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Tag Archives: Variety (trade paper)
Life After the Manson Family or How Hollywood Got Bigger and Smaller at the Same Time – Another Exploitative Memoir
August 6, 2014 Todd Tranner Leave a comment
After being purged from the ranks of Manson International (see earlier memoir) just in time for Christmas 1985 I spent most of 1986 watching the TV series Berlin Alexanderplatz in a bourboned haze while polishing feature scripts to a greasy sheen. In the fall the phone rang. A former co-worker at Manson, Warren Braverman, was now CFO at a company called Carolco. Warren asked if I wished to join Carolco as director of distribution services to help set up the Business Information Systems program we had developed at Manson International. The computer was virgin dirt in foreign film distrib. At Manson we created primal software with BIS; incorporating purchasing, shipping, and inventory for electro ease. Having grown weary of Fassbinder's gargantuan parade I decided to plunge into the marvel which was Carolco (the name Carolco is meaningless, a prehistoric Panama City company at best).
At that time Carolco was situated in the City National Bank building sandwiched between Sunset and Doheny, near enough to Beverly Hills to have Paul Lynde in your CNB banking line every other Friday but still in West LA so Charles Nelson Reilly was in line alternate Fridays.
Carolco was in a state of joyous chaos. Carolco's third (or fourth) production First Blood II had erupted a volcanic fortune, tripling the domestic 50 million of First Blood and exploding BO records on international frontlines. America embraced John Rambo as their lovable, guilt scrubbing sonny boy, the one they'd been seeking since the fall of Hanoi. The money was washing over Carolco in tidal wave proportions. The accounting department, formerly attended by Linda "Dallas" Evans' sister Charlie, had desk drawers filled with greenbacks literally splashing out.
I shared one office and one desk with Ceci Vajna, the wife of Andrew G. Vajna. Andy with Mario Kassar owned and ran Carolco. Andy and Mario had their office a few doors from mine and they too shared one office and one desk with each other. This was not a space issue. It was how Andy and Mario preferred to work, facing one another across a table, producing mega munchers as a game of friendly checkers or frantic chess. Ceci believed the same split desk strategy would work for her and me as well. For the most part it did. But such proximity meant familiarity with Ceci's world whirl outside foreign distrib.
Happiest of times.
Ceci had been Andy's secretarial assistant at his old Hong Kong wig company. She told me she used to live in a tin hut with her mother and siblings. Now Ceci had her chauffeur on call by our office door reading his Variety. Instead of paltry Hong Kong getups Ceci never repeated an outfit during my employ. New wardrobe items arrived by UPS each day. She wore hot pants suits, trending Asian chic meringue. No Suzie Wong retro sexo 60s duds. Actually Ceci was pals with Nancy "Suzie Wong" Kwan who opened her restaurant Joss on the ground floor of our building facing Sunset. I went with Ceci and Andy for a pre-opening tasting there. Kwan helped serve the dim sum asking our opinion of each item. I commented quietly that we wouldn't be eating this fab dim sum if Marlon Brando hadn't derailed France Nuyen from playing Wong. Before I could ask Nancy if she ever thanked Brando Ceci poked me with a fork.
Ceci planned Beverly Hills homie dinner parties, checkered with A-listers and B-climbers. I counseled her on soiree dilemmas.
"I wish Mickey Rourke would take a bath. It's hard to eat sitting near him."
I suggested, "Seat him next to Nick Nolte. They may cancel each other out."
When her son was sick and home from school (before personal game consoles were in every universal corner) she'd call an arcade rental company and have a coin op batch delivered by semi to their manse for his rehab. "One Asteroids, one Donkey Kong and Tapper." I suggested my fave Centipede for the office but she countered with "You don't need one. You aren't sick or sad."
Ceci oversaw "letter of credit" payments, the spark for overseas printing and element access. I maintained the rest of the distribution scene, receipt and delivery, anguish and anxiety. I worked with producers and post on the completion of Extreme Prejudice and Angel Heart pleading for them to finish before Carolco sales king Rocco called again about Japan changing release dates. At the behest of legal I created the domestic delivery schedule boiler plates for Tri-Star and began my demonic romance with attorneys and their reasoned obfuscation of everything.
The company populous was inflating. Production offices were required. Three or four floors of bank building were tight, elbows were getting bruised. Time to take over a whole building. So a structure was built at 8800 Sunset Boulevard across from Tower Records and Old World restaurant (way gone institutions.) We took a "hard hat tour" of the steel shell and I discovered I had my own office and Ceci had hers. Our "wedded bliss" would end while Andy and Mario would continue their one desk, one office practice in the new digs.
8800 Sunset Boulevard.
Amid the moving mania and the moolah flood, there was still a family feel to Carolco. Andy's mom, Clara, served her fried chicken on birthdays. Employees' offspring were often hanging out playing with the profusion of Rambo toys. Mario's assistant Kim would bring in king cakes at Mardi Gras, supplied by Kim's significant other Louisiana comic Ellen DeGeneres. There were comfy holiday parties at Le Dome with secret Santas and typical inebriated antics.
Much hubbub, personality and product flowed through our offices. Jerry Goldsmith came in wearing an immaculate white caftan dressed perhaps for a river baptism. He was very upset brandishing a Variety ad by the musicians' union contending that Goldsmith's score for Hoosiers was un-American and not worthy of Oscar consideration because it had been recorded at Carolco's recording studio in Budapest with "Red instrumentalists." Ceci soothed a sobbing Goldsmith reassuring him that he wasn't a Communist. I half-expected her to call the arcade company and order Jerry a Space Invaders for home use. Jerry may have received some solace with Walter Hill being "persuaded" to dump his buddy Ry Cooder in favor of Goldsmith's Extreme Prejudice score.
Alan Parker paced the office distressed over the MPAA (who except the MPAA isn't distressed over those slicing screwheads?) demanding an edit of Lisa Bonet's naked blood bath to get Angel Heart an 'R'. Bill Cosby's name came up as an arbiter and quickly dipped below the surface again.
A large carton of designer jeans arrived in my office. The legs on every pair had been brutally slashed and frayed by razor. I showed the abused denim to Ceci assuming they were hers clarifying I didn't do the cutting.
"No, those are Sly's. He has them cut like that."
In due Sly showed up. Shaped like a muscled V with face like an Italian McCartney after a pummeling, Stallone squeezed into my office, stacks of check prints and MFX mags clogged the room.
"You got my jeans in here? You oughta clean this place up, Toddles."
"You wanna help me clean it up?"
He tittered like a thug, "Just give me my jeans." I did and he slipped off before I could ask him how Rambo III was evolving (not very well, I'd heard). Like many I was enamored with the concept of Rambo vs. Rocky, the ultimate matchup, in the ring, the Sahara or in Richard Crenna's pants it didn't matter where as long as they beat each other to a pulp and retreated into oblivion.
McCartney before and after the fight.
Once Red Heat started up Schwarzenegger made office visitations. It was "unwritten" company policy never to have Stallone and Schwarzenegger on the same floor at the same time. Warning signals were traded when they both had identical day meetings. Was it simple ego clash or the chance of two potent objects engorged with testosterone and steroidal jelly bumping in a hallway and exploding on contact? I tend to believe it was a safety concern.
Along with Sly's tortured jeans, random multimillion dollar checks to no one, and the odd boxes of jet engine lubricant we also got Rambo fan letters, most followed this template:
"Dear Rambo, Please come to my house and (sic) to watch TV. There's food to eat and if anybody bother (sic) you feel free to shoot them."
Things got large. It was all about international sales becoming more than half of a film's revenue. It was about presales with buyers salivating for the newest plum teats. With huge pre-sell cash gushing in for giant product it was natural (seemingly) to make interplanetary deals for even more gigantic productions. Carolco altered the dynamics across this town's boards. The only way to get what you want was to pay more than anybody else. Scale film budgets became obese.
Peter Hoffman entered the scene as Carolco's president. Peter was brought in to make things pop, to make magic happen. Hoffman managed an IPO which succeeded against a market usually not prone to loving film speculation. Among the other "magical things" Peter did was buy IVE (International Video Entertainment), a video producer and distributor in Woodland Hills and Canoga Park. One part of IVE was Cabellero Home Video, the old and distinguished porn purveyor, and the bedrock upon which IVE lived. I'd had "fun dealings" with Cabellero while at Manson. The other piece of IVE was Family Home Entertainment, the family friendly stuff. The pre-video boom was a solid mix of kid content and adult content, the public lures which never wane. The owner Noel C. Bloom was a video release pioneer, a prime "golden age of porn" producer and per the state attorney general's office mob connected. Bloom also collected cars. Every Friday he had his automotive fleet taken by flatbed to a car wash. After they were cleaned he returned them to their stationary, driverless life.
Andy told me we needed to use the IVE telecine and duplication facilities from now on. I'd been using Modern Video and was not overjoyed to work elsewhere but… He said call Jose and set things up. Jose Menendez was running IVE which would become LIVE. Formerly he'd been a muckety-muck with Hertz and RCA. At RCA he supposedly signed Duran Duran and Menudo to the label.
Jose and I traded phone messages for days. When I finally got hold of him Jose seemed over his head in management woes, also unaware of what IVE's facilities actually were. He said he had to run off to his son's tennis match and he'd call me back. He never did. When I finally tracked him down Jose claimed they weren't ready to receive work yet and that he'd call me when they did. Right now he had to run off to his other son's tennis game. He sure loved watching his sons play tennis. I never heard back from Jose.
LIVE became a profitable entity. The company's 1989 profit line received its largest bump from a life insurance policy LIVE had taken out on its chairman Menendez.
Strawberries and vanilla ice cream and blood.
Peter Hoffman's wife Susan took the office next to mine. Following executive spousal tradition I asked her if she wanted to share a desk and she told me she'd worked with another Todd, Todd Rundgren. She was there when he was robbed at gunpoint in his home around 1980. One of the culprits was whistling Rundgren's song "I Saw the Light" during the theft. Susan's Carolco task was putting together Canadian tax shelter projects. Her hubby Peter was a tax shelter freak.
Whereas Carolco sales were handled mainly by Rocco Viglietta, with his custom made fantastic pop shirts, Carolco's legal end began to resemble an army metastasizing at night, each dawn another office was occupied by a new attorney handling some obscure biz tidbit.
Peter Hoffman kept company acquisitions and investments rolling. Productions were in fungi growth mode everywhere. With Hoffman and his staff came ripples of attack buzz and office gaming, regulation job paranoia hit. There was a scent of pandemonium in the corridors.
The Andy and Mario machine began to misfire. When two men who could buy Columbian coffee plantations for kicks engage in combat over the expresso machine you figure something's more than amiss. The shared desk was history. Separate offices were the new flavor.
Maggie at Technicolor rang me to ask if I wanted to run distribution and post services at a small Hollywood company. They wanted to pay me more than Carolco so I jumped (everyone at Carolco wasn't overpaid). I told Ceci I was leaving and without looking up she said "Okay" and continued eating her lunch.
I left Carolco before Terminator 2 and Basic Instinct. Before Wagons East! and Cutthroat Island. Before the IRS and the SEC came a'knockin'. Before Andy Vajna split. The last straw for Andy may have been when he asked, "What's this shooting in British Columbia? Narrow Margin? How come I never heard of it?" In 1989 Mario bought out Andy's percentage for 100 million clams. Pete Hoffman vamoosed when Oliver Stone pushed The Doors 20 mil over budget with no justification. Andy and Ceci divorced. Andy and Mario remarried and made Terminator 3. At the moment Peter and Susan Hoffman are awaiting trial in New Orleans for a tax shelter scheme.
Skouras Pictures was located at Hollywood Center Studios on Las Palmas. This stage rental studio reeked of lotusland history. In 1919 John Jasper left Chaplin Studios to build three stages and a squadron of bungalows now bordered by Santa Monica, Romaine, Seward and Las Palmas. Names and ownership changed through the decades from (Jasper) Hollywood Studios, Inc. to Hollywood/Metropolitan Studios to General Service(s) Studios to Hollywood General Studios to Zoetrope Studios and finally Hollywood Center Studios.
1040 North Las Palmas
While hands changed everything under the sun was getting made in the shade there. The highlights include Milestone's Two Arabian Nights, Hell's Angels, Harold Lloyd's The Kid Brother, The Freshman and Speedy, Mae West's Klondike Annie and Go West, Young Man, Renoir's The Southerner and Diary Of A Chambermaid, Trail Of the Lonesome Pine, The Flying Deuces, The Thief Of Bagdad, The Jungle Book, A Night In Casablanca, Cagney's Blood On The Sun, Crosby's Pennies From Heaven, Love Happy, Destination Moon, Shampoo, One From The Heart, Body Heat, X Men, Zoolander and of course Freddie Got Fingered. From the fifties on television dominated shooting on the lot and it was a home to tube nuggets I Love Lucy, Ozzie And Harriet, Our Miss Brooks, Sky King and the Filmways Five: The Beverly Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction, Mr. Ed, Green Acres, and The Addams Family then Perry Mason, The Rockford Files, Baretta, Jeopardy, True Blood and Pee-wee's Playhouse.
The legend of Skouras Pictures (as school children tell it) began when far away in Greece Dimitri "Tom" Skouras having spent untold time sitting on a beach contemplating the Aegean Sea had the realization that there must be more to the big pic than racing cars for grins and grease. Tom had to step in the celluloid ooze of his ancestors, a Skouras brother trio that ran a theater chain out of Missouri, managed production for the Warner brothers and one brother, Tom's Uncle Spyros, who would have the longest run as el presidente of 20th Century Fox telling the world "Movies are better than ever" until he got slugged by Cleopatra. So Tom headed back to the difficult pastures of Hollywood and started a film distribution company. The early cream came from a Peter Elson tip (the same Peter of Manson who sold softcore Sinderella and the Golden Bra to the Mideast, see earlier memoir.) Peter told Tom to check out a little flick by the Cohens (still more brothers) named Blood Simple. The rest was some kinda history.
