Richard compares the modern music documentary–think “One Direction: This is Us”–to old school fictionalized stories of the lives of musicians on and off the road. Which is more realistic? “A Hard Day’s Night” or “Katy Perry: Part of Me”? Click HERE to find out! Click HERE to read about some of Richard’s favourite–and most realistic–music movies.
The Devils was one of the most controversial films ever made, considered to be blasphemous, indecent and downright demonic — but top Toronto film critic and author Richard Crouse wasn’t put off. In Raising Hell: Ken Russell and the Unmaking of The Devils (ECW Press), Richard writes about a film so notorious that people have been talking about it for forty years.
Raising Hell examines this unique film in all its horrible glory via new interviews with cast and crew, including an exclusive interview with late director Ken Russell.
Today we welcome Richard to Open Book as part of our Proust Questionnaire series. In his answers to the Proust Questionnaire, Richard tells Open Book about sock lust, a flower with an appetite and the best meal to be had in Toronto.
The Proust Questionnaire was not invented by Marcel Proust, but it was a much loved game by the French author and many of his contemporaries. The idea behind the questionnaire is that the answers are supposed to reveal the respondent’s “true” nature.
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What is your dream of happiness?
Writing a perfect sentence… and having someone there to read it.
What is your idea of misery?
Being thrown in jail for something I didn’t do, or spending time at a cottage.
Where would you like to live?
Exactly where I live right now.
What qualities do you admire most in a man?
Kindness.
What qualities do you admire most in a woman?
See above… and dark curly hair.
What is your chief characteristic?
Self-sufficiency.
What is your principal fault?
Impatience.
What is your greatest extravagance?
My (uncontrollable) lust for buying Paul Smith socks.
What faults in others are you most tolerant of?
Drunkeness and ego.
What do you value most about your friends?
See above… actually, loyalty, humour and patience.
What characteristic do you dislike most in others?
Incompetence.
What characteristic do you dislike most in yourself?
My intolerance for incompetence.
What is your favourite virtue?
Diligence.
What is your favourite occupation?
Writing.
What would you like to be?
Keith Richards’s guitar pick.
What is your favourite colour?
Anything that isn’t taupe.
What is your favourite flower?
Audrey, the man-eating plant from Little Shop of Horrors.
What is your favourite bird?
Lyrebird, an Australian bird that can mimic any sound in the world.
What historical figure do you admire the most?
John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich. Thanks for the BLT’s!
What character in history do you most dislike?
Jay M. Arena, creator of the Child-Proof Cap.
Who are your favourite prose authors?
Hunter S. Thompson, Truman Capote and Richard Matheson.
Who are your favourite poets?
Ogden Nash, George Carlin and Edgar Allen Poe.
Who are your favourite heroes in fiction?
George Bailey, Ferris Bueller and Ziggy Stardust.
Who are your heroes in real life?
The people who read my books and watch my shows.
Who is your favourite painter?
Andy Warhol.
Who is your favourite musician?
In cascading order… David Bowie, Elvis Costello, Tom Waits.
What is your favourite food?
The Piquant Shrimp at Southern Accent on Markham Street in Toronto.
What is your favourite drink?
Most anything in a pint glass… but especially Guinness.
What are your favourite names?
Andrea, Max, Jack and 国.
What is it you most dislike?
Wilful ignorance.
What natural talent would you most like to possess?
The innate ability to know how many chili flakes is too many.
How do you want to die?
While watching The Godfather… Part 62, which will star an actor who hasn’t even been born yet.
What is your current state of mind?
Cautiously optimistic.
What do you consider your greatest accomplishment?
Convincing my publisher to let me write a book about The Devils, a decades old movie not many people have seen.
What is your motto?
With a nod to Dr. Thompson: Buy the ticket, take the ride.
“Barry Avrich’s account of the life of this most unlikely revolutionary of the 1960s counterculture is energetic, iconoclastic and well researched, examining Guccione’s long and audacious career, most notably as publisher of the hugely influential pornographic magazine Penthouse and producer of the porn epic Caligula.”
Richard will host a Q&A with Filthy Gorgeous: The Bob Guccione Story director Barry Avrich at the TIFF Bell Lightboxon Friday September 20, 2013!
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“Death Wish,” the Charles Bronson revenge drama, painted its main character as a vigilante hero, someone who evened the score when the police couldn’t.
“Prisoners,” a new child abduction drama starring Hugh Jackman, Jake Gyllenhaal and Terrence Howard, isn’t as cut and dried. It asks the question, How far would you go to get the information you need to protect your family?
The story is fairly simple. Best friends Keller and Grace Dover (Jackman and Maria Bello), Franklin and Nancy Birch (Terrence Howard and Viola Davis) and their kids spend Thanksgiving together. After dinner the youngest members of the family, Anna Dover (Erin Gerasimovich) and Joy Birch (Kyla Drew Simmons) go for a walk and never return.
Panicked, the family search the neighborhood and when they come up empty the police are called with a description of the girls and a suspicious RV that was seen in the area. The camper is racked down and Detective Loki (Gyllenhaal) arrests a suspect, Alex Jones (Paul Dano).
Keller is convinced the police have the right man and when Alex is released, he takes matters into his own hands. Kidnapping Jones, he tries to beat a confession out of him. When that doesn’t work his methods escalate.
There is a serial killer subplot woven into “Prisoners,” but it detracts from the core element that makes the movie interesting. Jackman brings the full weight of Keller’s anguish to the screen, and his performance carries with it the moral dilemma of the movie. The serial killer element feels tacked on, as though screenwriter Aaron Guzikowski felt he needed to up the tension with a “Criminal Minds” style plot twist.
