Really not that unmarried: Deceased Artiste Jill Clayburgh

Jill Clayburgh, who died this week at 66 after a reported 21-year battle with leukemia, was one of the poster girls of Hollywood’s late-Seventies feminism. This period found several great films released in a a matter of a few years, all with superb female lead performances. Then, as it always has, the industry pretty much dispensed with those actresses (who were left to return to the stage, or play mothers and girlfriends again), unless of course they were critical super-darlings (Meryl Streep) or the kind of performer who could semi-retire every few years because she didn’t really need to work for a living (the aerobics instructor Ms. Fonda).

I was a young teen when Clayburgh had her string of starring roles and was such a familiar face she was called on to host Saturday Night Live. At that time, my allegiance was to the winsome brunettes who pretty much all got similar roles (Brooke Adams, Karen Allen, Jessica Harper, Kathleen Quinlan, to a lesser extent Amy Irving), but I did see pretty much all of Clayburgh’s starring features in a theater (ah, for the days of “bargain matinees”) and thought she had a compelling presence on screen. (As for my blog-entry header, she was married to playwright from 1979 until her death.)

What’s interesting to reflect upon is the fact that the argument about women not getting quality lead roles continues to this day. The sad truth is that Hollywood is not interested in performances by humans in general, so the gender divide isn’t as important as it once was. Great work is still being done by talented actresses young and old, but the films in question are rarely going to make a dent in the weekend box-office report. And that’s okay — because we know the films that do were all made with the 14–25 market in mind, so they ain’t the kinds of things to take seriously.

I’ll say farewell to Ms. Clayburgh with a mini-survey of her career up to the early Eighties. She made her film debut in Brian De Palma’s The Wedding Party (1968) (both she and De Palma had gone to Sarah Lawrence; costar Robert De Niro had not). I really love the extremely tacky big-screen adaptation of Portnoy’s Complaint (1972) that she appears in as the Israeli soldier-girl fucked by Richard Benjamin (although that film’s truly tackiest moments feature Mama Lee Grant).

Her first credited TV role was with then-boyfriend Al Pacino in the Jack Warden cop series (and damn, did it move quickly — a half-hour for a show that would run one hour minimum these days) NYPD (1968). Here is the opening:



Other memorable TV appearances include a supporting role on the super-silly old-lady detective show (“hey, if Miss Marple works, why not *two* of them?”), The Snoop Sisters, and the TV movie Griffin and Phoenix with the always wonderful Peter Falk:



The Michael Ritchie satire about football and various ridiculous oh-so-Seventies forms of therapy (EST, “rolfing,” etc.) Semi-Tough (1977) featured Jill Clayburgh with her future Starting Over costar Burt Reynolds (when he was seriously being hailed as a new-model Cary Grant, a few years before the Bandit films came along….). But her biggest success was Paul Mazursky’s time piece An Unmarried Woman (1978). This is a fondly remembered scene where she begins dancing in her apartment for no reason other than sheer joy:



She followed that film with Bertolucci’s incest saga Luna (1979). This is a very strange film, in that Fred Gwynne plays her hubby, who has to die to set the story in motion. Once it’s going, you find that she’s quite a hot young mom who decides to help her son through his heroin-withdrawal suffering by getting him off (did I forget to mention she’s also an opera diva?). I saw this on an “arthouse” incest double-bill with Malle’s Murmur of the Heart at the Cinema Village back around 1980. Ah, for the days when you could have themed double features that had bizarro themes….




After Starting Over — which got uniformly great reviews but didn’t seemingly transform Burt Reynolds into the “next Cary Grant” — she starred in what would now definitely be labeled a “chick flick,” the big-budget follow-up by director Claudia Weill to her terrific low-budget Girlfriends, called It’s My Turn (1980). It was cute and pleasant, but not as memorable as Unmarried Woman. I have no recollection of a single moment of the film but you can see the whole film here, uploaded by a poster who loves Ms. Clayburgh, and also digs Faye Dunaway, Glenda Jackson, and my faves Sandy Dennis and the utterly sublime Barbara Harris.

