Amoeba Music

Set in Depression-era Hollywood, Inserts follows the lives of a has-been film director and his entourage of “degenerates” that helps him lead a career directing pornography. The movie might bring to mind a stage play as it is set in a single day, in one room, and follows the actions of the cast in real time. What made the story interesting was realizing that the glamorous and privileged approach to blockbuster films in the late '20s was also used with smut. The performances and heavy dialogue also allow you to mentally compare the fickle and sleazy attitudes in the filmmaking industry of yesteryear with those of today.

Richard Dreyfuss plays The Boy Wonder, a young director known for his achievements in silent film who discovered that he couldn't direct talkies. He's hit rock bottom, just like the rest of America during the Depression, and refuses to leave his Hollywood Hills home. He's dealing with a looming anxiety about not only being a failure but what will happen to his home when the city wants to build a freeway through the land. When a fellow called Big Mac (Bob Hoskins) offered him a contract to direct porn, he took it, not knowing that having such a brutish producer might be the end of him for good. Harlene (Veronica Cartwright) is his star in the picture, and a real handful. Sparing no time, she dives into a frenzy of antics and gossip before settling into her heroin fix. Her co-star is the young and naive Rex the Wonder Dog (Stephen Davies), who laps up praise from others so quickly that you'd think he was a bit dense. The three try to pick up from where they last left off filming and are disturbed by a knock on the door. Harlene's daily gossip comprised of telling the director that the then unknown Clark Gable thought he was a genius and wanted him to direct again. She gave him his address, and now he's come to talk. The Boy Wonder wants nothing to do with that world and sends Rex to shoo him away. They pick up again and grow close to finishing when Mac makes an entrance with his fiance Cathy Cake (Jessica Harper), who is mesmerized by their activities. Mac's presence causes tension because he's paying for the picture and providing Harlene's drugs. Once the actors are paid and high, The Boy Wonder finds it nearly impossible to continue working. As Mac bullies everyone and makes them uncomfortable, Harlene exits the room to shoot up and the others talk of developments in both the film world and America's future.

Walter Hill’s long directing resume had a number of interesting genre movies early in his career (Southern Comfort, The Warriors, The Driver, The Long Riders) but 48 Hrs. stands out not only as a gritty piece of cop pulp, but as the slam bang debut of the then edgy 21-year old Eddie Murphy, transforming the usually dour Hill formula into a funny, action comedy and one of the best films of both Hill and Murphy’s career. And frankly neither has ever lived up to the promise 48 Hrs. showed for both of them. Murphy has enjoyed some massive mainstream success but for the most part, both he and Hill most have spent the last couple decades treading between mediocre, dull, and lame.

Writing the screenplay for tough guy director Sam Peckinpah’s The Getaway in the early '70s got Hill going in the business. He got his start directing soon after with the Bronson/Coburn fight fest Hard Times. He would carry on the Peckinpah legacy with films about badass guys who live in a hard-boiled world under a certain violent code (with underwhelming women’s roles, usually as hookers). With The Warriors Hill would score a bonafide hit, though it’s dark and ugly it would turn away from the Peckinpah realism into comic book territory, a style Hill would take to the max with his 48 Hrs. follow up, the action rock ‘n roll musical dud Streets Of Fire. With 48 Hrs. Hill would go back to gritty realism but find some humor, mostly because of his intensely funny actor discovery.

Long before writing the novel Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton created another futuristic amusement park where everything goes wrong. Directing his first feature, Westworld, the result is much more credible than the later Spielberg directed flick. Closer to the vibe of cult-television show, The Wild, Wild West, than the Gene Autry serial Phantom Empire, Crichton’s film may be the best science-fiction / western Hollywood has ever produced.

A new high tech adult playland offers vacationers the choice between Medievalworld, Romanworld or Westworld. Vacationers get to enjoy exotic pleasures both in danger and even sexual, interacting with perfectly human looking androids. Peter Martin (Richard Benjamin) and his much cooler pal John Blane (James Brolin) opt for Westworld. It’s an Old West experience straight out of Bonanza, with saloon fights, shootouts, and robot brothels (though the guys are usually left to wonder if that was a human or a droid). The cowardly Martin has a run in with a gunfighter of few words, likely a droid, played by the famously shaved headed Russian tough guy Yul Brynner (wearing his same cool black outfit from The Magnificent Seven), killing him gives Martin some new found bravado.

