Sunday, April 22, 2012

wasted


 
"Living's mostly wasting time
I waste my share of mine
but it never feels too good
so let's not take too long"
—Townes Van Zandt, "To Live Is To Fly"

"How can you waste time? Man, that's ridiculous."
—William J. Craddock, Be Not Content

Friday, April 06, 2012

I Made My Bones When You Were Going Out With Cheerleaders

In a recent interview, The Onion's AV Club asked Alex Rocco, now appearing on Magic City, about Peter O'Toole.

AVC: Did you toss a few back with him? It seems like you almost would’ve felt obliged to.

AR: Oh, yeah. [Laughs.] Yeah, but, you know, he was really a strange way. Because I was in The Godfather, playing Moe Green, he kind of in his own screwed-up way thought I was connected to the mob. Truly. He’d just be, like, “Oh, Rocco, I know what you people do...” [Laughs.]

He was slightly more forthcoming with his hometown paper, the Boston Herald.

“I learned to bet the Red Sox, the Celtics, Suffolk Downs. I thought it was a glorious life—pull up to the doughnut shop, spread out and plan your day,” he recalled.

At 20, he was busted and ended up in the Middlesex County House of Correction in Billerica.

“I was only supposed to do 90 days, but my mom went to the judge and I didn’t make parole,” Rocco said, recalling the teaching moment that earned him 10 months. “I realized I never wanted to be locked up again.”

A flip of a coin (L.A. or Miami) brought him to the West Coast. In his first job, he played a henchman in two episodes of the 1967 TV series “Batman.”

“And I was off to the races,” he said.

His has always been an animated life — and one that usually teetered between life imitating art and art imitating life. Last spring, FBI agents from Massachusetts and New Hampshire knocked on his door, asking questions about Whitey Bulger’s whereabouts.

Here's what the local papers had to say half a century ago about the former Alexander Federico Petricone Jr.:



More here.

Token Heroes

Marvel Two-in-One #6 (November, 1974). Art by George Tuska. Words by Steve Gerber.

Daredevil #119 (March, 1975). Art by Bob Brown. Words by Tony Isabella.

Iron Fist #8 (October, 1976). Art by John Byrne. Words by Chris Claremont.

Thursday, April 05, 2012

The Alamo Remembers

The Midtown in 1933
(Photo: Wurts Brothers collection, via NYPL)

The Metro (nee The Midtown Theater) was built in 1933 by the architectural team of Boak & Paris; by the 1970s it was, like so many old movie palaces, a decrepit porn venue. Although the exterior was declared a historic site in 1989, the New York Times noted that the "original interior molding, statuary, grillework and other ornamentation" were demolished. Repeated attempts to make a go of a new business in the space—including the repertory house Metro Twin—sputtered in the following decades.



Woody Allen visits the Metro; regains the will to live (1986)


As the Metro in 1989
(Photo: Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times)

Now—hallelujah!—comes word that the Austin-based Alamo Drafthouse Cinema will use the space to "feature five screens of new releases, repertory programming and the Alamo’s unique signature programming." It's a welcome exception to the 21st-century rule of cinema's decay and death.

More here and here.