Billy Corgan's New Role Model: Robert Mitchum

The Smashing Pumpkins singer opens up about his spiritual journey, what the rise and fall of grunge felt like from the inside, and his current role model (ROBERT MITCHUM?)

Corgan: "Robert Mitchum always struck me, at least how he came across as an actor, he was a man who was comfortable with both his grace and his darkness. If John Wayne was the hero version of that, Robert Mitchum is the darker version of that. He's the darker hero. He's the guy who's not sure whether he wants to fuck the chick or go home to his wife. He's gotta sit there and smoke a cigarette and think about it, you know what I mean? He's closer to my archetype of being conflicted by the forces of the world but really wanting to make the best of it."

Read the full interview at LA Weekly

'Night of the Hunter' Coming to Blu-Ray

No surprise that 'Night of the Hunter' will be the first ROBERT MITCHUM movie released on Blu-ray. The special edition will feature lots of extras and will also be available on DVD. Look for it November 16.

Here's some of the bonus features:
-- New, restored high-definition digital transfer (with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)
-- Audio commentary featuring assistant director Terry Sanders, film critic F. X. Feeney, archivist Robert Gitt, and author Preston Neal Jones
-- Charles Laughton Directs "The Night of the Hunter," a two-and-a-half-hour archival treasure trove of outtakes from the film
-- New documentary featuring interviews with producer Paul Gregory, Sanders, Jones, and author Jeffrey Couchman
-- New video interview with Simon Callow, author of Charles Laughton: A Difficult Actor
-- Clip from the The Ed Sullivan Show, in which cast members perform live a scene that was deleted from the film
-- Fifteen-minute episode of the BBC show Moving Pictures about the film
-- Archival interview with cinematographer Stanley Cortez
-- Gallery of sketches by author Davis Grubb
-- New video conversation between Gitt and film critic Leonard Maltin about Charles Laughton Directs "The Night of the Hunter"
-- Original theatrical trailer
-- A booklet featuring essays by critics Terrence Rafferty and Michael Sragow

Full article here at IGN

The Star Who Made it Look Easy

From The Irish Independent

While surfing channels recently I came across a late-night screening of Martin Scorsese's 1991 thriller Cape Fear. Like most people I'm a huge admirer of Scorsese's films but have always thought this is one of the worst of them -- and as I watched it again my worst suspicions were confirmed.

A master director like Scorsese was well able to keep the tension going, but seemed unable to decide whether the prevailing mood in his remake should be irony or fear. And surprisingly, the film's weakest link is Robert De Niro.

As a result perhaps of his director's uncharacteristic indecision, De Niro's portrayal of cheery southern psychopath Max Cady quickly descends into an overblown caricature, and is about as scary as a trip to Santa's grotto. In fairness, De Niro has hardly ever been bad in anything, before or since, but his performance and Scorsese's film match up very badly against the excellent 1962 original.

Appearing in small parts in Scorsese's remake were the two stars of the first Cape Fear, Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum. Peck brought a sort of moral authority to every role, but it was Mitchum's sneering sadist Max Cady that made the original film so memorably disturbing, and perhaps he's the real difference between the two versions.

He and Robert De Niro couldn't have been more different in their approach to acting, and when they first performed together in The Last Tycoon in 1976, 'Mitch' made fun of De Niro's insistence on staying in character between shoots.

Throughout his long career Mitchum made light of his chosen profession and was fond of saying things like, "I got three expressions, looking left, looking right and looking straight ahead". But this bluster may have been a front because behind it all Mitchum seems to have been a dedicated and surprisingly versatile actor.

Read the rest of the article here.

