Live on Tape: Roger Corman and Me at Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Talking with Roger Corman about Edgar Allan Poe, Jack Nicholson, Sylvester Stallone, taking "a nice trip," and missing the chance to direct Orson Welles. (Of course, I look so huge here, he must have thought his dream finally came true.)

Coming soon to Alamo Drafthouse LaCenterra: Tread, a strange and extraordinary documentary.

When I was asked by my Variety editor to contribute a blurb about one of the best films I saw at SXSW 2019, I had this to say about Tread:

“Paul Solet’s remarkably absorbing and suspenseful documentary plays like the flip side of some 1970s rural revenge movie — think Jonathan Kaplan’s White Line Fever, or Jonathan Demme’s Fighting Mad — in which a besieged protagonist turns the tools of his trade into weaponry while battling oppressors. But Marvin Heemeyer, the vindictive welder at the heart of this true-life drama, gradually comes into focus as a delusional sociopath, not a plucky underdog, as he uses a steel-and-concrete-armored bulldozer to cause damage and settle scores in a Colorado mountain town during a 2004 rampage.”

It will be my privilege to introduce the Houston premire of Tread at 7:15 pm Tuesday, Feb. 25, at the Alamo Drafthouse LaCenterra. But wait, there’s more: After the film, director Paul Solet will join us via Skype for a Q&A.

Check out my full Variety review, check out the trailer -- and then check out the movie.

F9 -- They're still fast! They're still furious! And they're coming back May 22!

“No matter how fast you run,” chrome-domed Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) says at one point in this super-amped trailer for F9, “no one outruns their past.” Maybe so. But really, these guys don’t even appear to be trying very hard, right?

Not that I’m complaining, you understand. I’ve seen all the other flicks in the Fast and Furious franchise. So I’m sure I’ll be in line when the latest one opens May 22.

Roger Corman and Me

It will be my pleasure and privilege to conduct a Q&A with the legendary Roger Corman on Friday, Jan. 3, following the 7 pm screening of his classic Masque of the Red Death at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. And I’m even happier to report this will occur just one night after the Houston Film Critics Society — of which I am a founding member — honors Corman with a special lifetime achievement tribute during HFCA’s annual awards show at MFAH.

You can purchase tickets for both the awards show and the Masque of the Red Death screening at the MFAH website. Or you can opt not to attend either event, and spend the rest of your life tortured by gnawing regret. The choice is yours.

For the benefit of those who tuned in late…

(Cue the cut-and-pastings from the mini-bio I have prepared for my film studies students.)

Roger Corman has earned millions and entertained millions more throughout his decades-long career as a director, producer and/or distributor of over 300 highly successful small-budget, high-concept films, and continues to regale audiences with a steady output of similar fare for theatrical, home video, streaming and cable platforms. Indeed, just three weeks ago, the remarkably spry 93-year-old legend presented his latest effort as an executive producer, the sci-fi action-thriller Abduction, at the Bahamas International Film Festival — where, not incidentally, he and his wife, producer Julie Corman, conducted mentoring sessions with budding screenwriters.

The titles of many of Corman's 1950s films -- The Beast with a Million Eyes (1955), It Conquered the World (1956), Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957), War of the Satellites (1958) and A Bucket of Blood (1959) -- indicate why he earned early on the nickname “King of the Drive-in.” (In 1960, he produced and directed the cult classic Little Shop of Horrors, which reportedly was shot in two days and one night on a leftover set).

During the 1960s, however, he began to attract serious critical attention, domestically as well as internationally, as the auteur of several stylishly gothic horror films based on the stories of Edgar Allan Poe, including House of Usher (1960), The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), The Raven (1963), The Haunted Palace (1963), and, of course, The Masque of the Red Death (1964), featuring such established actors as Vincent Price, Basil Rathbone, Boris Karloff, Ray Milland, and Peter Lorre. (If you are of a certain age, these films are more likely than all the English classes in the world to have sparked any interest you’ve ever had in Poe’s literary output.) But Corman is equally proud of The Intruder (1962), his socially conscious indie drama about a charismatic demagogue (brilliantly played by a young William Shatner) who stokes racial tensions in a small Southern town. The movie was boldly progressive for its time, and remains, in the words of critic-historian  Wheeler Winston Dixon, “one of the most brutal, honest, and unflinching examinations of American racism in cinema history.”

In 1970, Corman formed New World Pictures, an independent mini-major that produced the work of such up-and-comers as John Sayles, Martin Scorsese, Joe Dante, Jonathan Demme, James Cameron, and Peter Bogdanovich. New World's first film, The Student Nurses (1970), was shot in three weeks for $150,000 and grossed more than $1 million. Other early New World releases included horror, biker, and women-in-prison films. The profits from these low-budget features allowed Corman to act as the American distributor for a number of prestigious foreign films. In a 10-year period, New World released three Academy Award winners in the Foreign Language Film category: Federico Fellini's Amarcord (1974), Akira Kurosawa’s Dersu Uzala (1975) and Volker Schlöndorff's The Tin Drum (1979). It should be noted that when Corman told Ingmar Bergman that he had attempted to expand the potential audience for the latter’s 1972 masterwork Cries and Whispers by releasing it in some drive-ins, Bergman approved.

Corman’s influence on American cinema has been incalculably enormous, both as a filmmaker — his Poe films continue to inspire many directors of gothic horror movies — and as a nurturer of up-and-coming, destined-for-prominence actors, screenwriters and directors. (In addition to those previously mentioned, Jack Nicholson, Francis Ford Coppola, Peter Fonda, Sylvester Stallone, Pam Grier, Bruce Dern, Gale Ann Hurd, Ron Howard and Robert Towne are among the luminaries he gave significant early-career boosts.) In 2009, the Motion Picture Academy’s Board of Governors voted to give Corman an honorary Oscar “for his unparalleled ability to nurture aspiring filmmakers by providing an environment that no film school could match.”

