Winter Kills (1979)

Stuart's Nite

Via William Richart's site:

Helming his own adaptation of Richard ("The Manchurian Candidate"; "Prizzi's Honor") Condon's novel, Richert crafted a jet black comedy starring Jeff Bridges as the younger brother of an assassinated president who becomes embroiled in a mind-boggling conspiracy as he searches for the real assassin. Though "Winter Kills" was his first fiction feature as a director (having previously helmed several "cinema verite" documentaries), Richert managed to round up an extraordinary cast in support of Bridges including John Huston as the patriarch power broker, Anthony Perkins, Toshiro Mifune, Sterling Hayden, Eli Wallach, Dorothy Malone and Elizabeth Taylor. Not surprisingly, his powers of persuasion are legendary.

Production began in 1976 and screeched to a halt a few weeks before completion when union representatives arrived on the set. "Winter Kills" was shut down for non-payment of salaries. MGM impounded the negative and the production went into bankruptcy. A bad situation became surreal as one of the neophyte producers was found dead in his apartment, handcuffed and shot through the head, while the other was arrested for drug smuggling as part of the biggest marijuana bust in California history. The making of the film had become every bit as dark, convoluted and absurd as its plot.

While struggling to raise money to complete "Winter Kills", Richert scripted (from a Larry Cohen story) and directed another off-beat satire starring Jeff Bridges, "The American Success Company/American Success/Success" (1979). The targets were capitalism and machismo as Bridges portrayed a rich and passive young man who spices up his life by developing an alternate persona. Made in Munich with German tax shelter money, the film was barely released to mixed reviews. Deemed quite funny but uneven, "The American Success Company" has its share of ardent admirers including Steven Spielberg who owns a print that he shows to friends.

Meanwhile, Richert convinced Avco-Embassy to put up the money for two more weeks of shooting on "Winter Kills". He reassembled the necessary cast members and finally finished the film in late 1978. The $6 million budget had inflated to $8 million but many creditors were never paid. "Winter Kills" was released briefly in 1979 to mostly perplexed reviews and quickly pulled by the studio in favor of a less estimable flop, "Goldengirl", with Susan Anton. In contrast, the reputation of Richert's film has only grown over the years.

In 1980, Richert and former studio exec Claire Townsend formed the Invisible Studio, an unorthodox distribution company which re-released "The American Success Story" as "American Success" in 1981 (the title was later shortened to "Success"). "Winter Kills" was revived, re-edited and re-released with its original ending restored in 1983.

On the Town (1949)

Nora's Nite

Via American Masters:

Born in 1912 into a large middle-class Irish family in Pittsburgh, Kelly's father was a traveling record salesman and his mother was possessed with a formidable determination to expose her children to the arts. By his teenage years, Gene and his brother Fred took over a failing dance school with their mother and their father slid deeper into alcoholism. After choreographing local shows and playing nightclubs with Fred, by 1938 Kelly felt he was good enough to buy a one-way ticket to New York City and eventually won the lead role in the original Broadway production of Pal Joey.

Seeing him on stage, MGM head Louis B. Mayer assured Kelly that the studio would like to sign him without so much as a screen test but, through a series of miscommunications, a screen test is requested and Kelly refused. Writing an acerbic letter to Mayer accusing him of duplicity, Kelly turned down the counteroffer and set the stage for a lifetime of acrimony between the two men. Ironically, Kelly was put under contract at Selznick International by Mayer's son-in-law David O. Selznick, who had no interest in producing musicals and thought Kelly could exist purely as a dramatic actor. With no roles forthcoming, Kelly was loaned out to MGM to co-star with Judy Garland in FOR ME AND MY GAL. The film was a hit and Selznick subsequently sold the actor and his contract to MGM.

A series of mediocre roles followed and it was not until Kelly was loaned out to Columbia for 1944's COVER GIRL, with Rita Hayworth, that he became firmly established as a star. His landmark "alter ego" sequence, in which he partnered with himself, brought film dance to a new level of special effects. With Stanley Donen as his assistant, Kelly created a sense of the psychological and integrated story telling never before seen in a Hollywood musical. Realizing what they had, MGM refused to ever loan him out again, ruining Kelly's opportunity to star in the film versions of GUYS AND DOLLS, PAL JOEY and even SUNSET BOULEVARD. Back with producer Arthur Freed at MGM, Kelly continued his innovative approach to material by placing himself in a cartoon environment to dance with Jerry the Mouse in ANCHOR'S AWEIGH yet another musical first.

During his marriage to the actress Betsy Blair, Kelly was radicalized and the couple became well known for their liberal politics. In 1947, when the Carpenters Union went on strike and the Hollywood studios were looking for an intermediary to intervene on their behalf, Kelly was chosen much to everyone's surprise. He traveled back and forth from Culver City to union headquarters in Chicago for two months, mediating a strike that was costing the studios dearly. When a settlement was finally reached, Kelly was shocked to learn that the studios felt it was unfair and that they had been cheated by his siding with the strikers. Naively and genuinely trying to help and unaware of unstated expectations, underhanded tactics, and slush funds Kelly's efforts only resulted in further exacerbating his relationship with Louis B. Mayer.

