Gavno

I think that Larry Flynt, the Pornographer, was a despicable scumbag. A man who exploited sexuality for a profit. And Flynt himself would probably agree with that assessment of himself and the magazine he created.

But there's clearly much MORE to Larry Flynt than that.

He was honest about that. But in being honest, he challenged others, including those who hold political and economic power in our nation, to do the SAME about themselves. But they won't... they're afraid to tell the truth about themselves

In an odd way, his fight to be free to be a pornographer led him to also become a gutsy and tireless champion of the First Amendment. And that's a lot more than the political frauds in office can ever claim to be.

In a way, the dirt bag that was Larry Flynt was admirable. He could have backed off in his resistance to censorship; he could have toned down the magazine some and continued to reap profits without having to go to jail and spend far too much of his life in courtrooms... but he didn't. He challenged America to LIVE UP to the principles that it loudly professes to support, but is too chicken to support beyond mere lip service.

And that, in a nutshell, is one way that a dirt bag pornographer earns himself the title of American Patriot.

Tom Laughlin, the actor who portrayed the character Billy Jack, once said in an interview that Billy Jack was about the ONLY hero that our young people could admire and believe in. Billy was honest, brave, and tough.

Maybe right next to Billy Jack we should place an angry man in a gold plated wheelchair whose name is Larry Flynt.

Don't sell the man short; there's much MORE there than a short, casual look would reveal. And this film gives us the opportunity to look into that complex individual.

Even tho most of the shooting locations are listed as in California, the film is clearly a story based in Chicago!

The Foley footage used in the train chase sequence, and the stations the conductor calls out, are part of the old Stockyards Branch of the Chicago Transit Authority system (LONG ago defunct and demolished).

According to the book by Bruce Moffat, FORTY FEET BELOW, this film is the only movie presentation of the old Chicago Tunnel and Transport Company tunnel system under Chicago... which, about a decade ago, flooded when a piling was accidentally driven thru the roof of a tunnel under the Chicago River.

The tunnel system was used to move freight and packages around The Loop, and haul away the ashes from the coal fired furnaces that heated the stores along State Street.

For railroad buffs, that unique footage shot in the tunnel system is MORE than enough incentive to see the film.

Maynard G. Krebs is nonconformist throughout the series, and the kindest, most totally lovable person anybody could ever hope to meet... but he's totally asexual. The concept of gender, especially the opposite one, never comes up in his thinking, because the opposite sex is irrelevant when it comes to knocking down the old Endicott Building, or watching "The Monster That Devoured Cleveland" for the fiftieth time, or digging the bongos or Thelonious Monk.

You can never imagine Maynard finding, or wanting, a girlfriend; no woman is unorthodox enough to be a soul mate for Maynard G. Krebs... until he meets Edwina "Eddie" Kegal, a fellow lover of watching the big iron ball dispatching the walls of the old Endicott Building!

In one short episode Maynard goes from the joy of his first love, to the pain of his first broken heart... and we watch as Maynard grows up from the experience.

Definitely a DIFFERENT episode of Dobie Gillis.

Long, long ago, when dinosaurs ruled the world and I was a college undergrad, I made an interesting discovery... at least it was interesting to ME.

The discovery was this... unless it personally grabs him by the noogies and gives a sharp yank, John Q. Public doesn't give a rodent's rectum about history. As a History major, I was appalled to discover that my fellow undergrads didn't know about things that happened 5 years ago, and frankly didn't give a damn about them; if you go to 100 or 200 years ago, that's completely off the RADAR screen. We're seeing today that events that far back produce some really garbled, half remembered jingoistic pronouncements from the average person on the street... or even from wannabe political leaders, who should KNOW better, but instead give us fairy tales about Paul Revere ringing church bells to warn the British about not taking our guns away!

In 1974, ABC-TV presented a production called "The Missiles Of October", covering Kennedy's Cuban missile crisis of a decade before. I wasn't aware that it was going to be broadcast.

One evening in October, I went to the Boar's Head... the campus beer bar at my college. I was stunned by what I saw there.

The place was packed, but the jukebox was shut down. Dead silence... except for the sound of a 21 inch TV set over the bar, presenting the ABC broadcast.

EVERYONE... from the bookworms and nerds to the jocks... was absolutely mesmerized by the program.

It connected with them immediately... and I understood immediately WHY it connected.

I still remember the cold, leaden lump of raw, animal instinct fear that formed in my chest as I'd watched and listened to John F. Kennedy on TV a decade earlier while he informed the American people that nuclear weapons were being aimed at us from 90 miles off our southern coast.

