The Many Times John Landis Put His Director Pals In His Projects

Because today is the 78th Birthday of THX-1138 and AMERICAN GRAFFITI filmmaker George Lucas, I was reminded of his odd cameo in John Landis’s BEVERLY HILLS COP III (1994). Then I thought about how Landis often had his fellow director friends put in brief appearances in his films, and then I thought that might make a good blog post. So before I think about something else, and forget this thread, let’s take a look at some of the most notable times that this crazy event occurred (this post is far from complete as I skipped over as well as probably missed a number of these instances).

 

The whole Landis and his filmmaker friends cameo calvacade starts with Frank Oz.

A few years before Oz began his filmmaking career co-directing THE DARK CRYSTAL (1982) with Jim Henson (his solo debut as Director was LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS in 1986), the voice behind such major Muppets as Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, and Animal (among many others), made his in-person film debut as “Corrections Officer” in Landis’s THE BLUES BROTHERS (1980). The part consists of Oz drolly, and displaying much disgust, doling out the possessions of John Belushi’s Jake Blues as he’s being released from Chicago’s Joliet Prison. 

In Landis’s beyond misguided 1998 sequel, BLUES BROTHERS 2000, Oz reprises the role, showing that the character is now the Prison Warden, who has the sad task of having to tell Dan Aykroyd’s Elwood Blues, upon his release from Joliet 18 years after the events in the first film, that his brother has passed. Not sure why this important info wasn’t revealed to Elwood before this, but it actually makes for one of the miserable movie’s only heartfelt moments so I’ll drop the questioning.

 

Oz also put in cameos, usually as stern authority figures, in Landis’s AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON (1981), TRADING PLACES (1983), SPIES LIKE US (1985), and INNOCENT BLOOD (1992), which was not only his last appearance in a Landis film, but his last in-person part in a movie until his brief bit in Rian Johnson’s KNIVES OUT, in 2019. 

 

Back to the original BLUES BROTHERS, in which arguably the most famous, and most successful filmmaker in cinema history, Steven Spielberg put in a cameo. It was his film acting debut, as the “Cook County Assessor’s Office Clerk” who helped the black-suited, fedora, and sunglass-wearing music men fulfill their “mission from God.”

After a tragic accident which took the lives of actor Vic Morrow, and two illegally-hired child actors on the set of Landis’s segment for TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE (1983), the director/writer/producer staged a comeback in the 1985 Jeff Goldblum/Michelle Pfeifer vehicle, INTO THE NIGHT. The film was a decent mid ‘80s comedy throwaway, the kind you’d see and quickly forget on cable, but when it came to director cameos it boasted an embarrassment of riches.

Filmmakers Jack Arnold (IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE), Paul Bartel (EATING RAOUL), David Cronenberg (SCANNERS), Jonathan Demme (SILENCE OF THE LAMBS), Richard Franklin (ROAD GAMES), Amy Heckerling (FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH), Jim Henson (pictured above with Landis), Colin Higgins (HAROLD AND MAUDE writer/BEST LITTLE WHOREHOUSE IN TEXAS director), Lawrence Kasdan (BODY HEAT), Paul Mazursky (AN UNMARRIED WOMAN), Daniel Petrie (A RAISIN IN THE SUN), Don Siegel (DIRTY HARRY), and Roger Vadim (BARBARELLA) all popped up throughout INTO THE NIGHT as the movie went, well, deeper into the night.

 

There’s too many of these people to post pics of here (unless I want a blog post a mile long), but here’s one of Cronenberg, whose part, credited as “Group Supervisor” was larger than most of the other directors involved.

Landis’s aforementioned 1985 Chevy Chase/Dan Aykroyd comedy SPIES LIKE US also featured:

 

Joel Coen, and Sam Raimi as “Drive-in Security.” 

And Terry Gilliam as “Dr. Imhaus.” 

Directors Mikael Apted, Ray Harryhausen, and Martin Brest (the director of the original BEVERLY HILLS COP) also put in cameos in SPIES LIKE US, but, again, I don’t want to take up too much space with pics.

Landis’s 1996 Tom Arnold comedy, THE STUPIDS, again featured Cronenberg, as well as more filmmaker bit parts by Robert Wise, Norman Jewison, Atom Egoyan, and Costa-Gavras.

I’ll finish with the cameo that inspired this post, Lucas as “Disappointed Man” in BEVERLY HILLS COP III. Unlike his other appearances in HOOK (1991) as “Man Kissing on Bridge,” and as Baron Papanoida in STAR WARS EPISODE III: REVENGE OF THE SITH (2005), he actually has a speaking part: “Hey!” – reacting to Eddie Murphy’s Axl Foley stealing his Sky Whirl ride at the fictional theme park, Wonderworld – and “Come on, let’s go.” Okay, those lines obviously aren’t much, but they do constitute Lucas’s only in-person lines ever in a feature film. Watch the scene if you must:

From how awkward, and stiff, the STAR WARS guru was in this scene, one can only guess that Frank Oz was busy that day.

