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R.I.P.
I liked him especially in After Hours as the bartender and, most certainly, as the flamboyant Cutter in Cutter's Way.
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Posted: |
Jul 22, 2017 - 3:59 PM
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By: |
Ralph
(Member)
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John is just about at his most likeable in Joan Micklin Silver’s version of “Chilly Scenes of Winter.” He appears relaxed, enjoying his character’s openness, and he has the good fortunate to have Gloria Grahame as his mother. Borderline neurotic, as in eating a box of laxatives, and contemptuous of duties and proprieties, she’s also enjoying herself when she announces that “there isn’t any dinner” for her son and his friend who’ve come for a holiday turkey meal.
True that the movie had a hard time, bombing out when released as “Head Over Heels,” and then in a rescue effort the original title was restored and a different end provided, which didn’t help any at the box office, but what the movie(s) did was pinpoint John’s character’s obsession with his wife played by Mary Beth Hurt. Which is to say, many of us got what we thought we wanted back in the 70s, only to end up regretting that we got what we didn’t need at all.
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Posted: |
Jul 24, 2017 - 4:23 PM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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John Heard's third film with the Silvers was 1979's HEAD OVER HEELS. This time, as with BETWEEN THE LINES, it was Joan Micklin Silver directing and Raphael D. Silver producing. The film focused on "Charles" (Heard), a Salt Lake City civil servant. Charles obsesses about his former lover, "Laura" (Mary Beth Hurt), a married woman who left him to reconcile with her husband, "Jim 'Ox' Connelly" (Mark Metcalf). Although their affair ended a year ago, Charles still loves Laura and announces to his college-age sister, "Susan" (Tarah Nutter), and best friend, "Sam" (Peter Riegert), that he will win her back.
During production, the project bore the same title as its 1976 Ann Beattie source novel, Chilly Scenes of Winter. However, the marketing department at United Artists Corp. preferred a more commercial title, and the film was renamed HEAD OVER HEELS for the 1979 release. Director-screenwriter Joan Micklin Silver was upset about the change, which mistakenly implied a light-hearted romantic comedy, as were the crew, who voiced their disapproval by sending a rare petition to the studio.
During its original release, critical reaction was mixed. While the 17 October 1979 Hollywood Reporter was enthusiastic and argued that the film deserved “solid support,” the 24 October Variety complained, “both [lead] characters wear out their welcome.” Similarly, the 19 October New York Times stated, “Charles and Laura become tiresome instead of more interesting.” Among the many critics who pointed out the inappropriate title, HEAD OVER HEELS, the 26 October Los Angeles Times wrote that the film “keeps its feet resolutely on the ground, with no vastly larger-than-life romantic gestures, no wheeling heels over head over heels.”
Nathaniel Kwit of United Artists Classics, who had realized the commercial benefit of re-releasing NEW YORK, NEW YORK (1977) and CUTTER'S WAY (1981), was an important advocate for the film’s resurrection. United Artists Classics re-released the film in 1982, restored the original title CHILLY SCENES OF WINTER, and altered the ending to make it more ambiguous. The 1982 re-release surpassed the 1979 box-office results. In New York City, for example, the 1979 release earned close to $17,000 during its entire two-week engagement, while the 1982 release grossed more than $20,000 in a single week. Co-producer Griffin Dunne credited the success to positive new reviews in the Village Voice and Rolling Stone, favorable word-of-mouth, and increased recognition of lead actors John Heard and Mary Beth Hurt.
Ken Lauber's score received its first release as an isolated score track on the 2017 Twilight Time Blu-ray of the film.
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poor, poor Bob DiM
rip
JH
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Posted: |
Jul 24, 2017 - 11:46 PM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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Set in the late 1940s, HEART BEAT is a based-on-fact story of a struggling Greenwich Village novelist named Jack Kerouac (John Heard) and his friend, Neal Cassady (Nick Nolte), a former reform school delinquent. One day, Neal invites Jack on a road trip to San Francisco. Once there, Neal visits an old childhood friend, Dick (Tony Bill), who is studying at the San Francisco Art Institute. When Dick introduces Neal and Jack to his girl friend Carolyn (Sissy Spacek), she is intrigued because they are unlike any men she has previously known.
Producer Michael Shamberg’s interest in “beatniks” inspired him to contact Carolyn Cassady, Neal Cassady’s widow, while visiting San Francisco. After reading her unpublished 1,200-page memoir, The Third Word, a personal account of her relationships with Cassady and writer Jack Kerouac, Shamberg decided to develop the material into a feature film. John Byrum directed the 1980 film. Jack Nitzsche's score was released on a Capitol LP, but has not been re-issued on CD.
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Posted: |
Jul 25, 2017 - 12:02 AM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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Author Newton Thornburg’s book "Cutter and Bone: A Novel" was published in 1976. Producer Paul Gurian bought the rights to Thornburg's novel and asked screenwriter Jeffrey Alan Fiskin if he could adapt it into screenplay form. Gurian got EMI interested in financially backing the film with Robert Mulligan to direct and Dustin Hoffman to play "Alex Cutter." However, a scheduling conflict forced Hoffman to leave the project, which prompted Mulligan to leave as well. And once Mulligan and Hoffman left, EMI pulled their money. Gurian then took the film to United Artists where the studio's vice president, David C. Field, became interested in backing it.
