Podcasts about Million Dollar Mystery

Ah, '80s nostalgia. It's one of the few things going for Million Dollar Mystery, a treasure hunt adventure from 1987. Matt & Ashley revisit this fondly-remembered movie from Matt's childhood, in our latest Retro episode. You can click below to listen.

Here's a batch of general entertainment trivia I used at a corporate party! Book your party any time by emailing ryanbudds@gmail.com Fact of the Day: The 1987 movie Million Dollar Mystery was promoted with a real contest in which $1 million were hidden in an undisclosed location that the winner would correctly identify. 14-year-old Alesia Lenae Jones won the contest. Triple Connections: Pink Swimmingo, Great Blue-dini, Rock-a-dile Red THE FIRST TRIVIA QUESTION STARTS AT 01:21 SUPPORT THE SHOW MONTHLY, LISTEN AD-FREE FOR JUST $1 A MONTH: www.Patreon.com/TriviaWithBudds INSTANT DOWNLOAD DIGITAL TRIVIA GAMES ON ETSY, GRAB ONE NOW!  GET A CUSTOM EPISODE FOR YOUR LOVED ONES:  Email ryanbudds@gmail.com Theme song by www.soundcloud.com/Frawsty Bed Music:  "Your Call" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://TriviaWithBudds.comhttp://Facebook.com/TriviaWithBudds http://Instagram.com/ryanbudds Book a party, corporate event, or fundraiser anytime by emailing ryanbudds@gmail.com or use the contact form here: https://www.triviawithbudds.com/contact SPECIAL THANKS TO ALL MY AMAZING PATREON SUBSCRIBERS INCLUDING:   Linda Elswick Ansley Bennett Mom & Mac Lillian Campbell Lynnette KeelJerry Loven Jamie Greig Rondell Merritt Sue First Nick Vogelpohl Adam Jacoby Adam Suzan Jeremy Yoder Chelsea Walker Carter A. Fourqurean Tiffany Poplin Bill Bavar Courtney Cassal Daniel Hoisington-McArthur Paula Wetterhahn Justin Cone Steven LongSue FirstKC Khoury Keith MartinTonya CharlesBen Katelyn Turner Ryan Ballantine Justly Maya Brandon Lavin Kathy McHale Selectronica Chuck Nealen Courtney French Nikki Long Jenny Santomauro Jon Handel Mark Zarate Keiva BranniganLaura PalmerLauren Glassman John Taylor Dean Bratton Mona B Pate Hogan Kristy Donald Fuller Erin Burgess Chris Arneson Trenton Sullivan Josh Gregovich Jen and NicJessica Allen Michele Lindemann Ben Stitzel Michael Redman Timothy HeavnerHarlie WestJeff Foust Sarah Snow-BrineRichard Lefdal Rebecca Meredith Leslie Gerhardt Myles Bagby Jenna Leatherman Vernon Heagy Albert Thomas Kimberly Brown Tracy Oldaker Sara Zimmerman Madeleine Garvey Jenni Yetter Alexandra Pepin Brendan JohnB Patrick Leahy Dillon Enderby John Mihaljevic James Brown Christy Shipley Pamela Yoshimura Cody Roslund Clayton Polizzi Alexander Calder Mark Haas Ricky Carney Paul McLaughlin Manny Cortez Casey OConnor Willy Powell Robert Casey Rich Hyjack Matthew Frost Joe Jermolowicz Brian Salyer Greg Bristow Megan Donnelly Jim Fields Mo Martinez Luke Mckay Simon Time Feana Nevel Brian WilliamsJordania of ZeilingriskS

