Entertainment
The Odd Job
The Odd Job
Graham Chapman, best known for appearing in and writing the award-winning Monty Python TV series, is the star, writer and co-producer of a crazy, bizarre, madcap, loopy, loony feature film, the Odd Job.
Also starring is David Jason, who is the star of TV’s A Sharp Intake of Breath. He plays the odd job man who finds employment with Graham Chapman, an insurance executive whose wife, played by Diana Quick, has left him after 10 years. The odd job man’s mission is to arrange Chapman’s suicide regardless of any subsequent instructions to the contrary. Unfortunately (depending on how you look at it) the wife returns and the suicide is cancelled, but the odd job man remembers to ignore subsequent instructions.
The Odd Job, filmed Shepperton Studios, is Graham Chapman’s first film since Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the producer of which, Mark Forstater, is also the producer of this new film. Peter Medak, whose films include A Day In The Death Of Joe Egg and The Ruling Class, is the director.
Richard Dreyfuss
Richard Dreyfuss – long ago I convinced myself I was a star, that I was special
Some actors are just lucky. Richard Dreyfuss, for instance, doesn’t even look like a movie star but out of his five movies released so far, three, American Graffiti, Jaws and his latest Close Encounters Of The Third Kind are huge box office winners. Of Close Encounters Columbia pictures figure it will be the most successful film in their 50 years of moviemaking. Dreyfuss has another finished film, The Goodbye Girl, a romantic comedy by Neil Simon which co-stars Simon’s wife, Marsha Mason.
“I’m not a star,” he protested.”I still have the same name, Richard Dreyfuss, that I used to write on my assignment papers in school. I don’t feel any different than I did in those days except I must admit it blew my mind the first time I saw my name spelt out in big letters on a marquee.”
“I was driving down Hollywood Boulevard with a girl and I let out a yell when I saw my name up there. I drove by the Theatre five times before I’d had enough of that.”
And he still insists his life hasn’t changed?
“Well, it’s changed in some areas,” said Dreyfuss. “Now I get a lot of calls from girls. In school I wasn’t exactly what you’d call popular with the opposite sex. The most beautiful girls in school, the ones everyone wanted, didn’t want me. Or if they did, I didn’t know it.
“I remember a pretty girl once asked me why I didn’t come on to her. I told her it was because she didn’t tell me to. She insisted she had, and 1000 subtle ways. I told her ‘ don’t be subtle because I’m not subtle. I don’t understand subtlety. If you want me, tell me, because I don’t have the courage to tell you.”
“Getting back to that idea about being a star,” said Richard. ”I have a couple of other thoughts about that. You’re only a star if you’re constantly aware of it and I’m not. The reason I’m not, and this sounds arrogant, is that long ago I convinced myself I was a star, that I was special. So I just got used to the idea long before I ever made it.
“In the beginning it was an emotional reaction, part of my desire to be different. I have a big ego and I’m selfish. But selfish to me is never been a bad word. And an artist has to have an ego. If he doesn’t believe he’s unique he’ll never make it.”
Dreyfuss realises, of course, that talk of art and artists doesn’t mean much in Hollywood.
“You are judged by your value as a box office commodity,” he said. “It’s taken me two years of hard drinking to get used to that idea. The number of lies they tell you in order to have your name on a piece of paper, so they can raise money to make an $8 million movie, is enormous. They’d sell their grandmother, you know, to get the money to make a movie. Hopefully, a movie that will make a lot of money. “But I can accept that kind of attitude now. After all, it’s part of the business I chose for myself.”
“My mother once asked me what would have happened if the family hadn’t wanted me to be an actor. I told her I would have left the family. You know what she said? ‘That’s exactly the right answer.’”
He says his next film The Goodbye Girl is a kind used to see as a kid and wanted to star in when he grew up.
“I play a nice guy, a struggling New York actor, who has an affair with an ex-Broadway dancer. That’s Marsha. She has a nine-year-old daughter played by newcomer, Quinn Cummings. My characters outstanding because he’s incredibly decent. Neill wrote the script with me in mind.”
