Quips and Quotations (Three-Hour Tour Wear Edition)

 

1938-2020

 

Oh, I've had a $50,000 offer, but I don't know. There's only one pair, that's all there is.

--Dawn Wells, aka, Mary Ann on Gilligan's Island

Seoul Music

 

 

Time recently named its annual (duh) Person of the Year, which happens to be President-elect Joe Biden. That's not much of a surprise. In the last 24 presidential elections, the winner was accorded the honor 12 times--that's half if I doing my math right--the year of the election. In the last 20 years alone--that's five election cycles--we've seen two George W. Bushes, two Barack Obamas, one Donald Trump (thank God only one) and now Biden. So it it isn't really something that piqued my interest. However, Time has other "of the year" categories, including Entertainer of the Year, the 2020 recipient of which is South Korean pop band BTS, and that surprised me. I've heard of the band, and I think their hit single "Dynamite" may have drifted into the vicinity of my ear drums at one time or other, but I had no idea they were the dominant form of entertainment of the past 12 months. This is my fault, and not theirs. Unlike others my age, or, really, anybody over, say, 40, I don't pretend that pop music has declined in quality simply because I don't keep up with current trends as much as I used to. As one gets older, staying attuned to tunes has to compete with such things as earning a living, trying to figure out where it all went wrong, and taking daily doses of prescribed medications that either make you dizzy, have to go to the bathroom, or both. With all that going on, who's got time to check out the cover of Rolling Stone, much less Time? Do they even publish Rolling Stone anymore? (I looked; they still do but it's now a monthly.) Moreover, who's even had time for entertainment with a pandemic going on?...Um, actually, with all the school closings, layoffs, and 10:PM curfews, most people now have the time, as long as the entertainment is emanating from an electrical device in your home. And that kind of works in BTS's favor. You can find them on the radio, on television, and on the dominant entertainment venue of our era, the Internet. Speaking of the Internet, you can find them here: 

Watching that video, I can't help but get the sense of a torch being passed. Androgynous young men singing (or rapping) a song packed with pop culture references that celebrates youthful rebellion. Sure, that kind of thing's been done before, but usually by artists operating inside the United States-United Kingdom pop music dominium. I guess what I'm trying to say is that the Asians are beating us at our own game. But I'm not complaining. If freedom is to survive at all in our sorry world in the near term, it will have less to do with shameless politicians goose-stepping to the beat of the most incontinent campaign donor, and more to do with bands like BTS reminding us that freedom can be a viable option in the first place, as pop music acts have demonstrated since Elvis (or Louis Armstrong.) And it's not just a youthful rebellion without a cause, either. At the height of this year's race riots, the band sent a one million dollar check to Black Lives Matter, and challenged their fans, via social media, to match that number, and they did, in a single day (See? People without MAGA hats are allowed to use Facebook and Twitter, too.) And they've spoken out in favor of LGBTQ rights, otherwise a taboo topic in South Korea.

All well and good, but old fogey that I am, my mind can't help but turn to another musical video set in Korea. OK, it's actually a Hollywood set pretending to be Korea, and the performers aren't Korean themselves, but in its own way it's about that most basic of freedoms, the freedom to express oneself: 

You may want to come up with your own lyrics in case martial law is declared between now and January 20.

 

 

Quips and Quotations (Christmas Anthropomorphism Edition)

 

It was a pretty sight, and a seasonable one, that met their eyes when they flung the door open. In the fore-court, lit by the dim rays of a horn lantern, some eight or ten little field-mice stood in a semicircle, red worsted comforters round their throats, their fore-paws thrust deep into their pockets, their feet jigging for warmth. With bright beady eyes they glanced shyly at each other, sniggering a little, sniffing and applying coat-sleeves a good deal. As the door opened, one of the elder ones that carried the lantern was just saying, "Now then, one, two, three!" and forthwith their shrill little voices uprose on the air, singing one of the old-time carols that their forefathers composed in fields that were fallow and held by frost, or when snow-bound in chimney corners, and handed down to be sung in the miry street to lamp-lit windows at Yule-time.

--Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

 

Under the Radar: Melanie Chartoff

 

 OK, it's time for the third installment of my ongoing series about talented people, usually performers of some sort, who for whatever reasons never attained stardom. Except where Melanie Chartoff is concerned, I wonder if she didn't achieve some kind of stardom after all. I say that because I came across on eBay this autographed index card that sold about a week ago for just under $5. Ok, that's not a whole lot of money these days, but it does show that somebody is willing to shell out something just to bask in the afterglow of her celebrity. Of course, it could just be the afterglow of the fondly-remembered 1990's sitcom Seinfeld, and anybody who had any connection to it, even if, as in Chartoff's case, that connection amounts to a mere two episodes ("The Fire" and "The Finale".) I myself remember Chartoff from the early 1980s sketch comedy show Fridays. Like Goldie Hawn on Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, she was the show's resident sex symbol, but, again like Hawn, she had the comic chops to transcend such symbolism. Unfortunately, you won't see those comic chops much on display in the following clip, as she, and just about everyone else in the scene (including a young Jon Favreau in clown's make-up) plays straight man to Jason Alexander's George Costanza:

George exhibits similar grace under pressure later on in the episode. I don't want to give anything away except to say it involves a toy pistol.

The comic stylings of Melanie Chartoff (whose birthday is today, incidentally) are more readily apparent in this clip (though it's not the only thing readily apparent):

Back in 1980, scatological humor was somewhat less commonplace on television than it is today, one reason you hear such loud whoops of laughter every time the word sex is mentioned in the above clip. Compared that to the mention of another word, pretentious. There the laughter is much more subdued, as if the audience weren't sure they got the joke. Of course, that's the whole point of the sketch, whether that television critic has figured it out or not.  

The cast of Fridays. Clockwise there's...um...where to begin...I'll start with the lanky guy in glasses with the Larry Fine-like hairdo. In fact, he's a Larry, too, though his last name's David. Next there's Mark Blankfield, Maryedith Burrell, Darrow Igus, Michael Richards, John Roarke, Brandis Kemp, Bruce Mahler, and in the center, Chartoff. Though I suppose there's only so many ways one can do a live late-night sketch comedy show geared toward an under-30 audience, Fridays was originally dismissed by most TV critics as a Saturday Night Live ripoff. That is, until SNL producer Lorne Michaels left the show (temporarily as it turned out), as did the original Not Ready for Prime Time Players (a more permanent departure.) A woman named Jean Doumanian took over and made such a mess of things that Saturday Night Live soon became a Saturday Night Live ripoff. Meanwhile, Fridays continued to improve, got better press as a result, and might have had a much longer run had ABC not decided to move the starting time a half-hour later to make room for a Friday edition of Nightline. Ratings dipped, and it was canceled after just three seasons. 

So what happened to its talented cast? For some, at least, Seinfeld. Larry David is best known these days for Curb Your Enthusiasm, but before that he was the co-creator, co-producer, and guiding light of Seinfeld. I'm sure some of you who were fans of the show about nothing took one look at the father in that Fridays sketch and shouted "Kramer!" Yes, the Saturday Night Live ripoff is where Larry David first met Michael Richards. Bruce Mahler played  the recurring character Rabbi Glickman,  Maryedith Burrell appeared as the proprietor of a non-fat yogert shop, and I've already told you about Chartoff. By the way, she's still a working actress, the voice of Didi Pickles on Rugrats.

All well and good, but I have a beef with Larry David. If he's going to have Melanie Chartoff on the show, why have her play it straight? Let her be funny. If nothing else, he could have at least have her say the word sex. 

Vital Viewing (Craniums Edition)

 

Sure, go ahead, spend all your time dieting, lifting weights, doing sit-ups, push-ups, pull-ups. Go ahead and give yourselves the the flattest stomach, the biggest biceps, the most shapely legs, the broadest shoulders, the tightest ass, the most massive pecs. But in doing so, you'll just be ignoring the most important part of your body, the part that's not your body, but the seeing, hearing, talking, tasting, sniffing, and of course, thinking growth that sits on the top of your body: your head. We are our heads. Our heads define us. Don't think so? Perhaps the following videos will change your mind.

