Reasons to be Cheerful, Part Four

Since this is officially the day I turn “another year old and deeper in debt,” I’m going to just slip backwards in time (which comes easily most of the year, even easier on birthdays). I’ve talked before on this blog about Sixties and Seventies “easy listening” music (aka elevator music) that was burnt into my brain at a young age, and continues to conjure sensations of that era when I hear it.

You can find entries about punk artists and psychedelic artists and bubble-gum artists elsewhere on this blog, but for this entry, there are no lyrics, and it’s just “MOR” easy listening tracks that were hits and became the wallpaper to our daily activities back then. (And remain a sorta “comfort music” for those who had this piped into their consciousness.)

Most of the songs I’ll be linking to are in the Herb Alpert/Burt Bacharach/bouncy pop number category (I’ve already paid tribute to numbers like ”Classical Gas”), but I thought I’d start off with one that predates those songs and instead has a nice little depressing edge to it. It’s an evocative little number called “Last Date” by Floyd Cramer, the master of the “slide piano” who was a legendary session player in Nashvile. On its own the song has a sort of downbeat, last-call-at-the-bar feel, but when you find out the title, you sorta get the drift:



And since I don’t want to slide into a “saloon song” coma with these tunes, I’ll offer another Cramer number, this time incredibly fuckin’ bouncy and catchy. This was recently used in the soundtrack of the movie An Education (which I still haven’t seen; I found this on, where else, YT). It’s called “On the Rebound” and although “jaunty” is a word you’re supposed to use to describe people and not music, it’s pretty damned jaunty:



I’m going to skip past two of the most obvious songs that belong in the category of cheerful instrumental, “Java” and “Alley Cat,” and proceed onto one that most people of a certain age (what a remarkably diplomatic phrase, that) know, but don’t know the title of, Dave Baby Cortez’s “The Happy Organ” (all genitalia jokes will be happily skipped past too):



And one of the other songs that seeped into the brainpan back then was this sucker, which was recorded and became a hit by Billy Vaughn and Bert Kaempfert. This version has a jungle girl-themed video, so it seemed to be the one that needed linking:



Continuing on with Kaempfert, there is only one pop tune I know of to have a chart status (in the U.S. at least) that had the word “Afrikaan” in the title. That was “Afrikaan Beat,” and Kaempfert definitely led the way to the style of Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, although Herb “Latin-ized” the sound.



Most of these songs are best-remembered in their single versions, but here’s a live rendition by Kaempfert of “That Happy Feeling.” The word “bouncy” doesn’t even convey the damned thing, but it must also be noted the tune has a special resonance for those in the NYC area in the early Sixties, as it was used as the theme to the afternoon children’s show The Sandy Becker Show. And what makes the vid special? You get to see the handclaps, a key part in any mercilessly hooky Sixties tune:



There's a bottomless pit of instrumentals you may know the tune of but can’t name, like “Wheels” by the String-a-longs. Then there are the songs that AM-radio listeners knew all too well, but are still as pleasant to re-hear decades on, like “Grazin’ in the Grass” by Hugh Masekela. The hit with vocals (and the insane “Icandigityoucandigithecandigitshecandigit”) was done
by the Friends of Distinction. But the Masekela original is the instrumental great:



Months ago when I did a little Deceased Artiste tribute to
Raymond, Lefèvre, the man who gave us the infectious instrumental “Soul Coaxing,” I was of course reminded of the best-known French instrumental of the Sixties “Love is Blue” by Paul Mauriat. Since I am fixated by the unnecessary vocal versions of these songs, I offer you the vocal version by Al Martino, but here is the Mauriat originaL:



On an album-cover associative level (painted womyn), here is the indelible Burt Bacharach-penned Casino Royale theme by Herb Alpert. I’m not a soundtrack aficionado per se, but this is one of the OST LPs I will dig out and spin every few months. It definitely buoys the spirits:



Since we’re on the infectious route, here’s “No Matter What Shape (Your Stomach’s In)” by the T-Bones, which was used in a TV commercial about heartburn which is here:



And if we’re going to go deep-Sixties, you’d have to resurrect
Andy Williams’ “Music to Watch Girls By” clip which is endearingly corny as fuck. Andy sang many, many of the instrumental songs that they wrote ridiculously impromptu lyrics for. One YouTube uploader maintains that the Andy song was the original in this case, but the Bob Crewe Generation (nobody calls their band the “Generation” anymore, more’s the pity) had the hook-ridden instrumental hit:



And I’ll close out with two tunes whose titles I didn’t know until recently. The first is the insanely infectious “Soulful Strut” by Young Holt Unlimited. This is supreme stuff:



Since we must move leave the Sixties behind, let’s do that to enter the Seventies, with the 1972 hit “Joy” by Apollo 100, which was sort of the 45 RPM super-pop version of the more pretentious art-rock stuff Emerson Lake & Palmer were carrying out in that era. Alternately brilliant and immaculately cheesy, it won’t exit your noggin anytime soon:



If anyone has any infectious instrumentals they want to leave links to, drop 'em in the comments! UPDATE: The comments contain a bunch of suggestions from M. Faust that include at least two songs I know had (natch) unnecessary lyrics sung at one point by Andy Williams! (The "Romeo and Juliet theme" and "Love's Theme") The Midnight Cowboy theme is almost too sublimely movie-related to have fit in here (but musically it does), and Hot Butter's "Popcorn" is infectious as hell (and well utilized in a party scene in Shriek of the Mutilated; the sequence is not on YT).

"I'm a little man, I'm a little man -- he's a big man": Deceased Artiste Dennis Hopper

Back when Dennis Hopper was a hippie wildman, Kris Kristofferson wrote the song “The Pilgrim, Chapter 33 (Hang In, Hopper)” for Dennis, whom he had worked with on The Last Movie (the song was also supposed to reflect Kris’ other friends, like Johnny Cash and Jerry Jeff Walker, but his title betrays the main subject). Kristofferson’s lyrics, which can be found here, talk about the schizo nature of Hopper’s talent, how he was a “walking contradiction” (a line quoted by Paul Schrader in Taxi Driver, with a direct reference to Kristofferson, and yet another later in the film to Hopper).

