Before Osama bin Laden, before Chemical Ali…there was: Ali Assa Seen.

A member of the terrorist organization known as CHUMP (Criminals Headquartered and Underworld Master Planners), Ali Assa Seen had joined forces with Baron von Butcher, Dr. Strangemind, Dragon Lady, Wang Fu and other foreign bullies bent on world domination.

Thankfully, the nice people of the planet had on their side APE (Agency to Prevent Evil). Headed by Commander Darwin, APE’s top agents were the seductive Mata Hairi and that spy of all spies, Lancelot Link.

Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp was a live-action filmed Saturday morning series that initially aired from September 12, 1970, to September 2, 1972 on ABC.

And while the show may have been created by Mike Marmer and Stan Burns, two human writers from the spy spoof Get Smart! the show’s cast was made up entirely of chimpanzees.

If you like your espionage thrillers acted out by monkeys, have at it.

The series is available from Amazon.

Here’s the Show Open…

Looks like the folks at Warner Bros. are serious about taking the S.S. Minnow out for another three-hour tour. Or, at least, a two-hour one. Yes, the word out of Burbank is that the next iconic TV series to make it to the big screen will be Gilligan’s Island.

The comedy series, which debuted on CBS in 1964, only lasted three seasons but its 98 half-hour episodes have been running ever since. A mix of the silly and the surreal, Gilligan’s Island told story of seven castaways who were caught in a storm on a cruise out of Hawaii and wound up stranded on an “uncharted desert isle” somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.

The castaways included (from left to right in the photo above) The Professor (Russell Johnson), Kansas farm girl Mary Ann (Dawn Wells), Minnow First Mate Gilligan, Hollywood actress Ginger Grant (Tina Louise), millionaire Thurston Howell III (Jim Backus) and his wife, Lovey (Natalie Schafer) and the Minnow’s captain, The Skipper (Alan Hale, Jr.)

Gilligan’s Island’s creator, Sherwood Schwartz, will executive produce the big screen comedy, with Charles Roven (Get Smart) and Richard Suckle (Yours, Mine and Ours) joining him as producers. No writer or director has been announced.

And, of course, no cast. That means it’s time to play…Cyclops Central’s Cast Gilligan’s Castaways Game! The rules are simple: Beat the house. My cast list is below. If you think you can do better, email me your list. I’ll go through all the entries and the best single list (in my subjective opinion) will win something cool and TV-related from the Cyclops Central Prize Closet. In the case of a tie, you’ll be asked to guess which three of the seven actors listed below that I’ve worked with. You’ve got ten days (until March 14, 2010) to get your list in.

Here we go…

WITH GILLIGAN: The Minnow’s First Mate was sincere, eager to please, inept and paranoid. From his work on Rushmore to Bored to Death, those sound like the core attributes of the Jason Schwartzman character catalog.

THE SKIPPER, TOO: Big, blustery and a bit of a bully. That could describe The Skipper and…Tony Soprano. I think James Gandolfini has the range to pull off this role and make it his own.

THE MILLIONAIRE AND HIS WIFE: Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen. He’s a few years older than Jim Backus and she’s a few years younger than Natalie Schaeffer when they took the roles of Thurston Howell III and Lovey, but it hardly matters. The real-life husband and wife are classy and funny and would bring a rich dimension to the demented rich.

THE MOVIE STAR: The character of Ginger Grant recalled Cold War-era sex symbol Marilyn Monroe. Christina Hendricks plays the similarly sexy and symbolic Joan Holloway on the Cold War-era Mad Men. Let’s get this one done, people!

THE PROFESSOR: He’s brilliant, brooding and clueless to the fact that he’s the best-looking guy trapped on a island with a couple of real hotties like Ginger and Mary Ann. This role plays to Paul Rudd’s strength: Being funny without doing much of anything.

AND MARY ANN:  Born in the Ukraine and moving to Los Angeles when she was seven, Mila Kunis knows what it’s like to be a stranger in a strange land. That make Mila the perfect choice to play the most famous farm girl since Dorothy. That, and adorableness.

And there it is, the Gilligan’s Island cast list to beat. Have at it and good luck.

He himself refers to it as “that period”.

