Liverpool actor scores role in new Stephen King film

Actor Paul Hilts

Actor Paul Hilts is living proof that the harder you work, the more luck comes your way. After a decade in the film business, the Liverpool actor is finding his luck is improving each day.

A 20-year veteran of more than 50 film and theater productions, Hilts recently snared a part in Mute, a 2007 short story by best-selling author Stephen King.

Hilts will play the part of a priest who listens to the confessions of a traveling book salesman after he discovers his wife is having an affair.

“The idea of me in a Stephen King movie is a bit surreal because he’s one of the greatest known authors of our time. It doesn’t hurt to have an association with an icon,” Hilts said. “The past few years have been pretty amazing.”

Hilts is referring to his relationship with Shivilenco Pictures, a Liverpool-based production company which makes shorts and feature films. The company is owned and operated by director Colin Hives, who has hired Hilts for almost every one of his projects.

“Paul is probably the most professional actor I have ever worked with. He's so well prepared it's scary,” Hives says. “He will lament over a part but when you are ready to shoot he is the part. Paul is what I wish every actor was – helpful. I don't after worry about Paul, who is a godsend.”

Paul Hilts in Tangled Tales

And if the name Hilts sounds vaguely familiar, that’s because it’s based on Steve McQueen’s character from the classic World War II flick, The Great Escape. Hilt’s was born Paul Taylor, but changed it professionally to honor of his screen idol.

“Working class Brits love and underdog, someone who fights against the odds and triumphs over adversity, which Steve McQueen mastered,” Hilts says. “It was because of Steve that I wanted to become an actor. He made me feel if he could do it, so could I.”

Shooting on Mute will start later this month and will be entirely filmed on location in Liverpool.

Q & A with McQueen author Andrew Antoniades

Interviewer: You have just released a new book called “Steve McQueen: The Actor and his Films”. Why is McQueen so popular even today?



Andrew: In essence it is because what Steve McQueen stood for in his lifetime is still as relevant, if not more so, today. He was a no-nonsense person who was essentially an underdog and that story is always appealing. He was a rebel but he could also act, so his films remain relevant and well-loved today. For example, Bullitt is still influencing modern cinema through its cinematography and its car chase. Aside form the films there is McQueen fashion sense and his love of fast cars and motorbikes. So for every person there is nearly always something they can relate to and admire. In an age where cinema really has no tough guys like McQueen, people have to look back and appreciated him for the maverick he was, since there is no one that comes close these days. He died just over 30 years ago but remains as relevant and as big as ever.
Interviewer: How did you come to write a book on Steve McQueen?

Andrew: I had just edited Marshall Terrill’s latest biography Steve McQueen: The Life and Legend of a Hollywood Icon. That was a great experience for me as I had read Marshall’s first biography on McQueen from 1993 when I was just in my late teens. Marshall always felt, having written the definitive biography on McQueen that the story of his films needed to be told. Marshall graciously suggested that I be the one to tell this story and put in contact with his publisher. From there I teamed up with Mike Siegel who has one of Europe’s leading film memorabilia archives with so many great images and film posters. We teamed up with the idea being that I did most of the writing and Mike providing most of the images. In a sense, the book now has the best of both worlds and benefits from two very big McQueen fans to ensure that the text and imagery are of the highest caliber. The partnership worked well and, with Marshall and the publisher’s support, the end product exceeded all our hopes.

Interviewer: Why did you focus on Steve McQueen’s films?

Andrew: McQueen’s life was a miracle in its own way. He was born into poverty and managed to somehow work his way from a teenage delinquent to a Hollywood megastar, defying the odds. His life story is completely interwoven with his films. The reason being two-fold. Firstly, being an actor was his way to a better life, a way of achieving success. Without films he could have easily drifted from job to job, just as he had as a young man. Secondly, McQueen used acting as a means of developing himself. He used all his hardships and life experiences to create some of cinema’s richest and most subtle characterizations.

