— This past week, we lost John Flynn, the director of the William Devane/Tommy Lee Jones pulp thriller Rolling Thunder. He passed away in his sleep. Since I’m something of an 80s baby, I personally remembered the man less for Thunder than I did for similarly pulpy fare like Stallone’s Lock Up and Seagal’s Out For Justice. But if you’ve missed any of these, catch up to ’em as soon as possible (RT is out of print, alas).
— Also shuffling off the mortal coil is Jimmy Lee Smith, the criminal at the heart of the kidnapping and murder of a police officer as seen in the true crime story The Onion Field. He died in jail at the age of 76. He actually wasn’t in jail because of his most infamous crime as he was paroled for that in 1982. Since then, however, Smith had become a career criminal who was always in and out of prison for various transgressions.
— Tony Hale and Jordana Spiro had some mortgage payments coming up, so they decided to sign on to the Jimmy Fallon/Tom Arnold family drama we reported on a little while ago, now called Rockett, instead of Rocket (I can only hope it morphs into something "kewl" like Rawketzzz LOLOL before it belly flops into a video shelf near you). Fallon plays some idiot who returns to his hometown because that’s how personal issues get solved in movies, you know. Spiro, who you may remember from that recent TBS original series My Boys, will play a young lady Fallon reconnects with. Hale will be the dutiful childhood best friend.