The 17th Annual TCM Classic Film Festival kicks off this week in Hollywood and Cherry the Geek TV will be there! This will be our second year attending. This year’s theme is The World Comes to Hollywood, and classic film fans from all over the world will indeed be heading to Hollywood to immerse themselves in four day-long marathons full of classic film screenings, many of which will feature introductions and Q&As from TCM hosts and special guests.
The festival kicks off on Thursday night April 30th with a screening of 1967’s Barefoot in the Park with Jane Fonda and other special guests in attendance at the famous TCL Chinese Theater. The screening no doubt will also pay tribute to the film’s other star Robert Redford, who passed away last year. Another Redford classic All the President’s Men screens on Sunday with special guest John Dean, who was the Counsel to Richard Nixon from July 1970 to April 1973 and will surely have a lot to say about this film on its 50th Annniversary.
With almost eighty films spread out over four days at historic Hollywood theaters like the TCL Chinese, the Egyptian, and the El Capitan, and many great films, panels, and guests programmed against each other with overlapping time slots, this is going to come down to some hard choices.
Here are our Top 10 highlights:
- THE TOWERING INFERNO (1974) Sunday May 3rd. 3:00pm-6:15pm Egyptian Theater
The disaster film reached new heights with this 1974 mega-hit. The saga of a 138-story San Francisco building that catches fire the night of its grand opening required two directors, four camera crews, two top box-office stars (Paul Newman and Steve McQueen) and two major studios. It also required the construction of 57 studio sets (a record at the time), and a massive rooftop promenade deck costing $300,000. The ½” scale model used in some shots stood as tall as a five-story building. Made on a then-impressive $14 million budget, the film from “master of disaster” producer Irwin Allen was a gamble that paid off, raking in huge returns at the box office, nabbing eight Oscar nominations including Best Picture, and winning for Best Cinematography, Editing and Song.
Oscar-winners Craig Barron and Ben Burtt will present this thrilling blockbuster. Last year, their presentation for Colossus:The Forbin Project was amazing, and no doubt they will bring the goods this year as well. In addition, The Towering Inferno is a 20th Century Fox title (now controlled by Disney) and Disney is notorious for not allowing screenings of repertory films to be screened at movie theaters (like Alamo Drafhouse), so this is a rare opportunity to see it presented on a big screen.
2) GREASE 2 (1982) Thursday, April 30th, 7:30-9:45pm Poolside at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel
Do you really need a reason to watch Grease 2 other than the fact that it is the SUPERIOR Grease film? (Don’t come at me–the original Grease film is also great but for me the sequel surpasses the original is many ways). Well I can give your four reasons–cast members Maxwell Caulfield, Adrian Zmed, Christopher McDonald, and Lorna Luft (who also just happens to be the daughter of Judy Garland) will be in attendance.
Sometimes box-office flops have more life in them than instant hits. The sequel to Grease (1978) received mixed reviews with some claiming it as just a retread of the original without the star power of John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John. Yet it survived as a cult favorite on the strength of director-choreographer Patricia Birch’s well-staged but unconventional musical numbers, including salutes to bowling and luaus, and a star-making performance from Michelle Pfeiffer in her first lead. It’s basically a gender-flipped retread of the original, with Pfeiffer as the it-girl, head of the Pink Ladies, and Maxwell Caulfield as a brainy British exchange student (the cousin of Newton-John’s Sandy) who must change his image if he wants to win her heart. Didi Conn, Eve Arden and Sid Caesar were among those reprising roles from the first film while Tab Hunter and Connie Stevens were on hand to up the nostalgia factor.
3) THE BAD NEWS BEARS (1976) Sunday, May 3rd 9:00am-11:15am, TCL Chinese Theatre IMAX
If you were casting a role based on athletic actor Burt Lancaster, one of the last people you’d think would be grizzled, overweight Water Matthau. When Bill Lancaster wrote a comedy inspired by the years his father coached the son’s little league team, he created a hit. For the film, the coach was changed from a movie star trying to drive his son to success to a failed minor-league ball player desperately in need of money. And the younger Lancaster, a survivor of childhood polio that left him with a limp, transformed his character into a female pitcher (Tatum O’Neal) fighting for recognition. Directed by Michael Ritchie, an expert at casting a jaundiced eye on American institutions like sports, politics, and beauty pageants, the film became a big hit and won Lancaster a Writers Guild Award. The film would inspire two sequels, a short-lived TV series, and a remake directed by Richard Linklater, but none of them hit quite as well as the original, which marks its 50th anniversary.
