Podcast appearances and mentions of Ben Cross

It's one simple question ... one really difficult answer, WHO'S YOUR GOAT? Jacob tells us his, and tells us why.With thanks to the Legends @betr - The fastest & easiest betting app in Australia!

This edition of 101 Dimensions (curated by me) features nearly 2 hours of electronic/ambient progressive music from Johan Agebjörn, David Arkenstone, Yak, Ash Ra Tempel, and Ben Cross!

What is more 90's than Pierce Brosnan and Ron Silver? Well, a lot of things, but Live Wire is definitely one 90's film that sees pre-Bond as a bomb tech in an unnecessary and ridiculous plot!DISCLAIMER: Language and Spoilers!!LIVE WIREdir. Christian Duguaystarring: Pierce Brosnan; Ron Silver; Ben Cross

George took over the start of the episode to tell everyone about his charity walk again and to give an update of the total raised which is £511 thank you to everyone who has donated so far it's so kind of you, the link is on Marc's profile. Todays guest was Ben who has been flying the flag for British flowers for 10 years with over 650 talks throughout the UK. Highlights from the episode ⬇️

Steve & Izzy finish a random May, where guests (or hosts) pick their movies, as they are joined by power couple Hanae & Jayson of Kobo Studios to discuss 1992's "Live Wire" starring Pierce Brosnan, Jill Eilbacher, Ben Cross, Ron Silver, Philip Baker Hall & more!!! What is with the accents? Is this potentially the worst marriage in cinematic history? Need some good recipes for bombs? Is Pierce a great actor?!? Let's find out!!! So kick back, grab a few brews, blast a clown, and enjoy!!! This episode is proudly sponsored by Untidy Venus, your one-stop shop for incredible art & gift ideas at UntidyVenus.Etsy.com and be sure to follow her on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram & Patreon at @UntidyVenus for all of her awesomeness!!! Try it today!!! Twitter - www.twitter.com/eilfmovies Facebook - www.facebook.com/eilfmovies Etsy - www.untidyvenus.etsy.com TeePublic - www.teepublic.com/user/untidyvenus Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

... a 1 on 1 interview like you have never heard before! #UNFILTERED

... a 1 on 1 interview like you have never heard before! #UNFILTERED

Star Trek (2009): Chris Pine, Zachery Quinto, Bruce Greenwood, John Cho, Ben Cross, Simon Pegg, Winonan Ryder, Zoe Saldana, Karl Urban, Anton Yelchin, Eric Bana, Leonard Nimoy Music: February (mumblemix) this track is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commerical 3.0 Unported License.   https://blocsonic.com/releases/track/bscomp0007-disc-1-6-calendar-girl-february-mumblemix http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/   Podcast cover art by Rodney Holmes with Vecteezy. Michael Combs: Website   Heroes of Science Fiction and Fantasy covers heroes of movies, television, comics, and books, interviews, and commentary. Sci-Fi Talk. doc@heroesofsciencefictionandfantasy.com. Text 510-610-8944. www.heroesofsciencefictionandfantasy.com  

It's Die Hard in a plane (with very few passengers)! This week, Phil and Liam are experiencing TURBULENCE, the 1997 action-thriller starring Ray Liotta, Lauren Holly, Hector Elizondo, Ben Cross, Brendan Gleeson, Rachel Ticotin…and a mystery Die Hard cast member!On Christmas Eve, convicted serial killer Ryan Weaver (Ray Liotta) is being transported across the country on an almost empty 747, with another prisoner and a group of federal marshals. Once airborne, Weaver escapes and wreaks havoc on board with the cops, passengers and the flight crew. When his actions result in the death of both pilots, it becomes up to lone Flight Attendant Teri Halloran (Lauren Holly) to somehow defeat Weaver and land the plane safely before it crashes!There's Die Hard (and Die Hard 2) DNA everywhere in this Xmas-set skybound thrill-ride, giving the boys plenty to examine in the comparison section. They also discuss the life and career of the film's late star Ray Liotta, listing their favorite performances among his stellar filmography. They talk in detail about the film's female cast - notably its leading lady Lauren Holly, and supporting performers Rachel Ticotin and Catherine Hicks – amid the wider context of the movie's provocative sexual politics. The boys then fly through the ‘Die Hard Oscars' and stick the landing with a dastardly edition of the ‘Double Jeopardy' trivia quiz! TURBULENCE trailer:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29nriO8ux0Q At the time of release, TURBULENCE is available to rent or buy on Prime Video, YouTube, Apple/iTunes, Fandango, and all the usual platforms! Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Although its run was short-lived, NBC's 1991 Dark Shadows revival series left indelible fang marks upon its fans. A beautifully produced prime-time series helmed by Dan Curtis himself, the '91 DS featured the likes of Ben Cross, Joanna Going, Barbara Steele, Jean Simmons, Roy Thinnes, Lysette Anthony, Adrian Paul, and a young Joseph Gordon-Levitt, among many others. While the series generated much excitement among the fanbase and debuted to great success, it was unceremoniously canceled after only twelve episodes. Two of the show's diehard fans, Dominique Lamssies and Steven Stark, who first became DS fans by way of the 1991 series, visit the podcast to help examine the show's characters and plotlines. Other topics include: '91 series merchandise, music, costumes, Collinwood, home video releases, turtleneck sweaters, and more! Download or listen to the AUDIO version below. Watch the VIDEO version on YouTube. Be sure to subscribe to Terror at Collinwood FREE at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, IHeartRadio, or wherever you get your podcasts. Be sure to subscribe, like, and comment on the video version of the podcast at the official Terror at Collinwood YouTube channel. Help support the podcast by donating at Buy Me a Coffin…er….Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/terroratcollinwood House of Silent Graves on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61550939139934 House of Silent Graves on Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/houseofsilentgraves/ Dominique's University of the Bizarre Blog: https://theuniversityofthebizarre.wordpress.com/ Steven's article on the 1991 DS: https://stevencharles.substack.com/p/dark-shadows-1991-version-now-on?r=2xgrxj&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true Between the Shadows podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArK_lf7cyzA&t=1410s Mysterious Adventures Tours – Dark Shadows 2025 tour info: https://mysteriousadventurestours.com/tour-item/dark-shadows-supernatural-tour/ Collinsport Historical Society article on lost DS comic issue cover: http://www.collinsporthistoricalsociety.com/2015/09/lost-dark-shadows-comic-promised-return.html Surfing the Shadows surf rock cover of Bob Cobert's Dark Shadows theme by Johnny D & The Moonlighters: https://music.apple.com/us/artist/johnny-d-the-moonlighters/1187748534 TaC Logos by Eric MarshallTaC ending music by Rebecca Paiva

We first interviewed Ben Cross five years ago, when he was the Head of Functional Genomics at Horizon Discovery, and we're delighted to welcome him back to the podcast as CTO of PhoreMost, an innovative target discovery company focused on drugging the undruggable. Ben caught us up on what he's learned over the last five years, including why failing fast isn't a viable strategy in drug discovery, and introduced us to PhoreMost's brand new molecular glue platform, GlueSeeker.

À quelques heures du palmarès, nous revenons sur les temps forts du 77ème festival de Cannes avec quatre journalistes de la presse internationale : Laurentine Assiga (présidente du réseau des journalistes culturels du Cameroun et qui écrit dans Nyanga), Peter Debruge (Chief film critic dans le magazine professionnel Variety), Ben Cross (correspondant parisien notamment de Variety et Indiewire) et Patrick Straumann (correspondant parisien des journaux suisses 21 et Neue Zürcher Zeitung). Qui succèdera à Justine Triet (récompensée l'an dernier (2023) pour Anatomie d'une chute) pour aller chercher sur scène la Palme d'or ?À l'issue de douze jours de festival, plusieurs des 22 longs métrages en compétition peuvent prétendre au palmarès : Les graines du figuier sauvage de l'Iranien Mohammad Rasoulof, Emilia Perez de Jacques Audiard, Anora de Sean Baker, Limonov de Kirill Serebrennikov.Le festin cannois touche à sa fin.Les jurés réunis autour de leur présidente, la réalisatrice américaine Greta Gerwig (la réalisatrice de Barbie) ont achevé leurs délibérations. Nous revenons avec quatre journalistes de la presse internationale sur les temps forts de cette 77ème édition, leurs coups de cœur ou leurs déceptions.Musiques : Modern love par Zaho de Sagazan, Take that par Greatest Day ft. Calum Scott (Robin Schult Rework), El Camino par Adios Amores.

Ben Cross teaching on 1 Corinthians 12:1-11. Below are discussion questions from his teaching: Who is someone at your table who you've seen use the way God made them for the good of other people?  What is an area where you feel spiritually insecure? How can your group help you move to confidence? How do you think you are spiritually gifted? What is at least one way in the next week that you can use or develop that gift for the good of others?

A generation defining film, much like The Lord of the Rings Trilogy was 20+ years ago.     0:08:15 - Box Office and upcoming releases. 0:19:00 *** What's Streaming  *** NETFLIX FIRST KNIGHT, Dir. Jerry Zucker – Richard Gere, Sean Connery, Ralph Ineson, Julia Ormond, Ben Cross, Liam Cunningham, 1995. THE IMMITATION GAME, Dir. Morten Tyldum – Benedict Cumberbatch, Keira Knightly, Matthew Goode, Rory Kinnear, Charles Dance, Mark Strong, 2014. EVERYTHING, EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE, Dir. Daniel Kwan / Daniel Scheinert – Michelle Yeoh, Jamie Lee Curtis, James Hong, 2022. 0:26:45 - Trailers:  5LBS OF PRESSURE – Luke Evans, Rory Culkin, Alex Pettyfer, Feature BLOOD FOR DUST – Kit Harrington, Stephen Dorff, Josh Lucas, Ethan Suplee, Feature. DADDIO – Dakota Johnson, Sean Penn, Feature.   0:34:15 - DUNE: PART TWO, Dir. Denis Villeneuve ( Grayson 9 / Roger 10 / Chris 10 )   Hosted, produced and mixed by Grayson Maxwell and Roger Stillion.  Music by Chad Wall. Quality Assurance by Anthony Emmett. Visit the new Youtube channel, "For the Love of Cinema" to follow and support our short video discussions.  Roger wears aviators!  Please give a like and subscribe if you enjoy it.   Follow the show on Twitter @lovecinemapod and check out the Facebook page for updates.  Rate, subscribe and leave a comment or two.  Every Little bit helps.  Send us an email to fortheloveofcinemapodcast@gmail.com

When people speak about tough, hard players in the NRL not many can go past Ben Cross. Crossy played for Canberra Raiders, Melbourne Storm and the Newcastle Knights in the NRL before moving over to the SuperLeague. Don't let me tell you however, hear it from the man himself in this special interview with a legend of the game and all round nice guy. You won't want to miss this chat with the former NSW front rower. Listen now and enjoy. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/josiah-alchin/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/josiah-alchin/support

“If it's Exorcist: The Beginning… let's get some background on Pazuzu! What's he up to? What was his deal?” - Steve  On this episode, the 2023 Halloween Spooktacular continues with a convo about the stunningly terrible prequel Exorcist: The Beginning! How bad are all these CGI landscapes? Why did they think an Exorcist film needed so many extreme gore-hound moments? Was that side-boob necessary? And really, Morgan Creek should have let Schrader finish his film with an appropriate budget and called it a day! PLUS: Your ears are not ready for the “Tubular Bells” knock-off at the end…  Exorcist: The Beginning stars Stellan Skarsgård, Izabella Scorpio, James D'Arcy, Remy Sweeney, Julian Wadham, Andrew French, Ralph Brown, Ben Cross, Alan Ford, Eddie Osei, and David Bradley as Father Gionetti; directed by Renny Harlin. Want more WHM? Join our Patreon fam today and instantly unlock hours and hours of exclusive bonus content, including Ad-Free WHM Prime at the $8 level and up! Be sure to get in early and get your tickets for the WHM Holiday Extravaganza where we're talking The Santa Clause! Check out the WHM Merch Store featuring new Polish Decoy, ‘Jack Kirby', and Forrest the Universal Soldier designs! Today's episode is brought to you in part by Nutrisense! To start decoding your body's messages and pave the way for a healthier life, visit  NUTRISENSE DOT COM SLASH WHM and get $30 off your first month and one month of board certified nutritionist support as well. When they ask how you learned about Nutrisense make sure to tell them it was the We Hate Movies podcast!

Leading an armed crowd, Judas approaches Jesus and greets him with a kiss. Chaos ensues as Jesus is forcibly arrested and Peter cuts off a man's ear. Instead of matching the violence of the moment, Jesus responds with rational words. In a moment of tremendous betrayal, we see Jesus respond in kindness.

In this episode hear how Ben Cross is delivering British grown Alstroemeria all year round for the public and businesses. This family business has been running since 1936 and Ben tells us all about how British flowers rock! Also get your gardening and grow your own tips from regular contributor @pond_dipper. Afterwards @mr_plantgeek and @ellenmarygardening gossip about outside broadcasts, middle age and lots more!   Series 12 of The Plant Based Podcast is sponsored by People Plants Wellbeing where you can find your magic through the power of plants and nature. Relax at a nature immersive retreat, wellness day, forest bathing walk or contact the studio about creating a tailored team based day for your work colleagues wellbeing. We also have an exclusive discount code for our podcast listeners which can be used for all People Plants Wellbeing services.    Take 10% off all services, treatments and retreats with code PBPSERIES12 via the website or when you contact the team to book. Next wellness days are coming up soon…find out more and book your place at peopleplantswellbeing.com or on instagram @peopleplantswellbeing.   Offer code valid until the end of series 12. *terms and conditions may apply.

On Episode 85, we have a very special guest who probably needs no introduction... Ben Cross, CEO and Founder of GLOMO!! GLOMO is a consulting firm focused on helping companies in the global mobility industry (relocation, immigration, tax, etc.) grow through talent recruiting, M&A and other consulting services. But Ben is more than just the founder and CEO of GLOMO. Ben is also the host of Love + Relo, a long-running and popular live show that interviews professionals within global mobility on everything from industry trends to policy changes to news updates to technology and more. Ben's journey started at PODS, handling corporate relocation. From there, Ben quickly worked his way up the corporate ladder at several relocation companies and found success quickly. He was also building a brand on LinkedIn at the same time. Ben launched his show, Love + Relo, out of his office while at his last job, and the show absolutely took off. Eventually, he left and launched GLOMO in 2020. So, here's what Ben and I are going to be talking about: Ben's early life and attending college in upstate New York How Ben fell into the relocation industry at PODS and how his career grew over the years What inspired Ben to start Love + Relo, and how the show impacted his life When Ben decided to start GLOMO, how he did it and what GLOMO does today Ben's thoughts on the future of GLOMO and the global mobility industry more broadly And more! So please join us, ask questions and leave comments! #immigration #globalmobility #immigrationlaw #relocation #migration ---- Check out GLOMO here: https://glomo.com/ Connect with Ben here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dbencross/ Digital marketing for immigration & global mobility at GMI Rocket: https://gmirocket.com/ Digitize your LCA posting and PAF process with LaborLess: https://laborless.io/ Connect with Roman Zelichenko on LinkedIn! https://www.linkedin.com/in/romanzelichenko-electronic-lca-posting-public-access-file/

Crítica de CARROS DE FUEGO (1981) por Jaime V. Echagüe película dirigida por Hugh Hudson con Ben Cross, Ian Charleson, Nigel Havers, Cheryl Campbell

Chariots Of Fire is one of the most-respected movies we will ever cover, what with all the critical & financial success, not to mention the Oscar for Best Picture. It's just a shame we didn't care more about this true story. All the religious talk definitely didn't help us connect with the material. Ian Charleson runs blissfully for God (except when he won't) while the Jewish character played by Ben Cross runs his heart out, even though he has to fight against quiet-but-cruel anti-Semitism. Then they and their fellow upper-crust, subdued, white Great Britainers head to Paris for the 1924 Summer Olympics to try to run faster than the (white) Americans et al. It's a pretty simple story handled well by director Hugh Hudson, who never topped himself after this film. We just wish his crowning achievement touched us more. So dash on the beach in slow motion as a famous song plays along while we enlighten you about the acclaimed Chariots Of Fire.   Oh, and for the record, there were only 44 nations competing in the 1924 games while more than 200 countries have been competing in recent years.   To make your voice heard, you can shoot us an email (scoringatthemovies@gmail.com) or hit us with some tweets (@moviefiend51 and @scoringatmovies).

