Here it is, fans of Jackie “The Great One” Gleason, the wait is finally over: Otto Preminger’s weirdo comedy curiosity item Skidoo is now available on DVD.  While it came out before counter-culture exploded into mainstream cinema with Easy Rider, Skidoo was an attempt to tap into the hippie audience of the late sixties, even going so far as to feature a soundtrack by Harry Nilsson, as well as a script by Brewster McCloud scribe Doran William Cannon.  The cast of the movie is easily one of the daffiest ever assembled, including not only Gleason, but names like Frankie Avalon, Frank Gorshin, Burgess Meredith, Cesar Romero, John Phillip Law, Mickey Rooney, Carol Channing, Richard “Jaws” Kiel, Fred Clark, and Slim Pickens.  Oh, and Groucho Marx appears here in his final screen role, playing God, a casting decision that somehow seems more absurd than George Burns, and yet infinitely more palatable.

Skidoo has been seen as something of an oddity in Preminger’s body of work, a director primarily known for heavier films like Laura, Exodus, and The Man With the Golden Arm.  The film was largely panned upon release as a cynical attempt to pander to a hip crowd, Preminger even brought in a young Rob Reiner to do uncredited rewrites on the script, reportedly telling him to “write scenes for the hippies.”  This DVD release marks the first time that this movie has even gotten a home video release, it’s current advent to video being probably due to the cult appeal it’s gained playing late nights on Turner Classic Movies’ TCM Underground, where bizarre not-quite-classics of yesteryear find their modern audience.

The DVD details on this one are virtually non-existent, though I can happily report it’s being released in it’s original anamorphic widescreen, and not a cropped frame.  Other than that though, we get no special features to speak of.  Given that this is the first and only release of Skidoo available to date, those of us wanting to own it will have to as our current President commands of we his subjects: shut up and eat our (Preminger) peas.  Though, really, this movie had me at Jackie Gleason and Harry Nilsson.  Sold.

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Fifty years ago this month the smartest television show of all time first aired. As a writer, I am a sucker for good writing. “The Twilight Zone,” as  Michael Anton recently wrote in his commemoration at National Review Online, is nothing if not a writer’s show. Modern sci-fi fans, caught up in dazzling special effects and action, lose sight of the fact that sci-fi, in its radio incarnations “X Minus One” and “Dimension X,” and its later television offerings such as “The Outer Limits” and “Doctor Who,” is the plaything of nerd scribes with creative imaginations. The megastars and big-budgets would come later. In the beginning, there were wordsmiths.

It’s telling that “The Twilight Zone’s” recurring character is not an A-list hearthrob but the diminutive, gap-toothed, akimbo-eared Rod Serling, the show’s chief writer. Rocky Balboa’s trainer, otherwise known as that bow-legged villian of Gotham, is the closest thing one gets to an actor associated with “The Twilight Zone.” Even the theme music steals the limelight from the actors.

A few years ago, I purchased the 28-disc “complete, definitive collection” spanning all five of the show’s seasons. I’m on season five, and I generally watch late on weekend nights after imbibing. The benefits to this are twofold: first, my imagination is more malleable then and, second, it enables me to enjoy the episodes a second time around without deja vu. (more…)

Entitlement. It’s a silly notion. Almost as silly as the idea of “homophobes” or the “whitey,” yet it is still an idea that permeates the minds of much of America’s lower and middle classes today. Truth be told, I’m getting really tired of being made to feel guilty for other people’s shortcomings. When will people stop playing the blame game, suck it up, grow a pair and take control over their own lives?

I was at the Houston airport the other day and I couldn’t find my baggage carousel. I asked the employee there where it was:

“What does it say on the screen?” he asked grumpily.

“Well, it says Carousel 2 but…”

“Then that’s what it is. You should be old enough to know that,” he said as he went off mumbling about how they weren’t paying him enough.  (more…)

Looking back at The Karate Kid (1984), which turned twenty-five years old this week, a thought keeps recurring.

Wow. . . Avildsen made it work twice.

John G. Avildsen is, in some ways, a director of little distinction when compared with well-known marquee names like Spielberg, Scorsese, Nolan, and Tarantino. The vast majority of his movies are utterly forgotten by the average filmgoer — indeed, he’s been nominated for Worst Director at The Razzies three times. And yet, like Victor Fleming decades earlier with his twin successes The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind (both 1939 — read a great recent article on Fleming here), Avildsen has twice punched way above his weight, netting himself an Oscar for Best Director and giving birth to some of the most memorable moments in motion picture history. (more…)

The United States Navy is in the news and on my mind lately. The events off the coast of Somalia are surely one very good reason for this. Heroism and service. Ordinary people under extraordinary circumstances. Another not nearly so dramatic, but nonetheless exciting reason, for me at least, involves the very recent honor I’ve had of contributing my prose to a citation to confer on Mr. George Herbert Walker Bush the degree of Doctor of Social Science, honoris causa.  His own history, his willingness to serve, to sacrifice and risk everything for a cause, for others, is something we should never underestimate. It’s something we, as Americans have always been good at.

It’s also something our movies used to portray well. We don’t get to see too many of these kinds of movies anymore. Nope, they don’t make them like they used to. That can be said of both the men and women of Bush 41’s generation, as well as the films of that era. But sometimes, in more recent times, we’re graced with shining examples of tarnished excellence, of battered beauty in our citizens and in our favorite art, the movies.    (more…)