Personality Crisis: One Night Only

Year 17, Day 179 - 6/28/25 - Movie #5,062

BEFORE: Nearly one week into the Doc Block, and if I look back I see the pattern, which I didn't even realize I was making - I alternated between female and male subjects, also between living and non-living ones. Well, the pattern continues tonight but then I'm shaking things up - as dictated by the linking. Ben Vereen carries over from "Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story" and in two days I'll be done with the actor/filmmaker profiles, we've got a lot of other topics to get to before this Doc Block is done. 

I haven't even started on the main music chain, but I fear there will be more of the same - all the great rockers are in their 70s or 80s now, so this could easily become just a litany of the fallen, or the ones who fall and can't get up. Debbie Harry from "Blondie" has a big birthday coming up in a few days, I'd say the number but a gentleman doesn't do such things, you can look it up though. Yeah, we're all getting older but I don't have to be reminded every day about it, it's hard though when every major band from back then is down to just two or three original members. 

David Johansen passed away about four months ago - but I saw him in person just about two years ago, a late night screening at the Tribeca Film Festival. I'm pretty good at spotting the celebs usually, but of course he was not going to just blend in with the crowd. It was a screening of the John Early film "Now More than Ever", which I just found out was directed by Johansen's step-daughter. OK, that explains a few things.  

Last year I programmed a couple of concert films - Elton John's farewell concert from Dodger Stadium, and (essentially) Bowie's "Moonage Daydream".  Those seemed to work well, so I've programmed maybe five more for this year's Doc (and Rock) Block. That little mini-chain kicks off tonight, and I'll work the other ones into July.  That's why I won't have room for Barbara Walters this time around. 

THE PLOT: David Johansen's luminous set at Cafe Carlyle from January 2020 - a concert that was wonderfully intimate and a testament to both a lost New York and an artist who was as fresh and exciting as ever. 

AFTER: If you don't know who David Johansen was, you may know him by his other name - for a few years he called himself Buster Poindexter and had some hit records, most notably "Hot Hot Hot" which is now played by every terrible DJ at weddings and on every cruise ship or at every vacation resort to "get the party started". It could be the worst song ever, only there's no way to prove that, but it's an uptempo party song so it's on that playlist with "Who Let the Dogs Out" and "Macarena" and "YMCA". If you're a popular recording artist or band, you don't know what's going to connect with the public, so you may find yourself performing your worst or least favorite song in your line-up for the rest of your career. Suck it up, buttercup. 

Johansen/Poindexter got hired to front the house band on "SNL" at some point, talk about getting stuck in a character, he had to maintain that act for like a full season, but before long he quit or got fired, leaving G.E. Smith in charge of that band, and that lasted until Hall & Oates decided they wanted to go out on tour again. Johansen moved on to acting in films, but it seemed like he was intentionally picking the most TERRIBLE movies to appear in. "Scrooged" with Bill Murray was fine, but come on, "Let it Ride"? "Car 54, Where Are You?" "Mr. Nanny"?  Either he had a terrible agent or his heart just wasn't in it.  

Before all that, he fronted one of the earliest punk bands, the New York Dolls, which only put out two albums, and their gimmick was they were a bunch of dudes wearing women's clothing - and this was back in the early 1970's before that was even fashionable or acceptable - a full decade before Twisted Sister did it, and they spent time on the NY scene hanging out with Warhol's Factory people and the Ridiculous Theater Company, among the other hippies, weirdos, freaks and drug addicts of the day. Forget Studio 54, they had CBGB's and Max's Kansas City and the Mudd club, who needs to go uptown anyway?  

Then came the David Johansen Band, then for a while he fronted a blues band called the Harry Smiths, which was named after a NYC-based infamous animator who lived in the Chelsea Hotel but also had an extensive record collection and seemed to know a lot about a great many things, but never really broke through as an animator or eccentric genius or anything else. Johansen said he could visit people at the Chelsea Hotel and not leave the building for a week, and yeah, that tracks, considering the eclectic bunch of gypsies, tramps and thieves who maintained apartments there. I work right near there, I think it's all co-op apartments now, but I miss the Doughnut Plant that was on the ground floor before COVID.  

Speaking of that, this concert was recorded at the Carlyle Hotel bar - which I've seen in a number of films, including "Always at the Carlyle" - in January of 2020, which was RIGHT before the whole world shut down in March of that year. Most film production came to a halt, too, so that may explain why it took a couple years to get this film edited and released. That was the month my wife and I went to see "Hamilton" (I won the ticket lottery) and that was the last thing we did in public before we became shut-ins for six months. It's funny how that changed people's lives, I mean those lucky enough to live or get vaccinated when the time came found themselves with different habits, or maybe a new career after, hopefully a different outlook on life too. Everything is so fragile and impermanent, which is why we all have to hang on to the aspects of life that we enjoy and try to not waste any time on frivolous things. Maybe many of us are still in recovery mode, who can say?  

Anyway, I didn't really know the songs here, never really listened to the Dolls or anything from Buster Poindexter beyond the song that everyone hates but plays anyway. There's little Buster material here, except footage of Ben Vereen introducing him during a televised New Year's Eve Party at the Waldorf-Astoria in 1988. Did that really happen?  The internet was unable to confirm this, because there was no internet until 10 years later, and I guess record-keeping was darn near impossible before that. Well, sure, there's video but you can fake all that these days so we'll never know for sure.  This concert is Buster Poindexter covering the songs of David Johansen - but wait, aren't they the same person?  Well, yes, but also no. It's complicated.  We all walk down several different roads as we pass through this life, and you can change your name or your look or your gender identity and maybe you forget about the first few roads when all is sung and done.  That's the Personality Crisis, I guess. 

I used to be a P.A. on music videos, and that life exists only in my memory now, like I remember holding camera cables while surrounded by Rick James and four barely-dressed female dancers. Did that really happen?  I remember watching Leon Redbone and Dr. John lip-synch to "Frosty the Snowman" for a Christmas album, but it seems just as likely that was a weird dream I had one winter night. And don't get me started on the Sesame Street projects, one of which had En Vogue, the Count and Super Grover in it - there's no way that really happened. But that's MY life. 

