My buddy Steve Spears ably covered the highlights of Patrick Swayze's career on his Stuck in the 80's -- except for not listing Dirty Dancing among his five favorite Swayze films.
YouTube and Lionsgate disabled embedding for most of the DD clips but I found this one that escaped.
Here's most of the climactic dance with pre-nose job Jennifer Grey, including Swayze's touchstone line: "Nobody puts baby in a corner," that lives on in real-life conversations (mine, at least). The final lift (that unfortunately Lionsgate doesn't allow online) is one of modern cinema's instantly recognizable images, a triumphant move that seems like the right way to remember the man who never forgot his fans or what he was put on Earth to do.
So, I found a clip from earlier in Dirty Dancing when Johnny starts coaching Baby in the lift.
Set up an interview with Kenny Vanceto talk about his career and you don't know where to begin. Pick a topic and Vance, 65, doesn't know where to end. Dude can talk.
This guy has been around -- and around some of the biggest names in show biz -- for 50 years, first as a founding member of Jay and the Americans, who parlayed a string of hits into, among other things, a slot opening for the Beatles on their 1964 U.S. tour, and later the Rolling Stones.
Vance moved into movie music, deciding where the right notes went in movies like National Lampoon's Animal House, The Warriors, Streets of Fire, John Waters' original Hairspray and both Eddie and the Cruisers flicks. He also served as musical director for Saturday Night Live in the early 1980's (okay, the show sucked then but that was mostly Joe Piscopo's fault).
Vance also dabbled in acting, appearing in no less than six Woody Allen movies (although his duet with Tracey Ullman in Everyone Says I Love You was cut from the final edit).
Oh, yeah, he also produced the early recordings of Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, who proceeded to form my all-time favorite band, Steely Dan. Vance was impressed that I still have an 8-track of their movie soundtrack You've Gotta Walk It Like You Talk It (or You'll Lose That Beat) that he produced. Or maybe that I'd even heard of it.
Vance tells such stories -- and sings doo-wop ditties with his band, the Planotones -- Friday night at Capitol Theatre in Clearwater. I'll have some of his memories of working and playing with John Belushi, the Woodman and others online and on page 2B tomorrow. For now, enjoy Vance's recollection of discovering the band and song responsible for one of the 80's greatest movie hits.
A little background: Vance met director Marty Davidson, wjo mentioned he was making a movie called Eddie and the Cruisers, about a 1960's band on the Jersey shore. Vance mentioned that Jay and the Americans lived that life, providing photos for proof and inspiration. Davidson appreciated that, and asked Vance to listen to the movie's central song, writtten by Joe Brooks, who inflicted You Light Up My Life on public ears.
"Marty plays the music and asks what I think," Vance said. "I told him it’s garbage. It’s no good. It sounds like a jingle guy's idea of what Eddie and the Cruisers should be. He asked me to read the script and give him some ideas.
"While I’m doing that, I’m thinking of a group I had just seen in Greenwich Village, at the Bitter End: the Beaver Brown Band with John Cafferty. These guys had been together for 11 years, and were about a day away from getting real jobs. I went to meet them in Rhode Island, walked in and they knew me as Professor LaPlano in American Hot Wax. Right away I had credibility. I told them this guy has this movie and needs some music. let's make some records.
"Cafferty had a song loosely based on Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, called On the Dark Side. That night, Cafferty and the band were playing in a little New Jersey club. I went back to New York with the record, piled Marty and some Hollywood guys into the car and played the song. Nobody said anything.
Then we got into the club and Cafferty did it live.
"When those guys saw the rave-up inside the club with these kids going crazy, they said that’s it. That's the song. It wound up selling 4 million copies."
A postponement Monday of my interview with Halloween II director Rob Zombie leads to an interesting Wednesday. Today I'll get telephone calls from Zombie and Academy Award winning actor/comedian/musician Jamie Foxx, who'll be focusing on the latter talent Aug. 28 with his Blame It tour at Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center.
