Monthly Archives: December 2018

Ever since the trailer came out for Stan & Ollie, I've been asked incessantly if I've seen it or the film and as a lifelong lover of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, what I think of this motion picture. Saturday evening, I attended a screening at the Writers Guild so here is what I think of this motion picture.

The art direction, design and cinematography are superb. I can't think of a film that has ever done a better job of re-creating the world of a time gone by.

I also can't think of a film about well-known personalities that did a better job of making you think you were watching the real people. Folks are especially raving about John C. Reilly as Mr. Hardy but I was more impressed with Steve Coogan as Mr. Laurel. I thought he had the tougher role in playing more of a multi-layered character plus I thought the make-up/prosthetics job on Reilly did a lot of the heavy lifting in that performance.

The make-up was real impressive and certainly Oscar-worthy because it didn't look like make-up. Usually, Billy Crystal playing a much older man looks to me like Billy Crystal with a lot of stuff on his face.

Beyond that, I really, really disliked this movie.

I went in wanting to love it. Honest, I did. And I really expected to because so many friends of mine who adore The Boys have expressed their delight in it. (How to know if someone's really a fan of them: They speak of "Stan and Babe," Babe being Hardy's nickname.)

Leonard Maltin, a lover of Stan and Babe if ever there was one, even started his review with "I love this movie!" and reviews don't get any more approving than that. I rarely disagree much with my pal Leonard but I suspect we'll be mudwrestling over this one for the rest of our lives or our friendship, whichever ends first.

Before I get into detail about why I didn't like the film, I'm going to post one of these…

Okay now. First off, I need to say something and this is not the reason I didn't like the movie but it has something to do with it. A lot of the actual history of Laurel and Hardy has been rewritten and fictionalized. Here are but a few examples…

Laurel did not resent Hardy making a movie without him in 1939. They did not have a great offer from Twentieth-Century Fox in 1939 which Hardy refused to sign then. Their popularity did not decline as rapidly as the film makes out. Their final trip overseas, which is what the movie is mainly about, was not the fiasco the film makes it out to be. And I don't know if the movie makes it clear but that was their third UK tour and they were all pretty successful.

The tour promoter, Bernard Delfont, was not the inept con artist that the film makes him out to be, just as their old studio boss Hal Roach was not the angry tyrant that he was portrayed to be. (Even Leonard had a problem with the depiction of Roach.) Hardy did suffer a mild heart attack on the third tour and it resulted in the truncation of that tour. It did not result in Hardy promising his wife he would retire. Therefore, it also did not result in him breaking that promise, ignoring his doctor's orders and resuming the tour, even refusing to drop the strenuous dance routine.

I'm aware I'm one of the few people who did not like this film. Am I also one of the few who did not take that as a gloriously happy ending? To me, a happy ending might have been for Hardy to offer to continue the tour and for Stan to say to him, "I love you for that, Babe, but it's more important that you keep living than for us to do ten more cities and entertain a few thousand more people. You need to be there for Lucille…and hey, if your health returns, maybe we can make another movie or two." But instead in the ending, Stan seems quite pleased that his dear friend — the one who just had the heart attack and was ordered to stop performing — is up there, dancing his severely injured heart out.

In real life, what did happen was that Hardy went home, got better and the two of them were days from the commencement of shooting on a new film when Laurel had a stroke that ended both their performing careers.

But like I said, it isn't just the rewriting of history that bothers me. I mentioned some of it because I think it's significant that the filmmakers had to change so much reality in order to gin up a tale of Stan and Oliver fighting. There wasn't a real one that they could use so they came up with something that I'm afraid just did not ring emotionally true to me. I don't think it would even if I knew very little of the truth.

Two guys who've been together that long…fighting over those silly things? I'd hate to think they were really that shallow. Or married to women that annoying. Hardy was married three times. Laurel was married to four different women and one of them, he married and divorced twice, plus there was also a common law spouse before the four legal ones. If the wives depicted in the film were anything like their real-life counterparts, I think Stan and Babe each needed one more divorce.

This is a movie about two of the most beloved, successful comedians of all time. There's not nearly enough of that in the film. If you didn't know going in that the unsuccessful-at-first tour was a minor outlier in their careers, I don't think you'd figure it out from this movie. Or get what was beloved about them. The real guys had an innocence that made you love them. I don't think it's missing in the acting. I think it's missing in the story that the filmmakers chose to tell. It's Stan and Babe at their lowest point, told in a way that makes it lower so that we can get to a happy ending which I found more bizarre than happy.

Coogan and Reilly are astounding at looking like and sounding like the genuine articles but I found myself thinking, "Oh, I hope Stan and Babe weren't really like that." Stan's a bit of a dick in the film. Babe lacks the off-screen likability that every single person who knew the real thing said he had. (Hal Roach, portrayed wrongly as a bad guy in this picture, told me "Hardy made everyone smile everywhere he went." Reilly's Hardy doesn't.)

