Unseen photos from the “maverick” era in Hollywood: The Edit Room Floor blog

It’d be impossible to count the number of movie-related websites that are currently in existence. On the Funhouse TV show, I frequently liken the Internet to that wood where trees are falling and no one is hearing the sound. The sound in this instance is that of historians, experts, and super-fans sharing their knowledge and personal collections for free.

Such is the case with the Edit Room Floor blog, run by Jordan Krug, an editor who lives in Toronto. Krug collects contact sheets of photos taken on the sets of his favorite movies. Lucky for us, he has excellent taste.

Although the films from which he provides unseen images range chronologically from The Hustler (1961) to Blade Runner (1982), my fascination with his blog is that the lion’s share of his rarities are from the “maverick” era of American film — borrowing a phrase from the comic book world, one could easily deem it “the Silver Age” of American filmmaking.

The specific purpose of Krug’s blog is to present on-set photos and explore deleted scenes from these films. He offers up images from the lost sequences and supplements those with the appropriate pages from the original scripts and anecdotes from biographies and autobiographies of those involved. In a few cases he even “animated” shots from lost scenes to provide the best possible approximation of what the lost scene looked like in motion.

Jordan has so far put up 61 entries on his blog, starting in 2012 and ending in 2014. I hope he has more rarities hiding up his sleeve, but as it stands the blog is still a wonderful source of new information about films that many of us have seen several times (and/or memorized, depending on our level of devotion).

Given the fact that so many restorations are being done at the moment, Krug refers to many of the images on his blog as “rarely seen” photos. In some cases it’s evident that, aside from the filmmakers themselves and other massive fans of the films (who are not wanting to share, as Jordan is doing), these images truly have gone unseen.

Thus we are treated to some wonderful on-set shots from a variety of cult favorites. The first category comprises films that fit handily into the “macho hero” category: Cool Hand Luke (1967), Prime Cut (1972), and The Cowboys (also ’72).

The second category of titles that Jordan provides rare images from are box office blockbusters. He spotlights Rocky (1976) (which was a terrific film — ignoring the crap sequels that it inspired) and the juggernaut Star Wars (1977). I have no interest in the latter but any rare images of Peter Cushing are fine by me.

The third category — mind you, these are my designations, not Jordan’s — are the films that are not only star-driven but are terrific auteurist works. These include The Hustler, The Train (1964), Help! (1965), Dirty Harry (1971), The Getaway (1972), Bound for Glory (1976), The Road Warrior (1981).

The final group of films that Jordan dotes on are unmitigated masterpieces, in mine ‘umble opinion. The first is Leone’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966). Jordan shares with us rare shots of the final shootout in the cemetery.

With Blade Runner, we are treated to shots from the last night of shooting, in which Deckard hangs from the ledge in the rain.

One of the linchpins of modern American cinema (from an era that now seems like it was a million years ago, not only in terms of the quality of filmmaking but as for the emotional attachment of its maker), Taxi Driver (1976) is represented through rarely seen shots from the famous mirror sequence and the “Scar scene” (labelled as such by Scorsese and Schrader, who felt that The Searchers lacked a scene in which Natalie Wood's allegiance to her Indian captor was explained), in which we see Iris and Sport (Harvey Keitel) as a couple in love. Also, Iris initially walking down the street with Travis.

Polanski’s masterwork Chinatown (1974) is represented by a wonderful array of color on-set photos. Included are moments from the sequence in which Jake has his nose cut by a mean little gangster (Polanski himself), as well an intimate moment between Jake and Evelyn. Also, images from a scene entirely cut from the film in which Jake drives by a “rainmaker” who is plying his trade.

The two films that receive the most in-depth treatment on the Edit Room Floor blog are John Boorman’s Point Blank (1967) and Coppola’s The Conversation (1974). Boorman’s film is represented by nine (!) separate blog entries in which Krug offers unseen images from the set and scenes that were trimmed or cut from the film.

Included are Walker walking in LAX, the sequences in Alcatraz, the death of Reese (John Vernon) and Walker being beaten up by Chris (Angie Dickinson). Not only that, but we are offered groovy pics of the wrap party, in which we see Lee Marvin palling around with Steve McQueen, Warren Oates, Charles Bronson, Burt Reynolds and other Hollywood tough-guys.

