Daniel Klos wrote to pose an interesting question…
Regarding your recent post on It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (I think I have the correct number of "Mads" in there), I know it's your favorite film, but if you saw it today for the first time as a 67-year-old man in 2020, do you think you would like it? Meaning, how much of your affection for it is because of the film itself, and how much of it is because of the circumstances surrounding it when you first saw?
This is not meant to cast judgment on your taste in film. Just curious if, divorced from your history with the film, it would be something that would appeal to the current you if you had never seen it before.
It's hard to imagine me making it to age 67 without seeing a movie that starred Sid Caesar, Jonathan Winters, Phil Silvers, et cetera, et cetera. I loved that kind of comic performer before I saw Mad World and I loved them more after I saw it. It's definitely a product of its time but also an important part of my childhood…and if you're thinking I might not be able to completely separate those two things, you're right. But I love seeing those performers and I love seeing them interact.
For those reading this who don't know: I saw this movie for the first time on 11/23/63. It was one day after Lee Harvey Oswald murdered John F. Kennedy and one day before Jack Ruby murdered Lee Harvey Oswald. There was a lot of emotion in this country that Saturday. My parents were given tickets by some friends who'd purchased them in advance but were too depressed to leave the house. We took them because my parents were too depressed to stay home and watch the sad coverage on TV. So that underscored my first viewing of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.
That was part of my experience that night but probably not a major part. It was a life-changing experience when I was eleven and I can draw a line between that evening and who I am now. I think I would like it very much if I saw it for the first time today but I'd sure ask, "How the hell did I miss this 'til now?" And I might not be the same 67-year-old person enjoying it.
Here's a rerun from May of 2014. A couple of readers of this blog have written to say it was of value to them so I thought I'd give it another airing. I'll be back later with something new but for now…
For a guy who's pretty healthy, I find that I have an amazing number of doctors. I have my Primary Care Physician, of course, but my phone book also contains the numbers of my dermatologist, my dentist, my ophthalmologist, my gastroenterologist, my proctologist, my urologist, my cardiologist, my podiatrist, my orthopedist and a vascular surgeon who helped me with a circulatory problem relating to my recent knee problems. (I am only listing doctors to whom I will probably return some day. There's also, for instance, the gent who performed my Gastric Bypass Surgery in 2006.)
Generally what happens is that my Primary Care Physician (or P.C.P. for short) refers me to a specialist and I go to see that specialist and I either like that specialist and continue to see him or her as needed…or I don't like that specialist and I go in search of someone else who does that same thing. I went to five dermatologists before I found one I liked enough to call my own. I also went through a couple of P.C.P.s before I found the one I have now.
What made me not like certain doctors? My main complaint has not been their competence as men and women of medicine. I've only left two because of that. Mainly what's driven me away has been not being able to get their attention. When I went to them, they either were in too much of a hurry to get on to their next patient or they passed me on to a Physician's Assistant in their offices.
The worst of the "too busy" guys was a world-famous nutritionist I went to long before 2006, before I had my weight generally under control. I asked my current P.C.P. to send me to the best nutritionist he knew of and he recommended a man I'll call Dr. Occupado. "He's a genius," my P.C.P. said…but he added, "You may have trouble getting an appointment." Sure enough, when I called up, they said the next opening they had was in the middle of May. I was calling the first week of March.
I made the appointment anyway and showed up on time, expecting to spend a half-hour or more discussing my various eating disorders and food allergies and what I should and shouldn't eat. Instead, I waited well over an hour for a whopping five minutes with Dr. Occupado. He gave me some good information before bolting for his next appointment…but how much good can a doctor do you in five minutes? I never even got to tell him about the allergies…and since he charged above 'n' beyond what my insurance would pay, I spent about $100 for those five minutes.
Still, I sensed this was a brilliant doctor who could help me so on my way out, I made another appointment…and I got lucky. He had an opening in June.
In June, I went back and after another considerable wait, got another five minutes from Dr. Occupado. He had, he explained as he walked in, an interview waiting for a very important magazine. I started wondering if any of the magazines I worked for would send me to interview him but at that moment, the only one was Groo the Wanderer and all I would have gotten was nutritional information on cheese dip.
Still, the five minutes I got were not without their benefit and I still thought the man knew his business so on the way out, I stopped at the desk. The woman there asked me, "Would you like to make an appointment for your next visit?" I said, "No, I'd like to make four appointments for my next visit. I would like to book four appointments, one right after another."
