The Great Warren Oates

Oates is just fantastic to me. I think his greatest performance is either GTO in Two-Lane Blacktop or Bennie in Alfredo Garcia. I love his romantic scenes--with Isela Vega in Garcia or Patricia Pearcy in Cockfighter--there's something in them that captures the essence of a true romantic relationship to me far more than, say, a damn Nora Ephron movie with Tom Hanks and Meg whats-her-name.

I appreciate how open he was in taking on either mainstream projects or totally non-commercial projects, and also really respect how on some movies he wasn't at all afraid to make his characters as unattractive, unsympathetic or just plain idiotic as possible (Lyle Gorch in The Wild Bunch, the racist deputy in In the Heat of the Night), if that was really what the role called for...All the actors in Hollywood today seem pretty chickenshit to me by comparison.

It's too bad they didn't give him more leads; I think he was the Bogart of the 60s/70s (yes, I know he did the TV movie of "The African Queen); not particularly handsome, but he had that rough, charismatic quality.

He was a "constitutional anarchist."

anyone want to urge me to see Monte Hellman's China 9, Liberty 37 as my second film tonight?

oh, I guess this woulda been the better thread

The Warren Oates thread

Don't know anything about it but was definitely curious when I was setting watching the promo cards over and over.

i have that one copied and i still haven't watched it. let me know. hellman really hits my sweet spot with the two mid-60s westerns and two-lane blacktop, but even cockfighter felt pretty strained to me. i haven't seen the new one.

no, you let me know, I hadda go home and do the laundry.

it's not that great, lots of nude jenny agutter though

you just contradicted yourself

it is worth seeing imo, i was thinking of the good Dr. when i wrote that

better than nude Oates; stop w/ Kinsey-based pandering

finally saw Dillinger, nice 35mm print; too bad Milius wrote it, especially, as well as directed. He seems to lose interest in Oates in the third act, preferring to give scenes to Harry Dean Stanton, Richard Dreyfuss, Cloris Leachman (and to Ben Johnson's Purvis throughout). I wonder if maybe they didn't get along.

NYC retro in early July includes the restored Private Property plus 92 in the Shade, Brink's Job, Hired Hand plus the hits.

http://www.filmlinc.org/daily/warren-oates-retrospective/

It's been interesting going through Twilight Zone from the start watching cameos from people who haven't quite arrived yet. He gets a small part as a driver in a Korean war set thing where an officer can predict who's about to die. Darren from Bewitched has a larger role.
I did a double take when I saw the driver's face but couldn't quite place him.
Does happen quite a bit in that series.

TZ is littered with great bit parts (and lead roles too) like that

nyc retro:

The newly rediscovered find is Outer Limits creator Leslie Stevens's Private Property (1960), a humid indie psychodrama giving Oates his first major role, as one of two sociopathic beatniks who spy on and eventually lay siege to Kate Manx's wealthy but bored L.A. housewife. Largely unseen since, and brimming with suggestions of sexual dysfunction that seem shocking even for the year Psycho was released, the film is ruled by Manx's lovely, naïve, spoiled golden girl, daydreaming about fucking with a belt cinched around her throat. She only made one other movie, also by Stevens, her husband, before killing herself with pills in 1964, and here her emotional neediness is right on the surface.

http://www.villagevoice.com/film/the-everyman-gone-bad-a-warren-oates-retro-helps-make-america-grit-again-8796758