant in mind.
3. When Grace Kelly turned the Master down, Hitch cast a wide net looking for a newcomer to star. He saw Tippi Hedren in a soda commercial, and rushed her to the Universal set for three days of screen tests at a cost of $25,000. During the actual six month shoot, Hedren was needed on the set every day; she appeared in nearly every major scene.
4. Hitchcock's customary cameo appearance catches him leaving Davidson's Pet Shop as Hedren enters. Hitch is being dragged out the door by two dogs--his own terriers, Geoffrey and Stanley.
5. The Birds used hundred of real trained birds, as well as a few mechanical ones and some animation. Effects wizard Ub Iwerks was nominated for an Oscar for Best Special Effects--but lost that year to Cleopatra! (I'm still working on this one: aside from Elizabeth Taylor's eye makeup, what special effects were there in Cleopatra?) Iwerks worked for Walt Disney since the early 1920s. He had to ask Walt's permission to work with Hitchcock.
6. Bird trainer Ray Berwick was brought in when it became apparent that the mechanical birds simply didn't look real. The ideal situation would have been to train baby birds as they were growing up, but there wasn't time for that. The film desperately needed grown ravens and crows. Professional trappers were called with a promise to pay $10 per bird captured. "Not one trapper came up with a single bird!" Berwick said; he and his assistant later tracked and captured part of a 20,000 flock of crows.
7. The birds weren't antagonistic towards the actors at first, although it certainly looked that way. The birds had motivation: before film takes the actors' hands were smeared with shrimp, anchovies, and ground meat to attract the feathered foes. As shooting progressed, bird bites became more common; one day alone 12 crew members were nipped. And yes, the American Humane Society was on the set to make sure that no birds were harmed during filming. (You'd think they would have been more worried about Tippi Hedren...)
8. One very vocal critic of the film was the screenwriter, Evan Hunter, best known for writing the The Blackboard Jungle and the Ed McBain 89th Precinct mysteries. "I don't think Hitchcock was fair to my screenplay," Hunter lamented. Later he added, "I think Hitch is putting the world on when he pretends there is anything meaningful about The Birds. We were just trying to scare the hell out of people. Period."
One of this fall's most eagerly awaited television events is the October premiere of the HBO film The Girl, the true story of Alfred Hitchcock's obsession with his blond actresses--most notably his different relationship with Tippi Hedren, who starred in The Birds and Marnie for the Master of Mayhem.
At a screening for TV critics last week, Hedren, still glamorous at 82, pulled no punches in describing Hitchcock, whose perverse relationship with her affected her career. "I think we're dealing with a mind here that is incomprehensible," she said. "It was something I never experienced before," she added. "But it certainly wasn't love."
She continued to dissect Hitchcock's attitude towards women. "He was an extremely sad character. You're dealing with a brain here that was unusual, genius, and evil, and deviant, almost to the point of deviant."
Hitchcock's obsession with blondes--Grace Kelly, Doris Day, Vera Miles, Kim Novak, and Hedren--were legendary, but his disturbing behavior towards them was kept a secret. After his death, Hitchcock film critic Donald Spoto wrote the controversial book Spellbound By Beauty, which described the director's many "kinks." (Once, after being spurned by Hedren, Hitchcock sent her daughter, Melanie Griffith, a toy coffin with a perfect likeness of her mother inside.)
Hedren couldn't escape the harassment; it was, after all, the 1960s. "If it had happened today, I would have been a rich woman," she admitted. Nevertheless, Hedren added that Hitch was a great director. "There were times of delight and joy," she asserted.
Hedren worked closely with the screenwriter of The Girl to insure its authenticity, also collaborating with actress Sienna Miller, who portrays Hedren in the HBO film. Hitchcock is played by British actor Toby Jones, who gave a little-seen but hypnotic performance as Truman Capote in Infamous. How closely does Jones capture the aura of the Master?
"When I first heard Toby's voice as Hitchcock," Hedren stated, "I froze."
Hot on the heels of a nationwide sold-out screening of M-G-M's Singin' In The Rain, Turner Classic Movies is teaming up with Universal Studios to showcase four of its classic films in theaters this fall. First up is a Hitchcock classic that's a must on the big screen: a September 19th screening of The Birds. The cagey creatures wreak havoc on the quiet little town of Bodega Bay. Tippi Hedren was Hitch's newest "discovery" to star in one of his films. (His twisted obsession with the actress is the subject of That Girl, an October HBO film.) This is one film that gave a lot of adults (myself included) nightmares as a kid.
Universal is also known for their classic horror films. October 24th's screening is a double feature of Frankenstein, and a sequel that might even be better than the original, Bride of Frankenstein.
To round out the series is one of the most beloved films of all time, To Kill A Mockingbird, starring Gregory Peck in his award-winning role as Southern lawyer Atticus Finch. How good was Peck in this film? He won the 1962 Oscar for Best Actor, even beating out Peter O'Toole for his amazing debut in Lawrence of Arabia. Mockingbird screens one night only on Thursday, November 15th.
It's bad enough when Hollywood rakes over the old coals in an effort for a new idea. But how many times should a studio ruin a perfect classic by remaking it? Peter Jackson learned the hard way not to monkey around with King Kong. Meg Ryan probably fired her agent (or should have) after co-starring in the dismal remake of The Women.
Thankfully, Warners is putting a hold on a projected remake of The Thin Man, starring Johnny Depp and to be directed by Rob Marshall (Chicago, Nine). The budget was apparently over $100 million to start...and Nora Charles hadn't even been cast yet!
Warners may be scared by the lukewarm response to Dark Shadows, Depp's current flop for the studio. (Luckily, director Marshall is moving on to a project better suited for his tastes: an adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's Into The Woods.)
The Thin Man is the classic M-G-M series starring William Powell and Myrna Loy as a former detective and his society wife who keep getting mixed up in murder. The first one, shot in only 13 days, set a standard for sophisticated sleuthing that lasts to this day (see any episode of Hart to Hart for its influence).
Sometimes there is no need to remake a classic. The Thin Man still stands on its own. To update it would take it out of the 1930s, where it worked so well. And as for "sophistication," well, I like Johnny Depp. But that isn't the first word I think of when I watch him on screen.
Can you think of any other ill-fated remakes that should have been left undone? Ones that pop into my mind: the painful Streisand remake of A Star Is Born. The new Total Recall. The horrible remake of The Stepford Wives. Feel free to add to my list.
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