Ali & Cavett: The Tale of the Tapes

Year 17, Day 186 - 7/5/25 - Movie #5,069

BEFORE: Al Sharpton carries over from "I Am MLK Jr.", and so do several others via archive footage. It's a different approach to documentary filmmaking tonight, basically someone licensed all the footage of Muhammad Ali appearing on "The Dick Cavett Show" and interspersed that with interviews with Cavett and a bunch of boxing experts and social pundits, creating a kind of timeline review of Ali's career. This was done for another cultural legend, but I'm not putting the two films next to each other, even though Dick Cavett is a staple of my Doc Block line-up each year. I tried to arrange the films differently, and I landed on a structure that's broken down thematically, and all attempts to re-arrange things caused the chain to break, so I decided to leave it alone. 

This meant that the famous athletes section was reduced to just one film this year, after the fact I saw the way to work in "Reggie", the doc about Reggie Jackson - but I was raised to hate the NY Yankees, so I'm inclined to make him wait another year, right now adding another film would throw off my whole calendar. That's my story, anyway.

FOLLOW-UP TO: "What's My Name: Muhammad Ali" (Movie #4,406)

THE PLOT: The life and times of Muhammad Ali, as shown through the lens of his numerous appearances on The Dick Cavett Show. 

AFTER: If this one feels like filler, that's only because it totally is. I had the whole framework set for this year's Doc Block, but then in January when I finally replaced my problematic DVR, I could burn movies from HBO and Cinemax to DVD for the first time ever with the new system, and that led me to check out HBO on Demand with a closer eye than ever before. That's where I found the two docs made from Cavett's archives - together they solved a few linking problems, but then they also kind of created another. Only by separating them could I work everything in to this year's chain that I wanted to watch, so we'll get to the other Cavett-based doc in early August. And sure, in previous years I focused on three boxing docs here, two baseball films there, and maybe four tennis films so that the max number of people could carry over. But I'm down to just ONE sports doc this year, it's fine because there's so much other ground to cover. 

And hey, if we can chart Faye Dunaway's career through her husbands and boyfriends, and we can chart Liza Minnelli's life through her five post-Judy mentors, then sure, we can chart Muhammad Ali's career via his talk-show appearances. It's notable that when the champ won a boxing match, he was in great demand on the sofa circuit, and also notable that when he lost (it was rare, but it happened) he was still welcome to sit down with Dick Cavett. Cavett swears they became close friends over the years, he also swears that Ali was smarter than he ever let on, but also he's concerned that maybe the leaders of Islam were using him as the public face of their religion. The comparison is made here to Tom Cruise's relationship with the Church of Scientology, that there's some cross-promotion involved, making the celebrity seem more like an everyday sort who practices religion, also normalizing a religion that many people don't really understand. 

Remember that Ali was the only three-time heavyweight boxing champion, which means he lost the title twice - and this was back in the days when any person on the street could tell you who the heavyweight boxing champion of the world was. To be fair, people didn't have the internet yet or "Star Wars" movies and TV shows, so there was a lot less competing for people's attention. Boxing's never been high on my entertainment radar, with the exception of the "Rocky" and "Creed" movies, maybe, because it's really a throwback to those gladiator games that Roman emperors put on so the public wouldn't notice they were slowly losing their rights and also taxes were going up. Just saying. Put two men (or women) in a ring and make them fight, and people will watch, that's as true today as it was in the 1960s, as it was in the 0060's A.D.

Cavett actually took credit for writing some of the rhymes that Ali used when he appeared on Jerry Lewis' show earlier in his career. Ali, of course, was known as a poet and this is the first time I've heard that maybe he didn't write all his own material. This also became a concern when he recited some of the same religious dogma on Cavett's show that people remember hearing from the head of the Nation of Islam, meaning that Ali could memorize religious theory, but maybe he didn't have very much of his own. This was also back when it was not typical for celebrities to change their names, and Ali had won a medal in the Olympics under his birth name of Cassius Clay, and after changing to his Islamic name, tended to get upset whenever reporters still called him "Clay" or "Cassius". I think Kareem Abdul-Jabbar went through something similar, but few remember that he was born as Lew Alcindor. Maybe more people change their names than we realize, and we only notice it when someone famous does it?

American society also didn't require its sports stars to be TV-friendly, I'm not sure if Ali was the exception or more like the precursor of things to come.  Countless sports stars have been interviewed after baseball or football games over the years and had nothing constructive to say at all, except for how they stepped up to the plate or came out swinging or their teamwork came through for them, or else they dropped the ball entirely and really need to focus on fundamentals more. But then after Ali I think more and more sports stars started popping up on talk shows, or trying harder to get TV guest spots and movie roles, like Tom Brady did. 

Again I feel like I'm doing just some clean-up work of my own, because two years ago I watched that two-part doc "What's My Name: Muhammad Ali" which took me through his whole career, start to finish, and this doc tries to do that too, but it's only got 90 minutes to work with, and maybe half of that is given over to the talk-show footage that takes up half of the film.  So boxing experts and journalists are called in to tell us all what it meant for Ali to go up against Joe Frazier, or George Foreman, or Joe Frazier again. Well, thank god for that because I don't have time to watch that other doc again, or even read my review of it.  Still, Ali's lifetime record was 56-3, and so none of us really have time for the 56 wins, maybe that's why this doc chooses to focus on the 3 losses.  

We're also reminded that Ali didn't box for four years, between 1967 and 1971, because he was charged with draft evasion for claiming he was a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War, and until the case was settled he was stripped of his titled and could not box professionally. It's still a bit weird that since he wouldn't fight with a gun in Vietnam, he was forbidden to beat up a man with his fists in the U.S. and the draft board couldn't resolve those two things. Why not just make an arrangement like Elvis did, where he'd visibly serve his country but also get special treatment where he wouldn't see any actual combat, because, you know, how would THAT look if the heavyweight champ, beloved by many, got shot and killed in the war? It would do more harm than good, so better to just put him to work entertaining the troops by boxing for them or something. 

Dick Cavett got to travel to Pennsylvania when Ali was training for the rematch with Frazier, and filmed remote segments showing us the cabin that Ali was living in with no electricity, just a simple kitchen set up, with a pump for water, and no television either. Ali also spent one night at Cavett's home in Montauk, which was only apparently awkward when Cavett's wife called him that night and Ali answered the phone.  

Well, when David Bowie and Mick Jagger start showing up in my credits, you know what that means, the rockumentaries are coming. They only appeared here in a montage to prove that Dick Cavett had other famous people on his show, and not just boxers. New topic starts tomorrow, and remember I'm working in concert films this year, there are four more of those on the docket. 

Directed by Robert S. Bader (producer of "The Super Bob Einstein Movie")

Also starring Dick Cavett (last seen in "Brats"), Thomas Hauser, Michael Marley, Larry Merchant, Randy Roberts, Ilyasah Shabazz, Clarence Taylor, Juan Williams, 

with archive footage of Muhammad Ali (also carrying over from "I Am MLK Jr."), Martin Luther King Jr. (ditto), Malcolm X (ditto), Woody Allen (last seen in "Marvin Hamlisch: What He Did for Love"), Jimmy Breslin (last seen in "Breslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists"), Jim Brown (last seen in "Say Hey, Willie Mays!"), Howard Cosell (last seen in "Billie Jean King: Portrait of a Pioneer"), George Foreman (ditto), Bob Hope (ditto), Angelo Dundee, Louis Farrakhan, Joe Frazier (last seen in "What's My Name: Muhammad Ali"), Jerry Lewis (last seen in "Bob Fosse: It's Showtime!"), Joe Louis, Lester Maddox, Norman Mailer (last seen in "Where's My Roy Cohn?"), Elijah Muhammad, Michael Parkinson, Sugar Ray Robinson,

Lucille Ball (last seen in "Famous Nathan"), Warren Beatty (last seen in "Faye"), David Bowie (last seen in "Jim Henson: Idea Man"), Stevie Wonder (ditto), Jimi Hendrix (last seen in "Little Richard: I Am Everything"), Katharine Hepburn (also last seen in "Faye"), Alfred Hitchcock, Mick Jagger (last seen in "Wham!"), Ted Kennedy, John Lennon (last seen in "Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story"), Ronald Reagan (last seen in "Inside Job"), Paul Simon (last seen in "The Greatest Night in Pop"), Frank Sinatra (also last seen in "Brats"), 

RATING: 6 out of 10 awkward questions from Cavett

I Am MLK Jr.