The same poster has put up a film I have not caught up to (despite having had a prerecord VHS of it now for about a decade), Costa-Gavras’ tale of an American Israeli lawyer defending a Palestinian, Hanna K. (1983), written by Battle of Algiers scripter Franco Solinas.



Another semi-pseudo arthouse release starring Ms. Clayburgh that I never caught up to is also available in its entirety on YT. It is Shy People (1987), co-scripted by the always awesome Gerard Brach, and directed and conscripted by Andrei Konchalovsky. It can be found
here.

Jill Clayburgh kept working steadily until her death in both the movies and on TV, but will be best remembered as the “Unmarried Woman” who got to have an affair with the cool British artist guy (Alan Bates) and still remain independent. And able to dance around the apartment for absolutely no reason at all.

Chris Morris: the Funhouse interview

The “hidden” man of British comedy is hidden no more. I was very happy to speak yesterday with Chris Morris — whose career I surveyed on this blog here — in conjunction with the NYC opening of his debut as a feature filmmaker, Four Lions.

Morris has spent a hell of a lot of his career as a radio and TV humorist decimating the interview process, so I wasn’t sure what to expect when I interviewed him about Four Lions and some of his past work. I found that he was more than willing to discuss the different facets of his career, but as notions of process and approach arose, he laughed or made jokes that appeared to sidestep my questions — but then wound up answering them in beautifully eloquent detail.

Four Lions follows a group of dimwitted Islamic terrorists in England as they plan an attack on a charity marathon in London. Morris has taken great care in other interviews to discuss the fact that while the film is entirely fictitious, it was inspired by numerous accounts he had researched of moronic — yet obviously lethal — terrorists. I discussed the film’s characters with him and its distinctly dark comic tone. He noted that it wasn’t his intention to make a dark comedy, but that “the real elements in the data that’s out there undermines the metallic, cast-iron image of these people.” The tone didn’t guide the creation of the jokes, therefore, but rather the subject itself dictated the humor.

As for the characters, the film’s protagonist Omar (Riz Ahmed) is a family man whom the audience can relate to on certain levels, while marveling at his wrong-headed and dangerous philosophy — this split in the character is best exemplified by the pleasant-seeming conversations he has with his wife and son about how he intends to die for the cause. His counterpart is Barry (Nigel Lindsay), a temperamental working-class Englishman who follows his own Al-Qaeda-inspired values without question.

“Omar does have a conscience, he believes in right and wrong, while Barry just believes in wrong,” says Morris. “We had a sequence that was cut, in which the characters were playing their subtext cards too openly. Omar tries to argue that sometimes to do the right thing you have to do the wrong thing…. Barry laughs at him because Omar is tangled up in a confused conscience. Barry is happily doing the wrong thing.”

I found that Barry relates to many of Morris’ past comic creations, in that he speaks nonsense with an absolute air of certainty.



Four Lions benefits from a documentary-like visual style that, at points, reports the truth of a situation, and in some others slightly misleads the viewer for comic purposes. Discussing the use of documentary techniques to study a terrorist cell in a fiction film, Morris says: “It’s a long-established technique from at least Battle of Algiers, and probably before…. It’s sometimes good if the camera is left on the table and forgotten. In that way, the camera’s not quite seeing everything it should. When we shot, I worked out the orthodox camera positions and then banned them, and then used what was left.” The result, he says, is that “it’s as if you’re never quite in the right place,” in order to bring the viewer into the action.

Like Morris’ TV series Brass Eye and Nathan Barley, the film also includes wonderfully ridiculous scenes where its characters interact with new media, including chat rooms, handicams, and cellphone SIM cards. Reflecting on the characters’ repeated attempts to make video manifestos, Morris remarks on a court transcript he read that included MI-5 surveillance on would-be terrorists who argued with each other about whether a video camera should be used to record images, and whether Bin Laden did it.

“So they’re taking elements of Islamic law, and there’s this sort of confused conversation” that winds up with the one gent deciding that Bin Laden must shoot his videos in a mirror, because that would be okay.” Morris adds that he wouldn’t be surprised to find a real-life cell that was making its own video documentary, “because that would excite them, allow them to say, ‘yeah, that’s how we are.’ Unfortunately, I suspect it would show all to clearly that’s how they are….”