However, McQueen also managed to do the reverse too, in the latter half of his career, his movies became his confessional of sorts. He would invest in scenes to achieve catharsis and to understand his own personal anxieties and fears. For example, in Junior Bonner there is the scene between McQueen’s character and his father, Ace, in which the two have a very strained relationship, but a deep respect. McQueen himself grew up never knowing his father and this scene allowed McQueen to examine his own feelings of abandonment and being denied a conventional father-son relationship. It is an incredibly poignant scene, but really highlights just how important McQueen’s films are.

Interviewer: Which part of the book are you most proud of?

Andrew: It is hard to pick one. The reason being is the book covers so much in text and in words. This was a conscious decision as we wanted to give fans everything we like ourselves. With the text of the book, I guess I’m most proud of the dissection of McQueen’s acting. I wanted to offer a unique and in-depth insight into McQueen’s technique, his subtleties and his motivations, to really get under his skin. This is something that has never been done in such detail.

Interviewer: Visually, what are the books strengths?

Andrew: We were adamant that the book should look impressive and possess great quality. As a collector myself, I always want things that look good and impress. The book is literally huge; at nearly 500 pages I don’t think there is another book on McQueen of this size. It is presented in hardback too with a wonderful gold embossed logo on the cover, underneath the dust jacket. When I got my own copy of the book I had no idea about this and was blown away. My publisher did a great job and I believe that little touches add to the overall presentation.

With the images, even the biggest McQueen fan will be blown away. With over a 1,000 images there are so many never-before-seen photos. So many books on McQueen have been released that simply repeat the same images. Steve McQueen: The Actor and his Films has something for casual and die-hard fans alike. Whether it’s an unseen image of McQueen taking a nap between takes on The Getaway or a rare Italian poster for Bullitt, there is something new and fresh.

Interviewer: What makes your book so different?

Andrew: The word I would use, and I use it with caution, is “definitive”. I do not say this lightly. I own practically every book published on McQueen over the years. I must say that, as an account of McQueen’s films, it really is definitive. Other books that try to cover his films either are outdated, not richly presented or omit key details. With this book every aspect is dealt with in great detail and new angles discovered. I clearly have a bias, but I believe that there is nothing on the market that comes close.

Interviewer: Thank you Andrew, this book sounds great, I wish you every success. Any closing comments?

Andrew: Yes, thank you too, this has been great. To close I’d just like to say that I am very grateful to have had this opportunity to put together a book on a subject that I am so passionate about. It has really been a labor of love. At the end of the day, I am a McQueen fan so I wanted to put something together that would really do him justice. I hope that I have achieved that.

Q: Tell us something you've never revealed to anyone else?

Andrew: I love Tiny Tim's "Tiptoe Through The Tulips."

Steve McQueen: The Actor and his Films, by Andrew Antoniades and Mike Siegel

Is available from Dalton Watson Fine books www.daltonwatson.com

http://www.daltonwatson.com/78-celebrities/130-steve-mcqueen-the-actor-and-his-films

ISBN 978-1-85443-253-7

Hard cover with dust jacket

Publication Date November 2011

Page Size: 300mm x 230mm. 492 pages.

Illustrations: 1,020 illustrations: 790 photos incl. 44 full page photos. 230 artwork reproductions incl. 48 full page poster reproductions & 10 full page lobby card reproductions

Price: US$69/£39

McQueen's main main releases new book

ROBERT RELYEA'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY: BEHIND THE ... Celebrating Films of the 1960s & 1970s

When I first moved to Los Angeles about a dozen years ago, the one person I wanted to meet was Robert Relyea. Now, this may seem like an odd choice since his is hardly a household name, but Bob Relyea’s credit was on just about every one of my favorite movies growing up. And if you’re reading Cinema Retro, the odds are these films are favorites of yours as well - “The Alamo,” “The Magnificent Seven,” “West Side Story,” “The Great Escape,” and “Bullitt,” to name a few of the classic movies he worked on.

His nominal title on a picture like “The Great Escape” was assistant to the producer but this hardly begins to describe what he actually contributed to that film. He scouted locations, he was the production manager, directed all the night scenes (because John Sturges didn’t like working nights), he even flew the plane that James Garner piloted in the film and was courageous enough to take on the hazardous job of stunt pilot when the plane needed to crash. Oh, and that immortal shot of Steve McQueen jumping the barbed wire fence on his motorcycle? Yup, Bob Relyea directed that.

