Forster's career as told through clippings

At one time, your humble blogger tried to get a Robert Forster biography off the ground. And during the process of acquiring research materials, old newspaper and magazine clippings were collected. Some scans of such are presented below, completely non-chronologically.

Two different San Francisco papers ran articles on Forster within a day of each other in 1969. The other clipping begins with "So nude is now?" in reference to the fact that the actor had already gone fully nekkid in films twice (REFLECTIONS IN A GOLDEN EYE and MEDIUM COOL) since his screen debut in '67.

In Marty McKee's 2002 interview with Forster for Mobius, the actor said that Columbia got sued over NAKIA by writer/actor/director Tom Laughlin for resembling Laughlin's BILLY JACK too closely.

A trade ad that unsuccessfully attempted to get Forster nominated for an Oscar for his role in the Mamet-written LAKEBOAT. I remember renting the DVD of this after ol' Bob himself recommended the film to me. They included the film's trailer on the DVD too, and embarrassingly, they misspelled Forster's name in the trailer!

TV GUIDE coverage of the unsold '80s pilot ONCE A HERO, which is part of the subgenre that also includes LAST ACTION HERO, ENCHANTED and PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO -- stories of a fictional character stepping into the harsh real world. Forster played a hardboiled detective, not for the first time (see also BANYON). Speaking of which ...

Forster is well-remembered by TV viewers of a certain age for starring as 1930s private detective Miles Banyon in the series BANYON -- despite the show being cancelled after only a half-season run. The show was well liked but expensive, and when one of the creators died, BANYON fizzled. Reportedly, the blue pinstripe suit that Forster is wearing in the top BANYON photo was the same one he wore in the poster for HOLLYWOOD HARRY, a good fifteen years later.

My career interview with Forster ended up in SHOCK CINEMA magazine, issue #31. It contained some real anecdotal gold, like how Forster once used some BANYON/BANACEK confusion to get past a security officer and into some NFL locker rooms to see O.J. Simpson.

--Mike Malloy

Random memory from a tough-and-gritty co-star

A quick, previously unpublished memory about Robert Forster during his much-hyped film debut by a certain co-star -- himself a tough-guy actor and now dearly departed.

"I remember Forster on the set of REFLECTIONS IN A GOLDEN EYE. He was very shy. I felt that everybody was watching him to see how he'd perform. Forster was well aware what a great opportunity he had been given by [John] Huston. These are just my feelings. I never really socialized with him, and we didn't really have any scenes together."

--Gordon Mitchell, e.mail to Mike Malloy, 1-3-03

The toughest and grittiest '70s mags that never existed

Beginner vigilantes! Kick-ass crackers! Motocross accessories! Honest cops!

Seventies pop-culture authority Mike Malloy has been trying his hand at magazine cover design -- and dreaming up the most absurdly limited-appeal magazines to have never come out of the decade.

They're for sale on etsy (these designs are toughening up that site), and they look good in cheap, beat-up 9x11 (not 8x10) thrift-store frames.

http://www.etsy.com/shop/mikemalloy?section_id=10766813

Thusly, they make good Christmas gifts, especially if you know a beginner vigilante who has bare wall space that needs filling.

These are the first four designs in the series. More to come, and if there's significant interest, many more -- maybe even customs.

http://www.etsy.com/shop/mikemalloy?section_id=10766813

A fistul of hi-res Cliff Robertson photos, In Memoriam

From my film-still collection, below are a few scans (click for super hi-res version) of the recently deceased Cliff Robertson (more of a character actor than a tough-guy lead during the all-important 1970s). Although I had already seen him in ESCAPE FROM L.A., I first became keenly aware of Robertson when I found a copy of 1976's SHOOT several years later. SHOOT was a riff on DELIVERANCE's "theme mixing" of sex, power and wilderness survival, and Robertson played one hell of an unlikable Alpha Male -- a guy who had to rule not only the hunting grounds, but also the business world (a furniture company, iirc) and the female population (including some of his buddies' wives). The version of the story in the novel had even more disturbing scenes, and Robertson's portrayal of the character fit perfectly into them. But as realistically reprehensible as Robertson's SHOOT character was, I grew to find the actor's screen presence likable over the years (when I caught up with 1975's THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR, 1976's OBSESSION, etc) so that when someone finally twisted my arm to watch SPIDER-MAN, I was pleased to see him in the cast. As soon as his character kicked, though, I was done with the movie. Seriously.