This was me trying to outgame the system…which once in a while in this world, it's possible to do. I figured this way, he couldn't leave me for his next appointment because I would be his next appointment. And I had this crazy idea that this "stunt" would make him realize I needed some special attention and maybe he'd see me for as long as I needed, if not that day then someday.
For about thirty seconds, I thought I was so, so clever. That was until the woman said as she paged through her calendar, "I'm sorry but if you want four appointments with him, they'll be in July, September, late October and then there's one open just before we close down for Christmas."
I asked, "Does he have four consecutive appointments open any day in July?" She said, "Yes but other patients have tried this and I've been told not to book them that way."
I left without making even one appointment.
The lasting value of my attempts to actually get doctored by Dr. Occupado was this: Since then, when I meet a new doctor, I try to find a way to work that tale into the conversation. It's my way of telling them up front what I consider lousy doctoring, just to see what they say. Many of them know of Dr. Occupado and nod in understanding…and then they make sure they spend enough time with me. Either that or they show their true colors early on and I can quickly write them off as a long-term relationship.
None of my current specialists ever rushes me but I couldn't have written those words two days ago. Yesterday, I made a change. Over the last year or two, one doctor began going the Physician's Assistant route. It wasn't that I could only see him for five minutes. I couldn't see him at all. I'd make an appointment with him, go into the examining room to await his usually-delayed entry…and instead. a P.A. would come into the examining room, introduce him or herself, and begin doing his job for him.
So, what exactly is a Physician's Assistant?
A physician assistant or associate is a healthcare professional who is licensed to practice medicine as part of a team with physicians. Physician assistants are concerned with preventing and treating human illness and injury by providing a broad range of health care services under the direction of a physician or surgeon. Physician assistants conduct physical exams, diagnose and treat illnesses, order and interpret tests, prescribe medications, counsel on preventive health care and may assist in surgery.
In other words, "I'm not a doctor but I play one in a doctor's office."
The bait-and-switch did not sit well with me and the Physician's Assistants — I went through three there — told me so little, I had the feeling they were researching my condition on Wikipedia. That, by the way, is where I found the above definition.
I have no idea how much the first P.A. knew about the particular area of medicine because English was not his first language. It did not seem to be his second, third or eighth, either. I am used to not being able to understand the nouns doctors use but with this guy, I couldn't parse the verbs, adjectives or adverbs, and only the occasional article. After three visits where I felt like I was being treated by Sid Caesar, I specified that my next appointment be with The Doctor himself.
I went to see him, waited in the examining room…and in came a different P.A. He was a nice guy and I could understand him. But my insurance and I were paying full price and I was getting about a third of a doctor.
On the way out of my second and what I'd decided would be my last appointment with P.A. #2, I ran into the real doctor in the hallway. He was all smiles until I told him I was not happy seeing people from a temp agency instead of him. "I supervise them all very carefully," he assured me. "They're giving you the exact same treatment you would get from me."
I said, "Are you telling me that these people who do not have the legal right to call themselves 'doctors' know as much as you do?" He said no, of course not, though someday they might. I said, "Well, it's my health here and I'd kinda like to entrust it to the most knowledgeable person in this office. Every time I come here, there are more and more names on your door. On my way in, I checked for mine because I thought it had to be a list of patients."
He laughed, apologized and promised that my next visit there would be with him…and it was. Unfortunately, there was also this woman there, observing and listening and taking notes. And after ten or so minutes, he turned me over to P.A. #3 and left. So now I've left him.
My P.C.P. gave me a new referral and I got all my records from the busy specialist's office and gave them to the new guy. The new guy isn't a new guy to medicine — he's been practicing for thirty years — but he's new to me. And he doesn't have any Physician's Assistants. When I go there, there'll be nobody there for me to see but him.
Matter of fact, he needed some blood from me and I figured he'd do what every single doctor of my lifetime has done, which is to call in a nurse and have her take it. Instead, he had me roll up my sleeve and he hauled out the equipment and took it himself. I'm 62 years old and I can't recall a person with the title of "doctor" ever taking blood from me before.
His nurse had taken my blood pressure and jotted down my height and weight before I saw him, and I asked him why she wasn't taking my blood. He leaned in very confidentially and told me, "It makes her squeamish." I think I'm going to like this guy.
Yesterday when the news came out that Monty Python member Terry Jones had passed, fellow member John Cleese tweeted "Two Down, Four To Go." I think Terry Gilliam tweeted the same line.
