"65"

As producer/director Roger Corman once told me, movies are a kind of alchemy, an outcome of many complex elements. Bad movies can be forged from wrongheaded decisions, great ones can often be attributed to … plain dumb luck. The resulting concoction is all that counts. Of course, when you watch an amazing performance in a great film, it’s hard to envision how it could have been done any other way. Casting is crucial because most often we associate movies with the actors that star in them. But consider how differently a movie might have turned out if an alternate choice had been made. Just a tiny shift in the recipe can make a world of difference.  Here then is a list of 9 actual “what might have been” casting choices from some of our favorite films that prove my point. 

Once again, I hear Alice Cooper in my head screaming out that anthem of freedom: “School’s out for summer!” I was actually on the cusp of high school when that song became a hit, and I took the lyrics very much to heart. Back then, summer seemed like a time of endless possibility- parties to attend, girls to meet, and um, everything else associated with that.

Cheap knockoffs are usually pretty easy to spot in real life. Buying a purse for my wife once in Chinatown, I asked, “is this a REAL Coach bag?” The vendor produced a hot glue gun and a Coach emblem and said, “It will be when you buy it.”  This kind of thing shouldn’t surprise us — in movies, it happens all the time. For those who don’t already know, Hollywood’s unspoken mantra is: “If it works, buy it or steal it!” This means that studios pilfer from successful foreign films all the time, and have for years. After all, as more than one sage has noted, there are no new stories, only new ways to tell them... Sometimes it’s just plotlines that get recycled. Example: observe how certain scenes in Akira Kurosawa’s “The Hidden Fortress” (1958) resemble a little movie called “Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope” (1977).

The key, of course, is the music; from the splashy upbeat production number to the show-stopping heartfelt ballad. To anyone ready to help a loved one cure the sad affliction of “musical denial,” we offer this list of smart, buoyant and very sophisticated musicals.

I’ll never forget the segment on “60 Minutes” a couple of years ago, when Morley Safer interviewed our most famous living historian, David McCullough.

A great screenwriting professor once told me, “A screenplay is like a chalk drawing – it’s a beautiful thing until they stomp all over it like a bunch of circus ponies.” Many writers can be precious with their work, but to the typewriter-jamming chagrin of some Hollywood screenwriters, a movie is a living thing, and sometimes changes have to happen at the very last split-second – even as film is rolling.

I am a professional plot hole detective. It can be a tedious job, but I guess I was born for it. Movies, after all, are all about suspension of disbelief. The stories they tell in sight, sound, and motion are like delicate threads that can be cut anytime something happens that’s not credible or even explainable. Then the spell is broken, and you’re no longer transported by the narrative. Instead, you’re looking at a movie with a stupid plot and wondering what the offending studio was thinking when they released it.    Sometimes, plot holes even happen in top-notch movies, but they are usually minor and easily overlooked or forgiven. They never break the spell, and most can be explained with a close re-watching of the film. So don’t let a supposed gap in logic taint your enjoyment of an otherwise classic movie. Below, I take some of the most well-known plot holes and lovingly fill them in for you.

Here’s a bold statement: Giving your children the chance to watch classic films can be just as vital as anything they learn in school. 

Over the years, some film directors have had their own so-called stock companies. We’re not talking Wall Street stocks, folks, but rather groups of actors they felt so comfortable working with that they cast them in their projects time and again. The great John Ford’s stable of thespians was perhaps the biggest and most prolific in Hollywood history. In fact, some of its members appeared in the iconic director’s films over twenty times; bit player Jack Pennick worked with the filmmaker a whopping 41 times, although several of his roles were uncredited. Of course, starting in the forties, John Wayne was Ford’s favorite star. “The Duke,” who also had an abiding off-screen friendship with “Pappy” Ford, could be seen in 24 Ford enterprises, all starring roles in some of Ford’s most iconic work (you can see some of these movie titles at the end of this article).