BEFORE: It's a new week but the Summer Doc Fest rolls on - I've got my tribute to the ring-a-ding Rat Pack of the Swinging Sixties starting tonight. This film also aired at DocFest last year so I programmed it on faith, believing that one way or another I'd be able to view it the following summer - so far, all of my instincts have been spot on, with the exception of that documentary about Dionne Warwick that was scheduled to run on CNN+, then the CNN+ service folded, so I guess it can't air anywhere else for some reason? Anyway, I've been really lucky that "Adrienne" and "Jagged" and "Becoming Mike Nichols" stuck around on HBO Max long enough for me to watch them, and that the Brian Wilson doc turned up on American Masters on PBS, and Showtime aired that Dick Gregory documentary - somehow, it all came together. And I've only had to rent a few films, like the Elaine Stritch documentary that couldn't stay on Hulu for another month, and I had to pay to watch "Tiny Tim: King for a Day" and also "The Automat". Worth it.
Regis Philbin carries over again from "Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal & Greed".
Speaking of scheduling, I don't mean to alarm you but I maybe found a path, post-Docfest, that should take me to the end of the year. First I closed the gap between the last documentary film in August and my first horror film in October - and that path goes through "Thor: Love & Thunder", "Jurassic World: Dominion" (I think you may see the linking potential there) and also "Minions: The Rise of Gru". So I've got to get my ass to the movie theater in July and August, if I want to make this work. (I'm kind of crossing my fingers that some channel or streaming service will run "Lightyear" and "Morbius" in time, here's hoping.)
That took 30 steps, to get to my first Shocktober film, I already had that chain mapped out. But then I was left with 24 slots for November and December, and I started playing around with some ideas, maybe some vague hope that I could include "Bob's Burgers" and "Don't Look Up" (I think you may also see the linking potential there...) and before long, I'd found a path to TWO Thanksgiving movies in just 14 steps. That left 9 or maybe 10 slots for December, could I get to a Christmas movie of some kind in that short a time? You'd better believe I can, because I did. Or, I will. Maybe even TWO holiday films if I manage to drop something from the list between here and there.
So there you go, I've got a plan for the rest of Movie Year 14 - I can't say I'm going to stick with it, but maybe I will and 95 movies from now, I'll put down my remote and celebrate the holiday with Movie #4,300, MERRY CHRISTMAS.
THE PLOT: The story of Dean Martin.
AFTER: I'm back at the movie theater tonight, for just one special screening of "Where the Crawdads Sing". The place was originally supposed to be closed for the summer due to roof repairs, but it seems those have been delayed until August, so I managed one screening tonight, with just nine people in the audience, as most of the school's students are away for the summer, so just a few faculty members showed up, probably on their way home or to get out of the rain for a couple hours. It felt a bit like hosting a pop-up dining experience in a restaurant that got shut down by the health department.
Anyway, I'm hoping that by devoting four days of docs this week to Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr. and then Jerry Lewis, that I don't just end up watching the same film, essentially, four days in a row. But it seems like the documentary makers these days will go very far out of their way to avoid the standard, chronological walk through a person's life, punctuated by comments from friends & family and celebrity admirers, known as the "talking head" format. But if you just use archive footage, then that feels weird, and if you just include people talking about that famous person, that feels too cold and distant, so ideally you want some kind of mix of testimony plus footage, and it doesn't even need to be completely chronological - some of these docs have started in the present, like with old Gordon Lightfoot, and then they go back to their subject as a child, or a teenager or whatever.
There's usually also some kind of defying of expectations, like the way that Don Rickles is mostly known for insulting people and acting mean to them, so you just know that doc is going to drop in some material about him being a devoted husband and father, because we're not expecting it, at least on some level. Betty White played a dumb older lady on "The Golden Girls", but surprise, she was actually a very savvy TV host and producer. And George Carlin was known for being a guy who smoked a lot of grass, but surprise, it turns out he also snorted a ton of cocaine! See, we're learning more about these celebrities every day!
