Films etc.

This is the eighth edition of “On Set, Off Camera.” As with previous editions, it consists mainly of shots of actors and directors caught in off-camera moments during the making of a movie, sometimes off-set, at home and elsewhere. Some of these are candid and some are obviously posed, but I think they’re all interesting.

____________________________________________________

Martin Scorsese

________________________________________________________

Scorsese & Robert De Niro during the making of Taxi Driver (1976).

____________________________________________________

Again, De Niro and Sccorsese.

____________________________________________________

Scorsese with his mom and De Niro on Taxi Driver set.

____________________________________________________

Scorsese with his parents at Christmas time in their home in Queens, New York, 1948.

__________________________________________________

Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, and somebody’s baby while shooting Raging Bull (1980).

_________________________________________________

Sofia Coppola with arms around her father and Bill Murray.

____________________________________________________

Michelangelo Antonioni with Jack Nicholson while making The Passenger (1975).

_______________________________________________________

Antonioni with Monica Vitti.

_________________________________________________________

William Wyler with John Ford.

__________________________________________________

Akira Kurosawa with John Ford, 1957.

_________________________________________________

Dennis Hopper, John Ford, John Huston. Interesting bedfellows.

_______________________________________________

Marlon Brando and Anna Magnani while making Sidney Lumet’s The Fugitive Kind (1960).

_____________________________________________________

Anna Magnani

_____________________________________________________

Pier Paolo Pasolini and his mother.

________________________________________________

Yasujirö Ozu and his mother.

______________________________________________

Luchino Visconti and his sister, with their mother’s portrait behind them.

______________________________________________

Nick Cassavetes with his mother, Gena Rowlands.

_________________________________________________

John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands.

______________________________________________________

John Cassavetes

____________________________________________________

Audrey Hepburn and Mel Ferrar outside Paris, 1956.

_______________________________________________________

William Holden

__________________________________________________

Steve McQueen with magazines, with cat, and with Natalie Wood while making Love with the Proper Stranger (1963). Very cool.

______________________________________________________________

Paul Newman, Sidney Lumet, Lindsay Crouse, and unidentified woman during production of The Verdict (1982).

________________________________________________________

Paul Newman deplanes.

________________________________________________________

Shelley Duvall, Danny Lloyd, and Jack Nicholson in car mock-up for The Shining (1980)._______________________________________________________

Brad Pitt in sports car rigged for shooting in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019). Not so simple.

______________________________________________________

Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor. Below that, James Dean looking at a magazine with Jackie Gleason on the cover while Liz naps on the couch, probably during a break while making Giant (1956).

_______________________________________________

Jean-Pierre Léaud regards a poster for his film, The 400 Blows, at the Cannes Film Festival in 1959.

_______________________________________________________

John Wayne and Gary Cooper.

___________________________________________________

Toshiro Mifune, looking very relaxed.

__________________________________________________

The cast of High Noon (1951) in what appears to be a posed shot. From left, Otto Kruger, Thomas Mitchell, Gary Cooper, Fred Zinnemann (maybe), Grace Kelly, and Lon Chaney Jr. I wonder what they were supposed to be watching on the television.

___________________________________________________

François Truffaut and Jeanne Moreau, 1964.

__________________________________________________________

Jean-Luc Godard, Anna Karina, Jean-Paul Belmondo.

_______________________________________________________

Belmondo and Jean Seberg clown around while shooting Breathless (1960).

_____________________________________________________

And to close this out, obsessive shutterbug Yul Brynne, in make-up for The King and I, takes a shot.

________________________________________________________

That’s probably enough for this installment. I’ve got a lot more photos stockpiled for posts like this. I just keep finding more. See you next time. — Ted Hicks

________________________________________________________

______________________________________________

On July 3 of this year I was jolted by the news that Ted Perry had died the previous month. I first met Ted and his wife Miriam in 1964 at the University of Iowa when he was a TA in the first film production course I took, Cinematography Techniques, which everyone called Cine Tech, taught by Dr. John Kuiper. Sixty years ago. whew! We became friends and stayed in contact during all that time. Ted followed this blog, so when I saw a response I assumed was from him in my in-box, I was anxious to see what comments he might have made on my previous post. But it was his daughter Melissa, writing to tell me her father had passed away on June 10. Sad news indeed, especially for those of us who knew him.

I became friends with Ted and Miriam at Iowa. I think we took a film history course together in the first semester of the 1965-66 school year. I seem to remember meeting with them and others from the course in the cafeteria lounge of the student union to go over notes before the final exam. I still have my notes around here somewhere. I also remember a film party that was held at Don Pasquella’s great apartment above the Whiteway grocery store in downtown Iowa City where I was living in the months prior to leaving for Air Force basic training that October. A bunch of us chipped in to rent a 16mm print of Tod Browning’s Freaks (1932) to show. Quite a party. “One of us! One of us!” I remember Ted was there, though not sure if Miriam was. By now they’d had their first child, so maybe not.

