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

Lucy and Desi

Year 14, Day 209 - 7/28/22 - Movie #4,213

BEFORE: Norman Lear carries over from "Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go For It", and can we give an extra-loud Birthday SHOUT-out to Mr. Lear, who turned 100 years young yesterday?  I didn't even plan this, it's just another one of those coincidences, and if I hadn't decided to slow my Doc Block down a bit, I wouldn't have landed a film with him right on his 100th birthday, how about that? 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Being the Ricardos" (Movie #4,075)

THE PLOT: Explores the rise of comedian icon Lucille Ball, her relationship with Desi Arnaz, and how their groundbreaking sitcom "I Love Lucy" forever changed Hollywood, cementing her legacy long after her death in 1989. 

AFTER: Well, here we are again, at the intersection of the image that celebrities in the 1950's put out into the world with the reality of what was going on behind the scenes.  The sitcom that was all about love, about the crazy, perfectly imperfect marriage of the fictional Ricky and Lucy Ricardo was the story that everybody in America watched on TV, but by now it should come as no surprise that the real-life Lucy and Desi Arnaz didn't have the perfect home life.  Did I need both this film and "Being the Ricardos" in the same movie year?  No, I really didn't, because they both tell the exact same stories - how they met, how they fell in love, how they filmed their TV show, and how they fended off the accusations of Lucy being a communist.  (I'll say it again, anybody could have been on the other end of that phone line, nobody can PROVE that it was J. Edgar Hoover, Desi could have pulled a fast one.)

But some people like fiction films, bio-pics with actors dressed up to look like other actors, and other people prefer documentaries.  I'm still a bit upset that J.K. Simmons didn't win an Oscar for playing William Frawley, who cares if Nicole Kidman gets another Oscar, I want J.K. Simmons to win every time, even if he was only in a "Spider-Man" movie that year. Director Amy Poehler had full access to the estates of Ball and Arnaz, so there's plenty of recordings of them discussing their TV show and their marriages.  

In the early days of TV, I think maybe viewers had a harder time distinguishing reality from fantasy, like today nobody thinks that the court cases on "Law & Order" are real, because we've been watching TV our whole lives and we know it doesn't reflect reality, even reality shows are partially scripted these days. But back then things were different, unless you happened to be part of that live studio audience and realized the Ricardos don't live in a real house, it's just a set.  Maybe some people at home thought the cameras went over to the Arnaz house to film an episode, or maybe they didn't think about that much at all, they just accepted the image on the TV screen as a form of reality.  Lines got blurred further when Lucille Ball got pregnant (for the second time) and they worked her pregnancy and baby delivery into the show, and I wonder how many people at home knew that the actress had two kids, while the character had only one.  

And of course, if you couldn't show a pregnancy on TV, you couldn't have two characters getting divorced, either, no no, it just wasn't done!  So I think the couple had to keep acting as if they were married on screen for a while after they were splitsville in real life, but I could be wrong here.  Even now people look back on Lucy and Desi as one of the great love stories, but the truth is that they both had longer marriages with their next partners after they divorced.  

The real legacy of Lucille Ball is this - a woman who co-ran, then ran solo, a TV production company.  Desi got out of management a few years after they split up, but Lucy kept running the company through the later incarnations of "The Lucy Show".  And Desilu Productions was responsible for some really big TV shows in the 1960's, like "That Girl", "The Untouchables", "Mission: Impossible" and "Star Trek". Think about how huge the "Star Trek" franchise is now, seven or eight spin-off shows over the years, and three different movie series.  All that (eventually) came from a TV show produced by Lucy and Desi's company!  And Desilu Studios was also the filming location for "The Dick Van Dyke Show", "My Three Sons", "I Spy", "Hogan's Heroes", "Family Affair" and "That Girl".  Yeah, they had kind of a huge lot, they bought the old RKO Studios and turned that into Desilu. Eventually Lucy gave up the studio, too and sold everything off to Gulf & Western, which started Paramount TV, though now I guess it's all under the CBS banner. 

The couple was ahead of their time in so many ways - not just in the innovative set design and multi-camera techniques that Desi introduced, but they divorced back before it was trendy to do so, co-parented and remained friends, which happens so often these days that we all just take it for granted now. Yeah, Lucy and Desi invented that, I'm pretty sure. 

Amy Poehler directed this, and she really did a lot with a little - most documentaries would interview about 50 people to try to convince us of how great the subject is, but the in-person cast list here is minimal.  Really, do you need more than Carol Burnett, Charo and Bette Midler?  No, I guess you don't.  To be fair, it feels a bit like they planned the shoot and then realized that most everybody in Hollywood was on vacation that week.  Thankfully there were enough clips from "I Love Lucy" to use to pick up the slack.