Hopper definitely was a conflicted character when he was at his best — once the conflicts died down, so did the factors that made him an extremely watchable performer, and he made the conscious decision to appear in anything and everything (using accents he wasn’t very good at, and even playing Sinatra in one particularly odd pic that showed up on DVD). Perhaps to support his habit of buying art, perhaps to keep up with his upscale lifestyle, perhaps merely because he wanted to die “with his boots on” on a movie set. As a longtime fan of his, I’ve been cringing for the past 15 years plus, as he’s appeared in bad TV series, godawful “DVD premieres” (and their forefather, the “straight to video” movie), and stinking cable films; pretty much anything they offered him, he took. He completely ceased being a filmmaker after producing a few really interesting films, and became a character performer who would star in just about anything.

I say the preceding with regret, since I thought that, at his best, Hopper had a helluva lot to offer as an actor and as a filmmaker. Since the man has left us now, after a very public battle with prostate cancer (and his most recent younger wife), I’ll leave out the bad and just focus here on the good and the weird in Hopper’s work. He grew tremendously as a performer over the years, most likely due to his life experience and prolonged period indulging in drugs and really, really wild behavior (as with the sitting-in-the-middle-of-a-dynamite-circle story). Like his friend Jack Nicholson, he grew from being a really flat actor into a true multi-dimensional character on-screen, stealing some films outright and dominating others with scarily intense performances.

Hopper cultivated his “hipster” cred early on, from basking in the reflected glow of James Dean and starting a feud on a movie set with journeyman director Henry Hathaway. After the incident with Hathaway blacklisted him, he moved to New York, and tried for a “legit” reputation in theater and television. He gave some great performances in TV series, but also appeared in some compulsively watchable kitsch, like this episode of Petticoat Junction:



Even while appearing on fun crap like the above, he also kept moving in art circles, as is indicated by the fact he was in a “Screen Test” for Andy Warhol:



While researching this piece, I found that the clearest example of how Hopper grew as an actor could be found in his recitation of an all-too-familiar poem he’d memorized. He performed Rudyard Kipling’s “If” (which, btw, he had to remind us, was the middle word in “life”… man…) on The Johnny Cash Show (there was also a singing duet, which is wonderfully bad and can be found here). It’s pure corn, seeing Dennis recite the piece at this point in his career, kinda like him doing something “straight” for once, even as he is a hippie film star (with oddly groomed hair — what was it with that “pilgrim” look?):



He then performed the poem at a Dylan "Rolling Thunder" tour show, and of course inserted it out of the blue (plus the "middle word in life" bit) into Apocalypse Now. The most impressive clip I came across is him reciting the poem again as an older man, and a far, far better actor, giving it a genuinely emotional tinge that was missing in his earlier performances. Dammit if he didn’t get better as he got older (the reason why I was saddened by his descent into awful moviemaking for his final 15 years).



For a dose of pure hippie-visionary Dennis, the single best source is the documentary American Dreamer (1971), directed by L.M. Kit Carson and Lawrence Schiller. When the docu was made, he was one of the hottest filmmakers in the world thanks to the success of Easy Rider, and he was about to shoot himself in the foot big-time with The Last Movie. Here he’s driving and rambling:



Here he centers in on Orson Welles as a model filmmaker, but also as the kind of person the studios simply would *not* trust with a film budget:



One of the docu’s finest moments, Dennis’s admission that he is a male lesbian:



The Last Movie (1971) is available in its entirety on YT. I have very mixed feelings about the film, since I think it is bold and daring and extremely crazy (always to be encouraged), but it actually winds up being only half a good movie, due to Hopper’s inability to actually carry off Godardian disjunctive techniques — plus the fact that he’s set up such a conventionally good storyline his working with alienation techniques wasn’t necessary:



He gave some great performances even while he was “indulging” in a major way. One of those was Henry Jaglom’s terrific Tracks (1977). The incredibly high-strung conclusion of the film finds Hopper going to that place he went to again in films like Blue Velvet:



He was also just perfectly cast in Wim Wenders’ brilliant crime-and-character picture The American Friend (1977). This trailer doesn’t have English subs, but Dennis’ scenes are in English:



Shortly after he gave the disciplined performance above, he went full-tilt gonzo for Coppola’s cameras in Apocalypse Now. It’s interesting that he was such a “type” when he gave this kind of performance, yet no one ever did an impression of him (although everyone I know wound up quoting his more batfuck crazy dialogue after seeing him give performances like this). He serves as the "doorway" to Brando, which is interesting in light of the fact that Marlon was forever going to be the paramount actor of Hopper's generation, given that Dean took an early exit and Monty Clift dissolved in the mid-Sixties:



Now we come to what I feel was the most underrated part of Hopper’s career, and the part he sadly abandoned when he started getting blockbuster salaries in the early Nineties: his filmmaking. Again, while he was still a dedicated “user,” he made an excellent low-budget independent feature in Canada that found him emulating the Cassavetes style to very good effect. Out of the Blue (1980) is hippie Dennis reflecting on the new punk culture, and the way in which people of his generation might not have been the most… attentive parents. It’s an excellently acted pic that is disturbing as hell and showed he was a very talented filmmaker who shoulda kept making movies. Here the lead character, Hopper’s fucked-up teen (Linda Manz), registers her complaints on a CB radio:



Here’s a little slice of the pic’s “atmosphere,” as the underage Manz wanders into a punk club:



And here Daddy Dennis comments on punk:



