Post by Callahan on May 19, 2010 12:05:36 GMT -5
This is the first few paragraphs of an article on a guns in film exhibit at the national NRA exhibit. It's from the June issue of American Rifleman. I thought many of you might get a kick out of what Bob Swagger's creator, Stephen Hunter, who was for years a film critic, had to say about a certain star not much loved in many circles:
"The first movie star I ever saw was a disappointment. Beautiful on screen, in life she turned out to be scrawny, sullen and surly. No eye contact, no communication save muttered bromides, she clearly hated meeting the press. Her hair was bigger than she was. She was a kind of Kewpie Doll from hell. Okay, so it was Jane Fonda, shilling a movie called “Rollover.”
"The last movie star I saw was a vast improvement. Regal, queenly, majestic, she was an essay in charisma. The sense of presence generated, the recollections launched, the fondness warmly felt, the grace in aging well, all represented her as a true star in the best Hollywood tradition. Katharine Hepburn? Lauren Bacall? Okay, so it was a machine gun.
"It was, in fact, the Browning water-cooled Model 1917A1 around which Sam Peckinpah constructed his great film “The Wild Bunch” in 1969 ... . "
"The first movie star I ever saw was a disappointment. Beautiful on screen, in life she turned out to be scrawny, sullen and surly. No eye contact, no communication save muttered bromides, she clearly hated meeting the press. Her hair was bigger than she was. She was a kind of Kewpie Doll from hell. Okay, so it was Jane Fonda, shilling a movie called “Rollover.”
"The last movie star I saw was a vast improvement. Regal, queenly, majestic, she was an essay in charisma. The sense of presence generated, the recollections launched, the fondness warmly felt, the grace in aging well, all represented her as a true star in the best Hollywood tradition. Katharine Hepburn? Lauren Bacall? Okay, so it was a machine gun.
"It was, in fact, the Browning water-cooled Model 1917A1 around which Sam Peckinpah constructed his great film “The Wild Bunch” in 1969 ... . "
(Though, I've heard you have to be painfully thin to look good on camera.)