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Grand Larceny in the Gay Nineties

June 7th, 2010 · No Comments

New Beverly marquee 2

In the month of June, Joe Valdez “takes over” programming of the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles with a series of double features on his favorite film themes. Joe is not a professional curator and may not even show potential as an amateur one, but comments and recommendations for future double features are welcome below.

Harry and Walter Go To New York 1976 poster Harry and Walter Go To New York DVD

Harry and Walter Go To New York (1976)
Directed by Mark Rydell
Screenplay by John Byrum and Robert Kaufman, story by Don Devlin and John Byrum
Produced by Don Devlin, Harry Gittes
115 minutes

Disparaged by critics and ignored by audiences, Harry and Walter Go To New York deserves a reception much better than the one it was pelted with in July 1976, when all interested parties seemed to agree that the best thing for this lavishly produced comedy with music was to act like it never happened. Actor and veteran TV director Mark Rydell had delivered three solid films in a row — Steve McQueen in The Reivers, John Wayne in The Cowboys and James Caan & Marsha Mason in Cinderella Liberty — but unable to bank whatever producer Don Devlin was betting on, editor Monte Hellman was hired to recut Rydell’s footage. Harry and Walter Go To New York doesn’t jig to the rhythm of The Sting or any other recognizable genre really, but blunders onto something novel and even magnificent in its own right.

Adapting a story idea by Devlin was screenwriter John Byrum, one of the original staff writers Jim Henson hired for Sesame Street. In many ways, Harry and Walter Go To New York is like something The Muppet Theater might stage on the Muppets’ night off. The jokes don’t have punchlines, at least none that would get very far without a laugh track, but a gentle type of backstage tomfoolery runs through the piece, which like The Muppet Show, allows some of the finest actors of the 1970s — Caan, Gould, Keaton, Caine, Lesley Ann Warren, Charles Durning, Carol Kane — to get in on the low key fun. Whether you think the story is much ado about nothing, the cinematography by László Kovács and production design by Harry Horner make every moment of this visually splendid knick-knack a marvel to watch.

Harry and Walter Go To New York 1976 title card

In Sudburry, Massachusetts of 1892, the singing and dancing duo of Harry Dighby (James Caan) and Walter Hill (Elliott Gould) take the stage in a variety show whose audience is filled with just as much poultry as people. In New York City, renowned gentleman thief Adam Worth (Michael Caine) falls into a trap sprung by Rufus T. Crisp (Charles Durning), a bank president whose safe was cracked by Worth and his gang. Meanwhile, the dim witted Walter wants little more than a career in show business, but Harry’s criminal enterprise lands the entertainers in the same Concord prison as Adam Worth. Harry and Walter are put in his employ as butlers, maintaining Worth’s lavish cell and receiving his guests, including crusading journalist Lissa Chestnut (Diane Keaton) who arrives to do an expose on the thief.

While Worth charms Ms. Chestnut, Harry cajoles Walter into using her flash lamp camera to photograph the blueprint of a bank vault that Worth plans to crack. When they set the precious blueprint on fire, Worth has Harry and Walter exiled to the prison’s rock quarry, where it’s hoped the idiots will blow themselves up. Using a vial of nitroglycerin, Harry secures an early release for himself and his partner. Arriving in New York, Harry volunteers to Ms. Chestnut’s newspaper hoping to get his hands on the bank vault photograph. Once Worth is set free, the crime lord smashes up the newspaper office in search of the photo. To repair the damage and forge on protecting the public, Ms. Chestnut implores Harry and Walter to help her and her staff (Jack Gilford, Carol Kane, David Proval, Valerie Curtin) crack the vault first.

