Who's Next To Croak?

Started by cine, September 28, 2003, 11:07:39 AM

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polkablues

I like to think that if someone were to slaughter Maurice Sendak, we'd all show a little more respect.

I'd also like to say that, judging from the looks of the Curious George movie, this was a mercy killing.








I feel dirty.
My house, my rules, my coffee

MacGuffin

"Jaws" author Peter Benchley dead at 65

Peter Benchley, author of the bestseller "Jaws" that was the basis for the blockbuster movie that terrified beachgoers and kept many out of the water for years, died at his home at age 65, his family said on Sunday.

Benchley, well-known for other water-based suspense fiction including "The Deep" and "The Island" which also spawned films, died of complications from pulmonary fibrosis, his son-in-law Chris Turner told Reuters.

Benchley was diagnosed with the condition last autumn and his health had been diminishing, but his death at this time had not been expected, according to Turner.

"It was peaceful," he said, adding that the writer's wife Wendy and other family members were by his side at their Princeton, New Jersey home.

In addition to the fame he achieved as a novelist, Benchley was a reporter for the Washington Post and Newsweek, wrote for magazines and a speechwriter for President Lyndon B. Johnson from 1967 until January, 1969.

The Harvard graduate, who grew up in New York City and went to prep school in New Hampshire, was also the grandson of writer and humorist Robert Benchley, member of the renowned Algonquin Round Table that included personalities such as Dorothy Parker, George S. Kaufman, Robert Sherwood and Alexander Wolcott.

But it was the 1974 novel "Jaws," about a series of gruesome shark attacks that cause panic in a placid beach resort, that Benchley won the kind of fame rarely accorded any writer of popular fiction.

The book has sold more than 20 million copies, and Benchley even had a cameo as a reporter in the 1975 Steven Spielberg film, which spawned a series of inferior sequels.

Benchley said he had been interested in sharks since his childhood days spent on the island of Nantucket off Massachusetts. Then, in 1964, he read about a fisherman who caught a 4,550-pound great white shark off Long Island.

"I thought to myself, 'What would happen if one of those came around and wouldn't go away?' That was the seed idea of 'Jaws,"' he said in an interview on his Web site.

But he didn't pursue the idea until 1971. By the time the book, his first novel, came out in early 1974, it had earned more than $1 million before the first press run, including $575,000 for the paperback rights and from sales to books clubs and the film's producers.

Benchley continued his lifelong fascination with the sea and its potential terrors with "The Deep," about divers looking for treasure, and "The Island," in which sailors are terrorized by modern-day pirates. Among his latest books was "Shark Life: True Stories About Sharks and the Sea," which was published only last year.

"Everything I've written is based on something that has happened to me or something that I know a great deal about," Benchley said.

"In 'Jaws' I knew a great deal about sharks. In 'The Deep' I had been lucky enough to learn about Bermuda and to meet Teddy Tucker, a great Bermudan treasure diver, while doing a story for the National Geographic, and I learned about shipwrecks in Bermuda," he added.

But, he noted, he was never injured by any sea creature other than jellyfish stings or sea urchin spines, although he was nearly bitten by sharks a few times.

Other books included "White Shark," "Beast," about a giant squid, and "Rummies," about an alcoholic's journey through recovery and rehabilitation.

Besides his wife Benchley is survived by two grown children. Funeral arrangements have not been formalized.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

MacGuffin

Coroner: Chris Penn Died Accidentally

Actor Chris Penn died accidentally from an enlarged heart and the effects of a mix of multiple medications, the county coroner's office said Monday.

"There is absolutely no indication that this is anything but an accident," chief coroner investigator Craig Harvey said.

Penn, 40, the younger brother of Sean Penn, was found dead in his Santa Monica condominium on Jan. 24, but the results of his autopsy and toxicology tests were not released until Monday.

The primary cause of death was "nonspecific cardiomyopathy," an oversized heart, with the "effects of multiple medication intake," according to a statement issued by the coroner's office.

"We know he had several prescriptions, including promethazine with codeine, which featured predominantly in his death," Harvey said.

Promethazine with codeine is known as a highly addictive prescription medication. Promethazine is an antihistamine that prevents vomiting, while codeine suppresses coughing and relieves pain, Harvey said.

"We don't know how much he ingested or when," Harvey said. "There are a lot of 'what ifs' to be factored in."

A full coroner's report with further details will be available in a few weeks, Harvey said.

Penn's heart weighed 700 grams, a few hundred grams more than an average heart. Harvey said Penn was not taking heart medication at the time of his death.