In short: Roger Corman has made an immeasurable impact on American movies — on movies, period — as a maverick and a mentor. And I would venture to say the secret of his success has been his savvy as an entertainer. He has always known that audiences will respond to a wide variety of films — everything from low-budget horror flicks to socially conscious dramas to slam-bang B-movies to challenging art-house fare — if they have access to, and are encouraged to sample, the full scope of that variety. To paraphrase Walt Whitman, Roger Corman understands and appreciates that cinema is large — it contains multitudes.  

Happy 124th Birthday to Cinema!

On December 28, 1895, cinema in projected form was presented for the first time to a paying audience by two French brothers, Auguste and Louis Lumiere (pictured above), owners of a photographic studio in Lyons. They went to Paris to demonstrate their cinématographe -- the name they'd given their combination camera and projector -- by showcasing short films they had shot with their hand-cranked innovation.

According to legend: At the Grand Café at 14 Boulevard des Capucines, a man stood outside the building all day on December 28, handing out programs to passers-by. But cold weather kept many people from stopping. As a result, only 33 tickets were sold for the first show.

When the lights went down that evening in a makeshift theater in the basement of the Grand Café, a white screen was lit up with a photographic projection showing the doors of the Lumiere factory in Lyon. Without warning, the factory doors were flung open, releasing a stream of workers... and, wonder of wonders, everything moved. The audience was stunned.

This first film was entitled La sortie de l'usine Lumière à Lyon (Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory). Ten more short scenes followed, each reel roughly 17 meters in length, including Baby's Dinner (kinda-sorta the first home movie by proud parents, later echoed by Spike Lee in Lumiere & Company) and The Sprinkler Sprinkled (arguably the first slapstick comedy, involving a man, his garden hose and a practical joker).

Within a week, with no advertising but word of mouth, more than 2,000 spectators visited the Grand Café each day, each paying the admission price of one franc. The crowds were so huge, police had to be called in to maintain order. The age of cinema had begun. Vive le cinema.

Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood and Marriage Story loom large among nominees for Houston Film Critics Society awards

Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood is the leader of the pack — but Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story is not too far behind as they head toward the homestretch .

That’s the takeaway for anyone handicapping the 13^th annual awards of the Houston Film Critic Society. Nominations for the organization’s accolades were announced late Sunday evening, with winners to be revealed during a Jan. 2 extravaganza at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Tarantino’s audaciously entertaining and wish-fulfilling comedy-drama picked up a total of seven nominations — including one in the HFCS’s Best Movie Poster Art Category — while Baumbach’s intimate view of marital discord scored six nods. Both films have been nominated for Best Picture, along with 1917, The Farewell, The Irishman, Jojo Rabbit, Joker, Knives Out, Parasite, and Uncut Gems.

“We’re a passionate, adventurous group,” says HFCS president Doug Harris. “This list of nominees represents the thousands of screening hours our members have devoted to uncovering the year’s most distinctive films so that we can bring the best of cinema from around the world to the audiences we serve.”

Because of unusually close voting tallies, Harris added, some categories have six, rather than the customary five, nominations. For example, six actresses will compete for Best Actress, including Charlize Theron of Bombshell, Awkwafina of The Farewell, Renée Zellweger of Judy, Scarlett Johansson of Marriage Story, Saoirse Ronan of Little Women, and Lupita Nyong’o of Us. 

Johansson is also up for Best Supporting Actress for Jojo Rabbit, along with Kathy Bates, Richard Jewell; Laura Dern, Marriage Story; Florence Pugh, Little Women; Margot Robbie, Bombshell; and Zhao Shuzhen, The Farewell.

Best Actor nominees include Leonardo DiCaprio for Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, Adam Driver for Marriage Story, Eddie Murphy for Dolemite is My Name, Joaquin Phoenix for Joker, and Adam Sandler for Uncut Gems.

Earlier this month, the HFCS announced its nominees for the Texas Independent Film Awards which honor films made in Texas: Bull, Building the American Dream, Nothing Stays the Same: The Story of the Saxon Pub, Seadrift and Sleeping in Plastic.

Winners in 18 categories will be presented at the Jan. 2 event. But wait, there’s more: Legendary producer, director and talent nurturer Roger Corman will be on hand to receive a lifetime achievement award. (The following evening, Jan 3, Corman will return to MFAH for a screening of his 1964 classic The Masque of the Death, and a post-screening Q&A conducted by... by... well, actually, by me.) And Ellyn Needham, wife of the late movie stunts pioneer Hal Needham, will present the HFCS’s inaugural award for Best Stunt Coordination Team.

Tickets for the 13^th annual HFCS Awards can be purchased on the MFAH website. Ticketholders will be invited to attend, at no additional charge, an after party across the street from the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston at the Ultimate Ransom Room at the Hotel ZaZa Houston Museum District. 

The Houston Film Critics Society’s 13^th Annual Movie Awards are underwritten in part by Leonard Courtright and the Keystone Family of Companies, with additional support provided by Balcones Distilling. 

