Next James Deans

 1) Paul Newman in Somebody Up There Likes Me

Dean was going to play Rocky Graziano in Somebody Up There Likes Me for MGM. He died. Paul Newman stepped in instead. Newman became such an individual star that it's often forget he was very much in Dean's shadow for a long time, playing a lot of similarly moody young men. Like Dean, he was also under contract to Warners. Every role Newman played in the late 50s you could imagine being played by Dean.

2) John Kerr in The Corn is Green

 In 1955 just before Dean died it was announced Maurice Evans was negotiating with Dean to star in The Corn is Green for TV with Judith Anderson. He was about to start rehearsals when he died. Kerr took the part - Anderson's role ended up being played be Eva La Galliene.

3) Dewey Martin in The Battler

Martin took over a role meant to Dean in The Battler on TV. 

4) Paul Newman in The Left Handed Gun

Apparently Dean was going to be in this. Sounds like a perfect fit. Unlike the first three this may have more been in the "advanced talks" phase. Dean would have made a Western, inevitably. Even Brando did one.

5) Tony Perkins in Fear Strikes Out

This was in negotiation apparently not a done deal. The role would be perfect for Dean - moody young man, athlete, TV origins.

Movie review - "Get Back" (1991) **

 This was grim. Paul McCartney's world tour in a particularly uninteresting time in his life. Linda is on keyboards but we don't see much of her. We see more of these other musicians there. Sorry ifyou're important, guys, I didn't recognise you.Nice colours.Bright lights.  Baby boomer audience members dancing away having a good time. Late 80s fashion - mullets, long sleeves.

Paul goes through the hits, Beatles and Wings with some newer ones. There's clips to some songs - vision from Help! and shots of Vietnam veterans and the like.

It's not very well done. I mean it's professional, just dull. It's Trad Dad had more fun. Richard Lester's last studio film to date. You long for some life... some pretentious chat, some backyard footage, an appearance by Ringo. Something.

Richard Lester - random thoughts...

 I recently completed the (feature length) cinematic oeuvre of director Richard Lester and tried to come up with a top ten  I couldn't. I totally respect him as a director, I get the cult thing - he's had at least three books written on him. He just doesn't do it for me.

I came up with a top seven...

1) It's Trad, Dad (1962) - quite a bright debut feature. Not really a proper musical, it's a collection of musical acts, but some of those are very good and presented imaginatively. Compare it with the hard slog, impersonal gloss and late 80s fashion of Get Back (1991).

2) A Hard Day's Night (1964) -freewheeling in the best sense, the perfect marriage of performer and director it would seem, superb music. It makes it so odd that in Help (1965) Lester seems bored with the Beatles and more interested in the support cast, people like Leo McKern - seriously, watch the movie, you could cut all the Beatles out of it except Ringo and he's just a maguffin.

3) Petulia (1968) - excellently acted smart drama, one of the more realistic depictions of domestic violence, not to mention marriage and divorce, in a Hollywood film

4) The Three (and Four) Musketeers)(1973-74) - Lester is kept under control by a very good adaptation of a strong source material. His "bits" add to the fun rather than detract. Superb cast.

5) Juggernaut (1974) - Lester brought on as a hired gun. He adds lots of "bits" but the satire works in the context of the film and he's straightjacketed by a strong narrative line.

6) Robin and Marian (1976) - more superb actors, one of Sean Connery's best performances, some terrific stuff (eg death of Richard I). A very real take on the story. My only gripe is that Marian doesn't seem that into Robin. And maybe the thought of King John (Ian Holm) having a horny 12 year old bride (Victoria Abril!) isn't as funny as Lester think it is.

7) Cuba (1979) - the basic story of Casablanca turned on its head. A slightly silly last act but wonderful things up until then - the atmosphere and colour of Cuba, with its jai alai games, poverty, sleazy clubs, corruption, plantations, dodgy foreigners at casinos, casual violence. I get why this flopped but I think it's terrific. Connery is great, so is Brooke Adams, so is everyone, actually.

As for the rest...

Mouse in the Moon (1963) and Butch and Sundance the Early Days (1979) a both "whatever" sequels - not terrible, just watching them the whole time you go "I wish the original stars were in this... and why is there no romance?" (Lester is lousy at romance.) I don't mind Return of the Musketeers (1989), it's just a bit "whatever" too despite having the original cast (I think they should have adapted Man in the Iron Mask instead... better story).

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966) and The Ritz (1976) were not bad but, for me, movies that you watch going "this was probably really fun on stage". Royal Flash (1975) I've written about at length - I think it was miscast, used the wrong Flashman novel, and needed voice over. Finders Keepers (1984) felt miscast.

For his culty movies... The Knack (1965), How I Won the War (1967) and The Bed Sitting Room (1968) all have great things and are visually interesting but just... boring. Sorry cultists. The last two in particular seemed to make the same point again and again. I absolutely recognise these films have their fans.

I don't count Superman 2 as a Lester film - it was Richard Donner's, he overlooked the casting and the script Lester just shot most of it. Superman 3 however... yikes. Liked it as a kid, has good ideas in it (bringing in Lana Lang, having bad Superman) but it's lazy, full of stupid "bits" (that Perry White subplot involving the competition, Richard Pryor as a general) and has a script lacking in logic and full of contempt for its source material. This movie actually made me angry.

Anyway, Richard Lester. He was attached to do The Princess Bride. It would've been okay but he would've muffed the love story. I think he would've done a great Sea Kings.

This is more negative than I intended. Give Petulia and Cuba a look if you haven't.