Directed by Martin Scorsese (director of "Killers of the Flower Moon") & David Tedeschi (editor of "Shine a Light" and "No Direction Home: Bob Dylan")

Also starring David Johansen (last seen in "Little Richard: I Am Everything"), Penny Arcade, Debbie Harry (last seen in "Tales from the Darkside: The Movie"), Leah Hennessey, Mara Hennessey, Morrissey, Keith Cotton, Ray Grappone, Richard Hammond, Brian Koonin, 

with archive footage of John Cage (last seen in "The Velvet Underground"), Maria Callas (last seen in "Faye"), Alan Cumming (also carrying over from "Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story"), Jacqueline Kennedy (ditto), Abbie Hoffman (last seen in "LennoNYC"), Arthur Kane, Kurt Loder (last seen in "Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2"), Charlotte Moorman, Billy Murcia, Charlie Musselwhite, Conan O'Brien (last seen in "Money Shot: The Pornhub Story"), Al Roker (last seen in "Wolfgang"), Jonathan Ross (last seen in "The Sparks Brothers"), Harry Smith, Hubert Sumlin, Ingrid Superstar, Sylvain Sylvain, Johnny Thunders, Max Weinberg (last seen in "20 Feet from Stardom")

RATING: 5 out of 10 cover songs

Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story

Year 17, Day 178 - 6/27/25 - Movie #5,061

BEFORE: So far, this Doc Block has been like a game of "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" - Faye Dunaway was in "Bonnie & Clyde" with Gene Hackman, who was in "Superman" with Christopher Reeve, which also starred Valerie Perrine, who was in "Lenny" directed by Bob Fosse, who directed "Cabaret" which starred Liza Minnelli. It all just makes sense, right?  And it makes my linking and my organizing super easy - well, things are going to get a bit more difficult for a while, and the connections may not be so obvious going forward, but who knows, maybe when I hit the docs about rock music the connections will become more obvious again. 

So Liza Minnelli carries over this time from "Bob Fosse: It's Showtime!" This doc comes to me courtesy of the long-running PBS series "American Masters", it was pledge week a couple months ago and I always check to see what PBS is running then because it usually means a couple of great docs, which are easily dubbed to DVD because, you know, public TV. These movies belong to all of us. 

THE PLOT: A tribute to a young artist of unlimited raw talent and the deep, creative relationships she had with her mentors and influences. 

AFTER: Well, tonight it's another army brat, someone who moved around a lot as a child, and as we've seen, that automatically leads to an adult who can't commit to long-term relationships. Just kidding, Liza Minnelli's parents were apparently in the film business or something. Her mother was Judy Garland, who was most famous for the 1936 film "Pigskin Parade" and the 1962 animated film "Gay Purr-ee".  Her father was Vincente Minnelli, known for "I Dood It" and "Yolanda and the Thief". Again, kidding, sort of. Liza's parents were both Oscar winners (Garland won the Juvenile Oscar in 1940) so how could she NOT go on to win one herself?  Of course, she won for her unforgettable performance in "Arthur 2: On the Rocks" - 1988 was apparently a slow year. JK. 

Liza was the first Nepo Baby, maybe the ultimate nepo baby. Judy Garland had her performing early, doing duets with her during her London Palladium shows. But Momma couldn't help being momma, you can see her micro-managing the way Liza was holding the microphone. Jeezus, MA, just let me do it!  Then Liza got gigs dancing on the Ed Sullivan show - but she hadn't even really had dancing lessons, they just let her do it. If you're famous, they let you do it. But even at the age of 16 she had been in Broadway stage productions, and she won a Tony at age 19. But then when her mother died in 1969, Liza had to figure out who she wanted to be and how she could still have a career in show business without her mother's guidance (and, I'm guessing, influence).

So this documentary breaks down her career into time-frames, based on the five people she turned to for advice: Kay Thompson (author of the "Eloise" books, and people had long speculated she based Eloise on Liza's childhood), Charles Azvanour, Frank Ebb, Bob Fosse, and Halston. Just imagine how very different her life had been if she had instead turned to Lucille Ball, Jacques Brel, Stephen Sondheim, Jerome Robbins and Ralph Lauren, she would have been a total mess. Wow, I'm glad she got it together by hanging out with the right people. 

Through Bob Fosse she was cast in "Cabaret", and she had auditioned in the past for the stage production and been turned down, so when it got turned into a film she fought really hard for it, and you know, Oscar rewarded her so I guess she was right. We all know how Sally Bowles was in love with Brian Roberts, who moved into her flat, and despite her best efforts, he keeps having sex with men. Isn't it funny how life imitates art sometimes? 

After "Cabaret", Liza went on to voice Dorothy in an animated sequel to "The Wizard of Oz", and also married Jack Haley Jr., who himself was a sequel to the Tin Man from "The Wizard of Oz". I guess you can try to outrun your past but you never really can, can you?  But then she went on to co-star with everyone from Dudley Moore to the Muppets, and in the new millennium, she popped up on shows like "Law & Order: Criminal Intent" and "Arrested Development". Meanwhile, the stage version of "Cabaret" gets revived Off-Broadway every few years now, Alan Cumming was in the first notable revival and since then performers like Adam Lambert, Neil Patrick Harris and Eddie Redmayne have played The Emcee and Michelle Williams, Debbie Gibson, Lea Thompson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Teri Hatcher and Emma Stone have all taken their turns as Sally Bowles. Hey, if there's an actress you like a lot and you haven't seen them in their underwear, just wait.  

Her TV specials included "Liza with a 'Z'", 1980's "An Evening with Liza Minnelli", 1992's "Liza Minnelli Live from Radio City Music Hall" and 2009's "Liza's at the Palace", so you could definitely count on her to perform a comeback special every 11 or 17 years. I remember watching the Freddie Mercury tribute concert back in 1992 where she was the special unannounced guest who came out to perform the final song, "We Are the Champions, because you just KNOW Freddie would have wanted it that way.  She's also overcome scoliosis, encephalitis, and four marriages, including one to David Gest, the husband who took all her furniture and belongings while she was out of town. What a prince. 

Well, it's still Pride month, it's coming to a close but I got this one in just under the wire - I think the long list of Liza's boyfriends and husbands and companions who were gay men (either at the time or later on) qualifies this one. Seriously, at what point do you learn to ask ONE simple question before dating a person?  It's not that hard, especially these days. Maybe she knew, I think she had to know, and she just had a "type" or something.  

Directed by Bruce David Klein

Also starring Marisa Berenson (last seen in "Filmworker"), Jim Caruso, Darren Criss (last seen in "Muppets Haunted Mansion"), Mia Farrow (last seen in "Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind"), Michael Feinstein, Joel Grey (last seen in "Remembering Gene Wilder"), George Hamilton (last seen in "Valerie"), John Kander, Naeem Khan, Allan Lazare, Arlene Lazare, Michele Lee (last seen in "Along Came Polly"), Lorna Luft (last seen in "Sid & Judy"), Ann Pellegrini, Ben Rimalower, Chita Rivera (also carrying over from "Bob Fosse: It's Showtime!"), Ben Vereen (ditto), Ralph Rucci, Myra Scheer, Christina Smith, Billy Stritch, Kevin Winkler, 

