Podcasts about sir alec guinness

The legacy of Star Wars extends far beyond lightsabers and space battles—it lives in the remarkable humans who brought these iconic characters to life. From the reluctant Jedi to the princess who gave zero f*cks, this episode pulls back the curtain on the fascinating, sometimes tragic lives of the Star Wars actors who've joined the cosmic force.Sir Alec Guinness might have hated the "mumbo jumbo" dialogue of Obi-Wan Kenobi, but his shrewd 2% royalty deal made him wealthy beyond imagination. Yet behind his disdain lurked a complicated man—a convert to Catholicism with arrest records suggesting a hidden sexuality in an era when such truths meant professional death. Meanwhile, Peter Mayhew transformed Chewbacca from a walking carpet into one of cinema's most beloved characters, his 7'3" frame and gentle nature making him the polar opposite of Guinness at conventions—embracing fans rather than telling them to never watch Star Wars again.Carrie Fisher's journey from Hollywood royalty to space princess to mental health advocate stands as perhaps the most compelling story. Her battles with bipolar disorder and addiction never dimmed her razor-sharp wit, turning personal demons into literary gold through memoirs that peeled back celebrity's gilded veneer. When she passed away in December 2016, followed just one day later by her mother Debbie Reynolds, it felt like losing both royalty and family.The men behind Darth Vader—David Prowse's intimidating physicality and James Earl Jones' resonant voice—remind us that even the greatest villains are team efforts. Prowse, who chose to play Vader over Chewbacca because "everyone remembers the villain," never saw his face on screen, while Jones transformed from a stuttering child into the voice that launched a thousand shivers down spines worldwide.These actors created more than characters—they built a modern mythology that continues to resonate across generations. Want to hear more Hollywood tales from beyond the grave? Subscribe now and join us next week when we uncover another chapter in Death in Entertainment.Send us a message!Support the showDeath in Entertainment is hosted by Kyle Ploof and Ben Kissel.New episodes every week!https://linktr.ee/deathinentertainment

WARREN CUMMINGS joins me to talk about the TV adaptations of the work of JOHN LE CARRÉ First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on December 8th 2024. For various reasons, recently I've been watching rather a lot of adaptations of the work of the novelist John le Carré, or David Cornwell as his family knew him, mostly, perhaps, because I've started reading his books, partially, of course, because SANDY made reference to him our show about ROCK FOLLIES earlier in the year, and also maybe because several of the adaptations have been made more widely available on the BBC's iPlayer service. Anyway, whatever the mysterious dark truth of those reasons might turn out to be, I've recently watched THE LITTLE DRUMMER GIRL; THE NIGHT MANAGER; TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY; SMILEY'S PEOPLE and also the film of his 1960s classic THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD, and, at time of recording, I'm also about to give A PERFECT SPY a rewatch after several decades. Le Carré's world of spies, counter-spies, mistrust, intrigue, and intense Cold War hostilities entertained us for several decades, and mostly centred around the enigmatic character of GEORGE SMILEY, as perfectly personified in two of the television adaptations of the late 1970s and early 1980s by SIR ALEC GUINNESS, and it is mostly upon those two series, TINKER, TAILOR and SMILEY'S PEOPLE that my conversation with WARREN CUMMINGS over the course of the next slow-burning but hopefully intensely engaging hour will concentrate, but, as long as neither of us turns out to be the Mole, then maybe we'll return to talk about a few of the others on another occasion. PLEASE NOTE - For Copyright reasons, musical content sometimes has to be removed for the podcast edition. All the spoken word content remains (mostly) as it was in the broadcast version. Hopefully this won't spoil your enjoyment of the show.

Talking About Jacques Audiard's The Beat That My Heart Skipped with our guest, director John Patton FordIn this delightful episode of Movies We Like, we have the pleasure of welcoming director John Patton Ford to join us – Andy Nelson and Pete Wright – for an engaging discussion about his career journey and one of his all-time favorite films, Jacques Audiard's The Beat That My Heart Skipped. The conversation kicks off with John sharing a fascinating anecdote about how his appearance on our podcast The Next Reel a decade ago unexpectedly played a role in a legal situation involving one of his scripts. The discussion then shifts to John's experiences as a writer trying to break into the industry and his bold decision to transition into directing, which ultimately led to the creation of his critically acclaimed debut feature, Emily the Criminal.John shares the challenges he faced as a first-time director, from his successful short film playing well at Sundance to getting his script for Emily the Criminal into the hands of the talented Aubrey Plaza. He shares how their mutual desire to showcase their talents in a gritty, compelling thriller helped bring the project to life. The conversation then takes a passionate turn as John reminisces about discovering The Beat That My Heart Skipped during his early days of filmmaking and how the film left an indelible mark on his creative journey. He effusively praises the movie's raw authenticity, captivating storytelling, and unforgettable ending.The Beat That My Heart Skipped is a film that beautifully captures the complexity of the human experience, as the protagonist navigates the gritty world of the underground real estate market while rediscovering his long-lost passion for piano performance. We explore with John the parallels between this film and Emily the Criminal, noting how both movies brilliantly capture the idea of characters pushing their boundaries and expanding their sense of self. While The Beat That My Heart Skipped may be a lesser-known work in Audiard's impressive filmography, it remains a powerful and influential piece of cinema that continues to resonate with aspiring filmmakers and audiences alike. John's infectious enthusiasm for the film makes for a great conversation, leading to a truly captivating episode that is sure to inspire listeners to seek out this hidden gem and experience its magic for themselves. So sit back, relax, and join us on this delightful journey as we celebrate the enduring power of great storytelling and the films that shape our lives.Film SundriesWatch our conversation on YouTubeFind John on InstagramJohn on IMDbListen to our conversation with John on The Next Reel where we discuss his script Rothchild that was on the 2014 Black List, part of our Sir Alec Guinness series in which we discuss the film Kind Hearts and CoronetsWatch this on YouTube, or find other places at JustWatchTheatrical trailerOriginal MaterialLetterboxd Learn how to support our show and The Next Reel's family of film podcasts by becoming a member. It's just $5 monthly or $55 annually. Learn more here.Join the conversation with movie lovers from around the world in our Discord community!Here's where you can find us around the internet:The WebLetterboxdCheck out poster artwork for movies we've discussed on our Pinterest pagePeteAndyWhat are some other ways you can support us and show your love? Glad you asked!You can buy our movie-related apparel, stickers, mugs and more from our MERCH PAGE.Or buy or rent movies we've discussed on the show from our WATCH PAGE.Or buy books, plays, etc. that was the source for movies we've discussed on the show from our ORIGINALS PAGE.Or renew or sign up for a Letterboxd Pro or Patron account with our LETTERBOXD MEMBERSHIP DISCOUNT.Or sign up for AUDIBLE.

Join us this week on Vintage Classic Radio's "Sunday Night Playhouse" for a special presentation of "The Little Prince." Originally aired on May 25th, 1956, by the CBS Radio Workshop, this beloved radio play brings to life the enchanting story of a young prince who travels the universe, gaining wisdom as he explores various planets and meets intriguing characters. This timeless tale, adapted from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's novel, captures the imagination and hearts of both young and old. Featuring the talented voices of Richard Beals as The Little Prince, Alec Guinness as the Narrator, and a full cast including Evelyn Rudie, Karl Swenson, and Norman Lloyd, each brings a unique depth to their characters, from the inquisitive prince to the array of whimsical beings he encounters. Don't miss this magical journey through space and life, which continues to resonate as a profound exploration of love, friendship, and what it truly means to be human. Tune in this Sunday to experience the wonder and charm of "The Little Prince."

This is part 1 of our next series, which delves into the actors who have brought the character of Obi-Wan Kenobi to life and all they bring to the table in their version of Obi-Wan. We begin first with the original Obi-Wan Kenobi: Sir Alec Guinness. Alec set the bar for all the portrayals of Obi-Wan to come, and in this episode we honor his legacy of acting, the minuscule details of his skill, and the way he really set the standard for Obi-Wan as we know it today. We salute you, Sir Alec Guinness! Next week we will explore Ewan McGregor, so be sure to tune in as we continue the series! --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/most-things-kenobi/support

David Frankham Remembers the Hollywood of Yesterday David Frankham played Larry Marvick in the "Star Trek" season three episode, "Is There In Truth No Beauty?" but his extensive resume traces all the way back to the 1940s. Mr. Frankham, who is the oldest guest to appear on this podcast at 97 years young, has seen it all and has tons of amazing tales from a bygone era of Hollywood.  David explains how he found his way into acting serving in the British Army during WW II, working for the BBC, his first television gig in front of 25 million people thanks to Rosemary Clooney, how Elizabeth Taylor and Sir Alec Guinness started his acting career in Hollywood, tales of kindness from Vincent Price, a wealth of Angela Lansbury stories, voicing Sgt. Tibbs in "101 Dalmations" and his encounters with the man behind The Mouse, Walt Disney, working on "King Rat," and great stories with Steve McQueen, George Cukor, Capucine, and even being attacked by Judy Gardland with a shoe!  And, of course, loads of memories from Star Trek, including working with Diana Muldair, William Shatner, DeForest Kelley, Leonard Nimoy, James Doohan, and the behind-the-scenes drama that shut down production!  Check out his book "Which One Was David?" on Amazon - https://amzn.to/3rAmAWH NOTE: This interview was conducted before the SAG-AFTRA Strike of 2023. No performers were interviewed during the strike unless they were discussing the strike itself. Please subscribe to our brand new YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/@trekuntold . There, you will see all the old episodes of this show, as well as new episodes and all of our other content, including shorts and some other fun things planned for the future. Visit my Amazon shop to check out tons of Trek products and other things I enjoy - https://www.amazon.com/shop/thefightnerd View the Teespring store for Trek Untold gear & apparel - https://my-store-9204078.creator-spring.com Support Trek Untold by becoming a Patreon at Patreon.com/TrekUntold. Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast and leave a rating if you like us! Follow Trek Untold on Social Media Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/trekuntoldTwitter: https://www.twitter.com/trekuntoldFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/trekuntold Follow Nerd News Today on Social Media Twitter:  Twitter.com/NerdNews2Day Instagram: Instagram.com/NerdNewsToday Facebook: Facebook.com/NerdNewsToday Trek Untold is sponsored by Treksphere.com, powered by the RAGE Works Podcast Network, and affiliated with Nerd News Today.   The views expressed on air during Trek Untold do not represent the views of the RAGE Works staff, partners, or affiliates. 

David Frankham played Larry Marvick in the "Star Trek" season three episode, "Is There In Truth No Beauty?" but his extensive resume traces all the way back to the 1940s. Mr. Frankham, who is the oldest guest to appear on this podcast at 97 years young, has seen it all and has tons of amazing tales from a bygone era of Hollywood.  David explains how he found his way into acting serving in the British Army during WW II, working for the BBC, his first television gig in front of 25 million people thanks to Rosemary Clooney, how Elizabeth Taylor and Sir Alec Guinness started his acting career in Hollywood, tales of kindness from Vincent Price, a wealth of Angela Lansbury stories, voicing Sgt. Tibbs in "101 Dalmations" and his encounters with the man behind The Mouse, Walt Disney, working on "King Rat," and great stories with Steve McQueen, George Cukor, Capucine, and even being attacked by Judy Gardland with a shoe!  And, of course, loads of memories from Star Trek, including working with Diana Muldaur, William Shatner, DeForest Kelley, Leonard Nimoy, James Doohan, and the behind-the-scenes drama that shut down production!  Check out his book "Which One Was David?" on Amazon - https://amzn.to/3rAmAWH NOTE: This interview was conducted before the SAG-AFTRA Strike of 2023. No performers were interviewed during the strike unless they were discussing the strike itself. Please subscribe to our brand new YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/@trekuntold . There, you will see all the old episodes of this show, as well as new episodes and all of our other content, including shorts and some other fun things planned for the future. Visit my Amazon shop to check out tons of Trek products and other things I enjoy - https://www.amazon.com/shop/thefightnerd View the Teespring store for Trek Untold gear & apparel - https://my-store-9204078.creator-spring.com Support Trek Untold by becoming a Patreon at Patreon.com/TrekUntold. Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast and leave a rating if you like us! Follow Trek Untold on Social Media Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/trekuntoldTwitter: https://www.twitter.com/trekuntoldFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/trekuntold Follow Nerd News Today on Social Media Twitter: Twitter.com/NerdNews2DayInstagram: Instagram.com/NerdNewsTodayFacebook: Facebook.com/NerdNewsToday Trek Untold is sponsored by Treksphere.com, powered by the RAGE Works Podcast Network, and affiliated with Nerd News Today.

