The High School Revolution

What are the best teenager rebellion movies?

Teens rebel, it is in their/our nature. 

Teenage rebellion is a part of human development in adolescents in order for them to develop an identity independent from their parents or family and a capacity for independent decision-making.^[1] They may experiment with different roles, behaviours, and ideologies as part of this process of developing an identity.^[2] Teenage rebellion has been recognized within psychology as a set of behavioural traits that supersede class, culture, or race;^[3] some psychologists, however, have disputed the universality of the phenomenon.^[4] According to Terror Management Theory, the child's allegiance to parental authority and worldviews can weaken after the discovery that parents, like themselves and everyone else, are mortal. This realization creates an unconscious need for security that is broader than what the parents alone provide. This can lead to new cultural allegiances, in the search for a more enduring sense of meaning. Teenagers seek to perceive themselves a valued contributor to aspects of culture that more convincingly outlive or transcend the mortal individual's lifespan. However, since the parents also instill their cultural beliefs onto the child, if the child does not come to associate their parents‘ mortality with their cultural beliefs, the chances of rebellion decrease

But what films have displayed this act of rebellion in the most authentic and compelling way?

What are your favourite teenage rebellion movies?

There have been many great films about rebellious young people with the most prominent trendsetter being 1955's Rebel Without A Cause.

Since Rebel Without A Cause we've seen Francis Ford Coppola's The Outsiders, Tim Hunter's River's Edge, and John Hughes' The Breakfast Club to name but three. 

Another great teen rebellion film is Heathers.

Here's what IndieWire had to say about that one:

Coming in two years after the sappily titled “Pretty in Pink,” “Heathers” is a darkly comic satire on the brutality of high school cliques. Veronica Sawyer (Winona Ryder, in one of her first roles), a relatively normal middle-class girl with an above average IQ, has been adopted by the popular girls, all called Heather, but isn’t sure she can hack the moral ambiguity and all-around vapid bitchiness that comes with the crown. Everything changes when she meets the new kid J.D. (Christian Slater, aping Jack Nicholson), whose disdain for the high school hierarchy, and readiness with a weapon, provides her with a way out: offing the popular kids. J.D. deceives Veronica and funnels her adolescent fury into violent action. Painting their murders as suicides, Veronica and J.D. get revenge and attempt to upend the social order, however little changes at the high school, as suicide becomes a trend (with number one single “Teenage Suicide (Don’t Do It)” by Big Fun, playing in the background), while the Queen Bees at Westerburg High (named for the frontman of The Replacements) are quickly replaced. Veronica manages to foil J.D.’s dramatic plans to blow up the school, create “a Woodstock for the 80s,” and simultaneously usurp and break free of the Heathers, taking up instead with the school dork Martha Dunnstock, and striking a blow for teenage misfits everywhere. The script is a sarcastic gold mine for made-up teen quotables, from “What’s your damage?” to “How very” and the cynically romantic “Our love is God, let’s go get a slushie.” The out-of-touch teachers and parents all make hilarious straight men, whether they are ignoring the events or going into overzealous touchy-feely smother-mode, as one hippie teacher earnestly informs the kids, “Whether to kill yourself or not is one of the most important decisions a teenager can make.” Its hard to believe that Winona Ryder was just 17 when she made “Heathers” — the world weary one-liners and simultaneous eye-roll seem like second nature, and the combo-release of “Beetlejuice” that same year made her the object of outsider adoration the world over. “Heathers,” though a box office dud, became a cult classic and source material for a spate of black high school comedies in the future.

