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From Pig starring Nicolas Cage, Writer/Director Michael Sarnoski and Writer/Producer Vanessa Block join Josh and Joe to discuss the movies that inspired them during the creation of their film.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Nobody (2021)

Infested (2002)

The Big Chill (1983)

A History of Violence (2005)

Pig (2021)

Mandy (2018)

John Wick (2014)

The Testimony (2015)

No Country For Old Men (2007) [Both] – John Badham’s trailer commentary

The Maltese Falcon (1941) – John Landis’s trailer commentary

Blood Simple (1984) – Josh Olson’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s Criterion Blu-ray review, Dennis Cozzaliio’s review

Leaving Las Vegas (1995)

Raising Arizona (1987)

Moonstruck (1987) – Glenn Erickson’s trailer commentary

Joe (2013)

Witness For The Prosecution (1957) [Vanessa Block] – Larry Cohen’s trailer commentary

Easter Parade (1948)

Titanic (1997)

Never Been Kissed (1999)

Abbott And Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) – John Landis’s trailer commentary

McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971) – Josh Olson’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s Criterion Blu-ray review

The Crow (1994)

Jurassic Park (1993)

Midnight Cowboy (1969) [Michael Sarnoski] – Glenn Erickson’s Criterion...

On the release of what was to be the late Monte Hellman’s final feature film in 2011, critic Steve Erickson noted “Monte Hellman is the ultimate outlaw filmmaker.”

A decade earlier, filmmaker-critic Kent Jones wrote that “anything written in America about Monte Hellman … cinema’s most under-appreciated great director … must be a defense.”

Decades before Jones’ astute assessment, film critic David Thomson had noted, “No system could digest the willful arbitrariness of Monte Hellman’s best films,” which is probably as clear an explanation of why Hellman made only one Hollywood Studio film in a directing career that stretched from 1959 to 2011 and included stints as Jack Nicholson’s filmmaking partner and Quentin Tarantino’s directorial debut enabler-producer.

That assessment of Hellman’s importance, that notion that a defensive posture is the inevitable position of the Hellman fan and the idea that Hellman’s Hollywood Failure was his greatest success, all...

Monte Hellman, the filmmaker behind movies like Two-Lane Blacktop, The Shooting, and Cockfighter, has died. He suffered a fall in his home on April 19, and died the next day. He was 93 years old. Variety brought word of Hellman’s death, and the outlet described the filmmaker as a “maverick” and a “cult” director. He was […]

The post ‘Two-Lane Blacktop’ Director Monte Hellman Dies at Age 91 appeared first on /Film.

Influential instead of famous, brilliant in a way for which his medium has little remaining use, Monte Hellman died yesterday at 91. It was heartening, if not a bit surprising all the same, to see my Twitter feed instantly and unanimously alight with praise for the director, whose filmography is often distilled to one sui generis classic and considered an object of intense interest for true believers otherwise.

Whatever that implies, it’s hard to recommend a filmography with less reservation—Hellman’s cinema is immediately identifiable for its vision of rugged, roughshod masculinity, accessible with its use of iconic figures, and (at the risk of underlining this point too sharply) always invigorates in its sense of discovering some well-kept secret.

Some cursory searches reveal a good number readily streaming. So long as you don’t mind the occasional ad break, your first step is Tubi, which hosts his Jack Nicholson...

Director of cult classics Two-Lane Blacktop and Cockfighter also directed Jack Nicholson and helped Quentin Tarantino with his feature debut

Monte Hellman, the director behind 1970s cult classics Two Lane Blacktop and Cockfighter, as well as being instrumental in getting Quentin Tarantino’s directorial debut Reservoir Dogs off the ground, has died aged 91. His daughter Melissa, who produced his 2010 film Road to Nowhere, confirmed the news to the Hollywood Reporter, saying Hellman had died in hospital after a fall at his home.

Hellman was born Monte Himmelman in 1929, and after studying theatre at Stanford University set up a theatre company in Los Angeles. Like many directors of his generation, Hellman gained early experience working for Roger Corman’s low-budget exploitation-movie factory. Corman hired him to make Beast from Haunted Cave, shot simultaneously with the same cast and crew as another Corman film, Ski Troop Attack. Along with contemporaries such as...

Monte Hellman, the film director who earned a cult following with movies like Two-Lane Blacktop and Ride in the Whirlwind, died Tuesday at Eisenhower Medical Center in Palm Springs, California, after a fall in his home. His daughter, Melissa Hellman, confirmed his death to The Hollywood Reporter. He was 91.

Hellman was well regarded for his genre films, such as his 1964 war drama Back Door to Hell, 1966’s pair of Westerns The Shooting and Ride in the Whirlwind (both starring Jack Nicholson), and the acclaimed road movie Two-Lane Blacktop starring James Taylor and Dennis Wilson.

