Robin Williams’ Black-on-White Floral Silk D&G Shirt in The Birdcage

Robin Williams in The Birdcage (1996)

Vitals

Robin Williams as Armand Goldman, South Beach nightclub manager

Miami Beach, Winter 1996

Film: The Birdcage
Release Date: March 8, 1996
Director: Mike Nichols
Costume Designer: Ann Roth

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

I’m honored to share my birthday with Robin Williams, who was born 75 years ago today on July 21, 1951. One of my favorite of the late comedian’s movies is The Birdcage, crafted by the iconic married team of director Mike Nichols and writer Elaine May as an adaptation of the French play and subsequent film La Cage aux Folles.

Williams stars as Armand Goldman, owner of the titular Birdcage, a South Beach drag club starring his more flamboyant partner Albert (Nathan Lane). When Armand’s son Val (Dan Futterman) reveals he’s marrying the daughter of the ultraconservative Virginia senator Kevin Keeley (Gene Hackman) who insists on meeting his future in-laws, Armand and Val conceive a plan to host the senator’s family by luring Albert away from the couple’s ostentatious apartment—allowing time for Armand to renovate himself and his home to support Val’s untruth that his father is actually Armand Coleman: a heterosexual cultural attaché to Greece… “whatever the hell that is.” Continue reading →

The Four Seasons: Alan Alda’s Sky-Blue Summer Shirt and White Trousers

Alan Alda in The Four Seasons (1981)

Vitals

Alan Alda as Jack Burroughs, married lawyer

Saint Thomas, Summer 1980

Film: The Four Seasons
Release Date: May 22, 1981
Director: Alan Alda
Costume Designer: Jane Greenwood

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Six months ago, I observed Alan Alda’s 90th birthday with my first post of his seasonal wardrobe in The Four Seasons, his 1981 comedy following four pairs of couples vacationing together throughout a tumultuous year in their lives, scored by Vivaldi’s concerti of the same name. (The film was recently adapted as a Netflix series co-created by and starring Tina Fey with Alda’s endorsement, as the actor also appears as Fey’s father.)

The second segment of The Four Seasons is set during the summer when the group sails their rented boat Sandavore through the U.S. Virgin Islands. The dynamic has shifted since the salesman Nick (Len Cariou) left his wife and has brought his much younger girlfriend Ginny (Bess Armstrong) on the trip, distracting the rest with loud sex at night and nude swimming in the morning. Alda’s moralistic lawyer Jack tries to openly explore how this has affected the group, but denies to his wife Kate (Carol Burnett) that he harbors any fantasties of his own around Ginny or a woman like her, instead venting his frustrations about Nick and Ginny treating the group expedition like a private holiday:

They’re not even on this trip! They walk around mooning all the time, making goo-goo eyes. My God, if one of them farts, the other one thinks it’s Guy Lombardo!

Continue reading →

Marlon Brando’s Snakeskin Jacket in The Fugitive Kind

Marlon Brando in The Fugitive Kind (1960)

Vitals

Marlon Brando as Valentine “Snakeskin” Xavier, guitar-playing drifter seeking redemption

Mississippi Delta, January 1959

Film: The Fugitive Kind
Release Date: April 14, 1960
Director: Sidney Lumet
Costume Designer: Frank L. Thompson

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

For National Snake Day on July 16th, let’s celebrate the famous snakeskin jacket that Marlon Brando wore as Valentine “Val” Xavier in The Fugitive Kind, adapted from Tennessee Williams’ 1957 play Orpheus Descending—itself a modern retelling of the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Continue reading →

Paris, Texas: Harry Dean Stanton’s Red Road Trip Shirt and Ranchero

Harry Dean Stanton in Paris, Texas (1984)

Vitals

Harry Dean Stanton as Travis Henderson, once-wandering drifter

Los Angeles to Houston, Fall 1983

Film: Paris, Texas
Release Date: September 19, 1984
Director: Wim Wenders
Costume Designer: Birgitta Bjerke

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

One of my favorite actors, Harry Dean Stanton, was born 100 years ago today on July 14, 1926 in Kentucky. Following his U.S. Navy service during World War II, Stanton began an acting career that lasted more than six decades until his death from heart failure at age 91 in September 2017 after completing his penultimate film Lucky, which also afforded Stanton the rare starring role. He was a close, respected friend of many A-listers like Francis Ford Coppola, David Lynch, and Jack Nicholson, who included Stanton as best man in his 1962 wedding and habitually scrawled “H.D. Stanton” on the sets of his films.

