Popdose: Sugar Water: Running Scared From Progress
adorno
· 6 months ago
This is the last time I read your blog. I'm sure you won't miss me, but I've had it with your gay politicking.
I came here for the music, and there are a million other music blogs out there who don't shove gay marriage in your face.
Lotsa luck
jefito
· 6 months ago
You're absolutely right. We won't miss you one bit.
JonCummings
· 6 months ago
Actually, I'm gonna miss Adorno a lot. Someone who can string together a sentence that discusses both why he came and how he doesn't want something shoved in his face? Now THAT's some hot man-on-man comments-section action!
rwcass
· 6 months ago
Thank you thank you thank you for going there, Jon. But please don't tell Adorno that a lot of his favorite music was probably written, produced, and/or performed by gay people.
rwcass
· 6 months ago
Thanks for not reading!
E
· 6 months ago
Hi there! I'm from Iowa. How many times a year you think I get to take pride in that?
And speaking of Peter Hyams: I liked 2010 just fine (to my grade-school mind, it made a hell of a lot more sense than 2001), but didn't he surgically remove a lot of the astronaut-on-astronaut action from the book, including a little switch-hitting on the part of the John Lithgow character?
I may be remembering this wrong, but I don't think I am.
rwcass
· 6 months ago
I haven't read "2010: Odyssey Two," E, so I don't know about the switch-hitting, but that's interesting. Do you think Hyams made up for its exclusion from "2010" with the gay subtext of "Running Scared"?
I seem to remember turning to my dad as we were leaving the theater after "2010" ended and saying, "That's the best movie I've ever seen." Or did I say that about "The Natural" the same year? Either way, I agree that "2010" made a lot more sense than "2001" as a child. My dad showed "2001" to my brother and me two years after we saw "2010," but I got bored very quickly. Even today I have trouble getting into it because of the lack of interesting characters. But I've never been able to get into the films Kubrick made once he moved to London, except for "Eyes Wide Shut," which I've been told I'm wrong for liking. "Paths of Glory" is probably my favorite of the Kubrick films I've seen.
rwcass
· 6 months ago
You're right, E. According to Wikipedia, "The film also removes all the romantic/physical relationships between the astronauts (the novel's version of Tanya Kirbuk is married to navigator Vasili Orlov and is surnamed Orlova; in the novel Walter Curnow is bisexual and has a relationship with Maxim Brailovsky, breaking it off when he learns that Zenia Marchenko is in love with Maxim. At the end of the book we learn that Maxim marries Zenia and Curnow marries Katerina Rudenko)."
pbsebastian
· 6 months ago
I saw this movie when I was a kid and all of the homosexual subtext that you mentioned went right over my head.
The homoerotic undertones were very stark in the first clip that you posted. The fishing rod that Gregory Hines was holding was extremely phallic. Oh what fun the shirtless Crystal and Hines are having tugging that rod while drinking beer in their very short shorts. When the women appear, the on-camera fun is over, Crystal jumps away from the action and quickly skirts away to a cabin, supposedly to prove his masculine prowess. Hines is left alone, holding his rod. He must perform a metaphorical castration if he does not want to be left alone from the group.
rwcass
· 6 months ago
Excellent call on that fishing scene, Peter. I didn't even think about the metaphorical castration. Now please watch the tight-squeeze-in-the-garbage-compactor scene and tell me what that one means.
BobCashill
· 6 months ago
What I most remember about RUNNING SCARED is an irate Roger Ebert bellowing through a screening, "Look at that FAKE SNOW in the trees!"--and the MGM publicist near me in the screening room holding his head in his hands, knowing that a thumbs down was imminent. (Ebert was I think mixed on the picture, a pleasant diversion that's sort of like Hyams' grittier and more dowbeat Seventies film BUSTING, with all the cynicism rinsed out for the plastic Eighties.)
Ryan O'Neal and John Hurt played straight and gay cops living together in the 1981 comedy PARTNERS, but, as there's no subtext to their relationship, there's nothing really to uncover.
