FHM 100 Sexiest Women
Russell Watson
Kat McPhee made #38
Kristen Bell made #24
Erica Durrance is #15
I personally would have ranked all of them higher. Lindsay Lohan made
#16 right behind Lois Lane, while Kristen is way back at 24? I don't
fuckin' think so...
Hayden Panettiere is #11? She's cute as hell, but that's all she is is
cute. I thought the list was "sexiest". Have her play a grown-up role
where she gets to be a little hot and I might change my mind, but
having seen her as yet be nothing but a high school cheerleader or ice
skater on TV she has yet to qualify, IMO. #7 below is a similar case.
When she has a fan base outside girls who watch the Disney Channel
come back and let me know. Hell, they may as well have thrown Miley
Cyrus in, too, at this rate. Of course they probably had someone who
wanted to and somebody said "Dude, you do know she's only 15, right?"
Top 10 were
10. Kate Beckinsale (yummy)
9. Blake Lively (I don't even know who that is)
8. Tricia Helfer (I know you guys are all jazzed she's going to be on
BN but she doesn't do much for me)
7. Hillary Duff (Hillary Duff?!)
6. Emmanuelle Chriqui (somebody else I'm clueless about, but her pic
is cute)
5. Scarlett Johansson (of course)
4. Elisha Cuthbert (a fox, but not in the public eye much since "The
Girl Next Door")
3. Jessica Alba (of course)
2. Jessica Biel (yowzer!)
1. Megan Fox (her looks agree with her name but I don't know who she
is: is she the gal from the "Transformers" movie?)
Oh, and Topcat: taking this FHM list (the whole thing, not just their
Top 10) as the basis of a current personal Top 10 Kat McPhee (as well
as KB and ED) is in there! How's that?
Down in the bottom, can you believe they have pot-bellied, drunken
unfit mother Britney Spears on here, if even only at the very last
spot?
Almost as shocking as her is Madonna at #87. That bitch wasn't "sexy"
25 years ago, IMO. Sexy and slutty are NOT the same thing!
The River-nator made the list at #90. I would have ranked her a lot
higher.
Paris Hilton #77! How?! Why?!
No accounting for taste, I guess...
topcat
"Russell Watson" <russell...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:r8f614dlm8t4eue14...@4ax.com...
I saw they had compiled this but didn't get a chance to review it. Thanks
for this info.
I'm glad to see you're finally catching some McPheever. The surprises for me
are the Jessicas (Biel and Alba). I wouldn't have either in my top 10. Now
Kate Beckinsale, double yummy.
Like you said, Hayden Panettiere #11? Puh-leeze. She'd probably be somewhere
down around 80 on my list. Hillary Duff? For some reason I just don't see
her as "sexy".
TC
Ray O'Hara
such lists are a "who's notorious at the moment" and have no basis in
reality.
some cute chick makes a movie and she's on the list for that year.
they ignore anybody who isn't an actress.
and sexiness is different than just being cute.
C.O. Jones
<russell...@comcast.net> wrote:
A couple of things to remember. It is not so much a "100 Sexiest" as it
is a 100 most "Popular" no matter what they arbitrarily call it, and,
#2, Everybody that "voted" are probably vain, shallow people (wannabes)
themselves, and include women, metrosexuals and gays. Just my opinion,
of course.
--
////////// \\\\\\\\\\\
The two most common elements in the universe are Hydrogen and stupidity.
-- Harlan Ellison
Russell Watson
My "of course" comment on Alba and Johansson was more in the way of
"you knew they were going to be there" than an agreement with either.
I can't lie: I'd probably nail them both just so I could say I had,
but neither has ever particularly appealed to me. If SJ walked around
in ever movie in a shirt and pink bikini drawers like she did in "Lost
in Translation" she might could sway me otherwise on her score.
Biel, OTOH, is one of the true beauties of the age IMO. She has been
in some sucky movies ("Blade: Trinity" and that one about the AI
fighter plane that runs amok), but she is drop dead gorgeous to my way
of thinking and made "The Illusionist", which is already a good movie,
IMO, twice as watchable with the way she looked in the clothes she got
to wear in it. She's probably in my Top 5, maybe after all is said and
done even my #1 if ONLY the gals from the FHM list are taken into
consideration. On that score, some of the people who are missing are
what baffles me: what kind of world do we live in where Jennifer
Connelly can't make a list of this sort? She has probably matured past
ever pulling off the mechanical horse scene from "Career
Opportunities" again but it ain't like she has become some sort of hag
in the meantime, either, nor has she retired from the public eye.
Hillary Duff looks too much like she did when she was still on Disney
to get me going. I'm a dirty ol' man, but goddamn, there's a line
there, y'know? I know she's technically legal, as is Panettiere, but
they both have some maturing out of their teeny-bopper look before I
start getting wood on their behalf. I still look at them with "Boy.
she'll probably be a hotty when she grows up" eye.
Russell Watson
But of course you are dead on in your assessment that it's just a
popularity thing, which only plays to my "I should be in charge of
this shit" frame of mind.
As I said in my reply to Topcat, the list is noteworthy as much for
who is absent as who is present, IMO, never mind the respective
rankings of those who are there.
KT3000
> Looks like some of our group's favorites were represented this year.
>
> Kat McPhee made #38
> Kristen Bell made #24
> Erica Durrance is #15
>
> I personally would have ranked all of them higher. Lindsay Lohan made
> #16 right behind Lois Lane, while Kristen is way back at 24? I don't
> fuckin' think so...
> Hayden Panettiere is #11? She's cute as hell, but that's all she is is
> cute. I thought the list was "sexiest". Have her play a grown-up role
> where she gets to be a little hot and I might change my mind, but
> having seen her as yet be nothing but a high school cheerleader or ice
> skater on TV she has yet to qualify, IMO. #7 below is a similar case.
> When she has a fan base outside girls who watch the Disney Channel
> come back and let me know.
She's pretty popular among teen age boys. At least the good kid crowd.
> Hell, they may as well have thrown Miley
> Cyrus in, too, at this rate. Of course they probably had someone who
> wanted to and somebody said "Dude, you do know she's only 15, right?"
>
> Top 10 were
>
> 10. Kate Beckinsale (yummy)
> 9. Blake Lively (I don't even know who that is)
> 8. Tricia Helfer (I know you guys are all jazzed she's going to be on
> BN but she doesn't do much for me)
> 7. Hillary Duff (Hillary Duff?!)
> 6. Emmanuelle Chriqui (somebody else I'm clueless about, but her pic
> is cute)
> 5. Scarlett Johansson (of course)
> 4. Elisha Cuthbert (a fox, but not in the public eye much since "The
> Girl Next Door")
> 3. Jessica Alba (of course)
> 2. Jessica Biel (yowzer!)
> 1. Megan Fox (her looks agree with her name but I don't know who she
> is: is she the gal from the "Transformers" movie?)
>
> Oh, and Topcat: taking this FHM list (the whole thing, not just their
> Top 10) as the basis of a current personal Top 10 Kat McPhee (as well
> as KB and ED) is in there! How's that?
>
> Down in the bottom, can you believe they have pot-bellied, drunken
> unfit mother Britney Spears on here, if even only at the very last
> spot?
OTOH the photo they have of her is about the best I've ever seen.
> Almost as shocking as her is Madonna at #87. That bitch wasn't "sexy"
> 25 years ago, IMO. Sexy and slutty are NOT the same thing!
> The River-nator made the list at #90. I would have ranked her a lot
> higher.
> Paris Hilton #77! How?! Why?!
Skank zone. They've got Pam Anderson at 75 also.
> No accounting for taste, I guess...
An I correct that this list was nominated by and selected by online
voters, and not the editors?
Grace Park
Kristin Kreuk
Kristen Bell
Kaley Cuoco
Ali Larter
Erica Durance
Hayden Panettiere
Tricia Helfer
Not that I'd disagree with some of these but do I sense a certain bias
in the voter pool?
Russell Watson
wrote:
You mean in that "Smallville", "Heroes" and BSG are maybe a little too
well represented?
Bruins72
>
> Kat McPhee made #38
Yum.
> Kristen Bell made #24
Super Yum.
> Erica Durrance is #15
She's got a hot body but there's just something about her mouth that bothers
me. It's like she's got a puppet (like a ventriliquism dummy) mouth. I don't
know why but I've got a hard time getting past that.
> I personally would have ranked all of them higher. Lindsay Lohan made
> #16 right behind Lois Lane, while Kristen is way back at 24? I don't
> fuckin' think so...
Lindsay Lohan is NOT hot or sexy in any way. She's junk.
> Hayden Panettiere is #11? She's cute as hell, but that's all she is is
> cute. I thought the list was "sexiest". Have her play a grown-up role
> where she gets to be a little hot and I might change my mind, but
> having seen her as yet be nothing but a high school cheerleader or ice
> skater on TV she has yet to qualify, IMO. #7 below is a similar case.
> When she has a fan base outside girls who watch the Disney Channel
> come back and let me know. Hell, they may as well have thrown Miley
> Cyrus in, too, at this rate. Of course they probably had someone who
> wanted to and somebody said "Dude, you do know she's only 15, right?"
Yeah, I'm pretty much right there with you.
> Top 10 were
>
> 10. Kate Beckinsale (yummy)
Yeah, she should've been ranked higher. She's probably in my top 3.
> 9. Blake Lively (I don't even know who that is)
She's on that show Gossip Girl. I haven't seen it but it's got quite a
following. She was also the girl in Accepted, the movie with the kid from
the Mac commercials and his phoney college. She's okay but a little too
skinny and a little too long faced for my taste.
> 8. Tricia Helfer (I know you guys are all jazzed she's going to be on
> BN but she doesn't do much for me)
She can go between looking really hot and looking really unattractive. Part
of the problem is that she's just way too skinny. She does a good job in BSG
though.
> 7. Hillary Duff (Hillary Duff?!)
I was never really exposed to her when she was a kid, so I don't feel igged
out by looking at her as an attractive woman. That being said, she's only
good to look at. Once she opens her mouth you know she's just another late
teens/early 20's vacant minded ditz.
> 6. Emmanuelle Chriqui (somebody else I'm clueless about, but her pic
> is cute)
She played E's girlfriend on Entourage. She was also in Waiting, a funny
movie about restaurant workers that came out a couple years ago, which I
just happened to watch again on Comedy Central last night. She's attractive
but not top ten worthy. Plus, what has she done lately to land here?
> 5. Scarlett Johansson (of course)
She's stunning. Definite top 3 for me.
> 4. Elisha Cuthbert (a fox, but not in the public eye much since "The
> Girl Next Door")
Yeah, she hasn't done a damn thing since leaving 24 and doing a couple
movies. The Girl Next Door was okay.
> 3. Jessica Alba (of course)
She's hot but she's not as hot as she was 4 or 5 years ago. I don't know
why. She's lost some of her shine.
> 2. Jessica Biel (yowzer!)
I've seen some pictures of her lately and she didn't look as good. She got
some collagen injections in her lips and she looked ridiculous. She was
stunningly beautiful before. I don't know why should should feel the need to
mess with that.
> 1. Megan Fox (her looks agree with her name but I don't know who she
> is: is she the gal from the "Transformers" movie?)
I still haven't gotten around to seeing Transformers but I've seen pics of
her. She's smoking hot but I don't know about #1. I'm guessing she's just
the latest flavor that everyone is into.
> Oh, and Topcat: taking this FHM list (the whole thing, not just their
> Top 10) as the basis of a current personal Top 10 Kat McPhee (as well
> as KB and ED) is in there! How's that?
>
> Down in the bottom, can you believe they have pot-bellied, drunken
> unfit mother Britney Spears on here, if even only at the very last
> spot?
That's just messed up. Britney was attractive years ago but she's seen a lot
of miles and a whole lot of crazy since then.
> Almost as shocking as her is Madonna at #87. That bitch wasn't "sexy"
> 25 years ago, IMO. Sexy and slutty are NOT the same thing!
Speaking of a lot of miles... I found Madonna somewhat attractive when I was
a kid, when she first made her name for herself. I found her to be skanky
looking in the 90's and these days she's just scary. Have you ever been out
and seen that slutty older woman that's trying to dress like she's 20 or 30
years younger than she is and trying to pick up on the younger guys? You
look at her and you can see that maybe she was attractive at some point but
she's seen way too many miles since then. She's just trying too hard to
still be sexy. That's Madonna. It's just sad.
> The River-nator made the list at #90. I would have ranked her a lot
> higher.
She's not a super-well known actress. I can see her maybe being down there
and working her way up. Plus, she's got that damn mole on her eye that
drives me nuts.
> Paris Hilton #77! How?! Why?!
> No accounting for taste, I guess...
Enough with this skank. Why is she still in the public eye?