Also starring Lucie Arnaz (last seen in "Robert Klein Still Can't Stop His Leg"), Carol Burnett (last seen in "The Kid Stays in the Picture"), Charo, David Daniels, Journey Gunderson, Laura Laplaca, Eduardo Machado, Bette Midler (last seen in "Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind"), Gregg Oppenheimer and the voices of Desi Arnaz Jr. (last seen in "Dean Martin: King of Cool"), Dick Cavett (last seen in "Becoming Cousteau"), Michele Spitz

with archive footage of Desi Arnaz, Lucille Ball (also last seen in "Dean Martin: King of Cool"), Ray Charles (ditto), Andy Griffith (ditto), Fred Astaire (last seen in "Joker"), Barbara Billingsley, Fanny Brice, Xavier Cugat, Sammy Davis Jr. (also carrying over from "Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go For It"), Judy Garland (ditto), Louis B. Mayer (ditto), Joan Rivers (ditto), Walt Disney (last seen in "Walt: The Man Behind the Myth"), Dwight Eisenhower (last seen in "Standing in the Shadows of Motown"), Queen Elizabeth (last seen in "Sammy Davis Jr.: I've Gotta Be Me"), Larry Fine (also last seen in "Robert Klein Still Can't Stop His Leg"), Curly Howard (ditto), Moe Howard (ditto), Preston Foster, William Frawley, Gale Gordon, Katharine Hepburn, J. Edgar Hoover (last seen in "The One and Only Dick Gregory"), Buster Keaton (last seen in "Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project"), Mary Tyler Moore (ditto), Nancy Reagan (ditto), Harpo Marx (last seen in "Can We Take a Joke?"), Carmen Miranda, Gary Morton, Ronald Reagan (also last seen in "Becoming Cousteau"), Donna Reed (last seen in "The Automat"), Ginger Rogers, Cesar Romero, Mickey Rooney, Robert Stack (last seen in "Spielberg"), Robert Young (ditto), Ed Sullivan (last seen in "Mr. Saturday Night"), Dick Van Dyke (ditto), Danny Thomas, Marlo Thomas (last seen in "The Female Brain"), Vivian Vance, Max von Sydow (last seen in "I Am Divine"), Mary Wickes, Walter Winchell, and the voice of Johnny Carson (also last seen in "Dean Martin: King of Cool")

RATING: 5 out of 10 roles in RKO musicals

Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go For It

Year 14, Day 208 - 7/27/22 - Movie #4,212

BEFORE: Well, it happened, I watched so many documentaries that there's a new contender for the most appearances in this Movie Year, and it's a former U.S. President. I won't say the name, but it's not THAT one - and this is not unexpected, the people who show up the most ofen in documentaries seem to be Presidents and talk-show hosts.  Everyone from Dick Cavett to Dave Letterman to Jimmy Kimmel has been moving up in the ranks - Johnny Carson's been appearing a lot, that much I know.  OK, so Nicolas Cage is still tied for the lead, with one of the Presidents, and then Bruce Willis is still in second place with 9 appearances, but tied for third, with 8 appearances each, are John Lennon, Susan Sarandon and Frank Sinatra.  I don't think Lennon and Sinatra are expected to show up any more, but you never know.  It's a close race, with 13 docs left after tonight, and then another 75 films before I tally everything up. 

Marlon Brando carries over from "Mr. Saturday Night" via archive footage.  I've had this on my Netflix list for quite a while, but then when I learned that the PBS series "American Masters" licenses quite a few docs about entertainers, I found it there, too.  

THE PLOT: A look at the life and work of Rita Moreno from her humble beginnings in Puerto Rico to her success on Broadway and in Hollywood. 

AFTER: I've learned so much about the private lives of celebrities over the last couple of weeks, perhaps even a bit too much, like now I know that Jacques Cousteau had a second secret family (how very French!) and Bob Ross was probably having an affair with one of his business partners, none of the Rat Packers were faithful to their wives, and Robert Evans was married and divorced seven times.  The long-time married Mel Brooks, Betty White and Elaine Stritch, who all outlived their spouses, kind of look like saints by comparison, but who really knows?  And now we come to Rita Moreno, who was in a relationship with Marlon Brando for 7 or 8 years. It was on-again, off-again, and something of an abusive relationship at that, so I'm not really sure what to do with all of that information.  

Everything that's revealed here about Moreno's relationships comes from a post-metoo angle, everything is very sort of PC, even if it wasn't at the time, because things are different now than they were then.  When she started in the industry, as what they call a "contract player", the studio told the actresses what to do, where to eat, who to date, and they were often seen out on the town with single actors who were straight and unattached or even gay, just to bolster their images as available, attractive, handsome men.  But still, the studios kind of pimped them out, if you think about it.  Then the big-shot studio executives hit on the very same actresses at parties, in a milder version of the casting couch process, which was probably in play, too.  Moreno even talks on camera about being raped by her agent, and then continuing to let that man BE her agent, which just wouldn't fly today in our post-Harvey Weinstein world. 