As for Hyams, he never made better films than BUSTING or CAPRICORN ONE, and 2010 is a nice try. He makes movies you get a kick out of, like OUTLAND, THE STAR CHAMBER, and THE RELIC.
rwcass
· 6 months ago
Bob, did you get into local critic screenings when you were at Northwestern? That's impressive. Does that sort of thing happen anymore with college students?
Ebert did like "Running Scared" -- http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/ar... -- but he did say this about the snow, which I almost quoted above: "The movie takes place in the middle of a cold, gray Chicago winter, which is made all the colder and grayer by the hilariously inept use of fake movie snow. Considering how many vertical surfaces are plastered with 'snow' in this movie, while the ground remains clear, Chicago must be the only city in which the snow falls from Oak Park instead of from the sky."
That's not entirely accurate: there is plenty of snow on vertical surfaces in the film, but it's the streets that are clean, not the ground. I'm sure the salt trucks were out in full force even in '85. But the snow does look fake, especially when it's covering green and yellow leaves and you don't see anyone's breath hanging frozen in the air. However, I've seen lots of snow stuck on the outside of buildings and on trees here, and I don't think it's just snow blowers that are putting it there. It is the Windy City.
I'd forgotten about "Partners," but I remember seeing the cassette box at the video store as a child and thinking it probably wasn't very good. Were there any big buddy-cop films between "48 Hrs." and "Running Scared"? I thought there were, but I couldn't find any.
I'd like to see "Busting." I haven't seen many of Hyams's films, actually, but I've always thought of him as an interesting if anonymous mainstream director. "End of Days" is his biggest hit -- $66 million -- but I don't think anyone considered it a hit when it was released. IMDB says his new film, "Beyond a Reasonable Doubt," his first in four years, opened last Friday, but it doesn't say where. Even though it reunites Hyams with "The Star Chamber's" Michael Douglas, I doubt it'll get a wide release. His last film, "A Sound of Thunder," was apparently completed with the cheapest special effects money could buy after the production company, Franchise Pictures, went bankrupt during filming.
BobCashill
· 6 months ago
A SOUND OF THUNDER is a sad disaster. The effects are one thing; Ben Kingsley's conical hair style was, however, self-inflicted. Hyams is a do-it-yourselfer, which I respect even when the results come to grief. REASONABLE DOUBT is a good one to remake--better than the cracking NARROW MARGIN, which died in his arms--but he and Michael Douglas aren't what they used to be, or were back in 83 and STAR CHAMBER.
(You'd think a movie directed by the great James Burrows, from a script by the great Francis Veber, would turn out...great. But PARTNERS didn't. It's not even half-interesting. The times were too skittish for the subject matter. It's made it to DVD, though. As you noted, the cop-buddy genre didn't really gain momentum till LETHAL WEAPON. Namedrop ahead: I sat next to Oprah Winfrey and Steadman at its Chicago premiere.)
I served the Daily Northwestern faithfully in a Popdose-ish capacity back in the 80s. I went to numerous screenings in Chicago. If Siskel and Ebert were to attend, and they were late, the start time was delayed. And they were usually late. I remember waiting 45 minutes once.
I interviewed a fair number of film people while at school, including a chain-smoking Helena Bonham Carter, the wonderful (wonderful) Jonathan Demme, and Divine a week before he died. Oh, and Judd Nelson. I see student types at NY screenings today; it makes sense to cater to them, as they're the ones who can best get the word out to that demo, unless the kids ("the kids"--what am I, 43? Don't answer that) have abandoned even college newspapers for the blogs.
I love Chicago. So many good memories, a few without Jon Cummings. My wife and I were last there in 07. Must get back again.
JonCummings
· 6 months ago
What the rest of you don't know is that Bob and I are conspiring to slowly turn Popdose into an arrested-development version of The Daily's TGIF section (minus certain unsavory characters, and with certain other highly capable classmates -- Annie -- along for the ride).