Hopper didn’t make another movie as a director until 1988, when he helmed Catchfire, which was released as Backtrack on video in 1990. It’s a bizarrely cast movie that is a helluva lot of fun, despite the fact that Dennis’s urban tough-guy accent is about as unconvincing as Nicholson’s in Prizzi’s Honor. The film was pretty much buried by its studio Vestron, just before Vestron itself was buried by bankruptcy. It exists on YT only as a pseudo-bondage clip uploaded for its fetish-y aspect, and for its Bob Dylan cameo, recorded here off of a TV set (I guess whomever holds the right to the title is demanding the clips come down?):



Hopper also made one of the best ever films about L.A. street gangs, Colors (1988). Superbly acted by Robert Duvall and Sean Penn, and as tense as all hell, the film is definitely one to be seen. It has been uploaded in its entirety on YT:



Hopper’s last film as a director was Chasers in 1994, which can be best described as “The Last Detail with Randy Quaid replaced by a hot blonde from Baywatch" (yes, it’s that high-concept). He had spoken in interviews about creating a film school for directors, but he completely abandoned that part of his career after Chasers (with the exception of one short in 2000). A definite shame, considering the talent he did display as a director — and the fact that he stopped being interested in filmmaking around the time he started earning *giant* salaries in big-budget crapo blockbusters like Speed and Waterworld (which may have failed at the b.o., but Dennis made quite a lot doing it).

Since I don’t really want to draw too much attention to Chasers, I’ll close with the trailer to his last good pic as a director, The Hot Spot (1990), which is based on an old hardboiled novel, found Don Johnson actually giving an excellent performance, and costarred the dynamic duo of Virginia Madsen and Jennifer Connelly, both unquestionably pleasing to the eye:

A plea for an actual classic TV network: Turner Classic Television?

It is entirely obvious to anyone who digs nostalgia that b&w films and TV shows are anathema to cable broadcasters. Given our short national memory (which began disappearing when Reagan became president), I understand this fact, but still wish there was some kind of classic TV network currently on cable.

“Nick at Night” has been showing very recent-vintage family sitcoms since 1990s; it is utterly useless to fans of classic TV, as is its onetime “replacement” network, TV Land. You know how the replacement network thing works, right? A franchise is established, and then the creators of said franchise begin to sorta alter (and usually tarnish) the original, and so a secondary network is created to do what the original network used to do. In the case of Nick, it left behind the Fifties long ago, then ditched the Sixties, with the exception of a few very beloved sitcoms.

As time went on, even the Seventies was phased out on Nick. SIDE THOUGHT: Being a child of the Seventies, I firmly believe that it was the decade when American TV series really went into the crapper, as far as the quality of the most popular shows (writing, acting, even concepts; Sixties concepts were indeed “gimmicky,” but at least they went all over the map). The auspicious beginning of the decade, with the debut of the groundbreaking Norman Lear and MTM sitcoms, led to the painful '77-'80 era, when the Lear shows set the bar (low, mighty low) for the long-running sitcoms that would "jump the shark" from that point on, and the MTM shows wisely left the air while they were still funny. END OF SIDE THOUGHT. Once the Eighties Cosby Show/Family Ties/Growing Pains family series became the focus of Nick at Night's schedule, it was pretty much the end of the truly classic nostalgia factor, and the shows were not only spanking new, they were just off their network run.

Thus, TV Land appeared, in order to “pick up the slack.” In a few years it too became ashamed of its classic TV programming, relegating it to "off" hours, while producing new reality shows and showing movies that are edited for TV and theoretically relate to the viewer demographic (not forgetting airings of spankin' new reruns of "Extreme Makeover" series, which are someone's idea of classic television — someone very sad). Around this time, we who had broader cable choices were able to latch on to showings of classic b&w shows on GSN (and we know what happened there, don’t we?) and the onetime Nostalgia Network.

Whatever did happen to the last-mentioned? Well, it’s now the American Life channel, and its schedule is here. The channel tries to appeal to baby boomers, or Gen Xers, or whomever might watch old TV shows that aren’t all that old (plus “health and wellness” shows and now some kickboxing — but only a little). The Color Honeymooners (which is dazzling to the eye, but mighty hard to sit through, esp. when Kramden, Norton and co. go on foreign cruises) and Mission: Impossible are the only Sixties shows left in their lineup, which is now mostly drama series of the pre-Law and Order variety, and the lesser MTM sitcoms (where’s Paul Sand in Friends and Lovers?). In researching this blog entry, I found that the channel was bought in 2001 by the Unification Church, so they have what one advertising blog calls a “mandate for family values programming.”

Thus, we have a network that used to show nostalgia, and used to be called the Nostalgia Network, but no longer has much of a connection to it. Today I learned of a channel not carried in NYC, called the Retro Television Network (RTN). The network’s lineup is here. And again, you’ll notice that it’s a nostalgia network that believes its nostalgia fans only want to watch old shows in color. The selection comes from one library (I believe it is the Universal one), and is heavy on crime and action series, with a small smattering of comedies (The Munsters Today???), and things that were awful then and are awful now (That’s Incredible!).

RTN shows a handful of b&w shows (the sublime Jack Benny, Mike Hammer with Darren McGavin, The Rifleman, Bachelor Father, The Cisco Kid). But, as is the case everywhere else on the cable dial, classic TV is thought to be purely color series, and the Fifties are to be forgotten, the Sixties merely tolerated, and the Seventies indulged in if you’re talking those awful ABC shows that everyone watched out of sheer pre-cable zombiedom (I’m looking at you, Three’s Company, the acme and nadir of dumb-ass Seventies TV).

Thus, I make a modest proposal which I’m sure won’t materialize, but I sincerely hope that it will. Since Turner Classic Movies has proven to be THE one source for classic b&w film on television, I wish that the folks responsible for programming that network would take a chance on a Turner Classic Television network, where we could indeed see the rest of Television Past. On my personal wish list would be the gems of the Fifties (live TV plays, Mr. Peepers, Bilko, et al), the forgotten dramas of the Sixties (Naked City, East Side West Side), and the comedies that were indeed funny and not dunderheaded in the Seventies (Barney Miller among a few others). Shows that have not been in syndication since their original runs would be incredibly welcome — Comedy Central, when it was The Comedy Channel (and aired a top-notch roster of classic TV comedy fare), had a bizarre afternoon slot for failed Sixties/Seventies shows called “Sitcom Sanctuary” that was terrific.

