Podcasts about inside moves

EPISODE 16 - “Beginner's Luck” - 01/01/2024 To win an Oscar sometimes takes decades of hard work and dedication to your craft — just ask PAUL NEWMAN, GERALDINE PAGE, and JESSICA TANDY. In fact, when Newman finally won the Oscar in 1987 for “The Color of Money,” after being nominated six times previously, he didn't even bother to show up to the ceremony. “It's like chasing a beautiful woman for 80 years,” he told the Associated Press. “Finally, she relents and you say, ‘I'm terribly sorry. I'm tired.'” However, there is a small group of actors who didn't have to chase that beautiful Oscar for 80 years. They won for their very first film. This week we take a look at this rarified group. SHOW NOTES:  Sources: Inside Oscar: The Unofficial History of the Academy Awards (1986), by Mason Wiley and Damien Bona The Real Oscar: The Story Behind The Academy Awards (1981), by Peter H. Brown Seventy-Five Years of the Oscars: The Official History of The Academy Awards (2003), by Robert Osborne Oscar Dearest (1987), by Peter H. Brown and Jim Pinkston The Film Encyclopedia (1994), By Ephraim Katz Leonard Maltin's Movie Encyclopedia (1994), by Leonard Maltin IMDBPro.com Wikipedia.com Stars/Movies Mentioned:    GALE SONDERGAARD — The Wizard of Oz (1939), Anthony Adverse (1936), The Mark Of Zorro (1940), The Letter (1940), Sherlock Holmes and the Spider Woman (1943), The King of Siam (1946); KATINA PAXINOU — For Whom The Bell Tolls (1943), Mourning Becomes Electra (1947); HAROLD RUSSELL — The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), Inside Moves (1980); MERCEDES McCAMBRIDGE — All The King's Men (1949), Lightning Strikes Twice (1951), Johnny Guitar (1954), Giant (1956), Touch Of Evil (1958), The Exorcist (1973); SHIRLEY BOOTH — Come Back Little Sheet (1952), About Mrs. Leslie (1954); EVA MARIE SAINT — On The Waterfront (1955), A Hatful of Rain (1957), Raintree County (1957), North By Northwest (1959); JO VAN FLEET — East of Eden (1955), The Rose Tattoo (1955), I'll Cry Tomorrow (1955), Four Queens and a King (1956), Gunfight At The Okay Corral (1957), Wild River (1960), Cool Hand Luke (1967); JULIE ANDREWS — Mary Poppins (1964), The Sound Of Music (1965), Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967), Darling Lil (1970), The Pink Panther (1967), The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976), 10 (1979), Victor/Victoria (1982);   BARBRA STREISAND — Funny Girl (1968), Hello Dolly (1969), On A Clear Day You Can See Forever (1970), The Owl and the Pussycat (1970); --------------------------------- http://www.airwavemedia.com Please contact sales@advertisecast.com if you would like to advertise on our podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After an extended holiday hiatus, cohosts Dino and Mike are back on the mics to close off Season 3 before they bid the concepts of seasons farewell due to their inability to properly count in I Eat Movies #30: Mike's First Time - Inside Moves (1980). Honoring the late Richard Donner, Mike and Dino examine a more intimate, character driven opus from the man behind Superman: The Movie and the Lethal Weapon films that he hailed as his personal favorite amongst all his features. A notable black sheep in a sea of bigger-budgeted studio fare, John Savage (The Deer Hunter) stars as a broken man who unsuccessfully attempts suicide only to find new purpose through the regulars of a local bar and a best friend in a bartender (David Morse, The Green Mile) with ambitions of becoming a pro basketball player. Pride, loyalty, friendship and the concept of community are all discussed in this virtually forgotten opus co-written by Barry Levinson (Diner, Rain Man) and Valerie Curtin (And Justice for All, Best Friends) and co-starring Diana Scarwind (Mommie Dearest, Psycho III) who was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role.