Bob rarely (never?) got plus-ones to those screenings, not that he would have taken me anyway. We did nab a lot of great interviews back then, for a college paper.
BobCashill
· 6 months ago
Ummm, I always got plus-ones...just took other ones along... (Kidding!)
rwcass
· 6 months ago
You two sound just like Ray and Danny.
JonCummings
· 6 months ago
Well, I did make Bob disappear when the hot chicks came over...but we always wound up together. And our height differential (Bob is approximately 8 feet tall) is similar to the Hines-Crystal dynamic. Other than that, though...Bob can't tap dance, though he does have his own rather interesting moves.
rwcass
· 6 months ago
Ben Kingsley's career in the past decade is another thing altogether, though I don't begrudge him at all for doing movies like "A Sound of Thunder" or "The Love Guru" for some extra Italian-villa money. I just think it's odd seeing him in those movies sometimes.
It's true that Douglas and Hyams are a long way from their peak as power players in Hollywood. Douglas is even a long way from "Disclosure" at this point. Did you hear that Oliver Stone and he are planning to make "Wall Street 2"? I am curious to see if Steven Soderbergh's Liberace biopic starring Douglas will get off the ground.
I had no idea that James Burrows had ever directed a feature film. Along the same lines, I never saw Larry David's "Sour Grapes," but since I don't find Steven Weber or Craig Bierko funny, I had no interest. I see that David's starring in Woody Allen's next movie. That should be interesting, at the very least.
I've wondered about college newspapers and if students still read them. As a friend said, "Well, they're free," which probably means that generation does read them, because the generation below mine doesn't buy the Tribune or the Sun-Times, but they do pick up the Tribune's free daily, RedEye. It's awful and pretty much all entertainment-gossip fluff, but it's free, so there you go.
BobCashill
· 6 months ago
Kingsley lost a bundle in divorce court, but still has the chops for indie-ish pictures like THE WACKNESS and ELEGY.
SOUR GRAPES isn't much of a vintage.
rwcass
· 6 months ago
I didn't know Kingsley got divorced. That explains a lot.
All Comments
I came here for the music, and there are a million other music blogs out there who don't shove gay marriage in your face.
Lotsa luck
And speaking of Peter Hyams: I liked 2010 just fine (to my grade-school mind, it made a hell of a lot more sense than 2001), but didn't he surgically remove a lot of the astronaut-on-astronaut action from the book, including a little switch-hitting on the part of the John Lithgow character?
I may be remembering this wrong, but I don't think I am.
I seem to remember turning to my dad as we were leaving the theater after "2010" ended and saying, "That's the best movie I've ever seen." Or did I say that about "The Natural" the same year? Either way, I agree that "2010" made a lot more sense than "2001" as a child. My dad showed "2001" to my brother and me two years after we saw "2010," but I got bored very quickly. Even today I have trouble getting into it because of the lack of interesting characters. But I've never been able to get into the films Kubrick made once he moved to London, except for "Eyes Wide Shut," which I've been told I'm wrong for liking. "Paths of Glory" is probably my favorite of the Kubrick films I've seen.
The homoerotic undertones were very stark in the first clip that you posted. The fishing rod that Gregory Hines was holding was extremely phallic. Oh what fun the shirtless Crystal and Hines are having tugging that rod while drinking beer in their very short shorts. When the women appear, the on-camera fun is over, Crystal jumps away from the action and quickly skirts away to a cabin, supposedly to prove his masculine prowess. Hines is left alone, holding his rod. He must perform a metaphorical castration if he does not want to be left alone from the group.
Ryan O'Neal and John Hurt played straight and gay cops living together in the 1981 comedy PARTNERS, but, as there's no subtext to their relationship, there's nothing really to uncover.
As for Hyams, he never made better films than BUSTING or CAPRICORN ONE, and 2010 is a nice try. He makes movies you get a kick out of, like OUTLAND, THE STAR CHAMBER, and THE RELIC.