Year 17, Day 185 - 7/4/25 - Movie #5,068

BEFORE: I wish I could say we're having a quiet Fourth of July, but you know that quiet is always off the table. One of our two cats is hiding down in the basement, and I probably won't see her until breakfast time - as a former stray cat she may have been outside one July 4 and now hearing fireworks is triggering for her, I get it. When she heard the first explosion today she gave me this look as if to say, "Oh, is THAT today?" and she jumped off the bed and headed for safety in the basement, where there's a windowless room.  We didn't grill burgers and hot dogs like a few people I saw on the block, but we had White Castle sliders delivered - anything so I don't have to leave the house after dark. 

Martin Luther King Jr carries over from "Join or Die".  

FOLLOW-UP TO: "MLK/FBI" (Movie #3,909)

THE PLOT: This documentary explores the life of Martin Luther King Jr. and his impact on civil rights through the present day. 

AFTER: OK, this one's my fault, I didn't really learn anything tonight because I've already seen a few docs (and fiction films) about Martin Luther King - not just "MLK/FBI" and "John Lewis: Good Trouble" but also "Selma" and "Rustin" and "Malcolm X", so while the subject matter is still very important, I just feel like I've covered this already, and the whole point of docs is to learn something new from them. So going forward I will continue to use MLK as a link, because he turns up in quite a few docs each year - but I should probably steer away from docs about him, because I'm just not picking up anything that I didn't already know. But hey, at least my pattern is back - someone who appears in archive footage in one doc carries over to be the focus of the next one. That should continue tomorrow, too, as a big sports star was seen standing next to MLK while he was being interviewed...

It's a little strange that this seems to come from the same production company that made "I Am Chris Farley" and "I Am Burt Reynolds", these are mostly docs cobbled together from archive footage, although they DO still interview friends and family of the deceased, so they're not as bad as the one about Bob Fosse or the one about Tom Hanks, which both interviewed nobody. MLK and civil rights is a sharp left turn from comic actors - I still have another one from this series coming up in late July, but that's another comedian. I'm guessing that they did something special by releasing this film in 2018, which was the 50th anniversary of MLK's death. 

OK, about that, maybe that's the one thing I did learn by watching this, because I'd never really heard before that maybe Martin KNEW he was going to be die, and felt it was likely that he'd be assassinated. Jesse Jackson talks about joking around a bit with Martin on that last trip to Memphis, and yeah, that's probably a bit of dark humor if you're joking about your own killing, but I guess whatever you have to do to keep your spirits up or maintain perspective. It puts some of the language used in his last (?) speech in a different light, like if he was talking about the mountaintop and how "I may not get there with you", that now sounds like he was maybe expecting something to happen to him.  

There were still a few people in 2018 who had marched with Rev. King during the 1960's - Jesse Jackson, Andrew Young, and John Lewis for example, although Lewis is no longer with us. Israel Dresner, the rabbi who marched with King from Selma to Montgomery, was also still alive when they made this film, but passed away in 2022. Al Sharpton is interviewed here, but he would have been only 14 in 1968 so I think he was too young to march - he was one of those first people in the mid-2010's to really lose a lot of weight, like Al Roker, and maybe at the time that was a trend-setting thing to do, but if you remember those people as overweight then they kind of never really look right when they're skinny, or is that just me?  Now with Ozempic and Wegovy of course all of your larger Hollywood comedians are slimming down, like Billy Gardell and Jim Gaffigan and Rebel Wilson. Kathy Bates, too - Anyone have eyes on Melissa McCarthy? 

I'm off topic so I should probably just call a mulligan and move on - you don't need me to tell you how great of a person Martin Luther King was, or what he managed to accomplish that was well overdue. I know that the struggle continues, but come on, in 1965 it had been 100 years since the end of the Civil War, and still black people were being mistreated and lynched and had trouble voting in the South?  Change was long overdue, and finally some advancement happened thanks to King and the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968. This, of course, was back in the time when Presidents passed bills to enact social change, and not just to give tax cuts to the rich and take services away from the poor. 

Anyway, this doc covers the Montgomery bus boycotts in the mid 1950's, the Emmett Till murder in 1955, the sit-ins, the Freedom Rides, the Birmingham campaign in 1963, the march on Washington in 1963 and the other march to Montgomery in 1965. It's a real time-saver if you've got a test in history class tomorrow and you don't have time to read the three chapters. Remember also that Dr. King won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 and was posthumously awarded both the Presidential Medal of Freedom and a Congressional Gold Medal. And of course we have a holiday in his honor every January.

Directed by John Barbisan (producer of "I Am Burt Reynolds") & Michael Hamilton

Also starring Carmelo Anthony (last seen in "Imagine That"), Nick Cannon (last seen in "Whatever It Takes"), Clayborne Carson, Israel Dresner, Rutha Harris, Jesse Jackson (last seen in "Scandalous: The True Story of the National Enquirer"), Malcolm Jenkins, Clarence B. Jones, Van Jones (last seen in "The First Purge"), Janice Kelsey, Shaun King, Mamie King-Chambers, Bernard Lafayette, James Lawson, John Lewis (last seen in "Running with Beto"), Diane Nash, Steve Schapiro, Al Sharpton (last seen in "Mayor Pete"), Nolan Shivers, Tavis Smiley, Minnijean Brown Trickey, Andrew Young (last seen in "What Happened, Miss Simone?")

with archive footage of Muhammad Ali (last seen in "Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story"), Stokely Carmichael (also last seen in "What Happened, Miss Simone?"), Walter Cronkite (last seen in "A Complete Unknown"), J. Edgar Hoover (last seen in "The Real Charlie Chaplin"), Lyndon Johnson (also carrying over from "Join or Die"), Jacqueline Kennedy (ditto), John F. Kennedy (ditto), Coretta Scott King (last seen in "MLK/FBI"), Martin Luther King Sr., Rosa Parks (last seen in "Venus and Serena"), Adam Clayton Powell Jr., Malcolm X (last seen in "Mike Wallace Was Here")

RATING: 5 out of 10 honorary doctorate degrees

Join or Die

Year 17, Day 184 - 7/3/25 - Movie #5,067

BEFORE: Barack Obama carries over again from "Inside Job".  The Doc Block is focused on all things 'Murica-related this week, we covered economics and today it's civics class. Let's get ready to celebrate July 4, we're only one year away from our country's semi-quin-centennial.  

Yes, that's what it's going to be called, I looked it up. I don't think Quarter Millennium or bisesquicentennial are going to catch on, but who knows. 

THE PLOT: Centers on America's civic unraveling through the journey of scientist Robert Putnam, whose research on the decline in American community lights a path out of our democracy's present crisis.  

AFTER: My films this week are all about America, and our national pastime is not really baseball, it's complaining. Prove me wrong. We've got a long history of it, like when I saw the January 6 insurrection taking place, the first thing it brought to mind for me was the Boston Tea Party, the only difference was that one event was ultimately successful. But the same spirit was there, you might say, we're a country of rebels, which are just complainers taking action. Shay's Rebellion, the Whiskey Rebellion, the Civil War, they all started with complaining about this or that, I'd say it's a proud American tradition if it also wasn't the cause of so much death and destruction. 

On a daily basis, we call them "Karens", or, umm, male Karens, people who simply will NOT be silent about what they see going on around them that they perceive as wrong or misguided, including but not limited to public behavior and violations of the neighborhood housing code. And more recently we had half the country complaining about illegal immigrants, so they re-elected you-know-who, but then when ICE started to deport people, then citizens (probably some of the same ones) started complaining that they didn't know that their friends and neighbors were going to be taken to detention centers. Regretting your vote yet? 

People used to join community groups to enact social change, but over time Robert Putnam noticed that it seemed like fewer and fewer people were joining these groups - his own father was a Kiwanis member, and he himself was not. It seems like he could just ask himself why he didn't join THAT community group like his father did, and we could then wrap up this doc early, just saying. Well, come on, you never want to join the same group your parents were in, because we all reject everything our parents did and stood for when we're 16 or 17, and then we go forward and live our own lives. Groucho Marx used to quip that he wouldn't join any club that would have him as a member, but I wouldn't join any organization that would admit my own parents, because it would just be a bunch of churchy stuff under discussion. 