The stills below include three from PT-109 (1963), for which JFK personally selected Robertson to portray him, supposedly because Robertson didn't try to affect a Bostonian accent (he was cast despite being way older than Kennedy was during the WWII events in question). The last two are from SHOOT.

REMEMBERING TOUGH-GUY ACTOR ROSS HAGEN....

News is circulating that biker-movie actor and general tough guy Ross Hagen passed away a couple days ago, and although this has not been confirmed by mainstream sources yet, we can take this opportunity to remember some of his work, no matter what his current condition (which I hope is "perfectly in the pink").

The following are some random excerpts from my interview with Mr. Hagen from January 15, 2007.

I remember calling to set up the interview with Ross, and he told me he had recently done interviews for projects about co-stars Nancy Kwan and Elvis Presley. So when I called for the actual interview, I told him, "Mr. Hagen, you said you've done interviews about other people lately, but I only want to talk to you about Ross Hagen." He laughed, and I hoped he felt flattered. --Mike Malloy

ON ACTING WITH CHARLES BRONSON:

“He was a fun guy to work with. Because when we were shooting The Virginian, everybody was, “Oh, Charlie Bronson. He’s mean. He’s weird. And when he came on the set, I was playing one of the roles then. I’m part of his gang. They always have the leader and then the gang.”

“So Charlie and I are sitting there, and I had never met him before, and he had never met me. And when we started rehearsing the scene, I started doing him, imitating him. [Imitates Bronson] And about five minutes into the rehearsal, he says, “What are you doing? You sound like me.” I said, “Well, I thought you were the star. I thought I was supposed to sound like you, because you’re the star of this episode.” He said, “No, no. You’re supposed to sound like yourself.” I said, “How come my acting teacher never told me that? I thought you had to sound like the star.” Of course, I was kidding."

We get ready to do the scene, and I say [in deep voice], “Is it better if I talk like this, Charlie? Do you like that better?” Because he didn’t have a voice as deep as mine. So we used to have the voice wars—who would have the deepest voice would win the contest.”

MUCH OF A RIDER? OWN A BIKE?

“Never. The great thing about that is that’s why we have stuntmen in Hollywood. You get on a bike, roll it into the shot and then get off. But in between, I let the stuntmen do that.”

“I could ride down the street, but not ride like you think of riding, like these really good riders.”

ON PRODUCING:

“You just get up in the morning and go out and do it. Most people are completely shocked that you could go out and actually make a movie. Because it’s been hidden – the secret of making a film.”

ON IVAN NAGY:

“Remember when that Heidi Fleiss stuff was going on? Well, he was one of her boyfriends for a while.”

“Ivan was a Hungarian guy, and he came over. He had a company that used to go around photographing stars—like paparazzis. And he got into this “wanting to make a film.” And he saw Sidehackers, and he called me and said, “Ross, jeez, we could make a movie, you know? And we went out and made two films together: Bad Charleston Charlie and Pushing Up Daisies—the original title was 'The Violent Breed.'"

“We shot Five Minutes of Freedom [Pushing Up Daisies] first. And I had a ranch in Malibu. We built all those sets on the ranch we had in Malibu. So that whole thing was constructed by our team of little filmmakers—the Mexican town, the villages, the blow-ups and stuff.”

“Charlie was shot in Champagne, Illinois. We actually went on location with that film. That was our first attempt to go on location.” (...) “We needed all the old cars and all that stuff. So we went back to Champagne, and they gave us all of that stuff. They even took all the parking meters down and all the TV antennae off roofs and everything.”

ON DAVID CARRADINE IN 'ARMED RESPONSE':

“David was known for sometimes he’d miss a punch and actually hit somebody. And I said, 'No -- in this one, no hitting allowed.'"

WHAT LED TO MAKING MOVIES IN PHILIPPINES?

