Passages

[souvenir]

Edie Adams.

I just watched The Best Man last night. And I've always loved her and her glasses in The Apartment. Edie was an absolute knock-out and a great talent.

[Dr Amicus]

Christopher Wicking

Screenwriter for some of the more imaginative later Hammers, and also several interesting collaborations with Gordon Hessler. Scream and Scream Again was very high in my 70s list.

[Matt]

Levi Stubbs. An incredible loss that, sadly, has been a long time coming.

[HerrSchreck]

One of the heaviest voicest of some of the most intense soul songs ever recorded. Songs like "Reach Out (I'll Be There)" and "I Can't Help Myself" conjure up the whole era of the 60's in NY- I see the fuzzy images of the NY of my youth up to approximatey 4 yrs old. Few voices could so perfectly encapsulate the feel of an era/place, i e the inner cities in the 60's, as Stubbs.

[HypnoHelioStaticStasis]

and lets not forget his amazing work in Little Shop of Horrors.

RIP. Can anyone recommend which of their records I should pick up first? I only own some singles.

[Gregory]

A nice, brief tribute to Stubbs and the Four Tops here. "[The Four Tops] are the voice of adolescent angst and adult heartbreak, the pure, the absolute joy that humans can take in one another."

HHSS: for essential Four Tops albums, most people would probably recommend 60s albums like Second Album and Reach Out, and those are indeed great, but I even like the later stuff like Changing Times and Main Street People. As more of a career overview, I recommend a collection of lost recordings from the 1960s called Lost Without You -- dozens of amazing tracks.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Xie Jin

[domino harvey]

Wonder if he's gonna have a cow up in Heaven at everyone wearing black to his funeral?

[Fletch F. Fletch]

Rudy Ray Moore dies at 81
comedian and filmmaker influenced rap and hip-hop

By Jocelyn Y. Stewart. October 21, 2008. L.A. Times.

Rudy Ray Moore, the self-proclaimed "Godfather of Rap" who influenced generations of rappers and comedians with his rhyming style, braggadocio and profanity-laced routines, has died. He was 81.

Moore, whose low-budget films were panned by critics in the 1970s but became cult classics decades later, died Sunday night in Toledo, Ohio, of complications from diabetes, his brother Gerald told the Associated Press.

Though he was little known to mainstream audiences, Moore had a significant effect on comedians and hip-hop artists.

"People think of black comedy and think of Eddie Murphy," rap artist Luther Campbell of 2 Live Crew told the Miami Herald in 1997. "They don't realize [Moore] was the first, the biggest underground comedian of them all. I listened to him and patterned myself after him."

And in the liner notes to the 2006 release of the soundtrack to Moore's 1975 motion picture "Dolemite," hip-hop artist Snoop Dogg said:

"Without Rudy Ray Moore, there would be no Snoop Dogg, and that's for real."

When it came to his own sense of his accomplishments, Moore was never burdened by immodesty.

"These guys Steve Harvey and Cedric the Entertainer and Bernie Mac claim they're the Kings of Comedy," Moore told the Cleveland Plain Dealer in 2003. "They may be funny, but they ain't no kings. That title is reserved for Rudy Ray Moore and Redd Foxx."

The heyday of his fame was in the 1970s, with the release of "Dolemite" followed by "The Human Tornado," "Petey Wheatstraw: The Devil's Son-in-Law" and "Money Hustler."

The way Moore told it, his introduction to Dolemite came from an old wino named Rico, who frequented a record shop Moore managed in Los Angeles. Rico told foul-mouthed stories about Dolemite, a tough-talking, super-bad brother, whose exploits had customers at the record shop falling down with laughter.

One day Moore recorded Rico telling his stories. Later Moore assumed the role of Dolemite, a character who became the cornerstone of his decades-long career as a raunchy comedian, filmmaker and blues singer.

"What you call dirty words," he often said, "I call ghetto expression."

But long before "Dolemite" debuted on theater screens, Moore had found fame -- and fans -- through stand-up routines and a series of sexually explicit comedy albums.

Not only were the album contents raunchy, the album covers featured women and Moore nude and were too racy for display. So store clerks kept the albums under the counter. Without airplay or big-studio promotion, the so-called party records were underground hits.

"I put records in my car and traveled and walked across the U.S. I walked to the ghetto communities and told people to take the record home and let their friends hear it. And before I left the city, my record would be a hit. This is how it started for me," he told the St. Louis Post Dispatch in 2001.