A number of folks posting online have said that they thought this was an insensitive thing to say/tweet. No. As others are pointing out, it was just the continuance of an ongoing joke the Pythons started when they subtitled their final performances (the ones at the O2 in London), "One Down, Five To Go." See it there on the banner?
When either Cleese, Gilliam, Idle or Palin dies, one or all of the others will post or proclaim, "Three Down, Three To Go" and so on. When the last of them joins the bleeding Choir Invisible, someone will tweet, "Six Down, Zero to Go." If the Python guys know anything, they know how to pay off a running gag. I suspect each of them would be hurt if their survivors didn't keep it going.
Like most of America, including all the Republican members of the Senate, I'm largely ignoring the impeachment trial currently underway. I don't know the odds of Trump actually being removed from office by it but I suspect they're around the same as the odds of me being his replacement.
There was a term that Republicans used incessantly during the Clinton impeachment — "the rule of law." I hope no one uses it this time because it's become pretty much inoperative in politics today, replaced by "the rule of retaining power." As Jonathan Chait said in this piece…
Trump of course opposes all mechanisms of accountability. Anybody who investigates Trump — the Department of Justice, Congress, a state attorney general, a judge presiding over a lawsuit by victims of his swindling — is corrupt, biased, engaging in a witch hunt, and so on.
"The rule of law" is of course meaningless if one does not recognize that laws are to prevail and that is clearly not the case any longer. And "corrupt" no longer means you can point to any law the person you're applying that to has broken. It now means they're not on your side.
I always find it genuinely sad when someone I'd thought was a Person of Principle turns out to be anything but. I'm sure I've mentioned how disappointed I've been over the years to watch Alan Dershowitz morph from a man who took courageous stands against hate crimes and white supremacists to a person who'll advocate damn near anything if it'll get him on camera and add to his fame…
"It certainly doesn't have to be a crime," he said in a television interview in 1998, during the impeachment controversy surrounding President Bill Clinton. "If you have somebody who completely corrupts the office of the president and abuses trust and who poses great danger to our liberty, you don't need a technical crime."
Now, he has a different view. "Without a crime there can be no impeachment," he said on CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday, foreshadowing the formal brief presented Monday by Trump's legal team to the Senate.
He got into one of his famous brawls on CNN on Monday night. Host Anderson Cooper and the network's chief legal analyst, Jeffrey Toobin, confronted Dershowitz about his changed opinion. The resulting exchange wasn't pretty.
"So you were wrong then," Cooper said to Dershowitz.
"No, I wasn't wrong. I have a more sophisticated basis for my argument," he said, citing his research into the 1868 impeachment proceedings against President Andrew Johnson. "It's very clear now that what you need is criminal-like behavior akin to bribery and treason."
Later, he insisted, "I wasn't wrong. I am just far more correct now than I was then." Which I guess is better than saying, "No, there was a Democratic president then and the guy being impeached now is a Republican."
It helps me to keep this in mind: In most law schools, they do war games — mock trials where the lawyers of the future practice being both prosecutors and defense attorneys. Law Student Smith argues that the defendant is guilty and Law Student Jones argues he's innocent. Then they take a five-minute break before trying the same case again, only this time Law Student Jones argues that the defendant is guilty and Law Student Smith argues he's innocent.
It's one of the reasons most people hate all lawyers except the one handling their case at the moment. You'd like to believe they stand for Truth and Justice and the bad guy being punished and the innocent guy being cleared. But really it's about winning. And only about winning.
Early bird hotel reservations are now available for Comic-Con International in San Diego this July. These are mostly for hotels some distance from the convention center and some of them are in San Diego only on a technicality. But they have rooms and they're not as expensive as the lodging you might (might!) later be able to secure at closer places. For info, check here. Me, I'm thinking of going into one of the rooms where I host panels and setting up one of those tents that homeless people live in.
And here's a page from the good folks at the unaffiliated-but-often-helpful San Diego-Comic Con Unofficial Blog. It'll give you a general overview of how housing works for the big event.
In the biggest surprise since Donald Trump last lied, I have been announced as a Special Guest at WonderCon 2020, which takes place in Anaheim from April 10 to 12. Hey, I'm not doing bad for a guy who doesn't have a favorite Marx Brothers movie.
For some inexplicable reason, they have also announced that cartoonist Sergio Aragonés will also be among the Special Guests. I will be doing most of the same panels I did last year and one or two new ones and I'll tell you about them once the schedule is set. It is still possible to order badges to this big event…something you can't say for Comic-Con International which, in case you don't know, is run by the same people. Details on how to be there are here.
