Third Eye Cinema / Weird Scenes Inside the Goldmine podcast

Tonight, we'll be talking a set of films that almost form a genre of their own.   These films were often, though not always, “respected” by critics and the general public at large, but all bore that dark, almost despairing claustrophobia and realistic feel of what I and others were living every day out on the streets locally, far from the dayglo nonsense of the 60's reruns or the sunnier Hollywood based fare of the day.   The streets were crowded, filthy, filled with the detritus of the post-hippie era – the junkies, the odd artsy types, the gangs, the whores.  The days where you were damn glad to see Curtis Sliwa's Guardian Angels on a subway…if you were crazy enough to use them at all. Everything covered in graffiti, buildings collapsing into tenements, crack houses, illicit hookup spots for rough trade cruising types.  Garbage in the streets, and decay in every sense of the word.   These are films that wallow in what in later years would be referred to as urban blight, but not so much “celebrating” as providing a window into all the palpable danger and decline of an impoverished post-blackout Manhattan in the days after the Watts and Newark riots, not long past Ford telling the mayor and city to go screw ourselves when asking for Federal relief.   These were the days of Studio 54, CBGBs and the original Saturday Night Live – but filled with menace. Hard drug use was rampant.  Muggings were so commonplace as to be a shrug of the shoulders.  Nobody in their right mind stepped into Central Park after sunset.  Washington Square was known for decades as Needle Park.  And the East Village?  Forget about Alphabet City, the Bronx or Brooklyn.   This was a special breed of film, that focused on crooked, flawed cops working outside a busted system…but not with the heroic vibe of Reaganite action heroes.  These guys paid for painting outside the lines.  The denouments were never triumphant, all victories were pyrrhic.  Vigilante justice and community action were about as fantastic as these films got, and as close to actual comeuppance as anyone got.   This is the story, in a way, of our childhood and early youth to young adulthood, as told in some very memorable films. So join us as we go dumpster diving in the back alleys of most dangerous of neighborhoods, only here on Weird Scenes! Week 111 (11/30/23): Take a Bite of the Rotten Apple - NYC cop/crime films of the 70s https://weirdscenes1.wordpress.com/ https://www.facebook.com/WeirdScenes1 https://twitter.com/WeirdScenes1 (@weirdscenes1) TheThirdEyeCinema @Threads https://thirdeyecinema.podbean.com/ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/third-eye-cinema-weird-scenes-inside-the-goldmine-podcast/id553402044 https://(open.spotify.com)/show/4s8QkoE6PnAfh65C5on5ZS?nd=1 https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/09456286-8956-4b80-a158-f750f525f246/Third-Eye-Cinema-Weird-Scenes-Inside-the-Goldmine-podcast Take a Bite of the Rotten Apple - NYC cop/crime films of the 70s  

Archibald Alec Leach was born in Bristol, England at the turn of the century, January 18, 1904 to a tailor and a seamstress. A theatrical tour of NYC led him to emigrate at the ripe old age of 16, where he became a vaudeville song and dance man on the same circuit as the likes of the Marx Brothers, Abbott and Costello and Ted Healy and his Stooges. Moving to Hollywood at the height of the Depression, he wound up cast as handsome young men and rich playboys in a handful of Marlene Dietrich and Mae West films, the latter of which elevated him to leading man status.   But it wasn't until the rise of the screwball comedy that he truly made his mark, starring in several of the best known entries thereof.  A long run of similar if, by the late forties, increasingly inferior efforts was salvaged by four well regarded films for the great Alfred Hitchcock, which subverted his image in favor of a darker, more realistic persona. These quartet of roles almost led to his casting as the first James Bond in Doctor No, but he would only commit to one film in what was always intended as an ongoing series...and the rest is history. After a handful of interesting if decidedly flawed oddities, he finally retired from film in the mid 60s, leaving behind more of a unique character and persona than there ever was a consistent body of work to be remembered by...those Hitchcock films aside. So join us as we take on the inimitable Cary Grant, only here on Weird Scenes! Week 110 (11/16/23): Cary Grant https://weirdscenes1.wordpress.com/ https://www.facebook.com/WeirdScenes1 https://twitter.com/WeirdScenes1 (@weirdscenes1) TheThirdEyeCinema @Threads https://thirdeyecinema.podbean.com/ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/third-eye-cinema-weird-scenes-inside-the-goldmine-podcast/id553402044 https:// (open.spotify.com) /show/4s8QkoE6PnAfh65C5on5ZS?nd=1 https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/09456286-8956-4b80-a158-f750f525f246/Third-Eye-Cinema-Weird-Scenes-Inside-the-Goldmine-podcast

The French crime film is different from those of other countries for several reasons.  While some, certainly Jean Dellanoy's Soleil Des Voyeux (aka Action Man) draw elements from the German Krimi and the George Nader Jerry Cotton films and even the serial (particularly those of Feuillade, whose Fantomas and Les Vampires remain surprisingly gripping and modern in feel and approach), the overarching vibe is less that of contemporaneous American crime films or Italian poliziotteschi than it is, as you might expect from the nation that coined the term, the American film noir and gangster pictures of the late 30s and 1940s. And as with the idiosyncratic and often groundbreaking critics turned directors of the Nouvelle Vague, the French crime film less pays strict homage to than integrates the driving elements and visual aesthetic of American noir in a more contemporary sense, improving and updating them to something more suited and appealing to a modern audience: think much venerated names like Jean Pierre Melville, Rene Clement, Georges Lautner, Jean Paul Belmondo and Alain Delon. So join us as we discuss one of the most notable and influential genres of its type, the French Crime film, only here on Weird Scenes! Week 109 (11/2/23): Crimenaux ala Francais - Crime The French Way https://weirdscenes1.wordpress.com/ https://www.facebook.com/WeirdScenes1 https://twitter.com/WeirdScenes1 (@weirdscenes1) TheThirdEyeCinema @Threads https://thirdeyecinema.podbean.com/ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/third-eye-cinema-weird-scenes-inside-the-goldmine-podcast/id553402044 https:// (open.spotify.com) /show/4s8QkoE6PnAfh65C5on5ZS?nd=1 https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/09456286-8956-4b80-a158-f750f525f246/Third-Eye-Cinema-Weird-Scenes-Inside-the-Goldmine-podcast

Roy Harold Scherer Jr. was born smack dab in the middle of both the Roaring 20's and the country in Illinois, Thanksgiving of 1925. Of all the gay and bisexual actors and actresses we've covered, Hudson was easily the most elusive and convincing in his career long presentation as a very straight screen idol and leading man. While known to many in Hollywood circles, his private life only came to public light over three decades into his career, when he was one of the earliest celebrities to openly discuss his being stricken with AIDS. A naval veteran and strangely enough, a lifelong Republican and de facto Goldwater Girl (!) he pursued his dream of acting despite a pronounced and career long difficulty in remembering lines, being rejected from drama school and wasting no less than 38 takes to deliver a single line in his first onscreen role – a testament to his All American good looks and winning personality, to be sure. After being signed to Universal, he was cast in several forgettable and forgotten cheesy period westerns, pirate and supposed adventure films before landing industry attention with his Oscar for the execrable James Dean/Elizabeth Taylor melodrama Giant.  But it was with his oddly fortuitous pairing with Doris Day and neurotic comic relief sideman Tony Randall in a series of fluffy and decidedly conservative romantic comedies at the end of the 1950s that he truly attained marquee leading man status. Going on to star with Italian sex symbols Gina Lollobrigida and Claudia Cardinale, as well as other attempts to replicate the Hudson/Day formula with lesser lights like Leslie Caron and Paula Prentiss, Hudson began to tire of these sort of light comedy roles, moving to television for the highly enjoyable and well remembered McMillan and Wife alongside the equally loveable Susan Saint James and gay icon (and Rosie the paper towel lady!) Nancy Walker  for a several season, nigh-decade spanning run.   His latter roles tended towards the decidedly idiosyncratic: John  Frankenheimer's existential paranoia opus Seconds, Alastair MacLean's flawed if enjoyable Cold War spy film Ice Station Zebra, Roger Vadim's sexploitation slasher/comedy Pretty Maids All In a Row, entertaining disaster epic Avalanche and the pensive meditation of a miniseries that was The Martian Chronicles. So join us as we take on the All-American leading man who hid a surprising edge behind the surface veneer, the one and only Rock Hudson, only here on Weird Scenes! Week 108 (10/19/23): Hide in Plain Sight: the Life and Career of Rock Hudson https://weirdscenes1.wordpress.com/ https://www.facebook.com/WeirdScenes1 https://twitter.com/WeirdScenes1 (@weirdscenes1) https://thirdeyecinema.podbean.com/ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/third-eye-cinema-weird-scenes-inside-the-goldmine-podcast/id553402044 https:// (open.spotify.com) /show/4s8QkoE6PnAfh65C5on5ZS?nd=1 https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/09456286-8956-4b80-a158-f750f525f246/Third-Eye-Cinema-Weird-Scenes-Inside-the-Goldmine-podcast

Hugh John Mungo Grant was born at the start of September, 1960, Live at Hammersmith, London to a Highlander turned carpet salesman and a music and multilingual language teacher. A  1st XV division rugby player with a background in English literature who turned down an offer for a PhD in art history at London University, he instead took up drama at Oxford.  Kicking off his career in Merchant Ivory stinker Maurice, he got his first major role in Ken Russell's Lair of the White Worm, followed by a headlining turn in Roman Polanski's Bitter Moon before striking  international box office with Four Weddings and a Funeral. Splitting his career between twee faux-arthouse fare like Sirens, Sense and Sensibility and The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain and more populist roles in comedies like Notting Hill, Small Time Crooks, Love Actually and the Bridget Jones films, Grant would often strike gold with rom com fare like Two Weeks Notice and Music and Lyrics before a lengthy hiatus  from film peppered with occasional guest roles ranging from the highly entertaining The Man From Uncle and the pandering Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. A noted curmudgeon and on-set perfectionist, Grant has a notedly embattled relationship with the tabloid press, and was a major player in stopping the detestable Rupert Murdoch and the practice of celebrity phone tapping.  And who can forget the whole Divine Brown affair? Join us as we take on the loveable and eternally youthful in spirit Hugh Grant, only here on Weird Scenes! Week 107 (10/5/23): Still a Bit of a Lad: The Bumpy Career of Hugh Grant https://weirdscenes1.wordpress.com/ https://www.facebook.com/WeirdScenes1 https://twitter.com/WeirdScenes1 (@weirdscenes1) https://thirdeyecinema.podbean.com/ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/third-eye-cinema-weird-scenes-inside-the-goldmine-podcast/id553402044 https:// (open.spotify.com) /show/4s8QkoE6PnAfh65C5on5ZS?nd=1 https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/09456286-8956-4b80-a158-f750f525f246/Third-Eye-Cinema-Weird-Scenes-Inside-the-Goldmine-podcast

Richard Walter Jenkins Jr. was born in November of 1925 in Wales to an hard drinking coal miner cum absentee father and a pub barmaid.  Growing up in a rough steel mill town under the roof of his older sister and her husband, he left school to work in the mines after his sister's husband (like both parents before him) fell ill, due to the unregulated, non-unionized working conditions, before joining the RAF, where he served as navigator. His omnipresent sideline in theatrical productions led to adoption by acting tutor and schoolmaster Philip Burton, and he fell under the wing of none other than Sir John Gielgud.  As part of a Gielgud-led touring company, he came Stateside, winning both a World Theatre Award and a succession of Hollywood film roles.  His leading role in The Robe both kicked off a proper filmic career and entangled him in a decades long, fiery on and off relationship with Elizabeth Taylor, who'd star with him in numerous films and tabloid headlines throughout the 60s and 70s. Starring in everything from critical accolade-bedecked dreck like Look Back in Anger, Equus and Night of the Iguana and excellent films like The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, 1984 or Where Eagles Dare to cult absurdities Candy, The Medusa Touch and Exorcist II, Burton was arguably more famed for his offscreen  antics than his own theatrical talents...and had a rollercoaster of a career that reflected both his notable highs and precipitous lows. Join us as we take on one of the most notorious thespians to walk the boards and chew the cinematic scenery, the late great Richard Burton, only here on Weird Scenes! Week 106 (9/21/23): Who's Afraid of Liz and Dick?  The Tempestuous Career of Richard Burton https://weirdscenes1.wordpress.com/ https://www.facebook.com/WeirdScenes1 https://twitter.com/WeirdScenes1 (@weirdscenes1) TheThirdEyeCinema @threads https://thirdeyecinema.podbean.com/ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/third-eye-cinema-weird-scenes-inside-the-goldmine-podcast/id553402044 https:// (open.spotify.com) /show/4s8QkoE6PnAfh65C5on5ZS?nd=1 https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/09456286-8956-4b80-a158-f750f525f246/Third-Eye-Cinema-Weird-Scenes-Inside-the-Goldmine-podcast

