I was going to combine both posts into one but each man deserved there own, Goodbye friend Irvin and farewell to Leslie, It is a sad day.
Archive for November, 2010
30
Nov
10
two sad posts today
Leslie Nielson was one amazing talent. He covered every genre of being an actor and with each style he took on, he did ever so masterfully, from sci-fi, to westerns, to dramas, and in his senior years, comedies. As a kid, there were three movies that I loved Leslie in and they were “Forbidden Planet”, “The Poseidon Adventure”, and the “Reluctant Astronaut”. As time goes on, more and more of Hollywood’s great legends sadly are passing on, but not without leaving their incredible marks in film history. Leslie Nielsen is one of these Hollywood heroes and will be sadly missed.
from forbidden planet
Nielson and Francis, from Forbidden Planet
Nielson and Don Knotts from "The Reluctant Astronaut"
from "The Reluctant Astronaut"
a kiss godbye, "Forbidden Planet"
kersh n vader
2010 has been quite a year to say the least. In February, space artist Robert T. McCall passed away. we lost Dan OBannon, Today, Leslie Nielsen, and over the weekend we lost a legend & good friend Irvin Kershner. Kersh, as he liked to be called, is most known for his directing of “The Empire Strikes Back”. He had been fighting a long battle with lung cancer and, sadly, on Saturday, November the 27th his fight came to an end, and Kershner passed away at his home in Coldwater Canyon, CA.
The Empire has always been my favorite of the Star Wars films, as well as being one of my all time favorite movies. It is a masterpiece on all levels and so towers over the rest of the films in terms of character development and edge of your seat drama and surprises. I have been a huge fan of Kersh’s work ever since. In 1977, I first heard his name in a 1976/77 film called “the Eyes of Laura Mars” Kersh directed this eerie little tale and it was written by a virtual unknown at the time, Mr. John Carpenter. I started working in Hollywood in 1985 with a lot of inspiration from; Spielberg, Kershner, George Miller and George Lucas, and in 1992 I was hired as an artist on a new Steven Spielberg television series called “SeaQuest DSV”. WOW I was so excited to finally be on a Spielberg production!!!!! After a few weeks of working on the show, we got word that Kershner was going to direct!!! DOUBLE DOG WOW!!! This was a dream come true – working with my two favorites on one show, Spielberg and Kershner!!! It was not too long after the news was heard that he came over to our office to meet everyone!!! Knowing what he looked like from pictures, we knew him immediately when he came in the door. He opened his mouth and said loudly “Hi everyone” and in all honesty I was thrown back that this towering man had a lot of Frank OZ and Yoda mixed into his voice. For a minute I thought he was goofing around but right away I realized that that was his real voice. How cool, and even more cool was how very gracious and kind he was to everyone. There was no level of superiority between himself and us in the art department. To Irvin, we were all a team and that was how it was. He was a Hollywood master without a Hollywood aura. Right away he jumped into all the drawings with great enthusiasm, and lots and lots of feedback on things. One day he was in talking to us all and the topic of the Empire Strikes Back came up, and after answering a million questions, he said that he would dig out his 35mm copy of Empire and we could all watch it at lunch one day!!! A few days later he had the film and we all headed down to the big Amblin screening room and the movie started. There was about 25 of us in there with Kersh in the middle. As the movie started, the color of the print drifted from full color to a rolling shade of pale blue. Kersh cussed up some good sailor terms and hollered out that the film can was stored on the sunny side of the garage!!! The film had some heat damage that disappeared after about 5 minutes so once clear on the screen he talked over the movie at points and filled in lots of behind the scenes details. You could hear in his tone that there were lots of grand memories filling his mind as he spoke and by the end you could tell that this film was very special to him. As SeaQuest went on, we became friends and Kersh would bring things in to show me from some of his other films. One of the fun things I enjoyed was to watch him direct. What an animated man…I would think that from an actor’s point of view, he would be a favorite to work with. He would become the character and inspire the dialog in a collaboration with the actors as they were developing the personalities of who they were playing. Once the pilot was finished, it was editing time and Kersh was not allowed to be a part of it due to studio intervention. I remember talking to him on the phone and he was so upset that he could not finish what he had begun. The pilot aired shortly after and all that he had done on stage was not evident in the final show!!! Very sad to have wasted his talent by not letting him see the production through.
