Before he became a star, Bruce Willis was an extra sitting in a courtroom watching Paul Newman’s closing argument in “The Verdict.”
One of the greatest lawyer movies of all time that also features one of Paul Newman’s best performances as a down-on-his-luck alcoholic attorney is the 1982 film, The Verdict. Fans of the movie likely know that it was directed by Sidney Lumet and in addition to Newman featured standout performances from Charlotte Rampling, Jack Warden, James Mason, and Milo O’Shea. But did you know that Bruce Willis also appears in the movie?
Yes, Bruce Willis is in the The Verdict. But if you did not know, you probably do not remember him because he was an extra and had no lines.
During Paul Newman’s closing argument, Willis sits in the courtroom. Watch about three rows back as Newman starts the scene. As the camera starts to pan in, Willis is high in the center of the screen.
Unfortunately, once you see the 27-year-old Willis in the scene, it is hard to stay focuses on Newman’s great acting. Maybe I should not have told you about it, but I had to share.
Three years after The Verdict, Bruce Willis would gain a more prominent role playing David Addison Jr. in the television series Moonlighting starting in 1985. After a few film roles, his movie career took off following a starring role in 1988’s Die Hard. Like other fans of many of his films, I was saddened to hear of his retirement in 2022 due to an aphasia diagnosis.
Bruce Willis, however, is not the only future popular actor sitting in the audience as an extra in The Verdict. Just to Willis’s right in the courtroom (and in the photo above), you may also see Tobin Bell, who later became famous as John Kramer, aka Jigsaw, in the Saw movie franchise.
If you have never seen The Verdict, make sure to check it out, both to catch a glimpse of yet-to-be discovered stars and to see a great movie. The film currently has an 89% critics rating and 88% audience rating onRotten Tomatoes. But maybe it would get a few extra points if more people knew about Bruce Willis.
Lisa Marie Presley carried the burdens of being a famous daughter but she also exhibited her own talents as a singer-songwriter.
Many of us may first think of Lisa Marie Presley, who died on January 12, 2023, as a child and the connection we felt to her through her famous father Elvis Presley. Some younger people may first think of her famous marriages to Michael Jackson and Nicolas Cage. But Lisa Marie Presley was a talented musical artist in her own right, recording several albums as well as some “duets” with her father.
I bought her debut albumTo Whom It May Concern when it came out in 2003. Presley wrote or cowrote all of the songs on the album, which was a solid debut. I loved the fist single, “Lights Out,” featured in the video below. The lyrics seem extra powerful now that it has been announced that Lisa Marie Presley is going to be buried at Graceland.
Someone turned the lights out there in Memphis; Ooh, that’s where my family are buried and gone (gone); Oh yeah; Last time I was there I noticed a space left, Oh, next to them there in Memphis, yeah, In the damn back lawn.
In 2005, she released her second album, Now What. And her third and final album Storm & Grace was released in 2012.
Through the years, she also released a handful of “duets” that incorporated her vocals with recordings made by Elvis. One of the touching duets she created was on “I Love You Because,” as song written and originally recorded by country music singer-songwriter Leo Payne in 1949.
Elvis recorded “I Love You Because” in July 1954 at Sun Studio, at the same time he was recording “That’s All Right.” The recording occurred before Presley had become a star. Of course you can hear his talent in his vocals, but if you listen closely enough, you may hear a teenager who has no idea of how big of a success he will become.
Lisa Marie Presley recorded her vocals and created a video for “I Love You Because” that was featured in the 35th Anniversary Elvis Concert on August 16, 2012. The video featured never-before-seen family photos, not only of Elvis and his daughter, but also of Lisa Marie and her children: her twin girls Finley and Harper, along with her son Benjamin and daughter Riley (who has since become a talented actress).
As the obituaries about Lisa Marie Presley point out, not only did she and her father die at a relatively young age, but her son Benjamin also died tragically. When we think about these deaths, they of course bring a lot of sadness. And not long before her own death, Lisa Marie wrote a touching and thoughtful essay about grief and about losing her son to suicide.
But also as seen in the video for “I Love You Because,” there was a lot of love in the family. The video is a reminder that although life inevitably brings many tragedies and losses to our lives, there also can be a lot of joy and love at times. The sadness and tragedies may hinder our view of much of life when we look in the rear view mirror. But it also is important to stretch our necks a little to try to see the moments of grace and joy that are there too.
While best known for the uplifting title songs from “Fame” and “Flashdance,” Irene Cara created a movng performance of a song about isolation and loneliness with “Out Here On My Own.”
In the early 1980’s, one would have expected Irene Cara, who passed away in November 2022, to go on to have a long and successful music (and acting) career based largely upon recording two of the biggest hits of the early 1980s. Few artists have such big exciting hit title tracks from successful movies so close together. First, starring in the movie Fame (1980), Cara hit it big not only with “Fame,” but an impressive star turn as an actress. Then, three years later, she topped the charts with “Flashdance . . . What a Feeling” from the movie Flashdance (1983). But while I loved those songs, it was a quieter performance from Fame that I always think of first when I hear her name.
In the early 1980s, I had gone off to attend college several hundred miles away from home. Like many others there, I was young and living on my own for the first time, going somewhere where I had no friends or family. Of course, all of us there were extremely fortunate to be where we were, but many of us also were experiencing a new kind of loneliness. As with any recolocation, during those early days we had not yet forged the new bonds and friendships that would eventually come.