Jennifer Lynn Lopez was born in the Bronx's Castle Hill, in July 1969 to an Army guy turned computer tech and housewife turned gym teacher.  Her decision to take up dance led to a major falling out with her mother, leaving the aspiring terpsichore living at her dance studio for months thereafter.    Kicking off her career as an In Living Color Fly Girl, her big break came when she costarred in the Wesley Snipes/Woody Harrelson reunion Money Train, followed by a starring role as the late Tex Mex icon Selena, the absurd Anaconda and a string of successful rom coms like The Wedding Planner, Marry Me and Shotgun Wedding.  A third and simultaneous shift into dance music led to 9 albums and a long run of chart topping hits in conjunction with big names like Pitbull, Wisin Y Yandel, Big Pun, Fat Joe and Ja Rule (just to name a few!)   Her much vaunted curvature actually led to an entire sociocultural shift in what American males find sexy in a woman, and her troubled love life has been top drawer fodder for tabloid coverage for decades, culminating in a surprising second time around reunion with the other half of Benifer (Mark I AND III), Ben Affleck just a year or so back. Nominated for dozens of awards in both music and film over the years, she's been called one of the world's most influential people, and she continues to deliver light if entertaining product right to this very day. Join us as we take on the "triple threat" queen of media, the one and only Jennifer Lopez, only here on Weird Scenes! Week 105 (9/7/23): Ride the rollercoaster - the life and career of Jennifer Lopez https://weirdscenes1.wordpress.com/ https://www.facebook.com/WeirdScenes1 https://twitter.com/WeirdScenes1 (@weirdscenes1) https://thirdeyecinema.podbean.com/ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/third-eye-cinema-weird-scenes-inside-the-goldmine-podcast/id553402044 https:// (open.spotify.com) /show/4s8QkoE6PnAfh65C5on5ZS?nd=1 https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/09456286-8956-4b80-a158-f750f525f246/Third-Eye-Cinema-Weird-Scenes-Inside-the-Goldmine-podcast  

Sandra Annette Bullock was born on July 26, 1964, in our nations capitol, Washington, D.C. to a German opera singer (and daughter of a rocket scientist!) and an Alabama career military man who, perhaps surprisingly, was also a voice coach.  A military brat, she spent her youth in Nuremberg, Vienna and Salzburg, before returning to attend school in Virginia and North Carolina and a bid for stardom right here in New York City. As lucky in her rise to prominence as she was unlucky in love, she broke into the bigtime with the one two punch of Keanu Reeves turn to action hero, Speed and the Sylvester Stallone/Wesley Snipes sci fi action epic Demolition Man, before starting  her own production company and breaking both records and hearts with big hits like Miss Congeniality, While You Were Sleeping and the Hugh Grant starring Two Weeks Notice. But problems in her personal life took her out of the spotlight and slowed her relentless run of box office smashes...until a surprise comeback with the Ryan Reynolds (and Betty White) opus The Proposal, pensive Keanu Reeves reunion The Lake House, the likeable all-female Ocean's 8 and the recent Channing Tatum/Brad Pitt comedy/adventure The Lost City. Join us as we take on the queen of the rom com and Hollywood power player Sandra Bullock, only here on Weird Scenes! Week 104 (8/24/23): Hail to the Queen: the rise, fall and resurrection of America's Sweetheart Sandra Bullock https://weirdscenes1.wordpress.com/ https://www.facebook.com/WeirdScenes1 https://twitter.com/WeirdScenes1 (@weirdscenes1) https://thirdeyecinema.podbean.com/ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/third-eye-cinema-weird-scenes-inside-the-goldmine-podcast/id553402044 https:// (open.spotify.com) /show/4s8QkoE6PnAfh65C5on5ZS?nd=1 https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/09456286-8956-4b80-a158-f750f525f246/Third-Eye-Cinema-Weird-Scenes-Inside-the-Goldmine-podcast  

Sofia Costanza Brigida Villani Scicolone was born in the heyday of Mussolini, Rome 1934 to an engineer turned railway worker who may or may not have been descended from a Viscount and a piano teacher/local actress who he never married, hence leaving Loren and her mother in poverty.   Finalizing in local beauty contests under the assumed name Sofia Lazzaro brought her to the attention of film mogul Carlo Ponti, who changed her name and got her signed with Paramount for a string of big budget films that brought her to international prominence. In an era defined by blowsy blondes like Monroe, Mansfield and Van Doren, Loren became one of the first and biggest of the far more naturalistic and earthy European competition, without question only surpassed by the even more existentially authentic Brigitte Bardot, who we quite deservedly devoted an entire show to. Popular and prolific throughout the 1960s, she made a huge sensation with a handful of films she'd done with Vittorio de Sica, often in conjunction with male sex symbol of the era Marcello Mastrioanni, before marriage to Ponti and a conscious decision to more or less step away from cinema in the 1970s.  Join us as we discuss one of the world's most beloved sex symbols, the one and only Sophia Loren, only here on Weird Scenes Inside the Goldmine! Week 103 (8/10/23): Sex Italian Style: The Life and Films of Sophia Loren   https://weirdscenes1.wordpress.com/ https://www.facebook.com/WeirdScenes1 https://twitter.com/WeirdScenes1 (@weirdscenes1) https://thirdeyecinema.podbean.com/ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/third-eye-cinema-weird-scenes-inside-the-goldmine-podcast/id553402044 https:// (open.spotify.com) /show/4s8QkoE6PnAfh65C5on5ZS?nd=1 https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/09456286-8956-4b80-a158-f750f525f246/Third-Eye-Cinema-Weird-Scenes-Inside-the-Goldmine-podcast  

Born to the trade right here in Manhattan, April of 1932, Tony Perkins was the son of theatrical actor Osgood (most notably appearing alongside Boris Karloff, George Raft and Paul Muni in Scarface the very same year.) Raised almost entirely by his mother and a French nanny, he self-avowedly "became abnormally attached to" his mother, developing "an Oedipal Complex in a pronounced form", which became further complicated by misplaced guilt when his father died backstage only 5 years later. Continually conflicted in his orientation, he married photographer "Berry" Berenson (sister of Marisa), with whom he bore two children...despite being involved with any number of men since his teens.   With his quirky, “sensitive” demeanor and strong hints of a darker undertone to his persona, he was, perhaps unusually, often cast as an off kilter romantic lead, the sort of oddball outsider character later essayed by the likes of Christian Slater or Crispin Glover.  But it was his shockingly convincing portrait of Norman Bates for the great subversive film technician Alfred Hitchcock that both defined and, for a large part of his career thereafter, typecast him domestically for a series of darker, more villainous if not psychotic roles thereafter. Having starred with the likes of Brigitte Bardot, Sophia Loren, Audrey Hepburn, Fred Astaire, Orson Welles, Sean Connery, Roger Moore and Paul Newman, he moved from domestic churn ‘em out studio fare to a far more interesting sideline in the French cinema of the 60's and early 70's.   Briefly settling into the more auteurist work of 70's British and American film, he took a deep dive into cult cinema throughout the 80s, working for folks like Ken Russell and bringing his Bates character back for a better than average slasher series based on the 1960 original. Cowriting the highly subtextual The Last of Sheila with then-partner and musical theater impresario, he further tried his hand at directing, first in two stage productions, and later a pair of films (one of which he starred in.) He even had a short lived sideline in schmaltz, releasing four albums in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, which showed him (perhaps surprisingly) possessed of a pleasant, syrupy tone very much along the lines of Jack Jones. Join us as we discuss one of the great character actors of our time, the multilayered Tony Perkins, only here on Weird Scenes Inside the Goldmine! Week 102 (7/27/23): A Man of Unusual Talent: The Life and Career of Tony Perkins https://weirdscenes1.wordpress.com/ https://www.facebook.com/WeirdScenes1 https://twitter.com/WeirdScenes1 (@weirdscenes1) https://thirdeyecinema.podbean.com/ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/third-eye-cinema-weird-scenes-inside-the-goldmine-podcast/id553402044 https:// (open.spotify.com) /show/4s8QkoE6PnAfh65C5on5ZS?nd=1 https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/09456286-8956-4b80-a158-f750f525f246/Third-Eye-Cinema-Weird-Scenes-Inside-the-Goldmine-podcast

Born in Newark, NJ in September of 1940, Brian DePalma went from physics student to student filmmaker in the heady height of the hippie era, with his early experimental films introducing none other than the much feted Robert DeNiro to the world at large. Following a surprising run of perversely Hitchcockian works like Sisters, Obsession, Dressed to Kill, Blow Out and Body Double (and a few strangely beloved cult oddities like Carrie and Phantom of the Paradise,) DePalma made a hard right turn into populist crime films like Scarface and Carlito's Way, the first Tom Cruise Mission Impossible film and Disney CG fest Mission to Mars before descending into a ghetto of direct to video style "erotic thrillers" oddly peopled by the likes of Rebecca Romijin-Stamos, Antonio Banderas and Scarlett Johanssen.   So join us as we attempt to dig into the notable highs (and precipitous lows) of Brian DePalma, only here on Weird Scenes! Week 101 (7/13/23): The Modern Day Hitchcock or Hapless Hollywood Hack?  From Auteurist to Churn 'em Out Company Man: The Decidedly Bumpy Career of Brian DePalma   https://weirdscenes1.wordpress.com/ https://www.facebook.com/WeirdScenes1 https://twitter.com/WeirdScenes1 (@weirdscenes1) https://thirdeyecinema.podbean.com/ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/third-eye-cinema-weird-scenes-inside-the-goldmine-podcast/id553402044 https:// (open.spotify.com) /show/4s8QkoE6PnAfh65C5on5ZS?nd=1 https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/09456286-8956-4b80-a158-f750f525f246/Third-Eye-Cinema-Weird-Scenes-Inside-the-Goldmine-podcast

Santa Monica, Thanksgiving of 1958, Jamie Lee Curtis was born to screen idols Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh.   Left to be raised by a single mother as a toddler, Curtis dropped out after a single semester at law school to take on the wild world of thespianism as a television bit player in notable episodes of The Shaun Cassidy/Parker Stevenson Hardy Boys, Buck Rogers, Charlies Angels and Columbo, before a recurring part on the short lived Operation Petticoat sitcom. But a prominent screen debut in John Carpenter's soon to be iconic slasher Halloween led to a succession of similar roles both in and apart from the franchise that resulted, in such well remembered efforts as The Fog, Prom Night, Terror Train and Road Games (not to mention Halloween II, H2O, Resurrection and the recent revival trilogy under David Gordon Green. Concerned about being typecast, she began to branch out into comedy, appearing (and generally stealing the show) in box office hits like Trading Places, A Fish Called Wanda, Freaky Friday and the recent Everything Everywhere All At Once as well as more dramatic roles in films like Perfect, Love Letters, Blue Steel and True Lies. Join us as we take on the original "Final Girl", scream queen, comedienne and more, the one and only Jamie Lee Curtis, only here on Weird Scenes! Week 100 (6/29/23): Jamie Lee Curtis https://weirdscenes1.wordpress.com/ https://www.facebook.com/WeirdScenes1 https://twitter.com/WeirdScenes1 (@weirdscenes1) https://thirdeyecinema.podbean.com/ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/third-eye-cinema-weird-scenes-inside-the-goldmine-podcast/id553402044 https:// (open.spotify.com) /show/4s8QkoE6PnAfh65C5on5ZS?nd=1 https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/09456286-8956-4b80-a158-f750f525f246/Third-Eye-Cinema-Weird-Scenes-Inside-the-Goldmine-podcast

