Pink Floyd'sA Momentary Lapse of Reason -- unlike many of the band's greater efforts (The Final Cut, Dark Side of the Moon, The Wall) -- is not a concept album. The cover photo, on the other hand, is highly conceptual, conveying ideas of isolation, loneliness and irrationality. When contemplating prospective cover art, lyrics from the album track "Yet Another Movie" brought images of an empty bed to Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour. Gilmour explained his idea to Storm Thorgerson whose design firm was responsible for several notable rock album covers including the aforementioned Dark Side of the Moon, Led Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy and Pieces of Eight by Styx. Thorgerson's final design was a type of installation art that provided a nod to the album's track list and incorporated a soaring hang glider ("Learning to Fly") and several dogs ("Dogs of War") occupying an English beach with not one, but 700 carefully arranged wrought iron Victorian beds. Though shot on a typical gray day, the sky we see has a lovely purplish hue, which gives the photo and this cover a wonderfully serene feel.
Barbra Streisand's nineteenth album would be one of her best-selling. Released in 1977 when she was coming off the success of the chart topping "Evergreen" single and three straight box office hits (The Way We Were, Funny Lady and A Star is Born) Streisand was arguably at the peak of her career and rightly being considered the biggest female talent in entertainment. But on the Superman cover she belies prevailing opinions with a simple, demure pose against a plain blue backdrop. Wearing a white t-shirt emblazoned with the Superman logo, knee socks and white shorts, Streisand is shy but coquettish as she sheepishly cocks her head and tugs down on her shirt. Adorable!
Like Never Mind the Bullocks Here's the Sex Pistols, Green Day's Dookie is more than just a major label debut, it's a pronouncement. Just as the Sex Pistols' album had seventeen years prior, Dookie makes the statement: "We're here; we're kicking the effing doors in and we're changing the face of punk." Unfortunately, despite the fact that their lone album is considered one of the seminal works of its genre, the Sex Pistols didn't last. Green Day, however, is closing in on five decades of punk rock relevancy.
Dookie's cover is everything you'd expect from a punk album -- frenetic, irreverent, iconoclastic. In a jam-packed R. Crumb-like illustration by artist Richie Bucher, we see bombs dropped from a plane, a giant mushroom cloud, the "Bad Year" blimp, funny renderings of Patti Smith, fat Elvis and AC-DC's Angus Young; a satyr, a prospector, a giant talking fly, the woman from the first Black Sabbath album, and tons of dogs hurling their feces.
Apart from all the (often scatological) chaos you'll find, the Dookie cover is also a tribute to Green Day's old stomping ground of East Bay, San Francisco. The setting of the entire illustration is downtown Berkeley and Bucher includes representations of several locals from the East Bay punk scene along and the UC Berkeley Marching band. There's also a shout out to Huey Newton, the former Black Panther leader whose base of operations was just a few miles to the south in Oakland,
This is nowhere close to a full list of all the characters, Easter eggs and inside jokes included on this cover. I bought it when it first came out in 1994 and honestly, I'm still discovering things I hadn't previously.
While exploring the Pop Culture Fiend Archives, I came across the New York Times from Jan 1, 2000 -- which I obviously saved because it was the first 21st century edition of one of the largest newspapers in the country. Upon examination, I noticed that overlooked among the banner headline and all the talk about the new millennium was a story about the surprise resignation of Russian President Boris Yeltsin and the installation of one Vladimir Putin.
Yeltsin resigned due to several factors, including instability in his Cabinet, health issues, a bribery scandal, and cratering popularity among the Russian people due to overall ineffectiveness. Under Putin, Russia has reverted toward its former identity on the world stage as an aggressor, enemy of the U.S., and a major threat to world democracy. Indeed, "President" Putin has become a de facto dictator who, in just a few days, will almost certainly be "elected" to his fifth term thanks to his continuous suppression and outright elimination of any true opposition.
Clearly we all had no idea how thuggish and sinister Putin would be back on 1/1/00 but this issue of the New York Times unknowingly announced the start of it all.
One of the most enjoyable things about Murphy's series: seeing the three most iconic actresses of the 1980's sharing the screen for the very first time... we have Diane Lane, Molly Ringwald and Demi Moore who, forty-plus years after their initial fame, crush their roles and once again show us why they became stars.
We are barely halfway through Ryan Murphy's latest offering, Feud: Capote vs. the Swans but we've already been treated to a once in a decade type performance by Tom Hollander who positively disappears into his (title) character role. Hollander perfectly captures Capote's dual nature -- amusing and endearing but also pompous and infuriating --- and also replicates his speech and mannerisms so precisely it's practically spooky. (To be honest, they should just skip the ceremony and give him the Emmy right now.)
