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Due to a malfunction, rogue bomb #20 is stuck outside the bomb bay with orders to detonate. That indeed spells trouble for the crew of Dark Star.

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I am always amazed at how many people have never seen this movie...it is one of my all-time favorites...1982, at time when Micky Rourke, Kevin Bacon, Paul Reiser, Tim Dailey and, even freakin' Steve Guttenberg were all cool. This flick was so influential on things like "Seinfeld"....Guttenberg is Costanza all over... and Micky Rourke was so cool in that movie... "Boogie...Sintra or Mathis?" Boogie: "Elvis"

 

I might be the odd one out but those clips from Diner didn't make me laugh and I didn't think Seinfeld was funny either. Way to dry and they just drone on about meaningless shite.

Posted

I might be the odd one out but those clips from Diner didn't make me laugh and I didn't think Seinfeld was funny either. Way to dry and they just drone on about meaningless shite.

 

I don't like Seinfeld either. I actually have no problem with meaningless shite, but the meaningless shite on Seinfeld always seemed so contrived and inorganic. One of those shows that makes me say "Ok, it's comedians reading lines."

 

Except Jason Alexander. He owned that role.

Posted

I couldn't find the clip. But it's before this one in The Godfather...

 

Luca Brasi, sitting on a chair outside, practicing his lines before he goes and sees The Godfather.

 

I was in a meeting a few years ago with Al Ruddy, the Producer of The Godfather (and also the original Longest Yard, Million Dollar Baby, etc). He was telling me and my manager all kinds of great Godfather stories. He brings up that scene, where Luca Brasi was practicing his lines. It turns out the guy who played him was not an actor, but somewhat of a real thug. Coppola saw him sitting in that chair before the scene was supposed to be filmed, practicing his lines for the upcoming shot. Coppola whispered to the cameraman to come over and told him to start filming, and they did, and end up using it as if it were intentional.

 

In that same meeting, Ruddy started giving my manager some professional advice, and he went on and on about how you have to be passionate about your work, and truly believe with all your heart in the films you chose to make or agree to, because you will spend a year or even two years of your life immersed in this film, and you better be completely emotionally engaged in it. It was quite a speech and very inspiring.

 

Then we asked a couple minutes later what he was working on and he said, "The movie version of "Mr. Ed", you know, the talking horse from the TV show."

Posted

I couldn't find the clip. But it's before this one in The Godfather...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgZ60tcT17s

 

Luca Brasi, sitting on a chair outside, practicing his lines before he goes and sees The Godfather.

 

I was in a meeting a few years ago with Al Ruddy, the Producer of The Godfather (and also the original Longest Yard, Million Dollar Baby, etc). He was telling me and my manager all kinds of great Godfather stories. He brings up that scene, where Luca Brasi was practicing his lines. It turns out the guy who played him was not an actor, but somewhat of a real thug. Coppola saw him sitting in that chair before the scene was supposed to be filmed, practicing his lines for the upcoming shot. Coppola whispered to the cameraman to come over and told him to start filming, and they did, and end up using it as if it were intentional.

 

In that same meeting, Ruddy started giving my manager some professional advice, and he went on and on about how you have to be passionate about your work, and truly believe with all your heart in the films you chose to make or agree to, because you will spend a year or even two years of your life immersed in this film, and you better be completely emotionally engaged in it. It was quite a speech and very inspiring.

 

Then we asked a couple minutes later what he was working on and he said, "The movie version of "Mr. Ed", you know, the talking horse from the TV show."

 

Fantastic stuff, thanks for sharing!

Posted

Fantastic stuff, thanks for sharing!

I just found this article. It's a really good expose on the making of The Godfather.

http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2009/03/godfather200903

 

It mentions that scene that I did, with the guy playing Luca Brasi practicing his lines.

 

It also mentions a story that Ruddy told us in that meeting, but he told it slightly differently. In this article it says...

But in the first of endless contradictions in the making of the film, they chose Albert “Al” Ruddy, a non-Italian, to produce. A tall, tough, gravel-voiced New Yorker, he had recently muscled a crazy idea for a comedy about a Nazi P.O.W. camp into the hit TV series Hogan’s Heroes. Whatever his artistic talent may have been, Ruddy was known for being able to get a movie made cheaply and quickly.

