MarianStarrett
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Posts posted by MarianStarrett
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> {quote:title=Kim1607 wrote:}{quote}
> I liked Ben's introduction. When my husband asked what I watching I said Lust in the Dust.
>
> I didn't like GP in this. His innate likeability kept me from taking him seriously as a bad guy. I'm glad this wasn't the first thing I ever saw him in. I didn't like Jennifer Jones in this.
I didn't watch Ben's intro. Do you remember much of what he said?
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> {quote:title=Fedya wrote:}{quote}
> What about Zalman King in *The Passover Plot*?
>
> (That sounds like a good candidate for TCM Underground.)
I agree. Might be a fun movie to add to the Underground schedule.
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Who's going to be presenting "Meet John Doe"? B-)
> {quote:title=cinemafan wrote:}{quote}
> FrankG, For some reason, you have quite a following here.
Is that what you think it is? I just thought people enjoyed the thread topic.
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There's an interesting essay about director Mike Nichols in today's New York Times, prompted mostly by the Museum of Modern Art's 2-week Nichols retrospective. Since TCM plays quite a few of his movies (most recently including "The Fortune") I thought it might be of interest to some:
April 12, 2009
Film
Mike Nichols, Master of Invisibility
By CHARLES McGRATH
MIKE NICHOLS, the subject of a two-week retrospective starting Tuesday at the Museum of Modern Art, is not an obvious choice for a place as artsy and highbrow as the MoMA film department. MoMA retrospectives tend to be awarded to brooding European auteurs ? Bernardo Bertolucci and Milos Forman were the last two ? and not to commercial Hollywood directors who include on their r?sum? pop hits like ?Working Girl,? ?The Birdcage? and, just recently, ?Charlie Wilson?s War.?
Except for a puzzling string of duds in the mid-?70s, almost all of Mr. Nichols?s movies have made money, and a few, like ?The Graduate? and ?Carnal Knowledge,? have been recognized as cultural landmarks. But because of their commercial shimmer, their way of eliciting exceptional performances by top-of-the-line stars, it?s sometimes hard to say what makes a Nichols movie a Nichols movie. They seem like vehicles for actors, not the director, whose stamp is in leaving almost no trace of himself.
?If you want to be a legend, God help you, it?s so easy,? Mr. Nichols said the other day over coffee in his Times Square office. ?You just do one thing. You can be the master of suspense, say. But if you want to be as invisible as is practical, then it?s fun to do a lot of different things.?
If his movies have a common denominator, it?s probably their intelligence and, though Mr. Nichols doesn?t think of himself as a writer, their writerly attention to detail. They?re almost invariably based on good scripts, from which he extracts extra layers of nuance. The organizer of the retrospective, Rajendra Roy, the chief curator of film at MoMA, said: ?Here is a guy who is in some ways quintessentially Hollywood, and yet you can see in his movies a consistent through-line. He?s an example of how popular cinema can be vision based.?
Nora Ephron, who wrote the script for Mr. Nichols?s movie ?Heartburn? and co-wrote his film ?Silkwood,? said recently: ?It?s supposed to be a given that Mike doesn?t have the visual style of, say, a Scorsese. But that isn?t fair. Mike doesn?t use the camera in a flamboyant way, but he has a style just the way a writer who?s crystal clear has a style. He has an almost invisible fluidity.?
She added: ?One of the main things about Mike?s movies is that, with a few exceptions, they?re all really smart movies about smart people. They?re about something. And he?s funny. You?re certainly not going to lose a joke. And if there?s one hidden, he?ll find it.?
Mr. Nichols is now 77 but hardly slowing down. Among the possible projects on his plate are movies based on scripts by David Mamet and Tony Kushner and a theatrical revival of a Harold Pinter play. He is beginning to think about simplifying and de-accessioning, though.
He?s unloading his horses, for example. He used to own 150 but is now down to 6, and they?re ?on the way out,? he promised. He also doesn?t listen much anymore to his classical record collection.
?As a young man I got to a bad stage where I knew every recording of every piece,? he said. ?But I spoiled it. I was a pseudo-expert without any real knowledge.?
