Here’s a strange thought: today would’ve been Christopher Reeve’s 57th birthday. And in only a few days, on October 10, it will be five years since his death. Time flies, eh?
I don’t intend to make a habit of observing celebrity birthdays here, especially those of celebrities who are no longer with us, but, well… Chris is kind of a special case for me. Besides, marking this particular date gives me an excuse to post a real treasure of a video, a clip of Chris’ first appearance on The Tonight Show way back in 1978, when he was promoting Superman: The Movie. He comes across as very young, very earnest, more than a little nervous, and kinda goofy, especially when a couple of his jokes fall completely flat. Johnny Carson, though, is gracious as always and helps this up-and-coming young star through what must have been an incredibly nerve-wracking experience:
Strange to think that all three of the men featured in this clip — Chris, Johnny, and Rodney Dangerfield — are now gone. Without getting too maudlin about it, let me just say that realizations like this are what make me feel increasingly out of touch with the present.
Hat tip to LA Times‘ Hero Complex blog for the clip…
Like a lot of other young people, I went through a phase in my late teens and early twenties when I idolized the legendary actor James Dean. It’s tough to explain the Dean mystique to someone who doesn’t get it, but I think a major component is the unanswerable question of what might have happened to him if he hadn’t died in a car crash at the age of 24. You see, he made only three movies before his untimely death, and by some quirk of fate, all three were good and memorable. He never had the chance to fail, to appear in a box-office dud or choose some experimental project that no one understands; to be involved in a career-threatening scandal or fall out of fashion with the fickle movie-going public. He is frozen in our collective consciousness at the peak of his physical and professional attractiveness, an eternal avatar of unfulfilled potential. Which means that, sociologically speaking, he’s a blank slate onto which fans — young fans, in particular — can project their dreams and worries about the unpredictable future.
What classic-movie buff has not speculated on what Jimmy would’ve done if he had lived beyond the year 1955? Would he have flamed out in another year or two and gone back to Iowa to raise hogs in obscurity? Would he have gotten fat and weird like his own idol, Marlon Brando? Or would he have been the rare Hollywood personality who manages to build a lifelong career and ends up respected and beloved well into old age, like his contemporary Paul Newman? This same “what if?” scenario is at the heart of a pretty amazing TV commercial that I’ve been seeing around the ‘net the past couple of days. Created for a South African investment company, this piece is brilliantly conceived and executed, in my humble opinion. I’m still trying to figure out just how it was done:
Seriously, was that a lookalike who’s had his face tweaked with CGI? Or actual footage of Dean that’s been inserted Forrest Gump-style into other settings? I’m usually pretty good at spotting special effects, but I honestly can’t tell what’s been done here. It’s an impressive piece of work, regardless.
As I said, I’ve seen this in several places, but the first was (naturally) on Boing Boing. Surprisingly, the ad brought a lot of derision in the comments over there, with several posters saying that it was tasteless, disrespectful, or downright irrelevant because “hardly anyone under 50 remembers” Dean. The latter argument is just plain stupid — I am under 50, and obviously I know who he is, and I’m willing to bet a lot of the Damn Kids™ I complain about are aware of him, too, as an iconic face and a legend, if nothing else. But I really don’t get the charges of tastelessness and disrespect. Maybe I’m operating from a different paradigm or something, but it struck me as a very reverential piece, a harmless exercise in wish fulfillment that does nothing to diminish Dean’s real life or reputation. I suppose you could argue it’s crass to use a dead celebrity’s image for advertising under any circumstances — but that’s problematic, given all the ways Dean’s face is used to make money already — or whether the concept of the ad is really suited for the thing being advertised. Personally, I think the company’s slogan — “given more time, imagine the possibilities” — is both poignant in its connotations for Dean’s life and appropriate for the services being sold, i.e., long-term investments.
Or maybe I’m just a sentimental dope who likes the fantasy of a life that might have been for the guy whose image hung over my bed for several years.
If you’d like to know more about the creation of the “James Dean (Legend)” ad or see a full-rez version of it, go here.
Reading the Sunday funnies yesterday brought me to an important moment of self-realization.
No, really.