with archive footage of Peter Allen, Desi Arnaz Jr. (last seen in "Lucy and Desi"), Fred Astaire (last seen in "Joker: Folie a Deux"), Charles Aznavour, Rona Barrett (last seen in "Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed"), Mikhail Baryshnikov (last seen in "Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit"), Alan Cumming (last seen in "Marlowe"), Sammy Davis Jr. (also carrying over from "Bob Fosse: It's Showtime!"), Bob Fosse (ditto), Gwen Verdon (ditto), Robert De Niro (last seen in "Ezra"), Hugh Downs (last seen in "Mike Wallace Is Here"), Geraldo Rivera (ditto), Fred Ebb, David Frost (last seen in "I Am Burt Reynolds"), Judy Garland (also last seen in "Sid & Judy"), Vincente Minnelli (ditto), Frank Sinatra (ditto), Mark Gero, David Gest, Gene Hackman (last seen in "Valerie"), Jack Haley Jr., Halston, Sam Harris, Michael Jackson (last seen in "The Greatest Night in Pop"), Bianca Jagger, Elton John (last seen in "Billie Jean King: Portrait of a Pioneer"), Grace Jones (last seen in "Boomerang"), John F. Kennedy (last seen in "Faye"), Jacqueline Kennedy (last seen in "Famous Nathan"), John Lennon (last seen in "Stan Lee"), Rosie O'Donnell (last seen in "Butterfly in the Sky"), Cicely Tyson (ditto), Princess Diana (last seen in "Elton John: Becoming Rocketman"), Diana Ross (last seen in "Marvin Hamlisch: What He Did for Love"), Martin Scorsese (last seen in "Killers of the Flower Moon"), Peter Sellers (last seen in "An Accidental Studio"), Dinah Shore (last seen in "Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story"), Andy Warhol (ditto), Ed Sullivan (last seen in "Jim Henson: Idea Man"), Raquel Welch (ditto), Kay Thompson (last seen in "Funny Face"), Liv Ullmann (also last seen in "Faye"), Kristen Wiig (last heard in "Despicable Me 4")

RATING: 6 out of 10 nights at Studio 54 (where simply NOBODY took drugs, ever)

Bob Fosse: It's Showtime!

Year 17, Day 177 - 6/26/25 - Movie #5,060

BEFORE: Again, probably posting late today, but for a different reason, I had a job interview and I don't want to jinx it so no details, but if this comes through I might have a summer job to replace my other job which tends to slow down over the summer. More updates as they become available, but since I won't know anything until after the July 4 holiday, I'm just going to file for partial unemployment next week, to be on the safe side. I still have a paycheck coming from working the Tribeca Film Festival earlier this month, and I put in a LOT of hours so I'm hoping for a deposit in my account that will make me happy. 

Valerie Perrine carries over from "Valerie" - Bob Fosse directed the film "Lenny" which she got her Oscar nomination for, so it's only natural that they should appear in each other's documentaries. 

THE PLOT: A story about the 8-time Tony Award-winning director, choreographer and cinematographer Bob Fosse which focuses on some of the gray areas of his life and his self-destructive side. 

AFTER: I spotted this one on Amazon Prime and figured I just HAD to work it into the chain - bear in mind that the finalized chain can still be used as a framework, one which I can attach more films to, like the Christmas tree is never really done, you can always add one more ornament if you really want to. I'll still be on track for July 4 material and I'll still land that doc about the comedian right on the anniversary of his death, so I'm maybe going to have to circle the airport a bit, but we're still cleared for landing on schedule. I feel like I know who Bob Fosse was, but still I don't really know who Bob Fosse was - maybe I just feel like I should know more about Bob Fosse overall. Well, that's what documentaries are for, right?  

Fosse won a Best Director Oscar for "Cabaret". Oh, yeah, sure, respect. That same year he won 2 Tonys and an Emmy, and nobody ever did all that in one year, not before Fosse or after. Like he was 3/4 of the way to an EGOT within one calendar year.  He only directed five films, but those films were VERY notable - "Sweet Charity", "Cabaret", "Lenny", "All That Jazz" and "Star 80".  SO much stage work as a choreographer, on "The Pajama Game", "Damn Yankees", "Bells are Ringing", "Pippin", "Chicago", "Sweet Charity" and "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying", and many more. The doc really focuses on those films, though, because footage from them is relatively available, footage of the Broadway shows, not so much.  

Where the hell did they get these scrubs to talk about Fosse's career? I've never heard of any of these people, Will Young seems to be the most notable, but he's got zero IMDB credits, so I still don't know who the hell he is. The ones who do have credits seem to have worked only as critics on BBC art shows, why couldn't they interview people who worked with Fosse, or knew Fosse, this felt like those horrible cable docs I watched last year about David Bowie and Elton John, all of the information comes across like hearsay, we don't know if these people are just repeating stories they read about Fosse in a book or something.  Where is the research? Or did somebody just blow the budget on getting archive footage from "Star 80" and "Cabaret", leaving nothing to travel to NY and interview actual Broadway performers?  

I'm glad they took the time to explain Fosse's style of choreography somewhat, like the finger-snapping, the turned-in knees, the shoulder rolls and what they call the "amoeba", that's the group of dancers that coalesces and kind of moves across the stage together. Yes, I know Robin Williams made fun of Fosse moves in "The Birdcage", but for the life of me I couldn't remember how he moved his body when he said, "You, you do Fosse Fosse Fosse!"  However it's still a big NITPICK POINT for me that the sequences here of four dancers doing Fosse moves over and over and over is MUCH too long. In an hour-long documentary, 10 minutes of instructional dance is just overkill. 

But Fosse invented jazz hands, maybe that's all you really need to know, and for a choreographer to coin a term like that and have it catch on all across musical theater and enter the vernacular language, that's a really big deal. Fosse liked using hats because he suffered from premature baldness (relatable) and he liked dancers in fishnets and tight clothing because he was a total perv. Well he grew up working in strip-clubs in his teens, so sure, that explains a lot.  

Dancing since the age of 13, he also served in the U.S. Navy starting in 1945, stayed in the Pacific Theater until 1947, but performing in actual theaters as part of the Special Services that entertained the troops. After getting discharged he went straight to NYC to try to become the next Fred Astaire. Well, he danced like Astaire but that's where the resemblance ended, he couldn't act worth a damn, so he stuck to dancing and became a choreographer too. "Kiss Me Kate" in 1953 was one of the earliest films to have a Bob Fosse dance sequence. After that it was easier for him to find dance & choreography work in theater, but then there came a time when all those Broadway shows like "Damn Yankees" and "The Pajama Game" started being turned into movies, so he just followed the trend and worked on movies.  

Becoming a film director was the next logical step - after all, what is a director but a choreographer for actors, if you think about it?  I've never seen "Sweet Charity" but after seeing some scenes here I'd give it a whirl, it looks very trippy, also hippy-dippy.  They're running "Lenny" on cable now so I should probably put that one on my list, too, you know how I love to be a completist. It took me a long time to watch "Cabaret", but I eventually got there - and I'd seen "All That Jazz" and "Star 80" when I was a teen, because nudity. I didn't stop to think back then how Roy Scheider playing a hard-working, burnt out, drug-addicted womanizing choreographer was really Bob Fosse putting his own experiences right there on film for everyone to see. 