Mostly, what I would like to see aired on some nostalgia network at some point, in any capacity, would be the wonderful VARIETY SHOWS that were a staple of network TV from the Fifties through the Seventies: from Berle, Allen, Caesar, and Kovacs, to The Hollywood Palace, The Dean Martin Show, and of course Ed Sullivan (with the specialty acts left in).

This is, of course, a concept that most would say wouldn’t fly because: a.) people won’t watch b&w anymore, except a niche audience, who could buy the shows on DVD anyway (if they even exist on that transitory medium); b.) kids have no idea what b&w is and don’t care; c.) the Trio Network, which made a practice of programming real quality classic TV, failed; d.) the “comfort shows” people crave have changed from things viewers saw growing up to the shows they remember from a handful of years ago (does anyone anywhere, though, consider the Jim Belushi sitcom a comfort show? Really?); and e.) you’d need to set up a network that would delve into different libraries of programming, and not just air one kind of classic TV rerun.

Well, all of these things were obstacles to getting a unified source for classic movies on TV, until the Turner people made a “replacement network” for TNT, which had been airing some rare and terrific gems from the Turner Library. TCM has become the model of a real nostalgia network as far as film is concerned, and it is the model for what could be done for a classic TV network. There *is* an audience for this kind of thing, it is just a dispersed one that is completely ignored by the existing nets because of the viewers’ age, their buying habits, and the fact that, although much lip service is given to the concept of “alternative” TV programming, there really is none on American television (with the exception of, ahem, what remains of cable-access).

It’s a certainty that classic TV would never fetch the kind of numbers that American Idol gets on a weekly basis. But, then again, TCM has cultivated a very devoted audience, and those folks are eagerly addicted to the channel. Again, there *is* a market for this kind of TV repository of all the good shows that aired on American TV from the Fifties through the Eighties. We’d just need Turner, or an organization with as much courage, foresight, and marketing savvy, to set it up.

Flying through the streets of San Francisco: Deceased Artiste William A. Fraker

In months past, I tried to keep track of the full-length films that were hiding in plain sight on YouTube. I’ve had other things to write about in the time since, but it’s not like the influx of uploads has stopped or anything. I offer as evidence of the raving fandom (and you have to be a fan to take the time to upload a feature film onto YT piece by piece by piece…) clips and entire features that showcase the work of cinematographer William A. Fraker, who died this week at 86.

Fraker is credited with additional photography on the surprisingly good Esperanto-Shatner horror pic Incubus, but his mainstream bow as d.p. was the Curtis Harrington thriller Games. He next did the very evocative The Fox starring a personal fave, the always on-edge Sandy Dennis. The film’s look is beautiful, and most of the picture is on YT:



One of the most successful films he worked on was Rosemary’s Baby. Here is the trailer for that classic (which was on YT, but has obviously been taken down or “hidden” under a fake name):



Fraker personally shot the amazing car chase from Bullitt:



Most interesting is a film I haven’t caught up with, Dusty and Sweets McGee. The very intense and well-scored opening of the film used to be up on YT, but now only this dramatic scene can be found. Still looks like a fascinating movie:



Fraker shot additional scenes for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (which is indeed up in its entirety on YT), and did terrific work on Richard Brooks’ atmospheric time-capsule pic Looking for Mr. Goodbar. The trailer is here. The last film to fascinate me that Fraker worked on was the wonderful train-wreck known as The Island of Dr. Moreau. Good to know that Fraker’s camera beheld the always magical Nelson de la Rosa (not to mention mountainous Marlon):

Life lived in public: Deceased Artiste Gary Coleman

He was 4’7”, a child star, and we knew every twist and turn of his existence. At different times I was amused by, bored by, and felt bad for the little man who had been “Arnold” on Different Strokes. When a celebrity dies, you think back to something they did or said that made an impression on you — when the announcement of Coleman’s death came out this week, I remembered that he had revealed on a daytime talk show (I’m pretty sure it was Geraldo) that he had a condition whereby he hadn’t “sat down” on the toilet (somesuch delicate phrasing) for years, and instead voided himself in another manner (presumably a colostomy bag). That’s the point where you realize the colorful little person on TV isn’t leading such an amusing life in private.

So many of Gary’s public and private run-ins were recounted on tabloid TV, with probably one of the lower moments being his stint as a mall security guard, when he was accosted by an autograph seeker who got pissed off and he wound up punching her. He did have a temper, but then again if you were constantly in the public eye and your show biz fortunes found you starring in the mockumentary Midgets vs. Mascots, I think you’d be pissed off too.

But let us have some levity (please!). Here he is doing some shtick for the WWF with Jeff Jarrett, master of the “guitar shot”:



A much-circulated ad he did a for loan service that included an outtake of him laughing:



Along with the clip where he spoke to the camera excoriating “bone-headed idiots!”, this particular clip of him earlier this year cursing out someone on the panel of the horrific tabloid-TV crapfest The Insider is the most popular Coleman show of anger (actually he’s rather composed):



One of the best Seventies shows that has been out of distribution for a long time is Fernwood 2-Night. Here is a scene from the show’s second incarnation (America 2-Night) with Gary as “Little Wayne Coleman” (someone yells “Hey, Gary!” when he comes out, and Martin Mull ad-libs “isn’t it sad when cousins marry?”). Gary played a local California boy that Barth Gimble (Mull) was trying to adopt; he later hosted the “kids version” of the show (which appeared on the show proper) in Barth’s place.



