Passages

[CSM126]

It looks worse than The Apple, but not quite as lunatically bad as Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band!

Nail/head, etc. It’s dreadful but there are worse films out there. The rare highlight comes from Caitlyn Jenner playing Mr. Lawyer man in a suit and all that until it’s time for fun, at which point she shows up in a midriff shirt and booty shorts, which leads me to wonder how anyone ever took her for a straight man afterwards.

[colinr0380]

As the Cinema Snob video says, its weird because its desperately trying to make the Village People, of all figures, into ladies men, when not treating them (and Steve Guttenberg) as extras in their own movie! If you needed a portrait of how mainstream American cinema was both coming tragically late to the party regarding disco ("the sound of the 1980s!") and struggling to 'figure out the gays' in 1980, you could do worse than a double bill of Can't Stop The Music and Cruising!

[The Narrator Returns]

Joe Flaherty

[domino harvey]

Joe Flaherty

Tragic. I'm not ready for the SCTV cast to start going (Candy was hard enough decades ago)

[Roger Ryan]

Joe Flaherty

Tragic. I'm not ready for the SCTV cast to start going (Candy was hard enough decades ago)

Flaherty may have been my favorite SCTV cast member; certainly his "Count Floyd" TV horror movie host was iconic. And, of course, his one season appearance as the dad in Freaks and Geeks was perhaps the ultimate showcase for the kind of humor he excelled at (as well as some effective dramatic turns). I am reminded that this project has still not been released - when will we get to see this?!

[colinr0380]

I'm afraid that not having seen SCTV I mostly remember him for his role at the end of Back To The Future Part II!

[beamish14]

Joe Flaherty

I love how he used his talents to teach new generations of aspiring comics and comedy writers for years.

Despite being American by birth, he was the only member of SCTV who actually lived in Canada year-round at the time of his death

[otis]

Trevor Griffiths

[beamish14]

Trevor Griffiths

I wish I was familiar with more of his work, but Comedians is truly exceptional, and I wish it could be seen in higher quality beyond the appalling dupe on YouTube

[GaryC]

Trevor Griffiths

I wish I was familiar with more of his work, but Comedians is truly exceptional, and I wish it could be seen in higher quality beyond the appalling dupe on YouTube

I don't know where you are, but in the UK BBC4 has been reshowing a lot of classic TV drama, often in a regular slot on Wednesday nights. I wonder if they'll show the original Play for Today of Comedians as a tribute? It was last shown in 1993. There are three other Plays for Today of his they could repeat - one of them, Country, they did give a showing to in 2020. They also reshowed his later play Food for Ravens last year.

[GaryC]

John Barth at the age of 93. He was a leading American post-War writer of the postmodern/fabulist school.

The only film or TV version of his works was End of the Road, directed by Aram Avakian and released in 1970, and which had a MPAA X rating on release. It was based on Barth's second novel (The End of the Road, with an extra definite article) and is a very interesting film, quite faithful to the novel in many ways. Barth disliked the film though, particularly in a couple of aspects where it did depart from the novel.

Steven Soderbergh is a fan of the film - to the extent of making an interview featurette for the US DVD release - and has wanted to make a version of Barth's later novel The Sot-Weed Factor for years.

[Mr Sausage]

I guess that just leaves Pynchon and Coover of that group of big American postmodernists (well, there's McElroy, but his readership was far more limited).

I was never the biggest fan of Barth. I read everything up to and including Letters, his exhausting epistolary novel, and of the bunch I only enjoyed The Sot Weed Factor unreservedly. It's rollicking and also works as a fine example of the thing it's parodying. I found stuff to enjoy in the rest, but Barth really began to lose me with the final novella in Chimera, whose endless involutions made it unreadable, and then with Letters, which had the sad effect of ruining even the parts of his previous books that I did like as it replayed them at endless length. I gave up on him there. Looks like the book world felt the same, as his popular readership largely dried up and he felt more and more marginal to the critical conversation after the 70s ended. I've heard good notices of his 90s novel, The Story of Somebody the Sailor, tho'.

Seems like he was writing up to the end. He hadn't published a work of fiction since 2011, but he put out a nonfiction book in 2022.

[beamish14]

Christopher Durang, one of the most gifted American playwrights of our time. Most well-known for Beyond Therapy, which was adapted into a 1987 film by Robert Altman

[GaryC]

I guess that just leaves Pynchon and Coover of that group of big American postmodernists

Given that this is a film/TV forum, one characteristic of those writers is that their work must be very hard if not impossible to adapt. There's only been the one version of Barth, one novel of Pynchon (plus a documentary on the V2 rocket including dramatised scenes from Gravity's Rainbow), and for Coover one short film based on one short story. If Kurt Vonnegut counted as one of that group, he did rather better with film/TV adaptations, not forgetting his jokey cameo as himself in Back to School (1986).

[beamish14]

I guess that just leaves Pynchon and Coover of that group of big American postmodernists

Given that this is a film/TV forum, one characteristic of those writers is that their work must be very hard if not impossible to adapt. There's only been the one version of Barth, one novel of Pynchon (plus a documentary on the V2 rocket including dramatised scenes from Gravity's Rainbow), and for Coover one short film based on one short story. If Kurt Vonnegut counted as one of that group, he did rather better with film/TV adaptations, not forgetting his jokey cameo as himself in Back to School (1986).

Vonnegut was all business when it came to film adaptations of his work. He really didn’t interfere or care much provided that the money was right

[Walter Kurtz]

What's the name of the doc with G---R--- recreations?

[beamish14]

What's the name of the doc with G---R--- recreations?

I believe you’re thinking of Prüfstand VII.

There is also a weird documentary on him called Thomas Pynchon: A Journey Into the Mind of P. that would make an interesting double bill with similar documentaries from the era on William Gibson and Bret Easton Ellis

[agnamaracs]

Albert "Tootie" Heath

[Walter Kurtz]

I believe you’re thinking of Prüfstand VII.

Thanks Beamish. It is indeed and it's up on YouTube.

[Roscoe]

What's the name of the doc with G---R--- recreations?

There's also Alex Ross Perry's IMPOLEX, which has played on the C. Channel.

[hearthesilence]

Clarence 'Frogman' Henry

[Lemmy Caution]

Ain't Got a Home is the definition of a New Orleans novelty tune. A tremendous song. As for the explicit No Home followups, It Won't Be Long is terrific with a similar jaunty, bouncy beat. I Found a Home is a likeable reprise, complete with frog- and girl-singing and a terrific sax solo by a crack NO studio band.

A lot of Henry's subsequent output sounds distinctly Fats Dominated. Lost Without You among the best. (I Don’t Know Why) But I Do is a beautiful song, with a lush vaguely big band backing. Just My Baby & Me also walks that line between Fats Domino and big band. I assume Henry was trying to make the same sort of transition from R&B to pop ballads which worked for fellow NO musician Lloyd Price. Henry had an upbeat yet restrained singing style, and while many of his 57-63 tunes feature great NO musicianship, the material wasn't distinctive enough.

[Never Cursed]

O.J. Simpson

[therewillbeblus]

O.J. Simpson

As good a time as any to watch O.J.: Made in America for anyone who hasn't yet, one of the most remarkable docs about America's dynamic relationship with race and how this informs and is informed by racial identity

[bearcuborg]

O.J. Simpson

As good a time as any to watch O.J.: Made in America for anyone who hasn't yet, one of the most remarkable docs about America's dynamic relationship with race and how this informs and is informed by racial identity

For my money, it's a better time to watch the most remarkable wrestling promo about America's dynamic relationship with race. RIP New Jack