___________________________________________________________

Ted has had a truly impressive and important career in film. I’m always amazed that I actually know people like this. After the University of Iowa, he went to the University of Texas at Austin where he was on the ground floor developing a film program. From there he and Miriam moved to New York City where he was the new Chair of Cinema Studies at NYU from 1971 to 1975. After that he was the director of the Museum of Modern Art’s Film Department from 1975 to 1978. Ted was hired by Middlebury College in Vermont in ’78 as a professor of theater and dean of the arts and humanities. Seeing that Middlebury didn’t have a film studies department, he basically built one from the ground up, which became the Department of Film and Media Culture. Ted stayed at Middlebury until he retired.

Ted was one of the film scholars who was instrumental in developing film studies programs in this country. As he said in a 2018 interview, “…I think a lot of credit should go to those peopled who really had to fight at places to teach film and to have film recognized as medium for serious study.”

Michelle McCauley, a longtime colleague, wrote that “Ted recognized the instrumental value for students to be not only well read but also well viewed. He led Middlebury to develop a robust film curriculum far ahead of many of our peers. Our nationally renowned film and media culture program is a testament to his inspiring vision.”

In an article Ted wrote for Middlebury Magazine in 1988 titled “Why I Teach Film,” he said, “Investigating the history and criticism and the aesthetics of the moving image is important, not only because the moving image is an independent art form, but also because the moving image has inflected the culture of this century.”

I also liked what he said when he arrived at the University of Texas, “Okay. You want to have a film program. Let’s go.”

_____________________________________________________

When I moved to New York in 1977, we met at MoMA and Ted gave me a year-long pass, which I really appreciated since I had very little money then. I put it to good use seeing many films at the museum. We got together a few times before he and Miriam and their kids made the move to Burlington, Vermont. After that, we stayed in touch via email.

Monica Vitti – Red Desert

The last time I saw Ted in person was when he and Miriam came to the city for the start of a Michelangelo Antonioni retrospective at MoMA in December of 2017. Ted loved Antonioni’s films, ever since L’Eclisse (1962) had knocked him out when he first saw it at Iowa. He’d even done his doctoral dissertation on that film. The series began on Thursday, December 7, with Red Desert (1964). I met Ted and Miriam at MoMA before the film, where they introduced me to Antonioni’s widow, Enrica, with whom they’d become great friends. Two days later, Nancy and I met Ted and Miriam for lunch at their hotel. Nancy took the following shot. I remember Ted mentioning that the color timing was off in some scenes in the copy of Red Desert we’d seen. I liked that.

_________________________________________________

When I’d learned that Ted had written a memoir titled My Reel Story, I was anxious to read it. I remember getting a copy when it was first published in 2001. At the time, I had a very uncertain reaction to the book. I was confused and disappointed that it was so personal and open. I hadn’t expected that, and was maybe a little embarrassed by it. I didn’t want to know all that. It was too much information. This wasn’t the book I’d expected. I thought it was just going to be about movies, but it was much more than that. Movies were important to Ted growing up in New Orleans, but the images of his mother and father were disturbing to me. He had a problematic relationship with problematic parents. I’m not sure I even finished reading it then. When I emailed a mutual friend to tell him about Ted’s death, he mentioned that he was re-reading My Reel Story. This motivated me to take another look. Due to some recent downsizing, I no longer had my copy, but got one at the library. This time I loved it! Re-reading it made me think my original discomfort was because it had triggered feelings of my complicated relationship with my own parents. Their marriage was certainly problematic, but I suspect that’s true of all marriages to varying degrees. I know it wasn’t Father Knows Best, but that’s what I saw on TV in the ‘50s. I think what I’m saying is that book was personal to Ted in ways that are personal to me in my own story. It just took me a while accept that.

I love the photo below on the back jacket cover. So there actually is a streetcar named Desire in New Orleans!

___________________________________________________

When I started looking online for material to include in this post, I found the transcript of an interview with Ted that had been done in 2018. I read the interview and thought it was great, but could find nothing in the transcript itself that would indicate attribution of the piece. I was eventually put in touch with Christian Keathley in the Film & Media Culture Department at Middlebury college. Chris had done the interview with Ted for the Society for Cinema and Media Studies Fieldnotes program, which is a series of in-depth interviews with film scholars and educators relating to their careers and the history of film and media studies in academia. He gave me this link to the Fieldnotes interviews.