Putnam wonders whatever happened to that time period, when we had all those Civil Rights organizations and the Women's suffrage movement was working to enact change. Duh, they accomplished their goals, women can vote now and the Civil Rights bill passed, so those groups are no longer needed. I would have thought this was a pretty simple answer, we don't NEED the women's suffrage groups any more, couldn't he just mention this, that they succeeded right out of existence?  We also don't need the Sons of Liberty and you don't see many people protesting the war in Vietnam any more. 

Putnam had the rare opportunity to study the Italian government at a unique moment in history, when they were trying to de-centralize a couple decades after World War II and create something like state or province government to handle local matters like building more day-care centers and other public issues. Which state governments would be successful and which might not, and how could we even measure this? Through polling and public satisfaction, also they could count how many day-care centers actually got built in each state, as of five years later. 

So that's what he did, only he was left with the question of WHY (and HOW) some state governments were more successful than others, or at least perceived to be, and eventually he landed on an answer - in those cities and states with more community groups and community involvement, people were happier with their lives and their government. Social capital, it came to be called, and when Putnam came back to the U.S., he found the same thing to be true, in communities where more people joined community groups, social clubs and even bowling leagues, people tended to be happier and lived longer. (By extension, in areas where brokers sold a lot of subprime mortgages to people who could not afford houses, and then bundled those subprime mortgages to create derivatives that people could bet against, people tended to be not as happy and prayed for the sweet release of death.)

 A few years later, Putnam published his findings in a book titled "Bowling Alone", because he noticed the statistics which said that while more people were taking up the pastime of bowling, fewer people were joining bowling leagues. Well, sure, some people just want to have fun and not be pressured to bowl better, I get it. Also, other people suck sometimes, and if you don't like the guy (or gal) who runs the league, you're probably not going to join. I was on a pub trivia team in NYC for nearly a decade, because it was fun AND I liked the people on the team - but when I eventually realized how annoying some of them were, I was a lot less likely to continue. Now I feel like I should just keep trying out for "Jeopardy!" as a solo act, because joining another team would mean putting up with another bunch of self-involved self-righteous people who think they're always right. (Umm, myself included, OK? I can't say I didn't act like that when it came to some topics.)

Another reason for the decline of community involvement over the years is the growth of the popularity of television, also the QUALITY of that TV.  For a while there they were running "Must See TV" on Thursday nights, are you having trouble understanding that I must see this? And now with 500 channels and streaming, the Golden Age of Television is NOW, even if you're only watching old stuff.  It's only recently that DVRs became popular and we can all record our shows and watch them whenever we want, but older people had trouble setting their VCRs, so show me someone over 65 who knows how to set their DVR to record only the new episodes of "Matlock" with Kathy Bates and not accidentally also record all the old episodes with Andy Griffith that air on another channel. Yes, they can also stream the episodes, but nobody over 65 knows how that works either, prove me wrong. 

There are also internet groups, like on Facebook and Reddit and other sites too. Is it possible that some social capital just migrated to the web, making it easier for everyone?  Someone in this doc does briefly mention Facebook groups with regards to a labor union, but also casually dismisses that too, saying it would be much more effective to get out of one's social media bubble and walk down to the factory and discuss this issue face to face with management. Sure, but that sounds like work, and it's WAY too hot out to leave the house. Also, are there some more aspects of my life that you want to micro-manage and tell me that I'm not doing right?  Plus, come on, I just voted in a primary election, what more do you want from me?  

The advice for everyone to join an organization also needs some kind of asterisk next to it - surely they can't mean EVERYONE - what about those kids that shot up Columbine, weren't they in some kind of bowling league?  And there must be some bad organizations out there, too - like gangs and organized crime, joining those can't be good, and I'd lump some private militia groups in there as well. And what about cults?  So the advice really should be to join a GOOD group, because there are BAD groups out there as well. Just saying. 

Another factor that the charts just don't seem to factor in is the aging of America - there are more people over the age of 70 in America than there ever have been before. Modern medicine has found ways to keep these people alive longer and longer, but it failed horribly at giving them something to do with all that time. More and more people just get old and tired - and a very normal human reaction is just to stay home and circle the wagons, watch the 6 pm news followed by the 7 pm news and go to bed earlier and earlier, so they don't just sit around and regret all their life choices - who has the time and inclination to go to weekly meetings at that point? 

But that's OK, because if our founding fathers and our military fought and died for the rights to freedoms, that doesn't just include the freedom to join a group and take civic action, that also included the freedom to NOT do that. You can't make me join a group if I don't want to, I have the right to the pursuit of happiness, and maybe it makes me happy to be a solitary loner, even if I'm only a few steps away from moving to a tiny cabin and working on my manifesto.  Any of those countries that require military service from all citizens seem like oppressive regimes to me, honestly I just don't want any trouble, leave me alone please. 

Still, this documentary has given me a lot to think about, and this week we're discussing America, so I promise to do exactly that, think some more about it. But I can't possibly leave the house, it's much too hot and also things are going to start exploding tonight.  

Directed by Pete Davis & Rebecca Davis

Also starring Robert Putnam, Pete Buttigieg (last seen in "Mayor Pete"), Raj Chatty, Hillary Clinton (also carrying over from "Inside Job"), Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Hahrie Han, Julianne Holt-Lunstad, Glenn Loury, Jane McAlevey, Vivek Murthy, Priya Parker

with archive footage of Joe Biden (also last seen in "Mayor Pete"), George H.W. Bush (last seen in "Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story"), Jimmy Carter (ditto), Bill Clinton (ditto), Al Gore (ditto), Winston Churchill (last seen in "A Royal Night Out"), Joan Didion (last seen in "Everything Is Copy"), Albert Einstein (last seen in "Famous Nathan"), Pope Francis (last seen in "The Two Popes"), Bill Gates (last seen in "Freakonomics"), Newt Gingrich (last seen in "Butterfly in the Sky"), Ruth Bader Ginsburg (last seen in "The Automat"), Arsenio Hall (last seen in "Brats"), Chris Hayes (last seen in "About My Father"), Steve Jobs, Lyndon Johnson (last seen in "The Secret Life of Bees"), Megyn Kelly (last seen in "The Accidental President"), Jacqueline Kennedy (last seen in "Personality Crisis: One Night Only"), John F. Kennedy (last seen in "Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story"), Robert F. Kennedy (last seen in "Faye"), Martin Luther King (ditto), Gayle King (last seen in "The Last Blockbuster"), George Lucas (last seen in "Jim Henson: Idea Man"), Richard Nixon (last seen in "Tom Hanks: The Nomad"), Lee Harvey Oswald (last seen in "Bob Dylan: No Direction Home"), Jackie Robinson (last seen in "Yogi Berra: It AInt' Over"), Franklin Roosevelt (last seen in "Stan Lee"), Joseph Stalin, Donald Trump (last seen in "Mike Wallace Is Here"), Melania Trump (last seen in "You've Been Trumped Too"), George Will, Steve Wozniak (last seen in "Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine"), Mark Zuckerberg (last seen in "George Carlin's American Dream")

RATING: 5 out of 10 potluck dinners

Inside Job

Year 17, Day 183 - 7/2/25 - Movie #5,066

BEFORE: I think I covered this topic before - the 2008 financial collapse?  This is the same one that was shown in the movie "Too Big to Fail"?  It's so hard to keep track, we've had a few different recessions and such - oh, sorry, I'm not supposed to use the "R" word any more, it's fallen out of favor or something.  

I went back and read my breakdown of "Too Big to Fail", and nope, I still don't really fully understand economics. It's never going to happen, OK?  I don't have the mental capacity for it, I just wait until the friendly news people on MSNBC tell me what happened. 

Barack Obama carries over from "Trainwreck: Poop Cruise". 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Too Big to Fail" (Movie #3,914)

THE PLOT: A closer look at what brought about the 2008 financial meltdown. 

