The Screengrab : gary cooper

Taxing Time: A Screengrab Salute To Beat The Clock Cinema (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 20:00:00 GMT

When I was a younger man, summer vacations seemed to last 100 years and every day was at least 24 hours long.

Now, as an old geezer, I can’t help but notice how time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping into the future at an alarming rate. Summers, at best, tend to flash by in a matter of days -- and my days, like everything else, have apparently been downsized...

...or at least that’s how it feels here beneath the mountain of overdue assignments, unfinished projects and blown deadlines I find myself tunneling through of late, with less than a week remaining to file that damn “married filing jointly” 1040 form I haven’t even started yet...

...tick...tick...tick...

...but even as the clock ticks down to the April 15th tax deadline (not to mention the end of the Mayan calendar -- AND THE WORLD!!!!! -- in 2012), we here at the Screengrab figured we could spare a few seconds to salute THE BEST RACE AGAINST TIME FLICKS OF ALL...uh...TIME!

D.O.A. (1950)

This sweaty, 83-minute noir is pretty much all gimmick, but it's the ultimate in race-against-time gimmicks. Edmund O'Brien, who barks out his lines as if trying to reach the pork chop hanging around his neck, plays an accountant who hits San Francisco for a working vacation and discovers that he's been slipped a dose of a "luminous poison" for which there is no antidote. Given no more than a few days to live, O'Brien blows off the guided tour of Alcatraz and tears around the city, doing his unsubtle best to solve his own impending murder and wreak vengeance on his murderer before it's tag-on-the-toe time. The 1988 sequel, directed by Max Headroom creators Annabel Jankel and Rocky Morton and starring Dennis Quaid, feels padded at 93 minutes, but it does have a couple of witty strokes in relocating the action to the world of academia -- Quaid plays a lapsed novelist and college professor whose motto of "publish or perish" is used against him by someone who has taken it a little too literally -- and setting it on a sweltering Texas college campus at Christmas time, thus giving Quaid an excuse to sweat even more profusely than Edmund O'Brien even with holiday decorations in the background. (PN)

HIGH NOON (1952)

Fred Zinnemann takes all the suspense out of the race against time; there’s no question of escaping the consequences, only of how they’re going to be dealt with. No one doubts that a gang of badmen are going to arrive in town at high noon, and that they’re going to call out Gary Cooper’s marshal, Will Kane, and seek revenge for him sending them up. Everyone knows what’s going to happen. So why is it one of the most tense Westerns ever made? That’s a testament to Zinnemann’s skill as a director: he manages to work endless amounts of tension, suspense and discomfort out of something we all know is going to happen. The only question is: will the townsfolk stand with Kane, who has protected them before, or will they abandon him in hopes of safety? That’s what makes the passage of time so excruciating in High Noon, and nowhere is it more explicit than in the famous scene where the clock ticks down, inexorably, in a stunning montage accompanied by Dmitri Tiomkin’s pitiless score, and the thing we all knew was going to happen finally happens. It’s one of the best examples in classic Hollywood of wrenching tension out of the inevitable. (LP)

THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (1962)

Many years and many outbreaks of paranoia later, John Frankenheimer's satirical yet stirring Cold War thriller is still the gold standard for political-assassination fantasies. Among its other virtues, it remains one of the most blackly funny movies ever to come out of Hollywood, but the laughter dies as the noose tightens and Frank Sinatra, losing faith that things will work out, races through the traffic-clogged streets to arrive at the convention hall, just in time to see Laurence Harvey finally earn his Medal of Honor. (PN)

RUN LOLA RUN (1999)

Run Lola Run, about Lola’s (Franka Potente) efforts to save her boyfriend (Moritz Bleibtreu) from death by procuring 100,000 deutschmarks in 20 minutes, is a tour de force of blistering kineticism that predictably achieved cult canon status the moment it hit theaters in 1999. Yet what elevates Tom Tykwer’s debut above so many other beat-the-clock sagas is its aesthetic flair and inventiveness, its storytelling and visual intricacy, and its deft use of its unique style in the service of a subtly thoughtful meditation on time and fate. Segmented into three sections, each of which finds Lola attempting to achieve her goal, Run Lola Run’s race-against-time narrative presents a free will-vs.-determinism debate in the guise of a frenzied videogame, one in which Lola must use her allotted three lives to figure out how to complete her mission. Playfully philosophical without being pretentious, and excessively flashy without being shallow, Tykwer’s film delivers edge-of-your-seat rollercoaster thrills as well as enough sly substance to warrant coming back for a return ride. (NS)

Hurry!!!! Click Here For Part Two, Three, Four, Five & Six!!!!