Let's start with 1962's The Brain That Wouldn't Die, which played to sold-out grindhouse audiences in Skid Rows across America:

The Brain That Wouldn't Die was independently produced and released through American International Pictures. Neither Virginia Leith, who played the film's title character (though it's not just her brain but also her eyes, nose, mouth, and, presumably, ears that survive that car wreck) or Jason Evers, who plays her distraught, homicidal husband, went on to film stardom, but their performances are a notch above of  what one might expect from this kind of thing. A scientist who kills people in the name of science had been done before (most notably in producer Val Lewton's 1945 horror classic The Body Snatcher) but this time around the foul play, or rather, attempt at foul play, is not merely because of some abstract goal of increasing humankind's knowledge, but also due to affairs of the heart. And maybe the loins. I mean, Mr. Evers character can't very well enjoy an intimate relationship with his wife while she's in this condition (actually, he can, but it would give a whole new meaning to the phrase "giving head".) Ms. Leith died just last year at the age of 94, after which her body was immediately donated to the UCLA Medical Center. Intact, if I'm not mistaken.

Oh, yeah? Well, that English proverb writer never saw this movie:

Another film distributed by American International Pictures but independently produced. In fact, so independently produced that after his paycheck bounced, Bruce Dern--a mainstay of low-budget cinema at this point in his career--didn't know how to contact the producers, who had left town, and maybe even the continent as a whole, without leaving a forwarding address. 49 years later, Dern is still waiting to get paid. I don't know if Casey Kasem, who plays Dern's caution-prone colleague--mad scientists always have caution-prone colleagues--was paid or not, but by 1971, when this film was made, he had already begun his long-running radio show America's Top 40 as well as voicing Shaggy on Scoopy-Doo, Where Are You!, so I doubt he had to go on food stamps. Pat Priest, the second of two actresses to play Marilyn on The Munsters, portrays Dern's wife, so she's gone from one horror comedy to another (though this time around the comedy is unintentional.) The title-character in this film does a pretty thorough job terrorizing the countryside and leaving a high body count. But does a monster really need a second head to do that? I'm not sure what advantage that would give you, Well, I guess it would take the intended prey completely by surprise 

As I said, the two previous films were distributed by the above company. So what exactly was American International Pictures and how was it able to distribute all these flicks? Was the studio across the street from the post office? I doubt it, because I can't find any evidence that there ever was a studio in the sense of soundstages or a gate you had to go through or a commissary where all the big stars had lunch or a backlot that eventually became a Los Angeles suburb-- no, none of that, I'm afraid. AIP was no more than an independent film company itself, just a bit larger than the ones that piggy-backed on its distribution system. Whereas the company that stiffed Bruce Dern may have been headquartered in a rusty Winnebago with expired plates double-parked in front of a pawn shop, AIP probably had a long-term lease in a nicely-maintained office building, possibly one with a savings and loan on the first floor. We can only speculate. What we do know is that American International Pictures was co-owned and run on a day-to-day basis by one Samuel Z. Arkoff, a former entertainment lawyer. The skeleton key to Arkoff's success--he died a millionaire--was his targeting of an audience that in the 1950s, '60s, and first half of the '70s was largely being ignored by the major Hollywood studios: teenage males (boy, things sure have changed, haven't they?) This meant hot rod movies, bikini movies, and above all else, horror movies. Although some of those who worked under or alongside him may have had higher aspirations (such as Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Robert Towne, Richard Matheson, Charles Beaumont, Laszlo Kovacs, Charles B. Griffith, and, when he decided to have a go with Edgar Allen Poe, Roger Corman), Arkoff made no pretense of creating art. It was all just pure entertainment, or maybe another word that begins with an "e", exploitation. However... 

...not even Arkoff could ignore the turbulent times he was living in, so in 1972 when he decided to make another multiple-noggin movie, he made sure it had a touch of...