AFTER: Yes it happened again, my eyes glazed over and my brain stopped working when the causes of the 2008 economic collapse (and the bailout) were explained. But I think this time I know what directly caused it, it's the wor "derivatives". As soon as I hear that, I remember calculus class in high school, where we needed to find derivatives so we could determine the area of the space under a curve, or something. What curve? Where is this curve? And why is it important that we know how much space is under it?  Who gives a rat's ass?  Really I think I tuned out of math class for a few months because I didn't see any point to it all, but I still got a "B" for showing up.  I think if you can understand calculus then you get to come back and replace the math teacher after you finish college, that must be how it works. They just want to pass this crap on to somebody else so they can retire. 

It seems like the actions of a couple of Presidents led to the 2008 collapse, but we've decided to lay the blame more or less on George W. Bush, and I'm OK with that. Deregulation of the financial industry, what could POSSIBLY go wrong? And while we're at it, let's fire 5 out of the 7 members of the regulatory commission, that seems like a surefire plan for success, just look at how well that worked out in Iceland. Actually, it didn't work out in Iceland at all, but the Iceland Tourist Board slipped some economists some money to write papers about how super great everything was going in Iceland, and they found a way to control the narrative. This would only be a problem if the U.S. used the Iceland model to justify banking deregulation in America and Presidential oversight that followed the "well, fuck it" model. What really happened in Iceland is that their three banks (not three banking chains, just three banks) borrowed millions of dollars that they proceeded to loan out to people who used it to buy a bunch of things they couldn't afford, like yachts and London penthouses and football teams, and then nobody reminded them they'd have to start making payments on those loans. Wait, what? When the defaults happened, everyone in Iceland woke up one day and realized they had no money.

The economy is a fragile thing perhaps, it's all smoke and mirrors and it only works because we need it to, or maybe because we believe that we need it to. It's kind of like believing in God, you want to think that somebody is in charge of the universe and made everything happen for a reason, but if you press even a devout religious person hard enough, you can get them to admit that, well, maybe nothing's THERE and everything we know about happened randomly. Look, either way you're alive and that's something, you have as many years as you have, and you have what you have in the bank and, well, don't get greedy. But the bankers never got the memo about that last part, they want you to give your money to them and they'll invest it for you and pay you a small dividend or some interest and really, you're helping build companies and your taxes are going to bring people (including you) valuable services someday, so just shut up. It works the way we say it works. 

But then what happened was that brokers created this thing called derivatives (Oh, God, it's happening again...) and that allowed other people to invest according to whether they believed certain industries would be successful or not. It's maybe like betting on sports, but you understand that your favorite team can't win every game, so sometimes you bet against them, because then you'll win money if they lose. And then brokers convinced regular people to invest in derivatives, because come on, everybody's doing it, and the economy just keeps going up, so again, WCPGW? Just in housing everybody was talking about the bubble, how the market had been growing faster than usual for the last 15 years, and a bubble is a great metaphor for success because bubbles just last and last, right? JK. Bubbles burst, always always, but nobody knew when the bubble would burst, so as long as it doesn't, you can still invest and make money, just make sure you cash out before it bursts, OK?  It's simple, you just... um... well, you sell before that thing happens, that's all. 

At the same time, brokers were being financially encouraged to sell derivatives and other investments with higher risk - and the housing market was such that houses were being sold to people who couldn't possibly afford them over time, because all the people with good credit already had houses, I guess. And honestly, we did have a housing shortage for a while, but whatever the opposite of a housing shortage is, that's not a great situation either, because it means that people who can't really afford houses are buying houses because that's the American Dream, and those are what were affectionately called "sub-prime" mortgages. Then the enterprising accounting demons bundled a bunch of those sub-prime mortgages together to create a derivative, and then people could invest in those and essentially bet on whether those mortgages would collectively succeed or fail. If I'm close to reality here, it's only because I've reviewed this so many times.  But it's no different from those Iceland banks, people were borrowing money HERE to invest it in a lot of shady things over THERE, and they were betting on failure, or the feeling that failure was about to happen.  

You might remember that back in 2000, something similar happened with internet stocks, investment banks were promoting companies that they said were going to be the next Google or the next Facebook, only that wasn't true, those companies were likely to fail, but the banks got rich either way, and investors lost $5 trillion when those companies were not successful. Same thing happened with the bundled mortgages (collateralized debt obligations, or CDOs), they were crap and the banks knew they were crap, but they paid the rating agencies to give those investments AAA ratings, making them look like they were solid things to buy, so people bought them.  So the SAME companies that were telling the public that these investments were top-notch were ALSO buying credit default swaps (CDSs) which were like an insurance policy, to bet against those very same CDOs. They would get rich either way, but at the cost of defrauding the public investors. 

Things came to a head in 2007, when the CDO market collapsed (honestly, was it ever even real to begin with?) and the banks were left holding useless CDSs, loans and all that real estate that was bought by the people who couldn't afford houses. Well, damn, that's what a bubble does, after all - maybe a balloon would have been a better metaphor because when a balloon bursts it leaves little scraps of plastic on the floor that are useless and you'll never be able to assemble into a balloon ever again. The U.S. government took over the mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and then started bailing out the banks, which all got their AAA ratings back very quickly - well, sure, there couldn't possibly be a better time to invest in banks than after they lost everything and the government just gave them a big pile of money. Lehman Brothers and AIG were gone, but Wells Fargo bought that bank and Citibank bought that one, and except for a ton of foreclosures and layoffs, we were back to normal fairly quickly, except that now there were fewer banks, zero accountabilty and still, for some reason, no reverse of that de-regulation, which I guess would be "regulation", the other R word you just can't say.  

The only people who came out ahead were the former top executives of the collapsed banks, who all walked away with severance pay because suddenly the bank's board was playing with house money, and so sure, we'll get rid of the guy whose policies helped our bank fail, but we'll also give him $50 million after he cleans out his desk?  There was a slight push by the Obama administration to go after this unwarranted severance pay, but by then there were so many former bank executives working for the White House that this idea was a non-starter. Go figure.  

I bring all this up now because if you think that this can't happen again, you're living in a fantasy world for sure. One of the factors that led to the 2008 economic collapse was the laying off of most of the regulatory committees, and what do you think Elon Musk just did with his DOGE crap? And then we've had all this crap over tariffs in the last three months, I don't even remember where we landed with that, but that could easily have been the next big thing that would derail the U.S. economy and cause an R-word.  Considering how high gasoline and egg prices were two months ago, I just figured we were already on that track, it's kind of a miracle right now that things seem to have settled down, but I just jinxed it, didn't I?  The next time that people lose faith in one sector of the economy we're all done for, but no worries, just sell all your stocks and other investments right before that happens, you'll be fine. 

Directed by Charles Ferguson

Also starring Bill Ackman, Daniel Alpert, Jonathan Alpert, Sigridur Beneditsdottir, Willem Buiter, John Campbell, Patrick Daniel, Satyajit Das, Kristin Davis, Martin Feldstein, Jerome Fons, Barney Frank (last seen in "Mike Wallace Is Here"), Robert Gnaizda, Michael Greenberger, Eric Halperin, Samuel Hayes, R. Glenn Hubbard, Simon Johnson, Christine Lagarde, Jeffrey Lane, Andrew Lo, Lee Hsien Loong, Andri Magnason, David McCormick, Lawrence McDonald, Harvey Miller, Frederic Mishkin, Charles Morris, Frank Partnoy, Raghuram Rajan, Kenneth Rogoff, Nouriel Roubini, Andrew Sheng, Allan Sloan, George Soros, Eliot Spitzer (last seen in "Get Me Roger Stone"), Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Scott Talbott, Gillian Tett, Paul Volcker, Martin Wolf, Gylfi Zoega, 

with narration by Matt Damon (last heard in "IF") and archive footage of Maria Bartiromo (last seen in "Too Big to Fail"), Alan Greenspan (ditto), Ben Bernanke, Joe Biden (last seen in "Mayor Pete"), Lloyd Blankfein, Tom Brokaw (last seen in "Gotti"), George W. Bush (last seen in "Stan Lee"), Bill Clinton (last seen in "Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story"), Hillary Clinton (ditto), Ronald Reagan (ditto), Susan Collins, Ann Curry (last seen in "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives"), Rahm Emanuel, Richard Fuld, Timothy Geithner (last seen in "Capitalism: A Love Story"), Phil Gramm (ditto), Charles Keating (ditto), Henry Paulson (ditto), Carl Levin (last seen in 'Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine"), Richard Portes, Donald Regan, Larry Summers, Henry Waxman, Brian Williams (last seen in "Nyad"), 

RATING: 6 out of 10 people who declined interviews

Trainwreck: Poop Cruise

Year 17, Day 182 - 7/1/25 - Movie #5,065

BEFORE: I wasn't sure whether to include this one, because it's part of a series on Netflix, all different disasters under the covering title "Trainwreck" - which might seem to make less sense because this one takes place on a ship, not a train, but you know, it's a metaphor.  Usually I don't touch things that seem like series, however exceptions have been made for the docs that aired as part of MTV's "Music Box" series a couple of years ago, and also some docs get bought out by PBS and aired as part of their "American Masters" series, like that Liza Minnelli doc I just watched. So, OK, it's in, and my wife wanted to watch this one the day it got released, so I joined her and I figured I could work this in somewhere if the archive footage allowed, and if there was no archive footage of anyone famous, then I just wouldn't review it. But OF COURSE I found a way to work it into my framework, because it's a good framework and the same people keep popping up in docs, over and over again.  