Stepping outside America, we have films like If.

if.... is a 1968 British drama film produced and directed by Lindsay Anderson, and starring Malcolm McDowell as Mick Travis, and also starring Richard Warwick, Christine Noonan, David Wood, and Robert Swann. A satire of English public school life, the film follows a group of pupils who stage a savage insurrection at a boys' boarding school. The film was the subject of controversy at the time of its release, receiving an X certificate for its depictions of violence.

if.... won the Palme d'Or at the 1969 Cannes Film Festival.^[3] In 1999, the British Film Institute named it the 12th greatest British film of the 20th century; in 2004, the magazine Total Film named it the 16th greatest British film of all time. In 2017 a poll of 150 actors, directors, writers, producers and critics for Time Out magazine ranked it the 9th best British film ever.^[4] On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a 92% approval rating based on 48 reviews, with an average score of 7.9/10. According to the site's critical consensus, "Incendiary, subversive, and darkly humorous, If.... is a landmark of British countercultural cinema."^[5]

Nihilism in cinema is hit-or-miss for me normally, but Anderson’s 1968 psychological drama film exceeds my expectations in every aspect. When ruminating on it as a whole, I can comprehend how the English public school life and religion that it satirizes is conveyed through a cerebral fever dream. 

When it was released in 1968, Lindsay Anderson’s bellow of righteous outrage was described as “a hand grenade” of a movie. Some critics and many politicians were made thoroughly queasy at its apparent message of total, uncompromising revolution. The fact that, across the Channel, the student population was busy building the barricades can’t have helped.

Malcolm McDowell heads the cast as Mick, a teenage schoolboy who leads his classmates in a revolution against the stifling conformism of his boarding school. Facing up to the bullying prefects and the incompetent teachers, Mick and his crusaders attempt to destroy the stagnant system of petty viciousness and an out-dated belief in the importance of the institution over the individual.

Anderson captures the spirit of youthful rebellion beautifully, linking it with the sweeping political changes that were dominating the headlines through the photos of Mao, Che Guevara, and Vietnam that adorn the walls of Mick's bedroom (shooting started just a few months before the May 1968 riots in Paris).

The years may have robbed it of some of its power, but "If..." still deserves the reputation as one of the best films to have come from these shores, a subversive, anti-authoritarian masterpiece that stands alongside Godard's "Weekend" and Bunuel's "The Exterminating Angel" as a blistering attack on the morality and values of the middle class. To rework that famous Parisian cry of 1968: "Under the schoolyard, the beach!"

The film's greatness lies in its surreal take on these events. As the schoolyard revolution slowly kicks into gear, the film itself begins to disintegrate. The photography switches restlessly between colour and sepia, and the narrative becomes increasingly elliptical as reality and fantasy merge.

A modern classic in which Anderson minutely captures both the particular ethos of a public school and the general flavour of any structured community, thus achieving a clear allegorical force without sacrificing a whit of his exploration of an essentially British institution. 

What Are The Best Scary Movies About Ghosts & Haunted Houses?

What's the best ghost story in cinema?

The Shining, The Entity, The Haunting, The Sixth Sense..?

Horror cinema is awash with great films about ghosts and haunted houses. There's the classics like The Innocents and Don't Look Now as well as modern greats like Insidious and The Conjuring. 

Ghosts - in horror cinema that wants to scare its audience - have proven to be perfect "villains" to unsettle and get under the skin.

They are the unseen terror. The threat that appears to transcend the normal boundaries of right and wrong. 

One of my favourite ghost stories in cinema is 1961's The Innocents. A chilling film that proved to be a trendsetter for future movies about paranormal activity and haunted houses. 

Here's The Guardian's film critic Peter Bradshaw explaining what's so great about The Innocents:

"Jack Clayton's The Innocents (1961), now on national rerelease, is an elegant, sinister and scalp-prickling ghost story – as scary in its way as Rosemary's Baby or The Exorcist. It has to be the most sure-footed screen adaptation of Henry James, taken from his 1898 novella The Turn of the Screw, clarifying some of the original's ambiguities and obscurities, but without damaging the story's subtlety. Deborah Kerr plays Miss Giddens, a governess hired to look after two children in a country estate: Flora (Pamela Franklin) and Miles (Martin Stephens). Miss Giddens finds something she describes as "secret, whispery, and indecent": the house is haunted by the souls of Peter Quint, a drunken, disreputable valet, and Miss Jessel, the former governess whom he seduced. Without admitting it, the children can see the ghosts as well; the spectres have become their secret, parasitical friends. Flora's pertly knowing innocence and Miles's insolent adult hauteur show how the children become possessed and corrupted by them. Clayton brilliantly uses slow dissolves to create ghostly superimpositions, and the harmless squeals of bath-time fun, or squeakings of a pencil, suggest uncanny screams. The most disturbing scenes take place in daylight: Quint's appearance in the garden is heralded by the sudden silencing of the birdsong. It's a moment that makes your blood run cold. The whole film does that."

