People send me links for a lot of these bogus trailers where someone with video editing software and a lot of time and patience has merged two very different movies into one. This mix intermingles Singin' in the Rain and Star Wars and it made me laugh so it goes up here on the weblog. It's an ifilm link and since those don't always embed well, we like to include the direct address in case clicking below doesn't work on your computer. Go for it.
Bob Newhart on the day after Christmas. And I should mention that I enjoyed Mr. Newhart's recently-issued autobiography, which is entitled I Shouldn't Even Be Doing This: And Other Things That Strike Me as Funny. It's a small, quiet book full of Newhart-style wit, which means it's quite humorous. I don't understand a few things that aren't in it…like, I didn't notice any mention of his first TV series, the one that won the Emmy as Best Show after it was cancelled. (That was the first time that had ever happened. I think Taxi was the second.) But hey, he's Bob Newhart. Here's an Amazon link to order the thing if you feel about him the way I do.
One more bit of Christmas animation you might want to check out before it goes away. It's the Garfield version of The Twelve Days of Christmas. Very clever stuff.
There's a great charity in New York called Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. Basically, it's folks in the theatrical community doing whatever they can to raise money to fight that dread disease. Among the many ways they do this is by putting on star-studded benefits. Here's a nice little montage that shows two and a half minutes from their recent events…
John Kerry, whose chances of being the Democratic nominee in 2008 are only a little better than mine, writes that "flip-flopping" is not a bad thing, especially when it turns out you're not right. I agree…although I may change my mind about that.
Well, we all knew it was coming but we've reached this stage…
The U.S. military death toll in Iraq has reached 2,974, one more than the number of deaths in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, according to an Associated Press count on Tuesday.
I think the premise here is that if we let them kill Americans over there, they won't kill Americans here.
The wise writer-director Vince Waldron favors my e-mailbox with some additional comments on the movie we were just discussing here…
That film's been a requisite part of the Christmas holidays since NBC Saturday Night at the Movies dragged it out for an annual airing some time after Thanksgiving for seemingly every year of my childhood. And, you're right, the continuity errors are legend. But you really have to see it in a packed house to truly appreciate the unintentional comedy of some of those blunders. I had the privilege of watching White Christmas on the big screen for a number of years at Chicago's Music Box theatre, where pre-Christmas Day screenings of Der Bingle's cinematic holiday card have become a Chicago tradition. And ever time a coffee cup gets magically refilled between cuts, there's always a big laugh. The other moment guaranteed to elicit a gasp is when unbilled dancer George Chakiris' face is revealed. In other W.C. trivia, I didn't know until recently that Vera-Ellen's vocals were performed by Trudy Stevens.
As to the question of how so many obvious continuity errors crept in, my guess — based on nothing more than a hunch — was that Der Bingle couldn't be bothered doing a bunch of takes to cover for something as minor as fixing a continuity error involving a pitcher of buttermilk.
Hot on the heels of that e-mail, Vince sent a P.S. with another thought…
Also remember that White Christmas was the first movie shot in the wide screen Vista Vision, and thus may well have been a working rehearsal for all involved. Shooting a film in an untested screen ratio may well have presented economic or other practical reasons that prevented the director, A.D. or script supervisor from insisting on retakes where needed, even if they were aware of them during the shoot.
That sounds a bit more logical…though I don't recall hearing that Mr. Crosby was that pissy about doing an extra take of something. There are some pretty unflattering anecdotes around about him but none that I can recall in that category. But you may be right. The crew may been so busy mastering the intricacies of Vista Vision that they didn't have time to think about unfilled coffee mugs. Or maybe the A.D. was just drunk a lot.
Not only did Trudy Stevens do those uncredited vocals but her husband, Dick Stabile, played the orchestra leader in the scene where Rosemary Clooney is off in New York doing a solo performance. (Talk about odd continuity: Clooney's character has been doing a sister act for years. Then she abruptly quits the show in Vermont and a few days later, she's doing a fully-produced act of her own — complete with back-up dancers — in one of Manhattan's top night clubs. Not only that but they're some of the same dancers who are still appearing in the show in Vermont. And then the next day, she just quits the New York gig and goes back to the one in Vermont.)
