This MST3K addict was hoping for a much funnier book, but there are loads of bad movie recommendations herein. Hopefully he'll publish a ranked list. This MST3K addict was hoping for a much funnier book, but there are loads of bad movie recommendations herein. Hopefully he'll publish a ranked list. ...more
Imagine Roscoe Dexter -- you know, the manic silent-film director from Singin' in the Rain -- reincarnated among us as an auteur of blockbuster horrorImagine Roscoe Dexter -- you know, the manic silent-film director from Singin' in the Rain -- reincarnated among us as an auteur of blockbuster horror flicks. Then allow him to kick off a preposterous concatenation of gory Hollywood fuckups, using an IRL serial killer named Darwin and a Pam Grier doppelganger, Coconut, who causes him to alter seismology forever in one (literally) dynamite shoot. The freakish spider-poisoned imagination of a youngster like Rick Spears seems perfectly fitted to a Hollywood money system run amok. Sure he doesn't "understand" it, that's half the comedy! This reminds me of an old W.C. Fields bit -- say Mr. Muckle swinging cane at a pyramid of lightbulbs -- crossed with the meatlocker sensibility of early Peter Jackson, actors slipping on bloody floors etc. The most hilarious trolling of "Hollywood" and "auteurs" I've ever read. ...more
Hilarious, rambling, heartfelt, self-effacing -- only one of those adjectives applies to Kermode's film criticism: all four apply here. Between lamentHilarious, rambling, heartfelt, self-effacing -- only one of those adjectives applies to Kermode's film criticism: all four apply here. Between lamenting the deaths of Alexander Walker (!) and Roger Ebert, and sounding the alarm about the use of "community reviews" -- such as this one -- to evaluate artistic works, he offers a potent defense of the value of professional critics, especially in a century where all that is solid melts into air. I'd ask for more structure, but if you approach this as a collection of interrelated essays, you'll dig it. ...more
Gunnar is often too reliant on quotes from his colleagues to flesh out his narrative, but this is a fun and revealing des[RIP Gunnar Hansen 1947-2015]
Gunnar is often too reliant on quotes from his colleagues to flesh out his narrative, but this is a fun and revealing descent into the making of one of the world's freakiest movies by a group of completely normal people. His quote about a chainsaw-swingin' mishap later in the filming could well describe the entire process: "It was pure luck -- dumb, idiotic, inbred-toothless-country-boy-banjo-twangin' beginner's luck. I'll never do anything like that again."
Hansen concludes the memoir with some meditations on the nature of horror and violence, and in many ways he's a bit too simplistic on that front (I was hoping his inner poet would emerge here), but it's quite revealing so see how much dander gets raised by the flick 40 years later. ...more
Weirdest of many weird facts in this bio: Milligan's obsession with the Golden Girls. Hang my brain upside-down and it makes sense -- a hit sitcom witWeirdest of many weird facts in this bio: Milligan's obsession with the Golden Girls. Hang my brain upside-down and it makes sense -- a hit sitcom with a secret queer aesthetic and misanthropic angle, what else could comfort this guy as his hospice Boswell wiped his incontinent ass?
Except Milligan -- whose sexual attentions usually focused on ugly, mentally-challenged, messed up dudes -- hated "queers". And if he had a sense of humor, there's no evidence in this bio or in his dire body of work. The man's films -- I've seen two -- are a fascinating but unendurable hybrid of Coleman Francis and Herschell Gordon Lewis. Claustrophobic, cruel, exhausting -- how did this handsome boy from St. Paul, MN end up here?
The bio -- which ranks with Tosches' Dino as one of the best I've read -- not only enlarges the guy, but gives us a deep look at two NYC scenes. First, the Cafe Cino off-off Broadway scene where Milligan, remarkably, began as an auteur. The same community that also launched Bernadette Peters and Abe Vigoda (in one of Milligan's Bernard Shaw productions). And then we get the 42nd Street sleaze-cinema world where Milligan's odd flicks sometimes made green. The decline and demise of both was echoed in Milligan's hatred of NYC, just about the time the Deuce got bowlderized. He exiled himself to LA, delivered in a car by an oddball named Dennis Malvasi, yes, that guy Made a couple even crappier flicks there, posed for an RV ad while dying of AIDS, muttered and harangued to the luckiest biographer ever.
