TCM Film Festival Recap (2026)

 Day One

Thursday April 30th was the opening night of the TCM Film Festival,  and as  become our custom, we had the Essential pass which allowed us to go to the opening night Premiere and walk the red carpet. The feature was Barefoot in the Park from 1967 starring Robert Redford and Jane Fonda. It was chosen as a tribute to Robert Redford who passed last year and Jane Fonda herself showed up as the guest to talk about her experience making the movie. While I am not a huge fan of Jane Fonda, I did think that her presentation was sweet and heartfelt about her co-star. 

She mentioned how she had had a crush on him and would try to convince him that they should have an affair. I'm not sure she was really joking. She also told the story of how all the secretaries at the studio looked out the door and down the hallway when Redford was walking down the pathways of the studio.  

The movie is a light fluffy romantic comedy from playwright Neil Simon, and it had its share of crazy characters and oddball situations, and there were plenty of laughs. I know I saw the movie back in the 1970s at some point probably on television, but I had very little memory of it except that their apartment was sort of dismal and small. Redford had a very nice touch with the comedy elements and he even does kind of a silly dance as part of the story. I think there's a restored 4K Blu-ray coming, and I will probably pick that up just to make sure I have it in my collection.

We were originally going to stay for a second movie but we got hungry and decided to make a late evening visit to Canter's Delicatessen for a sandwich and some cheesecake to take home to Allison.

Day Two

The El Capitan theater usually hosts an animated film from the Disney Vault on the first full day of the TCM Film Festival, this year it was ”Alice in Wonderland" which was pretty surreal anytime you see it. Mario Cantone was the host and he was delightfully silly and fun and talking about the film. His expert guest was Andreas Deja , a legendary animator from Disney Studios who has worked on dozens of Disney films since the 1980s.  They talked about the things that inspired the movie and the fact that it had been one of the things Walt Disney had wanted to do from the very start. Of course there was also a discussion of how the movie finally started making money when we got to the Psychedelic era of the 60s and hippies under the influence made the film a hit.

We got locked out of “Letty Linton”, because Alice in Wonderland got out just 15 minutes before this long lost Joan Crawford film was to screen at the Egyptian. We did get in line and get a queue card but there was no way we were going to get into the film. The Theater was completely packed. So we went and had lunch in the car in the parking garage at Hollywood and Highland, and then went up for the second film of the day, which was “Dangerous Liaisons”.  

The star of the film, Glenn Close, had just gotten her feet and handprints done in the courtyard at the Chinese Theater, and she stayed over to talk about this movie. She did have some interesting information about the process, including the fact that all of her scenes were shot well after everybody else had completed their work. She had given birth just 7 weeks before and was still on maternity leave before she came to Europe to film her part of the movie. She talked about how she was unsure that John Malkovich was going to cut it as a romantic lead , but she ultimately decided that he was definitely going to work in the film.

It's easy to forget that both Uma Thurman and Keanu Reeves are also in the movie, they play secondary characters and they were both quite good despite the usual criticism that Keanu gets for playing a character in a period piece. There was a little bit of a discussion about the ending of the film, and Glenn Close revealed that they did shoot a guillotine execution, but that that was ultimately abandoned for the disturbing silent treatment ending that finishes off the film now.

The movie is a tour de force for both Close and John Malkovich, and it was certainly deserving of the awards that it received and the ones it was considered for.

Next on the agenda is just one of the most delightful moments of the festival. The presentation of the 1996 film “That Thing You Do”. This has always been a personal favorite, and it tells a great story behind one of those one hit wonders that made up pop music in the '60s and '70s, in this case though one that was entirely invented for the movie. The two guests were Johnathon Schaech and Kevin Pollock, who both explained how they had been cast and some of the contributions that they made to the way the story was told. The writer-director of the film is Tom Hanks, who also plays the part of record company executive Mr. White. 

Schaech explained that when he went in for his audition he improvised the snapping fingers, hand on the ear and delivery to an invisible microphone when his character says “I quit”. It was his idea to present it as if it was a song that he's walking away from. He also literally walked away when he finished his line and Tom Hanks had to chase him down in the hallway to get him back. He said that that is the point at which he knew he was going to get the part.  Pollock on the other hand had worked with Tom Hanks on his Apollo Mission miniseries, so they had a previous relationship. Again, the actor was given quite a bit of leeway into how his character was going to be played. People sometimes mistake him for a DJ but he's actually a local businessman who does his own commercials on the radio and that's why the audience is familiar with him. Pollock said that Hank's told him to do whatever he wanted with the character, and Kevin  played it very broadly with some cartoonish dancing and movements and oddball vocal delivery. He thought for sure Hanks was going to call him on it and ask him to tone it down, but he said Tom was just fine with it and it ended up in the film. This presentation and the conversation that followed the movie were highlights of the festival for us.

We then went out and got in line again to go back into the Chinese Theater for the presentation of Gaslight starring Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer. Boyer had also been in “Barefoot in the Park" the night before so we were seeing him in two different movies that were made 30 years apart. It was sort of an interesting comparison. Incidentally actress Mildred Natwick had been in both “Barefoot in the Park” and “Dangerous Liasions” so we saw two stars in their own double feature at the festival, an unplanned but very pleasant coincidence.

Amanda had not seen Gaslight before and she enjoyed it quite well, the fact that the term gaslighting has become so prolific in the last couple of years is easy to understand once you see the movie. We know that we are being deliberately lied to and are expected to accept the lie in spite of the evidence of our own eyes and ears. That's exactly what is happening as Boyer's character is attempting to drive his wife mad as he seeks jewels that belonged to her aunt.  The movie was also the debut of Angela Lansbury and she is quite a character as a fairly slutty servant who is providing comic relief and some plot details in the film.

As much as we would have liked to stay for the midnight screening of “Vanishing Point”, it wasn't going to work. We were not staying in a hotel downtown and so we had a 45 minute commute back to the house in Glendora, and that meant that we would not have gotten home until after 3 am.. Not something that we could do and then on Saturday morning get up for the other films that we planned on seeing.

Day Three

We had to make a tough choice on Saturday morning, and the way it played out for the afternoon meant that our best option was to see “The Day the Earth Stood Still" in the Chinese Theater Multiplex. I think whenever they have an older science fiction film they basically get Joe Dante out of storage and bring him to the festival. Let's face it, this is a guy who knows what Saturday sci-fi and the 50s and 60s was all about. 

He told a couple of quick stories about the making of the film, got us hyped up for the movie, and then got out of the way. This may be the 4th or 5th time I've seen him introduce a movie at the festival, and he always seems to work it just right, so the focus is on the movie.

Immediately after The Day the Earth Stood Still we got back in line at the multiplex to see Captain Blood, one of my favorite Errol Flynn films. The guest was Allen Rode who has written extensively about the era of films that this was made in and in particular about director Michael Curtis, whose long association with Errol Flynn was contentious for a variety of reasons including things that happened in the making of this film.  

Mr Rode talked about the final time that Flynn and Curtis met near the end of Flynn's life when he was broke and desperate for work, and although they had had their differences they seem to have a Reconciliation at that final meeting, and after Flynn left Curtis told his host that if it wasn't for Errol Flynn he would not have had a career. 

Because of the timing of events at the festival, we had to step out of Captain Blood for a few minutes to get queue cards for the next film that we wanted to see. We were able to do that and then go back in to finish off the movie, but the sequence that we missed while we were gone was the great duel between Flynn and Basil Rathbone on the beach. Fortunately I've seen the movie a dozen times, still it would have been nice to be able to see that moment again on the big screen.

The movie that we were trying to ensure that we got queue cards for was next and that was 1979's”The Muppet Movie”. The guest was composer Paul Williams, who did the music for the film and wrote the great classic song “Rainbow Connection”. Williams was in fine form telling great stories, and because he was going to be doing a conversation later in the festival, there was a small tribute film to him that screened before the Muppet Movie. Frankly if I had to pick a moment from the festival that was my favorite this would probably be it. I love “The Muppet Movie" and I've admired Paul Williams for 50 plus years. This made me anticipate the conversation that would be coming up later even more. 