Born in NYC way back in 1938 to a garment district worker, Richard Benjamin met his wife to this very day, fellow actress Paula Prentiss, and would appear with her in several theatrical, filmic and televised roles (starting with late 60s sitcom He & She, oft referenced as a template for the iconic Mary Tyler Moore show.)   This short lived but critically beloved series kicked off a long career in both comedic and dramatic cinematic roles that began with 1969's box office smash Goodbye Columbus alongside Ali McGraw, and went on to include such cultural touchstones as Catch 22, Diary of a Mad Housewife, Portnoy's Complaint and Westworld. Later works included the wide ranging Buck Henry science fiction satire Quark (which took on everything from Star Trek, Star Wars and 2001 to Zardoz in its all too brief late 70s run), Love at First Bite, Scavenger Hunt and How to Beat the High Co$t of Living, before moving into an exclusively directorial role with the Peter O'Toole vehicle My Favorite Year, and a short run of successful comedies like Tom Hanks' Money Pit, Melanie Griffith's Milk Money, Whoopi Golberg/Ted Danson film Made in America and the Cher/Winona Ryder hit Mermaids. Join us as we talk a true 70's icon (and 80's hit director), the one and only Richard Benjamin, only here on Weird Scenes! Week 99 (6/15/23): Richard Benjamin, Class(y) Clown https://weirdscenes1.wordpress.com/ https://www.facebook.com/WeirdScenes1 https://twitter.com/WeirdScenes1 (@weirdscenes1) https://thirdeyecinema.podbean.com/ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/third-eye-cinema-weird-scenes-inside-the-goldmine-podcast/id553402044 https:// (open.spotify.com) /show/4s8QkoE6PnAfh65C5on5ZS?nd=1 https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/09456286-8956-4b80-a158-f750f525f246/Third-Eye-Cinema-Weird-Scenes-Inside-the-Goldmine-podcast  

John Adam Belushi was born in Chicago, 1949...and like so many bright lights of the counterculture, left us at a disturbingly young age, only 33 years later at the dawn of March, 1982. A candle burning at both ends, this somersaulting, volatile, pratfall prone comedian stole the spotlight wherever he went, in both personal and onscreen life, from Chicago's Second City to National Lampoon to a fabled stint with the original Saturday Night Live ensemble.   A sideline performing high energy schtick-based (but strangely both serious and more than competent) classic blues and soul covers with veterans of the scene went from local club dates to album releases, eventually resulting in an enduring modern era movie classic: The Blues Brothers. But an all too brief run in filmmaking was not without its own perils, and his personal indulgences were all too encouraged in the circles in which he ran.   After delivering a handful of off kilter (but towards the end, surprisingly good) films that showed there was more to the man than a juvenile, slovenly life of the party type, he was gone, leaving a short but memorable legacy that endures to this very day. Join us as we wrestle with a true live wire, the bombastic John Belushi! Weird Scenes Week 98 (6/1/23): High Voltage and Wired: The Life and Career of John Belushi https://weirdscenes1.wordpress.com/ https://www.facebook.com/WeirdScenes1 https://twitter.com/WeirdScenes1 (@weirdscenes1) https://thirdeyecinema.podbean.com/ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/third-eye-cinema-weird-scenes-inside-the-goldmine-podcast/id553402044 https:// (open.spotify.com) /show/4s8QkoE6PnAfh65C5on5ZS?nd=1 https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/09456286-8956-4b80-a158-f750f525f246/Third-Eye-Cinema-Weird-Scenes-Inside-the-Goldmine-podcast

Born in 1962 in Disneyworld territory, Orlando, Florida, Wesley Trent Snipes grew up on the mean streets of the Bronx, before shuttling back to Florida as a teen and then doing college out in California. After some awkward beginnings as a drug dealer in Miami Vice and the heavy in a Michael Jackson video (and losing out on a pair of high profile opportunities to the likes of LeVar Burton and Tymak), Snipes broke out in a brief but notable run of New Jack gangsta films for the likes of Mario Van Peebles and Spike Lee before making a name with smash hits like White Men Can't Jump and an unexpected turn in To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar...while simultaneously pumping out a surprising number of no budget direct to video affairs of varying quality. With a  wide ranging background in martial arts and a side hustle providing bodyguard muscle for celebs, he found a new career in high profile action films like Passenger 57, Rising Sun, Demolition Man and the Blade series...before running into a number of headline baiting legal troubles which resulted in a three year incarceration. Since then, he's been making a return to notable film roles with a very central character in the latest entry in Stallone's all-star Expendables series and Eddie Murphy's long overdue return to form, Coming 2 America.  Could Snipes, like a good fighter who's taken a few hard knocks, find himself on the upswing once again? Join us as we take on the rollercoaster career of the one and only Wesley Snipes! Week 97 (5/18/23): In The Court of Chaos: Up (and Down) with Wesley Snipes   https://weirdscenes1.wordpress.com/ https://www.facebook.com/WeirdScenes1 https://twitter.com/WeirdScenes1 (@weirdscenes1) https://thirdeyecinema.podbean.com/ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/third-eye-cinema-weird-scenes-inside-the-goldmine-podcast/id553402044 https:// (open.spotify.com) /show/4s8QkoE6PnAfh65C5on5ZS?nd=1 https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/09456286-8956-4b80-a158-f750f525f246/Third-Eye-Cinema-Weird-Scenes-Inside-the-Goldmine-podcast  

Caryn Elaine Johnson, was born in Manhattan in 1955. A Trekkie since childhood, she would eventually go on to a recurring (if oft uncredited) role on the successor series to that very show... Working an unusual, character based standup in the vein of Carol Burnett or Tracy Ullman, it was none other than Steven Spielberg who pulled her from handling hecklers to marquee lights with his The Color Purple, setting her on the road to a lengthy career in film, where she headlined a trio of interesting action comedies before making a name in such populist fare as Ghost, Soapdish, Boys on the Side, Girl Interrupted, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, Made in America and Sister Act...and more interesting if seldom discussed efforts like Eddie, The Associate and what remains the definitive adaptation of Stephen King's sprawling postapocalyptic parable, The Stand. Since taking the lead chair on the popular daytime sociopolitical chat show The View a full decade and a half back, she's begun to further pursue a role in producing documentaries relating to black figures in history and entertainment.   Join us as we take on what most would agree to be the most unexpected subject in our hundred episode history, the inimitable Whoopi Goldberg! Weird Scenes Week 96 (5/4/23): Sometimes You've Just Got To Let One Go: The Atypical Career of Whoopi Goldberg https://weirdscenes1.wordpress.com/ https://www.facebook.com/WeirdScenes1 https://twitter.com/WeirdScenes1 (@weirdscenes1) https://thirdeyecinema.podbean.com/ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/third-eye-cinema-weird-scenes-inside-the-goldmine-podcast/id553402044 https:// (open.spotify.com) /show/4s8QkoE6PnAfh65C5on5ZS?nd=1 https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/09456286-8956-4b80-a158-f750f525f246/Third-Eye-Cinema-Weird-Scenes-Inside-the-Goldmine-podcast

Edward Regan Murphy was born in Broooklyn's dicey Bushwick district, 1961, to a transit cop and ill fated aspiring comedian. Raised by a single mother (after a lengthy stint with foster parents!) and idolizing the similarly minded 70's standup star turned film lead Richard Pryor, he rose to fame as a four year veteran of Saturday Night Live, becoming one of its most universally beloved alumni in the process.   Turning to Hollywood, he then became one of the earliest SNL cast turned film stars, eventually fathering a daughter with none other than 90's icon Mel B aka Scary Spice. One of the few to successfully navigate the strange transition from raunchy standup comedy to late night television fame through wildly popular, even decade defining action comedies, Eddie seemed to be on top of the world...before a string of flops that left his career devolving into the decidedly juvenile and embarrassing (if well paying) world of fat suit fart joke crap for the mentally challenged under the likes of Disney and DreamWorks.  Join us as we pull no punches with the meteoric rise (and decided fall) of famed funnyman and Hollywood headliner Eddie Murphy! Weird Scenes Week 95 (4/20/23): From Horse Laughs to Hollywood to Fat Suit Hell: The Rapid Rise and Precipitous Fall of Eddie Murphy   https://weirdscenes1.wordpress.com/ https://www.facebook.com/WeirdScenes1 https://twitter.com/WeirdScenes1 (@weirdscenes1) https://thirdeyecinema.podbean.com/ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/third-eye-cinema-weird-scenes-inside-the-goldmine-podcast/id553402044 https:// (open.spotify.com) /show/4s8QkoE6PnAfh65C5on5ZS?nd=1 https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/09456286-8956-4b80-a158-f750f525f246/Third-Eye-Cinema-Weird-Scenes-Inside-the-Goldmine-podcast

Winifred Jacqueline Fraser Bisset came into this world in the latter days of WWII, in the Fall of 1944 to a Scotch GP and French lawyer cum housewife who biked her way into an airlift out of Occupied France and her new life in the rather rural climes of Surrey. A short modeling career led to roles in such disparate films (in quality as well as  type) as The Knack and How to Get It, Audrey Hepburn vehicle Two For the Road and Roman Polanski's Cul de Sac, launching her into a career in cinema marked by roles in such highlights as The Detective (with Frank Sinatra), Bullitt (with Steve McQueen), Le Magnifique (with Jean Paul Belmondo), The Mephisto Waltz (with Alan Alda) and Truffaut's excellent Day For Night, before settling into big budget all star oddities like the multi-director Casino Royale, Airport, the Albert Finney Murder on the Orient Express, Who is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe (with George Segal), St. Ives (with Charles Bronson), The Deep (with Nick Nolte) and even Wild Orchid (with Mickey Rourke), smoking up the screen in a manner not altogether dissimilar to the previously covered Charlotte Rampling and earning herself both Golden Globes and France's Legion d'Honneur for her efforts.  Join us as we talk another of our favorite ladies of 70's cinema, the lovely and talented Jacqueline Bissett! Weird Scenes Week 94 (4/6/23): Class and Style: The Unusual Career of Jacqueline Bissett https://weirdscenes1.wordpress.com/ https://www.facebook.com/WeirdScenes1 https://twitter.com/WeirdScenes1 (@weirdscenes1) https://thirdeyecinema.podbean.com/ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/third-eye-cinema-weird-scenes-inside-the-goldmine-podcast/id553402044 https:// (open.spotify.com) /show/4s8QkoE6PnAfh65C5on5ZS?nd=1 https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/09456286-8956-4b80-a158-f750f525f246/Third-Eye-Cinema-Weird-Scenes-Inside-the-Goldmine-podcast

