Marty, Life Is Short

Year 18, Day 239 - 8/27/26 - Movie #5,413 - SQC DOC BLOCK #50

BEFORE: Finally, I've arrived at the LAST documentary of the Doc Block. I took a little break from docs so I could work in the "Spinal Tap" sequel and the horrible old-and-improv'ed "Cracking Up", but here at the almost-end of August, I can wrap things up. It's another all-star affair, I've had docs about people from the cast of "SNL" and one person from the cast of "SCTV", and tonight it's a doc about the one man who was officially part of BOTH casts, Martin Short. 

I'm also going to wrap up my "Get to Know a State" feature, and I saved this state because it didn't line up with anything else, and based on my sources, most of the movie "Three Amigos" was filmed there (admittedly, some of it was shot in Arizona and some scenes in California...). Still, my next-to-last state is NEW MEXICO. 

Date admitted to the U.S.: January 6, 1912 (47th state)

Claim to fame: I just said it, "Three Amigos" was filmed there, isn't that enough? 

Nickname: The Land of Enchantment

State Motto: "crescit eundo" which means "it grows as it goes". Umm, that's what she said. 

State Flower: Yucca flower

State Bird: Greater roadrunner

State Animal: Well then it SHOULD be the wily coyote, but it's not, it's the black bear. 

State Fish: Rio Grande cutthroat trout

State Gem: Turquoise 

State Insect: Tarantula hawk wasp

State Reptile: New Mexico whiptail lizard

State Tie: Bolo tie

Notable Sports Teams: Just college teams and minor-league affiliates, like the "Simpsons" inspired Albuquerque Isotopes, a minor-league baseball team affiliated with the Rockies, and the New Mexico Goatheads, a minor league hockey team in the ECHL. I guess there is one pro team, a soccer team named New Mexico United. 

Fun Facts: It's the southeastern state of the "Four Corners" states, where it meets with Utah, Colorado and Arizona, though geometrically it can only be adjacent to two of those, there apparently is a spot where you can stand in one spot and take up space in four states. I heard that maybe the marker isn't really in the right spot, though. During the years of World War II, New Mexico was home to three U.S. Air Force bases, the White Sands Missile Range, and of course the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where the atomic bomb was developed. In addition to the State symbols above, New Mexico also has an official question, which is "Red or green?" that refers to ordering chile sauce on local foods. 

I have never been to New Mexico, so I'm still at 29 states visited out of 50. But wait, I hear you wondering out there, because I did profile the District of Columbia, which is NOT a state, and that means that after 50 documentaries, there is still one state that remains un-profiled. I'll give you a minute if you want to go back and figure out which state I skipped.  

AHA, I skipped MINNESOTA - or did I? If you remember, I watched one documentary back in January, because I wasn't sure if I'd have a chance to work that film into the chain, it only had one star in it, and that was Bill Murray. Well, Bill Murray then turned up in EIGHT other docs, often uncredited, but you can see why I was a little worried. I COULD have watched that film, "The Saint of Second Chances" between "Being Eddie" and "Lorne", making a Bill Murray three-peat, only I DID NOT KNOW that back in January. If I had, that film would have become the 51st doc, and the baseball team in it, the St. Paul Saints, is based in, you guessed it, MINNESOTA. So I'm going to go back and edit the review from January to include a profile of the last state. Yeah, I maybe cheated a little, but I did cover all 51 states and districts, one was just separate from the others. I've never been to Minnesota, either, so the final stats are just slightly different, 29 out of 51.

Harry Shearer carries over from "Cracking Up".

THE PLOT: The definitive documentary on comedian Martin Short, exploring his career across film, television, theater and comedy. 

AFTER: We seem to be riding a wave of celebrity deaths, it's been a big year for them - our national bank of celebrities is rapidly aging, it's true. However, we also have more celebrities than ever before, and the reporting of their deaths, thanks to the internet and social media, is more prevalent than ever before, so it may only seem like a lot because - ah, who am I kidding, it's a lot to deal with. Dolly Parton, Hayden Panettiere, Tim Curry, and now songstress and "Gong Show" judge Jaye P. Morgan. And that's just in the last week or so - anybody have eyes on Jo Anne Worley? I mean, Dick Van Dyke turned 100 and then Mel Brooks turned 100, we treasure whatever time they're able to stick around, but then at the same time, we figure they're not buying any green bananas, if you know what I mean. 

Somebody pointed out that we lost FOUR people from the film "Home Alone 2" in this calendar year, that would be Catherine O'Hara, Brenda Flicker, Jaye P. Morgan (seen on a TV screen in the film) and Tim Curry. There's a certain business mogul and President who made a cameo in the film, and some people are just hoping he's next...not me, of course. That would be wrong. (But it maybe would feel OH SO right...)

Really, I think we're just dealing with the aging of America, and by America I mean Canada too. The cast of SCTV has been getting older, as have we all, and John Candy has passed away, Joe Flaherty too, and now Catherine O'Hara this year. Martin Short was the "baby" of the group, and he's now 76 himself. Of course, we wish him well and we hope he's around for a long time, but at the same time, we hope he's taking care of himself, medically speaking. I think, that based on what I've seen here in tonight's documentary, #50 in a 50-part series, that he is one of the FEW people profiled this Doc Block that I can deem "Artist Brain"-free. You should know what I'm talking about by now, it's a condition where certain filmmakers or musicians or athletes just simply refuse to retire, because they can't imagine movies or concerts or games taking place without THEM being involved. Symptoms include an aggravated sense of self, an inability to admit failures and varying symptoms including pettiness and jealousy and constant demand for attention. It happens, fame is an addictive drug and the more some people get of it, the more they want. 

I mean, Chevy Chase had a BAD case - he thinks he never said anything inappropriate and can't understand why he has a reputation for being an a-hole. Really, it has everything to do with him being an a-hole. Cheech & Chong have bad cases, too, though it only manifests itself when they get together and argue over who played the bigger role in their success. Reggie Jackson, Elvis Presley, Billy Joel, David Lynch, Mel Brooks - artist brain, artist brain, artist brain. Jesus, I was very disappointed to learn that even Dick Van Dyke had a (rather mild) case of it too - it drives him to stay in shape and dance, he still wants to entertain America, and that's great, but you know what, admitting that it's past time to retire would also be great. 

No, I think I'm only going to declare three people free of the condition this year, and unfortunately two of them are deceased, Fred Rogers and John McCain. I mean, Fred Rogers is top-of-the-line, selfless and giving, all he wanted to do was to talk to kids through the TV and educate them about the world and help them through the tough times. John McCain also had a lifetime of service to America, in the military and then the U.S. Senate, maybe there was a touch of overblown self-esteem when he ran for President twice, but the point here is that he DID NOT get elected, he had setbacks and failures, and really that's a great cure for the A.B. condition. So with that in mind, I'm declaring Martin Short as only the THIRD documentary subject this year that I can call "artist brain free". 

Again, this has everything to do with attitude, and how a person deals with failures and setbacks. I mean, Billy Joel had a BUNCH of them, albums that didn't sell and managers who stole his money and failed song ideas (I'm guessing) but still he won't retire and still he's got an overarching ego, so that means he maybe hasn't learned anything from his down moments. Sure, it's not how many times you get knocked down, it's how many times you get up after, but then once you do get up again, you need to know when to stop fighting overall. Martin Short had a long string of failure movies, I mean real stinkers like "Pure Luck" and "Clifford" and "Mumford" and "Jungle 2 Jungle". But he kept making movies, because not every film is going to be "Father of the Bride" or "The Three Amigos" or "The Prince of Egypt". Hell, some films are just going to be average, like "Innerspace" or "Mars Attacks!" or "Madagascar 3". It's OK, you're working in a very fun industry and you're getting paid, there's still a lot to be thankful for. 

Plus, you have your reputation, and you have your family and hopefully, your health too. Now of course there have been personal losses, his wife Nancy passed away in 2010, and one of their children died this year. But he still seems to be in good spirits, and able to deal with the losses, having lost both his parents and an older brother over the span of 8 years when he was younger. I think I'd be worried about him if he were doing weird things like buying part of a Canadian Football team and flying around to all of their away games. He's been working on "Only Murders in the Building" for five seasons with friend and co-star Steve Martin, with people wondering if he's dating his other co-star, Meryl Streep. It's fine if he is, it's fine if he isn't. 