Gurian gave screenwriter Fiskin a list of directors, and asked him who he thought should direct the film. Ivan Passer's name was the only one the screenwriter didn't recognize. To investigate the director, Fiskin and a couple of United Artists executives screened Passer's 1965 Czech film INTIMATE LIGHTING, apparently not realizing that in 1971, Passer had directed the film BORN TO WIN for United Artists. In any case, all agreed that he was the man to direct the film. Passer was already involved with another film, but chose to do CUTTER AND BONE instead after reading Fiskin's script.
Both Nick Nolte and Tommy Lee Jones were considered for Cutter. Tom Berenger tried to get the part, but was repeatedly turned down. Director Passer ultimately cast actor John Heard after seeing him in a Joseph Papp Shakespeare in the Park production of "Othello."
The initial budget was estimated at $3.3 million, but UA would only agree to make the movie if the filmmakers were able to reduce the price tag to under three million dollars. Passer and company agreed. Then, United Artists said that the film needed a big name star for the film to succeed at the box office. The studio liked Jeff Bridges' work in the dailies for Michael Cimino's HEAVEN’S GATE and said that they would only further support the film if the filmmakers got the actor to be in their movie. With that done, filming proceeded.
When United Artists executives David C. Field and Claire Townsend, the film's biggest supporters, left for 20th Century Fox, the film became a victim of internal politics. The studio felt that it would get no credit if the film succeeded and had no responsibility if it failed, so there was no interest in it. United Artists senior domestic sales and marketing vice president Jerry Esbin saw the film and decided that it did not have any commercial possibilities.
In an interview, Ivan Passer said "They didn't do any research. I was supposed to have two previews with a paying audience. It was in my contract.” Regardless, United Artists decided to open the film as it was. UA spent a meager $63,000 on promotion for the film's opening in New York City, on 20 March 1981. There, all three daily papers and the three major network critics gave CUTTER AND BONE negative reviews. Vincent Canby in the New York Times wrote, "It's the sort of picture that never wants to concede what it's about. It is, however, enchanted by the sound of its own dialogue, which is vivid without being informative or even amusing on any level." The studio was so shocked by the negative reviews that it planned to pull the film after only a week. Unbeknownst to them, the next week Richard Schickel in Time, David Ansen in Newsweek, and New York City's weekly newspapers would write glowing reviews. Ansen wrote, "Under Passer's sensitive direction, Heard gives his best film performance: he's funny and abrasive and mad, but you see the self-awareness eating him up inside."
The positive reviews prompted United Artists to give CUTTER AND BONE to its United Artists Classics division, which changed the film's title to CUTTER’S WAY (thinking that the original title would be mistaken by audiences for a comedy about surgeons) and entered it into a number of film festivals. At Houston's Third International Film Festival in April 1981, it won the Grand Prize for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Actor (John Heard). It was at the Houston Festival that Passer first saw his film with a paying audience. A week later it was given the closing feature slot at the Seattle International Film Festival. With a new ad campaign, CUTTER’S WAY reopened in the summer of 1981 in Seattle, Boston, and New York. It finally opened in Los Angeles on 16 September 1981.
UA Classics adroitly marketed CUTTER’S WAY, riding a wave of rave reviews and good word-of-mouth among more discriminating filmgoers to modest box-office success. Nevertheless, Passer was bitter about the experience, commenting in an interview published in the July/August 1981 edition of Film Comment magazine, "You can assassinate movies as you can assassinate people. I think UA murdered the film. Or at least they tried to murder it."
Jack Nitzsche's score for the film was released first as an isolated score track on the April 2016 Twilight Time Blu-ray of the film, and later on CD by Quartet in November 2016.
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Posted: |
Jul 25, 2017 - 12:28 AM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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CAT PEOPLE was a 1982 remake of the 1942 horror film of the same name. Director Paul Schrader reworked the plot of the 1942 picture, but he does not receive writing credit in the remake. Schrader reportedly also made significant changes to Alan Ormsby’s script, including the addition of a prologue, the expansion of the character “Paul Gallier,” which re-envisioned his role as a minister, the inclusion of an incest scene, and further modifications to distinguish the ending of the film from its precursor. Nastassia Kinski and Malcolm McDowell star as Irena and Paul Gallier. John Heard plays zoologist "Oliver Yates."
The character played by Heard was played by Kent Smith in the original CAT PEOPLE and its sequel THE CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE (1944). Both characters have the same first name, but in the original movie and its sequel, the character was called "Oliver Reed." This represents an instance where a character name was the same name as a real famous person, in this case, actor Oliver Reed. But this is retrospective, since actor Reed was only a boy when the original film and its sequel were released. However, because of this similarity with the famous actor, the Oliver character was called Oliver Yates for this remake. In THE CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE, the character was credited as Oliver 'Ollie' Reed.
Giorgio Moroder's score was released on an MCA LP and later re-issued on CD.
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