Tony Bill seems to have it all going for him – successful actor, producer and director – so it was with great pleasure that we were able to pick his brains recently on the many strings to his bow and how he became involved as a producer with The Sting, which gets a beautifully buffed and shined Blu-ray re-release this week.
HeyUGuys: How did you come to meet David Ward? I understand that you first met him when he had already written Steelyard Blues and was working on The Sting?
Tony Bill: David was just out of film school at UCLA and had written Steelyard Blues. His agent sent it to me and I asked to meet him, because I thought it showed a lot of original talent. I asked him what he wanted to write next and he told me a 3 minute idea about a movie set in the 30′s about confidence men.
HeyUGuys: How did you come to meet David Ward? I understand that you first met him when he had already written Steelyard Blues and was working on The Sting?
Tony Bill: David was just out of film school at UCLA and had written Steelyard Blues. His agent sent it to me and I asked to meet him, because I thought it showed a lot of original talent. I asked him what he wanted to write next and he told me a 3 minute idea about a movie set in the 30′s about confidence men.
- 6/6/2012
- by Dave Roper
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
As part of Universal’s centennial celebrations they are dusting off some of the more esteemed classics in their back catalogue (and some bizarre titles that would perhaps better be left confined to history), giving them the HD spit and polish treatment and re-releasing them.
One hugely welcome member of the upgrade club is 1973′s The Sting, starring Butch and Sundance (Paul Newman & Robert Redford), directed once again by George Roy Hill. I recently had the great pleasure of interviewing Michael Phillips, who along with his then wife Julia was presented with the Best Film Oscar that year for producing this peerless con film, which was especially enjoyable given his noticeable absence from the raft of special features being rolled out with the newly spruced up Blu-ray. Since it was only his second film as producer (after Steelyard Blues), I started by asking him how he became involved in the project.
One hugely welcome member of the upgrade club is 1973′s The Sting, starring Butch and Sundance (Paul Newman & Robert Redford), directed once again by George Roy Hill. I recently had the great pleasure of interviewing Michael Phillips, who along with his then wife Julia was presented with the Best Film Oscar that year for producing this peerless con film, which was especially enjoyable given his noticeable absence from the raft of special features being rolled out with the newly spruced up Blu-ray. Since it was only his second film as producer (after Steelyard Blues), I started by asking him how he became involved in the project.
- 6/4/2012
- by Dave Roper
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
By 1971, America's involvement in Vietnam had steamrolled onward in full combat-&-bombing mode for six solid years, just about as long as the U.S. has currently been occupying Iraq. They're different wars, but similar enough to make the evidence presented in the long-censored, long-buried, long-bootlegged film "F.T.A." (1972) all the more astonishing: it was then, more than midway through the first Nixon term, that a couple of full-on movie stars (Donald Sutherland and Jane Fonda) helped gather together a band of lefty anti-war musicians, actors and activists, and devised a cheesy vaudeville show to act as counterpoint to the Bob Hope pro-war paradigm. And then they toured, but not at home for other activists or mere American voters, but on or around military bases, for G.I.s, beginning at Fort Bragg (which wasn't filmed) and ending up bouncing around the Pacific Rim from one installation to another. The delighted...
- 3/3/2009
- by Michael Atkinson
- ifc.com
Peter Boyle, the hulking, snappish actor who started out his career as a tough but gained fame for his comedic roles as the Monster in Young Frankenstein and the irascible father on Everybody Loves Raymond, died yesterday in New York; he was 71. In news reports on Wednesday morning, Boyle's publicist stated that the actor passed away at New York Presbyterian Hospital after suffering from from multiple myeloma and heart disease. (The actor had suffered a stroke in 1990, and a heart attack in 1999.) A Christian Brothers monk who taught drama before turning to acting himself, Boyle honed his craft with both the Second City Chicago ensemble and famed acting teacher Uta Hagen. Bit roles soon gave way to a starring role in the Vietnam-era drama Joe, where he played a misanthropic factory worker; in the early '70s, he also had supporting roles in The Friends of Eddie Coyle, The Candidate, and Steelyard Blues. Boyle overcame his rather ominous appearance and brooding presence with a phenomenal comic turn in Mel Brooks's Young Frankenstein, where as the Monster he was the he perfect foil to the manic actors surrounding him, including Marty Feldman and Madeline Kahn, and stood out in two memorable scenes: one where he stumbled across a blind man (Gene Hackman) living alone in a cottage, and a show-stopping musical number with Gene Wilder, where the two performed a hilarious version of "Putting on the Ritz." Boyle continued in character actor roles throughout his career, appearing in hard-hitting dramas, raucous comedies, and action flicks alike; very few actors could claim a range that put them in films as disparate as Taxi Driver and While You Were Sleeping throughout their career. Winning an Emmy for a guest turn on the sci-fi series The X-Files in 1996, Boyle was cast that year as cantankerous patriarch Frank Barone in the Ray Romano sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond. The show made him a household name and comedy television fixture, earning him seven Emmy nominations but never a win. In stark contrast to his TV role, his chilling turn as a racist former cop in 2001's Monster's Ball demonstrated that Boyle could still play intense drama as well as light-hearted comedy. Most recently, he appeared in The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause and the upcoming drama Shadows of Atticus. Boyle is survived by his wife, Loraine Alterman (whom he met on the set of Young Frankenstein), and their two daughters. --IMDb staff...
- 12/13/2006
- IMDb News
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