George Segal died in March 2021. I wrote this for Midnight Quatermass a few days later.
“Calling all cars, calling all cars. Be on the lookout for a stolen bank, approximately eleven feet tall, blue and white…”
Fuck, I loved George Segal. Since news of his death broke, I’ve seen a lot of folk championing THE QUILLER MEMORANDUM (1966) and for good reason. It’s great movie and you should definitely check it out if you haven’t seen it. But for me it was his output in the seventies that really left a mark. His better movies from say 1972 to ‘77 are THE TERMINAL MAN, CALIFORNIA SPLIT, FUN WITH DICK AND JANE and the highly underrated ROLLERCOASTER (1977). The last one features one of my favourite Segal characters and I may well circle back to talk about it in another newsletter. Instead I want to mention my very favourite movie of his even though he’s playing second fiddle to Robert Redford. THE HOT ROCK (1972). This one kinda lives in my head, but I end up watching it every 18 months or so regardless.
So a few things. No one has seen this thing or talks about it and that’s incredible to me. Peter Yates (look him up) directed it and William Goldman wrote the screenplay to what became a cool 70s caper movie that seems to be way more of an influence on Soderbergh’s OCEAN’S 11 than the Sinatra original.
See what I mean? It’s such a fun little movie. If there’s a problem with it, it’s just that Redford is playing Redford. Now that actually makes it a better movie overall, but the lead character, an eternal underdog by the name of Dortmunder, is at heart a lot more akin to Segal if you read the novels by Donald E Westlake. Westlake is a huge deal to me. Right up there with Elmore Leonard – and like Leonard, Hollywood has a hard-on for his material, but never quite pulls it off. He even tackled a few screenplays himself – love THE GRIFTERS (1990)? That’s Westlake.
He’s arguably better known under the pen-name Richard Stark and a series of books featuring his professional thief, Parker. To date, Parker has been played by Lee Marvin, Jim Brown, Robert Duvall, Peter Coyote, Mel Gibson and Jason Statham. If Jack Reacher was a bad guy, he’d be Parker. If he had incredibly bad luck and a gang of loveable but incompetent pals he’d be John Dortmunder. In fact ‘The Hot Rock’ started out as a Parker novel, but the heist kept getting away from him and a new character was born.
Redford is a little too self assured to nail him, but no one but me would complain about that. There’s a scene in the movie where Segal is trying to retrieve a priceless gem from a museum at night and accidentally gets trapped inside the display case in the process. That’s more in the spirit of Dortmunder. And while this is my favourite of the character’s onscreen outings, George C Scott, Christopher Lambert and Martin Lawrence have all taken a crack so far. He even turns up in a Gary Coleman vehicle. If this is all new to you then your life now has a cool little space that needs filling. But start with the movie from ‘72 because it’ll have you from the moment Segal picks Redford up from prison. RIP.