Dear Ms.: A Revolution in Print

Year 17, Day 215 - 8/03/25 - Movie #5,099

BEFORE: Gloria Steinem carries over from "Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything". I really wasn't going to include the Barbara Walters doc this year, because it had SUCH a huge cast of people seen in archive footage that I was going to save it to maybe get myself out of some possible linking jam next year - it's a shame to just use a film like that to connect two films with Ronald Reagan in them, it's like throwing away an opportunity or something. But then I recorded this doc about Ms. magazine and the cast list for this one was much smaller - it seemed like there was a good change that if I put this one off until Movie Year 18 too then maybe I'd never get to watch this one, it would just sit on my list taking up space for years. 

BUT if I included the Baba Wawa doc, I saw that I could get this one linked in as well. If that was the only film in the world that ever featured footage of both Groucho Marx and Gloria Steinem (basically polar opposites, if you think about it) then using it as such seemed like a much more noble undertaking. In my brain, anyway. 

This is the last last-second drop-in for this year's Doc Block, this played at the Tribeca Film Festival in June and I was working at the screening, the film's three directors were there to do a Q&A after about their segments, and Gloria Steinem was there also, and I got a couple very blurry photos of her from a distance. 

THE PLOT: Three filmmakers dive deep into the storied and complex legacy of Ms. magazine through the lens of some of its most iconic covers, featuring never-before-seen archival footage and engaging interviews. 

AFTER: From what I overheard of the Q&A after the screening, it seemed like the three directors of this film were able to sort of choose the topic of their segment, or they each chose a famous cover of the magazine and built their segment around that, but that seems a little weird now because each segment was about so much more than a famous magazine cover. It seems quite confusing, why not just assign each director to cover a part of the magazine's history from a specific angle, in much the same way that a magazine editor might assign a story to a journalist, like write me a story about the magazine's debate over racism and approach it from THIS angle. Since that's pretty much what happened, why not start there and not try to over-complicate things? 

The first segment ended up being about the founders of the magazine getting together, deciding what would be covered in the first issue, and then making that happen over the period of a few months. Makes sense, just start at the beginning, right?  There was an offer from Newsweek to publish the first run of the first issue, and include subscription cards, keep that issue on newstands for two months so they could build up a fan base, and if that didn't work out, well then there would just be no issue #2. But it DID sell, the first issue sold out in fact, so they proceeded with more articles, more staff, and eventually an office that wasn't just two rooms in the upper part of some generic four-floor walk-up Manhattan office building. 

The second segment was (more or less) about the complicated intertwined issues of sexism and racism, especially since Essence magazine had started up just a few months before, so there were questions about how heavy Ms. should lean on this topic, since there was competition in the marketplace, or should they avoid discussing it altogether and keep the focus on gender-based equality?  Also, as a glaring omission the Ms. magazine founders kind of neglected to hire any non-white staff at first, so yeah, it was maybe a few issues before they realized their mistake and thought about hiring some minority female writers. One cause at a time, I guess. 

This brings up kind of a double-edge sword for me, because they initially hired only women to produce the magazine, which, sure, that's great because it starts to make up for all of the inequality over the years, years when society didn't think that women could be reporters or editors or publishers, and no, they're not going to achieve balance overnight, it's going to take time, also they would need to get other magazines and newspapers on board to really make a change in the world. But they tried, and that's a noble thing. BUT, if the magazine only hired female writers and female artists and female managing editors, isn't that a form of sexism in itself? Aren't they therefore NOT hiring qualifed male candidates for those positions?  I mean, overall they were acting as a force for positive change in the world, but if they were really trying to foster equal rights then shouldn't they have hired an equal number of males and females? 

Which brings me back to the directors, they gave three female film directors the chance to direct segments of this - so I'm guessing they didn't even consider any male directors. Yes, of course, there's still work to be done to equalize things, as there are still many more male film directors and film executives in Hollywood than there are females. But by only considering women for the position, whoever exec. produced this was practicing a form of sexism. Just saying - I see both sides of this argument. 

The third segment of the doc concerns the rather touchy subject of pornography, and this was back in the 1970's, it was a different time. Playboy had been around since the 1950's, but suddenly there were x-rated films everywhere, porn peep-shows in Times Square and coming off the decade of free love, suddenly there was more sexual freedom and that meant porn was becoming a lucrative business. Unfortunately for the magazine, there were feminists on both sides of this issue - there were anti-porn feminists and there were sexual freedom feminists. It looks like nothing really got resolved except that the magazine tended to side with the anti-porn side, and then there was a contradiction of sorts, especially when it came to light that there were a few adult film stars who were not making movies against their will, in fact I think the women adult film stars were getting paid more than the male ones, and some were becoming producers and film executives in that space. 

So, umm, was porn a good thing or a bad thing? Feminists who were anti-porn found themselves criticizing an industry that was female forward, paying women more than men and producing well-paid, sex-positive performers like Annie Sprinkle and Gloria Leonard. The magazine had just spent the last few years promoting sexual freedom, it would seem like a cop-out if they suddenly reversed themselves and said that women shouldn't be sexually free to star in x-rated movies that men (and maybe some women) enjoyed watching. Well, while everyone was trying to figure this out the whole world changed, and then the internet got invented and every kind of porn was everywhere for free, so the whole thing kind of became a moot point. Yeah, sure, it's dirty and pointless and degrading, but it's also free speech, so there's no going back to Puritan standards now. 

Anyway, we're fast approaching the point where porn's going to be created by A.I., and then everyone will be able to see anything they can imagine, and umm, again I ask, is that a good thing or a bad thing?  OK, real women won't be degraded on camera, but also, porn actors will be out of jobs because CGI graphics will be made more cheaply. I just got out of the animation business because pretty soon all those movies will be made by pushing a button, and then I'm guessing x-rated movies will be next. Welcome to the future, just tell us what your fantasies are, just please, please, no Wookiee porn. 

The magazine is still around, it changed hands a few times over the years and was owned by various media companies based in other countries, then in 1998 a group of investors (including Steinem) formed Liberty Media to buy it back and run it independently without advertising. Great idea, but Liberty Media went bankrupt in 2001 (gee, I wonder why) and the magazine was donated to the Feminist Majority Foundation, which moved the editorial headquarters from NYC to L.A., and published Ms. bi-monthly, and then quarterly. Gee, this sounds like the same way they killed MAD magazine, but I'll cover that in the next Doc Block, hopefully. All magazines are struggling though, it's only a matter of time before they all fold and everything is just published online. Which is a shame, because I don't really see that much positive social change coming from Tik Tok videos or Snapchats. 

There was a weird montage of 1970's movie and TV clips used here, everything from "Young Frankenstein" to "The Incredible Hulk" was featured to prove points of some kind, or more often, no real point at all. A clip of Mary Richards complaining to Lou Grant that she's getting paid less than a male reporter, sure, that's relevant. A clip of Dolly Parton fending off her horny boss in "9 to 5", yes, that's a great way to illustrate a point about sexual harassment. But the montage of clips from "Grease", "SNL", "The Jeffersons", "Taxi" and "M*A*S*H" was extremely confusing, it didn't add up to much of anything. I've seen better 1970's TV montages twice in the last 2 weeks, in "A Disturbance in the Force" and "Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution", and both of those made a whole lot more sense. 