Skouras Pictures had a foreign division headed by Pam Pickering (Sam Peckinpah's former assistant also dumped by Manson with me in '85) and a domestic division run by Jeff Lipsky. My job was to serve both divisions by wearing multi hats. I coordinated all titles' delivery of preprint elements, answer and check prints, film to tape transfer, trailer creation, release printing, Latin Spanish version, publicity orders, shipping, purchasing, invoicing, letters of credit, distributor contracts, inventory input and tabulation, plumbing and pharmaceuticals. I comforted clueless lawyers, problem producers, distraught directors and screaming overseas buyers. My first week there Jeff Lipsky told Tom to fire me because he hadn't been consulted regarding my hiring. Tom laughed and Pam laughed but Jeff did not. He wanted me gone, solid gone.
Sigrid, VP of sales, a cheerful adult Heidi with dark wit beneath candied enamel, told me Jeff didn't want another male on the premises. The Skouras work force was comprised of 15 women and now 3 men (the mailroom staff was two males but not unlike H.G. Wells's Morlocks they were mostly invisible toilers). Sigrid said Skouras was "Tom's harem" with Jeff attempting to seize the sultan position from Tom.
Sigrid advised "Now you're competing for the harem and Jeff wants you out."
"Tell Jeff not to worry I'm a diehard eunuch."
Eventually Jeff cornered me in my office. He was a strong presence described by Peter Biskind in "Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance and the Rise of Independent Film" thusly: "Bald as a cue ball – he suffers from alopecia, the Lex Luthor disease, not a hair on his body- Lipsky has an angular face and wore black-framed Mr. McGoo glasses. He was fussy and retentive, intense and intimidating." Jeff wanted to know my motives, my intentions, and what's up with women around here "liking you and going out to lunch with you." He was also not amused that I had my own private WC (in this bungalow I was the sole male among seven femmes). On a biz level I respected Jeff, he was a positive force in getting indie films seen from My Dinner with Andre and Sid and Nancy to Mike Leigh's masterworks but this confrontation was bizarrely personal. My initial response was a Ralph Kramden stammer then I uttered some Psych 101 speak, "I'm sorry you feel that way." Having said his piece Jeff returned to his office. After that things were copasetic even friendly between us but I remained wary around Lipsky.
Latrine of contention.
The bungalow suite for the Skouras foreign division sat in the northwest corner of the lot where you could breathe a mix of Magee's Donuts and petro fumes. This part of Hollywood Central is immortalized in the opening track shot of Altman's The Player.
Skouras's more expansive courtyard offices, formerly Zoetrope's main workplace, were in the far southeast corner under a wafting chemical cloud from Consolidated Film Industries. Dozens of journeys were made daily from foreign to the main. These multiple treks across the cozy lot exposed troupes in play. Standard phenom included passing James Garner posed oddly across his car hood, Mike Tyson pontificating on rape, Bill Murray playing hoop with little people, Raul Julia having another incident of eye proptosis, an open door revealing Dan Ackroyd sifting through scripts echoing Drew Friedman's Spy mag cartoon or one night rushing to Tom Skouras's aid and nearly colliding in the dark with a "Rickenbacker" wielding George Harrison (or more appropriately Nelson Wilbury).
The office next to our suite had been occupied since 1950 by a 92 year old ex-vaudevillian named George Burns. Mr. Burns would arrive by Cadillac most mornings around 10 AM and spend time in his office before retreating to lunch at Hillcrest Country Club. If I happened to pass during his arrival I'd greet him with "Good morning, Mr. Burns" and he'd wave a stogie the size of Billy Barty's shillelagh. Sometimes I'd channel Joe Franklin and ask a question.
"Mr. Burns, did you discover Ann-Margret or was it actually George Jessel?"
"No, I did. I discovered her. Or she discovered me. Jessel never discovered anybody. Some showgirls perhaps. What else?"
"Did you ever see W.C. Fields sober?"
"Once. Maybe twice. Don't you think we better go to our offices and get to work?"
He started to his door then stopped and asked me, "Did they vacuum your office yesterday? I think they forgot to do mine."
At some point during the shoot for LIFE, Ann-Margret visited with her mentor, the legendary George Burns, in a prop room of a studio where he kept an office, 1961.
Skouras entered a lucrative domestic output agreement with Paramount Pictures for video exploitation of titles. The lead dog in the deal was Hallstrom's My Life as a Dog (the third biggest foreign language BO up to that time after La Cage aux Folles and Das Boot and the source for any industry wallop Skouras had). Delivery was keyed on supplying NTSC analog 1" which was acceptable to Paramount's QC standards. Creating video masters in those primeval days usually meant use of a low contrast print for telecine (interpositives would soon swap with the LC). The film to tape process had the telecine operator trying to recreate the look of the film on video. A true match was not technically possible so overseeing the transfer was often a labor of frustration for directors and cinematographers who didn't identify two different mediums. One who understood the dif was Dante Spinotti, the DP for Paul Schrader's The Comfort of Strangers. Working on the transfer with Spinotti was a pleasure as he'd lived in the film's setting of Venice and he recounted grand memories of swimming in the canals dodging hepatitis A nodules.
Dyan Cannon wrote, directed and starred in The End of Innocence. Dyan supervised her video transfer while I simultaneously peered over her shoulder and at the clock. This was Dyan's autobio baby and her desire for perfection was understandable. She bounced on a mini-trampoline drinking health elixirs easily manipulating our telecine operator Tim who was madly in love with Dyan. The hours at Sunset Post ticked up as Dyan would go over scenes ad infinitum. Tom Skouras advised me any excessive hours would come out of my pay so I tried gently coaxing Dyan, "Don't pull a Kubrick or a Billy Friedkin on me, Dyan." Or annoying her with amusing acid trip anecdotes which Dyan countered with "There's nothing funny about LSD." Finally I had a heart to heart with Dyan explaining I was about to get married on a northwest camping expedition and if this isn't wrapped now… I broke down in mock tears and she said "We'll finish it tomorrow." And she did. To cover myself I bought camping gear, found someone to marry and left town for a while.
SIDEBAR: The telecine operator Tim said working with Dyan was "the greatest moment of my life" adding "The only thing that would have made it better was if she was naked." For Tim's birthday certain parties at Sunset Post set up a wee gag. A porn actress came in with a work reel to transfer. As Tim labored the flesh thesp complained about feeling "hot and bothered" and began disrobing until… Tim forgot about what had been the earlier greatest moment of his life.
One of Tim's two greatest moments
My finest Skouras achievements were re-titling Blood Oath to Prisoners of the Sun (apologies to Herge) and Picking Up the Pieces to Blood Sucking Pharaohs of Pittsburgh. For this I was promoted to the absurdisto title Vice President of Post Production. Sigrid called VPs "V-penises" since they were primarily males in the industrial churn.
Tom took over more bungalows in his neck of the woods so foreign united with domestic. I shared my "suite" with sales person Midge, a former Vegas songster from Tuxedo Junction. Our receptionist Peggy was a former Weeki Wachee mermaid. Domestic print juggler Ruth was a former Olympic kayaker. And my assistant Lisa was the former hot dog vendor on the lot who'd impressed with her ability to ward off a crazed Bill Murray.
A wandering maintenance drone, who wandered more than maintained, informed me that Bob Cummings used my office when he filmed his show here in the 50s. He added that when Coppola ruled the roost the office was assigned to Jean Luc Godard but Godard never showed up. Cummings to Godard, Hollywood talent shuffle.
Found refuse: James Cann's MISERY prop stumps and George Burns' chimp in Bob Cummings and Jean-Luc Godard's office.
Tom's stepdaughter Margie, Skouras acquisitions head, saw sex, lies and videotape and embraced it shouting its brilliance to all and getting it in Sundance. Jeff loved it even more than Margie. It was tossed in Tom's lap, a service deal, no upfront monies, but Tom forever cautious, often at the expense of success, said no thanks. In his consideration the film's video rights were already with RCA/Columbia and it was perhaps a hard watch for a man whose favorite film was One-Eyed Jacks. Sex, lies and videotape would end up with Miramax. Miramax would take over earth as Skouras dove for footnote status (read Biskind's Down and Dirty Pictures for the grotty niceties).
The company mood was evident at a gloomy American Film Market cocktail party for the opus Beverly Hills Brats, a Terry "Come Back Little Sheba" Moore and Martin "Badlands" Sheen vehicle without wheels. We also attempted to celebrate Shadow of Death but the star Anthony "Pretty Poison" Perkins was not feeling well and didn't attend. Perkins co-star Lyle "Ernest Goes To Camp" Alzado did show up and confirmed somberly, "Tony's not doing so well I guess." Beverly Hills Brats co-star Natalie "The Snake Pit" Schafer began weeping when she confessed to me that she didn't expect there to be another Gilligan's Island reunion because her "millionaire husband" Jim "Here Come the Nelsons" Backus was wasting away with Parkinson's. Beverly Hills Brat Peter "A Christmas Story" Billingsley looked at me and shrugged, "Everybody's gotta go some time." And go they did Backus in 1989, Schafer in 1991, Perkins and Alzado in 1992.
Leftovers at the Beverly Hills Brats cocktail party, March 25, 1989.
Pam Pickering was shoved out in a divisive manner and went to Samuel Goldwyn. Assistant Lisa departed months later following Pam to Goldwyn.
Jeff Lipsky quit Skouras in October 1990 when Tom wouldn't share an interest in Mike Leigh's great Life Is Sweet. He and Bingham Ray started October Films.
The picture fount was unexceptional. The financial portrait was dim. Not meeting payroll was a whisper topic. The state of things was plainly headed for desolation row only no one was "selling postcards of the hanging" or selling much of anything at Skouras.
As the knives sharpened my phone rang and it was Maggie at Technicolor asking if I wanted to be "V-penis" of distribution at Odyssey Distributors. Odyssey was a foreign distributor of A-product, mainly New Regency titles, started by comic Alan King and some "dubious" New York financiers. Rather than become a casualty in the fall of Skouras I fled the storied bungalows of Hollywood Center Studios and headed west… to San Vicente and Wilshire and a company where the chance of being vomited on by Gerard Depardieu was considerably high.
Alan KingAlan Parker (director)American Film MarketAndrew G. VajnaAngel HeartAnn-MargretAnthony PerkinsArnold SchwarzeneggerBasic InstinctBerlin AlexanderplatzBeverly Hills BratsBill CosbyBill MurrayBlood SimpleBlood Sucking Pharaohs of PittsburghBob CummingsCabellero Home VideoCarolcoCeci VajnaCharlie EvansConsolidated Film IndustriesCutthroat IslandDan AckroydDante SpinottiDas BootDimitri "Tom" SkourasDown and Dirty Pictures: MiramaxDyan CannonEllen DeGeneresExtreme Prejudice (film)Family Home EntertainmentFirst BloodGeorge BurnsGeorge HarrisonHollywood Center StudiosHollywood General StudiosHoosiers (film)IVE (International Video Entertainment)James GarnerJean-Luc GodardJeff LipskyJerry GoldsmithJim BackusLa Cage aux Folleslies and videotapeLife Is SweetLisa BonetLIVE (entertainment company)Lyle AlzadoManson InternationalMario KassarMickey RourkeMike LeighMike TysonModern Video (company)MPAAMy Dinner with AndreMy Life as a DogNancy KwanNatalie SchaferNick NolteNoel C. BloomOctober FilmsOdyssey DistributorsOliver StoneOne-Eyed JacksPam PickeringParamount PicturesPeter BiskindPeter Hoffman (Carolco executive)Prisoners of the SunRambo First Blood IIRaul JuliaRed Heat (film)Ry CoodersexShadow of DeathSid and NancySinderella and the Golden BraSkouras PicturesSundance and the Rise of Independent FilmSundance Film FestivalSunset PostSylvester StalloneTechnicolor (laboratory)Terminator 2Terminator 3The Comfort of StrangersThe Doors (film)The End of InnocenceThe Narrow Margin (remake)The Player (film)Todd RundgrenTri-StarVariety (trade paper)Wagons East!Walter HillWarren BravermanZoetrope Studios
The Upper Crust (1981): Frank Gorshin Gives the Performance of His Career in a Forgotten Austrian Thriller
April 19, 2014 Stephen Bowie Leave a comment
Imagine an unassuming policier directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder and that will give you some idea of the atmosphere of Peter Patzak's The Upper Crust (Den Tüchtigen gehört die Welt; literally, The Brave Own the World, 1981), an impressive and unjustly forgotten bilingual crime film. Although it appears never to have opened commercially in the United States, The Upper Crust screened in a retrospective of Austrian films at the now-defunct Carnegie Hall Cinema in May 1982, and returned to New York earlier this month as part of the Museum of Modern Art's "Vienna Unveiled" series.
Very much a product of the post-1968 hangover era, in which thoughts of revolution gave way to dispirited cynicism, The Upper Crust concerns a murky political conspiracy in which a trio of well-connected government officials (Ernst Konarek, Bibiane Zeller, and Fred Schaffer) turn to murder to suppress a potentially ruinous scandal. Although it's not entirely clear (at least via the English subtitles) what kind of corporate crimes these starched-collar villains are up to, they are also connected to a prostitution ring via their pimp-enforcer Kralicek (Pavel Landovsky). When a small-time con man, Haumer (Lukas Resatarits), learns that Kralicek got his teenaged girl addicted to heroin and turned her out, he puts his unorthodox professional skills to work in a scheme to exact revenge on the whole group. Not wishing to sully their own hands, the trio send away to America for a mob-connected hit man to dispatch Haumer.
Although it isn't quite their equal, Patzak's film more closely resembles the political thrillers of Costa-Gavras or Wim Wenders's The American Friend than the exuberant, violent Italian poliziotteschi that remain the most-exported Eurocrime genre of the period. Patzak's palette is all muted browns and grays, and The Upper Crust takes place in an overcast, rain-soaked Vienna of modern metal buildings and post-industrial blandness—a far cry from Johann Strauss's Austria. The look of the film is of a piece with the central performance by Franz Buchrieser, who plays the police detective assigned to the case with a thick mustache and a shrug. Smarter than his superiors, Major Kottan is also burned-out and all too aware that bureaucracy will derail any meaningful police work, especially as he follows the misdeeds up the chain to the "upper crust." Kottan's portly partner (Walter Davy, a World War II amputee) has only one leg—an inspired visual metaphor for the ineffectuality of the police.
