For all you proper film enthusiasts who would like to peruse the films of TruStory FM’s entertainment podcasts by release decade. Get ready for a firehose of film history in these here stacks.
After writing his teleplay for “Marty,” it wasn’t long before Hollywood asked Paddy Chayefsky to adapt his script for a feature film. And it’s a good thing he did too — he won his first Oscar for his screenplay. Join us — Pete Wright and Andy Nelson — as we finish our Paddy Chayefsky series with Delbert Mann’s 1955 film “Marty.”
When people list off caper films, it’s a long list that comes to mind – Ocean’s Eleven, Rififi, The Killing, The Ladykillers, Kelly’s Heroes, The Italian Job, The Usual Suspects, even more recently Inception – but the film that really kicked it all off was 1950s masterpiece, The Asphalt Jungle. John Huston co-adapted W. R. Burnett’s novel and turned it into one of his greatest directorial achievements, a story of a group of criminals working hard to pull off the perfect heist only to have everything fall apart in the end.
It’s the start of our Richard D. Zanuck tribute series, ladies and gentlemen, and what better way to begin than with the first film he produced for his father, Darryl F. Zanuck, 1959’s “Compulsion.” Based on the book of the same name by Meyer Levin about the Leopold/Loeb murder from 1924, Richard D. Zanuck puts together a top notch team of cast and crew, headed up by director Richard Fleischer, to create a film that comes in under budget and ahead of schedule.
John Huston co-wrote and directed it, choosing to shoot as much as he possibly could in Africa. While many said it couldn’t be done—shooting a story on location about two characters typically considered much too old for a love story—John Huston proved them wrong.
Merry Christmas and happy holidays, movie nerds! Tonight, in the spirit of the season, we talk about Michael Curtiz’s curious gem of a Christmas comedy from 1955, “We’re No Angels.”