“We had our office at General Service Studios. And there’s a film called Midnight Cowboy that really took off ... The writer of that, James Leo Herlihy, a friend of ours, he gave me the next book that he had written. Called Hard Rain Falling [ed note: Herlihy wrote a book entitled All Fall Down]. He said, “You can make it if you want.” So I took the book around – a brilliant book – and every studio said, “No, no, no. We don’t want to make a film like that.” So I was sitting in my office, and I said, “You know this is really unbelievable.” The guy’s had a top film. Here’s his book that can easily be turned into a great screenplay. And yet nobody wants to do it. So I thought of the worst idea I could think of: “Wild Women of Cannibal Island”—the original title for Wonder Women. And I went upstairs to Art Marks, who was head of General Service, and I said, “I got this idea. This plane crashes on this island with all these women.” And he goes, “I love it. Let’s make a script.”

(...)

“The next thing we knew, Art had a deal in the Philippines with a guy named Ron Remy, and we were on the airplane going to the Philippines to make Wonder Women. And that was our first adventure out of the United States.”

ON FILMMAKING IN THE PHILIPPINES:

“John [Ashley] was the godfather. If you went into the Philippines, you went to John, and he would tell you who to deal with. Because he had cut the door open, and he knew all of the right players.”

"They’re such wonderful people, the [Filipinos]. It’s fun to work with them. They’re always laughing, and everybody’s having a good time. There’s none of that sourpuss stuff. So I’d say that our film experience in the Philippines was 100% good, happy times."

“Those guys take their cockfighting just as seriously as Spain does their bulls.”

“[Cockfighting] is their national sport. Just as we played it in Supercock is exactly what goes on there. That’s all authentic dialogue ... all of that cockfighting talk in there is exactly the way they talk. There’s not any added Hollywood stuff to that at all.”

"In Wonder Women, most of us stayed at the Intercontinental Hotel in Makati. And it’s a super-class five-star hotel. And of course, we were there, and we got caught in the typhoons of the Philippines, the great rains and stuff. So what we did is we took the ballroom of the hotel, and I produced the film, so I just turned the ballroom into a soundstage. We filmed a lot of the interiors right there in the hotel."

"Fowl Play, we used the old Manilla Motel, the one where MacArthur was in, because it had more of that seedy area. And then Imelda Marcos took it over, and now it’s one of the top hotels in the world. It’s beautiful now."

“COCK” USED AS DOUBLE ENTENDRE IN 'FOWL PLAY'/'SUPERCOCK'?

“Of course, but how nice when you can have a PG film with the name Supercock on it. And it’s PG—there’s no tits, there’s none of that stuff. That was the fun of it. The rating board here, when they were rating the film, they called me after they gave it a PG rating, and they said, “Ross, that title...” And I said, “It’s a chicken! The whole ad shows me running with a chicken!”

“Louisville, Kentucky—when we were opening the film there, they said, “We’re not going to run that ad. It’s pornography.” And I had to fly back to Louisville and convince them it was about a rooster. I said, “Look it up in Webster’s Dictionary. It has nothing to do with your penis."

ON GUS TRIKONIS DIRECTING 'FOWL PLAY':

“Gus is a hell of a director. He took a piece of material like that and shaped it into something that was totally entertaining.”

“Gus would add those little touches, like the bamboo sticks dancing. So he put a little of their culture in the film too.”

ON RUMORS HE DIDN'T ACTUALLY DIRECT 'THE GLOVE':

“No, there was one director. There was me. That was my first directing job. I owned the film. We were looking for a director. Bill Silberkleit was the exec producer, and we were running around, looking for a director, because I’m basically an actor. And we kept talking to different guys, and one day, Bill said, ‘Ross, you direct the damn film.’ And I said, ‘Hell, I don’t know how to direct a film.’ And he said, ‘You know the story well enough. We’ll get you a good cameraman.’ And then Julian Roffman, a guy from Canada, came on, and he had a lot of experience in film. So Julian came on as a producer, and I’ll never forget, Gary Graver."

Mike Malloy's "Elsewhere on the Web" Files #2 -- CROSS SHOT

Nigel Maskell's Italian Film Review (italianfilmreview.com) is a blog that gives one much the same feeling as cracking open an edition of Leonard Maltin's video guide in days of yore -- it's a good place to expeditiously (a) compare your opinion on a particular recent viewing, or (b) get advanced info on what to expect from an upcoming viewing, or (c) browse so as to bulk up your "to watch" pile. The obvious difference being that Nigel's blog is focused entirely on the cool world of Italian genre cinema (the Eurocrime and Giallo genres, primarily) and skips all that other fluff of MGM musicals, Buddy Hackett comedies and whatever else Maltin and his staff wasted their time reviewing. And while still short enough to qualify as capsule reviews, the Italian Film Review write-ups are about three times as long as the old Maltin-book ones. But even so, your humble writer was still too verbose and wordy when he submitted a review (see, Nigel enlists other reviewers too) of the 1976 John Saxon Eurocrime film, CROSS SHOT. So here's the breezy IFR version at the link, followed by a fuller version....