William Shatner’s first wife, Gloria, was filing for divorce. NBC was unhappy with Star Trek’s ratings and cancellation loomed. Other acting jobs were not forthcoming. And the former Captain of the starship Enterprise was now living in a truck bed camper in the San Fernando Valley, trying to keep some money coming in.

He hustled guest star roles on now-forgotten series like Paris 7000, The Storefront Lawyers and The Name of the Game. He went on quiz shows like The Match Game and Tattletales and did some TV commercials for a Canadian supermarket chain called Loblaws.

And it was somewhere during the early part of “that period” that Bill Shatner went on The Mike Douglas Show and sang “It Was A Very Good Year.”

Composed in 1961 by Ervin Drake for The Kingston Trio, “It Was A Very Good Year” later earned Frank Sinatra a Grammy Award for Best Male Vocal Performance in 1966.

Told from a middle-age man’s point of view,the song recalls the kinds of women that the singer’s been with during various periods of his life: “small-town girls on the village green”, at 17; “city girls who lived up the stairs” at 21; “blue-blooded girls of independent means” at 35.

William Shatner, middle aged, living in a camper, accepting gigs beneath his talent, must have felt every bit his age when this was recorded at a Philadelphia TV station.

We know now that Shatner had a lot to look forward to: The Star Trek movies, T.J. Hooker; Rescue 911; his self-created  sci-fi franchise, TekWar; books (non-fiction and fiction), more movies, more TV, Boston Legal, plus writing, producing, directing, a Golden Globe, two Emmy Awards and the kind of global fame and hero-worship that few people have known.

But back then, during “that period”, William Shatner had no clue what was ahead for him. And you can feel that in his song…

Tags: Boston Legal, NBC, Rescue 911, Star Trek, T.J. Hooker, William Shatner
Posted in Shatner Observatory

“It’s after seven and I haven’t fed the kids. I think I’ll
just make some tollhouse cookies and call it night.”
Wendy Snyder, mother of two

You’re a television development executive. You’ve been charged by the head of your network with finding the next great TV family sitcom. The next Roseanne or Home Improvement. The next Everybody Loves Raymond or Arrested Development.

This is your lucky day. I’m here to tell you that the raw material for the next great TV family comedy is just lying out there in the open on the digital landscape. This family comedy would be fiction, but based in reality. And you can clearly hear the potential for it via a series of real-life podcasts known as SnydeRemarksRadio.

Wendy Snyder is a veteran of Chicago radio. She’s been a rock ‘n roll DJ, a talk show host, a news anchor and a comedic sidekick to radio legend Steve Dahl. Currently, she’s part of the Don Wade and Roma morning show team on WLS radio.

Wendy’s husband, the much-younger Jimmy McInerney, also works in radio, doing commercial and promo production work for WERV in Naperville, Illinois. He also co-produces and co-hosts The Force-Cast, an internet radio show devoted to Star Wars.

Wendy and Jimmy Mac have two sons (Michael, 10 and Dylan, 7). They recently adopted an Australian Shepherd/Bernese Mountain Dog Mix named Tiki. They all live happily together in their suburban Chicago home.

And, once a week, after five grueling days of making and broadcasting professional radio, Wendy and Jimmy lock the kids away in their room, break out the cocktail mixers and fire up the podcasting equipment. And then, it’s game on.

If you listen to their SnydeRemarksRadio podcasts, you’ll learn a lot about the Snyder-Macs (like, that they are known as the Snyder-Macs) and the way they live their very funny lives.

Wendy, a self-described “avid hypochondriac and a bit of a bitch”, has to get up every day at 2:30am for work. Thus, when it comes weekend podcasting time, she can be a tad erratic.

Wendy has revealed that—out in the real world—she will not be ignored or denied by anyone, be they bank teller or sales clerk (”You know I need to talk to people!”) and that that can lead to trouble (like the tomato-smashing incident with the cashier at the local supermarket).

Wendy says that when sees people out and alone on the streets of Chicago, she creates “sad back stories” for them in her head which, in turn, makes her feel sad.

Once in while, Wendy will have a thought and then leave that thought for herself as an iPhone messages, so she can play it back on the podcast.

