The blog for the cult Manhattan cable-access TV show that offers viewers the best in "everything from high art to low trash... and back again!" Find links to rare footage, original reviews, and reflections on pop culture and arthouse cinema.
Inspired by the example of the pseudonymous UK blogger Arthur Ignatowski and our friend Stephen K's cool scan-posts [both blogs gone by the 2010s], I thought I’d try to add to the ongoing “library” of articles found on the Net by scanning in some items about a major Funhouse favorite, Tuesday Weld.
Tuesday had two careers: in her first, she was a teenage “sex kitten” on TV and in the movies, but in the late Sixties, she decided she wanted to be a legit actress and carved out a wonderful group of adult performances (see, among others, Play It As It Lays). She remained a very reluctant star performer, however, and was well known for turning down major box-office successes (which were pretty much considered hits-in-the-making as they were being cast) like Bonnie and Clyde and Rosemary’s Baby.
She gave belligerent interviews, appeared in fewer and fewer films, and these days is only seen in the occasional supporting role. But, for a minute or two, let’s return to her starlet phase when she was featured on the covers of magazines, as with this February 1960 edition of “TV Radio Mirror,” where she poses with a pre-plastic surgery Paul Anka. The issue includes profiles of Steve McQueen, Florence Henderson, and Charles Van Doren, in addition to Anka and Tuesday, but I figured we will keep Tuesday on our mind here.
These are scanned on a consumer-grade HP Officejet 5610 all-in-one scanner at 150 dpi (the Klavan/Finch scans below are 100 dpi, which I think is what I'm going with in the future). The files became pretty sizable when I upped the dpi level (about half of the size of last week's Robert Vaughn video file), and I know space on Blogger is limited, so I thought I'd keep the file-size down. If anyone has any (friendly and constructive) advice on scanning old magazine pages, please do feel free to pass it along. I realize the one thing that is missing here is the beloved (by me, at least) smell of old magazine paper....
And a bonus pic, a full-page portrait of Ms. Weld from another mag:
In scanning for the blog post that follows, I found that the same Feb. 1960 issue that contained a cover story on Tuesday Weld also had an article on the NYC radio comedy team Klavan and Finch. I grew up listening to Gene Klavan on WNEW-AM in the Seventies (by that time Dee Finch had retired), and have very fond memories of his crazy characters (whom he would "converse" with). Thus, I couldn't resist scanning this article too and putting it "in the public record" for local radio fans.
I haven’t linked to video finds on other blogs in a few weeks now, so I will correct that and point your attention to bakedziti.net where blog-master Gene has posted a bunch of wonderful clips (full disclosure: yes, one recent post did come from a Funhouse episode). His recent uploads include ABC’s “Charlie B.” rap promo for It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, and two terrific clips of Stevie Wonder funkin’ out on Sesame Street. Keep in mind that Stevie is a grizzled music-biz vet of 23 at this time.
Every year around this time I start thinking about one clip that I caught by chance back in 1986 because I am an avid fan of star-filled pointlessness, like… the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade! The clip in question really does sum up the finer points of the U.S. in one neat little package. Formerly famous (you’ll never hear me saying “has-been”) TV actor gets the gig to read the U.S. Constitution to commemorate its 200th anniversary. Said actor doesn’t know the lines without cue cards — and then the clowns come over….
I have watched this clip countless times, and believe its effect intensifies the more you watch it in sequence. I can think of no better way to sum up what American means to me than to offer up Robert Vaughn being mocked by Macy’s employees dressed as clowns (watch them flock!) as he reads the Constitution to a befuddled and bored TV audience. The fact that host Pat Sajak tries to save his bacon by doing an impromptu intro to the segment (after Vaughn says on-mic, “you have the cards?"), and the fact that the director then tries to save Napoleon Solo once again by putting him in a little circle (in which you can still the bobbing clown heads) only makes this moment more of a patriotic godsend. I can offer no better treasure from my coffer of weird VHS moments to celebrate the “discovery” of this wonderful land (and yes, it’s available on YouTube, and that guy’s copy is far, far worse than this one).
I wanted to share two more moments from my 2002 interview with the Soup. So here is his take on the Ritz Brothers, whom some folks curiously prefer to the Marx Brothers. I asked Soupy to talk about the allure of Harry “don’t holler!!!” Ritz:
And here he talks about the Metromedia executives, whom he refers to as “the suits.” These bean counters bothered him so much that he quit his very popular afternoon show in 1966.
The Soup has been gone for a few weeks now, but we never forget our favorites here in the Funhouse. This week I’m rerunning part two of my 2002 interview with him on the program, so I felt it was time to review the offerings online and pay further tribute to the one and only “Simple Pieman” of kids TV, who was a great performer and all-‘round nice guy.