This week, we finish our three part episode on the 1980s distribution company Vestron Pictures. ----more---- The movies discussed on this week's episode are: The Adventures of a Gnome Named Gnorm (1990, Stan Winston) Big Man on Campus (1989, Jeremy Paul Kagan) Dream a Little Dream (1989, Marc Rocco) Earth Girls Are Easy (1989, Julien Temple) Far From Home (1989, Meiert Avis) Paperhouse (1989, Bernard Rose) Parents (1989, Bob Balaban) The Rainbow (1989, Ken Russell) Wonderland (1989, Philip Saville)   TRANSCRIPT From Los Angeles, California, the Entertainment Capital of the World, it's The 80s Movies Podcast. I am your host, Edward Havens. Thank you for listening today.   At the end of the previous episode, Vestron Pictures was starting to experience the turbulence a number of independent distributors faced when they had a successful film too soon out of the gate, and the direction of the company seemingly changes to go chasing more waterfalls instead of sticking to the rivers and the lakes they were used to.   Welcome to Part Three of our miniseries.   As we enter 1989, Vestron is seriously in trouble. More money has gone out then has come back in. It seems that they needed one more hit to keep going for a while longer. But if you were to look at their release schedule for the year, which included a pickup from the recently bankrupt DeLaurentiis Entertainment Group, there wasn't really anything that felt like it could be a Dirty Dancing-like break out, except for maybe the pickup from the recently bankrupt DeLaurentiis Entertainment Group.    But we'll get there in a moment.   Their first film from 1989 is a certifiable cult film if there ever was one, but the problem with this label is that the film tagged as so was not a success upon its initial theatrical release. Bob Balaban, the beloved character actor who had been regularly seen on screen since his memorable debut in Midnight Cowboy twenty years earlier, would make his directorial debut with the black comedy horror film Parents.   Bryan Madorsky stars as Michael Laemle, a ten year old boy living in the California suburbs in the 1950s, who starts to suspect mom and dad, played by Mary Beth Hurt and Randy Quaid, might be cannibals. It's a strange but fun little movie, and even Ken Russell would compare it favorably over David Lynch's Blue Velvet during one contemporary interview, but sadly, it would take far more time for the film to find its audience than Vestron could afford.   Opening in 94 theatres on January 27th, the $3m Parents could not overcome a series of negative reviews from critics, and it would only gross $278k in its first three days. Vestron would not strike any additional prints of the film, and would cycle the ones they did have around the country for several months, but after four months, the film could only attract $870k in box office receipts. But it would become something of a cult hit on video later in the year.   In 1992, British filmmaker Bernard Rose would make his American directing debut with an all-time banger, Candyman. But he wouldn't gotten Candyman if it wasn't for his 1989 film Paperhouse, an inventive story about a young girl whose drawings seem to manifest into reality. British actor Ben Cross from Chariots of Fire and American actress Glenne Headly from Dirty Rotten Scoundrels plays the young girl's parents.   Outside of Gene Siskel, who would give the film a thumbs down on his movie review show with Roger Ebert despite acknowledging Rose's talent as a filmmaker and being fascinated by the first two-thirds of the movie, the critical consensus was extraordinary. But it appears Siskel may have never actually written a review of the film for the Chicago Tribune, as the film still has a 100% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. But the film would only earn $6,700 from its single screen playdate at the Carnegie Hall Cinemas when it opened on February 17th, and the film would get little support from Vestron after that. More single playdates in major cities that added up to a $241k box office tally after fourteen weeks in release.   Marc Rocco's Dream a Little Dream would be the third film in The Two Coreys Cinematic Universe. Corey Feldman plays a high school student who, through one of the strangest plot twists in the whole body switching genre, finds himself switching places with two time Academy Award-winner Jason Robards, playing a professor who is looking for immortality through entering a meditative alpha state. Meredith Salinger and Piper Laurie also find themselves switching bodies as well, while Corey Haim plays the goofball best friend with not a whole lot to do. The supporting cast also includes veteran character actors Harry Dean Stanton and Alex Rocco, the latter who agreed to do the film because it was directed by his son.   When the film opened on March 3rd, it would be Vestron's second widest release, opening on more than 1,000 theatres. But just like the previous year's License to Drive, the pairing of Corey Haim and Corey Feldman did not set the box office on fire, opening in fifth place with $2.57m in ticket sales, compared to the #1 film of the week, the Morgan Freeman drama Lean on Me, which would gross twice as much as Dream a Little Dream while playing in 125 fewer theatres. In its second week, the film would lose 56 theatres and 52% of its opening weekend audience, falling all the way to 13th place with a gross of only $1.25m. By week three, the movie would move to dollar houses, and trudge along for several more months, until it closed in the middle of summer with only $5.55m in the till.   In the late 1970s and early 1980s, writer/director Jeremy Paul Kagan had directed and occasionally written several big ticket movies, including the 1977 Henry Winkler drama Heroes, which also starred Sally Field and, in his first post-Star Wars movie, Harrison Ford, and the 1985 Meredith Salinger/John Cusack adventure film The Journey of Natty Gann. Which makes his Natty Gann follow up, Big Man on Campus, such a head scratcher.   A modern adaptation of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Big Man on Campus was written by Allan Katz, who had been working in television for nearly twenty years writing for and producing shows like All in the Family, Sanford and Son, The Mary Tyler Moore Show and MASH. Katz would also star in the movie as the titular hunchback, even though he had never once acted on any of his shows. But at least he had a good cast supporting him, including Gerrit Graham, Melora Hardin, Jessica Harper, Tom Skerritt, and Cindy Williams.   I can only find one playdate for the film ever, in Los Angeles at the American Cinematheque in March 1989, so while this mostly qualifies as a direct to video release, I feel compelled to at least give it a token mention here.   Have you ever heard of a movie called The Fruit Machine? Of course you haven't, because that's a horrible name for a movie, no matter what it's about. When Vestron acquired this British drama about young gay men who go on the run after they witness a murder, the first thing they did was change the title to Wonderland. Not that Wonderland gives you any more of an idea of what the movie is about than The Fruit Machine. But, whatever.   Today, the movie has two things going for it. One, an early role for Robbie Coltrane, playing a transvestite who operates a nightclub for gay men and transvestites called, you guessed it, The Fruit Machine. Second, the musical score was written by Hans Zimmer, in one of his earliest film jobs. Ironically, Wonderland would be the the third movie scored by Hans Zimmer to be released by Vestron in a four month period, after Burning Secret and Paperhouse.   Wonderland would open at the Quad Cinemas in New York City on April 28th, to poor reviews but a decent $11,500 opening weekend. But the film would not be able to maintain much of an audience, and after five weeks, Wonderland was out of the Quad Cinemas, never to play another theatre in America, with just $50k in the till.   Ken Russell's third and final film in his contract with Vestron was The Rainbow, an adaptation of a 1915 novel by D.H. Lawrence, whose 1920 novel Women in Love had been adapted by Russell in 1969. Glenda Jackson, who had won the Academy Award for her role in Women in Love, here plays the mother of the character she played in the other film. Here, she co-stars with Sammi Davis as Ursala, the younger sister of Jackson's Women in Love character, who finds herself attracted to Anton, a young man in town, as well as her gym teacher Winifred.   As one would expect from Ken Russell, the supporting cast is top notch, including future Eighth Doctor Paul McGann, regular Russell collaborator Christopher Gable, and Blowup star David Hemmings. The film would open at the Paris Theatre in New York City on May 5th, where it would gross a very good $22k, spurred on by great reviews from most of the city's major critics, several of which noted the film to be Russell's best in a number of years. So it would be sad that the film would end up being the lowest grossing of the three films he'd make with Vestron, only earning a total of $444k after three months in mostly single playdates in major markets.   In 1985, Geena Davis and Jeff Goldblum would work together on a forgettable horror comedy film called Transylvania 6-5000, whose name was a pun on a popular 1940 song recorded by Glenn Miller. In 1986, the pair would work together again in David Cronenberg's amazing remake of the cheesy 1950s horror film The Fly. In late 1987, shortly after the pair married, they would work together for a third time, on another comedy, and on a movie that was this time based on an actual song.    Earth Girls Are Easy was the name of a song that appeared on comedian Julie Brown's 1984 EP Goddess in Progress, and was originally developed as a movie at Warner Brothers Studio. The studio would get cold feet when Absolute Beginners, the big British musical directed by music video director Julien Temple, failed big time everywhere in the world except for the UK. Temple was slated to direct Earth Girls Are Easy, and Brown, as the co-writer and co-star of the film, was committed to the filmmaker, even if it meant Warners putting the film into turnaround.   Which they did, in 1986.   It would take nearly a year to get the project back on track, after being rejected by every other major studio and production company in Hollywood, until the French banking giant Credit Lyonnais agree to finance the film, provided they could cut the budget from $14m to $10m, and if the filmmakers could make a distribution deal with the bank's preferred distributor, the then newly-formed DeLaurentiis Entertainment Group.   The film, about a manicurist in Los Angeles who helps three aliens blend into human culture after they accidentally crash land their spaceship into her pool, would begin production in Los Angeles in October 1987. Davis played the manicurist, and Goldblum one of the aliens, alongside Damon Wayans and Jim Carrey, while the remaining cast would include a number of great comedic actors like MASH's Larry Linville, Michael McKean, Rick Overton, and Charles Rocket, as well as Los Angeles media personality Angelyne as basically herself.   While the film was nearing completion in early 1988, the DeLaurentiis Entertainment Group would go out of business, leaving Credit Lyonnais in need of a new distributor for their investment. But after Temple turned in his first cut of the film, Credit Lyonnais would send Temple back into his editing bay, where he and his team would spend nearly another five months  winnowing out various scenes and completely excising a big and expensive musical number based on one of the other songs on Brown's 1984 EP, I Like ‘Em Big and Stupid, because it just didn't work for the film. Additional scenes would be shot, and the budget would end up being $11m.    The film would have its premiere at the Toronto Film Festival in September 1988, and attract attention from a number of distributors including MGM/UA, New World Pictures and Twentieth Century-Fox, but Vestron would end up putting in the winning bid.   The film would originally be set for a February 1989 release, but would get delayed until May 12th. When it finally opened on 317 screens in Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Philly, San Francisco, Toronto and Washington DC, the film would gross $893k, putting in twelfth place for the weekend, but its per screen average would be the fourth best amongst the films in the top twenty. The film would fall one place in its second week,  losing 35% of its opening weekend audience, grossing $577k. The film would slowly hemorrhage theatres and box office until the plug was pulled in mid-July with only $3.9m in tickets sold.   The sole lasting legacy of the film is that Damon Wayans enjoyed working so much with Jim Carrey that when Damon's brother Kenan Ivory Wayans was putting together a new comedy television show together thanks to the success of his movie I'm Gonna Get You Sucka, Damon would get his brother to give Carrey a chance. In Living Color would make Carrey and the Wayans Brothers stars, and would change the course of comedy. So there's that…   In late June, the Lightning Pictures imprint would release their first movie in nearly two years, Far From Home. The film starred the then-fourteen year old Drew Barrymore as a young girl traveling cross country with her father, who get stuck in a small desert town in Nevada on their way to back to Los Angeles, who must deal with some very strange characters in the trailer park they're staying in, as they slowly discover nothing is as it's supposed to be. Matt Frewer, Max Headroom himself, plays the dad, who must protect his daughter while he figures out how to get the hell out of town alive.   Truth be told, the movie sucks, and it's really creepy in how it sexualizes Barrymore, but there's one hell of a great supporting cast doing their best to keep the joint from totally stinking the place up. Richard Masur, Academy Award nominee Susan Tyrell, Anthony Rapp from Adventures in Babysitting, Jennifer Tilly, and beloved character actor Dick Miller. When Vestron opened the film in four theatres in third-tier regions on June 30th, it was little surprise the film got some very bad notices, although one unnamed reviewer for Variety felt the need to note that Barrymore, who again was only fourteen at the time, had “a baby face, dreamy eyes and a playboy model's body.” The film would gross just $3,763 in its first and only weekend in theatres.   But that wasn't even the worst news of the week for Vestron.   On the same day as they opened Far From Home, Vestron had been informed by Security Pacific Bank in Los Angeles that the $100 million line of credit the company had with them was being terminated. 140 of the approximately 300 Vestron staff members, mostly from the Los Angeles office, were let go, including the President of Production, the Senior Vice President of Marketing and Distribution, and the Vice President of Publicity and Promotion. While Vestron Video would continue for a while, in large part thanks to a $15.7m payoff during a dispute over home video ownership rights to the 1986 Best Picture winner Platoon, the theatrical distribution unit was effectively dead. Some movies, including the Fred Savage/Howie Mandel comedy Little Monsters, the Harry Dean Stanton-led comedy Twister, and the Kathryn Bigelow-directed action thriller Blue Steel with Jamie Lee Curtis, would be sold off to other companies, but the titles left behind would see their planned theatrical releases cancelled and eventually be released direct to video.   Thanks to some of the legacy titles in their video catalog, including Dirty Dancing, Vestron would be able to stave off the inevitable, but in January 1991, the company would file for bankruptcy, their final film being the Stan Winston-directed fantasy buddy comedy The Adventures of a Gnome named Gnorm. Filmed in 1988 as Upward, the film featured Anthony Michael Hall as an Los Angeles Police Detective who has to team up with a gnome, a puppet created by Winston, the effects wizard who also directed the film, to solve a murder. For Winston, it was deja vu all over again, as his previous directorial effort, Pumpkinhead, found itself in limbo for a while when its distributor, the DeLaurentiis Entertainment Group, filed for bankruptcy in 1987 before they could release that film.   In bankruptcy court, Live Entertainment, partially owned by 1990s mega movie production company Carolco Pictures, would purchase all of Vestron's assets for $24m. Live used the assets as collateral to secure a line of credit from industry friendly banks, so they could start their own production and distribution company, of which their only moment of note was helping to finance Reservoir Dogs when no one else would.   Eventually, Live Entertainment would be sold off to Bain Capital, a private investment firm co-founded by Mitt Romney, in 1997, and they would rebrand Live as Artisan Entertainment. Artisan today is best known as the little independent distributor of The Blair Witch Project, but they also would enter into an agreement with Marvel Comics to make movies for 15 of their characters, including Ant-Man, Black Panther, Deadpool, Iron Fist, Longshot, Morbius, Mort the Dead Teenager, and the Power Pack.   Artisan would produce two movies based on Marvel characters, Man-Thing and The Punisher, although neither of those films would be released by Artisan. Artisan would declare bankruptcy in 2003, and Marvel would be one of the companies to place a bid for them. Lionsgate would end up becoming the winning bidder for Artisan's assets, which is how the vast majority of Vestron titles are now owned by a company that didn't even exist when Vestron closed shop.   Today, Lionsgate is the owner of the assets of a number of the companies we've spoken about on this podcast in the past, and will be talking about in the future, including Crown International, the DeLaurentiis Entertainment Group, Embassy Pictures, and New World Pictures. And it's also a major reason why so many of the movies we discuss in these episodes looking back at past companies are completely unknown today. As big as Lionsgate is, with nearly $3.6 billion in revenue in 2022, they aren't going to be able to keep up with the chain of ownership for every movies from every company they've purchased, and they're not going to put the money in to the movies that are barely remembered today. The Film Foundation, the non-profit organization co-founded by Woody Allen, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg, which is dedicated to film preservation, estimates the average cost to do a photochemical restoration of a color feature with sound to between $80,000 to $450,000 dollars, not including the cost of a 2k or 4k digital scan. I'm going to have a link in the show notes on our website at The80sMoviePodcast.com to a November 2018 article from the Science History Institute about the process of restoring films. It's not a long read, but it's a fascinating read. I hope you'll check it out.   So there you have it, the end of the line for Vestron Pictures, and many of the movies they helped to make and distribute, most of which you cannot find today in any form.   Thank you for listening.   We'll talk again next week when Episode 105, on the 1985 teen comedy O.C. and Stiggs, directed by Robert Altman, will be discussed.   Remember to visit this episode's page on our website, The80sMoviePodcast.com, for extra materials about the movies we covered this episode.   The 80s Movies Podcast has been researched, written, narrated and edited by Edward Havens for Idiosyncratic Entertainment.   Thank you again.   Good night.