Before she got into radio, Wendy worked at the Brookfield Zoo and, thus, knows stuff. She can launch into a dissertation about the difference between African and Indian elephants or simply regale her audience with the true-life story of the Brookfield zookeeper who had his scrotum ripped off by a crazed kangaroo named Creampuff.

Wendy appears to have an affinity for unmotivated non sequitors (”I love the game of Yahtzee!”) and has been known to yell out “Jeez, Louise” when she’s flabbergasted.

Most of Wendy’s ire is directed toward her husband/boy toy, Jimmy Mac. During one podcast, she admonished him for “almost spilling red wine from my Crate and Barrel glass on my beige  couch!” (As a result, they no longer podcast from that room.)

Sometimes, when Jimmy Mac frustrates Wendy in the middle of the podcast, she will scream out things like: “God, I hate you today!”

Truth to tell, Jimmy Mac can be just as frustrating. Whereas Wendy is a loaded grenade, set to explode for any and all reasons, Jimmy is extraordinarily laid back. Nothing is a big deal. (The dog ran away? Well, there’s no getting him back now. Tomorrow, we’ll go get another dog…)

The differences in Wendy and Jimmy Mac’s personalities can be heightened when Jimmy tries to solve problems by using lessons he’s learned from pop culture. The Three Stooges, Star Wars and the Ghostbusters were his teachers and therapists. This causes Wendy to get irritated, leading the couple into situations like their nasty squabble over H.R. Pufenstuf.

As mentioned, Jimmy is a Star Wars fanatic. An entire room of the Snyder-Mac home has been given over to his Star Wars toy and action figure collection. This year, Jimmy chose to blow off his wedding anniversary plans with Wendy in favor of jetting out of town to attend the Star Wars Fan Days convention in Plano, Texas.

He made it up to her with a successful birthday, Wendy-style (”Go out for the night, wake up on the sofa”), but blew it on Valentine’s Day when he gave a Wendy a bag of Peanut Butter M&Ms instead of Peanut M&Ms. Wendy refused the gift, saying they didn’t need to “celebrate the Hallmark holidays”, to which Jimmy declared: “I could give a rat’s ass about Valentine’s Day!”

Their sons, Michael and Dylan, are not part of the podcast. They are talked about (the infamous What To Do If Your Kid Gives Another Kid A Wedgie On The Playground show), but are not heard. They are, in fact, frequently dispatched to other areas of the home and bribed with gifts to, as Wendy says, “leave us alone to podcast”

When the boys do act up during the recording, Jimmy is dispatched by Wendy to “go kick some ass”. When that goes horribly wrong, Jimmy and Wendy, take full responsibility for their parenting style and recognize the situation for what it is (Wendy: “All hell is breaking loose in this house!” Jimmy: “This is a train wreck!”).

Still, they do seem like a happy family, even attending Catholic Mass on (most) Sundays. The Snyder-Macs “enjoy people-watching during Communion” at what they call their “Godspell Church” where, Wendy tells us, the “bread is made by the Fifth Grade Catechism class!”

Food looms large in the world of Wendy Snyder and Jimmy Mac. Whether they are discussing their favorite local Led Zeppelin tribute band or reminiscing about the fight they got into on stage at the neighborhood Open Mic Night, food talk is never far away.

There was the night Wendy closed the door on a group of Christmas carolers singing “Silent Night”, because her Mexican food was getting cold.

Jimmy Mac once revealed that he likes to hit the sample tables at Sam’s Club around noon, as a way of scarfing a free lunch.

Both are wary of the recently re-opened Trader Joe’s (Jimmy: “It seems very California…”).

They’ve debated the virtues of Spam vs. Underwood Deviled Ham, Wendy’s passion for Sloppy Joes and frozen, crinkle cut French fries, and Jimmy’s lust for Li’l Smokey wiener wraps.

When Wendy excitedly reported on her Facebook page that “McRib is back!”, she was unprepared for the McRib-backlash she was hit with from busybody parents who were concerned about what the Snyder-Macs might be feeding their kids.

But, ultimately, when it comes to food, Jimmy and Wendy are not afraid to take a few risks (Wendy: “The Snyder-Macs like to hang onto expired canned goods on the off chance the Food Drive folks come calling!”).