Most of the big blockbusters have already hit theaters and with the writers and actors on strike, most of Hollywood is at a standstill. Co-host Bruce Miller would normally be soaking up the sun of Southern California, interviewing the stars of the upcoming fall television series, but instead remains rooted in Iowa. So instead we take a look at some streaming options that are out now or dropping soon: "Only Murders in the Building" and "Reservation Dogs" began began their respective third seasons. Both are available on Hulu. Season two of "Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty" just began on HBO. And the latest entry into the "Star Wars" universe — "Ahsoka" — premieres Aug. 23 with a pair of episodes on Disney+. One show that has become a staple of summer programming is "American Ninja Warrior" on NBC. The 2023 season began on June 5 and will be wrapping soon. Bruce has an interview with Scott Behrends and his son Ben, who both advanced on the show. Their episode will air later this month. Where to watch "Only Murders in the Building" on Hulu "Reservation Dogs" on FX/Hulu "High School Musical: The Musical: The Series" on Disney+ "Ahsoka" on Disney+ "Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty" on HBO/Max "Archer" on FX/Hulu "American Ninja Warrior" on NBC About the show Streamed & Screened is a podcast about movies and TV hosted by Bruce Miller, a longtime entertainment reporter who is now the editor of the Sioux City Journal in Iowa and Terry Lipshetz, a senior producer for Lee Enterprises based in Madison, Wisconsin. Next week With no end to the strikes in sight, we plan to look back at the year so far. What are the hits? What are the misses? And what will stand the test of time? Related episode Artificial intelligence and how we deploy it is likely the top ethical dilemma the world is facing, and recent actor and writers strikes in Hollywood have put the issue in a bright spotlight. In a recent episode of The Ethical Life — How will artificial intelligence change how entertainment is made? — Richard Kyte and Scott Rada discuss how worried we should be about computers taking over more of what we watch and read, and whether live performances and sports will benefit. Episode transcript Note: The following transcript was created by Adobe Premiere and may contain misspellings and other inaccuracies as it was generated automatically: Welcome everyone to another episode of Streamed & Screened, an entertainment podcasts about movies and TV from Lee Enterprises. I'm Terry Lipshetz, a senior producer at Lee and co-host of the program with the Ninja Warrior of the Cinema, Bruce Miller, editor of the Sioux City Journal and a longtime entertainment reporter. Did you come in all stealth-like, ready to sneak in and attack this episode? I am all ready. I am so pumped. I actually I realized that I will never, ever be a ninja warrior and I don't have any skills. And I probably would slip on the first step. So I think I'm I'm out of it. But, you know, Terry, the the new season, the third season of only murders in the building starts this week. And it's about podcasts now. Now, yeah. You are the biggest fan of Only Murders in the Building. I've watched one episode of season one and I don't remember why I stopped watching the show. I think it was one of those deals where my wife and I popped it on. She didn't like it, and then I just never came back to it. So I feel like nobody wants to watch people do a podcast. Oh, it's so boring, that podcasting stuff. Podcast. Forget it. That's not a career track. That's not happening. People make a living doing that. I can't believe this is terrible. Well, in the third season now, it's been going three seasons, so you missed two of them. The third one brings in Meryl Streep and Meryl Streep plays the actress who's kind of not successful. She's she's just hoping to get a part in a in a play directed by Martin Short and he's excited because he's back on Broadway again. Yes. And there's a part for a nanny and she gets his role as a nanny. And then they start kind of circling each other like there's going to be a relationship. But the leading man drops dead in the first episode. So is the play going to go on? What happens? It starts this week, so you should be able to keep that all kind of condensed in one little nice package and honest. Don't spoil it at the end. Who? Who is responsible? Maybe I should go back and crush the first two seasons again, because that's Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez, is it? Selena Gomez. Yeah. And it's weird because in the first two years they were together all the time, kind of doing the seek and destroy information thing to find out who was the killer. The third season, they're all kind of separate. So I wonder if it was a filming thing. Maybe Selena was on some tour or something or doing some other show, but she's not with the other two as much as she should be. So it's not as much the trio, but they're all you know. Martin Short's nominated for an Emmy. The show is nominated. So we'll see when the Emmys are in 2027 or whatever, when they do start airing those things if they won for the second season. But, you know, I watched it all at once. I was able to binge it, so I felt good about that. And then reservation dogs, are you a fan of that? No, I haven't watched that one at all. My God, my rez dogs. I love that show that is starting its third and final season. This week. And it's you know, these these kids who live on a reservation are kind of searching for something. And last season, they went to California to see that was their goal, was that they were all going to go to California to start this new life and everything. And they realized when they got to California it wasn't what they thought it was going to be. And so now they're making their way back home in this third season, and you'll see what happens to them on that trip. They go on a bus. They thought they were going to call it a plane, but they couldn't afford the plane. So they're riding in a bus and they stop somewhere along the way. And much happens. That's what I can say about as dogs. And then my high school musical, you know, I pitched that the last time and I was trying out that was that starts it's going to be a big thing. What's weird about this time of year is it's normally fall preview. And if you were one of those hardcore TB watchers in your childhood, you always knew that you waited for the TV guide that would have all of the the new shows listed and you'd watch the ads that were coming and it was going to be like, Oh, I can hardly wait Thursday. And I'd memorize the schedule of all the shows are going to be on Thursday night, and then I'd be watching that. Well, that's not happening this year because of the strikes that are going on and so there's a lot of built in material on the networks, a lot of game shows, a lot of shows that are coming from Canada that you'll see. So it isn't going to be a typical fall TV season. It's going to be, you know, kind of hit and miss. The streaming services are still going ahead with their their programing lineup. So you'll see a lot of new shows in August, September and October that were planned to be rolling out and then they're hoping that everything will come back into shape, hopefully with the end of the strike. But we'll see what happens. It it could be weird, but it is for me, it's like withdrawal. I'm going through those kind of shakes that I'm not going to get all my new fall shows. Oh, you sound like me right now. But. But I'm as a baseball fan. My my New York Mets have punted for the year. They traded and they traded half their team while I was out last week. And it's just it's not looking too good. You know, you mentioned the streaming services. They're kind of secretive. We don't actually know what they have stored in the bank. I've read a few things saying that, you know, they probably have a lot more than you're aware of because they film some of these and then they just they just leave them there for a while. And then when they're ready, they they dust them off and bring them out. They do the worst job of publicity. Can I just be honest? They really don't let you know far enough in advance what's coming. They also pick up a lot of stuff now from Asia, so a lot of Asian series because they can subtitle them and throw them out there and Paradise gave everybody that kind of confidence that let's go look at Asian markets and see what kind of shows are out there. And then you had all the things on Netflix that they pulled out of Asian markets and there you go. Yeah. The only things that I'm really looking forward to at the moment is on Disney. Plus in the next couple of weeks, we will see the debut of the Ahsoka Ahsoka Tano spinoff, which is part of that ongoing Mandalorian book of Boba Fett Universe that takes place after Return of the Jedi. So that's coming out on I think it's August 23rd. They've got two episodes that are going to stream that first night, and it sounds like it's going to be almost movie length, like, like 90 minutes straight of those first two episodes. And then the other one, it just came out, I think, this weekend, but I haven't had a chance to watch it yet and I don't even want to call it a good show. But I got roped in on the first season because I'm a I'm a sports fan. Winning Time. The rise of the Lakers dynasty. It's like it's supposed to be a true story, but they they dramatize it so much. I think Jerry West, who was the GM of that those teams. Right. I think he threatened to sue because it made him look ridiculous. So on one hand, it's kind of this oddball semi fictional account of the teams, but I just couldn't stop watching it because I found it so entertaining. You can tell it's a heightened version. You can tell that it's not you know, it's like the Weird Al Yankovic movie you could call that. That wasn't, you know, all this is exactly how it happened. Well, it's the same way with that. With the Winning Time series, you could tell that there was a little goose there that kind of made it a little different. So I think it's fine to get that little extra something, but if you're featured in it, maybe you don't like that kind of stuff. Jerry West did not look good in that first season. I mean, it made him look like a sociopath, but he's going around, he's throwing his MVP trophy against the wall. It may be kind of ridiculous. I don't know. Maybe it did. But, you know, it's nice entertaining. Yeah. You could be watching Kim versus Connor, the divorce series that's coming up. Yeah. So, you know, who knows? There's a lot of strange stuff going on and there are, you know, new sequels that are coming out, new kinds of series, animated series that are out there. But again, it's not like you're not going to get a heads up on all of this. You need to do a little research. In fact, today I got a thing about a new Netflix series that I had never heard of, and I thought, wow, this is this is kind of odd that they would drop it that quickly. But, you know, there you are. Archer's coming out with another see a season a let me ask you, though, about that Star Wars stuff. Do you like all those kind of morphing things that they've got that are coming out of the Star Wars universe or are you you know, like you say, is this too much? I'm kind of mixed. On one hand, it took them so long during that George Lucas period because he did the three movies and then he said he was done and then he did the prequels and then he said he was done and then they sold it to Disney. And then once that happens, you know, you're going to we're doing everything. We're doing everything right. I think they've done a pretty good job with some of the shows where I want the good ones to keep on coming out. But, you know, I looked at the Emmy nominations and the Obi-Wan Kenobi mini series got nominations, and I thought that was me, you know? Yeah, he was Ewan McGregor was a really good Obi-Wan Kenobi. I thought he he did a nice job honoring the legacy of Sir Alec Guinness as Obi-Wan Kenobi. And I was really looking forward to that series. But it just it was. Yeah. And I can't believe it actually got nominated for awards. Now, Book of Boba Fett was okay. It had some ups and downs. I think The Mandalorian has been generally pretty good, but it even this last season was it felt like a little bit of a downer to me. I'm looking forward to season two, which is supposed to be the final season of Andor because I thought that one was really good. And the funny thing is I still think that Andor was the best of all the series so far that they've done. It's just been amazing to me. And the irony is, is I think Rogue, one of all the new movies that have happened is really been the best of the movies that they've done too. So it's just kind of ironic that that the same character arc is the one that I've been attracted to the most. I am looking forward to this. So Kitano series, I know my daughter loves the character. She's she watches the Clone Wars episodes all the time and just loved it. So I'm looking forward to watching the show with her, but I don't know what we're going to get. And supposedly they're going to take these series and it's part of that theatrical release. They're going to tie up all the loose ends in one big movie that's going to bring Ahsoka, Boba Fett Mandalorian all together to tie up some sort of story arc and who knows when. But that's still going up. Page from Marvel. Yeah, but they're just not doing a good job at it that, you know, you hear about people who are such hardcore Star Wars fans, but are they Star Wars fans of the original, the, you know, the classic three films and that's what makes them Star Wars fans and these other things are kind of dip in and out. I don't know how that how that plays. It's interesting because of the generational differences. Also because if you talk to someone like me who's a Gen Xer, we don't really love those prequel movies at all. We love the three originals, but the prequel movies not so much. But my my youngest brother, who's a millennial, he was my age when the prequels came out compared to me when the original series came out. So to him, he loves The Phantom Menace and he loves those three movies because that's what he grew up on. So I think there is a generational thing too. And then my daughter, who's 12 years old, this is all she knows. She knows the three newer movies that came out, the cartoon series, all that stuff. So I think I think it just depends on when you come into the series. It's like your favorite animated film. It's when you were kind of in that, what, 10 to 12 age range, where that was the movie that came out. And so that becomes your all time favorite animated film. And I think when you look back on those original three, we've we've seen them here in concert versions with a symphony, you know, they show them on the screen and then the symphony plays underneath. They do all the music accompaniment and you see all, my God, these are kind of slow or these are kind of like hacky. Yup. And that's the original ones that you thought were just like, the best ever. And when you see them in a different light, it's like, Oh, but so I don't know, you know, as one who isn't. So I'm not a Star Trek person either, but I would am not sold on like, Oh, I've got to see the next one. That's going to be my, my future, my life. If I don't see that the world is ended. You know, I have no buy in like that for those kinds of things. And maybe it's because I think they're always dragging us around by a leash. So I don't know. You know, you bring up before we kind of move in to the the main event, if you will, that I did want to bring up a little bit more just because the strike has created a few interesting things. You know, number one, it's it's shut down some production while shut down most production, you know, with some some exceptions here and there. But I read recently The Little Mermaid, now it's made over $500 million globally, but it's kind of being looked upon as a failure for Disney. And they have since, you know, it's been leaked that The Hunchback of Notre Dame, notre Tom the the they were going to do a live version of that and it's done it's they've canceled it Well there's a hunchback Broadway show too that's been on the books for a long time. So maybe they want to lean into that first before they do a film. But The Little Mermaid, they overhyped. Yeah, they they pushed that way too much. It got caught up in all of that kind of wokeness, if you will, that people were asking about. And I think that just just undercut it. I thought it had too much. It was way too much, you know, like when they went under the sea, there was like, is it crowded down there? Is it that much stuff that you want to be like? No wonder she wanted to get out of that Sea World. She wanted it be a little less congested, but they tried to heart. And I think that's always where you go wrong. Sometimes the simpler the better. And that's I think the Little Mermaid shot itself in the foot. Yeah. Or jail or whatever. I can't get into any of those live action remake. Oh yeah. The bunny rule. It's a mean it's all it is And I always believe that if you know, if you really loved like The Lion King, for example, rerelease it, you don't need to see a live action version where you go, Oh my God, that thing looks like he's going to kill you, right? You know? Yeah. So it just it's my take on it, and I wish they would do that. There used to be a time when they would rerelease movies like the animated Movies, and you go, Oh my God, it's coming back. It's coming back. But see, then the DVD market just made it. Well, I got it in the closet. We can watch it any time you want. Yeah, I don't mind. Yeah, I don't mind a remake in some cases. You know, I find it interesting is okay, you do Ocean's 11 in the sixties with Frank Sinatra, and now you want to do an updated version of it with George Clooney. You sure? I might check that out. Or, you know, The Manchurian Candidate, where you may you may want to update it for The Times. And it's sort of the same movie and the concepts, but you updated for the modern times. I don't mind that, but if it's done well, but for something, if you're just going to do like a straight pickup of of the movie, I fell asleep during Mulan. I couldn't even watch that one. I, I went to a drive in theater to see The Lion King with the kids. It was okay. I mean, I kind of laughed a little bit when John Oliver, he was doing the voice of of the bird, but it was I didn't need it. Yeah, there's way too much expectation and little delivered is what happens with that kind of stuff. And you know, they're looking for a money bag. It's if they can make a bunch of money off this and then they have more toys, you know, they came out with more Little Mermaid dolls. So that's a whole industry in and of itself, I'm sure. And when Little Mermaid first came out, they as an animated film, they said they couldn't have a red haired era one because they never had one. She's got to be blond. And Ron Clements, who was one of the directors, had red hair at the time. And he said, No, I really like to see a redheaded heroine. Well, that was like, though, the most difficult thing to bring to pass. And look what happened. It was a huge. So now they're looking to make sure that every segment is represented. And oddly enough, Barbie has done it. Yeah, Barbie, all of the Barbies in there, any kind of Barbie, you could have ever wanted. They're there and they're they're selling dolls like crazy. $1,000,000,000 now. Yeah, it's it's huge. But I, I really caution them now when they do a sequel, if they're doing a sequel and I'm sure they're doing a sequel, that they use the same kind of sensibility. And if Greta Gerwig isn't doing it, then go with another indie director that has a different take on Barbie, you know? But if you're just trying to do more of the same, good luck. It's just trying to merchandise, that's all. Interesting thing with Barbie, I did read that none of them are under contract to do another movie, so if they are going to do a sequel, they're going to have to get the gang back together. And, well, I feel like you could do Asian Barbie and Asian Cat and then you could do a story with that, and that could be a whole different thing. And I'd be I'd be up for it. But you can't kind of, okay, we're going to put in, you know, Reese Witherspoon as old Barbie and all Barbie is going to be playing around with Ben Affleck as old man. I don't think that's going to work. No, no, no, no. Good luck. And I think sometimes those things should be left alone. It's it's great to have a great idea and move on from there. You know what's interesting, The first big Black summer blockbuster and I think I've mentioned this before on the blog, the on the podcast, rather, is was Jaws 1975. I believe it was huge. And it kicked off this whole thing of summer blockbusters. We didn't do it before 75. We didn't look forward to a film that was like going to be We must see this. And then we've had it ever since. Well, now this year they're doing a Broadway show about the making of Jaws and how difficult it was. This called The Shark. Some of it has to do with the shark. The shark didn't work or the shark doesn't work. And all the kind of trouble they had, it's written by Robert Shaw's son and he's in it as his dad. And it's kind of weird that this comes full circle now with all this time. But yeah, there's still look they this year Meg to Meg too is another one of those kind of sea creature things that is trying to eat and destroy. It's the same stuff they will repeat until tomorrow comes and we tell them no more and then they'll still repeat. They'll still do. I mean, you look at all those horror movies, how many times have they brought Freddy back or whatever, or Jason, and you think, Oh, good, he's dead now. And like Halloween, they just did a threequel with Jamie Lee Curtis. And I don't know how they could bring that guy back again because they ground him up and everybody in town saw it. But hey, it could happen. Be ready. Those Fast and Furious movies, too. They keep bringing all their characters back from the dead to a well. And then it's not even a horror movie. No. And that they do all that kind of air stuff that you think, wait a minute here, now we don't want this. Let's just go back and look at the past. And as I always use the Polar Express as my all example of why we don't need a guide, you stop right there. Not a fan of that. Oh, I hated that movie. That movie creep me out so much. I thought, it's a Christmas horror film. And those people looked all kind of dead and scary. And even Tom Hanks, who was in it, looked bad. He did look terrible. Right. And he played so many characters so that I wouldn't show that to a kid. I'd read the book two of them before I'd show them that movie, because that movie was dreadful. Oh, yeah. So what do you have for us this week? You've got a little interview. Okay. So you know, you know that I'm a huge fan of American Ninja Warriors. I would love that show because it's everything I can't do. And I love watching and I love cheering them on. And I think all if they only had done this or if they'd run faster, if they'd done this and they're getting near the finals. And that's another thing I always worry about is I never get to see the finals. This year I am clued in because I talked to a father and son, the first father and son to make the finals of American Ninja Warrior, and they tell me it's the last week in August that the finals will be held and you'll get to find out who actually won. So this is my my impetus for watching that. Scott and Ben Behrends are their names, and they have created their own Ninja Warrior gym, for lack of a better term, and they train you on each of the apparatuses or apparatus I that you would see on the warriors, so that then you would be able to try and do it because that always freaks me out is like, Oh my God, they threw in something. Now that I've never I've never seen this thing, how do I grab it? What do I do? And I you know, I was curious about some of the kind of technical aspects of this. Like I said, do they wipe the equipment off after somebody has been through it? Because what if they were a real sweater and they were sweating up all of the equipment and then you have to come next and you slip because they didn't wipe the step up, but they do wipe the stuff off. So there is your $0.02 worth on that one. But they do say it's hugely popular. They have little kids that are in their gym doing this whole kind of ninja stuff. They have a series of YouTube videos. If you want to follow them. You can see, you know, the techniques and the training things that they tell you. But it is, I must tell you, sorry, dear, it's a young man's game. Scott The father tells me that kids have an advantage at this that we don't have. Although they did tell me, you know, Bruce, there is somebody at our gym who's 70 years old and about 70 years old. That's like, close to me. I don't like hearing that. That's old. But there they are. But yeah, so you'll hear them talk about what this is because it was fascinating to me. If you're fast as fascinated as I am about this, you'll hear kind of the secrets of what it's like to be a ninja and what they go through and what's better. Should you wear long pants? Should you wear short pants? Should you go shirtless? All those things that you probably have wondered at some point, is that the advantage or the disadvantage that will keep you from being that big winner at the end? So this is Scott and Ben Barons and they're from Cedar Falls, Iowa. This show is an obsession of mine. I love watching it. Awesome. I know that I could never, ever do it. And I think that it takes a special kind of person. Do you guys see that to get to a point? I think it's definitely the right kind of person. But, you know, it's fun seeing all kinds of ages jumping in and figuring out, you know, what they what they didn't think that they could do that they can actually do. So, Ben Caplan, are there certain skills or certainly exercises that you need that you have to be able to do to be able to compete pull ups? I know that that's the trick. I mean, obviously, like any sport, there's just a ton of technique that you learn over the years. And, you know, I it's definitely a up and coming sport that like anything, the more training you have, the more experience you have on the courses. I mean, it definitely pays off. It's I would say there's especially once you get to a certain level, there's no chance anyone that hasn't done this before could ever even keep up with. But the early start, the faster you get better. So if you start young like you do, it's a good thing, right? Very much so. So are you better than Dad or not? Maybe. Maybe there's you know, there's no maybe there. He's competing pro and doing quite well where I'm in the Master's division. And that old timers. Is that what that means? Exactly. Yeah. So I'm 82 and yeah, that's, I mean it's just a whole nother level, you know, it's like going from college to pro sports. Like it's, it's maybe even high school to pro it's, it's a huge jump when you're 42. How old are you? I'm 60. Is that kind of a good wheelhouse to be in or. Yeah, right. Year or is five better? Yeah. Right now a lot of teens because they've, you know, been doing it for six years or so 6 to 8 years like me. So basically right now the best things in the world are, you know, 18, 19 years old and there's a bunch of young. So yeah, so again, we're aiming for that big that big prize you you're the first father son team to make it to nationals. Is that right? Yes. Yep. On American Ninja Warrior. Yep. We're the first father son duo to make it to the national finals. Did you know that going in that you would be the first or did you just not even think about it? Yeah, I. I actually had no clue. We didn't really know until it kind of happened and they announced it and I'm like, Oh, I guess I never thought of that. Yeah. So it's pretty exciting. So is there competition between the two of you? Do you compete and say, Oh, I did that one better than you did? Or I think the competition is if I ever beat Ben, it's incredible. There's a few things that I'm generally good at doing an obstacle. The very first try. Yeah. And that most people don't know this, but an American ninja warrior, you don't get to try anything. They just kind of tell you the rules and you have to go. So generally it pays off. If you can be good at your first try doing something. And I'm I'm pretty good at that. But since I'm so old, I need to rest and recover between obstacles where he's just motoring through it, you know, keep sprinting. Yeah. You know, the thing that bothers me is do they wipe this stuff off after somebody's been on it? Because I would think, what if you had sweaty hands in front of you? And then they they've touch things and you kind of slide off things. Do they do that. Yeah. So they actually have like grip tape on the obstacles. Nothing, almost nothing is just like a straight metal bar, right? There's usually tape or something on it that's grippy to help you. And then obviously if you know it gets where splashed onto pads, it'll dried off and stuff before you run. Okay. Because I worried I could just see this sweater person that was in front of me who would go through the hole, Is that bad? So I throw that the forward part of me and then I would drop right away. Yeah, there's some of that. But like he said, most of the top rob schools have like grip tape on them, so it doesn't really affect you as much. You're not allowed to talk on the show until the very last stage, if you will, for finals. So then in that can be a good thing, right? Because the course courses, number one looks cleaner. And number two, sometimes charcoal after a while does kind of compact and get slick. When you are preparing for this, how do you know what kind of obstacles they might have when you get to, you know, the television stage? You know, you don't you really can't usually will go back and watch seasons before just to see what obstacles they've had, you know, what obstacles they thought up last year, because usually the newer ones will stay. But, you know, we really have no clue whatsoever. Well, then which ones are your worst and which ones are your best, like obstacle wise? Yeah. Yeah, Which ones are you really good at? You go suck. I think I would say I'm I'm pretty good at any kind of big dynamic move that kind of throws you and like I said, I can generally hit an obstacle pretty well. But it's the long grip endurance ones that really tax me fast. I just don't have that endurance as much as I used to. Oh, I would say mine is like I would say it's a lot of endurance, but also like change of direction. It's basically when you're like hanging and your kick, your swing is going one way and you got to change it and take a different direction. I'd say that's probably one of the best that which are the ones that you can't do well. And you it's so hard to get consistent on balance. Like that's that's basically the thing that every ninja fears is falling on balance because yeah, so our to be consistent and on and on the show those are obstacles that are generally more sketchy balance I'll say where it's just kind of sprinting across these obstacle work. Those are sometimes hard to set up in a gym, right? Because if you fall on those, you fall in the water. But if you would fall in a gym, you'd might like roll your ankle or how, you know. So I kind of all those like say a prayer and run across obstacles and you know, ninjas practice just sprinting through something. Yeah generally it's not a slow slack line type balance. It's generally a sprint across. So but yeah, every, every ninja loves upper body and rarely do they like balance. What about the water? Is the water cold? Yeah. So obviously. Well a lot of people don't know is they film at night so it's you know in California it's still cause you know 40 degrees or depending on the time of year. Yeah. Depending on the time of year. It's like 40 degrees at midnight, you know, that's an hour competing. So water's outside temperature. So it's not very not very warm, but usually you're zoned out if you fall. So you don't really feel it, but you start to dry off in the way the finals like that. Have you gotten hurt? Neither of us have really gone out on the show. There's a couple people that have. But yeah, when you look, you know, sometimes when they fall, they'll hit like the wall. The the water wall. And I think, oh my God, they hit their head. Something is bad here, but I'm assuming it's really padded. So that yeah, the show does a fantastic job making sure everything's as safe as possible. And, you know, I mean, even training kind of going back to obstacles and what what to work on for the show is like, we don't even know. But you have to kind of put yourself in these kind of big situations. Yeah. You have to figure out, right, that  situation. So sometimes I'm less likely to do this because I'm 42, but sometimes you kind of put yourself big, huge moves like the show has and you know, if you fall off of that at a gym, like I don't care how much padding you have, it's you're going to feel it. So a lot of ninjas have kind of been through in, you know, you almost practice how to fall. Yeah. So overall, I mean, like I said, the show does a fantastic job making sure everyone's safe. When did you first get interested in this? At what point and what prompted it? Yeah, so I think the first time I ever, like, fell in love with Ninja was actually not Ninja is gymnastics and P.E. and I just loved it. And my dad made a course in our backyard. And your gymnastics course you're taught. Yeah. They kind of made, like, an obstacle teasing, just stuff. Yeah. And that's how back door indicated was born was offer making courses in our backyard and then we discovered snowballed from there. Yeah. So Backyard Ninja Kids is a YouTube channel. We started up shortly after they boys came home and we started making obstacle courses in our backyard. Wanted to kind of become that positive influence on social media and teach my boys at a young age what that looks like. And then, yeah, a couple of years early, several months later, we went to our first ninja gym down in Saint Louis and it kind of snowballed from there. And then a couple of years later, we opened up our gym ninja view and yeah, boys were on American Ninja Warrior. JR What cool thing was the gym wasn't even open, so they just had backyard experience and maybe one or two gym experiences really. So it's kind of cool to see. That was their very first ninja competition. Was this TV show. Wow, Really cool to see how they performed realistically, just using backyard, like not even really crazy or moves or anything and just but kind of talk. Going back to what we said at the beginning, like they just knew the moves, they knew how to do peg boards. They knew how to, you know, do some dynamic stuff, but you put yourself in a position and you got to figure it out. When do nationals happen or have they happened in? You already know how it all worked out. Yeah, yeah, it's already been recorded. And yeah, you just have to tune in and see what happens. I guess you have a date for the finals. You know, this is the other thing I get about this show. Okay? I'm sharing it with you so you can share with the others is they don't billboard enough. When the finals are, it's like suddenly it's like, wait a minute, I went away for a week and it's not there. So they need to make a better attempted letting you know when the finals are. But would you we know when they they'll air We we know that our episode will be August 28. Okay. At least currently sometimes, you know, playoffs are different things than they go as it was. The Olympics can shift it right, that ours will be August 28 and yeah well, do they swear you to secrecy and then they'll kill you if you say anything is that. No, that works. I mean yeah, it's it's a it's a, you know, a sporting event that's based on a reality TV show wrapped around it. Right. So of course, they don't want any I mean, just like American Idol, right? It's already done and recorded. But they you can't give away the winner otherwise. No, I don't know. So. Right. You don't see that kind of thing. Yeah. I get about being quiet about it. I would be that would be tough. It is tough sometimes, but it's also like there's this exciting element, right? Like sometimes like even when I wasn't on the show, but my fellow gym mates were like, It's kind of fun to see them on the show, but it's like when you know the results, it's like not quite as fun. Yeah, you don't so necessarily want to watch it. Like this season it's less fun to watch because I know how everybody does. Yeah, but like seasons before that. I love it. Yeah. Thanks Bruce, for that interview. I will probably have to go and check that out. I know the kids love to watch American Ninja Warrior, so probably have to tune in near the end. And least I think I'm like you. I've never actually seen the end. I'll watch it periodically during the summer because it's on and it's just there and I need something, but I have no idea who's ever won or I'm counting on you training. I want you to be a warrior right down there on the sideline in the t shirt, cheering you on like crazy. We'd call you. What would we call you? What would be a good name for you? Oh, man, the pod master that were there. I am. So they're pod master. Pod pod board. I would slip and fall immediately. I'd probably hurt myself before I even got on to something I'd be getting out of that year. Would they announce you and you come out and you stand there, Fall down, Break in there. There we are. There we are. So we here at LA Enterprises produce quite a few podcasts across the company. Another one that I thought I'd bring up as we close out this episode, it's called The Ethical Life, and it's hosted by Scott Rodda, a colleague of mine who manages social media. And he he does it with Richard Kyte, who is a professor at a university in Wisconsin and their most recent episode of The Ethical Life. It's called How Will Artificial Intelligence Change How Entertainment is Made? And they talk about the ethical aspects of the great debate as far as AI goes tied to movies, because that's one of the things that is holding up these negotiations with actors who fear that AI is going to come in and, you know, maybe take some of their jobs and and that kind of thing. So you if you get a chance, go check out the Ethical Life. How will artificial intelligence change how entertainment is made? It is available on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Can you do a link? We will have a link in this episode. Show notes as well. Go ahead. Oh, that sounds great. Well, I'm counting on it, but I am an A.I. A.I. person because I can just imagine what they can do with that and how. And so, you know, you're I'm I'm fully confessing that I don't like it, But maybe there will be that one instance where you say, I love that. That's so wonderful. It's the best thing ever. And Marilyn Monroe is back. But I don't think I want it. No, it's an interesting conversation if you get a chance to listen to it, because they do talk about just even the evolution of special effects. And, you know, we as watchers, viewers of movies, TV shows, would we even notice it if if they used A.I. because we've gotten so used to seeing such crazy special effects. So, you know, they talk a little bit about the evolution of, you know, like a Christopher Reeve in Superman years ago, being hung with wires and all that stuff. And now you've got, you know, all these movies being produced with A.I. and other other animation in ambition. Right. Right. You know, what happens is usually they work two weeks and then they're done and everything else is being done by an animator to make sure it looks like they've just done all that kind of stuff. I even question if sometimes the superheroes are wearing the costume. I swear it's a stunt man who wears the costume. They throw him around a little bit and then if they need to, they superimpose the face of the actor on them. So, yeah, see what happens. But that sounds fascinating. That's what we want to watch next week. You know, what I'd like to do was that I'd like to look back at the the year to date and look at the things that were and the things that were misses and the things that will last. It sounds good. Yes. Let's do that. All right. Make your list. All right. I'm going to start making my list. I will check it twice. We'll see. Oh, we know that Santa Claus. That Santa Claus. You're going to be a ninja. Remember? I am a die hard. But. All right. Well, on that note, we will wrap this show. Thank you again for listening to this episode of Streamed & Screened.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome to the Instant Trivia podcast episode 851, where we ask the best trivia on the Internet. Round 1. Category: also a bar drink 1: Flathead or Phillips head. a screwdriver. 2: With so much brainpower on stage today, this "Living Dead" movie monster wouldn't know where to start. a zombie. 3: It was last call for this Scottish outlaw on Dec. 28, 1734. Rob Roy. 4: Take a flying leap and name this type of reconnaissance plane or insect of the family Acrididae. a grasshopper. 5: G'day! This wooden weapon can also be a scheme that does injury to its originator. a boomerang. Round 2. Category: they all played hamlet 1: Fans from around the world sped to Winnipeg to see this "Speed" star play Hamlet there in 1995. Keanu Reeves. 2: He's only 9 years younger than Glenn Close, but he called her Mom in Zeffirelli's 1990 version. Mel Gibson. 3: The role of Obi-Wan Kenobi was light-years away when he played Hamlet at the Old Vic in 1938. Sir Alec Guinness. 4: This star of "A Fish Called Wanda" not only starred in but directed a 1990 production of "Hamlet". Kevin Kline. 5: He played Hamlet at the New York Shakespeare Festival before he hammed it up as Mike Hammer:. Stacy Keach. Round 3. Category: tv bars and restaurants 1: On this sitcom Duff Beer is on tap at Moe's Tavern where the clientele is always "animated". "The Simpsons". 2: Head north, far north, to visit The Brick, this show's restaurant. "Northern Exposure". 3: On this sitcom you could have seen Jay Thomas take a few "Potts" shots in the Blue Shamrock. "Love And War". 4: On this sitcom you may find the Crane brothers having coffee at Cafe Nervosa. "Frasier". 5: The Lunch Box in Lanford, Ill. is one of this sitcom's settings. "Roseanne". Round 4. Category: classic movies 1: It's the first rule of Fight Club. you do not talk about Fight Club. 2: Crime film that features Gene Hackman as Buck Barrow. Bonnie and Clyde. 3: Charlie Chaplin befriends a millionaire and falls in love with a blind girl in this 1931 film. City Lights. 4: Film in which De Niro as Travis Bickle asks, "You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me?". Taxi Driver. 5: In it, reporter Rosalind Russell tells Cary Grant, "I wouldn't cover the burning of Rome for you if they were just lighting it up". His Girl Friday. Round 5. Category: what a year! 1: Dewaele won the Tour de France, Coco Chanel was the toast of Paris and Sacre Bleu!, the market crashed in this year. 1929. 2: The Titanic set off on maiden voyage. 1912. 3: In this year, Teddy became president, Eddie became king and Nicky became father of Anastasia. 1901. 4: Rosa Parks sat down for freedom. 1955. 5: (Hi, I'm Tyler Christopher of General Hospital.) In this year, ABC gave "G.H." a shot on TV, "He's So Fine" shot up to No. 1 and JFK visited the Berlin Wall. 1963. Thanks for listening! Come back tomorrow for more exciting trivia! Special thanks to https://blog.feedspot.com/trivia_podcasts/