--
-
--
-
Bruins72
http://www.myspace.com/billbruins72
Russell Watson
wrote:
>"Russell Watson" <russell...@comcast.net> wrote in message
>news:r8f614dlm8t4eue14...@4ax.com...
>
>> Paris Hilton #77! How?! Why?!
>> No accounting for taste, I guess...
>
>Enough with this skank. Why is she still in the public eye?
Kind of funny having this conversation now as it ties in obliquely
with the one in another thread about pulp fiction.
Being like a lot of other people who love to read but grew up in the
movie age I often populate books with actors/actresses/etc that match
up with my mental image of the characters as described by the author.
I don't even do it consciously, I just read a descriptio of a
character and a person I've seen on on TV or in the movies (not always
even an actor) will just pop into my head. For instance the Harry
Bosch character created by Michael Connelly always appears in my
mind's eye as looking like Bill O' Reilly. Another recurring cop
character that I can't think of right now always looks like Dick Van
Dyke's son (on TV and IRL) from "Diagnosis Murder" to my mind's eye
when I read about him, while Peri O' Shaughnessy's lady lawyer Nina
Riley looks like Lauren Graham to me. It doesn't always work out: Try
as I might, my attempts to see Jack Ryan in Tom Selleck's skin just
won't play, even though Tom Clancy claims that's who he had in mind in
writing the character originally.
Anyhoo, since we were talking about Doc Savage in that other thread
and dug my surviving books out I decided to re-read them while they
were close to hand I didn't have any other literary irons in the fire,
and I'll be damned if when I read the description of the character Z
from #53 _The Mental Wizard_ if the image I got of what she should
look like wasn't Paris Hilton!
To whit:
"She was a fabulous creature.
Her hair, perhaps, was the most striking of all. It was spun gold.
Not the spun gold that the poets rhyme about. They mean their girls'
hair only to like unto spun gold in color and texture. This girl's
hair >was< spun gold. At least, it had been treated with some gilt
process.
She had an oval face with a tendency to length, and there was
something absolutely aristocratic about the chiseling of her features.
She was not the kind of a beauty every man would try to flirt with.
They would hold their breath when she went by."
Dismiss what you know of PH as a personality and "poor little rich
girl" and focus on her purely as a physical "type" and she fits the
description above to a tee. If you read the whole story there are some
personality similarities, as well.
Bruins72
I can see some of it but I really don't find her attractive at all (and not
just because of her personality), so some of those descriptions just don't
ring true for me.
I can relate to putting a known face to a literary character though. It's
one of those things that just happens. I'm not thinking of any right off the
top of my head but I know I've done that. I think Clancy is full of shit
that Tom Selleck fits the Jack Ryan mold. No way! For one thing, I just
can't get past Selleck's porno 'stache. No way Jack Ryan would have that.
Back when Hunt for Red October came out, I thought Baldwin fit the part well
but of course he wouldn't fit now. Harrison Ford definitely didn't fit!
Russell Watson
wrote:
I can dig where you're coming from. I can see how she would be
attributed a certain so-called "classic" beauty by some, problem with
me is being that is not anything that has ever appealed to me. I'd
steamroll over a dozen of that stripe to get to one cute, cuddly
girl-next-door type.
>
>I can relate to putting a known face to a literary character though. It's
>one of those things that just happens. I'm not thinking of any right off the
>top of my head but I know I've done that. I think Clancy is full of shit
>that Tom Selleck fits the Jack Ryan mold.
>No way! For one thing, I just can't get past Selleck's porno 'stache. No way Jack Ryan would have that.
>Back when Hunt for Red October came out, I thought Baldwin fit the part well
>but of course he wouldn't fit now. Harrison Ford definitely didn't fit!
More a case of Ryan having been written to fit the Selleck mold, but I
know what you mean. When I read that in an interview it left me
scratching my head. As badly as I dislike Baldwin for his kneejerk
liberal political biases I have to say he fit the image of the
character I got from the books best of any of the 3 to play part so
far. I don't know if Affleck could have ever sold me on it or not:
"Sum of all Fears" was so egregiously out of synch with the others in
the series and with the book on which it was so loosely based that he
could have been perfect and it wouldn't have registered.
Speaking of Selleck: you know how you will hear of a project
originally having been developed with another actor in mind and you
just can't get your brain wrapped around it? Well did you know that
"Quigley Down Under" was originally written for Steve McQueen but was
shelved due to his terminal cancer a decade before it was finally made
with Selleck in the title role?
C.O. Jones
<russell...@comcast.net> wrote:
> >I can relate to putting a known face to a literary character though. It's
> >one of those things that just happens. I'm not thinking of any right off the
> >top of my head but I know I've done that. I think Clancy is full of shit
> >that Tom Selleck fits the Jack Ryan mold.
> >No way! For one thing, I just can't get past Selleck's porno 'stache. No way
> >Jack Ryan would have that.
> >Back when Hunt for Red October came out, I thought Baldwin fit the part well
> >but of course he wouldn't fit now. Harrison Ford definitely didn't fit!
>
> More a case of Ryan having been written to fit the Selleck mold, but I
> know what you mean. When I read that in an interview it left me
> scratching my head. As badly as I dislike Baldwin for his kneejerk
> liberal political biases I have to say he fit the image of the
> character I got from the books best of any of the 3 to play part so
> far. I don't know if Affleck could have ever sold me on it or not:
> "Sum of all Fears" was so egregiously out of synch with the others in
> the series and with the book on which it was so loosely based that he
> could have been perfect and it wouldn't have registered.
> Speaking of Selleck: you know how you will hear of a project
> originally having been developed with another actor in mind and you
> just can't get your brain wrapped around it? Well did you know that
> "Quigley Down Under" was originally written for Steve McQueen but was
> shelved due to his terminal cancer a decade before it was finally made
> with Selleck in the title role?
Lonesome Dove: Originally written by Larry McMurtry in 1971 as a movie
script. He intended John Wayne to play Woodrow Call, James Stewart to
play Gus McCrae and Henry Fonda to play Jake Spoon, with Peter
Bogdanovich directing. Wayne turned it down, and the project was
shelved. Ten years later McMurtry bought the script back and wrote the
book (on which the series was based). (from IMDB)
Bruins72
I'm with you on that! Cute girls rank pretty high in my book.
I've got to admit that I never saw Sum of All Fears. I just couldn't do it.
I couldn't subject myself to it. I was a big fan of Clancy's books at the
time the movie came out and I had heard about how badly the had butchered it
by straying so far from the source. I'm a part of the minority that thinks
Ben Affleck is a pretty good actor when he's working with decent material...
but I'd never accept him as Jack Ryan. He's just too young. Even for Patriot
Games, he's too young. Well maybe if he made Patriot Games today he might
but overall... I don't see it. You know what really killed me? Casting
Willem Dafoe as Mr Clark in Clear and Present Danger. WTF were they
thinking? You couldn't get any further from the character there. That was a
travesty!
I never knew about Quigley Down Under being written for McQueen. I thought
Selleck was good in that but I can see McQueen doing it too. Unfortately,
I've only seen a couple McQueen movies. I loved The Great Escape and thought
he played his character well. He was probably my favorite in that movie. I
hated the Magnificent Seven though. That was just a boring movie to me. It
was cheesy too, a classic example of why I don't watch old movies. Anyhow,
back to Selleck... wasn't he almost cast as Han Solo in Star Wars? Or maybe
Lucas had him in mind?
Russell Watson
wrote:
That was part of the Big Departure: they decided to hit the magic
button and retcon the series for a younger actor, so they took a novel
from the middle of the Ryan saga and rewrote it into a movie script
that features Ryan as an absolute tyro in the CIA who had only started
to date the woman he eventually married. In that novel he was
assistant director of Central Intelligence, had been married for years
and had 2 kids and was contemplating #3 having said that SOAF was the
2nd hardest Ryan novel to slog through for me, _Red Rabbit_ being the
absolute worst. .
>You know what really killed me? Casting
>Willem Dafoe as Mr Clark in Clear and Present Danger. WTF were they
>thinking? You couldn't get any further from the character there. That was a
>travesty!
Funny you mention that: when I read the novel originally Dafoe is
exactly who I pictured Clark as being! It wasn't until _Without
Remorse_, which described the character's physical type along with his
personality, that I started seeing him as someone more like a younger
Tom Berenger, or that other guy who played on "Flight of the Intruder"
as Dafoe's pilot.
>
>I never knew about Quigley Down Under being written for McQueen. I thought
>Selleck was good in that but I can see McQueen doing it too. Unfortately,
>I've only seen a couple McQueen movies. I loved The Great Escape and thought
>he played his character well. He was probably my favorite in that movie. I
>hated the Magnificent Seven though. That was just a boring movie to me. It
>was cheesy too, a classic example of why I don't watch old movies. Anyhow,
>back to Selleck... wasn't he almost cast as Han Solo in Star Wars? Or maybe
>Lucas had him in mind?
I think I remember something like that. The history of cinema is rife
with such tales of almost-wuz versions of films that might have been
quite different animals if shot as originally written and cast.
"Pretty Woman" comes to mind, having been written initially as a
gritty drama with a tragic ending. After various people were tested
for the leads and didn't work out (most of them turned it down for
various reasons rather than vice versa) it ended up with Gere and
Roberts in the leads and evolved into a "romantic comedy" and one of
the biggest hits of the '90s.
KT3000
> Anyhow, back to Selleck... wasn't he almost
> cast as Han Solo in Star Wars? Or maybe
> Lucas had him in mind?
Are you sure you aren't thinking of Indiana Jones?
Russell Watson
wrote:
That's the one. I knew it was some part that Ford eventually ended up
with. Somehow can't imagine ROTLA being the classic it became or
spawning the sequels (#4 is on the way?!) it did with anyone else in
the role. Put Selleck in there and I see a minor, one-shot deal like
"High Road to China". Cute movie but no entry in the annals of
celluloid immortality. Selleck is a very good actor, but he he plays
either grim or silly, without a lot of shadings in between. A lot of
what makes Indiana Jones classic is the stuff Ford did with just his
facial expressions, which Selleck doesn't really do well.
Bruins72
I never read Red Rabbit. That's the one with his kid joining the CIA, right?
The last Tom Clancy novel I read was... well I started The Bear and the
Dragon but I never finished it. I lost interest in the story but it was also
due to me not being able to sit and read anything more than a magazine
article without losing interest. Sum of All Fears was one that I had put
down at one point and then once I picked it back up (months later) I really
enjoyed it.
>>You know what really killed me? Casting
>>Willem Dafoe as Mr Clark in Clear and Present Danger. WTF were they
>>thinking? You couldn't get any further from the character there. That was
>>a
>>travesty!
>
> Funny you mention that: when I read the novel originally Dafoe is
> exactly who I pictured Clark as being! It wasn't until _Without
> Remorse_, which described the character's physical type along with his
> personality, that I started seeing him as someone more like a younger
> Tom Berenger, or that other guy who played on "Flight of the Intruder"
> as Dafoe's pilot.
Really? I don't know. Dafoe is kind of a small guy. From the early
descriptions of Clark in some of the Clancy novels (before Without
Remorse... which is one of my favorites), the was described as tall but not
too tall, dark features that could be mistaken for several different
nationalities, and a face that you would immediately forget. That doesn't
sound like Dafoe at all, especially the last part. I never saw Flight of the
Intruder. Who was the actor?
>>I never knew about Quigley Down Under being written for McQueen. I thought
>>Selleck was good in that but I can see McQueen doing it too. Unfortately,
>>I've only seen a couple McQueen movies. I loved The Great Escape and
>>thought
>>he played his character well. He was probably my favorite in that movie. I
>>hated the Magnificent Seven though. That was just a boring movie to me. It
>>was cheesy too, a classic example of why I don't watch old movies. Anyhow,
>>back to Selleck... wasn't he almost cast as Han Solo in Star Wars? Or
>>maybe
>>Lucas had him in mind?
>
> I think I remember something like that. The history of cinema is rife
> with such tales of almost-wuz versions of films that might have been
> quite different animals if shot as originally written and cast.
> "Pretty Woman" comes to mind, having been written initially as a
> gritty drama with a tragic ending. After various people were tested
> for the leads and didn't work out (most of them turned it down for
> various reasons rather than vice versa) it ended up with Gere and
> Roberts in the leads and evolved into a "romantic comedy" and one of
> the biggest hits of the '90s.
I hadn't heard that one. Did the rich guy character kill the prostitute in
some violent S&M game or something in the original script?
Bruins72
news:cbGdnQcD-fYMs4TV...@earthlink.com...
Hmmm... maybe? I'm not sure. I remember around the big anniversary of Star
Wars there was a lot of talk about people who almost got cast in the
original movie and I thought that was where this was mentioned. I could be
wrong though.
Bruins72
I can agree with you there! Harrison Ford made that role a classic.