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent, Leonard Pierce, Nick Schager

Screengrab Salutes: The Top 25 Leading Men of All Time (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 20:00:00 GMT

My friends, last week in this space we paid tribute to the Top 10 films of the late, lamented Paul Newman, one of our favorite movie stars of all time...which, not surprisingly, got us thinking about the very qualities that separate the film industry’s classic, iconic Leading Men – the true gods of the silver screen – from, say, Shia LaBeouf.

My friends, I ask you: what is that special something, that ephemeral je nes sais quoi that makes for a truly great Leading Man? Is it talent? Sex appeal? Box office clout? Are we drawn more to the stars who remind us of ourselves or those who embody exactly the qualities we lack (but do our best to imitate in hopes of meeting girls)? Do the off-screen good deeds and/or drunken racist ranting and/or pro-Xenu proselytizing of the men behind the movies matter? Do we forgive the occasional bombs and missteps in a long, prolific career, or do we prefer a shorter resume packed with performances of a generally higher quality? And do foreigners count?

My friends, these difficult questions led to much consternation and debate within the hallowed halls of The Screengrab...but in the end, we all came together as a website, setting aside our individual differences to bring you this historic document, our bipartisan, multilateral picks for THE TOP 25 LEADING MEN OF ALL TIME!

25. FRANK SINATRA (1915-1998)

Sinatra's movie career had three distinct acts. In the 1940s, as a young singing heartthrob, he starred in such godawful musicals as Step Lively and The Kissing Bandit while dabbling with "acting" (as the kids call it nowadays) in such roles as a priest in The Miracle of the Bells. Some twenty years later, with his stardom set in concrete, he got paid for palling around on-screen with his buddies in such stuff as the original Ocean's Eleven and 4 for Texas, as well as for honoring his serious (or at least his self-serious) side by allowing his grumpy mid-life crisis to be recorded on camera in such downers as The Detective and The Naked Runner. But in between, starting with the famously career-reviving supporting performance as Maggio in From Here to Eternity, Sinatra had a good, solid career as a leading actor, a period which includes his political-assassination double feature of The Manchurian Candidate and the lesser-known 1954 Suddenly, in which he invades a house and plans to take out the president from a conveniently placed window. This period also included his best co-starring gig with Dean Martin in Some Came Running, his vividly sweaty impersonation of the nightclub comic Joe E. Lewis in The Joker Is Wild, and (especially) his rhythmic, convincing embodiment of a junkie poker dealer in The Man with the Golden Arm. The trick to getting work of this caliber out of Sinatra seems to have been that he felt in danger of fading away and washing out -- or at least becoming just another rich, famous entertainer -- and he had to deliver, a feeling that gave a charge to everything he did...for a while. When he felt his confidence return, he knew he wasn't going anywhere and so, in movies at least, he turned into a coaster. Maybe it's too bad that some way couldn't have been found to throw a good scare into him every ten years or so. But how the hell are you going to scare somebody after they've agreed to star in Dirty Dingus Magee, and even that check has cleared?

24. MONTGOMERY CLIFT (1920-1966)

James Dean was a tragic figure, but Montgomery Clift was a doomed one. When he finally died in 1966 (of arterial sclerosis, though his former acting teacher called it a slow-motion suicide), he was readying to play a lead role in Reflections in a Golden Eye opposite his friend Elizabeth Taylor; Marlon Brando took over the role. The two had a lot in common, including searingly handsome faces that would eventually be scarred by their self-destructive behavior and ill health, and a propensity for masterfully portraying emotionally complex working-class characters. That Brando was, at the time, considered the more stable of the two gives some indication of just how fucked up Monty Clift was. Brought up in an abusive family situation, wracked his entire life by ill health, and paralyzed by guilt over his own homosexuality and drug addiction, Clift was beloved by half of Hollywood and despised by the other half. So ruined was both his body and his career by the early ‘60s that he nearly became, with Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe, the third Hollywood legend to make The Misfits their final film. Happily, Clift survived just long enough to turn in a riveting performance in Judgment at Nuremberg, but the cards were dealt for him almost from the time he was born. He didn’t live past 45, and for someone who had such a great reputation as an actor during his prime, he made precious few movies – only 17 total, and a dozen as the lead. But he left hardly a screen credit that didn’t make a lasting impression, and his legacy, curiously enough, can be seen in music: a number of bands have written songs about poor doomed Monty, including R.E.M. (“Monty Got a Raw Deal”), Jets to Brazil (“Conrad”), and the Clash (“The Right Profile”).

