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OT: RIPs galore for Rafelson, Sorvino, Warner

posted 2 years ago by swanstep (2628)
13 replies | jump to latest

Grim reaper working overtime....
1. Bob Rafelson made two key, must-see films in the early '70s (Five Easy Pieces, The King of Marvin Gardens), and earlier put together the Monkees and with the money from that was able to partly finance Easy Rider and The Last Picture Show. Nothing after that period from Rafelson is truly essential in my view but the peak period *was* truly golden. Even his flop Monkees movie Head looks better and better these days with, e.g., the end of Mad Men Season 6 clarifying Head as a source of the show's falling imagery and potently using some of its soundtrack:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxQGNqJzcx0
2. Paul Sorvino (father of Mira) had bit parts in lots of things but achieved immortality as mob boss Paulie and proto-Toni Soprano in Goodfellas (third Goodfellas death in a week or two after Ray Liotta & Tony Sirico - blimey).
3. David Warner was a good actor with a *great* voice who is in a host of important '70s and '80s films for Peckinpah and others, including Ballad of Cable Hogue, Straw Dogs, Cross of Iron, The Omen (in which his character has an, up there with Arbogast, landmark surprise death), Tron, Time Bandits. His biggest, most fun part was as a time-traveling Jack The Ripper (battling an actual time-machine-inventing HG Wells! played by McDowell) who feels *right* at home (a chilling 'This is *my* time') in late '70s San Fran in Time After Time (1979). (He was also in the 1978 remake of The 39 Steps for a Hitchcock connection.)

Thanks to all for making everyone's movie lives better.

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Thanks to all for making everyone's movie lives better.

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That's a nice way of putting it, swanstep.

In my later years, I'm having a little struggle about just how important movie actors ARE. Their interviews are rather trite a lot of the time; and they are often saying the same things about their co-stars, like "He taught me the true art of acting: LISTEN to the other person." (I"ve read that line so OFTEN in star interviews that I think maybe it is a private joke to them, the usual answer to give.) Movie directors(especially when they also write) have a bit more to say, but one still worries: they get paid all that money to do...what?

Well, give us memories we never forget. Like Psycho, eh? But hey, also Freebie and the Bean (you could look it up.)

Some additional thoughts on those three:

RAFELSON: The Monkees end up being a pretty big deal from a lot of Boomer childhoods. The songs were uniformly fun pop rock, the foursome were well-cast contrasts who were entertaining beyond their songs -- "buddies." (I've been thinking lately that those three Haim sisters -- who, interestingly, don't look at all like each other -- are kind of Mickey(Este), Davy(Alana) and Peter(Danielle) without a Mike.)
The Monkee Movie "Head" was a weird trip with Jack Nicholson writing some of it -- the gateway to the 70's and Nicholson as a "counterculture star" under Rafelson's direction in Five Easy Pieces and The King of Marvin Gardens(with Bruce Dern as Jack's brother pretty much equal to him for one time in their careers.)

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Rafelson's career rather collapsed with his fellow early-70s rebels, but I have two more of his movies I really like:

Stay Hungry. (1976.) It stars Jeff Bridges in that "unformed young period" of stardom, and Sally Field(playing a sex object and, in one scene, nude) and a "new find" named Arnold Schwarzenegger, who got all sorts of great reviews with critics little knowing where he would take his career. It is set in a bodybuilder's gym and has a climactic fight scene the the gym between Bridges and Old Hollywood Tough Guy RJ Armstrong -- with Armstrong flinging free weights at Bridges(I can't remember why.)

I personally met Bob Rafelson when he brought "Stay Hungry" to one of those LA film seminars I went to in the 70's. He seemed pleasant enough, though he had a somewhat snooty edge to him , as I recall.

But the late Rafelson film I REALLY like is "Blood and Wine"(1996) with Nicholson (doing a favor for his old friend) and Michael Caine as two middle-aged but very dangerous crooks at large in Florida. I love me them "old time actors with gravitas" and watching Nicholson and Caine share scenes was a real treat(funny: Caine's crook is dangerous, brutal -- a real killer, but with such a hacking cough that nobody takes him seriously until its too late for them.)