BTW, I can't wait to see the new Indiana Jones movie. I saw a trailer for it
yesterday and I actually got giddy... and I'm not ashamed to say it! I loved
the Indy movies and this one looks like another great one.
Russell Watson
wrote:
No, _Red Rabbit_ would actually be the earliest book chronologically
in the Ryan series, set around the time of the attempted assassination
of John Paul II (of course in Clancy's novel it's Ryan who first
figures out and then foils the plot). The only earlier story in the
Ryan-verse so far is _Without Remorse_, which is set around '72.
>
>>>You know what really killed me? Casting
>>>Willem Dafoe as Mr Clark in Clear and Present Danger. WTF were they
>>>thinking? You couldn't get any further from the character there. That was
>>>a
>>>travesty!
>>
>> Funny you mention that: when I read the novel originally Dafoe is
>> exactly who I pictured Clark as being! It wasn't until _Without
>> Remorse_, which described the character's physical type along with his
>> personality, that I started seeing him as someone more like a younger
>> Tom Berenger, or that other guy who played on "Flight of the Intruder"
>> as Dafoe's pilot.
>
>Really? I don't know. Dafoe is kind of a small guy. From the early
>descriptions of Clark in some of the Clancy novels (before Without
>Remorse... which is one of my favorites), the was described as tall but not
>too tall, dark features that could be mistaken for several different
>nationalities, and a face that you would immediately forget. That doesn't
>sound like Dafoe at all, especially the last part. I never saw Flight of the
>Intruder. Who was the actor?
At the time I read SOAF I had not read any other stories about the
Clark character and if he was described physically in that book it
didn't register at the time. I know he's in _Cardinal of the Kremlin_
but I had not read it yet (somehow I skipped that one and caught up on
it later).
>
>>>I never knew about Quigley Down Under being written for McQueen. I thought
>>>Selleck was good in that but I can see McQueen doing it too. Unfortately,
>>>I've only seen a couple McQueen movies. I loved The Great Escape and
>>>thought
>>>he played his character well. He was probably my favorite in that movie. I
>>>hated the Magnificent Seven though. That was just a boring movie to me. It
>>>was cheesy too, a classic example of why I don't watch old movies. Anyhow,
>>>back to Selleck... wasn't he almost cast as Han Solo in Star Wars? Or
>>>maybe
>>>Lucas had him in mind?
>>
>> I think I remember something like that. The history of cinema is rife
>> with such tales of almost-wuz versions of films that might have been
>> quite different animals if shot as originally written and cast.
>> "Pretty Woman" comes to mind, having been written initially as a
>> gritty drama with a tragic ending. After various people were tested
>> for the leads and didn't work out (most of them turned it down for
>> various reasons rather than vice versa) it ended up with Gere and
>> Roberts in the leads and evolved into a "romantic comedy" and one of
>> the biggest hits of the '90s.
>
>I hadn't heard that one. Did the rich guy character kill the prostitute in
>some violent S&M game or something in the original script?
I don't think he kills her but they go their separate ways and it's a
pretty big downer all the way around. Part of the original story is
that the Vivian character, like most real life whores, is a junkie.
One of the people who was offered the role was Molly Ringwald, of all
people, and she turned it down because as it was written at the time
she had no interest in playing the character. Allegedly it was more
the drug content than the prostitution that put her off it.
Russell Watson
wrote:
The original is a classic, the sequels did not impress me that much at
all, and the new one could have just as well not been made and I
wouldn't care, but I'm happy you are stoked about it and hope it's all
you want it to be. I'm seeing "Iron Man" tonight at 10:00 (tickets are
already purchased) so I'm in that lull before the storm, but I have
also experienced moments of giddiness when seeing previews for it. I
had thought I was beyond all that but the sheer surprise that they
made "Iron Man" at all, let alone were as faithful to the original
story as the previews indicate, proved me wrong. I can't think of
anything else that would get me so jazzed. I just hope it's not a big
letdown. I've been here before and left sad, albeit years ago:
"Greystoke", "Batman" ('89), "The Keep" (loved the novel, the movie
sucked balls), and the list goes on.
Russell Watson
OK, having said what I did above, I saw the full-length trailer for
the Indiana Jones flick with "Iron Man" tonight and I'll be damned if
by the time it was over I wasn't feeling it just a little bit, too.
Also saw the latest "Dark Knight" and "The Incredible Hulk" trailers,
the latter being the first one I've seen for it on the big screen.
BTW, "Iron Man" totally fuckin' rocks, IMO. I felt not a shred of
disappointment in it. Of course it's a comic book movie that has to be
all things to all people who might go see it, from old farts like me
who read the originals 40 years ago to the fanbois and geeks of the
later period, so there are allusions to things that those of us who
were around at or near the beginning think of as having "happened"
much later in the characters' storylines, but given that a movie
doesn't have the luxury of spinning the yarn out over decades they had
to give certain future developments a nod. They managed to do this
without trying to put all the eggs into one basket or scrambling the
timeline into something unrecognizable as almost was the case with
"Spider-Man". I might have to say it's the best comics-based movie
I've seen yet, an I say that from the POV of someone whose love of the
concept would make me trend more rather than less critical of a poor
execution.
Also, the one we saw was the DLP version, and that also totally blew
me away. I have always skipped those because it isn't one of the super
honkin' big ass screens at the AMC, but the showing in there happened
to be the most convenient time for my party and I was pleased enough
with the picture quality to not care that it was only one of the
medium-sized screens.
KT3000
Yeah, it seems in recent years there have been all kind of stories about
how so-and-so was almost someone in _Star Wars_, maybe even Selleck
although I haven't heard him mentioned. Thing is I never heard any of
these stories back "then", and I have to wonder how much is truth and
how much is just retro-publicity.
But Selleck as Indiana Jones is an old and confirmed story. I believe
the way it went was something like Selleck was cast and signed as
Indiana Jones, only he was still attached to an expiring TV pilot
proposal no one expected anything to happen with. Then a couple of weeks
before _ROTLA_ was to start filming CBS picked up _Magnum PI_ and the
pre-existing contract took precedence. Indiana Jones had to be recast
but supposedly there's some test footage out there somewhere with
Selleck as Indy.
KT3000
Yeah. Selleck is no Indiana Jones. With Spielberg directing _ROTLA_ with
Selleck wouldn't have been a _High Road to China_ either, but likely
we'd remember _ROTLA_the movie. Harrison Ford made Indiana Jones the
larger than one movie icon.
Not to mention that one of the trademark scenes of _ROTLA_ was
supposedly Ford's idea. The swordsman and the gun was originally
supposed to be a longer drawn out fight, but Ford had diarrhea and was
looking to cut short his workday and proposed "why not...?", and the
rest is cinematic history.
Bruins72
> Bruins72 wrote:
>> "KT3000" <kt3...@mad.scientist.com> wrote in message
>> news:cbGdnQcD-fYMs4TV...@earthlink.com...
>>> Bruins72 wrote:
>>>
>>>> Anyhow, back to Selleck... wasn't he almost
>>>> cast as Han Solo in Star Wars? Or maybe Lucas had him in mind?
>>> Are you sure you aren't thinking of Indiana Jones?
>>
>> Hmmm... maybe? I'm not sure. I remember around the big anniversary of
>> Star Wars there was a lot of talk about people who almost got cast in the
>> original movie and I thought that was where this was mentioned. I could
>> be wrong though.
>
> Yeah, it seems in recent years there have been all kind of stories about
> how so-and-so was almost someone in _Star Wars_, maybe even Selleck
> although I haven't heard him mentioned. Thing is I never heard any of
> these stories back "then", and I have to wonder how much is truth and how
> much is just retro-publicity.
I wonder if part of the reason we never heard these things is because the
general public wasn't given that kind of info back then. Before the internet
we weren't tapped in to every little bit of information out there. I'm sure
there were probably a couple sci-fi fan magazines that got little bits of
info but beyond that we really didn't hear anything at all about the movies
before they came out.
> But Selleck as Indiana Jones is an old and confirmed story. I believe the
> way it went was something like Selleck was cast and signed as Indiana
> Jones, only he was still attached to an expiring TV pilot proposal no one
> expected anything to happen with. Then a couple of weeks before _ROTLA_
> was to start filming CBS picked up _Magnum PI_ and the pre-existing
> contract took precedence. Indiana Jones had to be recast but supposedly
> there's some test footage out there somewhere with Selleck as Indy.
I'm still having trouble picturing Indy with a porno mustache. LOL!
Bruins72
I loved the original (Raiders) and loved the sequel (Temple of Doom). I
wasn't a big fan of the Last Crusade when it first came out but I came to
like it more later on down the line.I bought the Indy box set when it came
out a few years ago and watched a bunch of the extras and all three movies.
It was a great bit of nostalgia but it also didn't feel dated. They were
that good. What I saw in the trailers for the new sure did have that old
Indy feel to it. I hope it doesn't disappoint. I thought the Mummy series
might have had a chance to became a new Indy-like franchise after the first
movie. That first one really had that same kind of feel to it. Then they put
out that crap-fest of a sequel. I hear they're making a new one of those
too. Let's hope they get that one back on track.
Bruins72
But the book came out later, right? Chronologically it happened earliest but
it must've come out after I stopped reading his books. I was pretty sure I
had read all of his books at the time.
Let me just say again, Without Remorse was one of my favorite books. That
book could be made into a great movie!
Cardinal of the Kremlin, that's the one I was thinking of. That was my first
exposure to him. I remember them talking about how he could blend in all
over Europe, everywhere from Ireland to Spain and so on. Then they also said
he was passible as a Russian and spoke it well enough to blend in. Something
like that.
Wow! That sounds like a totally different movie.
Bruins72
I've heard this story too but hadn't heard it was diarrhea. I heard it had
something to do with Ford not being able to get the sword fighting down. He
said he felt bad for the guy he was fighting though. I guess the guy was a
sword expert and he had practiced this whole big fight and gotten it all
down. Then they decide to do it this way. LOL!
Russell Watson
wrote:
>"Russell Watson" <russell...@comcast.net> wrote in message
>news:rfek14t1ocjd8ncpn...@4ax.com...
>>
>> No, _Red Rabbit_ would actually be the earliest book chronologically
>> in the Ryan series, set around the time of the attempted assassination
>> of John Paul II (of course in Clancy's novel it's Ryan who first
>> figures out and then foils the plot). The only earlier story in the
>> Ryan-verse so far is _Without Remorse_, which is set around '72.
>
>But the book came out later, right? Chronologically it happened earliest but
>it must've come out after I stopped reading his books. I was pretty sure I
>had read all of his books at the time.
Yes, in publishing order it's the last of the Jack Ryan novels so far.
The one after that takes up with his kid. Something about a Tiger, but
I never read it. Clancy's novels really started to run to Hackville
starting with _Rainbow Six_ and by the time I forced my way through
the tedious _Red Rabbit_ I was done with him.
>
>Let me just say again, Without Remorse was one of my favorite books. That
>book could be made into a great movie!
_Without Remorse_ is definitely one of his easier books to read.
Biggest problem I have with it is that it reads like a Mack Bolan
Executioner novel with the names changed (or a Punisher comic book:
same premise). Doesn't mean it isn't good, just very derivative of a
couple of earlier storylines with the departure coming when he gets
recruited into the CIA and pardoned for his "crimes". Gotta love the
scene in the later book (can't remember which one now) where he and
the Coast Guard guy who was his former friend then hunter come face to
face almost 30 years after the CG dude thought he was dead.
Bruins72
> On Fri, 2 May 2008 10:32:02 -0400, "Bruins72" <brui...@yahoo.com>
> wrote:
>
>>"Russell Watson" <russell...@comcast.net> wrote in message
>>news:rfek14t1ocjd8ncpn...@4ax.com...
>
>>>
>>> No, _Red Rabbit_ would actually be the earliest book chronologically
>>> in the Ryan series, set around the time of the attempted assassination
>>> of John Paul II (of course in Clancy's novel it's Ryan who first
>>> figures out and then foils the plot). The only earlier story in the
>>> Ryan-verse so far is _Without Remorse_, which is set around '72.
>>
>>But the book came out later, right? Chronologically it happened earliest
>>but
>>it must've come out after I stopped reading his books. I was pretty sure I
>>had read all of his books at the time.
>
> Yes, in publishing order it's the last of the Jack Ryan novels so far.
> The one after that takes up with his kid. Something about a Tiger, but
> I never read it. Clancy's novels really started to run to Hackville
> starting with _Rainbow Six_ and by the time I forced my way through
> the tedious _Red Rabbit_ I was done with him.
I actually liked Rainbow Six. I liked the dynamic between Mr Clark and Ding
going back to Clear and Present Danger. Rainbow Six had that plus it had
that international squad of badasses hunting terrorists. It was a fun read
for me.
