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  • Peter White, ‘Boys in the Band’ and ‘All My Children’ Actor, Dies at 86

    Peter White, ‘Boys in the Band’ and ‘All My Children’ Actor, Dies at 86

    Peter White, who portrayed Linc Tyler on the ABC soap opera All My Children over four decades and starred in the original stage production and film adaptation of The Boys in the Band, has died. He was 86.

    White died Wednesday at his home in Los Angeles of melanoma, his All My Children castmate Kathleen Noone (Ellen Shepherd Dalton on the show) told The Hollywood Reporter.

    White also played Arthur Cates, the attorney for Sable Colby (Stephanie Beacham), on the first two seasons of the ABC primetime soap The Colbys in 1985-86, and he recurred as the deceased doctor dad of the characters played by Swoosie Kurtz, Sela Ward, Patricia Kalember and Julianne Phillips on the 1991-96 NBC drama Sisters.

    White first portrayed Lincoln Tyler, son of stern Pine Valley matriarch Phoebe Tyler (Ruth Warrick), from 1974-80 — he was the third actor in the role, starting with James Karen — then returned for stints in ’81, ’84, ’86, ‘95 and 2005.

    White starred as Alan McCarthy in Mart Crowley’s The Boys in the Band, which opened off-Broadway at Theater Four in April 1968. The drama revolves around a group of gay men attending a birthday party in a Manhattan apartment for their friend Harold (Leonard Frey), though it’s left unclear whether Alan was/is gay.

    Until then, most gay characters in American theater had been veiled or demonized.

    “Opening night, none of us knew what we had,” White recalled in a 2008 interview. “We all just thought, ‘It’s a play, it’s something new, it’s different and it’s good.’ It was a 100 percent gay audience — and then the next day, it went crazy!

    “We got a call to come to the theater early, because there was such a crowd around the theater, you couldn’t get near it. Everyone at the time wanted to call it a gay play — [I always thought] it wasn’t [so much] a gay play [as] it was a play with gay characters.”

    When Crowley produced and adapted his drama for the landmark 1970 film that was directed by William Friedkin and released through National General Pictures, White and his co-stars came along for the ride.

    Born in New York City on Oct. 10, 1937, White started out on soaps by playing Jerry Ames on CBS’ The Secret Storm in 1965-66, then guest-starred on an episode of N.Y.P.D. in 1968.

    He was working alongside Myrna Loy in a touring production of Barefoot in the Park when he was offered the Boys in the Band opportunity.

    “Things were sort of really moving for me; I was doing so well, and I thought, ‘I don’t need this kind of risk,’” he recalled. “I talked to Myrna — she became my mentor — and she said, ‘Peter, if you are going to be an actor, you are going to have to take some risks in your life.’”

    The play would run for more than 1,000 performances.

    White returned to the soap world in 1971 with a turn as Dr. Sanford Hiller on CBS’ Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing, and he also appeared in the Robert Mulligan-directed film The Pursuit of Happiness that year.

    He made it to Broadway in 1975 in P.S. Your Cat Is Dead, though that play lasted just 16 performances.

    White guest-starred on dozens of TV shows over the years, from Cannon, Hill Street Blues, The Jeffersons, Dynasty and Knots Landing to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Mad About You, The X-Files, The West Wing and Cold Case.

    His film résumé also included Dave (1993), Mother (1996), Flubber (1997), Armageddon (1998), Thirteen Days (2000) and First Daughter (2004). In recent years, he served as an acting coach for those preparing to audition.

    Noone said White was not married and had no children. His death was first reported by the SoapHub website.

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  • Every ‘Exorcist’ Sequel Has a Negative Rotten Tomatoes Score

    Every ‘Exorcist’ Sequel Has a Negative Rotten Tomatoes Score

    The Exorcist is one of the most iconic horror movies ever. In fact, it’s an iconic movie period. Unfortunately, none of the sequels have really captured the magic of the original.