Our 75th guest! The legendary filmmaker John Sayles joins Josh and Joe to explore some of his favorite movies.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Ulzana’s Raid (1972)

Django (1966)

The Birth Of A Nation (1915)

City Of Hope (1991)

Return of the Secaucus 7 (1980)

The Challenge (1982)

Avalanche (1978)

Eight Men Out (1988)

Piranha (1978)

The Howling (1981)

The Wizard Of Oz (1939)

The Killers (1964)

The King And I (1956)

Time Without Pity (1957)

The Incredible Mr. Limpet (1964)

Ben-Hur (1957)

The Ten Commandments (1956)

Two Women (1960)

Sunset Boulevard (1950)

Citizen Kane (1941)

Spartacus (1960)

Fixed Bayonets! (1951)

The Steel Helmet (1951)

Merrill’s Marauders (1962)

Targets (1968)

Touch Of Evil (1958)

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Woodstock (1970)

Crime In The Streets (1956)

The Bad Seed (1956)

The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971)

Fedora (1978)

Dune (1984)

The Cotton Club (1984)

Choose Me (1984)

Raising Arizona (1987)

El Norte (1983)

Yellow Sky (1948)

Apocalypse Now (1979)

The Irishman (2019)

A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood (2019)

The Thing (1982)

Chinatown (1974)

Manhattan (1979)

Duck Amuck (1953)

Goodfellas (1990)

Humanoids Of The Deep (1980)

Cockfighter (1974)

Dynamite Women a.k.a. The Great Texas Dynamite Chase...

Filmmakers/authors discuss the movies they wish more people were familiar with.

Movies Referenced In This Episode

Eurocrime! The Italian Cop and Gangster Films That Ruled the ’70s (2012)

Live Like A Cop, Die Like A Man (1976)

Island of Lost Souls (1932)

Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau (2014)

Top Gun (1986)

Water Power (1977)

Taxi Driver (1976)

In Fabric (2018)

A Climax of Blue Power (1974)

Forced Entry (1975)

Once Upon A Time In America (1984)

Nashville Girl (1976)

Ms .45 (1981)

Act of Vengeance a.k.a. Rape Squad (1974)

High Plains Drifter (1973)

Design For Living (1933)

Trouble In Paradise (1932)

Melody (1971)

Oliver! (1968)

Moonrise Kingdom (2012)

That’ll Be The Day (1973)

Stardust (1974)

The Errand Boy (1961)

Looney Tunes: Back In Action (2003)

The Bellboy (1960)

Which Way To The Front? (1970)

Hardly Working (1980)

A Night In Casablanca (1946)

The Cocoanuts (1929)

Duck Soup (1933)

Boeing Boeing (1965)

Confessions of a Young American Housewife (1974)

Cockfighter (1974)

The Second Civil War (1997)

I, A Woman (1965)

The Devil At Your Heels (1981)

The...

When Richard Bryce Goodman was a young man, his wide-ranging interests included photography, music and philosophy, but it was a present he received while growing up in Baltimore that seems to have had the biggest influence on his career arc.

“I had a darkroom from age 12 where friends and I used to make our own R&b mixes off Wwin radio with a fancy tape recorder that was given to me by a rich uncle,” says Goodman, an Academy Award-nominated sound mixer.

Goodman’s early training was eclectic. In the late ’60s, he attended London’s Slade School of Fine Art, gaining insight into moviemaking from the institution’s in-house film legend, Thorold Dickinson. Returning stateside, he earned a degree in fine art and philosophy from Bucknell University in 1970. He began shooting documentaries around the college’s art classes using a Bolex camera stocked with film short ends from the psych department.

Summer used to be the time for blockbusters, but the slow creep of all-summer-movies-all-year-long means that we know get a new Pixar film, a live action adaptation of a Disney classic and a sequel to a 2018 horror hit in…March. Also this month: a buddy film involving two frontiersmen and a cow; a sports movie doubling as a fallen star’s potential comeback vehicle; and a film deemed too hot for 2019. Here’s what’s coming soon to a theater near you.

The Burnt Orange Heresy (Mar. 6th)

The tough,...

Samuel Gelfman, a New York producer known for his work on Roger Corman’s “Caged Heat,” “Cockfighter” and “Cannonball!,” died Thursday morning at UCLA Hospital in Westwood following complications from heart and respiratory disease, his son Peter Gelfman confirmed. He was 88.

Gelfman was born in Brooklyn, New York and was raised in Caldwell New Jersey where he attended grade and high school, before graduating Princeton University in 1953 with a degree in architecture. Soon after, he returned to New York where he worked for the Candida Donadio talent agency and the Feuer and Martin company. It was the latter that got him his next job as an Off-Broadway producer for the improvisational theater The Premise.

From there, he became the Vice President of New York Production for United Artists, before leaving to buy film rights for the first video cassette company Cartrivision. At that time, he also began working with...

