Showing posts with label Larry Gross. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Larry Gross. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Obscure One-Sheet: Headin' for Broadway

They're singers and dancers.  Lovers and dreamers.  They're young, talented and scared.

I remember finding this poster many years ago when fishing around a bargain bin in a movie memorabilia shop in Millburn, NJ.  It looks like an after-effect of the Fame craze and, sure enough, it was released in 1980.  That's probably not enough time for this to have been produced after the release of Fame meaning that this film was likely in production at the same time.  In any event, it clearly lost out on the "down-and-out-singer-songwriter-actor-hoofer" movie sweepstakes.  It's never appeared on home video and most of its stars were barely heard from again.  


However, it is of interest for several reasons.  One of its stars, Paul Carafotes (who, going by IMDb, was only 16 or 17 when this was filmed) would play a solid supporting role in the 1983 Tom Cruise film, All the Right Moves.  Another star, Vivian Reed, is a Tony-nominated actress and sings one of my favorite '70s Philly Soul tunes, "Save Your Love For Me," which appears on the great WEA compilation, Creme de la Creme: Philly Soul Classics and Rarities.  



Lastly, it was co-written by one Larry Gross, who strangely does not mention it in his diaries even as he contains amusing stories about 48 Hrs. producer Joel Silver's 1980 musical bomb, Xanadu.  Headin' for Broadway director Joseph Brooks, who struck gold of a certain kind with 1977's You Light Up My Life, only had a few more directorial opportunities after this one.

More Dirt on Sonny Landham (& Everyone Else Involved With 48Hrs.)


Thanks to William S. Wilson over at the Mobius forums, I've been tipped off to a fascinating series of online diaries posted by screenwriter Larry Gross.  Gross has been periodically transcribing his diaries from the 1982 filming of Walter Hill's 48 Hrs. and they are a treasure trove of insider information from the trenches of a major Hollywood film.  Political hopeful Sonny Landham comes off particularly poorly, but Gross does not mince words about anyone on set.  I should also say that I am a big Walter Hill admirer and it is especially interesting to learn a little more about his personality and working methods since he's never really been given his due.  


Head on over to Jeremy's Moon in the Gutter site for an illuminating read on Hill's Johnny Handsome.