Podcasts about My Favorite Year

GGACP's celebration of National Couples Appreciation Month continues with a revisit of this conclusion of a 2-part interview with veteran screen performers Richard Benjamin and Paula Prentiss. In this episode, Richard and Paula talk about sharing the stage with their children, celebrating 60 years of marriage, casting the comedy classic “My Favorite Year” and filming “The Stepford Wives,” “Westworld,” Diary of a Mad Housewife” and “The Parallax View.” Also, Mel Brooks produces “The Elephant Man,” Orson Welles intimidates the cast of “Catch-22,” Paula's mom chats up William S. Burroughs and Richard lists his favorite Paula Prentiss performances. PLUS: “Captain Nice”! Elsa Lanchester! The genius of Michael Crichton! The irrepressible Bill Macy! And Richard and Paula remember Yul Brynner, Buck Henry, Jack Klugman and George Segal! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Gina Giachero is the musical director of the 50th Anniversary Gala. She joined Summer Stage in 2007 as an accompanist. She was the musical director for Ragtime, My Favorite Year, The SpongeBob Musical, and many other mainstage classics. Her vibrant personality shines through in her hilarious Summer Stage stories. So, come along and have some fun!We all have stories to tell, and they can be heard here. Welcome to Brave and Strong and True, a podcast that engages Summer Stage alumni of all ages. I'm Bob Falkenstein. We all have stories to tell, and they can be heard here.Our music is composed and performed by Neil McGettigan https://neilmcgettiganandtheeleventhhour.bandcamp.com/releases. Please click on the link to visit Neil's BandCamp website to listen to songs from his album, including cut number 7, “Harry Dietzler.” Please support Neil's work by buying downloads of your favorites.Please follow Brave and Strong and True on Apple Podcasts. While you're there, please rate the show and leave a comment.  If you want to be a guest on Brave and Strong and True, please contact me at braveandstrongandtrue@gmail.com. I can record five guests simultaneously so reach out to your friends for an online mini-reunion.You must have the latest version of the Google Chrome browser on your desktop or laptop computer. I can now record interviews with guests who have iPads or iPhones. It helps if you have an external microphone and headphones, but Apple earbuds work too; however, BlueTooth ones are not 100% reliable, so see if you can borrow wired ones.Support the showUpper Darby Summer Stage is now part of the non-profit organization known as the Upper Darby Arts and Education Foundation. Harry Dietzler is the Executive Director of the UDAEF. If you are able to support Summer Stage financially, please visit udsummerstage.org to find out more.

232 - My Favorite Year Movie Discussion with Julian David Stone Steven is joined on this episode by author, director and film historian Julian David Stone to discuss 1982's My Favorite Year! To learn more about Mr. Stone's career listen to episode 199, and go to his website, JulianDavidStone.com. Please send feedback to DieCastMoviePodcast@gmail.com or leave us a message on our Facebook page. Thanks for listening!