Directed by Cecilia Aldarondo, Alice Gu, Salima Koroma 

Also starring Alan Alda (last seen in "Remembering Gene Wilder"), Pat Carbine, Lisa Coleman, Marcia Ann Gillespie, Robin Leonardi, Suzanne Braun Levine, Robin Morgan, Jane O'Reilly, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Annie Sprinkle, Ellen Sweet, Lindsy Van Gelder, Michele Wallace, 

with archive footage of  John Amos (last seen in "Me Time"), Edward Asner (last seen in "Being Mary Tyler Moore"), Carroll O'Connor (ditto), Sally Struthers (ditto), Marlo Thomas (ditto), Dan Aykroyd (last seen in "Pee-Wee as Himself"), Jane Curtin (ditto), Bill Murray (ditto), Paulette Barnes, John Belushi (last seen in "Jim Henson: Idea Man"), Richard Bey (last seen in "Bruno"), Peter Boyle (also last seen in "Remembering Gene Wilder"), Carol Burnett (last seen in "Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution"), Jerry Falwell (ditto), Sherman Hemsley (ditto), Del Martin (ditto), Charles Nelson Reilly (ditto), Lily Tomlin (ditto), Johnny Carson (also carrying over from "Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything"), Dick Cavett (ditto), David Hartman (ditto), John Lennon (ditto), Dolly Parton (ditto), Jane Pauley (ditto), Gilda Radner (ditto), Ronald Reagan (ditto), Harry Reasoner (ditto), Gene Shalit (ditto), Dinah Shore (ditto), Shirley Chisholm, Dabney Coleman (last seen in "Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You"), Esther Rolle (ditto), Jean Stapleton (ditto), Danny DeVito (last seen in "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice"), Phil Donahue (last seen in "Stevie Van Zandt: Disciple"), Andrea Dworkin, Mike Farrell (last heard in "Superman: Brainiac Attacks"), Lou Ferrigno (last seen in "I Am Your Father"), Stephen Furst (last seen in "Belushi"), Tim Matheson (ditto), Jackie Gleason (last seen in "Tom Hanks: The Nomad"), Dorothy Pittman Hughes, Andy Kaufman (last seen in "Pee-Wee as Himself"), Jean Last, Lisa Leghorn, Gloria Leonard, Mike Lookinland (last seen in "The Towering Inferno"), Catharine A. MacKinnon, Audrey Meadows, Barbara Mikulski, Mary Tyler Moore (last seen in "Brats"), Robert Redford (ditto), Susan Myer, Olivia Newton-John (last seen in "Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary"), John Travolta (ditto), Yoko Ono (last seen in "Killing John Lennon"), Oliver Reed (last seen in "Mr. Saturday Night"), Rob Reiner (last seen in "Albert Brooks: Defending My Life"), Peter Riegert (last seen in "You've Been Trumped"), Candida Royalle, Roy Scheider (last seen in "Bob Fosse: It's Showtime!"), Phyllis Schlafly, David Ogden Stiers (last seen in "Magic"), Linda Lee Tracey, Carole S. Vance, Veronica Vera, Alice Walker, Fred Willard (last seen in "Ira & Abby"), Diane Williams, Shelley Winters (last seen in "Groucho & Cavett") 

RATING: 5 out of 10 feminist rallies

Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything

Year 17, Day 214 - 8/02/25 - Movie #5,098

BEFORE: Groucho Marx carries over again from "My Mom Jayne". That's three in a row for him, so he'll make the year-end countdown - but another comedian has taken the lead for the year overall, see if you can guess who. Hint, he's got a cameo in today's film, but you know, so does everyone else in the world, so really everyone on my list is moving up a notch today. 

THE PLOT: Exploring the pioneering career of Barbara Walters, this documentary delves into her influential role in broadcast journalism, shedding light on sexism, ambition and the challenges women face in achieving success. 

AFTER: It's an almost-all archive footage affair tonight, with a look at the long and storied career of Barbara Walters, she started writing fashion reports for the Today Show back in the 1950's, when TV was still black and white! It's a wonder that there was even sound, right? Then she had so many "firsts", first female co-host of "The Today Show", first woman to co-anchor the evening news, first, umm, hang on, let me check her Wiki page - ah, first woman to interview every U.S. President, I assume she started with Washington. JK, she started with Nixon and worked her way forward from there. (She did interview both Trump and Biden, but those were both before they were elected - anyway, it counts, I'll allow it.)

She moved from NBC to ABC, which is where they paired her with Harry Reasoner on the evening news - maybe it was because Reasoner was not eager to share his program with a woman, but they just didn't get along, so her network news career ended there. Kidding again! They just moved her to another show, this woman had more comebacks than Pee-Wee Herman! Even when her network career was essentially over, she went and create "The View", despite being old enough to retire, and stayed on TV for another 7 years!  By that point she was apparently showing signs of dementia, but the show she created, hosted by like 99% women, is still on the air. For now, anyway. They've had like 200 different hosts, so I guess every time the ratings lag they just sack a few people and keep trying with a new vibe. 

Walters was married three times, but also divorced three times, which the doc suggests is an indication that she was really married to her job, that's how driven she was. Or maybe she just couldn't get along with anyone for too long, that's also possible, some people are like that. There are different rules for the famous people, right? So if it's not totally 100% working out they just scrap it and move on to the next one.  Really, there are two ways of looking at everything. 

She also had high-profile relationships with some famous people, which doesn't really sound 100% ethical to me. One was with Alan Greenspan, so what if she had to report on some financial news that maybe showed him in a negative light? Wouldn't that be a conflict of interest if she was in a relationship with him?  She also mentions being in a relationship with John Warner, and we see her in this doc interviewing him while he was married to Elizabeth Taylor. (He was her sixth husband, she was his second wife). How is that cool?  She's interviewing him one day and then dating him the next? Even worse, the doc suggests that she may have gotten together with any number of her interview subjects, maybe even Henry Kissinger, Fidel Castro or Vladimir Putin? Well, clearly she's got a type, but HOW is that ethical at all?  Why was she never brought before H.R. and told to stop dating international dictators who are often IN the news themselves? Then there's the relationship with Roy Cohn, they apparently dated in college, but how would THAT work out, exactly? Sure, he provided some "legal assistance" to her father, who owed a lot of back taxes, but something tells me he just wasn't the marrying kind. I think Groucho Marx would have been more successful marrying Truman Capote. 

Walters was quoted in 2013 as having regrets over not having more children, she only had the one adopted daughter who famously ran away from home and got involved with drugs and random sex. And then when her daughter came back, Barbara turned their reunion into a special program on adoption, which also seems a bit over the line. A journalist's personal life is just that, and it shouldn't cross over into their work life and influence the content of the reporting. Sure, Barbara had another person interview her daughter, but it still seems rather sketchy to me. 

This doc ends with footage from a special episode of "The View", in which countless female TV journalists are brought on stage to represent her legacy, because if Barbara hadn't broken the ground that she did, maybe those female reporters would never have gotten the chance to succeed in the news medium, or at least it would have taken a bit longer for the nightly news to become gender-integrated. But I see this in another light, too - this is evidence that you should never really succeed at anything, because if you do, there will be 100 other people right behind you, desperate to take your job. Look how many bands copied the Beatles, they flooded the market with guitar groups and created an environment where just 6 years later, there was no need for the original Beatles. Sure, go ahead, retire, who cares, we've got the Rolling Stones and CCR and the Doors and the Who and Blood, Sweat & Tears. Same goes for Barbara Walters, she was so successful that Jane Pauley got a show, then Diane Sawyer got a show, then Katie Couric and Connie Chung came along and so on. Babe Ruth broke all kinds of records, but that only motivated other baseball players to break them as the years went on - so maybe it's better to not do so well in the first place. 

You can run around the world and interview every dictator you can find, but it's not going to make you happy, is it? Barbara is credited with getting Egypt's Anwar Sadat and Israel's Menachem Begin to sit down for a joint interview (take THAT, Walter Cronkite!) but years later, the Middle East is still at war, just with different people in charge. And all those other interviews where she kept invading the privacy of celebrities and making them cry, what did that accomplish, in the end?  That was all time she could have spent working on herself and her relationships, just saying. If her regret was not having more children, that was a fixable problem, but that would have required compromise at some point, that's my take-away. 

As for the film, it definitely lacks focus. That's partially because Barbara Walters interviewed SO MANY famous people over the years, and there was kind of an attempt to get footage of all the notable ones in there - but then that means we can't possibly spend more than 10 seconds on any of them, mostly it just jumps around from clip to clip so there's no depth here, just a vast flat plane of interviews that extends to the horizon. 