Movie review - "Superman 3" (1983) **

 Critical opinion of this Superman movie has not been kind. Richard Donner was famously sacked off the original with Richard Lester shooting new footage for that and Superman 2. This one is more clearly Lester's film - he was the only director. It's also the film of David and Leslie Newman, with no Robert Benton or Tom Mankiewicz.

I remember loving it as a kid. I adored Richard Pryor and thought the opening slapstick sequence was incredibly hilarious. I remember being upset that Lois Lane got so little screen time.

It's really fun to see those actors again - Chris Reeve, Margot Kidder, Jackie Coogan, Marc McClure, etc. I loved Annette O'Toole as Lana. 

The idea of a bad Superman isn't a bad one and him going some for a school reunion is a great one. The computer stealing scam is funny.

But it's lazy. So lazy.

Cobbled together. After a while I started getting angry watching it.

The script is random. Richard Pryor is on unemployment forever then turns out to be a computer genius, so good he attracts Robert Vaughan, who has a Valerine Perrine style mistress in the form of Pamela Stephenson. Vaughan's plan is vague, something to do with oil. It starts and stops - Pryor creates a kryptonite variant, turning Superman bad accidentally; he makes the weather change; he a super computer which... is bad. Pryor has to go to Smallville to do something with computers which involves a slimy bully who is hitting on Lana. Smallville?

It's full of comic bits. Some are okay - that opening sequence. Some are irritating - Pryor describing what Superman did, Pryor impersonating a general to give Superman a gift, Pryor getting the bully drunk, Pryor on skis, a three beat story of Perry White running a competition at the office and the winners going on holiday and having a bad time.

Vaughan may as well have not been in the film. Stephenson could've been cut out - I guess she sleeps with Superman, which is different. But why not use this emotionally?

It's just a shame they didn't use the comic books as a resource more - they could've brought in Braniac, Supergirl, Mxy.

Or just focused it on the two Supermans. Have Vaughan want that from the get go. Give him a specific plan (control of oil is fine but be specific). Make Pryor a computer genius from the start. Really work on the Lana-Clarke Kent plot, have him want to be a father figure, fall for his high school sweetheart, be heartbroken over Lois. Have Lana kidnapped. Have bad Superman do really bad things.

It's so frustrating because there's a good movie inside here, or at least a cohesive one, but this is a mess.

Movie review - "Butch and Sundance The Early Days" (1979) **

 I guess the original made too much money that 20th Century Fox felt it was too irresistible to not return to the well. William Goldman never talks about this film but he was heavily involved as a producer as well as working on the script. It was directed by Richard Lester, who was going to do Goldman's The Princess Bride (and maybe The Sea Beast too).

It's quite well made, looks handsome and all that. But there doesn't seem to be a lot of point to it. Who cares how they met? The tone is similar to the first, a sort of jokey seriousness... but without them dying it doesn't have the same emotional weight. There's no Etta Place either. William Katt and Tom Berenger are fine but they're not Robert Redford and Paul Newman.

Why didn't they have a decent female role? Jill Eikenberry appears as Butch's wife, and other to his two kids... but it's not a very long sequence and the fact he just takes off and leave her  makes him seem like a drongo, and old. Why not use the Bassett sisters? 

Why not give them fiercer villains? There's Jake Lefors (Peter Weller) who pops up at the beginning and end but he's just doing his job.They have a scene where they note the railroad uses child labor but that's just in passing.

It's so hard to care. There's sequences which don't build, like in the snow when they try to transport medicine to help... and fail. The final train robbery you don't care. I mean, what's the point?

Maybe this would've worked with them as really young kids, like teenagers - Butch being tutored by Mike Cassidy. They could have made up a meeting with Sundance.

It's one of the most 'whatever' movies I can remember having seen.

Movie review - "Finders Keepers" (1984) **

 A frequently forgotten entry in Richard Lester's oeuvre... despite the success of the last two Superman films, this was all he could get made?

It's an ensemble comedy piece, set in 1973, presumably so Michael O'Keefe can impersonate a soldier escorting a dead body home.And there's a subplot about the dead body never actually having served because the real kid is hiding out (Jim Carrey) for dodging the draft at the behest of his dad (Brian Dennehy).

Everything feels off here. The pace is sluggish, the casting not quite right. O'Keefe is alright, I guess. I normally like Beverly d'Angelo, as an erratic actor he meets on the train, but not here - her gay jokes don't age well. Pamela Stephenson adds some life as widow who steals $5 million but she's barely in the film. Ed Lauter seems uneasy as a fellow conman who has quite a big role. Carrey has a decent bit of screen time as the kid hiding out but he never pays off in the way that you hope. Ditto Brian Dennehy. Louis Gosset Jnr pops up as O'Keefe's conman mentor in a part that could actually be cut out of the film.

The whole film is based on misunderstandings which gets tiresome. There's all these coincidences - Michael O'Keefe's conman gets confused for a helper for crook Ed Lauter, the dead returning soldier is actually hiding out. It doesn't pay off in a decent way.

Maybe it had all kept on the train or something. Lester's touch, so confident in his European films, feels uneasy here with Canada standing in for America. Maybe a more youthful lead, like say Carrey even, would be more engaging than O'Keefe, who plays it cocky, when someone more bumbling might be effective - and make more sense he had a mentor. Maybe a younger actor than d'Angelo too to give the lead duo more freshness.

It's awkward and needed another draft and probably for Lester needed to be filmed in England where he was more comfortable. Some people like this movie though.

Book review - "Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card (1985)

 Took me a while to get through this for whatever reason. Hard to adapt into a film. Smart. Lots of ideas. I'm not wild about these narratives of the chosen one - brilliant child warriors. They're always a little fascist. But interesting. The future seems super depressing. Do columnists really have such impact as implied here? Best sequences are the bullying. Ender doesn't have much of a relationship with anyone except his sister.