"83"

There’s an extra frisson of excitement to be found in what I call “launch pad” movies. This is not necessarily a movie star’s first film, but rather the one that propels him or her to that exalted status. In these special outings, you can feel a certain electricity coming off the screen; it's as if the performer is announcing in a subliminal stage whisper: “I’ve arrived!”  Here are twenty key launch pad vehicles for some of my favorite stars, spanning eighty years of movie history.   

One of my favorite “insider” books about the film business is 1983’s “Adventures In The Screen Trade,”  an often lacerating, highly insightful expose about the inner workings of Hollywood. Its author is veteran screenwriter William Goldman, who scripted numerous high profile movies in the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s.  

They say the customer is always right — but not always right away. For instance, sometimes it takes a while for movie audiences to recognize just how special a film really is. When it premieres, there’s a barely audible thud, and very little box office.  The culprit could be poor distribution, half-hearted promotion, a storyline slightly ahead of its time, the ire of some influential critic with digestive trouble, or any combination of the above. A surprising number of now-classic films either just broke even, or actually lost money on initial release. Here are 10 classics from my list that fall into this category. 

 One of the major pleasures and sources of eye candy the movies provide are fantasy spaces of which dreams are made. For anyone who lives for their monthly issue of Dwell, or who forwards photo compilations of delicious décor, on-screen interiors offer a form of fun several notches up from catalogue shopping.  Whether these movies were shot on sound stages, or on existing locations dressed up for their close-up, they perform the task of drawing us into the world of the story, and making us forget about the tedious limitations of reality. If you could choose any movie interior to move into, which one would it be? 

How do you make a legendary film in a few weeks’ time, all with a budget that would make even the most miserly studio head giddily twirl his mustache? Ask Sidney Lumet. Unquestionably, “12 Angry Men” (1957) is one of the finest films of the 1950s, with three Oscar nominations to its credit; but even so, the project had a skin-tight budget, (only $350,000 - a paltry sum for a film, even then). This forced first-time feature director Lumet to bob and weave to finish on-time and on-cost. So how did he pull it off? This tense film follows the contentious deliberations of twelve men, packed into a sweltering jury room, as they decide the fate of a youth accused of murdering his father. Lumet made the most of the confining premise by filming 93 of the 96 minutes on the same cramped 16 x 24 foot set. Even this solo venue was a cheap collection of sticks that Henry Fonda (AKA Juror 8) famously complained “looked like shit”, comparing it unfavorably to the lavish Hitchcock soundstages he’d just stepped off of when filming “The Wrong Man.”

Two gunslingers stand toe-to-toe in a dusty crossroads… on the left, a powerfully built man donning a cowboy hat and wearing a leather vest and bandanna; on the right, a tall, cool customer in a serape, with a rope burn ‘round his throat.     You duck down inside an old barrel and hold your breath… a tumbleweed rolls by… and the church bells chime…. bong… bong…bong... (Cue the “Waah Waah Waah Waah Waah” of Ennio Morricone’s signature soundtrack theme).     As far as I’m concerned, the only man thick-skinned enough to stand up in a town square to the cool, rattler squint of Clinton “Clint” Eastwood, would be the Duke himself (better known as John Wayne). But on which would you stake your claim when facing a hail of bullets?