Daniel & Harry are joined by writer, filmmaker, and festival curator Jeffrey Wengrofsky to discuss the 1948 version of “Oliver Twist” directed by David Lean and starring Sir Alec Guinness, John Howard Davies, and Robert Newton.The discuss the grotesque depiction of Alex Guiness' Fagin and how it reinforces harmful Jewish stereotypes, trace how the film's plot fits into a Christian redemption narrative, and consider the choices made by this adaption as they compare to the 20+ versions that have appeared onscreen.As always, they close out the episode by ranking the film's "Jewishness" in terms of its cast & crew, content, and themes.IMDb - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040662/Trailer - https://youtu.be/oXkQGI_Pn0kFollow Jeffrey Wengrofsky on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/les.syndicatLearn more about Jeffrey's work - http://www.humansyndicate.com/Connect with Jews on Film online:Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/jewsonfilm/Twitter - https://twitter.com/jewsonfilmpodYouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@jewsonfilmTikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@jewsonfilmpod

On this episode, we talk about the great American filmmaker Robert Altman, and what is arguably the worst movie of his six decade, thirty-five film career: his 1987 atrocity O.C. and Stiggs. ----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're going to talk about one of the strangest movies to come out of the decade, not only for its material, but for who directed it.   Robert Altman's O.C. and Stiggs.   As always, before we get to the O.C. and Stiggs, we will be going a little further back in time.   Although he is not every cineaste's cup of tea, it is generally acknowledged that Robert Altman was one of the best filmmakers to ever work in cinema. But he wasn't an immediate success when he broke into the industry.   Born in Kansas City in February 1925, Robert Altman would join the US Army Air Force after graduating high school, as many a young man would do in the days of World War II. He would train to be a pilot, and he would fly more than 50 missions during the war as part of the 307th Bomb Group, operating in the Pacific Theatre. They would help liberate prisoners of war held in Japanese POW Camps from Okinawa to Manila after the victory over Japan lead to the end of World War II in that part of the world.   After the war, Altman would move to Los Angeles to break into the movies, and he would even succeed in selling a screenplay to RKO Pictures called Bodyguard, a film noir story shot in 1948 starring Lawrence Tierney and Priscilla Lane, but on the final film, he would only share a “Story by” credit with his then-writing partner, George W. George. But by 1950, he'd be back in Kansas City, where he would direct more than 65 industrial films over the course of three years, before heading back to Los Angeles with the experience he would need to take another shot.   Altman would spend a few years directing episodes of a drama series called Pulse of the City on the DuMont television network and a syndicated police drama called The Sheriff of Cochise, but he wouldn't get his first feature directing gig until 1957, when a businessman in Kansas City would hire the thirty-two year old to write and direct a movie locally. That film, The Delinquents, cost only $60k to make, and would be purchased for release by United Artists for $150k. The first film to star future Billy Jack writer/director/star Tom Laughlin, The Delinquents would gross more than a million dollars in theatres, a very good sum back in those days, but despite the success of the film, the only work Altman could get outside of television was co-directing The James Dean Story, a documentary set up at Warner Brothers to capitalize on the interest in the actor after dying in a car accident two years earlier.   Throughout the 1960s, Altman would continue to work in television, until he was finally given another chance to direct a feature film. 1967's Countdown was a lower budgeted feature at Warner Brothers featuring James Caan in an early leading role, about the space race between the Americans and Soviets, a good two years before Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon. The shoot itself was easy, but Altman would be fired from the film shortly after filming was completed, as Jack Warner, the 75 year old head of the studio, was not very happy about the overlapping dialogue, a motif that would become a part of Altman's way of making movies. Although his name appears in the credits as the director of the film, he had no input in its assembly. His ambiguous ending was changed, and the film would be edited to be more family friendly than the director intended.   Altman would follow Countdown with 1969's That Cold Day in the Park, a psychological drama that would be both a critical and financial disappointment.   But his next film would change everything.   Before Altman was hired by Twentieth-Century Fox to direct MASH, more than a dozen major filmmakers would pass on the project. An adaptation of a little known novel by a Korean War veteran who worked as a surgeon at one of the Mobile Auxiliary Surgical Hospitals that give the story its acronymic title, MASH would literally fly under the radar from the executives at the studio, as most of the $3m film would be shot at the studio's ranch lot in Malibu, while the executives were more concerned about their bigger movies of the year in production, like their $12.5m biographical film on World War II general George S. Patton and their $25m World War II drama Tora! Tora! Tora!, one of the first movies to be a Japanese and American co-production since the end of the war.    Altman was going to make MASH his way, no matter what. When the studio refused to allow him to hire a fair amount of extras to populate the MASH camp, Altman would steal individual lines from other characters to give to background actors, in order to get the bustling atmosphere he wanted. In order to give the camp a properly dirty look, he would shoot most of the outdoor scenes with a zoom lens and a fog filter with the camera a reasonably far distance from the actors, so they could act to one another instead of the camera, giving the film a sort of documentary feel. And he would find flexibility when the moment called for it. Sally Kellerman, who was hired to play Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan, would work with Altman to expand and improve her character to be more than just eye candy, in large part because Altman liked what she was doing in her scenes.   This kind of flexibility infuriated the two major stars of the film, Elliott Gould and Donald Sutherland, who at one point during the shoot tried to get Altman fired for treating everyone in the cast and crew with the same level of respect and decorum regardless of their position. But unlike at Warners a couple years earlier, the success of movies like Bonnie and Clyde and Easy Rider bamboozled Hollywood studio executives, who did not understand exactly what the new generation of filmgoers wanted, and would often give filmmakers more leeway than before, in the hopes that lightning could be captured once again.   And Altman would give them exactly that.   MASH, which would also be the first major studio film to be released with The F Word spoken on screen, would not only become a critical hit, but become the third highest grossing movie released in 1970, grossing more than $80m. The movie would win the Palme D'Or at that year's Cannes Film Festival, and it would be nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Supporting Actress for Ms. Kellerman, winning only for Best Adapted Screenplay. An ironic win, since most of the dialogue was improvised on set, but the victory for screenwriter Ring Lardner Jr. would effectively destroy the once powerful Hollywood Blacklist that had been in place since the Red Scare of the 1950s.   After MASH, Altman went on one of the greatest runs any filmmaker would ever enjoy.   MASH would be released in January 1970, and Altman's follow up, Brewster McCloud, would be released in December 1970. Bud Cort, the future star of Harold and Maude, plays a recluse who lives in the fallout shelter of the Houston Astrodome, who is building a pair of wings in order to achieve his dream of flying. The film would feature a number of actors who already were featured in MASH and would continue to be featured in a number of future Altman movies, including Sally Kellerman, Michael Murphy, John Schuck and Bert Remson, but another reason to watch Brewster McCloud if you've never seen it is because it is the film debut of Shelley Duvall, one of our greatest and least appreciated actresses, who would go on to appear in six other Altman movies over the ensuing decade.   1971's McCabe and Mrs. Miller, for me, is his second best film. A Western starring Warren Beatty and Julie Christie, was a minor hit when it was first released but has seen a reevaluation over the years that found it to be named the 8th Best Western of all time by the American Film Institute, which frankly is too low for me. The film would also bring a little-known Canadian poet and musician to the world, Leonard Cohen, who wrote and performed three songs for the soundtrack. Yeah, you have Robert Altman to thank for Leonard Cohen.   1972's Images was another psychological horror film, this time co-written with English actress Susannah York, who also stars in the film as an author of children's books who starts to have wild hallucinations at her remote vacation home, after learning her husband might be cheating on her. The $800k film was one of the first to be produced by Hemdale Films, a British production company co-founded by Blow Up actor David Hemmings, but the film would be a critical and financial disappointment when it was released Christmas week. But it would get nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Dramatic Score. It would be one of two nominations in the category for John Williams, the other being The Poseidon Adventure.   Whatever resentment Elliott Gould may have had with Altman during the shooting of MASH was gone by late 1972, when the actor agreed to star in the director's new movie, a modern adaptation of Raymond Chandler's 1953 novel The Long Goodbye. Gould would be the eighth actor to play the lead character, Phillip Marlowe, in a movie. The screenplay would be written by Leigh Brackett, who Star Wars nerds know as the first writer on The Empire Strikes Back but had also adapted Chandler's novel The Big Sleep, another Phillip Marlowe story, to the big screen back in 1946.   Howard Hawks and Peter Bogdanovich had both been approached to make the film, and it would be Bogdanovich who would recommend Altman to the President of United Artists. The final film would anger Chandler fans, who did not like Altman's approach to the material, and the $1.7m film would gross less than $1m when it was released in March 1973. But like many of Altman's movies, it was a big hit with critics, and would find favor with film fans in the years to come.   1974 would be another year where Altman would make and release two movies in the same calendar year. The first, Thieves Like Us, was a crime drama most noted as one of the few movies to not have any kind of traditional musical score. What music there is in the film is usually heard off radios seen in individual scenes. Once again, we have a number of Altman regulars in the film, including Shelley Duvall, Bert Remsen, John Schuck and Tom Skerritt, and would feature Keith Carradine, who had a small co-starring role in McCabe and Mrs. Miller, in his first major leading role. And, once again, the film would be a hit with critics but a dud with audiences. Unlike most of Altman's movies of the 1970s, Thieves Like Us has not enjoyed the same kind of reappraisal.   The second film, California Split, was released in August, just six months after Thieves Like Us. Elliott Gould once again stars in a Robert Altman movie, this time alongside George Segal. They play a pair of gamblers who ride what they think is a lucky streak from Los Angeles to Reno, Nevada, would be the only time Gould and Segal would work closely together in a movie, and watching California Split, one wishes there could have been more. The movie would be an innovator seemingly purpose-build for a Robert Altman movie, for it would be the first non-Cinerama movie to be recorded using an eight track stereo sound system. More than any movie before, Altman could control how his overlapping dialogue was placed in a theatre. But while most theatres that played the movie would only play it in mono sound, the film would still be a minor success, bringing in more than $5m in ticket sales.   1975 would bring what many consider to be the quintessential Robert Altman movie to screens.   The two hour and forty minute Nashville would feature no less than 24 different major characters, as a group of people come to Music City to be involved in a gala concert for a political outsider who is running for President on the Replacement Party ticket. The cast is one of the best ever assembled for a movie ever, including Ned Beatty, Karen Black, Ronee Blakely, Keith Carradine, Geraldine Chaplin, Robert DoQui, Shelley Duvall, Allen Garfield, Henry Gibson, Scott Glenn, Jeff Goldblum, Barbara Harris, Cristina Raines, Lily Tomlin and Keenan Wynn.   Altman would be nominated for two Academy Awards for the film, Best Picture, as its producer, and Best Director, while both Ronee Blakely and Lily Tomlin would be nominated for Best Supporting Actress. Keith Carradine would also be nominated for an Oscar, but not as an actor. He would, at the urging of Altman during the production of the film, write and perform a song called I'm Easy, which would win for Best Original Song. The $2.2m film would earn $10m in ticket sales, and would eventually become part of the fourth class of movies to be selected for preservation by the National Film Registry in 1991, the first of four Robert Altman films to be given that honor. MASH, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, and The Long Goodbye would also be selected for preservation over the years.   And we're going to stop here for a second and take a look at that list of films again.   MASH Brewster McCloud McCabe and Mrs. Miller Images The Long Goodbye Thieves Like Us California Split Nashville   Eight movies, made over a five year period, that between them earned twelve Academy Award nominations, four of which would be deemed so culturally important that they should be preserved for future generations.   And we're still only in the middle of the 1970s.   But the problem with a director like Robert Altman, like many of our greatest directors, their next film after one of their greatest successes feels like a major disappointment. And his 1976 film Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson, and that is the complete title of the film by the way, did not meet the lofty expectations of film fans not only its director, but of its main stars. Altman would cast two legendary actors he had not yet worked with, Paul Newman and Burt Lancaster, and the combination of those two actors with this director should have been fantastic, but the results were merely okay. In fact,  Altman would, for the first time in his career, re-edit a film after its theatrical release, removing some of the Wild West show acts that he felt were maybe redundant.   His 1977 film 3 Women would bring Altman back to the limelight. The film was based on a dream he had one night while his wife was in the hospital. In the dream, he was directing his regular co-star Shelley Duvall alongside Sissy Spacek, who he had never worked with before, in a story about identity theft that took place in the deserts outside Los Angeles. He woke up in the middle of the dream, jotted down what he could remember, and went back to sleep. In the morning, he didn't have a full movie planned out, but enough of one to get Alan Ladd, Jr., the President of Twentieth-Century Fox, to put up $1.7m for a not fully formed idea. That's how much Robert Altman was trusted at the time. That, and Altman was known for never going over budget. As long as he stayed within his budget, Ladd would let Altman make whatever movie he wanted to make. That, plus Ladd was more concerned about a $10m movie he approved that was going over budget over in England, a science fiction movie directed by the guy who did American Graffiti that had no stars outside of Sir Alec Guinness.   That movie, of course, was Star Wars, which would be released four weeks after 3 Women had its premiere in New York City. While the film didn't make 1/100th the money Star Wars made, it was one of the best reviewed movies of the year. But, strangely, the film would not be seen again outside of sporadic screenings on cable until it was released on DVD by the Criterion Collection 27 years later.   I'm not going to try and explain the movie to you. Just trust me that 3 Women is from a master craftsman at the top of his game.   While on the press tour to publicize 3 Women, a reporter asked Altman what was going to be next for him. He jokingly said he was going to shoot a wedding. But then he went home, thought about it some more, and in a few weeks, had a basic idea sketched out for a movie titled A Wedding that would take place over the course of one day, as the daughter of a Southern nouveau riche family marries the son of a wealthy Chicago businessman who may or may not a major figure in The Outfit.   And while the film is quite entertaining, what's most interesting about watching this 1978 movie in 2023 is not only how many great established actors Altman got for the film, including Carol Burnett, Paul Dooley, Howard Duff, Mia Farrow, Vittorio Gassman, Lauren Hutton, and, in her 100th movie, Lillian Gish, but the number of notable actors he was able to get because he shot the film just outside Chicago. Not only will you see Dennis Christopher just before his breakthrough in Breaking Away, and not only will you see Pam Dawber just before she was cast alongside Robin Williams in Mark and Mindy, but you'll also see Dennis Franz, Laurie Metcalfe, Gary Sinese, Tim Thomerson, and George Wendt.   And because Altman was able to keep the budget at a reasonable level, less than $1.75m, the film would be slightly profitable for Twentieth Century-Fox after grossing $3.6m at the box office.   Altman's next film for Fox, 1979's Quintet, would not be as fortunate.   Altman had come up with the story for this post-apocalyptic drama as a vehicle for Walter Hill to write and direct. But Hill would instead make The Warriors, and Altman decided to make the film himself. While developing the screenplay with his co-writers Frank Barhydt and Patricia Resnick, Altman would create a board game, complete with token pieces and a full set of rules, to flesh out the storyline.   Altman would once again work with Paul Newman, who stars as a seal hunter in the early days of a new ice age who finds himself in elaborate game with a group of gamblers where losing in the game means losing your life in the process. Altman would deliberately hire an international cast to star alongside Newman, not only to help improve the film's ability to do well in foreign territories but to not have the storyline tied to any specific country. So we would have Italian actor Vittorio Gassman, Spaniard Fernando Rey, Swedish actress Bibi Andersson, French actress Brigitte Fossey, and Danish actress Nina van Pallandt.    In order to maintain the mystery of the movie, Altman would ask Fox to withhold all pre-release publicity for the film, in order to avoid any conditioning of the audience. Imagine trying to put together a compelling trailer for a movie featuring one of the most beloved actors of all time, but you're not allowed to show potential audiences what they're getting themselves into? Altman would let the studio use five shots from the film, totaling about seven seconds, for the trailer, which mostly comprised of slo-mo shots of a pair of dice bouncing around, while the names of the stars pop up from moment to moment and a narrator tries to create some sense of mystery on the soundtrack.   But audiences would not be intrigued by the mystery, and critics would tear the $6.4m budget film apart. To be fair, the shoot for the film, in the winter of 1977 outside Montreal was a tough time for all, and Altman would lose final cut on the film for going severely over-budget during production, although there seems to be very little documentation about how much the final film might have differed from what Altman would have been working on had he been able to complete the film his way.   But despite all the problems with Quintet, Fox would still back Altman's next movie, A Perfect Couple, which would be shot after Fox pulled Altman off Quintet. Can you imagine that happening today? A director working with the studio that just pulled them off their project. But that's how little ego Altman had. He just wanted to make movies. Tell stories. This simple romantic comedy starred his regular collaborator Paul Dooley as  Alex, a man who follows a band of traveling bohemian musicians because he's falling for one of the singers in the band.   Altman kept the film on its $1.9m budget, but the response from critics was mostly concern that Altman had lost his touch. Maybe it was because this was his 13th film of the decade, but there was a serious concern about the director's ability to tell a story had evaporated.   That worry would continue with his next film, Health.   A satire of the political scene in the United States at the end of the 1970s, Health would follow a health food organization holding a convention at a luxury hotel in St. Petersburg FL. As one would expect from a Robert Altman movie, there's one hell of a cast. Along with Henry Gibson, and Paul Dooley, who co-write the script with Altman and Frank Barhydt, the cast would include Lauren Bacall, Carol Burnett, James Garner and, in one of her earliest screen appearances, Alfre Woodard, as well as Dick Cavett and Dinah Shore as themselves.   