Another great is Don't Look Now. 

John and Laura Baxter are in Venice when they meet a pair of elderly sisters, one of whom claims to be psychic. She insists that she sees the spirit of the Baxters' daughter, who recently drowned. Laura is intrigued, but John resists the idea. He, however, seems to have his own psychic flashes, seeing their daughter walk the streets in her red cloak, as well as Laura and the sisters on a funeral gondola.

—James Meek <james@oz.net>

Fast-forward and we have the work of James Wan in films such as Insidious and The Conjuring.

 

"Directed by James Wan and scripted by Leigh Whannell, the Australian co-creators of Saw, and produced by Oren Peli, the Israeli writer-director of Paranormal Activity, this is a supernatural horror flick by and for horror buffs. A pleasant, apparently American couple and their three small children move into a new house where things go bump in the night and the eldest child experiences a three-month coma. They get even bumpier when the family moves elsewhere and the situation become more problematic than that in The Amityville Horror. The build-up is slow and sure, the shocks are exponential, Barbara Hershey as the husband's mother is even creepier than she was in Black Swan, and a bad time is had by all. The film cost $1.5m to make and has taken $45m at the US box office." Source: The Guardian

What are your favourite movies about ghosts and haunted houses?

Alec Baldwin prop gun shooting: What search warrant reveals - Los Angeles Times

Actor Alec Baldwin was practicing removing a revolver from its holster and aiming toward the camera during rehearsal for the movie “Rust” when director Joel Souza heard “what sounded like a whip and then a loud pop,” according to a search warrant obtained by the Los Angeles Times on Sunday night that also provided grim new details about the final minutes of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins’ life.

In the newly released document Souza said someone identified the weapon as a “cold gun,” meaning it did not have any live rounds. But instead the gun discharged, striking Hutchins in her chest and Souza in his right shoulder, according to a Santa Fe County, N.M., sheriff’s detective’s affidavit used to obtain a search warrant. Hutchins was pronounced dead at an Albuquerque hospital.

Souza’s statement to the detective offered a new window into the on-set shooting Thursday that has left Hollywood reeling and calling for safer working conditions on sets.

The shooting took place after six members of the film’s crew walked off the set after complaining to the production company about payment and housing, camera operator Reid Russell told Det. Joel Cano. The affidavit offered the most detailed chronology yet of an unfolding tragedy.

The day started late because the production hired another camera crew and was working with only one camera, Souza told the detective.

Souza said three people were handling the gun for the scene: armorer Hannah Gutierrez Reed, then assistant director Dave Halls, who handed the gun to Baldwin, the affidavit said.

Halls had taken one of three prop guns set up by Gutierrez Reed on a cart left outside the structure because of COVID-19 restrictions, the affidavit said. Halls did not know live rounds were in the gun when he handed it to Baldwin, and Halls yelled “cold gun,” according to the affidavit.

Souza said cast and crew were preparing the scene before lunch but then had a meal away from the rehearsal area around 12:30 p.m., according to the affidavit. When they returned, Souza said, he wasn’t sure if the gun was checked again, the affidavit said.

“Joel said as far as he knows, no one gets checked for live ammunition on their person prior and after the scenes are being filmed,” the affidavit said. “The only thing checked are the firearms to avoid live ammunition being in them. Joel stated there should never be live rounds whatsoever, near or around the scene.”

When they came back from lunch, a creeping shadow prompted the camera to be moved to a different angle, Russell said in the affidavit. As Baldwin was explaining how he was going to draw his gun and where his arm would be when he pulled the gun from the holster, it discharged, Russell said.

Souza said he was looking over Hutchins’ shoulder when the gun discharged. Hutchins grabbed her midsection, stumbled backward and “was assisted to the ground,” Souza told the detective.