Until that particular “idiots’ manifesto” comes out, we can make do with Four Lions, which has Morris again finding the humor in an extremely taboo topic.

As a bonus in this entry, I will note that I also discussed Morris’ past work with him. Segments from that part of the interview will appear in this blog and on the Funhouse TV show in the weeks to come. One of his most direct and enlightening answers came to my question about his radio “feedback reports” (man on the street interviews) which, of course, were later modified to include show-biz celebrities and politicians on Brass Eye. As is indicated by his answer here, Morris’ humor is indeed well thought-out but, most importantly, it’s very, very funny.

Schmaltz in the "new" show-biz: Stewart and Colbert live (part one)

I think and write a lot about the comedians of yesteryear, and have often talked on the Funhouse TV show and in this blog about watching variety shows in the Sixties/Seventies — the idea of all those stars interacting on one stage used to make my little head explode, but now when I rewatch the shows from that era, all I can think about is the mixture of “old” and “new” acts that made those programs semi-surreal and very entertaining (and, let’s be a little serious here, often just terrible — that’s what makes the fun moments more fun). Time can make things that were awful seem more palatable.

Before I attempt to discuss the Stewart/Colbert rally and the “Night of Too Many Stars” broadcast, let me first say I regularly watch and do enjoy The Daily Show and Colbert’s program. I find the latter to be a bit edgier (and more confounding, in terms of audience reaction — more on this later), but both shows are, on the whole, quite funny.

I’ve noticed that older pop culture is kept at arm’s length on both shows — and then, used only as a punchline that can then be commented upon by Stewart (it’s usually Jon who does this), noting that the audience is too young for the reference. Those millions of us watching at home don’t really care what’s happening in the studio audience, but that activity is indeed the focus of these programs; I’ve attended a Colbert taping, and yes, they want you to “scream” — in the manner of Pee-Wee Herman — “real loud!” I like these shows, but comedy that is screamed for? That can easily turn into Dane Cook or the “Diceman.” Gimme laughter every time….

So the past is the past, and it has no place on these two programs, right? Well, not really. Both “The Night of Too Many Stars” and the recent rally TV show (which was the rally itself, and the rally was merely the variety show — as the Singing Detective would say, am I right or am I right?) both seemed to me to not only be the modern equivalents of old Bob Hope specials, but actually were structured comedically in the manner of those old shows. Sure, the hosts and guests delivered their jokes with the degree of snark/sillines that has come to symbolize what Stewart and Colbert do best. But both programs definitely felt like the Sixties all over again — not in the “we can change the world!” sense, but more the American leisure-culture “let me go back to bed” mindset (or, in the Nineties translation, “here we are now, entertain us”).

“The Night of Too Many Stars” raised money for a wonderful cause, and anyone reading this blog knows what the model for a TV show raising money for charity is: the Jerry Lewis telethon. The “Night” show cut between segments shot live at the Beacon Theater featuring a specific pool of talent (which is made up primarily of “comic actors who make really abysmal movies for the multiplex”) and (theoretically) live studio segments with a variety of “name” performers pretending to answer phones.

The Beacon segments had a self-congratulatory tone indicating that you were watching cutting-edge comedy; telethon viewers will recognize this attitude from the Lewis tagline, “You miss a little, you miss a lot!” That cutting-edge included the closing routine/sketch/whateveritwas, wherein Tracey Morgan and Chris Rock (a brilliantly funny standup) did a bit where they sang badly as Simon and Garfunkel and were interrupted by the meanest singer/songwriter in the biz (oops, I forgot Lou Reed is still alive), Paul Simon, who then performed a Snoop Doggy Dogg rap. It was, to coin, a phrase, fucking awful:



All I can compare this awkwardly awful bit of comedy to is the moment where George Burns and Jack Benny came out as hippies on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in ’67 or ’68. The “old meets the new” is at its most sublime as a concept when it is unintentionally funny; when it is scripted, it is just plain terrible. The Morgan/Rock bit was straight out of — you guessed it — a Bob Hope special. And let me clarify for those who are too young to know: the Smother Brothers’ show was always fun, but really only hit its stride in its third season, when the Smothers hired an amazing team of comedy writers. Bob Hope’s specials (random related image above) were pretty much uniformly hokey, schmaltzy, and “old” in their outlook.