This screening will be followed by a cast reunion featuring EIGHT of The Bad News Bears in person! Christopher Barnes, Erin Blunt, Gary Cavagnaro, Scott Firestone, Alfred Lutter, Brett Marx, David Pollock, and David Stambaugh will all be there for a panel discussion. A rare opportunity to see this group together!
4) PAUL WILLIAMS TRIBUTE including screenings of THE MUPPET MOVIE (1979) Saturday, May 2nd 3:00pm-5:00pm Chinese Multiplex Screen 1 and ISHTAR (1987) Sunday, May 3rd 2:30-4:45pm Chinese Multiplex screen 6, plus A CONVERSATION WITH PAUL WILLIAMS Sunday, May 3rd 1:00pm-2:00pm at Club TCM at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel
This is the guest I am probably most excited to see this year. I’ve loved him and his songs ever since seeing him on The Muppet Show as a child, and to have three opportunities to hear him talk about his career (including the great Brian De Palma film Phantom of the Paradise, and writing the great Kermit the Frog song The Rainbow Connection) is going to be a real treat.
Fans still remember their delight at seeing Kermit the Frog ride a bicycle in the film that launched The Muppets’ eight-picture franchise (to date). Over two decades since their introduction in 1955, Jim Henson’s spirited creations finally hit the big screen with — what else? — an origin story. The film traces Kermit’s odyssey from a Florida swamp to Hollywood stardom, picking up other beloved characters along the way. Putting the Muppets on screen was a logistical challenge. Sets had to be built on four-to-six-foot-tall platforms to accommodate puppeteers, and some sequences were so complicated it took a day to capture one minute of screen time. But the film was more than just a hit; it was a generation-defining treasure. Along with characters like Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear and Rowlf, the picture features an array of cameos from performers like Orson Welles, Carole Kane, Steve Martin and, in his last film, Edgar Bergen. That’s not to mention the classic tune “Rainbow Connection,” which earned an Oscar nomination for songwriter Paul Williams.
By the time ISHTAR premiered in 1987, critics had already been sharpening their knives for it. Stories of cost overruns, on-set feuds and the large salaries paid to stars Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman alienated the media and audiences alike. The result was a box-office disaster that ended Elaine May’s directing career. Yet, even then, there were a few critics who liked it. May’s script was a modern take on the Bob Hope-Bing Crosby Road pictures, in which the stars play inept singer-songwriters who can only land a booking in Morocco. They’re caught in the middle of a battle between the CIA and leftist guerillas led by Isabella Adjani, as a more liberated version of Dorothy Lamour’s characters. Despite its reputation, the film has acquired such high-profile fans as Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino. The soundtrack, featuring intentionally “bad” songs crafted by master songwriter Paul Williams, has earned its own cult following. Contemporary critics have hailed it as a hilarious, very personal work, proving you can’t keep a good movie down.
he TCM Classic Film Festival is proud to pay tribute to the work of award-winning lyricist and composer, actor and singer, and president and chairman of ASCAP, Paul Williams. His timeless classics range from “We’ve Only Just Begun”, “You and Me Against the World” and “The Rainbow Connection” and have been recorded by artists such as David Bowie, Barbra Streisand, Diana Ross, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Daft Punk, Ella Fitzgerald, and Kermit The Frog, to name a few. Paul Williams has also made his mark onscreen, with his debut in The Loved One (1965) to the roles of Little Enos Burdette in Smokey and the Bandit (1977) and the villainous Swan in Phantom of the Paradise (1974). Join TCM for an in-depth conversation with Paul Williams about his remarkable career.
