From: SURNAME@panix.removethispart.com   
      
   In the previous article, Mark Shaw   wrote:   
   >     In "Harold and Maude," which became a beloved and enduring cult   
   >     classic despite a rocky start at the box office, Cort played a   
   >     20-year old man obsessed by thoughts of suicide whose life   
   >     changes when he meets Maude, a 79-year-old Holocaust survivor   
   >     played by Ruth Gordon.   
      
   That picture ran for, like, two years at one Minneapolis theater   
   (where I first saw it). I vaguely remember Ruth Gordon showing up   
   there for the one-year anniversary. And this wasn't a multiplex:  it   
   was a theater with one screen, and that is what they showed, twice   
   every evening and a few more showings on weekends.   
      
   My friends all agreed:  I physically resembled Harold and had enough   
   of his general attitude (*absolute* deadpan delivery of wise-ass   
   remarks being my salient personality feature) that some of them   
   started calling me Harold occasionally. This wasn't a nickname as   
   such, it was just a way of tweaking me when I was maybe Harold-ing it   
   up a bit much.   
      
   And I introduced this film to one of my minor-celebrity friends. The   
   actor Doug Hutchison[1] was one of my closer friends in high school.   
   The Minneapolis theater that ran the picture had long since moved on   
   to other things, but when it ran at one of the art houses (Riverside   
   or Uptown, maybe), I got him to come along with me, and he was bowled   
   over by it.   
      
   [1] Yes, thank you in advance, I am aware that he went a bit off the   
       deep end, to put it euphemistically.   
      
   Years later, he was working in a cookie shop in NYC and Ruth Gordon   
   walked by. He ran out with a cookie to give her and gushed about   
   Harold and Maude and -- this is what she later said was unique about   
   Doug -- he asked what Bud Cort was like and why didn't he have more of   
   a career. Ruth was struck by someone who complimented her but then   
   didn't just keep kissing her ass, but actually asked about Bud.   
      
   Doug became friendly with Ruth and her husband Garson Kanin and that   
   got him a couple of roles. I am unclear on details, except they   
   introduced him to David "Hoosiers" Anspaugh, who gave him a very   
   forgettable role in a very forgettable picture whose title I have   
   forgotten. But Doug would, shortly thereafter, work directly with Bud   
   Cort on a 1988 picture called The Chocolate War. (It's not a bad   
   movie.) So that's fun.   
   --   
   jd   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)