Directed by Jackie Jesko

Also starring Cindy Adams, Joy Behar (last seen in "Everything Is Copy"), Connie Chung (last seen in "Wham!"), Andy Cohen (last seen in "Luther: Never Too Much"), Katie Couric (ditto), Martin Clancy, Peter Gethers, Bob Iger, Lori Klein, Monica Lewinsky (last seen in "The Special Relationship"), Cynthia McFadden, Bette Midler (last seen in "Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution"), Victor Neufeld, David Sloan, Oprah Winfrey (last seen in "Pee-Wee as Himself"), Katie Nelson Thomson, Chris Vlasto, 

with archive footage of Barbara Walters (last seen in "Dark Waters"), Merv Adelson, Muhammad Ali (last seen in "Beatles '64"), Woody Allen (last seen in "Groucho & Cavett"), Truman Capote (ditto), Johnny Carson (ditto), Dick Cavett (ditto), Harry Reasoner (ditto), Dinah Shore (ditto), Frank Sinatra (ditto), Yassir Arafat, Roone Arledge, Lucille Ball (also last seen in "Pee-Wee as Himself"), Carol Channing (ditto), Cher (ditto), Whoopi Goldberg (ditto), Michael Jackson (ditto), David Letterman (ditto), Steve Martin (ditto), Eddie Murphy (ditto), Dolly Parton (ditto), Gilda Radner (ditto), Joan Rivers (ditto), Arnold Schwarzenegger (ditto), Maria Shriver (ditto), Drew Barrymore (last seen in "Scream" (2022)), Menachem Begin, Lorena Bobbitt, Edward Brooke, George H.W. Bush (last seen in "Join or Die"), Barack Obama (ditto), Donald Trump (ditto), George W. Bush (last seen in "Inside Job"), Alan Greenspan (ditto), Jimmy Carter (last seen in "Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary"), Hillary Clinton (ditto), John Lennon (ditto), Paul McCartney (ditto), Sylvester Stallone (ditto), Ringo Starr (ditto), Barbra Streisand (ditto), Rosalynn Carter, Fidel Castro (last seen in "Nyad"), John Chancellor (last seen in "ReMastered: Tricky Dick and the Man in Black"), Martin Luther King (ditto), Mark David Chapman (last seen in "Killing John Lennon"), George Harrison (ditto), John F. Kennedy (ditto), Richard Nixon (ditto), Prince Charles (last seen in "Elton John: Becoming Rocketman"), Bill Clinton (also last seen in "Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution"), Ellen DeGeneres (ditto), Judy Garland (ditto), Rosie O'Donnell (ditto), Richard Pryor (ditto), Nancy Reagan (ditto), Ronald Reagan (ditto), Diane Sawyer (ditto), John Wayne (ditto), Roy Cohn (last seen in "Where's My Roy Cohn?"), Bill Cosby, Walter Cronkite (last seen in "If I Leave Here Tomorrow: A Film About Lynyrd Skynyrd"), Bing Crosby (last seen in "A Disturbance in the Force"), Elvis Presley (ditto), Tom Cruise (last seen in "Brats"), Gene Shalit (ditto), Sam Donaldson, Kirk Douglas (last seen in "Mike Wallace Is Here"), Bill O'Reilly (ditto), Vladimir Putin (ditto), Hugh Downs (last seen in "Claydream"), Jane Pauley (ditto), Clint Eastwood (last seen in "Cry Macho"), Farrah Fawcett (last seen in "Dr. T & the Women"), Harvey Fierstein (last seen in "Bros"), Amy Fisher, Heidi Fleiss, Michael J. Fox (last seen in "Tom Hanks: The Nomad"), Paul Newman (ditto), Julia Roberts (ditto), David Frost (last seen in "Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story"), Muammar Gaddafi, Lady Gaga (last seen in "Joker: Folie a Deux"), Joe Garagiola (last seen in "Yogi Berra: It Ain't Over"), Dave Garroway (last seen in "Jim Henson: Idea Man"), Charles Gibson (ditto), Ana Gasteyer (last seen in "Will & Harper"), Tracy Morgan (ditto), Molly Shannon (ditto), Kathie Lee Gifford (last seen in "Albert Brooks: Defending My Life"), William Ginsburg, Robin Givens (last seen in "Boomerang"), John Goodman (last seen in "Speed Racer"), Lee Guber, 

Tonya Harding (last seen in "I, Tonya"), David Hartman (also carrying over from "My Mom Jayne"), Elizabeth Hasselbeck (last seen in "The Accidental President"), Goldie Hawn (last seen in "Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story"), Katharine Hepburn (last seen in "Ali & Cavett: The Tale of the Tapes"), Whitney Houston (last seen in "Luther: Never Too Much"), Diana Ross (ditto), Stevie Wonder (ditto), Kris Jenner, Peter Jennings (last seen in "Stevie Van Zandt: Disciple"), Angelina Jolie (last seen in "Faye"), Star Jones, Khloe Kardashian, Kim Kardashian (last seen in "Ocean's Eight"), Kourtney Kardashian, Grace Kelly (last seen in "Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project"), John Kennedy Jr., Ted Kennedy (last seen in "Beatles '64'), Nancy Kerrigan, Jack Kevorkian, Billie Jean King (last seen in "Elton John: Never Too Late"), Don King (last seen in "What's My Name: Muhammad Ali"), Mike Tyson (ditto), Henry Kissinger (last seen in "What the Hell Happened to Blood, Sweat & Tears?"), Hoda Kotb (last seen in "Casa Bonita, Mi Amor!"), Lisa Ling, Courtney Love (last seen in "Nothing Compares"), Joan Lunden (last seen in "Wolfgang"), Charles Manson (last seen in "The Beach Boys"), Debbie Matenopoulos, Jenny McCarthy-Wahlberg (last seen in "Scream 3"), Pat McCormick (last seen in "I Am Burt Reynolds"), Frank McGee, Erik Menendez, Lyle Menendez, Roger Moore (also last seen in "Jim Henson: Idea Man"), Willie Nelson (last seen in "The Greatest Night in Pop"), Mike Nichols (last seen in "The Kid Stays in the Picture"), Cheri Oteri (last seen in "Grown Ups 2"), Farah Pahlavi, Mohammad Resa Pahlavi, Michelle Pfeiffer (last seen in "I Could Never Be Your Woman"), Colin Powell (last seen in "Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time"), Priscilla Presley (last seen in "Elvis Presley: The Searcher"), Christopher Reeve (last seen in "Valerie"), Burt Reynolds (last seen in "The End"), Robin Roberts (last seen in "Pitch Perfect 2"), 

Anwar Sadat, Norman Schwarzkopf, Eric Sevareid, Sherri Shepherd (last seen in "Ride Along 2"), Brooke Shields (last seen in "I Am Sam Kinison"), O.J. Simpson (last seen in "The Burial"), Liz Smith, Lara Spencer (last seen in "Free Guy"), Gloria Steinem (last seen in "Billie Jean King: Portrait of a Pioneer"), Martha Stewart (last seen in "Wolfgang"), Taylor Swift (last seen in "The Giver"), Elizabeth Taylor (last seen in "Marvin Hamlisch: What He Did for Love"), Elizabeth Vargas (last seen in "Life" (2017)), Meredith Vieira (also last seen in "Everything Is Copy"), Dena Walters, Jacqueline Walters, Jackie Walters, Lou Walters, John Warner, Boris Yeltsin (also last seen in "The Special Relationship")

RATING: 5 out of 10 Daytime Emmys

My Mom Jayne

Year 17, Day 213 - 8/01/25 - Movie #5,097

BEFORE: Groucho Marx carries over from "Groucho & Cavett". And here are my links for August: Gloria Steinem, Dan Rather, Mark Cuban, Robert Wagner, Henry Mancini and Ke Huy Quan - but wait, that only gets me through to August 10 or so, after that I've got nothing scheduled. So I guess I'd better get moving on figuring out a plan for late August and September. 

THE PLOT: Explores the life and legacy of Mariska Hargitay's mother, Hollywood icon Jayne Mansfield, who tragically died in a car accident at age 34 when Mariska was only three years old. 