The Four Bs: Birdlace, Berzin, Benjamin, and Buel (aka Oakie). They're teenage Marines who met at boot camp and became friends. It's 1963 and Kennedy is president. A war is unfolding and they've stopped in a small town with a base on the outskirts. By morning, they'll be shipped off to a place they've never heard of called Vietnam. They think they'll be there approximately three months, “take a few names,” and come home unharmed. The naivety of these characters and that of the actual young men who thought the same thing is uncanny and heartbreaking.

Gathering $50 per man, the group decides to have a party of some tradition called a dogfight. The objective of the evening is to rent a nice place and throw a sort of going-away bash. The money is pooled and each guy is supposed to bring a date. The man with the ugliest date wins the pool.

The Deer Hunter - a film about three Pennsylvania steel worker buds who go off to fight in Vietnam, and how the war affects them and the people around them - was massively praised on release back in '78. Time has been a mixed bag for the film, though everyone would agree the acting, with Robert De Niro leading a cast of then mostly unknowns, is exceptional; it’s the film’s murky politics and point of view that has been put into question. Much of the reevaluation has arisen with the epic rise and brutal fall that director Michael Cimino went through. But regardless of what the film was trying to convey, what is on screen is a stunning looking piece of filmmaking. Like a great symphony, it is often gentle and quiet, but still emotional and then loud with a horn section of shocking violence, giving the film a massive punch to pack.

The first third of the film’s three-hour running time follows a group of steel workers first preparing for Steven’s (John Savage) Russian Orthodox wedding and then a deer hunting trip as Steven, Michael (De Niro), and Nick (Christopher Walken) are about to be shipped out to Vietnam. They are joined by three other friends played by George Dzundza (Basic Instinct), Chuck Aspegren in his only film role, and the great John Cazale (Fredo of The Godfather and Sal of Dog Day Afternoon in his fifth and final film role before he died). The overly tense Michael also has a little thing for Nick’s girlfriend, Linda (Meryl Streep), but acting on it would play against his machismo code.

If I had to sum up Cry-Baby in a sentence for someone, I would say that it is the wet dream of John Waters. Not since Kenneth Anger has there ever been someone who plays on the homoeroticism of hairless leather-daddies and rockabilly culture with such style. The movie also has what I would consider to be a dream cast for Waters, with Johnny Depp leading the pack. There's also his late muse, Ricki Lake, and small performances by Iggy Pop, Mink Stole, Joe Dallesandro, and a cameo by Willem Dafoe. To boot, the soundtrack is also outrageously good, featuring some of my favorite doo-wop, rockabilly, and psychobilly songs.

To compare this gem with other greaser vs. socs movies would be placing an emphasis on the more typical parts of the story; a nice town in 1950s suburbia is split in two, with its elite on one side and the trailer-trash on the other. But you have to remember that this is not The Outsiders or Grease, nor a jailhouse/Elvis flick. In fact, it's a parody of such movies. Waters takes the road-rebel genre and turns it into an opportunity to direct an over-the-top musical about teenagers and star-crossed love. The result is a story about a young man named Wade “Cry-Baby” Walker (Johnny Depp), a juvenile delinquent who prides himself on the ability to shed a single tear when confronted by his emotions. Behind him, sporting leather jackets with his name on the back, is his gang, referred to by the town as “drapes.” Perhaps the name comes from the emotional curtain of hair that keeps half of their faces in shadow. There's his plump and pregnant sister, Pepper (Ricki Lake); the fiery Wanda (Traci Lords); and the oddest couple to ever hit the screen, Milton (Darren E. Burrows) and his gal, Hatchet-Face (Kim McGuire). Their rivals on the playground are the suburban “squares,” and like other movies with the same theme, these characters are given little screen time and are presented as the enemy. The starlet among them is Allison (Amy Locane), a blonde who's seen as the most talented and beautiful among the rich. Allison and Cry-Baby lock eyes while getting a polio shot in the gymnasium. The sight of her makes him shed a tear, and the rest is history.