As a child of the Duck & Cover generation my first automatic thought wasn't comforting... I'm living in Chicago, and Chicago is a prime target. If this breaks loose, we're gonna get hit first.

I wondered if a week from then I was still going to be alive... it was a 13 year old who was grappling for the first time with the concept of mortality.

Yeah... the audience in the Boar's Head remembered. "The Missiles of October" grabbed 'em by the scrotum on a downhill pull.THIS was history that was up close and personal; they'd lived through it.

"The Missiles of October" was a VERY well constructed bit of stagecraft, and is historically accurate.Over the years I've wanted to see it again. Now, I can; it's been released on DVD.

Playing the part of JFK is William Devane; he did a great job with the role. As Nikita Krushchev we have Howard DaSilva... the irony here is overpowering because DaSilva was named before HUAC as a Communist sympathizer and was subsequently blacklisted. Now, he was playing the part of the most powerful member of the Communist Party who had ever been born.

In an interesting bit of casting... a VERY young Martin Sheen plays Robert Kennedy. And he plays the hell out of it!

Neamiah Persoff is Andre Gromyko, and Ralph Bellamy plays UN Ambassador Adlai Stevenson.

ABC sure didn't pinch pennies on the TALENT here. Everyone is top rate.

The material presented is pretty historically accurate; the script is based on Robert Kennedy's book THIRTEEN DAYS.

The DVD release is pretty good, but you have to keep in mind the technical limitations of the time when the production was mounted.

This was done with analog cameras (probably the then state of the art Image Orthicon, or possibly the follow-up Vidicon cameras). Compared to current "chip" cameras, the image presentation is "soft"... but that works well with this material. It imparts a slightly dreamlike quality to the production.

It's clear that they shot this to 2" Ampex videotape; in a very few spots, head switching errors (2 inch machines were fiddly devices and were notorious for head switching glitches)are momentarily present... but all in all, it's a pretty good DVD transfer.

HIGHLY recommended !!! The movie 13 DAYS has better fireworks, and more Bells & Whistles... but "The Missiles of October" does a much better job with the back room diplomacy that brought the world back from the brink of nuclear war.

I encountered "12" by accident, and I'm glad I did. I've been into Russian and Soviet films for a very long time; all a part of being a Russophile! In the winter I wear a Red Army issued ushanka, my wrist watch is a Soviet Air Force Sturmanskie, I often have a KGB hip flask in the inside pocket of my motorcycle jacket, and the bike itself is a Russian Ural!

From the little I've learned about the ex-Soviet Union and it's military, I gathered enough to get the shocking FULL IMPACT of the ending's meaning.

I won't spoil things here... but after seeing the film, look up the Army's SPETZNAZ units, and learn a little about how they're trained and how they operate.

After you know that... YOU'LL get the punch line here too.

"Uncle" isn't what he seems to be...

MY SON JOHN has been a bit of an obscure legend for decades. After finally seeing it, I can say "Deservedly So". It's an embarrassment to everyone involved... so much so that I have to wonder if the script was written to broadly parody the film's stated purpose. In many ways, the script seems like an elaborate joke.

The film concentrates on reinforcing and perpetuating the hysterical and often baseless propaganda stereotypes of McCarthy era America. It concentrates on upholding "American Cultural Values"... sometimes in ridiculous ways.

In a rather amusing and decidedly quaint early sequence, women are well and truly put in their place as the family doctor forces pills on Helen Hayes for an unstated malady (clearly the effects of menopause). No explanations, just stern orders to TAKE THE PILLS, and no questions or backtalk permitted!!! You're clearly not able to understand an explanation even if it was offered... women shouldn't bother their heads with such matters.

Dean Jager is forced to deliver dialog that portrays him as a simple minded dolt who knows nothing more than the blind patriotism preached by the Joe McCarthys and Roy Cohns. In an embarrassing sequence Dean passionately and almost hysterically belts out the mindless lyrics of an anti Red song dredged up from the days of the Palmer Raids and Red hysteria of the 1920s.

There is a REALLY warped and twisted bit of business as Mother sends two of her sons off to the war in Korea.

One son promises to send her back an OPIUM PIPE! What is Mama gonna do with THAT??? Perhaps opium is intended to be a means more effective than pills for dealing with Hot Flashes??? In a particularly jolting Freudian moment, they refer to her as their "Sweater Girl"... a reference to Jayne Russell's WW2 pin-ups that deliberately displayed her ample breasts, carefully camouflaged by a sweater.

