Met Jeff Goldblum...!

...well I never! Recently saw David Mamet's brilliantly scripted play Speed The Plow at London's Old Vic theatre at the beginning of February. Both Jeff Goldblum and Kevin Spacey were fantastic in the play. Afterwards, I managed to catch the actor at the stage door where he had a bit of banter with autograph hunters. He's a genuinely pleasant fellow, very down to earth. I can't recommend Speed The Plow highly enough.

Into The Night trivia...can you name all the cameos?

Eighteen film directors, one make-up artist and one screenwriter have cameos in the film:

* Paul Mazursky co-stars as beachhouse owner and accused drug dealer Bud Herman.
* Roger Vadim also co-stars as Monsieur Melville, the French kidnapper.
* The man on the elevator with the "nice dog" is played by Jack Arnold.
* The top-hatted doorman at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel is Paul Bartel.
* Ed's boardroom supervisor is played by David Cronenberg.
* The aerospace engineer sitting next to Herb (Dan Aykroyd) in the cafeteria is played by Richard Franklin.
* Amy, the clumsy waitress in Ship's Restaurant, is Amy Heckerling.
* Mr. Williams (Carl Perkins) instructs a man to get off of the phone. The man is Jim Henson. Incidentally, the person Henson is talking to is named "Bert", after Henson's muppet.
* The actor playing the terrorist at a beauty concert is Colin Higgins.
* The script clerk on the hostage film is played by Jonathan Kaufer ("Soup for One" (1982)).
* The director of the hostage film, up on the crane, is played by Daniel Petrie.
* The police detective who interrogates Bud Herman at his beachhouse is Lawrence Kasdan.
* The tailor who fits the SAVAK agents is Jonathan Lynn.
* The driver ogling dirty pictures in the traffic jam at the start of the film is Andrew Marton (King Solomon's Mines (1950), The Longest Day (1962)).
* The man caught with a girl in the bathroom of the Beverly Wilshire Hotel is Don Siegel.
* At the end, two Secret Service agents argue with the head agent (Clu Gulager) in Ed's hotel room. The thin one with the glasses is Jonathan Demme and the larger one with the moustache is Carl Gottlieb.
* John Landis himself appears as the mute member of the quartet of Iranian hitmen.

* Other cameos:
* The drug dealer who tries to sell to Ed and Diana in their car is played by Academy-Award-winning make-up artist Rick Baker.
* The hooker who appears just before Baker is played by Michelle Pfeiffer's sister, Dedee Pfeiffer.
* Screenwriter Waldo Salt plays the derelict who tells Ed that his car has been towed away by the cops.
* Landis often casts musicians in his film. In this one, David Bowie fights Carl Perkins to the death.
* Dan Aykroyd, the star of Landis' earlier film The Blues Brothers, plays Ed's co-worker, Herb.
* Bruce McGill, the co-star of Landis' National Lampoon's Animal House plays Diana's Elvis-impersonator brother, Charlie.

Top 10 Horror Movies of the 1980s

Check out Strange Conversation's Top 10 Horror movies of the 1980s. John Landis' An American Werewolf In London is on the list!

Click HERE for Top 10!

Genius....the greatest late night movie ever made

Check out the 80s Movie Rewind for their thoughts on the movie.

Into The Night on Region 1 DVD

It’s a shame Universal haven’t provided a ‘special’ edition of this film on DVD, as the one additional feature, B.B King: ‘Into The Night’ is nice but rather unfulfilling. They have however, provided the film with good sound and excellent picture quality that remains true to the film’s original theatrical exhibition.

The picture is presented in its original theatrical aspect ratio of 1.85:1, and anamorphic enhanced. Robert Paynter’s photography in Into The Night’s dark exteriors look wonderfully crisp and clear, displaying a lot of detail. Colours are a little faded but true to the rather indistinct, bland cinematography that was used for the film. The print is in notably good condition displaying very little noticeable grain or artefacts.

The soundtrack hasn’t been re-mastered which is unfortunate given its stereo origins, but the Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack does a good enough job. Remaining rather mono throughout, dialogue is clear and music doesn’t drown out speech. Directionality is kept to a minimum but this track is fine for this type of film.