You see, yesterday’s edition of “Get Fuzzy” turned on a disparaging reference to the TV sitcom Two and a Half Men, a series that seems to be deeply loathed by a not-insignificant number of people. I like it, myself; it’s not remotely deep, but I find it is consistently laugh-out-loud funny, at least to my sensibilities, and I’m frankly baffled by the level of ire I often see directed at this amiable — if admittedly crass — little show.
So I was thinking all of these things about Two and a Half Men and suddenly it struck me.
OMG… I like crap.
The things the sophisticates, connoisseurs, intellectuals, and hipsters generally decry as lowbrow, superficial, or — how I have come to loathe this word! — cheesy are often the things I most enjoy. And in turn the things that make them gush with enthusiasm and sweet, sticky joy tend to leave me, well, unimpressed. Consider the evidence:
Or so I hope. It’s a photo of Sigourney Weaver eating a hot dog:
Why? I dunno. It amuses me, and I thought it might amuse my Loyal Readers. And after the day I had at work, and the heavy associations this day holds, and the earlier unpleasantness over Rep. Wilson, I figure we could all use some amusement.
Incidentally, the hot-dog-shaped hot-dog stand in the background is Tail o’ the Pup, a Los Angeles-area landmark and a well-known example of programmatic architecture, i.e., buildings that were made to look like other objects, usually the products sold inside them, like giant donuts and such. Sadly, the Pup has been MIA since 2005, when it was evicted from its old lot by development plans. It was supposedly placed into storage until it could be relocated, but it’s been four years now and I can’t find any news about it coming back. I hope it does eventually. The world needs a hot-dog stand that looks like a hot dog.
I visited Tail o’ the Pup shortly before it closed down, but I was on my way to the airport and had already lunched, so I only had a cherry Coke. That’s another reason I hope it eventually reopens, so I can actually experience eating a dog there…
One of my pals from the old movie-theater days recently tagged me with this meme over on Facebook. The idea is to list “15 movies that will always stick with you,” which I interpreted to mean those flicks for which I can still recall the circumstances of my first seeing them, or movies that have some special meaning or memory for me. These are not necessarily my picks for the best movies I’ve ever seen, or even my favorite movies — although I’d be willing to call all of them faves, if you pressed me on it — but rather these are ones that have, well, stayed with me over the years. You’re not supposed to think too much about this exercise, though; the instructions call for you to just throw out the first 15 titles that come to mind, and you’re not supposed to take any longer than 15 minutes to do it (as if it would take me 15 minutes to come up with a mere 15 titles!).
Following what seems to have become my usual custom for these Facebook things, I’m going to repost the results here, with some additional commentary. Hey, just think of this as the Expanded Edition! And in case you’re wondering, I came up with this list in about three minutes, instead of the allotted 15. Because I’m a show-off that way.
And yet, somehow, so very right… it’s Molly Ringwald in that inescapable slave-Leia outfit:
Actually, I can imagine Molly playing Leia if the original trilogy had been made just a couple years later. But then I’ve got a weird imagination that way. I’ve always thought Humphrey Bogart would’ve rocked as Han Solo, too…
Let’s move on to something a little more lighthearted, shall we?
First, a lesson in film history: Back in the 1930s and ’40s, individual movie studios tended to specialize more in particular genres than they do now, and Universal had established itself as the “house of horror” with several monster — forgive the pun — hits that are still considered iconic, if not definitive films today, particularly the 1931 versions of Dracula and Frankenstein, and 1941’s The Wolf Man. Universal execs naturally sought to maximize their earnings on these beloved characters by churning out several sequels for each — proving that nothing ever changes all that much in Hollywood — and finally culminating in two “monster rally” crossover films that featured all three characters: House of Frankenstein in 1944 and House of Dracula in ’45. By the late ’40s, however, the monster craze was waning, and several “Abbott and Costello Meet…” films reduced the legendary monsters of movieland to mere punchlines. Which meant poor Larry Talbot — a.k.a. the Wolf Man — never got his own “House of” movie.
Until now.
