"Who Is That Guy?!": Steve Inwood

Guesting on an episode of Wonder Woman.

A face, if not a name, that should be familiar to fans of several prominent "Dirty New York"-lensed films of the early '80s, Steve Inwood seemingly left the scene as quickly as he arrived.  In truth, according to his IMDb page, Inwood hung around in the industry in guest spots and telefilms until 1997.  After that, he entered a life completely out of the public eye and information on him is scant.  But, for a few years in the late '70s and early '80s, Inwood was a reliable presence in feature films shot in New York, making a strong impression even in small roles, while showcasing a distinctive charisma and range. 

With Ben Gazzara on A Question of Honor, a 1982 telefilm.

In the 1977 Frank Sinatra telefilm Contract on Cherry Street, Inwood is part of a very impressive  ensemble of players, playing a low-level junkie informant.  With his gaunt features, greasy hair, and whiny New Yawkese, Inwood rather effectively evinces the rat-like, desperate qualities of this pathetic figure.  With beard, Inwood briefly appears as a self-assured New York fashion designer-turned-murder victim in William Friedkin's Cruising.  A brief appearance it is, but it's an interesting role, that of a successful fashion entrepreneur by day who looks for sexual hook-ups in gay peep show booths on 42nd Street after hours.  Inwood is very good here, charming and confident when we first see him at his tony Madison Avenue shop, as he closes up for the weekend, then more wary, as he goes incognito at a peep show arcade that looks a lot like one seen in Robert Butler's Night of the Juggler, also from 1980, and also featuring Inwood.  He figures heavily in one of the darkest moments in Alan Parker's Fame, as a predatory Times Square "photographer" who convinces Irene Cara to pose topless for him.  In the following year's Prince of the City, Inwood has what might be his best role, as Mario Vincente, the Rudy Giuliani-inspired assistant U.S. attorney who empathizes and works with Detective Daniel Ciello (Treat Williams) as he struggles to come clean about his role in widespread police department corruption.  These roles culminated with Inwood's fourth-billing as the ego-maniacal Broadway producer in Sylvester Stallone's Staying Alive, the critically-skewered, though financially successful sequel to Saturday Night Fever. 

As Jesse in Staying Alive.

Perhaps if Staying Alive had been a better film Inwood's next feature film part, the starring role, would have been in something more reputable than Grizzly II: The Concert.  A troubled production shot in Hungary, it attracted a fine roster of players around Inwood, including Deborah Raffin, Louise Fletcher, Laura Dern, Jack Starrett, Charles Cyphers, Marc Alaimo, Dick Anthony Williams, young George Clooney and Charlie Sheen, and John Rhys-Davies, who had this to say about Inwood in an AV Club interview:

"Now, as far as Steve… well, to begin with, is he still alive?  Poor fellow.  He was very handsome, very strong, but he had one or two problems, and I guess coming off the near-superstardom of Staying Alive, it made him… perhaps overvalue his contribution a little bit."

From there, Inwood's career mostly consisted of television guest spots, along with a few supporting parts in telefilms and direct-to-video features.  The trail ends after 1997.  Did Inwood get too big for his britches or burn bridges, as Rhys-Davies indicates in his quote, leading to his career decline, or did general industry trends make his type unfashionable?  Whatever the cause, it's unfortunate that Inwood didn't continue on the path he was on in the early '80s, because his was a face and persona that fit well with the gritty, reality-based NY features and telefilms of that time, and even if he wasn't quite a viable leading man, his talent and versatility should have translated into a more extensive career as a character player.

With Shawnee Smith in the 1985 television film Crime of Innocence.

The Movie Love We've Come to Expect

This poster features a dead body in a pose similar to the one seen on the Goodfellas one-sheet.  The body on this poster was cut and pasted onto the cover of a German Blu-ray of Mean Streets that I wrote about here.  Not sure whose face they stuck in there to represent Johnny Boy, but it ain't De Niro.