WHEN is the last time you heard somebody make reference to his mother's breasts... let alone in a context of sexual titillation? Most astonishing of all is the end of this amazing sequence... Mama leans into the window of the car to bestow a final kiss on her son... a MUCH LONGER than motherly kiss... and is rewarded by HER SON giving her a passionate hug that threatens to pull her thru the window and into his lap! This script HAD to be a put-on... NO writer would construct so many awkward, off-putting situations unless he was doing it deliberately.

The rest of the script is replete with awkward, strained ideological claptrap, some of it delivered by the Right Reverend Frank McHugh!!! The Reverend Frank as comedy relief in GOING MY WAY; he did it again here, but usually in situations where comedy wasn't called for.

The third son, our protagonist, is a college educated egghead who is a dupe and Fellow Traveler for the International Communist Conspiracy. The clear message... intellectuals are NOT to be trusted. They'll become Commies EVERY time.

Most astonishing... when Our Hero is tagged for assassination, The Dirty Commies come out in a sinister looking, high power black sedan, and MACHINE GUN him in the streets of Washington DC!!! No one is apparently captured for the crime; they get away clean.

That happened just about EVERY DAY in Washington. Yeah.

I have to hand it to the writers of the script... they succeeded in poking a finger in the eye of the every Red scare witch hunter in Washington with a patently absurd movie. They skated a fine and very dangerous line here.

It was absurd enough to get the point across to thinking audiences, but not so far over the top that Neanderthal ideologues could directly attack it. It makes them look ridiculous.

It's no wonder that this film vanished from circulation so quickly, and remained buried all these years; it flips The Bird at every anti Red demagogue of the era.

...as a police force with no discernible ethical standards or scruples.

There's NOTHING the cops here won't do; burglary (to search the records of a mortuary business without obtaining a warrant), false arrest (for jailing the undertaker multiple times to pressure him into telling what he knows), blackmail (for hinting that the undertaker's wife will find out he has a lover), downright police corruption (releasing busted call girls in exchange for information), not to mention knowingly consorting with a known prostitute and operator of a call girl service (the call girl's madam) and not tossing her in the jug! On Robinson's suggestions and orders, policemen commit acts that should be rewarded with 5 years in San Quentin. They should have called this film "Cops Gone Wild"! If this is the LAPD Vice Squad, I'd hate to see what sort of schtick goes on down in Homicide.

On the other hand, it's a fun romp through the world of 1950s film noire, with Robinson playing the cool, laid back leader of the Vice Squad. I don't think Eddie EVER put in a bad performance.

Lee Van Cleef puts in an appearance at his beady eyed, sinister best. He was a natural born villain even this early in his career.

The script is a lot of fun... but it's enough to make Rodney King flinch.

Welcome to the corrupt Police State.

I was never impressed with Sylvester Stallone, or his movies.

The Italian Stallion may have made a splash by showing off his pectorals and oversize guns in the ROCKY and RAMBO flicks... and he got some underground success in a few youthful, starving actor porno flicks. But the ability to impress teenage boys by making war, or the movie house Trenchcoat Brigade by making love, doesn't equal acting ability. ANY young Hollywood wannabe can do it.

F*I*S*T was a sleeper out there... a film that was released without the big promotion treatment that Hollywood specializes in for turning loser films into box office winners. I'd never heard of it until a friend showed me a VHS tape of the film.

He showed it to me because he knows that I'm a fan of Norman Jewison's work.

Norman is a piece of the OLD Hollywood... he'd have been right at home in the old Warner Brothers stable. He's a man who makes movies that have a social conscience; films that are ABOUT SOMETHING.

In my estimation, if you're a young actor you can't miss when Jewison is directing. He has a gift for getting the VERY BEST out of any actor who works for him. So it was with Stallone.

Sylvester Stallone emerged as an actor with PRODIGIOUS acting chops in the first 30 minutes of F*I*S*T... Labor organizer Johnny Kovak came through the door of a Union meeting, pushing the wheelchair of Joe Harper, a disabled trucker.

In a simple, emotional speech, Kovak laid it all on the line in no uncertain terms. Since he couldn't drive, the trucking company didn't care about Joe Harper anymore, but that's OK... Joe is a member of the Federation of Inter State Truckers, and FIST takes care of it's own. The Union will take care of his medical bills, and provide for the family Joe had worked so hard to support.

The pure, gut wrenching emotion, outrage and sincerity that Stallone poured into that scene announced to the world that Sylvester Stallone had ARRIVED as an actor to be taken seriously.

The part of rough cut, crude Johnny Kovak was a part that was made for Stallone; it fit him like a glove. He could project incredible strength by the soft, laid back delivery of a single line.

In his first labor negotiations... "We're gonna cut 'em off, Pal. You know that?".