Welcome to our first episode of the new year, which is also our first episode of Season 5. Thank you for continuing to join us on this amazing journey. On today's episode, we head back to Christmas of 1980, when pop music superstar Neil Diamond would be making his feature acting debut in a new version of The Jazz Singer. ----more---- EPISODE TRANSCRIPT From Los Angeles, California, the entertainment capital of the world, this is The 80s Movies Podcast. I am your host, Edward Havens. Thank you for listening today.   It's 2023, which means we are starting our fifth season. And for our first episode of this new season, we're going back to the end of 1980, to take a look back at what was supposed to be the launch of a new phase in the career of one of music's biggest stars. That musical star was Neil Diamond, and this would end up becoming his one and only attempt to act in a motion picture.   We're talking about The Jazz Singer.   As I have said time and time again, I don't really have a plan for this show. I talk about the movies and subjects I talk about often on a whim. I'll hear about something and I'll be reminded of something, and a few days later, I've got an episode researched, written, recorded, edited and out there in the world. As I was working on the previous episode, about The War of the Roses just before my trip to Thailand, I saw a video of Neil Diamond singing Sweet Caroline on opening night of A Beautiful Noise, a new Broadway musical about the life and music of Mr. Diamond. I hadn't noticed Diamond had stopped performing live five years earlier due to a diagnosis of Parkinson's, and it was very touching to watch a thousand people joyously singing along with the man.   But as I was watching that video, I was reminded of The Jazz Singer, a movie we previously covered very lightly three years ago as part of our episode on the distribution company Associated Film Distribution. I was reminded that I haven't seen the movie in over forty years, even though I remember rather enjoying it when it opened in theatres in December 1980. I think I saw it four or five times over the course of a month, and I even went out and bought the soundtrack album, which I easily listened to a hundred times before the start of summer.   But we're getting ahead of ourselves yet again.   The Jazz Singer began its life in 1917, when Samson Raphaelson, a twenty-three year old undergraduate at the University of Illinois, attended a performance of Robinson Crusoe, Jr., in Champaign, IL. The star of that show was thirty-year-old Al Jolson, a Russian-born Jew who had been a popular performer on Broadway stages for fifteen years by this point, regularly performing in blackface. After graduation, Raphaelson would become an advertising executive in New York City, but on the side, he would write stories. One short story, called “The Day of Atonement,” would be a thinly fictionalized account of Al Jolson's life. It would be published in Everybody's Magazine in January 1922.   At the encouragement of his secretary at the advertising firm, Raphaelson would adapted his story into a play, which would be produced on Broadway in September 1925 with a new title…   The Jazz Singer.   Ironically, for a Broadway show based on the early life of Al Jolson, Jolson was not a part of the production. The part of Jake Rabinowitz, the son of a cantor who finds success on Broadway with the Anglicized named Jack Robin, would be played by George Jessel. The play would be a minor hit, running for 303 performances on Broadway before closing in June 1926, and Warner Brothers would buy the movie rights the same week the show closed. George Jessel would be signed to play his stage role in the movie version. The film was scheduled to go into production in May 1927.   There are a number of reasons why Jessel would not end up making the movie. After the success of two Warner movies in 1926 using Vitaphone, a sound-on-disc system that could play music synchronized to a motion picture, Warner Brothers reconcieved The Jazz Singer as a sound movie, but not just a movie with music synchronized to the images on screen, but a “talkie,” where, for the first time for a motion picture, actual dialogue and vocal songs would be synchronized to the pictures on screen. When he learned about this development, Jessel demanded more money.    The Warner Brothers refused.   Then Jessel had some concerns about the solvency of the studio. These would be valid concerns, as Harry Warner, the eldest of the four eponymous brothers who ran the studio, had sold nearly $4m worth of his personal stock to keep the company afloat just a few months earlier.   But what ended up driving Jessel away was a major change screenwriter Alfred A. Cohen made when adapting the original story and the play into the screenplay. Instead of leaving the theatre and becoming a cantor like his father, as it was written for the stage, the movie would end with Jack Robin performing on Broadway in blackface while his mom cheers him on from one of the box seats.   With Jessel off the project, Warner would naturally turn to… Eddie Cantor. Like Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor was a Jew of Russian descent, although, unlike Jolson, he had been born in New York City. Like Jolson, he had been a star on Broadway for years, regularly performing in and writing songs for Florenz Ziegfeld' annual Follies shows. And like Jolson, Cantor would regularly appear on stage in blackface. But Cantor, a friend of Jessel's, instead offered to help the studio get Jessel back on the movie. The studio instead went to their third choice…   Al Jolson.   You know. The guy whose life inspired the darn story to begin with.   Many years later, film historian Robert Carringer would note that, in 1927, George Jessel was a vaudeville comedian with one successful play and one modestly successful movie to his credit, while Jolson was one of the biggest stars in America. In fact, when The Vitaphone Company was trying to convince American studios to try their sound-on-disc system for movies, they would hire Jolson in the fall of 1926 for a ten minute test film. It would be the success of the short film, titled A Plantation Act and featuring Jolson in blackface singing three songs, that would convince Warners to take a chance with The Jazz Singer as the first quote unquote talkie film.   I'll have a link to A Plantation Act on our website, The80sMoviePodcast.com, if you're interested in seeing it.   Al Jolson signed on to play the character inspired by himself for $75,000 in May 1927, the equivalent to $1.28m today. Filming would be pushed back to June 1927, in part due to Jolson still being on tour with another show until the end of the month. Warners would begin production on the film in New York City in late June, starting with second unit shots of the Lower East Side and The Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway, shooting as much as they could until Jolson arrived on set on July 11th.   Now, while the film has been regularly touted for nearly a century now as the first talking motion picture, the truth is, there's very little verbal dialogue in the film. The vast majority of dialogue in the movie was still handled with the traditional silent movie use of caption cards, and the very few scenes featuring what would be synchronized dialogue were saved for the end of production, due to the complexity of how those scenes would be captured. But the film would finish shooting in mid-September.   The $422k movie would have its world premiere at the Warner Brothers theatre in New York City not three weeks later, on October 6th, 1927, where the film would become a sensation. Sadly, none of the Warner Brothers would attend the premiere, as Sam Warner, the strongest advocate for Vitaphone at the studio, had died of pneumonia the night before the premiere, and his remaining brothers stayed in Los Angeles for the funeral. The reviews were outstanding, and the film would bring more than $2.5m in rental fees back to the studio.   At the first Academy Awards, held in May 1929 to honor the films released between August 1927 and July 1928, The Jazz Singer was deemed ineligible for the two highest awards, Outstanding Production, now known as Best Picture, and Unique and Artistic Production, which would only be awarded this one time, on the grounds that it would have been unfair to a sound picture compete against all the other silent films. Ironically, by the time the second Academy Awards were handed out, in April 1930, silent films would practically be a thing of the past. The success of The Jazz Singer had been that much a tectonic shift in the industry. The film would receive one Oscar nomination, for Alfred Cohn's screenplay adaptation, while the Warner Brothers would be given a special award for producing The Jazz Singer, the “pioneer outstanding talking picture which has revolutionized the industry,” as the inscription on the award read.   There would be a remake of The Jazz Singer produced in 1952, starring Danny Thomas as Korean War veteran who, thankfully, leaves the blackface in the past, and a one-hour television adaptation of the story in 1959, starring Jerry Lewis. And if that sounds strange to you, Jerry Lewis, at the height of his post-Lewis and Martin success, playing a man torn between his desire to be a successful performer and his shattered relationship with his cantor father… well, you can see it for yourself, if you desire, on the page for this episode on our website. It is as strange as it sounds.   At this point, we're going to fast forward a number of years in our story.   In the 1970s, Neil Diamond became one of the biggest musical stars in America. While he wanted to be a singer, Diamond would get his first big success in music in the 1960s as a songwriter, including writing two songs that would become big hits for The Monkees: I'm a Believer and A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You.   And really quickly, let me throw out a weird coincidence here… Bob Rafelson, the creator of The Monkees who would go on to produce and/or direct such films as Easy Rider and Five Easy Pieces, was the nephew of Samson Raphaelson, the man who wrote the original story on which The Jazz Singer is based.   Anyway, after finding success as a songwriter, Diamond would become a major singing star with hits like Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon, Sweet Caroline, and Song Sung Blue. And in another weird coincidence, by 1972, Neil Diamond would become the first performer since Al Jolson to stage a one-man show at the Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway.   By 1976, Neil Diamond is hosting specials on television, and one person who would see one of Diamond's television specials was a guy named Jerry Leider, an executive at Warner Brothers in charge of foreign feature production. Leider sees something in Diamond that just night be suited for the movies, not unlike Elvis Presley or Barbra Streisand, who in 1976 just happens to be the star of a remake of A Star Is Born for Warner Brothers that is cleaning up at the box office and at records stores nationwide. Leider is so convinced Neil Diamond has that X Factor, that unquantifiable thing that turns mere mortals into superstars, that Leider quits his job at Warners to start his own movie production company, wrestling the story rights to The Jazz Singer from Warner Brothers and United Artists, both of whom claimed ownership of the story, so he can make his own version with Diamond as the star.   So, naturally, a former Warners Brothers executive wanting to remake one of the most iconic movies in the Warner Brothers library is going to set it up at Warner Brothers, right?   Nope!   In the fall of 1977, Leider makes a deal with MGM to make the movie. Diamond signs on to play the lead, even before a script is written, and screenwriter Stephen H. Foreman is brought in to update the vaudeville-based original story into the modern day while incorporating Diamond's strengths as a songwriter to inform the story. But just before the film was set to shoot in September 1978, MGM would drop the movie, as some executives were worried the film would be perceived as being, and I am quoting Mr. Foreman here, “too Jewish.”   American Film Distribution, the American distribution arm of British production companies ITC and EMI, would pick the film up in turnaround, and set a May 1979 production start date. Sidney J. Furie, the Canadian filmmaker who had directed Diana Ross in Lady Sings the Blues, would be hired to direct, and Jacqueline Bisset was pursued to play the lead female role, but her agent priced their client out of the running. Deborah Raffin would be cast instead. And to help bring the kids in, the producers would sign Sir Laurence Olivier to play Diamond's father, Cantor Rabinovitch. Sir Larry would get a cool million dollars for ten weeks of work.   There would, as always is with the case of making movies, be setbacks that would further delay the start of production. First, Diamond would hurt his back at the end of 1978, and needed to go in for surgery in early January 1979. Although Diamond had already written and recorded all the music that was going to be used in the movie, AFD considered replacing Diamond with Barry Manilow, who had also never starred in a movie before, but they would stick with their original star.   After nearly a year of rest, Diamond was ready to begin, and cameras would roll on the $10m production on January 7th, 1980. And, as always is with the case of making movies, there would be more setbacks as soon as production began. Diamond, uniquely aware of just how little training he had as an actor, struggled to find his place on set, especially when working with an actor of Sir Laurence Olivier's stature. Director Furie, who was never satisfied with the screenplay, ordered writer Foreman to come up with new scenes that would help lessen the burden Diamond was placing on himself and the production. The writer would balk at almost every single suggestion, and eventually walked off the film.   Herbert Baker, an old school screenwriter who had worked on several of the Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis movies, was brought in to punch up the script, but he would end up completely rewriting the film, even though the movie had been in production for a few weeks. Baker and Furie would spend every moment the director wasn't actively working on set reworking the story, changing the Deborah Raffin character so much she would leave the production. Her friend Lucie Arnaz, the daughter of Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball, would take over the role, after Cher, Liza Minnelli and Donna Summer were considered.   Sensing an out of control production, Sir Lew Grade, the British media titan owner of AFD, decided a change was needed. He would shut the production down on March 3rd, 1980, and fire director Furie. While Baker continued to work on the script, Sir Grade would find a new director in Richard Fleischer, the journeyman filmmaker whose credits in the 1950s and 1960s included such films as 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Compulsion, Fantastic Voyage and Doctor Doolittle, but had fallen out of favor with most studios after a string of flops. In fact, this would be the second film in a year where Fleischer was hired to replace another director during the middle of production, having replaced Richard C. Sarafian on the action-adventure film Ashanti in 1979.   With Fleischer aboard, production on The Jazz Singer would resume in late March, and there was an immediate noticeable difference on set. Where Furie and many members of the crew would regularly defer to Diamond due to his stature as an entertainer, letting the singer spiral out of control if things weren't working right, Fleischer would calm the actor down and help work him back into the scene. Except for one scene, set in a recording studio, where Diamond's character needed to explode into anger. After a few takes that didn't go as well as he hoped, Diamond went into the recording booth where his movie band was stationed while Fleischer was resetting the shot, when the director noticed Diamond working himself into a rage. The director called “action,” and Diamond nailed the take as needed. When the director asked Diamond how he got to that moment, the singer said he was frustrated with himself that he wasn't hitting the scene right, and asked the band to play something that would make him angry. The band obliged.    What did they play?   A Barry Manilow song.   Despite the recasting of the leading female role, a change of director and a number of rewrites by two different writers during the production, the film was able to finish shooting at the end of April with only $3m added to the budget.   Associated Film would set a December 19th, 1980 release date for the film, while Capitol Records, owned at the time by EMI, would release the first single from the soundtrack, a soft-rock ballad called Love on the Rocks, in October, with the full soundtrack album arriving in stores a month later.   As expected for a new Neil Diamond song, Love on the Rocks was an immediate hit, climbing the charts all the way to #2 on the Billboard Hot 100.   Several days before the film opened in 241 theatres on December 19th, there was a huge, star-studded premiere at the Plitt Century Plaza Cinemas in Los Angeles. Peter Falk, Harvey Korman, Ed McMahon, Gregory Peck, Cesar Romero and Jon Voight were just a handful of the Hollywood community who came out to attend what was one of the biggest Hollywood premieres in years. That would seem to project a confidence in the movie from the distributor's standpoint.   Or so you'd think.   But as it turned out, The Jazz Singer was one of three movies Associated Film would release that day. Along with The Jazz Singer, they would release the British mystery film The Mirror Crack'd starring Angela Lansbury and Elizabeth Taylor, and the Richard Donner drama Inside Moves. Of the three movies, The Jazz Singer would gross the most that weekend, pulling in a modest $1.167m, versus The Mirror Crack'd's $608k from 340 screens, and Inside Moves's $201k from 67 screens.   But compared to Clint Eastwood's Any Which Way You Can, the Richard Pryor/Gene Wilder comedy Stir Crazy, and Dolly Parton/Lily Tomlin/Jane Fonda comedy 9 to 5, it wasn't the best opening they could hope for.   But the film would continue to play… well, if not exceptional, at least it would hold on to its intended audience for a while. Sensing the film needed some help, Capitol Records released a second single from the soundtrack, another power ballad called Hello Again, in January 1981, which would become yet another top ten hit for Diamond. A third single, the pro-immigration power-pop song America, would arrive in April 1981 and go to number eight on the charts, but by then, the film was out of theatres with a respectable $27.12m in tickets sold.   Contemporary reviews of the film were rather negative, especially towards Diamond as an actor. Roger Ebert noted in his review that there were so many things wrong in the film that the review was threatening to become a list of cinematic atrocities. His review buddy Gene Siskel did praise Lucie Arnaz's performance, while pointing out how out of touch the new story was with the immigrant story told by the original film. Many critics would also point out the cringe-worthy homage to the original film, where Diamond unnecessarily performs in blackface, as well as Olivier's overacting.   I recently watched the film for the first time since 1981, and it's not a great movie by any measurable metric. Diamond isn't as bad an actor as the reviews make him out to be, especially considering he's essentially playing an altered version of himself, a successful pop singer, and Lucie Arnaz is fairly good. The single best performance in the film comes from Caitlin Adams, playing Jess's wife Rivka, who, for me, is the emotional center of the film. And yes, Olivier really goes all-in on the scenery chewing. At times, it's truly painful to watch this great actor spin out of control.   There would be a few awards nominations for the film, including acting nominations for Diamond and Arnaz at the 1981 Golden Globes, and a Grammy nomination for Best Soundtrack Album, but most of its quote unquote awards would come from the atrocious Golden Raspberry organization, which would name Diamond the Worst Actor of the year and Olivier the Worst Supporting Actor during its first quote unquote ceremony, which was held in some guy's living room.   Ironically but not so surprisingly, while the film would be vaguely profitable for its producers, it would be the soundtrack to the movie that would bring in the lion's share of the profits. On top of three hit singles, the soundtrack album would sell more than five million copies just in the United States in 1980 and 1981, and would also go platinum in Canada, South Africa, and the United Kingdom. While he would earn less than half a million dollars from the film, Diamond's cut of the soundtrack would net him a dollar per unit sold, earning him more than ten times his salary as an actor.   And although I fancied myself a punk and new wave kid at the end of 1980, I bought the soundtrack to The Jazz Singer, ostensibly as a gift for my mom, who loved Neil Diamond, but I easily wore out the grooves of the album listening to it over and over again. Of the ten new songs he wrote for the soundtrack, there's a good two or three additional tracks that weren't released as singles, including a short little ragtime-inspired ditty called On the Robert E. Lee, but America is the one song from the soundtrack I am still drawn to today. It's a weirdly uplifting song with its rhythmic “today” chants that end the song that just makes me feel good despite its inherent cheesiness.   After The Jazz Singer, Neil Diamond would only appear as himself in a film. Lucie Arnaz would never quite have much of a career after the film, although she would work quote regularly in television during the 80s and 90s, including a short stint as the star of The Lucie Arnaz Show, which lasted six episodes in 1985 before being cancelled. Laurence Olivier would continue to play supporting roles in a series of not so great motion pictures and television movies and miniseries for several more years, until his passing in 1989. And director Richard Fleischer would make several bad movies, including Red Sonja and Million Dollar Mystery, until he retired from filmmaking in 1987.   As we noted in our February 2020 episode about AFD, the act of releasing three movies on the same day was a last, desperate move in order to pump some much needed capital into the company. And while The Jazz Singer would bring some money in, that wasn't enough to cover the losses from the other two movies released the same day, or several other underperforming films released earlier in the year such as the infamous Village People movie Can't Stop the Music and Raise the Titanic. Sir Lew Grade would close AFD down in early 1981, and sell several movies that were completed, in production or in pre-production to Universal Studios. Ironically, those movies might have saved the company had they been able to hang on a little longer, as they included such films as The Dark Crystal, Frances, On Golden Pond, Sophie's Choice and Tender Mercies.   Thank you for joining us. We'll talk again soon, when Episode 99 is released.   Remember to visit this episode's page on our website, The80sMoviePodcast.com, for extra materials about Neil Diamond and The Jazz Singer.   The 80s Movies Podcast has been researched, written, narrated and edited by Edward Havens for Idiosyncratic Entertainment.   Thank you again.   Good night.

