Orson Wells once said that “raising money is my profession, making movies is my hobby” and sadly he spoke the truth. Whenever I feel frustrated by the amount of time it takes to get a movie made, and bemoan how many seemingly inactive years a filmmaker piles up, I re-examine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usrhAo9KOCUhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1WX9znN7CE The commercial campaign for the Revlon fragrance ‘Charlie’, which debuted in 1973, was centered around a very hip little jingle which accompanied model Shelley Hack as she strode confidently through a club, onto a boat, getting out of a nifty 1930s Dusenberg etc. Further hip-ifying the campaign was the
The YouTube artist known as NASS has unleashed a new, wonderful example of his/her/they’s superb work–restoring footage of old urban environments, colorizing them (expertly), adjusting the frame rate and adding a realistic sound bed of background noise. I love these videos and have posted a number of the New York
Let’s take a break from the usual weekend Three Stooges two-reeler. Instead, we’ll listen to an audio-only interview with Moe Howard, recorded in 1973. I don’t know who the interviewer is but, aside from an awkward start, he does an admirable job of stepping back and letting the very friendly
Closing out this Cassavetes-centric week, here’s a very cool piece of film featuring Cassavetes in an unidentified environment (re: hotel room) anecdoting to an unidentified group of people as his adoring wife Gena Rowlands looks on about the making of his first two films ‘Shadows’ and ‘Faces’. The stories are
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcgWO-hxZls Here’s an excerpt from an interview with John Cassavetes, taken from the documentary “Cineaste de notre temps” (1968). I feel like I’ve posted the entire doc before (long long ago) but am not finding it on YouTube currently. So this tantalizing bit, featuring Cassavetes driving a convertible along Mulholland
Apropos of our focus on John Cassavetes this week, above is the trailer for his 1968 film ‘Faces’. I have no idea if he cut or approved this trailer but it does an excellent job of whetting the appetite for seeing the film. Removing the audio and playing the images
Here’s a ten minute excerpt reel of John Cassavetes speaking culled from half a dozen different interviews. When he’s younger he looks like Roy Scheider and when he speaks with an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips he is the quintessence of New York-Actors Lab-Beatnik-Mingus-Jazz Clubs-New Wave-Greenwich Village-Paris sidewalk cafe-Sartre
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TU2wTGNBehs The magnificent Gena Rowlands passed away last week and in tribute to her I offer the above legendary video which features her husband John Cassavetes, Paul Stewart, Ben Gazzara and Seymour Cassel (sort of–he’s barely seen and doesn’t speak) sitting around a table in a restaurant called ‘The Bull
Readers of this blog are perhaps familiar with my obsessive love for the KTTV Channel 11 logos of the 1970s. KTTV was my go-to home channel for my entire youth, with their schedule heavy on old movies (they had the MGM library), the Ben Hunter Matinee every weekday at noon,