This week on the blog, a podcast interview with Ari Kahan, who assembled and oversees the most complete compendium of on-line information on Brian DePalma's classic rock music horror classic, Phantom of the Paradise. LINKSA Free Film Book for You: https://dl.bookfunnel.com/cq23xyyt12Another Free Film Book: https://dl.bookfunnel.com/x3jn3emga6Fast, Cheap Film Website: https://www.fastcheapfilm.com/The Swan Archives: https://www.swanarchives.org/Eli Marks Website: https://www.elimarksmysteries.com/Albert's Bridge Books Website: https://www.albertsbridgebooks.com/YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/BehindthePageTheEliMarksPodcastINTERVIEW TRANSCRIPTDo you remember when you first saw it? What were the circumstances? How old are you? What was your reaction? ARI KAHAN: Sure. I first saw it when I was 12. It was double billed with Young Frankenstein. This would have been in early 1975, and my mom took me to see Young Frankenstein, which was okay. It was pretty good, but I was really enamored with the second feature on the bill, which was Phantom. And I've been in love with it ever since.Did you know anything about it before you went in? ARI KAHAN: Nothing. Nothing at all. So, what has been the attraction for you for that film, low those many, many years ago?ARI KAHAN: It may have just hit me at an impressionable time. But I think that, you know, being 12 and being kind of a nerd, I probably identified with Winslow and his fervent belief that if the world could only hear from his heart, and especially if all the girls in school could only hear from his heart, then they would love him and not the jerk that they always went out with.So, there's probably some of that. There was certainly, I do remember very, very clearly that the direction in some respect stood out to me. I had seen a lot of movies when I was 12, and I remember even today, thinking when I was 12, that there was a moment where the Phantom is rising up into the rafters in the foreground as Beef is descending in the background. And I looked at that and I thought, boy, that's complex. Anybody else would have done a shot of the Phantom starting to climb a rope, and then cut away, and then come back to him up in the rafters. This guy is trying to do things that are more interesting than he needs to and I thought that was really fun.After seeing Phantom I went back and saw Sisters.Which was no mean feat back then. ARI KAHAN: Yeah, I know and in fact, I had to see Sisters by buying a 16-millimeter print of it. That was the only way I could. I had fixed up a couple of—this is probably a year or two later—I had fixed up a couple of 16-millimeter projectors that my school was discarding, so I could even do changeovers in my bedroom. And I got a copy of Sisters just so I could see it because it was unseeable otherwise. Well, kudos to you for finding Sisters, because it took me a long time. I imagine it showed up at the Film society at the university or something finally. So getting to see William Findlay in a markedly different role and also seeing, oh, okay, this is a director who likes split screen. Although I probably would have gotten that from Carrie, because I'm sure I saw Carrie first. He's accused of doing stuff like that just for showing off. In fact, I think it's always for a cinematic or emotional reason. And Sisters is the best example of that. The suspense of getting rid of that dead body before they get to the door is enhanced by the fact that you're watching two things happen at the same time. ARI KAHAN: Yeah, I think in Sisters and Phantom both, it works really well. And I think, and I think even DePalma would agree that it didn't work as well in Carrie. Because the split screen calls for intellectualizing on the part of the audience. And it takes you out emotionally and wasn't really working that well. I understand why he did it, because it'd be boring to like, cut to Carrie's face, cut the things happening, cut back to Carrie's face, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I think both he and Paul Hirsch, the editor, feel it would have been better off to do something else.But anyway, after Phantom, you know, every new De Palma film to come out—all the way through Domino—has been a much anticipated event for me, you know, and I'm in the theater on the first day. And there have been a couple of disappointments along the way, but by and large, it's been awesome. Since you've seen Phantom so many times, were there any surprises that popped up over the years as you've watched again and again and things that you hadn't seen or hadn't realized?ARI KAHAN: It took me a really long time to notice that there was a frame or two of Jessica Harper being one of the backup singers on stage when Beef's performing life at last and only because I think it was unavoidable to use those frames. I think somebody figured out in editing that it didn't make any sense for her to be one of those backup singers and then in a white dress. So that took a while. It also was only within the past couple of years that I realized that a lot of the sort of classical, but silent movie sounding music that I had always thought was composed by the guy who did the incidental music was actually Beethoven. Oh, really?ARI KAHAN: Because Beethoven's not credited. So that little like a little violin thing that happens …ARI KAHAN: Or when Swan is going into phoenix's dressing room. When Winslow is escaping from prison. Well, it's Beethoven piano trios for the most part. So, you don't need to get permission from the Beethoven estate on that…ARI KAHAN: Well, I think that they would have had to pay the orchestra involved and I can easily imagine them omitting credit to avoid doing that. Hoping nobody would notice. And nobody did, obviously.Until you've just brought it up. ARI KAHAN: Yeah, sorry. That's okay. It's not, it's not our problem. One of the things that, that I found the Swan Archives to be so helpful on—well, lots of things, uh, when I discovered it years ago and I've returned to it as new things have popped up or I've dug a little deeper—was your explanation of the Swan Song debacle. As a frequent viewer of the movie. I wasn't noticing truncated shots. That I didn't notice until you showed us those shots. But obviously the mattes, particularly at the press conference, are really, really terrible. If I'm noticing them, they're bad. Can you just give us a brief history of why they had to do that? ARI KAHAN: Sure. So, it goes to Beef electrocution. In the early seventies, there was a band called Stone the Crows, whose guitarist was a guy named Les Harvey and Peter Grant, who would later manage Led Zeppelin, managed Stone The Crows. And Les Harvey was—in a freak accident—electrocuted on stage. I think his guitar was badly grounded or something along those lines, in 1971 or 72.And when Peter Grant learned that there was a film coming out in which a rock guitarist is electrocuted on stage, he assumed, that it was making fun of what had happened to his friend, Les Harvey. And by that time he was managing Led Zeppelin. I should say in De Palma's defense that Beef's electrocution shows up in early drafts of the script that were written before Les Harvey suffered his accident. So, this was life imitating art, imitating life, you know, rather than the other way around. De Palma clearly did not take that plot and probably didn't even know about what had happened to Les Harvey. But anyway, by the time Peter Grant got wind of this, Phantom had already been shot, but not yet released. This was in the summer of 1974. And by sheer absolute sheer coincidence, Peter Grant and Led Zeppelin had just gotten a trademark on Swan Song for their record label. And the first record to come out on the Swan Song label was Bad Company's first record, and that was in somewhere around June of 1974. So that's when their trademark was perfected, and Phantom was scheduled to be released a few months later at the end of October.And Peter Grant went to 20th Century Fox, which had just purchased Phantom from Ed Pressman and DePalma. You know, it's important for the story to know that Phantom was independently produced. It wasn't financed by Fox. Pressman and DePalma raised money to make this movie in the hopes that they would then sell it to some distributor for more than they had paid to make it.And it turned out that there was a, quite a bidding war among several studios, which Fox won. And Fox paid more for Phantom than anyone had ever paid for an independent film to that point in history. They had very high expectations for it. So that sale had just closed, but Pressman and De Palma and everyone else hadn't been paid yet by Fox.And of course, they had run out of money and owed everybody money, everyone who had worked on the film. So, they were in kind of a desperate situation. And Peter Grant went to Fox and said, “I'll sue you and prevent release of this film.” And the only thing that Fox could do was to tell Pressman and De Palma, you need to fix this.And the only way they could fix it was by removing all of the references to Swan Song, so that Peter Grant wouldn't have grounds for his claim, because he obviously can't claim you can't have a film with an electrocution of a rock star. Really, all he had was the Swan Song thing. And so that was done very, very hastily. They were still working on it in early October, even though the film was scheduled for release at the end of October. And so, basically, Fox signed a deal with Led Zeppelin saying we won't release the film with any of this Swan Song prominently shown. Which is a very stupid resolution really because Peter Grant in the end did not prevent distribution of a film with an electrocution of a rock star, which was his original concern.All he really managed to do was mangle somebody else's. And so the end result is that the film that we've all been watching for the last 50 years, there's a little bit cut out of it. There's some lovely crane shots that you missed because what the DePalma had done through the film was start on this Swan Song logo or the Swan name and then move away from it to whatever was going on. So that you have the impression that Swan was everywhere. And so that whole thing was lost and, you know, as you and everybody else noticed, some of it's very noticeable, particularly the bird at the airport. Which is too bad.I understand that you have a secret print of the film in which all those logos had been restored. In addition to fixing the crane shots and having shots that no longer have the terrible matte on them, is there anything else in that version that we wouldn't have seen before? ARI KAHAN: It's not a secret print, really. It was just reconstructing the film the way that it was intended to be, using footage that had been assumed to have been destroyed decades ago, but which I eventually found and digitized. And then with the help of a couple of other folks, put the movie back together. The most challenging part: there's a couple of challenging parts to that.You know, it's not just a matter of sticking things in. The footage was without sound. And so, if you're making a scene a few seconds longer, for example, and there's music underlying that scene, what are you going to do? Are you going to start the music a little bit later? Are you going to end it a little bit earlier?Are you going to play it a little bit slower so that it fills up these extra seconds? Are you going to loop it? Are you going to find some other piece of music that was probably intended to go there in the first place? So there's that problem. And then the podium scene, which is the worst offender—at the airport—the original, they actually worked on the negative to put the dead bird on. And so, the original footage for that podium didn't exist. But we knew what the podium was supposed to look like, because there's a photo that was used for the German promotional campaign—created obviously months before the film is released—and that still shows the podium the way that it's supposed to look. So, I got my friend, Steve Rosenbaum, who is a special effects supervisor. He won Oscars for Forrest Gump and Avatar, I think. And he's about to win an Emmy—I will bet you a box of donuts—he's about to win an Emmy for his work on Masters of the Air. I gave him this image and the footage that's shown, you know, in the theater normally, and he reconstructed the podium for me. So that's how we did the podium. But the other thing that was that if you go see the film now in the theater projected from DCP, the DCP master—which is the same master that we've used for the current blu rays—it was done by a company called Reliance Media Works in Burbank. And, I don't know what 17 year olds they had working on it, but they did the coloring and grading the way it's fashionable to do when they did it, you know, 10 years ago, which was a lot of orange, teal and the blacks are crushed so that anything that's really dark gray or dark brown, just black, so that the colors pop more, but you lose a lot of the detail, and to my eye it looks terrible.And so, I used an earlier master of the film that looks more like it looked in the 70s as the base for the reconstruction. And then color matched the replacement footage to that. It sounds beautiful. ARI KAHAN: It's gorgeous. The only other thing that I suppose we could have done, but didn't, is there's originally footage of Winslow's face coming out of the record press looking all mangled. And I have that footage, but I didn't put it back in because that footage that DePalma deemed not appropriate to the tone of the film that he was making. And so, since the object of this game was to restore the film to the way that he would have wanted it, I let that out. I think that was a wise choice. You know, I talked to Pete Gelderblom, who did the Raising Cainreconstruction. And it's a beautiful piece of work that he did. He was more constrained than you, because he was only allowed to use the footage which was there, and he just had to rearrange it. He repeats one shot, but he got it as close to the original shooting script as he could. I don't think Paul Hirsch was particularly thrilled with it, but De Palma was and has referred it as his director's cut. Did De Palma see your version and did he like it? ARI KAHAN: Yeah. I did a cast and crew sort of screening in Los Angeles and Paul Williams came to that and Archie Hahn and so on. Ed Pressman, the producer. And there was tremendous enthusiasm, because none of them had ever seen the film that they made the way that it was supposed to be.And I sent a copy to Paul Hirsch and I'm not sure whether DePalma heard about it from Pressman or from Paul Hirsch, but he asked to see it. And I sent it to him and I got a nice note from him saying, you know, that it was great, good job, la la la, it's great to see the film the way that it was, you know, the original cut.So. Yes, he is. Definitely. He's seen it. He's happy with it. And Ed Pressman, in particular, wanted to have that version released on home video or in some other way. And we went to Fox. This is before Disney. It was still Fox. And Fox said, well, you know, we could consider doing that under two conditions. First, Mr.DePalma approves. Well, yes, check box checked there. He does. And second, we made this deal with Led Zeppelin back in 1974, where we agreed not to do this. And if you can get them to waive their rights under that agreement, then yeah, sure. So, I worked with Ed Pressman and we put together a bunch of testimonials from people that we thought Led Zeppelin might respect, like Brett Easton Ellis and I think Guillermo del Toro and others, and sent a package off to Led Zeppelin through their lawyers. And God bless them, they got back to us in less than a week and said no. At least they didn't leave you hanging. ARI KAHAN: At least they didn't leave us hanging. That's right. So, your archive is amazing and is hour's worth of fun to go through it. ARI KAHAN: It's a rabbit warren. Yeah, I wish it were a little better organized.How did it get started? Well first, when did you start collecting memorabilia and then how did that grow into the archive? ARI KAHAN: I started collecting memorabilia right after I saw the film when I was 12. And that was obviously pre internet and pre-eBay. And it was a lot harder to get stuff. Bt I would frequent science fiction conventions and horror conventions and comic book shops.And there were a whole bunch of people who knew me as that kid who's always looking for Phantomstuff. And I was the kind of nerd who kept a log with the what everybody else was also looking for. And so, if I were at some convention and the guy who was collecting Olivia Newton, John's stuff, if I saw something interesting—not that there is anything interesting about it, but anyway—if I saw something interesting about Olivia Newton, John, I would run to the pay phone and call him and say, Hey, you want this? And I would pick it up for him. And so, there was a lot of returning of favorites where there would be people who were going to cons that I wasn't going to. And if they saw Phantom stuff, they would pick it up for me and that kind of thing. And so, you know, that became the way to get the posters from every country in the world that it was released in and the lobby cards and everything else and it started filling up, taking up more and more space over time and grew into, you know, trailers and magazines and everything else.And then when the site came out in around 2006, I put up the first version of the site. People who either had worked on the film or had something interesting would get in touch with me and say, “You know, I have this. I see you have a good home for it. Do you want it?” And of course, you know, eBay was a way to fill in some gap.Is there, within what your current collection holds, is there a prized possession that, you know, if there was a fire and you only grabbed one of those pieces, what would you take with you? ARI KAHAN: Yeah, absolutely. You know, in every dorm room and every apartment and every house I've ever lived in has hung John Alvin's art from the one sheet, and it's the same art that's on the cover of the soundtrack album. I just thought that was beautiful piece of