McDonough's posthumous research into Milligan's childhood in St. Paul, added as a surprise ending here, should give this a sixth star. A creepy sexual mismatch between a pedophile and an adipose nympho begat a rage-fetus whose exit from the womb actually scarred him physically.
I'd like to think Andy knew the shot from day zero, but there's a tale of discovery here, from acting, to puppeteer, to dressmaking, to the grimy Auricon of his stories, slipping on blood, costumes, and hate. All this gives him -- and the bio -- an element of rational wisdom. The rat's are coming. The werewolves are here.
One of the world's most naturally hilarious men because deeply unpleasant after big dollars start rolling in (Sanford & Son). A wonderful & thoroughlyOne of the world's most naturally hilarious men because deeply unpleasant after big dollars start rolling in (Sanford & Son). A wonderful & thoroughly researched bio -- recommended. ...more
Lots of film geeks love to hoard shards of bizarro trivia and arcana. Hell I can probably recite the complete filmographies of Kroger Babb and Susan TLots of film geeks love to hoard shards of bizarro trivia and arcana. Hell I can probably recite the complete filmographies of Kroger Babb and Susan Tyrrell if you pressed a tenner into my hand. But prior to 2009, the name "Gary Kent" would've stumped me. Yet here he is, the world's wittiest and most articulate stuntman, C-movie actor, and all-round raconteur telling you like it was in sixties Hollywood, when everyone's brains was getting rattled by gunsmoke, breastses on celluloid, and beardos on hogs.
This memoir is banged outta the saddle and rolling in dust -- neither ego-driven nor gossipy, but filled with the strangest cast of characters: Coleman Francis, Jack Nicholson, Linda Lavin, Katherine Helmond, Chuck Bail, Vic Tayback, Gary Kurtz, Max Julien, Ronald fucking Reagan, Warren Oates, John Cassavetes, Jack Elam, Richard Rush... And all in the service of a hand-to-mouth world of cinema that existed all too briefly but and remains practically a lost continent of groovy movies. Ever hear of 'The Black Klansman'? Or 'Satan's Sadists'? Gary was in those flicks -- among others -- and they represent a nameless exploitation genre that even the savviest of us have yet to mine.
Here's what Kent says during a particularly breathless sideline possibly involving Steven Seagal: "Remember, what we are celebrating here, in this book, are the independent filmmakers, gnarly, obscene, obscure, foolish, yes, but a magnificent testament to the freedom and daring of art without consensus, without committee, without numbers that add up to a perfect ten."
Even more important -- since he shifted back and forth from actor to crew -- is his celebration of the strange rituals and smells and sounds of film making, the workers, the characters, the buzz and invention of the whole enterprise: "Under unusual and frequently impossible circumstances, they make raindrops, teardrops, forest fires, plagues, snow in July, Easter in August, and day into night. They create shadow and light, call up ghosts, and pierce the veil of eternity. They carry within their trucks and trailers, their dirty bags, pouches, kit and kaboodles, the stuff necessary for the weaving of dreams." Yes! And yes, this book was not ghosted, in case you're scratching your head about a poetic stuntman waxing awesome on the page.
Leaving aside all this, the author, despite his beefy good looks and career of onscreen bigotry & rape & second unit genius, is one of the most thoughtful and witty dudes you'll ever stumble over in the Hollywood memoir business.
For instance. I've seen (and been) lots of scribblers wrestling with the dubious legacy of Charles Bukowski, but Kent just nails it in this book: "Bukowski was an unpleasant drunk, a womanizer, a homophobe; unshaven and unbathed; an abusive leftover from the Beat Generation. He was as ugly as a mummy with its wraps off. He was not only constantly commode-hugging, knee-walking plastered, he was also prolific, and frequently brilliant as a writer. Much of his work was a lot of garbled wordage, but some of his works are exquisite pieces of literature. L.A. embraced him for thirty years. He chronicled for us the winos, the people with broken dreams and threadbare hearts."