First, we dispense with the obvious by offering a live version of his Top 40 single, “The Mouse” (go-go girls make everything sweeter):
Soup also performed with go-go chicks on Hullaballoo, but I now direct you to a clip I showed a piece of on my first interview episode, Soupy on I’ve Got a Secret when he had recently come out to L.A. to duplicate his Detroit show and wasn’t yet known by the celeb panel (which included Steve Allen, a very big fan of other comics):
And the introduction of the puppets. Here, from the Metromedia show Soupy did in NYC from 1964-66 (which was syndicated around the country), appearances by the immortal Pookie — for me, the seminal Soupy puppet, a wisecracking hipster lion — and White Fang:
A great representative episode from 1965 has been posted in its entirety. It includes “The Mouse” (with a Lugosi mask that won’t be seen anymore, thanks to Bela Jr.’s court case about celebrity likenesses), Frank Nastasi as “the Nut in the Door,” and the Words of Widsom:
A nice little tribute to the man who supplied the voices of Soupy’s puppets and who played “the Nut” on the Metromedia show, the late Frank Nastasi:
A clip that has gotten a lot of play over the years, but this is definitely the longest version I’ve ever seen: the time when Soup’s crew hired a stripper to replace “the Nut” and he didn’t know about it until he opened said portal:
Soupy quit Metromedia in 1966, and unfortunately didn’t have another regular daily series again until 1979. The networks didn’t exactly know what to do with him, and thus he made a bunch of pilots and specials that were pleasant but weren’t as entertaining as his daytime program. Here’s one cute moment from a 1966 primetime Soupy special, an appearance by Ernest Borgnine, subbing for Judy Garland — who eventually does wander out herself:
Another wonderful rarity, Soupy doing a pie-throwing sketch with Moe Howard (looking curiously like George Burns) and Mike Douglas on Mike’s daytime show:
Soupy’s own recounting on a nightclub stage of the infamous “little green pieces of paper” story, circa 1993:
Soup and Metromedia vets Sandy Becker and Fred Scott (the “commercial ranger” on Capt. Video), interviewed by the wonderfully wry Ch. 5 Metromedia movie reviewer Stewart Klein, who died many years ago but supplied me with many wonderful memories of very eager and nasty “pans” of bad mainstream flicks:
And being famous sometimes has its drawbacks — like Howard Stern deciding you need to be made fun of as a senior citizen. Thus one of Howard’s stooges came to interview Soup, but thankfully got an appropriately nasty response (and then took a pratfall — ya can see that Soup didn’t actually land him on his fat ass). It’s indeed a good thing that Howard went to satellite, where we never have to hear about him any more…. (He did apologize for having been shitty to the Soup, but it came too little, too late, when the gent was in his declining phase and the apology didn’t mean much.)
Now, on a happier note, Funhouse favorite Alice Cooper makes an appearance on the 1979 “comeback” series:
There’s no way I would end this tribute without a little Pookie. Here the rockin’ lion grooves the fuck out to a recording of “High Heeled Sneakers.” It’s no wonder that Soupy’s fans grew up to become the sex ‘n’ drugs ‘n’ rock ‘n’ roll generations of the Sixties and Seventies. Farewell, Mr. Sales (aka Milton Supman).
Carl Ballantine, the first great “comedy magician,” died this week at 92. His obits spoke about how he popularized the art of doing a terrible magic act (I vividly remember the drapery “made by mother” which proclaimed him “World’s Greatest Magishen”). Ballantine was a staple on Sixties variety and talk shows, but was best known as a regular on McHale’s Navy for the four seasons (1962-’66) that it was on.
The most interesting note in the obits was that he transformed the act from an early one in which he was billed as “the River Gambler” (Riverboat?), doing straight card tricks. Take a glimmer here at someone’s wretched but priceless VHS recording of his misbegotten magic act off some special hosted by Peter Graves (could this have been “Circus of the Stars”?):
Ballantine performed the act for over 50 years, and revived it for countless TV shows including the dreaded Eighties Cosby show and Donny and Marie (and yes, I realize that with my Mackenzie Phillips entry and this one, I’ll now have linked to Donny and Marie clips twice in one month….):
One of those oddities that YouTube is populated by, a nightclub puppet act that had a “Ballatine the Great” puppet:
And here’s a scary TV history, the Charles Nelson Reilly Saturday morning kids show parody, Uncle Croc’s Block, on which Ballantine guested as “Sherlock Domes”:
British TV documentaries about the lives of celebrities routinely offer excellent “frames” for their biographies, which often include a portrait of the locale the subject lives/lived in (the Brits are heavy on context, and cities provide the most picturesque sort of context), or an “essay” on the impact the person’s work has had. In the links below, British documentarians tackle two of the most talented singer/songwriters alive, two gents who have always had name recognition but have never had Top 40 singles (except in the case of one “novelty” success….). The subjects are Randy Newman and Leonard Cohen. The Newman docu is a fan’s love-letter to Randy, who acts appropriately cranky and off-handed during the interview segments; the fan in question is Jon Ronson, who wrote the book that inspired the new movie The Men Who Stare at Goats and directed the documentary Stanley Kubrick’s Boxes. The docu, found on the World of Wonder site, is called “I am, unfortunately, Randy Newman”:
The portrait of Leonard Cohen isn’t as blissfully musical as Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man, but it does supply a good short-form intro to the cult of Leonard and its acolytes (of whom I am one). I recently sat in the nosebleeds at Madison Square Garden to see Len, and he gave one helluva show, offering three hours of solid classics (and the deft handling of a very fine hat).