Ebert did like "Running Scared" -- http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/ar... -- but he did say this about the snow, which I almost quoted above: "The movie takes place in the middle of a cold, gray Chicago winter, which is made all the colder and grayer by the hilariously inept use of fake movie snow. Considering how many vertical surfaces are plastered with 'snow' in this movie, while the ground remains clear, Chicago must be the only city in which the snow falls from Oak Park instead of from the sky."
That's not entirely accurate: there is plenty of snow on vertical surfaces in the film, but it's the streets that are clean, not the ground. I'm sure the salt trucks were out in full force even in '85. But the snow does look fake, especially when it's covering green and yellow leaves and you don't see anyone's breath hanging frozen in the air. However, I've seen lots of snow stuck on the outside of buildings and on trees here, and I don't think it's just snow blowers that are putting it there. It is the Windy City.
I'd forgotten about "Partners," but I remember seeing the cassette box at the video store as a child and thinking it probably wasn't very good. Were there any big buddy-cop films between "48 Hrs." and "Running Scared"? I thought there were, but I couldn't find any.
I'd like to see "Busting." I haven't seen many of Hyams's films, actually, but I've always thought of him as an interesting if anonymous mainstream director. "End of Days" is his biggest hit -- $66 million -- but I don't think anyone considered it a hit when it was released. IMDB says his new film, "Beyond a Reasonable Doubt," his first in four years, opened last Friday, but it doesn't say where. Even though it reunites Hyams with "The Star Chamber's" Michael Douglas, I doubt it'll get a wide release. His last film, "A Sound of Thunder," was apparently completed with the cheapest special effects money could buy after the production company, Franchise Pictures, went bankrupt during filming.
(You'd think a movie directed by the great James Burrows, from a script by the great Francis Veber, would turn out...great. But PARTNERS didn't. It's not even half-interesting. The times were too skittish for the subject matter. It's made it to DVD, though. As you noted, the cop-buddy genre didn't really gain momentum till LETHAL WEAPON. Namedrop ahead: I sat next to Oprah Winfrey and Steadman at its Chicago premiere.)
I served the Daily Northwestern faithfully in a Popdose-ish capacity back in the 80s. I went to numerous screenings in Chicago. If Siskel and Ebert were to attend, and they were late, the start time was delayed. And they were usually late. I remember waiting 45 minutes once.
I interviewed a fair number of film people while at school, including a chain-smoking Helena Bonham Carter, the wonderful (wonderful) Jonathan Demme, and Divine a week before he died. Oh, and Judd Nelson. I see student types at NY screenings today; it makes sense to cater to them, as they're the ones who can best get the word out to that demo, unless the kids ("the kids"--what am I, 43? Don't answer that) have abandoned even college newspapers for the blogs.
I love Chicago. So many good memories, a few without Jon Cummings. My wife and I were last there in 07. Must get back again.
Bob rarely (never?) got plus-ones to those screenings, not that he would have taken me anyway. We did nab a lot of great interviews back then, for a college paper.
It's true that Douglas and Hyams are a long way from their peak as power players in Hollywood. Douglas is even a long way from "Disclosure" at this point. Did you hear that Oliver Stone and he are planning to make "Wall Street 2"? I am curious to see if Steven Soderbergh's Liberace biopic starring Douglas will get off the ground.
I had no idea that James Burrows had ever directed a feature film. Along the same lines, I never saw Larry David's "Sour Grapes," but since I don't find Steven Weber or Craig Bierko funny, I had no interest. I see that David's starring in Woody Allen's next movie. That should be interesting, at the very least.
I've wondered about college newspapers and if students still read them. As a friend said, "Well, they're free," which probably means that generation does read them, because the generation below mine doesn't buy the Tribune or the Sun-Times, but they do pick up the Tribune's free daily, RedEye. It's awful and pretty much all entertainment-gossip fluff, but it's free, so there you go.
SOUR GRAPES isn't much of a vintage.