Posted on 12/28/2025 2:53:21 PM PST by Twotone
John Huston was dying when he made The Dead, his last movie, in early 1987. It's the kind of thing that the mordant Huston would have found amusing, but the details of filming, as recalled in Jeffrey Meyer's biography John Huston: Courage and Art, are a grim read.
"Huston," he writes, "was a dead man walking, or wheeling, attached to a tall green rocket of oxygen that shot air into his failing lungs and enable him to breathe." He would have preferred to shoot on location, as he always did from the moment he freed himself from the Hollywood backlot, but director Karel Reisz was on standby to take over should the emphysema take an early victory, and Huston's doctor had forbade him to get on a plane and fly to Ireland.
"His lungs are like lace," the doctor said, "and he'll be dead when he steps out of the plane."
And so, except for some second unit exteriors filmed in Dublin, The Dead was shot in a warehouse in Valencia, in Santa Clarita, thirty-five miles north of Los Angeles. "He had bags under his watery eyes," Meyer writes," hollow cheeks and drawn features. He abandoned his once-stylish clothes and, bundled up in a warm vest and jacket, wore an old man's zipped-up track suit. The ailing Huston said he could now concentrate fully on the picture since 'there were no longer any distractions.'"
The film is based on the final and what's generally considered the best story in Dubliners, James Joyce's collection of short stories, published in 1914.
(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...
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And the answer is, no one gave a crap.
Joyce!
She’s my favorite writer!!
3, 2, 1....
(just wait ππππππ€£π€£)
This is the last story in Joyceβs great βDublinersβ, Iβm looking at my copy right now.
Huston did such a great job with it. All three Huston
Lol!
“I love Eric Clapner music!”
Dr. Joycelyn Elders Surgeon General for B. Clinton (1993)
LOL π€£π€£π€£
Excellent, faithful adaptation. Huston’s Moby Dick was great as well.
I think heβs a he.
John Huston played the aging cowboy star Buck Loner in Myra Breckenridge from Gore Vidal’s novel. I’m more impressed as I see it again years after its 1970 premiere days. Tom Selleck’s first (minor) role, and introduced Farah Fawcett plus featured Raquel Welch. Film critic Rex Reed was a costar.
Photo of Dr. Joyce Brothers.
“The patients who have a clear idea of exactly how things really are without self delusions are the ones who are all depressed.”
She was at first denied getting into the doctorate program when a man said: “Women like you will work a year or two or three in the profession and then find a man and drop it to get married. A man would contribute value to psychology and patients for a long career. You would deny a man that opportunity from him.”
Well..... everyone has their own little quirks I suppose.....
:)
I thought Mark Steyn wrote it.
I was surprised to see that someone named Rick McGinnis wrote the review, after I went back to check.
I do not recall ever seeing "The Dead" in a theater or on TV.
I do recall reading it in "Dubliners," by James Joyce.
I gave up on James Joyce after "Dubliners" and "Portrait of the Artist."
"Ulysses" and "Finnegans Wake" were un-readable in my youth. In my old age, I keep threatening to dig my way through both of them, before I die.
John Huston - the actor - always brought a completely unique presence to his personal movie scenes.
βFreud, Jung, Pavlov, β¦ Brothers.βSo funny!
Before I really understood who John Huston was (movie director, etc.) I only knew him for three roles:
1. Gandalf in the Rankin-Bass animated features of The Hobbit and The Return of the King,
2. The Law-Giver in the first Planet of the Apes movie,
3. Narrator for a Contact cold-medicine commercial.
...which occurs in the first act, so you can leave and not have to suffer through the rest of it, but, come to think of it, it's not worth suffering through the first act either. See if you can get a ticket to Tosca or Tristan or The Magic Flute or most anything else instead.
BTW, Saint-SaΓ«ns' Samson et Dalila is another one-aria opera. If you can, get a ticket to hear ElΔ«na GaranΔa sing "Mon coeur s'ouvre Γ ta voix" and skip the rest of it.
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