Stevie Nicks: Wild at Heart

Year 18, Day 211 - 7/30/26 - Movie #5,389 - SQC DOC BLOCK FILM #28

BEFORE: Stevie Nicks carries over again from "Fleetwood Mac: Live in Boston". I'm going to do one more about the band before getting back into politics. It's much easier to watch this stock-umentary that's running on the AXS channel instead of tracking down a longer and more complicated doc on the band, assuming one exists. 

Since the Fleetwood Mac song "Don't Stop" was famously used as a campaign song for Bill Clinton, this gives me a chance to cross another state off my "Get to Know a State" U.S. tour - yes, it's ARKANSAS!

Date admitted to the U.S.: June 15, 1836 (25th state)

Claim to fame: I just mentioned it, Bill Clinton is from there. Before that nothing much.

Nickname: "The Natural State" - sounds like a nudist colony. Formerly "Land of Opportunity", I guess something happened and it's not that anymore. 

State Motto: "Regnat Populus", Latin for "The People Rule"

State Flower: Apple blossom

State Bird: Mockingbird, yeah.

State Tree: Pine Tree

State mammal: White-tailed deer

State gemstone: Diamond - oh, yeah, I think there are diamond mines there. But Idaho somehow claimed "The Gem State" first.

Notable Sports Teams: Just college teams and minor-league affiliates. The Razorbacks have a pretty cool logo though. 

Fun Facts: Little Rock has been the capital of the state since 1821, however the capital was moved to Hot Springs during the Civil War because there was better BBQ there. You can visit the William Jefferson Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, but I think the library only has a bunch of Playboy magazines in it. The governor of the state is Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who is the daughter of former governor Mike Huckabee, I'm sure she's qualified but also she is a legacy hire. 

I have been to Arkansas! Because the way the map works, you can't get from Texas to Tennessee without going through there. This was back during BBQ Crawl 1 in 2017, and we got so hungry driving that we just couldn't wait until we got to Little Rock, so we stopped at Stubby's, which was out near Hot Springs. I remember getting the "Super Ultimate Platter" which had beef, pork, ribs, ham and a half-chicken, plus potato salad, beans, and bread. Now they were out of ham, but that's OK, I took a couple more ribs instead. They asked where I was from, probably because I ate so much and they wanted me to send more people from wherever to go and eat there. Once we got to Little Rock, we spent a day walking around and we saw the actual "Little Rock" but honestly, there wasn't much to do there, but our laundry and then we hit a casino in West Memphis on the way out, and it happened to be steak night at their buffet. Yeah, I get hungry on the road - anyway I'm moving up to 21 states visited out of 28 profiled. 

THE PLOT: For decades, Stevie Nicks fronted one of the most successful bands in history, and has remained an iconic role model, synonymous with the witchy, transcendental, deep rooted mysticism of a fairy godmother. 

AFTER: Yeah they definitely didn't include anything in this stockumentary that isn't also listed on Stevie Nicks' Wikipedia page. No research assistants were hurt doing a deep dive into her career, that's for sure. This is really really basic stuff, just the simple facts, like how she did so much cocaine during the 1970s that she had to have reconstructive surgery on her nasal cavity. Umm, thanks for that, but it was really unnecessary to drive that point home. I think we can assume that everyone in the music industry in the 1970's did massive amounts of blow. 

She moved around a lot as a child because her father was a VP for Greyhound, so from Phoenix to Albuquerque, El Paso, Salt Lake City, Los Angeles and San Francisco - it's almost like she knew somebody one day would have to write about her and connect the documentary about her to one of several U.S. states. She went from Phoenix, Arizona all the way to Tacoma, Albuquerque and El Paso, L.A. - it's almost musical, right? But in high school in Arcadia, CA she joined her first band, the Changing Times. Then at another high school in Atherton, she met Lindsey Buckingham - I guess if you move around a lot you're just bound to meet more people, and some of them could turn out to be significant in your life. Buckingham was in a band called Fritz, which she joined when a spot opened up, foreshadowing how she would similarly get into Fleetwood Mac. That's not to say she isn't talented, but being in a relationship with another band guy didn't hurt. "Buckingham Nicks" got a record deal with Polydor but was dropped after one album. 

By now we all know the "Sound City" story, which is how Mick Fleetwood heard their song "Frozen Love" while touring a studio and hired Buckingham, and how he brought in Nicks as part of the deal. And we know that after a few years the pair was pretty much driving the band, except for the Christine McVie songs, she got at least one per album, making her sort of the "George Harrison" of Fleetwood Mac. Stevie and Lindsey were therefore the Lennon and McCartney, if Paul and John could have been romantic partners as well. But you know that any creative marriage can't last, because of Artist Brain and attempts to figure out which one is the Alpha, plus if we throw drugs and infidelity and touring into the mix, it's like tossing a Mentos into a bottle of Diet Coke. Sit back and watch the fireworks. 

What's amazing is that Fleetwood Mac stayed together for so long after the romantic relationships ended, I mean Christine McVie was in the band for 22 years, off and on, after getting divorced from bassist John McVie. And we don't know exactly when Nicks and Buckingham broke up, but they sang together on stage for a long time after, and several of their songs are ABOUT their relationship ending, like "Go Your Own Way" and "Silver Springs". Sure, mine your own personal heartbreak because that sells albums big-time, but then you're going to have to sing those songs together on tour, night after night, putting it all out there in one city after another. If only there were some substances you could take to help deal with that situation...

On top of all the Buckingham stuff, Nicks had an affair with Mick Fleetwood at some point, which they all knew couldn't work long-term either. He was married (for a while, anyway) and then when the marriage ended, he left his wife for Stevie Nicks' best friend. Oh, well, that's show biz. 

This doc gets a little into the rehab trips, and Nicks being prescribed Klonopin to get off cocaine, however in some ways Klonopin is even worse, because it's a sedative and therefore side effects include sleepiness, memory loss, poor coordination and also memory loss. Plus weight gain and withdrawal symptoms if you stop taking it. All of this is terrible if you're on tour and have to go on stage, also not good for writing songs, Nicks claims that there are eight years of her life that she just doesn't remember. Who knows how many people she might have married during that period? More research is required. 

Anyway, Nicks had like five solo albums in addition to her work with Fleetwood Mac, even if she doesn't remember all of them. The Clinton campaign using the "Don't Stop" song was a boost for the band (even if it's a Christine McVie song) and that prompted them all to go to rehabd and get back together and take advantage of the newfound popularity. By this time there was a whole generation who did not know the band had hits during the 1970's with its original line-up, and also knew nothing of the fake Fleetwood Mac that toured in 1973. To be fair, that band toured under the name "Fleetwood Mock" and hoped that people wouldn't look closely at the marquee. 

The real band did a tour called "The Dance" in 1997 that toured in celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Rumours album, and obviously they were still doing the nostalgia circuit when they came to Boston in 2004. Between reunion tours, box set releases and various solo projects, they kept the band going for another decade without putting out any new material, it seems. It can be done, just look at REO Speedwagon, same business model. But the band finally had to call it quits in 2022. At least Ms. Nicks got inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice, once with the band and once as a solo artist. 

Directed by Piers Garland (director of "ABBA: Super Troupe")

Also starring Jennifer Otter Bickerdike (last seen in "The Beatles: In the Life"), Chris Salewicz, 

with archive footage of Lindsey Buckingham, Mick Fleetwood, John McVie (all three carrying over from "Fleetwood Mac: Live in Boston"), Christine McVie, Kim Anderson, Mike Campbell (last seen in "Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Live from Gatorville"), Bill Clinton (last seen in "When We Went MAD!"), Jimi Hendrix (ditto), Jose Eber, Neil Finn, Peter Green, Rupert Hine, Janis Joplin (last seen in "Little Richard: I Am Everything"), Danny Kirwan, Jeremy Spencer, Bob Welch, 

with narration by Mike Ciporkin

RATING: 4 out of 10 solo albums (including 1 of lost songs from the vault and 2 live ones)

Fleetwood Mac: Live in Boston

Year 18, Day 210 - 7/29/26 - Movie #5,388 - SQC DOC BLOCK FILM #27

BEFORE: Stevie Nicks carries over from "Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Live from Gatorville" and guess where she was born - Phoenix, Arizona! Hey, that's great, I haven't profiled that state yet, why it's almost like I planned this! Here's today's "Get to Know a State" feature for ARIZONA:

Date admitted to the U.S.: February 14, 1912 (48th state)

Claim to fame: A giant hole in the ground. I suppose that's not redundant. 

Nickname: The Grand Canyon State. See? That's all they got. Or The Copper State. OK, they have two things. 

State Motto: "Ditat Deus" or "God enriches". With copper? 

State Flower: Saguaro cactus blossom

State Fish: Apache trout

State Bird: Cactus wren

State Tree: Palo verde

State mammal: Ring-tailed cat. OK, at least that's original.

State amphibian: Arizona tree frog. Come to America, we got turtles AND frogs.

State gemstone: Turquoise. Yeah, that tracks, it's on all their jewelry.  

State beverage: Lemonade. OK, at least it's not milk. Who wants milk when you're out in the desert? Lemonade seems like a better choice. 

Notable Sports Teams: Hey, they got some? I think it took a while, but they got there. The Cardinals in the NFL, the Suns in the NBA and the Diamondbacks in the MLB, plus the Phoenix Mercury in the WNBA. For a while, at least with baseball, I think it was just the state some teams had their spring training in. 

