Behind the Scenes With My Favorite Actors: Gene Hackman in Night Moves (1975)

"He didn't see it. He played something else and he lost."

Operation Screenshot (Films of the 2000s): Wes Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)

My Fantasy Criterion Collection: Volumes 1-3

Recently one of my favorite spots, the essential Twin Peaks Archive, posted an imaginary Criterion Collection Cover (seen above) for Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. It came from this thread over at The Auteur's Forum and I thought it was an absolutely terrific idea and it has inspired me to create some of my own. Here are my first three imaginary discs with my ideal specs listed as well. Excuse how primitive they look as I am still learning how to create them. Hopefully, my abilities will improve and future covers will be more creative and look more professional.
I know these are just pipe dreams but just thinking about these discs puts a huge smile on my face:

Fantasy Criterion #1: Arthur Penn's Night Moves (1975)



Ideal Specs for a Three-Disc Set:
Widescreen Transfer Supervised by Arthur Penn
Feature Length Commentary from Arthur Penn and screenwriter Alan Sharp
Feature Length Commentary from Gene Hackman, Melanie Griffith and James Woods
Original 1975 Promotional Featurette
The Lost Score: A Tribute to Late Composer Michael Small
Neo Noir: A Featurette on Noir in the Seventies
The Damaged Detective: A Conversation with Gene Hackman
Career Starter: Conversations with James Woods and Melanie Griffith
Feature Length Documentary on the Making of Night Moves
Outtakes and Deleted Scenes
Photo Gallery
Bonus Book Featuring Original Screenplay, Novelization and Production Materials

Fantasy Criterion #2: Roman Polanski's Frantic (1988)



Ideal Specs for a Three-Disc Set:
Widescreen Transfer Supervised by Roman Polanski
Feature Length Commentary from Roman Polanski and Screenwriter Gérard Brach
Feature Length Commentary from Harrison Ford and Emmanuelle Seigner
The Maestro: A Conversation with Composer Ennio Morricone
Quite a Find: A Conversation with Emmanuelle Seigner
Creating a Look: A Conversation with Cinematographer Witold Sobocinski
Original 1988 Featurette
A Lesser Work?: A Look Back at Frantic
Outtakes and Deleted Scenes
Remastered CD Soundtrack
Photo Gallery

Fantasy Criterion #3: Richard Loncraine's Full Circle (1977)



Ideal Specs for a Three-Disc Set:
Widescreen Transfer Supervised by Richard Loncraine
Feature Length Commentary from Richard Loncraine
Feature Length Commentary from Mia Farrow
Creating Julia: A Conversation with Novelist Peter Straub
The Haunting: A Conversation with Composer Colin Towns
Recreating The Score: Colin Towns Performing the Score Live
Finding Olivia: A Conversation with Samantha Gates
Lets Scare the Audience to Death: A Featurette on Seventies Horror
Everything's Right Now: A Feature Length Documentary on Full Circle
Deleted Scenes and Outtakes
Remastered Soundtrack CD
Photo Gallery
Bonus Book Featuring Screenplay and Original Peter Straub Novel

Schatzberg's Scarecrow: Seven Stories, Seven Shots

Part of my Scarecrow tribute week at Harry Moseby Confidential.

Bronx born director Jerry Schatzberg came to fame in the sixties as a photographer whose work graced the pages of Vogue, Esquire and many other of the period’s most respected and famed publications. He also found time to photograph some of the decade’s greatest album covers including the legendary Blonde on Blonde sleeve for Bob Dylan.
In the late sixties he began dating up and coming Hollywood legend Faye Dunaway and it would indeed be the Bonnie and Clyde star who would be the leading lady of Schatzberg’s first film, 1970’s Puzzle of a Downfall Child. The film would generate quite a bit of controversy and received a vastly mixed critical reaction when it was released, although many agreed that Schatzberg was a talent to watch.
Schatzberg would follow up Puzzle of a Downfall Child with the acclaimed junkie drama Panic in Needle Park, a film which starred a young actor named Al Pacino. The harrowing film would lead to Scarecrow, a picture that would see the director and the future Oscar winning actor collaborating for the second and final time.
Schatzberg has never received the credit he has deserved as being one of the key American directors of the early seventies. Scarecrow remains arguably the greatest achievement of an often overlooked career behind the camera.