?Until about a week ago I thought ?Vesti la giubba? meant ?clothe the Jew,? ? he added, referring to the famous aria in which Pagliacci sings about putting on his clown costume. ?So I came to love silence, because it?s so rare, and it?s now my favorite aural condition.?
Still boyish looking, Mr. Nichols retains an impish grin and the deadpan, quicksilver wit that for a while made him and Elaine May the most innovative comedians in the United States. Paragraphs spill out of him as if outlined: the three reasons for this, the four most important examples of that. And Mr. Nichols?s greatest improvisation is still himself. He wakes up every morning in his Fifth Avenue apartment, collects himself and, wearing a wig and paste-on eyebrows, plays a character called Mike Nichols.
He was born Michael Igor Peschkowsky, the son of a White Russian doctor who emigrated to Berlin after the Russian revolution, and he arrived in New York in 1939, at the age of 7, permanently hairless (a reaction to whooping cough vaccine) and with almost no English. All he could say was: ?I do not speak English? and ?Please, do not kiss me.? He enrolled at the Dalton School, where an early classmate was Buck Henry, and set about cultivating what he calls his ?immigrant?s ear.?
?Semiconsciously I was thinking all the time: ?How do they do it? Let me listen,? ? he recalled, and added: ?I?ll tell you the most extreme example of immigrant?s ear in all of Western civilization. My grandfather, Gustav Landauer, was quite a well-known writer in Germany. He was also very political, and he was part of the two-week provisional Weimar government after the kaiser fell. When the government fell, he was taken to the police station and beaten to death. His best friend, who was also in the government, escaped, made his way to Sante Fe, changed his name to B. Traven and wrote ?The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.? That?s the ur-immigrant story.?
Mr. Nichols?s story is scarcely less dramatic. His father died when he was 12, plunging the family into genteel poverty. Lonely and self-conscious about his looks, he found solace in the movies and theater, thanks in part to the generosity of Sol Hurok, who had been one of his father?s patients.
He attended the University of Chicago, floundered a bit, and then was heaped with undreamed-of success, first with Ms. May, whom he met in college (along with Susan Sontag and Ed Asner) and next as a theater director. His string of Broadway hits (including ?Annie,? ?The Odd Couple? and ?Spamalot?) may be even more remarkable than his movie record, and Mr. Nichols is one of very few in the performing arts to score the grand slam of major American entertainment awards: he has a Grammy, an Oscar, four Emmys and eight Tonys. He is a shrewd dealmaker, and he has been rewarded like a foundling prince, so that along the way there were countless girlfriends, multiple wives (Diane Sawyer, to whom he has been married since 1988, is his fourth), paintings, cars, a stable.
The only thing he doesn?t have enough of anymore is time. He used to love to develop a play out of town, then close it down and put it aside for a few months. ?Everything gets simpler on the shelf,? he said. He also recalled, with amazement, how long he was allowed to work on ?The Graduate,? which he directed when he was in his mid-30s.
?We prepared that film for about a year,? he said. ?They gave us a little bit of money ? about three million bucks ? and we rented some space out at Paramount and went to our bungalows every day. I remember one day the art director came and said that when Mrs. Robinson got undressed maybe we should see the marks from the straps of her bathing suit. That was a day?s work ? time just spent soaking yourself in a subject.?
He and Buck Henry, the screenwriter, spent three or four weeks working just on the famous montage sequence in ?The Graduate,? he said, and he added: ?It?s painful and hard to remember now how long and how carefully we worked. I really do think it?s important to sit with a text for as long as you can afford to, reading and talking and doing what I call ?naming things,? which is just explaining what happens in every scene. Now you have to do it all in your head, and you have to do it pretty damn fast, because nobody?s going to pay you to do prep. You?re going to have to do it on your own time. It can be done, of course, but it?s just much harder ? unless you?re Bu?uel, and I think about him pretty much every day. You have to look for a way to free yourself, and he had the best conceivable way: he just jumped to the surreal.?