AFTER: This is the last-second replacement for that other doc that I removed from the chain and re-scheduled for next year's Block - really, the link was very weak and it will be a lot happier in about 12 months when it's surrounded by much closer friends. I didn't come this far to just come this far and break the chain now, almost 200 films in to the year. Once I connect the end of the Doc Block to the start of the Horror chain, I promise, you're gonna see some linking!  Sure, anybody can link films with the Beatles in them, or Elvis, that's really basic stuff. But Groucho Marx? in modern docs? I'm working on a whole different level, man. And check out that list of links coming up, you can't even imagine how many times I re-organized this year's docs if I'm using Henry Mancini, Mark Cuban and Ke Huy Quan as links!  Yet, somehow I'll look back on it at the end of the year and it will all have made perfect sense, somehow. 

That's pretty much what Mariska Hargitay was trying to do, look back on her mother's life (she has no direct memories of her mother, who died in a car accident when she was 3) and try to make some sense of it, and at the same time maybe gain some insight into her own life by looking at where she came from. First she gathered her family members together, her two brothers and older sister, plus her step-mother, and asked them to relive some memories of Jayne Mansfield. Her father, Mickey Hargitay, Jayne's 2nd husband, died in 2006 - it started simply enough, what do you remember about that time we all went on the Merv Griffin show?  And then eventually they got to remembering the night of the car accident, and yeah, maybe this ended up being some form of therapy for all of them, this was something they had never really discussed as a family. 

But at the same time, she was going through the storage unit that held a lot of her mother's keepsakes, photo albums and press clippings and such, things nobody had even looked at since 1969 or so, and she hoped to learn more about her mother that way, too.  Man, she kind of got more than she bargained with, because she ended up learning a lot more about herself, as there were family secrets that nobody even knew, let alone talked about. It turned out there was a time when Jayne and Mickey were separated, she was off making a movie in Italy and Mickey was at home with the kids, but it turned out that their parents weren't just separated by distance, they were emotionally separating as well.  But then Jayne came back to Mickey and got pregnant soon after, then Mariska was born, and nobody really checked the timeline on that very closely. 

Some things popped up that didn't seem to make sense - sometimes Mariska was called "Maria" by her siblings, or by Jayne on that talk show. Also there were very few photos of Jayne holding Mariska/Maria, as if she was avoiding her or unable to connect with her emotionally. And then 25 years after Jayne's death Mariska was invited to a fan club meeting, and the fan club president accidentally called her father "Nelson" instead of "Mickey". Who the hell was Nelson?  If only Mariska, the actress, had the same sort of detective skills as the character she plays on "Law & Order: SVU", maybe she could put all the pieces together...

Eventually, she does, or did. That fan club meeting years ago led her to find a picture of the mysterious Nelson, but she withheld this information for a long time, out of respect for her father. In retrospect maybe everything does make sense, but we really all kind of get there the long way. But this is her personal journey, she started out not really connecting with her mother's sexpot image, and that goofy voice that she had to use in movies that made her sound just like  a typical dumb blonde, when in reality she was anything but.  Jayne Mansfield could play the violin and piano and speak in four languages, but you know, it was a different time and there really was no market for sexy women who were also brainy, that would spoil the fantasy for a generation of men who just wanted to think of women as beings with hourglass figures and clothes that would barely contain them, leading to the inevitable wardrobe malfunctions. And they would appear in movies that would always depict them in bubble baths or lying down on massage tables in skimpy towels so they didn't have to work that hard to imagine them naked. Sure, sell out your entire gender to gain a few more thousand at the box office, what's the harm? 

We all reach a point in our lives where we reject what our parents do or believe in, that's only natural. And many of us go out of our way to go into a different line of business, or find a different religion, or live hundreds of miles away so we can figure out who WE are once we're no longer under their influence. Totally relatable - it's kind of a wonder that Mariska went into acting at all, but she became an entirely different kind of actress. (You have to wonder if she felt herself turning into her mother when starring in the teen T&A comedy "Welcome to 18".) But then we also reach a point in our lives when we realize our parents were not perfect, so in a way this is totally relatable. 

But then again, just the other night, Paul Reubens was saying that he couldn't/shouldn't direct the documentary about his own life, because he lacks the proper perspective, or at least that's what everyone was telling him. Mariska's probably too close to the subject matter to have the proper perspective on her mother's life or her own.  Also, we normal humans probably can't relate to trying to buy our mother's treasured piano to remember her by, only that darn Englebert Humperdinck won't sell it, not at any price. (Englebert bought the Mansfield/Hargitay mansion after Jayne's death, and Jayne's kids only got a few of her personal items each.)

This is maybe the price of fame, though - and if you're born into it, there's no guarantee of leading a "normal" life, whatever that means. So I guess if you're going to be living under the cultural microscope then you might as well lean into it, and after 25 years on an NBC crime show you can have enough pull to make a movie about your famous mother. No, really, it's OK, if you're born on third base you might as well try to score a home run. It's a more worthy cause than the films most actors direct during their summer breaks. Do I sound bitter? 

Directed by Mariska Hargitay

Also starring Mariska Hargitay, Tony Cimber, Ellen Hargitay, Mickey Hargitay Jr., Zoltan Hargitay, Peter Hermann (last seen in "All Is Bright"), Jayne Marie Mansfield, Giovanna Sardelli, Nelson Sardelli, Pietra Sardelli, Raymond Strait, 

with archive footage of Jayne Mansfield (last seen in "I Am Divine"), Mickey Hargitay, Richard Belzer (last seen in "Species II"), Sam Brody, Matt Cimber, Joan Collins (last seen in "Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed"), Tony Randall (ditto), Ellen Corby (last seen in "Support Your Local Gunfighter"), Joyce Davidson, Tom Ewell (last seen in "Little Richard: I Am Everything"), Sabin Gray, Merv Griffin (also carrying over from "Groucho & Cavett"), Jack Paar (ditto), David Hartman (last seen in "Brats"), Bob Hope (last seen in "A Disturbance in the Force"), Engelbert Humperdinck, Paul Mansfield, Marilyn Monroe (last seen in "Famous Nathan"), Edward R. Murrow (last seen in "Mike Wallace Is Here"), Herbert Palmer, Vera Peers, Edward Platt (last seen in "The Disaster Artist"), Mickey Rooney (last seen in "Sid & Judy"), Mae West (last seen in "I'm No Angel"), Henny Youngman (last seen in "Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution")

RATING: 6 out of 10 wild animals in the family petting zoo (must be a California thing)

Groucho & Cavett

Year 17, Day 212 - 7/31/25 - Movie #5,096

BEFORE: OK, end of the month, let's get to the accounting and then on with the last film for July. This makes FORTY docs in the Doc Block, with I think 9 to go. We're not going to hit 50 this year, but hey, I watched one doc back in January, so in a way, I kind of got there. 

JULY

12 Movies watched on cable (saved to DVD): I Am MLK Jr., Ali & Cavett: The Tale of the Tapes, Johnny Cash: The Redemption of an American Icon, Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind, The Legendary 1979 No Nukes Concerts - Springsteen E Street Band, Stevie Van Zandt: Disciple, The Beatles: In the Life, Killing John Lennon. Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary, Luther: Never Too Much, Pee-Wee as Himself, Groucho & Cavett

3 Movies watched on cable (not saved): The 100th: Billy Joel at Madison Square Garden, If I Leave Here Tomorrow: A Film About Lynyrd Skynyrd, God Is the Bigger Elvis

5 watched on Netflix: Trainwreck: Poop Cruise, Join or Die, Remastered: Tricky Dick and the Man in Black, Travelin' Band: Creedence Clearwater Revival at the Royal Albert Hall, Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution

1 watched on iTunes: A Disturbance in the Force
4 watched on Amazon Prime: What the Hell Happened to Blood, Sweat & Tears?, Claydream, Animation Outlaws, Dear Mr. Watterson
2 watched on Hulu: Joan Baez: I Am a Noise, Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band

2 watched on Disney+: Elton John: Never Too Late, Beatles '64

1 watched on Paramount+: Casa Bonita, Mi Amor!

1 watched on Roku: Inside Job

1 watched on a random site: I Am Sam Kinison

32 TOTAL

Update - I had to switch things up a bit, as one of my links was not good - there was just a photo of Frank Sinatra in a certain film, and that's not much to go on, I'm better than that, it's a really weak link. But I did make it ALMOST all the way through the chain before monkeying with it - what I'm going to do is table that film for next year, and I think I already see what else it can connect, and since there are so many redundancies built into this year's chain, when I remove it the chain's just going to close up around where it was, and I'm dropping in one other film that I JUST recorded to fill tomorrow's slot - so you'll never even notice something happened. 