There's a lot of material like that here in the "King of Cool" documentary about Dean Martin - but how do you shed light on a man who was notoriously hard to figure out? There's footage of him appearing with his family on the Christmas Special with Frank Sinatra, but that was his 2nd wife, and soon after he would leave her for the woman who would become his 3rd. Right, he was such a devoted family man that he left a string of families all over Hollywood... Then we've got the public image of the happy-go-lucky entertainer, but was he laughing on the outside while crying on the inside? It's a fair bet. Performer after performer talks about how great he was to work with on stage, but then they take a minute to mention that they didn't spend much time with Dean before and after the show, because he was by himself in his trailer. Bob Newhart relates a story about Dean calling the police and pretending to be a neighbor to phone in a noise complaint on his own house, just so the party would stop and he could finally get some sleep.
Dino Paul Crocetti was born in Steubenville, Ohio to Italian immigrants, and he didn't learn to speak English until grammar school. After dropping out of high school in tenth grade, he worked in a coal mine, a steel mill, tried his hand at boxing and also worked as a blackjack dealer in a illegal casino behind a tobacco shop, because Ohio. Singing Italian songs was his way out of the Cleveland area, moving to New York in 1943, but then got drafted into World War II for 14 months, before a medical discharge. Meanwhile he had married wife #1 and had four kids in Cleveland, but they got left behind in 1949 when his showbiz career started to take off. Remember, he was the family man that just couldn't stop starting up new families...
Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis were working the same club circuit in New York, but doing very different acts - combining Dean's singing with Jerry's rude interruptions of Dean's act, along with some old vaudeville-style slapstick proved to be the magic recipe to make the audience laugh. The pair just ignored the audience and played off each other on stage, the show was a fake shambles but also a comedy hit. After appearing on the Ed Sullivan Show, the pair hired Norman Lear and Ed Simmons to start writing their bits, which allowed them to move out of the clubs and into television and movies. Together they made 18 movies in four years, or some might say they made the same movie 18 times in four years....
Their act in clubs, movies and TV's Colgate Comedy Hour lasted for ten years, but the comedy team broke up in 1956, and Dean went on to a solo movie career in "The Young Lions", "Some Came Running" and "Rio Bravo", while I guess Jerry Lewis was filming "The Sad Sack", "The Geisha Boy", "The Bellboy" and "Cinderfella". Then Dean countered with "Bells Are Ringing", "Who Was That Lady?" and the crime films "Ocean's 11" and "Robin and the 7 Hoods" with Sinatra. Meanwhile Dean also had a recording career, with hits like "Volare", and then came the TV career, with "The Dean Martin Show" running for nine years (264 episodes!) because NBC kept forgetting to cancel it. By the ninth season in 1974 it had transformed from a variety show into just a series of celebrity roasts - it's probably just as well, based on how much footage there is of Dean forgetting the lyrics to songs after he adamantly refused to ever rehearse.
The 1970's brought solo success in Vegas, but he broke up with the Riviera Hotel because they wanted him to perform 2 shows a night, and he moved over to the MGM Grand, who only demanded one show per night, as long as he also made a movie for MGM. He filed for divorce from his second wife (who apparently also wanted him to perform twice a night) and moved on to wife #3, a hair salon receptionist from Beverly Hills, and they lasted until 1976. Eventually he reconciled to some degree with all of his exes, even Jerry Lewis, after Frank Sinatra brought him out as a surprise guest during the MDA Labor Day Telethon in 1976. Martin and Lewis became friends again, but privately, and only performed together once after that, in 1989.
The death of Dean's son in 1987 (his jet fighter crashed while he was flying for the California Air National Guard) left him depressed and demoralized, and a reclusive alcoholic for real, unlike the one he'd pretended to be for so many years in his act. But it was lung cancer that took him out on Christmas in 1995. Another distinguished career brought down by cigarettes in the end. Just in music singles alone - "Volare", "That's Amore", "Ain't That a Kick in the Head?" and "Everybody Loves Somebody", that's a great track record, without even getting into his Christmas album. But still, his discography pales in comparison to the member of the Rat Pack being profiled in tomorrow's film...