That said, the "Swans" referred to in this series are a group of elite socialites (most of them New York-based) who befriended and patronized Capote after he reached fame with his sensationalistic novel In Cold Blood. After years of trusting some of their most guarded secrets to the author, he reveals them in a Esquire article that included excerpts from a new book titled Answered Prayers. The group then proceeded to ostracize Capote, forever banishing him from the high society circle he relished so much. Capote supposedly coined the term "Swans" to describe these women that were, by all appearances, perfectly composed but in reality were carrying tremendous weight and beneath the surface were always paddling furiously to keep themselves afloat.
Often, elements of this story and the reaction of the Swans to Capote's betrayal are difficult to understand. Why would these women -- wealthy, refined and entrenched in the upper crust of society, care so much about Truman? Why are they so devasted when he exposes them this way? And why do they second guess themselves for even a minute about cutting them out of their lives?
It's because Capote's assessment of them was correct. Beneath their veneers of perfection, these women are struggling mightily. They've lost their identities after marrying bankers, European royalty, and other rich and powerful men and now deep down perhaps they're realizing that most of what they've accomplished was only made possible through their family and social connections. Maybe they're awakening to the thought that although they're the envy of many, their lives are largely empty, short of pruning the perfect garden, earning "best dressed" honors, or planning Truman's famous Black and White Ball. Or maybe the betrayal thrust these women into turmoil due to simple embarrassment. For the Swans, appearances (we quickly learn) are paramount. Confronting Truman and making a scene in a swank restaurant they frequent is deemed just as much a sin as the betrayal itself. Likewise, husbands' infidelities are tolerable but the thought of others knowing is not.
It speaks to why Capote was able to fall in with the Swans in the first place. He ingratiates himself with flattery, preying on their superficiality and appearance consciousness, even going so far as to toy with them (and send them into a competitive tizzy) by suggesting he'll be choosing one of them as guest of honor at his ball. In spite of his not so subtle pandering and social climbing, the Swans adopted Truman, introduced him to power brokers, brought him along on lavish vacations, all while sharing their personal doubts and fears. So yes they are clearly victims but not entirely sympathetic due to their own snobbery and pretentiousness. All of this makes them rich, multi-layered characters that any actress (particularly those of a certain age) would love to play.
Which brings me to one of the most enjoyable things about Murphy's series: seeing the three most iconic actresses of the 1980's sharing the screen for the very first time. In addition to Naomi Watts as Babe Paley, wife of CBS head William Paley; Calista Flockhart, as Lee Radziwill, younger sister of Jackie Kennedy, and Chloe Sevigny as fashion icon and author C.Z. Guest, we have Diane Lane, Molly Ringwald and Demi Moore who -- forty-plus years after their initial fame -- crush their roles and once again show us why they became stars.
Diane Lane first grabbed headlines at age fourteen when she starred opposite Sir Laurence Olivier in the 1979 feature A Little Romance. Olivier called her "the next Grace Kelly" and Time magazine put Lane on the cover, proclaiming her one of Hollywood's "whiz kids." This was at a time when print was still a dominant form of media, so for a respected world news magazine like Time to dedicate a cover story to a Hollywood actress (especially one still in her early teens) was practically unprecedented.
Lane next made waves in the cult classic Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains and the more mainstream family pic Six Pack. At the famous casting sessions for Francis Ford Coppola's adaptation of The Outsiders, she beat out a who's who of other young ingenues for the role of the beautiful and conflicted Cherry Valance. The performance earned Lane a Young Artist Award nomination. Coppola was so taken with Lane that he cast her in his next film, Rumble Fish (also based on an S.E. Hinton novel.)
In 1984, Lane took on the role of Ellen Aim, a kidnapped rock star in Walter Hill's vastly underrated Streets of Fire and later that year she scored her first "adult" role as singer/gun moll Vera Cicero in Coppola's brilliant The Cotton Club. Lane was just eighteen during shooting (her co-star Richard Gere was thirty-four) but brought a sultriness to her performance that helped establish her as one of Hollywood's leading screen sirens. (She would go on to star in two other films opposite Gere, the acclaimed Unfaithful -- for which she earned a Best Actress Academy Award nomination -- and Nights of Rodante, adapted from the Nicholas Sparks novel.)
