Our first Photo Opportunity of 2021 features a cracking shot discovered by one of our admin team, Davy Triumph. Clint is captured here (resembling a young Dirty Harry) whist judging a teen Miss Jersey contest at Palisades Amusement Park in 1962. We think it’s a winner! Image by Jim Demetropoulous, Retna Ltd.
I thought I’d kick off 2021 with this rather amusing Italian Locandina poster for ‘Ringo Prega Il Tuo Dio... Ora T'Ammazzo’ (1967). It was just one of many Ringo spin off movies that began to swamp the genre - which was becoming something of a minefield around this time. The film has an English translation of RINGO PRAY YOUR GOD ... NOW I WILL KILL YOU – yep, I know…
However, it was our eagle-eyed UK correspondent Davy Triumph who spotted this a few weeks ago and purchased the poster for himself. Not that Davy is a big Ringo fan, but it was just something about the artwork which stood out as a little ‘familiar’ to him. The artist, credited as ‘Mos’, was clearly influenced by the previous year’s Leone classic The Good, the bad and the ugly as the painting is clearly based upon a famous still from the movie. We can’t blame the artist for this cheeky bit of license of course, I believe someone once said, ‘You only borrow from the best’, and who are we to argue with that.
My thanks to Davy Triumph.
In Memoriam:
Well here’s something you just don’t see every day. This week an incredibly rare U.K. Quad poster (size 30” x 40”) surfaced within the U.K. The poster is believed to be an early re-issue poster. Other than that it is something of a mystery. The seller stated in his description that, “it appears the poster was received rolled as no creases appear on the main body of the poster.” He continued, “Back in the 1970s and 80s I was part of a club that used to run fund raising dances, usually themed. If I thought I could “scrounge” anything from any of the many film companies, then I would send a letter and often publicity material such as film posters would arrive. These would be put up for the dance and then ended up rolled up in my loft. Some arrived folded some rolled.”
Whilst the poster has a little edge wear due to age (digitally restored here for purposes of the Archive), the poster is in incredibly good shape. The poster proved to be very popular, which isn’t too surprising considering its rarity value. After some fierce battling it eventually sold for £255.00.
I am also pleased to report that the poster went to a very good friend and part of the administration team here at the Archive, Davy Triumph. It’s certainly the first time either Davy or myself have seen this one.So congratulations Sir, I’m over the moon that you managed to secure it.
Dieves sponsored Green for union
membership in 1965, and the next summer Green handled assistant cameraman
duties for a documentary on the film “The Way West,” flying aerials over
Oregon. He subsequently worked with John Lowry Prods., crewing on more
helicopter gigs and moving full-time to Los Angeles in 1968.
Risky aerials became Green’s
bread and butter. He filmed airborne montages that appeared in “Bob & Carol
& Ted & Alice,” chase scenes for “Bullitt” and naval pictorials for
“Tora! Tora! Tora!” He earned his operator chops one set-up at a time, handling
urban flyovers on “Dirty Harry,” Carmel’s enchanted coastline for “Play Misty
for Me” and challenging coverage of rafting sequences for “Rooster Cogburn.”
“My break came with
[cinematographer] Michael Watkins on [producer] Roger Corman’s ‘Fighting Mad,’”
he says. A study in guerrilla cinematography in terms of the schedule and the
crew, the picture required “off-the-cuff shooting” that few but Green could
handle.
When Green was drafted by friend
and cinematographer Rexford Metz to operate B-camera on Eastwood’s “The
Gauntlet,” the action film’s nocturnal schedule — which included crashes and
steel-plated bus shootouts — taught him the Zen of minimal takes and how to
give cinematographers what they want in difficult circumstances.
He was befriended by Bruce
Surtees, who would become his mentor, and more Eastwood fare followed. Green
joined Eastwood’s troupe for ”Every Which Way but Loose,” “Bronco Billy,”
”Firefox,” “Tightrope” and “Pale Rider” -— shooting handheld coverage of the
mining camp attack for the last film. Meanwhile, he continued to work on
crash-’em-up pictures like “48 Hrs.” and “Beverly Hills Cop” to make the rent.
With Surtees’ blessing, he moved
up to director of photography on Eastwood’s “Heartbreak Ridge” in 1986. For the
Charlie Parker biopic “Bird” in 1988, it was Green’s screen test of Forest
Whitaker playing sax in a recording booth that sold Eastwood on the sombre but
high-key look of the film.
The DP became a chameleon of
visceral shooting styles, as seen in movies ranging from “White Hunter Black
Heart” and “The Bridges of Madison County” to “Unforgiven” and “Midnight in the
Garden of Good and Evil.”
Now retired and living in Santa
Rosa with his wife of 51 years, Susan, Green earned his star on the Hollywood
Walk of Fame thanks to myriad photographic talents and a focus on what was best
for the picture. He says he always tried to serve the director’s vision and
would happily relinquish his ideas “if the boss’s vision was better.”
His ideas must have been pretty
good fairly often: He received the Cinematographers Guild’s Lifetime
Achievement Award in 2009.
CRY MACHO rumoured to be Clint’s next project
Reports are coming out of Hollywood that Clint’s next project may be Cry Macho. As the film industry slowly returns to work, Clint looks to be moving quickly to get his next movie going. Deadline reported that the iconic director is coming on to direct and star in Cry Macho for Warner Bros. While it’s unknown about a start date or when it might be released, sources say Eastwood has already begun scouting locations for the shoot.
Knowing how quick Eastwood’s shoots can go, insiders add the film could be in front of audiences by next winter. Sources add that the film does not yet have a formal green light.
Al Ruddy and Jessica Meier are producing, along with Tim Moore and Eastwood at Malpaso. N. Richard Nash, who wrote the novel Cry Macho, penned the script along with Nick Schenk. I can’t however confirm this, unless it is based on an old draft, as Wikipedia states that Nash died in Manhattan on December 11th 2000, aged 87?
Based on the book (which was published in June 1975 by Delacorte Press), the film will star Eastwood as a onetime rodeo star and washed-up horse breeder who, in 1978, takes a job from an ex-boss to bring the man’s young son home and away from his alcoholic mom. Crossing rural Mexico on their back way to Texas, the unlikely pair faces an unexpectedly challenging journey, during which the world-weary horseman may find his own sense of redemption through teaching the boy what it means to be a good man. The New York Times described it as a morality tale about two characters who help each other through tough transitions. Over the decades, there have been two aborted attempts to produce a movie of Cry Macho – a feature starring Roy Scheider began initial production in Mexico in 1991, while Arnold Schwarzenegger originally planned to return to acting in 2011, after his time as Governor of California, with a film of Cry Macho that was eventually cancelled. After selling Cry Macho, Nash began to write what he called "real novels" and discover that writing a novel was more flexible than writing a play and received much less criticism than writing a play
When it comes to the acting part, it hasn’t always been a given that Eastwood would also act in the films he was directing; he usually leaned toward staying behind the camera rather than do both. In recent years, he has been drawn to material that allows for both, most recently him starring and directing the 2018 thriller The Mule.
