The Super Bob Einstein Movie

Year 14, Day 211 - 7/30/22 - Movie #4,214

BEFORE: I took Thursday night off from watching movies, because we went out to a real Broadway show, live and in-person, for the first time since January 2020, when we saw "Hamilton".  This time we saw "Into the Woods", which was fine, but I think my wife enjoyed it more than I did, she's more familiar with the stage version of this Sondheim play, but my main reference was the movie that came out a few years ago, and a movie to me is probably always going to feel bigger than a play.  

How many more documentaries?  Still ten to go, and then my life will get a bit easier because I won't have to keep updating the IMDB with the people appearing in archive footage - I'm sure there's somebody working at the IMDB that I drive absolutely crazy with my submissions, and they'll also be happy when I move back to fiction films in a couple weeks. 

Norman Lear carries over again from "Lucy and Desi". And this is going to be my last film for July, I'm spreading my films out to reduce the down time in September, so I'll be right back here on August 1.  Just 5 films this week and 4 next week - but here's the format breakdown for July: 

8 Movies watched on cable (saved to DVD): WBCN and the American Revolution, Under the Volcano, Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road, Neil Young: Heart of Gold, Betty White: First Lady of Television, Sammy Davis Jr.: I've Gotta Be Me, The Kid Stays in the Picture, Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It

6 Movies watched on cable (not saved): Adrienne, Rock 'n' Roll High School, Eating Raoul, Jagged, Becoming Mike Nichols, Dean Martin: King of Cool

2 watched on Netflix: Count Me In, Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal & Greed

1 watched on Academy screeners: The Velvet Underground
1 watched on iTunes: Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me
4 watched on Amazon Prime: Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind, Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project, Jerry Lewis: The Man Behind the Clown, Lucy and Desi

1 watched on YouTube: The Automat
1 watched on Disney+: Becoming Cousteau
1 watched on Tubi: Frank Sinatra: One More for the Road

3 watched on HBO MAX: Mel Brooks Unwrapped, Mr. Saturday Night, The Super Bob Einstein Movie

28 TOTAL

FOLLOW-UP TO: "The Extreme Adventures of Super Dave" (Movie #1,784)

THE PLOT: Follows the life of the late actor, writer and producer Bob Einstein, featuring some of his greatest comedic contributions.  

AFTER: Of course I remember the old "Super Dave Osborne" skits from when I was a kid, though I think his act started on a show called "Bizarre", which was on HBO, and my parents refused to buy cable, so I had to try and watch them at a neighbor's house. I think one of the local Boston channels did show "Bizarre" late at night, but it was an edited version of the adult show that was made in Toronto and then shipped down to the U.S. Kind of like the North American version of "Benny Hill", another show I tried to catch late at night because it had a bunch of scantily-clad women in it - I was a horny teen, that's for sure.  

Then Super Dave/Bob Einstein had his own show for a while, but I was busy at college by then, and I was also becoming a fan of his brother, Albert Brooks, through films like "Broadcast News", "Defending Your Life", "The Scout" and "Mother".  I'd actually first encountered Albert way back on the Dr. Demento syndicated radio show, especially his comedy routine about people trying to write a better version of the U.S. anthem, in open auditions - what a delight to then find out he was also a movie star, and that he was very funny.  I didn't realize the relationship between the two actors until years later, and that Albert Brooks had changed his name from Albert Einstein, to avoid confusion with the famous German scientist. Sure, it made sense, he needed a stage name, but apparently so did his brother.  Now today I'm learning that their father was also in show business, and he ALSO appeared under a stage name, Harry Parke, and he did a lot of ethnic humor as a recurring character named Parkyakarkas.  This is a family that understands comedy and is willing to go to some lengths to be funny.  

But Bob/Dave was uniquely funny - I love Albert Brooks' dry humor more, but he's probably taken a few roles over the years that other actors could have handled, like his voice-over work in "Finding Nemo" and "The Secret Life of Pets".  Only his brother Bob could have been Super Dave, because it required acting completely seriously in utterly ridiculous situations - and Bob never cracked.  I hate to analyze comedy because doing so usually kills it, but as this film explains, he managed to act as his own straight man, the stunts he did were funny merely because he acted so seriously about them, and then the stunt would go horribly wrong, leading to the ultimate form of self-deprecation, namely (fake) serious injury.  And this was years before "Jackass" and other stunt shows like "Wipeout" came along and upped the ante by actually having people get hurt.  Even as a kid, I figured out that while bad things appeared to happen to Super Dave, the actor was always replaced during a cutaway by a dummy or a prop - it's just another form of magic trick, and figuring out that kind of trick probably led to my interest in filmmaking, the powerful combination of editing and visual effects. I bet to this day there are probably a few people who never even stopped to think how the Super Dave stunts were faked, and that's the power of filmmaking. 

Before he immersed himself into the Super Dave character, Bob worked in advertising, but then dipped his toe into acting and writing, after swearing to never go into the same business as his father, but then he did.  The earliest comedy routine played here, which didn't appear to be comedy at all at first, was Bob playing the guy who enshrines entertainers' names in the Hollywood Walk of Fame by pouring the concrete, and then gradually he lets slip that he'd added a star for himself and a couple of his close friends.  He's so deadpan during the whole routine that you WANT to believe him, and your mind figures out the extent of the hilarity of the situation before the interviewer does, so you get there faster if you're conditioned to assume the worst about people.  He moved on to partner with an up-and-coming Steve Martin on variety shows for The Smothers Brothers and then Sonny and Cher - if I've learned one thing from my documentaries this year, it's that simply everybody had their own variety show at some point in the 1960's or 1970's. The most popular character he played on those shows was another straight man, a motorcycle cop named "Officer Judy", and I had to laugh out loud when they played the footage of him stopping a piano performance by Liberace, riding in on his motorcycle and asking, "Do you know how fast you were going?"