Samuel Gelfman, who produced the low-budget films Caged Heat, Cockfighter and Cannonball! for Roger Corman's New World Pictures in the 1970s, has died. He was 88.

Gelfman died Thursday at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles of complications from heart and respiratory disease, his son Peter Gelfman, a New York-based property master, told The Hollywood Reporter.

After serving as a vice president at United Artists and a film buyer for one of the first videocassette companies, Cartrivision, Gelfman joined ranks with Corman and produced Jonathan Demme's directorial debut, Caged Heat (1974), about women in prison; Cockfighter (1974), helmed by Monte Hellman and ...

Samuel Gelfman, who produced the low-budget films Caged Heat, Cockfighter and Cannonball! for Roger Corman's New World Pictures in the 1970s, has died. He was 88.

Gelfman died Thursday at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles of complications from heart and respiratory disease, his son Peter Gelfman, a New York-based property master, told The Hollywood Reporter.

After serving as a vice president at United Artists and a film buyer for one of the first videocassette companies, Cartrivision, Gelfman joined ranks with Corman and produced Jonathan Demme's directorial debut, Caged Heat (1974), about women in prison; Cockfighter (1974), helmed by Monte Hellman and ...

By Todd Garbarini

When I was asked to review a film from 1975 called Supercock, I immediately thought that it sounded like a film that may have starred the late adult film performer John Holmes who was known the world over for being extraordinarily, if not freakishly, well-endowed. An Internet Google search turned up Supercock – the film I was reviewing and another one that starred John Holmes, a film I only joked about even existing! The latter didn’t surprise me in the slightest and I breathed a sigh of relief that I wasn’t being asked to review that film.

Supercock is a comedic outing concerning the sport of cockfighting with a humorous script that makes as many sexual inuendoes as you can imagine, to the point of it being a one-note joke that occasionally draws guffaws, smiles, and even a few rolling eyes. It was usually double-billed with the...

Author Kier-La Janisse is preparing to release her new book, Cockfight, an in-depth study of Monte Hellman's 1974 film Cockfighter. Screen Anarchy is very pleased to be the first to share with you the cover for her new book. We also have a small selection of images from the production and included the trailer, which has a wee bit of nudity in it apart from scenes of cockfighting.    Cockfight is the fifth book from Canadian micro-publisher Spectacular Optical. An Indiegogo campaign launches tomorrow where you can preorder Kier-la's new book. The funds raised go towards completion funds, image rights and printing costs. There will be any number of incentives attached to different packages including copies...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Harry Dean Stanton, the legendary character actor and offbeat leading man who starred in Repo Man, Paris, Texas, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me and Big Love in a career that spanned over seven decades, has died at the age of 91.

Stanton died of natural causes in Los Angeles, Variety reports, with TMZ adding that the actor died peacefully Friday afternoon at the city's Cedars-Sinai Hospital.

Director David Lynch, who cast Stanton in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, Wild at Heart, The Straight Story and the recent Twin Peaks: The Return,...

Harry Dean Stanton has died at 91, reports TMZ. The actor, a screen legend who endeared himself to moviegoers for his performances in everything from “Pretty in Pink” and “The Godfather Part II” to “Alien” and “Repo Man,” passed away peacefully at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles.

Read More:‘Lucky’ Review: 90-Year-Old Harry Dean Stanton Gives a Performance for the Ages in Wry Comedy Co-Starring David Lynch — SXSW 2017

Best known as a character actor, Stanton had his share of leading roles as well. None was more moving than Wim Wenders’ “Paris, Texas,” in which he plays a grief-stricken drifter who attempts to reconnect with his former life. Stanton frequently collaborated with David Lynch, appearing in “Wild at Heart,” “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me,” “The Straight Story,” “Inland Empire,” and the just-concluded “Twin Peaks” revival.

Read More:‘Lucky’ Trailer: Harry Dean Stanton and David Lynch Reunite For This Wise Meditation on...

All week long our writers will debate: Which was the greatest film year of the past half century.  Click here for a complete list of our essays. I was one of the first to select years for this particular exercise, which probably allowed me to select the correct year. The answer is, of course, 1974 and all other answers are wrong. No matter what your criteria happens to be, 1974 is going to come out on top. Again, this is not ambiguous or open to debate. We have to start, of course, with the best of the best. "Chinatown" is one of the greatest movies ever made. You can't structure a thriller better than Robert Towne and Roman Polanski do, nor shoot a Los Angeles movie better than John Alonzo has done. Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway give the best performances of their careers, which is no small achievement. If you ask...

We wanted to let everyone get their hopes and getting "50 Shades of Grey" out of your system before we completely ruined Valentines with awful memories of hearts being crushed to a pulp. So, we caught up with current and future Latino filmmakers we actually do love! We asked them about their worst dates (because we love bringing up the past.) Their fave love story and anyone in the movies they’ve crush on. Give them so ‘Follows’!