From Leni Riefenstahl‘s controversial Olympia to Pumping Iron to Hoop Dreams, great sports documentaries often tell us more about society and the times than the actual sport. Ken Burns' epic Baseball is equally important as a history of 20th century America as it is for its bats and balls. In recent years ESPN and HBO have been at the forefront of excellent sports documentaries, ESPN with their outstanding 30 For 30 series and HBO has continually produced great feature length docs, Magic And Bird: A Courtship of Rivals is no exception.

Fascinating as both a study of two athletes, complete opposites who went from mortal enemies to friends, it also establishes how their rivalry helped to transform the NBA and save it from financial disaster. It also sharply touches on hot button issues that the two men represented or found themselves thrust into the middle of, race and race relations and later, tragically, AIDS.

In the 1970s, journalists for the National Geographic magazine stumbled into a small, seemingly deserted theater in Death Valley. Inside was a woman of old age dressed in costume, performing ballet for an empty room. Surrounding the stage and empty seats was her artwork, a mural done over the course of a few seasons that resembles an audience of nobles and royalty. These journalists found the woman, Marta Becket, to be extraordinary. They interviewed her, trying to understand how an aged New York ballerina found her way to the desert, and what she hopes to accomplish. They discovered that she was reclusive, a woman used to being alone and yet only wanted love and understanding from human beings. When this simple desire conflicted with her quest to become a devoted artist, she turned to the desert and one of its ghost towns for solace. Amargosa attempts to chronicle her life, both in the limelight and in Death Valley.

Marta Becket started dancing at 14, which she states was a late start. Her mother nourished and supported her efforts to sing, dance, and paint, while her father remained a skeptic until his death. She made it to Broadway, dancing for years and developing beautiful relationships with dancing partners and associates. She married in her 30s and thought she had finally settled into life, until something seemed to tug at her conscience. She saw a fortune teller, but couldn't figure out what the prophecy meant. After riding through the desert with her husband, they got a flat tire and began looking for help. Nearby was a small white theater, deserted and literally falling apart. Upon discovering the theater, Becket presented her find to her husband and inquired about its ownership. The town was mostly uninhabited and in desperate need of repairs, so Becket was offered the theater for practically nothing in exchange for fixing it up. The decision to move to the desert and start a new life was done with a haste and assuredness that wasn't matched by her husband. They two split after years of an already difficult marriage, and Becket settled into the idea of truly being alone. She renamed the theater Amargosa, which is Spanish for “bitter” and was the former name of Death Valley Junction, where the theater stands.

The "mini-series" was a cultural phenomenon on late '70s and early '80s television. With the massive success of Rich Man, Poor Man (followed by the even more popular Roots a year later), it became a rite of passage for television executives to find a thick book and a match it with a classy cast for a rating bonanza. Finally out on DVD, Rich Man, Poor Man is the epitome of the mini-series epic, 12 one-hour episodes spanning 25 years in the life of the Jordache brothers. It made a star of the then unknown actor Nick Nolte and gave a bunch of out of work ex-TV stars a chance to chew on some scenery. And though at times it may feel dated, it still makes for some gripping, addictive watching.

Based on novelist Irwin Shaw’s (The Young Lions) massively long best seller, the enormous scope of the cast of characters would put a paycheck in a lot of mid-'70s actor pockets. Along the way a who’s who of names pop up in supporting roles including Gloria Grahame, Dick Sargent, Talia Shire, Ray Milland, Lynda Day George, Norman Fell, Fionnula Flanagan, Dorothy Malone, Van Johnson, Murray Hamilton, and Kim Darby (the original True Grit girl).

“If I die, what a beautiful death; to die in the exercise of your passion.” - Philippe Petit

In his youth, Philippe Petit was drawn to climbing, fencing, and riding a unicycle. Balance was a gift, and motivation was endless. When he was 17, while waiting to see a dentist, he came across an article in the paper about two structures that were to be built in New York. The World Trade Center was to be the largest man-made structure, and within him developed a dream to conquer such a building in his own poetic way. Learning to walk a tightrope and gather close friends to help him reach his future goals, Petit set out to train, plan, and discipline himself to walk across a building that was yet to exist.