Barack Obama carries over from "Tom Hanks: The Nomad". And here are the links that should get me to the end of July: Bill Clinton, Martin Luther King, Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Bruce Springsteen, John Fogerty, John Lennon, Al Kooper, John F. Kennedy, John Lennon again, Elvis Presley, Diana Ross (et al.), Eddie Murphy, Will Vinton (et al.), Seth Green, Bruce Vilanch, Sam Kinison, Tommy Chong, and Judd Apatow.  I know that's only 19 people, but it's enough to get me through 31 days. And there's a lot of overlap, in addition to some of these people hanging around for 3 or 4 days at a stretch, there are definitely other connections to be made, everything is connected after all. 

I'm off the subject of actors for now, until next year I suppose, and I'm changing course to set up some films about America in time for July 4. Since this one fits neatly here, I'll have a full schedule for the month, I had scheduled a free day in-between June 30 and July 4, but that ship has sailed. And so now this isn't just a Doc Block, it's also a Dock Block as I get closer to the very brief Jock Block, which links to the Rock Block, which starts on Sunday. But one week into the Doc Block, who's leading the pack? Well, since she appeared in last night's doc on Tom Hanks, Sally Field is now in first place for the year with 10 appearances - but Johnny Carson and other talk show regulars are rising through the ranks, so I'll have to tally it up again at the end of the month. 

THE PLOT: A luxury cruise turns disastrous when an engine fire cuts power to the entire ship. 4,000 passengers face failing systems, sewage leaks and food shortages, sparking unrest and media coverage of "The Poop Cruise". 

AFTER: What I really can't wait for is that time in August when the documentary portion of my watch list is down to about 20 films that DO NOT connect to each other in any way. Then I can spend the fall and winter and spring building the list back up again, and looking for connections. I also do this with the romance, horror and Christmas categories - so really, those are the four seasons of the year for me. Doc Summer makes perfect sense if you think of romance as spring, horror as fall, and Christmas as winter - so I'm always building up one category or another, based on what season it is. October's all ready to go right now, I just need to get there. 

My wife and I were on the three-year (or seven-year) cycle with cruises, but then we took like a 10-year break. We'd been to the Western Caribbean on our honeymoon, the Eastern Caribbean in 2006, and then a Southern Caribbean cruise in 2013, which took us to Aruba, Curacao, Colombia, the Panama Canal and Costa Rica. That last one was 11 days long, which was just a bit too much time at sea, but hey, that's what it took to be able to say I've been to South America. Then we took that break for a while, basically we'd run out of islands to visit - first world problems, right? Those 3 cruises were all on Holland America, and I remember they took great strides at that time with regards to sanitation and cleanliness and managing risk to passengers, like we couldn't serve ourselves at the buffet, the main concern at the time was norovirus, this was pre-COVID after all. 

But also, the date of our third cruise was April 2013, two months after the Carnival "poop cruise" fiasco. I remember thinking at first we were totally safe, because we weren't sailing on a Carnival ship, then I made the mistake of looking up who owned Holland America, and finding out it was part of the Carnival corporate structure.  So with a cruise of our own coming up, we followed the news pretty closely back then, as reports came in that the Carnival Triumph was floating in the Caribbean without power, unable to make it back to Mexico without help. It was drifting with the current, possibly getting closer to home port in Galveston, but nobody was really sure.  What we did know was that there was a fire in the ship's engine room, and though the fire was extinguished, the ship had lost power - we've all been through black-outs at home, when you scramble to save the food in your refrigerator because you don't know how long it will stay cold. Maybe you run to the store and buy some party ice, find the picnic cooler and do a little food triage, and OK, maybe you'll have to replace the milk, but still, that clock is ticking. Multiply that problem times a thousand and you'll get an idea of what the Carnival Triumph was facing.  

Even worse, for some reason the toilets on the ship were powered by electricity, so after the chefs had prepared all the food that was likely to spoil, another problem presented itself - a few thousand people had no way to go to the bathroom. Emergency solutions like peeing off the side of the ship were not feasible, for safety concerns as well as personal privacy issues.  I'm sure men would consider it a challenge, but literally pissing into the wind just isn't going to work, and women would be more likely to fall over the railing. So work-around #1 was to tell the passengers to pee in the shower (something people might occasionally do anyway) but then, umm, what about the solid waste?  Some people probably hit the ship's buffet hard the night before the fire, and so that was another disaster waiting to happen. Work-around #2, the crew passed around little red baggies that passengers were instructed to poop in, and then deliver the full red baggies to collection stations, similar to the process for dog-walkers cleaning up after a pet, and trying to keep the neighbors' lawns clean. Great in theory, but hard in actual practice. I can speak to this because six years ago I tried that ColoGuard thing, where you poop into a bucket and then mail that bucket to a lab somewhere, and my brain would not allow it to happen - there's just something unnatural about pooping into a tiny container. 

Without the proper modern convenience of a working, flushing sewage system, things began to back up, and any listing of the ship would cause the, umm, liquids in the shower to spill, so before too long the pee and poop were spilling out into the hallways, and as you might imagine, that made it hard and disgusting to walk around. Without air conditioning, passengers had relocated their mattresses and linens out to the ship's deck, and used the lounge chairs to create barriers to have private sleeping areas - it was a bit like building pillow forts as a kid, only not as much fun.  And attempts to keep up morale were not working, like at one point the cruise line offered guests free drinks at the bar, and you might think that would make the conditions more bearable, but it only caused things to get more out of control, there were drunken fights over territory, plus then people only needed to pee more, think about it.  

By the second day, emergency generators had kicked in, and the ship got partial restoration of some functions, also, other Carnival ships in the Gulf of Mexico were able to transfer food and water, however no other ship had the capacity to take on a substantial number of passengers from the Triumph. One passenger transferred to the Legend for medical reasons, they needed dialysis and the best option was to take them back to Cozumel.  By Day 4, two seagoing tugboats had reached the ship, and began towing it toward Mobile, Alabama, two more tugboats joined in and the ship reached Alabama on Valentine's Day, Day 5 of the ordeal.  

There are interviews in this doc with several of the passengers, some only willing to identify by their first names, and members of the crew like the cruise director (who tried in vain to keep spirits up), a Carnival Public Relations rep who sure had his work cut out for him, and a Chef who's probably scarred for life, at least we know he'll never cook lasagna again. Then there's a stereotypically greazy lawyer who specialized in maritime cases, and was probably standing on the dock in Mobile just waiting with a class-action suit ready for passengers to join.  Not all sharks are in the water, apparently. An investigation into the ship's records revealed that the diesel generator that caught fire was more than a year overdue for maintenance, and the month before the incident, there were propulsion issues that caused the ship to cancel a stop in Cozumel, and an investigation found a short in a voltage connection box and cables connected to that generator, however nobody had made any corrections to that issue as of February 10, 2013 (the compliance due date was February 27)

The cruise line settled the lawsuits, offering the affected passengers full refunds for the Poop Cruise, a free future cruise on Carnival (I wonder how many people didn't take advantage of this, I could imagine some people being DONE with cruising after their ordeal) plus additional compensation of $500 per person, plus reimbursement of travel costs and gift shop purchases. Seems low to me, but we are talking about almost 3,000 passengers. The ship is still in service, of course they repaired it and cleaned it (though I wonder if any amount of cleaning would ever be enough) and re-named it the Carnival Sunrise.  Looking back through my photos, when we were on our second cruise in 2006, our Holland America ship was docked next to the Triumph when we were in St. Thomas. So we walked RIGHT by it, of course this was almost seven years before it had its Troubles. 

