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The Compendium Podcast: An Assembly of Fascinating and Intriguing Things
In this episode of The Compendium, we uncover the true story of Chris Lemmon's near-death experience in the North Sea—a survival tale that defies belief. In 2012, Chris, a seasoned saturation diver, was carrying out routine maintenance work 300 feet beneath the surface when disaster struck. His lifeline—the umbilical cord supplying air, warmth, and communication—suddenly snapped, leaving him stranded in total darkness, with no oxygen and no way to escape.What followed was an unthinkable fight for survival in one of the most extreme environments on Earth. How did Chris Lemmon beat the odds? What happens when a diver loses their air supply? And why do some call this story nothing short of a miracle?We give you just The Compendium, but if you want more, here are our resources:Last Breath (2019) - Directed by Alex Parkinson and Richard da CostaLast Breath - The True Story - BBC Host & Show Info Hosts: Kyle Risi & Adam Cox About: Kyle and Adam are more than just your hosts, they're your close friends sharing intriguing stories from tales from the darker corners of true crime, the annals of your forgotten history books, and the who's who of incredible people. Intro Music: Alice in dark Wonderland by Aleksey Chistilin Community & Calls to Action ⭐ Review & follow on: Spotify & Apple Podcasts
Harvey Brownstone conducts an in-depth Interview with Chris Lemmon, Son of Legendary Actor, Jack Lemmon, Actor & Author, “A Twist of Lemmon: A Tribute to My Father" About Harvey's guest: Today's guest, Chris Lemmon, an actor, producer and author who's appeared in many movies including “Airport ‘77”, “Seems Like Old Times”, “Uncommon Valor”, “Swing Shift”, “Cannonball Run 2”, “Weekend Warrior”, “Lena's Holiday”, “Roe vs Wade”, and 2 very special movies, “That's Life” and “Dad”, in which he appeared with his legendary father, 2-time Academy Award winner Jack Lemmon, who's been immortalized in movies like “Mr. Roberts”, “Save the Tiger”, “The Apartment”, “Irma LaDouce”, “The Odd Couple”, “The China Syndrome”, “Glengarry Glen Ross”, and of course, the greatest comedy film of all time, “Some Like it Hot”. In fact, our guest portrayed his father in a re-enactment of his time on the set of “Some Like it Hot”, in the Marilyn Monroe biopic, “Blonde”. On television, our guest has brought us many memorable roles including “Checko” in “Brothers and Sisters”, “Richard Philips” in “Duet” and “Open House”, “Jeff Cameron” in “Knots Landing”, and “Martin Brubaker”, better known as “Bru”, in “Thunder in Paradise”. On the stage, he's starred in “Barefoot in the Park”, “Shay”, “Love Letters”, and his highly acclaimed one-man show “Twist of Lemmon”, based on his best selling, highly compelling and heartwarming 2006 memoir entitled, “A Twist of Lemmon: A Tribute to my Father”. He also wrote, produced and hosted the wonderful documentary film, “Magic Time”, which is all about the brilliant artistry of Jack Lemmon. For more interviews and podcasts go to: https://www.harveybrownstoneinterviews.com/ To learn more about Chris Lemmon, go to:https://www.stonemanorproductions.comhttps://www.instagram.com/therealchrislemmon/ www.youtube.com/@stonemanorproduction #ChrisLemmon #harveybrownstoneinterviews
Bruce Ferber and I discuss reading sports books as a kid; Thomas Wolffe; attending a summer writing session at Andover while in high school; Phillip Roth; Woody Allen; publishers don't like comic novels; the genesis of his novel "I Buried Paul"; meeting struggling musicians without an outlet; session musicians; there are less crappy sitcoms on now; his book "Elevating Oberman" and subsequent tour; "Cascade Falls" and cookie cutter architecture; "The Way We Work" reveals show business from all angles; Billy Van Zandt tells his Lucy story in "The Way We Work"; Steven Van Zandt endorses "I Buried Paul"; going to NYU to be a director; doing six months of film editing and six months writing; writing a spec M*A*S*H* and getting hired to write two Bosom Buddies and a Laverne & Shirley; working on House Calls, Star of the Family, Jennifer Slept Here and Oh, Madeline; writing a Simon & Simon; working on Webster and having Alex Karras be a jerk; Eugene Roche; Facts of Life; bad timing for Gung Ho; Duet; working with Alison LaPlaca, Chris Lemmon, Ellen DeGeneres, Danny Gans; working on Growing Pains but not getting to write an episode; working on Nurses; Coach and Craig T. Nelson; running Home Improvement; the cancer scare episode; Sabrina, the Teenage Witch; his spec Cheers; his film "Praying for Tucson" about Presidential candidate Howard Dean; Dan vs.; his wife's passing; pitching an animated series based on the book "Dazzle" about a misanthropic dog
We continue our miniseries on the 1980s movies distributed by Miramax Films, with a look at the films released in 1988. ----more---- 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. On this episode, we finally continue with the next part of our look back at the 1980s movies distributed by Miramax Films, specifically looking at 1988. But before we get there, I must issue another mea culpa. In our episode on the 1987 movies from Miramax, I mentioned that a Kiefer Sutherland movie called Crazy Moon never played in another theatre after its disastrous one week Oscar qualifying run in Los Angeles in December 1987. I was wrong. While doing research on this episode, I found one New York City playdate for the film, in early February 1988. It grossed a very dismal $3200 at the 545 seat Festival Theatre during its first weekend, and would be gone after seven days. Sorry for the misinformation. 1988 would be a watershed year for the company, as one of the movies they acquired for distribution would change the course of documentary filmmaking as we knew it, and another would give a much beloved actor his first Academy Award nomination while giving the company its first Oscar win. But before we get to those two movies, there's a whole bunch of others to talk about first. Of the twelve movies Miramax would release in 1988, only four were from America. The rest would be a from a mixture of mostly Anglo-Saxon countries like the UK, Canada, France and Sweden, although there would be one Spanish film in there. Their first release of the new year, Le Grand Chemin, told the story of a timid nine-year-old boy from Paris who spends one summer vacation in a small town in Brittany. His mother has lodged the boy with her friend and her friend's husband while Mom has another baby. The boy makes friends with a slightly older girl next door, and learns about life from her. Richard Bohringer, who plays the friend's husband, and Anémone, who plays the pregnant mother, both won Cesars, the French equivalent to the Oscars, in their respective lead categories, and the film would be nominated for Best Foreign Language Film of 1987 by the National Board of Review. Miramax, who had picked up the film at Cannes several months earlier, waited until January 22nd, 1988, to release it in America, first at the Paris Theatre in midtown Manhattan, where it would gross a very impressive $41k in its first three days. In its second week, it would drop less than 25% of its opening weekend audience, bringing in another $31k. But shortly after that, the expected Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film did not come, and business on the film slowed to a trickle. But it kept chugging on, and by the time the film finished its run in early June, it had grossed $541k. A week later, on January 29th, Miramax would open another French film, Light Years. An animated science fiction film written and directed by René Laloux, best known for directing the 1973 animated head trip film Fantastic Planet, Light Years was the story of an evil force from a thousand years in the future who begins to destroy an idyllic paradise where the citizens are in perfect harmony with nature. In its first three days at two screens in Los Angeles and five screens in the San Francisco Bay Area, Light Years would gross a decent $48,665. Miramax would print a self-congratulating ad in that week's Variety touting the film's success, and thanking Isaac Asimov, who helped to write the English translation, and many of the actors who lent their vocal talents to the new dub, including Glenn Close, Bridget Fonda, Jennifer Grey, Christopher Plummer, and Penn and Teller. Yes, Teller speaks. The ad was a message to both the theatre operators and the major players in the industry. Miramax was here. Get used to it. But that ad may have been a bit premature. While the film would do well in major markets during its initial week in theatres, audience interest would drop outside of its opening week in big cities, and be practically non-existent in college towns and other smaller cities. Its final box office total would be just over $370k. March 18th saw the release of a truly unique film. Imagine a film directed by Robert Altman and Bruce Beresford and Jean-Luc Godard and Derek Jarman and Franc Roddam and Nicolas Roeg and Ken Russell and Charles Sturridge and Julien Temple. Imagine a film that starred Beverly D'Angelo, Bridget Fonda in her first movie, Julie Hagerty, Buck Henry, Elizabeth Hurley and John Hurt and Theresa Russell and Tilda Swinton. Imagine a film that brought together ten of the most eclectic filmmakers in the world doing four to fourteen minute short films featuring the arias of some of the most famous and beloved operas ever written, often taken out of their original context and placed into strange new places. Like, for example, the aria for Verdi's Rigoletto set at the kitschy Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo, where a movie producer is cheating on his wife while she is in a nearby room with a hunky man who is not her husband. Imagine that there's almost no dialogue in the film. Just the arias to set the moments. That is Aria. If you are unfamiliar with opera in general, and these arias specifically, that's not a problem. When I saw the film at the Nickelodeon Theatre in Santa Cruz in June 1988, I knew some Wagner, some Puccini, and some Verdi, through other movies that used the music as punctuation for a scene. I think the first time I had heard Nessun Dorma was in The Killing Fields. Vesti La Giubba in The Untouchables. But this would be the first time I would hear these arias as they were meant to be performed, even if they were out of context within their original stories. Certainly, Wagner didn't intend the aria from Tristan und Isolde to be used to highlight a suicide pact between a young couple killing themselves in a Las Vegas hotel bathroom. Aria definitely split critics when it premiered at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival, when it competed for the festival's main prize, the Palme D'Or. Roger Ebert would call it the first MTV opera and felt the filmmakers were poking fun at their own styles, while Leonard Maltin felt most of the endeavor was a waste of time. In the review for the New York Times, Janet Maslin would also make a reference to MTV but not in a positive way, and would note the two best parts of the film were the photo montage that is seen over the end credits, and the clever licensing of Chuck Jones's classic Bugs Bunny cartoon What's Opera, Doc, to play with the film, at least during its New York run. In the Los Angeles Times, the newspaper chose one of its music critics to review the film. They too would compare the film to MTV, but also to Fantasia, neither reference meant to be positive. It's easy to see what might have attracted Harvey Weinstein to acquire the film. Nudity. And lots of it. Including from a 21 year old Hurley, and a 22 year old Fonda. Open at the 420 seat Ridgemont Theatre in Seattle on March 18th, 1988, Aria would gross a respectable $10,600. It would be the second highest grossing theatre in the city, only behind The Unbearable Lightness of Being, which grossed $16,600 in its fifth week at the 850 seat Cinerama Theatre, which was and still is the single best theatre in Seattle. It would continue to do well in Seattle, but it would not open until April 15th in Los Angeles and May 20th in New York City. But despite some decent notices and the presence of some big name directors, Aria would stiff at the box office, grossing just $1.03m after seven months in theatres. As we discussed on our previous episode, there was a Dennis Hopper movie called Riders on the Storm that supposedly opened in November 1987, but didn't. It did open in theatres in May of 1988, and now we're here to talk about it. Riders on the Storm would open in eleven theatres in the New York City area on May 7th, including three theatres in Manhattan. Since Miramax did not screen the film for critics before release, never a good sign, the first reviews wouldn't show up until the following day, since the critics would actually have to go see the film with a regular audience. Vincent Canby's review for the New York Times would arrive first, and surprisingly, he didn't completely hate the film. But audiences didn't care. In its first weekend in New York City, Riders on the Storm would gross an anemic $25k. The following Friday, Miramax would open the film at two theatres in Baltimore, four theatres in Fort Worth TX (but surprisingly none in Dallas), one theatre in Los Angeles and one theatre in Springfield OH, while continuing on only one screen in New York. No reported grosses from Fort Worth, LA or Springfield, but the New York theatre reported ticket sales of $3k for the weekend, a 57% drop from its previous week, while the two in Baltimore combined for $5k. There would be more single playdates for a few months. Tampa the same week as New York. Atlanta, Charlotte, Des Moines and Memphis in late May. Cincinnati in late June. Boston, Calgary, Ottawa and Philadelphia in early July. Greenville SC in late August. Evansville IL, Ithaca NY and San Francisco in early September. Chicago in late September. It just kept popping up in random places for months, always a one week playdate before heading off to the next location. And in all that time, Miramax never reported grosses. What little numbers we do have is from the theatres that Variety was tracking, and those numbers totaled up to less than $30k. Another mostly lost and forgotten Miramax release from 1988 is Caribe, a Canadian production that shot in Belize about an amateur illegal arms trader to Central American terrorists who must go on the run after a deal goes down bad, because who wants to see a Canadian movie about an amateur illegal arms trader to Canadian terrorists who must go on the run in the Canadian tundra after a deal goes down bad? Kara Glover would play Helen, the arms dealer, and John Savage as Jeff, a British intelligence agent who helps Helen. Caribe would first open in Detroit on May 20th, 1988. Can you guess what I'm going to say next? Yep. No reported grosses, no theatres playing the film tracked by Variety. The following week, Caribe opens in the San Francisco Bay Area, at the 300 seat United Artists Theatre in San Francisco, and three theatres in the South Bay. While Miramax once again did not report grosses, the combined gross for the four theatres, according to Variety, was a weak $3,700. Compare that to Aria, which was playing at the Opera Plaza Cinemas in its third week in San Francisco, in an auditorium 40% smaller than the United Artist, grossing $5,300 on its own. On June 3rd, Caribe would open at the AMC Fountain Square 14 in Nashville. One show only on Friday and Saturday at 11:45pm. Miramax did not report grosses. Probably because people we going to see Willie Tyler and Lester at Zanie's down the street. And again, it kept cycling around the country, one or two new playdates in each city it played in. Philadelphia in mid-June. Indianapolis in mid-July. Jersey City in late August. Always for one week, grosses never reported. Miramax's first Swedish release of the year was called Mio, but this was truly an international production. The $4m film was co-produced by Swedish, Norwegian and Russian production companies, directed by a Russian, adapted from a Swedish book by an American screenwriter, scored by one of the members of ABBA, and starring actors from England, Finland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the United States. Mio tells the story of a boy from Stockholm who travels to an otherworldly fantasy realm and frees the land from an evil knight's oppression. What makes this movie memorable today is that Mio's best friend is played by none other than Christian Bale, in his very first film. The movie was shot in Moscow, Stockholm, the Crimea, Scotland, and outside Pripyat in the Northern part of what is now Ukraine, between March and July 1986. In fact, the cast and crew were shooting outside Pripyat on April 26th, when they got the call they needed to evacuate the area. It would be hours later when they would discover there had been a reactor core meltdown at the nearby Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. They would have to scramble to shoot in other locations away from Ukraine for a month, and when they were finally allowed to return, the area they were shooting in deemed to have not been adversely affected