Fun Facts: Without getting in to the enormously fun aspects of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and the Gadsden Purchase, it's enough to say that Arizona was formerly part of Mexico, also Nueva California and was a bit late to the USA party. But we got there, and just think about how funny the map would look if there was this big Arizona-shaped part of Mexico just sticking up into these United States. We just HAD to get Arizona into the country, the mapmakers were demanding it, it would be like if you had every Pokemon card EXCEPT one, you might really go to extremes to get it, right?  Some of the other state names that were considered were "Pimeria", "Gadsonia" and "Montezuma". There were various gold rushes and silver rushes into the state, but mostly people found a lot of copper, so they just said, "OK, whatever, we're mining copper, I guess." I think now there are more retired people in Arizona than working people, because everyone's doctor keeps recommending that they move to a dry place, I suspect those doctors also have stake in land or timeshares in Arizona. 

Nope, never been there, so I'm holding at 20 states visited out of 27. 

THE PLOT: It's a Fleetwood Mac concert in Boston from 2004. What were you expecting? 

AFTER: OK, I'll admit I am NOT an expert on Fleetwood Mac, they're just not one of my core bands. And I do have a LONG list of bands that I've seen live, like Air Supply to ZZ Top, and they're not on it. I'm a much bigger Tom Petty fan, obviously. But still, I recorded this one off the AXS channel, only upstairs, so I have no way to dub it to VHS and then to DVD. BUT, that's two hours of space I can free up on the DVR, and another two and a half hours if I erase the Tom Petty concert (which I also have on DVD) and now I'm really making some headway. By the time I'm done in mid-August I should have very few docs left taking up space on the list, and both DVRs, then I can start collecting some for next year's Doc Block, I suppose. I'm not adding anything now beyond the 23 docs I have waiting on deck.

Here's the Set List:

"The Chain"

"Never Going Back Again"

"Rhiannon"

"Gypsy"

"Big Love"

"Landslide"

"Beautiful Child"

"Gold Dust Woman"

"I'm So Afraid"

"Silver Springs"

"Tusk"

"Stand Back"

"Go Your Own Way"

"Don't Stop"

"Goodbye Baby"

You know, I know more Fleetwood Mac songs than I thought I did - well, I listened to the NYC classic rock radio station for a few decades, and if Fleetwood Mac's not classic rock, then I don't know what is. So of course I know "The Chain" and "Rhiannon" and "Go Your Own Way" and "Don't Stop", those are classic rock station standards. "Landslide" became super popular over the last decade because the (formerly Dixie) Chicks covered it, and then so did everyone else. I thought "Stand Back" and "Gypsy" were technically Stevie Nicks solo songs, but maybe I'm wrong or half wrong. And I remember "Big Love" from the days after MTV was invented, plus they showed that video in another doc, I think. 

I also knew "Gold Dust Woman" from the radio, though I didn't know it was called "Gold Dust Woman". OK, I'm here to learn, and now I know that. And I sort of knew "Tusk", that's the song that they usually perform with a college marching band or something, I don't know if I ever heard the song straight and simplified, like just Fleetwood Mac without the USC Trojans band or whatever. It's a weird song, very experimental. For that matter, everything Lindsey Buckingham does seems a little experimental and out there, he seems a bit like a genius or a madman or a little bit of both. You know, like a musician. 

The rest of the songs, I was kind of flying blind here - "Silver Springs"? "Beautiful Child"? "I'm So Afraid"? How about "I'm So Clueless"?  Reading up about the band on Wikipedia a little, it seems like different people wrote different songs, obviously, and so there are Nicks songs and Buckingham songs and McVie songs and, presumably, Fleetwood songs, but I don't know which ones those would be. Tom Petty even covered a Fleetwood Mac song in his concert, "Oh Well" but it's from the early days of the band, before Buckingham and Nicks jumped on board in 1974. This moment was documented a bit in the, umm, documentary "Sound City", when Mick Fleetwood was touring Sound City Studios in L.A. in 1974 and the house engineer played him a track from the album "Buckingham Nicks" which was being mixed there. Fleetwood liked it and asked Buckingham to join the band, and he said yes, provided there was also a space for his girlfriend, Stevie Nicks. Their first album together as a band had "Rhiannon" and "Landslide" on it, plus the Christine McVie songs "Over My Head" and "Say You Love Me". 

Speaking of that, where is Christine McVie in this concert? Ah, she left the band in 1998 but came back in 2014. The band's last studio album came out in 2004, the year before this Boston concert. So I guess even since then, they've been on that nostalgia circuit, like not producing any new material but still eager to perform and make sure that people remember them AND buy a t-shirt. Officially I think they called it quits in 2022 when Christine died and they realize Mick was really getting up there in age. Buckingham left (again) in 2018 and was replaced by Mike Campbell from the Heartbreakers. Again, we see that everything is like, connected, man, we just have to figure out where exactly those connections are if we want to understand them. 

It's really a Spinal Tap-like situation, people tend to remember the four or five main members, but there really have been like 20 or 30 people in and out of the band over the years. Really only TWO were in from start to finish, that's Fleetwood and John McVie - which worked out great considering the band's name came from their two last names. But I think you can see in this 2004 concert that by this point in the band's career, really Buckingham and Nicks were figuratively driving the bus. Or they were the engine, whatever, and Mick Fleetwood was happy to just still have a seat on the bus. Who knows, maybe I'm reading things wrong. 

Stylistically, this concert is heavy on the Nicks/Buckingham stuff, and so conspicuously absent are the songs "You Make Loving Fun" and "Hold Me" and "Think About Me". Probably there needs to be another whole documentary about the comings and goings of all the band's members, the marriages and the divorces, the hook-ups and the break-ups, and a proper chronicling of who was in rehab during various absences from touring. I can't even begin to parse it out here, it's too complicated, plus there was a FAKE Fleetwood Mac band touring in 1973, before the REAL band got back together in 1974 - there's probably a whole doc's worth of material in the telling of THAT story. I'll have to keep an eye out. 

Directed by Joe Thomas (director of "Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Live from Gatorville")

Also starring Lindsey Buckingham (last seen in "The Greatest Night in Pop"), Mick Fleetwood (last seen in "Under the Volcano"), John McVie (ditto), Taku Hirano

RATING: 5 out of 10 songs played in THIS concert that didn't make it to the film.

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Live from Gatorville

Year 18, Day 209 - 7/28/26 - Movie #5,387 - SQC DOC BLOCK FILM #26

BEFORE: All right, it's time for a break, a couple of concerts to mark the halfway point in this year's Doc Block. A concert film is still a documentary, of sorts, at least the way I count it - I've been dropping one or two in each year, if they're significant, like Billy Joel's 100th concert at MSG or Elton John's final concert anywhere. Tonight I'm dropping in two specific ones because they're going to keep the linking alive, I really only need ONE of them but I'm going to do two because it works out, also no other doc or concert film works to represent tomorrow's state. 

Now, I recorded this particular Tom Petty concert a while ago, it ran on the AXS channel - I didn't think I'd be able to work it in, I just kind of kept it on my upstairs DVR so I could watch it a bit at a time, like when there was nothing else to watch, which is really never. But it turned out to be just the thing I needed to not break the chain, and as Fleetwood Mac sang, "Never break the chain."

I was going through some old DVDs in preparation for something else, and I went through a bunch of concerts I burned to DVD years ago, and then I realized I already HAD this concert on disc, so once I confirm that it is, in fact the same concert (which it is, the Heartbreakers 30th anniversary spectacular) now I can delete it from the DVR and free up some space. And it's great that I had it on disc, too, because the damn cable was out last night when I got home late and I would not have been able to stay up too long watching it if I had to rely on the cable or internet. OK, pop in that DVD, let's get started, it's already 1 am but sleep is for lesser men... 

Tom Petty carries over from being seen in the Traveling Wilburys in "Roy Orbison Forever" and I think you can guess who's carrying over to tomorrow, as in Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow, because it'll soon be here. But in the meantime, what state can I possibly profile tonight, because Tom Petty and his band are from Florida, and I already had the Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova doc represent Florida. Well, I have to go back to music trivia, Tom Petty's first band was called Mudcrutch, and they drove up to Tulsa to record their first album. Also, the Heartbreakers kicked off their 40th Anniversary U.S. tour in Oklahoma City, so there you go, it's OKLAHOMA tonight: 

Date admitted to the U.S.: November 16, 1907 (46th state)

Claim to fame: One very famous Rodgers & Hammerstein musical, and one domestic terror attack.

Nickname: Sooner State, it's got something to do with settlers entering early to claim land, I think

State Motto: "Labor omnia vincit" or "work conquers all". Thanks, but I'm out. 

State Flower: Oklahoma rose

State Fish: Sand bass. Sounds delicious.

State Bird: Scissor-tailed flycatcher

State Tree: Redbud. Not familiar with that one. 

State mammal: American bison

State amphibian: Bullfrog

State beverage: Milk - jesus, if every state is going to pick milk, what's the point? It should only be one state per beverage, otherwise everybody's just going to be lazy. 

Notable Sports Teams: Just one major-league team, the Oklahoma Thunder in the NBA. Seems about right, the rest is all college level stuff. 