Just a great memoir, read it for fun and profit, AND you'll get some movie recommendations in here like you ain't never heard before. ...more
Fact: Let Us Now Praise Famous Men was my earliest "gonzo" literary experience -- an elaborate, Biblical, rambling book with a world-historical anchorFact: Let Us Now Praise Famous Men was my earliest "gonzo" literary experience -- an elaborate, Biblical, rambling book with a world-historical anchor and a truth to tell us about poverty and faith. I was practically a kid when I devoured it between three jobs and over coffee -- age 22 or so -- but my impression was of an inspired tongue-of-fire collaborating with a no-nonsense genius photographer, Walker Evans. A professional collaboration, paid for by Fortune magazine no less. So imagine my surprise, reading the man's bio many years later, to find Jim Agee weeping uncontrollably at the foot of the bed as he watched Walker having sex with his pregnant wife Alma. Of course Agee arranged this kink scenario because he believed in universal love and whatnot, but the event scarred him and probably embarrassed all three parties... But that's nothing, Jim's ex-wife was also riding Walker's man-dangle just a couple years earlier.
I still can't say I have a grip on Agee, even after reading this propulsive bio. On the one hand he slogged about like a poverty-stricken sot (he "would work a suit into fitting him perfectly by the simple method of not taking it off much" says Evans), yet he was a Harvard grad who never held a regular manual-labor job in his life. He made some babies but never paid much attention to them, while adoring the many simultaneous women he was boning in some abstruse proto-hippie poly lifestyle. He became fast friends with Whittaker Chambers, Charlie Chaplin, Dwight MacDonald, John Huston, the mighty Helen Levitt, and Clement Greenberg (who said this about Jim: "He had the ability to be sincere without being honest").
His film reviews are a frontier of wit and insight; and he wrote the screenplays for The African Queen and Night of the Hunter. His ability to score chicks magically increased as he got doughier and more dissipated, with bad teeth and booze on his breath day and night. Indeed, one could say that round about 1949 (pace Jim Croce) you do mess around with Jim.
As he entered his forties he had heart attacks constantly, and at 45 he died in the back of a cab on the way to a regular doctor appointment. "He wanted to destroy with his own hands everything in the world, including himself, that was shoddy, false, and despicable," so went one eulogy from T.S. Matthews. Something like that -- he really did have a sense of principle, and his talent did magically ascend even as he trotted about at the bottom of a whiskey bottle. And of course his afterlife was much better -- hippies and beats and one future President resurrecting 'Famous Men', and cineastes exalting his reviews and scripts.
This bio puts all that in front of you in a very gossipy and insightful narrative -- it's obvious Bergreen has a love/hate relationship with his subject too. Highly recommended. ...more
At age 92, Ernest Borgnine ain't in the mood for poison pen or dishy gossip -- he's too busy masturbating! So he gives us the basics of his life storyAt age 92, Ernest Borgnine ain't in the mood for poison pen or dishy gossip -- he's too busy masturbating! So he gives us the basics of his life story, including scores of G-rated anecdotes about his hardscrabble Italian-American youth, his stint in the Navy, and his drunk buddy Lee Marvin. Very few surprises or revelations: even his 'Johnny Guitar' anecdote is just a rehash of the usual Joan vs. Mercy gossip we've been hearing for years. His marriage to Ethel Merman gets a bit more explication than we're used to though: "Ethel wasn't a bitch, but she was just naturally competitive in a very competitive business. She reacted strongly and emotionally to what she suddenly viewed as a contest between her and me." In other words, Ernie was -- according to his own self -- getting more attention than her. Could be true: her own memoir has a chapter entitled 'Ernest Borgnine' which is completely blank.
The best chapters are his reminiscences of several movies throughout the seventies and early eighties, including a 'Wild Bunch' sequel of sorts called 'The Revengers', the rat-horror 'Willard', 'Jesus of Nazareth' (where he plays a Roman centurion who mocks Christ), and 'The Greatest' -- a Muhammad Ali biopic starring Ali himself and co-directed by Monte Hellman of all people. Not to mention 'The Poseidon Adventure' and my personal fave 'The Black Hole'.