Schatzberg’s film would mark the first screen credit for award winning and revered playwright Garry Michael White. Pacino would call White’s original script as the best he had ever read and Scarecrow does indeed stand as one of the most challenging and moving scripts of the seventies, a poignant work that would work as an entirely personal project while securing itself as an insightful look at an America that was becoming more and more distrustful of authority. Is there a more knowing and chilling acknowledgement of what was happening to America in the midst of Vietnam and Watergate than when Hackman’s Max says towards the end of the film, “Who Can I trust now”?

Gene Hackman has called Scarecrow the favorite of all of the films he worked on in his career, impressive considering the number of classics that have appeared among the 100 or so titles he has starred in. Hackman had just won the Oscar for William Friedkin’s searing The French Connection when he shot Scarecrow, and his performance as Max for Schatzberg is the equal of his work as the famed Popeye Doyle that had won him so much acclaim. Incredibly neither Hackman nor Pacino were nominated for Oscars for Scarecrow.

The film would become a sensation in Europe when it was initially released in 1973 and it won the coveted Golden Palm at that year’s Cannes Festival. Schatzberg and his film would also win several other top European prizes, a fact that makes the initial relative failure of the film in America all the more surprising. The film would open to poor box office and mixed reviews in the Spring of 1973 causing a disillusioned Hackman to announce he would only work on commercial projects afterwards, a promise thankfully he didn’t keep. It would take years for the film to really find its audience in America, even though it is still not held perhaps in the esteem that it should be.

There was some reported tension between Hackman and Pacino on the set as the two had vastly different ways of approaching the material. The two would have the up most respect for each other though and have spoken highly of the experience since. Hackman would recall on Larry King that he loved and admired Pacino, a factor that went into him naming Scarecrow as his favorite film. Scarecrow marks the only time these two giants would work together.

Behind the scenes players included legendary cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, and his work combined with Scatzbergs marks Scarecrow as a photography lover’s dream and one of the most striking looking features of the seventies. The film’s intriguing editing which melds some surprising jump cuts into Schatzberg’s celebrated long takes is courtesy of none other than Evan A. Lottman, the man who would cut The Exorcist in the same year as Scarecrow. The film’s off kilter but effective score is credited to Fred Myrow, an interesting composer who would later provide the very effective music for the influential shocker Phantasm in 1979.

Scarecrow came out just a month before I was born in 1973. I first saw it when I was around 15 courtesy of a censored TV print and I immediately fell in love with it. I consider it one of the key American films of the seventies and more than a dozen viewings of it over the years have only increased my admiration and love for the film.

Paul Thomas Anderson Tribute Month: Actor Profiles (John C. Reilly)

***Wow, it's so strange to go back and read this. This little piece on John C. Reilly was one of the very first I wrote for Moon in the Gutter, way back in December of 2006. While it was long before I had any real readers, this article did garner me my first email from someone I had wrote on, which was really freaking cool! In the nearly four years since I wrote this little article Reilly has continued his reign as one of our great actors, although now he can also claim to be one of our great comedians with side-splitting roles in films like Walk Hard, Talladega Nights and Step-Brothers all showing him as one of the funniest men on the planet. He also got nominated for his first Oscar and recently appeared in one of the real bright spots (so I am told, as I still haven't been able to see it) of 2010, Cyrus. I was tempted to really update this article but I thought I would let it stand as it is. Let me just say that John C. Reilly remains a major cinematic treasure and there are very few actors that I like seeing more in modern American films.***


