Passages

[Mr Sausage]

"The body of a beautiful, talented actress was found hanging from a shower rod in the bathtub of a Greenwich Village apartment by her horrified husband, who cried out, "Why? Why?"

Sounds like the beginning of a lurid pulp novel. I don't know who approved this, but it's laughably horrid (or horridly laughable).

[souvenir]

Sounds like the beginning of a lurid pulp novel. I don't know who approved this, but it's laughably horrid (or horridly laughable).

That's from the Post, not the Times so laughably horrid is expected.

[portnoy]

Sounds like the beginning of a lurid pulp novel. I don't know who approved this, but it's laughably horrid (or horridly laughable).

It's really just awful. What a tasteless way to talk about her death - it's the sort of thing I'd expect from the Post, not the Times.

[Mr Sausage]

That's from the Post, not the Times so laughably horrid is expected.

Ah. Mistake fixed.

I guess not living in the United States makes this more surprising.

[Floyd]

Trust is my most watched film ever and the film if I was asked I would immediately say is my favorite of all time. It is pretty difficult to believe that her life would lead to this after watching Trust so many times and seeing new things from her performance as an actress and her spectacular beauty. I don't know...

[Steven H]

Leonard Schrader, 62; Oscar-nominated screenwriter taught at AFI

By Valerie J. Nelson, Times Staff Writer
November 5, 2006

Leonard Schrader, who was nominated for an Oscar for his screenplay adaptation for the 1985 film "Kiss of the Spider Woman" and headed the graduate screenwriting program at the American Film Institute, has died. He was 62.

Schrader, who had suffered from cancer and other ailments, died Thursday of heart failure at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, said his brother, writer-director Paul Schrader.

Along with his brother, who wrote the screenplay for "Taxi Driver" (1976), Leonard Schrader was known for weaving dark, complex stories that explored violence and the underbelly of society. Among the screenplays the brothers wrote together were "The Yakuza" (1975), a suspenseful tale about the Japanese Mafia, and "Mishima" (1985), a stylized drama about Yukio Mishima, the militaristic Japanese author who killed himself in a ritual suicide.

The Times' review of "Kiss of the Spider Woman" called Schrader's adaptation of the Manuel Puig novel "profoundly moving." William Hurt won an Oscar for best actor for his portrayal of Luis Molina, a gay man who survives prison in South America by spinning narratives of Hollywood movies.

The Schrader brothers honed their storytelling ability in a childhood devoid of pop culture. Since their strict Calvinist parents forbade film and television, they grew up hearing Michigan celery farmers tell simple stories "in such a way you couldn't stop listening," Paul Schrader told The Times on Friday. "Leonard was a natural storyteller…. Because he felt he was a stranger in his own upbringing, he was drawn to strangers throughout his creative life, whether it be in Japan or South America."

"Naked Tango" (1991) was the only feature film that Leonard Schrader wrote and directed. A period piece set against the tango underworld of 1920s Buenos Aires, the movie was an ambitious shoot on 37 locations, many of them in Argentina, according to a 1990 Times feature.

He also wrote several Japanese-language screenplays that were made into films.

Schrader examined violence in the United States in "The Killing of America," a graphic 1982 documentary that he wrote with his Japanese-born wife, Chieko.

When asked why he was so interested in death and violence, Schrader told the Independent of London in 2000, "My answer is that I'm interested in America. If you're interested in the real America, the real America has got a lot of blood in the soil."

Born in 1943 in Grand Rapids, Mich., Schrader attended a local religious school, Calvin College, and earned a master's in fine arts from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. By then, he had "escaped his repressive upbringing," he said on his website, http://www.leonardschrader.com.

To avoid being drafted, Schrader asked Calvin College to send him overseas in 1968, and he taught at a church school in Kyoto, Japan, his brother said.

While teaching American literature at Doshisha University and Kyoto University in the early 1970s, he became familiar with the ways of the Yakuza, which led to the screenplay for his first film.

Later in his career, he taught screenwriting at USC and Chapman University.

As a senior filmmaker-in-residence at AFI since 1999, Schrader chaired the screenwriting department and taught graduate screenwriting.

"Simply put, Len loved his AFI fellows, and they loved him," Robert Mandel, dean of the AFI Conservatory, said via e-mail. "He was an extraordinarily gifted teacher."

In addition to his brother, Schrader is survived by his wife of 29 years, Chieko.[/url]

[pianocrash]

Update on the Adrienne Shelly case: it was murder.

