the gentle art of victory

style icons for the common man

[gentleartofvictory]

style icons: shades of grey in Possession.

[gentleartofvictory]

style icons: pub lads from straw dogs.

keep edging closer and closer to this look. the pants are really the key and they're hard to get a look at in still images.

[gentleartofvictory]

style icon: that pimp dude's apartment from american gigolo.

[gentleartofvictory]

Style Icon: Disguised George C. Scott in Hardcore.

[gentleartofvictory]

style icon: gene wilder as eugene grizzard in bonnie and clyde.

[gentleartofvictory]

style icon: this little dude from Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore.

[gentleartofvictory]

style icon: bronson pinchot as elliot blitzer in true romance.

[gentleartofvictory]

style icon: ronny cox in deliverance.

why was ronny cox not a bigger star? did i miss something?

[gentleartofvictory]

style icon: river phoenix as devo in i love you to death.

i have deep affection for this odd, flawed, rather silly movie. phoenix in his interrogation, stone walling the detectives? amiright? there was a time when being a hippy also meant being cynical, dark, and a even a little smug.

[gentleartofvictory]

style icon: keir dullea in bunny lake is missing.

it's a slippery slope straight down to black christmas from here... 

[gentleartofvictory]

style icon: tom from the social seminar.

making  pottery to trade for rice, dropping acid, playing the recorder… with un-neutered cats running all over the place... good god, the times they have a-changed. 

[gentleartofvictory]

style icon: nick nolte in extreme prejudice.

why don't people wear these giant trash bag-looking duster ponchos anymore?

also, is it just me, or is this movie not the same story as No Country for Old Men? only written by john milius like 18 years before cormac mccarthy got around to it?

[gentleartofvictory]

style icon: richard dreyfuss in the goodbye girl.

you have to love dreyfuss in the years leading up to his crack up / break down.

did he play any major roles in this first golden era where he DIDN'T wear a grey sweatshirt and jeans?

jaws, goodbye girl, close encounters, etc…  what did he wear in that small role in the graduate?

[gentleartofvictory]

style icon: alec guinness as gulley jimson in the horse's mouth.

gulley is a good name for my first born.

so is jimson, for that matter.

[gentleartofvictory]

style icons: thugs of death wish 2.

i didn't grow up in the big city, but if there's anything films have taught me, (from police academy to robocop), it's that this is what dangerous men look like. every film of this era trots out the same costume designer's fever dream of imagined urban low life types:

- the black guy dressed in half new wave/half break dancing gear

- the white dude with an odd hair line (often also wearing guatemalan pants tucked into boots or similar)

- the dance instructor

- the wresting coach 

once you assemble the core team, you then throw as much jewelry as possible all over every one, give at least one guy a can of spray paint, and you're ready to shoot the scene. 

[gentleartofvictory]

style icons: the dashing men of fatal beauty. 

on the heels of jumpin jack flash, fatal beauty is something of mystery. it's as if whoopi, still dressed after wrapping on burglar, wandered onto to the set of a vastly cheaper, nastier, more violent B movie being filmed on an adjacent soundstage. 

i mean, the scene where they machine gun a naked man so high on PCP that he won't stop walking even though he's riddled with bullets? the guy eating a bottle and spitting bloody chunks of broken glass out of his mouth? the piles of dead yuppy teenagers? the nude asian drug factory workers massacred by brad dourif? 

"Teflon, bitch" is the new "Bitches, leave".

[gentleartofvictory]

rival style icons: tom selleck versus gene simmons.

selleck, literally dressed as the brauny paper towel man, must have been cursing his luck when he wound up in this film opposite the swarthy Kiss frontman sans cosmic demon makeup, what with having to turn down Raiders of the Lost Arc due to contractual obligations.

well who's laughing now?

probably still hank ford, i guess, if he ever really laughs. maybe when he's really stoned.