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      Susan Backlinie, First Shark Attack Victim in ‘Jaws,’ Dies at 77

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      Ms. Backlinie, a stunt woman, appeared in the terrifying opening scene of the 1975 blockbuster in which a great white shark attacks.The actress and stunt woman Susan Backlinie, whose portrayal of a violent death as the first shark attack victim in the opening scene of the blockbuster movie “Jaws” terrified moviegoers, died on Saturday. She was 77.Ms. Backlinie died at her home in California, her agent, Sean Clark, said on Sunday. He said she had a heart attack.“Jaws,” the 1975 movie directed by Steven Spielberg, memorably features Ms. Backlinie in a scene in which she played a skinny-dipper, Chrissie Watkins, who runs along the beach and dives into the water for a nighttime swim.The placid scene is shattered as she is suddenly pulled under the water. She screams while being violently thrashed by an unseen great white shark and tries desperately to cling to a clanging buoy only to be pulled below the water one final time.For the scene, Ms. Backlinie was secured to a harness, according to The Daily Jaws website. The Palm Beach Post reported that Ms. Backlinie was wearing a pair of jeans with metal plates stitched into the sides with cables attached.Susan Backlinie getting prepared for her memorable opening scene from “Jaws.”MPTV, via ReutersWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Roger Corman’s Best Movies: A Streaming Guide

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      The producer and director ran what was essentially a trade school for future stars and filmmakers like Jack Nicholson, Francis Ford Coppola and Pam Grier.It’s almost impossible to measure the impact Roger Corman, who died Thursday at 98, had on independent genre filmmaking and the careers of emerging young directors, performers and crew members who cut their teeth under his tutelage. As a producer, Corman mastered the economics of drive-in movies and B-pictures, turning out consistently profitable work that gave the audience what it wanted while allowing for a little creative flexibility. Directors like Francis Ford Coppola, Jonathan Demme, Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard, Joe Dante and John Sayles didn’t exactly do their best work under Corman, nor did future stars like Peter Fonda, Bruce Dern, Jack Nicholson, Pam Grier and Diane Ladd. But his productions were like a trade school for New Hollywood.The 13 films below only scratch the surface of Corman’s huge filmography, but they do provide a glimpse into his ambition and his sensibility as both a director and a micro studio boss. From the macabre comedy of early films like “A Bucket of Blood” and “The Little Shop of Horrors” to heady forays into science fiction and the work of Edgar Allan Poe, Corman’s work as a director signaled the dime-stretching ingenuity that would define his tenure at New World Pictures, where he developed a formula for making money while revealing a keen eye for recognizing talent. Beatniks, bikers, gear heads, voyeurs, outcasts and rebels — all had a place in Corman’s world, on both sides of the screen.1959‘A Bucket of Blood’Stream it on AMC+ and Shudder. Rent it on Amazon and Apple TV.From early in his career, Corman took a keen interest in the emerging counterculture, even as he personally understood himself as an outsider. That dynamic animates his fiendishly clever, ultra-low-budget comedy about a square who schemes his way into the cool crowd through macabre means. “A Bucket of Blood” would turn out to be a rare lead role for legendary character actor Dick Miller. He stars as the busboy at a beatnik bar who uses his incredibly lifelike sculptures to impress the hip clientele. His secret? Best not to break through the plaster and find out.1960‘The Little Shop of Horrors’Stream it on AMC+. Rent it on Amazon, Apple TV, Fandango at Home, Google Play and YouTube.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Why ‘The Jinx’ Owes Its Existence to a Bizarre Movie About Robert Durst

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      Film can be influential in strange ways. The HBO series and follow-up wouldn’t have been made if a killer hadn’t taken a liking to a fictional portrayal.Years ago, while doing my civic duty in a Brooklyn courthouse, I was amused to be asked during jury selection if I watched “The Wire.” The lawyer explained that people’s understanding of what constituted evidence, guilt and crime were often tilted by the kind of media they watched. I did watch “The Wire.” I was dismissed.That experience came to mind while viewing “The Jinx: Part Two,” the follow-up series to Andrew Jarecki’s hit HBO original that’s largely responsible for the general public’s awareness of the real estate heir and convicted murderer Robert Durst. In the 2015 finale of “The Jinx,” Durst infamously said on a hot mic — seemingly by accident — that he’d murdered his best friend, Susan Berman; his wife, Kathie McCormack Durst, who had disappeared; and his neighbor Morris Black.The most recent episode of the new show focuses on Berman and a prosecutor’s argument that she helped Durst cover up Kathie’s death by posing as the dead woman on a phone call. The prosecution said Durst killed Berman in 2000 to keep the secret from getting out.Durst’s defense attorney, David Chesnoff, says on-camera that he was “salivating” because he believed they had “a tremendous reasonable doubt argument.” That is not surprising. What’s interesting is the tack he took.Chesnoff is shown in court thunderously defending Durst to the jury, saying that the theory that Berman posed as Kathie Durst “was spun from whole cloth.” He adds, “It began in part as the result of a fictional movie that Jarecki made.” Fictional, he emphasizes twice more, and really leans into that angle, bringing it up several more times, including on a slide that reads, “The evidence will show that the prosecution’s case is based on speculation, a flawed investigation, and their work with Hollywood producers.”If you don’t really know, or remember, what Chesnoff is talking about, the episode doesn’t make it all that clear. What he’s pointing to is “All Good Things,” Jarecki’s 2010 drama about a real estate heir named David Marks (Ryan Gosling), whose wife, Katie (Kirsten Dunst), mysteriously disappears. Marks is obviously modeled on Robert Durst, and Katie on Kathie. Berman’s stand-in, Deborah Lehrman, is played by Lily Rabe. As Chesnoff talks in the “Jinx” episode, red carpet footage from the “All Good Things” premiere briefly appears, as do clips of Lehrman posing as Katie and making a call from a pay phone.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Anya Taylor-Joy Went Through the Wringer for ‘Furiosa’

