Over the past days since returning from my visit to the Midlands I have watched two films, with one in theatre, the Oscar award winning performance of Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart, and an Italian Roman, as I call them, an adventure set in the days of the Roman Empire called Julius Caesar and the Pirates, surprisingly based on a fact. There have been five attention seeking episodes of Babylon 5 and another important episodes in unravelling the secrets of Lost. I have watched several familiar episodes of NCIS, and Friday was the first of the Spring and Summer’s great weekends of sport on TV with the start of the latest new format Formula 1 season and the second day of the Indian Premier League, and England overpowering Bangladesh in the first of two Tests, not an expected outcome in Rugby union International at Murrayfield, Newcastle playing the Boro away and Sunderland at home to Man City after Man United home to Fulham ay midday.
I begin with Jeffrey Leon Bridges and father and elder brother all established film actors, His father Lloyd Vernet Bridges Junior was born in 1913, grew up with parents in the hotel industry but who also owned a movie theatre. He attended UCLA where he studied political science which led him to being briefly blacklisted years later because he and once belonged to an Acting Laboratory which had links with the Communist Party. He appeared in nearly 100 films and was just as well known in the USA for TV work which led to a couple of Emmy nominations.
Looking through the list of film credits I recall Lost Horizon 1937 and Blondie Goes to College 1942, Atlantic Convoy 1942, Sahara 1943, A walk in the sun 1945, Ramrod 1947,16 Fathoms Deep 1948 Red Canyon 1949, Little Big Horn 1951 High Noon 1952, Wichita 1955, Apache Women 1955, The Rainmaker 1956, Running Wild 1973 and the Fifth Musketeer 1979, Hot Shots 1991, Honey I blew up the Kid 1992, Hot Shots Part Deux 1993, Peter and the Wolf 1995. Sea Hunt brought him TV attention 1957-1961 and in the UK he became well known through his role as Commander Cain in Battlestar Galactica. He was also the White Knight in a TV production of Alice appearing in a wide range of roles and series from Mission Impossible to Roots. His personal interests were more social than party political, becoming involved in environmental campaigns and his one marriage to actor Dorothy Simpson in 1938, provided him with the strongest of family lives, albeit he was absent working for more time than he was at home with his children the actors Beau and Lloyd Bridges, daughter artist daughter Lucinda, with a third son who died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. He lived to the age of 85.
His wife, who was also known as Dorothy Dean, provided the family with its strength, was a child actress who first appeared the film Finders Keepers when she was six. She appeared with Lloyd in a UCLA production and they married after living together for 60 years. She lived to the age of 94. She continued to work throughout her life usually appearing with members of her family and father and sons in the well known TV movie Secret Sins of the Father in 1993. She was also a published poet and is known to have written one piece for her husband every Valentine’s day. Aged 89 she published the story of their relationship and the success of her children, as well as the horror of the death of her baby son.
Beau Bridges was christened with the name of his father but given the nickname according to Wikipedia by his parents while reading Gone with Wind. Lloyd has stated in public the importance of his brother on his life because of his father’s absences for work. They worked together in one film which has been shown several times on satellite and cable TV, The Fabulous Baker Boys.
I remember seeing the film Red Pony 1949 but not Beau who was only 8 years, but the film the Cimarron Strip 1969 makes a regular appearance on TV. I also have seen Two Minutes Warning and the Four Feathers, another TV regular showing from 1977, Norma Rae 1979, Silver Dream Racer 1980 and Night Crossing1 981 with Honky Tonk Freeway also that year, Witness for the Prosecution 1982, Kissinger and Nixon 1995, Jerry Maquire1996, P T Barnum 1999, Inherit the Wind 1999, The Agency 2002, Evil Knieval 2004, He has appeared in several episodes of Stargate and in recent films Desperate Housewives and My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend both of which I have chosen not to see.
Despite their success it was left to the young brother to produce performances in parts which attracted the critical attention of his contemporaries, first with a nomination as Best Supporting Actor in The Last Picture Show and again for his supporting role in the Clint Eastwood Film Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, He was nominated for the best actor with Starman and other roles have brought him praise including his role in the Big Lebowski. I have also seen the Iceman Cometh 1973 Tron 1981, Jagged Edge 1985 Texasville 1990 The Vanishing 1992, The Mirror has Two Faces 1996, Arlington Road, 1999, K Pax 2001, Seabiscuit 2003 and the Men who stared at Goats 2009. He will appear in a Tron follow up and as Rooster Cogburn in a remake of True Grit. He is married with three children an is an admitted user of marijuana to which is not longer addicted.