 ...social significance: 

It's hard to classify a film about a man with two heads as belonging to anything other than the horror genre, but it should be noted that the title character is quite sympathetic. Well, one half, the soul brother half, is sympathetic. The real monster here is institutional racism (that's the best spin I can put on it, I'm afraid.) Really, this movie is less horror and more a blaxploitation/car chase hybrid. Neither Pam Grier nor Peter Fonda would feel out of place in such a film. Also, until a finale that insists otherwise, the movie looks like it might turn into a buddy comedy, in which case Dorothy Lamour wouldn't feel out of place. Instead we have Ray Milland, and he's not really out of place either, as by this point in his career he was becoming a grindhouse mainstay. A talented actor, he was a movie star in the 1940s and '50s, and won an Oscar for his portrayal of an alcoholic writer in The Lost Weekend. But as the stardom faded, he seemed to accept any role that came along (or maybe the stardom faded because he accepted any role that came along.) As for former NFL player Rosey Grier, he seems to be enjoying himself, and actually plays off the surly Milland quite well. Rowen and Martin's Laugh-In repertory company member Chelsea Brown is a hoot as Grier's dumbfounded wife and gets some of the film's best lines. Let me see, anything else? Oh, yes, as if a two-headed man wasn't enough, there's a two-headed gorilla terrorizing not the countryside for a change but a supermarket. Spills in too many aisles to count.

Now what keeps a head attached to a body is the neck, which, sans skin, look like the above. Unless...

...you happen to be processed by the Devil:

Homophobic little brat!  And to think, William Friedkin had directed The Boys in the Band only a few years earlier. Anyway, The Exorcist itself hit theaters in 1972, long before the advent of digital special effects. So, how did Friedkin and his crew get young Linda Blair's head to make that 360 degree turn?

 

 Simple. The camera was turned off and Blair was replaced by a life-size doll of herself. Then with wires and pulleys and other mechanical doohickeys, as well as someone who was operating all those things just outside the camera's range, the head was set into motion. Basically, it's a very sophisticated, and very scary, Muppet you're looking at.

Unfortunately, due to a prior commitment, the rabbit is unavailable.

Speaking of magic... 

Meet Georges Méliès, born on this day in Paris, France in 1861. Unlike some stage magicians in the late 19th-early 20th centuries, he wasn't at all phased by the sudden emergence of a newfangled competitor, the moving picture. Instead, he saw in it the opportunity to create illusions on a whole new scale. With some 500 films to his credit,  Méliès was arguably the first special effects artist, the Stephen Spielberg of his day. His most famous film was 1902's A Trip to the Moon, based on a Jules Verne novel. Except nowhere in Verne's novel does he describe anything like this:

Ouch!

I'm tempted to show you the entire 18-minute film, but the topic of today's post is the human head, not lunar landings. So instead I'll show you a Méliès film from four years earlier, The Four Troublesome Heads, which he not only directs but stars. In fact, he has several starring roles:

 Méliès took a medium that in its earliest years did nothing more than document reality, and with a sleight of hand, gave it a reality all its own.

Finally, what does the future hold for the human head? Here's Matt Groening's prediction:

Yes, I know one president is conspicuously absent, but that's because...

...his jar is locked away in some cupboard in the 30th century White House, still unwilling to concede.

Well, I hope I've convinced you of the importance of the human head. You couldn't really survive without one, so use yours wisely.

Take it away, Lou:

 

 

 

Quips and Quotations (Single Bound Edition)

He was mostly leaping tall buildings in the beginning. There were cases where he would leap off a tall building or swoop down, and at that point he would look like he was flying, I suppose. It was just natural to draw him like that.

--Original Superman artist Joe Shuster, on just how that guy got off the ground in the first place.

Square Meal It's Not

Dinner is now being served.

Dark or white meat?

Vital Viewing (In Memoriam Edition)

 Amidst all the election news there's been a couple of permanent departures that I can't in good conscience let go by. 