She also had to endure years of playing jungle girls, Asian girls, Native American girls, basically the same silly love-struck roles that were some male writers' or producers' fantasies, wearing not exactly black-face, but more like brown-face, or whatever color the skin of that exotic woman in a short skirt needed to be. And nobody cared about whether the accents were correct, as long as she had one. That's old Hollywood for you, once you get typecast into one type of role, if the film's a hit you get to play that same character, again and again, as long as the skirt is short and that puts male asses in the seats. 

Eventually she got a minor part in "Singin' in the Rain" as a silent film star, Zelda Zanders. But it was two steps forward and one step back, because then she was in "The King and I" as an Asian love-struck slave.  The struggle continued until "West Side Story" in 1961, when she finally played a strong Latina character, Anita, and won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, but then was offered just a bunch of the same characters again and again.  So, she stopped making movies and went to work on Broadway, where she won a Tony for "The Ritz".  

We know where this is going, because that's half of an EGOT, and this is the THIRD documentary in my chain this year focused on people who have won all four major entertainment awards, the others were Mel Brooks and Mike Nichols.  Her Grammy came in 1972 for an album from "The Electric Company" and the Emmys came in 1977 and 1978 for appearing on "The Muppet Show" and "The Rockford Files".  She didn't stop there, she got a Golden Globe, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, was inducted into the California Hall of Fame, and got the SAG Life Achievement Award in 2013.  National Medal of Arts, Presidential Medal of Freedom, a Peabody Award, you get the idea.  

After all that, what else was there to do, besides guest appearances on "The Love Boat", "The Golden Girls" and "The Cosby Show"?  Plenty, it turns out.  Who can forget her as the tough nun, Sister Pete, on HBO's "Oz"?  Or the voice of Carmen Sandiego on that PBS geography game-show?  How about as Detective Goren's dying mother on "Law & Order: Criminal Intent"? And then came the Latina-based remake of "One Day at a Time", and most recently everything came full circle for her with a role in the remake of "West Side Story" - I'd link there directly but that would take me off the path of finishing all these documentaries, but don't worry, I'm going to get there in about a month, that film is part of my plan for 2022, just 24 steps away from here. 

I'm not sure I prefer all the PC-material in my documentaries, though - Moreno is seen following the Brett Kavanagh confirmation hearings, and championing the testimony of that woman who claimed he assaulted her at a party.  Umm, great, but Kavanagh still got confirmed, so that was a bit of a failure.  Moreno also speaks up for abortion rights, which is important, sure - she had a botched abortion after getting pregnant by Marlon Brando, and while her story is significant, it appears that ship has already sailed now, since Roe v. Wade got overturned.  It's too late now, only it isn't, the fight has to start all over again, still, can't the documentary just focus on the movie career?  It's important for her to talk about her suicide attempt, too, and I'm glad she got therapy and moved past all of that, but still...it's not why I came to the movie. 

Anyway, the best news here is that Rita Moreno is still alive, still working, after eight decades in show business.  Unlike many of the other celebrities profiled here, the dead are clearly outnumbering the living this time around.  And now one of my favorite actors, David Warner, has passed away - Paul Sorvino, too.  We've already lost so many celebrities in 2022 that I'll be hard-pressed to pick one for my dedication in January - but I'm leaning toward Meat Loaf.

Also starring Rita Moreno (last seen in "Marlowe"), George Chakiris, Hector Elizondo (last seen in "Overboard" (1987)), Gloria Estefan (last heard in "Vivo"), John Ferguson, Tom Fontana, Morgan Freeman (last seen in "Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard"), Mitzi Gaynor, Whoopi Goldberg (last seen in "Sammy Davis Jr.: I've Gotta Be Me"), Norman Lear (ditto), Eva Longoria (last seen in "The Sentinel"), Justina Machado (last seen in "Betty White: First Lady of Television"), Terrence McNally, Lin-Manuel Miranda (last seen in "Tick, Tick...Boom!"), Chita Rivera (ditto), Sonia Manzano (last seen in "I Am Big Bird: The Caroll Spinney Story"), Karen Olivo, Gina Rodriguez (last heard in "Scoob!"), Tony Taccone, 