Short's been active in the industry since 1972, of course it was that Toronto production of "Godspell" where he and SO MANY other people made their theatrical debuts, we saw this in the John Candy doc and in other docs, most of the future cast of "SCTV" was in that play, plus Gilda Radner, plus Victor Garber - it's the stuff of legends. Short caught up with some of the others in 1977 by joining the Toronto outlet of the Second City improv group, and then later the TV show they produced began in 1976, though he didn't join until 1982, because he still was trying to have a singing career, while playing bit parts in shows like "Taxi". But then after he joined the cast of "SCTV" in 1982, it got cancelled in 1984 BUT he got the call to move on over to Saturday Night Live, which was clearing house for the third or maybe fourth time and there were a bunch of openings. This created an "All-Star" season of SNL, with Billy Crystal, Julia-Louis Dreyfus, Christopher Guest, Jim Belushi, Mary Gross and Harry Shearer, but then there was a writer's strike, so an episode that was going to be hosted by Eugene Levy and John Candy was cancelled, and the following year Lorne Michaels came back and there was, essentially, another purge. Still, it's better to have been on SNL for one season than to have not been on it at all. 

I think by now he kind of knows where he stands, he's a pop culture icon but he hasn't let it go to his head, he still feels humble, although there's home movie footage of his family hobnobbing with the Hanks-Wilsons, the Spielberg-Capshaws, and the Kasdans, but ostensibly this came about because their families all had kids of similar ages, and therefore at holidays there could be group interactions for everyone of all ages. OK, sure, so he's had very famous friends, that's just a by-product of being in movies and finding cool people to hang out with. I stand by my analysis, this guy's been on TV sketch shows, he's been in (a couple) great movies, he's been on Broadway and he's done voice-over work, so I don't think he's got artist brain. And I'm sticking with that until I find out when he's 87 that he's refusing to retire. 

Look, he's been on the scene for over 50 years now and the documentary about him is just an hour and 40 minutes long, it's very concise. Need I remind you that Billy's Joel's 2-part HBO documentary ran almost FIVE HOURS? Of course, maybe it just feels like a masterpiece because I watched it the day after watching "Cracking Up"? 

Directed by Lawrence Kasdan (director of "Spielberg" and "Darling Companion")

Also starring Martin Short, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Catherine O'Hara, Steven Spielberg (all last seen in "John Candy: I Like Me"), 

Kate Capshaw (last seen in "Music by John Williams"), Lawrence Kasdan (ditto), Deborah Devine, Tom Hanks (last seen in "The Ventures: Stars on Guitars"), Ron Howard (last seen in "Roger Corman: The Pope of Pop Cinema"), Laurie MacDonald, Steve Martin (last seen in "Film Geek"), John Mulaney (last seen in "Mel Brooks: The 99 Year Old Man!"), Walter F. Parkes, Paul Shaffer (last seen in "Spinal Tap II: The End Continues"), Michael Short, Oliver Short, Rita Wilson (last seen in "Tom Hanks: The Nomad"),

with archive footage of Dan Aykroyd, Jim Belushi, John Candy, Robin Duke, Joe Flaherty, David Letterman, Rick Moranis, Bill Murray, Gilda Radner, Harold Ramis, Dave Thomas (all last seen in "John Candy: I Like Me"),

Kevin Bacon, Jack Lemmon (both last seen in "Beyond 'JFK': The Question of Conspiracy"),

Mel Brooks, Roger Ebert, Carrie Fisher, Diane Keaton, Jack Nicholson, Bernadette Peters, Dennis Quaid, Robert Redford, Gene Siskel, Meryl Streep (all last seen in "Film Geek"), 

Carol Burnett, Lorne Michaels (both last seen in "I'm Chevy Chase and You're Not"),

Steve Carell, Chevy Chase, Jimmy Fallon, Larry King, Jerry Seinfeld, Ringo Starr (all last seen in "Billy Joel: And So It Goes"),

Johnny Carson, Goldie Hawn, Joan Rivers, Tina Turner (all last seen in "Sunday Best: The Untold Story of Ed Sullivan")

Billy Crystal, Jeff Goldblum (both last seen in "Mel Brooks: The 99 Year Old Man!")

Ted Danson, Jimmy Kimmel (both last seen in "Starring Dick Van Dyke")

Tina Fey, Bill Hader, Maya Rudolph, Kristen Wiig (all last seen in "Lorne"), 

Sally Field, Sean Hayes (both last seen in "Bob Mackie: Naked Illusion"),

Jodie Foster, Scarlett Johansson (both last seen in "Sigourney Weaver, the Most Iconic Action Heroine")

Danny Glover, Nick Nolte (both last seen in "Being Eddie"),

Selena Gomez, Christopher Lloyd, Julia Louis-Dreyfus (all last seen in "Child Star"),

Christopher Guest, Paul McCartney (both last seen in "Spinal Tap II: The End Continues"),

Melissa McCarthy, Paul Rudd (both last seen in "When We Went MAD!"),

Nancy Dolman, Tim Allen (last heard in "Claydream"), Peter Aykroyd, Glenn Close (last seen in "Back in Action"), Bob Costas (last seen in "Coach Carter"), Phil Donahue (last seen in "Bang My Box: The Robin Byrd Story"), Jayne Eastwood, Dick Ebersol, Paul Flaherty, Glenn Frey, Charles Grodin (last seen in "Albert Brooks: Defending My Life"), Tony Hale (last seen in "Woman of the Hour"), Ice Cube (last seen in "Playdate"), Meg Kasdan, John Leguizamo (last heard in "Zootopia 2"), James Lipton, Lucy Liu (last heard in "The Tiger's Apprentice"), Paul Newman (last seen in "Reinventing Elvis: The '68 Comeback"), Olivia Newton-John (last seen in "Dear Ms.: A Revolution in Print"), Conan O'Brien (last seen in "Return of the King: The Fall and Rise of Elvis Presley"), Annette O'Toole (last seen in "A Futile and Stupid Gesture"), Kurt Russell (last seen in "Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story"), Brian Short, Charles Short, David Short, Nora Short, Olive Short, Jimmy Smits (last seen in "Pee-Wee as Himself"), Tom Snyder (last seen in "Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes"), Justin Timberlake (last seen in "Madonna: Goddess of Pop"), Kimberly Williams-Paisley (last seen in "The Christmas Chronicles: Part Two"), BD Wong (last heard in "The Monkey King"), 

RATING: 7 out of 10 (at least) animated features he's done voices for.

Cracking Up

Year 18, Day 238 - 8/26/26 - Movie #5,412

BEFORE: The whole linking system I use is a bit touch-and-go, I mean I have to both live by it and die by it. I noticed that a few people who were in the Billy Joel documentary were also in the original "Spinal Tap" film, like Artie Ripp and Danny Kortchmar, but knowing that gains me absolutely nothing, in the end it's just something I noticed which has no value. But since I've seen "This Is Spinal Tap" like 1,000 times at least, it's still mildly interesting, you can still learn something very minor about a film that you've seen so many times you can say every line as you view it. So instead I had to look at who was in the documentary that was also in the SECOND Spinal Tap movie, a couple of unknowns named Paul McCartney and Elton John. 

I recorded tonight's film because I put that second "Spinal Tap" film on DVD, and I wanted to put something else in the empty space to fill up the disc more, that's my excuse. It's a little-seen, little-known film from the mid 1970's featuring mostly improv comics, some of whom went on to become very famous and others, well, not so much. It honestly looks terrible and maybe like a film that nobody knows what to do with, even the IMDB has confused it with a Jerry Lewis comedy with the same title that came out six years later and on THIS film's page, it runs clips of the Jerry Lewis film, which is just a bit bizarre. 

But anyway, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer carry over from "Spinal Tap II: The End Continues" and this is something of a weird relic of a film, but let's clear it off the board tonight and see what we're dealing with, then tomorrow will be the FINAL film of the Doc Block, finally.

THE PLOT: California is devastated by a big earthquake and, in a series of hilarious vignettes, a television station conducts interviews with the survivors. 

AFTER: Oh, how I wish this were a better movie - I thought maybe I'd stumbled on a little-seen comedy from the 70's with some hilarious gems on it, and that's just not the case. It turns out when you take three different improvisation troupes and put them together in the same film, the result is not greater than the sum of its parts, in fact I think it's much less than that. 

There's a loose framework about a devastating California earthquake, and well, that sounds all well and good but it's just not very FUNNY, now, is it? And this is used to allow flashbacks where each group of players can perform one of their better skits, like in flashback, but then if we keep flashing back to funny-ish scenes, then we've lost the throughline about the earthquake, haven't we? What's even worse is that the comedy is deeply rooted in the novel things about the 1970's, so there's a whole segment designed to call out Polish people or Polish-Americans as being very stupid, the fact that the person being interviewed is half-Polish and half-Irish doesn't help much, it's still from a time when you could make sweeping generalizations along ethnic or gender or sexual preference lines, and nowadays that just wouldn't fly. There's a news reporter who is clearly a man in drag, and like, that's the joke, that a man is wearing a dress and trying to look like a woman, and he's not really succeeding at it. 

