June 2003

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Mr. Movie Quiz Takes a Vacation

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Since I won't be able to read and answer all my email over the next couple weeks, the Monday Movie Quiz will be taking a break as well. It should be back in all its esoteric splendor on July 14. Stay tuned.

Posted by Steve Monaco at June 30, 2003 11:18 AM

 

Last week's Movie Quiz winners

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Well, for the first time, there weren't any. The unidentified movie was the 1929 Disney cartoon The Skeleton Dance, another one-of-a-kind creation by animation's greatest crackpot, Ub Iwerks, with a perfect, xylophone-laden musical score by Carl W. Stalling. So kudos to nobody!

Posted by Steve Monaco at June 30, 2003 11:12 AM

 

The Cask of Amontillado with Sydney Greenstreet

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I'll be on vacation for the next couple weeks and won't be able to write much, but I'll still keep things going with sounds, pics, etc.

To start, here's a recording made from an old set of 78s in the forties-- it's a dramatic adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado" starring the Fat Man himself, Sydney Greenstreet. (Sydney was an expert at audio drama; he was radio's best Nero Wolfe.) Note: File size is 1.5 MB.

Posted by Steve Monaco at June 29, 2003 11:22 PM

 

The Outbursts of Everett True by Condo & Raper (1907)

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Posted by Steve Monaco at June 28, 2003 12:04 AM

 

Bad Dialogue of the Week-- Flub-a-dub-Dubya

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Would you buy a used war from this man?

Look what happens when even moderate downloader packrats like yours truly start to scrub their hard-drives-- they come up with anonymous audio montages like this. Whatever you thought of Clinton (and for eight years, I tried not to), at least he could talk. Listen to this remix of the Great Un-Communicator's undoctored words-- you wouldn't trust him to clean your kids' school toilets, let alone run the country!

Posted by Steve Monaco at June 27, 2003 12:21 AM

 

W.C. Fields laughs!

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Fervent Fields fan that I am (and as I've stated before, I think he's the funniest fellow of the twentieth century), I don't think I've ever heard him actually laugh. Except, that is, for this clip from the old radio show The Chase & Sanborn Show with Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy. Listen to the nano-moment when he cracks up: it's the quickest and dryest laugh I think I've ever heard, and it's absolute music to the ears, since it's the sound of one of the greatest comedians who ever lived actually breaking himself up. (After that, stick around for the deer & train anecdote, which features one of the best double-takes of all time.)

Posted by Steve Monaco at June 26, 2003 2:48 AM

 

Previews of Scary Attractions

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Here are some screen-grabs from a few of my favorite horror movies.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)

There are so many eerie moments in this film, they're impossible to count, but the scene toward the end where words literally begin to drive the doctor mad is at the very top of the list.

The Old Dark House (1932) directed by James Whale

Funny and creepy at the same time, with a fine cast that includes Charles Laughton, Melvyn Douglas, Raymond Massey and Gloria Stuart (Titanic, but don't hold that against her), the standout performance is by Boris Karloff, who doesn't say a word. With a face like this, he doesn't have to.

Snaker (2001)

A weird combination of folk legend and horror flick, this Cambodian film is about the lovechild from an affair between a village housewife and a boa constrictor. The woman's husband is understandably miffed when he learns of his spouse's abnormal love, and he kills her and her scaly paramour. However, when he attempts to slay the fruit of her womb-- a nest of baby snakes-- one of them slithers to freedom. Years later, the offspring is a happy hybrid-- half girl, half serpent. (And while it's not clear in the picture, those are real snakes on her head.) 

 

 

Posted by Steve Monaco at June 25, 2003 10:35 PM

 

On the Streets with Coyle and Sharpe

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Two square-looking businessmen enter a print shop and begin asking the printer how much he'd charge to paint a house. When he explains that he's a printer, not a painter, the men seem not to hear him and keep asking him questions about painting the house, until he becomes so exasperated that he kicks them out. Another shop owner is approached by the same men, who ask if he'd like to put a new kind of animal in his window: a zeb-eel, which is half eel and half zebra. The men also approach a pharmacist about what over-the-counter painkiller would be good to use for do-it-yourself surgery.

The two men were Jim Coyle and Mal Sharpe, and in the early '60s they had a nightly radio program called On the Loose, which was largely filled with similarly crazed man-on-the-street stunts like the above. Forty years later, the bits continue to be timeless comedy, but they also serve as audio time capsules, preserving an era in this country where a couple of jokers could talk crazy to complete strangers and not get shot.