The search warrant said Russell recalled hearing a loud bang, seeing a bloody Souza and hearing Hutchins say she couldn’t feel her legs.

The shooting came after crew members raised concerns about safety conditions on set. Two “Rust” crew members told the L.A. Times that, less than a week earlier, a stunt double had fired two accidental prop gun discharges after being told the gun was “cold.”

Rust Movie Productions said in a statement that the safety of its cast and crew is “the top priority” and it was not aware of official complaints raised about weapon safety and will conduct an internal review. On Sunday, the production company said it would shut down the film’s production during the investigation but did not rule out restarting.

Hutchins’ death follows other accidents that have happened on TV and movie sets. Some in Hollywood and the greater community have called for sets to no longer have operational firearms, especially as muzzle fire could be added through post production. A California state senator has announced plans to propose legislation to ban live ammunition and firearms capable of shooting live ammunition on Hollywood productions in California.

Alec Baldwin 'Rust' shooting: Focus on assistant director - Los Angeles Times

The outrage and disbelief over the death of “Rust” cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, shot by actor and producer Alec Baldwin during rehearsal of a scene Thursday, have many in the Hollywood production community talking about one man at the center of the tragedy: first assistant director Dave Halls.

According to a search warrant filed by the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Department and obtained by the Associated Press, Halls picked up one of three guns from a mobile cart that had been prepared by the production’s armorer, Hannah Gutierrez Reed. Halls allegedly declared “cold gun,” meaning the weapon was not loaded, as he was handing it to Baldwin.

On a recording of the 911 call placed by script supervisor Mamie Mitchell, she presumably refers to Halls when she can be heard saying, “the f— AD that yelled at me at lunch, asking about revisions.” On the recording, obtained by the Albuquerque Journal, she adds: “He’s supposed to check the guns. He’s responsible for what happens on the set.”

Halls did not respond to The Times’ request for comment.

An industry veteran with credits dating to the early ’90s, Halls has worked on films such as “Bone Tomahawk,” “Balls of Fury,” “A Prairie Home Companion,” “Bad Santa,” “The Matrix Reloaded,” “A Simple Plan” and “Fargo.” In a grim coincidence, he worked as the first assistant director on the second unit of the 2000 movie “The Crow: Salvation,” the sequel to “The Crow,” the film on which Brandon Lee died in an on-set gun accident in 1993.

Halls also was first assistant director and had a small on-screen role on the 2019 film “Darlin’,” for which Hutchins was the cinematographer.

The duties of the first assistant director can include overseeing set safety and keeping the production moving and on schedule.

Filmmaker Aaron B. Koontz, who also knew Hutchins, worked with Halls twice: on the 2020 film “The Pale Door” and the 2017 film “Camera Obscura.”

“Dave is extremely efficient and he’s very good at keeping the pace going and just moving at the speed that you have to move at in order to make your days,” Koontz said Saturday, emphasizing he has no direct knowledge of what happened on the “Rust” set.

“He was a good manager of the day. Which all ADs have to be.”

“Rust” crew members who spoke with The Times said they were mystified how Halls could have handed a loaded gun to Baldwin without thoroughly checking it. The role of the AD has been a subject of debate following the shooting, but some production workers said the protocol on many sets is for the first AD to check the gun for safety.

“You don’t hand an actor a loaded gun,” said one of the “Rust” crew members who was not authorized to speak publicly.

Crew members reported tensions on the set. A half-dozen camera operators and their assistants walked off the Bonanza Creek Ranch movie set earlier in the day. Crew members who spoke with The Times described what they saw as an imperative by producers to keep the 21-day shoot on schedule and on budget. “Every day on that set, it was just go-go-go,” said one of the crew members. “They were in such a rush to get things done.”

There were three actors with guns during the scene being rehearsed when Hutchins was killed.

Following the 2014 death of assistant camera operator Sarah Jones on the set of the film “Midnight Rider,” assistant director Hillary Schwartz was found guilty of manslaughter and criminal trespass and sentenced to 10 years’ probation.

