Podcasts about daily variety

TVC 679.1: TV Confidential remembers actor, author, playwright, and decorated U.S. Army veteran James McEachin (Tenafly, Matlock, The Perry Mason Mysteries, Play Misty for Me, The Heroin Factor, Farewell to the Mockingbirds, The Alpha Caper, Above the Call: Beyond the Duty, Reveille, Swing Low, My Sweet Chariot: The Ballad of Jimmy Mack) by bringing you an encore presentation of a conversation with James that originally aired in February 2013. James McEachin passed away on Jan. 11, 2025 at the age of ninety-four. At the time we spoke with James in February 2013, he had just released the audiobook edition of Tell Me a Tale: A Novel of the Old South that delves into the many issues of slavery during the Civil War era while also offering a better understanding of the white man's view of the times. James' reading of the Tell Me a Tale audiobook ”is so good,” said Peter Bart of Daily Variety, “it would make Morgan Freeman a fan.” Topics this segment how James originally wrote Tell Me a Tale in 1965, and how the novel generated interest from both Henry Fonda and Hal Holbrook. TV Confidential spoke to James McEachin a second time in November 2014. That conversation is available for listening on demand for free by clicking here. 

Sun, 16 Feb 2025 07:00:00 +0000 https://efm-industry-insights.podigee.io/67-from-local-to-universal-serial-storytelling-for-global-audiences 547dccba98c2816635fec9482d0e85f0 Industry Insights – The EFM Podcast is presented by the European Film Market of the Berlinale. Hosted by editor and journalist Michael Schneider, it delves deep into the rapidly evolving film industry. In this episode, we bring together a diverse group of industry experts for a dynamic conversation about the ever-evolving world of TV series. We delve into what makes a series truly international—what allows a show to break through cultural and language barriers and resonate with audiences worldwide? Is it the warmth of relatable characters that audiences are seeking during challenging times, or is it the exploration of social-political issues and dystopian themes that capture our collective attention? Ultimately, the answer lies in universally compelling stories that speak to viewers beyond the confines of a single market. While it may be a tougher feat for comedy, there's a clear call for future series to transcend these boundaries and reach a global audience. In this discussion, Anna Rohde, Steve Matthews, Maria Cervera, and Paul Telegdy offer their unique perspectives on the international series market, providing predictions on where global audiences are headed next. They also explore the current trends shaping the industry, including the impact of financial shifts. Tune in to hear the experts tackle the future of series content and its journey across the globe. The Berlinale Series Market is the EFM's boutique market for serial content from all over the world. From February 16 to 19, industry experts, creatives, buyers and distributors will meet again at CinemaxX at Potsdamer Platz and Gropius Bau. Steve Matthews is the Head of Scripted, Creative, at Banijay Entertainment, where he plays a pivotal role in the group's production development process, leading on creative initiatives for original drama projects. Before joining Banijay Entertainment, Matthews was VP and Executive Producer, Scripted, at HBO Europe, having joined the business back in 2014. In that post, he partnered with local teams across Central Europe, Spain and Nordics, to spearhead the development of original series, miniseries, and international adaptations. His portfolio included Pustina, Umbre, Blinded By The Lights, Uspjeh, The Sleepers, Foodie Love, Gösta; and from Banijay Entertainment's footprint specifically, 30 Coins (Pokeepsie), Beforeigners (Rubicon), and Beartown (Filmlance). Additionally, Matthews is dedicated to mentoring talent, and set up Banijay Bootcamp, a specific programme for scripted creatives. Before joining Germany's distribution and production house Beta Film GmbH as International Creative Executive & Content Editor, Anna Rohde studied dramaturgy, philosophy, and literature at Munich's Theatre Academy and at Ludwig Maximilian University Munich. Before her studies, she worked as assistant director in many national and international TV and feature films. She is member of Germany's VeDRA (Verband für Film- und Fernsehdramaturgie e.V.), jury member of e.g. the International Emmy's semi-finals, the Council of Europe Eurimages development award and – among others - mentor of SFF's (Sarajevo Film Festival) CineLink workshop, the post-graduate Serial Eyes writing program. As content editor, she has been working on many internationally successful shows from the CEE region, most recently on the multi-awarded THE SILENCE (2021-2023) and GOLDEN BOY (2021), Jasmila Zbanic's Venice premiered I KNOW YOUR SOUL (2023), and the Canneseries-awarded OPERATION SABRE (2024). Maria Cervera is Head of Content for Cattleya Producciones, part of ITV Studios in Spain. During her 20 year+ professional path she has focused on series development and production for local and international markets, with previous roles at Paramount's International TV Studio as Head of Content for EMEAA and within the Netflix International team. She also teaches at several writing programs including Berlin's Serial Eyes and Spain's screenwriters' guild-sponsored master. Paul Telegdy has worked across all genres of content, on brands as diverse as Top Gear, Teletubbies, Dr Who, The Voice and Planet Earth, to name a handful. Paul worked at NBCUniversal for 12 years, becoming Chairman of NBC in 2019, before that the BBC for ten years. In 2021, Paul co-founded The Whole Spiel, a media, entertainment, and gaming company based in Berlin and Los Angeles. With a degree in Korean and Japanese, and having lived in Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, Japan, The US and the UK, Paul has a distinctly global view of content and opportunity. The host Michael Schneider has been covering the business of television for more than 25 years — most of that time at Variety, where he oversees television coverage as its TV Editor. Schneider has won several entertainment journalism awards and also regularly contributes to local outlets including Spectrum News 1 and KCRW. He was previously Executive Editor at IndieWire; the Chief Content Officer for TV Guide Magazine; and TV Editor at Daily Variety. Mike regularly moderates industry and TV show panels at events including Comic-Con, PaleyFest, HRTS, NATPE and others, and once won a staring contest with Jon Hamm on the Dolby Theatre stage. This podcast episode has been developed in collaboration with Variety. The Berlinale's European Film Market is the first international film market of the year, where the film industry starts its business. Industry Insights - The EFM Podcast puts a spotlight on highly topical and trendsetting industry issues, thereby creating a compass for the forthcoming film year. The year-round podcast is produced in cooperation with Goethe-Institut and co-funded by Creative Europe MEDIA. full no Berlinale,European Film Market,EFM,Entertainment Business,Series,TV,Deadline European Film Market

TVC 669.4: Ed welcomes back Ray Richmond, longtime television critic and entertainment reporter for such trade publications as The Hollywood Reporter and Daily Variety. Ray's latest book, The Sopranos: The Complete Visual History, celebrates the twenty-fifth anniversary of the premiere of The Sopranos, the multi-Emmy Award-winning drama created by David Chase and starring James Gandolfini that broke new ground in television when it premiered in 1999, launching the current Golden Age of dramatic television on cable and digital platforms, while also taking the concept of anti-hero as TV protagonist to an entirely different level. Topics this segment include how each episode of The Sopranos is a like a one-hour movie; why so many viewers embraced the characters on The Sopranos like extended members of their own families; and why “Paulie Walnuts,” the character played by Tony Sirico, is Ray's favorite character. The Sopranos: The Complete Visual History is available wherever books are sold through Insight Editions.

Front Row Classics welcomes back author and historian Joseph McBride. Brandon and Joe are discussing the newly revised and expanded edition of his critical study, "John Ford". Co-authored by the late Michael Wilmington, the book takes a look at Ford's key films and recurring themes found throughout his filmography. Brandon and Joe discuss several of these films & themes as well as Ford's directorial style. "John Ford" is available from University Press of Kentucky wherever books are sold. Joseph McBride is the author of twenty-four books, including the biography Searchingfor John Ford (hailed as "definitive" by the New YorkTimes and the IrishTimes), biographies of Capra and Spielberg, three books on Welles, and critical studies of Ernst Lubitsch and Billy Wilder. A former film and television writer as well as a reporter, reviewer, and columnist for Daily Variety in Hollywood, McBride is a professor in the School of Cinema at San Francisco State University

In today's episode, I sit down with Tim Chey, the director and producer of the upcoming film "The Firing Squad," set to release on August 2, 2024. Tim shares his remarkable journey from Atheism and Buddhism to his radical conversion to Christianity, his career highs and lows, and his commitment to making faith-based films. His story is one of transformation, perseverance, and unwavering faith in the face of adversity. We also talk about the movie and how the concept impacted Tim. It is based off of the story of the Christians who were executed by firing squad in Indonesia on April 29, 2015. It stars Kevin Sorbo and Cuba Gooding Jr. Keep an eye out for advanced ticket sales near you to get the interest going and get it in more theaters! Bio: Educated at Harvard University, USC Film School, and Boston University School of Law. Chey's work has been seen on E! Entertainment, The Wall Street Journal, The LA Times, VIBE TV, MTV, Daily Variety, Hollywood Reporter, TNT, USA Networks, the Dove Awards, MovieGuide Awards, People Magazine, and the New York Times. Chey has produced, written and directed nine feature films, including his latest ‘Epic Journey' (2013) which took him to 27 countries and ‘Final' (2013) based on his novel. He also produced ‘The Underground Railroad' (2013) starring Cuba Gooding, Jr. William Sadler, and Sharon Leal. In 2011, his film, 'Suing the Devil' starring Malcolm McDowell, Tom Sizemore, Corbin Bernsen, Rebecca St. James ranked #8 nationwide out of 17,000 movies on Walmart's On Demand. The film was shot in Sydney, Australia and won the coveted 5-star Dove Award. Chey is the winner of two 5-Star Dove Awards and was the recipient of the prestigious 'Spirit of the Independent' award for Best Director. He served as chairman of the Student Awards committee at the Director's Guild of America. He divides his time between Honolulu and Los Angeles. He's happily married with two children. Anchor Verse: Romans 8:28 Hebrews 6:10 Ephesians 4:31 Philippians 4:13 Connect with Tim: Movie Website: https://www.firingsquadfilm.com/  Website: http://timchey.net  https://www.instagram.com/tim_chey FB: https://www.facebook.com/TimChey ***We love hearing from our listeners! Sharing your thoughts through reviews is a fantastic way to be a part of our podcast family and contribute to the conversation. If you've enjoyed our podcast, leaving a review is quick and easy! Just head to Apple podcasts or wherever you are tuning in and share your thoughts. Your feedback makes a big difference!***

[Can a movie touch a Million lives for salvation? Check out the movie's link https://www.thefiringsquadmovie.com/ to find out more on how you can be a part of making that happen - it already won many on the film set to Christ. Listen to hear more. In Theaters this August. BTD]Timothy Chey's latest project, 'The Firing Squad,' starring James Barrington, Kevin Sorbo (“God's Not Dead”, “Let There Be Light”), and Cuba Gooding, Jr., is a compelling true story of redemption that delves into transformation through faith. The film showcases the power of Christianity in turning the lives of drug dealers into devout believers, offering a message of hope, healing, and renewal. Tim Chey Timothy Chey was a former Harvard-educated atheist who found Christ in his 30's. Before he found Christ, he was a litigation attorney who worked for two of the top, largest law firms in LA. He wasn't happy and decided to go into film directing/producing. He directed his first film that Universal Studios acquired in 1998.Educated at Harvard University, USC Film School, and Boston University School of Law. Chey's work has been seen on E! Entertainment, The Wall Street Journal, The LA Times, VIBE TV, MTV, Daily Variety, Hollywood Reporter, TNT, USA Networks, the Dove Awards, MovieGuide Awards, People Magazine, and the New York Times.Chey has produced, written and directed nine feature films, including his latest ‘Epic Journey' (2013) which took him to 27 countries and ‘Final' (2013) based on his novel.He also produced ‘The Underground Railroad' (2013) starring Cuba Gooding, Jr. William Sadler, and Sharon Leal.In 2011, his film, 'Suing the Devil' starring Malcolm McDowell, Tom Sizemore, Corbin Bernsen, Rebecca St. James ranked #8 nationwide out of 17,000 movies on Walmart's On Demand. The film was shot in Sydney, Australia and won the coveted 5-star Dove Award.Chey is the winner of two 5-Star Dove Awards and was the recipient of the prestigious 'Spirit of the Independent' award for Best Director. He served as chairman of the Student Awards committee at the Director's Guild of America.He divides his time between Honolulu and Los Angeles. He's happily married with two children.Tim CheyThe Firing Squad

CTAG Studios Present ~ The (Almost)Daily Variety Live Stream Show Extravaganze a Zencast Audioblog

From September 26, 2016: Comedy legend and Chicago's own Tom Dreesen discusses his comedy career and his appearances on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson (more than 60!), along with a DVD set:  THE TONIGHT SHOW STARRING JOHNNY CARSON: THE VAULT SERIES. ABOUT TOM DREESEN (2016 BIO):Tom Dreesen's life is equal parts comedy and philanthropy. He excels at both, and has created an extraordinary legacy in both arenas. Dreesen has made over 500 appearances on national television as a stand-up comedian, including more than 60 appearances on The Tonight Show. He was a favorite guest of David Letterman, and frequently hosted the show in Letterman's absence. He was also a favorite guest of Johnny Carson. For 13 years he toured cross country and opened for Frank Sinatra, and has appeared countless times in Las Vegas, Tahoe, Reno and Atlantic City with artists like Smokey Robinson, Liza Minnelli, Natalie Cole and Sammy Davis, Jr. Tom has acted in numerous television shows – fromColumbo to Murder She Wrote – and appeared in motion pictures including Man on the Moon and Spaceballs. He has recorded comedy albums, starred in his own TV comedy special, Dreesen Street, and hosted a late night talk show in Chicago, Night Time Starring Tom Dreesen.He is currently appearing to rave reviews around the country in his one-man show “An Evening Of Laughter and Memories of Sinatra.” Dreesen's comic style is down-to-earth, warm and unpretentious. Daily Variety called him “a thorough pro… one of the most respected family comedians of our time.” Larry Wilde ,author of The Great Comedians said about Tom's performances. “Excellent Material, Impeccable Timing, Tom Dreesen is the Quintessential Comedian.” Frank Sinatra, who called himself a “saloon singer,” characterized Dreesen as a “saloon comedian.” “We're a couple of neighborhood kind of guys,” said Sinatra.Dreesen has also made an indelible mark with his philanthropic activities. For 30 years he has lent his talent to over 100 charities, and founded a “Day for Darlene” to benefit Multiple Sclerosis Research. He ran 26 miles on three occasions for the event, which is named for his late sister who was afflicted with MS.And he's still going strong. A proud veteran of the United States Navy, he continues to perform for US troops all over the world, and recently appeared at numerous bases in Iraq. Tom Dreesen's hometown of Harvey, Illinois named a street after him. He was a 2005 recipient of the Ellis Island Medal of Honor.

On this episode, we do our first deep dive into the John Landis filmography, to talk about one of his lesser celebrated film, the 1985 Jeff Goldblum/Michelle Pfeiffer morbid comedy Into the Night. ----more---- TRANSCRIPT From Los Angeles, California, the Entertainment Capital of the World, it's The 80s Movies Podcast. I am your host, Edward Havens. Thank you for listening today.   Long time listeners to this show know that I am not the biggest fan of John Landis, the person. I've spoken about Landis, and especially about his irresponsibility and seeming callousness when it comes to the helicopter accident on the set of his segment for the 1983 film The Twilight Zone which took the lives of actors Vic Morrow, Myca Dinh Le and Renee Shin-Yi Chen, enough where I don't wish to rehash it once again.   But when one does a podcast that celebrates the movies of the 1980s, every once in a while, one is going to have to talk about John Landis and his movies. He did direct eight movies, one documentary and a segment in an anthology film during the decade, and several of them, both before and after the 1982 helicopter accident, are actually pretty good films.   For this episode, we're going to talk about one of his lesser known and celebrated films from the decade, despite its stacked cast.   We're talking about 1985's Into the Night.   But, as always, before we get to Into the Night, some backstory.   John David Landis was born in Chicago in 1950, but his family moved to Los Angeles when he was four months old. While he grew up in the City of Angels, he still considers himself a Chicagoan, which is an important factoid to point out a little later in his life.   After graduating from high school in 1968, Landis got his first job in the film industry the way many a young man and woman did in those days: through the mail room at a major studio, his being Twentieth Century-Fox. He wasn't all that fond of the mail room. Even since he had seen The  7th Voyage of Sinbad at the age of eight, he knew he wanted to be a filmmaker, and you're not going to become a filmmaker in the mail room. By chance, he would get a job as a production assistant on the Clint Eastwood/Telly Savalas World War II comedy/drama Kelly's Heroes, despite the fact that the film would be shooting in Yugoslavia. During the shoot, he would become friendly with the film's co-stars Don Rickles and Donald Sutherland. When the assistant director on the film got sick and had to go back to the United States, Landis positioned himself to be the logical, and readily available, replacement. Once Kelly's Heroes finished shooting, Landis would spend his time working on other films that were shooting in Italy and the United Kingdom. It is said he was a stuntman on Sergio Leone's The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, but I'm going to call shenanigans on that one, as the film was made in 1966, when Landis was only sixteen years old and not yet working in the film industry. I'm also going to call shenanigans on his working as a stunt performer on Leone's 1968 film Once Upon a Time in the West, and Tony Richardson's 1968 film The Charge of the Light Brigade, and Peter Collinson's 1969 film The Italian Job, which also were all filmed and released into theatres before Landis made his way to Europe the first time around.   In 1971, Landis would write and direct his first film, a low-budget horror comedy called Schlock, which would star Landis as the title character, in an ape suit designed by master makeup creator Rick Baker. The $60k film was Landis's homage to the monster movies he grew up watching, and his crew would spend 12 days in production, stealing shots wherever they could  because they could not afford filming permits. For more than a year, Landis would show the completed film to any distributor that would give him the time of day, but no one was interested in a very quirky comedy featuring a guy in a gorilla suit playing it very very straight.   Somehow, Johnny Carson was able to screen a print of the film sometime in the fall of 1972, and the powerful talk show host loved it. On November 2nd, 1972, Carson would have Landis on The Tonight Show to talk about his movie. Landis was only 22 at the time, and the exposure on Carson would drive great interest in the film from a number of smaller independent distributors would wouldn't take his calls even a week earlier. Jack H. Harris Enterprises would be the victor, and they would first release Schlock on twenty screens in Los Angeles on December 12th, 1973, the top of a double bill alongside the truly schlocky Son of The Blob. The film would get a very good reception from the local press, including positive reviews from the notoriously prickly Los Angeles Times critic Kevin Thomas, and an unnamed critic in the pages of the industry trade publication Daily Variety. The film would move from market to market every few weeks, and the film would make a tidy little profit for everyone involved. But it would be four more years until Landis would make his follow-up film.   The Kentucky Fried Movie originated not with Landis but with three guys from Madison, Wisconsin who started their own theatre troop while attending the University of Wisconsin before moving it to West Los Angeles in 1971. Those guys, brothers David and Jerry Zucker, and their high school friend Jim Abrahams, had written a number of sketches for their stage shows over a four year period, and felt a number of them could translate well to film, as long as they could come up with a way to link them all together. Although they would be aware of Ken Shapiro's 1974 comedy anthology movie The Groove Tube, a series of sketches shot on videotape shown in movie theatres on the East Coast at midnight on Saturday nights, it would finally hit them in 1976, when Neal Israel's anthology sketch comedy movie TunnelVision became a small hit in theatres. That movie featured Chevy Chase and Laraine Newman, two of the stars of NBC's hit show Saturday Night Live, which was the real reason the film was a hit, but that didn't matter to Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker.   The Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker team decided they needed to not just tell potential backers about the film but show them what they would be getting. They would raise $35,000 to film a ten minute segment, but none of them had ever directed anything for film before, so they would start looking for an experienced director who would be willing to work on a movie like theirs for little to no money.   Through mutual friend Bob Weiss, the trio would meet and get to know John Landis, who would come aboard to direct the presentation reel, if not the entire film should it get funded. That segment, if you've seen Kentucky Fried Movie, included the fake trailer for Cleopatra Schwartz, a parody of blaxploitation movies. The guys would screen the presentation reel first to Kim Jorgensen, the owner of the famed arthouse theatre the Nuart here in Los Angeles, and Jorgensen loved it. He would put up part of the $650k budget himself, and he would show the reel to his friends who also ran theatres, not just in Los Angeles, whenever they were in town, and it would be through a consortium of independent movie theatre owners that Kentucky Fried Movie would get financed.   The movie would be released on August 10th, 1977, ironically the same day as another independent sketch comedy movie, Can I Do It Till I Need Glasses?, was released. But Kentucky Fried Movie would have the powerful United Artists Theatres behind them, as they would make the movie the very first release through their own distribution company, United Film Distribution. I did a three part series on UFDC back in 2021, if you'd like to learn more about them. Featuring such name actors as Bill Bixby, Henry Gibson, George Lazenby and Donald Sutherland, Kentucky Fried Movie would earn more than $7m in theatres, and would not only give John Landis the hit he needed to move up the ranks, but it would give Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker the opportunity to make their own movie. But we'll talk about Airplane! sometime in the future.   Shortly after the release of Kentuck Fried Movie, Landis would get hired to direct Animal House, which would become the surprise success of 1978 and lead Landis into directing The Blues Brothers, which is probably the most John Landis movie that will ever be made. Big, loud, schizophrenic, a little too long for its own good, and filled with a load of in-jokes and cameos that are built only for film fanatics and/or John Landis fanatics. The success of The Blues Brothers would give Landis the chance to make his dream project, a horror comedy he had written more than a decade before.   An American Werewolf in London was the right mix of comedy and horror, in-jokes and great needle drops, with some of the best practical makeup effects ever created for a movie. Makeup effects so good that, in fact, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences would make the occasionally given Best Makeup Effects Oscar a permanent category, and Werewolf would win that category's first competitive Oscar.   In 1982, Landis would direct Coming Soon, one of the first direct-to-home video movies ever released. Narrated by Jamie Lee Curtis, Coming Soon was, essentially, edited clips from 34 old horror and thriller trailers for movies owned by Universal, from Frankenstein and Dracula to Psycho and The Birds. It's only 55 minutes long, but the video did help younger burgeoning cineasts learn more about the history of Universal's monster movies.   And then, as previously mentioned, there was the accident during the filming of The Twilight Zone.   Landis was able to recover enough emotionally from the tragedy to direct Trading Places with Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd in the winter of 1982/83, another hit that maybe showed Hollywood the public wasn't as concerned about the Twilight Zone accident as they worried it would. The Twilight Zone movie would be released three weeks after Trading Places, and while it was not that big a hit, it wasn't quite the bomb it was expected to be because of the accident.   Which brings us to Into the Night.   While Landis was working on the final edit of Trading Places, the President of Universal Pictures, Sean Daniels, contacted Landis about what his next project might be. Universal was where Landis had made Animal House, The Blues Brothers and American Werewolf, so it would not be unusual for a studio head to check up on a filmmaker who had made three recent successful films for them. Specifically, Daniels wanted to pitch Landis on a screenplay the studio had in development called Into the Night. Ron Koslow, the writer of the 1976 Sam Elliott drama Lifeguard, had written the script on spec which the studio had picked up, about an average, ordinary guy who, upon discovering his wife is having an affair, who finds himself in the middle of an international incident involving jewel smuggling out of Iran. Maybe this might be something he would be interested in working on, as it would be both right up his alley, a comedy, and something he'd never done before, a romantic action thriller.   Landis would agree to make the film, if he were allowed some leeway in casting.   For the role of Ed Okin, an aerospace engineer whose insomnia leads him to the Los Angeles International Airport in search of some rest, Landis wanted Jeff Goldblum, who had made more than 15 films over the past decade, including Annie Hall, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Big Chill and The Right Stuff, but had never been the lead in a movie to this point. For Diana, the jewel smuggler who enlists the unwitting Ed into her strange world, Landis wanted Michelle Pfeiffer, the gorgeous star of Grease 2 and Scarface. But mostly, Landis wanted to fill as many of supporting roles with either actors he had worked with before, like Dan Aykroyd and Bruce McGill, or filmmakers who were either contemporaries of Landis and/or were filmmakers he had admired. Amongst those he would get would be Jack Arnold, Paul Bartel, David Cronenberg, Jonathan Demme, Richard Franklin, Amy Heckerling, Colin Higgins, Jim Henson, Lawrence Kasdan, Jonathan Lynn, Paul Mazursky, Don Siegel, and Roger Vadim, as well as Jaws screenwriter Carl Gottlieb, Midnight Cowboy writer Waldo Salt, personal trainer to the stars Jake Steinfeld, music legends David Bowie and Carl Perkins, and several recent Playboy Playmates. Landis himself would be featured as one of the four Iranian agents chasing Pfeiffer's character.   While neither Perkins nor Bowie would appear on the soundtrack to the film, Landis was able to get blues legend B.B. King to perform three songs, two brand new songs as well as a cover of the Wilson Pickett classic In the Midnight Hour.   Originally scheduled to be produced by Joel Douglas, brother of Michael and son of Kirk, Into the Night would go into production on April 2nd, 1984, under the leadership of first-time producer Ron Koslow and Landis's producing partner George Folsey, Jr.   The movie would make great use of dozens of iconic Los Angeles locations, including the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, the Shubert Theatre in Century City, the Ships Coffee Shot on La Cienega, the flagship Tiffanys and Company in Beverly Hills, Randy's Donuts, and the aforementioned airport. But on Monday, April 23rd, the start of the fourth week of shooting, the director was ordered to stand trial on charges of involuntary manslaughter due to the accident on the Twilight Zone set. But the trial would not start until months after Into the Night was scheduled to complete its shoot. In an article about the indictment printed in the Los Angeles Times two days later, Universal Studios head Sean Daniels was insistent the studio had made no special plans in the event of Landis' possible conviction. Had he been found guilty of involuntary manslaughter, Landis was looking at up to six years in prison.   The film would wrap production in early June, and Landis would spend the rest of the year in an editing bay on the Universal lot with his editor, Malcolm Campbell, who had also cut An American Werewolf in London, Trading Places, the Michael Jackson Thriller short film, and Landis's segment and the Landis-shot prologue to The Twilight Zone.   During this time, Universal would set a February 22nd, 1985 release date for the film, an unusual move, as every movie Landis had made since Kentucky Fried Movie had been released during the summer movie season, and there was nothing about Into the Night that screamed late Winter.   I've long been a proponent of certain movies having a right time to be released, and late February never felt like the right time to release a morbid comedy, especially one that takes place in sunny Los Angeles. When Into the Night opened in New York City, at the Loews New York Twin at Second Avenue and 66th Street, the high in the city was 43 degrees, after an overnight low of 25 degrees. What New Yorker wants to freeze his or her butt off to see Jeff Goldblum run around Los Angeles with Michelle Pfeiffer in a light red leather jacket and a thin white t-shirt, if she's wearing anything at all? Well, actually, that last part wasn't so bad. But still, a $40,000 opening weekend gross at the 525 seat New York Twin would be one of the better grosses for all of the city. In Los Angeles, where the weather was in the 60s all weekend, the film would gross $65,500 between the 424 seat Avco Cinema 2 in Westwood and the 915 seat Cinerama Dome in Hollywood.   The reviews, like with many of Landis's films, were mixed.   Richard Corliss of Time Magazine would find the film irresistible and a sparkling thriller, calling Goldblum and Pfeiffer two of the most engaging young actors working. Peter Travers, writing for People Magazine at the time, would anoint the film with a rarely used noun in film criticism, calling it a “pip.” Travers would also call Pfeiffer a knockout of the first order, with a newly uncovered flair for comedy. Guess he hadn't seen her in the 1979 ABC spin-off of Animal House, called Delta House, in which she played The Bombshell, or in Floyd Mutrix's 1980 comedy The Hollywood Knights.    But the majority of critics would find plenty to fault with the film. The general critical feeling for the film was that it was too inside baseball for most people, as typified by Vincent Canby in his review for the New York Times. Canby would dismiss the film as having an insidey, which is not a word, manner of a movie made not for the rest of us but for the moviemakers on the Bel Air circuit who watch each other's films in their own screening room.   After two weeks of exclusive engagements in New York and Los Angeles, Universal would expand the film to 1096 screens on March 8th, where the film would gross $2.57m, putting it in fifth place for the weekend, nearly a million dollars less than fellow Universal Pictures film The Breakfast Club, which was in its fourth week of release and in ninety fewer theatres. After a fourth weekend of release, where the film would come in fifth place again with $1.95m, now nearly a million and a half behind The Breakfast Club, Universal would start to migrate the film out of first run theatres and into dollar houses, in order to make room for another film of theirs, Peter Bogdanovich's comeback film Mask, which would be itself expanding from limited release to wide release on March 22nd. Into the Night would continue to play at the second-run theatres for months, but its final gross of $7.56m wouldn't even cover the film's $8m production budget.   Despite the fact that it has both Jeff Goldblum and Michelle Pfeiffer as its leads, Into the Night would not become a cult film on home video the way that many films neglected by audiences in theatres would find a second life.   I thought the film was good when I saw it opening night at the Aptos Twin. I enjoyed the obvious chemistry between the two leads, and I enjoyed the insidey manner in which there were so many famous filmmakers doing cameos in the film. I remember wishing there was more of David Bowie, since there were very few people, actors or musicians, who would fill the screen with so much charm and charisma, even when playing a bad guy. And I enjoyed listening to B.B. King on the soundtrack, as I had just started to get into the blues during my senior year of high school.   I revisited the film, which you can rent or buy on Apple TV, Amazon and several other major streaming services, for the podcast, and although I didn't enjoy the film as much as I remember doing so in 1985, it was clear that these two actors were going to become big stars somewhere down the road. Goldblum, of course, would become a star the following year, thanks to his incredible work in David Cronenberg's The Fly. Incidentally, Goldblum and Cronenberg would meet for the first time on the set of Into the Night. And, of course, Michelle Pfeiffer would explode in 1987, thanks to her work with Susan Sarandon, Cher and Jack Nicholson in The Witches of Eastwick, which she would follow up with not one, not two but three powerhouse performances of completely different natures in 1988, in Jonathan Demme's Married to the Mob, Robert Towne's Tequila Sunrise, and her Oscar-nominated work in Stephen Frears' Dangerous Liaisons. Incidentally, Pfeiffer and Jonathan Demme would also meet for the first time on the set of Into the Night, so maybe it was kismet that all these things happened in part because of the unusual casting desires of John Landis.   Thank you for joining us. We'll talk again soon, when Episode 108, on Martha Coolidge's Valley Girl, is released.     Remember to visit this episode's page on our website, The80sMoviePodcast.com, for extra materials about Into the Night.   The 80s Movies Podcast has been researched, written, narrated and edited by Edward Havens for Idiosyncratic Entertainment.   Thank you again.   Good night.