In the meantime, injured people are stumbling around after emerging from the rubble of the disaster, and other people are wandering around and taking off their clothes for no reason, mostly women, duh. I mean, sure, it's set in California in the decade after free love and hippies, but people just didn't take off their clothes in the street for no reason, did they? I'm not sure, I mean there were nudist colonies, but they were separate from most people and not found in urban areas.  

There's a sketch about a job interview where the interviewer and his boss and HIS boss all have various random seizure-like tics, and sure, let's make fun of disabled people while we're at it. That might play well on stage with an improv group, but in a movie watched by modern audiences, it's a non-starter, and not funny at all. Later there's a diner sketch where a man trying to get a hamburger is unable to do so, because the waiters are over-complicating the order, the tiny ratty diner suddenly becomes the place for a casino-like floor show and a giveaway raffle and the diner manager is suddenly like an emcee talking to a non-existent audience, and I don't think the customer ever gets his burger. 

In another sketch, a mailman delivers a dead man's body to his brother, with no coffin, and that's not really a thing that could happen, the concept comes from nothing and goes nowhere. Another couple is having an intimate evening but the woman doesn't want to have sex unless the Tom Snyder show is on, I guess she just needs the sounds of an interview to either get her in the mood or distract her, I'm not sure which. The couple ends up hiding under the bed for no reason, except to explain why the woman was found emerging from a bed after the earthquake which happened before. No, wait, after?  And a woman dressed as a cowboy appears in a window in a men's room so she can compliment them on their genitals while they're using the urinal - again, it's just a weird idea that comes out of nowhere and then goes nowhere. 

There's really just one sketch I liked, but I've heard it before, it's from the group called the Credibility Gap and it has Harry Shearer playing a rock concert promoter, buying ad space in a newspaper from a salesman played by David L. Lander, and their conversation is a take on the old Abbott & Costello routine "Who's on First" about oddly-named baseball players. Here there's much confusion over the names of the three headliners in the concert, one of which is The Who, and well, you can imagine the confusion over the band's name, and it gets worse because the band Yes is also on the bill. I recommend tracking down the routine, it's really great, and I knew it as a kid but it became so much funnier when I grew up and liked more rock music. 

Speaking of rock bands, the only one in the movie is The Tubes, and lead singer Fee Waybill also plays a weird seismologist with a German accent who explains that earthquakes are caused by a sort of jam that is found within the earth, as if the planet were a giant Uncrustable or something. Like most everything else here, that conversation serves no purpose overall and is also not funny. 

I don't even understand the image on the movie's poster, it has a guy whose head seems to be in the shape of California all bandaged up, holding a crutch, and sitting on a bit of land surrounded by water while various California landmarks are drowning or in a flood, and that's about as confusing as the rest of the movie. How can the state of California be smaller than the buildings found in some of its cities? If those buildings are no longer in the state of California, then where are they? And isn't the film about an earthquake, not a flood? Did the whole state fall into the ocean?  And if it did, how is it sitting on an island afterwards, all bandaged up? That whole image needed to be rejected and the artist should have been made to start over. But you kind of get the feeling that the whole movie was made on the cheap and there were no second takes or even rewrites. 

I guess it's the kind of film that got approved two years after "Saturday Night Live" hit the scene, and suddenly comedians were in demand, and every improv theater group got the feeling they could be famous, all they needed was the right vehicle to appear in to show everyone how funny they were. Well, two of the comedians here did become mega-stars of comedy, but it took being in "Spinal Tap" and then joining the cast of "SNL" to get there. 

Directed by Rowby Goren & Chuck Staley

Also starring Michael Mislove, Fred Willard (last seen in "Devo"), Paul Zegler (last seen in "Popeye"), Steve Bluestein, David L. Lander (last seen in "Say It Isn't So"), Jim Staahl (last seen in "Spies Like Us"), Tino Insana (last heard in "Belushi"), Phil Proctor (last heard in "The Lion King" (2019)), Peter Bergman, Bob McClurg (last seen in "Cheech and Chong's Next Movie"), Leslie Ackerman, Rowby Goren, Neal Israel (last seen in "The Wedding Ringer"), Rickey Murray (last seen in "The Mating Game"), C.D. Taylor, Edie McClurg (last seen in "Cheech & Chong's Last Movie"), Mary McCusker (last seen in "The Incredible Shrinking Woman"), Christopher Pray (last seen in "The Candidate"), Ron Prince, Lynne Marie Stewart (last seen in "Pee-Wee as Himself"), Stephen Stucker, Kurt Taylor (last seen in "Semi-Tough"), Fee Waybill (last seen in "Brats"), Dody Dorn, Jim Fisher (also last heard in "Belushi"), Joe Roth (last seen in "Stevie Van Zandt: Disciple"), Paul Willson (last seen in "Alex & Emma") and The Tubes.

RATING: 3 out of 10 raffle tickets

Spinal Tap II: The End Continues

Year 18, Day 237 - 8/25/26 - Movie #5,411

BEFORE: I suppose this requires a bit of explanation, because obviously today's film is NOT a documentary, it's a comedy that's made in the style of one, we all know the term for that by now. I was looking for a way to work it in with fiction films, and the links just weren't there, BUT there are famous rock musicians IN this film, so the most obvious way to get HERE would be to link from a documentary, 90% of all documentaries have Paul McCartney in them, or Elton John if they somehow don't have footage of the Beatles. So it seemed ideal, after the Doc Block ended, just come here, and then this naturally leads to tomorrow's film, which is nearly impossible to link to if I don't go from HERE to THERE. But, umm, then what?  

The original plan was to end the Doc Block with Billy Joel, then come here, but then after tomorrow the chain just dies, UNLESS I withheld one documentary, move it all the way to the end, like a musical coda, and that documentary has some good linking possiblities to it, lots of actors who are in other things, and one of those stood out as a good place to go before the summer ends, you'll see when we get there. But this means dropping a couple of comedies into the Doc Block, or rather dropping the documentary format for a couple of days, and then finishing strong. Again this is NOT a true documentary, I know this so they don't get a state to profile and there's not a ton of archive footage (although, there is some...)

So the target date for finishing the Doc Block is in just two days, I may still be in recovery due to my ankle injury, so right now I don't know when I can go back to work, at either the theater or the stadium, I might have to cash in some sick hours and stay home and watch movies, oh darn. Well, I don't want to injure the ankle any worse, I need to stay put and elevate it and go from there. 

So, yeah, Paul McCartney and Elton John carry over from "Billy Joel: And So It Goes", and this is not a bad place to be, except that Rob Reiner died and therefore tonight's comedy is also a bit sad, but I can't do anything about that. Sorry. 

THE PLOT: After a 15-year break, the band reunites for one final concert. 

AFTER: It's been over 40 years since the original "This Is Spinal Tap" film came out, which introduced the concept of the mockumentary to a lot of people - wait, what do you mean, it's not REAL? It all seemed ridiculous enough to be real, and afterwards there were a lot of rock bands who swore that they were the ones who got lost backstage trying to find the stage in Cleveland. Before "This one goes to 11" became a household phrase and back when you could still make fun of really short people. I think maybe eventually we all had to determine that the people involved were clearly actors, mainly because we recognized Rob Reiner from "All in the Family", though he looked older than he did before, and wait, isn't that the guy who used to be on "Laverne & Shirley", and isn't that guy playing the more famous rock star also the guy who was Johnny Fever on "WKRP in Cincinnati"?  

Yeah, we had to burst that bubble, though it might have been more fun to keep living in a world where Spinal Tap was a real band and those guys didn't all turn up in the cast of "SNL" a few years down the road, and Fran Drescher became super-famous for starring in "The Nanny" after playing press agent Bobbi Flekman. (There were many other future stars in there who made cameos, like Bruno Kirby and Dana Carvey, but I digress...). We shouldn't have had to wait so long for a sequel, I mean we had "A Mighty Wind" but that really isn't the same thing. 40 years may not be a record number of years between a film and its sequel, but it's still far too long. Maybe they were all afraid of ruining a classic comedy, but that shouldn't hold people back - perhaps everyone was just busy with other projects and it took 40 years for everyone's availability to sync up.  (The internet tells me that three Disney films took even longer to produce a sequel, "Bambi" (64 years), "Fantasia" (59 years) and "Mary Poppins" (54 years))

Anyway, 40 years down the road, in the fictional Spinal Tap-verse, filmmaker Marty DeBergi has checked in with the members of "Tap" and the other people he interviewed back then. Only David St. Hubbins is still working in the music industry, however he's crafting background tunes for crime podcasts and customer service systems that play music when callers are on hold. Nigel Tufnel has been running a cheese shop in the UK with his new life and/or business partner, and Harry Shearer runs a Museum of Glue (it should be a Glue-seum, but what do I know?) after losing his fortune and money from his bandmates in an ill-fated cryptocurrency scheme. That tracks. Meanwhile David's ex-wife (the source of friction in the previous film) is now a nun, promoter Artie Fufkin sells those inflatable car-dealer waving men and Bobbi Flekman is still a press agent, however she's too busy and not interested enough to work with Spinal Tap ever again. 