The roles for John C. Reilly leading up to playing John Finnegan in Paul Thomas Anderson's debut Sydney (Hard Eight) were mostly just bit parts in films such as Brian DePalma's Causalities Of War and Woody Allen's Shadows and Fog. The great opening shot of Reilly in Anderson's film feels like a debut though, a major debut. Reilly's amazing performance, as the lonely Finnegan looking to win enough money in Vegas to bury his mother, is one of the great performances of the 90s. While Phillip Baker Hall's work as the mentor Sydney was rightly acclaimed, Reilly seemed to drift so far into the character that you forget it's a performance that needs praising.
The obvious comparison in looking at John C. Reilly is Gene Hackman. Reilly has that same everyman quality but more importantly, like Hackman, he is able to invest his characters with a real soul. There is never a moment watching Reilly where we aren't watching someone who is internally questioning and searching. While he hasn't yet found a leading role the equal of Hackman's Popeye Doyle or Harry Moseby one hopes the wait won't be long.
His most iconic work has been with Anderson, like in Boogie Nights where he gave Reed Rothchild a sincerity that anyone else would have missed and in Magnolia's lonely police officer Jim Kurring, a man so desperate for someone to accept the love he wants so much to give. Magnolia's final moments with Reilly telling Melora Walters Claudia how special she is is one of the most moving things I've ever seen in a film. Anderson's decision to drown out Reilly's wonderful dialogue with Aimee Mann's incredible score ranks with Scorsese's famous pan away from Travis on the phone in Taxi Driver as an example of a rare scene that is too personal to film straight on.
Reilly has continued in film after film to prove his dramatic, comedic and even musical chops. His performance as the simple well meaning husband in The Good Girl is a personal favorite, and his singing cowboy was a major highlight in Robert Altman's final film A Prairie Home Companion. A greatly underrated performance in an equally underrated film, Walter Salles' Dark Water, shows just how much Reilly can give what could have been a very flat character. Jennifer Connelly would talk of being floored by just how inventive Reilly was, and he had no problem stealing every scene he was in from heavyweights like Connelly and Tim Roth.
Whether or not Reilly ever gets his French Connection or Night Moves remains to be seen but I highly doubt that Anderson is done with him. In the meantime he stands as the finest character actor of his generation and someone we can look at as truly being one of us.

The Art of the Movie Poster: The Conversation (A Gene Hackman Birthday Edition)

Paying Tribute To The Little Big Man

I must say that all of the recent cinema related deaths have caused me to really want to look at some of my favorites who were among my heroes growing up and who are still around. One of my favorite actors is turning an incredible seventy years old today so it seemed a perfect opportunity to pay tribute to him.

I sometimes wonder if younger film fans truly understand just how amazing and important the great Dustin Hoffman is. He is certainly still a very visible actor but he has basically turned into one of our great character actors and rarely appears as the lead anymore. He remains though, along with much more often mentioned names like Pacino, De Niro, Hackman and Nicholson, one of the premiere and finest American actors that came out of the mid sixties.

The Los Angeles native Hoffman was born in 1937 to a Jazz pianist and set decorator. Interested in theatre from a very young age, Hoffman met Gene Hackman and in their early twenties they travelled to New York together for theater work.
After working a number of odd jobs and studying at the Actor's Studio, Hoffman began landing roles in a variety of TV shows, including NAKED CITY and THE DEFENDERS. After a minor role in THE TIGER MAKES OUT (1966) Hoffman became an overnight sensation with his work in Mike Nichols THE GRADUATE (1967). This award winning film, with it's Simon and Garfunkel soundtrack, would help define a generation and Hoffman quickly became one of the most important actor's in American film. It was perfect timing too as American cinema was getting ready to undergo some major changes and Hoffman was the perfect actor and star for the New Hollywood.

