2. Liquid Sky (1982) is a science fiction art film co-written and directed by Vladislav “Slava” Tsukerman (b.1940). An amusing and occasionally seedy effort, it concerns invisible aliens, who land on the roof of a Manhattan penthouse in a miniscule flying saucer. Observing the inhabitants of New York’s sordid punk/new wave drug culture, they are attracted to the chemicals released by humans using heroin and/or achieving orgasm. Tsukerman’s other works include the feature films Poor Liza (2000) and Perestroika (2008), and the documentary Stalin’s Wife (2004).
3. Richard Hambleton (b.1954) is the artist Cohen invokes here. Born in Vancouver, Canada, he is regarded as “The Godfather of Street Art” and emerged in the early 1980s during the heyday of the New York art scene alongside his contemporaries Keith Haring (1958-1990) and Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988). Hambleton’s signature “shadowman” paintings are amongst his most famous works and depict a life-size silhouette on the wall of a New York building or structure (often described as a “splashy shadow figure”). Hambleton later painted similar figures on the streets of London, Paris, Rome and Berlin.
4. Janelle Webb Cohen has written or co-written several songs that have been heard in her former husband’s films including “Big Poppa” for Hell Up in Harlem; “Sweet Momma, Sweetlove” for God Told Me To; “We Came So Close to Love” for The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover; “Full Moon Anthem”, “Tony, My Pet”, “When the Sun Goes Down” and “Meet Me in the Moonlight” for Full Moon High; “Ride the Bull” for See China and Die; “Let’s Fall Apart Together Tonight” for Q — The Winged Serpent and “Firing Line of Life” for Perfect Strangers. The song featured in Perfect Strangers during the sequence where Johnny spray-paints a shadowy figure is “I’m a Shadow (On the Walls of the City)”, written and performed by Michael Minard.
5. After making Special Effects, Ann Magnuson went on to appear in such films as Desperately Seeking Susan (1985), Sleepwalk (1986), Making Mr. Right (1987), Tequila Sunrise (1988), Clear and Present Danger (1994), Small Soldiers (1998), Glitter (2001), and Panic Room (2002).
6. The actor who played the gangster, Maletti, is Zachary Hains. Perfect Strangers appears to be his only film credit as an actor.
7. The blond heavy that grabs Johnny in the cemetery is played by actor Bill Fagerbakke (b.1957). Fagerbakke is most famous for playing Michael “Dauber” Dybinski in the ABC sitcom Coach (which aired for nine seasons on ABC) and for voicing Patrick Star in the popular animated series SpongeBob SquarePants (1999-present).
8. John Daly (1937-2008) pulled off the remarkable achievement of producing back-to-back Academy Award winning films for Best Picture: Platoon in 1986 and The Last Emperor in 1987.
9. The film that Daly directed was The Aryan Couple (2004), an Anglo-American film starring Martin Landau as a wealthy Jewish tycoon, who must give up his considerable wealth in order to ensure that his family receive a safe passage from Nazi-dominated Hungary.
CHAPTER 15: SPECIAL EFFECTS (1984)
1. Lowell Blair Nesbitt (1933-1993) was an American painter, draughtsman, printmaker and sculptor celebrated for his notable floral works of art. During his career, Nesbitt had more than eighty one man shows since his first was mounted in 1957. His works are currently housed in several prestigious museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Fine Art in New York and the National Gallery of Fine Art in Washington DC.
2. Michael Cimino (b.1940) began his career producing commercials and industrial films for a company in New York. After shooting ads for clients such as Eastman Kodak, United Airlines and Pepsi, he moved to Los Angeles and co-wrote the screenplays for Silent Running (1972) and Magnum Force (1973) before helming his first feature as director, the crime drama Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974). After the notable success of The Deer Hunter (1978), for which Cimino won the Academy Award for Best Director, he then assisted in bankrupting United Artists with the notorious Western, Heaven’s Gate (1980), the failure of which signalled the end of New Hollywood. Cimino’s reputation has never recovered and the stink of this film has tainted his subsequent career, despite the unedited version of Heaven’s Gate later being hailed by some critics as a masterpiece.
