Passages

[therewillbeblus]

The Gravy Train/The Dion Bros. is a wonderful film with one of Forrest’s best performances. The interplay between him and Stacy Keach is glorious. I don’t know why it’s never received ANY home video release, with the bootlegs of it out there probably coming from Z Channel or HBO airings

If Tarantino ever starts his label, I'm sure he'll try to put it out. I revisited this again just the other day - it's an endlessly rewatchable shaggy-dog buddy crime comedy, and eligible for the '74 project

[beamish14]

The Gravy Train/The Dion Bros. is a wonderful film with one of Forrest’s best performances. The interplay between him and Stacy Keach is glorious. I don’t know why it’s never received ANY home video release, with the bootlegs of it out there probably coming from Z Channel or HBO airings

If Tarantino ever starts his label, I'm sure he'll try to put it out. I revisited this again just the other day - it's an endlessly rewatchable shaggy-dog buddy crime comedy, and eligible for the '74 project

In the Sony email hacks, it was indicated that he inquired about the film’s status with Amy Pascal. He’s never shown it at the New Beverly, which surprises me

[therewillbeblus]

Yeah, that's strange - he's a pretty outspoken fan of the film, which is probably what prompted me to seek it out in college. I always expect these rare cult films that are available on public back channels to be more widely-seen, but zero people I follow on LB have seen this, except for Sean Baker

[beamish14]

When it was shown at the American Cinematheque about 15+ years ago, the print was faded, so it might be a materials issue. You would think they would strike a new print of it. Sony has gorgeous prints of Remember My Name, and that’s never getting a home video release

[Mr Sausage]

Sony has gorgeous prints of Remember My Name, and that’s never getting a home video release

Why’s that?

[beamish14]

Sony has gorgeous prints of Remember My Name, and that’s never getting a home video release

Why’s that?

The copious Alberta Hunter songs that play throughout it. Choose Me has similar issues with its great Teddy Pendergrass soundtrack

[MichaelB]

I’m surprised that he has not been legally declared dead yet

In the absence of a body, I believe seven years is the standard period of waiting before someone can be declared legally dead. Some US states opt for less than that, but we're still talking several years.

Human remains have been found, but as yet not identified, in the area where Julian Sands went missing.

[MichaelB]

British director Malcolm Mowbray, best known by far for his second collaboration with Alan Bennett, A Private Function (1984). (Their first was the TV play Our Winnie a couple of years earlier).

[Big Ben]

I’m surprised that he has not been legally declared dead yet

In the absence of a body, I believe seven years is the standard period of waiting before someone can be declared legally dead. Some US states opt for less than that, but we're still talking several years.

Human remains have been found, but as yet not identified, in the area where Julian Sands went missing.

The identity of the remains have been confirmed as Sands.

[DeprongMori]

Frederic Forrest

[colinr0380]

On Julian Sands, I suppose the main thing people will gravitate towards will be A Room With A View, but I think the role I was first introduced to him with was the (eventually proved to be ineffectual, because all that book learnin' and adventurin' don't mean anything when up against actual spiders) spider expert in Arachnophobia! There were a lot of great horror roles early in his career (inevitably also period roles, which he seemed suited to as a man out of time) with a part in the best adaptation of the 'body snatchers' Burke and Hare story The Doctor and the Devils; as Percy Bysshe Shelley in Ken Russell's Gothic and in Tale of the Vampire. Plus a 1992 version of The Turn of the Screw (with Stephane Audran!) and of course as the Phantom in Dario Argento's 1998 version of The Phantom of the Opera.

Although his big role at the time was up against Richard E. Grant in Warlock and its sequel, which bracket perhaps his most famous film, the notoriously poorly received Boxing Helena, which probably had a big impact on his career. (Although it makes for a great triple bill with Blind Beast and Tattoo!)

For me perhaps his very best appearance in film is the unnerving single scene in Naked Lunch as the erudite Yves Clouquet, with certain horrific secrets hidden in the back rumpus rooms of his mansion! (And it has always amused me that Sands turns up as the main motivating bad guy in Season 5 of 24, which also features Peter Weller in it! It was a mini-Naked Lunch reunion there!)