The band's old manager, Ian Faith, passed away (which means the actor, Tony Hendra, did) but his daughter, Hope, has somehow inherited the band's contract and she has the right to have them perform one more show, which seems kind of illegal as well as ill-advised. But they'll need to find a new drummer and also work around a concert promoter who has no idea what he's doing, also the band members are older, out of shape, and prone to fighting over past events that went bad, much like Cheech and Chong IRL. Yeah, there's a lot here that kind of holds up a mirror to not only the nostalgia rock tour thing but also the social media trends and also the ridiculousness of making documentaries and having Artist Brain in general, like the band is certainly old enough to retire, two-thirds of them are semi-retired or on their third ridiculous career, kind of like Billy Joel, right? But still they can't imagine a world where there isn't an upcoming concert to look forward to and rehearse for. 

Supposedly Garth Brooks has gone viral after singing a cover of "Big Bottom" with his wife, Trisha Yearwood, and that creates a trend and a motivation to get the band back together. Nigel is still mad at David for sleeping with his wife and causing their break-up, and David swears that never happened, but they're the heart of the band, they're Tap's Lennon & McCartney or Billy Joel and Jon Small, without them working together, there's no band. Anyway that was 15 or 25 years ago when that thing happened or didn't happen, so who cares? If Fleetwood Mac can still play together after all of their affairs and band-cestual encounters, why can't Spinal Tap work together for one more show? 

So they gather together in New Orleans and start rehearsals, plus they call a bunch of famous rock drummers, none of which want to take their lives into their hands by risking a gig with a band that's had so many drummers die over the years. The last auditioner is the best, and she's a woman, maybe that can break the curse, besides it's the 2020's now, women have been in various bands for a long time now, it's only the aging Tap core members who have a little bit of trouble with a female drummer, at first, anyway. Paul McCartney drops by to play "Cups & Cakes" with the band and then Elton John pops by to sing "Listen to the Flower People", funny how Elton's been on the road for decades and never met Spinal Tap in person before. But they invite him to play "Stonehenge" at the big concert with them, what could possibly go wrong?

Ah, it turns out in real life that one reason no sequel was made was that the stars and creators of the first film were involved in a long legal battle over not being properly compensated for the film's success, thanks to "Hollywood accounting" they had not received proper royalties from music sales, royalties and the case took four years to settle, after which the trademarks and licensing would be owned by the four creators of the film going forward, meaning the film and the band were now their intellectual property again and they could profit from making a sequel, so sure, let's do that now. 

The sequel film doesn't repeat the same jokes, not exactly, but it does have new versions of the same jokes. Like in the first film the joke was that the "Stonehenge" prop was made too small, here they've gone in the opposite direction and accidentally made the prop much too big. instead of giving the doc film director a tour of his guitars, Nigel here shows him an overly complicated set of foot pedals, most of which he doesn't even use on stage. The concert promoter thinks it would be great publicity if one or more members of the band were to die on stage, which is a terrible thing to suggest, and also be careful what you wish for.  The drummer manages to survive and breaks the curse - or does she? 

A few months ago I would have said this was exactly the sequel we needed right now, something light to entertain us that we wouldn't have to think too hard about and we could forget about the constant floodings and the still-rising gas prices and the war in Iran, but then Rob Reiner had to go and get himself murdered by his own son, so now it's hardly the laugh-fest that it could have been. Maybe it was if you went to the movie theater to see this last year, but I waited until it was on HBO, who knew that would turn out to be a mistake? 

Directed by Rob Reiner

Also starring Christopher Guest (last seen in "I'm Chevy Chase and You're Not"), Michael McKean (last seen in "Bob Mackie: Naked Illusion"), Harry Shearer (last seen in "Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project"), Rob Reiner (last seen in "Sunday Best: The Untold Story of Ed Sullivan"), Valerie Franco, CJ Vanston (last seen in "Danny Collins"), Jean Cromie, Kerry Godliman (last seen in "Mascots"), June Chadwick, Griffin Matthews (last seen in "Your Place or Mine"), David Furnish (last seen in "Elton John: Never Too Late"), Chris Addison, Kathreen Khavari (also last seen in "Mascots"), Brad Williams (ditto), Nina Conti (last seen in "For Your Consideration"), Robert Walker Branchaud (last seen in "Queen & Slim"), Annie Gordenier, Jason "Wee Man" Acuna, Josh Ford, Don Lake (last seen in "John Candy: I Like Me"), Derrick Rossi, Justin Miles (last seen in "Old Dads"), Rajeev Jacob (last seen in "The Big Short"), Dorothea Taylor, Matthew Ramsey, Andrew McLean, Steve Hickman, Quintron, Scott Allen Perry (last seen in "Fool's Paradise"), Thom Lowry, Soroush Rajabnik, Greta Pasqua, Bart St. Germain and the voices of Ryan Farris, Judith Owen.

with cameos from Garth Brooks (also carrying over from "Billy Joel: And So It Goes"), Fran Drescher (last seen in "Pamela: A Love Story"), John Michael Higgins (also last seen in "Bob Mackie: Naked Illusion"), Questlove (last seen in "Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary"), Paul Shaffer (also last seen in "I'm Chevy Chase and You're Not"), Chad Smith (last seen in "Count Me In"), Lars Ulrich (last seen in "Sound City"), Trisha Yearwood (last seen in "Jimmy Carter: Rock & Roll President"), Henry Diltz (last seen in "Woodstock: Three Days That Defined a Generation"), Lucy Faust (last seen in "Renfield"), 

and archive footage of Ed Begley Jr. (last seen in "Strange Darling"), Tony Hendra (last heard in "Belushi"), Russ Kunkel (Last seen in "Funny People")

RATING: 6 out of 10 tourists on the New Orleans "ghost house" tour (Hey, I've been on that tour!)

Billy Joel: And So It Goes

Year 18, Day 236 - 8/24/26 - Movie #5,410 - SQC DOC BLOCK FILM #49

BEFORE: I'm probably very late in posting this one, I had to take another skip day, however I have three very good excuses for doing so. First, we had another downpour thunderstorm on Sunday morning, thankfully I was awake at 6 am, having not gone to sleep yet, and I was able to start bailing out the backyard basement steps, where the drain backs up, before my wife woke up. We have sandbags and a trashbag covering the door, however if the water gets high enough, it will start to come into the basement. A tiny bit of water did come in, but barely enough to even mop. Second excuse, I somehow sprained my ankle, not sure if it was from working Saturday night or bailing water Sunday morning, or if I just slept on it wrong, but it prevented me from getting back upstairs to my computer until very late on Monday. 

But the main reason to take another skip day is the fact that this documentary on Billy Joel, the next-to-last one in my chain (of course) is in two parts, and each is almost 2 and a half hours long, meaning that if I count this as ONE two-part film, instead of a two-part doc series like HBO does, the total running time is almost FIVE HOURS. I've had to split that into two viewing days for my own sanity, however with all the skip days the Doc Block has gone on longer than I planned, math tells me that it's been 55 days since the start of the Block and I've watched 49 films in that time-frame, so yeah, somehow I almost took a week off from movies during an 8-week span. Well, it's almost over and then I won't have to watch docs for a long while. 

Now for the 49th installment of my "Get to Know a State (or District)" featurette, there are just three states left to choose from, so even though Billy Joel is a Long Islander and therefore a New Yorker, that was the first state to go, so he's going to have to cover RHODE ISLAND. No worries, I found out that when he kicked off his "An Innocent Man" tour in 1984, Providence RI was the first stop, despite a major snowstorm. He came back there in June of 1990 on the "Storm Front" tour, playing there in summer was much smarter. Anyway, RHODE ISLAND!

Date admitted to the U.S.: May 29, 1790 (lucky 13th state)

Claim to fame: Smallest state in area, though not the least populated

Nickname: The Ocean State or "Little Rhody" (nobody calls it that...)

State Motto: Hope

State Flower: Violet   

State Bird: Rhode Island Red (chicken)

State Insect: American Burying Beetle

State Tree: Red maple

State Fish: Striped bass

State Mineral: Bowenite (OK, now you're just making stuff up)

State Fruit: Rhode Island Greening Apple

State Drink: Coffee milkl

Notable Sports Teams: Providence Bruins, a minor-league affiliate of the Boston NHL teams, and they used to have the Pawtucket Red Sox, I wonder what happened to them. Ah, they moved to Worcester, MA. 

