The Cannell Channel

Having mentioned that "Riptide" was coming to DVD, I felt it necessary to post the opening title sequence of the show (courtesy of the indispensable Retro Junk). Like all the self-produced shows of Stephen J. Cannell, it features lots of clips of things blowing up or falling down, and a Mike Post theme tune that tells you exactly what kind of show this is. And I wouldn't have it any other way. Heaven help me, I miss long title sequences like this.



As I said before, "Riptide" was one of several shows Cannell created very quickly in the wake of the success of "The A-Team" in early 1983. His decision to become a totally independent producer of TV series -- making shows with little or no studio involvement and owning the copyrights himself -- had left him near-bankrupt at one point, with a bunch of flops (including the wonderful "Tenspeed and Brown Shoe," which really needs a DVD release) and one semi-hit ("The Greatest American Hero"). "The A-Team" finally made him a success, and he almost instantly came up with two shows to follow in its footsteps: "Hardcastle and McCormick" arrived in fall 1983, and "Riptide" in January of 1984. Meaning that Cannell was executive-producing, writing for, and renting space for three shows simultaneously. And as a look at the episode guides reveals, he was writing several scripts a season himself for each of these shows. Kind of astounding, really.

The limitations of doing a big action show without studio resources can be seen in each of these shows, which tend to set lots of scenes in warehouses -- which Cannell often used in lieu of studio space -- and recycle lots of footage; there's an "A-Team" episode where the first five minutes consist entirely of a chase scene from an earlier episode, dubbed over with new dialogue. And of course we have to factor in the basic cheesiness and the fact that every show was a re-hash of something else that NBC wanted to cash in on ("Riptide" = Brandon Tartikoff asking for something like Magnum P.I., but with a helicopter like Blue Thunder). But these shows had one thing going for them that most cheesy action shows didn't, and that was Cannell himself. I think Cannell is one of the best television writers ever, and when he writes a script for one of his own shows, no matter how cheesy or derivative the setup, he usually manages to raise the tone of the show with his smart, terse dialogue, balance between humor and seriousness, and ability to make even stereotypical characters interesting. Every character on a Cannell show seems a little more three-dimensional and fleshed out when Cannell is writing for them. For example, I've already mentioned in an earlier post that the only script Cannell wrote for the show "Hunter" -- a show he produced but didn't create -- is so much better than the rest of the first season's episodes that it almost seems incongruous.

I've said before that the unevenness of Cannell's self-produced shows may stem in part from the lack of really good writers to back him up, the way Juanita Bartlett and David Chase backed him up and even surpassed him on "Rockford Files." Of the people Cannell had working for him at his own production company, the best was probably Patrick Hasburgh -- who co-created "Hardcastle" and "21 Jump Street." Frank Lupo, who co-created "A-Team" and "Riptide" and "Wiseguy" and soloed on "Hunter," was sort of Cannell without the sense of humour. Babs Greyhosky, the "token female" on the staff, was very good and funny and given to off-kilter ideas; she wrote an "A-Team" script about the A-Team helping out a bunch of hookers, which NBC wouldn't produce, and when "Riptide" was cancelled due to competition from ABC's "Moonlighting", she and Tom Blomquist sent off "Riptide" with an elaborate Moonlighting parody. But some of the other staff writers in the mid-'80s tended to turn out half-a-dozen undifferentiated scripts a year for several different shows; this meant that these shows could seem dull when Cannell wasn't writing for them, and often collapsed entirely after Cannell turned his attention to another project. The only Cannell show that improved after he stopped writing for it was probably "Wiseguy."

And to close this off with an extra dose of Mike Post/Cannell '80s-ness, here is the main title of "Hardcastle and McCormick," with the opening narration translated into French:

"It's Hummer Time"

Warner Brothers' official Looney Tunes site used to feature very weak, newly-produced Flash cartoons. Recently they've wised up and started offering actual classic cartoons as web content, including some that aren't on DVD yet (but which might be on the next Looney Tunes Golden Collection later this year). Here's the page with all the cartoons they have available for viewing.

One semi-obscure cartoon I'd like to call your attention to is "It's Hummer Time."

This is a 1950 cartoon directed by Robert McKimson, one of many odd and quirky one-shot cartoons he made in the early '50s. The central character is a mischievous hummingbird, sort of a singing version of the early, vicious Tweety Bird -- there's even a Tweety reference in the cartoon -- who is pursued by a cat. The hummingbird keeps turning the tables on him and getting him in trouble with a big grey dog. A standard premise, but the twist is that every time the cat gets in trouble, the dog punishes him with an elaborate, sadistic penalty, despite the cat's pleas for mercy: "Not the Thinker! No, please! NOT THE THINKER!!!" Like many of McKimson's cartoons from this period, it undercuts the stereotype of McKimson as a "square" or unimaginative director; it's got great, off-kilter gags, imaginatively staged with good use of perspective (characters running from background to foreground and back again). Great animation, too, from the likes of Bill Melendez and Rod Scribner.

The cartoon's soundtrack features a whole bunch of popular songs that were regular staples of Carl Stalling's scores: "I'm Looking Over a Four Leaf Clover," "By a Waterfall," "Ain't We Got Fun?," "The Teddy Bear's Picnic," "Baby Face." But the biggest presence on the soundtrack is Raymond Scott's "Powerhouse," which underscores every "penalty" scene.

