Most of the articles about James' passing highlight his role as a redneck sheriff in two James Bond films starring Roger Moore: Live and Let Die (1973) and The Man With the Golden Gun (1974). "His daughter noted that her father sometimes said actors get remembered for one particular role out of hundreds," states the Associated Press article. "His is the sheriff's, but he said he would have never picked that one," said Lynn James. During the prime of his career, the article states, James "loved working on the stage in New York."

Here's part of an obituary written by Meagan Navarro at ScreenRant:

James was born May 29, 1920 in Spokane, Washington as the oldest of five siblings, and the only son. His mother was a teacher and his father a journalist. He was raised near Portland, Oregon during the height of the Great Depression. A decorated World War II veteran, James served nearly five years in the South Pacific and has earned numerous decorations for his service including a Silver Star, Bronze Star, and two Purple Hearts.

After leaving the Army, James took classes and acted in plays at the University of Oregon before moving to New York to launch his acting career. His first stage appearance was The Time of Your Life, and he continued to perform in numerous stage plays on Broadway.

Despite being a northerner with a love of theater, his most famous role came on film as the tobacco spitting southern sheriff from Louisiana in 1973’s Live and Let Die. The stark comedic contrast to Roger Moore’s cool, sophisticated James Bond proved to be so popular with audiences that the writers wrote the comic-relief character into the next James Bond film, 1974’s The Man with the Golden Gun. This entry saw the popular character bringing even more comedic relief to the film as it took the southern sheriff out of the south and into Thailand. His knack for portraying a cigar-chomping, tobacco chewing southerners carried over in many other film roles, as in his role of Carr in Cool Hand Luke. James also acted opposite to Bruce Willis in The Bonfire of the Vanities, and Robert De Niro in an uncredited role as a district attorney who prosecuted Al Capone in The Untouchables.

On television, James had appeared in Gunsmoke, Bonanza, The Dukes of Hazard, Lewis & Clark, The A-Team, Dallas, and more. As a lover of celebrating holidays with his wife, Laurie, James once played Kris Kringle in a 1996 episode of long-running soap opera All My Children. Perhaps his most notable television role, however, is that of powerful Houston lawyer Striker Bellman in the soap opera Texas, from 1981 to 1982.

James leaves behind his wife, his five children, 14 grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren, as well his two younger sisters Cicely and Beverley. He will be missed.

On May 8th, Robert DeNiro will be honored at The Film Society Of Lincoln Center’s 44th Annual Chaplin Award Gala. As a primer to this vital fundraiser, The Film Society will host a one week retrospective featuring his best performances. It will include his seminal work with director Martin Scorsese (Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The King Of Comedy, Goodfellas, Casino, Cape Fear), Michael Mann (Heat), Brian DePalma (Hi Mom!, The Untouchables), and the late Sergio Leone (Once Upon A Time In America). Seeing any of these films are essential, but the real treat in the series is DePalma’s black comedy, ‘Hi Mom’, which featured DeNiro in one of his earliest starring roles; and Once Upon A Time In America, Leone’s 1984 epic which has been restored to its original 3 hour-plus cut.

“I remember the first time I sat in a movie theatre, I spent more time staring back at where the image was coming from than at the film itself,” Laurent says with excitement. “So my dad arranged for me to go into the projection room after it was over. I was fascinating with the projector and the circle at the top that meant you had to change reels. That started my love of looking behind the scenes.”

Laurent recalls one incredible chance encounter a few years later in 1981 with his film hero. “I used to go to this small movie store in Paris every Saturday at 11am. One time, I was chatting to the owner - this creepy guy who gave me a good deal on posters – telling him how great Francois Truffaut was when in walked the famous director himself. This was a few days before The Last Metro was coming out. I was freaking out. He bought two books, one by Andre Bazin, the famous critic. I went over and talked to him. He was slight with an old fashioned tie and suit on. I was surprised as I imagined him as being tall, big and super hip. I said I was such a big fan and couldn’t wait for The Last Metro. But he responded that he was really scared because all his recent films were flops and that it would be a disaster. I was so floored that someone who I idolised had zero confidence. Interestingly, it went on to be the movie that put him back on the map.”

Not too long after this encounter, and after finishing his baccalaureate in France, Laurent decided to pack his bags and head for the US determined to get into the film world somehow. With no connections or film qualifications, little money, and only hope, his chances looked slim. His first port of call was the Big Apple.

