Sorry if this is short notice for you or if you see it too late. Here I am once again to tell you about an interesting movie that's airing on Turner Classic Movies. Please note that I am not saying this is a good movie. I leave that to you to decide. I'm just telling you it's interesting.
In the early eighties, Paramount Pictures paid a lot of money for the rights to turn the best-selling book, The Joy of Sex into a movie. They did this even though no one there had the foggiest notion of what that movie might be...a condition that persisted through dozens of pitches and scripts and development deals. If you'd been in the industry during those years, there was about a one-in-three chance you'd be asked if you had a concept via which to turn The Joy of Sex into a movie. At the time of John Belushi's death in 1982, Paramount had semi-convinced him to star in an as-yet unwritten picture with that name.
One of many folks who had tackled the challenge was the actor, Charles Grodin. For some reason, they asked him if he had an idea...and he pondered for a while and decided he did. It was hilarious, thought Grodin, that a big studio had paid all this money for The Joy of Sex and didn't know how to make a movie out of it. So he wrote a screenplay for a movie about a big studio that pays a lot of money for The Joy of Sex and doesn't know how to make a movie out of it.
Many people thought Grodin's screenplay was brilliant but these were all people who didn't work for Paramount. The ones at Paramount didn't see the humor in the situation and added it to the towering pile of rejected Joy of Sex scripts. Grodin reacquired it and spent many years of his life trying to place it elsewhere. Finally, because a lot of big star friends agreed to appear it in for low money, he got it made as a low-budget independent. William Asher directed.
Among the big stars in it (some not for long) were Steve Martin, Penny Marshall, Gilda Radner and Grodin himself. Walter Matthau had the lead. He was a last-minute replacement when Grodin's first choice — I'm not sure who it was — failed the insurance physical they make you pass if you're going to star in a movie. Given that cast, you'd think it would have a big opening in many theaters but MGM/UA, which was then in a heap of internal trouble, decided they had a flop on their hands and released accordingly. It only played in a handful of houses in a couple of cities and didn't do much business. A few critics loved it. A few more hated it. The majority probably never got around to seeing it...but you can.
Movers and Shakers runs on one of the Encore channels (Encore Love, for some reason) very early tomorrow morning. It's 4:05 AM on my satellite. I have no idea if you'll like it or not. I'm not even sure if I like it or not. But it sure is interesting.
Read Timothy Noah on the rising cost of health care and what can be done about it. A stunner fact is how much the cost (to you) of your employer-supplied health coverage rose during the last few years. Even if you got a raise, you didn't get it because the cost of your health plan went up even more.
Starlog, a magazine which has been covering the world of science-fiction and fantasy for 33 years, has announced the "temporary cessation" of its print edition and a shift to an Internet-only presence, at least for a while. I have no inside info here but I would imagine that its many contributors and fans are taking "temporary cessation" to mean what it usually means in the publishing world: "Cancelled, probably forever." I can't think of too many publications that ever left the newsstands and returned, at least under the same ownership. Issue #374 is the last in the paper format and from here on, they'll try and make a go of it online.
I wish them luck. I only followed the magazine intermittently but whenever I picked up a copy, I was struck by generally smart, well-researched reporting that didn't pander. When you're writing about current fantasy movies and TV shows, there's a temptation to cater to the geeky element that such enterprises usually attract...to focus, as one of my friends once put it, on the Spock ears and not on the actor wearing them. Starlog sold to that crowd without, I'd like to think, insulting or losing those who like their journalism with a few more ounces of dignity. I always especially liked their habit of focusing on the so-called "little people" on a film or program — behind-the-scenes folks and supporting players who have much to offer even if they haven't the marquee value.
Presumably, this approach will continue so you might want to keep an eye on their website. And my buddy Lee Goldberg, who pretty much launched his career writing for Starlog, has some thoughts. I fear we're going to be saying goodbye to a lot of hard copy before '09 is out.
Joe Conason offers up an intriguing concept — that the way to neutralize a group like Al Qaeda is to divide its base, convincing citizens who might follow them that America is not The Great Satan, as it is portrayed, and that it is not out to destroy Muslims or their states. Okay, that makes sense. The point Conason makes is that Obama is uniquely qualified to achieve that in a way that someone else — say, John McCain — was not.
By the by: Back when a lot of us had the audacity to suggest that George W. Bush might not be a wonderful president, a stock way of dismissing us without rebutting us was to accuse us of being "Bush-haters." The new response from all the same people is that we're "Obama-worshippers." I don't think either was ever valid and I note how uncomfy a lot of us are with Obama's seeming policies of growing government secrecy and executive power. Sure hope we're wrong about the direction he's heading with all that because I don't trust anyone, Democrat or Republican, with the kind of omnipotence that Bush demanded and that Obama seems to be extending.
For those of you still toying with the idea of attending the Comic-Con International in San Diego this July...
The four-day passes are sold out. Saturday is sold out. Friday will be sold out soon. Thursday and Sunday will follow. Long before the convention convenes, tickets will be as scarce as Dick Cheney supporters. Amtrak train reservations to S.D. may also be hard to come by.
Last year, I got an awful lot of calls and e-mails from folks asking if I could get them into the con. Don't make me say no to you. Get your tickets now while there are still tickets to get.
In 1967, there was this weird, minimalist TV production of the musical, Damn Yankees. It had a cast of about eight people and almost no sets or dancing, and they interspersed little cartoon sequences and the whole thing looked like it cost about ninety bucks. The most interesting thing about it was that Mr. Applegate (i.e., The Devil) was played by Phil Silvers...but even he couldn't rise far above the overall cheapness of the proceedings.
Someone edited together eleven minutes of scenes, all of which feature Fran Allison in her role as Meg, the spouse who's "deserted" by her husband Joe when he goes off to become Baseball Superstar Joe Hardy. This is the same Fran who starred for years in the delightful puppet program, Kukla, Fran and Ollie. She does a nice job here. So did Lee Remick as Lola and Jerry Lanning as Joe Hardy, and you'll see them both in this video, too. Fans of The Dick Van Dyke Show may recall Lanning for the episode where he introduced the smash dance craze that swept the nation...the Twizzle! Here he is singing better songs...
I'm not going to embed it but if you'd like to see Lawrence O'Donnell kick the derriere of Pat Buchanan in a debate, here's a YouTube link. The topic is whether a Catholic University should invite a president (in this case, Barack Obama) to speak there even though he is pro-choice about abortion.
April 11, 2009