2019 Houston Film Critics Society Nominations

Best Picture

1917; The Farewell; The Irishman; Jojo Rabbit; Joker; Knives Out; Marriage Story; Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood; Parasite; Uncut Gems

Best Director

Bong Joon Ho, Parasite; Sam Mendes, 1917; Martin Scorsese, The Irishman; Quentin Tarantino, Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood; Lulu Wang, The Farewell

Best Actor

Leonardo DiCaprio, Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood; Adam Driver, Marriage Story; Eddie Murphy, Dolemite is My Name; Joaquin Phoenix, Joker; Adam Sandler, Uncut Gems

Best Actress

Awkwafina, The Farewell; Scarlett Johansson, Marriage Story; Lupita Nyong’o, Us; Saoirse Ronan, Little Women; Charlize Theron, Bombshell; Renée Zellweger, Judy

Best Supporting Actor

Willem Dafoe, The Lighthouse; Anthony Hopkins, The Two Popes; Al Pacino, The Irishman; Joe Pesci, The Irishman; Brad Pitt, Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood

Best Supporting Actress

Kathy Bates, Richard Jewell; Laura Dern, Marriage Story; Scarlett Johansson, Jojo Rabbit; Florence Pugh, Little Women; Margot Robbie, Bombshell; Zhao Shuzhen, The Farewell

Best Screenplay

Knives Out; Marriage Story; Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood; Parasite; The Farewell

Best Cinematography

1917; The Irishman; The Joker; Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood; Parasite

Best Animated Feature

Frozen II; How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World; I Lost My Body; Missing Link; Toy Story 4

Best Original Score

1917; Joker; Little Women; Marriage Story; Us

Best Original Song

Glasgow, Wild Rose; Home to You, The Aeronauts; I Punched Keanu Reeves, Always Be My Maybe; (I’m Gonna) Love Me Again, Rocketman; Into the Unknown, Frozen II; Stand Up, Harriet

Best Foreign Language Film

Atlantics; Corpus Christi; Les Miserables; Monos; Pain and Glory; Parasite

Best Documentary Feature

American Factory; Apollo 11; Biggest Little Farm; For Sama; Hail Satan; They Shall Not Grow Old

Texas Independent Film Award

Bull; Building the American Dream; Nothing Stays the Same: The Story of the Saxon Bar; Seadrift; Sleeping in Plastic

Visual Effects

1917; Ad Astra; Avengers: Endgame

Best Stunt Coordination Team

Crawl; Ford v Ferrari; Furie; John Wick: Chapter 3 Parabellum; Shadow

Best Movie Poster Art

Birds of Passage; John Wick: Chapter 3 Parabellum; Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood; Parasite; Portrait of a Lady on Fire; The Last Black Man in San Francisco.

Last Black Christmas

I have not yet seen the new Black Christmas — curiously enough, it was not programmed for the Bahamas Film Festival, which I am currently attending — but I can only hope, for the sake of those who do see it, that it is better than the version I reviewed for Variety before reporting on that unpleasant task back on Christmas Day 2006.

Remembering Robert Evans: The Kid Stayed in the Picture

As a tribute to Robert Evans, who passed away Saturday at age 89, I offer this 2002 interview, which I wrote prior to the theatrical of The Kid Stays in the Picture, the documentary film adapted from his best-selling autobiography.

“OK,” says I, lapsing into my best approximation of a Hollywood hard-sell tone, “there are these teen-agers at this posh British boarding school, and they're feeling rebellious in regard to their oppressive teachers and their bullying classmates, and so they fantasize about getting these automatic weapons and blowing people away on graduation day, only maybe they're not fantasizing because we've blurred the line between fantasy and reality, you know what I mean?”

Robert Evans smiles, his eyes fairly twinkling behind his trademark tinted, oversized glasses as he relaxes in his condo at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival. He knows exactly what I mean, because the movie I'm pretending to pitch, If…, was one of many outstanding films released by Paramount Pictures during his storied tenure as head of production in the ‘60s and ‘70s.

In its time, this particular movie — a remarkably lyrical yet darkly troubling fantasia by the late, great Lindsay Anderson — was hailed as a visionary masterwork, and earned top honors at the 1969 Cannes Film Festival. Better still, from Evans’ point of few, it earned a tidy sum for Paramount.

But what would happen if I would pitch If… today?

“You'd be stopped before you’d finish the sentence,” Evans says in his raspy, rumbling baritone. “And the meeting would be over. Immediately.

“And you never get another meeting. At Paramount or anywhere else.”

.

Which should tell you all you need to know about the difference between the take-no-chances timidity of today’s corporate-micromanaged moviemaking by committee, and the go-for-broke venturesomeness that fueled the filmmaking machinery  — and even infused Hollywood studio decision-makers — during Evans’ heyday three decades ago.

“But If… isn't the only one,” Evans says. “How about Harold and Maude, eh? An 18-year-old boy falls in love with an 80-year-old woman. I actually had to keep that a secret from (Charles Bludhorn, head of Gulf + Western, then owner of Paramount). I just told him it was a love story.

“And then there was Medium Cool,” Haskell Wexler’s audacious semi-documentary drama about political protests and anti-war activism at the 1968 Democratic convention. Evans may have been a close buddy of Presidential advisor Henry Kissinger, but he didn’t let friendship — or the angry response of board members at Gulf + Western — get in the way of his dropping the hot-potato picture into theaters and drive-ins everywhere.

“I even tried to bring Henry Miller to the screen, in 1970. You ever see Tropic of Cancer, with Rip Torn? You did? Well, then you're the only one at this festival who ever had, I’ll bet. It was a half-assed film, I admit. But it was exciting to try it.”

Evans described many highlights of '70s moviemaking in general, and his Paramount output in particular, in The Kid Stays in the Picture, his best-selling 1994 autobiography that has been turned into a uniquely candid and captivating documentary film. 

Of course, Evans also wrote about the many women he has wooed, wed or otherwise encountered, and catalogued several misadventures involving chemically-enhanced activity, and that helped to broaden the appeal of his book beyond movie buffs and film historians. (The audio version of the book, read by Evans himself, became a cult item and popular Christmas gift among Hollywood insiders and up-and-comers.) 

But his first-hand accounts of green-lighting productions during his Paramount regime —Rosemary's Baby, Chinatown, The Conversation, Serpico, Harold and Maude and the first two Godfather epics, among others — are what really make the book required reading for anyone who's serious about cinema as art and entertainment. More important, those stories, and those experiences, are what continue to make the 72-year-old Evans such an influential figure and sought-after adviser in the eyes of much-younger moviemakers in the New Hollywood of the 21^st century.