by the worst nuclear power plant accident in human history,, Geiger counters would be placed all over the sets, and every meal served by craft services would need to be read to make sure it wasn't contaminated. After premiering at the Moscow Film Festival in July 1987 and the Norwegian Film Festival in August, Mio would open in Sweden on October 16th, 1987. The local critics would tear the film apart. They hated that the filmmakers had Anglicized the movie with British actors like Christopher Lee, Susannah York, Christian Bale and Nicholas Pickard, an eleven year old boy also making his film debut. They also hated how the filmmakers adapted the novel by the legendary Astrid Lindgren, whose Pippi Longstocking novels made her and her works world famous. Overall, they hated pretty much everything about it outside of Christopher Lee's performance and the production's design in the fantasy world. Miramax most likely picked it up trying to emulate the success of The Neverending Story, which had opened to great success in most of the world in 1984. So it might seem kinda odd that when they would open the now titled The Land of Faraway in theatres, they wouldn't go wide but instead open it on one screen in Atlanta GA on June 10th, 1988. And, once again, Miramax did not report grosses, and Variety did not track Atlanta theatres that week. Two weeks later, they would open the film in Miami. How many theatres? Can't tell you. Miramax did not report grosses, and Variety was not tracking any of the theatres in Miami playing the film. But hey, Bull Durham did pretty good in Miami that week. The film would next open in theatres in Los Angeles. This time, Miramax bought a quarter page ad in the Los Angeles Times on opening day to let people know the film existed. So we know it was playing on 18 screens that weekend. And, once again, Miramax did not report grosses for the film. But on the two screens it played on that Variety was tracking, the combined gross was just $2,500. There'd be other playdates. Kansas City and Minneapolis in mid-September. Vancouver, BC in early October. Palm Beach FL in mid October. Calgary AB and Fort Lauderdale in late October. Phoenix in mid November. And never once did Miramax report any grosses for it. One week after Mio, Miramax would release a comedy called Going Undercover. Now, if you listened to our March 2021 episode on Some Kind of Wonderful, you may remember be mentioning Lea Thompson taking the role of Amanda Jones in that film, a role she had turned down twice before, the week after Howard the Duck opened, because she was afraid she'd never get cast in a movie again. And while Some Kind of Wonderful wasn't as big a film as you'd expect from a John Hughes production, Thompson did indeed continue to work, and is still working to this day. So if you were looking at a newspaper ad in several cities in June 1988 and saw her latest movie and wonder why she went back to making weird little movies. She hadn't. This was a movie she had made just before Back to the Future, in August and September 1984. Originally titled Yellow Pages, the film starred film legend Jean Simmons as Maxine, a rich woman who has hired Chris Lemmon's private investigator Henry Brilliant to protect her stepdaughter Marigold during her trip to Copenhagen. The director, James Clarke, had written the script specifically for Lemmon, tailoring his role to mimic various roles played by his famous father, Jack Lemmon, over the decades, and for Simmons. But Thompson was just one of a number of young actresses they looked at before making their casting choice. Half of the $6m budget would come from a first-time British film producer, while the other half from a group of Danish investors wanting to lure more Hollywood productions to their area. The shoot would be plagued by a number of problems. The shoot in Los Angeles coincided with the final days of the 1984 Summer Olympics, which would cut out using some of the best and most regularly used locations in the city, and a long-lasting heat wave that would make outdoor shoots unbearable for cast and crew. When they arrived in Copenhagen at the end of August, Denmark was going through an unusually heavy storm front that hung around for weeks. Clarke would spend several months editing the film, longer than usual for a smaller production like this, but he in part was waiting to see how Back to the Future would do at the box office. If the film was a hit, and his leading actress was a major part of that, it could make it easier to sell his film to a distributor. Or that was line of thinking. Of course, Back to the Future was a hit, and Thompson received much praise for her comedic work on the film. But that didn't make it any easier to sell his film. The producer would set the first screenings for the film at the February 1986 American Film Market in Santa Monica, which caters not only to foreign distributors looking to acquire American movies for their markets, but helps independent filmmakers get their movies seen by American distributors. As these screenings were for buyers by invitation only, there would be no reviews from the screenings, but one could guess that no one would hear about the film again until Miramax bought the American distribution rights to it in March 1988 tells us that maybe those screenings didn't go so well. The film would get retitled Going Undercover, and would open in single screen playdates in Atlanta, Cincinnati, Dallas, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Nashville, Orlando, St. Louis and Tampa on June 17th. And as I've said too many times already, no reported grosses from Miramax, and only one theatre playing the film was being tracked by Variety, with Going Undercover earning $3,000 during its one week at the Century City 14 in Los Angeles. In the June 22nd, 1988 issue of Variety, there was an article about Miramax securing a $25m line of credit in order to start producing their own films. Going Undercover is mentioned in the article about being one of Miramax's releases, without noting it had just been released that week or how well it did or did not do. The Thin Blue Line would be Miramax's first non-music based documentary, and one that would truly change how documentaries were made. Errol Morris had already made two bizarre but entertaining documentaries in the late 70s and early 80s. Gates of Heaven was shot in 1977, about a man who operated a failing pet cemetery in Northern California's Napa Valley. When Morris told his famous German filmmaking supporter Werner Herzog about the film, Herzog vowed to eat one of the shoes he was wearing that day if Morris could actually complete the film and have it shown in a public theatre. In April 1979, just before the documentary had its world premiere at UC Theatre in Berkeley, where Morris had studied philosophy, Herzog would spend the morning at Chez Pannise, the creators of the California Cuisine cooking style, boiling his shoes for five hours in garlic, herbs and stock. This event itself would be commemorated in a documentary short called, naturally, Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe, by Les Blank, which is a must watch on its own. Because of the success of Gates of Heaven, Morris was able to quickly find financing for his next film, Nub City, which was originally supposed to be about the number of Vernon, Florida's citizens who have “accidentally” cut off their limbs, in order to collect the insurance money. But after several of those citizens threatened to kill Morris, and one of them tried to run down his cinematographer with their truck, Morris would rework the documentary, dropping the limb angle, no pun intended, and focus on the numerous eccentric people in the town. It would premiere at the 1981 New York Film Festival, and become a hit, for a documentary, when it was released in theatres in 1982. But it would take Morris another six years after completing Vernon, Florida, to make another film. Part of it was having trouble lining up full funding to work on his next proposed movie, about James Grigson, a Texas forensic psychiatrist whose was nicknamed Doctor Death for being an expert witness for the prosecution in death penalty cases in Texas. Morris had gotten seed money for the documentary from PBS and the Endowment for Public Arts, but there was little else coming in while he worked on the film. In fact, Morris would get a PI license in New York and work cases for two years, using every penny he earned that wasn't going towards living expenses to keep the film afloat. One of Morris's major problems for the film was that Grigson would not sit on camera for an interview, but would meet with Morris face to face to talk about the cases. During that meeting, the good doctor suggested to the filmmaker that he should research the killers he helped put away. And during that research, Morris would come across the case of one Randall Dale Adams, who was convicted of killing Dallas police officer Robert Wood in 1976, even though another man, David Harris, was the police's initial suspect. For two years, Morris would fly back and forth between New York City and Texas, talking to and filming interviews with Adams and more than two hundred other people connected to the shooting and the trial. Morris had become convinced Adams was indeed innocent, and dropped the idea about Dr. Grigson to solely focus on the Robert Wood murder. After showing the producers of PBS's American Playhouse some of the footage he had put together of the new direction of the film, they kicked in more funds so that Morris could shoot some re-enactment sequences outside New York City, as well as commission composer Phillip Glass to create a score for the film once it was completed. Documentaries at that time did not regularly use re-enactments, but Morris felt it was important to show how different personal accounts of the same moment can be misinterpreted or misremembered or outright manipulated to suppress the truth. After the film completed its post-production in March 1988, The Thin Blue Line would have its world premiere at the San Francisco Film Festival on March 18th, and word quickly spread Morris had something truly unique and special on his hands. The critic for Variety would note in the very first paragraph of his write up that the film employed “strikingly original formal devices to pull together diverse interviews, film clips, photo collages, and” and this is where it broke ground, “recreations of the crime from many points of view.” Miramax would put together a full court press in order to get the rights to the film, which was announced during the opening days of the 1988 Cannes Film Festival in early May. An early hint on how the company was going to sell the film was by calling it a “non-fiction feature” instead of a documentary. Miramax would send Morris out on a cross-country press tour in the weeks leading up to the film's August 26th opening date, but Morris, like many documentary filmmakers, was not used to being in the spotlight themselves, and was not as articulate about talking up his movies as the more seasoned directors and actors who've been on the promotion circuit for a while. After one interview, Harvey Weinstein would send Errol Morris a note. “Heard your NPR interview and you were boring.” Harvey would offer up several suggestions to help the filmmaker, including hyping the movie up as a real life mystery thriller rather than a documentary, and using shorter and clearer sentences when answering a question. It was a clear gamble to release The Thin Blue Line in the final week of summer, and the film would need a lot of good will to stand out. And it would get it. The New York Times was so enthralled with the film, it would not only run a review from Janet Maslin, who would heap great praise on the film, but would also run a lengthy interview with Errol Morris right next to the review. The quarter page ad in the New York Times, several pages back, would tout positive quotes from Roger Ebert, J. Hoberman, who had left The Village Voice for the then-new Premiere Magazine, Peter Travers, writing for People Magazine instead of Rolling Stone, and critics from the San Francisco Chronicle and, interestingly enough, the Dallas Morning News. The top of the ad was tagged with an intriguing tease: solving this mystery is going to be murder, with a second tag line underneath the key art and title, which called the film “a new kind of movie mystery.” Of the 15 New York area-based film critics for local newspapers, television and national magazines, 14 of them gave favorable reviews, while 1, Stephen Schiff of Vanity Fair, was ambivalent about it. Not one critic gave it a bad review. New York audiences were hooked. Opening in the 240 seat main house at the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas, the movie grossed $30,945 its first three days. In its second weekend, the gross at the Lincoln Plaza would jump to $31k, and adding another $27,500 from its two theatre opening in Los Angeles and $15,800 from a single DC theatre that week. Third week in New York was a still good $21k, but the second week in Los Angeles fell to $10,500 and DC to $10k. And that's how it rolled out for several months, mostly single screen bookings in major cities not called Los Angeles or New York City, racking up some of the best reviews Miramax would receive to date, but never breaking out much outside the major cities. When it looked like Santa Cruz wasn't going to play the film, I drove to San Francisco to see it, just as my friends and I had for the opening day of Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ in mid-August. That's 75 miles each way, plus parking in San Francisco, just to see a movie. That's when you know you no longer just like movies but have developed a serious case of cinephilea. So when The Nickelodeon did open the film in late November, I did something I had never done with any documentary before. I went and saw it again. Second time around, I was still pissed off at the outrageous injustice heaped upon Randall Dale Adams for nothing more than being with and trusting the wrong person at the wrong time. But, thankfully, things would turn around for Adams in the coming weeks. On December 1st, it was reported that David Harris had recanted his testimony at Adams' trial, admitting he was alone when Officer Wood stopped his car. And on March 1st, 1989, after more than 15,000 people had signed the film's petition to revisit the decision, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned Adams's conviction “based largely” on facts presented in the film. The film would also find itself in several more controversies. Despite being named The Best Documentary of the Year by a number of critics groups, the Documentary Branch of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences would not nominate the film, due in large part to the numerous reenactments presented throughout the film. Filmmaker Michael Apted, a member of the Directors Branch of the Academy, noted that the failure to acknowledge The Thin Blue Line was “one of the most outrageous things in the modern history of the Academy,” while Roger Ebert added the slight was “the worst non-nomination of the year.” Despite the lack of a nomination, Errol Morris would attend the Oscars ceremony in March 1989, as a protest for his film being snubbed. Morris would also, several months after Adams' release, find himself being sued by Adams, but not because of how he was portrayed in the film. During the making of the film, Morris had Adams sign a contract giving Morris the exclusive right to tell Adams's story, and Adams wanted, essentially, the right to tell his own story now that he was a free man. Morris and Adams would settle out of court, and Adams would regain his life rights. Once the movie was played out in theatres, it had grossed $1.2m, which on the surface sounds like not a whole lot of money. Adjusted for inflation, that would only be $3.08m. But even unadjusted for inflation, it's still one of the 100 highest grossing documentaries of the past forty years. And it is one of just a handful of documentaries to become a part of the National Film Registry, for being a culturally, historically or aesthetically significant film.” Adams would live a quiet life after his release, working as an anti-death penalty advocate and marrying the sister of one of the death row inmates he was helping to exonerate. He would pass away from a brain tumor in October 2010 at a courthouse in Ohio not half an hour from where he was born and still lived, but he would so disappear from the spotlight after the movie was released that his passing wasn't even reported until June 2011. Errol Morris would become one of the most celebrated documentarians of his generation, finally getting nominated for, and winning, an Oscar in 2003, for The Fog of War, about the life and times of Robert McNamara, Richard Nixon's Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War era. The Fog of War would also be added to the National Film Registry in 2019. Morris would become only the third documentarian, after D.A. Pennebaker and Les Blank, to have two films on the Registry. In 1973, the senseless killings of five members of the Alday family in Donalsonville GA made