Thanks, Vince. And I should mention that I'm still intrigued by these claims that Bob Fosse was an uncredited choreographer on the film. If so, I think it would have been the first time he ever choreographed something in which he was not a performer. Does anyone know if there's any believable source for this? I'm not saying it's not possible, of course, but you'd think it would have been mentioned in one of the Fosse bios or somewhere.
Earlier this month, a lot of you were happy that I linked to this video of Sandy Duncan performing the "I'm Flying" number in the 1979 Broadway revival of Peter Pan. So you oughta be pleased with this link of her doing the "Neverland" song. She was very good in the role and I'm sorry no one videotaped the whole production for perpetual replay. (The subsequent Cathy Rigby production, which I thought was even better in some ways, was recorded but the DVD seems to be out of print now. If I were you and I didn't have a copy of it, I'd scurry about and find one before they become even more scarce.) Here's Sandy…
Bob Ingersoll was one of many who sent a message that said essentially the following…
Probably not the first to e-mail with this "correction," but your "imagination" was a little off. James Brown didn't die the day before Dreamgirls was due to open. He died in Atlanta in the early morning of December 25. (It was probably still December 24th for you at the time) But as he was in the Eastern Time Zone, he died the same day that Dreamgirls was due to open.
…and somewhere in the Paramount organization, one exec phoned another and asked, "Do you think this helps us or hurts us?"
By the way: I suspect I'm not the only person who was surprised to see that the great James Brown was only 73 years old. I thought he was somewhat older than that. I guess that's what being The Hardest-Working Man in Show Business will do to you.
Last night while working, I just felt like re-watching White Christmas, the 1954 feature that starred Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen. If you can get past the overly-sentimental plot points — and Christmas is a fine time to embrace a little schmaltz — it's a pretty good movie. Danny Kaye's especially terrific in it, and it's interesting that he was at least the third choice for the role. Fred Astaire was originally supposed to fill that slot but he didn't like the script…or maybe he just didn't want to work. Donald O'Connor was signed but he had to withdraw due to health problems so the producers went to Kaye.
I always found it hard to believe that no one discussed trying to get Bob Hope in the part. A Paramount picture which called for a comedian who could dance and play Bing Crosby's partner and wartime buddy? How do you not try to get Hope for that? When I interviewed screenwriter Norman Panama for my Li'l Abner articles, I took a detour and asked him about this and he kept saying over and over, "Bob would have been so great, Bob would have been so great." Mr. Panama was in poor health at the time and was having huge memory gaps, and I'm not sure if he confirmed my hunch or not. I also wish I'd asked him what, if anything, Bob Fosse had to do with the choreography of White Christmas. I suspect the correct answer is "Nothing." It's been reported in any number of places that he did some of it but neither of the published biographies of Fosse mentions it. Perhaps more significantly, Rosemary Clooney did a commentary track for the White Christmas DVD and though she talks about the dancers and the credited choreographer, she never speaks of Fosse. She does point out that among the unbilled dancers are Barrie Chase and George Chakiris.
One thing which I find curious about the film is how filled it is with very simple continuity errors. You know…like someone's holding a glass that's half full of liquid in their left hand, the camera cuts to someone else, and then when it cuts back to the first person, the glass is full and in the other hand. There are so many of these that at least one class for wanna-be Script Supervisors uses it as a kind of training film, challenging students to see how many mistakes they can catch. Paramount was a big studio and Michael Curtiz was an experienced director…so how did so many bad match shots creep in? Beats me. But it says something about the performances that they manage to distract you from all the jump cuts.
Recently, the movie was turned into a stage musical with the interpolation of a few more great tunes from the Irving Berlin catalog. One production of it is currently in Detroit and another is in St. Paul. (In St. Paul, David Ogden Stiers of M*A*S*H fame is playing the General.) In theory, it will get to Broadway next Christmas…or maybe the Christmas after that or the one after that. I haven't seen the show but I've listened to the cast album and it sounds pretty good. There's some info over on the show's website along with some video clips that don't seem to play.