>>Let me just say again, Without Remorse was one of my favorite books. That
>>book could be made into a great movie!
>
> _Without Remorse_ is definitely one of his easier books to read.
> Biggest problem I have with it is that it reads like a Mack Bolan
> Executioner novel with the names changed (or a Punisher comic book:
> same premise). Doesn't mean it isn't good, just very derivative of a
> couple of earlier storylines with the departure coming when he gets
> recruited into the CIA and pardoned for his "crimes". Gotta love the
> scene in the later book (can't remember which one now) where he and
> the Coast Guard guy who was his former friend then hunter come face to
> face almost 30 years after the CG dude thought he was dead.
I don't know Mack Bolan but that book was totally Punisher. In fact, the guy
that played Frank Castle (The Punisher) in that Punisher movie with Travolta
as the bad guy... he'd probably make a decent Mr Clark... or was it
originally John Kelly?
I remember that bit you're talking about with the coast guard guy. Didn't he
also have some sort of interaction with Jack Ryan's dad too?
Russell Watson
wrote:
I read fast and can take down a Clancy-type book sometimes in 2 or 3
evenings. The problem with that is that you tend to notice things like
little inconsistencies or reptitiveness that might have been forgotten
if you spread the book out over a longer span of time. Here's a post
and what I posted in reponse to someone on alt.books.tom-clancy soon
after reading that book in Jan '99:
"On Sat, 30 Jan 1999 12:34:47 -0600, "gws" <g...@oscn.net> wrote:
>R6 is, hands down, the most poorly edited "big time" book I have
>ever read. That has been the uniform reaction here. I suspect
>suspect the reason to be that TC will not allow professional
>editors to edit his books. I believe that any professional
>editor who let work such as R6 out the door would soon be an
>ex-professional editor.
>
>Grey Satterfield
My reply below...
Lessee:
At different places in the book Mary Bannister is said to be 26, 23
and 21 years of age.
During the Worldpark hostage scenario the point is made that one
terrorist accidentally refers to another by his real name while the
phone on which he is talking to Doc is still off hook, leading you
expect that this will come to play a part in the negotiations. It is
never mentioned again.
Certain phraseology, such as using the zipping of one's pants as an
analogy for how automatically characters perform certain tasks, is
used too repetitiously to be effective. Also references to criminals
as "mutts". This might not be as noticeable to someone who reads a few
chapters a night, but it is not unusual for me to read half of such a
book in a single sitting, so I find the lack of original phrasing to
be somewhat irritating.
The plot contrivances that allowed for Ding's team to be on alert for
every scenario were a bit transparent.
An agent of Dmitri's caliber should have picked up on the fact that
the same team did the first two takedowns without having to see the
third.
Yep, this one definately had some problems."
>
>>>Let me just say again, Without Remorse was one of my favorite books. That
>>>book could be made into a great movie!
>>
>> _Without Remorse_ is definitely one of his easier books to read.
>> Biggest problem I have with it is that it reads like a Mack Bolan
>> Executioner novel with the names changed (or a Punisher comic book:
>> same premise). Doesn't mean it isn't good, just very derivative of a
>> couple of earlier storylines with the departure coming when he gets
>> recruited into the CIA and pardoned for his "crimes". Gotta love the
>> scene in the later book (can't remember which one now) where he and
>> the Coast Guard guy who was his former friend then hunter come face to
>> face almost 30 years after the CG dude thought he was dead.
>
>I don't know Mack Bolan but that book was totally Punisher. In fact, the guy
>that played Frank Castle (The Punisher) in that Punisher movie with Travolta
>as the bad guy... he'd probably make a decent Mr Clark... or was it
>originally John Kelly?
Mack Bolan is the main character of a series of books called "The
Executioner" that started in the early '70s and continues to this day.
You may have seen The Mad Scientist, the Artist Formerly Known as
Lurking Horror, and I discuss here before. Basically same origin story
as the Punisher, same MO except for the trademark shirt with the skull
on it. When I read the very first Punisher comic book I ever saw that
had his origin story in it my first thought was "I can't believe the
guy who writes the Bolan stories isn't suing Marvel for this!"
>
>I remember that bit you're talking about with the coast guard guy. Didn't he
>also have some sort of interaction with Jack Ryan's dad too?
Yeah, Portagee was the CG guy who was Kelly's friend while he lived on
the island and later got caught up in the hunt for him (Kelly's
"death" was arranged by tricking the CG that he had been killed in a
boat chase), while Emmett Ryan was the Baltimore cop who caught the
case initially after Kelly snuffed the dope dealers who killed the
girl he had rescued.
C.O. Jones
<russell...@comcast.net> wrote:
> >I don't know Mack Bolan but that book was totally Punisher. In fact, the guy
> >that played Frank Castle (The Punisher) in that Punisher movie with Travolta
> >as the bad guy... he'd probably make a decent Mr Clark... or was it
> >originally John Kelly?
>
> Mack Bolan is the main character of a series of books called "The
> Executioner" that started in the early '70s and continues to this day.
> You may have seen The Mad Scientist, the Artist Formerly Known as
> Lurking Horror, and I discuss here before. Basically same origin story
> as the Punisher, same MO except for the trademark shirt with the skull
> on it. When I read the very first Punisher comic book I ever saw that
> had his origin story in it my first thought was "I can't believe the
> guy who writes the Bolan stories isn't suing Marvel for this!"
I had the exact same thought. The fact that they had different names,
and one had a skull t-shirt, was not enough in my mind to differentiate
between the two basically identical characters. I mean when Superman
sued Captain Marvel, they were WAY different.
Russell Watson
Prezackly so! DC not only got Fawcett to drop Captain Marvel by
driving them to near bankruptcy with legal fees but got an injunction
that made every other comic book publisher whose superheroes wore
capes at the time get rid of them. Of course when you get down to
brass tacks capes are silly and superfluous (as even the Incredibles
know) and the only character who really NEEDS one as part of his
ensemble is Batman, but Superman's is so fixed in the public image of
the character that he'd look weird without it. Besides which, Captain
Marvel's was kind of queer, what with that whole off-the-shoulder
thing going on and the embroidery around the edges which appeared to
be pure decoration and not even symbolic of anything. Makes you wonder
if he had never had that particular disaster of a wardrobe accessory
if DC would have even thought him worth pursuing?
C.O. Jones
<russell...@comcast.net> wrote:
The Big Red Cheese didn't really have a overly "manly" thing going for
him, did he? What with the afore mentioned cape, the Fred MacMurray
face and the whole "good kid Billy Batson" personality! But talking
about the cape, didn't that design move over into the Richard Nixon
White House Guard (or whatever) uniforms? It seems that they might have
had that embroidered, off the sholder capes also. Or am I
misremembering?
But as far as CAPES in general go, they are NOT a reasonable choice to
mix with skin-tight superhero costuming in a realistic world. I just
don't believe that there is any way to combine the two in a Real World
setting, and not make people point and laugh. (for some reason, Batman
being an exception) On the other hand, the 18th century cloak is
another manner, but, still, not with skin-tight colorful tights and
such. Maybe I'm just too repressed?
Russell Watson
<apairO...@solidbrass.com> wrote:
Your comments do evoke a memory of something of that sort, but I can't
remember any specifics.
>
>But as far as CAPES in general go, they are NOT a reasonable choice to
>mix with skin-tight superhero costuming in a realistic world. I just
>don't believe that there is any way to combine the two in a Real World
>setting, and not make people point and laugh. (for some reason, Batman
>being an exception) On the other hand, the 18th century cloak is
>another manner, but, still, not with skin-tight colorful tights and
>such. Maybe I'm just too repressed?
If so we're in the same boat. Of course the idea behind the superhero
costume as we know it was formed from people who do strenuous athletic
acts of derring-do in colorful, tight-fitting clothing: circus
acrobats and trapeze artists. And these people often do wear a cape as
part of their ensemble, however, the first thing they do before taking
to the air is to ditch the damn thing!
As for the whole cloak thing, like I said in our discussion of
"Elseworlds" a couple of weeks or so ago the whole Batman thing works
better for me in the "Gotham by Gaslight" Victorian setting than in
any 20th Century version and for my money they could retcon the entire
thing back to that time frame and I'd probably read it religiously as
long as it was well-written.
I saw the latest trailer for "The Dark Knight" with "Iron Man" last
night and the whole thing just looks too...sterile, I guess. There's
nothing dark and gritty about it, and Gotham looks awfully clean to be
a city in the throes of massive corruption. I just can't get jazzed up
for it because there's something just "off" about the whole thing.
Even though a great deal of it takes place at night it's a little too
well lit. If I lived there I'd go walking around at night without
thinking twice about it. My little podunk town is gloomier in the dark
than that place and I feel perfectly safe here.
KT3000
There were several sci-fi magazines and I read every one I could get my
hands on. Plus _Variety_. So I was a little more plugged in than most.
But there was a different media emphasis back then. The focus was solid
after the fact reporting, not promotion. A movie had to sell tickets,
THEN it was worthy of press. Sure there were exceptions that built
interest early but except for things like a cryptic listing in
_Variety's_ "in production" list most films were off the radar until
they were ready for the theaters.
Fridays were like Christmas every week. One never quite knew what would
be in theaters until the morning paper or a tour down Main street. Even
when you knew which big pictures were coming out there was still the
question of how many weeks it would take to get to your town - if ever.
Fifty weeks for _Doc Savage_, and probably only then because the theater
was desperate to fill a week.
I remember the first time I ever heard of _Star Wars_ - spring 1977, a
theater had the lobby card set taped to a front window. (Show of hands
how many youngsters here know what lobby cards are?) Just from those
eight pictures I could tell "this is going to be the coolest thing ever,
so better rush to see it when it opens as it won't last more than a
week". Well by the time it came to town it had been playing bigger
cities for a month and everyone but everyone knew it was the biggest
thing ever, and it was two weeks before you could get in without
standing in line for a couple of hours. I was sort of miffed. LOL
KT3000
Could have been both. Being sick could have been why he was having
trouble getting the moves right.
KT3000
Plus there are a few functional capes: Doctor Strange. Nightveil, NoMan,
I believe there's someone with a bullet proof cape?...
> but Superman's is so fixed in the public image of
> the character that he'd look weird without it. Besides which, Captain
> Marvel's was kind of queer, what with that whole off-the-shoulder
> thing going on and the embroidery around the edges which appeared to
> be pure decoration and not even symbolic of anything. Makes you wonder
> if he had never had that particular disaster of a wardrobe accessory
> if DC would have even thought him worth pursuing?
His sales numbers were what made him a worthy target.
Russell Watson
wrote:
At least you knew about it in advance. I was in basic when it came out
and heard guys who had already finished basic and were in "casual"
waiting for their advanced school to start and able to leave the base
talking about this awesome movie called "Star Wars" they had seen over
the 4 July weekend. I thought to myself "'Star Wars'?: that sounds
like a stupid title for a movie!" Of course with the exception of
"2001..." a decade earlier sci-fi type movies were strictly B-movie
affairs so I figured this had to be more of the same and couldn't
figure out why these guys were so jazzed up about it. When I got to
come home a couple of weeks later the brand new Capitol Cinemas which
was still under interior construction had gotten 2 of its eventually 8
theaters open in time to be the venue for that movie. My friends were
just as hyper about it as the guys at Lackland had been, and had
already seen it a couple of times each. They insisted that I go with
them to see it and when we got there the ticket line ran halfway back
up the parking lot to the highway. I had never seen anything like it
and I told them there was no fuckin' way I was standing in that line
to see a stupid movie. I ended up waiting about a couple more weeks
until the hoopla died down a bit (it had been out for over a month by
then) and caught it on a weeknight showing. It was still nearly full
even at that. After all that hype I found it enjoyable to watch but
was not nearly as blown away by it as they had been. The FX were truly
incredible for the time but the story was pretty lame IMO.
C.O. Jones
<russell...@comcast.net> wrote:
> >> Prezackly so! DC not only got Fawcett to drop Captain Marvel by
> >> driving them to near bankruptcy with legal fees but got an injunction
> >> that made every other comic book publisher whose superheroes wore
> >> capes at the time get rid of them. Of course when you get down to
> >> brass tacks capes are silly and superfluous (as even the Incredibles
> >> know) and the only character who really NEEDS one as part of his
> >> ensemble is Batman, but Superman's is so fixed in the public image of
> >> the character that he'd look weird without it. Besides which, Captain
> >> Marvel's was kind of queer, what with that whole off-the-shoulder
> >> thing going on and the embroidery around the edges which appeared to
> >> be pure decoration and not even symbolic of anything. Makes you wonder
> >> if he had never had that particular disaster of a wardrobe accessory
> >> if DC would have even thought him worth pursuing?