with archive footage of Jack Benny (last seen in "Dean Martin: King of Cool"), Gene Kelly (ditto), Natalie Wood (ditto), Yul Brynner, George W. Bush (last seen in "George Carlin's American Dream"), Robert Clohessy (last seen in "Man on a Ledge"), Ted Danson (last seen in "The One I Love"), Sammy Davis Jr. (last seen in "Jerry Lewis: The Man Behind the Clown"), Tom Ewell, America Ferrera (last seen in "End of Watch"), Christine Blasey Ford, Judy Garland (also last seen in "Sammy Davis Jr.: I've Gotta Be Me"), Martin Luther King (ditto), James Garner (last seen in "The Children's Hour"), Rita Hayworth (last seen in "They'll Love Me When I'm Dead"), Rock Hudson (last seen in "Becoming Mike Nichols"), Howard Keel (last seen in "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers"), Deborah Kerr (last seen in "Frank Sinatra: One More for the Road"), Debbie Reynolds (ditto), Jimmy Kimmel (last seen in "Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project"), Elizabeth Taylor (ditto), Mario Lanza, Louis B. Mayer, Christopher Meloni (last seen in "The Diary of a Teenage Girl"), Jack Nicholson (also carrying over from "Mr. Saturday Night"), David Niven, Barack Obama (last seen in "Spielberg"), Donald O'Connor, Kelly Ripa (last seen in "Cheaper By the Dozen"), Joan Rivers (last seen in "Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal & Greed"), Ryan Seacrest (last seen in "New Year's Eve"), Sonia Sotomayor (last seen in "All In: The Fight for Democracy"), Steven Spielberg (last seen in "Spielberg")

RATING: 6 out of 10 digs at her late husband (really?)

Mr. Saturday Night (2021)

Year 14, Day 207 - 7/26/22 - Movie #4,211

BEFORE: OK, just fourteen more documentaries to go, I swear.  This has been the longest and most interconnected Rock and Doc Block since the first one, back in 2018, which now feels like a lifetime ago.  But that first one centered on JUST rock and roll, all the classic performers (OK, most, not all) and now my docfests are a lot more diverse.  Painters, politicians, chefs, oceanographers, everybody's welcome now - I'm going to get to chefs next week, and then a couple of politicians after the big concert.  For now I'm still on Hollywood types, and then before you know it, I'll be back on westerns and dinosaurs and superheroes, I've just got to hang in there, the sweet world of fiction will return. 

John Travolta (and several others) carries over from "The Kid Stays in the Picture". 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart" (Movie #3,903)

THE PLOT: The untold story of Robert Stigwood and how he amped the disco era. 

AFTER: Well, this movie answers a lot of questions, like what happened to Paramount after Robert Evans left?  The company moved forward with hits like "Saturday Night Fever" and "Grease", that's what.  How did John Travolta make the transition from a TV sitcom star to a real movie star?  And did he stay in touch with his friends from "Welcome Back, Kotter"?  Probably not. And how did the Bee Gees become disco stars, and then survive the dreaded Disco backlash of 1980?  Well, I already know the answer to that one, because that was covered in the documentary about them, which I watched in late July last year. 

Here's the biggest question, who was Robert Stigwood, and where did he come from?  He was just a kid from Australia who hitchhiked to England (which must have taken some time) where he worked a bunch of dead-end jobs, before forming a small theatrical agency.  It must be one of those right place, right time things, because he started managing small bands in the early 1960's, then when the Beatles took off, it was probably like selling ice during a heat wave, everybody was looking for the next British group that could hit the charts. Stigwood put the band Cream together from two other acts he had signed, and putting Clapton together with Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker was like catching lightning in a bottle - and then he became the booking agent for The Who, so he was off and running.  Stigwood's company merged with Brian Epstein's company, and so he had a shot at managing the Beatles after Epstein died, the only problem was, the Beatles didn't like him, so he left the company and took his half of the acts, which included the Bee Gees.  

Then came stage production, Stigwood produced the West End versions of "Hair" and "Oh! Calcutta!", then got an even bigger break when he produced the first stage version of "Jesus Christ Superstar", establishing a working relationship with Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice which would continue for years.  Meanwhile he was also managing the very difficult Eric Clapton through several other bands and pushing the Bee Gees toward their disco sound.  The only medium left unconquered was film, and so he went back to the well and turned "Jesus Christ Superstar" into a movie, then convinced his buddies in The Who to make a film out of their film "Tommy".  All this lay the groundwork for "Saturday Night Fever".  

Stigwood put all the pieces together - he licensed the rights to a New Yorker article about the rise of disco culture in New York City, he signed John Travolta to a three-picture deal, got his RSO associates to hire a director, then a crazy screenwriter, then another director, and while the process wasn't easy - nothing ever is - at the end of it all, they had a hit movie.  This is what a true producer does, the hiring, the firing, the arguing with the talent and the director, but still somehow keeping the whole production on schedule, on budget and moving forward.  So he really was the next Robert Evans, I can see the connections, only Stigwood wasn't as easily distracted by the female stars, you could say he preferred the male ones.