Toss in tapping out a story on Chris Fuller, the St. Pete filmmaker whose lauded debut Loren Cass opens Aug. 28 at Beach Theatre, and this should be an interesting day.
But the schedule has me scrambling for questions to ask Foxx and Zombie, so I'm shouting "help" to you, dear readers.
What do you want to hear from the hirsute prince of darkness and and the lively prince of show biz? And don't say: "When are those two guys collaborating?"
It's a pretty safe bet that nobody named Sharlto ever became a movie star. Sharlto Copley never planned to be the first. The 29-year-old South African didn't even know he auditioned for the lead role in his lifelong friend Neill Blomkamp's stunning sci-fi allegory, District 9.
The movie, its creator and star have seemingly emerged from nowhere over the past two weeks. Copley even made the cover of this week's Entertainment Weekly, an honor usually reserved for the Pitts, Cruises and Twilight stars of Hollywood.
I suggested to Copley during a telephone interview that he's probably the least-known person to ever grace the cover of EW. The guy Blomkamp compares to Sacha Baron Cohen for his improv and wit burst into long, hearty laughter.
"I love that!," he said after catching his breath. "One reporter said: 'So, you're an
accidental actor that almost becomes a hero in this movie,' which I
just loved. I told him: 'I'm going to steal your line, dude.
"Now you've just given me another
one: 'You're the least-famous person I've ever known to make the cover
of Entertainment Weekly.' That's awesome."
Over the next few minutes, Copley discussed his friendship with Blomkamp and how he was tricked into playing Wikus Van De Merwe, a bureaucrat assigned to evict 2 million aliens from a Johannesburg ghetto. District 9 is inspired by the friends' early exposure to apartheid but resonates with discrimination in any era or place.
So, you and Neill were friends through childhood?
Basically that's true, although he left (for Canada) when he was 17, so we didn't have too many years together in South Africa. Probably about three years or so. We kept in touch -- and I'm going back a long time now -- by sending faxes: 'How's it going?' Then e-mails, then Neill would generally come to South Africa about once a year, and I went out to Canada once or twice."
You produced Neill's short film, Alive in Joburg that expanded to District 9, but how did you get the role of Wikus?
It was a very strange experience because Neill actually shot a short test with me without telling me exactly what it was for. He told me in the beginning: 'I just want to explore an idea for a character in the film. Why don't you play him for right now.' That was the context, so I thought at some time some A-list actor would get involved, and I would be involved behind the scenes, what I usually do.
So, I jumped on-camera and did this character, basically improvised for a couple hours. When Neill edited that together, he basically thought I should be the guy. He showed the footage to (producer) Peter (Jackson), and started writing the script with Terri (Tatchell), with me in mind but they weren't telling me. They didn't tell me for months.
Why do you think Neill held back?
I recently asked him: 'Dude, what was going on? Why didn't you tell me?' He said he was concerned that it wouldn't get through the Hollywood system; his thing about wanting to improvise all the dialogue and wanting an unknown guy to do that. It seemed like such a longshot. In the end, Peter just said go for it.
But you'd never acted before. How did you know how to create the Wikus character?
I'm now having to try and understand all this, so I can answer the question: (in a stuffy actor's voice) 'As an actor, my process is...' But I don't have that yet. What I always did in my life -- and what Neill spotted, I guess -- is I've always done characters. If you visited me at my office at any time, I would be a particular character that I would switch off and on for a month or two. Just messing around with my staff; comedic stuff, massive pranks, just to be drastically different.
You've produced, written and directed (the unreleased Spoon), done visual effects effects and now acting. I imagine District 9 has people from Hollywood chasing you.
Oh, they are.
For which talent?
It's sort of everything right but but (acting) is the big ticket for everybody. That's where things are just flying in quickly, the offers piling up. It's crazy.
Wikus looks nerdy but you're a good-looking guy. Would you want to be a leading man?
