On today’s episode, Variety’s Daniel D’Addario goes inside the mind of a man who is playing a serial killer, “Monster: The Ed Gein Story” star Charlie Hunnam, for our Cover Story segment. And host Cynthia Littleton dives into the Variety archives to revisit a front page from October 1956 full of headlines that resonate today.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:14):
Welcome to Daily Variety, your daily dose of news and
analysis for entertainment industry insiders. It's Thursday, October second, twenty
twenty five. I'm your host, Cynthia Littleton. I am co
editor in chief of Variety alongside Ramin Setuda. I'm in
LA He's in New York, and Variety has reporters around
the world covering the business of entertainment. In today's episode,
(00:35):
Variety's Standadario goes inside the mind of a man who
is playing a serial killer. Charlie Hunum is Variety's cover
star this week, and I have a little fun by
stepping into the wayback machine to visit the Variety archives.
I found an October front page of Daily Variety from
many years ago that has some pretty wild parallels for today.
(00:58):
But before we get to that, here are a few
headlines just in that you need to know. Peaky Blinders
is coming back with the new generation of Shelby's. Netflix
and BBC have given a two season order to a
sequel series from creator Stephen Knight. No word on the cast,
but original star Killian Murphy is on board as an
executive producer. My colleague Alice Schaeffer in London has the
(01:21):
big story on Variety dot com. Jane Fonda is fed up.
The legendary star from a famous Hollywood family has relaunched
the Committee for the First Amendment that was an initiative
founded in the nineteen forties by her father, Henry Fonda,
to guard against attacks on free speech during that dark
(01:41):
period when a troubled senator from Wisconsin terrorized the nation
with his Red Scare tactics. Jane clearly sees history repeating itself.
She says, quote, the McCarthy era ended when Americans from
across the political spectrum finally came together and stood up
for the principles in the Constitution against the forces of repression.
(02:02):
Those forces have returned, and it is our turn to
stand together in defense of our constitutional rights. En Fonda
has more than five hundred A listers on board, including
Kerrie Washington, Pedro Pascal, Billie Eilish, Sean Penn, and Barber
Streisand on a much lighter note, Nicki Glazer has set
a new comedy special at Hulu. It'll be shot in
(02:24):
her hometown of Saint Louis and air next year. Of course,
we'll see her on January eleventh, when Glazer hosts the
Live Golden Globe Awards telecast for the second year in
a row. All of these stories and so much more
can be found on Variety dot com. Rate Now now
(02:46):
we turn to conversations with Variety journalists about news and
trends in show business. In today's Cover Story segment, we'll
talk to Dan Didario, Variety's senior correspondent, about his profile
of actor Charliehunum, The Son's Anarchy veteran is back to
series TV in Netflix's Monster The ed Geen Story. Hunham
(03:06):
has taken a long break from acting and he's really
hunkered down as a writer in recent years. He's even
sold a pilot to FX. Before we hear from Dan
about profiling Hunum, who is a native son of Newcastle, England.
Here's a clip from Variety's Cover Story video of Hunum
explaining the unusual break that got his acting career started.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
This neighborhood called Biker which is actually when my father
was from really historically super rough neighborhood. But there was
a TV show called Bika Grove where I grew up,
and it was like the only TV show and about
like a I don't know, two hundred mile radius that
was shot where I was from, and so it was
like this tiny little emblem of hope that it was
(03:48):
actually possible to become an actor coming from Newcastle. When
I was eighteen, I'd already started like pursuing hopefully a
career in film by going to film school and studying film.
It was Christmas Eve and I was in Newcastle doing
Christmas shopping and so I was in JD Sports at
about four point thirty in the afternoon Christmas Eve, trying
(04:09):
on some sneaks for my brother and sort of dancing around,
and this lady was looking at me. So I blew
her a kiss, just being the cheeky young man that
I was. And it turned out that her name was
Elizabeth Binns and she was the production manager for Biker
Grove and she came over and said, you're a charming
young man on you and I said, on my good days?
(04:29):
And she said, well, have you ever thought about acting?
