He was old, overweight, drunken, ill tempered and profane. He had no friends save for an elderly Chinese man and a cat named General Price. But he was a lawman and a good one. And from the very first moment he showed his eye patch on the big screen, it was evident that Rooster Cogburn was the role that John Wayne had been waiting sixty years to play.

Created in 1968 by former journalist Charles Portis, U.S. Marshal Rooster Cogburn first appeared in the pages of The Saturday Evening Post in the serialized Western, True Grit. When an expanded version was later published as a novel, Paramount Pictures and producer Hal B. Wallis came calling and True Grit was headed for the movies.

The film tells the story of young Mattie Ross (Kim Darby) who hires Cogburn to track down the man who killed her father. Things go bad for the Marshal almost immediately when Mattie insists on riding along with Cogburn and they both get saddled with an inexperienced Texas Ranger (Glen Campbell) who is also on the trail of the killer Tom Chaney (Jeff Corey).

Director Henrey Hathaway infused True Grit with a lot of terrific stuff to enjoy, but the real pleasure is in watching John Wayne breathe Rooster Cogburn to life. For his efforts, he won both the Golden Globe and the Academy Award for Best Actor. Accepting the Oscar, a delighted Wayne snarked, “If I’d known this, I’d have put that eye patch on 40 years ago!”

An unsatisfying sequel, Rooster Cogburn, followed in 1975. Here, Wayne is paired with Katherine Hepburn, who is looking for both her father’s killer and missing shipment of nitroglycerin. Though less successful than True Grit, development began on Sometime, a third Cogburn film. Alas, Sometime never came as John Wayne completed just one more movie (The Shootist) before his death in 1979.

The next step for the character the Duke left behind was television. In May of 1978, ABC aired True Grit: A Further Adventure. Written and produced by Sandor Stern (The Mod Squad) and starring Warren Oates as Rooster Cogburn and Lisa Pelikan as Mattie Ross, the two-hour movies was a pilot for a proposed Rooster Cogburn TV series that never materialized.

Rooster Cogburn had hit the end of the trail. And that’s the way it’s been for over 30 years.

Now, thanks to directors Joel and Ethan Coen, True Grit is headed back into movie theaters. After auditioning more than 15,000 teenage girls, Paramount says the new Mattie Ross is 13-year old Hailee Steinfeld. She will join Josh Brolin (as the killer Chaney) and Matt Damon (as the Texas Ranger) in a new adaptation of the original Charles Portis novel. Filling the big boots of John Wayne as U.S. Marshal Rooster Cogburn will be Jeff Bridges.

I say bring it on. The character of Rooster is so strong and so deep and so inherently cinematic that it’s almost a shame we’ve had to wait this long to see him again.

Brilliant or bad, there’s nothing that Jeff Bridges and the Coens can do with their Marshal that will diminish John Wayne’s. Like Ringo in Stagecoach and Ethan in The Searchers, Rooster is one of the few John Wayne characters that is bigger than the Duke himself.

So let’s raise a flask and wish the new True Grit and the Coen Brothers well. I hope they make a great movie. And to Jeff Bridges, with all due respect and great anticipation, let me echo the words of Rooster Cogburn himself and say: “Fill your hands, you son of a bitch!”

“All you need for a movie is a girl and a gun…”
Jean-Luc Godard

I’m sure that when Luc Besson sat down to write the first few scenes of would become the film La Femme Nikita, he had no idea that he was creating a piece of intellectual property that would get made and re-made no less than five times over the next seven years.

The 1990 French action film, written and directed by Besson, told the story of Nikita Taylor (Anne Parillaud), a petty criminal and drug addict who was arrested for the murder of a cop, convicted and imprisoned. At that point, Nikita was approached by France’s top spy agency and offered a deal: Die in prison or work as a government assassin.

That Nikita inspired a slick 1991 Hong Kong action remake called Black Cat, which closely followed the original film’s storyline. Jade Leung played the Chinese street girl turned living weapon in both Black Cat and the 1992 sequel, Black Cat 2.

In 1993, Warner Bros. remade Nikita for American audiences as Point of No Return, with veteran director John Badham stepping in for Luc Besson (who declined the offer). This time, Bridget Fonda was the girl wielding the gun (now known as Nina).

Next up: La Femme Nikita, a 1997 television series produced by Warner Bros. and Fireworks Entertainment. The USA Network series ran for five seasons. Created by 24’s executive producer Joel Surnow, the series starred Peta Wilson as Nikita.

