20160408

THE LEGACY

Cryptic references to 'the Six' were made in the 1979 occult movie, 'The Legacy' starring Katharine Ross as Maggie, who was a descendant of a witch. The film which dabbled in black magic was directed by Richard Marquand. Based on John Coyne's 1978 best-selling fiction, 'The Legacy' centered around a group of 6 possessed souls who convened at a haunted old 17th century English countryside manor house, which was presided over by Lord Jason Mountolive. After one by one became victims of mysterious supernatural force, the remaining survivor inherited The Legacy, the unlimited power of an incredibly aged wizard. 

Dave Chenoweth of 'The Gazette, Montreal' noted, "Classical theology says that the Dark One can never be truly creative – that spark comes from God alone – and the main evil of 'Legacy' is that it is totally uninspired." John Coyne believed, "A storyteller is someone who can hold an audience. It might be a story told around a campfire or in a bar after work. The magic for any 'storyteller' is the ability to construct a narrate that has a beginning, middle and end, and that travels as straight and true as an arrow shot from a bow."

One Salesian priest observed in 1987, "The contemporary world doesn’t like mystery, it likes control. But Jesus gave himself up to mystery." Albert Schweitzer argued, "Each successive epoch found its own thoughts in Jesus, which was, indeed, the only way in which it could make him live." Each generation "created him in accordance with one's own character. There is no historical task which so reveals someone's true self as the writing of a 'Life of Jesus.'"

By 1981, Katharine told Dan Lewis of the 'Sarasota Journal', "Television is where it's at today. There may be a lot of junk on the air, but there is also a lot of quality on television. There are so few good roles for women in feature films that it creates a big scramble among actresses. Television has more interesting roles for women." However Katharine also recognized, "Network TV is an advertising medium. Sponsors or network officials would have interfered with the production. It would have been broken up by commercials."  

Richard Marquand also directed 'Return of the Jedi'. He told Lee Goldberg of 'Starlog' magazine in 1983, "If you are the director, you are really the man who says what goes. There are always stories in the movie industry about directors getting pushed around by producers. But, all those producers are people who really don't understand how movies get made. You can only really have one person doing that job. The good thing about George Lucas is he knows that fact.

"The actors who needed to know knew well in advance of shooting what was going to happen. They had their scripts. Any actors who we felt were security risks were given other (fake) scripts. There was one particular actor who gave an interview to the English press about the movie's plot, which extremely upset us. But we knew that actor was a security risk and had actually not given him the correct lines of dialog. He fell completely into the trap. And there he was, having lunch with the English press one day. The next morning, the paper came out, having printed all this totally misleading information."

As reported, "Unlike most directors, Marquand films some of his rehearsals." Richard explained, "The reason I do that is because it makes the crew suddenly realize we are actually shooting film. There's a different quality to the way people act when they know film is going through the gate than if it's just a rehearsal and we're moving the camera around. Very often you find that the first take has a quality to it, it's a sort of an angst, that the adrenalin is really pumping and often you get some wonderful stuff. It's money well invested to get as much on the negative as you can in one day."

Richard Marquand also made the point, "Many people get completely carried away by the superficial, the science-fiction aspect of the movie. That's like being completely enthralled with the frame around a Picasso. Science-fiction is not really what it's about. It happens to be set in that world because that's where the saga works best. I don't want to get pompous here, but 'Jedi' does set up some echoes in your mind and in your heart. It deals with life and death of man, which is very important stuff.

"There are sequels and there are sequels. Is this a sequel? What this film does is end the third chapter of a coherent story. 'Superman III' isn't the coherent end of anything, it's just a remake of the same movie. James Bond is merely a remake of an old movie, too. You just hope that this time they can re-manipulate your characters and come up with something slightly different. The actual 'Star Wars' saga from chapters one through 9 is a total symphony, if you like, though it's actually just a movie. You know what I mean? I'm not making a sequel. I'm doing the 3rd movement of a piece of music. The themes are being developed and ended here. That's why it's satisfying. I don't know if I could do a sequel.

"There are some deeply sad moments. Not everything ends as you necessarily expect it to end. There are such interesting revelations about the characters and there are still open endings for most of them. And there are places to go for those who don't die. When I went to see 'Star Wars', I was completely bowled over by the experience, by the mythological storyline as well as the incredible creations in the story and the way it was technically made. I had never seen anything like it as an emotional human being or as a moviemaker. All you can do is tell the story your way, the best that you can. I must say I like the way George made 'Star Wars', the way he set it up and did it was extremely clever. He made it seem to have a very simple surface, but, in fact, it had a very dense, complex background to it.

"I preferred that surface naiveté to the much more sophisticated way (Irvin) Kershner told his story. His style very much suited this rather more dark, metallic 2nd section of the saga. I think this 3rd segment has a different kind of glow and flavor to it. But, I tried to make it simple because the textures in 'Jedi' are so very, very complex. There's a world of new people and some of them are incredibly difficult to appreciate at first meeting. I felt an enormous surge of pleasure when I discovered there was going to be another one. It was as though a group of long-lost members of my family had phoned to say they were stopping by the house."

"I had wanted to be an actor since I was 9," Sam Elliot told John Hartl of 'The Seattle Times' in 2015. "Clearly, I just went to too many films when I was a kid. I got very lucky after moving south (to L.A.). I got an agent and I got a portfolio of photos together. The first meeting they took me on was over at Fox, where they had one of those old contract programs still, and I was signed to a term contract." Sam also told David Hochman of 'AARP The Magazine', "I was one of the early guys from my generation to have hair on his face. Me and Tom Selleck, and I was first. I shaved clean and combed my hair straight back for a show called 'Justified' on FX this year (2015). It was fun transforming my look, but I did feel naked without the mustache."

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