It was in those days that the school’s movie theater offered a showing of Fame. And there, in that darkened theater, we found some kinship with the young characters on the screen striving to create something out of their lives, struggling for success while also learning to encounter failure.
In that context, Irene Cara appeared onscreen and performed the song “Out Here On My Own.” Unlike the title track where she and everyone danced, she sold this song by merely singing at a piano. Her moving performance of the opening lyrics made our audience lean into the song. And we were there with her all the way to the final note.
Sometimes I wonder where I’ve been, Who I am, Do I fit in. Make believin’ is hard alone, Out here on my own.
As I listened, I thought about my own feelings, connecting as we do with much great art to find ourselves. I felt connected to the isolation reflected in the song, thinking it was only me. But then something happened I had not seen before and have not seen since.
I have seen movie audiences clap at the end of a movie.
I have heard movie audiences cheer when the good guy finally defeats the bad guy.
But during Fame, in the middle of the film, I was surprised to hear the college audience applaud and cheer Irene Cara’s performance of this quiet song.
And that is why Cara’s “Out Here On My Own” remains so important for me. At that moment when I was feeling alone and isolated, I realized that others in that same room were feeling the same thing. And Irene Cara brought us together for those few minutes. And it also taught me a lesson that remains to this day, to remember to be kind to others because they are often going through things that you might not suspect or know.
In recent years due to the Covid pandemic, many of us around the world have encountered new layers of loneliness, making “Out Here On My Own” seem especially timely. Reportedly, Irene Cara herself faced her own isolation in these last years leading to her death too, making the song even more poignant.
“Out Here On My Own,” while not as big of a hit as the title track “Fame,” was successful on its own. The song, written by the sister-brother team of Lesley Gore and Michael Gore, not only charted but was nominated for an Academy Award. It lost to the other bigger and happier Irene Cara song from the movie about living forever, “Fame.”
But “Out Here On My Own” remains one of the great movie songs about loneliness. In Billboard, Chuck Taylor wrote about the rerelease of the soundtrack, noting that “Out Here On My Own” “remains as simplistic and memorable a statement of isolation as has ever been written”
For a song about isolation, though, I always remember it as bringing people together.
Kasey Chambers began covering Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” on tour, recently releasing a live single due to demands from fans for the outstanding version of the song.
When you have a song so identified with one artist as Eminem’s “Lose Yourself,’ it becomes difficult to imagine anyone covering the song. One of the few artists who has the talent to take on such a song and make it her own, though is Australia’s Kasey Chambers. And she does it with a banjo.
Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” appeared on the soundtrack for his movie 8 Mile in 2002. In the film, the song is part biography of Eminem’s character B-Rabbit and part boast in encountering obstacles.
Kasey Chambers stays true to the original, starting off quieter and bulding until the full band joins her with drums and a raging electric guitar. Her voice, as always, is capable of being both tender and powerful, as she wrenches the emotion deep in the lyrics.
Check out Kasey Chambers’s version of “Lose Yourself” below. The performance takes place at the Civic Theater in Newcastle, Australia, the final show of her 2022 her recent Behind The Barricades tour. Due to demand from fans, Chambers released the performance as a single and created the video puthing together video taken by fans at the show.
Chambers explained how she connects during her performance of the song: ““I had no idea that audiences would respond to it like they have. Something else takes over my body when I play it and I get completely lost in it.” She added, “I can honestly say it’s the most I’ve ever connected to a performance of a cover song in my life.”
Albert Hague, recognizable for his role in the original “Fame” movie and the 1980s TV series, also wrote the music for the beloved Christmas classic, “How the Grinch Stole Christmas!”
If you were around in the 1980s, you likely remember the movie Fame (1980), which also became a TV series that ran from 1982 until 1987. One of the actors in Fame had earlier found success writing music for a beloved Christmas animated special, Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas!
Albert Hague as Mr. Shorofsky
The movie Fame was later remade in 2009, but both the 1980’s version of the movie and of the series featured the character of Benjamin Shorofsky. Mr. Shorofsky was a teacher with more traditional ideas of music who sometimes butted heads with the more “hip” students. The actor who played Mr. Shorofsky, Albert Hague, was also an established musician in his own right. He wrote music for several Broadway musicals, even winning the Best Score Tony Award in 1959 for Bob Fosse’s musical Redhead. But his music that you most likely recognize is what he wrote for the Christmas 1966 animated special, Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas!
In this scene from the original movie, Mr. Shorofsky debates about the future of music with Bruno (Lee Curreri), a student at the New York City High School for the Performing Arts.
Below is a scene from the second season of the Fame TV series. In it, Hague, as Shorosfsky, sings “Did I Ever Really Live?” as the same student, Bruno, again played by Lee Curreri, looks on.
Hague had earlier written the music for the popular song.
Music for The Grinch
As for Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, Hague is credited with composing the music for the 1966 special, long before his work on Fame. While songs like “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch” feature lyrics by Dr. Seuss, the music comes from Hague. In the special, that song is performed by Thurl Ravenscroft.
And Hague also wrote the music for the featured song “Welcome Christmas.” The Who’s perform the song in the special.
Hague was born in Berlin, Germany on October 13, 1920 as part of a Jewish family. As Hitler rose to power, Hague moved to America, earning a music scholarship at the University of Cincinnati. After graduating in 1942, he served in the United States Army’s special service during World War II.
During his music career Hague often collaborated with his wife, Renee Orin. She passed away in 2000, and Hague followed her on November 12, 2001.
The next time you enjoy How the Grinch Stole Christmas, say a little thanks to Mr. Shorofsky.