Three months ago, we returned to cruising after that 12-year break, but a trip that left from NYC (no flight to Florida required) and just went to Bermuda (an island we haven't been to!) and back. Just five days, back on the sixth, and only a day and a half on the island - and on a different cruise line than the one we got used to, because my wife wanted to shake things up. She's become a little cruise-obsessed, watching YouTube videos and reviews and she's also got the next one booked already, despite my reservations. Being under-employed right now, it's difficult for me to feel like I need a break, when I'm only working three or four days a week at best. Yes, I work hard, but I feel like I have to, and if I get the new gig, I hope to someday beef that back up to five days a week. But we sailed to Bermuda while I was also being fired from my 30-year job, so it was hard for me to relax and enjoy it, because I had so much on my mind. The food was great, Bermuda was beautiful and it did kind of help me get lost in the un-reality of it while my work life was in flux. 

I got to talking to our butler (yes, we had a butler) and he mentioned how Norwegian (and I assume the other lines as well) kept ships in dock for nearly two years during the pandemic, and they kept a full staff employed on the ship, even though there were NO passengers, because they wanted to be ready whenever COVID cooled and the world was ready to travel in style again. Sure, I get it, the whole world was on pause, and there are probably worse ways to spend your time away from society than living on a cruise ship - the food was still good and it was probably a relief to still have a job even when your company doesn't have any income. But that's when I realized that the ship was a little microcosm of our country, or our planet, perhaps. There's a class system, just like the one in the USA, and there are passengers and there are crew, or the working class. Without the workers the whole system falls apart, something maybe the politicians should remember when they're debating a bill offering more tax cuts for the rich. 

When there's an emergency, like a fire or a power outage, who fixes it? The working class. Who maintains order and keeps the Karens of the world in their place? The working class. And then when everything's going well, who sees to the needs of the people on vacation, just trying to relax for a few days and eat and drink and (try to) be happy?  Duh, it's the working class. And without them things don't function, and then we're all really sunk. If you want to expand the metaphor, the planet's like a ship out on the ocean, far away from any land, and the resources are limited, and pollution is a problem. If we don't conserve and recycle, stuff is rapidly going to run out and things will get very messy. Just saying. 

For me, I just worry about karma - like I don't want to be one of those entitled people who needs to be catered to while on vacation. Sure, I want to relax and enjoy some nice food and beverages while on vacation, and don't get me wrong, if I find out there are ribs at the buffet, well, I'm already THERE, you don't need to tell me twice. But then feeling like I deserve all that comfort and luxury, that's another story. When we started our BBQ Crawl vacation series back in 2017, we spent a few more SkyMiles and upgraded to first class - it was on my bucket list to fly first class ONCE, just to see what it was like. Well, sure, the unlimited coffee and snacks on board is nice, but the real benefit is that you get to skip a lot of the lines at the airport, which could save you an hour or more. Also, they unload the first class luggage FIRST, so your bags come down on that conveyor belt FIRST, and you can leave the airport before the commoners, which is helpful if you've got limited time and a lot of vacation-y things you want to do. So it's been very hard for us to go back to economy class, we'll spend the extra miles or money to make it happen, but then there's that part of me that thinks about karma, and I wonder if I'm borrowing against the future, and somehow increasing the chances of a plane crash, which is ridiculous, I know. Deep down maybe that's my problem with cruises, like maybe there's only so much luxury and enjoyment that each person is entitled to, and I don't want to push it, and possibly end up on something like the Poop Cruise. Still, I'd love to be proven wrong. 

Directed by James Ross

Also starring Brooke Baldwin (last seen in "The Accidental President"), Buck Banks, Jen Baxter, Jayme Lamm, Devin Marble, Larry Poret, Mary Poret, Rebekah Poret, Frank Spagnoletti, Chef Abhi. 

with archive footage of Pope Benedict (last seen in "Nothing Compares"), Wolf Blitzer (last seen in "You've Been Trumped Too"), Anderson Cooper (last seen in "Scandalous: The True Story of the National Enquirer"), Conan O'Brien (last seen in "Brats"), Jon Stewart (last heard in "IF"), Cecily Strong (last heard in "The Garfield Movie"), Jason Sudeikis (last seen in "Fool's Paradise"), Jeff Zucker (also last seen in "The Accidental President")

RATING: 6 out of 10 decks to search through for a possibly mythical still-working toilet

Tom Hanks: The Nomad

Year 17, Day 181 - 6/30/25 - Movie #5,064

BEFORE: June is over, but the Doc Block continues until August, so really, I'm just getting started. Here are the format stats for June: 

16 Movies watched on cable (saved to DVD): The United States of Leland, Cut Bank, One More Time, At Close Range, Five Nights at Freddy's, 57 Seconds, Journey 2: The Mysterious Island, Boomerang, Mr. Church, A Thousand Words, Imagine That, Ezra, Faye, Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story, Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story, Personality Crisis: One Night Only

5 watched on Netflix: Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, Luckiest Girl Alive, Incoming, Old Dads, Nonnas

1 watched on iTunes: The Apprentice
3 watched on Amazon Prime: The Fall Guy, Bob Fosse: It's Showtime!, Tom Hanks: The Nomad
3 watched on Hulu: Daddy Day Care, A Complete Unknown, Brats

1 watched on Tubi: Valerie

1 watched on a random site: Fade to Black

30 TOTAL

Kevin Bacon carries over from "Brats" via archive footage. This doc seems to be ALL archive footage, nobody was interviewed and that's usually a very bad sign. Anyway I was a little worried about the connections these last couple of days, but they seem to be solid, so I'll post the July links tomorrow. I'm still in job slowdown right now, waiting to hear about this new gig, so I've got lots of time on my hands. 

THE PLOT: From humble beginnings to acting as some of the world's most iconic and notable characters, Tom Hanks has picked up a reputation as "America's Nice Guy", "The Everymand" and a nomad of the arts. 

AFTER: I kind of need to come up with a term for this kind of thrown-together, half-made doc, since the term "mockumentary" is already taken, for a fake comedy doc, what can the term be for a poorly-made, probably unauthorized, knock-off type of documentary? "Knock-umentary"? How about "schlock-umentary"? Whenever we want to dismiss something, the "schl" prefix is always a good one. So like the Bob Fosse one, this is hereby a "schlockumentary", and the bad news is that we're going to see much more of this once A.I. gets a solid hold in the marketplace. One day soon you'll be able to type "Tom Hanks documentary" into an A.I. engine, and it will combine his Wiki page with his IMDB filmography with some stock footage and BOOM, you've got a 45-minute doc that you can sell to Amazon Prime in just a few minutes.  

OK, maybe this took some doing, maybe someone had to watch hours and hours of interviews with Tom Hanks on the red carpet or went through the "Entertainment Tonight" archives, I can't be sure. But everything that's ever been filmed or recorded is currently being digitized into some kind of archive somewhere, so prepare for many more films like this coming in the future, for which no actors are being compensated, no set personnel are being paid, even script writers will be left out of the deal, because why pay someone to write dialogue or narration when the internet has already done that for you?  

Just think how easy this was to make - find out the name of the high school Tom Hanks attended, and just put that name on the screen with generic footage of a high-school hallway lined with lockers - it doesn't have to be the RIGHT high school, because who cares? Nobody's going to research that and call the filmmakers out for not doing proper research.  And sure, mistakes may get made, like here since there was no photo available of Tom getting married to his first wife, they just used a photo from his wedding to Rita Wilson - all brides look alike, right?  And hey, we got half the picture we needed, so let's just run with that. If you watched this and didn't pay close attention, you might think he married the same woman twice - but does that really matter?  

