He might have seemed as much of a permanent Hollywood fixture as the Chinese Theater or Musso & Frank, but columnist Army Archerd, for decades the writer of the “Just for Variety” column, past away yesterday from cancer at the age of 87. Growing up in Los Angeles with a permanent eye fixed on the movies, I was nevertheless rarely a regular Variety reader except when I was lucky enough to be working someplace with a subscription, but Archerd’s importance was obvious.

He was a fairly far cry from the muckraking and abrasive Nikki Finke and a much further cry from the punishing, often vindictive, gossip/entertainment columnists of the past like the mean-spirited but powerful Walter Winchell and Hedda Hopper. Indeed, I had kind of forgotten that the younger Archerd had fought the Hollywood blacklist. Winchell and Hopper had done very much the opposite.

When Archerd broke a personal story about a celebrity it wasn’t to try and “destroy” them and, in the most famous instance, it was a social good — though not everyone thought so at the time. For those who can’t remember the news that aging onetime superstar Rock Hudson had AIDS, it’s hard to explain the importance of the event. It was the first time many had even heard of the disease, which was already devastating the lives of untold numbers of people. Even in L.A., where Hudson’s sexual preference was an open secret even outside the show business world, the news raised the awareness of the quickly spreading disease far beyond the confines of the gay community, where it was already a devastating fact of life. Outside of Hollywood, it was also maybe the moment where “middle America” became aware that some of their favorite performers were not heterosexual.

For me, however, however, Archerd was always the pleasant, calm guy I grew up watching at the Oscars or at the Hollywood Christmas Parade. I was never a regular reader of his column, but he was just always there. I don’t know what to say except that I half expect those cement footprints in front of the theater Sid Grauman built might go away, too. Nikki Finke and, of course, Variety have excellent obituaries up.

Also, see Finke’s comments. Starting off with one by actor/activist Mike Farrell (”MASH”), it’s a pretty moving tribute.

(Originally posted at Premium Hollywood.)

I have to admit I only came to appreciate him later on in his life; maybe we both improved with age.

The ending of Budd Schulberg’s extraordinary life at age 95 tonight is just a little strange for me personally. By a very odd coincidence, just last night I finished watching the 1959 TV production of “What Makes Sammy Run?,” Schulberg’s great and possibly never-to-be-filmed 1941 novel about Hollywood dehumanization (yes, it goes back that far, at least). The DVD included an interview he gave just last year and, given his age and fairly obvious frailty, I wondered how long it would be before I’d be writing one of these posts on him. He was not a young man, but this is still too soon.

Anyhow, what can you say about the writer of “On the Waterfront” and “A Face in the Crowd” — two of the most acclaimed screenplays ever written — and the nastily on-point movie business novel which was so effective it drove John Wayne to physical violence? Of course, Schulberg got it from all sides, though for differing reasons.

Like most liberals, I have serious complaints with how Schulberg comported himself during the McCarthy era, and certain lines in both of his great scripts slightly stick in my craw. While, unlike many, he never abandoned his liberalism, it’s clear to me that his entirely justified anticommunism took a form that helped that American extreme-right,  harmed the first amendment, and bolstered the most vicious aspects of U.S. foreign policy. Still, there’s no denying the power and clarity of his writing or the moral values they expressed at their best.

As it happens, I posted one great scene from “A Face in the Crowd” last week. Here’s another clip from that should knock your socks off.

From the only surviving dramatization of the ultimate Hollywood novel.

“On the Waterfront” has never been a huge personal favorite of mine, but it’s easy to see why this became one of the most famous scenes ever in movie history. And it’s more than five minutes of two guys talking in the back of a cab with no action or movement other than the tremendous emotions between two brothers. Hard to imagine anyone in mainstream movies having the guts to pull this one off now.

H/t The Auteurs Daily Feed

I keep reading, in articles like this, that support for the President’s health care efforts is slipping. Do people really believe the blatant lies about Obama killing old people and the like? If so, why?

The situation in this country is so catastrophically bad for so many people that it truly boggles my mind that the need for reform isn’t obvious, and lot of polls back up that contention to. (Support for a public option was ridiculously high as recently as six weeks back, when the question is framed that way.)

Anyhow, if you disagree with me, please talk with the Canadian or Western European of your choice and see if they’d like to swap their deal with yours. If you love your health plan: What would happen if you lost your job? Or what if you decided to start your own business? What do you think the effect on our economy is when most people can’t start an entrepreneurial venture without very literally risking their own and their family’s lives? If you’re a hardcore free  marketer, then ask yourself if our free market is so terribly harmed by having public police, fire, and education? And, just as have private education and security, remember that more gold-plated options won’t be off the table for folks who can afford to spend more.

Anyhow, if you’re like me, stop getting angry and asking obvious questions like I just did. Do something. Calling congresscritters and senators is what I’m doing, but there’s always more. And, if you haven’t yet signed a petition on this, now’s definitely the time. We need everyone on record.

I’ve basically been neglecting this blog because of my other blogging duties over at Premium Hollywood, and we’re still trying to figure out if there’s a way to link this site more easily to that one for as  long as this lasts — though my brief there is a bit different, i.e., more contemporary, slightly more film biz, slightly less cinephile-esque, and less political.