It’s too bad, because the last hour—the movie clocks in at 150 minutes—feels unnecessary. The procedural elements is interesting until the red herrings start and the movie moves away from the ethical question that propelled the first half.
“Prisoners” is compelling stuff. At its heart it is a family drama with a twist. But as is, it almost feels like two movies.
Occasionally there is one thing that makes it worth a trip to the movies.
For me “The Art of the Steal” has a few things to recommend it but the thing that would make me reach into my wallet and pay for a second viewing is something that has nothing to do with the twisty-turny plot or the presence of Terence Stamp, one of my favorite actors.
It’s a blink and you’ll miss it moment, but I’d sprung for a ticket just to see Kurt Russell reprise his impersonation of Elvis Presley. Wearing a Vegas era jumpsuit, he mimics one of the King’s famous dance / karate movies he perfected for the 1979 television movie Elvis. It ups the general cool level of the movie and reaffirms my belief that everything is 10% better with Elvis in it.
In this heist flick Crunch and Nicky Calhoun (Russell and Matt Dillon) are brothers and art thieves, who haven’t worked together since Nicky snitched on Crunch and sent him to prison.
Years later they team up to steal The Gospel According to James, one of the world’s oldest and rarest books, but will the job lead to more double-crossing? Or a taste of revenge?
Along for the ride is Crunch’s apprentice (Jay Baruchel) and a variety of law-and-order types, including a former-art-thief-turned-FBI-informant (Terence Stamp) and an FBI fumbler played by “The Daily Show’s” Jason Jones.
The mechanics of the heist aspect don’t entirely add up—what border crossing storage unit doesn’t have closed circuit cameras?—and the twists threaten to overshadow the whole thing but the chemistry of the cast goes a long way toward smoothing over any plot rough spots.
It simply works better as a comedy than a heist film. Dillon and Stamp are in good form, Russell can cut through this material like a hot knife through butter, but it is Baruchel who shines in a supporting role. He provides the film’s funniest moment although it’s one that may make it harder for him to cross the border in future.
“The Art of the Steal” is an entertaining movie that mixes laughs with intrigue, crime with revenge in an offbeat heist flick.
At the beginning of “Our Man in Tehran” we’re told, “this wasn’t a movie, it was real life.”
It’s hard not to see that as a jab at Ben Affleck & Company whose film “Argo” won Academy Awards last year for taking liberties with the story of the Iranian Hostage Crisis.
“Our Man in Tehran,” the account of ambassador Ken Taylor and his Canadian peers who arranged the rescue of six Americans in Tehran during the U.S. hostage crisis in 1980 aims to set the record straight.
There’s no mention of the Oscar winning film, just interviews with the main players, including Taylor, Minister of External Affairs Flora MacDonald, former Prime Minister Joe Clark, reporters like Joe Schlesinger, CIA agent Tony Mendez and several of the hostages mixed with archival footage.
Directors Larry Weinstein and Drew Taylor set up the story, providing context about the political climate in Iran that preceded and instigated the events of the hostage taking. It’s straightforward talking head storytelling, but it’s riveting and exciting stuff.
The tale is told from the Canadian point of view and while some details overlap with Affleck’s vision of the story—they really did use the ruse of a film production called “Argo” to cover their tracks—Taylor’s role is clearly explained. Canadian actor Victor Garber played him in the feature where he mainly seen peering around corners and closing doors, but here he is given his due.
“People lose sight of what a hero really is,” says says former CIA officer and Iranian hostage William Daugherty, as a soft focus picture of Ken Taylor fills the screen. In any other movie this might be seen as a heavy-handed image but after seeing “Our man in Tehran” it’s hard to argue with the sentiment.
It’s a reclamation of the legacy of Canadian Caper, topped with a typically quaint Canadian quote from one of the key players.
“We rose to the occasion and showed us at our best,” says Joe Clark. “Not simply because it worked but because the motives were correct.”
What did Sophie Cossette Cartoonist Blog have to say about Raising Hell: Ken Russell and the Unmaking of The Devils? Let me tell you…
“… when I came across Toronto writer Richard Crouse’s book from ECW Press about the making of ‘The Devils’, I was in heaven!
Here I could indulge in my guilty pleasure of reading about Ollie‘s bad-boy behavior and find out what went on behind the scenes of my favorite movie of all time. And on top of that, illustrator Ghoulish Gary came up with that extraordinary cover! It can’t get any better, can it? Yes, actually. Crouse’s writing is vividly descriptive, providing the inside scoop on the making of that cursed film. It’s a goddamn great read and if you love ‘The Devils’, get the book now! It beats knitting with nuns any day (unless it’s the nuns from ‘The Devils’ – they’re a fun bunch!) One of the many things I learned from Crouse’s book was that Ken Russell was the first to think of making Anthony Burgess’ 1962 novel on youth ultra-violence, ‘A Clockwork Orange’, into a movie before Stanley Kubrick took on the project. Can you imagine what that film would have looked like had it been made by Russell?!”
Keep your eyes open for Sophie’s upcoming book Sinemania!, where, she says, “her two biggest passions, movies and comics, collide.” It’s a collection of her biographical comic book stories satirically exposing the lives and careers of film directors whose personalities are – or were – particularly over the top. Everyone from Alfred Hitchcock to Roman Polanski by way of… Ken Russell!
Slash and director Anthony Leonardi stopped by NewsTalk 1010 today to chat about their new movie Nothing Left to Fear. The interview will air Saturday September 21 from 4:30 to 5 pm! We talk everything from Slash’s love of Hammer Films to French madrigal music.