We have some very serious reporting about very serious topics coming your way, including the official Sanrio character rankings, a Jellycat status update, and some wild news from the domain-hoarding beat.   We have to take a moment to show some love to Kuromi, the third-ranked Sanrio character overall and Sanrio costume-sourcing, ℅  Sueju Design and Nerdy Treasures by Amy.  How Jellycat became so popular with kids and grown-ups alike. Also: Their pop=ups give Sew Your Soul vibes, in our opinion.  Let's talk tech! Our listener Olivia shared her Notion tips, we are flatted for the credit you're giving us for Google Tabs, and we loved the piece “The Million-Dollar Mystery of Milk.com” by Alex Mayyasi for The Hustle.   Finally, have you listened to "Longer Gone" yet?   Name how much $$ it would take for you to change your email for at podcast@athingortwohq.com, @athingortwohq, our Geneva, or our Substack comments! Show your hair love with Nutrafol. Take $10 off your first month's subscription with the code ATHINGORTWO. Send your first Moonpig card for FREE with the code ATHINGORTWO. Upgrade your cleaning experience with Blueland and get 15% off your first order when you use our link. Get a free Sage guidebook for parents with kids ages 5 to 12 who want to better navigate tech and their digital worlds. YAY.

Rick Overton walked into his audition for Beverly Hills Cop and director Martin Brest asked him about a prophylactic. Why? He's still not sure. Rick joins Matt to talk about doing martial arts with Eddie Murphy on set, preparing for his role of Bonded Warehouse Night Manager with mirror douche work, and getting to improvise in the film. Then, we hear of Rick's experience playing Franjean, a brownie who serves as comic relief in Willow's journey, why Million Dollar Mystery fell apart, and getting squibbed in Blind Fury.Come see us at the Now Hear This podcast festival: nowhearthisfest.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rick Overton walked into his audition for Beverly Hills Cop and director Martin Brest asked him about a prophylactic. Why? He's still not sure. Rick joins Matt to talk about doing martial arts with Eddie Murphy on set, preparing for his role of Bonded Warehouse Night Manager with mirror douche work, and getting to improvise in the film. Then, we hear of Rick's experience playing Franjean, a brownie who serves as comic relief in Willow's journey, why Million Dollar Mystery fell apart, and getting squibbed in Blind Fury.Come see us at the Now Hear This podcast festival: nowhearthisfest.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

GGACP commemorates the 30th Anniversary of the classic comedy “Groundhog Day” (released February 12, 1993) with an ENCORE presentation of a 2017 interview with comedian, actor and Emmy-winning writer Rick Overton. In this episode, Rick talks about everything from incidental sitcom music to the Beatles' animated series to the underrated mimicry of Frank Gorshin. Also, Barney Fife screws up his courage, Ian McKellen prank calls Patrick Stewart, Rick hangs with Kurt Vonnegut and Captain Nemo meets the Prince of *$#@* Darkness! PLUS: Burns & Carlin! “Million Dollar Mystery”! Otis the Drunk cleans up! The return of the Lee Marvin story! And Rick remembers his friend Jonathan Winters! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For today's movie review:Sam Raimi directs Bill Paxton, Billy Bob Thornton, and Bridget Fonda in the crime drama A Simple Plan, in this episode! Adam and Andy lay out their simple plan to give you the scoop on this movie, so check it out!Check out A Simple Plan (1998)Show Notes:What We've Been Watching:Adam: Knives Out, Glass OnionAndy: Variety, Million Dollar Mystery, Midnight Madness, Acción MutanteChapters:(~0:00:00) Introduction(~0:00:35) Featured Review(~0:21:24) What We've Been Watching(~0:38:57) Up Next(~0:39:50) ClosingLike, comment, or subscribe if you'd want to see more episodes.Feel free to send us a question we can answer on the air to ReelShame@gmail.com or follow us on Instagram @ReelShame.

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.