[flyonthewall2983]

What a shitty way to die.

[flyonthewall2983]

The film composer Basil Poledouris (Robocop, The Hunt For Red October) has passed away according to a confirmed message on Film Score Monthly. He was 61 years old.

[jesus the mexican boi]

The film composer Basil Poledouris (Robocop, The Hunt For Red October) has passed away according to a confirmed message on Film Score Monthly. He was 61 years old.

Godspeed, Poledouris, by Crom. I have to admit getting a testosterone boost from his CONAN THE BARBARIAN score. HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER is awesome, too.

[flyonthewall2983]

60 Minutes' Ed Bradley Dead At 65

Veteran CBS News Correspondent Succumbs To Leukemia

(CBS) Veteran 60 Minutes correspondent Ed Bradley died Thursday at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan of complications from leukemia.

Bradley joined the staff of the venerable news magazine 26 years ago. His consummate skills as a broadcast journalist and his distinctive body of work were recognized with numerous awards, including 19 Emmys, the latest for a segment that reported the reopening of the 50-year-old racial murder case of Emmett Till.

In a special report, CBS Evening News anchor and managing editor Katie Couric said Bradley was "considered intelligent, smooth, cool, a great reporter, beloved and respected by all his colleagues here at CBS News."

"He certainly was a reporter's reporter," fellow 60 Minutes correspondent Mike Wallace told CBS News Radio.

Bradley was honored with the Lifetime Achievement award from the National Association of Black Journalists. Three of his Emmys came at the 2003 awards: a Lifetime Achievement Emmy; one for a 60 Minutes report on brain cancer patients, "A New Lease on Life;" and another for his hour on 60 Minutes II about sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, “The Catholic Church on Trial."

Bradley's 60 Minutes interview with condemned Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was the only television interview ever given by the man guilty of one of the worst terrorist acts on American soil; it also earned Bradley an Emmy.

His reporting on the worst school shooting in American history, "Columbine" (April 2001), revealed on 60 Minutes II that authorities ignored telling evidence with which they might have prevented the massacre.

Other hour-long reports by Bradley prompted praise and action: "Death by Denial" won a Peabody Award for focusing on the plight of Africans dying of AIDS and helped convince drug companies to donate and discount AIDS drugs; "Unsafe Haven" spurred federal investigations into the nation's largest chain of psychiatric hospitals; and "Town Under Siege," about a small town battling toxic waste, was named one of the Ten Best Television Programs of 1997 by Time magazine.

Bradley's significant contribution to electronic journalism was also recognized by the Radio/Television News Directors Association when it named him its Paul White Award winner for 2000. He joined other distinguished journalists, such as Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite and Peter Jennings, as a Paul White recipient.

More recently, the Denver Press Club awarded him its 2003 Damon Runyon Award for career journalistic excellence. Bradley also received the prestigious Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards grand prize and television first prize for "CBS Reports: In the Killing Fields of America" (January 1995), a documentary about violence in America, for which he was co-anchor and reporter.

His work on 60 Minutes has gained much recognition, including a George Foster Peabody Award for "Big Man, Big Voice" (November 1997), the uplifting story of a German singer who became successful despite birth defects. In 1995, he won his 11th Emmy Award for a 60 Minutes segment on the cruel effects of nuclear testing in the town of Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan — a report that also won him an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award in 1994.

Also in 1994, he was honored with an Overseas Press Club Award for two 60 Minutes reports that took viewers inside sensitive military installations in Russia and the United States. In 1985, he received an Emmy Award for "Schizophrenia," a 60 Minutes report on that misunderstood brain disorder.

In 1983, two of Bradley's reports for 60 Minutes won Emmy Awards: "In the Belly of the Beast," an interview with Jack Henry Abbott, a convicted murderer and author, and "Lena," a profile of singer Lena Horne. He received an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Silver Baton and a 1991 Emmy Award for his 60 Minutes report "Made in China," a look at Chinese forced-labor camps, and another Emmy for "Caitlin's Story" (November 1992), an examination of the controversy between the parents of a deaf child and a deaf association.

In addition to "In the Killing Fields," his work for "CBS Reports" included: "Enter the Jury Room" (April 1997), an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award winner that revealed the jury deliberation process for the first time in front of network cameras; "The Boat People" (January 1979), which won duPont, Emmy and Overseas Press Club Awards; "The Boston Goes to China" (April 1979), a report on the historic visit to China by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which won Emmy, Peabody and Ohio State Awards, and "Blacks in America: With All Deliberate Speed?" (July 1979), which won Emmy and duPont Awards.