Ms. Ephron compared Mr. Nichols?s way of preparing to psychoanalysis. ?You sit there for days and days,? she said, ?and he keeps asking questions. What is this scene in the movie about? What does it remind you of? You free associate. And eventually you figure it out.?
Mr. Nichols is a great believer in the single big idea, the controlling metaphor or idea that defines a picture ? the notion that Benjamin in ?The Graduate,? for example, is on a conveyor belt, just like his suitcase. But he is also like a psychoanalyst in that he trusts a lot in the unconscious. The point of all the preparation, he said, is to get to the point where you?re surprised. And, he added, ?You want to keep doing it until you get to the thing nobody could have planned.?
The famous ending of ?The Graduate,? for example, came about because as it came time to film the scene where Dustin Hoffman and Katharine Ross get on the bus, Mr. Nichols found himself growing unaccountably irritable. ?I told Dustin and Katharine, ?Look, we?ve got traffic blocked for 20 blocks, we?ve got a police escort, we can?t do this over and over. Get on the bus and laugh, God damn it.? I remember thinking, What the hell is wrong with me? I?ve gone nuts. The next day I looked at what we?d shot and went, ?Oh my God, here?s the end of the movie: they?re terrified.? My unconscious did that. I learned it as it happened.?
During the filming of ?Angels in America? for HBO, he recalled, he was amazed by Meryl Streep. ?I said to her, ?How did you ever think of making Ethel Rosenberg funny?? And she said, ?Oh, you never know what you?re going to do until you do it.? That?s it. That sentence says it all, and it?s what happens when you?re in the very highest realms of this stuff. The director can?t make it happen. It?s about all being in the same place and being moved by the way each of your imaginations kindles everyone else.?
Ms. Streep said: ?What makes Mike so great is one of the hardest things for people temperamentally drawn to directing. People who direct tend to want to be in control, and Mike?s gift is knowing when to take his hands off and just let it happen. A lot of directors are still dealing with the text when you?re on the set. Mike has done all that beforehand, so when you get on the set you feel it?s a secure world where all the architecture is in place. You can jump as hard as you want and the floor won?t give way.?
Mr. Nichols said he had to keep reminding himself how new his profession was. ?Movie acting was invented less than 100 years ago ? movie acting with sound,? he explained. ?You know how Harold Bloom says that Shakespeare invented us? It?s a fascinating idea, and you can go quite far with it. You could say that it?s in talking movies that inner life begins to appear. You can see things happen to the faces of people that were neither planned nor rehearsed. This is what Garbo was such a master of: actual thoughts that had not occurred before that particular take. And you can see this taking tremendous leaps with Brando and Clift and then with Streep.?
He added: ?The greatest thrill is that moment when a thousand people are sitting in the dark, looking at the same scene, and they are all apprehending something that has not been spoken. That?s the thrill of it, the miracle ? that?s what holds us to movies forever. It?s what we wish we could do in real life. We all see something and understand it together, and nobody has to say a word. There?s a good reason that the very best sound an audience can make ? in both the theater and the movies ? is no sound at all, just absolute silence.?
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Martin Scorsese would be a terrific choice, but as long as he remains an active director, it's very likely he'd be way too busy to do it on a regular basis. If he ever chose to be retired or semi-retired as director, however, maybe he could be persuaded to do it.
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> {quote:title=FrankGrimes wrote:}{quote}
> Thank you for not being the fan programmer who chose Gone With the Wind. It just doesn't get any worse than that. I cannot imagine a person selecting such a trashy film. But there are some that came close. Meet John Doe? Gary Cooper?
> Dreadful!
>
Honestly, what movie could be better than "Gone with the Wind", since it's the first movie that TCM ever played? I think it's a terrific choice, personally.
>
> And Happy Easter to all those who celebrate the holiday.
Thanks and likewise! B-)
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> {quote:title=Poinciana wrote:}{quote}
> I did. Is she still married too him? Really like her in anything. And Joe can do no wrong either. Wish tcm would show Searching for Bobby Fisher some time.
No, apparently they divorced in 1990.