And I went, well, yes I have. And now here
I am.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Dan Didario, our Ace cover story writer. Thank yous for
joining me again.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
Thanks as always for having me.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
So this week's assignment, we set you off to take
the measure of Charlie Hunnam, a really good actor who
became known in the US for his role on FX's
Sons of Anarchy, a very high octane drama. It ran
on FX from twenty eight to twenty fourteen. But as
your story points out, we haven't seen a lot of
(05:03):
Charlie Hunem in the last some years. What a great
assignment to go find out what this terrific actor has
been doing of late, And of course the occasion is
he's got a new show. Dan, tell me the setting
in which you met and what it was that brought
Charlie Hunnan back to work in front of the camera.
Speaker 4 (05:19):
Well, we met at an office space in North Hollywood.
It's the office where he has been spending the past
few years writing pilots. Like any good screenwriter, he has
a daily practice. He works on his pages. And this
is very notable what he's doing with Ryan Murphy, Ian
Brennan and director Max Winkler on Monster the Ed Greenes Story,
(05:40):
because it's one of the only times he's acted in
front of the camera this decade. He had an Apple
TV Plus show about three years ago and a very
small role in a Zack Snyder film, and that's pretty
much the only other acting he's done. He took the
COVID pandemic very hard, he told me, and he got
very interested in indulging other passions. He sold pilot to
(06:01):
Effects and house Slipping. He's a man of many talents
right there.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
You know, there's a million stories that we could chase
at anytime, and when you settle on one, you just
never know what you were going to get. I don't
know that any of us knew that Charlie Huntum had
ambition to write.
Speaker 4 (06:16):
He was every bit as excited talking about acting as
he was about writing. And he thought it was a
real full circle moment because while he'd worked on other
shows Sons of Anarchy, what really launched him stateside and
that was on Fax. So to sell a pilot to
Effects again, he was.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
Over the moon, dandy. To give you any hint, the
focus of this pilot. Was it a comedy? Is it
a drama? Is it a classic FX dark drama edy?
Speaker 4 (06:41):
The sense I got was that it was in the
world of drama. But I'm a writer as well. I'm sympathetic.
You know, you sell no wine before it's time. He
would not spill the details because he wants to be
out when it's ready. So that's the writer in him.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
Oh, we know those writers. What was it about this
particular series, Kailer that brought him back to being the
lead in a series.
Speaker 4 (07:04):
So if you don't necessarily know the name ed Geen,
you know his legend because ed Gean is the murderer
who died in an insane asylum some years ago, whose
crimes inspired the Texas Chainsaw Masker, are said to have
inspired Psycho, are said to have inspired Buffalo Bill in Silence.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
Of the Lambs.
Speaker 4 (07:25):
And he was a very grizzly guy, suffered from all
sorts of mental illness, and the way it manifested itself
was in his mutilating his victims or graver robbing. Obviously
not the kind of stuff you necessarily want to be
watching over breakfast, but it is a story that goes
(07:47):
deep and dark, and from what I've seen, the season
is interested in probing the roots of how a person
comes to do something like this and the ways in
which it ripples outwards through culture. The season is explicitly
concerned with the ways in which the culture metabolized Gain
(08:08):
and made him into a character. I'm told that Alfred
Hitchcock enters the story as a character played by Tom Hollander,
and so all of this adds up to a three
course meal for an actor. He didn't just transform his voice,
his bearing, but he gets to go to places that.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
Only Ryan Murphy can take you.
Speaker 4 (08:29):
Ryan Murphy oversees the whole thing, with his top lieutenant
Ian Brennan writing every episode and Max Winkler directing some episodes.
And Ryan Murphy is extremely interested in the extremes of
human nature and what we can learn from our shared
cultural history. And I think that Charlie Hadden was eager
to get on that ride.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
To the credit of the Ryan Murphy organization, they tell
the drama, but there is always that underlying of why
did this happen? And oftentimes how did so many people
miss it? What was the racism, what was the blindness
to what was going on? What was the LGBT discrimination
going on? And there is a lot to probe. So
you're sitting there talking about a notorious serial killer. How
(09:14):
did you find Charlie to be in terms of to interview?
Was he warm? Was he forthcoming?
Speaker 3 (09:20):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (09:20):
He was warm and forthcoming, willing to go anywhere in conversation.
I was quite struck. He was very honest about it.
First of all, we were supposed to meet in his
favorite coffee shop.
Speaker 3 (09:30):
We got there.
Speaker 4 (09:31):
And he didn't want to discuss the pretensions of an
actor in his process and all those things that are
part and parcel of talking to an actor.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
He didn't feel comfortable.
Speaker 4 (09:42):
Talking about that in front of the baristas he saw
every day. He thought he would look pretentious, And so
we went to his office space and he opened up
and he said, you know, I haven't had occasion to
do this in a while, and that gave rise to
a really interesting open conversation. I would say that he
now whars the story lightly. He does not carry it
(10:03):
with him because, as he said, when he's working, he's
really in it.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
He is mission driven.
Speaker 4 (10:09):
Nothing will divert him from the goal of doing an
amazing job playing Edgine. But when he emerges, he has
to re enter his real life, and he was in
real life mode. It was just a frank, open conversation
with someone who is that wonderful thing passionate about what he.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
Does the whole time.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
During suns of Anarchy, all the FX folks would say
that he was just a really kind and warm person.
Despite the crazy things that he did is in front
of the camera. Of course. Charlie is a son of
Northern England, now relocated to southern California and house flipping.
I think that's also an interesting pastime.
Speaker 4 (10:49):
First of all, it runs in his blood. He told
me that growing up, his family moved annually because his
mom was always on the hunt for bigger and better.
I think it was a way to express the creative
impul at a time when he felt constrained from working.
He did not want to be working during high COVID
pre vaccine COVID, and this was a way of working
(11:10):
in a different way. I think that the creative impulse,
if it's strong enough, cannot be suppressed.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
It just comes out in different form.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Well, Dan, thank you for delivering us a very good
profile of an actor and a creative person in our
industry who seems to clearly be at an inflection point.
I have a feeling that we are going to be
talking a lot again about the new season of Monster
on Netflix.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
Thank you for the assignment and thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Now, listeners, let's time travel back to nineteen fifty six.
For Kicks, I often flipped through varieties voluminous archive to
find stories and headlines with news from the past that
resonates in the present day. The front page of Daily
Variety from October first nighteth teen fifty six really fits
that bill. Remember, folks, we've been at this since nineteen
(12:05):
oh five, and away we go. On this Monday edition
from the early fall of nineteen fifty six. Our banner
headline is Government aid for distressed exhibs. The story is
all about the Small Business Administration in Washington, d c.
Recommending that it grant low interest loans to struggling movie
theater owners. Remember, television was still relatively new and it
(12:29):
was taking a big toll on moviegoing in these days.
The other top of the page story is about the
Board of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
voting unanimously to create the Foreign Language category at the Oscars.
Before that, films produced outside the United States had to
be dubbed or subtitled in English and released in the
US to be eligible for competitive Oscars. Otherwise, foreign films
(12:54):
were only given Oscars on an honorary basis. That the
headline in this edition doctus immens the Academy's first formal
step toward the presentation of the first Competitive Foreign Film OSCAR,
recognizing the nineteen fifty six film year, and the winner
was Frederico Fellini's Lestrada, a brutal drama set in postwar
(13:16):
Italy that starred Anthony Quinn. Back to the front page.
There are twelve story starts in total. It was packed.
Here's two more fun ones. There's a good yarn about
the famous producer Samuel Goldwyn, who was known to be
a handful. He's the source of the original g in
MGM Metro Goldwyn Mayor. Although Samuel Goldwyn was famously elbowed
(13:39):
out of the Goldwyn Pictures business that he founded in
nineteen twenty two just as that company was acquired by
Metro Pictures, and then Metro Pictures turned around and merged
with producer Louis B.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
Mayer.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Samuel Goldwyn was in the name MGM, but he never
was a player in the business. Samuel Goldwyn is also
the grandfather of actor, writer director Tony Goldwyn. The headline
reads sam Goldwyn invades Another World, Ike's White House press room,
and the story reads dateline Washington, September thirtieth. Samuel Goldwyn
(14:14):
called on President Eisenhower Friday, and then stepped into the
White House press room to find himself in a world
that knew him not. Goldwyn was introduced briefly to the newsman.
