Tag: Paul Newman

COOL HAND LUKE ‘THE SWEATIEST FILM EVER MADE’

HOLLYWOOD – Cool Hand Luke declared the ‘sweatiest film ever made’ by Lynx Underarm Deodorant.

Lynx Underarm Deodorant today announced that the sweatiest film ever made is Cool Hand Luke. The Paul Newman prison flick beat out tough competition from Das Boot and Apocalypse Now. A spokesperson from the underarm sweat busters, Martin Creamerton told the Studio Exec:

This was a tough one but in the end the combination of dust and heat and forced labour in the sweltering south made this a go to sweat fest. Perspiration pongs from the screen, whether they’re digging ditches, eating eggs, or watching that gal wash her car.

The choice was not without controversy, however. Many considered Spike Lee‘s Do the Right Thing a firm favorite and some harked back to the claustrophobic sweatiness of 12 Angry Men.

You are always going to have disagreements. But we here at Lynx like to think that this kind of award is about promoting discussion. Our word is by no means final. And yet we do use scientists who study things like droplets, stains and pores in order to come to a final verdict. In this way Stuart Rosenberg’s 1967 drama was a perfect score all along the line.

Asked for comment Spike Lee merely said: ‘Bullshit!’ and slammed the phone down.

Spike Lee’s new film Sweaty Ass MuthaFukkas is on Netflix in 2021.

CANNES RELEASE OFFICIAL POSTER

PARIS – Another year, another Cannes Festival and in preparation the Cannes authorities have released a poster which will be hung above the Palais du Cinema in May.

In the past Cannes has gone with icons of cinema history – Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, Marcello Mastronianni and Ingrid Bergman – as a way of both celebrating the glamour of the movies but also the prestige that they have achieved. This year is no different and the most famous European film festival is paying tribute with an image of Kevin James in Paul Blart Mall Cop.

Thierry Fremaux spoke EXCLUSIVELY about the thinking behind the decision:

There are two cinemas in this world. There is the cinema that existed before 2009 and the cinema that came after 2009. That year was the year of Paul Blart Mall Cop starring Kevin James, the heir of Chaplin, Keaton, Sandler, and directed by Frank Coraci, the American Fellini as he known around these parts. I believe with Paul Blart looking down on the Croisette, this festival will be inspired to ever greater heights and also humbled to some extent about the task of carrying on the great legacy that Coraci and James have left us.

A recently restored version of Paul Blart Mall Cop will also be shown as part of a season of digitally restored Kevin James films, – including Here Comes the Boom and the rediscovered classic Grownups – which will be shown during the festival. Of course Paul Blart has a long history with the festival after Paul Blart 2 opened the festival only last year.

The Cannes Film Festival takes place from 11th of May to the 22nd.

Image courtesy of @ThePixelFactor.

5 FACTS YOU NEVER KNEW ABOUT SUNDANCE

UTAH – Sundance is American Independent cinema’s annual gathering, taking place in the high altitude resort of Park City and promoted by Robert Redford. But how much do we really know about this most secretive of cinematic happenings.

The Studio Exec FACT squad – under the direction of Steven Soderbergh – were dropped by helicopter to find out.

1. Although success at Sundance is a guarantee of lifelong wealth (see Steven Soderbergh), failure at Sundance can result in the payment of a terrible price. Filmmakers whose films are met with anything less than enthusiasm are ritually stripped of their clothes and forced to run through the snow in the nude, midst pelting stones and stinging mockery. 

2. The name Sundance comes from a role that Robert Redford played in the film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. However, for the first seven years of its thirty year existence the festival went by a number of names, including: ‘The Big Halsy Fest’, ‘The Sting Fest’ and the ‘The Bob Woodward Festival for the Appreciation of the Cinematic Arts.’

 3. Paul Newman also started a film festival in Berlin, Germany called ‘The Butch Cassidy Film Festival’ but he was so cool, he forgot to tell anybody about it and, after a disastrous inauguration year, it changed its name to ‘The Berlin Cassidy Film Festival’ and then ‘The Berlin Film Festival.’

4. Approximately 62% of the state of Utah are Mormons, which means for a film to be shown, there must be no scenes of coffee drinking and at least two wives per male character. 

5. The first film ever to be shown at the Sundance Film Festival was The Bad News Bears Go To Japan. The filmmakers were stripped naked and forced to run through the snow in the nude, midst pelting stones and stinging mockery.

For more FACTS click HERE.

FX TO MAKE HUDSUCKER PROXY TV SHOW

HOLLYWOOD – Following the success of the Fargo TV show, FX have announced they have green lit a spin off TV version of the hit Coen Brothers movie: The Hudsucker Proxy.