And now, word comes from the folks at the awkwardly named The CW that a new Nikita is on the way. Hawaiian-born Maggie Q has just been cast in a pilot being prepped by Warner Bros. Television and McG’s Wonderland. The story this time is that a new Nikita has been trained to replace the original one after she goes, y’know, rogue.

Will it work? Who knows? But I wouldn’t bet against it. The track record for the Nikita franchise has almost single-handedly proven Godard’s adage.

Tags: Anne Parillaud, Bridget Fonda, Jean-Luc Godard, Joel Surnow, Luc Besson, Maggie Q, Peta Wilson
Posted in Screening Room

Back in the dim, dark days before home video, Netflix, DVRs, on-demand and streaming, movies fans had only two places to look to view and study older, out-of-circulation films.

Place Number One was late night television. Before the midnight TV landscape was crowded with a half-dozen white guys sitting behind desks, there were branded movie showcases with names like The Million Dollar Movie, The Great Entertainment, Chiller Theatre, The Movie Loft, Classic Horror, Science Fiction Theater, Comedy Classics and Creature Double Feature.

If you were in the mood to watch James Cagney, Boris Karloff, Judy Holliday, Abbott & Costello,  Godzilla, Maria Montez or Klaatu do their thing, you stayed up late and you watched.

And Place Number Two for old movies? Well, if you were lucky enough to live in a city big enough to support a couple of major colleges and/or universities, then you probably had the option of venturing out from the house and down to the local repertory cinema.

We had a great rep cinema in the town where I attended college. They ran double features and changed their bill every two or three days. Inside of a week, you could drop by the cinema three different nights and see The Marx Brothers starring A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races; two film directed by Bob Fosse, Lenny and All That Jazz; or Roman Polanski’s The Fearless Vampire Killers paired with George Romero’s also-a-vampire-movie, Martin.

I was a film student at the time. If I wasn’t in class screening Buster Keaton in Sherlock, Jr. or Anna Karina in Pierrot le Fou or Orson Welles in F for Fake, then I was down at the rep cinema, popcorn in hand, catching a double feature of Woody Allen or Michael Powell or Brian De Palma.It was pure, unadulterated movie geek heaven.

Fast forward. Digital technology (your DVDs and DVRs and online streaming) emerges and virtually wipes out the nation’s repertory cinemas. Who needs to schlep across town to see Richard Rush’s brilliant The Stunt Man on the big screen when you could simply have Netflix or Amazon or DirectTV deliver to your home? Only a movie maniac.

Enter Quentin Tarantino, movie maniac.

The news broke this week that the writer-director of Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill and Inglourious Basterds recently purchased The New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles’s Fairfax district.

Formerly a vaudeville house, a mob nightclub and a porn theater, The New Beverly Cinema opened on May of 1978 as a two-fer repertory cinema. In the 32 years since the New Bev ran its first Marlon Brando double feature, hundreds of film students and novice filmmakers have flocked to the theater. One of them was Quentin Tarantino, who started visiting the New Bev just a couple of years after the place opened.

And so, when the financially-strapped New Beverly Cinema was recently threatened with closure, Tarantino swooped in and bought place to ensure that the New Bev, its programmers and its audiences would always have a home.

The full story (recounted by Vanity Fair) is here. The official site of the New Bev is here.

Check ‘em out. And if you live or regularly visit Los Angeles, think about dropping by The New Beverly Cinema to check out whatever double-bill happens to be playing. If Quentin Tarantino chooses to exert some influence over the programming, the results could be fascinating.

Long before TV or radio or movies ever had any influence on them, children loved their weapons. Schoolyards, playgrounds and backyards were all strewn with slingshots, popguns and wooden rifles well before the big media companies even existed. So you can’t pin America’s obsession with guns on anybody except those Second Amendment-loving seven-year-olds who got their jollies pretending to wound, main and kill while waiting to grow up.

But let’s face it…once Big Media burst forth, it was only too happy step in and try to squeeze every last nickel out of Kid Nation’s pocket, even if it meant selling their own kid a gun.

Movies, radio and TV created heroes. Heroes carried guns. Kids, wanting to be like their heroes, also wanted to carry guns. More importantly they wanted to carry the kinds of guns that their heroes carried. That’s where Big Media stepped on up.