Fun Facts: Rhode Island borders only two states, Massachusetts and Connecticut - or does it? There's apparently a small maritime border with New York, like the easternmost part of Long Island. The state was founded by Roger Williams who fled religious persecution in Massachusetts, which is ironic because that's the same principle the Pilgrims founded Mass. on, what a bunch of hypocritical Massholes. Little Rhode Island was actually the first colony to renounce the British crown, but since the state contested the Articles of Confederation and then boycotted the Constitution convention, it did not become the first state of the U.S., it took so long to ratify the Constitution that it became the LAST of the 13 colonies to be declared a state. Well, they're stubborn up there I guess. I know they also have some unique cuisine items up there, like their own kind of hot dogs and that weird coffee milk drink and unique calamari, also clam cakes, stuffies and a drink called the Awful Awful. 

And I have been to Rhode Island, many times. I think I saw my first concert in Warwick, RI but it wasn't Billy Joel, it was Weird Al Yankovic. And I've been to the Chowderfest in Newport, RI many times over the years. Mostly I just visit the rest stops now, because once we hit Rhode Island I'm so close to my hometown that we might as well wait to eat, and Rhode Island food is so weird anyhow. So that makes 29 states visited by me, out of 49. That's probably where I'll land, 29. Jimmy Page carries over from "The Ventures: Stars on Guitars" - unexpectedly, somehow so does Billy Joel. 

THE PLOT: Showcases an extensive look at Billy Joel's life and music career, featuring exclusive interviews, performances, home movies and personal photographs. 

AFTER: Like I said above, this documentary is almost FIVE HOURS long if you manage to watch both parts. Now I have, so I can attest that they were very very thorough in making it, I now know a lot about Billy Joel - SO MUCH! I probably know more about Billy Joel than Billy Joel does, well, I mean he's 77 years old now so he's probably getting quite forgetful. I wonder if he agreed to make the documentary so he could always just watch it again if he forgets to remember any aspects of his life.  

They cover the early years of course, taking piano lessons and being smacked around by his father if he should try to play something like "The Moonlight Sonata" with a boogie-woogie beat. It turns out some adults back then did NOT foster creativity in children, and his father Howard (formerly Helmut) Joel took music very seriously and he met Billy's mother, Rosalind Nyman, while they were both in a production of Gilbert and Sullivan's "The Pirates of Penzance" at the City College of New York. Well, he was an accomplished classical pianist, born in Germany, but he was also the son of a textile manufacturer there, who was Jewish and forced by the Nazis to sell his company to a Gentile for almost nothing. Billy's grandfather and father left for Switzerland, and Howard came to the U.S. via Cuba and became an engineer, but still remained a musician. Billy's parents split up in 1957 when he was 15 or so, and he did not see his father again for maybe 30 years, when he tracked him down in Vienna, Austria. (When he did, Billy learned his father had re-married and had another son, his half-brother, Alexander, who became a classical music conductor.)

Billy Joel, of course, grew up on Long Island (we go to this rest stop that has a "Long Island Walk of Fame" so I'm pretty familiar now with all the famous people born out there) and his family called Hicksville home during his youth, Billy didn't graduate with his class because he went off to make music, but later in 1992 he wrote some essays and his old high school gave him his degree, just 25 years late. He played in local bands like the Echoes, which became the Emeralds, which became the Lost Souls. But he left the Lost Souls to join the Hassles when they offered him a Hammond organ to switch over - that's where he met Jon Small, the drummer and the only other serious musician in the Hassles. Jon Small and Billy tried to start a heavy metal ground named Attila because they wanted to be the next Led Zeppelin, but that didn't work out. 

Billy moved in with Jon Small and his wife, Elizabeth Weber, however he and Elizabeth spent a lot of time together and were attracted to each other, and well, we all know what happens when there's a love triangle, somebody gets shut out because nobody back then had invented thrupples yet, so Elizabeth and Jon broke up and Elizabeth and Billy got together, and were married for quite a time, 1973 to 1982. Billy became very famous during that time, and at some point Elizabeth also became his manager, since she knew more about what his career could be or needed to be than some random person with more experience, but less know-how. And she also served as his creative muse, too, being his wife and inspiration for songs like "Just the Way You Are" and "She's Always a Woman" and for a while they lived in Los Angeles and he worked in a piano bar, where she was a waitress, and all that played out in "Piano Man". 

It's amazing how much of Billy's personal life turned up in his songs, I mean it probably shouldn't be that surprising but not every songwriter ends up putting so much of themselves out there, I guess they're all trying to write songs for everybody which means a lot of generic situations or random veiled thoughts about love and relationships, but no, everything that happened to Billy Joel seemed to end up in a song, and they play all the song cues here to drive that point home. When he and Elizabeth were having relationship issues, that played out in "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant" and "Stiletto" and ultimately "You May Be Right", which detailed a wild motorcycle ride home that Billy took with no headlights, in the rain, and possibly drunk, leading his wife to say, "You must be crazy..." and then that inspired the song. 

However, just when the career was really going well, with the success of the "Turnstiles" album and the commercial breakthrough of "The Stranger", Billy had an accident on his motorcycle, and was in the hospital for a while, and Elizabeth, who had warned him repeatedly about the dangers of motorcycles and the possibilities of having an accident, had realized she'd had enough. By then she already had an apartment in Manhattan, so I guess it was a good time to split. Billy took it hard, of course, and started drinking again and nobody saw him for a while, but he came back with new music, as he always did, and that was "Glass Houses", really the kind of album you make when you're divorced and angry and ready to show the world you have a new bad attitude. 

(THIS is about where Part One ends, after the motorcycle accident and the divorce from Elizabeth - meaning we're only about halfway through the story, so sure, cue up Part Two)

"Songs in the Attic" was next, but of course those were mainly the correct versions of older songs, ones that were improperly sped up on his first album, "Cold Spring Harbor". Then came the "Nylon Curtain" album, with songs like "Allentown" and "Pressure" and "Goodnight Saigon", so he was still going through his angry stage, I think...or the point was being made that the American Dream was dying because of Reaganomics or something. 

But then of course he met Christie Brinkley, on the island of St. Bart's, where she was doing a modeling shoot, and life was good again, meaning American music fans got more uplifting songs like "Tell Her About It" and "Uptown Girl" and "The Longest Time". Well, inspiration is where you find it, I guess. For a while they were the hottest celebrity mismatched couple on the planet, he's a rocker and she's a model and this was never going to work out, except that it did for a time, and then of course it didn't. What happened was they went on long road trips together, and everywhere they went, like all over Maine, they met people who claimed that Billy had bought property in town, or they'd bought their cousin's horse or car or something. This meant that Billy's manager, his ex-brother-in-law, had been traveling around and spending Billy's money buying a bunch of properties and things, meaning that Billy was nearly broke as a result. 

Well, actions have consequences, and not keeping an eye on what your business manager is doing has very bad consequences, but rather than keep a $90 million lawsuit going forever, Billy decided to get back out on the road and tour, more often and harder than ever before, to try and make that money back, build up his fortune again. But then he was spending so much time away from Christie, again, actions have consequences, that he was touring and she was home and they weren't spending any time together, and you know how that story ends. 

Part Two also covers the big concert Joel did in the Soviet Union, after his album "The Bridge", which had the songs "A Matter of Trust" and "This Is the Time" on it. I remember the concert album from the U.S.S.R., that was a big deal to me because he covered the Beatles song "Back in the U.S.S.R., and also Dylan's "The Times They Are a-Changin'". Back in the U.S. to release "Storm Front" in 1988 and do a few other things, like getting divorced from Christie Brinkley in 1994 but also starting to tour with Elton John around the same time. Those joint concerts took place, off and on for 16 years, despite the fact that Billy tried to retire in 1999, after the New Year's Eve pre-millennial concert at Madison Square Garden, except, you know, he was really bad at retiring, I think. 

He also tried to just focus on writing classical music for a while, and somehow had the number one Classical album, but then it was Superstorm Sandy that got him back into touring again, he did a benefit concert in 2012 for people on Long Island affected by the hurricane and that led to going back to MSG, and that led to a long residency there that went to 100 nights between 2014 and 2025.  Well, they had to end this documentary somehow, somewhere, so finally after five hours they managed to stop telling me about stuff Billy Joel has done. But he defiantly claims that he's "not finished", so in the end, there's a diagnosis of "artist brain" to be made. Dude, you're 77, if you want to retire, YOU CAN. You worked very hard for a long time, you tried to retire before, you were just too early - maybe now is a better time? Just take a break, stay at home with your fourth wife and your new toddler children and take it easy before you break a hip or something. You've got the memoir, you've got the five-hour documentary about all of your accomplishments, now maybe let some younger people have arena concerts, whaddaya say? People will still listen to your music, that's never going to change, so why isn't that enough? Oh, right, your toddlers will still need to go to college someday - but don't you think you can leave them money in your will? Just saying. 