The Upper Crust was a spin-off of an acclaimed Austrian television series, Kottan ermittelt, which depicted police corruption and incompetence with a darkly humorous tone. The main character's name is itself a gag, a pun on the Jerry Cotton series of films, and in The Upper Crust Buchrieser glares balefully at a couple of suspects who bust out the George Nader jokes. The show is unknown in the United States but sounds a lot like Hill Street Blues, which Kottan predates by five years.
The chief element that distinguishes The Upper Crust from Kottan ermittelt is also the factor that should make the film ripe for an English-friendly home video release: the addition of American locations and actors to the mix. Patzak connected with Bay Area producer Richard Chase's Baytide Films, in what Variety surmised was "the first true U.S.-Austrian co-production since World War II," in order to shoot a prologue in some grungy San Francisco locations during the winter of 1980-81. (Primarily a director-producer of television commercials, Chase also worked as a journalist and a Dallas-based restaurateur before his early death at 46, in 1992.) Chase also recommended an American actor to play the villain: Frank Gorshin.
Best remembered as Batman's The Riddler, Gorshin made most of his living as an impressionist and a nightclub entertainer. His career in front of the camera had sputtered after Batman; there were guest shots on crime shows like Ironside and Charlie's Angels, but nothing more substantial, and Chase thought of him after reading one of many interviews in which Gorshin complained about the dearth of film roles on offer. The American non-release of The Upper Crust meant that nothing much changed for Gorshin - while promoting the film's sole appearance in New York City, Gorshin noted that he was about to get killed off after four months on the daytime soap Edge of Night. It's a bit of a tragedy, because Gorshin gives a first-rate performance—maybe the best of his life—in The Upper Crust.
The prologue also features two other American actors: Broderick Crawford and stand-up comic Joey Forman, both of whom died not long after the film was made. Forman and Gorshin take Crawford to a sparsely-attended high school basketball game, buy him a couple of beers there, and then kill him during the drive back. They're all connected to the mob, but Crawford's character had been talking to the cops. As they leave the body in the passenger seat of a jeep parked under a freeway overpass, Gorshin puts the gun in Crawford's hand. Forman jokes that a shot to the back of the head is not a very convincing suicide. Gorshin says that's the most popular way to do it in Germany, then strains a muscle reaching around behind his neck to demonstrate. "Ow!" he exclaims with a sheepish grin, and . . . cut to the opening credits.
The banal nature of this murder—a high school basketball game?!—sets the tone for Gorshin's character, Harry Werner, who loves to gamble online at casinodames.com/live-casino. He's as at ease in his work as any paper-pusher who's been working in the same cubicle for twenty years. Patzak shows him assembling his rifle (and adjusting a loose screw on the sight, which later seems to work itself loose every time he uses it; a nice detail), but spends just as much screen time on Harry's progress in acquiring a rental car. Any macho posturing or moral agonizing would be out of place within this sketch of pragmatic evil. Gorshin gets that; he plays Harry with total nonchalance, his worn face usually devoid of expression but still captivatingly pregnant with uncertain intent. Every hired killer has to be a sociopath, one imagines, but Gorshin lifts the veil for only an occasional flash of menace. Near the end of the film, on the run from the cops and holed up in a lonely woman's apartment, Harry kidnaps (catnaps?) his hostage's beloved feline for leverage. The woman picks up a pan, then hesitates. Gorshin never looks at her; he's busy stroking the cat. "What do you think?" Harry coos, addressing the pet. "Is she going to hit me with that pan?" It's a satisfying irony that Gorshin, who became famous for mimicking a certain type of savagely ferocious actor (Richard Widmark, James Cagney, Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster) should understand that he could be even more mesmerizing by channelling the somnolence of Robert Mitchum.
Gorshin's only Riddler-esque indulgences in The Upper Crust are an occasional Nicholsonesque grin and the battered fisherman's hat he keeps pushing down over his eyes. Both attract more attention than Harry might be expected to want, but it's okay—they remind us that The Upper Crust is first and foremost a star turn. The film's major flaw is its pulpy, at times nonsensical plotting, and the toughest part to swallow is Harry's decision to stick around after the job is done—foolish behavior for a experienced lawbreaker. It's as if Patzak couldn't bear to let go of Gorshin, even at the expense of his story. Ultimately Harry sticks around until the end, becoming not so much the villain as a twinned, flawed protagonist, equal in stature and screen time to Buchrieser's Kottan. The Upper Crust is Gorshin's movie all the way. Every underutilized character actor should have one like it.
Batman (TV series)Baytide FilmsBibiane ZellerBroderick CrawfordBurt LancasterCarnegie Hall CinemaCharlie's Angels (TV series)Costa-GavrasEdge of Night (TV series)Ernst KonarekFrank GorshinFranz BuchrieserFred SchafferGeorge NaderHill Street BluesIronsideJames CagneyJerry Cotton (film series)Joey FormanKirk DouglasKottan ermittelt (TV series)Lukas ResataritsMuseum of Modern ArtPavel LandovskyPeter PatzakRainer Werner FassbinderRichard Chase (producer)Richard WidmarkRobert MitchumSan FranciscoThe RiddlerVariety (trade paper)ViennaWalter DavyWim Wenders"Vienna Unveiled" series
Savant 3-D Blu-ray Review: "Man in the Dark" (1953)
March 4, 2014 Glenn Erickson Leave a comment
When Arch Oboler's Bwana Devil set off a stampede to promote 3-D as the savior of Hollywood, the first studio picture on screens was a Columbia quickie filmed in record time, on the cheap. Producer Wallace MacDonald had the 1936 amnesia-plastic surgery potboiler The Man Who Lived Twice reworked as a very lightweight noir thriller. Man in the Dark pulled in customers primed by the big publicity push being given 3-D. Warners' House of Wax followed two days later, losing the race to be first but reaping much bigger returns.
The refurbished storyline drops the plastic surgery angle but retains the now- disturbing idea that doctors might use brain surgery to "cure" lawbreakers of criminal tendencies. Convicted criminal Steve Rawley (Edmond O'Brien) volunteers for the operation half-assuming that he'll not survive. He awakes with total amnesia and a more cheerful personality. Under a new name, "Blake" actually looks forward to beginning life afresh tending the hospital's hedges. Steve is instead kidnapped and beaten bloody by his old cronies in crime Lefty, Arnie and Cookie (Ted de Corsia, Horace McMahon & Nick Dennis), who want to know where Steve hid the loot from their last robbery. Steve remembers nothing, and kisses from his old girlfriend Peg Benedict (Audrey Totter) fail to extract the location of the $130,000. But weird dreams provide clues that might lead Steve and Peg to the money everyone is so desperate to possess.
Columbia chief Harry Cohn's commitment to 3-D had its limits, as Man in the Dark is a real quickie distinguished only by its cast of noir icons. The adapted storyline is packed with somewhat limp 'smart' dialogue. Indicating how conscious writers of this time were of previous hardboiled thrillers. One speech even borrows a line about money "being a piece of paper with germs on it" from Edgar Ulmer's Detour.
Man in the Dark is sometimes listed as a sci-fi movie, owing to its notion of using surgery to correct criminal behavior. If that idea had been developed beyond gimmick status the movie might connect with later sci-fi efforts like A Clockwork Orange. As it is Dr. Marston (Dayton Lummis) merely succeeds in making a blank slate of Steve Rawley's mind. It is just assumed that he's no longer a crook. The doctor sees nothing wrong in wiping out the identity of a human being, but he does object to Rawley being questioned by the insurance investigator Jawald (creepy Dan Riss). Although one would think that Steve's post-operative brain might be a little on the tender side, he suffers no ill effects from the beatings delivered by the sadistic Lefty.
Understandably disenchanted with his new/old cronies, Steve breaks free to get the missing moolah for himself. But can he remember where he left it? Peg Benedict thinks that he's reverting to his wicked ways. The rather inconsistent Peg initially acts as a standard-issue femme fatale, seducing Steve to find a short cut to a big payday. Later, she accuses her former crook boyfriend of 'being himself' and starts complaining that since they're in love they don't need the money.
Some tension arises when Jawald's detective proves to be just as slimy as the crooks — he's perfectly happy to allow the dangerous fugitives to stay at large and pummel Steve, as long as they lead him to the cash. The subject of crime-fighting ethics is dropped like a hot rock, along with any and all questions about the exact nature of Steve's brain operation. We instead get a few back-lot chases and a dream sequence in which Steve and a dozen cops pile into an amusement park ride. While an animated statue of a fat lady laughs, the hallucinated cops pull their guns and shoot at Steve at the same time.
The big finish — promised in all the ads — sends Steve on a wild roller coaster ride. It's the famed Pacific Ocean Park Pier, whose massive wooden roller coaster can also be seen (from several of the exact same angles) in the same year's The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. A big chase between Edmond O'Brien and Ted de Corsia's stuntmen takes place on the rooftop of Columbia Studios at their old Sunset & Gower location. Look closely and you'll spot the first two letters of the Hollywood Sign, and a few seconds later, the distinctive sign for the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.
Director Lew Landers (Louis Friedlander) made his career by grinding out movies at a blistering pace, averaging about six features a year. The IMDB lists twelve Landers titles for 1942 alone! Landers' direction of Man in the Dark hypes the 3-D by making sure that small objects are thrust into the camera at regular intervals — medical instruments, guns, spiders, a bird. Variety's review called the 3-D effects the real reason to see the movie. That trade magazine's coverage rather ungallantly suggests that "Miss Totter's figure is a definite 3-D asset." Reviewers made the same promises about the erotic potential of 3-D for their coverage of Universal's It Came From Outer Space.
Edmond O'Brien's career as a leading man was winding down by this time, as was the enticing Audrey Totter's tenure as a top noir siren. Both give solid pro performances, although the baddies Ted de Corsia (The Naked City, The Killing) and Nick Dennis (Kiss Me Deadly, Spartacus) are more fun to watch. The costumers give Dennis the cheesiest-looking striped suit imaginable, which with his wild shock of hair makes a perfect low-rent impression.
The Twilight Time Blu-ray + 3-D of Man in the Dark is a pristine transfer of this oddity, one of only two official films noir shot in the 3-D format. The Academy aspect ratio is correct and consistent with the April '53 release date. An Isolated Score Track gives us the full effect of stock film music rearranged for a movie, rather than composed for it. The work of half a dozen composers blends together unobtrusively.
Twilight Time's first 3-D offering is also a disc debut for Man in the Dark. The trailer included in the package is a teaser item hyping the special shoot as if it were the Manhattan Project. Edmond O'Brien addresses a sales pitch directly at the camera, just outside a stage where the "top secret" film is being shot.
The menu for the 3-D version encoded on the disc comes up only on 3-D disc players, otherwise the disc reverts to the fine-quality flat HD version. The 3-D effect is satisfying, although most shots are not as carefully designed for the process as they are in more expensive pictures. It is interesting that this Columbia show chooses to use a roller coaster ride as a way of showing off its 3-D depth — the year before, the initial This Is Cinerama launched the mad race to defeat Television by starting with a roller coaster ride. Audiences may not have felt the same jolt, however, as the roller coaster sequence is all done with 2-D rear projection.
Julie Kirgo's liner notes detail the custom rig used to film Man in the Dark and add some thoughts about the use of 3-D in the dream sequences. This disc will be a sure sell to the owners of 3-D home theater equipment.
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
Man in the Dark
Blu-ray + 3D
Twilight Time
1953 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 70 min. / Street Date January 21, 2014 / available through Screen Archives Entertainment / 29.95
Deaf and Hearing Impaired Friendly?
YES; Subtitles: English
Packaging: Keep case
Starring Edmond O'Brien, Audrey Totter, Ted de Corsia, Horace McMahon, Nick Dennis, Dayton Lummis, Dan Riss.
Cinematography Floyd Crosby
Film Editor Viola Lawrence
Musical Director Ross DiMaggio
Composers of Stock Music George Antheil, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, George Duning, Herman Hand, Paul Mertz, Ben Oakland, Hans J. Salter, Marlin Skiles.
Written by George Bricker, Jack Leonard, William Sackheim, from the 1936 film The Man Who Lived Twice by Tom Van Dycke & Henry Altimus
Produced by Wallace MacDonald
Directed by Lew Landers
000 Fathoms3-DA Clockwork OrangeArch OblerAudrey TotterBwana DevilColumbia PicturesColumbia Studios (Sunset & Gower)Dan RissDayton LummisDetour (film)Edgar UlmerEdmond O'BrienFloyd CrosbyGeorge BrickerHarry CohnHenry AltimusHollywood signHorace McMahonHouse of Wax (1953)It Came from Outer SpaceJack LeonardJulie KirgoLew LandersNick DennisPacific Ocean Park PierRoss DiMaggioTed de CorsiaThe Beast from 20The Man Who Lived TwiceThis is CineramaTom Van DyckeTwilight TimeUniversal PicturesVariety (trade paper)Viola LawrenceWallace MacDonald (producer)Warner Bros.William Sackheim
Whatever Happened to Christopher Jones? (Part 2)
February 27, 2014 Peter Winkler 1 Comment
…and now the conculsion of Peter Winkler's two-part look and the strange, storied career of this enigmatic actor:
William J. Immerman, Wild in the Streets' associate producer, who cast the film, had been impressed by Jones in The Legend of Jesse James, but had heard rumors about his troublesome behavior. After conferring with Stuart Cohen, one of Jones' managers, Immerman was reassured that he would babysit his client and keep him in line during the film's production. Although Jones failed to appear for a read through of the script with the rest of the film's cast, principal photography on Wild wrapped in 20 days without incident. Larry Bishop, making his debut in the film, said that Jones was friendly and generous with the other actors, even giving him tips on how to play his role.