I found that besides being able to access transcripts of each interview, videos of the interviews are also available. Being able to see and hear the person being interviewed is obviously much more immediate and alive than just reading words on a page or screen. One thing I really like about this interview with Ted is how much of his personality and humor are present. He always seems to have a twinkle in his eyes.

__________________________________________________

From the brief obituary at the Sanderson Funeral Home website:

Edward “Ted” S. Perry, 87, peacefully passed away June 10, 2024 surrounded by his family.

“Surrounded by his family” sounds pretty ideal, if it’s time to go. After Iowa, Ted and I infrequently got together, but were never out of touch. I really miss him, and am proud that we were friends.

_____________________________________________________

Ted Perry obituary

______________________________________________________

Postscript: Ted was a fan of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974). He knew some of the people who worked on the film. In a somewhat controversial move, the Museum of Modern Art acquired a print of that film for their permanent collection in 1976. This was while Ted was head of the Film Department at MoMA, and from what I’ve been able to find, Larry Kardish and Adrienne Mancia are credited with that decision, but not Ted. Nevertheless, I’d like to think that he had to have been involved in that somehow.

______________________________________________________

That does it for this one. See you next time. — Ted Hicks

______________________________________________________

Last Friday I saw Alien Romulus, the seventh film in the series since 1979. I’d seen the trailer frequently in advance of the release date and was wondering what, if anything, could be different about this installment. I mean, each film from the start has one (or more) of these things getting loose in an enclosed space and scaring the hell out of everybody, killing most of them in the bargain. The humans are trying to kill it and just survive. Okay, there’s usually been more going on, but that’s what it basically comes down to. As it turns out, this one is pretty good.

As is usually the case in an Alien film, the final 30 minutes or so is a desperate race against time with tension being constantly cranked up until you’re out of breath just watching it. Just two days prior I’d seen Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre at the Museum of Modern Art, and this felt very familiar. The last 30 minutes (or more) of that film were even more intensely brutal than Romulus, and felt more real. I’d seen Chain Saw for the first time in 1974 when it opened at the State Theater in Minneapolis, but had forgotten how extreme it is. Almost too much to take. It’s impossible to overestimate how influential this film and George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968) have been on everything that followed. Chain Saw is so raw and direct, it’s like the movie was hammered out in a junkyard. That may be partly why it’s so effective, it’s not a polished studio production, it’s rough and ragged and you never saw these actors before. It’s still really disturbing after all these years, maybe even more so, right down to the final apocalyptic, iconic image of Leatherface whirling with his chainsaw against the rising sun.

_______________________________________________

When the last surviving member of her group, Sally Hardesty (played by Marilyn Burns in what must have been an exhausting experience), starts screaming, basically nonstop, she doesn’t stop until she’s in the back of a pickup truck, covered in blood (hers), speeding away from Leatherface doing his chainsaw dance in the road. During the extended finale, we’re assaulted on the soundtrack by Sally’s terrified screams and the chainsaw engine revving in the background, while jump cuts get closer and closer to Sally’s bugged-out eyes. This collision of sound and image is really extreme. You just want it to be over. But for what it is, it’s really great.

_________________________________________________

While Night of the Living Dead directly defined how zombies would be portrayed in films and TV thereafter, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, perhaps less directly but no less significantly, established a template for how climactic sequences would be paced and structured in thrillers and horror films in general, not just in Alien movies. There’s nothing original about this; down-to-the-wire, race-against-time climaxes in movies go back to D.W. Griffith, but I think what sets Chain Saw apart is the level of raw, unrelenting intensity.

_____________________________________________________

Of course, the original Alien, which I first saw in 1979 at the Criterion Theater in New York was influenced by more than Chain Saw. Its DNA includes The Thing from Another World (1951), It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958), and Mario Bava’s Planet of the Vampires (1960).

______________________________________________________________

In The Thing (directed by Christian Nyby with an assist from Howard Hawks), a murderous extraterrestrial is on the loose in the claustrophobic  confines of an outpost at the North Pole. It’s a similar environment to spacecraft in the Alien films.

_____________________________________________________

It! The Terror from Beyond Space has the title creature hiding on a spaceship and killing off crew members as they attempt to locate and kill it. Sound familiar? The connection with Planet of the Vampires is a bit more interesting.