NITPICK POINT: It's one thing to be an executive producer of a documentary made about your own father. It's another thing to be interviewed for that very same documentary, that's all well and good. But to get yourself filmed with that special lens that makes you look extra skinny, and then to make sure that lens doesn't get used for footage of anybody else, well, that's another thing entirely.
Also starring Frankie Avalon (last seen in "Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project"), Bob Newhart (ditto), Tony Oppedisano (ditto), Alec Baldwin (last seen in "Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me"), Jeanine Basinger, Jerry Blavat, Peter Bogdanovich (last seen in "It: Chapter Two"), Bill Boggs, Carol Burnett (last seen in "Becoming Mike Nichols"), Dick Cavett (last seen in "George Carlin's American Dream"), Neil Daniels, Angie Dickinson (last seen in Walt: The Man Behind the Myth"), Tom Dreesen (last seen in "Trouble with the Curve"), Gerald Early, Todd Fisher (last seen in "Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds"), Will Friedwald, Rosie Gitlin, Michael Gregory, Lee Hale, Jon Hamm (last seen in "Howl"), Florence Henderson (last seen in "The Brady Bunch Movie"), Billy Hinsche, Josh Homme (last seen in "ZZ Top: That Little Ol' Band from Texas"), Henry Jaglom (last seen in "They'll Love Me When I'm Dead"), James Kaplan, Lainie Kazan (last seen in "I Am Divine"), Norman Lear (last seen in "If You're Not in the Obit, Eat Breakfast"), Barry Levinson, Scott Lewis, Ron Marasco, Deana Martin, Kliph Nesteroff, Barbara Rush, RZA (last seen in "The Man With the Iron Fists"), George Schlatter (last seen in "Tiny Tim: King for a Day"), Al Schmitt, Tommy Tune, Steven Watts, Eliot Weisman, James Woods (last seen in "Too Big to Fail")
with archive footage of Dean Martin (also last seen in "Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project"), Jack Benny (ditto), Johnny Carson (ditto), Sammy Davis Jr. (ditto), Andy Griffith (ditto), Bob Hope (ditto), Ronald Reagan (ditto), Frank Sinatra (ditto), Louis Armstrong, Desi Arnaz Jr,, Lucille Ball (last seen in "Tina"), Ron Howard (ditto), Chuck Berry (last seen in "The Velvet Underground"), Joey Bishop, Marlon Brando (also last seen in "Becoming Mike Nichols"), Montgomery Clift (ditto), Tom Brokaw (last seen in "The Eyes of Tammy Faye"), Ray Charles (last seen in "Jimmy Carter: Rock & Roll President"), John Wayne (ditto), Bing Crosby (also last seen in "Tiny Tim: King for a Day"), Dom DeLuise, Jimmy Durante, Ella Fitzgerald, Aretha Franklin (last seen in "WBCN and the American Revolution"), Goldie Hawn (last seen in "Spielberg"), Audrey Hepburn (last seen in "The Automat"), Peter Lawford (ditto), Judy Holliday (last seen in "Bells Are Ringing"), Buddy Holly, Olivia Hussey, Gene Kelly, Jacqueline Kennedy (also last seen in "George Carlin's American Dream"), John F. Kennedy (ditto), Martin Luther King (ditto), Yoko Ono (ditto), Peggy Lee, John Lennon (last seen in "Count Me In"), Ed Sullivan (ditto), Jerry Lewis (last seen in "The Trust"), Joe E. Lewis, Dean Paul Martin, Ethel Merman, The Mills Brothers, Zero Mostel (last seen in "Mel Brooks: Unwrapped"), Ricky Nelson, Elvis Presley (last seen in "Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind"), Sugar Ray Robinson, Frank Sinatra Jr., Tina Sinatra, James Stewart (last seen in "Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde"), Lawrence Welk (last seen in "The Last Laugh" (2019)), Orson Welles (last seen in "The Other Side of the Wind"), Natalie Wood.
RATING: 6 out of 10 clips from "Citizen Kane" for some reason
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