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Have you ever watched a police lineup on TV and wondered how real-life detectives manage to find so many similar-looking potential perps in a hurry? Sometimes they round up police officers or department employees, or friends of friends. But in New York, they sometimes call Robert Weston, police lineup casting director. It’s an odd job, but somebody’s got to do it.
Mr. Weston says he is always on call; his Bluetooth earpiece comes off in public only when he goes to the barber for his weekly $16 trim. His cellphone, he says, holds the numbers of some 100 potential lineup fillers, mostly friends and acquaintances from the Mill Brook Houses, the public housing project in the South Bronx where he has lived most of his life.
He often complains about how people hound him for the chance to make a few dollars through lineup work.
“I can’t even play basketball on the courts or sit here and drink a beer,” Mr. Weston said on a recent afternoon. “People are always asking me if there is a lineup.”
Fillers are paid $10 for a local lineup in the Bronx. For each lineup that Mr. Weston fills in the Bronx, he receives $10; he gets more if he sits in as a filler or if his services are required in another borough.
Read how he builds a lineup at the New York Times. Link -via Breakfast Links
(Image credit: The Bronx District Attorney)
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Do you love Johnny Depp movies? Do you love Dr. Seuss? Well then, I assume you’ll be lining up to go see the new Seuss biopic being produced by Mr. Depp that will also star -Johnny Depp.
Personally, while I love the actor and the writer, I just don’t see Johnny’s eccentric character acting style working for Dr. Seuss. What do you guys think?
By now, you likely already heard about the marines who asked Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake to the Marine Corps Ball and got positive responses from the actors. While those stories are cute and surprising, I prefer the newest addition to the celebrity invitation parade, the guy who asks Betty White to the ball. Betty, if you’re reading this, please say “yes.”
Via BuzzFeed
I know most of us have had some incredible teachers in our time, but most of them will never be well-known by people other than those they have had direct contact with. Sure you may have the occasional teacher that was so inspiring a movie will be made about them, a la Dangerous Minds, but even then, the real educator won’t even be featured in the movie and his or her actions will probably be over dramatized for the sake of the audience. That’s why when talking about famous teachers, it’s much more realistic to talk about those who have been teachers at one point of their life, but are much better known for their roles outside the classroom. Here are 10 individuals that you almost certainly know of, but you probably didn’t know they also served as teachers.
Education has been an important part of Angelou’s life ever since a teacher helped her recover from becoming voluntarily mute. When Maya was eight, she was raped by her mother’s boyfriend, who was beaten to death shortly after by some of her relatives. Because she believed her confession of the act was responsible for his murder, she felt that her voice was directly to blame for his death. It wasn’t until she was 13 that she learned to speak again with the help of a dedicated teacher and family friend who introduced her to classic authors such as Shakespeare, Poe and Dickens as well as black female artists like Frances Harper and Anne Spencer.
Naturally, it was only fitting that Angelou repay her gratitude by working to educate others. While writing has remained her main passion, she has also taught at a number of colleges, including the University of Kansas, Wichita State University and California State University of Sacramento. For over 20 years though, she’s remained a professor at Wake Forest University in North Carolina.
You might know him best for his epic tongue-flicking rock concerts and terrible reality shows, but long before he was the legendary make-up sporting rocker, he was Mr. Simmons, a sixth-grade teacher in Harlem. While most celebrities who used to be teachers quit to follow their dreams, Gene was fired before Kiss started taking off. As it turns out, school administrators don’t particularly like it when a teacher decides to teach Spiderman comics in place of Shakespearean plays. In Gene’s defense, he’s right that the students were probably more likely to read the comic books than the plays, but I doubt they’d get as much out of them as they would the bard’s classic works.
Image via Lokomotive74 [Wikipedia]
If you thought Lord of the Flies did an excellent job depicting the attitudes and mannerisms of preteen boys, there’s a good reason for that –Sir William Golding served as a teacher before and after his stint in WWII. He often allowed the boy’s free reign of the classroom during debate sessions, which provided him with ample inspiration for the very novel that allowed him the financial freedom to leave the teaching profession.
Before joining The Police, Sting worked as a teacher during the week, heading out to the jazz clubs during the weekends. In his own words, he claimed to be a terrible teacher, only bothering to teach the students about subjects he enjoyed. This meant they pretty much only learned poetry and soccer from the future rock star.