It’s Halloween again, my FAVORITE holiday of the year (fie on Xmas). And since I’ve mostly paid tribute to film and music items relating to horror and the Halloween holiday on the show and in this blog, this time out I thought I’d raise a candle to the genius of the creepiest artist of the E.C. Comics group, Graham Ingels.
Nicknamed “Ghastly,” Ingels was, along with Jack Davis, the most “extreme” E.C. artist. But where Davis was cartoony, Ingels really seemed to relish sketching the shocked facial expressions, ominous landscapes, and decomposing corpses that were frequent parts of the stories he was chosen to illustrate. Among the things I’d like to present to honor him are two scans I made of his biography. First, the official one that came out in the 1950s (reprinted in one of the wonderful, invaluable Russ Cochran reprints). Click the image to enlarge.
Then there is a sort of update, a biographical sketch of him provided for a later reprint, which notes he didn’t like to acknowledge his connection with E.C. later in life; it is noted in other online bios that he finally did, in his last few years. Click to enlarge.
And in case you’re looking to read a whole story illustrated by Ghastly, there are two that have been scanned by the good souls over at Insane Journal (great name!). First, a most appropriate tale called “Halloween!” from Shock Suspenstories #2. Read “Halloween,” and celebrate the holiday in style!
And you can’t get any further-out than the really sick “Horror We? How’s Bayou?” It remains one of the most extreme exercises in ugliness that brilliant horror scribe Al Feldstein (who is owned very many royalties and residuals by his student Stephen King) ever came up with. How can you resist reading one of the sickest stories E.C. ever came up?
I should acknowledge where I my E.C. “fan-addiction” sprang to life again: at the local paradise of low-priced, perfect-condition cool books and comic-related stuff, Drougas Books (known to NYers in the know as “that awesome bookstore on Carmine St. with the long Lefty name I can't remember”).
Some of my favorite Ghastly covers, starting with the most atmospheric and subdued to the more lurid lovelies:
2009 stands as the 40th anniversary of a whole raft of things, from the moon landing to Woodstock to the Manson murders. Among the many things that began in ’69 was the television series Monty Python’s Flying Circus, which I and many of my confreres became addicted to back when it started appearing on American TV.
Thus, I counted myself lucky that I was among the folk who attended the reunion of the five surviving members at the Ziegfeld Theater — which was oddly foreshadowed by a reunion of four of the members the night before on The Jimmy Fallon Show, and a quick interview of three of them on Countdown with Keith Olbermann, which actually constituted the only time they were asked serious questions, and gave (semi-) serious answers. The event was the official American premiere of the Eagle Rock documentary Monty Python: Almost the Truth, which by this time has aired on IFC, and which I’ve viewed in both versions. The shorter one (a two-hour cut made for British theatrical release, purportedly) is actually the better of the two, unless you are a fan like myself who likes all the sordid details, and who is willing to sit through heaping chunks of the feature films in order to get background info.
I felt the documentary shone when it found the Pythons rhapsodizing about their heroes, who all happen to be folks who should be better known by the American public: Spike Millgan and the Goons; the Beyond the Fringe group, especially the blindingly brilliant Peter Cook; the Bonzo Dog Band (the single most important link between Beatles/’60s and Python/’70s, and many of the participants would agree on that). That Was the Week That Was (which I’ll readily admit is the entry in this list I know very little about); and humor-mag pioneer Harvey Kurtzman. All the lionizing goes on in the first episode of the series (except for a juicy bit about how Spike Milligan beat the Pythons to the punch with his wildly surreal Q series in the second episode). The third episode proved equally compelling, supplying info about the personalities of the six Pythons.
“Disguised as a normal person” (thanks, David Steinberg), I covered the Ziegfeld Theater reunion for the trade magazine Video Business. Here is my account.
I don’t often blog about local politics, but when I do it’s never because I’m happy. In this case I’m extremely unhappy that Michael Bloomberg, GRB (Greedy Rich Bastard), will more than likely be re-elected as New York City mayor next Tuesday for a variety of reasons. The foremost reason, of course, is that he’s a GRB. I am a registered Democrat — not that I love the party, but because I wanted to participate in the primaries, and being an Independent for so many years essentially meant nothing; as with voting for third-party candidates, it’s a great idea, but this country’s vision is far too narrow to allow for difference, never mind dissidence.
