Happy new year! Wow, 2023! Last night I was reminded by various social media posts of that New Year’s Eve classic, Irwin Allen’s The Poseidon Adventure.
I read an article where Ben Stiller talks about how heartbroken he was when he met Gene Hackman on The Royal Tenenbaums and told him how much he loves this movie:
“The whole shoot, I was waiting to get up the nerve—because he’s an intimidating guy—to tell him how much Poseidon Adventure meant to me. So, two days before the shoot was over, finally, there’s this quiet moment. I said, ‘Gene, I just want to say it’s just been amazing working with you—and I didn’t say this before, but really for me, Poseidon Adventure is probably one of the most important movies for me, ever, because it really made me want to be a filmmaker, to be in movies, and I saw it multiple times and it just really, really changed my life.”
Hackman took a moment, then looked at Stiller. “Oh yeah. Money job.”
Then he walked away. Haha! Hackman was notoriously difficult.
I have a celebrity story of my own. It involves Irwin Allen’s wife, Sheila Mathews Allen, who often guest starred in his productions (including Poseidon).
Years ago I was at a memorabilia event aboard the Queen Mary (where Poseidon was filmed) and had a table to sell FSM CDs—including The Poseidon Adventure. (This was the event where I met Bob Culp—speaking of difficult!)
None other than Sheila Allen walked by—and I don’t remember exactly how this transpired, but if you can imagine, she glanced at all my wares dismissively, and was about to walk off when she saw the Poseidon CD. At this point her face turns into, “What is this doing here?” As in, I had robbed her husband’s grave and why hadn’t she been informed?
So I explained that we licensed it from Fox. She nods and blurts out, “Okay, I get money from that.” And then, a la Hackman, walks away!
Happy 2023—and you can look forward to more of this nonsense every day from me here on my blog!
Comments