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.
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.
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.
So it’s February 2nd. What’s all the excitement about? Perhaps Bill Murray said it best:
“A large squirrel predicting the weather.”
Yes, it’s Groundhog Day.
Today’s big holiday, which began in central Pennsylvania as a imported German custom during the 18th and 19th centuries, has its origins in ancient European weather lore, wherein an animal (usually, a badger or a bear) assumed the role of meteorologist.
The biggest and most famous of all Groundhog Day celebrations is held in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. Since 1886, crowds of up to 40,000 humans have gathered to witness the bizarre ritual: Punxsutawney bureaucrats coax a groundhog called Phil out of the comfort of his little tree-trunk house. They then watch Phil closely. If the confused groundhog (also known as a woodchuck or whistle-pig) emerges from his tree house and fails to see its shadow, winter will end soon. If Phil does see his shadow, then winter will continue for six more weeks.
And that’s all it was…an odd small town ritual that, once a year, got a quick 30-second mention on the TV news channels and a maybe a blurb in USA Today or Whistle-Pig Weekly.
But in 1993, Punxsutawney Phil took the world stage as a global superstar when Columbia Pictures’ Groundhog Day, starring Bill Murray, Andi MacDowall and Scooter the Groundhog broke big. Co-written by Harold Ramis and Danny Rubin and directed by Ramis, Groundhog Day tells the Twilight Zone-esque tale of a local TV weatherman sent for the umpteenth time to cover the groundhog ritual, only to get caught in a crazy cosmic loop, where he is doomed to re-live the day’s events over and over again.
Because of Groundhog Day’s unique premise, the film invited multiple viewings. People who did watch it more than once discovered something new in it each time, learning—as Bill Murray’s character does—that each of us can indeed live the lives we really want to live as long as we choose how we spend our time. For students of philosophy, Groundhog Day is considered something of a object lesson in enlightenment and self-improvement.
The film also has become a metaphor for the concept of spiritual transcendence. As such, Groundhog Day has become a favorite of Buddhists who see its themes of selflessness and rebirth reflecting of their own spiritual teachings. And, among Catholics, Bill Murray’s endlessly repeated day is seen as a representation of the concept of Purgatory.
Is Groundhog Day a spiritual movie? Its co-writer and director certainly seems to think so. Here’s Harold Ramis from October of 2009, giving a talk at the Hudson Union Society in New York. Listen as he explains how Christians, Buddhists, Jews and psychoanalysts alike all find meaning in his film. It’s a testament to good storytelling and the power of cinema.
Sometime back, I did a piece here on television producer David L. Wolper and mentioned some of his crime shows, including an obscure one called Lady Blue, which had a 13-week run on ABC beginning in September of 1986. I did some work with the show and had a pleasant experience with everyone involved, but that doesn’t blind me to the show’s many faults.
Lady Blue starred Jamie Rose as Katy Mahoney, a tough Chicago homicide detective with a big gun and even bigger attitude. Katy was the daughter of a hard-hitting cop who had little use for the police rulebook. Once she’d earned her badge, Katy followed in Daddy’s footsteps as the second Mahoney to become famous for using excessive force in her detective work.
Katy and her boss, Lt. Terry Nichols (Danny Aiello), frequently butted heads over her aggressive and abusive method of fighting crime, but that didn’t stop the show from becoming the target of anti-TV violence watchdogs groups, one of which reported a whopping 50 acts of violence in a single Lady Blue episode.
Truth be told, the show needed its violent because it didn’t have much else going for it. If it weren’t for the energizing presence of Aiello (The Godfather Part II, Broadway Danny Rose, Fort Apache the Bronx) and the fact that Lady Blue was shot on location on the streets and El trains of Chicago, there’d be no reason to be writing about it now.
Except for the Main Title Sequence., which is a solid example of a bad Main Title Sequence.
It starts with that Lady Blue Theme. The music is dated in a very mid-80s, Miami Vice-influenced kind of way, but we’ll give that a pass. It’s the lyrics–sung by a woman who sounds every bit as angry as Katy Mahoney–that are truly bad (”…back to the blue, the power’s in you…”). John Cacavas was a talented composer with a solid track record for TV music work (he scored almost 90 episodes of Kojak), but Lady Blue is not his finest hour.