Enter the merchandising tie-in. In the 1930s, young fans of the Buck Rogers comic strip and movie serial could feel closer to their favorite spaceman by filling their fists with the Buck Rogers Rocket Pistol, Disintegrator Pistol or Liquid Helium Pistol.

When Westerns ruled the screen back in the 1940s and 1950s, kids could buy all kinds of six-shooters and carbines, all endorsed and promoted by big screen Western stars and characters like Red Ryder, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Hopalong Cassidy and Davy Crockett. Even the littlest cowpoke, Howdy Doody, shot guns and he was a puppet.

In the 1960s, crime fighters like Dick Tracy, James Bond, The Detectives, Honey West, The Green Hornet and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. inspired all manner of sub-machine guns, Walther PPK water pistols and snub-nose .38 cap guns.

For your edification and enlightenment, we have below a commercial for one of those guns. Television itself was only about 16 years old when this spot debuted. Tough crime shows like Naked City, The Untouchables, M-Squad and Peter Gunn (gun!) were staples of the three networks’ schedules. The influence of those TV shows on this product choice and this marketing effort should be obvious to even the most casual of viewer. Ladies and Gentlemen—and, most importantly, Boys and Girls—here’s Mattel’s Tommy Burst Detective Set.

NOTE: If the actor playing the crook seems like he might be a familiar face, he is. That’s Hal Smith, best known as Otis Campbell, Mayberry’s town drunk, on The Andy Griffith Show.

Before he was known as a screenwriter, film director and a guy who couldn’t help but marry his girlfriend’s adopted daughter, Woody Allen was a nightclub comic trying to get famous.

After anonymously writing gags for showbiz columnists like Earl Wilson and TV shows like The Colgate Comedy Hour, The Tonight Show, Caesar’s Hour and Candid Camera, Woody traded on his funny bone to become a funny face in print media, especially in advertising.

For example, Woody Allen hung his mug out in a series of Smirnoff Vodka ads. He later turned that experience into a monologue on his 1968 Standup Comic live performance record.

Most of these ads appeared in Playboy, whose readers liked pretty girls like actress Monique van Vooren and smart comedians like Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahl.

And Playboy’s various features and interviews focusing on Woody Allen allowed the comedian’s voice and point of view to emerge.

Soon, other advertisers wanted a piece of Woody Allen’s face.  Foster Grant sunglasses was one that took a shine to Woody Allen.

It was only a matter of time before mainstream magazines like The New Yorker and Esquire and Life featured Woody’s writing and promoted his projects.

Woody Allen may have been a sophisticated comedian doing adult material, but he was careful not to leave comic book reading kids behind.

From a comic to the comics: For eight years, “Woody Allen” appeared in the funny pages as a daily comic strip (though it was neither written nor drawn by Woody Allen).

In the end, it all helped. After over sixty years in show business and nearly fifty films, Woody Allen’s longest-lasting creation–the image of Woody Allen himself–endures.

Yesterday’s edition of Cyclops Central regarding Roger Corman made me think a bit about Martin Scorsese and the one film that Scorsese directed for Corman, the low-budget exploitation movie, Boxcar Bertha (1972).

In the 1960s, Scorsese attended New York University’s film school, making shorts like What’s a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This?, It’s Not Just You, Murray! and The Big Shave.

In 1967, Scorsese made his first feature-length film, the black and white I Call First, which was later expanded (to include some distributor-mandated nudity), re-cut and re-titled Who’s That Knocking at My Door. The film featured actor Harvey Keitel in the lead and was edited by Thelma Schoonmaker, both of whom would become career-long collaborators with Scorsese.

Sometime later (after working as an editor on the documentary Woodstock), Scorsese screened Who’s That Knocking for Roger Corman. Mr. Scorsese:

“My agent set up a meeting with Roger and he asked if I would like to do Boxcar Bertha, a sequel to Bloody Mama. That changed everything for me. From him, I learned how to put a picture together. He was like a great professor. He also taught you about the realities of the marketplace. There has to be a chase scene here, there has to be a touch of nudity there. He didn’t apologize for that. This is what we do.”

Produced by Roger Corman and directed by Martin Scorsese, Boxcar Bertha told a fast and violent Depression-era tale, with heavy Bonnie and Clyde overtones. The title character, played by Barbara Hershey (who would later work with Scorsese on The Last Temptation of Christ), hooks up with union organizer David Carradine (who would appear in Scorsese’s Mean Streets) to lead a gang of notorious train and bank robbers (including Barry Primus, who would appear in Scorsese’s New York, New York and Victor Garber, later to be seen in Mean Streets and Taxi Driver) across the American South.