The only additional feature is the W.C Handy Award-Winning documentary ‘B.B King: Into The Night’ which is actually very good. It starts off with a performance of the title song by B.B King which is particularly funny and notable for the backing group that accompanies the singer/songwriter. On drums is Eddie Murphy, on piano Jeff Goldblum, and in the brass section: Dan Aykroyd, Steve Martin and Michelle Pfeiffer – it’s actually quite funny, especially Eddie Murphy’s winks to the camera, and again it seems that Landis has called on his friends to help him out. The documentary proceeds to briefly look at B.B King’s career through an interview with Landis himself, and also looks at how the title song came about and why it was used in the film. There’s some lovely footage of King playing for Landis, as the documentary appears at times to be more a film about Blues music rather than the film itself, but it’s an enjoyable experience. The documentary ends with more footage of King playing with Aykoryd, Goldblum, Martin, Murphy and Pfeiffer. It is approximately 26 minutes long and presented in full-frame 4:3, from what looks like a VHS master.

Into The Night...postmodern?

Although this film is not a great one, it probably is more suitable than any other I know of for a demonstration of the modern/post-modern debate. In the middle of the previous century, actors and authors were trying to dig deeper and deeper into reality, to create an illusion that the audience wasn't watching a manufactured drama, but actual life. Pauline Kael wrote about a play she saw in March of 1946, in which a young, unknown actor had an epileptic fit on the stage of the Belasco Theater in Maxwell Anderson's "Truckline Cafe". She was embarrassed for the poor kid, thinking it a shame that he got his first break in a big role, and then had to have something like that happen on stage during the play. She was not the only one deceived by this illusion. Except for those who had seen the play before, the entire audience was convinced that it was not the character who was convulsing, but the actor. On more than one occasion, an employee of the theater had to stop people from calling doctors, or to stop doctors from rushing to his assistance.

Now THAT'S acting. As a former stage actor with the love for theater but not the talent, I could die happily if I could do that.

The unknown actor did not remain unknown for very long. Very soon thereafter, he would dazzle the world with his stage and screen performances in a Streetcar Named Desire.

Brando's acting coach was Stella Adler. Ms Adler and Lee Strasberg were the two most famous advocates of the Stanislavsky "method" of acting, a style that would gradually replace the old oratorical style of acting exemplified by such stars as John Barrymore and Burt Lancaster. Brando moved to Hollywood in 1950, and "the method" moved with him. Hollywood gradually, slowly started replacing the old larger-than-life, speechified style of Lancastrian acting with the new modern method in which guys tried to be exactly the same size as life. Movie conventions followed suit. It was an unwritten understanding in the most serious "modern" movies that the characters in those movies didn't see other movies, and didn't copy characters in other movies. Movies existed in one world, reality in another. A movie was allowed to copy reality, but not to copy other movies. Characters in "worthwhile", "modern" movies were supposed to behave like people, not like movie characters or speechmakers.

Parallel to that development was a completely contrary one, as is so often the case. As movies gained a greater and greater influence on our consciousness, they became part of cultural reality, not separate from it, and became fully integrated into culture itself. Movies started to base themselves on the worlds created in previous movies rather than on the real world. Characters started to speak dialogue which referred to other movies. Characters sometimes even knew they were in a movie. Most important, characters behaved by the conventions of movie character behavior, not by the rules of life. In any given situation, if you could imagine the character asking himself "what would a real person do in this case?" and "what would a movie character do in this case?", you'd realize that they always chose the latter. These movies are not really like the "modern" ones, and they are not really any form of nostalgia, or recidivism. They are something new, post-modern movies, a neologism necessary to acknowledge that the gap between the "real" world and the "movie" words is disappearing, because movies shape popular culture.

The debate between the supporters of these styles raged for decades, and continues to do so. The reality school will always produce great films like To Kill a Mockingbird, The Pianist and Raging Bull, but the post-modernist school is grabbing more and more of the public's imagination. More and more existing movies seem to live in the world of previous movies, not in the real world. (Scream would be the perfect illustration.) Tarantino's films push the limit of the post-modernist theory. Although they include characters who seem to be human, they are not. They come from an alien culture, just as surely as the oddest characters from the oddest world on Star Trek, except that the culture they come from exists in a world of infinite width and height, and infinitesimal depth: the world on screen.