I definitely wouldn't. I'm a character actor. I'm not interested in that sort of role. I do voices, and I want to do characters that I can really get into. That's what I feel natural doing.
Hollywood Reporter.com reports that Sony's bid has increased for the Michael Jackson concert rehearsal footage shot by AEG before his death. With at least four other studios reportedly in the chase (Fox, Relativity, Paramount, Universal), Sony is offering $60 million for the rights, with plans to release it theatrically in October. Sony owns the rights to Jackson's music library.
Initial reports were that Sony intended to debut the quasi-concert flick around Christmas. Now that timetable has been moved up to Halloween weekend. You know, when the zombies rise up.
Meanwhile, B-movie filmmaker Bryan Michael Stoller claims that he and Jackson had worked for seven years on a movie adaptation of the book They Cage the Animals at Night by Jennings Michael Burch. The book is based on Burch's childhood experiences bouncing around foster homes, a situation to which Stoller claims Jackson felt closely connected.
You can hear Stoller telling his side of the story, plus Jackson asking Burch about his experiences in the video clip posted above.
"Michael told me often he felt like he grew up as an orphan, like a foster kid, because he never was in one home," Stoller told Hollywood Reporter. "To him every hotel was like a different foster home. He said he used to sit in the window and see kids playing outside and cry because he couldn't be part of that."
The movie approached production with a budget of between $12 million and $20 million through Icon Productions (home to another, umm, unusual artist, Mel Gibson) but was shelved. Details of when and why are sketchy, with Icon and Stoller each claiming various degrees of interest/disinterest. Stoller claims that three months before his death, Jackson proposed making They Cage the Animals at Night as an indle for $8 million.
Stoller previously worked with Jackson on the 2005 straight-to-video comedy Miss Cast Away and the Island Girls, starring Eric Roberts and Charlie Schlatter. Blockbuster Video briefly offered the movie but pulled it after Jackson's child molestation case blew up in the media. It's so obscure that I didn't notice it referenced in the postmortem orgy of Jackson memorials, much less hear of it before.
Take a few minutes and check out Variety.com's Comedy Impact Report, a fascinating annual look at the top bananas making audiences laugh, in movies and on TV and stages. The lead story is about the new wave of woman making movies as dirty as dudes do, a tribe calling itself "The Fempire," led by screenwriter Diablo Cody (Juno, Jennifer's Body) and Lynn Shelton (the upcoming Humpday).
There are also profiles of 2009's biggest comedy stars, so far, ranging from Paul Rudd and Adam Sandler to scene-stealing Betty White (The Proposal). TV jokers profiled include Andy Samberg, Wanda Sykes and Stephen Colbert.
And, in a double-take backward, Variety assesses how 2008's comedy star picks (Tina Fey, Robert Downey, Jr. and others) are staying on top. A good read all around.
Forbes magazine just came out with its list of the richest 20 women in Hollywood. Judging by who's at the top,Brad Pitt can expect really nice birthday presents on Dec. 18, and Christmas a week later, no matter who he's romancing by then.
Forbes didn't sort through anyone's tax returns, so the rankings are purely speculation after conferring with Hollywood agents and studio types who know the art of such deals. But what's a decimal point or two among friends?
Angelina Jolie leads the way with an estimated $27 million earned from June 2008 through last month. Jennifer Aniston, still earning residuals from Friends to go with her movie career,is Jolie's runner-up (again) with $25 million.
Now all Pitt needs to do is start dating No. 3, Meryl Streep ($24 million) for the trifecta.
Click here for Forbes' online photo galley and detailed information on the entire list.
It's the step that all aging or aspiring ingenues must take: taking off their clothes to make their careers take off. Unless you're Julia Roberts, who may be the last of America's sweethearts retaining her duds and dignity.