Directed by Susan Lacy (director of "Spielberg" and "Jane Fonda in Five Acts") & Jessica Levin (producer of "LennoNYC" and "Spielberg")

Also starring Billy Joel (also carrying over from "The Ventures: Stars on Guitars"), Dennis Arfa, Christie Brinkley (last seen in "I'm Chevy Chase and You're Not"), Garth Brooks, Jackson Browne (last seen in "Roy Orbison Forever"), Tommy Byrnes, Richie Cannata, Rhys Clark, Steve Cohen, Clive Davis (last seen in "Earth, Wind & Fire"), Anthony DeCurtis, Liberty DeVitto, Larry Franke, Bunny Freidus, Sandy Gibson, Wendy Greguski, Edna Gundersen, Don Henley (last seen in "Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary"), Steven Hyden, Russell Javors, Alexa Ray Joel (last seen in "Always at the Carlyle"), Alexander Joel, Hyung-Ki Joo, Danny Kortchmar, Katie Lee, Bradshaw Leigh, Paul McCartney (last seen in "Return of the King: The Fall and Rise of Elvis Presley"), John Mellencamp (last seen in "Devo"), Bertha Miller, Judy Molinari, Nas (last seen in "De Palma"), Nick Paumgarten, Pink (last seen in "Bob Mackie: Naked Illusion"), Mark Rivera (last seen in "Billy Joel: The 100th Live at Madison Square Garden"), Crystal Taliefero (ditto), John Rockwell, Alexis Roderick, David Rosenthal, Brian Ruggles, Denny Seiwell, Jon Small, Bruce Springsteen (last seen in "Bruce Springsteen: Born to Rock"), Sting (ditto), Elizabeth Weber, Sean Weber-Small, Arlyne Wilcox, 

with archive footage of Tony Bennett (last seen in "Reinventing Elvis: The '68 Comeback"), John Bonham (last seen in "Becoming Led Zeppelin"), John Paul Jones (ditto), John Lennon (ditto), Marilyn Monroe (ditto), Robert Plant (ditto), Luke Bryan, Steve Carell (last seen in "John McCain: For Whom the Bell Tolls"), Ray Charles (last seen in "Sunday Best: The Untold Story of Ed Sullivan"), Stephen Colbert (ditto), Jimmy Fallon (ditto), Janis Joplin (ditto), Barbra Streisand (ditto), Chevy Chase (last seen in "The Ventures: Stars on Guitars"), Jimi Hendrix (ditto), Elton John (ditto), Miley Cyrus (also last seen in "Bob Mackie: Naked Illusion"), Whitney Houston (ditto), Roger Daltrey (last seen in "Paul Anka: His Way"), Aretha Franklin (ditto), Pete Townshend (ditto), Rodney Dangerfield (also last seen in "I'm Chevy Chase and You're Not"), Paul Simon (ditto), Bob Dylan (also last seen in "Return of the King: The Fall and Rise of Elvis Presley"), Frank Sinatra (ditto), Ringo Starr (ditto), Tom Ewell (last seen in "The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe: The Unheard Tapes"), Andy Gibb, Barry Gibb (also last seen in "Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary"), George Martin (ditto), Joni Mitchell (ditto), Lionel Richie (ditto), Mark Goodman (also last seen in "Devo"), Jimmy Guercio, Bryant Gumbel (last seen in "Raise Hell: The Life & Times of Molly Ivins"), Daryl Hall (last seen in "John Candy: I Like Me"), Larry King (ditto), Shirley MacLaine (ditto), Adolf Hitler (last seen in "Audrey"), Thomas Hoving, Howard Joel, Mick Jones, Michael Lang (last seen in "What the Hell Happened to Blood, Sweat & Tears?"), Jay Leno (last seen in "Pamela: A Love Story"), Elle Macpherson, Barry Manilow (last seen in "Bang My Box; The Robin Byrd Story"), John Malkovich (last seen in "Mile 22"), Linda McCartney (last seen in "The Beatles: In the Life"), Philip Nyman, Rosalind Nyman, Rosie O'Donnell (last seen in "Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything"), Diane Sawyer (ditto), Scott Pelley, Itzhak Perlman (last seen in "Mister Rogers: It's You I Like"), Katy Perry, Phil Ramone, Lou Reed (last seen in "Stevie Van Zandt: Disciple"), Keith Richards (last seen in "Cheech & Chong's Last Movie"), Artie Ripp, Linda Ronstadt (last seen in "Johnny Cash: The Redemption of an American Icon"), James Taylor (ditto), Ed Sciaky, Jerry Seinfeld (last seen in "Mel Brooks: The 99 Year Old Man!"), Joel Siegel, Phoebe Snow, Doug Stegmeyer, Howard Stern (last seen in "When We Went MAD!"), Donald Trump (ditto), Cat Stevens, Julius Streicher, Jason Sudeikis (last seen in "Lorne"), John Tesh (ditto), Lily Tomlin (ditto), Frank Weber, Terry Wogan, Walter Yetnikoff

The Beach Boys (also last seen in "Reinventing Elvis: The '68 Comeback"), Talking Heads

RATING: 7 out of 10 music videos played on MTV (some directed by Jon Small)

The Ventures: Stars on Guitars

Year 18, Day 234 - 8/22/26 - Movie #5,409 - SQC DOC BLOCK FILM #48

BEFORE: I've got just three more states to profile in this Semi-Quincentennial historic year's Doc Block, and it looks like I'm going to run out of documentaries before I run out of states - don't worry, it's all part of the plan, I've taken care of everything. Including the fact that the Ventures were a band formed in and often based in the state of WASHINGTON, which I have not profiled and I saved just for them. So let's Get to Know a State...

Date admitted to the U.S.: November 11, 1889 (42nd state)

Claim to fame: Umm, Seattle? The Space Needle and grunge rock? 

Nickname: "The Evergreen State"

State Motto: "Alki" which is Chinook for "by and by", apparently

State Flower: Rhododendron       

State Bird: Willow goldfinch

State Tree: Western hemlock

State Mammal: Marmot? 

State Fish: Steelhead trout

State Gemstone: Petrified wood

State Insect: Green darner

State Sport: Pickleball

Notable Sports Teams: Umm, Mariners in baseball, and they used to have the Seahawks in football, I'm not sure if they're still active. Well, I guess they are. I think it's the basketball team that moved away? There's still a WNBA team, the Seattle Storm, and there's an NHL team, the Kraken, and the Seattle Sounders soccer team, I know them. 

Fun Facts: George Washington the President never made it to the state that got named for him, he died well before that happened and I think he never went that far west, anyhow. Washington the state made a constitution in 1878 but it was never officially adopted, so I guess that means that everything is legal there? Not sure. There was a very famous volcanic eruption of Mount St. Helens back in 1980, I remember that, it flattened the forest for 12 miles and killed 57 people, and many states eastward were caught in a big cloud of ash. The state also has Mount Rainier, the Cascade Mountains and the Olympic Mountains, so really this should be called the Mountain State and Colorado should have to come up with something else. 

I have not been to Washington, the state, so my total stands at 28 states visited out of 48 states profiled. I think I'm only going to be able to add one more place I've been. Jimmy Page carries over from "Becoming Led Zeppelin". 

THE PLOT: Documentary film on the instrumental group The Ventures. The story of their rise to fame in the 1960's right up to now as they celebrate their 60th anniversary. 

AFTER: Even if you don't know who the Ventures are, you probably know who the Ventures are. They had a bunch of instrumental hits that started with "Walk, Don't Run" in 1960 and then another version of that same song charted again in 1964, which was technically a different decade (because there was no year zero, it's complicated) so they were the first band to have the same song in the Top 10 in two different decades. They popularized the use of the electric guitar and the whammy bar and the reverb and the fuzzbox, pretty much anything you can use to change the sound of a guitar electronically, they did it first and inspired everyone from Peter Frampton to Jimi Hendrix to Slash. They were one of those bands that "launched a thousand other bands" and they got inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2008. 

They started just as two guys, Don Wilson and Bob Bogle who worked as bricklayers together who also played a little guitar, and they started their band as a duet, with one basically doing a drum part on his guitar and the other simulating a bass part too, but soon the group grew into a foursome and they got a real drummer and a real bass player, then the guitar guys could REALLY take off and do whatever they wanted, exploring different sounds and rhythms, and playing what would come to be called "surf music" before there was even a need for surf music in the culture. 

While they did not write the theme to "Hawaii Five-O", when that show's theme song became popular, a longer version was needed than the one made for the show, so the Ventures recorded a longer version, and that was a hit, too. And then no matter what became popular throughout the decades, the Ventures would record a version of it, whether it was Carpenters music or the theme from "Shaft", they were right there to add their famous twangy sound to it, which meant they released over 200 albums over the years, including a Christmas album and albums that taught teenagers how to play the guitar, I don't think they ever made a Beach Boys album, though, because really the whole Beach Boys thing was copied from the sound of the Ventures. 

