Living in California and having as friends many artists, writers, and poets (all of them, to a one, blissfully, unreflectively liberal), I often have the opportunity to hear them wax poetic about the Golden Age of their lives: the late 1960s/early 1970s hippie scene centered around San Francisco/Berkeley. The drugs were amazing, the sex constant and unreserved, the spirit of joie de vivre and carpe diem all-encompassing.

After listening to these misty-eyed reveries, I usually press them with what, to anyone else, would be the obvious question: If it was all so great, why did they leave the Haight and the Castro and all of their associated communes and bong-fueled revolutions behind, and fall into a more conventional lifestyle elsewhere? Why not continue living in what was, according to them, the closest thing to paradise on earth imaginable?

The answer, boiled down, is usually some variant of “I realized the lifestyle was killing me — that if I didn’t get away I would soon be dead.” I’ve heard tales of bad drug trips, violence and paranoia, anarchism and terrorism, and any number of utterly disgusting and disease-ridden sexual perversions. Promising paradise and delivering nightmares is as good a definition of socialism as any (socialism, communism, liberalism, progressivism — call it what you will, it’s all the same poison, just delivered in different doses and by different means). Every few decades a new group of idealistic young fools attempt to stage a new revolt (“Yes, we can!”) in an attempt to overturn the wisdom of their forefathers and the immutable laws of reality, and each time they end up like Icarus, staging spectacular belly-flops into cesspools of unintended consequences.

Examine the cinema of the era, and you’ll see this whole thing play out again and again. Easy Rider, Billy Jack, Vanishing Point, The French Connection, Apocalypse Now!, and so many others glorified nihilism, hedonism, revolution, and hopelessness. Again and again we were treated to, on the one hand, liberal myths of heroes striving mightily to fight, escape, or ignore evil conservative society only to be mercilessly extinguished, and on the other stories of conservatives discovering the corruption and emptiness infecting their base values and ideals.

One of the things I am most grateful for in my life is that I came of age not in the late Sixties, when America was descending into this chaos, but in the early Eighties, when Ronald Reagan was dragging us out of it. (more…)

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This via a press release from the Young America’s Foundation (YAF). Reagan paraphrases a bit of scripture in the preview below, “I look to the hills, from whence cometh my strength.” Reads the actual scripture, “I lift up my eyes to the hills from whence cometh my help. My help comes from the Divine; Maker of heaven and earth.”

SANTA BARBRA, CA – Young America’s Foundation announced today that their inaugural film production, Still Point in a Turning World: Ronald and his Ranch, will premier at the conclusion of the Foundation’s Reagan 100 Gala with Vice President Dick Cheney. The dinner banquet will be held at the Reagan Ranch Center on Saturday night. The film, written and directed by Stephen K. Bannon, is the definitive examination of Ronald Reagan’s beloved ranch and its personification of his philosophy and values. Ronald Reagan’s Rancho del Cielo, the “‘Ranch in the Sky,” was not just a respite from the chaotic world that his Presidency encountered, but also a living embodiment of the values he held dear. The Ranch was where hard work and self-reliance showed themselves in the principles he championed for all Americans: Freedom, Prosperity, Victory.

The thought of an homage to Reagan’s Ranch left me thinking about Sarah Palin’s recent travelogue from Alaska, which some in the establishment viewed as un-presidential. Somehow I doubt they would dare say the same thing about former President Reagan drawing strength from his ranch. It’s also worth noting how his Crawford ranch played such a significant role in the presidency of George Bush. The theme of a rugged outdoorsman, or perhaps one day a woman, and the American spirit, and even the presidency, goes all the way back to Teddy Roosevelt, if not further. (more…)

Reality demonstrates that people act on their basest needs. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs says that basic needs are things like food, shelter, safety, and security.  If one progresses up the scale, needs like love, belonging, esteem, and respect become important.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Hollywood is a competitive place to live and work.  People who live and work there know that it might be the most competitive place to live in the entire world.  The drive to succeed, to find an edge that propels you to the next level can be very compelling for those who are weak.  Of those who crave the sort of attention that might compel them into the snake pit that is Hollywood, psychologists could agree that components in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs are lacking in key areas such as confidence, friendship, and even morality.  All of these mid-level needs should be met for healthy development of creativity, intellect, problem solving, and other high-level needs.  Maslow might reason that in the desperate setting of Hollywood, the underdevelopment of needs like morality, confidence, respect of self and from others might lead to the malformative finding of one’s self at the top of the triangle, with many of the more basic needs still lacking.  In Abraham Maslow’s terms, this is a recipe for disaster of philosophical incorporation. (more…)

The President and his clan are all tied-up-in-knots over not being able to raise taxes on those they deem rich. When Democrats don’t get their way they loose all rational thought like teen-girls suffering a case of front row “Bieber Fever.”  This latest flood of emotions has left Democrats and Obama feeling as if they’ve been taken hostage by the GOP. So rather than just handing over pizza and soda to Republicans so they can feed their captors on the hill, I thought it more instructive to send them five of the best hostage films on DVD during this trying time.