In any case, I’m a registered Dem, and thus have been pissed off that my mailbox has been literally flooded with mail from Bloomberg’s campaign, telling me how his opponent, Bill Thompson, represents “politics as usual.” This is a great strategy, often used by the party in power (especially if they’re right of center): accuse the opponent of being exactly what you are, so you sometimes throw the public off so much that a percentage of them believe it. Bloomberg has run this city for eight years, and yet somehow voting for him will be voting for change. Good one, “Mayor Mike.”
In the meantime, we have a barrage of mail and TV ads telling us how Bill Thompson is a terrible candidate, and why we should vote for the same old same old in order to be really progressive. This New York Times article notes that Bloomie has spent more of his own money than other candidate in U.S. history. If I was forced to say something charitable about Bloomberg, I believe the only positive thing I could come up with is that he is not a loathsome, repellent individual like his predecessor Rudy Guiliani. No, Mike Bloomberg is a billionaire and this is an experiment he’s been carrying on. The name of the experiment? "Make NYC more comfortable for the rich and tourists." Both groups have received many boons during Bloomie’s past two terms, and they will no doubt be the only important individuals during his third.
The hauteur Bloomberg conveys when he speaks can't be hidden. He could be read like a book during his debate with Thompson earlier in the week: “why am I being forced to stand here with this man?” This AMAZING montage of Bloomberg being a haughty prick pretty much illustrates his attitude toward the “rest” of the populace — if you thought him calling a reporter a “disgrace” for daring to ask about term limits was a wonderfully revealing moment, check out the “silence” he enacts when someone’s tape recorder is dropped during a press conference (he is a bitchy little cuss, isn’t he?):
The most puzzling part of the equation is the old saw that NYC is a liberal city. We do indeed have a lot of really bright progressive minds hangin’ ’round, but what has sadly hit me over the past few years — even despite the election of Barack Obama, whom I support — is that this is a conservative country broken up by pockets of enlightenment. The fact that no one woke the fuck up during the eight-year reign of the moron who previously held the presidency, and said, “hey, you there, get the hell outta here!” is underscored by the fact that “liberal NYC” has now had 16 years of conservative mayors (one repellent on all levels, one smarmily self-satisfied and content). And it will no doubt be 20 years, unless a lot of folks like me who are disgusted by the b.s. “improvements” (need we say Bloomberg Beach again?) and amazed by how things really aren’t better in any way, shape, or form (have ya ever ridden a subway that was not that one a day that Mikey takes as a daily publicity stunt?), vote the GRB out of office.
The Media Funhouse was declared the “Best Public-Access Show” in this week’s Village Voice “Best of NYC” issue. This is a terrific honor, since I’ve been reading the Voice on and off since (gasp) the turn of the 1980s, when I did clerical tasks as a “junior intern” for film reviewer Tom Allen.
In any case, I thank the Voice for such a very nicely written acknowledgement of the programme. I am particularly pleased that the names of Marco Ferreri and Jerry Lewis were linked with the show. We shall continue the flow of high art and low trash, for those who continue to prefer it to be broadcast straight into their abode….
First Capt. Lou left us last week, and now another Funhouse favorite, the inimitable Soupy Sales. I’ll put together something longer pertaining to the Soup in the near future, but for the meantime wanted to link to the one Funhouse interview I have up already on YouTube (which finds Soupy speaking about pies on his afternoon Metromedia show). Soupy was a very friendly gentleman and exuded class even as he did the very silliest of humor. He won’t be forgotten:
I felt that Seizure needed to be represented on YouTube (if only to attest to the wonderful chemicals folks used to ingest in the Seventies), and so uploaded some choice clips. First, a Frid blooper that Stone kept in the film — either because he thought it “seemed real” or because he was pissed off at Frid. Jonathan was known for losing his lines on Dark Shadows and making up new ones that paralyzed his fellow actors. He also cursed to occasionally make the tape stop (outside of cursing, there was no way the directors of the low-budget soap were going to stop tape — actors regularly lost their lines and the take in question aired). The slip occurs at about :24 seconds in:
And the film would be utterly insane and still memorable without them, but a little sex appeal never hurt, so here we have the amazing Martine and her ruby lips, and Ms. Woronov and her amazing gams:
A few weeks back there were three past-tense sex “scandals” that emerged in a short span of days: the David Letterman blackmail situation (which I couldn’t have cared less about, never having found Letterman to be a genuinely funny comedian or an engaging host); the Polanski case (which I wrote about here), and Mackenzie Phillips’ revelation of a long-term incestuous relationship with her father John, aka “Papa John” of the Mamas and Papas. I had wanted to write something about the last-mentioned story, but figured I should wait until I had had time to read her memoir, High on Arrival. In the meantime, mainstream media interest in her revelation has died down, which is just as well, since that enables us to better put her story in perspective.