> >
> >The Big Red Cheese didn't really have a overly "manly" thing going for
> >him, did he? What with the afore mentioned cape, the Fred MacMurray
> >face and the whole "good kid Billy Batson" personality! But talking
> >about the cape, didn't that design move over into the Richard Nixon
> >White House Guard (or whatever) uniforms? It seems that they might have
> >had that embroidered, off the sholder capes also. Or am I
> >misremembering?
>
> Your comments do evoke a memory of something of that sort, but I can't
> remember any specifics.
IIRC, after the proposed uniform designs were made public, they died a
pretty quick death. According to public outcry, they looked too
European or "Disneylandish." (All things considered in hindsight, they
would have probably been right on target. Too Disneylandish, indeed)
>
> >
> >But as far as CAPES in general go, they are NOT a reasonable choice to
> >mix with skin-tight superhero costuming in a realistic world. I just
> >don't believe that there is any way to combine the two in a Real World
> >setting, and not make people point and laugh. (for some reason, Batman
> >being an exception) On the other hand, the 18th century cloak is
> >another manner, but, still, not with skin-tight colorful tights and
> >such. Maybe I'm just too repressed?
>
> If so we're in the same boat. Of course the idea behind the superhero
> costume as we know it was formed from people who do strenuous athletic
> acts of derring-do in colorful, tight-fitting clothing: circus
> acrobats and trapeze artists. And these people often do wear a cape as
> part of their ensemble, however, the first thing they do before taking
> to the air is to ditch the damn thing!
And, more important, they do it inside a large circus tent or similar
venue. You don't see such people normaly walking down a street! Unless
there is a parade or a SciFi convention in town. OK, or a Reniassance
Faire.
> As for the whole cloak thing, like I said in our discussion of
> "Elseworlds" a couple of weeks or so ago the whole Batman thing works
> better for me in the "Gotham by Gaslight" Victorian setting than in
> any 20th Century version and for my money they could retcon the entire
> thing back to that time frame and I'd probably read it religiously as
> long as it was well-written.
I've often wished that the public fashion was such that one could wear
a cloak as normal wear without people laughing or throwing rotten
vegetables. In the meantime, I'll wear my long, cliched trenchcoat.
> I saw the latest trailer for "The Dark Knight" with "Iron Man" last
> night and the whole thing just looks too...sterile, I guess. There's
> nothing dark and gritty about it, and Gotham looks awfully clean to be
> a city in the throes of massive corruption. I just can't get jazzed up
> for it because there's something just "off" about the whole thing.
> Even though a great deal of it takes place at night it's a little too
> well lit. If I lived there I'd go walking around at night without
> thinking twice about it.
Batman can't really be Batman without the grit. Unles it's the Batman
with a spinning "ZOWIE!" across the scene.
> My little podunk town is gloomier in the dark
> than that place and I feel perfectly safe here.
Does your little podunk town have sirens wailing constantly throughout
the night? I still remember my first night in The Big City. I seriously
wondered how people managed to get ANY sleep. Nowdays, many years
later, the sound is not much different than the birds chirping.
Russell Watson
Wasn't there like a beret or something (standard now but for elite
forces only back then)? I seem to have a vague impression of something
Swiss Guardish about the whole getup.
>>
>> >
>> >But as far as CAPES in general go, they are NOT a reasonable choice to
>> >mix with skin-tight superhero costuming in a realistic world. I just
>> >don't believe that there is any way to combine the two in a Real World
>> >setting, and not make people point and laugh. (for some reason, Batman
>> >being an exception) On the other hand, the 18th century cloak is
>> >another manner, but, still, not with skin-tight colorful tights and
>> >such. Maybe I'm just too repressed?
>>
>> If so we're in the same boat. Of course the idea behind the superhero
>> costume as we know it was formed from people who do strenuous athletic
>> acts of derring-do in colorful, tight-fitting clothing: circus
>> acrobats and trapeze artists. And these people often do wear a cape as
>> part of their ensemble, however, the first thing they do before taking
>> to the air is to ditch the damn thing!
>
>And, more important, they do it inside a large circus tent or similar
>venue. You don't see such people normaly walking down a street! Unless
>there is a parade or a SciFi convention in town. OK, or a Reniassance
>Faire.
True enough.
>
>> As for the whole cloak thing, like I said in our discussion of
>> "Elseworlds" a couple of weeks or so ago the whole Batman thing works
>> better for me in the "Gotham by Gaslight" Victorian setting than in
>> any 20th Century version and for my money they could retcon the entire
>> thing back to that time frame and I'd probably read it religiously as
>> long as it was well-written.
>
>I've often wished that the public fashion was such that one could wear
>a cloak as normal wear without people laughing or throwing rotten
>vegetables. In the meantime, I'll wear my long, cliched trenchcoat.
The old cowboy style "duster" with the caped back, often in leather
instead of canvas, is actually popular here. Not a bad-looking coat. I
know a lot of biker types (or wannabes: RUBS in the parlance of the
"real" bikers) who wear them. It's actually a similar coat to the
thing Batman is wearing in that figure I posted a link to.
>
>> I saw the latest trailer for "The Dark Knight" with "Iron Man" last
>> night and the whole thing just looks too...sterile, I guess. There's
>> nothing dark and gritty about it, and Gotham looks awfully clean to be
>> a city in the throes of massive corruption. I just can't get jazzed up
>> for it because there's something just "off" about the whole thing.
>> Even though a great deal of it takes place at night it's a little too
>> well lit. If I lived there I'd go walking around at night without
>> thinking twice about it.
>
>Batman can't really be Batman without the grit. Unles it's the Batman
>with a spinning "ZOWIE!" across the scene.
Eggzactly, as Vincent Price would say...
>
>> My little podunk town is gloomier in the dark
>> than that place and I feel perfectly safe here.
>
>Does your little podunk town have sirens wailing constantly throughout
>the night? I still remember my first night in The Big City. I seriously
>wondered how people managed to get ANY sleep. Nowdays, many years
>later, the sound is not much different than the birds chirping.
Ironically enough, yes. I live where I can hear firetrucks (3 blocks
away), ambulances (less than 2 blocks away), sheriff department cars
(right across the highway from the ambulance place) and police cars
(about 2 blocks away in another direction) leave their respective
stations, which is damn near constantly. Between rednecks, 'boos and
beaners and their various, respective misadventures with automobiles,
knives, guns and fire they keep 'em hopping. Besides which there is a
fuller's earth processing plant about a mile away that uses a siren to
announce shift changes at 7:00 AM, 3 PM, and 11 PM as well as a noon
one to annouce lunch for the people who work days only, and due to the
acoustics it may as well be right outside my house. Oh, and we also
live in a town that is the juncture for 3 rail lines so we have trains
running through around the clock. The only thing that has changed in
the last 30 or so years is that the opening of the part of I-10 that
runs through here in the summer of '77 greatly reduced the number of
semis that run through the middle of town on US-90, which is hilly
here, so we used to have a lot more of that, too. Tallahassee is
actually relatively quiet late at night compared to my town.
On the whole thread we've had going here, I just came from the
bookstore and was surprised to find that PJ Farmer's _Tarzan Alive!_
is still/back in print in "trade papaerback" form. However, they
wanted $20 instead of the $15 or so a comparable volume usually
fetches, so I didn't get it. Was a time I'd have been on it like a
mockingbird on a junebug but I not that enthused any more. I might
pick it up on a whim one of these days but I wasn't feeling it today.
C.O. Jones
<russell...@comcast.net> wrote:
> On Sat, 03 May 2008 09:19:41 -0700, "C.O. Jones"
> <apairO...@solidbrass.com> wrote:
>
> >> >The Big Red Cheese didn't really have a overly "manly" thing going for
> >> >him, did he? What with the afore mentioned cape, the Fred MacMurray
> >> >face and the whole "good kid Billy Batson" personality! But talking
> >> >about the cape, didn't that design move over into the Richard Nixon
> >> >White House Guard (or whatever) uniforms? It seems that they might have
> >> >had that embroidered, off the sholder capes also. Or am I
> >> >misremembering?
> >>
> >> Your comments do evoke a memory of something of that sort, but I can't
> >> remember any specifics.
> >
> >IIRC, after the proposed uniform designs were made public, they died a
> >pretty quick death. According to public outcry, they looked too
> >European or "Disneylandish." (All things considered in hindsight, they
> >would have probably been right on target. Too Disneylandish, indeed)
>
> Wasn't there like a beret or something (standard now but for elite
> forces only back then)? I seem to have a vague impression of something
> Swiss Guardish about the whole getup.
All I really remember was that it wasn't "Normal American" for the
time. It seems that people thought that the design was "too much."
>
> >>
> >> >
> >> > >> As for the whole cloak thing, like I said in our discussion of
> >> "Elseworlds" a couple of weeks or so ago the whole Batman thing works
> >> better for me in the "Gotham by Gaslight" Victorian setting than in
> >> any 20th Century version and for my money they could retcon the entire
> >> thing back to that time frame and I'd probably read it religiously as
> >> long as it was well-written.
> >
> >I've often wished that the public fashion was such that one could wear
> >a cloak as normal wear without people laughing or throwing rotten
> >vegetables. In the meantime, I'll wear my long, cliched trenchcoat.
>
> The old cowboy style "duster" with the caped back, often in leather
> instead of canvas, is actually popular here. Not a bad-looking coat. I
> know a lot of biker types (or wannabes: RUBS in the parlance of the
> "real" bikers) who wear them. It's actually a similar coat to the
> thing Batman is wearing in that figure I posted a link to.
The Duster is even better than the extra long Trench Coat, but WAY more
expensive and harder to come by in my Extra Larger size. Odd,
considering that Tucson IS the Old West. But, then again, I thought
that there would be more cowboy hats when I moved here. Except for the
straw hat that the hispanics tend to wear. I guess there is the "Felt
is hot as shit in Tucson summers" thing going for it. Except during the
rodeo season, of course.
>
> >
> >>> >
> >> My little podunk town is gloomier in the dark
> >> than that place and I feel perfectly safe here.
> >
> >Does your little podunk town have sirens wailing constantly throughout
> >the night? I still remember my first night in The Big City. I seriously
> >wondered how people managed to get ANY sleep. Nowdays, many years
> >later, the sound is not much different than the birds chirping.
>
> Ironically enough, yes. I live where I can hear firetrucks (3 blocks
> away), ambulances (less than 2 blocks away), sheriff department cars
> (right across the highway from the ambulance place) and police cars
> (about 2 blocks away in another direction) leave their respective
> stations, which is damn near constantly. Between rednecks, 'boos and
> beaners and their various, respective misadventures with automobiles,
> knives, guns and fire they keep 'em hopping. Besides which there is a
> fuller's earth processing plant about a mile away that uses a siren to
> announce shift changes at 7:00 AM, 3 PM, and 11 PM as well as a noon
> one to annouce lunch for the people who work days only, and due to the
> acoustics it may as well be right outside my house. Oh, and we also
> live in a town that is the juncture for 3 rail lines so we have trains
> running through around the clock. The only thing that has changed in
> the last 30 or so years is that the opening of the part of I-10 that
> runs through here in the summer of '77 greatly reduced the number of
> semis that run through the middle of town on US-90, which is hilly
> here, so we used to have a lot more of that, too. Tallahassee is
> actually relatively quiet late at night compared to my town.
Sounds like a NOISY little podunk town you live in. The town I wint
through early gradeschool in usually had the monthly Air Raid Siren
test, and not much else. Of course the town's population was les than
250 people... But even the town I went to High School in, with it's ONE
red light and THREE gradeschools, when there was a fire or ambulance
siren, it was cause for, if not alarm, at least concern. (OK, it was
morbid curiosity) I'm sure it is much noisier now. I hear that they had
a murder there a few years back!
>
> On the whole thread we've had going here, I just came from the
> bookstore and was surprised to find that PJ Farmer's _Tarzan Alive!_
> is still/back in print in "trade papaerback" form. However, they
> wanted $20 instead of the $15 or so a comparable volume usually
> fetches, so I didn't get it. Was a time I'd have been on it like a
> mockingbird on a junebug but I not that enthused any more. I might
> pick it up on a whim one of these days but I wasn't feeling it today.
It's probably available in used at Amazon at a lesser price. Do books
START at 20 dollars nowdays? My purchasing whims are pretty much
non-existent as of late.
Russell Watson
<apairO...@solidbrass.com> wrote:
>The Duster is even better than the extra long Trench Coat, but WAY more
>expensive and harder to come by in my Extra Larger size. Odd,
>considering that Tucson IS the Old West. But, then again, I thought
>that there would be more cowboy hats when I moved here. Except for the
>straw hat that the hispanics tend to wear. I guess there is the "Felt
>is hot as shit in Tucson summers" thing going for it. Except during the
>rodeo season, of course.
