In Memoriam
Peter Yates: The End?
Remembering the great director of Bullitt and Breaking Away — and the movie deal he didn’t close.
(Page 2 of 2)
In this Age of Auteur, the Editorial Director of this magazine attributes the chorus of faint praise to Yates’s versatility. Like Hollywood helmers of old (Wellman, Wilder, Wyler) he could do anything. Usually — not always — well. Consider this eclectic filmography: a mixed bag; and all of which reportedly came in On Time/Under Budget:
• Musical? Summer Holiday with Cliff Richard — English Elvis goes Continental.
• True crime? Robbery with Stanley Baker — Pussy Cat wannabe pulls off Crime of Century.
• Comedy? Mother, Jugs & Speed with Raquel Welch — Bill Cosby actually funny for a change.
• Action Adventure? Murphy’s War — Over the Waves (& Hill) Peter O’Toole comes out on top. Again.
• SciFinery? Krull with Lysette Anthony — JAPrincess saved from faith worse than death.
• Horror? The Deep with Jackie Bissett — Bra-less, brainless, British bimbo in wet Tee but “No Esther Williams” (i.e. “Wet She Was Great”).
To make it up to the memory of Peter, it behooves the British Embassy’s current Culture spy to schedule a Yates Festival; perhaps with Telegraph critic (and Yates fan) David Gritten as EmCee. For openers, what about Suspect, Washington oriented but shot in Toronto. Would you believe Cher for the Defense? (U better believe it.) A suitable venue might be Georgetown. If the old Biograph was good enough for John Waters, its NW DC successor is good enough for Peter Yates.
But even a Georgetown art house could not re-create the cheery “birther” who disclosed the actual surname of Breaking Away’s lead whose fondest hope was to pass for Italian. (Dennis “Christopher,” né “Corelli.”)
Nor could it shazam the tongue-in-chic director who urged a Bill Buckley accent upon Robert Vaughn, the Bullitt nemesis of Steve McQueen. (Speaking of: After he made McQueen a star who could demand “director approval,” the newly famous actor never asked for Yates again. But look at it this way: What had he done for him lately?)
The best of “Late Yates” can be summed up in two films. There was The Dresser, an homage to Lear featuring Tom Courtenay and Peter’s old friend Albert Finney as has been actor trying to carry on during the London Blitz. Finally, there was The Run of the Country, an underrated tale of shanty Irish Capulets and Montagus along the Ulster border; and which was to be Yates’s final theatrical release.
My own last suggestion to Peter Yates was a remake of The Ruling Class (the one penned by Peter Barnes — not those by Angelo Codevilla or Lewis Lapham). And I liked Steve Breaking Way screenwriter Tesich’s script idea: a variation on his Four Friends: this one to be set in (what became the former) Yugoslavia; and whose three boyhood friends would be Serb, Croat, and Bosnian. At the time of Steve’s untimely death, I believe that the late Arthur Penn may have been considering it.
As it happened The Moviegoer never got made. Not by me nor anyone else. As for Yates, his last bow was a made-for-TV version of John Knowles’s novel A Separate Peace. Sometime before, ironically, and according to Wilfrid Sheed, Peter told Knowles that his book, fine as it was, was un-filmable.
See. Just like I said: What did He know?
Letter to the Editor View all comments (39) | Leave a comment
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PCC| 2.11.11 @ 8:21AM
Dear Mr. Parmentel,
Mr. Yates introduced you to the word "unfilmable".
I'd like to introduce you to another word: "unreadable".
DeesBull| 2.11.11 @ 12:06PM
And I thought it was just me that couldn't understand half of what he wrote.
DeesBull| 2.11.11 @ 12:37PM
Please forgive my bad grammar. Must have caught it from the article. I promise to do better next time.
WRTolkas| 2.11.11 @ 11:35PM
Dear DeesBull,
Thank you for the clarification I desperately needed after reading this article. I can not understand what I just read. This doesn't happen often and never with The American Spectator. My personal opinion of La La Land and Hollywood is the less read and seen the better.
Steve A| 2.11.11 @ 12:44PM
PCC, Too funny. I (reference to myself in "Italics") find ("Discover;" with no immediate reference to the Discovery Channel or the guy who went nuts & shot people over there) Mr. Parmentel's piece to be a headache inducing mess as well.
Silver Streake| 2.11.11 @ 8:43AM
Noel, Yates' directed "The Friends of Eddie Coyle", not "Doyle". We Boston Irish are very protective of our names and gangsters!
Eddie Doyle was the bartender at the Hampshire House on Beacon Street in Boston. Few people know where the Hampshire House is (or was) but if you say "Cheers" then everyone knows the bar. Doyle was the basis for the Sam Malone character in the TV series of the same name.