First, a little bit about why I’m writing about Mackenzie. A few weeks I talked about the fan/celebrity connection when I wrote about the death of poet-rocker Jim Carroll. I should thus say that I’m a few years younger than she is, but I was totally infatuated with her when I was a kid (I use the word “infatuated” because I hated the term “crush” back then). Like every self-respecting couch potato, I watched every Norman Lear show that aired during the 1970s (and got to see them all jump the shark in a horrible fashion), and was totally taken with Mackenzie when she showed up as the rebellious older sister Julie on One Day at a Time.
To sort of put in perspective how “odd” it was that I found Mackenzie to be the cutest chick on TV, I should only remind those who remember that dim, dark time, that the leads on Charlie’s Angels were the most desired women on TV (jiggle on ABC!), Raquel Welch was still referred to with leering remarks on variety and talk shows, and, on One Day itself, Valerie Bertinelli was the “sweetheart” teen actress. Mackenzie describes herself quite accurately in her book as “gangly, with big teeth and a big smile, kinda goofy-looking,” and she’s not wrong. I believe I can make an argument that she was a very good actress whose career was sadly fucked up by her drug use, but that’s not the issue here — my infatuation with her was based entirely on the fact that she did not resemble an “Angel” and was not the wholesome Bertinelli type, and was in fact an awkward, winsome, troublemaking teen (and for those who think I’m being sleazy here, remember that was I was slightly younger than her when I had this infatuation, so shut up awreddy).
Okay, now that I’ve gotten that personal “connection” to her past out of the way, I can discuss her history of sharing her personal life with the public. I should note that, even while I was in the throes of my infatuation with her, I appreciated a Village Voice piece by James Wolcott about her appearance on The Dick Cavett Show on PBS with Papa John, when both were “drug-free” and happy to preach about sobriety, back around 1981. Wolcott’s pieces for the Voice are not available on the paper’s site at all, but his writing on TV was actually terrific (unlike Frank Rich’s film-reviewing for The New York Post, where he panned virtually every great movie of the mid-’70s). He spotlighted the fact that when John and Mackenzie spoke about their former drug use, they were showing signs of a particular show-biz affliction: talking about something tragic, and indicating that they possessed the money to make that particular high-priced tragedy occur.
As Mackenzie notes in her book, John often talked about how he shot up heroin *every single half-hour he was awake* when he was at his worst. Wolcott wisely discussed this in terms of an equation: talking about doing that many drugs means you clearly had that much money to buy the drugs! You can tell kids not to take them because they will wreck their lives, but you’re also talking to them about a level of luxury and wealth that permits that kind of beyond-indulgent drug use. Much as I was happy as a fan to see Mackenzie turning her life around back then, Wolcott’s piece struck home — John and she were indeed putting themselves on the world-class, let’s call it Keith Richards, level of junkiedom, rather than being akin to the average nodder on the corner. There was a kind of "status" to the tragedy. That sentiment is, happily, missing from Mackenzie's memoir.
Mackenzie’s history of drug use has always seemingly been linked with the fact that her father was an extreme addict, and she was brought up in an aura of unrestrained luxury and privilege. Still, her memoir seems like nothing less than an effort to free herself from Papa John’s nearly cult-leader charisma — no, NO, he wasn’t a Charlie Manson, but in reading her descriptions of him, he indeed sounds like a charming rogue who not only didn’t have boundaries, but was one for lying, stealing, and thoroughly manipulating all the women in his orbit.
The question that was brought up quite often when Mackenzie decided to discuss the incest on Oprah a few weeks back was “what does she stand to gain from this?” I know the answer is obvious — “better sales for the book, more public recognition,” or simply Michael O’Donoghue’s old dictum that on the daytime talk show circuit, “the one in the most pain wins!” As a fan of hers (I am still a fan in theory, although I admit to having lost the thread of her career, since I was a little too old to follow her stint as a cute rockstar mom in the Disney series So Weird), I realized that by coming out with this story, she was branding herself with a phrase that would become her “identity” in the media, that of “incest survivor.” The question of whether she was having “recovered memories” and had simply made the incest up also came up, but anyone who listened to her interviews or reads the book will realize that the story is indeed too sordid and sad to be anything someone would cook up as a “career move.” (Now, a sex tape or even a sex addiction — there, my friend, is a career move….)
It’s always been apparent to me that we human beings pine for the lovers and loved ones who abandon us the most. It’s a very sad trait, but one that none of us can avoid. Mackenzie’s story is exactly that: at one point in High on Arrival, she chronicles the many ways in which John physically and emotionally abandoned her, and later she talks about the incest, speaking of it as “consensual” — she also acknowledges that by having that connection with him, she finally had gotten him to stick with her, to not abandon her again. It was noted on various websites that addressed the issue that incest victims many times perceive the relationship to be consensual, when the parent is completely exploiting the power dynamic.