If you haven't seen the film lately and don't have a tape or DVD around, Turner Classic Movies is running it tomorrow morning at 6 AM Eastern time. Why are they running White Christmas the day after Christmas? Who knows? Maybe it's another one of those continuity errors.
Every year about this time, the most popular page on my weblog is my Christmas tale involving Mel Tormé. Here's the link to the story, which involves his famous co-composition, "The Christmas Song." And here's a clip of that tune as performed by another darn good singer, Nat King Cole. Have a Merry, everyone.
Is it my imagination or did James Brown actually die the day before Dreamgirls opens?
I wandered through several stores last evening and I think I heard the same song playing at some point in every one of them: "Linus and Lucy," as written and performed by Vince Guaraldi for A Charlie Brown Christmas. It's everywhere. In fact, it's the ringtone on my cellphone and when I heard it the other night while I was in a CVS Pharmacy, I thought at first I had a call.
It's a fine song, of course…and this jazz critic even thinks the soundtrack album from that much-loved Christmas special is "the most successful recording in the history of jazz." I'm sure, by some definition of "success," that's so.
What I find interesting is how popular "Linus and Lucy" is as a Christmas song since there are no lyrics to connect it with Christmas. I was thinking of that as I drove to and from that party this evening. I had on a local radio station that was playing holiday tunes, many of them instrumentals. When you hear a Christmas instrumental, there are only two things that causes it be about Christmas. One is if the arranger has called for a lot of bells, especially jingle bells. You hear bells, you think Christmas. The other is if the tune is sufficiently well known so that the listener does a kind of Mental Karaoke, filling in the unheard lyrics which are about Christmas. You hear "Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-dum…" and you think, "Oh, you'd better watch out, you'd better not cry…"
And that makes it Christmas music. You have to make the connection yourself.
Neither of these applies to "Linus and Lucy." There are no bells in Guaraldi's recording and there are no lyrics about Christmas for you to mentally supply. What makes it a Christmas song is that it reminds you of a Christmas TV special you watched and loved as a kid. (Come to think of it, there might be one other way in which the tune denotes the holiday. It may remind some people of Christmas just because you always hear it around Christmas. But at some point, that couldn't have been the connection. At some point, someone had to start playing it at Christmas just because it evoked memories of the Peanuts Christmas cartoon.)
I guess this attests not only to Vince Guaraldi's talent but Charles Schulz's as well…and also, Lee Mendelson, Bill Melendez and the other gifted folks who made A Charlie Brown Christmas. I watched it again the other night and it still works for me, still hits all the proper chords. Lee told me once, in greater detail than he has in most interviews, how he had to fight to get the show on the air and to keep its quiet, non-gimmicky manner (and Guaraldi's score) intact from network tampering. I'm glad he won those battles because it really is a wonderful show.
We're coming to you live from the lovely home of my friends, Misty Lee and Paul Dini…via Paul's computer, no less. Some of their friends — not all their friends because all their friends couldn't fit into the Rose Bowl, let alone their house — are assembling for fried turkey, pot roast and an odd array of people, places and things made out of gingerbread.
The monkeys are here, too. (If you're not familiar with them, you need to check out what they've been up to…which mostly consists of adding omelets to local Christmas decorations. Go to this page and see what I mean.)
I have to get back to the party. I just wanted to see if I could post here from a Mac. If you can read this, I can.
This is just to remind/warn you: You still have a couple of chances to hear the episode of Stu's Show with Yours Truly as the guest, discussing the late, great Joe Barbera. Stuart Shostak invited me on to discuss Mr. B. and discuss we did…for the full two hours, along with phone calls, a few rare Hanna-Barbera records and two very easy H-B trivia questions. You can hear this on Shokus Internet Radio today (Sunday) at 1 PM Pacific Time, which is two hours from when I'm posting this. It repeats again tomorrow and Tuesday at 7 PM and…well, just consult the schedule to see when it's on. That's simpler.
Ah, but how do you listen to Shokus Internet Radio? That's what you want to know? Easy. Click on this link and select an audio browser. Then click on it and don't stop until you hear the sound of my voice.