A few days ago here, I offered the apparently-controversial opinion that of the movies starring the Marx Brothers, the best one to show someone unfamiliar with those boys is A Night at the Opera. If you're going to limit your choices to the films they made for Paramount, then Horse Feathers.
Somehow, about a dozen of you read that as me saying those are the best Marx Brothers movies and want to challenge me to a duel at ten paces for daring to suggest that Duck Soup was not the greatest movie they ever made. It may well be but that's not what I was discussing. I was discussing which film you show — as I need to do with my friend Amber — as an introduction to Groucho, Harpo and Chico, as well as the outside possibility of Zeppo.
And to the person who wrote me to ask, "No love for Monkey Business?" Yes, sure, absolutely. I love Monkey Business. I'm not really sure how the plot wraps up at the end…but then I was never entirely sure what the plot was in the first place but I still love Monkey Business. It has, in fact, my favorite scene in any Marx Siblings movie. I was going to link you to something I wrote here about it back in 2006 but I'll save you a click and reprint it here…
Let us review. The boys are stowaways on an ocean liner. They have no passports so they can't get off the ship. Zeppo gets hold of the passport of the great French entertainer Maurice Chevalier and somehow knows that the bearer of it can prove it's his by singing one of Chevalier's songs. Well, that's an obvious assumption now, isn't it? I mean, how else would the customs guys verify that the holder of a passport was indeed that person? They'd expect him to perform his big hit tune, right? So to get off the boat, all four Marxes are going to have to pretend to be someone they're not.
This is not quite ridiculous enough so let's make it worse: Since they have only the one passport, they'll all pretend to be the same person. Not only that but they're all going to pretend to be a well-known celebrity that none of them resembles in any way.
The Italian guy's going to tell them he's Maurice Chevalier. And after that doesn't work, the rude guy with the mustache and no French accent whatsoever is going to tell them he's Maurice Chevalier. Even the guy who doesn't talk is going to claim to be Maurice Chevalier…and he's really got a surefire plan. First, he'll bolster his chances of getting through by throwing around all the papers on the Customs Agents' table like a maniac. That will surely make the officials more likely to believe he's Maurice Chevalier. Then he'll mime to a record, assuming they won't notice the phonograph under his coat, nor wonder about the sudden appearance of musical accompaniment from nowhere. And then to really convince them, he'll mess up all their papers again and rubber stamp the customs agent's bald head. If that doesn't prove he's Maurice Chevalier, nothing will.
(And that's really the point of the whole scene: Nothing will. Harpo's chances of getting through aren't all that much worse than what Zeppo tried, which was to actually impersonate Maurice Chevalier.)
Chico Marx Maurice Chevalier
It's the perfect summary of what was wonderful about the Marxes. After spending the first half of the movie doing everything possible to avoid the security personnel on the liner, not one of the four brothers pauses to wonder if it's a good idea to go up to the ship's police and all claim to be someone that none of them could possibly be. Even after the plan has completely failed three times, Harpo doesn't hesitate to try it…and I think it yields one of the most beautiful, wonderful scenes anyone ever put into a movie. Because you can go through life doing things the logical way or you can do them the illogical way. Should you decide to do something the illogical way, the way that is almost certain not to work, you might as well make it all as illogical as humanly possible. If that isn't the best advice in the world then my name isn't Maurice Chevalier.
So there's love for Monkey Business. And the truth is that I kinda love something in every Marx Brothers movie — yes, even Love Happy — even if it's only watching one or more of those guys running around triumphing over weak material. I finally decided that the best way to deal with the question "What's your favorite Marx Brothers movie?" is to not have one.
It's not mandatory. You can't get through life without a driver's license, a Social Security number, a place to live, a means of earning a living, a complete collection of Groo the Wanderer, water, food, clothing, some means of transportation (these may not be in order of importance), oxygen (I probably should have put that near the top of the list) and a number of other things. But I stand before you on this blog as living proof that you can get by just fine without a favorite Marx Brothers movie. I do not have one.
If I did, it would be Duck Soup but I don't have one so it isn't.
The other day here, I was talking about sitting through a great many movies in one sitting and I said, "Today, I don't think I could make it through a double feature of anything." Here to challenge me on that is Ben Sternbach…
I'm going to challenge you on that. I've been reading your blog for a long time and I've seen how you race to see It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World every time any theater in L.A. shows it. That movie is 192 minutes. I've been to plenty of double features that ran that long or less. Do you still think you couldn't sit through a double feature of that length?
