Michael Caine in Billion Dollar Brain (1967, dir. Ken Russell)
The dark side of fame:
“A long time ago I interviewed Michael Caine. He came to America to make a movie called Hurry Sundown, after having become a success in Alfie and The Ipcress File. And I said, ‘What does it feel like to be a movie star? And he said, ‘You can’t go into a dirty bookstore anymore.’
He said, ‘I tried it. In England we don’t have the kind of pornography you have over here, but I’d heard about the stores in Times Square. And so I looked in through the window of one of them; I was curious. With my trained actor’s eye, I quickly realized that there was no eye contact in a porno store. Everybody looks as tunnel vision, nobody looks at anybody else, and I realized this is a way… An actor would notice this. And I congratulated myself, I said Michael, you can walk right in there because nobody will look at you, so I walked right in.
‘Unfortunately, there was a gent on an elevated stool with a microphone whose job it was to say, ‘Okay gents, this isn’t the library, make your purchases.’ And he got on his microphone and said, ‘Look who we have in the rubber wear section - Michael Caine!’”
-Roger Ebert, Fresh Air, orig. airdate March 21, 1996
Assorted Jets rehearse on the set of West Side Story (1961, dir. Robert Wise & Jerome Robbins) (photo by Gjon Mili for LIFE, 1960)
Blow-up (1966, dir. Michelangelo Antonioni)
“You knew you were in the presence of a great man with Antonioni; he was an auteur supreme. He wanted everything exactly right. We had also heard how particular he was about colours. I’m colour-blind so I can’t tell, but he was supposed to have sprayed the grass at Greenwich Park because he wasn’t happy about the green. He was even said to have changed the colour of the marijuana in Blow-Up because he thought it was the wrong shade.
I have never had such close coaching from any other director, and many actors wouldn’t stand for it. Finally, on take 13: ‘Cut. Print. Good. Peter, come with me.’ So he took me off set and said to me, ‘Peter, I understand. You wish to show the world what a fine actor you are.’ He got that right. ‘When you work with other directors you give them your performance and they film it. Not with me, Peter. You see I have chosen you for how you look. I have chosen all your clothes. If I move my camera six inches, I would ask you to do that line in a different way.’
Upon this, he put his arms around me and held me close to him and said, ‘Peter, believe in me. Trust me. I am not God, but I am Michelangelo Antonioni.’
-Peter Bowles on the making of Blow-up (via)
For my boy Grambo.
Herbie Hancock - Bring Down the Birds (via Blow-Up: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
If you’re only familiar with this as “that sample from the Dee-Lite song,” I feel sad for you.