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> {quote:title=CineSage_jr wrote:}{quote}
> Certainly not in a major Hollywood film (and probably not in any foreign productions, either):
>
> H.B. Warner (KING OF KINGS, 1927)
> Jeffrey Hunter (KING OF KINGS, 1961)
> Claude Peyton (BEN-HUR, 1925)
> Claude Heater (BEN-HUR, 1959)
> Cameron Mitchell (voice only, THE ROBE)
> Roy Mangano (SALOME, 1953)
> Max von Sydow (THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD)
> Willem Dafoe (THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST)
> Jim Caviezel (THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST)
You left out Ted Neely ("Jesus Christ Superstar")
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I just watched "The Big Country" again - what a magnificent motion picture. What's most amazing to me is how easily Gregory Peck dominates the movie most of the way, and even Chuck Heston seems like a second-banana next to him. That is just amazing, because I really like Heston in "The Ten Commandments" and "Ben-Hur". But Peck is definitely the bigger man in this movie, and it's also not hard to see almost from the beginning that he's going to have better chemistry with Jean Simmons' character than with the Carroll Baker character.
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> {quote:title=movieman1957 wrote:}{quote}
> One thing to add to Joe's declaration that he wouldn't trade places with anyone is the line just before it when talking about giving up his freedom he says "No man ever gave it up more willingly." As fine a sentiment to me and just as important as the one you mention.
Wasn't that a romantic thing for Joe to say? Marian couldn't have been a luckier gal! :x
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> {quote:title=CineMaven wrote:}{quote}
> Only 48 posts in two years.
>
It'd be a long way for starstruck to catch up with you!
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Wasn't Hitchcock reportedly very sexually repressed due to having been born in Victorian England? I could have sworn I read that someplace... can't remember where.
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> {quote:title=lzcutter wrote:}{quote}
> Molo,
>
> Best JaYne movie (for my money): *The Girl Can't Help It* which does occasionally turn up on TCM.
>
> Beautiful color and great music. Oh and JaYne.
That sounds like a fun movie Ms. Cutter. I'll have to add that one to my DVD queue
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ElegantlyClassic, Welcome to the forum!
You're absolutely right, classic films can become quite an obsession for some of us... we're in good company, I say!
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> {quote:title=FredCDobbs wrote:}{quote}
> I remember in the '40s and '50s a lot of theaters had "baby crying rooms" for women with crying babies. it was usually a boxed-in room in the back of the theater, with a plate glass front on it so they could see the movie and take care of their babies at the same time, but the main audience couldn't hear the babies crying.
I've seen at least one theater with "baby rooms", and it's a shame that there aren't more out there. On the one I used to know, you also had a volume control inside the soundproof room, so you could crank it up or turn it way down.
> I would think that the women's/men's movies gradually developed early on, like the novels had done in the 19th Century.
>
> Also, keep in mind, that in the '30s, '40s, and into the '50s, many or most theaters showed double-features, which allowed a family or a couple to see one of each kind of film during the same outing.
Very good observation, maybe they did have demographics in mind when deciding which movies to put in a double feature.
> {quote:title=FredCDobbs wrote:}{quote}
> Here is the historical record for films that were showing in 1944 at the Stanford Theater in Palo Alto (northern California):
>
> http://www.stanfordtheatre.org/stf/years/1944.htm
I see "Cover Girl" is an old favorite at the Stanford.
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> {quote:title=markbeckuaf wrote:}{quote}
> LZ, I'll echo the sentiments expressed here by Cinemafan, Chips, and others. It's great to be part of this community of classic movie fans! It's wonderful because for many years I have felt so alone in my love for classic and older films, and I'm glad to know there is a community here, and even more affirmation to see folks from these boards step up and share their favorite films and their love for those films!
> Thank you and all the great folks here who not only represented us all with this event, but who share in this community here in the forums in celebrating this channel and the awesome films it shares with all of us.
I definitely concur with you, mark
It was definitely harder to find places to enjoy conversations with fellow classic movie fans in the days before the internet!
It's going to be a good week. What a great way to celebrate TCM's 15th anniversary.
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Speaking of "men's movies" and "women's movies", when exactly did directors like George Cukor and Vincente Minnelli come to be regarded as good directors of women's movies? Is that a relatively new stereotype, or was that how they were regarded back in the 40s/50s?
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And I'm sure you already knew that Lindsay Crouse (the female lead) was Mamet's wife, right?
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Rick, you have definitely put together a terrific noir list! You are to be congratulated on your good taste.
Although I'd probably put "D.O.A." and "Laura" a little bit higher than you did, overall you have picked most of the movies that come to mind when I try to think of great noir.
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> {quote:title=Poinciana wrote:}{quote}
> I believe it's an HBO movie, I don't know if it's on DVD but it is on VHS.
"House of Games" may have shown up on HBO and other movie channels, but it was made to be released in theaters. Actually, I seem to remember that it was originally distributed by the now-defunct Orion Pictures.
And, yes, like most David Mamet pictures, it's dynamite, once you get past the heavy language.
P.S. There are actually two editions of this movie on DVD: one from MGM and one from Criterion.
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And PS..... I think you are WRONG on both accounts by the way.... I think BOTH men are equal in terms of integrity and decency. They each have their strong suits in different areas of life... but in terms of one being better than the other.... I don't think so. I would say they are DIFFERENT men... And because of their differences.... they may come at life from different ways.... but both are equally honorable and both are worthy of the respect I(and love) they earn from the people around them.
I agree with Kathy on this one. They're both great guys in their own way, each with different strengths (and liabilities) due to their background, their experiences. For Joe, never having been a gunfighter or anything like that was a great liability in terms of facing the Rykers, especially once they brought Wilson into the picture, but it was also a great strength in that it made it possible to have a long-lasting marriage with a wonderful woman like Marion.
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I do hope someone in Atlanta might be able to post photos from this very exciting event!
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I have very fond memories of "Salome". And since it's not on DVD, it's a good thing TCM can show it.
Thanks, TCM!
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My favorite Jayne Mansfield photo (with Sophia Loren):
God knows what Sophia must have been thinking.
New documentary honors John Cazale
in General Discussions
Posted
Anybody else here admire John Cazale and all the movies he was in before his untimely death? Then you should try and watch this documentary.
*Late actor John Cazale lionized in documentary*
Ruthe Stein, Chronicle Movie Correspondent
Sunday, April 12, 2009
(04-12) 04:00 PDT Park City, Utah -- Every movie John Cazale appeared in was nominated for an Oscar for best picture, and three of them - "The Godfather," "The Godfather: Part II" and "The Deer Hunter" - won the top prize. Collectively, his five films earned 40 Academy Award nominations.
He was the best supporting actor any star could ask for, whether playing Al Pacino's ineffectual older brother Fredo in the first two "Godfather" movies, Pacino's jittery accomplice in a botched bank robbery in "Dog Day Afternoon," assistant to Gene Hackman's obsessed surveillance expert in "The Conversation" or buddy to Vietnam recruit Robert De Niro in "The Deer Hunter."
With his thin, angular face, deep-set eyes, bushy brows and high forehead, Cazale is the poster boy for the best films of the 1970s - a fertile decade in Hollywood history. Mathematically, Cazale would have made a clinker at some point in his career. But he never had a chance. He died of cancer in 1978 at age 42.
"He was always my favorite actor, but when I wanted to read something about him, I found almost nothing," said Richard Shepard, director of "The Matador" starring Pierce Brosnan and an Emmy Award winner for directing the "Ugly Betty" pilot. "It was like he was forgotten."
Shepard is determined to rectify that with his documentary "I Knew It Was You: Rediscovering John Cazale," which played at the Sundance Film Festival and will air on HBO later this year. It will get a sneak preview Thursday at the Vogue Theater with Shepard in attendance (an event I helped program as a volunteer).
The cooperation of Meryl Streep was essential before the film could get made. She fell in love with Cazale when they co-starred in "Measure to Measure" in Central Park in 1976 and put her career on hold to minister to him when he became ill. It took a year of letters, e-mails, calls and a personal plea from Cazale's brother, Steven Cazale, before Streep, who is known to be reluctant to talk about her personal life, agreed to participate in the documentary.