They say it’s best not to meet your heroes, that they will only let you down. Well, as usual “they” are wrong. I finally got to meet Mr. Relyea and it has been one of the great pleasures of my life to be able to call him my friend. A finer, more decent man I have never met and he is also one of the best storytellers I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. Now, with the publication of his memoirs of a life in the motion picture industry, “Not So Quiet on the Set,” you, too, have the opportunity to meet Robert Relyea and I urge you to do yourself a great favor and read one of the funniest and most moving books about the movie industry I have ever read. The style of the book perfectly captures the voice of the man I know - understated, honest, slightly amazed at the things he has seen and been a part of, and full of a puckish wit that infuses the incredible goings on.

And what a cast of characters! Grace Kelly, Marlon Brando, Elvis, John Wayne, Richard Widmark, Frank Sinatra, Steve McQueen, Audrey Hepburn, Shirley MacLaine, James Garner, June Allyson, Yul Brynner, Burt Lancaster, Charles Bronson, James Coburn, Cliff Robertson, David McCallum and Peter Sellers, even the Beatles make an appearance.

And the directors he’s worked with are here as well - Vincente Minnelli, William Wyler, Robert Wise, Blake Edwards, Peter Yates, Mark Rydell and his mentor, the great John Sturges. In fact, the story about how Sturges happened to make “Bad Day at Black Rock” is worth the price of admission alone, as they used to say. It’s hard to pick out a favorite anecdote, they are all so well told, but there are a couple of stories about the making of “The Alamo” that are priceless, including one about Relyea having a conversation with John Wayne as a horse proceeded to bite the Duke on the ass. Wayne turned around and socked his equine attacker squarely on the snout without missing a beat in the conversation with Relyea. And this was years before Mongo in “Blazing Saddles!” “I realized then,” Bob once told me, “He wasn’t acting. He really WAS John Wayne!”

John Wayne with director John Ford, who visited the set“The Alamo” provides the book with some of its funniest moments as well as one of the most dramatic. During the long, arduous shoot, Relyea developed a bleeding ulcer that came within minutes of killing him. Thanks to the blood transfusions of the many stuntmen on the film, he survived, thanks to the massive infusions of stuntmen’s blood, almost all of it laced with copious amounts of tequila, Jack Daniels and Scotch. In fact, there’s a funny story that Bob Relyea once told me about that film, that isn’t in the book so I won’t be giving anything away if I recount it here.

“On the first day of shooting, one of my responsibilities was to watch Duke play the scene, since they didn’t have video monitors in those days for him to look at after the shot was completed. Well, I got so pre-occupied with the set-up and and everything that I didn’t notice until we all saw the dailies that because he had lived so long with this project, Duke not only knew his lines, but knew every other actor’s lines in the scene as well. And when we saw the dailies, there he was, silently mouthing the other actor’s lines as they were delivering them. I was so focused on everything else, I missed it, and I can assure you that I caught hell for that one!”

Relyea was such a consummate professional that top directors like Sturges and Wise and Wyler clamored for his assistance on their films. In fact, one of the dramatic highlights of the book is when he is forced to choose whose company he will become a part of - Wise, who offered him a signed contract to become partner of his production company, or an identical proposal from John Sturges, his mentor. He had agreed to both men’s requests, figuring that it was unlikely that either proposal would pan out and yet when offers arrived on the same day from both directors, Relyea was forced to choose. It goes to show how a good man can find himself in an untenable position and I know that Bob Relyea still smarts over his own perceived shortcoming in the affair. In a highly charged scene in the book, he visits the man he is forced to turn down and receives a devastating dismissal. It just goes to show that the choices that the business forces to make can test the moral resolution of even the most upright man. I think that Relyea is too hard on himself in the matter but his own moral code doesn’t let himself off the hook any easier than it does anyone else in the book.

One of the interesting concepts of the book is the twin narrative than flows through the pages. Relyea’s son Craig introduces many of the chapters by placing the films in a social and familial context and though it is a concept that is fraught with hazards, Craig Relyea pulls it off superbly. His introductions are concise, well-written and illuminate the innate decency of his father. The book is a tremendously entertaining read and more knowledge on the inner workings of the American movie industry can be found between its covers than that in any undergraduate film school.