“Dog Day Afternoon”: This Sidney Lumet film starring Al Pacino ranks as one of the best, and actually does comes with pizza and soda. When Sonny robs a bank to pay for his boyfriend’s sex change operation, things go horribly wrong and the first-time robber ends up with a bank full of hostages (Democrats).

This film is the perfect framework for Democrats to work their victim identity while trying to sneak in a pork-barrel project that gives members who lost in the last election a sex change before heading home for the holidays.

“Die Hard”: The first “Die Hard” film is also one of the best action films of all time and full of holiday hostages. Detective John McLane single-handedly saves a tower full of captives at his wife’s Christmas party from thirteen Euro-trash thieves trying to steel $640 million in bearer bonds. (more…)

You had to hide it somewhere that no one would find it:  your very first record, tape, CD– whatever medium– that Mom and Dad didn’t approve of.  You had to listen to it through headphones or when they were out of the house.  You had to do this because you knew it was an act of rebellion; your parents did not want you hearing that music performed that way with those lyrics, and you decided that you wouldn’t obey them.  According to the new documentary Rockin’ The Wall, that simple moment of defiance, experienced collectively by the citizens of the Soviet Union, contributed to and may have even defined the fall of the Berlin Wall.

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Co-produced by Big Hollywood contributor Larry Schweikart, who first wrote about this issue in his book 7 Events That Made America America, and narrated by Adam Baldwin, Rockin’ the Wall gives viewers an intimate look into life in East Berlin, where citizens were restricted by a literal concrete wall from the same free enterprise and thought that their neighbors in the Western half of the city enjoyed.  Commentators in the film range from bow tie-wearing historians to shaggy-haired rock musicians, with the most interesting tidbits coming from individuals who had lived under Soviet rule in East Berlin (some of whom escaped before the wall fell).  Noting that this was the first time in history where walls were used to keep citizens in rather than invaders out, the film conveys a palpable feeling of the quiet rebellion simmering against a regime so petty as to restrict women from putting their hair in ponytails.

The film’s thesis, that rock and roll music brought down the wall, seems spurious at first.  After its fast-paced introduction, we’re treated to a montage of aged musicians opining on the nature of rock and roll, how it embodies liberty and rebellion, and we’re thinking, “Okay, but how does this relate to–” right as director Marc Leif unleashes a barrage of information that convincingly portrays rock music as the driving force of anti-Communist subversion.  We learn about Radio Free Europe, whose modern music penetrated the wall and was forbidden by the Soviets.  We learn about the black market for Western records, where demand was so high that a single LP could cost 1/10th of a week’s wages.  We learn about the conferences for young people warning them of the physical and mental dangers of rock and roll.

(more…)

[Editor's Note: Script reviews of upcoming projects have been around for as long as there's been an Internet. Therefore it's no secret that a film can evolve into something quite different from its screenplay. Please keep in mind that this article represents a look at a particular script and not the final product.]

The script, formerly titled Bagman, has been retitled Casino Jack, perhaps in candor or maybe hope, as the structure echoes Martin Scorsese’s masterwork Casino.  That film’s narrative structure, the film noir plot which begins near the end, with voice over by the protagonist in an ambiguous time warp, then rewinds to skip around in the plot back to the earlier scene, is replicated in Casino Jack.  Such imitation is revealing, as Scorsese’s Casino gives us nothing less than the essence of an era, the golden age of Las Vegas, before it is destroyed by the characters we follow, Sam ‘Ace’ Rothstein, Nicky Santoro, Ginger, and the old-time mob, through failures of limits, trust, growth, and awareness, to be overtaken by corporate ownership.  

