I Miss Sonia Henie

Giovanni Brass (born March 26, 1933), better known as Tinto Brass, is an Italian filmmaker. He is noted especially for his work in the erotic genre, with films such as Così fan tutte (released under the English title All Ladies Do It), Paprika, Monella (Frivolous Lola) and Trasgredire.

Brass was born in Venice12. He is of Russian and Austro-Hungarian background. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s he created many avant-garde films, including Nerosubianco, L’urlo, and La Vacanza. However, he is best known for his erotic epics, Salon Kitty, The Key, Senso ‘45 and Caligula. The latter film was a collaboration with celebrated author Gore Vidal, Franco Rossellini and Penthouse magazine publisher Bob Guccione. However, many consider Caligula not to be a true Tinto Brass film since post-production was not handled by Brass. The director demanded that his name be stricken from the credits after Guccione inserted hardcore sex scenes and recut much of the film’s story and theme structure. Despite this, the film contains many of Brass’ trademarks and remains his most widely viewed work (and the highest-grossing Italian film released in the United States). Well into his seventies, he continues to make films.

Brass’ films follow an impressionistic style – they tend not to show immense landscapes, but bits and pieces of the scenery and peripheral characters and objects through pans and zooms, thus imitating how the viewer might see the events if they were actually present. This also gives the films an extraordinarily rapid pace. He often uses a television-like multicam method of shooting, with at least three cameras running at once, each focusing on something else.

There are many other directorial trademarks throughout his films. From 1976’s Salon Kitty onwards, mirrors play a large part in the set design. Sometimes he even goes as far as to begin a scene with a mirror shot, then pan over to the action being reflected, giving a disorienting feeling. His erotic films – especially The Key, Miranda and All Ladies Do It – often accentuate women’s buttocks and hairy armpits, almost to the point of fetishizing those particular physical feature. Many of his erotic films seem to include unsimulated sexual acts, but his male actors usually are using prosthetic penises in these instances.[citation needed]

He almost always works in a cameo for his friend Osiride Pevarello, and, in more recent years, for himself. —Wikipedia

Forman grew up in a small town near Prague. Orphaned when his parents, a Jewish professor and a Protestant housewife, died in Nazi concentration camps, he was reared by two uncles and family friends. In the mid-1950s Forman studied at the film school of the University of Prague. Upon graduating he wrote two screenplays, the first of which, Nechte to na mn (“Leave It to Me”), was filmed in 1955 by noted Czech director Martin Fri. Forman in 1957 was himself an assistant director on the second of these screenplays, a situation comedy entitled Stenata (“The Puppies”).

Throughout the late 1950s and early ‘60s Forman acted as either writer or assistant director on other films. He directed his first major productions in 1963: Cerný Petr (Black Peter) and Konkurs (Talent Competition). These films had great success both domestically and on the international festival circuit, and Forman was hailed as a major talent of the Czech New Wave. His early films were characterized by their examination of working-class life and their enthusiasm for a socialist lifestyle. These elements are also evident in Lásky jedné plavovlásky (1965; Loves of a Blonde) and Hoí, má panenko (1967; _The Firemen’s Ball_), both of which explored social and moral issues with gentle satire. When Firemen’s Ball was banned in Czechoslovakia after the Soviet invasion of 1968, Forman immigrated to the United States.

His first American film, Taking Off (1971), was the last to incorporate his early themes. Although he clearly demonstrated his mastery of the craft of direction and showed a remarkable ability to work with actors, most of his American films are also bereft of the earlier social concerns that defined his Czech films. In 1975 he directed One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, an independent production that had been turned down by every major studio. It became only the second film in history to win Academy Awards in all the four major categories: best picture, best director, best actor (Jack Nicholson), and best actress (Louise Fletcher).

Forman followed this success with several adaptations, including one of the popular Broadway musical Hair (1979), an epic telling of E.L. Doctorow’s novel set in turn-of-the-century America, Ragtime (1981), and the screen version of the Peter Shaffer play Amadeus (1984). The last film, an exuberant celebration of the genius of Mozart, won the Oscar for best picture and earned Forman his second Oscar for directing.

With The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996), Forman returned to the theme of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest—the misuse of power within a hopeless and comic bureaucracy. It garnered Academy Award nominations for best director and best actor. In 1999 he directed Man on the Moon, the life story of comedian Andy Kaufman. He followed that with Goya’s Ghosts (2006), about painter Francisco de Goya. With Jan Novák, Forman wrote Turnaround: A Memoir in 1994. –biography.com

Buck Henry’s meek and mild, ordinary guy demeanor belies a razor-sharp dry, wry wit that he aptly applies to his screenplays, the roles he portrays, and the projects he directs. Born Buck Henry Zuckerman to a successful Wall Street broker (who was once an Air Force general) and actress Ruth Taylor, Henry launched his career as an actor at age 16, plying a small role in the Broadway version of Life With Father. During the Korean War, Henry served with the Seventh Army Repertory Company touring Germany performing in a musical comedy that he wrote and directed. During the ‘50s, Henry became somewhat famous for perpetrating the famous SINA hoax — the acronym stands for the Society for Indecency to Naked Animals — that made Henry a popular figure on talk shows where he would claim that naked animals were the cause of humanity’s moral decay. In 1960, Henry worked briefly in an improvisational troupe before moving to the West Coast to write for the popular television satire That Was the Week That Was with hosts Steve Allen and Garry Moore. He and fellow comic Mel Brooks collaborated in 1964 to create the pilot for the successful spy spoof Get Smart. That year Henry also collaborated on the screenplay and starred in The Troublemaker, but it was not until Henry’s second collaborative screenplay for The Graduate (1967) — he also played a small role — that he became one of Hollywood’s most in-demand screenwriters.

In 1973, he and Warren Beatty were Oscar nominated for their joint effort Heaven Can Wait, a remake of Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941). In the film, Henry played the small but crucial role of the heavenly escort who goofs and brings a football player to heaven too soon. Henry was a periodic host on the NBC comedy series Saturday Night Live during the ’70s. Through the ’80s and ’90s, Henry continued to occasionally write screenplays and play supporting roles in feature films. —allmovie guide

Dusan Makavejev, the most prominent director in new Yugoslav cinema is internationally recognized for his passionate, daring films that blend fiction with reality, and drama with humor. Many of these films contain experimental elements and were considered controversial for their eroticism and sharp criticism of Eastern European politics. Makavejev began making short films during the ‘50s just after he studied psychology at Belgrade University; he then went on to become active in several film societies and festivals while studying direction at the Academy for Radio, Television, and Film. He continued making shorts and documentaries for both Zagreb and Avala studios until the early ’60s. His interest in documentaries can still be see in his later fictional features. Makavejev’s first three features — Man Is Not a Bird (1966), Love Affair (1967), and Innocence Unprotected (1968) — won him international acclaim. In 1971, his fictionalized chronicle of psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich, WR: Mysteries of the Organism, was immediately banned in Yugoslavia for its political-sexual content. The film also resulted in Makavejev’s exile until the late ‘80s. This did not stop him from making films. In 1974, he made Sweet Movie in Canada. The film was so violent and sexually explicit that it was considered pornographic in many countries and banned. Makavejev’s only real commercial success was his 1981 film Montenegro. In 1988, he finally returned home, where he made Manifesto, a political farce that has not been widely seen on the international market.

(Source: http://www.allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll?p=avg&sql=2:100850)