art. And I think it was his second movie poster he painted. The first one would be for Blazing Saddles. And then he did Young Frankenstein, and if you look at the Young Frankenstein poster and the Phantom poster, you can see that there's a lot of stylistic similarities there.But he went on to do, you know, E. T. and, you know, 130 odd other posters. And at some point, he and I started corresponding and he finally said, “You know, I have something that I think you should have. Give me your mailing address.” And a few days later what showed up was his original painting, the comp painting for that poster, which he had had all this time. And so that would be the prize possession for sure. Well, that qualifies, I think. Is there a Holy Grail out there that you're still looking for? ARI KAHAN: The original art for the Corbin poster. Which is the “he's been maimed and framed, beaten, robbed, and mutilated.” That artwork would be a Holy Grail. As well as, well, the Phantom's original helmet. Now, it turns out there's a couple of them, at least. And one of them Guillermo del Toro now has. He just bought the Phantom's costume after it failed to sell at auction at Bonham's. And the other helmet the Pressmanfamily has, so those would be a grail. There's a lot of things that I'm sure no longer exist that would be the grail, like, you know, the Phantom's contract.Any number of props would be fun, but there's not very many known to still exist. I think Peter Elbling still has—or I think his son has it right now—the microphone that he used with a knife on it. And Garrett Graham still has his guitar strap, Beef's guitar strap. And I think he may still have the plunger.But not the antler belt? ARI KAHAN: No, not as far as I know. That'd be tough to ship. It would be. Yes. Dangerous to keep around the house. You could bump into it. On the site you kindly show all kinds of different memorabilia that you have or that exists around the world. And you also have a section called Inexplicable Crap. Is there one piece in there that just stands out for you as what in the world were they thinking? ARI KAHAN: Maybe the Death Records pillow. Like I can understand why they did. They made prototypes that never went out for sale. Why anybody would want it, you know, a dead bird, probably somebody wants a dead bird pillow, but the market would be limited.When the DVD for Phantom Palooza 2 came out, I bought that and then heard you talking somewhere about getting Jessica Harper to sing Old Souls, which is on the DVD. We just see the very end of her singing it. I'm guessing there were some technical problems or something with that. ARI KAHAN: It wasn't technical problems. It was the Paul Williams rider, which required that the show not be recorded. And I think that midway through Jessica singing, somebody might have said, or actually I think that's an audience--t might be an audience shot thing that we have. There's probably lots and lots of cell phone video out there of the show, but nobody related to who worked on Phantom Palooza—and I was one of the people who worked on Phantom Palooza—is going to be out there distributing anything that we agreed with Paul we would not even shoot. But, but yes, Jessica was absolutely a highlight of the show there. I was surprised that she went full force on the end of that song. ARI KAHAN: Well, there were no plans for her to perform. And the morning of the rehearsal, I said, “Hey, Jessica, you want to go down and watch Paul rehearse?” And I took her over to the auditorium and I was hoping that, you know, seeing that and being a performer at heart, she might be inspired to maybe, you know, participate. And she decided she would do Old Souls with Paul's band. And then she went back to the hotel and practiced the song, I think, all day in her hotel room and then, you know, knocked it out of the park that night. That's how I remember it. And then she came off stage and said, you know, now I know how Mick Jagger feels. It's a pretty stunning debut for her in that movie, to come from essentially nowhere—although she'd done things before that. And then the run that she had in the seventies, pretty unequaled when it comes to being the, um…ARI KAHAN: The queen of cult. Yeah. The queen of cult. And just the range, from Suspiria to My Favorite Year. You don't get a much broader range than that. ARI KAHAN: Pennies From Heaven. Yes, just phenomenal. Even just the wheat speech in Love and Death is worth the price of admission alone. ARI KAHAN: She played, uh, Gary Shandling's wife on The Gary Shandling show in the last season, named Phoebe, of all things. And in, I'm pretty sure it was the last episode of that show, she's held hostage by a phantom who lives under the set, who threatens to sabotage Gary's show, unless she will sing his song. And she ends up singing his song, which turns out to be YMCA. Wearing a dress that is very, very reminiscent of the one she wore to sing Old Souls in. And they even make a Pennies From Heaven joke. So, it's very inside baseball, I should say. Speaking of actors from that, I've always been blown away by William Finley's performance in the movie. I think it was Paul Williams who said something like, you know, he spends three quarters of the movie acting with one eye and metal teeth, and that's all he's got. And it's just flawless and so heartbreaking.And I'm just sorry we didn't get to see him in more movies. He's delightful in The Fury in a very small part. He's all over the early films. And I got the sense since I read somewhere that you did a eulogy for him, that you must have developed a friendship over the years. ARI KAHAN: Yeah. And, before we get to that, you say heartbreaking, right?And I think that that's one of the things about Phantom that was so ballsy. It's obviously a spoof of many things, but while being a spoof, it tries to get you to care about the characters. If, if you were not, you know, devastated at the end when Winslow dies just before Phoenix recognizes that it was him all along, you know, the film has failed.Whereas in other spoofs, you know, Rocky Horror doesn't ask you to care whether Brad and Janet will get back together after their experience or anything like that. Nobody asked you to care about the characters at all. And I think it's a huge risk that DePalma took in making a film like this: while simultaneously being a parody and a satire and a spoof and everything else, he wants you to care about the outcome. As far as Finley, I got to know Bill a little bit towards the end of his life after meeting him at Phantom Palooza. I went to New York and spent a little time with him and now I know his wife Susan pretty well and his son Dash a little bit. And when he died, Susan asked If I would put together some kind of a video montage for the funeral, which wasn't that—it's a celebration of life was what she was calling it. And I did that. And every time I had it finished—and, you know, I had like a day and a half to do this. And then I had to take the red eye to New York from California for this, for this event—every time I had it finished, she would send me a few more pictures and I'd have to, you know, redo it.And then she asked, could you set it to music? Could it be set to Faust? You know, okay. You know, you don't say no to a widow, right? And I was working at the time too. So, when I finally flew to New York, I was completely exhausted. And I got to the chapel I guess a couple of hours before the ceremony was supposed to start, so that we could make sure that this thing would play on their equipment and so on.And I'm taking a nap on one of the pews and Susan showed up with, you know, programs under her arm. And I picked up a program and saw that, right after Garrett Graham and Jessica Harper was supposed to speak, I'm supposed to speak. But I this was the first I was hearing about it. And so, I spent the first, unfortunately, the first part of the ceremony—where I really wanted to be paying full attention—kind of scrambling together what I was going to say.I have no idea what I said at this point. I hope it did Bill justice and didn't offend anybody, but I couldn't tell you now a single word of what I ended up saying there. And it's in front of, you know, various of the icons of my childhood, right, are in that chapel. So it's kind of like all of the nightmares of going to school and realizing that there's a test in the subject that you never took, and that you're not wearing pants, and all your ex-girlfriends are there laughing at you. Because I have my own podcast that has to do with my series of books, and like your site, I want to make it perpetual. But there's really no way to do that unless I set up a fund so that after I die they keep paying the site to keep running it. Because as soon as that site shuts down, the podcast goes away. And the same thing will happen to the archive. Whoever is hosting it, unless they're paid, it's gonna go away. I'm wondering, do you have a plan in place for all that information? ARI KAHAN: When I go, it goes.Oh, I feel like I set you up for that. Okay. Can I propose an alternate ending to that? ARI KAHAN: Sure. You essentially have a book there. You just have it in web form. You should put that together so that when it is done, when you are done, it can just be put into a book because it already reads like a book.ARI KAHAN: People have suggested that, and I've resisted doing a book because every now and then, some new fact comes to light that shows that something I had in there was wrong. And everything in there—virtually everything—is based on conversations that I've had with participants or material that came out at the time. None of it is taken from someone else's book or anything. So it's all fairly firsthand, but people have fallible memory. So, for example, the guy who made the phantom's helmet assured me that he had made only one. And it's crazy, because every production wants to have multiple copies of any key prop, because if something happens to the prop during shooting, shooting would have to, you know, it's an incredibly expensive problem to stop shooting waiting for another one.But as it turns out, he's, he's wrong. He made more than one. There is more than one. And so, every now and then, I have to correct something on the site. And if I put it out in book form, these books would be wrong. Potentially, something could come out in the future that that would make something with my name on it. Wrong. Imagine a book with a mistake. I can't imagine. ARI KAHAN: Exactly. And I can't abide that. So, it exists in electronic form so that I can edit it and improve it. Well, I would argue that you can do the ebooks, but that's, you know, that's your circus. It's not my circus. But you do raise an interesting question about misconceptions. I know that one of the biggest misconceptions is that it ran in Winnipeg forever and it didn't. I can—as someone who lived here in Minneapolis when Harold and Maude ran at the Westgate Theater for two and a half years—I can assure you it ran there for two and a half years, because I was there those two and a half years. So that was real. Is there another misconception out there about the movie that you just can't—like a whack a mole—get rid of? ARI KAHAN: So many. In fact, um, I think on my FAQ page, I list some of them. Is there an egregious one that just gets under your skin? ARI KAHAN: Yeah. The idea that it was only popular in Winnipeg and a couple other places is just completely wrong. It was big in Japan. It eventually became a big in Los Angeles. It never did anything in New York. Where it was actually biggest was not Winnipeg, it was El Salvador, where the songs hit number one on the radio. More than once. And it was brought back and revived many times. I get more mail from El Salvador than from anybody else.As we wrap up here, my favorite scene in the movie is the closing credits. I just love the music. I love what Paul Hirsch did with the assembly of that. And for years, I was living under the mistaken impression that in the credits, when it said Montage by Paul Hirsch, that that's what I was looking at was that montage. That's a montage. Then I was disabused of that in an interview with him—which I clarified with him. It was very nice to get back to me on Facebook when I said, “Am I correct in my understanding that the montage in the middle of the movie, the writing montage, you never saw that until the film was done? You had to put all the timing of that together, the animation of the writing, the placement of Phoenix's face on this part of the screen, and the Phantom and that, all the dissolves, all that timing?” And he said, “Yes it was a one-shot thing.” And I think for that he does deserve a special “Montage by Paul Hirsch,” because even today, with all the stuff we have, that would still be a challenging thing to do. And then not to be able to see the end result.But even with that, I just still love the closing credits. It's a combination of music, it allows me to revisit all my favorite scenes in the movie and a lot of my favorite shots. Do you have a favorite scene? ARI KAHAN: Well, I actually like those closing credits too, because most of the shots in those closing credits aren't actually in the film. Most of them are outtakes. And so, for example, in those closing credits, you have Swan splashing in the tub. There's Archie Han twirling around like this. And most of them, alternate takes. And they're clearly things that Paul Hirsch thought were charming and wanted to include that he couldn't put in the film.I suspect that you've held 35-millimeter film in your hands and cut shot A to shot B. I've only done that in 16mm. To keep a piece of film that short, hanging on a hook somewhere going, “I know I'm going to want to use that later.” Then finding that. I don't think people today understand what skill level was involved in, you know, that sort of thing, or the TIE Fighters in Star Wars that he did, or all that connection of little pieces, and tracking that and knowing that that's going to go there and that's going to go. It's so much easier today. And you had to make firmer decisions then earlier in the process than you do now, right? And fixing things was much more arduous. ARI KAHAN: You know, I think if they had to fix the Swan Song stuff out of Phantom and they were doing it using digital technology today, obviously, it'd be much faster and so on, but, uh, doing it on film. And having to send each change into the processing house, and then getting it back a few days later, and, uh, you know, it's a lot of work. It'd be horrible.But favorite scenes: The Goodbye Eddie number just remains a favorite. Do you know why? It's not fancy DePalma. It's a wide shot, two shot, a single. ARI KAHAN: That's right. It's the most conventionally shot thing in the film, but Archie Han is just so great in it. His delivery boy in My Favorite Year—when he does the punching—he just does the exact right thing at the right time. And I wish there'd been bigger movies with more Archie Han in them than what we got. ARI KAHAN: So does Archie. Okay, last question. If you take Phantom of the Paradise out of the mix, what would you say is your favorite De Palma movie?ARI KAHAN: Well, I'm not sure that Phantom of the Paradise is my favorite De Palma movie. It is a sentimental childhood favorite. But I go back and forth between Carlito's Way, Casualties of War, Femme Fatale, Carrie. And Raising Cain.I think that Femme Fatale is probably the one that came closest to his intention.It's the one that I think of as being, like, the most successfully realized, and I love it for that reason. Carlito's Way is just, by, I think, any objective standard, probably his best work. Then I love Blow Out. I'm not on the Blow Out train as much as everybody else. Maybe because it just, it goes so dark.ARI KAHAN: That's what I love about it is the devastating ending. I really love Peet Gelderboom's version of Raising Cain. Given all that, and given that you're 12 years old in 1974, 75, somewhere in there, and you're you're a movie freak at this point, which is a really good time in film history from that era. Is there a favorite? ARI KAHAN: So, I was really lucky that I was when I was 15 or 16, I was working at a theater called the UC theater in Berkeley, which was a repertory house that showed a different double bill every night. And any night that I wasn't working, I was there seeing movies.So, I saw lots and lots and lots of movies. And despite all that and all the weird stuff I saw, my favorites are probably the same things that every 70s kid's favorites were: Star Wars, Harold and Maude, The Godfather. I loved Harold and Maude so much that I bought an old hearse at one point.Okay, you win. ARI KAHAN: And I didn't keep it for long. It got like, I don't know how many gallons per mile. It was just not economical to have as a car, but it was fun for a while. I was very lucky when they hit the two-year mark here in Minneapolis, and I was a junior in high school, maybe. I happen to know the son of the local movie critic for the paper, and the critic knew that I was a big fan of Harold and Maude. And so he took me along on his press junkets. So, I had dinner with Bud Cort, got to chat with him. I got to hang out with Ruth Gordon for the day. ARI KAHAN: The only one I can propose to top that would be when I was in high school, I was writing for the school paper. Actually, I had stopped going to high school. I was the entertainment editor for the school paper, and I had stopped going to high school. I dropped out, but I kept submitting articles to the paper. And at some point, the newspaper staff changed my title from Entertainment Editor to Foreign Correspondent. And on the strength of that—when Tim Curry's first record, Read My Lips, came out, and he was coming to town to sign autographs at Tower Records—myself and a writer from the Berkeley Bar, which was a newspaper back then, had lunch with him around the corner from Tower Records just before he went off to do his autographing. And I was a huge Tim Curry fan. And I had to try to keep that under wraps and, you know, not ask any Rocky Horror related questions. And that was my claim to fame until all of the Phantom nonsense started.