Now Soupy Sales carries over from "Pee-Wee as Himself", as there was archive footage yesterday of that classic comedian implying that Pee-Wee was "a pervert", but Soupy's kids show sometimes came close to being dirty, so that's really hypocritical of him. I met Soupy one day when my Laika boss and I were walking down the street, and there was Soupy, just strolling down Third Ave., possibly coming from Sarge's Deli. My boss had no filter, so he just started chatting with Soupy, I'm guessing maybe Mr. Sales lived somewhere in that part of town? Not sure, it was just one of those weird things that happens. 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Ali & Cavett: The Tale of the Tapes" (Movie #5,069)

THE PLOT: The friendship between Emmy Award-winning TV personality Dick Cavett and comedian Groucho Marx, featuring talk-show footage and other rare recordings. 

AFTER: We're back to the late 60's and early 70's, which was a fertile time for docs about rock bands who were trying to follow in the path carved out by the Beatles. This film uses footage from a similar time in TV land, when talk-show hosts were trying to follow in the path carved out by Ed Sullivan, Jack Paar and Steve Allen. Jack Paar was retiring from "The Tonight Show" and some young buck named Johnny Carson was going to take over as host, only he was under contract somewhere else and they had to wait a few months before he could be the new host of the show, so they used other celebrities as hosts, and one of them was Groucho Marx. Dick Cavett was a young writer on that talk show, so he got to write some jokes for one of his comedy idols. 

The real first meeting, however, might have been when Cavett and Woody Allen attended the funeral for the playwright George Kaufman, and they saw Groucho in attendance. Well, in those days people went to funerals all the time, because the internet hadn't been invented yet so there wasn't much else to do. I'm kidding, really it was a different time, and people felt that if you didn't go to other people's funerals, then they wouldn't come to yours - a philosophy I also believe in and quote frequently. That's actually a phrase credited to Yogi Berra, but it also sounds like something that Groucho Marx would have said. Groucho's quips tended to be a bit more mean-spirited, like saying "This has been a great evening, let's do it again soon, only next time, leave me out of it." 

There's footage here from the Tonight Show, and then some Kraft Comedy Special, and then down the road a bit, Dick Cavett got his own talk-show and had Groucho on as a frequent guest. Often Groucho would sing a song, either from one of the Marx Brothers movies, like "Lydia the Tattooed Lady" or "Hello, I Must Be Going". Other times it was a forgotten vaudeville classic song, or one that should have been forgotten, like "Father's Day" or "Show Me a Rose". Then there was this weird Irving Berlin song called "Stay Down Here Where You Belong" which was sung from the P.O.V. of the devil, telling his son to not leave the underworld and go visit the humans, because they're so evil and war-happy that Hell is really a nicer place. Wow, I can't tell if that's a dig at the Vietnam War or humanity in general, but yeah, that's pretty dark. 

Groucho also told stories from the old days, and so it seems Chico was quite the romancer, he slept with more ladies in two days than the other Marx Brothers combined did in two weeks. These guys were like the Beatles of their time, they really only kept making movies so they could get laid. But Chico also was a terrible gambler, so really he spent his money almost faster then he could earn it, while Groucho saved his money, that's why he needed to get paid for his talk-show appearances, or so he said. Gummo was also in a bad way, because he wouldn't go on Cavett's show and give everyone the real dirt on Groucho unless they paid him $5K, and in those days, that was kind of almost a lot of money. 

But you know, Groucho did all right, he brought his third wife, Eden Hartford, to one taping and also his daughter Melinda from his second marriage, and you know, they looked like they might be about the same age. That seems sort of Donald Trump-like to me, always having a younger potential wife waiting in the wings. Then by the next appearance on Cavett's show, Groucho was divorced from Eden and he brought along his new companion, Erin Fleming. She claimed to be his "secretary" but really she was an aspiring actress, and if sleeping with Groucho would get you roles in a Woody Allen movie, well, that's kind of what people did back then. It was a different time (and man, have I been saying that a LOT during this Doc Block...)

But then you can really see in his last appearance on Cavett's show that Groucho wasn't really on the top of his game, he wasn't as quick with the snappy comebacks, and he wasn't up to singing a song (so the doc drops in rare footage of Groucho performing in a TV production of "The Mikado" instead, you know, to drive home the point that he really loved Gilbert & Sullivan (and sometimes both in the same night, if you know what I mean...).  The weirdest moment shown here is probably Groucho essentially proposing on air to Truman Capote, as some kind of takedown of the tax break that a U.S. citizen gets for being married. Possibly Groucho was just upset because he was single at the time and didn't think it was fair that he was paying more income tax as a result. It's doubtful that he really wanted to marry a gay man, but he kind of implies that he knows Mr. Capote is gay and he wouldn't want to be intimate with him, but still willing to marry him to prove a point. But legal gay marriage was still years away in the future, so it's tough to see where Groucho was going with this line of thought. 

This was kind of assembled with purpose, it wasn't just thrown together, but I think it became very sad and even ironic over time, like there's footage of Cavett and Woody Allen complaining that their mutual friend Groucho didn't get a big enough obituary in the press, and both realizing that no matter what anyone accomplishes in the film and TV world, they're still going to get old and they're still going to die. Well, duh, and now Cavett and Allen are both very old, and as we know Woody is 90 years old and married to someone who used to be his step-daughter of sorts, and with the recent wave of celebrity deaths we've had lately, all I can say is that karma is a real bitch, Woody. 

Speaking of that, I totalled up the status of my doc subjects for the year so far, to determine how many are still alive and how many are deceased. I was running at about 50-50 for most of the block, it was 13 each (the Beatles are a "push", since 2 of them are still alive) but then this week of course I hit a streak with Sam Kinison, Paul Reubens and now Groucho Marx. So the dead subjects are ahead right now, 16 to 13. I think I can maybe even the score here and get a bit more positive in the next week, and watch a few more films about living people like Dan Rather and Martha Stewart.  But also right now I've got to figure out where I'm going after the Doc Block ends. 

Directed by Robert S. Bader (director of "Ali & Cavett: The Tale of the Tapes")

Also starring Dick Cavett (last seen in "Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind")

with archive footage of Groucho Marx (last seen in "Marvin Hamlisch: What He Did for Love"), Woody Allen (last seen in "Ali & Cavett: The Tale of the Tapes"), Rona Barrett (last seen in "Liza; A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story"), Dinah Shore (ditto), Irving Berlin, George Burns (last seen in "Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution"), Johnny Carson (ditto), Frank Buxton, Truman Capote (last seen in "Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed"), Erin Fleming (last seen in "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex *But Were Afraid to Ask"), Merv Griffin (last seen in "Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary"), Eden Hartford, George Jessel (last seen in "Sid & Judy"), Danny Kaye (ditto), Jack Paar (ditto), Dean Martin (last seen in "Stevie Van Zandt: Disciple"), Chico Marx (last seen in "Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time"), Harpo Marx (ditto), Zeppo Marx (ditto), Gummo Marx, Phyllis Newman (last seen in "The Human Stain"), Harry Reasoner (last seen in "Mike Wallace Is Here"), Dan Rowan (last seen in "Tiny Tim: King for a Day"), Harry Ruby, Rosalind Russell (last seen in "Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind"), Marlene Schmidt, Frank Sinatra (last seen in "The Beatles: In the Life"), Lewis J. Stadlin, Ben Taggart, Shelley Winters (last seen in "The Sparks Brothers")

RATING: 4 out of 10 bad hats worn to cover up an even worse toupee

Pee-Wee as Himself

Year 17, Day 211 - 7/30/25 - Movie #5,095

BEFORE: Well, this was the secret agenda all along - to land this film on the 2nd anniversary of the death of Paul Reubens, aka Pee-Wee Herman. It's still hard to believe he's gone, because it kind of feels like he was ready for his fourth or fifth comeback, and really that loss left a giant man-child sized hole in the entertainment industry that nobody seems willing or able to replace. 