The official Coyle and Sharpe webpage is run by Mal Sharpe's daughter Jennifer, and it's filled with articles about the duo as well as several sound files of classic C&S routines. (You can also buy CD reissues of their sixties comedy albums.) I recommend a lengthy visit to the site for any fan of audio comedy. To whet your appetite, here's one of my favorite bits, where they offer an innocent bystander the chance to work in a simulated living hell, complete with snakes, bats and pitchfork-wielding maniacs. (Note: File size is 900K.)

Posted by Steve Monaco at June 24, 2003 7:54 PM

 

Last Week's Movie Quiz Winners

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Last week's musical clue was from the 1953 classic The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T, starring Tommy Rettig, Hans Conried and Peter Lind Hayes. It was the only feature film ever written by the one and only Dr. Seuss (he did the story and then co-scripted with Allan Scott). Many people are going to be surprised to learn that Seuss was the author of the lyrics from the song we used for the hint. Here's an excerpt:

Second floor dungeon/Jewelry department/Leg chains, ankle chains, neck chains, wrist chains, thumbscrews and nooses of the very finest rope.

It's a film that is a very fond memory for many of us who saw it when we were young, and one that inspires strong reactions from some movie fans when they compare it to the crap that's shovelled at kids today. One reader, who didn't wish to play the quiz and asked to be identified as Melvin Mole, had this to say about the difference:

"Like the best children's fiction, 5,000 Fingers operates as a bridge between the adult and child worlds, written by a man sympathetic to the way the target audience interprets their parents and adult authority in general. The vast majority of stuff being churned out for kids today is generally written by people who have nothing but contempt for the genre but are desperate to get a credit of any sort in order to begin a lifetime of hackwork."

Then our friend Mr. Mole really gets down to it, by quoting from letters by E.B. White regarding the cinematic handling of his books Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little in the 1960s. White summed up how he felt about film adaptations in general with the following passage from 1967:

"It is the fixed purpose of television and motion pictures to scrap the author, sink him without a trace, on the theory that he is incompetent, has never read his own stuff, is not responsible for anything he ever wrote, and wouldn't know what to do about it even if he were. I believe this has something to do with the urge to create, and the only way a TV person or a movie person can become a creator is to sink the guy who did it to begin with."

Mr. Mole goes on to show sad comparisons between what White wanted from adaptations of his work then and the treatment Hollywood doles out to his work now. White wrote: "I want the chance to edit the script whenever anything turns up that is a gross departure or a gross violation. I would also like to be protected against the insertion of wholly new material--songs, jokes, capers, episodes . . . I will give you an example of what I call a 'gross' violation. In my book, Charlotte dies. If, in the screenplay, she should turn up alive at the end of the story in the interests of a happier ending, I would consider this a gross violation and I would regard my disapproval as reasonable." Mr. Mole then adds a parenthetical aside: "Consider the new, improved subtext of Stuart Little, in which the theme of life as a quest is replaced by one suggesting that if you don't like your parents, find better ones. There's an electric boogaloo number in there somewhere too, I believe, though I have avoided both of those pictures like the plague and make the sign of the cross when I catch a glimpse of the direct-to-video Charlotte's Web II: Back in Black."

Our friend MM concludes, sadly, "They really do spit in the faces of people like White and Seuss these days, don't they? White is so direct in his integrity that we can take it for granted that he would have been outraged by what his estate has allowed to be done to his thoughtful books for the sake of greed alone. Seuss, meanwhile, could only reply by rewriting one of his books himself . . . The 500 Hacks of Bartholomew Cubbins, in which a studio assigns every hustling film student and Hawaiian-shirted unfunny-man in town to produce an endless stream of worthless 'development' burying one of his classics in increasingly awful drafts."

To which all I can add is an angry "Amen."

But we can still feel good about the people who made it into this week's winners' circle by correctly identifying the movie: Wayne A. Palmer, E. Yarber, Sally Ryan and Hank Parmer, all of whom have impeccable taste in kids' movies. Congrats, gang-- treat yourself to a big helping of Dreamstuff.

Posted by Steve Monaco at June 23, 2003 5:59 PM

 

The Monday Movie Quiz #9

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First, apologies to last week's winners-- a temporary glitch with Yahoo mail is keeping me from accessing your names right now. Stay tuned.

Anyway, this week's quiz is like last week's: only one clue, and it's musical. The only hint is that "movie" does not mean feature film.