 1930-2020

  

Sean Connery is best known for being the first actor to play superspy James Bond in a motion picture. For many of us, he was the best actor to play James Bond in a motion picture. But what were these movies? Well, for a long time, and long after Connery had left the role and others took over, these films were based on a series of rather violent espionage novels and short stories written in the 1950s and early '60s by Ian Fleming, whose day job was a kind of foreign correspondent-in-chief for a chain of British newspapers. When these very popular novels and short stories were adapted for big screen in the 1960s and beyond, they went through increasing structural changes that, in time, made them quite different from the original source material. Sean Connery made five Bond movies for producer Albert Broccoli: Dr. No (1962), From Russia with Love (1963), Goldfinger (1964), Thunderball (1965), You Only Live Twice, and Diamonds are Forever (1971). With the exception of Goldfinger, the Broccoli-produced Connery Bond films concerns the threat posed by SPECTRE, a powerful organization unknown to the general public (and sometimes, it seems, the military-industrial complex of the day) that's hellbent on...world domination? World destruction? They just like to do evil, let's leave it at that. Meanwhile, there's still that thing called the "Cold War", the epic struggle between the West, led by the United States, and the Soviet Union, with one side arguing in favor of democracy (with the further argument, one under some duress at the moment, that democracy is synonymous with capitalism) and the other side arguing in favor of an extreme form of socialism called communism (extreme in part because it can't seem to be realized without resorting to anti-democratic measures.) Not that any of that ideological stuff mattered much in the Bond movies, the epic struggle really just a way for SPECTRE to play the United States and Russia against each other, all part and parcel of doing evil. And Great Britain? It's role as a world power significantly reduced after World War II, it's often not taken very seriously by any of the major players ("Your pitiful little island has not even been threatened," archvillain Blofield says to Bond after he shows up unannounced in Diamonds Are Forever)  but that only works to secret agent 007's advantage, as he's constantly underestimated. He must be underestimated, or how else to explain why when they have him in their clutches such meanies as Blofield or Goldfinger or Dr. No don't kill him on the spot (though they usually off an assassin for failing to kill him) but instead keep him around, even treating him as a kind of guest. Or, if they do decide to kill him, a simple bullet to the brain won't do but it instead has to be something elaborate like a laser beam to the crotch. That may make the average man squeamish, but Bond's one thing he's ballsy, and in the end it just turns out to be a big waste of a power source.

Not that the suave Bond ever saves the world all by himself. His boss, M (Bernard Lee), provides him with backup if needed. M's lovelorn secretary Miss Moneypenny (Lois Maxwell) provides flirtatious moral support. Speaking of flirtatiousness, there's always the love (or lust) interest that's come to be known as the "Bond girl" (though, as indicated by the above picture,007 sometimes has to go through several Bond girls before finding one who will still be around by the end of the picture.) Usually following Bond around like a lost puppy is CIA agent Felix Leiter (such a nonentity that he's played by a different actor in every film.) And my personal favorite, the goofy spywares inventor Q (Desmond Lleweyln), who comes up with such novel killing devices as an exploding parking meter and cigarette rocket launcher. He's Thomas Edison by way of Northrop Grumman. 

If my prose still hasn't given you an idea what the typical James Bond movie was like in Sean Connery era, then watch this:

Film's kind of scratchy-looking, huh? It's either an old print, or the cameraman got in the middle of one of those gunfights.

Here's Connery himself, Scottish accent and all, talking about his famous character:

Connery mumbles that he had a difficult time getting through one of Fleming's books because it lacked humor. Now, I've read several of the Bond novels, and while I've found them easy enough reads--the foreign correspondent knows the who-what-where-when-and-why's of good reporting--I agree that the prose is about as witty as a shark attack. Fleming had a post-imperialist ax to grind, and took very seriously himself and his contention that the world had become a much more dangerous place once a Brit needed a passport to get into India and Ceylon, er, Sri Lanka. By contrast the movies were, as I said before, nonideological and nontopical, and thus more lighthearted. Sex, violence, and one-liners became the basic formula. In fact, the Bond films owe at least as much to such tongue-in-cheek Alfred Hitchcock suspense-thrillers as The 39 Steps and North by Northwest as anything written by Ian Fleming. There is one difference, however. In Steps and Northwest, the hero is an innocent bystander who gets caught up in an amazing adventure. Where Bond's concerned, evading assassins and then assassinating assassins are all in a day's work, a way of paying for the rent, groceries, utilities, and boxes of candy for his many girlfriends. If anything, there's more comic potential. And if Connery thought Fleming's fiction could use a few more laughs, just how good was the actor himself at providing them?

