The true essence of America: Robert Vaughn and his clown friends

Each year at this time I return to a piece of footage that really sums up America for me. Herewith, the annual presentation of Robert Vaughn being mocked by clowns (no doubt Macy's employees whose one goal was to be seen on TV) as he read the Constitution at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in the late Eighties. I used to show this clip at every "video night" I hosted and aired it annually on the Funhouse TV show — this week I'll be doing a tribute to the work of George Kuchar, so there wasn't time (although I'm sure George would've approved).

I share it again, in the hopes that all of the world will someday know that THIS is the very essence of our country:

Disc-o-rama: My latest DVD reviews

Readers of this blog might be unaware that I also review new DVD releases regularly for the Disc Dish website. I'm quite proud of the work I do for the DD site, so herewith are the reviews of mine that have appeared in the last few months.

Godard's end-of-Sixties masterpiece Weekend

Robert Aldrich's taut political thriller Twilight's Last Gleaming

British comedian-ventriloquist Nina Conti's documentary about her relation to her very unusual (and funny) act, visiting a ventriloquist convention, and the grieving process, Nina Conti: Her Master's Voice

She sits, she stares: Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present

The great cult anti-sitcom starring Chris Elliott, Get a Life: the CompleteSeries

Robert Bresson's portrait of disaffected youth in the Seventies, The Devil, Probably

Terry Southern co-scripted Aram Avakian's unforgettable The End of the Road

Maidstone and Other Films by Norman Mailer contains all three of Mailer's compulsively watchable “experimental” misfires

Aki Kaurismaki's simply sublime Le Havre

Bergman's trend-setting Summer With Monika made a star and a defiant sex symbol out of Harriet Andersson

John Cassavetes' most personal and disturbing “work-for-hire,” Too Late Blues

Pearls of the Czech New Wave showcases six great Czech films of the Sixties, including the mind-melting Daisies

The French biographical drama The Conquest offers a non-too-flattering look at former French pres Nicolas Sarkozy

 

The Rat Pack spirit runs through Who's Got the Action?, a totally ridiculous yet very entertaining big-screen sitcom episode starring the one and only Dean Martin

Gainsbourg: a Heroic Life, the Serge Gainsbourg biopic

Fassbinder's complex and brilliant sci-fi telefilm World on a Wire

And proof that Frank Tashlin was the filmmaker who was best able to make Jerry Lewis charming and even (gasp) loveable onscreen, Rock-a-bye Baby