Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Charley Varrick

4 comments:

Bruce said...

Don Siegel films rule and Cormac McCarthy ripped it off think about it.







I'm joking.

Todd Mason said...

Well, you don't have to joke much. George Higgins source novel, I think (nope, John Reese, whom I don't know, script by Howard Rodman, whose work I do).

Finally saw this on Retroplex the other month, along with THE LAUGHING POLICEMAN. They love Matthau on Rplx.

Brent McKee said...

He had an interesting way of "boxing the compass." I just wonder where he got the stamina to do it.

Siegel's movies, particularly in the mid-late 60s and 1970s are amazing. When you think about it most of his films don't rely on "big" stars: In Charley Varrick Matthau is the only really big name - unless you're a Canadian in which case there's John Vernon, or a Star Trek fan in which case you know Andrew Robinson as "Garak the Tailor" from Deep Space Nine. And yet in most of his movies it's the execution not the cast that really makes the film.

Juri said...

John Reese was the western writer who also wrote as John Carpenter! He lived 1910-1981 and worked in many professions: as a miner, a taxi driver, campaing manager for James Roosevelt in 1950, a journalist for Los Angeles Examiner. He wrote for the western pulps and later on he did lots of western paperbacks and hardbacks, with some crime novels on the side. Charley Varrick is based on The Looters (1968), I think without checking up. I haven't read it and I don't know anyone who has.