Tag Archives: harry dean stanton

Quote of the Week

Posted by Marisa on

(Producer Midge) Sanford: For Dennis Hopper‘s role [‘Feck’], we sent the script to Harry Dean Stanton, who passed. Apparently, Harry Dean Stanton passed on a lot of scripts and gave them to Dennis.

(Director Tim) Hunter: I initially hoped that John Lithgow would play it, but it was too dark for John—he wanted no part of it. We had some reluctance that it might be typecasting for Dennis, but ultimately we wanted him very badly and we needed Hemdale to come up with a little extra money for him. I threatened to cast Timothy Carey, who was in Stanley Kubrick‘s The Killing and John Cassavetes‘s The Killing of a Chinese Bookie. He was brilliant, but also a well-known wild man who never stuck to a script—he’d ad lib and be quite disruptive. The thought of having Timothy Carey in the picture finally convinced Hemdale to come up with that small amount of money to pay Dennis to do it.

hopperriversedge

Dennis Hopper as Feck, with Crispin Glover

Quote of the Week

Posted by Marisa on

Alex Cox, director of Repo Man (1984) and Sid and Nancy (1986), talks about almost hiring Timothy for his debut student film Edge City (aka Sleep is for Sissies) (1980). Part 2 of his tale next week!

‘If you’re looking for a really out-there actor,’ Michael Miner said one day, ‘there’s always Timothy Carey.’ Timothy Carey was a powerful actor with an outstanding history: he’d worked for Kubrick in The Killing and Paths of Glory, Brando in One-Eyed Jacks, and Cassavetes in The Killing of a Chinese Bookie.

Michael had a number for him, and I called it. It was an agricultural feed store, out in the desert somewhere. They had another number, where a woman answered, and I had a long conversation with a madman, to whom I promptly mailed a copy of the script. Timothy Carey liked it, liked the character of Beauregard, and so we met. Unlike some actors, Carey was more imposing in person than on film. He looked about six foot six, and had a powerful voice, black-and-white hair, and staring eyes. He talked constantly, a little bit about the script, but mostly about farting, about the importance of not suppressing the breaking of wind, about how Western society was doomed, due to its suppression of the fart. On and on like this he went, in the same way as Harry Dean [Stanton] was apt to get into a longish diatribe about the Jews, not that Harry was anti-Semitic – he thought the Christian culture every bit as bad and stupid as the Jewish one – but he did tend, given a trapped interlocutor, to go on about the Jews. Timothy’s obsession, expressed in public, in a much louder voice, was the beauty and importance of the fart.

For all that Timothy Carey seemed nuts, he was a very fine actor, putting on a performance for me and everyone else in Dairy Queen. He was the most egomaniacal thespian I’d yet met, and thus, I suspect, one of the most insecure and damaged. He was also a director, having authored and starred in a feature of his own, The World’s Greatest Sinner.

– Alex Cox, X Films: True Confessions of a Radical Filmmaker (I.B. Tauris, 2008)

Edge City (1980) in four parts on YouTube

 

Video of the Week: “A Time for Killing”

Posted by Marisa on

This week’s video is another clip (it says trailer, but it isn’t) from A Time for Killing (1967), the gritty Civil War drama directed by Phil Karlson and an uncredited Roger Corman. This one pretty much picks up where the previous clip I’ve posted here ends. Timothy actually has some lines in this one!

Featuring Tim’s Paths of Glory co-star Emile Meyer, Glenn Ford, Kenneth Tobey, George Hamilton, Harry Dean Stanton, Inger Stevens, and young Harrison Ford in his first credited screen appearance. This one is definitely worth your time.

Pic of the Day: “A Time for Killing”

Posted by Marisa on

Our pic today revisits Billy Cat, the “Yankee from Missourah” of Phil Karlson‘s Civil War drama A Time for Killing (1967). Billy has hit his mark, and he’s pretty happy about it.

A Time for Killing

If you have the Encore Westerns channel, you can catch this entertaining potboiler there tomorrow. It’s got a stellar cast – Glenn Ford, George Hamilton, Inger Stevens, Kenneth Tobey, Dick Miller, and early performances from Harrison Ford and Harry Dean Stanton.

Video of the Week: Behind the scenes of “A Time for Killing”

Posted by Marisa on

There is a Kickstarter campaign going on right now in support of a super-cool documentary-in-progress by the name of That Guy Dick Miller, directed by Elijah Drenner, the director of American Grindhouse. It’s all about, well, Dick Miller – one of the greatest character actors who ever lived and one of Roger Corman‘s favorite featured players. This week’s video is some rare 8mm behind-the-scenes footage revealed for the first time by the campaign. It was shot during the making of A Time for Killing (1967), which I believe is the only film that Timothy and Miller appeared in together. Tim can be glimpsed at about the 1:10 mark.

Behind the scenes of A Time for Killing (unable to embed, sorry about that!)

Says Drenner, “The film was begun by Roger Corman, but finished by director Phil Karlson. Never released on DVD, this film begs to be re-discovered. And I think you will agree after you see this clip. Dick co-stars with an incredible cast, many of whom you will see playing around on set, including Glenn Ford, Harry Dean Stanton, Inger Stevens, Timothy Carey and George Hamilton. You’ll also see a tall, lanky Corman in a white cowboy hat with black sunglasses setting up shots and blocking scenes for actors.” And I swear I see Katharine Ross in there too, even though she’s not in the film.

So how cool is this?? That Guy Dick Miller promises to be a terrific look at a much-loved cult legend. Please consider contributing to the campaign if at all possible – they are not even halfway to their goal, and there are only two weeks left! (And I was not paid to say that!) Tell your friends too!