Tommy Chong carries over from "I Am Sam Kinison". You know, I almost forgot that one of Pee-Wee Herman's first appearances was in the 2nd Cheech & Chong movie - but that connection is there and OK, Sam Kinison carries over too, but let's not give him any more attention.

And yes, I know that this is in 2 episodes on HBO, which technically makes this a TV series rather than a movie, but I have made exceptions for this before, the 2-part docs about Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, Muhammad Ali and others - this is an exception only reserved for the greatest, the top dogs of entertainment, and in my world Mr. Reubens qualifies. I'm going to watch both eps in one big chunk today, as long as I have enough coffee to make it through, and I'll probably make an exception next year for Billy Joel, as the "And So It Goes" 2-part doc arrived too late to qualify for my Doc Block this year. 

On the brighter side, there's an impossibly rare DOUBLE Birthday SHOUT-out today, because Laurence Fishburne (Cowboy Curtis) is turning 64 and Arnold Schwarzenegger (seen on a talk-show with Pee-Wee) is turning 78 today. I knew with all these docs with giant casts that I'd have to land some film on somebody's birthday, the odds made it incredibly likely, it just took over a month, that's all. 

THE PLOT: A kaleidoscopic portrait in two parts that traces the life of an imaginative artist. 

AFTER: I worked for over 30 years in production in NYC, so you might imagine I've got a Pee-Wee Herman story, and you'd be right. They may not be great stories, but I do have them. I went to see the 2011 Broadway revival of his original Pee-Wee stage pilot, the show that pre-dated "Pee-Wee's Playhouse" and introduced the character to the right people. My boss at the Laika job had worked in commercial production and knew some of the people who had worked on the first season of his show, which was recorded at Broadcast Arts, so they came to the same show with us. A few years before that, I was working for a pair of directors who was married but in the process of separating, and they paid me to go to Broadcast Arts and load up some sets that were used to make some bumpers for the Disney Channel to take them to storage. I got the feeling that technically they didn't OWN these sets, but they were trying to ensure that if there was more use for them, only they would know where they were and thus Disney would have to hire them again. This might be standard practice, but it's possible that I was involved in a heist of sorts, and honestly I don't really want to to know if DisneyCorp ever needed those sets or if they just got forgotten in a storage unit - I turned over the paperwork from the storage company and the keys and I was out. But while we were loading sets at Broadcast Arts, there were Pee-Wee Herman photos all over that place, you could tell they were enormously proud of their work. 

See, I told you it was a lame story, I never met Pee-Wee or Paul face-to-face, just saw his show on Broadway once. Also I never formally met anyone in this doc's ginormous cast list, except I did see both David Letterman and Gilbert Gottfried out in nature on separate occasions. What I remember about "Pee-Wee's Playhouse" is that it started airing the year I was a freshman at NYU, and my roommates and I would watch it on my crappy black and white TV, we had no internet back then, you couldn't watch TV on your phone, sure there was a color TV in the common room but good luck getting other people to change the channel to what YOU wanted to watch. Cable in the dorm rooms was also out of the question. But we picked up on the jokes for adults right away and this was probably the first thing I ever watched with gay subtext to it. So Paul Reubens coming out posthumously in this doc is no big deal to me, really, I've known for a long time. You can't have Pee-Wee and Cowboy Curtis teaching each other to dance, and have one say to the other, "OK, I showed you mine, now you show me yours!" 

Of course, we didn't know the actor's back-story, back then nobody did. Now today I learn exactly why, Paul Reubens intentionally created this persona to perform as, and he subverted his entire personality behind it, more or less. I wonder if Paul Reubens and David Johanssen knew each other, maybe they'd get along because they had so much in common. Maybe only another similar split-personality showbiz person would understand - if they met, would they continue to act like Pee-Wee and Buster Poindexter, or would they immediately just drop the facades so Paul and David could be friends?  I guess maybe the difference was that Johanssen created his character to sell albums, and Reubens created Pee-Wee to be more like conceptual art, does that make sense?  Of course he found a way to turn the character into a franchise, with a TV series, four movies and a Christmas special - so it's perhaps the greatest example of a person successfully re-inventing themself for business reasons. 

Of course, this was done out of fear, if anyone found out about the man behind the bow-tie, Reubens was afraid that he wouldn't be able to work again. Back then they certainly didn't give children's TV shows to openly gay men - it was a different time. But in the process of creating this character, Paul also decided that he had to break up with the man he was in love with and living with so that he could focus on his new career. I'm not sure I follow the logic exactly, but apparently he was so comfortable in the relationship that he just wanted to stay home and "play house", and therefore not working on becoming famous. But shouldn't someone be able to have it all, to have a comforting home life and solid relationship and still be able to go out into the world and go on auditions?  Why couldn't he balance his career and personal life? Other people seem to manage that just fine, at least some of the time.  I guess in order to succeed, he had to feel driven and focused and while in the relationship, he just couldn't do that? 

Then of course came the scandals, one where he was accused of exposing himself in a porn theater and the second when his art collection was confiscated for suspicion of child porn possession. He pleaded "no contest" after the first incident, but fought a legal battle during the second, and eventually came out on top and got his art collection back. Yeah, OK, really it was a bunch of male model magazines from the 1950's and 60's and you have to figure only a certain type of person would collect those - but that's not illegal, is it? Then for every scandal involving Pee-Wee there would be another comeback for Paul Reubens, like playing a vampire in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and a superhero in "Mystery Men".  I don't think anybody else in Hollywood ever had so many second chances as he did. Hey, I was there for it, it was kind of cool to see him re-invent himself every few years and try new things. 

But we didn't know, not until now, what kind of toll that took on the man - even when he was being interviewed for this documentary about himself, he was often guarded or mistrustful, or concerned that he wouldn't be in control of the narrative, and perhaps the director would take his story in some weird direction that he couldn't foresee. But the guy had been through a lot over the years, people saying this and that about him in newspapers and magazines, so I don't blame him for being skeptical. Then maybe he felt that he revealed a bit too much about the man behind Pee-Wee, because at one point he broke off communications with the director, and never really finished the interview process, so the director and the audience are kind of forced to draw their own conclusions at the end, maybe about what this person's life was really all about. Hey, they got him to record 40 hours worth of interviews, so really, at that point, how much more do you need to make the movie?  

Reubens had not told anyone that he had been fighting cancer for six years, so yeah, that would probably make someone who was guarded about giving out personal information perhaps a bit more receptive to allowing a doc filmmaker to have some control of the narrative. But, at the same time, it's clear he still wasn't totally OK with it. But then again, if he knew the film might not be completed while he was alive, then what difference does it make? So I think I get it, I see why he cut off the interview process when he did. Well, I'm glad I took the time two years later to really learn all about him, it didn't take me 10 years like it did with Michael Jackson. Thanks for the laughs, Pee-Wee, or Paul or whoever you ended up feeling most comfortable being. 

From his childhood in Oneonta, NY and Sarasota, FL (which was still kind of a circus town at the time) through his college years at Cal Arts (where he performed in student films, sometimes in drag) and his years with the Groundlings, his failed audition for SNL and then successfully appearing on that same show after creating the Pee-Wee character, the successful movie that led to his Saturday morning kids TV show, the disappointing sequel (which was a personal callback to that circus town), then the scandals and the comebacks and the cameos and finally the return of Pee-Wee in 2016, this one just about covers it all. Pour yourself some more coffee and just go on the journey as Paul takes you through his long and winding career. 