Welcome to our first episode of the new year, which is also our first episode of Season 5. Thank you for continuing to join us on this amazing journey. On today's episode, we head back to Christmas of 1980, when pop music superstar Neil Diamond would be making his feature acting debut in a new version of The Jazz Singer. ----more---- EPISODE TRANSCRIPT From Los Angeles, California, the entertainment capital of the world, this is The 80s Movies Podcast. I am your host, Edward Havens. Thank you for listening today.   It's 2023, which means we are starting our fifth season. And for our first episode of this new season, we're going back to the end of 1980, to take a look back at what was supposed to be the launch of a new phase in the career of one of music's biggest stars. That musical star was Neil Diamond, and this would end up becoming his one and only attempt to act in a motion picture.   We're talking about The Jazz Singer.   As I have said time and time again, I don't really have a plan for this show. I talk about the movies and subjects I talk about often on a whim. I'll hear about something and I'll be reminded of something, and a few days later, I've got an episode researched, written, recorded, edited and out there in the world. As I was working on the previous episode, about The War of the Roses just before my trip to Thailand, I saw a video of Neil Diamond singing Sweet Caroline on opening night of A Beautiful Noise, a new Broadway musical about the life and music of Mr. Diamond. I hadn't noticed Diamond had stopped performing live five years earlier due to a diagnosis of Parkinson's, and it was very touching to watch a thousand people joyously singing along with the man.   But as I was watching that video, I was reminded of The Jazz Singer, a movie we previously covered very lightly three years ago as part of our episode on the distribution company Associated Film Distribution. I was reminded that I haven't seen the movie in over forty years, even though I remember rather enjoying it when it opened in theatres in December 1980. I think I saw it four or five times over the course of a month, and I even went out and bought the soundtrack album, which I easily listened to a hundred times before the start of summer.   But we're getting ahead of ourselves yet again.   The Jazz Singer began its life in 1917, when Samson Raphaelson, a twenty-three year old undergraduate at the University of Illinois, attended a performance of Robinson Crusoe, Jr., in Champaign, IL. The star of that show was thirty-year-old Al Jolson, a Russian-born Jew who had been a popular performer on Broadway stages for fifteen years by this point, regularly performing in blackface. After graduation, Raphaelson would become an advertising executive in New York City, but on the side, he would write stories. One short story, called “The Day of Atonement,” would be a thinly fictionalized account of Al Jolson's life. It would be published in Everybody's Magazine in January 1922.   At the encouragement of his secretary at the advertising firm, Raphaelson would adapted his story into a play, which would be produced on Broadway in September 1925 with a new title…   The Jazz Singer.   Ironically, for a Broadway show based on the early life of Al Jolson, Jolson was not a part of the production. The part of Jake Rabinowitz, the son of a cantor who finds success on Broadway with the Anglicized named Jack Robin, would be played by George Jessel. The play would be a minor hit, running for 303 performances on Broadway before closing in June 1926, and Warner Brothers would buy the movie rights the same week the show closed. George Jessel would be signed to play his stage role in the movie version. The film was scheduled to go into production in May 1927.   There are a number of reasons why Jessel would not end up making the movie. After the success of two Warner movies in 1926 using Vitaphone, a sound-on-disc system that could play music synchronized to a motion picture, Warner Brothers reconcieved The Jazz Singer as a sound movie, but not just a movie with music synchronized to the images on screen, but a “talkie,” where, for the first time for a motion picture, actual dialogue and vocal songs would be synchronized to the pictures on screen. When he learned about this development, Jessel demanded more money.    The Warner Brothers refused.   Then Jessel had some concerns about the solvency of the studio. These would be valid concerns, as Harry Warner, the eldest of the four eponymous brothers who ran the studio, had sold nearly $4m worth of his personal stock to keep the company afloat just a few months earlier.   But what ended up driving Jessel away was a major change screenwriter Alfred A. Cohen made when adapting the original story and the play into the screenplay. Instead of leaving the theatre and becoming a cantor like his father, as it was written for the stage, the movie would end with Jack Robin performing on Broadway in blackface while his mom cheers him on from one of the box seats.   With Jessel off the project, Warner would naturally turn to… Eddie Cantor. Like Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor was a Jew of Russian descent, although, unlike Jolson, he had been born in New York City. Like Jolson, he had been a star on Broadway for years, regularly performing in and writing songs for Florenz Ziegfeld' annual Follies shows. And like Jolson, Cantor would regularly appear on stage in blackface. But Cantor, a friend of Jessel's, instead offered to help the studio get Jessel back on the movie. The studio instead went to their third choice…   Al Jolson.   You know. The guy whose life inspired the darn story to begin with.   Many years later, film historian Robert Carringer would note that, in 1927, George Jessel was a vaudeville comedian with one successful play and one modestly successful movie to his credit, while Jolson was one of the biggest stars in America. In fact, when The Vitaphone Company was trying to convince American studios to try their sound-on-disc system for movies, they would hire Jolson in the fall of 1926 for a ten minute test film. It would be the success of the short film, titled A Plantation Act and featuring Jolson in blackface singing three songs, that would convince Warners to take a chance with The Jazz Singer as the first quote unquote talkie film.   I'll have a link to A Plantation Act on our website, The80sMoviePodcast.com, if you're interested in seeing it.   Al Jolson signed on to play the character inspired by himself for $75,000 in May 1927, the equivalent to $1.28m today. Filming would be pushed back to June 1927, in part due to Jolson still being on tour with another show until the end of the month. Warners would begin production on the film in New York City in late June, starting with second unit shots of the Lower East Side and The Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway, shooting as much as they could until Jolson arrived on set on July 11th.   Now, while the film has been regularly touted for nearly a century now as the first talking motion picture, the truth is, there's very little verbal dialogue in the film. The vast majority of dialogue in the movie was still handled with the traditional silent movie use of caption cards, and the very few scenes featuring what would be synchronized dialogue were saved for the end of production, due to the complexity of how those scenes would be captured. But the film would finish shooting in mid-September.   The $422k movie would have its world premiere at the Warner Brothers theatre in New York City not three weeks later, on October 6th, 1927, where the film would become a sensation. Sadly, none of the Warner Brothers would attend the premiere, as Sam Warner, the strongest advocate for Vitaphone at the studio, had died of pneumonia the night before the premiere, and his remaining brothers stayed in Los Angeles for the funeral. The reviews were outstanding, and the film would bring more than $2.5m in rental fees back to the studio.   At the first Academy Awards, held in May 1929 to honor the films released between August 1927 and July 1928, The Jazz Singer was deemed ineligible for the two highest awards, Outstanding Production, now known as Best Picture, and Unique and Artistic Production, which would only be awarded this one time, on the grounds that it would have been unfair to a sound picture compete against all the other silent films. Ironically, by the time the second Academy Awards were handed out, in April 1930, silent films would practically be a thing of the past. The success of The Jazz Singer had been that much a tectonic shift in the industry. The film would receive one Oscar nomination, for Alfred Cohn's screenplay adaptation, while the Warner Brothers would be given a special award for producing The Jazz Singer, the “pioneer outstanding talking picture which has revolutionized the industry,” as the inscription on the award read.   There would be a remake of The Jazz Singer produced in 1952, starring Danny Thomas as Korean War veteran who, thankfully, leaves the blackface in the past, and a one-hour television adaptation of the story in 1959, starring Jerry Lewis. And if that sounds strange to you, Jerry Lewis, at the height of his post-Lewis and Martin success, playing a man torn between his desire to be a successful performer and his shattered relationship with his cantor father… well, you can see it for yourself, if you desire, on the page for this episode on our website. It is as strange as it sounds.   At this point, we're going to fast forward a number of years in our story.   In the 1970s, Neil Diamond became one of the biggest musical stars in America. While he wanted to be a singer, Diamond would get his first big success in music in the 1960s as a songwriter, including writing two songs that would become big hits for The Monkees: I'm a Believer and A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You.   And really quickly, let me throw out a weird coincidence here… Bob Rafelson, the creator of The Monkees who would go on to produce and/or direct such films as Easy Rider and Five Easy Pieces, was the nephew of Samson Raphaelson, the man who wrote the original story on which The Jazz Singer is based.   Anyway, after finding success as a songwriter, Diamond would become a major singing star with hits like Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon, Sweet Caroline, and Song Sung Blue. And in another weird coincidence, by 1972, Neil Diamond would become the first performer since Al Jolson to stage a one-man show at the Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway.   By 1976, Neil Diamond is hosting specials on television, and one person who would see one of Diamond's television specials was a guy named Jerry Leider, an executive at Warner Brothers in charge of foreign feature production. Leider sees something in Diamond that just night be suited for the movies, not unlike Elvis Presley or Barbra Streisand, who in 1976 just happens to be the star of a remake of A Star Is Born for Warner Brothers that is cleaning up at the box office and at records stores nationwide. Leider is so convinced Neil Diamond has that X Factor, that unquantifiable thing that turns mere mortals into superstars, that Leider quits his job at Warners to start his own movie production company, wrestling the story rights to The Jazz Singer from Warner Brothers and United Artists, both of whom claimed ownership of the story, so he can make his own version with Diamond as the star.   So, naturally, a former Warners Brothers executive wanting to remake one of the most iconic movies in the Warner Brothers library is going to set it up at Warner Brothers, right?   Nope!   