Fun Facts: It was originally planned as an all-Native American state, I guess to try and make up for the infamous "Trail of Tears" relocation, which of course was a forced displacement and ethnic cleansing. For a while the oil industry was focused there, Tulsa was called the "Oil Capital of the World" at one point. Also the original stretch of Route 66 was from Amarillo, TX to Tulsa, and it just kind of expanded out from there, until it hit Chicago on one end and the Pacific Ocean on the other. The state is now also known as "Prison Capital of the World", with over one out of every 1,000 residents in lock-up, as of 2018.

No, I've never been to Oklahoma, so I'm holding at 20 states visited out of 26.

THE PLOT: In 2006, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers returned to Gainesville, Florida, where it all started, to play their first hometown show in 13 years. 

AFTER: It's the 20 year anniversary of this concert (and the album "Highway Companion") and this was the 30th anniversary of the band, so that means that 2026 is the FIFTIETH anniversary of the band, which never officially broke up, but come on, they're not doing anything without their captain. This concert exists in a number of different versions, it's been released and re-released, I think, but essentially it's the same material in all formats. The longer version that aired on AXS had ONE extra song, "Southern Accents". You know what, I'm good with what I have on DVD.

It certainly helped my linking to know that Stevie Nicks recorded a duet with Tom Petty back in the day, and that she went out on tour with the Heartbreakers in 2006, so Fleetwood Mac must have been dormant that year or its members were fighting, it's tough to say. But she wasn't just one-and-done here, she sang lead or back-up on at least four songs here, an extra harmony is always welcome, but she couldn't help but dance around with a bunch of silks and really "Stevie Nicks" up those songs. It's what she does. 

I've caught up with a lot of older bands over the years, sometimes past their prime, sometimes without all of the original members, and sometimes catching them JUST at the right time - like we saw the band Boston perform, and it was the ONE tour where every person who'd ever been in the band was on stage together. That's an accomplishment, because their last two or three albums were just Tom Scholz composing, singing and playing all the parts electronically. We saw Chicago without Peter Cetera, Journey without Steve Perry, and REO Speedwagon without Gary Richrath, but at least we SAW those bands - I never got to see Tom Petty play live, and he kind of became my favorite over the years, and not just because we shared the same birthday. (Not the same year, he was like 18 years older than me.)

If you live long enough, you maybe get to see a lot of bands, and also a lot of bands you like lose a member through attrition or in-fighting or death. So yeah, musically for me it's been all downhill since Tom Petty passed in 2017. Like if I could have just seen him perform the whole "Wildflowers" album in concert, that would have been enough for me, I wouldn't need all the other hits, but there were plenty of those. Here's the set list for this 30th Anniversary concert film: 

Part 1:

"Listen to Her Heart"

"Mary Jane's Last Dance"

"I Won't Back Down"

"Free Fallin'"

"Saving Grace"

"I'm a Man" (Bo Diddley song)

"Oh Well" (Fleetwood Mac song)

"Handle with Care" (Traveling Wilburys song)

"Stop Draggin' My Heart Around" (w/Stevie Nicks)

"I Need to Know" (w/Stevie Nicks)

"Runnin' Down a Dream"

Part 2:

"You Wreck Me"

"It's Good to Be King"

"Insider" (w/Stevie Nicks)

"Learning to Fly"

"Don't Come Around Here No More"

"Mystic Eyes"

"American Girl"

I mean, that's a damn CONCERT. I could have used another hour, sure, like why leave out "Don't Do Me Like That", "Refugee", "Here Comes My Girl", "Even the Losers" and "Breakdown", those are all conspicuous in their absence. But I get it, you can only do so many hits on each tour when you have that many. And "The Waiting", what about "The Waiting"? I hear it's the hardest part. And what about "You Got Lucky", for Chrissakes?

For the newer songs, what about "Into the Great Wide Open"? That's another great song. And my personal favorites, "Built to Last" and "Walls (Circus)" (that last one came from the soundtrack to a movie, "She's the One", but damn, I love that song.). And what about "Love Is a Long Road", do these songs just not play well in concert or something? I get that there were already three songs from "Wildflowers" on the set list, but how do you not perform "You Don't Know How It Feels"? Damn, I'm trying very hard to not get angry over what they left out. 

I guess what I'm saying is that if I had been to a Tom Petty concert, and he wanted to take that opportunity to play his entire catalog, I might not have minded. When your band has a 30th, 40th anniversary and SO many albums to choose from (and some count as "band" albums and some count as Tom Petty solo albums, I know, it's a bit confusing) then inevitably something's got to be left out. Even Weird Al Yankovic is at the point where he can't play everything on every tour, he's got to pick and choose what themes he wants to put out there this time around - does he want to just do the parodies, or do everything BUT the parodies, or do all the originals, or the polka medleys, etc. I guess since Ms. Nicks was available for this tour, that naturally led them to the two songs she recorded with Petty, plus a few others where she could sing back-up or otherwise lend a harmony here and there. 

Another issue with turning a rock concert into a concert film is the pacing, like I know the film doesn't have to show the songs in the SAME order they were performed, they can play a little fast and loose with that. If they do, I can usually tell by the fact that a lead singer might go through a few costume changes during the show, because sweat and all that, so if Petty's green shirt is suddenly white and then goes back to green, well they probably moved a song from late in the evening up to the first half for some reason. I think it has a lot to do with the energy level of each song, most bands save their most powerful numbers for the encores, so they can take a long rest right after that. So I suspect here that "Runnin' Down a Dream" and maybe also "You Wreck Me" were encore songs that got moved up in the film's line-up because they wanted a high-energy song to close Part 1 with, but I don't have a formal set-list so there's no way to be sure. 

Anyway, great concert tonight, it's the kind I wish I'd gone to when I had the chance - but we really favored bands on the nostalgia circuit, there's a venue on Long Island called Jones Beach and we usually picked ONE band to see each summer, ideally somebody we wished we'd seen during the 1980's or 90's and just missed out on because we were young and stupid then, also we thought those bands would be around FOREVER and sadly that just wasn't the case. Now I'm going to go listen to discs 2 and 4 (and who knows, maybe even 3) of "Playback", the Tom Petty box set. 

Directed by Joe Thomas

Also starring Ron Blair (last seen in "Concert for George"), Steve Ferrone (ditto), Scott Thurston (ditto), Mike Campbell (last seen in "Sound City"), Benmont Tench (ditto), Stevie Nicks (last seen in "Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary")

RATING: 7 out of 10 bonus tracks

Roy Orbison Forever

Year 18, Day 208 - 7/27/26 - Movie #5,386 - SQC DOC BLOCK FILM #25

BEFORE: It's funny how the whole world of cinema is connected via archive footage, and I think I see that more prominently during Doc Block season. Like it was kind of weird that the "Earth, Wind & Fire" doc used footage from "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", right? Just to illustrate the point that the band kind of liked weird alien stuff? But that footage had Richard Dreyfuss in it, which allowed me to connect to the doc about "Jaws". It's very bizarre that these things just kind of fall into my lap, but I'm more than happy to take advantage of them. 

In a similar way, this stock-umentary about the late Roy Orbison uses a clip from "Blue Velvet", because Dean Stockwell's character famously lip-synched to Roy's song "In Dreams" in a very creepy scene that really made no sense. (I mean, even for a David Lynch film, WTF?)  But that footage is included here, making it the perfect way for David Lynch to carry over from "David Lynch: The Art Life".  Lynch is interviewed here to talk about why he wanted to use Roy's song, yet of course he also fails to explain THAT scene. Why would he?

This film also gives me a chance to profile another state - no, not Texas where Roy was born, I'm going to pick the state he MOVED to, in order to record with Sun Records, the label of Johnny Cash and early Elvis. Their headquarters was in Memphis, and I know because I visited that studio and saw Roy's records hanging on the wall. So tonight's "Get to Know a State" feature focuses on TENNESSEE: 

Date admitted to the U.S.: June 1, 1796 (16th state)

Claim to fame: Nashville, so all kinds of music and pretty great BBQ. Also whiskey.

Nickname: The Volunteer State

State Motto: Agriculture and Commerce. Seems about right, couldn't get music in there, though?

State Flower: Iris AND passion flower - seems like somebody couldn't make up their mind? 

State Fish: Channel catfish AND smallmouth bass. Same problem? 

State Bird: Northern mockingbird AND bobwhite quail. Yeah, I'm sensing a theme. 

State Tree: Tulip poplar AND Easter red cedar. Why am I not surprised there are two? 

State mammal: Tennessee walking horse AND raccoon. Yep, two of everything. 

Notable Sports Teams: Thank God, only one of each - Titans in the NFL, Grizzlies in the NBA and Predators in the NHL. Predators? Really? That word doesn't have a bad connotation? 

Fun Facts: In 1784 three counties broke off from North Carolina and tried to form a new state, called Franklin. Benjamin Franklin reportedly said, "Geez, I'm honored, but I live in Philadelphia, please leave me out of this." Franklin didn't have enough support to join the Union as a state, but another 8 counties west of there later joined in, and North Carolina gave up the territory in 1790, then it took another few years for there to be enough residents to qualify as a state. The nickname of "The Volunteer State" dates back to the War of 1812, when 3,500 people from Tennessee answered a recruitment call for the war effort, and they played a major role under Andrew Jackson in the Battle of New Orleans, which we all know was technically fought after the war was over, it's just that the news didn't reach the army in time. Well, OK the Treaty of Ghent had been SIGNED 15 days before the battle, but it wasn't ratified by the U.S. for another two months, so who's to say if the battle was "necessary" or not, you're just quibbling at that point, right? 