This week, we finish our three part episode on the 1980s distribution company Vestron Pictures. ----more---- The movies discussed on this week's episode are: The Adventures of a Gnome Named Gnorm (1990, Stan Winston) Big Man on Campus (1989, Jeremy Paul Kagan) Dream a Little Dream (1989, Marc Rocco) Earth Girls Are Easy (1989, Julien Temple) Far From Home (1989, Meiert Avis) Paperhouse (1989, Bernard Rose) Parents (1989, Bob Balaban) The Rainbow (1989, Ken Russell) Wonderland (1989, Philip Saville)   TRANSCRIPT From Los Angeles, California, the Entertainment Capital of the World, it's The 80s Movies Podcast. I am your host, Edward Havens. Thank you for listening today.   At the end of the previous episode, Vestron Pictures was starting to experience the turbulence a number of independent distributors faced when they had a successful film too soon out of the gate, and the direction of the company seemingly changes to go chasing more waterfalls instead of sticking to the rivers and the lakes they were used to.   Welcome to Part Three of our miniseries.   As we enter 1989, Vestron is seriously in trouble. More money has gone out then has come back in. It seems that they needed one more hit to keep going for a while longer. But if you were to look at their release schedule for the year, which included a pickup from the recently bankrupt DeLaurentiis Entertainment Group, there wasn't really anything that felt like it could be a Dirty Dancing-like break out, except for maybe the pickup from the recently bankrupt DeLaurentiis Entertainment Group.    But we'll get there in a moment.   Their first film from 1989 is a certifiable cult film if there ever was one, but the problem with this label is that the film tagged as so was not a success upon its initial theatrical release. Bob Balaban, the beloved character actor who had been regularly seen on screen since his memorable debut in Midnight Cowboy twenty years earlier, would make his directorial debut with the black comedy horror film Parents.   Bryan Madorsky stars as Michael Laemle, a ten year old boy living in the California suburbs in the 1950s, who starts to suspect mom and dad, played by Mary Beth Hurt and Randy Quaid, might be cannibals. It's a strange but fun little movie, and even Ken Russell would compare it favorably over David Lynch's Blue Velvet during one contemporary interview, but sadly, it would take far more time for the film to find its audience than Vestron could afford.   Opening in 94 theatres on January 27th, the $3m Parents could not overcome a series of negative reviews from critics, and it would only gross $278k in its first three days. Vestron would not strike any additional prints of the film, and would cycle the ones they did have around the country for several months, but after four months, the film could only attract $870k in box office receipts. But it would become something of a cult hit on video later in the year.   In 1992, British filmmaker Bernard Rose would make his American directing debut with an all-time banger, Candyman. But he wouldn't gotten Candyman if it wasn't for his 1989 film Paperhouse, an inventive story about a young girl whose drawings seem to manifest into reality. British actor Ben Cross from Chariots of Fire and American actress Glenne Headly from Dirty Rotten Scoundrels plays the young girl's parents.   Outside of Gene Siskel, who would give the film a thumbs down on his movie review show with Roger Ebert despite acknowledging Rose's talent as a filmmaker and being fascinated by the first two-thirds of the movie, the critical consensus was extraordinary. But it appears Siskel may have never actually written a review of the film for the Chicago Tribune, as the film still has a 100% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. But the film would only earn $6,700 from its single screen playdate at the Carnegie Hall Cinemas when it opened on February 17th, and the film would get little support from Vestron after that. More single playdates in major cities that added up to a $241k box office tally after fourteen weeks in release.   Marc Rocco's Dream a Little Dream would be the third film in The Two Coreys Cinematic Universe. Corey Feldman plays a high school student who, through one of the strangest plot twists in the whole body switching genre, finds himself switching places with two time Academy Award-winner Jason Robards, playing a professor who is looking for immortality through entering a meditative alpha state. Meredith Salinger and Piper Laurie also find themselves switching bodies as well, while Corey Haim plays the goofball best friend with not a whole lot to do. The supporting cast also includes veteran character actors Harry Dean Stanton and Alex Rocco, the latter who agreed to do the film because it was directed by his son.   When the film opened on March 3rd, it would be Vestron's second widest release, opening on more than 1,000 theatres. But just like the previous year's License to Drive, the pairing of Corey Haim and Corey Feldman did not set the box office on fire, opening in fifth place with $2.57m in ticket sales, compared to the #1 film of the week, the Morgan Freeman drama Lean on Me, which would gross twice as much as Dream a Little Dream while playing in 125 fewer theatres. In its second week, the film would lose 56 theatres and 52% of its opening weekend audience, falling all the way to 13th place with a gross of only $1.25m. By week three, the movie would move to dollar houses, and trudge along for several more months, until it closed in the middle of summer with only $5.55m in the till.   In the late 1970s and early 1980s, writer/director Jeremy Paul Kagan had directed and occasionally written several big ticket movies, including the 1977 Henry Winkler drama Heroes, which also starred Sally Field and, in his first post-Star Wars movie, Harrison Ford, and the 1985 Meredith Salinger/John Cusack adventure film The Journey of Natty Gann. Which makes his Natty Gann follow up, Big Man on Campus, such a head scratcher.   A modern adaptation of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Big Man on Campus was written by Allan Katz, who had been working in television for nearly twenty years writing for and producing shows like All in the Family, Sanford and Son, The Mary Tyler Moore Show and MASH. Katz would also star in the movie as the titular hunchback, even though he had never once acted on any of his shows. But at least he had a good cast supporting him, including Gerrit Graham, Melora Hardin, Jessica Harper, Tom Skerritt, and Cindy Williams.   I can only find one playdate for the film ever, in Los Angeles at the American Cinematheque in March 1989, so while this mostly qualifies as a direct to video release, I feel compelled to at least give it a token mention here.   Have you ever heard of a movie called The Fruit Machine? Of course you haven't, because that's a horrible name for a movie, no matter what it's about. When Vestron acquired this British drama about young gay men who go on the run after they witness a murder, the first thing they did was change the title to Wonderland. Not that Wonderland gives you any more of an idea of what the movie is about than The Fruit Machine. But, whatever.   Today, the movie has two things going for it. One, an early role for Robbie Coltrane, playing a transvestite who operates a nightclub for gay men and transvestites called, you guessed it, The Fruit Machine. Second, the musical score was written by Hans Zimmer, in one of his earliest film jobs. Ironically, Wonderland would be the the third movie scored by Hans Zimmer to be released by Vestron in a four month period, after Burning Secret and Paperhouse.   Wonderland would open at the Quad Cinemas in New York City on April 28th, to poor reviews but a decent $11,500 opening weekend. But the film would not be able to maintain much of an audience, and after five weeks, Wonderland was out of the Quad Cinemas, never to play another theatre in America, with just $50k in the till.   Ken Russell's third and final film in his contract with Vestron was The Rainbow, an adaptation of a 1915 novel by D.H. Lawrence, whose 1920 novel Women in Love had been adapted by Russell in 1969. Glenda Jackson, who had won the Academy Award for her role in Women in Love, here plays the mother of the character she played in the other film. Here, she co-stars with Sammi Davis as Ursala, the younger sister of Jackson's Women in Love character, who finds herself attracted to Anton, a young man in town, as well as her gym teacher Winifred.   As one would expect from Ken Russell, the supporting cast is top notch, including future Eighth Doctor Paul McGann, regular Russell collaborator Christopher Gable, and Blowup star David Hemmings. The film would open at the Paris Theatre in New York City on May 5th, where it would gross a very good $22k, spurred on by great reviews from most of the city's major critics, several of which noted the film to be Russell's best in a number of years. So it would be sad that the film would end up being the lowest grossing of the three films he'd make with Vestron, only earning a total of $444k after three months in mostly single playdates in major markets.   In 1985, Geena Davis and Jeff Goldblum would work together on a forgettable horror comedy film called Transylvania 6-5000, whose name was a pun on a popular 1940 song recorded by Glenn Miller. In 1986, the pair would work together again in David Cronenberg's amazing remake of the cheesy 1950s horror film The Fly. In late 1987, shortly after the pair married, they would work together for a third time, on another comedy, and on a movie that was this time based on an actual song.    Earth Girls Are Easy was the name of a song that appeared on comedian Julie Brown's 1984 EP Goddess in Progress, and was originally developed as a movie at Warner Brothers Studio. The studio would get cold feet when Absolute Beginners, the big British musical directed by music video director Julien Temple, failed big time everywhere in the world except for the UK. Temple was slated to direct Earth Girls Are Easy, and Brown, as the co-writer and co-star of the film, was committed to the filmmaker, even if it meant Warners putting the film into turnaround.   Which they did, in 1986.   It would take nearly a year to get the project back on track, after being rejected by every other major studio and production company in Hollywood, until the French banking giant Credit Lyonnais agree to finance the film, provided they could cut the budget from $14m to $10m, and if the filmmakers could make a distribution deal with the bank's preferred distributor, the then newly-formed DeLaurentiis Entertainment Group.   The film, about a manicurist in Los Angeles who helps three aliens blend into human culture after they accidentally crash land their spaceship into her pool, would begin production in Los Angeles in October 1987. Davis played the manicurist, and Goldblum one of the aliens, alongside Damon Wayans and Jim Carrey, while the remaining cast would include a number of great comedic actors like MASH's Larry Linville, Michael McKean, Rick Overton, and Charles Rocket, as well as Los Angeles media personality Angelyne as basically herself.   While the film was nearing completion in early 1988, the DeLaurentiis Entertainment Group would go out of business, leaving Credit Lyonnais in need of a new distributor for their investment. But after Temple turned in his first cut of the film, Credit Lyonnais would send Temple back into his editing bay, where he and his team would spend nearly another five months  winnowing out various scenes and completely excising a big and expensive musical number based on one of the other songs on Brown's 1984 EP, I Like ‘Em Big and Stupid, because it just didn't work for the film. Additional scenes would be shot, and the budget would end up being $11m.    The film would have its premiere at the Toronto Film Festival in September 1988, and attract attention from a number of distributors including MGM/UA, New World Pictures and Twentieth Century-Fox, but Vestron would end up putting in the winning bid.   The film would originally be set for a February 1989 release, but would get delayed until May 12th. When it finally opened on 317 screens in Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Philly, San Francisco, Toronto and Washington DC, the film would gross $893k, putting in twelfth place for the weekend, but its per screen average would be the fourth best amongst the films in the top twenty. The film would fall one place in its second week,  losing 35% of its opening weekend audience, grossing $577k. The film would slowly hemorrhage theatres and box office until the plug was pulled in mid-July with only $3.9m in tickets sold.   The sole lasting legacy of the film is that Damon Wayans enjoyed working so much with Jim Carrey that when Damon's brother Kenan Ivory Wayans was putting together a new comedy television show together thanks to the success of his movie I'm Gonna Get You Sucka, Damon would get his brother to give Carrey a chance. In Living Color would make Carrey and the Wayans Brothers stars, and would change the course of comedy. So there's that…   In late June, the Lightning Pictures imprint would release their first movie in nearly two years, Far From Home. The film starred the then-fourteen year old Drew Barrymore as a young girl traveling cross country with her father, who get stuck in a small desert town in Nevada on their way to back to Los Angeles, who must deal with some very strange characters in the trailer park they're staying in, as they slowly discover nothing is as it's supposed to be. Matt Frewer, Max Headroom himself, plays the dad, who must protect his daughter while he figures out how to get the hell out of town alive.   Truth be told, the movie sucks, and it's really creepy in how it sexualizes Barrymore, but there's one hell of a great supporting cast doing their best to keep the joint from totally stinking the place up. Richard Masur, Academy Award nominee Susan Tyrell, Anthony Rapp from Adventures in Babysitting, Jennifer Tilly, and beloved character actor Dick Miller. When Vestron opened the film in four theatres in third-tier regions on June 30th, it was little surprise the film got some very bad notices, although one unnamed reviewer for Variety felt the need to note that Barrymore, who again was only fourteen at the time, had “a baby face, dreamy eyes and a playboy model's body.” The film would gross just $3,763 in its first and only weekend in theatres.   But that wasn't even the worst news of the week for Vestron.   On the same day as they opened Far From Home, Vestron had been informed by Security Pacific Bank in Los Angeles that the $100 million line of credit the company had with them was being terminated. 140 of the approximately 300 Vestron staff members, mostly from the Los Angeles office, were let go, including the President of Production, the Senior Vice President of Marketing and Distribution, and the Vice President of Publicity and Promotion. While Vestron Video would continue for a while, in large part thanks to a $15.7m payoff during a dispute over home video ownership rights to the 1986 Best Picture winner Platoon, the theatrical distribution unit was effectively dead. Some movies, including the Fred Savage/Howie Mandel comedy Little Monsters, the Harry Dean Stanton-led comedy Twister, and the Kathryn Bigelow-directed action thriller Blue Steel with Jamie Lee Curtis, would be sold off to other companies, but the titles left behind would see their planned theatrical releases cancelled and eventually be released direct to video.   Thanks to some of the legacy titles in their video catalog, including Dirty Dancing, Vestron would be able to stave off the inevitable, but in January 1991, the company would file for bankruptcy, their final film being the Stan Winston-directed fantasy buddy comedy The Adventures of a Gnome named Gnorm. Filmed in 1988 as Upward, the film featured Anthony Michael Hall as an Los Angeles Police Detective who has to team up with a gnome, a puppet created by Winston, the effects wizard who also directed the film, to solve a murder. For Winston, it was deja vu all over again, as his previous directorial effort, Pumpkinhead, found itself in limbo for a while when its distributor, the DeLaurentiis Entertainment Group, filed for bankruptcy in 1987 before they could release that film.   In bankruptcy court, Live Entertainment, partially owned by 1990s mega movie production company Carolco Pictures, would purchase all of Vestron's assets for $24m. Live used the assets as collateral to secure a line of credit from industry friendly banks, so they could start their own production and distribution company, of which their only moment of note was helping to finance Reservoir Dogs when no one else would.   Eventually, Live Entertainment would be sold off to Bain Capital, a private investment firm co-founded by Mitt Romney, in 1997, and they would rebrand Live as Artisan Entertainment. Artisan today is best known as the little independent distributor of The Blair Witch Project, but they also would enter into an agreement with Marvel Comics to make movies for 15 of their characters, including Ant-Man, Black Panther, Deadpool, Iron Fist, Longshot, Morbius, Mort the Dead Teenager, and the Power Pack.   Artisan would produce two movies based on Marvel characters, Man-Thing and The Punisher, although neither of those films would be released by Artisan. Artisan would declare bankruptcy in 2003, and Marvel would be one of the companies to place a bid for them. Lionsgate would end up becoming the winning bidder for Artisan's assets, which is how the vast majority of Vestron titles are now owned by a company that didn't even exist when Vestron closed shop.   Today, Lionsgate is the owner of the assets of a number of the companies we've spoken about on this podcast in the past, and will be talking about in the future, including Crown International, the DeLaurentiis Entertainment Group, Embassy Pictures, and New World Pictures. And it's also a major reason why so many of the movies we discuss in these episodes looking back at past companies are completely unknown today. As big as Lionsgate is, with nearly $3.6 billion in revenue in 2022, they aren't going to be able to keep up with the chain of ownership for every movies from every company they've purchased, and they're not going to put the money in to the movies that are barely remembered today. The Film Foundation, the non-profit organization co-founded by Woody Allen, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg, which is dedicated to film preservation, estimates the average cost to do a photochemical restoration of a color feature with sound to between $80,000 to $450,000 dollars, not including the cost of a 2k or 4k digital scan. I'm going to have a link in the show notes on our website at The80sMoviePodcast.com to a November 2018 article from the Science History Institute about the process of restoring films. It's not a long read, but it's a fascinating read. I hope you'll check it out.   So there you have it, the end of the line for Vestron Pictures, and many of the movies they helped to make and distribute, most of which you cannot find today in any form.   Thank you for listening.   We'll talk again next week when Episode 105, on the 1985 teen comedy O.C. and Stiggs, directed by Robert Altman, will be discussed.   Remember to visit this episode's page on our website, The80sMoviePodcast.com, for extra materials about the movies we covered this episode.   The 80s Movies Podcast has been researched, written, narrated and edited by Edward Havens for Idiosyncratic Entertainment.   Thank you again.   Good night.