“You go over to Bob's house in Beverly Hills any evening,” says Nannette Burstein, co-director of Kid Stays in the Picture, “and you're likely to find people like Wes Anderson or David O. Russell there, asking questions or just hanging out. Because he made a lot of the movies that we watched while we were growing up, that made us want to become filmmakers.”

Co-director Brett Morgan is even more hyperbolic: “Bob Evans is one of the most fascinating men who ever lived in the 20^th century. Without a question. And the more time I’ve spent with him, the more confidant I am to make that statement.”

Robert Evans came to Paramount in 1966 best known as a semi-successful businessman — “I was into women's pants,” he says, jokingly referring to his family’s fashion business — and failed actor. (The title of the book and movie come from producer Darryl Zanuck’s angry response when Evans’ director and co-stars tried to get him booted from a key role in the 1957 film version of The Sun Also Rises.) At the time, little was expected of him because Paramount, then a minor, money-hemorrhaging property of Gulf + Western, was dead last among Hollywood studios. He was dealt a free hand. And with extraordinary frequency, he came up aces.

“Bob was there,” says Morgan, “during a period between the studio system and the corporate conglomerates. It was like the Wild West.”

“It wasn't a multi-billion-dollar business at that time,” says Burstein. “When Robert came into Paramount, is was like, ‘OK, this company is about to go into the graveyard — let’s make some movies, and try not to lose too much on our stock value.’  The thing is, Robert turned it around, and they ended becoming fiscally sound. And a result — and this happened at a lot of other studios as well — the movie business became very important, very profitable. So it became very corporately run.”

Evans eventually stepped down as Paramount chief to work as an independent producer. But he fell out of favor in Hollywood during the 1980s after his arrest for cocaine possession — with typical shrewdness, he avoided jail time by producing a prime-time TV anti-drug extravaganza — and his innocent-bystander involvement with a highly-publicized murder. (He has nothing to with the killing of Roy Radin, a potential investor in The Cotton Club, but he was linked to the crime by newspapers, and endured guilt-by-association consequences.) He began to make a comeback in the 1990s, but was sidelined by a 1998 stroke.

“My right side was totally paralyzed,” Evans says. “But you know what? Now I can play tennis. The doctors thought I’d never be able to walk again without a cane. But I can.”

And so he’s back in the game, planning new films to produce, working on another book – and, yes, he frankly admits, basking in the adulation he’s receiving for the film based on his autobiography.

Evans received a standing ovation after the Sundance premiere of The Kid Stays the Picture. During a post-screening Q&A session, when someone asked if there’s anything he would change about his life, he replied: “The second half.” But, then again, maybe not. Unlike F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose The Great Gatsby he brought to the screen during his Paramount era, Evans believes there really are second acts in American lives.

“We're in a world of three-act plays now, that's the difference,” Evans says. “You know, at one point, I wanted Warren Beatty to star in The Great Gatsby, and he said, ‘No, I’ll direct it — and you'll play Jay Gatsby.’ Maybe he was right.

“My life has been easier to read or to see than to live. And there’s been a lot of hurt. It’s a cliché, but it's true: You live by the sword, you die by the sword. I lived well by the sword. And I’ve died hard by the sword. Much of it I deserved, though some of it I didn’t. And much of the good I deserved, but some of it I didn’t. But I know one thing: I did it the only way I know how.

“That's why I wanted to do the movie Popeye years ago. That’s what I’ve stood for: I am what I am, that's all that I am.”

Preview: Martin Scorsese's The Irishman

In the unlikely event you weren’t already geeked to see The Irishman, Martin Scorsese’s magnum opus featuring the dream-team cast of Robert De Niro, Al Pacino. Joe Pesci and Harvey Keitel, Netflix amped the must-see quotient today by dropping a riveting trailer for the film.

What’s it all about? According to Netflix, The Irishman is “an epic saga of organized crime in post-war America told through the eyes of World War II veteran Frank Sheeran [De Niro], a hustler and hitman who worked alongside some of the most notorious figures of the 20th century. Spanning decades, the film chronicles one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in American history, the disappearance of legendary union boss Jimmy Hoffa, and offers a monumental journey through the hidden corridors of organized crime: its inner workings, rivalries and connections to mainstream politics.”

The Irishman will open in limited theatrical release Nov. 1, and debut on Netflix Nov. 27. Here is the trailer. 

Happy Birthday to Robert Redford!

Back in 2012, the folks at Houston Cinema Arts Festival honored Robert Redford for his many and various achievements as actor, director, producer, and film festival overlord. But let’s face it: For most folks, he remains — then and now, first and last — an old school, much-beloved movie star.

Sure, even the stargazers will agree, the guy has done a lot off-screen as a passionate spokesperson for assorted environmental and sociopolitical causes. And, yeah, he fully deserved his Oscar for directing Ordinary People. In fact, he probably should have gotten another one for the even-better Quiz Show.

But did you ever see him in…?

What follows is an unapologetically subjective list of movies (and one TV drama) I compiled in 2012 — and I’m repeating here today on the occasion of his 83^rd birthday — that I think demonstrate the diversity and quality of Redford’s work as an actor.

NOTHING IN THE DARK (1962): In this classic half-hour episode of The Twilight Zone, Redford relies more on boyish good looks and charm than heavy-duty thesping while playing a police officer who seeks help from an eccentric old lady (Gladys Cooper) as he lies seriously wounded near her front door. Trouble is, the lady is reluctant to allow anyone inside her tenement apartment – even a wounded cop – because she’s convinced that, if she lets down her guard, “Mr. Death” will appear in one of his many guises to kill her with his touch. I don’t have to tell you what happens next, do I? Suffice it to say that Redford is well cast and, thanks in large part to the aforementioned looks and charm, extremely convincing. 