The rest was all marketing - they released the movie soundtrack early, so people could go crazy over the Bee Gees songs, and then they just HAD to go see the movie.  Or people saw the movie and then ran out to buy the soundtrack, and it became the best-selling album ever. Nobody ever really cross-marketed a movie's album to this degree before, Stigwood had all the album rights and profits because Paramount didn't think there was much money in soundtracks, and boy did they get that one wrong.  Stigwood repeated that formula and that success with "Grease", saying that as long as there were two hits on the album, he could sell the hell out of it, and he was right again.  

But then, something changed - disco became unpopular for some reason (honestly, it might have been dying when "Saturday Night Fever" came out, and the film extended the lifespan by a bit), and the third Travolta film, "Moment by Moment", was a bomb.  After making sequels to both "Grease" and "Saturday Night Fever", Stigwood was essentially done, so he did the only thing he could do, hopped on his yacht and headed to Bermuda to live out the rest of his days.  Sure, why don't we all just do that when times get tough?  Must be nice...

There's not nearly enough time devoted here to the Stigwood-produced movie "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", which for my money is the best film ever made entirely of Beatles covers songs that stars the Bee Gees and Peter Frampton. I ask you, when else are you going to see George Burns, Steve Martin and Aerosmith in the same movie?  The general opinion is that this film is TERRIBLE, which it is, but if I just play a Beatles song sung by the Bee Gees, anybody else in the room starts asking, "What is this? WHO is this? It's so great!"  But the movie has managed to turn off so many more people than it turned on, but if you were stoned in the late 1970's, it was probably THE thing to watch, critics be damned. Stay for the definitive cover of "Got to Get You Into My Life" performed by Earth, Wind & Fire.  

I've made it MOST of the way through all of the documentaries that ended up on HBO's "Music Box" series after their festival appearances at last year's Docfest, which really inspired a bunch of my programming choices this year.  I think "Jagged" and the "Woodstock 99" films were both on "Music Box", and I'll get to the one about Kenny G in 2 weeks. (The one about DMX I didn't care about.). But I think "Adrienne", "Becoming Cousteau", "Dean Martin: King of Cool", "The Velvet Underground" and "The Automat" all played at Docfest last fall in the theater where I work, but I was so busy working the event that I couldn't watch them on the screen. Instead I had to keep a mental list and then wait for them to become available on cable or the various streaming platforms.  After that, I was just lucky to find enough bridging material to connect them all together - but when the casts are THIS large, that becomes possible. 

Also starring Bob Adcock, Vince Aletti, John Badham, Patrick Bywalski, Nik Cohn, Elizabeth Curcio, Joey Curcio, James Dayley, Michael Eisner, Ahlby Galuten, Freddie Gershon, Richard Goldstein, Kevin McCormick, James McMullan, Bill Oakes, Tim Rice, Deney Terrio, Earl Young, 

with archive footage of Robert Stigwood, Barry Gibb, Maurice Gibb, Robin Gibb, Colin Petersen, Vince Melouney, Jack Bruce, Steve Dahl, Brian Epstein, Meat Loaf (all last seen in "The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart"), Carl Anderson (last seen in "The Color Purple"), Ann-Margret (last seen in "Becoming Mike Nichols"), Army Archerd, John Avildsen, Ginger Baker (last seen in "Count Me In"), Roger Daltrey (ditto), John Entwistle (ditto), George Harrison (ditto), Paul McCartney (ditto), Keith Moon (ditto), Ringo Starr (ditto), Pete Townshend (ditto), Warren Beatty (also carrying over from "The Kid Stays in the Picture"), Faye Dunaway (ditto), Dustin Hoffman (ditto), Jack Nicholson (ditto), Al Pacino (ditto), Robert Redford (ditto), Marlon Brando (last seen in "Dean Martin: King of Cool"), John Lennon (ditto), Ed Sullivan (ditto), Joseph Cali, David Cassidy, Eric Clapton (last seen in "Under the Volcano"), Dick Clark (last seen in "Betty White: First Lady of Television"), Merv Griffin (ditto), Robert De Niro (last seen in "Jerry Lewis: The Man Behind the Clown"), Barry Diller (last seen in "Everything Is Copy"), Sarah Ferguson, Peter Finch, John Fogerty (last seen in "Woodstock: Three Days that Defined a Generation"), Peter Fonda (last seen in "The Boondocks Saints II: All Saints Day"), Karen Lynn Gormey, Mark Hamill (last seen in "Spielberg"), George Lucas (ditto), Roy Scheider (ditto), Gene Shalit (ditto), Dennis Hopper (last seen in "David Crosby: Remember My Name"), Elton John (last seen in "Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road"), Diane Keaton (last seen in "Love, Weddings & Other Disasters"), Sherry Lansing (last seen in "Mel Brooks Unwrapped"), Arif Mardin, Penny Marshall, Harold Melvin, Barry Miller, Marvin Moss, Olivia Newton-John (last seen in "Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind"), Bill Oakes, Donny Osmond (last seen in "Muscle Shoals"), Ron Palillo (last seen in "George Carlin's American Dream"), Paul Pape, Valerie Perrine, Donna Pescow, Billy Preston, Dan Rather (last seen in "The Eyes of Tammy Faye"), Oliver Reed, Karl Richardson, Nile Rodgers (last seen in "Bitchin': The Sound and Fury of Rick James"), Kurtwood Smith, Dee Snider, Sylvester Stallone (last seen in "Escape Plan: The Extractors"), Lily Tomlin (last seen in "Dolly Parton: Here I Am"), Tina Turner (last seen in "Tina"), Dick Van Dyke (last seen in "Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project"), Andy Warhol (last seen in "WBCN and the American Revolution"), Andrew Lloyd Webber, Norman Wexler, Cindy Williams (last seen in "The Conversation"), Tom Wolfe.  