Diane Lane's other 1980's film roles included stripper/femme fatale Lorry in The Cincinnati Kid-esque The Big Town, and lead in the erotic thriller Lady Beware. She closed out the decade with an Emmy nominated performance in 1989's Lonesome Dove miniseries.
Lane has one of the meatiest roles in Feud, portraying Nancy "Slim" Keith, who wed filmmaker Howard Hawks and Broadway producer Leland Hayward before marrying into British royalty. According to some accounts, Slim helped Capote land high powered agent Swifty Lazar and a million dollar book deal. Lane's Slim is resolute in her disdain and quest for revenge after Capote's backstab and Lane's strong performance portrays her as the icy ringleader of Capote's ostracization. As she did with her character in The Cotton Club, Lane plays Slim as calculating, direct and in charge. When it comes to the Swans, she is "the center of the center" -- as Slim describes herself in episode 3. Lane is also fantastic at replicating the high-born accent and affectations of New York's upper crust.
Though she's three years Lane's junior, Molly Ringwald's career path was eerily similar -- from starting out as a child actress, to having a cover story crowning her the new face of young Hollywood, to having her career propelled forward by a genius director. She first gained attention for her lead role in the west coast production of the stage play Annie. In 1979, at just eleven years old, she played Molly in the The Facts of Life but the show was retooled after its first season and the cast drastically reduced. It was a lucky break for Ringwald; she quickly found success in feature films, beginning with 1982's Tempest, for which she earned a Golden Globe nomination. But it would be 1984's Sixteen Candles that would rocket the young actress to fame. Writer-director John Hughes cast Ringwald as the film's protagonist Samantha Baker, a high school sophomore whose sixteenth birthday is forgotten in the chaos surrounding her older sister's wedding. Ringwald was praised for her tender and authentic portrayal and the film helped propel the teen movie genre into its High Renaissance.
Like Coppola did with Diane Lane, Hughes was inspired by Ringwald and cast her in his next project -- the film that would come to define Gen X, The Breakfast Club. Ringwald would become something of a muse for Hughes and she next took on the lead role in the director's follow up, Pretty in Pink. A few weeks after the film's release, Ringwald was on the cover of Life magazine in a special issue that christened her as "Hollywood's Teen Queen". Two months later, her own Time magazine cover story cemented this status.
At this point, Molly was eighteen and ready to take on more mature roles. She turned down Hughes' Some Kind of Wonderful and starred as Cordelia in Jean Luc Godard's avant garde exploration of King Lear; played opposite Robert Downey Jr. in the Warren Beatty-produced The Pick-Up Artist; and finished her 80's run with the comedy For Keeps and the drama Fresh Horses, adapted from the stage play.
In Feud, Ringwald plays Joanna Carson, ex-wife of Johnny, who (like the New York Swans) is taken with Capote's charm, wit and intellect. Carson adopts the discarded Capote and brings him into her circle of elite (this time Hollywood) friends. Ringwald's signature red tresses are colored brunette for this role and at fifty-five years old she naturally no longer possesses her waif-like figure, so it's easy to forget who you're watching. As Carson, Ringwald brings the same effusiveness she did with her Pretty in Pink character Andie and her compassion for Truman is on display in several pathos-rich scenes that portray the man at his lowest.
Demi Moore's road to 1980's stardom was far different than Lane's and Moore's. She wasn't an accomplished child actor and in 1983 -- at the exact same time Lane was shooting scenes with the Academy Award-winning Coppola and Ringwald was about to become the face of the American teenager -- Moore was earning her bones as a recurring character on General Hospital. But in 1984, she starred opposite Michael Caine in the charming but overlooked romantic comedy Blame it On Rio. Though newcomer Michelle Johnson was the breakout star, it was Moore's first major film and she soon began a slow climb to success that would culminate with a run of critical and commercial successes through the 1990's. Ghost, A Few Good Men, Indecemt Proposal, Disclosure and Striptease (the film that made Moore the highest paid actress in Hollywood) were all in her future, along with her own iconic magazine cover, but her rise to fame largely began with the sweet and quirky 1984 teen comedy No Small Affair. The role of Jules in the seminal Gen X coming-of-age drama St. Elmo's Fire followed, as did a relationship with co-star Emilio Estevez and membership in the famous "Brat Pack". Moore then played John Cusack's love interest in One Crazy Summer and re-teamed with her St. Elmo's co-star Rob Lowe in the beloved About Last Night, both released in the summer of 1986.
Her next film, The Seventh Sign (despite being highly anticipated) was a box office flop. Moore then closed her 80's career with the role of Molly -- a prostitute who befriends two escape convicts (Robert DeNiro and Sean Penn) masquerading as priests -- in the much-hyped Christmastime release We're No Angels.
Interestingly, though her box office hit rate was spotty, Moore's career never stalled during the eighties. She married Bruce Willis, who at the time was starring in the ABC hit Moonlighting but with the release of 1988's Die Hard would soon become a full on movie star. He and Moore became Hollywood's "it" couple which helped Demi move solidly onto Hollywood's A-list -- where she basically remained until the 2000's.
In Feud, Moore plays Ann Woodward, a former radio star and showgirl who was married to wealthy banker William Woodward Jr. In what would become one of the biggest stories of its day, Ann killed William after mistaking him for a burglar. Speculation that it was murder ignited after Capote's book preview, which included a character based on Ann who was painted as a gold digger and murderess. In real life, Capote seemed to have personal disdain for Ann and publicly accused her of killing her husband.
Moore gives us a picture of Ann battling depression and straining to maintain her dignity amid the public stares. She displays venomous anger in certain scenes and intense vulnerability in others. At the ball, we see Moore at her best, portraying calm and elegance -- but when Truman calls security to have her ejected we see her shaken, pleading, humiliated. It's a scene where Moore demonstrates swan-like comportment as she calls Truman out for his misdeeds and it's reminiscent of another emotional scene in which Moore displayed similar range -- the break up scene in About Last Night.
For Lane, Ringwald and Moore, streaming shows and other high end television like Murphy's Feud offer strong, female lead roles that come few and far between in feature films. Past the age where they can star in rom-coms, take on "lethal lady" action roles (e..g., Black Widow, Atomic Blonde) or other parts written for younger actresses, fifty-something actresses are these days too often relegated to lesser fare -- guest shots on network shows or if they're lucky perhaps a starring role in their own series (think Tea Leoni in Madame Secretary or Julia Louis-Dreyfus in Veep.) Thankfully, Capote and the Swans shines a spotlight on three of the most talented and beloved mature actresses who by chance came up at almost the exact same time. You literally could not have chosen three women more representative of young Hollywood during the 1980's than these three. In fact, you almost wish Murphy would have made it an all-80's party and given the Watts, Sevigny and Flockhart roles to Elisabeth Shue, Lea Thompson and Winona Ryder instead.
The Michigan Wolverines just defeated the Washington Huskies to win the college football national championship. The victory put a cap on the 2023 college football season but in many ways it also marks the end of 155 years of the country's second oldest organized sport. The events of the last several years, the choices of university officials, rulings by judges, and other factors have finally brought college football to a tipping point where it seems the sport's most defining rules, guidelines and provisions have been compromised (or altogether eliminated) to the point where college football no longer resembles the sport it once was. NCAA football has become the wild west -- complete with rustlers, guns for hire, and more opportunists and villains than it can handle it seems. Here are all the things that slowly killed the college game.
The demise of college football began with the creeping hand of corporate influence and
the money grabbing that ensued. Beginning
in the early 1990's, the sports world was seduced by the
lure of the big dollars of Fortune 500 and other large companies. The 80's had seen Nike, Adidas, Gatorade and other brands strike deals with college and pro-level teams to provide shoes, apparel and more. These, plus endorsement deals with the decade's individual superstars, including Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky and Bo Jackson, had proved tremendously lucrative. As
the US economy began roaring under the Clinton administration, and the birth of the internet led to the rise of wealthy tech
companies like AOL, Yahoo and Cisco, these
companies began looking for ways to elevate their brands and increase public
awareness. The tens of millions of viewers watching sporting
events each week provided the huge audiences they were
looking to reach.
From
the earliest days of baseball -- America's oldest professional sport -- billboards for beer and cigarette brands were a regular site at ballparks and stadiums. Soon after, play-by-play announcers for baseball, football,
basketball and boxing began interrupting their calls to offer a word
from the sponsor, whether it was a breakfast cereal, shaving cream,
or clothing brand. Later, with the advent of television, games were
brought to you by local and national companies in industries including hardware, automobiles, hair care and insurance. But this advertising was always in the
background -- fairly innocuous and far from anything one would consider obnoxious. But as time changed, businesses
of the new economy wanted a bigger bang for the their buck than
billboards or live reads could offer. No longer would companies be satisfied with signage inside the stadium. Instead they sought a much higher profile by acquiring naming rights for the stadiums and arenas where teams played. So it was that by the mid-90's corporate sponsorship in sports reached new heights as American sports stadiums and ballparks quickly sold out (no pun intended.) In 1995, Candlestick Park became 3 Com Park, after the manufacturer of networking equipment. In 1996, the newly opening Pac Bell Park would debut. The following year, Jack Murphy Stadium, home of the NFL's San Diego Chargers became Qualcomm Stadium. We also got Coors Field, Invesco Stadium and several others. From coast to coast, our most famous sports venues were unceremoniously rebranded as big corps shelled out millions to have their names attached to sports franchises.