Veal Prince Orloff

The best season of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," season 4, gets DVD-ified on June 20.

The show improved massively in its third season, probably due to the arrival of writer Ed. Weinberger as a producer: all the comedy writing got sharper and several characters suddenly went from caricatures to three-dimensional comic creations (especially Ted and Lou). The fourth season continued the improvement and added Sue Ann (Betty White) to give it an extra edge. Famous episodes include "The Lars Affair" (Phyllis thinks her never-seen husband Lars is having an affair with Sue Ann) and the episode where Lou's wife leaves him, an episode Jay Sandrich was reluctant to direct because he felt the audience would hate her guts for leaving such a beloved character.

This was the season that brought David Lloyd to the writing staff; it was his first sitcom gig, but he instantly got the hang of it and became one of the most prolific writers in television history. His specialty was writing scripts for high-toned ensemble shows in the MTM mode, like "Taxi" -- for which he wrote the episode where Elaine likes a guy who likes Tony, and the episode where Reverend Jim adopts a dying racehorse -- "Cheers," "Cheers in an Airport" (aka "Wings") and "Frasier." His most famous script is unquestionably the one he wrote for the sixth-season MTM episode "Chuckles Bites the Dust." Oddly enough, nearly all his best work was for shows which he didn't have a hand in creating or developing.

Wowsers!

David Cornelius smacks down "Inspector Gadget."

In mild defence of the show, one thing that made it fun to watch as a kid was that most episodes involved Gadget going to some unusual location, often to foreign countries where we could get our first look (in cartoon form) at other culturea snd landmarks. The only one I remember distinctly was the trip to Paris, where Gadget tried to guard against jewel thefts and where a rich woman was, for, some reason voiced by a man with a bad French accent. But at least DIC tried to show us the world.

The other thing kids loved about the show was the fact that Gadget's niece Penny had a "computer book" -- a book that, opened up, turned out to be a vast computerized system of some kind -- that was basically omnipotent: it could jam security systems, take over and steer trucks by remote control, and get her into any place at any time. It was the '80s, personal computers were new, and were therefore portrayed in media as all-powerful magic boxes; this was the most famous example.

The only other thing I remember about "Inspector Gadget" is that it was one of those shows that kept fading out and fading back in on the same scene: they'd fade out on Gadget in trouble and immediately fade back in on said trouble. My impression was that the producers never fixed where to put the act breaks, so they would just keep fading out and in at random points and let the broadcasters break for a commercial whenever they wanted.

The Searchers: Did Ethan Kill Lucy?

One of the many reasons why The Searchers is the most fascinating movie ever made -- not necessarily the best, just the most endlessly fascinating -- is that so many important story points are stated indirectly or ambiguously. The movie depends on the fact that Ethan (John Wayne) is in love with his brother's wife Martha, yet no one ever says so. The origin of Ethan's racism is shown to us only in the background, in a blink-and-you-miss-it moment, when young Debbie (Lana Wood) crouches near a gravestone that indicates that Ethan's mother was killed by Comanches. Ethan's criminal past is talked about very vaguely or not at all. Horrible atrocities are committed by both the white man and the Comanches, but almost always offscreen and frequently only hinted at. Ethan has all kinds of parallels with the villain, Scar, that are never explicitly spelled out by anyone. The ending depends on actions by Debbie (Natalie Wood) and Ethan that seem logically unmotivated, yet somehow make emotional sense because of all the little hints the film has given up to that point. It's a big, visually expansive movie, yet all the important information seems to be half-hidden from us.

Some of this comes from the way the film was made -- Frank Nugent's shooting script was heavily modified by Ford during shooting, and many of the hidden motivations and dark hints in the film were semi-improvised. (The famous silent scene that comes the closest to indicating the love and possible involvement of Ethan and Martha, the one where Ward Bond drinks his coffee and pretends not to notice the sexual tension between them, is not in the script at all. And Ford added the scene where Ethan shoots out a dead Comanche's eyes; the script called for Ethan to take his scalp.) But most of it is undoubtedly intentional. Ford liked to point out that many of the critics missed the fact that Ethan was supposed to be in love with Martha. If you don't get that sexual element, the movie becomes more of a standard revenge Western, and that's the way most critics treated it at the time.

The fact that so much in the movie is only hinted at makes it easy to speculate about other things the movie might be trying to tell us; that's where the fascination comes from. Because The Searchers constantly wants us to read between the lines and see what's really happening underneath the surface, it's tempting to look for all kinds of clues to hidden motivations, even ones that Ford might not exactly have intended. The most common speculation is that Ethan was not only in love with Martha, but that he might be the real father of Debbie. If you believe that, it changes the way you read Ethan's quest. Others have speculated that Ethan's whole quest is driven by sexual frustration over having lost Martha to his brother. Another line of speculation is that Ethan might be the father of Martin (Jeffrey Hunter); we are told that Ethan "found" Martin, but Ethan seems defensive and wants to change the subject ("It just happened to be me"). Other speculation involves the question of who taught Ethan the Comanche language and how this ties into his racism; when Ethan indirectly (of course) taunts Scar for having learned English from Debbie, Scar turns the taunt back on Ethan's knowledge of Comanche, suggesting that there might be a Comanche woman in Ethan's past. And so on and so on. There's about a dozen unmade movies lurking in the ellipses and penumbras of this one movie.