international headlines. Four years later, Canadian documentarian Tex Fuller made an award-winning documentary about the case, called Murder One. For years, Fuller shopped around a screenplay telling the same story, but it would take nearly a decade for it to finally be sold, in part because Fuller was insistent that he also be the director. A small Canadian production company would fund the $1m CAD production, which would star Henry Thomas of E.T. fame as the fifteen year old narrator of the story, Billy Isaacs. The shoot began in early October 1987 outside Toronto, but after a week of shooting, Fuller was fired, and was replaced by Graeme Campbell, a young and energetic filmmaker for whom Murder One would be his fourth movie directing gig of the year. Details are sketchy as to why Fuller was fired, but Thomas and his mother Carolyn would voice concerns with the producers about the new direction the film was taking under its new director. The film would premiere in Canada in May 1988. When the film did well up North, Miramax took notice and purchased the American distribution rights. Murder One would first open in America on two screens in Los Angeles on September 9th, 1988. Michael Wilmington of the Los Angeles Times noted that while the film itself wasn't very good, that it still sprung from the disturbing insight about the crazy reasons people cross of what should be impassable moral lines. “No movie studio could have invented it!,” screamed the tagline on the poster and newspaper key art. “No writer could have imagined it! Because what happened that night became the most controversial in American history.” That would draw limited interest from filmgoers in Tinseltown. The two theatres would gross a combined $7k in its first three days. Not great but far better than several other recent Miramax releases in the area. Two weeks later, on September 23rd, Miramax would book Murder One into 20 theatres in the New York City metro region, as well as in Akron, Atlanta, Charlotte, Indianpolis, Nashville, and Tampa-St. Petersburg. In New York, the film would actually get some good reviews from the Times and the Post as well as Peter Travers of People Magazine, but once again, Miramax would not report grosses for the film. Variety would note the combined gross for the film in New York City was only $25k. In early October, the film would fall out of Variety's internal list of the 50 Top Grossing Films within the twenty markets they regularly tracked, with a final gross of just $87k. One market that Miramax deliberately did not book the film was anywhere near southwest Georgia, where the murders took place. The closest theatre that did play the film was more than 200 miles away. Miramax would finish 1988 with two releases. The first was Dakota, which would mark star Lou Diamond Phillips first time as a producer. He would star as a troubled teenager who takes a job on a Texas horse ranch to help pay of his debts, who becomes a sorta big brother to the ranch owner's young son, who has recently lost a leg to cancer, as he also falls for the rancher's daughter. When the $1.1m budgeted film began production in Texas in June 1987, Phillips had already made La Bamba and Stand and Deliver, but neither had yet to be released into theatres. By the time filming ended five weeks later, La Bamba had just opened, and Phillips was on his way to becoming a star. The main producers wanted director Fred Holmes to get the film through post-production as quickly as possible, to get it into theatres in the early part of 1988 to capitalize on the newfound success of their young star. But that wouldn't happen. Holmes wouldn't have the film ready until the end of February 1988, which was deemed acceptable because of the impending release of Stand and Deliver. In fact, the producers would schedule their first distributor screening of the film on March 14th, the Monday after Stand and Delivered opened, in the hopes that good box office for the film and good notices for Phillips would translate to higher distributor interest in their film, which sorta worked. None of the major studios would show for the screening, but a number of Indies would, including Miramax. Phillips would not attend the screening, as he was on location in New Mexico shooting Young Guns. I can't find any reason why Miramax waited nearly nine months after they acquired Dakota to get it into theatres. It certainly wasn't Oscar bait, and screen availability would be scarce during the busy holiday movie season, which would see a number of popular, high profile releases like Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Ernest Saves Christmas, The Naked Gun, Rain Man, Scrooged, Tequila Sunrise, Twins and Working Girl. Which might explain why, when Miramax released the film into 18 theatres in the New York City area on December 2nd, they could only get three screens in all of Manhattan, the best being the nice but hardly first-rate Embassy 4 at Broadway and 47th. Or of the 22 screens in Los Angeles opening the film the same day, the best would be the tiny Westwood 4 next to UCLA or the Paramount in Hollywood, whose best days were back in the Eisenhower administration. And, yet again, Miramax did not report grosses, and none of the theatres playing the film was tracked by Variety that week. The film would be gone after just one week. The Paramount, which would open Dirty Rotten Scoundrels on the 14th, opted to instead play a double feature of Clara's Heart, with Whoopi Goldberg and Neil Patrick Harris, and the River Phoenix drama Running on Empty, even though neither film had been much of a hit. Miramax's last film of the year would be the one that changed everything for them. Pelle the Conquerer. Adapted from a 1910 Danish book and directed by Billie August, whose previous film Twist and Shout had been released by Miramax in 1986, Pelle the Conquerer would be the first Danish or Swedish movie to star Max von Sydow in almost 15 years, having spent most of the 70s and 80s in Hollywood and London starring in a number of major movies including The Exorcist, Three Days of the Condor, Flash Gordon,Conan the Barbarian, Never Say Never Again, and David Lynch's Dune. But because von Sydow would be making his return to his native cinema, August was able to secure $4.5m to make the film, one of the highest budgeted Scandinavian films to be made to date. In the late 1850s, an elderly emigrant Lasse and his son Pelle leave their home in Sweden after the death of the boy's mother, wanting to build a new life on the Danish island of Bornholm. Lasse finds it difficult to find work, given his age and his son's youth. The pair are forced to work at a large farm, where they are generally mistreated by the managers for being foreigners. The father falls into depression and alcoholism, the young boy befriends one of the bastard children of the farm owner as well as another Swedish farm worker, who dreams of conquering the world. For the title character of Pelle, Billie August saw more than 3,000 Swedish boys before deciding to cast 11 year old Pelle Hvenegaard, who, like many boys in Sweden, had been named for the character he was now going to play on screen. After six months of filming in the summer and fall of 1986, Billie August would finish editing Pelle the Conquerer in time for it to make its intended Christmas Day 1987 release date in Denmark and Sweden, where the film would be one of the biggest releases in either country for the entire decade. It would make its debut outside Scandinavia at the Cannes Film Festival in May 1988, where it had been invited to compete for the Palme D'Or. It would compete against a number of talented filmmakers who had come with some of the best films they would ever make, including Clint Eastwood with Bird, Claire Denis' Chocolat, István Szabó's Hanussen, Vincent Ward's The Navigator, and A Short Film About Killing, an expanded movie version of the fifth episode in Krzysztof Kieślowski's masterful miniseries Dekalog. Pelle would conquer them all, taking home the top prize from one of cinema's most revered film festivals. Reviews for the film out of Cannes were almost universally excellent. Vincent Canby, the lead film critic for the New York Times for nearly twenty years by this point, wouldn't file his review until the end of the festival, in which he pointed out that a number of people at the festival were scandalized von Sydow had not also won the award for Best Actor. Having previously worked with the company on his previous film's American release, August felt that Miramax would have what it took to make the film a success in the States. Their first moves would be to schedule the film for a late December release, while securing a slot at that September's New York Film Festival. And once again, the critical consensus was highly positive, with only a small sampling of distractors. The film would open first on two screens at the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas in midtown Manhattan on Wednesday, December 21st, following by exclusive engagements in nine other cities including Los Angeles, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington DC, on the 23rd. But the opening week numbers weren't very good, just $46k from ten screens. And you can't really blame the film's two hour and forty-five minute running time. Little Dorrit, the two-part, four hour adaptation of the Charles Dickens novel, had been out nine weeks at this point and was still making nearly 50% more per screen. But after the new year, when more and more awards were hurled the film's way, including the National Board of Review naming it one of the best foreign films of the year and the Golden Globes awarding it their Best Foreign Language trophy, ticket sales would pick up. Well, for a foreign film. The week after the Motion Picture Academy awarded Pelle their award for Best Foreign Language Film, business for the film would pick up 35%, and a third of its $2m American gross would come after that win. One of the things that surprised me while doing the research for this episode was learning that Max von Sydow had never been nominated for an Oscar until he was nominated for Best Actor for Pelle the Conquerer. You look at his credits over the years, and it's just mind blowing. The Seventh Seal. Wild Strawberries. The Virgin Spring. The Greatest Story Ever Told. The Emigrants. The Exorcist. The Three Days of the Condor. Surely there was one performance amongst those that deserved recognition. I hate to keep going back to A24, but there's something about a company's first Oscar win that sends that company into the next level. A24 didn't really become A24 until 2016, when three of their movies won Oscars, including Brie Larson for Best Actress in Room. And Miramax didn't really become the Miramax we knew and once loved until its win for Pelle. Thank you for joining us. We'll talk again soon, when Episode 117, the fifth and final part of our miniseries on Miramax Films, is released. 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 miniseries on the 1980s movies distributed by Miramax Films, with a look at the films released in 1988. ----more---- 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. On this episode, we finally continue with the next part of our look back at the 1980s movies distributed by Miramax Films, specifically looking at 1988. But before we get there, I must issue another mea culpa. In our episode on the 1987 movies from Miramax, I mentioned that a Kiefer Sutherland movie called Crazy Moon never played in another theatre after its disastrous one week Oscar qualifying run in Los Angeles in December 1987. I was wrong. While doing research on this episode, I found one New York City playdate for the film, in early February 1988. It grossed a very dismal $3200 at the 545 seat Festival Theatre during its first weekend, and would be gone after seven days. Sorry for the misinformation. 1988 would be a watershed year for the company, as one of the movies they acquired for distribution would change the course of documentary filmmaking as we knew it, and another would give a much beloved actor his first Academy Award nomination while giving the company its first Oscar win. But before we get to those two movies, there's a whole bunch of others to talk about first. Of the twelve movies Miramax would release in 1988, only four were from America. The rest would be a from a mixture of mostly Anglo-Saxon countries like the UK, Canada, France and Sweden, although there would be one Spanish film in there. Their first release of the new year, Le Grand Chemin, told the story of a timid nine-year-old boy from Paris who spends one summer vacation in a small town in Brittany. His mother has lodged the boy with her friend and her friend's husband while Mom has another baby. The boy makes friends with a slightly older girl next door, and learns about life from her. Richard Bohringer, who plays the friend's husband, and Anémone, who plays the pregnant mother, both won Cesars, the French equivalent to the Oscars, in their respective lead categories, and the film would be nominated for Best Foreign Language Film of 1987 by the National Board of Review. Miramax, who had picked up the film at Cannes several months earlier, waited until January 22nd, 1988, to release it in America, first at the Paris Theatre in midtown Manhattan, where it would gross a very impressive $41k in its first three days. In its second week, it would drop less than 25% of its opening weekend audience, bringing in another $31k. But shortly after that, the expected Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film did not come, and business on the film slowed to a trickle. But it kept chugging on, and by the time the film finished its run in early June, it had grossed $541k. A week later, on January 29th, Miramax would open another French film, Light Years. An animated science fiction film written and directed by René Laloux, best known for directing the 1973 animated head trip film Fantastic Planet, Light Years was the story of an evil force from a thousand years in the future who begins to destroy an idyllic paradise where the citizens are in perfect harmony with nature. In its first three days at two screens in Los Angeles and five screens in the San Francisco Bay Area, Light Years would gross a decent $48,665. Miramax would print a self-congratulating ad in that week's Variety touting the film's success, and thanking Isaac Asimov, who helped to write the English translation, and many of the actors who lent their vocal talents to the new dub, including Glenn Close, Bridget Fonda, Jennifer Grey, Christopher Plummer, and Penn and Teller. Yes, Teller speaks. The ad was a message to both the theatre operators and the major players in the industry. Miramax was here. Get used to it. But that ad may have been a bit premature. While the film would do well in major markets during its initial week in theatres, audience interest would drop outside of its opening week in big cities, and be practically non-existent in college towns and other smaller cities. Its final box office total would be just over $370k. March 18th saw the release of a truly unique film. Imagine a film directed by Robert Altman and Bruce Beresford and Jean-Luc Godard and Derek Jarman and Franc Roddam and Nicolas Roeg and Ken Russell and Charles Sturridge and Julien Temple. Imagine a film that starred Beverly D'Angelo, Bridget Fonda in her first movie, Julie Hagerty, Buck Henry, Elizabeth Hurley and John Hurt and Theresa Russell and Tilda Swinton. Imagine a film that brought together ten of the most eclectic filmmakers in the world doing four to fourteen minute short films featuring the arias of some of the most famous and beloved operas ever written, often taken out of their original context and placed into strange new places. Like, for example, the aria for Verdi's Rigoletto set at the kitschy Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo, where a movie producer is cheating on his wife while she is in a nearby room with a hunky man who is not her husband. Imagine that there's almost no dialogue in the film. Just the arias to set the moments. That is Aria. If you are unfamiliar with opera in general, and these arias specifically, that's not a problem. When I saw the film at the Nickelodeon Theatre in Santa Cruz in June 1988, I knew some Wagner, some Puccini, and some Verdi, through other movies that used the music as punctuation for a scene. I think the first time I had heard Nessun Dorma was in The Killing Fields. Vesti La Giubba in The Untouchables. But this would be the first time I would hear these arias as they were meant to be performed, even if they were out of context within their original stories. Certainly, Wagner didn't intend the aria from Tristan und Isolde to be used to highlight a suicide pact between a young couple killing themselves in a Las Vegas hotel bathroom. Aria definitely split critics when it premiered at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival, when it competed for the festival's main prize, the Palme D'Or. Roger Ebert would call it the first MTV opera and felt the filmmakers were poking fun at their own styles, while Leonard Maltin felt most of the endeavor was a waste of time. In the review for