The Screengrab : tony curtis

The Screengrab Highlight Reel: Oct. 11-17, 2008

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 21:30:00 GMT

Hey there, Screengrab readers. Joe the Plumber here. You don’t want to know the details, believe me, but there’s been an unusual toilet incident here at Screengrab headquarters and I’ve been called in to take care of the situation. It’s cool, I don’t mind helping these guys out because they pay cash under the table. No taxes! But they did ask if I wouldn’t mind handling the Highlight Reel while I’m here. I’ll admit, I don’t usually read the Screengrab – I’m more of a Modern Materialist guy – but they slipped me a few extra bucks, so what the hell. Here’s the best stuff I saw this week:

They did a decent job with the Top 25 Leading Ladies of All Time (Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven and Eight), although I personally would have included Raquel Welch. Always had a thing for her. And this list of the Top 007 James Bond Theme Songs (Parts One and Two) is all right, but where’s For Your Eyes Only? That Sheena Easton had some pipes – and I know from pipes!

I don’t get out to the pictures much, so I probably won’t see W. and What Just Happened, but I am looking forward to that new Star Trek. Does anyone know if it has tribbles in it? I never saw Cockfighter, My Neighbor Totoro, Swept Away or Boiler Room – but I’ve seen my share of boiler rooms, let me tell you!

Aw, jeez, this toilet is bad news. What is that green stuff? Anyway, I gotta wrap this up, but if you’re interested in Tony Curtis’s book, Oliver Stone movies, the Saw amusement park ride or Jabba the portly Irish gent, go read about ‘em.

Oh, and this isn’t funny. These are tools, not weapons.

Summer of ’78: “The Bad News Bears Go to Japan”

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Each Thursday this summer we’ll hop in the Screengrab time machine and jump back thirty years to see what was new and exciting at the neighborhood moviehouse this week in…The Summer of ’78!

The Bad News Bears Go to Japan

Release Date: June 30, 1978

Cast: Tony Curtis, Jackie Earle Haley, Tomisaburo Wakayama, Dick Button, Regis Philbin

The Buzz: Bad News Bears! Japan! Whaddaya need, a roadmap?

Keywords: Baseball, Sequel, Japan

The Plot: The Bad News Bears go to Japan. That’s about it, but I’ll try to be a little more specific. The Bears little league team – or at least the members of the team that returned for the concluding film of this essential trilogy – see a news report indicating that the United States will not be sending a team to Tokyo to compete with the Japanese little league champions. The Bears decide they’re the team for the job, and go on TV to tell Regis why they should represent our national pastime in the Land of the Rising Sun. Degenerate gambler Tony Curtis sees the program and decides the Bears are his meal ticket; he’ll take them to Japan in exchange for the lion’s share of the profits from a potential network telecast. Once the team reaches Tokyo, the Bears disappear for large chunks of the movie, which is heavily padded with travelogue material: a karate exhibition, a wrestling match, a game show talent competition. Curtis’s gambling partners fly in three ringers for the big game in order to ensure a U.S. victory, and a brawl breaks out shortly after the match-up at the Tokyo Dome gets underway. The network broadcast falls apart, but the two teams later meet up in an old-fashioned sandlot showdown.

The Test of Time: As I proceed with this series, it’s becoming clear that I spent the summer of ’78 reading a lot of novelizations. I’ve already mentioned Damien: Omen II and Jaws 2, but I also had the Fotonovel of Heaven Can Wait and I definitely had all three Bad News Bears novelizations. Although the original Bears was one of the seminal movies of my childhood, I don’t think I ever saw the sequels on the big screen. I’m sure I wanted to see the first sequel at least, but I had limited options at that age. If it wasn’t playing at the Navy base or in the tiny two-screen theater at the mall in Ellsworth, Maine, I didn’t have much choice. In retrospect I’m glad I didn’t see The Bad News Bears Go to Japan at the time, because I had better things to do in 1978, and now I apparently don’t. The one thing I’ll say on the movie’s behalf is that it didn’t dip nearly as deeply into the waters of cultural insensitivity as I was expecting. That’s not to say it’s a nuanced look at Japan circa the late ’70s, but it’s not as offensive as it could have been. It is, however, horrible. It’s so bad that most of the original cast declined to participate. I’m not just talking about Walter Matthau and Tatum O’Neal here – I mean like the kids who played Tanner and Lupus. Can you imagine how badly Tony Curtis’s career must have been going if he agreed to star in a movie that the kid who played Lupus turned down? The few Bears who do return have pretty much outgrown their cuteness, particularly pudgy catcher Englebert, now roughly the size of Haystacks Calhoun. The Bears aren’t given much to do aside from Kelly Leak (Jackie Earle Haley), the onetime bad boy who has now been Fonzied into a sensitive punk and who gets a perfunctory romance with a Japanese girl. I’m glad Haley had that little comeback a couple years ago, because it would be sad if this was the last thing he’d ever done.

Fashion Highlights: Kelly Leak still has the look with his shiny disco shirts and bell-bottom jeans, but Curtis is tragic in a wide-collared leisure suit with gold chains. Let us not even speak of his flared baseball uniform pants.

2008 Equivalent: The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, just because it’s an unrequested and unnecessary threequel that will undoubtedly suck.

Previously on Summer of '78: Heaven Can Wait

Our Favorite Tony Curtis Story

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 20:30:00 GMT

The Guardian profiles Tony Curtis, who would like you to know he’s still very much alive, and he’s still had more sex than you could even dream about. Now 82, Curtis enjoys his golden years from a gated community outside Las Vegas. “His house, situated on the corner of a quiet street, seems surprisingly small,” writes John Patterson. “Once you're inside, though, it opens up hugely, and the living-room window is a majestic Cinemascope production, looking on to a small pool that in turn overlooks a golf course that stretches away into the desert distance. It rises to a low ridge that niftily obscures all the crappier suburbs of Vegas, leaving visible only the thicket of garishly coloured casino-hotels downtown. At night, this must truly be a million-dollar view.”

Curtis doesn’t get around as well as he used to, so his days of carousing the strip Rat Pack-style are probably behind him. Patterson finds the actor in a wheelchair (“He doesn't really need it any more, he says”), hard of hearing and just getting over a long bout with pneumonia. But by gum, he’s still got his memories. “Well, there was a lot of pussy - always a lot. I don't mean to be disrespectful, but that was my aim in life - the girls. And I took a personal pleasure in it, obviously, because it had nothing to do with me, I was just a nice-looking guy. Listen, that was one of the best gifts I had. What am I gonna do, put it down?”

Along those lines, Curtis recounts an anecdote we’ve heard before, one that’s almost too perfect to be true although we really hope it is. The last time we heard it was right after Walter Matthau died, and at the time, we could think of no better tribute. Just picture his trademark hangdog expression when the punchline arrives.

“I was in my early movie days, and they flew me back to New York from being in this one movie, tiny part. And I got in the limousine to go back to the hotel. And I told them to drive by the old theatre where the acting school was - the President Theater - and Walter was standing under the awning, looking just miserable, a terrible rainy day. And I told the driver, 'See that guy standing over there, pull over so I can talk to him.' And here's Walter, still at the acting school, hasn't worked as an actor properly yet, and he was so dishevelled and sad and wet, and I'll never forget the look on his face, like, 'Who the fuck is comin' to the school in a car like that?' And before he could get a word out, I rolled down the window, stuck my head out and said very loud: 'I fucked Yvonne De Carlo!' And then I told the driver, 'Get outta here!' I left poor old Walter standing there holding his newspaper over his head in the rain.”

We’re sure Matthau laughed about it eventually.