I'm sorry, said the correspondent for a large n Y paper,
but I missed your name. Goldwyn, surprised, obliged with the information,
(14:38):
a wire service man asked, are you still the head
of mg M? Goldwyn looked at him suspiciously for a
moment and replied, slowly and carefully. I sold Metro thirty
eight years ago. Are you kidding? No, sir, was the reply.
I guess we live in another world here. That's the
whole story. And finally, here's a classic bottom of the
(15:00):
page two sentence item about a casting call for the
movie Raintree County that's in nineteen fifty seven Civil War
set romance weeper starring Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Cliff. The
headline reads one thousand Raintree Extras twenty year MGM record.
The story states Metro will place a twenty year record
(15:24):
call for extras next week when the company uses one
thousand for Raintree County. It's the largest since nineteen thirty six,
when the studio used as many in the Good Earth listeners.
As we return to twenty twenty five, I want to
point out that there's a rain Tree Circle Street in
Culver City that sits on a patch of land that
(15:45):
was once owned by MGM and used for filming Raintree
County and many other movies. The history of our business
is everywhere in southern California. You just have to look
for it. As we close out today's episode, here's a
(16:06):
few things we're watching for Variety is loaded with promise.
Next week coming up, we have our annual ten Screenwriters
to watch feature in print and online. The scribes will
be spotlighted with an event in two weeks at the
Santa Fe Film Festival in New Mexico. We also have
our ten Broadway Stars to watch feature. We'll hear more
(16:26):
about that on Monday from Gordon Cox, Variety's main man
on the main Stem. Before we go, Congrats to Mike Cavanaugh.
He's been promoted to co CEO of Comcast. Cavanaugh has
spent the past three years as president of Comcast, and
he's been the top boss for NBC Universal. He's the
first to share CEO power with Brian Roberts. Thanks for
(16:49):
listening this episode was written and reported by me Cynthia Littleton,
with contributions from Dan Didario. Stick's Next hick Picks. Please
leave us a review at the podcast platform of your choice,
and please tune in tomorrow for another episode of Daily
Variety and Listeners Shaunatova
Welcome to Daily Variety, your daily dose of news and
analysis for entertainment industry insiders. It's Thursday, October second, twenty
twenty five. I'm your host, Cynthia Littleton. I am co
editor in chief of Variety alongside Ramin Setuda. I'm in
LA He's in New York, and Variety has reporters around
the world covering the business of entertainment. In today's episode,
(00:35):
Variety's Standadario goes inside the mind of a man who
is playing a serial killer. Charlie Hunum is Variety's cover
star this week, and I have a little fun by
stepping into the wayback machine to visit the Variety archives.
I found an October front page of Daily Variety from
many years ago that has some pretty wild parallels for today.
(00:58):
But before we get to that, here are a few
headlines just in that you need to know. Peaky Blinders
is coming back with the new generation of Shelby's. Netflix
and BBC have given a two season order to a
sequel series from creator Stephen Knight. No word on the cast,
but original star Killian Murphy is on board as an
executive producer. My colleague Alice Schaeffer in London has the
(01:21):
big story on Variety dot com. Jane Fonda is fed up.
The legendary star from a famous Hollywood family has relaunched
the Committee for the First Amendment that was an initiative
founded in the nineteen forties by her father, Henry Fonda,
to guard against attacks on free speech during that dark
(01:41):
period when a troubled senator from Wisconsin terrorized the nation
with his Red Scare tactics. Jane clearly sees history repeating itself.
She says, quote, the McCarthy era ended when Americans from
across the political spectrum finally came together and stood up
for the principles in the Constitution against the forces of repression.
