While searching my cluttered hard drive for some info on It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World for a post here the other day, I came across a JPG of this newspaper clipping…
Some of you may be thinking, "Jackie Mason? Barbara Heller? I don't recall either of them in the movie!" That might because they weren't in the movie. Jackie Mason was originally signed to play one of the gas station attendants but it turned out that his schedule was so full of club dates and bookings that they couldn't know if they'd have him when they needed him. I got the impression from Stanley Kramer that he thought Mason's agent had misled them about his availability. Anyway, Mason was replaced.
Originally, the two gas station attendants were to have been Mr. Mason and Joe Besser but Besser was then a regular on The Joey Bishop Show, a sitcom at the time. Mr. Bishop would not allow Mr. Besser the necessary days off to be in Mad World so he was out. I think the way it worked was that Arnold Stang was hired to replace Besser and then a little later, Marvin Kaplan was hired to replace Mason.
Rumor has it that Ms. Heller was signed to play the wife of Ben Blue, who played the airline pilot…a role ultimately played by Bobo Lewis. But there were a lot of scenes cut from Mad World — some filmed, some not — and she might have been in or intended for one of them.
And speaking of people who were cut from the film: When I showed you the Jack Davis poster in this posting here, I meant to point out the officer on the ground below the car driven by Milton Berle. That was Allen Jenkins, a character actor probably best known for voicing the character of Officer Dibble in the cartoon show Top Cat…which also featured voices by Stang and Kaplan. A photo of Mr. Jenkins was in the souvenir book for Mad World sold at the roadshow engagements but he was cut from the movie just before its release. He apparently played a policeman or sheriff.
And I haven't figured out where Herbie Faye might have been in the movie. Faye, seen above with his long-time friend Phil Silvers on Sgt. Bilko, is in several stills taken during the desert scenes in Mad World. It's unlikely he would have schlepped out there in 105° heat just to say hi to Phil. Whatever he did never made it into the movie. He had to be content to guest star on just about every sitcom of the sixties and about half of the funny movies made in that decade. In show biz, he went back to the days of burlesque when he was First Banana (lead comic) and Phil Silvers was Second Banana (supporting comic).
There were others who didn't make it in…and before someone asks, as people seem to do hourly on Facebook, about Don Rickles: Don Rickles was never going to be in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and the reason he was never going to be in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World is that when the film was casting, he was still an unknown, especially in the comedy world. He didn't even appear on The Tonight Show until 1965.
It's Legal Eagle Time! Devin Stone explains why Alex Jones may actually have to cough up a large wad of that money he owes the families of the kids in the Sandy Hook horror. I tend to feel sorry for a lot of people some of my friends tell me no one should feel sorry for. I have no trouble not feeling sorry for Alex Jones.
By the way: Some of the same folks have told me they enjoy Mr. Stone's lectures more when they use the YouTube feature that allows you to slow down the video a bit. Look for the little gear icon in the taskbar that appears once you start playing a video.
There are two ads in this video. If those annoy you, consider watching Legal Eagle the way I do…with a subscription to Nebula. His videos there have no ads, they often include extra comments and they occasionally post a video there which never turns up on YouTube and therefore never appear on this site. There are lots of other interesting things on Nebula also.
As you've no doubt heard, the SAG-AFTRA strike appears to be over. Various officials within the union need to ratify it as does the general membership but those appear to be formalities. And of course, the outcome is a deal that the union could have accepted on Day One if management had merely offered it then. That's how these things always go but of course, the folks who make zillions of dollars a second running the companies have to play their little power games and lose a lot of time and money doing so. It's one of those things that never makes any sense but they do it anyway.
The way registration for Comic-Con works is that some portion of the available badges is put up for purchase as "Returning Registration," meaning that if you attended the last con, you can purchase badges for this one. This sale is then followed by "Open Registration" on another date and on that date, anyone can try to purchase badges. Later on, there may be additional (but limited) opportunities but those two dates are when most of the badges that are going to be sold are sold.
Returning Registration was last Saturday and the anecdotal reports I've heard said that it went smoothly. That is not to say that everyone who wanted badges got them but the ones who got them seem to have gotten them with a minimum of stress and frustration. There will always be those who are unable to score badges because of simply math. The convention center can hold X number of people and the number of people who want to attend is more like ten times X. Or more.
Open Registration takes place Saturday, November 18, 2023 commencing at 9:00 AM Pacific Standard Time. The Virtual Waiting Room opens an hour before that. You can find out more on this page and on this page. Our friends over at The San Diego Comic-Con Unofficial Blog have written up their own unofficial guide that may also be helpful and you can read it here.