Yes, I've been to Tennessee, we went through there on our first BBQ Crawl, which started in Dallas, TX, went through Little Rock, AR and then Memphis on the way to Nashville. So we had great BBQ in both major Tennessee cities, and in Memphis we visited a giant pyramid that holds the world's largest Bass Pro Shop, and we had dinner in a restaurant that specializes in wild game on top of that pyramid, with a great view of the Mississippi River. Good times, then we had BBQ from a restaurant near our hotel, only to come back to our room and watch as the Food Network declared that exact restaurant as their #1 pick for BBQ in the entire country. What are the odds? We also visited Graceland, of course, and then stood in the Sun Records studio lobby before driving to Nashville. In Nashville we saw a Parthenon and had more great BBQ.

Now I'm up to 20 states visited out of 25, and I'm at the halfway point of this year's Doc Block tonight. 

THE PLOT: Roy Orbison's journey from "Pretty Woman" to The Traveling Wilburys, featuring his legendary music and career through interviews with Johnny Cash, Tom Petty, Bono and other stars who shaped his iconic legacy. 

AFTER: I had a dream about Pee-Wee Herman last night. I guess if Roy Orbison sang about "a candy-colored clown they call the Sandman" then my candy-colored clown is Pee-Wee. In my dream the government was sending celebrities to spy on people when they were home alone, and I drew Paul Reubens, who was doing a very bad job of hiding in my house, like I found him right away, trying to hide under the bed and failing. I know exactly where the dream came from, scanning through the doc "Overnight" trying to figure out where he appears - plus I saw an Instagram video from Comic-Con of somebody dressed like him, also Trump tried to insult someone by saying they looked like "Pinkie Herman". Well, it's like Beetlejuice, after I see three references to Pee-Wee Herman, he pops up in my dreams. Then in the dream I was talking to Steve Martin about it, and he didn't seem to know who Pee-Wee Herman was, which meant I had to do an impression of Pee-Wee saying "I'm trying to use the PHONE!" so he would get it.

Well, jeez, I'm awake now, a dream like that will do a number on you though. I'm surprised Pee-Wee wasn't singing a Roy Orbison song into a light fixture while Dennis Hopper and Kyle MacLachlan looked on. Yes, David Lynch is back for a third night, talking about how he used Roy's song in "Blue Velvet" and how Roy was NOT happy about it, at least at first. I guess it's better to ask for forgiveness later than to ask for permission first, because later Roy (allegedly) came around and said that was really the perfect use of his song. Umm, sure he did, David, or is that just another lie you tell yourself that nobody can now confirm or deny? Artist Brain.

I got really into Roy Orbison music during college, I was rooming with the world's largest Beatles fan and he was so highly anticipating new music from George Harrison, and that turned out to be the Traveling Wilburys' first album. Well, sure, it's college, so please tell me more about this Bob Dylan fella and what he's all about, and let's throw Jeff Lynne into the mix because why not. But Orbison turned out to be the surprise ringer, the guy adding something to the songs that we didn't even know they needed. Wait, where do I KNOW this guy from? "Pretty Woman", was that him? I know that song, let me go and buy his whole back catalog on cassette format because maybe there are some hidden gems in there. Wow, this guy's got a voice and he knows about heartbreak, clearly, because he keeps singing about it. And what the heck is an "Ooby Dooby"?

So yeah, I jumped on train a little late, but if I hadn't jumped on at all I might have just regarded Orbison as a bargain-basement Elvis, I mean he had the hair and the sunglasses and a few of those one-piece studded jumpsuits (which I later learned are called "Nudies", even though they do cover everything, they're named after their designer, Nudie Cohn). Roy didn't have the same album sales as Elvis, but he stayed alive and stayed working longer, I guess the flame that burns twice as bright also burns half as long.  But I got into Orbison before I got into Elvis - still, two reasons to go and visit Sun Records, there was a lot of history there, and I guess they both jumped ship for bigger labels, but Roy did it first. 

The Wilburys were a hit, people kind of forget that was a #1 album, full of star power without the star names for some reason. I guess they wanted to see if they could make good music without people knowing it was them, but come on, we all knew who it was. And then Roy worked on his own album, "Mystery Girl", with the #1 hit "You Got It" and a bunch of the Wilburys worked on the songs here and there, plus Bono was apparently the co-writer of the song "She's a Mystery to Me", he had listened to a bunch of Roy Orbison songs and then fell asleep and dreamed that song, yeah I can see that. He therefore thought it was a Roy Orbison song until he played it for people who could not identify it as such, and after he had the opportunity to play it for Roy, it ended up on Roy's album. It's a process. 

Roy died before "Mystery Girl" was released, and shortly after filming the video for "You Got It", and when the Wilburys finally made a video for "Handle With Care", Roy had to be represented by a rocking chair with a guitar in it, which is a damn shame. But he went out on top, with two albums in the top five at the same time, and therefore the first deceased musician since Elvis to accomplish that. And then somehow there was another new album three years later, "King of Hearts" in 1992. I'm not sure if those were all the songs that didn't make it to "Mystery Girl" or what, but in his final days he had enough output for TWO albums, I think he was just so happy to be working again, but also it's important to take breaks and look after your health, even if you're in a very creative period. 

Still, I have to regard this particular film about Roy for what it is, a stock-umentary. I suspect that nothing was filmed NEW for this, somebody just assembled a bunch of footage where various music icons mentioned their admiration for Orbison and that all just got Frankensteined together, making something new and technically alive out of dead footage. So while I love the subject matter, it's the format that bothers me, nobody did much (any) research, they just worked with what they had. Sure, there are insights into Roy's complex musical structure, or lack thereof, and those insights come from Bono or Bernie Taupin, but it's still a bunch of old news here, sorry to say. OK, so Bruce Springsteen was surprised how different and radical the song charts were for "Dream Baby", what am I supposed to do with that information? 

I really want to go and watch "A Black and White Night Live" now, and maybe I will, but I can't really make that part of the countdown, because I've seen it before and that would be against the rules. Still, I'm at the halfway point of the Doc Block and I think I deserve a little break for some music. It's Summer Concerts time. 

Directed by Steve Cole

Also starring Bono (last seen in "Stevie Van Zandt: Disciple"), Elvis Costello (last seen in "The 100th: Billy Joel Live at Madison Square Garden"), Robin Gibb (last seen in "Elton John: Becoming Rocketman"), Olivia Harrison (last seen in "Concert for George"), Jeff Lynne (ditto), Steve Jones, Tony King, Gerry Marsden, Barbara Orbison, Bernie Taupin (last seen in "Elton John: Never Too Late"), Joe Walsh (last seen in "Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary"), Terry Widlake, Bill Wyman (last seen in "Paul Anka: His Way"), 

with archive footage of Roy Orbison (last seen in "The Beatles: In the Life"), Jackson Browne (also last seen in "Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary"), Bonnie Raitt (ditto), Johnny Cash (last seen in "Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind"), Bob Dylan (last seen in "Roberta"), George Harrison (last seen in "Cheech & Chong's Last Movie"), Bruce Springsteen (ditto), Dennis Hopper (last seen in "Devo"), k.d. lang (last seen in "Pee-Wee as Himself"), John Lennon (last seen in "Being Eddie"), Ringo Starr (ditto), Kyle MacLachlan (last seen in "Blink Twice"), Paul McCartney (last seen in "Lorne"), Jack Nance (last seen in "Zeroville"), Tom Petty (last seen in "The Legendary 1979 No Nukes Concerts - Springsteen E Street Band"), Cliff Richard (last seen in "If These Walls Could Sing"), Isabella Rossellini (last seen in "Cat Person"), Dean Stockwell (last heard in "Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker"),

RATING: 5 out of 10 members of the TCB Band (including special guests)

David Lynch: The Art Life

Year 18, Day 207 - 7/26/26 - Movie #5,385 - SQC DOC BLOCK FILM #24

BEFORE: Today's film is another one that got pulled from last year's Doc Block, the main reason being that I just couldn't link to it. To get here, and then go somewhere else, I would have needed two other films with David Lynch in them, because apparently there's no archive footage here from Lynch's movies, which could have made this a lot easier. So since I didn't have two other movies with him in them, I had to table it. The process this year was easier, because I found two other movies with David Lynch in them so OK, just build the chain outwards from HERE, start with these three in a row and see where that takes me, and eventually I connected another mini-block HERE and another section THERE and I Lego-ed my way up to 50 films. 

So David Lynch carries over from "Mel Brooks: The 99 Year Old Man" and this also helps me cross off another state, because it seems Lynch moved around a lot, as both a child and an adult. Idaho, Washington, Virginia, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and obviously some time in California - but I was elated when I saw where he was born, Missoula, MONTANA. So let's get some mileage out of THAT.

Date admitted to the U.S.: November 8, 1889 (41st state)

Claim to fame: Umm, let me get back to you on this one. The Battle of Little Bighorn, aka Custer's Last Stand? 

Nickname: Big Sky Country, or The Treasure State. That second one seems like a trap.

State Motto: "Oro y Plata", which is Spanish for "Gold and Silver". Another trap. 

State Flower: Bitterroot. Does not sound fun.

State Fish: Westslope cutthroat trout. 

State Bird: Western meadowlark

State Tree: Ponderosa pine

State mammal: Grizzly bear

Notable Sports Teams: Not a chance. This is a place where rodeo is king, I'll wager. 