When Scorsese completed his Boxcar Bertha rough cut, he showed it to his friend and indie filmmaking mentor John Cassavetes (Shadows, Faces, Husbands). According to both Scorsese and Cassavetes biographer Raymond Carney, Cassavetes said:

“Marty, you’ve just spent a year of your life making a piece of shit…don’t get hooked into exploitation pictures. Makes something personal. Isn’t there anything you really want to make? Why don’t you make a movie about something you really care about?”

There was. It was called Mean Streets. And that film led to Taxi Driver, which led to Raging Bull and everything else. John Cassavetes would be proud.

But it all started with Boxcar Bertha. Here’s a look at the trailer. Within its 2 minutes and 35 seconds, you can see glimpses of an young artist taking control of his chosen medium.

Note: The voice talent is Charles Aidman, an actor with over 170 movies and TV shows to his credit. He went on to become the voice of the 1985 CBS revival of The Twilight Zone.

“In science-fiction films, the monster
should always be bigger than the leading lady…”
Roger Corman

You’ve got to love Roger Corman. In his career as a filmmaker, Roger’s produced 388 movies and TV shows. He’s directed 56 films. And he’s not done yet.

The World Wide Webbie thing has been ablaze the past couple of days with the big news that Roger Corman is about to launch his next production:

SHARKTOPUS!

That’s right. Half-shark, half-octopus, all terror.

Hot of the heels of Asylum Home Entertainment’s DVD original Mega Shark Vs. Giant Octopus (Number 8 on Yahoo’s Top 10 Most Viewed Trailers of 2009), SyFy’s Director of Original Movies Karen O’Hara has decided that the world is ready for a shark/octopus hybrid to stalk the seven seas.

Several Internet sites have claimed that Roger Corman himself will be directing Sharktopus. You might want to take that with a huge hunk of sea-salt. Mr. Corman is 84 years old and has not directed a movie in 20 years (1990’s Frankenstein Unbound). I say he’ll be handing the megaphone and the hip-waders to someone else.

But Mr. Corman will be producing and that’s good news. He’s had lots of experience bringing water-dwelling monsters to the screen, with his Supergator (2007), Dinocroc (2004), Humanoids from the Deep (1996), Piranha (1995) and The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent (1957).

Roger’s a legend in business, having mentored young filmmakers like Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Peter Bogdanovich, Jonathan Demme, Ron Howard, James Cameron and John Sayles as well as hiring unknown actors like Jack Nicholson, Robert De Niro, Sylvester Stallone and Charles Bronson.

I don’t think Sharktopus will be Roger Corman’s greatest contribution to the history of cinema, but I’ll be watching SyFy for my first sighting of it just the same.

On February 15 1931, Tod Browning’s Dracula was released by Universal. It starred Bela Lugosi and Edward Van Sloan who originated their roles of Count Dracula and Abraham Van Helsing on Broadway in 1927.

Exactly one year later to the day, George Burns and Gracie Allen debuted as regulars on CBS Radio’s The Guy Lombardo Show. The couple proved to be so popular that they soon were given a program of their own, The Burns & Allen Show, which ran for on radio for 18 years before jumping to television.

CBS News President Fred Friendly resigned from CBS News on February 15 1966 when the network refused to carry the first U.S. hearings questioning American involvement in Vietnam in favor of airing an episode of The Lucy Show.

ABC began airing Amerika on February 15, 1987. The mini-series, about life in the United States after a bloodless takeover by the Soviet Union, starred Kris Kristofferson, Mariel Hemingway, Robert Urich, and a 17-year-old Lara Flynn Boyle in her first major role. Amerika aired for 14½ hours (including commercials) over seven nights.

February 15 1992: Fox Broadcasting aired the 100th episode of Cops.

YouTube, the Internet video-sharing site was launched on February 15 2005.

Launched on February 16 1948, Camel Newsreel Theatre was a 10-minute NBC program that featured Fox Movietone News newsreels. Actor and former game show host John Cameron Swayze provided voice-over for the series.

The Mark Goodson and Bill Todman-produced panel quiz show, What’s My Line debuted on CBS on February 16 1950. It remained on the air for 17 years, making it the longest-running game show in the history of prime-time network television.