Bizarrely his dad, who had nothing to do with the film world, had met a film producer from New York on a plane a short while before, and had told her that his son was an obsessive film fan desperate to move to the US. She had said Laurent could get in touch, probably not expecting him to do so. He did.

“Her name was Sally Faile. She had produced this pretty terrible horror film called The Returning (1983). I worked with her for a few months, which was great,” explains Laurent. But he had his sights set a little higher. Fortunately the omens were good.

At a film screening, two new actor friends, Rutanya Alda (The Deer Hunter) and her husband, Richard Bright (Looking for Mr Goodbar) introduced Laurent to Scarface director Mr Brian De Palma. Laurent found it hard to contain his excitement. He was a huge fan.

“We talked at length about his movies, and although nothing happened then, I would go on to do making of documentaries for pretty much all of his movies,” says Laurent excitedly.

However, this was the 1980s and the independent film sector was dying in New York. So after six years, Laurent decided to move to the home of Hollywood, LA. He managed to get a job working with another Hollywood great, Bette Midler for her company All Girl Productions, based in the Walt Disney Studios on Dopey Drive.

“I was a feature film development executive. It was an exciting time and she was a big star. But one of the most important things was they had a production deal with Steven Spielberg’s company Amblin Entertainment,” enthuses Laurent. This proved to be a huge turning point in Laurent’s career trajectory.

“I had written a book about De Palma by this point, and one abut Hitchcock, so I was starting to make a bit of a name for myself, which helped encourage Amblin to decide to bring me on board to do a retrospective film about Steven’s movie 1941,” he explains.

Laurent’s first encounter with the Close Encounters director was an amusing one. “He couldn’t believe I knew so much about 1941, one of his smaller and obscure films, which was not a box office success. I had a huge number of memorabilia from the film, including posters and lobby cards. That started us geeking out and we just clicked.”

This was the start of a beautiful friendship. Soon after he was asked to do a retrospective of Jaws. Laurent recalls one particularly interesting and enlightening conversation with Spielberg about the famous shark. “At the end of Jaws, the shark explodes and you have a shot of it falling to the bottom of the ocean and you hear a strange sound, like an eeeeerrrrrrr. I said to him that in his movie Duel when the truck goes over the hill at the end, it has the same sound. He said ‘Oh my god! You’re the first person to notice this. It was a dinosaur sound from an old Universal movie that I really liked, so I put it in both movies.’”

This interest in cinema language, sounds and techniques is what drives Laurent when directing his ‘making of’ movies. Whether he’s doing retrospectives of films like Jaws, The Exorcist or Lawrence of Arabia, which require lengthy research of archives, or actually being on the sets of movies and uncovering behind the scenes little gems for the DVD or Blu-Ray extras.

“I have a good relationship with all the heads of departments on the movies I work on, so I know exactly what went into creating every aspect of the films,” explains Laurent. “If it’s a big movie with large sets, I’m usually there early on to witness everything. If it’s a more modest movie or doesn’t require much pre-production, then I’ll join a little later. But the important thing is I have to be invisible. Everyone is working hard and so I don’t want to get in their way. Fortunately, Steven has pretty much the same crews for all his films, and they know and trust me, telling me ‘you should come and see this’.”

When Ethan (Brian Elerding), Sam (Lana McKissack) and James (Michael Nardelli) find themselves the target of cryptic emails from someone posing as their childhood friend Molly (Noemi Gonzales), they assume she’s been the victim of an all-too-common hack. After they reach out to alert her, however, they discover that Molly’s been missing for months and no one has any idea what happened to her. As the emails keep coming, each containing a tale written by Molly, her friends realize that this may be more than just a sick joke. Someone has hidden information in the stories, details pulled from real life that point them to people and places from Molly’s past; clues that may lead them to their missing friend, or something far sinister. DARK/WEB’s unique structure combines the classic, standalone stories traditionally found in an anthology with an overarching, season-long mystery.

Al Pacino’s big, kind eyes say more about Carlito than his explanatory voiceover: the ex-conman, fresh out of prison, wants to believe again in the beauty of life. Director Brian de Palma employs his trademark voluptuous filmmaking to translate the hopeful passion that Carlito manages to bring back to his girlfriend, making this his most tender and romantic film. Yet the director’s pessimistic view of humanity hasn’t left him as Carlito can’t simply forget the code of the streets, nor can he rely on the law to protect him, corrupted as it is by selfish greed and rampant distrust. Even the most genuine and overwhelming love can’t survive when redemption remains but a dashed dream.