In the fall of 1977, Leider makes a deal with MGM to make the movie. Diamond signs on to play the lead, even before a script is written, and screenwriter Stephen H. Foreman is brought in to update the vaudeville-based original story into the modern day while incorporating Diamond's strengths as a songwriter to inform the story. But just before the film was set to shoot in September 1978, MGM would drop the movie, as some executives were worried the film would be perceived as being, and I am quoting Mr. Foreman here, “too Jewish.”   American Film Distribution, the American distribution arm of British production companies ITC and EMI, would pick the film up in turnaround, and set a May 1979 production start date. Sidney J. Furie, the Canadian filmmaker who had directed Diana Ross in Lady Sings the Blues, would be hired to direct, and Jacqueline Bisset was pursued to play the lead female role, but her agent priced their client out of the running. Deborah Raffin would be cast instead. And to help bring the kids in, the producers would sign Sir Laurence Olivier to play Diamond's father, Cantor Rabinovitch. Sir Larry would get a cool million dollars for ten weeks of work.   There would, as always is with the case of making movies, be setbacks that would further delay the start of production. First, Diamond would hurt his back at the end of 1978, and needed to go in for surgery in early January 1979. Although Diamond had already written and recorded all the music that was going to be used in the movie, AFD considered replacing Diamond with Barry Manilow, who had also never starred in a movie before, but they would stick with their original star.   After nearly a year of rest, Diamond was ready to begin, and cameras would roll on the $10m production on January 7th, 1980. And, as always is with the case of making movies, there would be more setbacks as soon as production began. Diamond, uniquely aware of just how little training he had as an actor, struggled to find his place on set, especially when working with an actor of Sir Laurence Olivier's stature. Director Furie, who was never satisfied with the screenplay, ordered writer Foreman to come up with new scenes that would help lessen the burden Diamond was placing on himself and the production. The writer would balk at almost every single suggestion, and eventually walked off the film.   Herbert Baker, an old school screenwriter who had worked on several of the Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis movies, was brought in to punch up the script, but he would end up completely rewriting the film, even though the movie had been in production for a few weeks. Baker and Furie would spend every moment the director wasn't actively working on set reworking the story, changing the Deborah Raffin character so much she would leave the production. Her friend Lucie Arnaz, the daughter of Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball, would take over the role, after Cher, Liza Minnelli and Donna Summer were considered.   Sensing an out of control production, Sir Lew Grade, the British media titan owner of AFD, decided a change was needed. He would shut the production down on March 3rd, 1980, and fire director Furie. While Baker continued to work on the script, Sir Grade would find a new director in Richard Fleischer, the journeyman filmmaker whose credits in the 1950s and 1960s included such films as 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Compulsion, Fantastic Voyage and Doctor Doolittle, but had fallen out of favor with most studios after a string of flops. In fact, this would be the second film in a year where Fleischer was hired to replace another director during the middle of production, having replaced Richard C. Sarafian on the action-adventure film Ashanti in 1979.   With Fleischer aboard, production on The Jazz Singer would resume in late March, and there was an immediate noticeable difference on set. Where Furie and many members of the crew would regularly defer to Diamond due to his stature as an entertainer, letting the singer spiral out of control if things weren't working right, Fleischer would calm the actor down and help work him back into the scene. Except for one scene, set in a recording studio, where Diamond's character needed to explode into anger. After a few takes that didn't go as well as he hoped, Diamond went into the recording booth where his movie band was stationed while Fleischer was resetting the shot, when the director noticed Diamond working himself into a rage. The director called “action,” and Diamond nailed the take as needed. When the director asked Diamond how he got to that moment, the singer said he was frustrated with himself that he wasn't hitting the scene right, and asked the band to play something that would make him angry. The band obliged.    What did they play?   A Barry Manilow song.   Despite the recasting of the leading female role, a change of director and a number of rewrites by two different writers during the production, the film was able to finish shooting at the end of April with only $3m added to the budget.   Associated Film would set a December 19th, 1980 release date for the film, while Capitol Records, owned at the time by EMI, would release the first single from the soundtrack, a soft-rock ballad called Love on the Rocks, in October, with the full soundtrack album arriving in stores a month later.   As expected for a new Neil Diamond song, Love on the Rocks was an immediate hit, climbing the charts all the way to #2 on the Billboard Hot 100.   Several days before the film opened in 241 theatres on December 19th, there was a huge, star-studded premiere at the Plitt Century Plaza Cinemas in Los Angeles. Peter Falk, Harvey Korman, Ed McMahon, Gregory Peck, Cesar Romero and Jon Voight were just a handful of the Hollywood community who came out to attend what was one of the biggest Hollywood premieres in years. That would seem to project a confidence in the movie from the distributor's standpoint.   Or so you'd think.   But as it turned out, The Jazz Singer was one of three movies Associated Film would release that day. Along with The Jazz Singer, they would release the British mystery film The Mirror Crack'd starring Angela Lansbury and Elizabeth Taylor, and the Richard Donner drama Inside Moves. Of the three movies, The Jazz Singer would gross the most that weekend, pulling in a modest $1.167m, versus The Mirror Crack'd's $608k from 340 screens, and Inside Moves's $201k from 67 screens.   But compared to Clint Eastwood's Any Which Way You Can, the Richard Pryor/Gene Wilder comedy Stir Crazy, and Dolly Parton/Lily Tomlin/Jane Fonda comedy 9 to 5, it wasn't the best opening they could hope for.   But the film would continue to play… well, if not exceptional, at least it would hold on to its intended audience for a while. Sensing the film needed some help, Capitol Records released a second single from the soundtrack, another power ballad called Hello Again, in January 1981, which would become yet another top ten hit for Diamond. A third single, the pro-immigration power-pop song America, would arrive in April 1981 and go to number eight on the charts, but by then, the film was out of theatres with a respectable $27.12m in tickets sold.   Contemporary reviews of the film were rather negative, especially towards Diamond as an actor. Roger Ebert noted in his review that there were so many things wrong in the film that the review was threatening to become a list of cinematic atrocities. His review buddy Gene Siskel did praise Lucie Arnaz's performance, while pointing out how out of touch the new story was with the immigrant story told by the original film. Many critics would also point out the cringe-worthy homage to the original film, where Diamond unnecessarily performs in blackface, as well as Olivier's overacting.   I recently watched the film for the first time since 1981, and it's not a great movie by any measurable metric. Diamond isn't as bad an actor as the reviews make him out to be, especially considering he's essentially playing an altered version of himself, a successful pop singer, and Lucie Arnaz is fairly good. The single best performance in the film comes from Caitlin Adams, playing Jess's wife Rivka, who, for me, is the emotional center of the film. And yes, Olivier really goes all-in on the scenery chewing. At times, it's truly painful to watch this great actor spin out of control.   There would be a few awards nominations for the film, including acting nominations for Diamond and Arnaz at the 1981 Golden Globes, and a Grammy nomination for Best Soundtrack Album, but most of its quote unquote awards would come from the atrocious Golden Raspberry organization, which would name Diamond the Worst Actor of the year and Olivier the Worst Supporting Actor during its first quote unquote ceremony, which was held in some guy's living room.   Ironically but not so surprisingly, while the film would be vaguely profitable for its producers, it would be the soundtrack to the movie that would bring in the lion's share of the profits. On top of three hit singles, the soundtrack album would sell more than five million copies just in the United States in 1980 and 1981, and would also go platinum in Canada, South Africa, and the United Kingdom. While he would earn less than half a million dollars from the film, Diamond's cut of the soundtrack would net him a dollar per unit sold, earning him more than ten times his salary as an actor.   And although I fancied myself a punk and new wave kid at the end of 1980, I bought the soundtrack to The Jazz Singer, ostensibly as a gift for my mom, who loved Neil Diamond, but I easily wore out the grooves of the album listening to it over and over again. Of the ten new songs he wrote for the soundtrack, there's a good two or three additional tracks that weren't released as singles, including a short little ragtime-inspired ditty called On the Robert E. Lee, but America is the one song from the soundtrack I am still drawn to today. It's a weirdly uplifting song with its rhythmic “today” chants that end the song that just makes me feel good despite its inherent cheesiness.   After The Jazz Singer, Neil Diamond would only appear as himself in a film. Lucie Arnaz would never quite have much of a career after the film, although she would work quote regularly in television during the 80s and 90s, including a short stint as the star of The Lucie Arnaz Show, which lasted six episodes in 1985 before being cancelled. Laurence Olivier would continue to play supporting roles in a series of not so great motion pictures and television movies and miniseries for several more years, until his passing in 1989. And director Richard Fleischer would make several bad movies, including Red Sonja and Million Dollar Mystery, until he retired from filmmaking in 1987.   As we noted in our February 2020 episode about AFD, the act of releasing three movies on the same day was a last, desperate move in order to pump some much needed capital into the company. And while The Jazz Singer would bring some money in, that wasn't enough to cover the losses from the other two movies released the same day, or several other underperforming films released earlier in the year such as the infamous Village People movie Can't Stop the Music and Raise the Titanic. Sir Lew Grade would close AFD down in early 1981, and sell several movies that were completed, in production or in pre-production to Universal Studios. Ironically, those movies might have saved the company had they been able to hang on a little longer, as they included such films as The Dark Crystal, Frances, On Golden Pond, Sophie's Choice and Tender Mercies.   Thank you for joining us. We'll talk again soon, when Episode 99 is released.   Remember to visit this episode's page on our website, The80sMoviePodcast.com, for extra materials about Neil Diamond and The Jazz Singer.   The 80s Movies Podcast has been researched, written, narrated and edited by Edward Havens for Idiosyncratic Entertainment.   Thank you again.   Good night.