After getting an Oscar nomination for THE GRADUATE and winning many other notable awards, a few lean years and minor roles followed as Hoffman was trying to plan his next move. In 1968 director John Schlesinger offered him the role of Enrico 'Ratso' Rizzo in the astonishing MIDNIGHT COWBOY (1969) and Hoffman accepted the brave and difficult role after some hesitation. While Hoffman has admitted some disappointment in certain aspects of his performance, Ratso Rizzo is one of the most famous characters in screen history and Hoffman is brilliant in the part. MIDNIGHT COWBOY would go on to win best picture and Hoffman's performance should have won the Oscar that was given to John Wayne in TRUE GRIT. He did, however, win many other film awards for the iconic Rizzo.
Dustin would follow up the intense MIDNIGHT COWBOY with a surprising and underrated turn in JOHN AND MARY (1969) opposite a lovely Mia Farrow. He won a well deserved BAFTA award for that film and was also honored with another Golden Globe nomination.
One of his greatest and most interesting roles followed in 1970 with Arthur Penn's audacious and moving LITTLE BIG MAN. Hoffman's performance as the elderly Jack Crabb looking back over his life in the Old West is incredible and the film remains one of the most moving and sympathetic accounts of Native American life ever caught on film. Hoffman would receive another BAFTA nomination for his brave work in this undervalued American classic.
After the strange WHO IS HARRY KELLERMAN AND WHY IS HE SAYING THOSE TERRIBLE THINGS ABOUT ME? (1970) Hoffman would deliver a performance of staggering intensity in a film that would make him absolutely miserable in his personal life.

Sam Peckinpah's STRAW DOGS (1971) is one of the most controversial and greatest films in Peckinpah's extraordinary canon. A difficult and cold film that has been mis-read by many, including famously by Pauline Kael, Criterion's DVD is one of the most essential sets ever released as far as containing eye opening supplemental material. Hoffman and Peckinpah had major problems on the set and unfortunately this is a role Dustin doesn't talk about much. His work as David Sumner is masterful though and one of the key performances of the early seventies, it is a shame Hoffman doesn't have warmer feelings for the film.
A role in Pietro Germi's ALFREDO ALFREDO (1972) would give him the chance to work opposite the exquisite Stefania Sandrelli but it would be PAPILLON (1973) that would give him his best role since STRAW DOGS. Playing opposite a wonderful Steve Mcqueen, Hoffman is great as Louis Degain in Franklin J. Schaffner's exciting and moving escape film.
The years following PAPILLON would give Dustin some of his greatest roles ever. Starting with Bob Fosse's brutal LENNY (1974), a film in which he would receive yet another Oscar nomination, Hoffman became along with Al Pacino probably the best all around young actor America had. After exhausting himself inhabiting the great Lenny Bruce, Hoffman took a little time off but would return with a bang in 1976 with not one, but two, of the Seventies best films.
Alan J. Pakula's ALL THE PRESIDENTS MEN (1976) isn't just a great film but it is one of a handful that can be truly called important. Producer and star Robert Redford spent two years doing exhaustive research to make sure the film would be accurate and it remains not only of the great political films this country has ever seen but one of the best looks at American Journalism in history. Hoffman's Carl Bernstein is another totally unique and memorable creation and he would click so well with Redford's Bob Woodward. The two of them are both so solid in this film that it still baffles me how their performances were ignored by the Academy.