This brings me to the Oscar winning film Crazy Heart which is about an alcoholic country singer song writer with failed marriages and career dive which has taken him to appearing in small bars and a bowling alley, bursting with resentment over the way his former singing partner who he taught everything he knows is having a major career with albums and 10000 audiences. The film is said to partly based on the story of Kris Kristofferson and was made by County Music Television for a direct to DVD release and only was given limited release by Fox subsequently. It cost only $7 to make.
Certainly the physical appearances of Bridges and Kristoffersen are strikingly similar and Kris was married three times, was a brilliant song writer and his singing career had its ups and downs but to suggest that there a great resemblance is nonsense, although the production company explained that they had difficulties in getting the rights to do the story and therefore the film had elements of the lives of three country singers composite.
Kristofferson was the son of a USA Major General and he became a captain in the army and then a helicopter pilot of graduating in Literature and coming to Merton Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar I think just before I went to Ruskin College. He was married three times including the singer Rita Coolridge. He is known to have ahd a relationship with Janice Joplin up to her death and with Barbara Streisand. He has eight children by the marriages. He wrote Me and Bobby McGhee for Ray Stevens and Joplin, Sunday morning Coming Down for Johnny Cash and Ray Stevens, and Help me Make it Through the night a Grammy award. He also wrote, From the bottle to the bottom.
He also became a first rank Actor appearing in 100 film and TV Production winning a Golden Globe as best actor in a Star is Born. Other well known roles were Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Bring me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, Alice does not Live here anymore, Freedom Road and Heaven’s Gate, and with Johnny Cash and Last days of Frank and Jesse James, in the Blade films and the remake of Planet of the Apes. He is on a different plane to the character of Crazy Heart.
Back to the film in which Bridges plays an alcoholic country singer playing small town bars and a bowling alley. As a favour he agrees to be interviewed by a young divorcee with a young son and son. At first she is yet one more prospect for a one night stand and where despite his alcoholism, his unkempt appearance and age, women of all ages, including wives, throw themselves at him.
What makes the reporter- Jean Craddock, played Maggie Gyllenhaak, different, is that she reveals she has a young son, and when she presses Bridges about his background and three marriages, he reveals he has a son now aged 28 who he has not seen since the marriage broke up when the child was four years of age. The character is only too painfully aware of his shortcomings and failures and it is this in turn which attracts women to him. It is Jean who persuades him to try and make contact with his son and she is there to pick up the pieces when the son does not want to know.
There is something about their first experience together which draws Bridges back to the young woman but when drunk, he falls asleep at the wheel and crashes into the desert. It she he contacts and she who agrees to care for him while the leg heals. The doctor warns that he is moving quickly to early grave unless he stops the smoking, the drinking and loses weight. It is during his recovery that two things happen which reshape their respective futures. He starts to have the relationship with her young son which he failed to have with his own child and becomes keen to present himself in a better light, so he swallows his pride and accepts the opportunity to open a large open air concert with his former protégée, played by Colin Farrell, who he resents for having become so successful, a 50 concert world tour and an ongoing recording contract.
The concert appearance and the contact he makes with his former friend and work colleague leads to the offer of a substantial advance to write songs for a new album and enables him to get off the road for several months and return to his home.
This means a 900 mile distance between him and the young mother and her son and against her better judgement she saves up holiday to have an extended weekend with him during which time he takes the two into the city and suggests he looks after the boy while the mother goes shopping. Going into the bar for a drink he takes his eye off the boy who wanders off and is lost in the big city. He is quickly recovers by the police but the mother realises what a mistake she has made and goes immediately home.
This is yet another reminder of the price his drinking has cost in his life and he seeks the help of a friend, played by Robert Duvall who also has a major role in the production of the film, also a recovering alcoholic, to enter a clinic. He sobers up, cleans himself up and his home, and then makes an unannounced appearance at the home of the woman, who tells him that if he really loves her and her son he will not attempt further contact. Because of insight and guilt he accepts her request.