It seems an independent filmmaker named Eben McGarr has created a retro-tastic new flick called House of the Wolf Man. It’s filmed in glorious black-and-white, shot in the period-appropriate “academy” aspect ratio of 1.33:1 (which we now call “full-screen” on the backs of our DVDs), and generally looks as if it’s a long-lost treasure that’s recently been discovered in Universal’s vaults. Here’s the trailer:
I don’t know about you, but I think that looks a lot cooler than the upcoming Wolf Man remake with Benecio Del Toro (and that actually looks pretty good to me, as remakes go). I haven’t heard anything about how or when this is going to be released, but I intend to be watching for it.
First, for any who may be wondering, the Odd Fellows Hall building I referenced in the previous entry successfully crossed Market Street yesterday, creating a really odd sight for anyone who happened to walk past the intersection of Market and Main. (Basically, Market dead-ended in a three-story brick wall for a good part of the day). The building still needs to be shoved sideways onto its new foundation — which I guess gives the forces of entropy one last chance to try and implode the old thing into a dusty heap of shattered masonry — but at this point I think the worst threat of it crumbling is past. Now all I have to do is get over the cognitive dissonance caused by having a big old building standing on the wrong side of the street!
Secondly, if you didn’t see it, there was a very nice tribute to John Hughes in the New York Times a few days ago, written by the actress Molly Ringwald. She, of course, starred in three of Hughes’ best-loved movies, Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, and Pretty in Pink. She reminisces about working with Hughes and the impact he had on her life and career, and also reveals some interesting personal details, such as the fact that Hughes held grudges, and both she and co-star Anthony Michael Hall felt like they ended up on the receiving end of them. It’s a very heartfelt piece of writing from a woman who was in many ways a proxy for we children of the ’80s; here she plays that role one last time to tell us what our friend and big brother John was really like.
Oh, and this is probably really dumb, but it makes me happy to think that she and Hall are still friends enough that they called one another after John died, and also that… well, I’ll let you see for yourself how Molly’s article ends…
You may have encountered this already, but here’s a nifty little video clip that’s making the rounds. It’s a tribute to John Hughes comprising scenes from his best-loved movies set to The Who’s “Baba O’Reilly,” which many people think is called “Teenage Wasteland” because of the refrain. Whoever put it together did a fine job of editing, and I think it’s quite effective:
There’s a lot of memories and associations packed into that five minutes. Personally, every time I hear “Baba O’Reilly,” I find myself instantly transported back to the speech and debate room at good old Bingham High School. (FYI, I was on the debate team for a year.) Somewhere along the way, I’ve lost the context of this memory; I don’t know if the moment I recall so clearly occurred during the day or at one of our after-school prep sessions, or maybe it was in the wee hours after a tournament. I just have the moment of the song itself, the first time I remember hearing it, or at least the first time I paid attention to it. One of those moments when whatever’s playing on the radio seems to have been programmed specifically for you, like the soundtrack of your life. I remember I wasn’t especially happy at that moment. I didn’t really like being on the debate team; it was more work than I’d anticipated, and less fun. I was worried that I didn’t seem to have what it took to effectively compete. And of course I was swimming in all the usual adolescent angst, the insecurity poorly concealed by swagger, the constant preoccupation with the mysteries of sex, and the bigger mystery of why I couldn’t get any. But man, I must’ve looked cool, crashed on the worn-out thrift-store couch in the back of the room, wearing my cheap Ray Ban knockoffs and my ratty old trench coat. Teenage wasteland indeed. Just like a John Hughes movie.
Getting back to him, I’ve collected a few links that fans may find interesting. First up is a brief retrospective of the music in his movies, which was essentially a character in itself and always seemed to be utterly perfect for the mood of the scene. Following that, have a look at where Hughes’ teenage stars are now. I had a big crush on Molly Ringwald back in the day, and I think I kind of still do. Interestingly, the guy who played Jake Ryan in Sixteen Candles has completely dropped off the radar, as in reporters are unable to locate him. Rumor has it he’s a carpenter now. Finally, this blog post is a personal remembrance of John Hughes and what he meant to a young woman who became his pen pal. It’s a beautiful piece that gives you a good idea of what he must’ve really been like, and it even includes some insight into why he left Hollywood. (Here’s a big hint: it involved his sons and John Candy’s death.)
And just for a little treat after all that, here is something I never expected to stumble across, the original short story that inspired National Lampoon’s Vacation. The basic bones of the movie are all here, but the overall effect is quite different. It’s a fascinating comparison…
