Payday

By Robert Ward American Film May 1985 Maury Dann, the country singer, is sitting in a restaurant with his entourage. It’s one of those cheap little Formica-table places in Alabama, the kind of hard-light joint that says “All You Can Eat” outside. Maury is a...

“I’m Not a Movie Star; I’m an Actor!”

By Robert Ward American Film March 1983 Character actor Frank Pesce has a problem. He is supposed to be standing in the rain with this menacing look on his face, pointing a rod at Gene Hackman. He is playing the gunsel who backs up surly Mickey Rourke, crazy Joe...

Out of the Woods

By Eve Babitz American Film 1987 Whenever I think about James Woods, it is either as the affront he was in Split Image, where he plays the cure almost worse than the disease for a family who wants to have their kid deprogrammed from some Moonie-type cult, or else—and...

Gorgo, Warhol, Rocky, and Me

By Richard Price American Film December 1982 Over the marquee of a beat-up two-dollar movie house in Times Square, there’s an ancient faded sign: “Get More Out of Life—See a Movie.” The visual contrast between that sentiment and the desperate seediness surrounding it...