Year 14, Day 179 - 6/28/22 - Movie #4,183
BEFORE: "Weird Al" Yankovic carries over from "The Sparks Brothers" to narrate today's documentary. This would have been a great place to drop in "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story", except they haven't finished MAKING that movie yet, so I'll have to catch up with it later. It's still listed with a 2022 release date, but now I don't know if I'll be able to link to it when it arrives. I guess I'll have to be satisfied watching the fake trailer they made years ago, with Aaron Paul as Weird Al, instead of Daniel Ratcliffe. I don't know of any other instance of a fake trailer that ever became a real movie, so it's a chance for history to be made there. In the fake trailer, Patton Oswalt also plays Dr. Demento, and that's just genius. I don't often watch shorts before my features, but perhaps I should, more often - the "Weird" trailer from a few years ago fits into my chain though, so I'll watch it four or five times tonight before my feature, please feel free to do the same. It's the one where Gary Cole and Mary Steenburgen play Al's parents, check it out at your leisure in preparation for the real movie.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcNuiri2dV0
THE PLOT: The story of outcast Herbert Khaury's rise to stardom as Tiny Tim - either considered a freak or a genius, Tiny Tim left no one unaffected.
AFTER: If you're not familiar with Tiny Tim, you may not be old enough - there's no connection to the Charles Dickens character from "A Christmas Carol", this was a musical act from the 1960's who used that as his stage name, because it looked better and was easier to remember than his real name, Herbert Khaury. And he was "Tiny" the same way you'd call a man with no hair "Curly" or a man with red hair "Bluey" (Australians only, I think).
He also wasn't a great singer, but he was a unique singer, and back then, I guess that was enough - he played the ukulele and sang in falsetto, and many people were therefore confused, they'd never heard a man sing with such a high voice, because castrated men singing in the high tenor range fell out of favor after the 1800's. Herbert grew up as a lonely child but a musical prodigy, who taught himself to play ukulele and violin while listening to records, and then learned he had a high singing voice, which he called his "sissy voice" - his words, not mine. And when he performed that way, he got a reaction, either good, bad or confused, but either way, people were talking about it. And they were interested, they wanted to see more, and slowly Herbert found the recognition and attention he'd been looking for in his life.
The animated sequences here illustrate passages from Tiny Tim's diaries, and his words are narrated by Weird Al - this does give some insight to his personality and mindset. He had some romantic feelings for another boy when he was a teenager, but the relationship wasn't physical, not in that sense anyway. Herbert allowed the other boy to use him as a punching bag, and that's about as far as it went - for the documentary, the filmmakers revealed to that boy, now a grown-up man, obviously, about the diary passages, and it was news to him, so in other words, the romantic feelings weren't reciprocated.
Tiny Tim's third wife refers to him as "half gay", and I guess today we'd call that "bisexual" or at least "bi-curious", but we may never know exactly what she knew, or how Tiny Tim felt inside. He got married three times, so clearly he loved women, or he wanted to love women, or maybe he just wanted to feel normal, and that's the way he thought he could be. But even Elton John married a woman once, it didn't last, but it happened. Tiny Tim married his first wife, Miss Vicki, live on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, and it got the second-highest TV ratings up to that point, second only to the first moon landing. He was a reality TV star before there even was such a thing - and you have to figure if he'd started his career today he'd probably get a nose-job, put on a dress and compete on "Rupaul's Drag Race", or just sing in a high voice on "America's Got Talent" and he'd make it to the third round, at least.
But the marriage to Miss Vicki didn't last, she wanted to live with him in a house, have children and cook dinner for him, play cards and watch TV, but he preferred life on the road, living out of hotels and going from town to town, always on to the next performance. This was a form of addiction, perhaps, he couldn't or wouldn't stop making appearances, because that would mean not hearing the applause and just living life as a regular person. It happens, I guess - you have to figure this happened to the Rolling Stones, Grateful Dead and so many other acts over the years. If there are any other reasons why the marriage didn't last, you'll just have to read between the lines, I guess.