No judgments, come on, it was the 1970s and everybody was doing drugs and sleeping around and trying to make films like Fellini.  But we know that Fosse was using amphetamines to work harder and longer and downers so he could sleep, and that's what's known as an (eventual) lethal combination. Fosse had a heart attack in September 1987, so really his lifestyle cut his career short after five films and only a zillion stage productions.  I know they also made a mini-series about Fosse's life and relationship with Gwen Verdon, I've been meaning to check that out, but I've got a long list of TV shows that I haven't been getting to - if I get the new job that would become impossible for me. But it stars Sam Rockwell and I like him so I will try. 

This doc also speculates that if Fosse had lived, he probably would have gotten around to directing a film version of "Chicago", and he wanted Madonna to star in it.  Without Fosse the film version was mired in development hell for decades, though we finally got a film version in 2002 that won Best Picture. True Fosse fans will probably say his version would have been better, but what could be "better" than Best Picture? 

Directed by Lucia Helenka

Also starring James Barton, David Benedict, Vanessa Fenton, Emma Harris, Merritt Moore, Geraldine Morris, Louise Redknapp, Jason Solomons, Kelsey Williams, Will Young,

with archive footage of Bob Fosse (also carrying over from "Valerie"), Dustin Hoffman (ditto), Sandahl Bergman (last seen in "The Singing Detective"), Sammy Davis Jr. (last seen in "Think Like a Man Too"), Richard Gere (last seen in "The Benefactor"), Charles Grass, Joel Grey (last seen in "Remembering Gene Wilder"), Mariel Hemingway (last seen in "The Mean Season"), Paula Kelly (last seen in "Soylent Green"), Jessica Lange (last seen in "Marlowe"), Jerry Lewis (last seen in "Famous Nathan"), Liza Minnelli (ditto), Shirley MacLaine (last seen in "American Dreamer"), Dean Martin (last seen in "Sid & Judy"), Joan McCracken, Mary Ann Niles, Ann Reinking (last seen in "All That Jazz"), Chita Rivera (last seen in "Bathtubs Over Broadway"), Eric Roberts (last seen in "Babylon"), Cliff Robertson (last seen in "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse"), Roy Scheider (last seen in "The Myth of Fingerprints"), Gwen Verdon (last seen in "Alice"), Ben Vereen (last seen in "Top Five"), Michael York (last seen in "The Taming of the Shrew"), Renee Zellweger (last seen in "Idina Menzel: Which Way to the Stage?")

RATING: 4 out of 10 moves that were stolen by Michael Jackson (yes, even the moonwalk)

Valerie

Year 17, Day 176 - 6/25/25 - Movie #5,059

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

Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story

Year 17, Day 175 - 6/24/25 - Movie #5,058

BEFORE: Monday night I worked at a screening of a new PBS doc titled "Caregiving", which will be airing in a few days. The crowd consisted of a group of people who work as caregivers, you know, give them a sneak peek because they may be too busy to watch the show when it airs.  That seemed like a very good introduction to tonight's documentary at home, which is partially about Christopher Reeve being cared for by his wife, Dana, for years after his horse riding accident. It's always nice when my work life kind of lines up with my personal movie-viewing. 

A number of actors carry over from "Faye" via archive footage, but let's just point out Gene Hackman, who was in "Bonnie & Clyde" in addition to playing Lex Luthor in the first "Superman" movie. Hackman, of course, passed away a few months ago, they think on February 18, but part of the problem was that his wife died unexpectedly, and she was his caregiver. So they think he died a few days later, possibly without understanding why he hadn't seen his wife in a while. And so it goes, I guess. 

THE PLOT: Reeve's rise to becoming a film star is followed by a near-fatal horse-riding accident in 1995 that left him paralyzed from the neck down. After the accident, he became an activist for spinal cord injury treatments and disability rights. 

AFTER: Well, DC Comics is already calling this the "Summer of Superman", they're selling extra issues of Superman comics because of the upcoming reboot movie, which is due in theaters on July 11. I'm going to be deep into the Doc Block by then, so I fear that I'm going to miss out on "Superman" and "Fantastic Four: First Steps" this year and I'm just going to have to catch up with them later. Honestly, I was fine with Henry Cavill as Superman, hell I was fine with Tom Welling as Superman on "Smallville" and I don't quite see the need to start over with the origin story AGAIN every few years.  At this point I think the DC Movie-verse may have re-booted itself more times than the comic books have, which is saying something. I went through the same damn thing with Spider-Man, just PLEASE don't make me watch another superhero origin story that I've seen four times already. 

I always think back to 1983, when my favorite comic-book author/writer at the time, John Byrne, tackled Superman in a miniseries called "The Man of Steel", and he started, as most writers tend to do, on Krypton, with the doomed planet and the rocket launch and Jor-El and his wife trying to save their baby, who would be the ONLY survivor of their world, except of course for Supergirl and Krypto the Super-Dog and the Phantom Zone criminals and the bottled city of Kandor and Superman's second cousin twice removed and of course Beppo the Super-Monkey. (not kidding) But then a few months later, Byrne regretted starting the story we all know on Krypton, and thought that maybe he just should have started the story with a teenage Clark Kent, who didn't yet know he came from another planet, and then we'd find out his origin the same time that he did - it's a much more powerful way of organizing the story, using flashbacks and enabling the story to start in the exciting middle, rather than way back in the boring past. 

This "Super/Man" doc kind of does something similar to a comic book "splash page", it starts in the middle of Christopher Reeve's life, with the news about his accident and subsequent paralysis. (Yes, that seems a bit exploitative, but sure, start in the exciting middle.). His wife and kids talk about not knowing at first whether he was going to live, and then came figuring out what kind of life he was going to have, and how was that all going to work. Fans wondered if he would ever act again, and people couldn't help but note the irony of seeing someone who played a powerful superhero suddenly reduced to the polar opposite of that, someone who could not move or speak, and we hoped that even if his body was broken, perhaps some piece of his spirit could still be there. 

Then the movie goes back, again comic-book style, to show us the origin story of Christopher Reeve, born to a father who was a noted poet, and after he divorced Christopher's mother, they both managed to get re-married twice. Which meant Christopher had a bunch of half-sisters and half-brothers out there, though it perhaps was one big blended family, long before that was even fashionable. We learn how there was difficulty in casting what was essentially the first big-budget superhero movie, they'd considered everyone from Bruce Jenner to Arnold Schwarzenegger to Neil Diamond to play Superman, but then decided that since they already had signed Gene Hackman and Marlon Brando for the film and that was most of the budget spent already, maybe it was better to hire an unknown. Someone who fit the suit, tall and muscular, and would maybe resemble the character seen in the comic books.  Being a classically trained actor was a bonus, but that's what they got in Reeve, someone who LOOKED like he could stop a locomotive, but also someone who could act next to Gene Hackman and be a corny goody-two-shoes as Superman, but also believable.  