I did not see every minute of the “Night” special (life is too short), but the big portion I did see had the same structure as the Jerry telethon: a bank of phones, “please call in now… we need your pledge!”; enlightening video documentaries about the charity itself and care facilities; and goofy stunts performed in both the Beacon and phone-bank segments to raise money. (Jerry Lewis swore he’d take off his pants if a certain amount was hit one year, and so he did; Will Arnett had his “dress” torn off by sexygirl correspondent Olivia Munn).

I’m sure the notion of the team creating the special was to spoof telethons in the phone-banks segments (a la the brilliant SCTV and the very first sketch spoofing the Lewis telethon, done by Steve Allen in the late Sixties), but when they cut to the real video documentary footage, I came to the conclusion that there really is only one way of raising money for a charity on TV, at least if you’re going to try and reach the broadest possible cross-section of the American public (which wouldn’t recognize subtlety if you labeled it as such). The answer is schmaltz, and Jerry’s been doing it now for 45 years straight — and Stewart and the guests on “Too Many Stars” were doing it, too. There may have been a veneer of hipness and “we’re just spoofing telethons,” but it was still Jerry-style all the way, and there was something very familiar about something that was presenting itself as cutting-edge.

A mediation on the “Rally to Restore Sanity” and its similarity to (take a guess) a Bob Hope special will come in part two….

Happy Halloween! (The favorite holiday)

Now that I no longer go trick-or-treating, I still do celebrate Halloween in my own way. It usually includes revisiting the work of the same gents I revered as a young monster movie fan. Herewith, just a brief tribute to the folks who mean “Halloween” to me.

Although I have a high regard for all periods of Karloff’s career, I came to know him as the “kindly monster” in his senior days in the late 1960s. Here is a TV appearance that references his aging horror-star persona, the infamous Route 66 that featured his last time out sporting Jack Pierce’s Frankenstein makeup. He costars with two other horror icons, Lon Chaney Jr. and Peter Lorre:



Karloff worked with Vincent Price on a few occasions, including The Tower of London and Corman’s farcical The Raven. Last night I rewatched the one and only VP as a torturer extreme (with quite a nice outfit) in The Witchfinder General, which can be found in its entirety here (near-entirety, as for some reason the closing freeze-frame and the final credits are omitted — the rest is there). Here is the trailer:



Price also worked with Alice Cooper, my adolescent monster-hero. Here he is doing his immortal “I Love the Dead” (a favorite of Johnny Rotten!) in the concert film Good to See You Again, Alice Cooper:



And a final holiday message from the immortal East Coast TV horror host John Zacherle (still swingin’ at 92). He says it best:

Recommended interview podcast 2: WTF with Marc Maron

Comedians are either “on” or “off” during interviews. The perfect example was George Carlin — George would be in his revved-up, observational mode for his panel appearances with Carson, Leno, and Letterman; for quieter, non-late night shows, he generally was very quiet and introspective, never coming within a mile of a wisecrack.

Thus, depending on the outlet, comics will give one of two interviews. On the Marc Maron podcast WTF, however, a third option has come into being — that of the comic “on the couch,” delving into their insecurities, paranoias, and petty jealousies. It’s not clear exactly how this has developed, but Marc has surely become the podcasting “therapist” for his comedy colleagues.

Perhaps this is a result of the fact that Marc is not a professional interviewer. I first saw him as one of the million standups who inhabit the late, late hours on Comedy Central, but finally became familiar with him when he cohosted a morning show on Air America called “Morning Sedition.” When that show was axed, he floated around as a substitute host and was the cohost of the network’s only video podcast for a while.

I’ve written about AAR in the past, but suffice it to say that whoever put the network together had the rather wonky idea to pair standup comics or comedy writers with experienced radio people. Marc was teamed with Mark Riley, who continues to do a great job on WWRL-AM these days (6-8 p.m. weekdays). The morning show was fun when I caught it, but Marc’s subsequent hosting gigs found him veering away from political concerns and talking about himself at length. Thus was born the frame device of WTF, wherein he delivers a blog-like recap of what he’s been up to. This is not where the magic comes in.