(02:02):
Those forces have returned, and it is our turn to
stand together in defense of our constitutional rights. En Fonda
has more than five hundred A listers on board, including
Kerrie Washington, Pedro Pascal, Billie Eilish, Sean Penn, and Barber
Streisand on a much lighter note, Nicki Glazer has set
a new comedy special at Hulu. It'll be shot in
(02:24):
her hometown of Saint Louis and air next year. Of course,
we'll see her on January eleventh, when Glazer hosts the
Live Golden Globe Awards telecast for the second year in
a row. All of these stories and so much more
can be found on Variety dot com. Rate Now now
(02:46):
we turn to conversations with Variety journalists about news and
trends in show business. In today's Cover Story segment, we'll
talk to Dan Didario, Variety's senior correspondent, about his profile
of actor Charliehunum, The Son's Anarchy veteran is back to
series TV in Netflix's Monster The ed Geen Story. Hunham
(03:06):
has taken a long break from acting and he's really
hunkered down as a writer in recent years. He's even
sold a pilot to FX. Before we hear from Dan
about profiling Hunum, who is a native son of Newcastle, England.
Here's a clip from Variety's Cover Story video of Hunum
explaining the unusual break that got his acting career started.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
This neighborhood called Biker which is actually when my father
was from really historically super rough neighborhood. But there was
a TV show called Bika Grove where I grew up,
and it was like the only TV show and about
like a I don't know, two hundred mile radius that
was shot where I was from, and so it was
like this tiny little emblem of hope that it was
(03:48):
actually possible to become an actor coming from Newcastle. When
I was eighteen, I'd already started like pursuing hopefully a
career in film by going to film school and studying film.
It was Christmas Eve and I was in Newcastle doing
Christmas shopping and so I was in JD Sports at
about four point thirty in the afternoon Christmas Eve, trying
(04:09):
on some sneaks for my brother and sort of dancing around,
and this lady was looking at me. So I blew
her a kiss, just being the cheeky young man that
I was. And it turned out that her name was
Elizabeth Binns and she was the production manager for Biker
Grove and she came over and said, you're a charming
young man on you and I said, on my good days?
(04:29):
And she said, well, have you ever thought about acting?
And I went, well, yes I have. And now here
I am.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Dan Didario, our Ace cover story writer. Thank yous for
joining me again.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
Thanks as always for having me.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
So this week's assignment, we set you off to take
the measure of Charlie Hunnam, a really good actor who
became known in the US for his role on FX's
Sons of Anarchy, a very high octane drama. It ran
on FX from twenty eight to twenty fourteen. But as
your story points out, we haven't seen a lot of
(05:03):
Charlie Hunem in the last some years. What a great
assignment to go find out what this terrific actor has
been doing of late, And of course the occasion is
he's got a new show. Dan, tell me the setting
in which you met and what it was that brought
Charlie Hunnan back to work in front of the camera.
Speaker 4 (05:19):
Well, we met at an office space in North Hollywood.
It's the office where he has been spending the past
few years writing pilots. Like any good screenwriter, he has
a daily practice. He works on his pages. And this
is very notable what he's doing with Ryan Murphy, Ian
Brennan and director Max Winkler on Monster the Ed Greenes Story,
(05:40):
because it's one of the only times he's acted in
front of the camera this decade. He had an Apple
TV Plus show about three years ago and a very
small role in a Zack Snyder film, and that's pretty
much the only other acting he's done. He took the
COVID pandemic very hard, he told me, and he got
very interested in indulging other passions. He sold pilot to
(06:01):
Effects and house Slipping. He's a man of many talents
right there.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
You know, there's a million stories that we could chase
at anytime, and when you settle on one, you just
never know what you were going to get. I don't
know that any of us knew that Charlie Huntum had
ambition to write.
Speaker 4 (06:16):
He was every bit as excited talking about acting as
he was about writing. And he thought it was a
real full circle moment because while he'd worked on other
shows Sons of Anarchy, what really launched him stateside and
that was on Fax. So to sell a pilot to
Effects again, he was.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
Over the moon, dandy. To give you any hint, the
focus of this pilot. Was it a comedy? Is it
a drama? Is it a classic FX dark drama edy?
Speaker 4 (06:41):
The sense I got was that it was in the
world of drama. But I'm a writer as well. I'm sympathetic.
You know, you sell no wine before it's time. He
would not spill the details because he wants to be
out when it's ready. So that's the writer in him.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
Oh, we know those writers. What was it about this
particular series, Kailer that brought him back to being the
lead in a series.
Speaker 4 (07:04):
So if you don't necessarily know the name ed Geen,
you know his legend because ed Gean is the murderer
who died in an insane asylum some years ago, whose
crimes inspired the Texas Chainsaw Masker, are said to have
inspired Psycho, are said to have inspired Buffalo Bill in Silence.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
Of the Lambs.
Speaker 4 (07:25):
And he was a very grizzly guy, suffered from all
sorts of mental illness, and the way it manifested itself
was in his mutilating his victims or graver robbing. Obviously
not the kind of stuff you necessarily want to be
watching over breakfast, but it is a story that goes
(07:47):
deep and dark, and from what I've seen, the season
is interested in probing the roots of how a person
comes to do something like this and the ways in
which it ripples outwards through culture. The season is explicitly
concerned with the ways in which the culture metabolized Gain
(08:08):
and made him into a character. I'm told that Alfred
Hitchcock enters the story as a character played by Tom Hollander,
and so all of this adds up to a three
course meal for an actor. He didn't just transform his voice,
his bearing, but he gets to go to places that.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
Only Ryan Murphy can take you.
Speaker 4 (08:29):
Ryan Murphy oversees the whole thing, with his top lieutenant
Ian Brennan writing every episode and Max Winkler directing some episodes.
And Ryan Murphy is extremely interested in the extremes of
human nature and what we can learn from our shared
cultural history. And I think that Charlie Hadden was eager
to get on that ride.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
To the credit of the Ryan Murphy organization, they tell
the drama, but there is always that underlying of why
did this happen? And oftentimes how did so many people
miss it? What was the racism, what was the blindness
to what was going on? What was the LGBT discrimination
going on? And there is a lot to probe. So
you're sitting there talking about a notorious serial killer. How
(09:14):
did you find Charlie to be in terms of to interview?
Was he warm? Was he forthcoming?
Speaker 3 (09:20):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (09:20):
He was warm and forthcoming, willing to go anywhere in conversation.
I was quite struck. He was very honest about it.
First of all, we were supposed to meet in his
favorite coffee shop.
Speaker 3 (09:30):
We got there.
Speaker 4 (09:31):
And he didn't want to discuss the pretensions of an
actor in his process and all those things that are
part and parcel of talking to an actor.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
He didn't feel comfortable.
Speaker 4 (09:42):
Talking about that in front of the baristas he saw
every day. He thought he would look pretentious, And so
we went to his office space and he opened up
and he said, you know, I haven't had occasion to
do this in a while, and that gave rise to
a really interesting open conversation. I would say that he
now whars the story lightly. He does not carry it
(10:03):
with him because, as he said, when he's working, he's
really in it.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
He is mission driven.
Speaker 4 (10:09):
Nothing will divert him from the goal of doing an
amazing job playing Edgine. But when he emerges, he has
to re enter his real life, and he was in
real life mode. It was just a frank, open conversation
with someone who is that wonderful thing passionate about what he.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
Does the whole time.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
During suns of Anarchy, all the FX folks would say
that he was just a really kind and warm person.
Despite the crazy things that he did is in front
of the camera. Of course. Charlie is a son of
Northern England, now relocated to southern California and house flipping.
I think that's also an interesting pastime.
Speaker 4 (10:49):
First of all, it runs in his blood. He told
me that growing up, his family moved annually because his
mom was always on the hunt for bigger and better.
I think it was a way to express the creative
impul at a time when he felt constrained from working.
He did not want to be working during high COVID
pre vaccine COVID, and this was a way of working
(11:10):
in a different way. I think that the creative impulse,
if it's strong enough, cannot be suppressed.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
It just comes out in different form.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Well, Dan, thank you for delivering us a very good
profile of an actor and a creative person in our
industry who seems to clearly be at an inflection point.
I have a feeling that we are going to be
talking a lot again about the new season of Monster
on Netflix.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
Thank you for the assignment and thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Now, listeners, let's time travel back to nineteen fifty six.