Daniel Armando – (Filmmaker) What It Was

Worst Valentine's date: There's a Valentine's date I remember and it wasn't because it was a bad date, but because it was a realization I had. The sun was shining, the birds were chirping, and the stroll through the park was lovely. It was the ideal perfect Valentine's date, but I was slowly realizing that it was with someone who didn't feel the same way I did. I felt bad because I wish I had spent it with someone who did feel the same way and who I truly loved. A romantic film that comes to mind is Forrest Gump. The love that Forrest had for Jenny is amazingly beautiful. Through all the excitement, confusion, and chaos that surrounded his life the one thing he was sure about was his calm, simple, and never-ending love for Jenny. He's not a smart man, but he knows what love is.

Website: http://www.novonovus.com/

Douglas Spain – (Producer/Actor) North By El Norte

My favorite cinematic love story is 'The Terminator'. Yes, it's an amazing Sci-Fi/Action film but at the core it's a love story: A man travels back in time to save the woman he fell in love with via a photo that was given to him by his unbeknownst son. His future was 2029, which isn't too far away and interestingly enough, people nowadays fall in love via photos on Instagram. If a man traveled back in time to be with me you can bet I would never terminate that relationship. Lol. I did try online dating once and the guy was not the same from the pictures on his profile. After some small talk, I said to him, "I'll be back." But unlike The Terminator, I didn't come back. Instead I hauled ass out of there.

Twitter: @DouglasSpain

Jessica Molina – (Host/Producer) Daily Dos

Years ago I went out with this fella who tried to impress me with money – never a good idea. He picked me up in (his sister’s) Range Rover. He was in med school and broke down how much money he was going to make each year following his graduation. Dude pretty much talked about himself the whole date. To top it off, based on his suggestion, we went to a restaurant but he barely ate because he’d already eaten. Nothing a girl loves more than to be stuffing her face alone on a first date! The conversation was lacking, but I do remember the food was delicious! I don’t have a favorite love story that comes to mind; I just love ‘love.’ I love seeing my friends in love – love seeing them honored and appreciated. So those are my favorite love stories the ones in which the people I care for most are receiving the absolute best.

Noah played by Ryan Gosling in The Notebook. Say what you want, but I love that movie! Here’s a man who was fun, kind, passionate, crafty, and insanely loyal. (And very easy on the eyes!)

Twitter: @jessicahosts

Laura Gomez (Filmmaker/Actress) Orange Is The New Black

Not so much "bad date," more like no chemistry date. I didn't necessarily go to a breakup album, but rather to specific songs that reminded me of the person and would ironically make me feel even more nostalgic. Cuando Te Beso, Juan Luis Guerra, Negra Murguera, from Argentine band Bersuit Vergarabat, lots of Concha Buika and Amy Winehouse (just 'cause) and old School Mecano. Mecano has a song about "how hard it's to forget him"... I must have listened to that song thousands of times.

The Bridges of Madison County is definitely one my favorite romantic films of all times, and you need some serious ice cream eating at that scene where Francesca (the luminous Meryl Streep) holds the door knob and is fighting not to open it as Clint Eastwood places the necklace with the cross on the mirror. Ufff, I always cry with that scene.

Some of my film crushes are Michael Fassbender, Idris Elba, Benicio del Toro and Edgar Ramirez. I guess it's a combination of looks and their raw talent. Absolute best.

Twitter: @lg_lauragomez

Elise DuRant (Filmmaker) Eden

I have some favorite love story moments. One of them is in Tim Burton’s Ed Wood, when he goes on a first date with Kathy played by Patricia Arquette. They're in this little car in the Spook House when in the middle of the ride, the lights go out. As they wait, in that silence, he turns to her and tells her that he likes to dress as a woman, wear women’s sweaters and undergarments. She's a little confused. She asks him if that means he doesn’t like sex with women. “No!” he tells her, he loves sex with women. She takes it in, and after a moment she acceptingly says, “Okay.” The lights go on, the ride starts up again, and they continue through the Spook House. It’s such a sweet moment of acceptance, the permission to be who we are. It’s so sweet and simple and so elegantly done.

Worst date: It was a first date and after he kissed me -- a sweet kiss -- he told me he was trying to kick heroin.

Celebrity crush: On this Valentine's I would have to choose Warren Oates. Tell me if you -- man or woman -- don't have a crush on him after seeing him in The Wild Bunch, Badlands, Cockfighter, and Two-Lane Blacktop.

Twitter: @elise_durant

Vivian Lamolli (Actress) East Los High

Hmm this is kind of a hard one because I've always managed somehow to not have a love interest on Cupid's Day of Love! But I guess I would have to go with 8th grade, a boy named Michael gave me an empty heart box :(...he had eaten all the chocolates!!!

