Auteur Watch - John Barry

 Of course, if you're going to go to all the trouble to talk about John Barry (comes up first in the search, 5 Oscars (TM) (R) (C), handsome), shouldn't you also give a Shout Out to someone languishing in the shadow or shadows of his famous father like John Barry Jr.?  Hey, at least you don't have to work hard!  Or how about someone like John Barry-Hayes?  Boy, that must've been a life: to spend the first part of the '60s working, then swinging the rest of the time.  Oh, those Swinging Sixties.  Of course, I'm getting on in years myself, and now the "Swinging Sixties" is what I call my double chin.  

Then of course, you've got people whose middle name is Barry, people like John Barry Kelly or John Barry McMahon or John Barry Price or John Barry Womble or John Barry Wilson or John Barry Graham.  Oh, he's a fun one.  Knockaround Guys is one of those movies.  Doesn't play on cable enough; I keep confusing it with Boiler Room.  Then you got someone like Tom St. John Barry... does he count?  Where's a librarian when you need one?  I tell you darlings, there's just no Dewey Decimal System that can handle all the strangeness of messy, messy real life... ooh!  Tuddy!  I found an auteur John Barry!  You know, I heard a rumor some time ago that George Lucas and company liked to employ people who worked with Stanley Kubrick, and I guess it's true!  From A Clockwork Orange, we get Mr. Universe David Prowse... okay, he may not have won that, but a little work in Hollywood would have to suffice as a consolation prize, I suppose.  Hmm!  For some reason, you never hear much about Mr. Universe's travels in space.  Anyway, this here John Barry also worked on A Clockwork Orange, but managed to escape Kubrick's clutches, unlike Leon Vitali and that Italian cab driver.  Unfortunately, Mr. Barry died young of meningitis, but before he did he worked as a production designer on the very first Star Wars and Superman (1978).  People still watch those, right?  But when you work on two big films like that, you look at the directors of those and think to yourself, hell!  If those idiots can do it, I sure as hell can.  And did!  Which brings us to his solo directorial effort, Saturn 3 (1980).  And for those of you who are fans of the "Star Wars" font, check out the poster... look a little familiar?  I know, it's hard to look at once your eye is drawn to what looks like C3PO turned inside out from Hell.  And as readers of this series of web pages knows, my hobby is noting the age differences between the leading man and his leading lady.  In Kirk Douglas' case here, he was born in 1916, and Farrah Fawcett in 1947.  It's the kind of thing that makes you want to make a movie like "The Burning Bed" afterwards.  Farrah's character is named Alex in Saturn 3... as to whether or not her last name is DeLarge, well, I'm going to have to get back to you on that.