For Kicks, I often flipped through varieties voluminous archive to
find stories and headlines with news from the past that
resonates in the present day. The front page of Daily
Variety from October first nighteth teen fifty six really fits
that bill. Remember, folks, we've been at this since nineteen
(12:05):
oh five, and away we go. On this Monday edition
from the early fall of nineteen fifty six. Our banner
headline is Government aid for distressed exhibs. The story is
all about the Small Business Administration in Washington, d c.
Recommending that it grant low interest loans to struggling movie
theater owners. Remember, television was still relatively new and it
(12:29):
was taking a big toll on moviegoing in these days.
The other top of the page story is about the
Board of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
voting unanimously to create the Foreign Language category at the Oscars.
Before that, films produced outside the United States had to
be dubbed or subtitled in English and released in the
US to be eligible for competitive Oscars. Otherwise, foreign films
(12:54):
were only given Oscars on an honorary basis. That the
headline in this edition doctus immens the Academy's first formal
step toward the presentation of the first Competitive Foreign Film OSCAR,
recognizing the nineteen fifty six film year, and the winner
was Frederico Fellini's Lestrada, a brutal drama set in postwar
(13:16):
Italy that starred Anthony Quinn. Back to the front page.
There are twelve story starts in total. It was packed.
Here's two more fun ones. There's a good yarn about
the famous producer Samuel Goldwyn, who was known to be
a handful. He's the source of the original g in
MGM Metro Goldwyn Mayor. Although Samuel Goldwyn was famously elbowed
(13:39):
out of the Goldwyn Pictures business that he founded in
nineteen twenty two just as that company was acquired by
Metro Pictures, and then Metro Pictures turned around and merged
with producer Louis B.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
Mayer.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Samuel Goldwyn was in the name MGM, but he never
was a player in the business. Samuel Goldwyn is also
the grandfather of actor, writer director Tony Goldwyn. The headline
reads sam Goldwyn invades Another World, Ike's White House press room,
and the story reads dateline Washington, September thirtieth. Samuel Goldwyn
(14:14):
called on President Eisenhower Friday, and then stepped into the
White House press room to find himself in a world
that knew him not. Goldwyn was introduced briefly to the newsman.
I'm sorry, said the correspondent for a large n Y paper,
but I missed your name. Goldwyn, surprised, obliged with the information,
(14:38):
a wire service man asked, are you still the head
of mg M? Goldwyn looked at him suspiciously for a
moment and replied, slowly and carefully. I sold Metro thirty
eight years ago. Are you kidding? No, sir, was the reply.
I guess we live in another world here. That's the
whole story. And finally, here's a classic bottom of the
(15:00):
page two sentence item about a casting call for the
movie Raintree County that's in nineteen fifty seven Civil War
set romance weeper starring Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Cliff. The
headline reads one thousand Raintree Extras twenty year MGM record.
The story states Metro will place a twenty year record
(15:24):
call for extras next week when the company uses one
thousand for Raintree County. It's the largest since nineteen thirty six,
when the studio used as many in the Good Earth listeners.
As we return to twenty twenty five, I want to
point out that there's a rain Tree Circle Street in
Culver City that sits on a patch of land that
(15:45):
was once owned by MGM and used for filming Raintree
County and many other movies. The history of our business
is everywhere in southern California. You just have to look
for it. As we close out today's episode, here's a
(16:06):
few things we're watching for Variety is loaded with promise.
Next week coming up, we have our annual ten Screenwriters
to watch feature in print and online. The scribes will
be spotlighted with an event in two weeks at the
Santa Fe Film Festival in New Mexico. We also have
our ten Broadway Stars to watch feature. We'll hear more
(16:26):
about that on Monday from Gordon Cox, Variety's main man
on the main Stem. Before we go, Congrats to Mike Cavanaugh.
He's been promoted to co CEO of Comcast. Cavanaugh has
spent the past three years as president of Comcast, and
he's been the top boss for NBC Universal. He's the
first to share CEO power with Brian Roberts. Thanks for
(16:49):
listening this episode was written and reported by me Cynthia Littleton,
with contributions from Dan Didario. Stick's Next hick Picks. Please
leave us a review at the podcast platform of your choice,
and please tune in tomorrow for another episode of Daily
Variety and Listeners Shaunatova
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