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Post by moviebuffbrad on May 8, 2024 18:38:51 GMT
Apparently he's Iranian but he's very white passing. Especially in this with the 70s white guy sideburns and stuff. Yeah but it is such forced casting if you want authenticity. If that is what you are claiming to sell.
If you compromise an idea because you feel you need to inject diversity of some kind--which is unnecessary because you did have black and latino and asians on tv at the time--it's not like you don't have options to fill that requirement-they could easily make one of the guests black, indian or Mexican or whatever -but to make the host the diversity card by default--you are sacrificing the most important part of it--there's no way that there are no actors who could play the role as well at least (since most tv hosts were not half Iranian!) so it is a kind of token woken.
If this movie was made in the 70s and they used Ricardo Montalban as the host----it may have worked-I could picture him as a host of a show because he had the screen presence for that-but standards were so different then for casting.
I remember this guy in the Dark Knight now after thinking about it but he just doesn't strike me as having the gravitas for it. Some movies are great at doing retro-casting. The Shadow 1994 was very clever at some of the casting--they picked supporting actors like Max Wright and Ethan Phillips who had personas and voices that would have fit perfectly into 1940s radio--even the guy playing the Asian scientist had a Keye Luke kind of quality. I don't think I have seen a movie that was so careful in retro casting to make you think of older acting styles. Not so much for the leads but the people playing cab drivers etc.
As I said, he passes for white to me - I always assumed he was East European or something. Along with me fact that he's been universally praised on this board for his performance, I don't think he was a diversity hire. And if you read my review, I too was skeptical he'd have the "gravitas" or whatever to pull off a talk show host but he sold it to me. Either way, it's a plot point in the movie that he's getting butt-fucked in the ratings by Johnny Carson and he literally has to sacrifice his wife to the devil to be successful. |
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Post by Prime etc. on May 8, 2024 19:46:11 GMT
As I said, he passes for white to me - I always assumed he was East European or something. Along with me fact that he's been universally praised on this board for his performance, I don't think he was a diversity hire. And if you read my review, I too was skeptical he'd have the "gravitas" or whatever to pull off a talk show host but he sold it to me. Either way, it's a plot point in the movie that he's getting butt-fucked in the ratings by Johnny Carson and he literally has to sacrifice his wife to the devil to be successful. East European so there you go--it's forced in some way. You have to suspend disbelief a little if you are familiar with the host casting of the era.
You can't please everyone but when I heard of this idea--and the host--I just imagined someone more white bread but I didn't picture that cellphone eater Donal Logue lookalike as a believable host for 70s tv either. Even that felt like quirky out of place casting. I am not sure what kind of competition Carson had in those days anyway--I think of Dick Cavett or Mike Douglas etc.
I pay attention to anachronisms--like that horror movie series about the people who go to film a porn film in the late 70s-- porn was not something that anyone and everyone was making in the 1970s.The word was hardly even spoken in public conversation.
And Super 8--with the kids filming a zombie movie. Zombies were not popular subjects for kid filmmakers --they would have done aliens, werewolves or vampires--not Romero zombies since that didn't really get wide attention until well after 1979. Night of the Living Dead wasn't even talked about much until the mid 80s. It's only a movie I know but this is a movie forum.
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Post by moviemouth on May 8, 2024 21:08:10 GMT
lol ok I don't even remember that guy.
there goes the verisimilitude.
That guy would not have been hosting a national tv show in 1970s America. Maybe Fernando's Hideaway.
TV was very white bread in those days.
I had this picture in my head of the cell phone guy as a talk show host and even he seemed a little out of sync with the hosts I remember. The closest thing I could think of to that guy was William Conrad in Brotherhood of the Bell.
Apparently he's Iranian but he's very white passing. Especially in this with the 70s white guy sideburns and stuff. Yeah, he looks white to me. I would have guessed he had some Italian in him. |
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Post by moviemouth on May 8, 2024 21:13:48 GMT
As I said, he passes for white to me - I always assumed he was East European or something. Along with me fact that he's been universally praised on this board for his performance, I don't think he was a diversity hire. And if you read my review, I too was skeptical he'd have the "gravitas" or whatever to pull off a talk show host but he sold it to me. Either way, it's a plot point in the movie that he's getting butt-fucked in the ratings by Johnny Carson and he literally has to sacrifice his wife to the devil to be successful. East European so there you go--it's forced in some way. You have to suspend disbelief a little if you are familiar with the host casting of the era.