Since I saw the picture, I've spoken with several fellow L&H lovers who are aghast at my reaction. Some said, "Yeah, yeah, but isn't it great seeing them getting all this attention?" or "Maybe this will cause a new generation to discover their films?" Maybe…but that doesn't change anything about what I didn't like in the film. It's just a reason to perhaps tolerate it.

The last movie I saw that disappointed me while delighting many (not all) of my friends was Saving Mr. Banks. Shortly after I wrote here of my feelings, I ran into Richard Sherman who, of course, was a player in the story it told and an enthusiastic approver of the film. He said to me with amazement, "You really didn't like it? Why not?" I asked him, "How did you like spending weeks of your life with that woman?" He said, "I hated it." I said, "Okay. You didn't like spending a couple of weeks with her and I didn't like spending a couple of hours with her."

Mr. Sherman thought for a second and said, "You've got a point." I didn't like spending a couple of hours — it felt like more than it was — watching my two favorite performers at the ass-end of their careers wherein they created glorious work that will live forever, bickering and struggling through a quickly-forgotten tour. I am not out to change anyone's love for this film and I can see there's plenty of that around. But I've been inundated by folks asking me what I thought of it so I just told you what I thought of it. Perhaps some of them will consider that I have a point.

• When I was five, I thought a rabbit brought eggs at Easter. When I was six, I thought a jolly man in a red suit brought gifts at Christmas. And when I was fifty-eight, I thought Louis C.K. was funny.

That's a photo of my friend Tom Williams…and if you didn't know him, it's your loss. If you did, I don't have to tell you he was a funny, friendly gent that you, like me, were always glad to be around. He died Friday at the age of 89.

Tom was an actor for many years, even appearing in a Broadway play or two. His career started on local television in Chicago where he often worked with — and became a lifelong friend of — Bill Daily. Tom eventually made it to Hollywood where he did bit parts on programs like F Troop and The Cara Williams Show. In 1965, an invite to a party at the home of Bobby Troup and Julie London led to him becoming close pals with them and also with Julie's ex-husband, Jack Webb.

In '66, Webb made a two-hour TV movie as the pilot for a revival of his Dragnet series. It sold the series to NBC but the TV movie didn't air until '69. Tom was cast as Harry Morgan's nephew and while playing the part, he became fascinated with the way Webb ran his set and his overall operation. All the questions he put to Webb led to a job as Webb's assistant and that led to other behind-the-scenes jobs. Eventually, he became the showrunner and producer of Webb's series, Adam 12.

When Webb ran out of programs to hire him on, Tom returned to acting and was on shows like Too Close for Comfort and The Jeffersons. More and more though, he was hired for voiceover work. He had a nice repertoire of voices including the ability to cry like a baby or imitate a wide menagerie of animals. He did the sounds of the dog in this commercial…

Those of you who listen to or watch my pal Stu Shostak's online program Stu's Show know Tom as a frequent guest there. I owe Stu thanks for introducing me to Tom and also for supplying some biographical info on him for this piece. Tom was just a delightful conversationalist and he had the best drinking-with-Jack-Webb stories of anyone in show business. I liked him an awful lot and I'm going to miss having him around. In fact, I already do.

In a kind of exit interview with The Los Angeles Times, outgoing White House Chief of Staff John Kelly said that he hopes his tenure will be judged not by what Trump did but by what Kelly prevented him from doing. In other words: "If you think he was bad the last year, you won't believe how bad he would have been without me there to stop some of his worst ideas and actions."

One assumes that within a week, he'll be signing the contract to write a book telling us what Trump wanted to do that was so much worse than what he did.

In Durham, North Carolina there's a very famous bridge…famous because of its height, which is 11 feet and 8 inches. That's lower than most bridges so a lot of truckers who don't pay attention to the signs wind up crashing into the bridge and decapitating their vehicles. A gent named Jürgen Henn who works nearby set up cameras to capture these crashes and he posts them to his web page, which has zillions of followers. Here's a twelve-minute documentary on the bridge and Mr. Henn…

Will there be two million people in Times Square on New Year's Eve as some predict? Experts who are serious about estimating crowd sizes say "No way, not even close." In fact, it seems that most estimates of large crowd sizes are hokum. Read all about it.

Justin Deremo has something to ASK me…

Hello. On a recent post, you mentioned taking the day off from the blog, in part because you really liked or enjoyed what you were writing that day. Which got me thinking…How much of what you create do you truly enjoy or that captures your heart/mind in this way?