The film jumps to sixteen months later. Bridges is part way through a major concert tour shared with his protégée, as famous and a wealthy man, sober but alone. He encounters the mother again who has become a music journalist and engaged to someone else. He agrees to an interview and the film ends and we know they will then go their separate ways. They both are happy in their own ways but the self inflicted wound inside him is beyond repair.
This is a story that has been made time and time again and in this form intended for the country music loving fraternity. The performance is excellent in a film which will otherwise prove unmemorable. In terms of other nominated actors that of Colin Firth on a Single Man is marginally better. In some way the award is for a career to date and for a family.
There had have been other father and son notables, Douglas Fairbanks Senior and Junior, the first, Kirk Douglas with two actors sons, Michael the most well known and two sons who are film producers were more of my generation, and more recently Martin and Charlie Sheen come to mind.
I flipped through available free films one lunch time and blinked at the title Julius Caesar and the Pirates. There has been a series of Italian made films about Roman Empire Times of dubious quality but Julius Caesar and the Pirates, come on. Alas I am wrong.
Rome not just tolerated piracy but negotiated deal on the basis that Senators were supplied with slaves to work their estates. There is a contemporary account of what is alleged to have happened when Julius was captured by Pirates written by Plutarch in that a ransom of twenty gold talents was demanded to which Julius burst out laughing and said he was worth 50, a point made in the film. He was in captivity for over a month but released as soon as it was paid, It is reported that he maintained a regal manner through the stay and then set about capturing them and their spoils. He eventually crucified all his captors as he is alleged to have warned them during the captivity.
In the film Caesar has been forced out of office by Sulla who in reality was either a Consul and Roman Dictator about 150 years before the capture or a contemporary senator who was one of Caesar’s commanders during an important battle. In the film the fictitious Sulla takes power and sends his forces to find Caesar who has escaped the coup, but badly wounded. They reach the coast and without tools manage to create an effective raft until captured by the pirate Hamar along with the daughter of a friend. It is not clear why Caesar, his faithful servant and the girl are not used and killed during the brief period when Caesar’s friend is sent back to Rome to collect the ransom. The Pirate leader lets it be known that he proposes to kill him after he has the money. The plan is foiled through the intervention of the father of the captured daughter and the mistress of the Pirate who takes a shine to Caesar and aids in his escape from immediate harm. Caesar returns to his wife and power, the daughter to her father although she also establishes a relationship with Caesar’s friend who arranges the ransom and helps with the rescue. The mistress of the Pirates appears to have sacrificed her life from him. There are various interludes with dancing girl and celebration banquets Roman style as well as pirates battles before the final comeuppance. The film provided an amusing interlude while attending to my work project completing the registration work on some 40 new sets
I begin with Jeffrey Leon Bridges and father and elder brother all established film actors, His father Lloyd Vernet Bridges Junior was born in 1913, grew up with parents in the hotel industry but who also owned a movie theatre. He attended UCLA where he studied political science which led him to being briefly blacklisted years later because he and once belonged to an Acting Laboratory which had links with the Communist Party. He appeared in nearly 100 films and was just as well known in the USA for TV work which led to a couple of Emmy nominations.
Looking through the list of film credits I recall Lost Horizon 1937 and Blondie Goes to College 1942, Atlantic Convoy 1942, Sahara 1943, A walk in the sun 1945, Ramrod 1947,16 Fathoms Deep 1948 Red Canyon 1949, Little Big Horn 1951 High Noon 1952, Wichita 1955, Apache Women 1955, The Rainmaker 1956, Running Wild 1973 and the Fifth Musketeer 1979, Hot Shots 1991, Honey I blew up the Kid 1992, Hot Shots Part Deux 1993, Peter and the Wolf 1995. Sea Hunt brought him TV attention 1957-1961 and in the UK he became well known through his role as Commander Cain in Battlestar Galactica. He was also the White Knight in a TV production of Alice appearing in a wide range of roles and series from Mission Impossible to Roots. His personal interests were more social than party political, becoming involved in environmental campaigns and his one marriage to actor Dorothy Simpson in 1938, provided him with the strongest of family lives, albeit he was absent working for more time than he was at home with his children the actors Beau and Lloyd Bridges, daughter artist daughter Lucinda, with a third son who died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. He lived to the age of 85.