 

Throughout 2015 and '16, I published a series of posts, what I like to call an online book, about Star Trek, a TV show I'm sure you've all heard of, whether you're a fan or not. In one of those posts (or chapters) I focused on Leonard Nimoy, and noted that though his famous Spock character was essentially dramatic, the actor at times could easily and successfully play him for laughs, comparing him to Connery's Bond, which led to this digression: 

It should be no surprise that Nimoy's Spock could be funny. In a way he reminds me of Sean Connery's James Bond. Starting with Dr. No in 1962, Connery on his own added humor to the narrative by the way he said a particular line or even his deadpan expression upon witnessing something amazing, be it a technological display theretofore unbeknownst to science or his own hairbreadth escape from certain death. Eventually the producers and writers caught on to what Connery was doing and started adding intentional comic material, until you get to Diamonds are Forever, an out-and-out comedy. 

 I didn't mention Q in the above paragraph, but whenever he and Bond shared a scene, the movie would suddenly turn into a cloak-and-dagger version of vaudeville:

OK, enough comedy. Time for some sex and...

...violence.

I said earlier that SPECTRE was the villainous organization that Bond mostly did battle with during the Connery era. But it was not so in the Fleming novels. Starting with the first, Casino Royale, in 1953, the bad boys were usually agents of SMERSH, a real-life Soviet counter-intelligence organization that operated mostly during World War II. Fleming, though, kept the fictional SMERSH up-and-running throughout the 1950s until it began to resemble an organization that had succeeded it, the KGB. So where exactly did SPECTRE come from? A thaw in West-East relations toward the end of the 1950s gave Ian Fleming reason to believe that the Cold War was drawing to a close (as it turned out, the Bay of Pigs, the construction of the Berlin Wall, and the Cuban Missile Crises were all right around the corner) and so came up with SPECTRE as a replacement for SMERSH. At least, somebody came up with SPECTRE. Here we come to some real life intrigue, though intrigue involving not international affairs but international copyrights. Whereas most James Bond screenplays were based on Ian Fleming novels, 1959's Thunderball was an Ian Fleming novel based on a James Bond screenplay, though one yet unproduced. This was still a few years before Dr. No, and the only screen rights sold so far were for Casino Royale, and that was originally small screen rights, making its debut on American television in 1954 (Bond was played by American Barry Nelson as an American.) MGM acquired the big screen rights shortly thereafter, and then just dithered. Tired of waiting, Fleming got together with Irish filmmaker Kevin McClory and British screenwriter Jack Whittingham to cook up an original Bond screenplay, eventually titled Thunderball. But McClory didn't know Fleming was also writing a novel, and when he got his hands on an advanced copy, sued for plagiarism. There was a protracted court battle (during which time Dr. No, From Russia with Love, and Goldfinger had all become box office hits.) An out-of-court settlement gave McClory the film rights to Thunderball. To get that movie made, he joined forces with Albert Broccoli, producer of the first three Bond movies, though with the understanding that McClory could do a remake if he wanted at some future date. That future date turned out to be 1983. By that time the James Bond film franchise was still going strong with Roger Moore now playing the legendary secret agent. What chance in Hell or Hollywood did McClory have with his own film?  

Sean Connery had first decided to end his association with Bond in 1967 following completion of You Only Live Twice. So the role went to male model George Lazenby, extremely good-looking but not much of an actor, though he has his defenders. Actually, they're not defending Lazenby so much as the movie as a whole, 1969's On Her Majesty's Secret Service, which has its share of excellent stunts, special-effects, and exotic locations. As a further added attraction, the Bond girl this time was someone who was already a star, Diana Rigg of The Avengers fame (but, man, oh, man, can you imagine if Connery and Emma Peel had appeared in a movie together? Patrick Macnee would have ate his bowler.) The movie took in less money than previous Bonds, but was still a hit, and the producers were willing to do another film with Lazenby. Surprisingly, it was Lazenby himself who refused to go on. Different reasons have been given for this decision, but underlining all of them is the neophyte actor simply hadn't enjoyed the experience. Connery had his own problems with Bond, but willing to return to the role once enough money was thrown at him. Perhaps because On Her Majesty's Secret Service had ended on a dark note (I don't want to give anything away but it does involve a drive-by shooting), the comedy quotient was ramped up considerably for this new 007 outing. In fact, Diamonds Are Forever owes at least as much to Rowen and Martin's Laugh-In as anything written by Ian Fleming. It proved to be a template for the rest of the 1970s and the first half of the 1980s, sex, violence and blackout gags becoming the basic formula, even after Connery left once again and was replaced by Roger Moore, who basically smirked his way through the series. Connery, meanwhile, worked steadily through the 1970s and early '80, starring, or at least appearing in, the mainstream films Murder on the Orient Express, The Man Who Be King, Robin and Marian, A Bridge Too Far, Time Bandits, and Outland. Some of these films were more well-received than others, but Connery's presence was always counted as a plus (even the post-apocalyptic flop Zardoz, where he appears in a mankini.) When asked about the possibility of some day reprising Bond, his usual reply was something along the lines of "never".