But between the shooting of the film in the late winter and early spring of 1979 and the planned Christmas 1979 release, there was a change of management at Fox. Alan Ladd Jr. was out, and after Altman turned in his final cut, new studio head Norman Levy decided to pull the film off the 1979 release calendar. Altman fought to get the film released sometime during the 1980 Presidential Campaign, and was able to get Levy to give the film a platform release starting in Los Angeles and New York City in March 1980, but that date would get cancelled as well. Levy then suggested an April 1980 test run in St. Louis, which Altman was not happy with. Altman countered with test runs in Boston, Houston, Sacramento and San Francisco. The best Altman, who was in Malta shooting his next movie, could get were sneak previews of the film in those four markets, and the response cards from the audience were so bad, the studio decided to effectively put the film on the proverbial shelf.   Back from the Mediterranean Sea, Altman would get permission to take the film to the Montreal World Film Festival in August, and the Telluride and Venice Film Festivals in September. After good responses from film goers at those festivals, Fox would relent, and give the film a “preview” screening at the United Artists Theatre in Westwood, starting on September 12th, 1980. But the studio would give the film the most boring ad campaign possible, a very crude line drawing of an older woman's pearl bracelet-covered arm thrusted upward while holding a carrot. With no trailers in circulation at any theatre, and no television commercials on air, it would be little surprise the film didn't do a whole lot of business. You really had to know the film had been released. But its $14k opening weekend gross wasn't really all that bad. And it's second week gross of $10,500 with even less ad support was decent if unspectacular. But it would be good enough to get the film a four week playdate at the UA Westwood.   And then, nothing, until early March 1981, when a film society at Northwestern University in Evanston IL was able to screen a 16mm print for one show, while a theatre in Baltimore was able to show the film one time at the end of March. But then, nothing again for more than another year, when the film would finally get a belated official release at the Film Forum in New York City on April 7th, 1982. It would only play for a week, and as a non-profit, the Film Forum does not report film grosses, so we have no idea how well the film actually did. Since then, the movie showed once on CBS in August 1983, and has occasionally played on the Fox Movie Channel, but has never been released on VHS or DVD or Blu-Ray.   I mentioned a few moments ago that while he was dealing with all this drama concerning Health, Altman was in the Mediterranean filming a movie. I'm not going to go too much into that movie here, since I already have an episode for the future planned for it, suffice to say that a Robert Altman-directed live-action musical version of the Popeye the Sailor Man cartoon featuring songs by the incomparable Harry Nilsson should have been a smash hit, but it wasn't. It was profitable, to be certain, but not the hit everyone was expecting. We'll talk about the film in much more detail soon.   After the disappointing results for Popeye, Altman decided to stop working in Hollywood for a while and hit the Broadway stages, to direct a show called Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean. While the show's run was not very long and the reviews not very good, Altman would fund a movie version himself, thanks in part to the sale of his production company, Lion's Gate, not to be confused with the current studio called Lionsgate, and would cast Karen Black, Cher and Sandy Dennis alongside newcomers Sudie Bond and Kathy Bates, as five female members of The Disciples of James Dean come together on the 20th anniversary of the actor's death to honor his life and times. As the first film released by a new independent distributor called Cinecom, I'll spend more time talking about this movie on our show about that distributor, also coming soon, suffice it to say that Altman was back. Critics were behind the film, and arthouse audiences loved it. This would be the first time Altman adapted a stage play to the screen, and it would set the tone for a number of his works throughout the rest of the decade.   Streamers was Altman's 17th film in thirteen years, and another adaptation of a stage play. One of several works by noted Broadway playwright David Rabe's time in the Army during the Vietnam War, the film followed four young soldiers waiting to be shipped to Vietnam who deal with racial tensions and their own intolerances when one soldier reveals he is gay. The film featured Matthew Modine as the Rabe stand-in, and features a rare dramatic role for comedy legend David Alan Grier. Many critics would note how much more intense the film version was compared to the stage version, as Altman's camera was able to effortlessly breeze around the set, and get up close and personal with the performers in ways that simply cannot happen on the stage. But in 1983, audiences were still not quite ready to deal with the trauma of Vietnam on film, and the film would be fairly ignored by audiences, grossing just $378k.   Which, finally, after half an hour, brings us to our featured movie.   O.C. and Stiggs.   Now, you might be asking yourself why I went into such detail about Robert Altman's career, most of it during the 1970s. Well, I wanted to establish what types of material Altman would chose for his projects, and just how different O.C. and Stiggs  was from any other project he had made to date.   O.C. and Stiggs began their lives in the July 1981 issue of National Lampoon, as written by two of the editors of the magazine, Ted Mann and Tod Carroll. The characters were fun-loving and occasionally destructive teenage pranksters, and their first appearance in the magazine would prove to be so popular with readers, the pair would appear a few more times until Matty Simmons, the publisher and owner of National Lampoon, gave over the entire October 1982 issue to Mann and Carroll for a story called “The Utterly Monstrous Mind-Roasting Summer of O.C. and Stiggs.” It's easy to find PDFs of the issues online if you look for it.   So the issue becomes one of the biggest selling issues in the history of National Lampoon, and Matty Simmons has been building the National Lampoon brand name by sponsoring a series of movies, including Animal House, co-written by Lampoon writers Doug Kenney and Chris Miller, and the soon to be released movies Class Reunion, written by Lampoon writer John Hughes… yes, that John Hughes… and Movie Madness, written by five Lampoon writers including Tod Carroll. But for some reason, Simmons was not behind the idea of turning the utterly monstrous mind-roasting adventures of O.C. and Stiggs into a movie. He would, however, allow Mann and Carroll to shop the idea around Hollywood, and wished them the best of luck.   As luck would have it, Mann and Carroll would meet Peter Newman, who had worked as Altman's production executive on Jimmy Dean, and was looking to set up his first film as a producer. And while Newman might not have had the credits, he had the connections. The first person he would take the script to his Oscar-winning director Mike Nichols, whose credits by this time included Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolff?, The Graduate, Catch-22, and Carnal Knowledge. Surprisingly, Nichols was not just interested in making the movie, but really wanted to have Eddie Murphy, who was a breakout star on Saturday Night Live but was still a month away from becoming a movie star when 48 Hours was released, play one of the leading characters. But Murphy couldn't get out of his SNL commitments, and Nichols had too many other projects, both on Broadway and in movies, to be able to commit to the film.    A few weeks later, Newman and Altman both attended a party where they would catch up after several months. Newman started to tell Altman about this new project he was setting up, and to Newman's surprise, Altman, drawn to the characters' anti-establishment outlook, expressed interest in making it. And because Altman's name still commanded respect in Hollywood, several studios would start to show their interest in making the movie with them. MGM, who was enjoying a number of successes in 1982 thanks to movies like Shoot the Moon, Diner, Victor/Victoria, Rocky III, Poltergeist, Pink Floyd - The Wall, and My Favorite Year, made a preemptive bid on the film, hoping to beat Paramount Pictures to the deal. Unknown to Altman, what interested MGM was that Sylvester Stallone of all people went nuts for the script when he read it, and mentioned to his buddies at the studio that he might be interested in making it himself.   Despite hating studio executives for doing stuff like buying a script he's attached to  then kicking him off so some Italian Stallion not known for comedy could make it himself, Altman agree to make the movie with MGM once Stallone lost interest, as the studio promised there would be no further notes about the script, that Altman could have final cut on the film, that he could shoot the film in Phoenix without studio interference, and that he could have a budget of $7m.   Since this was a Robert Altman film, the cast would be big and eclectic, filled with a number of his regular cast members, known actors who he had never worked with before, and newcomers who would go on to have success a few years down the road. Because, seriously, outside of a Robert Altman movie, where are you going to find a cast that included Jon Cryer, Jane Curtin, Paul Dooley, Dennis Hopper, Tina Louise, Martin Mull, Cynthia Nixon, Bob Uecker, Melvin van Peebles, and King Sunny Adé and His African Beats? And then imagine that movie also featuring Matthew Broderick, Jim Carrey, Robert Downey, Jr. and Laura Dern?   The story for the film would both follow the stories that appeared in the pages of National Lampoon fairly closely while also making some major changes. In the film, Oliver Cromwell “O.C.” Oglivie and Mark Stiggs are two ne'er-do-well, middle-class Phoenix, Arizona high school students who are disgusted with what they see as an omnipresent culture of vulgar and vapid suburban consumerism. They spend their days slacking off and committing pranks or outright crimes against their sworn enemies, the Schwab family, especially family head Randall Schwab, a wealthy insurance salesman who was responsible for the involuntary commitment of O.C.'s grandfather into a group home. During the film, O.C. and Stiggs will ruin the wedding of Randall Schwab's daughter Lenore, raft their way down to a Mexican fiesta, ruin a horrible dinner theatre performance directed by their high school's drama teacher being attended by the Schwabs, and turn the Schwab mansion into a homeless shelter while the family is on vacation. The film ends with O.C. and Stiggs getting into a gun fight with Randall Schwab before being rescued by Dennis Hopper and a helicopter, before discovering one of their adventures that summer has made them very wealthy themselves.   The film would begin production in Phoenix on August 22nd, 1983, with two newcomers, Daniel H. Jenkins and Neill Barry, as the titular stars of the film. And almost immediately, Altman's chaotic ways of making a movie would become a problem. Altman would make sure the entire cast and crew were all staying at the same hotel in town, across the street from a greyhound racetrack, so Altman could take off to bet on a few of the races during production downtime, and made sure the bar at the hotel was an open bar for his team while they were shooting. When shooting was done every day, the director and his cast would head to a makeshift screening room at the hotel, where they'd watch the previous day's footage, a process called “dailies” in production parlance. On most films, dailies are only attended by the director and his immediate production crew, but in Phoenix, everyone was encouraged to attend. And according to producer Peter Newman and Dan Jenkins, everyone loved the footage, although both would note that it might have been a combination of the alcohol, the pot, the cocaine and the dehydration caused by shooting all day in the excessive Arizona heat during the middle of summer that helped people enjoy the footage.    But here's the funny thing about dailies.   Unless a film is being shot in sequence, you're only seeing small fragments of scenes, often the same actors doing the same things over and over again, before the camera switches places to catch reactions or have other characters continue the scene. Sometimes, they're long takes of scenes that might be interrupted by an actor flubbing a line or an unexpected camera jitter or some other interruption that requires a restart. But everyone seemed to be having fun, especially when dailies ended and Altman would show one of his other movies like MASH or The Long Goodbye or 3 Women.   After two months of shooting, the film would wrap production, and Altman would get to work on his edit of the film. He would have it done before the end of 1983, and he would turn it in to the studio. Shortly after the new year, there would be a private screening of the film in New York City at the offices of the talent agency William Morris, one of the larger private screening rooms in the city. Altman was there, the New York-based executives at MGM were there, Peter Newman was there, several of the actors were there. And within five minutes of the start of the film, Altman realized what he was watching was not his cut of the film. As he was about to lose his stuff and start yelling at the studio executives, the projector broke. The lights would go up, and Altman would dig into the the executives. “This is your effing cut of the film and not mine!” Altman stormed out of the screening and into the cold New York winter night.   A few weeks later, that same print from New York would be screened for the big executives at the MGM lot in Los Angeles. Newman was there, and, surprisingly, Altman was there too. The film would screen for the entire running length, and Altman would sit there, watching someone else's version of the footage he had shot, scenes put in different places than they were supposed to be, music cues not of his design or consent.   At the end of the screening, the room was silent. Not one person in the room had laughed once during the entire screening. Newman and Altman left after the screening, and hit one of Altman's favorite local watering holes. As they said their goodbyes the next morning, Altman apologized to Newman. “I hope I didn't eff up your movie.”   Maybe the movie wasn't completely effed up, but MGM certainly neither knew what to do with the film or how to sell it, so it would just sit there, just like Health a few years earlier, on that proverbial shelf.   More than a year later, in an issue of Spin Magazine, a review of the latest album by King Sunny Adé would mention the film he performed in, O.C. and Stiggs, would, quote unquote, “finally” be released into theatres later that year.   That didn't happen, in large part because after WarGames in the early summer of 1983, almost every MGM release had been  either an outright bomb or an unexpected financial disappointment. The cash flow problem was so bad that the studio effectively had to sell itself to Atlanta cable mogul Ted Turner in order to save itself. Turner didn't actually want all of MGM. He only wanted the valuable MGM film library, but the owner of MGM at the time was either going to sell it all or nothing at all.   Barely two months after Ted Turner bought MGM, he had sold the famed studio lot in Culver City to Lorimar, a television production company that was looking to become a producer and distributor of motion pictures, and sold rest of the company he never wanted in the first place to the guy he bought it all from, who had a kind of seller's remorse. But that repurchase would saddle the company with massive bills, and movies like O.C. and Stiggs would have to sit and collect dust while everything was sorted out.   How long would O.C. and Stiggs be left in a void?   It would be so long that Robert Altman would have time to make not one, not two, but three other movies that would all be released before O.C. and Stiggs ever saw the light of day.   The first, Secret Honor, released in 1984, featured the great Philip Baker Hall as former President Richard Nixon. It's probably Hall's single best work as an actor, and the film would be amongst the best reviewed films of Altman's career.   In 1985, Altman would film Fool For Love, an adaptation of a play by Sam Shepard. This would be the only time in Shepard's film career where he would star as one of the characters himself had written. The film would also prove once and for all that Kim Basinger was more than just a pretty face but a real actor.   And in February 1987, Altman's film version of Beyond Therapy, a play by absurdist playwright Christopher Durant, would open in theatres. The all-star cast would include Tom Conti, Jeff Goldblum, Christopher Guest, Julie Hagerty and Glenda Jackson.   On March 5th, 1987, an article in Daily Variety would note that the “long shelved” film would have a limited theatrical release in May, despite the fact that Frank Yablans, the vice chairman of MGM, being quoted in the article that the film was unreleasable. It would further be noted that despite the film being available to international distributors for three years, not one company was willing to acquire the film for any market. The plan was to release the movie for one or two weeks in three major US markets, depending on its popularity, and then decide a future course of action from there.   But May would come and go, without a hint of the film.   Finally, on Friday, July 10th, the film would open on 18 screens, but none in any major market like Chicago, Los Angeles or New York City. I can't find a single theatre the film played in that weekend, but that week's box office figures would show an abysmal $6,273 worth of tickets were sold during that first weekend.   There would not be a second weekend of reported grosses.   But to MGM's credit, they didn't totally give up on the film.   On Thursday, August 27th, O.C. and Stiggs would open in at least one theatre. And, lucky for me, that theatre happened to be the Nickelodeon Theatre in Santa Cruz. But despite the fact that the new Robert Altman was opening in town, I could not get a single friend to see it with me. So on a Tuesday night at 8:40pm, I was the only person in all of the region to watch what I would soon discover was the worst Robert Altman movie of all time. Now, I should note that even a bad Robert Altman movie is better than many filmmakers' best movies, but O.C. and Stiggs would have ignobility of feeling very much like a Robert Altman movie, with its wandering camera and overlapping dialogue that weaves in and out of conversations while in progress and not quite over yet, yet not feeling anything like a Robert Altman movie at the same time. It didn't have that magical whimsy-ness that was the hallmark of his movies. The satire didn't have its normal bite. It had a number of Altman's regular troop of actors, but in smaller roles than they'd usually occupy, and not giving the performances one would expect of them in an Altman movie.   I don't know how well the film did at the Nick, suffice it to say the film was gone after a week.   But to MGM's credit, they still didn't give up on the film.   On October 9th, the film would open at the AMC Century City 14, one of a handful of movies that would open the newest multiplex in Los Angeles.   MGM did not report grosses, and the film was gone from the new multiplex after a week.   But to MGM's credit, they still didn't give up on the film.   The studio would give the film one more chance, opening it at the Film Forum in New York City on March 18th, 1988.   MGM did not report grosses, and the film was gone after a week. But whether that was because MGM didn't support the film with any kind of newspaper advertising in the largest market in America, or because the movie had been released on home video back in November, remains to be seen.   O.C. and Stiggs would never become anything resembling a cult film. It's been released on DVD, and if one was programming a Robert Altman retrospect at a local arthouse movie theatre, one could actually book a 35mm print of the film from the repertory cinema company Park Circus.   But don't feel bad for Altman, as he would return to cinemas with a vengeance in the 1990s, first with the 1990 biographical drama Vincent and Theo, featuring Tim Roth as the tortured genius 19th century painter that would put the actor on the map for good. Then, in 1992, he became a sensation again with his Hollywood satire The Player, featuring Tim Robbins as a murderous studio executive trying to keep the police off his trail while he navigates the pitfalls of the industry. Altman would receive his first Oscar nomination for Best Director since 1975 with The Player, his third overall, a feat he would repeat the following year with Short Cuts, based on a series of short stories by Raymond Carver. In fact, Altman would be nominated for an Academy Award seven times during his career, five times as a director and twice as a producer, although he would never win a competitive Oscar.   In March 2006, while editing his 35th film, a screen adaptation of the then-popular NPR series A Prairie Home Companion, the Academy would bestow an Honorary Oscar upon Altman. During his acceptance speech, Altman would wonder if perhaps the Academy acted prematurely in honoring him in this fashion. He revealed he had received a heart transplant in the mid-1990s, and felt that, even though he had turned 81 the month before, he could continue for another forty years.   Robert Altman would pass away from leukemia on November 20th, 2006, only eight months after receiving the biggest prize of his career.   Robert Altman had a style so unique onto himself, there's an adjective that exists to describe it. Altmanesque. Displaying traits typical of a film made by Robert Altman, typically highly naturalistic, but with a stylized perspective and often a subversive twist.   He truly was a one of a kind filmmaker, and there will likely never be anyone like him, no matter how hard Paul Thomas Anderson tries.     Thank you for joining us. We'll talk again in two weeks, when Episode 106, Mad Magazine Presents Up the Academy, 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.  