A very particular breakup had me crushed around the holidays, and when Kelly Clarkson came out with her album My December I couldn't put it down. I realized that she was going through a really difficult breakup as well when she wrote the beautiful songs and it made me even closer to the words. Kelly, you helped me see the light girl!!!

Oooo there are just too many crushes I can't decide!!! But, forever and always Mr. Justin Timberlake will stand the test of time for me. I mean, what can't he do?? I tend to have talent crushes often and Justin's voice, dance skills, wit, and obvious gorgeous looks...well, damn God must have spent a little more time on you Jt!! Haha. Loving him since those *Nsync platinum blonde hair days, congratulations to little miss Jessica Biel!!

Twitter: @Vivalivin

Veronica Valencia (Actress) The Other Barrio

I don't think I've been on a really bad date on Valentine's, I've just been alone which is bad enough lol.... But the worst date?? This was a first date. I think he was really trying to impress me but was saying all the wrong things. All he talked about was material things. Like how he had a speed boat, Mercedes, etc... He went on to talk about how much money he made the previous year and how the current year he was going to surpass that amount. Maybe for most women they would've been impressed but I never returned his call or text again. Celebrity crush? ...Brad Pitt! Ever since I watched Legends of the Fall and A River Runs Through It I fell in love with the state of Montana. In fact, the main reason why I started dating my current boyfriend was because he was born and raised from Montana. So, I have to give Brad Pitt the credit there, Lol! I absolutely love nature. I love hiking and camping...Someday, Montana will be my home.

Twitter: @vluvsong

Written by Juan Caceres . LatinoBuzz is a weekly feature on SydneysBuzz that highlights Latino indie talent and upcoming trends in Latino film with the specific objective of presenting a broad range of Latino voices. Follow [At]LatinoBuzz on Twitter and Facebook...

Just when you thought you’d seen everything… here comes another 55 insane trailers to whip you into a frenzy in this collection of sick, depraved and hysterically brilliant movie previews from the golden age of Grindhouse cinema in Grindhouse Trailer Classics 4.

Following the successful and critically-acclaimed release of Grindhouse Trailer Classics 1, 2 & 3, Nucleus Films will once again take you on trip back to the “gory days” of cult and exploitation cinema with their latest unseen compilation of audacious theatrical trailers from the sleazy cinematic sub-genre known as “grindhouse”.

I’m a Huge fan of this series (check out this pic of my signed copies of the first 3 releases) so I’m super-excited to see what stupefyingly awesome trailers this collection has to offer. According to the press release, all of the trailers in this collection have been sourced from ultra-rare 35mm prints, many of which haven’t been seen since they...

Following are some supplemental sections featuring notable director & actor teams that did not meet the criteria for the main body of the article. Some will argue that a number of these should have been included in the primary section but keep in mind that film writing on any level, from the casual to the academic, is a game of knowledge and perception filtered through personal taste.

****

Other Notable Director & Actor Teams

This section is devoted to pairings where the duo worked together at least 3 times with the actor in a major role in each feature film, resulting in 1 must-see film.

Terence Young & Sean Connery

Must-See Collaboration: From Russia with Love (1962).

Other Collaborations: Action of the Tiger (1957), Dr. No (1962), Thunderball (1965).

Director Young and actor Connery teamed up to create one of the very best Connery-era James Bond films with From Russia with Love which features a great villainous performance by Robert Shaw...

“A small band of efficient, dedicated, highly trained warriors can defeat any number of rabble. That’s my theory of filmmaking.”

—Roger Corman

What sort of creature is 21st century cinema going to be? Two-headed beast or tentacular jellyfish? Branded or brain-dead entertainment? Elitist pastime or popular food for thought? To be on the safe side and remind future generations of the genetic foundations of this untamed living being called cinema, at the venerable age of 87 year-old, Roger Corman has opened his own YouTube channel. From king of the drive-in to elder librarian of the digital cinematheque of Babel, Corman’s protean genius is anything but nostalgic. Instead of mourning the cyclical “death of cinema” the legendary producer keeps injecting new life and ideas into the changing shape of films. While his output has significantly decreased throughout the years his relevance has not, nor, it would appear, has his maverick spirit.

The best thing about Silent Night, Deadly Night 3: Better Watch Out! is the cover, and to even suggest that it’s a great cover is solely based on the pre-shrunk Sndn branding from the original film combined with an absolute love for the Ive logo at the bottom of the poster/cover box. The content of the film is completely trash. Late 80’s hooey! I’m not gonna be the guy who’s complaining that it is a sequel in name only even if it does follow around poor Bah Humbugged Ricky Caldwell. I mean at least Ricky Caldwell’s back and following the late 80’s psychic saves the day/psychic causes all the problems trope. And yeah, there’s a Santa Claus and he’s a killer and there’s creepy Christmas imagery, so I can see why it has a fan base. This epitomizes how the direct...