Based on the 1994 film starring Tim Robbins, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Paul Newman, The Hudsucker Proxy TV show will be written by Noah Hawley and executive produced by the Coen Brothers. Hawley came by the Studio Exec Bungalow to talk about the project:

I’m really excited. We’ve done two seasons of Fargo and the third will be a real challenge but now I have enough people in place that I can kind of let it run itself and I am ready for a new challenge. Hudsucker is going to give me that.

How is it going to be different from Fargo?

Well, if you’ve seen the film you’ll know that it is a tribute to the sort of screwball comedies of the 30s and 40s and much less dark than Fargo. So we’re going to be doing that. There will be much less violence. Bruce Campbell also had a great role in the film so we’re hoping he’ll come back for us.

So there’ll be less violence?

Oh absolutely. The whole tone will be lighter and more comic. Plus we’re looking at a totally different demographic. A younger audience. This is going to be fun and youthful, colorful and with lots of music and dance. Oh and they’re going to be the Muppets as well. They are going to be working in Hudsucker Industries int he lower sections.

That sounds… very different. So it’s going to be …

You know for kids.

The Hudsucker Proxy: The Show will be broadcast in 2016.

SIR EDWIN FLUFFER REMEMBERS ROBERT ZEMECKIS

HOLLYWOOD – Sir Edwin Fluffer recalls his encounter with Robert Zemeckis and the birth of an American masterpiece.

Being an old hand at all this Hollywood lark I feel almost duty bound to lend the benefit of my experience to the younger generations as they make way their way up through the ranks. Some are kind enough to listen, others just look at me the way Lassie used to look at Jayne Russell, before slowly shaking their heads and turning away. But without my help, and passion for gardening, one of the most successful franchises in this business we still lovingly call show may have never come to pass.

A few years ago I suddenly got a call from a talented young director called Robert Zemeckis. He’d just had a hit with a picture called Romancing The Stone starring Kirk Douglas’s little boy, Michael. Bobby, as I instantly came to know and love him, wanted to talk to me about his next project. It was to be a comedy about time travel. I invited him over for a chat and one of my ex-wives served us drinks in the garden while the smoke from Paul Newman’s barbecue wafted over the fence. The smell was truly awful so we went for a wander ‘round the grounds and I showed Bobby some of my favourite plants, including a fuchsia that Claude Rains left me in his will. We spent an absolute age walking up and down the long borders trying to think of a suitable name for this film of his. Eventually I looked up and noticed we’d returned to the exact same spot we left all those hours earlier, but we were still no nearer a title.
‘Well,’ I said ‘here we are. Back to the fuchsia.’
And the rest as we so often say in Hollywood, is history…
Bobby was kind enough to show his gratitude by offering me the role of Dr Emmett Brown, but an in-growing toenail and some tax problems that forced me to leave for Switzerland under an assumed name meant I had to politely say no. I could tell he was disappointed and I promised to make it up to him by telling him about the time Marlene Dietrich asked me to put up some shelves in her new bungalow. 
But that’s another story…

5 FILMS WITH EGGS IN THEM

HOLLYWOOD – I know what you are thinking. It’s Easter but what egg themed film am I going to watch?

Well, the Studio Exec FACT squad has been out on the prowl and has carefully selected five EGG themed films for your viewing pleasure. ENJOY.

1. Cool Hand Luke. During this prison drama Paul Newman’s eponymous inmate eats 50 eggs in one hour for a bet. However, because they needed to film from different angles and use different lenses and in addition because the light was failing, in actual fact Paul Newman had to eat 176 eggs in little over twenty minutes causing an explosive flatulence and lifelong bad breath. As a way of compensating for the bad breath, Newman invented salad dressing!

2. Alien. Possibly the film which gave eggs a bad name to such an extent that the International Egg Consortium called for a boycott of Ridley Scott’s film using the slogan, ‘In Space No one Can Hear You Defame a Genuinely Delicious Source of Protein.’ It was not a success. When asked about the famous egg sequence, actor John Hurt who played Kane, the unfortunate astronaut answered simply that he had never enjoyed Easter since.

3. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. The word bad egg has a long history dating back to the Chinese emperor Boi Eg who was so tyrannical that the entire food stuff – eggs – were made illegal for three entire generations. But Veruca Salt in the original and only adaptation of Roald Dahl’s novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a bad egg and gets her comeuppance and is appropriately murdered off screen.

4. Sleeper. Perhaps the most erotic use of an egg ever committed to celluloid, Woody Allen’s 1973 futuristic comedy was the first film to use the egg as a substitute for scenes of oral sex, soon to be joined by Rocky and Ghostbusters. By the nineties it was such a common practice that the MPAA began to consider egg use as a rate-able offence.

5. Airplane. Nothing is funnier than an egg coming out of someone’s mouth and this 1980 comedy spoof delivered the classic egg/mouth joke first invented by Fatty Arbuckle with zany aplomb.

For more FACTS click HERE.

