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"One-Hit Wonder" Actors/Actors who never made it


ArtVanderlay

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Boll also takes the Corman approach of reusing sets/actors and just filming back-to-back. That's why/how he made a dramatic picture about Auschwitz, a World War II era Bloodrayne sequel, and a "comedy" about a morbidly obese woman fighting Nazis, in like 3 months.

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https://www.yahoo.com/movies/s/6-actors-who-sabotaged-their-own-careers-130134679.html

 

Most of these listed still had careers(like Chase and Heigl), but it reminded me of George Lazenby. Can't remember if he's been mentioned yet, but his picture should be in the dictionary next to one hit wonder, well that and egotistical nutcase. . . .

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Courtney Love has done minor TV/movie work before and since, but she will never again reach the heights she did in The People vs. Larry Flynt.

 

Call it personal experience (she was playing a drug-addled crazy woman) or good casting or good directing, but she fucking nailed that part. It wasn't even like most biopics where someone is simply doing a good impersonation: She was this woman.

 

She should have won an Oscar for it, IMO.   I mean, it's still acting even if you're playing a warped, alternative version of yourself. 

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Love is a really great choice for this. She really was great in Flynt. The crazy was easy to capture, but she hit the perfect note on several little tender and playful moments that really added greatly to the movie. 

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How have we gotten this far and not mentioned Peter Weller?  He has a long list of credits, but did he have a major role in anything good besides the first Robocop?  I can't think of anything and nothing resembling a good movie or role jumps out at me from his IMDB page.  Dude was in a lotta flops.

 

It looks like he's gotten back into the business after a sting teaching.  He's taken a few small parts recently and done some directing.  Sigh.  He can't even get work on good shows as a director.  His recent directing credits are Tyrant, Under the Dome, and the Strain.  Ugh.

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How have we gotten this far and not mentioned Peter Weller? He has a long list of credits, but did he have a major role in anything good besides the first Robocop? I can't think of anything and nothing resembling a good movie or role jumps out at me from his IMDB page. Dude was in a lotta flops.

It looks like he's gotten back into the business after a sting teaching. He's taken a few small parts recently and done some directing. Sigh. He can't even get work on good shows as a director. His recent directing credits are Tyrant, Under the Dome, and the Strain. Ugh.

Shame on you.

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I always used to mix up Weller with James Woods and now I'm not sure why. I know Woods has joked about being mistaken for Robocop, so I'm not crazy. I thought Weller did a nice job as DKR Batman in the animated adaptation.

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I'm just surprised there isn't a young black filmmaker who wants her to star in an indie project solely based on the fact she was in Love & Basketball fifteen years ago. There probably is one, but she might consider herself above doing crowdfunded stuff.

 

 

 

Given that Love & Basketball barely made $27 million at the box office, I'm not sure there are many young black filmmakers who are even aware that Love & Basketball exists.

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I'm just surprised there isn't a young black filmmaker who wants her to star in an indie project solely based on the fact she was in Love & Basketball fifteen years ago. There probably is one, but she might consider herself above doing crowdfunded stuff.

 

 

 

Given that Love & Basketball barely made $27 million at the box office, I'm not sure there are many young black filmmakers who are even aware that Love & Basketball exists.

 

 

Apparently, you don't know much about black culture. That's our fucking Casablanca apparently.

 

Also, how much did The Last Dragon and Friday make at the box office? How about Love Jones or The Inkwell?

 

You're not going to find bootleg numbers on Wikipedia. Sorry.

 

Stuff like The Harder They Come? Yeah, I'm the only person I know who has seen that. Something like Shottas has apparently made its way through African-American neighborhoods for some strange reason though.

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Also, how much did The Last Dragon and Friday make at the box office?

After adjusting for inflation: millions more than Love & Basketball made. Anecdotally (maybe it's just coincidence or a racial-barrier thingy or whatever, I dunno and don't pretend to) I've known plenty of people who love Last Dragon and especially Friday; while I think this is literally the very first time I've ever heard L&B come up in any conversation ever.
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I've never heard of Last Dragon, but even as a white dude completely loved the shit out of Friday.

 

But I almost came here to post Annabeth Gish has a one hit wonder after watching her in Mystic Pizza, it was not until I went to IMDb that I realized how wrong I was. My movie knowledge is probably pretty sparse. 

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Stuff like The Harder They Come? Yeah, I'm the only person I know who has seen that. Something like Shottas has apparently made its way through African-American neighborhoods for some strange reason though.

 

No you are not, dude.  El Rey Network and Bounce are favorites on my cable boxes.  The Harder They Come is on light rotation on both networks and I have that shit on VHS somewhere in my attic along with The Mack, JD's Revenge (ALICE JUBERT I LOVE YOU~!), Cotton Comes To Harlem, and both Super Fly movies.

 

If Love & Basketball is the Casablanca of African Americans, then The Harder They Come is the Citizen Kane of the entire Caribbean.

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Also, how much did The Last Dragon and Friday make at the box office?

After adjusting for inflation: millions more than Love & Basketball made. Anecdotally (maybe it's just coincidence or a racial-barrier thingy or whatever, I dunno and don't pretend to) I've known plenty of people who love Last Dragon and especially Friday; while I think this is literally the very first time I've ever heard L&B come up in any conversation ever.
That's probably because you don't know a slew of sixteen year old black teenagers. If you're a black person who has played basketball in high school or college since it came out, it's probably a felony if you haven't seen it. There are people that were born three or four years before that movie came out who have that listed as their favorite movie. So yeah, it's a black thing. It's a combo of word of mouth, illegal downloads (P2P programs over torrents), rentals, and being played on television constantly. It's prevalent that black movies tend to have a life

of their own well after their theatrical release. If black films relied on my box office dollars throughout the 90s and early 00s, then I would not have seen 1/8 of what I already seen.

But as J.T. kinda mentioned, all those movies are/were cable staples for the last what? 15 years at least? The Last Dragon for even longer obviously. It's not like BET is replete with their own original programming. The sad thing is eventually some of those movies are going to be replaced with Black Nativity or Jumping the Broom if they haven't been already. So if you don't get Centric or Bounce in addition to IFC, Sundance, and Starz (which might play those movies since they play everything else), you probably will only see it on Netflix. It's scary that pretty soon that there will be a generation that hasn't seen A Rage in Harlem or South Central, but will know every Tyler Perry play turned into a movie.

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I highly recommend Brown Sugar Saturday Nights on Bounce for the censored Blaxploitation classics. 

 

Bounce is the only network where I have regularly caught Cotton Comes To Harlem and Black Belt Jones and they have shown Ruby, the Blacula movies, The Incredible Two-Headed Transplant bka The Thing With Two Heads (with Rosey Greer), and JD's Revenge as a marathon every Halloween.

 

I tend to see Blaxploitation movies on El Rey every now and then and at least you can count on Rodriguez to show them uncensored after 9PM.

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