Does anyone have a link/download for Leopard, the film by Eoin Macken with Tom Hopper? I started watching it but never finished it. Please tag, reblog, any help is appreciated 🙏
I love acting moments that are really specific: a tiny movement, a micro expression, a particular flip of the wrist. A moment when a choice was so distinctly made. This bit from Leopard (2016) where Tom Hopper moves in front of Eoin Macken, who’s playing his brother, and puts his hand on his knee in a sort of grabbing motion while desperately asking why Macken left him alone with their abusive father is exactly that kind of choice. I think about it all the time.
last night @thenerdyindividual and i watched leopard the super indie movie Eoin Macken and Tom Hopper made in between filming Merlin. It was weird and definitely uncomfortable at times, and fell apart a bit in the last half hour (and trigger warnings for murder, suicide, slight necrophilia, slight incest in the movie). But all in all for a first time writing and directing a movie it wasn’t that bad, and on the scale of watch it because you really like the actor? So much better than when we watched Henry Cavill’s Night Hunter.
Ciro’s was one of the most legendary nightclub-restaurants located on Sunset Boulevard, aka the Sunset Strip, a part of then unincorporated Los Angeles County where regulations were more relaxed than in the City of Los Angeles. Entrepreneur William "Billy" Wilkerson, owner of the Hollywood Reporter newspaper, Cafe Trocadero and Vendome restaurant, opened Ciro’s in January 1940. It was an immediate hit that Hollywood stars flocked to in droves, as did Wilkerson’s other loyal Hollywood moguls, due to his previous track record of restaurant successes. Celebrity "regulars" included Clark Gable, Charlie Chaplin, Paulette Goddard, Errol Flynn, Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, Olivia De Havilland, Ginger Rogers, Ronald Reagan, and many more.
Hollywood Reporter ads preceding the highly anticipated opening were a daily occurrence, reminding readers that "Everybody that's anybody will be at Ciro's." There was such a buzz, two opening nights were scheduled and for weeks afterwards, it was the only place in town to “see and be seen”. Guests were greeted with a sophisticated exterior facade designed by George Vernon Russell and a Baroque style interior by Tom Douglas. Douglas’ style epitomized the latest in Hollywood glamour - walls draped in heavy ribbed silk, dyed a pale Reseda green, and ceilings painted in American Beauty red. The stars luxuriated on red silk upholstered banquettes and warm bronze urn light fixtures flanked the bandstand. Emil Coleman's orchestra graced the stage.
Post premiere parties, benefits, and birthday parties were lavishly celebrated at Ciro’s. One of the oddest occasions in the club’s early days was a fashion show by a local furrier who dressed models in expensive fur ensembles accompanied by the same live animal. These beavers, leopards and minks got a peek at Hollywood’s infamous nightlife that most people weren’t even privy to! Speaking of insider access, columnists Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons were usually on hand to surveil the scene and keep the public informed of Veronica Lake's alcoholic bouts, who Judy Garland was seeing, and the latest leading man to be temporarily banned for causing a disturbance. Lana Turner named it her favorite haunt, and with high powered endorsements like hers, Ciro's entered the realm of legend, packing the house with nightly audiences eager to enjoy headliners such as Jerry Lewis, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peggy Lee, Liberace, Maurice Chevalier, Danny Kaye, Nat King Cole, and countless other performers, for almost two solid decades.
After two and a half years, Billy Wilkerson repeated the exit strategy he’d used at the Trocadero, abandoning Ciro’s to establish La Rue Restaurant just down the street. In his place, Herman Hover took the reins and continued to foster the nightclub's great reputation. Hover remodeled the club, making it even larger and more opulent, in an effort to keep up with the other joints on the Sunset Strip and cater to the tastes of Hollywood's elite and loyal customers with the best entertainment in Hollywood. Highly popular with photographers, hundreds of photographs were snapped of the famous and not-so famous each night.
With the increasing popularity of Las Vegas in the 1950s, Hollywood's nightclubs found it difficult to compete with the enormous salaries being paid to entertainers in the gambling capital of the world. With business dropping off and expenses increasing, Hover filed for bankruptcy and closed Ciro's in January 1958.
Two years later, Frank Sennes, owner of the Moulin Rouge nightclub in the former Earl Carroll Theatre, further east on Sunset Boulevard, acquired Ciro's and re-opened it. Ciro's continued to do well and feature top entertainers. In 1961, Sennes decided to rename the venue “Le Crazy Horse” after the famous Crazy Horse Revue from Paris. After just a few months, the club was taken over by Paul Raffles and Bill Doheny who re-established the Ciro’s name in February 1967. Less than six months later, it was again renamed Spectrum 2000. In the early 1970s, pioneering disc jockey/record producer Art Laboe acquired the club and named it "Art Laboe's”. A couple of years later, the location was acquired by Sammy and Mitzie Shore who opened “The Comedy Store”. Mitzie operated the club throughout the 1970s and 80s as a new population began to enjoy the Strip. The Comedy Store remains in operation today.