One possible interpretation that never occurred to me before is one I just found on a message board somewhere. A poster was writing about the scene where Brad (Harry Carey Jr.) thinks he's spotted Lucy, the older of Ethan's two kidnapped nieces. A distraught Ethan reveals -- as usual, without actually saying everything directly -- that he found Lucy raped and killed earlier that day. Here's the scene as written in the script, which made it to filming more or less intact -- Wayne's performance is of course incredibly powerful in the scene:

ETHAN (voice flat): What you saw wasn't Lucy.

BRAD: It was, I tell you!

ETHAN: What you saw was a buck wearin' Lucy's dress...
(they stare at him)
I found Lucy back there in that canyon...I wrapped her in my blanket an' buried her with m'own hands...I thought it best to keep it from you -- long as I could.

He can't look at Brad or at Martin. Brad can't speak -- and then finally:

BRAD: Did they...? Was she...?

Ethan wheels on him in shouting fury.

ETHAN (blazing): What've I got to do -- draw you a picture?...Spell it out?...Don't ever ask me!...Long as you live don't ever ask me more!

It seems straightforward enough, but a poster -- perhaps picking up on the fact that Ethan never specifically says that the Comanches killed Lucy -- wondered whether Ethan could have killed Lucy after he found that she had been raped. Remember, the rest of the movie is about Ethan's quest to find and kill Debbie for having been "defiled" by the Comanches; who's to say he didn't do the same to Lucy? Ethan is also shown with a knife not long after coming back from finding Lucy, though I can't remember exactly what he's doing with it.

Obviously, it makes just as much sense to stick to the interpretation that Ethan found Lucy dead; the point is that the way the scene is played, it makes just as much sense if you assume that Ethan found her alive and killed her. The interpretation works in the context of the movie and makes Ethan an even scarier character than he already is, because, if you read it that way, he is absolutely deadly serious about wanting to kill Debbie -- he's already done the same to his other niece. I'm not saying that's what Ford intended, but it's part of the fascination of The Searchers: the characters' motivations and even their actions are so murky and hard to figure out that all kinds of interpretations suggest themselves -- and they all work in the context of the story. No other movie makes the audience work as hard to fill in the gaps in the story and the characters, and that's what's great about The Searchers -- it's the original and the best audience-participation movie.

That'll Be the Day

The special edition of The Searchers is out on June 6. Good news and bad news on the special features. The good news is that the second disc will include Nick Redman's documentary A Turning of the Earth: John Ford, John Wayne and The Searchers, which chronicles the making of the film through scenes from twenty reels' worth of behind-the-scenes footage and portentous voice-over narration. It will also have the various promotional behind-the-scenes segments Warner Brothers produced for TV, among the first examples of a studio making TV infomercials to promote its movies.

Bad news: the commentary is by Peter Bogdanovich. "Now this is the scene where John Wayne finds the dead bodies... you may notice that George Lucas, whom I know personally, borrowed this shot for Star Wars. But as Pappy -- John Ford let me call him 'Pappy' -- told me, 'We all steal from god-damn near everybody.' Pappy said 'god-damn' a lot. Did I mention I know George Lucas?"

Boat Show

Stephen J. Cannell's "Riptide" is coming to DVD (only in Canada).

This was one of several shows Cannell created in the immediate aftermath of the success of "The A-Team," and was sort of a combination of "The A-Team" with his rival Glen Larson's "Magnum, P.I." Or as Cannell's official site describes it:

California beach bums and a mousy computer nerd decide to go into business for themselves as private investigators. Working out of a cabin cruiser dubbed RIPTIDE, most of their cases involve an action-packed series of high speed chases, explosions and beautiful girls in bikinis.

Everything was better in 1983.

No More Supporting Players

I like George Clooney. He is better and more talented and better-looking than me but has a sense of humor about it. But my heart sank a little when he won -- just because I have kind of a purist approach to the Best Supporting Actor Oscars. The Best Supporting Actor award was created -- several years after the Academy Awards started -- to recognize the work of professional supporting players and character actors, the people who did not play lead roles. Look at the early winners of the award, and they're mostly hard-working character-actor types: Walter Brennan, Donald Crisp, Thomas Mitchell, Barry Fitzgerald, Charles Coburn. And it's the same with the women -- the award recognized the work of people like Hattie McDaniel, Alice Brady and Jane Darwell, who neither got nor aspired to get leading roles.

Hollywood has changed over the years, and the stable of resident character players has more or less dispersed -- many of them work more consistently in television -- so as time went on, the supporting awards became just as much, if not more, for lead actors who take second or third-billed roles. Oddly enough, this has happened much more in the male category than in the female category; by the '80s, the supporting actor awards were going to slumming leads like Jack Nicholson and Sean Connery, but on the distaff side there were still opportunities for the Olympia Dukakisis and Dianne Wiests. But recently we've had four straight years of the supporting actress award being won by actresses who are basically stars (Jennifer Connelly, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Renée Zellweger, Cate Blanchett), which is not what the award was supposed to be for.