the New York Times, Janet Maslin would also make a reference to MTV but not in a positive way, and would note the two best parts of the film were the photo montage that is seen over the end credits, and the clever licensing of Chuck Jones's classic Bugs Bunny cartoon What's Opera, Doc, to play with the film, at least during its New York run. In the Los Angeles Times, the newspaper chose one of its music critics to review the film. They too would compare the film to MTV, but also to Fantasia, neither reference meant to be positive. It's easy to see what might have attracted Harvey Weinstein to acquire the film. Nudity. And lots of it. Including from a 21 year old Hurley, and a 22 year old Fonda. Open at the 420 seat Ridgemont Theatre in Seattle on March 18th, 1988, Aria would gross a respectable $10,600. It would be the second highest grossing theatre in the city, only behind The Unbearable Lightness of Being, which grossed $16,600 in its fifth week at the 850 seat Cinerama Theatre, which was and still is the single best theatre in Seattle. It would continue to do well in Seattle, but it would not open until April 15th in Los Angeles and May 20th in New York City. But despite some decent notices and the presence of some big name directors, Aria would stiff at the box office, grossing just $1.03m after seven months in theatres. As we discussed on our previous episode, there was a Dennis Hopper movie called Riders on the Storm that supposedly opened in November 1987, but didn't. It did open in theatres in May of 1988, and now we're here to talk about it. Riders on the Storm would open in eleven theatres in the New York City area on May 7th, including three theatres in Manhattan. Since Miramax did not screen the film for critics before release, never a good sign, the first reviews wouldn't show up until the following day, since the critics would actually have to go see the film with a regular audience. Vincent Canby's review for the New York Times would arrive first, and surprisingly, he didn't completely hate the film. But audiences didn't care. In its first weekend in New York City, Riders on the Storm would gross an anemic $25k. The following Friday, Miramax would open the film at two theatres in Baltimore, four theatres in Fort Worth TX (but surprisingly none in Dallas), one theatre in Los Angeles and one theatre in Springfield OH, while continuing on only one screen in New York. No reported grosses from Fort Worth, LA or Springfield, but the New York theatre reported ticket sales of $3k for the weekend, a 57% drop from its previous week, while the two in Baltimore combined for $5k. There would be more single playdates for a few months. Tampa the same week as New York. Atlanta, Charlotte, Des Moines and Memphis in late May. Cincinnati in late June. Boston, Calgary, Ottawa and Philadelphia in early July. Greenville SC in late August. Evansville IL, Ithaca NY and San Francisco in early September. Chicago in late September. It just kept popping up in random places for months, always a one week playdate before heading off to the next location. And in all that time, Miramax never reported grosses. What little numbers we do have is from the theatres that Variety was tracking, and those numbers totaled up to less than $30k. Another mostly lost and forgotten Miramax release from 1988 is Caribe, a Canadian production that shot in Belize about an amateur illegal arms trader to Central American terrorists who must go on the run after a deal goes down bad, because who wants to see a Canadian movie about an amateur illegal arms trader to Canadian terrorists who must go on the run in the Canadian tundra after a deal goes down bad? Kara Glover would play Helen, the arms dealer, and John Savage as Jeff, a British intelligence agent who helps Helen. Caribe would first open in Detroit on May 20th, 1988. Can you guess what I'm going to say next? Yep. No reported grosses, no theatres playing the film tracked by Variety. The following week, Caribe opens in the San Francisco Bay Area, at the 300 seat United Artists Theatre in San Francisco, and three theatres in the South Bay. While Miramax once again did not report grosses, the combined gross for the four theatres, according to Variety, was a weak $3,700. Compare that to Aria, which was playing at the Opera Plaza Cinemas in its third week in San Francisco, in an auditorium 40% smaller than the United Artist, grossing $5,300 on its own. On June 3rd, Caribe would open at the AMC Fountain Square 14 in Nashville. One show only on Friday and Saturday at 11:45pm. Miramax did not report grosses. Probably because people we going to see Willie Tyler and Lester at Zanie's down the street. And again, it kept cycling around the country, one or two new playdates in each city it played in. Philadelphia in mid-June. Indianapolis in mid-July. Jersey City in late August. Always for one week, grosses never reported. Miramax's first Swedish release of the year was called Mio, but this was truly an international production. The $4m film was co-produced by Swedish, Norwegian and Russian production companies, directed by a Russian, adapted from a Swedish book by an American screenwriter, scored by one of the members of ABBA, and starring actors from England, Finland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the United States. Mio tells the story of a boy from Stockholm who travels to an otherworldly fantasy realm and frees the land from an evil knight's oppression. What makes this movie memorable today is that Mio's best friend is played by none other than Christian Bale, in his very first film. The movie was shot in Moscow, Stockholm, the Crimea, Scotland, and outside Pripyat in the Northern part of what is now Ukraine, between March and July 1986. In fact, the cast and crew were shooting outside Pripyat on April 26th, when they got the call they needed to evacuate the area. It would be hours later when they would discover there had been a reactor core meltdown at the nearby Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. They would have to scramble to shoot in other locations away from Ukraine for a month, and when they were finally allowed to return, the area they were shooting in deemed to have not been adversely affected by the worst nuclear power plant accident in human history,, Geiger counters would be placed all over the sets, and every meal served by craft services would need to be read to make sure it wasn't contaminated. After premiering at the Moscow Film Festival in July 1987 and the Norwegian Film Festival in August, Mio would open in Sweden on October 16th, 1987. The local critics would tear the film apart. They hated that the filmmakers had Anglicized the movie with British actors like Christopher Lee, Susannah York, Christian Bale and Nicholas Pickard, an eleven year old boy also making his film debut. They also hated how the filmmakers adapted the novel by the legendary Astrid Lindgren, whose Pippi Longstocking novels made her and her works world famous. Overall, they hated pretty much everything about it outside of Christopher Lee's performance and the production's design in the fantasy world. Miramax most likely picked it up trying to emulate the success of The Neverending Story, which had opened to great success in most of the world in 1984. So it might seem kinda odd that when they would open the now titled The Land of Faraway in theatres, they wouldn't go wide but instead open it on one screen in Atlanta GA on June 10th, 1988. And, once again, Miramax did not report grosses, and Variety did not track Atlanta theatres that week. Two weeks later, they would open the film in Miami. How many theatres? Can't tell you. Miramax did not report grosses, and Variety was not tracking any of the theatres in Miami playing the film. But hey, Bull Durham did pretty good in Miami that week. The film would next open in theatres in Los Angeles. This time, Miramax bought a quarter page ad in the Los Angeles Times on opening day to let people know the film existed. So we know it was playing on 18 screens that weekend. And, once again, Miramax did not report grosses for the film. But on the two screens it played on that Variety was tracking, the combined gross was just $2,500. There'd be other playdates. Kansas City and Minneapolis in mid-September. Vancouver, BC in early October. Palm Beach FL in mid October. Calgary AB and Fort Lauderdale in late October. Phoenix in mid November. And never once did Miramax report any grosses for it. One week after Mio, Miramax would release a comedy called Going Undercover. Now, if you listened to our March 2021 episode on Some Kind of Wonderful, you may remember be mentioning Lea Thompson taking the role of Amanda Jones in that film, a role she had turned down twice before, the week after Howard the Duck opened, because she was afraid she'd never get cast in a movie again. And while Some Kind of Wonderful wasn't as big a film as you'd expect from a John Hughes production, Thompson did indeed continue to work, and is still working to this day. So if you were looking at a newspaper ad in several cities in June 1988 and saw her latest movie and wonder why she went back to making weird little movies. She hadn't. This was a movie she had made just before Back to the Future, in August and September 1984. Originally titled Yellow Pages, the film starred film legend Jean Simmons as Maxine, a rich woman who has hired Chris Lemmon's private investigator Henry Brilliant to protect her stepdaughter Marigold during her trip to Copenhagen. The director, James Clarke, had written the script specifically for Lemmon, tailoring his role to mimic various roles played by his famous father, Jack Lemmon, over the decades, and for Simmons. But Thompson was just one of a number of young actresses they looked at before making their casting choice. Half of the $6m budget would come from a first-time British film producer, while the other half from a group of Danish investors wanting to lure more Hollywood productions to their area. The shoot would be plagued by a number of problems. The shoot in Los Angeles coincided with the final days of the 1984 Summer Olympics, which would cut out using some of the best and most regularly used locations in the city, and a long-lasting heat wave that would make outdoor shoots unbearable for cast and crew. When they arrived in Copenhagen at the end of August, Denmark was going through an unusually heavy storm front that hung around for weeks. Clarke would spend several months editing the film, longer than usual for a smaller production like this, but he in part was waiting to see how Back to the Future would do at the box office. If the film was a hit, and his leading actress was a major part of that, it could make it easier to sell his film to a distributor. Or that was line of thinking. Of course, Back to the Future was a hit, and Thompson received much praise for her comedic work on the film. But that didn't make it any easier to sell his film. The producer would set the first screenings for the film at the February 1986 American Film Market in Santa Monica, which caters not only to foreign distributors looking to acquire American movies for their markets, but helps independent filmmakers get their movies seen by American distributors. As these screenings were for buyers by invitation only, there would be no reviews from the screenings, but one could guess that no one would hear about the film again until Miramax bought the American distribution rights to it in March 1988 tells us that maybe those screenings didn't go so well. The film would get retitled Going Undercover, and would open in single screen playdates in Atlanta, Cincinnati, Dallas, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Nashville, Orlando, St. Louis and Tampa on June 17th. And as I've said too many times already, no reported grosses from Miramax, and only one theatre playing the film was being tracked by Variety, with Going Undercover earning $3,000 during its one week at the Century City 14 in Los Angeles. In the June 22nd, 1988 issue of Variety, there was an article about Miramax securing a $25m line of credit in order to start producing their own films. Going Undercover is mentioned in the article about being one of Miramax's releases, without noting it had just been released that week or how well it did or did not do. The Thin Blue Line would be Miramax's first non-music based documentary, and one that would truly change how documentaries were made. Errol Morris had already made two bizarre but entertaining documentaries in the late 70s and early 80s. Gates of Heaven was shot in 1977, about a man who operated a failing pet cemetery in Northern California's Napa Valley. When Morris told his famous German filmmaking supporter Werner Herzog about the film, Herzog vowed to eat one of the shoes he was wearing that day if Morris could actually complete the film and have it shown in a public theatre. In April 1979, just before the documentary had its world premiere at UC Theatre in Berkeley, where Morris had studied philosophy, Herzog would spend the morning at Chez Pannise, the creators of the California Cuisine cooking style, boiling his shoes for five hours in garlic, herbs and stock. This event itself would be commemorated in a documentary short called, naturally, Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe, by Les Blank, which is a must watch on its own. Because of the success of Gates of Heaven, Morris was able to quickly find financing for his next film, Nub City, which was originally supposed to be about the number of Vernon, Florida's citizens who have “accidentally” cut off their limbs, in order to collect the insurance money. But after several of those citizens threatened to kill Morris, and one of them tried to run down his cinematographer with their truck, Morris would rework the documentary, dropping the limb angle, no pun intended, and focus on the numerous eccentric people in the town. It would premiere at the 1981 New York Film Festival, and become a hit, for a documentary, when it was released in theatres in 1982. But it would take Morris another six years after completing Vernon, Florida, to make another film. Part of it was having trouble lining up full funding to work on his next proposed movie, about James Grigson, a Texas forensic psychiatrist whose was nicknamed Doctor Death for being an expert witness for the prosecution in death penalty cases in Texas. Morris had gotten seed money for the documentary from PBS and the Endowment for Public Arts, but there was little else coming in while he worked on the film. In fact, Morris would get a PI license in New York and work cases for two years, using every penny he earned that wasn't going towards living expenses to keep the film afloat. One of Morris's major problems for the film was that Grigson would not sit on camera for an interview, but would meet with Morris face to face to talk about the cases. During that meeting, the good doctor suggested to the filmmaker that he should research the killers he helped put away. And during that research, Morris would come across the case of one Randall Dale Adams, who was convicted of killing Dallas police officer Robert Wood in 1976, even though another man, David Harris, was the police's initial suspect. For two years, Morris would fly back and forth between New York City and Texas, talking to and filming interviews with Adams and more than two hundred other people connected to the shooting and the trial. Morris had become convinced Adams was indeed innocent, and dropped the idea about Dr. Grigson to solely focus on the Robert Wood murder. After showing the producers of PBS's American Playhouse some of the footage he had put together of the new direction of the film, they kicked in more funds so that Morris could shoot some re-enactment sequences outside New York City, as well as commission composer Phillip Glass to create a score for the film once it was completed. Documentaries at that time did not regularly use re-enactments, but Morris felt it was important to show how different personal accounts of the same moment can be misinterpreted or misremembered or outright manipulated to suppress the truth. After the film completed its post-production in March 1988, The Thin Blue Line would have its world premiere at the San Francisco Film Festival on March 18th, and word quickly spread Morris had something truly unique and special on his hands. The critic for Variety would note in the very first paragraph of his write up that the film employed “strikingly original formal devices to pull together diverse interviews, film clips, photo collages, and” and this is where it broke ground, “recreations of the crime from many points of view.” Miramax would put together a full court press in order to get the rights to the film, which was announced during the opening days of the 1988 Cannes Film Festival in early May. An early hint on how the company was going to sell the film was by calling it a “non-fiction feature” instead of a documentary. Miramax would send Morris out on a cross-country press tour in the weeks leading up to the film's August 26th opening date, but Morris, like many documentary filmmakers, was not used to being in the spotlight themselves, and was