And the two single best clips you’re gonna find. Italian TV host Sabrina Salerno journey to L.A. to talk to “Arnold.” The show is Matricole & Meteore, and included are scenes from Different Strokes dubbed in Italian, a Euro view of L.A. (which still seems to include disco), and Gary saying his tagline in Italian:



But the kitsch mother lode is this “career change” moment when Gary was making the talk show circuit with Michael Jackson impersonator Dion Mial to promote a single they’d released called “The Outlaw and the Indian.” It’s pretty special:

Conservatives say the darndest things: Deceased Artiste Art Linkletter

Usually I’m filled with a sort of reverent wistfulness when I write about a celebrity who has died, but I have to admit at the outset of this post that I always felt that Art Linkletter’s most prominent trait on TV was his sanctimoniousness. His interviews with kids were way cloying, his hosting benign, and his comedy… well, it wasn’t really comedy. He was involved in the creation of Groucho’s You Bet Your Life, so he somehow participated in something I really enjoyed. His own stuff? As the kids nowadays put it, “meh.”

Linkletter was openly conservative, and seemed like the very definition of the old guard, a narrow-minded gent in every way. He lived to 97, but spent the better part of his time in the media in the last 41 years preaching against drugs. He blamed the 1969 suicide of his daughter Diane on LSD, even though it wasn’t found in her system upon her death. He made it his personal mission to “save” America’s youth, and warn parents that their kids were indulging in dangerous, nay lethal, behavior. Throughout the crusade he never appeared to me to be dismayed by his daughter’s death, but rather seemed like an opportunist exploiting her demise to create a new identity for himself, one that allowed him to condemn the drug culture, and by extension the liberal “permissiveness” of the Sixties and Seventies. Perhaps there was grief behind his crusade, but in his TV appearances, you merely saw a hateful older man who had decided that the villain that killed his daughter was the demon “drugs” and not her own inner turmoil (or perhaps his own bad parenting?).

John Waters’ joyously dark short “The Diane Linkletter Story” is no longer on YouTube (ah, now there’s a piece of nasty-assed satire), but I can offer you an appearance by Art selling “Circus Nuts” on a TV ad with Diane:



The solid-gold shameless 45 that Linkletter put out after his daughter’s death, a melodramatic spoken-word recording (that subsequently won a Grammy) that he had recorded with Diane about a father’s anguish over his runaway daughter. Corny as fuck, startling kitsch, but only because Linkletter meant it to be heartwarming and sincere, and was in fact exploiting his kid’s personal trauma. This recording is used in the soundtrack of the Waters movie, and yes, it does seem to imply that any girl who’s forced to participate in the recording of a bummer like this would’ve wanted to off herself:



And to close out, a pretty amazing bit of early “ambush TV,” in which host Stanley Siegel (wherever did he go?) “sandbags” Dr. Timothy Leary with a call-in from an outraged Art Linkletter. I agree with Leary that the ever-pompous Linkletter made a living off his daughter’s death. Siegel allows Linkletter to tell off crazy ol’ Tim at length. Art also condemns the Jefferson Airplane, Allen Ginsberg, and the whole hippie culture — he truly was one of those folks who was outraged that the youth culture of the Sixties ever happened, and set out on this crusade to assuage his own guilt or emptiness, and to find a “cause” that could indeed prolong his long-dormant career.



UPDATE: Dick Cavett confirms that, despite hosting a show called People Are Funny, AL wasn't a funny guy at all. Here is his account.

The Mark Twain Prize to... Tina Fey?: A list of far more deserving candidates for a lifetime achievement award

[The pics used to accompany this blog post are meant to illustrate a point. A pretty obvious one.]

The American Film Institute’s Lifetime Achievement Award shows were really something to watch back in the 1970s and ’80s. The folks receiving the prize were bona fide A-list talents who were without question worthy to get a lifetime achievement award. Two-hour award presentations were made to performers and filmmakers on the order of Ford, Welles, Hitchcock, Capra, Huston, Astaire, Cagney, Gish, Davis, Stanwyck, and Fonda.

In the 1990s, as U.S. culture and entertainment took its precipitous slide toward the utter soulless crap that is extremely popular in today’s mainstream, the AFI Award began going to performers and filmmakers whose careers were still in full flourish, but who could guarantee a solid audience for the TV airing of the award show. What had been amazing about the AFI was that, even though the usual “mavericks” (Ray, Fuller, Sirk, and on and on) were going to be ignored, in the '70s and '80s you were treated to CBS (I believe that was the network) presenting a two-hour show saluting the work of Lillian Gish or John Ford or Orson or some Golden Age star who worked in the era of black and white that network television wants to stay far, far away from (the opening and closing moments of Wizard of Oz aside).

Then, with the sole exception of Robert Wise, the AFI turned to honoring only those who would attract TV ratings and a roster of current-day Hollywood names to salute him/her. Nicholson, Eastwood, Spielberg, Scorsese, Streep, and others whose careers were still moving along at a steady clip were then honored, and the result was similar to the many, many moments in the Oscar ceremony when Hollywood slaps itself on the back and reminds us all what wonderful movies used to be made, and how the pap that comes out these days is the obvious continuation of what came before. The most interesting thing about the list of winners that can be found here is that the recipients have gone from being in their 70s and 80s to 45 for the extremely charming but oh-SO-non-versatile Tom Hanks (45).

I bring up all this about the valuelessness of the AFI awards, and the shameless grab for TV ratings (or even a network to air the event — for a bit it was relegated to cable from its original network home), to bring up the subject of yet another valueless encomium, the Mark Twain Prize for Humor. The Kennedy Center presents this honor, and it has been sort of dubious since its inception — what makes the Kennedy Center board experts on humor in America? Whatever their qualifications are or aren’t, the award has followed the same trajectory as the AFI award, except it has been even more singularly pathetic in its choice of honorees, its ignoring comic legends who deserve appreciation, and its craving for viewers (especially since the show airs on PBS, and not a commercial network).