So George Clooney I like, but he's not the kind of actor the award was created for. The award was for the hero's sidekick, not the hero.

Oscarz

So, a few thoughts while we wait for the entrance of Jon Stewart into the wondrous world of Oscar hostage:

1. The most interesting thing about the list of nominees this year is that four of the five Best Picture nominees are very low-budget films. Capote, Crash and Good Night and Good Luck cost only about $7 million each, which on a blockbuster movie would be roughly the cost of the catering. Other acclaimed recent movies aren't quite that cheap, but still fairly low-budget; Walk the Line and The 40 Year-Old Virgin both came in at under $30 million at a time when $100 million is considered about average for a Major Motion Picture. There seems to have developed a kind of unofficial rule that if a filmmaker is going to make a "grown-up" movie -- even a comedy for grown-ups like 40 Year-Old Virgin -- it has to be done inexpensively.

That's fine, and has led to more good, relatively inexpensive movies being made with studio gloss and polish -- sort of a combination of the co-opted "indie" movement with the big-studio ethos. But the age of the big-budget grown-up drama or comedy seems to be gone: fourteen years ago, a major studio could sink a fair amount of money into a multi-story drama about race and crime in Los Angeles (Lawrence Kasdan's Grand Canyon) but today, a similar movie, Crash, has to be made on a very tight budget or not at all. There are a lot of good movies being made, but what we're not seeing very often is the combination of a grown-up subject and approach with a big budget to do it justice. Or think of it this way: The Searchers, a dark Western for grown-ups, cost $3.7 million in 1956, which the inflation calculator estimates would be about $29 million today. In truth, with everything rising in cost over the years, to do what The Searchers did would probably cost much, much more than $29 million. And I don't think any studio would sink that kind of money into a movie as dark as The Searchers; they'd make it, but they'd make it on the cheap -- good, dark, uncompromising, but without the epic sweep and splendour that a big budget can bring.

2. Worst crop of nominated movies ever? It's a tough call. The worst era for Academy Award nominations was probably in the mid-'50s through the late '60s, when the Academy would basically nominate whatever bloated blockbuster the big studios were pushing. The nomination of Dr. Dolittle in 1967 may have been straw that broke that particular camel's back; it was such an absurd nomination -- leading Truman Capote, furious that the film version of In Cold Blood had not been nominated, to say something to the effect of "anything that allows a Dolittle to happen is ridiculous" -- that there seems to have been some effort to make sure that the list of nominees made some kind of rational sense.

If I had to choose a worst crop of Best Picture nominees, I think 1956 probably wins the prize:

Around the World in 80 Days
Friendly Persuasion
Giant
The King and I
The Ten Commandments

We're not talking bad movies here (though 80 Days is more fun than good, and The King and I is uneven and cuts too many good songs to be satisfying), but it's not a very inspiring list of movies overall, and when you take into account the movies that weren't nominated -- The Searchers, Baby Doll, Lust For Life, Written on the Wind and Invasion of the Body Snatchers -- you realize that this is one of those years when the list of nominated best pictures bears no resemblance to the best work that Hollywood was actually doing that year.

Last Yip Harburg Lyric of the Day

This is the 25th anniversary of the death of E.Y. "Yip" Harburg, my favourite song lyricist. Here is one of my favourite of his lyrics, "The World is Your Balloon" from his flop musical Flahooley (1951). It has all the Harburg touches: a whimsical tone combined with concrete, specific imagery of things and actions; a happy-go-lucky theme combined with a wistful acceptance of the transience of life.

In the show, it was sung by -- and this will give you an idea of the kind of show it was -- a bunch of puppets (the Bil Baird Marionettes). The cast of characters also included the young Barbara Cook, Irwin Corey as a magical genie, and Yma Sumac.

Love, love, when you're in love,
The world is your balloon.
Rain is confetti rain,
The moon's a lantern moon.
Glow-worms are footlights in the clover,
For they know
Life's a bang-up show;
Why should it irk us?
Ain't it a circus?
Yours is the gate that swings
To clowns and tinkerbells;
Yours is the hope on wings,
The heart on carousels.
Yours is the earth to play with
On a summer afternoon,
For when girl loves boy
The world is a toy balloon.

Pretty little world with valley and stream
Floating in rainbow weather.
Something for a girl and boy with a dream,
Something to share together.
Lucky are they who never lose the string
To youth and spring.

Yours is the gate that swings
To clowns and tinkerbells;
Yours is the hope on wings,
The heart on carousels.
Yours is the earth to play with
On a summer afternoon,
For when girl loves boy
The world is a toy balloon.

The Tootie Connection

In honour of this year's Academy Awards, I would like to point out that this is the first year when two -- not one, but two -- nominated directors are connected with "The Facts of Life." Everyone knows that George Clooney did a stint on the show after the girls had finished school and opened up some kind of store with Mrs. Garrett. (I think there was an episode where he dated Jo, which may be a reason why George Clooney seems so unflappable -- once you've dated Jo, what is there to fear?) But not everyone remembers that Paul Haggis was a writer-producer for several years -- in fact, he was there the year George Clooney was there. So think of Crash as a movie full of people who can't solve their problems because Mrs. Garrett isn't there to tell them what to do.

