Today is both President’s Day and Don Coscarelli’s birthday! As such, it only seems appropriate that today’s scene of the day should come from Coscarelli’s 2002 film, Bubba Ho-Tep.
In this film, Elvis (Bruce Campbell) and John F. Kennedy (Ossie Davis) team up to battle the killer Mummy that is haunting their nursing home. Personally, I choose to believe that both Elvis and JFK were exactly who they said they were in this film.
In honor of Alan Parker’s birthday, today’s scene of the day comes from his 1980 film, Fame. This is one of the best finales ever captured on film.
In this scene, the film’s characters performer for one last time before graduating and heading out into a world that, for all their talent, promises nothing. The film follows these students over the course of their four years at the High School for the Performing Arts and, as the finale plays out, we know that, no matter what happens, there years at the school will remain some of the most important of their lives.
Today is Kim Novak’s 92nd birthday!
Today’s scene of the day is the wonderfully sensual dance scene that she shares with William Holden in 1955’s Picnic. Picnic is a film that has its flaws, the main one being that William Holden, as charming and ruggedly handsome as he is, is a bit too old for the lead role. But none of that matter once he and Kim Novak start dancing.
(At around the 18 second mark, the picture appears to freeze but don’t panic. That’s a glitch in the upload and it only lasts for a second or two.)
Deliverance (1972, directed by John Boorman, DP: Vilmos Zsigmond)
“Machines are going to fail!” Lewis Medlock says in Deliverance, delivering a line that feels even more relevant today than it might have in 1972. Lewis is the athlete and self-styled alpha male who drags his friends on a canoeing trip that involves some dangerous rapids. When Lewis suffers a compound fraction, it’s a shocking moment because, up until that point, Lewis seemed invulnerable to harm. Even when they return to civilization and Lewis learns he might lose his leg, he remains defiant.
Lewis was played by the late Burt Reynolds, who born 89 years ago today. In this scene that I love, Lewis explains his philosophy to his best friend and eventual savior, Ed Gentry (Jon Voight).
On this date, 115 years ago, Lon Chaney, Jr. was born in Oklahoma City. At the time, Oklahoma wasn’t even a state. His father was the actor Lon Chaney Sr.
Originally named Creighton Chaney, Lon Jr. followed in his father’s footsteps. Like many sons of famous men, he often struggled to escape his father’s shadow. While he would never be mistaken for a man of a thousand faces, Lon Chaney, Jr. did make a name for himself, first as Lenny in the Oscar-nominated 1939 film version of Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men and then as Larry Talbot, the unfortunate man who found himself cursed to turn into the Wolf Man whenever the moon was full. Chaney spent the majority of his career appearing in horror films and, later, westerns. Not only did he play The Wolf Man but he was also one of the many actors to take a shot at playing both Frankenstein’s Monster and Dracula. Later, he would appear in a series of low budget horror films that were often a far cry from his best-known films. In his later years, he was a favorite of producer/director Stanley Kramer, who cast him in both High Noon and The Defiant Ones and who once said that Chaney was one of the finest character actors in Hollywood. His deep voice and craggily face made an undeniable impression in those later films. Looking at him, you could see had lived a tough life but he had the heart of a survivor.
In today’s scene that I love, Larry Talbot learns the facts about being a werewolf. From 1941’s The Wolf Man, here is Lon Chaney, Jr in his signature role.
In honor of Joe Pesci’s birthday, today’s scene that I love comes from 1990’s Goodfellas. This iconic scene was largely improvised by Joe Pesci and Ray Liotta. Reportedly, Pesci based the scene on an actual incident that he observed.
It’s also interesting to note that Tommy’s comment of “you might fold under pressure” turns out to be true.
Today’s scene that I love comes from my favorite Greydon Clark movie, 1990’s The Forbidden Dance!
Yes, this scene is technically a spoiler. It’s got music! It’s got dancing! It has some deeply questionable stereotypes and some obvious virtue signaling! It has that classic line, “We should just boycott their ass!” It’s got Sid Haig! It’s got everything you could ever hope for!
And remember — this film is dedicated to the preservation of the rain forest.
Today’s scene that I love features future President Ronald Reagan, giving what he considered to be his best performance in 1942’s Kings Row. He liked one of the lines in this scene so much that he used it as the title for autobiography.
On what would have been Ronald Reagan’s 114th birthday, here is today’s scene that I love.
Since today is Michael Mann’s birthday, today’s scene that I love comes from his 1986 film, Manhunter.
In this scene, a blind woman (played by Joan Allen) pets a sedated tiger while her new boyfriend (Tom Noonan) watches. This would actually be a pretty romantic scene if not for the fact that her boyfriend is also a homicidal maniac. This is a scene that, when you watch the film, seems to come out of nowhere but, when you look back, you realize it was one of the key moments in the narrative. While the killer watches the woman who represents a possible redemption embrace another predator, the profiler played by William Petersen continues his way into the killer’s tortured psyche.
This scene is Michael Mann at his best.
Today would have been George Romero’s 85th birthday.
Today’s scene of the day comes from Romero’s best film, Night of the Living Dead. In this scene, an attempt to escape from a farmhouse ends in disaster. As was typical of all of Romero’s films, the disaster has less to do with the zombies and more to do with humans that simply can’t work together.
The upload isn’t great but this scene still represents Romero’s vision of a society working to destroy itself.
Through the Shattered Lens 