FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH (1982) | dir. Amy Heckerling

Phoebe Cates and Robert Romanus behind the scenes on the set of Fast Times at Ridgemont High, 1982

Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) dir. Amy Heckerling

Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke

Fast Times at Ridgemont High  

IN THE SHADOWS (2023) Review of slasher with Michael Paré plus trailer and clip

“He’s coming for revenge’ In the Shadows is a 2023 American horror slasher thriller film about a psychopath who escapes from a mental institution seeking revenge. Written, directed and co-produced by Glenn Martin (The Seeking; American Bigfoot; When Night Comes). Produced by E. Dylan Costa and Beverly Randolph. The In the Shadows production stars Michael Paré, Robert Romanus, Jennifer Banko,…

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MEAN STREETS (1973) dir. Martin Scorsese

Mean Streets (1973, Martin Scorsese)

5/24/23

IWTV s2 started filming a week ago and, since we are all starving for more information, I made this fancast to cope (let me know what you think!)

Gabrielle - Miranda Otto

She's got everything: the looks, the age and the 2000s nostalgia. Besides we all know she can play a gnc female warrior so damn well.

Nicolas - José Pimentão or Alec Secărenau

Aesthetically, both could fit perfectly in the part. José Pimentão's scruffy curls and earring are so in character while 6'2 Alec Secărenau standing next to Sam!Lestat is a dream come true.

Career wise, José Pimentão is very similar to Assad: not very well known yet but with a handful of works to consider. You should really watch him in Al Berto (2017) (his character has couple of important similarities with Nicolas, it's almost unsettling.)

On the other hand, Alec Secărenau has been known for a little bit longer and knowing him for his part in God's own country (2017) could be an appeal for those who aren't familiar with Nicolas as a character yet.

Marius - Murray Bartlett

He has had a lot of success lately, he's known for playing gay characters and there is just something about him that screams power. Also, he's undoubtedly attractive (I for one don't agree with those who want to make Marius ugly, sorry).

Magnus - Robert Carlyle

Someone who has played Rumpelstiltskin can also play a creepy, crazy, alchemist vampire.

Akasha - May Calamawy

Her smile is way too sweet, nothing about her screams evil and yet I think that would make Akasha way more terrifying.

Santiago - Jon Kortajarena

(I'm very happy with Ben Daniels playing Santiago but still this is how I've always pictured him)

Madeleine - Noèmie Merlant

Claudia deserves her own French girlfriend.

February 28th: Saint of the Day – Saint Romanus, patron saint of drowning victims, mental illnesses, and mentally ill people.

Oftentimes, I ponder about the meme of 2023 being so bad that you’d turn to some form of Christianity. My holy savior was 100mg of divinity that would induce mania enough that I could drag myself out of my January rot with chattering teeth and twitching limbs. Without my fix, I functioned in the endless abyss of an unmarked grave, trapped in the cemetery of my summers, living off my brain-defaulted autopilot; Kim Gordon, Robert Smith, The Chameleons, a bottle of SVEDKA at 7 PM.

I struggle to remind myself that I can’t wash down Sertraline with vodka while secretly begging I’ll black out like I used to. I like it when my body can perform, but I’m not conscious – eye-fucking in a worn Manhattan club while liquors and faces whirl, kissing someone I wouldn’t if I was sober, sex where I fall off the bed, a twenty-nine year old’s phone number that’s marked green, stumbling too close to the yellow lines on the way home.

Sometimes, I wonder when the concept of religion derailed from my life despite twelve years of Catholic school and long Sunday school mornings. Maybe it was the first time I thought of kissing my friend Natalia when I was ten, our shoulders pressed together on the bus, our faces so close I could see the ruptures in her dry lips and smell she'd only eaten strawberries for lunch. Her potent aura of Polish descent, and cheap hairspray, and outdated Bath and Body Works was my first taste of intoxication, her skin sticking in my teeth and lingering gently on my tongue.

Those arms were my first God.

They were taken away from me before I learned to kneel at her altar one Sunday when my old-school baptist teacher cursed “all homosexuals to damnation”. She was maybe seventy-five with a stiff blonde wig that I thought was too real in my impressionable mind, but the way her aged black wrinkles looked at me when the words rolled off her lips and hung in the air knocked the last bit of air from my lungs, sending my mind spiraling. I was a normal student, with a normal family, and a normal mind, and I normally prayed every night, and I only sometimes, normally, thought of kissing her.

If I turned back to Natalia’s village, would I turn to a pillar of salt?

I never overindulged after that, the tenderness for her was replaced with a level of platonic love and closeness that I searched for in everyone and have never fully found again. I’ll never know if I actually loved her, but I thought maybe if I could get the seed of her romance out of my mind, I could be redeemed in the eyes of God. Or maybe just the firm eyes of that teacher that seemed so sure, too sure. Did I pray every night because I thought I should have, or was I praying to not be seen for who I am, and who I was becoming?

Saint Romanus— Ava Wilson, 2024.

