For Friday, April 2, 2010: Photo of the Week and Kerstien Matondang 's Great New Coppertone Tan Ad Featuring Sharon Tate,

Here is the photo of the week:

Kerstien has done it again with another great video of Sharon advertising Coppertone and "Don't Make Waves" here:

http://www.youtube.com/user/accedo98#p/a/u/0/B4FjF04-PCw

Please go to Kerstien's great website for more terrific art! :

http://www.kerstien.se/sharoninart.htm

For Thursday, April 1, 2010: Rare Footage of Sharon's Funeral, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and a Great Review of "Valley of the Dolls"

Rare sad footage from Sharon's funeral.  You can see how Roman was destroyed emotionally by her death.  It also shows the funeral footage of Abigail Folger, Steve Parent and Jay Sebring:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJvOimAohyU&feature=related

Here is a web mention of the take off of "Valley of the Dolls," "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls":

http://www.crawdaddy.com/index.php/2010/04/02/celluloid-heroes-beyond-the-valley-of-the-dolls/

Recently I asked one of the stars of "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls" Cynthia Myers, if she knew Sharon?

Myers: I lived just above her on Benedict Canyon back then. I heard the dogs barking in a very eerie way "that" night, almost in a frenzied way. I woke up my fiance and told him that something was wrong--I could feel it. That was the night of the murders. In addition, I left my ring at Jay Sebring's house a few weeks earlier--it was a gift from Eddie Fisher--his wedding ring from Liz Taylor. After I read the news of the murders I never tried to retrieve my ring...horrible. I never met Sharon in person, I just knew Jay.

I asked her about Jay as well but she said she really didn't want to talk about it.  Sad situation.

And here is a great review of "Valley of the Dolls" now on DVD.  It also reviews the special features included:

http://sterner5078558.ngeblogs.com/2010/03/30/download-valley-of-the-dolls-online/

For Wednesday, March 31, 2010: Interesting Quote from Polanski, A Great Video Montage of Sharon, and Sharon, Roman on Playboy After Dark and Another Pierce Brosnan Interview

Here is an interesting quote I found from Polanski:

“I’m not a fortune teller. I would like to be judged for my work, not for my life. If there is any possibility of changing your destiny, it may only be in your creative life.”


This quote comes from a discussion about his film "Chinatown" from here:

http://tacomafilmclubannex.wordpress.com/2010/03/29/chinatown-924-broadway/

Here is a sad but very interesting montage on You Tube that has an interesting interview with Debra Tate:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pMhHvcvGdw&feature=related

And if you haven't seen this Playboy After Dark interview please go here:

http://trueslant.com/susannahbreslin/2010/03/30/hugh-hefner-interviews-roman-polanski-and-sharon-tate/

Here is one of the highlights of the interview:


“I was arrested, I was arrested on a train,” Tate chimes in breathlessly. “My dress was like to here,” she gestures high on her thigh. “I said, ‘If you stop opening the windows and looking at us, you wouldn’t ever know I had a short dress on!’”


Hef asks Tate how she feels about doing nude scenes.


“Well, I feel that if it’s a real scene,” Tate responds, “and it’s an honest scene, and if it’s something where you’re stripped naked that you would be doing naturally, you know, making love, which is natural, taking a bath, you know, that’s lovely, you know, if it has a reason for it, it’s beautiful, but if it’s contrived, then, you know, it becomes vulgar.”

And here is another Pierce Brosnan interview mentioning Polanski and "The Ghost Writer".  Everytime I think he has said everything about this subject, I find something new in these interviews:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/7528829/Pierce-Brosnan-interview-for-The-Ghost.html

For Tuesday, March 30, 2010: Rare Sharon Tate, Roman Polanski footage on set of "The Fearless Vampire Killers", Brosnan Talks About Loss and Polanski and Sharon Remembered for Attending Irvin High School in El Paso, Texas

New footage from the set of "The Fearless Vampire Killers" here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMd9Ua8OLZQ

I made a few digital screencaps here:

Pierce Brosnan is asked about his own loss and Polanski's (they both lossed wives to tragic deaths):

In 1991, you had to get over the cancer death of your wife Cassie. Is experiencing a personal tragedy, something that ties you to Roman Polanski? He had to cope with the 1969 murder of his pregnant wife Sharon Tate.

I think the man has suffered. Very much so. The death of Sharon - and in this brutal way with the murder of the unborn child in her womb. She was his light. I know that he has told me so himself.

Have you had the courage to address him on this tragedy?