Born Francis Albert Sinatra in lovely downtown Hoboken, NJ, Frank so idolized 1930s swing singer and the man they coined the term "crooner" over, Bing Crosby, that he decided not only to emulate his hero, but to effectively BECOME him in the eyes of the American public.  And for all intents and purposes, he succeeded. Possessed of a lighter, more lyric tenor with an amazing degree of breath control, Sinatra, even before becoming a stylist par excellence (to this day, mostly unparalleled) matched his predecessor in wooing temporary wartime widows and proto-bobby soxers alike, and may in fact have topped his idol in building a tremendous following of mostly female fans.  They were the Elvises or Beatles of their day, only Frank, unlike the others, improved his craft throughout the 50s, becoming an American icon.   But his success wasn't limited to the world of music - like Elvis (who we also did a show on,) he further found himself drawn into the world of filmmaking, holding his own against some of the greats of his era and even producing and directing a few along the way. So join us as we delve into the life and career of the epitome of swingin' style, the one and only Frank Sinatra!   Weird Scenes Week 93 (3/23/23): Come Fly With The Chairman of the Bored - The Films of Frank Sinatra https://weirdscenes1.wordpress.com/ https://www.facebook.com/WeirdScenes1 https://twitter.com/WeirdScenes1 (@weirdscenes1) https://thirdeyecinema.podbean.com/ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/third-eye-cinema-weird-scenes-inside-the-goldmine-podcast/id553402044 https:// (open.spotify.com) /show/4s8QkoE6PnAfh65C5on5ZS?nd=1 https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/09456286-8956-4b80-a158-f750f525f246/Third-Eye-Cinema-Weird-Scenes-Inside-the-Goldmine-podcast

Manhattan's own George Segal Jr. was an interesting actor, moving deftly between solid and quite serious dramatic roles to a career in far broader, if generally still intelligent comedies in the 70s.   One of the first "ethnic" actors of prominence to leave his name unchanged, he specialized in easily frustrated, angrily gesticulating types, lashing out at the vagaries of life and the world surrounding with arms flailing and temple blood vessels throbbing.  But it was almost always for a cheap laugh, and he always came off likeable in the end. After a stint in the army during the Korean War, he signed up to learn The Method with Lee Strasberg and wound up working bit parts in both film and television in the early 60's, before kicking off a career that spanned everything from James Clavell's grim POW opus King Rat, war film classic The Bridge at Remagen, chilly 60's eurospy The Quiller Memorandum and the Ernest Tidyman scripted Burt Reynolds crime film Stick to classic (and often heady) comedies like The Owl and the Pussycat, Fun With Dick and Jane and Carbon Copy, where he costarred with the likes of Barbra Streisand, Glenda Jackson, Jane Fonda and a young Denzel Washington. Join us as we talk the surprisingly varied and many-faceted career of George Segal! Week 92 (3/9/23): George Segal   https://weirdscenes1.wordpress.com/ https://www.facebook.com/WeirdScenes1 https://twitter.com/WeirdScenes1 (@weirdscenes1) https://thirdeyecinema.podbean.com/ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/third-eye-cinema-weird-scenes-inside-the-goldmine-podcast/id553402044 https:// (open.spotify.com) /show/4s8QkoE6PnAfh65C5on5ZS?nd=1 https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/09456286-8956-4b80-a158-f750f525f246/Third-Eye-Cinema-Weird-Scenes-Inside-the-Goldmine-podcast

Clint Eastwood, Jr. was born into wealth in San Francisco, complete with in-ground pool and country club membership.  Despite being drafted into the Korean war, never saw a lick of combat, serving as lifeguard at Fort Ord for his entire stint in the military, all very much belieing his later "tough guy" image. Lambasted as a terrible actor by Hollywood filmmakers and acting coaches alike, he nevertheless managed to land a few walk on roles in classic 50s sci fi monster flicks and television westerns, based entirely on his looks. But by another huge stroke of luck, his role on TV's Rawhide got him a role in an Italian western when his costar turned it down...and that film and its sequel launched an entire genre. A trio of films with Sergio Leone and a 5 film run as maverick cop Dirty Harry spanned two full decades, making this very lucky fellow an actor, director and producer...and moreover, an American icon.   Giving right wing sacred cow Ronald Reagan one of his most trademarkable catchphrases and delivering the most unintentionally amusing bits of impromptu political theater ever recorded with his last minute "empty chair debate" at the 2012 RNC, Clint also delivered popular favorites like Every Which Way But Loose, Escape from Alcatraz, Kelly's Heroes, The Gauntlet and The Unforgiven...plenty of juicy backstory and cinema for us to dig into (and we do, in our own inimitable manner!) Join us as we alternately celebrate and have some well deserved laughs at the expense of the oft problematic but ever fascinating career of the inimitable Clint Eastwood, only here at Weird Scenes! Weird Scenes Week 91 (2/23/23): Clint Eastwood Makes Your Day   https://weirdscenes1.wordpress.com/ https://www.facebook.com/WeirdScenes1 https://twitter.com/WeirdScenes1 (@weirdscenes1) https://thirdeyecinema.podbean.com/ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/third-eye-cinema-weird-scenes-inside-the-goldmine-podcast/id553402044 https:// (open.spotify.com) /show/4s8QkoE6PnAfh65C5on5ZS?nd=1 https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/09456286-8956-4b80-a158-f750f525f246/Third-Eye-Cinema-Weird-Scenes-Inside-the-Goldmine-podcast  

Edward Regan Murphy was born in Broooklyn's dicey Bushwick district, 1961, to a transit cop and ill fated aspiring comedian. Raised by a single mother (after a lengthy stint with foster parents!) and idolizing the similarly minded 70's standup star turned film lead Richard Pryor, he rose to fame as a four year veteran of Saturday Night Live, becoming one of its most universally beloved alumni in the process.   Turning to Hollywood, he then became one of the earliest SNL cast turned film stars, eventually fathering a daughter with none other than 90's icon Mel B aka Scary Spice. One of the few to successfully navigate the strange transition from raunchy standup comedy to late night television fame through wildly popular, even decade defining action comedies, Eddie seemed to be on top of the world...before a string of flops that left his career devolving into the decidedly juvenile and embarrassing (if well paying) world of fat suit fart joke crap for the mentally challenged under the likes of Disney and DreamWorks.  Join us as we pull no punches with the meteoric rise (and decided fall) of famed funnyman and Hollywood headliner Eddie Murphy! Weird Scenes Week 95 (4/20/23): From Horse Laughs to Hollywood to Fat Suit Hell: The Rapid Rise and Precipitous Fall of Eddie Murphy   https://weirdscenes1.wordpress.com/ https://www.facebook.com/WeirdScenes1 https://twitter.com/WeirdScenes1 (@weirdscenes1) https://thirdeyecinema.podbean.com/ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/third-eye-cinema-weird-scenes-inside-the-goldmine-podcast/id553402044 https:// (open.spotify.com) /show/4s8QkoE6PnAfh65C5on5ZS?nd=1 https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/09456286-8956-4b80-a158-f750f525f246/Third-Eye-Cinema-Weird-Scenes-Inside-the-Goldmine-podcast

Born at the dawn of the talkies in 1930, Richard St John Francis Harris was born to a “flour merchant” in Ireland, where he intended to become a rugby pro.  With best laid plans derailed by a bout with disease, he decided to pursue a career in acting, only to find himself  rejected as "too old" at the whopping age of 25. Nonetheless, he perservered for over a decade before demanding - and receiving! - third billing against Marlon Brando on Mutiny on the Bounty and working with arthouse favorite Michelangelo Antonioni and Stateside auteur John Huston, before a starring role in the popular Camelot and a top 10 hit with the odd but much beloved "MacArthur Park"...despite the fact that he, self-admittedly, couldn't sing a lick. But it was in the 70's (and early 80's) that he delivered his most interesting work, a rollercoaster ride that went from the likes of A Man Called Horse, Juggernaut, the Cassandra Crossing and The Wild Geese to the lows of Dino DiLaurentis' Orca and the Bo Derek Tarzan the Ape Man.   Always a contentious sort and prone to the arch theatricality of his early stage work, join us as we discuss the odd but fascinating career of Richard Harris! Week 90 (2/9/23): Richard Harris in the 70's https://weirdscenes1.wordpress.com/ https://www.facebook.com/WeirdScenes1 https://twitter.com/WeirdScenes1 (@weirdscenes1) https://thirdeyecinema.podbean.com/ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/third-eye-cinema-weird-scenes-inside-the-goldmine-podcast/id553402044 https:// (open.spotify.com) /show/4s8QkoE6PnAfh65C5on5ZS?nd=1 https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/09456286-8956-4b80-a158-f750f525f246/Third-Eye-Cinema-Weird-Scenes-Inside-the-Goldmine-podcast

Harvard Literature major turned Biological Anthropology BA and medical school student turned author Michael Crichton penned no less than 26 novels...of which at least 9 were made into feature films.   Turning screenwriter, he quickly shifted chairs to direction, delivering several memorable films (and scripting and producing even more.) With interesting pictures like The Andromeda Strain, Coma, Looker and Runaway (not to mention popular favorites like The Great Train Robbery, Twister and, well, Jurassic Park), his background in medicine and overarching fascination with cutting edge technology played a major part in his work, either predicting or latching onto the first advances towards things like computer generated imagery, artificial intelligence, smart technology (particularly weaponry) and robotics in a series of well crafted efforts. Hearkening back to the glory days of science fiction, when new technologies, ideas and Imagineering of yet untapped vistas still recognized the inherent dangers of a flawed mankind meddling in things they honestly do not fully understand, no discussion of the science fiction genre would be complete without speaking to the films of…Michael Crichton. Week 89 (1/26/23): The Films of Michael Crichton https://weirdscenes1.wordpress.com/ https://www.facebook.com/WeirdScenes1 https://twitter.com/WeirdScenes1 (@weirdscenes1) https://thirdeyecinema.podbean.com/ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/third-eye-cinema-weird-scenes-inside-the-goldmine-podcast/id553402044 https:// (open.spotify.com) /show/4s8QkoE6PnAfh65C5on5ZS?nd=1 https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/09456286-8956-4b80-a158-f750f525f246/Third-Eye-Cinema-Weird-Scenes-Inside-the-Goldmine-podcast

Tonight, we're talking to a modern day doom metal giant.  Originally working in a very different band and genre, Christian Hector and Daniel Droste ventured off into the rarified world of funeral doom…and transformed it into something all their own. With a focus on late 19th century whaling and nautical literature, particularly those tomes of a darker bent, they quickly drifted beyond the expected borders of the subgenre's sound and focus with their third, clean vocalled and far more progressively inclined album, 2012's The Giant, which so impressed us, we had Chris on the show to discuss its many merits. But after a well received followup with 2015's Boats of Glen Carrig, there was a decidedly long silence that left fans wondering if they'd gone the way of far too many other doom bands of note…until now. Join us as we welcome back, after over a decade(!) Christian Hector of Ahab for a stiff pint of grog and a sea dog's tale well spun... Week 96 (Sun. January 22) - Chris Hector of Ahab (10 years on) http://www.facebook.com/ThirdEyeCinema https://thirdeyecinema.wordpress.com/ Twitter: @thirdeyecinema https://thirdeyecinema.podbean.com/ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/third-eye-cinema-weird-scenes-inside-the-goldmine-podcast/id553402044 https://open.spotify.com/show/4s8QkoE6PnAfh65C5on5ZS?nd=1 https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/09456286-8956-4b80-a158-f750f525f246/Third-Eye-Cinema-Weird-Scenes-Inside-the-Goldmine-podcast  