On this episode, we talk about the great American filmmaker Robert Altman, and what is arguably the worst movie of his six decade, thirty-five film career: his 1987 atrocity O.C. and Stiggs. ----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're going to talk about one of the strangest movies to come out of the decade, not only for its material, but for who directed it.   Robert Altman's O.C. and Stiggs.   As always, before we get to the O.C. and Stiggs, we will be going a little further back in time.   Although he is not every cineaste's cup of tea, it is generally acknowledged that Robert Altman was one of the best filmmakers to ever work in cinema. But he wasn't an immediate success when he broke into the industry.   Born in Kansas City in February 1925, Robert Altman would join the US Army Air Force after graduating high school, as many a young man would do in the days of World War II. He would train to be a pilot, and he would fly more than 50 missions during the war as part of the 307th Bomb Group, operating in the Pacific Theatre. They would help liberate prisoners of war held in Japanese POW Camps from Okinawa to Manila after the victory over Japan lead to the end of World War II in that part of the world.   After the war, Altman would move to Los Angeles to break into the movies, and he would even succeed in selling a screenplay to RKO Pictures called Bodyguard, a film noir story shot in 1948 starring Lawrence Tierney and Priscilla Lane, but on the final film, he would only share a “Story by” credit with his then-writing partner, George W. George. But by 1950, he'd be back in Kansas City, where he would direct more than 65 industrial films over the course of three years, before heading back to Los Angeles with the experience he would need to take another shot.   Altman would spend a few years directing episodes of a drama series called Pulse of the City on the DuMont television network and a syndicated police drama called The Sheriff of Cochise, but he wouldn't get his first feature directing gig until 1957, when a businessman in Kansas City would hire the thirty-two year old to write and direct a movie locally. That film, The Delinquents, cost only $60k to make, and would be purchased for release by United Artists for $150k. The first film to star future Billy Jack writer/director/star Tom Laughlin, The Delinquents would gross more than a million dollars in theatres, a very good sum back in those days, but despite the success of the film, the only work Altman could get outside of television was co-directing The James Dean Story, a documentary set up at Warner Brothers to capitalize on the interest in the actor after dying in a car accident two years earlier.   Throughout the 1960s, Altman would continue to work in television, until he was finally given another chance to direct a feature film. 1967's Countdown was a lower budgeted feature at Warner Brothers featuring James Caan in an early leading role, about the space race between the Americans and Soviets, a good two years before Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon. The shoot itself was easy, but Altman would be fired from the film shortly after filming was completed, as Jack Warner, the 75 year old head of the studio, was not very happy about the overlapping dialogue, a motif that would become a part of Altman's way of making movies. Although his name appears in the credits as the director of the film, he had no input in its assembly. His ambiguous ending was changed, and the film would be edited to be more family friendly than the director intended.   Altman would follow Countdown with 1969's That Cold Day in the Park, a psychological drama that would be both a critical and financial disappointment.   But his next film would change everything.   Before Altman was hired by Twentieth-Century Fox to direct MASH, more than a dozen major filmmakers would pass on the project. An adaptation of a little known novel by a Korean War veteran who worked as a surgeon at one of the Mobile Auxiliary Surgical Hospitals that give the story its acronymic title, MASH would literally fly under the radar from the executives at the studio, as most of the $3m film would be shot at the studio's ranch lot in Malibu, while the executives were more concerned about their bigger movies of the year in production, like their $12.5m biographical film on World War II general George S. Patton and their $25m World War II drama Tora! Tora! Tora!, one of the first movies to be a Japanese and American co-production since the end of the war.    Altman was going to make MASH his way, no matter what. When the studio refused to allow him to hire a fair amount of extras to populate the MASH camp, Altman would steal individual lines from other characters to give to background actors, in order to get the bustling atmosphere he wanted. In order to give the camp a properly dirty look, he would shoot most of the outdoor scenes with a zoom lens and a fog filter with the camera a reasonably far distance from the actors, so they could act to one another instead of the camera, giving the film a sort of documentary feel. And he would find flexibility when the moment called for it. Sally Kellerman, who was hired to play Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan, would work with Altman to expand and improve her character to be more than just eye candy, in large part because Altman liked what she was doing in her scenes.   This kind of flexibility infuriated the two major stars of the film, Elliott Gould and Donald Sutherland, who at one point during the shoot tried to get Altman fired for treating everyone in the cast and crew with the same level of respect and decorum regardless of their position. But unlike at Warners a couple years earlier, the success of movies like Bonnie and Clyde and Easy Rider bamboozled Hollywood studio executives, who did not understand exactly what the new generation of filmgoers wanted, and would often give filmmakers more leeway than before, in the hopes that lightning could be captured once again.   And Altman would give them exactly that.   MASH, which would also be the first major studio film to be released with The F Word spoken on screen, would not only become a critical hit, but become the third highest grossing movie released in 1970, grossing more than $80m. The movie would win the Palme D'Or at that year's Cannes Film Festival, and it would be nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Supporting Actress for Ms. Kellerman, winning only for Best Adapted Screenplay. An ironic win, since most of the dialogue was improvised on set, but the victory for screenwriter Ring Lardner Jr. would effectively destroy the once powerful Hollywood Blacklist that had been in place since the Red Scare of the 1950s.   After MASH, Altman went on one of the greatest runs any filmmaker would ever enjoy.   MASH would be released in January 1970, and Altman's follow up, Brewster McCloud, would be released in December 1970. Bud Cort, the future star of Harold and Maude, plays a recluse who lives in the fallout shelter of the Houston Astrodome, who is building a pair of wings in order to achieve his dream of flying. The film would feature a number of actors who already were featured in MASH and would continue to be featured in a number of future Altman movies, including Sally Kellerman, Michael Murphy, John Schuck and Bert Remson, but another reason to watch Brewster McCloud if you've never seen it is because it is the film debut of Shelley Duvall, one of our greatest and least appreciated actresses, who would go on to appear in six other Altman movies over the ensuing decade.   1971's McCabe and Mrs. Miller, for me, is his second best film. A Western starring Warren Beatty and Julie Christie, was a minor hit when it was first released but has seen a reevaluation over the years that found it to be named the 8th Best Western of all time by the American Film Institute, which frankly is too low for me. The film would also bring a little-known Canadian poet and musician to the world, Leonard Cohen, who wrote and performed three songs for the soundtrack. Yeah, you have Robert Altman to thank for Leonard Cohen.   1972's Images was another psychological horror film, this time co-written with English actress Susannah York, who also stars in the film as an author of children's books who starts to have wild hallucinations at her remote vacation home, after learning her husband might be cheating on her. The $800k film was one of the first to be produced by Hemdale Films, a British production company co-founded by Blow Up actor David Hemmings, but the film would be a critical and financial disappointment when it was released Christmas week. But it would get nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Dramatic Score. It would be one of two nominations in the category for John Williams, the other being The Poseidon Adventure.   Whatever resentment Elliott Gould may have had with Altman during the shooting of MASH was gone by late 1972, when the actor agreed to star in the director's new movie, a modern adaptation of Raymond Chandler's 1953 novel The Long Goodbye. Gould would be the eighth actor to play the lead character, Phillip Marlowe, in a movie. The screenplay would be written by Leigh Brackett, who Star Wars nerds know as the first writer on The Empire Strikes Back but had also adapted Chandler's novel The Big Sleep, another Phillip Marlowe story, to the big screen back in 1946.   Howard Hawks and Peter Bogdanovich had both been approached to make the film, and it would be Bogdanovich who would recommend Altman to the President of United Artists. The final film would anger Chandler fans, who did not like Altman's approach to the material, and the $1.7m film would gross less than $1m when it was released in March 1973. But like many of Altman's movies, it was a big hit with critics, and would find favor with film fans in the years to come.   1974 would be another year where Altman would make and release two movies in the same calendar year. The first, Thieves Like Us, was a crime drama most noted as one of the few movies to not have any kind of traditional musical score. What music there is in the film is usually heard off radios seen in individual scenes. Once again, we have a number of Altman regulars in the film, including Shelley Duvall, Bert Remsen, John Schuck and Tom Skerritt, and would feature Keith Carradine, who had a small co-starring role in McCabe and Mrs. Miller, in his first major leading role. And, once again, the film would be a hit with critics but a dud with audiences. Unlike most of Altman's movies of the 1970s, Thieves Like Us has not enjoyed the same kind of reappraisal.   The second film, California Split, was released in August, just six months after Thieves Like Us. Elliott Gould once again stars in a Robert Altman movie, this time alongside George Segal. They play a pair of gamblers who ride what they think is a lucky streak from Los Angeles to Reno, Nevada, would be the only time Gould and Segal would work closely together in a movie, and watching California Split, one wishes there could have been more. The movie would be an innovator seemingly purpose-build for a Robert Altman movie, for it would be the first non-Cinerama movie to be recorded using an eight track stereo sound system. More than any movie before, Altman could control how his overlapping dialogue was placed in a theatre. But while most theatres that played the movie would only play it in mono sound, the film would still be a minor success, bringing in more than $5m in ticket sales.   1975 would bring what many consider to be the quintessential Robert Altman movie to screens.   The two hour and forty minute Nashville would feature no less than 24 different major characters, as a group of people come to Music City to be involved in a gala concert for a political outsider who is running for President on the Replacement Party ticket. The cast is one of the best ever assembled for a movie ever, including Ned Beatty, Karen Black, Ronee Blakely, Keith Carradine, Geraldine Chaplin, Robert DoQui, Shelley Duvall, Allen Garfield, Henry Gibson, Scott Glenn, Jeff Goldblum, Barbara Harris, Cristina Raines, Lily Tomlin and Keenan Wynn.   Altman would be nominated for two Academy Awards for the film, Best Picture, as its producer, and Best Director, while both Ronee Blakely and Lily Tomlin would be nominated for Best Supporting Actress. Keith Carradine would also be nominated for an Oscar, but not as an actor. He would, at the urging of Altman during the production of the film, write and perform a song called I'm Easy, which would win for Best Original Song. The $2.2m film would earn $10m in ticket sales, and would eventually become part of the fourth class of movies to be selected for preservation by the National Film Registry in 1991, the first of four Robert Altman films to be given that honor. MASH, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, and The Long Goodbye would also be selected for preservation over the years.   And we're going to stop here for a second and take a look at that list of films again.   MASH Brewster McCloud McCabe and Mrs. Miller Images The Long Goodbye Thieves Like Us California Split Nashville   Eight movies, made over a five year period, that between them earned twelve Academy Award nominations, four of which would be deemed so culturally important that they should be preserved for future generations.   And we're still only in the middle of the 1970s.   But the problem with a director like Robert Altman, like many of our greatest directors, their next film after one of their greatest successes feels like a major disappointment. And his 1976 film Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson, and that is the complete title of the film by the way, did not meet the lofty expectations of film fans not only its director, but of its main stars. Altman would cast two legendary actors he had not yet worked with, Paul Newman and Burt Lancaster, and the combination of those two actors with this director should have been fantastic, but the results were merely okay. In fact,  Altman would, for the first time in his career, re-edit a film after its theatrical release, removing some of the Wild West show acts that he felt were maybe redundant.   His 1977 film 3 Women would bring Altman back to the limelight. The film was based on a dream he had one night while his wife was in the hospital. In the dream, he was directing his regular co-star Shelley Duvall alongside Sissy Spacek, who he had never worked with before, in a story about identity theft that took place in the deserts outside Los Angeles. He woke up in the middle of the dream, jotted down what he could remember, and went back to sleep. In the morning, he didn't have a full movie planned out, but enough of one to get Alan Ladd, Jr., the President of Twentieth-Century Fox, to put up $1.7m for a not fully formed idea. That's how much Robert Altman was trusted at the time. That, and Altman was known for never going over budget. As long as he stayed within his budget, Ladd would let Altman make whatever movie he wanted to make. That, plus Ladd was more concerned about a $10m movie he approved that was going over budget over in England, a science fiction movie directed by the guy who did American Graffiti that had no stars outside of Sir Alec Guinness.   That movie, of course, was Star Wars, which would be released four weeks after 3 Women had its premiere in New York City. While the film didn't make 1/100th the money Star Wars made, it was one of the best reviewed movies of the year. But, strangely, the film would not be seen again outside of sporadic screenings on cable until it was released on DVD by the Criterion Collection 27 years later.   I'm not going to try and explain the movie to you. Just trust me that 3 Women is from a master craftsman at the top of his game.   While on the press tour to publicize 3 Women, a reporter asked Altman what was going to be next for him. He jokingly said he was going to shoot a wedding. But then he went home, thought about it some more, and in a few weeks, had a basic idea sketched out for a movie titled A Wedding that would take place over the course of one day, as the daughter of a Southern nouveau riche family marries the son of a wealthy Chicago businessman who may or may not a major figure in The Outfit.   And while the film is quite entertaining, what's most interesting about watching this 1978 movie in 2023 is not only how many great established actors Altman got for the film, including Carol Burnett, Paul Dooley, Howard Duff, Mia Farrow, Vittorio Gassman, Lauren Hutton, and, in her 100th movie, Lillian Gish, but the number of notable actors he was able to get because he shot the film just outside Chicago. Not only will you see Dennis Christopher just before his breakthrough in Breaking Away, and not only will you see Pam Dawber just before she was cast alongside Robin Williams in Mark and Mindy, but you'll also see Dennis Franz, Laurie Metcalfe, Gary Sinese, Tim Thomerson, and George Wendt.   And because Altman was able to keep the budget at a reasonable level, less than $1.75m, the film would be slightly profitable for Twentieth Century-Fox after grossing $3.6m at the box office.   Altman's next film for Fox, 1979's Quintet, would not be as fortunate.   Altman had come up with the story for this post-apocalyptic drama as a vehicle for Walter Hill to write and direct. But Hill would instead make The Warriors, and Altman decided to make the film himself. While developing the screenplay with his co-writers Frank Barhydt and Patricia Resnick, Altman would create a board game, complete with token pieces and a full set of rules, to flesh out the storyline.   Altman would once again work with Paul Newman, who stars as a seal hunter in the early days of a new ice age who finds himself in elaborate game with a group of gamblers where losing in the game means losing your life in the process. Altman would deliberately hire an international cast to star alongside Newman, not only to help improve the film's ability to do well in foreign territories but to not have the storyline tied to any specific country. So we would have Italian actor Vittorio Gassman, Spaniard Fernando Rey, Swedish actress Bibi Andersson, French actress Brigitte Fossey, and Danish actress Nina van Pallandt.    In order to maintain the mystery of the movie, Altman would ask Fox to withhold all pre-release publicity for the film, in order to avoid any conditioning of the audience. Imagine trying to put together a compelling trailer for a movie featuring one of the most beloved actors of all time, but you're not allowed to show potential audiences what they're getting themselves into? Altman would let the studio use five shots from the film, totaling about seven seconds, for the trailer, which mostly comprised of slo-mo shots of a pair of dice bouncing around, while the names of the stars pop up from moment to moment and a narrator tries to create some sense of mystery on the soundtrack.   But audiences would not be intrigued by the mystery, and critics would tear the $6.4m budget film apart. To be fair, the shoot for the film, in the winter of 1977 outside Montreal was a tough time for all, and Altman would lose final cut on the film for going severely over-budget during production, although there seems to be very little documentation about how much the final film might have differed from what Altman would have been working on had he been able to complete the film his way.   But despite all the problems with Quintet, Fox would still back Altman's next movie, A Perfect Couple, which would be shot after Fox pulled Altman off Quintet. Can you imagine that happening today? A director working with the studio that just pulled them off their project. But that's how little ego Altman had. He just wanted to make movies. Tell stories. This simple romantic comedy starred his regular collaborator Paul Dooley as  Alex, a man who follows a band of traveling bohemian musicians because he's falling for one of the singers in the band.   Altman kept the film on its $1.9m budget, but the response from critics was mostly concern that Altman had lost his touch. Maybe it was because this was his 13th film of the decade, but there was a serious concern about the director's ability to tell a story had evaporated.   That worry would continue with his next film, Health.   A satire of the political scene in the United States at the end of the 1970s, Health would follow a health food organization holding a convention at a luxury hotel in St. Petersburg FL. As one would expect from a Robert Altman movie, there's one hell of a cast. Along with Henry Gibson, and Paul Dooley, who co-write the script with Altman and Frank Barhydt, the cast would include Lauren Bacall, Carol Burnett, James Garner and, in one of her earliest screen appearances, Alfre Woodard, as well as Dick Cavett and Dinah Shore as themselves.   But between the shooting of the film in the late winter and early spring of 1979 and the planned Christmas 1979 release, there was a change of management at Fox. Alan Ladd Jr. was out, and after Altman turned in his final cut, new studio head Norman Levy decided to pull the film off the 1979 release calendar. Altman fought to get the film released sometime during the 1980 Presidential Campaign, and was able to get Levy to give the film a platform release starting in Los Angeles and New York City in March 1980, but that date would get cancelled as well. Levy then suggested an April 1980 test run in St. Louis, which Altman was not happy with. Altman countered with test runs in Boston, Houston, Sacramento and San Francisco. The best Altman, who was in Malta shooting his next movie, could get were sneak previews of the film in those four markets, and the response cards from the audience were so bad, the studio decided to effectively put the film on the proverbial shelf.   Back from the Mediterranean Sea, Altman would get permission to take the film to the Montreal World Film Festival in August, and the Telluride and Venice Film Festivals in September. After good responses from film goers at those festivals, Fox would relent, and give the film a “preview” screening at the United Artists Theatre in Westwood, starting on September 12th, 1980. But the studio would give the film the most boring ad campaign possible, a very crude line drawing of an older woman's pearl bracelet-covered arm thrusted upward while holding a carrot. With no trailers in circulation at any theatre, and no television commercials on air, it would be little surprise the film didn't do a whole lot of business. You really had to know the film had been released. But its $14k opening weekend gross wasn't really all that bad. And it's second week gross of $10,500 with even less ad support was decent if unspectacular. But it would be good enough to get the film a four week playdate at the UA Westwood.   And then, nothing, until early March 1981, when a film society at Northwestern University in Evanston IL was able to screen a 16mm print for one show, while a theatre in Baltimore was able to show the film one time at the end of March. But then, nothing again for more than another year, when the film would finally get a belated official release at the Film Forum in New York City on April 7th, 1982. It would only play for a week, and as a non-profit, the Film Forum does not report film grosses, so we have no idea how well the film actually did. Since then, the movie showed once on CBS in August 1983, and has occasionally played on the Fox Movie Channel, but has never been released on VHS or DVD or Blu-Ray.   I mentioned a few moments ago that while he was dealing with all this drama concerning Health, Altman was in the Mediterranean filming a movie. I'm not going to go too much into that movie here, since I already have an episode for the future planned for it, suffice to say that a Robert Altman-directed live-action musical version of the Popeye the Sailor Man cartoon featuring songs by the incomparable Harry Nilsson should have been a smash hit, but it wasn't. It was profitable, to be certain, but not the hit everyone was expecting. We'll talk about the film in much more detail soon.   After the disappointing results for Popeye, Altman decided to stop working in Hollywood for a while and hit the Broadway stages, to direct a show called Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean. While the show's run was not very long and the reviews not very good, Altman would fund a movie version himself, thanks in part to the sale of his production company, Lion's Gate, not to be confused with the current studio called Lionsgate, and would cast Karen Black, Cher and Sandy Dennis alongside newcomers Sudie Bond and Kathy Bates, as five female members of The Disciples of James Dean come together on the 20th anniversary of the actor's death to honor his life and times. As the first film released by a new independent distributor called Cinecom, I'll spend more time talking about this movie on our show about that distributor, also coming soon, suffice it to say that Altman was back. Critics were behind the film, and arthouse audiences loved it. This would be the first time Altman adapted a stage play to the screen, and it would set the tone for a number of his works throughout the rest of the decade.   Streamers was Altman's 17th film in thirteen years, and another adaptation of a stage play. One of several works by noted Broadway playwright David Rabe's time in the Army during the Vietnam War, the film followed four young soldiers waiting to be shipped to Vietnam who deal with racial tensions and their own intolerances when one soldier reveals he is gay. The film featured Matthew Modine as the Rabe stand-in, and features a rare dramatic role for comedy legend David Alan Grier. Many critics would note how much more intense the film version was compared to the stage version, as Altman's camera was able to effortlessly breeze around the set, and get up close and personal with the performers in ways that simply cannot happen on the stage. But in 1983, audiences were still not quite ready to deal with the trauma of Vietnam on film, and the film would be fairly ignored by audiences, grossing just $378k.   Which, finally, after half an hour, brings us to our featured movie.   O.C. and Stiggs.   Now, you might be asking yourself why I went into such detail about Robert Altman's career, most of it during the 1970s. Well, I wanted to establish what types of material Altman would chose for his projects, and just how different O.C. and Stiggs  was from any other project he had made to date.   O.C. and Stiggs began their lives in the July 1981 issue of National Lampoon, as written by two of the editors of the magazine, Ted Mann and Tod Carroll. The characters were fun-loving and occasionally destructive teenage pranksters, and their first appearance in the magazine would prove to be so popular with readers, the pair would appear a few more times until Matty Simmons, the publisher and owner of National Lampoon, gave over the entire October 1982 issue to Mann and Carroll for a story called “The Utterly Monstrous Mind-Roasting Summer of O.C. and Stiggs.” It's easy to find PDFs of the issues online if you look for it.   So the issue becomes one of the biggest selling issues in the history of National Lampoon, and Matty Simmons has been building the National Lampoon brand name by sponsoring a series of movies, including Animal House, co-written by Lampoon writers Doug Kenney and Chris Miller, and the soon to be released movies Class Reunion, written by Lampoon writer John Hughes… yes, that John Hughes… and Movie Madness, written by five Lampoon writers including Tod Carroll. But for some reason, Simmons was not behind the idea of turning the utterly monstrous mind-roasting adventures of O.C. and Stiggs into a movie. He would, however, allow Mann and Carroll to shop the idea around Hollywood, and wished them the best of luck.   As luck would have it, Mann and Carroll would meet Peter Newman, who had worked as Altman's production executive on Jimmy Dean, and was looking to set up his first film as a producer. And while Newman might not have had the credits, he had the connections. The first person he would take the script to his Oscar-winning director Mike Nichols, whose credits by this time included Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolff?, The Graduate, Catch-22, and Carnal Knowledge. Surprisingly, Nichols was not just interested in making the movie, but really wanted to have Eddie Murphy, who was a breakout star on Saturday Night Live but was still a month away from becoming a movie star when 48 Hours was released, play one of the leading characters. But Murphy couldn't get out of his SNL commitments, and Nichols had too many other projects, both on Broadway and in movies, to be able to commit to the film.    A few weeks later, Newman and Altman both attended a party where they would catch up after several months. Newman started to tell Altman about this new project he was setting up, and to Newman's surprise, Altman, drawn to the characters' anti-establishment outlook, expressed interest in making it. And because Altman's name still commanded respect in Hollywood, several studios would start to show their interest in making the movie with them. MGM, who was enjoying a number of successes in 1982 thanks to movies like Shoot the Moon, Diner, Victor/Victoria, Rocky III, Poltergeist, Pink Floyd - The Wall, and My Favorite Year, made a preemptive bid on the film, hoping to beat Paramount Pictures to the deal. Unknown to Altman, what interested MGM was that Sylvester Stallone of all people went nuts for the script when he read it, and mentioned to his buddies at the studio that he might be interested in making it himself.   Despite hating studio executives for doing stuff like buying a script he's attached to  then kicking him off so some Italian Stallion not known for comedy could make it himself, Altman agree to make the movie with MGM once Stallone lost interest, as the studio promised there would be no further notes about the script, that Altman could have final cut on the film, that he could shoot the film in Phoenix without studio interference, and that he could have a budget of $7m.   Since this was a Robert Altman film, the cast would be big and eclectic, filled with a number of his regular cast members, known actors who he had never worked with before, and newcomers who would go on to have success a few years down the road. Because, seriously, outside of a Robert Altman movie, where are you going to find a cast that included Jon Cryer, Jane Curtin, Paul Dooley, Dennis Hopper, Tina Louise, Martin Mull, Cynthia Nixon, Bob Uecker, Melvin van Peebles, and King Sunny Adé and His African Beats? And then imagine that movie also featuring Matthew Broderick, Jim Carrey, Robert Downey, Jr. and Laura Dern?   The story for the film would both follow the stories that appeared in the pages of National Lampoon fairly closely while also making some major changes. In the film, Oliver Cromwell “O.C.” Oglivie and Mark Stiggs are two ne'er-do-well, middle-class Phoenix, Arizona high school students who are disgusted with what they see as an omnipresent culture of vulgar and vapid suburban consumerism. They spend their days slacking off and committing pranks or outright crimes against their sworn enemies, the Schwab family, especially family head Randall Schwab, a wealthy insurance salesman who was responsible for the involuntary commitment of O.C.'s grandfather into a group home. During the film, O.C. and Stiggs will ruin the wedding of Randall Schwab's daughter Lenore, raft their way down to a Mexican fiesta, ruin a horrible dinner theatre performance directed by their high school's drama teacher being attended by the Schwabs, and turn the Schwab mansion into a homeless shelter while the family is on vacation. The film ends with O.C. and Stiggs getting into a gun fight with Randall Schwab before being rescued by Dennis Hopper and a helicopter, before discovering one of their adventures that summer has made them very wealthy themselves.   The film would begin production in Phoenix on August 22nd, 1983, with two newcomers, Daniel H. Jenkins and Neill Barry, as the titular stars of the film. And almost immediately, Altman's chaotic ways of making a movie would become a problem. Altman would make sure the entire cast and crew were all staying at the same hotel in town, across the street from a greyhound racetrack, so Altman could take off to bet on a few of the races during production downtime, and made sure the bar at the hotel was an open bar for his team while they were shooting. When shooting was done every day, the director and his cast would head to a makeshift screening room at the hotel, where they'd watch the previous day's footage, a process called “dailies” in production parlance. On most films, dailies are only attended by the director and his immediate production crew, but in Phoenix, everyone was encouraged to attend. And according to producer Peter Newman and Dan Jenkins, everyone loved the footage, although both would note that it might have been a combination of the alcohol, the pot, the cocaine and the dehydration caused by shooting all day in the excessive Arizona heat during the middle of summer that helped people enjoy the footage.    But here's the funny thing about dailies.   Unless a film is being shot in sequence, you're only seeing small fragments of scenes, often the same actors doing the same things over and over again, before the camera switches places to catch reactions or have other characters continue the scene. Sometimes, they're long takes of scenes that might be interrupted by an actor flubbing a line or an unexpected camera jitter or some other interruption that requires a restart. But everyone seemed to be having fun, especially when dailies ended and Altman would show one of his other movies like MASH or The Long Goodbye or 3 Women.   After two months of shooting, the film would wrap production, and Altman would get to work on his edit of the film. He would have it done before the end of 1983, and he would turn it in to the studio. Shortly after the new year, there would be a private screening of the film in New York City at the offices of the talent agency William Morris, one of the larger private screening rooms in the city. Altman was there, the New York-based executives at MGM were there, Peter Newman was there, several of the actors were there. And within five minutes of the start of the film, Altman realized what he was watching was not his cut of the film. As he was about to lose his stuff and start yelling at the studio executives, the projector broke. The lights would go up, and Altman would dig into the the executives. “This is your effing cut of the film and not mine!” Altman stormed out of the screening and into the cold New York winter night.   A few weeks later, that same print from New York would be screened for the big executives at the MGM lot in Los Angeles. Newman was there, and, surprisingly, Altman was there too. The film would screen for the entire running length, and Altman would sit there, watching someone else's version of the footage he had shot, scenes put in different places than they were supposed to be, music cues not of his design or consent.   At the end of the screening, the room was silent. Not one person in the room had laughed once during the entire screening. Newman and Altman left after the screening, and hit one of Altman's favorite local watering holes. As they said their goodbyes the next morning, Altman apologized to Newman. “I hope I didn't eff up your movie.”   Maybe the movie wasn't completely effed up, but MGM certainly neither knew what to do with the film or how to sell it, so it would just sit there, just like Health a few years earlier, on that proverbial shelf.   More than a year later, in an issue of Spin Magazine, a review of the latest album by King Sunny Adé would mention the film he performed in, O.C. and Stiggs, would, quote unquote, “finally” be released into theatres later that year.   That didn't happen, in large part because after WarGames in the early summer of 1983, almost every MGM release had been  either an outright bomb or an unexpected financial disappointment. The cash flow problem was so bad that the studio effectively had to sell itself to Atlanta cable mogul Ted Turner in order to save itself. Turner didn't actually want all of MGM. He only wanted the valuable MGM film library, but the owner of MGM at the time was either going to sell it all or nothing at all.   Barely two months after Ted Turner bought MGM, he had sold the famed studio lot in Culver City to Lorimar, a television production company that was looking to become a producer and distributor of motion pictures, and sold rest of the company he never wanted in the first place to the guy he bought it all from, who had a kind of seller's remorse. But that repurchase would saddle the company with massive bills, and movies like O.C. and Stiggs would have to sit and collect dust while everything was sorted out.   How long would O.C. and Stiggs be left in a void?   It would be so long that Robert Altman would have time to make not one, not two, but three other movies that would all be released before O.C. and Stiggs ever saw the light of day.   The first, Secret Honor, released in 1984, featured the great Philip Baker Hall as former President Richard Nixon. It's probably Hall's single best work as an actor, and the film would be amongst the best reviewed films of Altman's career.   In 1985, Altman would film Fool For Love, an adaptation of a play by Sam Shepard. This would be the only time in Shepard's film career where he would star as one of the characters himself had written. The film would also prove once and for all that Kim Basinger was more than just a pretty face but a real actor.   And in February 1987, Altman's film version of Beyond Therapy, a play by absurdist playwright Christopher Durant, would open in theatres. The all-star cast would include Tom Conti, Jeff Goldblum, Christopher Guest, Julie Hagerty and Glenda Jackson.   On March 5th, 1987, an article in Daily Variety would note that the “long shelved” film would have a limited theatrical release in May, despite the fact that Frank Yablans, the vice chairman of MGM, being quoted in the article that the film was unreleasable. It would further be noted that despite the film being available to international distributors for three years, not one company was willing to acquire the film for any market. The plan was to release the movie for one or two weeks in three major US markets, depending on its popularity, and then decide a future course of action from there.   But May would come and go, without a hint of the film.   Finally, on Friday, July 10th, the film would open on 18 screens, but none in any major market like Chicago, Los Angeles or New York City. I can't find a single theatre the film played in that weekend, but that week's box office figures would show an abysmal $6,273 worth of tickets were sold during that first weekend.   There would not be a second weekend of reported grosses.   But to MGM's credit, they didn't totally give up on the film.   On Thursday, August 27th, O.C. and Stiggs would open in at least one theatre. And, lucky for me, that theatre happened to be the Nickelodeon Theatre in Santa Cruz. But despite the fact that the new Robert Altman was opening in town, I could not get a single friend to see it with me. So on a Tuesday night at 8:40pm, I was the only person in all of the region to watch what I would soon discover was the worst Robert Altman movie of all time. Now, I should note that even a bad Robert Altman movie is better than many filmmakers' best movies, but O.C. and Stiggs would have ignobility of feeling very much like a Robert Altman movie, with its wandering camera and overlapping dialogue that weaves in and out of conversations while in progress and not quite over yet, yet not feeling anything like a Robert Altman movie at the same time. It didn't have that magical whimsy-ness that was the hallmark of his movies. The satire didn't have its normal bite. It had a number of Altman's regular troop of actors, but in smaller roles than they'd usually occupy, and not giving the performances one would expect of them in an Altman movie.   I don't know how well the film did at the Nick, suffice it to say the film was gone after a week.   But to MGM's credit, they still didn't give up on the film.   On October 9th, the film would open at the AMC Century City 14, one of a handful of movies that would open the newest multiplex in Los Angeles.   MGM did not report grosses, and the film was gone from the new multiplex after a week.   But to MGM's credit, they still didn't give up on the film.   The studio would give the film one more chance, opening it at the Film Forum in New York City on March 18th, 1988.   MGM did not report grosses, and the film was gone after a week. But whether that was because MGM didn't support the film with any kind of newspaper advertising in the largest market in America, or because the movie had been released on home video back in November, remains to be seen.   O.C. and Stiggs would never become anything resembling a cult film. It's been released on DVD, and if one was programming a Robert Altman retrospect at a local arthouse movie theatre, one could actually book a 35mm print of the film from the repertory cinema company Park Circus.   But don't feel bad for Altman, as he would return to cinemas with a vengeance in the 1990s, first with the 1990 biographical drama Vincent and Theo, featuring Tim Roth as the tortured genius 19th century painter that would put the actor on the map for good. Then, in 1992, he became a sensation again with his Hollywood satire The Player, featuring Tim Robbins as a murderous studio executive trying to keep the police off his trail while he navigates the pitfalls of the industry. Altman would receive his first Oscar nomination for Best Director since 1975 with The Player, his third overall, a feat he would repeat the following year with Short Cuts, based on a series of short stories by Raymond Carver. In fact, Altman would be nominated for an Academy Award seven times during his career, five times as a director and twice as a producer, although he would never win a competitive Oscar.   In March 2006, while editing his 35th film, a screen adaptation of the then-popular NPR series A Prairie Home Companion, the Academy would bestow an Honorary Oscar upon Altman. During his acceptance speech, Altman would wonder if perhaps the Academy acted prematurely in honoring him in this fashion. He revealed he had received a heart transplant in the mid-1990s, and felt that, even though he had turned 81 the month before, he could continue for another forty years.   Robert Altman would pass away from leukemia on November 20th, 2006, only eight months after receiving the biggest prize of his career.   Robert Altman had a style so unique onto himself, there's an adjective that exists to describe it. Altmanesque. Displaying traits typical of a film made by Robert Altman, typically highly naturalistic, but with a stylized perspective and often a subversive twist.   He truly was a one of a kind filmmaker, and there will likely never be anyone like him, no matter how hard Paul Thomas Anderson tries.     Thank you for joining us. We'll talk again in two weeks, when Episode 106, Mad Magazine Presents Up the Academy, 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.  