We continue our look back at the movies released by independent distributor Vestron Pictures, focusing on their 1988 releases. ----more---- The movies discussed on this episode, all released by Vestron Pictures in 1988 unless otherwise noted, include: Amsterdamned (Dick Maas) And God Created Woman (Roger Vadim) The Beat (Paul Mones) Burning Secret (Andrew Birkin) Call Me (Sollace Mitchell) The Family (Ettore Scola) Gothic (Ken Russell, 1987) The Lair of the White Worm (Ken Russell) Midnight Crossing (Roger Holzberg) Paramedics (Stuart Margolin) The Pointsman (Jos Stelling) Salome's Last Dance (Ken Russell) Promised Land (Michael Hoffman) The Unholy (Camilo Vila) Waxwork (Anthony Hickox)   TRANSCRIPT   From Los Angeles, California, the Entertainment Capital of the World, it's The 80s Movies Podcast. I am your host, Edward Havens. Thank you for listening today.   At the end of the previous episode, Vestron Pictures was celebrating the best year of its two year history. Dirty Dancing had become one of the most beloved movies of the year, and Anna was becoming a major awards contender, thanks to a powerhouse performance by veteran actress Sally Kirkland. And at the 60th Academy Awards ceremony, honoring the films of 1987, Dirty Dancing would win the Oscar for Best Original Song, while Anna would be nominated for Best Actress, and The Dead for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Costumes.   Surely, things could only go up from there, right?   Welcome to Part Two of our miniseries.   But before we get started, I'm issuing a rare mea culpa. I need to add another Vestron movie which I completely missed on the previous episode, because it factors in to today's episode. Which, of course, starts before our story begins.   In the 1970s, there were very few filmmakers like the flamboyant Ken Russell. So unique a visual storyteller was Russell, it's nigh impossible to accurately describe him in a verbal or textual manner. Those who have seen The Devils, Tommy or Altered States know just how special Russell was as a filmmaker. By the late 1980s, the hits had dried up, and Russell was in a different kind of artistic stage, wanting to make somewhat faithful adaptations of late 19th and early 20th century UK authors. Vestron was looking to work with some prestigious filmmakers, to help build their cache in the filmmaking community, and Russell saw the opportunity to hopefully find a new home with this new distributor not unlike the one he had with Warner Brothers in the early 70s that brought forth several of his strongest movies.   In June 1986, Russell began production on a gothic horror film entitled, appropriately enough, Gothic, which depicted a fictionalized version of a real life meeting between Mary Godwin, Percy Shelley, John William Polidori and Claire Clairemont at the Villa Diodati in Geneva, hosted by Lord Byron, from which historians believe both Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and John William Polidori's The Vampyre were inspired.   And you want to talk about a movie with a great cast. Gabriel Byrne plays Lord Byron, Julian Sands as Percy Shelley, Natasha Richardson, in her first ever movie, as Mary Shelley, Timothy Spall as John William Polidori, and Dexter Fletcher.   Although the film was produced through MGM, and distributed by the company in Europe, they would not release the film in America, fearing American audiences wouldn't get it. So Vestron would swoop in and acquire the American theatrical rights.   Incidentally, the film did not do very well in American theatres. Opening at the Cinema 1 in midtown Manhattan on April 10th, 1987, the film would sell $45,000 worth of tickets in its first three days, one of the best grosses of any single screen in the city. But the film would end up grossing only $916k after three months in theatres.   BUT…   The movie would do quite well for Vestron on home video, enough so that Vestron would sign on to produce Russell's next three movies. The first of those will be coming up very soon.   Vestron's 1988 release schedule began on January 22nd with the release of two films.   The first was Michael Hoffman's Promised Land. In 1982, Hoffman's first film, Privileged, was the first film to made through the Oxford Film Foundation, and was notable for being the first screen appearances for Hugh Grant and Imogen Stubbs, the first film scored by future Oscar winning composer Rachel Portman, and was shepherded into production by none other than John Schlesinger, the Oscar winning director of 1969 Best Picture winner Midnight Cowboy. Hoffman's second film, the Scottish comedy Restless Natives, was part of the 1980s Scottish New Wave film movement that also included Bill Forsyth's Gregory's Girl and Local Hero, and was the only film to be scored by the Scottish rock band Big Country.   Promised Land was one of the first films to be developed by the Sundance Institute, in 1984, and when it was finally produced in 1986, would include Robert Redford as one of its executive producers. The film would follow two recent local high school graduates, Hancock and Danny, whose lives would intersect again with disastrous results several years after graduation. The cast features two young actors destined to become stars, in Keifer Sutherland and Meg Ryan, as well as Jason Gedrick, Tracy Pollan, and Jay Underwood. Shot in Reno and around the Sundance Institute outside Park City, Utah during the early winter months of 1987, Promised Land would make its world premiere at the prestigious Deauville Film Festival in September 1987, but would lose its original distributor, New World Pictures around the same time. Vestron would swoop in to grab the distribution rights, and set it for a January 22nd, 1988 release, just after its American debut at the then U.S. Film Festival, which is now known as the Sundance Film Festival.    Convenient, eh?   Opening on six screens in , the film would gross $31k in its first three days. The film would continue to slowly roll out into more major markets, but with a lack of stellar reviews, and a cast that wouldn't be more famous for at least another year and a half, Vestron would never push the film out to more than 67 theaters, and it would quickly disappear with only $316k worth of tickets sold.   The other movie Vestron opened on January 22nd was Ettore Scale's The Family, which was Italy's submission to that year's Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film. The great Vittorio Gassman stars as a retired college professor who reminisces about his life and his family over the course of the twentieth century. Featuring a cast of great international actors including Fanny Ardant, Philip Noiret, Stefania Sandrelli and Ricky Tognazzi, The Family would win every major film award in Italy, and it would indeed be nominated for Best Foreign Language Film, but in America, it would only play in a handful of theatres for about two months, unable to gross even $350k.   When is a remake not a remake? When French filmmaker Roger Vadim, who shot to international fame in 1956 with his movie And God Created Woman, decided to give a generational and international spin on his most famous work. And a completely different story, as to not resemble his original work in any form outside of the general brushstrokes of both being about a young, pretty, sexually liberated young woman.   Instead of Bridget Bardot, we get Rebecca De Mornay, who was never able to parlay her starring role in Risky Business to any kind of stardom the way one-time boyfriend Tom Cruise had. And if there was any American woman in the United States in 1988 who could bring in a certain demographic to see her traipse around New Mexico au natural, it would be Rebecca De Mornay. But as we saw with Kathleen Turner in Ken Russell's Crimes of Passion in 1984 and Ellen Barkin in Mary Lambert's Siesta in 1987, American audiences were still rather prudish when it came to seeing a certain kind of female empowered sexuality on screen, and when the film opened at 385 theatres on March 4th, it would open to barely a $1,000 per screen average. And God Created Woman would be gone from theatres after only three weeks and $717k in ticket sales.   Vestron would next release a Dutch film called The Pointsman, about a French woman who accidentally gets off at the wrong train station in a remote Dutch village, and a local railwayman who, unable to speak the other person's language, develop a strange relationship while she waits for another train that never arrives.   Opening at the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas on New York's Upper West Side on April 8th, the film would gross $7,000 in its first week, which in and of itself isn't all that bad for a mostly silent Dutch film. Except there was another Dutch film in the marketplace already, one that was getting much better reviews, and was the official Dutch entry into that year's Best Foreign Language Film race. That film, Babette's Feast, was becoming something more than just a movie. Restaurants across the country were creating menus based on the meals served in the film, and in its sixth week of release in New York City that weekend, had grossed four times as much as The Pointsman, despite the fact that the theatre playing Babette's Feast, the Cinema Studio 1, sat only 65 more people than the Lincoln Plaza 1. The following week, The Pointsman would drop to $6k in ticket sales, while Babette's Feast's audience grew another $6k over the previous week. After a third lackluster week, The Pointsman was gone from the Lincoln Plaza, and would never play in another theatre in America.   In the mid-80s, British actor Ben Cross was still trying to capitalize on his having been one of the leads in the 1981 Best Picture winner Chariots of Fire, and was sharing a home with his wife and children, as well as Camilo Vila, a filmmaker looking for his first big break in features after two well-received short films made in his native Cuba before he defected in the early 1980s. When Vila was offered the chance to direct The Unholy, about a Roman Catholic priest in New Orleans who finds himself battling a demonic force after being appointed to a new parish, he would walk down the hall of his shared home and offered his roomie the lead role.   Along with Ned Beatty, William Russ, Hal Holbrook and British actor Trevor Howard in his final film, The Unholy would begin two weeks of exterior filming in New Orleans on October 27th, 1986, before moving to a studio in Miami for seven more weeks. The film would open in 1189 theatres, Vestron's widest opening to date, on April 22nd, and would open in seventh place with $2.35m in ticket sales. By its second week in theatres, it would fall to eleventh place with a $1.24m gross. But with the Summer Movie Season quickly creeping up on the calendar, The Unholy would suffer the same fate as most horror films, making the drop to dollar houses after two weeks, as to make room for such dreck as Sunset, Blake Edwards' lamentable Bruce Willis/James Garner riff on Hollywood and cowboys in the late 1920s, and the pointless sequel to Critters before screens got gobbled up by Rambo III on Memorial Day weekend. It would earn a bit more than $6m at the box office.   When Gothic didn't perform well in American theatres, Ken Russell thought his career was over. As we mentioned earlier, the American home video store saved his career, as least for the time being.    The first film Russell would make for Vestron proper was Salome's Last Dance, based on an 1891 play by Oscar Wilde, which itself was based on a story from the New Testament. Russell's script would add a framing device as a way for movie audiences to get into this most theatrical of stories.   On Guy Fawkes Day in London in 1892, Oscar Wilde and his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, arrive late at a friend's brothel, where the author is treated to a surprise performance of his play Salome, which has recently been banned from being performed at all in England by Lord Chamberlain. All of the actors in his special performance are played by the prostitutes of the brothel and their clients, and the scenes of the play are intertwined with Wilde's escapades at the brothel that night.   We didn't know it at the time, but Salome's Last Dance would be the penultimate film performance for Academy Award winning actress Glenda Jackson, who would retire to go into politics in England a couple years later, after working with Russell on another film, which we'll get to in a moment. About the only other actor you might recognize in the film is David Doyle, of all people, the American actor best known for playing Bosley on Charlie's Angels.   Like Gothic, Salome's Last Dance would not do very well in theatres, grossing less than half a million dollars after three months, but would find an appreciative audience on home video.   The most interesting thing about Roger Holzberg's Midnight Crossing is the writer and director himself. Holzberg started in the entertainment industry as a playwright, then designed the props and weapons for Albert Pyun's 1982 film The Sword and the Sorcerer, before moving on to direct the second unit team on Pyun's 1985 film Radioactive Dreams. After making this film, Holzberg would have a cancer scare, and pivot to health care, creating a number of technological advancements to help evolve patient treatment, including the Infusionarium, a media setup which helps children with cancer cope with treatment by asking them questions designed to determine what setting would be most comforting to them, and then using virtual reality technology and live events to immerse them in such an environment during treatment.   That's pretty darn cool, actually.   Midnight Crossing stars Faye Dunaway and Hill Street Blues star Daniel J. Travanti in his first major movie role as a couple who team with another couple, played by Kim Cattrall and John Laughlin, who go hunting for treasure supposedly buried between Florida and Cuba.   The film would open in 419 theaters on May 11th, 1988, and gross a paltry $673k in its first three days, putting it 15th on the list of box office grosses for the week, $23k more than Three Men and a Baby, which was playing on 538 screens in its 25th week of release. In its second week, Midnight Crossing would lose more than a third of its theatres, and the weekend gross would fall to just $232k. The third week would be even worse, dropping to just 67 theatres and $43k in ticket sales. After a few weeks at a handful of dollar houses, the film would be history with just $1.3m in the bank. Leonard Klady, then writing for the Los Angeles Times, would note in a January 1989 article about the 1988 box office that Midnight Crossing's box office to budget ratio of 0.26 was the tenth worst ratio for any major or mini-major studio, ahead of And God Created Woman's 8th worst ratio of .155 but behind other stinkers like Caddyshack II.   The forgotten erotic thriller Call Me sounds like a twist on the 1984 Alan Rudolph romantic comedy Choose Me, but instead of Genevieve Bujold we get Patricia Charbonneau, and instead of a meet cute involving singles at a bar in Los Angeles, we get a murder mystery involving a New York City journalist who gets involved with a mysterious caller after she witnesses a murder at a bar due to a case of mistaken identity.   The film's not very good, but the supporting cast is great, including Steve Buscemi, Patti D'Arbanville, Stephen McHattie and David Straithairn.   Opening on 24 screens in major markets on May 20th, Call Me would open to horrible reviews, lead by Siskel and Ebert's thumbs facing downward, and only $58,348 worth of tickets sold in its first three days. After five weeks in theatres, Vestron hung up on Call Me with just $252k in the kitty.   Vestron would open two movies on June 3rd, one in a very limited release, and one in a moderate national release.   There are a lot of obscure titles in these two episodes, and probably the most obscure is Paul Mones' The Beat. The film followed a young man named Billy Kane, played by William McNamara in his film debut, who moves into a rough neighborhood controlled by several gangs, who tries to help make his new area a better place by teaching them about poetry. John Savage from The Deer Hunter plays a teacher, and future writer and director Reggie Rock Bythewood plays one of the troubled youths whose life is turned around through the written and spoken word.   The production team was top notch. Producer Julia Phillips was one of the few women to ever win a Best Picture Oscar when she and her then husband Michael Phillips produced The Sting in 1973. Phillips was assisted on the film by two young men who were making their first movie. Jon Kilik would go on to produce or co-produce every Spike Lee movie from Do the Right Thing to Da 5 Bloods, except for BlackkKlansman, while Nick Weschler would produce sex, lies and videotape, Drugstore Cowboy, The Player and Requiem for a Dream, amongst dozens of major films. And the film's cinematographer, Tom DiCillo, would move into the director's chair in 1991 with Johnny Suede, which gave Brad Pitt his first lead role.   The Beat would be shot on location in New York City in the summer of 1986, and it would make its world premiere at the Cannes Film Market in May 1987. But it would be another thirteen months before the film arrived in theatres.   Opening on seven screens in Los Angeles and New York City on June 3rd, The Beat would gross just $7,168 in its first three days.  There would not be a second week for The Beat. It would make its way onto home video in early 1989, and that's the last time the film was seen for nearly thirty years, until the film was picked up by a number of streaming services.   Vestron's streak of bad luck continued with the comedy Paramedics starring George Newbern and Christopher McDonald. The only feature film directed by Stuart Margolin, best known as Angel on the 1970s TV series The Rockford Files, Newbern and McDonald play two… well, paramedics… who are sent by boss, as punishment, from their cushy uptown gig to a troubled district at the edge of the city, where they discover two other paramedics are running a cadavers for dollars scheme, harvesting organs from dead bodies to the black market.   Here again we have a great supporting cast who deserve to be in a better movie, including character actor John P. Ryan, James Noble from Benson, Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs from Welcome Back Kotter, the great Ray Walston, and one-time Playboy Playmate Karen Witter, who plays a sort of angel of death.   Opening on 301 screens nationwide, Paramedics would only gross $149,577 in its first three days, the worst per screen average of any movie playing in at least 100 theatres that weekend. Vestron stopped tracking the film after just three days.   Two weeks later, on June 17th, Vestron released a comedy horror film that should have done better. Waxwork was an interesting idea, a group of college students who have some strange encounters with the wax figures at a local museum, but that's not exactly why it should have been more popular. It was the cast that should have brought audiences in. On one side, you had a group of well-known younger actors like Deborah Foreman from Valley Girl, Zack Gailligan from Gremlins, Michelle Johnson from Blame It on Rio, and Miles O'Keeffe from Sword of the Valiant. On the other hand, you had a group of seasoned veterans from popular television shows and movies, such as Patrick Macnee from the popular 1960s British TV show The Avengers, John Rhys-Davies from the Indiana Jones movies, and David Warner, from The Omen and Time after Time and Time Bandits and Tron.   But if I want to be completely honest, this was not a movie to release in the early part of summer. While I'm a firm believer that the right movie can find an audience no matter when it's released, Waxwork was absolutely a prime candidate for an early October release. Throughout the 1980s, we saw a number of horror movies, and especially horror comedies, released in the summer season that just did not hit with audiences. So it would be of little surprise when Waxwork grossed less than a million dollars during its theatrical run. And it should be of little surprise that the film would become popular enough on home video to warrant a sequel, which would add more popular sci-fi and horror actors like Marina Sirtis from Star Trek: The Next Generation, David Carradine and even Bruce Campbell. But by 1992, when Waxwork 2 was released, Vestron was long since closed.   The second Ken Russell movie made for Vestron was The Lair of the White Worm, based on a 1911 novel by Bram Stoker, the author's final published book before his death the following year. The story follows the residents in and around a rural English manor that are tormented by an ancient priestess after the skull of a serpent she worships is unearthed by an archaeologist.   Russell would offer the role of Sylvia Marsh, the enigmatic Lady who is actually an immortal priestess to an ancient snake god, to Tilda Swinton, who at this point of her career had already racked up a substantial resume in film after only two years, but she would decline. Instead, the role would go to Amanda Donohoe, the British actress best known at the time for her appearances in a pair of Adam Ant videos earlier in the decade. And the supporting cast would include Peter Capaldi, Hugh Grant, Catherine Oxenberg, and the under-appreciated Sammi Davis, who was simply amazing in Mona Lisa, A Prayer for the Dying and John Boorman's Hope and Glory.   The $2m would come together fairly quickly. Vestron and Russell would agree on the film in late 1987, the script would be approved by January 1988, filming would begin in England in February, and the completed film would have its world premiere at the Montreal Film Festival before the end of August.   When the film arrived in American theatres starting on October 21st, many critics would embrace the director's deliberate camp qualities and anachronisms. But audiences, who maybe weren't used to Russell's style of filmmaking, did not embrace the film quite so much. New Yorkers would buy $31k worth of tickets in its opening weekend at the D. W. Griffith and 8th Street Playhouse, and the film would perform well in its opening weeks in major markets, but the film would never quite break out, earning just $1.2m after ten weeks in theatres. But, again, home video would save the day, as the film would become one of the bigger rental titles in 1989.   If you were a teenager in the early 80s, as I was, you may remember a Dutch horror film called The Lift. Or, at the very least, you remember the key art on the VHS box, of a man who has his head stuck in between the doors of an elevator, while the potential viewer is warned to take the stairs, take the stairs, for God's sake, take the stairs. It was an impressive debut film for Dick Maas, but it was one that would place an albatross around the neck of his career.   One of his follow ups to The Lift, called Amsterdamned, would follow a police detective who is searching for a serial killer in his home town, who uses the canals of the Dutch capital to keep himself hidden. When the detective gets too close to solving the identity of the murderer, the killer sends a message by killing the detective's girlfriend, which, if the killer had ever seen a movie before, he should have known you never do. You never make it personal for the cop, because he's gonna take you down even worse.   When the film's producers brought the film to the American Film Market in early 1988, it would become one of the most talked about films, and Vestron would pick up the American distribution rights for a cool half a million dollars. The film would open on six screens in the US on November 25th, including the Laemmle Music Hall in Beverly Hills but not in New York City, but a $15k first weekend gross would seal its fate almost immediately. The film would play for another four weeks in theatres, playing on 18 screens at its widest, but it would end its run shortly after the start of of the year with only $62,044 in tickets sold.   The final Vestron Pictures release of 1988 was Andrew Birkin's Burning Secret. Birkin, the brother of French singer and actress Jane Birkin, would co-write the screenplay for this adaptation of a 1913 short story by Austrian novelist Stefan Zweig, about a about an American diplomat's son who befriends a mysterious baron while staying at an Austrian spa during the 1920s. According to Birkin in a 2021 interview, making the movie was somewhat of a nightmare, as his leading actors, Klaus Maria Brandauer and Faye Dunaway, did not like each other, and their lack of comfort with each other would bleed into their performances, which is fatal for a film about two people who are supposed to passionately burn for each other.   Opening on 16 screens in major markets on Thursday, December 22nd, Burning Secret would only gross $27k in its first four days. The film would actually see a post-Christmas bump, as it would lose a screen but see its gross jump to $40k. But after the first of the year, as it was obvious reviews were not going to save the film and awards consideration was non-existent, the film would close after three weeks with only $104k worth of tickets sold.   By the end of 1988, Vestron was facing bankruptcy. The major distributors had learned the lessons independents like Vestron had taught them about selling more volumes of tapes by lowering the price, to make movies collectables and have people curate their own video library. Top titles were harder to come by, and studios were no longer giving up home video rights to the movies they acquired from third-party producers.   Like many of the distributors we've spoken about before, and will undoubtedly speak of again, Vestron had too much success with one movie too quickly, and learned the wrong lessons about growth. If you look at the independent distribution world of 2023, you'll see companies like A24 that have learned that lesson. Stay lean and mean, don't go too wide too quickly, try not to spend too much money on a movie, no matter who the filmmaker is and how good of a relationship you have with them. A24 worked with Robert Eggers on The Witch and The Lighthouse, but when he wanted to spend $70-90m to make The Northman, A24 tapped out early, and Focus Features ended up losing millions on the film. Focus, the “indie” label for Universal Studios, can weather a huge loss like The Northman because they are a part of a multinational, multimedia conglomerate.   This didn't mean Vestron was going to quit quite yet, but, spoiler alert, they'll be gone soon enough.   In fact, and in case you are newer to the podcast and haven't listen to many of the previous episodes, none of the independent distribution companies that began and/or saw their best years in the 1980s that we've covered so far or will be covering in the future, exist in the same form they existed in back then.    New Line still exists, but it's now a label within Warner Brothers instead of being an independent distributor. Ditto Orion, which is now just a specialty label within MGM/UA. The Samuel Goldwyn Company is still around and still distributes movies, but it was bought by Orion Pictures the year before Orion was bought by MGM/UA, so it too is now just a specialty label, within another specialty label. Miramax today is just a holding company for the movies the company made before they were sold off to Disney, before Disney sold them off to a hedge fund, who sold Miramax off to another hedge fund.    Atlantic is gone. New World is gone. Cannon is gone. Hemdale is gone. Cinecom is gone. Island Films is gone. Alive Films is gone. Concorde Films is gone. MCEG is gone. CineTel is gone. Crown International is gone. Lorimar is gone. New Century/Vista is gone. Skouras Films is gone. Cineplex Odeon Films is gone.   Not one of them survived.   The same can pretty much be said for the independent distributors created in the 1990s, save Lionsgate, but I'll leave that for another podcast to tackle.   As for the Vestron story, we'll continue that one next week, because there are still a dozen more movies to talk about, as well as the end of the line for the once high flying company.   Thank you for joining us. We'll talk again soon.   Remember to visit this episode's page on our website, The80sMoviePodcast.com, for extra materials about the movies we covered this episode.   The 80s Movies Podcast has been researched, written, narrated and edited by Edward Havens for Idiosyncratic Entertainment.   Thank you again.   Good night.