Bradley's coverage of the plight of Cambodian refugees, broadcast on the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite and CBS News Sunday Morning, won a George Polk Award in journalism.

He also received a duPont citation for a segment on the Cambodian situation broadcast on CBS News' "Magazine" series. He covered the presidential campaign of Jimmy Carter during 1976, served as a floor correspondent for CBS News' coverage of the Democratic and Republican National Conventions from 1976 through 1996, and has participated in CBS News' election-night coverage.

Prior to joining 60 Minutes, Bradley was a principal correspondent for "CBS Reports" (1978-81), after serving as CBS News' White House correspondent (1976-78). He was also anchor of the "CBS Sunday Night Newsâ€

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Edward L. Alperson Jr died on Oct 31, according to a paid newspaper obituary. The news wires don't appear to have picked this up yet. He composed for a handful of films, including co-writing the score for Boetticher's The Magnificent Matador.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

And Marian Marsh has died at the age of 93. She was Trilby to John Barrymore's Svengali in 1931, and Sonya to Peter Lorre's Raskolnikov in von Sternberg's Crime and Punishment.

[pianocrash]

Oscar-Winning Actor Jack Palance Dies

LOS ANGELES (AP) _ Jack Palance, the craggy-faced menace in ''Shane,'' ''Sudden Fear'' and other films who turned to comedy at 70 with his Oscar-winning self-parody in ''City Slickers,'' died Friday.

Palance died of natural causes at his home in Montecito, Calif., surrounded by family, said spokesman Dick Guttman. Palance was 85 according to Associated Press records, but his family gave his age as 87.

When Palance accepted his Oscar for best supporting actor he delighted viewers of the 1992 Academy Awards by dropping to the stage and performing one-armed push-ups to demonstrate his physical prowess.

''That's nothing, really,'' he said slyly. ''As far as two-handed push-ups, you can do that all night, and it doesn't make a difference whether she's there or not.''

That year's Oscar host, Billy Crystal, turned the moment into a running joke, making increasingly outlandish remarks about Palance's accomplishments throughout the night's awards presentations.

It was a magic moment that epitomized the actor's 40 years in films. Always the iconoclast, Palance had scorned most of his film roles.

''Most of the stuff I do is garbage,'' he once told a reporter, adding that most of the directors he worked with were incompetent.

Movie audiences, however, were electrified by the actor's chiseled face and hulking presence, and a calm, low voice that made him all the more chilling.

[Mr Sausage]

Well that's too bad. I'll always have fond childhood memories of watching him as Boss Carl Grissom in Batman.

[peerpee]

Gary Graver died last week.

[Matt]

Ruth Brown, a.k.a. Motormouth Maybelle, has died.

[Ashirg]

VHS, RIP!

[Matt]

Robert Altman has died. Please see our tribute thread here.

[colinr0380]

Gary Graver died last week.

I hadn't made the connection so looking at the garygraver.com site I was surprised that he was also the director of photography on the original Toolbox Murders film.

[Arn777]

Philippe Noiret died today as reported by French media.

[Cinesimilitude]

One of the greats. He'll be missed.

[Matt]

Philippe Noiret died today as reported by French media.

What a career. He had been working non-stop for over half a century. Anyone who hasn't yet seen him in Chabrol's Masques should pay tribute to him now by doing so.

[tavernier]

Philippe Noiret died today as reported by French media.

What a career. He had been working non-stop for over half a century. Anyone who hasn't yet seen him in Chabrol's Masques should pay tribute to him now by doing so.

Look for his wife, the superb actress Monique Chaumette, as the secretary in Masques. He was one of the best film actors around....RIP.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Betty Comden has died:

Betty Comden, who with her longtime collaborator Adolph Green wrote the lyrics and often the librettos for some of the most celebrated musicals of stage and screen, died today at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. She was 89 and lived in Manhattan.

The cause was heart failure, said Ronald Konecky, her lawyer and the executor of her estate.

During a professional partnership that lasted for more than 60 years, and which finally ended with Mr. Green's death in 2002, the Comden-Green blend of sophisticated wit and musical know-how lit up stage shows like "On the Town," "Wonderful Town," "Peter Pan" and "Bells Are Ringing." Their Hollywood credits included the screenplays for two landmark film musicals, "Singin' in the Rain" and "The Band Wagon."