With the screenplay in place, there remained the question of casting. On a flight with [Stanley] Jaffe, Lansing ran into Michael Douglas, who read the script. "It was the perfect what-if, the ultimate quickie nightmare," he said.

The actor was no longer the B-list star Lansing had met when she served as an executive on 1979's The China Syndrome. But he still did not have the heft to get a film greenlighted on his name alone, and Paramount, where Lansing and Jaffe were based, passed on the project, as did every other studio. Its head of production, Dawn Steel, was so outraged by the script, she hurled it across the room.

"She yelled, 'How can you give me this? I'm a newlywed!' " recalled Lansing. "She said, 'Why should we care about a guy who cheats on his wife, especially when he doesn't have a reason?' But the fact there was no reason was the whole point. Things like that happen, and knowing it adds to the feeling of, 'This could happen to me.' "

She failed to persuade Steel, however, just as she failed to persuade numerous directors to sign on. "Everyone passed," she said. "I begged John Carpenter [Halloween]. And it wasn't just him. I begged everyone."

The movie was in trouble. Studio readers were sick of seeing the same old script recycled, making its way again and again through their story departments. And the agencies were bored with Lansing's repeated requests to show it to clients.

Everything changed when Brian De Palma (The Untouchables) said yes. The director was at the top of Hollywood's A-list, and Steel could not have been more excited. Suddenly it became her favorite project. Red flags might have been visible if Lansing had cared to look: De Palma did not share her sympathy for the jilted woman and wanted to make changes that seemed close to turning the story into a horror film.

"We even had a Halloween scene, with Alex running around in a Kabuki mask, terrorizing the household," noted Dearden.

But De Palma had Steel's support, and that meant Fatal was a go. Gearing up for the shoot, Lansing rented an apartment in New York, where the movie was going to be filmed, while Jaffe set to work finding locations and staff. Then De Palma had second thoughts.

"We were just a few weeks away from the shoot," recalled Lansing, "and he said, 'I can't make the movie with Douglas. Michael's completely unsympathetic. No one will ever like him.' " De Palma gave an ultimatum: "It's either him or me."

"It was one of those come-to-Jesus moments," Lansing continued. "De Palma was the element that got us a green light, but Michael had been on the movie for two years, when everybody else rejected us. We said, 'We're sticking with Michael.' "

With De Palma out, the film was dead. It had an actor nobody wanted and a script in which no one believed. Then ICM agent Diane Cairns sent it to her client Adrian Lyne. The British director was at home in the South of France when he received the package and sat down on the stone steps of his farmhouse to read it. He finished the whole thing without moving.

"I woke my wife up," he remembered. "I fell in the bed and said, 'Listen, if I don't f— this up, I know this is a huge movie.' "

A key piece of the puzzle lingered: finding Alex. "The role was critical because she had to be sexy but vulnerable, a career woman who had her act together but could still completely collapse," said Lansing. Her first choice, Barbara Hershey, was unavailable. Another possibility, French actress Isabelle Adjani, did not speak enough English. Debra Winger, Susan Sarandon, Michelle Pfeiffer and Jessica Lange were all considered or turned the role down. Melanie Griffith was also in contention, but the filmmakers feared that what she had in sexuality, she might lack in gravitas.

Cheers star Kirstie Alley read for the role and contributed a unique element to the film. "Her husband [Parker Stevenson] had been stalked by a woman who camped outside their house and made their lives hell," said Lansing. "Kirstie had saved a tape of the woman's calls and gave it to Adrian. You could hear the woman crying as she begged to be part of this man's life. Adrian ended up using it verbatim."

Deadline's Brian Brooks filed a report from SXSW on March 11. Here's an excerpt:

Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver hit the ground with tires squealing this evening at its world premiere at SXSW, with the writer-director and key cast along for the ride for the packed screening at the Paramount Theater. “That is going to make a lot of money,” was among the comments overheard as the revved-up audience left the screening and a boisterous post-movie Q&A that climaxed Day 2 at the festival.

Wright took the stage for the Q&A joined by stars Jon Hamm, Eiza González and Ansel Elgort, who plays the young innocent Baby, an unlikely maestro behind the wheel of a getaway car. The music-fueled actioner is the first film Wright wrote by himself (he previously co-wrote features he also directed including Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World and The World’s End), and said tonight that Baby Driver had “existed” in his head for 22 years...

