In Memorium (Chad McQueen, ‘Karate Kid’ Actor, Dies at 63)

ForeverBlu wrote:John Heard and Melissa Leo had a bitter split and custody battle.

There were allegations of domestic violence.

WyldeMan wrote:

ForeverBlu wrote:John Heard and Melissa Leo had a bitter split and custody battle.

There were allegations of domestic violence.

Heard and Leo were a couple? I never knew that.

Sam Shepard, whose snaggle-toothed smile, craggy good looks and outlaw style as actor and writer made him an American icon in the mold of Gary Cooper and Marlon Brando, died July 27 at home in Kentucky. He was 73 and had been suffering from ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. He was surrounded by family at the time of his death, according to Chris Boneau, a family spokesman.

A Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, actor, author, screenwriter and director, Shepard was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his portrayal of pilot Chuck Yeager in Philip Kaufman’s 1983 film The Right Stuff. The author of 44 plays, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1979 for Buried Child and was best known for such works as Fool for Love, True West and A Lie of the Mind. In 2009 he was named the PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award as a master American dramatist.

Shepard’s screen acting career began with Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven (1978), with Richard Gere and Brooke Adams. He played Ellen Burstyn’s love interest, Cal, in Resurrection (1980). In 1985, Robert Atman adapted Fool for Love with Shepard playing opposite Kim Basinger and Harry Dean Stanton.

The following year, Shepard was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Shepard, like Bob Dylan a Midwest transplant to New York’s creatively roiling, devoutly anti-Establishment downtown scene of the 1960s, came of age in the anarchic, off-off-Broadway theaters – Theatre Genesis, Caffé Cino, Judson Poets’ Theatre and La Mama Experimental Theatre Club. His early plays grafted the energy and often the music of rock ‘n’ roll onto the free-wheeling open verse of protest and youth worship. His affair and collaboration with poet and rocker Patti Smith resulted in Cowboy Mouth, whose hero was described in semi-mythic terms (“a rock-and-roll Jesus with a cowboy mouth”). The 1971 play was performed only once before Shepard, whose wife at the time had just given birth to their son, left town, finding the show “too personal.” In 1966 the American Place Theatre had presented his first full-length play, La Turista, which Shepard trimmed from three acts to two just before opening.

“I was a belligerent asshole back then,” he told me in an interview later. “Really. I mean I was really not a pleasant person to be around. I was rude and belligerent.” He told producer Wynn Handman, “‘Listen, man, it’s too long, let’s make it a two- act play.’ He didn’t even blink an eye. He just said, ‘Fine, whatever works.’ I just dropped the last act and made adjustments in the second act. It worked much better.” But the show, which included an onstage act of fowlicide, infuriated audiences.

“I had my doubts about killing a live chicken onstage every night,” Handman told me. “I told them it was illegal.” The creative team came up with a way of faking the death of the chicken, but the audiences were not assuaged.

Shepard’s plays remained obsessed with American iconography – especially of an idealized West in which cowboys roamed, at odds with modernism, capitalism and most other isms – while addressing serious themes of inequality, disenfranchisement, poverty and anti-militarism that put him in the company of the greatest American playwrights. Those works – Buried Child, Curse of the Starving Class, A Lie of the Mind and others – were significant in influencing a new generation of socially engaged writers across genres, from theater to film and television and poetry; Shepard’s oeuvre includes several volumes of poetry and short stories.

Shepard was born in Fort Sheridan, IL. His partner from 1982 through 2009 was Oscar-winning actress Jessica Lange, with whom he had two children. Survivors include his children, Jesse, Hannah and Walker Shepard, and his sisters, Sandy and Roxanne Rogers. Funeral arrangements remain private. Plans for a public memorial have not yet been determined.

ForeverBlu wrote:Another OG Legend gone.

RIP..

Seeing the first name, I thought it was Sam Elliott or Law and Order Alumn  Sam Waterston.

The latter's daughter recently starred in Alien Covenant and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.

WyldeMan wrote:Today marks the second anniversary of Gary Anderson's passing.

I still miss all our fun arguments.

GrooThePerverted, gone but not forgotten.

Rusty wrote:

WyldeMan wrote:Today marks the second anniversary of Gary Anderson's passing.

I still miss all our fun arguments.

GrooThePerverted, gone but not forgotten.

2 years already? Damn.

Frank Vincent, who played the vicious mob boss Phil Leotardo on The Sopranos, has died. He was 78.

Vincent died Wednesday of complications from heart surgery in New Jersey, according to reports from The Blast and TMZ.

