With a flamethrower of hate to torch heaven's gate.
30YRS AGO TODAY

Hard-headed fuck you all. R.I.P. Chris Cornell.
25YRS AGO TODAY

15YRS AGO TODAY

Today marks the 40th anniversary of BLUE MAGIC (1981) opening in XXX theaters. Not to be confused with the Philadelphia 70's R&B soul group. The year is 1900 and Natalie is a witch who has been living in her hilltop castle mansion for 216yrs, and is super luscious to boot for someone with a 2 century lifespan. When she invites 3 couples over, puttin' on the ritz, for a fancy costumed dinner party, in no time at all, the women are slappin' out the tits in a wife swapping, grabby groping gala of getting off. And then with everyone setting off in search of a magic aphrodisiac and learning the secret to everlasting youth. For its hot sex pageantry and more than capable seasoned cast at the time, BLUE MAGIC is rather quite overlooked & underappreciated. It was apparently a very problematic shoot due to Candida Royalle (writing her first screenplay here and acting in her final film) showing a lack of experience that resulted in several people brought in having to scramble on schedule to put forth a proper script. There were also allegations of havoc during filming supposedly because of Royalle's insistent feminism (which not uncommonly for the era was scoffed at as claptrap) which also brought accusations of diva-ish behaviour/attitude. Her Swedish boyfriend on set (soon to be husband, Per Sjostedt) was a production manager who later went on to be an editor, assistant director, and producer but because of carelessness, lost all(!) of BM's paperwork, sound elements, and negatives.

Going off the rails.
5YRS AGO TODAY

40YRS AGO TODAY


60YRS AGO TODAY

This month marks the 45th anniversary of the publication debuts of both HIGH SOCIETY and PUB magazine (1976). One of HIGH SOCIETY's first editors was porn star Gloria Leonard who used '900' and '976' phone numbers for advertising which evolved into the first phone sex lines. While she (and/or publisher Carl Ruderman) is credited with the invention, this has been disputed by another former editor, Jeff Goodman. The final print issue for PUB was Apr 1986.


MAY 1976 ON THE WORLD STAGE The year before, a bomb had rocked the Cannes Film Festival’s main viewing hall behind the Cinema Palace before dawn on opening day. (A failed plot mounted by a bizarre terrorist group called The People’s Struggle Against the Perversion of Humanity who are never heard from again). The year after, another explosive device would be discovered in the same building and defused by French police just a few hours before it was set to go off. But at the 29th Cannes festival in 1976, the big blowup came on May 28, when it was announced that Taxi Driver, director Martin Scorsese’s incendiary study of urban isolation had won top prize, the Palme d’Or. Already a hit in the U.S. and called a masterpiece of inner city alienation — it would gross $29 million that year — the $1.3 million movie dramatically raised the 33-year-old filmmaker’s international standing; he’d beaten out such continental legends as Roman Polanski (The Tenant), Bernardo Bertolucci (1900), and Ingmar Bergman (Face to Face). Despite protestations by Cannes jury president Tennessee Williams about the escalating level of violence in the year’s entries, the film’s toxic fever-dream mood was widely considered an aesthetic triumph. No one disputed the eerie power of 32yr old Robert De Niro, who as Vietnam-vet cab driver Travis Bickle, seemed to buttonhole each person in the audience with the hostile query “You talkin’ to me?” But debate at the festival did grow heated over the moral implications of the bloody ultraviolent climax in which Travis guns down a seedy pimp named Sport (Harvey Keitel, 37) and other heavies to ”save” Iris, the curly-haired 12yr old child prostitute played by 12yr old Jodie Foster. By the time the award was announced at the Cote d’Azur colloquium (having caught wind of a report that jury head Williams hated the film), Scorsese was back in Los Angeles working on his $9 million musical 'New York, New York' and had he been present at the awards conference, he would have faced jittery festivalgoers who heartily & loudly booed the jury’s decision. Already a mercurial crowd during the screening, many attenders streamed out of the theater ashen-faced over the film’s ending of a problematic and disturbed questionable hero whose method of rescue culminates in a crescendo of savagery. Foster recently told THR (The Hollywood Reporter), “The whole issue about the violence in the movie kind of exploded. Marty, Bobby and Harvey kind of got stuck at the Hotel du Cap and didn’t come out very much.” Despite the film’s brutality, the jury could not deny however that Taxi Driver was a triumph deserving of its prestigious award, accompanied by a hand-wringing caveat that “cinema not become a source of hatred.” Not surprisingly, the decision was controversial with producer Michael Phillips recalling, “Half the audience was on its feet cheering and the other half was booing.” It was Taxi Driver‘s ultimate fan though who unsettled the director far more than any detractors. At the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on March 31, 1981, a few minutes after Scorsese had lost the Best Director Oscar (for Raging Bull) to Robert Redford (Ordinary People), he got some shocking news backstage: John Hinckley Jr., whose assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan’s the day before had delayed the Academy Awards ceremony by 24 hours, was citing Taxi Driver as his inspiration — part of his warped obsession to “impress” Jodie Foster whom he had contacted (to which the psychotic infauation spawned the name of Phoenix hardcore punk band JFA - Jodie Foster's Army). Hinckley the would-be murderer closely mirrored another disconnected loner, Mark David Chapman, who on December 8, 1980 killed John Lennon claiming he was inspired by fictional character and book, Holden Caulfield of J.D. Salinger's classic 1951 novel, The Catcher in the Rye. For a while afterward, the provovative Scorsese told friends that he didn’t want to make any more films and at a 1983 press conference he said, “Maybe my films do strike a nerve. That’s what they’re supposed to do, isn’t it?”

Italy's worst ever earthquake has killed more than 550 people and left 80,000 homeless. At least 1,000 people were injured when the powerful quake struck the town of Friuli in the Udine province located in the northeastern region of the country at 8PM, affecting 11 villages near the Austrian and Yugoslav borders. A government spokesman said as many as 1,000 may have been killed with a possible thousand more expected to be found harmed. It is likely the death toll will rise as rescue workers find more bodies buried under the rubble of fallen buildings, particularly those trapped in the small town of Maiano in the foothills of the Italian Alps. Most of the 180,000 people who live in Friuli (the epicentre) spent the night outdoors for fear of further aftershocks. With police reporting chaos on the roads from those evacuating the devastated districts, the local military and Red Cross are on the scene and are due to be joined by rescue workers from Venice & Trieste. With broken communication links having made urgent information hard to come by, officials from the affected towns are appealing for medicine & emergency lights for hospitals. American army units in the area have flown in equipment & medical staff by helicopter and flown out the injured. Italian President Giovanni Leone and the Interior Minister, Francesco Cossiga, visited the earthquake zone by helicopter and were moved to tears when they spoke to those hospitalized in the small town of Maiano, 10 miles (16km) northwest of Udine. The hill town of Gemona further north was almost flattened, killing at least 100 people. A cemetery worker told reporters, "we just haven't got enough coffins." So far the Italian news agency 'Italia' has reported bodies also pulled out from the nearby towns of Buia, and San Daniele. Inmates of the town's prison tried to take advantage of the disaster by making a desperate attempt to escape by scaling the walls in their panic to get out but were beaten back by machine-gun fire from guards. Northern & central Italy are susceptible to earthquakes with many minor tremors occurring on a regular basis. This last quake measured 6.5 on the Richter scale, and was by far the strongest of the 23 tremors which began the night prior. It was felt as far away in France, West Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland and Yugoslavia. The Italian tourist office in London has said that there were no known British casualties while the Queen has sent a message of sympathy to the Italian Government.