Actually The Goodbye Girl was inspired by Bogart Slept Here, a film Simon wrote about an actor who scores big in New York and goes to Hollywood to be a movie star. Filming started originally with Marsha Mason and Robert De Niro as the actor. But director Mike Nichols evidently disagree with De Niro’s interpretation of the role and the project was cancelled.
So Simon provided an entirely new script focusing on the actor before he becomes a New York stage success with Dreyfuss firmly in mind for the leading male role.
“I went to the movies every day as a kid. When I told my mother I wanted to act for a living she told me I better get out there fast and do it,” says Dreyfuss. “I tried the lead in The Graduate.
“Well, every young actor in New York and Los Angeles was up for that part. Dustin Hoffman got my role and I got a part with two lines.’ Shall I call the cops? I’ll call the cops.’
My Valley of the Dolls role was even shorter. I got to knock on Patty Duke’s dressing room door and say,’5 minutes, Miss O’Hara.’”
Better parts followed but Dreyfuss wasn’t really noticed until his Baby Face Nelson role in Dillinger in 1973 and, the following year, for his brilliant performance in The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz.
Now, Richard definitely is one of Hollywood’s top stars
I Don’t Mind Doing Nude Scenes
I don’t mind doing nude scenes – Joan Collins
“This is 1978 will stop you open a popular newspaper and see a nude woman on page 3. The paper is on view all over the house so it seems a bit silly not to show nudity on the screen, doesn’t it?”
Joan Collins talking, very candidly, about today’s nude movie scene and about her new movie, somewhat of a scorcher, called The Stud in which she plays the Jetset nymphomaniac who keeps herself well supplied with young men.
It’s a story about a woman who has everything, husband, money, position, yet in reality has nothing and through boredom has to add excitement to life through a series of affairs.
“I don’t mind being seen in the nude,” says Joan.”There’s quite a few scenes in The Stud which show sexual activity between people without their clothes, but it’s not a case of “wham, bang, thank you ma’am.”
She shrugged. ”Who needs all that sort of thing? I don’t think sex on screen is terribly attractive anyway. I find it incredibly boring. I fell asleep during Deep Throat. It was unbelievably ugly will stop is a bit like watching someone eat. I mean eating his very enjoyable but you don’t want to pay to see someone sitting in the hay eating steak and chips.”
That being said, however, we going to see quite a lot of Joan, literally, in the Stud, a movie based, incidentally, on the novel by younger sister Jackie. What to keep on what to take off has been a constantly recurring problem for Joan during her 25 years in the business. When she was just 16 she appeared in Britain’s first ever X-rated film Cosh Boy.
“It was considered to be incredibly daring,” says Joan. “I was a young girl who is raped. All they showed was a close up of my face then dissolved to the next scene where I announce I’m pregnant.” She laughed.
Things were still pretty restricted when she went to Hollywood as an 18-year-old. Cleavage was the main problem then. “The wardrobe lady used to measure my cleavage, laughed the 42-year-old star. “Only one and a half or 2 inches were permissible exposure. They didn’t care about padding or uplift. If too much was showing in went a disguising flower.”
Joan Collins talks about today’s sex scene with a frankness and humour that is very appealing. She views it all very tongue in cheek. For her it’s been like the dance of the seven veils with one veil been discarded just about every other year. A striptease she did in Seven Thieves was cut because it was considered too erotic. In the early 60s, in an Italian movie and wearing only a petticoat, she flung herself passionately onto prostrate Vittorio Gassman.
“It was the first time in one of my movies that I had gone to bed with a man and then it was on top of the covers.” She smiled. The final veil was removed in 1969 in The Executioner. I did my first nude scene in that then they cut it out to get an ‘A’ certificate.”
Today, in the late 70s, it’s really a case of too many actresses jumping on the nudity bandwagon.”There was a stage, not so long ago, when an actress had to fight to keep her clothes on,” says Joan. “I think now though we have reached the peak of eroticism. Nudity, as long as it’s an integral part of the story, as long as it’s not gratuitous, is fine. I feel that showing bosom or bottom is the same as being seen in the bikini, as long as it looks good of course. I’m not particularly shocked by language any more either,” she adds, “and in The Stud you’ll hear this lady say plenty of four letter words.”