In his favorable review of the film, Variety's "Murf" noted, "Christopher Jones, whose future star potential is established herein." American International Pictures must have been ecstatic when New York Times reviewer Renata Adler wrote, "By far the best American film of the year so far––and this has been the worst year in a long time for, among other things, movies––is 'Wild in the Streets.' It is a very blunt, bitter, head-on but live and funny attack on the problem of the generations. And it is more straight and thorough about the times than any science fiction or horror movie in a while. The thing that is surprising about a movie of 'Wild in the Streets's' élan and energy (and although it is quite botched together in many ways, it runs right along) is the number of philosophical bases it manages to touch. It is a brutally witty and intelligent film." When it comes to sex, so much emphasis is placed on what people do. And for obvious reason. But what about what people say? Particularly for long-distance lovers, bboutique sex toys become an important device for expressing themselves and connecting sexually. While men must focus on maintaining good penile health so that any visual materials they send aren't alarming, and so that they will be able to perform once the lover is nearby, they should equally attend to their verbal abilities so they can please partners in the present with a tailored sex story. Now, anyone can tell a sex story, but not everyone can tell a truly thrilling one. Below, men can find tips for telling a tale that stokes a lover's passion. And, while this is certainly desired in the case of long-distance lovers, it can also be of benefit to those near and dear, spicing things up in the bedroom. You can check this blog here about the REAL SEX STORIES.
Jones' next film was no Wild in the Streets. In Three in the Attic (1968), he played Paxton Quigley, a college Casanova who carries on simultaneous affairs with three co-eds (Yvette Mimieux, Judy Pace, and Maggie Thrett) at a women's university in Vermont. After they discover that he's been cheating on them, Quigley's girlfriends lock him in Mimieux's attic and try to fatally exhaust him with sex while he goes on a hunger strike. The school's headmistress (Nan Martin) eventually discovers his whereabouts and Mimieux leaves the school with him.
"Mr. Jones and Miss Mimieux have a certain starlet diligence and charm," Renata Adler wrote, before concluding, "The movie, which was made by American International Pictures for the drive-in set, has a little of 'The Touchables,' some 'Joanna,' generation gap, hippiedom, college, McLuhan and Kierkegaard, all wilted and stale."
Based on John Le Carre's novel, The Looking Glass War (1969) boasted a cast that included Sir Ralph Richardson and a young Anthony Hopkins. Jones played a Polish émigré who British intelligence convinces to infiltrate East Germany to ascertain the status of Soviet nuclear missiles.
When Jones flew to London to film interior scenes, he was joined by Jim Morrison's girlfriend, Pamela Courson, who he began an affair with while living at the Chateau Marmont hotel on the Sunset Strip. When she discovered that he was writing letters to Susan Strasberg, she flew into a rage and left. Jones began an affair with his costar, Pia Degermark (star of Elvira Madigan [1967]), and a dalliance with Susan George, who played his girlfriend in The Looking Glass War.
He followed The Looking Glass War with A Brief Season (1969), filmed in Italy. Jones played Johnny, an American stockbroker in Rome who falls in love with Luisa (Pia Degermark) and misappropriates funds to invest in a speculative venture to fund his romance. The investment fails and he accidentally kills a guard while escaping jail. The couple share a lovers' idyll in the Italian countryside and at a luxury hotel, their pleasure made poignant by the eventuality of Johnny's recapture. Then Luisa shoots Johnny and herself.
Jones was tired out after making The Looking Glass War and disinclined to do A Brief Season. Producer Dino De Laurentiis said, "What will it take for you to do the film?" Jones asked for nearly a millon dollars and a new $20,000 Ferrari, never expecting De Laurentiis to agree.
Jones took his Ferrari out for a spin with nearly deadly consequences. "I narrowly escaped being decapitated by almost going under a truck on the highway outside Rome," he recalled. "I must have laid 90 feet of rubber trying to get the black stallion [the Ferrari emblem] stopped! You couldn't see the car for the smoke from the four tires as I was braking. Thanks to divine intervention, I believe, I miraculously escaped dying by literally inches, drifting sideways in the last few seconds before the car could make contact with the truck."
In a 2007 interview with Britain's Daily Mail, Jones revealed that he had an affair with Sharon Tate while she was filming Twelve Plus One (1970) in Rome in March 1969. The then-pregnant Tate was deprived of the company of her husband, Roman Polanski, who couldn't obtain a visa to leave London.
"Sharon arrived in Rome with my manager, and so we all arranged to go out to dinner that night," he recalled. Later that evening, Jones sat on Tate's couch in her hotel room. "She then said: 'Chris, have you ever smoked opium?' and I told her no, and she said I had to try it and that she had some in the bedroom. Everyone says that Sharon didn't smoke pot, yet she was definitely looking for this bag, but couldn't find it so came back over to me, standing by the bed.
"One minute she was looking at me and the next thing I knew, she was pulling me on top of her on to the bed. I hadn't even taken my clothes off but after we'd made love I told her I was going upstairs to sleep. She asked me to stay, but when I looked out the window I couldn't see a fire escape and my first thought then was: 'What if Polanski comes back?' I wasn't afraid of him, just worried about the repercussions, but she stopped asking me to stay and I left."
Jones left Rome for Dingle, Ireland to act in the most prestigious production of his career, David Lean's Ryan's Daughter (1970). He portrayed British Major Randolph Doryan, a shell-shocked, stiff-legged WWI veteran who falls in love with Rosy Ryan (Sarah Miles), who is trapped in a passionless marriage with a local school teacher played by Robert Mitchum. Though he was accompanied by his latest girlfriend, Olivia Hussey, Jones hated the experience of making the film. Inclement weather and Lean's perfectionism stretched principal photography to a year. Jones and Lean clashed continually. In one scene Jones was supposed to pin Miles against a wall and kiss her, with a framed picture behind them. On the fourth take, the picture's glass shattered, injuring his hand. The glass was replaced with plexiglass. Lean eventually insisted on 30 takes of the scene.
Jones suffered a nervous breakdown early into the filming of Ryan's Daughter after learning that Sharon Tate and four others had been murdered in her home in Los Angeles on August 9, 1969. Disoriented by Tate's muder, he behaved erratically and kept to himself during shooting, according to costar Sarah Miles.
"Only slowly did it hit me, and then it hit me hard," he said. "I was pretty disoriented. I couldn't make sense of it, that someone that beautiful and young had to die like that."
"Christopher Jones was an enigma and a deeply troubled soul," Miles told mirror.co.uk after his death. "At the time [of Tate's murder] Christopher was distinctly disturbed about something, so much so that he could hardly perform at all. Stanley Holloway's son, Julian, had to dub him throughout. At the end of the shoot he was taken off to a mental hospital."
Jones and Miles enjoyed no sexual chemistry, which became problematic when it came time to shoot their famous sex scene. She said that he was even given a local pharmacist's homemade aphrodisiac. Jones infuriated Lean when he refused to touch Miles' breast in the scene. "I got religious suddenly," he later said. "What a time for it to hit me! Lean couldn't believe it and, in the middle of a rehearsal, he had a nervous breakdown. He said, 'Christopher, put your hand on Sarah's breast.' I said, 'No, I can't.' He freaked and said, 'Go to your caravan [trailer]! And don't come out!'"
Jones didn't attend the premiere of Ryan's Daughter in 1970. "When the film came out, we had a chance to meet and talk," Frank Corsaro said. "Ryan's Daughter turned out for him as a rather catastrophic situation, as he put it. He was very unhappy with the procedure and he found the director very abusive."
A little over two years after the release of Wild in the Streets, Jones abruptly quit acting and withdrew from public life.
"I had done three pictures in a row in Europe, and had so many love affairs I was exhausted," he said. "I was tired, man. After a year in Ireland with David Lean not letting anyone leave the location, not even to fly to London over a weekend, it felt a bit like getting off Devil's Island. I also had a very bad, almost fatal car crash in Ireland––and I had absolutely no desire to do anything for a long time."
Jones' shock at Sharon Tate's murder was compounded when Jim Morrison, who he identified with, died on July 3, 1971. Jones said that his last two films made him realize he hated acting. "It had been a very unpleasant experience. The directors––David Lean and Renato Castellani––were both Svengalis, real puppet masters. It was humiliating to me and I didn't dig it."
He contributed to the air of mystery surrounding his decision to quit acting by giving contradictory answers to interviewers' questions on the subject.
In 2000, he told journalist Harvey Chartrand that one of his managers broke contracts he had with AIP and Columbia Pictures. "While I was in Europe, my salary zoomed up above $500,000, so on returning to America, my former manager––without my knowledge––would not honor those contracts, since they were for about half what I had made on the films in Europe."
At the same time, he told the Chicago Tribune that he refused to re-sign with his agent and tore up his contract when he handed it to him.
Jones told Pamela Des Barres that his managers misappropriated his funds and that one of them inveigled him to visit a house in Virginia, where he was imprisoned for weeks with 20 or 30 others in some kind of cult, "all of them doing one of those 'I'm OK, you're OK'-type self-help things. The bitch in charge kept trying to have sex with me, with six henchmen holding me down."
When Des Barres asked him why his managers would do that to him, he said, "They wanted control of me and my money. They were gay and since they couldn't have me they wanted to destroy my ass."
"People knew Chris had a nervous breakdown," Millie Perkins said. "He flipped out and he didn't trust anybody anymore. I knew Stuart and Rudy [Jones' managers, Stuart Cohen and Rudy Altobelli], and they were not bad people. They weren't thieves. It's stylish and it was stylish at the time to hate your agents, hate your managers. Thom [screenwriter Robert Thom, Perkins' husband at the time, who wrote Wild in the Streets] and Christopher had the same agent, and one day, this was after the movie [Ryan's Daughter], and I guess after Christopher was going through hard times, Thom was supposed to have lunch with his agent. He called Thom up and he said, 'Forget lunch, I can't get out of the building, because Chris Jones is sitting outside with a gun pointed at the door and said that he is going to shoot any agent that walks out the door.' Now, at that time you didn't squeal on movie stars. So they didn't call the police, they just didn't go out of the office. And Thom hung up the phone and said, 'Well, darling, Christopher is going to shoot my agent, so I can't have lunch.'"
After his career ended, Jones spent his time living the life of a playboy––la dolce vita, as he put it––going through the nearly one million dollars he'd made. When that ran out, he was supported by the women he lived with, Carrie (aka Cathy) Abernathy and then Paula McKenna, fathering five children with them. His relationships with them were hardly serene. He subjected them to psychological and physical abuse, breaking Abernathy's nose on two occasions. Both women eventually filed restraining orders against him.
Quentin Tarantino offered Jones the role of Zed in Pulp Fiction (1994). "I didn't return Quentin's calls because I didn't know who he was," he told the Chicago Tribune. "And I wasn't interested. When he did find me with the 'Pulp Fiction' script, I had no interest in acting or in the part he was offering." "My girlfriend at the time read it and said: 'You're not doing this––it's disgusting,'" he told another interviewer. "So I didn't."
Jones yielded to financial necessity when he accepted a cameo in Trigger Happy (released as Mad Dog Time [1996]), written and directed by his friend Larry Bishop. Jones owns the screen during his brief appearance as fake hit man Nicholas Falco, showing he still had seductive charisma to burn.
With no stardom to defend, he gave a revealing interview to his friend, Pamela Des Barres, for Movieline magazine in 1996. (He later discounted his admissions to Des Barres, telling Harvey Chartrand that he was drunk throughout the interview.)
"No, I'm not a fan of [James] Dean," he said. "But I never went as far as he did. He was far superior as an actor." Jones disdained his films, calling them "crap." "I never read a script all the way through," he said. "I knew they were lousy movies. One page in, I knew." Asked if he thought he was a good actor, he said, "No. I wasn't consistent."
Jones almost died in November 1997, suffering hemorrhagic shock due to a perforated ulcer. He attributed it to years of stress, capped by the end of his 11-year relationship with Paula McKenna. "The medical report said I'd died in the ambulance, but somehow, I managed to survive," he told the Daily Mail's Lina Das in 2007, who reported that he "ingested 'something caustic.'" "The doctors thought I'd tried to kill myself, which I hadn't." He told Das that he had to inject nutrients through a syringe connected to his stomach. "I shouldn't drink, but occasionally I'll pour shots into the syringe," he confessed.
Jones spent his last few years with Paula McKenna in Seal Beach, California, where he once taught an acting class at a nearby private school in 2009. He was diagnosed with cancer of the gallbladder in December 2013 and died on January 31, 2014 at the Los Alamitos Medical Center in California.
In 1996, he told Pamela Des Barres that his life had not been a success, and he felt haunted by his youthful fame, like Dorian Gray.
In 2000, he told the Chicago Tribune, "I am happy. Everyone has regrets, but I don't have many that I want to talk about. I did exactly as I pleased––within my world."
"I'm not bitter and have no reason to be bitter," he told Harvey Chartrand. "Fate is fate. That's the way it was. As for the rest, "I want my epitaph to read: 'Some things are better left unsaid.'"
Peter Winkler is the author of Dennis Hopper: The Wild Ride of a Hollywood Rebel (Barricade Books, 2011).
"Murf" (Variety reviewer)A Brief Season (1969)American International Pictures (AIP)Anthony HopkinsCarrie AbernathyCharles Manson murdersChateau MarmontChicago TribuneColumbia PicturesDavid LeanDino De LaurentiisElvira MadiganFrank CorsaroHarvey ChartrandJames DeanJim Morrison (musician)John Le CarreJudy PaceJulian HollowayLarry Bishop (actor)Mad Dog Time (1996)Maggie ThrettMillie PerkinsMovieline (magazine)Nan MartinOlivia HusseyPamela CoursonPamela Des BarresPaula McKennaPia DegermarkPulp FictionQuentin TarantinoRalph RichardsonRenata AdlerRenato CastellaniRobert MitchumRobert ThomRoman PolanskiRyan's DaughterSarah MilesSharon TateStanley HollowaySusan GeorgeSusan StrasbergThe Legend of Jesse James (TV series)The New York TimesThree in the AtticTwelve Plus OneVariety (trade paper)Wild in the StreetsWilliam J. ImmermanYvette Mimieux


