John Landis Takes Seat As Turner Classic Movies Guest Programmer for March
John Landis Takes Seat As Turner Classic Movies Guest Programmer for March
From TCM:
Award-winning director John Landis (National Lampoon’s Animal House, An American Werewolf in London) is bringing his off-center sense of humor and abundant knowledge of cinema to Turner Classic Movies (TCM) this March, when he presents a collection of favorite films in the latest edition of the network’s GUEST PROGRAMMER series. Each month on this movie showcase, TCM invites a celebrity to exchange star status for a role as a devoted fan of classic film by picking a few favorite movies and sharing with viewers what he or she has come to love about each one. Landis will join TCM host Robert Osborne to present seven memorable films – including a Buster Keaton classic; three shorts featuring Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle and Mabel Normand; a classic, groundbreaking musical; a cult horror film; and a masterful thriller from Alfred Hitchcock – on Monday, March 16, beginning at 8 p.m. (ET).
Landishas chosen the following films for his chance in the TCM programmer’s chair: Buster Keaton’s classic comedy The Navigator (1924 – 8 p.m.), in which the stone-faced actor winds up on a sinking ocean liner; Mabel and Fatty’s Wash Day (1915 – 9:15 p.m.), with Mabel Normand and Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle in a comic short about a henpecked husband’s innocent friendship with a married woman; The Brain that Wouldn’t Die(1963 – 9:30 p.m.), starring Herb Evers (aka Jason Evers) and Virginia Leith in the story of a surgeon looking for a new body for his girlfriend’s head; He Did and He Didn’t (1916 – 10:45 p.m.), starring Normand and Arbuckle in a comedy about a gormandizing doctor who imagines his wife is unfaithful; Show Boat (1936 – 11:15 p.m.), with Irene Dunne and Paul Robeson in director James Whale’s version of the Kern-Hammerstein musical; Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy (1972 – 1:15 a.m.), starring Jon Finch and Barry Foster in the suspenseful and darkly humorous tale of an innocent man suspected of being a serial strangler; and Fatty and Mabel’s Simple Life (1915 – 3:15 a.m.), featuring Arbuckle and Normand as secret lovers down on the farm.
Landis’ extensive film credits include National Lampoon’s Animal House, The Blues Brothers, An American Werewolf in London, Trading Places, Three Amigos!, Into the Night, Spies Like Us, Coming to America and Innocent Blood. He also wrote, produced and directed Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” one of the most popular music videos of all time, and directed Jackson’s “Black and White” video. He also directed the critically acclaimed documentary Slasher.
Landis is also an active television producer and director, with such credits as Dream On, Psych, Masters of Horror, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.
Throughout his career, Landis has picked up numerous honors, including a recent Emmy® for the special Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project. He has earned several People’s Choice Awards and CableACEs, the prestigious W.C. Handy Award, an NAACP Image Award and various international film and television festival honors. He was made a Chevalier dans l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government in 1985 and was awarded the Federico Fellini Prize by Rimini Cinema in Italy during the ‘90s. The Eastman House in Rochester, N.Y., has named him a George Eastman Scholar. A retrospective of his film work was held at the Toronto Film Festival in 2004, and he earned the Time Machine Career Achievement Award at the Sitges Film Festival in Spain. Last month, the Cinematheque Francais had a complete Landis retrospective in Paris.
Landis’ next project will be Burke and Hare, the story of the legendary grave robbers, for Ealing Studios in London.