On this episode, we do our first deep dive into the John Landis filmography, to talk about one of his lesser celebrated film, the 1985 Jeff Goldblum/Michelle Pfeiffer morbid comedy Into the Night. ----more---- TRANSCRIPT From Los Angeles, California, the Entertainment Capital of the World, it's The 80s Movies Podcast. I am your host, Edward Havens. Thank you for listening today.   Long time listeners to this show know that I am not the biggest fan of John Landis, the person. I've spoken about Landis, and especially about his irresponsibility and seeming callousness when it comes to the helicopter accident on the set of his segment for the 1983 film The Twilight Zone which took the lives of actors Vic Morrow, Myca Dinh Le and Renee Shin-Yi Chen, enough where I don't wish to rehash it once again.   But when one does a podcast that celebrates the movies of the 1980s, every once in a while, one is going to have to talk about John Landis and his movies. He did direct eight movies, one documentary and a segment in an anthology film during the decade, and several of them, both before and after the 1982 helicopter accident, are actually pretty good films.   For this episode, we're going to talk about one of his lesser known and celebrated films from the decade, despite its stacked cast.   We're talking about 1985's Into the Night.   But, as always, before we get to Into the Night, some backstory.   John David Landis was born in Chicago in 1950, but his family moved to Los Angeles when he was four months old. While he grew up in the City of Angels, he still considers himself a Chicagoan, which is an important factoid to point out a little later in his life.   After graduating from high school in 1968, Landis got his first job in the film industry the way many a young man and woman did in those days: through the mail room at a major studio, his being Twentieth Century-Fox. He wasn't all that fond of the mail room. Even since he had seen The  7th Voyage of Sinbad at the age of eight, he knew he wanted to be a filmmaker, and you're not going to become a filmmaker in the mail room. By chance, he would get a job as a production assistant on the Clint Eastwood/Telly Savalas World War II comedy/drama Kelly's Heroes, despite the fact that the film would be shooting in Yugoslavia. During the shoot, he would become friendly with the film's co-stars Don Rickles and Donald Sutherland. When the assistant director on the film got sick and had to go back to the United States, Landis positioned himself to be the logical, and readily available, replacement. Once Kelly's Heroes finished shooting, Landis would spend his time working on other films that were shooting in Italy and the United Kingdom. It is said he was a stuntman on Sergio Leone's The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, but I'm going to call shenanigans on that one, as the film was made in 1966, when Landis was only sixteen years old and not yet working in the film industry. I'm also going to call shenanigans on his working as a stunt performer on Leone's 1968 film Once Upon a Time in the West, and Tony Richardson's 1968 film The Charge of the Light Brigade, and Peter Collinson's 1969 film The Italian Job, which also were all filmed and released into theatres before Landis made his way to Europe the first time around.   In 1971, Landis would write and direct his first film, a low-budget horror comedy called Schlock, which would star Landis as the title character, in an ape suit designed by master makeup creator Rick Baker. The $60k film was Landis's homage to the monster movies he grew up watching, and his crew would spend 12 days in production, stealing shots wherever they could  because they could not afford filming permits. For more than a year, Landis would show the completed film to any distributor that would give him the time of day, but no one was interested in a very quirky comedy featuring a guy in a gorilla suit playing it very very straight.   Somehow, Johnny Carson was able to screen a print of the film sometime in the fall of 1972, and the powerful talk show host loved it. On November 2nd, 1972, Carson would have Landis on The Tonight Show to talk about his movie. Landis was only 22 at the time, and the exposure on Carson would drive great interest in the film from a number of smaller independent distributors would wouldn't take his calls even a week earlier. Jack H. Harris Enterprises would be the victor, and they would first release Schlock on twenty screens in Los Angeles on December 12th, 1973, the top of a double bill alongside the truly schlocky Son of The Blob. The film would get a very good reception from the local press, including positive reviews from the notoriously prickly Los Angeles Times critic Kevin Thomas, and an unnamed critic in the pages of the industry trade publication Daily Variety. The film would move from market to market every few weeks, and the film would make a tidy little profit for everyone involved. But it would be four more years until Landis would make his follow-up film.   The Kentucky Fried Movie originated not with Landis but with three guys from Madison, Wisconsin who started their own theatre troop while attending the University of Wisconsin before moving it to West Los Angeles in 1971. Those guys, brothers David and Jerry Zucker, and their high school friend Jim Abrahams, had written a number of sketches for their stage shows over a four year period, and felt a number of them could translate well to film, as long as they could come up with a way to link them all together. Although they would be aware of Ken Shapiro's 1974 comedy anthology movie The Groove Tube, a series of sketches shot on videotape shown in movie theatres on the East Coast at midnight on Saturday nights, it would finally hit them in 1976, when Neal Israel's anthology sketch comedy movie TunnelVision became a small hit in theatres. That movie featured Chevy Chase and Laraine Newman, two of the stars of NBC's hit show Saturday Night Live, which was the real reason the film was a hit, but that didn't matter to Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker.   The Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker team decided they needed to not just tell potential backers about the film but show them what they would be getting. They would raise $35,000 to film a ten minute segment, but none of them had ever directed anything for film before, so they would start looking for an experienced director who would be willing to work on a movie like theirs for little to no money.   Through mutual friend Bob Weiss, the trio would meet and get to know John Landis, who would come aboard to direct the presentation reel, if not the entire film should it get funded. That segment, if you've seen Kentucky Fried Movie, included the fake trailer for Cleopatra Schwartz, a parody of blaxploitation movies. The guys would screen the presentation reel first to Kim Jorgensen, the owner of the famed arthouse theatre the Nuart here in Los Angeles, and Jorgensen loved it. He would put up part of the $650k budget himself, and he would show the reel to his friends who also ran theatres, not just in Los Angeles, whenever they were in town, and it would be through a consortium of independent movie theatre owners that Kentucky Fried Movie would get financed.   The movie would be released on August 10th, 1977, ironically the same day as another independent sketch comedy movie, Can I Do It Till I Need Glasses?, was released. But Kentucky Fried Movie would have the powerful United Artists Theatres behind them, as they would make the movie the very first release through their own distribution company, United Film Distribution. I did a three part series on UFDC back in 2021, if you'd like to learn more about them. Featuring such name actors as Bill Bixby, Henry Gibson, George Lazenby and Donald Sutherland, Kentucky Fried Movie would earn more than $7m in theatres, and would not only give John Landis the hit he needed to move up the ranks, but it would give Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker the opportunity to make their own movie. But we'll talk about Airplane! sometime in the future.   Shortly after the release of Kentuck Fried Movie, Landis would get hired to direct Animal House, which would become the surprise success of 1978 and lead Landis into directing The Blues Brothers, which is probably the most John Landis movie that will ever be made. Big, loud, schizophrenic, a little too long for its own good, and filled with a load of in-jokes and cameos that are built only for film fanatics and/or John Landis fanatics. The success of The Blues Brothers would give Landis the chance to make his dream project, a horror comedy he had written more than a decade before.   An American Werewolf in London was the right mix of comedy and horror, in-jokes and great needle drops, with some of the best practical makeup effects ever created for a movie. Makeup effects so good that, in fact, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences would make the occasionally given Best Makeup Effects Oscar a permanent category, and Werewolf would win that category's first competitive Oscar.   In 1982, Landis would direct Coming Soon, one of the first direct-to-home video movies ever released. Narrated by Jamie Lee Curtis, Coming Soon was, essentially, edited clips from 34 old horror and thriller trailers for movies owned by Universal, from Frankenstein and Dracula to Psycho and The Birds. It's only 55 minutes long, but the video did help younger burgeoning cineasts learn more about the history of Universal's monster movies.   And then, as previously mentioned, there was the accident during the filming of The Twilight Zone.   Landis was able to recover enough emotionally from the tragedy to direct Trading Places with Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd in the winter of 1982/83, another hit that maybe showed Hollywood the public wasn't as concerned about the Twilight Zone accident as they worried it would. The Twilight Zone movie would be released three weeks after Trading Places, and while it was not that big a hit, it wasn't quite the bomb it was expected to be because of the accident.   Which brings us to Into the Night.   While Landis was working on the final edit of Trading Places, the President of Universal Pictures, Sean Daniels, contacted Landis about what his next project might be. Universal was where Landis had made Animal House, The Blues Brothers and American Werewolf, so it would not be unusual for a studio head to check up on a filmmaker who had made three recent successful films for them. Specifically, Daniels wanted to pitch Landis on a screenplay the studio had in development called Into the Night. Ron Koslow, the writer of the 1976 Sam Elliott drama Lifeguard, had written the script on spec which the studio had picked up, about an average, ordinary guy who, upon discovering his wife is having an affair, who finds himself in the middle of an international incident involving jewel smuggling out of Iran. Maybe this might be something he would be interested in working on, as it would be both right up his alley, a comedy, and something he'd never done before, a romantic action thriller.   Landis would agree to make the film, if he were allowed some leeway in casting.   For the role of Ed Okin, an aerospace engineer whose insomnia leads him to the Los Angeles International Airport in search of some rest, Landis wanted Jeff Goldblum, who had made more than 15 films over the past decade, including Annie Hall, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Big Chill and The Right Stuff, but had never been the lead in a movie to this point. For Diana, the jewel smuggler who enlists the unwitting Ed into her strange world, Landis wanted Michelle Pfeiffer, the gorgeous star of Grease 2 and Scarface. But mostly, Landis wanted to fill as many of supporting roles with either actors he had worked with before, like Dan Aykroyd and Bruce McGill, or filmmakers who were either contemporaries of Landis and/or were filmmakers he had admired. Amongst those he would get would be Jack Arnold, Paul Bartel, David Cronenberg, Jonathan Demme, Richard Franklin, Amy Heckerling, Colin Higgins, Jim Henson, Lawrence Kasdan, Jonathan Lynn, Paul Mazursky, Don Siegel, and Roger Vadim, as well as Jaws screenwriter Carl Gottlieb, Midnight Cowboy writer Waldo Salt, personal trainer to the stars Jake Steinfeld, music legends David Bowie and Carl Perkins, and several recent Playboy Playmates. Landis himself would be featured as one of the four Iranian agents chasing Pfeiffer's character.   While neither Perkins nor Bowie would appear on the soundtrack to the film, Landis was able to get blues legend B.B. King to perform three songs, two brand new songs as well as a cover of the Wilson Pickett classic In the Midnight Hour.   Originally scheduled to be produced by Joel Douglas, brother of Michael and son of Kirk, Into the Night would go into production on April 2nd, 1984, under the leadership of first-time producer Ron Koslow and Landis's producing partner George Folsey, Jr.   The movie would make great use of dozens of iconic Los Angeles locations, including the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, the Shubert Theatre in Century City, the Ships Coffee Shot on La Cienega, the flagship Tiffanys and Company in Beverly Hills, Randy's Donuts, and the aforementioned airport. But on Monday, April 23rd, the start of the fourth week of shooting, the director was ordered to stand trial on charges of involuntary manslaughter due to the accident on the Twilight Zone set. But the trial would not start until months after Into the Night was scheduled to complete its shoot. In an article about the indictment printed in the Los Angeles Times two days later, Universal Studios head Sean Daniels was insistent the studio had made no special plans in the event of Landis' possible conviction. Had he been found guilty of involuntary manslaughter, Landis was looking at up to six years in prison.   The film would wrap production in early June, and Landis would spend the rest of the year in an editing bay on the Universal lot with his editor, Malcolm Campbell, who had also cut An American Werewolf in London, Trading Places, the Michael Jackson Thriller short film, and Landis's segment and the Landis-shot prologue to The Twilight Zone.   During this time, Universal would set a February 22nd, 1985 release date for the film, an unusual move, as every movie Landis had made since Kentucky Fried Movie had been released during the summer movie season, and there was nothing about Into the Night that screamed late Winter.   I've long been a proponent of certain movies having a right time to be released, and late February never felt like the right time to release a morbid comedy, especially one that takes place in sunny Los Angeles. When Into the Night opened in New York City, at the Loews New York Twin at Second Avenue and 66th Street, the high in the city was 43 degrees, after an overnight low of 25 degrees. What New Yorker wants to freeze his or her butt off to see Jeff Goldblum run around Los Angeles with Michelle Pfeiffer in a light red leather jacket and a thin white t-shirt, if she's wearing anything at all? Well, actually, that last part wasn't so bad. But still, a $40,000 opening weekend gross at the 525 seat New York Twin would be one of the better grosses for all of the city. In Los Angeles, where the weather was in the 60s all weekend, the film would gross $65,500 between the 424 seat Avco Cinema 2 in Westwood and the 915 seat Cinerama Dome in Hollywood.   The reviews, like with many of Landis's films, were mixed.   Richard Corliss of Time Magazine would find the film irresistible and a sparkling thriller, calling Goldblum and Pfeiffer two of the most engaging young actors working. Peter Travers, writing for People Magazine at the time, would anoint the film with a rarely used noun in film criticism, calling it a “pip.” Travers would also call Pfeiffer a knockout of the first order, with a newly uncovered flair for comedy. Guess he hadn't seen her in the 1979 ABC spin-off of Animal House, called Delta House, in which she played The Bombshell, or in Floyd Mutrix's 1980 comedy The Hollywood Knights.    But the majority of critics would find plenty to fault with the film. The general critical feeling for the film was that it was too inside baseball for most people, as typified by Vincent Canby in his review for the New York Times. Canby would dismiss the film as having an insidey, which is not a word, manner of a movie made not for the rest of us but for the moviemakers on the Bel Air circuit who watch each other's films in their own screening room.   After two weeks of exclusive engagements in New York and Los Angeles, Universal would expand the film to 1096 screens on March 8th, where the film would gross $2.57m, putting it in fifth place for the weekend, nearly a million dollars less than fellow Universal Pictures film The Breakfast Club, which was in its fourth week of release and in ninety fewer theatres. After a fourth weekend of release, where the film would come in fifth place again with $1.95m, now nearly a million and a half behind The Breakfast Club, Universal would start to migrate the film out of first run theatres and into dollar houses, in order to make room for another film of theirs, Peter Bogdanovich's comeback film Mask, which would be itself expanding from limited release to wide release on March 22nd. Into the Night would continue to play at the second-run theatres for months, but its final gross of $7.56m wouldn't even cover the film's $8m production budget.   Despite the fact that it has both Jeff Goldblum and Michelle Pfeiffer as its leads, Into the Night would not become a cult film on home video the way that many films neglected by audiences in theatres would find a second life.   I thought the film was good when I saw it opening night at the Aptos Twin. I enjoyed the obvious chemistry between the two leads, and I enjoyed the insidey manner in which there were so many famous filmmakers doing cameos in the film. I remember wishing there was more of David Bowie, since there were very few people, actors or musicians, who would fill the screen with so much charm and charisma, even when playing a bad guy. And I enjoyed listening to B.B. King on the soundtrack, as I had just started to get into the blues during my senior year of high school.   I revisited the film, which you can rent or buy on Apple TV, Amazon and several other major streaming services, for the podcast, and although I didn't enjoy the film as much as I remember doing so in 1985, it was clear that these two actors were going to become big stars somewhere down the road. Goldblum, of course, would become a star the following year, thanks to his incredible work in David Cronenberg's The Fly. Incidentally, Goldblum and Cronenberg would meet for the first time on the set of Into the Night. And, of course, Michelle Pfeiffer would explode in 1987, thanks to her work with Susan Sarandon, Cher and Jack Nicholson in The Witches of Eastwick, which she would follow up with not one, not two but three powerhouse performances of completely different natures in 1988, in Jonathan Demme's Married to the Mob, Robert Towne's Tequila Sunrise, and her Oscar-nominated work in Stephen Frears' Dangerous Liaisons. Incidentally, Pfeiffer and Jonathan Demme would also meet for the first time on the set of Into the Night, so maybe it was kismet that all these things happened in part because of the unusual casting desires of John Landis.   Thank you for joining us. We'll talk again soon, when Episode 108, on Martha Coolidge's Valley Girl, is released.     Remember to visit this episode's page on our website, The80sMoviePodcast.com, for extra materials about Into the Night.   The 80s Movies Podcast has been researched, written, narrated and edited by Edward Havens for Idiosyncratic Entertainment.   Thank you again.   Good night.

On this episode, we talk about the great American filmmaker Robert Altman, and what is arguably the worst movie of his six decade, thirty-five film career: his 1987 atrocity O.C. and Stiggs. ----more---- TRANSCRIPT   From Los Angeles, California, the Entertainment Capital of the World, it's The 80s Movies Podcast. I am your host, Edward Havens. Thank you for listening today.   On this episode, we're going to talk about one of the strangest movies to come out of the decade, not only for its material, but for who directed it.   Robert Altman's O.C. and Stiggs.   As always, before we get to the O.C. and Stiggs, we will be going a little further back in time.   Although he is not every cineaste's cup of tea, it is generally acknowledged that Robert Altman was one of the best filmmakers to ever work in cinema. But he wasn't an immediate success when he broke into the industry.   Born in Kansas City in February 1925, Robert Altman would join the US Army Air Force after graduating high school, as many a young man would do in the days of World War II. He would train to be a pilot, and he would fly more than 50 missions during the war as part of the 307th Bomb Group, operating in the Pacific Theatre. They would help liberate prisoners of war held in Japanese POW Camps from Okinawa to Manila after the victory over Japan lead to the end of World War II in that part of the world.   After the war, Altman would move to Los Angeles to break into the movies, and he would even succeed in selling a screenplay to RKO Pictures called Bodyguard, a film noir story shot in 1948 starring Lawrence Tierney and Priscilla Lane, but on the final film, he would only share a “Story by” credit with his then-writing partner, George W. George. But by 1950, he'd be back in Kansas City, where he would direct more than 65 industrial films over the course of three years, before heading back to Los Angeles with the experience he would need to take another shot.   Altman would spend a few years directing episodes of a drama series called Pulse of the City on the DuMont television network and a syndicated police drama called The Sheriff of Cochise, but he wouldn't get his first feature directing gig until 1957, when a businessman in Kansas City would hire the thirty-two year old to write and direct a movie locally. That film, The Delinquents, cost only $60k to make, and would be purchased for release by United Artists for $150k. The first film to star future Billy Jack writer/director/star Tom Laughlin, The Delinquents would gross more than a million dollars in theatres, a very good sum back in those days, but despite the success of the film, the only work Altman could get outside of television was co-directing The James Dean Story, a documentary set up at Warner Brothers to capitalize on the interest in the actor after dying in a car accident two years earlier.   Throughout the 1960s, Altman would continue to work in television, until he was finally given another chance to direct a feature film. 1967's Countdown was a lower budgeted feature at Warner Brothers featuring James Caan in an early leading role, about the space race between the Americans and Soviets, a good two years before Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon. The shoot itself was easy, but Altman would be fired from the film shortly after filming was completed, as Jack Warner, the 75 year old head of the studio, was not very happy about the overlapping dialogue, a motif that would become a part of Altman's way of making movies. Although his name appears in the credits as the director of the film, he had no input in its assembly. His ambiguous ending was changed, and the film would be edited to be more family friendly than the director intended.   Altman would follow Countdown with 1969's That Cold Day in the Park, a psychological drama that would be both a critical and financial disappointment.   But his next film would change everything.   Before Altman was hired by Twentieth-Century Fox to direct MASH, more than a dozen major filmmakers would pass on the project. An adaptation of a little known novel by a Korean War veteran who worked as a surgeon at one of the Mobile Auxiliary Surgical Hospitals that give the story its acronymic title, MASH would literally fly under the radar from the executives at the studio, as most of the $3m film would be shot at the studio's ranch lot in Malibu, while the executives were more concerned about their bigger movies of the year in production, like their $12.5m biographical film on World War II general George S. Patton and their $25m World War II drama Tora! Tora! Tora!, one of the first movies to be a Japanese and American co-production since the end of the war.    Altman was going to make MASH his way, no matter what. When the studio refused to allow him to hire a fair amount of extras to populate the MASH camp, Altman would steal individual lines from other characters to give to background actors, in order to get the bustling atmosphere he wanted. In order to give the camp a properly dirty look, he would shoot most of the outdoor scenes with a zoom lens and a fog filter with the camera a reasonably far distance from the actors, so they could act to one another instead of the camera, giving the film a sort of documentary feel. And he would find flexibility when the moment called for it. Sally Kellerman, who was hired to play Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan, would work with Altman to expand and improve her character to be more than just eye candy, in large part because Altman liked what she was doing in her scenes.   This kind of flexibility infuriated the two major stars of the film, Elliott Gould and Donald Sutherland, who at one point during the shoot tried to get Altman fired for treating everyone in the cast and crew with the same level of respect and decorum regardless of their position. But unlike at Warners a couple years earlier, the success of movies like Bonnie and Clyde and Easy Rider bamboozled Hollywood studio executives, who did not understand exactly what the new generation of filmgoers wanted, and would often give filmmakers more leeway than before, in the hopes that lightning could be captured once again.   And Altman would give them exactly that.   MASH, which would also be the first major studio film to be released with The F Word spoken on screen, would not only become a critical hit, but become the third highest grossing movie released in 1970, grossing more than $80m. The movie would win the Palme D'Or at that year's Cannes Film Festival, and it would be nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Supporting Actress for Ms. Kellerman, winning only for Best Adapted Screenplay. An ironic win, since most of the dialogue was improvised on set, but the victory for screenwriter Ring Lardner Jr. would effectively destroy the once powerful Hollywood Blacklist that had been in place since the Red Scare of the 1950s.   After MASH, Altman went on one of the greatest runs any filmmaker would ever enjoy.   MASH would be released in January 1970, and Altman's follow up, Brewster McCloud, would be released in December 1970. Bud Cort, the future star of Harold and Maude, plays a recluse who lives in the fallout shelter of the Houston Astrodome, who is building a pair of wings in order to achieve his dream of flying. The film would feature a number of actors who already were featured in MASH and would continue to be featured in a number of future Altman movies, including Sally Kellerman, Michael Murphy, John Schuck and Bert Remson, but another reason to watch Brewster McCloud if you've never seen it is because it is the film debut of Shelley Duvall, one of our greatest and least appreciated actresses, who would go on to appear in six other Altman movies over the ensuing decade.   1971's McCabe and Mrs. Miller, for me, is his second best film. A Western starring Warren Beatty and Julie Christie, was a minor hit when it was first released but has seen a reevaluation over the years that found it to be named the 8th Best Western of all time by the American Film Institute, which frankly is too low for me. The film would also bring a little-known Canadian poet and musician to the world, Leonard Cohen, who wrote and performed three songs for the soundtrack. Yeah, you have Robert Altman to thank for Leonard Cohen.   1972's Images was another psychological horror film, this time co-written with English actress Susannah York, who also stars in the film as an author of children's books who starts to have wild hallucinations at her remote vacation home, after learning her husband might be cheating on her. The $800k film was one of the first to be produced by Hemdale Films, a British production company co-founded by Blow Up actor David Hemmings, but the film would be a critical and financial disappointment when it was released Christmas week. But it would get nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Dramatic Score. It would be one of two nominations in the category for John Williams, the other being The Poseidon Adventure.   Whatever resentment Elliott Gould may have had with Altman during the shooting of MASH was gone by late 1972, when the actor agreed to star in the director's new movie, a modern adaptation of Raymond Chandler's 1953 novel The Long Goodbye. Gould would be the eighth actor to play the lead character, Phillip Marlowe, in a movie. The screenplay would be written by Leigh Brackett, who Star Wars nerds know as the first writer on The Empire Strikes Back but had also adapted Chandler's novel The Big Sleep, another Phillip Marlowe story, to the big screen back in 1946.   Howard Hawks and Peter Bogdanovich had both been approached to make the film, and it would be Bogdanovich who would recommend Altman to the President of United Artists. The final film would anger Chandler fans, who did not like Altman's approach to the material, and the $1.7m film would gross less than $1m when it was released in March 1973. But like many of Altman's movies, it was a big hit with critics, and would find favor with film fans in the years to come.   1974 would be another year where Altman would make and release two movies in the same calendar year. The first, Thieves Like Us, was a crime drama most noted as one of the few movies to not have any kind of traditional musical score. What music there is in the film is usually heard off radios seen in individual scenes. Once again, we have a number of Altman regulars in the film, including Shelley Duvall, Bert Remsen, John Schuck and Tom Skerritt, and would feature Keith Carradine, who had a small co-starring role in McCabe and Mrs. Miller, in his first major leading role. And, once again, the film would be a hit with critics but a dud with audiences. Unlike most of Altman's movies of the 1970s, Thieves Like Us has not enjoyed the same kind of reappraisal.   The second film, California Split, was released in August, just six months after Thieves Like Us. Elliott Gould once again stars in a Robert Altman movie, this time alongside George Segal. They play a pair of gamblers who ride what they think is a lucky streak from Los Angeles to Reno, Nevada, would be the only time Gould and Segal would work closely together in a movie, and watching California Split, one wishes there could have been more. The movie would be an innovator seemingly purpose-build for a Robert Altman movie, for it would be the first non-Cinerama movie to be recorded using an eight track stereo sound system. More than any movie before, Altman could control how his overlapping dialogue was placed in a theatre. But while most theatres that played the movie would only play it in mono sound, the film would still be a minor success, bringing in more than $5m in ticket sales.   1975 would bring what many consider to be the quintessential Robert Altman movie to screens.   The two hour and forty minute Nashville would feature no less than 24 different major characters, as a group of people come to Music City to be involved in a gala concert for a political outsider who is running for President on the Replacement Party ticket. The cast is one of the best ever assembled for a movie ever, including Ned Beatty, Karen Black, Ronee Blakely, Keith Carradine, Geraldine Chaplin, Robert DoQui, Shelley Duvall, Allen Garfield, Henry Gibson, Scott Glenn, Jeff Goldblum, Barbara Harris, Cristina Raines, Lily Tomlin and Keenan Wynn.   Altman would be nominated for two Academy Awards for the film, Best Picture, as its producer, and Best Director, while both Ronee Blakely and Lily Tomlin would be nominated for Best Supporting Actress. Keith Carradine would also be nominated for an Oscar, but not as an actor. He would, at the urging of Altman during the production of the film, write and perform a song called I'm Easy, which would win for Best Original Song. The $2.2m film would earn $10m in ticket sales, and would eventually become part of the fourth class of movies to be selected for preservation by the National Film Registry in 1991, the first of four Robert Altman films to be given that honor. MASH, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, and The Long Goodbye would also be selected for preservation over the years.   And we're going to stop here for a second and take a look at that list of films again.   MASH Brewster McCloud McCabe and Mrs. Miller Images The Long Goodbye Thieves Like Us California Split Nashville   Eight movies, made over a five year period, that between them earned twelve Academy Award nominations, four of which would be deemed so culturally important that they should be preserved for future generations.   And we're still only in the middle of the 1970s.   But the problem with a director like Robert Altman, like many of our greatest directors, their next film after one of their greatest successes feels like a major disappointment. And his 1976 film Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson, and that is the complete title of the film by the way, did not meet the lofty expectations of film fans not only its director, but of its main stars. Altman would cast two legendary actors he had not yet worked with, Paul Newman and Burt Lancaster, and the combination of those two actors with this director should have been fantastic, but the results were merely okay. In fact,  Altman would, for the first time in his career, re-edit a film after its theatrical release, removing some of the Wild West show acts that he felt were maybe redundant.   His 1977 film 3 Women would bring Altman back to the limelight. The film was based on a dream he had one night while his wife was in the hospital. In the dream, he was directing his regular co-star Shelley Duvall alongside Sissy Spacek, who he had never worked with before, in a story about identity theft that took place in the deserts outside Los Angeles. He woke up in the middle of the dream, jotted down what he could remember, and went back to sleep. In the morning, he didn't have a full movie planned out, but enough of one to get Alan Ladd, Jr., the President of Twentieth-Century Fox, to put up $1.7m for a not fully formed idea. That's how much Robert Altman was trusted at the time. That, and Altman was known for never going over budget. As long as he stayed within his budget, Ladd would let Altman make whatever movie he wanted to make. That, plus Ladd was more concerned about a $10m movie he approved that was going over budget over in England, a science fiction movie directed by the guy who did American Graffiti that had no stars outside of Sir Alec Guinness.   That movie, of course, was Star Wars, which would be released four weeks after 3 Women had its premiere in New York City. While the film didn't make 1/100th the money Star Wars made, it was one of the best reviewed movies of the year. But, strangely, the film would not be seen again outside of sporadic screenings on cable until it was released on DVD by the Criterion Collection 27 years later.   I'm not going to try and explain the movie to you. Just trust me that 3 Women is from a master craftsman at the top of his game.   While on the press tour to publicize 3 Women, a reporter asked Altman what was going to be next for him. He jokingly said he was going to shoot a wedding. But then he went home, thought about it some more, and in a few weeks, had a basic idea sketched out for a movie titled A Wedding that would take place over the course of one day, as the daughter of a Southern nouveau riche family marries the son of a wealthy Chicago businessman who may or may not a major figure in The Outfit.   And while the film is quite entertaining, what's most interesting about watching this 1978 movie in 2023 is not only how many great established actors Altman got for the film, including Carol Burnett, Paul Dooley, Howard Duff, Mia Farrow, Vittorio Gassman, Lauren Hutton, and, in her 100th movie, Lillian Gish, but the number of notable actors he was able to get because he shot the film just outside Chicago. Not only will you see Dennis Christopher just before his breakthrough in Breaking Away, and not only will you see Pam Dawber just before she was cast alongside Robin Williams in Mark and Mindy, but you'll also see Dennis Franz, Laurie Metcalfe, Gary Sinese, Tim Thomerson, and George Wendt.   And because Altman was able to keep the budget at a reasonable level, less than $1.75m, the film would be slightly profitable for Twentieth Century-Fox after grossing $3.6m at the box office.   Altman's next film for Fox, 1979's Quintet, would not be as fortunate.   Altman had come up with the story for this post-apocalyptic drama as a vehicle for Walter Hill to write and direct. But Hill would instead make The Warriors, and Altman decided to make the film himself. While developing the screenplay with his co-writers Frank Barhydt and Patricia Resnick, Altman would create a board game, complete with token pieces and a full set of rules, to flesh out the storyline.   Altman would once again work with Paul Newman, who stars as a seal hunter in the early days of a new ice age who finds himself in elaborate game with a group of gamblers where losing in the game means losing your life in the process. Altman would deliberately hire an international cast to star alongside Newman, not only to help improve the film's ability to do well in foreign territories but to not have the storyline tied to any specific country. So we would have Italian actor Vittorio Gassman, Spaniard Fernando Rey, Swedish actress Bibi Andersson, French actress Brigitte Fossey, and Danish actress Nina van Pallandt.    In order to maintain the mystery of the movie, Altman would ask Fox to withhold all pre-release publicity for the film, in order to avoid any conditioning of the audience. Imagine trying to put together a compelling trailer for a movie featuring one of the most beloved actors of all time, but you're not allowed to show potential audiences what they're getting themselves into? Altman would let the studio use five shots from the film, totaling about seven seconds, for the trailer, which mostly comprised of slo-mo shots of a pair of dice bouncing around, while the names of the stars pop up from moment to moment and a narrator tries to create some sense of mystery on the soundtrack.   But audiences would not be intrigued by the mystery, and critics would tear the $6.4m budget film apart. To be fair, the shoot for the film, in the winter of 1977 outside Montreal was a tough time for all, and Altman would lose final cut on the film for going severely over-budget during production, although there seems to be very little documentation about how much the final film might have differed from what Altman would have been working on had he been able to complete the film his way.   But despite all the problems with Quintet, Fox would still back Altman's next movie, A Perfect Couple, which would be shot after Fox pulled Altman off Quintet. Can you imagine that happening today? A director working with the studio that just pulled them off their project. But that's how little ego Altman had. He just wanted to make movies. Tell stories. This simple romantic comedy starred his regular collaborator Paul Dooley as  Alex, a man who follows a band of traveling bohemian musicians because he's falling for one of the singers in the band.   Altman kept the film on its $1.9m budget, but the response from critics was mostly concern that Altman had lost his touch. Maybe it was because this was his 13th film of the decade, but there was a serious concern about the director's ability to tell a story had evaporated.   That worry would continue with his next film, Health.   A satire of the political scene in the United States at the end of the 1970s, Health would follow a health food organization holding a convention at a luxury hotel in St. Petersburg FL. As one would expect from a Robert Altman movie, there's one hell of a cast. Along with Henry Gibson, and Paul Dooley, who co-write the script with Altman and Frank Barhydt, the cast would include Lauren Bacall, Carol Burnett, James Garner and, in one of her earliest screen appearances, Alfre Woodard, as well as Dick Cavett and Dinah Shore as themselves.   But between the shooting of the film in the late winter and early spring of 1979 and the planned Christmas 1979 release, there was a change of management at Fox. Alan Ladd Jr. was out, and after Altman turned in his final cut, new studio head Norman Levy decided to pull the film off the 1979 release calendar. Altman fought to get the film released sometime during the 1980 Presidential Campaign, and was able to get Levy to give the film a platform release starting in Los Angeles and New York City in March 1980, but that date would get cancelled as well. Levy then suggested an April 1980 test run in St. Louis, which Altman was not happy with. Altman countered with test runs in Boston, Houston, Sacramento and San Francisco. The best Altman, who was in Malta shooting his next movie, could get were sneak previews of the film in those four markets, and the response cards from the audience were so bad, the studio decided to effectively put the film on the proverbial shelf.   Back from the Mediterranean Sea, Altman would get permission to take the film to the Montreal World Film Festival in August, and the Telluride and Venice Film Festivals in September. After good responses from film goers at those festivals, Fox would relent, and give the film a “preview” screening at the United Artists Theatre in Westwood, starting on September 12th, 1980. But the studio would give the film the most boring ad campaign possible, a very crude line drawing of an older woman's pearl bracelet-covered arm thrusted upward while holding a carrot. With no trailers in circulation at any theatre, and no television commercials on air, it would be little surprise the film didn't do a whole lot of business. You really had to know the film had been released. But its $14k opening weekend gross wasn't really all that bad. And it's second week gross of $10,500 with even less ad support was decent if unspectacular. But it would be good enough to get the film a four week playdate at the UA Westwood.   And then, nothing, until early March 1981, when a film society at Northwestern University in Evanston IL was able to screen a 16mm print for one show, while a theatre in Baltimore was able to show the film one time at the end of March. But then, nothing again for more than another year, when the film would finally get a belated official release at the Film Forum in New York City on April 7th, 1982. It would only play for a week, and as a non-profit, the Film Forum does not report film grosses, so we have no idea how well the film actually did. Since then, the movie showed once on CBS in August 1983, and has occasionally played on the Fox Movie Channel, but has never been released on VHS or DVD or Blu-Ray.   I mentioned a few moments ago that while he was dealing with all this drama concerning Health, Altman was in the Mediterranean filming a movie. I'm not going to go too much into that movie here, since I already have an episode for the future planned for it, suffice to say that a Robert Altman-directed live-action musical version of the Popeye the Sailor Man cartoon featuring songs by the incomparable Harry Nilsson should have been a smash hit, but it wasn't. It was profitable, to be certain, but not the hit everyone was expecting. We'll talk about the film in much more detail soon.   After the disappointing results for Popeye, Altman decided to stop working in Hollywood for a while and hit the Broadway stages, to direct a show called Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean. While the show's run was not very long and the reviews not very good, Altman would fund a movie version himself, thanks in part to the sale of his production company, Lion's Gate, not to be confused with the current studio called Lionsgate, and would cast Karen Black, Cher and Sandy Dennis alongside newcomers Sudie Bond and Kathy Bates, as five female members of The Disciples of James Dean come together on the 20th anniversary of the actor's death to honor his life and times. As the first film released by a new independent distributor called Cinecom, I'll spend more time talking about this movie on our show about that distributor, also coming soon, suffice it to say that Altman was back. Critics were behind the film, and arthouse audiences loved it. This would be the first time Altman adapted a stage play to the screen, and it would set the tone for a number of his works throughout the rest of the decade.   Streamers was Altman's 17th film in thirteen years, and another adaptation of a stage play. One of several works by noted Broadway playwright David Rabe's time in the Army during the Vietnam War, the film followed four young soldiers waiting to be shipped to Vietnam who deal with racial tensions and their own intolerances when one soldier reveals he is gay. The film featured Matthew Modine as the Rabe stand-in, and features a rare dramatic role for comedy legend David Alan Grier. Many critics would note how much more intense the film version was compared to the stage version, as Altman's camera was able to effortlessly breeze around the set, and get up close and personal with the performers in ways that simply cannot happen on the stage. But in 1983, audiences were still not quite ready to deal with the trauma of Vietnam on film, and the film would be fairly ignored by audiences, grossing just $378k.   Which, finally, after half an hour, brings us to our featured movie.   O.C. and Stiggs.   Now, you might be asking yourself why I went into such detail about Robert Altman's career, most of it during the 1970s. Well, I wanted to establish what types of material Altman would chose for his projects, and just how different O.C. and Stiggs  was from any other project he had made to date.   O.C. and Stiggs began their lives in the July 1981 issue of National Lampoon, as written by two of the editors of the magazine, Ted Mann and Tod Carroll. The characters were fun-loving and occasionally destructive teenage pranksters, and their first appearance in the magazine would prove to be so popular with readers, the pair would appear a few more times until Matty Simmons, the publisher and owner of National Lampoon, gave over the entire October 1982 issue to Mann and Carroll for a story called “The Utterly Monstrous Mind-Roasting Summer of O.C. and Stiggs.” It's easy to find PDFs of the issues online if you look for it.   So the issue becomes one of the biggest selling issues in the history of National Lampoon, and Matty Simmons has been building the National Lampoon brand name by sponsoring a series of movies, including Animal House, co-written by Lampoon writers Doug Kenney and Chris Miller, and the soon to be released movies Class Reunion, written by Lampoon writer John Hughes… yes, that John Hughes… and Movie Madness, written by five Lampoon writers including Tod Carroll. But for some reason, Simmons was not behind the idea of turning the utterly monstrous mind-roasting adventures of O.C. and Stiggs into a movie. He would, however, allow Mann and Carroll to shop the idea around Hollywood, and wished them the best of luck.   As luck would have it, Mann and Carroll would meet Peter Newman, who had worked as Altman's production executive on Jimmy Dean, and was looking to set up his first film as a producer. And while Newman might not have had the credits, he had the connections. The first person he would take the script to his Oscar-winning director Mike Nichols, whose credits by this time included Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolff?, The Graduate, Catch-22, and Carnal Knowledge. Surprisingly, Nichols was not just interested in making the movie, but really wanted to have Eddie Murphy, who was a breakout star on Saturday Night Live but was still a month away from becoming a movie star when 48 Hours was released, play one of the leading characters. But Murphy couldn't get out of his SNL commitments, and Nichols had too many other projects, both on Broadway and in movies, to be able to commit to the film.    A few weeks later, Newman and Altman both attended a party where they would catch up after several months. Newman started to tell Altman about this new project he was setting up, and to Newman's surprise, Altman, drawn to the characters' anti-establishment outlook, expressed interest in making it. And because Altman's name still commanded respect in Hollywood, several studios would start to show their interest in making the movie with them. MGM, who was enjoying a number of successes in 1982 thanks to movies like Shoot the Moon, Diner, Victor/Victoria, Rocky III, Poltergeist, Pink Floyd - The Wall, and My Favorite Year, made a preemptive bid on the film, hoping to beat Paramount Pictures to the deal. Unknown to Altman, what interested MGM was that Sylvester Stallone of all people went nuts for the script when he read it, and mentioned to his buddies at the studio that he might be interested in making it himself.   Despite hating studio executives for doing stuff like buying a script he's attached to  then kicking him off so some Italian Stallion not known for comedy could make it himself, Altman agree to make the movie with MGM once Stallone lost interest, as the studio promised there would be no further notes about the script, that Altman could have final cut on the film, that he could shoot the film in Phoenix without studio interference, and that he could have a budget of $7m.   Since this was a Robert Altman film, the cast would be big and eclectic, filled with a number of his regular cast members, known actors who he had never worked with before, and newcomers who would go on to have success a few years down the road. Because, seriously, outside of a Robert Altman movie, where are you going to find a cast that included Jon Cryer, Jane Curtin, Paul Dooley, Dennis Hopper, Tina Louise, Martin Mull, Cynthia Nixon, Bob Uecker, Melvin van Peebles, and King Sunny Adé and His African Beats? And then imagine that movie also featuring Matthew Broderick, Jim Carrey, Robert Downey, Jr. and Laura Dern?   The story for the film would both follow the stories that appeared in the pages of National Lampoon fairly closely while also making some major changes. In the film, Oliver Cromwell “O.C.” Oglivie and Mark Stiggs are two ne'er-do-well, middle-class Phoenix, Arizona high school students who are disgusted with what they see as an omnipresent culture of vulgar and vapid suburban consumerism. They spend their days slacking off and committing pranks or outright crimes against their sworn enemies, the Schwab family, especially family head Randall Schwab, a wealthy insurance salesman who was responsible for the involuntary commitment of O.C.'s grandfather into a group home. During the film, O.C. and Stiggs will ruin the wedding of Randall Schwab's daughter Lenore, raft their way down to a Mexican fiesta, ruin a horrible dinner theatre performance directed by their high school's drama teacher being attended by the Schwabs, and turn the Schwab mansion into a homeless shelter while the family is on vacation. The film ends with O.C. and Stiggs getting into a gun fight with Randall Schwab before being rescued by Dennis Hopper and a helicopter, before discovering one of their adventures that summer has made them very wealthy themselves.   The film would begin production in Phoenix on August 22nd, 1983, with two newcomers, Daniel H. Jenkins and Neill Barry, as the titular stars of the film. And almost immediately, Altman's chaotic ways of making a movie would become a problem. Altman would make sure the entire cast and crew were all staying at the same hotel in town, across the street from a greyhound racetrack, so Altman could take off to bet on a few of the races during production downtime, and made sure the bar at the hotel was an open bar for his team while they were shooting. When shooting was done every day, the director and his cast would head to a makeshift screening room at the hotel, where they'd watch the previous day's footage, a process called “dailies” in production parlance. On most films, dailies are only attended by the director and his immediate production crew, but in Phoenix, everyone was encouraged to attend. And according to producer Peter Newman and Dan Jenkins, everyone loved the footage, although both would note that it might have been a combination of the alcohol, the pot, the cocaine and the dehydration caused by shooting all day in the excessive Arizona heat during the middle of summer that helped people enjoy the footage.    But here's the funny thing about dailies.   Unless a film is being shot in sequence, you're only seeing small fragments of scenes, often the same actors doing the same things over and over again, before the camera switches places to catch reactions or have other characters continue the scene. Sometimes, they're long takes of scenes that might be interrupted by an actor flubbing a line or an unexpected camera jitter or some other interruption that requires a restart. But everyone seemed to be having fun, especially when dailies ended and Altman would show one of his other movies like MASH or The Long Goodbye or 3 Women.   After two months of shooting, the film would wrap production, and Altman would get to work on his edit of the film. He would have it done before the end of 1983, and he would turn it in to the studio. Shortly after the new year, there would be a private screening of the film in New York City at the offices of the talent agency William Morris, one of the larger private screening rooms in the city. Altman was there, the New York-based executives at MGM were there, Peter Newman was there, several of the actors were there. And within five minutes of the start of the film, Altman realized what he was watching was not his cut of the film. As he was about to lose his stuff and start yelling at the studio executives, the projector broke. The lights would go up, and Altman would dig into the the executives. “This is your effing cut of the film and not mine!” Altman stormed out of the screening and into the cold New York winter night.   A few weeks later, that same print from New York would be screened for the big executives at the MGM lot in Los Angeles. Newman was there, and, surprisingly, Altman was there too. The film would screen for the entire running length, and Altman would sit there, watching someone else's version of the footage he had shot, scenes put in different places than they were supposed to be, music cues not of his design or consent.   At the end of the screening, the room was silent. Not one person in the room had laughed once during the entire screening. Newman and Altman left after the screening, and hit one of Altman's favorite local watering holes. As they said their goodbyes the next morning, Altman apologized to Newman. “I hope I didn't eff up your movie.”   Maybe the movie wasn't completely effed up, but MGM certainly neither knew what to do with the film or how to sell it, so it would just sit there, just like Health a few years earlier, on that proverbial shelf.   More than a year later, in an issue of Spin Magazine, a review of the latest album by King Sunny Adé would mention the film he performed in, O.C. and Stiggs, would, quote unquote, “finally” be released into theatres later that year.   That didn't happen, in large part because after WarGames in the early summer of 1983, almost every MGM release had been  either an outright bomb or an unexpected financial disappointment. The cash flow problem was so bad that the studio effectively had to sell itself to Atlanta cable mogul Ted Turner in order to save itself. Turner didn't actually want all of MGM. He only wanted the valuable MGM film library, but the owner of MGM at the time was either going to sell it all or nothing at all.   Barely two months after Ted Turner bought MGM, he had sold the famed studio lot in Culver City to Lorimar, a television production company that was looking to become a producer and distributor of motion pictures, and sold rest of the company he never wanted in the first place to the guy he bought it all from, who had a kind of seller's remorse. But that repurchase would saddle the company with massive bills, and movies like O.C. and Stiggs would have to sit and collect dust while everything was sorted out.   How long would O.C. and Stiggs be left in a void?   It would be so long that Robert Altman would have time to make not one, not two, but three other movies that would all be released before O.C. and Stiggs ever saw the light of day.   The first, Secret Honor, released in 1984, featured the great Philip Baker Hall as former President Richard Nixon. It's probably Hall's single best work as an actor, and the film would be amongst the best reviewed films of Altman's career.   In 1985, Altman would film Fool For Love, an adaptation of a play by Sam Shepard. This would be the only time in Shepard's film career where he would star as one of the characters himself had written. The film would also prove once and for all that Kim Basinger was more than just a pretty face but a real actor.   And in February 1987, Altman's film version of Beyond Therapy, a play by absurdist playwright Christopher Durant, would open in theatres. The all-star cast would include Tom Conti, Jeff Goldblum, Christopher Guest, Julie Hagerty and Glenda Jackson.   On March 5th, 1987, an article in Daily Variety would note that the “long shelved” film would have a limited theatrical release in May, despite the fact that Frank Yablans, the vice chairman of MGM, being quoted in the article that the film was unreleasable. It would further be noted that despite the film being available to international distributors for three years, not one company was willing to acquire the film for any market. The plan was to release the movie for one or two weeks in three major US markets, depending on its popularity, and then decide a future course of action from there.   But May would come and go, without a hint of the film.   Finally, on Friday, July 10th, the film would open on 18 screens, but none in any major market like Chicago, Los Angeles or New York City. I can't find a single theatre the film played in that weekend, but that week's box office figures would show an abysmal $6,273 worth of tickets were sold during that first weekend.   There would not be a second weekend of reported grosses.   But to MGM's credit, they didn't totally give up on the film.   On Thursday, August 27th, O.C. and Stiggs would open in at least one theatre. And, lucky for me, that theatre happened to be the Nickelodeon Theatre in Santa Cruz. But despite the fact that the new Robert Altman was opening in town, I could not get a single friend to see it with me. So on a Tuesday night at 8:40pm, I was the only person in all of the region to watch what I would soon discover was the worst Robert Altman movie of all time. Now, I should note that even a bad Robert Altman movie is better than many filmmakers' best movies, but O.C. and Stiggs would have ignobility of feeling very much like a Robert Altman movie, with its wandering camera and overlapping dialogue that weaves in and out of conversations while in progress and not quite over yet, yet not feeling anything like a Robert Altman movie at the same time. It didn't have that magical whimsy-ness that was the hallmark of his movies. The satire didn't have its normal bite. It had a number of Altman's regular troop of actors, but in smaller roles than they'd usually occupy, and not giving the performances one would expect of them in an Altman movie.   I don't know how well the film did at the Nick, suffice it to say the film was gone after a week.   But to MGM's credit, they still didn't give up on the film.   On October 9th, the film would open at the AMC Century City 14, one of a handful of movies that would open the newest multiplex in Los Angeles.   MGM did not report grosses, and the film was gone from the new multiplex after a week.   But to MGM's credit, they still didn't give up on the film.   The studio would give the film one more chance, opening it at the Film Forum in New York City on March 18th, 1988.   MGM did not report grosses, and the film was gone after a week. But whether that was because MGM didn't support the film with any kind of newspaper advertising in the largest market in America, or because the movie had been released on home video back in November, remains to be seen.   O.C. and Stiggs would never become anything resembling a cult film. It's been released on DVD, and if one was programming a Robert Altman retrospect at a local arthouse movie theatre, one could actually book a 35mm print of the film from the repertory cinema company Park Circus.   But don't feel bad for Altman, as he would return to cinemas with a vengeance in the 1990s, first with the 1990 biographical drama Vincent and Theo, featuring Tim Roth as the tortured genius 19th century painter that would put the actor on the map for good. Then, in 1992, he became a sensation again with his Hollywood satire The Player, featuring Tim Robbins as a murderous studio executive trying to keep the police off his trail while he navigates the pitfalls of the industry. Altman would receive his first Oscar nomination for Best Director since 1975 with The Player, his third overall, a feat he would repeat the following year with Short Cuts, based on a series of short stories by Raymond Carver. In fact, Altman would be nominated for an Academy Award seven times during his career, five times as a director and twice as a producer, although he would never win a competitive Oscar.   In March 2006, while editing his 35th film, a screen adaptation of the then-popular NPR series A Prairie Home Companion, the Academy would bestow an Honorary Oscar upon Altman. During his acceptance speech, Altman would wonder if perhaps the Academy acted prematurely in honoring him in this fashion. He revealed he had received a heart transplant in the mid-1990s, and felt that, even though he had turned 81 the month before, he could continue for another forty years.   Robert Altman would pass away from leukemia on November 20th, 2006, only eight months after receiving the biggest prize of his career.   Robert Altman had a style so unique onto himself, there's an adjective that exists to describe it. Altmanesque. Displaying traits typical of a film made by Robert Altman, typically highly naturalistic, but with a stylized perspective and often a subversive twist.   He truly was a one of a kind filmmaker, and there will likely never be anyone like him, no matter how hard Paul Thomas Anderson tries.     Thank you for joining us. We'll talk again in two weeks, when Episode 106, Mad Magazine Presents Up the Academy, is released.   Remember to visit this episode's page on our website, The80sMoviePodcast.com, for extra materials about the movies we covered this episode.   The 80s Movies Podcast has been researched, written, narrated and edited by Edward Havens for Idiosyncratic Entertainment.   Thank you again.   Good night.  

On this episode, we talk about the great American filmmaker Robert Altman, and what is arguably the worst movie of his six decade, thirty-five film career: his 1987 atrocity O.C. and Stiggs. ----more---- TRANSCRIPT   From Los Angeles, California, the Entertainment Capital of the World, it's The 80s Movies Podcast. I am your host, Edward Havens. Thank you for listening today.   On this episode, we're going to talk about one of the strangest movies to come out of the decade, not only for its material, but for who directed it.   Robert Altman's O.C. and Stiggs.   As always, before we get to the O.C. and Stiggs, we will be going a little further back in time.   Although he is not every cineaste's cup of tea, it is generally acknowledged that Robert Altman was one of the best filmmakers to ever work in cinema. But he wasn't an immediate success when he broke into the industry.   Born in Kansas City in February 1925, Robert Altman would join the US Army Air Force after graduating high school, as many a young man would do in the days of World War II. He would train to be a pilot, and he would fly more than 50 missions during the war as part of the 307th Bomb Group, operating in the Pacific Theatre. They would help liberate prisoners of war held in Japanese POW Camps from Okinawa to Manila after the victory over Japan lead to the end of World War II in that part of the world.   After the war, Altman would move to Los Angeles to break into the movies, and he would even succeed in selling a screenplay to RKO Pictures called Bodyguard, a film noir story shot in 1948 starring Lawrence Tierney and Priscilla Lane, but on the final film, he would only share a “Story by” credit with his then-writing partner, George W. George. But by 1950, he'd be back in Kansas City, where he would direct more than 65 industrial films over the course of three years, before heading back to Los Angeles with the experience he would need to take another shot.   Altman would spend a few years directing episodes of a drama series called Pulse of the City on the DuMont television network and a syndicated police drama called The Sheriff of Cochise, but he wouldn't get his first feature directing gig until 1957, when a businessman in Kansas City would hire the thirty-two year old to write and direct a movie locally. That film, The Delinquents, cost only $60k to make, and would be purchased for release by United Artists for $150k. The first film to star future Billy Jack writer/director/star Tom Laughlin, The Delinquents would gross more than a million dollars in theatres, a very good sum back in those days, but despite the success of the film, the only work Altman could get outside of television was co-directing The James Dean Story, a documentary set up at Warner Brothers to capitalize on the interest in the actor after dying in a car accident two years earlier.   Throughout the 1960s, Altman would continue to work in television, until he was finally given another chance to direct a feature film. 1967's Countdown was a lower budgeted feature at Warner Brothers featuring James Caan in an early leading role, about the space race between the Americans and Soviets, a good two years before Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon. The shoot itself was easy, but Altman would be fired from the film shortly after filming was completed, as Jack Warner, the 75 year old head of the studio, was not very happy about the overlapping dialogue, a motif that would become a part of Altman's way of making movies. Although his name appears in the credits as the director of the film, he had no input in its assembly. His ambiguous ending was changed, and the film would be edited to be more family friendly than the director intended.   Altman would follow Countdown with 1969's That Cold Day in the Park, a psychological drama that would be both a critical and financial disappointment.   But his next film would change everything.   Before Altman was hired by Twentieth-Century Fox to direct MASH, more than a dozen major filmmakers would pass on the project. An adaptation of a little known novel by a Korean War veteran who worked as a surgeon at one of the Mobile Auxiliary Surgical Hospitals that give the story its acronymic title, MASH would literally fly under the radar from the executives at the studio, as most of the $3m film would be shot at the studio's ranch lot in Malibu, while the executives were more concerned about their bigger movies of the year in production, like their $12.5m biographical film on World War II general George S. Patton and their $25m World War II drama Tora! Tora! Tora!, one of the first movies to be a Japanese and American co-production since the end of the war.    Altman was going to make MASH his way, no matter what. When the studio refused to allow him to hire a fair amount of extras to populate the MASH camp, Altman would steal individual lines from other characters to give to background actors, in order to get the bustling atmosphere he wanted. In order to give the camp a properly dirty look, he would shoot most of the outdoor scenes with a zoom lens and a fog filter with the camera a reasonably far distance from the actors, so they could act to one another instead of the camera, giving the film a sort of documentary feel. And he would find flexibility when the moment called for it. Sally Kellerman, who was hired to play Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan, would work with Altman to expand and improve her character to be more than just eye candy, in large part because Altman liked what she was doing in her scenes.   This kind of flexibility infuriated the two major stars of the film, Elliott Gould and Donald Sutherland, who at one point during the shoot tried to get Altman fired for treating everyone in the cast and crew with the same level of respect and decorum regardless of their position. But unlike at Warners a couple years earlier, the success of movies like Bonnie and Clyde and Easy Rider bamboozled Hollywood studio executives, who did not understand exactly what the new generation of filmgoers wanted, and would often give filmmakers more leeway than before, in the hopes that lightning could be captured once again.   And Altman would give them exactly that.   MASH, which would also be the first major studio film to be released with The F Word spoken on screen, would not only become a critical hit, but become the third highest grossing movie released in 1970, grossing more than $80m. The movie would win the Palme D'Or at that year's Cannes Film Festival, and it would be nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Supporting Actress for Ms. Kellerman, winning only for Best Adapted Screenplay. An ironic win, since most of the dialogue was improvised on set, but the victory for screenwriter Ring Lardner Jr. would effectively destroy the once powerful Hollywood Blacklist that had been in place since the Red Scare of the 1950s.   After MASH, Altman went on one of the greatest runs any filmmaker would ever enjoy.   MASH would be released in January 1970, and Altman's follow up, Brewster McCloud, would be released in December 1970. Bud Cort, the future star of Harold and Maude, plays a recluse who lives in the fallout shelter of the Houston Astrodome, who is building a pair of wings in order to achieve his dream of flying. The film would feature a number of actors who already were featured in MASH and would continue to be featured in a number of future Altman movies, including Sally Kellerman, Michael Murphy, John Schuck and Bert Remson, but another reason to watch Brewster McCloud if you've never seen it is because it is the film debut of Shelley Duvall, one of our greatest and least appreciated actresses, who would go on to appear in six other Altman movies over the ensuing decade.   1971's McCabe and Mrs. Miller, for me, is his second best film. A Western starring Warren Beatty and Julie Christie, was a minor hit when it was first released but has seen a reevaluation over the years that found it to be named the 8th Best Western of all time by the American Film Institute, which frankly is too low for me. The film would also bring a little-known Canadian poet and musician to the world, Leonard Cohen, who wrote and performed three songs for the soundtrack. Yeah, you have Robert Altman to thank for Leonard Cohen.   1972's Images was another psychological horror film, this time co-written with English actress Susannah York, who also stars in the film as an author of children's books who starts to have wild hallucinations at her remote vacation home, after learning her husband might be cheating on her. The $800k film was one of the first to be produced by Hemdale Films, a British production company co-founded by Blow Up actor David Hemmings, but the film would be a critical and financial disappointment when it was released Christmas week. But it would get nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Dramatic Score. It would be one of two nominations in the category for John Williams, the other being The Poseidon Adventure.   Whatever resentment Elliott Gould may have had with Altman during the shooting of MASH was gone by late 1972, when the actor agreed to star in the director's new movie, a modern adaptation of Raymond Chandler's 1953 novel The Long Goodbye. Gould would be the eighth actor to play the lead character, Phillip Marlowe, in a movie. The screenplay would be written by Leigh Brackett, who Star Wars nerds know as the first writer on The Empire Strikes Back but had also adapted Chandler's novel The Big Sleep, another Phillip Marlowe story, to the big screen back in 1946.   Howard Hawks and Peter Bogdanovich had both been approached to make the film, and it would be Bogdanovich who would recommend Altman to the President of United Artists. The final film would anger Chandler fans, who did not like Altman's approach to the material, and the $1.7m film would gross less than $1m when it was released in March 1973. But like many of Altman's movies, it was a big hit with critics, and would find favor with film fans in the years to come.   1974 would be another year where Altman would make and release two movies in the same calendar year. The first, Thieves Like Us, was a crime drama most noted as one of the few movies to not have any kind of traditional musical score. What music there is in the film is usually heard off radios seen in individual scenes. Once again, we have a number of Altman regulars in the film, including Shelley Duvall, Bert Remsen, John Schuck and Tom Skerritt, and would feature Keith Carradine, who had a small co-starring role in McCabe and Mrs. Miller, in his first major leading role. And, once again, the film would be a hit with critics but a dud with audiences. Unlike most of Altman's movies of the 1970s, Thieves Like Us has not enjoyed the same kind of reappraisal.   The second film, California Split, was released in August, just six months after Thieves Like Us. Elliott Gould once again stars in a Robert Altman movie, this time alongside George Segal. They play a pair of gamblers who ride what they think is a lucky streak from Los Angeles to Reno, Nevada, would be the only time Gould and Segal would work closely together in a movie, and watching California Split, one wishes there could have been more. The movie would be an innovator seemingly purpose-build for a Robert Altman movie, for it would be the first non-Cinerama movie to be recorded using an eight track stereo sound system. More than any movie before, Altman could control how his overlapping dialogue was placed in a theatre. But while most theatres that played the movie would only play it in mono sound, the film would still be a minor success, bringing in more than $5m in ticket sales.   1975 would bring what many consider to be the quintessential Robert Altman movie to screens.   The two hour and forty minute Nashville would feature no less than 24 different major characters, as a group of people come to Music City to be involved in a gala concert for a political outsider who is running for President on the Replacement Party ticket. The cast is one of the best ever assembled for a movie ever, including Ned Beatty, Karen Black, Ronee Blakely, Keith Carradine, Geraldine Chaplin, Robert DoQui, Shelley Duvall, Allen Garfield, Henry Gibson, Scott Glenn, Jeff Goldblum, Barbara Harris, Cristina Raines, Lily Tomlin and Keenan Wynn.   Altman would be nominated for two Academy Awards for the film, Best Picture, as its producer, and Best Director, while both Ronee Blakely and Lily Tomlin would be nominated for Best Supporting Actress. Keith Carradine would also be nominated for an Oscar, but not as an actor. He would, at the urging of Altman during the production of the film, write and perform a song called I'm Easy, which would win for Best Original Song. The $2.2m film would earn $10m in ticket sales, and would eventually become part of the fourth class of movies to be selected for preservation by the National Film Registry in 1991, the first of four Robert Altman films to be given that honor. MASH, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, and The Long Goodbye would also be selected for preservation over the years.   And we're going to stop here for a second and take a look at that list of films again.   MASH Brewster McCloud McCabe and Mrs. Miller Images The Long Goodbye Thieves Like Us California Split Nashville   Eight movies, made over a five year period, that between them earned twelve Academy Award nominations, four of which would be deemed so culturally important that they should be preserved for future generations.   And we're still only in the middle of the 1970s.   But the problem with a director like Robert Altman, like many of our greatest directors, their next film after one of their greatest successes feels like a major disappointment. And his 1976 film Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson, and that is the complete title of the film by the way, did not meet the lofty expectations of film fans not only its director, but of its main stars. Altman would cast two legendary actors he had not yet worked with, Paul Newman and Burt Lancaster, and the combination of those two actors with this director should have been fantastic, but the results were merely okay. In fact,  Altman would, for the first time in his career, re-edit a film after its theatrical release, removing some of the Wild West show acts that he felt were maybe redundant.   His 1977 film 3 Women would bring Altman back to the limelight. The film was based on a dream he had one night while his wife was in the hospital. In the dream, he was directing his regular co-star Shelley Duvall alongside Sissy Spacek, who he had never worked with before, in a story about identity theft that took place in the deserts outside Los Angeles. He woke up in the middle of the dream, jotted down what he could remember, and went back to sleep. In the morning, he didn't have a full movie planned out, but enough of one to get Alan Ladd, Jr., the President of Twentieth-Century Fox, to put up $1.7m for a not fully formed idea. That's how much Robert Altman was trusted at the time. That, and Altman was known for never going over budget. As long as he stayed within his budget, Ladd would let Altman make whatever movie he wanted to make. That, plus Ladd was more concerned about a $10m movie he approved that was going over budget over in England, a science fiction movie directed by the guy who did American Graffiti that had no stars outside of Sir Alec Guinness.   That movie, of course, was Star Wars, which would be released four weeks after 3 Women had its premiere in New York City. While the film didn't make 1/100th the money Star Wars made, it was one of the best reviewed movies of the year. But, strangely, the film would not be seen again outside of sporadic screenings on cable until it was released on DVD by the Criterion Collection 27 years later.   I'm not going to try and explain the movie to you. Just trust me that 3 Women is from a master craftsman at the top of his game.   While on the press tour to publicize 3 Women, a reporter asked Altman what was going to be next for him. He jokingly said he was going to shoot a wedding. But then he went home, thought about it some more, and in a few weeks, had a basic idea sketched out for a movie titled A Wedding that would take place over the course of one day, as the daughter of a Southern nouveau riche family marries the son of a wealthy Chicago businessman who may or may not a major figure in The Outfit.   And while the film is quite entertaining, what's most interesting about watching this 1978 movie in 2023 is not only how many great established actors Altman got for the film, including Carol Burnett, Paul Dooley, Howard Duff, Mia Farrow, Vittorio Gassman, Lauren Hutton, and, in her 100th movie, Lillian Gish, but the number of notable actors he was able to get because he shot the film just outside Chicago. Not only will you see Dennis Christopher just before his breakthrough in Breaking Away, and not only will you see Pam Dawber just before she was cast alongside Robin Williams in Mark and Mindy, but you'll also see Dennis Franz, Laurie Metcalfe, Gary Sinese, Tim Thomerson, and George Wendt.   And because Altman was able to keep the budget at a reasonable level, less than $1.75m, the film would be slightly profitable for Twentieth Century-Fox after grossing $3.6m at the box office.   Altman's next film for Fox, 1979's Quintet, would not be as fortunate.   Altman had come up with the story for this post-apocalyptic drama as a vehicle for Walter Hill to write and direct. But Hill would instead make The Warriors, and Altman decided to make the film himself. While developing the screenplay with his co-writers Frank Barhydt and Patricia Resnick, Altman would create a board game, complete with token pieces and a full set of rules, to flesh out the storyline.   Altman would once again work with Paul Newman, who stars as a seal hunter in the early days of a new ice age who finds himself in elaborate game with a group of gamblers where losing in the game means losing your life in the process. Altman would deliberately hire an international cast to star alongside Newman, not only to help improve the film's ability to do well in foreign territories but to not have the storyline tied to any specific country. So we would have Italian actor Vittorio Gassman, Spaniard Fernando Rey, Swedish actress Bibi Andersson, French actress Brigitte Fossey, and Danish actress Nina van Pallandt.    In order to maintain the mystery of the movie, Altman would ask Fox to withhold all pre-release publicity for the film, in order to avoid any conditioning of the audience. Imagine trying to put together a compelling trailer for a movie featuring one of the most beloved actors of all time, but you're not allowed to show potential audiences what they're getting themselves into? Altman would let the studio use five shots from the film, totaling about seven seconds, for the trailer, which mostly comprised of slo-mo shots of a pair of dice bouncing around, while the names of the stars pop up from moment to moment and a narrator tries to create some sense of mystery on the soundtrack.   But audiences would not be intrigued by the mystery, and critics would tear the $6.4m budget film apart. To be fair, the shoot for the film, in the winter of 1977 outside Montreal was a tough time for all, and Altman would lose final cut on the film for going severely over-budget during production, although there seems to be very little documentation about how much the final film might have differed from what Altman would have been working on had he been able to complete the film his way.   But despite all the problems with Quintet, Fox would still back Altman's next movie, A Perfect Couple, which would be shot after Fox pulled Altman off Quintet. Can you imagine that happening today? A director working with the studio that just pulled them off their project. But that's how little ego Altman had. He just wanted to make movies. Tell stories. This simple romantic comedy starred his regular collaborator Paul Dooley as  Alex, a man who follows a band of traveling bohemian musicians because he's falling for one of the singers in the band.   Altman kept the film on its $1.9m budget, but the response from critics was mostly concern that Altman had lost his touch. Maybe it was because this was his 13th film of the decade, but there was a serious concern about the director's ability to tell a story had evaporated.   That worry would continue with his next film, Health.   A satire of the political scene in the United States at the end of the 1970s, Health would follow a health food organization holding a convention at a luxury hotel in St. Petersburg FL. As one would expect from a Robert Altman movie, there's one hell of a cast. Along with Henry Gibson, and Paul Dooley, who co-write the script with Altman and Frank Barhydt, the cast would include Lauren Bacall, Carol Burnett, James Garner and, in one of her earliest screen appearances, Alfre Woodard, as well as Dick Cavett and Dinah Shore as themselves.   But between the shooting of the film in the late winter and early spring of 1979 and the planned Christmas 1979 release, there was a change of management at Fox. Alan Ladd Jr. was out, and after Altman turned in his final cut, new studio head Norman Levy decided to pull the film off the 1979 release calendar. Altman fought to get the film released sometime during the 1980 Presidential Campaign, and was able to get Levy to give the film a platform release starting in Los Angeles and New York City in March 1980, but that date would get cancelled as well. Levy then suggested an April 1980 test run in St. Louis, which Altman was not happy with. Altman countered with test runs in Boston, Houston, Sacramento and San Francisco. The best Altman, who was in Malta shooting his next movie, could get were sneak previews of the film in those four markets, and the response cards from the audience were so bad, the studio decided to effectively put the film on the proverbial shelf.   Back from the Mediterranean Sea, Altman would get permission to take the film to the Montreal World Film Festival in August, and the Telluride and Venice Film Festivals in September. After good responses from film goers at those festivals, Fox would relent, and give the film a “preview” screening at the United Artists Theatre in Westwood, starting on September 12th, 1980. But the studio would give the film the most boring ad campaign possible, a very crude line drawing of an older woman's pearl bracelet-covered arm thrusted upward while holding a carrot. With no trailers in circulation at any theatre, and no television commercials on air, it would be little surprise the film didn't do a whole lot of business. You really had to know the film had been released. But its $14k opening weekend gross wasn't really all that bad. And it's second week gross of $10,500 with even less ad support was decent if unspectacular. But it would be good enough to get the film a four week playdate at the UA Westwood.   And then, nothing, until early March 1981, when a film society at Northwestern University in Evanston IL was able to screen a 16mm print for one show, while a theatre in Baltimore was able to show the film one time at the end of March. But then, nothing again for more than another year, when the film would finally get a belated official release at the Film Forum in New York City on April 7th, 1982. It would only play for a week, and as a non-profit, the Film Forum does not report film grosses, so we have no idea how well the film actually did. Since then, the movie showed once on CBS in August 1983, and has occasionally played on the Fox Movie Channel, but has never been released on VHS or DVD or Blu-Ray.   I mentioned a few moments ago that while he was dealing with all this drama concerning Health, Altman was in the Mediterranean filming a movie. I'm not going to go too much into that movie here, since I already have an episode for the future planned for it, suffice to say that a Robert Altman-directed live-action musical version of the Popeye the Sailor Man cartoon featuring songs by the incomparable Harry Nilsson should have been a smash hit, but it wasn't. It was profitable, to be certain, but not the hit everyone was expecting. We'll talk about the film in much more detail soon.   After the disappointing results for Popeye, Altman decided to stop working in Hollywood for a while and hit the Broadway stages, to direct a show called Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean. While the show's run was not very long and the reviews not very good, Altman would fund a movie version himself, thanks in part to the sale of his production company, Lion's Gate, not to be confused with the current studio called Lionsgate, and would cast Karen Black, Cher and Sandy Dennis alongside newcomers Sudie Bond and Kathy Bates, as five female members of The Disciples of James Dean come together on the 20th anniversary of the actor's death to honor his life and times. As the first film released by a new independent distributor called Cinecom, I'll spend more time talking about this movie on our show about that distributor, also coming soon, suffice it to say that Altman was back. Critics were behind the film, and arthouse audiences loved it. This would be the first time Altman adapted a stage play to the screen, and it would set the tone for a number of his works throughout the rest of the decade.   Streamers was Altman's 17th film in thirteen years, and another adaptation of a stage play. One of several works by noted Broadway playwright David Rabe's time in the Army during the Vietnam War, the film followed four young soldiers waiting to be shipped to Vietnam who deal with racial tensions and their own intolerances when one soldier reveals he is gay. The film featured Matthew Modine as the Rabe stand-in, and features a rare dramatic role for comedy legend David Alan Grier. Many critics would note how much more intense the film version was compared to the stage version, as Altman's camera was able to effortlessly breeze around the set, and get up close and personal with the performers in ways that simply cannot happen on the stage. But in 1983, audiences were still not quite ready to deal with the trauma of Vietnam on film, and the film would be fairly ignored by audiences, grossing just $378k.   Which, finally, after half an hour, brings us to our featured movie.   O.C. and Stiggs.   Now, you might be asking yourself why I went into such detail about Robert Altman's career, most of it during the 1970s. Well, I wanted to establish what types of material Altman would chose for his projects, and just how different O.C. and Stiggs  was from any other project he had made to date.   O.C. and Stiggs began their lives in the July 1981 issue of National Lampoon, as written by two of the editors of the magazine, Ted Mann and Tod Carroll. The characters were fun-loving and occasionally destructive teenage pranksters, and their first appearance in the magazine would prove to be so popular with readers, the pair would appear a few more times until Matty Simmons, the publisher and owner of National Lampoon, gave over the entire October 1982 issue to Mann and Carroll for a story called “The Utterly Monstrous Mind-Roasting Summer of O.C. and Stiggs.” It's easy to find PDFs of the issues online if you look for it.   So the issue becomes one of the biggest selling issues in the history of National Lampoon, and Matty Simmons has been building the National Lampoon brand name by sponsoring a series of movies, including Animal House, co-written by Lampoon writers Doug Kenney and Chris Miller, and the soon to be released movies Class Reunion, written by Lampoon writer John Hughes… yes, that John Hughes… and Movie Madness, written by five Lampoon writers including Tod Carroll. But for some reason, Simmons was not behind the idea of turning the utterly monstrous mind-roasting adventures of O.C. and Stiggs into a movie. He would, however, allow Mann and Carroll to shop the idea around Hollywood, and wished them the best of luck.   As luck would have it, Mann and Carroll would meet Peter Newman, who had worked as Altman's production executive on Jimmy Dean, and was looking to set up his first film as a producer. And while Newman might not have had the credits, he had the connections. The first person he would take the script to his Oscar-winning director Mike Nichols, whose credits by this time included Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolff?, The Graduate, Catch-22, and Carnal Knowledge. Surprisingly, Nichols was not just interested in making the movie, but really wanted to have Eddie Murphy, who was a breakout star on Saturday Night Live but was still a month away from becoming a movie star when 48 Hours was released, play one of the leading characters. But Murphy couldn't get out of his SNL commitments, and Nichols had too many other projects, both on Broadway and in movies, to be able to commit to the film.    A few weeks later, Newman and Altman both attended a party where they would catch up after several months. Newman started to tell Altman about this new project he was setting up, and to Newman's surprise, Altman, drawn to the characters' anti-establishment outlook, expressed interest in making it. And because Altman's name still commanded respect in Hollywood, several studios would start to show their interest in making the movie with them. MGM, who was enjoying a number of successes in 1982 thanks to movies like Shoot the Moon, Diner, Victor/Victoria, Rocky III, Poltergeist, Pink Floyd - The Wall, and My Favorite Year, made a preemptive bid on the film, hoping to beat Paramount Pictures to the deal. Unknown to Altman, what interested MGM was that Sylvester Stallone of all people went nuts for the script when he read it, and mentioned to his buddies at the studio that he might be interested in making it himself.   Despite hating studio executives for doing stuff like buying a script he's attached to  then kicking him off so some Italian Stallion not known for comedy could make it himself, Altman agree to make the movie with MGM once Stallone lost interest, as the studio promised there would be no further notes about the script, that Altman could have final cut on the film, that he could shoot the film in Phoenix without studio interference, and that he could have a budget of $7m.   Since this was a Robert Altman film, the cast would be big and eclectic, filled with a number of his regular cast members, known actors who he had never worked with before, and newcomers who would go on to have success a few years down the road. Because, seriously, outside of a Robert Altman movie, where are you going to find a cast that included Jon Cryer, Jane Curtin, Paul Dooley, Dennis Hopper, Tina Louise, Martin Mull, Cynthia Nixon, Bob Uecker, Melvin van Peebles, and King Sunny Adé and His African Beats? And then imagine that movie also featuring Matthew Broderick, Jim Carrey, Robert Downey, Jr. and Laura Dern?   The story for the film would both follow the stories that appeared in the pages of National Lampoon fairly closely while also making some major changes. In the film, Oliver Cromwell “O.C.” Oglivie and Mark Stiggs are two ne'er-do-well, middle-class Phoenix, Arizona high school students who are disgusted with what they see as an omnipresent culture of vulgar and vapid suburban consumerism. They spend their days slacking off and committing pranks or outright crimes against their sworn enemies, the Schwab family, especially family head Randall Schwab, a wealthy insurance salesman who was responsible for the involuntary commitment of O.C.'s grandfather into a group home. During the film, O.C. and Stiggs will ruin the wedding of Randall Schwab's daughter Lenore, raft their way down to a Mexican fiesta, ruin a horrible dinner theatre performance directed by their high school's drama teacher being attended by the Schwabs, and turn the Schwab mansion into a homeless shelter while the family is on vacation. The film ends with O.C. and Stiggs getting into a gun fight with Randall Schwab before being rescued by Dennis Hopper and a helicopter, before discovering one of their adventures that summer has made them very wealthy themselves.   The film would begin production in Phoenix on August 22nd, 1983, with two newcomers, Daniel H. Jenkins and Neill Barry, as the titular stars of the film. And almost immediately, Altman's chaotic ways of making a movie would become a problem. Altman would make sure the entire cast and crew were all staying at the same hotel in town, across the street from a greyhound racetrack, so Altman could take off to bet on a few of the races during production downtime, and made sure the bar at the hotel was an open bar for his team while they were shooting. When shooting was done every day, the director and his cast would head to a makeshift screening room at the hotel, where they'd watch the previous day's footage, a process called “dailies” in production parlance. On most films, dailies are only attended by the director and his immediate production crew, but in Phoenix, everyone was encouraged to attend. And according to producer Peter Newman and Dan Jenkins, everyone loved the footage, although both would note that it might have been a combination of the alcohol, the pot, the cocaine and the dehydration caused by shooting all day in the excessive Arizona heat during the middle of summer that helped people enjoy the footage.    But here's the funny thing about dailies.   Unless a film is being shot in sequence, you're only seeing small fragments of scenes, often the same actors doing the same things over and over again, before the camera switches places to catch reactions or have other characters continue the scene. Sometimes, they're long takes of scenes that might be interrupted by an actor flubbing a line or an unexpected camera jitter or some other interruption that requires a restart. But everyone seemed to be having fun, especially when dailies ended and Altman would show one of his other movies like MASH or The Long Goodbye or 3 Women.   After two months of shooting, the film would wrap production, and Altman would get to work on his edit of the film. He would have it done before the end of 1983, and he would turn it in to the studio. Shortly after the new year, there would be a private screening of the film in New York City at the offices of the talent agency William Morris, one of the larger private screening rooms in the city. Altman was there, the New York-based executives at MGM were there, Peter Newman was there, several of the actors were there. And within five minutes of the start of the film, Altman realized what he was watching was not his cut of the film. As he was about to lose his stuff and start yelling at the studio executives, the projector broke. The lights would go up, and Altman would dig into the the executives. “This is your effing cut of the film and not mine!” Altman stormed out of the screening and into the cold New York winter night.   A few weeks later, that same print from New York would be screened for the big executives at the MGM lot in Los Angeles. Newman was there, and, surprisingly, Altman was there too. The film would screen for the entire running length, and Altman would sit there, watching someone else's version of the footage he had shot, scenes put in different places than they were supposed to be, music cues not of his design or consent.   At the end of the screening, the room was silent. Not one person in the room had laughed once during the entire screening. Newman and Altman left after the screening, and hit one of Altman's favorite local watering holes. As they said their goodbyes the next morning, Altman apologized to Newman. “I hope I didn't eff up your movie.”   Maybe the movie wasn't completely effed up, but MGM certainly neither knew what to do with the film or how to sell it, so it would just sit there, just like Health a few years earlier, on that proverbial shelf.   More than a year later, in an issue of Spin Magazine, a review of the latest album by King Sunny Adé would mention the film he performed in, O.C. and Stiggs, would, quote unquote, “finally” be released into theatres later that year.   That didn't happen, in large part because after WarGames in the early summer of 1983, almost every MGM release had been  either an outright bomb or an unexpected financial disappointment. The cash flow problem was so bad that the studio effectively had to sell itself to Atlanta cable mogul Ted Turner in order to save itself. Turner didn't actually want all of MGM. He only wanted the valuable MGM film library, but the owner of MGM at the time was either going to sell it all or nothing at all.   Barely two months after Ted Turner bought MGM, he had sold the famed studio lot in Culver City to Lorimar, a television production company that was looking to become a producer and distributor of motion pictures, and sold rest of the company he never wanted in the first place to the guy he bought it all from, who had a kind of seller's remorse. But that repurchase would saddle the company with massive bills, and movies like O.C. and Stiggs would have to sit and collect dust while everything was sorted out.   How long would O.C. and Stiggs be left in a void?   It would be so long that Robert Altman would have time to make not one, not two, but three other movies that would all be released before O.C. and Stiggs ever saw the light of day.   The first, Secret Honor, released in 1984, featured the great Philip Baker Hall as former President Richard Nixon. It's probably Hall's single best work as an actor, and the film would be amongst the best reviewed films of Altman's career.   In 1985, Altman would film Fool For Love, an adaptation of a play by Sam Shepard. This would be the only time in Shepard's film career where he would star as one of the characters himself had written. The film would also prove once and for all that Kim Basinger was more than just a pretty face but a real actor.   And in February 1987, Altman's film version of Beyond Therapy, a play by absurdist playwright Christopher Durant, would open in theatres. The all-star cast would include Tom Conti, Jeff Goldblum, Christopher Guest, Julie Hagerty and Glenda Jackson.   On March 5th, 1987, an article in Daily Variety would note that the “long shelved” film would have a limited theatrical release in May, despite the fact that Frank Yablans, the vice chairman of MGM, being quoted in the article that the film was unreleasable. It would further be noted that despite the film being available to international distributors for three years, not one company was willing to acquire the film for any market. The plan was to release the movie for one or two weeks in three major US markets, depending on its popularity, and then decide a future course of action from there.   But May would come and go, without a hint of the film.   Finally, on Friday, July 10th, the film would open on 18 screens, but none in any major market like Chicago, Los Angeles or New York City. I can't find a single theatre the film played in that weekend, but that week's box office figures would show an abysmal $6,273 worth of tickets were sold during that first weekend.   There would not be a second weekend of reported grosses.   But to MGM's credit, they didn't totally give up on the film.   On Thursday, August 27th, O.C. and Stiggs would open in at least one theatre. And, lucky for me, that theatre happened to be the Nickelodeon Theatre in Santa Cruz. But despite the fact that the new Robert Altman was opening in town, I could not get a single friend to see it with me. So on a Tuesday night at 8:40pm, I was the only person in all of the region to watch what I would soon discover was the worst Robert Altman movie of all time. Now, I should note that even a bad Robert Altman movie is better than many filmmakers' best movies, but O.C. and Stiggs would have ignobility of feeling very much like a Robert Altman movie, with its wandering camera and overlapping dialogue that weaves in and out of conversations while in progress and not quite over yet, yet not feeling anything like a Robert Altman movie at the same time. It didn't have that magical whimsy-ness that was the hallmark of his movies. The satire didn't have its normal bite. It had a number of Altman's regular troop of actors, but in smaller roles than they'd usually occupy, and not giving the performances one would expect of them in an Altman movie.   I don't know how well the film did at the Nick, suffice it to say the film was gone after a week.   But to MGM's credit, they still didn't give up on the film.   On October 9th, the film would open at the AMC Century City 14, one of a handful of movies that would open the newest multiplex in Los Angeles.   MGM did not report grosses, and the film was gone from the new multiplex after a week.   But to MGM's credit, they still didn't give up on the film.   The studio would give the film one more chance, opening it at the Film Forum in New York City on March 18th, 1988.   MGM did not report grosses, and the film was gone after a week. But whether that was because MGM didn't support the film with any kind of newspaper advertising in the largest market in America, or because the movie had been released on home video back in November, remains to be seen.   O.C. and Stiggs would never become anything resembling a cult film. It's been released on DVD, and if one was programming a Robert Altman retrospect at a local arthouse movie theatre, one could actually book a 35mm print of the film from the repertory cinema company Park Circus.   But don't feel bad for Altman, as he would return to cinemas with a vengeance in the 1990s, first with the 1990 biographical drama Vincent and Theo, featuring Tim Roth as the tortured genius 19th century painter that would put the actor on the map for good. Then, in 1992, he became a sensation again with his Hollywood satire The Player, featuring Tim Robbins as a murderous studio executive trying to keep the police off his trail while he navigates the pitfalls of the industry. Altman would receive his first Oscar nomination for Best Director since 1975 with The Player, his third overall, a feat he would repeat the following year with Short Cuts, based on a series of short stories by Raymond Carver. In fact, Altman would be nominated for an Academy Award seven times during his career, five times as a director and twice as a producer, although he would never win a competitive Oscar.   In March 2006, while editing his 35th film, a screen adaptation of the then-popular NPR series A Prairie Home Companion, the Academy would bestow an Honorary Oscar upon Altman. During his acceptance speech, Altman would wonder if perhaps the Academy acted prematurely in honoring him in this fashion. He revealed he had received a heart transplant in the mid-1990s, and felt that, even though he had turned 81 the month before, he could continue for another forty years.   Robert Altman would pass away from leukemia on November 20th, 2006, only eight months after receiving the biggest prize of his career.   Robert Altman had a style so unique onto himself, there's an adjective that exists to describe it. Altmanesque. Displaying traits typical of a film made by Robert Altman, typically highly naturalistic, but with a stylized perspective and often a subversive twist.   He truly was a one of a kind filmmaker, and there will likely never be anyone like him, no matter how hard Paul Thomas Anderson tries.     Thank you for joining us. We'll talk again in two weeks, when Episode 106, Mad Magazine Presents Up the Academy, is released.   Remember to visit this episode's page on our website, The80sMoviePodcast.com, for extra materials about the movies we covered this episode.   The 80s Movies Podcast has been researched, written, narrated and edited by Edward Havens for Idiosyncratic Entertainment.   Thank you again.   Good night.  

Actor and Author, Ryan Cassidy, will join Billy and Frank on the March 22nd episode of A Mick A Mook and A Mic. Ryan recently authored the book, “James Cagney Was My Baby Sitter.”Ryan is the youngest of the famous Cassidy brothers and the son of Academy Award-Winner Shirley Jones for Elmer Gantry, plus the hit, The Music Man.Ryan embarked on an acting career after graduating from Beverly Hills High School. During this time, he appeared in the Lionel Ritchie music video, Penny Lover, the NBC sitcom The Facts of Life as Kevin Metcalf (a role designed around Ryan, himself), and as Jake Hittman in The Centurions episode of the short-lived CBS series, Jesse Hawkes.Cassidy left show business in the '90s and pursued different avenues, finally settling on work behind the scenes, working first in the art department at Jim Henson Productions and, later, for such shows as, The King of Queens, My Wife and Kids, According to Jim, and Summerland.In 2000, Ryan re-established himself as an actor and pursued more dramatic roles. His portrayal of Chris McPherson in the 2002 stage production of The Family Game earned the praise of Daily Variety, and he worked on the independent film, Paradise.Be sure to join Mick, Mook and Ryan on March 22 to learn more about Cassidy's intriguing life.

I recently attended a film appreciation class with Dale Pollock, called Senior Moments. And yes, as the name suggests, it was a look into how the film industry, Hollywood in particular, has treated aging. Not surprisingly it has not done a stellar job. When I asked Dale to tell me more about how the industry has changed, he said we've come a long way from depicting older characters as simply being the crazy old biddy or the wise decrepit grandfather. Especially when you look at a film like “Good Luck to you Leo Grande,” with Emma Thompson.He believes that advances in science and technology with regards aging will inform filmmaking and stories. When I ask Dale if there is anything that actors, filmmakers, and the industry in general can do to improve accurate and authentic representation of older characters, he points to three main things. The first is, as actors we must embrace our older selves. His second point is that directors, who are typically ‘risk averse', need to be more willing to cast 50-year-old characters who actually look 50. He also says those teaching in the many film schools around the country have to continue to move towards a more generous view of aging. He says, only then will filmmakers fully realize the dramatic and comedic potential of aging.  Dale M. Pollock received a BA in Anthropology from Brandeis University in 1972 and MS in Communications from San Jose State University. In 1977, he became the head film critic for the Daily Variety until he was hired by the Los Angeles Times to be their chief entertainment correspondent.  He was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in the early 1980s and wrote Skywalking: The Life and Films of George Lucas in 1984, which has sold more than 150,000 copies and remains in print. In 1985, Pollock joined David Geffen's company as a development executive, where he discovered the scripts for Beetlejuice, The Burbs and Universal Soldier.  He joined A&M Films as vice president in charge of production, and was named president in 1990, producing such films as The Beast, The Mighty Quinn, A Midnight Clear and Mrs. Winterbourne. Pollock ran his own film company Peak Productions for 10 years, producing the box office hit Set It Off.   He co-founded the producing program at the American Film Institute in 1995. In 1999 he became Dean of the School of Filmmaking at the (then) North Carolina School of the Arts, stepping down in 2006 to become Professor of Cinema Studies. He was awarded Emeritus status in 2019 and served as Interim Dean for nine months in 2021. Pollock was awarded an Endowed Professorship in Film in his name at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts School of Filmmaking and is the 2016 recipient of the UNC Board of Governors Award for Teaching Excellence. He also received the 2020 Arts Council of Winston Salem's Annual Award, its highest honor. Pollock's first work of fiction, Chopped: A Novel will be published in February 2023, and he is at work on a book about how Hollywood has treated aging in the movies. Learn more about Dale Pollockhttps://www.imdb.com/name/nm0689645/https://dalempollock.com If you want to chat or ask questions about the episode go to FB: https://www.facebook.com/tarmeydanielle/and visit the group site. Follow me on: IG: @tarmeydanielle Twitter: @TarmeyDanielle

For our second episode of 2023, we look back, as we did with Neil Diamond's only starring role last week, at the one and only acting role the late, great football star Pelé would ever make: Escape to Victory, a football-themed World War II drama that would also feature Michael Caine, Sylvester Stallone and Max von Sydow.   ----more---- TRANSCRIPT From Los Angeles, California, the Entertainment Capital of the World, it's The 80s Movies Podcast. I am your host, Edward Havens. Thank you for listening today.   On December 29th, while this show was on hiatus, the football world lost Edson Arantes de Nascimento, the legend known around the world by his single word nickname, Pelé. Even if you weren't a particular fan of football in the 1960s and 1970s, you more than likely knew who Pelé was. The International Olympic Committee named him the Athlete of the Century in 1999. Time Magazine named him one of the 100 most important people of the Twentieth Century. In the Brazilian city of Santos, where a fifteen year old Pelé got his professional start in 1956, a museum dedicated to all things Pelé opened in 2014, with more than 2400 items devoted to his life and careers.   After he retired from football in 1977, in an exhibition game between the New York Cosmos of the North American Soccer League, where Pelé had been playing for three years, and Santos, his former club of nineteen years, Pelé would become a global ambassador for the sport, and record an album of music alongside fellow Brazilian Sergio Mendes to accompany a documentary about his life.   And because this is a podcast about 80s movies, he would, of course, attempt a career in motion pictures.   And those who were going to be responsible for making Pelé a movie star were not going to take any chances.   Because Pelé was the most famous footballer on the planet, the movie was going to somehow be about football. American film producer Freddie Fields and his partner on the film, future Carolco Films co-owner Mario Kassar, would find their story for Escape to Victory in a Hungarian movie from 1961 called Two Halves in Hell. The film was based on a tale of a 1942 football match between German soldiers and their Ukrainian prisoners of war during World War II, known as the Death Match. That film, directed by Zoltán Fábri, would win several awards at film festivals worldwide, and was ripe for the American remake treatment.   However, there would need to be some changes to the story. The action would be moved from Soviet Russia to France, and the character being built for Pelé, Corporal Luis Fernandez, would be identified as being from Trinidad, as Brazil would not enter the European theatre of war until July of 1944.   While the script was being written, Fields and Kassar would get busy putting the film together.   In July 1979, it was announced that Brian Hutton, who had directed two other World War II-set movies, 1968's Where Eagles Dare and 1970's Kelly's Heroes, would helm this new movie, and that Lloyd Bridges was being considered for a role. A writer for Daily Variety reporting on Hutton's hire speculated that Clint Eastwood, who had starred in both Where Eagles Dare and Kelly's Heroes, would also star in the film, but that never happened.   In mid-September 1979, it was announced that legendary French actor Alain Delon would star in the film, and that Hutton had already left the project. Two weeks later, it was announced that two-time Academy Award-winning filmmaker John Huston would direct the project, which would now star Michael Caine and Sylvester Stallone. Amongst the locations Huston scouted to shoot the film at included Austria, Canada, England, Germany, and Ireland, but in the end, they would shoot in and around Budapest, Hungary, because they could shoot the film in the then-communist country for around $12m, versus $30m to $35m it would have cost to shoot in a more democratic country.   On a side note, Stallone ended up coming on to the film in a most unusual way. The actor was looking to buy a beach house in Malibu, and one of the houses he looked at was owned by Freddie Fields. After touring the house, Stallone found Fields sitting on the sundeck, and the actor informed the producer that the house was not quite big enough for himself, his wife and two sons. The two men got to talking, and Fields started to tell Stallone about this sports-based World War II movie he was about to make with John Huston as director. Although Stallone knew almost nothing about football, he was intrigued by the idea of getting to work with a director of Huston's stature. And wouldn't you know it, Fields just happened to have a copy of the script right here. Stallone took the script home, and agreed to be in the film three days later.   Not only would Pelé star in the film alongside Caine and Stallone, he would also work with Huston and the crew to design the football action in the film. Nearly two dozen professional football players, including Bobby Moore, the captain of the World Cup-winning 1966 British football team, would either have major roles in the film or play secondary characters in the film. Another member of that team, goalkeeper Gordon Banks, would assist Pelé in getting Stallone to look more like a goalkeeper on camera.   The movie would also hire Desmond Llewelyn, the beloved British character actor best known as Q in 17 James Bond movies made between 1963 and 1999, as a technical advisor, as Llewelyn had spent five years as a POW in German prison camps during World War II.   In early 1980, Max von Sydow, still shooting his role as Ming the Merciless in Mike Hedges' big screen adaptation of Flash Gordon, would be cast as Von Steiner, the Nazi Major who operates the POW camp.   Shooting would begin on May 26, 1980, after Stallone was done shooting Nighthawks in New York City.  Stallone would spend his weekends off that film to work with Gordon Banks on how to better look like a goalie, and to lose no less than forty pounds to better look like a prisoner of war, a sort of method acting Stallone was not really known for. But apparently, Stallone didn't really listen to Banks at first, as on his first day of shooting, the actor would throw himself around his goal area with a kind of reckless abandon, dislocating his shoulder and breaking a rib. The production would need to rearrange the shooting schedule to give Stallone time to heal. After he returned to the set, he would better heed Banks' advice, although he would end up breaking another rib and, in one scene with Pelé, breaking a finger trying to stop one of the superstar footballer's shots.   Other than Stallone's injuries, production on the film ran rather smoothly for nearly two months, until they were forced to shut production down completely on July 29th, eight days after the American Screen Actors Guild went on strike over residuals from emerging revenue streams like videocassettes and pay television. Since several actors like Stallone were SAG members, they had to stop working on the 21st, and the film completed all shots not using those actors a week later. Although the strike would last for slightly more than three months, Fields and Kassar were able to sign an interim agreement with the Guild to allow the film, which only had five days of shooting left when production was shut down, to resume shooting on August 31st.     Huston would spend the rest of 1980 and the first four months of 1981 working with his production team to get the film edited and ready for release. At the suggestion of Sylvester Stallone, Huston would hire Bill Conti to compose the score, the fifth movie starring Stallone that Conti would write the score to in as many years.   In May 1981, two months before the film's release, its American distributor, announced a slight change in the name of the movie. Instead of Escape to Victory, which would be retained by most every other distributor around the world, the film would simply be called Victory when it hit theatres on July 31st. Because the studio was worried that the full title would be a spoiler. And it actually would be. You'll notice I have not really said anything about the story, because if you haven't seen the movie yet, and you feel compelled to check it out because of this episode, I don't want to spoil it for you. And if you have seen the movie before, you already know what happens.   Victory would face very stiff competition when it opened at 692 theatres on July 31st. In addition to the Chevy Chase comedy Under the Rainbow, the film would go up against a re-release of The Empire Strikes Back and also contend with the continued success of Raiders of the Lost Ark and and Superman II.    The film would gross $2.4m in its first weekend, which would place it sixth on the box office charts, but that was slightly more than a third of what the Star Wars sequel would bring in that weekend, after having initially opened in theatres 14 months earlier. Victory would barely beat Arthur, which was in its third week of release but hadn't become the breakout success it would be in the weeks to come, but it lose out to the critically panned disaster known as John Derek's Tarzan the Ape Man in its second week. But hey, naked Bo Derek on the big screen, even more naked than in 10. Can't blame horny guys at the time for that.   In its second week of release, Victory would drop from sixth place to twelfth, with only $1.6m in ticket sales, and lose half of its screens in its third week, falling to thirteenth place with barely $1m taken in at the box office. After that fourth week, the film was no longer being tracked by Paramount, having earned just $10.85m. Internationally, the film would gross another $16m, since football was a more popular sport outside America. In fact, it was the seventh most popular movie released in 1981, outside of America. The film would barely break even once it was gone from theatres, but it would never become much of a cult film once it was released on videotape and to cable channels.   Although audiences didn't quite go for the movie, critics were rather kind to the film.   Vincent Canby of the New York Times would note that while the form of the film was highly conventional, the manner in which it was executed was not. An unnamed critic for the Hollywood trade publication would call the film “old fashioned,” and meant it as a compliment. And Gavin Bainbridge of the UK movie magazine Empire would highlight how John Huston created enough on-field magic and nostalgia for the game, and would note the kind of sportsmanship shown in the film that had sadly become extinct in the succeeding forty years.   In later years, Huston would admit he hated the idea of the movie and only did it for the paycheck, while Caine would tell one reporter while doing press for another movie that the only reason he made Victory was to meet and work with Pelé. Stallone would admit that shooting his scenes as a goalie were more physically and mentally demanding than on either of the Rocky movies that had been made up to that time.   Of course, Michael Caine and Sylvester Stallone would see far greater successes in their careers as the 80s continued on, while  Pelé pretty much kept future on-screen appearances more rooted in reality, appearing as himself on a few global television shows and movie documentaries.   We're actually planning on a small series for the final decade of John Huston's directing career, with a diverse set of movies that include the musical Annie, the mob comedy Prizzi's Honor, and the lyrical adaptation of James Joyce's The Dead. Look for that to come later this year.   Thank you for joining us. We'll talk again soon, when Episode 100 is released.   Remember to visit this episode's page on our website, The80sMoviePodcast.com, for extra materials about Pelé and the movie Victory.   The 80s Movies Podcast has been researched, written, narrated and edited by Edward Havens for Idiosyncratic Entertainment.   Thank you again.   Good night.  

For our second episode of 2023, we look back, as we did with Neil Diamond's only starring role last week, at the one and only acting role the late, great football star Pelé would ever make: Escape to Victory, a football-themed World War II drama that would also feature Michael Caine, Sylvester Stallone and Max von Sydow.   ----more---- TRANSCRIPT From Los Angeles, California, the Entertainment Capital of the World, it's The 80s Movies Podcast. I am your host, Edward Havens. Thank you for listening today.   On December 29th, while this show was on hiatus, the football world lost Edson Arantes de Nascimento, the legend known around the world by his single word nickname, Pelé. Even if you weren't a particular fan of football in the 1960s and 1970s, you more than likely knew who Pelé was. The International Olympic Committee named him the Athlete of the Century in 1999. Time Magazine named him one of the 100 most important people of the Twentieth Century. In the Brazilian city of Santos, where a fifteen year old Pelé got his professional start in 1956, a museum dedicated to all things Pelé opened in 2014, with more than 2400 items devoted to his life and careers.   After he retired from football in 1977, in an exhibition game between the New York Cosmos of the North American Soccer League, where Pelé had been playing for three years, and Santos, his former club of nineteen years, Pelé would become a global ambassador for the sport, and record an album of music alongside fellow Brazilian Sergio Mendes to accompany a documentary about his life.   And because this is a podcast about 80s movies, he would, of course, attempt a career in motion pictures.   And those who were going to be responsible for making Pelé a movie star were not going to take any chances.   Because Pelé was the most famous footballer on the planet, the movie was going to somehow be about football. American film producer Freddie Fields and his partner on the film, future Carolco Films co-owner Mario Kassar, would find their story for Escape to Victory in a Hungarian movie from 1961 called Two Halves in Hell. The film was based on a tale of a 1942 football match between German soldiers and their Ukrainian prisoners of war during World War II, known as the Death Match. That film, directed by Zoltán Fábri, would win several awards at film festivals worldwide, and was ripe for the American remake treatment.   However, there would need to be some changes to the story. The action would be moved from Soviet Russia to France, and the character being built for Pelé, Corporal Luis Fernandez, would be identified as being from Trinidad, as Brazil would not enter the European theatre of war until July of 1944.   While the script was being written, Fields and Kassar would get busy putting the film together.   In July 1979, it was announced that Brian Hutton, who had directed two other World War II-set movies, 1968's Where Eagles Dare and 1970's Kelly's Heroes, would helm this new movie, and that Lloyd Bridges was being considered for a role. A writer for Daily Variety reporting on Hutton's hire speculated that Clint Eastwood, who had starred in both Where Eagles Dare and Kelly's Heroes, would also star in the film, but that never happened.   In mid-September 1979, it was announced that legendary French actor Alain Delon would star in the film, and that Hutton had already left the project. Two weeks later, it was announced that two-time Academy Award-winning filmmaker John Huston would direct the project, which would now star Michael Caine and Sylvester Stallone. Amongst the locations Huston scouted to shoot the film at included Austria, Canada, England, Germany, and Ireland, but in the end, they would shoot in and around Budapest, Hungary, because they could shoot the film in the then-communist country for around $12m, versus $30m to $35m it would have cost to shoot in a more democratic country.   On a side note, Stallone ended up coming on to the film in a most unusual way. The actor was looking to buy a beach house in Malibu, and one of the houses he looked at was owned by Freddie Fields. After touring the house, Stallone found Fields sitting on the sundeck, and the actor informed the producer that the house was not quite big enough for himself, his wife and two sons. The two men got to talking, and Fields started to tell Stallone about this sports-based World War II movie he was about to make with John Huston as director. Although Stallone knew almost nothing about football, he was intrigued by the idea of getting to work with a director of Huston's stature. And wouldn't you know it, Fields just happened to have a copy of the script right here. Stallone took the script home, and agreed to be in the film three days later.   Not only would Pelé star in the film alongside Caine and Stallone, he would also work with Huston and the crew to design the football action in the film. Nearly two dozen professional football players, including Bobby Moore, the captain of the World Cup-winning 1966 British football team, would either have major roles in the film or play secondary characters in the film. Another member of that team, goalkeeper Gordon Banks, would assist Pelé in getting Stallone to look more like a goalkeeper on camera.   The movie would also hire Desmond Llewelyn, the beloved British character actor best known as Q in 17 James Bond movies made between 1963 and 1999, as a technical advisor, as Llewelyn had spent five years as a POW in German prison camps during World War II.   In early 1980, Max von Sydow, still shooting his role as Ming the Merciless in Mike Hedges' big screen adaptation of Flash Gordon, would be cast as Von Steiner, the Nazi Major who operates the POW camp.   Shooting would begin on May 26, 1980, after Stallone was done shooting Nighthawks in New York City.  Stallone would spend his weekends off that film to work with Gordon Banks on how to better look like a goalie, and to lose no less than forty pounds to better look like a prisoner of war, a sort of method acting Stallone was not really known for. But apparently, Stallone didn't really listen to Banks at first, as on his first day of shooting, the actor would throw himself around his goal area with a kind of reckless abandon, dislocating his shoulder and breaking a rib. The production would need to rearrange the shooting schedule to give Stallone time to heal. After he returned to the set, he would better heed Banks' advice, although he would end up breaking another rib and, in one scene with Pelé, breaking a finger trying to stop one of the superstar footballer's shots.   Other than Stallone's injuries, production on the film ran rather smoothly for nearly two months, until they were forced to shut production down completely on July 29th, eight days after the American Screen Actors Guild went on strike over residuals from emerging revenue streams like videocassettes and pay television. Since several actors like Stallone were SAG members, they had to stop working on the 21st, and the film completed all shots not using those actors a week later. Although the strike would last for slightly more than three months, Fields and Kassar were able to sign an interim agreement with the Guild to allow the film, which only had five days of shooting left when production was shut down, to resume shooting on August 31st.     Huston would spend the rest of 1980 and the first four months of 1981 working with his production team to get the film edited and ready for release. At the suggestion of Sylvester Stallone, Huston would hire Bill Conti to compose the score, the fifth movie starring Stallone that Conti would write the score to in as many years.   In May 1981, two months before the film's release, its American distributor, announced a slight change in the name of the movie. Instead of Escape to Victory, which would be retained by most every other distributor around the world, the film would simply be called Victory when it hit theatres on July 31st. Because the studio was worried that the full title would be a spoiler. And it actually would be. You'll notice I have not really said anything about the story, because if you haven't seen the movie yet, and you feel compelled to check it out because of this episode, I don't want to spoil it for you. And if you have seen the movie before, you already know what happens.   Victory would face very stiff competition when it opened at 692 theatres on July 31st. In addition to the Chevy Chase comedy Under the Rainbow, the film would go up against a re-release of The Empire Strikes Back and also contend with the continued success of Raiders of the Lost Ark and and Superman II.    The film would gross $2.4m in its first weekend, which would place it sixth on the box office charts, but that was slightly more than a third of what the Star Wars sequel would bring in that weekend, after having initially opened in theatres 14 months earlier. Victory would barely beat Arthur, which was in its third week of release but hadn't become the breakout success it would be in the weeks to come, but it lose out to the critically panned disaster known as John Derek's Tarzan the Ape Man in its second week. But hey, naked Bo Derek on the big screen, even more naked than in 10. Can't blame horny guys at the time for that.   In its second week of release, Victory would drop from sixth place to twelfth, with only $1.6m in ticket sales, and lose half of its screens in its third week, falling to thirteenth place with barely $1m taken in at the box office. After that fourth week, the film was no longer being tracked by Paramount, having earned just $10.85m. Internationally, the film would gross another $16m, since football was a more popular sport outside America. In fact, it was the seventh most popular movie released in 1981, outside of America. The film would barely break even once it was gone from theatres, but it would never become much of a cult film once it was released on videotape and to cable channels.   Although audiences didn't quite go for the movie, critics were rather kind to the film.   Vincent Canby of the New York Times would note that while the form of the film was highly conventional, the manner in which it was executed was not. An unnamed critic for the Hollywood trade publication would call the film “old fashioned,” and meant it as a compliment. And Gavin Bainbridge of the UK movie magazine Empire would highlight how John Huston created enough on-field magic and nostalgia for the game, and would note the kind of sportsmanship shown in the film that had sadly become extinct in the succeeding forty years.   In later years, Huston would admit he hated the idea of the movie and only did it for the paycheck, while Caine would tell one reporter while doing press for another movie that the only reason he made Victory was to meet and work with Pelé. Stallone would admit that shooting his scenes as a goalie were more physically and mentally demanding than on either of the Rocky movies that had been made up to that time.   Of course, Michael Caine and Sylvester Stallone would see far greater successes in their careers as the 80s continued on, while  Pelé pretty much kept future on-screen appearances more rooted in reality, appearing as himself on a few global television shows and movie documentaries.   We're actually planning on a small series for the final decade of John Huston's directing career, with a diverse set of movies that include the musical Annie, the mob comedy Prizzi's Honor, and the lyrical adaptation of James Joyce's The Dead. Look for that to come later this year.   Thank you for joining us. We'll talk again soon, when Episode 100 is released.   Remember to visit this episode's page on our website, The80sMoviePodcast.com, for extra materials about Pelé and the movie Victory.   The 80s Movies Podcast has been researched, written, narrated and edited by Edward Havens for Idiosyncratic Entertainment.   Thank you again.   Good night.  

Want to hear a crazy story on how one filmmaker used a hybrid distribution and marketing strategy to sell his film Bomb It. May I introduce Jon Reiss.  After hearing his story I had to have him on the show so he can tell his story to the IFH Tribe.Jon Reiss was named one of “10 Digital Directors to Watch” by Daily Variety, Jon Reiss is a critically acclaimed filmmaker whose experience releasing his documentary feature, Bomb It with a hybrid distribution and marketing strategy.This strategy inspired him writing Think Outside the Box Office: The Ultimate Guide to Film Distribution and Marketing for the Digital Era, the first step-by-step guide for filmmakers to distribute and market their films. Two years ago he co-wrote Selling Your Film Without Selling Your Soul and last year co-wrote Selling Your Film Outside the U.S.: Digital Distribution in Europe.Jon Reiss teaches in the Film Directing Program at California Institute of the Arts. He created the course "Real World Survival Skills: Everything I Wish I Had Been Taught in Film School" which covers the practical/business aspects of filmmaking from fundraising through distribution.Jon is a very interesting filmmaker. When I spoke to him he brought the heat and shared a ton of film marketing and distribution knowledge.

Episode 117 On this week's episode, your groovy hosts Jay Gilbert and Mike Etchart chat about these important stories: "How Streaming Has Impacted the Value of Music" (Larry Miller/Musonomics); "Introducing... The Culture Report" (Dan Runcie/Trapital); "Global Value Of Music Copyrights Jumps 18% To A Record High Of $39.6bn In 2021: Could It Have Been Even Higher?" (Will Page).  Daily Variety's Jimmy Iovine Interview: https://variety.com/2022/music/news/jimmy-iovine-bruce-springsteen-dr-dre-rock-hall-of-fame-1235421694/#recipient_hashed=8b06f96edadae6ef8c19e54769dd57f8c42971757d079340628f1d86fc02eeb7&recipient_salt=c6591d92029de2ad1e55506ef17e88207abf40538dbea7ff534bf21eaaf09bf5 Subscribe to the newsletter! YourMorning.Coffee

George Lucas has been talking retirement since 1977. Weary of the mainstream cinema he helped to created, he began saying in interviews that he was planning on getting back to the cinema of his college days, the avant-garde “tone poems” of his U.S.C. short films, or his of his first feature, THX-1138 — even before he returned to feature directing in the 2000s, with the Star Wars prequels. Now, that Lucas has all but officially retired — not having directed a feature in 17 years — I'm joined on this episode by Dale Pollock, Lucas's first biographer, to discuss whatever happened to these post-retirement promises. We discuss:- Steve Silberman's 2005 Wired article, “Life After Darth,” which voiced all these questions, the year of Lucas's retirement;- what were the exact circumstances of Lucas opening up his life to Pollock as a biographer during the filming of Return of the Jedi;- does Lucas deserve his reputation as a tin-eared regurgitator of poppy pulp tropes;- is he not only one of the greatest editors of all-time, or — easily — one of the greatest filmmakers of all-time?Also:- the abbreviated career of his first wife and early collaborator, Marcia Lucas;- why the critical reception of the Star Wars prequels guaranteed Lucas would never return to film directing;- is Lucas making — maybe even stockpiling, these movies, unseen;- and is he setting up these experiments to be released after his death?Dale Pollock is a journalist, film producer, professor, and festival programmer. Along with writing the biography Skywalking: The Life and Times of George Lucas, he's also written for Daily Variety, the Los Angeles Times, Life, People, and Esquire. He's executive producer 13 films, including A Midnight Clear and Blaze, taught at both USC and the University of North Carolina School of Arts in Winston-Salem, and ran the RiverRun International Film Festival. More can be found at his website.

The Legends Of S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Lauren, Agent Michelle, Consultant Chris, and Producer of the show Director SP discuss the 1992 Marvel Entertainment Group X-Men The Animated Series season two episodes “‘Till Death Do Us Part: Part 1,” “‘Till Death Do Us Part: Part 2,” “Whatever It Takes,” and “Red Dawn,” and “Repo Man.” They also discuss the top Marvel Studios news stories of the week including what Netflix is doing with the Marvel series, that Doctor Strange Superbowl Trailer and that Moon night Superbowl Trailer. The Team debriefs you on National Random Acts Of Kindness Day, a profile on Fox Kids Executive Sidney Iwanter, a Legends Of S.H.I.E.L.D. Previously On in honor of X-Men The Animated Series, episode synopses, Morph's return, the grandiose and fabulous Mr. Sinister, Xavier and Magneto's buddy comedy journey, Xavier's walking in the Savage Land, The Shadow King, Storm's character background and her two voice actors, Rogue and Storm Girl Power passing the Bechdel test, Colossus' return to the series as a Golden Retriever, Matt LeBlanc or Mr. Peanutbutter (from BoJack Horseman), Alpha Flight because Canada, Wolverine's Bone Claws and Len Wein, the noted mutant cameos , killing the Cyclops robot, and what Wolverine's type is. Stay tuned after the credits for a few minutes of Legends Of S.H.I.E.L.D. bonus audio.   THIS TIME ON LEGENDS OF S.H.I.E.L.D.:   Marvel Entertainment's X-Men The Animated Series As Shown On Disney+ Discuss the 1992 X-Men Animated Series season 2 episodes 1-5 Some background into Fox Kids Network Developer Sidney Iwanter Weekly Marvel Studio News What Netflix is doing with the Marvel series That Doctor Strange Superbowl Trailer That Moon night Superbowl Trailer Your Feedback Your favorite Marvel Comics Base video games Your Multiverse Mutant and Avengers Team Ups Your Favorite Rocking Marvel Character on Tour   Tom Holland's Lip Sync Battle - Rhianna's Umbrella https://youtu.be/SgxEnEzJhBA?t=73   X-MEN THE ANIMATED SERIES S2E1 – S2E5 [3:50]   X-Men The Animated Series Fox Kids Network Executive Sidney Iwanter Profile   IMDB Credits 1 Developer Credits since 1985 https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2458358/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0 76 episodes of X-Men: The Animated Series Background Father fought in WWII (Lithuanian Jew) Polish Cavalry Joined the French - Captured at Dunkirk Liberated from Concentration Camp Fought in Battle Of The Bulge Degree in History from the University Of Wisconsin Accepted to UCLA film school but dropped out after a 1 ½ Got a job at channel 9 because he was a fast typist That job led to a job at Paramount pictures That led to a job at Hanna-Barbera in 1979 Same boss hired him in 1989 at Marvel Entertainment Same boss hired him at Fox Kids a year later Most proud of X-Men The Animated Series Was Fox Kids network Executive Director on X-Men The Animated Series Multi-leveled stories References to Voltaire and Shakespeare Show's premise, outlines, scripts, story writers, first cuts and final cuts Okays the show's writers Worked with Joe Calamari of Marvel to finalize premises Bringing Morph back in season two was to satisfy a promise to Avery Coburn, the Broadcast Standards and Practices Person that the show would bring Morph back like a Soap Opera X-Men The Animated Series was never designed for Adults. It was always designed for kids 6-11 years old Sidney's favorite X-Men was Beast Wishes that the animation was better and they had the same budget Warner Bros was able to spend for Batman The show was successful because: Multilayered stories and great writing Worked the characters backstories into their actions Understood the philosophies of characters Great voice talent Interviews Oral History: Sidney Iwanter https://mosseprogram.wisc.edu/2021/08/06/iwanter/ https://youtu.be/P5hIZaSq_qs 01:00:01 Tortorice: So, this brings up then your post-UW career. What did you do? How did you how did you end up in the entertainment business? Iwanter: I slept with all the wrong people. What happened was I went out to UCLA Film School. I got accepted to, I got accepted there. But I didn't like it. In fact, I basically dropped out after maybe a year, year and a half. Why? Because academically, it was the pits. Doney: Do you want a water? Iwanter: Oh, no. Thank you. I had… Tortorice: Especially when compared to UW, right? Iwanter: Yeah. No, I'm I'm being serious about that. I had my major professor and film was Russell Merritt. Tortorice: Fantastic teacher. Iwanter: PhD from Harvard in Comp Lit. And he used to say to me, He's now Berkeley, he's Berkeley emeritus now. He used to say to me, You don't study film. As. Unless, you don't study film, as film, it's part of an interdisciplinary study. So in other words, if you're going to study film, you study it through English Lit, French Lit, History, Comp Lit, you know, economics. It doesn't make any difference. But it's not. Film is an art form, but it also is as an art form. You, if, if you're studying Renaissance artists, you have to study Italian, you have to study the history. You have to know what's going on at, in Florence and Venice and Rome at the time. Okay. The teachers at UCLA at that time and maybe still there. All they did was study film. But they studied film as if it were in a vacuum. They might as well have just been reading Daily Variety. I hated it, hated it with a passion. There was no intellectualism. There was, it was, it was like a wasteland. And I was really pissed because I had also gotten accepted to NYU. And, you know, and but I couldn't afford NYU. And I could afford UCLA only because if you stayed there for a year, you'd become a California resident. 01:02:59 And so I basically dropped out after about a year, year and a half. And I thought to myself, should I go back to Madison? No, because I don't want my mother telling me. “Well, I told you so,” honest to God. So I stayed out in Los Angeles and I, weaseled my way into a job. My girlfriend, who I met here in Madison, we went out together to Los Angeles. And so she had gotten a job at J. Walter Thompson. And one day she says to me, Sidney, there's a job. I hear from a friend who's working at a TV station, Channel 9 (KHJ-TV), which was General Tire at the time, which is now owned by Disney. The station the there's a job available there as a teletypist, you can type. And maybe you can go get the job and get off your ass. I says okay. And I, I went there, I got the job. And the reason I got the job was that the person who had promised she wanted it had gone elsewhere and they just needed somebody. And so I actually had to take a typing test. And so and I had prior to that, I worked at the phone company for 18 months as a teletypist. So I was really quick at this. So I got the job at Channel 9 and I got it through a woman named Shelby Conti, whose husband was a struggling composer named Bill [William] Conti, who was the guy from Rocky eventually, you know, an Oscar winner, you know, and so on, and then but he's Bill Conti anyway. So that job led to a, because I like to talk to people. That job led to another job at Paramount Pictures Television, which was right across the street, which in research again, as a typist, which led to a job at Hanna-Barbera in 1979. I'm encapsulating all of this because there are all kinds of weird stories that go along with this stuff. A lot of one of them, I got the job working at Hanna-Barbera through drugs, but not I wasn't taking them, but the person who hired me was and this God as my witness that you know, and she got fired from Hanna-Barbera because she came out of the ladies room with a milk sign, but got milk. Well, it wasn't milk. So they fired her. They says, you can't  be taking coke. You work for Hanna-Barbera! You know, we do Scooby Doo. 01:06:00 What are you talking? And you know. Okay. Anyway, so and the but I had been doing some freelance work for Hanna-Barbera while I was at Paramount. And then I got fired because she had hired me, six weeks later. I say, man, I, I gotta I gotta get this this job, you know, because I'm losing too much money playing the horses at Santa Anita and Hollywood Park. That's what, I used to do that to make I used to make extra money, you know, trying to play the ponies as well as, you know, poker because they were poker parlors back then. I was a real reprobate. I had just, you know, I would have probably ended up as something straight out of Guys and Dolls if I hadn't gotten this job. So I, I called, I called up to get my Hanna-Barbera job back, which was just a freelance job. And the person who answered the phone was the person who had just, had replaced the woman who had a coke problem, because she answered the phone because her secretary was in the bathroom. And one thing led to another. And this woman hired me. And this woman became my like my Rabbi in a way, she hired me and fired me three separate times, all for insubordination over the years, different jobs. And so she hired me at Hanna-Barbera. She hired me ten years later at Marvel Entertainment. And then a year after that at Fox Kids, where I became, everybody got to know me because of the shows I worked on, like in animation like X-Men and Batman and Beetlejuice and Spider-Man and Silver Surfer and Goosebumps. And so I mean, you know, and that's basically, you know, Tortorice: So you kind of fell into it, it sounds like. Iwanter: Yeah. Oh, yeah. I fell into it because, and a lot of people fall into it. Tortorice: Right. Iwanter: Because those of us who didn't, you know, when I went to UCLA, I didn't want to become a production person. I think I wanted to, I wanted to be Harvey Goldberg or George Mosse and I knew I couldn't because I don't I don't speak like that, you know, and so and I just ramble on and I just, you know, my, my stories, most of them are, you know, except the ones I tell you, you know, that there's a lot of tall tale-isms about it, you know, that sort of stuff. But, but yeah, you do. I fell into it like a lot of people. And I've spent 40 years in kids programming. Tortorice: What are you most proud of in terms of your work in kids programming? Iwanter: The X-Men, the X-Men show. Because they still talk about it today. 01:09:00 Because this, what this show did, this is animation from, it basically revived the Marvel Universe. It proved you could do this. [Bryan] Singer, the, the, the Director of the first X-Men movie, never read a comic book. He said, I only watched the series to get my, you know, to, to understand that world. And I was the network executive on that show, which meant that everything passed by my desk. All concepts, all scripts, all storyboards, all the, all the, you know, the, the pre-, the post-production. I was there with the editors and all this other stuff. And to this day it's probably the most sophisticated storytelling. For a children's. I don't know if you've ever watched it? Doney: Yeah, I have. Iwanter: And, you know, it is, the animation might have sucked, but those stories, man, they were, they were multi-leveled. There was, there was, there, were, there was a character Beast who would always quote Voltaire and Shakespeare. I mean, you know, I got away with murder on this, because it was my show and nobody could touch it. And I did stuff that had never been done before in, you know, for kids programming. And yeah, I made, I made those kinds of references. And it's, that sort of stuff has been lost today because the people who make these decisions are stupid and they don't believe that kids are smart enough. And even though you know, you've got, you've got the six-month-olds with their computers in front of them and you know. But so yeah, that I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm also proud of surviving, you know, because it's not it was not an easy business. And because you're always fighting for tenure and that's your only as good as your, as you're not good at all. No matter forget about what you just did. What are you gonna do for me now type of thing. So yeah. Blast From the Past TV Interview http://www.blastfromthepasttv.com/siwanterinterview.html 15 year anniversary of the show Executive Director Of X-Men The Animated Series Show's premise, outlines, scripts, story writers, first cuts and final cuts Okays the show's writers Worked with Joe Calamari of Marvel to finalize premises Bringing Morph back in season two was to satisfy a promise to Avery Coburn, the Broadcast Standards and Practices Person that the show would bring Morph back like a Soap Opera X-Men The Animated Series was never designed for Adults. It was always designed for kids 6-11 years old Sidney's favorite X-Men was Beast Wishes that the animation was better and they had the same budget Warner Bros was able to spend for Batman The show was successful because: Multilayered stories and great writing Worked the characters backstories into their actions Understood the philosophies of characters Great voice talent https://thenostalgiaspot.com/tag/sidney-iwanter/                                   X-Men The Animated Series Season Two Episodes 1-5 Premiered on “Fox Kids” (Episode Order As Shown On Disney+, Premiere Dates As Shown On Fox) S2E1 “‘Till Death Do Us Part: Part 1” Saturday October 23rd, 1993 S2E2 “‘Till Death Do Us Part: Part 2” Saturday October 30th, 1993 S2E3 “Whatever It Takes” Saturday November 6th, 1993 S2E4 “Red Dawn” Saturday November 13th, 1993 S2E5 “Repo Man” Saturday November 20th, 1993 Produced By: Will Meugniot Larry Houston             X-Men The Animated Series Main Cast Cedric Smith                                        ...         Professor X / Charles Xavier 117 Credits, best known for X-Men Norm Spencer                                      ...         Cyclops / Scott Summers  31 Credits, best known for X-Men Catherine Disher                                  ...         Jean Grey / Phoenix 122 Credits, best known for X-Men Alison Sealy-Smith                              ...         Storm / Ororo Munroe 72 Credits, best known for X-Men Iona Morris                                          ...         Storm / Ororo Munroe 101 Credits Star Tek TOD (Little Girl) Claudian Grant on Robotech 2xStar Trek: Voyager Lenore Zann                                         ...         Rogue 110 Credits, best known for X-Men Cal Dodd                                              ...         Wolverine / Logan 34 Credits, best known for X-Men Alyson Court                                        ...         Jubilee / Jubilation Lee 100 Credits, best known for X-Men George Buza                                        ...         Beast / Dr. Henry 'Hank' McCoy  163 Credits, best known for X-Men Chris Potter                                         ...         Gambit / Remy LeBeau 58 Credits The Pacifier Heartland  Don Francks                                       ...         Sabretooth / Graydon Creed Sr.  191 Credits Johnny Mnemonic Heavy Metal Brett Halsey                                         ...         Bolivar Trask 154 Credits        Barry Flatman                                      ...         Henry Peter Gyrich (works with Trask) David Hemblen                         ...         Magneto / Erik Magnus Lehnsherr Lawrence Bayne                                   ...         Cable / Nathan Dayspring-Summers 127 Credits Randall Carpenter        (She)                ...         Mystique / Raven Darkholme (voice) 13 Credits          Lally Cadeau                                         ...         Dr. Moira MacTaggert  Stephen Ouimette                                ...         Angel / Warren Worthington III  John Colicos                                        ...         Apocalypse / En Sabah Nur Rick Bennett                                        ...         Colossus / Piotr Rasputin / Juggernaut / Cain Marko (voice) Philip Akin                                           ...         Bishop (voice) (as Phil Aiken) Marc Strange                                       ...         Forge (voice) Chris Britton                ...         Mr. Sinister / Nathaniel Essex  Ron Rubin                                ...         Morph Maurice Dean Wint                   ...         Shadow King Robert Cait                              ...         Colossus / Piotr Rasputin Tara Strong                             ...         Illyana Rasputin   NEWS [47:46]   UPCOMING MARVEL STUDIOS SLATE OF PROJECTS   Moon Knight will premiere March 30th, 2022 on Disney+ Confirmed During Disney+ Day 12 Nov 20211 Series Synopsis Released: https://www.cbr.com/moon-knight-marvel-synopsis-multiple-personalities/ First Trailer Released: https://www.superherohype.com/tv/510119-marvel-studios-debuts-the-first-trailer-for-moon-knight   Spider-Man: No Way Home premiered on December 17th, 2021. Will premiere streaming on Starz https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/movie-news/watch-spider-man-no-way-home-online-free-1273518/   Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (May 6, 2022)   Ms Marvel is supposed to premiere late in 2021 on Disney+ but no date has been announced.  The series was confirmed on Disney+ Day 12 Nov 2021 (Summer 2022) Series synopsis: https://www.cbr.com/ms-marvel-captain-marvel-shadow-synopsis/ Ms. Marvel introduces Kamala Khan--a 16-year-old Pakistani American from Jersey City. An aspiring artist, an avid gamer and a voracious fan-fiction scribe, she is a huge fan of the Avengers—and one in particular, Captain Marvel. But Kamala has always struggled to find her place in the world—that is, until she gets super powers like the heroes she's always looked up to Two reports confirm a 2022 date https://thedirect.com/article/marvel-mcu-shows-2022-release-slate https://www.thecosmiccircus.com/report-marvel-studios-2022-revealed/   She-Hulk is supposed to premiere late in 2022 on Disney+ It was confirmed the series was coming in 2022 on Disney+ Day  12 Nov 2021 Two reports confirm a 2022 date https://www.thecosmiccircus.com/report-marvel-studios-2022-revealed/ https://thedirect.com/article/marvel-mcu-shows-2022-release-slate   Thor: Love and Thunder (July 8, 2022)   Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (Nov. 11, 2022) https://comicbook.com/marvel/amp/news/black-panther-riri-williams-ironheart-mcu-debut-dominique-thorne/   I Am Groot is in development for release on Disney+ No date has been announced. Previous mentioned as a holiday special Series confirmed during Disney+ Day 12 Nov 21 as a series of shorts watching Groot grow up Two reports confirm a 2022 date https://www.thecosmiccircus.com/report-marvel-studios-2022-revealed/ https://thedirect.com/article/marvel-mcu-shows-2022-release-slate   Secret Invasion is in development for release on Disney+ No date has been announced.  Series confirmed during Disney+ Day 12 Nov 21 A report from Japan removed Secret Invasion from a 2022 premiere date https://www.thecosmiccircus.com/report-marvel-studios-2022-revealed/ https://thedirect.com/article/marvel-mcu-shows-2022-release-slate   What If…? Season 2 Confirmed during Disney+ Day 12 Nov 21 No premiere date indicated Possibly moved to 2023” https://www.thecosmiccircus.com/report-marvel-studios-2022-revealed/ https://thedirect.com/article/marvel-mcu-shows-2022-release-slate   Ironheart is in development for release on Disney+ No date has been announced.  Series confirmed on Disney+ Day 12 Nov 21   Armor Wars is in development for release on Disney+ but no date has been announced.    Echo is in development for release on Disney+ Confirmed on Disney+ Day 12 Nov 21 but no release/premiere date given.    Agatha: House of Harkness Announced/Confirmed on Disney+ Day 12 Nov 2021   An untitled Wakanda series is in development for release on Disney+ but no date has been announced.    X-Men ‘97 (2023) Written by Executive Producer Beau DeMayo. Announced Disney+ Day (12 Nov 2021)   The Marvels (Feb. 17, 2023)    Marvel Zombies Animated series announced on Disney+ Day 12 Nov 21 No date given   Also, we know there will be a Loki season two at some point.   Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (July 28, 2023)   Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (May 5th, 2023)   Fantastic Four  (???)   Guardians Of The Galaxy Holiday Special Confirmed during Disney+ Day 12 Nov 21 Different from I Am Groot   Spider-Man: Freshman Year Announced during Disney+ Day 12 Nov 2021 No premiere date given   Untitled (February 16th, 2024)   Untitled (May 3rd, 2024)   Untitled (July 26th, 2024)   Untitled (November 8th, 2024)   List of MCU films in production without premiere dates Fantastic Four Deadpool 3 Blade Avengers-Level Team up to end the phase (not confirmed in development) Could be linked to Russo Brothers story from last week Captain America Sequel Possible X-Men   Projects that have NOT been announced yet Young Avengers   TOP NEWS STORY OF THE WEEK   Netflix Is Removing Its Marvel Shows Next Month https://gizmodo.com/marvel-netflix-daredevil-leaving-streaming-march-1-1848523123    Quietly, Netflix has revealed that all six of its original Marvel streaming series will join a rare handful of Netflix Originals to leave the service, and it's not sure yet if, or when, they'll appear elsewhere. No news where Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, The Punisher, and The Defenders will land. io9 has confirmed via UK and US accounts that in addition to the Marvel Netflix shows, Marvel's Agents of SHIELD will be leaving the platform at midnight on February 28.   MCU – MARVEL STUDIOS   Dr. Strange Trailer (Aired During The Superbowl). Marvel Studios' Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness | Official Trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWzlQ2N6qqg Captain Carter's Shield Spotted https://twitter.com/DrStrangeUpdate/status/1493006687397109761   DISNEY+   Big Game TV Spot | Marvel Studios' Moon Knight | Disney+ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KM3Yx-5Ymiw   ‘Echo' Gets A New Working Title (Exclusive) https://onetakenews.wordpress.com/2022/02/10/echo-new-working-title-exclusive/ One Take News has exclusively learned that Echo has a working title of Grasshopper. Now you may be saying “Echo already has a working title” and you're right. The good people over at The Cosmic Circus reported that the working title for Echo was Whole Branzino and while that was indeed the working title, Marvel Studios likes to have multiple working titles for their projects and they tend to shift over time. As of right now, Grasshopper is the title they're working with and I expect it'll stick until filming begins.   FEEDBACK [1:01:10]   TWITTER https://twitter.com/LegendsofSHIELD/status/1492129854006996997 Legends of S.H.I.E.L.D. @LegendsofSHIELD Our host @playcomicscast would like to know what has been your favorite Marvel Comics based video game of all time? Chris Ferrell @TheChrisFerrell Marvel's Spider-Man on PS4. Honorable mentions to X-Men Legends and Marvel Ultimate Alliance. aka LW Salinas @sithwitch I haven't played the PS4 Spider-Man or thr new GotG game yet. So right now my favorites are Squenix's Avengers and the Wolverine game from the early 2000s, the one with Mark Hamill as Wolverine. One Bachman A Day...#BlackLivesMatter #KamiGaming @anthonybachman Spider-Man on PS4 is the best so far with Miles Morales a close second. Dr. Gnome to you @MrParacletes Top 4: X-Men Arcade Spider-Man 2 Maximum Carnage X-Men on Sega   https://twitter.com/MrParacletes/status/1492852122920140800 Dr. Gnome to you @MrParacletes Did @StargatePioneer try to make Deanna Troi the Launchpad McQuack of Star Trek?

We had a great conversation with actor Gabriel Jarret on The Chris & Sandy Show. We talked about so many things on this episode from acting, he told some really amazing stories especially about the sacrifices it takes to make it as an actor plus a whole lot more!Actor Gabriel Jarret recently co-starred as an auto repair shop owner and ambulance dispatcher, opposite Amy Smart, Thora Birch and Anne Heche, in writer/director Lindsay Gossling's true tornado survival Quiver feature, 13 Minutes. He plays a man of the cloth opposite Tom Malloy, Briana Evigan, Jesse Kove and Joyce DeWitt the romantic the comedy Ask Me to Dance, and he's Heckle, a 13th Century plague sanitizer in Bring On the Dancing Horses, a limited series that stars Kate Bosworth. In the latter, all of his dialogue is in American sign language. A native of Westlake Village, California who grew up in Malibu, Gabe is the son of screenwriter Jeremy Joe Kronsberg who wrote Clint Eastwood's celebrated comedy Every Which Way But Loose. At 11, Gabe's first show business opportunity came when he picked up a copy of Daily Variety and spotted a talent audition ad. Taking the bus from Malibu to Hollywood, he was selected to play one of the background kids on Walt Disney's Mousercise, an exercise show. Graduating from high school, Gabe was accepted at UCLA but decided to pursue acting full time. He made his scripted television debut on Goodnight, Beantown, and appeared opposite Joe Pantoliano in the play Vampire Guts. Then his big break came when he won the lead opposite Val Kilmer in the comedy Real Genius, in which he played a fourteen-year-old whiz kid who goes to college. He has been a working actor ever since. His feature credits include The Karate Kid Part III, Apollo 13, The American President, Las Days, Poseidon (as the helmsman), Frost/Nixon, Swing State and Limbo. His television credits include 21 Jump Street, The Bronx Zoo, Freddy's Nightmares, L.A. Law, Party of Five, The West Wing, The Game and Mystic Cosmic Patrol. When Gabe isn't acting, he's an American sign language interpreter who works in many venues, including press conferences, cruise lines, theme parks and medical conventions.

Actor Gabriel Jarret recently co-starred as an auto repair shop owner and ambulance dispatcher, opposite Amy Smart, Thora Birch and Anne Heche, in writer/director Lindsay Gossling's true tornado survival Quiver feature, 13 Minutes. He plays a man of the cloth opposite Tom Malloy, Briana Evigan, Jesse Kove and Joyce DeWitt the romantic the comedy Ask Me to Dance, and he's Heckle, a 13th Century plague sanitizer in Bring On the Dancing Horses, a limited series that stars Kate Bosworth. In the latter, all of his dialogue is in American sign language. A native of Westlake Village, California who grew up in Malibu, Gabe is the son of screenwriter Jeremy Joe Kronsberg who wrote Clint Eastwood's celebrated comedy Every Which Way But Loose. At 11, Gabe's first show business opportunity came when he picked up a copy of Daily Variety and spotted a talent audition ad. Taking the bus from Malibu to Hollywood, he was selected to play one of the background kids on Walt Disney's Mousercise, an exercise show. Graduating from high school, Gabe was accepted at UCLA but decided to pursue acting full time. He made his scripted television debut on Goodnight, Beantown, and appeared opposite Joe Pantoliano in the play Vampire Guts. Then his big break came when he won the lead opposite Val Kilmer in the comedy Real Genius, in which he played a fourteen-year-old whiz kid who goes to college. He has been a working actor ever since. His feature credits include The Karate Kid Part III, Apollo 13, The American President, Las Days, Poseidon (as the helmsman), Frost/Nixon, Swing State and Limbo. His television credits include 21 Jump Street, The Bronx Zoo, Freddy's Nightmares, L.A. Law, Party of Five, The West Wing, The Game and Mystic Cosmic Patrol. When Gabe isn't acting, he's an American sign language interpreter who works in many venues, including press conferences, cruise lines, theme parks and medical conventions.James Lott jr is the host!

We welcome "Seinfeld" Guest Star Jill Holden and her husband TV Critic and Author Ray Richmond. Jill played Elaine's friend Lisa, in several "Seinfeld" episodes, including "The Soul Mate" and "The English Patient." Ray is a leading expert on television and the Entertainment industry, He is an author, journalist and playwright. He was worked as a feature and entertainment writer, beat reporter and TV critic for a variety of publications including The LA Times, The Hollywood Reporter, Daily Variety and Deadline Hollywood. Ray has written seven books including the New York Times bestseller The Simpsons: A Complete Guide to Our Favorite Family, This is Jeopardy! Celebrating America's Favorite Quiz Show…and Betty White: 100 Remarkable Moments in an Extraordinary Life…. Ray also appears in several scenes in the "Seinfeld" DVD Extras, talking about the show. We talk in-depth with Seinfeld guest stars, cast, crew, and writers. Find out how your favorite Seinfeld scenes came about, and hear behind-the-scenes stories about Seinfeld episodes from those who were there. We are a podcast dedicated to "Seinfeld," the last, great sitcom of our time. We are the World's #1 Destination for Seinfeld Interviews. We talk to those responsible for making Seinfeld the greatest sitcom in TV history. Our guests are Seinfeld writers, Seinfeld actors and actresses and Seinfeld crew. We also welcome well-known Seinfeld fans from all walks of life including authors, entertainers, and TV & Radio personalities. We analyze Seinfeld and breakdown the show with an honest insight. We rank every Seinfeld episode and compare Seinfeld seasons. If you are a fan of Seinfeld, television history, sitcoms, acting, comedy or entertainment, this is the place for you. iTunes: https://apple.co/2RGC89m Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3tqDVh6 List of Podcast Episodes and Sponsors: https://bit.ly/3rn0PUp Seinfeld Episode Rankings: https://bit.ly/3ic8mEi Social: https://linktr.ee/ThisThirsty Twitter: https://twitter.com/ThisThirsty Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisthirsty/ "This Podcast Is Making Me Thirsty" is The #1 Destination for "Seinfeld" fans.

How To Execute Your Vision with Tom Dreesen "Laughter is not only psychologically a deterrent; it's physiologically therapeutic. Comedians are physicians of the soul.”  - Tom Dreesen (16:43-16:45) Laughter is the best medicine, and it always will be. To send you some cure to whatever illness you're experiencing right now, Someone Gets Me has an amazing guest with us who can heal us by making us laugh. But wait there's more! Our guest for today's episode also managed to have a vision and go after it with fervor and attain it and is still moving forward with amazing things.  Tom Dreesen is with us today. He's coming to us from California and Tom has a longstanding career that started with that inner urge of "I'm going to do something with my life, and I'm going to follow that inner vision." And guess what? He did it. Tom is a known actor and comedian. He opened for Frank Sinatra for many years and has been on over 500 T.V. shows and movies. Tom has an amazing story that will inspire you beyond measure. So get your coffee or your tea. Hang out with us for a little while and let yourself listen to his words in a way that will touch your heart and provide meaning for you.  Part One of "How To Execute Your Vision with Tom Dreesen." Tom Dreesen has such a fascinating life that roots from the inner part of him that took a stand to follow his vision. I believe that if we talk about how he did that, all these great results he achieved, and all the fun experiences, then we'll learn something valuable from him. Tom related that he grew up in a suburb on the south side of Chicago called Harvey, Illinois. It was steel mills and factories where they made everything from clutch plates to crankshafts. He had eight brothers and sisters, and they lived in a shack with no bathtub, no shower, no hot water. The shack was rat-infested, roach-infested and if a window broke, you stuck a rag in it.  He further added that as a little boy, both his parents were alcoholics. He would take his shoeshine box every night and go shining shoes in all the bars in the neighborhood. At age 16, he helped feed his brothers and sisters.  As poor as they were during those times, Tom was embarrassed by the way he dressed whenever he attended school. He quit high school when he was a sophomore and worked in the streets. He ran with a tough crowd and at age 17 went into the Navy.  When Tom was in the Navy, he began to go out to sea and read. "I wanted to read books that would improve my mind. When you're a young boy like that, you're reading sex novels and stuff like that. But I kept thinking I need to improve my mind. So I started reading Norman Vincent Peale, The Power of Positive Thinking." shared Tom. Tom also mentioned that "The Magic of Believing" by Claude Bristol helped him more than anything. From that moment on, Tom believed that whatever the mind can see and believe, it will achieve. And that fascinated me and how you could accomplish that.  "That's what this vehicle we have, this body we have, it needs a flight plan. "- Tom Dreesen (05:53-05:57) In giving an account of how he executed his vision, Tom let the cat out of the bag and shared to us his beliefs. He said, "I now get motivation talks on four subjects: perception visualization, self talk and develop a sense of humor. But I tell everybody that most people wander in life because they don't know what they want in life. So I said this, "The pilot who flies the 747 from L.A. to Boston, does he drive a hundred miles an hour to the airport, drive out on a tarmac, run to board the aircraft, take off down the runway and say, "Now, where am I going?" NO! He files a flight plan. That's what this vehicle we have, this body we have, it needs a flight plan." Anchored to that belief and enthusiasm, while Tom was in the Junior Chamber of Commerce, he wrote a drug education program about drug abuse with humor. He was making the kids laugh, playing music and everything, and then showing them the illicit drug use in our community.  At that time, they were teaching drug education at a college level or high school level, let alone at an elementary school level. He met a young black guy who graduated from Norfolk State College, and his name was Tim Reid. Together they worked on a project, went from one classroom to another, and the program became very popular.  Then one day, a little girl walked out of the classroom and said, "You guys are funny, you ought to become a comedy team." That moment rang some bell on Tom's mind, and he said, "I never, ever thought about being in show business. That was the furthest thing from my mind." The thought of a black-white comedy team is intriguing, and there had never been one in America.  They started writing what they thought was material and went into a club. That first night on stage on Friday night, something Tom had written got a laugh, and it was almost like an epiphany, like the dark clouds opening up like a bee movie.  "At that very moment, my whole being. Oh, yes, this is what I want to do. I want to make a living as a standup comedian. The thought that I can make a living making people laugh overwhelmed me." Tim proudly retold how he felt during that moment of celebration, self-satisfaction, and victory. Part Two of "How To Execute Your Vision with Tom Dreesen." Tom's winning moment doesn't end there. He also shared that one day when he was eight years old, he was selling newspapers and all horns were blowing, all the elders in the community were coming out in the streets. It's Lou Boudreau day; he's a famous baseball player from Harvey, Illinois. He played shortstop for the Cleveland Indians, and they won the World Series. He's a hometown hero. That day, Tom thought, "Wow, there are parades, and people were cheering him on. Wow, somebody from Harvey, Illinois, is famous. One day maybe they'll also have a parade for me." On that Lou Boudreau day, Tom was fantasizing about driving down a street and waving at everybody in a car.  Then, August 22nd, 1992, Tom went back to Harvey, Illinois, and on that corner, that corner where he sold newspapers, they named that street, "Dreesen Street."—after him. A big parade was made for him, and the guy who introduced me to the crowd was Lou Boudreau. "You can live every day until you die. Or you can die every day until you die. It's your call."-Tom Dreesen (41:31-41:37) Tom also had an inspiring answer when I asked him if there was any food he had eaten that was so memorable that he still thinks about it, whether it was good, bad or indifferent.  So he told us another story and said, "When I was a little boy, the shack we lived in, we rarely had meals. And I grew up with very poor nutrition. I took my shoeshine box downtown Chicago and went by the Chicago theatre. There was a steak place called the Blackhawk Restaurant, and I had never eaten steak in my life. The smells of that steak, I couldn't believe how delicious that smell was. But I couldn't afford to pay for that. And my family's greatest delicacy would have been chicken.  Years later, when I was in the Navy, a buddy of mine, got to ask me what kind of steak you like? And I said, "I don't know. I'd never eaten steak." He didn't believe that. Steaks are done well in Chicago, and there's a place called Gibson Steakhouse that when I go to Chicago, I'd go there and have my steak." "Prayers are answered. Sometimes we can't handle it all alone. You need to have faith, and faith can move mountains. It can move mountains, and I'm a living example of that." Tom added. In closing, Tom reminded us that Every day is a celebration. Every day is a gift. Every morning when you wake up, say yes, to whatever amazing experience or opportunity shows up. It's always more magical and amazing than you imagined.  Tom Dreesen Full Bio: Tom Dreesen left his hometown of Harvey, Illinois over 40 years ago to seek fame and fortune in Hollywood. Since that time he has made over 500 appearances on national television as a standup comedian including 61 appearances on the Tonight Show.  He was a  favorite guest of David Letterman and has hosted the show during David’s absence.  For years, he has been a regular in all of the main showrooms in Las Vegas performing with Sammy Davis Jr., Lisa Minnelli, Natalie Cole, Smokey Robinson, Mac Davis, Tony Orlando and for 14 years in seven different casinos and toured the nation as the opening act for Frank Sinatra. As an actor he’s appeared in many motion pictures like Trouble With the Curve, Spaceballs, Man On the Moon, HBO movies Rat Pack and Lansky, and mastered roles on television shows like Columbo, Touched By An Angel, Murder She Wrote, Facts of Life and WKRP in Cincinnati. The first 6 years of his career he shared the stage with Tim Reid as America’s first black and white comedy team and as history shows, they were the last.  The duo recently wrote a book called Tim and Tom: An American Comedy in Black and White about their escapades touring the nation from 1969 to 1975, which is now in the process of becoming a movie. Tom’s current book Still Standing. My Journey from Streets and Saloons to the Stage and Sinatra is receiving rave reviews. He is currently appearing in theaters around the country in his one man show, An Evening of Laughter and Stories of Sinatra, displaying his critically acclaimed comedy skills with his extraordinary storytelling ability. The combination of the two led Chicago Tribune critic Rick Kogan to write, “Brilliant, funny, poignant”. His manager of over 30 years says, “Tom has lent his talent to over 100 charities including one he founded called Day for Darlene running 26 miles three years in a row to raise money and honor his sister Darlene who was challenged with Multiple Sclerosis.  An ex-GI and strong supporter of our troops, he’s performed in military bases all over the world including Iraq.  On May 14, 2005 he received the prestigious Ellis Island Medal of Honor Award for humanitarian service to his country. Daily Variety wrote, “Dreesen is one of the most respected comedians of our time”.  Larry Wilde, author of the book, The Great Comedians said, “Excellent material, superb delivery, impeccable timing.  Tom Dreesen is the Quintessential  Comedian.” Frank Sinatra said “Tommy is a brilliant comedian and a master, Master of ceremonies.” How to Connect with Dianne A. Allen You have a vision inside to create something bigger than you. What you need are a community and a mentor. The 6-month Visionary Leader Program will move you forward. You will grow, transform and connect. http://bit.ly/DianneAAllen Join our Facebook Group Someone Gets Me Follow our Dianne’s Facebook Page: Dianne A. Allen Email contact: dianne@visionsapplied.com Dianne’s Mentoring Services: msdianneallen.com Website: www.visionsapplied.com Be sure to take a second and subscribe to the show and share it with anyone you think will benefit. Until next time, remember the world needs your special gift, so let your light shine!

(Today's edition comes with an audio edition! Listen to today's nine-minute story by clicking the play tab above.)A quick diversion from photography and my recent dive into family history today to take a minute and marvel at a news bite from this week. (There is a photo angle, but you'll need to read all the way through to get there. Bear with me!) Newsflash! Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, the two longtime Hollywood trade publications, are now corporate siblings. Wow! This is like Coke swallowing Pepsi. Or Toyota bringing Nissan into the fold. Hard to believe. The company that owns Variety snapped up THR as well. Read on and you'll see why I think this is such a huge deal. As you may or may not know, at an earlier time in my life, I was a THR reporter, at a time when Variety was king and THR was a very weak, No. 2. Competition was fierce, unlike anything I ever experienced anywhere else, at any other time. Like heart-thumping, every morning intense. Each night I would go to sleep, hoping I wouldn't be scooped in the morning. I'd wake up, and that's all I could still think about, with a pit in my stomach, on the drive into Hollywood. I'd arrive to the offices on Sunset Blvd., in-between Hollywood High and the Corners of the World building, breathing heavily, and immediately grabbing what was awaiting me, on my desk. The latest issue of Daily Variety, already marked up in red pencil. The stories that were on my beat were highlighted, and the subtext was simple: why didn't you have this too?Because Variety and THR were so competitive, the Variety reporters told their sources that if they “gave” their story to us, they wouldn't be noted in the Show-Biz Bible. And Variety played really hard. Sometimes, they gave an inch, and agreed to note the story. It would appear on the next to last page, as a two-to-four paragraph short. It was that rough. Variety, of course had the storied history that created such pieces of slang as the words “Boffo,” (for great) “Biopic,” (biography) and “Nix” (for reject.) The famous headline “Sticks Nix Hick Pix,” was immortalized in the George M. Cohan biopic, “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” THR had the Rambling Reporter (and the late Robert Osborne before he became….that Robert Osborne.)A Variety front page article, a mention in Army Archerd's column, those were the places Hollywood power wanted to be. THR was an afterthought, but one they indeed wanted as well. The two Trade papers had small circulations of around 15,000 each. But talk about influencers! Every subscriber was the ultimate influencer, from studio chiefs, to network heads, show buyers and schedulers, producers and other industry “pros” who wanted to be in the know. My phone rang every morning between 9 a.m. and 9:15 with an intensity I never would see anywhere else in my career. Ever. The feedback was amazing and instantaneous, and the screaming was at high-level decibels. My job was to get an exclusive. Or at least the same story, day and date. My competitor was a crusty reporter, now deceased, named Morrie Gelman. He was a veteran with the best Rolodex in town, or so it seemed to me. I was young and learned on the job, by going to lunch with sources every day, and attending every industry function there was. I didn't care about anyone else than Morrie. If the LA Times got a scoop, it was irrelevant. If Time or Newsweek wrote about something, it was old news. Variety was all that mattered to me. THR was founded in 1930 by Billy Wilkerson, a one-time owner of the Ciro's nightclub on the Sunset Strip as his answer to Variety, which had begun in 1905 as a New York based weekly chronicler of vaudeville and theater. The L.A. version, “Daily” Variety, started up in 1933. The trades were mostly about casting news, executive appointments, labor updates and “slate” stories. Like that Paramount was set to produce 8 new films in the coming year. It would go on to name them, and the attached producers and talent. But it was the exec appointments that were the lifeblood, because it told our subscribers who was in, and who was out. In other words, whom could they call on? My beat was home video and pay TV, two areas that were brand new, at a time when new channels like MTV and Disney Channel were launching. HBO was becoming a force in Hollywood, and the studios hated them back then. I reported that, and HBO despised me. I went out to lunch every day, pulling up to the valet in my white, beaten up and really dirty Mazda that was covered head to toe with bumper stickers. I arrived to fancy places like the Polo Lounge, Brown Derby, Jimmy's, the Palm and other long gone industry hang-outs because that's where the people I interviewed wanted to meet. Even with the THR/Variety rivalry, plenty of people were happy to talk to me. I just couldn't reach the top caliber as often as Variety did. Meanwhile, things were pretty crazy in the newsroom. Gina, Rena and Tina were three of the reporters, and every time one of their names was called out, they all turned and said, “Yes?” One of the sales associates, Pat, was all over the newsroom, daily, urging us to cozy up to her advertisers and write glowing pieces about them. Especially during AFM time. AFM was the American Film Market, and it was a venue where cheap independent movies were brokered in suites at a Sunset Strip hotel. Producers got attention for their shlocky titles by buying full page ads in THR. Menahem Golan and his Cannon Films was our benefactor. I didn't write about movies. But I wrote about Menahem. It was mandatory. He was a big advertiser. He paid our salaries. (Some of his films included titles like “Hospital Massacre” and “Enter the Ninja,” along with some “Death Wish” sequels and a Sylvester Stallone vehicle about arm wrestling called “Over the Top.”My first editor was fired after the publisher's daughter requested to have her boyfriend installed as editor instead. They married a year later, and when they returned from the honeymoon, the publisher fired her new son-in-law. No reason given. I left soon after. In recent times, THR engineered what seemed to be an amazing comeback, investing millions, switching from daily publication to online focus and producing a once a week glossy magazine that was like Vanity Fair with more of an industry bent. Variety, meanwhile, lost its muscle and took a backseat to the two hot online “trades” of the internet era, Deadline and TheWrap. Meanwhile, all that money THR spent on expansion wasn't paying off. The company had some big layoffs earlier this year, and now, it's part of the Penske Media Group. Which also owns Deadline and Billboard too. The only independent left is TheWrap.It's all so sad. But at least the THR reporters don't have to endure having their rivals stories circled anymore. P.S. And speaking of the photo angleIn keeping with the Photowalk theme of this newsletter, where are my great photos of the newsroom? I can only find one roll of Black & White Tri-X that was snapped during this time period, on a contact sheet. First of all, shame on me, for not being more proactive. But look at how far we've come folks! Back then, you had a choice of pro-level 35mm cameras, which were hard to operate for most people. “Disposable” cardboard cameras began appearing in the 1980s, but they were only used for special occasions and places with great light. So for everyday life, most of us never bothered. Compare that to now, where everyone you know has a camera in their pocket, and you can ask anyone to grab a shot of you with no issues. And the smartphone cameras are so good, they can shoot in pretty much any kind of light. Still, I would have loved to illustrate this post with historical images from the newsroom. For those of you reading, who may be in this position in a few years, some friendly words of advice. Take more photos, and back them up!Song of the WeekWho's a fan of “Dream a Little Dream of Me?” It's one of my favorites to play on the guitar. Any requests for next time?Today's morning beach photoUntil next time, thanks as always for going down memory lane with me. If you enjoyed today's newsletter, please let me know with a heart or a reply. Jeff This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jeffersongraham.substack.com

Do you want to write comedy? Reality? Scripted? Work in development? Write a pilot? Web series? Or maybe work as an executive? This week we have a massive 82 minute podcast with Chad Gervich… and he’s done it all!Chad Gervich is a television producer, bestselling author, and award- winning playwright who currently has a comedy development deal with 20th Century Fox, and is a writer-producer for After Lately, E!’s hit half-hour comedy starring Chelsea Handler.As a writer and producer, Chad created Style Network’s hit comedy/reality show, Foody Call, before going on to write, produce, and develop shows (both scripted and reality) for ABC, FOX, Warner Brothers, Endemol, E!, Overbrook, SuperDelicious, CBS Studios, TruTV, Zoo Productions, Fox Reality Channel, Renegade 83, Food Network, and the Weinstein Company. His credits include Wipeout, Cupcake Wars, Reality Binge, Speeders, and others.Prior to producing, Chad spent five years as a development executive with the Littlefield Company, former NBC president Warren Littlefield’s production company, developing pilots and series for NBC, ABC, UPN, the WB, and Paramount TV. Chad also worked in production on shows such as The Wanda Sykes Show, Star Search, The Academy Awards, and Malcolm in the Middle.As an author, Chad’s best-selling TV-writing handbook, Small Screen, Big Picture: A Writers Guide to the TV Business, debuted in 2008 to critical acclaim and outstanding sales, and it’s presently being used as a textbook in the CBS Diversity Writing Program, the WGA Showrunners Training Program, NBC’s Writers on the Verge, NATPE’s Diversity Fellowship, California State, and USC’s TV classes.Chad currently writes Script Magazine’s popular weekly Primetime blog, and contributes regularly to many other publications, including Daily Variety. In addition, he created and produced Morning Call Time, Hollywood’s first daily audio news podcast.One of Chad’s passions is teaching. With a Playwriting MFA from UCLA, he has spent years teaching writing and producing classes for Mediabistro, Gotham Writers Workshop, Writing Pad, and StoryStudio Chicago, as well as lecturing at colleges and schools such as UCLA and Vanderbilt. He also speaks at festivals and conferences such as the TV/Film Summit, and the Great American Pitchfest.Follow Chad on Twitter: @ChadGervichVisit Chad’s website: www.chadgervich.comBuy Gray’s book for only $4.99! Look for it on Amazon – How To Break In To TV Writing: Insider Interviews.Didn’t get your questions asked? Make sure you follow Gray on Twitter (@GrayJones) so you can get the scoop on who is being interviewed and how to get your questions in. Also check out our TV Writer Twitter Database to find Twitter addresses for over 1,000 TV writers. Find our previous episodes and other resources at www.tvwriterpodcast.com or on Gray’s YouTube channel.First published May 15, 2011.