If you know what it is, send me an email before late Sunday night, and you can see your name listed in next week's winners column. Good luck.

Posted by Steve Monaco at June 23, 2003 2:56 AM

 

The funniest man in baseball

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On April 13, 1983, the Chicago Cubs lost both games in a doubleheader and they were loudly booed by the fans. Cubs manager Lee Elia then held the most foul-mouthed press conference ever given. You can listen to it here, but brace yourself for the most profuse profanity since Pete and Ray.

Posted by Steve Monaco at June 22, 2003 10:13 PM

 

The Outbursts of Everett True by Condo & Raper (1907)

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Posted by Steve Monaco at June 21, 2003 1:59 AM

 

Bad Dialogue of the Week

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This week's bad dialogue clip is from a piece of drive-in hucksterism known as the Facts of Life book pitch. (Note: File size is 750K.) It was shown halfway through a film on childbirth. which for years was the only way movies could show female genitalia. While the books and the pitch went back to the '30s, the drive-in audience proved to be the perfect target group for cruddy, smutty little pamphlets with chapters on male sexual ineptitude and cheap birth-control alternatives. (I'll bet anything a nickel bottle of Coke was mentioned in the latter chapter, which was coincidentally on sale at the snack counter for only 50 cents.)

Posted by Steve Monaco at June 20, 2003 2:53 AM

 

Greil Monaco's No-Life Top 10

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I just realized that I haven't done a single top 10 list of any kind since I've been doing this blog, and since top 10s seem to be the main reasons blogs exist in the first place, I thought I should finally get one done. So with apologies to Mr. Marcus, here are some things I like right now.

1) Colin Blunstone & Rod Argent, "Sanctuary" from Out of the Shadows (Koch). Every decade or three, these former Zombies like to redo their best and biggest hit "Time of the Season" as a different song, and it's a winner every time they try. (For another great example, check out "Andorra" from Blunstone's best album, Ennismore.) This one is a contemporary but timelessly catchy plea for love and protection, with good lyrics, groovy playing (Argent's organ licks are all grade-A hooks) and a typically sexy and lovely vocal by Blunstone, the best of the now-unknown Brit-rock vocalists of the '60s and '70s. In an alternate America, one with better radio, it'd be a huge summer hit and we'd all feel a little bit better.

2) Steely Dan, "Pixeleen" from Everything Must Go (Reprise). I love this album already and am totally stuck on this song, an ode to a direct-to-video action heroine. What I find most interesting is that, even though the words are typically great, unless you follow the lyric sheet you can't understand them after a point-- the lead vocals smear into the overall lushness of the sound. It's almost as though Don and Walt felt that this one was so cool and pretty that they'd make it so it could be enjoyed with or without the story. Either way, I think it's irresistable.

3) Pizzicato Five, "Passing By" from Sister Freedom Tapes (Matador). Leave it to the cheeriest pop duo in the world to turn Brian Wilson's dreamy, wordless slow song into a peppy march tune performed on kazoos! The best Beach Boys instrumental since Pet Sounds and a million times less depressed.

4) Wondermints, Mind If We Make Love to You (Smile). Speaking of Brian, The 'Mints were the band-within-the-band that brought his Pet Sounds concerts to life earlier this century, and they can play anything he ever wrote with note-perfect beauty. This is the album they made after the experience of working with the master, and it's the best album Carl Wilson never made. While pastiche charges could be brought against the band, you'd have to be a far greater grump than even yours truly to file them-- these guys love '60s pop-rock so much that I'm willing to consider their occasional lick-cribbing as genuine homage instead. And the songs are all sultry pop confections that do their damnedest to be original and still Beach Boy-esque. A great make-out album for all ages!

5) Stupid Behavior Caught on Tape, narrated by Stacy Keach (Fox). There's no way to convey with words how funny one segment of last week's episode really was, but fool that I am, I'll try. It was a story about a tornado, and the opening shot of the tale's smiling hero revealed the power of the funnel-cloud-- apparently, it knocked out several of his front teeth. After an introductory shot of his trailer home (as Keach put it, his "little piece of paradise"), it cut to the guy's own home video, because when the tornado landed, this idiot decided he'd go out and get some good tape of it. But almost immediately the picture goes black, because our protagonist gets hit by lightning. (The audio is still working, and you hear him say to no one, "I feel like I've been struck.") Then they cut back to Jack O'Lantern today, who admits, "This was probably the stupidest thing I've ever done." One look at his face and you realize it's maybe the stupidest thing anybody has ever done.