Good question, Ben. My reply starts by noting that 192 minutes was the length It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World was when it was first released in 1963. The prints they run these days are more like 161.
But that's a minor point because if a 192-minute print did surface, I could easily sit through it and then ask if there's a second screening of it. And the thing is that I love that movie so much that the normal rules do not apply. You're not going to find a double feature of two movies that I enjoy as much as I enjoy that movie, nor could they have been such an important part of the first 67 years of my childhood — i.e., my entire life.
Also, two complete stories with beginnings, middles and ends are more work for the brain than one movie of the same length with one beginning, one middle and one end.
And finally, if I go to see two current movies on the same bill today, that's me at age 67, watching the picture but unable to hush the part of my brain that knows the seventeen different things I have to do when I get home. So when a film lags and loses my undivided attention even for a minute, my attention divides. My "must do" tasks diminish my patience more than it should. When I go see Mad World, that part of my brain goes on Silent and I'm just an eleven-year-old kid with nothing more pressing to do at home than sort out my comic books.
That's my reply to your challenge, Ben. But thanks. It was a good, logical challenge.
February 18, Warner Archive will bring out the first volume of Tex Avery's MGM cartoons on Blu Ray. I don't think too many animation fans will challenge me if I say that during his little Golden Age at that studio, Tex produced some of the funniest, most imaginative cartoons ever made and it's way overdue for them to be available in this format.
The hope is that Warner Archive will keep issuing these until all 67 cartoons he made for the studio are out but since there are only 19 of those cartoons on this Blu Ray…well, you do the math. I doubt Warner Archive is planning to bring out 3½ sets of these…but maybe there will be two volumes that each have 24 cartoons or three more that each have 16. One set with all 67 would have been even nicer but this is all minor quibbling.
Major quibbling is, of course, already starting. The following is in no way an attempt to stifle anyone's free speech but I have my First Amendment Right to suggest that one thing that is discouraging some folks in the home video biz from doing more releases of cartoons is that it's hard to do without getting bludgeoned. The bludgeoning is done by a small group of folks who love animation so much that they are livid when a DVD or Blu Ray release isn't done the way they think it should have been done. 95% perfect might as well be 0% with these people.
Never mind the need to bring these releases in on a budget that leaves them a good chance of showing a profit. Never mind the problems that may exist with less-than-ideal source material. (Some movie lovers — and I'm not just talking about cartoon fans — firmly believe that there is a pristine, uncut, perfect print of everything somewhere in the world and that if you haven't found it, it's just because you don't care enough about quality to look hard enough. I still sometimes run into someone who is utterly certain that there is a complete, virgin print of the original release version of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and why the hell didn't they put that out instead of the edited versions that they have? And exactly where is this print? They don't know but they do know a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy who claims to have one.)
We want what we love to be available but we also don't want to wait until it can be as absolutely perfect as inhumanly possible. We'd also like to have the studios spare no expense to remaster and restore our favorite films but not charge more to make back that unspared expense.
I think some folks are forgetting what seems to be the basic rule of the dwindling market for hard copies (DVD or Blu Ray) of films that will mostly be available in the future only via streaming. The rule is that if a lot of people buy it, you'll eventually put out an improved version of it with more restoration and more extras And if no one buys it? Well, there's a film for which there's no audience. No point spending a lot of money to bring that out in an upgraded release.
As I've been writing this, I've just received an e-mail from a cartoon fan who read the news of the Tex Avery set on another site and wants to launch a boycott. "These great cartoons," he writes, "deserve nothing less than a complete set in chronological order." I agree they do but I also understand the position of whoever at Warner Archive said, "Okay, we'll put out a Volume One and load it with the best stuff Tex did. If that doesn't sell, there isn't much point in doing more." I'd really like to see them do more.
The middle of last November, my buddy Jack Enyart passed away. This coming Sunday afternoon, January 26, I'm attending a memorial gathering for Jack here in Los Angeles. If you knew Jack and wish to attend, drop me a note and I'll see that you get all the information. There will be speeches and refreshments and a lot of good memories. That's this coming Sunday afternoon.
Yeah, I go to a lot of these and that causes me to hear a lot of people say things like, "This is what happens when you get old…all your friends start dying." Well maybe that's so but I wish folks would remember that it's also a matter of how many friends you have. The more friends you have, the more you're going to hear that some friend of yours has died. It's simple math.
If you want to cut down on the number of friends' memorial services you're invited to attend, it's real easy. Just have fewer friends.