RATING: 5 out of 10 knee-drops on the dance floor

The Kid Stays in the Picture

Year 14, Day 205 - 7/24/22 - Movie #4,210

BEFORE: It seems like my documentary subjects have been a bit all over the place, but they really haven't - Jerry Lewis saw himself as a filmmaker, Jacques Cousteau saw himself as a filmmaker, and that's a great lead-in for a week of films set in hot hot Hollywood.  I assume it's very hot there right now, it's hot as hell in NYC so they're probably about to change the first "O" in the Hollywood sign to an "E". Maybe not, the high in San Diego will be 72 today, I almost forgot how nice the weather used to be at Comic-Con, back when I used to go there. Anyway, I've got five films about actors and producers next, so I'm going to try to spread those out over the next seven days as a theme week. 

Carol Burnett carries over from "Becoming Cousteau". 

THE PLOT: Documentary about legendary Paramount producer Robert Evans. 

AFTER: Well, it feels a bit odd using Carol Burnett as a link to get here, when there were SO many other choices - It turns out that nearly everybody in Hollyweird either worked with or dated super-producer Robert Evans.  Some people, I'm guessing, did both.  But here's the thing, this documentary is ALL archive footage, and NO interviews.  So no matter who I used as a link here, it was going to happen through footage only, that's just the deal.  In my defense, go back to yesterday's cast list and take a look at just how difficult that was - let's fact it, I got extremely lucky that there was footage in two films on my list of Louis Malle interacting with both Jerry Lewis and Mr. Cousteau - and so yeah, I took advantage of that.  Who else was I going to use as a link, Vincent Cassel?  And it's also a bit of good fortune that when Dick Cavett interviewed Jacques Cousteau, Carol Burnett was another guest on that same show.  Now, when I program my links, I often don't know how and when each person listed on the IMDB will appear - and in Ms. Burnett's case, she was part of an anti-drug music video that Robert Evans was forced to make in after his big coke bust, this essentially counted as "community service" for him, to make a program that would air in 1981 as a network special , starring all of the major stars of the day, like Scott Baio, Dana Plato, Cheryl Tiegs, Leif Garrett and Andy Gibb.  Perhaps for some of those stars, appearing in the video also counted as THEIR community service, we'll never know.  Seriously, the program was called "Get High on Yourself", I'm guessing it was just a whole hour of awful songs and PSAs, but you can research that on your own. 

Anyway, this is a film with a cast of hundreds, thanks to the wonders of archive footage from the Paramount vaults, so now that I'm HERE, there's no way back, and from here, I can also go just about anywhere.  Fourteen more documentaries are going to wrap up this chain - but another weird thing about how this chain is linked together, tomorrow's film has a cast that's JUST as large.  I think the two docs with the biggest casts ended up back-to-back, you'd think that the linking would make it necessary for each one of them to get me out of a linking jam, but that's what's weird, some docs with just 10 people in them (again, according to the IMDB) gave me no linking trouble, on either end.  I can't really explain the magic of linking, except to say that no film is unlinkable, the links are there, I just have to go and find them.  I think at least five of the people listed below will be carrying over to the next film, which makes sense because it's another film about a Hollywood producer. 