6) Old Phil Hendrie radio shows from the '90s. The sad truth is that Hendrie, once Minneapolis's best-kept secret, just keeps getting worse the more popular he becomes. His current show is, to me, unlistenable: all the bits have been done to death long ago (and his current writer is the worst he's ever had) and his talk-only segments are indistiguishable from all the other warmongering right-wing bellowers on the air. But before he became a neo-con Mel Blanc he truly was the funniest one-man band radio ever had, and I've been enjoying revisiting some of his best shows. (For those who don't know the gimmick, Hendrie does the voices of all his make-believe guests and then argues with real irate callers, and his ability to bounce seamlessly between his different characters is amazing.) It's still big laughs to hear Phil's boss David G. Hall call him on the air to rip him (and the "idiot listeners") to pieces, or Korean War vet Lloyd Bonafide explaining why he ran someone off the road with his Winnebago (the guy flipped Lloyd off, and no one tosses a bone at a Korean War vet!), or 16-year-old squeaky-voiced R.C. Collins describing how cool it is to be Goth. Fortunately, Phil churned out great comedy for hours every day during all those years, so even if he never does another funny thing-- and it's looking like that's the case-- there's literally dozens of hours of stuff to enjoy. (I'd put up a sound clip for you, but this litigious prick would sic his lawyers on me before the day was over.)

7) Grand Theft Auto III (Rockstar), one year later. I have all these really good games that I've been given for Xmas, my birthday, and Father's Day and I haven't played one of them because I'm still stuck in Liberty City turning the streets into rivers of blood. This game may be the greatest Rorschach test of all time: the way it's designed, there's absolutely no need to shoot the head off every old woman you see or grind people into paste with your car in order to win. So if you do those things-- and I dearly love to-- it's your problem, not the game's. Doom III is really going to have to be good to top this as the greatest game of all time. (And just so you know, I'm 49 years old!)

Okay, I know that's only seven, but the truth is, I'm just too big of a grouch to like ten things all at once. Maybe next time.

Posted by Steve Monaco at June 19, 2003 12:32 PM

 

Peter Haskett doesn't want to hear it!

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This clip from Shut Up, Little Man (again, direct from the master tapes-- read about it here) features Pete's powers of repetition, as he voices his lack of interest in what Ray has to say. This clip also showcases one of Ray's most stunning claims: that the Hispanic policeman known as Officer Dennis had said to him, "We'll turn your fuckin' hair a-fire the next time" as well as his equally outrageous (and unlikely) rejoinder: "Fine! I've got too much hair anyway, let's do it right now!" As ever, this clip is non-stop cursing and ain't nothin' else. (Note: clip is 750K.)

Posted by Steve Monaco at June 19, 2003 1:24 AM

 

John Wayne, drunken patriot

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"My hope and prayer is that everyone know and love our country for what she truly is and what she stands for."-- John Wayne

Here's another clip from Nick Bougas' ab-fab collection of real-life celebrity bloopers-- this time it's the shitfaced shootist himself, da Duke, giving a slurred but obviously heartfelt speech to a group of right-wing young manhood. (Their actual identity isn't given, so use your imagination.) It was apparently given at the dawn of the era of the dirty hippie, and the former Marion Morrison has a few curse words for them and their scurvy ilk. Enjoy!

Posted by Steve Monaco at June 18, 2003 3:47 AM

 

Tearjerkers for men-- the results

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Several brave saps wrote in with their admissions of weepiness over favorite guy tearjerkers. Since I don't want to embarrass anyone, we'll identify the big sissies by their initials only.

S. wrote: "I doubt you'll get anybody else with this pick: The Iron Giant. Bambi never got a tear from me, but when the big lug flies towards the nuclear missle to save the town, closes his eyes and says 'Soooper-man', it gets me every time. Am I a wimp or what?"

From E.Y.: " Well, I can think right off the top of my head of about four films I've thrown up while watching, which may be an interesting subject for a rainy day, but as far as crying at a film I can think of only two climactic scenes which brought a lump to the throat: The Great Santini and October Sky. Both of these involve the clumsy relationships which keep fathers and sons from directly expressing their love for one another, which seems to be a peculiarly male trait. As far as other films, even if a guy walks into a barrage of bullets for a woman, I can't feel too upset because I figure he's looking for sex in it somehow even after death. That's another peculiarly male trait."

M.G. volunteers: "I cry every time I watch the end of Braveheart, because I know it's only a movie and Mel Gibson's not really being racked or quartered."