Stanton typically made the most of supporting roles in films like Cool Hand Luke (1967), Dillinger (1973), The Godfather Part II (1974), Alien (1979), Escape from New York (1981), Christine (1983), Red Dawn (1984), Pretty in Pink (1986), Wild at Heart (1990), Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992), Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998), The Green Mile (1999), and The Avengers (2012)—a filmography so prolific that Roger Ebert once declared that, with the sole exception of Dream a Little Dream (1989), “no movie featuring either Harry Dean Stanton or M. Emmet Walsh in a supporting role can be altogether bad.”

Despite his prolific supporting career, Stanton was cast in leading parts for back-to-back films released in 1984: Alex Cox’s dark sci-fi comedy Repo Man and Wim Wenders’ elegiac road drama Paris, Texas. The latter won the Palme d’Or when it premiered at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival and, though overlooked by most American award bodies, has grown its cult reputation as one of the greatest movies ever made. With additional style provided by Ry Cooder’s original score and Robby Müller’s masterful cinematography, the script was written by L.M. Kit Carson and Sam Shepard, who offered Stanton the part after the two connected at a Santa Fe film festival. Continue reading →

Point Break: Keanu Reeves’ Pale-Blue Camp Shirt and Jeans

Keanu Reeves as FBI Agent Johnny Utah in Point Break (1991)

Vitals

Keanu Reeves as Johnny Utah, ambitious FBI agent

Los Angeles, Summer 1991

Film: Point Break
Release Date: July 12, 1991
Director: Kathryn Bigelow
Costume Supervisors: Colby P. Bart & Louis Infante

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Point Break was released 35 years ago today on July 12, 1991, chronicling Ohio State football star-turned-FBI agent Johnny Utah (Keanu Reeves) infiltrating a group of bank-robbing surfers and skydivers led by the enigmatic Bodhi (Patrick Swayze) while also buying two meatball subs for his supervisor, Angelo Pappas (Gary Busey). It feels especially appropriate to celebrate Point Break‘s cinematic legacy on the day after World Skydiving Day—observed on the second Saturday of July. Continue reading →

Kill Me Again: Val Kilmer’s White Shirt and White Cadillac

Val Kilmer in Kill Me Again (1989)

Vitals

Val Kilmer as Jack Andrews, cynical private investigator

Nevada, Spring 1989

Film: Kill Me Again
Release Date: October 27, 1989
Director: John Dahl
Costume Designer: Terry Dresbach

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

This summer’s Car Week wraps with Kill Me Again, John Dahl’s little-known (at least to me, before last year) 1989 neo-noir thriller starring the late Val Kilmer and Michael Madsen opposite Kilmer’s then-wife Joanne Whalley as a dangerous femme fatale.

I’ll admit I was drawn to this as a subject this week due to some stylistic similarities with one of my favorite “car movies”, Vanishing Point (1971), which also features a man in a white shirt and jeans desperately racing a white two-door hardtop V8 through the desert until the car meets a fiery end. In this case, it’s not the nihilistic Kowalski in a Dodge Challenger but our widowed gambler P.I. in his quarter-century-old Cadillac, racing through the sand for a bundle of stolen cash. Continue reading →

Two-Lane Blacktop: James Taylor as a ’55 Chevy Driver

James Taylor with Dennis Wilson and Laurie Bird in Two-Lane Blacktop (1971)

Vitals

James Taylor as “The Driver”, laconic race car driver

Arizona through Tennessee, Fall 1970

Film: Two-Lane Blacktop
Release Date: July 7, 1971
Director: Monte Hellman
Costume Designer: Richard Bruno

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Monte Hellman’s offbeat cult classic road movie Two-Lane Blacktop was released 55 years ago this week on July 7, 1971, starring musicians James Taylor and Dennis Wilson as the unnamed driver and mechanic of a ’55 Chevy gasser that picks up a hitchhiker (Laurie Bird) and falls into a cross-country race for pinks against the blustering driver of a new Pontiac GTO, played by Warren Oates.

Always an unorthodox maverick, Hellman was inspired to cast Taylor after spying his face on a Sunset Boulevard billboard, recalling that he “just flipped over his face.” Both Taylor and his late co-star Oates recalled the first-time actor feeling frustrated with his lack of control as Hellman and his 30-person crew shot the film in sequence, offering the cast only a few pages of the script at a time. “I’m not talking out of turn when I say Jimmy Taylor had terrible struggles relinquishing control to Monte,” Oates later shared.