The prize jumped the shark when it made its first fourth honoree, and its first female, Whoopi Goldberg, in 2001. I’m not going to debate Goldberg’s comic pedigree — she did do great accents and voices back when she did standup, but that was a very long, long time ago. In any case, they leapfrogged over the first modern female standup, Phyllis Diller, the second, Joan Rivers, and the many women who populated variety television (never mind the women comedy writers) to move on to Whoopi, after having saluted two national treasures and comic innovators — Richard Pryor and Jonathan Winters — and one gent who had a good run in the Fifties and Sixties, Carl Reiner.

Probably the next horrific honoree was Lorne Michaels in 2004. Michaels spearheaded a show that was brave, bold, and innovative for five years, and has been a walking-dead example of everything that is dull, boring, and formulaic in TV sketch comedy since then (with the exception of the sterling 1984-85 season, which was cast almost entirely with “ringers,” meaning people who were already proven commodities as sketch/character comedians). There have been others whose contribution to American comedy is indisputable (Neil Simon, Bill Cosby, George Carlin, Lily Tomlin), but the obvious mandate is to interest TV viewers in the ceremony, and so this year the winner of the prize is none other than the pin-up of snarky sketch and fake-news comedy, Tina Fey.

I am not going to debate the merits of Tina Fey as a comedian here. I find her stuff pleasant but not memorable. The hubbub that surrounded her Sarah Palin imitation in 2008 was fascinating, in that there were other comic actresses on the Web doing equally good impressions of the Brainless One, and Fey’s “material” was essentially direct quotes from Palin’s own verbal missteps. Fey is a good-looking woman (never let that slip out of the equation), and she is currently a powerhouse to be reckoned with in terms of reputation, paycheck, and drawing power. But is she the 2000s equivalent of Dorothy Parker? Not on your life. Except, of course, to those who consume only contemporary mainstream culture, and are not familiar with anything old, foreign, or even slightly "alternative."

In any case, since the Mark Twain Prize has now irredeemably jumped the shark, I would like to submit for public view a list of the people they’ve forgotten to honor (in case you haven't been looking at the pics I've scattered throughout this post). Maybe they feel these people wouldn't be “ratings bait” — then again, on PBS you’d think an older name would be ratings bait, but PBS is as dull and lifeless as the rest of American broadcasting these days.

I’m leaving out the names of such folk as Professor Irwin Corey and Bob Elliott, as I think that, though they richly deserve the prize, a mainstream board like the Kennedy Center’s would never be that hip. I also leave out the solid gold name of Woody Allen (who was without doubt in the top rank of American humorists of the second half of the 20th century), since I have the feeling that he has already turned the honor down. I can’t help but feel that they’ve never asked Mel Brooks, though, since I don’t think he would turn it down (not a man who revisits an item like Spaceballs). I know that they’re probably already prepping the Twain Prizes for Adam Sandler, Will Ferrell, and Jack Black, so let me remind everyone who is still alive and deserves the Prize. If it really had any meaning.

• SID CAESAR
  
• Mort Sahl
  
• Shelley Berman
  
• Nichols and May
  
• Dick Gregory
  
• The Smothers Brothers
  
• Mel Brooks
  
• the aforementioned grandma of women standups, Phyllis Diller
  

And after all that, I’m not even going to mention that Mark Twain was a WRITER for fuck’s sake, and that breed of humorist hasn’t even been given a second thought. Then again, when your comedy prize is little more than a joke, well… it writes itself, doesn't it?

On Facebook's privacy "problem"

There is much “news” on the Internet these days about the privacy violations perpetrated by Facebook. I find it funny that people feel "violated" by the site, since it never says explicitly (c’mon, let’s be honest) that it will protect your information, your identity, or your creations — it exists simply to link people up, and to generate page views for itself.

Facebook is the hottest Internet “community” currently, but like YouTube and MySpace, it is an attempt to gather users together to create a hub of Internet activity. The site came into existence with classically American rules about “obscene” materials. To wit, nothing with any nudity on the site. Filthy language okay, unclad bodies never ever — the U.S. steadfastly refuses to grow up, it ain’t happening, no way no how. We like bein’ the all-powerful, church-going hypocrites we pretend to be.

I’m on all three sites mentioned above, as I am here on Blogspot — where I’ve found a lot of freedom, thus far. I’ve never been so delusional as to think that there is actual free speech on the sites, though, or that what I’m doing is not being “tabulated” for consumer demographic use. Although we pay nothing to use the sites’ storage capacities, we provide them with that most valuable of all commodities on the Internet, content.

I am still very amused by the abandonment of MySpace by most of its users (except musicians and other entertainers, who need the free storage space for audio). That can be most readily attributed to the laziness factor — which is as intrinsic to American life as the hypocritical prurience mentioned above. Middle-aged and senior users find Facebook easier to use since you don’t have to find a “wizard” to build a page, and there is a pretend “gate” around the “community,” so one can pretend one is really only in communication with the folks one chooses as “Friends.”

The gate is fake, the community is fake. Only the communications between users and, yes, the content is real, so let’s just focus on that and not pretend that a corporate-run site really gives even one-millionth of a shit about the safety of its users’ personal information. This is the Internet after all. It’s all a big farce, but a fun one, so let’s be honest and acknowledge the game we’re playing.

Budd Boetticher: the Funhouse interview

This is one of the numerous interviews done for the Funhouse before the "digital era" arrived. I spoke to Budd in September of 2000, and it was a delight. The man was a no-nonsense type who was happy to tell stories about his filmmaking (and bullfighting) past. He was an incredibly engaging individual, as charming as the heroes (and villains) in his pictures.