    The director, William Friedkin, was right off of the absolute classic The French Connection. He was just one part of the equation though. William Peter Blatty’s novel of the same name had just been published in 1971, and the novel flew off the shelves. Friedkin’s film won multiple Oscars and Golden Globes.

    Unfortunately, every sequel to the original movie has either received middling feedback or been panned outright — including the new The Exorcist: Believer which opens this weekend and has gotten absolutely brutal reviews. Let’s go ahead and check out exactly how these shake out on Rotten Tomatoes (with their critics and audience ratings):

    • The Exorcist —  89% / 91%
    • Exorcist II: The Heretic — 09% / 13%
    • The Exorcist III — 58% / 57% 
    • Exorcist: The Beginning — 11% / 27%
    • Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist — 30% / 25%
    • The Exorcist: Believer — 23% / TBD
    Warner Bros.

    READ MORE: A Company Paid Critics For Rotten Tomatoes Reviews

    As you can see above, most of the movies in the franchise have brutally low scores. That being said, The Exorcist III has been reappraised to a certain degree and is gaining steam as a cult classic. That’s mostly due to Brad Dourif’s stellar performance as the Gemini Killer.

    The only exception here is The Exorcist TV show that ran on television from 2016 to 2017. That project has an 89 percent critic score, with an impressive 91 percent audience score. If you’re a fan of the franchise, that’s probably the one to check out.

    On the other hand, the new Exorcist by director David Gordon Green is receiving some pretty disappointing feedback. Most of the criticism claims that the film tries really hard to stick close to the original movie, while also not reaching the same highs. There are supposed to be two more Exorcist sequels on the way, so only time will tell how the trilogy turns out.

    Matt Singer wrote in ScreenCrush’s review…

    Believer swiftly descends into bad horror movie hell. Although I have no first-hand knowledge about the production, it appears that this Exorcist may have been heavily truncated and reworked in post-production — most obviously in a scene where Burstyn delivers a two-minute monologue almost entirely off-screen while the camera focuses on an endless closeup of Odom’s face.

    The Exorcist: Believer opens in theaters tomorrow.

    The Worst Sequels Ever

    These sequels ruined the reputations of some great movies.

    Gallery Credit: Matt Singer

    Cody Mcintosh

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  • Guillermo Del Toro Was ‘Back-Up Director’ On William Friedkin’s Final Film

    Guillermo Del Toro Was ‘Back-Up Director’ On William Friedkin’s Final Film

    By Corey Atad.
    Published:

    William Friedkin had Guillermo del Toro backing him up on his final outing.

    At the Venice premiere of the late director’s last film, “The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial”, producer Annabelle Dunne revealed del Toro acted as “back-up director” on the project.


    READ MORE:
    ‘The Exorcist’ Stars Ellen Burstyn And Linda Blair Praise William Friedkin For His ‘Genius’ Talent After His Death At 87 Years Old

    “That’s very common, Hollywood is ageist,” Dunne said of the contractual need for the 87-year-old filmmaker to have a back-up, according to Variety, adding that she was going to reveal a “state secret.”

    Recalling how she let Friedkin know about the requirement, the director told her, “Let me think about that.”

    The next day, he called her back and said, “Ok, honey I have the guy. Get a pen: it’s Guillermo Del Toro, you got that?”

    Dunne called up the Oscar-winning “Shape of Water” director, who told her, “I am going to come to set every single day and sit next to you.”

    She added, “It was joy for all of us, including the actors, to have his presence there. He made it abundantly clear it was Billy’s movie. He said he was our mascot.”


    READ MORE:
    ‘The Exorcist: Believer:’ Brace Yourself For The Demonic Onslaught In The Most Terrifying Chapter

    Friedkin, who was behind classics like “The French Connection”, “The Exorcist”, “Sorcerer” and “To Live and Die in L.A.”, died on August 7.

