Steve Bray

MOST FILM & TV PR IS B.S. EVERY SHOT CAN BE A VFX SHOT.

[Mark Urban @MarkUrban01]

Use of a drone at sea to save a downed aircrew - surely a first? The uncrewed surface vessel took them to a spot where a helicopter picked them up

[lusso @luusssso]

They didn’t teach you about half the stuff NASA was doing in the 1960s

[DepressedBergman @DannyDrinksWine]

Jules Dassin on how "Night and the City" (1950) was made during the peak of HUAC hearings:

"Dassin: After HUAC was in full cry, I went to Darryl and said, "I know you don't like the blacklist. Do you want to break it?" He said, "Yes, I do." I said, "I want you to buy a book called The Journey of Simon McKeever, written by Albert Maltz."

"Albert f***ing Maltz!"

"John Huston is ready to do the screenplay. Walter Huston is ready to play the leading role. It's the story of a guy who has arthritis and hitchhikes from San Francisco to Los Angeles to find a doctor and has adventures on the way."

He said, "All right, we'll do it. But tell nobody. Tell nobody" I said, "Well, some people have to know." He said, "I'll take care of the studio. You take care of Maltz." I called Maltz and said, "Albert, I've got twenty-five thousand dollars for you, but you mustn't say a word," because Zanuck's plan was for me to take a skeleton crew and start in San Francisco-all childish Boy Scout tricks-and by the time we reached Los Angeles it would be too late to stop the film. I told this to Albert, but the next day there was a headline in the Hollywood Reporter: "Albert Maltz Declares the Blacklist Is Broken." [Laughs.] And that was the end. Zanuck was angry.

Interviewer: Angry with you?

Dassin: No. He protected me as much as he could, but when all of New York descended-with [Spyros] Skouras swearing at me and saying, "I'm going to step on your neck!" and things like that-Darryl said, "The kid didn't quite tell me." I forgave him all that. He did something, the same night, I think it was. He came to my house, and coming to my house was like visiting the tenements, because I lived on the wrong side of town. He said, "Get out. Get out fast. Here's a book. You're going to London. Get a screenplay as fast as you can and start shooting the most expensive scenes. Then they might let you finish it." That was 'Night and the City' (1950).

I really respected the guy. He did something else that touched me so. We were getting very close to shooting time, when he called me and said, "You owe me one." I said, "Yes, I do." He said, "I want you to write in a part for Gene Tierney." I said, "She's a star. What do you mean 'write in' a part?" He said, "This girl has just had un grand chagrin d' amour" -a big deception in love-"and is su!c!dal. I know her. She'll go to work, and it'll save her." This from Zanuck, the guy who is known for being so ... so tough, so heartless. We wrote in a part for her. Darryl sent me a one-word telegram: "Thanks." That was the unknown Zanuck."

("Tender Comrades: A Backstory of the Hollywood Blacklist", Patrick McGilligan & Paul Buhle, 1997)

P.S: On this day, 76 years ago, "Night and the City" (1950) premiered in New York City, USA.

[Steve Bray @SteveVFX]

I am in no way qualified for this job, but I would love to have the headed note paper.

[Stonehenge U.K @ST0NEHENGE]

English Heritage is seeking a Head of Stonehenge for a permanent, full-time role based at the UK’s most visited heritage site. The postholder will lead a large team to deliver an outstanding visitor experience, strengthen financial performance, and develop long-term strategy for the site’s sustainable future.
https://t.co/FbEirtYX7j

[Steve Bray @SteveVFX]

@1918friends @joerussotweets True! But Mulder and Scully probably wouldn’t. They’d be ok but other people..?

[Steve Bray @SteveVFX]

Well it would be an obvious choice for a home makeover show, and it could run forever!

[Geeks + Gamers @GeeksGamersCom]

Get Ready For Multiple Sequels to ‘Backrooms’

"Parsons wants a series of different films as well, as he sees the Backrooms movies as a potential anthology series, perhaps even moving beyond the horror genre."

[Eric Alper 🎧 @ThatEricAlper]

Bright idea: Lightswitches that show what they are for.

[Steve Bray @SteveVFX]

It’s tonally perfect and delivers all the necessary exposition needed at that point in the movie. No notes from Spielberg has got to be great validation too.

[Vashi Nedomansky, ACE @vashikoo]

The Mr. DNA exposition scene is Spielberg’s first hand-drawn cartoon sequence in a feature film he directed. Kurtz and Friends Animation created the old-school educational style cartoon. Spielberg asked for no changes to the storyboards, pencil tests or the final animation!🦕

[Pulp Librarian @PulpLibrarian]

The League Of Gentleman, by John Boland. Great Pan, 1960. Cover by Sam Peffer.

[Prof Janina Ramirez @DrJaninaRamirez]

It was supposed to be a normal trip into London for meetings, but then I stumbled upon this gem!! Thirteenth-century church of Saint Etheldreda (who founded Ely Cathedral in 673) & a relic of her hand no less! It survived the Great Fire of London 1666 only to be bombed in WWII.

