New York's Vulture blog has a great, too-short interview with "Fritz the Cat" animator Ralph Bakshi (the subject of an exhibition at the Animazing Gallery running through the end of the month) that's worthy of its own post.

Key quotes:

On giving Thomas Kinkade his start as a background artist on "Fire and Ice": "That son of a bitch! Kinkade was the coolest. If Kinkade wasn't a painter, he'd be one of those cult leaders."

On "Night Moves" being used at the end of "American Pop": "' 'Night Moves' sucks! I was furious! It was all wrong. I had a brilliant song in mind, but they just wanted too much money. I forget what it was. I've blocked it out. If I remember, I'll give you a call.' [Ed. note: True to his word, Bakshi telephoned Vulture from a busy street corner less than an hour after our interview, and confessed that the song he originally had in mind was 'Freebird.']"

On the music in "Lord of the Rings": "I hate Leonard Rosenman's music in Lord of the Rings. I thought it was clichéd. Gregorian chants -- what else is new? I wanted Led Zeppelin because they were right for the film. The film would have been seen by every hippie in the country. I was one of them."

[Photo: "Fire and Ice," Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation, 1983]

+ Animator Ralph Bakshi on Why 'American Pop,' Ended With a Lame Bob Seger Song (New York)

By Alison Willmore in In quotes | Link | Recommended (0)

Tags: Fire and Ice, Lord of the Rings, Ralph Bakshi, Thomas Kinkade

A survey of who's been saying what:

"I don't even say I'm not a liberal. I just say I'm not brain dead any more. I just want to consider the other guy's point of view. It's a wonderful lesson for me to learn so late in life."
       —David Mamet on his March Village Voice essay "Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal'" (which you can find here), at the Boston Globe

"I like Frank Rich a lot. I know him. I like the whole editorial. I am not eager to have an obituary written for my film before the film appears in theaters."
       —Errol Morris on Frank Rich's April New York Times editorial (which you can find here), at the Boston Phoenix

"I like to eat egg salad sandwiches."
       —David Lynch on his New York routine, at the New York Observer

"I don't know what the f..k they are talking about. I went out more since there was no reason to stay at home. Not a big deal. I think they were looking for some new development to introduce into the Harrison Ford story, so they went for that and the appearance of an earring was enough for them to generate the whole mid-life crisis thing."
       —Harrison Ford on not having a midlife crisis, at the Australian

"In a weird way, it's looking more like a sequel to 'Pan's Labyrinth' than 'Hellboy' -- it's 'Pan's Labyrinth' on speed. For the first time, it feels like both aspects of [Guillermo del Toro]'s career have merged."
       —Producer Lloyd Levin on "Hellboy II: The Rise of the Golden Army," at the LA Times

[Photo: David Mamet talks to Chiwetel Ejiofor on the set of "Redbelt," Sony Classics, 2008]

+ 'Redbelt' master (Boston Globe)
+ Photo op? (Boston Phoenix)
+ David Lynch Talks About Twin Peaks, World Peace and His Love of New York Deli Food (NY Observer)
+ The accidental hero (The Australian)
+ Guillermo del Toro dreams big on 'Hellboy II: The Rise of the Golden Army' (LA Times)

By Alison Willmore in In quotes | Link | Recommended (2)

Tags: David Lynch, David Mamet, Errol Morris, Guillermo del Toro, Harrison Ford

Another tour around the interview circuit:

"It's been axiomatic that documentaries are incapable of presenting the entire truth since the Lumière brothers first pointed a camera at workers leaving a factory, then got them to leave all over again for a second take."
       —Guy Maddin on the blurry line between doc and narrative at the Village Voice

"[C]ome on! Planet of the Apes? It was so below what we were doing!"
       —Dan Richter on playing the ape with the bone at the beginning of "2001: A Space Odyssey," at New York

"That had one of the best martial-arts fight scenes I've ever seen. Astonishing. I bought it for that. Fight choreography? Yeah, what choreography? As action movies go, I don't know how you could do better than that one."
       —Lou Reed (who apparently finally tied the knot with Laurie Anderson) on "The Bourne Ultimatum," at the Washington Post