Tuesday marked thirty years since the untimely passing of Warren Oates. The great, grizzled actor's work has fallen somewhat out of fashion these days -- few, bar perhaps Quentin Tarantino, name Sam Peckinpah or Monte Hellman, Oates' closest and most frequent collaborators, as influences. If you're familiar with him at all, it's likely from his parts as outlaw Lyle Gorch in "The Wild Bunch" or as Sgt. Hulka in Bill Murray comedy "Stripes." But for a time in the 1970s, Oates was Hollywood's go-to badass character actor, a man who everyone from Norman Jewison and William Friedkin to Steven Spielberg and Terrence Malick wanted to work with.

Born in Depoy, Kentucky in 1928, Oates discovered acting at the University of Louisville, and soon headed west to L.A. where he swiftly became a regular face in the golden era of TV westerns, including parts on "Rawhide," "Wanted: Dead or Alive," "Have Gun - Will Travel...

by Steve Dollar

Ah, Miami! City of Jackie Gleason and Tony Montana. Lost frontier of the cocaine cowboys and the city where Charles Willeford, America's greatest hardboiled novelist, wrote Cockfighter. Palm trees, art deco, Cuban coffee and models everywhere. And a film festival, too, for 27 years now. The 2012 edition of the Miami International Film Festival runs through Sunday at various locations amid the ocean-sprayed sprawl, including the historic 1926 Olympia Theatre, whose soaring ceilings and exotic Moorish architecture now resonate with live organ performances before each night's big feature.

Continued reading Miami 2012: Critic's Notebook...

I was recently afforded the opportunity to talk to Alex Stapleton, the director of the wonderful documentary Corman’s World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel (review here) about the many sides of the “schlock king” Roger Corman. Through a tenuous phone connection (I do have an At&T iPhone and live in New York City, after all), we discussed the process of making this film, how she got roped into doing crew on a Corman movie, Jack Nicholson‘s lounging gear, and doing interviews from the barber’s chair. The Film Stage’s questions are in bold, Alex’s responses follow.

Is there going to be a big premiere out there?

Well we had our kind of fancy premiere at Lacma [Los Angeles County Museum of Art], actually as a part of Film Independent’s series that they were running with Elvis Mitchell. So that was kind of our fancy night. So we will have on the 16th of December,...

Two-lane Blacktop (Masters of Cinema) is to be released in the UK on Blu-ray & Ltd Edition Blu-ray Steelbook on 23 January 2012. We have 3 copies of the Blu-ray to give away to our readers.

With the melancholy open-road epic Two-Lane Blacktop, American auteur Monte Hellman (The Shooting, Cockfighter, and the recent Road to Nowhere) poeticised the beautiful, terrible rootlessness of his nation in the era of Vietnam. Funded by Universal in a bid to recreate the success of Easy Rider – by giving a number of filmmakers $1m and final cut – Hellman’s effort is now regarded as one of the key films of the New Hollywood renaissance of the early 1970s.

While driving eastward on Route 66, two rival car owners – The Driver (singer-songwriter James Taylor) and The Mechanic (Dennis Wilson of The Beach Boys) in a souped-up, drag-racing ’55 Chevy, and a middle-aged braggart (Warren Oates) in a gleaming Gto – begin to...

Yes, those enigmatic cinematics are back with the launch of Season 2 of their popular podcast. So far this season the Crew has release three episodes as well as a Halloween Music Special, and there’s no stopping them now.

Here’s what’s been unleashed so far…

Episode 1

Well, they’re back… with a whole new look, a streamlined format, and a bunch of new contributors… all designed to slap your face and call you “Shirley.”

Ok, so… Season 2 Episode 1. First off, as always, there’s the Mighty Canuck Andrew Mack bringing you all the news that fit to cruise in his Twitch News of the Week. Next up, Sean and Thom go over a few of the films they’ve watched (and these by no means even scratch the surface of the amount of cinema these guys watch) over the break. After that, there’s Jonathan Lloyd Walker fresh...

Monterey will release the 2010 independent neo-noir Road to Nowhere directed by the great Monte Hellman on Blu-ray and DVD on August 23 for the list prices of $34.95 and $26.95, respectively.

Femme fatale as femme fatale: Shannyn Sossamon makes a movie in Road to Nowhere.

Written by Variety editor Steven Gaydos and starring Shannyn Sossamon (40 Days and 40 Nights), Dominique Swain (Fall Down Dead), Waylon Payne (Walk the Line), Cliff De Young (Suicide Kings) and John Diehl (Down in the Valley), the romance-thriller film tells the enigmatic tale of cult film director Mitchell Haven (Tygh Runyan, TV’s Stargate Universe), who has found the material to make his next movie. It’s a true crime story based in the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina, involving a beautiful young woman, Velma Duran (Sossamon), and her older politico lover, Rafe Taschen (De Young). Just as their so-called “true crime” goes awry, so does Haven’s obsessed...