23. JAMES CAGNEY (1899-1986)

Cagney was originally cast as the sidekick to the hero in his first big picture, The Public Enemy, but after the director, William Wellman, saw the rushes from the first day's shoot, he had a rude shock when he discovered that nobody could take their eyes off the runty smartass guy who wasn't supposed to be the star. It is a tribute to the common-sensical, whatever-works spirit of the early talkies that Wellman, rather than agonize over this perturbing situation, marched onto the set the next day and simply informed the two actors that they'd be swapping parts. Anybody who wanted to establish, with as little effort as possible, that the movies are probably the work of the devil could do worse than to screen a few of Cagney's choicest gangster movies -- say, The Public Enemy, Angels with Dirty Faces, The Roaring Twenties, and his middle-aged kiss-off to the genre, White Heat. In these films, Cagney emanates danger and energy as naturally as an electrified fence, and his satisfaction in being able to discharge his anger in ways that are unpleasant for the people he's discharging it all over is deeply unwholesome, but no actor in history has ever been more dependably watchable. A veteran of the vaudeville stage, he used a dancer's physicality, as well as his natural likability and an unpredictable streak ot dark wit, to keep his tough guys from ever seeming like mere brutes or bullies. He had range, and he tore it up in his hoofers' musicals, including the movie he was proudest of, the George M. Cohan musical biopic Yankee Doodle Dandy. But he remains chiefly identified as old Hollywood's favorite unromantic urban tough guy. (Bogart, who he shot full of lead in a couple of movies, has the romantic division sewn up.)

22. BURT LANCASTER (1913-1994)

Lancaster established his stardom as a big manly hunk of action star, but he's endured better than many of the trigger-happy lunks who starred in Hollywood action pictures, because he was both a throwback to the days of Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. and a predecessor to the gravity-defying stars of Hong Kong martial arts movies. A former gymnast, Lancaster had turned to acting after an injury cut short his career as a circus acrobat, and in such movies as The Crimson Pirate (co-starring his former circus partner, Nick Cravat, who appeared in nine of Lancaster's movies, and who died the same year Burt did) and Carol Reed's Trapeze, he demonstrated that it was possible for a big man to spin and pirouette through the air in ways that were not dreamt of in John Wayne's philosophy. At first, other aspects of the actor's art, such as speaking dialogue and making it through a whole scene without yawning, came less naturally to him than dancing in mid-air, but Lancaster, a long-range-plan kind of guy, became interested in developing the skills that would enable him to keep his career going when he could somersault no more. He also seemed to think that it would be a useful thing to make a few movies that would be good enough that he could stand to look at himself in the mirror the day after the premiere. In some of the "serious" pictures he made (The Devil's Disciples, The Rose Tattoo, Come Back, Little Sheba, Birdman of Alcatraz) when he was still in his beefcake prime, Lancaster seemed to be sponsoring his own on-the-job-training acting course. The training paid off when Luchino Visconti offered him the role of the prince in the 1963 epic masterpiece The Leopard, arguably the finest work of his career and one more film that likely wouldn't have been made at all without Lancaster's participation. Infuriatingly, The Leopard would not be seen in its full, uncut majesty in the United States until 1983. However, there was something fitting about that, because by the time it did arrive here, Lancaster's work in Louis Malle's Atlantic City (1981) and Bill Forsyth's Local Hero (1983), to name two, had established him as one of the great old men of the movies, a weathered but still-beautiful oak of a man whose courtly bearing seemed to mark him as an emissary from a better time.

