The Dunnes compared themselves to the Kennedys. Watch out what you wish for.

I really loathed “An American Werewolf in London.” It didn’t seem like any kind of major contribution to the genre. Gratuitous violence, gratuitous everything. I do still remember the little piece of skin dangling from Dunne’s ripped open throat when he talked, but that’s not a recommendation. “True Confessions” came out at about the same time. I didn’t get it. It was too dark and murky, in the lighting, in the mood, and in the plot. Somebody said at the time that it was essentially an NYC story that suffered from being set in LA. I did very much enjoy “My Favorite Year,” mostly because of Peter O’Toole and the recreation of the Sid Caesar era.

It’s fun when you let loose!

I don’t hold up “Creator” as a great film, but it is funny/good Peter O’Toole as a college professor seeking literally to clone his dead wife, but madcap Mariel Hemingway teaches him to live in the present, while flashing a boob or two.

Agreed. But he does it so freaking well… 😀

}}} Anyone who missed “The Stunt Man” (1980) and “Creator” (1985) with O’Toole might want to set their WayBack Machine to the 1980s and check those out.

Two thumbs up for The Stunt Man (though it feels dated and a lot slower than it used to — see PS comments below), less impressed with Creator, though I grant, it’s been close to 4 decades since I last saw it… my more mature opinion may vary.

==============
P.S., The Stunt Man, given that it’s about a returning Vietnam Vet with PTSD feels dated for obvious reasons.

It also feels “Slow” for reasons I’ve gone into here and many other places:

Movies segment on four different phase change events:

a — Talkies, ca. 1930. Kinda duh how anything before these is radically different from after.

b — Method Acting, ca. 1952. Prior to this, actors tended to be cast based on their “look” and less so for actual acting talent. This also led to “casting against ‘type'”, which, for example, had the blonde as the bad girl and the brunette as the good girl. After this, people started expecting all actors to really really act… prior to it, some did, but not as many as you might think.

c — the MPAA, ca. 1969. Prior to this, the Hayes Code strongly limited the topics which could be dealt with and/or caused them to be only tangentially suggested. Holly Golightly would likely be considered a prostitute (though sex was never really suggested, though implied) and the same with Paul Varjak, who was pretty obviously a gigolo, and Town Without Pity, well, the subject was rape, but that topic was never referred to by name, IIRC. There were other oddball things as a result of the Hayes Code, for example, husbands and wives had twin beds, because the HC specified that a man and a woman could not be shown in or sitting on a bed without each of them having one foot on the floor. This was true even if the two actors were married in real life, such as Tracy and Hepburn. The first MPAA Oscar winner was, of course, Midnight Cowboy, which was rated “X” despite being quite tame by modern standards, and openly deals with the subject of male prostitution. This “twin beds” thing bled into TV shows, as well, for much the same reasons. It was a moderately big deal, a watershed moment, when The Bob Newhart show depicted Bob and Emily in a king-sized bed, the first time that was done for a (US) TV show, I believe.

d — MTV, ca. 1980s (varies with director). Yes, oddly enough, Music Videos changed movies considerably. Think about it — a music video is a “little movie”, so it is trying to tell a visual, graphic story in a very short time. Plus it’s also a nice cheap way to test the real-world chops of a promising young director — much cheaper than handing off a 90m TV movie or low-budget movie to one, if they can’t handle it. So, it’s obvious that, in the process of telling those short, little stories that they would invent a kind of visual shorthand that the audiences — mostly young people, clearly — would learn as well. That, plus modern digital editing techniques allowed for many more cuts and shorter sequences, plus cheaper cameras also allowed the use of more angles for any given take. So music videos, then movies as the young directors moved to feature films, began to have a far faster visual pacing, with fewer long shots and many more closeups. The end result was a visually faster paced film… which led to older people complaining that “newer movies were all bang! bam! boom!!” while younger people, looking at classics, are going, “Freaking A, is anything gonna happen in the next 15m, or can I go take a crap and miss nothing?” 😀 Another, related affect (relevant to The Stunt Man, in particular) is the increased professionalism and education levels of actual Stunt Men, which led to much more intense action sequences as well as far more complex stunts, as they used actual physics and specialist knowledge (e.g., explosives) to make far more complex stunts and visual FX. You go back and watch the car chase scenes from Bullitt and The French Connection, which were considered very intense when released, and they are downright laughable nowadays (more cameras also have had an effect, with more cuts to keep it visually active). Basically, what happened was, as the 80s progressed, more and more directors adapted to the newer visual pacing, making the 80s another watershed area for films — before 1980, they had one pacing, after 1990, they had another — and films released during the 80s can be either way, depending on the director. (TV was slower to adapt — changes really did not occur there until around 1993, with the beginning of NYPD Blue).

AND, back to the original topic: The Stunt Man, since it’s from 1980, is in the older “slow” mode of film-making. This can lead to it feeling slow, so you have to adjust your internal “clock” to handle the slower pace of the scenes and the filming processes.

😉

Another film of this type, The pair of The Three/Four Musketeers, from 1973/74, are by far the best “Musketeers” adaptation, but they definitely seem a bit slow nowadays.

I think I saw the film version of True Confessions, by the other Dunne, but I couldnt get into it, how is it such rich and successful people, hove such a miserable outlook, I would say Dominick’s side of the family, considering his loss, still was an optimist,

A literary AND cinematic family…

Ask not for whom the cookie crumbles…etc.

He’s a commentator and director of the documentary film,
Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold, 2017, 1h 34m

Many here were familiar with her works. I was not, and found the film fascinating. On Netflix. The film has quite a bit on the Dunne family and Joan’s husband John.

Speaking of sons…
“Ex-LSU player Josh Maravich, son of Hall of Famer Pete Maravich, dead at age 42”—
https://nypost.com/2024/06/08/sports/pete-maravichs-son-josh-dead-at-42/

“Son of famous novelist who became arts journalist dies aged 59”—
https://www.holdthefrontpage.co.uk/2022/news/son-of-famous-novelist-who-became-arts-journalist-dies-aged-59/
RIP

+ Bonus:
“John le Carré’s sons: ‘We had to forgive our father’s sins'”—
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/authors/john-le-carres-sons-would-regard-today-high-dark-comedy-really/
“THE DOUBLE LIFE OF JOHN LE CARRÉ”—
https://thelampmagazine.com/issues/issue-16/the-double-life-of-john-le-carr%C3%A9
To be sure, this might just be Peter Hitchens being…Peter Hitchens…