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Sad to see. I recall him best from The Stalking Moon, one of my favourite westerns.
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78 years old. Rip. A lot of projects but seems he was a better actor/capable of more than some of the work he got offered.
Had forgotten he was in Breaking Bad, and the new Breaking Bad movie.
I first noticed him in an episode of Police Story and when i recorded the music off tv for Goldsmith's The Don is Dead.
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Of course most FSMers might remember Forster as "Abdul" in The Delta Force.
Certainly not in a Criterion Collection classic like MEDIUM COOL.
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78 years old. Rip. A lot of projects but seems he was a better actor/capable of more than some of the work he got offered.
Had forgotten he was in Breaking Bad, and the new Breaking Bad movie.
I first noticed him in an episode of Police Story and when i recorded the music off tv for Goldsmith's The Don is Dead.
" I'll give you 10,000 dollars to stay and play cards. One "
"One hour"
Great scene!
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Posted: |
Oct 12, 2019 - 2:15 PM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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Beginning in 1956, various filmmakers had been trying to film Carson McCullers’s 1941 novel REFLECTIONS IN A GOLDEN EYE. On 20 April 1966, the Los Angeles Times announced that filmmaker John Huston would direct a script by English novelist Chapman Mortimer, whose work Huston greatly admired. With a start date finally scheduled for early fall, Ray Stark decided to step down from his executive position at Seven Arts to personally oversee his productions. The agreement allowed him to continue serving as a consultant for the company, and stipulated a $62,500 bonus should he deliver REFLECTIONS IN A GOLDEN EYE to Warner Bros. within the designated budget.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift were signed to portray the unhappily married couple “Leonora” and “Maj. Weldon Penderton.” Taylor, a longtime friend, personally covered Clift's insurance fee, as most major studios were no longer willing to hire him due to his increased dependency on drugs and alcohol. Despite these efforts, Clift died of a heart attack on 23 July 1966, prompting a rush to secure a replacement in time for filming. Although a 17 August 1966 Variety report claimed that Richard Burton, Taylor’s husband at the time, was in consideration, the role ultimately went to Marlon Brando.
In the film, Brando stars as a gay Army Major married to Taylor. She’s having an affair with his buddy, "Lieut. Col. Morris Langdon" (Brian Keith), right under his nose. Meanwhile, "Pvt. L.G. Williams" (Robert Forster, making his film debut), who likes to ride his horse naked through the woods, catches Brando’s eye. However, Forster is too busy sneaking into Liz’s bedroom at night and sniffing her panties.
The first portion of the film was shot in Long Island, NY, on locations in Garden City and the Mitchel Field Air Force Base. The unit then spent the remaining ten weeks at the Dino de Laurentiis Studios in Rome, which was done solely to accommodate Taylor. This decision proved to be problematic following an aggressive incident on 24 November 1966 between Brando and the Italian paparazzi. As a result, Huston threatened to cancel the final weeks of production and reassess plans for future projects in Italy. Huston briefly left the country, during which time production designer Stephen Grimes completed pickup shots with Taylor. Huston wrapped solo work with Brando upon his return.
Although publicity surrounding the film often focused on the potentially controversial adult themes, no edits were made to the completed cut, which received a Production Code seal from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), and was tagged as “Suggested for Mature Audiences.” Contemporary reviews noted that the initial release was screened in a monochromatic sepia tone, with only selected objects, often pink, appearing in color. While the review in the Los Angeles Times praised Huston’s coloring, New York Times critic Bosley Crowther called the effect “pretentious” and distracting for viewers. A 24 December 1967 New York Times letter to the editor revealed that later engagements featured full Technicolor prints.
Toshirô Mayuzumi, who had previously scored John Huston's THE BIBLE (1966) scored this 1967 release. The score has not had a release.
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Posted: |
Oct 12, 2019 - 6:39 PM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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Theodore V. Olsen’s novel, THE STALKING MOON, was optioned by National General Corp.’s Carthay Center Productions shortly before Doubleday published the book. Initial plans were made to shoot a film adaptation “in color and widescreen” in June 1966. Carthay Center was poised to become “the first exhibitor circuit seriously involved in the making of motion pictures since First National Exhibitors Circuit was absorbed by Warner Bros.” roughly thirty-five years earlier. In the meantime, a Department of Justice decree had forbidden the production of films by exhibitors, a rule that had recently been overturned in 1964, when the Justice Department agreed that exhibitors could manufacture films as long as they offered them to competing theaters in the same districts as their own venues.
Wendell Mayes was hired to adapt the script. National General Corp.’s Irving H. Levin reported that filming would begin in fall 1966. Soon after, Gregory Peck’s casting was announced. National General Productions was named as the production company, and the deal was said to be National General’s first “with a major star.” The start of production was delayed until early 1967, and a $3.5 million budget was set. Peck’s Brentwood Productions was said to be “involved for an undisclosed percentage” of the picture.