GARY COOPER (1901-1961)

Gary Cooper is one of the greatest stars in Hollywood history, and yet he never strayed very far from one very basic role. That was both the upside and the downside of the old star system; it may have prevented more versatile actors from taking on roles that would have let them break out of their public personality, but it also kept stars of somewhat limited talents thriving by letting them play to their strengths. Cooper the actor wasn’t hard to define: he was the straight-shooting, simple fella who might not have been too bright, but damn it, he knew what was right, and he was going to do what was best no matter what. He essentially filled that narrow role again and again throughout his career, mostly in the Westerns that made him famous; it was a limitation he recognized, but probably never fully accepted. When the roles within that archetype were good enough, when they were handled by capable directors and backed up with good supporting casts, you could see why Gary Cooper became a legend: as Alvin York in Sergeant York, as Lou Gehrig in The Pride of the Yankees, and most especially, and unforgettably, as Will Kane in High Noon, he didn’t so much transcend his limitations as an actor as he did fill out the outlines of his role with complete perfection, with nothing left out. In life, Cooper was a much more complex and contradictory character than any of the roles he played on screen, but the biggest contradiction of all is that the actor, with all his shortcomings, will be remembered long after the man is forgotten.

Click Here for Part Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven & Eight

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent, Leonard Pierce

Democracy in the Western: Charles Taylor on "Rio Bravo"

Phil Nugent — Fri, 09 May 2008 18:00:00 GMT

"To the left, Wayne has always been close to a comic-book version of American power in all its swaggering crudeness. That his screen persona was neither swaggering nor crude hardly mattered." So writes Charles Taylor in the latest issue of the pinko-liberal publication Dissent. While the above statement can be taken as definitive proof that Taylor has never seen McQ, it'll stand for the performances that Taylor cites as among Wayne's best, such as those in Stagecoach, Red River, The Searchers, and the one he's here to preach about tonight: Howard Hawks's Rio Bravo. As Taylor writes, "The inspiration for Rio Bravo came from perhaps the most praised of Westerns, Fred Zinnemann’s 1952 High Noon. High-Minded Noon it might have been called. Existing for no other reason than to impart a lesson in good citizenship, High Noon was a transparent metaphor for the failure of Americans to stand up to Joe McCarthy. Hawks hated it. Narratively, Hawks felt it made no sense for Gary Cooper’s sheriff to spend the movie soliciting the townspeople’s help to fend off the killers coming for him only to prove, in the end, that he didn’t need help. Hawks was offended by the idea that a sheriff would endanger the lives of the people he was meant to protect by trying to recruit them to save his skin. So Hawks made a movie in which Wayne’s sheriff turns down the help offered him, and needs it at every turn... Part of the beauty of Wayne’s performance here is the way, even when Chance is refusing help, he never undervalues others. When Chance’s friend, the cattleman Wheeler (the inevitable Ward Bond), derides his deputies by asking, 'A bum-legged old man and a drunk—that’s all you’ve got?' Chance answers, 'That’s what I’ve got.' It’s the single best line reading of Wayne’s career. There’s a world of respect in the weight he puts on that one word, 'what,' an irreducible sense of people’s worth as individuals."

Rio Bravo's open affection for its characters--characters that we, the viewer, spend a lot of time cooped up with in small, confining spaces--helps to account for its status as, in Quentin Tarantino's terminology, one of the greatest hang-out movies of all time. Wayne's John T. Chance "is the heroic figure whose self-sufficiency inspires the others to rise above their shortcomings. But because this is a celebration of democracy, the result isn’t a race of isolated heroes but a community in which the strength of each individual buoys up everyone else. Even Chance, the strongest person in the movie, can’t do without those people." Indeed, because without Dean Martin fumbling with the last shreds of his self-respect, Walter Brennan lurching and gabbing, and Rick Nelson leading the camp sing-along, there woule nothing to watch except for Claude Akins complaining about the quality of the jail food until Wayne went back to his cell to bludgeon him to sleep, not that this wouldn't have been something to watch. As it is, it is a film that, in Taylor's eyes, "justif[ies] the idea of America." It is good to know that a film that justifies the idea of America has a scene in which Angie Dickinson appears wearing fishnet stockings.

No, But I've Read the Movie: THE FOUNTAINHEAD

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 20:30:00 GMT

Up until now, the "No, But I've Read the Movie" has focused on great works of western literature, and assessed the movie versions to see if they can possibly stand up to the titanic reputations of the novels upon which they are based. That ends today! For today, we will focus on one of the most successful, and yet overrated and overblown, works of the western canon: Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. It's a novel that helped launch her career as one of the preeminent authors and philosophers of our time, but as a novel, it's hokey, overlong, bloated, and filled with characters one dimension short of being one-dimensional; and as philosophy, it's incomplete, inconsistent, and unable to look past its own epistemological shortcomings. Rand's ideology of Objectivism became hugely popular, just as her novels became huge best-sellers, but whereas most literary adaptations were doomed to failure because what makes a great novel rarely makes a great movie, anyone daring to tackle her endlessly preachy books would be faced with the prospect of improving on the original, rather than dumbing it down for the format. Given the runaway success of The Fountainhead -- Rand's story of an incorruptible architect who refuses to compromise his craft to satisfy the demands of the masses -- it was inevitable that there would be a film adaptation. The question is, how would it handle such a patently unworkable premise and fundamentally unbelievable storyline?