And of course, there was no budget for clips from "Saving Private Ryan" or "Sleepless in Seattle", but again, it's not like that's important, just run some footage of the actual D-Day, which is probably free, and maybe some photos of the Seattle skyline, that'll do. And then even if they did run footage from "The Bonfire of the Vanities" or "Saving Mr. Banks", it's not the clips that you might think or even recognize. Probably they're outtakes, which maybe cost less?  And then for films like "Volunteers" or "Splash" or "A League of Their Own", you know, a cast still photo would probably be fine, and again, those are probably FREE on the internet. You can tell the filmmakers probably blew their whole budget on 3 seconds each of footage from "Philadelphia", "Forrest Gump" and "The Road to Perdition".  

Then, for some reason, they have interview footage of Chris Farley and Tom Arnold talking about how great it was to work with Tom Hanks - but I can't find any indication they ever co-starred with Hanks in a movie - are they talking about being on "SNL" or some comedy special?  Who knows?  It's great to know that no researchers were harmed in making this schlockumentary.  And then if there are events mentioned that no footage could possibly exist of, like Tom's family moving from state to state when he was a kid, again, who cares? All driving footage looks the same, so as long as we have a car on a road and scenery is being passed by, that's all that's needed to make the point.  Even the choice of footage from the ceremony where Barack Obama awarded Hanks the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the clip is of Obama talking about D-Day, and I think he knows the difference between an actor being in a film about that and the real thing (the current President, I'm not so sure.). So how do I know that clip came from that event, or from a different one?  Nobody double-checked anything, that's the feeling I get. 

Really, this is almost a complete waste of time, I guess AmazonPrime must be really desperate for material if they're running stuff like this. But that's the streaming wars, I guess, someday a better documentary about Tom Hanks will be made, but until then, we can get the jump on Netflix and Hulu by running this one at little cost.  You know, I could just not count this one, and try to forget I ever watched it, as long as I don't post about it, nobody will ever know and look at that, there's enough cross-over that the chain will just stay unbroken due to a different link than I had planned. But no, I need to warn people about the growing threat of cookie-cutter documentaries that are being made with almost no effort and definitely no research. 

Directed by Angelica Butcher

with archive footage of Tom Hanks (last seen in "Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story"), Glenn Close (ditto), Rob Howard (ditto), Barack Obama (ditto), Meryl Streep (ditto), Tim Allen (last heard in "Ralph Breaks the Internet"), Wes Anderson (last seen in "Always at the Carlyle"), Tom Arnold (last seen in "I Am Chris Farley"), Bono (last seen in "Wham!"), George Michael (ditto), Pierce Brosnan (last seen in "I Don't Know How She Does It"), Austin Butler (last seen in "Dune: Part Two"), John Candy (last seen in "Once Upon a Crime..."), Ethan Coen, Joel Coen, Wendy Crewson (last seen in "Death Wish"), Walt Disney (last seen in "The Real Charlie Chaplin"), Michael Clarke Duncan (last seen in "Breakfast of Champions"), Aaron Eckhart (last seen in "Midway"), Chris Farley (last seen in "I Am Chris Farley"), Tina Fey (last seen in "Will & Harper"), Sally Field (last seen in "Norma Rae"), Michael J. Fox (also carrying over from "Brats"), Jay Leno (ditto), Jackie Gleason (last seen in "Famous Nathan"), Alexander Godunov, Melanie Griffith (last seen in "Shining Through"), Colin Hanks (last seen in "Whatever It Takes"), Jeremy Irons (last seen in "The Beekeeper"), Elton John (last seen in "Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story"), Jude Law (last seen in "Peter Pan & Wendy"), Chris Makepeace (last seen in "The Bill Murray Stories"), Pat Morita (last heard in "Mulan II"), David Morse (last seen in "Disturbia"), Paul Newman (last seen in "Wolfgang"), Richard Nixon (last seen in "Faye"), Charlize Theron (ditto), Bill Paxton (last seen in "Term Life"), Elizabeth Perkins (last seen in "The Ring Two"), Julia Roberts (last seen in "Ticket to Paradise"), Peter Scolari (last seen in "Dean"), Tom Everett Scott (last seen in "Because I Said So"), Amanda Seyfried (last seen in "Letters to Juliet"), Gary Sinise (last seen in "A Midnight Clear"), Steven Spielberg (last seen in "Albert Brooks: Defending My Life"), Emma Thompson (last heard in "Men, Women & Children"), Stanley Tucci (last seen in "Conclave"), Liv Tyler (last seen in "Captain America: Brave New World"), Julie Walters (last seen in "Effie Gray"), Denzel Washington (last seen in "The Equalizer 3"), Bradley Whitford (last seen in "Unicorn Store"), Bruce Willis (last seen in "Sly"), Rita Wilson (last seen in "Asteroid City"), Henry Winkler (last heard in "Scream" (2022)), Robin Wright (last seen in "A Most Wanted Man"), Steve Zahn (last seen in "Daddy Day Care"), Robert Zemeckis (last seen in "Framing John DeLorean"), Catherine Zeta-Jones (last seen in "Side Effects")

RATING: 3 out of 10 U.S. states lived in after his parents' divorce

Brats

Year 17, Day 180 - 6/29/25 - Movie #5,063

BEFORE: Conan O'Brien carries over from "Personality Crisis: One Night Only". We've reached the point in the Doc Block where I only need to use talk show hosts and U.S. Presidents to connect the films.  Also the point where someone at the IMDB is getting very tired of me submitting updates with all the stars who appeared in archive footage who were left out of the main credits in these documentaries. Well, they haven't disabled my account yet, but sometimes they do ignore my submissions. 

And I'm going to send out a Birthday SHOUT-out today to Ilan Mitchell-Smith, one of the stars of "Weird Science", there's footage of him in this doc somewhere... I just missed John Cusack's birthday, which was yesterday. OK, fine, he gets a SHOUT-out too.

THE PLOT: Centers on 1980's films starring the "Brat Pack" and their profound impact on the young stars' lives. 

AFTER: I hate to break it to everyone, but the calendar doesn't lie - this year we'll celebrate the 40th anniversary of the release of the two biggest "Brat Pack" movies, "The Breakfast Club" and "St. Elmo's Fire", and also two of the lesser ones, "Back to the Future" and "Weird Science". Just in case you didn't already feel very old. The actors from these movies may have aged well, but they definitely aged - I know this because Andrew McCarthy tried to contact them BY PHONE, and nobody calls each other any more. He could have e-mailed them or texted them, it would have been more efficient, but maybe not as cinematic. Anyway, watching him stand there as all his calls go to voice-mail wasn't very interesting at all, so it really wasn't the best way to show that he was trying to reach his old friends. Jeez, why didn't he just wait for a reunion at a film festival or Comic-Con or something? 

It turns out that there are three kinds of ex-Brat Packers in the modern world, though. The first kind is like Andrew McCarthy, they tried very hard to escape the "Brat Pack" label, because they felt it was degrading or insulting, and they made career choices to do different things apart from their fellow Brats, but found after time that the label never went away, that feeling of not being good enough because they were defined by the perceived privilege, having been young and successful at the same time. This meant that they have friends who they have not seen or spoken to in thirty years (news flash, many regular people have this too) and so now later in life they're trying to re-connect with their peers and deal with this "problem" or perhaps perception of a problem. Like I want to feel sorry for them, but most of them have had 40-year long careers in film and/or television, so really, come on, what is the difficulty?

The second kind of Brat Packers are the ones who've seen it all, done it all, been through it all, went through therapy and are now somehow above it all, or over it. This is basically just Rob Lowe and Demi Moore, maybe Ally Sheedy.  They've all had career ups and downs, but they tried to make good choices over the last four decades, said "yes" to a lot of different things, probably have been married and divorced and married again, and sure, spent a lot of time and money getting their heads screwed on straight. The Type 1 Brat Packer really needed to get out and re-meet the Type 2 Brat Packer, as a form of their own therapy, that much is clear. Leave it to Rob and Demi to put a positive spin on the whole thing, as in "Sure, we got labeled, but we shouldn't let that label continue to define us, and plus, we changed the world of filmmaking, we have thousands if not millions of fans, and really, we're in a good place."  Rob and Demi have the power now to do whatever they want, if Rob Lowe wants to host a game show, he can do that. If Demi wants to make a career change and star in a psychological horror film, she can do that. Getting out of acting and into producing or directing is a path for a lot of actors who aren't as young as they used to be, which is all of them, plus it gives them more control over their own careers.  