3. “The English Fellow” who directed Chariots of Fire (1981) is Hugh Hudson (b.1936). Aside from helming the multiple Oscar-winning historical sports drama, Hudson’s other films include Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan (1984) and the notorious period piece Revolution (1985), a critical and commercial failure which encouraged its star Al Pacino to take a four-year hiatus from movies.
4. Eric Bogosian and Tad Savinar’s play Talk Radio was inspired by the 1984 assassination of attorney and talk show radio host Alan Berg. It premiered off-Broadway on May 28, 1987, at The Public Theatre and concerns the life and death of Barry Champlain, a controversial Jewish shock-jock whose Cleveland-based radio show is about to earn national syndication. Oliver Stone’s film adaptation of Talk Radio (co-written and starring Bogosian) was released on December 21, 1988.
5. The remake of Abel Ferrara’s controversial 1992 crime drama, now re-titled Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009), is a lighter and tamer affair than its unremitting predecessor. Directed by Werner Herzog, it stars Nicolas Cage as a police officer who develops a serious drug problem after sustaining a back injury whilst on duty in post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans.
6. Zoë Lund died on April 16, 1999, of heart failure in Paris, France, due to her extended drug use. She was just thirty-seven years old.
7. Kevin O’Connor died of cancer on June 22, 1991, at the age of fifty-three. The Ambulance was his final film.
8. Jessica Lange played Frances Farmer in Frances (1982), a highly sensationalized account of the actress’s life and alleged mental illness that draws on erroneous details first perpetrated in William Arnold’s largely fictionalised 1978 biography, Shadowland. Lange’s sensitive performance earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.
9. Preceding the release of Star 80 in 1983, an NBC television movie titled Death of a Centerfold: The Dorothy Stratten Story was broadcast on November 1, 1981 (nearly fifteen months after Stratten’s murder on August 14, 1980). Accused by some critics of being “exploitive” and “insensitive,” it is naturally a more restrained biopic than Bob Fosse’s theatrical film but boasts an impressive performance from Bruce Weitz as Stratten’s psychopathic husband, Paul Snider.
CHAPTER 16: THE STUFF (1985)
1. In an interview with Alan Jones for Starburst magazine to publicize the theatrical release of The Stuff in the United Kingdom, Cohen mentions a film he planned to do next (again with New World Pictures) that would have satirized another contemporary craze of the 1980s. F.I.T. to Kill would have concerned “the trendy fetishes of fitness, diet and health” and the potentially harmful fascination the public has with attaining “Arnold Schwarzeneggar [sic] type bodies.” Cohen’s story concerns The F.I.T. Institute, an aerobics/fitness center that offers its clients the chance to achieve an incredibly muscular physique in only a very short time. People acquire these heavenly bodies with the aid of an experimental steroid developed and administered by an evil Soviet scientist who has defected. An unfortunate side effect of this radical drug is that the fitness fanatics lose control of their own minds and bodies at the slightest provocation, suddenly becoming murderously psychotic. Cohen’s concept for F.I.T. to Kill is clearly allied to the destructive properties and conforming allure of the malevolent dessert in The Stuff.
2. Jim Danforth (b.1940) is a legendary stop-motion animator whose extensive credits include matte work and model animation on a number of classic and cult films. These include The Time Machine (1960), Jack the Giant Killer (1962), It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, 7 Faces of Dr. Lao (1964) — for which he received an Academy Award nomination, When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, Dark Star (1974), Clash of the Titans, Caveman, The Thing, The Never Ending Story (1984), Prince of Darkness (1987), They Live (1988), Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1992), Body Bags, and Body Snatchers.
3. All the a
dvertising jingles for The Stuff commercials were written, composed and produced by Richard Seaman.
4. Abe Vigoda (b.1921) is an American actor. His most memorable roles remain his portrayal of doomed capo Salvatore “Sal” Tessio in The Godfather (1972) and the world-weary Jewish-American cop Sgt. Fish on the television sitcom Barney Miller (which originally aired on ABC from January 23, 1975, to May 20, 1982). Bizarrely, Vigoda is also famous for the premature reports of his death, firstly by People magazine in 1982 and then again in 1987 when a New Jersey news presenter referred to him as “the late Abe Vigoda.”