Cinema Drive Classics presents:Some stories fall through the cracks (Hey, they can't ALL get the attention!), but just because you never heard of it doesn't mean one of these might not become your new favorite. Open your ears and your heart as Jason and Ryan take you through a filmography of pictures that deserve much, much more than they got.The Deep Question: What is the funniest line from a movie you can think of right now?This Week's Features:The Babysitter (2017)Blue Ruin (2013)Chef (2014)Dredd (2012)The Driver (1978)Grosse Pointe Blank (1997)Hot Rod (2007)Inside Moves (1980)Locke (2013)The Mask of Zorro (1998)Mud (2012)Sunshine (2007)Wait Until Dark (1967)Warrior (2011)

Peter Land has been with DICK'S Sporting Goods since mid-2020, where he currently serves as their Chief Communications and Sustainability Officer. He is also an adjunct professor at the New York University Stern School of Business, a position he has held since 1998.  Prior to joining the team at DICK'S, Peter specialized in corporate reputation and consumer marketing as a partner in New York strategic communications agency Finsbury Glover Hering. Before that, he was senior veep of corporate communications for AOL, and, earlier, he held that same title at PepsiCo. In this conversation with Lippe Taylor CEO Paul Dyer, Peter discusses the importance of skills acquisition, how marketing and comms functions are merging, the value of cultivating great ideas, and much much more. Here are some key takeaways from this conversation with Peter Land: Build personal relationships and networks in person.  Emailing back and forth with people you meet online is no way to make viable connections. According to Peter, you need to interact face-to-face if possible because that's how deep, meaningful, personal relationships are forged. He also makes the point that personal relationships are “massively important in communications. It's important across the board, but especially in our discipline [earned-creative comms].” Having a solid network allows you to do things like “say to your work colleagues … ‘I think your idea could get us some airtime at [one of the big morning shows]—a friend of mine is a producer there; let me ask them if they think so too.'”   Find opportunities to repurpose. To illustrate the point, Peter cites the example of a campaign his brand conducted last year called “Inside Moves.” The centerpiece was a 60-second commercial featuring eight of DICK'S Sporting Goods' top executives (all of whom are female), with company CEO Lauren Hobart voicing over the story of how the brand is driving the entire industry to boost women's and girls' athletics. But while the content of the commercial started with a great idea, it wasn't the only bit of ingenious thinking—Peter explains that he and his team additionally came up with a strategy of weaving the commercial's message into profiles of the women execs for dissemination via social channels and then repurposing those personality snapshots for internal use as employee-relations/team-building tools.    Let your brand value shine by solving problems. Peter tells of seeing just before the 2021 NCAA Final Four women's basketball tournament a viral video revealing how poorly equipped the women's weight room was at the event venue, the Alamo Dome in San Antonio, Texas. That sparked a publicity gambit in which the DICK'S Sporting Goods stores in San Antonio pitched in to deliver to the Alamo Dome sufficient weight equipment to put the women's weight room on par with the much-better outfitted men's room. “It was an incredible moment that let the NCAA know we're here for the women's basketball community,” Peter says. “[This] completely energized our San Antonio teammates and got us coverage in USA Today and on NBC's “Today” show. It also became an intense social media story that grew and grew and grew.” Thanks again for listening! If you enjoyed this episode, why not share it with your friends and colleagues on Linkedin - don't forget to follow the show on Instagram @LippeTaylor and on Twitter at the same handle. ALSO, don't forget to subscribe.  ----- Produced by https://podcastlaunch.pro (Simpler Media)

Some stories fall through the cracks (Hey, they can't ALL get the attention!), but just because you never heard of it doesn't mean one of these might not become your new favorite. Open your ears and your heart as Jason and Ryan take you through a filmography of pictures that deserve much, much more than they got.The Deep Question: What is the funniest line from a movie you can think of right now?This Week's Features:The Babysitter (2017)Blue Ruin (2013)Chef (2014)Dredd (2012)The Driver (1978)Grosse Pointe Blank (1997)Hot Rod (2007)Inside Moves (1980)Locke (2013)The Mask of Zorro (1998)Mud (2012)Sunshine (2007)Wait Until Dark (1967)Warrior (2011)

In another epic interview, the podcast team was honored to have the great Harold Sylvester join us in the nudie bar! Harold, as you all know, played Al's sidekick Griff from seasons 9 through the end of season 11.  Chris, Tyler, and Matt spent over two hours going through his 50 year career in television and film.  Not only is Harold an actor, but he is also a writer and producer.  His filmography includes roles in such films as Inside Moves, An Officer and a Gentlemen, Uncommon Valor, Vision Quest and Innerspace, to name a few.  On television he appeared in such shows as Wheels, Barnaby Jones, Walking Tall, Mary, Shaky Ground, A Different World, The Army Show, and City of Angels.  Harold wrote the screenplay for the TV movie Passing Glory, which described a particular episode in his high school life at St. Augustine's High School in New Orleans.  We learned that Harold was a scholar athlete and received 150 college scholarship offers, but chose to play college basketball at Tulane University, the first African American to receive an athletic scholarship from that school.  We talked about his education, early roles and just how un-Griff like he is in real life! Of course we talked a lot about Married with Children as well: his comedic inspiration, who he was up against for the character of Griff (who will really surprise you), his favorite episodes, and MUCH MUCH MORE! This interview was also a historic first for the current podcast team in that it was the first time that all 6 co-hosts were present for a live recording.  We were all so grateful that he was so generous and patient with his time and know that this interview will not disappoint you.   Please take a moment and leave a comment below which he may read.  We can't guarantee that he will answer anyone's comments, but we do know that he will enjoy hearing how his roles continue to entertain his fans. So grab a stool, crack open a Girlie Girl beer, and let's listen in to the great Harold Sylvester!

Where we go on w/ Anhedenia Films director Evan Jacobs who has been around the music scene and Indie film scene for some timejust giving him the love and Lime light he deserves check it out and enjoy! --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/inside-movies-galore/support

As part of our tributes to legendary Filmmaker, Richard Donner, who we had the honour of interviewing on the Podcast in 2017, we make good on our promise to him to watch and discuss what he considered to be one of his most unfairly overlooked movies, Inside Moves.    We explore this 1980 hidden gem from Donner's filmography, praising the incredible lead performance from John Savage and examining the weighty themes that the film deals with - Depression, suicide, disabilities and the importance of friendship.    Featuring excerpts from our interview with Dick, this is a celebration of a film that deserves a lot more eyes on it and a proper Blu-ray release in the UK so come join us for this very special episode, it will be one of the best moves you've ever made!   As usual you can find SPOCKLIGHT on: TWITTER - @spocklightpod INSTAGRAM – @spocklightpod FACEBOOK – https://www.facebook.com/spocklightpod/ EMAIL - spocklightpod@gmail.com Please Follow, like, share and all that good stuff.   Credit for our wonderful theme music goes to the incredibly talented, Adam Johnston's, you can find more of his work at - https://adamjohnstonuk.bandcamp.com/ Our beautiful artwork was created by Stephen Trumble, see more at http://www.stephentrumble.com  Huge thanks to Russell Honeywell for post production support

We get tortured by Spiral: From the Book of Saw and prune Loki plus we also discuss the Jackass Forever trailer and talk Space Jam: A New Legacy, Inside Moves, Escape Room, Deep Blood and Monsters at Work. 0:00 - Intro: Opening Gifts 13:30 - Review: Spiral: From the Book of Saw 37:25 - Review: Loki 56:00 - Trailer Trash: Jackass Forever 1:05:00 - Other Stuff We Watched: Space Jam: A New Legacy, Deep Blood, Monsters Inc., Monsters University, Monsters at Work, Saw II, Escape Room, Inside Moves 1:33:00 - This Week on DVD, Blu-ray and VOD 1:37:55 - Outro 1:38:35 - Spoiler Discussion: Loki

We get tortured by Spiral: From the Book of Saw and prune Loki plus we also discuss the Jackass Forever trailer and talk Space Jam: A New Legacy, Inside Moves, Escape Room, Deep Blood and Monsters at Work. 0:00 - Intro: Opening Gifts 13:30 - Review: Spiral: From the Book of Saw 37:25 - Review: Loki 56:00 - Trailer Trash: Jackass Forever 1:05:00 - Other Stuff We Watched: Space Jam: A New Legacy, Deep Blood, Monsters Inc., Monsters University, Monsters at Work, Saw II, Escape Room, Inside Moves 1:33:00 - This Week on DVD, Blu-ray and VOD 1:37:55 - Outro 1:38:35 - Spoiler Discussion: Loki

Hosts Mat Bradley-Tschirgi, Thrasher, and Alex Miller discuss the career of the late Richard Donner. Although he directed his first feature in his early 30s with X-15, his motion picture directing career didn't start in earnest until the original The Omen film in 1976. Donner directed hits in a variety of genres from superhero (Superman) and family films (The Goonies) to buddy cop (Lethal Weapon) and horror (The Omen) flicks. He sowed his directing oats doing over a dozen years of directing on classic TV shows like Route 66, Wagon Train, Get Smart, The Twilight Zone, and The Streets of San Francisco. After The Omen smashed box office expectations, Richard Donner's career stuck to big budget studio pictures with some notable intimate character dramas thrown in the mix (Inside Moves, Radio Flyer).   Those wanting to learn more about the career of Richard Donner are urged to read You're The Director, You Figure It Out The Life and Films of Richard Donner by James Christie. It's a frank look at a rich career with many insights direct from Donner himself.  Follow the show on Twitter @Sequelcast2 Like our Sequelcast 2 Facebook Page The theme song to the Sequelcast is written and performed by Marc with a C. Sequelcast 2 is delighted to be a member of The Batman Podcast Network. Hear more great podcasts here! Watch Thrasher's tabletop RPG YouTube show d-infinity Live!. Listen to Marc with a C's music podcast Discography. Buy One Starry Night, a Cthulhu Live scenario Thrasher contributed to, from DriveThruRPG!  --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Devin & James are back in the DEN OF CIN! In our new PODCAST, we celebrate one of the most admired filmmakers of our lifetime, RICHARD DONNER, who the world lost on July 5th. From THE OMEN to SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE, and THE GOONIES to LETHAL WEAPON, and everything in between and beyond... Richard Donner's attention to (his and my favorite word) VERISIMILITUDE in his movies made him one of the most influential storytellers to ever call "ACTION!"  From his start in the pioneering days of Television, through being one of the chief architects of modern popular Cinema (rightfully the 3rd part of a trifecta with Spielberg and Lucas), Donner delivered with his uncanny sense of humor, grounded approach to fantasy material, and the believability of his characters even in the craziest situations. He was arguably the only director who could make us all believe a man could fly. 

Welcome to another podcast in our occasional series (very occasional as it’s been over a year since the last one)– Director on Director. Writer / Director Phil Stubbs (Last Chancers) joins us again, to talk about another of his favourite directors, this time it’s Richard Donner. Before we talk about the content of the show, we have an apology to make to you, the listener, about the sound quality. There were some technical issues with the show. Believe me when I tell you that it was questionable whether we were even going to be able to release this one. However, technical maestro Graham worked non stop for three days and nights to get the show to a listen-able standard. Don’t cheer him too loudly though, as he is now trying to get some sleep! One problem that did amuse Graham is Jeff dropping out of the show at one point. Oddly it was just as they were starting to talk about Mel Gibson! Graham insists this was a complete fluke, however Neil did take some possible incriminating photos. Do they show Graham smiling as he pulls out wires that disables Jeff’s connection to the show? You be the judge – for the right fee Neil will send them on to you. As for the show itself, well, Richard Donner is an incredible character – still planning to direct at 90 years of age! In fact he didn’t direct his first major film until he was 46 years old (although there was one in the lead up to that I bet he wishes everyone would forget now – but don’t worry Jeff remembers it and spills the beans all about it). Be amazed as Phil tells some incredible stories about the making of The Omen and the first two Superman series. Find out why Ladyhawke causes a difference of opinion and also why is Inside Moves so elusive to find? It is just a shame Jeff wasn’t there to discuss the Mel and rein in Graham as in his praise for his favourite actor he once again reacted in an immoderate way. Overall, a fascinating discussion about a fascinating film maker, led by a quality film maker. A promise. We will not wait so long for the next director on director discussion – the name of the next director is even revealed at the end of the show. How do you rate Mr Donner, please let us know, as always we would love to hear from you. Finally if you want to read a fascinating interview with the great man himself then go to moviesinfocus.com and check out their interview section. Well worth your time.

TRANSCRIPT: Welcome to the ‘Five Minute Family' brought to you by Clear View Retreat, a family retreat ministry enlightening God's relationship principles to families in both the ‘norms' and ‘storms' of life. Join us each week as we explore various aspects of family life. Today, we are tackling the quarantine blues. For the quarantines to be truly protective of vulnerable populations, we must limit our public event interactions. That's going to translate to A LOT of time to fill at home. Five Minute Families will possibly be better titled ‘five week families' for the time being. While we need to be intentional about the added time that we will spend together, please remember that we do not need to fill every moment for our children or for ourselves. One of the reasons we promote the concept of ‘disconnect to reconnect‘ here at CVR is so that conversations can be “organic,” meaning that the conversations we have with one another are characterized by continuous or natural development, not forced attentions and exchanges. Likewise, we know that children who engage in unstructured play and make-believe are developing essential psychological and emotional capacities as well as learning to solve problems and create new possibilities. If you are a crafty person who feels thwarted during regular schedules, this should allow more flexibility for those creative ideas to flow. If you are a highly structured person who feels that you or your children will be missing out on quality academic options, then you will want to take advantage of the many educational opportunities online that are being opened for free, if only temporarily. Scholastic has a program opened to affected students, and there is a growing list of opportunities at the website amazingeducationalresources.com. If you do an internet search for ‘ideas during the quarantine,' lots of great ideas will pop up. The best way to introduce whatever ideas you may have would be through structure and an expected routine. Now, please do not try to recreate school at home. While some families may be able to pull that off, usually it causes more frustration than it helps. Five areas we suggest a Five Minute Family builds into their daily routine are: 1. Quiet time/Me time: Don't neglect your Bible time and be sure to find segments of the day in which everyone is expected to do something quietly on their own for a specific period of time. 2. Contact time: Use this age of technology to your advantage. Please video chat with your older family members who are more susceptible to the worst symptoms and outcomes of this virus. Call and text. Keep in touch with folks outside of your home on a daily basis to keep connections going despite the level of quarantine you or your loved ones may be experiencing. 3. Intentional computer time: Again, those online resources come into play here, but also, actual video play time. Kids aren't going to want to schedule their video game time, but encourage your child to be proactive to chat with online friends to set specific game times so that no one will feel left out and they get to have some fun together. 4. Project time: Do you have projects around the house that have been waiting for a bigger chunk of time to complete? Well, here is a gift in disguise. Use your time wisely. Non-house projects may include starting new hobbies such as drawing, painting, cooking, playing a musical instrument, or practicing magic tricks. 5. Outside or Physical time: Do not forget to include physical movement EVERY SINGLE DAY of your isolation. If it is raining or too cold, please make sure you have a fifteen to twenty minute “Inside Moves” plan. You can print off some stretches, pull up youtube videos of exercise sequences, or just make up your own. No matter how well you plan, being shut-in is difficult. Be mindful of each family member's emotional health needs, and keep lines of communication open to sharing honestly how they are handling the isolation. We...