His wife, who was also known as Dorothy Dean, provided the family with its strength, was a child actress who first appeared the film Finders Keepers when she was six. She appeared with Lloyd in a UCLA production and they married after living together for 60 years. She lived to the age of 94. She continued to work throughout her life usually appearing with members of her family and father and sons in the well known TV movie Secret Sins of the Father in 1993. She was also a published poet and is known to have written one piece for her husband every Valentine’s day. Aged 89 she published the story of their relationship and the success of her children, as well as the horror of the death of her baby son.
Beau Bridges was christened with the name of his father but given the nickname according to Wikipedia by his parents while reading Gone with Wind. Lloyd has stated in public the importance of his brother on his life because of his father’s absences for work. They worked together in one film which has been shown several times on satellite and cable TV, The Fabulous Baker Boys.
I remember seeing the film Red Pony 1949 but not Beau who was only 8 years, but the film the Cimarron Strip 1969 makes a regular appearance on TV. I also have seen Two Minutes Warning and the Four Feathers, another TV regular showing from 1977, Norma Rae 1979, Silver Dream Racer 1980 and Night Crossing1 981 with Honky Tonk Freeway also that year, Witness for the Prosecution 1982, Kissinger and Nixon 1995, Jerry Maquire1996, P T Barnum 1999, Inherit the Wind 1999, The Agency 2002, Evil Knieval 2004, He has appeared in several episodes of Stargate and in recent films Desperate Housewives and My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend both of which I have chosen not to see.
Despite their success it was left to the young brother to produce performances in parts which attracted the critical attention of his contemporaries, first with a nomination as Best Supporting Actor in The Last Picture Show and again for his supporting role in the Clint Eastwood Film Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, He was nominated for the best actor with Starman and other roles have brought him praise including his role in the Big Lebowski. I have also seen the Iceman Cometh 1973 Tron 1981, Jagged Edge 1985 Texasville 1990 The Vanishing 1992, The Mirror has Two Faces 1996, Arlington Road, 1999, K Pax 2001, Seabiscuit 2003 and the Men who stared at Goats 2009. He will appear in a Tron follow up and as Rooster Cogburn in a remake of True Grit. He is married with three children an is an admitted user of marijuana to which is not longer addicted.
This brings me to the Oscar winning film Crazy Heart which is about an alcoholic country singer song writer with failed marriages and career dive which has taken him to appearing in small bars and a bowling alley, bursting with resentment over the way his former singing partner who he taught everything he knows is having a major career with albums and 10000 audiences. The film is said to partly based on the story of Kris Kristofferson and was made by County Music Television for a direct to DVD release and only was given limited release by Fox subsequently. It cost only $7 to make.
Certainly the physical appearances of Bridges and Kristoffersen are strikingly similar and Kris was married three times, was a brilliant song writer and his singing career had its ups and downs but to suggest that there a great resemblance is nonsense, although the production company explained that they had difficulties in getting the rights to do the story and therefore the film had elements of the lives of three country singers composite.
Kristofferson was the son of a USA Major General and he became a captain in the army and then a helicopter pilot of graduating in Literature and coming to Merton Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar I think just before I went to Ruskin College. He was married three times including the singer Rita Coolridge. He is known to have ahd a relationship with Janice Joplin up to her death and with Barbara Streisand. He has eight children by the marriages. He wrote Me and Bobby McGhee for Ray Stevens and Joplin, Sunday morning Coming Down for Johnny Cash and Ray Stevens, and Help me Make it Through the night a Grammy award. He also wrote, From the bottle to the bottom.
He also became a first rank Actor appearing in 100 film and TV Production winning a Golden Globe as best actor in a Star is Born. Other well known roles were Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Bring me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, Alice does not Live here anymore, Freedom Road and Heaven’s Gate, and with Johnny Cash and Last days of Frank and Jesse James, in the Blade films and the remake of Planet of the Apes. He is on a different plane to the character of Crazy Heart.
Back to the film in which Bridges plays an alcoholic country singer playing small town bars and a bowling alley. As a favour he agrees to be interviewed by a young divorcee with a young son and son. At first she is yet one more prospect for a one night stand and where despite his alcoholism, his unkempt appearance and age, women of all ages, including wives, throw themselves at him.
What makes the reporter- Jean Craddock, played Maggie Gyllenhaak, different, is that she reveals she has a young son, and when she presses Bridges about his background and three marriages, he reveals he has a son now aged 28 who he has not seen since the marriage broke up when the child was four years of age. The character is only too painfully aware of his shortcomings and failures and it is this in turn which attracts women to him. It is Jean who persuades him to try and make contact with his son and she is there to pick up the pieces when the son does not want to know.
