Ever since it came and went from theaters in the summer of 1980, the city’s thriller ”Night of the Jongler“Has been as loved by learned cinefiles as it is difficult to see. Sean Baker is a vocal fan and Quentin Tarantino has its own 35mm print, but if you are not among the happy few who could catch film at Tarantino’s New Beverly Cinema Or one of its other repertoire shows, it is likely that you have never experienced “Night of the Juggler”, if you have heard about it at all.
“From the day we started shooting, I loved this movie and was so disappointed with its lack of distribution,” main actor James Brolin told indieview during a new interview. “It was amazing how it disappeared. On these days to have a movie in theaters for just a week was quite rare. They would let them cook for a while and they might be caught.”
“Night of the Juggler” has part of cinematographer Victor J. Kemper’s best New York Street Photography (no small performance, given that Kemper also shot “Dog Day afternoon” and John Cassavetes “Men”), a lead performance of incredible power and intensity of Brolin and one of the best expanded cash sequences. Still, its studio dumped it uncomfortably and never released it on DVD or Blu-ray and left it to disappear in ambiguity for decades.
Thank goodness, Lorber Cinema Have now restored “Night of the Jongler” in 4K and gives the film a theatrical edition on theaters around the country in September and kicks things with a cinematic void screening on American movie September 4 with Brolin presence for a question and answer. Kino will also release Special Edition 4K UHD and Blu-ray editions of the film on September 16.
“Night of the Jongler” is essentially an 110-minute hunt that begins when, in a variety of the prerequisite for Akira Kurosawas “High and Low” and Its last spike lee -remakeA kidnapper (Cliff Gorman) abduct the wrong child. He believes he has the offspring of a rich real estate developer, but he has actually taken the truck driver Brolin’s daughter Kathy (Abby Bluestone). When Sean Boyd (Brolin) sees that his daughter is grabbed and drawn into a car, he runs in action, relentlessly pursues the kidnapper through the average streets 1980 New York (presented on its seed by Kemper and production designer Stuart Wurtzel).
Although TV veteran Robert Butler is the credited director, Brolin says that the visual style of “Night of the Jongler” was established by “The IPCRESS File” AUTEUR SIDNEY J. Furie before he ended the film under mysterious circumstances. “What Bob has done on TV is pretty good, but he is more like a basketball coach than a director,” Brolin said. “He has no understanding of actors and what they may need and what makes each one unique. It was very different from Sidney, who cared for you.”
Before Furie left the film, he shot the most extraordinary sequence, a car chase through busy New York streets, which was all done practically, with Brolin visible that performs many of his own stunts. It is an extended set that is ranked together with the bank robbery in Michael Mann’s “heat” as an epic example on site -based action choreography; Like Mann, Furie brilliantly puts out the geography and arranges the action in a way that is kinetic and chaotic but clearly in its intentions and effects.
According to Brolin, the clarity and emotional power of the scene came from Furie’s decision to shoot the first 25 minutes of the film in continuity, building the sequence rose through chronological steps and shooting it with long lenses that enabled him to catch the city’s life. The lenses were so long and the cameras so far back actually that the local police sometimes mistook the film’s action for the real thing. “We blew out the windows, and people would show up and go,” Whoa! “We had several police officers who came from a block away,” he said.
Towards the end of shooting the car chase, Brolin broke the foot and production must be turned off for a few weeks, during which Furie left the project. “Basically, he thought he was doing a flop that would end his career,” Brolin said. “Maybe he thought my foot mining was a sign.” Anyway, Brolin said that Furie and Kemper had the shot so well mapped that Butler mainly followed their template. “Vic understood what Sidney wanted, and so did the ad that stayed, so Bob Butler couldn’t really modify or minimize it.”
Working with Kemper was a special pleasure for Brolin, a photography buff that began his career with the intention of working behind the camera, not in front of it. “As a child, I couldn’t stand up in front of people,” Brolin said. “I would sit down and shake during a book report.” Brolin spent his teenage years of film film and dreamed of becoming a director, but life took an unexpected turn when he walked around Westwood Village and a stranger stopped him to ask if he would like to be in an advertising.
“They said,” We want you to drive this Dodge truck, “Brolin said.” I said, “I wouldn’t have to talk, right?” I was dead seriously. The commercial led to more advertising work and a screen actor Guild card. “It started to change my thinking a bit. I got a job as Brando’s son in ‘Mutiny on the Bounty’ and went to Tahiti, but my role was cut. I came back and started park cars at Lawry’s at La Cienega and Dino on the strip.”
Eventually, 20th Century Fox Brolin signed a $ 93 contract – “more money than I had ever heard of,” Brolin said – and he stayed in the studio for seven years without getting any real speed. Then he left to go to Universal where within three months he got the second lead in a TV series (“Marcus Welby, MD”) and, with his words, became a success overnight 10 years later “, won an Emmy for his work on the show.
However, Brolin never really released his director’s ambitions and spent his time on “Night of the Jongler” to absorb what Furie and Kemper did. “I would look at Vic and I would look at Sidney and the little wheels turned in my head,” Brolin said. “I went,“ I’ll do it one day. “” At that time, Brolin had decided that he was done with television, after having some success in film like the star of “The Amityville Horror” – but it was TV that would ultimately help him realize his dream.
When Aaron Spelling came to Brolin in 1983 with an offer to start in the series “Hotel”, Brolin saw an opportunity. “I said, if I should do” Hotel “and get out of the film industry, I want to direct,” Brolin said. “Now I’ve been in DGA for over 40 years.” When Brolin got all the pictures he needed and sent everyone home at 15 on his first day, “they went,” this child must be the worst director in history. “” But Brolin had spent time observing not only the directors of movies and television programs he acted in, but Clint Eastwood, whose determination made an impression on Brolin.
“I learned a lot from Clint and Sidney and all these years that made my own shooting,” Brolin said, leaving that his experience at “Marcus Welby” was also invaluable. “Instead of relaxing at lunch, I would go into diaries and see what we just shot. I would see the difference between what I thought happened and what really happened on the screen. The mind starts to go,” Oh, you don’t need it. ”
Brolin still plans to direct more and has some films in the works, but he knows that the industry is in a transitional state. “Whether I am too old for it to affect me or not, I don’t know,” he said. “But I still have hope and I train three times a week with the toughest guy I ever met. I lift weights, I swim in the sea, I jog, so I still have energy. Except when I don’t work. Then I love the sofa.”