Robert Evans wasn't always a producer, or a studio executive - before that he was an actor, just not a very well-known one.  And before that he ran a fashion company that made pants for women, which at the time was groundbreaking, believe it or not.  There was a time, not too long ago, where pants were for men only - a woman not wearing a skirt or a dress or at least three petticoats was scandalous or obscene, and this was IN the 20th century.  Like, the 1950's was the turning point when it suddenly became OK for women to wear PANTS, and Robert Evans was right there, working in women's pants.  And I know how that sounds, a little racy, but it fits his style, he makes the same stupid joke himself in this doc.  It makes more sense to say he spent five years working to get women INTO pants, and then 20 years in Hollywood trying to get women OUT of their pants.  There, I fixed the joke, you're welcome. 

Before that, he was an actor, a child actor.  His life changed in 1956 when on a pants-based business trip, he was approached in a hotel pool in Beverly Hills by actress Norma Shearer, who asked if he was an actor, and if he'd be available to play a young version of her late husband, producer Irving Thalberg (last seen in "Mank") in a biopic about actor Lon Chaney.  This led mega-producer Darryl Zanuck to cast him as a bullfighter in the film adaptation of Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises", which meant training for three months to learn the techniques.  Both Hemingway and Ava Gardner thought Evans was all wrong for the role, and threatened to quit the production if his part wasn't re-cast.  But then Zanuck saw him in costume, and after the first take, announced, "The kid stays in the picture!" giving Evans the title for his future autobiography.  

After several non-illustrious roles, feeling that his acting career was going nowhere, Evans realized his dream was really to be the next Darryl Zanuck, the producer calling the shots.  Actors come and go, they're mostly a dime a dozen, I think we can all see that, but producers held the real power in Hollywood.  So Evans purchased the rights to a novel titled "The Detective" and got it made into a movie with Sinatra, Jack Klugman, Robert Duvall and Jacqueline Bisset, and this brought him to the attention of Charles Bluhdorn at Paramount, which at the time was the 9th largest Hollywood studio in a town that could really only support 8. 

But in just 10 years, Evans, acting as VP of production, turned the studio's fate around with movies like "Barefoot in the Park", "The Odd Couple", "Rosemary's Baby", "The Italian Job", "True Grit", "Love Story", "Harold and Maude", "Serpico", "The Conversation", "The Great Gatsby", and oh, yeah, a little film called "The Godfather", maybe you've heard of it.  Were there problems along the way?  Hiccups, disagreements, disappointments?  Yeah, sure, that's just filmmaking - but come on, that's an unmatchable string of hits to have on a studio's slate. But Evans was just getting started, he struck a deal in 1972 with Bluhdorn to stay on as executive V.P. of worldwide production, while also producing films directly under his own banner, which Paramount would then distribute - and the first was the Nicholson film "Chinatown", another critical and financial success.  

Then, another turning point, after "Chinatown" was a hit, Bob Evans left Paramount to be an independent producer for a few years, with both hits like "Marathon Man" and stinkers like "Popeye" getting released between 1976 and 1980.  Then over the following 12 years, he only produced two films, "The Cotton Club" and "The Two Jakes", which was the sequel to "Chinatown".  Then between 1993 and 2003, well, the less said about those films, the better. **cough** "The Phantom" **cough**

To be fair, there were extenuating circumstances - a man who Evans entered into a deal with to produce "The Cotton Club" turned up dead.  Each partner in the production company owned 45% of the film, so it seems like Evans would profit the most from this man's death, and therefore he was kind of like a suspect - but the killing was arranged by the female cocaine dealer who introduced the man to Evans, Evans gave her $50,000 as a finder's fee but apparently she didn't think that was enough. Ah, Hollywood - this is one reason why I never moved there to work. Evans was advised by his lawyer to not testify, which didn't look good, and the cocaine dealer said that she and Evans were lovers, and that didn't look good either.  It took Evans a decade or so to bounce back from all the bad publicity - but he was down, not out. 

If this film feels sort of cobbled together, with pieces of footage from all over, that's probably just because it is - the narration comes from Robert Evans himself, but it's possible that most or all of that came from excerpts of the audiobook version of his autobiography of the same name, then somebody just licensed all the images and footage they needed to illustrate the events he talked about.  Sure, it's a departure from the typical "talking heads" format so commonly used, but that doesn't necessarily make the approach better, especially when the only quoted authority on the life and times of Robert Evans has something of a vested interest in his portrayal.  And then all of his reminiscences of his marriage to Ali MacGraw just all feel way too intimate, and therefore creepy.  Somehow him describing their conversations and make-out sessions is worse than the rapid-fire montage of all the actresses he slept with over the years.  And then of course Ali left Robert Evans for Steve McQueen, after an affair began on the set of "The Getaway".  I mean, sure, if given the choice between Bob Evans and Steve McQueen, I get it - but she divorced McQueen five years later, anyway.  Everything's got an expiration date, remember...