5. Brooke Adams appeared in Philip Kaufman’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), the second of four cinematic adaptations of Jack Finney’s 1954 novel The Body Snatchers.
6. Carl Reiner (b.1922) is an American actor, stand-up comedian, writer, producer, director and singer. His films as director include Where’s Poppa? (1970), Oh, God! (1977), The Jerk (1979), Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid (1982), The Man with Two Brains (1983), All of Me (1984), Summer School (1987), Bert Rigby, You’re a Fool (1989), and That Old Feeling (1997).
7. The film that secured Mira Sorvino her Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress was Mighty Aphrodite (1994).
CHAPTER 17: SCREENPLAYS PART II (1987-1997)
1. Roger Corman executive produced this unreleased film of The Fantastic Four (1994) which was directed by Oley Sassone and written by Craig J. Nevius and Kevin Rock. It starred Alex Hyde-White as Reed Richards, Rebecca Staab as Susan Storm, Jay Underwood as Johnny Storm and Michael Bailey Smith as Ben Grimm. Although (as Cohen states) the film was made in order to retain the rights, it was rushed into production and shot on a stringent budget. Apparently, none of the aforementioned cast members were aware that the movie was never intended for release.
2. After wallowing in development hell for a quarter of a century and at various junctures orbiting the likes of James Cameron, Roland Emmerich and Chris Columbus, Spider-Man (2002) was eventually directed by Sam Raimi. Released to critical acclaim, the film also became the highest-grossing movie based on a comic book and resulted in Raimi returning to direct two sequels, Spider-Man 2 (2004) and Spider-Man 3 (2007).
3. Elliott Kastner (1930-2010) produced Where Eagles Dare (1968), The Long Goodbye (1973), Farewell My Lovely (1975), The Missouri Breaks, Equus (1977), The Big Sleep (1978), Garbo Talks (1984), Angel Heart (1987), and White of the Eye (1987).
4. The producer of Body Snatchers was Robert H. Solo.
5. Born in 1926, Martin Ransohoff’s credits as a producer include The Cincinnati Kid (1965), The Loved One (1965), The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967), Ice Station Zebra (1968), 10 Rillington Place (1971), Save the Tiger (1973), The White Dawn (1974), Silver Streak (1977), Nightwing (1979), The Wanderers (1979), Class (1983), Jagged Edge (1985), and Physical Evidence (1989).
6. The film Cohen makes reference to here is Bye, Bye Braverman (1968). A meandering black comedy and character study set in Brooklyn, director Sidney Lumet apparently had mixed feelings about it himself, stressing that it had only partially met his objectives as a movie.
7. Brute Force (1947), directed by Jules Dassin from a screenplay by Richard Brooks, is a powerful prison drama that was considered exorbitantly violent for its time. Hume Cronyn plays a memorably sadistic prison warden, whose guards systematically brutalise the convicts until Burt Lancaster’s rebellious prisoner leads them in a savage revolt. The Expert bears little relation to Dassin’s film, which suggests whoever “fucked around” with the script did so without inhibition.
8. The Monkey’s Paw was written by English author W.W. Jacobs and was first published in 1902. The story has proved hugely influential and has been adapted into stageplays, short films, feature-length movies, episodic television shows, comic books, and even an opera.
9. The Green Berets (1968) is a war drama directed by Ray Kellogg, the man responsible for such cult schlockers as The Giant Gila Monster (1959) and The Killer Shrews (1960). The film stars staunch Republican John Wayne as Colonel Mike Kirby, a solider who selects two crack teams to execute a dangerous mission in South Vietnam. Riddled with clichés and embarrassing in its unrepentant one-sidedness, The Green Berets is a jingoistic attempt to counter the protests, criticisms and unrest surrounding American involvement in the Vietnam War. A patriotic and occasionally offensive effort, Wayne’s dedicated soldiers are portrayed as noble and courageous men — ready and willing to lay down their lives to protect the persecuted peasantry.
10. Douglas Hickox (1929-1988) was an English director. His films include The Giant Behemoth (1959), Entertaining Mr. Sloane (1970), Theatre of Blood (1973), Brannigan (1975), Sky Riders (1976), Zulu Dawn (1979), and The Hound of the Baskervilles (1983).