P. offered the following: "I can't watch The Third Man without releasing a few tears at its amazing ending. You can sit through this film and be amazed by a million little things. But then, at the very end, with Anton Karas' beautiful zither music playing, Valli walks on by, beneath the tumbling leaves and the dishevled Holly Martens, right by the camera, and the heart of the film shows through. That's when I start to cry. It is only then that I realized (or feel again on repeated viewings) Anna Schmidt's torment through the whole movie, wishing for nothing more than to hold Harry Lime again, and being forced to bury him not once, but twice."

W.P. writes about "a Russian film from 1959, Ballad of a Soldier. It tells about a young soviet soldier in WW2 who has a 3-day pass to go home to visit his mother. In his travels home, he is constantly delayed as he helps various people with their problems. Returning to his village, he has only enough time to embrace his mother before he must return to duty and death. That moment when he and his mother come together had myself and others crying like babies."

Finally, DC says, "I know I'm going to get beat up pretty badly for this one but the movie I Am Sam had me bubbling like a three year old girl. The movie is made to tug at every heartstring, but that last scene on the soccer field with Michael Penn and Aimee Mann singing 'Two of Us' just kills me."

Now, as promised, I'll admit to the movie I refuse to watch if there's anyone else in the room: Robin and Marian, starring Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn. The film has several puddle-up moments (the now-old Merry Men waking in the forest, Robin recounting the horrors of the Crusades to Marian), but it's the final death scene that's the killer. After Marian's beautiful declaration of love for Robin, he shoots an arrow out the window, telling Little John to bury them both where it lands. And then a last shot of the three apples that started the film fresh and new, now withered.

Posted by Steve Monaco at June 17, 2003 12:45 AM

 

The Monday Movie Quiz #8

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This week we break quiz format and offer only one extended audio clip for the clue. It's from a '50s film that is much beloved by both movie buffs and fans of its author-- this is his only original feature-length screenplay. (A big hint to all twelve of my regular readers: he is mentioned by name in my home-schooling piece from awhile back.)

If you know the name of the film, send me an email by late Sunday night and you, too, can feel the warm glow of being a movie quiz winner. Good luck.

P.S. Tomrrow we'll be checking in with readers' favorite tearjerkers for men-- there's still time to send an email with your nomination, so please join the snivelling.

Posted by Steve Monaco at June 16, 2003 1:50 AM

 

Last week's Movie Quiz winners

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Several readers correctly identified last week's quiz movie as Barfly, the only film ever written by Charles Bukowski. To say that's it's the best thing Mickey Roarke ever did may not seem like much of a compliment, but even the author gave him a thumbs-up for his portrayal of the artist as a young drunk. Buk was less satisfied with Faye Dunaway's portrayal of the woman known as Jane in his books, although he approved of her legs-- while I agree with him on her gams, I think this is Dunaway's best work, too. It was the first American film by French director Barbet Schroeder, and he's yet to top it, at least in this country.

So a big toast to this week's winners: Michael Tortorello, Wayne Palmer, E. Yarber, Peter at Mudville Magazine, Christopher Bahn, Sally Ryan and Keith Bailey. Special thanks to old friend Keith who corrected an error of mine: the producers were not the Golan brothers; they were cousins, and one was named Globus. (Check out Keith's fine website, The Unknown Movies.) To all my friends!

Posted by Steve Monaco at June 16, 2003 1:21 AM

 

I Feel Pretty

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 . . . Oh, so pretty . . . I feel pretty and witty and . . . uh, er . . . 

Posted by Steve Monaco at June 15, 2003 7:22 PM

 

The Outbursts of Everett True by Condo & Raper (1907)

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Posted by Steve Monaco at June 14, 2003 12:04 AM

 

Bad dialogue of the week

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Once again, our dialogue clip is from reader favorite Dancing Outlaw, the documentary about Boone County, West Virginia native Jesco White, tap-dancer extrodinaire. This time, Jesse describes the drunken road trip that landed him in the reformatory. (Note to dial-uppers: file size is 900K.)

Posted by Steve Monaco at June 13, 2003 9:50 AM

 

Dennis Miller: The sellout is complete

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Two months ago, I wrote about Dennis Miller's disgusting performance on The Tonight Show (you can read it here). In the piece, I opined that it looked like Miller was using his appearance as an audition for some kind of new right-wing gig. Not to pat myself on the back, but today it was announced that he's joining the Hannity & Colmes show on Fox News as a commentator. Desperate measures for a desperate has-been.

(One interesting note: shortly after my initial piece, I read a posting on Democratic Underground by a person in California- don't remember the city-- that he had just seen Miller on a small local TV station's Saturday evening newscast. What was he doing there? You guessed it: a guest opinion piece.)

Posted by Steve Monaco at June 12, 2003 8:43 PM

 

Tearjerkers for men?

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CP editor and all-around sensitive guy Steve Perry had an idea for a reader survey that I liked quite a bit: What movie, more than any other, makes you bawl like a baby? Now that's a good question to start the conversation rolling anyway, but Steve's idea was to make the survey for men only. While women have long lists of movies they love to cry over, most guys not only don't like as many but they hate to admit to the ones they do. So if you're a guy who's been known to have a good weep over a certain movie and don't mind admitting it in print, send an email with the title and a short comment on why the movie gets you so strongly, and we'll list them here next week. And don't worry, yours truly will also be including his own choice-- it's a movie I absolutely refuse to watch in the presence of anybody else.

Posted by Steve Monaco at June 10, 2003 11:50 PM

 

The Monday Movie Quiz #7

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It's a tougher one this time, although it's also a film that is well-known by people who are not movie buffs, but rather by fans of the author of the screenplay. It was the only one he ever wrote, and his agreement with the director (a European filmmaker who was making his first major American picture) was that not a word would be changed without his okay. When the Golan brothers threatened to stop funding the film, the director went to their office with a chainsaw and threatened to cut off one of his own finger-joints right in front of them on a daily basis if they didn't cough up the dough to finish the thing. They coughed, and fans of the stars, director and creator are all glad they did.

How's that for hints? Hope it's enough, because it's all you get this time. Click here for the three audio clips. (File is 300K.)

And if you know the answer, send me an email before late Sunday night and your name will be added to next week's winners' circle.

Posted by Steve Monaco at June 9, 2003 2:01 AM

 

Last week's Movie Quiz winners

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It was a good turnout of people who knew the name of last week's mystery movie, but that's undoubtedly because it's a great one beloved by film buffs: the 1955 classic The Night of the Hunter, the only motion picture ever directed by actor Charles Laughton, and starring Robert Mitchum in one of his very best roles as the serial-killing preacherman Harry Powell. Also starring in the film was Lillian Gish, leading lady of D.W. Griffith's best work and whose career spanned eight decades. One of its many pleasures is Laughton's use of silent film techniques, but most of the movie is a visual treat-- the children's trip down the river is especially beautiful and magic, aided by Walter Schumann's evocative score and Stanley Cortez's inspired cinematography. (Click here to listen to the lovely and haunting song the little girl sings during this sequence-- file size is 400kb.)

So congratulation are in order to (in order of response time): Wayne A. Palmer, Christopher Bahn, E. Yarber, Hank Parmer, Tim Morris, JMStreep, Peter at Mudville Magazine, and Steve Perry. Again, special kudos to Mr. Yarber, who besides informing me about the film's script-- it's rumored that Laughton rescued the terminally drunk James Agee's screenplay while allowing the writer to keep the credit-- also tipped me to the recent and very interesting article in the Guardian about Laughton and the film. A recommended read. And hats off to all our winners!

P.S. Anyone who has seen this film would agree it's a one-of-kind work that should never be remade. So needless to say, it was not only remade (in the '90s), it was remade as a TV movie, and starring the very Mitchum-like Richard Chamberlain in the lead role! Speaking of Dr. Kildare, he has finally stated publicly that he is gay, at the age of 69. Needless to say, he's pimping a new autobiography, one that should have been titled Does Anyone Still Give a Shit?

Posted by Steve Monaco at June 9, 2003 1:49 AM

 

Mike Malloy will roast in Hell!

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By far, my favorite radio talk-show host is Mike Malloy, who has a three-hour call-in program every weeknight on the i.e. America radio network. Last Friday, he hit a new high when he put a representative of The Christian Action Network (CAN) on the air and proceeded to pimp the living hell out of him.

CAN had sent out a press release regarding their crusade to end the no-fly zone over Disney World-- they want to be allowed to fly anti-gay banners over the park during its annual "Gay Days". Malloy pounced on their offer to give interviews and had their representative on the show for 20 minutes.

What made the segment great was that, rather than take on the CAN clown in a traditional (and tiresome) left vs right debate, Malloy pretended to be even more Christian and conservative than his guest. So for 20 minutes, he sputtered with mock fundamentalist outrage as his guest regaled him with horror stories: families having to watch lifesize Mickeys and Goofys having simulated sex, the screening of gay XXX video on Disney tour buses . . . on and on. Malloy kept egging the guy on, at one point suggesting that ending the no-fly zone might solve everything, because then they could just drop a bomb on Treasure Island and kill all the "queers" below. The CAN guy couldn't bring himself to support that particular idea, but he did agree that gays are "cockroaches" and stated that the Bush administration is filled from the top down with homosexuals.

Needless to say, after the segment, Malloy reverted to his true, fire-breathing leftie self and spent the rest of the show carving the stupid bastard to pieces. It was state-of-the-art radio and was laugh-out-loud funny.

Because Mike stated afterward that listeners were free to share that clip in any way they wanted, I've made it available here. Note: It's 20 minutes long and is 3.2 Mb in size, the size of an average song download. I promise, though, it's worth the wait.

Mike Malloy shows are archived at an excellent webpage, The White Rose Society. if you want to hear the entire program. Also, there was an excellent Salon piece (not always a contradiction in terms) about Mike and his show; it's actually worth putting up with the bullshit ad to get access.

Posted by Steve Monaco at June 8, 2003 2:30 PM

 

The Outbursts of Everett True by Condo & Raper (1907)

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Posted by Steve Monaco at June 7, 2003 1:34 AM

 

A curse on Roger Ebert's prostate!

Filed under: Imported

If you've read anything about ths year's Cannes film festival, you know that all the talk was about a picture called The Brown Bunny, and the talk was all negative. Booing and mocking laughter accompanied the entire movie, and afterward Roger Ebert called it "The worst film in the history of the festival," adding: "I have not seen every film in the history of the festival, yet I feel my judgment will stand."

This didn't sit well with the filmmaker, director and actor Vincent Gallo (who pledged to never direct another film for the rest of his life). In a funny piece in the New York Observer, Frank DiGiacomo follows up on a New York Post Page Six column that mentioned Gallo claims to have put a curse on Ebert's "colon". DiGiacomo writes:

Mr. Gallo told us that with the help of Scorpio Rising filmmaker Kenneth Anger, he had put a curse on Mr. Ebert�s prostate. "I mean, he was at the [closing] ceremony�where I�m not a participant, because clearly I�m not the kind of person who will ever win anything�and every other word out of his fat face was �Vincent Gallo� or �The Brown Bunny.� Does he think, because he�s married to an African-American, that somehow that makes him compassionate or understanding? I mean, he has the physique of a slave trader."

[snip]

[Gallo said,] "The minute that I finish the print of the film, it will never go away, and Roger Ebert will be dead of prostate cancer�if my curse works�within 16 months, and my film will live far past the biopsies that are removed from his anus."

I ask you-- how could such a nice, sensitive guy like this possibly make a bad film?

Posted by Steve Monaco at June 6, 2003 3:09 PM

 

Bad Dialogue of the Week

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It's long been my belief that every generation gets the Michael J. Fox that it deserves. Movie audiences of the '30s must have earned some mighty bad karma, then-- there are few people in films that I find harder to stomach than young Mickey Rooney. (Older Mickey is another story: I'm inordinately fond of his '50s cheapies like Quicksand and the entertaining crap he made for Albert Zugsmith, and I thought he was genuinely good in The Black Stallion.) Over the past eight decades he's resurrected himself more than Dracula, and, more's the pity, there seems to be no end in sight.

(Last year, Mickey even came to my city, Des Moines, to give a one-man show at the town's dinner theater. I actually thought of going-- I haven't seen a good train wreck in ages-- until I learned that a ticket was eighty dollars.)

So this week's bad dialogue clip is an outtake of Mickey blowing take after take of a TV promo and then blaming it on the copy. It comes from one of the best found-sound collections of all time, Nick Bougas's Celebrities at Their Worst, which feature all kinds of wonderful fuck-ups of the rich and famous (a personal favorite is Brian Wilson's drunken rendition of "Barbara Ann", where he's so smashed I don't think he says a real word through the entire performance).

And hey, check out the official Mickey Rooney webpage. Here's the pic they use at their main page.

 

Posted by Steve Monaco at June 6, 2003 1:56 AM

 

Shut Up, Little Man-- from the master tapes!

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"You've been drunk all your life, and you're drunk today."-- Peter Haskett to his roommate Raymond Huffman.