The 1970s.   A turbulent and important time, marked by the decline and fall of the hippie movement that took the world by storm with the 1966 "summer of love" and introduced several generations to alternative religions and new age spirituality...often enough landing on some spectrum of the occult.   But the spirit of Woodstock and the ethos of peace, love and music had been subverted by a violent reaction from conservative forces, and together with a few grim and headline grabbing reality checks (Altamont, the Manson Family, the Weathermen and the iconoclastic discovery that so many of their new heroes and gurus bore feet of clay) combined with later disillusion brought about by political scandals, the seemingly endless (and ultimately failed) war in Vietnam, a plethora of self serving and destructive religious cults, drug casualties, the emergence of the serial killer and the failure of the idealistic commune lifestyle led to a very different tenor to the decade from the one that preceded it.   In short, the Age of Aquarius had revealed itself as the Aeon of Horus (if not the dawn of the Kali Yuga) in no uncertain terms, and with a shocking suddenness. As a reflection of the times, a widespread interest in Witchcraft and Satanism were all the rage, and cinema, from mainstream blockbusters like Rosemary's Baby, The Exorcist and the Omen series straight down to the level of adult film and even (if not most especially) the TV movie marketed to housewives and youngsters weekday afternoons, spoke to a new preoccupation with occultism.   So prevalent was all of this obsession with all things dark and dangerous that it very much defined the decade, far moreseo than any that preceded or followed.   Join us, as we delve into some of the best examples of what ultimately became a tidal wave of satanic terror, specifically limited to those centering on literal, if oft self styled cults of devil worshippers and their works... Week 88: Satan in the 70's (a discussion of satanic cult films) https://weirdscenes1.wordpress.com/ https://www.facebook.com/WeirdScenes1 https://twitter.com/WeirdScenes1 (@weirdscenes1) https://thirdeyecinema.podbean.com/ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/third-eye-cinema-weird-scenes-inside-the-goldmine-podcast/id553402044 https:// (open.spotify.com) /show/4s8QkoE6PnAfh65C5on5ZS?nd=1 https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/09456286-8956-4b80-a158-f750f525f246/Third-Eye-Cinema-Weird-Scenes-Inside-the-Goldmine-podcast

Born in Paris in the early 1930s, Roman Polanski lived a life marked by many tragedies.    From seeing both parents taken away to the camps during the Nazi occupation of Poland and forced to live with a series of clandestine foster families to a later youth under the equally horrific oppression of Communist Russia and the Poland of the Iron Curtain, he came to the attention of the film community with his debut film Knife in the Water, quickly moving on to a series of British and American successes. But even then, tragedy struck, with his new wife and future child murdered viciously by the Manson Family, with all these experiences feeding into his grim, fatalistically existential narratives onscreen.  Later (rather compromised) court matters led to his being scapegoated and rendered fugitive, forced to continue his directorial endeavors in a handful of European countries not subject to extradition laws (a matter that returned to public attention in the early millenium.) His is a cinema marked by both Decadence and doom, grimly determinist and Kafkaesque regardless of genre or subject, from Hitchcockian narrative to spy thriller to outright horror.   Oft feted and nominated (and winning) laudatory awards both domestically and abroad (in England, France and Europe per se) and much discussed in critical circles, he nonetheless remains something of a controversial figure, most often due to circumstances entirely out of his control or driven by self-serving accusatory figures in the media, courts and even public opinion.  But do these accusations paint as clear cut a condemnation of the man as it may seem? Join us as we discuss the life and films of Roman Polanski, and decide for  yourselves... Week 87: Paranoia, Decadence and Dissolution – The Films of Roman Polanski https://weirdscenes1.wordpress.com/ https://www.facebook.com/WeirdScenes1 https://twitter.com/WeirdScenes1 (@weirdscenes1) https://thirdeyecinema.podbean.com/ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/third-eye-cinema-weird-scenes-inside-the-goldmine-podcast/id553402044 https:// (open.spotify.com) /show/4s8QkoE6PnAfh65C5on5ZS?nd=1 https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/09456286-8956-4b80-a158-f750f525f246/Third-Eye-Cinema-Weird-Scenes-Inside-the-Goldmine-podcast

Hail Hydra!  Immortal Hydra!  Cut off a limb and two more shall take its place! No, we're not doing another superhero cinema and television show, but making an apt metaphor about the neverending horror story that is MAGA and the pernicious spread of Trumpism in the corridors of American power.    Despite effectively cutting the hydra off at the head in the 2020 election, the movement continues unabated, aided, abetted and energized if not driven by a stonewalling collective of 51 malfeasants who, like a bunch of cut rate dimestore Gandalfs, declare "you shall not pass!" to any and every bill the American people demand, or that may actually alleviate all the financial crises and domestic terror incidents that beset us on an increasingly regular basis.   Why?  In the name of power.  At any and all costs, including the future of this country. Defaming the Constitution and the principles our Founding Fathers and a few foresight blessed men (like Teddy Roosevelt, with his muckraking and trustbusting Square Deal, FDR with his social program creating New Deal and Johnson's Great Society, which gave us such things as social security, medicare and medicaid, fair housing, integration and more), these atavistic corporate owned plutocrats stoop to one new low after the next, distracting, dividing and using every dirty trick in the book just this side of legality (and often not) to rig the game in their favor.  A minority seeking total control - including the right to your own body and destiny, romantic or otherwise - over the will of the majority.   And we remain apathetic, fighting amongst ourselves over petty "wedge issues", while the American conservative of old seemingly vanishes into history, and a literal cult of death and "burn it all down" nihilism driven by false narratives, false "theocratic" support, propaganda and social division-fomenting "talking points" takes its place.   If you're not part of the cult, whatever direction your politics lean, you have to know this is wrong, not to mention completely unAmerican. And Covid, "monkey pox", an ongoing invasion of Ukraine and longstanding supply chain issues resulting from the aforementioned (and a drunken ship captain clogging up the main sea based global shipping route for weeks on end), not to mention trying to clean up the dumpster fire the Trump "Presidency" has left us with, have given a new leader the most difficult year and a half in office in living memory, with no feasible route to correct it all.   Because of 51 selfish puppets, dancing to their masters' tunes and denying any corrective measures in the hopes of regaining total control...and ending the "Grand Experiment" our Founding Fathers bequeathed to us. Add in a rash of hate crimes around the nation, hitting one group or demographic after another, with and without military-grade hardware, from senior citizens to children, from malls to concerts to protest marches and 10K runs, right down to schools.  Even walking the streets of our cities, in broad daylight.  The body count rises, and they refuse to take action or allow anyone else to.   All in the name of power, and the nihilistic urge to "burn it down". After our Marlowe show a few weeks back, here we rejoin the audience with another impromptu get together, talking these and many other pressing issues afflicting the state of the union, and suggest what should be some simple solutions everyone can enact, to hopefully turn this sinking ship back on course...and away from this road to certain destruction and a resurgent fascism, not to mention a return to serfdom for all not among their ranks in power and riches. Then we'll wrap it all up by decompressing with some good laughs and banter about this, that and the other... Weird Scenes Season 11 Episode 2: State of the Disunion - Guns n Russians and the Neverending American Horror Story https://weirdscenes1.wordpress.com/ https://www.facebook.com/WeirdScenes1 https://twitter.com/WeirdScenes1 (@weirdscenes1) https://thirdeyecinema.podbean.com/ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/third-eye-cinema-weird-scenes-inside-the-goldmine-podcast/id553402044 https://open.spotify.com/show/ 4s8QkoE6PnAfh65C5on5ZS?nd=1 https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/09456286-8956-4b80-a158-f750f525f246/Third-Eye-Cinema-Weird-Scenes-Inside-the-Goldmine-podcast

Tonight, we're doing something different.  Rather than tackling a genre, director or actor, we're actually going to take on a fictional character as represented in film.   Raymond Chandler was a dual citizen of the UK and US who turned to writing when he lost his job as an oil exec in the Great Depression.  In addition to co-scripting Double Indemnity with Billy Wilder, Strangers on a Train with Alfred Hitchcock and writing The Blue Dahlia which starred Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake, he wrote 7 ½ novels in his lifetime, and most of them were turned into film…some several times.  And the character?  Philip Marlowe. Some of these films were produced under different titles, or in established B-picture film series revolving around established radio detectives like The Falcon and Michael Shayne, others became much celebrated entries in the noir and neo-noir genre and high points in the filmography of big names like Humphrey Bogart, Robert Mitchum and Elliott Gould.  And with directors like Howard Hawks, Edward Dmytryk, Robert Altman and Michael Winner, we're not exactly talking programmers here… Join us as we talk the films of Chandler's Philip Marlowe, only here on Weird Scenes! Week 86: The Hard Boiled Exploits of Philip Marlowe https://weirdscenes1.wordpress.com/ https://www.facebook.com/WeirdScenes1 https://twitter.com/WeirdScenes1 (@weirdscenes1) https://thirdeyecinema.podbean.com/ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/third-eye-cinema-weird-scenes-inside-the-goldmine-podcast/id553402044 https:// (open.spotify.com) /show/4s8QkoE6PnAfh65C5on5ZS?nd=1 https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/09456286-8956-4b80-a158-f750f525f246/Third-Eye-Cinema-Weird-Scenes-Inside-the-Goldmine-podcast

We'd talked the early, more progressively minded SF of Charlton Heston in a recent show, and the life and career of the ubiquitous Roddy MacDowall not very long ago.  One series of films notable for featuring both iconic actors in primary roles remained glossed over, however, despite spurring a personal revisitation of the original 5 film run after the MacDowall chat.  Unaddressed, that is, until now. Marked by a then relevant if somewhat naïve by modern standards allegorical exploration of race relations and nuclear brinksmanship, the series was a true cause celebre in its heyday, resulting in all sorts of spinoff items: MEGOs, action figures, comic magazines, paperback novellas, a popular book and record series, games, jigsaw puzzles and plastic models, even a short lived TV series.  Like the later Star Wars, the Apes were inescapable throughout the early to mid 70's…then, just like that?  Utterly forgotten. Despite a post millennial attempt to revive the series in a disturbingly far lesser CG based trilogy of films, the Apes films seem locked in time, a 70's concern that left a huge mark only to disappear, seemingly without trace. What happened?  How did such a force of culture defining cinema, rivaled only by the Bond series, smaller scale works like the Six Million Dollar Man/Bionic Woman franchise and the brief popularity of blustery stuntman Evel Knievel for its sheer broad impact, simply drop off the radar, seldom if ever to be referenced again? And then, seemingly out of the blue, comes that 2011 reboot series… So join us tonight as we pick some nits off each other, and speak once again of those hoary days before Spielberg and Lucas turned cinema into a wasteland of brainless popcorn fare, and realize that 40 plus years back, this was about as lowbrow and brainless as things were ever likely to get.   My, how things have changed...  Week 85: Go Ape! The first major multimedia craze and how it disappeared into the vaults of time   https://weirdscenes1.wordpress.com/ https://www.facebook.com/WeirdScenes1 https://twitter.com/WeirdScenes1 (@weirdscenes1) https://thirdeyecinema.podbean.com/ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/third-eye-cinema-weird-scenes-inside-the-goldmine-podcast/id553402044 https:// (open.spotify.com) /show/4s8QkoE6PnAfh65C5on5ZS?nd=1 https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/09456286-8956-4b80-a158-f750f525f246/Third-Eye-Cinema-Weird-Scenes-Inside-the-Goldmine-podcast  

Born and raised in the Bronx, Stanley Kubrick started off as a photographer for magazines noted for such like Look, and that's something that carried through in most dramatic fashion in his subsequent film career. Almost uniquely in Hollywood, he managed to move from totally self-produced outsider cinema to decades funded by more traditional channels…and yet otherwise entirely self-directed, produced, scripted and more.  The man managed to have a cottage industry for his films, allowing for more quirks and control over the final product than even much feted auteurist directors like Hitchcock have ever been able to claim.   And yet, for all that financial and distribution advantage and personal control, he really seemed to choose some questionable material to tackle, and while much feted with awards and accolades, delivered a stream of very rocky pictures, more head scratching if visually sumptuous misses than enduring hits.  His demanding nature led to many a conflict with his casts, and where most directors of his era easily produced twice if not three times as many films within the same span of time, he ultimately only dropped a handful of films, whose ultimate merit is all over the map. Ultimately, all he left us was a trio of awkward no budget noir crime films in the 50s, a few scandalous oddities in the 60's and very early 70s, one dour historical that lacked either enough erotic or comic content to link it to the trend, a much beloved if unusual horror film of sorts and literally one film each in his two final decades: one attempt to tackle the then de rigeur Vietnam reminiscence and one seemingly Decadent erotic horror that attaches the expected spice to the tangled occult skein of films like The Order to the Ice Storm like loss of passion in a marriage and how a trip to the edge and near misses with realistic consequences (like nearly spending the night with an HIV positive partner) bring a straying couple back home to each other.   Join us tonight as we talk one of the most praised yet controversial and ultimately in most ways quite spotty directors in American cinema, the one and only Stanley Kubrick, right here on Weird Scenes.    Week 84: Questions Within Enigma: the films of Stanley Kubrick  https://weirdscenes1.wordpress.com/ https://www.facebook.com/WeirdScenes1 https://twitter.com/WeirdScenes1 (@weirdscenes1) https://thirdeyecinema.podbean.com/ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/third-eye-cinema-weird-scenes-inside-the-goldmine-podcast/id553402044 https:// (open.spotify.com) /show/4s8QkoE6PnAfh65C5on5ZS?nd=1 https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/09456286-8956-4b80-a158-f750f525f246/Third-Eye-Cinema-Weird-Scenes-Inside-the-Goldmine-podcast  