It's a mad, mad, mad, mad story about money, movies, and madcap mysteries! In 1963, one of the most serious film directors decided to prove to the world he could be funny......well, sort of........What he ended up creating was the The Treasure Hunt Comedy, a forgotten staple of film comedies. Rob teaches Ray about It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, Scavenger Hunt, Million Dollar Mystery, and Rat Race. Along the way we learn that Milton Berle's ego was as big as his cigar, the pretentiousness of Method Acting in comedy, Dino De Laurentiis' love of Glad trash bags, and the brilliance of Jon Lovitz and Kathy Najimy, as well as the wicked humor of Phil Silvers. If you like what we are doing, please support us on Patreon    TEAM: Ray Hebel Robert W Schneider Mark Schroeder Billy Recce Daniel Schwartzberg Gabe Crawford Natalie DeSavia     WEBSITES CRITERION: MAD MAD.....  MAD: 25 Years Later Behind the Madness   ARTICLES  Ebert on MAD Variety Review of MAD NY Times on MAD NY Times on MAD: Bosley Crowther Review Million Dollar Mystery Review: NY Times Rat Race vs. Mad: People Magazine AUDIO/VISUAL IT'S A MAD,MAD,MAD,MAD WORLD DOCUMENTARY STORY TV Ads 7Up W Magic Johnson & Scavenger Hunt Movie & Texas State Optical & Sage Furniture "Dogs of the Week" Movie Reviews Part 4 (1979) - Sneak Previews with Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel Million Dollar Mystery Trailer 1987 Siskel & Ebert - "Million Dollar Mystery"(1987) 1987 Glad Trash Bags TV Commercial With Tom Bosley Rat Race - Movie Trailer Rat Race - Prairie Doggin It  RAT RACE ..HITLER'S CAR.. SO FUNNY! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

3:01:42 – Frank in New Jersey, plus the Other Side. Topics include: Gas stations and visions, Flight Radar 24, watching all the Dunes, Dune (1984), Jodorowsky’s Dune (2013), Alicia Witt, Phish at the MGM Grand, musical costumes, Gamehenge 2, Mary Jane candy is back, Barlowe’s Guide to Extraterrestrials, Million Dollar Mystery (1987), Volkswagen Thing, Puzzle Hunts, Arcadia/PowerStation/Breakfast […]

3:01:42 – Frank in New Jersey, plus the Other Side. Topics include: Gas stations and visions, Flight Radar 24, watching all the Dunes, Dune (1984), Jodorowsky’s Dune (2013), Alicia Witt, Phish at the MGM Grand, musical costumes, Gamehenge 2, Mary Jane candy is back, Barlowe’s Guide to Extraterrestrials, Million Dollar Mystery (1987), Volkswagen Thing, Puzzle Hunts, Arcadia/PowerStation/Breakfast […]

In this episode of In Search of the Crystal Skull, Patricia and Arun discuss about the 1963 comedy It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World starring Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Buddy Hackett, Ethel Merman, Edie Adams, Terry-Thomas, Jonathan Winters, Dick Shawn, Phil Silvers, Dorothy Provine, and Mickey Rooney. A group of people come across a man who had crashed off State Road 74 and told them that he hid $350,000 under the "W" at Santa Rosa State Park. The group try to split the money evenly until their disagreements lead to them splitting up and racing to Santa Rosa State Park to see if they can get the money before anyone else. Meanwhile, a chief police officer is trying to find the man who stole the money so he can retire peacefully and go on vacation with his family. When the movie came out, it made 60 million dollars on a 9 million dollar budget and critics praising it for its cast, its premise, and its comedy. However, some critics were pointing its length being too long, the comedic slapstick moments going on for too long, and the story lacking structure. The movie was nominated for multiple Academy Awards and Golden Globe Awards and had inspired other films such as Scavenger Hunt, Million Dollar Mystery, and Rat Race. It currently has a 70% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. What did Patricia and Arun think of the film? Listen and find out. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/old-school-lane/support

It's a very special episode of Saturday Night Jive as we are counting down the best movies we've seen in the history of the podcast.  We unveil the list of Best Movies and take a look back with clips from the episode where we talked about it.  Scroll down in the description for the complete list if you don't mind getting spoiled.  It's a big old Saturday Night Jive Wank-A-Thon!  Enjoy!Download Here   1. Dead Heat2. Short Circuit 23. Rat Race4. (TIE) Out Of Bounds and Real Men6. The Comebacks7. Jack And Jill8. The Experts9. Million Dollar Mystery10. (TIE) Hot To Trot and Krippendorf's Tribe12.  Meet Dave13. Power Rangers14. Pumpkin15. Toys16. Three Fugitives17. What Planet Are You From?18. (TIE) Jack and Mystery Men20. Clifford21. (TIE) Chance Are and A Gnome Named Gnorm23. (TIE) Houseguest and It's Pat: The Movie25. (TIE) Funky Monkey and Monkeybone27. Troll28. (TIE) My Favorite Martian and That's My Boy

There's nearly $500,000 in cash that's been unearthed, but who gets to keep it? Haydo's identity is being stolen, and Nick's got the proper way to eat ice cream. 

