Joe Turkel, who played the menacing bartender The glowfrom Stanley Kubrickand who was the creator of the replicants in Blade RunnerRidley Scott is dead. He was 94.
Rhett Bartlett, a The Hollywood reporter, broke the news. And she wrote a kind of wonderful obituary, in which anecdotes of those two films are told.
Turkel died Monday at Providence St. John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, his family announced. Turkel also appeared in two other Kubrick films: as a gunman in the shooting culminating in cursed caste (The killing1956) and as a soldier sent to the firing squad in hell on patrol (Paths of Glory, 1957). Only Philip Stone has appeared in up to three Kubrick films.
Joe Turkel as Tyrell in “Blade Runner” (1982). Clarin archive photo
Kubrick first saw Turkel working on the B movie crazy man (1953). As the actor recalled in the podcast of Kubrick universethe director told him “the picture was terrible, but I liked you and what you were doing, so I said I should hire that guy at some point”.
After his minor role in cursed castethe meticulous Kubrick chose Turkel, then 30, as one of three soldiers used as scapegoats for a failed WWI attack in the classic hell on patrolwith Kirk Douglas.
His role in “The Shining”
halfway The glow (1980), aspiring writer and recovering alcoholic Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) walks into the empty Gold Room of the Overlook Hotel and heads to the bar, where in a state of madness he begs for a glass of beer.
Behind the scenes of Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining” (1980).
Suddenly, the saloon bartender, Lloyd (Turkel), appears and pours him a whiskey, even though Torrance has no money. “I like you, Lloyd, I’ve always liked you,” says Torrance. “You have always been the best of them. The best damn bartender from Timbuctoo in Portland, Maine, Portland, Oregon, for that matter. “
When Torrance returns to the room, Lloyd is still behind the bar, but is now full of 1920s party guests. Turkel utters a total of 96 words in his two scenes. In 2014, he noted that rehearsals lasted six weeks as “Stanley was looking for the perfect shot” and was on set one day from 9:00 to 22:30. “I walked into my dressing room, took off my shirt, took off my shirt and wrung out (sweat).”
Turkel’s dressing room was next to Nicholson’s and in the book Jack par excellenceby Scott Edwards, published in 2018, recalled seeing an open book on the effects of frostbite on Nicholson’s chest prior to filming the final snow sequence of The glow.
Joe Turkel, one of the soldiers in Kubrick’s “Patrol from Hell” (1957).
“For the last scene, my character freezes and I want to know how it happens. I want to get it … feel it … show it … as it is,” Nicholson told him.
Thanks to The glowScott cast him for the role of Doctor Eldon Tyrell Blade Runner (1982). “Joe had this kind of waxy make-up or quality on his skin,” says the director in the film’s DVD commentary, “and Joe was so clean-shaven that he almost looked like shiny ivory.”
Tyrell, who lives in a giant pyramid, runs a company that creates replicants with a four-year lifespan: “more human than human,” reads his company’s slogan.
Joe Turkel in another scene from Stanley Kubrick’s film, “The Patrol from Hell”.
At the end of the film, while wrapped in thick white tunics and wearing large glasses, Tyrell receives a visit from his most valuable and advanced replicant, Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer), who demands a short-term life extension. Tyrell tells him that “light that burns twice as long as light lasts half the time, and you burned very, very brightly, Roy”.
In one of the film’s most jaw-dropping moments, Batty, realizing that his creator cannot grant his wish, kisses Tyrell on the lips before crushing his head and eyes with his bare hands.
For the gory effect, the tubes were placed behind Turkel’s ears and when Hauer (his first day on set) started squeezing his face, makeup artist Marvin G. Westmore pumped fake blood through the tubes. The team had created an imaginary prosthetic head for Turkel, but it was never used on screen. He would find a home in the office of visual effects master Douglas Trumbull.
Why so serious? Kubrick, Nicholson and some members of the crew while they were shooting “The Shining”.
Born on July 15, 1927, Turkel began his film career in the late 1940s, appearing in film noir including Town across the river (1949), The glass wall (1953), Duffy of San Quentin (1954), The human jungle (1954) and the bare road (1955).
It could be seen on television boston black, Public Defender, The Lone Ranger, Bonanza, the Untouchables Y Miami vice.
Shortly before his death, Turkel completed a memoir called The misery of successthat the family plans to release this year.
In the book Science fiction film directors In Dennis Fischer’s 2000 film, Turkel recalled asking Kubrick why he asked for a seventeenth take of an actor walking down a corridor. “I worked four years to prepare this film, I want it fucking perfect,” was his response.
POS
Source: Clarin