The NBC mini-series Celebrity concluded its three-night run on February 16 1983.

February 16 1985: After an absence of seven years, actor Telly Savalas brought his iconic New York City police lieutenant, Theo Kojak, back to CBS in Kojak: The Belarus File. Between the years 1987 and 1990, Savalas would do six more Kojak movies, this time for ABC.

February 17 1933: Three years after Blondie, Chic Young’s popular comic strip, first debuted in U.S. newspapers, Dagwood Bumstead finally married his Blondie. They Bumsteads later became radio, movie and television stars.

Comedian Joan Rivers made her first guest appearance on NBC’s The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson on February 17 1965. She later became Carson’s permanent guest host.

A marshal from New Mexico traveled to New York on a case and stays there for seven years. Dennis Weaver’s pilot, McCloud: Who Killed Miss U.S.A?, aired on NBC on February 17 1970. The series became a regular part of the network’s line-up the following fall as part of the one-hour “wheel” series, Four in One. A year later, in 1971, McCloud expanded to 90 minutes and joined Columbo and McMillan & Wife under the NBC Mystery Movie umbrella.

February 17 1986: After being fired by WNBC, Howard Stern and his radio show returned to New York City morning radio on WXRK 92.3 FM.

10.5 Million viewers tuned in to ABC on February 17 1988 for the finale of Grace Under Fire.

February 18 1953: Robert Stack and Nigel Bruce appeared in the very first movie produced in 3D, Bwana Devil, as it opened in New York.

That same day, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz sign the richest contract in television when they agree to continue I Love Lucy on CBS through 1955 for $8,000,000.

Roots: The Next Generations premieres on ABC TV on February 18 1979. This sequel to the 1977 miniseries was based on the last seven chapters of Haley’s Roots: The Saga of an American Family and new research by the author.

On February 18 1983, King of Comedy opened in theaters.  The film was directed by Martin Scorsese and starred Robert De Niro, Sandra Bernhard and Jerry Lewis, who had to wait for Johnny Carson, Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin to turn his role down before he was cast.

Trinity Broadcasting Network, a Christian TV network, cancelled singer Pat Boone’s gospel music show on February 18 1997 after he appeared in black leather and fake tattoos on the American Music Awards show.

Cloverfield, produced by J.J. Abrams, was released on February 18 2008.

February 19 1922: Ed Wynn became the first big-name vaudeville talent to sign on as a radio performer. Previously, vaudevillians had not considered radio a respectable medium.

Stevie Wonder goes up against ABC’s Here Come The Brides and NBC’s The Virginian when appears on CBS’s The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour on February 19 1969

Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey’s 1978 bestseller, A Woman of Independent Means, premiered on NBC as a six-hour miniseries starring Sally Field on February 19 1995.

The films Jawbreaker with Rose McGowan, October Sky with Jake Gyllenhaal and Office Space with Jennifer Aniston were all released on February 19 1999.

February 20 1968: Introduced as a 1960 episode of the television-anthology series The Chevy Mystery Show and later adapted into a stage play, Prescription: Murder premiered as an NBC World Premiere Movie. Written by Richard Levinson and William Link, the movie stars Peter Falk as homicide detective Lieutenant Columbo.

After 11 years on the job, David Hartman exited ABC’s Good Morning America on February 20 1987. He introduced his replacement, Charles Gibson, who along with Joan Lunden, would co-host the morning television program into 1998.

On February 20 2004, 20th Century Fox released Welcome to Mooseport starring Ray Romano and Gene Hackman. A critical and financial disaster, Mooseport was Gene Hackman’s final film before waving goodbye to acting.

February 21 1949: The DuMont Television Network airs the first TV soap opera, A Woman to Remember, a backstage drama about the lives and loves of a group of people working on a radio serial. Fifteen minutes in length, it has no sponsors and lasts five months.

1988 – Televangelist Jimmy Swaggert resigned from his ministry after it was revealed he had been with a prostitute. In front of a Baton Rouge, Louisiana congregation of 7,000, Swaggert sobbed and said: “I have sinned against you and I beg your forgiveness…”

On February 21 2003, United Artists’ Dark Blue starring Kurt Russell goes up against The Life of David Gale starring Kevin Spacey at the box office.

