Welcome to Email News: James Brolin on ‘Night of the Juggler’

August 29, 2025 | View in browser

A woman and a bearded man wait outside an apartment.

By Mark Olsen

Staff Writer

Hello! I'm Mark Olsen. Welcome to another edition of your regular field guide to a world of Only Good Movies.

The Venice Film Festival is already underway and next week I will be part of The Times' team heading to Toronto. The Telluride Film Festival starts today and our own Joshua Rothkopf, Josh Rottenberg and Glenn Whipp are there covering the action.

Many of the season's most anticipated films will be playing over the next few days. Among world premieres at Telluride are Scott Cooper's "Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere," starring Jeremy Allen White as the acclaimed singer-songwriter; Chloé Zhao's "Hamnet," with Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal in an adaptation of Maggie O'Farrell's popular novel; and Edward Berger's "Ballad of a Small Player," with Colin Farrell as a down-on-his-luck international gambler.

Among the titles making their North American premieres after premiering at European festivals will be Noah Baumbach's "Jay Kelly," Yorgos Lanthimos' "Bugonia," Richard Linklater's two films "Blue Moon" and "Nouvelle Vague," Joachim Trier's "Sentimental Value," Rebecca Zlotowski's "A Private Life," Kelly Reichardt's "The Mastermind" and Kleber Mendonça Filho's "The Secret Agent." Mary Bronstein's "If I Had Legs I'd Kick You" premiered earlier this year at Sundance.

This week, Rottenberg spoke to Telluride's festival director, Julie Huntsinger, who said, "The devotion people have to this weekend makes me think there's hope. They're not coming here for anything but film-loving. To hear people say, 'I would not miss this for the world' makes me really proud and hopeful. After everything we've all been through, I think we still have reason to keep doing this crazy little picnic."

Even with so much happening elsewhere, there are still plenty of great events happening closer to home right here in L.A. On Wednesday, the Armenian Film Festival begins in Glendale, celebrating the 10-year anniversary of the Armenian Film Society with the Los Angeles premiere of Mehdi Idir and Grand Corps Malade's "Monsieur Aznavour," starring Tahar Rahim as legendary French-Armenian singer Charles Aznavour.

The highlight of the festival will likely come on Sept. 7 with a conversation between "Sinners" producer Sev Ohanian and writer-director Ryan Coogler about their ongoing creative collaboration. That night will also see an awards gala honoring Ohanian along with actors Madeline Sharafian ("Elio") and Karren Karagulian, best known for his work in Sean Baker's films, including "Anora."

James Brolin on 'Night of the Juggler'

"Night of the Juggler," directed by Robert Butler and adapted from a novel by William P. McGivern, has been little seen for years, only released on VHS and rarely seen in theaters or on TV. Shot on the streets of late-1970s New York City and released in 1980, the movie captures the grime and sweat of the city, making for a vividly authentic action thriller.

That should all change shortly, as a new 4K restoration distributed by Kino Lorber is playing at the Aero on Sept. 4 with star James Brolin in person for a Q&A. Then the film will get a limited run at the Los Feliz 3 on Sept. 18, 20 and 22.

In the film, Brolin plays Sean Boyd, a former NYC cop now working as truck driver. His adolescent daughter, Cathy, is abducted by the psychotic Gus Soltic (Cliff Gorman), who mistakes her for the daughter of a wealthy real-estate developer. This sets Boyd of on a frantic chase across the city to save Cathy before it is too late.

One dazzling early sequence begins as a chase on foot, finds both Soltic and Boyd stealing vehicles to make it a car chase and ends up with them hopping between cars on a moving subway train. There is a relentlessness to Brolin's performance that is countered by the creepy, disturbing undertones of Gorman.

Brolin, 85, was on a Zoom call recently from the home in Point Dume he shares with his wife, Barbra Streisand. Turning his computer around to share a distinctly spectacular view of the ocean, Brolin said with a laugh, "I'm a lucky boy."

Brolin began his career as a contract player at Fox and then Universal, winning an Emmy in 1970 for the first season of the hit TV show "Marcus Welby, M.D." Among his film credits was 1976's "Gable and Lombard," which saw him playing Clark Gable opposite Jill Clayburgh as Carole Lombard for director Sidney J. Furie.