The on-set strife reached a point where Hellman convinced Taylor not to quit the production by finally allowing him to read the entirety of Rudy Wurtlizer’s screenplay… which he didn’t do. Still, Taylor didn’t see Two-Lane Blacktop as the detour to a new path in his career, explaining in a contemporary interview with the Los Angeles Times that “I’m not an actor. I’ll never do this again. If I ever did another film I’d have to be the director and writer, I’d have to be in control.” To date, this remains the six-time Grammy-winning Taylor’s sole big-screen acting credit apart from cameos.

As this summer’s Car Week feature stretches on, let’s follow Sweet Baby James in that primer-gray Chevy along America’s blue highways stretching east from Arizona. Continue reading →

Rocky IV: The Italian Stallion’s Adidas Sweatsuit and Lamborghinis

Sylvester Stallone in Rocky IV (1985)

Vitals

Sylvester Stallone as Rocky Balboa, two-time heavyweight world champion boxer

Philadelphia, Fall 1985

Film: Rocky IV
Release Date: November 27, 1985
Director: Sylvester Stallone
Costume Designer: Tom Bronson

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Happy 80th birthday to Sylvester Stallone! Born July 6, 1946, the carved his own path to Hollywood success by writing and starring in Rocky as the fictional Philadelphia boxer Rocky Balboa. What started as a simple sports drama with a million-dollar budget has advanced over a half-century to $2 billion-grossing franchise of nine films and counting.

The first six films were all entirely written by Stallone who also directed four of the sequels, including Rocky IV (1985), which essentially pits Rocky as a symbol of American greatness against the cold-hearted cruelty of the Soviet Union as embodied by his deadly rival Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren).

A brief but memorable scene finds Rocky washing his pair of Lamborghinis outside his Philly mansion while his son Rocky Jr. (Rocky Krakoff) plays with the robot they gave Rocky’s brother-in-law Paulie (Burt Young) until this domestic bliss is interrupted by a phone call from Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) to discuss Drago.

Let’s continue this summer’s Car Week with a look at Rocky’s look and his Lambos! Continue reading →

Downhill Racer: Hometown Hero Redford’s Wrangler Denim and ’57 Chevy

Robert Redford as David Chappellet in Downhill Racer (1969)

Robert Redford as David Chappellet in Downhill Racer (1969)

Vitals

Robert Redford as Dave Chappellet, U.S. Olympic ski team star

Idaho Springs, Colorado, Summer 1967

Film: Downhill Racer
Release Date: November 6, 1969
Director: Michael Ritchie
Costume Designer: Edith Head (uncredited!)
Wardrobe Credit: Cynthia May

Background

To coincide with the United States celebrating its 250th anniversary today, let’s launch this summer’s Car Week with an all-American star driving an all-American car while sporting all-American denim.

Robert Redford starred in three films released in 1969, arguably a breakthrough year for the late screen icon. His most notable would be the latter role in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, though the contemporary sports drama Downhill Racer gave the ambitious future producer/director a taste of production as he wielded some of his newfound influence to recruit both screenwriter James Salter and director Michael Ritchie after Roman Polanski left the project.

Without having read Oakley Hall’s source novel, Salter followed Polanski’s original vision of adapting the High Noon concept on the Olympic slopes; instead of a downed sheriff requiring a replacement, it’s the U.S. national ski team who needs a replacement for its lead skier after an accident. Call in Redford’s arrogant but talented David Chappellet, inspired by elements of real-life skiers Billy Kidd, Spider Sabich, and Buddy Werner. Continue reading →

Kurt Russell’s Tank Top and Trucker Style in Big Trouble in Little China

Kurt Russell and Kim Cattrall in Big Trouble in Little China (1986)

Vitals

Kurt Russell as Jack Burton, troublesome truck driver

San Francisco, Fall 1985

Film: Big Trouble in Little China
Release Date: July 2, 1986
Director: John Carpenter
Costume Designer: April Ferry

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

John Carpenter’s cult classic Big Trouble in Little China was released 40 years ago today on July 2, 1986. Following their initial collaboration in The Thing (1982), Kurt Russell stars as cocky trucker Jack Burton, who indeed lands in big trouble in little China—specifically San Francisco’s Chinatown district—when his friend’s fiancée is kidnapped by a local street gang and then again kidnapped by henchmen serving the reclusive sorcerer David Lo Pan (James Hong), who needs a green-eyed wife to break an ancient curse. Jack and his friend Wang Chi (Dennis Dun) are joined by appropriately named attorney Gracie Law (Kim Cattrall) on their quest through the literal underground to retrieve Wang’s betrothed. Carpenter has explained he envisioned Jack as a sidekick who thinks he’s a hero, while the more comparatively reserved Wang more closely exemplifies the traditional leading man. Continue reading →