"I never saw her again" -The Big Sleep (Bogart and Bacall) by Howard Hawks

"Bogart was one of the best actors I worked with. He was a far cry from the actors of today, who are a little bit on the dilettante side... when I started working with him, I said, "Why don't you ever smile?" "Oh", he said, "I've got a bum lip." He had a lip that was badly cut up, and I think the nerves were cut. And I said, "Well, the other night when we got drunk you certainly were smiling and laughing a lot." He said, "Do you think I can?" And I said, "You'd better if you're gonna work with me . . ."
I had trouble the first day with him. I remember grabbing him by the lapels and pushed his head up against the wall, and said, "Look, Bogey. I'll tell you how to get tough, but don't get tough with me." He said, "I won't".Everything was fine from that time on. He had had a couple of drinks at lunch, and that's what caused it. I stopped that.As for Lauren Bacall, she had to keep practising [sic] for months to keep that low voice" -H Hawks. Source: www.reelclassics.com

Lauren Bacall in a publicity still for The Big Sleep, directed by Howard Hawks in 1946.

"She was worth a stare. She was trouble. She was tall and rangy and strong-looking. She had a good mouth and a good chin. There was a sulky droop to her lips and the lower lip was full. She had a drink. She took a swallow from it and gave me a cool level stare over the rim of the glass". -Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep (1939)

"On the way downtown I stopped at a bar and had a couple of double Scotches. They didn't do me any good. All they did was make me think of Silver-Wig, and I never saw her again". -"The Big Sleep" (Raymond Chandler)

Lauren Bacall as Vivian Rutledge, Humphrey Bogart as Philip Marlowe and Peggy Knudsen as Mona Mars in "The Big Sleep"

"Truth and invention, real lives and fiction become indistinct and equal elements, merging with other people's work in the found-footage style, to create a single fabric of random spontaneous expressiveness, not unlike the life that slides by in front of a shop video camera. Each piece of film presents a clue to an inextricable tangle to which everything in the world is connected in its spider web of time, space and chance". — Excerpt from Serafino Murri, 'Chris Petit, Anatomies of the Image', in Afterall - A Journal of Art, Context and Enquiry, Issue 5, February 2002.

Martha Vickers as Carmen Sternwood in "The Big Sleep" (1946)

"I've been called that by people of all sizes and shapes, including your little sister. She called me worse than that for not getting into bed with her. I got five hundred dollars from your father, which I didn't ask for, but he can afford to give it to me. I can get another thousand for finding Mr. Rusty Regan, if I could find him. Now you offer me fifteen grand. That makes me a big shot. With fifteen grand I could own a home and a new car and four suits of clothes. I might even take a vacation without worrying about losing a case. That's fine. What are you offering it to me for? Can I go on being a son of a bitch, or do I have to become a gentleman, like that lush that passed out in his car the other night?", "She was as silent as a stone woman". -Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep (1939)

Earth Angel: Ava Gardner, Gloria Grahame, Lauren Bacall, etc.

Earth Angel: Ava Gardner, Gloria Grahame, Lauren Bacall, and other co-stars of Humphrey Bogart. Song "I Forgot To Remember To Forget" by Elvis Presley.

Photo montage of Humphrey Bogart and Rita Hayworth

"Many have assumed the character of Maria Vargas was based on Gardner's life, although writer-director Joseph L. Mankiewicz said he was inspired by Rita Hayworth; her life as a dancer and her marriage to the international playboy Aly Kahn. Gardner, too, journeyed from a modest background to international stardom.
Gardner loved Europe, and felt alienated from Hollywood. Soon, she would buy a house in Spain (a place that reminded her of her North Carolina home) and live far from the movie business the rest of her life. She thought Bogart horribly provincial because he "hated Italy and lived on ham and eggs and steak whenever he could." He didn't think much of her acting ability; she wrote, "he certainly knew a lot more acting tricks than I did, and didn't hesitate to use them. I have to admit he probably forced me into a better performance than I could have managed without him." Sometimes, he gave her the wrong line just to freshen her performance, which he also did when acting in films with his wife, Lauren Bacall.
Mankiewicz said, "Bogie wanted you to be afraid of him a little. He made perfectly sure that you knew he was going to be an unpredictable man. I caught on to that and I played my own little game of keeping him off balance by never giving him his opportunity. You forstall it by kidding him out of it." But, he also said of him, "Bogie was the iconoclast in a society that dealt in icons, which is Hollywood. The cynicism that the part required was his by nature. When you've been through the Hollywood mill, you've been through the mill of mills." Source: www.moviediva.com

"Robert Osborne, the host of Turner Classic Movies always relates interesting background facts concerning the cast of the movies he presents. He shared the fact that Humphrey Bogart was very cool to Ava Gardner throughout the shooting of The Barefoot Contessa although she was certainly his type. Osborne reported that Bogart was a close friend of Frank Sinatra and that Ava Gardner was in the process of divorcing Sinatra at the time. Bogart was steadfast in his friendship with Frank which accounted for his coolness to her". Source: www.associatedcontent.com

The final say over the nudity: Love & other drugs, Love & sex on-screen

“I thought if I am literally trying to act and worrying, thinking: ‘Oh I can’t turn this way because that’ll show a side of my breast that I haven’t negotiated’ it would just ruin the entire
experience.
“So I sat down with my co-star Jake Gyllenhaal and the director and said: ‘I trust you guys, I trust that you are both gentlemen and you are not going to exploit the situation. Go ahead and film what you want’.