Penn appeared in such films as "Reservoir Dogs," "Rush Hour," "Starsky & Hutch" and "Corky Romano."
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

MacGuffin

Don Knotts, TV's Lovable Nerd, Dies at 81

Don Knotts, the skinny, lovable nerd who kept generations of television audiences laughing as bumbling Deputy Barney Fife on "The Andy Griffith Show," has died. He was 81.

Knotts died Friday night of pulmonary and respiratory complications at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Beverly Hills, said Paul Ward, a spokesman for the cable network TV Land, which airs "The Andy Griffith Show," and another Knotts hit, "Three's Company."

Unspecified health problems had forced him to cancel an appearance in his native Morgantown in August 2005.

The West Virginia-born actor's half-century career included seven TV series and more than 25 films, but it was the Griffith show that brought him TV immortality and five Emmies.

The show ran from 1960-68, and was in the top 10 of the Nielsen ratings each season, including a No. 1 ranking its final year. It is one of only three series in TV history to bow out at the top: The others are "I Love Lucy" and "Seinfeld." The 249 episodes have appeared frequently in reruns and have spawned a large, active network of fan clubs.

As the bug-eyed deputy to Griffith, Knotts carried in his shirt pocket the one bullet he was allowed after shooting himself in the foot. The constant fumbling, a recurring sight gag, was typical of his self-deprecating humor.

Knotts, whose shy, soft-spoken manner was unlike his high-strung characters, once said he was most proud of the Fife character and doesn't mind being remembered that way.

His favorite episodes, he said, were "The Pickle Story," where Aunt Bea makes pickles no one can eat, and "Barney and the Choir," where no one can stop him from singing.

"I can't sing. It makes me sad that I can't sing or dance well enough to be in a musical, but I'm just not talented in that way," he lamented. "It's one of my weaknesses."

Knotts appeared on six other television shows. In 1979, Knotts replaced Norman Fell on "Three's Company," playing the would-be swinger landlord to John Ritter, Suzanne Somers and Joyce DeWitt.

Early in his TV career, he was one of the original cast members of "The Steve Allen Show," the comedy-variety show that ran from 1956-61. He was one of a group of memorable comics backing Allen that included Louis Nye, Tom Poston and Bill "Jose Jimenez" Dana.

Knotts' G-rated films were family fun, not box-office blockbusters. In most, he ends up the hero and gets the girl — a girl who can see through his nervousness to the heart of gold.

In the part-animated 1964 film "The Incredible Mr. Limpet," Knotts played a meek clerk who turns into a fish after he is rejected by the Navy.

When it was announced in 1998 that Jim Carrey would star in a "Limpet" remake, Knotts responded: "I'm just flattered that someone of Carrey's caliber is remaking something I did. Now, if someone else did Barney Fife, THAT would be different."

In the 1967 film "The Reluctant Astronaut," co-starring Leslie Nielsen, Knotts' father enrolls his wimpy son — operator of a Kiddieland rocket ride — in NASA's space program. Knotts poses as a famous astronaut to the joy of his parents and hometown but is eventually exposed for what he really is, a janitor so terrified of heights he refuses to ride an airplane.

In the 1969 film "The Love God?," he was a geeky bird-watcher who is duped into becoming publisher of a naughty men's magazine and then becomes a national sex symbol. Eventually, he comes to his senses, leaves the big city and marries the sweet girl next door.

He was among an army of comedians from Buster Keaton to Jonathan Winters to liven up the 1963 megacomedy "It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World." Other films include "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken" (1966); "The Shakiest Gun in the West," (1968); and a few Disney films such as "The Apple Dumpling Gang," (1974); "Gus," (1976); and "Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo," (1977).

In 1998, he had a key role in the back-to-the-past movie "Pleasantville," playing a folksy television repairman whose supercharged remote control sends a teen boy and his sister into a TV sitcom past.

Knotts began his show biz career even before he graduated from high school, performing as a ventriloquist at local clubs and churches. He majored in speech at West Virginia University, then took off for the big city.

"I went to New York cold. On a $100 bill. Bummed a ride," he recalled in a visit to his hometown of Morgantown, where city officials renamed a street for him in 1998.

Within six months, Knotts had taken a job on a radio Western called "Bobby Benson and the B-Bar-B Riders," playing a wisecracking, know-it-all handyman. He stayed with it for five years, then came his series TV debut on "The Steve Allen Show."

He married Kay Metz in 1948, the year he graduated from college. The couple had two children before divorcing in 1969. Knotts later married, then divorced Lara Lee Szuchna.