In any case, for the next five days I’m going to be at Comic-Con and posting twice daily at PH. I might repost some material here, sooner or later, if I think it meets the strict FtY criteria, but I certainly encourage you to visit the place I’m going to link to yet again on  a frequent basis over the next four or five days  and maybe forever.

Also, there are some crucial political issues that are happening. I’ll keep it as simple as possible: Healthcare — don’t believe the BS. This is happening, now, and viable health care with a public option is absolutely essential, and if you don’t know that, you’re lucky to be so rich and not know anyone middle class. People are going being financially ruined, suffering and dying unnecessarily while small business and entrepreneurialism is being actively discouraged as people can no longer risk starting their own businesses because of the difficulty (near impossibility for many) of getting individual health insurance. Health care is no more a privilege than is education or police and fire protection, or maybe we should get rid of those socialized boondoggles as well. Damn communist fire department.

(H/t Bruinkid)

Call and write your senators and congress-critters. Sign every petition know to man (I know I have). In others words, start here and stand with Dr. Dean.

Oh, and Californians, we’ve got a real situation here. It’s complicated and I’m not 100% sure what the short-term answer is, but the long term answer is clear, the Prop. 13 limitations on the legislature, which basically makes passing any tax, on anyone or anything, impossible because of our smallish but for the most part utterly extremist and fanatical Republican party must go. But that’s a tough, but necessary, sell. In the meantime, check out the Courage Campaign site, we have to make the bastards in both party realize this will no longer be tolerated.

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Now, I have to go forth. However, this rather irritating — because I’ve read it 10,000,000,000 times before in various disguises — Variety article about the increasing number of females of all ages at the con puts me in mind of what the con was like the first time I went, when I was thirteen and geek sexual apartheid was in full force. In fact, I found some brief, raw footage of an actual seminar from the seventies Comic-Con online. Check it out. If you squint hard, you can see the El Cortez Hotel.

(more…)

A patriotic holiday tradition here at FtY, possibly just a bit more relevant this year. (And that first song is still a bit dull. You might want to start at about 2:40, when Frank decides to go for a smoke.)

Considering that it’s among the most influential of all Hollywood westerns and the last great film directed by the ultimate American classicist, John Ford, “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” is quirkier and darker than you might expert. It features two great stars playing characters initially decades older, and later decades younger, than their actual ages, and has a moral and political point of view that resonates with the most complex moments in American history, including the one we’re in now. Coming from a director famed for awe-inspiring vistas, it is so small in visual scope that it is often referred to as a “chamber western.” Though it was made at a point where color had become the Hollywood standard, it was shot in black and white – and had to be. For one thing, the nearly absurd age differences between the two male leads, and their characters throughout the film, would have been ruinously obvious in color – but also because black and white has always somehow been appropriate for portraying films about moral gray areas, and that’s where this tale lives.

Adapted by James Warner Bellah and Willis Goldbeck from a story by Dorothy Johnson, “Liberty Valence” opens sometime near the turn of the 20th century. The aging and highly distinguished Senator Ransom Stoddard (James Stewart), who rose to fame for a now legendary moment of heroism, and his wife, Hallie (Vera Miles, “Psycho”), return to the western town of Shinbone. They are there for the funeral of an old friend, a little-known resident who died penniless. After the Senator is accosted by a self-important newspaperman (Denver Pyle) demanding to know the significance of the deceased, the bulk of the film is told in flashback as a much younger Stoddard’s stagecoach is waylaid just outside of Shinbone….

READ THE REST AT BULLZ-EYE.COM

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A nicely student-sweded scene from the film. They don’t have Ford, Stewart, or Marvin, but they’ve got moxie.

Andrew Breitbart, whose site, Big Hollywood, I refuse to link to here on the grounds of something surpassing the highest levels of stupid known to man, fesses up in the page of the ultra-right Moonie The Washington Times, which is nevertheless generally the font of all wisdom when compared to the usual material the Breitbart gang produces. Anyhow, the title says it all, though it can be accused of massive understatement, but do read all the way to the end. You won’t be sorry.

And also, I’d like to take a moment to commend you all to the new Big Hollywood watchdog site: Andrew Breitbart: Mall Cop, it’s a unpleasant job of irritainment they’ve set out for themselves, as you’ll see below.

It seems to me there might be a movie in henry porter’s DailyKos diary, or rather in the fascinating later life of Marine Interrogator and Asian art scholar Sherwood Moran, who died two years shy of his hundredth birthday in 1983.  The opening of porter’s diary is bit lengthy, but the far lengthier essay  by Moran is, according to his moving online tribute, something of a cult classic among Marine “interviewers” (Moran’s preferred term for his art). The character of the semi-saintly, ex-pacifist, tap-dancing, utterly devoutly Christian liberal who helped defeat the Japanese militarists of World War II with his love of Japan and his sincere compassion for the Japanese people seems like a great star part for any late-middle-aged actor and an profound example of the best of Christianity. Yes, we need at least one more WWII movie, at least.

There are, of course, obvious political resonances as Dick Cheney dominates our airwaves for reasons known only to Dick Cheney, and this really should be “front and center” in the torture debate. Also, a movie based on him would drive our friends at Big Hollywood insane, who really should take a moment to reflect on the very radical and unconservative implications of what they’ve been saying.