Jane Fonda did it in Barbarella. So did Jennifer Aniston in The Break-Up. Now it's Sandra Bullock's turn to do a nude scene in The Proposal, and if there's a TV chat show where she isn't showing up to talk about it (as if the movie can't succeed on anything else), please let me know.
As you can see from the leaked clip of au naturel Bullock posted above, we're not talking Last Tango in Paris here. "Nude" simply means wearing no clothes, and Bullock keeps her arm and a washcloth strategically placed. But to hear her coyly talk about it with interviewers, you'd think The Proposal would be rated NC-17, and not PG-13. Anything to drum up business, so I consider posting the clip as a public service, saving millions of dollars at the box office for consumers who'd only go to see Bullock in the buff.
Which reminds me: All this talk about Bullock gone nude for the first time onscreen ignores the fact that she did a fairly steamy scene in 1993's Fire in the Amazon. Her naughty bits didn't do much to help that movie's success, did they?
Today's news that actor David Carradine was found dead in an apparent suicide hurts a little. He didn't strike me as a guy who'd hang himself, although we only crossed paths a few times during an L.A. weekend.
Carradine was at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills promoting Kill Bill, Vol. 2, and a one-on-one interview with him was planned, in his suite.
Thing is, the Four Seasons only allows smoking on the tenth of its 16 floors, and Carradine was bunking on the seventh. When I walk through the doorway into a cloud of some exotic tobacco smoke, I kid him: "You know they're going to kick you out for that."
"Let 'em try," Carradine says, a black kimono draped over what looks like hemp pants. "I'm the tobacco terrorist."
A wooden flute he played in Kill Bill Vol. 2 and, in a Tarantino touch, a forgotten martial arts movie before that, lays on an armchair. Carradine blows a few notes during the interview. The Hattori Hanzo samurai sword he used against Uma Thurman rests nearby, and Carradine doesn't mind taking a few swings when I mention it. I remember someone lighting incense. Good interview.
Later that day, I join the roundtable interviews with Thurman, Michael Madsen, Tarantino and others. Carradine is on the list but I'll just sit back and record. Let the junket whores get their turns. Carradine is late, so I duck outside on the patio for a quick smoke.
I can see through the French windows when Carradine arrives. But he spies me, excuses himself to the other reporters and comes to the patio. "Glad to see you again," he says. "Got a light?"
For five minutes we make small talk, abut the movie, the whole publicity scene. He wasn't used to such attention but appeared to really enjoy it. I can see other reporters -- obviously nonsmokers -- peering through the windows, one of them jerking a thumb at me and Carradine, as if saying: "They're using up all of our time out there."
"They can wait," Carradine says, stubbing the butt for punctuation. They did.
The next day, I look over my balcony at the Four Seasons courtyard as guests arrive at the wedding of some rich guy's daughter. Big, white tent, rows of pearly folding chairs and lots of flowers. I look closer and standing by the entrance to the catering tent is Carradine and a friend. Carradine, basking in a comeback glow for playing a cold-blooded killer who's introduced with a wedding chapel massacre.
"Hey, David," I yell, and wave so he'll see me. "I wouldn't want you hanging around my wedding."
Carradine smiles and makes a gun with his finger, points it at me and I get "killed" by Bill.
I don't care how John Travolta chooses to worship, or which causes he supports, or anything else that spurs snarkhounds to throw stones that bounce off his shield of self-confidence, anyway. Travolta is one of the nicest celebrities I've ever dealt with, the kind of person who makes you believe you're the only other person in the room when he's talking to you, even if it's crowded. He also has a heckuva memory for people, which I admire because it's a frequent failing of mine.
We first met in New York during interviews for Pulp Fiction, when Travolta was so genuinely excited to be relevant again that you couldn't avoid pulling for him. Two weeks earlier, I'd attended a high school reunion where I learned that one of my classmates, Bill Damm, was working in Ocala as the actor's personal pilot, when Travolta didn't feel like flying his personal jet himself.