- Sponsored by Aviatra Accelerators

Reject Video takes another break from SNL to go to the movies! In 1987, Dino De Laurentiis had a brilliant idea, a movie with a million-dollar sweepstakes, sponsored by Glad trash bags! He didn’t have much of a screenplay to work with, or any talent. But let’s just fill it with stunts and it will all work out. Audiences saw through this disaster and the film was mostly forgotten, but Reject Video never forgets, and we’re here to give you the play by play. Theme:  Bush Week - Nihilore (http://www.nihilore.com)

Reject Video takes another break from SNL to go to the movies! In 1987, Dino De Laurentiis had a brilliant idea, a movie with a million-dollar sweepstakes, sponsored by Glad trash bags! He didn’t have much of a screenplay to work with, or any talent. But let’s just fill it with stunts and it will all work out. Audiences saw through this disaster and the film was mostly forgotten, but Reject Video never forgets, and we’re here to give you the play by play.   Theme:  Bush Week - Nihilore (http://www.nihilore.com)

This week we join the Mile-High Club surrounded by Satanists in the sky with the Canadian Marilyn Manson-sploitation flick — Turbulence 3: Heavy Metal (2001)! Plus: What Movie Is This? — Heavy Metal Soundtracks, Letters From Listeners, Voicemails, and more! also: American Grindhouse, King Cohen, Alien Beasts, I Can’t Stop Masturbating, Hard To Die, Jim Wynorski, Meet The Hollowheads, Million Dollar Mystery, The Source Family, We Are Not Alone, Moth Man, Jurassic City, Firehead, Curse of the Black Widow, Contamination**

While the "Dirty Sons of Pitches" are keeping busy with some writing projects, enjoy a fascinating film showcased on Ben's other podcast he records regularly with his brother George, "Saturday Night Jive," an SNL-related podcast that reviews bad movies starring SNL alums. "Million Dollar Mystery" is a "Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" ripoff that was born as a, for real, real scavenger hunt to the public sponsored by Glad trash bags. It's truly bizarre and Ben and George love it. Give it a listen and you may fall in love too. Available on iTunes.

Oh man, oh man.  We just found my new favorite movie.  Million Dollar Mystery stars a cast of dozen C-level comedians in a straight rip-off of It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World...and it's awesome.  SNL alum Rich Hall co-stars as Vietnam vet Slaughter Buzzard so we watched it and it did not disappoint.  When it was funny it was funny, when it wasn't funny it was so bad it's good funny.  Tom Bosley dies from a bowl of chili and tells a room full of people about $4 million dollars he hid on 4 different bridges.  They chase after it but along the way they meet wrestlers in a motor home, Kevin Pollak doing impressions, guys eating toxic waster, film noir style private eyes, industrial size shredders, all the while Eddie Deezen is just trying to get his rocks off with his new bride.  I unabashedly loved this movie and there is also a bizarre piece of trivia about this film.  There was a tie-in promotion with Glad trash bags where you could win $1 million if you followed the clues.  Spoiler alert: The movie ends with a dude looking straight into camera and basically telling you to enter the contest.  It's weird, but also beautiful.  Watch this movie and listen to us talk about it.  Enjoy!Download Here

Comedian, actor and Emmy-winning writer Rick Overton ("Willow," Groundhog Day," "Seinfeld") joins Gilbert and Frank for a free form discussion of everything from incidental sitcom music to the Beatles' animated series to the underrated mimicry of Frank Gorshin. Also, Barney Fife screws up his courage, Ian McKellen prank calls Patrick Stewart, Rick hangs with Kurt Vonnegut and Captain Nemo meets the Prince of *$#@* Darkness! PLUS: Burns & Carlin! "Million Dollar Mystery"! Otis the Drunk cleans up! The return of the Lee Marvin story! And Rick remembers his friend Jonathan Winters! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