Harry and Walter Go To New York 1976 Elliot Gould James Caan

Harry and Walter Go To New York 1976 Charles Durning Michael Caine Karlene Gallegly

Harry and Walter Go To New York 1976 Elliot Gould James Caan

Harry and Walter Go To New York 1976 Diane Keaton Dennis Dugan

Harry and Walter Go To New York 1976 Elliot Gould James Caan Diane Keaton

Harry and Walter Go To New York 1976 Michael Caine Lesley Ann Warren

Harry and Walter Go To New York 1976 David Proval Jack Gilford Dennis Dugan Diane Keaton James Caan Elliot Gould Carol Kane Valerie Curtin

Harry and Walter Go To New York 1976 Michael Caine

Harry and Walter Go To New York 1976 Elliot Gould James Caan

Harry and Walter Go To New York 1976 Elliot Gould James Caan

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 1 user: 100% for Harry and Walter Go To New York

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

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→ No CommentsTags: Crooked officer · Gangsters and hoodlums · Heist · Train

To The 5 Boroughs

June 4th, 2010 · 3 Comments

New Beverly marquee 1

In the month of June, Joe Valdez “takes over” the programming of the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles with a series of double features on his favorite film themes. Joe is not a professional curator and may not even show potential as an amateur one, but comments and recommendations for future double features are welcome below.

Taking of Pelham One Two Three 1974 poster Taking of Pelham One Two Three 1974 poster B

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)
Directed by Joseph Sargent
Screenplay by Peter Stone, based on the novel by Morton Freedgood (as John Godey)
Produced by Gabriel Katzka, Edgar J. Scherick
104 minutes

Listening to a Beastie Boys LP or watching The Taking of Pelham One Two Three will not only assist a visitor in the successful navigation of the New York subway system, but for 1 hour 44 minutes, the latter is an electrifying 1970s cops and robbers thriller that captures the magnitude of NYC as well as the mettle of many of the people you’re likely to encounter there. Based on a 1973 bestseller by Morton Freedgood — a PR hack who published several potboilers under the name “John Godey” — Hollywood came calling during a bleak time for the Big Apple, which was depressed economically and threatening to crack with crime and ethnic tension. In an effort to turn the city’s fortunes around, Mayor John Lindsey invited the film industry to use Manhattan as a back lot, but his office initially found in this script exactly the type of social distortion he was trying to clean up.

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three is one of those once in a blue moon entertainments that fires on every cylinder from start to finish, sharply adapted by Peter Stone and supremely well cast right down to walk-on roles. If anything is better than “Walter Matthau as Lt. Zachary Garber” and “Jerry Stiller as Lt. Rico Patrone”, I don’t know what is; the equivalent would be Ricky Gervais and Patton Oswalt starring in a $150 million summer action movie; in other words, unlikely. Even more so than The Fugitive, this is an E-ticket ride through a great metropolis, with accents and plot developments that feel singular to that city above any other. TV journeyman Joseph Sargent does a yeoman’s job balancing action across different locations, while the peerless camerawork by Owen Roizman and musical score by David Shire send this movie into another stratosphere.

Taking of Pelham One Two Three 1974

On a subway train departing Pelham Bay Park Station in the Bronx at 1:23 in the afternoon, men sporting long coats, hats and wearing fake moustaches and eyeglasses move into position. Identifying each other as Mr. Blue (Robert Shaw), Mr. Green (Martin Balsam), Mr. Grey (Hector Elizondo) and Mr. Brown (Earl Hindman) and armed with submachine guns, the men access the motorman’s compartment and hijack the train, using Green’s expertise as a conductor to stop in a tunnel somewhere between 28th Street and 23rd Street. At the Transit Authority command center, the wry Lt. Zachary Garber (Walter Matthau) and Lt. Rico Patrone (Jerry Stiller) have their boredom interrupted when Blue radios threatening to execute hostages starting in one hour unless a ransom of $1 million is delivered.

