Passages

[Beloved Aunt]

Come to think of it...who is this David Newman character? Has he ever written anything solo? I know literally not a thing about him other than that he was Benton's writing partner for a while. It's kind of hard to believe that someone as gifted as Robert Benton had a significant hand in the terrible script for Superman, but maybe he put in good work that was mangled in subsequent drafts or something. (And gosh, isn't Richard Donner one of the worst directors ever?)

[domino harvey]

Get a free trial of Audible and download the amazingly entertaining audiobook for Easy Riders, Raging Bulls to learn about him and many more. The narrator's performance makes an already entertaining book 10X better. You can thank me later!

[bearcuborg]

Nobody's Fool is my favorite hands down, a real gem.

I’ll second that, I watch it every winter. Makes a nice double bill with Wonder Boys.

[GaryC]

Aidan Chambers, UK young-adult novelist and ghost-story anthologist, aged 90. His 1982 novel Dance on My Grave, one of the earliest gay-themed YA novels I know of, and second of his Dance Sequence of six novels, was filmed in 2020 by François Ozon as Été 85 (Summer of 85).

[cdnchris]

Joe Don Baker last week.

[captveg]

Joe Don Baker last week.

Mitchell!

[JSC]

Joe Don Baker last week.

Go ahead on...



In all fairness though, I thought he was a great villain in Charley Varrick.

[colinr0380]

He's also great in the original TV version of Edge of Darkness, delivering (spoiler) quite a final speech!

He was also one of the rare actors to survive across Bond eras, turning up as the token American contact in Dalton's The Living Daylights and then in two of the Pierce Brosnan films with GoldenEye and Tomorrow Never Dies.

I still have not seen the horror-comedy he was in Wacko, but his character does have the wonderful name of "Dick Harbringer"! (Only outdone by Andrew Dice Clay playing "Tony Schlongini"!)

[flyonthewall2983]

“The Whammer” in Barry Levinson's The Natural.

[hearthesilence]

I honestly thought he was already dead.

[cdnchris]

He was also one of the rare actors to survive across Bond eras, turning up as the token American contact in Dalton's The Living Daylights and then in two of the Pierce Brosnan films with GoldenEye and Tomorrow Never Dies.

He was actually the villain in the Dalton film (one of my favorites, too), and killed off at the end. So having him come back in the Brosnan ones as the CIA contact was odd (Maud Adams showed up twice as different characters, but thay was at least during the same era). I can only assume they liked working with him.

[The Curious Sofa]

I think it was weirder when the same actors played different characters against the same Bond actor. And to be completist: Charles Gray played a British contact in You Only Live Twice and Blofeld in Diamonds Are Forever. Martine Beswick played two different (minor) Bond girls in From Russia With Love and Thunderball. (Having recently rewatched all Bond movies in a row, I feel compelled to dispense Bond trivia)

[domino harvey]

Richard Donner discussion moved here

[beamish14]

Morris, an alligator featured in Happy Gilmore and Interview With a Vampire, at age 80+

[brundlefly]

George Wendt.

[knives]

On the more obscure end of things he’s really great in King of Ants, a film which I hope more people would seek out.

[domino harvey]

Not the kind of guy that often got to play lead, but I really enjoyed him in Welcome to Planet Earth

[beamish14]

On the more obscure end of things he’s really great in King of Ants, a film which I hope more people would seek out.

I love Stuart Gordon’s late period works. Wendt is also a co-producer on that, as I think he gave the material to Gordon and they’d worked together in Chicago theatre

[MichaelB]

Billy Williams, per the British Society of Cinematographers' Facebook page.

For a British cinematographer, he went comparatively early at a mere 95 - not quite as tragically young as Jack Cardiff at 94, but behind Freddie Young (96), Oswald Morris (98), Gilbert Taylor and Ronald Neame (both 99), Douglas Slocombe (103) and Wolfgang Suschitzky (104).

There must be a PhD thesis in prospect about the extraordinary longevity of cinematographers - outside the UK, Gunnar Fischer made it to 100 and Bill Butler to 101. I wonder if it's a combination of strenuous physical exercise and the preserving properties of the chemicals that they worked with?

[Aunt Peg]

The last film Billy Williams shot was Stella in 1990!

Did he retire at age 60? (Not that I can talk as I quit work at 54 and officially retired at 55).

[MichaelB]

Looks like it - and sixty is a perfectly reasonable retirement age, especially if you're a comparatively recent Oscar winner (Gandhi, just eight years earlier) who presumably wasn't short of a bob or two; cinematographers at Billy Williams's level will have been very handsomely paid.

My wife's retiring next year at sixty, and can't wait - although she's immediately going to get stuck into a PhD, so she's not exactly putting her feet up.

[GaryC]

Not quite - he has credits on IMDB up to 2000, though the last is a co-credit on a documentary about Sven Nykvist. But other than that, two feature films and two TV movies after Stella. But the point stands. Let's hope he enjoyed his quarter-century of retirement.

[hearthesilence]

Jeff Margolis, a TV producer and director who specialized in live events from the Oscars to the Emmys and SAG Awards, but he also directed Richard Pryor: Live in Concert, perhaps the greatest documentary film ever made of a live stand-up comedy performance.

[GaryC]

Kimble Rendall, Australian musician (singer/guitarist/founder member of XL Capris and Hoodoo Gurus) and director of Cut (2000), Bait (2012) and Guardians of the Tomb (2018), aged 67. I can't see a death date specified, but it was announced on 20 April.

[Aunt Peg]

Film director Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina, 91, best known for the Cannes winner Chronicle of the Years of Fire (1975) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammed_Lakhdar-Hamina