"Since I've become a father my attitudes have changed. I see my son play around with something for hours. I try to do that now with cinema."
       —Fatih Akin on "The Edge of Heaven" at the Sydney Morning Herald

"That month where I was smoking constantly, I thought it would be like when you catch a little kid smoking cigarettes, and you make him smoke a whole pack. I wake-and-bake on occasion, and I smoke almost every evening, but smoking day in and day out for 30 days, I thought by the end, I was going to be sick of it and that would be it. I'd either smoke pot rarely, or not at all. But Day 31, partway through the day, I lit up a joint."
       —Doug Benson on his "'Super Size Me' with weed" doc "Super High Me" at the Onion AV Club

"I bet Woody went longer, because I think I was there from September to October. I only went to one class. I went to the movies on 42nd Street. It wasn't NYU's fault, I don't blame them. I was out of my mind. I never went to class. Back then I was on LSD. Speed. Diet pills. I was up a lot. I had to see four movies a day; I couldn't be going to class except to steal textbooks and then go sell them back so I had money to go to the movies."
       —John Waters on whether he or Woody Allen attended NYU longer, at Details [via BoingBoing]

[Photo: "My Winnipeg," IFC Films, 2007]

+ Talking With Winnipeg's Remarkably Well-Adjusted Guy Maddin (Village Voice)
+ Dan Richter on Playing the Ape in '2001', Life With John and Yoko (New York)
+ "I love to get out and see movies" (Washington Post)
+ Turkish delight (Sydney Morning Herald)
+ Doug Benson (Onion AV Club)
+ John Waters (Details)

By Alison Willmore in In quotes | Link | Recommended (2)

Tags: Dan Richter, Doug Benson, Fatih Akin, Guy Maddin, John Waters, Lou Reed

A tour round the interview circuit:

"I am a ham. It makes people laugh when I play the male. So I played the male, when I am not playing a hermaphrodite."
       —Isabella Rossellini on depicting insect mating habits in "Green Porno," at the New York Times Magazine [Rossellini also discusses the "gigantic genitals" of insects at AMC's Shootout blog.]

"My idea of perfect happiness is a healthy family, peace between nations, and all the critics die."
       — David Mamet at Vanity Fair

"[S]ecretly that I am very unhappy to not have two towers being built, because I could offer to dance again--a dance of freedom, of victory, of 'We shall not be doomed.'"
       —Tightrope walker and "Man on Wire" subject Philippe Petit on the Freedom Tower, at the New York

"That was really Pennebaker's film. I just went around with a camera looking for good-looking girls."
       —Direct Cinema pioneer Richard Leacock on shooting "Monterey Pop," at the Globe and Mail

"[T]his time, the financiers told me to do what I wanted. It was possible to shoot anything! And this time, I discovered it was just natural to be graphic. To be graphic, this I like! And many times, people will say, 'Oh, this is graphic,' but I think of Renaissance painters. Their imagery is very strong and passionate. I wanted to do that without any sense of restrictions."
       — Dario Argento on being freed of censorship burdens when making "Mother Of Tears," in the new issue of Filmmaker Magazine

"[T]o me, it's extremely ludicrous, but the US audience can accept it, so I shot it according to the script. The story is a fairy tale, just like a cartoon. I believe the scriptwriter loves Chinese culture, for he could combine Drunken Fist, Jade Emperor, Eight Immortals, Monkey King, etc. together."
       — Jackie Chan talks frankly about "Forbidden Kingdom" at Wu-Jing.org [via Kaiju Shakedown]

[Photo: "Green Porno," Sundance, 2008]

+ Bugged Out (NY Times Magazine)
+ Proust Questionnaire: David Mamet (Vanity Fair)
+ Daring Frenchman Wants WTC Back (New York)
+ Through a lens weirdly (Globe and Mail)
+ DARK CITY (Filmmaker Magazine)
+ Forbidden Kingdom Interview: Jet Li Gets Philosophical While Jackie Chan Speaks His Mind (Wu-jing.org)