I would recommend digesting all this information well before the day, especially the part about having a Member I.D. in advance. I would also recommend keeping in mind that this is basically a lottery and not everyone can win. Until such time as the convention becomes a lot less popular — like, say, when I achieve my Master Plan to someday host all the panels and making sure every one of them is about Groo — there will always be way more people who want to attend than the con can accommodate. Just remember: It's not Real Life. It's Comic-Con, Jake.
And you probably will be able to get into WonderCon — run by the same people but it's smaller. That's at the Anaheim Convention Center from March 29 to March 31 next year. Badges for that will be on-sale soon.
Three quick items and then I have to get back to a Groo story…
1. As you've probably heard, voters in Ohio have just decreed that their state constitution should make it clear that women have the right to control their own bodies even when it means getting an abortion. I think this is a very good thing and I also think that it's not just because it's the right thing to do but because, while there are many folks out there who are sincere in their view of when life begins, there are also a lot who feel that the so-called "pro-life" movement these days is not about child-rearing and pediatrics but by fund-raising and politics.
2. The "open enrollment" period for insurance plans in my state has turned into a flurry of spam calls — about 80% of the "robo" variety. Most try to sound like they're from Medicare and all wish to connect me with agents who can sell me whatever they can sell me. I think I got about 40 of them today, starting with one that came in this morning at 6:22 AM. I happened to be up then so I answered it and found a real, live human being, evidently in some other country, who seemed shocked that someone answered. I told the person that if I ever got my hands on them, they'd be the ones who needed a hospitalization plan. Then I went back to bed and slept through the next six calls.
3. In the post before the post before this one, I put up an image of one of the great posters that Jack Davis created for the movie, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. My buddy Scott Shaw! sent me a better scan of that image so I have swapped them out and put his in its place. Thanks, Scott! Buy his book!
See you when things settle down here. Soon, I hope.
Here's something kinda interesting: David Grudt sent me an image of an ad that ran in the Hollywood Citizen-News on Thursday, November 7th, 1963. It ballyhoos the premiere that evening of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and offers tickets by mail order, which is how many tickets were purchased for "roadshow" movies in those days.
For those who don't know: A roadshow movie was one that debuted in one theater only in a given city and it ran at that theater for a long time, often more than a year. Mad World ran at the Pacific Cinerama Dome for fifteen months.
You bought tickets for them the same way you bought tickets to a Broadway show — reserved seats for a future date purchased by mail or at the box office or through a ticket agency or one or two other ways. These tickets cost more than admission to your local movie theater that was showing a double feature…and as you can see, a seat to Mad World could run you as high as $3.50!
Roadshow films were usually long, big budget productions with intermissions and they usually sold a souvenir book in the lobby. They also cleared the house after each showing because the next showing didn't start immediately and someone else had bought a ticket that would put them in the seat you have to vacate.
Click on the image to view the whole thing.
The ad would make you think that seven days a week, they had one showing at 8 PM except on Sundays when they started at 7:30. Then on some days, they had a matinee starting at 2 PM and on some nights, a midnight showing at Midnight. But I have here a schedule for this theater that's dated two days before the premiere and it specifies four showings a day — at 11 AM, 2:30 PM, 6 PM and 9:30 PM — though it doesn't say that they did this every day. Nothing on it about midnight showings, no showings starting at 7:30 PM or 8:00. I have no idea why this does not match up with the ad.
The list of celebrities attending the premiere — some of whose names were misspelled — is interesting because there are forty-six stars named but only four of them were in the movie — and two of those were the masters of ceremonies for the evening. There's plenty of news footage and many photos showing other actors from the film at the L.A. premiere and I think there may have been two evenings promoted as premieres.
Also I note that Peter Falk, who was then relatively new to the business, got his name in the ad but Eddie "Rochester" Anderson didn't even though Falk had pretty much the same prominence in the picture. I don't think that's a racial thing. Falk just probably had a better agent.
And that's about all I have to say about my favorite movie on this, the 60th anniversary of its opening. I wish some theater in Los Angeles — especially the Cinerama Dome — was showing it tonight. I can always watch my Blu-Ray (or my DVD or my VHS copies or my Beta copy and if my Laserdisc player still worked, I could watch my Laserdisc, plus it's on a couple of streaming channels…) but as I often say, the way to see this movie is on a big screen with a big, enthusiastic audience. I don't seem to have either in my den at the moment.