    

BAREFOOT IN THE PARK (1967): This bright and breezy adaptation of Neil Simon’s once-ubiquitous stage comedy about New York newlyweds may be a particularly pleasant surprise for any first-time viewer too young to remember the days when co-stars Redford and Jane Fonda were sleek and sexy rising stars best known as actors, not activists. Don’t get me wrong: I’m certainly not criticizing either icon for his or her politics. But a large part of the movie’s enduring charm is its quaintness as an amusing artifact from a more innocent age. 

     

DOWNHILL RACER (1969): “How fast must a man go to get from where he’s at?” That question, provocatively raised as the movie’s original advertising tagline, seems to serve as an unspoken mantra for Redford’s obsessively self-directed Dave Chappelet, a small-town skier dedicated to earning Olympic gold. Chappelet’s humorless, tightly focused intensity doesn’t win him many friends among his teammates – even his coach (Gene Hackman) doesn’t really like the guy – and he seems incapable expressing any emotion but the joy of victory. Which, of course, is what makes Redford’s implosive performance all the more fascinating. (Director Michael Ritchie later teamed with his star for another sharply observed movie about competition – The Candidate.)  

    

BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID (1969): It’s easy to forget that, back in the day, many critics were downright frosty toward director George Roy Hill’s semi-revisionist, seriocomic Western. (Academy voters, however, gave it four Oscars, including awards for William Goldman’s screenplay and Best Song – “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head.”) But even the naysayers couldn’t deny the immensely appealing chemistry generated by relative newcomer Redford and established superstar Paul Newman as two rollicking, wisecracking outlaws who can’t ride far or fast enough to escape their own obsolescence. Their casting was, quite simply, a match made in movie heaven.

LITTLE FAUSS AND BIG HALSEY (1970): Redford fearlessly portrays an irredeemable son of a bitch (arguably for the last time in his movie career, unless you count Captain America: Winer Soldier) in director Sidney J. Furie’s criminally under-rated road movie about two motorcycle racers – a naïve novice (Michael J. Pollard) and a studly braggart (Redford) -- who go nowhere fast while trying to transcend their status as small-timers. Redford’s Halsey is such a smugly and shamelessly manipulative jerk that, eventually, even Pollard’s timid Fauss rejects him. In typically self-centered fashion, Halsey responds as though unjustly affronted: “If this is friendship, I am aghast.” To which Fauss replies: “I never said I was your friend, Halsey. I don’t even fuckin’ like you.” When I saw this flick for the first time in a theater, the audience roared its approval of Fauss’ put-down. 

  

THE CANDIDATE (1972): Every political junkie’s very favorite movie seems more prescient with each passing year as it vividly details the image-buffing, compromise-demanding process through which a handsome young Senate hopeful (Redford, at the absolute top of his game) is transformed, with his reluctant acquiescence, from idealistic long-shot to pragmatic campaigner. Redford’s anxious query after his character manages an upset victory – “What do we do now?” – is one of the greatest curtain lines in all of movie history. But it’s only a small sample of the pitch-perfect dialogue in the Oscar-winning screenplay by Jeremy Larner, a novelist (Drive, He Said) who gained unique insights into the U.S. political process while working as a speechwriter for Eugene McCarthy’s 1968 presidential campaign.

         

THE STING (1973): Four years after they went out in a blaze of glory as Butch and Sundance, Redford and Paul Newman reteamed with director George Roy Hill for this Oscar-winning seriocomic caper about two Depression Era con artists – a sly old pro (Newman) and an eager young grifter (Redford)– who plot an elaborate revenge against the menacing mob boss (Robert Shaw) who murdered the younger man’s mentor. Redford hits the perfect balance of righteous anger and self-awareness when he explains why he’ll settle for conning, rather than killing, the object of his ire: “’Cause I don’t know enough about killing to kill him.” But, truth to tell, he’s never more believable than in the scene where Shaw’s intimidating badass unexpectedly punches him. There’s a moment – just a moment – when Redford’s expression reads: “Geez, he does remember this is just a movie, doesn’t he?” 

      

THE WAY WE WERE (1973): Beginning with 1966’s This Property is Condemned – and continuing, rather more auspiciously, with Jeremiah Johnson (1972), Three Days of the Condor (1975), and the Oscar-winning Out of Africa (1985) – Redford and director Sydney Pollack developed a fruitful working relationship and a mutual admiration society. Many critics (including yours truly) might insist that The Way We Were wasn’t the finest of their collaborations. But it’s impossible to deny the irresistible and enduring appeal of this bittersweet romantic drama about a WASPy golden boy (Redford) and a fiery left-wing activist (Barbra Streisand) who are united by their love, but divided by their politics. Redford manages the difficult feat of remaining likable, if not admirable, even as his character, a novelist turned TV scriptwriter, gradually is revealed as a man who so easily and often compromises his ideals that you wind up wondering if there’s anything other than ambition driving him. (Shades of Downhill Racer!)  

ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN (1976): Redford served as producer as well as co-star of director Alan J. Pakula’s potently low-key and meticulously detailed adaptation of the nonfiction best-seller written by Washington Post journalists Bob Woodard and Carl Bernstein about their doggedly determined investigation into various aspects of the Watergate scandal. (Screenwriter William Goldman won a well-deserved second Oscar for his part in cinematically translating what many thought was an unfilmable book.) The movie abounds in memorable moments. But Redford’s very best scene by far is the one in which his character makes a cold call to a GOP official, and is so amazed when the official himself actually answers the phone that he’s momentarily lost for words. He vamps, none too effectively, by twice introducing himself as “Bob Woodward of the Washington Post.” If you’ve ever worked as a journalist, and you’re at all honest, you can’t help thinking while watching this scene: “Been there. Done that.” 