Fun Facts: The Homestead Act of 1862 provided free land to settlers - come on, we've got treasure here, we've got silver and gold, you just need to get here. This tells me a lot if they were just GIVING away plots of land - if they didn't do this, nobody would have ever moved there. Then in 1877 there was the Desert Land Act, where they were selling Montana land for 25 cents an acre if people would come and work the land and irrigate the desert, but mostly people just raised cattle and sheep there, and forgot about their promise to irrigate the desert. So that didn't work either. I'm guessing over time they had to keep upping the price and offering more and more money to get people to move there. How did that work out? 

Montana also had the first female representative in the U.S. Congress, Jeannette Rankin, who famously voted AGAINST the U.S. entering World War I and World War II. That lady had some balls, I mean, financially it was the wrong thing to do for Montana, because the state profited greatly from a war-time economy, but there was a large percentage of pacifists in Montana, and they didn't feel it was our place to get involved in foreign wars. Considering that 10% of Montana's population served in those wars and a large number of them died, maybe she was on to something, we'll never know what happened in the other timeline.

Obviously I've never been to Montana, so I'm holding at 19 states visited out of 24. 

THE PLOT: Artist and filmmaker David Lynch discusses his early life and the events that shaped his outlook on art and the creative process. 

AFTER: Well, I didn't need this documentary to tell me that David Lynch had the condition known as Artist Brain, I already knew that from watching "Twin Peaks: The Return" and his last few movies. But now I think he caught it from Mel Brooks, who hired him to direct "The Elephant Man", and I didn't even know the condition was contagious. If not for Brooks, Lynch might have tried to get hired again on the surprise success of the midnight movie "Eraserhead", and perhaps failed, in which case he might have given up on filmmaking and returned to the process of making bizarre sculptures. That was the "road not taken" and maybe the world might have been a better place, who can say? I mean, then we would not have had "Blue Velvet" or "Twin Peaks" (the original show) but we also would not have had the confusing films "Lost Highway" and "Mulholland Drive". 

Look, this guy already owes me for making me watch 10 hours of "The Return" where absolutely nothing happened, plot-lines from the original series were continued but NOT resolved, and I ended up annoyed as heck. Now he owes me another 90 minutes for watching THIS doc and I don't know how I'm going to collect that debt, but I'll think of something. This is just 90 minutes of watching Lynch make art, paintings and sculptures, in this art studio in the Hollywood Hills, while he tells stories from his childhood, which, SPOILER ALERT, are all rambling tales that go nowhere. In other words, he's an old man. 

Late in the film, there's something of an origin story, which leads us right through the making of "Eraserhead", so when you combine this with what we learned yesterday, this is kind of the "Rogue One" of David Lynch movies, it brings us right up to him getting hired to direct "The Elephant Man", when he had moved from Philadelphia to Los Angeles to study at the American Film Institute's Center for Advanced Film Studies, which had on their campus a set of unused stables, and Lynch ended up filming "Eraserhead" there, also in a building called Greystone Mansion, which the AFI also happened to lease from the city of L.A. Technically it's a public park, which may have helped keep the budget down on "Eraserhead", the shooting location belonged to, you know, all of us. 

But to get this story, there's a cost, and that cost is watching David Lynch paint and tell those stories from his early days. His fights with his father over his career, his move to Massachusetts to study at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (where his roommate was future J. Geils Band frontman and future Faye Dunaway husband Peter Wolf), going to Austria with a friend to try and train with a painter named Oskar Kokoschka, only to find out that he was quite busy and they really should have telephoned first. 

Lynch returned to his family in Virginia, only to find that they had moved to California, perhaps hoping that he would not follow. So he decided to move to Philadelphia because it was much, much closer, and his friend Jack Fisk was enrolled in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, so fuck it, why not? Great art was being made there, but Lynch preferred the neighborhoods with the abandoned factories, the broken windows, railroad tracks that went nowhere and somehow busy late-night diners. (Hell, that sounds a lot like the town of Twin Peaks, doesn't it?). He fell into a relationship with another student, Peggy Reavey, who became pregnant, so for a time they lived as a family in a 12-room house in a terrible Philly neighborhood. He got a job in a printing shop, and made short films on the side that are, well, quite disturbing, even when the topic was just "The Alphabet". If David Cronenberg made shorts for Sesame Street, they might look a little bit like that. Live-action and animation mixed with body horror and grotesqueness, swell. 

So naturally that got him a grant from the AFI, and with that money he made a short film called "The Grandmother", starring people he knew from work and school and filmed in his own house, which you may recall was in a very bad neighborhood called "Philadelphia", so it looked like a horror film. But it was about a neglected boy who grows his own grandmother from a seed to care for him. It was "arty" so it was a lock to get him into proper film school, that's why he moved out to L.A. with his first wife (soon to be his ex-wife) and he was set up to make "Eraserhead". That took him two years, not a single reviewer understood the film (I still don't) but it became popular on the midnight movie circuit, and it got him the job with Mel Brooks. OK, we're all caught up now. 

Fast forward to 2020, after the "Twin Peaks" revival, and he was essentially retired, not by choice. Someone with Artist Brain will never retire, but since COVID had sidelined the entire industry, he didn't have to. Movies were just NOT being made, so Lynch went online with daily videos he called "Weather Reports", but were more about him making art collages at home, picking a random number from a set of 10 ping-pong balls, and talking about his dreams or what Beatles song he was thinking of that day. Well, you know, it's good for seniors to keep active. I consider this a form of retirement, if he was NOT making movies

But of course there's no OFF switch on the Artist Brain, and it turns out Lynch was making art, like paintings and sculptures again, and this documentary sees fit to show us every single one of them, to the point where it's actually painful. I would say, "Hey, maybe show us only the good ones..." but this probably means that there are no good ones, they're all equally terrible. So by all means, please show us every single one while I keep checking how much time is left in the film. The one thing he did movie-related in the last few years of his life was to make a cameo in Steven Spielberg's movie "The Fabelmans" in 2022, playing Hollywood director John Ford. I watched that back in February, finally worked it in, however that left this doc kind of stranded until I found two more docs with Lynch in them. So, umm, mission accomplished, can I please close the book on David Lynch now? 

One last thing, Lynch was diagnosed with emphysema in 2020, which was one more reason to stay home during the pandemic and not go anywhere, so it turns out smoking cigarettes from the age of 8 to 72 is NOT a good idea. (And STILL he said he would not retire, because Artist Brain.). However, in January 2025, those California wildfires struck, and he had to be evacuated from his home, still the smoke caused a decline in his health, and he passed away at his daughter's home. So that bad habit of yours WILL kill you, it just might take a little time. 

Directed by Rick Barnes, Olivia Neergaard-Holm (editor on "The Apprentice"), Jon Nguyen.

Also starring Lula Lynch, with archive footage of Jack Fisk, Bushnell Keeler, Donald Lynch, Edwina Lynch, Peggy Reavey. 

RATING: 3 out of 10 numbered ping-pong balls (what else?)

Mel Brooks: The 99 Year Old Man!

Year 18, Day 206 - 7/25/26 - Movie #5,384 - SQC DOC BLOCK FILM #23

BEFORE: All right, this one's going to take some time - and I worked late last night at the theater, so if this Saturday film posts on Sunday, don't be too surprised. This is a documentary in two parts, each is a little under two hours long, so I've got nearly FOUR hours of doc about Mel Brooks to get through tonight. Hey, the man is old and he's been around for a while, making movies and TV shows. He just had another birthday at the end of June, when he turned 100, so already the title of his documentary is wrong, or at least outdated. That's the chance you take. 

I spoke about the coincidence of me getting back on pop culture docs right around the time of San Diego Comic-Con, it's like my chain-making brain has muscle memory or something - well, how about this for a coincidence, they had a "Spaceballs 2" panel in Hall H at Comic-Con, and do you want to guess when that happened? OK, so it was Friday, but the NEWS broke today, that's still an amazing turn of events. Strange to say, but this only happened because footage of Paul Reubens was cut from "Overnight", if that hadn't happened then tonight's film was scheduled to be Doc Block film #30, which means I would have been off by a week. The strangest thing brought my schedule back in sync with reality, which feels a bit weird. Anyway tomorrow is the last day of SDCC, and I think I've got something appropriate, about film and art, before I go back to rock music and politics. 

Judd Apatow AND Sarah Silverman carry over from "Mister Rogers: It's You I Like", and that's no help in picking a U.S. state to profile tonight - Silverman is from New Hampshire and Apatow, like Mel Brooks, was born in NYC. I've covered both of those states already, so I'm stuck. What I did was let Google decide tonight - I did a search with his name and the name of each still-unassigned state, and I only got one usable result, so there you go. What popped up was the site of the Candlelight Theatre in Wilmington, DELAWARE, which earlier this year put on stage productions of both "The Producers" and "Young Frankenstein". Now, I'm not sure if these are the authorized touring productions of both shows, or just a local theater group putting on a show, it doesn't really matter. What counts is that there have recently been Mel Brooks shows in that state, and apparently nobody else - and that LIVE theater is alive and well in DELAWARE. So here we go: 

Date admitted to the U.S.: December 7, 1787  (1st state)

Claim to fame: The Delaware Water Gap, and Joe Biden's from there. That's about it, I think.

Nickname: The First State (and they just shove that in your face every chance they get, don't they?)

State Motto: "Liberty and Independence", also "Firsties"

State Flower: Peach blossom (really? that sounds a bit Southern)

State Fish: Weakfish (wait, what?)

