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Even though the film is inconsistently successful at translating the source novel's thematic layers, Beatty's performance in Wise Blood is so perfectly suited to the character that he's arguably the most 'right' thing about the adaptation

I still mainly associate him with Roseanne from all my years as a kid watching reruns, but real talk the fact that he didn't win Best Supporting Actor for Network is a joke, especially when his costars ran the other three categories. His role is the textbook definition of stealing a movie with one scene

Beatrice Straight winning Supporting Actress for a single scene is also weird since her perf is far, far less memorable

I fully agree with therewillbeblus about Beatty's great performance in Wise Blood where his character turns up late in the film and almost threatens to steal the show, which is perfectly appropriate for causing the main character to spiral off into his crisis!

Of course it may still be impossible for Beatty to be known for more than his debut of being forced to squeal like a piggy in Deliverance, which might still be the most intense (at least the most famous) male rape scene in cinema. One of Beatty's biggest roles though was musical, as Josef Locke in Hear My Song, especially in the finale (I had forgotten that it does a 'reverse Dr Strangelove' at the end!)

He also had a good run of comedy films too with the incredulous American General giving the best line in Thunderpants (the film about a farting kid becoming an astronaut and powering the shuttle with his emissions), and in Radioland Murders.

esl wrote: Mon Jun 14, 2021 12:12 amNo report I have read says where he died.

At his home in Los Angeles, apparently.

(Source: manager Deborah Miller.)

colinr0380 wrote: Mon Jun 14, 2021 5:37 am
He also had a good run of comedy films too with the incredulous American General giving the best line in Thunderpants (the film about a farting kid becoming an astronaut and powering the shuttle with his emissions),

And there was me thinking Exorcist II was the most embarassing thing he'd have on his CV.

Love him as Otis - probably the sweetest accomplice to potential mass-murder ever!

I presume Exorcist II is because of Beatty's connection to John Boorman after Deliverance. It may also be worth noting that Thunderpants is from the director of Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey and the first Garfield movie!

I had completely forgotten he was in the "Airport meets Airplane! but with a bus" disaster film parody The Big Bus too as the equivalent of the George Kennedy down to Earth blue collar engineer figure!

Oh God, and he was excellent as one of the couple obviously based on televangelists Jim and Tammy Fay Bakker in the Exorcist parody Repossessed, in which he carries on a film long murderously jealous vendetta against his wife's pampered poodle Foo Foo!

I wouldn't mind seeing in full some time that film he was in from master of the high concept made for TV disaster movie Jerry Jameson, The Deadly Tower, about the Charles Whitman shooting spree (with Kurt Russell as Whitman!)

He was great in everything he was in, particularly the first couple seasons of Homicide. The book described the detective he was based on as big as a bear, and he was pretty damn heavy at that time. Kudos to him for losing a lot of weight, the next time I saw him in Cookie’s Fortune, he looked amazing.

Also I just found out that Ned Beatty (along with Andy Garcia!) was in the pilot of the Murder, She Wrote series!

Frank Bonner, of Equinox and WKRP in Cincinnati fame.

John Paragon, Jambi the Genie on Pee-wee's Playhouse. By coincidence, I watched his starring turn in the Cannon Movie Tale The Frog Prince earlier this year. The film is as cheesy and low-rent as you would expect of a Golan-Globus children's production, but Paragon's performance was easily the best thing about it.

Feego wrote: Sun Jun 20, 2021 12:08 am John Paragon, Jambi the Genie on Pee-wee's Playhouse. By coincidence, I watched his starring turn in the Cannon Movie Tale The Frog Prince earlier this year. The film is as cheesy and low-rent as you would expect of a Golan-Globus children's production, but Paragon's performance was easily the best thing about it.

Wow, no idea he was the guy on the left! (from Seinfeld)



My appreciation for Pee-Wee has grown over the years - the films were all right, but the original children's show was really something. The Blu-ray set is exemplary, and even if it weren't for the massive technical upgrade (true HD from fresh scans of the original 16mm negative, they even re-did the VFX since they were originally done in SD video), the extras are amazing with some fond remembrances from people who got their start on the show. I only wish Phil Hartman was still around to contribute to that set.

Jackie Lane, aged 79, best known for playing Dodo Chaplet, a Doctor Who companion, in 1966. She later left acting to become a theatre agent and one of her clients was fourth Doctor Tom Baker.

John McAfee

Jack Kubrick wrote: Wed Jun 23, 2021 7:56 pm John McAfee

Has a movie been made on him? If not, given how crazy his life was, it's only a matter of time.

Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski wrote a script about him called King of the Jungle that keeps coming close to getting made. One iteration I think was supposed to star Michael Keaton.

Not a film but Clint Basinger (of LGR) did a great little video about McAfee's history. McAfee's Twitter feed is a wild ride and there was even a conspiracy theory a couple of years back that he was the person behind the YouTube channel posting drone footage from Jeffrey Epstein's island.

GaryC wrote: Wed Jun 23, 2021 7:40 pm Jackie Lane, aged 79, best known for playing Dodo Chaplet, a Doctor Who companion, in 1966. She later left acting to become a theatre agent and one of her clients was fourth Doctor Tom Baker.

Dodo started out as a Northern schoolgirl, then part way through her first full story, some BBC bigwig dictated she had to speak proper!

colinr0380 wrote: Thu Jun 24, 2021 5:18 amMcAfee's Twitter feed is a wild ride

His last tweet has the perfect title (maybe even several):

John McAfee wrote:The US believes I have hidden crypto. I wish I did but it has dissolved through the many hands of Team McAfee (your belief is not required), and my remaining assets are all seized. My friends evaporated through fear of association.

I have nothing.

Yet, I regret nothing.

That was a pinned tweet so technically his last one was:

John McAfee wrote:In a democracy, power is given not taken.

But it is still power.

Love, compassion, caring have no use for it. But it is fuel for greed, hostility, jealousy...

All power corrupts.

Take care which powers you allow a democracy to wield.

It is amazing to think that someone more dangerously paranoid than Trump was running in the 2016 election! He maybe stands as a similar example that withdrawn self-destructive crazy people are not half as scary as societally pro-active crazy people getting traction with the mainstream. But there is also something touchingly ironic about someone whose paranoia about surveillance both inspired the antivirus program boom (the closest he came to getting everyone else to share in a mass collective delusion) whilst appearing to have driven him on an ever more crazed individual level too.

EDIT: Here's an amusing 2019 interview with McAfee

No English obituary yet, but it has been reported that director, screenwriter, and producer Clare Peploe has passed away. She was also the wife of the late Bernardo Bertolucci (and co-wrote his films Luna and Besieged).

She also directed the very strange Rough Magic, which combines film noir with Bridget Fonda laying an egg

And she wrote and directed High Season with Jacqueline Bisset, Irene Papas, and a bunch of other famous people, which Pauline Kael pretty much raved about in 1988. Dunno if i should take that with a grain or two of salt, it seems like it *might* be one of her more dubious recommendations.

Randall Maysin wrote: Thu Jun 24, 2021 5:44 pm And she wrote and directed High Season with Jacqueline Bisset, Irene Papas, and a bunch of other famous people, which Pauline Kael pretty much raved about in 1988. Dunno if i should take that with a grain or two of salt, it seems like it *might* be one of her more dubious recommendations.

I saw it and seem to remember liking it quite a bit. Though I can't recall much about it now except its exotic setting.

Composer/trumpeter Jon Hassell, whose work appears on numerous film soundtracks.