As part of Schwartz’s probation, she also received a $5,000 fine and was restricted from working as a director, assistant director, producer or any department head in charge of crew safety.

Source: Los Angeles Times

Gun Fired By Alec Baldwin Was "Safe" Before Shooting - Court Records

The gun that actor Alec Baldwin fired on set, killing a woman, was handed to him by a director who told him it was safe, court records show.

Assistant director Dave Halls did not know the prop contained live ammunition and indicated it was unloaded by shouting "cold gun!", the records say.

Cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was fatally shot in the chest in Thursday's incident on the set of the film Rust.

Director Joel Souza, who was standing behind her, was wounded.

The 48-year-old received emergency treatment for a shoulder injury and was later released from hospital.

Further details of the police investigation were released on Friday when a search warrant was filed at a court in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

It noted that Baldwin's blood-stained outfit was taken as evidence along with the gun. Ammunition and other prop weapons were also taken from the set by police.

The 63-year-old actor was questioned by law enforcement, but no-one has been charged over the incident.

Earlier on Friday, Baldwin - who was the star and producer of the film - said he was "fully co-operating" with the Santa Fe County Sheriff's Office.

"My heart is broken for her husband, their son, and all who knew and loved Halyna," he wrote on Twitter.

"There are no words to convey my shock and sadness regarding the tragic accident that took the life of Halyna Hutchins, a wife, mother and deeply admired colleague of ours."

Ms Hutchins, 42, was from Ukraine and grew up on a Soviet military base in the Arctic Circle. She studied journalism in Kyiv, and film in Los Angeles, and was named a "rising star" by the American Cinematographer magazine in 2019.

She was the director of photography for the 2020 action film Archenemy, directed by Adam Egypt Mortimer.

According to the Los Angeles Times, about half a dozen members of the camera crew on Rust walked out hours before the tragedy after protesting over working conditions on the set at the Bonanza Creek Ranch near Santa Fe.

The union members had reportedly complained that they were promised hotel rooms in Santa Fe, but once filming of the Western began they were required to drive 50 miles (80km) from Albuquerque every morning.

Meanwhile, the BBC has obtained a document showing which crew members were listed as scheduled to be on set that day.

It names a head armourer, the crew member responsible for checking firearms. Hannah Gutierrez Reed is in her twenties and, according to the LA Times, had recently worked in this role for the first time.

The prop gun that Baldwin fired contained a "live single round", according to an email sent by the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees to its membership, reports Variety.

In Rust, Baldwin was starring as an outlaw whose grandson is sentenced to hang for an accidental murder.

The actor is best known for his role as Jack Donaghy on the NBC sitcom 30 Rock and for his portrayal of Donald Trump on the sketch show Saturday Night Live.

Such incidents on film sets are extremely rare.

Real firearms are often used in filming, and are loaded with blanks - cartridges that create a flash and a bang without discharging a projectile.

In 1993, Brandon Lee - the 28-year-old son of the late martial arts star Bruce Lee - died on set after being accidentally shot with a prop gun while filming a death scene for the film The Crow. The gun mistakenly had a dummy round loaded in it.

What (Not) To Watch: Halloween Kills

Halloween Kills is another rubbish entry in the Halloween franchise. David Gordon Green has somehow managed to outdo himself by making a film that's worse than his previous effort. 

The comedy movie director does not know how to create suspense and is not cut-out to make a horror movie. 

ABOUT HALLOWEEN KILLS:

Halloween Kills is a 2021 American slasher film directed by David Gordon Green and written by Green, Danny McBride, and Scott Teems. The film is a direct sequel to 2018's Halloween and the twelfth installment in the Halloween franchise. The film stars Jamie Lee Curtis and James Jude Courtney, who reprise their roles as Laurie Strode and Michael Myers. Judy Greer, Andi Matichak, and Will Patton also reprise their roles from the previous film, with Anthony Michael Hall and Thomas Mann joining the cast. The film, which begins precisely where the previous film ended, sees Strode and her family continuing to fend off Myers, this time with the help of the Haddonfield community.