We continue our look back at the movies released by independent distributor Vestron Pictures, focusing on their 1988 releases. ----more---- The movies discussed on this episode, all released by Vestron Pictures in 1988 unless otherwise noted, include: Amsterdamned (Dick Maas) And God Created Woman (Roger Vadim) The Beat (Paul Mones) Burning Secret (Andrew Birkin) Call Me (Sollace Mitchell) The Family (Ettore Scola) Gothic (Ken Russell, 1987) The Lair of the White Worm (Ken Russell) Midnight Crossing (Roger Holzberg) Paramedics (Stuart Margolin) The Pointsman (Jos Stelling) Salome's Last Dance (Ken Russell) Promised Land (Michael Hoffman) The Unholy (Camilo Vila) Waxwork (Anthony Hickox)   TRANSCRIPT   From Los Angeles, California, the Entertainment Capital of the World, it's The 80s Movies Podcast. I am your host, Edward Havens. Thank you for listening today.   At the end of the previous episode, Vestron Pictures was celebrating the best year of its two year history. Dirty Dancing had become one of the most beloved movies of the year, and Anna was becoming a major awards contender, thanks to a powerhouse performance by veteran actress Sally Kirkland. And at the 60th Academy Awards ceremony, honoring the films of 1987, Dirty Dancing would win the Oscar for Best Original Song, while Anna would be nominated for Best Actress, and The Dead for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Costumes.   Surely, things could only go up from there, right?   Welcome to Part Two of our miniseries.   But before we get started, I'm issuing a rare mea culpa. I need to add another Vestron movie which I completely missed on the previous episode, because it factors in to today's episode. Which, of course, starts before our story begins.   In the 1970s, there were very few filmmakers like the flamboyant Ken Russell. So unique a visual storyteller was Russell, it's nigh impossible to accurately describe him in a verbal or textual manner. Those who have seen The Devils, Tommy or Altered States know just how special Russell was as a filmmaker. By the late 1980s, the hits had dried up, and Russell was in a different kind of artistic stage, wanting to make somewhat faithful adaptations of late 19th and early 20th century UK authors. Vestron was looking to work with some prestigious filmmakers, to help build their cache in the filmmaking community, and Russell saw the opportunity to hopefully find a new home with this new distributor not unlike the one he had with Warner Brothers in the early 70s that brought forth several of his strongest movies.   In June 1986, Russell began production on a gothic horror film entitled, appropriately enough, Gothic, which depicted a fictionalized version of a real life meeting between Mary Godwin, Percy Shelley, John William Polidori and Claire Clairemont at the Villa Diodati in Geneva, hosted by Lord Byron, from which historians believe both Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and John William Polidori's The Vampyre were inspired.   And you want to talk about a movie with a great cast. Gabriel Byrne plays Lord Byron, Julian Sands as Percy Shelley, Natasha Richardson, in her first ever movie, as Mary Shelley, Timothy Spall as John William Polidori, and Dexter Fletcher.   Although the film was produced through MGM, and distributed by the company in Europe, they would not release the film in America, fearing American audiences wouldn't get it. So Vestron would swoop in and acquire the American theatrical rights.   Incidentally, the film did not do very well in American theatres. Opening at the Cinema 1 in midtown Manhattan on April 10th, 1987, the film would sell $45,000 worth of tickets in its first three days, one of the best grosses of any single screen in the city. But the film would end up grossing only $916k after three months in theatres.   BUT…   The movie would do quite well for Vestron on home video, enough so that Vestron would sign on to produce Russell's next three movies. The first of those will be coming up very soon.   Vestron's 1988 release schedule began on January 22nd with the release of two films.   The first was Michael Hoffman's Promised Land. In 1982, Hoffman's first film, Privileged, was the first film to made through the Oxford Film Foundation, and was notable for being the first screen appearances for Hugh Grant and Imogen Stubbs, the first film scored by future Oscar winning composer Rachel Portman, and was shepherded into production by none other than John Schlesinger, the Oscar winning director of 1969 Best Picture winner Midnight Cowboy. Hoffman's second film, the Scottish comedy Restless Natives, was part of the 1980s Scottish New Wave film movement that also included Bill Forsyth's Gregory's Girl and Local Hero, and was the only film to be scored by the Scottish rock band Big Country.   Promised Land was one of the first films to be developed by the Sundance Institute, in 1984, and when it was finally produced in 1986, would include Robert Redford as one of its executive producers. The film would follow two recent local high school graduates, Hancock and Danny, whose lives would intersect again with disastrous results several years after graduation. The cast features two young actors destined to become stars, in Keifer Sutherland and Meg Ryan, as well as Jason Gedrick, Tracy Pollan, and Jay Underwood. Shot in Reno and around the Sundance Institute outside Park City, Utah during the early winter months of 1987, Promised Land would make its world premiere at the prestigious Deauville Film Festival in September 1987, but would lose its original distributor, New World Pictures around the same time. Vestron would swoop in to grab the distribution rights, and set it for a January 22nd, 1988 release, just after its American debut at the then U.S. Film Festival, which is now known as the Sundance Film Festival.    Convenient, eh?   Opening on six screens in , the film would gross $31k in its first three days. The film would continue to slowly roll out into more major markets, but with a lack of stellar reviews, and a cast that wouldn't be more famous for at least another year and a half, Vestron would never push the film out to more than 67 theaters, and it would quickly disappear with only $316k worth of tickets sold.   The other movie Vestron opened on January 22nd was Ettore Scale's The Family, which was Italy's submission to that year's Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film. The great Vittorio Gassman stars as a retired college professor who reminisces about his life and his family over the course of the twentieth century. Featuring a cast of great international actors including Fanny Ardant, Philip Noiret, Stefania Sandrelli and Ricky Tognazzi, The Family would win every major film award in Italy, and it would indeed be nominated for Best Foreign Language Film, but in America, it would only play in a handful of theatres for about two months, unable to gross even $350k.   When is a remake not a remake? When French filmmaker Roger Vadim, who shot to international fame in 1956 with his movie And God Created Woman, decided to give a generational and international spin on his most famous work. And a completely different story, as to not resemble his original work in any form outside of the general brushstrokes of both being about a young, pretty, sexually liberated young woman.   Instead of Bridget Bardot, we get Rebecca De Mornay, who was never able to parlay her starring role in Risky Business to any kind of stardom the way one-time boyfriend Tom Cruise had. And if there was any American woman in the United States in 1988 who could bring in a certain demographic to see her traipse around New Mexico au natural, it would be Rebecca De Mornay. But as we saw with Kathleen Turner in Ken Russell's Crimes of Passion in 1984 and Ellen Barkin in Mary Lambert's Siesta in 1987, American audiences were still rather prudish when it came to seeing a certain kind of female empowered sexuality on screen, and when the film opened at 385 theatres on March 4th, it would open to barely a $1,000 per screen average. And God Created Woman would be gone from theatres after only three weeks and $717k in ticket sales.   Vestron would next release a Dutch film called The Pointsman, about a French woman who accidentally gets off at the wrong train station in a remote Dutch village, and a local railwayman who, unable to speak the other person's language, develop a strange relationship while she waits for another train that never arrives.   Opening at the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas on New York's Upper West Side on April 8th, the film would gross $7,000 in its first week, which in and of itself isn't all that bad for a mostly silent Dutch film. Except there was another Dutch film in the marketplace already, one that was getting much better reviews, and was the official Dutch entry into that year's Best Foreign Language Film race. That film, Babette's Feast, was becoming something more than just a movie. Restaurants across the country were creating menus based on the meals served in the film, and in its sixth week of release in New York City that weekend, had grossed four times as much as The Pointsman, despite the fact that the theatre playing Babette's Feast, the Cinema Studio 1, sat only 65 more people than the Lincoln Plaza 1. The following week, The Pointsman would drop to $6k in ticket sales, while Babette's Feast's audience grew another $6k over the previous week. After a third lackluster week, The Pointsman was gone from the Lincoln Plaza, and would never play in another theatre in America.   In the mid-80s, British actor Ben Cross was still trying to capitalize on his having been one of the leads in the 1981 Best Picture winner Chariots of Fire, and was sharing a home with his wife and children, as well as Camilo Vila, a filmmaker looking for his first big break in features after two well-received short films made in his native Cuba before he defected in the early 1980s. When Vila was offered the chance to direct The Unholy, about a Roman Catholic priest in New Orleans who finds himself battling a demonic force after being appointed to a new parish, he would walk down the hall of his shared home and offered his roomie the lead role.   Along with Ned Beatty, William Russ, Hal Holbrook and British actor Trevor Howard in his final film, The Unholy would begin two weeks of exterior filming in New Orleans on October 27th, 1986, before moving to a studio in Miami for seven more weeks. The film would open in 1189 theatres, Vestron's widest opening to date, on April 22nd, and would open in seventh place with $2.35m in ticket sales. By its second week in theatres, it would fall to eleventh place with a $1.24m gross. But with the Summer Movie Season quickly creeping up on the calendar, The Unholy would suffer the same fate as most horror films, making the drop to dollar houses after two weeks, as to make room for such dreck as Sunset, Blake Edwards' lamentable Bruce Willis/James Garner riff on Hollywood and cowboys in the late 1920s, and the pointless sequel to Critters before screens got gobbled up by Rambo III on Memorial Day weekend. It would earn a bit more than $6m at the box office.   When Gothic didn't perform well in American theatres, Ken Russell thought his career was over. As we mentioned earlier, the American home video store saved his career, as least for the time being.    The first film Russell would make for Vestron proper was Salome's Last Dance, based on an 1891 play by Oscar Wilde, which itself was based on a story from the New Testament. Russell's script would add a framing device as a way for movie audiences to get into this most theatrical of stories.   On Guy Fawkes Day in London in 1892, Oscar Wilde and his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, arrive late at a friend's brothel, where the author is treated to a surprise performance of his play Salome, which has recently been banned from being performed at all in England by Lord Chamberlain. All of the actors in his special performance are played by the prostitutes of the brothel and their clients, and the scenes of the play are intertwined with Wilde's escapades at the brothel that night.   We didn't know it at the time, but Salome's Last Dance would be the penultimate film performance for Academy Award winning actress Glenda Jackson, who would retire to go into politics in England a couple years later, after working with Russell on another film, which we'll get to in a moment. About the only other actor you might recognize in the film is David Doyle, of all people, the American actor best known for playing Bosley on Charlie's Angels.   Like Gothic, Salome's Last Dance would not do very well in theatres, grossing less than half a million dollars after three months, but would find an appreciative audience on home video.   The most interesting thing about Roger Holzberg's Midnight Crossing is the writer and director himself. Holzberg started in the entertainment industry as a playwright, then designed the props and weapons for Albert Pyun's 1982 film The Sword and the Sorcerer, before moving on to direct the second unit team on Pyun's 1985 film Radioactive Dreams. After making this film, Holzberg would have a cancer scare, and pivot to health care, creating a number of technological advancements to help evolve patient treatment, including the Infusionarium, a media setup which helps children with cancer cope with treatment by asking them questions designed to determine what setting would be most comforting to them, and then using virtual reality technology and live events to immerse them in such an environment during treatment.   That's pretty darn cool, actually.   Midnight Crossing stars Faye Dunaway and Hill Street Blues star Daniel J. Travanti in his first major movie role as a couple who team with another couple, played by Kim Cattrall and John Laughlin, who go hunting for treasure supposedly buried between Florida and Cuba.   The film would open in 419 theaters on May 11th, 1988, and gross a paltry $673k in its first three days, putting it 15th on the list of box office grosses for the week, $23k more than Three Men and a Baby, which was playing on 538 screens in its 25th week of release. In its second week, Midnight Crossing would lose more than a third of its theatres, and the weekend gross would fall to just $232k. The third week would be even worse, dropping to just 67 theatres and $43k in ticket sales. After a few weeks at a handful of dollar houses, the film would be history with just $1.3m in the bank. Leonard Klady, then writing for the Los Angeles Times, would note in a January 1989 article about the 1988 box office that Midnight Crossing's box office to budget ratio of 0.26 was the tenth worst ratio for any major or mini-major studio, ahead of And God Created Woman's 8th worst ratio of .155 but behind other stinkers like Caddyshack II.   The forgotten erotic thriller Call Me sounds like a twist on the 1984 Alan Rudolph romantic comedy Choose Me, but instead of Genevieve Bujold we get Patricia Charbonneau, and instead of a meet cute involving singles at a bar in Los Angeles, we get a murder mystery involving a New York City journalist who gets involved with a mysterious caller after she witnesses a murder at a bar due to a case of mistaken identity.   The film's not very good, but the supporting cast is great, including Steve Buscemi, Patti D'Arbanville, Stephen McHattie and David Straithairn.   Opening on 24 screens in major markets on May 20th, Call Me would open to horrible reviews, lead by Siskel and Ebert's thumbs facing downward, and only $58,348 worth of tickets sold in its first three days. After five weeks in theatres, Vestron hung up on Call Me with just $252k in the kitty.   Vestron would open two movies on June 3rd, one in a very limited release, and one in a moderate national release.   There are a lot of obscure titles in these two episodes, and probably the most obscure is Paul Mones' The Beat. The film followed a young man named Billy Kane, played by William McNamara in his film debut, who moves into a rough neighborhood controlled by several gangs, who tries to help make his new area a better place by teaching them about poetry. John Savage from The Deer Hunter plays a teacher, and future writer and director Reggie Rock Bythewood plays one of the troubled youths whose life is turned around through the written and spoken word.   The production team was top notch. Producer Julia Phillips was one of the few women to ever win a Best Picture Oscar when she and her then husband Michael Phillips produced The Sting in 1973. Phillips was assisted on the film by two young men who were making their first movie. Jon Kilik would go on to produce or co-produce every Spike Lee movie from Do the Right Thing to Da 5 Bloods, except for BlackkKlansman, while Nick Weschler would produce sex, lies and videotape, Drugstore Cowboy, The Player and Requiem for a Dream, amongst dozens of major films. And the film's cinematographer, Tom DiCillo, would move into the director's chair in 1991 with Johnny Suede, which gave Brad Pitt his first lead role.   The Beat would be shot on location in New York City in the summer of 1986, and it would make its world premiere at the Cannes Film Market in May 1987. But it would be another thirteen months before the film arrived in theatres.   Opening on seven screens in Los Angeles and New York City on June 3rd, The Beat would gross just $7,168 in its first three days.  There would not be a second week for The Beat. It would make its way onto home video in early 1989, and that's the last time the film was seen for nearly thirty years, until the film was picked up by a number of streaming services.   Vestron's streak of bad luck continued with the comedy Paramedics starring George Newbern and Christopher McDonald. The only feature film directed by Stuart Margolin, best known as Angel on the 1970s TV series The Rockford Files, Newbern and McDonald play two… well, paramedics… who are sent by boss, as punishment, from their cushy uptown gig to a troubled district at the edge of the city, where they discover two other paramedics are running a cadavers for dollars scheme, harvesting organs from dead bodies to the black market.   Here again we have a great supporting cast who deserve to be in a better movie, including character actor John P. Ryan, James Noble from Benson, Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs from Welcome Back Kotter, the great Ray Walston, and one-time Playboy Playmate Karen Witter, who plays a sort of angel of death.   Opening on 301 screens nationwide, Paramedics would only gross $149,577 in its first three days, the worst per screen average of any movie playing in at least 100 theatres that weekend. Vestron stopped tracking the film after just three days.   Two weeks later, on June 17th, Vestron released a comedy horror film that should have done better. Waxwork was an interesting idea, a group of college students who have some strange encounters with the wax figures at a local museum, but that's not exactly why it should have been more popular. It was the cast that should have brought audiences in. On one side, you had a group of well-known younger actors like Deborah Foreman from Valley Girl, Zack Gailligan from Gremlins, Michelle Johnson from Blame It on Rio, and Miles O'Keeffe from Sword of the Valiant. On the other hand, you had a group of seasoned veterans from popular television shows and movies, such as Patrick Macnee from the popular 1960s British TV show The Avengers, John Rhys-Davies from the Indiana Jones movies, and David Warner, from The Omen and Time after Time and Time Bandits and Tron.   But if I want to be completely honest, this was not a movie to release in the early part of summer. While I'm a firm believer that the right movie can find an audience no matter when it's released, Waxwork was absolutely a prime candidate for an early October release. Throughout the 1980s, we saw a number of horror movies, and especially horror comedies, released in the summer season that just did not hit with audiences. So it would be of little surprise when Waxwork grossed less than a million dollars during its theatrical run. And it should be of little surprise that the film would become popular enough on home video to warrant a sequel, which would add more popular sci-fi and horror actors like Marina Sirtis from Star Trek: The Next Generation, David Carradine and even Bruce Campbell. But by 1992, when Waxwork 2 was released, Vestron was long since closed.   The second Ken Russell movie made for Vestron was The Lair of the White Worm, based on a 1911 novel by Bram Stoker, the author's final published book before his death the following year. The story follows the residents in and around a rural English manor that are tormented by an ancient priestess after the skull of a serpent she worships is unearthed by an archaeologist.   Russell would offer the role of Sylvia Marsh, the enigmatic Lady who is actually an immortal priestess to an ancient snake god, to Tilda Swinton, who at this point of her career had already racked up a substantial resume in film after only two years, but she would decline. Instead, the role would go to Amanda Donohoe, the British actress best known at the time for her appearances in a pair of Adam Ant videos earlier in the decade. And the supporting cast would include Peter Capaldi, Hugh Grant, Catherine Oxenberg, and the under-appreciated Sammi Davis, who was simply amazing in Mona Lisa, A Prayer for the Dying and John Boorman's Hope and Glory.   The $2m would come together fairly quickly. Vestron and Russell would agree on the film in late 1987, the script would be approved by January 1988, filming would begin in England in February, and the completed film would have its world premiere at the Montreal Film Festival before the end of August.   When the film arrived in American theatres starting on October 21st, many critics would embrace the director's deliberate camp qualities and anachronisms. But audiences, who maybe weren't used to Russell's style of filmmaking, did not embrace the film quite so much. New Yorkers would buy $31k worth of tickets in its opening weekend at the D. W. Griffith and 8th Street Playhouse, and the film would perform well in its opening weeks in major markets, but the film would never quite break out, earning just $1.2m after ten weeks in theatres. But, again, home video would save the day, as the film would become one of the bigger rental titles in 1989.   If you were a teenager in the early 80s, as I was, you may remember a Dutch horror film called The Lift. Or, at the very least, you remember the key art on the VHS box, of a man who has his head stuck in between the doors of an elevator, while the potential viewer is warned to take the stairs, take the stairs, for God's sake, take the stairs. It was an impressive debut film for Dick Maas, but it was one that would place an albatross around the neck of his career.   One of his follow ups to The Lift, called Amsterdamned, would follow a police detective who is searching for a serial killer in his home town, who uses the canals of the Dutch capital to keep himself hidden. When the detective gets too close to solving the identity of the murderer, the killer sends a message by killing the detective's girlfriend, which, if the killer had ever seen a movie before, he should have known you never do. You never make it personal for the cop, because he's gonna take you down even worse.   When the film's producers brought the film to the American Film Market in early 1988, it would become one of the most talked about films, and Vestron would pick up the American distribution rights for a cool half a million dollars. The film would open on six screens in the US on November 25th, including the Laemmle Music Hall in Beverly Hills but not in New York City, but a $15k first weekend gross would seal its fate almost immediately. The film would play for another four weeks in theatres, playing on 18 screens at its widest, but it would end its run shortly after the start of of the year with only $62,044 in tickets sold.   The final Vestron Pictures release of 1988 was Andrew Birkin's Burning Secret. Birkin, the brother of French singer and actress Jane Birkin, would co-write the screenplay for this adaptation of a 1913 short story by Austrian novelist Stefan Zweig, about a about an American diplomat's son who befriends a mysterious baron while staying at an Austrian spa during the 1920s. According to Birkin in a 2021 interview, making the movie was somewhat of a nightmare, as his leading actors, Klaus Maria Brandauer and Faye Dunaway, did not like each other, and their lack of comfort with each other would bleed into their performances, which is fatal for a film about two people who are supposed to passionately burn for each other.   Opening on 16 screens in major markets on Thursday, December 22nd, Burning Secret would only gross $27k in its first four days. The film would actually see a post-Christmas bump, as it would lose a screen but see its gross jump to $40k. But after the first of the year, as it was obvious reviews were not going to save the film and awards consideration was non-existent, the film would close after three weeks with only $104k worth of tickets sold.   By the end of 1988, Vestron was facing bankruptcy. The major distributors had learned the lessons independents like Vestron had taught them about selling more volumes of tapes by lowering the price, to make movies collectables and have people curate their own video library. Top titles were harder to come by, and studios were no longer giving up home video rights to the movies they acquired from third-party producers.   Like many of the distributors we've spoken about before, and will undoubtedly speak of again, Vestron had too much success with one movie too quickly, and learned the wrong lessons about growth. If you look at the independent distribution world of 2023, you'll see companies like A24 that have learned that lesson. Stay lean and mean, don't go too wide too quickly, try not to spend too much money on a movie, no matter who the filmmaker is and how good of a relationship you have with them. A24 worked with Robert Eggers on The Witch and The Lighthouse, but when he wanted to spend $70-90m to make The Northman, A24 tapped out early, and Focus Features ended up losing millions on the film. Focus, the “indie” label for Universal Studios, can weather a huge loss like The Northman because they are a part of a multinational, multimedia conglomerate.   This didn't mean Vestron was going to quit quite yet, but, spoiler alert, they'll be gone soon enough.   In fact, and in case you are newer to the podcast and haven't listen to many of the previous episodes, none of the independent distribution companies that began and/or saw their best years in the 1980s that we've covered so far or will be covering in the future, exist in the same form they existed in back then.    New Line still exists, but it's now a label within Warner Brothers instead of being an independent distributor. Ditto Orion, which is now just a specialty label within MGM/UA. The Samuel Goldwyn Company is still around and still distributes movies, but it was bought by Orion Pictures the year before Orion was bought by MGM/UA, so it too is now just a specialty label, within another specialty label. Miramax today is just a holding company for the movies the company made before they were sold off to Disney, before Disney sold them off to a hedge fund, who sold Miramax off to another hedge fund.    Atlantic is gone. New World is gone. Cannon is gone. Hemdale is gone. Cinecom is gone. Island Films is gone. Alive Films is gone. Concorde Films is gone. MCEG is gone. CineTel is gone. Crown International is gone. Lorimar is gone. New Century/Vista is gone. Skouras Films is gone. Cineplex Odeon Films is gone.   Not one of them survived.   The same can pretty much be said for the independent distributors created in the 1990s, save Lionsgate, but I'll leave that for another podcast to tackle.   As for the Vestron story, we'll continue that one next week, because there are still a dozen more movies to talk about, as well as the end of the line for the once high flying company.   Thank you for joining us. We'll talk again soon.   Remember to visit this episode's page on our website, The80sMoviePodcast.com, for extra materials about the movies we covered this episode.   The 80s Movies Podcast has been researched, written, narrated and edited by Edward Havens for Idiosyncratic Entertainment.   Thank you again.   Good night.

