Tagged: Double-Barreled Shotgun
Sam Shepard’s Denim Western-wear in Fool for Love
Sam Shepard in Fool for Love (1985)
Vitals
Sam Shepard as Eddie, rodeo stunt rider
Mojave Desert, Spring 1985
Film: Fool for Love
Release Date: December 6, 1985
Director: Robert Altman
Wardrobe Credit: Kristine Flones
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Today marks eight years since the death of 10-time Obie Award-winning actor, director, and writer Sam Shepard, who died July 17, 2017 at the age of 73.
As someone who loves movies set in motels and thinks that Shepard and Harry Dean Stanton were two of the coolest guys to have walked on this planet, I had long been intrigued by Robert Altman’s 1985 adaptation of Shepard’s own play Fool for Love, starring Shepard and Stanton opposite Kim Basinger. Continue reading
Scarface: Geno Silva as “The Skull”
Geno Silva in Scarface (1983)
Vitals
Geno Silva as “The Skull”, stealthy cartel killer
Miami, Spring 1983
Film: Scarface
Release Date: December 9, 1983
Director: Brian De Palma
Costume Designer: Patricia Norris
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
A silent but significant role in Scarface was the otherwise unnamed cartel assassin “The Skull” portrayed by actor Geno Silva, who died five years ago today on May 9, 2020. Continue reading
Rolling Thunder: William Devane’s USAF Lightweight Blue Jacket
William Devane in Rolling Thunder (1977)
Vitals
William Devane as Major Charles Rane, twice-traumatized Vietnam War veteran and “one macho motherfucker”
Texas and Mexico, Summer 1973
Film: Rolling Thunder
Release Date: October 7, 1977
Director: John Flynn
Wardrobe Credit: Nancy McArdle
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
You learn to love the rope. That’s how you beat ’em. That’s how you beat people who torture you. You learn to love ’em. Then they don’t know you’re beatin’ ’em.
Today is the 85th birthday of William Devane, the talented Albany-born actor who appeared in the rare starring role in the 1977 revenge-centered action thriller Rolling Thunder.
Written by Paul Schrader and Heywood Gould as an intended expansion of the Travis Bickle Cinematic Universe that began in Schrader’s script for Taxi Driver, Rolling Thunder centers around Major Charles Rane, a United States Air Force pilot returning home to San Antonio after seven years of imprisonment and torture in a Hanoi hellhole.
“He’s unemotional, unresponsive, and stoic to the point of not being among the living,” writes Quentin Tarantino in Cinema Speculation, the volume that introduced me to Rolling Thunder. Continue reading
Mad Max
Mel Gibson in Mad Max (1979)
Vitals
Mel Gibson as Max Rockatansky, taciturn Main Force Patrol officer-turned-vigilante
Victoria, Australia, “A few years from now” (early 1980s)
Film: Mad Max
Release Date: April 12, 1979
Director: George Miller
Costume Designer: Clare Griffin
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Mad Max, George Miller’s dystopian action thriller set in Australia, celebrates its 45th anniversary today. This film marked the beginning of a series that would include three sequels throughout the ’80s, revived with the highly acclaimed Mad Mad: Fury Road in 2015.
Before the sequels’ increasingly elaborate productions, the original Mad Max was a relatively straightforward road movie-meets-Western. It was made on a modest budget of A$400,000, shot guerrilla-style in the Melbourne area through the last months of 1977. Although met with mixed reviews upon its release in April 1979, Mad Max went on to shatter box office records, grossing over $100 million worldwide. Its success not only opened up the global market for Australian cinema but also catapulted the 23-year-old Mel Gibson to stardom for his portrayal of the titular Max Rockatansky. Continue reading
Russell Crowe in 3:10 to Yuma
Russell Crowe as Ben Wade in 3:10 to Yuma (2007)
Vitals
Russell Crowe as Ben Wade, cunning bandit leader
Arizona Territory, Fall 1884
Film: 3:10 to Yuma
Release Date: September 7, 2007
Director: James Mangold
Costume Designer: Arianne Phillips
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
The remake of the classic 1957 Western 3:10 to Yuma, based on Elmore Leonard’s short story of the same name, was released 15 years ago this week during a renaissance year for Western-themed movies, including the respective masterpieces No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood, and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. I have fond memories of seeing each one in theaters with my dad including this one, which we saw one weekend early in my first semester of college and particularly resonated with its themes of fatherhood.
Russell Crowe was James Mangold’s first choice for the role of Ben Wade, the introspective and thoughtful yet still ultimately ruthless outlaw leader who had been originated on screen by Glenn Ford fifty years earlier. With a fear-and-awe-inspiring reputation akin to the real-life Jesse James (who was born today in 1847, 160 years to the day before this version of 3:10 to Yuma was released), Wade defies bandit stereotypes by seemingly preferring quietly sketching to shootouts… but that doesn’t mean he’ll hesitate to shoot fast, straight, and with wicked accuracy when he feels compelled. “I wouldn’t last five minutes leadin’ an outfit like that if I wasn’t as rotten a hell,” Wade reassures us. Continue reading
The Yakuza: Robert Mitchum’s Tan Parka and Turtleneck
Robert Mitchum as Harry Kilmer in The Yakuza (1974)
Vitals
Robert Mitchum as Harry Kilmer, tough former detective
Tokyo, Spring 1974
Film: The Yakuza
Release Date: December 28, 1974
Director: Sydney Pollack
Costume Designer: Dorothy Jeakins
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
The unique neo-noir Japanese gangster movie The Yakuza was conceptualized by brothers Paul and Leonard Schrader based on Leonard’s letters to Paul while living in Japan, particularly about the yakuza and the screen presence of Ken Takakura. While Takakura was almost always guaranteed to play a role, the crucial positions of the director and the lead actor—who would portray an aging former detective sent to Japan in service to an old friend—were still in transition.