Once, they decided they wanted taste-test Vegemite, the Australian bread-spread. After she snapped a photo of the yeast-extract food paste (”It looks like black peanut butter!”), Wendy took a small bite, spit it out (Jimmy: “She’s spitting it out!”) and declared: “That’s horrendous! It’s like somebody crapped in a jar!”

Maybe they just needed a drink. As evidenced by the time they took with the “Am I An Alcoholic?” quiz, the Snyder-Macs like to imbibe.

Wendy’s good with just about any “screw-top wine”, while Jimmy is very specific about his drink of choice: “Blue collar beer!  Miller light. Bud light. In cans. No imports. No micro-brews!”

Sometimes, Jimmy will attempt to branch out, but it rarely works out. Like the time Wendy impugned Jimmy’s manhood by calling his Bailey’s Irish Cream “a woman’s drink”.

But there are signs that Wendy might be going “all fancy” herself. She recently purchased their first bottle of Grand Marnier, the bitter orange liqueur. Confessed Wendy: “It’s a cognac, which I feel snobby to have! But I kind like that feeling, so when I opened the little foil top, I wanted to save it. Our first bottle of Grand Marnier!”

Personally, I think there’s a lot more than Grand Marnier in the Snyder-Macs’ future, which brings me back around to the premise of this piece.

I see a real and riotous TV family sitcom based on the adventures of Wendy and Jimmy. Imagine the cougar-wife and the boy-toy hubby who work all day together at the wacky radio station and discover that they only way they can communicate at home to solve problems is via podcast (which would act as a very organic time-lapse/flashback device).

If someone in Hollywood or Burbank besides me is not thinking in that direction, they should be. I would advise any and all development execs at FOX (home of The Simpsons and Family Guy), ABC (Modern Family), NBC (Parenthood), ABC Family (”a new kind of family!”) and everyone else from CBS to TBS to Comedy Central to give a listen to Wendy and Jimmy on their SnydeRemarksRadio podcasts on iTunes. I think you’ll hear the same thing I hear…the raw material for one the best Mom-centered sitcoms since Roseanne.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go register this pitch with the Writers Guild so I can get myself paid when this show gets greenlit. Break out the screw-top wine…

Tags: Jimmy McInerney, SnydeRemarksRadio, Star Wars, The Force-Cast, Wendy Snyder, WLS Radio
Posted in Development Laboratory

He was old, overweight, drunken, ill tempered and profane. He had no friends save for an elderly Chinese man and a cat named General Price. But he was a lawman and a good one. And from the very first moment he showed his eye patch on the big screen, it was evident that Rooster Cogburn was the role that John Wayne had been waiting sixty years to play.

Created in 1968 by former journalist Charles Portis, U.S. Marshal Rooster Cogburn first appeared in the pages of The Saturday Evening Post in the serialized Western, True Grit. When an expanded version was later published as a novel, Paramount Pictures and producer Hal B. Wallis came calling and True Grit was headed for the movies.

The film tells the story of young Mattie Ross (Kim Darby) who hires Cogburn to track down the man who killed her father. Things go bad for the Marshal almost immediately when Mattie insists on riding along with Cogburn and they both get saddled with an inexperienced Texas Ranger (Glen Campbell) who is also on the trail of the killer Tom Chaney (Jeff Corey).

Director Henrey Hathaway infused True Grit with a lot of terrific stuff to enjoy, but the real pleasure is in watching John Wayne breathe Rooster Cogburn to life. For his efforts, he won both the Golden Globe and the Academy Award for Best Actor. Accepting the Oscar, a delighted Wayne snarked, “If I’d known this, I’d have put that eye patch on 40 years ago!”

An unsatisfying sequel, Rooster Cogburn, followed in 1975. Here, Wayne is paired with Katherine Hepburn, who is looking for both her father’s killer and missing shipment of nitroglycerin. Though less successful than True Grit, development began on Sometime, a third Cogburn film. Alas, Sometime never came as John Wayne completed just one more movie (The Shootist) before his death in 1979.