Mackenzie maintains that the sex began when she was blacked out from drugs, but continued with them meeting explicitly to get high and have sex. However, she was disgusted when he tried to make the act romantic. The nightmare Freudian implications of all this are indeed mind-boggling, and while she argues that she does not want the public to revile her dad for what he did, one can’t help but think that, while he was without question an immaculately talented tunesmith and might’ve in fact been incredibly charming in person, his “rules don’t apply” behavior was monstrous in its effect on his family.
The book’s third act, in which Mackenzie returns to drugs after having had a 15-year period of sobriety, does not have Papa John, but it still seems to have been triggered by his poor example as a parent. The relapse began after Mackenzie had a reckoning of sorts, “forgiving” John on his deathbed for his actions. She speaks of this as a sort of closure through the book, and yet it in fact seemed to open the door on a worse period of self-destructive behavior for her.
To put it in slick, book-reviewer terms, the first third or so of High on Arrival is filled with the “fun” gossip properties: major rock stars (Jagger, Donovan, McCartney); the glamour of Hollywood wealth; Mackenzie’s sudden and unexpected career as an actress, sparked by her being cast in American Graffiti. (In the picture on the right, she's the second-from-left glam kid outside Rodney Bingenheimer's L.A. club.) The rest of the book is a downward spiral, leavened only by the shorter space given to her sobriety (she notes that when she wasn’t using drugs, her life was happy and thus not interesting fodder for a memoir) and the birth of her son. Her drug-life included rape, kidnap, disfiguration of her body through shooting up and plastic surgery, and the concept of living under the same roof with one’s drug dealers.
Thus, High is Mackenzie’s story, but it also sketches a complex and disturbing portrait of John. His daughter is now at a place where she can talk about what they did sexually, but it seems that her hero-worship continues in certain regards, so one can only glean other things between the lines. Among them is the real fact that John was an oldies act after his first solo album fizzled — he had no hits, and aside from that album, seemingly no releases between ’68 when the Ms&Ps broke up, and the major Beach Boys comeback “Kokomo” (which he co-wrote) in ’88. When Mackenzie toured with John in the “New Mamas and Papas” in the early Eighties, she was in fact more recognizable and arguably more famous than he was, to me and millions of others like me who had watched her on TV; we knew of John simply as a gent who had written some great hits more than a decade earlier. In the punk and disco era, she was in, he was out.
Another odd anecdote that is quite disturbing in the book — Mackenzie being kidnapped while stoned at a club, and being freed several days later by John’s friend “Big Sal” — seems to bring up other connections that are never spelled out, but are intimated by the fact that John nearly served 45 years in prison for drug trafficking charges. Again, Wolcott’s money equation comes up. No doubt John was still making dough from the residuals off his old hits (“California Dreamin’” and “Monday Monday” have never stopped being played on oldies stations and in Muzak formats) and from his appearances on the oldies circuit, but how in the hell did he afford all those drugs? Mackenzie notes that the ’81 clean-up she and her dad went through was almost strictly a function of John needing to escape prison time for somehow (never discussed) trafficking drugs. I don’t wanna sound too, too Sixties here, but this is all some very heavy stuff the man was involved in.
As for the book itself, High on Arrival is compelling because, even though Mackenzie’s cowriter Hilary Liftin may have shaped the book’s prose, it is undoubtedly the product of its subject’s own reflection. The fact that Mackenzie is now equipped to confront her dad’s incestuous actions but still writes around his other character flaws attests for me to the book’s authenticity. Also giving this the feel of a non-ghostwritten autobio are other quirks, from little snide-swipes at certain folk (fellow performers, teachers) who don’t seem to figure in the grand scheme (who would not indulge in those if they had the opportunity to write their autobiography?), to major bragging (her sex-with-Mick-Jagger tale is a big-time brag, and I don’t think she’d deny that), to self-confessed “boring” tidbits of domesticity from the sober years, and remembrances of small details about beloved relatives, pets, and (yes, she is my age group) the tackiness of Seventies fashion.
The book ends with Mackenzie talking about how she is currently “free” from her demons. Seeing as how her two relapses from sobriety sparked the worst horror stories, one hopes she keeps on that straight edge and is able to keep moving along (oh god, no, not that phrase!) one day… no, I just won’t do it. She’s too cool, and the book is too serious, for that line as a closer.
And since this is a movie/TV/music blog with links to clips, here are select links. First, I point to a recent interview with Mackenzie where she talks about her drug use. The money factor comes in here. Here is another interview, where she does utter the straightforward phrase “he wasn’t a good man” about her dad.