For me, there are several must-see blog entries on the Edit Room Floor, but Krug's many posts on The Conversation are his most valuable contribution to the online appreciation of the “maverick” era. He provides all available materials on the many deleted scenes he has images from, noting at the outset that Coppola left the film in the hands of his editor Walter Murch when he (Coppola) began to work on The Godfather Part II. Thus Murch had to cut a four-and-a-half hour film down to the two-hour mark.

The missing sequences covered by Krug include Harry Caul's visit to the apartment vacated by his mistress, more of the convention sequence, and several scenes that were easily cut because they provided Caul with friends and relatives, which would've mitigated the intensely lonely aspect of the finished film.

It turns out that the sequences that were shot but taken out of the film (and then sadly lost, meaning that these on-set photos and the original script are the only traces of these moments) included Harry receiving birthday wishes (and a cake!) from his neighbors, a subplot in which the neighbors were furious at their landlord (who we learn is Harry himself), and a subsequent visit Harry makes to his lawyer's office. 

The latter was initially so important to Coppola that he shot it twice, with Abe Vigoda playing the lawyer in the first version, and a young Mackenzie Phillips showing up as Harry's parochial school student niece (who winds up awkwardly telling him about her first time with a boy).

Point Blank wrap party: Marvin, Boorman, and Michelle Triola.

As I noted above, I hope Jordan has time to share more with us on the Edit Room Floor blog. In the meantime, he has already shared quite a lot and put some cult classics into a new light by providing a look at missing scenes and the on-set environment of the films. From one “tree falling in the forest” to another, I salute his efforts....

Lost movies and photomontage: two more great blogs

Any regular reader of this blog knows that I do it for no money whatsoever, but merely to spread the good word about the finest in high art, low trash, and other essentials. On the menu bar to the right I have a list of other sites and blogs that offer terrific content, but I think that perhaps only one of the bloggers actually is making money from what he’s doing on his blog (and that money comes from a nice side mail order business, and not the blog proper). These days, I seem to be discovering like-minded bloggers a few times a month, and have come to the very evident conclusion that the Internet is an unending series of trees falling in the forest. My advice is... just listen for the sound.

Sometimes another blogger approaches me, as happened when San Francisco artist Peter Combe wrote praising the full episode about New Yorker Films that I had put up on YouTube (btw, folks, it has been announced that New Yorker is coming back to life as of this writing). Peter does the blog A Tale of a Few Cities. He is a movie fan who posts arthouse-movie joke images in among the many fascinating images of l’art moderne.

And, since I like to move from art to trash and back again, I have to spotlight a blog that is absolutely chockfull of good things and represents of good deal of work by its blog-meisters. It’s called Temple of Schlock, and is a wonderful labor of love that sprang out of a zine started in 1987 by Syracuse residents Paul DeCirce and Chris Poggiali. Those gentlemen now run a blog with that name that incorporates a pretty sizeable collection of newspaper clippings, press booklets, posters (featured in the “One Sheet of the Week” entries), movie collectibles, and even View Master reels.

Here’s an example of the Temple-keepers’ newspaper clipping collection, including an ad for the “porn” re-release of Myra Breckenridge touting the participation of “Angel” Farrah Fawcett and a porn-ish promo ad for the Roman Polanski film What? (known over here as Forbidden Dreams or Diary of Forbidden Dreams). The blog also includes exploitation profiles, like this one about the marvelous Claudia Jennings.

The Schlock blog is very content-intensive, and two features are personal favorites of mine. The first is the “This Week on 42nd St.” entries, which gives us a list of what played on the Deuce on certain dates in certain years, for instance 1978 and 1985.

The most important entries DeCirce and Poggiali write, however, are the “Endangered List” blogposts about movies that they have information on, but which have never been released on VHS or DVD. They’ve written up dozens of these films, which include such unfindable rarities as the Romain Gary film Birds in Peru and an amazing-sounding (in so many ways) Rich Little vehicle in which Nixon and Agnew are seen as a kind of Laurel and Hardy for the Seventies. The film was produced by Tom Smothers, and directed by Bob “Super Dave”/“Officer Judy” Einstein. Its title? Another Nice Mess.

