BEFORE: All four Beatles carry over from "If These Walls Could Sing" via archive footage - and it probably won't be the last time in this Doc Block. And let's all send a big Birthday SHOUT-Out to Ringo Starr, born July 7, 1940. So there were a couple other places I could have squeezed this one in, but what a happy accident to land it on Ringo's birthday!
This is another film that's been on my list for YEARS, I've probably passed over it for the last three Doc Blocks, there just never seemed to be room for it. I was so tired of waiting for two films with Hitler footage to fit this one in between, but nah, this is better, and crossing it off the list feels like a bigger accomplishment after waiting so long.
THE PLOT: This documentary examines how ordinary, normal people cope with the extraordinary challenge of having an embarrassing, provocative, famous or unbelievable name.
AFTER: According to this film, there are really three types of strange names - one is having the same first and last name as a celebrity, real or fictional. In some cases this might happen by accident, or on purpose - like we learend last week that Albert Brooks was born Albert Einstein, most likely intentionally named after the famous scientist. Sometimes this is done as a tribute, like you can imagine a set of parents who share their last name with a famous person, and maybe they were thinking they'd give their son a leg up in the science field, but no, he chooses comedy and acting as a profession, so he'd almost have to change his name, wouldn't he? Well, Brooks' father had a stage name, his brother "Super Dave" had a stage name, why not just pick another very normal sounding last name and then you won't be expected to be some kind of genius. Gene Wilder would probably not have gotten as far with his real name, Jerome Silberman - and we know John Wayne was born Marion Morrison, Michael Keaton was born as Michael Douglas, and so on. We already had TWO Michael or Mike Douglases in show biz, having a third would be way too confusing.
Sharing a name with Paul McCartney might have its perks, anyway - the one interviewed here reports getting upgraded to first class on planes from time to time, because the flight crew might just assume they want to keep that Beatle in first class so he doesn't get mobbed by fans. I think this guy was born before 1964, so he couldn't have been named after the Beatle, it's just random chance that his parents liked the first name Paul, and anyway, even Paul McCartney wasn't born as Paul McCartney, I think his first name was James and Paul was his middle name. Let's not forget that Ringo Starr was once Richard Starkey, also - "what's in a name" becomes doubly important for famous people, just ask the former Maurice Micklewhite or Archibald Leach.
Sharing your name with a fictional character might be worse, and the film interviewed three guys named Donald Duck and years ago a bunch of people named Ronald McDonald were hired to appear in a commercial to promote a rival fast food chain, because they couldn't find anyone named Breakfast CrunchWrap. This is a bit of a slippery slope, because if Taco Bell can do this, what's to prevent a movie from finding another person who shares their name with a movie critic and paying the pretender off to say nice things about their terrible movie? I mean, there's got to be another Rex Reed or Richard Roeper living somewhere in America who could use a cool side hustle. That would be misleading, to just pay a guy also named Rex Reed to say your movie is spectacular, but it might not be illegal. (Columbia Pictures once created a fictional critic, David Manning, to make fake reviews, that seems slightly worse.)
The second kind of strange name is based on wordplay, but innocent wordplay. Like Mrs. Burr, who named her son Timothy, so when she called him home for dinner, she could shout "Tim Burr!" across the neighborhood, and once somebody thinks of this, they kind of almost HAVE to do it, like I knew a couple with the last name Turner and I asked if they ever thought about naming a daughter Paige, thinking she might become an author, but then they had three sons, so it never came up. The woman with the last name of "Bacon" who then got the middle name of "Smoki" after some sports coach, well she just ends up with a very memorable name, especially if she ever wants to work at a deli counter or a barbecue restaurant, but even if she just ends up with a fund-raising job, well, hearing her name might just put a smile on another person's face.
But then you have the people whose family names are derogatory terms or sound a bit too close to sexual terms, these can really mess people up during their school years. Some kids are cruel and they target people who are different or seen to be lacking in some way, and a kid with the last name of Clutz or Putz or Schmuck might as well have a target on their back. Then a teen girl with the last name of Hooker or Slutsky or a boy with the last name of Gay, well, there are bound to be problems, or at least a few misunderstandings. Thankfully most of the people profiled here seemed to find ways to rise above, and then maybe eventually they learned to laugh at the whole thing, but really, nobody should be made to feel inferior because of something as basic as their name.
If it really becomes a problem over time, well, you can always change your name, I don't know why this didn't seem to be considered by anyone as a viable solution, although I guess if somebody with a strange name DID change it, we'd never know about it because the producers of the film never would have called them in the first place.
Undoubtedly this may be a reason why movie characters tend to have unusual names - I doubt you'll ever meet a Luke Skywalker out in the world, but of course there are probably many people named James Bond. I know that as a protective measure the big movie studios years ago started getting frivolous lawsuits from people who had the same names as movie characters, but like in very normal movies like rom-coms and such. So I heard that as a precaution some studios, before releasing an original movie, would look for people with the same first and last names as their main characters and have them sign a contract for a very small fee, licensing the use of their names for a movie, and that way if anyone named Ethan Hunt wanted to sue the makers of "Mission: Impossible" for using HIS name, they would already have a contract that proved they paid a different guy $5 to license the use of his name, which just happens to be the same. I'm not really sure if it's true, though.
Anyway, this turned out to be a very short feature film, just 52 minutes long, which was fine by me because it gave me more time today to catch up on episodes of "Star Trek: Discovery", I've watched almost the whole series over the last two weeks, and I'm just 6 episodes away from the end. It's been a ride, and it kept me busy while the theater's been shut down (because, you know, who goes out to the movies in the summer?) and I haven't gone stir crazy just yet. Anyway I go back to work in 6 days, mostly Saturday events in July.
There's another film on my list with a similar subject matter, it's all about people with the last name of Hitler, but even though this film would connect with THAT one, I had no connection back to the rest of my chain. So that film will have to remain unwatched, for now. And just like "You've Been Trumped Too", this film is streaming for FREE on Roku, Tubi, and FreeVee (part of Amazon) so why not give it a look-see?
Also starring Smoki Bacon, Greg Boggis, James Bond, Tim Burr, Alfred Capone, Tom Clutz, Jeanine Cobbledick, Rob Crapo, Al Dente, Donald Duck, Barb Dwyer, Gunther Frankenstein, Gui Fuck, Richard Gay, Victoria Hooker, Paul McCartney (not that one), Linda McCartney (also not that one), Ronald McDonald (nope), Jim Mullarkey, Paul Nardizzi, Harry Potter, Stuart Putz, Dusty Rhodes, Howard Schmuck, Anna Slutsky, Jeff Studley, Donald Sutherland (not the actor), Donald L. Trump, Laura Wattenberg, Robin Williams (again, not the famous one) and the voice of Ben Mangina
with archive footage of Al Capone, Bill Clinton (last seen in "Yogi Berra: It Ain't Over"), Larry David (last seen in "Albert Brooks: Defending My Life"), Adolf Hitler (last seen in "White Noise"), Donald Trump (last seen in "We Blew It")
RATING: 6 out of 10 non-clownish Ronald McDonalds
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