And an odd clip that was posted after the recent revelations, featuring Mackenzie as part of the “New Mamas and Papas” with her dad. The song performed here is written by both John and Mackenzie, and has very striking (and openly strange) lyrics, in light of her memoir:
I always thought you’d take care of me Till I found out that you’re just scared of me They say that love will set you free Well look at me, in penitentiary
Now to some happier stuff. As I researched this piece online, I found that Mackenzie turns 50 next weekend, and so here's to a happy birthday, with a little YouTube career retrospective. Here’s a YT specialty, a fan tribute-vid, with some flattering shots of Mackenzie throughout the years. Her acting debut, American Graffiti, is up in its entirety (copyright knows no bounds on YT!):
One of those goofy little “minisodes” they feature on YT finds “Julie Cooper” pondering losing her virginity on One Day at a Time. Mackenzie notes in her book her acting is overstated on the show, and they seemed to like it that way. You can see that here:
Watch her sing “Junk Food Junkie” (holy christ, the Seventies!) on the variety show called The Jacksons. And here’s a recent, sobriety-era interview with Donny and Marie. She also appeared on their original variety series, doing a godawful skit about a robot sister:
A clip from the 1976 Battle of the Network Stars (wow, again, the fucking Seventies!):
A clip from Rafferty and the Gold Dust Twins, a road-movie comedy starring Alan Arkin, Sally Kellerman, and Mackenzie:
One of the times when I fully felt she could’ve had a really good dramatic career, her turn as the “young Eleanor Roosevelt” in Eleanor and Franklin:
And, just to end on a more recent note, here is the best-sounding song from the Disney So Weird series, and the flashiest video:
Captain Lou Albano died the other day at the age of 76, and the world of pro wrestling has certainly lost one of its all-time greatest crazy characters. I got the opportunity to interview Lou, and he kept cameraman Arnold and I literally laughing from beginning to end, because the man was a performer, I tell ya. We had a lavalier microphone for him, but I don’t know *what* I was thinking, since Lou had to have the mic in his hand to do his business.
You can find various obits around the Web for Lou (didn’t know he was born in the Mother Country!), but I think the truest way to experience what he was about is just watching the man rant his ass off, ad-libbing complete insanity. And so…
Lou handles the mic work for “the Golden Terrror” (a guy named Pete Doherty):
At his best, telling off Vince McMahon and a booing crowd:
A calmer Lou, being interviewed with Greg “the Hammer” by Mean “BY GOD” Gene Okerlund:
Actually wrestling against the legendary Gorilla Monsoon:
Interesting moment where he “blades” himself (meaning, cuts himself lightly with a razor to produce the usual “crimson mask”):
Serving as manager for one of the greatest characters of the Seventies and Eighties, George “the Animal” Steele:
A clip chronicling the mighty war that Lou and Cindi Lauper raged against the evil forces of Rowdy Roddy Piper:
One more with Roddy. Here’s Chef Lou giving him a taste of some home cooking:
Here’s a great “Captain Lou’s wisdom” clip with McMahon quizzing Lou that the poster didn’t want embedded. Pfooey!
In his role as “Mario,” Lou warns kids not to do drugs because “you go to hell before you die” (!):
A MUST inclusion. Lou “does “the Mario” on The Super Mario Brothers Super Show:
Handing the torch to a new generation of madman, interviewing Mick Foley, aka Cactus Jack:
Lou holds forth on the subject of the origins of rock ’n’ roll:
The song that goes through my head EVERY TIME I think of Lou, NRBQ’s wonderful “Captain Lou”:
And finally, a lively bit from my interview with Lou:
To commemorate Lou’s passing, I’ve uploaded two other snippets of the conversation, including a favorite moment — when he was interrupted by a security guard, checking on the room we were in.
In my intermittent effort to post entire episodes on the Net, so that folks who don’t live in Manhattan can get an idea of what a full Funhouse show is like, this week I offer up the last episode, which was an in-depth interview with a “comedian’s comedian,” the wonderful, razor-sharp stand-up Chris Rush.
Chris is currently in the midst of developing a one-man show called Bliss at the theater at 45 Bleecker St. (called, wait for it, 45 Bleecker), which ties together all the threads of his comedy to date. His work is a fusion of quantum physics, Eastern mysticism, pop-culture insights and, well… pussy jokes (he uses the far-more-proper “T&A” during our interview). He also has a terrific ability to riff on pretty much any given topic, and did so in our chat. He’s a force of nature, and a comedian whose time has come. Thus, I give you… Chris Rush.
Part one, in which we discuss Chris’s leaving the Catholic church, his friendship with George Carlin, his opinions on the legalization of pot and drugs in society:
Part two includes Chris’s reflections on Lenny Bruce, the early days of National Lampoon (which he wrote for), and his singular and unique fascination with quantum physics:
Part three continues with Chris’s bit on Madison Avenue and the “accident” that Christ had….
I first became entranced by Jean Seberg seeing the image of her in a striped shirt on an up escalator in Breathless, excerpted on a news magazine show back in 1979 or so. The program detailed how she was badgered and ultimately destroyed by COINTELPRO, a series of U.S. government projects to “neutralize political dissidents.” After I saw Breathless, I became a lifelong devotee of Godard (chronicled elsewhere on this blog), and was fascinated by Ms. Seberg, whose life is beautifully written about in the very sad and thorough biography Played Out by David Richards. The book, which is unfortunately out of print, has cried out to be a film now for several decades. Besides a failed West End musical, the only talk about doing a Seberg biopic was when Jodie Foster was supposedly interested in adapting the Richards book, and nothing came of it.
