Sunday, September 01, 2019

Auteur Watch - Raymond St. Jacques

Sadly, this week we celebrate yet another fella who's now in the big Director's Chair in the sky.  He was more or less in there during Hollywood's fun days.  I mean, The Green Berets?  Fun, right?  Historically inaccurate at best, completely racist at worst, but probably a fun shoot.  And of course, John Carpenter's They Live, a cult film without a cult.  I mean, God bless Carpenter, but his non-Halloween-related films seemed to die a quick, painful death at the box office.  Just one after the other, until finally you don't get to even make anymore.  Even the long awaited sequel to Escape from New York, and it was like... meh!  Maybe I'll just wait for it on laserdisc.
But I get sidetracked again.  See, this was the kind of thing that Raymond wanted to try, and did!  Only once!  I guess it was enough.  A lovely play on a biblical phrase, a movie called Book of Numbers.  Seventies filmmaking!  Auteurs in America!  More than one conversation at once on the screen!  A generational shift!  No, for some reason, for him once was enough, then it's back to his first love: acting.  Finished with producing as well: once was clearly more than enough.

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