[Steve Bray @SteveVFX]

I saw something like this happen before, after Gareth Edward’s broke through with Monsters (a very good movie). I hope they find more people and it goes well for all of them.

[The Hollywood Reporter @THR]

Do you hear that sound? That is the collective hum of assistant keyboards trawling Reddit and YouTube at the behest of their bosses, who are looking for the next big thing in the horror space. https://t.co/bJ6Ynn2u3G

[Best Movies Never Made @NeverMadeFilm]

With the release of the new MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE movie, check out our episode with @AdamRifkin where we discuss his unmade version of the film that John Woo would have directed.

[🖤 Buy Physical Media 🖤 @VHSDVDBLURAY4K]

The hardest ‘Beast Wars’ Cosplay I’ve ever seen

[johnnyB @agraphafx]

A good follow if you are on FB —- however, I wish to rate the automated translation (as the algo requests at the bottom) as a 3. On a scale of 1 to 11.

[Steve Bray @SteveVFX]

A new approach would involve choosing what to change, assembling a new creative team to run the series and committing hundreds of millions of dollars to producing the revised version. Many of us might think we know what to change, but would we convince Disney we were right?

[Star Wars Holocron @sw_holocron]

It’s been 1,577 days since Boba Fett appeared in live-action.

The Book of Boba Fett wasn’t perfect, but surely we can get a Season 2 that corrects for the issues of Season 1.

We need more Boba.

[Hidden History @HiddenHistoryYT]

Most people know the Army stormed Normandy. The Navy bombarded the shore. The Air Force owned the sky.

Nobody thinks about the Coast Guard.

They should.

The United States Coast Guard is not a combat force. Their entire purpose, the reason they exist, is to save people from the sea. They are trained to swim into storms, to pull drowning sailors from sinking ships, to run toward disaster when everyone else is running away.

On June 6, 1944, the Germans gave them more drowning men than they had ever seen in their lives.

The Coast Guard brought 800 men to Normandy. Five major assault transports were USCG-crewed. Eleven tank landing ships. Twenty-four troop carriers running soldiers directly onto Omaha and Utah Beaches. The USS Bayfield served as the command ship for the entire Utah Beach sector, the nerve center through which an entire army was directed ashore. The USS Samuel Chase led the assault group landing the 1st Infantry Division, the Big Red One, onto the eastern flank of Omaha.

But the thing almost nobody knows about is Rescue Flotilla One.

60 small Coast Guard cutters, nicknamed Matchbox ships because of how easily they burned, were assigned a single mission: pull men out of the water. As the landing craft were torn apart by German fire, as soldiers drowned in the surf under the weight of their own equipment, as wounded men on the beach were swallowed by the incoming tide, Rescue Flotilla One was already moving.

Their swimmers jumped into the Channel. Tethered to their boats by lines, they swam toward the men going under, grabbed them, and dragged them back. They did this 2,000 yards from shore. Under active German machine gun fire. Under mortar fire. Under artillery.

Again and again, all day long.

Two miles offshore a lookout spotted men from a sunken British landing craft floating in the Channel. One cutter went to them and pulled 24 soldiers and four Royal Navy sailors from the water before they went under.

One Coast Guard LCI was hit 25 times by German fire and kept going. Coxswain Delba Nivens kept driving his craft toward the beach after a grenade caught fire aboard his boat.

By the end of June 6, Rescue Flotilla One had pulled 400 men out of the sea.

400 men who would have drowned. 400 men who went home. 400 men whose families exist today because a Coast Guardsman jumped into the English Channel under machine gun fire and refused to let go.

Out of 800 Coast Guardsmen at Normandy, 15 were killed.

Every branch that fought on D-Day deserves its place in history. But the men who spent that day swimming between the dead to find the living, tethered to a burning ship with the whole weight of the German army trying to kill them, did something that has no good word for it.

They saved people. That's what they were built for.

On the worst day in the history of the sea, they were exactly who they were supposed to be.

[Pulp Librarian @PulpLibrarian]

Zero Hour! (1957). "Our survival hinges on one thing - finding someone who not only can fly this plane, but didn't have fish for dinner!"

Troubled wartime pilot Ted Stryker must land a stricken passenger plane as the pilots and half the passengers have eaten poisoned fish. With his estranged wife Ellen as his copilot, and his angry former commanding officer Captain Treleaven in the control tower, can Stryker conquer his demons and land that plane?

Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams and David Zucker wisely bought the rights to Zero Hour! before they made Airplane! (1980) as they do borrow much of the dialogue, plot and characters. That said, the 1957 film is still a fine melodrama. "Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit smoking."

[Bill & Ted 3 @BillandTed3]

Bill & Ted Day is TWO DAYS from today! 🎸⚡ https://t.co/27BJmzrds8

[Steve Bray @SteveVFX]

@HiddenYorkshire It flips the book, the replicants are pretty much pyschopathic in the book, whereas they are complex, feeling characters while a lot of the humans lack empathy in the movie. If they'd just made the film and PKD decided to sue them, it would've been a tough case to prove.

[J.D.M. Stewart @jdmstewart1]

I always showed this cartoon to my students when teaching Canadian history at BSS. 82nd anniversary of D-day today.