I shook Travolta hand in greeting, and told him Bill Damm says hello. "You know Bill?" he said, and I explained the connection. With other reporters waiting for the interview to begin, Travolta was leaning into me, urging me to give him "some kind of dirt" on Bill from high school, so he could rib him about it later. A few minutes later, that made my questions about his connections to Scientology -- at the time, the Times was tracking the religion tough -- easier to pose and more comfortable for him to answer.
The second time was in Los Angeles a decade later, where Travolta was promoting The Punisher that was filmed around Tampa Bay. Travolta saw me and came over to ask if I'd seen Bill lately. I was stunned by his recollection, admitted that I hadn't but that kicked off another solid interview.
The third time was last year in St. Pete, when Travolta and his wife Kelly Preston visited in support of the Sunscreen Film Festival and its efforts to promote Florida filmmaking. Again, he recognized me and was gracious even in the short time we shared.
Preston even more so; the battery from my voice recorder popped out during the interview and when the Travoltas were called away, she got down on her hands and knees in a dark nightclub to help me search for it under the couch. "Kelly, don't do that. Get up, please," I pleaded. But she wouldn't until the battery was found. Niceness runs in the family, I guess.
I mention this because tonight Princess Di and I will see The Taking of Pelham 123, a remake of a 1974 thriller about a hijacked subway train. Travolta plays the villain -- a nasty sort played by Robert Shaw in the original -- which is a major stretch, if you ask me.
Apparently his fans don't buy into Travolta in such roles, either. They obviously prefer nice and preferably singing and/or dancing JT, judging by the grosses for Saturday Night Fever, Grease, all the way to Hairspray. He can be a bad guy with irresistible charm and a thin streak of decency (Pulp Fiction, Get Shorty, Mad City, Michael, Primary Colors) but when he goes full-blown evil, there's a definite drop-off in audience appeal.
But, in honor of tonight's screening (which i hope is as solid as the original, which I watched again over the weekend), here are Travolta's most despised characters, with only three scoring as qualified hits:
Howard Saint, The Punisher: Maybe this one hit too close to home, since the movie was set in Tampa. Travolta plays a crooked industrialist whose vengeance for the death of his son leads to another family's massacre. One of the few Marvel Comics adaptations that didn't draw moviegoers like flies.
Gabriel Shear, Swordfish: Come to think of it, a counterterrorist attempting to steal billions of dirty government dollars might be a hero today, but not in June 2001. Watchable only for an early Hugh Jackman role and Halle Berry's topless scene.
Terl, Battlefield Earth: Okay, maybe I do hold this one against Travolta's religious beliefs. Devotion to Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard made this a passion project for Travolta, who submitted to Whoopi Goldberg's dreadstylist, a Klingon nose job and a Saturday night's worth of Ybor City face piercings.
Maj. Vic "Deak" Deakins, Broken Arrow: A rogue U.S. bomber pilot steals nuclear warheads and pledges to level Denver unless he's paid a huge ransom. You know a villain is weak when Christian Slater kicks his butt.
Billy Nolan, Carrie: Yes, it was a hit but that wasn't Travolta's doing. Stephen King's brand and an Oscar-nominated title performance by Sissy Spacek took care of that. But, oooh, that was nasty, dumping pig's blood on the poor girl.
Castor Troy, Face/Off: If only all of Travolta's villains could be this ingenious. He starts off as a good guy infiltrating organized crime but eventually switches faces and personalities with the kingpin. One of Travolta's best performances ever, doing a knockout impersonation of Nicolas Cage while in "disguise." Or was that the other way around?
Steve Persall is the movie critic for the St. Petersburg Times. He was conceived behind a drive-in movie theater his father operated and raised in projection booths and concession stands. He doesn't care how you did it up north.
Steve Persall is the movie critic for the St. Petersburg Times. He was conceived behind a drive-in movie theater his father operated and raised in projection booths and concession stands. He doesn't care how you did it up north.
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