  So how did producer Kevin McClory get Connery to return to the fold? Well, first off, he didn't return to what some Bond fans consider the "canonical" fold. That would be the body of films produced by Albert Broccoli (and these days his daughter Barbara) through Eon Productions in collaboration with various Hollywood studios. As far as those fans are concerned, 1983's Never Say Never Again, like the election results according to Trump, never happened, But of course there is such a film. McClory's way around Connery's reluctance was rather ingenious. Instead of asking Connery to star in a Bond movie, he merely asked him to write a Bond movie, which he did (though it was eventually rewritten by others.) This then gave Connery a stake in the movie's success. What better way to assure an successful James Bond movie, then have the actor best known for the role appear in it?

Never Say Never Again has all the components we'd expect from a Bond film: stunts, exotic locations, and beautiful women (in this case Kim Basinger and Barbara Carrera.)  When it comes to sheer spectacle , it was no match for the "official" Bond movie that came out the same year Octopussy,  which had all those things to the power of ten. But then does a Bond film always need to be a spectacle? The first few were much more modest compared to what came later. Instead, those films had that quality that comprises so much of good fiction: a person dealing with a problem, or problems, in an interesting, even entertaining, way. What makes the problem-solving so entertaining in Never Say Never Again is the suggestion that perhaps Bond is getting a bit too old for this kind of thing anymore. He tires out more easily, bruises too easily, and  his self-confidence seems a bit shaken at times, Connery's familiar deadpan expression is there, but it increasingly gives way to a less-familiar one of unease. Nevertheless, at the end of the day...

...he's still Bond, canonical or not.

..............................................................................................................................................

 1940-2020

 

 

Alex Trebek was not the first host of Jeopardy, nor, initially, was he the most famous. Jeopardy was created in 1964 by talk show host Merv Griffin, who also moonlighted as a game show producer (or maybe he was a game show producer who moonlighted as a talk show host.) Even 56 years ago, the concept would have been regarded as ancient by students of broadcast history. A contestant is asked a question, and if that person gets it right, there's some kind of prize, usually money. Except this time there was a twist: the question was in the form of an answer, and the answer in the form of a (not-always grammatically-correct) question. The gimmick was enough to make Jeopardy by the end of the 1960s the second-highest rated game show on daytime television (right behind Hollywood Squares), and its host, Art Fleming, a household name. So identified was Fleming with Jeopardy that his name is referenced in Stephen King's 1978 novel The Stand, and he appears in Weird Al Yankovic's 1982 parody video "I Lost on Jeopardy." The quiz show itself was off the air by that time, but Griffin wanted to bring it back as a syndicated companion to his popular Wheel of Fortune, giving him a whole hour of television. He asked Fleming to return as host, but the native New Yorker balked when he found out the new version was going to be taped in Hollywood. Alex Trebek had hosted several daytime games shows in the 1970s, the most successful being High Rollers (a show I recall watching, but for the life of me can't tell you the point of the game.) Trebek auditioned for and won hosting duties on the new Jeopardy, which went on the air in 1984. This version of Jeopardy, seen in most TV markets between 7:00 and 7:30pm, very quickly became a ratings sensation, its fame eclipsing the original. By the time Fleming died in 1996, he had become somewhat of an obscure figure, though I suppose he'll live on as long as The Stand remains in print. Meanwhile, what was Trebek's secret? Well, I suppose you can say it was the game show rather then the host, except his contract kept getting renewed through thick and thin and cancer treatments. The man was 80 and had he not got sick, he might have hosted it right up until he was 90 or beyond. I imagine it was a combination of his ability to keep pace with a fast-moving show--he was the play-by-play announcer as game show host--his modest handsomeness (with or without a moustache), and a certain affability.  Here he is (minus the moustache) on 60 Minutes:

Now here's Trebek (with the moustache) way back in 1984 hosting his very first Jeopardy:

Part of Trebek's job was to remind people when they forgot to put the answer in the form of a question:

That was no big deal in the first round. In later rounds, though, it could be held against you, none more so than in Final Jeopardy:

All she had to do was ask.

The point has been made that a quiz show is no true measure of a person's intellect or even breadth of knowledge, that it all depends on how the questions come up. In other words, luck. Well, if that's so, than the man on the right, Ken Jennings, is the luckiest man alive. For the first nineteen years of the Alex Trebek era, there was a consecutive five-day limit on how much a contestant could win. In 2003, for reasons that I suspect had a lot to do with all the attention being paid to Who Wants to Be a Millionaire at the time, the rule was changed to make it open-ended. As long as you reached Double Jeopardy, answered the question (or is it questioned the answer?) right, and bet right, you could conceivably play until you dropped dead. Well, Ken Jennings didn't drop dead in 2004, but during his record-setting 74-day streak that turned him into both a celebrity and a millionaire, people were beginning to wonder if they'd ever again see a Jennings-less episode of Jeopardy. Well, yes, the day after his 75th appearance, when he finally lost a game. Since then he's appeared on Jeopardy many more times in various tournaments featuring other past winners, including winners from before the 2003 rule change, always coming in second, making his original streak indeed seem like a fluke. Well, earlier this year there was a "Greatest of All Time" tournament, and here's the question/answer that came up right for the lucky Jennings:   

In case you're wondering about this Iago person:

"I do beseech you–
Though I perchance am vicious in my guess,
As, I confess, it is my nature’s plague
To spy into abuses, and oft my jealousy
Shapes faults that are not–that your wisdom yet,
From one that so imperfectly conceits,
Would take no notice, nor build yourself a trouble
Out of his scattering and unsure observance.
It were not for your quiet nor your good,
Nor for my manhood, honesty, or wisdom,
To let you know my thoughts."

(My, he does go on, doesn't he?)

I started this post with James Bond, so it's only appropriate that I end it with this 1980s Jeopardy promo, in which Alex Trebek has his own Bondian moment:

The pickup line in the form of an answer.

 

 

Serendipity

 

It may not be Lourdes or Fatima, but I'll take it.

Post-It Note

 

Keep the faith, guys. We're going to win this.

--Joe Biden

Quips and Quotations (Current Events Edition)

 

On returning from my trip to [the Great Beyond], I received a request from [Shadow of a Doubt] to write a piece answering the following question: What is a fascist?

 

A fascist is one whose lust for money or power is combined with such an intensity of intolerance toward those of other races, parties, classes, religions, cultures, regions or nations as to make him ruthless in his use of deceit or violence to attain his ends.

The supreme god of a fascist, to which his ends are directed, may be money or power; may be a race or a class; may be a military, clique or an economic group; or may be a culture, religion, or a political party.

 ...The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact.

...The myth of fascist efficiency has deluded many people. 

 

...The worldwide, agelong struggle between fascism and democracy will not stop when the fighting ends in Germany and Japan.

--Henry A. Wallace, 33rd Vice-President of the United States (1941-1945), 11th Secretary of Agriculture (1933-1940), 10th Secretary of Commerce (1945-1946), and 1948 Progressive Party candidate for President (2.38% of the popular vote--you can't win 'em all.) All quotes (minus what's in the the brackets) are  from The New York Times 1944 op-ed piece, "The Danger of American Fascism"  

Also from the 1940s:

Yes, I know, it's some other country's national anthem, but you have to consider the venue, which is nothing if not...

 

…multicultural.