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I remember many of these ads, but of course, at the time nobody knew the actors in them were going to be famous someday! Unknown actors take work where they can, and that’s often commercial ads, which lead to experience, which can lead to starring roles later. Unreality magazine has a collection of ads featuring stars you know, yet you might not recognize at a much younger age.
This list includes everyone from A-listers to TV stars, and products ranging from Pringles to Mylanta. It took me a while to track these down, but if you know of any more I’m missing, I’d be happy to amend the list with your finds. I’m sure there are a ton more out there, it can just be tough to know where to looks.
Enjoy the ones I’ve found so far, and keep in mind when watching commercials today, that someday that annoying kid from the Toyota commercials might be our next big movie star.
Go see them and find out who is in the picture here. Link
I don’t know about you guys, but I have a serious girl-crush on Tina Fey. It’s hard not to when the woman in question is unbelievably talented, smart, funny and beautiful. That’s why I’m so happy to get to write this Neatorama article about one of my biggest idols, who will be celebrating her forty-first birthday today. So for all you other SNL and 30 Rock fans, please join me in wishing Tina Fey a very happy birthday by enjoying these fascinating facts about one of the world’s most influential women (and that’s not just me speaking, see fact #7 for more details).
Image via David Shankbone [Flickr]
Liz Lemon’s first name is actually Ms. Fey’s real first name. “Tina” was actually born Elizabeth Stamatina Fey. To be fair, at least Tina isn’t a complete stage name, it’s just not her real first name. In case you’ve ever wondered, she was born to a brokerage employee of Greek descent and a university grant proposal writer of German and Scottish descent.
If you’ve ever looked closely enough at one of her movies or shows, you may have noticed that Tina has a fairly large scar on the left side of her cheek. While she refuses to talk about it, her husband finally revealed the story during a 2009 interview with Vanity Fair –and the story is a little terrifying.
According to Tina’s husband, she was playing in the front yard of her house when she was five years old and someone randomly came by and slashed her face with a razor. It happened so fast that when it happened, she thought someone marked her with a pen.
Tina says she doesn’t like to talk about the incident because she doesn’t want to seem like she is exploiting the trauma for attention. She’s also said that talking about it upsets her parents.
If you watch 30 Rock (or pretty much any of her work), you’ll notice the show overwhelmingly features her standing with her right side to the camera –that’s why.
Image via Vivanista1 [Flickr]
Mainstream Hollywood movies can always use new talent, as actors/actresses from the states tend to have a short shelf life. So what’s keeping them from using foreign actresses that shine in their debuts, only to get a token role before saying adieu? Cinematical’s Christopher Campbell investigates, starting with Audrey Tautou.
She was allegedly warned against doing the Hollywood thing by Amelie director Jean-Pierre Jeunet (who had his own failure with Alien: Resurrection) and even seemed to obey him for a while there. But five years after winning the hearts of film geeks the world over, she cashed in big time by starring opposite none other than Tom Hanks in one of the most anticipated films of the decade, The Da Vinci Code. The mainstream audiences didn’t fall as hard for her in that, but she doesn’t seem to mind, preferring to maintain permanent residence in Paris while at least being a member of the Academy.
Four similar examples at the link, including Franke Potente and Monica Belluci. These girls are great actresses, so why don’t they make a splash with American audiences?
I always loved Steve Martin, but doing this article about him gave me even more respect for him as I learned just how broad his talents really are. If you thought he was just a funny guy, think again, he’s also a playwright, novelist, musician and more. Let’s celebrate his birthday with a look back at his massive resume.
Born in Waco, Texas, on August 14, 1945, Steve Glenn Martin was the son of a homemaker and a Realtor with aspirations to become an actor. Steve’s father had temper and was not emotionally supportive, although he was proud of his son, Glenn Martin was also very critical. The two had a strained relationship almost until the end of Glenn’s life. It was likely this cold relationship that drove Steve into his later career, as he sought approval from others where he could not get it at home.