11. Anthony Hickox’s mother is Anne V. Coates (b.1925). Aside from cutting Lawrence of Arabia (1962), for which she won an Academy Award, her credits include Tunes of Glory (1960), Becket (1964), The Public Eye (1972), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), The Eagle Has Landed (1976), The Elephant Man (1980), Farewell to the King (1987), Chaplin (1992), In the Line of Fire (1993), Out of Sight (1998), Erin Brockovich (1999), Unfaithful (2002), The Golden Compass (2007), and Fifty Shades of Grey (2015).
12. The “famous Black model” to which Cohen refers is Naomi Campbell.
13. The lead girl in Invasion of Privacy is Mili Avital, an Israeli-American actress who has appeared in films such as Stargate (1994), Dead Man (1995) and Arabian Nights (2000). The leading man is played by Johnathon Schaech whose credits include That Thing You Do (1996), The Doom Generation (1995), Quarantine (2008), and Takers (2010).
INTERMISSION: DEADLY ILLUSION (1987)
1. The film Cohen is probably thinking about is Love You to Death (1990), Lawrence Kasdan’s black comedy about a scheming wife (Tracey Ullman), who repeatedly tries to murder her womanizing husband (Kevin Kline). It was actually released three years after Deadly Illusion.
2. Action Jackson (1987) is an action thriller directed by Craig R. Baxley. It stars Carl Weathers as the eponymous hero, a Detroit cop with a Harvard law degree, who is attempting to apprehend an evil businessman played by Craig T. Nelson. Vanity was nominated for a Golden Raspberry for her stilted performance as a sultry lounge singer combating a heroin addiction.
3. Born in New York City in 1942, William Tannen began his career directing commercials before moving to Hollywood in the early 1970s. His credits include the thrillers Flashpoint (1984), Hero and the Terror (1988), Inside Edge (1992), and The Cutter (2008), and the historical drama Love Lies Bleeding (1998). Tannen has also directed music videos for artists such as Aretha Franklin, The Commodores, The Temptations, and Tangerine Dream.
4. Cohen is almost certainly referring to the Costa Concordia disaster that occurred on the night of January 13, 2012. Only hours after leaving the port of Civitavecchia, the Italian cruise ship ran aground with more than 4,000 people onboard (3,206 passengers and 1,032 crew). After striking a reef on her portside the vessel capsized and sank, killing thirty-two people.
CHAPTER 18: IT’S ALIVE III — ISLAND OF THE ALIVE (1987)
1. With the advent of television luring moviegoers away in their droves, Hollywood devised 3D as a means of offering audiences something they couldn’t get at home. House of Wax (1953) is one of the superior 3D pictures of the early 1950s and is Warner Bros.’ first effort at adopting the format. Although not as accomplished as Michael Curtiz’ Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933), Andre De Toth’s remake is a resplendent effort with several effective moments. The story concerns Henry Jarrod (Vincent Price), an insane sculptor whose body has been disfigured by a fire at his museum that was started by his greedy partner (Roy Roberts). Jarrod decides to repopulate his destroyed museum by dipping human corpses in boiling wax so that he can display them in his chamber of horrors. Ironically, having only one eye, De Toth could not see the 3D effect onscreen.
2. William Girdler (1947-1978) was an American director, producer, and screenwriter. He made nine films in six years before his sudden death in a he
licopter accident at the age of thirty whilst scouting locations in the Philippines for his next project The Overlords (a science fiction movie designed to capitalise on the phenomenal success of Star Wars). His spirited oeuvre includes Asylum of Satan (1972), Three on a Meathook (1973), Abby (1974), Grizzly (1976), Day of the Animals (1977), and The Manitou (1978).
3. To illustrate the extent of the debt Abby owes to The Exorcist, consider the fact that Warner Bros. launched a lawsuit against the filmmakers for copyright violation and succeeded in winning their case. This resulted in William Girdler’s film being withdrawn from theaters but, according to williamgirdler.com, a website dedicated to the late director, this was not before Abby had earned a whopping $4 million at the box office.
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