Guests: Jessica Harper, Bea Franklin Actor, author, and singer-songwriter Jessica Harper talks about her work on films, including Suspiria, My Favorite Year, Pennies from Heaven, and Minority Report, television roles on It's Garry Shandling's Show and The Old Man, and creating books and music for children. The “Queen Bea”, Bea Franklin, returns to talk about her remarkable life and her upcoming 100th birthday.          

Some songs have very deep roots in the Floodisphere. For instance, the late Joe Dobbs loved this song. In fact, we can remember Dave Peyton and Charlie Bowen jamming on this one with Joe and his brother Dennis at their Fret ‘n Fiddle music shop in its original Huntington West 14th Street location in the mid-1970s. (The song might even have been in the set list when the four opened for Little Jimmy Dickens' concert at the old Memorial Field House in 1977.)The tune also was the first song that the great Doug Chaffin played with us when we met up with him at a Nancy McClellan New Year's Eve party a quarter of a century ago. And Sam St. Clair still talks about Chuck Romine loving that melody; oh, how Doctor Jazz could tear it up on his tenor banjo.These days Sam and Charlie have introduced the song to a whole new generation of Floodsters. Just listen to Randy Hamilton and Danny Cox and Jack Nuckols rocking on “Somebody Stole My Gal!”About the Song“Somebody Stole My Gal” already was an old-timer by the time it reached Floodlandia.Written in 1918 by San Francisco songwriter Leo Wood, the song was first recorded by Ted Weems and His Orchestra. In 1924, that group's version sold a million copies and spent a full five weeks at No. 1 on the charts in The Roarin' Twenties.Over the decades, the song also has been recorded by so many of our heroes, folks like Bix Beiderbecke (1928), Cab Calloway (1931), Fats Waller (1935), both Count Basie and Benny Goodman (1940), Johnny Ray (1952) and Jim Kweskin (1965).In the MoviesThe song has even gotten its share of screen time, starting in a cartoon of all things in 1931 from Fleischer Studios, the famed creators of Betty Boop and Koko the Clown.Its best known Big Screen moments, though, were in Peter O'Toole's 1982 comedy My Favorite Year, in the Sissy Spacek-Piper Laurie comedy The Grass Harp in 1995 and in the 2004 epic bio-pic The Aviator about Howard Hughes, starring Leonardo DiCaprio.On a Flood AlbumWhen The Flood went into the studio in November 2002, this was one of the song the guys recorded for the album to be released as The 1937 Flood Plays Up a Storm. Just listen to Joe, Chuck and Doug rocking the introduction. (Oh, and how we love hearing Joe's comment midway through Romine's solo: “Sounds like New Orleans!…)Nowadays you can hear that disc — and all the other Flood albums — for free on the Floodango music streaming service. Click here to give the album a spin.More History?Finally, if you'd like more history on the tunes we play, check out Flood Watch's ever-growing Song Stories section.Click here to start your browsing. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 1937flood.substack.com

Today being Passover Professor Juskow takes a lesson plan page out of my class and we discuss films released in 1982. Although I think I forgot 1981 hilariously (we'll get back to it) there certainly is a treasure trove to discuss. We'll discuss the hilarious Morgan Fairchild vehicle, The Seduction; the awful sequel to Grease, Grease 2 and the classics, or at least the Juskow classics, Al Pacino in Author, Author and the Mel Brooks inspired, My Favorite Year. Fun, fun, fun. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's the final week of #MaxFunDrive! Thanks to everyone who has joined or upgraded so far; if you've been putting it off, now's thie time! maximumfun.org/joinIt's been a long time since comedian Jackie Kashian (co-host of MaxFun's own Jackie and Laurie Show) has been a industry newb like Benji (Mark Linn Baker) in 1982's MY FAVORITE YEAR. But she felt really seen by Benji's journey into the world of comedy -- the risks, the shifting identity, and the heartbreak. She and Jordan will get into all of that, plus learn why Jackie relates to A.X.L., the top-secret robotic dog from  2018's A.X.L.Then, Jordan has one quick thing about the...ahem...Poohniverse?***With Jordan Crucchiola and Jackie Kashian

Jeff watches My Favorite Year; will this be your favorite episode? Subscribe to That's Auntertaiment!'s Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thatsauntertainment Intro and Outro Music from Bensound.com Please leave us a review by heading to ratethispodcast.com/thatsauntertainment. Follow That's Auntertainment! on Twitter (@auntertainment), Instagram (thatsauntertainment), and Facebook (That's Auntertainment). Check out Jeff's blog at jmunney.com Got any questions or thoughts? Email us at thatsauntertainmentpodcast@gmail.com --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thats-auntertainment/support

Welcome to the Instant Trivia podcast episode 1085, where we ask the best trivia on the Internet. Round 1. Category: Medical Prefixes And Suffixes 1: These 2 -iatricians specialize in opposite times of life and there's often talk of a surplus of one and a shortage of the other. a pediatrician and a geriatrician. 2: -sclerosis,as in "of an artery". hardening. 3: After my-, it means pain in the muscles; after neur-, it's pain along the course of a nerve. -algia. 4: Following lump- and tonsil(l)-, it denotes a surgical removal. -ectomy. 5: Schizo-,as in an atom or a banana dessert. split. Round 2. Category: '80s Film Comedy 1: Golf course groundskeeper Bill Murray battles gophers in this laugh riot. Caddyshack. 2: SCTV's Bob and Doug McKenzie foamed up on the big screen in this 1983 movie. Strange Brew. 3: He played movie star and TV guest star Alan Swann in 1982's "My Favorite Year". Peter O'Toole. 4: This film starring Ally Sheedy, Steve Guttenberg and a robot electrified audiences in '86. Short Circuit. 5: It's the film in which Tom Hanks and Shelley Long buy a dream house that turns into a nightmare. The Money Pit. Round 3. Category: Show Me The Munchies! 1: Logically enough, brands of this snack favorite include Jiffy Pop and Pop Secret. popcorn. 2: Get twisted with these ancient treats made from dough that's baked, salted and usually twisted into a loose knot. a pretzel. 3: It's Super Bowl time! Break out the chips and this yummy dip made from mashed avocados and cilantro. guacamole. 4: One of the two snacks mentioned in the song "Take Me Out To The Ball Game". peanuts or Cracker Jacks. 5: Many different snacks from this brand are supposedly baked by elves in a hollow tree. Keebler. Round 4. Category: 2 First Names 1: He won an Emmy for portraying Liberace in "Behind the Candelabra". Michael Douglas. 2: The doormat at her Nashville museum reads, "Howdee!". Minnie Pearl. 3: This star of "Glee" made her Broadway debut at age 8 playing Cosette in "Les Miz". Lea Michele. 4: In 1988 he won the "Best Actor" Oscar. Michael Douglas. 5: In the '90s his "you got the right one baby" Diet Pepsi commercials earned him a new generation of fans--uh huh!. Ray Charles. Round 5. Category: Conquistadors 1: The Cabrillo National Monument sits in this California city where Juan sailed in 1542. San Diego. 2: Sent to Mexico to get this Spanish leader to resign, Panfilo de Narvaez lost the battle and his eye instead. Cortés. 3: The conquistador-laden ships that landed at Darien in 1514 were called this, also the name of a later 16th c. Spanish fleet. the Armada. 4: Maybe the 1st black African in the New World, Juan Garrido pillaged in Mexico before going to Florida with this man. Ponce de León. 5: Despite retaking this Incan capital, Diego de Almagro was killed for imprisoning Pizarro's brothers. Cuzco. Thanks for listening! Come back tomorrow for more exciting trivia!Special thanks to https://blog.feedspot.com/trivia_podcasts/ AI Voices used

Welcome to the Instant Trivia podcast episode 1085, where we ask the best trivia on the Internet. Round 1. Category: Medical Prefixes And Suffixes 1: These 2 -iatricians specialize in opposite times of life and there's often talk of a surplus of one and a shortage of the other. a pediatrician and a geriatrician. 2: -sclerosis,as in "of an artery". hardening. 3: After my-, it means pain in the muscles; after neur-, it's pain along the course of a nerve. -algia. 4: Following lump- and tonsil(l)-, it denotes a surgical removal. -ectomy. 5: Schizo-,as in an atom or a banana dessert. split. Round 2. Category: '80s Film Comedy 1: Golf course groundskeeper Bill Murray battles gophers in this laugh riot. Caddyshack. 2: SCTV's Bob and Doug McKenzie foamed up on the big screen in this 1983 movie. Strange Brew. 3: He played movie star and TV guest star Alan Swann in 1982's "My Favorite Year". Peter O'Toole. 4: This film starring Ally Sheedy, Steve Guttenberg and a robot electrified audiences in '86. Short Circuit. 5: It's the film in which Tom Hanks and Shelley Long buy a dream house that turns into a nightmare. The Money Pit. Round 3. Category: Show Me The Munchies! 1: Logically enough, brands of this snack favorite include Jiffy Pop and Pop Secret. popcorn. 2: Get twisted with these ancient treats made from dough that's baked, salted and usually twisted into a loose knot. a pretzel. 3: It's Super Bowl time! Break out the chips and this yummy dip made from mashed avocados and cilantro. guacamole. 4: One of the two snacks mentioned in the song "Take Me Out To The Ball Game". peanuts or Cracker Jacks. 5: Many different snacks from this brand are supposedly baked by elves in a hollow tree. Keebler. Round 4. Category: 2 First Names 1: He won an Emmy for portraying Liberace in "Behind the Candelabra". Michael Douglas. 2: The doormat at her Nashville museum reads, "Howdee!". Minnie Pearl. 3: This star of "Glee" made her Broadway debut at age 8 playing Cosette in "Les Miz". Lea Michele. 4: In 1988 he won the "Best Actor" Oscar. Michael Douglas. 5: In the '90s his "you got the right one baby" Diet Pepsi commercials earned him a new generation of fans--uh huh!. Ray Charles. Round 5. Category: Conquistadors 1: The Cabrillo National Monument sits in this California city where Juan sailed in 1542. San Diego. 2: Sent to Mexico to get this Spanish leader to resign, Panfilo de Narvaez lost the battle and his eye instead. Cortés. 3: The conquistador-laden ships that landed at Darien in 1514 were called this, also the name of a later 16th c. Spanish fleet. the Armada. 4: Maybe the 1st black African in the New World, Juan Garrido pillaged in Mexico before going to Florida with this man. Ponce de León. 5: Despite retaking this Incan capital, Diego de Almagro was killed for imprisoning Pizarro's brothers. Cuzco. Thanks for listening! Come back tomorrow for more exciting trivia!Special thanks to https://blog.feedspot.com/trivia_podcasts/ AI Voices used