In November 1966, George Stevens was hired to direct, as part of a three-picture deal with Universal Pictures. However, the 7 March 1967 Daily Variety announced that Stevens had left the project, and described its future as “up in the air.” Peck claimed he was anxious to work, and might take on another role while THE STALKING MOON was in limbo. National General Productions planned to make the picture with or without Universal, and, despite his departure, Stevens had given them “two huge portfolios of research” he had been working on. Wendell Mayes, who had reportedly prepared an adaptation, left the project at the same time as Stevens.
Producer Alan J. Pakula and director Robert Mulligan were brought on to the project in late March 1967. Meanwhile, Peck accepted a role in MACKENNA’s GOLD, from which he was scheduled to be released by 15 October 1967, when THE STALKING MOON was set to begin. The collaboration marked a re-teaming for Pakula, Mulligan, and Peck, after their Academy Award-winning 1962 film, TO KILL A MOCKINGHBIRD. Reportedly, Pakula and Mulligan enlisted Horton Foote to write the screenplay, although Foote did not receive onscreen credit in the final film.
A casting director for Pakula-Mulligan Productions discovered Peck’s young co-star, eleven-year-old Apache Indian Noland Clay, on the White River Reservation in Arizona. Clay was one of several Apache boys who were flown to Los Angeles for screen testing. His salary would be at least $1,000 per week. As part of his salary, a trust fund was established for Clay’s education. National General also promised funds to improve a recreation center on the White River Reservation, and the company made a donation in the reservation’s name to the Save the Children Federation, which was later honored at a preview screening in Washington, D.C., which Clay attended before traveling to Philadelphia for an appearance on a daytime television talk show.
In the film, a sympathetic retired army scout, “Sam Varner” (Gregory Peck), takes in a white woman (Eva Marie Saint) and her half-Apache son (Noland Clay), not knowing that the boy's father (Nathaniel Narcisco), a murderous renegade Apache, is after them. Robert Forster plays “Nick Tana,” a half-Indian friend of Sam's.
Robert Forster and Noland Clay in THE STALKING MOON
On 5 May 1967, the Los Angeles Times announced the formation of National General Pictures Corporation, a new subsidiary of National General Corp., which was set to release THE STALKING MOON in the wake of Universal’s departure. The film premiered on 12 December 1968 at the Village Theatre in Westwood, CA. Fred Karlin’s score for the film was released by Reel Music Down Under in 2002.
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Posted: |
Oct 12, 2019 - 8:01 PM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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JUSTINE is set in Alexandria, Egypt, in 1938, where “Darley” (Michael York), a young British schoolmaster and poet, makes friends through “Pursewarden” (Dirk Bogarde), the British Consular Officer, with “Justine” (Anouk Aimée), the beautiful and mysterious wife of a Coptic banker. Robert Forster plays the revolutionary “Narouz.”
Anouk Aimee, Michael York, John Vernon, and Robert Forster in JUSTINE
Director Joseph Strick worked for several weeks on JUSTINE on location in Tunis. His plan was to film as much of it as possible on location. He had quarrels with the management of Twentieth Century Fox and was disliked by some of his actors and actresses. Anna Karina claimed that he had actually fallen asleep while directing her. When he was replaced by George Cukor, a big decision was taken to re-create the Alexandria of the 1930s in the Hollywood studios and to do the rest of the movie there. A few bits and pieces of Strick's location work were retained, but most of his work was re-shot by Cukor, who accepted the extant cast. The film ended up being enormously costly, and was a box-office flop.
During shooting, Cukor told an interviewer that JUSTINE would very likely be nearly three hours long, but when it finally emerged in cinemas, it was under two hours. Cukor never went into detail about what had been cut, but was always very reserved when discussing the film.
Jerry Goldsmith re-recorded his score for a Monument Records LP release. The original score and album version were issued on CD by Varese Sarabande in 2003.
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Posted: |
Oct 13, 2019 - 1:45 PM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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Writer-director Haskell Wexler's MEDIUM COOL tells the story of a TV news cameraman (Robert Forster) who finds himself becoming personally involved in the violence that erupts around the 1968 Democratic National Convention. The main character was originally called "John Cassavetes" and was in fact going to be played by actor-director John Cassavetes. When he withdrew from the film due to a scheduling conflict, the character's name was changed to "John Cassellis" and Robert Forster was cast in the role.
Haskell Wexler initially set out to make MEDIUM COOL as a screen adaptation of Jack Couffer’s as-yet-unpublished novel, The Concrete Wilderness. But Wexler’s script strayed significantly from the source material. An article in the 10 July 2013 Chicago Reader noted of the adaptation, “The only vestige of Couffer’s novel was a subplot in which the cameraman, John Cassellis, gets involved with an Appalachian boy and his mother in Uptown.”
Verna Bloom played that mother, "Eileen Horton," a welfare recipient who moved from her West Virginia home to Chicago when her husband was sent to Vietnam. Bloom's young son in the film, "Harold," is played by Harold Blankenship, whose real-life circumstances were written into the film by Wexler. Thirteen-year-old Blankenship, who also made his motion picture debut in MEDIUM COOL, was discovered by Wexler in an Uptown neighborhood populated by poor Appalachian transplants. Blankenship’s parents had moved the family there in 1966 and were subsisting on welfare when the boy was cast. A few years after filming, Blankenship was orphaned and subsequently moved back to his home state of West Virginia.
Robert Forster in MEDIUM COOL
In an interview published in the 28 October 1968 Los Angeles Times, actor Peter Bonerz explained, “We had a script when we started, and our intention was to fill the portions involving news events with actual news occasions.” Fortuitously, the filmmakers were present for the history-making demonstrations and ensuing riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Although Wexler claimed in a 7 September 1969 New York Times interview that the script was completed four months before the convention was scheduled to take place, and that the violence could not have been predicted, there were plenty of indicators that a confrontation might erupt between police and antiwar demonstrators. Wexler also alleged that he and his crew were surveilled by Chicago police, the U.S. Army, and the Secret Service for the seven-week period in which they shot there.
Wexler estimated his final expenditures on the production would amount to $800,000, which was $200,000 over the acquisition fee Paramount had promised to acquire the film for dsitribution. However, Wexler was also set to receive fifty-percent of the profits. According to the deal, Paramount retained the right to “re-edit and add or delete from Wexler’s cut” before releasing the picture. Mike Bloomfield’s score for the 1969 film has not had a release.
MEDIUM COOL received an X-rating from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), due to vulgar language and a love scene showing male and female frontal nudity. Variety noted that the film contained “liberal use of the most common four-letter word for fornication, as well as the common five-letter word for the male sexual organ.” The words alluded to were said to “represent the last language barrier” for major studio films, after the recent normalization of “the common euphemisms for urine and defecation” that had been taboo only eighteen months before when heard in the film version of Truman Capote’s IN COLD BLOOD (1967). The article also pointed out that MEDIUM COOL was “the first major-company American film to contain below-the-waist nudity." In 1970, the film was re-rated [R] after an appeal.
Critical reception was mixed. However, the picture came to be known as one of the “new American statement films,” as noted in the Los Angeles Times review, which deemed it more provocative and important than recent releases like MIDNIGHT COWBOY and EASY RIDER. It fared well commercially, grossing $1 million in film rentals in the first four months of release.
Wexler was one of ten nominees for a Directors Guild of America (DGA) award for Best Direction of Motion Pictures for the year 1969. In 2003, the historical significance of MEDIUM COOL was acknowledged when it was added to the Library of Congress’s National Film Registry.
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Posted: |
Oct 13, 2019 - 2:02 PM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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In PIECES OF DREAMS, Robert Forster plays “Gregory Lind,” the junior priest at Our Lady of the Assumption, a Catholic parish in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Life at the parish is not perfect for Greg, as he is beginning to have philosophical differences with the church, most specifically the senior parish priest, “Father Paul Schaeffer” (Ivor Francis). Greg meets social worker and divorcée "Pamela Gibson” (Lauren Hutton), who is able to live in comfort as a result of the divorce settlement. Greg and Pamela begin a sexual relationship.
Robert Forster and Lauren Hutton in PIECES OF DREAMS
Daniel Haller directed this 1970 drama, which has an unreleased score by Michel Legrand.
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Posted: |
Oct 13, 2019 - 5:02 PM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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BANYON was a made-for-television film which starred Robert Forster as “Miles C. Banyon,” a private eye in 1930s Los Angeles. His police contact, “Lieutenant Pete Cordova,” was played by Darren McGavin. In the film, Banyon's client, a young woman, is found dead in Banyon's office, shot with Banyon's gun. Ed Adamson and Richard Alan Simmons produced the film, which was directed by Robert Day and scored by Leonard Rosenman. It aired on NBC on 15 March 1971.
Although he had not been involved in the TV movie, Quinn Martin pitched “Banyon” as a series to NBC and the network picked it up for the 1972-73 season. The show premiered on Friday, 15 September 1972 at 10 PM. The series now had Richard Jaeckel playing Banyon’s police contact, “Lt. Pete McNeil.” Since Banyon’s office was located in the same building as “Peggy Revere's’ (Joan Blondell’s) secretarial school, Banyon found himself with a different pretty new receptionist almost every week.
“Banyon” went up against the established romantic comedy “Love, American Style” on ABC and the “CBS Friday Night Movie.” The show never got any traction, and was cancelled after 15 episodes.
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Posted: |
Oct 13, 2019 - 5:21 PM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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In JOURNEY THROUGH ROSEBUD, Kristoffer Tabori plays ‘Danny,” a draft dodger who finds himself on the Rosebud Indian Reservation, where he meets “Frank” (Robert Forster), a cynical Viet Nam veteran and unofficial leader of the reservation. “Shirley” (Victoria Racimo), Frank’s ex-wife, is an idealistic yet practical person who still has much control over Frank.
Kristoffer Tabori, Victoria Racimo, and Robert Forster in JOURNEY THROUGH ROSEBUD
Directed by Tom Gries, JOURNEY THROUGH ROSEBUD was the first release of GSF Productions, a production and distribution company established by David Gil, Robert S. Sinn, and Paul Frankenberg. Johnny Mandel’s score has not had a release.
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