So: The Monkees, Five Easy Pieces(less that chicken sandwich scene, I thought Jack bullied a working woman there), King of Marvin Gardens, Stay Hungry...Blood and Wine...good enough for me.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

SORVINO. I know he did a lot of movies, but GoodFellas is The One. They made TWO posters for it. In one, only DeNiro, Liotta, and Pesci stood side by side. But in another, they let Sorvino stand with them, too. THAT one made sense, For Sorvino's Don is the most powerful character in the movie.

I love the early scene where the restauranteur , having been brutalized by Pesci, begs Don Sorvino to take over his restaurant . Sorvino keeps hemming and hawing ("I dunno...what do I know about running a restaurant?") but then takes it over...and ruins it, using a technique called "the bust out" which Tony Soprano did years later with his loser gambler friend's sporting goods store. Some mob drama connection there -- but Sorvino is GREAT in this scene -- acting like he knows nothing, when he really knows EVERYTHING.

And hey: the rather big and rotund Paul Sorvino gave us that rather thin and gorgeous daughter Mira...thanks, dad. (She was QT's lady for awhile, and won an Oscar working for Woody.)

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

(third Goodfellas death in a week or two after Ray Liotta & Tony Sirico - blimey).

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Its a bit worrisome. That the survivors are the biggest deal actors -- DeNiro and Pesci -- will hopefully afford them some invincibility for awhile.

WARNER:

3. David Warner was a good actor with a *great* voice who is in a host of important '70s and '80s films for Peckinpah and others,

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Yes..he was a "go to British guy," even though one critic went after his features: "Looks like a constipated cloud." Well...he had a long face.

including Ballad of Cable Hogue,
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Warner is a "preacher" of a self-made religion with an eye for the ladies and has this great line which I looked up:

"Funny thing...it doesn't matter how much or how little you've wandered around..how many women you've been with. Every once in awhile, one of them cuts right through. Right straight into you."

(All too true.)

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

The Omen (in which his character has an, up there with Arbogast, landmark surprise death),

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I remember how The Omen sort of "came out of nowhere" as a big hit in the summer of 1976 (the "non-blockbuster" summer between the Jaws summer and the Star Wars summer.) It looked to be rather a B-movie, with Gregory Peck a rather faded star for the piece (Peck got the role after Charlton Heston turned it down -- big mistake for Heston, who already had a lot of risible 70s hits like Airport 1975 and Earthquake, and just missed another.) Lee Remick was in it, but she, too, was considered past her prime.

It had none of the build-up of The Exorcist, even though Satan was big in this one, too. What it proved to have that The Exorcist did NOT was...shock killings. Finally, after Rosemary's Baby and The Exorcist eschewed the "Psycho" template, came a movie where Satan himself proved to be just as fine a slasher as Mrs. Bates (and came ahead of Halloween and Friday the 13th.)

It was odd watching these shock killings unfold as "accidents" with an invisible hand of Satan as the killer, I guess that made The Omen rather B, too.

Anyway, David Warner got the "coolest" death, indeed to be added to that list that I think rather starts with Arbogast -- a truck rolls downhill and ejects a huge pane of glass which proceeds to decapitate Warner in slow motion. Unlike Arbogast's demise, this didn't meet with screams -- audiences were getting more jaded. It met rather with a "WOAH! Wow!" sense of appreciation. Plus, the "invisibility of the killer"(Satan) was almost a little funny.

Note in passing: The Omen 2 of 1978 put William Holden in the "faded star" part (as Peck's brother) and had a series of shock killings, too. The best one had a guy trapped in a falling elevator and then cut in two by a cable that sliced through the car when it reached bottom. Who thinks up this stuff?

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

His biggest, most fun part was as a time-traveling Jack The Ripper (battling an actual time-machine-inventing HG Wells! played by McDowell) who feels *right* at home (a chilling 'This is *my* time') in late '70s San Fran in Time After Time (1979).

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Time travel movies are always rather fun "what ifs," and to see HG Wells encountering 1979 San Francisco was a lot of fun...even as he was tracking a Jack the Ripper who was, indeed, appreciative of all the murder and mayhem of that year ("I'm an amateur compared to these people.") I'm afraid Mad Jack would find 2022 even more to his liking...a little less war, a LOT more psychopathy.

I'll add one more for David Warner that came almost 20 years after Time After Time. Warner was widely seen in the infamous "Titanic" as the gun-wielding henchman/bodyguard to Rich Villain Billy Zane. As I recall, when the Titanic went down at the end, Warner ended up right where the ship split in two...and fell into the crevass created thereby.