Although SeaQuest was over and Kersh was gone, we continued to chat and he called me one day and he said “I have two words for you”. Really! I said, What could they be. He said “Forbidden Planet, do you want to work on this one with me”??? WOW!!! I could not wait. So the next step was to meet up at Stan Winston’s studio and after the meeting we all started to work out the details of a little rough draft of the remake. Stan and his gang was awesome! I was a fan of everyone there and to be in the same room with Kersh, Stan, Crash McCreary, Shane Mahan, and John Rosengandt was just too much to take. The film went no where as time went on and thank goodness because the script was awful and would have been a travesty no matter who was working on it!! Once this one was all fizzled out, that was about the end of Kersh’s directing career. We stayed in touch and either talked on the phone or had visits whenever we could. Every once in a while he would have a request or two that were always fun to comply with. Once he called and said, “Hey, your an old model maker. Would you fix my Kane robot from Robocop II.” Phil Tippet had given Kersh the stop motion puppet from the film and he was so worn out and so very heavy that just a few weeks time would cause the puppet to slump over. A quick rod attached to the base and some thin wire fixed the problem and Kane was standing again! We talked a few months ago about the 30th anniversary of Empire and with great sadness the last time we ever spoke. Kersh was a a man I had a lot of respect for…such a kind and caring man, with some amazing talents in so many genres of art, photography and movie making rolled in, too. I will miss you my friend and thanks for all the inspirations and fun memories. Below and after the pictures is a bio and a link about Kersh, lots of fascinating things to read about here.
Kersh n Yoda
Art and photography were the dual launch pads for director Irvin Kershner’s career. He studied both at length as well as tackling documentaries in the 1950’s, before making his feature film debut with “Stakeout on Dope Street” (1958) – a gritty crime drama produced by Roger Corman. It led to various jobs on television series and in other independent features. Kershner’s film work was distinguished by his ability to show realistic and intimate human drama in his stories, and for finding unusual aspects on nearly every genre – from comedies like “A Fine Madness” (1966) and romantic dramas such as “Loving” (1970), to horror flicks like “The Eyes of Laura Mars” (1978) and historical adventures in the ilk of as “The Return of a Man Called Horse” (1976). His biggest box office hit was the “Star Wars” sequel “The Empire Strikes Back” (1980), which benefited hugely from his mature direction. Kershner also maintained alternate careers as a producer, educator and some-time actor, but it was his work creating the darkest and most critically acclaimed of the “Star Wars” trilogy that would be his greatest and longest living legacy.
Born in 1923, Kershner’s education was rich in the arts. He studied music at a young age before joining the Air Force as a flight engineer on B-24 bombers during World War II. When he returned to civilian life, he studied art and design at the Tyler School of Fine Arts, part of Temple University in Philadelphia, USA. He also studied art under Hans Hoffman, an artist in New York City. In 1948 at age 25 he moved to Los Angeles to study photography and design at the Art Center College of Design and UCLA while paying the bills working as a commercial artist. Kershner later studied film at USC’s School of Cinema, where he also taught photography. While there, he took on a job as a still photographer with a State Department Film Crew in Iran, which led to him directing documentaries on the Middle East and Europe for the US Information Service in 1950. From 1953 to 1955, he developed, directed and acted as cameraman on a documentary series for TV called “Confidential File,” which recreated events in the news. Irvin Kershner’s first feature film was a low-budget crime drama called “Stakeout on Dope Street” featuring a script by veteran writer Andrew J. Fenady and a young cast culled from Roger Corman’s talent pool. Praised for its realistic direction, Kershner was able to direct two more well-received urban crime dramas on the back of this one – “The Young Captives” (1959) and “Hoodlum Priest” (1961), with Don Murray as Father Charles Clark, a preacher to inner city street gangs. Murray was nominated for two awards at the 1961 Cannes Film Festival.