Haggis, of course, also created "Walker, Texas Ranger," which means that by definition anything he does is good.

Harburg Lyric of the Day: "I Like the Likes of You"

A simple but nutty lyric, this one, and a fairly early Harburg song -- 1934 -- with music by Vernon Duke (whose most famous collaboration with Harburg was on "April in Paris"). The gimmick, simply enough, is that it's a love song sung by someone who is tongue-tied and unable to express himself clearly, with the result that he stumbles over typical phrases, gets confused, and ends the song with a brilliantly confused bit of tongue-twisting ("Your looks are pure deluxe...").


Verse

Lady, last Saturday --
Or was it yesterday?
I was rehearsing a speech,
Really, I think it's a peach,
Hope you don't think it a breach
Of recognized etiquette,
I'm from Connecticut --
You see the state that I'm in.
I mean, I'm a mess --
What was that speech? Oh, yes...

Refrain

I like the likes of you,
I like the things you do,
I mean, I like the likes of you.
I like your eyes of blue,
I think they're blue, don't you?
I mean, I like your eyes of blue.
Oh, dear, if I could only say what I mean...
I mean, if I could mean what I say...
That is, I mean to say that I mean to say that:
I like the likes of you,
Your looks are pure deluxe,
Looks like I like the likes of you.

Why I've Come Around on Network

I was never that big a fan of the movie Network. Compared to Paddy Chayefsky's masterpiece -- the really audacious, taboo-breaking The Americanization of Emily, which took on the still-sacred ideals of heroism and glory and revealed them as fraudulent, I thought Network picked mostly easy targets and didn't hit even those targets hard enough. Chayefsky's portrait of network television seems unduly influenced by a nostalgia for the "golden age" of live New York TV -- that is, a time when TV producers would hire him -- and a seething rage against young people, of whom the Faye Dunaway character is the film's representative (William Holden lectures her on how much more decent and good his generation is than hers). Add in the fact that many of its points about TV had already been made in A Face in the Crowd twenty years earlier, and you get a film that doesn't have nearly as much to say as Chayefsky thinks it does.

But watching the new DVD edition, I've warmed to it a bit more. Not just because of what I recognized as the best performances in the movie, those of William Holden, Peter Finch and Ned Beatty (I'm less impressed with Faye Dunaway, Oscar or no Oscar). The theme that now comes through in the film is not so much the Face in the Crowd-lite theme about the dangerous influence of the media and the endless quest for ratings; it now comes off more as a film about people who feel that their life has no meaning, and the ways in which they try to validate their own existences. Max (Holden) tries to do it by snatching at youth, in the form of his affair with Diana (Faye Dunaway). Diana finds all the validation she needs in the quest for ratings. Howard Beale (Finch), after pulling back from the brink of suicide, decides -- and tells his viewers -- that you can find meaning in your life by getting angry and getting involved. But Arthur Jensen (Ned Beatty), the crusading business mogul, sets Beale straight: there's nothing we can do, in the modern business-dominated world, to make ourselves meaningful participants in the world; everything is out of our control. And the movie ends by coming down on the side of this bleak message: it's true that we can't find any meaning in our lives; all we can do is escape into the TV and pretend that our lives have value -- and when Beale tries to tell his audience otherwise, his ratings drop and he is killed for it. Bleak, but relevant, especially in downbeat times.

Also, in light of current events, a major plot twist in the film is startlingly current. Beale discovers that the network is about to be secretly taken over by a Saudi company, and tells his viewers to block the deal:

I will tell you who they're buying CCA for. They're buying it for the Saudi-Arabian Investment Corporation. They're buying it for the Arabs...We all know that the Arabs control sixteen billion dollars in this country. They own a chunk of Fifth Avenue, twenty downtown pieces of Boston, a part of the port of New Orleans, an industrial park in Salt Lake City. They own big hunks of the Atlanta Hilton, the Arizona Land and Cattle Company, the Security National Bank in California, the Bank of the Commonwealth in Detroit. They control ARAMCO, so that puts them into Exxon, Texaco, and Mobil Oil. They're all over - New Jersey, Louisville, St. Louis Missouri. And that's only what we know about! There's a hell of a lot more we don't know about because all of the those Arab petro-dollars are washed through Switzerland and Canada and the biggest banks in this country. For example, what we don't know about is this CCA deal and all the other CCA deals. Right now, the Arabs have screwed us out of enough American dollars to come right back and with our own money, buy General Motors, IBM, ITT, AT and T, Dupont, US Steel, and twenty other American companies. Hell, they already own half of England. So listen to me. Listen to me, god-dammit! The Arabs are simply buying us. There's only one thing that can stop them. You! You!

...And Beale's influence causes millions of telegrams to be sent to the White House, an outpouring of outrage that forces the takeover to be blocked.

