BEFORE: You'll see there is a method to my madness, or perhaps it's the other way around, because there is also a madness to my method. This film goes here in the line-up because Valerie Perrine was also in the original "Superman" film, so both Gene Hackman and Christopher Reeve carry over via archive footage, and I stay on topic - I'm going to deal with all of the films about actors before I move on to docs about the U.S.A. in time for July 4.
What I decided to do with the Barbara Walters doc is to try to NOT work it in to my schedule for this year, because I already have two docs with enormous casts that are helping to make the linking possible. "Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything" has one of the largest archive footage casts I've ever seen, I think maybe I should save it until next year, because it could help me out of a linking jam then. Of course, if a linking problem should come up THIS year, it's good to know I can drop it in just about anywhere and it should work.
Yes, this is a SHORT film, only about 38 minutes long, and I know that the last short film I watched didn't count in my tally, but the situation is different where the Doc Block is concerned, because I need it to be - the linking works out in my favor, as you'll see.
THE PLOT: An exploration of actress Valerie Perrine's amazing career and personal life, offering an intimate look behind the curtain.
AFTER: I don't have a lot of time today for Valerie Perrine, but that's kind of OK, because the filmmakers didn't either - the film is just 38 minutes long, so really, it's just enough time to tell us all who she was (if you didn't already know) and check in on her condition (if you did). She's been struggling with Parkinson's disease for the past few years - this was released in 2019 and she hasn't appeared in the Oscar "In Memoriam" montage yet, so still alive and dealing with this. It's a terrible thing, this old age, and the more vibrant and beautiful someone was when they were in their 20's or 30's, the harder it hits when someone is bedridden and requires constant care. But this is across the board, you go to any long-term care facility or any geriatric hospital and you might think to yourself that ALL of these people were once carefree kids running around outside, then they were ALL reckless teens to some degree, and then adulthood hit and really, can old age be too far around the corner? And yet, these are the lucky ones, if you stop and think about it, to even make it to 70 or 80 or beyond - but sure, at some point it becomes more about the quality of life.
Valerie was another army brat (like Faye Dunaway) so always moving around as a kid, never in the same place for more than 2 years, and logically we've seen what kind of adult those brats become, if we want to draw the connection to not really being into long-term relationships or having children (Faye Dunaway adopted her son, that's a celebrity work-around I guess) and then Valerie worked as a Vegas showgirl for a number of years. Like with acting, that's a job where there's a definite time limit, they probably put the old ones out to pasture or shoot them behind the barn, so to speak. After four years she slipped into acting when they needed someone to play Montana Wildhack, the soft-core porn actress in "Slaughterhouse Five" that the aliens brought to live with Billy Pilgrim in his human zoo exhibit. Of all the actresses who tried out for that role, she was the most comfortable with being topless, and she might have been the first actress since Marilyn Monroe to appear nude in Playboy timed to promote a current movie project.
Two years later, she basically did the same in "Lenny", play the supporting role of a woman who was naked a lot, but that film was more high-profile and she got an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. See, you stay true to what you know, become the best at it, and the recognition will follow. Then she was in that first "Superman" movie wearing very little, and probably blew the minds of a few young male comic book nerds. When the comic-book craze met the sexual revolution and "jiggle TV", as in "Wonder Woman", yeah, people started to see comic books in a whole new light. Perrine bounced around the movie industry for years, even somehow survived the nightmare disco-themed movie "Can't Stop the Music", where she co-starred with Bruce Jenner and the Village People (even I can't bring myseif to watch that one.)
What you may not know about Valerie Perrine is that in 1969 she was dating Jay Sebring, who died at the same party where Sharon Tate was murdered by Manson cultists - Valerie was supposed to be there that night, too, but someone at her job called in sick, so she missed the party at Roman Polanski's house, and therefore escaped death, but she's said that in some ways she never really got over that.
If I'm posting this one late tonight, it's because our internet's been spotty all evening, there was some kind of power outage because of the heat, though we never lost power the outage affected our cable & internet service. I'm hoping it comes back before 11:30 pm because the next film in the chain is on Amazon Prime, and for that I need the interwebs - it turns out there are two things that CAN stop the Doc Block once it gets rolling, and those are a linking mistake and a power outage. One of those two things is beyond my control.
Directed by Stacey Souther
Also starring Valerie Perrine (last seen in "An Accidental Studio"), Loni Anderson (last seen in "Stroker Ace"), David Arquette (last seen in "Scream" (2022)), Jeff Bridges (last seen in Stay Hungry"), Andrea Brooks (last seen in "The Company You Keep"), Angie Dickinson (last seen in "Wolfgang"), Richard Donner (also carrying over from "Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story"), Sarah Douglas (ditto), José Eber, Peggy Goldwater, George Hamilton (last seen in "Once Upon a Crime..."), Howard Hesseman (last seen in "All About Steve"), Stacy Keach (last seen in "Gotti"), David Ladd, William McNamara (last seen in "Copycat"), Nels Van Patten, Ken Perrine, Jeffrey Schwarz
with archive footage of Ned Beatty (also last seen in "Stroker Ace"), Bill Bixby (last seen in "Under the Yum Yum Tree"), Diahann Carroll (last seen in "Eve's Bayou"), Johnny Carson (also carrying over from "Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story"), Caitlyn / Bruce Jenner (ditto), David Letterman (ditto), Faye Dunaway (last seen in "Faye"), Merv Griffin (ditto), Roman Polanski (ditto), Bob Fosse (last seen in "Bathtubs Over Broadway"), Steve Guttenberg (last seen in "The Boys from Brazil"), George Roy Hill, Dustin Hoffman (last seen in "Runaway Jury"), Jack Lemmon (last seen in "Sly"), Ed McMahon (last seen in "Nyad"), Regis Philbin (last seen in "Albert Brooks: Defending My Life"), Gena Rowlands (last seen in "Night on Earth"), Michael Sacks (last seen in "Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time"), Jay Sebring, Sharon Tate (last seen in "The Beach Boys"), Dick Van Patten (last seen in "Westworld"), and the Village People.
RATING: 5 out of 10 talk show appearances
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