Monte Hellman's best films begin by pretending to tell a story. Take your pick: Ride in the Whirlwind, Two-Lane Blacktop, Cockfighter, Iguana—every of them establishes a good punchy premise (often aided by a startling opening shot or scene) and then, without ever fully abandoning "plot," inches towards an earthy, unshowy, existential bleakness with each scene. In an odd (and ironic) interplay of inertia and impermanence, his frequently stubborn characters become metaphors while their all-consuming goals fade away into the landscape. Road to Nowhere ups the ante by pretending to tell several stories at once: one about the production of a film (also called Road to Nowhere), another about the crime the film is based on, and a third involving a mysterious video-recorded conversation between the film's director and the blogger whose reporting formed the basis for the film. However, the various strands, which are intentionally not differentiated, don't...

Updated through 6/10.

To Hellman and Back: An Evening with Monte Hellman is set for this evening at the Walter Reade Theater, and here's how the New York Times' Dave Kehr recommends you be there if you can: "The undisputed master of the existential road movie (Two-Lane Blacktop, 1971) will be present for a 6 pm sneak preview of his new feature, Road to Nowhere, to be followed by a rare screening of Mr Hellman's magnificently bleak adaptation of Charles Willeford's novel Cockfighter, starring Warren Oates as an itinerant gambler. A discussion with Mr Hellman follows the screening, as does a book party celebrating the reissue of the Willeford novel from PictureBox Books."

"Combining an almost quaint self-reflexiveness with state-of-the-art digital filmmaking, Road concerns the production of a film based on a controversial lovers' double-suicide in North Carolina," explains Nick Pinkerton in the Voice. "Director Mitchell Haven (Tygh Runyan) is determined to...

As a fan of Monte Hellman, the famed director of the 70's seminal counter-culture classics such as Two Lane Blacktop and Cockfighter, it is very hard for me to report to other Hellman fans that Road to Nowhere, his new film in more than twenty years, is...umm...absolutely...dreadful. There I said it. Such is the burden of being the messenger of bad news. Prior to the screening Hellman told the audience the advice he got from someone once- 'never explain your film, never apologize for your film and never reimburse tickets.' He succeeded in getting couple of laughs out of that. In retrospect, he wasn't joking. It was his ominous preemptive strike. The film concerns a young, esteemed Hollywood director Mitchell Haven (Tygh Runyan) adapting a...

If Monte Hellman never made another film after Two-Lane Blacktop—a 1971 road movie about men who love driving their cars down the open road so much, they either don’t notice or don’t care that it stretches to oblivion—he could have retired knowing he’d still be talked about today. Some films are reputations unto themselves, even though Hellman did interesting, sometimes startlingly good work like The Shooting and Cockfighter both before and after his most famous effort. He worked sporadically in the years after Blacktop, and then not at all, seeming to settle into a career ...

Long Shadows: The Late Work of Satyajit Ray opens this evening and runs through April 26 at the Film Society of Lincoln Center: "Of special interest is Home and the World [1984; image above], his final, wonderful adaptation of a work by his mentor, Rabindranath Tagore (whose 150th anniversary we celebrate this year), as well as his final, luminous work, The Stranger, an extraordinary summing up of so much of Ray's worldview graced with a sensational lead performance by Utpal Dutt." Plus, "we asked some friends of the Film Society: what film would you recommend seeing, and why?" Meantime, Paul Brunick posts a roundup on Distant Thunder (1973) at Alt Screen. Update, 4/20: Salman Rushdie for the Fslc on The Golden Fortress (1974): "The film is a true delight and the moment when the Golden Fortress is discovered — when it is revealed not to be a child's fantasy but a real place, shimmering on...

There’s little better at restoring one’s faith in cinema then when a great director returns from the wilderness. Terrence Malick was Mia for 20 years between Days of Heaven and The Thin Red Line, but Monte Hellman’s time away from feature filmmaking has been even more prolonged. It was as far back as 1988 when Hellman made Iguana, his last “proper” film, but now the director of such cult classics as Two Lane Blacktop and Cockfighter has happily returned to filmmaking.

Last fall, Hellman unveiled Road to Nowhere at the Venice Film Festival – where he won a Jury Award Special Lion for Career Achievement – and declared the movie his first truly personal work. It’s a deliriously enjoyable film about filmmaking, centering on a director, Mitchell Haven (Tygh Runyan) and screenwriter, Steven Gates (Rob Kolar), who set out to make a movie based on a recent crime story involving murder,...

By Sean O’Connell

Hollywoodnews.com: “Road to Nowhere” already has led Steven Gaydos to some pretty special places. He’s hoping the journey has just begun.

