Monthly Archives: July 2011

Americathon: Made in 1979 for 2011

30 Saturday Jul 2011

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“Ah, a documentary!” laughs Jeremy at Lost Weekend Video when I bring Americathon, today’s selection, up to the counter.

Well, maybe not exactly, but yeah, with the debt limit ceiling about to crash on all our heads, it seems like a good time to revisit this broad political satire. Made in 1979 during the middle of an oil crisis, it was set in 1998 in a world where there was only enough energy left to power televisions. People live in their now immobile cars and the United States is flat broke. President Chet Roosevelt (a Three’s Company-era John Ritter) – a California-bred doofus descendant of Teddy and FDR who governs from a condo in Marina Del Rey – first tries to raise money with such schemes as auctioning a date with the Secretary of Agriculture and a National Marijuana Smoke-Off. When that doesn’t work, he borrows $400 billion from tycoon Sam Birdwater (Chief Dan George), who threatens to foreclose on the whole country when the loan isn’t paid back.

What’s a broke nation to do? Why hold a telethon, of course, hosted by  drug-guzzling, fading TV sitcom actor Monty Rushmore (Harvey Korman) who looks at the show as a comeback vehicle. But while marketing whiz Eric McMurkin (Peter Riegert, fresh from Animal House) diligently attempts to cobble together a winning show from an array of acts that is overly populated by ventriloquists, other forces are working to bring the country down.

That’s not so different when you think about it from what’s going on now, except there is nothing so entertaining as “Family In-Fighting” – a boxing match between Larry Miller a/k/a “Poopy Butt” (Jay Leno) and his mom – on the horizon and those that would bring this country to its knees are self-styled “patriots” not the United Hebrab Republic. (In the world of Americathon, the Israelis and the Arabs have joined together in a quest for world domination and England is the 57th state, complete with a theme park that occupies Buckingham Palace.)

When Americathon was released in August 1979, it was to dismal reviews. Roger Ebert gave it one star in the Chicago Sun-Times. The Chicago Reader‘s Dave Kehr thought the funniest thing about it was that it was financed by German tax shelter money. Janet Maslin in the New York Times was kinder. She thought buried within was a good 15-minute sketch.

Adapted from a play by the Firesign Theatre’s Phil Proctor and Peter Bergman and helmed by Tunnel Vision director Neil Israel, the movie is one of those sketch comedies that replaces plotting with a series of episodes. The cast that includes Ritter, Korman, Riegert, Leno, Fred Willard, Nancy Morgan, Zane Buzby, Howard Hesseman, Terry McGovern, then L.A. Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda, and Meat Loaf (as well as Elvis Costello in a singing cameo) is game. There is a let’s-put-on-a-show cheesiness that’s charming and a shamelessness that’s appealing. A lot of the jokes didn’t work then and don’t work now, but there’s something disarming in the audacity of simply letting jokes fly hit or miss.

In a couple of places the movie is spookily prescient. Maybe Vietnam has not evolved into an alternative to the French Riviera, but Westerners do enjoy vacationing there. And, as a matter of fact, China has emerged as an economic powerhouse. Then again, North Dakota is not the country’s first all-gay state. Also, we don’t all live in our cars, just in houses with underwater mortgages.

As I write this, members of Congress seems hellbent on continuing with their scheme to bring this country to its knees as they play a game of chicken with the debt ceiling. We can all panic about it or mourn the country that once was or simply hide under the covers until the crisis passes (we might be cowering there for a long time). Or we can laugh. Americathon is not a work of genius, but it is suddenly topical and good for a few giggles. – Pam Grady

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Americathon is part of the Warner Bros. Home Archive Collection. It can be purchased from wbshop.com or Amazon or rented from independent video stores such as San Francisco’s Lost Weekend. Don’t even bother looking for it on Netflix or iTunes. You won’t find it.