not as articulate about talking up his movies as the more seasoned directors and actors who've been on the promotion circuit for a while. After one interview, Harvey Weinstein would send Errol Morris a note. “Heard your NPR interview and you were boring.” Harvey would offer up several suggestions to help the filmmaker, including hyping the movie up as a real life mystery thriller rather than a documentary, and using shorter and clearer sentences when answering a question. It was a clear gamble to release The Thin Blue Line in the final week of summer, and the film would need a lot of good will to stand out. And it would get it. The New York Times was so enthralled with the film, it would not only run a review from Janet Maslin, who would heap great praise on the film, but would also run a lengthy interview with Errol Morris right next to the review. The quarter page ad in the New York Times, several pages back, would tout positive quotes from Roger Ebert, J. Hoberman, who had left The Village Voice for the then-new Premiere Magazine, Peter Travers, writing for People Magazine instead of Rolling Stone, and critics from the San Francisco Chronicle and, interestingly enough, the Dallas Morning News. The top of the ad was tagged with an intriguing tease: solving this mystery is going to be murder, with a second tag line underneath the key art and title, which called the film “a new kind of movie mystery.” Of the 15 New York area-based film critics for local newspapers, television and national magazines, 14 of them gave favorable reviews, while 1, Stephen Schiff of Vanity Fair, was ambivalent about it. Not one critic gave it a bad review. New York audiences were hooked. Opening in the 240 seat main house at the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas, the movie grossed $30,945 its first three days. In its second weekend, the gross at the Lincoln Plaza would jump to $31k, and adding another $27,500 from its two theatre opening in Los Angeles and $15,800 from a single DC theatre that week. Third week in New York was a still good $21k, but the second week in Los Angeles fell to $10,500 and DC to $10k. And that's how it rolled out for several months, mostly single screen bookings in major cities not called Los Angeles or New York City, racking up some of the best reviews Miramax would receive to date, but never breaking out much outside the major cities. When it looked like Santa Cruz wasn't going to play the film, I drove to San Francisco to see it, just as my friends and I had for the opening day of Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ in mid-August. That's 75 miles each way, plus parking in San Francisco, just to see a movie. That's when you know you no longer just like movies but have developed a serious case of cinephilea. So when The Nickelodeon did open the film in late November, I did something I had never done with any documentary before. I went and saw it again. Second time around, I was still pissed off at the outrageous injustice heaped upon Randall Dale Adams for nothing more than being with and trusting the wrong person at the wrong time. But, thankfully, things would turn around for Adams in the coming weeks. On December 1st, it was reported that David Harris had recanted his testimony at Adams' trial, admitting he was alone when Officer Wood stopped his car. And on March 1st, 1989, after more than 15,000 people had signed the film's petition to revisit the decision, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned Adams's conviction “based largely” on facts presented in the film. The film would also find itself in several more controversies. Despite being named The Best Documentary of the Year by a number of critics groups, the Documentary Branch of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences would not nominate the film, due in large part to the numerous reenactments presented throughout the film. Filmmaker Michael Apted, a member of the Directors Branch of the Academy, noted that the failure to acknowledge The Thin Blue Line was “one of the most outrageous things in the modern history of the Academy,” while Roger Ebert added the slight was “the worst non-nomination of the year.” Despite the lack of a nomination, Errol Morris would attend the Oscars ceremony in March 1989, as a protest for his film being snubbed. Morris would also, several months after Adams' release, find himself being sued by Adams, but not because of how he was portrayed in the film. During the making of the film, Morris had Adams sign a contract giving Morris the exclusive right to tell Adams's story, and Adams wanted, essentially, the right to tell his own story now that he was a free man. Morris and Adams would settle out of court, and Adams would regain his life rights. Once the movie was played out in theatres, it had grossed $1.2m, which on the surface sounds like not a whole lot of money. Adjusted for inflation, that would only be $3.08m. But even unadjusted for inflation, it's still one of the 100 highest grossing documentaries of the past forty years. And it is one of just a handful of documentaries to become a part of the National Film Registry, for being a culturally, historically or aesthetically significant film.” Adams would live a quiet life after his release, working as an anti-death penalty advocate and marrying the sister of one of the death row inmates he was helping to exonerate. He would pass away from a brain tumor in October 2010 at a courthouse in Ohio not half an hour from where he was born and still lived, but he would so disappear from the spotlight after the movie was released that his passing wasn't even reported until June 2011. Errol Morris would become one of the most celebrated documentarians of his generation, finally getting nominated for, and winning, an Oscar in 2003, for The Fog of War, about the life and times of Robert McNamara, Richard Nixon's Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War era. The Fog of War would also be added to the National Film Registry in 2019. Morris would become only the third documentarian, after D.A. Pennebaker and Les Blank, to have two films on the Registry. In 1973, the senseless killings of five members of the Alday family in Donalsonville GA made international headlines. Four years later, Canadian documentarian Tex Fuller made an award-winning documentary about the case, called Murder One. For years, Fuller shopped around a screenplay telling the same story, but it would take nearly a decade for it to finally be sold, in part because Fuller was insistent that he also be the director. A small Canadian production company would fund the $1m CAD production, which would star Henry Thomas of E.T. fame as the fifteen year old narrator of the story, Billy Isaacs. The shoot began in early October 1987 outside Toronto, but after a week of shooting, Fuller was fired, and was replaced by Graeme Campbell, a young and energetic filmmaker for whom Murder One would be his fourth movie directing gig of the year. Details are sketchy as to why Fuller was fired, but Thomas and his mother Carolyn would voice concerns with the producers about the new direction the film was taking under its new director. The film would premiere in Canada in May 1988. When the film did well up North, Miramax took notice and purchased the American distribution rights. Murder One would first open in America on two screens in Los Angeles on September 9th, 1988. Michael Wilmington of the Los Angeles Times noted that while the film itself wasn't very good, that it still sprung from the disturbing insight about the crazy reasons people cross of what should be impassable moral lines. “No movie studio could have invented it!,” screamed the tagline on the poster and newspaper key art. “No writer could have imagined it! Because what happened that night became the most controversial in American history.” That would draw limited interest from filmgoers in Tinseltown. The two theatres would gross a combined $7k in its first three days. Not great but far better than several other recent Miramax releases in the area. Two weeks later, on September 23rd, Miramax would book Murder One into 20 theatres in the New York City metro region, as well as in Akron, Atlanta, Charlotte, Indianpolis, Nashville, and Tampa-St. Petersburg. In New York, the film would actually get some good reviews from the Times and the Post as well as Peter Travers of People Magazine, but once again, Miramax would not report grosses for the film. Variety would note the combined gross for the film in New York City was only $25k. In early October, the film would fall out of Variety's internal list of the 50 Top Grossing Films within the twenty markets they regularly tracked, with a final gross of just $87k. One market that Miramax deliberately did not book the film was anywhere near southwest Georgia, where the murders took place. The closest theatre that did play the film was more than 200 miles away. Miramax would finish 1988 with two releases. The first was Dakota, which would mark star Lou Diamond Phillips first time as a producer. He would star as a troubled teenager who takes a job on a Texas horse ranch to help pay of his debts, who becomes a sorta big brother to the ranch owner's young son, who has recently lost a leg to cancer, as he also falls for the rancher's daughter. When the $1.1m budgeted film began production in Texas in June 1987, Phillips had already made La Bamba and Stand and Deliver, but neither had yet to be released into theatres. By the time filming ended five weeks later, La Bamba had just opened, and Phillips was on his way to becoming a star. The main producers wanted director Fred Holmes to get the film through post-production as quickly as possible, to get it into theatres in the early part of 1988 to capitalize on the newfound success of their young star. But that wouldn't happen. Holmes wouldn't have the film ready until the end of February 1988, which was deemed acceptable because of the impending release of Stand and Deliver. In fact, the producers would schedule their first distributor screening of the film on March 14th, the Monday after Stand and Delivered opened, in the hopes that good box office for the film and good notices for Phillips would translate to higher distributor interest in their film, which sorta worked. None of the major studios would show for the screening, but a number of Indies would, including Miramax. Phillips would not attend the screening, as he was on location in New Mexico shooting Young Guns. I can't find any reason why Miramax waited nearly nine months after they acquired Dakota to get it into theatres. It certainly wasn't Oscar bait, and screen availability would be scarce during the busy holiday movie season, which would see a number of popular, high profile releases like Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Ernest Saves Christmas, The Naked Gun, Rain Man, Scrooged, Tequila Sunrise, Twins and Working Girl. Which might explain why, when Miramax released the film into 18 theatres in the New York City area on December 2nd, they could only get three screens in all of Manhattan, the best being the nice but hardly first-rate Embassy 4 at Broadway and 47th. Or of the 22 screens in Los Angeles opening the film the same day, the best would be the tiny Westwood 4 next to UCLA or the Paramount in Hollywood, whose best days were back in the Eisenhower administration. And, yet again, Miramax did not report grosses, and none of the theatres playing the film was tracked by Variety that week. The film would be gone after just one week. The Paramount, which would open Dirty Rotten Scoundrels on the 14th, opted to instead play a double feature of Clara's Heart, with Whoopi Goldberg and Neil Patrick Harris, and the River Phoenix drama Running on Empty, even though neither film had been much of a hit. Miramax's last film of the year would be the one that changed everything for them. Pelle the Conquerer. Adapted from a 1910 Danish book and directed by Billie August, whose previous film Twist and Shout had been released by Miramax in 1986, Pelle the Conquerer would be the first Danish or Swedish movie to star Max von Sydow in almost 15 years, having spent most of the 70s and 80s in Hollywood and London starring in a number of major movies including The Exorcist, Three Days of the Condor, Flash Gordon,Conan the Barbarian, Never Say Never Again, and David Lynch's Dune. But because von Sydow would be making his return to his native cinema, August was able to secure $4.5m to make the film, one of the highest budgeted Scandinavian films to be made to date. In the late 1850s, an elderly emigrant Lasse and his son Pelle leave their home in Sweden after the death of the boy's mother, wanting to build a new life on the Danish island of Bornholm. Lasse finds it difficult to find work, given his age and his son's youth. The pair are forced to work at a large farm, where they are generally mistreated by the managers for being foreigners. The father falls into depression and alcoholism, the young boy befriends one of the bastard children of the farm owner as well as another Swedish farm worker, who dreams of conquering the world. For the title character of Pelle, Billie August saw more than 3,000 Swedish boys before deciding to cast 11 year old Pelle Hvenegaard, who, like many boys in Sweden, had been named for the character he was now going to play on screen. After six months of filming in the summer and fall of 1986, Billie August would finish editing Pelle the Conquerer in time for it to make its intended Christmas Day 1987 release date in Denmark and Sweden, where the film would be one of the biggest releases in either country for the entire decade. It would make its debut outside Scandinavia at the Cannes Film Festival in May 1988, where it had been invited to compete for the Palme D'Or. It would compete against a number of talented filmmakers who had come with some of the best films they would ever make, including Clint Eastwood with Bird, Claire Denis' Chocolat, István Szabó's Hanussen, Vincent Ward's The Navigator, and A Short Film About Killing, an expanded movie version of the fifth episode in Krzysztof Kieślowski's masterful miniseries Dekalog. Pelle would conquer them all, taking home the top prize from one of cinema's most revered film festivals. Reviews for the film out of Cannes were almost universally excellent. Vincent Canby, the lead film critic for the New York Times for nearly twenty years by this point, wouldn't file his review until the end of the festival, in which he pointed out that a number of people at the festival were scandalized von Sydow had not also won the award for Best Actor. Having previously worked with the company on his previous film's American release, August felt that Miramax would have what it took to make the film a success in the States. Their first moves would be to schedule the film for a late December release, while securing a slot at that September's New York Film Festival. And once again, the critical consensus was highly positive, with only a small sampling of distractors. The film would open first on two screens at the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas in midtown Manhattan on Wednesday, December 21st, following by exclusive engagements in nine other cities including Los Angeles, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington DC, on the 23rd. But the opening week numbers weren't very good, just $46k from ten screens. And you can't really blame the film's two hour and forty-five minute running time. Little Dorrit, the two-part, four hour adaptation of the Charles Dickens novel, had been out nine weeks at this point and was still making nearly 50% more per screen. But after the new year, when more and more awards were hurled the film's way, including the National Board of Review naming it one of the best foreign films of the year and the Golden Globes awarding it their Best Foreign Language trophy, ticket sales would pick up. Well, for a foreign film. The week after the Motion Picture Academy awarded Pelle their award for Best Foreign Language Film, business for the film would pick up 35%, and a third of its $2m American gross would come after that win. One of the things that surprised me while doing the research for this episode was learning that Max von Sydow had never been nominated for an Oscar until he was nominated for Best Actor for Pelle the Conquerer. You look at his credits over the years, and it's just mind blowing. The Seventh Seal. Wild Strawberries. The Virgin Spring. The Greatest Story Ever Told. The Emigrants. The Exorcist. The Three Days of the Condor. Surely there was one performance amongst those that deserved recognition. I hate to keep going back to A24, but there's something about a company's first Oscar win that sends that company into the next level. A24 didn't really become A24 until 2016, when three of their movies won Oscars, including Brie Larson for Best Actress in Room. And Miramax didn't really become the Miramax we knew and once loved until its win for Pelle. Thank you for joining us. We'll talk again soon, when Episode 117, the fifth and final part of our miniseries on Miramax Films, is released. 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.
