2 of our child icons have gone

[Lomax]

ALSO DEAD...

Terry Richards, 1932 - 2014.

Not a name that immediately springs to mind; but a stuntman who worked on (amongst other films) The Dirty Dozen, Where Eagles Dare, From Russia with Love, Goldfinger, Superman II, The Princess Bride, Red Sonja (spit) Tomorrow Never Dies, The World in not Enough, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and Total Recall.

His most memorable role - ten seconds for which he will forever be remembered - was in Raiders of the Lost Ark. He played the gut in back with the huge scimitar who is shot by Harrison Ford. This was slated to be a huge set-piece, but since Ford was ill with dysentery at the time, the scene was shortened, and made cinema history.

[rickyj]

Got another TERRIBLE passing..this one will fly under the radar BUT...Meshach Taylor. He was the infamous goofy guy "Hollywood Montose" in the movie Mannequin--you guys probably remember him...he wore those gaudy outfits and sunglasses and played Andrew Mccarthy's "buddy" in the department store. He was also in Designing woman, that popular sitcom from the 80's.

The other guy Rik Mayall who died also was the infamous crazy nut in DROP DEAD FRED...another classic movie from 1991 (I think)...remember with that girl from Gremlins(forgot her name offhand) where Mayall played her "imaginary friend" that came back to torment her as an adult(he kept calling her "snotface")and he did that stupid "cornflakes disease" bit where he opened his suit up and cornflakes and crap flew out. Remember that anyone? Apparently he was like the big comedy man in England...before Mr. Bean and the dude who did Borat took over.

Man what is it with all these famous people dying...I have an old saying "you know youre getting old when you start seeing celebrities die"

[bbjohn]

Got another TERRIBLE passing..this one will fly under the radar BUT...Meshach Taylor. He was the infamous goofy guy "Hollywood Montose" in the movie Mannequin--you guys probably remember him...he wore those gaudy outfits and sunglasses and played Andrew Mccarthy's "buddy" in the department store. He was also in Designing woman, that popular sitcom from the 80's.

The other guy Rik Mayall who died also was the infamous crazy nut in DROP DEAD FRED...another classic movie from 1991 (I think)...remember with that girl from Gremlins(forgot her name offhand) where Mayall played her "imaginary friend" that came back to torment her as an adult(he kept calling her "snotface")and he did that stupid "cornflakes disease" bit where he opened his suit up and cornflakes and crap flew out. Remember that anyone? Apparently he was like the big comedy man in England...before Mr. Bean and the dude who did Borat took over.

Man what is it with all these famous people dying...I have an old saying "you know youre getting old when you start seeing celebrities die"

The woman in "Drop Dead Fred" was Phoebe Cates. She's married to another well-known actor, Kevin Kline. Her most famous role was in "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," where she had one of the most famous bikini scenes in movie history.

-Big Bad John

[rickyj]

Yah youre right on the name...I just forgot it offhand. She kinda vanished after the 80's. Yeah Fastimes was a great movie--a lot of teenagers today dont even know it exists. In 1994 I took my gf to see it and she had NEVER even HEARD OF IT...I couldnt believe it. She also never saw The Breakfast club either...and she was born in 1976..it's almost mindboggling that a person born in the 70's would have never seen either of those two movie.
Ridgemont high though was overshadowed quickly by brat pack movies of the 80's. All those John Hughes movies basically copied the formula that FasTimes invented. Fasttimes was really the "First" sorta teenager highschool movie--did you know that the writers/director actually had a person go in undercover posing as a student to find out "what teenagers are doing" before they made the movie? I cant think of any other movie that ever did that.
FastTimes Ridgemont high also launched the careers of MANY people...Cates, Sean Penn, Judge Reinhold, Forrest Whittaker, Jennifer Jason Leigh..the movie was like a who's who of people went on to be famous. ANd the infamous bikini scene will go down in history...I didn't see what the big deal was with Cates but the funny part is when she busts Reinhold spanking the monkey (about her) in the bathroom...probably the only movie ever to show something like that..well sorta. Reinhold says the famous line "Doesn't anyone knock anymore??" And those Sean Penn-Mr. Hand(that name is another sexual reference among many in that movie) were total classics...even better than Judd Nelson and Dick Vernon in Breakfast club. When Penn goes, "YOU DICK!" to Mr. Hand's face was probably the funniest line maybe ever. Sean Penn basically invented the whole "California surfer dude" crazy and lingo singlehandedly from that movie. BEfore that the surfer movies were all clean-cut. Frankie Avalon was the polar opposite of Sean Penn. And people imitated Penn's surfer talk for like the next 10 years no matter where you lived. Then of course all that ended almost overnight when they stopped making fun movies and turned into all that grundge/goth stupid crap in the 90's.

[Lomax]

...I didn't see what the big deal was with Cates but the funny part is when she busts Reinhold spanking the monkey (about her) in the bathroom...probably the only movie ever to show something like that..well sorta.

According to legend, Cates' expression of horror was totally genuine, because Reinhold was actually playing with a large dildo which he'd smuggled in without telling her.

[rickyj]

really? didnt know that...im sorta suprised she would be scared though..i mean given the kind of movie she was a part of...and in that mall scene she used a carrot with her mouth to "show" her friend how to do it. I'd figure she would probably not be shocked to find anything unexpected given the kind of movie it was.
Ya know it's kinda wierd...looking back at that movie (32 years old it is already) I would have to see our society has changed a TON since then. It would have been like watching a movie in 1982 about teenage life in 1950 (that's the 32 years equivlent). The question though is do you think our culture has changed MORE between 1950 and 1982, or 1982 and 2014? It's a tough call. I'd say it changed more since 1982...simply because of the digital revolution. If u think about it. really not much changed from 1950 to 1982...i mean everything we had in 1982 we had in 1950 from a tech standpoint...cars, tv, primitive computers even...but just about everything we use today didn't exist AT ALL in 1982. As for culture though, oviously more change from 1950 to 1982. But even that's debatable. Tech has radically transformed our culture as well.

[Fred588]

I was born in 1950 so my memory goes back only to the mid 50s, but there was indeed a good deal of change between then and the early 80s. On the technological side we went from marginally functional black and white TV to full color that really worked, we had the moon program, and the earliest microcomputers were developed. A lot of the changes, however, were of a very different, and VERY profound nature. And, I think, for the better. Racism was rampant, and legal, in the 50s and well into the 60s, for example. And internationally there was, in my opinion, a major shift from a primitive, and very warlike, view to something more sophisticated. I think the change began after the missle crisis of 1962. Coming very, VERY close to an all out nuclear war I think led to many people thinking in terms other than bigger and bigger guns.

really? didnt know that...im sorta suprised she would be scared though..i mean given the kind of movie she was a part of...and in that mall scene she used a carrot with her mouth to "show" her friend how to do it. I'd figure she would probably not be shocked to find anything unexpected given the kind of movie it was.
Ya know it's kinda wierd...looking back at that movie (32 years old it is already) I would have to see our society has changed a TON since then. It would have been like watching a movie in 1982 about teenage life in 1950 (that's the 32 years equivlent). The question though is do you think our culture has changed MORE between 1950 and 1982, or 1982 and 2014? It's a tough call. I'd say it changed more since 1982...simply because of the digital revolution. If u think about it. really not much changed from 1950 to 1982...i mean everything we had in 1982 we had in 1950 from a tech standpoint...cars, tv, primitive computers even...but just about everything we use today didn't exist AT ALL in 1982. As for culture though, oviously more change from 1950 to 1982. But even that's debatable. Tech has radically transformed our culture as well.