    Kiefer Sutherland stars in “The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial” as Lr. Commander Queeg, who stands trial in the film for mutiny after taking command of a ship from its captain, who he felt was acting in a mentally unstable manner.

    Based on the classic novel by Herman Wouk, the story was previously adapted into a 1954 film starring Humphrey Bogart, as well as a Broadway play that same year and a made-for-TV movie in 1988 directed by Robert Altman.

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    Stars We’ve Lost In 2023




    Corey Atad

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  • The Film That Returned William Friedkin to Critical Acclaim

    The Film That Returned William Friedkin to Critical Acclaim

    Shortly before his death, the director William Friedkin expressed a few regrets. Among them was that, in his opinion, he never created a film as critically acclaimed as some of Hollywood’s masterpieces, like Citizen Kane. The man who embodied New Hollywood for many, and who died on August 7 at the age of 87, was perhaps forgetting that he was behind the best thriller of the 1980s, To Live and Die in LA.

    Released in 1985, the plot of this 116-minute feature centers around a Secret Service agent’s relentless pursuit of a brilliant forger. The cop is a handsome adrenaline junkie, while the counterfeiter is a criminal with the smooth talents of a social climber. The film was Friedkin’s return to the detective genre, the source of his fame in the movie industry (The French Connection, his first success, won him an Oscar for Best Director in 1971). He also, however, produced some duds in the same genre. In 1980, the director released Cruising, a thriller starring Al Pacino as an undercover cop immersed in New York’s homosexual community. The film, which some critics pointed out was latently homophobic, was later disowned by Pacino. It put some dents in Friedkin’s reputation as a minor genius, and in 1983 he took another tumble with Deal of the Century. Critically and publicly panned, the comedy barely turned a profit.

    By the mid-1980s, the filmmaker’s young promise felt like a distant memory, based on movies released in the previous past decade. At the age of 50, he had no choice. If he were to continue directing, he had to create another great film.

    Then the director heard about a book written by a former Secret Service agent, Gerald Petrievich. The son of a California cop, Petrievich was assigned to fight counterfeiting operations. The novel To Live and Die in LA, published in 1984, was directly inspired by his experience as an agent.

    To make his film, Friedkin had to work with a $6 million budget ($4 million less than the budget for Deal of the Century). He soon realized that he wouldn’t be able to cast any of the big stars of the day. He called in his old friend Bob Weiner, the casting director who had worked miracles on The French Connection. His mission would be to find young actors capable of carrying a big movie. It was easy for Weiner: the lead role went to William Petersen, a complete unknown at the time. As for the counterfeiter, it was the angular face of young Willem Dafoe that caught the producer’s attention. The supporting roles were played by actors who would go on to successful careers in Hollywood: John Turturro, Darlanne Fluegel, Dean Stockwell, and John Pankow.

    William Petersen on the set of To Live And Die In L.A., 1985.

    Sunset Boulevard/Getty Images

    Miami Vice Style in a West Coast Setting

    Among the remarkable aspects of the film is how Friedkin used music to anchor it in its time. He has some firsthand knowledge of ’80s pop music. In 1984, he directed the video for “Self Control,” performed by Laura Branigan, and a year later, he fell in love with the group Wang Chung. The film’s soundtrack was entrusted to the British band, which “adds real depth to the film’s universe,” Friedkin said at the time.

    Maxime Jacob

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  • ‘The French Connection’ Is Censored on Streaming, And Fans Are Not Happy

    ‘The French Connection’ Is Censored on Streaming, And Fans Are Not Happy

    William Friedkin’s 1971 film The French Connection is now hailed as a classic of the crime genre. Unfortunately, it’s definitely also a product of its time. While using slurs is never okay, it was definitely more socially acceptable as a whole back in the 1970s. As a result, they’ve shown up a lot frequently in older movies. Sometimes, they’re even used by protagonists or people we’re supposed to otherwise connect with. That’s the case with Gene Hackman’s cop character, Popeye Doyle, in The French Connection.

