BEFORE: I suppose Phase 1 of this year's Doc Block is over, but there are more tributes to deceased celebrities coming up in Phase 2, because, you know, that's what filmmakers make documentaries about, I can't get around that. I'm taking a little musical departure, then there will be a couple political films, then I'll be back on the graveyard shift. There will also be at least a week and a half on rock and pop music, but also I'll get to hot dogs and porn, only not at the same time, that would be weird.
David Letterman carries over again from "Albert Brooks: Defending My Life". This year I've somehow managed to clear off some films that have been on the list for a very long time, like "Project Almanac", "People Places Things", "The Secret of Kells" or "Fire in the Sky". That's also been true for docs, like I can't tell you how long "The Wolfpack" was on my list, or "Belushi" or tomorrow's film, which is arriving at least four years too late.
THE PLOT: A Late Night comedy writer stumbles upon a hilarious hidden world of corporate entertainment and finds an unexpected connection to his fellow man.
AFTER: I feel like I know quite a bit about the backstory here, because way back in the early 1990's I was working for a small production company about a block south of the World Trade Center. (this was back when there WAS a World Trade Center). The company did little jobs like music videos and segments for Sesame Street and I really was just happy to be working in the industry I'd chosen, and not tearing tickets at a movie theater (this was back when there WERE tickets to tear). One summer the company got hired to do an editing job, there was some kind of industrial film to be made where the footage came from a corporate event for an insurance company, I want to say MetLife, but I'm not sure. It was some kind of stage show put on at their annual employee conference and it was a spoof of Indiana Jones films, The Quest for Something. My job was to go through the hours of footage and mark the time codes of the interesting bits, and then the editor would take over and try to turn the hours of footage into something shorter that still made some kind of sense. I didn't know much about editing, but I knew a cheezy stage show when I saw it.
I also know a lot about Letterman's CBS show, I attended a few tapings including his last holiday show for CBS, and I remember the transition period after Dave announced he was retiring, though he kind of un-retired a few years later and I'm convinced now that he just left his show to avoid some lawsuit or being cancelled by the #MeToo movement. Get out ahead of that, it's really the way to go. My BFF and I were behind the scenes of his NBC show once, but not at the Ed Sullivan theater - but my wife was working for a company at the time that did some of the construction work on the Ed Sullivan, specifically the concrete/stone casting. I'd also seen every episode of Late Show, and they frequently had their writers appear on camera in bits.
So yeah, I knew who Steve Young was, and this movie really focuses on him during the time when he learned he'd be out of work after Letterman "retired", and that probably wasn't an easy time for anyone on the show. What happens now? Where do I go? Is Conan hiring? Steve had worked over the years on a segment called "Dave's Record Collection", where Dave would hold up odd records that staffers had found in record stores (this was back when there WERE record stores) and they'd play a bit of the weirdest or funniest track, followed by a funny comment. Sure, I get it, as I've mentioned many times I learned so much from novelty records as a pre-teen and for a while that obsession took over my life. But this occasionally brought Steve in touch with soundtracks that came from odd industrial films, and those films would be about wheat production in Canada or how a petroleum company was changing its name to better serve the public and their shareholders.
Searching for these records, collecting these records and appreciating these records sort of took over Steve's life, or at least gave him something to DO, and maybe everybody is really an expert on something, even if that something can be very specific and often odd. Anyway, trying to find these records on eBay and other forums brought Steve into contact with Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedys and the drummer from The Germs, who also had large record collections and also appreciated these weird, retro soundtracks from films and staged musicals that the general public never even saw. "Bathrooms Are Coming" was meant to tell the employees of a certain company that new fixtures were on the way, it was never really meant to be appreciated for its musical merits, but who knows, maybe there's something entertaining about it if you can kind of turn off your brain and forget what it really was and why it was made.
Also, it turns out there was a whole community of people in the 1960's and 1970's who were under-employed singers and dancers, but they found that if they worked on three or four industrials each year, they could earn enough money to survive the down times, I mean you have to pay the bills while you're waiting for that phone call from your agent telling you about the new Off-Broadway play that's casting now. So this loose community of songwriters, musicians and dancers formed to tour the country and perform at corporate meetings and retreats, touting the benefits of DuPont chemicals or insurance or the new designs for tractors. But hey, that's show biz, of a sort.
Steve took it upon himself to track down some of the stars and songwriters of these almost-forgotten films, and he met some of them in the real world, and brought back some fond memories to people who'd been out of show biz for decades, because at some point everybody needed to settle down and get real jobs. Steve also hosted film screenings at indie theaters across the U.S. (and I know a thing or two about that, also) with some of the notable stars of the industrials in attendance, provided they didn't live too far from that particular theater.
Overall the films and the musicals were probably terrible, but they meant something to the people who appeared in them, probably because they were so fond of the people they met along the way. People formed life-long friendships and marriages after being on stage together, and that means that even though the work was mercenary and grueling, you can still find love in a hopeless place, and that's kind of inspiring. Steve fulfilled one of his own dream by working on a song with one of the composers he met, and performing it with a cast of industrial theater stars at the end of "Bathtubs Over Broadway", and look, I guess any day spent working on a film is a good one, provided you can finish the film and be proud of the result.
And I also get how once you start collecting something or focusing on something, you see that thing everywhere, or the pursuit becomes this quest that will never really end, you'll never have "enough" of that thing, and at some point there's a shift where you don't really have to look that hard for more of those things, because they start to find YOU. I have that with Star Wars autographs, after years of chasing down opportunities then I found myself bumping into Greg Grunberg at a BBQ restaurant in North Carolina, or Sofia Coppola would show up at the theater where I work. (I did not land autographs in those two cases, but I COULD have.)
Also starring Steve Young, Hank Beebe, Jello Biafra (last seen in "Tapeheads"), Don Bolles, Willi Burke, Lee Ellenberg, SuEllen Estey, Sandi Freeman, Patt Stanton Gjonola, Joe Grossman, Sheldon Harnick, Florence Henderson (last seen in "Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind"), Chuck Karel, Chita Rivera (last seen in "Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go For It"), Melody Rogers, Peter Shawn, Sid Siegel, Martin Short (last heard in "Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom"), Susan Stroman, Jeremy Weiner
with archive footage of Mel Brooks (also last seen in "Albert Brooks: Defending My Life"), Ed McMahon (ditto), Dom DeLuise (last seen in "Dean Martin: King of Cool"), Bob Fosse, Andrea Martin (last seen in "Sr."), Willie Nelson (last seen in "Belushi"), Bob Newhart (last seen in "Being Mary Tyler Moore"), Tony Randall (last seen in "Betty White: First Lady of Television"), Paul Shaffer (last seen in "Sheryl") and the voice of Terry Gross (last heard in "Vengeance")
RATING: 6 out of 10 uses for silicone molds
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