State Bird: Delaware blue hen

State Insect: 7-spotted ladybug

State Tree: American holly

State Cocktail: Orange crush
State Food: peach custard pie (what's with all the peach stuff?)

Notable Sports Teams: You must be joking. 

Fun Facts: Wow, I did not know that Delaware had a secret racist history (not kidding, for once). Attempts to abolish slavery in Delaware in 1847 failed by narrow margins, and just before the Civil War southern states sent commissioners to try to get Delaware to secede, and then during the war Delaware's state government was dominated by pro-slavery Democrats, and I didn't even know that was a thing. The state rejected the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments (umm, that's kind of a big deal) and didn't ratify them until 1901. WTF, Delaware? And then in 1954 the state was home to PRO-segregation boycotts - that's right, when people in the south were holding boycotts AGAINST segregation, Delaware was doing the opposite. Jeez, read the damn room, would you? 

Yes, I have been to Delaware, so my record goes up to 19 states visited out of 23, but now I'm thinking about boycotting the state in the future - let's see how THEY like it. That's right, we're going to drive straight through on our next trip to North Carolina and we will NOT be stopping at any rest areas or restaurants in Delaware. It's time to take a stand. 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Mel Brooks: Unwrapped" (Movie #4,201)

THE PLOT: Follows the life, career, friendships and loves of legendary writer, director, producer and performer Mel Brooks, chronicling his early experiences and rise to superstardom. 

AFTER: So far, it feels like this Doc Block has been brought to you by "Artist Brain", it's the condition that successful people in the entertainment industry have that makes them think that their shit don't stink. Spielberg had Artist Brain young, when he office-squatted his way into a job at Universal and then made the biggest blockbuster in film history (up until that time) and the guy who ran "Earth, Wind & Fire" had a convenient case of Artist Brain when he decided that he wanted a solo career and was also tired of paying all the other guys in the band. The whole Devo band had Artist Brain when they thought they were better than any punk band and also were, at one point, the only band with a backlog music videos made before MTV was invented. Paul Anka? He might have the biggest case I've ever seen, once you're the guy who wrote "My Way" for Sinatra, that head just does not return to normal size, not ever. Both Cheech AND Chong had different strains of Artist Brain, and you can't have a lasting duo when the two people can't agree who is in charge. (It's too bad, really, they could have just taken turns, for chrissake.)

The one person profiled so far this year who seems immune is, of course, Fred Rogers. He didn't set out to make the longest-running PBS show for kids, he wasn't in it for the money or because he believed he "belonged" on TV, his interest was always the mental health of America's kids, making sure they could cope mentally with tough things like divorce and pets dying and feeling angry. He also taught kids that diversity and equality and acceptance are pretty cool things, and that wearing sweaters and feeding fish and pretending are not just activities for shut-ins. Mr. Rogers, you are hereby declared "Artist Brain Free", sorry for the delay, I guess it hardly matters now. 

So we have to now consider Mel Brooks - Artist Brain or Not Artist Brain? It's going to take a few hours (4, almost) to get to the bottom of this. First, we have the humble beginnings, being born into a Brooklyn Jewish tenement family, learning comedy as a way of survival, then serving in World War II because that was what you did back then. Sure, he found his way into the traveling entertainment unit when the fighting ended, but really, isn't that where he belonged? When he got back from the war he worked in TV production to avoid a job in the Garment District. Mostly this is NOT Artist Brain behavior, except for considering the menial labor job to be somehow beneath him, and having delusions of grandeur. We need to investigate this further. 

After years working in TV on "Your Show of Shows" and feeling inadequate, Brooks got married and had three kids, but the marriage unfortunately did not last. Still inconclusive, but he really wanted to write a movie, and would have written one with Sid Caesar if the network hadn't offered so much money to keep Caesar on TV. He also had worked his way up from being a drummer and a back-up performer in the Catskills. Still, by the late 1950's he felt that he was destined for something greater, and that led to his "2,000 Year Old Man" routine and comedy album with Carl Reiner. Having aspirations is an early warning sign of Artist Brain, perhaps. 

In the early 1960's, he wrote an animated short film that won an Oscar, and started working on "Get Smart", a TV spoof of spy films, and that turned out to be a hit, so Brooks turned his attention to writing his first feature film. This is a time in his career where it still felt a bit like he was trying a lot of different things, attempting to figure out what works and what doesn't work, what's going to attract and engage with the audience. That first feature was, of course, "The Producers" and it did win him another Oscar, for Best Original Screenplay. But it wasn't an instant hit with audiences, really it became a cult classic over time - still, I can kind of feel the old Artist Brain kicking in, because two Oscars can do that to a filmmaker... His next film was "The Twelve Chairs", which was a box-office flop. Yeah, thinking that you can turn American audiences on to Russian literature is a tell-tale sign of Artist Brain - I wouldn't say that it was a full case yet, because a box-office disaster is usually pretty humbling. 

The first part of this two-part documentary ends with the success of "Blazing Saddles", and while it wasn't exactly the mid-point of his career, I think it's an appropriate place to stop for a moment because a giant successful film, one that breaks all the rules and pokes fun at society's racism and sexism and corrupt politicians, sure, that's a wonderful thing. But I'm guessing that's also where Brook's Artist Brain affliction really kicked in. And then it got worse with the success of "Young Frankenstein" and I think when you look at the following films, "Silent Movie" and "High Anxiety", you start to get the feeling that Brooks thought he could do no wrong, he'd cracked the code of comedy and all he had to do was throw together another spoof film and his winning streak would continue. But any athlete can tell you that a winning streak can't go on forever, eventually your team is going to lose a game and you have to be ready to deal with that, too, you literally can't win 'em all, you have to take the bad with the good, and also there is no "I" in "TEAM". 

His production company decided to diversify, hiring David Lynch to direct "The Elephant Man" and then David Cronenberg to direct "The Fly". It's a very good sign that Brooks was willing to produce some films and not direct everything himself, perhaps the curative powers of a few more films that didn't gain any traction staved off his Artist Brain for a few years. A typical film director with Artist Brain would want to direct everything himself, and not allow anyone to share billing, while Brooks actually removed his name from the credits of "The Elephant Man" because people expected a certain kind of film from Mel Brooks, and it just wasn't that kind of film. But Brooks was also planning the next wave of spoof films, which led to "History of the World, Part I", "To Be or Not to Be" and eventually, "Spaceballs". This kept his film career thriving for a while, but I think if you were a "Star Wars" fan and you went to see "Spaceballs", you probably felt like you were really slumming. I mean, sure the franchise was ripe for parody, but it all seemed pretty low-rent, like below the level of a MAD magazine parody, even. 

By the time Brooks got to "Robin Hood: Men in Tights" and "Dracula: Dead and Loving It", I think we can all agree the quality level was way, way down, exemplifying a severe case of Artist Brain, and I think from there recovery was very, very unlikely. The "Robin Hood" film re-used a bunch of gags from previous Brooks movies even, so, like, was he even trying? Sure, it's another genre of film that needed the piss taken out of it, but by then his films were way too silly for me, and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only person who felt that way. In some ways it was more of a take on "The Princess Bride" than a Robin Hood movie. Brooksfilms was pretty much "Dead and NOT Loving It" at that point, and it took a few years, but that's when Broadway started adapting his films into stage musicals. Sure, why not, it's not like he was planning any new breakthrough comedy films. And that Artist Brain was whispering in his ear, if only his play could win a Tony or 12, then he'd also be not just an Oscar winner, but an EGOT winner. 

Look, I'm not saying that "The Producers" wasn't a great stage musical, it was great, and I did see it on stage. The movie remake with the original Broadway cast was great, too, I liked it just as much as the original film. But believing that your past work needs to be remade, or transferred into another medium, and then re-cast, re-packaged, re-filmed and re-sold every few years is a DEFINITE sign of advanced Artist Brain. Some people make movies, and they let them get old and they just leave them alone, maybe re-watch them once in a while. Brooks has re-vamped, re-worked and re-produced his biggest successes as much as George Lucas has re-issued "Star Wars" over and over again in new mediums. And I thought maybe Lucas had the biggest case of Artist Brain of anyone, now I think Mel Brooks found ways to surpass even him over the course of his career. 

Another sure sign of Artist Brain is refusing to retire, and as yet Brooks has still not retired, not at the age of 100, because he licensed "History of the World Part II" as a Hulu series, and now they've got "Spaceballs 2" close to a theatrical release. I did watch the "History Part II" series, it was OK, I wasn't super thrilled by it - and I'm not expecting "Spaceballs 2" to be terrific, though I probably will watch it sooner rather than later. I'm curious about it, but mainly I want to see what they do with it, there have been like nine more "Star Wars" movies since the first "Spaceballs" movie came out. So I know Mel's never, ever going to retire, I just wish he'd take life a little easier, he's certainly earned it. Look, Mel, people can go back and watch "Blazing Saddles" and "Young Frankenstein" any time they want, those two films are practically annually viewed in my house, just leave them alone. They don't need to be re-made or turned into 3-D films or made into Hulu series, just let them be.