Here he speaks about his friend John Ford:



And answers a question about filming in CinemaScope:

Aesop, Orson, and a Sixties pop tune

The Internet is filled with misinformation, rumors, urban legends, and in-depth info about stuff of no meaning or consequence. On the other hand, it holds untold wonder, lots and lots (and lots) of quality free stuff, and, yes, it solves bar bets, arguments, debates, trivia contests, and that hunt for a specific dimly remembered song lyric. I was in the last-mentioned mode the other day, when I just had to sort out what song it was that included the lyric, “…sssssighed the snake…” Within a few clicks I had encountered this 1968 one-hit wonder by Al Wilson that is as catchy as hell:



Hadn’t heard it on the radio in a few decades now, but it was coursing around somewhere in the back of my mind. Of course, the song brought up a certain movie scene that also can’t be forgotten. The question arises, though: why is the same story told by Orson Welles in Mr. Arkadin about a frog and a scorpion? It appears that that is the more popular version of the story “often mis-attributed to Aesop” which has a variant known as “the farmer and the snake.” The songwriters obviously wanted to sex the tale up (a “tender woman” is a helluva lot more interesting than a farmer). As the frog and scorpion story (not to be confused with the “Frog and Peach” restaurant), it has had several dozen appearances in popular culture, the best of which has been and will forever be Orson’s telling in his very jumbled and uneven mystery pic Mr. Arkadin (aka Confidential Report,1955). Orson was god.



And totally off the topic of the fable and back onto the pop tune, turns out Al Wilson (who died back in 2008) was not a one-hit wonder by any means. He also gave us the indelible tune “Show and Tell”, and one I vividly remember from my childhood, “The La La Peace Song.” The song was also recorded around the same time by O.C. Smith, but the one I remember was the Wilson version. It’s gotta be the most upbeat song ever to mention racial injustice and skyjacking. Ah, the early Seventies…

FOOTNOTE: And who wrote "The Snake"? Oscar Brown, Jr., who had a very lively life as a singer, songwriter, playwright, poet, and civil rights activist. His Wiki bio can be found here. Nice pedigree for such a memorable tune.

“No rights, only duties”: new interviews with Uncle Jean

Since I wrote the blog post below, there has been more new Godard-info on the Net. The New York Times has published a review of Film Socialisme that indicates it is indeed the dense and brilliant work we’ve all been expecting it to be. Of course, reading the review my mind went off onto a Godardian tangent, wondering if Manohla Dargis has finally moved to NYC, or whether she’s still telecommuting her reviews in from L.A. (Who would have ever thought that the “paper of record” in a major U.S. capital of culture would make its chief film critic someone who wouldn’t deign to live in the city in which the paper was published? Ah, but then again, I’m so old-fashioned and analog, and her insights are really so invaluable a bi-coastal hookup was totally necessary….)

But, veering away from that missive from the shores of privilege and onto the latest classically contrarian statements by Uncle Jean, I point your attention to the invaluable translations of current Godard interviews being served up on the Cinemasparagus blog by Craig Keller. Craig recently provided translations of various Godard items, including an interview from the film’s press kit and two current magazine/website interviews. The first magazine interview is a chat between Uncle Jean and “child of ’68” turned mainstream politico Daniel Cohn-Bendit in Télérama. The article finds JLG probing his friendship with, and memories of, “Dany” while also noting that he engages in contradiction in his statements not for “fun,” but “to provoke an argument, in the sense of the Greeks.” Craig’s translation can be found here.

Another, even more quotable, interview with the Master can be found in the pages of the current issue of Les Inrockuptibles. Craig has provided a translation of this talk too, and there are plenty of interesting statements from Godard. His latest film took four years to create, and thus he wishes it was distributed in a rather unique way (this odd scenario is offered to both the Inrockuptibles interviewer and Cohn-Bendit). He also voices his support for the Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi and (gasp) Roman Polanski. The wonderful phrase from Film Socialisme, “what’s different these days is that the bastards are sincere” is explored; he reaffirms his disinterest in Truffaut’s more conventional later films (they were “not what we were dreaming of”); and he was the one who proposed YouTube as the site for his infamous trailers (which consist of the whole feature sped up to different commercial-style lengths). Find out his view of posterity, ownership of art, intellectual property (take a guess), and the words that might well wind up on his gravestone here.

Why I will continue to love Uncle Jean

News about Godard's latest, Film Socialisme, upon its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. Followers of his work, and readers of this blog, will remember, that he has already fashioned and made available online a series of trailers that show the film in its entirety, but sped up to a four-minute and a minute-and-a-half duration.

The legendary French film director Jean-Luc Godard, whose latest work, Film Socialisme, is showing at Cannes this week, has decided to run its subtitles in "Navajo English" as in old Westerns where the Native Americans spoke in choppy phrases. Because the drama takes place on a cruise ship where no one speaks the same language, Godard has fashioned his subtitles concisely to say the least. If a character is saying "give me your watch", the subtitle will read "You, me, watch."

The text above appeared on the site for the Independent here. JLG continues to be the oldest enfant terrible around.

Passings in Passing: Lena Horne and Frank Frazetta

I am not personally a collector of the work of Frank Frazetta or Lena Horne, but I certainly admired and respected them. In lieu of obit tributes, I’ll simply link you to some clips and images.

Good galleries of Frazetta’s work can be found at two tributes sites, one put up by a fan and one put up by his family. His work on movie promotional materials is fascinating. Most movie buffs are aware of his self-referential poster for the Eastwood movie The Gauntlet:

But fewer knew he did this promotial image for What’s New Pussycat? (I didn’t, and I have the paperback with it on the cover somewhere):

And he also did this dramatic poster for Polanski’s Fearless Vampire Killers:



And when it comes to the beautiful and talented Ms. Horne, there is little I can say to add to the chorus of praise, so I will spotlight her 1953 appearance on the beloved What’s My Line?:



Her duet with Funhouse deity Sammy Davis Jr. (audio only — they apparently never appeared on TV together?):



And with another Rat Pack member. Lena guests on The Perry Como Show with Dean Martin:



One of her last appearances in a fiction film, in The Wiz, directed by her son-in-law Sidney Lumet (who is a superb director, but may not be the best choice to helm musicals):



And another flashback to that weird period when the “old” met the “new.” Lena covers McCartney’s “Maybe I’m Amazed,” and makes it her own. Why? Who knows?