Ben Cross - British Flowers Rock (Back For More) This episode features a first ever for the podcast – as I'm joined for the first time, by a returning guest in their second appearance. Join me as I talk to Ben Cross, from Crosslands Flower Nursery – otherwise known online as Alstroemeria Ben. Ben spoke to me way back in season 1 about his British Flowers Rock campaign, and he joins me now for an update. Do follow Ben on Instagram and Twitter where you can find him on both @alstroemeriaben. You can order your own Alstroemeria from Crosslands directly by getting in touch with Ben on his socials.

Ben, is a 4th generation British Alstroemeria grower. It was very interesting to hear his story talking about the business starting in the 30s all the way to today and how the production has stayed the same but the challenges have increased. Ben is at the forefront of fighting for the flower industry with his British Flowers Rock campaign! The team are award winning and it's an all in great story! Enjoy!

We revisit an on the nose moment from this morning's show.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Imagine starting your own recruitment agency with no recruiting experience and growing it to almost a million dollars in the first year. Sounds unbelievable, right?  Yet that's exactly what my special guest, Ben Cross, has accomplished in his first year in recruitment. In this interview, we break down exactly how he achieved those remarkable results. Ben is the founder and CEO of GLOMO based in Dallas. GLOMO specializes in the global mobility industry providing talent search as well as consulting services in sales and marketing plus mergers and acquisitions.    So what's the secret to Ben's success? It comes down to an intangible asset that doesn't appear on a balance sheet – his personal brand. Ben was already extremely well-known in his industry prior to launching his own business.  In this episode, you'll learn how Ben became a micro-celebrity within his niche using the 3R formula: Reach, Relevance and Relationship.   Episode Outline and Highlights [02:55] Ben's background and his journey as a startup recruitment agency owner. [06:28] Ben explains the 3 R's of personal branding - reach, relevance, relationship [08:01] The LOVE + RELO podcast - Spreading love and community building during the pandemic. [11:28] What is Global Mobility? [18:26] How setting up virtual conferences led to ‘unintended good stuff'. [24:58] What motivated Ben to start his own recruitment business? [28:35] A critical ingredient for recruitment business owners when starting or scaling. [33:52] What GLOMO has achieved this year and what key success factors? [42:07] Why should you consider raising your rates? [50:00] The value of meeting people in person to build personal relationships. [51:28] Failing daily! Ben's biggest challenges in growing a business. [56:27] Things Ben would have done differently. [01:04:14] New offices in Dallas and challenging the work-from-home (WFH) setup. [01:08:21] What is next for GLOMO?   LOVE + RELO - Hosting Daily LinkedIn Live Streams During the Pandemic Ben is a genius when it comes to personal branding - a skill that has translated well to his recruitment firm's success. Ben has been creating content on LinkedIn since 2006. When the platform rolled out a Live Feature, he was one of the Beta testers to utilize the feature. It became his resolution on January 1st, 2020 to go live every day!    You will hear how their program - Love + Relo came about. It's a LinkedIn Live stream for the Global Mobility industry where they interview leaders while responding to audience questions. In retrospect, his timing could not have been better. When this pandemic hit in March 2020, people were seeking that sense of connection and community that LOVE + RELO provided.   Ben's live stream attracted speaking opportunities and invitations to host virtual conferences (and later in-person conferences) for trade associations in the global mobility space.     You will also hear about their Get Talent! Podcast - which has been a valuable way to connect with both clients and candidates. Ben explained the 3 keys when it comes to personal branding: Reach, Relevancy, and Relationships.   Secrets of Starting a Successful Recruitment Agency How did GLOMO's startup recruitment business perform in its first year?    Ben revealed, “We're coming on the end of the calendar year 2022, I think we are gonna be in the $950k range, I am proud of that.”   There could be several explanations for Ben's rapid growth. For one, GLOMO was founded in June 2020 as a consulting firm. So Ben was adding recruiting and executive search to an already established business. Secondly, prior to launching GLOMO Ben was the VP of Sales for a moving company so he has a deep knowledge and understanding of the industry he serves.  But that alone doesn't explain his outstanding results.   Here are some of the factors that Ben attributes GLOMO's success to:  Leveraging his Personal Brand and the momentum of his LinkedIn content Hiring the right people, including an experienced and reliable fee-earner Giving to the community: creating meaningful content for their industry. Raising their rates above their competitors and overdelivering.   We also get into the nitty-gritty of starting a recruitment agency, from getting an ATS/CRM, building the systems and processes, LinkedIn Recruiter, and more.    Ben's Perspective on Failing Daily I asked Ben about the challenges and struggles he encountered and what he would have done differently.   What really resonated with me is Ben's perspective on the importance of failure: “We fail daily, like every day, all day… If you are not failing, you are not trying. As business owners or professionals, we think that success is avoiding failures. It is not. It is about embracing them, learning from them, and even memorializing them in our mind palace and saying ‘I'm gonna pay homage to this ridiculous epic failure that I had'... We are really big in celebrating failures.”   Our Sponsors This podcast is proudly sponsored by i-intro and Recruitment Entrepreneur.   i-intro® is an end-to-end retained recruitment platform. Their technology and methodology allow recruiters to differentiate themselves from the competition, win more retained business, bigger fees and increase their billings. Their software combined with world-class training enables you to transition from transactional, contingency recruiter to consultative, retained recruiter. Instead of being perceived as a “me too” vendor, you'll be positioned as a “me only” solutions provider. Be sure to mention Mark Whitby or The Resilient Recruiter. Book your free, no-obligation consultation here: www.recruitmentcoach.com/retained Recruitment Entrepreneur is the world's leading Private Equity firm specializing in the international recruitment industry. If you've dreamed of starting, scaling and selling your recruitment business, this is your chance. James Caan and his team at Recruitment Entrepreneur are actively seeking ambitious recruiters who they can invest in. They provide everything you need to grow a successful recruitment business including: funding, financial expertise, coaching and mentoring, operational strategy, backoffice support, marketing and talent attraction solutions. Be sure to mention Mark Whitby or The Resilient Recruiter. Start a conversation here: https://www.recruitmentcoach.com/vc   Ben Cross Bio and Contact Info After 15 year career in the moving and relocation industry, Ben Cross quit his job to start a consulting and recruitment firm called GLOMO. In his first full year of recruiting, this small startup has billed over $1 million US dollars. Over the past three years, Ben has hosted over 400 episodes of his podcast "Love + Relo" which has become "the voice of the relocation industry". He has also co-hosted a recruitment podcast called the Get Talent! Podcast which shares recruitment insights for hiring managers. Ben's approach is to build reach, relevancy and relationships through Linkedin Live streams and hosting in-person events where he and his team build their personal brand's social capital. He also hosts conferences within his niche industries and speaks on numerous panels.    Ben on LinkedIn GLOMO website link LOVE + RELO streaming link LOVE + RELO on YouTube Get Talent! Podcast link People and Resources Mentioned Danny Herskowitz on LinkedIn Connect with Mark Whitby Get your FREE 30-minute strategy call Mark on LinkedIn Mark on Twitter: @MarkWhitby Mark on Facebook Mark on Instagram: @RecruitmentCoach Related Podcast You Might Enjoy TRR#150 How to Self-Destruct a $4M Search Firm and Re-Build on Stronger Foundations, with Mark Phillips   Subscribe to The Resilient Recruiter