The episode below originally aired in 1998, upon the eve of what would have been her 60th birthday. The materials were supplied to me by the great NYC filmmaker (who’s now a Parisian critic) Mark Rappaport, whose essay film From the Journals of Jean Seberg had come out the year before (and whose fiction films are sadly unrepresented on U.S. DVD). He had heartily recommended the film Kill! for its sheer camp appeal, and he was undeniably right.
Part one contains my intro concerning Seberg’s life and work, with clips from her rare films playing over my capsule bio:
Part two contains scenes from a rare Philippe De Broca film and an equally rare Godard short, plus the astoundingly (and wonderfully) misguided Romain Gary potboiler Kill!):
Part three is all wrapped up in Kill! because it will blow your mind:
Full credit to Larry Belmont’s Cracked Actress blog for the amazing pictures of Jean used here.
I am not a Wizard of Oz cultist, but I have indeed memorized the picture — as did most people have who grew up watching it annually (and then semi-annually) on TV. In my “other life” as a freelance writer/reviewer, I was able to recently bask in the glow of this evergreen fantasy when I was sent to cover an Oz press junket and then a lush party at the Tavern on the Green, which began with a hot-air balloon being inflated on the lawn (to promote the DVD/Blu-ray release of the newly restored version of the film) and ended with a series of performances inside the restaurant.
As I note in the piece linked to below — which is written in a rather straightforward reportorial style, as VB is indeed a trade mag — there was a slightly surreal cast to the Oz events, as the folks who were celebrating the film were celebrating it for a whole host of reasons: because they participated in it; because their famed relatives participated in it; because they grew up with it, and know the thing by heart; because they grew up with it, and secretly began living it; or because they were/are starstruck by Judy Garland, the tragic star who wasn’t tragic at all when she made the classic 1939 film (but that song, that sad, sad, freakin’ song…!).
In any case, there were several highlights to the day, but one personal highlight meant much to me: shaking the hands of three of the male Munchkins who were in attendance. Only six of the little people who acted in the film are still alive (out of a number above 120) and five of them appeared in the event. I got some time to chat with Jerry Maren and his lovely and friendly wife — Maren has had an amazingly long career in show biz (the surviving Munchkins range in age from 86 to 94), and his credit list includes both At the Circus with the Marx Bros. (yes, he’s the butt of Groucho’s “three on a midget” gag) and The Gong Show (he was the confetti guy at the end). Maren is quite friendly and has honed his anecdotes (all he will say about the Gong experience is that working with Chuck Barris was fun, “he wouldn’t hurt a fly — but he’s crazy!”). All in all, it was quite a colorful day, and I must salute the little people who populated the film that spawned many a daydream and nightmare. Here is my “button-down” account of the day for the VB blog, and here is a terrific pic of the five Munchkins who attended:
What a strange world this is. Taxi Driver, a film that defines an era in NYC (as viewed through the lens of some absolutely brilliant but inwardly tortured filmmakers), is now readily available for viewing on Youtube, thanks to corporate sponsorship. The fact that the film is as vital and disturbing today as it was 33 years ago is indisputable, but what is also apparent is that it belongs to the special moment in American film (the “maverick” instant) where major studio films could be deeply disturbing and challenging, without resorting to the “indie” label that currently produces a necessary shield of critical affirmation and at least one major “name” who gets the project ink and attention.
If made today, the film would be considered “reckless” and “dangerous,” and without question racist and sexist. Hollywood in the Seventies was a stranger place, though, and the film was indeed made with mainstream dough for mainstream audiences. The fact that the chieftains and talents at the time indulged in "substances" also impacted the film in a brilliant fashion (cocaine then was what CGI is today, an insidious tool that could alternately overwhelm or in fact aid fine filmmaking, especially when the subject was any kind of paranoia). It is indeed a modern American masterpiece that I oddly look at these days as strangely “innocent” (although a guiltier movie never existed, on the level of existential guilt), perhaps because I was a child in the dirty, crime-ridden NYC that the film depicts and I long for that raucous time, in comparison to the current benign tourist paradise that the city has become (greetings from Bloomberg Beach). The film’s antihero is timeless, its situations are timeless, but its real-life location has vastly changed, and not wholly for the better.
In the meantime you can now watch the entire movie on YouTube, preceded and sporadically interrupted by car commercials (and ads for the Army — hey kids, become *just like* Travis…!). You have to sign in with your YT i.d. and password when the watch the movie since it is rated R, but you are also warned that “information about you maybe be collected when you view this page.” You wanna talk disturbing?