Per Wikipedia:

Several critics have suggested that Bava’s film was a major influence on Ridley Scott’s Alien(1979) and Prometheus (2012), in both narrative details and visual design… One of the film’s most celebrated sequences involves the astronauts performing an exploration of an alien, derelict ship discovered in a huge ruin on the surface of the planet. The crewmembers climb up into the depths of the eerie ship and discover the gigantic remains of long dead monstrous creatures. In 1979, Cinefantastique magazine noted the remarkable similarities between this atmospheric sequence and a lengthy scene in the then-new Alien. However, both Alien‘s director Ridley Scott and screenwriter Dan O’Bannon claimed at the time that they had never seen Planet of the Vampires. Decades later, O’Bannon would admit: “I stole the giant skeleton from the Planet of the Vampires.”

_______________________________________________

Last Saturday, on the heels of just seeing The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Alien Romulus, it seemed only logical to watch Blu-ray video discs of the original Alien and James Cameron’s sequel, Aliens (1986), back to back. Alien is a horror film, Aliens is a war movie. For me, Alien is much more effective, more contained and claustrophobic, more terrifying. Also, what a jolt the chestburster scene must have been for first-time audiences in 1979, not to mention how destabilizing it was when we slowly realized, along with Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley, that Ash (played by the great Ian Holm) was a robot, especially after he gets his head knocked off. Thanks to CGI, Holm, who died in 2020,  turns up as another robot in Alien Romulus, one of the many nods and references to the original film.

__________________________________________________

Two examples of artwork for Alien‘s alien, or Xenomorph, as it came to be called. The term was first used in Aliens to mean generic extraterrestrial lifeforms.

__________________________________________________

Speaking of influences, Alien‘s is far-reaching. For example, when Paisley Abbey in Paisley, Scotland was restored in 1991, many of the original gargoyles were badly damaged and had to be replaced. It was someone’s great idea to have one of them be a Xenomorph. Here it is. Pretty cool, huh.

_______________________________________________

I’ll wrap this up with the original poster for The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. “Who will survive and what will be left of them?”  Whew! Can’t say they didn’t warn us.

Note: I’d originally spelled Chain Saw in the title as one word, Chainsaw. It’s that way in the poster below, so I thought I was right. Then I started seeing all these references where it was two words, so now I’ve changed it in this post. But what the hell, I guess however it’s spelled, we know what we’re talking about, right?

__________________________________________________

I make no apologies for higher than usual film geek content in this post. See you next time. — Ted Hicks

__________________________________________________

I thought it was time to share some more movie posters. As before, there’s no particular theme or category for this collection, other than they’re dynamic and dramatic, and got my attention in one way or another.

I thought I’d lead off with a particularly beautiful poster for The Sea Hawk (1924), directed by Frank Lloyd. .

_____________________________________________

Released in 1930, this was one of several features shot in 70mm, though shown mainly in 35mm since few theaters could accommodate the widescreen format. Years ago I saw it in 70mm at the Museum of Modern Art as part of a series of early widescreen films. It was a mind-blowing experience. Despite the poster’s claim, however, it is not “the most important picture every produced.”

It’s some indication of Raoul Walsh’s stature as a director that his name is above the title in the main title sequence.

Below is one of a series of striking lobby cards for the film. You don’t see lobby cards on display in theaters anymore.

John Wayne was 23 in this film, his first credited role. After The Big Trail, he appeared in many low-budget Westerns until 1939, when he had his breakout role in John Ford’s Stagecoach.

__________________________________________________

Baby Face Nelson (directed by Don Siegel, 1957)

____________________________________________

Baby Face (directed by Alfred E. Green 1933)  Per Wikipedia: Marketed with the salacious tagline “She had it and made it pay”, the film’s open discussion of sex made it one of the most notorious films of the Pre-Code Hollywood era and helped bring the era to a close as enforcement of the code became stricter beginning in 1934. The film was then heavily cut. The uncensored version remained lost until 2004, when it resurfaced at a Library of Congress film vault in Dayton, Ohio. This version had  its New York City premiere in 2005, which is when I probably saw it.

__________________________________________

Great poster for one of my favorite films, directed by John Frankenheimer in 1964. I find it eminently repeatable. Lancaster is great in this.

_______________________________________

Italian poster for My Forbidden Past, directed by Robert Stevenson in 1951.

________________________________________________

Italian poster for The Seven Year Itch, directed by Billy Wilder in 1955.

________________________________________

English language poster for François Truffaut’s Shoot the Piano Player (1960).

______________________________________________

Spanish poster for The Son of the Sheik, directed in 1926 by George Fitzmaurice.

___________________________________________

Hitchcock, 1936.

__________________________________________

Hitchcock, 1960. (I included this one in a previous poster collection, but it’s too good not to have here.)

_______________________________________

Hitchcock, 1963.

__________________________________________________

Two directed by Jean-Pierre Melville. Leon Morin, Priest (1961) and Le Doulos (1963).

___________________________________________________

It Pays to Advertise (directed by Frank Tuttle in 1931).