Even better, performance wise, for Hoffman, was John Schlesinger's MARATHON MAN (1976). In perhaps his greatest role, Hoffman plays a student who is unexpectedly caught up in a very deadly conspiracy. Along with THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR (1973) and PARALLAX VIEW (1974), MARATHON MAN is one of the greatest paranoid thrillers of the Seventies and Hoffman gives one of the most convincing portrayals of fear and confusion ever committed to celluloid. Once again Hoffman was ignored by the Academy, although he did receive several other honors for this major film.
Ulu Grosbard's STRAIGHT TIME (1978) is a real buried treasure. Working with the young, intense and incredibly talented Theresa Russell in a film he originally wanted to direct, Dustin's work as the persecuted thief Max Dembo is along with STRAW DOGS his most underrated performance. Grosbard's great film is in need of a major re-appraisal and hopefully its recent appearance on DVD will bring that about. With the possible exception of Michael Mann's THIEF (1980) it is the most honest look at the consequences of crime in an American film of the seventies.
After the relative failure of STRAIGHT TIME and the flawed AGATHA (1979), Hoffman scored a major hit and finally won the Oscar for Robert Benton's KRAMER VS. KRAMER (1979). Benton's film, focusing on a husband who has been abandoned by his wife leaving him to take care of his son alone, struck a major chord in 1979. If it seems a bit dated today it is more the fault of how many times the subject has been covered since rather than the film itself. Benton's sensitive direction is punctuated by Hoffman's down to earth and inspiring performance. A young Meryl Streep is also excellent as is eight year old Justin Henry as the son caught in the middle. The film all but swept the 1980 Academy Awards and would prove one of the biggest hits of Dustin Hoffman's career.
Taking another well deserved break Hoffman returned in 1982 in Sydney Pollack's masterful and hugely popular TOOTSIE. In another Oscar nominated turn, Hoffman plays out of work actor Michael Dorsey who lands a gig as a woman on a weekly soap opera. Hoffman is simply astonishing in the role and the film remains one of the funniest and best of the eighties. His scenes with Jessica Lange are among the best of his career and the film is a real highpoint in American Comedy history.

TOOTSIE was a massive hit but it would mark an end to Dustin Hoffman's reign as one of America's leading actors. He took a five year break from the screen, with only a solid DEATH OF A SALESMAN TV production keeping him in the film goer's eyes.
He returned in 1987 with ISHTAR opposite Warren Beatty and Isabelle Adjani. While the film isn't the disaster many made it out to be, it hurt Hoffman. He would garner another Oscar with RAIN MAN (1988) which isn't a film I like much. Tom Cruise hadn't come into his own as an actor yet and the film has not aged well in my eyes. More disappointing films followed including FAMILY BUSINESS (1989) and BILLY BATHGATE (1991) (which at least had a great early Nicole Kidman performance). His small role in Beatty's DICK TRACY (1990) did give him the one opportunity to work briefly with Pacino but the period is otherwise a low point in his career.
Several high profile roles followed but it wasn't until the audacious and compelling WAG THE DOG in 1997 that Dustin would find another truly great role. As the smarmy Hollywood producer Stanley Motss in Barry Levinson's sharp satire, Hoffman gives his best performance since TOOTSIE and easily steals the film from Robert De Niro's mannered and self conscious performance.
Hoffman would receive another well deserved Oscar Nomination for the role but WAG THE DOG wasn't the hit it should have been. The last ten years have been a busy time for Hoffman even though he typically just pops up in supporting roles. His best work from the past decade has been opposite Rachel Weisz twice in 2003's CONFIDENCE and RUNAWAY JURY, a film that finally matched him with Hackman, and a scene stealing role in David Russell's masterful I HEART HUCKABEES (2004). He also easily stole another film from Robert De Niro in the hugely popular MEET THE FOCKERS (2005). He has several films on the horizon and it doesn't look like he is going to slow down anytime soon. I wish someone would give him at least one more great leading role though as there are still few actors who are capable of delivery such emotionally devastating and honest work as Dustin Hoffman.

I really want to embrace the heroes of my youth who are still around while I can. The mere idea of world without a Hoffman, Eastwood, Pacino, De Niro, Hackman, Nicholson and so on just kills me. Dustin Hoffman is one of our great actors and an honorable man who has managed to get through 40 years in the public eye without any major scandal or controversy, and a career made up of some of the greatest performances in screen history. We should all send him the best wishes on his seventieth birthday.

Harry Moseby Confidential Hits The Road

Starts Monday at Harry Moseby Confidential.

Images From My All Time Favorite Films: William Friedkin's The French Connection (1971)

***Please note that these images are taken from the original special edition DVD and not Friedkin's 'revisioning' of the film that has just been released on Blu-Ray.***