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Casino Jack harbors similar aspirations, the essence of an era, in this case ostensibly the Bush II era.  But it is the “Republican Revolution” that Casino Jack targets, and after beginning with the Washington Post exposure and bust of the fictional “Jack Abramoff” and the murder of “Gus Boulis,” we discover the 21 year old Jack rooted in 1980, a college Republican riding in a campaign limo with “Ronald Reagan” himself, who counsels Jack: never surrender; there are no constraints on the human mind; no walls around the human spirit; no barriers to our progress except those we erect ourselves; the family is everything; all great changes in America begins around the dinner table.  This is Casino Jack’s foundational Reaganite wisdom, though Reagan will return and give Jack a cryptic warning, too late, about idealism. 

This Jack is an agent of smashmouth capitalism. Early on we see him busted in his Gulfstream wearing a $1000 Armani suit.  He is the son of a “Rat Pack” former Diners Club president now retired to Palm Springs, raised in Beverly Hills, and has become a superstar Washington lobbyist representing Indian tribes’ gambling interests.  Jack also invests, through homeboy “Adam Kidan” (think Joe Pesci’s Nicky Santoro) in Florida offshore gambling boats and owns a fancy restaurant in DC.  He represents the Northern Mariana Islands, where his Congressman friend vacations, entertained by a “nubile young Asian woman,”  and which manufactures “in the rag trade” under “Made in USA” labels, not subject to US labor law.  It is an increasingly murky, tragic saga of greedy Republican financial chicanery.  When things unravel, a partner at Jack’s firm compares the whole debacle to Enron.     (more…)

Editor’s note: Script reviews of upcoming projects have been around for as long as there’s been an Internet. Therefore it’s no secret that a film can evolve into something quite different from its screenplay. Please keep in mind that this article represents a look at a particular script and not the final product. 

Author’s note: There are a couple of spoilers in this review. If you are dying to watch this movie when it is released in 2011 don’t read any further. 

When BH editor extraordinaire John Nolte asked me if I wanted to do a Sucker Punch review of the script for The Iron Lady, the upcoming film featuring Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher, my response was (and I quote), “Yes!!!” After reading the script, however, I almost wish I had declined the offer.

Why? Well, when I think of Margaret Thatcher, I think of an extraordinary woman who defied the odds to become the UK’s first woman prime minister and who did her best to bring her nation, kicking and screaming, into a period of prosperity - a nation that was on the brink of financial collapse when she first came to office in 1979. Being human like the rest of us, she had triumphs, and also some failures. For a comprehensive look at both her successes and what she might have done differently, see this article at The Heritage Foundation.

Unfortunately, Thatcher (formally known as Baroness Thatcher, having had the lifetime peerage bestowed upon her by Queen Elizabeth II in 1992), after a lifetime of strength, courage and fortitude, is now known to be suffering from dementia, a terrible disease in which one begins to forget little things and slowly forgets more and more. I cannot imagine how frightening it must be to begin to forget one’s loved ones and, perhaps, oneself.

But it’s great fodder for a movie, especially if the subject is a strong conservative woman whose policies have always been loathed by the left. Who cares if she’s still alive but unable to defend herself against the film’s implications? (more…)

When I saw that Charlton Heston’s former publicist, Michael Levine, had started a petition to let “the Citizen Stamp Advisory Commission [know] that Heston deserves to be placed on a postage stamp,” I emailed Big Hollywood’s Editor John Nolte and jumped at the chance to write this post.

I did so because to honest students of Hollywood’s history, the very name Charlton Heston conjures up visions of greatness. He filled every room he entered, and spoke with a voice that commanded audience after audience, generation after generation.

Although he’s remembered for staring roles in “The Ten Commandments” (1956), “Ben-Hur” (1959), and the “Planet of the Apes” (1968), those are just the tip of the iceberg. During his lifetime he “earned two Academy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, three Emmy Award nominations, …the Kennedy Center Honors: Lifetime Achievement Award.” He “was a six-time president of the Screen Actors Guild, president of the American Film Institute,” and he “received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George Bush [in 2003].”

A renaissance man if ever there was one, Heston is also famous for marching with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1963, for serving as president of the National Rifle Association (NRA) from 1998 to 2003, and for being an unapologetic warrior for decency and tradition in America’s “cultural war.”

And let’s not forgot that he was also a veteran of World War II. That’s right: he not only talked the talk, he walked the walk as well. (more…)

According to yesterday’s Hollywood Reporter (more below the fold), even though actor James Brolin might have attempted to forever cement the world’s memory of Ronald Reagan as a “shallow thinker, indecisive, lost in the past and easily manipulated” through the incredible power of moving pictures via a disgraced mini-series, that was all just a big misunderstanding. In fact, Brolin’s a big Reagan fan! Now. Or maybe he always was. Or, as the Left always does, maybe he’s jumping on the history bandwagon that long ago left him far behind… Reagan was good, Communism was bad. Who knew?

