Rare Ernie Kovacs skit in color

I’m putting together Jerry Lewis blog posts, but as I was watching Jerry perform dialogue-less routines on foreign TV shows, I was reminded of the master of silent TV comedy (and pretty much everything else he tried). Here’s an extremely rare slice of Ernie Kovacs doing his “Silent Show” as it aired in color. The show was done twice, the first time in 1957, when it aired following a Jerry TV special and got much better reviews (perhaps the reason Jerry is dismissive of Kovacs to this day). The version called “Eugene” that is available on the one currently-available DVD set is the redo Ernie did a few years later for ABC.

We do have Ernie in color in various films directed by his friend Richard Quine, but here he is doing his pioneering TV comedy “across the orthicon tube,” as Percy Dovetonsils put it….

Does "God" really need an Oscar?

Every self-respecting film fan knows that the Oscars are a game that Hollywood plays with the world (and itself). Mainstream multiplex fare is worse than it has ever been in history, even the best films are pathetically derivative and the biggest stars are blander and less talented than ever. But at the Oscarcast each year they tell us about how today’s best films (maybe 10 out of the few hundred they produce every year) are part of a continuum, they are the current-day “descendents,” so to speak, of the masterworks made during Hollywood’s Golden Age, and Silver Ages like the stunning period in the early Seventies when some of the best-ever American films were made with major studio backing.

Each year’s Oscar telecast has less and less time for anything to do with Hollywood’s past, though. The old-movie montages get quicker and shorter, each dead-this-year tribute now lasts maybe 10-20 seconds instead of a minute or two (unless you're John Hughes!), and finally, this past ceremony saw the “erasure” from the official telecast of the Lifetime Achievement winners (Roger Corman, Lauren Bacall, studio exec John Calley, and cinematographer Gordon Willis), which I wrote about here.

So this week the new Lifetime Achievement winners were announced, and they are as worthy of the prize as Corman, Bacall, Calley, and Willis. The announced honorees are the most pre-eminent writer about silent cinema, Kevin Brownlow (right)(the first time a film historian has gotten an Oscar), character actor extraordinaire Eli Wallach, a “Hollywood maverick” generation director who still is trying to make challenging cinema (Francis Ford Coppola), and a legend who is one of the greatest living filmmakers, Uncle Jean, aka Jean-Luc Godard.

Now I winced as I heard that Godard was up for this award, since I knew that either it meant he was severely ill — the Oscars seem to have the inside track on old filmmakers who are dying — or that they were prepping “Godard fan” Quentin Tarantino to make a presentation and gush about Band A Part once more. The award seems to be pegged to the fact that this is the 50th anniversary of A bout de souffle (Breathless), and someone at Oscar Central decided that seminal film needed to get some belated recognition. Hey, they passed on giving Citizen Kane anything way back when, so Orson got the same kind of honorary business many, many years down the line — pictures that change cinema don’t really have top priority in the skewed vision of the movies that guides the Oscars (Kubrick never really nabbed anything for being a visionary, so just forget about connecting the Oscars to what is taught in film school as genius filmmaking).

Ah, but this blog entry isn’t just a chance for me to carp about how this belated gesture seems too little, too late (since you know they’re not honoring Godard for the whole of his stunning cinematic oeuvre, but more for his having made a trendsetting pic back in the era of Mad Men). The “story” surrounding the announcement that Godard will receive this honorary award has become more about the fact that he hasn’t yet gratefully acknowledged the prize than the fact that he’s not likely to show up to receive it. Vanity Fair published a bizarre blog piece today noting that Uncle Jean hadn’t yet answered the Academy — a whole 24 hours after their representative called! (hey, be grateful we even considered you for this high honor, which we won’t be making part of our official ceremony!).

Another blogger mocked the ginned-up non-story, and noted that Kevin Brownlow, who is currently 72, was woken up out of a sound sleep at night in England to be told the news by an Oscar rep (Hollywood does not acknowledge that the rest of the world lives in different time zones). All these gents are being invited to a prestigious shindig that is taking place on November 13 of this year, which will most likely be glimpsed in a two-minute quick-cut montage on the actual Oscarcast.

Godard has a history of not showing up in recent years to any film festivals where his work is showing, or to fests that honor him with Lifetime Achievement Awards. He seemed to be considering accepting the European Film Awards' 2007 Lifetime Achievement Award when he agreed to a few interviews a few weeks before the ceremony — and then he never showed up to claim the prize (then again, please check out the EFA’s list of honorees — much as I dearly love the Monty Python troupe, their "lifetime achievement" in cinema is in the realm of one excellent and four very fun movies). The official quote he gave at the time to the EFA was "I say at the same time ‘thank you’ and ‘no, thank you,’" which is thoroughly consistent with his behavior in the past 45 years or so.