Afterwards we all sang along with the “Dream Factory"at the end of The Muppet Movie and then we made our way over to the Egyptian Theater for a screening of a Fellini film. We were also going to meet up with one of the Lambs who is also going to be seeing “Nights of Cabiria”. Aaron Neuwirth saw me first, and yes I turned around to the call “hey old man”. Ouch, but it is accurate. Aaron went in first. He had already gotten a queue card and he held a couple of seats for us at the back of the theater because all three of us were going to leave as soon as the movie was done to get queue cards for the next film.

“Nights of Cabiria”, won the Academy Award for Best foreign language film back in the 1950s, and I suppose from the perspective of the time it would be deserving. Frankly, it was not my cup of tea. The lead actress was quite good but her character is frustratingly  irritating and dense to the point that she makes the same mistakes over and over again. And it may very well be that The stereotype of Italians shouting everything comes from this movie where the actors all seem to be about 20 decibels louder than they need to be. I have to admit that the three of us dozed off occasionally, and we left a little bit early to be sure we got in line for the movie that we were all anticipating.

Our final film on Saturday was “Robocop”, which I have seen on the big screen almost as many times as I've seen “Jaws” on the big screen. The bonus here though, was the guests, Paul McCrane who plays Emil,  the melting man in the movie, Kurtwood Smith who is Clarence Boddicker, the villain who gets the most amount of time and the juiciest lines in the movie, and RoboCop himself Dr Peter Weller.

They had a lively time sharing stories about the making of the film and commenting on the work of director Paul Verhofen in turning this film into something that was not cartoon movie junk but rather a satire of the social mores of the time. I think all of the conversations that took place during the festival are available on the TCM YouTube channel, but I will try to link this one here because it was so memorable. Amanda and I had actually seen Peter Weller talk about Robocop in the Egyptian Theater several years before when the American Cinematheque was doing a tribute to Miguel Ferrer who passed away just days earlier. We said goodbye to Aaron after this film and once again headed home for a short night's sleep before coming back for the last day of the festival.

Day 4

Going to a movie at 9: 00 in the morning on a Sunday is my idea of Heaven but I'm sure a lot of people felt it was a little early. One of the most fun conversations about a film at the festival however took place here as nine of the 12 kids who made up the “Bad News Bears" showed up to talk about the movie. You would think having that large a crowd of storytellers would be overwhelming but they paced themselves very well and everybody got a turn to say something about the movie and their experience in it.

All of them had very nice things to say about Walter Matthau but also the director Michael Ritchie. Some of them had been actors and some of them had been kids who played baseball and just wanted an opportunity to do so on screen. As anybody who has seen the movie knows, there is dialogue in this film that comes from not only the adults but the kids, that would certainly not be politically correct. There is language that would not pass muster with the woke police of today. With that warning the audience watching the movie laughed at all of the appropriate places and held their breath once or twice because of the language use but everyone seemed to recognize that this was a comedy not a commentary and they responded appropriately. 

I actually saw the Bad News Bears in the Chinese Theater in 1976 so it was kind of fun on the 50th anniversary to be back for another screening. I was asked about it by the cameras that were roving the courtyard before the film so I hope that that footage shows up somewhere so that people can appreciate the moment.

Our next stop at the TCM Film Festival was at Club TCM in the Roosevelt Hotel, to listen to the conversation with Paul Williams. Ben Mankiewicz introduced Williams and we also got to see the film tribute again which was nice. Paul went into more detail about the start of his career and he talked about how being an actor in a film where he picked up a guitar and started teaching himself how to play and making up a song on the spot led him to a career as a songwriter.

He could not be laudatory enough about Karen Carpenter, referring to her as an angel whose voice gave life to his lyrics and set his career path. I was hoping there would be a little bit more talk about the “Phantom of the Paradise" and I think Mankiewicz was planning on that, but Paul Williams is a raconteur and he had things that he wanted to say, so they just let him go. If there was one screening that I missed at this year's Film Festival that I would really like to have made it would have been “Ishtar” a movie that I have championed in the face of derisive criticism since the day it opened. Williams talked about how he was trying to create songs for that film that work musically but were cringe-worthy, and frankly he succeeded. He was pretty proud however of some of the lyrical rhyming that he did and who can blame him. 

After the conversation we rushed over to the Egyptian Theater for another one of those things that we look forward to every year, the Craig Barron Ben Burtt presentation of "The Towering Inferno”. These two Academy award-winning film technicians deconstruct the visual effects and the sound effects of the movie that they talk about each year. We briefly met our friend Michael in line,  who had shown up hoping to be able to crash the presentation and was in the standby line. We told him we would try to hold a seat for him when we got inside, but he texted us that he never really got close to being able to have a ticket to the screening. Maybe next year Michael, sorry.

Burtt and Baron both have a lot of fun putting these presentations together and they showed up in their firefighters turnouts and helmets to explain how the movie was made. They had some great behind the scenes pictures and clips to show, and the story of working with fire is always fascinating. 

“The Towering Inferno” is 2 hours and 45 minutes, which sounds like a long time but it actually moves very effectively. Some people may think of it as a Cheesy disaster film, but let me tell you it works really well and plays like gangbusters on the screen. Maybe the character development is a little thin, but the plot plays out with a lot of suspense and there are some great set pieces. Paul Newman and Steve McQueen both get to play action hero in a couple of scenes and those look terrific on the big screen. Everyone was surprised at how well the film holds up, and this was the right way to see it on the big screen with great sound. 

It also turns out that Director John Landis was a stuntman on the film who took a dive out a window on fire, and he was in the audience for the screening. How cool was this bit of trivia? 

For our last film at the festival we decided to skip the closing night screening in the Chinese IMAX theater and instead opted for screening of the Gene Kelly Musical “On the Town”. The hosts for the show were Mario Cantone and Kate Flannery and I think both of them had a few shots before the screening because they were feeling good. 

They didn't have any special insight into the film but they enjoyed talking about the three main characters and they engaged in a variation of the “F***”, Marry, or Kill?  game, and let's just say the poor Jules Munchen came up on the short end of the stick with everyone. 

“On the Town” is an ebullient celebration of New York City and the Golden Age of Hollywood dancing. Anne Miller and Vera Ellen are terrific dancers and Betty Garrett is no slouch either. There are great sequences and memorable moments in the film and it feels really nice to close out a classic film festival with a movie that came from the Dream Factory at its height.

So that was our Festival experience and I can't wait till next year.

TCM Film Festival 2025 (Day 4)

It feels a little like sundowner syndrome when we arrive at the fourth day of the film festival. Everyone has had a wonderful time for 3 days but we all know that it's about to be over with, even though there are wonderful things still scheduled for the afternoon. Our fourth day at the film festival was really pretty simple, we had two films that we were going to see both of them were pretty long, and then we had the closing night film.

2001 A Space Odyssey

Amanda and I made the decision to split up for the first film of the day, she had never seen "Oklahoma" before and was anxious to catch it on the big screen. And as I've said in other posts, although I love my daughter she has disappointed me in her lack of appreciation for "2001 A Space Odyssey", that's the film I decided that I would go to see. I was especially interested in seeing 2001 again on the big screen, because the guest of the day was going to be the star of the film Keir Dullea. The festival programmers seem to be doing their best to get to important guests while they are still around. Mr Dullea, is maybe the 5th or 6th guest that I saw this weekend who is in their late 80s. All of us are due to leave this Mortal coil at some point, and I'm glad that so many of these guests chose to spend some time with us while they still could.

2001 on the big screen, at the Egyptian, is something I've done several times before. And once again seeing the movie in a theater with a rapt audience is thrilling. We were given the whole effect, including Overture, intermission, and exit music. They have also made sure to make these presentations authentic in another way, they closed the curtains and then open them again when it's time for the feature. To me, the sense of excitement as the curtains part and the credits begin to roll, is one of the things that makes me most love the movies. They should be an event, not just content.

The conversation with Keir Dullea, was quite interesting, including stories about how he was cast and about his working with Stanley Kubrick on the set. His wife accompanied him onto the stage to help keep him focused on particular questions. He was by no means senile, but he would wander off track occasionally or miss the meaning of the question and she assisted him quite ably without necessarily suggesting that there was anything wrong. Especially appreciated the prompt that she had at the end when she reminded him that he wanted to talk about a piece of dialogue that got cut from the film, but for which he had spent a great deal of time trying to memorize, and still has it in his head.

I did an audio recording several parts of the conversation, and I'm going to try to include them here.

Richard Kirkham · Keir Dullea at TCMFF 2025

"2001", along with "Jaws" is on my list of 10 favorite films of all time. So this is a pretty good weekend for me.

Apocalypse Now

When I met up with my daughter after her screening, we were queuing up to get numbers for this 1979 Francis Ford Coppola classic. She had been quite enamored of "Oklahoma", and I hate that I missed sitting through it with her, because I quite like the film. I really enjoyed her embrace of the songs and the story and the joy that she seemed to be having. I was a little worried that this next film would destroy some of the cheerfulness that surrounded the mornings experience for her. After all Apocalypse Now is not a happy film.

I'm not sure how she managed to get to her age without being exposed to this film more. She told me she's only seen a few clips and doesn't really know much about the movie. So that made our decision to see "Apocalypse Now", here at the film festival, really an appropriate one. The guest for this presentation was director Antoine Fuqua who has directed a ton of action films that I have loved over the last 20 years. He had nothing to do with the production of "Apocalypse Now", it just happens that it's his favorite film and inspired him to become a director and make movies that feature kind of grit and action that Coppola provided. His commentary on the film was mostly that of an enamored fan, which is not really a bad thing. It was certainly encouraging to hear his enthusiasm for the movie, as we tried to gird ourselves for the experience.

I mentioned that in the 2001 screening, the festival was trying to create an authentic experience included the ritual with the curtains. For this screening, the authenticity was enhanced by the distribution of a booklet, that contain the credits for the film. Back in 1979, the premier screening of this movie it Cannes, was done without any credits appearing on the screen, but rather in a Nifty little pocketbook with pictures. That item was reproduced and provided to all of us who attended this Sunday afternoon screening of a decidedly depressing War film.

There are variations of "Apocalypse Now" that have become quite popular in the last few years, but this presentation was the original theatrical cut. That's the only version of the film that I know. I've seen the film occasionally over the years, and I have bounced back and forth between disliking it and embracing it. Whenever I think of the distaste I might have had for the movie, it probably reflects the negativity that is such a huge part of the story. 

This time I was happy to embrace the film, and I was glad that Amanda was suitably impressed with it as well. Now if only I could get her to respond to 2001 the same way maybe I wouldn't feel like such a failure as a father.

Heat

The closing night film for the festival was Heat, in the TCL IMAX theater. We had originally planned on watching the silent version of Beau Jeste in the Egyptian Theater. When actor Al Pacino was added to the discussion of "Heat", we changed our minds and decided we could not miss out on the opportunity to hear one of the great actors of the 20th century talk about this movie.

The original guest was Michael Mann the director of the film, and Pacino joining him made the discussion feel a lot more complete. In fact even though there were questions, the situation felt more like a conversation with two old friends on the couch rather than an interview. Each of them remembered some things slightly differently, and they occasionally made the effort to correct a misstatement or a difference in memory.

Now I do have a confession to make, we chose not to stay for the screening of the film after the conversation. We had watched Heat last year and Amanda was not up for repeating it. It is a long film, and if we had stayed we wouldn't have gotten home until midnight at least. So we stayed for the conversation between Pacino and director Michael Mann, and then we made our way out of the theater is quietly as possible so that we can return to the Southern California house and my daughter and her husband are living in. We got to have dinner with them instead of sending down in the diner with Robert De Niro and Al Pacino.

TCM Film Festival 2025 (Day 3)

Earth vs. the Flying Saucers

Our third day of the TCM Film Festival started off with a science fiction classic from the 1950s featuring Special Effects by the great Ray Harryhausen. I don't think I've ever seen this film before "Earth vs. the Flying Saucers". The morning's presentation was introduced by Joe Dante a director that I've admired for almost 50 years. Just as a side note that behind him at the screening of the Bruce Willis film "Sunset" in the Cinerama Dome.

Earth versus the flying saucers is a straightforward fifties sci-fi film, which means that it features military types who are hysterical about contact with new species, and weapons that we have not encountered before which will require a sudden development of Technology that we haven't used before. Many times the aliens in these movies are standings for communism, the idea that a totalitarian race wants to dominate us and control our resources and lives sounds like it's a pretty straightforward interpretation of the Soviet Union, only with cool space suits.

I'm sure I've seen actor Hugh Marlow in something else but at the moment I can't remember what it would be. Many of the actors portraying generals looked quite familiar, I suspect they probably worked regularly in the 1950s playing military types. The highlight of these films is usually the special effects and in this particular case it's the flying saucers and the Damage they cause Washington DC. Ray Harryhausen he's always been one of my favorite producers, who's specialty is stop motion animation, that he did mostly on his own. The effects look really cool on the screen, although in this particular film they were a little repetitive until we got to the attack on DC.

Colossus: The Forbin Project

Our second film of the day was one that I was looking forward to from the moment I first saw the schedule. In the decade Plus that I have attended the TCM Film Festival, I've made sure to see the presentations from Craig Barron and Ben Burtt. These two gentlemen have extensive background in sound and special effects, receiving multiple Academy Awards, and having a clear knowledge of the history of their own disciplines. The very first film I saw at one of these festivals was my favorite, "The Adventures of Robin Hood" with Errol Flynn. Barron and Burtt were the presenters for that screening and they had such interesting detail and background history on the movie that I resolved never to miss an opportunity when they were speaking again.

The film they were working on this day, was "Colossus: The Forbin Project", from 1970. While not the most well-known science fiction film of its ilk, Colossus is a forerunner of some of the most prescient films of the last 50 years. James Cameron was clearly influenced by exposure to this movie because the whole concept of Skynet is stolen from this film. The premise of the film is simple, we have created an artificial intelligence to run our defense systems, and the worst things that can happen do.

I was a little surprised that this was the film that these two gentlemen were working on for the festival, because I didn't remember that there were extensive effect shots. Of course I forget sometimes that matte paintings and sound design are a big part of how a movie like this manage to impress. The opening shots of Dr Forbin, walking through the Colossus computer as it is being booted up, require some difficult matte paintings that were done by the great Albert Whitlock. The descriptions that the speakers provided impressively explained why we should take note of this subtle work.

I also found it quite interesting, that the sound of colossus's voice in the television interface that originated at the World's Fair in 1939, was classified during World War II. The sound technology was used for the direct communication line between Franklin Delano Roosevelt in Winston Churchill. It was a nice simulation of what their call would have sounded like using the encryption sound technology that was later used for this movie. Once again one of my favorite things at the TCM Film Festival was a presentation by Craig Barron and Ben Bert. As an added bonus the star of the film Eric Braeden made an appearance. He did a brief introduction before the movie, and then participated in a little Q&A

Brigadoon

The third film for the day had us returning to the Egyptian Theater for the first time since last year. Although I love the Chinese IMAX I have to say that the Egyptian is my favorite venue for the festival. When I lived in Southern California I was a member of the American Cinematique, who operated the Egyptian. It is since traded hands and is now a Netflix venue, and while that may not be something I think is great, they have done a fantastic job updating the theater while still maintaining it's historical ambience. Such ambience seemed particularly important for this film, a 1950s Musical that I have never seen before Brigadoon.

I'm a fan of musicals and of Gene Kelly, so it's a little surprising that I hadn't seen this for myself at some point in the past. I don't know that it has the best reputation in the world of musicals, after all I'm not sure there's a song in it that was a hit. The film however it does have a number of charms, and it's a good reminder of how the studio system of the golden age of Hollywood could produce a film on sound stages that made you feel like you were in Scotland. In case you are not aware Brigadoon is a village that is either cursed or blessed depending upon your point of view. It's residents appear to be living nearly forever, because the village is only active for a few days every hundred years. Of course when Gene Kelly and Van Johnson stumble upon the village, complications ensue, but so do some wonderful dance sequences. I was not aware that Van Johnson danced in any films, but he did a pretty credible job with one number in this movie.

The real dancers in the film however were represented at the screening today by two of their own, Barrie Chase and George Chakiris. Both of these actors/dancers are well into their 80s, and they occasionally scratch their heads trying to remember some details about the particular film. They certainly gave us some insight into the way that dancers in those days found jobs or auditioned. I got the definite impression that Barry Chase lost a few opportunities because she would not submit to Arthur Freed . The casting couch was alive and well in those days.