Welcome to the Instant Trivia podcast episode 1023, where we ask the best trivia on the Internet. Round 1. Category: What Happened When? 1: On December 17, 1992, this agreement was signed by the leaders of three countries. NAFTA. 2: On Halloween 2012 the New York Stock Exchange reopened after being closed for 2 days due to this weather event. Hurricane Sandy. 3: On February 8, 1587 it was off with her head at Fotheringhay Castle after 19 years of imprisonment. Mary, Queen of Scots. 4: In 1810 Napoleon, divorced from Josephine, married this archduchess with whom he would have a son. Marie-Louise. 5: Discovered by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930, it got a big demotion in 2006. Pluto. Round 2. Category: State Capital Events 1: On Jan. 29, 2016 in Baton Rouge, the Mystic Krewe of Artemis was the first parade in this annual event. Mardi Gras. 2: In March 2016 you could catch an Easter concert by this group live in Salt Lake City or on closed-circuit simulcast. the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. 3: The 1850s are back as tons of dirt cover the streets of Old this state capital in its annual Gold Rush Days. Sacramento. 4: Cactus League spring training is held throughout the area of this capital. Phoenix. 5: Go to both the film and music parts of the SXSW festival in this capital and by all means, enjoy some BBQ. Austin. Round 3. Category: I Read It In A Book Once 1: "'Some pig!' whispered Mr. Zuckerman. They stared and stared for a long time at Wilbur". Charlotte's Web. 2: "I have no plans to call on you, Clarice, the world being more interesting with you in it". The Silence of the Lambs. 3: "His lips parted into a timid smile, and our neighbor's image blurred with my sudden tears. 'Hey, Boo,' I said". To Kill a Mockingbird. 4: "'Is it safe to get my diamonds?'… Szell opened the black leather case. And took out a portable hand drill". Marathon Man. 5: "For him evidently Mr. Kurtz was not in his grave; I suspect that for him Mr. Kurtz was one of the immortals". Heart of Darkness. Round 4. Category: Festivals 1: A Swine Festival in Georgia includes a greased pig chase and the eating of these, the cooked small intestines of pigs. chitlins. 2: This pop music festival is named for a town in southwestern England also said to be the burial site of King Arthur. Glastonbury. 3: Holi is a spring festival of colors in this religion. Hindu. 4: Each May this New Mexico city has a festival honoring Ralph Edwards, who brought the city much fame. Truth or Consequences. 5: A 5-day horseback ride named for this Tombstone lawman will take you to a ghost town and the gravesite of Johnny Ringo. Wyatt Earp. Round 5. Category: Hail, Caesar! 1: This Canadian singer had huge successes with her multi-year residencies at Caesars Palace starting in 2003 and 2011. Celine Dion. 2: The character King Kaiser is based on Sid Caesar in this 1982 Peter O'Toole film set in the world of 1950s TV. My Favorite Year. 3: Built by Herod the Great and dedicated to Augustus, Caesarea is a coastal town in this country. Israel. 4: Scholars believe St. Paul made his appeal to Caesar of Acts 25 in 59 A.D., so the Caesar would have been him. Nero. 5: It's where fancy restaurants once served Caesar salad, tossed as you watch; Ken's makes a bottled version of the dressing. tableside. Thanks for listening! Come back tomorrow for more exciting trivia! Special thanks to https://blog.feedspot.com/trivia_podcasts/ AI Voices us

Come visit the live television industry of 1954 through the lens of a movie from the 1980s: MY FAVORITE YEAR directed by Richard Benjamin, starring Mark Lin-Baker and Peter O'Toole. Truly a movie for fans of movies!

Formerly a Hollywood screenwriter (My Favorite Year, Welcome Back, Kotter), Dennis Palumbo is a licensed psychotherapist whose work with creative people has been featured on CNN, NPR, and in The New York Times and Los Angeles Times. He's also the author of the popular nonfiction book, Writing From The Inside Out. His mystery fiction has appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and The Strand, and is collected in From Crime to Crime. His series of award-winning mystery thrillers (the latest of which is Panic Attack) feature Daniel Rinaldi, a psychologist and trauma expert who consults with the Pittsburgh Police. Recently, Dennis served as consulting producer on the Hulu TV series The Patient. Dennis joins Barbara Demarco-Barrett to talk about the why writers procrastinate, self-worth, the habit of endlessly revising, finding time to write, the writers strike, and writers' worries. For more information on Writers on Writing and additional writing tips, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. (Recorded on July 21, 2023)  Host: Barbara DeMarco-BarrettCo-Host: Marrie StoneMusic and sound editing: Travis Barrett

Sean talks to Julius “Goldy” Sharpe and Alec Sulkin (Family Guy, A Typical Disgusting Display) about the movie My Favorite Year. They discuss the depiction of a comedy writers room, behind the scenes at Family Guy, and the WGA strike. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We're very excited to be joined by the actor, writer, podcaster and genuine pop star, Mike Fenton Stevens, who has chosen the 1982 comedy MY FAVORITE YEAR.END CREDITS - Presented by Robert Johnson and Chris Webb - Produced by Chris Webb - "Still Any Good?" logo designed by Graham Wood & Robert Johnson - Crap poster mock-ups by Chris Webb - Theme music ("The Slide Of Time") by The Sonic Jewels, used with kind permission  (c) 2023 Tiger Feet Productions  Find us: Twitter @stillanygoodpod Instagram stillanygoodpod Email stillanygood@gmail.comFind Mike:@fentonstevens@MyTCpodSupport the show

Born in NYC way back in 1938 to a garment district worker, Richard Benjamin met his wife to this very day, fellow actress Paula Prentiss, and would appear with her in several theatrical, filmic and televised roles (starting with late 60s sitcom He & She, oft referenced as a template for the iconic Mary Tyler Moore show.)   This short lived but critically beloved series kicked off a long career in both comedic and dramatic cinematic roles that began with 1969's box office smash Goodbye Columbus alongside Ali McGraw, and went on to include such cultural touchstones as Catch 22, Diary of a Mad Housewife, Portnoy's Complaint and Westworld. Later works included the wide ranging Buck Henry science fiction satire Quark (which took on everything from Star Trek, Star Wars and 2001 to Zardoz in its all too brief late 70s run), Love at First Bite, Scavenger Hunt and How to Beat the High Co$t of Living, before moving into an exclusively directorial role with the Peter O'Toole vehicle My Favorite Year, and a short run of successful comedies like Tom Hanks' Money Pit, Melanie Griffith's Milk Money, Whoopi Golberg/Ted Danson film Made in America and the Cher/Winona Ryder hit Mermaids. Join us as we talk a true 70's icon (and 80's hit director), the one and only Richard Benjamin, only here on Weird Scenes! Week 99 (6/15/23): Richard Benjamin, Class(y) Clown https://weirdscenes1.wordpress.com/ https://www.facebook.com/WeirdScenes1 https://twitter.com/WeirdScenes1 (@weirdscenes1) https://thirdeyecinema.podbean.com/ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/third-eye-cinema-weird-scenes-inside-the-goldmine-podcast/id553402044 https:// (open.spotify.com) /show/4s8QkoE6PnAfh65C5on5ZS?nd=1 https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/09456286-8956-4b80-a158-f750f525f246/Third-Eye-Cinema-Weird-Scenes-Inside-the-Goldmine-podcast  

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

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

Meg invests in David P. Bloom's Ponzi scheme. Jessica saddles up for a rant on Central Park's Bridle Path.

The Tony Award winning writing team of the musicals: Ragtime, Anastasia, Seussical, Once on This Island, My Favorite Year, Rocky, Chita Rivera: The Dancer's Life, Lucky Stiff, Dessa Rose, The Glorious Ones, A Man of No Importance, Knoxville and Little Dancer. These renowned collaborators have received theater, film and music's highest honors – the Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle and Olivier Awards, as well as nominations for two Academy Awards, two Golden Globes and four Grammys. They serve on the Council of the Dramatists Guild of America and founded the DGF Fellows Program for Emerging Writers. In 2014 they received the Oscar Hammerstein Award for Lifetime Achievement and in 2015 they were inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame. 

Psychologist Dennis Palumbo is a true renaissance man. As a screenwriter he wrote the beloved film “My Favorite Year,” as a talented author his “Daniel Rinaldi” Mysteries are bestsellers filled with wisdom and insight. In our conversation today Dennis enlightens us on how the creative mind works and what you can do to hone your own creativity.  Support the show

A movie where Peter O'Toole drunkenly tries to be funny. Kyle enjoys being back in the 50s. Dave wants to cancel the whole thing. The Machine wants to be a standup. You can follow us on Letterboxd to see the entire list of movies we've talked about: https://letterboxd.com/kdvstm/Watch the trailer for My Favorite Year here: https://youtu.be/U5QCoUKWdU0Our sponsors this week are:  Park Power - https://parkpower.ca - your friendly, local utilities provider in Alberta. Offering Internet, Electricity, and Natural Gas with low rates, awesome service, and profit-sharing with local charities. Alberta Blue Cross - https://www.ab.bluecross.ca - Alberta Blue Cross group benefit plans are easy to manage, anywhere, anytime and on any device, making it easy for you and your employees to access. Send feedback to kyleanddavevsthemachine@gmail.comKyle and Dave vs The Machine is a proud member of The Alberta Podcast Network: Locally grown. Community supported. Here's their link again: https://www.albertapodcastnetwork.comKeep up to date with Kyle and Dave vs The Machine by following its social media channels: Twitter: https://twitter.com/kdvstmInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/kdvstm/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEZKUfH0IOp-lH5OQdIpvLwPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/kdvstmThis week the Machine printed out: 01001111 01101110 00100000 01101000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01100100 01100101 01100001 01110100 01101000 00100000 01100010 01100101 01100100 00101100 00100000 01001011 01100101 01100001 01101110 00100000 01110111 01100001 01110011 00100000 01100001 01110011 01101011 01100101 01100100 00100000 01101000 01101111 01110111 00100000 01101000 01100101 00100000 01100110 01100101 01101100 01110100 00101110 00100000 01001000 01100101 00100000 01100001 01101110 01110011 01110111 01100101 01110010 01100101 01100100 00101100 00100000 00100010 01000100 01111001 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01100101 01100001 01110011 01111001 00101110 00100000 01000011 01101111 01101101 01100101 01100100 01111001 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01101000 01100001 01110010 01100100 00101110 00100010  ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Andrea Martin is an actress, singer, and comedian, best known for her work in the television series SCTV and Great News. She has appeared in films such as Black Christmas (1974), Wag the Dog (1997), Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001), My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002), My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 (2016), and Little Italy (2018). She has also lent her voice to the animated films Anastasia (1997), The Rugrats Movie (1998), and Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius (2001). Andrea has been equally prolific in the world of theater, winning Tony Awards for both My Favorite Year and the 2013 revival of Pippin. Martin also appeared on Broadway in Candide, Oklahoma!, Fiddler on the Roof, Young Frankenstein, Exit the King, and Act One. She has received five nominations for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical, more than any other actress in the award's history. She received her first nomination for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play for the 2016 revival of Noises Off. This episode dives deep into how director Diane Paulus and Andrea breathed new life into this classic show. It's the idea of circus, and how to bring that to life. Hosted by Ilana Levine, Produced by Alan Seales, part of the Broadway Podcast Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Greetings! In this week's episode Bill Cushing (writer, sailor, awesome guy) joins the show to discuss one of his favorite 80s comedies, MY FAVORITE YEAR (1982), starring Peter O'Toole & Mark Lynn Baker. Enjoy! MY FAVORITE YEAR links IMDB Wiki Rotten Tomatoes Related links Aubrey Plaza shares her NBC Page story Peter O'Toole shares the funniest story of all time Bill Cushing links linkedIn A Former Life Stamper Cinema links stampercinema.com my linktree