John Landis's Into the Night was very much a harbinger of Tarantino's films. It exists in a world which seems sorta like earth except nothing in it ever has happened, or ever will. The plot developments are not only illogical, they simply could not be. They are deliberately as silly as possible, in order to let the audience in on the joke. At the very end, when all seems blackest for our heroes, as they appear to be headed for a few years of serious prison sodomy, a "federal agent" brings them three quarters of a million dollars and sanctuary. Defying the entire concept of an "agent", he doesn't have an agency - he just identifies himself by saying "I'm a federal agent". He's just doing what all federal agents do - delivering vast quantities of money from one civilian to another. On his way out, he pockets about a hundred grand of the windfall for himself because - "who are you gonna tell?"

The film begins with a slice from the Sad Sack life of an aerospace engineer (Jeff Goldblum). I reckon they don't pay those aerospace lads a lot, because even though he has an engineering job and a working wife, Goldblum lives in a 50s tract house, next to an auto paint/body shop, under a noisy double freeway overpass. Ah, California Dreamin'! That only scratches the surface of how deep his life sucks. He can't sleep, for one thing. We're not talkin' a mild sleeping disorder here, where he tosses and turns and sleeps fitfully, then falls asleep on the job the next day. Nosireebob. He doesn't sleep at all. Nada. He just stares ahead in a daze, night and day. This gradually erodes his alertness until one day he screws up on the job, gets sent home, and finds his wife in bed with an ugly bald dude.
Ouch. This is gonna be one really bad day. Even worse than the norm for his life.

The bad day becomes a worse night when he drives around aimlessly and gets in the middle of a situation with a damsel in distress, ruthless Iranian smugglers (who act like the Keystone Kops with live ammo, and blow up most of Los Angeles that night), French thieves, English hit men, Elvis impersonators, and God knows what else. No matter where Goldblum takes the distressed damsel (Michelle Pfeiffer) trouble follows, although never logically.

To stress the point that this is not a film about people, but a film about films, the script is filled with dozens of completely inessential characters, and Landis filled many of those roles with his fellow directors, including David Cronenberg, Jonathan Demme, Jim Henson, Colin Higgins, Lawrence Kasdan, Jonathan Lynn, Paul Mazursky, Daniel Petrie, Don Siegel, and Roger Vadim. Oh, yes, and Landis himself plays one of the Iranian Keystone Kops. We can be thankful that most of these people had no more than a line or two, but of the four that had larger roles, some did fairly well, while others bombed. Landis did fine in a fairly big role with no lines. David Cronenberg did well as an aerospace geek. Paul Mazursky performed at the level of a local used car salesman reading cue cards. Roger Vadim got the maximum mileage out of his limited ability in a pretty funny turn, acting in a role obviously written just for him, and one completely inessential to the film.

If the presence of a dozen directors isn't enough evidence that we live in a post-modern world, this film also allows us to watch a long stretch of the movie "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein", in a Landis homage to one of the first films which not only acknowledged the existence of earlier films, but actually entered their world.

Let's face it, this movie is dumb. Is this a bad thing? I don't see why. I really like it. I just accepted the fact that it was a fantasy, kicked back, and went along for the ride. Not every day is an Ingmar Bergman day. Some days you just want to go to Six Flags and ride the roller coaster.