The film bounces back and forth between the two timelines, pre-accident and post-accident. It's not too hard to figure out the reason for this, if you told Reeve's story chronologically, the beginning part might seem unremarkable, the middle part where he played Superman FOUR times would be very exciting, and then the inability to play any other roles successfully, combined with the accident, would make that last third of the film very depressing, even bleak.  Sure, we can find moments in Reeve's later life that matter, and finding joy in spending time with his (second) wife and children means that it wasn't all so bad, but overall, the story arc just might not be perceived as entertaining or uplifting, so yeah, the split timeline was probably the way to go. But hey, they do that all the time in comic books, too, they intercut between two storylines, or two timelines, to show the similarities between them, or the effect that the past has on the present or the present has on the future. 

We understand, of course, that Superman is a fictional character, he (almost) always wins because he's got a moral code, he believes in "truth, justice and the American way" but I don't know if the American way has maybe changed over time, but the Superman comics don't really go for all that "America First" stuff any more, of course it's a different time, we're not fighting Nazis and Communists any more, and the enemy is often within our own borders. Marvel faces a similar problem with Captain America sometimes, like does he represent the U.S. policy, right or wrong, or is there some wiggle room there?  DC did an alt-reality story once called "Red Son", in which Superman's rocket landed in the Soviet Union instead of the U.S., and what did that mean for the character, if you take the "American way" out of the equation, what does he stand for then?  

I'm getting off track, because we're here to discuss Christopher Reeve, not Superman. After the accident Reeve still had the support of his wife, and friends such as Robin Williams, who he'd met when they both attended Juilliard at the same time. This was helpful knowledge when it came time for me to burn this documentary to DVD, which happened shortly after I got the new DVR that allowed me to record films from HBO for the first time. So naturally I paired this doc with "Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind" as a double-feature, the two men appear in each other's docs, of course. They were maybe an odd pair, something like two sides of the same coin, by contrast the tall, hunky optimist and the short, manic pessimist, but I can kind of see how that friendship worked. They're both gone know, as that tends to happen - Glenn Close, a mutual friend, however posits that Robin Williams might still be here if Christopher Reeve hadn't died when he did. Who can say? 

Reeve made an appearance at the Academy Awards in March of 1996, and received a standing ovation from all the Hollywood elite (many are listed below, even if the IMDB won't recognize their appearances in archive footage). Robin Williams and his wife had bought a large van, and Reeve traveled across the country to make his appearance at the Oscars - I doubt that took the six months that he said it did, but that doesn't really matter. Reeve and his wife created a foundation to advocate for stem cell research and push for legislation to help the disabled, and basicially spent the rest of his life trying to make social change on behalf of other paralyzed people.  Perhaps the only real mistake was allowing that Super Bowl commercial that used CGI animation to show him walking in the future, and while his heart was in the right place, I remember that there were disability advocates who did not approve of that ad at all, feeling that it sent the wrong message about their condition. 

The other time this film felt very exploitative was in interviewing all three children about the death of their father, and then the death of their mother/step-mother just two years later. Like, maybe there was a better way to do this than to make them all relive the worst moments of their lives? Just a thought.  Anyway, we also get to see Reeve's first screen-tests as Superman (before the final casting of Lois Lane) and thanks to clips from his audiobooks, this doc is essentially narrated by Reeve himself, post mortem. I'm not sure why it took 18 years after Reeve's death to get this movie released, maybe documentaries just take a long time.  

Some people talk about the "curse of Superman" because of what happened to Christopher Reeve, and George Reeves, who shot himself in 1959. Then of course there's Marlon Brando, Margot Kidder and Gene Hackman, who are now all deceased, too. But you have to realize that the life expectancy of everyone and everything over enough time is ZERO, like everyone who appeared in "Gone With the Wind" and "The Wizard of Oz" is dead too, but you never hear about any curses associated with those movies. Anyway, Dean Cain and Tom Welling and Brandon Routh and Henry Cavill and Tyler Hoechlin are all still alive and doing fine, so that's proof that any curse is just a load of hooey.  So get yourself ready for the next "Superman" reboot because, well, here we go again. 

Directed by Ian Bonhote & Peter Ettedgul (producer of "Kinky Boots")

Also starring Glenn Close (last seen in "Brothers"), Jeff Daniels (last seen in "Allegiant"), Brooke Ellison, Gae Exton, Alexandra Reeve Givens, Whoopi Goldberg (last seen in "Ezra"), Laurie Hawkins, Kevin Johnson, John Kerry (last seen in "The Report"), Steven Kirshblum, Michael Manganiello, Matthew Reeve, Will Reeve, Susan Sarandon (last seen in "Nonnas"), Pierre Spengler, 

with archive footage of Christopher Reeve (last seen in "The Flash"), Dana Reeve (last heard in "Everyone's Hero"), Muhammad Ali (last seen in "Sly"), Bill Boggs (last seen in "Little Richard: I Am Everything"), Marlon Brando (last seen in "The Bikeriders"), Carol Burnett (last seen in "Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed"), George H.W. Bush (last seen in "The Special Relationship"), Al Gore (ditto), Nicolas Cage (last seen in "Army of Thieves"), Michael Caine (also carrying over from "Faye"), Jack Nicholson (ditto), Robert Redford (ditto), Dinah Shore (ditto), Sharon Stone (ditto), Jim Carrey (last seen in "Kevin Hart & Chris Rock: Headliners Only"), Johnny Carson (ditto), Jimmy Carter (last seen in "Marvin Hamlisch: What He Did for Love"), Barack Obama (ditto), Nancy Reagan (ditto), Lacey Chabert (last seen in "Daddy Day Care"), Bill Clinton (last seen in "Stan Lee"), Hillary Clinton (ditto), Jackie Cooper (last seen in "Superman IV: The Quest for Peace"), Katie Couric (last seen in "Dark Waters"), Tom Cruise (last seen in "Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One"), Laura Dern (last seen in "Citizen Ruth"), Neil Diamond (last seen in "The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart"), Richard Donner, Sarah Douglas (last seen in "Conan the Destroyer"), Harrison Ford (last seen in "Captain America: Brave New World"), Morgan Freeman (last seen in "57 Seconds"), Jeff Goldblum (last seen in "Deep Cover"), Mark Hamill (last heard in "The Wild Robot"), Tom Hanks (last seen in "Bros"), David Hartman (last seen in "Mike Wallace Is Here"), David Letterman (ditto), Goldie Hawn (last seen in "Being Mary Tyler Moore"), Anthony Hopkins (last seen in "The Son"), John Houseman (last seen in "The Fog"), Ron Howard (last seen in "Ira & Abby"), William Hurt (last seen in "Albert Brooks: Defending My Life"), Jay Leno (ditto), Meryl Streep (ditto), Caitlyn / Bruce Jenner (last seen in "Butterfly in the Sky"), Barbara Johnson, Margot Kidder (last seen in "Elstree 1976"), Nicole Kidman (last heard in "Spellbound"), Richard Kiel (last seen in "Force 10 from Navarone"), Matt Lauer (last seen in "Venus and Serena"), Marc McClure (last seen in "Coach Carter"), Bette Midler, (last seen in "The Greatest Night in Pop"), Holly Palance (last seen in "The Best of Times"), Mandy Patinkin (last seen in "An American Pickle"), Gwyneth Paltrow (last seen in "Hard Eight"), Brad Pitt (last seen in "I Am Burt Reynolds"), David Prowse (last seen in "I Am Your Father"), Queen Elizabeth II (last seen in "Jim Henson: Idea Man"), Ronald Reagan (last seen in "The Apprentice"), Franklin Reeve, Tim Robbins (last seen in "Dark Waters"), Kurt Russell (last seen in "What If"), Winona Ryder (last seen in "A Scanner Darkly"), Arnold Schwarzenegger (last seen in "Stay Hungry"), Jane Seymour (last seen in "Love, Wedding, Marriage"), Will Smith (last seen in "Bad Boys: Ride or Die"), Terence Stamp (last seen in "The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert"), Quentin Tarantino (also last seen in "Sly"), John Travolta (last seen in "Basic"), Andy Warhol (last seen in "Famous Nathan"), Marsha Williams, Robin Williams (last seen in "Yogi Berra: It Ain't Over"), Rita Wilson (last seen in "Asteroid City"), Oprah Winfrey (last seen in "Nyad")