The Death of the Bowl Games
Around the same time this was taking place, there was also a major disruption in the college bowl system. Bowl games had been played since since 1902 and more were gradually added each decade beginning in the 1930's. By the eighties, the corporate giants (with their footprint now clearly established in the NFL) turned to the college game. Thanks to its new, deep pocketed sponsor, the Sugar Bowl became known officially as the "USF&G Sugar Bowl" in 1988. The next year, the Orange Bowl became the "Fedex Orange Bowl." All of the other bowls followed suit and this soon led to an unwieldy increase in the number of bowl games. To this point, bowl games were events rich in tradition and history. (The Sugar Bowl, for example, has been played since 1935 and came about because Louisiana was once the nation's leading producer of sugar. The game's solid silver trophy was made in London in 1830 during the reign of King George IV and was gifted to the bowl's organizers for the inaugural game.) After corporate sponsorship creeped in, history and tradition were swept aside and bowl names were shamelessly bastardized to afford the sponsor top billing in all press materials and during the TV broadcast.
The final step in this grand sell out was to create all new bowl games -- because after all, more bowls meant more money for everyone. It didn't take long for things to get completely out of hand in this regard evidenced by the fact that several of the newer bowl games have no other name other than that of the sponsor itself. Thus we've seen the likes of the Meineke Car Care Bowl, Little Caesar's Pizza Bowl, GoDaddy.com Bowl, and (God help us) the Pop Tarts Bowl, just to name a few.
Compensation and NIL Concerns
While big businesses were scrambling to stake claim of sports venues, and Nike was profiting and building its brand through partnerships with the professional athletes, new opinions began to form regarding compensation for college athletes. For instance, while practically every other nation on the globe sent players from their professional leagues to compete in the Olympics in sports like basketball, and volleyball, the U.S. had long maintained that only amateur athletes should be eligible for the Olympic Games. This was in spite of the fact that track, cycling and other American sports clubs had long been subsidizing its athletes training costs and even paying them stipends -- something that for all intents and purposes amounted to professionalism. But during the late 80's, the International and United States Olympic Committees began relaxing its rules and by 1992 professionals (including the famous "Dream Team") were ruled eligible in practically every Olympic sport. The line between professionals and amateurs became further blurred.
For decades, the goal for top high school football players was to gain a scholarship to a top university, excel there, graduate, get drafted and then make all your money in the NFL. Sure, there were unscrupulous backroom deals being made. Various NCAA investigations would reveal that money, cars and other enticements were offered to recruits to sign with a certain school and boosters or "friends of the program" provided cash payments and bonuses for outstanding play. Still, the fundamental tenet remained intact -- paying college players was illegal. Yet there was a growing sentiment that athletes were somehow being exploited. Many reasoned that the hundreds of millions the NCAA's member schools were making from TV rights were gained off of the backs of poor student-athletes. Others pointed to the fat multi-year contracts top coaches were signing. And while it was true that most top players were being paid in the form of full scholarships (a single year's tuition, room and board at major universities like Stanford, Michigan or Duke costs around $60,000 for example) such arguments held little sway. Figures like these seemed a mere pittance compared to the millions the schools were making, Thus, the opinion that college athletes should be paid continued into the 2000's.
Then in 2009, former basketball star Ed O'Bannon, who had led the UCLA Bruins to a national title in 1995, filed a class action against the NCAA to challenge its rules regarding the use of players' likenesses. Among other things, the O'Bannon case argued that the restrictions on compensation for the use of athletes' names, images and likenesses (NIL) for video games, live game telecasts, and other purposes violated antitrust laws. O'Bannon brought the suit after learning that his (and scores of other former players') likenesses were being used in EA Sports NCAA Basketball video games without the players' consent. EA Sports had established a licensing agreement with the NCAA but the individuals players were all left out, making the hypocrisy clear -- others could profit off of the performance and fame of college athletes but not the the athletes themselves.
