R.I.P. Richard Rush

[Sabin]

Just watched Getting Straight. This is a terrible movie.

[Big Magilla]

Getting Straight was the movie that made me stop reading New York Daily News film reviews. After missing the boat on Easy Rider and other genuine game-changers, they gave **** to that fraudulent piece of garbage. It would be ten years before I would look at another Richard Rush film. Fortunately, that film was The Stunt Man, which was indeed a film of absolute joy, one of the best sleepers of all time, although I still have a greater affection for The Great Santini, which was released in the South in 1979, went to HBO in early 1980 and only then was shown theatrically in New York and Los Angeles. I first saw it on HBO, then in a theatre in New York, and again during Oscar season the following year in another theatre in the Los Angeles area.

[Mister Tee]

Hell's Angels on Wheels and Freebie and the Bean were two of the worst movies I've ever seen. Getting Straight was a completely fraudulent cash-in on 60s radicalism.

After all that -- with no reason to expect a thing from Richard Rush -- I just adored The Stunt Man. The movie was notoriously buried by its studio, but 1980 was such a lackluster year for movies that a bunch of films (The Great Santini, Resurrection, and Melvin and Howard, in addition to Stunt Man) rose from the studio-grave, got second-chance releases, and ended up with major Oscar nominations. The Stunt Man was, to me, the best of them -- a bit of twee metaphysics guided with a wonderfully light touch by Rush, and featuring what I'd say is Peter O'Toole's best post-60s performance. An absolute joy, justification all on its own for Rush's career.

[anonymous1980]

Story.

Odd. I thought he had already passed.

Anyway, R.I.P. The Stunt Man was a pretty great movie.