And remembering her at her all-time prettiest, acting and singing in the two-reeler Boogie Woogie Dream from (1941)

"Dollybird" with a load of talent: Deceased Artiste Lynn Redgrave

By no means do I want this blog to simply be a collection of obits, but I’m happy to pay tribute to people whose work I’ve admired once they’ve shuffled off this mortal coil. Lynn Redgrave, who died only about a month after her brother Corin, had a busy career that combined both the very high and the extremely low. Impressive stage work alternated with pure crap TV series, but for me she will always be best remembered with two of the finest movies about "Swinging London" in the Sixties — yes, the decade that is the gift that keeps on giving.

First, let us run through the extremely low end of Ms. Redgrave’s resume (I have the utmost respect for her as a person and actress but, well… this is what I do in the Funhouse…). Perhaps the weirdest thing I found in her obits was a scandal I had forgotten about, whereby (try to chart this out) her son married a single mom whose kid, it was revealed, had previously been sired by Ms. Redgrave’s husband, John Clark. That qualifies for “I’m My Own Grandpa” status (with Mr. Clark being both the father and “grandfather” of the kid) but, as an add-on to that very unusual relationship, it was noted that Ms. Redgrave toured with Mr. Clark in the play Love Letters; they gave a special perf of said play to the jurors in the O.J. trial. I have no idea how/why they came up with that play being the proper entertainment for the jurors in a murder trial, but there you have it.

At least one theatrical endeavor that she attempted never saw the light of day, and not through any fault of hers: you can consult the Jerry Lewis biography King of Comedy by Shawn Levy to read why the Broadway-bound version of Hellzapoppin' starring Jerry and Ms. Redgrave died on the road in the mid-Seventies before it hit the Great White Way.

Back on TV, Ms. Redgrave became associated with the Weight Watchers brand for a time through numerous TV commercials, but her TV C.V. is pretty impressive in its schlockiness: The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, the series House Calls (from which she was famously fired for wanting to breastfeed on the set), and later on, Desperate Housewives and Ugly Betty — not forgetting a very odd turn in the Sherilyn Fenn dramedy Rude Awakening where she basically did a knockoff of Joanna Lumley’s character on Absolutely Fabulous. One of the other strange TV choices she made was to appear with her sister Vanessa in a very odd redo of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? in 1991 (seen above). It is one of the strangest double-acts in TV-movie history, and is eminently watchable, but as you're viewing it, the question "why?" will never leave your mind....

In looking for traces of her more memorably tepid TV work on YouTube, I came up with two shards, one from the completely forgotten sitcom Teachers Only



And the sitcom that paired her with Jackie Mason, the really, really bad Chicken Soup:



Her movie career was quite uneven also, due to the fact that she worked extensively in theater (where she received critical accolades for many performances, especially later in her career). Since I want to get all of the schlock out of the way, let me just spotlight perhaps her most renowned crap lead role, starring in The Happy Hooker (1975):



Thankfully, in the late Nineties, Ms. Redgrave’s movie roles went from fun crap like the above to things like Shine and Gods and Monsters, although she still did appear in some wonderfully campy items like The White Countess, which found Natasha Richardson supported by her mom Vanessa and auntie Lynn, both doing roadshow Chekhov Russian accents. I included a non-Redgrave-sisters scene from that incredibly corny flick in my tribute to Ms. Richardson. Of course, Ms. Redgrave’s greatest personal triumph was her very public struggle with breast cancer. She fought the disease for seven years and finally succumbed to it, but contributed some very inspirational materials (a book with her daughter, plays about her family, and some very personal interviews) while being the trooper she always was, and continuing to work as best she could on a regular basis.

But let’s flash back to the Sixties for my favorite part of Ms. Redgrave’s movie career. First, a little segment from I’ve Got a Secret in 1967, which finds host Steve Allen engaging her in one of the lamer set-ups (they gave up on the “secret” notion somewhere in the early Sixties). She is quite engaging, with her hair piled high upon her head:



She distinguished herself from her sleek, very serious sister Vanessa by playing two wonderful comedy roles in two of the best Swinging London movies ever. The first, Georgy Girl (1966), was a sort of epilogue (along with Alfie) to the “kitchen sink”/angry young man subgenre that required all young men to be rebels and their women to have “a bun in the oven.” Here, Lynn is centerstage and her character, though depicted as dowdy throughout the film (an impression furthered by the inclusion of a hot young “Charlie” Rampling as her friend), is not as helpless as the kitchen-sink girls like Rita Tushingham in A Taste of Honey. She may be the love interest of an energetic young man (Alan Bates) and fawned over by an rich older man (James Mason), but she ultimately chooses her own fate, even if it is a decidedly un-feminist one.

And what makes the film so great besides its three great lead performances and its views of 1966 London? Well, the fucking THEME SONG by the Seekers, for one. It is such an enchanting piece of pop, it literally sums up and adds to the film as a whole, remaining completely unforgettable:



Here is the sequence in which Georgy sings:



And the touching end of the picture, in which the song once more comments on the action while imprinting itself in our heads forever:



The other Swinging London pic Ms. Redgrave made is not as well known as Georgy. Smashing Time is a pastel-colored joy that is all about the impression that London (the fantasy London of the mind) was making on youth around England (and, by extension, around the world). The film is in the mode of referential musicals-with-people-who-can’t-sing, of the type made by Godard (Une Femme est Une Femme) and Rivette later on. The characters in this kind of musical are folks who’ve seen lots of musicals and then live one out in front of our eyes. The movie is charming, ineffably goofy, and a helluva tribute to London in the year it was made, 1967. Here is a trailer made for American viewers:



This is not one of Ms. Redgrave's scenes, but I couldn't overlook the visit to the “Too Much Boutique":



Lynn arrives on Carnaby Street, and there are photographers and models everywhere:



And, lastly, North Country girl Lynn being packaged as a pop superstar even though she's tonedeaf. She's so young! (that's the name of her hit tune, don't get ideas...)