Background
Gazzara, Ben was born on August 28, 1930 in New York City. The son of Sicilian immigrants, he spoke Italian as his first language.
("The book is a revelation...because I never knew all the ...)
"The book is a revelation...because I never knew all the details, all the people and the strategies that went into the making of the movie Saint Jack...I have discovered how this excellent movie was created. And what I had thought was a lost world is still accessible – I enjoyed revisiting it in this book (Kinda Hot: The Making of Saint Jack in Singapore).” - Paul Theroux, author of Saint Jack Kinda Hot: The Making of Saint Jack in Singapore reveals, for the first time, the extraordinary story behind the making of Saint Jack (1979), the only American film to be entirely shot on location in Singapore. Filmed in secret, it was subsequently banned by the authorities. Adapting Paul Theroux’s celebrated novel about pimps and prostitutes in the Lion City, a local, amateur cast and crew worked right alongside brilliant film-making talents gathered from all over the world. The director was Peter Bogdanovich, one-time Hollywood golden-boy whose career was in decline. The star was Ben Gazzara, a charismatic method actor. They immersed themselves into the world of brothels in the name of ‘research’. The film was made on the run, with the cast and crew improvising wildly, chaotically capturing the last vestiges of Singapore’s famous colonial and seedy past, all the time telling the authorities they were shooting a romance called Jack Of Hearts. Author Ben Slater has tracked down everyone from chief crew members and lead actors to the humblest extras, in order to tell the gripping, funny and poignant tale of what happened when Saint Jack came to Singapore for six months in 1978.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/9812610693/?tag=2022091-20
(When the 102-year-old inventor of an amazing new hunting ...)
When the 102-year-old inventor of an amazing new hunting product is murdered, the clues point toward the Endicotts, a controversial reality-show family. Did one of the members do something desperate to claim the invention as their own and boost their waning popularity? Blanco County game warden John Marlin intends to find out, if he can prevent his best friend from having a deadly run-in with the prime suspect. Stag Party is the eighth novel in Ben Rehder’s hilarious Blanco County mystery series.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1505440262/?tag=2022091-20
( The ultimate fan's guide to the Coen Brothers' cult cla...)
The ultimate fan's guide to the Coen Brothers' cult classic, with an introduction by the Dude himself, Jeff Bridges. To some The Big Lebowski is just a movie, to others it's THE MOVIE. Over the past several years the movie has developed a massive and passionate cult following, led by the creation of Lebowski Fest, a traveling festival celebrating all things Lebowski. Held in a bowling alley, it features bowling, costume and trivia contests, live music, a screening of the movie, White Russians, and what-have-you. Attendance has grown exponentially and the Fest has been featured in virtually every national media outlet, from NPR to the New York Times. The Associated Press called it "kind of a 'Star Trek' convention, but without all the geeks." SPIN Magazine called it one of the "19 events you can't miss!" Now, at last, comes the book that the legion of Lebowski fans (aka Achievers) has been waiting for. I'm a Lebowski, You're a Lebowski is a treasure trove of trivia and commentary, hilarious throughout and illustrated with photos from the film, including dozens taken on the set by Jeff Bridges. It includes interviews with virtually every major and minor cast member including John Goodman, Julianne Moore and John Turturro, as well as the real-life individuals who served as inspiration for the characters such as Jeff Dowd and John Milius. Fellow Achievers Patton Oswalt, Tony Hawk and Powerpuff Girls creator Craig McCracken give their thoughts on the movie and the phenomenon that surrounds it. The book features a handy guide to speaking Achiever, tips on how to Dude-ify your car, office, and living space, Lebowski Fest highlights and so much more.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1596912464/?tag=2022091-20
( Since its release nearly ten years ago, The Big Lebowsk...)