In recent years, he said he had no plans to retire, traveling with theater productions and appearing in print and TV ads for Kodiak pressure treated wood.

The world laughed at Knotts, but it also laughed with him.

He treasured his comedic roles and could point to only one role that wasn't funny, a brief stint on the daytime drama "Search for Tomorrow."

"That's the only serious thing I've done. I don't miss that," Knotts said.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

matt35mm

He was a funny, beautiful man, and shall be missed.

edison

It is with great sadness that we announce the death of Darren McGavin at approximately 7:10 A.M. Pacific time today, Saturday 25, 2006. Darren was just three months short of his 84th birthday. While we suspect none of us can imagine a world without the beloved, feisty little red-head, it is time to reflect, give thanks for his life and hold in reverence his memory. Darren is gone, but in many respects he will always be with us: as Carl Kolchak, fighting authority and battling monsters; the grumpy Old Man sending curses over Lake Michigan; as David Ross, the outsider, Grey Holden, captain of the Enterprise, the irascible detective Mike Hammer or any number of memorable guest star appearances, most notably as Joe Bascome on GUNSMOKE and as the washed-up old actor from "Distant Signals."
Please take a moment in your sadness to reflect upon all the ways Darren touched your lives, say a prayer and raise a glass to toast a career which spanned over fifty years and affected us all in ways too numerous to count.

www.darrenmcgavin.net

polkablues

"Some men are Baptists, other Catholics... my father was an Oldsmobile man."

I miss him already.
My house, my rules, my coffee

modage

yes, yesterday was a really crappy day. 
Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.

pete

"Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot."
- Buster Keaton

mogwai

r.i.p. dennis weaver, you were the bomb in "duel".  :yabbse-cry:

grand theft sparrow

It's been a shitty couple of days for character actors... Ernest Borgnine and Robert Vaughn had better watch out!

Alethia

Quote from: mogwai on February 27, 2006, 02:24:49 PM
r.i.p. dennis weaver, you were the bomb in "duel".  :yabbse-cry:

don't forget touch of evil.  rip

hedwig

Jackson 5 Drummer Slain
source
Fri Mar 03, 5:08 PM ET

Johnny Jackson, the man who kept the beat for the Jackson 5, and cousin to Michael, Janet, Tito et al., was found stabbed to death in his Gary, Indiana, home Wednesday.

According to local police, officers were called to Johnny Jackson's house at approximately 11:30 p.m. after a neighbor phoned in a noise complaint. The caller, who lived above Jackson, reported that the musician and an unidentified woman were having a heated exchange on the first floor of the building.

The police entered Jackson's home and found the 54-year-old unconscious with a stab wound to his chest. Less than an hour later, the Lake County coroner's office pronounced him dead.

The person who placed the emergency call told cops she went downstairs after hearing the commotion and found her neighbor lying in living room. It was then she contacted the police.

Police have no details on the woman Jackson was supposedly arguing with, including how she knew the drummer, although the neighbor described the woman as an acquaintance of Jackson's.

No arrests have been made. The case is being treated as a homicide investigation.

Jackson joined his famous cousins' singing troupe in the late 1960s, replacing the group's original drummer, Milford Hite. While Motown sessions musicians played on most of the group's greatest cuts, including "I Want You Back," "ABC," "I'll Be There" and "Never Can Say Goodbye," Johnny Jackson was the band's concert drummer. After the group disbanded, he joined an outfit called the White Doves.

There has always been some debate as to whether or not Johnny Jackson was a blood relative or legitimate cousin of the hit-making family; however, it is believed that he was a nephew of patriarch Joe Jackson.

It's not immediately known whether Johnny Jackson had ever married or had children; he was living alone at the time of his death.

"It hurts me so bad," Jackson's childhood friend and White Doves bandmate Anthony Acoff told the Associated Press. "I called him that night. We were supposed to go to a jam session."

"He was a show drummer," said another old friend, Gordon Keith (who has sued the Jackson 5 over some early recordings). "There were times that he would outshine Michael at their shows."

mogwai

#463
damn, my hopes for a jackson 5 reunion are horribly crushed.

Reinhold

that article seemed really weirdly written. did it strike anybody else?
Quote from: Pas Rap on April 23, 2010, 07:29:06 AM
Obviously what you are doing right now is called (in my upcoming book of psychology at least) validation. I think it's a normal thing to do. People will reply, say anything, and then you're gonna do what you were subconsciently thinking of doing all along.