Was looking at Mean Streets for the first time in a long while and took note of some in-movie film references that I hadn't recalled.  In addition, to the clips from The Searchers, The Big Heat, and Tomb of Ligeia seen at various points on various screens during the course of the film, there's also a cool shot of the Waverly from the vantage point of a cab.  The marquee boasts Sylvia Miles in Warhol's Heat.  No love for Joe...or, no room on the marquee?

When Charlie goes to The Searchers with Michael and Tony, we see the below shot of marquees on 42nd Street.  Some of the movies that can be made out are: Rage, Borsalino, Rider on the Rain, Suppose They Gave a War and Nobody Came?, And Hope to Die, Rosebud (Roberta Findlay's, not the Preminger film of the same name), Eighteen Carat Virgin (aka Without a Stitch), and The Arrangement.  

In an inspired bit of programming, Rene Clement's Rider on the Rain and And Hope to Die are on the same marquee.  Rider was Avco Embassy from '70 and And Hope to Die was Fox from '72.  He made The Deadly Trap (for National General) in between those two.

Later, Johnny Boy and Charlie are in a theater lobby after seeing Tomb of Ligeia, where we can see posters for Tomb, The Man With the X-Ray Eyes, Point Blank, and Husbands.

I like that in this one film we get such a cross section of contemporary and classic films references, including Scorsese favorite Kazan, albeit probably incidentally.

For the others that get bothered about these things, the WB Blu-ray of Mean Streets removes the original Saul Bass-designed Warner Communications logo in favor of the current WB logo.  Adding further insult, Charlie's opening v.o. begins while the new logo is still onscreen.  Previously, the logo went to black and then Charlie's voice was heard.  The previous WB DVD retained the original logo...so, it stays on my shelf even though space is at a premium.

Burt Goes to Whole Foods

What I discovered on my quest to find a location from Shamus, is as sure a sign as any that gentrification is inevitable just about everywhere, no matter the aesthetic qualities of the place, or lack thereof.  In Shamus, Burt Reynolds goes to Gowanus (an industrial section of Brooklyn named for the body of water that cuts through it) to investigate a warehouse owned by the film's villains.  Using Google Maps, I found the exact location, one which I've actually driven and walked by countless times over the years.  The warehouse that Burt breaks into has been demolished (when, I'm not certain) and is now a construction site where a Whole Foods (the first in the whole of Brooklyn, somewhat amazingly) is going up.  They'll never make Gowanus pretty, but if the mob scenes around Trader Joe's and other Whole Foods outposts in NYC are any indication, it will now be a destination.

Shamus is nothing special as a film, but it is one of the few films of its period to shoot in this part of Brooklyn and, of particular importance, provides visual documentation of a place that is on its way to permanently changing in appearance and character, something that could probably be said for just about any spot in this city.

Burt goes to Whole Foods.

Former college football star Burt Reynolds, as Shamus, displays his physical gifts, leaping away from pursuers after breaking into a warehouse (seen in the background) that would eventually give way to a Whole Foods Market.

Ghost of Serpico

David Shaber's original script for Nighthawks was developed as the basis for a second sequel to French Connection (with Richard Pryor as a wisecracking cop who teams up with Popeye), but Gene Hackman refused to reprise his role as Popeye Doyle again and the script was re-worked for Sylvester Stallone and co-star Billy Dee Williams. From the long locks and facial hair of a beefier than usual (at the time) Stallone, it's clear that the filmmakers (or the star himself) also had another famous '70s real-life and cinematic New York cop in their heads: Frank Serpico.  They're not so interested in the politics or methods of Serpico, nor the realism or tragic qualities of that film, but Stallone's sunglasses, beard, and long hair are surely meant to inspire memories of Al Pacino in his iconic role on a purely surface level.

Stallone's beard was apparently suggested by then-girlfriend Susan Anton, seen here with Warhol, receiving one of Sly's characteristic fake punches to the chin.

