Met up with amigo Tom Betts and had a great time at the screening of GET MEAN at the Silent Movie Theatre in Hollywood last night. Such a pleasure meeting Tony Anthony and Lloyd Battista...both very very friendly and affable and each with a great sense of humor. Tony regaled us seriously and humorously with wonderful anecdotes about how he got started in movies and all the trials and tribulations he went through getting the "Stranger' movies made. Since the three "Dollar" movies with Clint were already in the can and were going to be released one after the other, MGM wanted more than one "Stranger" film so they could do the same, but when it came time to release SILENT STRANGER Tony's man at MGM was no longer there and the new regime totally buried it and put it on the shelf to die. GET MEAN took a long time to get made, mostly money problems and Tony said, at one point, he even had to borrow $50,00 from the director (Ferdinando Baldi) to keep the production going. They would get some money shoot a few scenes and then have to wait for more money to do some more filming. GET MEAN was the 4th in the "Stranger" series and he had hopes of taking the character and putting him into all kinds of different settings and locations....but sadly that never happened. The evening was made possible by William Lustig of Blue Underground which will be releasing....in October.....GET MEAN on Blu-ray with commentary by Tony and Lloyd along with last night's Q&A moderated by Rob "WORD ON WESTERNS" Word. (Tony also said that COMIN' AT YA!" will be released on Blue-ray in November....but I'm not sure what company will be doing this.) Everybody in attendance...also there were fellow amigos Henry Parke and Chuck Cirino.....were given a poster of GET MEAN which Tony and Lloyd graciously signed. Tony is a fellow West Virginian and great to talk to. We exchanged a few mountaineer stories and he gladly signed my three "Stranger" posters as well as Lloyd did with my SILENT STRANGER one. (Interesting note..as mentioned Tony is a fellow Mountaineer and.....Lloyd is from Ohio like Tom and went to college at Carnegie Tech (now Carnegie Mellon) in Pittsburg just up the river from Morgantown and WVU where I went to college.) Tony said there probably will never be an official release of BLINDMAN since there are so many boot-leg copies out there. He further said that he is probably the most boot-legged person out there. Again a wonderful and most memorable evening.