1962 schickte David Lean seine Hauptdarsteller, darunter Peter O'Toole, Omar Sharif, Anthony Quinn, Sir Alec Guinness u. v. a. in die Wüste um ein Werk zu kreieren, für das man das Wort "episch" erfinden müsste, würde es das nicht schon geben. Und doch "schafften" Sebastian Schmidt von den "Nostromo-Gesprächen" und Host Markus erst 2022, die Kamele zu satteln und mit auf die Reise zu gehen. Hier und heute, erzählen sie von ihren Eindrücken!

Star Wars – The Start of Something Big For our twelfth season, we're looking at franchises and series of films that for one reason or another, we just haven't gotten around to yet. To start things off, we look at the original Star Wars trilogy. Join us – Pete Wright and Andy Nelson – as we start this series with George Lucas' 1977 classic Star Wars. What hasn't been said by this point about Star Wars? It's a big question – what do we talk about in a film that seemingly everyone's already talked about? For starters, we chat about our first experiences with this film and how it shaped our youths. We also discuss the Harmy Despecialized edition, as those are the versions we're looking at for this series. What changes has Lucas made to the film over the decades, why, and do they change our approach to the film? There have also been spinoffs of so many types over the years. How does this film change with projects like Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and Obi-Wan Kenobi? Does it make certain lines of dialogue in this film not work as well? Or are we able to look past that? And how do we define what's canon? The cast is iconic by this point. Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford, Sir Alec Guinness, Peter Cushing, Anthony Daniels, Kenny Baker, Peter Mayhew, David Prowse, James Earl Jones. They all are as much a part of this film and this franchise as it's a part of them. That holds true for the technical teams as well. Effects, sounds, costume, production design, score – it's all a core piece of what this film is. And of course it all comes back to George Lucas and this journey he created based on the Hero's Journey. We have a wide-ranging conversation about the film but it warrants it, so revisit this great film then tune in for a great episode. The Next Reel – when the movie ends, our conversation begins! Join the conversation with movie lovers from around the world on [The Next Reel's Discord channel][discord]! Film Sundries Learn more about supporting The Next Reel Film Podcast through your own membership. Watch this on [Apple][apple] or [Amazon][amazon], or find other places at [JustWatch][justwatch] [Script Transcript][script] [Theatrical trailer][trailer] [Poster artwork][pinterest] [Flickchart][flickchart] [Letterboxd][letterboxd] SNL Star Wars Lounge Singer Star Wars/Cantina Disco Harmy's Despecialized Edition [script]:https://maddogmovies.com/almost/scripts/starwars_fourth3_76.pdf [trailer]:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHk5kCIiGoM [pinterest]:https://www.pinterest.com/thenextreel/the-next-reels-poster-collection/ [flickchart]:https://www.flickchart.com/movie/A898B2411B [letterboxd]:https://letterboxd.com/film/star-wars/ [justwatch]:https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/star-wars-episode-iv-a-new-hope [discord]:https://discord.gg/yW72E6M [apple]:https://tv.apple.com/us/movie/star-wars-a-new-hope/umc.cmc.2o65qvudvwq1l1rqjlbyfszwn?playableId=tvs.sbd.9001%3A978943481 [amazon]:https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/0IE43SG8P6JXCFIMECRZKH1EUY/

Star Wars – The Start of Something Big For our twelfth season, we're looking at franchises and series of films that for one reason or another, we just haven't gotten around to yet. To start things off, we look at the original Star Wars trilogy. Join us – Pete Wright and Andy Nelson – as we start this series with George Lucas' 1977 classic Star Wars. What hasn't been said by this point about Star Wars? It's a big question – what do we talk about in a film that seemingly everyone's already talked about? For starters, we chat about our first experiences with this film and how it shaped our youths. We also discuss the Harmy Despecialized edition, as those are the versions we're looking at for this series. What changes has Lucas made to the film over the decades, why, and do they change our approach to the film? There have also been spinoffs of so many types over the years. How does this film change with projects like Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and Obi-Wan Kenobi? Does it make certain lines of dialogue in this film not work as well? Or are we able to look past that? And how do we define what's canon? The cast is iconic by this point. Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford, Sir Alec Guinness, Peter Cushing, Anthony Daniels, Kenny Baker, Peter Mayhew, David Prowse, James Earl Jones. They all are as much a part of this film and this franchise as it's a part of them. That holds true for the technical teams as well. Effects, sounds, costume, production design, score – it's all a core piece of what this film is. And of course it all comes back to George Lucas and this journey he created based on the Hero's Journey. We have a wide-ranging conversation about the film but it warrants it, so revisit this great film then tune in for a great episode. The Next Reel – when the movie ends, our conversation begins! Join the conversation with movie lovers from around the world on [The Next Reel's Discord channel][discord]! Film Sundries Learn more about supporting The Next Reel Film Podcast through your own membership. Watch this on [Apple][apple] or [Amazon][amazon], or find other places at [JustWatch][justwatch] [Script Transcript][script] [Theatrical trailer][trailer] [Poster artwork][pinterest] [Flickchart][flickchart] [Letterboxd][letterboxd] SNL Star Wars Lounge Singer Star Wars/Cantina Disco Harmy's Despecialized Edition [script]:https://maddogmovies.com/almost/scripts/starwars_fourth3_76.pdf [trailer]:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHk5kCIiGoM [pinterest]:https://www.pinterest.com/thenextreel/the-next-reels-poster-collection/ [flickchart]:https://www.flickchart.com/movie/A898B2411B [letterboxd]:https://letterboxd.com/film/star-wars/ [justwatch]:https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/star-wars-episode-iv-a-new-hope [discord]:https://discord.gg/yW72E6M [apple]:https://tv.apple.com/us/movie/star-wars-a-new-hope/umc.cmc.2o65qvudvwq1l1rqjlbyfszwn?playableId=tvs.sbd.9001%3A978943481 [amazon]:https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/0IE43SG8P6JXCFIMECRZKH1EUY/

How to keep–is there ány any, is there none such, nowhere known some, bow or brooch or braid or brace, láce, latch or catch or key to keep Back beauty, keep it, beauty, beauty, beauty, . . . from vanishing away? Gerard Manley Hopkins was an English poet and Jesuit priest born on July 28, 1844 (tomorrow would have been his 178th birthday!). A convert from Anglicanism, Hopkins was received into the Church in 1866 by none other than St. John Henry Newman.  Because of his commitment to his religious and priestly vocation, Hopkins resolved never to publish his poems during his life. After his death, however, friends and acquaintances published his surviving work, and Hopkins was quickly recognized as one of the most innovative poets of his century. "The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo"—originally intended as part of a larger, never finished poem about the martyrdom of St. Winifred—was completed in 1882, seven years before Hopkins' untimely death of typhoid fever in 1889, at the age of 44. Hopkins considered it to be the most musical of his poems, and among the most dramatic. Though he struggled with depression throughout his life, Hopkins' last words at his death were, "I am so happy, I am so happy. I loved my life." The mythic Philosopher's Stone was believed to be capable of turning lead into gold. In "The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo", a similar transmutation occurs—the kind of transformation which God's grace alone is capable of accomplishing. Let's pray for the soul of Gerard Manley Hopkins on this anniversary of his birth! Links "The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo" full text: https://hopkinspoetry.com/poem/the-leaden-echo-and-the-golden-echo/ Notable readings of the poem by Sir Alec Guinness and by Richard Burton: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyPnd5zyzI0 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhQwFf6Qb9U Short film and reading of the poem by Margaret Tait: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L080KSBxemg Go to http://www.catholicculture.org/getaudio to register for FREE access to the full archive of audiobooks beyond the most recent 15 episodes. Donate at http://catholicculture.org/donate/audio to support this podcast! Theme music: 2 Part Invention, composed by Mark Christopher Brandt, performed by Thomas Mirus. ©️2019 Heart of the Lion Publishing Co./BMI. All rights reserved.

"Hello there!" He is the favorite Jedi of the JAFN podcast. Easily on the Mt. Rushmore of Jedi and Star Wars characters. Sir Alec Guinness first breathed life into the character in 1977 but Ewan McGregor took up the mantle and gave new life to the character. Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi and the latest Star Wars installment on Disney+ are the subject of tonight's show! We can't wait to share our thoughts and feelings on this epic 6 part series. Additionally we can't wait to hear what you thought about the return of the Jedi Master - KENOBI!!! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/jafnpodcast/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/jafnpodcast/support

Charles Skaggs & Xan Sprouse watch Star Wars, the 1977 epic space opera film written & directed by George Lucas and introducing Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker, Carrie Fisher as Leia Organa, Harrison Ford as Han Solo, and Sir Alec Guinness as Obi-Wan Kenobi! Find us here:Twitter:  @DrunkCinemaCast, @CharlesSkaggs, @udanax19 Facebook:  @DrunkCinema Email:  DrunkCinemaPodcast@gmail.com Listen and subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts and leave us a review!

Welcome to another episode of OTTplay Now you Know, I'm your host NikhilThe highly anticipated Star Wars series Obi-Wan Kenobi is set to premiere on the 27th of May. The original cast of the Star Wars prequel trilogy including  Ewan McGregor, Hayden Christensen, and Joel Edgerton will reprise their roles. So here are some lesser-known facts about the Disney+ original series. Let's dive inEwan McGregor, who plays the titular character, revealed that it was a massive relief when Disney finally announced the project because he had known about the TV series for four years and found it extremely difficult to keep it a secret which involved lying to everyone about it.Actor Hayden Christensen, who essays the role of Anakin Skywalker, rewatched all Star Wars movies as well as binged the animated shows Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels to help prepare for reprising his role as the character who would become the iconic villain, Darth Vader.Popular talk show host Jon Stewart inadvertently helped name Obi-Wan's home planet. When Stewart interviewed Star Wars creator George Lucas in 2010 at a convention, Lucas joked that Obi-Wan's home planet is named Stewjon, a play on Jon Stewart's  name. The name has somehow stuck and as per the official Star Wars website, Stewjon is considered canon.Sir Alec Guinness who played the role of the older version of Obi-Wan Kenobi in the original trilogy of films is the only actor in the entire franchise to receive an Oscar nomination for essaying the role of a Star Wars character.Obi-Wan Kenobi is regarded as a legendary Jedi Knight in the Star Wars universe, therefore several artefacts are named after him. Within the Star Wars lore, The Kenobi Medallion, for instance, is awarded to those who have displayed great feats of bravery, while the New Republic commissioned a Star Destroyer called the Obi-Wan, and the Kenobi Offensive is a term used to describe a starship offensive manoeuvre.Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy was allegedly displeased with the script at one point, and it eventually led to production temporarily being halted on January 23rd 2020 and sending the crew home. Well that's the OTTplay Now You Know for today until the next time its your host Nikhil signing outAaj kya dekhoge OTTplay se poochoWritten by Ryan Gomez

In episode 110 of The Force Geeks: A Star Wars Podcast, Nate and DailySuperhero.com Founder & Editor-in-Chief Daniel Wolf take a deep dive into the many interviews with Ewan McGregor, Hayden Christensen, Moses Ingram and Obi-Wan Kenobi series Director Deborah Chow  from their press junket to learn what What Chow thinks the biggest difference is from directing The Mandalorian and this new limited series, along with how McGregor honors Sir Alec Guinness' original performance as Kenobi, how Christensen says Vader is conflicted when we meet him in this new chapter and how badass Ingram's Inquisitor Reva really is.They also dig into the many things Lucasfilm head Kathleen Kennedy shared in her Vanity Fair interview. To put it mildly, the Geeks were a little beside themselves at some of the things said, including blaming the less than stellar performance of Solo: A Star Wars Story on casting. Rosario Dawson lets it be known that she is in for the long haul playing the lead character in the Ahsoka series. Check it all out in this episode of The Force Geeks podcast!

Actor Daniel Logan (Attack of the Clones) joins us with his first-ever review of THE BOOK OF BOBA FETT in a lengthy exclusive interview. We talk about his history with the character, Boba Fett action figures, and his passion for being a STAR WARS fan ambassador. Plus, Daniel weighs in on THE BAD BATCH, Omega and unreleased episodes of THE CLONE WARS. The first image of Darth Vader from OBI-WAN KENOBI has been revealed along with a few quotes from Hayden Christensen about returning to the role. Plus, more info about Darth Maul formerly being the antagonist in the Kenobi series and how the story went from bleak to uplifting during the writing process. Star Wars In Pop Culture spotlights Sir Alec Guinness and info about The RFR Rooftop Bash: Anaheim 2022!

Happy Monday, Christmas fanatics! And Happy February! We are that much closer to the Ber Months!  It's been a minute, but this week, Julia, Thom, and Anthony once again cover an adaptation of Charles Dickens' iconic tale, "A Christmas Carol", this time in the form of the 1970 film "Scrooge", starring Albert Finney and Obi-Wan Kenobi himself, Sir Alec Guinness. Unfortunately, there's something about this particular telling that doesn't quite connect with any of the elves. Listen as they dive deep into the choices made in this version of the tale and discuss what worked for them and what didn't.  In addition, they answer another Question of the Week, this time posed by Mr. Ron Hogan (a.k.a. President Hotdog) of the always incredible "Film Strip Podcast"! He wrote to us asking:  "I associate the movie "Elf" with "Tis The Podcast". If you could pick a movie for people to associate with the podcast, what would it be besides "Elf" and "Christmas Vacation"? Let us know your answer to this question on any of our social media pages, which you can easily access from our new Linktr.ee at the following link: https://linktr.ee/TisThePodcast.com. So settle in and enjoy this fun episode that's full of passionate opinions and Christmas cheer, and – as always – thanks for your love and support, y'all!

This month sees Harry Bucknall, with The Oldie Podcast tucked under his arm, venture out from under his lockdown rock in Dorset  to London and the refined elegance of Wilton's Restaurant on Jermyn Street, in St James's  – just the spot for a cup of tea with his guest, the actress Madeline Smith, who writes candidly  in the August edition of the magazine about working with that genius of stage and screen, the late Sir Alec Guinness who many will remember as Colonel Nicholson in David Lean's Bridge over the River Kwai, or for his portrayal of John le Carre's George Smiley in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and latterly  as  Obe Wan Kenobi in George Lucas's l Star Wars trilogy. We began in bed with Sir Roger Moore. Photo credit: Steve Ball

Coincidences are a part of life, but have you ever ran into one that's a little TOO coincidental? You know Ben and Pat have... On the latest episode of 4-Thirty, the guys break down some of the most mind-bending coincidences human history has to offer, while also dishing out a series of quirky news stories that you'll only find here. Is the Moon just one giant coincidence? Did a license plate really prophesied the end of a world war? Why was Sir Alec Guinness such an influential person? For answers to all these questions and plenty more, be sure to check out this week's episode of 4-Thirty! 

Because Mark Wahlberg hates Mark Wahlberg movies. Jules Gill presents 10 More Actors Who Hate Their Own Movie Performances...ENJOY!Follow us on Twitter:@Retr0J@WhatCultureFor more awesome content, check out: whatculture.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This month, Team OLFC gather to discuss the Academy's fascination with East Asia, and the landmark moment in which the first film not in the English language took home Best Picture. The Bridge on the River Kwai is directed by Sir David Lean and stars Sir Alec Guinness as Colonel Nicholson, the senior British officer held with his troops in a Japanese POW camp tasked to build a bridge over the River Kwai in Burma, as Majors Warden (Jack Hawkins) and Shears (William Holden) attempt to prevent it. In Parasite, directed by Bong Joon-ho, we follow the struggling Kim family as one by one they infiltrate the service of the wealthy Park family and their extraordinary home. But all is not as it seems, particularly when former housekeeper Gook Moon-gwang shows up unexpectedly one night. Thank you to Thomas Whitelaw for our intro music and Rachel Valentine Smith for our artwork. This episode was recorded remotely and so we apologise for any changes in sound quality present.

This week, Hawaii Harry reviews the next film for Classic Hollywood Week. Starring Peter O’toole and Sir Alec Guinness, this episode is all about the David Lean Classic, “Lawrence of Arabia”. This podcast premieres on various podcasting platforms and on YouTube every Friday at 5:00 A.M. with each having a specific theme. 1st Friday: Streaming Week: discussion of a movie that has recently been uploaded on any of the various streaming services. 2nd Friday: Classic Hollywood Week: these weeks will be focused on a film from the Classic Hollywood era. 3rd Friday: Star Wars Week: discussion of a Star Wars film in chronological order of events, not theatrical order. 4th Friday: Disney Week: discussion of Disney's Animated films starting with Snow White Follow My Instagram Page: https://www.instagram.com/surfingthroughcinema/ Follow My Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/surfingthroughcinema Follow My Letterboxd Page: https://letterboxd.com/_hawaiiharry/ Listen On Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/surfing-through-cinema/id1495693794

A Holonet Krónikák Light hatodik adásában Sir Alec Guinness utolsó Star Wars forgatásáról, Lauren Mary Kim A mandalore-iban eljátszott szerepeiről és George Lucas Disney-részvényeiről esett szó.

The pandemic has staggered the entertainment business worldwide -- is it starting to find ways to make a comeback? We check in with Stratford, Broadway and Beijing. And Bitcoin, the market numbers are raising interest, excitement and concern.  We try to answer the questions with a guest who has the cred to deal with them.

What a Creep: Peter Sellers Season 9, Episode 7   Peter Sellers was an English actor and comedian who influenced generations of legendary performers including The Beatles and Monty Python. Possibly known best by American audiences for playing Inspector Clouseau in the Pink Panther movies, he was an actor who was in the same league as Sir Alec Guinness with three Academy Award nominations in his career. When he died of a heart attack at the age of 54, he was on a professional highpoint after starring in Being There as Chauncey Gardner, a simple man who enters the world of Washington DC politics. But it wasn’t long after his death that his fans found out something that almost every single person who interacted with him—the guy was a huge miserable/abusive creep who attacked friends and family with his temper and unprofessional behavior. So, let us dive into the world of Sellers and his creepy ways. Trigger warnings: Domestic abuse, verbal abuse, cruelty, and hearing about a miserable prick making his family life a living hell. Sources used in this episode: Mental Floss The Express The Guardian The Sun Time magazine (2003) Peter Sellers Wikipedia “Mr. Strangelove: The Life of Peter Sellers” by Ed Sikov The Ghost of Peter Sellers Peter Sellers: A State of Comic Ecstasy (BBC) Paul Mazursky "Show Me the Magic" Be sure to follow us on social media! But don’t follow us too closely … don’t be a creep about it! Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts Twitter: https://twitter.com/CreepPod @CreepPod Facebook: Join the private group!  Instagram @WhatACreepPodcast Visit our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/whatacreep Email: WhatACreepPodcast@gmail.com  We’ve got merch here! https://whatacreeppodcast.threadless.com/# Our website is www.whatacreeppodcast.com  Our logo was created by Claudia Gomez-Rodriguez follow her on Instagram @ClaudInCloud

Merry Belated Christmas from everyone here at Production Meetings! This week the guys and I try and make due with what little news we found, talk a little Mando, and give our review of #Netflix's #MaRaineysBlackBottom.First in the news, we talk about #MGM's potential sale of their expansive film and TV library; including things like #Creed, #Rocky, and #LegallyBlonde. Second, we discuss #DavidGordonGreen may be directing a #TheExorcist sequel. Finally, we talk a little about #ZackSnyder and the possible release of the #SnyderCut of #JusticeLeague coming in March of 2021.This week on Alex's Classic Corner, Alex gives his thoughts on #DavidLean's classic WWII film #TheBridgeontheRiverKwai starring Sir Alec Guinness.Ryan then pops in just in time for us to have our last MANDO TIME for a while as we discuss the season 2 finale of #TheMandalorian.Last but not least, we talk about the amazing performances of #ViolaDavis and #ChadwickBoseman in #Netflix's newest #MaRaineysBlackBottom.Time codes are right below. Everyone here at Production Meetings hope that you had a safe and happy holiday. We also ask that you like our show and leave us a comment to let us know how we are doing. Thanks for listening!00:00-13:08—Catching Up13:09-17:10—MGM In Talks to Sell Library17:11-20:55—David Gordon Green May Direct Exorcist Sequel20:56-26:22—Tessa Thompson Teases MCU Characters for Thor: Love and Thunder26:23-34:13—Snyder Cut May Be Released in March 202134:14-42:47—Alex’s Classic Corner: The Bridge on the River Kwai42:48-1:11:30—MANDO TIME!! (With Ryan!) *Spoilers*1:11:31-1:28:29—Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom Review1:28:30-1:32:57—Coming Up Next Week

If anyone needs me, I'll be in my trailer. Josh Brown presents 10 Actors Who HATED Working On Amazing Movies...ENJOY!Follow us on Twitter:@JoshBroown@WhatCultureFor more awesome content, check out: whatculture.com/ See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Another big category this week from 2 Guys 5 Movies – comedies of the 1940s. Frank's list includes Heaven Can Wait, starring Don Ameche, two Cary Grant comedies – His Girl Friday and Arsenic and Old Lace – the Charlie Chaplin classic, The Great Dictator, and Robert Hamer's Kind Hearts and Coronets, starring Sir Alec Guinness. If you are a fan of the podcast, there are other two important ways you can help us. First, you can please subscribe, rate, and leave a review on your podcast client. That not only would be useful to us for the feedback, but also help us receive more attention. Second, if you like your Facebook page, 2 Guys 5 Movies, it would be helpful to like or share our posts so others can learn about 2 Guys 5 Movies and decide if it is for them. Finally, if you have your own ideas for the podcast, you can also email us with list suggestions at 2guys5movies@gmail.com, and thank you all for listening and your support.

In this week’s episode, Diane and Frank talk about the 1976 murder/mystery classic “Murder By Death”. Six detectives + one weirdo Truman Capote = hilarious comedy from Neil Simon.

This podcast looks at anything and everything to do with the War of the three Kingdoms. In this episode I speak to Keith Dowen, deputy-curator of the Royal Armouries, about the Littlecote Collection (the most important surviving civil war armoury) and the individual civil war artefacts in the collection such as:Iconic armour which was used by both sidesBuff coats and Mortuary SwordsKing Charles I's armourOne 1970 prop from the film 'Cromwell' starring Sir Alec Guinness and Richard HarrisHear more about Gustavus Adolphus's buff coat, and why that changed hands shortly after WWI. (not in the RA collection)To find out more about the civil war, you can read various articles relating to it on my blog: http://www.allegianceofblood.comPlease do subscribe to CavalierCast on Apple Podcasts! You can keep on touch with me on Twitter (@1642author) and Facebook (markturnbullauthor).Thanks for your support!

We look back on the life of decorated war hero, Sir Alec Guinness. From his on stage roles, Lieutenant during World War 2, to his most famous film roles. If you'd like to support a first responders family, check out these two great firefighter companies: https://www.directattackapparel.com/ use code STAYSHARP for 10% off @directattackapparel https://www.muertoscoffeeco.com/ use code MUERTOS for a discount @muertoscoffeeco If you'd like to support our show: https://reppsports.com/ & use our code DFAU at checkout @repp_sports @razeenergy --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Here's your look at 'Today in Rock History' featuring: Jesse Carmichael is 41. He's Maroon 5's keyboardist. Pedro Pascal is 45. He IS "The Mandolorian". You'd also know him as Oberyn Martell on "Game of Thrones"and as DEA Agent Javier Pena on "Narcos". Marvin Gaye was born on this day in 1939. He was shot by his own father, the day before his 45th birthday. Obi-Wan Kenobi, Sir Alec Guinness, was born on this day in 1914. Today in In 1989, the Mega Powers exploded at "Wrestlemania 5". Hulk Hogan and "The Macho Man" Randy Savagefought for the WWF Title AND for Miss Elizabeth's heart . . . and Hogan won both. AND In 2005, Pope John Paul The Second died at the age of 84.

Here's your look at 'Today in Rock History' featuring: Jesse Carmichael is 41. He's Maroon 5's keyboardist. Pedro Pascal is 45. He IS "The Mandolorian". You'd also know him as Oberyn Martell on "Game of Thrones"and as DEA Agent Javier Pena on "Narcos". Marvin Gaye was born on this day in 1939. He was shot by his own father, the day before his 45th birthday. Obi-Wan Kenobi, Sir Alec Guinness, was born on this day in 1914. Today in In 1989, the Mega Powers exploded at "Wrestlemania 5". Hulk Hogan and "The Macho Man" Randy Savagefought for the WWF Title AND for Miss Elizabeth's heart . . . and Hogan won both. AND In 2005, Pope John Paul The Second died at the age of 84.

Sri discusses the classic leadership essay "A Message to Garcia" and how to apply it in your work. And what stealing your mom's car has to do with Stranger Things.EXPLICIT EPISODE: If you have kids in the car, we hope you'll choose another.Connect with Sri on Instagram: @sri_the_warrior_poetnotesYes, Whole Foods does deliver Cherry Garcia ice cream from Ben & Jerry's, cuz treat yo'self (Whole Foods delivery)"A Message to Garcia" by Elbert Hubbard (PDF)The classic book Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T.E. Lawrence (aka Lawrence of Arabia)"The Eleven - Live in San Fracisco, 1969" by the Grateful Dead (Spotify) The movie 1917 (trailer | Amazon Prime Video) The movie Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy starring Gary Oldman. Addenda and corrections: Forgot to mention that Colin Firth was also(!) in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (Amazon Prime Video). The topics of this episode were more intertwined than even Sri had expected :) Sri was referring to the 2011 movie version of Tinker, Tailor, but there is also a BBC miniseries of the same name starring the late Sir Alec Guinness. Should prolly check it out! (Amazon) Intro and/or outro music in most episodes is by Paul Sridhar (Spotify). Disclaimer: Any audio clips are included with every intent and steps taken to abide by Fair Use and serve the purpose(s) of illustration, education, augmentation, or promotion of source content. 