Kershner moved to TV series in the early sixties before directing “Face in the Rain” (1963) starring Rory Calhoun and “The Luck of Ginger Coffey” (1964) with Robert Shaw, the direction of which was widely praised by the arthouse press. Kershner then moved on to “A Fine Madness” (1966) – a wry comedy starring Sean Connery while he was at the height of his popularity as James Bond. Connery plays a poet who visits a string of unconventional psychiatrists seeking a cure for his mental block. “Madness” developed a cult following and, along with its successor “The Flim-Flam Man” (1967) starring George C Scott, cemented Kershner’s genre as a director. The 1970 flm “Loving” starring George Segal earned Kershner his best reviews and ticket sales to date and ushered Kershner into the Hollywood fold. Unfortunately his first big budget movie “Up the Sandbox” (1972) was poorly received by critics and box office alike, as was the 1974 film “S*P*Y*S”, a reunion of “M*A*S*H” (1970) stars Donald Sutherland and Elliott Gould in a dark comedy about espionage. While this was happening, Kershner did the development work for the gritty Western drama “A Man Called Horse” (1970), but was removed from the project before completion and not credited for his contributions to the screenplay. He did however direct the 1976 sequel, “Return of a Man Called Horse,” which again starred Richard Harris in the title role. The gruesome sequel re-enacted the purification ritual of the original “Horse” where Harris hangs from the ceiling of a sweat lodge by hookspiercing his chest.
Kershner experienced further success with “Raid on Entebbe” (1977) starring Charles Bronson, James Woods and Peter Finch which netted a Golden Globe and an Emmy for its technical aspects. A further nine nominations were given to its cast and production team, including one for Irvin Kershner himself. He followed this in 1978 with “The Eyes of Laura Mars” starring Faye Dunaway, which was a modest box office hit. George Lucas saw the film and contacted Kershner about directing the follow-up to his classic “Star Wars” (1977). Kershner felt “Star Wars” was too big a hit for him to want to take on a sequel, but bowed to the pressure fro his former student Lucas and took on “The Empire Strikes Back.” The rest, as they say, is history – “Empire” became the highest grossing film of 1980 and one of the top 50 money earners of all time. It was on the set of “Empire” that Irvin Kershner received the monica “Kersh”, which was to accompany him through the remainder of his career.
Kersh re-united with Sean Connery for the 1983 James Bond film “Never Say Never Again” and then went on to another sequel – “RoboCop 2” (1990). He later returned to television, directing the pilot episode of the NBC action-adventure series “seaQuest DSV” – productino of which then ran from 1993 to 96 and still airs today. That pretty much wound up the directorial career of Irvin Kershner, although he always found time to represent “Empire” whenever “Star Wars” retrospectives occurred, including watching as Lucasfilm added CGI effects to his classic production to create “The Empire Strikes Back: Special Edition” (1997). It was a testament to Kershner’s quality that “Empire” was the least retouched of the original trilogy. In the late 90’s Kersh kept himself active as an executive producer on several independent films. He also worked on various photography projects, and lectured at various colleges and festivals including his beloved USC, where he served on the faculty for the Master of Professional Writing program.
25
Nov
10
Happy Thanksgiving 2010
Happy Thanksgiving to all from the Eaves Family. Traditionally this is an American holiday, and I am not sure if it has become a day of Thanksgiving recognized internationally yet, but if not, I hope that one day it would be. No matter where you live and no matter what your circumstances are, there are so many things to be thankful for. Since this blog started almost two years ago a lot of heavy issues have hit our home, cancer with my step daughter Carlene, the loss of my daughter Alicia’s horse, as well as many other trials that life throws our way. Through it all there are so many people that I only know from written comments who have now become great friends and have let their hearts show with prayers and good thoughts for my family. Thank you everyone from around the world who has taken the time to share your experiences of joy and pain and brought us all closer together through these times. We are a family blessed indeed with such kindness, and we are all so thankful for what this blog has brought to our home. We are a Christian family, and we give thanks to our lord for always watching over us and for those everywhere. We are a patriotic family, not a political one, and we love our country and what it stands for
On this day we want to give thanks to a group of men and women who stand high above as heroes without measure. These men and women serve in the United States Army, The United States Air Force, The United States Marines, The United States Navy, and The United States Coast Guard. These brave individuals sacrifice all for our freedom as well as the freedoms of other countries around the world. They are a noble group that I have such great admiration and respect for. This Thanksgiving we give thanks to you all that are home, abroad and especially for those that have fallen and won’t be coming home. Many homes will have an empty chair at their tables tomorrow and our thoughts and prayers will be with you. Thank you to these families who have children and spouses that serve so bravely. Happy Thanksgiving to all and have a blessed day.