GGACP celebrates dads everywhere with this ENCORE of a special Father's Day show featuring actor-musician Chris Lemmon and producer-director Charlie Matthau. In this episode, Chris and Charlie look back at the lives and careers of one of cinema's legendary comedy teams, Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. Also: Jerry Lewis turns down "Some Like it Hot," Red Skelton passes on "The Sunshine Boys," Walter "compliments" Christopher Walken and Jack runs afoul of Virna Lisi's husband. PLUS: "The Fortune Cookie"! The Ukrainian Cary Grant! The music of Neal Hefti! The complexities of Blake Edwards! Walter rescues "The Odd Couple"! And Ving Rhames pays Jack an unforgettable tribute! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Welcome to Heilman & Haver - Episode 75. We hope you enjoy the show! Please join the conversation - email us with thoughts and ideas and connect with the show on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and at heilmanandhaver.com. IN THE SPOTLIGHT: Chris Lemmon With a career spanning over 40 years, Chris has starred in television series for all major networks, including Knot's Landing, Thunder In Paradise, Studio 59, Brothers Sisters, and most notably Fox's highly acclaimed network-starting situation comedy Duet. Plus over 25 feature films like Lena's Holiday, Just the Ticket, and That's Life alongside his father. Lemmon graduated California Institute of the Arts with degrees in classical piano and composition, as well as degrees in the theatrical arts, and went on to appear in numerous stage productions, including the west-coast tour of Barefoot In The Park, directed by the late Jerry Paris, the original award winning west coast production of Shay by Anne Commire, and the highly successful Love Letters with Stephanie Zimbalast. He presently resides in New England where he writes and produces feature films and television and his 2006 memoir, A Twist of Lemmon, is a heartfelt tribute to his iconic father. When Jack Lemmon died in 2001, the world lost a two-time Oscar winner and perhaps the most beloved actor of his generation; but Chris Lemmon lost a father and a best friend. In A Twist of Lemmon, Chris shares family tales, intimate father-son conversations, and anecdotes from and about his dad. Chris then took those stories and memories from the page to the stage, creating his one-man hit show Twist of Lemmon, sharing an intimate look into the experience of growing up in Hollywood, featuring nine of his original piano compositions, a narrative of touching and heartfelt stories, and laugh-out-loud anecdotes from his life and times in the world of Hollywood stardom. Chris joined from his home in Connecticut. Watch TWIST OF LEMMON on YouTube.
Welcome to Heilman & Haver - Episode 74. We hope you enjoy the show! Please join the conversation - email us with thoughts and ideas and connect with the show on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and at heilmanandhaver.com. IN THE SPOTLIGHT: Eddie Muller “The Czar of Noir” himself, Eddie Muller produces, programs, and hosts a national network of Noir City film festivals, including right here in Seattle, presented under the auspices of the Film Noir Foundation, a nonprofit corporation he founded in 2005 to rescue and restore films from America and abroad. The Foundation also publishes NOIR CITY magazine, the world's leading publication on classic and contemporary noir. Eddie is also the host of TCM's Noir Alley and the prolific author of crime fiction like The Distance, and is a recipient of the Raven Award from the Mystery Writers of America. His other books include biographies like Tab Hunter Confidential, cinema histories including Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir and the upcoming children's book Kid Noir: Kitty Feral and the Case of the Marshmallow Monkey. In his latest book, Eddie Muller's Noir Bar: Cocktails Inspired by the World of Film Noir, Eddie pairs classic cocktails and modern noir-inspired libations with behind-the-scenes anecdotes and insights on film favorites like The Asphalt Jungle, The Big Sleep, and Nightmare Alley. Eddie Muller's Noir Bar hits shelves on May 23rd and is available for pre-order now. Eddie joined us from his home in the Bay Area. COMING UP ON EPISODE 75: Join us on Friday, May 26th, when we'll celebrate our 75th episode with special guest Chris Lemmon - author, television and film actor, star of the acclaimed one man show A Twist of Lemmon and, as you might have guessed, son of beloved Oscar-winning actor Jack Lemmon.
Chris Lemmon is an accomplished author, martial artist, storyteller and concert pianist, who just happens to be the son of iconic actor Jack Lemmon. Chris discusses the flawed relationship with his farther, some Hollywood memories with Marilyn Monroe and JFK, and his near death experience during a double lung transplant, all related with great candor and humor.
This week our journey into the history of killbilly cinema takes us to the Pacific Northwest in 1981's "Just Before Dawn" directed by William Lieberman and starring George Kennedy, Chris Lemmon & more in this film where the killbilly genre becomes one in the same with the Slashers in the year where they had their shining moment. Plus musical guest "Deeds Of Flesh" returns courtesy of Horror Pain Gore Death Productions. (HorrorPainGoreDeath.com)
Father's Day is coming up in about a week, and today. I wanted to share with you an interview I did a few years ago about a Hollywood father-son story. For the better part of four decades, one of America's favorite actors was Jack Lemmon. He made some 60 movies. He was nominated for eight Academy Awards, and won the Oscar twice,for Mr. Roberts, and for Save The Tiger. Younger audiences may remember him best for his roles in the comedies Grumpy, Old Men and Grumpier Old Men. And starting in the 1970s, Jack Lemmon's son Chris also established himself as a performer. The younger lemon is a talented actor, screenwriter, and musician. And in 2006, he published a book, a tribute to his dad, called A Twist of Lemmon.
THE REAL AMERICANNicht jeder kam als Kind in den Genuss, die prügelnden und pöbelnden Amis in ihren knalligen Kostümen im Fernsehen zu bestaunen. Trotzdem dürften jedem auf dem Schulhof Namen wie Sting, der Undertaker oder Big Show über den Weg gelaufen sein. Ein Name thronte jedoch unangefochten über allen: Hulk Hogan. Der solariumgebräunte Riese mit dem Hufeisenschnauzer war DIE Identifikationsfigur des amerikanischen Wrestlingskults schlechthin und zog auch außerhalb des Rings Fans aus aller Welt in seinen Bann.So ergab es sich, dass Hogan in den 90er-Jahren eine Kampfpause einlegte, um sich anderen Vermarktungszweigen zu widmen: dem Filmgeschäft. So lauerten uns ein gutes Dutzend familienfreundlicher Komödien und C-Actionstreifen in den heimischen Videotheken auf. Aber auch im Fernsehen war man vor der Hulkamania nicht sicher, wo sich Hogan mit Chris Lemmon zusammenschloss und ihn "Thunder in Paradise" Jagd auf fiese Schurken machte.Diese kurzlebige, aber kultige Trashfilm-Karriere verdient in jedem Fall eine Sonderbehandlung. Deshalb habe ich mir mit Janno (Zimbelaffenpodcast) und Tom (Bullet und Fist) tatkräftige Mitstreiter an Bord der Thunder geholt. Gemeinsam mit euch düsen wir quer durch Hogans Filmografie, schwelgen von überteuerten Premiere-Abos und kredenzen euch noch drei ganz spezielle Cocktail-Rezepte.Also noch schnell den Schnauzer blondieren und die alten Actionfiguren aus dem Schrank kramen, denn:Das ist das Hulk Hogan-Spezial, das ihr euch immer gewünscht habt!---Jannos Projekte:ZimbelaffenpodcastGlotzende ZimbelaffenToms Projekte:Bullet und FistCET-Blog---Feedback, Verbesserungen, Wünsche? Gerne hier zurückmelden!Unterstützen: Kaffekasse (Ko-Fi) | Amazon Wishlist | Koch Films Shop (Affiliate)Abonnieren: iTunes | Spotify | Amazon Music | Google Podcasts | RSSFolgen: Youtube | Instagram | Facebook | TwitterFilmblog: VilmFerrückt.deTwitch-Stream: ModulPuster---Intro-/Outro-Song: © Aidan Finnegan (https://soundcloud.com/triadaudioofficial)"Real American" von Rick Derringer: © WWE/Rick Derringer
Today on the Rarified Heir Podcast, we present to you an encore episode with guest Chris Lemmon, son of Jack Lemmon. Chris spoke with us last year in the midst of Covid and was holed up as his home on the East Coast due to a pretty intense compromised immunity which he speaks about at length. In addition to his health, we speak to Chris about what it was like growing up Lemmon, the son of one of America's greatest actors and why he chose to go into acting as well. We further talked to Chris about some familial bonds as well – his father and Josh's mother Edie Adams were close friends beginning in the 1950s when Jack and Edie's first husband Ernie Kovacs starred in several films together. They were not only co-stars but fast friends. We talk about a trip to Venice Italy in 1984 that Chris and Josh attended where hotel guests included Hollywood super-agent, Sue Mengers, Gore Vidal and Christopher Walken, who was shooting the James Bond film “A View To A Kill” as villain Max Zorin. There were dinners, conversation and drinks at Harry's Bar all week that was both strangely normal and surreal. It was a great conversation with Chris and a fun catch-up to have him on the podcast. So take a listen as this is the Rarified Heir Podcast encore episode with Chris Lemmon. Everyone has a story.
JUST BEFORE DAWN (1981) Directed by Jeff Lieberman sees a group of young people – among them Gregg Henry, Chris Lemmon, and Deborah Benson – heading into the Oregon mountains to check out some property one of them has inherited. While camping in the woods, they are attacked by two hillbilly brothers trying to kill them all. At this, they mostly succeed. Pretty standard slasher movie stuff, right? And, yet, Just Before Dawn is anything but. It's merits as a horror movie are substantial, whether it's the first-rate cast, composer Brad Fidel's spooky and sparse score, or the expertly utilized and gorgeously photographed outdoor locations.
JUST BEFORE DAWN (1981) Directed by Jeff Lieberman sees a group of young people – among them Gregg Henry, Chris Lemmon, and Deborah Benson – heading into the Oregon mountains to check out some property one of them has inherited. While camping in the woods, they are attacked by two hillbilly brothers trying to kill them all. At this, they mostly succeed. Pretty standard slasher movie stuff, right? And, yet, Just Before Dawn is anything but. It's merits as a horror movie are substantial, whether it's the first-rate cast, composer Brad Fidel's spooky and sparse score, or the expertly utilized and gorgeously photographed outdoor locations.
In this episode of the VIA VHS Podcast, Wesley and Spencer relive the delightfully tacky yet unrefined Hulk Hogan small screen action vehicle, Thunder in Paradise. A TV movie written in a Hooters restaurant about a highly advanced speed boat captained by Martin ‘Bru' Brubaker (Chris Lemmon) and Randolph J. Hurricane(Hulk Hogan) Turn off your brain for this one folks, just sit back and take it in. Halfway through you'll have tons of questions, how is Hulk Hogan able to sneak around undetected, how can Hulk Hogan stand up with head room in the cabin of a tiny speedboat, why is this a bad rom com most of the way through, what happened to Chris Lemmon's career? All of these questions will be answered in this direct to video film/TV pilot episode. Find VIA VHS on Social Media: Twitter: @viavhs twitter.com/viavhs Instagram: @viavhspod instagram.com/viavhspod Facebook: @viavhspodcast facebook.com/viavhspodcast Find the VIA VHS Podcast on all platforms: https://linktr.ee/viavhs Find all of Spencer's work including the Old Man Orange Podcast and Pizza Boyz Comic at: Old Man Orange Podcast, Pizza Boyz Comics, Drunk Batman Comedy & Multi-Media Fun! - Old Man Orange Blog Intro music is the track Hackers thanks to Karl Casey at White Bat Audio. Listen to all his dope ass music on Spotify, YouTube or at: White Bat Audio
Männer, die auf Videos starren | Trashfilme, schlechte Musik und grottige Games
In unserer letzten Folge haben wir uns mit den Brüdern der großen Filmstars beschäftigt. Diesmal gucken wir, ob die Söhne es weniger verkackt haben. Spoiler: Nein! Blickt man auf die radikal-christlichen Schwurbelfilme von Mike Norris oder den moralisch fragwürdigen „Commando Mengele“ mit Chris Mitchum, sieht Frank Stallones „Terror in Beverly Hills“ plötzlich wie ein Bollwerk der Vernunft aus. Doch es gibt auch Lichtblicke. In einem Gastbeitrag lobt Dominik Starck Jason Connerys Darstellung von Robin Hood. Während Commodore Schmidlabb mit American Hunter eine Granate des niederklassigen Actionfilms im Arsenal hat, packt sein Kollege einen Geheimtipp des Slasherfilms aus. Was ihr sonst noch von Chris Lemmon, Brandon Lee, Michael Wayne, James & Chris Mitchum und Brandon Lee zu erwarten habt, erfahrt in dieser extralangen und prallgefüllten Folge des Trashfilm-Podcasts eures Vertrauens. Außerdem benötigen wir eure Hilfe. Wir planen zwei Folgen, die ohne eure Beteiligung nicht funktionieren. Zum einen wollen wir irgendwann einmal eine Ranking-Show über die besten Trashfilme machen. Da brauchen wir euren Input. Welche Filme gehören in jede Mülltonne? Zum anderen wollen wir gemeinsam mit euch unsere Reihe über VHS-Kassetten und Klappentexte fortführen. Gesucht werden Filmfans, die entweder lustige oder exotische Filme in ihrer Sammlung haben. Dabei kann es sich ruhig auch um andere ältere oder ausgestorbene Medien handeln. Schreibt uns an, falls da bei euch der Spinnensinn klingelt. Wir würden uns freuen, von euch zu hören. Homepage: mdavs.de Twitter: @MdaVs_Podcast Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TrashOMeter Mail: MdaVs-Podcast@hotmail.com Speakpipe: https://www.speakpipe.com/MdaVs Ihr wollt uns unterstützen? Dann hier entlang! https://www.mdavs.de/unterstuetzen/
Today on the Podcast, we are talking to someone Josh has known his whole life, actor Chris Lemmon, son of actress Cynthia Stone and the incomparable Jack Lemmon. Jack and host Josh Mills’ mom starred together in two films, The Apartment & Under The Yum Yum Tree, Jack and Ernie Kovacs starred in four movies together which cemented a great family friendship beginning in the 1950s. So what was it like growing up the son of one of the greatest actors this country has ever produced? Not as easy but also not as hard as you’d think. We talk to Chris tribute show to his dad, A Twist of Lemmon, his memories of hanging out with Blake Edwards & Walter Matthau, helping to launch the Fox Network with his show Duets in the late 80s, his recent double lung transplant – yikes - and starring with Josh’s mom Edie Adams in the classic film, The Happy Hooker Goes to Hollywood. I ask you, is there any other film title that screams Rarified Heir than that? It’s a Zoom induced love fest / cry fest with a little hammering thrown in, next on the Rarified Heir Podcast.