He later got back into advertising with the character, via some Nike commercials in the 1990's, and then others for Haggar Clothing, and of course in all of them he would appear to perform extreme stunts, that was the gig, but the Haggar clothing still wouldn't wrinkle, no matter what happed to Super Dave.  But then I think at some point there was no place for Super Dave in the new "Jackass" world.  The 2000 movie based on the character was probably the last blast.  

After a role on one season of "Arrested Development", Bob found a new home on the Larry David show "Curb Your Enthusiasm", which takes up probably the latter half of this documentary. I'm at a bit of a loss here because I've never watched that show - I was too busy in 2000 when that show started, and so I never had time to go back and catch up, now there are like 111 episodes and that's a serious time investment, though who knows, if I have to spend another month furloughed at home, it may come to that.  I think tonight instead I'll knock out the second season of "Tiger King", because that's only 5 episodes.  I thought that maybe during the pandemic I'd finally have some time to watch "Lost", but that didn't happen either - I had to get out of the house last summer and go back to work, or I would have gone totally stir crazy.  

Anyway, Bob Einstein died in January 2019, before the pandemic, and that feels like a lifetime ago, but it's still great that his brothers and co-stars got together and appeared in this tribute to him.  I know, it sucks that once again I'm watching a documentary about a deceased celebrity - I think I kind of have to take stock and figure out if there are more dead subjects than live ones - yeah, it's 20 doc subjects dead and 7 1/2 still alive, so it's not just me.  Still above ground are the Sparks Brothers, Brian Wilson, Alanis Morissette, Neil Young, Gordon Lightfoot, Mel Brooks and Rita Moreno, and I'm counting the Velvet Underground as the extra half because Lou Reed and Nico are gone, but I think the others are still alive.  Going through the cast list below then starts to read like a long list of the fallen, but let's try to look at the bright side - Albert Brooks is still with us, so is Steve Martin, Dave Letterman, The Smothers Brothers, John Byner, Bob Newhart, Cher, Richard Lewis, Rob Reiner and Ringo Starr, that's all something, right?  And Norman Lear just turned 100!  But then, there's balance because some of the cast recently passed away, too, like Larry Storch, Carl Reiner Larry King and Donald Rumsfeld. Now I'm depressed again, except about Rumsfeld. 

I'll be back in a couple of days to kick off August's programming...

Also starring Albert Brooks (last seen in "I Love You, Daddy"), John Byner, Larry David (last seen in "Clear History"), Susie Essman (last seen in "Gilbert"), Jeff Garlin (last seen in "After the Sunset"), Cheryl Hines (last seen in "Adrienne"), Jimmy Kimmel (last seen in "Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go For It"), David Letterman (last seen in "Sammy Davis Jr.: I've Gotta Be Me"), Rob Reiner (ditto), Steve Martin (last seen in "Count Me In"), Money-B, Patton Oswalt (last seen in "George Carlin's American Dream"), Jerry Seinfeld (ditto), Sarah Silverman (last seen in "Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal & Greed"), J.B. Smoove (last seen in "Spider-Man: No Way Home"), Tom Smothers (last seen in "Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project"), Allan Blye, Berta Einstein, Clifford Einstein, Erin Einstein-Dale, Tyler Stewart, 

with archive footage of Bob Einstein (last heard in "Strange Magic"), Paula Abdul, Muhammad Ali (last seen in "George Carlin's American Dream"), Flip Wilson (ditto), Steve Allen (last seen in "The Kid Stays in the Picture"), Bob Arbogast, Desi Arnaz (also carrying over from "Lucy and Desi"), Lucille Ball (ditto), Johnny Carson (ditto), Ray Charles (ditto), Ellen Barkin (last seen in "Breaking News in Yuba County"), Milton Berle (last seen in "Frank Sinatra: One More for the Road"), Sonny Bono (last seen in "No Direction Home: Bob Dylan"), Glen Campbell (last seen in "Sammy Davis Jr.: I've Gotta Be Me"), Eddie Cantor (ditto), Larry King (ditto), Donald Rumsfeld (ditto), Adam Carolla (last seen in "Can We Take a Joke?"), Cher (last seen in "Tina"), Judy Collins (last seen in "Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind"), Andy Williams (ditto), Simon Cowell (last heard in "Scoob!"), Matt Damon (last seen in "Jay and Silent Bob Reboot"), Vivica A. Fox (last seen in "Independence Day: Resurgence"), Redd Foxx (last seen in "Jimmy Carter: Rock & Roll President"), Ice Cube (last seen in "Bitchin': The Sound and Fury of Rick James", Art Irizawa, Randy Jackson, George Jessel (last seen in "The Other Side of the Wind"), Fat Joe, Richard Kind (last seen in "Tick, Tick...Boom!"), Evel Knievel, Jay Leno (last seen in "Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project"), Richard Lewis (ditto), Ed McMahon (ditto), Carl Reiner (ditto), Dick Smothers (ditto), Liberace (last seen in "Lucky"), Dean Martin (last seen in "Jerry Lewis: The Man Behind the Clown"), Jackie Mason, Bob Newhart (last seen in "Dean Martin: King of Cool"), Conan O'Brien (last heard in "The Mitchells vs the Machines"), Harry (Einstein) Parke, Pat Paulsen, Tupac Shakur (last seen in "Straight Outta Compton"), Ringo Starr (last seen in "Mr. Saturday Night"), Larry Storch, Mr. T (last seen in "Not Another Teen Movie"), Mike Walden, Jonathan Winters (last seen in "Robert Klein Still Can't Stop His Leg")

RATING: 6 out of 10 name drops from rappers