Yes, I believe they were. Hitchcock, Tarantino, Scorsese, De Palma, Stephen King (I threw the author in with the filmmakers as that’s where a lot of his trash ends up). Two really interesting actors were in The Rope this morning on TCM, Jimmy Stewart and Farley Granger. The third principle John Dall just comes across as irritating. The movie was about two twits who thought they could commit the “perfect” murder for some bullshit reason or another. Stewart as ‘Rupert’ (who names their kid Rupert?) figures out their deed and summons the police in a unique way.
But my point, if there is any is: What sort of psycho spends their entire life obsessed with murder? Think about that, what sort of nut doesn’t just use it as a random plot device once or twice in a career, but wallows in it. Bathes in it. Immerses himself in it. Who does that? Women filmmakers didn’t. Films with John Wayne as an example sometimes found it necessary that the good guy would have to kill the bad guy, but the films were never about celebrating the taking of innocent life. If the good guy had to kill someone, it was for a reason. Not because he was just a sick, twisted individual. Reveling in the most heinous of human acts.
What’s going through their mind? What sort of sick caldron exists in their head? Its not normal. Its not good. Film can go one of three ways. It can seek to extol the highest good of the human existence. It can seek to be an objective recorder of human events. Or it can appeal to the dark and evil recesses of the mind. Substituting shock for skill. Reaching for the grotesque constantly doesn’t elevate film or the human experience. It simply appeals to the ‘naughty’ factor.
After sufficient exposure, it simply coarsens, and perhaps inspiressick people to commit sick crimes. I would put it on the same terms as the way pornography is destructive to the mind. That there is something called ‘violence porn‘, which is equally destructive to the soul.
British daredevil looked death in the face, and laughed. Sneered. Chuckled. Guffawed. Ice runs through his veins.
You can find the most amazing things in the wee hours. This video circa 1978, at the height of Evil Knievel fame, is rich in so many ways. His audience watching from the apartment building (being England it was raining of course). No helmet, but does have oven mitts to protect the hands. Interesting bicycle, has Stingray style handle bars, but a 26 inch or so frame. As silly as it seems, he was out there keeping it real, he wasn’t on his ‘device’. (the channel, ‘Ozzy Man Reviews‘, is a case study in insanity itself)
Nancy Kovack
Shortly before it became unwatchable, I was watching, Enter Laughing (1967). Being a heterosexual male I immediately noticed Nancy Kovack. She played on a Star Trek: A Private Little War as a witch doctor type character. On Bewitched as Sheila Sommers, Darrin’s man-stealing ex-girlfriend. She had 8 beauty titles by the time she was 20 (no need to fact check that). Like a lot of beauty queens, her last role was when she was 40. She moved to Germany and lives happily ever after.
A scene from Enter Laughing
“A native of Flint, Michigan, Nancy Kovack was a student at the University of Michigan at 15, a radio deejay at 16, a college graduate at 19 and the holder of eight beauty titles by 20.”
Then there’s the Weather Channel’s Stephanie Abrams…
It could be the North Pole and she brings the heat. They won’t let her go to Alaska, she’d melt the polar ice cap.
There’s a million stories in the early morning, and this was one.
Lana Turner is a bit of an odd duck with me. Not having lived back then I don’t know what was really going on, only what I read and perceive from her work. Hollywood being of zero intelligence and no creativity, pigeonholed Lana like they did so many others (Esther Williams: She swims! Judy Garland! She has to sing! Ginger Rogers dances! Bette Davis plays crazy old bats!) Hollywood knows nothing else. That’s why there is a law in Hollywood that allows them to only make remakes. If they make something new they have to pay a fine.
Hollywood’s perception of Lana was that she could only play oversexed bimbos. When her parents moved to San Francisco her parents separated and she was placed in the foster care system. Meaning we pay adults to abuse these children in their care. Hollywood just continued the abuse. They nicknamed her “the sweater girl“. Married 8 times. Her 14 year old daughter stabs to death her mom’s abusive gangster boyfriend. She was a wild ride.
I knew nothing about all this until recently. I had a hard time remembering her name. The only reason she came on my radar at all was that I saw “The Postman Always Rings Twice” was coming on TCM and I had always wanted to see it. I had really come to appreciate John Garfield. As far as Lana Turner having sex appeal? Not for me. Nothing. She’s beautiful, but she certainly didn’t bring any heat. But that’s like a lot of what Hollywood tries to force on you; Joan Crawford, a young Katharine Hepburn, Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe, and on and on.
The other noteworthy work of hers from my perspective was Peyton Place (1957). Visually it was a stunning work. The people, the locations, the clothes. It was part of Hollywood’s period where they were a little ham-handed trying to take down mainstream American society. They wanted to make it clear that it wasn’t okay to be white. That traditional American culture was responsible for all the world’s problems. It wasn’t just me that liked that one, she received an Oscar nomination for it.
And none of this wasn’t to say old Hollywood couldn’t take a stunning photo. But that’s all they were, visual pageantry. Thus Lana was useful to them for awhile.
Gunsmoke closing credits, one of the most moving theme songs of all time
I had given up some weeks ago from trying to watch Barnaby Jones or Canon in the mornings on MeTV KCCI channel 8.2 in Des Moines. But in order to have a post on a factual basis I had to put a stopwatch to it. First I looked up how long each episode was that they put in a 1 hour time slot in the 70s. Turns out the shows were 51 minutes long back then (amazingly the Andy Griffith type half hour show in the 60s was an unbelievably 26 minutes long). So when I put a stopwatch to it I found out they had now taken 15 minutes from Barnaby Jones, 6 minutes more than as originally shown. It wouldn’t even be so bad if they kept interruptions to a quarter, half and top of the hour. 4 big breaks instead of 7 little ones. Or if they just did commercials, instead of these mind numbing station promos.
But what were those missing 6 minutes? We’ll never know. I notice on other channels they cheat by not showing the closing credits. They roll them at the bottom in real tiny print then as soon as the show is over they go to the next ones, skipping the closing theme song and the readable credits. When I saw them do that on Gunsmoke (pictured above) and the Virginian, two really good theme songs, I realized what was happening. The 45 seconds or so it took to do the credits originally, with the moving theme song, allowed you to ruminate for a minute and let you process what you had just watched. Now its just boom and gone! With no time for reflection. I do hope people wake up eventually and see what’s going on.
The TV stations by how they broadcast a show, are saying just what they think of you.
[As another example 11/15 on MeTV, they just cutout the, “Goodnight John Boy!” at the end of the Waltons! Who does that? How is a TV station that dumb? 8.2 isn’t the only time thief in the Des Moines area, 13.3 is too. Partridge Family, originally a 25 minute show, is now down to 20 minutes at the WHO-TV affiliate. 5 minutes just gone! You’d think “artists” would be pissed about being hacked and butchered. Its no different than taking a razor blade cutting off 20% of an oil painting. How would that look? Taking an arm off a statue.]
(Watching 1 primetime network show last night, Young Sheldon, has revealed how bad that market has become! These are first run shows! Up to and including the season premiere 2 weeks ago. Their commercials were: 3+6+4=13 They are almost at half commercials!13 minutes! Of a half hour show, its unbelievable. No credits, they are shrunken speed credits. There’s no where to go. What are they going to do next year? Go 15 and 15? Oh! Oh! I know! They’ll split screen it, run the show on half a screen and run commercials on the other.)
Watching this morning, there is literally nothing to watch. I finally ended up on 13.2, the constant local weather loop where they also announce birthdays. TCM is showing one of Glenn Ford’s horribly bad gritty urban youth dramas. The channels with the old fart shows I refuse to watch. The Weather Channel is doing one of their reality shows with obnoxious music. And the rest of the entire Mediacom Cable System is completely worthless.
“1-Adam 12! A 415 fight group with chains and knives!” That’s what I’m talking, one of the best shows made period. So I pulled out my Season One DVD set. The episodes are 24 1/2 minutes long. Tomorrow I’ll put a stopwatch to the hack job KCCI MeTV 8.2 does to them. After putting a stopwatch to it, my calculations is they have a total of 7 minutes of commercials and promos in the half hour show. Amazingly, that’s only a minute and a half more than as originally shown. Evidently where they do their worst, is as I originally said, in the wee hours. But once again it comes down to one basic fact. We wouldn’t have to miss 1 second of the show, if they just cut out some of the station promos.
Then on AMC they just had the ending of Vacation. The movie has that great version of Holiday Road, for the closing credits, but not on TV. Its actually a large part of the movie as it invokes wonderful nostalgia with the viewer. None of it, all gone. No credits.
Americans have no idea what they’ve missed, being dependent on Hollywood for their movies as it were. Being of limited experience I hadn’t realized it myself until 8 or 9 years ago with, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Hollywood of course had to keep the Danish version out of America so they could remake their own version to scoop up all the profits. Sure they ruined the movie, but by doing so they were able to release their own clothing line! It was all about merchandising!
Shortly thereafter I discovered film festivals. Where a sixteen year old with a Sony Handycam could generally be counted on to come up with something more interesting than Hollywood and a $23 million dollar budget. I was watching a really fun little movie last Saturday morning from 1932 that I thought was original, it was a remake from 1920! That’s all the last few years have been. So this morning I happen upon Un Carnet de Bal. A French film of course where a just widowed Christine takes the death of her husband to examine her own life. No children, just a haunting dream of a ball from 20 years ago and of the men who were on the dance card of her coming out party.
Having nothing to tie her down now, she decides to travel to look up the men from that night to see what has become of them. Some have died. Some have found their dreams. Many have not. Just fascinating vignettes as we drop in to observe lives that have been in motion the entire time, we just weren’t there to see them. Each sphere orbiting its own little world. Christine drops in for a moment of time and then moves on to the next on the list of 20 men. Simple men, complex men, good-hearted men, bad men.
Immediately below Christine on the upper left of the picture was my favorite encounter, the one with Alain Regnault (portrayed by an incredible actor named Harry Baur). The scene embodies everything lacking in American film. The understated nature. The focus on human emotions and not car chases and shootouts. Alain is now a Monk who leads a boys choir for at risk youth. His one true love having spurned him decades before. Now he tries to teach these boys the morals missing from today’s childhoods. The idea that the soul of a youth was to be nurtured and strengthened. Not coddled and ignored.
This movie from 1937 was in such contrast to American movies of the time. They seemed to be all about talking fast, drinking a lot and zinging one-liners (think William Powell, Myrna Loy, Clark Gable, Rosalind Russell). European films of the time weren’t stuck in a time warp so to speak. The people talked and acted like they do today, they just happened to be in black and white. Its never been so stark a difference as in their silent films. Watch a French, German, Danish, Italian, Norwegian, Japanese or Indian silent film and compare it to an American film.
Its like 10 year old’s with bad taste made the American films. The exaggerated body motions, ridiculous facial expressions. Everything was slapstick. So much of American film then seemed to be about spectacular train wrecks, impossible car chases, and death defying physical stunts. Lacking was any subtlety or nuance, all they had was a hammer and everything else was a nail. The overall impression I have of Hollywood film through the decades was their condescension for the American audience, or their complete lack of ability.
Hiding from life in the mountains
The monk thinking of a one-time love
The monk seeing if the boy who broke the lamp will come forward
The civil servant on his wedding day, marrying his maid
Gabrielle Fontan, Françoise Rosay, Marie Bell (the mother, center, unable to accept her sons death)
1973’s ‘The Exorcist’ – Linda Blair (R), Ellen Burstyn
Broadcast radio and television have 2 major flaws: most of their programming is substandard, but when they do run old shows they ruin it with excessive commercials. There is such a dearth of quality shows. So the other morning when I happen to catch The Exorcist on AMC, I watch it (who doesn’t like a good demon possession movie?). As I have taken to doing lately I check to see what the length of the movie is compared to how long of a timeslot they put it in. In this case the movie is 122 minutes long in a 165 minutes time slot. I think, okay, 2 hour movie with 45 minutes of commercials. That’s fair. Not great, but fair. But then I recently found out you can’t just go by those 2 numbers.