I assume that a trip to imdb will show me that Warner acted for years AFTER Titanic, but he seemed like a "blast from the past" even then -- a relic from a 60's/70s heyday.

And, as with all good character men -- fine little list of "great moments."

All these RIPS. I suppose as the "Boomer generation" moves on, these may be the years of a LOT of deaths of famous people. Dare I say that most of our biggest stars of the 70s are still standing, and it will be something when their times finally come.

[–] swanstep (2628) 2 years ago

Another couple of RIPs:

1. Judith Durham, Aussie lead singer of The Seekers, died last week. She sung the the title and opening&closing scenes theme song of Georgy Girl (1966). Here's a good vid for the streamlined single version of that song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsIbfYEizLk and here's how it was used in the film (with extra verses etc.):
(opening scene) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGukkdt5yOo
(closing scene) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aOKJ6EiC0c

The song was nom'd for Best Song along with things such as 'Alfie' but all lost to John Barry's 'Born Free'. Three *hugely* popular hits duking it out for the Best Song Oscar. Doesn't happen these days (and not since the '80s really).

Georgy Girl (1966) can't quite live up to its great theme song but it's still worth a look I'd say, especially if you have a weakness for seriously flawed protagonists and anatagonists alike or for 'swinging London' flicks generally.

2. Olivia Newton-John. Immensely likeable country-pop singer who was part of an enormous Aussie music wave in the '70s (Bee Gees, Helen Reddy, Little River Band, Air Supply) and who shrewdly parlayed the makeover trajectory of her Sandy character in blockbuster hit Grease (1978) into a more sexed-up music career full of big pop hits over the next 5 years. ONJ's Xanadu (1980) w/ Gene Kelly remains one of the worst, downright embarrassing movies I've paid actual money to see. But it had a bunch of killer tunes and the soundtrack sold a bucket-load.

Songs for movies that were better than the movies. There's a common theme here.

RIP to both Aussie songbirds who elevated the films to which they contributed.

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

1. Judith Durham, Aussie lead singer of The Seekers, died last week. She sung the the title and opening&closing scenes theme song of Georgy Girl (1966).

The song was nom'd for Best Song along with things such as 'Alfie' but all lost to John Barry's 'Born Free'. Three *hugely* popular hits duking it out for the Best Song Oscar. Doesn't happen these days (and not since the '80s really).

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No, it doesn't -- I'm afraid more of a knock on the modern irrelevance of the Oscars. Oh, various Disney and Pixar theme songs have won and millions know THOSE, but that's "fish in a barrel." No real competition.

1966 is a great late childhood year for me, and the radio and all those songs of that year bring it all back every time. Georgy Girl was one of them (the key to the radio was how one song would merge into the next until you had a 20-song strong dose of background music at home or in parents' car, and nostalgia now.)

I only finally SAW Georgy Girl about 2 years ago on TCM. It was OK...black and white and British and hip on some sexual matters and sad about "Georgy"(Lynn Redgrave) herself. And this: here's James Mason -- a mere 7 years after North by Northwest -- still possessed of that suave and silky voice, but playing a rather dull and tweedy "old man." It rather undercuts the suave menace of Philip Vandamm but proves just how good an actor Mason was.

More Hitchcock trivia: Hitchcock evidently pitched to both Vanessa Redgrave and her sister Lynn Redgrave to play Brenda and Babs in "Frenzy." That's right: Bob Rusk would have raped and strangled the Redgrave sisters(and Hitch had worked with their dad on The Lady Vanishes.) Perverse! Didn't happen.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Georgy Girl (1966) can't quite live up to its great theme song

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It sure couldn't when I saw it 50 years after the song came out

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but it's still worth a look I'd say, especially if you have a weakness for seriously flawed protagonists and anatagonists alike or for 'swinging London' flicks generally.

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Yes. I like to say that film history IS history, and there it is encapsulated: a time, a place, the mores of the people and the times.

And a great rockin' heartwarming song -- RIP to the singer, who got her immortality with that tune.

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

2. Olivia Newton-John. Immensely likeable country-pop singer who was part of an enormous Aussie music wave in the '70s (Bee Gees, Helen Reddy, Little River Band, Air Supply)

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The Aussie Invasion?

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and who shrewdly parlayed the makeover trajectory of her Sandy character in blockbuster hit Grease (1978) into a more sexed-up music career full of big pop hits over the next 5 years.