While the Mayor (Lee Wallace) dithers over how New York voters will respond to his decisions — negatively, it seems, no matter what he does — his deputy (Tony Roberts) and wife (Doris Roberts) advise that it would be wise to pay the hijackers and avoid risking another Attica. Sparring with Blue over the radio, Garber is stumped over how the meticulous ex-British Army colonel plans to escape an underground tunnel. When a sharpshooter fires off a round on accident, Blue makes good on his threats and executes one of the hostages. With the ransom cash running late, Garber thinks fast and produces a ruse to prevent Blue from shooting anyone else, including an undercover transit cop whose identity remains unknown. As Pelham 123 gets moving again and hurdles toward Manhattan, Garber hits on how the hijackers plan to escape.

Taking of Pelham One Two Three 1974 Robert Shaw

Taking of Pelham One Two Three 1974 Earl Hindman Mari Gorman

Taking of Pelham One Two Three 1974 Walter Matthau

Taking of Pelham One Two Three 1974 Jerry Stiller

Taking of Pelham One Two Three 1974 Robert Shaw

Taking of Pelham One Two Three 1974

Taking of Pelham One Two Three 1974 Robert Shaw Martin Balsam

Taking of Pelham One Two Three 1974 Dick O'Neill Walter Matthau

Taking of Pelham One Two Three 1974 Earl Hindman Robert Shaw Martin Balsam Hector Elizondo

Taking of Pelham One Two Three 1974 Walter Matthau

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 208 users: 94% for The Taking of Pelham One Two Three

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

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→ 3 CommentsTags: 24 hour time frame · Based on novel · Cult favorite · Gangsters and hoodlums · Heist · Interrogation · Prostitute · Shootout · Train

Breaking the Bank ‘70s Style

June 1st, 2010 · 5 Comments

New Beverly marquee 1

In the month of June, Joe Valdez “takes over” the programming of the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles with a series of double features on his favorite film themes. Joe is not a professional curator and may not even show potential as an amateur one, but comments and recommendations for future double features are welcome below.
Thunderbolt and Lightfoot 1974 poster A Thunderbolt and Lightfoot 1974 poster B

Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974)
Directed by Michael Cimino
Written by Michael Cimino
Produced by Robert Daley
115 minutes

For everyone who’s wished that Clint Eastwood and Jeff Bridges could have acted together in the same movie, the good news is that it’s called Thunderbolt and Lightfoot. The GREAT news is that this screwball buddy caper road movie has everything that a fan of drive-in movies could want: bank robbery, fist fighting, fast cars and fast women. If those weren’t enough, Gary Busey (billed as Garey Busey) even shows up. The script by Michael Cimino came to Eastwood in 1972 courtesy their mutual reps at the William Morris Agency. Responding to the offbeat bent of the piece (“Michael must have written it in some hallucinative state” Eastwood joked to biographer Richard Schickel), Malpaso agreed to let Cimino — a Michigan State grad with an MFA in painting from Yale and a successful career directing commercials in New York — make his feature film debut.

One of the innumerable charms of Thunderbolt and Lightfoot is that Cimino never seems in a hurry to go anywhere or prove anything here, putting the “idio” in “idiosyncratic” as if the Coen brothers were making a heist flick. Instead of being wed to pulp fiction, the material has a noble innocence to it. Filmed in the towns of Ulm, Fort Benton, Hobson, Augusta and Choteau in the Great Falls vicinity of Montana, it’s one half road movie and one half situation comedy, with four men who have nowhere else to go moving in together, taking day jobs and plotting the score of a lifetime. Whether a credit to the script or to the exuberance of 23-year-old Jeff Bridges, Clint Eastwood has never smiled in a movie as much as he does here. One of the few reflections of the time period it was made is a whimsical theme composed and sung by Paul Williams, “Where Do I Go From Here”.