As the Blacklist Era began, Kelly along with Humphrey Bogart, John Huston, Danny Kaye, and others joined the Committee for the First Amendment. Hoping to diffuse the rising situation in Washington, DC, the group created a kind of whistle-stop national tour to present their views to the public prior to their command performance before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Their efforts and press conference deteriorated into a fiasco and forced many of the stars to return to Hollywood and focus more on personal damage control than on their original idealistic intent.

More mediocre roles in "revue" films followed and Kelly's frustrations mounted. He was, however, able to continue refining and showcasing his unique appeal and approach to new material with standout numbers in THE PIRATE AND WORDS AND MUSIC, among other films. Determined from the start to differentiate himself from Fred Astaire, Kelly concerned himself with incorporating less ballroom dancing and more distinctly American athleticism into his choreography. Easter Parade and the chance to co-star with Judy Garland would have been Kelly's opportunity to get away from what he considered substandard fare. But, in a show of bravado in his own backyard, Kelly broke his ankle during one of his infamously competitive volley ball games and, ironically, had to turn the film over to Fred Astaire.

Finally, Kelly and Stanley Donen were assigned their own film to co-direct 1949's On the Town. In just five days of shooting selected sequences, they opened up the genre as no one had ever done before, creating another first a musical film shot on location. Followed by his two masterworks, AN AMERICAN IN PARIS, with its 17-minute ballet sequence, and SINGIN' IN THE RAIN, Kelly achieved icon status at the age of forty. In 1951, he was awarded a special Oscar for AN AMERICAN IN PARIS for his "extreme versatility as an actor, singer, director and dancer, but specifically for his brilliant achievement in the art of choreography."

Candleshoe (1977)

Pamela's Nite

Deadly Is the Female (1950)

Peter's Nite
Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton via senses of cinema:

Gun Crazy deserves a place by itself. First, because it's a nearly unclassifiable work. Gangster film? But here the gang is reduced to the minimum, to the association of two murderers. Criminal psychology film? It contrasts absolutely with the tone of that genre. Besides, the ambivalence of the story permits two very different interpretations. In effect, it's a question of a man with a mania for guns and his desperate attempts to conquer his virility through means other than murder. His companion, who plays the determining role in their career outside the law, is a splendid specimen of bitch. She has a strong preference for pants or cowboy outfits, and polarizes the aggression of the couple. The final episode, in the marsh, becomes an avenging execution by her lover: he prefers her death to that of the sheriff, his boyhood friend, whom she is about to shoot.

But rather than consider Gun Crazy as a story with an edifying conclusion, supported by pathological causes-as we appear to be invited to do-we prefer to see in it one of the rarest contemporary illustrations of L'AMOUR FOU (in all senses of the word, of course) which, according to André Breton, "takes" here "ALL THE POWER". Gun Crazy would then appear to be a kind of Golden Age of American film noir.

Could one say that the poetry misleads one a little? But everything is done here, visibly, so that the viewer, oblivious of his involvement with murderers, passes to the other side of the barricades with John Dall and Peggy Cummins. The memory of their death immediately joins the recollection of the deaths of other celebrated lovers in cinema and literature. Dall, throwing out his last scruples, becomes an outlaw. This is so as to be welcomed back by a triumphant woman stretched out on the bed, wearing only stockings and a robe. Taken with a veritable frenzy of passion, she waits in silence, nostrils quivering and mouth parted, for the embrace of her lover; their attitude-they seem to want to snap each other up voraciously-shows a singular desire. And one understands, in the presence of such consuming passions, how they could have lost their senses of traditional morality.

Laurie: What a joint! No more hot water.
Bart: Well, it's a roof anyway.
Laurie: Yeah, it's a roof alright. How are we gonna give the room clerk the money when we move out?
Bart: I can still get that job at Remington.
Laurie: Forty dollars a week?
Bart: We can get by on that.
Laurie: Yeah, maybe you can, but not me. It's too slow, Bart. I want to do a little living.
Bart: What's your idea of living?
Laurie: It's not forty bucks a week.
Bart: Tell me, when did you get this idea?
Laurie: Oh, I've always had this - ever since I can remember. If I don't get it one way, I'll get it the other.
Bart: I didn't think we'd had it figured out that way. (She steps into her bedroom slippers.)
Laurie: Well, so I changed my mind. I told you I was no good. I didn't kid you, did I? (She lights a cigarette for herself.) Well, now you know. Bart, I've been kicked around all my life. Well, from now on, I'm gonna start kicking back.
Bart: What is it you want?
Laurie: When are you going to begin to live? (She leans down with her hands on his shoulders from behind, speaking directly into his ear.) Four years in reform school, then the Army. I should think they'd owe you something for a change. What's it got you, being so particular?

Bart: Let's not argue. I'll hock my guns. It'll give us enough dough to make another start.
Laurie: There isn't enough money in those guns for the kind of start I want. Bart, I want things, a lot of things, big things. I don't want to be afraid of life or anything else. I want a guy with spirit and guts. A guy who can laugh at anything, who will do anything, a guy who can kick over the traces and win the world for me.
Bart: Look, I don't want to look in that mirror and see nothing but a stick up man staring back at me.
Laurie: You'd better kiss me goodbye, Bart (she drops onto the bed and reclines back), because I won't be here when you get back. Come on, Bart, let's finish it the way we started it, on the level. (She cooly drags on her cigarette as he nervously clenches his fist.)