Directed by Matt Wolf (director of "Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project")

Also starring Paul Reubens (last seen in "Little Richard: I Am Everything"), Richard Gilbert Abramson, Judd Apatow (last seen in "Albert Brooks: Defending My Life"), David Arquette (last seen in "Valerie"), Blair Berk, Allison Berry, Tim Burton (last seen in "Animation Outlaws"), Prudence Fenton, Laurence Fishburne (last seen in "Deep Cover"), Gregg Homer, Natasha Lyonne (last seen in "The United States vs. Billie Holiday"), Debi Mazar (last seen in "Malcolm X"), S. Epatha Merkerson (last seen in "Black Snake Moan"), Warren R. Montgomery, John Moody (last seen in "Pee-Wee's Big Holiday"), Alison Mork, Laraine Newman (last heard in "Despicable Me 4"), Tracy Newman, Kelly Bush Novak, Gary Panter, Cassandra Peterson (last seen in "Stroker Ace"), Ann Prim, Abby Rubenfeld, Lynne Marie Stewart (last seen in "Other People"), Helen Whelchel, Wayne White, Matt Wolf

with archive footage of Desi Arnaz (last seen in "Albert Brooks: Defending My Life"), Ben Stiller (ditto), Frankie Avalon (last seen in "The Beach Boys"), Annette Funicello (ditto), Dan Aykroyd (last seen in "Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire"), Bill Murray (ditto), Hank Azaria (last seen in "Great Expectations"), Lucille Ball (last seen in "Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution"), David Bowie (ditto), Cher (ditto), Kris Kristofferson (ditto), David Letterman (ditto), Eddie Murphy (ditto), Conan O'Brien (ditto), Chuck Barris (last seen in "The Wrecking Crew!"), Stephanie Beatriz (last heard in "The Bob's Burgers Movie"), Pat Benatar (last seen in "Stevie Van Zandt; Disciple"), Johnny Depp (ditto), Candice Bergen (last seen in "Belushi"), Dolly Parton (ditto), James Brolin (last seen in "Love, Wedding, Marriage"), Dana Carvey (last seen in "Will & Harper"), Carol Channing (last seen in "Marvin Hamlisch: What He Did for Love"), Gilda Radner (ditto), Charo (last seen in "Lucy and Desi"), Chevy Chase (last seen in "Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary"), Mark J. Goodman (ditto), Justin Timberlake (ditto), Howard Stern (ditto), Kevin Corcoran (last seen in "Walt: The Man Behind the Myth"), Courteney Cox (last seen in "Scream VI"), Penelope Cruz (last seen in "The 355"), Jane Curtin (last seen in "Queen Bees"), Joan Cusack (last seen in "Unicorn Store"), Elizabeth Daily (last heard in "Sing 2"), Rocky Delgadillo, the Del Rubio Triplets, Robert Downey Jr. (last seen in "Brats"), Anthony Michael Hall (ditto), Nora Dunn (last seen in "Runaway Jury"), Shelley Duvall (last seen in "An Accidental Studio"), Roger Ebert (last seen in "A Disturbance in the Force"), Gilbert Gottfried (ditto), Morgan Fairchild (last seen in "The Slammin' Salmon"), Aaron Fletcher, Zsa Zsa Gabor (last seen in "A Very Brady Sequel"), Whoopi Goldberg (last seen in "Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story"), Arnold Schwarzenegger (ditto), Valeria Golino (last seen in "Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her"), Steve Garvey, Elliott Gould (last seen in "The Big Hit"), Jackée Harry, Mary Hart, Phil Hartman (last seen in "I Am Chris Farley"), Jan Hooks (ditto), Victoria Jackson (ditto), Jon Lovitz (ditto), David Hasselhoff (last seen in "The New Guy"), Ric Heitzman, Audrey Hepburn (last seen in "Being Mary Tyler Moore"), Howard Hesseman (last seen in "Valerie"), Mark Holton (last seen in "Teen Wolf"), Michael Jackson (last seen in "Claydream"), Arte Johnson (last seen in "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind"), Jaye P. Morgan (ditto), Magic Johnson, Grace Jones (last seen in "Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story"), Andy Warhol (ditto), Carol Kane (last heard in "Migration"), Andy Kaufman (last seen in "George Carlin's American Dream"), Soupy Sales (ditto), Dawna Kaufmann, Robert Keeshan (last seen in "Being Elmo: A Puppeteer's Journey"), Suzanne Kent, Sam Kinison (also carrying over from "I Am Sam Kinison"), Jay Leno (ditto), Steve Martin (ditto), Robin Williams (ditto), Randal Kleiser, Oscar Konyot, Martin Landau (last seen in "City of Ember"), Monte Landis, k.d. lang (last seen in "The Black Dahlia"), Jim Lange, Lee Leonard, Harvey Levin (last seen in "Leaving Neverland"), Shari Lewis, Little Richard (last seen in "Beatles '64"), William H. Macy (last seen in "Murder in the First"), Joe Manganiello (last seen in "Nonnas"), Cheech Marin (last seen in "Champions"), William Marshall, Edie McClurg (last seen in "Eating Raoul"), John Paragon (ditto), Bill McEuen, George "Spanky" McFarland, George McGrath, Dennis Miller (last seen in "Kevin Hart & Chris Rock: Headliners Only"), Hayley Mills, Kevin Nealon (last seen in "Daddy Day Care"), Alice Nunn, Stone Phillips, Joe Regalbuto (last seen in "Lassiter"), Joan Rivers (last seen in "Luther: Never Too Much"), Maria Shriver (ditto), John Tesh (ditto), Oprah Winfrey (ditto), Judy Rubenfeld, Milton Rubenfeld, Paul Rust (last seen in "Queenpins"), Katey Sagal (last seen in "Bleed for This"), Diane L. Salinger (also last seen in "Pee-Wee's Big Holiday"), Alia Shawkat (last seen in "Being the Ricardos"), Gene Siskel (last seen in "Faye"), Buffalo Bob Smith, Jimmy Smits (last seen in "In the Heights"), Ethan Suplee (last seen in "Babylon"), Carl “Alfalfa” Switzer, Fred Travalena, Vic Trevino, Danitra Vance (last seen in "The War of the Roses") and the voice of Dan Rather (last seen in "Remastered: Tricky Dick and the Man in Black")

RATING: 8 out of 10 appearances on "The Gong Show" as various characters.

I Am Sam Kinison

Year 17, Day 210 - 7/29/25 - Movie #5,094

BEFORE: I'm recovering from the "Naked Gun" premiere - I was there until after midnight and then when everything from the outdoor set-up was taken away by the crew, and the porters were finished cleaning the theater, I could lock up. Even with a big crew from Paramount doing most of the hard work, we still had like 10 house managers working and 7 ushers, and I was the last man standing after everyone else tapped out. The closest subway was shut down so I had to walk 9 blocks down to 14th St. and it was still very hot outside - I was carrying a box with some donuts and I had to stop just because I was sweating so much, and sweat was in my eyes and I couldn't see anything. Got home at 1 am and typed up my last post and then I think I fell asleep at my desk. Woke up at 3 am and just went to bed with no blanket and the A/C running, it was the only way to be moderately comfortable. 

Sam Kinison carries over from "Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution". I hate to allow someone quoted in that film as saying something very homophobic to carry over, but I'm afraid that's where I find the linking going today. Not my fault. 

THE PLOT: Explores the life and legacy of shock comic Sam Kinison, a former Pentecostal preacher who repurposed his pulpit-honed chops for the brazen rock 'n roll world of MTV-era comedy. 

AFTER: Just a couple days left in July right now, and I don't want to jinx things, but the chain has held up so far, I didn't have to make any changes because somebody didn't appear in a doc they were listed as being in. So that's good, and I can now block out August and think about my return to fiction films, I can't wait. I've also got "Superman" to look forward to, and if I can squeeze in "Fantastic Four: First Steps" some time before the summer is over, I think I could find a place for it somewhere in the horror chain, yes I know it's not a horror film, but I've been known to put comic-book films in there to help connect horror movies. We'll see, it's still a rough plan and I still have a couple weeks before I need to worry about how I'm going to get from September 1 to October 1. Let me just clear as many docs as I can before setting to work on that. 

The Doc Block led me right to this one, sandwiched neatly between two other docs with Sam Kinison in them. It sounds a little crazy but to me the only "must watch" docs this year, at least when I was putting the chain together, were the one about Christopher Reeve, "Join or Die", the Billy Joel 100th MSG concert, the one about Blood, Sweat & Tears, "Yacht Rock" and "Casa Bonita Mi Amor!". OK, and the one about the Star Wars Holiday Special and tomorrow's film. Everything else this year so far was kind of dropped in as mortar, or connective tissue if you will, to make a chain with THOSE 8 films work. But then of course there were opportunities to clear so many other things off the list, and I think when all is said and done this summer, there will only be like FIVE docs left that I have on DVD or the DVR, everything else is available on streaming of course, but I try to prioritize the ones I have copies of, because that just clears up more slots for me to record more films. So I'll spend the next 10 months or so building the doc list back up again, just like I build the romance and horror and Christmas lists up ex post facto.