Robert Evans was married SEVEN times, though, he was a bit like the male Elizabeth Taylor in that regard - one marriage lasted just nine days, and none of them lasted more than three years. I hate to generalize, but I'm thinking that in most cases, the cause for divorce was listed as "being Robert Evans".  He had a stroke in 1998 and while he was recovering at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Frank Sinatra (his nemesis during the production of "Rosemary's Baby") died in one of the adjoining rooms, and this encouraged Evans to recover.  This documentary was made in 2002, and Evans lived another 17 years, and died in October 2019 at the age of 89.  

Being the classic, stereotypical Hollywood studio producer, Evans inspired characters in Orson Welles' final film "The Other Side of the Wind", the Blake Edwards film "S.O.B.", Dustin Hoffman's character in "Wag the Dog", Michael Douglas' character in "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past" and a recurring character on "Entourage", among others. There's also a miniseries (screening on Paramount+, naturally) about the making of "The Godfather", in which Evans is played by Matthew Goode - I have no doubt he can do the character justice.  This documentary did not make me feel happy, though, it's kind of depressing to me, and not just because it's another doc about a recently deceased person.  Bob Evans was the head of Paramount at the age of 37, and meanwhile I'm 53 and I've never been the head of Paramount.  Sure, I've got producing credits on a few animated shorts and a couple of features, but this guy produced "Chinatown" and "The Godfather", I'm a piker by comparison.  And seven divorces?  I've only been divorced once, so on every level I'm feeling quite inadequate, if that makes any sense.  Evans maybe had his ups and downs, but he was a huge player, he got out there and lived, made deals, worked with nearly everybody in Hollywood and dated everybody else. I manage a tiny animation studio and a tiny movie theater, and right now I'm only doing one of those, so there's a lot of time at home, during which I question my role in the universe. 

Also starring the voice of Robert Evans, with archive footage of Eddie Albert, Steve Allen (last seen in "Can We Take a Joke?"), Woody Allen (last seen in "Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me"), Pedro Almodovar, Ursula Andress, Scott Baio, Peter Bart, Warren Beatty (last seen in "Jimmy Carter: Rock & Roll President"), Paul Newman (ditto), Charlie Bluhdorn, James Caan (last seen in "Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project"), Clint Eastwood (ditto), Robin Williams (ditto), James Cagney (last seen in "Angela's Ashes"), John Cassavetes, William Castle, Carol Channing, James Coburn, Francis Ford Coppola (last seen in "Spielberg"), Peter Falk (ditto), John Davidson (last seen in "George Carlin's American Dream"), John Travolta (ditto), Catherine Deneuve, Bruce Dern (last seen in "Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind"), Barbra Streisand (ditto), Angie Dickinson (last seen in "Sammy Davis Jr.: I've Gotta Be Me"), Richard Nixon (ditto), Dinah Shore (ditto), Frank Sinatra (ditto), Kirk Douglas, Mike Douglas (last seen in "Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road"), Faye Dunaway (last seen in "The Rules of Attraction"), Mia Farrow (last seen in "Frank Sinatra: One More for the Road"), Ava Gardner (ditto), Bob Hope (ditto), Errol Flynn, Jane Fonda (last seen in "WBCN and the American Revolution"), Henry Kissinger (ditto), Richard Gere (last seen in "Three Christs"), Ruth Gordon (last seen in "The Trouble with Spies"), Gene Hackman, Gregory Harrison, Ernest Hemingway, Arthur Hiller, Dustin Hoffman (last seen in "Becoming Mike Nichols"), Walter Matthau (ditto), Mike Nichols (ditto), Robert Redford (ditto), Olivia Hussey (last seen in "Dean Martin: King of Cool"), John Wayne (ditto), Kate Jackson, Shirley Knight (last seen in "The Private Lives of Pippa Lee"), Cheryl Ladd, Jack Lemmon (last seen in "Dolemite Is My Name"), Ali MacGraw, Steve McQueen, Edward R. Murrow, Jack Nicholson (last seen in "New Wave: Dare to Be Different"), Ryan O'Neal (last seen in "They'll Love Me When I'm Dead"), Tatum O'Neal (last seen in "The Runaways"), Laurence Olivier (last seen in "Into the Storm"), Al Pacino (last seen in "House of Gucci"), Roman Polanski, Dana Plato, Tyrone Power, Mario Puzo, Robert Shapiro, Norma Shearer, Tommy Steele, David Susskind, Irving Thalberg, Cheryl Tiegs, Robert Towne, Kathleen Turner (last seen in "The Virgin Suicides"), Hervé Villechaize, Chris Wallace (last seen in "Irresistible"), Raquel Welch (last seen in "How to Be a Latin Lover"), Richard Widmark, Debra Winger (last seen in "Shadowlands"), Henry Winkler (last seen in "Down to You"), Darryl F. Zanuck, 

RATING: 6 out of 10 fights with Coppola