The next step for the character the Duke left behind was television. In May of 1978, ABC aired True Grit: A Further Adventure. Written and produced by Sandor Stern (The Mod Squad) and starring Warren Oates as Rooster Cogburn and Lisa Pelikan as Mattie Ross, the two-hour movies was a pilot for a proposed Rooster Cogburn TV series that never materialized.

Rooster Cogburn had hit the end of the trail. And that’s the way it’s been for over 30 years.

Now, thanks to directors Joel and Ethan Coen, True Grit is headed back into movie theaters. After auditioning more than 15,000 teenage girls, Paramount says the new Mattie Ross is 13-year old Hailee Steinfeld. She will join Josh Brolin (as the killer Chaney) and Matt Damon (as the Texas Ranger) in a new adaptation of the original Charles Portis novel. Filling the big boots of John Wayne as U.S. Marshal Rooster Cogburn will be Jeff Bridges.

I say bring it on. The character of Rooster is so strong and so deep and so inherently cinematic that it’s almost a shame we’ve had to wait this long to see him again.

Brilliant or bad, there’s nothing that Jeff Bridges and the Coens can do with their Marshal that will diminish John Wayne’s. Like Ringo in Stagecoach and Ethan in The Searchers, Rooster is one of the few John Wayne characters that is bigger than the Duke himself.

So let’s raise a flask and wish the new True Grit and the Coen Brothers well. I hope they make a great movie. And to Jeff Bridges, with all due respect and great anticipation, let me echo the words of Rooster Cogburn himself and say: “Fill your hands, you son of a bitch!”

“All you need for a movie is a girl and a gun…”
Jean-Luc Godard

I’m sure that when Luc Besson sat down to write the first few scenes of would become the film La Femme Nikita, he had no idea that he was creating a piece of intellectual property that would get made and re-made no less than five times over the next seven years.

The 1990 French action film, written and directed by Besson, told the story of Nikita Taylor (Anne Parillaud), a petty criminal and drug addict who was arrested for the murder of a cop, convicted and imprisoned. At that point, Nikita was approached by France’s top spy agency and offered a deal: Die in prison or work as a government assassin.

That Nikita inspired a slick 1991 Hong Kong action remake called Black Cat, which closely followed the original film’s storyline. Jade Leung played the Chinese street girl turned living weapon in both Black Cat and the 1992 sequel, Black Cat 2.

In 1993, Warner Bros. remade Nikita for American audiences as Point of No Return, with veteran director John Badham stepping in for Luc Besson (who declined the offer). This time, Bridget Fonda was the girl wielding the gun (now known as Nina).

Next up: La Femme Nikita, a 1997 television series produced by Warner Bros. and Fireworks Entertainment. The USA Network series ran for five seasons. Created by 24’s executive producer Joel Surnow, the series starred Peta Wilson as Nikita.

And now, word comes from the folks at the awkwardly named The CW that a new Nikita is on the way. Hawaiian-born Maggie Q has just been cast in a pilot being prepped by Warner Bros. Television and McG’s Wonderland. The story this time is that a new Nikita has been trained to replace the original one after she goes, y’know, rogue.

Will it work? Who knows? But I wouldn’t bet against it. The track record for the Nikita franchise has almost single-handedly proven Godard’s adage.

Tags: Anne Parillaud, Bridget Fonda, Jean-Luc Godard, Joel Surnow, Luc Besson, Maggie Q, Peta Wilson
Posted in Screening Room

Back in the dim, dark days before home video, Netflix, DVRs, on-demand and streaming, movies fans had only two places to look to view and study older, out-of-circulation films.

Place Number One was late night television. Before the midnight TV landscape was crowded with a half-dozen white guys sitting behind desks, there were branded movie showcases with names like The Million Dollar Movie, The Great Entertainment, Chiller Theatre, The Movie Loft, Classic Horror, Science Fiction Theater, Comedy Classics and Creature Double Feature.

If you were in the mood to watch James Cagney, Boris Karloff, Judy Holliday, Abbott & Costello,  Godzilla, Maria Montez or Klaatu do their thing, you stayed up late and you watched.

And Place Number Two for old movies? Well, if you were lucky enough to live in a city big enough to support a couple of major colleges and/or universities, then you probably had the option of venturing out from the house and down to the local repertory cinema.

