Sneak preview: Interview with Gary Clarke

Actor Gary Clarke, who co-starred on Mike Shayne and on The Virginian, was best friends with Steve Ihnat for many years.

Gary gave us an interview about Steve for Brief Candle. The first part of the interview is ready for viewing. (The second part is still being transcribed.)

However, lots of fun stuff here:

http://volcanoseven.com/BriefCandle/GaryClarke.html

Includes brief clips of Steve dancing in Dragstrip Riot, and menacing Clarke and Jeanine Riley in Strike Me Deadly. There's also an amusing clip of Gary Clarke trying to figure out a puzzle with three glasses, in the opening of Steve's first Virginian episode, "The Fatal Journey."



(Apologies for the unsynched audio in the clip. But you still get the gist.)

The Last of the Original I Dream of Jeannie?

I visited Steve Ihnat's IMDB webpage today, to check out the TV schedule for him that they have. (As for every actor.) His Gunsmoke episode, Exodus 21:22 will be airing on Friday, October 2, 2009, by the way.

Anyway, I noticed that of the 7 videos you used to be able to watch there, the I Dream of Jeannie episode was missing. (My Master the Rainmaker, in which Steve plays the meek and shy Sgt Ben Roberts, opposite Barbara Eden as Jeannie and Larry Hagman as Major Anthony Nelson.) So I went to the IMDB page for I Dream of Jeannie. You used to be able to watch all of those episodes...but now they are all gone.

And I'm wondering...they're remaking I Dream of Jeannie as a movie to be released in 2010, so did the producers decide to forbid the free viewing of all old episodes of the TV show, prepatory to releasing them on DVD or something?

In that regard, it's interesting, as you can watch every episode of Star Trek from the IMDB site (although the original versions, not the remastered, special effects added ones.) [And what's sad about that is, in the first season theme music, a vocalist named Loulie Jean Norman sang the melody line (not words, just the melody), but the episodes on DVD today don't have her vocal for some reason!Perhaps whoever owns the rights to the TV shows doesn't want to pay Norman's heirs the copyright due her each time that theme music plays, which is a damn shame.

However, you can hear it at YouTube:

Ayn Rand on YouTube

I have been a fan of Ayn Rand's for decades. While I don't believe in all of her philosophy of Objectivism, I do believe in a great deal of it. Which is why I was delighted to hear that Steve Ihnat was apparently an Objectivist too...or at least, a favorite of Ayn Rand's. According to Sally Ihnat-Marshall, Steve's widow, Ayn Rand wanted Steve to direct a movie version of Atlas Shrugged.

(I interviewed Sally just a couple of days ago, and as soon as its transcribed I'll upload it to Brief Candle, my tribute to Steve Ihnat.

I just checked YouTube, and there are a lot of videos there featuring Rand.

Here's one, where she was interviewed by Mike Wallace in 1959. An interview of her with Phil Donahue is also there, and more.

Mama Cass Sings Your Own Kind of Music

Note please she's talking about *music* - not rap which is just hatred set to music!

Clips from Mannix Endgame and Star Trek Whom Gods Destroy

I now have the technology to record film clips! Yay. Starting with Steve Ihnat, of course, but I'll shortly segue into other actors and other favorite scenes.

Alas, one thing my loyal readers won't see, at least any time soon, is my Steve Ihnat: Epic Fights and Confrontation Scenes. It's there, on my computer, a mixture of video and frame-by-frame clips, of some of Steve Ihnat's fights and confrontation scenes. I ha to do some of it frame-by-frame, because I wanted to coordinate the action precisely with the music I'd chosen, which was an extended version of O Fortuna (the music from Excalibur.)

And it's great. The music is synched beautifully...but for some reason my software won't save the file as a movie! I threw a couple of tantrums like Garth/Kirk in Whom Gods Destroy, but it did no good. I suspect it's because I've got too much frame-by-frame stuff, it does seem to give Windows Movie Maker fits to have too much of it.

So, I've given up on that for now and will just work with clips. Which will probably be better, anyway, as newbies to star actors will get more out of actually being able to hear dialog, then just seeing the face but not being able to hear the voice.

Moon Over the Plain At YouTube

Someone wrote and sang an original song called Moon Over the Plain, and set it to various clips of Steve Ihnat, and other actors, such as Robert Duvall from The Outer Limits The Inheritors.

Guns and how to hold them

I've been watching a show called Numbers, which features Enrico Colosanto holding a gun on a federal agent. And he's got his arms extended as far out as they'll go, and he's holding the gun at the end of his arms. And if the guy he's holding hadn't been suffering from a gun wound, I'm sure he could have reached out and grabbed that gun away.

Whenever you watch cop shows these days...that's the way they always hold their guns. I suppose to be cool. (Although the "in" thing, the "cool" thing these days is to hold the gun sideways...I've always thought that looked pretty stupid and must play hell with aiming...) And every time I watch these guys going around corners with their arms stretched out and their hands pointing down, I'm thinking, anyone could be waiting around the corner to grab that gun right out of their hands...

Contrast that with the way Steve Ihnat was holding his gun on Mannix in Endgame. At all times he's holding the gun close to his body, so there's no way Mannix can reach out and grab it from him. (The only time Mannix does get the drop on Steve's character, it's because Steve lets him, as part of his diabolical plan to blow up Mannix and Art Malcolm.)

But fashions change... similarly, I remember way back 20 years ago, the "in" thing with sword fights was to have one of the two duelists grab up his sword by the pointy end and swing the guard at his opponent. Stupid, stupid! But some famous fight choreographer had done it, and for a while htere, any movie that had any kind of a fencing scene would do it too...

Here he's holding the gun straight out from his body...but Mannix is 20 yards away!