Gaydos, who serves as Variety’s executive editor, recently penned a film-noir script that centered around a young director embroiled in a true-crime mystery. He pitched the idea to his friend and former colleague, acclaimed director Monte Hellman. To Gaydos’ surprise, Hellman bit on the idea, and the two were in business. They hired a cast that included Shannyn Sossamon and Dominique Swain. They filmed around the world, shooting in California, North Carolina, England and Italy. Earlier this fall, they unveiled the picture at the Venice Film Festival and received raves.

“Monte only knows one way to make a movie, which is ahead of the pack,” Gaydos said. “He does not tether himself to popular taste. But I think he has made a...

Monte Hellman made one the definitive American road movies in Two-Lane Blacktop in 1971; now he's returning to that theme with The Road to Nowhere

Four decades ago, a director named Monte Hellman made what many regard as the ultimate American road movie. Two-Lane Blacktop was an existential odyssey that set off for Washington DC only to blow it, memorably, on an airstrip in Tennessee. In the picture's explosive final reel, the sound dropped away and the film appeared to first catch and then combust in the gate of the projector. You'd be forgiven for assuming that the director had somehow blown up alongside it.

Now Hellman is back with another road movie of sorts, The Road to Nowhere. It shapes up as a tale of political skulduggery, though it's really a film about film-making, quoting liberally from the movies of old (everything from The Lady Eve to The Spirit of the Beehive). It's a playful,...

As Cinema Retro 'regulars' know, we have occasionally been able to find unpublished or rarely-seen interviews with legendary film personalities and provide them for our readers. In issue #1 of the magazine, Steve Mori provided an unseen interview Steve McQueen from 1968 and in issue #15, Steve did the same with a fascinating 1974 discussion with Lee Marvin. Now contributing writer Kris Gilpin has been kind enough to share with us with a 1988 interview with director Monte Hellman, whose work is revered by some of the great directors of our time. Please keep in mind that the text and events that are discussed in this interview took place in 1988 and have not been amended. (This is part one of a two-part interview.)

Interview With Monte Hellman

By Kris Gilpin

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Born July 12th, 1932 in New York City, writer-director Monte Hellman’s work is miles above typical American...

The list of Roger Corman protégés is amazingly long and stuffed with goodies of all persuasions. There are the famous men: Scorcese (Box Car Bertha); Demme (Caged Heat, Crazy Mama), Nicholson (Little Shop of Horrors), Joe Dante (Cockfighter), Francis Coppola (Battle Beyond the Sun), Ron Howard (Grand Theft Auto) Sylvester Stallone (Death Race 2000), Bruce Dern, Robert De Niro (Bloody Mama) Peter Fonda ( The Wild Angels), Peter Bogdanovich (Saint Jack) Curtis Hanson (Sweet Kill) and Jonathan Kaplan (Night Call Nurses) and those are just a few of the guys who wrote to the Motion Picture Academy to advocate for the award that Corman is finally getting this weekend. Corman with Jonathan Demme. They said, "it is virtually impossible to separate our various entries into the film industry from Roger Corman and his obsession with working with newcomers." Or how about...

Neil Labute will re-team with his Death at a Funeral producer William Horberg to direct an adaptation of Charles Willeford's art world crime novel The Burnt Orange Heresy, according to Variety. This isn't the first time Willeford's work has made it to the screen; he scripted Cockfighter (Monte Hellman! Warren Oates!) from his own novel, and Horberg previously produced an adaptation of Willeford's Miami Blues, starring a young Alec Baldwin. The Burnt Orange Heresy, published in 1971, was Willeford's first hardcover original after a string of pulp paperbacks. Not that the book isn't lurid; "crossing the art world with the underworld!" is from one description. Story follows a womanizing art critic, Jacques Figueras, who advances his art career with shady dealings: blackmail, burglary, assassination. Figueras gets into trouble when he begins to work for an art collector who has no boundaries when it comes to how his pieces are collected.

Revisionist horror favorite Larry Fessenden (director of Habit, Wendigo and The Last Winter) returned to Montreal’s just-wrapped Fantasia film festival this year with two new films from his indie-horror production company Scareflix: Ti West’s incredibly atmospheric ‘80s horror tribute House Of The Devil (a smash success at Tribeca and a late but great addition to the Fantasia program; see review here) and Glenn McQuaid’s period horror-comedy tribute to British ‘60s/’70s horror classics, I Sell The Dead (another Fango rave; see here; I Sell The Dead goes into limited theatrical release this Friday and is concurrently available as a video-on-demand from IFC Films).

Fessenden was on hand with co-producer Peter Phok and first-time feature director Glenn McQuaid for their award-winning I Sell The Dead, a one-of-a-kind dark adventure film depicting the daily lives and supernatural woes of two lowlife body-snatchers, played by Fessenden himself and Dominic Monaghan...