Yeah, it ain't a cheap garment, and probably not practical for the
desert for the most part. Likewise the cowboy hats. I'm not a hat guy,
myself. In a place where the baseball/trucker cap is ubiquitous I tend
to eschew them when possible, though my hair has thinned enough in
recent years that I have to wear one if I'm going to be out in the sun
for any length of time or my noggin burns. When I'm out on the bike I
just keep my doo rag on when I'm off the thing and not wearing a skid
lid, but it looks a tad hooliganish to wear to something like that to
my grandson's baseball games. Even if I'm on the bike I usually take a
cap to wear to those. I own a heavy cotton fedora style hat and a sort
of straw stetson style hat with the silly pukka shell band around the
crown (fuckin' Parrot Head headgear) but seldom wear them except in
situations where I think I need more shade than a cap will provide,
like deep sea fishing on the gulf or my own trip to the AZ desert a
few years back.
I probably undersell my place a tad on the whole. We are actually a
small city of some roughly 7000 souls comprising some nearly 2800
households according to '04 census numbers, with a population density
of 916 per sq mile. Besides which the populated areas extend beyond
the city limits proper by a good bit, so those people only don't live
"in town" by wont of where some lines are on maps, but have next door
neighbors who do. We have a 4-lane US highway as the main drag through
town which prior to the opening of I-10 (which itself only runs 2
miles south of 90 at the closest point in town) was the primary artery
of east-west travel through north FL. I have talked to people from all
over the country who are old enough to have traveled in the state
before 1977 who know exactly where this place is because they have
been through here. We have about 7 or 8 traffic lights on 90 (called
Jefferson St inside the city limits) and 5 or 6 on the street
immediately south of 90 and 4 or 5 on the street immediately north of
90. The next street get skipped then the northernmost east-west gets a
handful of lights based on being the street that 3 of the local
schools are on as well as being major streets for traffic coming into
town out of south GA or our neighboring town to the east, Havana
(which is pronounced Eng phonetically, NOT like the capitol of Cuba).
The smallest burg in my county is Gretna and it is 1.9 sq miles and
has 1700 people, though only 1 traffic light. There are "communities"
that are wide spots in the road but don't really count as "towns" by
local reckoning that are probably more analogous to where you're from.
>>
>> On the whole thread we've had going here, I just came from the
>> bookstore and was surprised to find that PJ Farmer's _Tarzan Alive!_
>> is still/back in print in "trade papaerback" form. However, they
>> wanted $20 instead of the $15 or so a comparable volume usually
>> fetches, so I didn't get it. Was a time I'd have been on it like a
>> mockingbird on a junebug but I not that enthused any more. I might
>> pick it up on a whim one of these days but I wasn't feeling it today.
>
>It's probably available in used at Amazon at a lesser price. Do books
>START at 20 dollars nowdays? My purchasing whims are pretty much
>non-existent as of late.
Books are just outrageously priced any more, and damn me if the ones
I'm interested in don't seem to be the pricier ones most of the time.
Many of the authors whose books I like seem to always only come out in
trade paperback instead of the regular pocket size, which are pricey
enough at around $8 each. I have taken to passing on a lot of
paperbacks to see if the hardbacks will appear on the over-run tables
and have actually scored quite a few that way, getting a hardback for
$6 instead of a paperback for $8.
KT3000
It's understandable that you didn't know about it very fast. From what I
understand about basic the world could come to an end but if the camp
was spared and the military didn't think you needed to know, you'd never
know.
> and heard guys who had already finished basic and were in "casual"
> waiting for their advanced school to start and able to leave the base
> talking about this awesome movie called "Star Wars" they had seen over
> the 4 July weekend. I thought to myself "'Star Wars'?: that sounds
> like a stupid title for a movie!"
Imagine if Lucas had used his original title. "Adventures of the
Starkiller", or something like that.
> Of course with the exception of
> "2001..." a decade earlier sci-fi type movies were strictly B-movie
> affairs so I figured this had to be more of the same and couldn't
> figure out why these guys were so jazzed up about it. When I got to
> come home a couple of weeks later the brand new Capitol Cinemas which
> was still under interior construction had gotten 2 of its eventually 8
> theaters open in time to be the venue for that movie. My friends were
> just as hyper about it as the guys at Lackland had been, and had
> already seen it a couple of times each. They insisted that I go with
> them to see it and when we got there the ticket line ran halfway back
> up the parking lot to the highway. I had never seen anything like it
> and I told them there was no fuckin' way I was standing in that line
> to see a stupid movie. I ended up waiting about a couple more weeks
> until the hoopla died down a bit (it had been out for over a month by
> then) and caught it on a weeknight showing. It was still nearly full
> even at that.
I saw if first time (of what were to be about 12 viewings total) on
Tuesday night the second week it was showing, which was when it finally
didn't require standing in line. A brand new theater also by
coincidence. But even then it was a 500 seat theater and there were
probably at least 400 people there.
> After all that hype I found it enjoyable to watch but
> was not nearly as blown away by it as they had been. The FX were truly
> incredible for the time but the story was pretty lame IMO.
In 1977 the story didn't matter, but the weak story is why it doesn't
hold up well now.
KT3000
> In article <dklp14h11tmfsftni...@4ax.com>, Russell Watson
> <russell...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
>> On Sat, 03 May 2008 09:19:41 -0700, "C.O. Jones"
>> <apairO...@solidbrass.com> wrote:
>>
>>>>> The Big Red Cheese didn't really have a overly "manly" thing going for
>>>>> him, did he? What with the afore mentioned cape, the Fred MacMurray
>>>>> face and the whole "good kid Billy Batson" personality! But talking
>>>>> about the cape, didn't that design move over into the Richard Nixon
>>>>> White House Guard (or whatever) uniforms? It seems that they might have
>>>>> had that embroidered, off the sholder capes also. Or am I
>>>>> misremembering?
>>>> Your comments do evoke a memory of something of that sort, but I can't
>>>> remember any specifics.
>>> IIRC, after the proposed uniform designs were made public, they died a
>>> pretty quick death. According to public outcry, they looked too
>>> European or "Disneylandish." (All things considered in hindsight, they
>>> would have probably been right on target. Too Disneylandish, indeed)
>> Wasn't there like a beret or something (standard now but for elite
>> forces only back then)? I seem to have a vague impression of something
>> Swiss Guardish about the whole getup.
>
> All I really remember was that it wasn't "Normal American" for the
> time. It seems that people thought that the design was "too much."
"Sissy" is the word you're looking for. I can't really picture the
uniforms anymore but Nixon got the idea during a state tour of Europe
and seeing the guards at Versailles, etc. I remember a Hugh Haynie
cartoon at the time of a little kid talking to a guard at the White
House gate. I don't remember the setup line but the punch line was the
officer turning redfaced "No, I'm a White House policeman".
As I recall the berets Russell remembers weren't part of the original
design but were a stopgap replacement after the original plumed hats
vanished after only a couple of days. The rest of the uniforma lasted a
bit longer until replacements were readied.
Russell Watson
<apairO...@solidbrass.com> wrote:
>In article <vrvm141r9n8smtk68...@4ax.com>, Russell Watson
><russell...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
>> >I don't know Mack Bolan but that book was totally Punisher. In fact, the guy
>> >that played Frank Castle (The Punisher) in that Punisher movie with Travolta
>> >as the bad guy... he'd probably make a decent Mr Clark... or was it
>> >originally John Kelly?
>>
>> Mack Bolan is the main character of a series of books called "The
>> Executioner" that started in the early '70s and continues to this day.
>> You may have seen The Mad Scientist, the Artist Formerly Known as
>> Lurking Horror, and I discuss here before. Basically same origin story
>> as the Punisher, same MO except for the trademark shirt with the skull
>> on it. When I read the very first Punisher comic book I ever saw that
>> had his origin story in it my first thought was "I can't believe the
>> guy who writes the Bolan stories isn't suing Marvel for this!"
>
>I had the exact same thought. The fact that they had different names,
>and one had a skull t-shirt, was not enough in my mind to differentiate
>between the two basically identical characters.
I read somewhere that in an early Punisher comic there was an
interview with Don Pendelton where he kind of gave them a pass on
making Castle Bolan's artistically rendered doppelganger. Whether that
was after some under the table deal wherein he got recompensed for
theft of his intellectual property may never be known by any but the
concerned parties <G>, but he managed to come off as flattered in a
tongue-in-cheek sort of way at the "similarities" between the 2
characters.
Russell Watson
wrote:
I don't think I have ever heard of Nightveil or NoMan. I found
Nightveil in Wiki but not NoMan. That's she's an early '90s character
explains why she's unknown to me, though the Phantom Lady of which it
is derivative is an old character that I have read reprints of.
What sort of functionality does her cape have, as this is not
discussed in the article?
I don't know who has a bulletproof cape besides Superman, but I'm not
surprised that there is one. Actually makes sense, as it is one of the
few practical applications beyond invisibility or allowing the wearer
to glide as Batman can in the new movies (and in "Batman Returns").
>> but Superman's is so fixed in the public image of
>> the character that he'd look weird without it. Besides which, Captain
>> Marvel's was kind of queer, what with that whole off-the-shoulder
>> thing going on and the embroidery around the edges which appeared to
>> be pure decoration and not even symbolic of anything. Makes you wonder
>> if he had never had that particular disaster of a wardrobe accessory
>> if DC would have even thought him worth pursuing?
>
>His sales numbers were what made him a worthy target.
There is that...
KT3000
The wiki article is really lacking. Even the picture is of her retro
Golden Age masked adventuress identity of the Blue Bulleteer rather than
of her later life as the sorceress Nightveil. As Nightveil she has an
interdimensional cloak with a starfield lining through which she can
travel anywhere instantly - and take her superhero teammates with her.
Quite useful.
BTW she lives right down the road from you. The publisher AC comics is
in Orlando and most of their stories are set in the area.
NoMan was one of the Thunder Agents. (Or technically _T.H.U.N.D.E.R.
Agents_). _Thunder Agemts_ was published by Tower comics all through the
last half of the 60s and was topnotch. I can't believe you missed out.
NoMan had an invisibility cape (you called it below) that "when powered
up turned absolutely black reflecting no light rendering the wearer
invisible". I always thought that was one of the worse pseudo science
explanations ever.
> I don't know who has a bulletproof cape besides Superman, but I'm not
> surprised that there is one. Actually makes sense, as it is one of the
> few practical applications beyond invisibility or allowing the wearer
> to glide as Batman can in the new movies (and in "Batman Returns").
Now that you mention it there was also a Thunder Agent with a "flying
cape", agent Raven. He was a later introduction and I never did care for
him much. And his "cape" as they called it, was more a hybrid jetpack
and fanfold wings than a real cape.
Russell Watson
wrote:
That sounds familiar. I probably saw an issue or two and just don't
recall all the details. The comics hereabout were VERY limited. 99% of
the ones I ever got were off those revolving wire racks in a
convenience store (in fact the one that I still walk to from here now)
which didn't hold enough for them to carry anything but the really
good sellers for this area. I was grown before I ever saw an X-Men
book because I guess they were popular here so they they didn't stock
them. The drug stores had better variety but I didn't get in there
often enough or stay long enough when I did to peruse the racks at
leisure. I usually had to snag something I was already familiar with
and didn't get to try new stuff much. By the early '70s I had more
freedom to get around but was also starting to get more interested in
spending my money on regular paperback books and on records than
comics.
>NoMan had an invisibility cape (you called it below) that "when powered
>up turned absolutely black reflecting no light rendering the wearer
>invisible". I always thought that was one of the worse pseudo science
>explanations ever.
>
>
>> I don't know who has a bulletproof cape besides Superman, but I'm not
>> surprised that there is one. Actually makes sense, as it is one of the
>> few practical applications beyond invisibility or allowing the wearer
>> to glide as Batman can in the new movies (and in "Batman Returns").
>
>Now that you mention it there was also a Thunder Agent with a "flying
>cape", agent Raven. He was a later introduction and I never did care for
>him much. And his "cape" as they called it, was more a hybrid jetpack
>and fanfold wings than a real cape.
Sounds like that thing they are really testing for the military now.
Saw something online about it earlier this week. Funny how much of the
stuff from pulp and the comics is real now. When I was re-reading the
Doc Savage books I have earlier this week I was struck by how many
"fantastic" gadgets they had that are common now.
C.O. Jones
<kt3...@mad.scientist.com> wrote:
> > All I really remember was that it wasn't "Normal American" for the
> > time. It seems that people thought that the design was "too much."
>
> "Sissy" is the word you're looking for.
I would have looked for a stronger, crueler, and less PC word, but OK.
C.O. Jones
<kt3...@mad.scientist.com> wrote:
> NoMan was one of the Thunder Agents. (Or technically _T.H.U.N.D.E.R.