Consider supporting the show on Patreon Watch us on our YouTube ChannelOn our latest episode, Doug dear his best drunken British impression, Jamie compares Peter O'Toole to Brad Pitt, and we both belt out the theme song to Perfect Strangers. Stuff your face with booze and/or Chinese food, steal a polish horse, and join us as we try not to get too distracted with 80s/90s sitcoms as we discuss, My Favorite Year!Full bonus episodes at our Patreon include: • Blame it on Rio • The House on Sorority Row • A He-Man and She-Ra Christmas • The Hollywood Knights • The Great Outdoors • Silver Bullet • One Magic Christmas • The Cabbage Patch Kids First Christmas • Under the Cherry Moon • Haunted Honeymoon • Commando• Beverly Hills Madam • Happy Birthday to Me • A Christmas Dream • A Garfield Christmas • Supergirl• Garlic is as Good as Ten Mothers • Who's Harry Crumb • Missing in Action 2: The Beginning • Revenge of the Stepford Wives • Evil Dead II • Dune• A Claymation Christmas Celebration• Howard the Duck• How to Beat the High Cost of Living• They Live• This House Possessed• Monkey Shines• Terror Train• Spice World/Stop or My Mom Will Shoot!• Teen Witch• 80's Handshake 5• 90's Handshake 5• Questions and Answers• Interviews• Covering/ranking all movies in the Friday the 13th Franchise! & more.. Merch on TeePublic Visit our WebsiteVisit our YouTube ChannelFollow us on TwitterAnd on InstagramFind us on Facebook

GGACP celebrates the 50th anniversary of Norman Lear's "Maude" (premiered September 12, 1972) with this ENCORE of an unforgettable interview with veteran actor Bill Macy ("The Jerk," "My Favorite Year," "The Producers"). In this episode, Bill looks back at his seven-decade career and his collaborations with everyone from Bea Arthur to Steve Martin to Peter O'Toole. Also, Bill praises Carl Reiner, understudies Walter Matthau, ticks off Tony Curtis and shares the big screen with Art Carney and Lily Tomlin. PLUS: "Oh! Calcutta!" Remembering Joe Bologna! Gilbert plays a Spaniard! William H. Macy changes his name! And Bill convicts Bialystock and Bloom!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week on Peanuts and Popcorn, the MLB season has less than a month to go. Which teams will find themselves vying for the World Series? Austin Meadows of the Tigers takes some time off to improve his mental health, while the Cincinnati Reds debut a promising star as well as an unlikely one. John Morosi sends Cubs Nation into hysterics, while the White Sox show signs of life. Finally, our Popcorn discussion is at the 36:46 mark, we talk about one of Tom's favorite movies, the Richard Benjamin directed, My Favorite Year. Next Week: Leon the Professional

John Redsecker is one of New York City's finest musicians. He has decades yof experience playing on broadway musicals  and is one of the inspirations for this podcast. He was one of four drummers featured in the Broadway Drummer's Roundtable in the June 1981 of Modern drummer and I'm honored to have as guest on my podcast.Shows he's done include Barnum, Anything Goes, Meet Me In St. Lous, My Favorite Year, Kiss Of The Spider Woman, Beauty And The Beast, The Little Mermaid, Anything Goes, and now the hit Broadway show, Aladdin.Clayton Craddock hosts the Broadway Drumming 101 Podcast and Newsletter. He has held the drum chair in several hit broadway and off-broadway musicals, including Tick, tick…BOOM!, Altar Boyz, Memphis The Musical, Lady Day At Emerson's Bar and Grill and Ain't Too Proud.The Broadway Drumming 101 Instagram page: InstagramThe Broadway Drumming 101 YouTube page: YouTubeFor more about Clayton, click HERE Get full access to Broadway Drumming 101 at broadwaydrumming101.substack.com/subscribe

SEUSSICAL COMPOSER: Stephen Flaherty LYRICIST: Lynn Ahrens BOOK: Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty SOURCE: The stories of Dr. Seuss (c. 1950s) DIRECTOR: Rob Marshall CHOREOGRAPHER: Kathleen Marshall PRINCIPLE CAST: Kevin Chamberlain (Horton), Janine LaManna (Gertrude), David Shiner (The Cat in the Hat) OPENING DATE: Nov 30, 2000 CLOSING DATE: May 20, 2001 PERFORMANCES: 198 SYNOPSIS: The wild world of Dr. Seuss comes to life as Seuss' various characters come together to tell the story of Horton, a lonely elephant, and Gertrude McFuzz, a shy bird, as they fall in love with one another.  Nathan Brewer argues for Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty's Seussical as a significant show that, despite lackluster reviews and box office sales, went on to find financial success as a staple within community theatre and educational institutions, especially through the work of director Marcia Milgrom Dodge. Seussical's ability to redefine theatrical financial success, and public exposure, after its failure on Broadway, offered shows that were not commercially viable to become regionally successful such as Little Women, The Addams Family, and Be More Chill. Nathan Brewer is a director of theatre, opera, concerts, film, and events.  Directing credits include Lincoln Center, The Kennedy Center, Washington National Opera, Park Avenue Armory, Theatreworks/USA, New York Musical Theatre Festival, numerous symphonic and pops concerts, and televised award shows.  Nathan is on the musical theatre faculty at The New Studio on Broadway at NYU/Tisch, and The College of New Jersey.  He has previously taught at Penn State and Westminster Choir College.   Assisting credits include Aladdin (Broadway), and Relatively Speaking (Broadway).  Nathan is the Founder & Artistic Director of Recreational Arts, a performing arts educational organization, with programs in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.   Stephen Flaherty is the composer of the Broadway musicals Ragtime (Tony, Drama Desk, OCC Awards, two Grammy nominations), Seussical (Grammy, Drama Desk nominations), Once on This Island (Tony nomination, Olivier Award, Best Musical) and Rocky. Additional Broadway includes Chita Rivera: The Dancer's Life (original songs) and Neil Simon's Proposals (incidental music). Stephen has also written four musicals at Lincoln Center Theatre: The Glorious Ones (OCC, Drama Desk nominations), Dessa Rose (OCC, Drama Desk nominations), A Man of No Importance (OCC, Best Musical, Drama Desk nomination) and My Favorite Year. Other theater includes In Your Arms (Old Globe), Little Dancer (Kennedy Center), Lucky Stiff (Playwrights Horizons) and Loving Repeating: A Musical of Gertrude Stein (Chicago's Jefferson Award, Best New Musical.) Film includes Anastasia (two Academy Award and two Golden Globe nominations), the documentary After The Storm and Lucky Stiff. Mr. Flaherty's concert music has premiered at the Hollywood Bowl, Boston's Symphony Hall, Carnegie Hall, the Guggenheim Museum and Symphony Space. This year celebrates Stephen's 32-year collaboration with lyricist-librettist Lynn Ahrens. Stephen and Lynn are members of the Dramatists Guild Council and co- founders of the Dramatists Guild Fellows Program. In 2015 they were inducted into the Theater Hall Of Fame. Upcoming: the stage adaptation of Anastasia. AhrensAndFlaherty.com. SOURCES Seussical, Original Cast Recording, Decca Records (2000) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Known as Bertram worldwide in Disney Channel's "Jessie" , Kevin Chamberlin Takes A, well-deserved, Bow! Known on Broadway as a 3 Time Tony Nominee for Suessical, The Addams Family, and Dirty Blonde. In this episode he takes us through his career, life journey, and inside scoop from his favorite productions. From the chorus in My Favorite Year to Chef Gusteau in Ratatouille, Horton the Elephant in Seussical, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in Wicked and so much more. Nowadays, you can catch him on Tik Tok creating incredible content loved by over 8 million people. Kevin Chamberlin, Curtain Up! Kevin and Eli talk about: Journey to Broadway Jessie on Disney Channel Horton the Elephant in Suessical The Addams Family Tony Award Nominations Education Tik Tok Ratatouille The Musical Writing and Directing/Next steps in his career + a ton more Connect with Kevin Chamberlin on Instagram: @chamberlin.kevin Connect with Take A Bow on Instagram: @takeabowpodcast Connect with host, Eli Tokash on Instagram: @tokash_eli Produced by the Broadway Podcast Network Edited by Tessie Tokash (@tessietokash) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

To celebrate its 40th anniversary, Rob and fellow network all-stars Shag and Chris are joined by returning guest Corey Moosa to provide a commentary track f0r STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN!Have a question or comment? Looking for more great content? E-MAIL: firewaterpodcast@comcast.net Follow THE FILM & WATER PODCAST on Twitter: @FilmAndWaterPod Check out Corey Moosa in MY FAVORITE YEAR the musical: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyGnjVO5MsEYou can find THE FILM & WATER PODCAST on these platforms: Apple Podcasts: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-film-and-water-podcast/id1077572484 Amazon Music Spotify StitcherThis 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 Support The Fire & Water Podcast Network on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/fwpodcasts Use our HASHTAG online: #FWPodcastsThank you very much for listening! That's A Wrap!

CLICK TO SUBSCRIBE ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCATCHER CONTENT WARNING: Discussion of alcoholism, shame, abandonment. This film is both incredibly highly regarded and somehow lost to time, because neither of us knew a single thing about this movie other than some Oscar trivia. But what was originally a Mel Brooks tale of his wild days at Your Show of Shows transforms into a tight, funny, and remarkably poignant movie about the perils of fame and the hard work of redemption. All in a 90 minute farce. It might not be the most memorable film, but it's certainly an outstanding, underrated comedy with a strong emotional core, and it deserves some more attention. So we'll give it some love today as Oscars '82 continues this week with My Favorite Year on Macintosh & Maud Haven't Seen What?! You can email us with feedback at macintoshandmaud@gmail.com, or you can connect with us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Also please subscribe, rate and review the show on your favorite podcatcher, and tell your friends. Intro and outro music taken from the Second Movement of Ludwig von Beethoven's 9th Symphony. Licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Hong Kong (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 HK) license. To hear the full performance or get more information, visit the song page at the Internet Archive. Excerpt taken from the film My Favorite Year is © 1982 Warner Bros. Entertainment. All Rights Reserved. Excerpt taken from the film History of the World, Part I is © 1981 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All rights reserved. Excerpt taken from “An Actor's Life (Main Title)” from the motion picture soundtrack to Tootsie. Composed and arranged by Dave Grusin. © 1982, 1983 Columbia Motion Pictures Industries, Inc.

This episode we talk My Favorite Year, one of our favorite comedies.