Furie was the original director on "Juggler." A few weeks into shooting, Brolin broke his foot doing one of the chase scenes. In the time it took to heal, Furie left the project to be replaced by Butler.

Besides his flowing hair, healthy beard and generously unbuttoned shirt, Brolin acknowledged "Juggler" was a different kind of role and a different kind of movie for him — a grittier project removed from the stalwart fare he was often known for.

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"I felt released," he said. "I felt this is what I've always wanted to do."

Remembering a scene in which he bitterly argues with his ex-wife in the film (played by Linda Miller), Brolin added, "I've been married 30 years now, but it's my third one. The first two were maybe kind of like that. So I was able to unleash on film some of my old nasty feelings."

Besides Gorman, a Tony winner for his performance in "Lenny," the cast also featured a young Dan Hedaya as a crooked cop holding a grudge against Brolin's Boyd and a then little-known Mandy Patinkin as a Puerto Rican cab driver who has no reservations about racing through traffic and provides a running commentary along the way.

"He was like a puppy in those days: 'Where are you guys going to eat? Can I go with you?'" recalls Brolin of Patinkin. "But for him to get in that car — so fun. He made whatever might have been repetitious about that sequence just full of fire. And right up until the cab crash, which was full-on."

In his original May 1980 review of the film, Times critic Charles Champlin wrote, "Of its kind, the police-action thriller 'Night of the Juggler' is a superior piece of work. The action is non-stop, the dialogue is tough and authentic, the characters major and minor are vivid and credible as the form allows. The people and the New York world in which they movie and work are as real as muggings and racial tension."

Brolin is happy to see the movie revived. "I'm so proud," he told me. "It was such a wonderful experience."

And in case anyone was wondering, yes, Barbra Streisand has seen "Night of the Juggler."

"She saw it two weeks ago and she said 'I'm in love all over again,'" said Brolin. "Which made me feel quite good. She thinks it's a wonderful movie and she loved what I did in it. Because I'm a bore at home."

Owen Kline on 'Who Killed Teddy Bear'

Owen Kline was 7 years old when his grandfather, Joseph Cates, died. Though he knew of his grandfather's career in show business, working on Broadway and in television, it was not until Kline became a teenage film fan, scouring movie guides and video stores in his native New York City that he discovered Cates had also directed a notorious cult film, "Who Killed Teddy Bear."

"I've collected the receipts on this movie and tried to piece its history together since I was 14," said Kline, whose parents are the actors Phoebe Cates and Kevin Kline, during a recent phone call from New York. "Because there's not much out there."

A newly struck 35mm print of the film — in a director's cut including some five minutes of footage removed from the film's initial 1965 release — is playing at the Los Feliz 3 on Sept. 2, 6 and 7. The film was restored and scanned by the boutique video label Cinématographe, who have released a 4K disc set loaded with extras.

"Teddy Bear's" cult reputation has grown over the years as a startlingly lurid artifact taking place in some of the seedier corners of New York City. Sal Mineo plays a young man of ambiguous sexuality who becomes increasingly obsessed with a female bartender (played by Juliet Prowse) at the nightclub where he is a busboy. Elaine Stritch plays the club's boss.

"Every video store in New York, in the cult section, would have a bootleg copy of this movie because for years, until recently, the copyright was just murky," said Kline. "So that did a great service to its unseemly reputation, as if it was one of the dirty paperbacks you'd smuggle out of one of these adult bookstores in the film."

As those video stores around New York City began closing, Kline, now 33, would buy up their copies, taking note of the different covers and cuts of the film that were circulating.

Kline noted that within the additional footage in the director's cut is a moment where Mineo thumbs through a paperback called "Beach Stud" in an adult bookstore, adding to the ambiguity of his character's sexuality. (And also perhaps a nod to Mineo's own bisexuality, rumored at the time but not yet public.) There's also a moment in the new scenes in which a killer kisses the cheek of his dead victim.

"On a film with a laundry list of taboos, suggested necrophilia is a new one," says Kline. "It does really feel like a throwback film to the pre-Code era. It's almost like they compiled a gigantic list of these taboos. There's some really shocking stuff."