And what can be said about a blog that poses as many interesting questions about lost movies as it answers about surviving ones? In the case of the “endangered” films the bloggers ask us outright for more information on the films’ whereabouts, but in the case of some items, it’s time to just scratch one’s head and wonder. What in the holy hell was the midnight movie “event” entitled The Beatles Meet Star Trek? We’d all love to know.

Vintage Stand-up Comedy: my new favorite blog

I am a junkie for several things, among them novelty songs and comedy albums. The novelty tunes I’ll go into another time, but as a comedy-LP fanatic, I need to heartily recommend this gent Jim and his Vintage Stand-up Comedy blog.

Over the years I’ve amassed a pretty decent collection of comedy on vinyl and CD, but the blogspot “sharity” phenomenon has now made it possible for older fans — the kind who aren’t frequenting BitTorrent — to delve into other’s “stashes” of rare vinyl. What could formerly only be obtained only through trades of audio tapes with fellow collectors, now is available on the Net, to anyone who has an RAR extractor (free download, for both PC and Mac) and the time to listen.

The thing about comedy records — true of any collectible item, really — is that they generally fall into two categories: the ones you will actively engage with over the years, replay and laugh at again in the future; and those you’re acquiring because they’re just so damned rare or so damned weird, or they are literally the only title by that particular person. The offerings on the Vintage Stand-up blog fall neatly into those slots, and since they do, I’ll offer two clumps of recommendations. The must-haves were generally available at one time on CD in some permutation or other (as with Woody Allen’s ever-changing two-LP set, or Nichols and May’s “best of”), but most comedy albums haven’t stayed in print for too long in any format.

Thus, you have the Essentials, as TCM calls them. Blogger Jim G and his friend, known simply as “Big Cheeze,” have put up albums that are must-listens by Woody Allen, Brooks and Reiner, Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Cheech and Chong, Lenny Bruce, Shelley Berman, Jonathan Winters, Nicholas and May, Eddie Murphy, Bill Hicks, Lily Tomlin, Moms Mabley, Redd Foxx, Jackie Mason, Lord Buckley, Steve Allen, and Ruth Wallis … just to name a few.

Then you have the oddities and rarities that have been posted. They may only been for the stout-hearted, comprehensive collector, but among the group there are a few that I’ve been pleasantly surprised by (read: they were actually very funny). Many are worth having in some form just because they are so insanely rare, and if I haven’t noted it up to this point, the key here is that Jim (and Cheeze, presumably) are making these available through their “rips” from vinyl (you can hear the surface noise as the needle touches down, babies). There are also posts of things that are true rarities: the “Live at the Playboy Club” Moms Mabley album posted isn’t that commercially available CD, it’s a montage that was made for satellite radio that includes cuts from that album, plus various other rare Moms material. The same is true of the Brother Theodore comp that Cheeze put up, which includes a whole performance and several other things including the audio of a Letterman appearance. These bits of sharity are perhaps the nicest on the blog, since they don’t constitute any particular “score” at a record shop, but rather are the spoils of a collector’s longtime obsession.

Thus, I will spotlight some of the more obscure things put up on Vintage Stand-up Comedy. Including the one and only album by Paul Lynde. It includes a bit that has the word “rape” in it (not heard that often on an older comedy LP), plus that strangled, sarcastic laugh that became Paul’s truest comic legacy.


Paul is here.

Since GSN dumped all its b&w programming into oblivion (and they’re getting such great late-night ratings as a result, haven’t you heard? Through the roof!), I’ve been jonesing for some Henry Morgan, and Jim has nicely obliged. This is a short LP (unavailable on CD, need I add) that is mostly focused on Morgan’s commercial parodies).


Henry is here.

I have been a hardcore fan of Father Guido Sarducci, Don Novello’s alter ego, since I first saw him singing in the confessional on the 1970s “comeback” Smothers Brothers comedy show. Novello is wonderfully funny (check out his Laszlo Toth books if you’re anywhere near the humor section of a well-stocked bookstore), but there have only been two comedy LPs by him in the last 30 years.


Fr. Guido is here.