Somehow, impossibly, the Ventures are still active and touring today, even though all of the original members have passed away, Don Wilson and Bob Bogle and Nokie Edwards and honestly, more drummers than "Spinal Tap", but that's how influential they were, every guitar player worth his salt knows their songs or their style or tried to duplicate what they did with a fuzzbox and a whammy bar. The current drummer is the son of one of their most prominent early members, so by now it's probably like a family thing. Or everyone in the Seattle music scene knows everybody else, and they've all just decided to keep this crazy thing going. 

And if they were well known in the U.S., they were even more famous in Japan, the original band toured there several times and the Japanese music scene created a whole new genre of music based on their style, called "teke-teke" which sounds kind of like the fast-paced strumming of a guitar on a Ventures song. Punk music fans love the Ventures, surf music fans love the Ventures, Billy Bob Thornton loves the Ventures, that's the main point this doc tries to get across, and it's not wrong, they're just kind of universally known and loved, and come on, you know them even if you don't know them, right? 

Directed by Staci Layne Wilson

Also starring Don Wilson, Danny Amis, Randy Bachman (last seen in "Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind"), Jeffrey "Skunk" Baxter (last seen in "Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary"), Mel Bergman, Liz Brasher, Joe Carducci, Del Casher, Jeff Cook, Josie Cotton, Nicole Damoff, Jack DeFranco, Deke Dickerson, Seymour Duncan, Bill Englehart, Mark Farner, Roger Fisher, John Fogerty (last seen in "Travelin' Band: Creedence Clearwater Revival at the Royal Albert Hall"), Bill Ford, Les Fradkin, Shermy Freeman, Pleasant Gehman, Barry Goudreau, Leon Hendrix, Mars Homeworld, Lisa S. Johnson, Wayne Kramer (last heard in "Super Duper Alice Cooper"), Giddle Partridge, Deanna Passarella, Tim Polecat, Raiyuki, Marky Ramone (last seen in "Rock 'n' Roll High School"), Robert Reissdorf, Eric Roberts (last seen in "Bob Fosse: It's Showtime!"), Joe Rosignolo, Ruiko, Denny Sarokin, Lalo Schifrin, Bob Spalding, Billy Bob Thornton (last heard in "The Electric Slate"), Waddy Wachtel, Paul Warren, Christian Wilde, Josie Wilson,  

The Neptunas, The Surfragettes, 

with archive footage of Tommy Allsup, Jeff Beck (also carrying over from "Becoming Led Zeppelin"), Rodney Bingenheimer, Hal Blaine (last seen in "The Beach Boys"), Bob Bogle, Bill Botrell, Glen Campbell (last seen in "Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind"), Chevy Chase (last seen in "John Candy: I Like Me"), Mark Christopher, Bobby Darin, Mickey Dolenz, Tommy Dorsey, Nokie Edwards, Mick Fleetwood (last seen in "Stevie Nicks: Wild at Heart"), Jimi Hendrix (ditto), Peter Frampton (last seen in "The 100th: Billy Joel at Madison Square Garden"), Billy Joel (ditto), Tom Hanks (also last seen in "John Candy: I Like Me"), Elton John (last seen in "Bob Mackie: Naked Illusion"), Howie Johnson, Davy Jones, Casey Kasem (last seen in "Luther: Never Too Much"), Carol Kaye, Kris Kristofferson (last seen in "Pee-Wee as Himself"), Kathy Marshall, Gerry McGee, Semie Moseley, Michael Nesmith, Les Paul, Joe Perry, Elvis Presley (also carrying over from "Becoming Led Zeppelin"), Bonnie Raitt (last seen in "Roy Orbison Forever"), Leon Russell, Gene Simmons, Slash, Leon Taylor, Mel Taylor, Peter Tork, Steven Tyler, Bobby Vee, Joe Walsh (also last seen in "Roy Orbison Forever"), Alan White,

The B-52's, The Go-Go's, Iron Butterfly, Mungo Jerry and the Stray Cats

RATING: 6 out of 10 Fender guitars (and Mosrite guitars, but only between 1963 and 1968)

Becoming Led Zeppelin

Year 18, Day 232 - 8/20/26 - Movie #5,408 - SQC DOC BLOCK FILM #47

BEFORE: The end is near - the end of the Doc Block, that is, so now I really have to scramble to figure out where I'm going to go after and which horror movies I'm going to watch in October. Of course, now I'm on deadline because I only figured out ONE movie past the DocChain and I'm hoping that it leads somewhere. 

Just a couple states left in my "Get to Know a State" feature, and between Led Zeppelin and Billy Joel, they have to somehow split Rhode Island and South Carolina if this is going to work. I think it would work either way, so it doesn't really matter - there's footage here tonight of Led Zeppelin playing at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1969, in kind of a weird ironic reversal of Bob Dylan playing at the Newport Folk Festival a few years before. Yeah, I could work with that, but this bit of trivia is funnier and weirder - there used to be a roller coaster called "Led Zeppelin - The Ride" with an onboard audio system that played "Whole Lotta Love", and it opened in April 2008 at the Hard Rock Park in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. The park closed after just one season, and that roller coaster was re-named "Time Machine" when the park opened under another name, but then THAT park went bankrupt, and the roller coaster was dismantled, shipped to Vietnam and is now called Dragon's Run. Hilarious, right? So today's state is SOUTH CAROLINA

Date admitted to the U.S.: May 23, 1788 (8th state)

Claim to fame: Great barbecue and the birthplace of Stephen Colbert, also where the Civil War started. 

Nickname: The Palmetto State

State Motto: "Dum spiro spero" which means "While I breathe, I hope" or Animis opibusque parati", which means "prepared in mind and resources"

State Flower: Yellow jessamine           

State Bird: Carolina wren

State Tree: Sabal palmetto

State Mammal: White-tailed deer

State Dance: Carolina shag

State Fish: Striped bass

State Mineral: Amethyst

State Fossil: Columbian mammoth

Notable Sports Teams: just college and minor league - we went to the State Fair near the home of the USC Gamecocks, the Clemson Tigers are also down there. Charleston RiverDogs are a minor-league baseball team, I know. 

Fun Facts: King Charles I established the province of Carolana, which covered the area we now know as both Carolinas, Georgia and Tennessee. But he only let members of the Anglican Church settle there, so it failed. Charles II pulled a fast one by granting the same land to eight different lords in return for their political and financial assistance, so really the whole territory came about through a giant con job. Real estate agents, am I right? Thanks to rice plantations and slave labor, by 1720 South Carolina was one of the richest colonies. Fort Sumter had the first battle of the war, and karma demanded that the war ruined the state's economy. Also that going forward, South Carolina would have the most earthquakes of any state on the East Coast. 

I have been to South Carolina - on BBQ Crawl #3, because the state was conveniently situated between Georgia and North Carolina. They have a BBQ style there that is different from those other two adjacent states, it's more of a mustard-based sauce. We hit state fairs in both Carolinas on that trip, too - and the BBQ restaurant we chose in S.C. had ALL of the sauces available, four I think, including the state mustard sauce, a vinegar-based sauce, and two tomato-based sauces from NC. Variety, you know, is the key. So that makes 27 states I've been to, out of 47 profiled. I've got to revise my totals, because I just remembered I have been to Arizona, I crossed the Hoover Dam while on our first trip to Vegas, so technically now I'm up to 28. I have to go back and update all the stats for the month...

I'm counting this as another Thursday movie, like I doubled up on Thursday, so I can send a Birthday SHOUT-out to Robert Plant, born 8/20/1948. Well, I did start watching this movie on Thursday and I finished early Friday morning. This was a message from The Chain that I didn't need to watch that second movie about the Elvis Comeback Special - so now I hope I don't fall one movie slot short at the end of the year. Elvis carries over from "Bruce Springsteen: Born to Rock", by the way, but there's just no way he can advance much further in the rankings. 

THE PLOT: The film traces the journeys of the four members of the "Stairway to Heaven" rockers through the music scene of the 1960s and their meeting in the summer of 1968. 

AFTER: There's a time and a place for everything, and usually that's college - you're away from parents for the first time, and nobody can tell you what to eat or when to eat or how long to sleep or what to listen to, except maybe the R.A. if you're blasting Zeppelin songs very loudly from your room on a Sunday morning. I had a hardcore Beatles fan for a roommate, and that got me not only into the Fab Four and their solo albums, but also the Wilburys and Roy Orbison and Bob Dylan and in a roundabout way, Tom Petty who I picked up later. But around junior year (which was also my senior year) I got into Zeppelin, in the now-unpopular cassette format and through a walkman, which is hardly the best way to listen to anything, but it's what I had. I think maybe at some point I saved up and got a boombox before i graduated, so I could torture everyone else by making them listen to what I wanted to listen to. 