By Alison Willmore in In quotes | Link | Recommended (2)

Tags: Dario Argento, David Mamet, Green Porno, Isabella Rossellini, Man on Wire, Monterey Pop, Mother Of Tears, Philippe Petit, Richard Leacock

"Charlton Heston, who won the 1959 best actor Oscar as the chariot-racing 'Ben-Hur' and portrayed Moses, Michelangelo, El Cid and other heroic figures in movie epics of the '50s and '60s, has died. He was 84."
       —AP

"Few films thrilled me -- or scared me -- as much as 'Soylent Green,' in which his character realizes that the stuff keeping the human race alive is made from other human beings: 'Soylent Green is people!' By then, he had played Moses and saved an entire people from destruction. Things didn't look good in 'Soylent Green,' but somehow, I thought, surely Charlton Heston could save us."
       —Manohla Dargis at the New York Times

"[T]here was something non-threatening, asexual even, to Heston's beefcakeiness: While he may have clutched Sophia Loren, Senta Berger, Janet Leigh and other babes of the era to his not-inconsiderable bosom, it never got really icky. Indeed, he seemed most comfortable expressing his sensual side by slashing away at Moorish invaders or urging his horses to ever-greater exertions on the race track."
       —James Adams at the Globe and Mail

"Where [Burt] Lancaster and [Kurt] Douglas were kinetic, bursting with restlessness, Heston was essentially static -- not so much statuesque as a statue in some audio-animatronic hall of Heroes. He stood and he spoke. That's why screenwriters loved him as much as movie audiences did. He was a hero to them all."
       —Richard Corliss at Time

"Heston succeeded at playing these courageous, imposing, appalled, beleaguered, almost classically handsome men (too much forehead, too many teeth) by overplaying them. This manly man's secret weapon was his histrionics -- it was camp. Even at his most ridiculous, Heston was hard to resist."
       —Wesley Morris at the Boston Globe

"Charlton Heston's defining performance, at least for members of my generation (whether most of us realize it or not), probably came in Wayne's World 2. He played a bit part, listed in the credits as 'Good Actor,' brought on in a gimmick to replace a man giving Wayne directions at a gas station whom Wayne complains isn't a good actor. Heston delivers the man's lines again, but does so with such pathos, such richness, that Wayne's mugging and crying in front of the camera almost seems genuine -- and Heston's Golden Hollywood baritone overacting fits the role perfectly."
       —Alex Remington at the Huffington Post

"The subject of the single most notorious pronouncement in the history of film criticism -- Michel Mourlet's proclamation that 'Charlton Heston is an axiom of the cinema' -- Heston made himself easy to dismiss in his later years with his own notorious pronouncements -- 'I'll give you my gun when you take it from my cold, dead hands' -- on behalf of the NRA. Yet I never loved him more than when he got up and walked out on a duplicitous, condescending Michael Moore in 'Bowling for Columbine.'"
       —Dave Kehr at DaveKehr.com

"It's funny--a few years back, one could really surprise people by pulling out that Michel Mourlet bit about Heston being an 'axiom of cinema;' now, thanks to the internet, almost everyone knows it. What we ought to acknowledge on his passing today is that Mourlet's pronouncement, dismissed as almost pathological hyperbole at the time and for some time after, was accurate."
       —Glenn Kenny at Premiere

[Photo: Heston in "Ben-Hur," MGM, 1959]

+ Charlton Heston Dead at 84 (AP)
+ The Man Who Touched Evil and Saved the World (NY Times)
+ Charlton Heston: a hero for his time (Globe and Mail)
+ Appreciation: Charlton Heston (Time)
+ Charlton Heston 1924-2008 (Boston Globe)
+ Rest in Peace, Charlton Heston (Huffington Post)
+ Charlton Heston 1924-2008 (DaveKehr.com)
+ Charlton Heston (Premiere)

By Alison Willmore in In quotes, Memoriam | Link | Recommended (1)

Tags: Charlton Heston