Mistakes, as they say, were made. Casting the young, fiery Patricia Neal -- 26 years younger than her co-star and with virtually no big-screen experience -- was one major gamble. Casting earnest, plain-speaking Gary Cooper, who excelled in playing jus'-folks characters who knew what was right as the pompous, speechifying Howard Roark was another. And it didn't exactly do anyone any favors to select the hapless King Vidor (who, for every Stella Dallas or The Crowd he had in him, also had a Duel in the Sun or Beyond the Forest) to direct. But what should have sent a jolt of fear down the spines of everyone involved in the production is who Warner Brothers hired to turn Ayn Rand's mess of a novel into a coherent screenplay: none other than Ayn Rand. She made it a condition of the sale of the rights to the novel that only she could write the script, and her fierce demeanor during pre-production (she apparently nearly drove the formidable King Vidor to a nervous breakdown) meant that, as with her hero Howard Roark, it would be her way or no way at all. This was made explicit when Warner wanted to trim Roark's famous speech before the jury at his trial down to a manageable length because it was rambling and dull; Rand pitched a fit, demanding it be included in the movie in its entirety or there would be no movie. The result is right there on the screen for all to see, in all its rambling, dull glory. She got the movie she wanted -- the question is, did anyone else?

WHAT IT HAD: You certainly can't fault The Fountainhead for inauthenticity. With the force of nature that was Ayn Rand writing the script and throwing her weight around as much as possible behind the scenes, it's as faithful an adaptation of the novel as we're ever going to get. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing is subject to debate, but its truth cannot be denied. The score is one of Max Steiner's livelier ones, and King Vidor occasionally gets to hit those whoozy melodramatic notes at which he excelled. A few of the supporting cast, including Raymond Massey as the newspaper tycoon Gail Wynand and Robert Douglas as the cartoonish villain Ellsworth Toohey, figured out what they were up against pretty quickly and decided to throw in the towel, resulting in some enjoyable performances. And, again, the basic story and the ham-handed philosophy from the novel are there, more or less perfectly intact, for better or for worse.

WHAT IT LACKED: Aside from a point, a direction, or any sense of style, decency or restraint? Pretty much everything. Vidor was clearly phoning it in as much as possible, even for a hack like him. Ayn Rand's script, much like the novel, hasn't got much going for it; the characters are cardboard-thin, the motivations are as transparent as the glass in Howard Roark's skyscrapers, and the situations strain the credulity of anyone who, unlike Ms. Rand, has actually interacted with other human beings and seen the way they behave. The two leads are amongst the least charismatic in screen history: Patricia Neal's heaving, fire-breathing, nearly psychotic Dominique Francon would be ridiculous just on her own, but is especially so when contrasted with Gary Cooper's abysmally miscast Howard Roark. Cooper reportedly didn't understand the screenplay at all, and tried to downplay Roark's character, leading to total disaster: one of the great tragedies of Charlton Heston's recent death is that the overwrought ham never had the chance to take a shot at Howard Roark, the character he was born to play.

DID IT SUCCEED?: Critics hated it then, and they hate it now, but Rand's books have always been rather critic-proof, both in literary and philosophical terms. More pertinently, it wasn't much of a success at the box office, either; at the time of its release, it barely broke even (it didn't cost much to make due to Rand and Vidor ramming it through to completion in less than two months, and it shows). However, it's picked up a certain degree of cachet in subsequent years: devotees of Objectivism have flocked to it because of their cultlike fervor for Rand's works, and it's also acheived a bit of a cult status in so-bad-it's-good circles. Rand herself blamed studio interference for the movie's failure (because it certainly couldn't have been her fault) and vowed never to write for the movies again. She never did, but her books still exert a mystical hold over some people in Hollywood; a big-budget adaptation of the interminable Atlas Shrugged is in preproduction and slated for a 2009 release, and longstanding rumor had it that a remake of The Fountainhead was brewing, to be directed by Michael Cimino. It never happened, thus robbing us of the delightfully egomaniacal romp that would have been, but rumors of a remake persist, this time -- even more wonderfully/terribly -- with Oliver Stone's name attached.