Jason Blum serves as a producer on the film through his Blumhouse Productions banner, alongside Malek Akkad and Bill Block. Before the release of the 2018 film, McBride in June 2018 confirmed that he and Green were originally intending to pitch two films that would be shot back-to-back, and then decided against it, waiting to see the reaction to the first film. Following the critical and commercial success of the 2018 film, development on the sequel promptly began as early as October 2018. By February 2019, Teems was hired to co-write the script. The film's title was officially announced in July 2019, along with its sequel. Principal photography commenced in September 2019 in Wilmington, North Carolina.

Following a year delay due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Halloween Kills had its world premiere at the 78th Venice International Film Festival on September 8, 2021, and was theatrically released in the United States on October 15, 2021, by Universal Pictures. It will also stream on paid tiers of Peacock for 60 days. The film has grossed $60.4 million worldwide and received mixed reviews from critics, who praised the creative kills and the performances of the cast, but criticized its screenplay and lack of innovation.

A direct sequel, Halloween Ends, is scheduled to be released on October 14, 2022.

What's it about?

On October 31, 2018, after being stabbed and left to die by Dr. Ranbir Sartain, Deputy Frank Hawkins is found by Cameron Elam. Hawkins awakens and remembers the events of 40 years earlier during the search for Michael Myers following his escape after being shot. In 1978, Hawkins accidentally killed his partner trying to save him from Michael in the Myers house before preventing Michael's original psychiatrist Dr. Sam Loomis from killing his patient outside, resolving to kill him in the present.

Meanwhile, Tommy Doyle is at a local bar celebrating the 40th anniversary of Michael’s arrest and imprisonment, and to commemorate the memory of his victims, along with fellow survivors Marion Chambers, Lindsey Wallace, and Cameron’s father, Lonnie Elam, who briefly encountered Michael in 1978, before toasting Laurie Strode. A group of firefighters respond to Laurie's burning house and unwittingly free Michael who massacres them with their own equipment. Laurie, her daughter Karen, and her granddaughter Allyson arrive at Haddonfield Memorial Hospital where Laurie undergoes emergency surgery. Michael murders Laurie's neighbors Sondra and Phil before making his way deeper into Haddonfield. An emergency newscast of the killings alerts Tommy, Marion, Lindsey, and Lonnie of Michael’s escape before bar patron Vanessa supposedly encounters Michael in the backseat of her car. Tommy and a group of people head outside to confront him as the car drives away and crashes; the driver, whom they falsely believe to be Michael, escapes unnoticed. While Lonnie heads off to pick up Cameron, Tommy forms a mob of vengeful Haddonfield citizens to hunt down and kill Michael before he can kill anyone else.

The police inform Karen and Allyson that Michael escaped and is still alive. Karen decides to withhold the information from Laurie to allow her to recover while Allyson reconciles with Cameron and joins him along with his father and the others to hunt down Michael and avenge her own father’s death. Laurie and Hawkins, now sharing a hospital room, both awaken and reminisce about their former relationship. Lindsey, Marion, Vanessa, and her husband Marcus are ambushed by Michael in the park after warning Haddonfield residents to stay inside; all of them are killed except for Lindsey who escapes and hides. Allyson, Cameron, Tommy, and Lonnie arrive at the scene discovering the bodies of the others on a playground. They find Lindsey traumatized and injured but alive.

While Tommy takes Lindsey to the hospital, Lonnie, Cameron, and Allyson map out the path Michael is taking. Based on where his victims are located, they deduce that he is heading towards his childhood home. Tommy reunites with former Haddonfield sheriff Leigh Brackett, whose daughter Annie was killed by Michael in 1978, and then informs Laurie of Michael’s survival. Across town, Michael murders Big John and Little John, a couple who live in his childhood home, as Laurie prepares to leave the hospital to have her final confrontation with him. The driver of Vanessa's car; Lance Tovoli, who is a fellow patient at Smith's Grove Psychiatric Hospital alongside Michael and escaped when the bus crashed, arrives at the hospital. Tommy and his mob mistake Lance for Michael and pursue him through the hospital. Karen manages to reach Lance and realizes he isn't Michael. Despite Karen's attempts to calm the mob and help Lance, he jumps out of a window to his death. Brackett grows concerned that the mob is turning into monsters from their fear and panic, while Laurie, who was injured during the chase, urges Karen to work with Tommy and hunt down Michael.