> Agents_). _Thunder Agemts_ was published by Tower comics all through the
> last half of the 60s and was topnotch. I can't believe you missed out.
> NoMan had an invisibility cape (you called it below) that "when powered
> up turned absolutely black reflecting no light rendering the wearer
> invisible". I always thought that was one of the worse pseudo science
> explanations ever.
NoMan was also an android, and like our favorite Cylons, when one body
would get killed off, he just powered up another body. The entire line
was pretty much art by Wally Wood. Man, he could draw!
>
> > I don't know who has a bulletproof cape besides Superman, but I'm not
> > surprised that there is one. Actually makes sense, as it is one of the
> > few practical applications beyond invisibility or allowing the wearer
> > to glide as Batman can in the new movies (and in "Batman Returns").
>
> Now that you mention it there was also a Thunder Agent with a "flying
> cape", agent Raven. He was a later introduction and I never did care for
> him much. And his "cape" as they called it, was more a hybrid jetpack
> and fanfold wings than a real cape.
The biggest problem I had with Raven was that he NEVER had a good
artist. Plus, by then, I believe the original run of THUNDER was just
about over.
Russell Watson
wrote:
Yep, they take away watches, radios, TV, newspapers, etc. Some people
got so fucked up they didn't have a clue what time of day it was. A
guy asked me once why the sun wasn't going down and I told because it
was mid-afternoon. He thought the last meal we had was evening chow,
not noon! I remember that when we went to some place on base (but not
what it was, for some reason) there was a newspaper box outside and
the headline on the paper was that MLK assassin James Earl Ray had
escaped from prison. When we got inside the building someone had a
radio on their desk and it was playing "Heard it in a Love Song" by
the Marshall Tucker Band, which was the last record I had bought
before going in. When that song was done "Suspiscious Minds" came on,
but it was the Waylon Jennings version, not Elvis.
>
>
>> and heard guys who had already finished basic and were in "casual"
>> waiting for their advanced school to start and able to leave the base
>> talking about this awesome movie called "Star Wars" they had seen over
>> the 4 July weekend. I thought to myself "'Star Wars'?: that sounds
>> like a stupid title for a movie!"
>
>Imagine if Lucas had used his original title. "Adventures of the
>Starkiller", or something like that.
Now that's cheesy.
Good point.
C.O. Jones
<russell...@comcast.net> wrote:
> >
> >It's understandable that you didn't know about it very fast. From what I
> >understand about basic the world could come to an end but if the camp
> >was spared and the military didn't think you needed to know, you'd never
> >know.
>
> Yep, they take away watches, radios, TV, newspapers, etc. Some people
> got so fucked up they didn't have a clue what time of day it was. A
> guy asked me once why the sun wasn't going down and I told because it
> was mid-afternoon. He thought the last meal we had was evening chow,
> not noon!
My first (and only) night in Casual status, they welcomed us by having
a fire drill. They came in screaming as was their way. I jumped up and
started getting dressed. The guy next to me asked what I was doing and
told me it was a fire drill. I thought it was the next day and time for
me to go! It was 10:30 at night!
I guess the point of Basic was to make the military training your whole
world. I was there over Christmas, so they let us have a half hour of a
Christmas variety show on a TV brought in for the occasion.
> I remember that when we went to some place on base (but not
> what it was, for some reason) there was a newspaper box outside and
> the headline on the paper was that MLK assassin James Earl Ray had
> escaped from prison. When we got inside the building someone had a
> radio on their desk and it was playing "Heard it in a Love Song" by
> the Marshall Tucker Band, which was the last record I had bought
> before going in. When that song was done "Suspiscious Minds" came on,
> but it was the Waylon Jennings version, not Elvis.
During a Sunday afternoon break late in the training, we were allowed
to take a break at a snack stand. Someone had "fixed" the jukebox, so
all that it played the entire time I was there was "Sweetpea" by Tommy
Roe. Either someone really liked the song, or else they were torturing
us, I'm not sure which.
Russell Watson
<apairO...@solidbrass.com> wrote:
>In article <7ekq14l5kmmfggd3c...@4ax.com>, Russell Watson
><russell...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
>> >
>> >It's understandable that you didn't know about it very fast. From what I
>> >understand about basic the world could come to an end but if the camp
>> >was spared and the military didn't think you needed to know, you'd never
>> >know.
>>
>> Yep, they take away watches, radios, TV, newspapers, etc. Some people
>> got so fucked up they didn't have a clue what time of day it was. A
>> guy asked me once why the sun wasn't going down and I told because it
>> was mid-afternoon. He thought the last meal we had was evening chow,
>> not noon!
>
>My first (and only) night in Casual status, they welcomed us by having
>a fire drill. They came in screaming as was their way. I jumped up and
>started getting dressed. The guy next to me asked what I was doing and
>told me it was a fire drill. I thought it was the next day and time for
>me to go! It was 10:30 at night!
>
>I guess the point of Basic was to make the military training your whole
>world.
I assume that was the old wooden WWII-era barracks that they were
always harping on us would burn down in 2 minutes flat?
They're pretty upfront during the screaming binge that is
"orientation" when you first arrive that they expect you to not sleep,
eat, bathe, shit, or shave without being told by them that it is time
to do so. It has a very disorienting effect on some folks, especially
when they roust you in the middle of the night. When it's lights out
at 2100 and you fall into and instant exhaustion induced deep sleep
and then are awakened noisily and hour or two later it is very easy to
believe that you have slept the entire night, since you are used to
being run out of bed at 0500 (or Oh-dark-thirty in military parlance)
when it is still dark out anyway. we used to do PT, shower, shave and
be at chow before full daylight.
>I was there over Christmas, so they let us have a half hour of a
>Christmas variety show on a TV brought in for the occasion.
I was there for July 4th and we got the day off, though being under
confinement still it didn't do us much good. It was really a holiday
for the instructors, but they did let us go into the day room and
watch TV and read and stuff. You weren't allowed in your bunk, though.
You could sit on the edge of it but better not get caught lying down.
Sillbugger shit all the way around. "Instilling discipline", y'know?
>
>> I remember that when we went to some place on base (but not
>> what it was, for some reason) there was a newspaper box outside and
>> the headline on the paper was that MLK assassin James Earl Ray had
>> escaped from prison. When we got inside the building someone had a
>> radio on their desk and it was playing "Heard it in a Love Song" by
>> the Marshall Tucker Band, which was the last record I had bought
>> before going in. When that song was done "Suspiscious Minds" came on,
>> but it was the Waylon Jennings version, not Elvis.
>
>During a Sunday afternoon break late in the training, we were allowed
>to take a break at a snack stand. Someone had "fixed" the jukebox, so
>all that it played the entire time I was there was "Sweetpea" by Tommy
>Roe. Either someone really liked the song, or else they were torturing
>us, I'm not sure which.
Yeah, we had those too in later days. Sundays usually meant laundry
duty, policing up the grounds around the barracks, etc. and a little
bit of slack time in the afternoons to write letters and such.
C.O. Jones
<russell...@comcast.net> wrote:
> On Sun, 04 May 2008 11:54:58 -0700, "C.O. Jones"
> <apairO...@solidbrass.com> wrote:
>
> >In article <7ekq14l5kmmfggd3c...@4ax.com>, Russell Watson
> ><russell...@comcast.net> wrote:
> >
> >> >
> >> >It's understandable that you didn't know about it very fast. From what I
> >> >understand about basic the world could come to an end but if the camp
> >> >was spared and the military didn't think you needed to know, you'd never
> >> >know.
> >>
> >> Yep, they take away watches, radios, TV, newspapers, etc. Some people
> >> got so fucked up they didn't have a clue what time of day it was. A
> >> guy asked me once why the sun wasn't going down and I told because it
> >> was mid-afternoon. He thought the last meal we had was evening chow,
> >> not noon!
> >
> >My first (and only) night in Casual status, they welcomed us by having
> >a fire drill. They came in screaming as was their way. I jumped up and
> >started getting dressed. The guy next to me asked what I was doing and
> >told me it was a fire drill. I thought it was the next day and time for
> >me to go! It was 10:30 at night!
> >
> >I guess the point of Basic was to make the military training your whole
> >world.
>
> I assume that was the old wooden WWII-era barracks that they were
> always harping on us would burn down in 2 minutes flat?
Those were the ones. With a row of bunkbeds all the way down both
sides, and two floors.
> They're pretty upfront during the screaming binge that is
> "orientation" when you first arrive that they expect you to not sleep,
> eat, bathe, shit, or shave without being told by them that it is time
> to do so. It has a very disorienting effect on some folks, especially
> when they roust you in the middle of the night. When it's lights out
> at 2100 and you fall into and instant exhaustion induced deep sleep
> and then are awakened noisily and hour or two later it is very easy to
> believe that you have slept the entire night, since you are used to
> being run out of bed at 0500 (or Oh-dark-thirty in military parlance)
> when it is still dark out anyway. we used to do PT, shower, shave and
> be at chow before full daylight.
I'm sure that by "be at" chow meant that you doubletimed in formation
to the chow hall as the sun was thinking about making it's entrance!
>
> >I was there over Christmas, so they let us have a half hour of a
> >Christmas variety show on a TV brought in for the occasion.
>
> I was there for July 4th and we got the day off, though being under
> confinement still it didn't do us much good. It was really a holiday
> for the instructors, but they did let us go into the day room and
> watch TV and read and stuff. You weren't allowed in your bunk, though.
> You could sit on the edge of it but better not get caught lying down.
> Sillbugger shit all the way around. "Instilling discipline", y'know?
I understand and accept the general idea of discipline. The biggest
liability that a "feller" usually brought to the military was a basic
lack of understanding to the whole idea that, if YOU fucked-up, it was
entirely possible that you wouldn't be the only one to die.
> >
> >> I remember that when we went to some place on base (but not
> >> what it was, for some reason) there was a newspaper box outside and
> >> the headline on the paper was that MLK assassin James Earl Ray had
> >> escaped from prison. When we got inside the building someone had a
> >> radio on their desk and it was playing "Heard it in a Love Song" by
> >> the Marshall Tucker Band, which was the last record I had bought
> >> before going in. When that song was done "Suspiscious Minds" came on,
> >> but it was the Waylon Jennings version, not Elvis.
> >
> >During a Sunday afternoon break late in the training, we were allowed
> >to take a break at a snack stand. Someone had "fixed" the jukebox, so
> >all that it played the entire time I was there was "Sweetpea" by Tommy
> >Roe. Either someone really liked the song, or else they were torturing
> >us, I'm not sure which.
>
> Yeah, we had those too in later days. Sundays usually meant laundry
> duty, policing up the grounds around the barracks, etc. and a little
> bit of slack time in the afternoons to write letters and such.
IIRC, we only had the one. OTOH, Vietnam was picking up, and the Air
Force had acellerated the basic training time to 30 (Training) days.
Mine was longer because of the whole Christmas/New Year holidays in the
middle of it. Mostly, in the theater on my mind, it's a blur. Not just
because it was a long time ago. I didn't remember that much a month
after I was away from it.
Ray O'Hara
"Bruins72" <brui...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:67rgg2F...@mid.individual.net...
>
> I never knew about Quigley Down Under being written for McQueen. I thought
> Selleck was good in that but I can see McQueen doing it too. Unfortately,
> I've only seen a couple McQueen movies. I loved The Great Escape and
thought
> he played his character well. He was probably my favorite in that movie. I
> hated the Magnificent Seven though. That was just a boring movie to me. It
> was cheesy too, a classic example of why I don't watch old movies. Anyhow,
> back to Selleck... wasn't he almost cast as Han Solo in Star Wars? Or
maybe
> Lucas had him in mind?
>
mcqueens best movie is 'the sand pebbles' followed 'by hell is for heroes'
and 'le mans'.
Ray O'Hara
"Russell Watson" <russell...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:l93i145r51ed1iqkk...@4ax.com...
>
> Funny you mention that: when I read the novel originally Dafoe is
> exactly who I pictured Clark as being! It wasn't until _Without
> Remorse_, which described the character's physical type along with his
> personality, that I started seeing him as someone more like a younger
> Tom Berenger, or that other guy who played on "Flight of the Intruder"
> as Dafoe's pilot.
dafoe???? he was horribly miscast as clark.
dafoe doesn't strike me as looking like a seal or anything like i ever
pictured clark as looking like.
i felt that movie failed on every level particularly casting.