Directed by Judd Apatow (producer of "Flipside" and "Pee-Wee as Himself") & Michael Bonfiglio (director of "George Carlin's American Dream")

Also starring Mel Brooks (last seen in "Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution"), Scott Alexander, Andrew Bergman, Matthew Broderick (last seen in "Lorne"), Dave Chappelle (ditto), Rob Reiner (ditto), Adam Sandler (ditto), Eddie Brooks, Max Brooks, Nicholas Brooks, Samantha Brooks, Stefanie Brooks, Ronny Chieng (last heard in "Kung Fu Panda 4"), Ron Clark (last seen in "The Last Laugh" (2019)), David Denby, Cary Elwes (last seen in "Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning"), Peter Farrelly (last seen in "Clear History"), Josh Gad (last heard in "Zootopia 2"), Dana Gould (last seen in "Fathers' Day"), Jimmy Kimmel (last seen in "When We Went MAD!"), Conan O'Brien (ditto), Jerry Seinfeld (ditto), Nick Kroll (last seen in "Don't Worry Darling"), Larry Karazewski, Nathan Lane (last seen in "No Pay, Nudity"), Barry Levinson (last seen in "Here Today"), David Lynch (last seen in "The Fabelmans"), Kliph Nesteroff, Patton Oswalt (last seen in "Blake Edwards: A Love Story in 24 Frames"), Bill Pullman (last seen in "Dark Waters"), Amy Schumer (last heard in "IF"), Ben Stiller (last seen in "Adam Sandler: Funny Guy"), Susan Stroman, Robert Townsend (last seen in "Kevin Hart & Chris Rock: Headliners Only"), Tracey Ullman (last seen in "I Could Never Be Your Woman"), David Zucker (also last seen in "When We Went MAD!"), Jerry Zucker, Daphne Zuniga (last seen in "Vision Quest")

with archive footage of Don Adams (also last seen in "When We Went MAD!"), Charlie Chaplin (ditto), Steve Allen (last seen in "Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind"), Kirstie Alley (last seen in "Drop Dead Gorgeous"), Don Appell, Bea Arthur (last seen in "A Disturbance in the Force"), Kenny Baker (last seen in "An Accidental Studio"), Anne Bancroft (last seen in "Famous Nathan"), Sid Caesar (ditto), Ike Barinholtz (last seen in "Blockers"), Florence Baum, David Begelman, Tony Bilbow, Mark Blankfield (last seen in "The Incredible Shrinking Woman"), Peter Boyle (last seen in "Dear Ms.: A Revolution in Print"), Gene Shalit (ditto), Dr. Joyce Brothers (last seen in "Tiny Tim: King for a Day"), James Caan (last seen in "Cheech & Chong's Last Movie"), Johnny Carson (ditto), Dan Castellaneta (ditto), Merv Griffin (ditto), Dustin Hoffman (ditto), Dinah Shore (ditto), Tom Snyder (ditto), John Candy (also last seen in "Lorne"), Ron Carey (last seen in "The Out of Towners (1970)), Dick Cavett (last seen in "Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story"), Francis Ford Coppola (ditto), Colin Clive, Imogene Coca, Myron Cohen, Stuart Cornfeld, Howard Cosell (last seen in "September 5"), Billy Crystal (last seen in "Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary"), Larry David (last seen in "The Strange Name Movie"), Geena Davis (last seen in "Blink Twice"), Dom Deluise (also last seen in "Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution"), Carl Reiner (ditto), Mike Douglas (last seen in "Devo"), Charlie Rose (ditto), Hugh Downs (last seen in "Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything"), Fritz Feld (last seen in "The Ladies Man"), Marty Feldman (last seen in "Remembering Gene Wilder"), Teri Garr (ditto), Burton Gilliam (ditto), Madeline Kahn (ditto), Cloris Leachman (ditto), Cleavon Little (ditto), Ben Mankiewicz (ditto), Zero Mostel (ditto), Barbara Feldon (last seen in "Fitzwilly"), Jeff Garlin (last seen in "Daddy Day Care"), Larry Gelbart, Jeff Goldblum (also last seen in "Lorne"), Buck Henry (ditto), Harold Gould (last seen in "Freaky Friday" (2003)), Shecky Greene (last seen in "Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project"), Gene Hackman (last seen in "The Package"), Christopher Hewett (last seen in "The Lavender Hill Mob"), John Hillerman (last seen in "I Am Burt Reynolds"), Gregory Hines (last seen in "Music by John Williams"), Peter O'Toole (ditto), Adolf Hitler (last seen in "Lee"), Anthony Hopkins (last seen in "Playdate"), David Huddleston (last seen in "Something. to Talk About"), John Hurt (last seen in "Hercules"), Kitty Kaminsky, Boris Karloff (last seen in "The Munsters"), Alex Karras (last seen in "Richard Pryor: Omit the Logic"), Buster Keaton (last seen in "The Real Charlie Chaplin"), Larry King (last seen in "Pamela: A Love Story"), Harvey Korman (last seen in "Paul Anka: His Way"), Eric Allen Kramer, Jessica Lange (last seen in "Bob Fosse: It's Showtime!"), Frank Langella (last seen in "Sigourney Weaver, the Most Iconic Action Heroine"), Rick Moranis (ditto), Norman Lear (last seen in "Sr."), Jerry Lewis (last seen in "Being Eddie"), Liza Minnelli (ditto), Paul Newman (ditto), Barack Obama (ditto), Richard Pryor (ditto), Don Rickles (ditto), Frank Sinatra (ditto), Gene Wilder (ditto), Richard Lewis (last seen in "Once Upon a Crime..."), Max Liebman, Leonard Maltin (also last seen in "Blake Edwards: A Love Story in 24 Frames"), Lesley Ann Warren (ditto), Marcel Marceau, Kenneth Mars (last seen in "Citizen Ruth"), Penny Marshall (also last seen in "Lorne"), Steve Martin (ditto), John Mulaney (ditto), Groucho Marx (also last seen in "When We Went MAD"), Harpo Marx (ditto), Ed McMahon (last seen in "Valerie"), Thomas Meehan, Don Meredith, Lee Meredith, Ron Moody, Kumail Nanjiani (last seen in "Life as We Know It"), Mike Ockrent, Slim Pickens (last seen in "Filmworker"), Edward Platt (last seen in "My Mom Jayne"), Matthew Porretta, Maury Povich, Burt Reynolds (last seen in "Chris & Martina: The Final Set"), Jack Riley (last seen in "McCabe & Mrs. Miller"), The Ritz Brothers, Tim Russ (last seen in "The Midnight Sky"), Soupy Sales (last seen in "Groucho & Cavett"), George Segal (last seen in "Being Mary Tyler Moore"), Dick Van Dyke (ditto), Neil Simon, David Steinberg (last seen in "The End"), Pamela Stephenson (last seen in "Superman III"), Jerry Stiller (last seen in "Serving Sara"), David Susskind, Wanda Sykes (last seen in "Bad Moms"), Stephen Tobolowsky (last seen in "Freakier Friday"), Dick Van Patten (also last seen in "Valerie"), Mike Wallace (last seen in "Rather"), Steven Weber (last seen in "Handsome: A Netflix Mystery Movie"), James Whale, Estelle Winwood (last seen in "Camelot"), George Wyner (last seen in "Not Another Teen Movie"), Amy Yasbeck (last seen in "Gilbert"), Gig Young (last seen in "Call Me Kate"),

and the voice of Orson Welles (also last seen in "Cheech & Chong's Last Movie")

RATING: 7 out of 10 Grammy nominations

Mister Rogers: It's You I Like

Year 18, Day 205 - 7/24/26 - Movie #5,383 - SQC DOC BLOCK FILM #22

BEFORE: OK, so I had the problem of adding one more doc, somehow, either from my list or from elsewhere, to bring this year's total back up to 50, after my bad link forced me to drop "Overnight", at least until next time. Oh, I have back-ups, and back-up back-ups, I would rather just not have to use them - but I will if I have to. But I scanned the week's programming for something that would fit into my chain and also might represent a U.S. state that I haven't profiled. Now, there's no shortage on AXS and Fuse of those stock-umentaries about bands, they're running one about Prince this week and a couple about Queen, the Eagles (who I already covered) and even Cher. Umm, I'll think about it. There's also one about the cast of "The Love Boat" and like, thematically I don't even know what to do with that. 

I landed on this doc, which started running again on PBS last night (Thursday) as my last-minute replacement, so that meant adding another skip day, because it's not streaming somewhere else, of course. PBS uses it once Pledge Week starts, which seems to be every other month these days, I get it, times are tough and funding has been cut again and again. I picked this one to add because of course it represents Pennsylvania, I had something in mind for that state but that is easily re-assigned. I know from watching the two OTHER films made about Fred Rogers over the last few years that the show was produced out of the PBS station in Pittsburgh, and boom, there's the tie-in. 

So let's cross PENNSYLVANIA off the list - my apologies in advance to Reggie Jackson and Billy Joel (since I covered New York already, I was going to use his song "Allentown" as a tie-in, but I'll just have to use something else...)

Date admitted to the U.S.: December 12, 1787 (2nd state)

Claim to fame: Jeez, the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall and the Continental Congress and I think Philadelphia was the U.S. capital for a while, really if it was important back in 1776 it probably happened in Pennsylvania. 

Nickname: The Keystone State

State Motto: Virtue, Liberty and Independence. 

State Flower: Mountain laurel

State Dog: Great Dane

State Fish: Brook trout

State Bird: Ruffed grouse, somehow

State Insect: Firefly (Photuris pensylvanica)

State Tree: Eastern hemlock

State Beverage: Milk. (NERDS!)
State Dance: Polka (GERMAN NERDS!)