Alienating Cowboys

29 Friday Jul 2011

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When did Harrison Ford – the once and always Han Solo and Indiana Jones – morph into Walter Brennan? True, he never takes out his teeth in Cowboys & Aliens and he never once says, “Dagnabit!” But his cranky cattle baron Woodrow Dolarhyde is not only cut from the same old coot cloth of many of Brennan’s characters, he also could be a cousin of Brennan’s My Darling Clementine villain Old Man Clanton – that is until the third act when Dolarhyde turns warmer and fuzzier. An actor who needs to be liked is a terrible thing.

In casting, at least, Cowboys & Aliens, feels very traditional. Daniel Craig makes a nice substitute for Steve McQueen. Sam Rockwell is a serviceable Jimmy Stewart type. One can easily imagine Justified‘s Walton Goggins, here seen in the supporting role of sniveling black hat Hunt, making a career out of similar parts back in the day when oaters were a cinematic staple. Cowboys & Aliens‘ Sheriff John Taggart Keith Carradine has toiled in Westerns off and on for 40 years, with credits that include guest stints on TV’s Bonanza and high-profile parts in The Long Riders, Wild Bill, and Deadwood. Paul Dano, playing Dolarhyde’s spoiled son Percy, is an inspired choice, with a face that would not be out of place among the collection of 19th -century photos in Wisconsin Death Trip.

It is unfortunate that the fine roster of talent that director  Jon Favreau assembled is in the service of this weak movie, the latest graphic novel to make the transition to screen. The tale of a community’s fight against the gold-mining space aliens that are bent on laying waste to humanity is neither offbeat nor witty enough, at least in comparison to, say, The Adventures of Brisco County Jr. and its golden orb, the mortally wounded William Blake wandering the wilderness in Dead Man, the homoerotic subtext and weirdly placed rock bands in Zachariah, or just about any episode of the old Wild Wild West TV series. And despite being from an apparently advanced civilization, the aliens seem barely more sentient than the ravenous monster earthworms from Tremors (a movie that Cowboys & Aliens resembles in some aspects, or would if it had a sense of humor).

The movie is replete with Western archetypes. Craig as amnesiac outlaw Jake Lonergan is the antihero whose brains, courage, and propensity for violence make him a natural leader. Rockwell, playing barkeep Doc, is the tenderfoot who rises to the occasion. Adam Beach’s Nat Colorado is the Native American raised among whites who is not entirely at home in either society. Ford and Dano represent the moneyed classes. Goggins’ gang would be the villains in any other movie. There is also a whole American Indian tribe. And while it is to be expected that they are all going to have to set aside their differences to fight their common enemy, the rough edges of conflict and any genuine tension are washed away as Cowboys & Aliens shifts into a kind of ‘Kumbayah” moment. It all begins to feel like one of those kids’ T-ball games where everyone gets a trophy.

Matthew Libatique’s cinematography is gorgeous and Henry Gregson-Williams contributes an appropriately evocative score. Craig is terrific. He really is the heir apparent to McQueen. He’s got the look, the charisma, and the coolness. Rockwell and Goggins also standout among the large ensemble. These are all reasons to see a film that is otherwise a waste, satisfying neither as a Western nor as science fiction. – Pam Grady

Simpsons’ Vet Mike Reiss Leads a Toonful Evening

26 Tuesday Jul 2011

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There were no standing ovations for longtime The Simpsons writer/producer Mike Reiss when he stepped up to the stage of the Castro Theatre on Monday, July 26 as part of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival’s “Jews in Toons” program, compared to the three standing o’s that greeted movie star Kirk Douglas during SFJFF’s Freedom of Expression ceremony the day before. But Reiss was quick to brag that the cartoon program sold more tickets.

“Take that, Hollywood legend!” he crowed.