Back at the Myers house, Lonnie arms himself and heads in alone until Allyson and Cameron hear gunshots and rush inside to help him. They discover the bodies of Big John, Little John, and Lonnie before being attacked by Michael. In the ensuing fight, Michael breaks Allyson's legs by shoving her down the stairs and brutally beats Cameron before snapping his neck. As Michael prepares to kill Allyson, Karen stabs him in the back with a pitchfork, steals his mask, and taunts him to follow her. Karen lures Michael into the path of Tommy's mob. Michael recovers his mask before being attacked and seemingly killed by the mob. As Karen leaves to reunite with Allyson, Brackett prepares to shoot Michael in the head. Michael recovers and manages to slaughter the entire mob, including Brackett and Tommy. Back at the Myers's house as Allyson receives medical attention, Karen sees a young Michael looking out the bedroom window and investigates. Michael appears and stabs her to death. Laurie stares out of her hospital room window while Michael stares out his window.

The Best Films Of Harry Dean Stanton

Harry Dean Stanton (July 14, 1926 – September 15, 2017) was an American actor, musician, and singer.[1] In a career that spanned more than six decades, Stanton played supporting roles in films including Cool Hand Luke (1967), Kelly's Heroes (1970), Dillinger (1973), The Godfather Part II (1974), Alien (1979), Escape from New York (1981), Christine (1983), Repo Man (1984), One Magic Christmas (1985), Pretty in Pink (1986), The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), Wild at Heart (1990), The Straight Story (1999), The Green Mile (1999), Alpha Dog (2006) and Inland Empire (2006). He had rare lead roles in Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas (1984) and in Lucky (2017), his last film.

In the first half of his career, Stanton made scores of television appearances, mainly westerns, and dozens of films, mostly in brief roles. His face but not his name gained recognition.

That is until he came into more focus in Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979) as a downtrodden engineer on the doomed spaceship. Then, in 1984, greatness was thrust upon him when he was given two of his rare leading roles, in Alex Cox’s Repo Man and Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas, which were, understandably, his own favourites. A few years later, he was celebrated by Debbie Harryin the 1989 Blondie hit I Want That Man.

Stanton was born in a small town in Kentucky, where his father, Sheridan Harry Stanton, was a tobacco farmer and barber, and his mother, Ersel, a hairdresser and cook. After leaving high school in 1944, he served in the US navy in the second world war, during which he saw action in Okinawa. He then returned to study journalism and radio at the University of Kentucky, where he became seriously interested in acting after playing Alfred Doolittle in a college production of Pygmalion. [Source: The Guardian]

Marlon Brando used to telephone his friend Harry Dean Stanton late at night in the 1970s to chat about acting. “He taught me Shakespearean monologues from The Tempest and Macbeth,” recalled Stanton.

Stanton’s favourite soliloquy was Macbeth’s one about life being “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing,” which Stanton would recite to friends and strangers and follow by saying: “Great line, eh?”

The meaning of life and death, and whether existence is anything more than a “black void”, is also at the heart of Stanton’s final movie, Lucky, which he completed just six months before he died at the age of 91 on 15 September 2017.

In Lucky, which marks John Carroll Lynch’s directorial debut, he plays a loner called Lucky in a small Californian desert town who is meditating on his past and his own mortality. The character echoes Stanton’s own life, with scriptwriters Logan Sparks and Drago Sumonja drawing on the experiences of one of the most remarkable actors of modern times.

Lucky explains that his name comes from his time in the Second World War when he served aboard USS Landing Ship Tank (LST) 970, as did Stanton himself. “I was in the battle of Okinawa,” the actor recalled. “People who are actors now don’t have that kind of life experience; I saw action on a ship. I was damn lucky I didn’t get blown up or killed.” [Source: The Independent]

Stanton was born in West Irvine, Kentucky, to Sheridan Harry Stanton, a tobacco farmer and barber and Ersel (née Moberly), a cook.[2] His parents divorced when Stanton was in high school; both later remarried.

