The Screengrab : geoffrey macnab

Richard Kiel Chews the Fat

Phil Nugent — Wed, 20 May 2009 19:30:00 GMT

A poll once selected "Jaws", the steel-toothed assassin played by Richard Kiel in The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker, as the best-loved James Bond character, with 30% of the vote. Kiel is understandably proud of this fact, as well he might be, given the input he had in shaping the role. Speaking to Geoffrey Macnab, he recalls that Cubby Broccoli recruited him for the role with this pitch: ""The character we have in mind is going to have teeth like tools, maybe like a shark." (Maybe like a shark, and he's called "Jaws"? Does Kiel not know that there's a movie? Is it too late to tell him?) It turns out that Kiel hesitated to take the role because "He wanted to break away from rent-a-giant parts and play - as he puts it - 'regular henchman or villain roles'. However, he eventually managed to talk Broccoli into making Jaws a sympathetic, three-dimensional character rather than just a titan with gleaming metallic molars. 'If I was to play this role, I told him I'd want to give this character who kills people with his teeth a human side to make him more interesting, maybe have him be persevering and frustrated, so he wouldn't become boring. A guy killing people with his teeth could easily become over the top.'" After you've been in the business for a while, you become sensitive to these things.

Kiel made his debut in 1960 in an episode of the TV series Laramie, and stayed employed for the next fifteen years or so through a succession of, well, rent-a-giant roles. One of his classier early turns was as an alien representative in the classic Twilight Zone episode "To Serve Mankind." He also appeared in no fewer than three movies later immortalized on Mystery Science Theater 3000: Eegah!, the living-caveman flick from the semi-notorious Arch Hall, The Human Duplicators, and The Magic Sword, in which he picked up a check as an uncredited pinhead. He also played various heavies in a string of movies (Skidoo, Silver Streak, The Longest Yard) and TV shows (including two different special guest monsters on The Night Stalker). After Jaws, he appeared in So Fine, Cannonball Run II, Pale Rider, Happy Gilmore, and the family film The Giant of Thunder Mountain, which he wrote and executive produced. But he knows that, at some date in the long-off and unforseeable future, Jaws is going to top his obituary; he even reprised the character, sort of, in 2003 when he lent his voice to a video game. He certainly worked hard enough for the part: it turns out that the prosthetic dentures he wore for the role "were nauseating. They were up in the roof of your mouth and gave you a gagging effect - you felt like you were going to be sick. It did add to the stoic part of my character - to keep from throwing up." The man employed to make them "ended up successfully making one set. He told me he couldn't make any more - it was just too difficult." Between rides inside Kiel's mouth, the teeth were safely guarded, but he wasn't allowed to keep them as a souvenir and doesn't know where they are today. If they're looking for a MacGuffin for Nicolas Cage to track down in National Treasure 3...

Stupid Little Bastard Makes Film

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 16:30:00 GMT

In what may or may not be a testament to the state of the French film industry today, some of the most interesting movies out of France in recent years have been directed not by veteran filmmakers, but by movie neophytes taking their first shot at standing behind the camera after experiencing great success in other artistic media. Last year's highly praised The Diving Bell and the Butterfly was helmed by Julian Schnabel, generally known as a visual artist, and if The Possibility of an Island, the directorial debut of controversial novelist Michel Houllebecq turns out not to be one of the best movies of the year, it will at least be one of the most talked about.

The Possibility of an Island, based on a novel by Houllebecq himself in 2005, certainly has an intriguing enough concept: it reads like a disjointed surrealist take on science fiction -- a post-apocalyptic mash-up of A Boy and His Dog, Solaris and The Holy Mountain, with cloning and bikini contests thrown in for good measure. Whether or not it will actually succeed is another matter; thus far, critics have not been kind. The Guardian's Geoffrey MacNab sat down with Houllebecq to discuss the process of moviemaking, how it differs from writing, and whether or not he intends to contune on as a filmmaker. "Maybe it is a superficial motivation," he says of filming many of the movie's scenes in Andalucian Spain, "but I always go to the locations when I write a novel. In this case, some of the locations were so impressive that the idea for the film came frm that...I enjoyed the preparation of the movie. I mean, the period immediately before the shooting when you choose everything, all the details. When you create the world."

Whether or not the world he created is one that critics or moviegoers will want to see remains a different affair. It's received a somewhat frosty reception in France, and no critic of Houllebecq's work has been harsher than his own mother. Lucie Ceccaldi, who abandoned Houllebecq when he was young, is involved in a big, ugly (and somewhat one-sided) feud with the novelist, calling him a fraud, a pornographer and a "stupid little bastard". For his part, Houllebecq is loath to discuss her, and tends to avoid press -- bad or good -- altogether: "It needs discipline not to look at the internet," says the author (he's telling us!); "It is human temptation to read what is said about you, but you have to resist."

Tartan Fades To Black

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 14:55:00 GMT

One of the oldest and most respected independent distribution houses in the United Kingdom, Tartan Films, is taking down its shutter. Plagued by financial difficulties and distribution concerns, Tartan has closed down its offices, dismantled its American arm (Tartan Video USA), released all of its employees, and begun the process of selling off its highly respectable catalogue to other distributors. In recent years, Tartan had been best known for its "Asia Extreme" series, which brought movies like Oldboy and the original Japanese version of The Ring to the West, but the catalog of the 26-year-old company included everything from Bergman's Wild Strawberries to The Death of Mr. Lazarescu.

According to Screen Daily, other distributors are rushing to snatch up some of the prestige titles in Tartan's collection (handled currently in the U.S. by Palisades Media); elsewhere, Time Out takes time out to remember some of Tartan's finest releases (ranging from Jodorowsky's El Topo to Verhoeven's The Fourth Man). Although the company had been in dire financial straits for some time, no particular reason has been given by company founder Hamish McAlpine as to why Tartan went out of business so quickly (Geoffrey Macnab speculates in the Guardian, and lays some blame at the foot of McAlpine's desire to produce films himself; his first major effort was the disastrous English-language remake of Michael Haneke's Funny Games). This has no doubt got other indie distributors, especially in the U.K., wondering: who's next?