This Savage Art

So much will be written. So many will wax poetic but in the end he had the last word. Living in obscurity, eating his frozen peas and keeping a death lock on his privacy he gave no one the right to interpret his world. Producers tried and tried and tried yet failed. It’s good to know that a man who gave us so much kept his talents from being possibly tarnished. It’s also comforting to know that in the world we live in not everyone is for sale.

A quick note about influence. The story A Perfect Day For Bananafish was an indirect influence for my short film The Face of the Earth. It may seem far removed from its inspiration but it really isn’t. It’s still about a tortured soul whose suppressed inner life to the world and to the people closest to him took him to a point of no return. In light of the event, one really wonders what Salinger was keeping from us. Maybe he was just tired of our frivolous ways.

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John Hughes was 59.

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Palookaville.

We have lost one of the great titans of literature and screenwriting. Writer of Elia Kazan’s corruption exposé On The Waterfront and the powerhouse insider’s guide to Hollywood backstabbing What Makes Sammy Run?, Budd Schulberg was literally born into the business by being son of B. P. Schulberg, head of Paramount Pictures and Adeline Jaffe-Schulberg, sister to agent/film producer Sam Jaffe.

What a life. Take a look at excerpts from this online documentary.

“The only novelist to come from Hollywood, not go to Hollywood.”

Updated. [Hat tip to Scott Myers.]

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I was just speaking with an old NYU friend while I was at Independent Film Week last Sunday and we were discussing The Hustler and The Color of Money and how they both held up. Even though my friend and I disagreed on the films, I saw The Color of Money recently and I still think it’s a great character piece — The Hustler is iconic, but one thing that we agreed on was Paul Newman. He was my first memory of what a movie star was in the first film I ever saw, The Towering Inferno. Maybe not the best display of his talents but at seven years old Paul Newman was the coolest guy in the room. Ironically, I have The Verdict and The Hustler in my stack of films to watch. I think today is a good day to remember him by screening a couple of his best performances.Take a look on IMDb and see how many films he’s been in that you have fond memories of.

The true test of a man will be how he is perceived once he is gone and this man will always be looked at as a class act. Rest in peace.

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Seven words transcript verbatim.

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Jules Dassin, the American director of Naked City, Rififi, Night and the City and Never On Sunday died in an Athens hospital after a short illness on Monday aged 96.

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“A villain is a guy with a frailty.”

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[Sorry, I had to say it. I'm a little late on this one but it's still worth noting.]

Whether he was chugging chum off the Orca, dancing to save his life or keeping Popeye Doyle from cracking skulls, Roy Scheider was the one of the great everyman actors. The last film I saw him in was Klute where he played the slick, meat locker cool pimp Frank Ligourin.

Roy Scheider was 75. Check out his roles in film and television and see how an old pro did it.

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What a strange, strange passing. Details about this will arise in the next day or so. He was a young actor who I thought actually had the goods. Ledger was 28. Very shocking and sad news.

Here is the New York Times and Gothamist.

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A day after Ingmar Bergman leaves us another cinematic great is gone. Michelangelo Antonioni has passed away in Rome at 94. Antonioni was an intellect who contributed to the vital art cinema scene in the 60′s with Blow Up and The Red Desert. Thematically his films dealt with alienation and his use of vast space to symbolize his character’s disillusion with their bourgeois lives became his trademark style. Do yourself a favor and rent The Passenger if you want to see this master at work. Just a caveat, his films are not for the ADD inclined.

There will always be movies but…

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