Yes, at our first meeting at a lunch in Paris. Hey, he is Polish, I Irishman, which creates even sympathy. And somehow we both wear the same thing Cross: I lost my wife to cancer. Yes, we talked about our deceased loved ones. And he spoke of Sharon with so much tenderness, she was so close ... (Breaks off)

Her grief has influenced you deeply, and Polanski. Do you feel him so close?

Yes, I have sympathy for him. I also think that it was wrong what he did, in every respect - God! He has made bad decisions. But the court then, the 90 days in prison, the escape from justice, exile, and especially the shame - well, now the long arm of the law has taken hold of him, but now also makes it fast with your righteousness. Let dignity and compassion prevail, if only to the families and the children's sake! Families are much more affected than you can imagine. I plead for peace. It is enough.

This is from: http://piercebrosnan-greek-fans.blogspot.com/2010/04/pierce-brosnan-interview.html
 
And Sharon is mentioned here for attending Irvin High in El Paso, TX:
 
http://www.elpasotimes.com/ci_14812632?source=most_emailed

For Monday March 29, 2010: I am back on the internet! New Art of Sharon, Full Transcript of Wanted and Desired, Sharon and Roman and Life Magazine Archives, and Faye Dunaway

After a week I am back on the internet.  Thanks to everyone who has emailed and said how much they appreciate this blog.  I am proud to keep Sharon's great memory alive.


I am going to make it up to you on posts that I will date from the day I was not on... So we start with:

Monday March 29, 2010

New Art of Sharon on Deviant Art:

I found a link that has the entire transcript of the documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired.  It has a lot of wonderful quotes about Sharon:

http://www.script-o-rama.com/movie_scripts/r/roman-polanki-wanted-and-desired-script.html

If you haven't seen the archives of Life Magazine please check out this page showcasing photos of Roman, Sharon, Mia Farrow and Debra Tate:

http://www.life.com/search/?q0=sharon+tate

Be sure to check out this month's Vogue with Model Gisele on the cover. It has an article on one of Sharon's favorite actresses, Faye Dunaway.

Missing Hank: Guru of Go

As a standout basketball player for Loyola Marymount University, Hank Gathers was all the things that sports fans love to celebrate. He was talented, for starters, but perhaps more importantly he was tough, relentless, charismatic, passionate and inexhaustible. He was the type of athlete that fans and coaches like to say played with a big heart. And yet when it comes to Gathers we don’t dare utter those words because, sadly, they’re all too true. Gathers really did have a big heart, and, in a depressing irony, it was that physical abnormality that helped to trigger his sudden and sickening on-court death just over 20 years ago. One moment Gathers was slamming home the business end of an alley-oop. The next moment he was flat on his back. A few moments later, he was being lifted onto a stretcher in front of a horrified crowd that was as silent as Gathers’ body was lifeless. Hank Gathers, once the nation’s leading scorer and rebounder, was dead at the age of 23. Sport went from ecstasy to catastrophe, just like that.

If you’re a fan of college basketball, you surely remember Gathers, or, perhaps more accurately, you can’t manage to forget him. Gathers’ death and the inspired performance by his teammates that followed it respectively rank among the most tragic and then uplifting sports stories of the past three decades. That’s why it’s entirely appropriate that these events should be remembered in ESPN Films’ “30 for 30” documentary series, and that’s why it’s altogether puzzling that they aren’t the explicit and exclusive focus of Bill Couturie’s film, Guru of Go. No, as you might be able to tell from the title, the film isn’t the Hank Gathers story or even the Loyola Marymount story. It is instead a profile of Gathers’ head coach, Paul Westhead, the mastermind of the fast-breaking, hard-pressing, never-resting offense that Westhead called “The System.” Couturie’s film is the documentary that should have been made had Gathers lived and led Loyola to a national title, dominating all-comers with an offense of organized chaos. Trouble is, that’s not what happened.

That’s why framing the Gathers story, or the Loyola story, as the Westhead story comes off as disingenuous or foolish, or maybe both. Couturie might have been trying to keep his documentary from feeling like a snuff film, something callously exploitive or unbearably grotesque, but to embed the Gathers tragedy within the tale of a vagabond coach who is steadfastly devoted to his unorthodox “System” is to either bury the lead or to entirely miss the point. When sports fans think of that Loyola team, they almost certainly remember Gathers first, teammate Bo Kimble second and the pedal-to-the-metal offense third. The guy who orchestrated the offense would rank fourth, if he’s thought of at all. Westhead might have been the figurehead going into that 1989-90 season, but he’s a supporting player in its history. The cold hard truth is that without Gathers’ death, Westhead isn’t worthy of “30 for 30” treatment. Couturie is wise to give the events of that season some context, but a deeper, more detailed understanding of Gathers’ upbringing would have served this film better than an account of Westhead’s tenure with the Los Angeles Lakers, the Denver Nuggets or the Phoenix Mercury – coaching campaigns that most sports fans will file under the “Who cares?” category.