Imagine how difficult it must have been for a fan like Brolin to portray his hero saying this of AIDS sufferers: “They that live in sin shall die in sin.” Of course Reagan never said any such thing and the line was eventually cut before the program aired. But Brolin loves the Gipper.

For those of you who don’t know, James Brolin’s Indian name is Creepy Truther Who Mocks 9/11: 

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And here here’s Creepy Truther Who Mocks 9/11 referring the “View” audience to a Creepy Truther website, which I’m sure fellow Creepy Truther, Rosie – fire can’t melt steel – O’Donnell, bookmarked immediately: (more…)

The Hollywood Reporter is reporting that major industry figures are planning a Ronald Reagan biopic, which is slated to cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $30 million.  The figures involved are Mark Joseph, Ralph Winter, and Jonas McCord.  Joseph optioned the wonderful Paul Kengor books The Crusader and God and Ronald Reagan; he’s is a marketing and development exec who worked on Ray, Holes, and The Passion of the Christ.  Winter, produced the four X-Men movies, two “Fantastic Four” movies, and the remake of Planet of the Apes.  McCord wrote Malice and The Body. 

Joseph and Winter clearly lean right politically; Joseph commented, quite rightly:

“Only in Hollywood could you make an insulting, condescending movie about a much-loved historical figure, hire an actor who loathes the man, watch it flop and then somehow conclude that Americans don’t want to see a movie about him.  I watched Americans line up and wait for 10 hours for the simple privilege of passing by his closed casket. They love this man.”  

I was one of the Americans who lined up to pass by his closed casket.  I am an unabashed fan of Ronald Wilson Reagan.  And I couldn’t be more excited about this movie. 

The movie is supposedly going to cover Reagan’s life from birth to the assassination attempt on him by John Hinckley, Jr., which was a transformative moment in the Reagan presidency.  Presumably there will be some coverage of Reagan’s impact on winning the Cold War and creating the largest peacetime economic boom in American history.   (more…)

“Walt Disney, who was a strong political conservative, sometimes used Zorro episodes to rail against the evils of big government. When Guy Williams was auditioning for the part, the cartoon maker suggested the actor grow a mustache similar to Walt’s.” — From my book, Hollywood Stories: Short, Entertaining Anecdotes About the Stars and Legends of the Movies!

My main goal in writing Hollywood Stories, just like when I am giving a tour, is to entertain. There is an endless amount of fascinating, fun material regarding Tinseltown’s colorful characters such as Marlon Brando who was too lazy to learn his lines in Superman (1978). When placing his soon to be Super-baby on a space ship to escape the doomed planet Krypton, the actor’s dialogue was written on the bottom of the infant’s diaper. People love the story first related to me by one of my passengers. He had taken his family on the Universal tour when a tall man dressed up like the knife wielding Norman Bates in drag from the 1960 Alfred Hitchcock shocker Psycho, came charging out at the tram. The maniacal figure gave the tourists a good scare before revealing himself to be comedian Jim Carrey! And speaking of scares there are also great tales about lessor-known Hollywood figures, like the time movie theater owner Sid Grauman hired two stuntman to dress up as pilots for the sole reason of tricking a famous director on a 1930s airplane flight. The two phonies came into the cabin, told the passengers that their ship was running out of gas, and jumped out with parachutes. (more…)

A Los Angeles Times article I read recently made me chuckle. It began by wearily tossing an exhausted barb at the 3-D phenomenon sweeping Hollywood: “With sighs of relief, critics last week took off their Polaroid glasses and looked at a couple of old-fashioned, two-dimensional films.” The big-screen photography of one of those pictures drew particular attention, with one critic noting that “It gives reality a true third dimension. . . the kind of 3-D you cannot get with mechanical tricks or by any other means except a rich comprehension and ingenious mastery of the visual storyteller’s art.”

Well, let me fess up. I read the article recently, yes — but in a fifty-year-old copy of the Los Angeles Times. The paper was dated May 6, 1953, and the two-dimensional film being praised for bucking Hollywood’s push towards 3-D was Shane.