That occurs when he begins to make the guests on his podcast feel at home by discussing a past meeting they had (with him frequently apologizing for how rude he was to the guest when he met them) or how they’ve been feeling lately (a leading question if ever there was one for people who make a living analyzing themselves in their work). Within a few minutes, the guest oddly consents to sharing information about the darkest times in their career or their lives. Depression, neurosis, breakdowns, incarceration, abuse by a significant other, a child’s life at risk in a hospital — somehow, Marc’s podcast has had all of these situations and more shared by comedians.

Which is not to say WTF is planned to be a therapy session — a good number of the episodes just end up going in that direction (certain guests, like Ray Romano, Stewart Lee, and Thomas Lennon, have seemingly kept it from going there). Perhaps it comes about because Marc overshares with the guest and will openly note if he is jealous of their success. Perhaps it comes about because Marc doesn’t explore the machinations of creating comedy but he does immediately leap into the machinations of the comedy lifestyle (traveling on the road, being booked to open or “middle,” dealing with audiences).

The podcast is thus ideal for both comedians and comedy fans because of its “shop talk” aspect. Marc has had a number of individuals on whose work I’m not a fan of (case in point: Judd Apatow), but his discussions with them have generally been more entertaining to me than their work is, because of this unintended “therapeutic” level of discussion.

And the show’s guest roster has gotten more and more impressive and expansive (the only missing element: the older troopers who are still alive in NYC and L.A., and would surely consent to interviews). WTF attracted the most attention when Marc has had “name” guests on and discussed “joke theft” with them. Again, because Marc is not a conventionally honed interviewer and is a comedian himself, he generally has the guts to ask questions that most other interviewers would gloss over.

I was very surprised to hear him raise the issue of stolen material with Robin Williams, who offered a very polite and sedate response to the question. He pursued the issue further with Carlos Mencia (in the two episodes that have brought the most attention to WTF) and Dane Cook — again, a performer I won’t spend a second listening to as a comic or actor, but if he has agreed to visit “Dr. Maron’s couch,” I’m all ears.

Marc is definitely an unconventional interviewer, and so his chats go into some very unconventional places, especially when he decides to document “healing” moments with old friends on tape for the podcast, rather than just let them happen “offstage” in real life. Thus, a few weeks ago, he tried to heal a rift that had grown between he and his old friend Louis C.K. (seen at right with Marc when both were much younger lads, along with Dave Attell and Sarah Silverman; the latter couple's relationship was gone into in much depth by Silverman recently on WTF). A related recommendation: Louis' FX show Louie, which debuted in 2010, was by far the darkest, best new American TV comedy to appear since Curb Your Enthusiasm, in my opinion.

The conversation, which spanned two episodes, was direct and honest, especially near the end when Marc once again confessed his envy of Louis’ recent professional accomplishments. Louis responded that when Marc was envious of him he was being a “really crappy friend” since he went through a divorce and a series cancellation while Marc was busy envying him. One can commend Maron for not editing this exchange out of the show, but a lot of what Marc does both on the podcast and in his standup has to do with being honest to a fault….

….which extends even to the “too much information” moments that littered the initial episodes of the ’cast, including an odd anecdote about Marc jerking off to porn on the computer while his ex-colleague Rachel Maddow was on TV. He humorously apologized on the podcast to Rachel for having turned off her show in favor of the porn, giving us yet another “fun fact” about him to try and quickly forget.

So what is the final point here? WTF is a completely unpredictable creation that can range from the truly mundane (Marc talking at length about how his new jeans and boots fit him) to the exceptional (the joke-theft discussions, a talk with Doug Stanhope and Janeane Garofalo where Marc introduced the phrase “children of Bill Hicks”). During the year-plus the show has been on, Maron has spotlighted comics I need to know better (including Brendon Burns), those whose work I forgot I liked a whole lot (Maria Bamford), and one energetic gent whose nonstop kvetches I do heartily enjoy (Eddie Pepitone). Catch WTF on iTunes and on its official site.

One of the few guests who actually has done shtick in Marc’s home studio, Nick Kroll as Latin DJ “El Chupacabra”:



WTF live with Maria Bamford:



And with Eddie Pepitone: