I once boarded an airplane and counted a dozen different Tom Clancy books being read in those pre-Kindle days as I walked down the row. On another trip, I flew on four planes and on all four was seated next to someone reading a Tom Clancy book. Clancy, who died today at age 66, was the master of the “airplane novel,” the gripping thriller that is just right for passing the time while traveling. Clancy’s trademark was the detailed descriptions of weapons and other military technology. He made it all seem both fantastic and realistic. That’s because it was both. Clancy was as famous for his meticulous research into dense and arcane government reports. That research produced his nonfiction “Guided Tour” series about military machinery. That’s just the background, though. What made his books come alive was the intensity of the peril in his plots and the integrity and dedication of the characters, especially Jack Ryan and Admiral Greer.
Clancy’s Jack Ryan books have been made into four movies (so far): The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, and Clear and Present Danger) (Alec Baldwin as Ryan in the first one and Harrison Ford in the second and third), plus The Sum of All Fears, a prequel with Ben Affleck. “Jack Ryan: Shadow One” is now in production, directed by Kenneth Branagh and starring “Star Trek’s” Chris Pine.
“The Hunt for Red October” is one of my favorite thrillers, with an all-star cast and a sensational storyline.
It is with special sadness that we bid farewell to the talented young actor who played Finn on “Glee,” Cory Monteith. The cause of death is not yet known but he struggled with substance abuse.
Here he tells Ellen Degeneres about his audition for “Glee.”
He had such a charming, unaffected presence and his portrayal of the gentle football player who loved to sing and struggled with his affection for the ambitious Rachel (sometime off-screen love Lea Michelle) and his gay step-brother Kurt (Chris Colfer) was in many ways the heart of the show. He will be missed.
Today we mourn the loss of James Gandofini, who died suddenly to day at age 51 while he was vacationing in Italy with his family. He will always be remembered for his iconic role as Tony Soprano, the mob guy who was in therapy, in the ground-breaking HBO series “The Sopranos.” His portrayal of the complex man who was often at war with the world and with himself was mesmerizing. But he was also magnificent in a wide range of other roles. I especially loved him as Bear, the doting father, sometime stunt man, and occasional enforcer in “Get Shorty” and as the general in “In the Loop.” Last year he was outstanding as the head of the CIA in “Zero Dark Thirty” and as the father of a music-obsessed teenager in “Not Fade Away.” He was an actor of endless power and sensitivity, able to handle a lead role but an ensemble player who made everyone better.
Here he is telling Zoe on Sesame Street about what to do when you’re scared.
We mourn the loss of television great Jean Stapleton, who died today at age 90. Best known as Edith, the sweet-natured wife of the bombastic Archie Bunker on “All in the Family,” she was often the target of his insults but occasionally showed some asperity by standing up to him.
She had an extensive and varied background in theater, both before and after her iconic role as Edith Bunker. One of her best stage roles was the owner of the answering service in “Bells Are Ringing,” which she repeated on film. She even co-starred with the Muppets.
One of the greatest thrills of my professional life was the chance to talk to one of the towering figures of film history, Ray Harryhausen, the special effects genius to transformed movie-making in the years before digital technology. Today, we mourn his passing, less than a year after the passing of his lifelong friend, Ray Bradbury, who joined us in the interview.
I asked Mr. Harryhausen if he thought that what he was doing was acting as well as animating.
Of course! You’re working with actors so you can’t let them upstage you. I learned from King Kong you have to get sympathy for the villain. Hard to do with a Tyrannasaurus Rex! You can get sympathy for a humanoid form, but it is harder to get sympathy for an animal. So we adapted the original design for Ymir to make him more like a human, his torso anyway. He originally had one eye, like a cyclops. We had to wiggle the tail a lot to distract the audience. I always did a lot of research but was not bound by it, just inspired by it. The Ymir was from Norse mythology originally, but we changed our mind.
I brought in the story; I was very modest in those days. It took me 50 years to learn that modesty is a dirty word in Hollywood. Originally, we had the rocket ship land in Chicago, but I wanted a trip to Rome, so we moved the landing to Italy so I could go there and scout locations. We added our ruins to theirs.
Fantasy was a word he came back to several times.
I did not do horror; I did fantasy. Fantasy is “what if” — it’s stretching your imagination. We don’t want to be associated with horror. I don’t like them to be called monster films.
The most challenging creature was Medusa with twelve snakes in her hair. I did not want to animate a cosmic goddess, so we gave her a snake’s body. We did not want to go with the classical concept of a pretty woman with a pretty face and snakes in her hair; we wanted to make her furious. We borrowed the bow and arrow from Diana. We borrowed the seven heads from Hercules; you always had to remember which head was going in which direction. With the multiple figures in “Jason,” We couldn’t do rotting corpses coming out of the ground at night in “Jason;” we had to do clean-cut skeletons in the daylight. The things you see today would frighten the devil.
Even in the days before CGI, there were issues of changing technology.
We had the advantages and disadvantages of changing technology in building our creatures. Originally, we used foam rubber, which shrinks 10-15 percent so the clay models were a little fat and you can see that some of the stand-ins were a little stouter. It depends on how long you cook it, how long it holds up. It is fine material, but it will rot. We have a big display of the models in Germany at the Sony Museum.
Mr. Harryhausen had one final comment, about following your dreams.
