Movies
Wings Hauser Celebrated In Documentary ‘Working Class Actor’!
Dark Star Pictures and La-La Land Entertainment announce production has commenced on Working Class Actor, a feature-length documentary on the life and career of renowned actor Wings Hauser, Bloody Disgusting learned this morning.
Working Class Actor, directed by Rondo Award-Winning Steve Mitchell, who helmed the acclaimed Larry Cohen doc King Cohen, is described as “a riveting ride through the exhilarating world of Wings Hauser, a man who turned his insatiable passion for acting, music, theater, writing and directing into a living wage that has carried him throughout the decades and up to the present moment.”
Self-described as arriving in Hollywood “with thirty dollars and a box of pampers,” Wings Hauser forged ahead as a single parent armed with an unstoppable work ethic, earning himself a noteworthy career full of standout performances in films like Vice Squad, A Soldier’s Story, Tough Guys Don’t Dance, The Insider and Tales from the Hood, among many others and alongside compelling guest turns on a truly staggering amount of television series including Beverly Hills 90210, China Beach, Murder She wrote, Castle, The A-Team and Roseanne and virtually countless others.
Adds the release: “Beyond his omnipresence on the silver screen and network TV, Wings Hauser also ruled the Video Store arena during its world-wide cultural heyday, becoming a bonafide action star in dozens of popular titles such as Deadly Force, L.A. Bounty, The Carpenter, No Safe Haven and many more, including Living to Die, Skins, and The Art of Dying, which he also directed.
“Wings Hauser is a force of nature on-screen like no other performer – no matter the role or genre,” says director Steve Mitchell. “His deep commitment to his craft, to life itself, has resulted in an impressive body of work, but also a remarkable personal journey of survival that continues to this very day.”
Dark Star will distribute the film, produced by La-La Land Entertainment, around the world upon its completion in 2022.
The trailer for Ti West’s upcoming adaptation of A Christmas Carol raised a lot of eyebrows when it dropped earlier this week. While plenty of folks initially dismissed Ebenezer as a derivative project meant to cash in on the recent wave of unnecessary prequels that expand the backstory of beloved characters (such as 2023’s Wonka), Charles Dickens’ original novel already made a point of exploring Ebenezer Scrooge’s origins in detail – meaning that this new film is likely just a particularly faithful adaptation of the source material under a different name.
Couple that with the fact that the movie is being helmed by a genuine horror auteur and I think it’s safe to say that the latest iteration of the first modern ghost story is in good hands.
That being said, one detail that immediately jumped out at me during the brief teaser (other than a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nod to Johnny Depp’s iconic bedroom death scene from the original A Nightmare on Elm Street) is the fact that many of Ebenezer’s ghosts appear to have been directly lifted from the iconic John Leech illustrations that accompanied the first edition of Dickens’ novel.
Here are a couple of stills from the trailer compared to the original artwork:
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
The Phantoms in ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘Ebenezer’
Marley’s Ghost in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
Mainly working with old-school wood and steel engravings that would later be transferred to print, Leech was instrumental in crafting the iconic look of history’s most influential phantoms – especially since Dickens is said to have been deeply involved with the creation of these so-called “comic illustrations.”
And since the novel is commonly said to have popularized spiritualism in Victorian England, much of the ghostly iconography that we still see in genre media to this very day (including some of Ti West’s previous films) can be traced back to the author’s partnership with Leech.
Ebenezer won’t be the first A Christmas Carol adaptation to borrow heavily from these designs, but I can appreciate how Ti West is incorporating an important part of horror history into his latest film.
Ebenezer will be available in theaters starting November 13.
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