      

HAVANA (1990): OK, it’s my list, so they’re my choices. And even though I realize this is a minority report, Havana – Redford’s last collaboration with the late, great Sydney Pollack – has always impressed me as a forgivably flawed, ultimately affecting attempt to do a Casablanca-style romantic drama set in 1958 Cuba. And I have taken an unreasonable amount of delight in savoring Redford’s dawn-of-middle-age charisma as Jack Weil, a cynical gambler who’s entirely aware that he’s been at the tables too long. (“A funny thing happened to me last week,” he says, only half-jokingly. “I realized I wasn't going to die young.”) Will he be capable of doing the right thing when he falls for an idealistic beauty (Lena Olin) whose revolutionary husband (Raul Julia) needs her sweet inspiration? What do you think? Here’s looking at you, Bob.     

New on Netflix: Billy Corben scores with Screwball

From my 9.24.18 Variety review: “The real-life misadventures of central figures in the 2013 Major League Baseball doping scandal play like outrageous twists and turns in the seriocomic crime fiction of Carl Hiassen or Elmore Leonard throughout Screwball, an impudently entertaining documentary that suggests what might result if the Monty Python troupe were given carte blanche to produce an investigative report for 60 Minutes.

“It comes to us from Billy Corben, a filmmaker whose previous chronicles of illicit activity and entrepreneurial drug traders in and around Miami (Cocaine Cowboys, Square Grouper: The Godfathers of Ganja) might now be viewed as warm-up pitches for his latest effort. This time on the mound, he throws heat and scores impressively with help from a lineup that includes baseball All-Stars, mob-connected lowlifes, tanning and bodybuilding enthusiasts, free-spending MLB investigators, and an unlicensed anti-aging expert whose lack of bona fide medical credentials scarcely hindered his ability to provide, one way or the other, performance-enhancing drugs for his clients. The latter shady character, Anthony Bosch, emerges early on as Corben’s most valuable player, in that his astonishingly unfiltered (albeit chronically self-justifying) account of his starring role in the doping scandal makes him the indisputable standout among the movie’s cast of colorful interviewees.”

BTW: Immediately after I saw Screwball at the 2018 Toronto Film Festival, I went to a sports-themed bar-restaurant near my rented condo for dinner. At one point, I looked up from my table, glanced at one of the establishment’s many TV screens and saw one of the film’s “stars” — Alex Rodriguez — offering commentary on ESPN. No, seriously.

Screwball is now available for streaming on Netflix. You can read the rest of my Variety review here.

The last night of Woodstock '99 was the longest night of my life. I wish I had spent it alone.

Note: I wrote this a few days after July 25, 1999, the last night of Woodstock ’99. Yes, things really were that bad there. Indeed, at the time this originally appeared online, I did not yet know how much worse it had been for some other folks.

Maybe it was the time of night. Or maybe it was the sound of sirens. But as I sat in the darkness of my tent during the final hours of Woodstock ’99, while my son tossed and turned in dream-plagued slumber, I couldn’t suppress the occasional shudder. 

Outside – a goodly distance away, perhaps, but not nearly far enough – several hundred hellraisers had no interest in getting back to the garden. Instead, for reasons never considered by Crosby, Stills and Nash, they had decided that the night was for burning.

And as the noise of their riotous misbehavior intruded upon the eerie stillness of our campground, I found myself wondering: Just how will I protect my child from the fire?

It had seemed like such a great idea last spring, when I impulsively purchased tickets during a late-night web surf: A graying baby-boomer – too young to have attended the first Woodstock Festival, too disinterested to have bothered with the second – would bring his 12-year-old son to Woodstock ’99 for three days of music, adventure and cross-generational bonding.

Right from the start, I assumed the event wouldn’t have the same sociological and iconographic significance for my son’s generation as the original Woodstock had for mine. Even in my worst imaginings, however, I couldn’t foresee that Woodstock ’99 might come perilously close to degenerating into his generation’s Altamont.

For George, my son, the decision to go was a no-brainer: Many of his rap-rock fave-raves, such as Korn, Limp Bizkit and Everlast would be on the bill, ensuring a terrific time. (Better still, George immediately recognized, he would be the envy of his friends and classmates for attending the mega-hyped affair, even if he went with someone as terminally uncool as Dad.) For his father, other acts – Alanis Morisette, The Brian Setzer Orchestra and George Clinton & The P-Funk All Stars – had an equally irresistible appeal.

Both of knew we likely would skip some of the lesser attractions. But, then again, we had to sleep sometime, right?

The good news: Throughout the first two and a half days, George and I vacillated between blissed-out pleasure and sunbaked exhaustion, pretty much fulfilling our most optimistic expectations. Indeed, the only real disappointment was the tardiness of our arrival: The “luxury tour bus” from Queens, N.Y., our point of departure after flying in from Houston, left nearly three hours late. We missed – damn! – the electrifying funk of James Brown, the official opening act of Woodstock ’99, and the sassy sensuality of Sheryl Crow (who, I must admit, never ranked very high on George’s must-see list.)

On the other hand, we arrived to find our accommodations were great, thanks in no small measure to the kind of pre-planning that’s greatly under-valued, and occasionally mocked, by most 12-year-olds. It helped a lot that Dad had e-purchased camping equipment from Ace Hardware, which had the material available for pick-up on the festival grounds. (For George, this was Life Lesson Number One: When you’re making a journey that might entail a long walk under a summer sun, pack light.) It helped even more that, because the e-purchase totaled more than $100, father and son could pitch their tent on a grassy, fenced-in campsite operated by Ace a few hundred feet to the right of the West Stage area. You could wander up a conveniently located hill within Camp Ace, and savor an unobstructed view of the immense stage and, more important, the humungous video monitors that offered close-ups of the performers.