“Jake and I had the final say over the nudity. As a result of all that, the sex scenes felt natural and very true to the characters.”
Did you lose weight for the role or spend a lot of time preparing physically to play the part?
“I had to figure out what Maggie’s body would look like and I did a lot of research on the effect that Parkinson’s drugs have on one’s body.

“I discovered that they end up keeping you very thin in a sinewy sort of way. So that was the body I had to create for the character and I worked very hard to get that body, it’s not my natural physique. What do you think this film says about relationships? What is the theme?

“The thing that I love is that there are two very strong threads that run throughout the film and they are connected by Jake’s character, Jamie, who is clearly going through an enormous transformation.
“I loved getting to watch Jake’s performance, the way he navigates the two worlds and what they have in common.

“I think that two threads revolve around Jamie’s choices: whether he will choose to be the better version of himself, which is the far riskier prospect, or continuing along the path he has been taking". Source: www.getsurrey.co.uk

Jake Gyllenhaal exits LAX International Airport after arriving on a flight from NYC on Friday (January 7) in Los Angeles. Source: justjared.buzznet.com

Scans of Jake Gyllenhaal in August Man (Singapore) magazine, January 2011 issue

Anne Hathaway laughs seeing Jake Gyllenhaal dancing in underwear in "Love & other drugs" (2010)

"Sex always has and always will sell movies," says assistant editor of Film Ireland, Steven Gavin.
"But looking at Hollywood 2010 you have to ask: where is the sex? We seem to be going through an impotent era in popular cinema that can't get it up on cinema screens and is afraid to present sex in any sort of adult way. Instead, we get vacuous teenager fantasies and rom-com misogynist cop-outs."
Casting an eye over the past year's cinematic offerings, even the vapid nudity of Love & Other Drugs stands out as an anomaly.
Other recent big hitters at the box office have included the thriller Inception, the excitement of Harry Potter and the vampire on-goings of the Twilight franchise -- all of which were high on production costs and low on explicit content. Studios have cottoned on to the fact that SFX is a bigger seller than sex.

Back in the day, the merest whiff of sexual friction was a guaranteed box-office winner. Cary Grant removing a spec of dust from Deborah Kerr's eye in An Affair To Remember had women swooning in 1957, while GIs whooped in 1946 when Rita Hayworth's Gilda stripped off one long, black, satin glove.But with the dawn of the internet and stiff competition from TV shows like True Blood, Californication and Boardwalk Empire (coming to Sky this spring), titillation is no longer something we have to go to the cinema for -- our cinematic (s) expectations have changed.
"I think people have become more blasé when it comes to sex, we're not so easily shocked," says Susan Picken, head of independent Belfast cinema, Queen's Film Theatre.
'But I don't think it's as simple as saying sex does or does not sell. We've all become a lot more cynical and more demanding as movie goers. Back in the 1980s and '90s there was a real vogue for erotic thrillers but people want to see something different."
Jake Gyllenhaal holds Anne Hathaway at the premiere of 'Love & Other Drugs' in Sydney, on 6th December 2010

He added: "Sex in the cinema isn't about nudity or the mechanical spectacle of simulated copulation -- it's about the illusion of fantasy, pleasure and emotional, physical and psychological desire. We'll always want this, we just want it done well." - Chrissie Russell
Source: www.independent.ie

Malin Akerman is Linda Lovelace in a beautiful script by Matthew Wilder for "Inferno"

Malin Akerman attending the 2011 People's Choice Awards

"Malin Akerman dished on the blue carpet about her upcoming Linda Lovelace movie, Inferno (she replaced Lindsay Lohan in the lead role): "I'm very excited. It's a beautiful script. It's a story of a woman's life -- who was really tortured," she told USA TODAY's Andrea Mandell. "And it needs to be told."
Linda Lovelance at the "Director's Guild Awards" (1974)
Malin Akerman in "Interview" magazine photoshoot

She wouldn't reveal how nude she would be in the film. Although shooting is supposed to start in March, she doesn't know where it's going to be shooting. "It's still in negotiations."
When asked about next projects, she noted that she's in Happythankyoumoreplease .... and with Ryan Phillippe in The Bang Bang Club, a movie about apartheid.
"For me it's just about trying new things", she said". Source: content.usatoday.com

Note from Weirdland: I have to agree with Malin here, Inferno's script, as well as Malin, is beautiful (in a totally different way) and I feel so fortunate of having been able to approach Matthew Wilder's script and I must say it's harrowing and fabulous, with a prodigious ear for the 70's era slang, with striking atmosphere and characters, ferociously defined in all their mightiness and ardor, getting properly its message across without resorting to shock tricks or abusing in any way of Linda Lovelace's ill-fated character. Lust and sadness go hand in hand, echoing classics as "Belle de jour", "Drugstore Cowboy" or "Boogie Nights". No cheap goods or calculated explotation in this brilliant, mournful transcript. Wilder, whom I consider one of the sharpest guys in this industry (and a movie comrade/friend) is a wildly talented writer and director whose career ahead of him I hope it bestows him many honors and joys.