And then there’s the editing. I don’t know who cut the Lady Blue Main Title (maybe show editors Richard Bracken or Ronald LaVine?), but they seem to have put in zero creative effort. Granted, at the time the Main Title needed to made, there were probably only a few of episodes of the show in the can, so the cutter didn’t have a lot of material to draw upon.
That said, the Lady Blue Main Title looks like it was hacked together in a lunch hour, with time left over for lunch. Let’s start with shot selection. It seems completely random. There’s no story arc, no sequence build, no internal logic whatsoever. Some shots are short; some are interminably long, both without any discernible motivation. In terms of rhythm, the shots in the sequence are cut neither to the music nor to the lyrics. And, you’ll notice, the two stars of the show never appear together in the same shot.
Put it all together and the Lady Blue Main Title sequence stands as a textbook example of how not to construct a Main Title. Give it look and see what you think.
Back to the blue, you’re breaking through. Go back, lady. Back to the blue…
Well, Sandra Bullock sure had herself an eventful year. Her two big movies, The Proposal and Blind Side, earned a combined 300 million dollars and counting. Sandra snagged herself two Golden Globe nominations, among other raves. And she and her husband, motorcycle builder and Monster Garage host Jesse James, entered into a child custody battle with James’ ex-wife, adult film star Janine Lindemulder.
Nobody would have predicted any of that back in the Spring of 1989 when the rough cut of Bionic Showdown: The Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman rolled down the hill from Universal City onto the NBC lot in Burbank.
The sequel to 1987’s The Return of The Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman starring Lee Majors and Lindsay Wagner, Bionic Showdown was supposed to be a backdoor pilot for that New Bionic Woman for the 90s, Kate Mason played by, yes, Sandra Bullock.
A year earlier, John Simon, theatre critic of New York magazine, had praised Bullock for her work as a Southern belle in the Off-Broadway play, No Time Flat. The notice led to Sandra signing with an agent, which led to her TV acting debut as the girl who gets some parts replaced in Bionic Showdown.
I’d love to say that those of us who sat through that first Bionic Showdown rough cut all jumped to our feet at the end and went nuts praising this cute new actress, Sandra Bullock. That didn’t happen. In point of fact, by the time Bionic Ever After, the third film in the franchise rolled around, the character of Kate Mason was long gone.
What a difference a couple of years make, no?
As we look forward to sharing Sandra’s big double-nominee night on, yes, NBC (The 67th Annual Golden Globe Awards will be telecast live Sunday, January 17th), let’s also take a look back. Here’s the oh-so-dramatic opening credits sequence from Bionic Showdown: The Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman.
The piece you’re about to watch is a 1987 commercial for Seagram’s Golden Wine Cooler. It is not a particularly outstanding example of TV commercial production. It doesn’t have groundbreaking visuals or outstanding copywriting. But what this spot does have that makes it worth a look is Bruce Willis and Sharon Stone.
At the height of his success starring opposite Cybill Shepherd in the mid-80’s romantic detective TV series, Moonlighting, Bruce Willis was hired by spirits maker Seagram to be the pitchman for their line of Golden Wine Coolers. Bruce proved to be worth every cent of his five to seven million-dollar contract when, inside of just two years, Seagram shot from fifth place to first in the marketplace .
Oddly enough, at the time this commercial was created, Sharon had the deeper resume. Yes, Bruce had become a star with Moonlighting, but prior to that, he’d only done guest shots on Miami Vice and The Twilight Zone, along with some glorified extra work on films like The First Deadly Sin and The Verdict.
Sharon had been much busier. She had a dozen feature films (Stardust Memories) and TV movies (The Calendar Girl Murders) among her credits, plus recurring roles on Magnum, PI and Steven Bochco’s Bay City Blues. She’d also starred in a couple of TV pilots, one of which (Hollywood Starr) had aired as an episode of William Shatner’s cop show, T.J. Hooker.
This was the first time Willis and Stone worked together, but it would be nearly two decades before they shared a project again (2006’s Alpha Dog, written and directed by Nick Cassavetes).
From the lack of snap, crackle and pop in their on-screen chemistry, it’s not hard to figure why that might have happened…