Even more troublesome, this misguided infatuation with Westhead also leads to the film’s clumsiest gimmick: In a nod to the former English professor’s fondness for dropping lines by the Bard, Guru of Go is separated into mini-chapters that are framed by famous Shakespeare quotes. It’s bad enough that the quotes pop up on the screen like slides from a PowerPoint presentation at a lame motivational seminar for white collar professionals. What’s worse is that they thwart the film’s ability to generate narrative momentum. By pounding us with these Shakespeare titlecards that in many places are only a few minutes apart, Guru of Go doesn’t develop thematic cohesion so much as it illustrates the shallowness of its snatch-and-grab approach. It’s as if Couturie is trying to will his film into being about something more than Gathers’ death, and yet somehow he overlooks that the best way to do that would be to dedicate more time to Gathers’ life. A profile of Westhead should be a lengthy chapter in the story of Gathers or his Loyola team, no question. What Westhead shouldn’t be is this story’s cover and spine.

In the film’s uninspired moments, and there are a handful of them, Guru of Go is the most pedestrian documentary of the “30 for 30” series through nine episodes. But what’s amazing is how little its flaws matter in the end. Despite the film’s wanderings, despite all that it might have been, when Guru of Go gets to Loyola’s 1989-90 season, the documentary is overpowering. No matter how many times you’ve seen the footage, watching the vital, exuberant Gathers tumble to the ground is shocking. Seeing Gathers’ family huddled around his inert body is gut-wrenching. Watching Gathers’ former teammates struggling to remember that day two decades later is heartbreaking. As Gathers’ teammates struggle for words in thoughtful talking-head interviews, you might find yourself struggling to breathe. And not for the last time. The beauty of sports is that it can heal as swiftly as it hurts. And so, to his credit, Couturie spends just as much time chronicling Loyola’s NCAA tournament run as he does on Gathers’ death before it. The team’s victories over New Mexico, Michigan and Alabama, to reach the Elite Eight, are uplifting even in brief. But nothing is more moving, or more memorable, than Kimble’s in-game tribute to his fallen friend: a left-handed free throw in the midst of March Madness that finds nothing but the bottom of the net.

To watch Couturie’s documentary isn’t to just see these moments again. It’s to feel them, too. It’s a film that most certainly could have been better, particularly if in content and title it had been Hank the Bank, instead of Guru of Go. But if providing 30 filmmakers with complete artistic control means suffering a few letdowns along the way, it’s a small price to pay for the “30 for 30” series’ exciting diversity. Guru of Go doesn’t sing like the operatic Winning Time. It doesn’t tuck us under its arm and rush us forward like The U. But what it does do is put the usual concerns of sports into perspective, reminding us that winning isn’t everything. What it does do is reveal that an awkward, weak-handed free throw can be as poignant and poetic as anything William Shakespeare ever wrote.

Guru of Go premieres tonight on ABC at 4 pm ET, and will rerun frequently thereafter. The Cooler will be reviewing each film in the “30 for 30” series upon its release.

The Conversations: Easter Double Feature

I'm pumped to report that there's a new edition of The Conversations at The House Next Door. In this edition, Ed Howard and I discuss Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ and Mel Gibon’s The Passion of the Christ, two movies that are similar in subject only – and even then only slightly. Ed and I debate the messages of the films, both in terms of perceived intent and ultimate effect, but we also discuss the filmmaking in general. This is our second Conversations piece to appear at the recently redesigned The House Next Door, and I’ve noticed that comments at the site have reduced since it became partnered with Slant Magazine. I can only assume that’s because commenters must create new accounts to comment. Well, those accounts are free and easy to set up, so what are you waiting for? Ed and I love to see our discussions and debates extended in the comments section, and that can’t happen without your help. Please head over to The House and join the conversation!

Previous Editions of The Conversations:

David Fincher (January 2009)
Mulholland Dr. (February 2009)
Overlooked - Part I: Undertow (March 2009)
Overlooked - Part II: Solaris (March 2009)
Star Trek (May 2009)
Werner Herzog (May 2009)
Errol Morris (July 2009)
Michael Mann (August 2009)
Quentin Tarantino - Part I (August 2009)
Quentin Tarantino - Part II (September 2009)
Pixar (WALL-E) (October 2009)
Trouble Every Day (October 2009)
Lawrence of Arabia (December 2009)
Crash (1996) (January 2010)
Nashville (1975) (February 2010)