Despite his youth, George fully appreciated the irony that Woodstock ’99 – which, like it two predecessors, employed a dove of peace as a registered trademark – was set in the 3,000-acre environs of the former Griffiss Air Force Base. (Festivalgoers were greeted by a memento of the decommissioned military outpost -- a hulking gray B-52 bomber -- just outside the gates.) And, like his father, he was cynically nonplussed by the high prices that appeared to outrage so many people. Four bucks for a bottle of water? Five bucks for chicken tenders? Twelve bucks for a 12-inch cheese pizza? So what? Didn’t you pay just as much, if not more, at movie theater concession stands?

If George was disturbed by any of the darker undercurrents trickling through the festival – the brazen bartering for drugs, the ubiquitous beer-drinking by under-age hard-partyers, the obvious evidence that many folks had ignored the restrictions against bringing fireworks and alcoholic beverages (i.e., glass bottles of wine and whiskey) inside the gates – he kept his uneasiness to himself.  Fortunately, he was sound asleep while, late on the first night, a spirited drug deal was consummated by what sounded like bad B-movie actors – “Yeah, man, this is primo stuff!” – right outside our tent.

Just as important: George was too busy being pumped up by the kick-ass aggressiveness of his favorite performers to complain much about the heat or the overpriced T-shirts or the foul-smelling, under-attended portable toilets.

(This probably is as good a spot as any to remind you that, for 12-year-olds, certain music-festival phenomena are not unalloyed delights. And, no, I’m not talking about Jewel or Sheryl Crow. Each time George saw any of the many bare-breasted young women who happily flaunted their charms here, there and everywhere, he instinctively averted his eyes – and then, after mustering up a little courage, stole a few furtive glimpses. The first time I noticed this, I teased him, and he responded with a sheepish grin. But he didn’t smile the second time I teased him, and so that was the end of that.)  

Early on, however, I began to feel a little queasy about the mood encouraged by the music. At the risk of sounding like those censorious fogies of the 1960s who thought the Rolling Stones plumbed new depths of decadence with “Let’s Spend the Night Together,” I must admit that, somewhere around the 15^th or 25^th time I head someone on stage screaming “Fuck you” or “I don’t give a fuck” or “Smash their fucking heads in,” I lost my taste for the distinct charms of the more belligerent rap-rock performers. And I began to worry about the cumulative effect of so much high-decibel belligerence on a large crowd.

Late on the second day of Woodstock ‘99, I questioned George about what I interpreted as full-throated roars of rage from Korn and their ilk. “They’re just expressing their emotions,” my son patiently explained. Then, with a flash of his most mischievous smile, he admitted: “And sometimes, they express their emotions with fuck you.”

Well, maybe. Early on the final day, however, I repeatedly noted telltale signs that, at least for some festivalgoers, the broiling heat and the roiling testosterone might be having a toxic effect.

As we strolled along the former Air Force runaway that served as a kind of carnival midway, we saw volunteers aboard a small vehicle passing candles to the crowd. “Bring them to the East Stage tonight,” they emplored passers-by, “for a peaceful protest against handgun violence.” For a rowdy twentysomething in a golf shirt, this was too much. He ran alongside the vehicle for several feet, yelling – no, I’m not making this up – “NRA! NRA! NRA!” The volunteers responded by tossing a few candles to him. (Or at him – it was hard to tell.) The heckler responded by grabbing a box of candles from the vehicle and tossing it several few away. As he dashed away, the volunteers stopped their vehicle and retrieved the candles.

(Ironically, these were the sort of candles eventually used by the rioters to light the fuse of their conflagration near the East Stage. Chalk it up to the law of unintended consequences.)

During our extended afternoon stint near the East Stage, George remained quietly unimpressed during an exhilarating set by the Brian Setzer Orchestra – rockabilly and big-band bop simply isn’t his bag – but responded with surprising ardor to a lazily amiable performance by Willie Nelson. I suggested to George that maybe, just maybe, Nelson’s songs about heavy drinking, chasing loose women and being too drunk to recall a concert might not be so very different from the odes to self-indulgence sung by his favorite “modern” acts. George warily nodded in half-hearted agreement.

Then came Everlast, the only rap-rock artist George and I enjoy with virtually equal enthusiasm. He and his self-proclaimed “white boys” were at the top of their game, especially during their dead-serious, high-energy cover of Marvin Gaye’s “Trouble Man.” (George seemed astonished that his father could actually sing along with an Everlast number.) Unfortunately, this is when things got ugly.

For starters, there was this balding, middle-aged fellow standing behind us. (To get the right image in your head, imagine that father who’s always yelling at his kid when the youngster strikes out during a Little League game.) Midway through Limp Bizkit’s set, I saw the guy shoving my son. So I shot him a dirty look. Not being a complete imbecile, he could see he’d been spotted, and indignantly sputtered: “Hey, I just wanted to keep my space here. You guys moved in front of us.” I shot him another dirty look, and he backed away, more embarrassed than genuinely intimidated. Whatever his reason, I was happy to end the confrontation without resorting to violence – particularly since, being a head taller and a foot wider than me, he very likely could have drop-kicked me into a different zip code. But I must confess: I barely refrained from laughing out loud when the guy was kicked in the face by a boisterous party animal who was being passed from hand to hand over the crowd.

Then everybody began to toss their plastic bottles into the air, making it appear that a swarm of economy-size locusts was hovering overhead. Fine and dandy, until Everlast noticed glass bottles also were being tossed. “Hey, stop that, you guys!” he extolled the crowd. “Act like ya mudders raised ya!” It was not entirely surprising that, after Everlast left the stage, an announcer asked the crowd to make way for emergency vehicles to tend to the injured near the stage.

By the time George and I schlepped back to our campsite, some ineffable but obvious bad vibe was in the air. We were surprised to note that a few tents already were gone, that our numbers were significantly diminished. And we were more than a little annoyed that, as early as 6 p.m., the water had been shut off. But we didn’t start to worry until some people on the other side of the fences began to engage in vandalism as a team sport.