“The Stud is a story of today. It’s about contemporary human relationships, and sex is an integral part of that.” She smiled, remembering back 25 years. “You can’t end with a kiss these days.”
Christopher Plummer Plays a Psycho Bank Robber
Would you believe it’s Christopher Plummer as a Psycho Bank Robber
The lady is no lady at all. It’s Christopher Plummer as he appears in his latest film The Silent Partner.
Chris plays a psychopathic bank robber who disguises himself when he robs banks. One day he’s Santa Claus. Another is a woman. Whatever he is he always wears a silver ankle bracelet and pink false nails!
Costume designer Deborah Weldon dressed Christopher for this sequence.
“He’s a brilliant man who knows exactly how he wants to look,” Miss Weldon explains.
Also starring in The Silent Partner are Elliott Gould and Susannah York. Gould plays a bank teller who dreams of a more exciting life. He turns to robbing his own bank and succeeds in outwitting our strange bank robbing friend as well as seducing the robber’s girlfriend. Finally Gould wins the affections of his bank manager’s mistress, Susannah York.
Plummer’s role must surely be his most bizarre. He’s made over 20 movies, including the Fall of the Roman Empire; Conduct Unbecoming; The Return of the Pink Panther; The Man Who Would be King and, of course, The Sound of Music, in which he played Von Trapp, a role that eventually brought him problems.
“For some time, he says, “I was recognised because of a part which I didn’t feel was particularly exciting, even though it was successful. People only thought of me as Von Trapp.
Determined to get out of that rut he searched for more demanding roles.
“I’ve tried to change from the rolls in which I always seem to be cast as a stern military figure. Now I think I’m more warm and, I hope, more generous and human. I like being normal.”
Normal? I most ironic statement from someone playing a psychopathic bank robber who wears a dress!
Back to Bray for Supernatural Thrills
Back to Bray for supernatural thrills
Down at the Bray Studios near Windsor, and once the home of those marvellous Hammer horror movies, more dark deeds have been taking place.
That Hammer type of horror movie has given way to supernatural thriller such as The Legacy which was recently filmed at the studio. It brought two American stars over here to make it, Katharine Ross and Sam Elliott. Katharine made her name in such movies as The Graduate and Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid. Sam Elliott made a big impact in a movie called Lifeguard and was the star of the mini-series Once an Eagle on TV.
“We saw Sam in Lifeguard,” said producer David Foster,” my partner Laurence Turman and myself agreed that this was the first time in a good long while that a big, good-looking actor had turned up. We were impressed .”
Richard Marquand the director, said: “This is a modern story of the real world which is why the events that take place are so frightening. I rarely see movies like this myself, they scare the living daylights out of me!
“For somebody interested in the craft of filmmaking, this picture is a marvellous one to do. It’s very stretching as we’re using all the possible special effects that can be used.”
Extensive location filming has taken place in London and the surrounding countryside.
Sinatra Sues for £2m
Magazine caused him “mental pain”
by Philip Finn
Retired singer Frank Sinatra is seeking £2 million damages from a New York weekly over an allegation that he had secretly remarried and was soon to be a father again.
The action was brought today in Manhattan Federal Court.
Sinatra’s lawyers claimed also that he suffered “great mental pain and disturbance”
Over another article in the weekly “Midnight” which alleged that he had cancer.
The court was told that the headline in Midnight dated November 1st – already on sale on the news stands -says “Sinatra married -he’ll be a daddy in March”
The first article in the complaint was alleged to have been published on May 10 bearing a headline saying “Frank Sinatra has cancer”
‘FALSE’
Sinatra charges that the article “Falsely stated” that he had been forced to retire because he suffered from cancer of the throat and within a year would be forced to be confined to a hospital to await death.
The defendants named in the case have 20 days in which to file a reply.
John Vidar, editor of Midnight said today : “Of course we shall defend the action, and I don’t think we have anything to fear”
Sinatra, who is 56, retired earlier this year.