You can't please everyone but when I heard of this idea--and the host--I just imagined someone more white bread but I didn't picture that cellphone eater Donal Logue lookalike as a believable host for 70s tv either. Even that felt like quirky out of place casting. I am not sure what kind of competition Carson had in those days anyway--I think of Dick Cavett or Mike Douglas etc.
I pay attention to anachronisms--like that horror movie series about the people who go to film a porn film in the late 70s-- porn was not something that anyone and everyone was making in the 1970s.The word was hardly even spoken in public conversation.
And Super 8--with the kids filming a zombie movie. Zombies were not popular subjects for kid filmmakers --they would have done aliens, werewolves or vampires--not Romero zombies since that didn't really get wide attention until well after 1979. Night of the Living Dead wasn't even talked about much until the mid 80s. It's only a movie I know but this is a movie forum.
I get it is a forum, but you are being too picky. Movies are movies, not real life. They just need to resemble reality in some sense. The fact that the host has black hair and is slightly ethnic looking isn't enough to take me out of reality. If he was darker and couldn't pass for white than maybe I would say you weren't being picky. I am imagining this keeps you from liking a lot of movies, especially "historical" movies and "based on a true story" movies. Also people can just ignore you. Which is what I usually do, because you are a total killjoy. |
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Post by Prime etc. on May 8, 2024 21:28:23 GMT
I am imagining this keeps you from liking a lot of movies, especially "historical" movies and "based on a true story" movies. Well it's the weak acting and scripts that take me out of it the most.
Like the bad guy in Ridley Scott's Robin Hood or that anonymous bad guy that Jeff Bridges zaps with a paralyzing device in Iron Man (I thought they were same guy actually). It gets worse over time--I can't believe how amateur actor voices are now--they often sound like high school drama students reading from a phone book, droning without emotional force. A huge change from 30 years ago and before when performance energy was a given.
The guy who played Captain Nemo in the League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen was interesting--I gather that Verne had wanted Nemo to be Polish but was forced to alter it because of political tensions--but whether he wanted him to be Indian or not, the guy in the movie was a charismatic presence--I had never seen him before or since. I don't think racial incongruities really bother me as much as performance quality-certainly not in older movies where it was inserted-and unfortunately, increased diversity seems to have come with a mildness in narrative.
I can't easily shift from older movies to new ones--it is so jarring in every way--editing cuts etc. Not to mention the unmemorable scores and posters.
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Post by moviebuffbrad on May 10, 2024 2:01:11 GMT
As I said, he passes for white to me - I always assumed he was East European or something. Along with me fact that he's been universally praised on this board for his performance, I don't think he was a diversity hire. And if you read my review, I too was skeptical he'd have the "gravitas" or whatever to pull off a talk show host but he sold it to me. Either way, it's a plot point in the movie that he's getting butt-fucked in the ratings by Johnny Carson and he literally has to sacrifice his wife to the devil to be successful. East European so there you go--it's forced in some way. You have to suspend disbelief a little if you are familiar with the host casting of the era.
You can't please everyone but when I heard of this idea--and the host--I just imagined someone more white bread but I didn't picture that cellphone eater Donal Logue lookalike as a believable host for 70s tv either. Even that felt like quirky out of place casting. I am not sure what kind of competition Carson had in those days anyway--I think of Dick Cavett or Mike Douglas etc.
I pay attention to anachronisms--like that horror movie series about the people who go to film a porn film in the late 70s-- porn was not something that anyone and everyone was making in the 1970s.The word was hardly even spoken in public conversation.
And Super 8--with the kids filming a zombie movie. Zombies were not popular subjects for kid filmmakers --they would have done aliens, werewolves or vampires--not Romero zombies since that didn't really get wide attention until well after 1979. Night of the Living Dead wasn't even talked about much until the mid 80s. It's only a movie I know but this is a movie forum.
