You Don't Know Me, But You Love Me by Caelum Vatnsdal

Author:Caelum Vatnsdal
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arbeiter Ring Publishing

After his firing from The Long Ride Home, Corman didn’t spend much time crying in his beer; with Jim Nicholson’s help again—Nicholson and Frankovich Sr. were pals—he engineered a more permanent “leave of absence” from Columbia, and very shortly after signed a similar deal with 20th Century Fox, “determined to make it all work this time,” he said. In contrast with the Columbia experience, Corman was able to start up a substantial project right away, a gangster picture with a hard-hitting, journalistic script by former Amazing Stories magazine editor Howard Browne. At two-and-a-half million dollars, The St. Valentines Day Massacre, the story of the war between Al Capone and Bugs Moran and the lead-up to the infamous 1929 massacre, was, and would remain, Corman’s most expensive film ever; and though he was beholden to use the studio craftspeople rather than his own, he was able to pepper the supporting cast with his friends and stock company. “Fox dictated that I couldn’t give them big roles,” Corman said, but people like Miller, Leo Gordon, Jonathan Haze, and even Jack Nicholson were naturals for a gangster movie, and all had experience in the genre. Bruce Dern was there too, playing a doomed mechanic; Joe Turkel—Miller’s nemesis ever since he welshed on a bet—was in as a character called Greasy Thumbs; and Barboura Morris would anchor the movie’s effective opening sequence. Fox players George Segal and Ralph Meeker sneered and tommygunned their way through the movie, and Al Capone was played by Miller’s old acting teacher, Jason Robards. “Dick Miller! My best student! My only student!” the star boomed again.

Richard Bakalyan, who played a lot of dogfaces, a lot of hoods, appeared as Capone lieutenant John Scalise. Bakalyan was an acquaintance of Miller’s, and, in concert with a man named Lester Colodny, he was looking for stories or script material that could be adapted and sold. They had a little money to spend, and, after Bakalyan and Miller got to talking one day, Miller brought in his “Which Way to the Front?” scenario. To Miller’s great delight, Bakalyan bought it.

Nicholson and Dern both needed money at the time, so Corman made sure they were on at the beginning and towards the end of the forty-five day schedule, which kept them on the payroll throughout. (Joe Dante would later extend this same kindness to Miller on a 1998 picture called Small Soldiers.) But other than tricks like that and the supporting cast of Corman players, he played it straight, determined not to make the same moves that had alienated him from Columbia. The very first shot in the picture is an elegant, complicated crane shot showing off an enormous street set and city cyclorama; far from ignoring half the equipment, Corman was using everything the studio had.

Miller was cast as one of the gunmen of that fatal February 14, and though the role was fairly small, the nature of it meant he was present for the key moment in the movie. The most popular

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.