Although contemporaries such as Foxx and Richard Pryor found success with a broader audience, Moore's stardom was bounded by the geography of race and class: He was a hit largely in economically disadvantaged African American communities.

According to his website, Moore was born in Fort Smith, Ark., on March 17, 1927.

In his youth Moore worked as a dancer and fortune teller and he entertained while serving in the U.S. Army. But his big break came with the recording of his Dolemite routine:

Dolemite is my name

And rappin and tappin

that's my game

I'm young and free

And just as bad as I wanna

be.

By the time Dolemite appeared on film, he was the ultimate ghetto hero: a bad dude, profane, skilled at kung-fu, dressed to kill and hell-bent on protecting the community from evil menaces. He was a pimp with a kung-fu-fighting clique of prostitutes and he was known for his sexual prowess.

For all the stereotypical images, Moore bristled at the term blaxploitation.

"When I was a boy and went to the movies, I watched Roy Rogers and Tim Holt and those singing cowboys killing Indians, but they never called those movies 'Indian exploitation' -- and I never heard 'The Godfather' called 'I-talian exploitation,' " he told a reporter for the Cleveland Scene in 2002.

Late in life, Moore saw his work win fans far beyond his African American audience. There is a "Dolemite" website and chat room that boasts a cross-cultural collection of young fans. Such interest won him mainstream work in an advertisement for Altoid Mints and a commercial for Levi's jeans.

Though Moore built a career on talking dirty, he was very religious. He took pride in taking his mother to the National Baptist Convention each year and often spoke in church at various functions. He rationalized his role as a performer.

"I wasn't saying dirty words just to say them," he told the Miami Herald in 1997. "It was a form of art, sketches in which I developed ghetto characters who cursed. I don't want to be referred to as a dirty old man, rather a ghetto expressionist."

[Matt]

St. Peter: Name?
Rudy Ray Moore: Man, move over and let me pass 'fo they hafta be pullin' these Hush Puppies out yo' muthafuckin' ass. You rat soup eatin', born insecure mutha FUCKA!

[Fletch F. Fletch]

St. Peter: Name?
Rudy Ray Moore: Man, move over and let me pass 'fo they hafta be pullin' these Hush Puppies out yo' muthafuckin' ass. You rat soup eatin', born insecure mutha FUCKA!

One my fave moments in any of his films - the instant replay of Rudy jumping down a hill naked in Human Tornado with him narrating, "So, y'all don't believe I jumped, huh? So watch this good shit!" Awesome.

[Michael Kerpan]

Xie Jin

More about XIE Jin.

His Two Stage sisters was a remarkable film. His Penitentiary Angel launched the career of Vicki ZHAO Wei (an interesting look behind the walls of a prison for young women). I've never been able to see his famed Hibiscus Town.

[Barmy]

I can't believe Gerard Damiano's death has not been reported here.

[Perkins Cobb]

Or Milton Katselas, legendary acting coach, director of Butterflies Are Free and Report to the Commissioner, and Scientology sock puppet.

[tavernier]

I can't believe Gerard Damiano's death has not been reported here.

Corliss has no peer writing about porn for a weekly newsmagazine.

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

Corliss has no peer writing about porn for a weekly newsmagazine.

On that note, this gem really gave me a giggle: "Like silent-film director D.W. Griffith in the talkie era, Damiano was a pioneer whom new trends left behind."

[Rufus T. Firefly]

I guess he wasn't of the same stature as Damiano, but adult film actor and director Buck Adams has died at 52. He was the brother of veteran porn superstar Amber Lynn.

[fiddlesticks]

Studs Terkel.

[carax09]

Studs Terkel.

That hurts. The only thing that made my morning commutes bearable this year was listening to the audiobook version of Touch and Go. I'm also saddened that he didn't hold on to see Obama (another adopted son of Chicago) make it to the White House. I'm sure Studs would've enjoyed that immensely...

[Donald Brown]

Roger Ebert on Studs Terkel.

[peerpee]

Yma Sumac. RIP.

[Lino]

No... I was just listening to her this morning as I awoke... the single greatest female singer of the 20th century...

[Dr Amicus]

John Daly

[souvenir]

John Daly

Make that "film producer John Daly" and not the troubled golfer

[Dr Amicus]

John Daly

Make that "film producer John Daly" and not the troubled golfer

Fair enough - as I know so little about sport (apart from the biggest names and/or a few Brits) I had never heard of him...

But yes - this is the film producer John Daly. I do like the 'fact' in this obit that states he helped Bertolucci start his career with The Last Emperor...