This is a 1945 Norman Rockwell Saturday Evening Post cover celebrating Thanksgiving with a mother and her (soldier) son peeling potatoes
one of my most favorite photos of a convoy of soldiers praying for each others safety
Thanksgiving dinner while on duty!
A group of Marines having a pretty good looking Thanksgiving feast
Thanksgiving with the Air Force
Thanksgiving with the Navy
giving thanks
Thanks to our Coast Guard
here is a great illustration of George Washington praying for his men before they go into battle.
And a special thanks to those fallen.
horizontal
First I wanted to say thanks for all of you who are participating in the fundraiser auction for Alicia!!! We had sold a lot of art and have made $1000.00 so far. Rob Holts asked me to make a combo pic of all of the images from Archers ready room and here are both versions of this combo. I also just added them to the list of auction items at
Lots of great support and I can’t thank you all enough.
For todays post here are some designs from The episode called “Home” from ST Enterprise. For the welcoming of the crew of the NX-01 back to Earth after winning the battle against the Xindi, Archer and his crew land one of the shuttle pods in a massive stadium for an enthusiastic hero’s welcome. The shot was to take place in San Francisco and the city has been so well established in all the films and shows that to suddenly drom a huge stadium into the skyline just wouldn’t work in keeping with what has already been seen. So for the solution we came up with the idea of a stadium built in the bay and located somewhat around the old WWII ship yards so as to just keep it out of view from the bay views that are usually seen from the Sausalito side of the Golden Gate Bridge. It was an great place for the stadium and one fun piece of architecture to work on. The base is a ship and train port followed by a hotel-resort section in the middle with the stadium itself on top. in addition a handful of little Zeppelin type ships got to be added to the final concept. I just started watched Enterprise for the first time since the original broadcasts and I forgot what a fun show this one was. After seeing “Home” I went and dug these pics out of the files for todays story. OK gang have a great weekend and catch up with everyone next week.
vertical format
the bay viewthe sky view
the sky view
Howdy all and thanks for all the support on Alicia’s fundraiser. Today is a post on some artwork I came across last week and wanted to put it up this morning. This is the final design for Captain Picards yacht from Star Trek Insurrection. This was a tough concept to work out because of the positioning of the torpedo launcher located in the same location on the underside of the Enterprise-E’s saucer. Just by enormous chance did the positioning and shape make for the perfect place for the yacht and took very little line work to tie the E’s lines in with the belly of the Yacht. Being so very established as the main torpedo launcher in First Contact, a lot of sloping had to be put into the exterior cockpit area of the yacht so that the launcher would still be able to operate. Those images will be posted in part two of this article. Mike Okuda named the ship Cousteau after the world famous diver and oceanographer Jacques Cousteau. Following the three quarter views are the schematics that were a whole lot of fun to put together. Not a lot of screen time for this one but it was very nice to have the chance to establish the architecture as well as the details for this little ship.
the yacht
yacht scales
10
Nov
10
fundraiser confusion
Howdy all, There was a bit of confusion with the fotki site. I was using it as a place to show the images but the site itself had a purchase set up so if you got anything there please cancel that out because the quality and pixel size varies as it was only to be used as a viewing site. Sorry all. Me bad so I pulled the Fotki page down and have a new link up,,, Remember to only use it as a a catalog of images and please don’t use the “put in cart” feature. Thanks, and sorry again for any confusion.