When he was five years old, Steve’s family moved to Inglewood, California and at ten years old, the family moved to Garden Grove, the same year Disneyland opened. Steve ended up getting his first job at the park selling guidebooks, but his fascination with magic tricks eventually earned him a place in the Main Street Magic Shop where he was able to perfect his tricks, which would later come in handy in his routine. Years later, he paired with Donald Duck to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Disneyland for a video played inside the park called Disneyland: The First 50 Magical Years.
Around this same time, he heard an Earl Scruggs record and fell in love with the banjo. He started playing the record at half speed and taught himself to play along with the music. Again, this would come in handy in his later career.
By the time Steve graduated high school, he was already honing his act by performing magic tricks, jokes and playing banjo music at Knott’s Berry Farm and a few small local venues.
It wasn’t long before he put his performance career on hold for a while and enrolled in CSU Long Beach, where he studied philosophy. As he studied philosophy and logic, he came to the conclusion that there was no such thing as logic, which led to the non-sequitur comedy routine he became known for later on.
He later explained in a magazine article he wrote for Smithsonian Magazine:
“In a college psychology class, I had read a treatise on comedy explaining that a laugh was formed when the storyteller created tension, then, with the punch line, released it. What bothered me about this formula was the nature of the laugh it inspired, a vocal acknowledgment that a joke had been told, like automatic applause at the end of a song. These notions formed an idea that revolutionized my comic direction: What if there were no punch lines? What if I created tension and never released it? What would the audience do with all that tension? Theoretically, it would have to come out sometime. The audience would eventually pick their own place to laugh, essentially out of desperation.”
Image via Jim Summaria [Wikipedia]
In 1967, Steve transferred to UCLA and switched his major to theater, but this didn’t last long and he dropped out of school at the age of 21 after he appeared in an episode of The Dating Game and started performing at local clubs regularly.
That same year, an ex-girlfriend of his helped him land a writing job on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. Although the show only lasted one season, it did rather well and he and the other writers won an Emmy Award for their work in 1969. He also appeared on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, while he got off on a good start, he didn’t have much material and eventually was demoted to only appearing on the show when there was a guest host.
Rather than stick around Hollywood, Steve decided he would be better off touring around this time, which allowed him to hone his craft without fear of destroying his non-existent reputation. “In this netherworld,” he explained, “I was free to experiment. Everything was learned in practice, and the lonely road, with no critical eyes watching, was the place to dig up my boldest, or dumbest, ideas and put them onstage.”
Although he had a hard time at first, all of this intense practicing and experimenting eventually allowed him to perfect his career. He started off with audiences that didn’t get it and eventually got to the point where they would follow him out the theater. At one point, a college audience continued following him until he arrived at an empty swimming pool. He instructed them to get inside so he could “swim” across them all. He started bringing an increasing level of physicality to his act, which gave it exactly the right amount of humor that the non-sequitur jokes needed to resonate. “My goal was to make the audience laugh but leave them unable to describe what it was that had made them laugh,” he said.
During this time, he went from being a hippy-looking kid with a weird act to being a straight-laced freak. With strange gags such as sing-a-longs that the audience couldn’t actually sing along to and his “happy feet” routine, which resulted in his dancing uncontrollably around the stage without being able to stop himself, he developed a unique style that his friend Rick Moranis aptly characterized as “anti-comedy.”
Image via Towpilot [Wikipedia]
Eventually he got to a level where Carson was proud to have him back on the regular show and he started regularly appearing on Saturday Night Live. His regular tv appearances led to him being able to release a comedy album that was a smash hit and led to the popularity of the expression “well excuse me.” His appearances on SNL also led to the trend of people using finger movements to indicate quotation marks.
Contrary to popular belief though, he was never actually a cast member on SNL, he has guest-hosted 15 times though. His Festrunk Brothers character with Dan Aykroyd led to a popular catch phrase and recurring sketch though, “Two Wild and Crazy Guys.” This phrase was also used on his second hit comedy album, titled “Wild and Crazy Guy.” The album also resulted in a disco single that reached #17 on the US charts called “King Tut.”
These albums won him Grammys for Best Comedy Recording two years in a row. His popularity became similar to that of a rockstar and he was soon filling up whole rock arenas.
As his TV performances and positive reviews started allowing him to perform to much bigger audiences, he simultaneously stopped wanting to tour. These huge audiences prevented him from being able to walk out of the theater with the crowd and he loathed it when audience members started showing up with balloon animals and rabbit ears. He also started to suffer from physical exhaustion, collapsing onstage on multiple occasions.