CLICK TO SUBSCRIBE ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCATCHER CONTENT WARNING: Discussion of losing a parent, death of a child, grief, suicide, mental illness, transgender representation, transphobia, death. Robin Williams' breakout film performance wasn't Popeye, and it wasn't Good Morning, Vietnam. It was this small, oddball tragicomedy that landed just around the time Mork from Ork waved goodbye to TV audiences. It's a strange movie, because the very literary novel it's based off of feels like it's fighting itself as a movie script constantly. But the acting is just magical in its softness and craft, with incomparable performances from Glenn Close and John Lithgow. And there's a dreaminess that, despite the efforts of the director and writers, couldn't be completely taken out from this film. Oscars '82 continues this week with The World According to Garp on Macintosh & Maud Haven't Seen What?! You can email us with feedback at macintoshandmaud@gmail.com, or you can connect with us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Also please subscribe, rate and review the show on your favorite podcatcher, and tell your friends. Intro and outro music taken from the Second Movement of Ludwig von Beethoven's 9th Symphony. Licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Hong Kong (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 HK) license. To hear the full performance or get more information, visit the song page at the Internet Archive. Excerpt of “When I'm Sixty-Four” written by Lennon-McCartney and performed by The Beatles. Copyright 1967, 2017 Calderstone Productions Limited. Excerpts taken from the film The World According to Garp are © 1982 Warner Bros. Entertainment. All Rights Reserved. Excerpt taken from the film My Favorite Year is © 1982 Warner Bros. Entertainment. All Rights Reserved. Excerpt taken from “Red Right Hand,” with lyrics by Nick Cave and music by Nick Cave, Mick Harvey and Thomas Wylder. Performed by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. ℗ & © 1994 Mute Records Limited.

THE FILM & WATER PODCASTEpisode 187 - MY FAVORITE YEAR COMMENTARYRob welcomes back producer Corey Moosa to present an audio commentary for the 1982 comedy MY FAVORITE YEAR starring Peter O'Toole and Mark Linn-Baker. I predict we'll get this in one take!Have a question or comment? Looking for more great content? E-MAIL: firewaterpodcast@comcast.net Follow THE FILM & WATER PODCAST on Twitter: @FilmAndWaterPod Check out Corey Moosa in MY FAVORITE YEAR the musical: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyGnjVO5MsEYou can find THE FILM & WATER PODCAST on these platforms: Apple Podcasts: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-film-and-water-podcast/id1077572484 Amazon Music Spotify StitcherThis 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 Support The Fire & Water Podcast Network on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/fwpodcasts Use our HASHTAG online: #FWPodcastsThank you very much for listening! That's A Wrap!

Now a licensed psychotherapist specializing in creative issues, Dennis Palumbo is a former Hollywood screenwriter ("My Favorite Year," "Welcome Back, Kotter," etc.). His mystery fiction has appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, The Strand, Mystery Weekly and elsewhere, and is collected in "From Crime to Crime" (Tallfellow Press). His acclaimed debut crime novel, "Mirror Image," was the first in a series featuring psychologist and trauma expert Daniel Rinaldi. It was followed by "Fever Dream," "Night Terrors," "Phantom Limb” and the award-winning “Head Wounds.” Panic Attack is the sixth in the series. Matt Coyle is the Shamus, Anthony and Lefty Award-winning author of the Rick Cahill crime series. This podcast is solely owned by the Authors on the Air Global radio Network.

In this conclusion of a 2-part episode, veteran screen actors Richard Benjamin and Paula Prentiss talk about sharing the stage with their children, celebrating 60 years of marriage, casting the comedy classic "My Favorite Year" and filming "The Stepford Wives," "Westworld," Diary of a Mad Housewife" and "The Parallax View." Also, Mel Brooks produces "The Elephant Man," Orson Welles intimidates the cast of "Catch-22," Paula's mom chats up William S. Burroughs and Richard lists his favorite Paula Prentiss performances! PLUS: "Captain Nice"! Elsa Lanchester! The genius of Michael Crichton! The irrepressible Bill Macy! And Richard and Paula remember friends Yul Brynner, Buck Henry, Jack Klugman and George Segal! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For Norma Desmond, the pictures got small when words stole her mystique; for Alan Swann, it was when his drunken antics got him downgraded to the boob tube. They're both stand-ins for larger-than-life stars past their prime, Norma in Billy Wilder's scathing Sunset Blvd. (1950) and Alan in Richard Benjamin's cozy My Favorite Year (1982). In our latest Geek Challenge, Paul and Arlo discuss these fallen idols and how their respective movies take much different approaches to a mentor/mentee relationship. The boys break down the ways in which both films echo real-life Hollywood legends; praise Gloria Swanson's arch turn as Norma and Peter O'Toole's thinly veiled take on Errol Flynn; pine for dead monkey funerals; and wonder what things would be like if Jessica Harper ruled the mob.   NEXT: on this month's Four-Color Flashback, we conclude the post-apocalyptic adventures of Gus and Jeppard in Deluxe Editions 2 and 3 of Jeff Lemire's Sweet Tooth.     BREAKDOWN 00:00:40  -  Intro / Guest 00:06:28  -  Sunset Blvd. 00:52:15  -  My Favorite Year 01:28:56  -  Outro / Next     LINKS   Sunset Boulevard at 70: We're All Norma Desmond Now by Tom Joudrey, The Guardian Sunset Boulevard: The Original Hollywood Exposé by Tony Sokol, Den of Geek Sunset Boulevard - Filmsite Movie Review Sunset Boulevard - Roger Ebert's Review My Favorite Year: A Mirror for Errol Flynn & Peter O'Toole's Hellraising by Richard Monetti, Den of Geek ‘Lord Jim' and ‘Great Catherine' in ‘My Favorite Year' by Ben Yagoda, Movies in Other Movies My Favorite Year - Cineaste Review     MUSIC “Mama Said Knock You Out” by LL Cool J, Mama Said Knock You Out (1990) “Celluloid Heroes” by The Kinks, Everybody's in Show-Biz (1972)     GOBBLEDYCARES National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/  Support AAPI communities and those affected by anti-Asian violence: https://www.gofundme.com/c/act/stop-aapi-hate Support the AAPI Civic Engagement Fund: https://aapifund.org/ Support Black Lives Matter and find anti-racism resources: https://blacklivesmatters.carrd.co/ Advocate for writers who might be owed money due to discontinuance of royalties: https://www.writersmustbepaid.org/  Help teachers and classrooms in need: https://www.donorschoose.org/ Do your part to remove the burden of medical debt for individuals, families, and veterans: https://ripmedicaldebt.org/ Register to vote: https://vote.gov/

Vamos a hacer un repaso por la carrera como músico del compositor americano Stephen Flaherty con su habitual colaboradora durante cerca de cuarenta años, la letrista y libretista Lynn Ahrens, autores entre otros de los musicales "RAGTIME", "ONCE ON THIS ISLAND" o "ANASTASIA". Stephen Flaherty a los doce años ya sabía qué quería ser de mayor, compositor de musicales. Se graduó a los veintidós años en el Conservatorio de Música de Cincinnati donde alternaba sus estudios con actuaciones en una banda en la que tocaba el piano ragtime que le sería de gran ayuda cuando compuso su musical más famoso. Marchó a New York para estudiar teatro musical y conoció a Lynn Ahrens, letrista con la que escribió su primer musical “LUCKY STIFF” que estrenaron en el off de Broadway en 1989, ganando el premio Richard Rodgers. A este le seguiría “ONCE ON THIS ISLAND” nominado a ocho premios Tony en 1990. "MY FAVORITE YEAR" en 1992 y "RAGTIME" en 1996 del que hablamos en el “Cuéntame un musical” de este mes. En el 2000 estrenaron "SEUSSICAL" en Broadway que se convirtió en uno de los musicales infantiles favoritos en colegios y en 2002 "A MAN OF NO IMPORTANCE". En 2005 estrenaron "DESSA ROSE" y en 2007 "THE GLORIOUS ONES. Sus últimos musicales hasta la fecha son “ROCKY” estrenado en el 2012, “LITTLE DANCER” estrenado en 2014 y "ANASTASIA" estrenado en 2016 en una versión teatral ampliada de la versión para la película de animación por la que fueron nominados al Oscar a la mejor banda sonora y canción. Espero te guste la selección que hemos preparado 00h 00'00" Presentación 00h 04'10" Cabecera 00h 04'45" 1988 LUCKY STIFF 00h 04'45" Something funny - Company 00h 06'27" Good to be alive - Evan Pappas, Paul Kandel, Mary Stout & Barbara Rosenblat 00h 10'17" Nice - Judy Blazer & Evan Pappas 00h 13'22" 1990 ONCE ON THIS ISLAND 00h 13'22" Forever yours - LaChanze, Jerry Dixon & Eric Riley 00h 17'52" The human heart - Andrea Frierson-Toney & Storytellers 00h 21'40" Wating for life - LaChanze 00h 25'05" We dance - Storytellers 00h 30'28" 1993 MY FAVORITE YEAR 00h 30'28" If the world were like the movies - Tim Curry 00h 34'16" Larger than life - Evan Pappas 00h 38'59" Exits - Tim Curry 00h 43'30" My favorite year - Evan Pappas 00h 46'52" Manhattan - Tim Curry 00h 51'27" Twenty million people - Evan Pappas 00h 57'33" 1998 RAGTIME 00h 57'33" Make them hear you - Quentin Darrington 00h 59'40" New music - Ron Bohmer, Christiane Noll, Bobby Steggert & Quentin Darrington 01h 03'45" Our children - Christiane Noll & Robert Petkoff 01h 06'08" Ragtime - Stephen Flaherty & Chorus 01h 09'02" Wheels of a dream - Quentin Darrington & Stephanie Umoh 01h 12'37" 2000 SEUSSICAL 01h 12'37" A day for the cat in the hat - David Shiner & Anthony Blair Hill 01h 15'26" Alone in the Universe - Anthony Blair Hill & Kevin Chamberlain 01h 20'08" How lucky you are - David Shiner, Michelle Pawk & Kevin Chamberlain 01h 22'39" Oh, the thinks you can think - David Shiner 01h 26'28" 2002 A MAN OF NO IMPORTANCE 01h 26'28" The streets of Dublin - Stephen Pasquale 01h 29'48" 2005 DESSA ROSE 01h 29'48" Fly away - Rebecca Eichenbeger 01h 32'49" In the bend of my arm - Rachel York, Norm Lewis, LaChanze & Eric Jordan 01h 37'49" Their eyes are clear, blue like - LaChanze 01h 40'14" We are descended - Company 01h 44'53" 2007 THE GLORIOUS ONES 01h 44'53" I was here - Marc Kudish 01h 48'13" Making love - Marc Kudish 01h 50'38" My body wasn't why - Natalie Venetia Belcon 01h 53'43" The glorious ones - Marc Kudish 01h 56'55" 2012 ROCKY 01h 56'55" Ain't down yet - Company 01h 58'59" Happiness - Andy Karl & Margo Sieber 02h 01'43" Keep on standing - Andy Karl 02h 04'58" My nose ain't broken - Andy Karl 02h 08'37" One of us - Company 02h 10'35" Raining - Margo Sieber 02h 14'38" 2016 ANASTASIA 02h 14'38" A rumor in St Petersburg - Derek Klena & John Bolton 02h 20'15" Everything to win - Derek Klena 02h 22'53" Journey to the past - Christy Altomare 02h 26'08" Once upon a December - Christy Altomare 02h 28'59" Paris holds the key to your heart - John Bolton, Derek Klena & Christy Altomare 02h 32'01" Still - Ramin Karimloo