Notable Sports Teams: Umm, two baseball teams, the Phillies and Pirates, also two NFL teams, the Eagles and the Steelers, and two NHL teams, the Flyers and the Penguins. Basically there's always a Philly team and a Pittsburgh team, but somehow there's just 1 NHL team, the Flyers.

Fun Facts: It's a state full of "firsts", starting with the oldest civilization known in America, there's evidence of an agricultural settlement there that is estimated to be over 10,000 years old, formed by nomadic people who may have been descended from people who crossed the land bridge into Alaska, it seemed they kept walking until they got to Pennsylvania and said, "This'll do." First currency, first use of credit in America, thanks to Ben Franklin, who also founded the first college in Pennsylvania, U Penn. First Continental Congress, first capital, how did they end up the SECOND state to ratify the Constitution? Philadelphia hosted a Sesquicentennial Exposition back in 1926, that was 100 years ago, to celebrate 150 years since the founding of America. Very ironically, they still have Amish families living there, and they seem to still mine coal and drill for oil depend on making steel. So they seem a bit backwards and set in their ways. Just me? Where's that pioneering "firsties" spirit when it comes to solar and wind power, huh? 

Of course, I've been to Pennsylvania, when I was a kid my family took a trip to HersheyPark, then visited the Gettysburg Battlefield and had a fantastic meal in Amish Country. I think I went there once after college to shoot some promo piece for Nintendo or something - but later visited several times after getting married again, we went to HersheyPark and had a fantastic meal in Amish Country. Then there was a place in the Poconos that we'd go to every once in a while, they had a pretty mean Italian buffet, as I recall. The state has casinos now, so I wonder if I could wrangle another visit there sometime soon. Anyway I'm now up to 18 states visited out of 22.

Judd Apatow carries over from "When We Went MAD!"

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Won't You Be My Neighbor?" (Movie #3,275) and "A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood" (Movie #3,656)

THE PLOT: Cast members  from the groundbreaking PBS series and several guest celebrities share their personal perspectives and insights that pay tribute to television's longest-running series, "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood". 

AFTER: Sorry for the abrupt u-turn, if anything counts as the "anti-MAD magazine", it's probably the show "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood". MAD was sarcastic and non-serious and told people to not trust the government, while "Mr. Rogers" was sincere and genuine and led kids to believe that all's right with the world, provided they had an outlet for their negative thoughts. And they do happen, those sad and mad feelings, let's not pretend that they don't, because sometimes your dog dies or your parents break up or you get polio or cancer and you have to find a way to deal with all that. Fred Rogers was the support system for kids who didn't even know they needed one, and he made it OK to "make-believe" if you just manage to keep that separate from reality. 

You can even do that now, just imagine that you can visit another land which is run by a powerful but benevolent ruler, one who's not fleecing citizens out of money by selling crypto-currency and NFTs, or disassembling the parts of the government responsible for controlling disease outbreaks and auditing billionaires' tax returns while making false claims about election interference (only the one he lost) and fixing soccer games. It would be nice, right? Just picture that and keep hope alive, and that's the first step toward maybe making better choices in the future. 

We all know this is where Michael Keaton started his career, behind the scenes on Fred Rogers' PBS show, and he came back to host this documentary and talk about his first showbiz job, making the trolley enter the set at the right time and dressing up like a circus performer to be one of the "Flying Zookini Brothers" to show kids how to pretend like they're acrobats, jumping off of platforms that were several inches off the ground.  Hey, everyone has to start somewhere. 

My memories of watching the show are quite hazy, I must have tuned in many times as a kid, but damn, the show was so square compared to "Sesame Street", which had animation with voices provided by Joan Rivers and Mel Brooks. Meanwhile in Mr. Rogers neighborhood, he was listening to music played by Yo-Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman. But meeting with Perlman was an opportunity to show kids that some people are differently-abled, not disabled, because Perlman walked with crutches most of his life and the side benefit was having really strong arms to help him play the violin. Meeting with Yo-Yo Ma was also an opportunity to preach family togetherness and have Yo-Yo's son play a duet with him. This was repeated 10 years later when Nicholas Ma was 16 instead of 6, but the message stayed the same. 

We also see the PBS cross-over that we didn't know we needed, the day that Big Bird came to visit the Land of Make-Believe. He could not appear in the "real-life" segments because Caroll Spinney would not remove his Big Bird costume on TV, Jim Henson would not allow him to. Mr. Rogers believed in full transparency, like he told all the kids in TV Land that he was the puppeteer and the voice for all the puppets, and now of course I realize why you never saw Fred Rogers in the fantasy realm, because he was working ALL the puppets. Watch, there will be a new "Mandela Effect" on Instagram soon, because somewhere out there people are going to SWEAR they saw Mr. Rogers interacting with King Friday and Miss Elaine Fairchild, and so now they think we're in a different timeline. No, you're just remembering it WRONG, you donut. Be an adult and admit it. 

Some of the more notable guest stars are seen here, I think in the previous documentary they also pointed out the casting of opera star Francois Clemmons as Officer Clemmons in over 90 episodes of the show, and by pretending it was a hot day and offering him the use of his kiddie pool to cool off his feet, Rogers was weighing in on the ridiculous laws in the American South that prevented black people from using the swimming pools as white people. Mr. Rogers also stood for diversity and championing the rights of the disabled and promoting small businesses and factories by doing remote segments on how everyday products like spoons and musical instruments are made. I think he wanted to know how spoons are made just as much, if not more than kids did, and that takes a certain kind of person. 

Yeah, sure, he was a Presbytarian minister, but the show never really got preachy, and he had a degree in music as well as theology, and a graduate degree in Child Development, I think this guy just genuinely loved learning and never wanted to stop. This earned him a Lifetime Achievement Emmy and a Presidential Medal of Freedom, also a spot in the Television Hall of Fame. Much like Jim Henson, he played with a bunch of puppets as a kid, but those two men couldn't have been more different as adults, Jim Henson seems more like a hippie who wanted to entertain adults with puppets, and when that wasn't a thing, he made it a thing. Fred Rogers was more like the shy kid who edited the yearbook in high school and was a member of the National Honor Society, and probably voted "Most Likely to Work in Public Television". 

There's also footage here from Mr. Rogers' encounter with Koko, the famous gorilla who could speak in sign language, and they really hit it off - Koko wanted to compare her hands and feet to Fred's, I don't know if she watched the show or not, but maybe she just wanted to see what his sneaker size was. They spent a couple hours staring at each other, Mr. Rogers couldn't believe that a gorilla could be fluent in conversation and be able to express its thoughts, and Koko probably couldn't believe that anyone could be as genuine and sincere as he was. I think maybe he restored Koko's faith in humanity, if that's possible. You know, as a long-time fan of the show I think Koko just already considered him a friend, as you do. 

Sure, there's a sick part of me that kind of wishes Koko had just ripped his head right off, because that would have raised quite a few questions about whether teaching a giant ape sign language changes its thinking, or if it retains its wild nature. You can take a gorilla out of the jungle, but can you completely take the jungle out of the gorilla? Seriously, though, it's possible that Fred Rogers acted as an unintentional ambassador between the two species, and that in doing so he somehow prevented the dystopian future seen in the "Planet of the Apes" movies. If not for him, we humans might all be robbed of the power of speech and put into primitive cages, held captive by orangutan wardens and gorilla, umm, guerrillas. 

You just could not make a show like this in New York, but that's where Fred Rogers learned about making television, being the floor director for shows like "Your Hit Parade" and "The Kate Smith Hour", then we went up to Canada for a few years to host a kid's program, and then back down to Pittsburgh Public TV to do his own thing. Which was changing into his cardigan, putting on his sneakers and feeding his fish, you know, teaching kids that there is a daily routine to life, and altering that would be very, very BAD. Hopefully you kind something you like, whether it's making music or baking pretzels or running a puppet show, and then you're going to do it again and again every damn day of your life, but we can work on your attitude so you'll feel OK about it.

Directed by John Paulson

Also starring Joyce DiDonato, Whoopi Goldberg (last seen in "I Am Mother"), Michael Keaton (last seen in "Goodrich"), Chris Kratt, John Lithgow (last seen in "Love Is Strange"), Nicholas Ma, Yo-Yo Ma (last seen in "Music by John Williams"), Itzhak Perlman (ditto), Joe Negri (last seen in "Won't You Be My Neighbor?"), David Newell (last seen in "A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood"), Joanne Rogers (ditto), Sarah Silverman (last seen in "Say It Isn't So"), Esperanza Spalding (last seen in "Michael Jackson's Journey from Motown to Off the Wall"), Caroll Spinney (last seen in "Jim Henson: Idea Man"),

with archive footage of Chuck Aber, Betty Aberlin (also last seen in "Won't You Be My Neighbor?"), Johnny Costa (ditto), Tony Bennett (last seen in "Roberta"), Billie Burke (last seen in "Sid & Judy"), Francois Clemmons, Jeff Erlanger, Judy Garland (last seen in "Child Star"), Hilary Hahn, Margaret Hamilton (last seen in "Remembering Gene Wilder"), Jim Henson (last seen in "Luther: Never Too Much"), Niki Hoeller, Ella Jenkins, Wynton Marsalis, Penny Patterson, Bob Rawsthorne, Bob Trow and the Empire Brass Quintet. 

RATING: 6 out of 10 fan letters answered BY HAND