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I found that pretty savvy on her part. She was a very beautiful young woman in the 70's but her songs and personality were squeaky-clean. The one that drove me nuts was "I Honestly Love You," a love song that bespeaks of a lawyer's counter-offer ("No, truly...I HONESTLY love you") and that didn't have much of a tune or a refrain or anything.

And yet: In the great early "shark attack on the boy on the raft sequence" in Jaws, there's that damn song floating out over the radios on the beach. I shook my head when I heard it on the Jaws soundtrack in 1975 -- it was from the summer before -- but all these years later, it is a sweet counterpoint to the gory action.

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CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

The "sexy turnaround" started with the hit song "Magic" in the awful Xanadu, but soon Olivia had her "sexy single" with a Jane Fonda workout-type gym video with sexy moves: "Physical." AKA "Let's get physical." Oh yeah. THAT did it. The line "let me hear your body talk, body talk" had its own throb.

That song and a few others actually got me to buy a ticket to an OLJ concert in the early 80's. I forgot about her 70's songs and agonized through "I Honestly Love You." But the show was fun enough -- and John Travolta himself came on stage to do "You're the One That I Want" with her. That was a little bit of movie history for me to witness personallly. (On topic in a certain way -- "Psycho" ruled the summer of 1960; "Grease" ruled the summer of 1978; you can never tell what your culture-influencing blockbuster is going to be. Except now, when its always a Marvel movie.)

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ONJ's Xanadu (1980) w/ Gene Kelly remains one of the worst, downright embarrassing movies I've paid actual money to see. But it had a bunch of killer tunes and the soundtrack sold a bucket-load.

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Yeah, it was as if all the box office power and goodwill of "Grease" for OLJ was revoked with "Xanadu." OLJ's star career was over before it started (the final nail was one more movie with Travolta that went nowhere, a major miscalculation for both of them which helped kill Travolta's superstar career for about a decade.)

The Xanadu songs were great fun on the 1980 radio though.

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Songs for movies that were better than the movies. There's a common theme here.

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Oh, yeah. That happens a lot. Even with Moon River and Breakfast at Tiffany's. No song, no movie.

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RIP to both Aussie songbirds who elevated the films to which they contributed.

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As I have noted, perhaps the fact that we have a generation of Baby Boomers in their later years will keep up an unfortunate pace of celebrity deaths. Oh well...its part of life.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

A sad note on Olivia Newton John(to me): the first half of her life seemed to be as "that pretty young blond songstress with the blockbuster pop classic movie and the sexy aerobics song." But somewhere along the line, she had several public bouts with cancer(particularly breast cancer), over several DECADES, and the second half of her life seemed to be as a cancer fighter and survivor and inspiration.

She finally lost that battle, but the decades should put into it should tell us to never give up.

[–] swanstep (2628) 2 years ago

And this: here's James Mason -- a mere 7 years after North by Northwest -- still possessed of that suave and silky voice, but playing a rather dull and tweedy "old man." It rather undercuts the suave menace of Philip Vandamm but proves just how good an actor Mason was.

The way that the film ends still shocks a little I think. We know that Georgy's beautiful roommate Meredith (Charlotte Rampling) is a bit cold and calculating and self-centered throughout the movie but it's breathtaking when her full monstrousness arrives in a rush at the end. Then when Georgy and Mason's character suddenly get married to smooth the adoption of Meredith's child, the film does *nothing* to soften Georgy's own attitude. For the film to completely work as comedy for the audience, Georgy *needs* to look like she at least genuinely appreciates Mason's actions and basically likes him, whereas instead she reads as completely baby-obsessed and as though she's strictly coldly exploiting Mason for his money. These are such sour notes to end on: we feel sorry for Mason's character and we suddenly grasp a perspective from which Georgy and the ghastly Meredith are more alike than we'd thought. I suspect that the film-makers wanted this ending to be a bit of a shock and to work as 'gritty cool realism' but it's just too dark I think. After all, if Georgy (stupidly) can't be a bit more pleasant to Mason than that then (a) her marriage won't last long, and (b) she could quickly end up in dire straits again, possibly even losing custody of the child. So I don't think the ending works as realism at all unless it's pointing at this very horrible ultra-dark possibility that makes Georgy a bit thick and probably doomed. Or maybe this late-breaking darkness and confusion all made Georgy Girl work as a good water cooler film back in 1966?