In one scene early on, Deke DaSilva (Stallone) and his partner Fox (Billy Dee Williams) scale a tenement via fire escape in order to make a bust.  It's reminiscent of a moment in Serpico in which Pacino uses the same method to enter a building.  I've mashed up these two scenes, as the parallels in costuming and physical appearance are rather striking.

The same scene in Serpico also has a shot of Pacino walking down a street and into building, which is similar to a shot in the actor's later vehicle, Cruising, in which he lazily swaggers home to his girlfriend (Karen Allen) after another night out in the Meatpacking District.  His appearance is completely different in terms of clothing and hairstyle from that of Serpico, but the mise-en-scene and the actor's movements are nearly identical.  In terms of performance, the two scenes reveal an aspect of an actor's bag of tricks--in this case, the way he moves to suit a character and the camera--that is not cited as often as his verbal abilities.

New York-Style

In memory of Erland Van Lidth  de Jeude, immortalized as Terror, leader of the Baldies, and owner of the most impressive onscreen display of rapid pizza ingestion.

I spent a few years in Chicago and there's probably nothing I missed more about the New York Tri-State Area than (good, easily obtainable) thin crust, New York-style pizza.

If you know of other similar moments (i.e. people chowing on slices) in NY-set movies of the era, please send 'em my way so that I may add them to this video.

I've a feeling Lenny's wasn't selling that Philly Cheesesteak when Travolta was prowling 86th St.

Can Take Him Out of Memphis, Can't Take the Memphis Out of...

Memphis native Michael Beck briefly loses his New Yawk mojo, which you can hear in this scene from the television version, then gets it back twofold in the last act.

I recall, when I first watched this scene on cable years ago, thinking that Beck's Southern twang was much more pronounced than it sounds to me now.  It does still sound different to me than the rest of his line readings as the hardened, laconic, (ironically named?) Swan, another in a long line of Western-inspired heroes in the cinema of Walter Hill.

One could argue that the aforementioned television scene should have been in the theatrical cut, as it makes clear to Swan that every gang is looking for the Warriors, under the mistaken impression that they are responsible for Cyrus' death.  It could also be surmised that Beck's slightly "off" line reading contributed to its deletion.

Burt's Dirty New York

Shamus.  Burt.  Gowanus.  Kentile sign.

Long before it became a beloved symbol of pre-gentrified Brooklyn, the Kentile Floors sign (and the company which it touted) were simply part of the landscape of an unglamorous, industrial section of Brooklyn, just the type of location used by Hollywood productions shooting in "Dirty New York," as was the case with 1972's Shamus, a mostly routine detective yarn with Southerner Burt Reynolds pretending to be a Brooklyn Philip Marlowe, even including a riff on the bookstore salesgirl scene from The Big Sleep.  Burt does plenty of running and leaping throughout the picture, showing off his formidable physical prowess, which is ultimately the best part of his performance.

3 Shuttered New York Theaters Captured on Celluloid

Some recent screen captures I made of the Prospect in Flushing, as seen in Fulci's New York Ripper, the Beacon, as seen in Scorsese's Who's That Knocking at My Door, and the Wakefield, as seen in Mulligan's Bloodbrothers.  The Beacon remains open, but not as a movie house.  I looked through some old New York Magazine movie listings from Summer  to late 1981, which are searchable via Google, and couldn't find a time when Werewolf and Nighthawks were playing together there.  They did play at neighboring theaters around that time, however.

The scene in Bloodbrothers actually includes footage from Enter the Dragon, the matinee that Richard Gere takes his kid brother to.  Both were Warner Bros. properties so there was some synergy there. Enter the Dragon would also appear in movie-within-movie form in Polanski's The Tenant, a Paramount picture, and, if I'm not mistaken, its use in the Polanski film did not thrill Warner Bros., but I can't find verification of that at the moment.  I'm left to wonder if the Beacon really was playing Rio Bravo at that time, or if Scorsese paid someone to dress the marquee specially for his film.