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      There’s nothing normal about making a “Mad Max” movie, and Anya Taylor-Joy knew that when she signed on to star in “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga,” the newest film in George Miller’s long-running action series.“I wanted to be changed,” she said. “I wanted to be put in a situation in extremis where I would have no choice but to grow. And I got it.”Trials by fire don’t burn much hotter than the conflagration that consumed “Mad Max: Fury Road” (2015), the most recent film in the franchise, which was one of the most infamously difficult productions in Hollywood history. In the works for nearly two decades, the movie was shut down several times by studio executives, who feared they were producing a big-budget boondoggle. And the constant clashes between Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron, two of its stars, in the remote Namibian desert required outside intervention.Despite all of those headwinds, “Fury Road” was hailed upon its release as one of the greatest action films ever made; it would go on to win six Oscars and net a spot on many critics’ best-of-the-decade lists. Its success paved the way for the prequel “Furiosa,” in theaters May 24, which casts the 28-year-old Taylor-Joy as a younger version of Theron’s iconic warrior woman.Plucked from her idyllic home by bandits, Furiosa grows up shuttled between two captors, the gabby psychopath Dementus (Chris Hemsworth) and the hulking warlord Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme). Furiosa faces constant danger on both sides, and she strives to survive long enough to escape, keen to exact revenge on those who have taken everything from her.Though Theron still casts a long shadow, Taylor-Joy stakes her claim on the role with a formidable ferocity: Under the grease that Furiosa smears on her face like war paint, the actress’s distinctive wide-set eyes blaze bright with righteous anger. To make Furiosa her own, she allowed herself to be put through an emotional and physical wringer for six and a half months. How did she feel in late 2022, when she finally wrapped the arduous production?We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Roger Corman, Producer of Low-Budget Horror Films, Dies at 98

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      He had hundreds of horror, science fiction and crime films to his credit. He also helped start the careers of Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola and many others.Roger Corman, who for decades dominated the world of B movies as the producer or director of countless proudly low-budget horror, science fiction and crime films, died on Thursday at his home in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 98. His death was confirmed in a statement by his family posted late Saturday on his official Instagram page.Mr. Corman produced more than 300 films and directed roughly 50 of them, including cult classics like “A Bucket of Blood” (1959), “The Masque of the Red Death” (1964), “The Wild Angels” (1966) and the original “The Little Shop of Horrors” (1960), which he shot for $35,000 in two days on a set left over from somebody else’s movie.When he got tired of directing, he opened the door to Hollywood for talented young protégés like Francis Ford Coppola (“Dementia 13”), Martin Scorsese (“Boxcar Bertha”), Jonathan Demme (“Caged Heat”), Peter Bogdanovich (“Targets”) and Ron Howard (“Grand Theft Auto”).Mr. Corman “was able to nurture other talent in a way that was never envious or difficult but always generous,” Mr. Scorsese said of him. “He once said: ‘Martin, what you have to get is a very good first reel, because people want to know what’s going on. Then you need a very good last reel, because people want to hear how it all turns out. Everything else doesn’t really matter.’ Probably the best sense I have ever heard about the movies.”Among the others Mr. Corman nurtured was Jack Nicholson, who was 21 when Mr. Corman gave him his first movie role, the lead in “The Cry Baby Killer” (1958), and 23 when he had a small part as a masochistic dental patient in “The Little Shop of Horrors.” Before he went on to stardom, Mr. Nicholson acted in eight Corman movies and wrote three of them, including “The Trip,” an uncautionary tale about LSD.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Jeannie Epper, Groundbreaking Stunt Double on ‘Wonder Woman,’ Dies at 83