I believe that the Academy might waive its no-Lifetime-Achievement-presentations-on-air rule for Coppola, if only because his friends, and one assumes, presenters, are A-list names in the business. But the incredibly important Mr. Brownlow and the hardworking Wallach will certainly get merely what Corman and Bacall got this year on the televised ceremony — a quick mention from the stage, and a wave to the camera from the audience (I was surprised the honorees weren’t moved to the back where resident senior Mickey Rooney is always seated; so much for Hollywood’s pride in its past….).

I’ll end on a note that is quite familiar to Godard fans, his letter to the New York Film Critics Circle in 1995 when they announced they were giving him a Lifetime Achievement Award. It is written with tongue-in-cheek and with film references galore (including ones familiar only to students of his career). Ah... the Bleecker Street Cinema!

Dear Sir,

Thanks for your electronic mail dated January 20 — 11:24 am. Too little good health. Too big snow to the airport, and too few banknotes saved for the ticket. Hollywood always used to say that your servant is not fit for telling stories. I therefore said in the last chapter of my stories of cinema [Histoires du cinema(s)] that nothing is lost, except honor.

And it is then my duty — no copyright, only copyduties — not to accept any longer the honor of your reward. Do please accept the incomplete following reasons for such genuine and shy statement.

JLG was never able through his whole movie maker/goer career to:
Prevent M. Spielberg from rebuilding Auschwitz,
Convince Mrs. Ted Turner not to colorize past and dear funny faces,
To sentence M. Bill Gates for naming his bug's office Rosebud,
To compel New York Film Critics Circle not to forget Shirley Clarke,
To oblige Sony ex-Columbia Pictures to imitate Dan Talbot / New Yorker Films when delivering accounts,
To force Oscar people to reward Abbas Klarostami instead of Kieslowski,
To persuade M. Kubrick to screen Santiago Alvarez shorts on Vietnam.
To beg Ms. Keaton to read Bugsy Siegel's biography.
To shoot Contempt with Sinatra and Novak, 
etc., etc.,

I'm still not over, dear Sir, through my long voyage to the home of cinematography, but I missed indeed quite a lot of ports of call — no girls in every port, but no honors neither I could deserve.

Do please ask the distinguished audience some indulgence for the piteous English of your colleague and send the reward to the Bleecker Street Cinema if remaining.

Faithfully yours,
Jean-Luc Godard

Thanks to David Arthur-Simons for passing on the text of JLG's letter.

Rare audio docs on Speechification

Like most possessed fans and collectors, the first thing I want to do when I find a trove of really top-notch material is to share it. Thus, I offer a bunch of links here to a new site I love, called Speechification.

**UPDATE: I found out today (10/20/10) that this site has been taken down by its owners. I leave this post up as a bookmark/gravestone that such a great archive existed for a few years. Thanks to its owners for all their hard work.**

The site contains literally hundreds of complete recent-vintage documentary radio shows as MP3 files, most of the programs having aired on the BBC. There are a few stray American NPR items (we do have pathetic radio over here, and NYC radio is absolutely abysmal), but the bulk of the material comes from England, and the shows are absolutely terrific “101” introductions to the artists being profiled.

I’m only at the beginning of my “dumpster dive” through Speechification’s collection, but I’ve liked all I’ve heard to date. I offer a list of the titles I think will be of most interest to the readers of this blog.

Filmmaker portraits and interviews:
-A Withnail and I reunion
-Mike Leigh interviewed

Portraits of authors:
-Philip K. Dick
-Jorge Luis Borges
-William Blake
-Another Blake profile

Music-related shows:
-Kraftwerk profile
-Patti Smith on songwriting
-Flight of the Conchords
-A tribute to Malcolm McLaren’s radio work
-”Jarvis Cocker’s Musical Map of Sheffield”
-A docu on The Ed Sullivan Show, hosted by Joan Rivers
"Killer Bs" (A great discussion of B-sides; awesome BBC production, but I spotted two factual errors – yes, I’m a geek)

Next, comedy and uncategorizable specialty docus:

-“The Life and Crimes of Lenny Bruce”
-“Great Lives: Groucho Marx”
-“I Was Dudley Moore’s First Bandleader”
-Comedian Tommy Cooper profiled
-“Stephen Fry’s English Delights”
-Comedian Josie Long talks about plants
-On Chaplin and the creation of the concept of celebrity
-“I Was Douglas Adams’ Flatmate”
-A show on museums which includes a contribution from Ken Nordine
-A weirdly obscure docu that helped explain to me one of my fave-ever Alan Partridge moments: Telly Savalas hypes the city of Birmingham
-Stephen Merchant (of The Office and Extras) offers a history of HBO
-A documentary on Columbo!
-British pro wrestling
-George Harrison and George Formby
-Moondog profiled

And lastly, three portraits of a trio of great eccentric artists from the UK:

-Scottish poet Ivor Cutler
-Painter-poet-rocker Billy Childish
-Spoken-word god John Cooper Clarke

Enjoy and recommend anything great *you* might find.