So Steve retired…from stage that is. And he started acting in movies. His first role was in a short film called the Absent-Minded Waiter. Next he played small roles in Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Ban , The Muppet Movie, and The Who documentary, The Kids Are Alright. That’s when he stepped up as the lead in a movie he co-wrote, The Jerk. The piece included a number of bits from his stand up act including my favorite part where he leaves his mansion saying “I don’t need anything at all, well, except for this ashtray.” Steve got $500,000 as star of the movie, $100,000 as writer and he made 50% of the profits, which was well over $100 million. Needless to say, it made him a movie star in no time flat.
He soon tried his hand at his first serious film, Pennies From Heaven, but the movie bombed, mostly because people didn’t want to see Steve in a serious role. After that, Steve went ahead and acted in a few more movies with the director from the Jerk, including Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid, The Man With Two Brains and All of Me.
Because he’s been in so many successful films, I’m just going to add a few interesting tidbits about some of his more famous performances:
Image via David Shankbone [Wikipedia]
Throughout the 1990’s Steve started writing various pieces for the New Yorker. He also wrote an autobiography called Born Standing Up, the aforementioned novella, Shopgirl, and another novella called The Pleasure of My Company. In 1993, he wrote a play called Picasso at the Lapin Agile, and when a school board refused to let their students perform the piece in 2009, he offered to pay out of his own pocket to allow them to do the performance off site.
While the banjo has played a minor role in Steve’s comedy routines, he is very good at playing the instrument and actually a well-respected musician. In fact, in 2001, he won a Grammy award for Best Country Instrumental Performance for his remake of “Foggy Mountain Breakdown,” and this year, he won the Grammy award for Best Blue Grass Album for his work on The Crow: New Songs for the 5-String Banjo.
These days, Steve is largely focused on playing with his band, the Steep Canyon Rangers. Even so, he has still found time to keep his comedy relevant in our digital world by releasing some of the funniest blog posts on the net, the best of which involve mocking himself. While many comedians fade out of the limelight, it seems likely that we will be laughing with Steve all the way to the end.
Image via Kata Rokkar [Flickr]
Sources: Wikipedia, Smithsonian Magazine, NY Mag and Talk Talk.
Charlie Chaplin was one of the greatest directors and actors the cinema has ever seen, but, like most great artists, his life was filled with controversy and struggle. While most people in modern times only know about his brilliant works, his private life and public scandals were equally fascinating. To celebrate this great man, let’s take a look at all those little things you may not have known about Hollywood’s favorite Tramp.
Charles Spencer Chaplin was born in London to two music hall actor/vocalists on April 16, 1889. His parents separated when he was only three and he lived with his mother and younger brother.
When Charlie was only five, he got his first taste of acting when he had to take stage to fill in for his mother, Hannah Chaplin, after her voice went out in the middle of a show. Throughout his childhood, he had to help his mother scrimp and save, particularly when she started losing her voice and increasingly began suffering from mental illness. The family was so poor, Hannah even pawned off her children’s spare clothing just to help make ends meet. By the time Charlie was seven, the family was forced to go to a workhouse and after only a few weeks, Charlie and his brother were sent to an orphanage. Hannah regained control of the boys soon after, but when she suffered from a serious mental breakdown, they were forced to live with their father and his mistress for a while.
This was when Charlie joined up with his first acting troupe, the Lancashire Lads. Only a few years later, his father died of cirrhosis of the liver. By 1910, Charlie had established a strong reputation in the local acting scene and he was able to tour the U.S. as a featured player in the Fred Karno Repertoire Company.
Upon traveling to America, he quickly became a favorite performer in the troupe. He returned home to England for a short while before touring America a second time in 1912. This was where Charlie got his big break. When the troupe was seen performing by director Mack Sennett and actors Mabel Normand, Minta Durfee and Fatty Arbuckle, Charlie was spotted and offered a contract with the Keystone Film Company.
Funny enough, one of the biggest names of film history actually had a hard time adjusting his acting methods to translate to film. Originally, Sennett thought he had made a big mistake after working with Charlie on his first film, Making a Living. Fortunately, Mabel Normand convinced the director to give Chaplin another chance and soon enough, a star was born.
Charlie’s best known role was as the iconic “Tramp” character, which he portrayed in a number of films throughout the silent era of film and even in a few pictures after “talkies.” He first developed the character for his second movie role in Mabel’s Strange Predicament.
Mack Sennett had told Charlie “get into a comedy make-up,” but Chaplin didn’t really know what that meant, so he freestyled it. Charlie put together a cane, baggy pants, a tight coat, huge shoes and a small derby hat. Because his character in the movie was supposed to be old, he added a small mustache so he could look older by still show expressions. Charlie said the character of the Tramp came as soon as he was dressed:
“the clothes and the makeup made me feel the person he was. I began to know him, and by the time I walked on stage he was fully born.”
If you’re wondering just where Charlie got the Tramp’s clothing, you have his friends on the movie set to thank. Fatty Arbuckle provided the pants and the hat was Fatty’s father-in-law’s. Chester Conklin gave him the coat and the shoes belonged to Ford Sterling. The shoes were so large that Charlie had to wear them on the wrong feet just so they would stay on.
Interestingly, Charlie’s first movie featuring the Tramp character wasn’t the first one released to the public. Instead, it was his second film, Kid Auto Races at Venice. Also interesting, the Tramp was in the first ever movie trailer shown in an American theater.
Charlie’s sense of humor and immaculate comedic timing led to his quickly being trusted to direct and edit his own films at Keystone. In his first (and only) year with the company, Chaplin made 34 shorts and a feature film.
In 1915, signed with Esseney Studios where he was also able to direct his own pictures, but he left their company within a year to begin working with the Mutual Film Corporation who gave him an even larger salary and nearly complete creative control. He started producing films in 1916 and when he started working with First National in 1917, he was given complete control of all of his projects.
He was a self-taught musician and played the cello and violin and even started composing the music to his films in 1918.
In 1919, Chaplin decided he had enough of the existing Hollywood studios and he co-founded United Artists with Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D.W. Griffith. This allowed him complete creative control on all of his projects for the rest of his life.
In July of 1925, Charlie was the first actor to be featured on “Time Magazine.”
One of the reasons Charlie’s Tramp character did so well was that it was able to transcend language barriers and cultural differences. People from all over the world could view a Chaplin film and identify with the gentlemanly vagrant and laugh at the bumbling authority figures.
Charlie was so good at filming silent pictures that he continued to do so for years after the public demanded movies with dialogue from all of his peers. Some of his best known silent classics, including The Circus and Modern Times, were actually made after talking became commonplace in movies.
Modern Times even does contain talking, although it is still considered a silent movie. It’s just that the only things that really talk are inanimate objects like radios. At the very end, audiences were able to hear Chaplin’s voice on film for the first time, while he sang gibberish lyrics. This was the last film Charlie made with the Tramp and it let the character take a quick step into modern movie history while staying true to his silent roots.
Charlie was considered a difficult director to work with because he was so intent on ensuring everything looked perfect on the film. He was notorious for shooting several takes of every scene during the silent films era, a time period where it was rare to reshoot even one scene. Some people even said that he was willing to shoot the same scene more than one hundred times until he was satisfied. He was known to get so upset about the wasted time and film that he would lash out at his actors and crew members and often would shut down production in a fury.
At the same time though, Charlie almost never used scripts until he started working on talking pictures in 1940. He developed a method where he would start with a vague premise and then build a set and start working on gags and plot devices. He often would work out the ideas on film and then end up having to redo whole scenes because the narrative structure ended up making a scene no longer make sense in the context of the story.
Strangely, no one in the general public knew about his filming techniques until after he died and the film Unknown Chaplin was released with outtakes and cut sequences showing his filming style.
While The Great Dictator is considered a classic these days, it was somewhat controversial when it came out in 1940 because the U.S. was still following a policy of pacifism. Chaplin’s Adenoid Hynkel infuriated the person it was based on, Adolf Hitler, and, unsurprisingly, the film was banned in Germany. While the movie was nominated for Academy Awards in the Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay and Best Actor categories, it did not bring home any awards, which many people believe had more to do with the politics of the film than its actual timing.
Although Chaplin was obviously against Hitler and was encouraging the U.S. to join the war long before Pearl Harbor, he was still the subject of public anger when he declined to support the war effort once it did get started.