April 23-29, 1994 Today Ken welcome actress, comedian and fellow Massachusetts native Erica Rhodes to the show. Ken and Erica discuss Boston accents, Newton Pedigree, Prairie Home Companion, The Nutcracker, Jason Alexander's clothes, Hollywood, Robert Altman, PT Anderson, Pee Wee's Playhouse, TV Contests, not having a TV until you're 7, the horror of Alice in Wonderland on TV, being scared of horror films, Modern Family, New England impressed, Family Matters vs. Blossom, Punky Brewster, shopping at Delia's, Baywatch, Classical Music, Oldies 103.3, Come Baby Come, America's Most Wanted, the Sound of Music, Zoom, Julia Child, Pam Grier as Phillips old flame on The Fresh Prince, John Candy's directorial debut, SCTV alum cartoons, Full House, Made for TV Movies, John Ritter as Frank L. Baulm in The Dreamer of Oz, Roseanne, The Witches vs. Hocus Pocus, 30 year old teenagers, Million Dollar Mystery, finding treasure, Home Improvement, mid-season replacements, Mad About You, The Simpsons, Seinfeld, Cheers, Kenny Rogers as Hannibal Lector, Step by Step, David Gregory, zombie children in Ireland, and judging a book by its cover.

VHS Rewind! - Episode 44 - Million Dollar Mystery (1987)

VHS Rewind! - Episode 44 - Million Dollar Mystery (1987)

VHS Rewind! Season 4 Episode 8 Deezenpalooza continues! This time Mark and Christopher discuss the zany 1987 comedy, Million Dollar Mystery!

A legend and a mentor to me it's beyond an honor to have the great Rick Overton on Inappropriate Earl. Sadly half way through this podcast he got a text with word of the passing of Gary Shandling so it's a bit awkward in that few minutes but Rick was AWESOME. Follow him on Twitter @rickoverton and me on Twitter/Instagram @EarlSkakel Rick Overton (born August 10, 1954)[1] is an American screenwriter, actor and comedian. His writing credits include Dennis Miller Live, and his acting credits include Willow and The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne. Overton was born in Forest Hills, Queens, New York, the son of Nancy Overton (née Swain), a singer, and Hall Overton, a teacher and music arranger.[1][2] He grew up in Englewood, New Jersey,[3] where he attended Dwight Morrow High School.[4] Overton made his first onscreen appearance in the 1982 film Young Doctors in Love, followed by a small role in Airplane II: The Sequel later that year. In 1987, he wrote an episode of The New Adventures of Beans Baxter while also appearing in various films and television shows including Willow, Amazing Stories and Million Dollar Mystery. Overton is mostly known for his Oscar-worthy performance as Buddy Claggett in Encyclopedia Brown: The Case of the Missing Time Capsule. In 1992, he landed a role in the FOX Network sketch comedy show The Edge. The show ended in 1993. Later that year, Overton appeared in two episodes of Seinfeld and landed a small role in Mrs. Doubtfire. The following year, he won an Emmy for writing an episode of Dennis Miller Live. In 2005, Overton appeared on Alias and Joan Of Arcadia; in the latter he played God explaining to the title character the meaning of real wealth. He also portrayed both H.G. Wells and Orson Welles in a podcast episode of The Radio Adventures of Dr. Floyd that same year. In 2009, Overton appeared in the film A Fork in the Road alongside Jaime King. In 2012, Overton appeared in the music video "Star Power" by Pakistani rapper Adil Omar.

Cole, Vanessa, and our favorite Usual Suspect Kevin Pollak ("Casino," "A Few Good Men," and "Kevin Pollak's Chat Show") talk Game of Thrones, Ryan Dunn vs. Roger Ebert, Doug Hutchison's craddle robbing, poker, meeting William Shatner, an Oscar party with Lemmon & Matthau, Hugh Hefner, keys to doing impressions, chunky Prefontaine, the Million Dollar Mystery [...]