The Screengrab Top Ten: The Baseball Movie All-Stars, Part 2

Phil Nugent — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 20:30:00 GMT

Lou Gehrig (Gary Cooper), THE PRIDE OF THE YANKEES (1942)

Some of the most memorable depictions of famous baseball players in movies have undercut the boy's-book images of childlike saints in cleats by showing the darker and more neurotic sides of driven professional athletes, but everyone with an informed opinion on the matter seems to agree that Lou Gehrig really was what a great ball player was supposed to be: hard-working, clean-living, decent, and somehow not even boring because of it, maybe because in the context of the Murderers' Row of the Babe Ruth-era Yankees, his boy scout qualities kind of gave him curiosity value. Like most celebrity biopics of the old studio era, especially ones made about athletes, this movie substitutes corn for depth or factual accuracy, and it has its snoozy side. But Gary Cooper's delivery of Gehrig's legendary farewell speech puts it at the top of the pile for male weepies.

Elmer Kane (Joe E. Brown), ELMER THE GREAT (1933)

"Imagine a cross-roads apple-knocker like that high-hatting the Chicago Cubs!, sneers the great talent scout Bull McWade, having traveled all they way (by horse-drawn sleigh apparently) to the little town of Gentryville, Indiaina, in order to welcome minor league wunderkind Elmer Kane into the majors. But, enigmatically, the swaggering, cossetted man-child will have nothing to do him, hiding in his room until the man leaves, and it is safe for him to descend for another of his endless ritualized breakfasts (towards the end of the gargantuan meal, asked by his housekeeper if he wants a slice of apple pie, he says, "Well, bring it on in and I'll flirt with it!"), where he reveals nothing either to his unbelieving brother (the great Sterling Holloway) other than boasting that his not joining the team will mean the Cubs will have no chance to win the "World Serious" that year, or dispensing xenophobic homilies to his dim ("Who's Babe Ruth?") doting mother (Emma Dunn), such as, "I hate places that I ain 't never seen!""

Inevitably it's love that keeps the poor sap trapped in Hicksvillle. He's fallen long and hard for his boss, the lovely Patricia Ellis, the women who runs the dry good store down the street . And he's lucky enough that she realizes the only way to loosen this barnacle is with a quick scrape of the brush; she rejects him as soon as he painfully mumbles out his feelings, then fires him, and in the cold fury of her apparent rejection he takes up the contract for the major leagues and heads out broken-hearted for fame and fortune. Elmer Kane , like many of Brown's characters, can have the tendency to set modern audience's teeth on edge, with the overbearing, know-it-allrube on the outside, barely covering up a world of ignorance and naiviete on the inside. Talented enough at baseball to lead his team to victory, but at the same time too dumb to know the difference between a sun lamp and microphone; hero to millions but also able to fall into the grips of organized crime boss because he thought he was "playing for fun" at the dice table, he often comes across as dim and otherworldly as an American Kasper Hauser. And if in the end if it's hard not to cheer for him when inevitably brings in that finally, muddy home run, and wins the pennant for the Cubs, you get the feeling that you still wouldn't really want to invite him over for breakfast after the game.

Nicky Rogan (Michael Keaton), GAME 6 (2005)

Life couldn't be much better for Red Sox fans these days, what with two world championships in four years and even the much-maligned Bill Buckner getting a hero's welcome for throwing out the first pitch at this week's Fenway Park home opener. The image of the tormented Sawx fan has pretty much passed into mythology by now, so the Don DeLillo scripted Game 6, which takes us back to the fateful night that "little roller up along first" dribbled between Buckner's legs in the 1986 World Series, is more of a quaint time capsule than was probably intended. Still, baseball brings out the best in DeLillo as anyone who read the dazzling "Pafko at the Wall" segment of the otherwise turgid Underworld knows, and it brings out the best in Michael Keaton, too. As playwright Nicky Rogan, whose latest effort is opening the same night as the pivotal Game 6, Keaton has his best role in years; he captures the feverish intensity of the true believer who sees the Red Sox as metaphor for all that's tragic in life, yet still can't take his eyes off them.