60 years ago tonight, my favorite movie opened at what was then called the Pacific Cinerama Dome in Hollywood — a theater that was literally built to show this movie. Now it's just the Cinerama Dome, part of the Arclight complex and it's been closed since the Pandemic closed a lot of things. The theater has been extensively remodeled during this time and I keep hearing rumors — in one case from a very good source — that it's about to reopen and that it will immediately (or soon after) show It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. So far, those rumors have been wrong.
As I've written here before, I saw that film there on November 23, 1963 and my life changed a little. Actually, the life of just about everyone changed the day before but mine also changed the next day…in this case, for the better. If and when I can see it again at The Dome, I intend to go for what will be my umpteenth viewing. I always enjoy it and I always notice something new I'd never noticed before.
Sixty years is a long time. The only cast member who's still with us is the lovely Barrie Chase who just turned 90 but in a way, everyone in it will live forever in the hearts of us who love this movie. I'm 71 but the next time I see this movie, I'll be 11 years old again. I'm always 11 years old when I see it except sometimes around the knees where I'm 71 or, some days, a couple of years older.
My "to do" list has enough items on it that I need to put up one of these soup cans that tells you not to expect much (if any) posting here today.
A friend of mine — a person of some prominence in the comic book community — once told me semi-jokingly that whenever he died, he hoped (a) that I would still be around to write an obit for him and (b) that it would be on a day when I'd put up a soup can to tell the world how busy I was. Then I would (c) start his obit with something like, "I know I said I wouldn't be posting today but the passing of [HIS NAME] is such big news that I had to put my work aside and post this long article about how important he was to comics and everyone who works in that industry or reads them."
If you are that person, do me a favor and don't die today. Because I'm really busy. Thank you.
Pro-Trump lawyer — who won't be a lawyer for long — John Eastman has been called one of the main architects of The Big Lie that Trump won the 2020 election. He's been wrong at every turn including his most recent belief that going on 60 Minutes would make him look better.
This is from tonight's episode and it's brutal to watch someone get battered so, largely through self-inflicted punches…
A gent who, as you'll see, wanted me to call him "Doc Bedlam" wrote with the following question…
Longtime reader here who has so far not bothered you with e-mails, requests for money, or an impassioned defense of cole slaw…but I have a question. It's a weird question, so feel free to ignore it, but it is a subject in which I am interested. If you choose to reprint this on your blog, call me Doc Bedlam.
Recently, I was given a gag gift: The Little Golden Book…of Dungeons and Dragons, based on the old Saturday morning cartoon show, a thing you've mentioned on your blog a few times, to say how you had little to do with it other than hammering someone else's concepts into a form and format that fit your standard Saturday morning cartoon show at the time, and filing off some rough edges here and there.
This book was written and illustrated by people who claim to not be Mark Evanier…but in the second tiniest print on the page, it says, "Based on the episode "The Night Of No Tomorrow" by Mark Evanier."
Now, experience has taught me that the writer doesn't get any more credit than he's contractually obligated for someone to give him. My question is this: Did you get some sort of residuals for the reuse of your story concept in a Little Golden Book, and was it any significant amount? I mean, I'm not asking for your financials or anything, but would the $$$ be worth the trouble of endorsing and depositing the check?
I ask this because I'm aware you've been writing for TV for more than a few minutes now, and I have this image in my head of Mr. Mark Evanier, slipping on his shoes, strolling jauntily out to whatever he drives, and heading out to the Post Office once a week or so…and walking back out with an enormous mail sack full of envelopes.
Most of them contain paper checks…for amounts ranging from a few dollars to a few cents. Because clear back in 1980, someone signed a contract with Mr. Evanier that meant he got residuals of some sort whenever a given story was used…on a downward sliding scale based on how long it's been since the contract was signed (I've heard actors talking about how the residuals run out after a given period, and how they were getting checks for 89 cents ten years after a show was cancelled, and like that; my knowledge of how the writers get paid is somewhat sketchier).
If you're feeling indulgent, could you enlighten me as to exactly how this works?