They start commercials early and comeback late. They completely eliminate the credits and run station promos over the top. So to satisfy my curiosity I put a timer to it. Very interesting. It started out great, 14 minutes of movie and 5 minutes of commercials. I can live with that. Then as the movie wore on it got worse and worse. By the end they were showing 7 minutes of movie and 5 minutes of commercials! That’s bullshit. When I did the tally they had taken off 12 minutes of the movie, and had a total of 57 minutes of commercial. And of course the people who made the movie, never got their credit at the end. Its maddening!
Radio does the same thing. These 2 Bozos in the morning, ‘Redeye Radio’ run 16 minutes of show in a half hour (15+1), and 14 minutes of news and commercial. That’s basically representative of all talk radio. What this says to me is they don’t think much of their customers. Their contempt is so great I’m waiting for them to go ‘overweight’ on commercials (more commercials in an hour than show). They’re close now. Rush has done it in the last year. He’s taken to reading these ‘live’ commercials in the middle of a broadcast period. Sean Hannity may have done it too. The reason they can get away with it is there is basically no competition, they’re all bad!
Radio was destroyed some years back when indie’s were forced out and they were all swallowed up by 1 mega-corporation. The first one I knew of was Clear Channel. They were bought out by iHeart Radio. Steel sharpens steel, and when there is no competition they get fat and lazy. And that they have. The same thing can be seen in television. In the old days there was a respectable amount of local programming. A way for the local affiliate to standout, make a name for themselves. That’s all gone. Now its network or nothing. They whole country sees the same crap. Homogenization. Their own programming tells them nothing.
The explosion in ‘retro’ channels isn’t telling them anything. No one’s buying into their new crap. But they’re not listening. What I’m really waiting for is to see if the consumers ever wake up to the fact they are being spit on by the broadcasters? Primetime network television (at least the 3 majors) isn’t quite as bad as radio yet, but they’re working on it. And the “off” channels, the AMC, USA and others are already there. Its a wasteland. You just never know when people are going to wake up, or not. The sliver of good shows, whether radio or TV, cannot be more than 10% of the total, then they ruin that!
[On a side note I find it interesting how The Exorcist really grew on me in its nearly 50 year existence. I looked up and found out it was mostly filmed at Georgetown University in DC. Simply beautiful exteriors with the beautiful fall they had that year. The ominous foreboding of the score. Linda Blair. A quality performance by Ellen Burstyn and Lee J. Cobb. But the one that has really grown on me is Jason Miller’s portrayal of Father Karras. Without him I don’t think the movie becomes the classic it has. He went between writing and acting during his career and died at the way too young age of 62. IMDB cast listing is so crazy. He is listed 6th, and Linda Blair is listed 7th! It doesn’t seem to be alphabetical, it doesn’t seem to be by screen time, it doesn’t seem to be by anything!]
Kristy McNichol, you may remember her from such shows as ‘Family’
I remember her as this cute seventeen year old, 110 pounds, beautiful brown eyes. “Star power” is a strange thing. I’m not sure if its a matter of some people have it and some people don’t, or maybe the others just never got a chance to show it. Kristy is an interesting case study. She had star power in spades. She was troubled by health issues, keeping her sexuality a secret, and all the other problems of being a teen/young person in Hollywood. If nothing else she was a ‘celebrity’. Hollywood liked her, they kept her employed. She made the difficult transition from child actor to adult.
A friend had sent me a ‘look at her now‘ photo. Once she told me who it was I said, “Oh yeah! Kristy McNichol!” I could see it then. All I had in my mind was the lithe teen on the cover of Tiger Beat magazine in terrycloth shorts and a crop top from forty years ago. 3 years apart, I had watched her pretty close back then. I remember thinking it was kind of odd in her late teens and early twenties when they tried to make this obvious tomboy into a sex kitten. One of the strangest was the pairing with Tatum O’Neal in ‘Little Darlings’. Just remembering a doe-eyed cutie.