______________________________________________

Tom Mix and Tony the Wonder Horse! Directed by Lewis Seiler in 1927.

________________________________________________

The Unknown (1927),  directed by Tod Browning. The Univited (1944), directed by Lewis Allen.

_________________________________________________

Directed by Curtis Bernhardt in 1951.

__________________________________________

Directed by Orson Welles in 1962.

_________________________________________________

Directed by Vincente Minnelli in 1955.

_______________________________________________

Excerpted from a poster for Chinatown (1974), directed by Roman Polanski and written by Robert Towne. This really captures a tone and feeling.

________________________________________________

That does it for this one. Stay tuned for the next one. — Ted Hicks

As with the previous Face Time posts, there’s no theme or organizing principle to these photographs of actors, other than that they all have the Look, faces that hold the screen and our attention, then and now.

____________________________________________________

Elizabeth Taylor (obviously)

______________________________________________

Michael K. Williams, Lance Reddick, Andre Braugher — Gone too soon.

_______________________________________________

Grace Kelly (photographed by Philippe Halsman, 1954)

_____________________________________

Elsa Lanchester

_____________________________________

Loretta Young, Gloria Swanson, Dorothy Malone

________________________________________

Simone Simon

________________________________________

Gene Tierney (1947)

________________________________________

Burt Lancaster, Jeff Chandler, Victor Mature 

___________________________________________

Robert Mitchum

___________________________________________

James Dean

___________________________________________

Sean Connery

___________________________________________

Tallulah Bankhead, Ann-Margret, Anya Taylor-Joy

__________________________________________

William Holden — The Wild Bunch (1969)

_______________________________________________

Brigitte Helm — as Maria in Metropolis (1927)

_____________________________________________

Bette Davis — Of Human Bondage (1934)

_________________________________________

Dennis Hopper — Looks like this was while shooting Apocalypse Now (1979).

____________________________________________________

Clint Eastwood

___________________________________

Sessue Hayakawa

__________________________________________________

Yul Brynner

___________________________________________________

Previous Face Time posts may be accessed here:

Face Time – The Classics, Part 1 (11/11/2021)

Face Time – The Classics, Part 2 (11/12/2021)

Face Time – The Classics, Part 3 (11/16/2021)

_____________________________________________________

That does it for this one. Until next time, keep calm, duck and cover. — Ted Hicks

________________________________________________

This is the seventh edition of “On Set, Off Camera.” It consists mainly of shots of actors and directors caught in off-camera moments during the making of a movie, sometimes off-set, at home and elsewhere. Some of these are candid and some are posed, but I think they’re all interesting, and in some cases unusual, possibly revealing.

_____________________________________

Stanley Kubrick and Jack Nicholson on set during filming of The Shining (1980).

________________________________________________

Kubrick on various sets.

The Killing (1956)

Spartacus (1960)

Ping pong during Lolita (1962).

Notice Kubrick reflected in the mirror at right in the shot below. Pretty cool.

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

2001: A Space Odyssey

Barry Lyndon (1975)

Full Metal Jacket (1987)

Full Metal Jacket 

Eyes Wide Shut (1999

______________________________________________

Early-version selfies from Kubrick and Yasujiro Ozu (!).

__________________________________________

Charlie Chaplin

_____________________________________

Agnès Varda

Agnès Varda and Jacques Demy

Alain Resnais, Agnès Varda, Jacques Demy

_____________________________________________

John Huston while shooting Moby Dick (1956).

____________________________________________

Hitchcock in Cannes 1963

Hitchcock on set of Rear Window (1954)

Rear Window set

The set for Rope (1948)

The Birds (1963)

______________________________________________

Sergio Leone adds some blood while directing Once Upon a Time in America (1984).

_____________________________________

Filming Billy Batts getting stomped in Goodfellas (1990).

______________________________________________

Orson Welles

Welles with Charlton Heston and Janet Leigh on Touch of Evil (1958).

_________________________________________

Federico Fellini

Fellini at Termini Station in Rome, 1954.

Fellini with Claudia Cardinale, 1962.

Fellini with Giulietta Masina on La Strada (1954).

Felllini and Masina at home with a few awards, 1961.

Fellini reflected.

___________________________________________

Akira Kurosawa on the set of Yojimbo (1961).

_____________________________________

Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe in Some Like It Hot (1959)

____________________________________________

Jean-Pierre Léaud in Cannes, 1959.

______________________________________

Boris Karloff takes a smoke break while filming The Mummy (1932), while below that, Elsa Lanchester takes a tea break during the making of The Bride of Frankenstein (1935).

_____________________________________________

Sergei Eisenstein and Charlie Chaplin.

Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, and Sergei Eisenstein in Mexico (second woman unidentified).

____________________________________________

Luis Buñuel

Luis Buñuel with Salvador Dali, 1929.

Luis Buñuel with Jeanne Moreau.

________________________________________________

Jeanne Moreau

_______________________________________________

Basil Rathbone and Angela Lansbury have lunch while making The Court Jester (1955), an historical musical comedy with Danny Kaye. Angela chows down with a cheeseburger. Nice detail.

______________________________________________

Peter Falk, producer Martin Manulus, and Jack Lemmon during the making of Clive Donner’s Luv (1967).

________________________________________

Sam Peckinpah and The Wild Bunch (1969).

_______________________________________________

Michelangelo Antonioni

_________________________________________

Stephen Spielberg, Harrison Ford, and Sean Connery on location for Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989).

______________________________________________

Sean Penn and director Clint Eastwood during the filming of Mystic River (2003).

________________________________________________

Anna Karina

_________________________________________

Alain Delon

Alain Delon with his mother.

__________________________________________________

Jean-Luc Godard painting Jean-Paul Belmondo’s face for Pierrot le Fou (1965).

_________________________________________________

Godard during the making of Contempt (1963). This is too carefully composed to be candid, but it’s a great shot.

________________________________________________

Sidney Lumet at left, Satyajit Ray at right.

_______________________________________________

David Lynch

_______________________________________________

Parting words from Godard.

____________________________________________

That’s it for this one. Stay tuned for the next one. Que sera, sera. — Ted Hicks

____________________________________________

This is the sixth edition of “On Set, Off Camera.”  They consist mainly of shots of actors and directors caught in off-camera moments during the making of a movie, sometimes off-set, at home and elsewhere. Some of these are candid and some are posed, but I think they’re all interesting, and in some cases unusual and revealing.

____________________________________________________

Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda, and Jack Nicholson in Cannes, 1969, when Easy Rider was screened in competition. Unfortunately, the women with them are unidentified.

_________________________________________________

 Dean & Brando

_______________________________________________

Jack Nicholson, John Huston, and Roman Polanski while shooting Chinatown (1974).

___________________________________________________

Ingmar Bergman and Liv Ullmann, younger and older.

___________________________________________

The Hands of Hitchcock

_______________________________________

Hitchcock & Cary Grant, very artsy shot.

_________________________________________

John Boorman, Billy Wilder, Michelangelo Antonioni, Satyajit Ray at Cannes in 1982. All that creative power at one tiny table.

___________________________________________________

Bernardo Bertolucci and Antonioni.

___________________________________________________

David Lynch with Jack Nance while shooting Eraserhead (1977). Below that, John Waters and Lynch in front of Bob’s Big Boy in 1979.

___________________________________________

John Waters. 1964

___________________________________________

Akira Kurosawa with fellow Ishirō Honda, director of the original Gojira, aka Godzilla (1954).

_______________________________________________

Kurosawa sweeps the set, and below that, with Satyajit Ray, and then looking pleased as punch with George Lucas and Stephen Spielberg at the Academy Awards.

____________________________________________

Toshiro Mifune takes a cigarette break during Yojimbo (1961).

_____________________________________________

Jean-Pierre Léaud with François Truffaut in 1959. Below that, bored at lunch with Jean Cocteau and Truffaut. Well, he was just a kid. Beneath that, Cocteau in 1921.

_____________________________________

Léaud regarding Jean-Luc Godard.

_____________________________________

Two Spocks (Zachary Quinto and Leonard Nimoy) with director J. J. Abrams while making Star Trek (2009).

_______________________________________________

Scorsese directs.

Taxi Driver (1976)

Raging Bull (1980)

Cape Fear (remake, 1991)

The Departed (2006)

___________________________________________________

Scorsese with Isabella Rossellini.

___________________________________________________

Wendell Cory and James Stewart play chess on the set of Rear Window (1954) while Grace Kelly watches. Below that, Stanley Kubrick and George C. Scott do the same during a break from shooting Dr. Strangelove (1964).

____________________________________________________

Gregory Peck on the beach. Below that, eating ice cream bars with Ingrid Bergman.

______________________________________________

Mel Gibson stoking up with Sigourney Weaver, probably when they were in The Year of Living Dangerously (1982).

________________________________________

Truffaut helps Luis Buñuel light up.

_________________________________________________

Buñuel and Catherine Deneuve.

_________________________________________________

Marilyn Monroe and Eli Wallach on the set of The Misfits (1961). I really like this shot. There’s a lot going on.

_______________________________________________

Natalie Wood’s dressing room. She’s a movie fan!