Many of us who engage in creative works as a side gig or hobby have a certain luxury in waiting for inspiration to strike, if that makes sense. I would expect that, if one were writing for a living, you might not have that luxury — the work has to be done if one is to bring in the paycheck.

It follows, in my thinking, that if one were writing in this latter way, that one might be more likely at times to produce work that is sufficient for the assignment, but feels to the creator as less inspired. If this is the case (please correct me if my assumptions are misguided), then there are also secondary questions that occur to me. Does writing at times become a grind, and, if so, does this ever threaten to dampen your enjoyment of the profession? How are you able to effectively curb these feelings, where they exist? Is it difficult to compartmentalize real-life events from the task of writing consistently and effectively?

There are always projects that are more enjoyable than others, and times when you just feel more like writing than you do at other times. There are times when you write something that pleases you because it checks off all the boxes and fulfills the needs of the project…but there isn't a whole lot of you in it. Or there isn't a whole lot of new in it but it's still, you feel, well-crafted and likely to please many.

I work with an awareness that (a) writing is all I've ever really wanted to do, (b) there's really nothing else I'm any good at and (c) even the tough/unpleasant jobs are preferable to being in another line of work. Yes, at times something can be difficult but that's the nature of any undertaking in which you can eventually feel a sense of achievement, above and beyond being handed a paycheck.

I may have told this story here but years ago, I was having a new brick patio built in my back yard. It was 105° that day and the guys out there, working on their hands and knees and sweating profusely were being paid five bucks an hour by the contractor I'd hired. While they slaved away, I was sitting here, resenting the hell out of a writing job I'd been entrapped into doing…for something like forty times the bricklayers' hourly compensation.

When I suddenly realized that, I felt like I'd been channeling Ebenezer Scrooge before any of those ghosts dropped by. My brain screamed at me, "What the hell do you have to complain about?" and to atone, I went out and asked the contractor if I could "tip" the workers. He didn't understand why but he said it was okay with him. Since then, if I ever catch myself feeling sorry for me in the middle of a script, I remember those bricklayers and I tell myself to stop whining.

The point is that all upsides come with downsides. I once met someone who'd hit the lottery for something like twenty million dollars. Obviously, there are a lot of upsides to that but the winner ticked off a list of problems: Tax complications, relatives who wanted to "borrow" money, total strangers badgering him to invest in their business schemes, etc. If you're going to accept the upsides of anything, you really need to not whine about whatever downsides are inevitable.

So: "Does writing at times become a grind, and, if so, does this ever threaten to dampen your enjoyment of the profession?" Yes, at times it can feel like actual work but no, it doesn't turn me against my chosen profession. All that really gets dampened in those situations is my enthusiasm for working for that employer or on similar projects.

"How are you able to effectively curb these feelings, where they exist?" Well, it helps that I'm always writing more than one thing at a time. I try not to let anything get down too close to the deadline so I have the option of taking a day or even a few hours off from it if I need that. When the TV script I'm writing gets to be a drag, I put it aside and work on the comic book script for a while. When I go back to the TV script, what I need to do on it is usually a little more obvious. That's when I suddenly become aware that I'm stuck on page 12 because I took a wrong turn on page 9.

And "Is it difficult to compartmentalize real-life events from the task of writing consistently and effectively?" If the real-life events take me physically away from the keyboard, I have a problem…but it's the same problem a baker has when real-life events take him away from his bakery, the same problem anyone can have. If the real-life event is just depressing or distracting, I try to leave that real life for a while and immerse myself into the one where my current assignment takes place. It can be a great way to move your mind off the depressing/distracting thing for a while.

I remember once, I had an impossible deadline that meant staying up all night to write a script. I was just settling down to tackle it when the phone rang and I heard that my father had died. I had to leave the keyboard…had to go take care of my mother and then go to the hospital to sign papers and make decisions. About six hours later, I got back to the keyboard and began writing the script, glad in a way to have the busy work to get my mind off the depressing news.

One thing that I think has helped me is the time I spent working in television, especially non-animated television. Every week or two, there was a moment when ten pages had to be written or completely rewritten in the next hour. There was no time to dither and no time to complain or fret. Once — I think more than once — I was rewriting a script as the actors waited to learn it and then go out and perform it for the live audience that was lined up outside my window while I was rewriting. That's the kind of situation where you don't even stop and think about the pressure. You just write the damned thing.

"How much of what you create do you truly enjoy or that captures your heart/mind in this way?" All of it a little, some of it a lot. I can't give you a more specific number because it fluctuates. Sometimes, I'm excited about something I write because I just know people are going to love it…and then they don't so the pride is diminished. But boy, did it feel good for a while there.

Thanks for the question, Justin. I don't know if anyone will like my answer but I enjoyed writing it. So far.