This was the late 1980's, so Led Zep had already disbanded by the time I'd discovered them, and it would be a few years before Page & Plant got back together to record some acoustic sets and also years before there was ever a rollercoaster in South Carolina named in their honor. They only had 8 albums, so it just made sense to buy them all and listen to them in the order they were released, yes my OCD was in its infancy then but still it guided my actions. I also got really into cover songs, I thought at one point I could collect every album with a Beatles cover on it, which is quite impossible BUT it did expose me to a lot of artists that I normally would not have listened to, maybe, like James Taylor and Alison Krauss. Once CDs hit the marketplace I discovered a band named Dread Zeppelin, who covered L.Z. songs, mostly, but did them in reggae style and had an Elvis impersonator for a lead singer. POOF, mind blown, I started to realize you could take any song and perform it in any style, even, umm, that one. What's weird is that I went to see Dread Zeppelin live, and I've never seen Led Zeppelin live. Sure, I'm old but I'm not THAT old. 

Look, I was born in 1968 so I don't have any memories from the moon landing or Woodstock or anything from the late 60's, OK? I was busy being a toddler and doing toddler stuff like learning to read. For a long time I thought John Paul Jones was just an admiral during the War of 1812 or something, and I found it confusing that he was somehow also in a rock band. I also heard a song by Mojo Nixon which had an improvised line of dialogue at the end that said, "In the later years, Jimmy Page was known as the one with the weird haircut...". This was back in the days where you couldn't just jump on the internet to research your favorite rock band, you had to pick up gossip and rumors from fans to learn about who these people are and how they got to be rock stars. We had something of a psych hospital or rehab clinic in my hometown, and over the years rumors had all kind of rock stars staying there to dry out, like that guy from Aerosmith or that other guy from the J. Geils Band, now I don't know if any of that was true. 

Anyway, I was a Zeppelin fan for a long time, they had some pretty good songs split over those eight albums, like "Ramble On" with its references to Tolkien stories and "Kashmir" with its Middle Eastern arrangements, and "In the Evening", "Fool in the Rain" and "All My Love" from "In Through the Out Door" - even as the band was breaking up they crafted some good tunes, just like most tracks on "Abbey Road" were phenomenal, even if the Beatles were fighting with each other. I wondered if the Zeppelin chaps were always at odds with each other, too, and if so, whether this was a prerequisite to making good music. Later on I went back to "Physical Graffiti" and re-discovered tracks like "In My Time of Dying" and "In the Light" and "Down by the Seaside" and those tracks stayed with me through my thirties. 

At some point, however, the veil was lifted because there was a music expert interviewed on the Howard Stern Show (my wife was a fan for a long while) and he claimed to be able to prove that Led Zeppelin had "borrowed" so many pieces of songs here and there that if you knew music, you might wonder what they actually wrote together on their albums, and that very little of it could be called "original". I mean, this guy played a bunch of old blues records, and you could easily see how they ripped off that one to make "Traveling Riverside Blues" and that other one to make "Dazed and Confused". Sometimes they kept the original title intact, and sometimes they changed it, and you would only change the title of a song if you didn't want people to know where it came from, right? 

There were explanations, of course, that the band members learned old blues songs early on, and those songs stuck with them, so when they sat down to write, naturally they would be influenced by that. But sometimes the would just steal a song outright, and maybe that was a band that they toured with, like if you listen to a song named "Taurus" by a band called Spirit, a song which predated "Stairway to Heaven" by two years, you might easily hear that the songs sound very similar, and it's not too hard to believe that Jimmy Page would have heard that song, altered it a bit, arranged a couple new sections, changed the title, and re-released it as a Zeppelin song. It's quite believable when you also understand how many blues songs they ripped off without crediting the original song writers. I mean, in the case of "Taurus" this actually went to court and the U.S. Court of Appeals, who are NOT musicologists, found themselves in the position of trying to decide how close two songs need to sound for one to be considered a version of the other. 

Now, here in this doc, while discussing the making of "Whole Lotta Love", Robert Plant casually says, "Oh, I just dropped in a Willie Dixon lyric..." - well, that's also called stealing. Or copyright theft along with cultural appropriation - my point is that Willie Dixon was not credited as a writer on "Whole Lotta Love" until recently. Musicologists started really calling Led Zeppelin out about 10 years back for outright theft of song lyrics from old blues singers like Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters and such, and it's only the most recent Led Zeppelin re-released albums that give any credit at all to those original songwriters, so really, for DECADES Led Zeppelin was making profits for many songs that had their roots in blues music, sure it's a lyric here and a riff there, perhaps, but those songwriters, or at least their estates, got cheated out of royalties for a very long time, while Led Zeppelin and their record label made a lot of money. You can't go back and correct past mistakes, but you can at least try to. 

I can't really forgive them for this, the band members even now seem very clueless about what song theft is, they all seem to think if you take a bit of that song, a bit of that other song, arrange them together and give it a new title, that you've done something original, and I happen to disagree. The fact that they are forced to credit the original blues writers NOW really seems like an admission of guilt to me. So I thought I was listening to original material all those years, and apparently I was mistaken, it was just new to me. I mean, everybody was doing it, like Elvis and Col. Parker were stealing black music like crazy, but at least they credited Leiber and Stoller whenever they did it, they robbed the bank with the security cameras on, at least, so we knew the theft took place. Page and Plant wore masks and knocked out the cameras and robbed the bank at night so nobody saw it, but it was still a robbery. 

We live in a society where there are rules, and there should also be repercussions for crimes, even artistic ones. I'm not saying Led Zeppelin should be thrown out of the Rock Hall of Fame, but if they're also in the Songwriters Hall of Fame, somebody should really take a look at their history and the song credits to see if they really belong there. That being said, this documentary really stops when it hits the second year of the band touring and their second album, so I suspect that there could/should be a sequel in the works. I would love to see a montage put together just of covers of "Stairway to Heaven", I have a few dozen on various CDs. 

It's a bit confusing because the first half of the film follows the "collision course" method of parallel editing, the three living members of the band all discuss their childhoods and early music experiences, and the film has to jump between all three stories (four if you count the taped recollections of the late John Bonham) and this can be disconcerting. The Cheech and Chong doc kind of followed the same format, but there were only two of them. It's quite a relief in both cases when the band forms and then we can follow just one storyline instead of three. 

I don't quite understand the process by which Led Zeppelin toured America and was promoted heavily by radio stations and record stores, all before their first album was even released in America, I wish they could have explained this better. Once the album's done, why wouldn't they want to sell it in both countries? Isn't more record sales better than less?  Also, why didn't someone buy their album in the U.S. and fly it over to the U.K. so people could enjoy it there, too? Sure, it was 1969 but they still had planes and you could mail or ship stuff from here to there, right? They did all that promotion in America and then flew back home and nobody knew who they were? That seems a bit counter-productive, just saying. 

Directed by Bernard MacMahon

Also starring Jimmy Page (last seen in "Little Richard: I Am Everything"), Robert Plant (last seen in "Travelin' Band: Creedence Clearwater Revival at the Royal Albert Hall"), John Paul Jones, 

with archive footage of John Bonham (last seen in "Count Me In"), Buzz Aldrin (last seen in "Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood"), Neil Armstrong (ditto), Carmine Appice, Joe Baldwin, Shirley Bassey (last seen in "If These Walls Could Sing"), Rev. Gordon Bates, Jeff Beck (last seen in "Stevie Van Zandt: Disciple"), Jack Bonham, Jason Bonham, Patricia Bonham, James Brown (last seen in "Reinventing Elvis: The '68 Comeback"), Margie Castle, Lonnie Donegan, Donovan, Perry Foster, Peter Grant, Glyn Johns (last seen in "History of the Eagles"), Maureen Jones, Eddie Kramer, Gene Krupa, John Lennon (last seen in "Return of the King: The Fall and Rise of Elvis Presley"), Little Richard (ditto), Lulu (last seen in "Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie"), Marilyn Monroe (last seen in "The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe: The Unheard Tapes")f, Mickie Most, Richard Nixon (also last seen in "Reinventing Elvis: The '68 Comeback"), Yoko Ono (last seen in "Roberta"), James Page, Patricia Page, Annie Plant, Carmen Plant, Maureen Plant, Robert Plant Sr., Terry Reid, Jerry Wexler (last seen in "Devo"), Sonny Boy Williamson II, Wolfman Jack, Rod Wyatt, 

Carter Lewis & The Southerners, Herman's Hermits, Johnny Kidd & The Pirates, Johnny Burnette Trio, Vanilla Fudge, The Yardbirds,

RATING: 6 out of 10 avant-garde guitar solos