The petty politics, the logistical challenges, the studio machinations, the human emotions that all go into making a motion picture are delineated here with utmost precision.
Steve McQueen in "The Great Escape" I have had the great pleasure over the years to interview and in many cases, befriend, great directors like Frank Capra, Billy WIlder, Robert Wise, Martin Scorsese and Oliver Stone, to name a few, but I have learned more about filmmaking from Robert Relyea than the lot of them combined. There is wisdom here aplenty but it is never didactic; simply the hard-earned truths of a man who has done it all. The last section has an elegiac quality to it, starting with the sale of Warner Bros. just as “Bullitt” was commencing principal photography. And if I had any nitpicking's about the book, it is that stops in 1971, after the debacle of “Le Mans,” and the dissolution of Relyea’s partnership and friendship with Steve McQueen. I understand his reason for doing so, but ending such a wonderful tale on such a sour note felt a bit awkward. Would that he had continued a few more years to the wild tales of “Day of the Dolphin” with Mike Nichols and George C. Scott, or how Relyea chose Michael Cimino to direct his production of a Vietnam script that became “The Deer Hunter,” only to walk away from the project in a bitter dispute with the young director.

Bob Relyea understands the old show biz maxim of always wanting to leave the audience wanting more and this book certainly does that. Alas, he has said there will be no sequel, this is the story he wanted to tell and I urge you not to miss it. This is a book, rich in anecdotes and wisdom, so do yourself a favor and buy a copy and then do your friends a favor and buy them copies. To borrow a couple of adjectives from the two classic John Sturges movies he worked on, this is a MAGNIFICENT book, written by a very GREAT man. - Mike Thomas

To order a copy of "Not So Quiet On The Set," visit http://www.notsoquietontheset.com/ or http://www.amazon.com/.

2nd annual Steve McQueen Days March 28-29

Steve McQueen fans from around the world will gather in Slater, Missouri, the actor’s boyhood hometown, to celebrate the life and work of the legendary actor on Friday and Saturday, March 28 and 29.

The 2^nd Annual Steve McQueen Days is timed around the actor’s birthday; McQueen would have been 78 years old on March 24^th. McQueen was born in Beech Grove, Indiana but moved to Slater, when he was an infant and remained there for most of the next decade. Slater is located in central Missouri in Saline County and has approximately 2,100 residents.

Among those attending will be McQueen’s widow, Barbara McQueen, who will be signing copies of her book Steve McQueen: The Last Mile about her years with McQueen. Also attending will be McQueen’s friend from his early days in Greenwich Village and later, in Hollywood, Richard Martin. Martin has just produced a documentary on McQueen’s life titled An American Rebel. The film is based on the book Steve McQueen: Portrait of an American Rebel by noted biographer Marshall Terrill, who will be a key speaker during the festivities in Slater.

McQueen’s stuntman, Loren Janes, who worked with McQueen throughout his professional career from his television western series, Wanted: Dead or Alive to the last film he made, The Hunter will be presenting rare behind the scenes footage from Nevada Smith and The Sand Pebbles.

Highlights of the festival will include a Steve McQueen Lookalike Contest and a Classic Car and Motorcycle Show. McQueen was an accomplished and competitive semi-professional car and motorcycle racer who owned over 100 antique motorcycles. An auction of McQueen-related memorabilia to benefit the Boy’s Republic School in Chino, California will also be held during the weekend. McQueen attended the Boy’s Republic shortly after he left Slater and continued to visit and support the school throughout his life.

McQueen was a worldwide box-office champion in the '60s and '70s and starred in such blockbuster films as The Great Escape, Papillon and The Sand Pebbles, which garnered him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. This year also marks the 40^th Anniversary of Bullitt and The Thomas Crown Affair, which are among McQueen’s most acclaimed films. At the time of his death in November of 1980 from asbestos-induced cancer, McQueen was the most-popular and highest-paid actor in the world.

For additional information about the 2nd Annual Steve McQueen Days visit www.cityofslater.com.

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