RATING: 7 out of 10 attempts to star in a successful non-Superman movie (sorry...)

Faye

Year 17, Day 174 - 6/23/25 - Movie #5,057 

BEFORE: The Summer Doc Block is finally here, so suddenly my life is going to get a whole lot easier (because the movies are shorter) but also, more difficult (because there's so much archive footage to keep track of, and the IMDB credits are often incomplete).

Last year I started with "Sly", the doc about Sylvester Stallone, and ended with "Call Me Kate", the one about Katherine Hepburn - there's no reason to NOT book-end the chain with a couple of Oscar winners (though the two people profiled couldn't be more different), and I think I'm set to do the same thing again this time. Remember that this chain started out as a giant 40-plus film circle, the last film is going to link back to the first one, so really, it's all about picking the best place to start that ALSO gives me the most options at the end. So we'll see some of tonight's people again in August, I've tweaked the line-up a few times but I think it's still a big circle.  

I don't want to tweak it any more because it's so delicate in some places that I think it might fall apart, and I'm determined to not break the chain over something silly like some actor mentioned on the IMDB who turns out to NOT be interviewed, if that should happen (and really, I've taken a lot of steps to make sure it doesn't) then I'll just have to link to the next possible film in the chain and cut out whatever's in between, because I just can't re-order it all again.  

Talia Shire carries over from "Nonnas". I know she appears in this film because she lost the Oscar to Faye Dunaway in 1977, so there's footage of her as one of the nominees that year, for "Rocky".

THE PLOT: Faye Dunaway reflects on her life and candidly discusses the triumphs and challenges of her illustrious career. 

AFTER: The other rule about planning out the Doc Block is that if a film arrives too late, and it can't be worked in, then it simply must be saved up for next year's chain. The documentary about Barbara Walters premieres TODAY, and I'll take a quick spin through it to see who's in it, as the IMDB list is still quite incomplete (it didn't even list Barbara Walters herself as appearing in it, but I took care of that straightaway). I've been saving a place for it, but at the end of the list, where I think it will fit in - but if I'm wrong, then I'll have to move forward without it and circle back in the next Doc Block. Really, at this point it's all about the archive footage the editors chose.

Well, I'll burn those bridges when I get to them - today's all about Faye Dunaway, her 60-year career in TV and movies (mostly movies, but there's a nod here to "It Had to Be You", her 6-episode short-lived sit-com co-starring Robert Urich. The films that get the most attention in this documentary are, of course, "Bonnie & Clyde", "Chinatown", "Network" and "Mommie Dearest" - each of those films probably deserve a "making of" doc all their own. But even if the film ONLY examined Ms. Dunaway's roles in those films, that would be enough. Movies that get a lot LESS attention here include "Barfly", "The Thomas Crown Affair", "Don Juan DeMarco" and "The Yards" (that last one I watched in January, but by no means have I seen every Faye Dunaway movie...)

Some films of hers that I remember watching as a teen that get NO mention at all here are "Little Big Man" from 1970 and "The Three Musketeers" from 1973. These were some of her sexiest roles!  Of course, I was a horny little teenager and listening to her talk about possibly seducing a young Dustin Hoffman as her adopted son while she was changing into a corset, well, come on, that's a scene I'll always remember. She also wore very little as Milady in some scenes from "The Three Musketeers, and those will always live rent-free in my head, too. Then a few years later when I could rent VHS tapes I discovered "The Wicked Lady". 'Nuff said. 

"Three Days of the Condor", "The Eyes of Laura Mars", "The Champ" and "The Handmaid's Tale" also get the short end of the stick here, but I guess they had to narrow the focus somehow, you can't condense such a long career into a 90-minute review and cover every little thing she's done in her career.  There needs to be time devoted to the usual facts, where she was born (Florida), where she went to college (Boston University), and how she got into acting (Elia Kazan's acting school, but you know, local theater before that.  

Dorothy Faye Dunaway grew up as an army brat, her father served and was transferred somewhere new about every two years. Faye didn't mind, because she loved going to new places, however also it was very difficult for her to form long friendships, what with all the moving around. So, that was kind of good, but also kind of bad?  Which is it?  And then it feels like she uses that as an excuse for why she never stayed in any marriage or other relationship for very long. She was married for five years to Terry O'Neill, celebrity photographer who snapped that famous photo by the Beverly Hills Hotel pool the morning after she won her Oscar.  But he lived in London and she lived in New York, so how exactly was that ever going to work, just seeing each other for a few months a year?  Well, I guess neither of them ever said they wanted more space, because they always had an ocean of space between them. 

Before that, she was married for a couple years to Peter Wolf, former Boston DJ for WBCN and lead singer of the J. Geils Band, yes the "Centerfold" band, but they had some other better songs, too. Most people might be shocked to learn this, but not me, I already knew that because I saw that other doc about Boston radio. The documentary also mentions her relationships with Jerry Schatzberg and Marcello Mastroianni, each of which lasted just a couple of years. Look, there's no reason to tie this to her childhood trauma, just let her say she's bad at long-term commitment, or she got tired of each man after two years, there's no shame in that. Rita Moreno basically trashed her dead husband in her doc, gave him a "meh" rating, so it sounds like maybe she just never got over Marlon Brando. "What, Leonard? Eh, he was OK, I'd hardly say he was the love of my life, though..."