 

More later…

At Long Last, Film Babble Blog’s 2021 In Review

So I’m finally getting around to appraise the films of 2021 – just under the wire, in fact, as the 95th Academy Awards ceremony is this coming Sunday (March 27).

It’s nothing new for it to take a few months into the new year to do this as many movies aren’t accessible until well into the awards season, and there’s a lot of films to catch up with. However, there are a lot fewer than in years past for obvious pandemic reasons. In the Before Times of 2019, there were 792 films released in the U.S. and Canada; in 2021, there were 403. I haven’t crunched the numbers to calculate how many movies of those that I’ve seen, but I think I’ve seen enough to say that it was a good, not great, year for film.

Like last year, I’m not posting a Top 10, but if I were, I would pick Paul Thomas Anderson’s LICORICE PIZZA as my #1 movie of the year. The film resonated with me as it matched my memories of being a kid with acting aspirations in the ‘70s, and delighted me with its radiant, real-feeling turns by its leads, Cooper Hoffman (son of Phillip Seymour Hoffman), and Alana Haim. A brash Bradley Cooper steals the show as producer Jon Peters (the inspiration for SHAMPOO!), which made much more of an impression on me than his performance in NIGHTMARE ALLEY.

Speaking of Guillermo del Toro’s NIGHTMARE ALLEY, that was one of a number of movies from the last year that I admired more than I enjoyed. Likewise, I found Jane Champion’s THE POWER OF THE DOG, a front-runner for the Best Picture Oscar, to be a fascinatingly weird western with a masterful performance by Benedict Cumberbatch, but I didn’t connect with it in any great, emotional way.

Same goes with DUNE. Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of the first half of Frank Herbert’s iconic sci-fi bestseller is amazing looking, and powerful in its presentation, but I felt a bit distant to it when I wanted to be more inside the action.

That’s not to say that it isn’t a worthy epic as it boasts a strong ensemble headed by “it boy” Timothée Chalamet, eye-popping visuals, a primo Hans Zimmer score, and a solidly intriguing storyline, yet I was still left somewhat cold by it. DUNE received ten Academy Award nominations for good reason, but I’m just hoping that PART TWO, due for 2023, will resonate more greatly with me.

2021 films that did speak me include Joel Coen’s spare black and white Shakespeare adaptation, THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH, which earned Denzel Washington a Best Actor nomination (he deserves it for his intense handling of the “Is this a dagger which I see before me” soliloquy alone); Joachim Trier’s THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD, which should’ve gotten Renate Reinsve a nom; Kenneth Branagh’s BELFAST (read my review here); and Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s elegantly poignant DRIVE MY CAR, which I bet will win the Best International Feature Oscar on Sunday night.

James Bond movies usually don’t make my year-end best lists, but Cary Joji Fukunaga’s magnificent NO TIME TO DIE certainly deserves such accolades. Daniel Craig’s swan song as 007 is one of the series’ best, and you can read my reasons why in my review from when the film hit theaters. 

One category that flourished in 2021 is the musical documentary genre. Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson’s SUMMER OF SOUL leads the pack of pop infotainment with its colossal concert footage from the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival. How an event that featured such iconic performers as Stevie Wonder, Mahalia Jackson, Nina Simone, The 5th Dimension, The Staple Singers, Gladys Knight & the Pips, and Sly and the Family Stone (among other luminaries) could linger in obscurity for so long is baffling, but thanks to Questlove, we’ve got an essential, and joyous addition to the roster of classic concert festival docs that includes WOODSTOCK, MONTEREY POP, and SOUL POWER. 

Second to that in the rock doc division is Edgar Wright’s THE SPARKS BROTHERS with its loving breakdown of the eccentric career of Ron and Russell Mael’s Los Angeles-based band, Sparks. It’s one of the most entertaining, and funny rockumentaries I’ve ever seen, and since I’m a big fan of the genre, I’ve seen a lot of them. Wright’s film really should’ve been nominated for Best Documentary - I’d say instead of Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s FLEE. Not that FLEE is undeserving, it’s just that it’s also nominated for Best Animated and Best International Feature too, so it’s pretty well covered.

Also worth seeing is Todd Haynes’ THE VELVET UNDERGROUND (read my review), Dan Lindsay and T. J. Martin’s TINA, about legendary singer, Tina Turner; and Garret Price’s WOODSTOCK 99: PEACE, LOVE, AND RAGE, which scarily depicts what’s been considered the worst music festival ever.

Finally, the musical documentary event of 2021 was THE BEATLES: GET BACK, Peter Jackson’s eight-hour exploration of the fab four’s sessions for their next-to-last album, Let it Be. We witness John, Paul, George, and Ringo rehearsing, joking around, arguing, and working on new material, capturing the band’s creativity as never seen before. The Apple Corps rooftop concert by itself makes for one of the year’s best docs as it’s been shown at IMAX theaters as a standalone film. Read my review of GET BACK here.