As far as I know, Eddie Doyle never robbed a bank or boosted a truck load of good as the fictional Eddie Coyle did.
PCC| 2.11.11 @ 4:28PM
The Bull & Finch. A good bar.
PCP Smoker| 2.11.11 @ 6:59PM
He did get caught driving a truck with about 200 cases of Canadian Club, and he would not "play ball" with the prosecutor in New Hampshire but as Eddie stated, "he did not know that man from Adam. He was minding his own business when the man asked him to drive a truck".
However, Eddie never robbed banks. Not his line of work. He did get guns for the "man" from Jackie Brown.
Lovely gritty movie. The hardest scene to watch is when Dillon puts a 22 to the base of Coyle's head.
W| 2.11.11 @ 8:37PM
the book by george v. higgins, a former prosecutor, is great. try Kennedy for the Defense, about a boston criminal lawyer
Doctor Right| 2.11.11 @ 9:57AM
"Breaking Away" is one of the most under-rated films of all time, and one of my absolute favorites.
KyMouse| 2.14.11 @ 12:21PM
The day I spent as a paid extra ($25) in "Breaking Away," on the Indiana University campus, has remained with me long after I've forgotten what I learned in my IU classes. I cut school to be among the hundreds of kids at the stadium in which the Little 500 bike race was re-staged for the film.
I took lots of photos of the action and the stars, such as when Dennis Christopher was having fake blood painted on his leg. A friend took photos of me with Paul Dooley and Jackie Earle Haley, both of whom were very nice and had plenty of time to chat between scenes. The crew showed some of us the storyboards and let us look through their gigantic cameras.
At one time I thought I saw myself in a gigantic shot of the infield crowd, but now I think that I didn't make it out of the cutting room. However, I still have a photocopy of my check as proof that I was involved.
I will always treasure the words Mr. Yates said to me -- "Lady with a camera! Get down!" I'm thinking of that carved on my tombstone.
Bill| 2.11.11 @ 10:20AM
Steve McQueen was a top actor long before Bullitt. He was one the major actors in The Great Escape, several years earlier.
Bill| 2.11.11 @ 10:29AM
One other thing: I agree that Peter Yates was a great director, but let's acknowledge that a lot of his movies are long (and in many cases, rightfully) forgotten or fading. The Friends of Eddie Coyle was a good movie, but let's face it, who's watching it these days? How often does it appear in film festivals or on TV?
Robbery was a great flick, but come on, Mother, Jugs and Speed? The Deep? Krull?
And what's with the suggestion that Yates do a re-make of The Ruling Class? Thank God that never took shape as a project.
gearjammer| 2.11.11 @ 12:04PM
Coyle will endure. There are always people who know better-the crashing waves of the raging popular culture can't destroy everything in a nation of free men. Now, if Glenn Beck is right and the Caliphate encompasses the entire globe, well then it and everything is gone.
Occam's Tool| 2.11.11 @ 12:27PM
"Krull?' That's MST3K fare, old boy.
ConantheContrarian| 2.11.11 @ 1:02PM
Krull was horrible. The plot was mind-numbingly stupid.
radiodaddy| 2.11.11 @ 2:52PM
Alas, the Biograph in Georgetown has been dead and buried for a decade and a half - like the MacArthur Theatre (where I, along with a full house of other aghast Trekkers, saw the world premiere of "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" in 1979) turned into a discount drug store.
Still remember forking over my couple of dollars at the Biograph box office and getting a subway token in lieu of a ticket. Now I feel old.
Bill| 2.14.11 @ 3:27PM
Theater 80 St. Mark's has probably gone too.
froglegs| 2.11.11 @ 4:40PM
I don't get it. What is the point of this article? I am a retired research scientist and we use to make a whole lot more sense in our shop talk than this gibberish.
All I agree with from what little I understand here is that Breaking Away IMHO was a good, not great movie and John and Mary was a piece of excrement. Bullitt had way too many scenes of the same car being crashed IMHO but otherwise the movie inspired Bill Cosby to do a very very funny album called 180 MPH or whatever I believe.
Stormzeye| 2.11.11 @ 8:26PM
The Friends of Eddie Coyle was the best of the modern noir films. He got the Boston gangster patois down perfectly as well as "the life". Bullitt of course was fantastic. Steve McQueen was the definition of "cool". He was great in The Sand Pebbles.
Bee Free| 2.11.11 @ 10:09PM
----AH, for when adult film didn't mean soft-porn.
BTW ---as Hollywood heavily programs us with
'eugenics friendly' themes as the day of the 'RED Chinese model' swiftly approaches, where are
our once so promising Boomer generation?
Scorsese, DePalma, Coppola, Stone ---each one
unbelievably rutted and dead in the water at a moment of unparallelled sellout, treason,
moral and cultural collapse.
Truly this 'cutting edge' is so sold out and creatively
bankrupt they couldn't cut a stick of butter.
Paul McGrath| 2.11.11 @ 11:17PM
The Dresser was good. Your article is incomprehensible.
Paul McGrath| 2.11.11 @ 11:39PM
And if you wish to use a parenthesis, you better BY WELL BLOODY GOD, remember to end your comment with one. When you don't, your reader gets lost because he is waiting for the end of the parenthesis and when it doesn't appear he has to go back and try to figure out where it should have been and then gets angry and decides that the person who is writing the article maybe isn't worth the time anyway.
Bob K.| 2.12.11 @ 12:07AM
A suggestion here, Mr. Parmentel, if you please?
When you finish assembling that collection of your essays please review them for any rewriting they might need.
R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.| 2.12.11 @ 10:10AM
For what is worth, in our print version's Continuing Crisis I note that the victorious team in Breaking Away was not composed of stone-cutting Townies but of Indiana University swimmers, two of whom have served on the magazine's Board of Directors. They were not from the underclass but upper-class, note their love of opera and tony dress.
Tesich had this thing for the lower orders, just as he had the upper-class's tastes.
ret
skip| 2.12.11 @ 3:14PM
Thank you for your significant contribution to Conservatism.
I saw you on Book TV this morning.
Anti-capital punishment?
Conscious refusal to discuss God and Christianity and thereby avoid offending the often virulently offensive anti-God and anti-Christian atheist Hitchens?
I am sure you had ulterior motives for these statements.
But, respectfully, you have alarmed me, sir.
When an individual has taken an innocent individual's life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness that individual has forfeited his own life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. There is little to poor justification for the huge monetary expense of rehabilitaton and life imprisonment, and the deterrence factor of consistent application of capital punishment can prevent untold future misery and suffering of innocent victims.
What favor is done on behalf of Hitchens by avoiding topics critical to his eternal well being while it is not too late?
Taxpayer| 2.14.11 @ 12:08AM
Yep, a bunch of rich kids in a bike race isn't very dramatic. Teisch was smart to make the underdogs locals.
College towns (still) have a caste system that is rather pathetic. Indiana University is no exception.
Roscoe| 2.12.11 @ 5:01PM
Anybody even partially responsible for the opening sequence of The Deep, with the gorgeous Ms. Bisset diving in white t-shirt, can't be all wrong.
John II| 2.12.11 @ 8:52PM
In defense of Mr. Parmentel, who's taken quite a beating on this thread, I'd like to point out that he's exactly right on the most important point. If "A Separate Peace" is filmable, so is "The Moviegoer."
Hell, the Brits made a terrific 11-hour miniseries out of the unfilmable "Brideshead Revisited." It's not just Yates. It's something about Brit filmmakers. When they put their minds to it, they really CAN do anything.
And now back to "Kind Hearts and Coronets" (1949), possibly the greatest comedy ever filmed, but in any event, the only flick I've ever seen more than 10 times.
ConantheContrarian| 2.13.11 @ 2:55PM
Kind Hearts and Coronets was a great movie. I've only seen it six or seven times, though. Zulu I've seen at least ten times.
Noel E. PARMENTEL Jr.| 2.13.11 @ 3:42PM
Dear John II=
Thanks for the few kind words. Nice to know that
"SOMEbody Up There Likes Me". Because I have not taken such a pounding since TheNATION actually ran my tribute to old friend PatRobertson
(in my view, far more sinned agin than sinning).
re: those COMMENT-taters, I have to concede
that some are on target. My"PeterYates:TheEnd?"
could've used a rewrite. Maybe two. In any case, my efforts rarely do well in the peanut gallery.
Philadelphia INQUIRER columnist Tom Fox used to dine out on then Philly Mayor Franks Rizzo's critique as follows: "Jeez, I love Noel but I can't read him." When Tom asked "Why Not?", Hizzoner replied "Cause he writes in LATIN".
All the Best. s/Noel E. PARMENTEL Jr *
(*"who's taken quite a beating on this thread"
Taxpayer| 2.14.11 @ 12:10AM
And your post is less readable than your article.
PCC| 2.13.11 @ 6:42PM
A nice riposte, Mr. Parmentel. Now you've made me feel guilty for my critical remarks. Godspeed.
Taxpayer| 2.14.11 @ 12:11AM
I agree with the other folks on this thread. Between the flood of name-dropping and random commentary, this article would get a D in my English course.
PCC| 2.14.11 @ 5:55AM
Dear Mr. Taxpayer,
Thank you. Now I feel better.
Reebok | 8.11.11 @ 3:50AM
is good
العاب | 4.11.12 @ 4:28PM
thank you