He knew story.

He started out as a journalist, writing for what used to be called “the slicks”, classy, upscale magazines like Collier’s, Harper’s and The Saturday Evening Post. He was the Managing Editor of Cosmopolitan and the Editor in Chief of Liberty magazine.

David Brown loved stories and he loved writers.

That’s why 20th Century Fox studio chief Darryl F. Zanuck hired David Brown to head his studio’s story department in 1951. Eventually, David Brown’s story sense led him to become Fox’s executive vice president of creative operations. For 20 years, he helped shape some of the studio’s most memorable films, including The King and I, South Pacific, The Robe, How to Marry a Millionaire, The Sound of Music, Fantastic Voyage and Planet of the Apes.

David Brown brought singer Elvis Presley to the movies in a musical Western called The Reno Brothers, but changed the name of the movie to Love Me Tender after the King’s single of that song sold a million copies. He presided over socially conscious films like Gentlemen’s Agreement and M*A*S*H. And David Brown is credited for convincing George C. Scott to take the lead in Patton, which ultimately became the actor’s greatest film performance.

In the early 70s, David Brown left Fox and teamed up with Richard Zanuck to become independent producers. For the next 16 years, they made or helped make movies like the Paul Newman-Robert Redford classic, The Sting; Steven Spielberg’s first two features, The Sugarland Express and Jaws; the Clint Eastwood thriller, The Eiger Sanction; Sidney Lumet’s The Verdict; Ron Howard’s Cocoon; Robert Altman’s The Player; and the first of three collaborations between David Brown and Morgan Freeman, Driving Miss Daisy.

After David Brown and Richard Zanuck amicably dissolved their partnership, Brown went on to produce films as diverse as The Saint, Angela’s Ashes, A Few Good Men, Kiss the Girls, Along Came a Spider, Deep Impact, Road to Perdition and Chocolat.

In a lifetime of creative pursuits, David Brown produced plays, wrote books and won awards, including the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; the David O. Selznick Lifetime Achievement Award from the Producers Guild of America; the ShowEast Lifetime Achievement Award, the Independent Spirit Award and four Oscars nominations (for Jaws, The Verdict, A Few God Men and Chocolat).

And when David Brown was asked what he looked for in choosing material, he replied: “What moves you. Something that makes you feel great, that absorbs you, that when you put it down you say, ‘I’ve got to call the agent, I hope I’m not too late.’ It’s subjective, it’s falling in love…”

Here’s to a real gentleman who loved to make movies.

David Gerber died about ten days ago. David Gerber was a Peabody Award and Emmy Award-winning TV producer, making over 50 TV movies (The Lindbergh Kidnapping Case, Elvis and the Beauty Queen) and mini-series (George Washington, The Last of Pompeii) during his four-decade career.

He also produced lots of episodic television, both comedy (The Ghost & Mrs. Muir, Nanny and the Professor, That’s My Mama) and drama (Cade’s County, The Quest, Medical Story).

But my favorite work of David Gerber’s were his mystery shows. He sure did a lot of them, with Eischeid, Walking Tall, Today’s FBI and Lady Blue being the least of them. In the Heat of the Night, starring Carroll O’Connor in a series adaptation of Norman Jewison’s classic film, ran for five seasons on NBC before jumping to CBS for three more.

The very best off David Gerber’s cop shows was Police Story. It was an anthology show, with stories focusing on patrolmen, detectives and all manner of law enforcement specialists within the LAPD. Police Story was unique in that it was created by an ex-LAPD cop-turned-novelist Joseph Wambaugh (The New Centurions, The Blue Knight). As such, the show was grounded in the harsh realities of police work and life on the street in a way that would pave the way for shows like Hill Street Blues, NYPD Blue and Homicide.

David Gerber’s Police Story is also significant in that it spawned three different spin-off series, including Joe Forrester and David Cassidy: Man Undercover and Police Woman, which made television history as the first successful cop show with a woman as the lead (Angie Dickinson). I’m sure David Gerber must have been proud of that.

(Note to Sony Pictures Television: Please crack open the old Columbia Pictures Television video storage closet and dust off all those Police Story masters. That’s a TV series that needs to be on DVD. Like now. Please.)

I never met Mr. Gerber. I did do some trailer and promo work on behalf of some of his productions and I once spent a week hanging out on one his sets, which was as relaxed and friendly as the man himself was supposed to be.

Many of his obits talk about David Gerber’s penchant for taking the time to talk to employees of every job description. As The Los Angeles Times reported in 2001, Gerber said that being nice was just good planning, offering that any employee he encountered as he went about his business “could be the next network president.”

That’s good planning from a good producer.

Some people seem to genuinely enjoy bashing Saturday Night Live. Not me. I’ve watched the show from the very first season and quickly came to the conclusion that no individual SNL show could or would ever be perfect. Some sketches will always be weaker than others; some musical acts less interesting than others and some hosts will tame the harsh mistress that is live television better than others.