BORN THIS WEEK: Actor and ventriloquist Edgar Bergen (The Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy Show), father of actress Candice Bergen; actor Cesar Romero (Ocean’s 11, ABC’s Batman); actor Hugh Beaumont (The Mole People, Leave It to Beaver); TV game show Bill Cullen (I’ve Got a Secret, The Price is Right, The Name that Tune); actor George Kennedy (Cool Hand Luke, the Airport movie series, The Blue Knight); actor Harvey Korman (The Carol Burnett Show, Blazing Saddles); actor William Katt (The Greatest American Hero, the Perry Mason Mystery movie series); actor John Travolta (Welcome Back Kotter, Saturday Night Fever, Pulp Fiction); cartoonist Matt Groening (Life in Hell, The Simpsons); actor Kelsey Grammer (Cheers, Frasier); actor LeVar Burton (Roots, Star Trek: The Next Generation); actress Molly Ringwald (The Breakfast Club, The Secret Life of the American Teenager); model, reality TV star Jenna Morasca (Survivor, Fear Factor, Celebrity Paranormal Project).

DIED THIS WEEK: Explorer and documentary filmmaker Robert Flaherty (Nanook of the North, Louisiana Story); character actor Wally Cox (Mr. Peepers, Underdog); actor Tim Holt (Stagecoach, The Treasure of Sierra Madre); actor Howard Da Silva (The Great Gatsby, The Missiles of October); child actor Tommy Rettig (Lassie/Jeff’s Collie); actor McLean Stevenson (M*A*S*H, Hello Larry); newspaper and TV film critic Gene Siskel (Chicago Tribune, Siskel & Ebert & the Movies); Howard W. Koch, television director (Maverick, The Untouchables) and film producer (The Odd Couple, Airplane, Ghost); broadcast journalist Howard K. Smith (ABC Evening News); commercial actress Jan Miner (Palmolive’s Madge the Manicurist).

The year 1978 had been a busy one for William Shatner.

It was three years after his big comeback television series, The Barbary Coast, had failed. It was one year before Star Trek: The Motion Picture revived interest in him.

That year of 1978, William Shatner appeared in the ABC mini-series How The West Was Won and played Paul Revere in the syndicated TV movie, The Bastard. Shatner also appeared in two obscure independent films, Land of No Return and The Third Walker, plus two more TV movies, Little Women and Crash.

But Shatner’s most stellar performance that year was as host and musical guest of the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films’ annual Science Fiction Film Awards show.

This syndicated Shatner spectacular was co-hosted by Karen Black (Burnt Offerings, Capricorn One) and featured an odd mix of presenters like Charlton Heston, Wolfman Jack, Buster Crabbe, Astronaut Buzz Aldrin, Quincy Jones and Brenda Vaccaro.

But it was William Shatner, with his floppy-tied tuxedo. tiny cigarette and beat poet growl, that wowed the crowd in Miami’s Coconut Grove with his singular interpretation of the Elton John/Bernie Taupin song, Rocket Man.

Here now is Karen Black introducing Bernie Taupin introducing William Shatner and his song. It runs 5:12, Make sure you stick with it until the end…

Tags: Karen Black, William Shatner
Posted in Shatner Observatory

If you’ve been paying attention, you’ve probably caught onto the fact that I’m interested in movie posters and the artists and designers who create them.

I’m sure it all started when I was kid, standing outside one movie theater or another, staring at the poster for that week’s biggest blockbuster or most disreputable exploitation picture, intrigued by all the promises (some, never fulfilled) made by the words and pictures on those big, one-sheet posters.

Much later, after I’d found my way into show business, I began to see and even participate in the marketing of movies and television shows. I learned that not all audiences are the alike. You couldn’t make just one poster. You had to make different posters for different demographic groups, different neighborhoods, different cities and even different countries.

And so, I thought it might be interesting to take a quick survey here of one recently released film’s portfolio of different posters. The movie in question is Quentin Tarantino’s latest, Inglourious Basterds.

We start with the key art most familiar to American audiences…

Here’s a kinder, gentler alternate version for the USA…

No photography, no faces for the United Kingdom…

A strong promise of violence for the audiences in Russia…

Brad Pitt as pulp hero for the people of Poland…

Mélanie Laurent takes center stage for Hungary…

A Bob Peak-style montage for Portugal…

Echoes of the Kill Bill movies for Japanese Tarantino fans…

Invaded by the Nazis in World War II, Slovenia gets this subdued treatment…