CROSS SHOT write-up on ItalianFilmReview

Where '70s tough-guy actors were concerned, John Saxon couldn't be beat for versatility. During the decade, the actor played equal amounts of leading and supporting parts, as both heroes and villains –- in a bevy of different countries, as a bevy of different ethnicities. But when Saxon made an incredibly prolific burst of 1976-1977 Eurocrime movies, the roles were a lot more lopsided towards villains and supporting parts –- you need only take a look at his nefarious criminal characters in VIOLENT NAPLES, MARK STRIKES AGAIN, SPECIAL COP IN ACTION, THE SWISS CONSPIRACY and THE CYNIC, THE RAT AND THE FIST. Although occasionally he would play a good guy (BLAZING MAGNUMS), only once did he play a heroic lead during his Eurocrime phase, in CROSS SHOT.

The story has Inspector Jacovella (Saxon) chasing a crew of armored-car heisters who killed a cop during the robbery. Jacovella catches up to some of the crooks (and delivers a nice groin kick to one), but another escapes by carjacking a vehicle. Because this new ride contains a briefcase belonging to a local mobster (Lee J. Cobb), the remainder of the film becomes a race between Inspector Jacovella and the mobster to locate the hiding crook.

CROSS SHOT is yet another DIRTY HARRY-inspired Italian cop movie about an angry-at-the-system police detective, but the script doesn't give Saxon much of a twist on this cinematic archetype, except an unusual (even for Eurocrime) penchant for excessive force (at one point, Jacovella pummels a kid for breaking into a cigarette machine). Perhaps to counter this, the film softens Jacovella by giving him a family, and we see him interacting lovingly with his wife and even racing slot cars with his son (played by Saxon's real-life kid -- awwww).

But the biggest twist that CROSS SHOT offers on the Italian angry-cop formula is that here the cop is not butting heads with his police superiors but rather the local newspaperman (Eurocrime fatty Renzo Palmer), who keeps whining that Jacovella's methods are not strictly by the book. Otherwise, all the genre staples are trotted out, from the hostage getting dumped from a moving car (see also CRIME BOSS, VIOLENT ROME, SPECIAL COP IN ACTION, etc) to the blind kingpin character (see also SYNDICATE SADISTS).

Saxon made another film with director Massi that year, playing the villain in MARK STRIKES AGAIN, which is the third in the “Mark the Narc” series. And who was the villain in the first two? CROSS SHOT's Lee J. Cobb.

A fistful of realistically tough and GRIT-ty female performances

The Coen brothers are notoriously meticulous about the details of their films' production design -- extending to casting -- and they're generally spot on. That's why it's disappointing that their new adaptation of the Western novel TRUE GRIT features a button-cute Hailee Steinfeld as its 14-year-old heroine, Mattie Ross. The earlier, 1969 film version of GRIT gets the Mattie character right, with the awkward, boyish-looking actress Kim Darby in the role. Her Mattie is not adorable or instantly endearing. But it is precisely because she has no cute exterior that the viewer must look to her defining inner quality -- dogged persistence -- in order to admire her. And maybe that''s as it should be. Because realistically tough female performances should have nothing to do with attractive women in spandex catsuits doing backflips while spraying machine-gun bullets into baddies. They should be more about real-looking women braving tough circumstances and pulling through, even if only by the skin of their teeth. Sadly, most lists of tough female film performances feature some combination of the same, tired usual suspects: Linda Hamilton, Sigourney Weaver and "them Lara Croft and KILL BILL girls" (I sometimes wonder if mainstream film journalists should have to pass an equivalent of the Bar).