Early in the pre-production stages, it looked like Robert Aldrich would direct with Lee Marvin in the lead role, until Marvin’s clash with Warner Brothers led to Robert Mitchum taking the role. Continue reading
Sean Connery’s Brown Corduroy Jacket in The Untouchables
Sean Connery as Jim Malone in The Untouchables (1987)
Vitals
Sean Connery as Jim Malone, tough and honest Chicago beat cop
Chicago, September 1930
Film: The Untouchables
Release Date: June 3, 1987
Director: Brian De Palma
Costume Designer: Marilyn Vance
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
The Untouchables is a highly entertaining—yet highly fictionalized—saga of the successful legal campaign to bring down Al Capone’s criminal enterprise that terrorized Chicago through the 1920s with an all-star cast including Robert De Niro as Capone himself.
Eliot Ness had made a name for himself in the final years of Chicago’s beer wars as a relentless Prohibition agent, and he would use his fame decades later to pen The Untouchables, a memoir in which he credits himself with practically single-handedly sending Capone to prison. In real life, Ness’ raids were indeed disruptive, but it was the work of modest investigators U.S. Attorney George E.Q. Johnson and IRS agent Frank Wilson that eventually led to the charges that successfully convicted Capone. Continue reading
Gene Hackman’s Tweed Suit as Buck Barrow
Gene Hackman and Estelle Parsons as Buck and Blanche Barrow in Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
Vitals
Gene Hackman as “Buck” Barrow, bank robber, ex-convict, and family man
Texas, May 1933
Film: Bonnie & Clyde
Release Date: August 13, 1967
Director: Arthur Penn
Costume Designer: Theadora Van Runkle
Background
Happy birthday to Gene Hackman, who turns 86 years old today!
Bonnie and Clyde marked the first major role for Hackman, who had spent much of the ’60s as a struggling actor who shared rooms with fellow struggling actors Dustin Hoffman and Robert Duvall. 1967 turned out to be a banner year for the friends and roommates, earning Hackman and Hoffman their first Academy Award nominations.
Hackman brings an easygoing charm to the role of the more famous Clyde’s older brother Buck, and the film gets many of the “on paper” details right about Buck. As Clyde’s older brother, he had more experience tangling with the law and spent the first few months of Clyde’s criminal career in the Texas state prison. He had escaped once, but—as Hackman tells Warren Beatty’s Clyde—it was his new wife Blanche that talked him into returning to prison to serve out the rest of his sentence, and he would be pardoned 15 months later. Buck and Blanche journeyed to visit Bonnie and Clyde, ostensibly for a reunion and possibly for Buck to try and talk Clyde into following his good example. Of course, the murder of two Joplin policemen during this reunion meant Buck would be wanted again as well, and the brothers led the motley “Barrow Gang” in a string of small-town stickups and kidnappings over the next three months. Continue reading
Joe Kidd’s Tweed Suit
Clint Eastwood as Joe Kidd in Joe Kidd (1972).
Vitals
Clint Eastwood as Joe Kidd, laconic hunter and former bounty hunter
New Mexico, Spring 1902
Film: Joe Kidd
Release Date: July 14, 1972
Director: John Sturges
Background
Penned by Elmore Leonard, Joe Kidd is a unique revisionist Western starring Clint Eastwood as the titular ex-bounty hunter who finds himself reluctantly hired to join a posse tracking down a group of Mexican revolutionaries fighting for land reform.
Although the Joe Kidd character could be interchanged with any of Eastwood’s usual taciturn and iron-willed Western heroes (not that he’s any less entertaining for it!), the movie benefits from its interesting and oft-ignored setting and context as well as the usual Elmore Leonard touch of an array of unique characters populating the film’s world.
At the outset, Joe is locked up in the small town of Sinola, New Mexico as he awaits his trial for poaching. When he is asked if he knew it was illegal to hunt on reservation land, Joe responds:
Well the deer didn’t know where he was, and I wasn’t sure either.
What’d He Wear?
Audiences had become well-acquainted with the sight of Clint Eastwood’s familiar “Man With No Name” guise in Westerns, so it must have caught many audiences off-guard when Joe Kidd is first introduced in a suit – albeit, a raggedly worn one after his night in the slammer. Continue reading
Buck Barrow’s Leather Flight Jacket
Gene Hackman as Buck Barrow in Bonnie and Clyde (1967).
Vitals
Gene Hackman as “Buck” Barrow, Depression-era ex-convict looking to go straight
Joplin, Missouri, Spring 1933
Film: Bonnie & Clyde
Release Date: August 13, 1967
Director: Arthur Penn
Costume Designer: Theadora Van Runkle
Background
BAMF Style’s been focusing a lot on law-abiding BAMFs lately, and—while their behavior may be admirable—it’s always fun to shift back to characters with murkier legal histories. 1967’s Bonnie and Clyde is stylish in many regards, including the rugged outlaw style sported by Clyde’s older brother Buck, played charmingly by Gene Hackman in his first major on-screen role. Continue reading