« MySpace spam | Main | Keith Olbermann's 9/11 message » What a Rush!
Richard Rush is phenomenal. Last night Marsha and I caught a screening of Richard Rush's "The Stunt Man" and "Psych-Out" at the Alamo Drafthouse Downtown, organized by Lars Nilsen, who programs the Alamo's Weird Wednesday series. Though I'd seen some of his earlier exploitation films ("Hell's Angels on Wheels," "The Savage Seven," I became a Richard Rush fan when I saw "Getting Straight" in 1970 - probably the only film to get a handle on the upheaval at the end of the 60s (which seems quaint compared to nastier contemporary upheaval, but I digress). Oddly, there wasn't a single reference to "Getting Straight" in last nights discussions before and after both films - wish they'd included it as a third feature. We saw Rush's own print of "Stunt Man" - the studio hasn't reprinted it, though it's available on DVD along with his full-lenth documentary, "The Sinister Saga of Making the Stunt Man" – which is about the ten years it took to cut through the politics of the film industry and to get the film made. Rush mentioned how he had to keep revising the script as the Vietnam era faded into the past. The protagonist of the film is a Vietnam vet (Steve Railsback) who stumbles into a brilliant director's location shoot and becomes a stunt man for the film - and more: he becomes the soul of the film, and the key to its purpose. The director, Eli Cross (Peter O'Toole), says at one point that his film is not about fighting wars, it's about fighting windmills. Ultimately both films, Rush's and Cross's, are about paranoia fed by assumption and illusion. Appearing with Rush: Charles Bail, a stunt man himself, who played stunt coordinator Chuck Barton in the film, and Austin's Gary Kent, who worked with Rush on several films, including "Psych-Out" (where he created the special effects). I ran into my friend Juliette Kernion, who's behind the terrific Slackerwood blog; looking forward to her post about the screening. jon posted this at 1:41 PM |
read weblogsky! latest posts: |