Bruins72
> On Fri, 2 May 2008 15:45:59 -0400, "Bruins72" <brui...@yahoo.com>
> wrote:
>
>>"Russell Watson" <russell...@comcast.net> wrote in message
>>> On Fri, 2 May 2008 10:32:02 -0400, "Bruins72" <brui...@yahoo.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>>"Russell Watson" <russell...@comcast.net> wrote in message
>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> No, _Red Rabbit_ would actually be the earliest book chronologically
>>>>> in the Ryan series, set around the time of the attempted assassination
>>>>> of John Paul II (of course in Clancy's novel it's Ryan who first
>>>>> figures out and then foils the plot). The only earlier story in the
>>>>> Ryan-verse so far is _Without Remorse_, which is set around '72.
>>>>
>>>>But the book came out later, right? Chronologically it happened earliest
>>>>but
>>>>it must've come out after I stopped reading his books. I was pretty sure
>>>>I
>>>>had read all of his books at the time.
>>>
>>> Yes, in publishing order it's the last of the Jack Ryan novels so far.
>>> The one after that takes up with his kid. Something about a Tiger, but
>>> I never read it. Clancy's novels really started to run to Hackville
>>> starting with _Rainbow Six_ and by the time I forced my way through
>>> the tedious _Red Rabbit_ I was done with him.
>>
>>I actually liked Rainbow Six. I liked the dynamic between Mr Clark and
>>Ding
>>going back to Clear and Present Danger. Rainbow Six had that plus it had
>>that international squad of badasses hunting terrorists. It was a fun read
>>for me.
>
> I read fast and can take down a Clancy-type book sometimes in 2 or 3
> evenings. The problem with that is that you tend to notice things like
> little inconsistencies or reptitiveness that might have been forgotten
> if you spread the book out over a longer span of time. Here's a post
> and what I posted in reponse to someone on alt.books.tom-clancy soon
> after reading that book in Jan '99:
>
> "On Sat, 30 Jan 1999 12:34:47 -0600, "gws" <g...@oscn.net> wrote:
>
>>R6 is, hands down, the most poorly edited "big time" book I have
>>ever read. That has been the uniform reaction here. I suspect
>>suspect the reason to be that TC will not allow professional
>>editors to edit his books. I believe that any professional
>>editor who let work such as R6 out the door would soon be an
>>ex-professional editor.
>>
>>Grey Satterfield
>
> My reply below...
>
> Lessee:
> At different places in the book Mary Bannister is said to be 26, 23
> and 21 years of age.
> During the Worldpark hostage scenario the point is made that one
> terrorist accidentally refers to another by his real name while the
> phone on which he is talking to Doc is still off hook, leading you
> expect that this will come to play a part in the negotiations. It is
> never mentioned again.
> Certain phraseology, such as using the zipping of one's pants as an
> analogy for how automatically characters perform certain tasks, is
> used too repetitiously to be effective. Also references to criminals
> as "mutts". This might not be as noticeable to someone who reads a few
> chapters a night, but it is not unusual for me to read half of such a
> book in a single sitting, so I find the lack of original phrasing to
> be somewhat irritating.
> The plot contrivances that allowed for Ding's team to be on alert for
> every scenario were a bit transparent.
> An agent of Dmitri's caliber should have picked up on the fact that
> the same team did the first two takedowns without having to see the
> third.
> Yep, this one definately had some problems."
Yikes! Okay, I can see your point there. I guess I never noticed those
things since I've never been a fast reader. A book will usually last me a
bit because I'll only do a bit per sitting. Plus, I've never been the most
observant guy on the block.
>>>>Let me just say again, Without Remorse was one of my favorite books.
>>>>That
>>>>book could be made into a great movie!
>>>
>>> _Without Remorse_ is definitely one of his easier books to read.
>>> Biggest problem I have with it is that it reads like a Mack Bolan
>>> Executioner novel with the names changed (or a Punisher comic book:
>>> same premise). Doesn't mean it isn't good, just very derivative of a
>>> couple of earlier storylines with the departure coming when he gets
>>> recruited into the CIA and pardoned for his "crimes". Gotta love the
>>> scene in the later book (can't remember which one now) where he and
>>> the Coast Guard guy who was his former friend then hunter come face to
>>> face almost 30 years after the CG dude thought he was dead.
>>
>>I don't know Mack Bolan but that book was totally Punisher. In fact, the
>>guy
>>that played Frank Castle (The Punisher) in that Punisher movie with
>>Travolta
>>as the bad guy... he'd probably make a decent Mr Clark... or was it
>>originally John Kelly?
>
> Mack Bolan is the main character of a series of books called "The
> Executioner" that started in the early '70s and continues to this day.
> You may have seen The Mad Scientist, the Artist Formerly Known as
> Lurking Horror, and I discuss here before. Basically same origin story
> as the Punisher, same MO except for the trademark shirt with the skull
> on it. When I read the very first Punisher comic book I ever saw that
> had his origin story in it my first thought was "I can't believe the
> guy who writes the Bolan stories isn't suing Marvel for this!"
Seriously? WOW! That's pretty bad.
>>I remember that bit you're talking about with the coast guard guy. Didn't
>>he
>>also have some sort of interaction with Jack Ryan's dad too?
>
> Yeah, Portagee was the CG guy who was Kelly's friend while he lived on
> the island and later got caught up in the hunt for him (Kelly's
> "death" was arranged by tricking the CG that he had been killed in a
> boat chase), while Emmett Ryan was the Baltimore cop who caught the
> case initially after Kelly snuffed the dope dealers who killed the
> girl he had rescued.
That's what it was. Now I'm remembering a bit. I read the book ages ago,
when it was only available in hardcover I think.
Speaking of books, I've got to grab a book to read on the beach. I've got my
honeymoon coming up (I'll be leaving for my honeymoon 3 weeks from today!)
and I'll need something to read while I'm relaxing. I'm thinking about
picking up Stephen King's "Cell". It's in paperback now and it's supposed to
be a very light and easy read.
--
-
--
-
Bruins72
http://www.myspace.com/billbruins72
Bruins72
Yeah but the average movie-goer didn't subscribe to Variety or any of the
sci-fi mags. You had to be really into the movies to get those things. Most
people weren't. These days I tend to find a lot of these things out without
even going to a movie website. I just see them on my MSN start page or
Yahoo. Then I find out all sorts of info when I check out places like Aint
It Cool News. The internet really changed all of that. Info overload!
> Fridays were like Christmas every week. One never quite knew what would be
> in theaters until the morning paper or a tour down Main street. Even when
> you knew which big pictures were coming out there was still the question
> of how many weeks it would take to get to your town - if ever. Fifty weeks
> for _Doc Savage_, and probably only then because the theater was desperate
> to fill a week.
I think that might have been a little before my time. We had 2 theaters near
where I lived. Once had 4 screens and the other had 6 or 8. I can't
remember. I think the bigger one expanded at some point. Anyhow, the two
theaters were about 2 miles apart so they didn't show the same movies. They
were in competition with each other. You had to check and see where the
movie you wanted to see was playing. They would keep movies around longer
than, or so it seemed. Then there were other theaters in the city that would
show some of the movies they had and a couple that they weren't showing
anymore. They were a little behind them. We usually saw ads on the tv
leading up to the movies coming out but it was nothing like it is now! These
days you can't go 10 minutes without seeing an ad for the next big movie.
> I remember the first time I ever heard of _Star Wars_ - spring 1977, a
> theater had the lobby card set taped to a front window. (Show of hands how
> many youngsters here know what lobby cards are?) Just from those eight
> pictures I could tell "this is going to be the coolest thing ever, so
> better rush to see it when it opens as it won't last more than a week".
> Well by the time it came to town it had been playing bigger cities for a
> month and everyone but everyone knew it was the biggest thing ever, and it
> was two weeks before you could get in without standing in line for a
> couple of hours. I was sort of miffed. LOL
What were lobby cards? I may have seen them but not known what they were. I
saw tons of movies at the theaters back in the 80's, so if they were around
back then, I probably saw them.
Bruins72
> I assume that was the old wooden WWII-era barracks that they were
> always harping on us would burn down in 2 minutes flat?
> They're pretty upfront during the screaming binge that is
> "orientation" when you first arrive that they expect you to not sleep,
> eat, bathe, shit, or shave without being told by them that it is time
> to do so. It has a very disorienting effect on some folks, especially
> when they roust you in the middle of the night. When it's lights out
> at 2100 and you fall into and instant exhaustion induced deep sleep
> and then are awakened noisily and hour or two later it is very easy to
> believe that you have slept the entire night, since you are used to
> being run out of bed at 0500 (or Oh-dark-thirty in military parlance)
> when it is still dark out anyway. we used to do PT, shower, shave and
> be at chow before full daylight.
When I was a kid we used to mess with my best friend during sleepovers by
waiting until he was asleep for a couple hours and then telling him it was
like 10 AM the next morning. He'd have a hell of a time falling back asleep
after that because he'd feel fully rested. We also used to talk to him in
his sleep and tell him to do things, which he would then do in his sleep and
tell us about when we woke him. But that's another story.
To this day I hate being up and out the door before the sun rises! I
remember going out to do PT when it was still pitch black out. People just
aren't supposed to be up and about that early! I've also got a serious
punctuality obsession thanks to the military. If I'm not early, I feel like
I'm late. Whenever I have an appointment, I'm there half an hour early. And
god forbid if I am ever late for work or something. If I am, my day is
RUINED! Thanks, Air Force!
Russell Watson
wrote:
>"KT3000" <kt3...@mad.scientist.com> wrote in message
>news:H4mdndPcDIFxbobV...@earthlink.com...
>
>> Fridays were like Christmas every week. One never quite knew what would be
>> in theaters until the morning paper or a tour down Main street. Even when
>> you knew which big pictures were coming out there was still the question
>> of how many weeks it would take to get to your town - if ever. Fifty weeks
>> for _Doc Savage_, and probably only then because the theater was desperate
>> to fill a week.
>
>I think that might have been a little before my time.
Mid-'70s --- you were just a pup!
As for Doc Savage, I never did get to see that damn thing in theaters.
Saw it on VHS around '84 or thereabout. one of the earliest flicks I
rented when I finally got into that scene.
C.O. Jones
<russell...@comcast.net> wrote:
Mid '70's. I do believe that is when I first got into VCR. Of course,
it was Betamax, and the remote controller had a long ass wire on it
connecting it to the machine. My first two "commercial" (HA!) Tapes
were Star Wars and Fantasia. From this address in New Jersey... My
first LEGITIMITE pre-recorded tape was King Kong.
KT3000
Lobby cards were officially discontinued in the US market in the mid 80s
but they really disappeared in the mid 70s. But they are still made
today for some foreign markets.
Lobby cards were mini portrait format posters, not much bigger than a
standard sheet of paper, displayed in special cases in and outside
theaters. They came in sets of I believe eight, one depicting the
standard ad campaign, one key credits, and the remainder various scenes
from the movie.
They were pretty common at single screens and drive-in concession stands
until about the mid seventies when with more and more movies the lobby
card displays would be empty, like there weren't any cards available or
something, and then theaters started taking out the lobby display cases.
The theater where I saw the _Star Wars_ set didn't have any display
cases but special taped the _SW_ set to the windows.
I've always suspected multiplexes did in lobby cards. I've never seen
them at multiplexes, and it sort of makes sense. With only one movie
playing and not that many coming, single screens had plenty of wall
space to fill and a need for non-repetitive wall content, a problem
multis don't have.
KT3000
> On Tue, 6 May 2008 13:51:06 -0400, "Bruins72" <brui...@yahoo.com>
> wrote:
>
>> "KT3000" <kt3...@mad.scientist.com> wrote in message
>> news:H4mdndPcDIFxbobV...@earthlink.com...
>
>>> Fridays were like Christmas every week. One never quite knew what would be
>>> in theaters until the morning paper or a tour down Main street. Even when
>>> you knew which big pictures were coming out there was still the question
>>> of how many weeks it would take to get to your town - if ever. Fifty weeks
>>> for _Doc Savage_, and probably only then because the theater was desperate
>>> to fill a week.
>> I think that might have been a little before my time.
>
> Mid-'70s --- you were just a pup!
> As for Doc Savage, I never did get to see that damn thing in theaters.
I was lucky. It had bombed so bad in the opening cities it was
essentially dead, and the only reason it ever came anywhere near me was
a new multi opened and they wanted to open with all "new" movies. I had
to cross a picket line also as the projectionist's union was picketing
that the new place didn't use a projectionist per screen.
> Saw it on VHS around '84 or thereabout. one of the earliest flicks I
> rented when I finally got into that scene.
By then I'd seen it twice. Second time was at college as part of an all
night "worse movies ever" beach party type in the student center
ballroom. _Doc Savage_ was at like 2:30 am following _Plan Nine From
Outer Space_. Six movies that night but I don't remember what else. I do
remember the cheap (and bad - Bud of course) beer and that by 2:30 the
crowd was pretty rowdy so I was really happy I wasn't seeing _Doc
Savage_ for the first time.
Bruins72
Mid 70's? I think I was watching Disney cartoons then and not much else.