And, of course, this leads directly to the second-most famous, but best, speech in the film, the speech where Ned Beatty explains to Beale that

"You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won't have it, is that clear? You think you have merely stopped a business deal - that is not the case! The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back. It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity, it is ecological balance. You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations! There are no peoples! There are no Russians! There are no Arabs! There are no Third Worlds! There is no West! There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multi-variate, multi-national dominion of dollars! Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds and shekels! It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic, and subatomic and galactic structure of things today. And you have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and you will atone! Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT and T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon - those are the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state - Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories and mini-max solutions and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable by-laws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime, and our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that perfect world in which there's no war or famine, oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock, all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused. And I have chosen you to preach this evangel, Mr. Beale."

"Why me?"

"Because you're on television, dummy."

Okay, I give. Network is relevant after all.

Harburg Lyric of the Day: "I Don't Think I'll End It All Today"

The next Yip Harburg lyric is another song from Jamaica, and one of the strangest songs ever written: "I Don't ThinK I'll End It All Today" is a happy song about gruesome methods of suicide. The idea of the song is the old one that it's the little things that make life worth living (in the context of Harburg's original conception of the show, it's the idea that natural and traditional things are what last after the commercial culture has been swept away by a storm), but it largely concentrates on the ways you could do away with yourself if life weren't worth living. Combined with one of Harold Arlen's catchiest, most upbeat tunes -- simpler and more easily hummable than usual for Arlen -- it's a strange, funny song that somehow finds a way to make the listener feel happy and queasy at the same time.


When I see the world and its wonders, what is there to say?
I don't think, oh no, I don't think I'll end it all today.
Fish in sea and sun in the heaven, sailboat in the bay,
I don't think, oh no, I don't think I'll end it all today.
So many sweet things still on my list,
So many sweet lips still to be kissed,
So many sweet dreams still to unfold,
So many sweet lies still to be told.
When I see the world and its wonders, what is there to say?
There's no time for the reaper to call,
So I don't think I'll end it all today.
Away with the river,
Away with the razor,
Away with the pearly gates,
Away with barbituates,
Away with the seconal,
The fall from the building tall,
No, I don't think I'll end it all today.

When I see your smile with its sunshine, what is there to say?
I don't think, oh no, I don't think I'll end it all today.
Tell the coroner and the mourners please to stay away,
I don't think, oh no, I don't think I'll hang myself today.
So many hilltops still to be climbed,
So many good words still to be rhymed,
So many sweet songs still to be sung,
So many slim hips still to be swung.
When I see your smile with its sunshine, what is there to say?
Let me quote from a ditty we wrote:
Oh, I don't think I'll cut my throat today.
Away with the bump-off,
Away with the rub-out,
Away with monoxide,
Away with the one-way ride,
Away with beyond recall,
St. Peter can tell St. Paul
That I don't think I'll end it all today.

So many small hands still to be squeezed,
So many bless-you's still to be sneezed,
So many smart deals still to be clinched,
So many soft spots still to be pinched.
Tell the crocodiles in the river please to swim away,
I don't think, oh no, I don't think,
Don't think I'll drown myself,
Don't think I'll cut my throat,
Don't think I'll commit hari-keri,
Don't think I'll jump from the ferry,
Oh, I don't think I'll end it all today.

Stephen Root is God

Another thing that comes back to me when watching the third season of "Newsradio" is that Jimmy James, as played by Stephen Root, is on my list of the top ten TV performances of all time. As creator Paul Simms originally conceived him, the character of Jimmy wasn't much -- a tough-but-fair, always-busy businessman whose eccentricities may be real or just a way of testing his young station manager, Dave. But Root, who didn't want to do a traditional sitcom boss (Lou Grant, say), took it in a quirkier direction, with weird line readings and unexpected inflections, and brilliant timing. (Root has the gift of knowing when not to pause after a joke: he'll often deliver a punchline and then start the next line without a break, and the lack of a pause actually makes the punchline funnier.) The writers soon followed suit, so by the second there was no longer any doubt of whether Jimmy was truly eccentric: he was a lovable nut, a benevolent tyrant who, in Root's own words on one of the DVD commentaries, kept his employees "as pets."

Some of Root's best performances in season 3 include:

- The season opener, "President," where Jimmy runs for President but hints that he has a strange secret motive for doing so: the climactic press conference, where Jimmy happily confesses to all his past indiscretions ("I was Deep Throat") and finally admits the real reason he's running for President (he just wants to meet women) is a tour de force for Root, with a great moment where he turns the whole press conference into an infomercial to get dates, and his mood suddenly changes from mock-remorse to happy hucksterism.

- The opening scene of "Rose Bowl": Jimmy unveils a bunch of movie memorabilia he bought, all of which turns out to be not only fake, but unconnected to the movies they're supposedly from. Classic moment: "The sword from The Sound of Music." Upon being told that there was no sword in The Sound of Music, Jimmy acts out what he thinks is a scene from the movie, swinging the sword and singing "Sound of Music" to the tune of the Hallelujah chorus, and hearing Root singing in a gravelly, excited voice is absolutely hilarious. (Root is a master at funny-bad singing; the funniest scene ever on "King of the Hill" is in an episode where Root's character, Bill, sings along to "Takin' Care of Business.")