So. If you're wondering how such a plug-ugly dude could make it big, I think he sums it up thus: "For me, 'different' ended up being running my own career without all kinds of representatives. And thanks to guys like Lee Marvin, who always brought me in on movies he was working on, and directors like Robert Aldrich and John Carpenter who just got a kick out of my work, I've done okay." ...more
First of all, Farber is just a weird and compelling writer. Sure, he chose to write bout films mostly, but he could have devoted his career to philateFirst of all, Farber is just a weird and compelling writer. Sure, he chose to write bout films mostly, but he could have devoted his career to philately or fitness and I would have enjoyed him. Unlike, say, Robert Christgau, he lacks the ability to condense oceans of thought and wit into brief coherent sentences. Yet riding his wordstream can be fun. Dig if you will the opening sentence to his seminal essay 'White Elephant Art vs. Termite Art': "Most of the feckless, listless quality of today's art can be blamed on its drive to break out of a tradition while, irrationally, hewing to the square, boxed-in shape and gemlike inertia of an old, densely wrought European masterpiece." Whew -- but boy does he proceed from there!
As a "film critic," Farber's opinions are often just flat-out perverse. Take his 1966 essay 'The Decline of the Actor', where he finds the only "good acting in recent films" to be practiced by three people: John Wayne, George Hamilton, and Mickey Rooney. And then there's his constant, palpable disdain for "longhairs" (his term) -- he really did seem a bit uncomfortable during the the pre-revolutionary cinema sixties. He's not reactionary -- he quite likes 'How I Won the War' for example -- but he just has no tolerance for preaching and the striving after the "masterpiece". And I do enjoy reading someone who can take John Huston or Preston Sturges down a peg or two. ...more
Wow, what a ride: an acting dynasty's travails from scrappy Richard Bennett impregnating his foster mom (so he says -- she died in childbirth) to JoanWow, what a ride: an acting dynasty's travails from scrappy Richard Bennett impregnating his foster mom (so he says -- she died in childbirth) to Joan Bennett's mundane death at a dinner table in 1990. (Or rather, from the lucrative Gilded Era play What Every Woman Knows to the 1977 gore-fest Suspiria.) Lots of classics in between, of course -- Constance in Topper and various other glamour roles, Joan's transition from sub-Constance blonde to noir brunette (and subsequent memorable work with Lang and Ophuls), Barbara -- well Barbara didn't make much of herself at all. She just drank booze by the gallon and became the sad, twitchy one of the lot.
Anyway, you get all the decent gossip -- climaxing obviously Joan's husband Walter Wanger shooting her lover (Jennings Lang) in the groin in 1951 (zzzzzzz). Poor Constance comes off as an insufferable aristocratic brat with no charisma and little acting genius (leaving aside Topper), but an obvious talent for preserving her sense of stardom. Joan, on the other hand seems the most resilient of the bunch, re-glamorizing herself with dark hair and a no-nonsense sensibility, very noir and strange. Yes, that was her in Dark Shadows, late in her career. And yeah, she was that slightly wooden but memorable Madame Blanc in Suspiria. Definitely one of the best dynastic biographies I've ever read. I have to dock it one star though, for omitting without explanation Barbara's most famous son, Morton Downey Jr. ...more
From the preface: "He's one of those rare artists whose impact upon our culture is as irreversibly dramatic as the asteroid which slammed into the surFrom the preface: "He's one of those rare artists whose impact upon our culture is as irreversibly dramatic as the asteroid which slammed into the surface of the earth some 65 million years ago, snuffing out all dinosaur life in a flash."
