From Chinatown to Niketown

By Michael Sragow SF Weekly September 30, 1998 In 1974 Robert Towne was seething about the lot of his script for Chinatown, now considered his most famous work. Released that same year, the screenplay won an Oscar for Towne. When I interviewed him at the time, he was...

Back in the High Life

By Ron Rosenbaum Vanity Fair April 1988 One thing you can say about Dr. Timothy Leary: the man has always had a talent for convincing himself that wherever he is is where it’s at. Tonight, for instance. Friday night at Helena’s, the private L.A. supper club backed by...

The Father, The Director, and the Holy Terror

By Brad Darrach Life September 1990 Fifty-three. For the average successful American male, it’s definitely not the prime of life. Your body has launched a paunch, your children are taller than you are, you’re dabbling furtively in your wile’s wrinkle cream and...

Is Randy Newman a Redneck Cole Porter—Or Just Strange?

By Grover Lewis Playboy September, 1983 Randy Newman is chary of interviewers by reflex, bless his level sense, but bent even more unbendingly in that direction since the critical shitstorm mounted in the pop-squeak press against his fifth album of art songs, Good Old...

The Method and Mystique of Jack Nicholson

By Ron Rosenbaum The New York Times Magazine July 13, 1986 Jack Nichols is singing “Three Blind Mice” for his visitor. Actually, singing might be the wrong word for the eerie droning intonations he’s producing; it sounds more like ritual chanting. Nicholson is...

Who’s the Bull Goose Looney Here?

By Grover Lewis Playboy 1975 The midmorning sky over the Oregon State Hospital in Salem looks liverish, quiverish, ready to collapse with torrential rain at any second. On the crewcut lawn behind the main building, an orderly shoos his excursion troupe of exercising...

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...

Jack Finds His Queen of Hearts

By Brad Darrach People July 8, 1985 When Jack Nicholson and Anjelica Huston finally appeared together onscreen in the 1985 black comedy Prizzi’s Honor—the second-to-last movie directed by her father, John—they brought years of subtext as one of Hollywood’s glam...

A Character Actor Reaches Cult Status

By Steve Oney The New York Times Magazine November 16, 1987 On a warm afternoon earlier this fall, Harry Dean Stanton, wearing an old denim work shirt, Levis, and deck shoes, sat on the sofa of his Mullholland Drive home high above Los Angeles dispensing shopping...

Brando

By Mark Kram Esquire November 1989 How civilized the fame game was then, a timid, furtive glimpse for the observer, the observed cordoned off by a dreamlike distance of respect. Worship knew its place; so did greatness. It was caught sharply once by a young American...

Magic Meryl

By Brad Darrach Life December 1987 Meryl Streep is gray with cold. In Ironweed, her new movie, she plays a ragged derelict who dies in a cheap hotel room, and for more than half an hour before the scene she has been hugging a huge bag of ice cubes in an agonizing...