_______________________________________________

Lauren Bacall’s hair style tests for To Have and Have Not  (1944), her first feature film.

_______________________________________________

Werner Herzog wrangling rats for his remake of Nosferatu (1979).

________________________________________________

The Gill Man steals a kiss during a break from filming The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954).

____________________________________________

Cary Grant on location for Father Goose (1964).

_________________________________________

John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands. Beautiful.

____________________________________________________

I think I’ll wrap it up with this wonderful shot of Audrey Hepburn. Really amazing.

_________________________________________

I’ve stockpiled many more of these photos than I can reasonably put in any one post. I keep finding them and feel compelled to save them. Stay tuned for more of these.

Okay, that’s all for now. — Ted Hicks

________________________________________

____________________________________________________

Most, if not all, of these filmmakers were contenders for Oscars in the recently held Academy Awards ceremony. Excellent show, by the way. First time we’ve watched all the way through in years. A number of these people turn up in more than one roundtable, so there’s bound to be some repetition. This is a lot of material. Pick and choose what looks interesting to you. Running times are indicated. Good luck!

_____________________________________________________

Actress Roundtable: Off Script with the Hollywood Reporter — Margot Robbie, Emma Stone, Lily Gladstone, Annette Bening, Greta Lee, and Carey Mulligan (56:47)

___________________________________________________

Actors Roundtable: Off Script with The Hollywood Reporter — Andrew Scott, Colman Domingo, Jeffrey Wright, Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey Jr, and Paul Giamatti (57:45)

________________________________________________

L.A. Times Actors Roundtable — Cilian Murphy, Mark Ruffalo, Jeffrey Wright, Paul Giamatti, Andrew Scott, and Colman Domingo (40:36)

______________________________________________

L.A. Times Directors Roundtable — Bradley Cooper, Blitz Bazawule, Michael Mann, Alexander Payne, Celine Song, Justine Triet (40:19)

__________________________________________________

Actors on Actors: Cilian Murphy & Margot Robbie — Variety (48:27)

__________________________________________________

Actors on Actors: Emma Stone  & Bradley Cooper — Variety (39:46)

__________________________________________________

Actors on Actors: Michael Fassbinder & Carey Mulligan — Variety (43:17)

_________________________________________________

The Hollywood Reporter Directors Roundtable: Bradley Cooper, Michael Mann, Greta Girwig, Eva Duvernay, Todd Haynes, Blitz Bazawule (55:06)

___________________________________________________

The Hollywood Reporter Writers Roundtable: Chole Domont, Andrew Haigh, Cord Jefferson, Tony McNamara, Eric Roth, and Celine Song (57:53)

_____________________________________________

The Hollywood Reporter Producers Roundtable: Christine Vachon, Ed Guiney, George C. Wolfe, Natalie Portman, Scott Sanders, and Tom Ackerley (42.31)

_________________________________________________

That’s it for this one. More later. See you at the movies. — Ted Hicks

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

I recently ran across a digital folder with movie posters I’ve been collecting. I’d actually forgotten about these. Almost all of these posters are from the 1920s and 1930s. Typical of film posters of that time, none of the ones here use photographs; the artwork is all illustration. Some of the films are well known, most of them not so much. But the posters are all are quite striking, beautiful at times. In my capacity as Chief Curator for Films etc., I feel compelled to put them on display. I’ve also stretched the parameters a bit to include a couple from the ’40s and ’50s. Behold!

________________________________________________

The Fighting Streak (1924)

____________________________________________

Red Hair (1928) & Red Headed Woman (1932)

_________________________________________

The Walking Dead (1936)

___________________________________________________

Fighting for Justice (1932)  Two decidedly different approaches to selling the film.

____________________________________________________________

Flash Gordon’s Trip to Mars – serial (1938)

_______________________________________________

The Black Cat (1934)

_______________________________________________

Rebecca (1940) & Quality Street (1937)

_______________________________________________

Spies (1928)  Expressionistic, not representational like the others. Below that, a great still from the film, too dynamic not to include here.

_______________________________________________

Stranger on the Third Floor (1940)  Arguably the first film noir.

_______________________________________________

3 Bad Men (1926)  Two posters and a trade ad.

_______________________________________________

The Man from Utah (1934) & The Oregon Trail (1936)

_______________________________________________

The Phantom of the Opera (1925)

_______________________________________________

King Kong (1933)

_______________________________________________

Deadwood Pass (1933) & The Traitor (1936)

_______________________________________________

Cimarron (1931)_______________________________________________

Fanny (France, 1932) & Anna Karenina (Germany, 1920)

_______________________________________________

Invisible Stripes (Swedish poster, 1939)

_______________________________________________

Not a film poster, but a stunning cover painting of ClaraBow (Motion Picture Classic magazine, June 1926)

_______________________________________________

The First Kiss (1928) & Love Letters (1945)

_______________________________________________

The Kid (1921) & Beggars of Life (1928)

________________________________________________________

America (1924)

________________________________________________________

Zaza (1923)

________________________________________________________

I want to close out with this aggressive poster for Them (1954). It reminds me a bit of the Spies poster in its stylized approach. I also thought it was a good way to go out with a bang.