- A scene in the episode "Rap" where Jimmy, a businessman to the core, is offended to hear Lisa say that advertising is "inherently deceptive." Jimmy goes off on a long, long rant about the glories of advertising, getting more and more emotional until he's almost crying at Lisa's failure to grasp that greed is good. The speech , drawing heavily on "Sesame Street" characters, is funny, but Root's over-the-top emotionalism in the service of the subject makes it still funnier.

Don't Be a Wussy!

To follow up on my recommendation of the sitcom "Titus,", DVD Verdict has an interview with Christopher Titus on the show, its cancellation, and its bizarre worldview. Sample quote: "The whole point of the show was how screwed-up people were way stronger than some guy who got everything handed to him. That guy goes out in the world and gets hit by a bus, because nobody taught him anything. He had no pain, he had no problems. I'm not dysfunctional—I'm evolving to the next level."

Important TV Dialogue With Life Lessons

From the third season of NewsRadio, a dialogue exchange where Beth (Vicki Lewis) is angry that Lisa (Maura Tierney) has received an award for "Cutest Reporter in New York":


LISA: All right, look, I did not ask for this stupid award.
BETH: If I were you, I'd be upset too. I mean you? Cute? Come on.
LISA: I am not entirely uncute. Why are you being nasty about this?
BETH: I'm not being nasty. You're pretty. You're very pretty, in fact. But cute? I don't think so.
LISA: Well, I wasn't aware there was a difference.
BETH: Well, of course there is a difference. Pretty means pretty. Cute means pretty but short and/or hyperactive -- like me!
LISA: Uh-huh. What is beautiful?
BETH: Beautiful means pretty and tall.
LISA: Gorgeous?
BETH: Pretty with great hair.
LISA: Striking?
BETH: Pretty with a big nose.
LISA: OK, you're making this up.
BETH: That's ridiculous, why would I make it up?
LISA: Sexy?
BETH: Pretty and easy.
LISA: Exotic?
BETH: Ugly.
LISA: I don't understand what this has to do with anything.
BETH: Look, once they start calling pretty people cute, it devalues the whole word. What's gonna happen next? Cute exotic people? Cute sexy people? It is very important that the word "cute" remain precise terminology for the people who truly have cuteness -- like me!
(Catherine walks up.)
CATHERINE: Hold it, Beth. Don't take it out on Lisa. It's not her fault that she's cute.
BETH: She's not cute, she's pretty.
CATHERINE: Okay, then what am I?
BETH: Sexy.
CATHERINE: Thank you.

Oh Dear God

My previous post on the cultural Stalinism of much of the contemporary right ("Comrade Clooney's film represents decadent bourgeois Hollywood and is counterrevolutionary!") should have been the end of it, but then I found National Review Online's Symposium on the Oscars, where various contributors -- most of whom have not seen all or indeed any of the movies nominated -- are invited to pontificate about the evils of liberal gay commie Hollywood and the "annoying" George Clooney, who has apparently replaced Barbra Streisand as public enemy # 1.

It's all here: reviewing movies you haven't seen; dismissing movies because they have coded "liberal" messages; sheltered hack journalists telling Hollywood producers what the heartland likes to see; the inability to understand the concept that a movie may be about more than one thing (Good Night and Good Luck isn't "about McCarthyism," you dolts; it's about journalism, and it's also a movie that uses the past to comment on the present, which is a tradition going back thousands of years); misunderstanding of the basic capitalistic concept of profit and loss, leading them to dismiss the nominated movies as failures when they're actually low-budget movies that made sizeable profits; obsession with the existence of gay people and scorn toward Hollywood for acknowledging the existence of said gay people; persecution complex; barely suppressed jealousy of people who are richer, smarter and happier than they are (see Clooney, above). On the evidence of this symposium, I believe not only that not a single National Review contributor knows anything about movies, but that none of them know exactly what a movie is.

Among the more dispiriting quotes, which I'll leave unattributed because why embarrass these people further:

"I didn't see [Brokeback Mountain] but the reviews are tediously unanimous: It is a slow-paced, nuanced, and skillfully crafted piece of art that uniquely captures the sweeping majesty of the Rocky Mountains. Oh yeah, and two married sheepherders do it in a tent. I never understood the lure of IMAX — until Brokeback Mountain! Problem is that infidelity is infidelity and if I can't sit through the awkwardness of Diane Lane sneaking around on Richard Gere (Unfaithful), I know I'm going to have trouble stomaching Jake Gyllenhaal cheating on Anne Hathaway with a dude."

"I think we were all amazed by The 40 Year Old Virgin. I mean, who knew there were any virgins left in Hollywood? "

"Best Picture prediction? It doesn't matter, nobody's going to be watching. The average box office for the Best Picture nominees is the lowest since 1984. And Jon Stewart's The Daily Show has half the ratings of Conan O'Brien. So we have an Oscar broadcast celebrating movies nobody saw, hosted by a TV host nobody watches. My prediction: The lowest ratings in 20 years."

"In an ideal world either Cinderella Man or The Great Raid would win. They are both films with values straight out of the Golden Age of Hollywood. They exemplify those virtues of courage and character. Dare I say it? They are both examples of those kinds of films that made old Hollywood great."
[ME: Someone should take this person to a Pre-Code Hollywood film festival and watch her run screaming out of the theatre. Even Old Hollywood hates America!]