Thunderbolt and Lightfoot 1974 title card

At the rustic Spirit Lake Idaho Community Church, the sermon of John Doherty (Clint Eastwood) is rudely interrupted when a stranger opens fire and chases the pastor through a field of wheat. A white ’73 Pontiac Trans Am crosses the pastor’s path and he jumps in. The wheelman is a kid who just stole the car and gives the name Lightfoot (Jeff Bridges). Watching the pastor pop his dislocated shoulder back in, the kid deduces that this is no ordinary clergyman. Stealing a ‘73 Buick Rivera, the pastor tires of grand theft auto and parts ways with Lightfoot, only to spot two more associates, bank robbers Red Leary (George Kennedy) and Eddie Goody (Geoffrey Lewis). The pastor changes his mind about riding shotgun with Lightfoot and even accepts the company of two women (Catherine Bach, June Fairchild) the kid picks up in town.

After Red comes gunning for the duo, the pastor reveals that he’s a Korean War veteran answering to the name Thunderbolt. A bank robber by vocation, Thunderbolt punctured the vault of an armored car company with a cannon firing 20mm artillery shells; the mastermind of his gang hid the money behind the blackboard of an old schoolhouse, but upon his death, only Thunderbolt knows where the loot is stashed. Believing he ripped them off, Red and Goody want Thunderbolt dead, but he explains to them that the schoolhouse and the loot have vanished. Lightfoot infects the thieves with the idea of hitting the same armored company again. The four men move in together and take day jobs to raise seed money for the job, devised more as an antidote to boredom and an excuse to build camaraderie than anything else.

Thunderbolt and Lightfoot 1974 Jeff Bridges Clint Eastwood

Thunderbolt and Lightfoot 1974 Catherine Bach Jeff Bridges June Fairchild

Thunderbolt and Lightfoot 1974 Jeff Bridges Clint Eastwood

Thunderbolt and Lightfoot 1974 Jeff Bridges Clint Eastwood

Thunderbolt and Lightfoot 1974 Geoffrey Lewis George Kennedy

Thunderbolt and Lightfoot 1974 George Kennedy Clint Eastwood Geoffrey Lewis Jeff Bridges

Thunderbolt and Lightfoot 1974 Clint Eastwood

Thunderbolt and Lightfoot 1974 Jeff Bridges

Thunderbolt and Lightfoot 1974

Thunderbolt and Lightfoot 1974 Clint Eastwood Jeff Bridges

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 89 users: 86% for Thunderbolt and Lightfoot

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

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→ 5 CommentsTags: Cult favorite · Gangsters and hoodlums · Heist · Master and pupil · Road trip · Small town

Happy 8-0, Mr. Eastwood

May 31st, 2010 · 3 Comments

31 Days of Eastwood

Clint Eastwood was born May 31, 1930 in San Francisco, California. 80 years later, there aren’t any superlatives or awards left to bestow on the filmmaker and movie icon. December 2009 saw the theatrical release of Invictus, his 31st film credit as director. Short of Woody Allen, no working director has produced such a prodigious body of work, which like Allen’s, spans the entirety of the 1970s, ’80s, ’90s and ’00s. Eastwood hasn’t filed for retirement benefits yet, having already wrapped the supernatural thriller Hereafter starring Matt Damon and set for release in 2010.

There weren’t enough days in May for me to cover every Eastwood film. The Man With No Name trilogy he made for director Sergio Leone — A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For A Few Dollars More (1965) and The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (1966) — are without words, while Eastwood’s work for Don Siegel in Escape From Alcatraz (1979) is exceptional as well. Some fans have a fondness for Clint gunning down every Nazi in Europe in Where Eagles Dare (1968) and somebody might even love his ill-fated pairing with Burt Reynolds in City Heat (1984).

There is one movie that Eastwood starred in and produced that I had a hell of a time tracking down in time for this series, but one that will be appearing on This Distracted Globe shortly.

Here are links to each of my 31 Days of Eastwood posts, listed in order of their U.S. theatrical release. Happy 8-0, Mr. Eastwood.

