Elroy Jackson Jr.: I don’t want no job, neither. I work for nothin’, take fifty percent of the prize money. Burton Colt: To begin with, I hire drivers on my terms. Elroy Jackson Jr.: And end up nowhere. Burton Colt: Where do you get off being so goddamn snotty? Elroy Jackson Jr.: I know my potential. So do you. Junior Jackson has a lot of... Continue reading

Happy Birthday Marilyn Monroe (photo by Elliott Erwitt, 1954) Continue reading

This was such an honor! To see our movie on the marquee at my favorite theater -- the New Beverly Cinema. Thank you, New Beverly, for showing the 35 mm B&W print of Nightmare Alley! And for having Guillermo & I discuss after. What a wonderful two nights! Continue reading

From the LA Times. Commentary: Martin Scorsese wants you to watch ‘Nightmare Alley.’ Let him tell you why An excerpt: "...But the term “noir” has been used so often and in such a cheeky way that it seems more like a flavor than anything else, and it might just lead someone seeking information about the picture in the wrong direction. They might be expecting a... Continue reading

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Some photos I took on the set of Nightmare Alley: Continue reading

Nominated for Best Picture, Best Cinematography, Best Production Design & Best Costume Design! Continue reading

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It’s a pity Gloria Beatty never met Jeremiah Johnson. They’d have some things to talk about. Gloria and Jeremiah, two characters in Sydney Pollack’s sixth and seventh pictures respectively, were asking similar questions, albeit with slightly different ends. Where can you? Can you ever escape this life? How do you survive? For Jane Fonda’s Gloria in Pollack’s They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? the question is... Continue reading

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Mrs. Forbes (Kathryn Hays) hears the alarm. She sees a letter in a series of squares, and it beeps and lights up. She’s the secretary to the principal of a grade school in a rural area somewhere in America in 1962 – and she’s pregnant. A thin woman well into her pregnancy she moves with ease but, with that child growing inside her, she seems... Continue reading

Regular small-town American life. Regular small-town American life in the 1950’s. What did that ever mean? The “regular” part? By regular does one mean purse snatching librarians, bank clerk window peepers, cheating wives, drunken husbands and little kids ashamed of their fathers for not serving in the war? Yes, that sounds about regular (it does). And then Lee Marvin. (That’s not so regular because... who... Continue reading

“This is the true story of a man and a gun and a car. The gun belonged to the man. The car might have been yours or that young couple across the aisle. What you will see in the next seventy minutes could have happened to you. For the facts are actual.” Sometime in 1951 or 1952, actress, director and movie star Ida Lupino walked... Continue reading

Happy to be a part of Arrow's new 4K restorations of both the Theatrical Cut and the Director’s Cut from the original camera negatives of Tony Scott's True Romance. I wrote one of the accompanying essays in this packed special edition. Loads of special features -- read more about them here. Release date July 19. Here's the beginning of my essay (extended from a piece... Continue reading

Hours are like diamonds, don't let them waste Time waits for no one; no favors has he Time waits for no one, and he won't wait for me – The Rolling Stones Time. Once you hit the teen mark in life – what a beautiful horrible time that is. Dreamy and crazy and banal and violent – in action or in mind – melodramatic and... Continue reading

Happy to be a part of Arrow's new 4K restorations of both the Theatrical Cut and the Director’s Cut from the original camera negatives of Tony Scott's True Romance. I wrote one of the accompanying essays in this packed special edition. Loads of special features -- read more about them here. Release date July 19. Here's the beginning of my essay (extended from a piece... Continue reading

"Hello there ladies and gentlemen!" Excited to be a part of this Arrow release -- it's long been one of my favorites -- Jonathan Kaplan's Over the Edge -- with an Illustrated collector's booklet featuring a new essay I wrote -- Also inside is writing by Henry Blyth, and the original San Francisco Examiner article that inspired the film. There are so many great extras... Continue reading

Christine: Men are such fools. Men want to be heroes and their widows mourn. Labiche: Perhaps men are fools. There were over a hundred involved in stopping that train. Switchmen, brakemen, yard gangs, stationmasters. God knows how many will be shot, like Jacques. You know what’s on that train? Paintings. That’s right, paintings. Art. The national heritage. The pride of France. Crazy, isn’t it? The... Continue reading

"The fool who walks in motley..." I was thrilled to be a part of this edition. Edmund Goulding's Nightmare Alley starring Tyrone Power in one of his best performances (his very best?) came out this week on Criterion in a beautiful edition. Special features include an interview with Imogen Sara Smith, an interview w/ performer and historian Todd Robbins, a 1971 interview with Henry King... Continue reading

Eddie: [to judge] I knew all that stuff about you helping us was baloney. I'll tell you why we can't go home—because our folks are poor. They can't get jobs and there isn't enough to eat. What good will it do you to send us home to starve? You say you've got to send us to jail to keep us off the streets. Well, that's... Continue reading

“So in ’67, we do this little motorcycle movie, Cameron Mitchell, the group of six, plus Miss Diane. We’ve got a little swagger under our belts. We’ve got ‘The Wild Angels’, which did okay. Jack has already done almost a decade of independent movies on his own, plus working for Roger. I’d been around almost a decade now. I’m a Kazanite, and so is Cameron... Continue reading

There's a moment in Heath Ledger's far too short, sometimes brilliant film career that makes me so filled with wistful emotion, that no matter how many times I watch it, I'm still taken aback by its deceptively simple power. It's his final scene in Catherine Hardwicke's great, beautiful, moving Lords of Dogtown, a far too under-discussed picture featuring one of Ledger's most poignant performances. As... Continue reading

A brief look at Phil Karlson's Gunman's Walk... “Look, times don’t change in this country where you breed a man soft… without any spirit in him. A man’s like a horse. If you don’t buck the first time you put a saddle on him, he ain’t worth having, you know that!”— Lee Hackett (Van Heflin) In Phil Karlson’s Gunman ‘s Walk – you wonder how... Continue reading

“Life is on the wire; the rest is just waiting.” – Karl Walenda “On the snap Vincent!” This is uttered to pool player and obnoxious kid, Vincent Lauria, via his manager girlfriend, Carmen -- almost like a boxing trainer -- in a smoky bar on a regular night of nothing particularly special in the 1980s. Phil Collins' “One More Night” plays on the soundtrack (and... Continue reading

Mikey: You call me “The Echo,” and you tell everybody that I have to say everything twice because I got a tunnel in my head. The second time is the echo. Nicky: Listen, Mikey, everybody says everything. I mean, what’s the difference? I was kidding. Don’t you ever kid? Mikey: You make me out a joke to Resnick. Just like you made me out a... Continue reading