You know what they say: Parenting is hard, especially when you're undercover KGB operatives masquerading as a suburban American couple. As Paul, Arlo, and special guest Wesley “Wezzo” Mead dive into season 2 of Joe Weisberg and Joel Fields' modern classic The Americans, they discover all the ways child-rearing is difficult for Philip and Elizabeth Jennings. This includes concealing your secret identity; setting up a decoy aunt; keeping your kids out of the church; and shielding them from the dreaded “spurtsposition.” Plus, Paul and Wezzo rock out to the new Fratellis album and share some nice words about Ted Lasso.   NEXT: it's My Favorite Year to take a stroll down Sunset Blvd. on a new Geek Challenge.     BREAKDOWN 00:01:16  -  Intro / Guest 00:14:17  -  Main Topic 01:51:00  -  Outro / Next     MUSIC “Twilight Zone” by Golden Earring, Cut (1982) “Here Comes the Flood” by Peter Gabriel, Peter Gabriel (1977)     GOBBLEDYCARES National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/  Support AAPI communities and those affected by anti-Asian violence: https://www.gofundme.com/c/act/stop-aapi-hate Support the AAPI Civic Engagement Fund: https://aapifund.org/ Support Black Lives Matter and find anti-racism resources: https://blacklivesmatters.carrd.co/ Advocate for writers who might be owed money due to discontinuance of royalties: https://www.writersmustbepaid.org/  Help teachers and classrooms in need: https://www.donorschoose.org/ Do your part to remove the burden of medical debt for individuals, families, and veterans: https://ripmedicaldebt.org/ Register to vote: https://vote.gov/

Welcome to the premier episode of the podcast “The History of Hollywood with Marc Wanamaker”.Marc Wanamaker is recognized around the world as one of the leading historians of Los Angeles, Hollywood, and the Motion Picture and Television Industries. Marc has been a foremost authority in the areas of film production, exhibition, and research for several decades. He has been the featured expert on numerous television shows and documentaries and is the author of several best selling books. Marc has served as a technical advisor and consultant on numerous major motion pictures, including, “Chaplin” with Robert Downey Jr. , “My Favorite Year” with Peter O'Toole, “LA Confidential” with Russell Crowe , “One Upon a Time in Hollywood” with Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio, as well as for television shows such as “NCIS Los Angeles” and many, many more.  For more information, go to www.PovertyRowStudios.TV.For more information about Marc, or to view his extensive collection of Hollywood photos, go to www.BisonArchives.com. Taped at Sunset Gower Studios, Hollywood, CAWritten by Marc WanamakerCreated & Produced by Christopher Ewing“The History of Hollywood with Marc Wanamaker” is brought to you by Audible.  With over 180,000 audio book titles, from New Releases to Best Sellers, you can listen to Audible on your computer,  iPhone, Android, or Kindle, whenever and wherever you want!Plus, just for being a listener of “The History of Hollywood with Marc Wanamaker”, our friends at Audible are giving you a FREE audiobook of your choice, and a 30-day free trial of their service!  To get your free audio book, just go to www.AudibleTrial.com/The HistoryOfHollywood!

SHOWS: Funny Girl, Seesaw (Detroit), My Favorite Year Lainie Kazan has done it all. Broadway, Off-Broadway, Movies, Television, Recordings, Nightclub Owner, Playboy Model, Fashionista, and provided audiences with indelible memories in such shows as Bravo, Giovanni, Seesaw (Detroit), My Favorite Year, TV shows like The Nanny, and movies like My Big Fat Greek Wedding! Lainie pulls back the curtain on her career to discuss how she won the role of understudying Fanny Brice in Funny Girl, what it was like out of town with Seesaw, and why she decided to become one of the first female club owners in a male-dominated field. Also, Lainie shines the spotlight on Peter O'Toole, Barbra Streisand, and Michael Bennett! Become a sponsor of Behind The Curtain and get early access to interviews, private playlists, and advanced knowledge of future guests so you can ask the legends your own questions. Go to: http://bit.ly/2i7nWC4 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I like the comedy with my Rock 'n Roll. Hall of Fame'r Ricky Byrd, delivers brilliantly on both counts. Great stories of his heroes in both worlds. Watching them as a kid on Ed Sullivan, to sharing jokes and cokes at The Pines Hotel coffee shop with Freddie Roman, Dick Capri, and Mal Z Lawrence, to sharing a stage with Stevie Wonder, Joe Walsh, Billie Joe Armstrong, Paul McCartney, and Ringo Starr, all at the same time. Full circle. I met Ricky Byrd back in the daze… when we were both in a daze… I was booking the Rock’ N Roll Café on Bleecker Street. Ricky was already a rockstar, center stage lead guitarist with Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, playing those iconic riffs in the great MTV Music Video Days. Ricky has recorded, toured, and/or has performed with Roger Daltrey, Ian Hunter, Southside Johnny, Mavis Staples, Brian Wilson, Alice Cooper, Paul Shaffer, Smokey Robinson, and so many others, but we got stories about the above mentioned. As we did about Don Rickles, Frank Gorshen, Ron Wood, Keith Richards, Peter O'Toole, My Favorite Year, Hurricane Sandy, Robert Plant, getting sober, recovery, recovery music groups, recovery coaching, and counseling, creating and making music which supports the cause, and, rocks like hell. Following his solo albums, Lifer and Clean Getaway, his Sobering Times just dropped wide and has already garnered two hits on Little Steven's Underground Garage and one Coolest Song in The World. To get a signed copy of the CD and some Byrd swag and for all things Ricky https://www.rickybyrd.com/ In 2017, he received the Drug-Free Heroes Award, the Faces, and Voices 2019 Voice of Recovery Award, and the 2019 Italian American of Distinction Award, presented by Governor Cuomo. So very proud of this rockin' pal. Basically an old Borscht Belt Jew at heart, this RockBoy is all about making music, helping people get sober, reading Dorothy Parker, laughing at Phil Rosenthal, and Entenmann's chocolate anything. As a sober woman in recovery, Ricky’s plight, his passion, his stories, and his hair, are close to my heart. We now party like it’s 1869. My kinda fun. Ricky Byrd on Game Changers with Vicki Abelson Wed, 5/5/21, 5 pm PT, 8 pm ET Streamed Live on my Facebook Replay here: https://bit.ly/3tp6PwT All BROADcasts, as podcasts, also available on iTunes apple.co/2dj8ld3 Stitcher bit.ly/2h3R1fla tunein bit.ly/2gGeItj Also on iHeartRadio, SoundCloud, Voox, OwlTail, Backtracks, PlayerFM, Himalaya, Podchaser, and Listen Notes Thanks to Rick Smolke of Quik Impressions, the best printers, printing, the best people people-ing. quikimpressions.com Nicole Venables,of Ruby Begonia Hair Studio Beauty and Products, for tresses like the stars she coifs, and regular people, like me. I love my hair, and I love Nicole. http://www.rubybegoniahairstudio.com/ Blue Microphones and Kevin Walt

"Dying is easy...comedy is hard." With those words tonight's episode of YKY Classic is the 1982 comedy, My Favorite Year. Starring Peter O'Toole, in an Oscar nominated performance, in which he plays Alan Swan, an Errol Flynn type movie star who is a guest on King Kaiser's Comedy Cavalcade, a1950's sketch show. O'Toole shines in this light and breezy comedy. Will he do the show? Will Boss Rojack stop the broadcast? Will Benji Stone get the girl? Will Alan Swan stay sober? It sure was fun to find out. You want to smile...this is the film.

Today on The Neil Haley Show, The Total Tutor Neil Haley and Caregiver Dave will interview Dennis Palumbo, Author of Head Wounds. Dennis Palumbo, M.A., MFT is a writer and licensed psychotherapist in private practice, specializing in creative issues. His newest crime novel, PHANTOM LIMB, is on sale now from Poisoned Pen Press. The book is the fourth in the series featuring psychologist and trauma expert Daniel Rinaldi. The first Rinaldi mystery was MIRROR IMAGE, to be followed by FEVER DREAM and NIGHT TERRORS. Palumbo is also the author of WRITING FROM THE INSIDE OUT (John Wiley), as well as a collection of mystery short stories, FROM CRIME TO CRIME (Tallfellow Press). He also blogs regularly for the Huffington Post, and writes the popular “Hollywood on the Couch” column for the PSYCHOLOGY TODAY website. Formerly a Hollywood screen writer, Palumbo's credits include the feature film My Favorite Year, for which he was nominated for a WGA Award for Best Screenplay. He was also a staff writer for the ABC-TV series Welcome Back, Kotter, and has written numerous series episodes and pilots. His first novel, City Wars (Bantam Books) is currently in development as a feature film, and his short fiction has appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, The Strand and elsewhere. He provides articles and reviews for The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Lancet, and many others.    

Phil began his journalism career at Pace University as an assignment reporter. He started doing movie reviews after an interview fell through. The newspaper needed to fill the space so he offered to review My Favorite Year starring Peter O'Toole. The editor and read and then asked him to continue doing movie reviews because he […] The post 111: Writing Tips and Techniques from Film and Journalism with Phil Hall appeared first on TCK Publishing.

The Next Reel's Speakeasy is a new ongoing series of ours in which we invite an industry guest to join us and, instead of bringing their favorite cocktail, we have them bring along one of their favorite movies to talk about. In this inaugural episode, actor Abraham Benrubi joins us to talk about one of his faves, Richard Benjamin's 1982 comedy gem “My Favorite Year,” starring Peter O'Toole and Mark Linn-Baker.

The Next Reel's Speakeasy is a new ongoing series of ours in which we invite an industry guest to join us and, instead of bringing their favorite cocktail, we have them bring along one of their favorite movies to talk about. In this inaugural episode, actor Abraham Benrubi joins us to talk about one of his faves, Richard Benjamin's 1982 comedy gem “My Favorite Year,” starring Peter O'Toole and Mark Linn-Baker.

The Next Reel's Speakeasy is a new ongoing series of ours in which we invite an industry guest to join us and, instead of bringing their favorite cocktail, we have them bring along one of their favorite movies to talk about. In this inaugural episode, actor Abraham Benrubi joins us to talk about one of his faves, Richard Benjamin's 1982 comedy gem “My Favorite Year,” starring Peter O'Toole and Mark Linn-Baker.