"L'idée prussienne, c'est encore l'affirmation d'un type humain précis, exclusivement mis au service de l'État. Ce type humain ne pouvait s'affirmer, sur le plan éthique, que par ce genre d'État et, en retour, ce même État engendrait, favorisait ce type d'hommes. Le Prussien, au sens le plus élevé du terme, comme le civis romanus, n'avait pas à se faire violence. Il n'était, par l'exercice de ses qualités, ni en dehors ni contre son monde. Il en était l'incarnation. Il représentait l'État, quelle que fût sa position sociale."

Gérard Nances et Robert Steuckers, Nouvelle École n°37 (1982)

Remembering Tom Wilkinson and Richard Romanus

Just as 2023 is about to end, there's two actor's who have passed away. Here is my combined remembrance:

Remembering Tom Wilkinson 1948-2023

British actor Tom Wilkinson has died at 75. He was a serious "that guy" actor who appeared in countless great movies and you might not know his name but you'd say "that guy is good in everything"! He received two Academy Award nominations: Todd Field's excellent In the Bedroom for Lead Actor and Tony Gilroy's Michael Clayton for Supporting Actor. Both phenomenal performances!

Kirsten Dunst and Wilkinson in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Beyond those two movies I think my other favorite performances of his were as the doctor with secrets of his own in Michel Gondry's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and the uncle in Woody Allen's underrated Cassandra's Dream.

Other notable performances included The Full Monty, Rush Hour, Shakespeare in Love, Ride with the Devil, The Patriot, Batman Begins, Recount, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and Selma just to name a few. That's a lot of historical biopics and period pieces he specialized in! He was consistently good in so many ensemble films.

The link above is the obit from Hollywood Reporter.

Remembering Richard Romanus 1943-2023

Actor Richard Romanus has died at 80. He is most known for playing the loan shark in Martin Scorsese's early epic Mean Streets! The scenes with him and Robert De Niro were quite memorable.

Harvey Keitel and Romanus in Mean Streets

He also played Dr. Melfi's husband on multiple episodes of The Sopranos from 1999-2002.

The link above is the obit from Hollywood Reporter.

Jennifer Jason Leigh and Phoebe Cates in Fast Times at Ridgemont High (Amy Heckerling, 1982)

Cast: Sean Penn, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Judge Reinhold, Robert Romanus, Brian Backer, Phoebe Cates, Ray Walston, Vincent Schiavelli, Forest Whitaker. Screenplay: Cameron Crowe, based on his book. Cinematography: Matthew F. Leonetti. Art director: Daniel A. Lomino.

Of the few standouts in the teen comedy genre, Fast Times at Ridgemont High is the one most loved by that pig in the python, the Baby Boomers. It's not as nostalgic as the granddaddy of the genre, American Graffiti (George Lucas, 1973), or as smart as Dazed and Confused (Richard Linklater, 1993), or as savagely witty as Tina Fey's Mean Girls (Mark Waters, 2004). It's not even as cleverly conceived as director Amy Heckerling's other major outing in the genre, Clueless (1995). But it is the one most frank about teenage sexuality, especially in the relationship between Jennifer Jason Leigh's Stacy and Phoebe Cates's Linda, in which the supposedly "experienced" Linda serves as the virginal Stacy's mentor. The film also admirably confronts the question of abortion straightforwardly: Stacy has one and suffers no lasting trauma. Instead the condemnation lands on the guy, Mike Damone (Robert Romanus), whose callous treatment of Stacy is devastatingly portrayed. Otherwise, Fast Times is best seen as a landmark in the careers of future Oscar winners Sean Penn, Forest Whitaker, and Nicolas Cage (who has a small part billed as "Brad's Bud" under the name Nicolas Coppola), and as a demonstration of the skill of someone who has always deserved the Oscar she hasn't won, namely Jennifer Jason Leigh. The cast also features future big names like Eric Stolz and Anthony Edwards in small roles, and gave a brief boost to the career of Judge Reinhold that flared in the mid-1980s and then fizzled. But while Fast Times at Ridgemont High is never quite the "scuz-pit" that Roger Ebert, on an off night, saw it as, it hasn't worn very well. The acting is sometimes just this side of amateurish and the blend of the seriousness of Stacy's scenes with the more familiar classroom comedy involving Spicoli (Penn) and Mr. Hand (Ray Walston) lacks finesse. While the movie has a slight feminist edge in its treatment of sex, it also involves some gratuitous breast-baring on the part of Leigh and Cates.

Awesome! Totally awesome! Today in 1982 Fast Times At Ridgemont High was released. What an awesome cast, too: Sean Penn, Judge Reinhold, Phoebe Cates, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Forest Whitaker, Robert Romanus, Eric Stoltz, Anthony Edwards, Brian Backer, Ray Walston Vincent Schiavelli, Nicolas Cage (Coppola), Amanda Wyss...wow! It's an Amy Heckerling masterpiece. Happy anniversary!