Director John Landis

John Landis began his career in the mail room of 20th Century-Fox. A high-school dropout, 18-year-old Landis made his way to Yugoslavia to work as a production assistant on Kelly's Heroes (1970). Remaining in Europe, Landis found work as an actor, extra and stuntman in many of the Spanish/Italian "spaghetti" westerns. Returning to the US, he made his feature debut as a writer-director at age 21 with Schlock (1973), an affectionate tribute to monster movies. Clad in a 'Rick Baker (I)' -designed gorilla suit, Landis starred as "Schlockthropus", the missing link. After working as a writer, actor and production assistant, Landis made his second film, The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977), in collaboration with the Zucker brothers and 'Jim Abrahams' . Landis rose to international recognition as director of the wildly successful Animal House (1978). With blockbusters such as The Blues Brothers (1980), Trading Places (1983), Spies Like Us (1985), ¡Three Amigos! (1986) and Coming to America (1988), Landis has directed some of the most popular film comedies of all time. Other feature credits include Into the Night (1985/I), Innocent Blood (1992) and the comedy/horror genre classic An American Werewolf in London (1981), which he also wrote. In 1986 Landis and four others, were acquitted of responsibility for the tragic accident that occurred in Landis' segment of Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983) in which actor 'Vic Morrow' and two child actors were killed. The film also included segments directed by 'Joe Dante (I)' , 'George Miller (II)' and 'Steven Spielberg (I)' . In 1983 Landis wrote and directed the groundbreaking music video of 'Michael Jackson (I)' 's Thriller (1983) (V), created originally to play as a theatrical short. "Thriller" forever changed MTV and the concept of music videos, garnering multiple accolades including the MTV Video Music Awards for Best Overall Video, Viewer's Choice, and the Video Vanguard Award - The Greatest Video in the History of the World. In 1991 "Thriller" was inducted into the MVPA's Hall of Fame. In 1991, Landis collaborated again with Jackson (I) on Black or White (1991) (V), which premiered simultaneously in 27 countries with an estimated audience of 500 million. Although it was not the first motion picture or music video to do so, "Black or White" popularized the use of "digital morphing", where one object appears to seamlessly metamorphoses into another; the project raised the standard for state-of-the-art special effects in music videos. Landis has also been active in television as the executive producer (and often director) of the Ace- and Emmy Award-winning HBO series "Dream On" (1990). Other TV shows produced by his company, St. Clare Entertainment (St. Clare is the patron saint of television), include "Weird Science" (1994), "Sliders" (1995), "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids: The TV Show" (1997), "Campus Cops" (1995) and The Lost World (1998). In 2004 the Independent Film Channel broadcast his feature-length documentary about a used-car salesman, Slasher (2004) (TV). Deer Woman, an original one-hour episode written by Landis and his son 'Max Landis' , inaugurated the "Masters of Horror" (2005) series in the fall of 2005 on Showtime. "Masters of Horror" also features one-hour episodes by 'John Carpenter (I)' , 'Roger Corman' , 'Tobe Hooper' , 'Don Coscarelli' , 'Mick Garris' , 'Dario Argento' and 'Larry Cohen (I)' .

A sought-after commercial director, Landis has worked for a variety of companies including Direct TV, Taco Bell, Coca Cola, Pepsi, Kellogg's and Disney. He was made a Chevalier dans l'ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government in 1985, awarded the Federico Fellini Prize by Rimini Cinema Festival in Italy and was named a George Eastman Scholar by The Eastman House in Rochester, New York. Both the Edinburgh Film Festival and the Torino Film Festival have held career retrospectives of his films. In 2004 Landis received the Time Machine Career Achievement Award at the Sitges Film Festival in Spain. Sent as a filmmaker/scholar by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences, Landis has lectured at many film schools and universities including Yale, Harvard, NYU, UCLA, UCSB, USC, Texas A&M, The North Carolina School of the Arts, University of Miami and Indiana University. He has also acted as a teacher and advisor to aspiring filmmakers at the Sundance Institute in Utah. Additionally, he edited Best American Movie Writing 2001 (Thunder's Mouth Press, NY, 2001). Born in Chicago, Illinois, Landis moved to Los Angeles soon after his birth. He is married to 'Deborah Nadoolman' , an Oscar-nominated costume designer, and President of the Costume Designers Guild, with whom he has two children.


Spouse
Nadoolman, Deborah (27 July 1980 - present) 2 children

Trade Mark

The phrase "See You Next Wednesday". Supposedly, the phrase is the title of a film that Landis had an idea for at the age of 15. The title is a direct reference to a line in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). He describes the film as the kind of movie that a 15 year old adolescent boy would have made. He sometimes uses ideas from this movie, and when he does he puts the phrase in as a "homage". It is not in all of his movies [SYNW].

Airport scenes in Into the Night (1985/I) and Coming to America (1988) have a call over the PA systemfor a 'Mr Frank Ozkerwitz' to pick up the white courtesy phone. This is 'Frank Oz' 's real name. Landis' work frequently features Oz.