I'll show you how observant I can be at times. When I got this message the other day, I thought, "There was a Little Golden Book adapting that script I wrote?" I started to write a reply here saying how I'd never seen a copy and certainly never seen a dime from it. But then I had the vague feeling that I had…somewhere, sometime. And then the vague feeling got a little less vague…
A few months ago, I was on a panel at Comic-Con about the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon show. The dais was decorated with Dungeons & Dragons merchandise and I went and looked at a YouTube video of the entire panel. Here — I'll let you have a gander at it if you're interested…
As you'll see if you gander its way, there was not only a copy of the book as part of the display, it was SITTING RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME FOR THE ENTIRE PANEL [Emphasis added to emphasize my cluelessness.] Well, at least I had that vague remembrance. But I never opened it and never looked inside and if I had, I might not have seen my name because I didn't have the electron microscope that I carry with me nearly everywhere I go. I found this image of the title page online…
If you still can't make out my name, clicking on the image will make it a wee bit larger. Or get out the electron microscope that you carry with you almost everywhere you go.
So no, no payment…yet. I may or may not be owed something but I'll have to haul out the contract to check…and with my filing system here, finding a paper from 40 years ago — and then, if any monies are due, actually collecting them — may be harder than finding one's way home from a mystic dimension based on a popular role-playing game.
The contract was with Marvel Productions, which has been sold and reorganized several times since then and I guess it's now part of Disney but not a part with any rights to the game and maybe the cartoons. It has been my experience that companies are pretty good about honoring deals that they (themselves) make. But when a company changes hands, the new hands either never receive the paperwork that delineates the contractual obligations that come with the acquisition or prefer to pretend that they didn't.
So that's part of the answer to your question, Doc. Here's a more complete answer…
From a writer's business standpoint, there are three kinds of cartoon shows — those that are covered by the Writers Guild of America contract, those that are covered by the Animation Guild contract and those that are covered by neither. The contracts for the first two are basically what we call "Minimum Basic Agreements," meaning that if the hiring entity wants your services badly enough, you or your representatives may be able to negotiate an additional contract that gives you better terms that are in the M.B.A.
So let's say that the M.B.A. specifies that for a certain-length script, you'll receive $8,000. Let's further say that your agent and/or circumstances persuade them to give you a better deal that adds in, say, $2000 more plus agreed-upon residuals or royalties or bonuses or special credits. In that case, you'd get $10,000 plus those residuals or royalties or bonuses or special credits. If you don't (or they won't) agree on an additional contract, you just get the $8,000 and whatever credit is dictated by the governing M.B.A.
If you know the story of how I came to do the Dungeons & Dragons pilot and bible — a brief version of it is in video above — you know that I had some extra clout to demand a better deal. This is what good agents are especially good at and mine got me a lot more money, a "Developed for Television By…" credit on every episode and I think there was a "series sale bonus" if/when the network bought the show plus some other rewards. I'll have to locate my copy of that contract and see if I'm owed anything more and if so, if it would be worth it to make the phone calls or turn it over to my lawyer.
It may not be. When I performed a similar service for a Disney cartoon show called The Wuzzles, they adapted my scripts into kids' books similar to Little Golden Books and also a record or two. That contract didn't promise me a cent if they did that so I didn't get money or even copies of the books or record nor was my name on them.
Marvel Productions at the time I worked on Dungeons & Dragons was a signatory to Local 839 of I.A.T.S.E., which has since changed its name to The Animation Guild. If I hadn't gotten that contract, my deal would have just been the M.B.A. of that union which, I'm pretty sure, did not allow for additional payments to the writers for anything.
And once, I worked on an ABC Weekend Special which was adapted by others into two books not unlike the Little Golden Book. My contract did not allow for this so I went to the studio's attorney and told her they should have gotten my okay and also asked me to do the adaptations. She said basically that if I made an issue of it, I would never work for the studio again. I chose not to make an issue of it but I also decided that I liked that part about never working for that studio again.
I think I've answered your basic question, Dr. Bedlam sir, but let me address your fantasy of me cruising to the post office to pick up sacks of checks. It wasn't even that way before a lot of this went to Direct Deposit. Money trickles in here and there, mostly from the two different Garfield cartoon series for which I was Producer, Writer and Voice Director…and I use the word "trickles" deliberately. There's not much there for anyone to envy.
Garfield and Friends now reruns 24/7 on some streaming services. On the streaming service called Pluto, there's literally an entire channel devoted to that show and it's on Tubi and others, as well. I worked on every episode and I've made a pact with one of the voice actors who was on every episode. At the end of this year, we're going to take all the money we've received in royalties and residuals for our work being streamed in 2023 and blow it all on one big lunch at Five Guys.
If we don't order the extra-large fries, the math may work out perfectly. This is a lot of what recent strikes in the entertainment industry have been about.