(Another wonderful rendition of Ray by artist M. Flinn, from the comic book Shut Up, Little Man.)

This time our audio clip is truly special: it comes from the original master tapes made by Pete & Ray's long-suffering neighbors, Mitchell D and Eddie Lee Sausage. I'm proud to be the official remastering engineer of the upcoming new CDs that will finally replace the cassette tapes that Eddie Lee has distributed for the past dozen or so years. He got all the original masters out of storage, and even though they'll still never be mistaken for a stereophonic sound spectacular, the improvement in the clarity is remarkable.

(For the record, I am not receiving a penny for my efforts-- this is genuinely a labor of love. To me, this is holy work, and I'm approaching the editing of these tapes with the seriousness of a translator. In other words, when it comes to Pete and Ray, yours truly is King James.)

As of yet, no noise-reduction or any other processing has been introduced, so this clip sounds exactly like the original tape. Also, it's from the beloved Volume One tape "Early Routines," which was made before Eddie and Mitch splurged and bought a $10 microphone, so the sound is even rougher than usual. But long-time listeners to these tapes will hear the improvement instantly.

Anyway, it's just another sunny moment with the boys as they share their feelings about one another. It must be pointed out that Ray is about as drunk as you'll ever hear him, and Pete uses his impairment to really go in for the kill. (Note: the mp3 is 400K.) And remember, as always, this clip contains nothing but foul language.

 

Posted by Steve Monaco at June 4, 2003 1:35 AM

 

Is Bob Hope already dead?

Filed under: Imported

I received a very thought-provoking email from a regular (and anonymous) reader who has proven to me that he knows his stuff about movies, so I thought I'd cut-&-paste what he had to say about Bob's recent 100th birthday celebration and my recent pieces about it.

"I'll share with you a suspicion that's even crueler than anything you managed to say. If you ever repeat this notion, however, please don't mention my name, because I would hate to alienate what loose ties to old Hollywood I possess. It's just that when George Burns died a few weeks after his hundredth birthday, he hadn't been seen for quite some time, just as Hope hasn't appeared in public for three years now. Is it possible that either of them or both had quietly passed away before the triple-digit mark, but the deaths were kept quiet long enough for the centennials to be celebrated?

"Hope was such a public guy that you'd expect him to take some sort of bow during the flood of tributes, even if it was only an audio message along the lines of, 'Rrrrg Hug Ahh.' He's supposedly coherent enough to be writing his umpteenth volume of memoirs with his daughter, so such a simple response would conceivably be possible. Maybe I'm too damn jaded for my own good, but his silence is going to nag at the back of my brain if we're suddenly told that he quietly slipped off in his sleep later this year."

(By the way, Bob posed for this photo!)

Posted by Steve Monaco at June 3, 2003 12:28 AM

 

The Monday Movie Quiz #6

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This week's quiz title is one of my all-time favorites, but since most of you don't know me, that's not much of a clue. So here are three more: it's from the 1950s but one of its stars was from a movie era from long ago, and it was directed by someone well-known in motion pictures but who never directed another; this is his one and only, and I'm not alone in thinking it's a masterpiece. If you know what it is-- or think you do-- send me an email before late Sunday night, and if you're right, you'll get your name in next Monday's Couch Pundit. Good luck!

Posted by Steve Monaco at June 2, 2003 1:53 AM

 

Last week's Movie Quiz winner

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That's right-- winner. Singular. So big congratulations to Wayne A. Palmer, the only one to recognize that the music from last week's quiz was from Mario Bava's 1968 campfest Danger: Diabolik starring John Phillip Law. Wayne also knew that the musical score by Ennio Morricone, which is beloved by all the Maestro's fans, only exists on the film itself-- alas, the master tapes for everything other than the main theme were destroyed years ago. (Fortunately, most of the time when the music's on in the film, the dialogue is off, and there's a decent bootleg made from the laser disc of the movie.)

Posted by Steve Monaco at June 2, 2003 1:43 AM

 

More Jesco!

Filed under: Imported

I was pleased that people seemed to like last week's sound clip from the documentary Dancing Outlaw as much as I do. (To hear it, as well as learn more about its subject, go here and scroll down.) So for a Sunday treat, here's another, longer clip (for the dial-up crowd, note: it's almost 500K) where Jesse and his wife, Norma Jean, calmly talk over their marital problems.

And here's yet another of Jesco's welcome mats that decorate his holler:

Posted by Steve Monaco at June 1, 2003 2:27 AM

 

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