Music: 'The Girl from Ipanema'.

Frequently casts other directors and filmmakers in small roles.

Often casts 'Stephen Bishop (I)' as "Charming Guy" in his films, basically a bit part for a friend.

Often has an image of large gorilla, usually King Kong, somewhere in a movie.

Features clips of cast members in the ending credits when their name appears

He often has his characters look into camera lens to make eye contact with the audience or "break frame".

Frequently works with 'Dan Aykroyd' .

Films usually contain a scene where a full song is sung (see: Animal House (1978), The Blues Brothers (1980), Coming to America (1988), Blues Brothers 2000 (1998)).

Trivia

The trademark trivia often mentioned in Landis-directed films, the inclusion in some form of the phrase "See you next Wednesday", is a reference to a line in the 'Stanley Kubrick' film 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), where astronaut Frank Poole watches a video sent to him by his wife and father on the occasion of his birthday. At the end of the video his wife says, "See you next Wednesday!", an obvious reference to their next available time to transmit a message to the distant spacecraft bound for Jupiter, though since Frank is killed within the next day or two by HAL, it is perhaps meant as an ironic trademark since it seems to occur in Landis films when characters are in great danger. It appears during the werewolf rampage as the title on the marquee of a porno theater in An American Werewolf in London (1981). It is spoken in German when 'Vic Morrow' is being shot at on the building in the sequence he directed for Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983). In The Blues Brothers (1980) it's on a billboard where the the cops are lying in wait. Then again, it mostly appears as the name on movie posters, so that it probably became merely something to watch for like 'Alfred Hitchcock (I)' 's cameos. It first appeared in his first film Schlock (1973) as the name of a movie and as a movie poster in a theater lobby. It appeared again in his second film. The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977), as the title of the "Feel-O-Rama" movie. It surfaces in an apartment in Trading Places (1983) on a movie poster. In Coming to America (1988) it appears in a subway station (the movie claims to star 'Jamie Lee Curtis' , who appeared in "Trading Places"). Another poster is visible in Ophelia's apartment. In Spies Like Us (1985) it appears on the recruitment poster behind the desk of the commander of the army training post. In Into the Night (1985/I) it appears on two posters in the office where Ed and Diana make the phone call. In Innocent Blood (1992) it is once again advertised on a movie marquee across the street from the Melody Lounge exotic dance bar near where a car crash takes place. It also appears in the 'Michael Jackson (I)' video Thriller (1983) (V), which was directed by Landis. One of the men chasing the werewolf finds a note and reads this out while the shot shows MJ in the theater eating popcorn.

In his early career he worked as a stunt-man specialising in horse-falls.

He directed the music videos Thriller (1983) (V) and Black or White (1991) (V), both by 'Michael Jackson (I)' . He has a small cameo as the director in "Black Or White".

Father of 'Max Landis' and 'Rachel Landis' .

After he dropped out of school at age 17 he worked as mailman at the Fox studios.

Went to school with 'Eliza Roberts' .

Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume Two, 1945-1985". Pages 555-559. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1988.

Has never shot a film in the 2.35:1 aspect ratio.

Once worked as an attendant in a parking lot.

One of his favorite movies is Charme discret de la bourgeoisie, Le (1972). He admits that this film inspired the use of the dream within a dream gag in An American Werewolf in London (1981).

Member of the jury at the Venice Film Festival in 1989.

Personal Quotes

"The [movie industry] ratings board reflect[s] the morals of the times. So now, with Reagan as president, it's all right to shred children, but bare breasts are pretty disgusting. The morality of the times is deeply sick." American Film Institute speech, January 27, 1982

"When 'Animal House' turned out the way it did, they all rushed to me with barrels of money begging me to make them rich."

"I've done every job there is to do on a movie set except makeup. Wait a minute, I've done makeup. I've done every job there is to do on a movie set except hairdressing."

[Commenting on visiting Paramount for the first time in years.] "I felt like Norma Desmond."

In 1991: "I live with the "Twilight Zone" every day of my life."

"I've had people come up to me and say Jake and Elwood Blues are these legendary blues artists and I start thinking 'uh-oh'."