You've reminded me of one time I had lunch with the late (and loved by me) actor Howard Morris. We met at the restaurant and he hauled out a pile of residual checks he'd just received for voice work at Hanna-Barbera. I don't know (nor did he know) what period of time it covered but the stack was about an inch high, which is a lot of checks. I said, "Well, I guess lunch is on you" and he said, "Take a look at the amounts."
At the time — this was mid-nineties, I think — it was said that to process and mail each residual check cost the studios about eight bucks. There wasn't one check in that stack that was for over about three bucks. Most were well under fifty cents. After we ate, as we waited for the bill, Howie began endorsing the checks so he could deposit them at his bank on the way home. Since I could forge his signature flawlessly, I took half of them to help out.
As we reached the end of the signing process, Howie said, "This is ridiculous. When I go to an autograph show, I get twenty dollars and up for signing my name. Here, I'm signing it for —"
And he flipped over the last check he'd signed to see the amount, which was four cents. The last one I signed was for three and the whole pile added up to a little less than forty dollars. I suggested he use some of that to buy a rubber stamp for future endorsements but he feared he might lose money on the deal if he did. He said, "I'm pissed off at having to do this but if I didn't get anything at all, I'd be even more pissed."
And then the check for our lunch arrived — which he grabbed and which he insisted on paying. With tip, it was for a little less than forty dollars.
We haven't had any Tom Lehrer on this site in many years so let's rectify that. Here he is on one of David Frost's eighty zillion TV shows in Great Britain many years ago, explaining our money to the folks over there…
Here are a few of many messages I've received about intermissions in movies as previously discussed here. We start with this one from Steve Replogle…
What bothers me about Scorsese is the hypocrisy. I bet he doesn't sit through a three-and-a-half hour movie. Or wait! Maybe I'm wrong. That could show this discussion in an entirely different light. If Martin Scorsese at 80 years old can indeed sit through a movie of that length, I really want to learn the secrets of his medical team. Urologist, orthopedist, ophthalmologist — let's hear from them!
And then we have this one from old friend Pat O'Neill…
As you are well aware, it is the rare stage production that does not have an intermission. I have never been to a professional performance that didn't have one and in my amateur acting career, appeared in only one show that was done without an intermission — and that one was only about 75 minutes long. If stage directors and playwrights can keep the audience's attention enough to have them come back from a 15 or 20 minute break, I fail to see why their cinematic counterparts cannot do the same.
Sports have half-times (even baseball has the seventh-inning stretch).
And this one from Mike Kyner…
Last movie I saw that had an intermission was Tess (I think, been so long ago I can't remember). I've run theaters off and on for a few years and here's something else you didn't touch upon…
When a movie is that damn long, chances are you can only show it once a weekday and on the weekends, maybe twice a day. Include ads/movie previews and you're looking at 4+ hours in the theater. I quit going to most theaters because there was literally forty minutes of crap on screen (I counted, 12 damn previews for upcoming movies @ roughly 2:30 minutes each, 30 minutes of my time being wasted) before the actual movie started. What that does is cut your concession sales down to about nothing, they'll buy stuff once they come in and you might have one or two come out to buy something during the show.
Two: Theaters prefer movies to be roughly 90 minutes to 2 hours long. More showings per day means more money coming in and more concession sales. When the studios take roughly 60% of your box office, you need as many people coming in as possible to buy was much stuff as possible at the concession stand.
Many times the studios force you to take X movie for 3 or more weeks and if it's a turkey, good luck trying to get out of it. Multiple screen theaters can just shift it to the smallest house and forget it, one or two screen mom & pop theaters are screwed.
And lastly, this one from Marcus Bressler…
In my semi-retirement, I manage the kitchen in one of those movie complexes that offer a full dinner menu as well as a bar. When a popular movie comes in, we can get really busy: like 600 lunch/dinner orders and, on the side that doesn't have service at your seat, a concession line that goes out the door! This was true of Barbie, for instance.
When the movie is very long in duration, we like it in the kitchen as there is down time in terms of food orders because people order in the first 30 minutes prior to the movie starting and for about 30 minutes after, depending on crowd size. It gives us a chance to regroup, re-stock, and catch our collective breaths.
Management only likes long movies if they are very popular and draw in high food and beverage and candy/popcorn/soda sales. Otherwise they have negative feelings toward them because it means one less movie in that theatre (we have 14 theatres). Since we don't earn any real money from admissions, the ancillary sales matter.
Some of the more recent superhero movies have bombed. We expected large crowds for the Taylor Swift concert movie and we got them. Funny though, they hardly ordered any food! One night we had 58 people at an 8 PM showing and we had one dinner order!. Typically, it would be about 40-50%.