Stanton had two younger brothers, Archie and Ralph, and a younger half-brother, Stanley McKnight. His family had a musical background. Stanton attended Lafayette High School and the University of Kentucky in Lexington where he performed at the Guignol Theatre under the direction of British theater director Wallace Briggs, and studied journalism and radio arts. 

"I could have been a writer," he told an interviewer for a 2011 documentary, Harry Dean Stanton: Crossing Mulholland, in which he sings and plays the harmonica. "I had to decide if I wanted to be a singer or an actor. I was always singing. I thought if I could be an actor, I could do all of it." Briggs encouraged him to leave the university and become an actor. He studied at the Pasadena Playhouse in Pasadena, California, where his classmates included his friends Tyler MacDuff and Dana Andrews.

During World War II, Stanton served in the United States Navy, including a stint as a cook aboard the USS LST-970, a Landing Ship, Tank, during the Battle of Okinawa.

After Navy service in the Pacific during World War II, he spent three years at the University of Kentucky and appeared in several plays. Determined to make it in Hollywood, he picked tobacco to earn his fare west.

Three years at the Pasadena Playhouse prepared him for television and movies.

For decades, Mr. Stanton lived in a small, dishevelled house overlooking the San Fernando Valley and was a fixture at the West Hollywood landmark Dan Tana’s. He was attacked in his home in 1996 by two robbers who forced their way in, tied him up at gunpoint, beat him, ransacked the house and fled in his Lexus. He was not seriously hurt, and the assailants, who were captured, were sentenced to prison.

Mr. Stanton never married, although he had a long relationship with actress Rebecca De Mornay, nearly 35 years his junior. “She left me for Tom Cruise,” Mr. Stanton said often.

“I might have had two or three [kids] out of marriage,” he once recalled. “But that’s another story.”

Stanton generally gave the impression he’d rather be someplace else, alone. That was one of the things that made him different from most movie actors (let alone, a ‘star’). He was pissed off with the world, unimpressed with himself, and he didn’t care to hide it. It amused him, rather.

Disillusionment carries with it at least the ashes of enchantment, and no matter how tough his bark, or how tightly his thin lips sneered around another smoke, Harry Dean could never entirely extinguish a forlorn smile, the promise of romance buried behind his eyes. He’d give you that blank, flat look, but then he’d pick up a guitar and show you his heart, still breaking.

Is that Harry Dean, or Travis from Paris, Texas? You can’t slip a cigarette paper between them, which is why this seems to me one of the indelible, singular performances in the American cinema, an unvarnished and achingly vulnerable portrait of a dead man walking, lost in the wilderness, little by little coaxed back to life and attempting to restore some of the damage he’s done. Wim Wenders has said the actor doubted himself, that he didn’t know if he was strong enough to carry an entire movie on his shoulders. That fear is crucial to the film, the key to its emotional reach.

Almost always cast as a crook, a codger, an eccentric or a loser, he appeared in more than 200 movies and TV shows in a career dating to the mid-1950s. He had been a cult favorite since the 1970s with roles in “Cockfighter,” “Two-Lane Blacktop” and “Cisco Pike.” His more famous credits included the Oscar-winning epic “The Godfather: Part II” (1974), the sci-fi classic “Alien” (1979) and the teen flick “Pretty in Pink” (1986), in which he played Molly Ringwald’s father.

In his later years he had fruitful collaborations with the director David Lynch, in Wild at Heart (1990), Inland Empire (2006), Twin Peaks (on both TV and the big screen) and an outstanding performance as the brother in The Straight Story (1999). He was also featured in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998), the following year’s The Green Mile, the comedies Anger Management (2003) and You, Me and Dupree (2006), Nick Cassavetes’ unpleasant Alpha Dog (2007), the offbeat animation Rango and equally bizarre This Must Be the Place (both 2011) and Marvel’s The Avengers (2012). He had a prominent role as Roman Grant in the HBO television series Big Love between 2006 and 2011.