Godfrey Cambridge is a comic who has lived on more through the movies he did (Watermelon Man, Cotton Comes to Harlem) than through his stand-up. This is a recording (I’m not sure if it actually was a released LP or is just a tape that’s circulated) of Cambridge doing a great set in Las Vegas, that includes a mention of one of my all-time favorite films he participated in (one of the ultimate New Yorker movies, Sidney Lumet’s small and PERFECT Bye Bye Braverman), as well as some very funny material about gambling, traveling to Italy, and losing weight.


Godfrey is here.

And since we’re on a fat kick, let’s mention “King Tut” himself, the terrific character actor Victor Buono. I’ve never quite gotten my mind around the fact that he was in his early 20s when he did …Baby Jane?, in his late 20 when he was on Batman, and was dead at 44. His one and only comedy LP contains a number of poems about being fat that he had recited on The Tonight Show. There are none of those appearances uploaded to YouTube, but you can find the best cut from this album, and a tribute video made by his nephew (the singer on the vid, who is not a Buono relative, sounds a whole lot like my perennial fave flower-child singer Melanie)


Victor is here.

And, since I’m going to be fair and honest here, here is an absolutely awful album that I am so glad I heard. Will I ever listen to it again? That’s a good question, but I had heard about it, and being able to sample insult comic Fat Jack E. Leonard’s nasty 1957 “tribute” to rock ’n’ roll, which consists of him mostly barking out lyrics to half-baked r’n’r song parodies, was something I needed to do. It was my sort of very “happy pain.” For that I must, er, thank, Jim and Cheez.


Fat Jack is here.

You need this record (so take it)

Sammy Davis was one of the most ubiquitous performers in show business from the Fifties to the Eighties. He particularly had a strong tie with the medium of television, showing off his skills as a consummate nightclub and cabaret entertainer on TV variety and talk shows (not that that stopped him from appearing on sitcoms, gameshows, and even anthology dramas). In the period of his busiest TV activity, the Seventies, he also recorded an album that included an incredible amount of TV themes. I have never found the alternate version of this LP (purported to be called "Sammy Sings the Great TV Tunes"), but one of our recommended blogspot colleagues has put the better-known variation of the record, called Song and Dance Man, up for public consumption in MP3 form. Grab it immediately, and hear Sam offer his Wham on the themes from "Baretta" (natch), "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," "Kojak" (yes, someone wrote lyrics to it), "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman" (with Sam appropriately sniffing and singing her name over and over and over, astounding!), "Hawaii Five-O" (with a menacing lyric about "Devil's Day"!), and "Chico and the Man"). Someday I will find the other variation of this album, which supposedly contains the "Maude" theme. In the meantime, rock out on this gem. Thanks to Stephen for pointing this one out.

CLICK HERE: Sammy Sings a Whole Mess of TV Tunes, Making Us All Much Happier in the Process

Please frequent the Menu Bar

The links have been updated, NEW blogs and sites have been added, the ones that went private or went down have been eliminated. So each click on the right is now a fully functional ticket to wondrous reading, listening, viewing, or downloading. You will be entertained!

Let us give thanks for terrific music: blogspot is heaven

I haven't had the chance to update my link-list on the right there, but there is one blog that I'd truly recommend for the finest in lounge, jazz, comedy, and yes, Vegas/Rat Pack live wonders, this gent right here has it all:

Jazz Hot Sauce blog

And for something I've been listening to more than once, I recommend this lively compilation CD of supersonic tunes from the Sixties and things from later eras that sound as if they were made in the Sixties. You've got Mongo Santamaria, Edwin Starr, the Kinks, Jacques Dutronc, Buddy Rich, and Andy Williams, do you need any more? Well worth the time to download!

Blow Up a Go Go!

For those who don't know how this download thing goes with the blogspot blogs:
-You get the link from the blog, click the sucker, and then if it's on the Megaupload site, just follow the prompts. If it's on RapidShare, go in as a "free user." Megaupload allows several downloads an hour, whereas Rapidshare allows only one (you're clear after an hour or two to go after more).
-You need an RAR "extractor," which is a free download for the PC and Mac, just dig one up (it's the equivalent of the Winzip Unzipper thing — this software changes every freakin' year!) Drop the file in there and voila! You've got the album in MP3 form.
-Certain of the music blogspots require that you entire a password in the RAR extractor before you drop the file in there -- the ones I've cited above DO NOT! Huzzah.