Do you want to write comedy? Reality? Scripted? Work in development? Write a pilot? Web series? Or maybe work as an executive? This week we have a massive 82 minute podcast with Chad Gervich… and he's done it all! Chad Gervich is a television producer, bestselling author, and award- winning playwright who currently has a comedy development deal with 20th Century Fox, and is a writer-producer for After Lately, E!'s hit half-hour comedy starring Chelsea Handler. As a writer and producer, Chad created Style Network's hit comedy/reality show, Foody Call, before going on to write, produce, and develop shows (both scripted and reality) for ABC, FOX, Warner Brothers, Endemol, E!, Overbrook, SuperDelicious, CBS Studios, TruTV, Zoo Productions, Fox Reality Channel, Renegade 83, Food Network, and the Weinstein Company. His credits include Wipeout, Cupcake Wars, Reality Binge, Speeders, and others. Prior to producing, Chad spent five years as a development executive with the Littlefield Company, former NBC president Warren Littlefield's production company, developing pilots and series for NBC, ABC, UPN, the WB, and Paramount TV. Chad also worked in production on shows such as The Wanda Sykes Show, Star Search, The Academy Awards, and Malcolm in the Middle. As an author, Chad's best-selling TV-writing handbook, Small Screen, Big Picture: A Writers Guide to the TV Business, debuted in 2008 to critical acclaim and outstanding sales, and it's presently being used as a textbook in the CBS Diversity Writing Program, the WGA Showrunners Training Program, NBC's Writers on the Verge, NATPE's Diversity Fellowship, California State, and USC's TV classes. Chad currently writes Script Magazine's popular weekly Primetime blog, and contributes regularly to many other publications, including Daily Variety. In addition, he created and produced Morning Call Time, Hollywood's first daily audio news podcast. One of Chad's passions is teaching. With a Playwriting MFA from UCLA, he has spent years teaching writing and producing classes for Mediabistro, Gotham Writers Workshop, Writing Pad, and StoryStudio Chicago, as well as lecturing at colleges and schools such as UCLA and Vanderbilt. He also speaks at festivals and conferences such as the TV/Film Summit, and the Great American Pitchfest. Follow Chad on Twitter: @ChadGervich Visit Chad's website: www.chadgervich.com Buy Gray's book for only $4.99! Look for it on Amazon – How To Break In To TV Writing: Insider Interviews. Didn't get your questions asked? Make sure you follow Gray on Twitter (@GrayJones) so you can get the scoop on who is being interviewed and how to get your questions in. Also check out our TV Writer Twitter Database to find Twitter addresses for over 1,000 TV writers. Find our previous episodes and other resources at www.tvwriterpodcast.com or on Gray's YouTube channel. First published May 15, 2011.

The Oscars are Sunday and once again this year's nominees reflect an Academy that's still older, whiter, and more male. All five directing nominees are men, and 19 of 20 nominees for acting are white. Adam B. Vary, Senior Entertainment Writer for Variety, tells Sam the best-reviewed film of the year is "Parasite," from South Korea, which is up for Best Picture. But none of its cast were singled out for awards. Audrey Cleo Yap, host of Daily Variety on Variety.com, says that lack of notice for Asian actors is consistent with past Academy behavior. She also notes the few film industry insiders who are pushing Hollywood to open up — but says most are too fearful to speak out. Sam also talks with two Virginia Commonwealth University political science students who traveled with their class to New Hampshire to observe and participate in the state's presidential primary activities. They're featured the New Hampshire Public Radio podcast Stranglehold. They asked why such an overwhelmingly white state should remain the first to hold a primary — when it doesn't reflect the rest of the nation.

Welcome back, we have another fun episode for you all this week. First up we have an absolute idiot in Russia insulting adult comic book readers. Now, we must apologise for the response to this segment, we Nerds love our comics and really enjoy reading them. As fans we love the artwork, the complexity of the stories, the downright fun of it all, and the insane gadgets that end up becoming a reality. Although we are still waiting to see the Fantastic 4’s flying car. Now things get heated in this as you might expect, but wow, you will love this. Would you like to learn more?Next up we have Australian Dragons and their last surviving cousins living overseas. For all those people who have decided to live abroad after they finish university you aren’t the first. Oh no, not even close. You are a few thousand years behind these guys. Now as typical Aussies they like to relax over a nice steak; enjoy a bit of time in the sun, and when they get angry fighting like a legend. Just in case you are wondering who we are talking about it is the, yeah nah. You will need to listen in to find out.Do you wish you could go play certain games you had on an old phone but are having trouble finding it? Perhaps it is a game on a friend’s phone and no matter how hard you look you just never seem to know where they got it from. Well things are about to get worse, because Infinity Blade are no longer supporting some of their games. So, better check out what this means for that bundle of games you have in your library and read those acknowledged agreements and game licences. Are you freaking out? Well listen in to find out what is happening before it is too late.As usual we have the shout outs, remembrances, birthdays and special events of interest. We would like to say thank you to all the awesome fire fighters battling the numerous bush fires raging around Australia. For all those people who have lost homes, businesses, jobs and all those things that make a life we hope you are safe. As always, stay safe, look out for each other and stay hydrated.EPISODE NOTES:Russian Politician vs adult comic book reader - https://www.bleedingcool.com/2019/09/08/russian-minister-of-culture-vladimir-medinsky-calls-adult-comic-book-readers-morons/Komodo Dragons - https://www.insidescience.org/news/how-last-dragons-survived-extinctionApp Archiving- https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/d1eys0/are_infinity_blade_games_no_longer_available_to/- https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT208436Games currently playingDJ- Warframe - https://store.steampowered.com/app/230410/Warframe/Professor– Space Run - https://store.steampowered.com/app/275670/Space_Run/Buck– The Orville Interactive Fan Experience - https://store.steampowered.com/app/1096200/The_Orville__Interactive_Fan_Experience/Other topics discussedDisney Vs Disney Debates (TNC Podcast)- https://thatsnotcanon.com/disneyvsdisneypodcastJames Oliver Rigney Jr. aka Robert Jordan (American author of epic fantasy. He is best known for the Wheel of Time series, which comprises 14 books and a prequel novel.)- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_JordanGeorge Raymond Richard Martin aka George R. R. Martin (American novelist and short story writer in the fantasy,horror, and science fiction genres, screenwriter, and television producer. He is best known for his series of epic fantasy novels, A Song of Ice and Fire, which was adapted into the HBO series Game of Thrones)- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_R._R._MartinBerserk (Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Kentaro Miura.)- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berserk_(manga)Ouran High Host Club (manga series by Bisco Hatori.)- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouran_High_School_Host_ClubThe Phantom (American adventure comic strip, first published by Lee Falk in February 1936)- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_PhantomWynonna Earp (weird West comic book miniseries created and owned by Beau Smith.)- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wynonna_EarpThe Boys (American comic book series, written by Garth Ennis and co-created, designed, and illustrated by Darick Robertson)- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boys_(comics)Hack/Slash (comic book series, launched from several one shots of the same name, published by Image Comics. The series was created by writer and sometime penciller Tim Seeley.)- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hack/SlashThe Punisher (fictional character appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics.)- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PunisherJoker star Marc Maron blasts outraged Marvel fans- https://www.cinemablend.com/news/2478614/joker-star-marc-maron-blasts-outraged-marvel-fans-after-superhero-movie-backlashParthenogenesis (natural form of asexual reproduction in which growth and development of embryos occur without fertilization.)- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ParthenogenesisQUT joins top 200 universities worldwide- https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/queensland/qut-joins-global-elite-universities-in-new-rankings-20190911-p52qdd.htmlSwedish scientist suggests cannibalism as a solution to climate change- https://futurism.com/the-byte/scientist-cannibalism-climate-changeKomodo Dragons (also known as the Komodo monitor, is a species of lizard found in the Indonesian islands of Komodo, Rinca, Flores, and Gili Motang)- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Komodo_dragonCan cats live on a vegan diet- https://www.petmd.com/blogs/thedailyvet/lorieahuston/2014/june/vegan-diets-cats-31822What happens to feeding your pet a vegan diet- https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-04-07/can-your-pet-become-vegan/10969616Komodo Dragon facts- https://www.livescience.com/27402-komodo-dragons.htmlNintendo sues RomUniverse for copyright infringement- https://www.businessinsider.com.au/nintendo-sues-romuniverse-copyright-infringement-claims-2019-9?r=US&IR=THow to play iPod games on PC- https://itstillworks.com/play-ipod-games-pc-7715671.htmlFlappy Bird (mobile game developed by Vietnamese video game artist and programmer Dong Nguyen under his game development company dotGears.)- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flappy_BirdPrince of Persia (1989 fantasy cinematic platformer originally developed and published by Brøderbund and designed by Jordan Mechner for the Apple II.)- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_of_Persia_(1989_video_game)Accursed Farms (YouTube channel)- Channel - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJ6KZTTnkE-s2XFJJmoTAkw- Games as a service is a fraud - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUAX0gnZ3NwFallout 76 charging $7 for a fridge and people are not happy- https://www.gamesradar.com/fallout-76-players-arent-happy-about-being-charged-dollar7-for-a-fridge/Warframe market- https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/MarketReplicator (In Star Trek a replicator is a machine that can create (and recycle) things.)- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replicator_(Star_Trek)CBS kills Star Trek fan project- https://www.pcmag.com/news/364042/cbs-kills-star-trek-stage-9-fan-projectGirl gives birthday cake to Queensland Firefighters- https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/499154903701389312/621667655765721089/70147954_10157763711869669_3177814528142344192_n.pngBardot (Australian girl group which formed in 1999 on the Australian reality television series Popstars.)- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bardot_(Australian_band)The Nomad Soul (adventure game developed by Quantic Dream and published by Eidos Interactive.)- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nomad_SoulDr Zhivago (novel by Boris Pasternak, first published in 1957 in Italy.)- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Zhivago_(novel)Indian lunar lander falls silent- https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/09/india-chandrayaan-2-landing-attempt-moon-lunar-south-pole/You, Me, and a Poltergeist (TNC Podcast)- https://thatsnotcanon.com/ymaappodcastShoutouts8 Sept 1965 – The Monkees were born, a small ad in New York’s Daily Variety on this day attracted 437 young men interested in forming the world’s first "manufactured" boy band –The Monkees. It happened after young movie and TV director Bob Rafelson, looking for his big break, dreamt up a show about a struggling rock band. He ran a production company called Raybert with his business partner Bert Schneider, whose father was the head of Columbia Pictures. The TV division of Columbia agreed in 1965 to go ahead with the project. All that was then needed was a band – or, at least, “four insane boys” who could literally play the part. - https://www.onthisday.com/articles/hey-hey-were-the-monkees9 Sept 1999 – Sega Dreamcast was released in America, it was the first in the sixth generation of video game consoles, preceding Sony's PlayStation 2, Nintendo's GameCube and Microsoft's Xbox. The Dreamcast was Sega's final home console, marking the end of the company's 18 years in the console market. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreamcast9 Sept 1839 - English scientist and astronomer John Herschel takes 1st glass plate photograph, which still exists, and experimented with some colour reproduction, noting that rays of different parts of the spectrum tended to impart their own colour to a photographic paper. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Herschel11 Sept 2019 - Tribute to the firefighters - https://10daily.com.au/news/australia/a190911uqndh/a-tribute-to-our-amazing-firies-in-10-incredible-photos-20190911Remembrances7 Sept 2019 - Robert Axelrod also credited as Axel Roberts and Myron Mensah, American actor. He was primarily known for his voice work, which included Digimon, Cowboy Bebop and Space Pirate Captain Harlock, having started voice acting for the English-language versions of anime in 1980; providing the voice of Lord Zedd, the main antagonist of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers; and Finster, the original Mighty Morphin Power Rangers monster maker. He also portrayed a Paul McCartney look-alike on the popular sitcom Family Matters, and later in his career appeared in several productions by comedy duo Tim & Eric. He died at the age of 70 in Los Angeles,California - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Axelrod_(actor)9 Sept 1976 - Mao Zedong, also known as Chairman Mao, was a Chinese communist revolutionary who became the founding father of the People's Republic of China (PRC), which he ruled as the Chairman of the Communist Party of China from its establishment in 1949 until his death in 1976. Idelogically a Marxist–Leninist, his theories, military strategies, and political policies are collectively known as Maoism. A controversial figure, Mao is regarded as one of the most important and influential individuals in modern world history. He is also known as a political intellect, theorist, military strategist, poet, and visionary. Supporters credit him with driving imperialism out of China, modernising the nation and building it into a world power, promoting the status of women, improving education and health care, as well as increasing life expectancy as China's population grew from around 550 million to over 900 million under his leadership. Conversely, his regime has been called autocratic and totalitarian, and condemned for bringing about mass repression and destroying religious and cultural artifacts and sites. It was additionally responsible for vast numbers of deaths with estimates ranging from 30 to 70 million victims through starvation, prison labour and mass executions. He died from a heart attack at the age of 82 in Beijing - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_Zedong9 Sept 1997 - Burgess Meredith, American actor, director, producer, and writer. Active for more than six decades, Meredith has been called "a virtuosic actor" and "one of the most accomplished actors of the century". A lifetime member of the Actors Studio by invitation, he won several Emmys, was the first male actor to win the Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actor twice, and was nominated for two Academy Awards. He established himself as a leading man in Hollywood with critically acclaimed performances as George Milton in Of Mice and Men, Ernie Pyle in The Story of G.I. Joe, and the narrator ofA Walk in the Sun. Meredith was known later in his career for his appearances on The Twilight Zone and for portraying arch-villain The Penguin on the 1960s TV series Batman and boxing trainer Mickey Goldmill in the Rocky film series. For his performances in The Day of the Locust and Rocky, he received nominations for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He later starred in the comedy Foul Play and the fantasy film Clash of the Titans. He narrated numerous films and documentaries during his long career, including Twilight Zone: The Movie. He died from complications of Alzheimer's disease and melanoma at the age of 89 in Malibu, California - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burgess_MeredithFamous Birthdays9 Sept 1828 - Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, usually referred to in English as Leo Tolstoy, was a Russian writer who is regarded as one of the greatest authors of all time. He received multiple nominations for Nobel Prize in Literature every year from 1902 to 1906, and nominations for Nobel Peace Prize in 1901, 1902 and 1910, and his miss of the prize is a major Nobel prize controversy. he is best known for the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, often cited as pinnacles of realist fiction. He first achieved literary acclaim in his twenties with his semi-autobiographical trilogy, Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth, and Sevastopol Sketches, based upon his experiences in the Crimean War. Tolstoy's fiction includes dozens of short stories and several novellas such as The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Family Happiness, and Hadji Murad. He also wrote plays and numerous philosophical essays. In the 1870s Tolstoy experienced a profound moral crisis, followed by what he regarded as an equally profound spiritual awakening, as outlined in his non-fiction work A Confession. His literal interpretation of the ethical teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him to become a fervent Christian anarchist and pacifist. Tolstoy's ideas on nonviolent resistance, expressed in such works as The Kingdom of God Is Within You, were to have a profound impact on such pivotal 20th-century figures as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. Tolstoy also became a dedicated advocate of Georgism, the economic philosophy of Henry George, which he incorporated into his writing, particularly Resurrection. He was born in Yasnaya Polyana, Tula Governorate - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Tolstoy9 Sept 1890 - Colonel Harland David Sanders, American businessman, best known for founding fast food chicken restaurant chain Kentucky Fried Chicken (also known as KFC) and later acting as the company's brand ambassador and symbol. His name and image are still symbols of the company. The title 'colonel' was honorary – a Kentucky Colonel – not the military rank. Sanders held a number of jobs in his early life, such as steam engine stoker, insurance salesman and filling station operator. He began selling fried chicken from his roadside restaurant inNorth Corbin, Kentucky, during the Great Depression. During that time Sanders developed his "secret recipe" and his patented method of cooking chicken in a pressure fryer. Sanders recognized the potential of the restaurant franchising concept, and the first KFC franchise opened in South Salt Lake, Utah in 1952. When his original restaurant closed, he devoted himself full-time to franchising his fried chicken throughout the country. The company's rapid expansion across the United States and overseas became overwhelming for Sanders. In 1964, then 73 years old, he sold the company to a group of investors led by John Y. Brown Jr. and Jack C. Massey for $2 million ($16.2 million today). However, he retained control of operations in Canada, and he became a salaried brand ambassador for Kentucky Fried Chicken. He was born in Henryville, Indiana - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonel_Sanders9 Sept 1953 - Janet Fielding, Australian actress, known for her role in the BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who as companion of the Fourth Doctor, and later of the Fifth Doctor,Tegan Jovanka. She made a guest appearance on Jim'll Fix It in a Doctor Who-related sketch alongside Colin Baker'sDoctor in 1985 (A Fix with Sontarans). She played Mel during Sylvester McCoy's audition for the part of the Seventh Doctor. She was born in Brisbane, Queensland - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_FieldingEvents of Interest9 Sept 1983 - Vitas Gerulaitis bets his house that Martina Navratilova can't beat 100th ranked male tennis player- https://www.onthisday.com/people/martina-navratilova- http://www.mertovstennisdesk.com/2013/10/14/the-most-famous-100-player-in-atp-history/9 Sept 2012 – The Indian space agency puts into orbit its heaviest foreign satellite yet, in a streak of 21 consecutive successful PSLV launches. The satellite known as SPOT 6 along with SPOT 7 form a constellation of Earth-imaging satellites designed to provide continuity of high-resolution, wide-swath data up to 2024. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPOT_(satellite)#SPOT_6_and_SPOT_711 Sept 1940 - The American Mathematical Society met at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, a few hundred miles north of the building of Bell Labs in New York, where was the Complex Number Computer. George Stibitz arranged to have the computer connected by telephone lines (28-wire teletype cable) to a teletype unit installed there. The Complex Number Computer worked well, and there is no doubt it impressed those who used it. The meeting was attended by many of America's most prominent mathematicians, as well as individuals who later led important computing projects. The Dartmouth demonstration foreshadowed the modern era of remote computing, but remote access of this type was not repeated for another ten years. - https://history-computer.com/ModernComputer/Relays/Stibitz.htmlIntroArtist – Goblins from MarsSong Title – Super Mario - Overworld Theme (GFM Trap Remix)Song Link - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GNMe6kF0j0&index=4&list=PLHmTsVREU3Ar1AJWkimkl6Pux3R5PB-QJFollow us onFacebook - https://www.facebook.com/NerdsAmalgamated/Twitter - https://twitter.com/NAmalgamatedSpotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/6Nux69rftdBeeEXwD8GXrSiTunes - https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/top-shelf-nerds/id1347661094RSS - http://www.thatsnotcanonproductions.com/topshelfnerdspodcast?format=rssGeneral EnquiriesEmail - Nerds.Amalgamated@gmail.com

With an expansive list of film and television credits spanning for more than 20 years, Michael Kelly is known best for his four-time Emmy-Nominated role as “Doug Stamper” in the critically acclaimed Netflix original series HOUSE OF CARDS, for which he starred in for all six seasons. Kelly can next be seen in season 2 of Carlton Cuse’s Amazon Prime Original Series JACK RYAN alongside John Krasinski and Wendell Pierce. Recently, Kelly produced and starred in John Hyams’ ALL SQUARE, supported by Jesse Ray Sheps, Josh Lucas, and Pamela Adlon. He also starred in THE SECRET IN THEIR EYES opposite Julia Roberts, Nicole Kidman, and Chiwetel Ejiofor and in EVEREST opposite Josh Brolin, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Robin Wright. Additionally, he played “Lt. Col. Gary Volesky” in National Geographic’s miniseries THE LONG ROAD HOME and “Dumbarton” in BBC’s limited series TABOO opposite Tom Hardy. In 2008, Kelly starred as “Detective Lester Ybarra” opposite Angelina Jolie and John Malkovich in Clint Eastwood’s CHANGELING, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and was distributed by Universal Pictures and Imagine Entertainment. For his performance, Kelly received a coveted spot as one of “Daily Variety’s 10 Actors to Watch.”  That same year, Kelly starred in the HBO miniseries GENERATION KILL, which chronicled one Marine’s journey in the American-led assault on Baghdad in 2003.  Kelly’s other feature film credits include Louis Leterrier’s NOW YOU SEE MEopposite Mark Ruffalo and Jesse Eisenberg, Zack Snyder’s MAN OF STEEL, the hit film CHRONICLE, George Nolfi’s THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU, Doug Liman’s FAIR GAME opposite Sean Penn and Naomi Watts, F. Gary Gray’s LAW ABIDING CITIZEN alongside Gerard Butler and Jamie Foxx, DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE MORGANS? with Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker, DEFENDOR with Woody Harrelson, INVINCIBLE opposite Mark Wahlberg, the Universal blockbuster DAWN OF THE DEADdirected by Zach Snyder, TENDERNESS starring Russell Crowe, THE NARROWS directed by Francois Velle, BROKEN ENGLISH  written and directed by Zoe Cassavetes, nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, and LOGGERHEADS nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. Kelly also appeared in M. Night Shyamalan’s UNBREAKABLE, Milos Forman’s MAN ON THE MOON and RIVER RED (Sundance Film Festival). On television, Kelly has had recurring roles on the hit shows THE GOOD WIFE and PERSON OF INTEREST. He played the series regular role of “Jonathan ‘Prophet’ Simms” in CRIMINAL MINDS: SUSPECT BEHAVIOR, “Terrence Brooks” on LAW & ORDER: CRIMINAL INTENT and “John Mosley” on FRINGE. Kelly also had the recurring role of “FBI Agent Ron Goddard” on THE SOPRANOS and was a series regular on the USA network television series KOJAK with Ving Rhames and Chazz Palminteri and the UPN action drama LEVEL 9.  He has also guest starred on numerous hit television shows, including BLACK MIRROR, LAW & ORDER: SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT, LAW & ORDER: C.S.I. MIAMI, THE SHIELD, JUDGING AMY, THE JURY and THIRD WATCH. A lifetime member of The Actor’s Studio, Kelly has performed in such plays as Arthur Penn’s production of Major Crimes, Theatre Studio’s Miss Julie as well as in a production of In Search of Strindberg staged in Stockholm, Sweden.

Arlene Schindler is an author and speaker sharing humorous tales of women’s secrets and desires. The book we are discussing during this interview is, “Stand Up and Heartbreak: A Comic and a Sex Addict Walk into a Marriage...” Arlene originated the comedy column for The New York Post, writing reviews and profiles of comedians appearing in New York City. It was the first of its kind in the country, helping spur comedy’s greatest growth period. Her writing has appeared in The Los Angeles Times, Daily Variety, Purple Clover, The Huffington Post and many other publications. Her novel, “The Last Place She’d Look” is a raucous romp through the hidden sex lives of today’s mature women. During this podcast Arlene talks about some traits to avoid while dating online and how sexual addiction impacts a marriage.

A memoir is a personal account of one’s life. It can be a portion of his or her life, or span many years. Memoirs are a wonderful way for us to understand someone else’s story. They give us a slice of history and can help us empathize and relate to people who might be celebrities, athletes, journalists, players in historical events or even every-day people with extraordinary stories. Lessons learned and the moments that shaped one’s life are often the goal in writing a memoir.   Why should we read them? What makes a memoir compelling? And, who should write them and what should they know about the process?  We’re talking to Ray Richmond. A professional journalist and author, he was also a television critic, columnist and reporter for a number ofpublications, including The Hollywood Reporter, Daily Variety, the Los Angeles Daily News, and more.   His books include The Simpsons: A Complete Guide to Our Favorite Family (1997), This is Jeopardy!:Celebrating America’s Favorite Quiz Show (2004), TV Moms: An Illustrated Guide (2000) and My Greatest Day in Show Business(1999).He contributed to the book The Momentas well.  Ray is also the founder of Family Sleuth Memoirs. It is his belief that working with others on their memoirs might help change the world—for the better—as we know it.  To learn more about Books That Make You go to:  http://www.booksthatmakeyou.com To learn more about Desiree Duffy go to: http://blackchateauenterprises.com  

Janie Lieberman - Former Entertainment reporter for Daily Variety and LA Times, Janie Lieberman dives into stand up and sours into LA's Comedy Scene.BTS is an Internet based Talk Show hosted by award winning Entertainment Photographer Joey Mas.Our call in number is: 262-JOEYMAS or 262-563-9627 Our Facebook Group is: https://www.facebook.com/groups/PhillySnapsRadio/BTS is LIVE on Tuesday Nights - 9:30PM EST on:http://WBTS-RADIO.com - WEBCAMhttp://PhillySnapsRadio.com - WEBCAMhttps://www.spreaker.com/show/bts-with-phillysnapsYouTube.com - Search: BTS with PhillySnapsBTS is Sponsored by: http://X2OVapes.com - Use coupon code SNAPS for 20% off at Checkout.AMAZON.com - Shop or AMAZON store at: http://joeymas.ddns.net/bts/indexstore.htm

Janie Lieberman - Former Entertainment reporter for Daily Variety and LA Times, Janie Lieberman dives into stand up and sours into LA's Comedy Scene.BTS is an Internet based Talk Show hosted by award winning Entertainment Photographer Joey Mas.Our call in number is: 262-JOEYMAS or 262-563-9627 Our Facebook Group is: https://www.facebook.com/groups/PhillySnapsRadio/BTS is LIVE on Tuesday Nights - 9:30PM EST on:http://WBTS-RADIO.com - WEBCAMhttp://PhillySnapsRadio.com - WEBCAMhttps://www.spreaker.com/show/bts-with-phillysnapsYouTube.com - Search: BTS with PhillySnapsBTS is Sponsored by: http://X2OVapes.com - Use coupon code SNAPS for 20% off at Checkout.AMAZON.com - Shop or AMAZON store at: http://joeymas.ddns.net/bts/indexstore.htm

The Total Tutor Neil Haley will interview Gerald Weaver, author of The First Gentlemen. About Gerald Weaver Gerald Weaver was educated at Yale University, where he studied fiction writing under Gordon Lish, then the fiction editor at Esquire, and formerly Raymond Carver's editor. He also studied literature under Harold Bloom, the renowned literary critic. Gerald has done just about everything there is to do on Capitol Hill and in Washington: he was a lawyer at a Washington law firm, a Chief of Staff in the U.S. House of Representatives, a lobbyist who owned his own firm, a political analyst at a major trade association, and a legislative assistant who began his career as an intern. He has managed Congressional campaigns, testified before the U.S. Senate, served on the steering committees of Presidential campaigns, affected federal legislation, managed a large state for a Presidential campaign and personally known many of Washington's most important politicians, journalists and other figures.   Gerald has been quoted on numerous occasions in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Daily Variety, ABC World News Tonight, and many other publications and media outlets. Having written countless speeches, press releases, Congressional testimonies, political advertisements, legal briefs and lobbying reports, he was encouraged by his close friend, the Sunday Times foreign correspondent Marie Colvin to begin writing a novel. This was Gospel Prism, a draft of which was found in Marie's luggage after she was killed in Syria. The First First Gentleman is Gerald's second novel.