Gigolo and Warriors Together Again, With a Special Thanks to Cinema Du Meep

As I've mentioned here before, Paramount did a nice little job of promoting one of their earlier properties, The Warriors, during a scene in Par's American Gigolo.  Other than the same studio, there isn't much they share, save for both having watershed synth-based scores that remain awesome 30+ years later.

Recently, over at his Facebook feed, where he manages to unearth one cool vintage newspaper ad or marquee picture after another, Cinema Du Meep posted a December 1980 ad featuring--you guessed it -Warriors and Gigolo on the same bill.  Curiously, Warriors, the earlier film by a year, appears as the first feature.  

This was actually a traveling double-bill put together by Paramount and which opened simultaneously at several local theaters, as you can see in the below New York listing.

In this old thread on the Warriors website, posters mention that the "VGV" ("Varrio Grande Vista") graffiti on the Warriors sign above is the tag of a gang portrayed in the LA-set 1979 gang feature Boulevard Nights, which you can see here.  So, it appears there was a little East Coast / West Coast rivalry which pre-dates Biggie and 2Pac.

When Cult Films Appear Within Cult Films

When a film scene plays out in front of a movie theater or in pre-Giuliani Times Square, I'm probably not the only cinephile who squints at the television set in order to read the marquee(s) or determine the one-sheet in the display. Of course, I really love it when the film within a film is a particular favorite of mine and /or a cult film.

Here are a couple of examples of "cult films within cult films," which I also happened to catch on 35mm within the last half year or so. Both examples hark back to a time when neighborhood theaters that played one film at a time were commonplace and the exterior and lobby were transformed into visual paeans to that film.

Darker Than Amber in Dusty and Sweets McGee:

The poster to the left of the ticket booth is different from the final one-sheet and resembles the key art in the British quad. The tagline reads, "If Travis McGee puts his life on the line, it's not going to be for free." Incidentally, we can also see a poster for what appears to be a stage production of Hair, just to the right of the man in brown leather.

British Quad (paired with Figures in a Landscape):

U.S. one-sheet:

Italian locandina:

The Warriors in American Gigolo

Most of the time, I'm sure the film advertising that appears within other films comes down to chance, but in the case of The Warriors and American Gigolo, the Warriors advertising prominently appears throughout the scene; my thought is that it's not a coincidence that The Warriors, and not The Wanderers, for example, is the film in the background given that both were produced and released by Paramount. To think I had the opportunity to ask Paul Schrader such an important question at a recent screening of Gigolo...and didn't do it.

"Put me on the scene..."

File under: "What might have been."

From the pages of the long-defunct industry trade journal Film Bulletin, John Travolta is the American Gigolo...