We had a great rep cinema in the town where I attended college. They ran double features and changed their bill every two or three days. Inside of a week, you could drop by the cinema three different nights and see The Marx Brothers starring A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races; two film directed by Bob Fosse, Lenny and All That Jazz; or Roman Polanski’s The Fearless Vampire Killers paired with George Romero’s also-a-vampire-movie, Martin.

I was a film student at the time. If I wasn’t in class screening Buster Keaton in Sherlock, Jr. or Anna Karina in Pierrot le Fou or Orson Welles in F for Fake, then I was down at the rep cinema, popcorn in hand, catching a double feature of Woody Allen or Michael Powell or Brian De Palma.It was pure, unadulterated movie geek heaven.

Fast forward. Digital technology (your DVDs and DVRs and online streaming) emerges and virtually wipes out the nation’s repertory cinemas. Who needs to schlep across town to see Richard Rush’s brilliant The Stunt Man on the big screen when you could simply have Netflix or Amazon or DirectTV deliver to your home? Only a movie maniac.

Enter Quentin Tarantino, movie maniac.

The news broke this week that the writer-director of Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill and Inglourious Basterds recently purchased The New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles’s Fairfax district.

Formerly a vaudeville house, a mob nightclub and a porn theater, The New Beverly Cinema opened on May of 1978 as a two-fer repertory cinema. In the 32 years since the New Bev ran its first Marlon Brando double feature, hundreds of film students and novice filmmakers have flocked to the theater. One of them was Quentin Tarantino, who started visiting the New Bev just a couple of years after the place opened.

And so, when the financially-strapped New Beverly Cinema was recently threatened with closure, Tarantino swooped in and bought place to ensure that the New Bev, its programmers and its audiences would always have a home.

The full story (recounted by Vanity Fair) is here. The official site of the New Bev is here.

Check ‘em out. And if you live or regularly visit Los Angeles, think about dropping by The New Beverly Cinema to check out whatever double-bill happens to be playing. If Quentin Tarantino chooses to exert some influence over the programming, the results could be fascinating.

Long before TV or radio or movies ever had any influence on them, children loved their weapons. Schoolyards, playgrounds and backyards were all strewn with slingshots, popguns and wooden rifles well before the big media companies even existed. So you can’t pin America’s obsession with guns on anybody except those Second Amendment-loving seven-year-olds who got their jollies pretending to wound, main and kill while waiting to grow up.

But let’s face it…once Big Media burst forth, it was only too happy step in and try to squeeze every last nickel out of Kid Nation’s pocket, even if it meant selling their own kid a gun.

Movies, radio and TV created heroes. Heroes carried guns. Kids, wanting to be like their heroes, also wanted to carry guns. More importantly they wanted to carry the kinds of guns that their heroes carried. That’s where Big Media stepped on up.

Enter the merchandising tie-in. In the 1930s, young fans of the Buck Rogers comic strip and movie serial could feel closer to their favorite spaceman by filling their fists with the Buck Rogers Rocket Pistol, Disintegrator Pistol or Liquid Helium Pistol.

When Westerns ruled the screen back in the 1940s and 1950s, kids could buy all kinds of six-shooters and carbines, all endorsed and promoted by big screen Western stars and characters like Red Ryder, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Hopalong Cassidy and Davy Crockett. Even the littlest cowpoke, Howdy Doody, shot guns and he was a puppet.

In the 1960s, crime fighters like Dick Tracy, James Bond, The Detectives, Honey West, The Green Hornet and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. inspired all manner of sub-machine guns, Walther PPK water pistols and snub-nose .38 cap guns.

For your edification and enlightenment, we have below a commercial for one of those guns. Television itself was only about 16 years old when this spot debuted. Tough crime shows like Naked City, The Untouchables, M-Squad and Peter Gunn (gun!) were staples of the three networks’ schedules. The influence of those TV shows on this product choice and this marketing effort should be obvious to even the most casual of viewer. Ladies and Gentlemen—and, most importantly, Boys and Girls—here’s Mattel’s Tommy Burst Detective Set.

NOTE: If the actor playing the crook seems like he might be a familiar face, he is. That’s Hal Smith, best known as Otis Campbell, Mayberry’s town drunk, on The Andy Griffith Show.

Before he was known as a screenwriter, film director and a guy who couldn’t help but marry his girlfriend’s adopted daughter, Woody Allen was a nightclub comic trying to get famous.

After anonymously writing gags for showbiz columnists like Earl Wilson and TV shows like The Colgate Comedy Hour, The Tonight Show, Caesar’s Hour and Candid Camera, Woody traded on his funny bone to become a funny face in print media, especially in advertising.

For example, Woody Allen hung his mug out in a series of Smirnoff Vodka ads. He later turned that experience into a monologue on his 1968 Standup Comic live performance record.

Most of these ads appeared in Playboy, whose readers liked pretty girls like actress Monique van Vooren and smart comedians like Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahl.

And Playboy’s various features and interviews focusing on Woody Allen allowed the comedian’s voice and point of view to emerge.

Soon, other advertisers wanted a piece of Woody Allen’s face.  Foster Grant sunglasses was one that took a shine to Woody Allen.

It was only a matter of time before mainstream magazines like The New Yorker and Esquire and Life featured Woody’s writing and promoted his projects.

Woody Allen may have been a sophisticated comedian doing adult material, but he was careful not to leave comic book reading kids behind.

From a comic to the comics: For eight years, “Woody Allen” appeared in the funny pages as a daily comic strip (though it was neither written nor drawn by Woody Allen).

In the end, it all helped. After over sixty years in show business and nearly fifty films, Woody Allen’s longest-lasting creation–the image of Woody Allen himself–endures.

Yesterday’s edition of Cyclops Central regarding Roger Corman made me think a bit about Martin Scorsese and the one film that Scorsese directed for Corman, the low-budget exploitation movie, Boxcar Bertha (1972).

In the 1960s, Scorsese attended New York University’s film school, making shorts like What’s a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This?, It’s Not Just You, Murray! and The Big Shave.

In 1967, Scorsese made his first feature-length film, the black and white I Call First, which was later expanded (to include some distributor-mandated nudity), re-cut and re-titled Who’s That Knocking at My Door. The film featured actor Harvey Keitel in the lead and was edited by Thelma Schoonmaker, both of whom would become career-long collaborators with Scorsese.

Sometime later (after working as an editor on the documentary Woodstock), Scorsese screened Who’s That Knocking for Roger Corman. Mr. Scorsese:

“My agent set up a meeting with Roger and he asked if I would like to do Boxcar Bertha, a sequel to Bloody Mama. That changed everything for me. From him, I learned how to put a picture together. He was like a great professor. He also taught you about the realities of the marketplace. There has to be a chase scene here, there has to be a touch of nudity there. He didn’t apologize for that. This is what we do.”

Produced by Roger Corman and directed by Martin Scorsese, Boxcar Bertha told a fast and violent Depression-era tale, with heavy Bonnie and Clyde overtones. The title character, played by Barbara Hershey (who would later work with Scorsese on The Last Temptation of Christ), hooks up with union organizer David Carradine (who would appear in Scorsese’s Mean Streets) to lead a gang of notorious train and bank robbers (including Barry Primus, who would appear in Scorsese’s New York, New York and Victor Garber, later to be seen in Mean Streets and Taxi Driver) across the American South.

When Scorsese completed his Boxcar Bertha rough cut, he showed it to his friend and indie filmmaking mentor John Cassavetes (Shadows, Faces, Husbands). According to both Scorsese and Cassavetes biographer Raymond Carney, Cassavetes said:

“Marty, you’ve just spent a year of your life making a piece of shit…don’t get hooked into exploitation pictures. Makes something personal. Isn’t there anything you really want to make? Why don’t you make a movie about something you really care about?”

There was. It was called Mean Streets. And that film led to Taxi Driver, which led to Raging Bull and everything else. John Cassavetes would be proud.

But it all started with Boxcar Bertha. Here’s a look at the trailer. Within its 2 minutes and 35 seconds, you can see glimpses of an young artist taking control of his chosen medium.

Note: The voice talent is Charles Aidman, an actor with over 170 movies and TV shows to his credit. He went on to become the voice of the 1985 CBS revival of The Twilight Zone.