I would like an intermission, personally. I never make it through a movie without a visit to the restroom, even if I curtail my consumption of fluids beforehand. But if my doctor needs a urine sample, guess what?
These messages and others I've received caused me to think more about this issue…but not much more. Obviously, there are marketing reasons for keeping a movie short. A director can't ignore the economic needs of the theaters any more than he can shirk his or her responsibility to do a certain amount of promotional work to help drive folks to the box office.
Mr. Scorsese must have that end of his job under control. He's been at this long enough and he doesn't make movies to not be shown in theaters. After two weekends in release, Killers of the Flower Moon is the third highest-grossing film following Five Nights at Freddy and the the Taylor Swift film. That's probably about where Paramount expected the new Martin Scorsese film to be. As he keeps telling us, he doesn't make "comic book movies" that young filmgoers line up for the first weekend.
I guess what I'm thinking here is that okay, I'm not fond of the idea of a 3.5 hour movie. The sheer length will probably keep me away and this doesn't feel like the kind of movie I want to watch here at home where so many distractions abound. But I didn't go to see The Irishman (which ran only three minutes less, also with no intermission) and I don't think Scorsese or his studio missed my patronage. So I think I'm going to stop thinking about this.
A Saturday Night Live blast from the past: Phil Hartman as The Anal Retentive Chef. Phil didn't know it but he was impersonating a guy I worked with once…
This article by Nardos Haile argues that real long movies don't need to have intermissions if the filmmaker doesn't think they should have them. I am all for creative people having a strong, perhaps dictatorial say in how their films are exhibited…but let's say I want to see Killers of the Flower Moon, which is the film under discussion here. If I understand Ms. Haile correctly, she thinks I have three choices…
See it in a theater in one three-hour-and-twenty-six minute sitting and don't leave to use the restroom or do anything else or…
See it in a theater where it's being shown with no formal intermission but in this option, I just make my own by leaving when I want to and coming back when I've done, probably inconveniencing others in the theater and missing some large chunk of the film or…
Wait until it's available on streaming and then I watch it in my own and pause it once or twice or ninety times if I need to pee or take phone calls or have a pizza delivered or stop for the night because I'm getting sleepy and/or serialize it over several days.
In other words, my options are to experience it exactly the way Martin Scorsese would like it to be seen or to see it (1) the way its director wants it seen or (2) missing one or more chunks of the movie — including possibly key, important scenes — entirely or (3) seeing it on a smaller screen without the same undivided attention we muster in a movie theater but not in our dens and inserting pauses anywhere I, not Mr. Scorsese, would like. And let's not forget (4) don't see it at all.
Option #1 gives him close to total control of how I see his film. Option #3 gives him absolutely none. I don't think Option #2 would please him. If he thinks an intermission would distract from my enjoyment of his film, how would he like the fact that my bladder or I pick a random time to miss fifteen minutes of it? And distract other audience members in the process of exiting and re-entering?
I feel odd suggesting how Martin Scorsese should make his movies but I wish those who make long, long films would consider not just our bladders but other concerns. I had a couple of years there where either my girl friend or my mother had serious medical needs to which I had to be responsive. If my phone vibrated with a call, I didn't want to check who was calling while others around me were trying to watch a movie…but it would have been damned irresponsible of me to wait three hours to do it.
I also have problems with my knees if I sit too long. When I work here at the computer, I make a point of getting up every hour and doing some chore or task that involve a little walking. A three-and-a-half hour movie with no intermission can be bad for my health.
And I wonder how the folks who operate movie theaters feel about this. A lot of theaters have closed in recent years due to declining revenues. Maybe some of them would like a nice little intermission to sell some of their overpriced popcorn, overpriced sodas, overpriced candy bars and maybe a couple of those overpriced hot dogs that have been sitting that in little roller display since the last time a new Walter Matthau film came out. If I had the chance to talk to Martin Scorsese…
No, I wouldn't do what I was about to write what I'd do. I wouldn't tell that man how to make movies. I'd probably just slather him with praise for most of the ones he's made. But I might sneak in something like, :"You know, you're so good at creating mood and dramatic tension in your movies that I bet you could give the people a ten-minute intermission and then get them right back into the story as if they'd never left it."
But someone's probably already said that to him and he's decided to do it the way he's going to do it. And if he and other directors keep making movies that last longer than Mike Pence's presidential campaign, I more and more may have to go with Option #4.