As reported earlier, Juventus CEO Giuseppe Marotta has assured that the 23-year-old midfielder Paul Pogba has no intention to leave. However, the Frenchman could leave if the bianconeri would receive an important offer. After three seasons with alternative performances, the former Manchester United man has become a key player for the Piedmont's team, where he is wearing the glorious number 10 shirt, the same of Michel Platini and Alessandro Del Piero.
€100 million could be the right amount to convince the Serie A defending champions to let the player leave; an amount that would allow Juve to sign some other important players. Pogba himself has never expressed the will to leave, but the bianconeri will have however to deal with clubs like Chelsea and Barcelona.


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Salzburg Global Fellow Updates - January 2016
by Patrick Wilson
Register for our Newsletter and stay up to date
Compilation of our Fellows' recent achievements and landmarks
Have you got some news - a new book, a promotion, a call for grant proposals - that you'd like to share with the Salzburg Global Fellowship? Email Salzburg Global Seminar Fellowship Manager Jan Heinecke.
Two of our Fellows from Session 535 | Holocaust Education and Genocide Prevention: Sharing Experience Across Borders have written articles for issue 21 of Café Dissensus, an alternative magazine dealing in art, culture, literature, and politics based in New York City, NY that aims to "challenge the contemporary parochial attitude in Indian media."
Navras Jaat Aafreedi has written a guest editorial under the title of Jewish-Muslim Relations in South Asia: An Introduction that frames the issues discussed in issue 21 of the publication.
Fawad Javaid has written a piece called: Holocaust Denial in Pakistan: An Appraisal. This article contextualizes the issue of Holocaust denial within the sociological and Politico-historical occurrence in the country as well as looking into motivations of deniers and plans to improve the issue.
Both of these articles can be found in issue 21 of Café Dissenus here.
Another Fellow from this session, Mohammed Dajani Daoudi has published a blog article on Times of Israel entitled "The Islamic reason PA should free Salim Sweidan" in which he discusses why he believes the Palestinian journalist Salim Sweidan should be released by the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the broader area of the PA's anti-terrorism efforts.
Brooke Hall Allen from Baltimore and Fellow of Session 538 | Salzburg Global Forum for Young Cultural Innovators is the co-founder of the festival Light City Baltimore which will be premiering from March 28 to April 3 of this year. Light City is the first large-scale, international light festival in the United States. There will be 28 light art installations illuminating a 1.5-mile path along the city's Inner Harbor as well as pop-up performances and musical acts adding to the festivities. The Festival will also feature conferences called Light City U that will focus on sustainability, health care, education and the city's creative industries.
More information can be found here.
Harry Hobbs, a Fellow of the Salzburg Cutler Law Fellows Program 2015, has had a paper, that he delivered at the conference in February, published in the Chicago Journal of International Law, volume 16:2. The paper is entitled Hybrid Tribunals and the Composition of the Court: In Search of Sociological Legitimacy which examines the link between sociological legitimacy and the composition of hybrid courts by analyzing the practice of five international criminal tribunals.
Charles Limb, Fellow and Co-Chair of Session 547 | The Neuroscience of Art: What are the Sources of Creativity and Innovation? has continued his ongoing neurological research on creatives. His recent research was posted in the January 4, 2016 issue of Scientific Reports. The research looks at Jazz pianists and how neural circuits associated with creativity are significantly altered when artists are actively attempting to express emotions.
You can read more about the research here.
Eduardo Moncada, Fellow of Session 549 | Youth, Economics and Violence: Implications for Future Conflict, has released his new book entitled Cities, Business, and the Politics of Urban Violence in Latin America. The book examines how the political projects that cities launch to confront urban violence are shaped by the interaction between local and national politicians, business interests, and powerful criminal actors.
The book is available on Amazon here.
Robert Mũnũku a Fellow from Session 502 | Power in Whose Palm? The Digital Democratization of Photography has been working in Kenya on a new movement called Mau Mau Arts. Named after one of the groups that fought for Kenya's independence, the movement uses the arts for social commentary towards the goal of uniting African creatives to pool their social resources for a flourishing continent. Mau Mau Arts utilizes fine art, graffiti and performing arts and any creative can contribute.
A video introduction to the project can be viewed below
Graham Mytton who is a Fellow from Session 231 | Communications, Development and Society in an Information Age which was held nearly 32 years ago in 1984 has written a new book called Media Audience Research. The book outlines "all the methods for conducting research in all forms of media" and will be released on February 16th this year.
The book can be pre-ordered here.
Debra Hess Norris, Fellow of Session 466 | Connecting to the World's Collections: Making the Case for the Conservation and Preservation of our Cultural Heritage, has received the College Art Association (CAA)/American Institute for Conservation Award for Distinction in Scholarship and Conservation. CAA will formally recognize the honorees at a special awards ceremony to be held during Convocation at the 104th Annual Conference in Washington, DC on February 3rd. The CAA states that the awards for distinction "honor the outstanding achievements and accomplishments of individual artists, art historians, authors, conservators, curators, and critics whose efforts transcend their individual disciplines and contribute to the profession as a whole and to the world at large".
Kira Vinke is a Fellow of Session 555 | Addressing the Challenges of Climate Migration: Legal Protections, Resilience & Eco-Security. She has co-written a book with her father, Hermann Vinke, entitled Zivilcourage 2.0: Vorkämpfer für eine gerechte Zukunft. The book uses examples of various people who have fought for freedom, human dignity and against environmental destruction and violence while the pair bring their own insights from two different generations.
The book is available to buy from Amazon here.
Another Fellow from this session, Ingrid Boas, has also released a book called Climate Migration and Security: Securitisation as a Strategy in Climate Change Politics. The book looks into the potential that climate change will cause mass movements of climate refugees, causing tensions and even violent conflict through the lens of politics and securitization theory and how and why climate migration has been presented in terms of security and reviews the political consequences of such framing exercises.
You can read more about the book and purchase it here.
Communications, Development and Society in an Information Age
Connecting to the World's Collections: Making the Case for the Conservation and Preservation of our Cultural Heritage
Power in Whose Palm? The Digital Democratization of Photography
Holocaust and Genocide Education: Sharing Experience Across Borders
Salzburg Global Forum for Young Cultural Innovators
Salzburg Cutler Fellows Program: The Future of Public and Private International Law
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