I just meant in general I thought he might be East European. In the movie, with his hair and style, he didn't really look like anything. Jewish, maybe. And like I said, his actual acting is very believable. Wasn't Deep Throat one of the highest grossing movies of the 70s? It certainly made its mark in pop culture at the time with Watergate and everything. As for X, the horror film I assume you're talking about, that's just a small group of indie filmmakers shooting an amateur porn. *shrug* Any thoughts on the actors who have portrayed Egyptians in anything pre-2015? Or Romans with English accents? |
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Post by Prime etc. on May 10, 2024 2:13:40 GMT
I just meant in general I thought he might be East European. In the movie, with his hair and style, he didn't really look like anything. Jewish, maybe. And like I said, his actual acting is very believable. Wasn't Deep Throat one of the highest grossing movies of the 70s? It certainly made its mark in pop culture at the time with Watergate and everything. As for X, the horror film I assume you're talking about, that's just a small group of indie filmmakers shooting an amateur porn. *shrug* Any thoughts on the actors who have portrayed Egyptians in anything pre-2015? Or Romans with English accents? Yes but even with Jewish actors--unless someone like Alan Arkin hosted a talk show in 1977...or someone like Omar Shariff---you just don't have it in US tv. Lighter skinned people.
A black guy would be more feasible --because of Flip Wilson and Richard Pryor--but not if he was as dark as Brock Peters.
Shooting an amateur porn-it is so anachronistic-the type of people making porn back then--in movies the normal depiction of a porn filmmaker was the people shown in Hard Core. The people who made Deep Throat were mafia-connected right?
As for the use of people playing Egyptians or Romans in movies- and the British accents--my view is that that kind of theater is based on Shakespeare mainly--so having British accents in those situations gives it a classical theater (of the West) aspect and that was ok for the time it was done especially with so many of those movies using UK people in roles. It is weird when you have Kirk Douglas with no accent and Olivier with it--but I seem to recall they would make the slaves American and the Romans British (except for John Gavin).
There was a version of Richard the Third where all the cast was American --it was strange but I find that Vincent Price, or Orson Welles, or Burgess Meredith seem to have worked fine for historical stories--something about their voices made it acceptable.
The alternative is something like Angelina Jolie's accent in Alexander which was allegedly authentic for Macedonia but made her sound Transylvanian.
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Post by Prime etc. on May 10, 2024 2:29:19 GMT
PS
The thing about the porn film isn't so much them doing it-but unless the characters are meant to be counter culture outsiders--it is not representative of what most folks would do for a hobby in the late 70s.
Film would have to go to a lab for developing as well--so if they are amateurs--then how would they get it developed?
Too lazy to check but how many states had decency laws that would make photographing something like that illegal?
In Canada, a guy made a porn film (Sexcula) with taxpayer money even though there were no porn theaters in Canada in 1974. He only made it as a tax write-off and the film was never shown beyond it's first screening. Thought lost for years-the webmaster of Canuxploitation found it in the National Library of Canada since technically the government owned it.
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ntatler76
Sophomore
@ntatler76
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Post by ntatler76 on May 14, 2024 13:56:08 GMT
I enjoyed it, though not as much as everyone else here. I don't know if you guys have seen Ghostwatch (1992), but it reminded me a lot of that film, though not as creepy or authentic for me personally (that one never stops feeling like a TV broadcast, whereas this kind of took me out of it with a lot of the multiple camera angles, or whenever they did "behind the scenes" which just looked like standard movie footage cut scenes). They kinda buried the leade early here with the psychic rather than play up any ambiguity, and I was a little letdown once it turned into a VFX reel. Not to sound overly negative, I did like it a lot. Especially the acting. I thought David Dastmalchian was an odd choice for a late night comedian going into it, but he was perfect. I forgot who the skeptic was until the hypnosis scene where he channels Huge Weaving for a second and was reminded of Matrix Bane. I really enjoyed it, about time we had something original in a horror film. It did feel a bit like an extended episode of Inside Number 9, and the ending gave me similar vibes to the endings to Dead of Night (1945) and Ghost Stories (2017) |
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Post by Xcalatë on May 15, 2024 8:14:44 GMT
I Keep hearing great things about it, cant wait to check it out  |
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