So there’s my overview of cinematic highlights of 2021. Friday, I will post my Oscar predictions for this Sunday’s broadcast. Hope to see you here.

More later…

BRIDGE OF SPIES: Spielberg & Hanks Serve Up Splendid Cold War Spy Stuff

Now playing at a multiplex near you:

BRIDGE OF SPIES (Dir. Steven Spielberg, 2015)

You know we’re really getting into the season of Oscar-baiting when a prestige picture with such pedigree as this one comes along. I mean, it’s a Steven Spielberg film, starring Tom Hanks, concerning historical events, with a screenplay co-written by the Coen brothers – can you get any more Oscar baity than that?

But BRIDGE OF SPIES, the 29th movie by the most famous and successful filmmaker of our times, is a worthy, noble piece of entertainment that ranks with Spielberg’s best work, and it’s my favorite of his four collaborations with Hanks, of course, one of the most famous and successful leading men ever.

Set in 1957 at the height of the Cold War, the film posits Hanks as James Donovan, a Brooklyn-based insurance lawyer who was recruited by the CIA to his initial chagrin to defend an accused Soviet spy.

The assignment makes Hanks’ Donovan very unpopular with the public – he gets nasty looks from folks on the subway looking up from their newspapers – and draws ire from his wife, played by Amy Ryan, elevating the role of the typical concerned wife-on-the-side, who asks: “Do you know how people will look at us, the family of the man trying to free a traitor?” (sure, it’s an easy, obvious role for Ryan, but if you have to have that part played - who better?).

Donovan consults with his client, Rudolf Abel (played with nonchalance by Mark Rylance) and explains that if convicted he could be facing the death penalty. “You don’t seem alarmed,” Donovan observes to which Abel says “would it help?” This line becomes a running joke of sorts.

As expected, Donavan loses the case but argues that Abel should be kept alive in case the situation arises in which the Soviets have captured an American then a trade could possibly be arranged.

Meanwhile, we are introduced to a group of U.S. fighter pilots who are sent on a secret intelligence gathering mission involving the Airforce’s new fangled high altitude, camera-equipped U-2 spy planes. One of the pilots, Gary Powers (Austin Stowell) is shot down and captured by the Russians.

Representing the CIA, Donovan travels to East Berlin to negotiate the trade of Abel for Powers, and another American, a Yale student named Frederic L. Pryor (Will Rogers), who was arrested and is being held without charge by the East German police.

Maneuvering through the negotiation process between East Germany and the U.S.S.R. is tricky for Donovan as has to work out the conditions of the deal with such prickly bureaucrats as Wolfgang Vogel (Sebastian Koch), a German lawyer; and German Stasi agent Harald Ott (Burghart Klaußner).

Between meetings on the street of Berlin, Donovan is accosted by a group of young German toughs, who steal his overcoat. Afterwards, one of his colleagues asks “How did you lose your coat?” Hanks shrugs and replies: “You know, spy stuff.”

Spielberg and Hanks serve up splendid, you know, spy stuff here in this sturdy, grey-toned drama that beautifully builds to the tense prisoner exchange climax at Glienicke Bridge between East and West Berlin, where Powers’ fighter pilot friend Joe Murphy (Jesse Plemons) is brought over to confirm his identity.

This stand-out sequence is where Spielberg’s longtime cinematographer Janusz Kamiński captures the film’s most stunning imagery with the glare of lights on the snowbound bridge juxtaposed with the pitch black of the night effectively surrounding these little men just doing their jobs, as one character puts it.

The film’s post script shines with Spielberg’s brand of sentimentality which many may find to be cheesy – i.e. such shots as a woman on the subway looks up from her paper to give our modest hero Hanks a smile of approval in obvious contrast to that earlier aforementioned scene - but it felt earned to me.

Hanks and Spielberg are among the only ones these days who can really sell such a Capra-esque vision of an all-American family man – an honest lawyer, mind you – who works to do the right thing to make the world a better place. Donovan’s role in the trial and the trade deserves such a treatise, enhanced by the timely commentary on how the Cold War of yesteryear echoes through the War on Terror of today.

It’s also a pleasure to have Hanks handling the sharply scripted dialogue by Joel and Ethan Coen, who co-wrote with Mark Charman, that’s so much better than what the Coen brothers gave him in one their rare misfires, 2004’s THE LADYKILLERS. Still, Hanks, as solid and dependable as his performance is, will doubtfully get any Oscar action for this (the Academy has been there done that), but I’m betting that Rylance, who quietly steals the movie as the amusingly jaded Abel, will get a nomination.

BRIDGE OF SPIES may be another case of the “Greatest Generation” saluting itself again, but it’s grand, old fashioned entertainment made by one of our most trusted storytellers, and one of our most trusted actors that does stately justice to its subject. So go ahead and label it Oscar bait, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth swallowing hook, line, and sinker.

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