THE JUDGE: REVIEW

Tony Stark – a hot-shot immoral defense lawyer – returns to Indiana for his mother’s funeral and meets up with his Days of Thunder consigliere father Col. Kilgore, a cantankerous judge who soon finds himself on the wrong side of the law.

Will his estranged son defend him? Will their relationship be restored? Will they perhaps go fishing the way Tony Stark wants to? This is like August: Osage County meets that Hannah Montana movie where the big city gal rediscovers the joy of homeliness – and spices it up with some illicit ‘urban’ beats. Good Christ but it’s wretched. And Tony Stark is appalling. Everything in the movie services him. An encounter with some barroom thugs, sweet talking his old school girlfriend, the yokel lawyer’s incompetence are all staged to allow Downey a moment of verbal dexterity and a series of twitchy, ironic, winky and eminently punchable reaction shots. (Sidebar: his father has been a judge in these parts for forty years, is a pillar of the community and he doesn’t know a lawyer better than a part-time puker?) He even has a ‘Holy Fool’ brother who walks around with a camera all the time, allowing Downey to be patient and loving with him in contrast to his older sibling and thereby winning more audience points.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I contend that Iron Man did not kill Robert Downey Jr. Nor Sherlock Holmes who is basically Iron Man in a fusty accent and a frock coat. Downey Jr – the actor – died the moment he discovered that he could get away with being likeable. His likeability means there’s no real edge to his smarmy bastard act. Everyone in the film keeps telling him what he’s like – ‘You really are a bastard’, ‘You hate bullies, but you are one’ etc. – because his performance doesn’t do it. Look at Paul Newman in The Verdict. Now there’s a Hollywood star who was unafraid of playing moral corruption like it meant something. And likewise earning the redemption rather than it just being a predictable plot point you can spot from the Warner Bros logo.

Objection! Robert Duvall is excellent.

Sustained. But he’s been an excellent character actor from Boo Radley on. That’s a given. It’s the film that stands accused, letting him down and Billy Bob Thornton and Vera Farmiga and Private Pyle from Full Metal Jacket, and it must also answer for its obnoxiously wrong tone, switching from mawkish sentimentality to folksy comedy in a way I’d call cynical, but cynicism implies some facility. The small town America it shows is the kind Hollywood excels at. Driving into town, Downey Jr spots a boy and his father loading fishing supplies onto their pick up. ‘Nothing changes,’ he hisses venomously, before getting all snarky about someone waving at him. I bet the Wi-Fi reception isn’t up to snuff either.

So I find The Judge guilty. Guilty of wasting talent. Three counts of using a folksy acoustic soundtrack, like an old Jack Daniels advert. Guilty of pretending to be the proper Oscar worthy movie for me that justifies the cash grab of Iron Man. And most guilty – and this is truly unforgivable – of a scene in which the main character recaptures his youth by riding a bicycle no-handed wearing a faded Metallica t-shirt.

Take them away.

For more Reviews CLICK HERE.

FIFTY SHADES OF FLUFFER



Hollywood is a beautiful town, full of beautiful people and Lee Van Cleef. But it has its ugly side and the name of that ugly side is prejudice. George Kennedy has warned me not to speak out. ‘Neddy,’ he said, ‘don’t bite the hand that feeds you,’ but something must be said and I’m the man who’s going to say it. I’ve seen racism and I didn’t like it. I’ve regularly been accused of sexism. But there’s a new ‘ism’ that we must get some do-gooder, maybe George Clooney, to organize a telethon about, and that is ageism. My name is Sir Edwin Fluffer, and this is my story.


Whenever I get a phone call from my agent, Julius ‘Gripper’ Levy, I’m always filled with excitement unless it’s about one of my ex-wives wanting money. This time he had an audition for me. ‘It’s based on a book,’ he said. ‘There’s no script as such, but lots of nudity.’ It sounded quite arty to me and already I could hear dear Tommy Hanks saying those immortal words ‘and the Academy Award goes to…’. The picture was called Fifty Shades of Grey, which is exactly the sort of project a veteran of stage and screen like myself should be involved in after missing out on both The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and Quartet. I rolled up to the audition ready to give them the first act from my one man-touring version of Chicago, but before I’d even said a word the producer took one look at me and said that word every actor hates to hear: next! I just picked up my trousers and left.
I don’t mind not getting the part, even if ‘Twinky’ Redford ends up doing it. I don’t mind that I could hear them sniggering and saying ‘wasn’t that Edwin Fluffer?’ as I left. But I do mind not even being given the chance to show them what I could do. After all the years I’ve given to this industry I thought that common courtesy was the least I deserve, but apparently I was wrong. I’ll bounce back, like I bounced back after they got Dick Burton to replace me in Cleopatra. And next time I won’t get mad, I’ll get even. 
I got mad when Paul Newman ate the boiled eggs I’d brought for my lunch on Cool Hand Luke, but that’s another story…