Since its release nearly ten years ago, The Big Lebowski has become a cult classic with a worldwide following, having survived the baffled reaction of many mainstream critics. Its fans tend to be fanatical, congregating at 'Lebowski Conventions' in bowling alleys across American and Britain, and even dressing up as characters from the film. Among the funniest films of the last twenty-five years, and one of the high-water marks of 1990s genre recycling and pastiche, The Big Lebowski is also littered with playful and subversive references to film history, especially to Raymond Chandler's world of hardboiled detective classics and the world of film noir. The Big Lebowski is the rarest kind of film, a comedy whose jokes become funnier with repetition. The same goes for its multitudinous jukebox-like references to other films, many of which open up vistas for intertextual interpretation. Underneath the film's breakneck pacing and foul-mouthed characters, a farcical collection of flakes, losers, and phonies, is a surprisingly humane account of what fools we mortals be. It is one of the oddest buddy films ever made, with extraordinary performances by Jeff Bridges and John Goodman. In this study, The Big Lebowski is set into the context of 1990s Hollywood cinema, anatomised for its witty relationship with the classics which it satirises, and discussed in terms of its key theme: the hopeless flailing of ridiculously unmanly men in the world of discombobulated, mixed-up, or put-on identities that is Los Angeles.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1844571734/?tag=2022091-20
Gazzara, Ben was born on August 28, 1930 in New York City. The son of Sicilian immigrants, he spoke Italian as his first language.
In 1948 he was awarded a drama scholarship and in 1951 he joined the Actors’ Studio, where he stayed three years, attracting special attention as Jocko de Paris in the Studio production of End as a Man, a role he repeated for his film debut in 1957.
On the stage, he also starred in A Hatful of Rain and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. His movies have not fulfilled the promise of stored-up hostility so casually implied in End as a Man (57, Jack Garfein). It remains an open question as to whether he is a remarkable actor or simply a glowering ham. Characteristically, Preminger emphasized this very ambiguity in Anatomy of a Murder (59). After that, amid much work for TV, he has made only a few, insignificant films: The Young Doctors (61, Phil Karlson); La Citta Prigioniera (62, Joseph Anthony); Reprieve (62, Millard Kaufman); A Rage to Live (65, Walter Grauman); The Bridge at Renuigen (69, John Guillermin); as one of the central trio in John Cassavetes’s Husbands (70); and The Neptune Factor (73, Daniel Petrie). The question at the end of Anatomy remains attached to Gazzara. Nor is it settled bv the florid Capone (75, Steve Carver), tamer than de Paris. He was the strip-club operator in The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (76, Cassavetes); in Opening Night (77, Cassavetes); secondhand Rick in Saint Jack (79, Peter Bogdanovich); and in Bloodline (79, Terence Young).
Since then, he has become an actor who moves easily between Italy and America: Inchon (81, Young); They All Laughed (81, Bogdanovich); Tales of Ordinary Madness (81, Marco Ferreri); as the cop in the Budd Schulberg-scripted A Question of Honor (82, Jud Taylor) for TV; La Ragazza di Trieste (82, Pasquale Festa Campanile); Uno Scandalo Perbene (84, Campanile); La Donna delle Meraviglie (85, Alberto Bevilacqua); Figlio Mio Infmitamente Caro (85, Valentino Orsini); A Letter to Three Wives (85, Larry Elikann); II Comorrista (86, Giuseppe Tornatore); as the father in An Early Frost (86, John Erman) on TV; Downpayment on Murder (87, Waris Hussein); Police Story: The Freeway Killings (87, William A. Graham); Quicker than the Eye (88, Nicolas Gessner); and Road House (89, Rowdy Herrington). In 1990, he acted in and directed Oltre I'Oceano.
