“Hell, Upside Down!”
Take a moment to enjoy what is, without a doubt, one of the greatest movie tag lines of all time! “Hell, Upside Down!” 

Now, as I spent the entire year going through some of the greatest films of the 70’s, it’s only appropriate to finish with a film that take place on New Year’s Eve!

Sure, toast all you want, but as the ship Captain Leslie Nelson discovered:

Oops! So this stellar cast was going to have a very bad New Year! Not only that, let’s find out how much of a “HELL” was endured on the set during the making of the film!

Time to enjoy some classic movie mayhem.

And time also to have two wild celebrity CATFIGHTS!

Steve McQueen and Paul Newman, with a “sandwiched in” Faye Dunaway, sure look chummy in this picture, but wait until you hear about what happened on the set of their disaster epic “The Towering Inferno!”

That’s right, let’s go back to the greatest decade for film – the 70’s, an era when disaster movies were BIG – and the Star feuds were BIGGER!

The Master Of Disaster!

There was an era in the 70’s when “disaster pictures” were the rage: huge blockbusters like “The Towering Inferno” with Steve McQueen and Paul Newman:

But did you know how McQueen referred to Newman in conversations?

“That Fuckwit!”

Well, thanks to the great British film magazine EMPIRE, I’ve got a bunch of anecdotes about stars who hated other stars while acting in huge blockbuster disaster films!

The Poseidon Adventure!

“Hell, Upside Down.” The greatest disaster movie of all time, and its massive success spawned a series of “disaster-themed” films throughout the rest of the 70’s – check out the trailer!

Yes, before he became a comic Actor thanks to “Airplane”, Leslie Nielsen was the Captain in the trailer, just one of a slew of recognizable faces in this star-studded disaster epic!

Gene Hackman – who just a year earlier won the Best Actor Oscar for “The French Connection” – plays Reverand Scott, who is on the ship that is capsized by a huge tidal wave! He must help a small group climb up to the bottom of the overturned luxury cruise ship!

This movie was Hollywood’s gold standard all right – Oscar winners Hackman, Shelley Winters and Ernest Borgnine – along with a bunch of other familiar faces – all struggling to survive!

A “Tricky” Gene Hackman, A Livid Shelley Winters!

A great anecdote from the making of the film involves Gene Hackman, who Director Ronald Neame referred to as “tricky”. Hackman demanded to change a scene, shifting the focus from Shelley Winters to himself. Winters went ballistic:

“That scene is the only damn reason I’m doing the movie and Hackman’s not going to take it away from me!”

Winters lost the argument, and she later said that filming the revised scene was, in her words:

“the most dreadful morning I’ve had since I made a film with Judy Garland.”

What a classic line! I love catty Hollywood insider stories, and since “The Poseidon Adventure” was a huge smash, Producer Irwin Allen had more Hollywood cattiness to come!

Now, time for a heated “Inferno!”

Steve McQueen’s Battle With Paul Newman!

The magazine also offered an inside look at Irwin Allen’s “The Towering Inferno”, starring Steve McQueen and Paul Newman – and of course, more Star fights!

First, check out the trailer for this hugely popular 1975 disaster film:

Empire tells the whole story about how Irwin Allen got both superstars to appear in the film, without realizing that McQueen HATED Newman! Even after becoming a superstar, McQueen always felt Newman was treated better by the press and the industry, and it drove him crazy.

The problems began even before they began filming. McQueen read the screenplay for “Inferno” and counted all of his lines – and then he counted Newman’s – and discovered the other Actor had twelve more lines than he did. His response?

“Goddmanit, that fucker’s always twisting my melon!”

“The Fuckwit!”

McQueen was so jealous of Newman’s popularity he always referred to him as “the fuckwit!” None of their rivalry impacted the end result, however, as “The Towering Inferno” was a huge box office smash!

These are two classic disaster films that helped spark the era of blockbuster cinema – and I love stories about stars who fight on the set!

I’ve been spending this year looking back at some of the greatest films of this decade, and there is a really terrific book that dives into all of it:

The title is also one of the great lines from the film – check out all of the fun stuff inside this great look at the films of the 70’s:

All year long, I’ve looked at the classic films of this decade, like the trio of films Clint Eastwood released in 1971, including this classic:

It was his perfect storm of cinema – see them all here:

Here’s an obscure gem that is worth finding – because it was written by the unlikely duo of Broadway legend Stephen Sondheim and Mr. “Psycho” himself, Tony Perkins!

This murder mystery is also a wickedly entertaining look at Hollywood – I cannot recommend this highly enough:

And finally, the greatest film of all time in my opinion – a masterpiece that is as compelling and entertaining now as it was when it swept the Oscars in 1972:

A masterpiece that stands above all others – see the inside stories of the making of this film here:

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Categories: 70's Cinema, Action Films, Comedy Movies, Cult Movies, Film Fight Club, Great Films, Hollywood, Movies, Pop Culture, Talent/Celebrities

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