Gay Best Friend: Bernstein (Antonio Fargas) in "Next Stop Greenwich Village" (1976)

 A series by Christopher James looking at the 'Gay Best Friend' trope

Look past the early "Chris" Walken appearance, Bernstein (Antonio Fargas - center) is the subject of this week's Gay Best Friend column.

Flying the nest can be simultaneously liberating and horrifying. On one hand, you have all this freedom to do what you want, when you want. Unfortunately, you have to learn how to take care of yourself and be self-sufficient. For those with tight knit families or over-involved parents, the horrifying can outweigh the liberating.

Next Stop, Greenwich Village laser focuses on the growing pains in this transition. The year is 1953. Larry Lapinski (Lenny Baker) leaves his parents’ home in Brooklyn to chase his dreams of stardom. His Mother, Fay (Shelley Winters), is utterly distraught and inconsolable. The umbilical cord is only hurt, not severed though. Larry's mother bursts in to his new life at the most inopportune times.  This column isn’t about Shelley Winters though, as much as it should be. Larry makes a variety of friends in Greenwich Village, one of which is Bernstein, played by Antonio Fargas, our gay best friend of the week...

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Showbiz History: The Globes that weren't Golden, and Shelley Winter's death-bed wedding

5 random things that happened on this day, January 13th, in showbiz history

1939 Son of Frankenstein, the third in Universal's Frankenstein franchise and the last to star Boris Karloff, opens in theaters. It was successful but given the lack of James Whale behind the camera, not as well remembered as its predecessors

1989 It was an odd January dump on this Friday the 13th...

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Smackdown '65: Nuns, child abusers, and tragic pawns

The Supporting Actress Smackdown series picks an Oscar vintage and explores...

 

THE NOMINEES  1965 was all about the Julies, Christie and Andrews, headlining the years biggest hits but both were located in the lead actress category. When some of the year's most lauded supporting actress turned up in films Oscar wasn't interested in they selected quite an odd list from which films they were looking at, still missing one very obvious great choice. Recent Oscar winner Shelley Winters (A Patch of Blue) and recent nominee Joyce Redman (Othello) were invited back and future Dame and Oscar darling Maggie Smith (Othello) was invited for the first time. TV regular Peggy Wood (The Sound of Music) and a longtime Hollywood screenwriter Ruth Gordon (Inside Daisy Clover), nabbing her first nomination in an acting category, were also chosen. The resulting shortlist of characters included a nun, a child abuser, two women doomed by hateful petty men, and an eccentric old Californian who wasn't quite in touch with reality... not unlike some Oscar voters! 

THE PANEL  Here to talk about the performances and films are, in alpha order, Oscar buff Baby Clyde (The Film Experience), freelance writer Kayleigh Donaldson (Pajiba, What to Watch, SyFy FanGrrls), character actor Spencer Garrett (Bombshell, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood), writer and podcaster Kevin Jacobsen (And the Runner Up Is...), writer, cosplayer, and director Terence Johnson (Le Noir Auteur, Vampyr Resistance Corps). And your host at The Film Experience, of course, Nathaniel R. Let's begin...

1965
SUPPORTING ACTRESS SMACKDOWN + PODCAST  
The companion podcast can be downloaded at the bottom of this article or by visiting the iTunes page...

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Monty @ 100: The influential peak of "A Place in the Sun"

We're watching all 17 of Montgomery Clift's films for his centennial. Here's Juan Carlos...

After starring in The Search, Red River, The Heiress, and The Big Lift, all but one of them either a critical or commercial success, Montgomery Clift reached an even great peak in 1951 with George Stevens’ A Place in the Sun. It was the adaptation of a novel and play, both called An American Tragedy, that were in turn inspired by the real-life murder of Grace Brown by Chester Gillette in 1906. The story, already made into a 1931 pre-Code drama as An American Tragedy, took on a life of its own in its 1951 form. A Place in the Sun's now classic tale of doomed romance and class divide proved a crucial success in the careers of all of its key players, winning six Oscars in a tight battle for Best Picture with An American in Paris. 

Shelley Winters stripped herself of the bombshell packaging that the studio system had placed on her and in turn earned her first Academy Award nomination. For Elizabeth Taylor, the film was a key act in her transition from juvenile star to legendary adult star. Meanwhile, the film gave director George Stevens his first Oscar on his second nomination. For Clift, this film, coupled with Marlon Brando’s smolderingly threatening work in Elia Kazan’s A Streetcar Named Desire released the same year, put The Method into the mainstream leading to an inevitable shift in acting styles in American cinema...

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The Furniture: Accuracy and Allegory in "The Poseidon Adventure"

Daniel Walber's series on Production Design offers a digestif for our Shelley Winters festival. Click on the images to see them in magnified detail.

Does it matter to you if a disaster movie is realistic? This is an honest question. How solid is your suspension of disbelief when it comes to airplane explosions and burning buildings, tsunamis and earthquakes? Do you sit on the couch fact-checking on your laptop while expensive catastrophes unfold on your TV?

I ask this because I was surprised to learn how much the team behind The Poseidon Adventure cared about accuracy. Paul Gallico, who wrote the original novel, was inspired by an actual trip on the Queen Mary he took in 1937, during which the ship turned on its side. And he did plenty of research to make sure it was possible for an ocean liner to be flipped entirely upside down by a rogue wave. 

Director Ronald Neame and production designer William Creber were equally concerned. By the time The Poseidon Adventure went into production, the Queen Mary had begun a long retirement docked in Los Angeles. Much of the film was shot on the real ship, including this pleasant glimpse at the deck...

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