Greer Garson, Peter Finch, Zoolander, and more...

1916 Happy Centennial to Best Actor winner Peter Finch (Network), one of only two posthumous acting winners in Oscar history. The other is Heath Ledger. (Curiously they were both Australian)
1924 Marcello Mastroianni (La Dolce Vita, 8½) is born in Italy. Becomes one of the all time great movie stars by his mid 30s. His career spans over 50 years of cinema.
1933 Greer Garson weds Edward Snelson, first of three husbands, though the cohabitation is brief. Ten years later she famously marries her screen son in Mrs Miniver.
1934 ...And God Created Brigitte Bardot in Paris

1945 Mildred Pierce opens. Joan Crawford will win Best Actress for this fabulous noir melodrama
1949 Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis first film together My Friend Irma
1950 American indie icon John Sayles is born in New York. Among his most famous films: Return of the Secaucus 7, Passion Fish, and Lone Star
1951 Franchot Tone marries Barbara Payton, his third wife, a disastrous marriage for both. And he survived Joan Crawford.
1957 The great cinematographer Harris Savides is born. Credits include Zodiac, Milk, and Birth. His last gorgeous film The Bling Ring was released posthumously

Greer Garson is Oscar's 7th Most Beloved Actress

1960 Sunrise at Campobello premieres at the movies. Greer Garson will snag her seventh and final Best Actress nomination as Eleanor Roosevelt. She'll lose to Elizabeth Taylor in BUtterfield 8 though their fates were reversed at the Golden Globes.
1961 Shirley Booth starts her run as Hazel a TV sitcom that lasts five seasons. The next summer she wins the Lead Emmy making her a Triple Crowner after her Tony & Oscar for Come Back Little Sheba.
1964 Janeane Garofalo is born. We don't appreciate her comic brilliance in Reality Bites (1994) enough. 
1967 Supporting Actress winner Mira Sorvino is born. If you never read our 1995 Smackdown it was a good one so check it out.

1968 Nicole's bestie Naomi Watts is born (curiously neither were born in Australia but moved there as children). Also "Hey Jude" by the Beatles hits #1 and stays there for 9 weeks 
1976 Israeli star Ohad Knoller is born. Credits include Yossi & Jagger, Yossi, Munich, and The Bubble
1984 Jessica Lange's Country opens. Exactly one week after Sally Field's Places in the Heart in the year of the farm wife
1987 Hilary Duff who comes to fame as "Lizzie McGuire" is born. Currently co-starring on the underappreciated Emmy worthy comedy Younger
1992 Keir Gilchrist, who was so wonderful as a gay teenager on The United States of Tara and was last seen in It Follows is born 

1994 Tim Burton's Ed Wood premieres. Do you still love it?
1997 Chad Lowe & Hilary Swank marry. Two years later she wins the Oscar and forgets to thank him. She remembers the second time but why was their a second time again. ARGH! (Old wounds - editor)
2001 Ben Stiller first delivers "Blue Steel" in movie theaters in Zoolander
2012 Looper hits theaters. That was a good one though perhaps it was a warning that Joseph Gordon Levitt was always going to try to "alter" himself in some way (face, voice, body whatever) for his future leading roles shaving off parts of his charisma in the process.

TCMFF Presents Faye Dunaway & Network

Anne Marie here, reporting with a 30 share on Hollywood Blvd!

The 7th Annual TCM Film Fest ended on a high note this year with Network. Though a satire about network television may not seem like the first choice for a film festival sponsored by a teleivion network, nonetheless TCM rolled out the red carpet, not only for the movie, but also for Faye Dunaway. The Academy Award-winning legend introduced the movie by talking to TCM host Ben Mankiewicz about the work - her process, her co-workers, and her thoughts on television and film.

Dunaway started by describing just how many people told her not to take the role of Diane Christensen in Network. Hot off the success of Bonnie & Clyde and Chinatown, Dunaway had awards goodwill to burn. Even Network director Sideney Lumet told her not to take the role. However, Faye Dunaway went against Lumet's good advice, and starred in Network regardless. When Mankiewicz asked her why she'd risk her career to play such a heartless character, Dunaway replied, "This was too interesting an exploration of American culture not to do it."