Well I'm sure you can see the joke in the last three words of that sentence, which shall one day join "Now I know how Joan of Arc felt" in its magnetic attraction to countless ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
Simon Goddard is already renowned as the Smiths uber-geek for The Smiths: Songs That Saved Your Life, which detailed every Smiths tune, the recording history, lyrical borrowings, etc. Mozipedia expands that to Morrissey's solo songs, and, even better, includes entries on all his cinematic, musical, and literary crushes, James Dean to Diana Dors, New York Dolls to Anthony Newley, Ronnie to Reggie Kray. Plus all the various collaborators and musicians and hangers-on that've populated Moz snow-globe since 1959. Just a fascinating treasure trove of facts, a diverting tour of the brainscape of our weirdest singing asteroid. Hell, it's only here, in this witty, chatty encyclopedia, that I found out that Albert Finney recorded a solo album for Motown (!) in 1977. Or (in the lengthy entry entitled "Sex") that he lost his virginity -- whatever that means -- at age "12 or 13".
They don't make fanatical encyclopedias better than this. I should also add that randomly flipping through this substantial 500-page book was much more rewarding than clicking around on a Moz-devoted website, another example of how digitizing everything really ain't gonna make the world a better place. ...more
Biographers often have to split the difference between accuracy and understanding -- sifting through contrasting facts & anecdotes, while vividly inteBiographers often have to split the difference between accuracy and understanding -- sifting through contrasting facts & anecdotes, while vividly interpreting their subject's strange path in the world. W.C. Fields is the worst though: it's still impossible to explain what made him such a bizarre genius, and the facts of his life have become so frosted over by mythology (much of it his own invention of course), I can't begin to imagine what sorts of Augean stables Curtis had to hose before he could get a glimpse of the coprolites and wall carvings that built this masterful bio.
Curtis lays out some well-documented facts of his early life -- young Bill an angry, nondescript boy tussling with dad, then living in a ditch. Then the juggling career takes him worldwide and hooks him up with a wife, Hattie, and then a child, both of whom appear to be the biggest mistakes of his life. Next comes Ziegfield, then Hollywood, a sequence of mistresses, and an increasing confidence in his own invented personality and capacity to ad lib and manipulate hats, golf clubs, tooth-removing tongs. Then comes the the acid tongue, and the wink and sneer, and the overall air of besotted trickery. Beset by shrews, beloved by daughters, forever popping the cork from his lunch -- this guy was mad, lovable, hideous. And Curtis gives us some great backstory -- from Fields's war on swans at his own home, to gossip about kicking his beloved Carlotta, to suing his own physician for celebrity gouging.
I didn't know, for example, that Fields was very self-conscious about his nose (and no it didn't grow crimson & bulbous from booze), his drinking, and his weight. He wanted the public to see him as a witty trickster, not a physical caricature -- hence his radio shows (which few people can hear now). I also didn't know that he'd kicked Carlotta Monti out of his home well before his death, and she came trudging back to help him through his final illnesses even though both of them were shagging other partners. Polyamory in the W.C. Fields house, no wonder the hippies loved him & he got shopped into the Sgt. Pepper cover.
I only wish that Curtis would have taken some time out to engage man's strange genius now and then -- the sorta thing say Nick Tosches would have done. On the whole this is straight reporting, but someone in the year 2525 reading this book without any experience of It's a Gift or The Fatal Glass of Beer will wonder what the hell is going on. Still I was hungry for every page, and all 550-odd pages went by in a flash. My favorite moment was Curtis's reproduction of an early stage pitch Fields used circa 1922, prior to his film work. Fields could make a mint today as a viagra huckster, says I:
Ladies and gentlemen, has your daily dozen of buckwheats lost its zest and that pillar of our ancestors, the boiled dinner, relinquished its punch? Can you no longer saw off your morning cord of wood or join the gay revelers in the light fantastic toddle to the stirring strains of the parlor organ? Be of good cheer, ladies and gentlemen! Again you can crochet lamp doilies, make and eat beaten biscuit, cut the ice and kill hogs like a boy of 18. And what is this great discovery, you ask? Why ladies and gentlemen, it is Purple Bark Sarsparilla, the greatest discovery in the scientific world of medicine since Hippocrates discovered the onion!...more
This book is just hilarious: a relentless stream of fistfights, boozin' and skirt-chasin' written in a breathless poetic cadence by this struggling chThis book is just hilarious: a relentless stream of fistfights, boozin' and skirt-chasin' written in a breathless poetic cadence by this struggling character actor who happens to be Robert Mitchum's brother. The gossip is what drew me in -- not just the great tales about Brother Robert, but fascinating tidbits about the author's first wife (who happened to be Gloria Grahame's older sister), Lee Van Cleef (tender & soused), Dan Blocker (damn near a socialist!), Deborah Kerr (the love of Brother Robert's life?). Etc. etc., plus there are 356-odd photos, most of which I've never seen before. Worthy of further reproduction are the snapshots of beach-bum Bob -- impossibly strapping and in those proto-Speedos -- prior to his stardom.
