Stanley Donen (1924 – 2019) was an American film director and choreographer best-known for Singin’ in the Rain (1952).
We remember him fondly for directing Bedazzled, an updated version of the Faust legend set in 1967.
Dudley Moore plays a lonely young man whose unrequited love of his co-worker drives him to attempt suicide. Just then the devil (Peter Cook) appears and offers him seven wishes in exchange for his soul.
The film’s fun-loving association with the Swinging London of the 1960s is smart and well-executed.
Henry Jacobs was an American sound artist and humorist, known for the radio program Music and Folklore, the TV program The Fine Art of Goofing Off (1971–1972) and compositions such as “Sonata For Loudspeakers” (1955).
He also invented the fictional characters Sixt Von Arnim, Sholem Stein and Shorty Petterstein.
Of these three, Sholem Stein is my favorite. I used him as a mystification in my book on the history of erotica in which I put the following words into his mouth:
“Man reveals his true nature in his fears and desires. Show me what he is afraid of, show me what excites him, I will tell you who he is.”
I use Sholem Stein off and on nowadays, I usually have him cite dicta I don’t know who to ascribe to.
Ken Nordine (1920 – 2019) was an American voice artist, best known for his series of spoken word jazz poetry albums, the first of which was Word Jazz (1957).
Bruno Ganz was was an internationally renowned Swiss actor.
He collaborated with filmmakers Werner Herzog (Nosferatu the Vampyre, 1979), Éric Rohmer (The Marquise of O, 1976), Francis Ford Coppola (Youth Without Youth, 2007), Wim Wenders (The American Friend, 1977 and Wings of Desire, 1987) and Jonathan Demme (The Manchurian Candidate, 2004).
Ganz was internationally lauded for portraying Adolf Hitler in the film Downfall (2004).
For the occasion, I watched Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979)of which the German version is online. Ganz plays Jonathan Harker, Count Dracula is played by a heavily breathing, almost panting Klaus Kinski.
Pay special attention to the beauty of Isabelle Adjani; the opening sequence of the Mummies of Guanajuato; the film score by Krautrock outfit Popol Vuh and Richard Wagner’s prelude to Das Rheingold, Charles Gounod’s “Sanctus” from Messe solennelle à Sainte Cécile and traditional Georgian folk song Tsintskaro; and the frantic mad scenes by Roland Topor.
The film is wonderful. It’s an hommage to the 1922 version by F. W. Murnau.
Tomi Ungerer was a French illustrator known for his children’s books, as well as his satirical and erotic work for adults.
I attended an interview with Ungerer in 2014 and wrote this small piece in Dutch after the occasion and also did a post on Tumblr[1].
I’ll never forget the moment at he end of the interview when he started singing “Die Gedanken sind frei” and many of the German-language invites joining in.
Fornicon (1969) [above] is a collection of 60 prints of scenes of funny machine-aided sadomasochistic male domination. When I say machine-aided, think Rube Goldberg machine. Box sets of these prints are being sold for as high as 3,000$. Books can be had for as little as ten dollars.
Ungerer’s humor is quite like that of Roland Topor.
Some people don’t make the news when they die. Among them this gentleman.
William Hamling was an American publisher of pulp and erotica, in a time when publishing books could still be dangerous (it has not been dangerous for the last fifty years of so, at least in the west). His financial backing for the case Redrup v. New York against Robert Redrup, a book seller who sold Hamling’s risqué paperbacks was instrumental in abolishing obscenity censorship in the United States.
Both its editor Earl Kemp and Hamling himself were sentenced to one year in prison for “conspiracy to mail obscene material,” but both served only the federal minimum of three months and one day. Incredible if you come to think of it (and strange also, considering that the Redrup case supposedly abolished obscenity censorship).
I would have thought a complete version of this grand example of détournement to have been available by now, disappointingly so, this is not the case.
Dick Miller was an American actor (Gremlins, The Little Shop of Horrors, Death Race 2000) known for his films with Roger Corman. He later appeared in the films of directors who began their careers with Corman, including James Cameron and Joe Dante.
He was, in the words of Cult Movie Stars (1991) a “scene-stealer in low-budget horror films”.
Above is the enormously amusing film The Little Shop of Horrors (1960, above) in which Miller plays a carnation-eating (“I’m crazy about kosher flowers”) regular customer of the florist in which the film is set.
Minute 34:48 has Jack Nicholson come in as a masochistic client to the dentist. That scene was later done by [1] with Steve Martin as the dentist and Bill Murray as the client.
I’ve seen quite some films with mister Miller, all entertaining, unassuming and unpretentious.