Dunaway was effusive in her praise of her costars and crew. She called William Holden as a man with "crusty elegance," and amitted that she nicknamed Sidney Lumet Roller Skates because he delivered movies on time and under budget no matter what. When asked what it was like to win an Academy Award, Dunaway could only quip, "You forget to thank people you were supposed to thank."

While the dour tone of Network may not seem like your first choice for a TV film festival, nevertheless the film and its interview beforehand showed what TCMFF is all about. Over 4 days, TCM screened dozens of lost treasures from Hollywood and beyond, exposing the multiplicity that makes true cinephile. As Dunaway said before she was whisked away: TCM does crucial work for promoting classic cinema. And this definition of "classic" always evolves.

Network (1976). One Angry Man.

In honor of Sidney Lumet who passed away this weekend, we're re-publishing The Film Experience retrospective on Network from a few years ago. It's new to some of you!

One Angry Man
One thing I suspect about director Sidney Lumet: He liked his drama super-sized, Empire State Building big. No 800 lbs gorillas in the room please, make it King Kong. Give them 16 tons of drama. Lumet wanted grunting, sweating, lunging, screaming, gargantuan desperate drama like the kind you get in Dog Day Afternoon, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead and Serpico. Never mind 12 Angry Men. How about 1 Angry Man, Sidney Lumet, and in the case of Network -- arguably his best film -- one angry fictional man named Howard Beale (Peter Finch). Network eventually gets around to naming Beale the “mad prophet of the airwaves” but it’s also a self descriptive tag. The movie is mad as hell and prophetic, too. Network is Howard Beale and Howard Beale is Network. This impressively large but also miniature film --it's not hard to imagine it as a stage play -- swings wildly from mood to mood like its bipolar madman.

A lot of movies steal from Network but I love the borrowing that Network does right out of the gate, in omniscient detached voiceover.

In his time Howard Beale had been a mandarin of television. The grand old man of news with a hot rating of 16 and a 28 audience share. In 1969 however his fortunes began to decline. He fell to a 22 share. The following year his wife died and he was left a childless widower with an 8 rating and a 12 share.

That calm voiceover, giving numbers as much if not more weight as the man's personal life, has already begun the chilling process of reduction. It's overtly reminiscent of both All About Eve's arch view of the theater world and Sunset Boulevard's ghost-eye view of Hollywood. Network’s target is television. Is it boldly proclaiming itself the final third of the Holy Trinity of Self-Loathing Showbiz Pictures? Whatever the intent, it moves with utter confidence, thereby forcing itself into the godhead. 

We're in the boredom killing business.

It may seem odd to claim that such a black hearted picture is completely entertaining, even enjoyable, but it is. Right from its first shot of four television screens (the one featuring Beale eventually growing to fill the whole screen) the movie surges at you with such electric, articulate force that you have no choice but to go with its current. The prologue of the film then finds Beale (just given his walking papers) with old friend Max Schumacher (William Holden) drinking and laughing maniacally. The chaser to their raucous laughter? A perfect 180˚ cut to Beale seated at the bar quietly announcing “I’m going to kill myself”. The two friends begin to set the movie's plot in motion with improvised plans for live suicides and terrorism on TV. "The Death Hour!" Max proclaims with forced 90 proof glee. Where does all this gallows humor put us before the title credits even begin to appear? 

That puts us in the shithouse. That's where that puts us.

Network is an easy film to quote and its super sculpted and scalding dialogue is undoubtedly the reason why the screenplay (by triple Oscar winner Paddy Chayefsky) is so lauded. It’s the type of talky feature that's jerry-rigged to draw attention to its themes, BIG ideas, diamond hard one liners and showcased monologues. But words aside, the plotting is also tight and strong. I can’t think of a single film that’s more interested in stopping for speeches that also moves with breakneck speed through the twists and turns of its various plots. 

Plot A: Howard Beale threatens to kill himself on air, leading to rubberneck ratings jumps and corporate exploitation of his sudden insanity. As Beale slips deeper into a complete psychotic break, corporate sharks Diana Christensen (Faye Dunaway) and Frank Hackett (Robert Duvall) start swimming, devouring the smaller fish at the network like Max Schumacher, as they try to capitalize on Beale's popularity with the public who embraces his catchphrase:

I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!

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