The consumer downturn has hit the aspirational end of the high street as two high-end retailers announced downsizing plans.
Boardwear brand O'Neill and upmarket electrical chain Bang & Olufsen are set to close stores.
Outdoor specialist Blacks Leisure Group is reviewing its surfwear brand O'Neill, and will close two high-profile London stores in Carnaby Street and Neal Street in Covent Garden.
It has handed the Carnaby Street lease back to landlord Shaftesbury and has instructed agent Churston Heard to sell its Neal Street lease.
It is thought both stores have suffered in the face of stronger denim brands that have been expanding.
Blacks Leisure announced last month that it had discovered accounting discrepancies at its O'Neill operation and suspended Darren Spurling, managing director of the Sandcity subsidiary, which runs O'Neill.
The group said it found that accounts relating to Sandcity, which distributes and retails O'Neill in the UK, had been overstated by £2m over the past two financial years.
The outdoor specialist found the accounting problems after a review to assess the feasibility of merging its Sandcity subsidiary with its Freespirit retail business in a bid to reduce operating costs at the boardsports businesses.
Freespirit has around 40 UK stores while O'Neill trades from 15.
Electrical chain Bang & Olufsen has embarked on a property review of its 120-strong retail estate 'to manage it in order to take direct ownership of some of the stores', a spokeswoman said.
Up to 10 Bang & Olufsen stores will close while the management is reorganised. It is set to permanently close at least two stores – in Blackheath, south-east London, and Worcester.
Experts have said the main casualties from any downturn in retail spending will come from the mid-market, but that the high-end and budget sectors could be hit as consumers cut down on spending.


