Archive for August 8th, 2022

Short observation on film.

Monday, August 8th, 2022

The Saturday Night Movie Group watched “The Last Emperor” over the weekend.

“The Last Emperor” is a beautiful looking movie. Wikipedia claims the budget was $23.8 million in 1987 dollars and every penny of that shows on the screen. Of course, the production had a lot of help from the Communist Chinese government, so I’m sure they were able to stretch their budget quite a bit…

(IMDB says £23,000,000. I’m not sure what the conversion factor between 1987 pounds and US dollars is.)

Here’s my quick point: $23.8 million in 1987 dollars translates to $62,079,241.20 in 2022 dollars.

The “unspekable” “Batgirl” movie that is allegedly so bad Warner Brothers won’t release it cost $90 to $100 million (sources vary).

I guess talent will out. Helped, of course, by the Commies.

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Obit watch: August 8, 2022.

Monday, August 8th, 2022

Clu Gulager, long time character actor. THR.

165 acting credits in IMDB. Man was in everything, from “The Virginian” to “The F.B.I” to “The Last Picture Show” to “Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood”, with lots of stops along the way…

…including “Mannix”. (“The Man Who Wasn’t There”, season 6, episode 16.)

Roger E. Mosley. Credits beyond “Magnum, P.I.” include “The Rockford Files”, “McCloud”, “McQ” (which Clu Gulager was also in), “The Mack”, and “The Sixth Sense” (the 1972 TV series).

As Mosley remembered it, his agent told him: ” ‘It’s starring this guy Tom Selleck. Tom Selleck has made about five pilot shows … and none of them has sold. So here’s what you do, Roger: Sign up for the show, go over to Hawaii, they’ll treat you good for the 20 days it will take to shoot the [pilot], you’ll get a lot of money, and then you come home. A show with Tom Selleck always fails, and you’ll be fine.’
“Well, 8 1/2 years later … “
Mosley in real life was a licensed private helicopter pilot (something the producers discovered after he was hired, he said) but not allowed to fly on the series.

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