 

“I got a call on a Sunday. ‘Do you want to do The Godfather?,’” Ruddy remembers. “I thought they were kidding me, right? I said, ‘Yes, of course, I love that book’—which I had never read. They said, ‘Could you fly to New York, because Charlie Bluhdorn [chairman of Paramount’s parent company, Gulf & Western] wants to approve the director and producer.’ I said, ‘Absolutely.’ I ran down to a bookstore, got a copy of the book, and read it in an afternoon.”

 

In New York, Ruddy met the fire-breathing, profanity-spewing Austrian tycoon Charles Bluhdorn, the acquisition-mad empire builder who had bought Paramount in 1966. “His exact line to me is ‘What do you want to do with this movie?,’” Ruddy says.

 

Ruddy had carefully marked up the book with notes, but since he had heard rumors that Bluhdorn and Gulf & Western had had dealings with the Mob, he decided to go with his gut, street fighter to street fighter. “Charlie, I want to make an ice-blue, terrifying movie about the people you love,” he said. Bluhdorn’s eyebrows shot skyward and his grin grew wide. “He bangs the !@#$ing table and runs out of the office.”

 

Ruddy had the job.

In Ruddy's version to us, he said that he heard they were doing the movie of the Godfather but he had no cache at that time, and he talked them into letting him go to New York to convince Bluhdorn. He said he read the book and loved it although he hadn't. He told us that he never read the book, on the plane to New York he read the inside flaps of the book cover that described what the story was.

 

Then he went into Bluhdorn's office like the article says, and he asked why should I let you do this movie. And Ruddy told us he said, "I'm going to make an ice-blue movie about people you hate that you learn to love." And then Bluhdorn just said, "I love it. You got the job."

 

Later when he told people about that they said, "What the fukk is 'an ice-blue movie?', and Ruddy said, "How do I know? I just made that up."

 

There were a lot of other great stories he told. Like one was, the guy that played Johnny Fontane, the singer Al Martino, was supposed to be a total ****. Coppola hated him because in his scenes with Connie (Talia Shire) when he got abusive with her, he hit her pretty hard. Coppola got pissed because Shire is, of course, his sister. So in the scenes that Sonny (James Caan) beats on Johnny Fontane, Coppola tells Caan to beat the **** out of Martino and he smacks him around pretty good.

Posted

I just found this article. It's a really good expose on the making of The Godfather.

http://www.vanityfai...godfather200903

 

It mentions that scene that I did, with the guy playing Luca Brasi practicing his lines.

 

It also mentions a story that Ruddy told us in that meeting, but he told it slightly differently. In this article it says...

 

In Ruddy's version to us, he said that he heard they were doing the movie of the Godfather but he had no cache at that time, and he talked them into letting him go to New York to convince Bluhdorn. He said he read the book and loved it although he hadn't. He told us that he never read the book, on the plane to New York he read the inside flaps of the book cover that described what the story was.

 

Then he went into Bluhdorn's office like the article says, and he asked why should I let you do this movie. And Ruddy told us he said, "I'm going to make an ice-blue movie about people you hate that you learn to love." And then Bluhdorn just said, "I love it. You got the job."

 

Later when he told people about that they said, "What the fukk is 'an ice-blue movie?', and Ruddy said, "How do I know? I just made that up."

 

There were a lot of other great stories he told. Like one was, the guy that played Johnny Fontane, the singer Al Martino, was supposed to be a total ****. Coppola hated him because in his scenes with Connie (Talia Shire) when he got abusive with her, he hit her pretty hard. Coppola got pissed because Shire is, of course, his sister. So in the scenes that Sonny (James Caan) beats on Johnny Fontane, Coppola tells Caan to beat the **** out of Martino and he smacks him around pretty good.

Al Martino/Johnny Fontaine, or Gianni Russo/Carlo?

Posted

First off - just watch this for Jack Lemmon (one of my favorite actors ever) and the humor that we all face when we are embarrassed by a friend who acts weird in a public place. Walter Mathau kept a straight face throughout and Lemmon nailed it. Neil Simon wrote the script and screenplay and was a master at taking ordinary events and having us laugh at ourselves and relate to the plight of those in similar circumstances (childhood, adult, social interaction, etc). This scene makes me laugh every time.....and it's clean humor.

 

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