Our regular public meetings are informal support spaces for queer youth. And we wholeheartedly invite participation from everyone who believes in what we stand for! This is your space to speak your mind, share your experiences with respect to coming out to family, friends, realization of your sexuality, your specific interests or what you exp…ect from a queer youth support group like QCI.
QueerCampus India invites you to join us for our public meeting at Yodakin Bookstore.
Being young and queer in India can be tricky. You often feel left out in your circle of friends. You struggle to come out. You pore over numerous google searches to find that iota of information which will give you a sense of identification and belonging. We know it gets better..but join us to make it better!
Fridays At Nigah Is Back!


text:
set svcName=MyService
set svcFullName="My Super Service"
set svcDesc="My super special service"
set svcJAR=de.taimos.myservice.jar
set svcStarter=de.taimos.myservice.Starter

@rem DO NOT EDIT BELOW

%svcName%.exe delete
%svcName%.exe install --DisplayName=%svcFullName% --Description=%svcDesc% --Install="%~dp0%svcName%.exe" --JvmOptions=-DstartupMode=run ++JvmOptions=-Djava.net.preferIPv4Stack=true --Classpath %svcJAR% --Jvm=auto --StartMode=jvm --StopMode=jvm --StartClass=%svcStarter% --StopClass=de.taimos.daemon.DaemonStopper

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
namespace Azure.Communication.Chat
{
    /// <summary> Request payload for updating a chat thread. </summary>
    internal partial class UpdateChatThreadRequest
    {
        /// <summary> Initializes a new instance of UpdateChatThreadRequest. </summary>
        public UpdateChatThreadRequest()
        {
        }

        /// <summary> Chat thread topic. </summary>
        public string Topic { get; set; }
    }
}


It is slowly coming out in the wash, how past investigations into 1MDB subsidiary SRC International was stymied and how its chief investigator received a gift of a bullet.
The revelations are coming thick and fast – none more disturbing nor heart-wrenching than the press conference on Tuesday held by Datuk Seri Mohd Shukri Abdull.
In a gripping 45-minute news conference at the impressive, expensive, ship-shaped MACC headquarters in Putrajaya, the newly appointed MACC chief revealed how the investigations into the affairs of SRC International– a unit of 1MDB – in 2015 was stymied by inducements, advice and the threats of bodily harm if not death.
This was no ordinary news conference. Over in a different part of the building, ousted Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak was being grilled by a team on the affairs of SRC in private earlier in the morning. So when the media scrum moved to the Datuk Shukri's news conference close to noon, the atmosphere was pregnant with expectation. In the event, Datuk Shukri did not disappoint.
He revealed how he at first was reluctant to accept Tun Mahathir's request to return and head the MACC for which he left to retire in a huff back in July 2016.
Shukri had then found his position as Deputy Chief commissioner – effectively the anti-corruption body's Number Two untenable – having to serve under an appointee parachuted in the Attorney General's chambers he unhesitatingly labelled a traitor.
The option to go on early retirement followed his best efforts to persuade the relevant authorities that there was enough evidence of wrongdoing all leading to the door of the ex-Prime Minister himself.
This included seeking an audience with the Council of Rulers to present MACC's findings and a recommendation to act but which came to naught.
Interestingly, he also recounted how a politician from a northern state came as an emissary to see him with the offer of inducement to back off.
It was in one of the meetings that the politician – who is widely known for expressing the credo that Cash Is King – brazenly asked him; "Datuk nak apa?" (What does Datuk want). After repeating that inducement a second time, Shukri sternly told him off with a: "Sekali lagi Datuk tanya macam ini, saya akan tangkap!" (The next time you make the same offer, I will arrest you!).
The harassment of Shukri too a sinister turn when he jetted off to the United States as part of his investigations into SRC and noticed that he was tailed by three men. He sought the help of some law enforcers in New York and broke down in tears in admitting to them that he stood accused of trying to bring down the Malaysian government.
He also revealed that he received a bullet upon his return home which was the straw that broke the camel's back leading to his eventual decision to opt for early retirement.
Now that he has made a comeback to head the organisation for which he had given more than three decades of sterling service, Shukri will show the true mettle of the MACC.
So moved were the posse of journalists by his revelations that they broke into applause at the end of the news conference.


text:
Desmoclystia luridifascia är en fjärilsart som beskrevs av Louis Beethoven Prout 1941. Desmoclystia luridifascia ingår i släktet Desmoclystia och familjen mätare. Inga underarter finns listade i Catalogue of Life.

Källor

Mätare
luridifascia

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Researchers from the the University of California, Santa Barbara recently hijacked the Torpig botnet and observed 70GB of data collected by the malware over a 10 day period.
The dangerous malware takes control of a computer by rewriting the hard drive's master boot record, and in doing so, gains control early on in a PC's boot process so that it can move past any security software.
Taken from about 180,000 infected machines, the stolen information included private banking and system data.
This included over 8,300 credentials that was used to login to 410 financial institutions and more than 21 percent were PayPal accounts.
The team of researchers were able to hijack the botnet by exploiting its "domain flux" component, which creates a list of potential command servers to contact.
The researchers said that once they successfully cracked the algorithm used to create the domains, they were able to guess possible future domains and create a fake command server.
Following the hijacking of the botnet, the team observed and collected information for 10 days. During this time, they made many key observations.
For instance, even though only 180,000 systems had been infected, more than 1.2 million IP addresses were logged, calling into question the correlation between the size of botnets to the number of IP addresses.
Another intriguing find was that the Torpig gathered more than just bank and credit card information.
The uploaded data also revealed user login details and email account information, which led researchers to believe that the botnet could potentially be used for spamming purposes.
The researchers discovered that like most malware, Torpig also targets poorly-patched machines and lax security practices to create the botnet.
Last month, an attack against the Web Hosting Talk message board led to select users having their credit card data compromised and publicly posted.


A strawberry is a popular fruit-bearing plant, and includes any of the species and hybrid that belong to the taxonomic genus Fragaria. The most common grown strawberry is the garden strawberry (Fragaria x ananassa) . They can be found virtually everywhere, except Africa, New Zealand, and Australia .
Strawberries have five basic anatomic structures; leaf, root system, crown, stolon, and daughter strawberry plant. The leaves and roots facilitate the growth and reproduction of the plant. 70% of the roots are under the soil, making the plant susceptible to drought. The crown is where the strawberry plants produce both stolons and flowering fruit stalks that eventually grow fruit (strawberries).
Strawberries are not real fruit. They are called aggregate fruits, meaning that the strawberry formed through many ovaries ripening. The seeds on the outside of the fruit are called achenes, this is where individual fruits are contained in their separate ovaries. The many seeds make the strawberry a complex fruit .
Initially strawberries grew best in colder regions than in the warmer, southern regions. Strawberries need good irrigation and will die if left without water. They are able to adapt well to a broader range of climates than most other fruits.
Strawberries are so delicate and root fast, they cannot be machine-harvested and are usually picked by hand. Strawberries do not ripen after they are picked so it is best to wait until they are fully ripened .
Birds help in the distribution of seeds that help many wild strawberry plants grow. When the birds eat ripe strawberries, the seeds pass through them in rather good condition, the the seeds are excreted and fall into the soil .
Many different kinds of butterflies and moths feed on strawberry plants .
The disease is caused by a fungus living in the soil. The fungus that causes red stele root rot is Phytophthora fragariae,and can remain alive for at least thirteen years ,or more, even if the are new crops.
Mycosphaerella fragariae is the fungus that causes this disease. The strawberry gets multiple reddish-purple pots all over the strawberry plant. The pots can be 1/8 to 1/4 of an inch long and a white or gray spot can appear in the middle of the spots .
The fungus that causes leaf blight is called Dendrophoma obscurans, and it usually appears after harvest. First the spots start with a reddish-purple color. As they grow, they develop a dark brown center and is surrounded by a lighter brown-purplish border. This fungus usually attacks weaker, slow-growing plants .
The fungus that causes leaf scorch is called Diplocarpon earliana. It attacks the strawberry plant's leaves, calyxes, petioles, runners, and pedicels.When it starts it will look like leaf spot, but will stay dark purple. If the leaf is severely infected it will shrivel and appear scorched .
The disease is caused by the fungus called Botrytis cinerea. The fungus causes infections that looked like soft, rapidly-growing spots that are light brown. A powdery layer of fungus spores cover the dead fruit giving it the gray appearance .
The cause of this disease is currently unknown. It only affect only flowers and leaves, occurring in the spring. The plant dies two to three years later .
This is caused by a fungus called Verticillium alboatrum. Once established it will life for more than 25 years.
The fungus that causes crown rot is called Phytophthora cactorum. Usually the fungus causes brown areas on green strawberries. The infected strawberries will have a horrible odor and bitter taste.
Strawberries were used in the 13th century by the French as a medical herb .
The Alpine Strawberry, Fragaria Vesca, was used as a digestive aid and skin tonic. The fruit helped diarrhea, and the leaves and roots were supposed to relieve gout. The fruit was used to help with the pain of sunburn and to relieve blemishes by rubbing it on the skin. The juice of the strawberry was used to brighten discolored teeth .
The ancient Romans believed strawberries relieved melancholy and helped with bad breath. They also thought strawberries could cure inflammations, fevers, throat infections, kidney stones, gout, fainting spells, and diseases of the blood, liver, and spleen .
Fragaria U.S. Department of Agriculture,plants.usda.gov, accessed April 21,2011.
Plant Anatomy 101: Strawberries author unknown,greenforkutah.blogspot.com, accessed date October 2, 2008.
Vegetarians in Paradiseauthor unknown, vegparadise.com, accessed date May 5, 2011.
Strawberry Plant author unknown, strawberryplants.org, accessed date May 5, 2011.
Fragaria unknown author, wikipedia.org, accessed date May 5, 2011.
This page was last modified on 8 February 2017, at 13:49.


