Richard Lupoff's story was first published in 1973 and filmed as a short by Jonathan Heap in 1990.
Lupoff and Heap were 'outraged' by Groundhog Day but no legal action was taken (presumably a David and Goliath scenario would have ensued).
Jonathan Silverman, Helen Slater, Martin Landau, Jeremy Piven.
Friday 11 March 2011
Sunday 6 March 2011
Beggars of Life (1928 William Wellman)
If you screw your eyes up and peer hard into the screen you can just about make out the faces of Louise Brooks, Richard Arlen and Wallace Beery in the tinted murk of my copy of the ultra-rare Beggars of Life. After a while, the totally unsynced classical music background (Swan lake, most inappropriately) is so distracting it's better to watch with the sound of birds in our garden instead. Funnily enough, it's playing at the BFI next month, having been restored by George Eastman House, with the Dodge Brothers playing the music.
Anyway, I managed to pick out enough film to realise it's brisk and modern. Lulu's story is told with no titles, and of course all eyes are on her, until Beery turns up behind a case of XXX moonshine, larger than the other beggars, and following a hilariously worded kangaroo court, decides to make Lulu his 'ward', a tight corner she manages to sly her way out of. There are some thrilling scenes with trains, looking uncomfortably real.
The source was Jim Tully's 1924 'hobo autobiography'.
Anyway, I managed to pick out enough film to realise it's brisk and modern. Lulu's story is told with no titles, and of course all eyes are on her, until Beery turns up behind a case of XXX moonshine, larger than the other beggars, and following a hilariously worded kangaroo court, decides to make Lulu his 'ward', a tight corner she manages to sly her way out of. There are some thrilling scenes with trains, looking uncomfortably real.
The source was Jim Tully's 1924 'hobo autobiography'.
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