10
Nov
10
the fundraiser auction continues
Miss laurel Rea
enterprise-e
Howdy all and thanks for all the great notes and orders for the “Help Alicia get a new horse” fundraiser. Below is a new link to a great deal of images and pin up pictures available for the auction. Due to popular demand for the pin up pictures in addition to the art I called most of the pin up gals that you all have read about here and they all were more than happy to add their pictures to the fundraiser. Miss laurel rea leads the way here as well as the Enterprise-E. I am sure I missed a great deal of images off of the blog so feel free to request anything you see their that I missed when putting the link together. Hopefully this new link will make it easier to see things and using the red boxed numbering system will make it easy to Id that image that your wanting to snag. Yesterdays post has the price breakdown and for all you international readers shipping over seas is not a problem. continue to use the email from yesterdays post to make an order and the options to pay are either thru paypal, check, or Western Union. OK thanks again from all the kind notes and donations to help Alicia out!!!! Have a fun and enjoy all the new images.
John
Ok the below link is for viewing only!!!! The “put in cart” feature is disabled, When you find one you like, write down the name or # and send me an email and we can go from there!!!!!
Thanks and sorry bout the confusion with the Fotki site from earlier
Alicia and Kiowa
Well, friends thanks again for all the kind words and prayers for my daughter, Alicia, and the tragedy with her losing her horse, Kiowa. The accident happened on 10-10 and on 10-16 the girls had a rodeo on their 2010/2011 competition schedule. One of the other wonderful rodeo families (The Jaspers) heard about Alicia’s loss and brought over one of theirs for her to ride. She had less than an hour to try her out and then we were off to the main events. Alicia and Olivia both carried a lock of Kiowa’s mane in their pockets and the rodeo began to Alicia riding tall and fast all day long. It was an extremely difficult day filled with tears, but both Alicia and Olivia are true cowgirls and stayed “cowgirl tuff”!
She carries Kiowa in her heart, as well as, her love for rodeo. Rising from where she has fallen she can’t be kept down and she is ready to move forward and ride again. Alicia has started to look for a new horse and with doing so we needed to find away to get her some funds to do so. Work has been fast furious and far between, so we came up with the idea of a fundraising auction featuring Star Trek art prints. We do so many fundraisers for all the different groups the girls participate in, so we thought it would be a perfect way to help her make some cash for getting that new horse. I am going to put prints up on ebay starting tomorrow, but for all my friends here on the blog you can have a print of anything you have seen here on the blog(That is something that I have drawn, and also almost all the the pin up gals have so graciously given permission to sell copies of their pictures as well!) at a fixed price special!!!! For a $15 donation plus shipping you can get an 8’5 x11 print…. For $20 plus shipping you can size up to an 11×17 print… Or for those of you with a lot of wall space you can really move up to the massive 13×19 for $25 plus shipping. All pictures will be printed on high gloss paper and hand personalized to you or to friends for that fun little Christmas gift. Feel free to drop me a line at johneaves227@gmail.com anytime in regards to what you would like. and I can send a pay thru paypal or info for checks thru private email, If you would like to add on a little extra, you are more than welcome to do so and all donations to our horse fundraising is most appreciated!
Thanks so much for helping out with Alicia’s fundraising efforts. Below is a note of thanks from Alicia that she wanted me to share with everyone here.
“Howdy, I wanted to thank you all for all your caring responses on my dad’s blog. It means so much to me. Thank you for your support during this rough time. Even though Kiowa can’t be with me now I know she would want me to continue with rodeo and my dad and I have come up with the idea of a fundraiser because I will be needing a new rodeo horse. It would mean a lot if you would consider contributing to my fundraiser. Thank you so much for all the support and comments” 🙂
~Alicia
Below are some print examples that have been posted here over the last year and a half or so and there are countless others available upon request.
print 1
print 2
print 3
print 4
print 5
print 6
print 7
Eavesdropping with Johnny 
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