The original Dec. 1965 review in The Times by Margaret Harford called the film "a grim commentary," while also noting, "No doubt about it, there are a lot of sick people walking around." The review concludes with the line, "The trend now is never knowing when to stop."

In a 1996 interview with NPR's Terry Gross, Cates downplayed the film's more shocking elements, while admitting, "Ours was a slightly sleazy film."

"We didn't set out about and say to ourselves, 'Gee, let's connive to do these things that are tasteless in the movie,'" said Cates. "There was a story and we had to figure out a way to do it."

Kline's own feature film, 2022's "Funny Pages," will be playing on a double bill with Andrew DeYoung's recent "Friendship" at the New Beverly on Sept. 16 and 17.

Points of interest

'52 Pick-Up' in 35mm

As if to prove that NYC does not corner the market on scuzzy depictions of an urban underbelly, Cinematic Void will be screening John Frankenheimer's L.A.-set "52 Pick-Up" in 35mm on Monday.

A 1986 portrait of the sleazy glory of our city and an adaptation of a novel by Elmore Leonard, the film follows a successful businessman (Roy Scheider) who is caught up in a blackmail scheme when he is videotaped with his mistress. Desperate to keep things quiet so as not to damage the local political aspirations of his wife (Ann-Margret), he finds things escalate quickly and he sets out for revenge. The cast also includes a terrifying Clarence Williams III, Vanity, Kelly Preston and actual members of the adult film demimonde.

Actor John Glover, who plays the deranged lead blackmailer in the film, will be at Monday's screening for a Q&A. In his original review of the film, Patrick Goldstein noted, "'52 Pick-Up' features a couple of stylish performances, especially by John Glover, who brings a flaky intensity to his role as extortionist leader."

'Barry Lyndon' in 4K

On Saturday, the Egyptian Theatre will host the Los Angeles premiere of a new 4K restoration of Stanley Kubrick's 1975 "Barry Lyndon." The film will also be shown in 35mm at the New Beverly on Sept. 5, 6 and 7.

An adaptation of the novel by William Makepeace Thackeray, the film brings the world of the late 1700s to astonishingly vivid life in telling the story of the wayward adventures of Redmond Barry (Ryan O'Neal), who eventually marries Lady Lyndon (Marisa Berenson).

The film won four Academy Awards and has over time seen its esteem only rise; now many consider it to be Kubrick's greatest achievement. Yet, upon release, it confounded viewers, who found its pacing and picturesque imagery to be impenetrable.

Reviewing the film in Dec. 1975, The Times' Charles Champlin said, "It is ravishingly beautiful and incredibly tedious in about equal doses." He added, "Kubrick is at once the most zealous and monastic of present film-makers, living in reclusive independence from the larger world of movies, setting himself each time a quite different kind of challenge and then meticulously solving it."

A January 1974 Times story by Thomas Wood as the film was in production was filled with thwarted attempts to get around the protective veil of secrecy Kubrick designed around it. One frustrated member of the Warner Bros. press team was exasperated by the lack of details about the movie that the studio had, noting, "What can you do with a man who is both a critic's darling and a box-office winner? You let him pick his own game and make up his own rules."

'Sign O' the Times' in Imax

Starting Friday, Prince's 1987 concert film "Sign O' the Times" is getting a one-week run in Imax theaters. Directed by Prince himself, the film is a document of the stage show he created to tour the album of the same name, combining concerts filmed in Europe with footage created on his own Paisley Park soundstages in Minnesota. Seeing Prince's mastery of performance at Imax scale may actually be too much for a brain to handle.

In Michael Wilmington's original review he wrote, "'Sign 'O' the Times' shows him seemingly as much influenced by Martin Scorses and 'The Last Waltz' — with its smokey, absolute lyricism — as was by Fellini and Dick Lester in 'Under the Cherry Moon.' And since the movie is predominately concert footage of his stage show, he's in greater control here; singer-composer Prince is at the peak of his form. … So as a concert film, judge from the music, 'Sign 'O' the Times is near the top. As a movie – carrying inside it the embryo of other movies – it's not fully satisfying. But you sense it could be; however he stumbles, Prince gives you the impression he'll always, catlike, leap back."