...“I was just listening through my record collection and I’d envision scenes,” Wright said tonight of how his movie came together. “I wouldn’t write scenes until I found the right track.” Music is central to the film. Gunshots, dialogue and action sequences are choreographed to the mostly high-energy soundtrack. Elgort’s Baby is the getaway driver for a crime boss (Spacey) who taps various criminals to pull off high-stakes heists. Each job becomes more intense than the last, and the chases more outlandish. Baby Driver is an homage to the ’70s car chase movies of Walter Hill, whose voice can be heard in the movie.

In 2012, Wright did the first read-through of a draft screenplay with Hamm, the only actor from that year who remained on the project. “This is a departure from the films I’ve done in the past,” said Wright. “It definitely took the longest [of my projects] to write.”

Previously:
Edgar Wright influenced by De Palma for Baby Driver

FINCHER'S VISION: "WE WANT TO MAKE IT THE CITIZEN KANE OF COP MOVIES"
If Greengrass does indeed go forward as director, it does not seem far-fetched in the least to expect that his Bourne franchise star Damon will hop back on board to play Ness. Paramount is probably salivating over the ads already: "From the director of Jason Bourne," while Matt Damon's face is plastered all over the screen. Although Fincher's interests are probably seen as too dark, bold, and risky to build a potential police franchise around, he had told MTV's Kurt Loder in 2007 that it wasn't the torso killings that interested him so much, but rather "the de-mythologizing of Eliot Ness. Because, you know, The Untouchables was only two or three years of the Eliot Ness story. There's a whole other, much more sinister downside to it. And so that's of interest to me. We want to make it the Citizen Kane of cop movies."

You combine in your narrative social commentary, comedy, gender and horror so effortlessly and fluid in Raw. What were some of the influences that helped you craft the film?

So the thing is when I write and I direct, I really, really try for once not to watch the movies that I love to watch in real life. I try not to be tempted to reproduce anything, I am kind of scared of that. I never go back to my main influences when I do the job. The funny thing is I do not make any direct reference to any of the main filmmakers, like Cronenberg, Argento or Lynch who are a holy trinity in my life. There is a however a direct Carrie reference, you know Brian De Palma. Carrie is a movie I like very much but it wasn’t a foundation experience for me, even though I love it, like how strong it is with a Cronenberg for example.

I did it because lots of members in the audience would think to themselves the premise of the movie, so I decided to make a small wink to it and play with this reference so we can move on to the next scene.

A lot of people have said they see Suspiria, and its funny because Suspiria was one of the biggest shocks in my life when I saw it. Even though I didn’t think about it when I was writing or directing, when someone tells me this, I am like yeah I think I understand it. Somehow its unconscious, but your identity is also what you’ve watched, what you’ve liked and what you’ve reacted to.

"Many of the film’s gory moments are reminiscent of Cronenberg’s style and there is an ode to De Palma’s Carrie when the group of incoming freshman are doused with buckets of animal blood. However, the film shocks the most when it does it in a subtle way and Ducournau manages to fool the audience into believing that they are watching a coming-of-age drama that suddenly becomes the perfect double bill with Hannibal or one of my favorites Ravenous. But here the audience never loses sight that Justine is not becoming this terrible monster by choice. She can’t seem to escape what the future has in store and even when she begins to do the unthinkable the audience still finds itself rooting for her to find a way out. Raw is a brilliantly executed horror film that instantly becomes a classic of the genre. The final act is both shocking and satisfying."

April Wolfe, LA Weekly

"The women’s competitive, murderous relationship suggests the psychodrama of Brian De Palma’s Sisters, which tells of separated conjoined-twin serial killers, but in Raw the soul siblings hurt themselves just as much as they hurt other people. When Justine smears lipstick on her face and grinds her hips into a mirror to a song whose chorus is literally “I like to bang the dead,” or when she rips her teeth into her own arm to quell her cravings, these scenes echo Andrzej Zulawski’s Possession, in which a woman is so wracked by sexual madness that she hurls herself over and over into a wall in a subway tunnel.

"A scene where drunk-on-passion Justine rips into her kissing partner’s lips, snagging a tasty chunk of flesh, brings to mind Claire Denis’ archetypal cannibalistic-love thriller Trouble Every Day. But Raw isn’t derivative — it’s fresh, funny and grounded in reality. Underneath all the blood and guts, this is the story of a woman whose body demands love in extremity and the only person who’ll ever understand her fully: her sister."