The Beguiled 1971 Jo Ann Carol Clint Eastwood

Inauspicious Shadows and Poisonous Candlelight ~ The Beguiled (March 1971)

Play Misty For Me 1971 Clint Eastwood Jessica Walter

Odd Little Story About A Disc Jockey ~ Play Misty For Me (November 1971)

Dirty Harry 1971 Clint Eastwood

The Most Powerful Handgun in the World ~ Dirty Harry (December 1971)

High Plains Drifter 1973 Clint Eastwood

Fire and Brimstone on the Plains ~ High Plains Drifter (April 1973)

Breezy 1973 Kay Lenz

Shacking Up With a Flower Child ~ Breezy (November 1973)

Eiger Sanction 1975 Clint Eastwood

Blaxploitation Goes Mountain Climbing ~ The Eiger Sanction (May 1975)

Outlaw Josey Wales 1976 Clint Eastwood Chief Dan George

We Got Us the Josey Wales ~ The Outlaw Josey Wales (June 1976)

Gauntlet 1977 Sondra Locke Clint Eastwood

Get Off the Bus ~ The Gauntlet (December 1977)

Every Which Way But Loose 1978 Clint Eastwood

Stupid Pet Tricks ~ Every Which Way But Loose (December 1978)

Bronco Billy 1980 Clint Eastwood

Greatest Horse Opera on Earth ~ Bronco Billy (June 1980)

Firefox 1982 Clint Eastwood

A Man and His Stolen MiG ~ Firefox (June 1982)

Honkytonk Man 1982 Alexa Kenin John McIntire Kyle Eastwood Clint Eastwood

Pit Stops of the Dust Bowl ~ Honkytonk Man (December 1982)

Tightrope 1984 Clint Eastwood

Handcuffs in The Big Easy ~ Tightrope (August 1984)

Pale Rider 1985 Clint Eastwood

When The Man Comes Around ~ Pale Rider (June 1985)

Vanessa In the Garden 1985 Sondra Locke

Merchant Ivory in Prime Time ~ Amazing Stories 1.12: Vanessa In the Garden (December 1985)

Heartbreak Ridge 1986 Clint Eastwood Tom Villard

Gung Ho About Being a Marine ~ Heartbreak Ridge (December 1986)

Bird 1988

Pushing Charlie Parker Into the Shadows ~ Bird (September 1988)

White Hunter Black Heart 1990 Jeff Fahey Clint Eastwood

Crazed Director In Africa ~ White Hunter Black Heart (September 1990)

Unforgiven 1992 Clint Eastwood

Meaner Than Hell Cold Blooded Damn Killer ~ Unforgiven (August 1992)

In The Line of Fire 1993 Clint Eastwood

On The Trail of the Assassin ~ In The Line of Fire (July 1993)

A Perfect World 1993 Kevin Costner T.J. Lowther

On the Road To Nowhere ~ A Perfect World (November 1993)

Bridges of Madison County 1995 Meryl Streep Clint Eastwood

Romantic Pang For Anything or Anybody ~ The Bridges of Madison County (June 1995)

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil 1997 John Cusack Kevin Spacey

Skullduggery in Savannah ~ Midnight In The Garden of Good and Evil (November 1997)

Space Cowboys 2000 Donald Sutherland Clint Eastwood

Guys Past Their Retest Dates ~ Space Cowboys (August 2000)

Blood Work 2002 Clint Eastwood Anjelica Huston

Blood Type D Negative ~ Blood Work (August 2002)

Mystic River 2003 Sean Penn

Dark Secrets Lurking In the Old Neighborhood ~ Mystic River (October 2003)

Million Dollar Baby 2004 Hilary Swank Clint Eastwood

On the Ropes ~ Million Dollar Baby (December 2004)

Letters From Iwo Jima 2006 Kazunari Ninomiya

Red Sun, Black Sand ~ Letters From Iwo Jima (December 2006)

Changeling 2008 Angelina Jolie

Lincoln Heights Confidential ~ Changeling (October 2008)

Gran Torino 2008 Clint Eastwood

Widowed By War, The Auto Plant and Their Wives ~ Gran Torino (December 2008)

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