The biggest reason he did not help drive the sales of bonds, like he had in the first World War, was that he was in the middle of a political scandal that involved both civil and criminal charges. In 1942, he had a brief affair with a young actress named Joan Barry, and at one point, he may have paid for her to go to New York City, where they shared a hotel room together.
Unfortunately, Joan got pregnant in the next year or so and publicly claimed that the child was Chaplin’s (it wasn’t). When the news went public, it meant that Charlie had to go to court for child support hearings and it meant that federal investigators could chose to try him under the Mann act.
The Mann Act made it a crime to transport a woman across state lines for immoral purposes. While it was created to prevent prostitution, it ended up being used as a way to prosecute people who were seen as immoral.
Charlie beat the criminal charges, but he lost at the civil trial and was forced to pay child support even though a blood test proved that the child wasn’t his. This case was largely responsible for a change in California law stating that blood tests could be used as evidence in civil trials. Even if he had won though, the damage to his reputation could never be removed.
Speaking of Charlie’s love life, he was always attracted to women who were far younger than he was. When he spent the night with 22 year old Joan, Chaplin was 53, and that wasn’t the largest age gap of his relationships. In fact, biographer Joyce Milton claims that Charlie was the inspiration for the book Lolita.
His first marriage was to a 16 year-old actress, Mildred Harris (seen above), and took place when Charlie was already 29. Chaplin’s next wife was also 16 when they started dating, only at this point, he was 35. When he was 43, he started dating his next wife, 22 year old Paulette Goddard. The worst age difference though was between Chaplin and the wife he stayed with until death, Oona O’Neil. Charlie was 54 years old at the time of the wedding, while the bride had just turned 18.
Modern Times was considered to be a bit critical of capitalism and when Charlie urged America to set up a second European front to support Russia, it was more than enough to convince J. Edgar Hoover (seen above) that Chaplin was a communist. The fact that he married two 16 year old girls by this time hadn’t helped improve his image with the feds.
Hoover ordered the FBI to keep detailed reports on him and tried to end his U.S. residency. At one point, congress tried to bring him in as a witness during the McCarthy hearings, but they kept pushing the date back and eventually canceled the order.
In 1952 though, Chaplin visited the U.K. to help push his newest film, Lamplight, and Hoover took the opportunity to exile him for good. He was able to pull some strings and get Charlie’s re-entry permit denied so he could not return to America. Rather than fight the decision, he got fed up and decided to instead move to Switzerland, saying:
“Since the end of the last world war, I have been the object of lies and propaganda by powerful reactionary groups who, by their influence and by the aid of America’s yellow press, have created an unhealthy atmosphere in which liberal-minded individuals can be singled out and persecuted. Under these conditions I find it virtually impossible to continue my motion-picture work, and I have therefore given up my residence in the United States.”
Chaplin didn’t let a little thing like relocation stand in the way of his work though, he instead started making films in Europe instead. Unsurprisingly, his first of these movies, A King in New York, was a satire of the political prosecution he had recently undergone.
Ten years later, he made his final film, A Countess from Hong Kong, which starred Sophia Loren and Marlon Brando. Charlie’s only appearance in the film was a brief cameo where he played a seasick man. He also composed the music for this film and the theme became a number one hit in the U.K.
His health started to fade around this point and he then started writing his autobiography, which was published in 1964. Next, he worked on composing original scores for his early silent pictures and re-released them. He also created a pictorial autobiography that was published in 1974.
Charlie was first suggested for knighthood in the thirties, but he was never actually knighted until 1975, when he was 85 years old. He also was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1970 after many people were angered that he was not one of the people originally honored in 1961. Funny enough, he had his handprints and footprints immortalized in the cement outside Grauman’s Chinese Theater, but after all the scandals, the section of cement was removed and now many believe it is lost.
Although Chaplin won one Academy Award at the first ceremony in 1929, he never one another until 1972 when he was awarded an Honorary Award. It was his first visit to the U.S. since he was denied re-entry and he received the longest standing ovation in the award show’s history.
In the late 60’s, Chaplin’s health began to deteriorate and he eventually died on Christmas Day 1977 at the age of 88. All in all, his entertainment career lasted over 75 years.