But this is what I don't get, if you want to discuss the life and work of a strong actress who played some very strong feminist roles, why define the phases of their life by using all the men she had relationships with as benchmarks?  "Jane Fonda in Five Acts" kind of made the same mistake, because the "acts" included Roger Vadim, Tom Hayden, Ted Turner, and, you know, down with the patriarchy and all that. After her latest long-term relationship ended, Fonda was asked what she learned about love and said, "Nothing. I'm not cut out for it!"  That's so refreshing to hear someone say after a lifetime of failed relationships, only I guess failure is only one way to look at it. 

I've got a major quibble with whoever edited this documentary - every time Faye Dunaway answers a question, there's a jump cut somewhere in her response. Why can't the camera stay on her for one whole sentence without an edit?  Was she rambling so much that her answers had to be assembled in post?  Or were there two takes for each response so they could edit them together for some reason?  If I didn't know better, I'd say that someone was manipulating her recorded dialogue to get the exact answers they wanted, which may or may not represent what she actually said. You know, you can cut away and show some other video while the audio response of the interview subject continues, that's another way to cover a bad take. If it only happened a few times I might not think much about it, but it's EVERY. SINGLE. SHOT.

Her friends (Sharon Stone), co-stars (Mickey Rourke) and her son (Liam O'Neill) have nothing but great things to say about her, of course. That's to be expected. And of course she's not going to look the same at age 84 that she did in the 1970's, nor should she. But it's maybe a little jarring to have so much beautiful footage of her being beautiful in "The Thomas Crown Affair" and "Chinatown" and then cut back to the present day. Old age comes for us all, as we're about to see in the next few docs, but it's maybe just a bit more noticeable when someone posed for so many glamour photos or spent their whole 30's doing nude scenes or near-nude scenes. Just saying. 

While we're exploring the actresses who made me feel teenage lust, can we maybe get some documentaries made about Ann-Margret, Lynda Carter and Catherine Bach?  I've got one about Valerie Perrine coming up, I guess that will have to do. 

Directed by Laurent Bouzereau (director of "Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind")

Also starring Faye Dunaway (last seen in "The Yards"), Rutanya Alda (last seen in "The Last Tycoon"), Chris Andrews, James Gray, Mark Harris, Mara Hobel (last seen in "True Story"), Annette Insdorf (last seen in "Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It"), Dave Itzkoff, Hawk Koch (last seen in "Keeping the Faith"), Michael Koresky, Tova Laiter, Robin Morgan, Liam O'Neill, Barry Primus (last seen in "Life as a House"), Mickey Rourke (last seen in "13"), Julie Salamon (last seen in "Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind"), Jerry Schatzberg (last seen in "We Blew It"), Sharon Stone (last seen in "Albert Brooks: Defending My Life"), 

with archive footage of William Alfred, Warren Beatty (last seen in "Remembering Gene Wilder"), Roger Ebert (ditto), Arthur Penn (ditto), Robert Benton, Ellen Burstyn (last seen in "Queen Bees"), James Caan (ditto), Michael Caine (last seen in "Journey 2: The Mysterious Island"), Maria Callas, Kate Capshaw (last seen in "The Love Letter"), Leslie Caron (last seen in "Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed"), Johnny Carson (last seen in "Nyad"), Dick Cavett (last seen in "Call Me Kate"), Katherine Hepburn (ditto), Paddy Chayefsky, James Coburn (last seen in "Eraser"), Joan Crawford (last seen in "Spielberg"), Bette Davis (last seen in "Mike Wallace Is Here"), Dinah Shore (ditto), Vera Day, Johnny Depp (last seen in "Jack and Jill"), Robert Duvall (last seen in "The Pale Blue Eye"), Peter Falk (last seen in "What If"), Peter Finch (last seen in "Mr. Saturday Night"), Jane Fonda (last heard in "Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken"), Merv Griffin (last seen in "Marvin Hamlisch: What He Did for Love"), Robert Redford (ditto), Gene Shalit (ditto), Gene Hackman (last seen in "Runaway Jury"), William Holden (last seen in "Paris When It Sizzles"), Angelina Jolie (last seen in "Eternals"), Tommy Lee Jones (last seen in "Rules of Engagement"), Pauline Kael (last seen in "Life Itself"), Elia Kazan (also last seen in "Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind"), Natalie Wood (ditto), John F. Kennedy (last seen in "A Complete Unknown"), Robert F. Kennedy (last seen in "Famous Nathan"), Martin Luther King (last seen in "The Secret Life of Bees"), John Phillip Law (last seen in "The Golden Voyage of Sinbad"), Vivien Leigh (last seen in "Gone with the Wind"), Sidney Lumet, Marcello Mastroianni (last seen in "Sr."), Steve McQueen (last seen in "The Kid Stays in the Picture"), Roman Polanski (ditto), Jack Nicholson (last seen in "I Am Burt Reynolds"), Richard Nixon (last seen in "The Apprentice"), Terry O'Neill, Frank Perry, Joaquin Phoenix (also last seen in "The Yards"), Mark Wahlberg (ditto), Anthony Quinn (last seen in "Lust for Life"), Rupaul (last seen in "Spoiler Alert"), Barbet Schroeder (last seen in "Paris, Je T'aime"), Joyce Selznick, Gene Siskel (also last seen in "Albert Brooks: Defending My Life"), Helen Slater (last seen in "The Flash"), Tom Snyder (last seen in "Stan Lee"), Sissy Spacek (last seen in "The Ring Two"), Sam Spiegel, Anne St. Marie, Charlize Theron (last seen in "Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga"), Liv Ullmann (last seen in "The Sparks Brothers"), Robert Urich (last seen in "Magnum Force"), Theadora Van Runkle, Tuesday Weld (last seen in "Once Upon a Time in America"), Peter Wolf (last seen in "WBCN and the American Revolution").

RATING: 6 out of 10 trips to the Cannes Film Festival

Nonnas

Year 17, Day 173 - 6/22/25 - Movie #5,056

BEFORE:  Geoffrey Owens carries over from "Ezra". The original plan was to get here via Campbell Scott and "Roger Dodger", but that hardly matters now. I'm here, this is where I planned to be so we can kick off the next chain tomorrow.  You may remember Geoffrey from episodes of "The Cosby Show", where he played Elvin on a few (hundred) episodes. At this point I wonder if being known for "The Cosby Show" is helpful or hurtful to an actor's career. 

I'm late posting again because I was working at the theater last night, an event which ran long but at least they had their reception before the screening, and they wanted all the food to be thrown away before the screening was over, but I just can't bring myself to throw away a lot of food sometimes. So I came home with a big bowl of corn chips (couldn't save the guacamole) and few pounds of deli meat - like prosciutto, salami, and bresaola (it's like prosciutto, but for beef). I may not be able to eat it all, so I might be throwing away some deli meat in the future, but at least I tried, it was going to be trashed anyway.  Some nights I just really wish there was a place I could bring the food leftover from events so it could be distributed to hungrier people, but City Harvest won't pick up anything small and I haven't found a homeless shelter that will take food in from strangers. 