Vincent also portrayed tough guys for director Martin Scorsese in Raging Bull (1980), Goodfellas (1990) — as the real-life Gambino gangster Billy Batts, he with the memorable line, "Go home and get your shine box!" — and Casino (1995).

On HBO's The Sopranos, Leotardo often butted heads with James Gandolfini's Tony Soprano as he eventually rose to become boss of the Lupertazzi crime family.
"He didn't fool around. Phil was serious," Vincent said in a 2011 interview. "He had a job to do and he thought, you know, 'This Soprano guy is from Jersey, what does that mean? We are New Yorkers! The Jersey mob is nothing — they don't even prick their fingers when they do the ceremony.' Some of the writing for Phil was just brilliant."

His film résumé also included The Pope of Greenwich Village (1984), Brian De Palma's Wise Guys (1986), Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing (1989) and Jungle Fever (1991), Sidney Lumet's Night Falls on Manhattan (1996), James Mangold's Cop Land (1997), Shark Tale (2004) and Chicago Overcoat (2009).

Vincent also appeared in Hype Williams' Belly (1998) and served as the official acting coach to rappers DMX, Nas and Method Man on the film.

A native of North Adams, Mass., Vincent was raised in Jersey City, N.J. and became a drummer, performing with the likes of Paul Anka, Del Shannon, Steve Lawrence & Eydie Gorme and Trini Lopez and the Belmonts.

Vincent played a gambler who gets killed by the mob in The Death Collector (1976) — the film starred Joe Pesci, a pal who helped get him the role — then was cast alongside Pesci and Robert De Niro as Salvi in the iconic boxing movie Raging Bull. In that film, Vincent's character is beaten up in the Copacabana by Pesci's Joey.

In 2006, Vincent co-wrote the book A Guy’s Guide to Being a Man’s Man.

Tyger wrote:Harry Dean Stanton

Nooooooooooooo

Rusty wrote:Hugh Hefner has passed.

WyldeMan wrote:

Rusty wrote:Hugh Hefner has passed.

WOAH, I thought any man who powered entirely by 20 year old pussy would like forever. You know, Fountain of Youth and all that...

That dude had a hell of a life and now he can finally rest.

Rusty wrote:The old adage "at least he's in a better place now" just doesn't ring true for Hef.

Tyger wrote:Tom Petty, damn. Legends are dropping so fast lately.

WyldeMan wrote:Hef has been dead for five days and Brett Ratner is now directing a Biopic on his life starring that shit bird emo bitch Jared Leto......

UltimateMarvel wrote:

WyldeMan wrote:Hef has been dead for five days and Brett Ratner is now directing a Biopic on his life starring that shit bird emo bitch Jared Leto......

You mean one of the GREATEST actors of our generation? I still think he can act. It's too early to be doing a Biopic on him though.

Tyger wrote:Leto doesn't deserve to pretend to be Hef's driver.

Brad Bufanda, who played Felix Toombs on the first two seasons of Veronica Mars, committed suicide Wednesday. He was 34.

“We are completely devastated for he was an extremely talented young actor and wonderful, caring human being,” said Bufanda’s manager Kirsten Solem in a press statement. “He was reviving his career having just completed two movies and we are shocked and saddened by his passing. The family would appreciate privacy at this difficult time.”

According to police reports, Bufanda committed suicide by jumping from a building.

Bufanda began his acting career before his teens, making appearances in the late 1990s and early 2000s on Roseanne, Hangin’ with Mr. Cooper, Malcolm in the Middle, Even Stevens and Days of Our Lives. Later he appeared on CSI: Miami, Boston Public and the 2004 feature A Cinderella Story.

But it was his recurring role as Felix on Veronica Mars during the series’ stint on UPN that took Bufanda out of his single-episode streak. He was later a series regular on Cinemax’s Co-Ed Confidential.

Tyger wrote:Wow, damn

joey con carne wrote:I'm not trying to be funny but jumping's gotta be the worst way to go. Imagine you change your mind while falling. That's fucked up.

Malcolm Young, the rhythm guitar player and founding member of heavy metal legends AC/DC, has died, the group announced Saturday. He was 64.

Known for the powerhouse riffs and rhythm guitar that propelled the group from Sydney, Australia, to superstardom, Young had been suffering from dementia for the past three years, the Australian Associated Press reported.

He died peacefully on Saturday with his family by his bedside, the news agency reported.

Young started the band with his brother Angus Young in 1973.

“As a guitarist, songwriter and visionary he was a perfectionist and a unique man,” Angus Young said on the AC/DC website. “He always stuck to his guns and did and said exactly what he wanted. He took great pride in all that he endeavored. His loyalty to the fans was unsurpassed.