Robert Winfree, Jason Teasley and Mark Radulich present their Prey for the Devil 2022 Review! Prey for the Devil is a 2022 American supernatural horror film directed by Daniel Stamm and written by Robert Zappia. The film stars Jacqueline Byers, Colin Salmon, Christian Navarro, Lisa Palfrey, Nicholas Ralph, Virginia Madsen, and Ben Cross. Prey for the Devil was released in the United States on October 28, 2022, by Lionsgate. It is the final film to feature Cross before his death in 2020 and is dedicated to his memory. Disclaimer: The following may contain offensive language, adult humor, and/or content that some viewers may find offensive – The views and opinions expressed by any one speaker does not explicitly or necessarily reflect or represent those of Mark Radulich or W2M Network. Mark Radulich and his wacky podcast on all the things: https://linktr.ee/markkind76 also snapchat: markkind76 FB Messenger: Mark Radulich LCSW Tiktok: @markradulich twitter: @MarkRadulich

Robert Winfree, Jason Teasley and Mark Radulich present their Prey for the Devil 2022 Review! Prey for the Devil is a 2022 American supernatural horror film directed by Daniel Stamm and written by Robert Zappia. The film stars Jacqueline Byers, Colin Salmon, Christian Navarro, Lisa Palfrey, Nicholas Ralph, Virginia Madsen, and Ben Cross. Prey for the Devil was released in the United States on October 28, 2022, by Lionsgate. It is the final film to feature Cross before his death in 2020 and is dedicated to his memory. Disclaimer: The following may contain offensive language, adult humor, and/or content that some viewers may find offensive – The views and opinions expressed by any one speaker does not explicitly or necessarily reflect or represent those of Mark Radulich or W2M Network. Mark Radulich and his wacky podcast on all the things: https://linktr.ee/markkind76 also snapchat: markkind76 FB Messenger: Mark Radulich LCSW Tiktok: @markradulich twitter: @MarkRadulich

Review phim ra rạp từ ngày 28/10/2022 ĐẶC VỤ XUYÊN QUỐC GIA C16 Đạo diễn: Lee Seok Hoon Diễn viên: Hyun Bin, Yoo Hai Jin, Lim Yoon A, Daniel Henney, Jin Sun Kyu Thể loại: Hài, Hành Động Câu chuyện phim ghi lại hành trình đặc vụ Triều Tiên Lim Cheol-ryung (Hyun Bin) quay trở lại Hàn Quốc để đánh sập một tổ chức tội phạm quốc tế tàn bạo, bí mật. Cùng lúc đó tại Hàn Quốc, Kang Jin-tae (Yoo Hai Jin) ở Đơn vị Tội phạm mạng đang khao khát trở lại đơn vị cũ thì được trao cho một nhiệm vụ đặc biệt với Cheol-ryung. Min-young (Lim Yoon A) cũng có cơ hội tiếp tục câu chuyện tình yêu “phát cuồng” dành cho Cheol-ryung. Jin-tae và Cheol-ryung cùng nhau làm việc dù vẫn còn nhiều nghi ngờ về động cơ của đối phương. Ngay khi bộ đôi chuẩn bị đột kích nơi ẩn náu của Jang Myung-jun (Jin Sun Kyu), thủ lĩnh của tổ chức tội phạm, thì đặc vụ FBI Jack (Daniel Henney) xông vào. Nhân tố mới này đã biến cuộc điều tra thành một cuộc điều tra quốc tế giữa 3 quốc gia, hứa hẹn nhiều tình tiết kịch tính và đầy bất ngờ. MỒI QUỶ DỮ C16 Đạo diễn: Daniel Stamm Diễn viên: Jacqueline Byers, Colin Salmon, Christian Navarro, Lisa Palfrey, Nicholas Ralph, Ben Cross, Virginia Madsen Thể loại: Hồi hộp, Kinh Dị “Mồi Quỷ Dữ” xoay quanh sơ Ann (do Jacqueline Byers thủ vai) bị kéo vào một cuộc chiến tại một Nhà Thờ Công Giáo trước thế lực quỷ ám đang ngày một hùng mạnh. Với khả năng chiến đấu với quỷ dữ, sơ Ann được phép thực hiện các buổi trừ tà dẫu cho các luật lệ xưa cũ chỉ cho phép Cha xứ thực hiện công việc này. Cùng với Cha Dante, sơ Ann chạm mặt một con quỷ dữ đang cố chiếm lấy linh hồn của một cô gái trẻ, và cũng có thể là kẻ đã ám lấy người mẹ quá cố của sơ. Sơ Ann dần nhận ra mối nguy đang đe dọa mình khủng khiếp thế nào, và cả lý do con quỷ dữ đó khao khát đoạt mạng cô. NGHI THỨC CẤM C18 Đạo diễn: Brando Lee Diễn viên: Fiona Dourif, Harris Dickinson, Malin Crépin, Jordan Belfi, Randy Wayne, William Miller, Phan Như Thảo, Konglar Kanchanahoti Thể loại: Hồi hộp, Kinh Dị Với khả năng cảm nhận những chuyện tâm linh đặc biệt, Jules (Fiona Dourif) thường là người lựa chọn những địa điểm “bị ám” để cùng nhóm bạn quay chương trình thực tế kiếm tiền. Nhận được lời kêu cứu của Ian (William Miller) và Martha (Malin Crépin), chủ nhân của một căn nhà cổ ở vùng núi Malaysia, cả nhóm đã nhận lời. Càng tìm hiểu kỹ về căn nhà, họ càng tìm ra những bí mật đen tối liên quan tới một nghi thức tàn bạo đã bị cấm từ lâu và dường như, thế lực hắc ám này có liên hệ tới quá khứ mà Jules luôn cố giấu... ĐƯA EM TÌM MỐI TÌNH ĐẦU C13 Đạo diễn: Choi Kook Hee Diễn viên: Ryu Seung Ryong, Yum Jung Ah, Ong Seong Wu, Park Se Wan… Thể loại: Hài, Tình cảm Câu chuyện hài hước và duyên dáng theo chân hai vợ chồng trên hành trình tìm lại mối tình đầu thời trung học cho người vợ đã lo toan nội trợ suốt 20 năm. Siêu sao “Nghề siêu khó” quay lại phòng vé trong chuyến hành trình đong đầy cảm xúc. GULLIVER DU KÝ Đạo diễn: Ilya Maksimov Diễn viên: Wayne Grayson, Alyson Leigh Rosenfeld, Billy Bob Thompson, v.v Thể loại: Hoạt Hình Nhà du hành và thám hiểm thế giới Gulliver được mời quay trở lại Lilliput - thị trấn trước đây đã được anh cứu khỏi hạm đội kẻ thù. Khi đến nơi, anh chỉ nhận thấy sự phẫn nộ và thất vọng của đám đông vì huyền thoại Gulliver khổng lồ giờ đây chỉ là một người bình thường. Cùng lúc đó, kẻ thù lại đe dọa xứ sở này thêm một lần nữa. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/kim-thanh-duong/support

In today's episode Roz is joined in the studio by Ben Cross of Crosslands Nursery We will be finding out about the work that Ben does for 'British Flower Rocks' and having a general discussion about the state of British flower growing and what needs to be done to improve things at a government and public level. Roz Chandler Resources:Lots of free resources on our website: www.thecutflowercollective.co.ukInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/fieldgateflowers  Facebook Groups Cut Flower Farming  - Growth and Profit in your business https://www.facebook.com/groups/449543639411874 Learn With The Cut Flower Collective https://www.facebook.com/groups/learnwiththecutflowercollectiveBen Cross Resources:Twitter - @Alstroemeriaben Instagram - @AlstroemeriabenFacebook- Crosslands Flower Nursery Lots of free resources on our website: www.thecutflowercollective.co.uk Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fieldgateflowers Facebook Groups Cut Flower Farming - Growth and Profit in your business https://www.facebook.com/groups/449543639411874 Learn With The Cut Flower Collective https://www.facebook.com/groups/learnwiththecutflowercollective

Two men chasing dreams of glory! Not the dudes from Chariots of Fire - the dudes from 80s Revisited! Use code "Revisited" for 20% off and free shipping at MANSCAPED.COM. 80srevisited@gmail.com to talk with us, and leave a review for us! Thank you for listening 80s Revisited, hosted by Trey Harris. Produced by Jesse Seidule.

On this episode we discuss one of the most controversial topics for recruiters: job hoppers! Depending on who you talk to this phenomenon is a talent pandemic, and some just say it's a sign of the times. Ben Cross and Danny Herskowitz from GLOMO weigh in on the issues and what's the right amount of tenure.

The newest episode of the Get Talent! Podcast is all about hiring fast! @Daniel Herskowitz and @Ben Cross provide you some stats you need to know and 7 Ways To Hire Fast. Has hiring cooled off? No!

Allotment Diaries Podcast is a podcast that aims to provide an honest insight into what owning a allotment plot is really about, it discusses what has worked well and equally what hasn't worked so well.  We also chat to special guests as well as other allotment holders! EP.4 |  Our Chat with Ben Cross (British Grower)Hello!Whilst growing fruits and vegetables on our plot is important, we believe that it is also important to grow flowers.  So on that basis, we decided that this week we would chat to Ben Cross who is a British Grower and who specialises in growing Alstroemeria in his Nursery (Crosslands). Ben has also been campaigning and is a passionate advocate for supporting British Growers and on this show, we get to understand how we can help him!Ben has been nominated for the British Florist Association ‘Grower of the Year award'. Please vote for Ben (Crosslands Nursery) via this link:www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/bfa_industry_awards_2022_votingWe hope you enjoy it.Amy  & ChayFor all enquiries: allotmentdiariespodcast@gmail.com or follow our Instagram @allotmentdiariespodcastYour hosts : ·       Amy | Instagram - @amys_allotment_·       Chay | Instagram - @london.allotment For all enquiries: allotmentdiariespodcast@gmail.com or follow our social media accounts on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter or YouTube.

Prey for the Devil 2022 (Movie Official Trailer) plus images from the film. Prey for the Devil - In Theaters October 28. Jacqueline Byers, Colin Salmon, Christian Navarro, Nicholas Ralph, Ben Cross, Academy Award Nominee Virginia Madsen. Directed by: Daniel Stamm Screenplay by: Robert Zappia Story by: Robert Zappia & Earl Richey Jones & Todd R. Jones Produced by: Paul Brooks, p.g.a., Todd R. Jones, p.g.a., Earl Richey Jones, p.g.a., Jessica Malanaphy, p.g.a. In response to a global rise in demonic possessions, the Catholic Church reopens exorcism schools to train priests in the Rite of Exorcism. On this spiritual battlefield, an unlikely warrior rises: a young nun, Sister Ann (Jacqueline Byers). Although nuns are forbidden to perform exorcisms, a professor (Colin Salmon) recognizes Sister Ann's gifts and agrees to train her. Thrust onto the spiritual frontline with fellow student Father Dante (Christian Navarro), Sister Ann finds herself in a battle for the soul of a young girl (who Sister Ann believes is possessed by the same demon that tormented her own mother years ago), and soon realizes the Devil has her right where he wants her….and it wants in. Photos Credit Vlad Cioplea/Lionsgate Copyright © 2021 Lionsgate Images, Trailer, Poster and Press Information supplied by info@epk.tv. Note | preyforthedevil Trailer courtesy of LionsGate Film. | All Rights Reserved. All audiovisual content are the © copyright of their respective owners. Lionsgate and Gold Circle Entertainment present, a Lionsgate production, a Confluence production. Subscribe to the LIONSGATE: YouTube Channel for the latest movie trailers, clips, and more: https://bit.ly/2Z6nfym VISIT THE OFFICIAL SITE https://www.preyforthedevil.movie/ FOLLOW ONLINE https://www.facebook.com/preyforthedevil https://twitter.com/preyforthedevil https://www.instagram.com/preyforthedevil/ https://www.tiktok.com/@lionsgate Lionsgate Official Website - https://bit.ly/3uEkGkd Follow Lionsgate on Twitter - https://bit.ly/3y3LGvy Follow Lionsgate on Facebook - https://bit.ly/3bhliot Follow Lionsgate on TikTok - https://bit.ly/3y3JjZ Subscribe ➤ Celebrity Spotlight Radio https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQJWuqwIeQrBpGS2Bx8F7TQ Follow ➤ Celebrity Spotlight Radio Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/celebrityspotlightradio Twitter: https://twitter.com/CSpotlightRadio Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/celebrityspotlightradio/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@celebrityspotlightradio Podcast: https://anchor.fm/celebrity-spotlight-radio Fair Use Disclaimer: I do not own any pictures/videos contained within this video. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/celebrity-spotlight-radio/support

How did we expect Hybrid working to work out? And what role has technology played as the working world adapts? We explore what the data is telling us and what lived experience is showing as we round the corner of the end of the pandemic with Alison Wright, who leads the customer and engagement strategy of 99% of UK's business community for Microsoft; pioneer remote-consulting dentist Ben Cross of Bristol Dentists and Paul Kelly, Microsoft Security Business Group Lead at Microsoft, plus Annie Auerbach, trends consultant and author of Flex: Reinventing Work for a Smarter, Happier Life. Brought to you in association with Microsoft

Another mediocre Fantastic Beast movie.  Unfortunately.  What else is new? 0:08:00 - Box Office and upcoming releases. 0:29:00 *** What's Streaming  *** NETFLIX BLADE RUNNER 2049, Dir. Denis Villeneuve – Ryan Gosling, Harrson Ford, Ana De Armas, Robin Wright, Mackenzie Davis, Jared Leto, Dave Bautista. 2017 FIRST KNIGHT, Dir. Jerry Zucker – Sean Connery, Richard Gere, Julia Ormond, Ben Cross, Liam Cunningham, Ralph Ineson. 1995 LOVE ACTUALLY, Dir Richard Curtis – Hugh Grant, Colin Firth, Emma Thompson, Keira Knightly, Bill Nighy, Liam Neeson, Laura Linney, Alan Rickman, Rowan Atkinson. 2003 0:31:00 - Trailers - THOR LOVE AND THUNDER / ESCAPE THE FIELD / LAST SEEN ALIVE   0:40:30 - FANTASTIC BEASTS: THE SECRETS OF DUMBLEDORE,Dir. David Yates (Gray 5 / Roger 5.5 / Chris 4 )   Hosted, produced and mixed by Grayson Maxwell and Roger Stillion. Music by Chad Wall.  Guess appearance by Christopher Boughan Quality Assurance by Anthony Emmett. Visit the new Youtube channel, "For the Love of Cinema" to follow and support our short video discussions.  Roger wears aviators!  Please give a like and subscribe if you enjoy it.   Follow the show on Twitter @lovecinemapod and check out the Facebook page for updates.  Rate, subscribe and leave a comment or two.  Every Little bit helps.  Send us an email to fortheloveofcinemapodcast@gmail.com Thank you for Listening!  Do you also secretly like the Fantastic Beasts movies?  

In this episode I talk to former NRL hard man Ben the boss Cross. Ben has had a distinguished career playing at three NRL clubs, playing in two NRL grand finals and winning one and a state of Origin series with the NSW Blues.Towards the end of his career Ben took up coaching roles whilst playing in the north of England before returning to Australia and working on the development pathway with the Newcastle knights and the NSW Blues Women's Origin team. Ben was later offered an assistant coaching role with the Brisbane Broncos that didn't end up going to plan and he discusses the tough times professional coaching can through at you and how he delt with that time in his career. This talk provided some great insight into the intricacies of professional coaching – Ben was able to illustrate some of the traits of his former coaches including the great Craig Bellamy and how he believes developing relationships are vital to being successful as a coach. Ben provided a detailed picture to what he believes went wrong at the Broncos after the Bennet Siebold saga of 2019. After his sacking from the Broncos Ben used the term get better not bitter which personified Ben's resilience after dealing with a very publicised sacking. He went out and completed leadership and business courses, developed other areas of his life and came back a stronger man following the ordeal. There is plenty to take away from this chat with Ben I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. If you are enjoying these podcasts please make sure you like it and leave a review and also follow me for updates on the podcast and other coaching matters on Instagram @thecoachdr

This month, your friendly Oscarologists rally to discuss the most athletic of Best Picture winners. Written by and starring Sylvester Stallone, Rocky (1976) charts the sudden rise to fame of Rocky Balboa, a down on his luck southpaw boxer from Philadelphia. The film also began one of the most successful film franchises in cinema history, with eight sequels. In Chariots of Fire (1982), we follow the competition and shared experiences between fellow 1924 Olympic athletes Harold Abrahams and Eric Liddell, portrayed by Ben Cross and Ian Charleson, featuring one of the most famous opencing sequences and musical theme by Vangelis. Thank you to Thomas Whitelaw for our intro music and Rachel Valentine Smith for our artwork. 

"I've seen better organized riots."  Chariots of Fire (1981) directed by Hugh Hudson and starring Ben Cross, Ian Charleson, Ian Holm, Nigel Havers, John Geilgud and Brad Davis. Next Time: Cool Runnings (1993)

The Coffee Break is the daily Christian talk and local events program on Hope Radio KCMI 97.1FM serving the Scottsbluff, NE area. Tune in for interviews with authors, musicians, pastors, and others in the Christian community and our local area! Visit our website: www.kcmifm.com Like us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/kcmifm

El episodio tres detalla el juicio del fanático nazi Rudolf Hess, cuya juicio estuvo marcada por su comportamiento cada vez más extraño y paranoico. Ben Cross ofrece una actuación convincente como el asistente de Hitler, Rudolf Hess. Después de su extraño vuelo a Escocia en 1941 para ofrecer paz a Gran Bretaña, el Führer hizo que Hess se declarara demente. En Nuremberg, la aptitud de Hess para el juicio estaba en el centro de su caso. Afirmó no recordar su pasado nazi y aparentemente sufrió de delirios paranoicos. El psiquiatra estadounidense Douglas Kelley y el psicólogo de la prisión Gustave Gilbert intentaron descubrir el misterio del estado mental de Hess. Lo que encontraron ofrece información reveladora sobre la psicología del nazismo. Falleció en la prisión de Spandau en 1987.