(Although I also like his role in the ensemble cast of Mike Figgis' excellent real-time split-screen film Timecode as the personal massage therapist 'gifted' to the studio executives and who spends much of the rest of the film hovering around in the background trying to give the other members of the cast massages! Sands is also in two of Figgis' 90s films, Leaving Las Vegas and One Night Stand, so probably makes sense that he turns up in a small part in Timecode too, as well as in Hotel just afterwards)

[MichaelB]

Frederic Forrest

Discussed in some detail a few posts above.

[colinr0380]

(Although I also like his role in the ensemble cast of Mike Figgis' excellent real-time split-screen film Timecode as the personal massage therapist 'gifted' to the studio executives and who spends much of the rest of the film hovering around in the background trying to give the other members of the cast massages! Sands is also in two of Figgis' 90s films, Leaving Las Vegas and One Night Stand, so probably makes sense that he turns up in a small part in Timecode too, as well as in Hotel just afterwards)

Here's Figgis doing a tribute to Julian Sands

[Pavel]

Alan Arkin

Everyone who hasn’t seen it should watch the incredible Little Murders, which he directed and starred in

[beamish14]

Alan Arkin

Everyone who hasn’t seen it should watch the incredible Little Murders, which he directed and starred in

So many wonderful performances. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Catch-22, Glengarry Glen Ross. My favorite might be in Ted Kotcheff’s Joshua Then and Now, which you can see in a Canadian television cut that’s over an hour longer on YouTube

[MichaelB]

Alan Arkin

Everyone who hasn’t seen it should watch the incredible Little Murders, which he directed and starred in

In a somewhat unsettling coincidence, today is the last day that Indicator is allowed to sell their Blu-ray edition of Little Murders before it gets locked up in the Disney vaults.

(Normally, a promotional post like this in the immediate wake of someone's death would rightly be considered somewhat tasteless, but this is a rather unusual situation!)

[brundlefly]

Don't know exactly how it happened, but in college my roommates and I became so fixated on Marshall Brickman's Simon that we started attributing any funny line we heard anywhere to it. May have to pull out my threadbare VHS copy and a cone-shaped party hat this weekend and see what was actually in there. RIP.

[domino harvey]

He also delivered arguably the greatest literal jump scare of all time

[colinr0380]

Alan Arkin

Everyone who hasn’t seen it should watch the incredible Little Murders, which he directed and starred in

So many wonderful performances. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Catch-22, Glengarry Glen Ross. My favorite might be in Ted Kotcheff’s Joshua Then and Now, which you can see in a Canadian television cut that’s over an hour longer on YouTube

Plus kvetching (I think that's the technical term) with James Caan in Freebie and the Bean! I like that he kept turning up in major roles well into the new millennium: he's in the Steven Soderbergh directed segment of the Eros anthology film and turns up as the Detective in Gattaca. His big role in the 2000s was probably the patriarch in Little Miss Sunshine, although even better is his segment coming on to Paul Walker in the star-studded ensemble feature film directed by Chazz Palminteri, Noel. I don't think that a subplot quite that off-the-wall audacious would even have been dreamed up, let alone attempted, in Gary Marshall's later thematically similar Valentine's Day/Mother's Day/New Year's Eve ensemble films!

[beamish14]

Don't know exactly how it happened, but in college my roommates and I became so fixated on Marshall Brickman's Simon that we started attributing any funny line we heard anywhere to it. May have to pull out my threadbare VHS copy and a cone-shaped party hat this weekend and see what was actually in there. RIP.

How could I forget that movie? One of the weirdest, most wild studio films of the 80’s. I love it. I remember that it’s one of the worst-looking WB Archive DVDs I’ve seen, too

[tolbs1010]

Arkin was such a subtly great actor. Equally adept at comedy and drama. His performance in The In-Laws is one of my all-time fav comedic performances. He is also slyly funny as Freud in The Seven Percent Solution.

The praise here for Little Murders led me to blind buy it last year. So glad I did. Most of the credit goes to Feiffer, but the direction is amazingly assured considering Arkin said he had no idea what he was doing in the featured interview on the Indicator release.

A life well-lived.

[ando]

R.I.P. Robert Gottlieb
Apparently passed on June 14.
Times Obit.

[CSM126]

Football player and professional wrestler Darren Drozdov, who famously suffered a horrible in-ring injury that left him quadriplegic the same year that Owen Hart died in the ring.

[Aunt Peg]

Veteran Australian actress Judi Farr, 84: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judi_Farr

[brundlefly]

Rick Froberg, of Pitchfork (the band), Drive Like Jehu, Hot Snakes, and Obits. Crushing news.