But if you’ve got a spare 65 minutes, a DVR and a dexterous remote thumb, there’s always going to be something fun and interesting during any random edition of Saturday Night Live.

This season, a lot of the fun and interesting have been provided by Mr. Kenan Thompson.

Kenan’s no newbie with the show. He started as a featured player in 2003 (Season 29) and was upped to full cast member in 2005 (Season 31). In the six and a half seasons since, Kenan’s built a character catalog that rivals SNL greats like Phil Hartman and Will Ferrell.

Think I’m kidding? Look at the numbers.During his eight years at SNL, Phil Hartman embodied 21 unique characters and did impressions of 76 different entertainers and newsmakers. Will Ferrell put in seven years on SNL and did 28 characters and 66 impressions.

And Kenan Thompson? Well, he’s been with the show six and a half years (a year and half less than Phil and a half-season less than Will), and he’s already posted 19 characters and 61 impressions. By the season’s end, he could pass Hartman in characters and Ferrell in impressions. Not bad for the former child actor from the Disney Mighty Ducks movies.

But it’s not all about the numbers. What I really enjoy about watching Kenan do his thing three Saturday nights a month is that he appears to be having fun. Whether he’s singing uncontrollably as Diondre Cole, host of What Up With That?, leaping to his feet as French Def Comedy Jam comic Jean K. Jean or just getting horny as the flashy and sassy Virginiaca Hastings, nobody looks more filled with joy in Studio 8H than Kenan Thompson.

And his impressions, too, are remarkably free of mean-spiritedness. Kenan’s done everyone from Al Sharpton to Star Jones, Chaka Kahn to Bill Cosby, Jennifer Hudson to O.J. Simpson, from Aretha Franklin to Tiger Woods and no matter how kooky they might be behaving or how much trouble they might be in, Kenan’s interpretation of them never goes to a negative place. Is he making fun of their behavior and their choices? Oh, yeah. Is he diminishing them as human beings? Not as far as I can tell.

As we head into the second half of Kenan Thompson’s seventh season with the show, we have to consider that it might be closer to the end than the beginning for Kenan on SNL. Yes, there have been cast members who have stayed longer (Darrell Hammond at 14 seasons, Kevin Nealon, Tim Meadows and Maya Rudolph at 9; Chris Kattan and Amy Poehler at 8), but a lot more have stayed a lot less time. Still, the fact remains that performers like Dana Carvey, Mike Myers, Molly Shannon, Rachel Dratch, Tracy Morgan all left after their seventh season.

So, with that in mind and with Saturday Night Live returning to the air tonight for five more months, I say let’s tune in and revel in whatever joy Kenan Thompson plans to send our way.

“I began to realize that all of these films that I had loved in the
past could be taken seriously, that some real artistic claims
could be made for them. That was a revelation.”
Robin Wood

I don’t want too much more time to pass by without writing a few words about a man who passed away quietly in his Toronto home this past December 18th.

Robin Wood was a film critic at a time when being a film critic actually stood for something. Today, in our entertainment-obsessed culture, we have lots of people throwing their rotten tomatoes in newspapers, magazines and the Internet, but they’re just movie reviewers.

Robin Wood was no reviewer. He was a film critic. Like Peter Bogdanovich, Andrew Sarris, Pauline Kael, David Thomson, Richard Schickel, Molly Haskell, J. Hoberman and Richard Corliss, Wood belonged to generation of writers who believed that researching, studying, examining and writing about cinema was a pursuit well worth devoting a lifetime. Call it a devotion to an art form.

To Robin Wood, movies were not corporate-manufactured thrill park rides to be judged by the brightness of their stars, the colorfulness of their explosions or the ringing of their box office registers. Wood understood that film was an art form that was made up of every other art form (acting, writing, photography, painting, music) and that great artistry and great art could be found in movies that were designed to be pure entertainment.

Wood’s seminal 1965 book, Hitchcock’s Films, led the way. It made the case that director Alfred Hitchcock was more than merely the Master of Suspense; he was also a Master of Cinema. That book led to a major critical re-examination of Hitchcock’s work, elevating him from a technician with a talent for thrillers to the status of film artist that he enjoys today.

And whether Wood was writing reviews and essays for magazines like Cahiers du cinema, Film Comment, his own CineACTION! or writing monographs and books on filmmakers like Howard Hawks, Arthur Penn, Ingmar Bergman, he did so with a passion that was matched only by his own intellect and his skill at expressing that intellect with words on paper.

Back in my college days, Robin Wood was required reading for those of us majoring in Film Studies. He validated our love for movies like Hitchcock’s Vertigo and Hawks’ Rio Bravo by declaring them masterpieces, while helping us to find a way into films like Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali and Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’avventura.

If you’ve never read any of Wood’s work, a good entry point might be his Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan…and Beyond, a book of essays that includes a critical look of the films of Martin Scorsese, a political analysis of the movies of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas and a detailed examination of the work of Brian De Palma.

It’s old school film criticism from a giant in the field who won’t be writing any more of it.

Our loss.