It was a time when TV was cutting deeply into movie profits, and studios were scrambling to win back the wandering eyeballs of America. Cinerama, an ambitious, three-projector widescreen extravaganza, debuted in New York in the fall of 1952, with its test film This Is Cinerama garnering front-page fanfare and great acclaim. Bosley Crowther, the Roger Ebert of his time, gasped that it gave the audience “the same sensations. . . felt on that night, years ago, when motion pictures were first publicly flashed on a large screen. . . People sat back in spellbound wonder. . . as though most of them were seeing motion pictures for the first time.” In a single evening, the development of all-new expansive formats had become a fait accompli, and studios immediately began looking for ways to capitalize on the buzz. (more…)

At the impressive Jewish Museum in Berlin, which carefully documents hundreds of years of German Jewish life and achievement, as well as the catastrophe of Hitler’s rise and ruination of European Jewry, there is a temporary exhibit featuring Jewish cartoonists over the past century. 

Like Hollywood itself, founded early in the 20th century by immigrant Jewish imagineers of the American Dream, the prominent U.S. inventors of comic strip heroes Superman, Batman, Spiderman, Captain Marvel, Hulk, and Captain America, were Jewish dreamers who promoted and projected American success. 

Blair Kramer wrote of Superman: 

After Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933 and proceeded to distort Nietzsche’s concept of Superman, (Siegel and Shuster) decided to rethink their own concept of Superman’s character. They changed their Jewish-created Superman to a force for good. Possessing superhuman powers, Superman leaped tall buildings in a single bound and bullets bounced off his chest as he lifted automobiles and ripped steel doors from their hinges. In the first issue, Superman even rescued battered wives from abusive husbands. 

When America entered World War II after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Superman’s character evolved into a combat hero. He destroyed Nazi armor, Japanese submarines and everything else that was thrown at the Allies. In fact, the cover of a 1944 issue of Superman featured the Man of Steel throttling Hitler and Tojo by the collar. 

Kramer further notes:  (more…)

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Angelina Jolie’s “Salt” might heat up the old Cold War, but “Farewell,” which also opens (in select cities) tomorrow, takes us back to a pivotal moment in the real one:

French director Christian Carion’s real-life espionage thriller “Farewell” is set at what is arguably the era’s turning point: It’s 1981, Ronald Reagan is barely in office, and France’s François Mitterrand presents him with a list of Soviets who’ve infiltrated American government and business. Mr. Mitterrand also offers an extraordinary estimate: 40% of the Soviet budget is being spent on defense, most of it on pilfering technology. The Soviet Union can’t possibly survive, the White House says. Let’s propose a strategic missile-defense initiative and push ‘em over the edge.

(more…)

****UPDATE: Link to trailer has been fixed.

Most (good) history books correctly portray the collapse of communism as due to the efforts of Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Pope John Paul II. But there were other subversive elements at work, not the least of which was rock and roll, which bled through the Iron Curtain at an unstoppable level. In Seven Events that Made America America, I examined rock’s part in not only providing a source of hope and optimism for those youth locked under communism’s grip, but also how it became a subversive force within the East Bloc. Through interviews with American rock and rollers of the “Golden Era” (1965-1990), I found an awareness on the part of the musicians of the oppressive nature of communism.

England’s Savoy Brown and me (in the “Jaws” t-shirt)

After I had sent the book off, Marc Leif, a documentary director and superb editor, and I got together to discuss a documentary film based on the rock chapter. As a professor, I’d never raised any money in my life, but now I had to raise a considerable sum to make a movie about rock and roll! We began filming in January 2010, with one of our first interviews being Leslie Mandoki, a Hungarian student leader who crawled through a sewer to escape communism. “We ALL wanted to be Americans!” he insisted. (Mandoki has become quite successful, not only in mainstream European rock, but as the music director for Audi and Volkswagen). As he thrived in the West, Mandoki soon traveled in circles with some well known people, including Bill Clinton and Mikhael Gorbachev, and was surprised to hear Gorby tell him that “we couldn’t keep out rock and roll.” (more…)

When in 1918 D. W. Griffith asked Lillian Gish to star in a tragic story of love, opium, dreams and death, all set against a Dickensian backdrop of poverty and despair, she was intrigued. But when he told the twenty-six-year-old actress that she would be playing a twelve-year-old girl, she was incredulous. Gish was a grown adult now, and fairly tall –  what possible trick of camera or posture could create the pixyish physique and innocent features that such a part would demand?

After much arguing, Griffith grudgingly agreed to raise the character’s age from twelve to fifteen, while still insisting that she play the part as a child. Lillian wasn’t convinced she could pull it off: “Virgins are the hardest roles to play. Those dear little girls — to make them interesting takes great vitality.” But seven years together had given the director full confidence in her abilities: “I gave her an outline of what I hoped to accomplish, and let her work it out in her own way. When she got it, she had something of her own.”