Interesting Interviews: Reminiscing with Robert Mitchum

From Cinematical.com

It's safe to say that once God made ROBERT MITCHUM, he then turned around and broke the mold. The late actor was a one of the kind talent -- a fantastic performer who was every bit as interesting when he was just being himself. He was the antithesis of today's celebrities -- Mitchum didn't care about fame in the slightest. A tough guy actor who often made you believe he was more than capable of doing everything he'd done onscreen in real-life, Mitchum was always a great interview. While surfing around, looking for something else entirely, I stumbled across this Salon piece from back in 1997. In it, author Dick Lochte reminisces about the actor's career after his passing and shares excerpts from a four-hour chat -- one filled with vodka, no less -- they'd had twenty years earlier. It's a great piece of writing, made memorable by Mitchum's characteristic candor and humor. Don't expect any politically correct answers in this one.

Full interview at Salon

NY Screening of Bruce Weber's 'Nice Girls Don't Stay for Breakfast'

From Italian Vogue:
On June 21st, 30 Rock star and Emmy Award-winning actor Alec Baldwin hosted a special sneak peak of fashion photographer Bruce Weber's latest film, Nice Girls Don't Stay for Breakfast, (the title comes from a 1967 album by singer Julie London) a beautifully shot documentary examining the life of the movie star with the tough guy looks and a cigarette always in his hand, ROBERT MITCHUM

The film also reveals never before seen studio recordings of Mitchum, a notorious Hollywood bad boy who starred in films like The Big Sleep and The Last Tycoon, singing. Filmed mostly in black and white, the movie is narrated by New Orleans rhythm and blues musician Dr. John and features revealing interviews with Mitchum, his brother John and many of his friends.

... Weber is most famous for his erotically charged photographs of semi-nude All-American boys, but he is also an Academy Award nominated director who has turned his movie camera in 1988 on jazz trumpeter Chet Baker in Let's Get Lost (which earned him the Best Documentary Oscar nomination), on his herd of beloved pet dogs and on teenage boxers in Broken Noses in 1987.

Weber is attracted to not only male physical perfection, but to beauty's flipside: damaged, wayward souls, so Mitchum, who often played anti-heroes and was called by film critic Roger Ebert "the soul of film noir," is the perfect subject.

From The Huffington Post:

The big question of the night, how did Weber get such candid footage from interview-phobic Mitchum who eluded the invitations of Barbara Walters, Dick Cavett, and Larry King. Weber, in signature head scarf, is disarming and sly, telling how he sent beautiful women with gifts to Mitchum's door ...

Through Weber's lens, the Hollywood tough guy of Westerns and noirs, the creep in the original Cape Fear with deep cleft chin and eyes at half mast emerges as a shy, modest, non-celebrity jamming sweetly off-key with Dr. John, Marianne Faithfull, and Rickie Lee Jones ...

New to DVD

Robert Mitchum movies that are new(ish) to DVD:

• Agency (1979) with Lee Majors
• A Killer in the Family (1983 TV Movie) with James Spader, Lance Kerwin, and Eric Stoltz
• Rampage (1963) with Elsa Martinelli
• Two for the Seesaw (1962) with Shirley MacLaine

Mitchum in New "Match Prints" Photography Book

This looks like a very cool new photography book of classic actors and rock 'n' roll stars:

Jim Marshall and Timothy White made an odd couple. White is a stylish shooter of celebrity portraits. The gruff Marshall ("I only photograph artists I like, where I get the trust") has taken some of the most iconic shots in rock & roll.

"We'd dress differently. We'd look differently. There's 20 years difference in our lives, our careers, everything. But there was this affection. There was this love that we had for each other, that this book came out of."

The book, called "Match Prints" (HarperCollins) is the product of Marshall and White's 24-year friendship.

It was a photograph White had taken of actor ROBERT MITCHUM that started it all: "My image of Robert Mitchum, which Jim just loved. He just really loved this picture a lot," said White. "And then, of course, [he] pulled out this image of Jim Morrison that was just uncanny. Just, you know, it was the exact same position, holding the cigarette the same way."

As they went through each other's work, they noticed more and more similarities.

Rest of the article at CBS News