Before Tiny Tim hit it big on TV, he started as a street musician, then played at club amateur nights under a variety of names. After he grew his hair long and started wearing white make-up, he was at least memorable - I think Marilyn Manson got famous the same way, only he had much more of an "edge" to him. By 1959 he was performing under the name "Larry Love, the Singing Canary" in Times Square, at a place called Hubert's Museum and Live Flea Circus - the place had a bunch of side-show acts similar to Coney Island, like a lobster-boy and a woman with no arms who smoked cigarettes with her feet. This led to a steady gig in 1963, 6 nights a week at a lesbian club in Greenwich Village. Five years after that, he was in an independent film singing the high parts in a duet of "I Got You Babe", and this got him booked on the TV show "Laugh-In", and the rest is history. He came on that TV show with his ukulele in a shopping bag, and performed "A-Tisket, A-Tasket" and "On the Good Ship Lollipop". He kept the shopping bag as a trademark for some reason, he was still holding it when he sang "Tiptoe Through the Tulips" on TV, and that became his signature song.
Some people thought he was British, some people thought he was gay, so the only thing clear is that most people just didn't understand him. It was also a bit hard to tell if he was putting on an act, or dead serious about everything - that's a bit tough with some people, especially those who have trouble socializing with others. Maybe he was autistic or on the spectrum somewhere, that's also a little tough to determine, was he in on the joke, or just a wack-a-doo? Sorry if that sounds insensitive, but you know what I mean.
By the 1980's all the TV work had dried up, and Carson wouldn't invite him back on The Tonight Show after a performance of Rod Stewart's song "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy" where he rolled around on the floor and had trouble keeping his shirt on. So Tiny Tim took to touring with a live circus, which is about as far from network TV as you can get, but still, technically part of the entertainment industry. He had a role in a horror film called "Blood Harvest", for which he wore clown make-up. There's no way around it, he was just an odd duck, as they say - and he didn't like not being in the limelight. He died on stage - metaphorically, probably dozens of times, but for real in 1996, while playing at a benefit concert for the Women's Club of Minneapolis. Well, at least he died doing what he loved...
You know, I'm just realizing now what the majority of my documentary subjects so far have in common. Dick Gregory died in 2017, Rick James in 2004, and Tiny Tim in 1996. This was not intentional on my part, to start out the Summer Rock & Doc Block with so many deceased subjects. Hey, the Sparks Brothers are still around, right? And many of the acts seen and interviewed in "New Wave: Dare to Be Different" are still active. I followed the linking when I set this chain up, and I found the order that would allow for me to easily enter the documentary chain and also end it where I wanted to. I assure you that in the next few weeks I'll have some docs coming about people who are still living - but yeah, there will be more dead subjects as well. For every Wolfgang Puck, there will be a Julia Child, I guess.
NITPICK POINT: Everyone in this film, including Tiny Tim's close friends, seems to call him "Tiny" for short. Jesus, why not just call him "Tim", for short, wouldn't that make more sense? Sure, he wasn't born with the name Tim, but he wasn't born with the name Tiny either - people don't call "Weird Al" by the name "Weird", to his friends and family I think he's just "Al", because THAT'S HIS NAME. Calling him "Tiny" just sounds stupid, and a bit disrespectful - are we sure he didn't mind that? If I knew him personally, I'd call him "Tim", just saying. Calling him "Tiny" makes it seem like his last name was "Tim", and that's not the case either.
Also starring Richard Barone, Ron De Blasio, Artie Butler, Will Friedwald, Bobby Gonsalves, Wavy Gravy (last seen in "Woodstock: Three Days that Defined a Generation"), Tommy James, Harve Mann, Justin Martell, Jonas Mekas, D.A. Pennebaker, Richard Perry, Johnny Pineapple, Eddie Rabin, Rita Ritz, George Schlatter, Bernie Stein, Tulip Stewart, Susan Khaury Wellman, Peter Yarrow (last seen in "No Direction Home: Bob Dylan").
with archive footage of Tiny Tim (Herbert Khaury), Jan Alweiss, Dr. Joyce Brothers, Vicki Budinger, Johnny Carson (last seen in "The Eyes of Tammy Faye"), Charlie Rose (ditto), Dick Cavett (last seen in "Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice"), Frank Sinatra (ditto), Bing Crosby (last seen in "Bad Reputation"), Bob Dylan (last seen in "Bitchin': The Sound and Fury of Rick James"), David Frost (last seen in "The One and Only Dick Gregory"), Ed Sullivan (ditto), Jackie Gleason, Dick Martin, Ed McMahon (last seen in "Robert Klein Still Can't Stop His Leg"), Richard Nixon (last seen in "Irresistible"), Dan Rowan, Martin Sharp, Donald Trump (also last seen in "Irresistible")
RATING: 5 out of 10 comeback attempts
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