While most of the film looked pretty good there were some sequences that probably needed to be remastered. I was happy to catch up on this classic and enjoy the look of the film even if the story is a little slight, and inconsistent on its own world building. After all it's really a musical not a science fiction fantasy film interested in creating its own universe.

JAWS

When we left the theater after Brigadoon we immediately got a new cue card and got in line to get back into the Egyptian for the most important film of our at TCM. This year is the 50th anniversary of the greatest film of the second half of the 20th century. Jaws is influential, groundbreaking, and once again in my opinion the best film that Steven Spielberg has ever made.

I am not sure that there is another movie that I have seen in a theater as often as I have Jaws. It made me very nostalgic to be seeing it here at TCM in the Egyptian Theater, since at least a half dozen of my earlier screenings also took place at this iconic venue. Anybody reading this can find more than a dozen posts about the movie Jaws on this blog site. I'm not going to recap the story or the significance of the movie on this day. Instead, main thing I want to talk about is the guest Lorraine Gary, who played Ellen Brody in the film. 

She was married to Sid Steinberg, who at the time was the chief at Universal Studios and Steven Spielberg's mentor. This is the part that she will be remembered for, all of her other roles were primarily supporting TV characters. Frankly she's terrific in the movie, although she disappears from the film entirely in the third Act. Advanced age of 88 she had No Reservations about being honest concerning her co-workers. She was dismissive of Richard Dreyfuss, without giving any details of why she didn't care for him. She also expressed the opinion that Roy Scheider was it somewhat mean co-star, and she didn't have any warm memories of working with him. She did however confess to having a crush on Robert Shaw, which I find completely Charming and ironic given their parts in the film.

The print of the film that was screened for us came from the British Film Institute, and had been preserved since a 1981 presentation on the BBC. The color dyes in this print are probably as close to the original version of the film from 1975, as we are likely to ever see. The film looked magnificent. It was surprising when Ben Mankowitz ask for a show of hands of people who had never seen the movie, that there were dozens of hands in the air. Listening to the audience during the film I had no trouble believing that those people were being honest, because you could hear the intake of breath, the shots of surprise, and the Applause of delight for all those little things that make Jaws the quintessential Blockbuster in one of my favorite films.

Blade Runner

We repeated the process at the end of this film walking out of the theater getting in line immediately to get a new cue card to go back in and see our final film for the evening. Although it was not a financial success in 1982 when it was first released, Blade Runner has been a critical success and a cult favorite for more than 40 years. 

One of the first Criterion Collection laserdiscs that I purchased was Blade Runner, back in the 1990s. That version does not include the director's cut in the Final Cut, but there is discussion of some of the things that would later be included in revised editions of the film. The version we saw appears to have been the Final Cut, so there is no narration in the ending is slightly different, although to be honest we only stayed through the first hour of the film. As I've already mentioned we were staying at the house in Glendora so we had a 45 minute ride home, if we stayed for the whole film we would not have been in bed until 1: 30, and we needed to get up at 5: 30 to make Sunday.

The special guests for this film was the female co-star Sean Young, who was only 19 when the film was made and who was making her debut as a film actress with this movie. Miss Young has always been known as an outspoken and opinionated actress and nothing has changed even if she is aged the way I have. She spoke about working with Harrison Ford, the rigors of the makeup chair, and generally working in Hollywood. Her talk was not limited to Blade Runner though, as she made brief comments about several films and actors that she had worked with. She seemed fond of the late Gene Hackman when she worked with in no way out, but never seem to get very close to Kevin Costner who was her leading man. She did say that Blade Runner was the favorite film that she made, but the bigger reaction from the audience was to her second favorite film which was Ace Ventura.

Watching Blade Runner at home on Blu-ray, streaming, or even my beloved LaserDisc, cannot do it justice. Seeing it on the big screen and listening to the score and the sound design of the film in the theater like the Egyptian is one of those things that everybody should experience. We only stayed through the scene where James Hong meets his demise, but I can tell you everything up to that point looked and sounded spectacular on the big screen.  

At one time it had been my hope to make a couple of the midnight movies, and "Wild at Heart" would have been another film at the Egyptian had we not been so tired. So we ended our day with the fun talk from Sean Young and the brilliant vision of Ridley Scott.