In this episode of The Pro Wrasslin' Reflection.... The Professor and Tommy Wonder take you way back to 1994 to review episode 4 in season one of the TV classic! Thunder In Paradise! Thunder in Paradise is an American action-adventure film TV series from the creators of Baywatch, which stars Hulk Hogan, Chris Lemmon, and Carol Alt. This first-run syndicated TV series originally premiered as a direct-to-video feature film in September 1993, then ran for one season from March 25 until November 27, 1994, before being cancelled. In May 1994, during a taping of WCW Saturday Night, Hogan publicly expressed a desire to return to professional wrestling and hinted that he would no longer be a part of the show. The series was later rebroadcast on the TNT cable network. In the episode the boys are reviewing.... Spence and Bru's arch-enemy Hammerhead, a dangerous criminal, takes over the underwater prison he's imprisoned in. Follow The Professor and Tommy on Twitter down below! The Professor: https://twitter.com/pwhustleprof Tommy Wonder: https://twitter.com/TheeTommyWonder SUPPORT THE BIG VITO BRAND ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/thebigvitobrand --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thebigvitobrand/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/thebigvitobrand/support
To celebrate both Father's Day and the 100th anniversary of Walter Matthau's birth, Gilbert and Frank are joined by actor-musician Chris Lemmon and producer-director Charlie Matthau for a loving look at the lives and careers of one of cinema's legendary comedy teams, Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. Also: Jerry Lewis turns down "Some Like it Hot," Red Skelton passes on "The Sunshine Boys," Walter "compliments" Christopher Walken and Jack runs afoul of Virna Lisi's husband. PLUS: "The Fortune Cookie"! The Ukrainian Cary Grant! The music of Neal Hefti! The complexities of Blake Edwards! Walter rescues "The Odd Couple"! And VingRhames pays Jack an unforgettable tribute! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Don Henderson and Doug Miles talk with actor/producer/musician Chris Lemmon about his recovery from a double lung transplant, his legendary Dad, Jack Lemmon and more. (www.dougmilesmedia.com)
The slasher film is one the biggest subgenres of horror films. But how did it come about and gain such popularity? This episode tracks the progression of (mostly) American slashers, focusing on how we got to the most formative years of the genre. ▶️Discussions include: How real-life influences and familiar settings were reflected in ‘60s and ‘70s films, thus inspiring the most popular slasher years; cementing slasher movie tropes; hooks, tonal changes, elevating intellectual and visual creativity as the years progressed; franchising; audience accessibility to slashers; recycling, resuscitation and reinvention of the genre, leading to the next evolutionary step to recapture the magic of the slasher movie trend. ▶️**PICKS OF THE WEEK** 1980s: “One heck of a final scene!” —Lindsay’s Pick, SLEEPAWAY CAMP (1983): A twisted summer camp story with a mysterious killer murdering foul-mouthed bullies. A deeper psychology behind this one. **Starring Felissa Rose, Jonathan Tiersten, Karen Fields, Katherine Kamhi. Directed by Robert Hiltzik.** —Justin’s Pick, JUST BEFORE DAWN (1981): A group of young hikers are hunted down by murderous, ruthless, inbred twins. **Starring George Kennedy, Gregg Henry, Chris Lemmon, Deborah Benson. Directed by Jeff Lieberman.** 1990s: “The one you’d never expect!” —Lindsay’s Pick, OFFICE KILLER (1997): After a repressed wallflower accidentally kills her jerk of a boss, she’s inspired to “correct” other problematic co-workers. **Starring Carol Kane, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Molly Ringwald. Directed by Cindy Sherman.** —Justin’s Pick, POPCORN (1991): An unknown killer seeks vengeance by picking off teenagers at an all-night horror movie marathon. **Starring Jill Schoelen, Dee Wallace, Tom Villard. Directed by Mark Herrier.** ▶️MURRAYMOMENT: Revisiting an adorable, unscripted scene in STRIPES (1981), featuring Billy and legendary scream queen, P.J. Soles. ▶️FINAL THOUGHTS: Hitting on a few influential/prominent Canadian slasher films, then how HALLOWEEN (2018) renews hope in the continuation of the slasher genre. ▶️NEXT UP: UNCLE BUCK (1989)!
Red Dawn s9e5 - Disturbed: The American Horror Story Podcast It's a new episode of the Disturbed Podcast. Chris and Rob discuss the fifth episode of the ninth season of FX's “American Horror Story: 1984”. Learn more, subscribe, or contact us at disturbed.smgpods.com. You can write to us at disturbedpodcast@gmail.com and let us know what you think. Please rate us and review the episode. It really helps other people find us. Thanks! Don't forget to check out our TeePublic page for a sweet Disturbed T-Shirt Find all our social media links at linktr.ee/disturbedpod And if you want to chat along live when we record or watch past episodes, check us out on GetVokl! SUPPORT SHOW BY SUPPORTING OUR SPONSORS Order our book Pod Life: Podcaster Stories orderpodlife.smgpods.com When you shop at Amazon.com using this link, every dollar you spend supports our podcast network and doesn’t cost you a penny more. amazon.smgpods.com Hunt a Killer – Get 20% off on your first box with Coupon Code SOUTHGATE www.huntakiller.com Tweaked Audio Headphones – Get 30% off, Free Shipping, and a Lifetime Warranty with Coupon Code – SOUTHGATE www.tweakedaudio.com Support our the SMG Podcast Network on Patreon www.patreon.com/SouthgateMediaGroup #AHSFX #AHS #AHS1984 00:10 - 07:08 So five American horror story four we're talking dawn I'm rob southgate with me is hey nine rain if I turn it does that change your head Yeah Nice head Chris Station big from the car If there are comments Chris you're going to have to manage that I'm not seeing it I don't know why but I was seeing things pop up the so this episode was nuts were I mean I mean seriously dude what was across the board so if you go to twitter instagram facebook type in at disturbed pod you'll find us on all of them I ended a couple of those today we're GonNa actually add content there we're going to add content to twitter I had some turns out we had an instagram since we started this actually since Jeff it's got were the hosts and all that time one post close close enough students okay don't worry about it it's ninety ninety fans on here next American horror story fans so we're going to start sharing some stuff and making this a kind of a fun horrid group that is rooted in American Horror Story Ashley this season's giving us a lot of fodder work with eighties horror movies little bit of nineties horror movies even though they're claiming eighties so so but we did get some answers oh wait we should we should give our social media we finally got our our instagram and everything worked out it's all the same so does this look okay all right that's the last time Gonna add that because there's nothing worse than a podcast where all they do is talk about how it looks or how it sounds L. and we've got a lot of cool I've been making a content calendar there we're gonNA start using to put cool stuff on here because there's a lot of cool horse stuff we have a lot of horror chance to Brooke did not sleep with that guy she said she didn't than what's her name I I don't have any names I forget everybody's name Montana clan don't oh she slept with him I know she did and that's where my brother's dead and yet that's not true we found out because I am putting all the links to all social media in other we have it all squared away I've updated and then on all of our platforms where you can find the show on our link yeah so okay so we got our I'm GonNa go with one answer right away we got one answer we had speculated there was interaction today we had a couple of people say that they that they were going to be joining us tonight's hope Boyd here even though this is a Janke setup hopefully they're joining us if there are any there were bets that shit so I don't know if there are not so it's GonNa be kind of a funny one I'm using my regular Mike Chris is a giant head and that's Chris Lemmon the I gotta turn it the other way this killing my hand so what can I do join us which is L. I. N. T. R. Dot e slash disturbed pod so everything is disturbed hot though it's all uniform not even bother so if the sound is terrible on this one blame it on my daughter we can point and make fun of her so car with you she slept with ray the ghost of ray or whatever you that she was a virgin the other thing car with you now or sour no she ended up right now so one of the big were you low I look like a train wreck did I that's okay so I don't know if I should turn the car off either here is a person that we got you plus if you go with the tropes of the eighties horror movies the final girl is typically virgin and she was definitely find out oh they definitely spun that in this that was cool how they did it so so we learned that part of it what did you think of that back story at the beginning I said Oh I believe her surprise me down I was like why would she quirk in that moment why would she have to why no her because she wasn't dead yet Nah yeah those pictures how many how many pictures were on that wall yeah probably like Yeah Yeah so big time serial killer And I I bet they were all different women it wasn't one woman torture a bunch of different with Rita Oh yeah of course beyond belief so I mean you know the dad finds a dad thinks team will years technically go over and he walks in with bleach seriously he was GonNa pour bleach in there he wasn't there to clean up he was going to torture what the Hell I've never seen that before no art we have I don't remember somebody doing that but he went right into jugular versus trophy it's one free so yeah and how quick was he too getting around that bed and disembowel because really didn't wait a long time to go in there and for no probably not so he's he's a fast mover he's like dolemite thought actually don't buy the cycle so that helps I got stabbed I tell you that you did I tell fellow molly he has a Jag the leather jacket it was very you know I'd like I thought they made it look like Sam Jackson and Black Snake Moan he was dead Oh yeah that's in that had to be a strong that's a big night putting your neck do not have multiple so yeah we're hazard chained up you know and I was like are they doing blasting bone where weird they how about when he killed himself he's spoiled when he stabbed himself in the next Katori yes 'cause picking and choosing who what goes coming back and he goes Oh said certain individuals officials say yes I stabbed myself cooking in the arm like good one when two inches in they keep showing up no kidding so I don't know and also here's another weird thing that happened win if you notice that the end when ray tries to leave except jingles and Ramirez we're not dead they were resurrected so they're not spirit there resurrect yeah man like season or next episode you know which did you see that or not oh yeah of course of course ridiculous I Baal is bad yeah that was disgusting and then she put the was ridiculous here's one thing I learned it summer camp robinhood dinner theater like trump he's like yes but also I completely I completely doug that whole idea of them going to Los Angeles I think we're GONNA get anniversary of zone anniversary or whatever jingles becomes Zodiac because we ever see his face if they do that for the hundreds episode we find out that he puts the mascot and he goes off and he's Zodiac because we saw Zodiac walk in my great heels win win can college like thirty years ago those the campground he falls right back in as we know that's going to happen with with the hitchhiker which swimming happens with all of them right right that's not because she she a visceral rated you know I mean if you look at the next coming sure Chris you're right out that I was thinking the same thing when they showed the three of them at the end and you saw Montana and Ray and you were in college so you were drunk and you just shut out at your find so Chris is bringing up he goes he's thinking that that this might be story of what happens in Los Angeles which which I into the night stalker general that but with Diane See I was wondering if he was dead already earlier win win because he was acting so weird I thought maybe he did Bernadette but let's get shot with the forty seven which was so bad that was awful I laughing through this episode the real fun stuff maybe we'll get some crossover maybe Ramirez go to the hotel who knows maybe because this is the hundred get out to Christmas and Jingles may not survive since we don't see him at Devil's night but you'll aggressive he might not you might not have noticed he even admits your I really wasn't killer until tonight so I don't think he is serious right now he's got a streak killer yeah I mean but it's GonNa be it's GonNa be I'm wondering where they're going with that because if it was just Ramirez Jingle going out and killing spree order he killed them all at one time people right for three who like Hell Birdie he called attack Murray Heidi 'cause this is mean hotel was based on real killer that we know about Gigolo was also based on killers that stayed at the hotel the second he's he's he said that he goes I was resurrected I was killed by was resurrected by the ball then when Jingle Jingle the night fell off in China and it landed the tip went right into my little bell and right right by the nail no damage but I- blood like l. 07:50 - 13:53 both are stuck in the camp were where are the three dumb asses these drugs jingles whereas Debbie girls from nineteen seventy and the other plane I'm assuming he did yes Zodiac Dingo during the eighties like early eighties seventies killers okay well isn't Zodiac earlier to Zodiac in the seventies and eighties or later how dare you throw logic macer other saying I mean he why he does now he knows he didn't kill Xavier Xavier unabridged if he really saw him there yeah they've you're right I was like I was like you know what there are way too many missing here the hitchhiker did the only one from that time how were they were killer right injuring singles or they they went there and they were learning their craft jean-gilles may never may not ever and not be a bad thing that might not be right for live with actually thinking that's what we were getting when they showed gone to Los Angeles I was like okay they're gonNA leave these ghosts behind and now we're going to get the our standards we don't we don't have any Peter's we don't have Sarah Paulson we don't have I mean we have people that have been here but we don't have those there might be Zodiac we might with that mascot and Zodiac was there at hell yeah but these though because I think he's just aspect to know man he's he's he plays weird well you're then kilburn he's he thinks he killed Birdie wavier yeah so he'll break Xavier because you didn't see Abeer until maybe he doesn't count right and he guilty new belt we figure this out he's a mass murder he's not a spree killer he's not a serial killer he's on a spree killer use a master I think the next season is going to be back with the winches another yeah yeah so you know if you're going to do that let's let's have a are you there like the staple of Kathy Bates has become a staple there they're not here but I like doing Loris stepping up right the right person he might chosen facial hair by you can't tell you I need Peter's weeds right and Sarah Paulson I think they should do that. 13:53 - 19:55 There's a new owner is weird have you noticed it seems Kinda weird this season to not have that'd be great because it would be twisty twisty was way earlier though one thing the same actor isn't it oh it is the same actor ideas completely wrong but I can rest easy with that because that is hard for the course goes marks can be like you just can't come here he yes well and Cordelia that'd be that'd be great out by guys like Denis O'hare just in all his glory season that is just Evan Peters characters though murder out right I'd be down with that like a reporter or something yeah I go back and watch them Rono do oh come on man remember those weird Chris good mood lighting for my car Christmas suggesting that for the final season of being like a mega mix of super friends mercy repeater site don't come back as March though as possible even oh yeah yeah we need like they keep saying that yeah podcasting that would have been off limits to early I know but it would have been great I want to be versus the legion of Doom and bring back everybody down that would be amazing imagine you could get like Casey and sound is GonNa be this time mainly because my daughter had a rehearsal tonight and I had to take her which means I have to record here Crispin Glover is he just wear DB is what he's a great player he's beyond that but looking for work right acting employers really is a really good actor cody Fernie might be but I think are a great actor in the same way that like controversy we're GONNA have vocal show no he couldn't do that 'cause video although look at us who cares right was it like what do the dance dying yeah he's he was awesome how about alot like seventeen so often but it's only thirteen character in apocalypse yeah that'd be great that I'll have to play the good and the bad like vegtable verses whichever Sarah Paul's character you on I think so also aw I just want burned up Dennis O'Hara show yeah I'll razor right jen she was like Margaret Stab yourself in the leg was remember she told jingle killer and jiggles Lady Gaga the woods where the can be you know so we got we got Rina's motivation we know why she to play her two headed character other characters dealing with we would have we would have syrup often clown I can't think of his name crust it's cross state no it was Oh my God here's what she is she get killed in this one I can't remember who Ria Moh she did so where was she at the commit let me girls was pretty good in itself I mean you know I think everyone's been graded and and what is cody has been he's it's so good here he's played the snivelling well well bed these I like him I I have to go into radio I just said his name today to I can't think of his name who is somebody's gotta write it with the Eight on the same guy the two nurses that were walking around out up was good stuff album they did it by you got clear their per second that was amazing yet in that one and then when he was would you report it remember when he in the Enron Enron in Rota Hughes kind of a coup yeah the live with what you all right and then left so she citadel son Margaret Alive Ramirez and Jingles are quote Unquote Alive and Bruce a lot right I doubt it was the funniest thing driving the bus oil batic right yeah slamming going into climactic it was just a standing compared to all the disembowel driving it was well all the things that happened at that camp that's like the leased like one of the future seasons we'll see those kids and the vampire kids and all all get together and have a party right well I'm not I wanNA talk about next week we got we got our Los Angeles thing we've got our camping do you think because we've got five more hey kids we're almost here although I can do an impression looking Save Transcription
On this week's episode, the Halloween Spooktacular sadly comes to an end, but the gang is going out in style by talking about the outrageous Wishmaster! What's with that pharmacist's brutal death? Look how great Kane Hodder's facial hair is! And how about that jaw rip? PLUS: God hates genies!Wishmaster stars Tammy Lauren, Andrew Divoff, Robert Englund, Chris Lemmon, and George 'Buck' Flower; directed by Robert Kurtzman.