Reiss was the closing act for a night that began with “When You Wish Upon a Weinstein, “ a Family Guy episode made in 2000 but not shown until 2003 when the Cartoon Network aired it. Original network Fox left the episode – in which family patriarch Peter seeks a Jewish accountant and attempts to get a quickie Bar Mitzvah for his teenage son Chris – to gather dust after it deemed the episode antisemitic, despite the fact that scriptwriter Ricky Blitt is Jewish and two rabbis vetted the script. That was followed by South Park‘s “The Passion of the Jew,” in which Stan and Kenny attempt to get a refund from an addled Mel Gibson after being appalled by The Passion of the Christ while the movie inspires Cartman to emulate Hitler. Finally, in the 1991 Simpsons’ episode “Like Father, Like Clown,” Bart and Lisa attempt to reunite Crusty the Clown with his long estranged rabbi father.

It was 69 minutes of brilliant TV, but Reiss – who also made this year’s SFJFF “Queer Duck” trailer – was the star of the show, delivering a talk interspersed with clips from The Simpsons, Queer Duck, and the cult series The Critic. He was quick to point out that he is a comedy writer, not a comedian.

“It’s like the difference between phone sex and real sex,” he explained, adding, “In my case, it’s 20 bucks for four minutes either way.”

For a writer not a comedian, Reiss timing was pitch-perfect on lines like, “I’m Jewish. I would never eat a ham sandwich in a synagogue on Yom Kippur – if anyone was watching.”

He was also the master of the dish, revealing that the worst Simpsons guest star ever was a female celebrity he can’t name but whose first name is “Oprah;” his frustration over Paramount’s insistence he remove a Tom Cruise joke from Queer Duck: The Movie; and that if this veteran of Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show writing staff couldn’t write comedy, he’d probably write for Jay Leno.

When “Jews in Toons” ran over, there was only time left for one question in an audience Q&A, a woman who wanted to know if Simpsons‘ bartender Moe Szyslak was modeled after Reiss.

“I get that a lot,” he crumbled, insisting Moe was based on no human at all.

“We started with an ape and we shave some fur,” he said, adding, “Chief Wiggum is a pig. Ralph Wiggum is a lamb fetus.” – Pam Grady

Kirk Douglas Recalls Breaking a Blacklist

26 Tuesday Jul 2011

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Kirk Douglas as Spartacus

Kirk Douglas took the stage of San Francisco’s Castro Theatre on Sunday, July 24 at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, to an extended standing ovation. No surprise there. The 94-year-old actor is, after all, one of the very last classic Hollywood stars still living. But the applause wasn’t just for the 87 movies, 10 plays, and nine books Douglas has to his name or for his very survival, his having survived a 1991 helicopter crash and 1996 stroke that left him with impaired speech. He is the SFJFF’s Freedom of Expression award winner this year, feted not for being a movie star, but for his pivotal role in ending the Hollywood blacklist of the 1950s when he insisted that Dalton Trumbo attach his own name to his screenplay of Stanley Kubrick’s 1960 historical epic Spartacus.

It was Douglas, who served as executive producer as well as star on the film and who is currently writing a book entitled I Am Spartacus, who optioned Howard Fast’s novel. He originally hired the author to adapt his own book, but as Douglas revealed to SFJFF Executive Director Peter Stein during an onstage Q&A, “Howard Fast wrote a terrible screenplay.”

So Douglas turned to Trumbo, a member of the Hollywood 10 who had 11 spent months in prison for contempt of Congress for his refusal to discuss his political associations with the House Un-American Activities Committee and had subsequently found himself unemployable in Hollywood – at least under his own name. Writing under pseudonyms, his scripts for 1953’s Roman Holiday and 1956’s The Brave One were both Oscar winners. “Sam Jackson” was the name that he was going to use for Spartacus, but despite being warned that his own career might suffer if Trumbo received screen credit, Douglas insisted on standing on principle.

“I think if I was 10 years older, I might not have done it,” Douglas told Stein. “When you’re young and impulsive … I just had to do it. I’m glad I did it now.

“He thanked me for giving back his name,” he remembered, adding, “Names are what give you life.”

To close out the Freedom of Expression event, the SFJFF screened Spartacus.

“I would stay, but I saw the picture,” laughed Douglas before leaving the Castro stage. “It’s good. You’ll like it.” – Pam Grady