Looking back, I have to say that George and I were lucky: The “rioters” near us had to be among the most stupid would-be hooligans at Woodstock ’99. In one corner, we had 10 or so knuckleheads who thought it would be a cool idea to topple a thick wooden flagpole used to mark their campsite. When they couldn’t muster the muscle to budge the pole, they attempted to burn it down, using scraps of plywood torn from another fence to build a bonfire. That didn’t work, either. They did succeed, however, at frightening the folks camped on our side of the fence – the sporadic bursts of wind could have easily carried something ablaze over to one of our tents. Fortunately, a fire truck arrived before things got of hand. And the fire fighters, despite being pelted with a few plastic bottles, quickly extinguished the blaze. After they left, the knuckleheads once again tried to topple the flagpole. After a while, however, they lost interest and wandered off to other misbehavior.

In another corner, a frightfully huge and obviously inebriated dunce was leading his smaller but likeminded companions in the systematic demolition of the plywood fence that separated the West Stage area from the campsites. Have you ever seen Full Metal Jacket? OK, remember the thick-witted recruit played by Vincent D’Onofrio? Then imagine that guy’s bigger, dumber and more undisciplined younger brother. That’s what the fence-smashing dunce looked like. When he finished with the plywood, he wandered over to the chainlink fence surrounding our campsite. As soon as he tried to rip it down, however, someone in a tent near ours shouted, “Hey! Don’t do that! Get outta here!” Miraculously, the dunce stopped dead in his tracks, turned and staggered away.

After all of this, I decided it might be a good idea to alert our campsite’s non-uniformed security enforcers -- who, until that point, had remained conspicuous by their absence. At the front gate, I talked with a guy who explained that most of the peacekeepers employed for Woodstock ’99 were busy handling far more serious disruptions throughout the festival. (Keep in mind: This was before sunset, hours before the full-scale rioting began after the festival-closing set by Red Hot Chili Peppers.) So I asked: “Well, if the water has been shut off, should I leave my son here and go buy some bottled water before the sun goes down?” He replied: “You want my advice? Pack up and leave. Now.”

Uh-oh.

When I told my pessimistic adviser that we couldn’t leave – our bus back to Queens wouldn’t arrive until the next morning, we had no other means of transportation, we really had no idea where the hell we were or what was between us and nearby Rome, N.Y. – he was sympathetic but unhelpful. “All I can suggest,” he said, “is that you get your food and water, go back to your tent, and just lie low.”

And that, for better or worse, is what we did. George and I trudged up the hill to watch the last West Stage attraction, a performance by Megadeath, mostly to distract ourselves from our worst expectations. (Not wishing to unduly frighten him, I said nothing about the “pack up and leave” advice.) After that, we returned to our tent. Fortuitously, George quickly fell asleep. I remained awake, steeling myself for a sudden invasion of rioters fueled by booze, drugs and all-purpose rage. I felt like Dustin Hoffman in Straw Dogs, suddenly confronted with a primordial test of my manhood. Trouble was, I didn’t have a bear trap or any of the other devices at Hoffman’s disposal.

Sometimes, I felt very scared. (If festivalgoers had managed to sneak whiskey and fireworks and even large dogs past the security guards, who’s to say they didn’t also bring along handguns?) More often, however, I felt ashamed and angry because I felt I had recklessly placed my son in harm’s way. And, worse, I feared I probably wasn’t bad-ass enough to do him much good if push came to shove.

Well into night, I could hear the insistent beat of people pounding on metal trash drums and other improvised percussion instruments. (Until I banished the image from mind through sheer force of will, I thought of the terrified documentary filmmakers huddled inside their tent during The Blair Witch Project.) Frequently, there were screams and sirens. Sporadically, there was something that sounded like a distant explosion. I told myself the latter merely was the sound of thunder. I also told myself that things couldn’t be as bad as I feared. I told myself that a lot.

Early the next morning, we awoke to a dim sunlight obscured by mist. (Or – gulp! – smoke from charred ruins?) George and I wandered past the trashed fences and the smashed pay phones, past scatterings of young people – many of them not so much older than George – who had passed out in the mud. We did not yet know about the torched trucks and toppled towers, about the looted tents and ransacked ATM machines. We didn’t know about the few hundred festivalgoers who were cheered by thousands of their fellows as they set fire to trucks and overturned portable toilets and “liberated” pricey food and beverages from concession booths. But we could see dozens of state troopers in riot gear directing the departing toward exit gates. And we knew this was not a good sign.

“Geez,” George marveled. “Something really bad must have happened last night.” And then, later, after we reached the main gate: “Boy, some people try to ruin things for everybody else.” Even so, neither us was sad or mad. Just relieved. We actually smiled when an oddly cheery unshirted teen-ager asked us to sign his Woodstock ’99 T-shirt. “It’s a souvenir,” he told us as his female companion handed a black marker to us. “This way, we’ll have something to show people years and years from now, to prove we all had a great time.”

What went wrong at Woodstock ’99? Not nearly enough for the festival to qualify as a total disaster – remember, there were those two and half great days before the long dark night – but more than enough to encourage op-ed writers and social commentators to manufacture scores of plausible theories. George and I agree that the root causes for the rage of the rioters were heat, high prices, heavy drug and alcohol consumption, and the non-stop, wall-to-wall inconvenience of having to walk so far to get anywhere. But I would also include another factor: The spirit of the music of the age. You really shouldn’t be surprised when, after three days of hearing so many swaggering rockers spew so much foul-mouthed venom about “ripping someone’s head off” or applying unauthorized anal probes, a few impressionable types warm to the idea of mob madness for fun and profit.

George, of course, doesn’t think the music had anything to do with it. And, frankly, I would be amazed if he thought it did. He does concede that festivalgoers might have acted a bit differently if they had spent three days listening to the likes of Ricky Martin or The Backstreet Boys. But, hey, Dad -- who would want to do that?