New Line Cinema released The Hidden on 30 October 1987.
I was there. In the theater. I absolutely loved it. And I’ve watched it about once a decade since then. And I still think it is great. So you should just watch it — even if you’ve seen it before.
But I want to talk about something else.
A few years back, I watched the film with director Jack Sholder’s commentary. It was fine. Pretty typical of director commentaries. No real surprises. And lots of production details no one really cares about.
But he talked a lot about co-star Michael Nouri. According to Sholder, Nouri was angry that Kyle MacLachlan was getting all the attention. And here’s the thing: I’m sure he was right. It’s hard to look at a photo of Nouri and not think he keeps his head firmly wedged up his ass.
But it always comes back to this: filmmaking ain’t cancer research. I would certainly hate if cancer researchers went out in public and bad-mouthed their colleagues. (Biologist James Watson did this about Rosalind Franklin and I lost all respect for him as a human being.) But I’d forgive it. I mean, people curing cancer can do what they want.
Why is it that filmmakers think it is fine to air their dirty laundry in public like this? I think part of it is that there is a very high level of psychopathy in Hollywood. But the bigger issue is that people in Hollywood love the taste of their own excrement. The successful ones don’t think they are curing cancer. They think what they are doing is so much more important than that!
So rather than acting like an adult and just moving on, they hold on to grudges for decades just to spew them out on commentary tracks, where the salacious bits are repeated in places normal (non-commentary watching) people frequent.
Again, I don’t doubt that Michael Nouri is a prick. Then again, maybe he was just at a bad place in his life. Or maybe Jack Sholder misunderstood him. The only thing that really matters is that Nouri is great on screen and his character’s relationship with MacLachlan’s character is perfect.
So forget all that. The Hidden is pure joy. Thanks to all who made it possible!
Other Psychotronic Birthdays & Releases
Filmmakers
- Ruth Gordon (1896-1985): Actor known for many thing but notably Rosemary’s Baby and Harold and Maude.
- Ruth Hussey (1911-2005): Actor best known for The Philadelphia Story but also Blackmail and The Uninvited.
- Jane Randolph (1914-2009): Actor known for Cat People, Jealousy, and more.
- William Campbell (1923-2011): Actor known for Dementia 13 and especially the Star Trek episode “The Squire of Gothos.”
- Louis Malle (1932-1995): Director of Pretty Baby, Atlantic City, and more.
- Michael Winner (1935-2013): Director of Death Wish, The Sentinel, and much more.
- Henry Winkler (1945-): Best known for the role of Fonzie on Happy Days, he’s been a character actor since in films like The Waterboy.
- Herschel Weingrod (1947-): Screenwriter (mostly with Timothy Harris) of films like Trading Places and My Stepmother Is an Alien.
- Harry Hamlin (1951-): Actor who starred in Clash of the Titans. He also appeared in Director’s Cut.
- Charles Martin Smith (1953-): Director of Trick or Treat, Boris and Natasha, and Air Bud.
- Kevin Pollak (1957-): Character actor in a whole bunch of stuff including Canadian Bacon, The Usual Suspects, The Whole Nine Yards, and more. He also stars in the great short film Our Time Is Up.
Films
- Bowery at Midnight (1942): A soup kitchen is used as a front for a criminal enterprise.
- I Married A Witch (1942): A witch is reincarnated and harasses the descendant of her former persecutor.
- Earth vs the Spider (1958): Giant spider lives in a cave and teens get stuck.
- Beast From Haunted Cave (1959): Typical single-location monster film but better because it is in the snow.
- Maniac (1963): A man tries to free his lover’s husband from a mental hospital.
- Halloween II (1981): It turns out Michael Myers isn’t dead.
- Looker (1981): Models are being murdered in a cyberpunk world.
- Saturday the 14th (1981): A family inherits a house with an evil book and a bunch of monsters.
- Deranged (1987): A woman kills a man in self-defense but is now paranoid and kills anyone who gets close. Don’t mistake it for the Ed Gein biopic Deranged.
- Vampires (1998): A group hunts vampires.
- Route 666 (2001): Federal agents chasing a witness encounter zombies.
- Dead/Undead (2002): A group on a religious retreat encounters a monster.
- Vampire Bats (2005): University students are killed at an underground party.
- The Blood Shed (2007): Cannibal family comedy.
- Kingdom of the Vampire (2007): Brett Kelly’s remake of the JR Bookwalter classic.
- Blood Guardian (2009): A boy sees his mother murder his father. As an adult, he notices people around him are being murdered. Who could it possibly be?
- Evil Weed (2009): Microbudget about cannabis that has an unexpected effect.
- The Occultist (2009): Med students find themselves in a Satanic ritual.
- Freaks of Nature (2015): Young human, vampire, and zombie must unite to defeat space aliens.
- Time Cut (2024): A young woman travels back in time and tries to stop a serial killer.
The Hidden (1987) poster via Wikipedia under Fair Use.
I wonder if Hollywood rudeness is just “s**t rolls downhill.” Studio executives routinely s**t on artists; directors and writers and actors compete with each other for work, trying to please the same clods at the top. People who are demeaned by those above them frequently seek out someone to demean, themselves. It’s ugly but it happens. And studio execs are pretty notorious for their sneering “I like telling artists they’re worthless and powerless” petty cruelty. That’s been true of Hollywood for over 100 years.
Still, you’re so right in pointing out how cheap and immature such DVD commentary remarks are. It’s like my thought that there should be honor among theives; those of us who are struggling writers shouldn’t s**t on other struggling writers, unless they write something particularly vile that gets a lot of attention. We’re all in the same leaky boat; we should support each other, personal disagreements aside. Hollywood people turded on by studio execs shouldn’t diss others who were turded on, too, not in public. It’s just tacky.
I think there is something to all of that. But I think it is far worse now when top actors and directors have a lot of power than it was when it was just a good-paying job. That’s why I lean heavily toward the idea that they are just full of themselves. And it goes along with my own experience. I still find it shocking how people in Hollywood act like what they are doing is super important. And most of these commentaries are recorded well after the people are still working. So they *could* complain about studio heads. But they don’t. And the things they complain about are minor. In general, their own rudeness is as bad as what they are complaining about!
Great point about how they could talk about studio heads, but they don’t. It was one thing I liked about Ron Shelton’s book about making Bull Durham — 99% of his complaints were about studio interference. (I normally don’t read “making of” books and it’s not like Bull Durham is some great masterpiece, but Shelton’s a funny writer.)
Just this afternoon I was thinking of The Long Kiss Goodnight. Shane Black was paid four million dollars for that script. But the studio still didn’t trust him and destroyed the ending. It’s crazy!