The third kind of Brat Packers are the ones who didn't respond to the invitation to appear in this film, so we don't really know HOW they feel about the distinction, but we can probably guess. This includes Judd Nelson, Anthony Michael Hall and Molly Ringwald. (Sean Penn was determined to not be an official member of the pack, and Jon Cryer was willing to be interviewed, but also doesn't consider himself as a Brat Packer, and you know, it's largely a self-identifying thing.)  Yeah, if you don't have Ringwald, you almost don't have a movie here, that means you have to give a lot more time to Ally Sheedy. And maybe Mare Winningham, except Andrew McCarthy seems to have forgotten completely about her, that's understandable. There's a bit at the end where McCarthy pretends that maybe Judd Nelson is calling him, only it's too late to include him. Yeah, nice try but if I don't hear his voice on the call, it didn't happen.  I think we can assume for these Brat Packers that they just don't want to revisit this era of their life, for whatever reason. Send them over to Rob Lowe's house, maybe for a chat. 

McCarthy also lands an interview with David Blum, the writer for New York magazine who coined the phrase in the first place. He was assigned to write a feature on Emilio Estevez, and instead focused on the whole group of actors from "St. Elmo's Fire" and found a phrase that would lump them all together, rhymingly based on the "Rat Pack" of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. (and for some reason Joey Bishop) from the 1960's, just a group of guys that hung out and often starred in movies together and (one imagines) got into a lot of good trouble in Vegas together.  But the Brat Packers didn't really spend THAT much time together off the set, and even less once the article came out and they got branded as a cohesive unit. David Blum hashes things out with the leader of the Pack for the sake of the documentary, and while he realizes that his article may have had negative effects on some people, and unfairly lumped them together, they all became more famous because of it, so you'll notice that he feels no need to apologize.  

Andrew McCarthy finally comes to terms with the Brat Pack label - thank GOD, because, honestly that was keeping me up nights - and thanks to therapy with Dr. Lowe and Dr. Moore, he realizes that he was part of something special, a three-year period of time that redefined the movie world, ever since then most movies have been targeted squarely at the 18-25 demographic, the young single people with money to burn and time to go out to the theater. That time is over now, because since then we've been through the VHS market, the DVD phase and the streaming revolution. If you're a Brat Packer and you don't already have a podcast, you're way behind the times. The people who go the movies now are people in their 40s with three kids who just want 90 minutes of peace and quiet while their kids are sitting in a dark theater spilling popcorn all over the place. Really, can you think of any other reason to remake the animated film "How to Train Your Dragon" as the exact same movie, only animated in a different way?  

Oh, and senior citizens still go to the movies, I can confirm that - bless their hearts, they still haven't figured out streaming platforms, so when there's a revival of something they recognize, they turn up and turn out. The Tribeca Festival this year screened "When You're Strange", which is a documentary about the Doors that was released in 2009, and you can probably watch online for FREE somewhere, but because John Densmore was going to do a Q&A after the screening, a whole load of seniors turned out and paid like $28 a head. Go figure, we had almost a full house at the theater, and this is what you have to do these days to get people to leave home, you have to have a celebrity there to talk about the movie, at least you'll get the superfans. 

So my advice to the Brat Packers, even the reluctant ones, is to lean into it - again, it's the 40th Anniversary of "The Breakfast Club" and "St. Elmo's Fire" so if any movie theater, film festival or Comic-Con wants to get a group of B.P.'s together to speak on a panel after and charge people extra to watch a movie they can see for free at home, I say you'd better say "Yes" to that, cash the check and stop feeling sorry for yourselves. Yep, I'm talking to you, Judd Nelson and Molly Ringwald. 

From a technical standpoint, there were WAY too many angles in every interview here - you really don't need 10 cameras covering every two-shot set-up from all around, in fact it's very distracting and confusing when the person on the right is suddenly on the left and vice versa. Just use the standard talk-show set-up, you only need three camera angles, one on the interviewer, one on the person being interviewed, and a two-shot - anything beyond that is overkill. Seeking out those weird angles or moving the camera to get another framing is just pointless.  

I know, I know, the big "Brat" summer was last year - people made a fuss over some song by Charlie XCX and then the term kind of got applied to Kamala Harris during all the election stuff, leaving newscasters to argue over what it meant for a political candidate to be called a "Brat", like is that good or bad?  I'm always playing catch-up though, so I don't know what the big trends are this summer, I guess we can't have two Brat Summers in a row, right? 

Directed by Andrew McCarthy

Also starring Andrew McCarthy (last seen in "Sr."), Emilio Estevez (last seen in "Freejack"), Ally Sheedy (last seen in "Welcome to the Rileys"), Demi Moore (last seen in "LOL"), Rob Lowe (last seen in "How to Be a Latin Lover"), Timothy Hutton (last seen in "Being Mary Tyler Moore"), Lea Thompson (last seen in "The Year of Spectacular Men"), Jon Cryer (last seen in "Shorts"), David Blum, Howard Deutch, Lauren Shuler Donner (last seen in "Maverick"), Bret Easton Ellis, Kate Erbland, Malcolm Gladwell (last seen in "The Beatles: Eight Days a Week - The Touring Years"), Susannah Gora, Marci Liroff, Ira Madison III, Michael Oates Palmer, Loree Rodkin, 

with archive footage of John Ashton (last seen in "Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F"), Kevin Bacon (ditto), Christopher Atkins, Jacqueline Bisset (last seen in "Domino"), Matthew Broderick (last seen in "The Night We Never Met"), Nicolas Cage (last seen in "Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story"), Tom Cruise (ditto), David Hartman (ditto), Jay Leno (ditto), Robert Redford (ditto), Johnny Carson (last seen in "Valerie"), Merv Griffin (ditto), David Letterman (ditto), Dick Cavett (last seen in "Faye"), Gene Shalit (ditto), John Cusack (last seen in "Runaway Jury"), Sammy Davis Jr. (last seen in "LIza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story"), Liza Minnelli (ditto), Frank Sinatra (ditto), George DiCenzo (last seen in "About Last Night"), Matt Dillon (last seen in "American Dreamer"), Phil Donahue (last seen in "Framing John Delorean"), Robert Downey Jr. (last seen in "A Scanner Darkly"), Michael J. Fox (last seen in "See You Yesterday"), Paul Gleason (last seen in "Not Another Teen Movie"), Bryant Gumbel (last seen in "Yogi Berra: It Ain't Over"), Anthony Michael Hall (last seen in "Clerks III"), Arsenio Hall (last seen in "Jim Henson: Idea Man"), Jason Hervey, C. Thomas Howell (last seen in "Old Dads"), John Hughes, Alan Hunter, Peter Lawford (last seen in "Sid & Judy"), Christopher Lloyd (last seen in "Love, Wedding, Marriage"), Ralph Macchio (also last seen in "Sr."), Dean Martin (last seen in "Bob Fosse: It's Showtime!"), Cliff Robertson (ditto), Frances Lee McCain (last seen in "End of the Road"), Ilan Mitchell-Smith, Mary Tyler Moore (also last seen in "Being Mary Tyler Moore"), Judd Nelson (last seen in "The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day"), Deborah Norville, John Parr, Jane Pauley (last seen in "Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed"), Chris Penn (last seen in "At Close Range"), Sean Penn (ditto), Molly Ringwald (last seen in "The Kissing Booth 3"), Charlie Rose (last seen in "Marvin Hamlisch: What He Did for Love"), Richard Schickel, Joel Schumacher, Martin Sheen (last seen in "Imagine That"), Brooke Shields (last seen in "Keith Haring: Street Art Boy"), Lori Singer (last seen in "The Falcon and the Snowman"), James Spader (last seen in "The Homesman"), Eric Stoltz (last seen in "Her Smell"), Patrick Swayze (last seen in "I Am Chris Farley"), Fee Waybill, Mare Winningham (last seen in "Dark Waters"), William Zabka (last seen in "The Karate Kid Part III")

RATING: 5 out of 10 rental cars (required whether you're driving to the Estevez house in Malibu or Timothy Hutton's farm in upstate NY)