There is something about their first experience together which draws Bridges back to the young woman but when drunk, he falls asleep at the wheel and crashes into the desert. It she he contacts and she who agrees to care for him while the leg heals. The doctor warns that he is moving quickly to early grave unless he stops the smoking, the drinking and loses weight. It is during his recovery that two things happen which reshape their respective futures. He starts to have the relationship with her young son which he failed to have with his own child and becomes keen to present himself in a better light, so he swallows his pride and accepts the opportunity to open a large open air concert with his former protégée, played by Colin Farrell, who he resents for having become so successful, a 50 concert world tour and an ongoing recording contract.
The concert appearance and the contact he makes with his former friend and work colleague leads to the offer of a substantial advance to write songs for a new album and enables him to get off the road for several months and return to his home.
This means a 900 mile distance between him and the young mother and her son and against her better judgement she saves up holiday to have an extended weekend with him during which time he takes the two into the city and suggests he looks after the boy while the mother goes shopping. Going into the bar for a drink he takes his eye off the boy who wanders off and is lost in the big city. He is quickly recovers by the police but the mother realises what a mistake she has made and goes immediately home.
This is yet another reminder of the price his drinking has cost in his life and he seeks the help of a friend, played by Robert Duvall who also has a major role in the production of the film, also a recovering alcoholic, to enter a clinic. He sobers up, cleans himself up and his home, and then makes an unannounced appearance at the home of the woman, who tells him that if he really loves her and her son he will not attempt further contact. Because of insight and guilt he accepts her request.
The film jumps to sixteen months later. Bridges is part way through a major concert tour shared with his protégée, as famous and a wealthy man, sober but alone. He encounters the mother again who has become a music journalist and engaged to someone else. He agrees to an interview and the film ends and we know they will then go their separate ways. They both are happy in their own ways but the self inflicted wound inside him is beyond repair.
This is a story that has been made time and time again and in this form intended for the country music loving fraternity. The performance is excellent in a film which will otherwise prove unmemorable. In terms of other nominated actors that of Colin Firth on a Single Man is marginally better. In some way the award is for a career to date and for a family.
There had have been other father and son notables, Douglas Fairbanks Senior and Junior, the first, Kirk Douglas with two actors sons, Michael the most well known and two sons who are film producers were more of my generation, and more recently Martin and Charlie Sheen come to mind.
I flipped through available free films one lunch time and blinked at the title Julius Caesar and the Pirates. There has been a series of Italian made films about Roman Empire Times of dubious quality but Julius Caesar and the Pirates, come on. Alas I am wrong.
Rome not just tolerated piracy but negotiated deal on the basis that Senators were supplied with slaves to work their estates. There is a contemporary account of what is alleged to have happened when Julius was captured by Pirates written by Plutarch in that a ransom of twenty gold talents was demanded to which Julius burst out laughing and said he was worth 50, a point made in the film. He was in captivity for over a month but released as soon as it was paid, It is reported that he maintained a regal manner through the stay and then set about capturing them and their spoils. He eventually crucified all his captors as he is alleged to have warned them during the captivity.
In the film Caesar has been forced out of office by Sulla who in reality was either a Consul and Roman Dictator about 150 years before the capture or a contemporary senator who was one of Caesar’s commanders during an important battle. In the film the fictitious Sulla takes power and sends his forces to find Caesar who has escaped the coup, but badly wounded. They reach the coast and without tools manage to create an effective raft until captured by the pirate Hamar along with the daughter of a friend. It is not clear why Caesar, his faithful servant and the girl are not used and killed during the brief period when Caesar’s friend is sent back to Rome to collect the ransom. The Pirate leader lets it be known that he proposes to kill him after he has the money. The plan is foiled through the intervention of the father of the captured daughter and the mistress of the Pirate who takes a shine to Caesar and aids in his escape from immediate harm. Caesar returns to his wife and power, the daughter to her father although she also establishes a relationship with Caesar’s friend who arranges the ransom and helps with the rescue. The mistress of the Pirates appears to have sacrificed her life from him. There are various interludes with dancing girl and celebration banquets Roman style as well as pirates battles before the final comeuppance. The film provided an amusing interlude while attending to my work project completing the registration work on some 40 new sets
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