5) ROBOCOP (1987) Saturday, May 2nd 9:45-11:45pm, Egyptian Theater
Cast members Kurtwood Smith and Paul McCrane will be joined in person with RoboCop himself–Dr. Peter Weller, who vowed years ago that he would never again watch RoboCop as it makes him cry. Having three of the stars from RoboCop in person to talk about this 1987 masterpiece makes this screening a can’t miss.
It took a Dutch director to create one of the screen’s most nightmarish visions of American social decay. In a future Detroit, crime is running rampant and corporations are slowly taking over public services. When the OCP corporation takes charge of the police, they introduce their latest innovation: a cyborg cop made using the body of a murdered officer (Peter Weller). What the suits don’t reckon with is the officer’s gradual recovery of his earlier memories and his response when he uncovers corruption within the company itself. Working from a script by Edward Neumeier and Michael Miner, Paul Verhoeven created a thrilling, often disturbing action film that also satirized the corporatist ideology of the Reagan era. Some audiences missed the joke, hailing RoboCop as the kind of hero America needed.
Here are some past interviews we’ve done with RoboCop stars Peter Weller and Nancy Allen.
6) THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (1951) Saturday, May 2nd 09:15am-11:00am, Chinese Multiplex House 1
Seventy-five years ago, an alien from Great Britain delivered a message of peace and hope as a visitor from another planet. Executives at 20th Century-Fox originally considered Spencer Tracy or Claude Rains to star as Klaatu before deciding the role needed a less familiar face. With his cultured diction and tall, slender frame, Michael Rennie fit the bill perfectly. The project was designed to take advantage of the UFO scare and the rising popularity of science fiction in the 1950s. Thanks to an intelligent script, Robert Wise’s taut direction, Bernard Herrmann’s imaginative score and a strong cast including Patricia Neal and Sam Jaffe, the film has become iconic, often hailed as one of the best science fiction pictures ever made. In recognition of its continuing legacy, Wise ended his thank you speech on receiving the AFI Life Achievement Award with its most famous line: “Klaatu barada nikto.”
Two reasons this screening is going to be great: First, it will be introduced by Joe Dante (Gremlins, Piranha, Innerspace). Secondly, this is another 20th Century Fox title, which means it is rarely given the opportunity to be screened.
7) MONEY FROM HOME (1953) Friday May 1st, 3:15pm-5:15pm Chinese Multiplex House 6
This film is in a competitive slot, programmed against Carol Burnett introducing Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train, Kimberly Williams-Paisley in person for 1991’s Father of the Bride, and Glenn Close in person for Dangerous Liaisons. What makes this stand out in that it will be presented in 3D. The fact that this is a deep cut and that this might be the ONLY opportunity to ever see it in this format, ALONG WITH a 3D Bugs Bunny short makes this the winner.
The 1950s 3D fad came and went so quickly that some films shot in the process were never or only sporadically screened that way. Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis’ 11th feature, and first in color, was shot in 3D and three-strip Technicolor, but because of technical problems premiered in 2D. Only two percent of the nation’s theaters ever showed it in 3D during its initial release. In this pairing, Martin is a hapless gambler who can only work off his debt by sabotaging a sure thing in a Maryland horse race. He takes along his cousin (Lewis), a veterinary trainee, but their efforts to throw the race are complicated when Martin falls for the horse’s owner (Marjie Millar) and Lewis for the vet (Patricia Crowley).
New 3D restoration. The process took 2 years to restore from the original 35mm 3-strip Technicolor Dynpotic 3D negative, and was worked on by Paramount Pictures and the 3-D Film Archive. This will be the west coast premiere.
This film will be preceded by the world premiere restoration of the short, “Lumber Jack-Rabbit” (1953). In this 3D short, Bugs Bunny discovers a “carrot mine,” but to excavate his treasure, he must square off against Paul Bunyan’s giant dog, Smidgen. 3D restoration by Warner Bros. Discovery in collaboration with The Film Foundation.
8) MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY (1962) Sunday, May 3rd 10:00am-01:30pm, Egyptian Theatre
When this remake of MGM’s Oscar-winning classic first appeared, critics tended to review it in terms of star Marlon Brando’s off-screen behavior, and fans stayed away. The first director, Sir Carol Reed, was fired from the production after three months of fighting with Brando. His replacement, Lewis Milestone, simply let the star call the shots, but refused to film a new ending, suggested by Billy Wilder and filmed by George Seaton. For modern audiences, however, it stands as a visually stunning rendition of the classic tale of sailors, led by Brando’s Fletcher Christian, rebelling against the tyrannical, but very human Captain Bligh (Trevor Howard). The location work in Tahiti is beautiful, and Brando’s dandyish interpretation of Mr. Christian, once derided by critics, now seems a densely layered, startlingly original performance. Although it picked up seven Oscar nominations, its box office failure led to the end of Joseph Vogel’s reign as MGM president in January 1963.
The format makes this a must see. The film will be presented on 70mm on the giant Egyptian Theater screen and will be introduced by Mario Van Peebles. I’m going to try to see part of this, but because of the film’s 3 1/2 hour length and the fact that it’s overlapping with The Bad News Bears, Cameron Crowe and Jay Mohr introducing Jerry Maguire, and the first half of the Paul Williams conversation, I feel like this will be my most agonizing conflict of the festival.
9) VANISHING POINT (1971) Friday May 2nd 11:59PM-2:00AM, Chinese Multiplex House 6
A great midnight selection that will be introduced by filmmaker Edgar Wright (Shawn of the Dead, Hot Fuzz).
Freedom was the central issue in many of the counter-culture films released in the wake of the surprise success of 1969’s Easy Rider. Kowalski (Barry Newman), the enigmatic figure at the center of this road picture, lives for speed as he delivers cars for a living, with his run from Denver to San Francisco in a souped-up Dodge Challenger taking on mythic qualities. He’s egged on and turned into a folk hero by DJ “Super Soul” (Cleavon Little). Director Richard C. Sarafian made the film in an atmosphere of newfound liberty, encouraging his cast, including non-professionals, to improvise. The studio, 20th Century-Fox, didn’t know what to do with VANISHING POINT until it took off in Europe. Then they reissued it on a successful double bill with The French Connection (1971). It also became a popular drive-in film, which helped it develop a loyal cult following that included directors Steven Spielberg and Quentin Tarantino.
10) NETWORK (1976) Sunday, May 3rd 7:30pm-10:00pm TCL Chinese Theatre IMAX
Faye Dunaway will be attending to close out the festival and speak about this wonderful film on it’s 50th Anniversary.
People were as mad as hell and not going to take it anymore long before Peter Finch gave them a voice 50 years ago in this searing satire of televised political media. But this film became a rallying cry for a discontented public. Some critics as well as those in TV journalism thought writer Paddy Chayefsky’s depiction of a world in which entertainment takes over the news media was farfetched. Today, Sidney Lumet’s brilliant movie seems more like a prophecy. Finch is a longtime anchor who loses it on air after being told he’s being fired because of low ratings. William Holden co-stars as the news division president who finds his department and heart taken over by program director (Faye Dunaway). NETWORK captured ten Oscar nominations, winning for Chayefsky’s script and actors Dunaway, Finch (the first actor to win posthumously), and Beatrice Straight, whose performance as Holden’s wife was the shortest to win an Academy Award.
These ten selections are just the tip of the iceberg. There are tons of other great films, guests, and screenings throughout the weekend. Carol Burnett in Conversation, Sharon Stone in person for The Misfits. Alan Ruck and Ben Stein in person for Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. A Glenn Close Hand and Footprint Ceremony at the Chinese Theatre. Disney’s Alice in Wonderland at the beautiful El Capitan Theatre. A World Premiere restoration screening of Joan Crawford’s 1932 film Letty Lynton, which been shown publicly in 90 years due to copyright issues. Barbara Hershey in person for Hannah and Her Sisters and A World Apart. Plus many, many, more.
To see the complete list of films, guests, and schedules as well as badge purchase options, you can visit the festival’s official webpage here: https://filmfestival.tcm.com/. Individual standby tickets will also be available for all shows if seats are available. Individual tickets are $20 except for the closing night film Network, which is $30.
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