Sometimes events that look like setbacks prove to be fortuitous. On the way home from being fitted for her costumes, Gish collapsed with Spanish Influenza, a deadly pandemic then spreading throughout the United States which ultimately killed over thirty million worldwide. By the time she rallied and recovered, her already svelte frame had degenerated so dramatically that her costumes had to be refitted. But in hindsight, this pathetic and emaciated look proved perfect for the role. (more…)

We all know of the great slights that Hollywood deals out to the American right. We see them all the time. From the TV shows that casts Republicans as villains, the movies that make Christians out to be hypocrites or even outright evil. Traditional motherhood and fatherhood also find constant ridicule at the hands of Hollywood. The overt examples are everywhere, of course. But the grand swipe isn’t all that Hollywood indulges. There are also these ubiquitous, small, quick, too fast to notice swipes against the right perpetrated by Hollywood. A fine example of the side-swipe approach to denigrating the right came in the April 29 episode of The Mentalist, a CBS detective show starring Australian actor Simon Baker.

Now, at the top here I want to say that The Mentalist is generally an inoffensive, amusing little show fashioned in the Sherlock Holmes mode featuring a detective that sees every little clue and can with ease assemble these disparate facts to solve the crime. Baker turns in a funny performance with just enough underlying darkness to make his character interesting.

But, despite that it is generally a diverting entertainment, the show is just as disposed to slam anything from the right as any other and the April 29 episode gives us a prime example of that.

In the episode titled “Red All Over,” the investigative team tries to solve the murder of a media mogul. One of the plot lines deals with the leader of a Scientology-styled cult played by famed actor Malcolm McDowell. (more…)

Last week, Andrew Breitbart sat down with David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network and articulated his position that the media is the primary adversary to those fighting for traditional American values.

Watch the whole thing: you’re sure to enjoy when Andrew discusses that while the New Media may well save the Republic (and perhaps the world), it has already saved him personally.

The Brody File show airs tonight on the CBN Newschannel.

A full profile of Andrew Breitbart will air on The 700 Club show May 13th.

Some highlights/discussion points below:

“By aiming everything at the media, I’ve pretty much done the one thing they ask you not to do: ‘please accept the premise that we’re fair and let’s move on.’ No, I’m not going to accept that premise.” (more…)

The Atlantic Online has a video up today of an unearthed TV episode featuring Ronald Reagan and James Dean acting together, unseen for decades. Edited from “The Dark, Dark Hours” episode of General Electric Theater, which aired live from Hollywood on December 12, 1954:

No one has seen this episode in the decades since; the kinescope has been locked away, until now. My friend Wayne Federman, a writer for NBC’s Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, unearthed the broadcast, condensing it from its original 23 minutes (without commercials) into the six-minute version you see below. (Federman is planning a retrospective of Reagan’s television career for next year’s Reagan centennial.)

Here, Reagan is a physician, forced to defend his home and family from Dean, a teenage lawbreaker seeking medical treatment for an injured friend… (more…)

Almost fifty years ago, in the film journal Sight and Sound for Winter 1964/65, critic Roger Hudson wrote that the talent of motion picture production designers “is often overlooked, except where it is the greatest element in a film’s success, as it is in Goldfinger.”

The greatest element — that’s a bold claim, considering the hot competition among the movie’s other collaborators. But in hindsight, few would argue that the marvelous sets, vehicles, and spy gadgets of Goldfinger, masterminded by production designer Ken Adam, are any less iconic than Ian Fleming’s novel, Sean Connery’s performance, or John Barry’s musical score.

Production design is a largely unsung art. Both the script and the need for historical accuracy tend to serve as harsh governors on the dreams and fantasies of the people charged with designing a movie’s sets and props. But the Bond films, Adam says, “are done so loosely that the script isn’t the Bible that it is in most films. It changes all the time, and the whole process of writing is like some democratic debating society.”

When Dr. No went into production in 1961, Adam got a mere 14,000 pounds (out of the movie’s total budget of 350,000) with which to design all of the interior sets for this “tongue-in-cheek spectacular,” including the casino in the opening scene, Bond’s apartments, M’s office, and the sprawling, futuristic lair of the villainous doctor himself. He performed his task in England while the rest of the cast and crew were off filming exteriors in Jamaica, and when they returned they were stunned by what they saw: (more…)