Mark Hanson (Product Manager of Bay Street Video) and Justin Decloux (Co-Host of The Important Cinema Club) take you through this week's new releases on Blu-ray and DVD live from BAY STREET VIDEO. RELEASES DISCUSSED: Abominable Snowman of The Himalayas, the (shout) Aces: Iron Eagle Iii (kino) Amazons (1984) (kino) Anne Bancroft Collection, the (shout) Badland (2019) (cinedigm) Before You Know It (2019) (passion River) Blue Collar (kino) Camille Claudel (1988) (kino) Christmas in July (kino) Cotton Club, The: Encore Edition (lionsgate) Dark Angel: The Ascent (full Moon) Dog Day (a.K.A. Canicule) (kino) Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde (shout) Elephant Sitting Still, an (kimstim) Family Guy: Season 17 (fox) Fanatic, the (2019) (quiver) Fly Collection, the (shout) Freaks (2018) (well Go) Fritz Lang's Indian Epic (film Movement) George: The Story of George Maciunas and Fluxus (kino) Glorifying the American Girl (kino) Great Mystical Circus, the (kino) Hard Night Falling (2019) (lionsgate) Harvesters, the (2018) (altered Innocence) Hustlers (2019) (elevation) Iceman (1984) (kino) Inside Moves (1980) (scorpion) It Chapter Two (warner) Killerman (2019) (vvs) Konga (kino) Limits of Control, the (arrow) Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice (kino) Loudest Voice, the (2019) (paramount) Lucky Day (2019) (elevation/lionsgate) Magic Sword, the (1962) (kino) Marie Curie: Courage of Knowledge (big World) Millennium Actress (g Kids/shout) Mr. Wrong (1996) (kino) Noon Wine (1985) (kino) Nude Bomb, the (kino) Old Joy (criterion) Once upon A Time in Hollywood (sony) Orville, The: Season 2 (fox) Papi Chulo (2018) (breaking Glass) Playing God (1997) (kino) Purge, The: Season 1 (universal) Rojo (2018) (icarus/distrib) Running Delilah (1993) (kino) She (1984) (kino) She's Just a Shadow (2019) (breaking Glass) Stick (1985) (kino) Stranger Among Us, a (1992) (kino) Suspiria (uhd) (synapse) Terminal Velocity (kino) Twin Peaks: From Z to A Collection (paramount) until The End of The World (criterion) Watch Me when I Kill (synapse) Yesterday Was a Lie (2009) (indiepix)

Movie Geeks United! home entertainment correspondent Adam Long reviews the roster of titles released on the Blu-ray format during the month of December, including Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Inside Moves, Iceman, Big Trouble in Little China, Silver Bullet and much more. IuinmL05bYTpceS34t63 Support this podcast

Movie Geeks United! home entertainment correspondent Adam Long reviews the roster of titles released on the Blu-ray format during the month of December, including Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Inside Moves, Iceman, Big Trouble in Little China, Silver Bullet and much more. IuinmL05bYTpceS34t63

Ted Cotter started his career with Bekins in the 1970s.  After gaining decades of experience in virtually every role in the moving industry, he started Inside Moves in 2000, which he has successfully operated going on 19 years. 

SUPERMAN MOVIE MINUTE - Inside Moves with Richard Donner In this extra special "bonus" episode of SUPERMAN MOVIE MINUTE, Chris and Rob are joined by the legendary Richard Donner to discuss his first film after SUPERMAN, the 1980 comedy/drama INSIDE MOVES starring John Savage, David Morse, Harold Russell, and Diana Scarwid. (No, we're not kidding, Richard Donner is really on the show!) Join the conversation and find more great content: E-MAIL: firewaterpodcast@comcast.net Opening theme and closing theme by John Williams This podcast is a proud member of the FIRE AND WATER PODCAST NETWORK: Visit the Fire & Water WEBSITE: http://fireandwaterpodcast.com Follow Fire & Water on TWITTER: https://twitter.com/FWPodcasts Like our Fire & Water FACEBOOK page: https://www.facebook.com/FWPodcastNetwork Use our HASHTAG online: #FWPodcasts Thanks for listening! 

SUPERMAN MOVIE MINUTE - Inside Moves with Richard Donner Fire and Water Network All-Stars Chris Franklin and Rob Kelly bring you SUPERMAN MOVIE MINUTE, where they analyze, scrutinize, and you'll-believe-a-man-can-fly-ize the classic 1978 film starring Christopher Reeve, Gene Hackman, Margot Kidder, and Marlon Brando, five minutes at a time! Chris and Rob preview their next bonus episode, a look at Richard Donner's 1980 film INSIDE MOVES, with special guest...Richard Donner! Coming May 28! Join the conversation and find more great content: E-MAIL: firewaterpodcast@comcast.net Opening theme and closing theme by John Williams This podcast is a proud member of the FIRE AND WATER PODCAST NETWORK: Visit the Fire & Water WEBSITE: http://fireandwaterpodcast.com Follow Fire & Water on TWITTER: https://twitter.com/FWPodcasts Like our Fire & Water FACEBOOK page: https://www.facebook.com/FWPodcastNetwork Use our HASHTAG online: #FWPodcasts Thanks for listening! 

Joining Mary Jane Mack and Nancy Mack in the studio is Dr. Jeff Haller discussing the Feldenkrais Method. Looking at the entire mind, body, experience for overall wellness.

Joining Mary Jane Mack and Nancy Mack in the studio is Dr. Jeff Haller discussing the Feldenkrais Method. Looking at the entire mind, body, experience for overall wellness.

This is an insanely busy movie week, so: No chit-chat! Time to get down to business. Will and Tim first dig into Edgar Wright's unique vision that is "Baby Driver." (His name is Baby. He is not in fact a baby.) Will hasn't seen "The Beguiled" or "The Big Sick" yet, so Tim monologues on those, but they return to lament their lost souls after sitting through "Transformers: The Last Knight." But there's more! They both have a personal connection to the Netflix documentary "Nobody Speak," but they (mostly) put that aside to judge the movie on its merits. And then in their Reboot segment, they try to figure out why everyone liked Richard Donner's 1980 comedy-drama "Inside Moves." Timestamps: 5:30 "Baby Driver" 27:10 "The Beguiled" 31:45 "The Big Sick" 36:35 "Transformers: The Last Knight" 54:10 "Nobody Speak" 1:16:30 "Inside Moves" We hope you enjoy. Let us know what you think @griersonleitch on Twitter, or griersonleitch@gmail.com. As always, give us a review on iTunes with the name of a movie you'd like us to review, and we'll discuss it on a later podcast. Opening Song: "Passenger Side," Wilco Closing Song: "Moral Majority," The Circle Jerks Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Our 12th episode finally brings us to December of 1980, and not only is this is the best month of movies we've had to discuss yet, it's also the best episode we've done yet! Seems fitting, right? After all, we get to talk about films like FLASH GORDON, RAGING BULL, NINE TO FIVE, ALTERED STATES, INSIDE MOVES, and, yes, Robert Altman's POPEYE. WHICH IS AWESOME. BECAUSE IT IS. AND WE WILL ACCEPT NO ARGUMENT ON THIS TOPIC. But seriously, POPEYE rules.

Earl Klugh Second Chances Grover Washington Jr. Inside Moves Quincy Jones Jazz Corner of the  world/ Birdland Ben Williams The Lee Morgan Story Lee Hogan A Night in Tunisia Maurice Brown  Time, Tick Tock Farnell Newton The Bluest Eyes Revisited Curtis Fuller and Ali Shaheed Muhammad Remix Five Spot After Dark Robert Glasper Twice Mike Phillips Right Person Wrong Time Christian Scott  Like This