As if to enhance this perceptive tapestry of amoral gossip & hedonism, the author occasionally butts in with protests of religious fervor and patriotic conservatism (not only did he campaign for Goldwater in '64, but he wrote the songs on John Wayne's classic LP, America: Why I Love Her). To hear his occasional pieties in a landscape of glass jaws, whiskey bottles, nekkid women, and dime bags: well I'm not sure if "cognitive dissonance" is the best way to describe it. I never thought I'd say this, but maybe some of these uptight Bible-thumping flag-kissing types are secretly cool?
Them Ornery Mitchum Boys<?i> surpasses the later Mitchum biography by Lee Server: not only is John Mitchum a better writer, but even the tall tales have more a whiff of historical veracity about them. This book is definitely long overdue for a reprint....more
Some fun trivia. Occasional interesting insights. Great cover.
Still, I'd rather read classic fanfic such as: "Look, I Found a Sacred Scroll of Kobol Some fun trivia. Occasional interesting insights. Great cover.
Still, I'd rather read classic fanfic such as: "Look, I Found a Sacred Scroll of Kobol Which Says We Forgot to Dismember Gaius Baltar and Throw the Pieces Out of the Airlock in Season Two"...more
Caveat emptor: Bryant adds very little new bio information (Charles Francisco remains the definitive biographer), and wastes his wordcount by recountiCaveat emptor: Bryant adds very little new bio information (Charles Francisco remains the definitive biographer), and wastes his wordcount by recounting Powell's myriad film plots. Thus the subtitle....more
"The important thing is the rhythm. Always have rhythm in your shaking. Now a Manhattan you shake to fox-trot time, a Bronx to two-step time, a dry ma"The important thing is the rhythm. Always have rhythm in your shaking. Now a Manhattan you shake to fox-trot time, a Bronx to two-step time, a dry martini you always shake to waltz time." This bio is shaken to fox-trot time, a perfect tempo... mildly gossipy, but witty and swiftly paced. Though Powell doesn't deserve the lurid treatment (his bisexuality is only implied here), I do wish more of his nasty traits and inner turmoil got some excavation.
I should warn readers that this book -- published in the eighties -- doesn't include any of David Stenn's updated research on Jean Harlow's life and death -- though Francisco is still admirably perceptive about their relationship. (And he reproduces that eerie photo of Powell weeping inconsolably at Harlow's funeral, propped up by his own mother and a studio functionary.)...more
More a groovy dap-walk through the genre than an authoritative guide. Funny, informative, nostalgic. Plus Darius thinks Willie Dynamite is the greatesMore a groovy dap-walk through the genre than an authoritative guide. Funny, informative, nostalgic. Plus Darius thinks Willie Dynamite is the greatest blaxploitation flick ever, an opinion with which I fully concur. ...more
I'm pretty certain this book was released in conjunction with the 1996 ConventioCon ExpoFest-A-Rama 2: Electric Bugaloo, which I did not attend. And aI'm pretty certain this book was released in conjunction with the 1996 ConventioCon ExpoFest-A-Rama 2: Electric Bugaloo, which I did not attend. And alas, its premature publication date means it's missing approximately 53 latter-day episodes, including my favorite, Space Mutiny. Still, the descriptions of the invention exchanges and Bot plots here are often more hilarious than actually watching them, and there's lots of goofy lists and insider jokes. Given what appears to be some factionalism within the Grand Army of the Bot Republic these days, rereading this is your chance to relive those gauzy memories of Tommy Kirk and Torgo. ...more
Loading...
