Everyone watch Heroes on Monday? Okay, I thought, with some nice touches, but not as good as previous eps. What did you think?
One thing did catch my attention though: it was directed by John Badham. Why should that have drawn my attention? Well, do you remember any of these films:
- Saturday Night Fever
- Blue Thunder
- WarGames
- Short Circuit?
Yes, he directed all of them. Not bad, hey? But now he's directing Heroes. It's a bit of a comedown, isn't it? I'm not saying anything bad about the show itself here, but you don't see Martin Scorsese directing episodes of Lost, and if you did, ABC would be making a bit of a song and dance about it, you can bet. But no mention of Badham's presence anywhere in the NBC publicity for the episode. Bad NBC.
I had a brief look at Badham's recent resumé on IMDB. It's a bit upsetting. Episodes of:
- Crossing Jordan
- Standoff
- Just Legal and
- Blind Justice
Standoff? What went wrong?
There's nothing on the trivia list that might explain his fall from grace. Is he just spending his time teaching film at Chapman University in Orange, California, as his trivia section suggests, picking up the extra bit of cash and keeping his hand in from time to time? Is it merely his age that's caused him to stick to smaller projects (he's 67, but then so's my Dad and he doesn't seem to be slowing down)? Is it because he's from Luton, and bad things happen to people from Luton?
Can anyone enlighten me?
May 10, 2007 | Reply
Not quite up to last week's episode, but still good... at least it didn't come off as too much of a placeholder - one of those just before the big finish? As the emotionally fragile bundle of Panettiere goodness that is Claire put it, "The universe cannot be that lame." (I really hope that the quintessence of smug bitchiness that is Candace Winter gets offed though.)
Badham's 1990s oeuvre might give a clue as to what happened to him - Bird on a Wire, Point of No Return (or The Assassin as it was called in the UK), Another Stakeout, The Hard Way and Nick of Time (notable not only for using the real-time thriller gimmick before 24 but also for a rare chance to see Johnny Depp play a regular human being). To be fair, not all of them lacked, but it ain't exactly Spielberg success.