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Recorded, as has been the norm of late, at the very welcoming Cahaba Brewery. Thanks, guys!
So if you want some background on Kazan, Schulburg, Brando and the whole scene, as well as my take on the spirituality – listen! As well as my Malick story.
The Malick story is related to my Movie Guy Son – who is starting on a couple of new runs here, amusingly framed, as is his wont:
Well, with the DCEU officially dead after the hiring of James Gunn (despite his best efforts at being a good corporate lackey and pumping up every release between his hiring and the start of production on his own first entry in the new DCU, Superman), I realized that I had left a bit of a hole in my rankings by not finishing up the viewing and reviewing of a series of films no one really liked, cared about at the time of their release, or even talk about much anymore.
Romero reminds me of Wes Craven from afar. Not only known for horror films, both started in horror because it was at the same time cheap and marketable, they also never wanted to be exclusively horror filmmakers, later known precisely for that….That being said, let’s get going! Well, I don’t think we need to go that fast. Zombies are slow walkers.
Now – I want to go into a bit more detail about a couple of aspects of On the Waterfront.
First, in the podcast, I talk about screenwriter Budd Schulberg, whom I’ve written about here before…
…as the screenwriter of A Face in the Crowd
and the author of the really smashing novel What Makes Sammy Run?
As I mention in the podcast, Schulberg got the idea for the film (and Kazan had been inspired as well) – from the very real life conflicts and corruption on the East Coast docks. On the Waterfront is almost like a docudrama from that perspective. Yes, highly dramatized, but rooted in quite current events, the exposure of which had won journalist Malcolm Johnson a Pulitzer Prize.
Schulberg was intrigued, fascinated, even obsessed with the story and spent months researching. One of the most important figures who helped and inspired him was a Catholic priest – the Jesuit Fr. John Corridan, known, yes, as “The Waterfront Priest,” – the very direct inspiration for Karl Malden’s Fr. Barry, even to the point of adapting some of Corridan’s own words for the justly famous “And if you don’t think Christ is down here on the waterfront you’ve got another guess coming!” speech.