Unfortunately, his trip underground wasn’t the last of his travels. His body was stolen in 1978 in an attempt to extort money from his family. After the robbers were captured, Charlie was buried under 6 feet of concrete to ensure this never would happen again.
Sources: Trivia Library, Wikipedia #1, #2, Time, BBC #1, #2, CharlieChaplin.com, Biography, Herald Sun, and IMDB.
Here’s a site where you can look up character actors by their pictures, because you don’t know their names.
Have you ever been watching TV or a movie and pointed to the screen and said, “Hey! It’s That Guy!”? Well, here is where you’ll find him. This page is dedicated to the character actors collectively known as “That Guy”.
That Guy is easy to recognize and difficult to place. You can describe him but not name him.
You’ll know a lot of the faces, and now you’ll know their names as well, and each is linked to their Internet Movie Database (IMDb) page. Pictured is Ed Lauter, who has appeared in 193 movies and television shows! Link -Thanks, Holistic CPA!
A star actor’s final performance should be something memorable, but that doesn’t happen often. In many cases, the actor probably didn’t know it would be their final performance. For others, their career was already fading, or maybe old age limited their options. Today’s Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss asks: how many of these final performances can you match with the well-known actor who played the part? I scored only about as well as you’d expect with random guesses. Link
David Bowie is a great musician with a wide variety of musical talent. He’s also got a heck of an interesting life story, far more than I could actually include in this post, including his having a hot super model wife.
David Bowie at the O’Keefe Center in Toronto, Canada (1976) Photo: jlacpo [Flickr]
“Bowie” is Loaded with Alter Egos
Although he was born David Robert Hayward-Jones in 1947, he had already decided to change his name to “Davie Jones” by the sixties. Unfortunately, this caused confusion with Davy Jones of The Monkeys, so he changed it to “David Bowie” in 1966. The name came from the hero of the Alamo, Jim Bowie.
By 1972, he already became someone else, taking on the androgynous personality of Ziggy Stardust. This character helped Bowie get a foothold into stardom with the revolutionary themed album, Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars.
After Ziggy’s retirement, a new persona took over, known as “The Thin White Duke.” This character was based on the character Bowie played in The Man Who Fell to Earth. Unfortunately, The Thin White Duke was a rather negative character and when mixed with excessive cocaine use, he caused quite a bit of a stir by saying and doing things to support fascism and Nazism. Since the Thin White Duke’s retirement, Bowie has had to work rather hard to distance himself from the statements of the time, and even donated $10,000 to the NAACP.
He’s Big on Collaborations
David Bowie has worked with some of the most cutting edge artists in the music industry, as well as some of the most highly-regarded musicians in modern history. One of his closest friends since the beginning was Iggy Pop, who Bowie helped get through some of the tougher times by recording the songs they co-wrote together once he was a household name. The two also toured together on multiple occasions and even lived together in West Berlin throughout a period of the eighties.
Some of the big names he’s worked with include John Lennon, Lou Reed, Bing Crosby, Pete Townshend, Queen, Tina Turner, Mick Jagger, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Peter Frampton, Trent Reznor, Toni Basil, Annie Lennox and everyone’s favorite actress-gone-singer Scarlett Johansson.
Bowie is a British National Treasure
David is number 29 out of 100 Greatest Britons. He is one of the ten best-selling musicians in UK pop history. He was previously offered the chance to be named as Commander of the British Empire in 2000 and a Knight in 2003, but he declined the opportunities. In 2003, the Sunday Express named Bowie as the second richest entertainer in the UK with over £510 million, but in 2005, Sunday Times Rich List said he actually only had £100 million.
His Eye is Permanently Dilated
At the age of 15, Bowie and his friend George Underwood got in a fight over a girl. George was wearing a ring and hit David in the eye, which resulted in David having to stay out of school for eight months so he could get multiple operations to protect his eye sight. He almost went blind from the incident and the pupil stayed permanently dilated and resulted in David’s having faulty depth perception. People commonly think his eyes are two different colors, but it only an illusion due to the extra blackness of the injured eye.
Even after the fight, David and George stayed friends and Bowie even hired Underwood to do the artwork on some of his early albums.