Join our hosts and they pick apart one of their less-favorite winners, Chariots of Fire. Between the lack of stakes, overused slow motion, and ill fitting (if iconic) score, Chariots did not finish first in Maggie's and Ian's opinions.

This week saw the passing of Ben Cross who starred in Chariots of Fire. Chariots of Fire is perhaps best known for it's Oscar winning film score which has become one of the most famous in history. Jill and Antonio discuss other movie themes in a very fun chat. Brand Way of The Gun https://igg.me/at/IGNXo5UJf-k/x/18549004#/ Support our Indiegogo campaign with artist Caanan White at http://www.ikaripress.com Read the first 21 pages of Brand for FREE! http://bit.ly/2Y6sRtB Get Brand merch here:https://teespring.com/stores/ikari-press?pr=CYBERFROG Ikari Press on Amazon:https://www.amazon.com/gp/search?ie=UTF8&tag=antoniodbrice-20&linkCode=ur2&linkId=fce638549947467874bbc212380f5209&camp=1789&creative=9325&index=apparel&keywords=ikari%20press Thanks for watching! Check out The Dollar Bin - on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/shop/influencer-c39fd8ab?listId=1VJMFX7L69XPS Follow us on social media here: https://twitter.com/ikaripress https://www.facebook.com/ikaripress https://instagram.com/ikaripress #jillstream --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/ikaripress/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/ikaripress/support

On this episode, we discuss the fifty-fourth Best Picture Winner: “CHARIOTS OF FIRE.”"Chariots of Fire" takes place in the class-obsessed and religiously divided United Kingdom of the early 1920s, where two determined young runners train for the 1924 Paris Olympics. Eric Liddell, a devout Christian born to Scottish missionaries in China, sees running as part of his worship of God's glory and refuses to train or compete on the Sabbath. Harold Abrahams overcomes anti-Semitism and class bias, but neglects his beloved sweetheart Sybil in his single-minded quest. Directed by Hugh Hudson, the film stars Ian Charleson as Eric Liddell, Ben Cross as Harold Abrahams, Alice Krige as Sybil Gordon, and Ian Holm as Sam Mussabini.Here on The Envelope, we discuss & review every Best Picture Winner in the Academy Awards History. You can reach anyone here at TheEnvelopePodcast.com – Just go there to email us, check our bios, and keep up with the latest episode.

美国喜剧大师访谈系列 乔治卡林乔治卡林 进入喜剧行业此内容为Great ComediansTalk about Comedy 音频访问George Carlin的Early Influences和Burns and Carlin部分。本集内容由Comedy翻译小组组织翻译。演播：芮宇组织：牙签（公号：牙签的签言万语）主持人问道乔治卡林是怎么样进入喜剧行业的。乔治卡林这样回答道。乔治卡林: 我爱喜剧，我爱喜剧给我带来的变化。主持人：有哪些人给你留下特别深刻的印象，或者让你觉得….要不给些名字吧？乔治卡林：可以啊，首先，Feminigenand Marley, Amos ‘n' Andy,Charlie McCarthy, Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy, Fred Allen。我比较少听Jack Benny，他的风格不是我最喜欢的类型。The Bob Hope Show，里面运用了很多不同风格的喜剧元素。Ben Cross，我和他一起表演过，里面也有很多喜剧元素。还有一些是轻喜剧，不是肥皂剧但有点像，比如Henry Overage， A Day with Julie等等….主持人：哦，那些电台上播的情景喜剧是吧。乔治卡林：没错，电台情景喜剧，就是这个。稍微岔一下话题，其实之前我也做了些研究，除了电台情景喜剧以外，当时还有些其他东西也给到了我帮助，比如一本叫“一千个笑话”的杂志，我每一期都看了；还有一本很小众的杂志，只发行了几期，叫Bally Who，我也买过；我看的时候Mad Comics还是本漫画；Panic Comics也只是本漫画，后来Panic变成了一本杂志；还有本杂志叫Help；还有Harvey Kurtzman …好多…主持人: 听起来你对喜剧的兴趣并不只是喜欢那么简单，你好像非常渴望，或者说，迫切地需要去走进喜剧的世界。乔治卡林：没错，没错。哦对了，还有Esar的漫画词典。主持人：这本超经典的。乔治卡林：我看了的第一反应就是：天啊！怎么那么厉害？我怎么没有想到？？就好像是老鼠掉进米缸里，我当时只想要…主持人：所以你沉迷的那段时间，是8？9？10？12岁这样子吗？乔治卡林：对。主持人：你和Jack Burns搭档的那段时候，又开始做起了电台节目？乔治卡林：恩，那时候我还在做电台节目。当时离开电台成为喜剧演员的计划还没在我脑中成型，我还没有…完全没有试过当喜剧演员。主持人：当你遇到了Jack…乔治卡林:我迈出了尝试喜剧的第一步。主持人：恩，然后你们又一起做电台节目了？乔治卡林：恩。主持人：你们做了一档电台喜剧节目，然后开始做了一些线下演出？乔治卡林：对，我和Jack当时在Fort Worth工作。我和他在波士顿认识。我离开原来的地方去了Fort Worth，他离开波士顿，打算一路开车到好莱坞，中途在Fort Worth停了一下，就签了份工作，而且就是我当时工作的那家电台。我们合租了大概3、4个月。每天晚上我做完节目…我当时都是半夜下班，他当时是晚间的配音演员…我们就会一起去一家叫Cellar的咖啡店。当时还是垮掉的一代盛行的时候，很多人都觉得自己代表了垮掉的一代。当然，那边还是有些真正玩世不恭，不受常规约束的自由散漫主义者。我们会即兴创作一段双人表演：白天在自己的房间里想一些点子，然后晚上到咖啡店去根据这些点子即兴表演。有点简单粗暴，实际上也是非常简单粗暴。但根据那边的观众的反馈…对了我们的表演是不收钱的，他们会免费提供酒。虽然这是家咖啡店，但他们会在咖啡杯里倒酒。肯尼迪被刺杀的前一晚，他的特勤人员就在这个咖啡馆，那晚这里开了个后来臭名昭著的烂醉派对，后来特勤人员来了，就在Fort Worth的这个Cellar咖啡馆。话说回来，就是因为我们从这些有时候会喝倒彩的酒鬼观众那边偶尔得到些笑声作为反馈，我们就有了信心，辞了电台工作，满怀壮志地开车到了加州。主持人：哇，你们刚到加州的时候，有几分钟的段子？5分钟？10分钟？乔治卡林：我们大概有个15分钟的段子吧。主持人：是成熟的，打磨过的，观众之前反应很好的段子吗？乔治卡林：对的，“打磨”这个词在当时用还太早了，但的确是经过观众检验的段子。主持人：这样啊，但你觉得已经够…乔治卡林: 恩，我们当时觉得已经可以自信的离开电台了，当时电台的人还说了，“你们一定会回来的！”他说有很多其他人也辞了电台，以为可以在好莱坞平步青云了，结果碰了一鼻子灰，我们也会回来的。他经常会说些这个…主持人：这样啊，那你们到了好莱坞，可以大展身手了，开始累积更多的段子了…然后呢？乔治卡林：四处碰运气了大概一个月后，我们的钱被偷了，所以不得不重新做了会儿电台节目，大概做了3个月。与此同时，我在一家叫Cosmo Alley的咖啡店找到了一份工作。Lenny Bruce来看过我们表演，Mor So也来看过我们表演，这些都要谢谢我们的经纪人Murray Becker。后来Lenny帮我们牵线搭桥，签了份GAC的合同。Mor也帮我们在好多地方说了些好话。我们当时的行程是连轴转。在 CosmoAlley只做了三个星期，我们就出了一张专辑，关于…主持人：你们当时来得及写段子吗？乔治卡林：我们每天都在创作新的段子，而且也挺高产的。你也知道，后来就不是这样了，我开始想当个歌手，想要稍微远离喜剧…主持人：我还有些想问的，乔治，你完成了从电台到舞台的转型，有什么技巧是电台上和观众沟通学不到的，只有面对面和观众线下互动才能学到的呢？乔治卡林：关于这点，我觉得得益于小时候在我家小区里的经验。我是那一带比较有名的开心果，这也是为什么在做电台喜剧之前，15岁的时候我就觉得自己要当一名喜剧演员，因为我经常开小区里的人玩笑。当时我有一段加起来30-40分钟的段子，不是一整套，但我会在小区里演。比如有邻居会说，乔治，演一段OddieLips从酒吧里出来，看到Margaret在酒吧外面的段子吧。然后我就会根据他们提到的小区里真实的人物的性格，即兴创作一段。当时我可以惟妙惟肖地模仿10-12个人，而且擅长自己编故事。我曾经编过一个牧师参加喝酒派对的故事。所以基本上，我很习惯在小区里，面对一群人，或者一小撮人表演，有时候观众会哈哈大笑，有的时候不会，所以我在表演的时候会一直保持紧张的状态，要学会适应冷场。主持人：有什么比较技巧性的贴士，比如如何运用麦克风，站位…乔治卡林：说实话我记不大得了。因为我们有两个人，所以舞台压力会小些，因为没有一个人需要单独承受压力，我们共同撑起了一场表演。关于麦克风…其实在不是自己朋友的观众面前表演很不一样（与在小区里相比）。我们前四周是在好莱坞的一个咖啡馆，所以大家都相对，比较有礼貌。后来我们去了一些沙龙，夜店表演，观众有些已经喝醉了，有些很冷漠，他们甚至都不是专门来看领衔主演的喜剧演员的，就更不要提我们这些暖场的了…

美国喜剧大师访谈系列 乔治卡林乔治卡林 进入喜剧行业此内容为Great ComediansTalk about Comedy 音频访问George Carlin的Early Influences和Burns and Carlin部分。本集内容由Comedy翻译小组组织翻译。演播：芮宇组织：牙签（公号：牙签的签言万语）主持人问道乔治卡林是怎么样进入喜剧行业的。乔治卡林这样回答道。乔治卡林: 我爱喜剧，我爱喜剧给我带来的变化。主持人：有哪些人给你留下特别深刻的印象，或者让你觉得….要不给些名字吧？乔治卡林：可以啊，首先，Feminigenand Marley, Amos ‘n' Andy,Charlie McCarthy, Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy, Fred Allen。我比较少听Jack Benny，他的风格不是我最喜欢的类型。The Bob Hope Show，里面运用了很多不同风格的喜剧元素。Ben Cross，我和他一起表演过，里面也有很多喜剧元素。还有一些是轻喜剧，不是肥皂剧但有点像，比如Henry Overage， A Day with Julie等等….主持人：哦，那些电台上播的情景喜剧是吧。乔治卡林：没错，电台情景喜剧，就是这个。稍微岔一下话题，其实之前我也做了些研究，除了电台情景喜剧以外，当时还有些其他东西也给到了我帮助，比如一本叫“一千个笑话”的杂志，我每一期都看了；还有一本很小众的杂志，只发行了几期，叫Bally Who，我也买过；我看的时候Mad Comics还是本漫画；Panic Comics也只是本漫画，后来Panic变成了一本杂志；还有本杂志叫Help；还有Harvey Kurtzman …好多…主持人: 听起来你对喜剧的兴趣并不只是喜欢那么简单，你好像非常渴望，或者说，迫切地需要去走进喜剧的世界。乔治卡林：没错，没错。哦对了，还有Esar的漫画词典。主持人：这本超经典的。乔治卡林：我看了的第一反应就是：天啊！怎么那么厉害？我怎么没有想到？？就好像是老鼠掉进米缸里，我当时只想要…主持人：所以你沉迷的那段时间，是8？9？10？12岁这样子吗？乔治卡林：对。主持人：你和Jack Burns搭档的那段时候，又开始做起了电台节目？乔治卡林：恩，那时候我还在做电台节目。当时离开电台成为喜剧演员的计划还没在我脑中成型，我还没有…完全没有试过当喜剧演员。主持人：当你遇到了Jack…乔治卡林:我迈出了尝试喜剧的第一步。主持人：恩，然后你们又一起做电台节目了？乔治卡林：恩。主持人：你们做了一档电台喜剧节目，然后开始做了一些线下演出？乔治卡林：对，我和Jack当时在Fort Worth工作。我和他在波士顿认识。我离开原来的地方去了Fort Worth，他离开波士顿，打算一路开车到好莱坞，中途在Fort Worth停了一下，就签了份工作，而且就是我当时工作的那家电台。我们合租了大概3、4个月。每天晚上我做完节目…我当时都是半夜下班，他当时是晚间的配音演员…我们就会一起去一家叫Cellar的咖啡店。当时还是垮掉的一代盛行的时候，很多人都觉得自己代表了垮掉的一代。当然，那边还是有些真正玩世不恭，不受常规约束的自由散漫主义者。我们会即兴创作一段双人表演：白天在自己的房间里想一些点子，然后晚上到咖啡店去根据这些点子即兴表演。有点简单粗暴，实际上也是非常简单粗暴。但根据那边的观众的反馈…对了我们的表演是不收钱的，他们会免费提供酒。虽然这是家咖啡店，但他们会在咖啡杯里倒酒。肯尼迪被刺杀的前一晚，他的特勤人员就在这个咖啡馆，那晚这里开了个后来臭名昭著的烂醉派对，后来特勤人员来了，就在Fort Worth的这个Cellar咖啡馆。话说回来，就是因为我们从这些有时候会喝倒彩的酒鬼观众那边偶尔得到些笑声作为反馈，我们就有了信心，辞了电台工作，满怀壮志地开车到了加州。主持人：哇，你们刚到加州的时候，有几分钟的段子？5分钟？10分钟？乔治卡林：我们大概有个15分钟的段子吧。主持人：是成熟的，打磨过的，观众之前反应很好的段子吗？乔治卡林：对的，“打磨”这个词在当时用还太早了，但的确是经过观众检验的段子。主持人：这样啊，但你觉得已经够…乔治卡林: 恩，我们当时觉得已经可以自信的离开电台了，当时电台的人还说了，“你们一定会回来的！”他说有很多其他人也辞了电台，以为可以在好莱坞平步青云了，结果碰了一鼻子灰，我们也会回来的。他经常会说些这个…主持人：这样啊，那你们到了好莱坞，可以大展身手了，开始累积更多的段子了…然后呢？乔治卡林：四处碰运气了大概一个月后，我们的钱被偷了，所以不得不重新做了会儿电台节目，大概做了3个月。与此同时，我在一家叫Cosmo Alley的咖啡店找到了一份工作。Lenny Bruce来看过我们表演，Mor So也来看过我们表演，这些都要谢谢我们的经纪人Murray Becker。后来Lenny帮我们牵线搭桥，签了份GAC的合同。Mor也帮我们在好多地方说了些好话。我们当时的行程是连轴转。在 CosmoAlley只做了三个星期，我们就出了一张专辑，关于…主持人：你们当时来得及写段子吗？乔治卡林：我们每天都在创作新的段子，而且也挺高产的。你也知道，后来就不是这样了，我开始想当个歌手，想要稍微远离喜剧…主持人：我还有些想问的，乔治，你完成了从电台到舞台的转型，有什么技巧是电台上和观众沟通学不到的，只有面对面和观众线下互动才能学到的呢？乔治卡林：关于这点，我觉得得益于小时候在我家小区里的经验。我是那一带比较有名的开心果，这也是为什么在做电台喜剧之前，15岁的时候我就觉得自己要当一名喜剧演员，因为我经常开小区里的人玩笑。当时我有一段加起来30-40分钟的段子，不是一整套，但我会在小区里演。比如有邻居会说，乔治，演一段OddieLips从酒吧里出来，看到Margaret在酒吧外面的段子吧。然后我就会根据他们提到的小区里真实的人物的性格，即兴创作一段。当时我可以惟妙惟肖地模仿10-12个人，而且擅长自己编故事。我曾经编过一个牧师参加喝酒派对的故事。所以基本上，我很习惯在小区里，面对一群人，或者一小撮人表演，有时候观众会哈哈大笑，有的时候不会，所以我在表演的时候会一直保持紧张的状态，要学会适应冷场。主持人：有什么比较技巧性的贴士，比如如何运用麦克风，站位…乔治卡林：说实话我记不大得了。因为我们有两个人，所以舞台压力会小些，因为没有一个人需要单独承受压力，我们共同撑起了一场表演。关于麦克风…其实在不是自己朋友的观众面前表演很不一样（与在小区里相比）。我们前四周是在好莱坞的一个咖啡馆，所以大家都相对，比较有礼貌。后来我们去了一些沙龙，夜店表演，观众有些已经喝醉了，有些很冷漠，他们甚至都不是专门来看领衔主演的喜剧演员的，就更不要提我们这些暖场的了…