Anyway, I had some prosciutto sandwiches and my wife had some salami sandwiches, so now I'm ready to watch today's movie, which is all about Italian food. 

THE PLOT: After losing his beloved mother, a man risks everything to honor her by opening an Italian restaurant with actual grandmothers as the chefs. 

AFTER: Essentially this is "Big Night" meets "Dodgeball" meets "Book Club" (or any of the other recent movies featuring four older actresses and their personal lives).  "Big Night" is a great movie with a lot of beautiful footage of Italian food, and it also has Campbell Scott in it, and of course you know "Dodgeball", which features Vince Vaughn owning an independent gym and taking on the corporate-owned ones.  Same idea here, he wants to run an indie restaurant and his business plan is to hire grandmothers and highlight their family recipes.  

After the death of his mother, Joe Scaravella is encouraged by friends to use her life insurance money to do something positive, like get some new furniture or update his wardrobe. But after visiting a market in Staten Island he used to visit with his mother and grandmother, he gets the inspiration to invest in a restaurant near the market and serve up not just Italian food, but the good feeling that a meal cooked with love by a family member provides. Sure, there are problems, as he's never run a restaurant before and he's unprepared for all of the city rules regarding safety, inspections, construction and renovation, permits, etc.  Thankfully his best friend Bruno is a contractor, although Bruno's not really sold on the concept and also has to work on spec until the restaurant takes off.  (What could possibly go wrong?)

Next he puts an ad on CraigsList for nonnas who want to cook - he gets three people from diverse backgrounds, with different recipes based on their heritage (Sicily, Bologna and The Bronx) and one is even a former nun.  Well, the biggest challenge is getting these three women to work together, it turns out, but the addition of a pastry chef manages to bring everyone together, because what problem can't be solved by makeovers and alcohol?  Seriously, that's a winning combination for the older ladies, am I right?  They all contribute items to the menu, even a capuzzelle (look it up) and decide to rotate the sauces weekly to be fair to everyone. 

All seems well until there's a massive thunderstorm on opening night, and nobody shows up. Then there's the bigger problem of how to publicize the restaurant, as there's a massive wait for getting a restaurant reviewed and also no critic wants to come out to Staten Island - yeah, that tracks.  Honestly I faced a similar problem working for years in the independent animation racket, social media and e-mailed newsletters can be a great equalizer, but you still have to publicize your screenings like crazy, and you just never know if you've done enough.  Also you're only as good as your mailing list, and maintaining that is a job in itself.  Anyway, Joe even takes some of the restaurant's food directly to a food critic, but it's all just a little too late - it seems he should have started publicizing the restaurant in advance, or getting on the critics' radar much earlier. Oh, well, you live and you learn. 

Joe also accidentally re-encounters his high-school girlfriend, and gets the opportunity to apologize to her for messing up on prom night. But she's a widow so there's maybe a chance to start over with her.  And he meets a bunch of older Italian ladies who help him honor his mother's memory, so there's that - finally he can get himself to a place where he can grieve and read the last letter his mother wrote to him. 

NITPICK POINT: They never told us what was the special ingredient that made Joe's mother's "gravy" so special. It was something sweet, but he tried honey and all forms of sugar and he couldn't quite get it right. But when he finally got the recipe, why not just mention what sweetener she used? It's a glaring omission, if he knows, then we should know too. I freeze-framed on the recipe, but there was nothing sweet listed in the ingredients, except for sweet sausage, but since hot sausage was also acceptable, it couldn't be that. So was it the type of tomatoes she used, or what?  

There is a REAL Enoteca Maria, located on Staten Isand, which I'm told is also part of New York City, however I have yet to find hard evidence of that. But sure, OK, let's say that it's part of NYC and there's a restaurant there where they invite guest grandmothers to cook, it's been open for 15 years and they've expanded beyond Italian food, they have guest nonnas from Argentina and Bangladesh and other countries. The Yelp reviews are mixed, because there's apparently some issues with making reservations and the place is only open three nights a week, and all of this pisses people off. Look, I live in Queens and if we want Italian food, we'll go to Patrizia's in Maspeth or Bamonte's in Williamsburg, or Laconda, there are plenty of places closer than Staten Island, that's all.  

Which brings me to another NITPICK POINT, Joe lives in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, but apparently works in Manhattan, as he's seen traveling on the Staten Island ferry to get to his restaurant. But this is a hell of a commute, if you live in Bay Ridge that's a solid hour just to get in to Manhattan, even if you catch an express train. If he goes to all three places every day, that's like four hours of commuting, which nobody in their right mind would do. No wonder he's always late for his job, he should be terribly behind on his sleep as well. From Bay Ridge to Staten Island, it makes much more sense to get there via the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, though I guess he'd need a car for that, but maybe also he could get there by bus? It just doesn't make much sense to get from Brooklyn to Staten Island by way of Manhattan.  For a while I worked in Brooklyn and it made sense for me to take a train into Manhattan to catch another train to Brooklyn, but that was a special case. If I lived in Bay Ridge and wanted to open a restaurant, I'd sure look for an open space a lot closer to home, just saying.  

Well, it's finally here, DOC BLOCK 2025 starts tomorrow, so check back soon!

Directed by Stephen Chbosky (director of "Dear Evan Hansen")

Also starring Vince Vaughn (last seen in "Queenpins"), Susan Sarandon (last seen in "Speed Racer"), Lorraine Bracco (last heard in "Pinocchio" (2022)), Talia Shire (last seen in "Sly"), Linda Cardellini (last heard in "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3"), Brenda Vaccaro (last seen in 'An Accidental Studio"), Joe Manganiello (last seen in "Jay and Silent Bob Reboot"), Drea de Matteo (last seen in "Dark Places"), Michael Rispoli (last seen in "Pain & Gain"), Campbell Scott (last seen in 'The Daytrippers"), Richie Moriarty (last seen in 'Irresistible"), Tammy Pescatelli, Theodore Helm, Jimmy Smagula (last seen in "Rebel in the Rye"), Jamie Eddy (last seen in "Escape Plan 2: Hades"), Adam Ferrara (last seen in "Little Italy"), Jack Casey, Kate Eastman (last seen in "Maestro"), Karen Giordano, Dee Roscioli, Ali Lopez-Sohaili, Quincy Dunn-Baker (last seen in "Hearts Beat Loud"), Vladimir Caamano, Taylor Sele, Karen Murphy, Eden MarryShow (last seen in "The Normal Heart"), Maureen Mountcastle, Maccie Margaret Chbosky, Dana de Celis, Tina Chilip, Erin Wilhelmi (last seen in "The Perks of Being a Wallflower"), Richard Piti, Craig Castaldo/Radio Man (last seen in "Killers of the Flower Moon"), Robert John Gallagher, Marcos A. Gonzalez (last seen in "Good Time"), Joe Scaravella

RATING: 7 out of 10 limoncello shots