There's not much NEW here that I could learn about Sam Kinison, if there was it's probably facts about him that I probably could have guessed - he had a drinking problem, he had a drug problem, he had anger issues that he was working through that turned his comedy sets into bouts of scream therapy. And he was considered the "heavy metal" comic, not just because he screamed so much, but he also could play guitar and he hung out with rockers like Ted Nugent and Billy Idol and a guy from Quiet Riot. He rose to fame in the 1980's, like around the same time MTV popularized all those videos with scantily-clad women dancing in those factories that just make sparks all the time. But he didn't get there overnight, he started out as a preacher, and when you think about a sermon, it's kind of just like a stand-up act, just with fewer jokes. A preacher has to follow some of the same rules, like make it short but not too short, keep it clean and by all means, make sure it's entertaining, at least by church standards. 

He came from a family of preachers, but you know, when your father is in the family business, sometimes the LAST thing you want to do for a living is that, whatever it is. I sure didn't want to take over my father's trucking business, and that was 100% the right call. And when you know what you DON'T want to do with your life, it's a great opportunity to look deep inside and think about what you DO want to do. So that's when Sam made it out to L.A. and tried out at the Comedy Store, but he didn't impress the owner, Mitzi Shore, enough so he took a job as the doorman and worked that for five years, and maybe that was a great opportunity to watch other comics and figure out what worked and what didn't work. She moved him to the Westwood branch of the club, and after he knocked out a mugger (or perhaps upset comedian) who was threatening her, he ascended to manager - this meant that he had to lock up every night, but when times were tough he would only pretend to do that and go home, actually he was sleeping in the club so he could spend his rent money on more drugs. 

(Westwood is a suburb of L.A. that must be known for comedy, as a kid I listened to the Dr. Demento syndicated radio show that was broadcast from Westwood, CA and I happened to live in Westwood, MA. For a brief time I thought that the good doctor was broadcasting somewhere in my home town, then I figured out there was another town in the U.S. with the same name.)

Kinison hit big after Rodney Dangerfield came to visit the Comedy Store, and convinced him to appear on his HBO "Young Comedians" showcase for younger talent. This was right about the time that Kinison started to scream in his act, and touch on subjects that were maybe a little taboo, but they were things he pretended to be angry about, and the screaming just brought the point home. (He and Stephen Wright perhaps best exemplify the opposite ends of the high-energy/low-energy spectrum.) Everyone remembers the routine about him screaming at the poor people starving in Africa by yelling at them to move out of the desert and go WHERE THE FOOD IS!  And if you never saw it, don't worry, nearly everyone being interviewed here did, and repeats it word for word. Jeez, guys, it's called editing, we don't need to hear the same joke eight times, do we? 

Rodney also got Sam a role in his comedy "Back to School", as a professor who, you guessed it, yells at all of his students.  But I guess the makers of this doc couldn't afford the rights to that footage - still, it was a big stepping stone in Kinison's career. He also did some TV work and appeared in a few music videos with Bon Jovi and Motley Crue, but as far as movies were concerned, he was really only in one. This doc reveals that he was cast in a movie called "Alta" and flew to the shoot without ever reading the script, even though all of his friends and his manager/brother had, and tried to convince him the film was a bomb. Sam figured that once he got to the shoot, he'd have some time to make some rewrites and suggestions and he did, after partying for a week in various NYC hotel rooms that all ejected him, however the filmmakers were not open to rewrites, especially since they hadn't even asked him to do that. So that was kind of the end of his film career, I guess. Sometimes we need to learn that the world doesn't work the way we think it does. 

I'm not going to say Kinison didn't have a lot to be mad about - there was an accident when he was three years old, he was hit by a truck and suffered epilepsy after, due to brain damage. Then being raised in a very religious family, well, jeez, I'd scream about that too if I could, all those years my parents made sure I was fed the most ridiculous ideas about how the world works. When I was told that the communion wafer and the wine "become" the body and blood of Christ, I thought, "Wow, that's a very powerful metaphor!" but it's so much worse that they actually believe that the bread and wine actually turn into Jesus's actual body and actual blood, that's when I knew they were all actually nuts. Then there was his feelings about women after he got divorced, you know, very relatable, some people never recover from something like that. 

But when someone with anger issues and an addictive personality suddenly makes it big and gets paid a ton of money for successful comedy albums and arena shows, well come on, it's recipe for disaster, we've seen that again and again here in the Doc Block. Plus remember it was the 1980's so the only people who got rich and stayed rich were the drug dealers. As Tommy Chong points out here, it was the time when cocaine took over the industry and ruined a lot of lives, like you can do a bunch of coke and feel like you can take over the world, but after just a few weeks it also starts taking a toll on your body.  And for someone who screamed regularly as part of his routine, drugs plus screaming plus being overweight is a recipe for disaster, he was headed for either a heart attack or an embolism. Then he started stumbling his way through shows and forgetting his own jokes, so his brother/manager forced some kind of intervention. 

Maybe it was his brother taking the hit for all the weed that Kinison had packed in his luggage when the DEA busted them at the airport, maybe that was the final straw. His brother went to rehab for him, and Bill didn't even drink - also that's not how rehab is supposed to work. Eventually Sam got himself clean and married a woman who appeared on stage with him often, however six days after the marriage he died in a car crash on his way to a gig in Laughlin, NV. A more cynical man would use this as evidence against getting married, and maybe this was a very ironic death, but in some way, aren't they all? Who's to say that if he'd stayed on the path of drinking and drugging that he would have lived any longer than he did? Nobody really knows. Let's not forget that at one point, his AA sponsor was the infamous Ozzy Osbourne. RIP Ozzy. 

Really, the whole industry changed since Kinison died in 1992 - nobody could pull off the routines he did back then today, they'd be picketed and boycotted and eventually cancelled. Still, somehow he was considered a ground breaking comic, because he tended to say the quiet part out loud, very loud. 

Directed by Adrian Buitenhuis (Director of "I Am Burt Reynolds")

Also starring Dan Barton, Bill Burr (last seen in "Old Dads"), Tommy Chong (last seen in "George Carlin's American Dream"), Lue Deck, Steve Epstein, Corey Feldman (last seen "The 'Burbs"), Joey Gaynor, Argus Hamilton, Ron Jeremy, Bill Kinison, Sherry Kinison, Jay Leno (last seen in "A Disturbance in the Force"), Felicia Michaels, Ted Nugent (last seen in "Tapeheads"), Kelly Coffield Park (last seen in "The Beaver"), Joe Rogan (last seen in "Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind"), Bob Saget (last seen in "I Am Chris Farley"), Rudy Sarzo (last seen in "God Bless Ozzy Osbourne"), Charlie Sheen (last seen in "A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III"), Jimmy Shubert, Judy Tenuta (last seen in "The Polka King")

with archive footage of George Carlin (last seen in "Albert Brooks: Defending My Life"), Eric Clapton (last seen in "Johnny Cash: The Redemption of an American Icon"), Larry King (ditto), Phil Collins (last seen in "Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary"), Rodney Dangerfield (last seen in "Robert Klein Still Can't Stop His Leg"), Billy Idol (last seen in "The Sparks Brothers"), Kevin Kinison, Tommy Lee (last seen in "The Dirt"), Heather Locklear (last seen in "Looney Tunes: Back in Action"), Marc Maron (last seen in "To Leslie"), Steve Martin (last seen in "Belushi"), Ozzy Osbourne (last heard in "Trolls World Tour"), Garry Shandling (last seen in "Luther: Never Too Much"), Brooke Shields (last seen in "Brats"), Mitzi Shore, Dee Snider (last seen in "Mr. Saturday Night"), Robin Williams (also carrying over from "Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution")

RATING: 5 out of 10 three-day parties with Charlie Sheen and Corey Feldman