“As his brother it is hard to express in words what he has meant to me during my life, the bond we had was unique and very special.

“He leaves behind an enormous legacy that will live on forever. Malcolm, job well done.”

Malcolm was replaced by nephew Stevie for the band’s last tour promoting the 2014 album Rock Or Bust.

“Renowned for his musical prowess, Malcolm was a songwriter, guitarist, performer, producer and visionary who inspired many,” AC/DC said in a statement.

“From the outset, he knew what he wanted to achieve and, along with his younger brother, took to the world stage giving their all at every show. Nothing less would do for their fans.”

He is survived by his wife O’Linda and two children.

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Charles Manson, the hippie cult leader who became the hypnotic-eyed face of evil across America after masterminding the gruesome murders of pregnant actress Sharon Tate and six others in Los Angeles during the summer of 1969, died Sunday night after nearly a half-century in prison. He was 83.

Manson died of natural causes at a California hospital while serving a life sentence, his name synonymous to this day with unspeakable violence and depravity.

Michele Hanisee, president of the Association of Deputy District Attorneys for Los Angeles County, reacted to the death by quoting the late Vincent Bugliosi, the prosecutor who put Manson behind bars. Bugliosi said: "Manson was an evil, sophisticated con man with twisted and warped moral values."

"Today, Manson's victims are the ones who should be remembered and mourned on the occasion of his death," Hanisee said.

A petty criminal who had been in and out of jail since childhood, the charismatic, guru-like Manson surrounded himself in the 1960s with runaways and other lost souls and then sent his disciples to butcher some of L.A.'s rich and famous in what prosecutors said was a bid to trigger a race war — an idea he got from a twisted reading of the Beatles song "Helter Skelter."

The slayings horrified the world and, together with the deadly violence that erupted later in 1969 during a Rolling Stones concert at California's Altamont Speedway, exposed the dangerous, drugged-out underside of the counterculture movement and seemed to mark the death of the era of peace and love.

Despite the overwhelming evidence against him, Manson maintained during his tumultuous trial in 1970 that he was innocent and that society itself was guilty.

"These children that come at you with knives, they are your children. You taught them; I didn't teach them. I just tried to help them stand up," he said in a courtroom soliloquy.

Linda Deutsch, the longtime courts reporter for The Associated Press who covered the Manson case, said he "left a legacy of evil and hate and murder."

"He was able to take young people who were impressionable and convince them he had the answer to everything and he turned them into killers," she said. "It was beyond anything we had ever seen before in this country."

California Corrections Department spokeswoman Vicky Waters said it has yet to be determined what happens to Manson's body. It was also unclear if Manson requested funeral services of any sort.

Prison officials previously said Manson had no known next of kin, and state law says that if no relative or legal representative surfaces within 10 days, then it's up to the department to determine whether the body is cremated or buried.

The Manson Family, as his followers were called, slaughtered five of its victims on Aug. 9, 1969, at Tate's home: the actress, who was 8½ months pregnant, coffee heiress Abigail Folger, celebrity hairdresser Jay Sebring, Polish movie director Voityck Frykowski and Steven Parent, a friend of the estate's caretaker. Tate's husband, "Rosemary's Baby" director Roman Polanski, was out of the country at the time.

The next night, a wealthy grocer and his wife, Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, were stabbed to death in their home across town.

The killers scrawled such phrases as "Pigs" and a misspelled "Healter Skelter" in blood at the crime scenes.

Manson was arrested three months later. In the annals of American crime, he became the personification of evil, a short, shaggy-haired, bearded figure with a demonic stare and an "X'' — later turned into a swastika — carved into his forehead.

"Many people I know in Los Angeles believe that the Sixties ended abruptly on August 9, 1969," author Joan Didion wrote in her 1979 book "The White Album."

After a trial that lasted nearly a year, Manson and three followers — Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten — were found guilty of murder and sentenced to death. Another defendant, Charles "Tex" Watson, was convicted later. All were spared execution and given life sentences after the California Supreme Court struck down the death penalty in 1972.

Atkins died behind bars in 2009. Krenwinkel, Van Houten and Watson remain in prison.

Another Manson devotee, Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, tried to assassinate President Gerald Ford in 1975, but her gun jammed. She served 34 years in prison.

Manson was born in Cincinnati on Nov. 12, 1934, to a teenager, possibly a prostitute, and was in reform school by the time he was 8. After serving a 10-year sentence for check forgery in the 1960s, Manson was said to have pleaded with authorities not to release him because he considered prison home.

"My father is the jailhouse. My father is your system," he would later say in a monologue on the witness stand. "I am only what you made me. I am only a reflection of you."