"Brokeback Mountain wins for Best Picture — a no brainer. Many of the Academy members ... average age 406 ... probably were mildly homophobic in their youth. Now they get to feel proud of themselves for voting for a gay love story."

[And in case you think AIDS jokes are the height of transgressive humour:]

"Not only is the heartland not as hot for Brokeback as Frank Rich says but neither is Hollywood. I don't believe they're in the mood for a gay Best Picture (Philadelphia won as a disease-of-the-week movie - My Left Foot with stick-on lesions)."

Yes, I know, I should leave this stuff to Roy, but this is depressing. This is a publication that is read by people in government; it can get the head of the National Endowment For the Arts to contribute to their insane little symposium (though he sensibly ducks all politicized questions). And the qualifications for being a contributor to its "culture" features apparently include being a Stalinist lunatic. You may think I've gotten too rant-y, but these are times that call for a rant: whereas twenty years ago a writer for a conservative magazine was expected to know something about... well... anything, now all you have to do is show your Party membership card. Depressing times, depressing times.

I would also add that if I only liked movies whose politics or cultural messages I agreed with, I'd have to condemn to hell all kinds of good movies, from Gone With the Wind to Howard Hawks's explicitly anti-science The Thing to all kinds of movies that conveyed the message that a woman's place is in the home. "Golden Age" Hollywood, just like current Hollywood, made movies with Commie messages and Fascist messages and sometimes both at the same time (see the average Frank Capra movie). They are, however, movies. Doesn't anybody on the contemporary right have any interest in movies anymore? Anybody?

"I have lots of stories about famous people that involve me in some way."

Just a reminder that Shout! Factory has released another Dick Cavett Show collection, the one we've really been waiting for: "Comedy Legends." The twelve hour-long episodes all feature the now-legendary Cavett format: instead of the host dominating the episode and occasionally deigning to interview somebody who's plugging a movie, Cavett does his opening monologue and then devotes the entire show to in-depth, lengthy discussions with the guest. The fact that anybody could have taken an hour on network television to let an elderly comedian talk about his life and career seems almost bizarre now (nowadays they wouldn't even do this kind of thing on public television, where Cavett eventually wound up). As the amazon.com reviewer notes, this works better with some guests than others, and sometimes has varying results with the same guest: the 1969 interview with Cavett's idol Groucho Marx, which opens the set, is a classic, but Groucho's return appearance in 1971 shows him in poorer health and more inclined to rant about the declining culture (referring to the stage show Oh, Calcutta!, he says: "I heard it was filthy, so I didn't go"). But the best of the episodes -- the first Groucho show, the Jerry Lewis show -- are terrific. The low-tech-ness of it is appealing too; you can sometimes see the boom mike in the shot, and the Lewis interview it punctuated by police sirens outside ("I meant no harm!" Lewis shouts).

Lewis's appearance reminds me that, according to my father, he was the best guest-host the Tonight show ever had when he hosted it in fall 1962; Dad said Lewis was so uninhibited and unpredictable -- as a performer and an interviewer -- that the networks were scared to give him his own talk show.

Harburg Lyric of the Day: "Sunset Tree"

Yip Harburg was over 70 when he wrote the lyrics for Darling of the Day, a musical version of Arnold Bennett's "Married Alive." The show marked Harburg's first and only collaboration with composer Jule Styne (Gypsy and many others). The source material was just about perfect for a musical: Arnold Bennett's "Married Alive," about a famous but eccentric artist who escapes the boredom of English high society by pretending to be his own valet. But the production ran into out-of-town trouble, brought on mostly by the hiring of an inexperienced director who wasn't up to the job and partly by the disastrous miscasting of the lead role (Vincent Price, who wasn't English, couldn't sing, and couldn't play romantic comedy). By the time the show came into New York, the book had been changed so much that writer Nunnally Johnson took his name off the credits; the show closed after 32 performances. It did have two things going for it: a mostly fine score from Harburg and Styne, and a Tony-winning performance by Patricia Routledge.

"Sunset Tree" is a ballad about the advantages of growing older, of love borne of wisdom rather than youthful impetuousness. It shows a mellower, gentler Harburg, who has tempered his most common theme -- the idea that life is short and we must grab happiness as soon as we can -- with a recognition of the virtues of patience and taking one's time. And note that even though the lyric has a deliberately old-fashioned feel to it (appropriately enough for the period setting), it is all achieved with very simple words and phrases; no flowery syntax for Harburg, just simple, direct imagery that adds up to something strangely beautiful.


When April's dreams are over
And all her songs are sung,
When the years are old and the hills are old
And only our hearts are young,
Then ev'ry sweet small wonder
Will still more wond'rous be,
In the brave new light of a world grown bright
Under the sunset tree,
Under the sunset tree.
Let youth have its apple blossoms,
Fair on the bough above,
But not so fair as the fruit we share
In the harvest-time of love.
Spring is a young man's fancy
In a world that is fancy-free,
But to know the grace of a warm embrace
When the heart is folly-free
Is to know why that bold leaf turns to gold
Under the sunset tree,
Under the sunset tree.