So in honor of Darby's performance, let's look at some other women who are realistically, convincingly tough:

Coleen Gray in KANSAS CITY CONFIDENTIAL (1952)

"I always felt my part was incidental … you have to have a leading lady," Ms. Gray told me during a 2001 interview about her character in this underrated film noir. And sure, she's not a head-turning femme fatale, as would be typical of a hard-boiled crimer, but that doesn't make her part incidental. In fact, Gray's squeaky-clean character (the actress would make a career out of portraying Good Girls) manages to play an integral role in keeping the hero alive. And how does she accomplish this, considering she doesn't fire a shot or throw a punch? Simply by using her law-student smarts to talk their way out of scrapes. And mind you, this is against some of the best screen villains of the 1950s, including Lee Van Cleef and Neville Brand.

Elizabeth James in THE BORN LOSERS (1967)

Before the plainly titled BILLY JACK, there was this lesser-known Billy Jack film, about the half-Indian vigilante's attempt to save a young lady from some bikers who have gang rape on their collective, dim-witted mind. And the girl -- played by Elizabeth James who, sadly, acted in only one other film -- did ultimately need saving. But she fended off their sexual assaults for a good while with her smart mouth ("All together or just one at a time?") and a lug wrench. Sure, her sassy backtalk to the bikers may have been just masking her fear, but she kept her cool (and a brave face) nonetheless. And if James seemed natural delivering the feisty dialogue, it's because she wrote the screenplay under the pseudonym "E. James Lloyd." (According to a 1975 NEW YORK MAGAZINE article, James worked on BILLY JACK too and was intended, for a time, to be the female lead. It's not clear exactly why she wasn't.)

Jodie Foster in THE LITTLE GIRL WHO LIVES DOWN THE LANE (1976)

Foster's impressive 13-year-old character somehow lives in a house all by herself and keeps that fact hidden from the townspeople (even the landlady!) -- all while fending off the advances of a pedophile played by Martin Sheen. This scenario would have been too improbable for a suspension of disbelief if any other actress had played the brave kiddo, but a young Jodie Foster possesses such a strength and intelligence here that it becomes credible. If John Hinckley absolutely had to go nuts over a Foster role, it should have been this and not her TAXI DRIVER part.

Linda Haynes in ROLLING THUNDER (1977)

Is a typical cocktail waitress tough enough to drop what she's doing (in this case literally, with drinks crashing to the floor) and head to Mexico to help a former 'Nam POW find the crooks who robbed him? Dunno, but in the capable hands of Ms. Haynes, we are believers -- perhaps because of the character's well-rounded realism: She likes the revenging 'Nam vet and wants to be supportive, but she doesn't mind putting up a fuss if their Mexican jaunt strays too far from what she signed up for. Also helpful is the waitress's background as the tomboy daughter of an Army sergeant (the scene explaining her history was reportedly added by co-writer Heywood Gould after the character played well in the dailies). Haynes is a cute blonde in this, but it's not the sort of cute that exists only in the movies.

Patty Duke in A MATTER OF JUSTICE (1993, TV)

"My hell began the day my son was killed. Your hell is just beginning." With these fighting words, Patty Duke's strong Alabama woman lays down the gauntlet to her former daughter-in-law, whom she eventually gets convicted for a part in conspiring to kill a young Marine (Duke's character's son). I say "eventually" because the process drags out for years, making Duke's character not only intimidating with her toughspeak but also determined as hell (she travels to other states, hires P.I.s, sits through hearings, and gets personally involved in operations). Although this fact-based TV movie made it to DVD as FINAL JUSTICE and continues to play occasionally on Lifetime, perhaps the biggest testament to Duke's crowd-pleasing toughness is the fact that a certain teenaged Eastwood/Bronson fan (guilty as charged) sat captivated in front of his TV on both nights of its original NBC airing, blown away by the Southern bravado he was witnessing.

CONFIDENTIAL and LITTLE GIRL have both been available on studio DVDs, and the former has also had a myriad of budget releases too (it was/is in the Public Domain). THE BORN LOSERS has been available in a couple of different Billy Jack box sets. ROLLING THUNDER is available from the MGM Movie On Demand dvd-r series. A severely cut MATTER OF JUSTICE is available as an R1 dvd entitled FINAL JUSTICE and as a R2 dvd bearing its original title.

And lastly ... how did Martin Sheen manage to turn up acting alongside 40% of the characters listed here?