On today's show, Anthony Daniels joins Dan Z to discuss his memoir, I am C-3PO-The Inside Story! The two discuss Anthony's experiences portraying the iconic droid, what's it's like to work with Sir Alec Guinness, how he feels about Threepio's red arm in The Force Awakens, and much more. Plus, he shares his thoughts on the trailer for The Rise of Skywalker. This is the podcast you're looking for!

It was March 22, 1976 -- the first day of shooting "Star Wars." As Mark Ramsey's new "Inside Star Wars" reimagines that day in the Tunisian desert, it included hours of falling droids, an unlikely cameo by Jesus Christ, and lots of doubt from Sir Alec Guinness. Ramsey, who also created "Inside Jaws," "Inside Psycho" and other podcasts, recently joined "Shoot This Now" to talk about Carrie Fisher's incredibly odyssey from reluctant actress to galactic icon. Ramsey also loaned us this brief excerpt of "Inside Star Wars," which you can subscribe to right here: https://wondery.com/shows/inside-star-wars/With meticulous research and George Lucas-like levels of imagination, Ramsey and producer Jeff Schmidt take you back to the start of "Star Wars": Inside George Lucas' doubts, Carrie Fisher's apprehension, and Sir Alec Guinness outright bewilderment. If you've forgotten why you loved "Star Wars," Ramsey's latest will remind you.And Tim and Deirdre will be back next week with an all-new "Shoot This Now." See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

From the Digital Box Set: In this episode, we look at famous people who began their careers in advertising. Many people who have gone on to shape popular culture cut their teeth in the world of marketing. From Dr. Seuss, Salman Rushdie and Bob Newhart, to Sir Alec Guinness - yes, Obi-Wan Kenobi himself - they all spent their formative years writing copy. Each learned some valuable skills on their way to the top. And their stories are remarkable. This is an archived episode that aired originally on March 14, 2014.

Sylvester Stallone recently revealed that he regretted killing off Apollo Creed so early in the Rocky franchise. He said there`s still lost more of the Rocky story to tell and that it would`ve been great to have Apollo still in it, especially with the success of the recent Creed movies. On that note, Ryan put together an interesting list of different actors who played a part in some pretty big and successful movies but absolutely hated their role -- Sean Connery hates James Bond, Sir Alec Guinness hated the Star Wars franchise and his character of Obi-Wan Kenobi and George Clooney hates that he was ever Batman… The Daily Derringer Podcast -- Thursday January 17th, 2019 Check out more full episodes at Q107.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Erick Estrada presenta un Retrovisor dedicado a la cinta del director David Lean, 'El Puente sobre el Río Kwai'; un clásico del cine bélico ganadora de siete premios Oscar que fue protagonizada por Sir Alec Guinness. Una película que innovaría en tecnología de filmación en su momento, marcando la pauta para el cine de guerra a posteriori. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Erick Estrada presenta un Retrovisor dedicado a la cinta del director David Lean, 'El Puente sobre el Río Kwai'; un clásico del cine bélico ganadora de siete premios Oscar que fue protagonizada por Sir Alec Guinness. Una película que innovaría en tecnología de filmación en su momento, marcando la pauta para el cine de guerra a posteriori.

They say only fools' rush in, True Believers and if I know any anything, I know that momma didn't raise no fools. Welcome back, folks. This is the Uticast, Episode #145 and this week, Bob Scholefield and Dr. Michael Attilio from Mohawk Valley Health Services join us, as we continue our on-going discussion surrounding the Downtown Hospital!! On Tap This Week: Kevin, Heather and Sam are back once again to unpack the most unnerving and deserving stories of the week, including Easter woes, awkward social moments, April Fools' Day and Laura Ingraham. Afterwards, Sam sits down with Bob Scholefield and Dr. Michael Attilio from Mohawk Valley Health Services to discuss the current status of the hospital, the process of dealing with currently established businesses and what we can expect to see going forward. Finally, the Crew comes back together to debate Sir Alec Guinness, cigarette thieves, cognitive offloading and WrestleMania 34. Plus, Either/Or!! This is The Uticast and we're here to tell you a story. #JoinTheClub #MadeInUtica UTICAST.COM Apple Podcasts Stitcher Soundcloud Made In Utica

We react to Last Jedi...Are we among the 50 percent that hated this film? Or are we gushing for joy? Spoilers ahead BEWARE Also from the same guys that predicted major developements for Force and Last Jedi we begin early predictions for Episode 9!

Madness! Madness! We're revisiting one of the all-time great war films for clues about The Last Jedi and making our final predictions in this week's episode of the Force Material podcast!This episode will be our last before The Last Jedi premieres and renders all of our idle speculation moot, so first up this week, we're putting it all on the table and making our final Episode VIII predictions. Who are Rey's parents? Is she just a random, or is the Force strong with her family?Is Snoke just a bloke, or is he actually a classic character back from the dead? How will it all end? What will the state of the galaxy look like heading into Episode IX? Bookmark this episode so you can see just how wrong all our guesses turn out to be when the film opens next week! Then, in our feature presentation, we're going back to director Rian Johnson's film camp to watch another of the films he made his cast and crew watch before they began shooting The Last Jedi. Directed by David Lean, The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) tells the story of a British officer and POW, Lieutenant Colonel Nicholson (played by Old Ben Kenobi himself, Sir Alec Guinness), who forms an unlikely working relationship with his Japanese captor, Colonel Saito (played by the utterly fascinating Sessue Hayakwawa).We're breaking down how Kwai relates to the other films in Johnson's program, and which recurring themes and scenarios pop up again here.And, mostly, we're just marveling at how bloody brilliant this 60-year-old film continues to be - especially that electrifying finale.

En la primera aparición televisiva en su ya larga y legendaria carrera, Sir Alec Guinness encarna al monacal agente de inteligencia George Smiley, vehículo a través del cual John le Carré despliega los grandes temas que cruzan su obra: el factor humano como debilidad y fortaleza; las labores de inteligencia como misión y vocación; y el cuestionamiento radical al valor de la "causa" por la que tanto y tantos se sacrifican. Mucho de puzzle, algo de thriller y bastante de tragedia hicieron del libro del libro una cumbre en la obra de su autor, cuya densidad rebalsa generosamente a esta adaptación y a otra posterior con Gary Oldman.

Star Wars news headlines with recent comments about the future of STAR WARS from Disney’s Bob Iger, interesting ROGUE ONE revelations from Riz Ahmed, an EPISODE IX update from director Colin Trevorrow, and a recently uncovered interview of Sir Alec Guinness talking about working with George Lucas on STAR WARS. And, speculation about Obi-Wan Kenobi and Boba Fett standalone films going before the cameras, and other rumors about the direction of the franchise. Plus, looking forward to Star Wars Celebration Orlando, STAR WARS in Pop Culture, and more stuff!

Derek Fowlds is one of Britain's best loved actors, with a career spanning over 60+ years. He is known by a whole generation of children as 'Mr Derek' from The Basil Brush Show, then as Bernard Woolley, Principal Private Secretary to the Minister for Administrative Affairs, in Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn’s biting political satire, Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister, and finally as Oscar Blaketon, in ITV’s Sunday night family drama, Heartbeat (throughout its eighteen year run). But as Mr Fowlds is keen to point out, these are just three of the many roles he’s played over the years - although he accepts that these are the most ‘iconic’ and high profile! His theatre work includes leads in Hamlet, Billy Liar, Macbeth, Chips With Everything and The Miracle Worker. Over the years he has worked with such luminaries as Sir Alec Guinness, Alistair Sim, Kenneth Moore, Anna Massey, Sir John Guilgud, Benedict Cumberbatch and Daniel Craig. In part 2 of this special feature length addition of SNS Online, Nick Randell visits ‘Mr Derek’ at his home in Bath, to talk about his wonderful career, and the people and experiences that helped to shape him along the way. You'll also find this show acts as the perfect companion to Derek's new autobiography, *A Part Worth Playing, available from all good book shops or online outlets (see below links). www.fantomfilms.co.uk/books/derekfow…rthplaying.htm www.amazon.co.uk/Part-Worth-Playi…hy/dp/B0192AXLPO Derek Fowlds/Twitter twitter.com/DerekFowldsshow Pt 1 https://soundcloud.com/scratchnsniff-rte-pulse/sns-online-series-3-derek-fowlds *Cover photography for A Part Worth Playing by Lisa Bowerman. SNS Online continues to offer an eclectic range of quality programming - free to download - to all like-minded people out there in cyber-space. These shows are independent podcasts produced to the highest professional standards and are non-profit making. So please enjoy, download and share these shows on all your lovely social media - as essentially that is our advertising! And please, please, please...offer feedback on the 'SNS Online' FB page or Twitter (ScratchNTweet). The last in the current series. Big kiss, ScratchNSniffers! - Nick Randell X EXTRAORDINARY LIVES. ONLINE.

Derek Fowlds is one of Britain's best loved actors, with a career spanning over 60+ years. He is known by a whole generation of children as 'Mr Derek' from The Basil Brush Show, then as Bernard Woolley, Principal Private Secretary to the Minister for Administrative Affairs, in Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn’s biting political satire, Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister, and finally as Oscar Blaketon, in ITV’s Sunday night family drama, Heartbeat (throughout its eighteen year run). But as Mr Fowlds is keen to point out, these are just three of the many roles he’s played over the years - although he accepts that these are the most ‘iconic’ and high profile! His theatre work includes leads in Hamlet, Billy Liar, Macbeth, Chips With Everything and The Miracle Worker. Over the years he has worked with such luminaries as Sir Alec Guinness, Alistair Sim, Kenneth Moore, Anna Massey, Sir John Guilgud, Benedict Cumberbatch and Daniel Craig. In part 1 of this special feature length addition of SNS Online, Nick Randell visits ‘Mr Derek’ at his home in Bath, to talk about his wonderful career, and the people and experiences that helped to shape him along the way. You'll also find this show acts as the perfect companion to Derek's new autobiography, A Part Worth Playing, available from all good book shops or online outlets (see below links). http://www.fantomfilms.co.uk/books/derekfowlds_apartworthplaying.htm https://www.amazon.co.uk/Part-Worth-Playing-My-Autobiography/dp/B0192AXLPO Derek Fowlds/Twitter https://twitter.com/DerekFowldsshow Pt 2 https://soundcloud.com/scratchnsniff-rte-pulse/sns-online-series-3-derek-fowlds-pt-2 SNS Online continues to offer an eclectic range of quality programming - free to download - to all like-minded people out there in cyber-space. These shows are independent podcasts produced to the highest professional standards and are non-profit making. So please enjoy, download and share these shows on all your lovely social media - as essentially that is our advertising! And please, please, please...offer feedback on the 'SNS Online' FB page or Twitter (ScratchNTweet). Big kiss, ScratchNSniffers! - Nick Randell X EXTRAORDINARY LIVES. ONLINE.

Under andra världskriget tjänstgjorde skådespelaren Sir Alec Guinness i brittiska flottan och deltog bland annat i landstigningarna på Sicilien under Operation Husky. Men för den breda allmänheten är han mest känd som Obi-Wan Kenobi i den första filmen om Stjärnornas krig.

Rancho Obi-Wan’s Steve Sansweet joins us to share his review of STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS. We review audio highlights of director Colin Trevorrow talking EPISODE IX at Sundance and Ewan McGregor on "Jimmy Kimmel Live". We open up the RFR Sound lab to deconstruct and reconstruct Sir Alec Guinness’s surprise vocal appearance in TFA. Plus, Listener Voice Mails, Topps STAR WARS trading cards, TFA on BluRay and more. 

This week on the Mispronounced Item Sarah and Nathan discuss BAFTA winners and Oscar hopefuls, and in particular Boyhood and The Grand Budapest Hotel. Nathan picks some favourite passages from the diaries of Sir Alec Guinness - without a mention of Star Wars - and Sarah talks about her piece for the New Statesman on Germany's Mega Brothels.

Neil Simon saw Alec Guinness reading the script for “Star Wars” on the set of “Murder By Death,” and very soon after that, Guinness would be known as Obi Wan Kenobi to the world. But there is so much more to Guinness before that series of films, and in this particular series, so much humor. Join us — Pete Wright and Andy Nelson — as we close out our Sir Alec Guinness series with Robert Moore's 1976 film “Murder By Death.” We talk about Neil Simon's comedy writing here, how it worked for us now, and, for Pete, how it's changed since he first saw it when he was young — the story definitely has aged. We chat about Guinness's performance as Jamesir Bensonmum, the blind butler, and how much we love what he brings to the table here. We discuss the other actors — the detectives played by Peter Falk, Peter Sellers, James Coco, David Niven, Elsa Lanchester; their seconds including Maggie Smith, Eileen Brennan and a very young James Cromwell; and in a surprising turn, Truman Capote as the mysterious host. We touch on Dave Grusin and what he brings to the table as the composer. And we can't help but compare the movie to “Clue,” the one that we both hold in our hearts as a guilty pleasure. It's a light and inconsequential film to talk about, despite its story problems. It's worth a watch. Then tune in once you have!

Neil Simon saw Alec Guinness reading the script for “Star Wars” on the set of “Murder By Death,” and very soon after that, Guinness would be known as Obi Wan Kenobi to the world. But there is so much more to Guinness before that series of films, and in this particular series, so much humor. Join us — Pete Wright and Andy Nelson — as we close out our Sir Alec Guinness series with Robert Moore’s 1976 film “Murder By Death.” We talk about Neil Simon’s comedy writing here, how it worked for us now, and, for Pete, how it’s changed since he first saw it when he was young — the story definitely has aged. We chat about Guinness’s performance as Jamesir Bensonmum, the blind butler, and how much we love what he brings to the table here. We discuss the other actors — the detectives played by Peter Falk, Peter Sellers, James Coco, David Niven, Elsa Lanchester; their seconds including Maggie Smith, Eileen Brennan and a very young James Cromwell; and in a surprising turn, Truman Capote as the mysterious host. We touch on Dave Grusin and what he brings to the table as the composer. And we can’t help but compare the movie to “Clue,” the one that we both hold in our hearts as a guilty pleasure. It’s a light and inconsequential film to talk about, despite its story problems. It’s worth a watch. Then tune in once you have!

Neil Simon saw Alec Guinness reading the script for “Star Wars” on the set of “Murder By Death,” and very soon after that, Guinness would be known as Obi Wan Kenobi to the world. But there is so much more to Guinness before that series of films, and in this particular series, so much humor. Join us — Pete Wright and Andy Nelson — as we close out our Sir Alec Guinness series with Robert Moore's 1976 film “Murder By Death.” We talk about Neil Simon's comedy writing here, how it worked for us now, and, for Pete, how it's changed since he first saw it when he was young — the story definitely has aged. We chat about Guinness's performance as Jamesir Bensonmum, the blind butler, and how much we love what he brings to the table here. We discuss the other actors — the detectives played by Peter Falk, Peter Sellers, James Coco, David Niven, Elsa Lanchester; their seconds including Maggie Smith, Eileen Brennan and a very young James Cromwell; and in a surprising turn, Truman Capote as the mysterious host. We touch on Dave Grusin and what he brings to the table as the composer. And we can't help but compare the movie to “Clue,” the one that we both hold in our hearts as a guilty pleasure. It's a light and inconsequential film to talk about, despite its story problems. It's worth a watch. Then tune in once you have!

Neil Simon saw Alec Guinness reading the script for “Star Wars” on the set of “Murder By Death,” and very soon after that, Guinness would be known as Obi Wan Kenobi to the world. But there is so much more to Guinness before that series of films, and in this particular series, so much humor. Join us — Pete Wright and Andy Nelson — as we close out our Sir Alec Guinness series with Robert Moore's 1976 film “Murder By Death.” We talk about Neil Simon's comedy writing here, how it worked for us now, and, for Pete, how it's changed since he first saw it when he was young — the story definitely has aged. We chat about Guinness's performance as Jamesir Bensonmum, the blind butler, and how much we love what he brings to the table here. We discuss the other actors — the detectives played by Peter Falk, Peter Sellers, James Coco, David Niven, Elsa Lanchester; their seconds including Maggie Smith, Eileen Brennan and a very young James Cromwell; and in a surprising turn, Truman Capote as the mysterious host. We touch on Dave Grusin and what he brings to the table as the composer. And we can't help but compare the movie to “Clue,” the one that we both hold in our hearts as a guilty pleasure. It's a light and inconsequential film to talk about, despite its story problems. It's worth a watch. Then tune in once you have!

Alec Guinness's Professor Marcus really meets his match with Katie Johnson's Mrs. Wilberforce in Alexander Mackendrick's 1955 Ealing Studios comedy "The Ladykillers," what some call the last great comedy from the studio. Where he plots and schemes to rob a bank truck, she makes tea and makes sure her guests act like gentlemen -- even when those men are thieves. It's a great premise for this film, and one that makes at least half of us on the show laugh. Join us -- Pete Wright and Andy Nelson -- as we continue our Sir Alec Guinness series with "The Ladykillers." We talk about why it worked so well for Andy and why it didn't for Pete, looking at everything from the characters to the situations to the overall story. We chat about the performances from the actors playing the five criminals -- Guinness, Peter Sellers, Herbert Lom, Cecil Parker and Danny Green -- as well as the very well mannered Mrs. Wilberforce played by the brilliant Johnson. We discuss the look of the film and the cinematography by Otto Heller, the great score by Tristram Cary and the Oscar-nominated writing by William Rose. We touch on the Coen remake and Tom Hanks playing the Guinness role. And we chat about how great Guinness really is in this film and how we're thrilled to be doing a series on him right now. So check it out -- let us know what you think about the movie. Love it? Hate it? We want to know!

Alec Guinness's Professor Marcus really meets his match with Katie Johnson's Mrs. Wilberforce in Alexander Mackendrick's 1955 Ealing Studios comedy "The Ladykillers," what some call the last great comedy from the studio. Where he plots and schemes to rob a bank truck, she makes tea and makes sure her guests act like gentlemen -- even when those men are thieves. It's a great premise for this film, and one that makes at least half of us on the show laugh. Join us -- Pete Wright and Andy Nelson -- as we continue our Sir Alec Guinness series with "The Ladykillers." We talk about why it worked so well for Andy and why it didn't for Pete, looking at everything from the characters to the situations to the overall story. We chat about the performances from the actors playing the five criminals -- Guinness, Peter Sellers, Herbert Lom, Cecil Parker and Danny Green -- as well as the very well mannered Mrs. Wilberforce played by the brilliant Johnson. We discuss the look of the film and the cinematography by Otto Heller, the great score by Tristram Cary and the Oscar-nominated writing by William Rose. We touch on the Coen remake and Tom Hanks playing the Guinness role. And we chat about how great Guinness really is in this film and how we're thrilled to be doing a series on him right now. So check it out -- let us know what you think about the movie. Love it? Hate it? We want to know!

Alec Guinness's Professor Marcus really meets his match with Katie Johnson's Mrs. Wilberforce in Alexander Mackendrick's 1955 Ealing Studios comedy "The Ladykillers," what some call the last great comedy from the studio. Where he plots and schemes to rob a bank truck, she makes tea and makes sure her guests act like gentlemen -- even when those men are thieves. It's a great premise for this film, and one that makes at least half of us on the show laugh. Join us -- Pete Wright and Andy Nelson -- as we continue our Sir Alec Guinness series with "The Ladykillers." We talk about why it worked so well for Andy and why it didn't for Pete, looking at everything from the characters to the situations to the overall story. We chat about the performances from the actors playing the five criminals -- Guinness, Peter Sellers, Herbert Lom, Cecil Parker and Danny Green -- as well as the very well mannered Mrs. Wilberforce played by the brilliant Johnson. We discuss the look of the film and the cinematography by Otto Heller, the great score by Tristram Cary and the Oscar-nominated writing by William Rose. We touch on the Coen remake and Tom Hanks playing the Guinness role. And we chat about how great Guinness really is in this film and how we're thrilled to be doing a series on him right now. So check it out -- let us know what you think about the movie. Love it? Hate it? We want to know!

Alec Guinness's Professor Marcus really meets his match with Katie Johnson's Mrs. Wilberforce in Alexander Mackendrick's 1955 Ealing Studios comedy "The Ladykillers," what some call the last great comedy from the studio. Where he plots and schemes to rob a bank truck, she makes tea and makes sure her guests act like gentlemen -- even when those men are thieves. It's a great premise for this film, and one that makes at least half of us on the show laugh. Join us -- Pete Wright and Andy Nelson -- as we continue our Sir Alec Guinness series with "The Ladykillers." We talk about why it worked so well for Andy and why it didn't for Pete, looking at everything from the characters to the situations to the overall story. We chat about the performances from the actors playing the five criminals -- Guinness, Peter Sellers, Herbert Lom, Cecil Parker and Danny Green -- as well as the very well mannered Mrs. Wilberforce played by the brilliant Johnson. We discuss the look of the film and the cinematography by Otto Heller, the great score by Tristram Cary and the Oscar-nominated writing by William Rose. We touch on the Coen remake and Tom Hanks playing the Guinness role. And we chat about how great Guinness really is in this film and how we're thrilled to be doing a series on him right now. So check it out -- let us know what you think about the movie. Love it? Hate it? We want to know!