Morris Buttermaker (Walter Matthau), THE BAD NEWS BEARS (1976)

Sure, it's a good thing for kids to have larger-than-life role models, like Reggie Jackson or Aquaman. But it can't hurt to develop a more attainable view of adulthood, which is where Morris Buttermaker, the manager of the Bad News Bears, comes in. (And with all due respect to Billy Bob Thornton, who essayed the role in the 2005 Richard Linklater remake, and Jack Warden, who took it to the small screen in a short-live 1979 series, the definitive Buttermaker is the original: Walter Matthau.) A failed minor leaguer turned swimming pool cleaner, perpetually disheveled and hungover, owner of a crappy car and so hard up for cash he takes a job coaching kids he can't stand--these are recognizable qualities of a man in full. He gets a bail bondsman to sponsor the team uniforms, he lets the kids drink beer in the dugout, and his idea of an inspirational speech is "Tanner almost got a base hit in the fourth inning." It is often said that baseball is a game of failure, in that even the best player makes an out in six out of ten tries. If that's the case, then what better manager for our nine? Two, four, six, eight, who do we appreciate? Buttermaker!

Frank Drebin (Leslie Nielsen), THE NAKED GUN (1988)

We can't have a ballgame without an umpire, so we might as well pick one who can double as our national anthem singer. I've long maintained that the original Naked Gun movie (from the files of Police Squad!, natch) was the last shining moment for Leslie Nielsen, comic actor, because it's the last movie he made before he realized he was supposed to be funny and started mugging like crazy instead of maintaining his serene deadpan. Here is one of his finest moments, a slapstick sendup of every arrogant ump who ever decided he was the show all the fans came to see. Unfortunately, this clip doesn't include his equally sublime butchering of "The Star-Spangled Banner" in the guise of opera singer Enrico Pallazzo, nor the repeated bad calls he makes in order to delay the game and prevent the assassination of Queen Elizabeth, but you probably know it all by heart anyway.

--Robert Gomez, Phil Nugent, Scott Von Doviak

Click here for Part 1!

Location, Location, Location: Yankee Stadium

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 18:30:00 GMT

If you didn’t wake up at 5:00 EST this morning and turn on ESPN2, you may not be aware that baseball season has begun. (The Oakland A’s and Boston Red Sox played their season opener in Japan’s Tokyo Dome, which accounts for the rather unorthodox start time.) This will be the final season for Yankee Stadium (a new version of same is scheduled to open across the street in 2009), so it only seems appropriate to commemorate Opening Day with a look at the cinematic history of the House That Ruth Built.

According to our crack research staff, Yankee Stadium’s earliest screen appearance came in Harold Lloyd’s 1928 feature Speedy. In his final silent film, Lloyd plays a cabbie who races Babe Ruth to the Stadium and stays to watch in the game, in which Ruth swats one of his then-record 60 home runs for the season. Not to be outdone, Buster Keaton appeared that same year in The Cameraman, in which he played a one-man game at the otherwise deserted stadium:

Fourteen years later, another sort of one-man show became the most famous scene to be shot at Yankee Stadium, as Gary Cooper re-enacted Lou Gehrig’s famous farewell address in Pride of the Yankees:

It’s hard to top that one as far as baseball monologues go, but Kevin Costner gave it a shot in 1999's For the Love of the Game, in which he played an aging pitcher attempting to complete a perfect game from the Yankee Stadium mound. With John C. Reilly as his catcher, how can he lose?

And finally we have this romantic moment from Anger Management, featuring the incomparable emoting of Rudy Giuliani. If only every American voter had seen this clip, his presidential campaign might still be alive today.

SLIFR University Announces Eminent New Professor

Paul Clark — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 15:00:00 GMT

Winter has arrived, and in the blogosphere that can only mean one thing- it's time once again for the latest epic quiz from Dennis Cozzalio's must-read blog, Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule. Dennis has a tradition of attributing his quizzes to famed educators of filmdom, and this one's got a doozy- Ball of Fire Bertram Potts, who's always dressed up like a million-dollar trooper. So whether you're blogging from work on a slow afternoon or looking to fill some of that end-of-year vacation time, take a trip to the hallowed halls of SLIFR University, sharpen those No. 2 pencils, and take Professor Bertram Potts' Hella Homework For the Holidays Christmas Break Quiz. Check it out- it's super duper!