5 simple facts about we buy your house reviews Clarkston explained.
Acquiring A House First Time Allocate exclusive home mortgage insurance policy. For conventional financing, PMI is normally essential if you do not make at least a 20% deposit when you acquire your house. Make sure you recognize how much this expense will be and factor it into your regular monthly residence settlement spending plan.
What To Deal On A Home In Today's Market 2014 Now, allow's think that you actually didn't have to pay that additional $7,500, that the vendor would really have actually approved the $350,000. Assume further that you remain in a gradually appreciating market, where your home or business gains 6 percent of admiration the initial year. Your home will appreciate $7,500 within the very first 3 months of ownership to most property buyers, "paying too much" is a threat they would take all over once again in order to secure the residential or commercial property they desire, particularly given that the property itself will certainly compensate for that "overpayment" within a really brief amount of time.
AZPIG (Georgia Prosperity Financial investment Team) http://www.AZPIG.com Contact: Paolla Romine [email protected] Telephone: (480) 539-7900 When: 4th Tuesday of every month, 6:30 pm-9:00 pm Where: Holiday Inn, 915 E. Apache Blvd., Clarkston.
Acquiring A House Without Any Loan Down Sometimes addresses can be very comparable as well as it could be a simple blunder to start bidding process on the incorrect property. It is a great idea to bring a clipboard with building photos, the address and your top quote amount. Just ensure you have a cover sheet so no one else could see your information.
Home Evaluation Make Use Of the "Click to Show or Conceal Frequently asked questions" link just over to see recently-posted concerns, comments, replies, attempt the search boxjust listed below, or if you like, upload an inquiry or comment in the Commentsbox below and also we will respond without delay.
A growing number of homes nowadays are making secure spaces, also referred to as panic rooms. These are areas that are set up in a house home to offer a secure shelter or concealing location in the event of a twister, horror assault, typhoon, residence invasion or other hazard were to occur. Evaluating a risk-free space calls for some extra time for a home inspector. They should inspect the walls, locks, and many other areas of the spaces making certain they are very safe. An assessment of a risk-free room in your house can set you back an extra $150-$400.
The top priority of a lien is normally figured out by the date it was positioned on the property. So an initial mortgage will normally have the very first concern, and also all other liens will certainly be considered younger liens. In most states, the general public auction cleans out any type of junior liens, however there are exceptions such as tax obligation liens, which generally will continue to be in effect after the auction.
Youll have to arrange a different evaluation with one of your home mortgage backers authorized evaluators if youre financing your residence acquisition through a GA or FHA funding. These assessments wont inform you every little thing that a residence assessor would, yet they will check for safety and cleanliness basics, like termites, structural honesty and water drainage.
At the very best of times insurance companies anywhere in the world seek to minimise their risk, and this uses in no little action to France, where procedures are usually very rigorous and policies commonly narrowly analyzed.
Then, claims Faulkner, be straightforward and smile. If you honestly tell the agent that your deal is your optimum due to the fact that thats all you have, which your home loan broker could validate that, after that the vendor could choose on whether to accept the offer. It might be that the fact you can move swiftly, with nothing to offer, attract them more than the money they could be able to obtain from another buyer. As well as they don't intend to lose the residential property they are acquiring anymore than you intend to lose on their own.


Where are your NetworkAIR FM CW manuals?
The NetworkAIR FM CW has been discontinued and is not featured on our website as a current product. Below you will find archived manuals that should be able to assist you. If you require more assistance, please call our technical support office at 888-695-6500.


My Dad gets up at 6 AM every morning, and I know for a fact that my Dad hates getting up early in the morning. But he does it almost every day, like clockwork. So why does he do it? More importantly: how does he do it? Well, I'm gonna have to ask him that sometime. In the meantime, I'll tell you what works for me. I am terrible getting up early in the morning, but I'm very good at doing other things, like working on my comic every day. So how do I do it?
Much of it can be summed up in an interview with John Norcross on Science Friday on keeping resolutions. I'll sum up the important points and add some of my own thoughts.
1. Take the One Seat. I stole this idea from Buddhism. The idea is that salvation is as simple as doing one thing -- sitting down and meditating. Creating is similar. Find your one thing to do every day. Stop trying to write a screenplay, plan a performance piece and start an NGO at the same time. Choose ONE thing.
You have way to many things to think about. So take the thinking and planning out of the equation, and just find something you can just do. If you're not interested in doing something artsy, just find something to do every day religiously. For Twyla Tharp, her ritual is going to the gym every day. Notice that her ritual isn't directly related to her profession - choreography - but it's the thing that commits her to her labors every day.
A daily ritual becomes an anchor in your life. You can depend on it. It clarifies and focuses your attention, and it gives your day-to-day life meaning.
2. Start Small. Start with a length of time that you know you can commit to. I would recommend 20 to 30 minutes max. I would even set limits. You don't need to make monumental efforts. You'll be amazed how much you can accomplish after a year of doing something every day for a couple of minutes.
If you feel very confident about doing more, do more, but don't do it out of guilt or ego. Do only as much as you are positive you can do every day.
3. Be Persistent. It's more important to be persistent than consistent. Most people that keep resolutions, have resets along the way. Don't worry about yesterday. Just do your thing today.
Ira Glass and Jerzy Drozd seem to think the same thing. Just focus on doing the one thing. You'll get better over time.
5. Be Willing to Be a Little Miserable. Sometimes doing your one thing will be miserable. But here's the thing: Misery comes and goes, but your work will still be there after the misery is gone. This is why you keep it short and simple. Even if its miserable, at least its only 20 to 30 minutes.
6. Have Fun. This is kind of a two-parter. First, whatever thing you choose to do, make sure it's something that has an inherent reward in it. That doesn't mean that it's easy to do, but that it is fun, peaceful, enlightening, engaging or somehow rewarding for you. There should be some nugget in it that keeps you coming back.
It's very important that the reward is inherent. While there may be external incentives to doing your thing, you must find something that is rewarding just from doing it.
I think this has a lot to do with why my Dad gets up early in the morning every day, even though he hates it. He loves his job. He's a doctor and he loves his work far more than I will ever love doing art. And so getting up early in the morning is a small sacrifice.
So what's the secret of motivation? It's not a whoosh of feeling, or an inherent get r' done attitude. Motivation is habit. It's creating those practices that make it as easy and rewarding as possible for you to do your thing every day.
If you still find large psychological barriers to doing your thing, I highly recommend Neil Fiore's The Now Habit. It's one of the few books on procrastination that gets past the drill sergeant answers to the deeper issues that can sometimes paralyze the otherwise well intentioned soul.
Green Monk Get 'em While They're Hot!


Limited edition BOOK & CD version that was put together by Sigur Ros and various Graphic Designers for their latest "Untitled" album '()' ,each track number is followed by a few pages consisting on the graphic interpretation of that track by various teams of graphic designers from all over the world. At the end of the book there is a brief biography of all of the contributors. Published only for Spain by Karonte Records. Size of the book is slightly larger than a CD and all the illustrations are very nice. The book has about 100 pages. The graphic contributions have been made by Walter Martin & Paloma Muñoz, Eva Bensasson, Sean Mackaoui, Gloria Gauger, Paul Domínguez, Ray Loriga, Chema Madoz, and Adam Jorquera. It is not a cd with the plastic sleeve, it is a book with the CD inside.


text:
Atrichopogon inconspicuus är en tvåvingeart som beskrevs av Ewen 1958. Atrichopogon inconspicuus ingår i släktet Atrichopogon och familjen svidknott.

Artens utbredningsområde är Saskatchewan. Inga underarter finns listade i Catalogue of Life.

Källor

Svidknott
inconspicuus


Emerson College Los Angeles (ELA) hosted a breakfast for internship site providers for the first time in its iconic building on April 21.
Supervisors and representatives from a variety of internship sites—including Fullscreen Media, Funny or Die, and Nickelodeon—attended the breakfast, where they also received packets containing an overview of the College, details on ELA's internship course, and a certificate of appreciation. This academic year, ELA hosted nearly 400 students who participated in more than 400 internship opportunities.
As the first East Coast college to establish a residential study and internship program in Los Angeles in 1986, Emerson has a long history of providing internship opportunities to students in the City of Angels. To celebrate a successful year of internships and build more meaningful connections with providers, Sampson, along with Liselda Fabian, ELA's associate director of internships and experiential learning, coordinated the breakfast.
During a brief presentation, Fabian encouraged providers to reach out to her to further professional engagement and announced that ELA was recently recognized with the 2017 Outstanding University Internship Program Award from the California Internship and Work Experience Association in recognition of its unique experiential learning program.
Liselda Fabian, ELA's associate director of internships and experiential learning, and Annie Kelly, ELA's assistant director of experiential learning, received the 2017 Outstanding University Internship Program Award from the California Internship and Work Experience Association during a conference in San Francisco.
Chris Tongue, vice president of creative affairs at Dark Horse Entertainment, attended the breakfast to get to know ELA better and tour the building. This semester, Dark Horse hosted two Emerson interns.
During the breakfast, senior Jenna Montefiore '17 spoke about her internship experience and Trustee Vin Di Bona '66 thanked the providers for helping to nurture ELA students.
Maureen McDermott '13, a development coordinator at the production company Magical Elves, said she was thrilled to return to her alma mater and represent her firm at the breakfast.
Trustee Vin Di Bona '66 addresses internship site providers during a breakfast at ELA.