Chatting With Sherri welcomes back Producer/Actor/Musician and Professor; Chris Lemmon! We will chat with Chris about all his adventures since we last chatted. Chris will be appearing at the Coronado Island Film Festival with his one-man musical tribute to his “Pop,” Jack Lemmon called “A Twist of Lemmon,”
Chatting With Sherri welcomes back incredibly talented actor, playwright and author Chris Lemmon! Chris is so excited that the University of New Haven as a special treat to the students will offer the opportunity to learn more about pre- and post- World War II films in “The Golden Age of Hollywood – Life Beyond the Silver Screen,” a course narrated by the exciting and passionate Professor Chris Lemmon, son of eight-time Academy Award nominee actor Jack Lemmon. This course is based on his story about Chris and his Dad, A Twist of Lemmon. Lemmon stated that by teaching the course, he hopes to bring back some of the happiness and simplicity that became lost in the modern era. “It was an age of innocence, [a] wonderful sense of life… We’ve lost that simplicity in this time of instant communication.”
Chatting With Sherri welcomes back the talented actor, writer and producer; Chris Lemmon! All the work of his one man show about his relationship with his dad, legendary actor,Jack Lemmon; "A Twist Of Lemmon," over the past year have been preparatory for his London opening. London was a whole new show, and the world premiere was a big success. It will be on to NY next this coming Spring. "I guess you could say it’s my Magnum Opus, and the crazy thing is, after ten years of development, it’s just beginning!" Chris Lemmon.
I met Chris Lemmon on The Facebook. We had an instant, easy rapport, and affection. He’s been warm, loving, generous, honoring me with brilliant words for Don’t Jump, and, willing at first utterance when I have a request. Son of the late, great, iconic, actor, Jack Lemmon, the resemblance both in appearance and voice are almost unnerving. A gifted pianist, Chris followed his father's acting footsteps appearing onstage, on television, in Duet and Open House, and, in films, appearing with his father in Airport '77, That's Life! and Dad. Also a screenwriter and author, Chris adapted his, A Twist of Lemmon, to the stage. The show, which has garnered rave reviews, is being performed by Chris coast to coast. This is a heartfelt conversation, searching for Chris in the Lemmon. I adore this lovely man, and trust you do, or, will, too. Vicki Abelson's BROADcast: The Road Taken Produced by Louise Palanker Sound edited by Jon Mattox Also available on: iTunes apple.co/2dj8ld3 Stitcher bit.ly/2h3R1fl tunein bit.ly/2gGeItj This week's show is sponsored by Quik Impressions, the best printers, printing. quikimpressions.com BROADcast debuts 5/16/17
As I head down to the 2017 TCM Classic Film Festival I play interviews with Sister Rose Pacatte, Keith Carradine and Chris Lemmon taken from last year's fest. My main discussion is with Kelly Kitchens, creator of the Going to the TCM Classic Film Festival Facebook group. Want to help influence show episodes? Learn more at Ticklish Business' Patreon page. NEXT TIME: Audio from the 2017 TCM Classic Film Festival
I am so excited that Chatting With Sherri welcomes back the amazing Chris Lemmon! All the work of his one man show about his relationship with his dad, legendary actor,Jack Lemmon; "A Twist Of Lemmon," over the past year have been preparatory for his London opening. London was a whole new show, and the world premiere was a big success. It will be on to NY next this coming Spring. "Dubbed from critics from Australia to England, "A Piece that will make you laugh, then cry, then laugh again!"" "I guess you could say it's my Magnum Opus, and the crazy thing is, after ten years of development, it's just beginning!" Chris Lemmon.
Movie Addict Headquarters presents Chris Lemmon in an encore discussion of A Twist of Lemmon, the acclaimed book he wrote about his father Jack Lemmon, one of Hollywood’s greatest movie stars. Chris has created a touching memoir, one that reveals the beloved family man behind Jack Lemmon’s star persona. But, happily for movie fans, he includes many fascinating behind-the-scenes stories relating to his father’s remarkable movie career as well as personal tributes from such well-known show biz greats as Neil Simon, Blake Edwards, Cliff Robertson, Andy Garcia, Julie Andrews, Tony Curtis and Shirley MacLaine. Jack Lemmon was a convincing actor in so many wonderful films, including Days of Wine and Roses, Mr. Roberts, Some Like It Hot, The Odd Couple, Save the Tiger, The Apartment, Missing and The China Syndrome. He was skilled at doing both comedy and drama equally well – and moviegoers couldn’t seem to get enough of him. Following in his father’s footsteps, Chris chose show biz as his career. Among the highlights of his impressive background are appearances in over 20 films – three with his dad (Airport ’77, That’s Life! and Dad). Chris is also a screenwriter, producer and musician.
In todays episode I talk with the multi-talented Chris Lemmon!
On this special episode of Chatting With Sherri, I am honored to welcome the multi-talented Chris Lemmon! We will talk about his new film and his one man show based on his book; A Twist of Lemmon, chronicles the lifelong journey of Chris Lemmon and his world famous father, actor Jack Lemmon. “All my life, the one question I was asked was, “What is it like to be Jack Lemmon's Son” It's taken me a lifetime to finally find that answer” “I adored my father - he truly was my very best friend. And though he's gone, for those 90 minutes onstage, it's like he's with me again”
Chris Lemmon, now starring in the play Jack Lemmon Returns, discusses A Twist of Lemmon, the touching memoir he wrote about his famous father, one of Hollywood’s greatest movie stars. This popular book reveals the beloved family man behind Jack Lemmon’s star persona. But, happily for movie fans, Chris includes many fascinating behind-the-scenes stories relating to his father’s remarkable movie career. Jack Lemmon was a convincing actor in so many wonderful films, including Days of Wine and Roses, Mr. Roberts, Some Like It Hot, The Odd Couple, Save the Tiger, The Apartment, Missing and The China Syndrome. He was skilled at doing both comedy and drama equally well – and moviegoers couldn’t seem to get enough of him. Following in his father’s footsteps, Chris chose show biz as his career. Among the highlights of his impressive background are appearances in over 20 films – three with his dad (Airport ’77, That’s Life! and Dad). Chris, who is also a screenwriter and producer, is currently starring as his father in Jack Lemmon Returns, a new play with music premiering at The Royal George Theatre in Chicago.
Join Mary E., as she gives an post show review of the World Premiere of "Jack Lemmon Returns" an intimate look into the life of Jack Lemmon. Written Review can be read here. Hershey Felder presents Chris Lemmon as Jack Lemmon in JACK LEMMON RETURNS--A new play with music about a world famous Dad and his son. Actor and pianist Chris Lemmon grew up immersed in the magic of Hollywood. Marilyn Monroe, Gregory Peck, James Cagney, Jimmy Stewart, and Shirley Maclaine were but a handful of the many stars that came through his childhood home because of his father, Jack Lemmon. Often called a south going guy in a north going world, Jack Lemmon's genius in both comedy and drama made him a Hollywood darling and a world-wide superstar. And then he had a son... Production Photos for JACK LEMMON RETURNS Photos by Charles Osgood Chris Lemmon stars as his father, Jack Lemmon, in the World Premiere of JACK LEMMON RETURNS, now playing at the Royal George Theatre. The production is written and directed by Hershey Felder and based on the true story of the legendary Jack Lemmon (Mister Roberts, Some Like it Hot, Days of Wine and Roses, The Odd Couple) and his relationship with his son, actor and musician Chris Lemmon (Duet, That’s Life, Lena’s Holiday, etc.). For tickets, call 312.988.9000 or visit www.theroyalgeorgetheatre.com.
Chris Lemmon discusses A Twist of Lemmon, the acclaimed book he wrote about his famous father Jack Lemmon, one of Hollywood’s greatest movie stars. Chris has created a touching memoir, one that reveals the beloved family man behind Jack Lemmon’s star persona. But, happily for movie fans, he includes many fascinating behind-the-scenes stories relating to his father’s remarkable movie career as well as personal tributes from such well-known show biz greats as Neil Simon, Blake Edwards, Cliff Robertson, Andy Garcia, Julie Andrews, Tony Curtis and Shirley MacLaine. Jack Lemmon was a convincing actor in so many wonderful films, including Days of Wine and Roses, Mr. Roberts, Some Like It Hot, The Odd Couple, Save the Tiger, The Apartment, Missing and The China Syndrome. He was skilled at doing both comedy and drama equally well – and moviegoers couldn’t seem to get enough of him. Following in his father’s footsteps, Chris chose show biz as his career. Among the highlights of his impressive background are appearances in over 20 films – three with his dad (Airport ’77, That’s Life! and Dad). Chris is also a screenwriter and producer. He will be starring in the upcoming film Publicity Stunt, a comedy which he co-wrote, to be shot in Connecticut and directed by Joel Zwick. In addition, Chris tours with his one-man musical show about his father.
Growing up the Child of a Celebrity Superstar is the topic of conversation, Wednesday, March 13, 3 pm ET on The Halli Casser-Jayne Show, Talk Radio for Fine Minds when Halli is joined by three dynamic children of famous celebrities actor-writer Chris Lemmon the son of actor Jack Lemmon, actor and film director Charlie Matthau the son of actor Walter Matthau and handbag designer Marin Hopper the daughter of actor, director, photographer Dennis Hopper. The parent-child relationship is never easy. But imagine growing up in the glare of the limelight when you father is Academy Award winning actor Jack Lemmon? Or your father is the loveable man who played the iconic role of Oscar Madison in The Odd Couple? The players in Marin Hopper's world were not only her iconic father the Easy Rider himself, Dennis Hopper but her mother is actress/writer Brooke Hayward daughter of legendary former agent turned film, television, and stage producer Leland Hayward and actress Margaret Sullavan. Their stories of growing up in the circle of fame and fortune will intrigue you, their personal journey's to a sense of self empowerment astound you, their talent astonish you. Chris Lemmon, Charlie Matthau, Marin Hopper, Growing Up in the Limelight the subject of The Halli Casser-Jayne Show, Talk Radio for Fine Minds and Lovers of Fascinating Conversation, Wednesday, March 13, 3 pm ET.
Chris Lemmon, son of legendary actor Jack Lemmon, reveals inside information about his father's impressive career in this fascinating interview. Chris is the author of "A Twist of Lemmon: A Tribute to My Father," an acclaimed biography and family memoir. Equally adept at drama and comedy, Jack Lemmon excelled in movies like "Days of Wine and Roses," "Mr. Roberts," "Some Like It Hot," "The Odd Couple," and "The China Syndrome." Following in his father's footsteps, Chris is also an actor. His film and television credits include roles in "Wishmaster," "Dad," "Swing Shift," "Land of the Free," "Corporate Affairs," '"Brothers & Sisters," "Thunder in Paradise" and "Open House." During the pre-recorded interview, a live chat will be available for listeners to discuss their favorite Jack Lemmon films and performances.