________________________________________________________

That does it for this one. I hope you’ve enjoyed seeing these amazing posters. I had a great time putting this together. See you next time. Stay tuned. — Ted Hicks

________________________________________________________

This is the fifth edition of “On Set, Off Camera,” following the first in 2018, two more last year, and another earlier last month. They consist mainly of shots of actors and directors caught in off-camera moments during the making of a movie, sometimes off-set, at home and elsewhere. Some of these are candid and some are posed, but I think they’re all interesting, and in some cases quite unusual.

__________________________________________

Federico Fellini and Anita Ekberg during the making of La Dolce Vita (1960). The dramatic interplay of light and shadow is simply stunning. Her hair! The cigarette smoke!

______________________________________________

Fellini and Marcello Mastroianni in Rome, 1962.

_______________________________________

Jack Nicholson and Michelangelo Antonioni in 1975, I assume while making The Passenger.

___________________________________________

Nicholson and Miloš Forman during One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975). Below that, Antonioni and Monica Vitti in 1964.

________________________________________

François Truffaut at age 18 and Jean-Luc Godard at age 20 in 1950.

_______________________________________________

Truffaut with Jean Cocteau at left, and with Françoise Dorléac in 1964 at right.

_______________________________________________

With Jacqueline Bisset while making Day for Night (1973).

_______________________________________________

_______________________________________________

On the set of The Godfather (1972) at left and The Godfather Part II at right. Below are Diane Keaton and Al Pacino from the first film.

________________________________________________________________

Stephen Spielberg directing Jurassic Park (1993).

____________________________________________

Akira Kurosawa meets John Ford.

________________________________________

Kurosawa with Francis Coppola, Irvin Kirshner, Stephen Spielberg, George Lucas, and Carroll Ballard at Coppola’s home in San Francisco, 1980.

________________________________________________

Stanley Kubrick, in the beginning.

_________________________________________________

At left, Christiane Kubrick, Kubrick, and Kirk Douglas while making Paths of Glory (1957). At right, Kubrick with his daughter Vivian while shooting 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).

__________________________________________________

Ingmar Bergman

_____________________________________________________

At left, Bergman with cinematographer Sven Nykvist. At right, Bergman visits Peter Sellers on the set of Murder by Death (1976). I wonder how that came about.

_____________________________________________________

Bergman with Harriett Andersson. And with Liv Ullman below that.

________________________________________

________________________________________

Robert De Niro in the early 1970s.

________________________________________

Martin Scorsese with Jodie Foster and De Niro at the Cannes Film Festival in 1975.

_______________________________________________

De Niro and Harvey Keitel at Cannes in 1976. Just a couple of nice boys.

_______________________________________________

Scorsese with Wes Anderson.

_______________________________________________

Natalie Portman while making Luc Besson’s Leon the Professional (1994).

__________________________________________________

Sophia Loren and Cary Grant, probably during the making of Houseboat (1958).

___________________________________________

Sophia Loren, 1964.

___________________________________________

Winona Ryder, Jodie Foster and Julia Roberts, 1989.________________________________________________

David Bowie and Elizabeth Taylor.

_______________________________________________

In 1972, police in Anchorage, Alaska arrested Steve McQueen for speeding and doing doughnuts in a rented Oldsmobile Toronado. Have been unable to find out what he was doing there in the first place.

_________________________________________________

Humphrey Bogart, director John Huston, and Katharine Hepburn during the shooting of The African Queen (1951).

______________________________________________

Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, and director Michael Mann shooting the diner scene in Heat (1995).

_________________________________________________

A celebration honoring John Wayne in 1969. From left, Lee Marvin, Clint Eastwood, Rock Hudson, Fred MacMurray, Wayne, James Stewart, Ernest Borgnine, Michael Caine, and (I think) Lawrence Harvey.

_________________________________________________

John Cassavetes

___________________________________________________

This is my favorite shot of the whole bunch. Lloyd Bridges and his young son, Jeff.

__________________________________________________

There are quite a few more photos I intended to include, but I think this is more than enough for one post. There’ll be plenty of time for those. So that’s it for now. Take it easy. — Ted Hicks

___________________________________________________