    The film is a fictional account of a real-life case, where a plot to smuggle drugs into New York from France was uncovered. It also features one of the most famous car chases in the history of cinema. It involves Doyle, in a car, chasing an elevated train across New York City.

    20th Century Fox

    READ MORE: ’70s Classics That Couldn’t Even Get Made Today

    In a key scene Hackman’s Popeye Doyle uses the n-word — and although the exact specifics of who removed it or why have yet to be uncovered, fans have discovered that the version of the film currently streaming on the Criterion Channel, has excised this slur. (Fans have also discovered that the print of the film currently available on Apple’s iTunes store is censored as well.)

    Criterion is typically known for restoring and streaming classic or culturally impactful movies in versions intended by their filmmakers — not the sort of place you expect to find a censored print of a film. Ever since Disney acquired 20th Century Fox and the Fox film library, the company has controlled the rights to The French Connection, although it’s not yet clear whether they were the ones responsible for removing the offending word from the film.

    Perhaps what we’re seeing here is a kind of historical revisionism that seeks to deny a problematic past in the pursuit of more money. While it would be better if Hollywood never had a phase where this was okay in the first place, that’s not the case. But those who do not acknowledge history are doomed to repeat it.

    The Best Oscar Best Picture Winners Ever

    More than 90 films have earned the title of Best Picture from the Academy Awards. These are the best of the best.

    Cody Mcintosh

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  • Owen Roizman, Cinematographer of ‘The French Connection,’ ‘The Exorcist,’ and More Has Died at 86

    Owen Roizman, Cinematographer of ‘The French Connection,’ ‘The Exorcist,’ and More Has Died at 86

    Owen Roizman, a groundbreaking cinematographer who lensed a great many essential films over a 25-year career in features, has died, according to a report in Variety. The Brooklyn-born Roizman brought his talents to almost every conceivable genre, from action to horror to Westerns to comedy and even a legendary live concert performance. He worked with directors William Friedkin, Sydney Pollack, Elaine May, Sidney Lumet, Bob Fosse, John Huston, Lawrence Kasdan, and Barry Sonnenfeld. He was nominated for five Academy Awards, and won an honorary award in 2017. He was 86 years old.

    Roizman’s father, Sol Roizman, was a cameraman for Movietone News and his uncle, Morrie Roizman, produced short subjects and worked as an editor. He entered the business by working in television commercials, landing his first feature gig as a director of photography with 1970’s Stop! This was Bill Gunn’s directorial debut, and after it received an X rating, it was shelved by Warner Bros. Gunn was only the second African American director of a studio picture at the time; the movie, shot in Puerto Rico and featuring gay love scenes, has since only played at museum screenings.

    But clearly, enough people in the industry saw it and liked Roizman’s cinematography. As such, William Friedkin hired him to shoot The French Connection, and the two pretty much changed the way we think about gritty, urban law enforcement. The 1971 film won Oscars for best picture, best director, best actor (Gene Hackman), and best adapted screenplay (Ernest Tidyman), as well as nominations for best editing and Roy Scheider’s supporting role. It was also Roizman’s first nomination for best cinematography. (He lost to Oswald Morris’s work on Fiddler on the Roof.) Fifty years later, the chase scene through Brooklyn under the elevated train more than holds up. 

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    And much like Popeye Doyle’s automobile, his career floored it from here, notching one essential movie after the other. After The French Connection, he shot the mafia comedy The Gang Who Couldn’t Shoot Straight, based on Jimmy Breslin’s book, then Play It Again, Sam a rare Woody Allen movie (based on his play) that he didn’t direct himself (Herbert Ross did) and which trades his classic New York setting for San Fransisco (there was a film worker’s strike in the Big Apple that summer.) After that, another comedy, this time The Heartbreak Kid for Elaine May starring Charles Grodin, Cybil Shepherd, and Jeannie Berlin. Then came another entertainment landmark.

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    Jordan Hoffman

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