It's hard to believe in the modern age of sheer bombast and explosion filled CG lightshows for their own sake, but not that long ago, the world of science fiction, yes, even that of the American cinema, tended to be devoted to a very different purpose and aesthetic. Like their low paid visionary scribes from the likes of Welles and Verne in the 1800s to the pulps of the 20's and 30's and the edge of current science devotees and aspirationists of the 1950s, the science fiction authors of the 1960s and early 70's had far more in mind than a cheap hour or two of mindless escapism from an increasingly dreary corporatocratic nightmare world we've all come to accept as if it were predestined master rather than an out of control dog to be brought to heel. For a few decades in particular, a hard SF mix of utopian aspiration and dystopian commentary and warning about then-new trends arising in contemporary society informed nearly every instance of same, from the lowest of budget to the highest of the highbrow, from the critically feted to the mocked and hated.   Many of these names have gone on into legend: Orwell, Bradbury, Ellison, Ballard, Dick, Zelazny.  And many films built off or inspired by such literary works have held their place in pop culture circles: The Planet of the Apes films, 2001: A Space Odyssey...and many of the otherwise unrelated films we'll be discussing this evening, like Fahrenheit 451, The Illustrated Man, The Omega Man, Soylent Green, Silent Running, A Boy and His Dog and Damnation Alley. So join us tonight as we speak of those hoary days before Spielberg and Lucas turned cinema into a wasteland of brainless popcorn fare, and realize just how many of the horrors warned against may already have come into being in our day and age, begging the question: why didn't we listen?  Come and see what answers await, as we talk the thought provoking dystopias of the counterculture era, right here on Weird Scenes! Week 83: SF with a message - the dystopic visions of the counterculture era    https://weirdscenes1.wordpress.com/ https://www.facebook.com/WeirdScenes1 https://twitter.com/WeirdScenes1 (@weirdscenes1) https://thirdeyecinema.podbean.com/ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/third-eye-cinema-weird-scenes-inside-the-goldmine-podcast/id553402044 https:// (open.spotify.com) /show/4s8QkoE6PnAfh65C5on5ZS?nd=1 https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/09456286-8956-4b80-a158-f750f525f246/Third-Eye-Cinema-Weird-Scenes-Inside-the-Goldmine-podcast  

This week, join us as we speak to pioneering all-femme Japanese hard rock/heavy metal band Show-Ya! Dropping no less than 8 solid albums of smooth yet punchy keyboard and guitar driven hard rock leaning ever more towards metal between 1985 and 1990, bluesy frontwoman Keiko Terada and "the three Mikis" ("Captain" Nakamura, "Sun-Go" Igarashi and "Mittan" Tsunoda) alongside Satomi Senba on bass were so well beloved as to be tapped for a major Coca Cola campaign in the days when rock and metal were still considered "scary" persona non grata to mainstream society. Over the course of a mere 5 years, the unusually prolific band subtly shifted style from their very anime style early sound to something more akin to American metal and even a bit of the Hollywood Guns N Roses sound (on the English lyriced songs of Hard Way) before Terada departed for a successful solo career. Soldiering on for two further releases with fellow J-rock maiden Steffanie (Borges) and the punkier Yoshino, Show-Ya finally closed up shop in the 90's. But a 20th reunion tour of the original lineup in 2005 led to renewed interest in the band, inclusive of two successive sets of remasters (the latter with bonus tracks like the aforementioned Coke commercial, surprisingly catchy tune that it is), and by 2012 they were back in studio, releasing material that sounded surprisingly like their mid 80s heyday, and even an all covers album that features their takes on hits from nearly every great J-rock and J-metal band of the 80's and 90's, from Luna Sea, X and Kyosuke Himuro's Boowy to Loudness, Earthshaker, Glay and L'Arc en Ciel. Now partnering with Blizard's Nozumu Wakai as songwriting partner and producer, they've released an album that simultaneously sounds familiar and uniquely new in Showdown, which gets international release through Metalville this coming month. Join us as we have a brief if entertaining and decidedly good humored chat with Keiko Terada and "Captain" Miki Nakamura (plus surprise guest Mirai Kawashima of Sigh, of all people!) only here on Third Eye Cinema! Week 96: Show-Ya http://www.facebook.com/ThirdEyeCinema https://thirdeyecinema.wordpress.com/ Twitter: @thirdeyecinema https://thirdeyecinema.podbean.com/ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/third-eye-cinema-weird-scenes-inside-the-goldmine-podcast/id553402044 https:// (open.spotify.com) /show/4s8QkoE6PnAfh65C5on5ZS?nd=1 https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/09456286-8956-4b80-a158-f750f525f246/Third-Eye-Cinema-Weird-Scenes-Inside-the-Goldmine-podcast

Starring in at least 12 films that are or have been associated with the Film Noir genre (a retroactive designation courtesy of France's Cahiers du Cinema crowd covering American B pictures with cynical, compromised heroes, vicious femme fatales and a gialloesque immersion in a dark underworld where all is not as it seems and everyone is guilty and menacing), Robert Mitchum brought a less comical, far less telegraphed Dean Martin style insouciance to his work.   Tall and manly enough to stand his own in a fight, yet sleepy eyed and laid back enough to be led along by the nose to his doom by the many vamps and tramps he'd encounter, much of his onscreen persona appears to have been presaged by his own life. The son of a working class dock worker and railroad man, he wound up living under a resented military stepfather to the point where he wound up riding the rails and bumming his way around the country in his early teens, supposedly winding up (and escaping!) Sullivans Travels style on a southern jailhouse chain gang for his efforts. An early advocate of the wacky weed, he wound up in prison for a second time over pot possession right in the middle of his noir career, threw a studio manager into a lake (literally) and more, in a career which at times found him working alongside two of the Gentlemen Prefer Blondes girls (Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell) and eventually starring in two much overhyped films late in the genre, Night of the Hunter and Cape Fear.  He'd then return to prominence over a decade later with three notable films in the 70's neo noir revival before closing out on then much hyped television miniseries The Winds of War...and that stupid Bill Murray vehicle Scrooged (oy, what a way to go!) Join us tonight as we speak of another cinematic epitome of tough guy cool, the one and only Robert MItchum, right here on Weird Scenes! Week 82: Ridin' the Rails with Rob - the unflappable cool of Robert Mitchum   https://weirdscenes1.wordpress.com/ https://www.facebook.com/WeirdScenes1 https://twitter.com/WeirdScenes1 (@weirdscenes1) https://thirdeyecinema.podbean.com/ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/third-eye-cinema-weird-scenes-inside-the-goldmine-podcast/id553402044 https:// (open.spotify.com) /show/4s8QkoE6PnAfh65C5on5ZS?nd=1 https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/09456286-8956-4b80-a158-f750f525f246/Third-Eye-Cinema-Weird-Scenes-Inside-the-Goldmine-podcast

Born in abject poverty to a Hungarian immigrant tailor, a young Bernie Schwartz learned one of life's most important lessons at a tender age: you can't rely on anyone but yourself.   Making his way through adversities of language, impoverishment, deaths of loved ones and even a stint in an orphanage, he turned things around after service in the military, using the G.I. Bill to fund his attendance in acting school.  One quick change of name, and straight out of some absurd Horatio Alger story, he wound up fast tracked to Hollywood and fame. Following a run of big budget historical epics, he found a niche in fluffy, sexless comedies, somewhere between the goofy antics of Martin and Lewis and the pillow talk of Rock Hudson and Doris Day.  Young, handsome and affable, he became a darling of the teenage fanclub set, to the point where he even spoofed himself on an episode of the Flintstones, voicing a thinly veiled cartoon analogue.   Falling on hard times and still striving for stretch roles outside this typecast safe zone, he wound up shaking the tree in extremis with a dramatization of early serial killer Albert DeSalvo, finding himself critically acclaimed...but seemingly unable to  land further roles of note.  Struggling with drug use, he still managed to bring a unique character and often riveting if decidedly off kilter sensibility to films as diverse and often absurd as The Bad News Bears Go to Japan, The Manitou and the Mae West oddity Sextette. Turning increasingly to television in his later years, he used a sleazy Hollywood gossip show as a platform to share some wholly unrelated memories of his past career, drumming up enough interest to publish a successful autobiography and launch a late sideline in painting, before taking one last truly bizarre turn at the very end of his life... Join us tonight as we speak to the quirky, often questionable but undeniably loveable Tony Curtis, only here on Weird Scenes! Week 81: Bronx Boy Breaks Box Office - the unusual tale of Tony Curtis https://weirdscenes1.wordpress.com/ https://www.facebook.com/WeirdScenes1 https://twitter.com/WeirdScenes1 (@weirdscenes1) https://thirdeyecinema.podbean.com/ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/third-eye-cinema-weird-scenes-inside-the-goldmine-podcast/id553402044 https:// (open.spotify.com) /show/4s8QkoE6PnAfh65C5on5ZS?nd=1 https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/09456286-8956-4b80-a158-f750f525f246/Third-Eye-Cinema-Weird-Scenes-Inside-the-Goldmine-podcast

While you were all out busy churchin' and pretending to be all religious and whatnot and dragging the brats to creepy furries in bunny suits at cheesy smalltown egg hunts, the Maven of Sleaze and yours truly were havin' us a meetin'!  Hallelujah! With all the tentside revival of an ersatz campside clergy, two dark but loveable souls convened to chat about this and that, waxing poetic and pontificating polemics in regards to everything from vinyl vs. CDs, prog rock, gothic rock, Dennis Wheatley vs. his Hammer adaptations, the state of The State, the pandemic and vaccination, Columbo, Kolchak and Quinn Martin productions like The Invaders, Dan August and Cannon...and plenty more besides! As we work our way towards the Tony Curtis podcast, enjoy another impromptu chat, with all the divergences and tangenital side debates and discussions you love us for, only here on Weird Scenes! https://weirdscenes1.wordpress.com/ https://www.facebook.com/WeirdScenes1 https://twitter.com/WeirdScenes1 (@weirdscenes1) https://thirdeyecinema.podbean.com/ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/third-eye-cinema-weird-scenes-inside-the-goldmine-podcast/id553402044 https://open.spotify.com/show/ 4s8QkoE6PnAfh65C5on5ZS?nd=1 https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/09456286-8956-4b80-a158-f750f525f246/Third-Eye-Cinema-Weird-Scenes-Inside-the-Goldmine-podcast

A former railway clerk and wireless operator for the RAF, he came out of WWII to build a career as a manically nervous, occasionally imperious and often downright perverse character actor in a stunning range of film and television appearances across any number of genres.  In fact, he's done so much work, he could almost be compared to Jess Franco with nearly 250 credits to his name...! Join us as we pick out a number of favorites and a few odd surprises along the way, as we touch on everything from arthouse to war and comedy to horror, only here on Weird Scenes! Tonight, it's the dayglo 80's, and as Donald moves into the twilight of his career, he turns up in any number of cult oddities, from Italian horror to slasher films, Uli Lommel, the Pumaman and much, much more… Week 80 - Donald Pleasance: Final Stage https://weirdscenes1.wordpress.com/ https://www.facebook.com/WeirdScenes1 https://twitter.com/WeirdScenes1 (@weirdscenes1) https://thirdeyecinema.podbean.com/ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/third-eye-cinema-weird-scenes-inside-the-goldmine-podcast/id553402044 https:// (open.spotify.com) /show/4s8QkoE6PnAfh65C5on5ZS?nd=1 https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/09456286-8956-4b80-a158-f750f525f246/Third-Eye-Cinema-Weird-Scenes-Inside-the-Goldmine-podcast

