Robert Benton obituary: director of Kramer vs. Kramer
Benton had already worked with Newman on an article for Esquire called The New Sentimentality, which highlighted cultural changes in American life in the 1960s, and persuaded him to collaborate on a film. 'I am dyslexic,' Benton explained. 'I cannot spell or punctuate. I knew a young editor at Esquire, a wonderful writer. I sold him on the glamorous life of the Hollywood screenwriter.'
The New Sentimentality had helped
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The Guardian
8 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Matthew Perry: A Hollywood Tragedy review – the details are so sad … but are we really shocked?
There is a reason the sitcom Friends was so popular from the off and became such a juggernaut so quickly. The writing was brilliant, and the six actors in it were astonishing individually and even better together. Comedy is alchemical, and they transmuted gold into pure joy. Matthew Perry formed one sixth of the troupe as Chandler Bing. Every actor had their particular strength and his was perhaps to be the nimblest, the most alive to the currents crisscrossing any scene he was in. He was the only one of the cast allowed in the writers' room to contribute, and from that maybe we can infer he was the most naturally funny off set too. Certainly his timing, even in the extraordinary company he kept, was immaculate. And now we know that the rumours of addiction that plagued him during the filming and broadcast of later seasons were true. As he put it in the autobiography he published in 2022, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, when Chandler was overweight, Perry was on the booze; when he was skinny, it was pills. But it was almost always something. A year after the book came out, Perry, 54, was found dead – drowned in his pool after suffering the acute effects of ketamine use. Matthew Perry: A Hollywood Tragedy, an hour-long documentary imported from the US by ITV, covers this sad story much as you might expect. There is footage from Friends' glory days, plus telling footage of the battery of paparazzi yelling for his attention every time he stepped out in public. There are clips of interviews with his castmates lauding his talents back in the day, and grief-stricken ones from his great friend Hank Azaria and others after his death. Azaria is on the verge of tears as he remembers how Perry would floor his friends with laughter when he was healthy, and how so many of those who loved him felt they had lost him years before to his demons. There are excerpts from the audio version of his book read by Perry himself, which supply glimpses of his inner torment and memories of the aspects of his childhood to which he attributes his vulnerability to addiction; and portions of interviews where you see his charm and some of his pain. There is not much of his work in Friends on display, but such was – and remains – the pervasiveness of the show that perhaps it wasn't felt necessary to remind us. Morgan Fairchild, who played Chandler's mother in the series, contributes some nice and not excessively saccharine memories of him as an actor and of the difficulty in making a difference to someone who is not yet ready to deal with his problems. Still, it feels like the background is being skimped to get to the 'good' stuff: the criminal investigation sparked by his death and the recent charges brought against five people for supplying the ketamine that led to Perry's death. Again, this is covered much as you might expect. Talking heads from the world of entertainment journalism are interwoven with accounts from retired LAPD officers explaining how police procedures work, and the district attorney in charge of the case is on hand in the sharpest of suits to explain how they discovered – and you're hardly going to believe this, I know – a network of suppliers in Los Angeles that were able to get a celebrity as much of his chosen narcotic as he asked for, often at inflated prices. One of the doctors allegedly involved in the chain messages another: 'I wonder how much this moron will pay … Let's find out.' The headshaking at this lack of respect between a man and his cash cow becomes almost comical. Amid the accumulating disingenuousness, the documentary does have the grace to include the name of Cody McLaury, whose death has also been attributed to ketamine supposedly supplied by one of the five suspects in Perry's case, and to include a comment from one of the contributors that it was surely largely because of Perry's fame that a criminal investigation was launched into the actor's death at all. The film ends, however, with unexpected delicacy, closing with the shot of a card left with flowers at his home by one of Perry's many fans. 'Thank you for making me laugh,' it says. 'I'm glad Chandler got the happy ending you deserved.' A grace note Perry surely earned. Matthew Perry: A Hollywood Tragedy aired on ITV1 and is on ITVX now. In the US, it is available to stream on Peacock.
Daily Mail
37 minutes ago
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Diana Vickers: I was invited to a party at Leonardo DiCaprio's house… what I caught the Hollywood A-lister doing was 'bizarre'
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The Guardian
an hour ago
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‘You're gonna need a bigger bank account': how a Jaws child actor turned a fleeting appearance into a fortune
Name: Jeffrey Voorhees. Age: 62. Appearance: Just the one. Occupation: Child actor. Pretty old for a child actor. He's a former child actor. Has he been in anything I would have seen? Jaws. Wow. Anything else? No, not really. Oh. Well, Jaws is pretty good. I've seen it dozens of times. Jeffrey Voorhees will be pleased to hear that. Why? Because, despite his very small role as shark victim Alex Kintner when he was 12, Voorhees is still being paid residuals – royalties – 50 years later. Every time Jaws is on TV, he earns money. Nice work if you can get it. 'It pays to die,' is how he put it in a recent interview with Syfy. Even so, he can't be pulling in that much after all this time. It's not just residuals. After hiding from fame for years, Voorhees – who still lives on Martha's Vineyard, where Jaws was filmed – has found ways to embrace the full earning capacity of his brief turn as victim number two. How? By attending fan conventions for '£10,000 a time', selling autographed merch online and making personalised videos on Cameo. People pay him for that? It helps that Jaws fans are a little obsessive. One woman brought Voorhees an inflatable yellow raft identical to the one on which Alex Kintner met his demise. 'She was in tears and I signed the raft for her,' he said. That sounds more than a little obsessive. He's even been presented with his old discarded royalty statements – bought by fans on eBay for thousands – to sign. 'I don't throw them away any more,' he said. Are there any other child actors still raking it in after all these years? Yes, if not to the same extent. Jason Weaver, who provided the singing voice for young Simba in the original animated version of The Lion King, reportedly received, and still receives, far more than the $2m (£1.5m) upfront Disney originally offered him before his mother insisted on a reduced fee plus royalties from soundtrack sales. Well done, Jason's mum. Are there any more actors with cameos as brief as Voorhees'? Casey Margolis, who fleetingly played a young version of Jonah Hill's character in the 2007 film Superbad, recently revealed he's still getting cheques. The kid who draws penises on everything? That's him. While the amounts vary from $10,000 to 12 cents, he reckons he's collected about $100k (£74,000) in total. What a racket! How can I get my kid killed in something huge? Actually, that ship has probably sailed. Streaming services don't tend to pay residuals in the same way, as their content is always available to watch – and young actors have reported receiving minuscule amounts for their work. Do say: 'These eye-watering sums are a symptom of how out of control fan culture has become.' Don't say: 'You're gonna need a bigger bank account.'