A successful Tom Cruise movie generally involves sunglasses, gold chains, rock music, a toothy grin and some sort of motorized travel (jet, boat, motorcycle, helicopter). Not generally a fan since All the Right Moves, but this movie blew me away. Really, really, blew me away. Not because of hunky Tommy, not because it was a great ‘movie’, but because of the story it told! Anyone with half a brain doesn’t rely on the lamestream media for all their news (or any of it). As someone who has listened to conservative talk radio for over a quarter century, I haven’t heard it all, but I’ve heard a lot of it.
Bush family, cocaine smuggling, Bo Gritz, Jerome Corsi, Mena Airport, the Golden Triangle, guns for drugs, Contras. I just never thought it would all be told in a mainstream Hollywood movie. I suppose nearly 40 years after the fact they thought it would be safe. Reminds me a lot of Oliver Stone and JFK, only I don’t remember anyone rushing out to deny this one. People have no idea what our government is capable of.
I thought I was savvy to all this, not even close. The eyeopener for me was the fools the drug cartels made out of Reagan and the CIA. They weren’t arming “rebels” fighting a communist insurgency, they were providing drug cartels with the guns they needed. So they could beat the other cartels. A bunch of narcos played the US Government for fools.
Oh the dilemma! I’ve always despised PBS for taking my tax dollars to buy British programming. On the other hand British shit is better (even if you do need subtitles). No denying. They can’t have the budget of Hollywood, they can’t have the facilities of Hollywood, but the Brits kick Hollywood’s ass so bad! Hollywood’s ass is still flying somewhere over Lake Michigan.
Now I could get into KCCI’s subchannel programming, ME-TV 8.2 and H&I 8.3, if they’d just play the damn shows. But they won’t. Its a never ending string of station promos. I’m not complaining about the commercials, I get that. What KCCI does on top of the commercials is run weather breaks, and news teases, and personality profiles, for minutes on end! Instead of just showing us how good they are, they tell us.
I just flip up one channel to 11.1. No commercials. No station promos. Better shows. Beautiful cinematography. Sure its goofy ass British shit, but at least you get to see the show. Somebody really should look at why Hollywood can’t turn out anything you’d want to watch. It is rather embarrassing. We’re supposed to be the “world’s lone superpower” and we can’t produce decent television. I think a group of 12-year-olds with Sony Cams could beat the snot out of Hollywood.
Horrible photo of 70s goddess Laurie Prange, there’s just nothing there of a young woman with such a heavenly body (the Barnaby Jones episode: The Inside Man)
I was going up channel, and here’s what I saw: Barney Miller, CHiPs, “Best of the Week” (some goofy video show where people get hurt), Last Man Standing, Bulletproof with idiot Adam Sandler, Law and Order… KCCI early morning shows a couple of great programs from the 70s, Cannon and Barnaby Jones. Yesterday I wasn’t sure what happened with Cannon. They were closing in on the crooks at 7 till the hour, on schedule, they go to commercial, then its the happy last minute wrap-up-! What the hell happened?? I’d been watching the whole show to get the viewer satisfaction of handcuffs being slapped on those bastards, and poof! KCCI misses the climax! The whole point of the damn show!
This morning I was watching for it on Barnaby Jones. They go to commercial and comeback at 12 minutes after the hour. Barnaby is sitting in the office getting the details of the heist from the owner when, poof! 5 seconds back from commercial, and GD KCCI is off on 5 minutes of station promos and weather promos! You literally just got back, and you go again?? Why even bother to run the damn show? We can not be seeing even half the show. Its ridiculous. When they aren’t showing crap shows you can’t watch, they’re cutting 12 minutes from the show you could watch!
[Saturday morning update: the weekend crew at the station didn’t seem to have the mission of the wrecking crew I mean regular crew to cut out half the show. I actually saw it all on the weekend morning, 46 minutes of an hour show. Yes, I put a timer to it.]
Iowa life 