He was set free in San Francisco during the heyday of the hippie movement in the city's Haight-Ashbury section, and though he was in his mid-30s by then, he began collecting followers — mostly women — who likened him to Jesus Christ. Most were teenagers; many came from good homes but were at odds with their parents.

The "family" eventually established a commune-like base at the Spahn Ranch, a ramshackle former movie location outside Los Angeles, where Manson manipulated his followers with drugs, oversaw orgies and subjected them to bizarre lectures.

He had musical ambitions and befriended rock stars, including Beach Boy Dennis Wilson. He also met Terry Melcher, a music producer who had lived in the same house that Polanski and Tate later rented.

By the summer of 1969, Manson had failed to sell his songs, and the rejection was later seen as a trigger for the violence. He complained that Wilson took a Manson song called "Cease to Exist," revised it into "Never Learn Not to Love" and recorded it with the Beach Boys without giving Manson credit.

Manson was obsessed with Beatles music, particularly "Piggies" and "Helter Skelter," a hard-rocking song that he interpreted as forecasting the end of the world. He told his followers that "Helter Skelter is coming down" and predicted a race war would destroy the planet.

"Everybody attached themselves to us, whether it was our fault or not," the Beatles' George Harrison, who wrote "Piggies," later said of the murders. "It was upsetting to be associated with something so sleazy as Charles Manson."

According to testimony, Manson sent his devotees out on the night of Tate's murder with instructions to "do something witchy." The state's star witness, Linda Kasabian, who was granted immunity, testified that Manson tied up the LaBiancas, then ordered his followers to kill. But Manson insisted: "I have killed no one, and I have ordered no one to be killed."

His trial was nearly scuttled when President Richard Nixon said Manson was "guilty, directly or indirectly." Manson grabbed a newspaper and held up the front-page headline for jurors to read: "Manson Guilty, Nixon Declares." Attorneys demanded a mistrial but were turned down.

From then on, jurors, sequestered at a hotel for 10 months, traveled to and from the courtroom in buses with blacked-out windows so they could not read the headlines on newsstands.

Manson was also later convicted of the slayings of a musician and a stuntman.

Over the decades, Manson and his followers appeared sporadically at parole hearings, where their bids for freedom were repeatedly rejected. The women suggested they had been rehabilitated, but Manson himself stopped attending, saying prison had become his home.

The killings inspired movies and TV shows, and Bugliosi, the prosecutor, wrote a best-selling book about the murders, "Helter Skelter." The macabre rock star Marilyn Manson borrowed part of his stage name from the killer.

"The Manson case, to this day, remains one of the most chilling in crime history," veteran crime reporter Theo Wilson wrote in her 1998 memoir, "Headline Justice: Inside the Courtroom — The Country's Most Controversial Trials." ''Even people who were not yet born when the murders took place know the name Charles Manson, and shudder."

AP writer Michelle A. Monroe contributed to this report. This story contains biographical information compiled by former AP Special Correspondent Linda Deutsch. Deutsch covered the Tate-La Bianca killings and the Manson trial for The Associated Press and has written about the Manson family for four decades.

Steve Reevis Dies: ‘Fargo’ & ‘Dances With Wolves’ Actor Was 55

Steve Reevis, an actor known for playing Shep Proudfoot in the Coen brothers’ Fargo and also appeared in the Best Picture Oscar winner Dances With Wolves, died unexpectedly on December 7 of unknown causes while at home on the Blackfeet reservation in Montana. He was 55.

Reevis is a member of the Blackfoot tribe and had his first role in film as a stunt rider in the 1987 film War Party. He went on to appear in many films including Geronimo, Last of the Dogmen, Twins, The Doors, Wild Bill, Crazy Horse, Texas Ranger and the 2005 remake of The Longest Yard.

His television credits include the mini-series Into the West, JAG, Walker, Texas Ranger and many others.

In 1996’s Fargo, Reevis played the mechanic whose criminal past led his boss, car dealer Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy), to ask where he could find someone to kidnap his  wife. He later attacks Carl Showalter (Steve Buscemi) and others in a motel room before going on the lam.

Reevis had a nonspeaking role as a Cheyenne warrior in Dances with Wolves starring Kevin Costner.

His roles in Crazy Horse and Fargo earned him an award from First Americans in the Arts in 1996. He continued to receive many accolades throughout his acting career.

Reevis is survived by his wife, Macile, and four children.

joey con carne wrote:I heard that on the radio this afternoon. I heard them say something about being bi-polar.

I love how the media just jumps to conclusions about shit when it comes to celebrities. I mean, was she bi-polar and did that contribute to her death? Who gives a shit. But the news reporters wanted to infer that it was the cause. Not cool.