Ealing Studios comedies, particularly the ones we've been talking about, have all had a bit of an anti-establishment feel to them but “The Man in the White Suit” feels like they were trying to something a bit more with it. The film is fascinating satirical comedy looking at the relationship between the factory owners and the union laborers in England back in the 50s that doesn't just focus on their differences but also finds a way to bring the two groups together. The reason for their coming together is, of course, the titular character, played wonderfully by Sir Alec Guinness. Join us — Pete Wright and Andy Nelson — as we talk about this great Alexander Mackendrick film from 1951 as the next in our Guinness series. We talk about why we find this film so fascinating, and how this film is really the foundation for our podcast. We chat about Guinness and the way he plays his character, as well as many of the other wonderful actors who do so well here, namely Joan Greenwood, Cecil Parker and Michael Gough. We discuss the wonderful cinematography by Douglas Slocombe, working with more shadows than we've seen before, as well as Mackendrick and what he brings to the table. And we chat about some of the effects, from the luminescent suit to the stunt of Guinness scaling the side of the house to escape. It's a brilliant film, one which we both love, and one which more people should really see. So check it out then tune in! Hey! You know what would be awesome? If you would drop us a positive rating on iTunes! If you like what we're doing here on TNR, it really is the best way to make sure that this show appears when others search for it, plus, it's just a nice thing to do. Thanks!! The Next Reel on iTunes The Next Reel on Facebook The Next Reel on Twitter The Next Reel on Flickchart The Next Reel on Letterboxd Guess the Movie with The Next Reel on Instagram Check out the Posters with The Next Reel on Pinterest And for anyone interested in our fine bouquet of show hosts: Follow Andy Nelson on Twitter Follow Pete Wright on Twitter Follow Steve Sarmento on Twitter Check out Tom Metz on IMDB Follow Mike Evans on Twitter Follow Chadd Stoops on Twitter Follow Steven Smart on Letterboxd

Ealing Studios comedies, particularly the ones we’ve been talking about, have all had a bit of an anti-establishment feel to them but “The Man in the White Suit” feels like they were trying to something a bit more with it. The film is fascinating satirical comedy looking at the relationship between the factory owners and the union laborers in England back in the 50s that doesn’t just focus on their differences but also finds a way to bring the two groups together. The reason for their coming together is, of course, the titular character, played wonderfully by Sir Alec Guinness. Join us — Pete Wright and Andy Nelson — as we talk about this great Alexander Mackendrick film from 1951 as the next in our Guinness series. We talk about why we find this film so fascinating, and how this film is really the foundation for our podcast. We chat about Guinness and the way he plays his character, as well as many of the other wonderful actors who do so well here, namely Joan Greenwood, Cecil Parker and Michael Gough. We discuss the wonderful cinematography by Douglas Slocombe, working with more shadows than we’ve seen before, as well as Mackendrick and what he brings to the table. And we chat about some of the effects, from the luminescent suit to the stunt of Guinness scaling the side of the house to escape. It’s a brilliant film, one which we both love, and one which more people should really see. So check it out then tune in! Hey! You know what would be awesome? If you would drop us a positive rating on iTunes! If you like what we’re doing here on TNR, it really is the best way to make sure that this show appears when others search for it, plus, it’s just a nice thing to do. Thanks!! The Next Reel on iTunes The Next Reel on Facebook The Next Reel on Twitter The Next Reel on Flickchart The Next Reel on Letterboxd Guess the Movie with The Next Reel on Instagram Check out the Posters with The Next Reel on Pinterest And for anyone interested in our fine bouquet of show hosts: Follow Andy Nelson on Twitter Follow Pete Wright on Twitter Follow Steve Sarmento on Twitter Check out Tom Metz on IMDB Follow Mike Evans on Twitter Follow Chadd Stoops on Twitter Follow Steven Smart on Letterboxd

Ealing Studios comedies, particularly the ones we've been talking about, have all had a bit of an anti-establishment feel to them but “The Man in the White Suit” feels like they were trying to something a bit more with it. The film is fascinating satirical comedy looking at the relationship between the factory owners and the union laborers in England back in the 50s that doesn't just focus on their differences but also finds a way to bring the two groups together. The reason for their coming together is, of course, the titular character, played wonderfully by Sir Alec Guinness. Join us — Pete Wright and Andy Nelson — as we talk about this great Alexander Mackendrick film from 1951 as the next in our Guinness series. We talk about why we find this film so fascinating, and how this film is really the foundation for our podcast. We chat about Guinness and the way he plays his character, as well as many of the other wonderful actors who do so well here, namely Joan Greenwood, Cecil Parker and Michael Gough. We discuss the wonderful cinematography by Douglas Slocombe, working with more shadows than we've seen before, as well as Mackendrick and what he brings to the table. And we chat about some of the effects, from the luminescent suit to the stunt of Guinness scaling the side of the house to escape. It's a brilliant film, one which we both love, and one which more people should really see. So check it out then tune in!* * *Hey! You know what would be awesome? If you would drop us a positive rating on iTunes! If you like what we're doing here on TNR, it really is the best way to make sure that this show appears when others search for it, plus, it's just a nice thing to do. Thanks!!- [The Next Reel on iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-next-reel/id478159328?mt=2)- [The Next Reel on Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/TheNextReel)- [The Next Reel on Twitter](http://twitter.com/thenextreel)- [The Next Reel on Flickchart](http://www.flickchart.com/thenextreel)- [The Next Reel on Letterboxd](http://letterboxd.com/thenextreel/)- [Guess the Movie with The Next Reel on Instagram](http://instagram.com/thenextreel)- [Check out the Posters with The Next Reel on Pinterest](http://pinterest.com/thenextreel)And for anyone interested in our fine bouquet of show hosts:- [Follow Andy Nelson on Twitter](http://twitter.com/sodacreekfilm)- [Follow Pete Wright on Twitter](http://twitter.com/petewright)- [Follow Steve Sarmento on Twitter](https://twitter.com/mr_steve23)- [Check out Tom Metz on IMDB](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1224453/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1)- [Follow Mike Evans on Twitter](https://twitter.com/ubersky)- [Follow Chadd Stoops on Twitter](https://twitter.com/ChaddStoops)- [Follow Steven Smart on Letterboxd](http://letterboxd.com/steamrobot/)

Ealing Studios comedies, particularly the ones we've been talking about, have all had a bit of an anti-establishment feel to them but “The Man in the White Suit” feels like they were trying to something a bit more with it. The film is fascinating satirical comedy looking at the relationship between the factory owners and the union laborers in England back in the 50s that doesn't just focus on their differences but also finds a way to bring the two groups together. The reason for their coming together is, of course, the titular character, played wonderfully by Sir Alec Guinness. Join us — Pete Wright and Andy Nelson — as we talk about this great Alexander Mackendrick film from 1951 as the next in our Guinness series. We talk about why we find this film so fascinating, and how this film is really the foundation for our podcast. We chat about Guinness and the way he plays his character, as well as many of the other wonderful actors who do so well here, namely Joan Greenwood, Cecil Parker and Michael Gough. We discuss the wonderful cinematography by Douglas Slocombe, working with more shadows than we've seen before, as well as Mackendrick and what he brings to the table. And we chat about some of the effects, from the luminescent suit to the stunt of Guinness scaling the side of the house to escape. It's a brilliant film, one which we both love, and one which more people should really see. So check it out then tune in!* * *Hey! You know what would be awesome? If you would drop us a positive rating on iTunes! If you like what we're doing here on TNR, it really is the best way to make sure that this show appears when others search for it, plus, it's just a nice thing to do. Thanks!!- [The Next Reel on iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-next-reel/id478159328?mt=2)- [The Next Reel on Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/TheNextReel)- [The Next Reel on Twitter](http://twitter.com/thenextreel)- [The Next Reel on Flickchart](http://www.flickchart.com/thenextreel)- [The Next Reel on Letterboxd](http://letterboxd.com/thenextreel/)- [Guess the Movie with The Next Reel on Instagram](http://instagram.com/thenextreel)- [Check out the Posters with The Next Reel on Pinterest](http://pinterest.com/thenextreel)And for anyone interested in our fine bouquet of show hosts:- [Follow Andy Nelson on Twitter](http://twitter.com/sodacreekfilm)- [Follow Pete Wright on Twitter](http://twitter.com/petewright)- [Follow Steve Sarmento on Twitter](https://twitter.com/mr_steve23)- [Check out Tom Metz on IMDB](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1224453/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1)- [Follow Mike Evans on Twitter](https://twitter.com/ubersky)- [Follow Chadd Stoops on Twitter](https://twitter.com/ChaddStoops)- [Follow Steven Smart on Letterboxd](http://letterboxd.com/steamrobot/)

Sir Alec Guinness had already proven both his comedic and dramatic prowess by the time he came to Ealing Studios’ “The Lavender Hill Mob” in 1951, a point in his career when he was making two films a year. He’d continue working in both comedy and drama throughout his career, but we’re lucky to still be talking about his comedies because “The Lavender Hill Mob” is an absolute delight. Join us — Pete Wright and Andy Nelson — as we continue our Sir Alec Guinness series with a conversation about his seventh film, directed by Charles Crichton. We talk about the comedy in this film and why it still works so well six and a half decades later. We chat about Crichton and his wonderful directing, and compare this film with his last film, 1988’s “A Fish Called Wanda,” which he directed and co-wrote. We discuss Guinness and the other actors making up the titular mob — Stanley Holloway, Sidney James and Alfie Bass — and look at what they each brought to the table. We chat about our favorite moments of the film and why, even with its problems, it’s still an utterly enjoyable caper film. And we point out several familiar faces that you may miss scattered throughout the film — see if you can catch them! It’s an absolute delight of a crime caper film, one which we have a great time talking about. Tune in! Hey! You know what would be awesome? If you would drop us a positive rating on iTunes! If you like what we’re doing here on TNR, it really is the best way to make sure that this show appears when others search for it, plus, it’s just a nice thing to do. Thanks!! The Next Reel on iTunes The Next Reel on Facebook The Next Reel on Twitter The Next Reel on Flickchart The Next Reel on Letterboxd Guess the Movie with The Next Reel on Instagram Check out the Posters with The Next Reel on Pinterest And for anyone interested in our fine bouquet of show hosts: Follow Andy Nelson on Twitter Follow Pete Wright on Twitter Follow Steve Sarmento on Twitter Check out Tom Metz on IMDB Follow Mike Evans on Twitter Follow Chadd Stoops on Twitter Follow Steven Smart on Letterboxd

Sir Alec Guinness had already proven both his comedic and dramatic prowess by the time he came to Ealing Studios' “The Lavender Hill Mob” in 1951, a point in his career when he was making two films a year. He'd continue working in both comedy and drama throughout his career, but we're lucky to still be talking about his comedies because “The Lavender Hill Mob” is an absolute delight. Join us — Pete Wright and Andy Nelson — as we continue our Sir Alec Guinness series with a conversation about his seventh film, directed by Charles Crichton. We talk about the comedy in this film and why it still works so well six and a half decades later. We chat about Crichton and his wonderful directing, and compare this film with his last film, 1988's “A Fish Called Wanda,” which he directed and co-wrote. We discuss Guinness and the other actors making up the titular mob — Stanley Holloway, Sidney James and Alfie Bass — and look at what they each brought to the table. We chat about our favorite moments of the film and why, even with its problems, it's still an utterly enjoyable caper film. And we point out several familiar faces that you may miss scattered throughout the film — see if you can catch them! It's an absolute delight of a crime caper film, one which we have a great time talking about. Tune in! Hey! You know what would be awesome? If you would drop us a positive rating on iTunes! If you like what we're doing here on TNR, it really is the best way to make sure that this show appears when others search for it, plus, it's just a nice thing to do. Thanks!! The Next Reel on iTunes The Next Reel on Facebook The Next Reel on Twitter The Next Reel on Flickchart The Next Reel on Letterboxd Guess the Movie with The Next Reel on Instagram Check out the Posters with The Next Reel on Pinterest And for anyone interested in our fine bouquet of show hosts: Follow Andy Nelson on Twitter Follow Pete Wright on Twitter Follow Steve Sarmento on Twitter Check out Tom Metz on IMDB Follow Mike Evans on Twitter Follow Chadd Stoops on Twitter Follow Steven Smart on Letterboxd

Sir Alec Guinness had already proven both his comedic and dramatic prowess by the time he came to Ealing Studios' “The Lavender Hill Mob” in 1951, a point in his career when he was making two films a year. He'd continue working in both comedy and drama throughout his career, but we're lucky to still be talking about his comedies because “The Lavender Hill Mob” is an absolute delight. Join us — Pete Wright and Andy Nelson — as we continue our Sir Alec Guinness series with a conversation about his seventh film, directed by Charles Crichton. We talk about the comedy in this film and why it still works so well six and a half decades later. We chat about Crichton and his wonderful directing, and compare this film with his last film, 1988's “A Fish Called Wanda,” which he directed and co-wrote. We discuss Guinness and the other actors making up the titular mob — Stanley Holloway, Sidney James and Alfie Bass — and look at what they each brought to the table. We chat about our favorite moments of the film and why, even with its problems, it's still an utterly enjoyable caper film. And we point out several familiar faces that you may miss scattered throughout the film — see if you can catch them! It's an absolute delight of a crime caper film, one which we have a great time talking about. Tune in!* * *Hey! You know what would be awesome? If you would drop us a positive rating on iTunes! If you like what we're doing here on TNR, it really is the best way to make sure that this show appears when others search for it, plus, it's just a nice thing to do. Thanks!!- [The Next Reel on iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-next-reel/id478159328?mt=2)- [The Next Reel on Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/TheNextReel)- [The Next Reel on Twitter](http://twitter.com/thenextreel)- [The Next Reel on Flickchart](http://www.flickchart.com/thenextreel)- [The Next Reel on Letterboxd](http://letterboxd.com/thenextreel/)- [Guess the Movie with The Next Reel on Instagram](http://instagram.com/thenextreel)- [Check out the Posters with The Next Reel on Pinterest](http://pinterest.com/thenextreel)And for anyone interested in our fine bouquet of show hosts:- [Follow Andy Nelson on Twitter](http://twitter.com/sodacreekfilm)- [Follow Pete Wright on Twitter](http://twitter.com/petewright)- [Follow Steve Sarmento on Twitter](https://twitter.com/mr_steve23)- [Check out Tom Metz on IMDB](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1224453/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1)- [Follow Mike Evans on Twitter](https://twitter.com/ubersky)- [Follow Chadd Stoops on Twitter](https://twitter.com/ChaddStoops)- [Follow Steven Smart on Letterboxd](http://letterboxd.com/steamrobot/)

Sir Alec Guinness had already proven both his comedic and dramatic prowess by the time he came to Ealing Studios' “The Lavender Hill Mob” in 1951, a point in his career when he was making two films a year. He'd continue working in both comedy and drama throughout his career, but we're lucky to still be talking about his comedies because “The Lavender Hill Mob” is an absolute delight. Join us — Pete Wright and Andy Nelson — as we continue our Sir Alec Guinness series with a conversation about his seventh film, directed by Charles Crichton. We talk about the comedy in this film and why it still works so well six and a half decades later. We chat about Crichton and his wonderful directing, and compare this film with his last film, 1988's “A Fish Called Wanda,” which he directed and co-wrote. We discuss Guinness and the other actors making up the titular mob — Stanley Holloway, Sidney James and Alfie Bass — and look at what they each brought to the table. We chat about our favorite moments of the film and why, even with its problems, it's still an utterly enjoyable caper film. And we point out several familiar faces that you may miss scattered throughout the film — see if you can catch them! It's an absolute delight of a crime caper film, one which we have a great time talking about. Tune in!* * *Hey! You know what would be awesome? If you would drop us a positive rating on iTunes! If you like what we're doing here on TNR, it really is the best way to make sure that this show appears when others search for it, plus, it's just a nice thing to do. Thanks!!- [The Next Reel on iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-next-reel/id478159328?mt=2)- [The Next Reel on Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/TheNextReel)- [The Next Reel on Twitter](http://twitter.com/thenextreel)- [The Next Reel on Flickchart](http://www.flickchart.com/thenextreel)- [The Next Reel on Letterboxd](http://letterboxd.com/thenextreel/)- [Guess the Movie with The Next Reel on Instagram](http://instagram.com/thenextreel)- [Check out the Posters with The Next Reel on Pinterest](http://pinterest.com/thenextreel)And for anyone interested in our fine bouquet of show hosts:- [Follow Andy Nelson on Twitter](http://twitter.com/sodacreekfilm)- [Follow Pete Wright on Twitter](http://twitter.com/petewright)- [Follow Steve Sarmento on Twitter](https://twitter.com/mr_steve23)- [Check out Tom Metz on IMDB](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1224453/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1)- [Follow Mike Evans on Twitter](https://twitter.com/ubersky)- [Follow Chadd Stoops on Twitter](https://twitter.com/ChaddStoops)- [Follow Steven Smart on Letterboxd](http://letterboxd.com/steamrobot/)

Sir Alec Guinness may always be remembered as Obi Wan Kenobi, but his career goes far beyond those three little science fiction films he did late in his career. He worked many times with David Lean. He gave life to the spy George Smiley long before Gary Oldman. And he starred in a number of the great Ealing comedies, his first of which is “Kind Hearts and Coronets,” where he pulls a Peter Sellers by playing 8 of the characters in the film. Join us — Pete Wright and Andy Nelson — as we begin our Sir Alec Guinness series by talking about Robert Hamer's 1949 comedy “Kind Hearts and Coronets.” We talk about the comedy in this film, and how clever it is to write a script in which the audience roots for the protagonist even though he's planning on committing a number of murders. We discuss the brilliant performances, from Dennis Price and Valerie Hobson to Joan Greenwood and, of course, Guinness. Not to mention a memorable turn from Miles Malleson. We chat about the cinematography by Douglas Slocombe, who we last discussed way back at the beginning of our run with the Indiana Jones series. And we talk about a recent script on the 2014 Black List, “Rothchild,” written by John Patton Ford, that takes this story and updates it. We even bring Ford on to discuss it with us. It's a great way to kick off our Guinness series and we have a great conversation about this brilliantly funny film. Tune in! Hey! You know what would be awesome? If you would drop us a positive rating on iTunes! If you like what we're doing here on TNR, it really is the best way to make sure that this show appears when others search for it, plus, it's just a nice thing to do. Thanks!! The Next Reel on iTunes The Next Reel on Facebook The Next Reel on Twitter The Next Reel on Flickchart The Next Reel on Letterboxd Guess the Movie with The Next Reel on Instagram Check out the Posters with The Next Reel on Pinterest And for anyone interested in our fine bouquet of show hosts: Follow Andy Nelson on Twitter Follow Pete Wright on Twitter Follow Steve Sarmento on Twitter Check out Tom Metz on IMDB Follow Mike Evans on Twitter Follow Chadd Stoops on Twitter Follow Steven Smart on Letterboxd

Sir Alec Guinness may always be remembered as Obi Wan Kenobi, but his career goes far beyond those three little science fiction films he did late in his career. He worked many times with David Lean. He gave life to the spy George Smiley long before Gary Oldman. And he starred in a number of the great Ealing comedies, his first of which is “Kind Hearts and Coronets,” where he pulls a Peter Sellers by playing 8 of the characters in the film. Join us — Pete Wright and Andy Nelson — as we begin our Sir Alec Guinness series by talking about Robert Hamer’s 1949 comedy “Kind Hearts and Coronets.” We talk about the comedy in this film, and how clever it is to write a script in which the audience roots for the protagonist even though he’s planning on committing a number of murders. We discuss the brilliant performances, from Dennis Price and Valerie Hobson to Joan Greenwood and, of course, Guinness. Not to mention a memorable turn from Miles Malleson. We chat about the cinematography by Douglas Slocombe, who we last discussed way back at the beginning of our run with the Indiana Jones series. And we talk about a recent script on the 2014 Black List, “Rothchild,” written by John Patton Ford, that takes this story and updates it. We even bring Ford on to discuss it with us. It’s a great way to kick off our Guinness series and we have a great conversation about this brilliantly funny film. Tune in! Hey! You know what would be awesome? If you would drop us a positive rating on iTunes! If you like what we’re doing here on TNR, it really is the best way to make sure that this show appears when others search for it, plus, it’s just a nice thing to do. Thanks!! The Next Reel on iTunes The Next Reel on Facebook The Next Reel on Twitter The Next Reel on Flickchart The Next Reel on Letterboxd Guess the Movie with The Next Reel on Instagram Check out the Posters with The Next Reel on Pinterest And for anyone interested in our fine bouquet of show hosts: Follow Andy Nelson on Twitter Follow Pete Wright on Twitter Follow Steve Sarmento on Twitter Check out Tom Metz on IMDB Follow Mike Evans on Twitter Follow Chadd Stoops on Twitter Follow Steven Smart on Letterboxd

Sir Alec Guinness may always be remembered as Obi Wan Kenobi, but his career goes far beyond those three little science fiction films he did late in his career. He worked many times with David Lean. He gave life to the spy George Smiley long before Gary Oldman. And he starred in a number of the great Ealing comedies, his first of which is “Kind Hearts and Coronets,” where he pulls a Peter Sellers by playing 8 of the characters in the film. Join us — Pete Wright and Andy Nelson — as we begin our Sir Alec Guinness series by talking about Robert Hamer's 1949 comedy “Kind Hearts and Coronets.” We talk about the comedy in this film, and how clever it is to write a script in which the audience roots for the protagonist even though he's planning on committing a number of murders. We discuss the brilliant performances, from Dennis Price and Valerie Hobson to Joan Greenwood and, of course, Guinness. Not to mention a memorable turn from Miles Malleson. We chat about the cinematography by Douglas Slocombe, who we last discussed way back at the beginning of our run with the Indiana Jones series. And we talk about a recent script on the 2014 Black List, “Rothchild,” written by John Patton Ford, that takes this story and updates it. We even bring Ford on to discuss it with us. It's a great way to kick off our Guinness series and we have a great conversation about this brilliantly funny film. Tune in!* * *Hey! You know what would be awesome? If you would drop us a positive rating on iTunes! If you like what we're doing here on TNR, it really is the best way to make sure that this show appears when others search for it, plus, it's just a nice thing to do. Thanks!!- [The Next Reel on iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-next-reel/id478159328?mt=2)- [The Next Reel on Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/TheNextReel)- [The Next Reel on Twitter](http://twitter.com/thenextreel)- [The Next Reel on Flickchart](http://www.flickchart.com/thenextreel)- [The Next Reel on Letterboxd](http://letterboxd.com/thenextreel/)- [Guess the Movie with The Next Reel on Instagram](http://instagram.com/thenextreel)- [Check out the Posters with The Next Reel on Pinterest](http://pinterest.com/thenextreel)And for anyone interested in our fine bouquet of show hosts:- [Follow Andy Nelson on Twitter](http://twitter.com/sodacreekfilm)- [Follow Pete Wright on Twitter](http://twitter.com/petewright)- [Follow Steve Sarmento on Twitter](https://twitter.com/mr_steve23)- [Check out Tom Metz on IMDB](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1224453/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1)- [Follow Mike Evans on Twitter](https://twitter.com/ubersky)- [Follow Chadd Stoops on Twitter](https://twitter.com/ChaddStoops)- [Follow Steven Smart on Letterboxd](http://letterboxd.com/steamrobot/)

Sir Alec Guinness may always be remembered as Obi Wan Kenobi, but his career goes far beyond those three little science fiction films he did late in his career. He worked many times with David Lean. He gave life to the spy George Smiley long before Gary Oldman. And he starred in a number of the great Ealing comedies, his first of which is “Kind Hearts and Coronets,” where he pulls a Peter Sellers by playing 8 of the characters in the film. Join us — Pete Wright and Andy Nelson — as we begin our Sir Alec Guinness series by talking about Robert Hamer's 1949 comedy “Kind Hearts and Coronets.” We talk about the comedy in this film, and how clever it is to write a script in which the audience roots for the protagonist even though he's planning on committing a number of murders. We discuss the brilliant performances, from Dennis Price and Valerie Hobson to Joan Greenwood and, of course, Guinness. Not to mention a memorable turn from Miles Malleson. We chat about the cinematography by Douglas Slocombe, who we last discussed way back at the beginning of our run with the Indiana Jones series. And we talk about a recent script on the 2014 Black List, “Rothchild,” written by John Patton Ford, that takes this story and updates it. We even bring Ford on to discuss it with us. It's a great way to kick off our Guinness series and we have a great conversation about this brilliantly funny film. Tune in!* * *Hey! You know what would be awesome? If you would drop us a positive rating on iTunes! If you like what we're doing here on TNR, it really is the best way to make sure that this show appears when others search for it, plus, it's just a nice thing to do. Thanks!!- [The Next Reel on iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-next-reel/id478159328?mt=2)- [The Next Reel on Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/TheNextReel)- [The Next Reel on Twitter](http://twitter.com/thenextreel)- [The Next Reel on Flickchart](http://www.flickchart.com/thenextreel)- [The Next Reel on Letterboxd](http://letterboxd.com/thenextreel/)- [Guess the Movie with The Next Reel on Instagram](http://instagram.com/thenextreel)- [Check out the Posters with The Next Reel on Pinterest](http://pinterest.com/thenextreel)And for anyone interested in our fine bouquet of show hosts:- [Follow Andy Nelson on Twitter](http://twitter.com/sodacreekfilm)- [Follow Pete Wright on Twitter](http://twitter.com/petewright)- [Follow Steve Sarmento on Twitter](https://twitter.com/mr_steve23)- [Check out Tom Metz on IMDB](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1224453/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1)- [Follow Mike Evans on Twitter](https://twitter.com/ubersky)- [Follow Chadd Stoops on Twitter](https://twitter.com/ChaddStoops)- [Follow Steven Smart on Letterboxd](http://letterboxd.com/steamrobot/)