Turning Japanese (for a paycheck): Celebs in '80s TV commercials

For almost four decades now, the Japanese have been luring American and European celebrities to do their ads with big paychecks and the promise that the commercial will only be aired in Japan. Of course now with YouTube, nothing is country-specific, and so posters like this one provide with endless amusement.

This gent seems to have specialized in collecting Japanese ads from the Eighties, so forthwith I present these kitschy little items:

Jane Bikin


Jodie Foster (to the tune of “She Drives Me Crazy”):



A very shabbily dressed Peter Falk (and would we have him any other way?):



The personification of class, Marcello Mastroianni:



Mickey Rourke, with his original face:



An odd choice for studliness, Anthony Perkins:



Even more gawky studliness from Tony:



And since we’re in the Eighties, we need some of the stunning ladies of that time. First, Nastassja Kinski:



The gorgeous Diane Lane:



The fantasy of every teen boy at that time, Phoebe Cates:



And the absolutely perfect Mademoiselle Sophie Marceau:



Sean Connery, who turned 80 years old this week!



And a little more Sir Sean:



To close out, I return to the kinetic and busy-as-fuck Mr. Sammy Davis Jr. If you thought he was ubiquitous on U.S. TV when we were young, he also blitzed the airwaves in other countries. Here he’s older and pitching coffee and something called “the stick”:



There are two versions of this one, a longer one that loses sound midway through and this twangy sucker:



From a 1974 campaign, where he pitched whiskey and did impressions. Here it’s Bogart:



Here it’s Brando as Don Vito:



A dance video, with the trademark “con-chicki-con-con”:



And lastly, a frenzied Jerry Lewis impression:

…and God Against All: Deceased Artiste Bruno S.

I am a deep disciple of the work of Werner Herzog, but every so often his films hit a disturbing note because the viewer becomes aware that the person onscreen may or may not be aware of how they are being used in Herzog’s strange and brilliant film world. This is most prominent in his documentary study of the blind and deaf, Land of Silence and Darkness. And it also is the case with the two very raw starring performances he got from street musician and all-around strange person Bruno S., who died this week at the age of 78. Bruno did seem aware of what was going on, but the emotional changes his characters go through have an incredible resonance that comes from the actor’s own deep perception of his character’s situation and how it mirrored his own real life.

Bruno was an incredible personality onscreen, as Herzog used him pretty much for what he was — a bright and imperturbable person who apparently suffered some mental and/or emotional disability. His obits this week noted the exact nature of that disability, and it is indeed as sad as the fate his characters confront in his two films with Herzog. Born Bruno Schleinstein, it is reported that his prostitute mother used to beat him as a little child, which made him temporarily deaf. He was committed to an asylum during the Nazi era, and was the subject of experiments conducted on mentally disabled children.

The savvy that Bruno showed onscreen, despite his handicap, was perfectly showcased by Herzog who starred him first in The Mystery of Kaspar Hauser (1974), which was released in Germany as “Every Man for Himself and God Against All.” Bruno was the perfect incarnation of the real-life figure who lived his whole life in a cellar and then emerged to innocently experience the world as an adult. Herzog wrote Stroszek (1977) expressly for Bruno S., and it is one of his masterpieces: the story of an unusual street musician who leaves Germany with a prostitute (the wonderful Eva Mattes) and his landlord, only to land in Wisconsin, where they are as alien and alienated as the dancing chicken seen in the film’s indelible final scene.

As a tribute to this unusual and extremely earnest and sincere performer, here is the trailer for a documentary made about him in 2003 (without English subtitles). This is the only feature he was in since the Herzog duo:



Here Bruno confronts logic in the guise of Kaspar Hauser:



A gorgeous scene from Stroszek that shows both what a great writer Herzog is and also what a fine actor Bruno was. Here he discusses those people who “hurt you with a smile”:



And because we should end on an up note, here is a scene from the same film in which Bruno lets loose on his chosen instrument, the glockenspiel. This is how he earned his living since the Herzog films many years ago, along with art he made that was indeed exhibited in galleries:



A final, newer clip of Bruno singing and playing: