Happy 89th Birthday Robert Evans 29th June 2019!

He was a successful child actor on radio and made the transition to juvenile roles on the silver screen. When that ran out of road he sold ladies’ slacks with his brother, making a million in women’s pants, as he liked to put it. Then he became the head of production at Paramount and was behind some of the best films in the last era that we can truly call a golden age of cinema, the New Hollywood.  He prioritised story above all so it’s apt that he wrote one of the best memoirs ever about the movie business The Kid Stays in the Picture which became a documentary (and an ace radio book). He’s hilarious and now he’s eighty-nine. Happy birthday Robert Evans!

 

 

 

 

Happy 80th Birthday Ali MacGraw 1st April 2019!

Many happy returns to screen goddess and Seventies icon Ali MacGraw who celebrates her 80th birthday today!

I was never trained as an actress. It was frightening for me, every single solitary breathing second. I had some sort of pop-star energy, but I had no qualifications. I was never comfortable.

 

 

Happy 79th Birthday Ali MacGraw 1st April 2018!

The stunning Ali MacGraw turns 79 today! Actress, stylist, interior decorator, model, wife, mother, memoirist, cover girl, style icon, animal rights activist, she made an incredible impact on cinema and was the world’s top female star in 1972, beloved of many. Her rare film and TV appearances are always worth watching but she has carved out another career, as yoga practitioner, and her bestselling video is believed to have been largely responsible for making it popular in the US.  Famous for her marriages to Robert Evans and Steve McQueen, she is her own woman and a true star. Many happy returns!

Convoy (1978)

Boy, these lonely long highways sure grind the souls of us cowboys. Trucker Martin ‘Rubber Duck’ Penwald (Kris Kristofferson) and his buddies Pig Pen (Burt Young), Widow Woman (Madge Sinclair) and Spider Mike (Franklin Ajaye) use their CB radios to warn one another of the presence of cops. But conniving Arizona Sheriff Lyle ‘Cottonmouth’ Wallace (Ernest Borgnine) is hip to the truckers’ tactics, and begins tracking them via CB because of a longstanding issue with Rubber Duck. Facing constant harassment, Rubber Duck and his pals use their radios to coordinate a vast convoy and rule the road. En route Rubber Duck teams up with a photographer Melissa (Ali MacGraw) driving to a job in her Jaguar XKE and she winds up hitching a ride ostensibly to the airport after a brouhaha in a diner which sees Wallace chained to a stool where Duck’s girlfriend Violet (Cassie Yates) sets him free after the truckers have left. The trucks set off to the state line heading into New Mexico but Wallace has an idea to use their one black driver as bait and more and more drivers join the convoy … There ain’t many of us left. Writer Bill (B.W.L.) Norton took his lead from the lyrics of the (literally) radio-friendly novelty country-pop song by C.W. McCall and Chip Davis to write this, which starred his Cisco Pike protagonist Kristofferson, with Sam Peckinpah (who had variously directed Kristofferson, MacGraw and Borgnine) drafted in to helm. It seems an unlikely setup for Peckinpah but when you understand its anti-authoritarian drive, the idea that these guys are like modern cowboys pitted against the vile sheriff antagonist, and pair that with the director’s customary robust style (tongue firmly planted slo-mo in cheek) then this isn’t just another one of those late Seventies comic road movies like Smokey and the Bandit and Every Which Way But Loose which I’ve always thought it must have been – it has a strangely operatic confidence and cadence embodied in Kristofferson’s fiercely independent trucker. That’s perhaps another way of saying you shouldn’t look at this too seriously for deep character or narrative sense but it has fantastically sensuous pleasures to enjoy – especially if you’re a fan of Mack Trucks and getting one over on The Man. Thing is, Peckinpah brought in his friend James Coburn (Pat Garrett to Kristofferson’s Billy the Kid) to take care of the second unit and due to Peckinpah’s various addictions Coburn wound up doing much of the movie. The director’s cut was four hours long and the studio took it away from him and put in a bunch of new music (we don’t object to diegetic Lucille or Blanket on the Ground within the first quarter hour).  I have vague memories of this being trailed (inappropriately) before a Disney movie when I was knee high to a proverbial grasshopper and it’s quite bizarre to have finally seen it tonight, with MacGraw’s horribly unflattering perm and unsuitable travel clothes ‘n’ all. The landscape of the American Southwest is stunningly captured by Harry Stradling Jr. and there’s a handful of country and western classics on the soundtrack. What’s interesting is that Rubber Duck and Cottonmouth start out from the same place – independence. It’s populist politics put together by a rebel heart with an explosive conclusion and a happily twisted ending. Yee haw! They’ve got a language all their own

Love Story (1970)

Where do I begin?  There are seven basic plots and Love Story is one of them. Boy meets girl, boy loves girl, boy loses girl. It began as a screenplay sold to Paramount Pictures and the writer, literature professor Erich Segal, was persuaded to novelise it. The novel became a bestseller before the film’s release. The stars were already very elderly to be playing undergrads – Ryan O’Neal was 29, Ali MacGraw 31.  Some smart and arch dialogue, the decision to use classical music (“What could be better than Bach – or Mozart – or you?”), an audacious opening, well chosen fashion, characters who do things (play keyboards, hockey) all contribute to a film that feels unerringly modern. O’Neal had been a Hollywood kid who nonetheless paid his dues in TV including a long stint on Peyton Place, MacGraw had made an impact the previous year as Jewish American Princess Brenda Patimkin in the Roth adaptation,  Goodbye, Columbus (Peerce) and both performers were affecting and ridiculously beautiful (and remain so to this day.) What can you say about a twenty-five year old girl who died?  A classic.