Peter Keough, The Boston Globe

"Ducournau has some brilliant set pieces to come. A couple, one painted blue, the other yellow, make love, forming green until an abrupt interruption. And in one of the most disturbing horror scenes so far this year, we learn that a human finger tastes like curry.

"But then Ducournau throws in subtexts of patriarchal tyranny, elitism, vengeful mediocrity, colonial exploitation, homophobia, eating disorders, incest, sibling rivalry, and vegetarianism. Plus, a handsome array of allusions to such directors as David Cronenberg, Alfred Hitchcock, and Brian De Palma. But we never get much closer to answering the key question — what’s eating Justine?"

Steve Erickson, Nashville Scene

"Sisterhood is powerful. It’s also powerfully damaged, according to the exciting French horror film Raw. Writer-director Julia Ducournau synthesizes the influences of Claire Denis (especially her film maudit Trouble Every Day) and David Cronenberg, while paying explicit homage to Brian De Palma and Alfred Hitchcock. Like many of the best films, Raw remains enigmatic to the end. I could list a dozen subjects and themes that it’s about, but in the end, it resists being reduced to a metaphor or, even more so, a message. Ducournau captures the sense of terror and the sheer oddity powering the best work of horror writers like Poppy Z. Brite and Clive Barker."

Kalyn Corrigan, Birth. Movies. Death.

In both Sisters and in Raw sexual acts prompt and coincide with the tendency toward violent acts. Just as Danielle discovers that she is as protective and violent towards anyone who tries to insert themselves between she and Dominique, Justine realizes that she, too, wants to keep her sister all to herself, because only her sister truly understands her -- the same can arguably be said about Alexia’s feelings toward Justine. Both stories feature women who evolve into more actualized human beings once their sisters pave the way to understanding themselves. Only the one who shares the same infected blood can point the way to self-acceptance, and only your sister will truly be there for you when you have a body that needs disposing of. It takes a true sibling to stand by your side while you’re holding a bloody kitchen knife in your hand – or, in certain circumstances, a bloody ski pole.

The inspiration for Sisters actually comes from a startling image that director Brian De Palma stumbled upon in an article in a 1966 issue of Life Magazine. The picture showed two conjoined Soviet twins named Masha and Dasha, and a caption in the bottom right corner reads something along the lines of “Although they are physiologically normal, as they get older, they are starting to develop mental problems”. Intrigued by this strange scenario, De Palma dreamed up a story about two Siamese twins who would eventually be surgically separated, resulting in one sister going mad and attacking any man who would dare try to date her one and only human connection. Influenced, as always, by Hitchcock, De Palma took his grand idea of a sibling set slasher and filled it to the brim with nods to his favorite filmmaker, giving it a very Psycho first act, as he kills off a lead character more than thirty minutes in, followed up by a small Rope homage as he uses as long of a take as possible to show the detective and reporter Collier making their way around Danielle’s apartment while looking for a body, all the while keeping a cool Rear Window style ever present with several characters watching important plot points develop through binoculars, typically from across the street, just as Jimmy Stewart does as Hitchcock’s classic wheelchair bound neighborly hero. During the editing process, he and Paul Hirsch even grew to believe it was necessary to get Bernard Herrmann to do the score.

De Palma is not character driven or a man of many words. He finds that too much chatter makes for a dull movie, and instead opts to find inspiration in a large set piece, or a big idea, and then shapes his story around that idea to match the image that he has in his head. Likewise, Raw director Ducournau is more into scoring long moments of silence rather than incorporating a ton of dialogue to explain what’s happening, and finds herself inspired by images of certain peculiar body movements, which she then uses as a jumping off point to build a narrative around. Therefore, although each director has his or her own way of doing it, the story actually comes second to the aesthetics for both filmmakers. Despite the difference in age, sex, birthplace, and point in time, they do share the habit of conjuring up strong visceral visuals and writing whatever is necessary to bring that visual to life.

In the case of these films, both of those visuals eventually came to involve sisters, and each showed the power of coming to terms with one’s own identity through the guiding force of her own female sibling. Blood, sex and carnage lined the path to self-actualization, but once each sister sets out to find herself, there was no turning back from the murderess that they would inevitably become.