O'Bannon eventually won the case and EA soon abandoned both its NCAA football and basketball games. Similar lawsuits followed and the courts continued to side against the NCAA. Now, not only was public sentiment seemingly in favor of rewriting compensation rules for college players but so was the legal system. The NCAA was clearly losing its grip as judges (who previously considered college athletics completely subject to NCAA regulations) now felt compelled to step in and overrule longstanding policies.
So the NCAA read the writing on the wall and finally began to seriously consider ways in which players might be compensated. Unfortunately, paying players is a lot easier said than done. Initially, ideas revolved around only paying athletes in the "revenue generating sports" ((baseball, men’s and women’s basketball, football and men’s ice hockey.) It's easy to see how this idea might have quickly been dismissed. First there was the matter of equity. Should the third string safety be paid the same as a Heisman candidate running back?... You can also imagine it wouldn't have been long before someone brought a lawsuit claiming only paying the revenue generating sports teams was discriminatory. And then of course there was Title 9. If you're paying the men's teams and not the women's it was a super safe bet there'd be all kinds of additional lawsuits quickly filed.
It's possible though that the NCAA never even seriously considered all this because the decision was more or less taken out of the their hands. In 2019, California passed the “Fair Pay to Play Act” -- which was the first state NIL law enacted. The legislation basically set the bar for how college athletes could be compensated moving forward. Players could now to be paid based on their value as an individual. More simply, any player could accept any endorsement deal, appearance fee or other payment available to them in the free market (provided it didn't create a conflict of interest with a deal already signed by the player's school.) The NCAA called the legislation harmful and "an existential threat to college sports" and even toyed with the idea of declaring all NCAA players in states who allowed payments ineligible. But threats don't get much emptier than that. It didn't take long for the association to capitulate to the new paradigm.
Conference realignment
Further disruption came to the NCAA's status quo with regard to its member conferences. Since their inception, conference affiliations had been both voluntary and fluid. Technically, institutions were free to switch conferences whenever they wished, so long as they gave notice and paid any agreed upon exit or entrance fees. Despite this, more often than not, a sense of logic prevailed and teams by and large remained in conferences that corresponded with their location on the map. That all changed in the nineties when football powerhouses Penn State and Florida State joined the Big 10 and ACC respectively. Meanwhile, the Big East looked to replicate its success as a basketball conference by adding five football schools. Notre Dame, which had always been staunchly independent, began flirting with the idea of joining the Big 10 and the Southwest Conference disintegrated altogether, its member teams joining the WAC, Conference USA and the Big 8 (which subsequently became the Big 12.) Tradition was once again pushed aside and nonsensical realignments (like Miami joining the Big East) proved that what mattered most now were the financials and what a conference could offer its member schools in terms of TV revenue.
The Cannonball Run is a zany comedy about a group of auto racers competing in a cross country trek from Connecticut to Los Angeles. In addition to Burt Reynolds (who stars as J.J. McClure), Roger Moore, Farrah Fawcett and Dom DeLuise, it features an all-star cast of wacky characters played by the likes of Adrienne Barbeau, Bert Convy, Jamie Farr, Jackie Chan, Mel Tillis, Terry Bradshaw and others. The film is directed by former stuntman Hal Needham, who was known for testosterone-fueled action-comedies like Smokey and the Bandit and was by no means a master of film photography. Nevertheless, as unlikely as it seems and in spite of the genre and subject matter, in Cannonball Run, Needham and cinematographer Michael C. Butler teamed to shoot a handful of gorgeously lit rom/com-like scenes that made the already stunning Farrah Fawcett look positively ethereal.
One of the methods employed was halo lighting, which uses bright, focused backlighting. This technique makes the subject stand out from the background and creates a glowing, halo effect around it. In Cannonball Run, early scenes introducing Farrah's character Pamela Glover use halo lighting to help establish her as the exquisite, almost otherworldly object of J.J.'s desire. Notice how the backlighting helps carve Pamela from the background and draws you in -- much like J.J. is drawn in when he first spots her in a crowded bar.
Later in the film, J.J. and Pamela share a quiet moment in the back of an ambulance and the two become closer. Needham and Butler employ the same sort of halo lighting to create a romantic glow around Farrah. The technique is especially effective with Farrah because it further accentuates one of her best features -- that golden mane of hair for which she's well known.
The soft, warm light creates a form of halation and gives her character an almost angelic quality. A similar result can be seen in the below shot from 1984's The Natural, where halo lighting is used to both set Glenn Close's character apart in the crowded stands of a baseball stadium and also symbolize the sense of goodness and purity her character possesses.
