Sunday, December 9, 2012

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

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