1974: Fifty Years Later / The Towering Inferno

Episodes are made available to Patreon subscribers one week before
their general release. {www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke} For the first
episode of our new series 197:4 Fifty Years Later, we’re joined by
the first guest ever to appear on the podcast, the peerless man of
le cinema Brian Saur. The Pure Cinema and Just the Discs podcast
impresario selected for our conversation to discuss one of the most
maligned and neglected Best Picture nominees of all-time, the ne
plus ultra of blockbuster disaster films, The Towering Inferno.
Star-studded cast featuring Steve McQueen (at the height of his box
office power), Paul Newman (coming off 1973’s Best Picture winner,
The Sting), Fred Astaire (shamelessly nominated for Best Supporting
Actor), William Holden & Faye Dunaway (together two years
before Network), Jennifer Jones, Richard Chamberlain and too many
others to name battle a high-rise blaze in a special effects
extravaganza that puts the spectacle in “Outrageously Outsized
Hollywood Spectacle.” We do our best to ignore the consistent
presence of OJ Simpson and put the focus where it belongs: on
Sterling Siliphant. We dig into the split-direction of disaster
movie mastermind Irwin Allen and actor’s director John Guillermin,
McQueen and Newman’s amazingly petty competition for screen-time,
the utterly ridiculous Oscar the film did win, and why there should
be more appreciation for Hollywood cinema doing what only Hollywood
cinema can do. Stars, explosions, character actors, air-tight
screenwriting and buckets of poured money into the blaze: join us
in standing in awe of this monument to Hollywood blockbusterizing.
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podcast: https://justthediscs.libsyn.com/ Pure Cinema podcast:
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twitter.com/cfunderburg Intro music: Unleash the Bastards / “Tea
for Two” Outro music: Marcus Pinn / “Vegas"