In the nineties, Gazzara made a movie called Too Tired to Die (98, Wonsuk Chin)—one of those titles that reflects on a career. Gazzara was nearly a star once, a figure of promise on stage and screen. Yet he has been reduced to working constantly in small roles in pictures hardly seen or heard of by the people he meets. The glamour of acting: Blindsided (93, Thomas Michael Donnelly); as Joe Bonanno in Love, Honor Lr Obey (93, John Patterson); Fatal Vows: The Alexander O'Hara Story (94, John Power); Hirondelles ne Meurent pas a Jerusalem (94, Ridha Belli); The Zone (95, Barry Zetlin); Banditi (95, Stefano Mignucci); Shadow Conspiracy (97, George P. Cosmatos); The Spanish Prisoner (97, David Mamet); Vicious Circles (97, Alexander Whitelaw); Buffalo 66 (98, Vincent Gallo); The Big Lebowski (98, Joel Coen); Happiness (98, Todd Solondz); Illuminate (98, John Turturro); Summer of Sam (99, Spike Lee); The Thomas Crown Affair (99, John McTieman); Very Mean Men (00, Tony Vitale); The List (00, Sylvain Guy); Home Sweet Hoboken (00, Yoshifumi Hosoya).
( Since its release nearly ten years ago, The Big Lebowsk...)
(When the 102-year-old inventor of an amazing new hunting ...)
( The ultimate fan's guide to the Coen Brothers' cult cla...)
("The book is a revelation...because I never knew all the ...)
Actor: stage appearances include Jezebel's Husband, 1952, End As a Man, 1953, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, 1955, Hatful of Rain, 1955, The Night Circus, 1959, Epitaph for George Dillon, 1959, Two for the Seesaw, 1960, Strange Interlude, 1963, Traveller Without Luggage, 1964, Hughie/Duet, 1974, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolfe, 1975, Shimada, 1992, Chinese Coffee, 1994. Motion pictures include The Strange One, 1957, Anatomy of Murder, 1959, Joy of Laughter, 1960, The Passionate Thief, 1960, The Young Doctors, 1961, Convicts Four, 1961, A Rage to Live, 1964, Husbands, 1969, Al Capone, 1974, High Velocity, 1976, Killing of a Chinese Bookie, 1976, Voyage of the Damned, 1976, Opening Night, 1977, Bloodline, 1978, Saint Jack, 1978, Inchon, 1979, They All Laughed, 1980, Tales of Ordinary Madness, 1981, The Girl from Trieste, 1985, The Cammorista, 1985, A Lovely Scandal, 1986, Quicker than the Eye, 1987, Roadhouse, 1989, Beyond the Ocean, 1990, And Quiet Flows the Don, 1992, Nefertiti, 1992, People across the Way, 1993, Els de Devart, 1993, Swallows Never Die in Jerusalem, 1994, Farmer and Chase, 1994, Shadow Conspiracy, 1995, Stag, 1996, The Spanish Prisoner, 1996, Buffalo 66, 1997, The Big Lebowski, 1997, Too Tired to Die, 1997, Illuminata, 1997, Happiness, 1998, Buffalo 66, 1998, Undertaker's Paradise, 1999, Blue Moon, 1999, No Man's Land, 1999, Very Mean Men, 1999, The List, 2000, Home Sweet Hoboken, 2000, Dogville, 2003, Awake and Sing!, 2006. Television series Arrest and Trial, 1963-1964, Run for Your Life, 1965-1968 (4 Emmy Nominations), Police Story, 1987.Appeared: television dramas including Playhouse 90, DuPont Show of the Month (Recipient Drama Critics award for role in End As a Man 1953, Theatre World award 1953, 3 nominations Antoinette Perry award, 4 Emmy nominations), An Early Frost, 1985, A Letter to Three Wives, 1985, Downpayment on Murder, 1987, People Like Us, 1990, Lies Before Kisses, 1991, Blindsided, 1993, Fatal Vows: The Alexandra O'Hara Story, 1994, Parallel Lives, 1994, Strangers, 1995, Valentine's Day, 1998, Angelo Nero (miniseries), 1998, Tesoro di Damasco (miniseries), 1998, Tre Stelle (miniseries), 1999, Brian's Song, 2001, Hysterical Blindness (Emmy award best support actor television Movie, 2003), 2002. Author, director, actor Ladykiller, 1996. Vicious Circle, 1997.(author) In the Moment: My Life as an Actor, 2004.
Married Louise Erickson, 1952 (divorced 1956). Married Janice Rule, 1 child, Elizabeth. Married Elke Stuckmann.
1 adopted child, Danja.