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      Her first stunt was riding a horse bareback down a cliff when she was 9. She went on to soar on the hit TV series “Wonder Woman” and in many other places.Jeannie Epper had at least 100 screen roles, maybe even 150 — no one is quite sure. But because she was a stunt double, galloping on horseback, crashing cars and kicking down doors for the stars of films and television shows, hers was not a household name.In her heyday, however, Ms. Epper was ubiquitous. She hurtled through the air most weeks as Lynda Carter’s stunt double on the hit television series “Wonder Woman” and mimed Ms. Carter’s leggy lope. She tumbled through a scrum of mud and rocks as Kathleen Turner’s double in the 1984 comedy-adventure film “Romancing the Stone,” which also starred Michael Douglas. She threw punches for Linda Evans in one of her many ballyhooed cat fights with Joan Collins on the frothy long-running 1980s nighttime soap opera “Dynasty.”And, in what she often said was her favorite stunt — or gag, to use the industry term — Ms. Epper skidded a Corvette into a 180-degree turn as Shirley MacLaine’s character in “Terms of Endearment” (1983), neatly hurling Jack Nicholson’s double into the Gulf of Mexico.Ms. Epper, whose bruising career spanned 70 years, died on Sunday at her home in Simi Valley, Calif. She was 83.Her daughter, Eurlyne Epper, confirmed the death. She said her mother had been ill for some time and caught an infection during a recent hospital visit.Ms. Epper, second from the left, in 1960, next to her husband at the time, Richard Spaethe, and their son, Richard. Her brother Tony and her sister Stephanie, also stunt performers, are sitting next to her on the fence. Another stuntman, Dick Hock, stands next to them with his wife, Margo, and their son, Johnnie.Los Angeles Examiner/USC Libraries — Corbis, via Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Cannes: Coralie Fargeat Doesn’t Shy Away From Gore in Her Films

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      The director Coralie Fargeat’s films don’t shy away from violence and gore, including her latest which is vying for the top prize at Cannes.The movies of Coralie Fargeat are not for the fainthearted: Blood and gore play an absolutely central role.There was so much of it in her body-horror movie “Revenge” (2017) — her first full-length feature — that, on set in Morocco, extra quantities of fake blood had to be constantly prepared using ingredients shipped over from France.Fargeat’s new title “The Substance” — starring Margaret Qualley, Demi Moore and Dennis Quaid — promises to be no less violent and is one of 22 contenders for the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, which begins on Tuesday.Fargeat, who was born in Paris, took up filmmaking from a very young age, making little movies of her toys, and developed a passion for genre movies thanks to her grandfather, who let the 12- or 13-year-old Coralie watch films her parents considered too violent: the “Rambo” series, “RoboCop” and “The Fly.”Later, while finishing her university studies at Sciences Po in Paris, she noticed a film shoot in the university courtyard one day and asked the assistant director for an internship. She interned on the set of his next movie, and spent the next two years doing other internships to learn the ropes.Releasing a number of critically acclaimed shorts, she presented “Revenge” at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2017 and got plenty of attention.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      At Cannes, Un Certain Regard Offers a Different Perspective

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      While not receiving the same attention as the main competition, the sidebar is where you often glimpse the future of cinema.The British filmmaker Molly Manning Walker was on vacation in Rome on May 26, 2023, when her phone rang. A week earlier, her feature debut “How to Have Sex” had premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. Now, festival organizers were calling because her movie, about a group of 16-year-old girls who spend a debauched booze and sex-soaked summer vacation on the Greek island of Crete, had won a prize that would be announced at that evening’s closing ceremony back on the Côte d’Azur.“I had to drive to the nearest airport really quickly and get on the next plane and I ran in three minutes after the film had been announced,” Manning Walker, 30, recalled in a recent phone interview.She wasn’t exaggerating. She did, in fact, bolt into the cinema wearing a lime green T-shirt and black tennis shorts. “What the hell is going on?” she asked the audience in disbelief. The answer was that “How to Have Sex” had won the top award in Un Certain Regard, the sidebar section at the festival that is known for recognizing films by new and emerging directors.While the starry main competition at Cannes — which begins on Tuesday, and this year features new work by David Cronenberg, Francis Ford Coppola, Yorgos Lanthimos and other established filmmakers — attracts most of the media’s attention, Un Certain Regard, which translates to “a certain look,” is where one can most reliably glimpse where world cinema is headed. In the words of Thierry Frémaux, Cannes’s artistic director, “U.C.R. discovers and celebrates the new generation and expands the frontiers of cinema.”Last year, Molly Manning Walker rushed back from Rome to Cannes to accept the prize for her feature debut, “How to Have Sex.”Ammar Abd Rabbo/Abaca/Sipa, via Associated PressIn an email interview, Frémaux, who heads the viewing committee that selects the films that screen at the festival, said that Un Certain Regard’s purpose was “to bring out new trends, new paths, new countries of cinema. It’s a selection that favors young filmmakers, especially female directors, and prepares the emergence of future generations.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More