He Might be Bad Luck
David appeared on a show hosted by his friend Marc Bolan of T Rex in 1977. Shortly afterward, Bolan died in a car crash. For Christmas that year, he joined Bing Crosby in a rendition of “Little Drummer Boy.” Only one month after the record was complete, Crosby died. After that, Bowie was quoted as saying he was hesitant to be a guest artist anymore because, “everyone I was going on with was kicking it.”
He Really Gets His Kicks Acting
Aside from pretending to be other people in his concerts, he actually has always showed a big interest and aptitude in acting. His first major role was in the 1976 film, The Man Who Fell to Earth. Following the critical acclaim of that role, he expanded his acting resume by playing in the 1979 movie; Just a Gigolo; the 1980 Broadway production of The Elephant Man; the 1980 BBC’s adaptation of Baal; the 1986 film, Absolute Beginners; and his most famous role as the Goblin King in the Labyrinth. He’s since played in a number of movies including: The Last Temptation of Christ; The Linguini Incident; Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me; Basquiat; Gunslinger’s Revenge; Mr. Rice’s Secret; and The Prestige. He even received a Hollywood Walk of Fame star in 1997.
He’s Got A Revolving Door On His Closet
A common thought about David Bowie is “Is he gay or bi or not?” Unfortunately, this answer isn’t so clear. He seems to shed his sexuality as much as he changes his egos around.
In 1972, David outed himself in an interview with Melody Maker newspaper. Around this time, he also frequently fed on rumors that he and Iggy Pop were fooling around together. He repeated these rumors in a 1976 interview with Playboy, saying, “It’s true –I am a bisexual…I suppose it’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”
But then, he changed his tune. In a 1983 interview with Rolling Stone, he said, it was “the biggest mistake I ever made.” By 1993, he decided that he was always a “closet heterosexual” and that “it wasn’t something I was comfortable with at all.”
By 2002, he seemed to decide that being bisexual had more to do with where he was trying to sell records, saying “I don’t think it was a mistake in Europe, but it was a lot tougher in America. I had no problem with people knowing I was bisexual…I felt that [bisexuality] became my headline over here for so long. America is a very puritanical place, and I think it stood in the way of so much I wanted to do.”
The Life Aquatic With David Bowie
The soundtrack for The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou featured cast member Seu Jorge singing a number of David Bowie songs with tracks slightly altered lyrics to fit the movie’s plot. Bowie later remarked, “Had Seu Jorge not recorded my songs acoustically in Portuguese I would never have heard this new level of beauty which he has imbued them with”
If pet rental isn’t enough to fill the void in your soul, how about renting a mommy or daddy? If you’re a single mom, and you think your child needs a father figure, just rent them love by the hour. Or, at least you can if you live in Japan.
“The website says the “dad” will help the children with their homework. He will sort out problems with the neighbors. He will take the kids to a barbecue or to a park. He could also appear at the daunting interview with a nursery school head teacher which parents are required to endure in order to persuade the principal to give their child a good start in life.”
While one hopes they check all the actors to make sure they aren’t sex offenders, I think there’s a much bigger concern here. Have our lives really gotten so empty that we must rent relationships rather than forging our own? And how long until this service comes to the states? I’ve really wanted to have a family reunion, but don’t feel like actually contacting all of my distant relatives.
Link Via TokyoMango
Ever wonder what happened to the cast of Seinfeld? No, not Jerry (he’s got a new Bee movie) or Ellen Elaine, George, and Kreamer Kramer – we mean the bit players. Like Babu, Man Hand, Low Talker, and Soup Nazi.
Mario Marsicano (or Jellio) of the always interesting YesButNoButYes blog tracked ‘em all down:
O’Henry? That’s one of our top-selling candy bars. It’s got chocolate, peanuts, nougat, it’s delicious, scrumptious, outstanding!
We’ll start with one of my favorites. Jackie Chiles had a way with words, using his talents to defend Kramer when he was scalded by coffee, disfigured from smoking and distracted by a bra. The cases didn’t go so well, but you may recall he ended up ok, being able to judge for himself that they were, indeed "real, and spectacular". Since then, Jim Morris has been all over the television dial, in everything from CSI to Smallville, with alot of voiceover work, as well. Here’s the most interesting thing I found…the University of Utah Law School has a Jackie Chiles Law Society, which seeks to "analyze America’s view of the Law based on how popular culture portrays it". That’s pretty spectacular, as well.