A former railway clerk and wireless operator for the RAF, he came out of WWII to build a career as a manically nervous, occasionally imperious and often downright perverse character actor in a stunning range of film and television appearances across any number of genres.  In fact, he's done so much work, he could almost be compared to Jess Franco with nearly 250 credits to his name...! Join us as we pick out a number of favorites and a few odd surprises along the way, as we touch on everything from arthouse to war and comedy to horror, only here on Weird Scenes! Week 79: Donald Pleasance: Dawn of the Deviant https://weirdscenes1.wordpress.com/https://www.facebook.com/WeirdScenes1https://twitter.com/WeirdScenes1 (@weirdscenes1)https://thirdeyecinema.podbean.com/ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/third-eye-cinema-weird-scenes-inside-the-goldmine-podcast/id553402044 https:// (open.spotify.com) /show/4s8QkoE6PnAfh65C5on5ZS?nd=1 https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/09456286-8956-4b80-a158-f750f525f246/Third-Eye-Cinema-Weird-Scenes-Inside-the-Goldmine-podcast

Holy Orange Goblins and Commie Turtles, Batman, this year of horrors JUST. WON'T. DIE.   wait, wha?  It's a new year, you say?  Sure enough, it's the eve of Kiss Our Collective Ass Day to the Madman Formerly Known as...well, 45.  We haven't had an actual President since 2016... But even now, at the dawn of a hard fought, embittered struggle towards new hope, the uncertainty remains.  Can it really be over, especially with the treasonous "Freedom" Caucus clowns and their ilk, fresh off their Capitol Recon Tours for Murder Inclined Terrorists, still in office and pretending irrational lies are truth?  Whether out of craven self interest, cowardly fear or a Machiavellian pursuit of power at any price or cost to self worth, personal dignity or any trace of basic human respectability, the unacceptable has been tacitly ignored, allowed the unspoken approval of failing to remove each and every one from office immediately to face due prosecution.    And their mad, self absorbed, regularly self-fouling leader (cue another wet loud one, crinkled noses and expressions of disgust and if we're all particularly unlucky, a big brown skidmark for all to see) still plays games, plotting and scheming even to the last minutes of his removal.   The former Loser of the Free World, who sat back, lied and regularly golfed his way into a far longer and deadlier plague than this nation ever need have seen, who at all turns screwed the average American in favor of his own personal circle of sycophants, paid cronies and sharpsters trying to take advantage of him in return, wants a Stalinesque tribute of military parade, all  jet fighters and missiles and tanks escorting him on his way, leaving the first legitimate President we've had in years to an already Covid-diminished, now hunkered down under massive military protection.  Ain't he cute?   And you wonder why we're all so stressed out, on edge, ready to snap.  Some turds just refuse to be flushed. Well, as that damn two part Donald Pleasance show enters the final stages of editing (we talk about it), here we rejoin the listener with another impromptu get together, talking the inevitable state of the union, the podcast, what we've been watching and listening to and much, much more. Dig in, join us in venting for a bit, then decompress with some good laughs and banter about this, that and the other... https://weirdscenes1.wordpress.com/https://www.facebook.com/WeirdScenes1https://twitter.com/WeirdScenes1 (@weirdscenes1)https://thirdeyecinema.podbean.com/ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/third-eye-cinema-weird-scenes-inside-the-goldmine-podcast/id553402044 https://open.spotify.com/show/4s8QkoE6PnAfh65C5on5ZS?nd=1 https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/09456286-8956-4b80-a158-f750f525f246/Third-Eye-Cinema-Weird-Scenes-Inside-the-Goldmine-podcast

Ah, Corona, the gift that keeps on giving.  The more it hangs around, the more we all get tired of social distancing and staying cooped up in our individual caves...and the more casual we get, the more we're persuaded to pretend we can all go back to "business as usual", the more it spreads.  Most amusingly, straight to the White House who trumpets how much it's "beaten".  After not lifting a finger to help.  After actively denying it even exists, and thereby directly causing an ongoing nationwide spread.  And now actively bringing this fruitcake of a regifting from the hothouse superspreader base of this joke of a presidency straight back to his supporters at mass rallies, standing arm in arm with uncovered faces.   What a stable genius!After a longer than intended hiatus, we've managed to get you the edit of that just-pre pandemic Burt Reynolds show out to you...and two off the cuff Coronavirus Week Zero Updates, just to let the fans in on what we've been into and up to, and that we're still here for ya, and eventually shall return to a more normal release schedule (well, for us...)We've just recorded a two part, two week tribute to Donald Pleasance, that will doubtless take some time to get edited and out to you - figure on at least the first part arriving sometime in November.  But in the meantime, here is the edit of a de facto third Coronavirus Update show, which was just our usual bonus content intro/outro chat, amplified to nearly an hour just because, well, we hadn't been in touch since the second update was recorded!Cheers, hang in there, and by all means, vote, and vote straight up and down ticket Team Blue. There's enough generational damage and dismantling of the Grand Experiment our Founding Fathers established already...it's been one doozy of a four year season in hell.  End it.  Vote these bastards and enablers out, to a one.Enjoy, and stay tuned for the Donald Pleasance two parter! Weird Scenes Week Zero Plus Three Coronavirus Update: The Dump Trump Special https://weirdscenes1.wordpress.com/https://www.facebook.com/WeirdScenes1https://twitter.com/WeirdScenes1 (@weirdscenes1)https://thirdeyecinema.podbean.com/https://open.spotify.com/show/4s8QkoE6PnAfh65C5on5ZShttps://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/third-eye-cinema-weird-scenes-inside-the-goldmine-podcast/id553402044

Like him or not, Burt Reynolds left a formative decade in cowboy films and television to become one of the biggest box office draws (and objects of female lust) of the 70’s. With a nearly unbroken string of box office smashes, he showed up in everything from Woody Allen and Mel Brooks comedies to sports melodrama, from movies built entirely around his down home good ol’ boy charm, often in connection with his good friend and former stunt double cum director Hal Needham (White Lightning, Gator, Smokey and the Bandit) to weird ‘stretch’ things like the musical At Long Last Love or Robert Aldrich’s odd neo-noir Hustle (with arthouse fave Catherine Deneuve, no less!) Kicking off the 80’s still in full swing, he kept on with Smokey and the Bandit and Cannonball Run films and similar fare like Stroker Ace, Hooper and the film adaptation of Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (with Dolly Parton) before making yet another career switch into a sort of grumpy old man Dirty Harry/Paul Kersey lite in films like Sharky’s Machine, Stick, Heat, Malone and Physical Evidence, finally settling into sporadic television cameos thereafter. And we didn’t even mention his naked centerfold and very public affair with aging swing chanteuse cum talk show host Dinah Shore… Join us tonight as we discuss the true force of nature, who wiped a grand swathe across the cinematic landscape of two whole decades(!) – the one, the only, Burt Reynolds. Week 78: A wink and a smile with a fist to follow: the Good Ol' Southern Charm of Burt Reynolds https://weirdscenes1.wordpress.com/https://www.facebook.com/WeirdScenes1https://twitter.com/WeirdScenes1 (@weirdscenes1)https://thirdeyecinema.podbean.com/https://open.spotify.com/show/4s8QkoE6PnAfh65C5on5ZShttps://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/third-eye-cinema-weird-scenes-inside-the-goldmine-podcast/id553402044

Geez, a month and a half and still no word from the Weird Scenes front? Well, you know us, we can't just leave our faithful fans and fearless followers hanging like that! So driving at high speed on ice and flying by the seat of our pants without a harness, here we come again, without even the slightest of background notes, structure or plan, pulling an old school At Eye Level style podcast, 100% improv! Of course, we'll be talking the State of the (Dis)Union and the lay of the land as we see, live and experience it, what our latest music obsessions are, and what we've been up to in (more or less) solitary confinement, as you wait with baited breath for that damn Burt Reynolds show (it's coming, Jimmy!  The Bus is Coming!) Join us for an ongoing apocalypse chat, when we're all yearning for that cool postapocalyptic world all those cheesy 80's SF films from Italy and late night cable promised us...hell, I'd settle for the zombie apocalypse!  Head shot, motherfucker! Time to pull out the axe... ...oh, well.  I guess we'll have to settle for wearing uncomfortable masks and not being able to hang with your friends or shop like a normal human being.  Kinda lame for an apocalypse, ain't it? Week Zero Plus One: Yet another missive from behind enemy lines from the battle hardened mercenary elite at Weird Scenes inside the Goldmine! https://weirdscenes1.wordpress.com/https://www.facebook.com/WeirdScenes1https://twitter.com/WeirdScenes1 (@weirdscenes1)https://thirdeyecinema.podbean.com/https://open.spotify.com/show/4s8QkoE6PnAfh65C5on5ZShttps://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/third-eye-cinema-weird-scenes-inside-the-goldmine-podcast/id553402044

And now for something completely different... With the ever worsening community spread and resulting hibernation lockdown were all facing globally, business as usual is proving to be decidedly unusual...if not pretty much impossible.   Don't worry, though, we're not going anywhere...and in the meantime, we've pulled together this missive from the bunker, a transmission from our underground cavern fortress at the end of the world as we knew it.  And because it's us, you know we can't take all of this shit too seriously: or as Valeria said to Conan, "two fools who laugh at death." After a chat about our respective experiences in the year of cholera...er, corona, we get into the status on our Season 10 opener, what we've been viewing and immersing ourselves in musically during the siege, and chat about recent podcast appearances and what's been going on over at Third Eye...with plenty of laughs and nuggets of wisdom scattered throughout like jewels in Smaug's mountain cavern. We'll leave the last word to Sandahl Bergman, in her defining film role:"Do you know what horrors await within?  Then you go first!" Week Zero: Report from the survivalists at Weird Scenes inside the Goldmine! https://weirdscenes1.wordpress.com/https://www.facebook.com/WeirdScenes1https://twitter.com/WeirdScenes1 (@weirdscenes1)https://thirdeyecinema.podbean.com/ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/third-eye-cinema-weird-scenes-inside-the-goldmine-podcast/id553402044

Back at the dawn of the millenium, still riding high and flush with the runaway success of Buffy (and to a lesser extent, its weird spinoff Angel) and not long before his foray into comics as writer of one of the bigger X-Men titles, Joss Whedon struck gold of a sort with perhaps the most viral and notable of his fan favorites: Firefly. While having a decidedly troubled history with the network (who aired episodes out of order and with long breaks, before taking the series off air without even showing all the material filmed (!), Whedon's quirky take on a self-made 'family' of misfits in a postapocalyptic feeling sci-fi/western struck all the right notes, from excellent casting to strong writing and memorable performances, even managing to pull in a few notable cult guest stars during its brief run. With a vocal fanbase chomping at the bit for the series' return and strong sales of the DVD releases, Whedon was able to convince an unrelated major studio to fund what should have brought proper closure to the abbreviated TV series and its many hanging plotlines...but which failed miserably at that very task, pulling off into some very odd, dark directions and suffering from worse looking CG than the series that preceded it. Some of the cast would continue on in Whedon's other works (from a still ongoing Buffy and Angel to Dr. Horrible) and either hail from or move on to sporadic work in other cult series (The Guild, Doom Patrol, Alias, Cleopatra 2025, V, Stargate Atlantis, Sarah Connor Chronicles, The Magicians, Gotham). One would even memorably grace a major comic book film (Deadpool). But most would wind up in the comparative oblivion of cartoon voice over work, leaving this one series as their collective high point of creativity and notability. So all you Browncoats, dust off your battle jackets and join us, as we delve as deeply as we dare into the dusty, lawless frontiers of the outer galaxy, with the fractious family...er, crew of the Firefly class Sirenity, only here on Weird Scenes! Week 77: Calling All Browncoats!   https://weirdscenes1.wordpress.com/https://www.facebook.com/WeirdScenes1https://twitter.com/WeirdScenes1 (@weirdscenes1)https://thirdeyecinema.podbean.com/ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/third-eye-cinema-weird-scenes-inside-the-goldmine-podcast/id553402044

This Sunday, February 9, join us for Week 94 of Third Eye Cinema with the living legend herself, Doro Pesch! Surviving a near fatal bout with illness, she decided at the ripe old age of 16 that she would devote her remaining years to music...a choice she never relented on, even in the darkest days of grunge. Releasing four classic albums with the band Warlock and steering that ship through label shifts, lineup changes and demands to lighten the sound and image to a more 'pop' 'radio friendly' approach, she kept things rolling through an enforced band name change, the infamously heavy producer's hand of none other than Gene Simmons and a decade or more where her albums were both unreleased and unavailable here in the States, still releasing quality records and touring Europe. As a result, she weathered the storms that took down nearly an entire genre of bands and careers, to find herself a much sought after guest vocalist and noted as an inspiration to hard rock and metal frontwomen across many subgenres and around the globe, garnering much acclaim and still working a busy recording and touring schedule after all these years! So join us as we squeeze as much friendly chat and amusing anecdotes as we can out of her busy schedule, when we welcome the loveliest of valkyries and most diehard of metallers, the inimitable Doro Pesch of Warlock and Doro, only here on Third Eye Cinema! Week 94 (Sun. Feb. 9) - Doro Pesch of Warlock and Doro http://www.facebook.com/ThirdEyeCinemahttps://thirdeyecinema.wordpress.com/Twitter: @thirdeyecinemahttps://thirdeyecinema.podbean.com/ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/third-eye-cinema-weird-scenes-inside-the-goldmine-podcast/id553402044

One of the most recognizable names in blaxploitation, and we’re not even talking about one of the guys. Starting off as a receptionist and switchboard operator, she was quickly snapped up to feature roles in five of the earliest Women in Prison films for Roger Corman, where she impressed enough in a series of soundalike roles to work her way into commanding full marquee value and headliner status all her own, just inside of 3 years! One of the first and certainly the most important female action stars, this former army brat became the queen of blaxploitation throughout the 1970’s, shifting into stranger waters with the changing decade – Disney, socially minded policier and even costarring in the first Stephen Seagal film, before taking a few roles for a faltering John Carpenter, doing a Bill & Ted film and winding up in one of the worst Eddie Murphy vehicles ever committed to celluloid…and starring in a Quentin Tarantino homage to her earlier work that revitalized her cachet to a new generation. Join us as we talk the First Lady of Blaxploitation, the one and only Pam Grier, here on Weird Scenes! Week 76: Coffy is the Colour - the Films of Pam Grier https://weirdscenes1.wordpress.com/https://www.facebook.com/WeirdScenes1https://twitter.com/WeirdScenes1 (@weirdscenes1)https://thirdeyecinema.podbean.com/ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/third-eye-cinema-weird-scenes-inside-the-goldmine-podcast/id553402044

Sunday, February 2, join us for Week 92 as Third Eye Cinema...goes straight into Moving Towards Light territory. Tonight, we’re doing something very different. This is not your typical Third Eye interview, so be warned... We'll be holding one of our patented informal fireside chats with a musician, founder and former distro owner of one of black metal's most solid and trustworthy labels, Saturnal Records. Breaking out first in a surprisingly deeper reaching than usual act in the overcrowded and quite honestly, poseur filled realm of black metal, he eventually found himself leaving the label behind and putting his main act on the back burner, channeling his energies more into the direction of a highly psychoactive and quirky dance industrial act who both simplify and sweeten the message while still retaining the same points, aims and lyrical focus of his earlier band. We'll be talking all of that, but that's just a precursor to some much deeper (and darker) subject matter of a decidedly esoteric bent. No, this is not one for the typical Third Eye listener. Those who will, join us as we speak with a certain Frater Zetekh, also known as King Aleister Satan...the one and only Aleister "Santtu" Kainulainen. Week 93 (Sun. Feb. 1) – Third Eye Special with Aleister "Santtu" Kainulainen of Saturnian Mist and King Satan http://www.facebook.com/ThirdEyeCinemahttps://thirdeyecinema.wordpress.com/Twitter: @thirdeyecinemahttps://thirdeyecinema.podbean.com/ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/third-eye-cinema-weird-scenes-inside-the-goldmine-podcast/id553402044

With a colorful background and love of fast living, his real life exploits put to shame anything seen in his films. A noted motocross aficionado and racecar driver, Steve McQueen was born of Scotch roots in the throes of the Great Depression to a flying circus stunt flyer who abandoned him at an early age. Difficult family relations led to a hardscrabble youth as a real life juvenile delinquent and gangbanger, leaving him living on the streets at one point before being consigned to juvenile hall. He later joined the merchant marine, went AWOL, worked in a whorehouse, on an oil rig, as a carnival barker and roustabout, joined the Marines, went AWOL again, did time in the brig…no question, he earned his reputation as a tough guy. Turning to acting relatively late in life, he was already approaching the ripe old age of 30 by the time he landed his first notable role...as a teenager, mind...in a low budget sci fi horror film that would become a classic of the genre, The Blob. With a lucky break in a Sinatra picture not far behind, McQueen proceeded to appear in a number of accepted classics: The Magnificent Seven. The Great Escape. The Thomas Crown Affair. Bullitt. But a run of questionable choices and roles in less successful films left his last decade on much shakier ground, despite being the highest paid actor of his day, and much feted on television and even in commercial advertising...until one of his earlier decisions came back in the form of a terminal disease that took him from us at the relatively young age of only 50. Join us tonight as we talk the highs and lows, triumphs and struggles of a man still put forth as a tough guy's tough guy, the inimitable Steve McQueen! Week 75: The Quiet Cool of Steve McQueen https://weirdscenes1.wordpress.com/https://www.facebook.com/WeirdScenes1https://twitter.com/WeirdScenes1 (@weirdscenes1)https://thirdeyecinema.podbean.com/ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/third-eye-cinema-weird-scenes-inside-the-goldmine-podcast/id553402044

Born right here in NYC at the very cusp of the Fin de Siecle, Christmas Day 1899, Humphrey DeForest Bogart came from a moneyed family as the scion of an early feminist suffragette. Intended to be brought up in "proper society", he blew his shot at Yale by tossing the headmaster into a local pond - his penchant for two fisted belligerence and a taste for strong, even "difficult" women present from an early age. "I wouldn't give you two cents for a dame without a temper," he once said... Joining the Navy at the height of the Great War, he came back from his experience "a liberal who hated pretensions, phonies, and snobs, defying both conventional behavior and authority"...very much a man after my own heart. Breaking into film in a recurring, even typecast role as a gangster of one sort or another (supposedly due to a resemblance to folk hero gangster John Dillinger, but I'm not seeing it), he worked that niche for 6 years and dozens of films before landing the role that made him a star: Sam Spade in John Huston's The Maltese Falcon. Following up with the much beloved Casablanca, it was his films with a certain someone that really cemented his position as a true Hollywood icon: To Have and Have Not. The Big Sleep. Dark Passage. Key Largo. It took him three bad marriages (the last of whom burned down their house, went after him with a knife and slit her own wrists several times) before he finally met his match in the sultry Lauren Bacall, who was both his longest and final spouse...and less than half his age. They met on the set of To Have and Have Not, and the heat carried offscreen, with the two remaining a couple through his death 12 years on. Always open about his issues with directors, actors and producers so often left on a pedestal, he both stood up rather openly against McCarthy's blacklist that was hitting so many in Hollywood at the time and even started his own production company (Santana productions), the working outside the system nature of which likely occasioned his run of far lesser (if occasionally much feted) final films, of which In A Lonely Place is easily the strongest contender. Further the man who coined the term "the Rat Pack" and dubbed the "PR director" of its earliest iteration (which included Bogie, Bacall, Sinatra and Judy Garland and her husband, among others), join us as we talk one of the true legends of the studio era, the inimitable Humphrey Bogart! Week 74: We’ll Always Have Paris – the films of Humphrey Bogart https://weirdscenes1.wordpress.com/https://www.facebook.com/WeirdScenes1https://twitter.com/WeirdScenes1 (@weirdscenes1)https://thirdeyecinema.podbean.com/ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/third-eye-cinema-weird-scenes-inside-the-goldmine-podcast/id553402044  

Born in Brooklyn, the former Carmine Orrico started out as an old school studio contract player, starring in healthily budgeted but forgettable films alongside the likes of Mamie Van Doren, Esther Williams, Sal Mineo, Fay Wray, Jimmy Stewart, Fabian and Sandra Dee as a succession of JDs, teen idols and romantic interests, before carving out something of a niche in film and television westerns. But it was when he first ventured out to Europe that his filmography got interesting, working with the likes of Mario Bava and in a pair of notable SF films in the UK and for Sam Arkoff, and with the dawn of a new decade, an unforgettable leading role in the classic Bruce Lee film Enter the Dragon. With a string of Italian poliziotteschi, a pair of Gene Roddenberry pilots and a succession of oddball efforts like Joe Don Baker's much lampooned Mitchell, Claudia Jennings hicksploiter Moonshine County Express and the delirious Mexican eco horror The Bees, Saxon moved deftly through cop films, blaxploitation, Filipino and Italian horror, Corman sci fi and a number of slasher films throughout the 70's and 80's, lending his presence to dozens of cult films (and nearly as many television appearances!) across genre and covering major swathes of global filmmaking! Join us as we discuss the slick to suave but always likeable genre standby John Saxon! Week 73: Cops, mobsters, heroes, monsters, cowpokes and kung fu - the wild career of John Saxon https://weirdscenes1.wordpress.com/https://www.facebook.com/WeirdScenes1https://twitter.com/WeirdScenes1 (@weirdscenes1)https://thirdeyecinema.podbean.com/ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/third-eye-cinema-weird-scenes-inside-the-goldmine-podcast/id553402044

Born in, of all places Harlem and raised in the Bronx, forced to leave an already broken home when he made the choice to pursue acting, Al Pacino was born tough and lived it as well (being known as a troublemaker and fighter in school) He actually won the “triple crown” in getting not only an Oscar, but an Emmy and a Tony for work across film, television and stage…which is a fairly rare achievement, to say the least. He did study under Strasberg and the hated Method, but he graduated to that after honing his craft at another New York based theatrical school, which may account for his rising above the usual mumblypeg and borderline schizophrenic “I AM the devil” absurdities you see in folks like Brando, De Niro or Pitt…and which took down more fragile egos like Dean and Monroe. Impressing Francis Ford Copolla enough to get cast in what wound up being three Godfather films in the pivotal role of Michael Corleone (perhaps appropriate, as his family hailed from that city in Italy), Pacino wound up starring in several films that were touchpoints of a generation: Serpico. Dog Day Afternoon. And Justice For All…all of which featured him as a sort of counterculture antihero, standing up to a corrupt system at great personal cost. Alternating his later career between various mob film roles trading on his Godfather cachet and more interesting oddities like Cruising, Sea of Love and even the much beloved Scent of a Woman, join us as we talk one of the greatest, most intense yet nuanced actors of our time, the one and only Al Pacino! Week 72: An Actor's Actor - Al Pacino   https://weirdscenes1.wordpress.com/https://www.facebook.com/WeirdScenes1https://twitter.com/WeirdScenes1 (@weirdscenes1)https://thirdeyecinema.podbean.com/ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/third-eye-cinema-weird-scenes-inside-the-goldmine-podcast/id553402044