A song from the Broadway show Gypsy as performed over the years by some pretty big stars…

Reports that we might soon see the infamous lost Jerry Lewis movie, The Day The Clown Cried, appear to have been somewhat erroneous. Apparently, no one knows who controls it or where an actual copy of it might be. There might not even be an actual copy of anything resembling an actual movie. Here's the latest.

Matt Yglesias has an interesting — and I suspect, correct — view of why our government is at such an impasse over Trump's Wall. Here's a summary if you don't have time to read the whole piece…

Republicans (excluding Trump) and Democrats both think The Wall is a stupid, useless expense that will do just about nothing Trump says it will do. The way most of these stalemates get unstalemated is that each side gives the other something they want. So Democrats would give Trump his Wall in exchange for something of real value to them. But since Republicans think the wall is of no real value to them, they don't want to give up something of value for it. Trump wants it but House and Senate Republicans, even if they pay lip service to the president's goals, don't really want it.

If that isn't clear, read the article. I may not have explained it well.

So Trump makes this surprise visit to visit troops in Iraq. Could he have made it look any less like he really wanted to do this? And he stands before our fighting men and women and tells them they're getting a 10% pay raise…

You haven't gotten one in more than 10 years — more than 10 years. And we got you a big one. I got you a big one. I got you a big one. They said: "You know, we could make it smaller. We could make it 3 percent. We could make it 2 percent. We could make it 4 percent." I said: "No, make it 10 percent. Make it more than 10 percent."

Now, of course, that's not true…none of it. Our troops have received a pay raise every year for decades. This year's is not 10%. It's 2.6%, which is just about what it takes to keep up with the rate of inflation. That means that it's not really a raise at all in that they won't be able to buy much more with it.

I've stopped wondering why he says things like that. He says them because something within him compels him to speak of darn near nothing else except what a fantastic president he is and we should all be so grateful we have him. Since he has nothing real to say to support that position, he makes shit up and doesn't bother to ask himself, "Won't they know this is a lie?" His more devout followers have made it quite clear to him they don't care…and he doesn't care that a military audience, composed of soldiers who were ordered to attend, is not an audience of his devout followers.

I've given up thinking it can be anything but pathological. If there's a logical thought process at all behind it, it's something like, "Hey, it works for me." What I still don't get is why anyone lets him get away with it.

I know I have devout Trump fans who read this site. Every day, I get one or two e-mails from someone who says they love everything here except the political stuff and it would be so nice if I'd knock that stuff off and stop spoiling my blog for them. Would a couple of you folks like to tell me you wouldn't be outraged if President Obama or any President Clinton had said one thing like that, let alone 7000+?

I try not to read reviews of movies I haven't seen but critiques of Vice — the new film about Dick Cheney — are somehow unavoidable. They make me think that the filmmakers made two completely different motion pictures under that name and released them simultaneously.

One is a brilliant, satirical slam at an evil Vice-President and his inhumanity and war profiteering. The other is a stupid, noxious look at our government that almost makes you feel sorry for that guy who left office with an approval rating of 13%. That's two points below projectile vomiting. Those of the former opinion think it deserves every Oscar in the book. Those of the latter want its makers banned from ever making another movie.

I just received a screener DVD. I can't wait to see which version I got.

Cookie Monster gets interviewed for some British TV show or podcast or something…

I'm in a kind of reduced blogging mode for the holidays, tending to this and that instead of posting as often as I usually do. I'm also not in the mood to follow the news avidly so that cuts down on what I have to write about.

Today, I went to the Costco in Inglewood for some needed supplies. I actually needed them the last two weeks but Costco in the two weeks before Christmas is not a place you want to be. I got some sense of how crowded the place must have been then by looking at the line of folks with items to return or exchange. I think the end of it was in the parking lot of the Costco in Marina Del Rey. As is usual for my trips to Costco, I found myself buying a few items not because I had any use for them but because they were so cheap it was impossible to resist. I'll bet Trump could build his stupid wall — all 900 miles of it, scaled back from his original insistence on 2,000 — for eighty bucks if only he had a Costco card. He could also pick up a rotisserie chicken while he was there.

Some folks have sent me lists of people they think were wrongly snubbed by the TCM obit reel I posted earlier today. Apparently, there's another version of it out that includes Penny Marshall. No, I don't think it was wrong to omit Steve Ditko. Yes, Stan Lee was in it but Stan was actually in many movies and had executive producer credits on many of the most-popular films of the last decade or two. The glaring omission for me was Chuck McCann.

I'm going back to a script. May the rest of your Boxing Day be joyous and filled with many happy returns.

Here's the annual super-stylish "obit reel" from Turner Classic Movies. I was struck this year by how many folks in it I met or even worked with, including Rose Marie, Harlan Ellison and Stan Lee. I doubt I have ever known anyone who was as happy at the thought that he might be included in a montage like this as Stan…