Shepard put together a trailer by combining clips of Cazale on film with interviews with Streep and Sidney Lumet, director of "Dog Day Afternoon." Sending it out, he soon had a producing partner, Brett Ratner - director of the "Rush Hour" trilogy and "X-Men: The Last Stand" and another devoted Cazale fan - and a commitment from HBO to finance "I Knew It Was You."
The title comes from Michael Corleone's famous line to his brother in "The Godfather: Part II" when he is sure that Fredo has conspired against him: "I know it was you, Fredo. You broke my heart."
"Everybody knows John as Fredo, but nobody knows his name," Shepard says. "So the title means you are going to actually get to know who it is you know just from his face."
Shepard fell in love with Cazale watching his movies when they first came out.
"There was something about John - a sensitivity and a vulnerability that isn't always seen in movies," he says. "Fredo was a bad guy. He was a pimp and a gangster. Yet you loved him because he was vulnerable and fragile. And John was able to show the fragility and weakness in an honest, non-actorly way. One of his talents was that he was unashamed. His ego didn't get in the way."
Every one of Cazale's co-stars who was asked to be in the film said yes.
"A lot of actors are showboating for themselves so they can only steal the scene," Ratner said at Sundance. "But guys like John, who are selfless, are giving so much to the other actor. They would rather be in a movie where everybody is great rather than just they are great. That is why people like De Niro and Hackman and others talked to us about John. He had done so much for them."
De Niro and Hackman talk onscreen, along with Pacino and Francis Ford Coppola, each of whom made three pictures with Cazale. Coppola wrote a part for Cazale in "The Conversation" after directing him in "The Godfather."
"He was inspiring. He made you better," Pacino says in the documentary.
Streep said that at that early stage in her career, "I was probably more glib and ready to pick the first idea that came to me (for a role). John would say, 'There are a lot of possibilities.' That's a real lesson I learned, and I still think about it today."
Lumet gives an example of Cazale's offbeat sense of humor that resulted in a hilarious ad-lib in "Dog Day Afternoon." Believing the police are going to give them an airplane for their getaway, Pacino's bank robber asks Cazale as his accomplice, "Any special country you want to go to?" After a long pause, Cazale says, "Wyoming." Lumet said he and Pacino almost ruined the take from laughing so loud.
Pacino recalls that when Cazale first worked with Streep, "He told me he met the greatest actress in the history of the world. She was just made for him, and he was made for her, and they found each other."
"I Knew It Was You" touchingly shows the kindnesses Cazale brought out in people. The producers didn't want him to be in "The Deer Hunter" because his cancer diagnosis made him uninsurable. Although De Niro never told Streep this, she believes to this day that "Bob secured the bond on John's participation because he is a very generous man."
Pacino marvels at how Streep took care of Cazale throughout his illness and was at his side at the end.
"As great as she is in her work, that's what I think of when I think of her," he says.
"It's other people talking about good deeds," Shepard says of these spontaneous comments. "It's not De Niro saying, 'Yes, I paid to insure him. I'm the greatest person in the world.' "
While press junkets existed in the 1970s, Cazale never went on any. As a result, there are no taped interviews of him talking about his work. There are hardly even any photographs of him. So the documentary consists of his work, including a minute or two from his plays, and of other people talking about him, creating a kind of snapshot.
The filmmakers came to think of Cazale as a little bit like Zelig, uncanny in his ability to hook up with the soon-to-be famous. Hardly out of their teens, he and Pacino were Standard Oil messengers together.
Born and raised in Boston, Cazale went to Boston University with Olympia Dukakis. She remembers him as a prankster who would go around campus stealing milk bottles.
Shepard hopes Cazale's buddies bind together one more time for a specific goal: to convince the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to bestow a posthumous Oscar on Cazale. He was never so much as nominated. Shepard realizes these Oscars are rare. But if baseball is a metaphor for life, he has the perfect analogy.
"If John Cazale was a baseball player," he says, "he would be in the Hall of Fame."