The startled management negotiator laughingly responded "What did you say?".

"Your BALLS, Pal. We're gonna cut 'em off and shut you DOWN!" Kovak replied. "You're suffering from small minds and fat asses!".

Johnny Kovak was a smoldering volcano, ready to explode.

Backed up by a powerful supporting cast, Stallone charged through the film like a bull.

A Jewison project always seems to attract the best acting talent around... in this case, Peter Boyle and Rod Steiger. Stallone's talent stood side by side with them; he showed that he was able to match them, taking as well as giving. The scenes where they're together, especially the Congressional hearings where he clashed head to head with Steiger, are titanic.

F*I*S*T is a film that's DEFINITELY worth the time.

After WW2 there were thousands of tons of unused war fighting material and equipment that were dumped on the civilian market as war surplus, at bargain basement prices, just to get rid of it.

I guess the Warner Brothers wartime propaganda film machine had exactly the same problem... they had tons of perfectly good, unused clichés that they didn't need anymore because the war had ended. So they wrapped them all up and dropped them like a huge blockbuster bomb into the script of FIGHTER SQUADRON, in one last explosion of silver screen bravado! Somehow I get the feeling that this barrage of badinage was something that they'd had left over from that other great collection of wartime wisecracking, GOD IS MY COPILOT. Tokyo Joe and Colonel Robert Scott hadn't used 'em all up, and this stuff had a definite shelf life... so it was a case of Use it or Lose it.

The flying sequences are first rate... much of it is actual combat footage and gun camera film, liberally supplemented by footage of postwar Air National Guard pilots flying their beloved Jugs for one last orgasm of wartime glory before the cameras.

As somebody else pointed out, you'll never see that many Thunderbolts in the air again. For aviation buffs like me, that's a saving virtue... the P-47 was a hell of a fighter plane design which, in my opinion, was robbed of it's share of recognition by the much more flashy (but also quite capable) P51 Mustang.

There's no need to yet again go into the Whys and Wherefores of the "Messerschmidts" that came rolling off of North American's P-51D assembly lines. Those California Air National Guard flown Bad Guys can take their place in cinematic history alongside the British built Hawker Hurricane that ALSO played the part of a Messerschmidt in Jimmy Cagney's CAPTAINS OF THE CLOUDS... a film which, by the way, was ANOTHER Warner Brothers firing range for unloosing tons of large caliber clichés.

The music in FIGHTER SQUADRON is also a collection of beloved wartime leftovers.

The film's main musical theme was recycled from the Erroll Flynn/Fred MacMurray prewar epic DIVE BOMBER.

During the sequence where the Thunderbolts supplied ground support for the Omaha Beach invasion forces, the theme music for the ground troops was lifted directly from the "Over the Top" sequence in Gary Cooper's SERGEANT YORK!

The film's plot and subplots are, to say the least, weak... the script is another Clearance Sale of hackneyed plot devices that had to be used up before they turned rancid on the shelf.

The result of all of this is a film that's something of a parody. I would have expected better of Raoul Walsh, but His was not to Reason Why.

FIGHTER SQUADRON is a lot of fun to watch, especially if you've got a couple of cold beers handy, if you can turn off reason and reality for the duration. Suspension of Disbelief is is the order of the day.

Just view this one as Hollywood's Postwar Victory Lap.

I'm a new fan of DUE SOUTH, by way of the DVD collection.

I dearly LOVED the first seasons; the writing was intelligent, and the plots were believable, tho somewhat unlikely. It was a show with warmth and heart and gentle humor... it was something that modern Hollywood productions didn't match.

When the series was resurrected for another go it was clear that something was missing.

Too many Hollywood influences were intruding; cheap double entendre dialogue ("Goat sh*t???" "No, that's GHOST SHIP!"), and plots that were clearly conceived by someone who'd done one line of coke too many.

MOUNTIE ON THE BOUNTY parts 1 and 2 made me want to cry. An excellent vehicle had just turned into a hackneyed series for people just going through the motions for the money.

The sly, subtle aspects of the series were dying; the homages were taking over. The early on references to A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE were cute, but it was easy to see that imagination was dying with the opening of part 1; the re staging of the cliff scene from BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID.

When they pulled that one, they didn't jump a cliff... they were Jumping the Shark.

Good parts... Frasier singing the Stan Rogers song BARRATT'S PRIVATEERS in part one, and the unspoken reference to Gordon Lightfoot in part 2.

For a whole lot of years now, there has been a yearly tradition at my house.

I'm pretty cynical about the whole holiday season; the guy behind the counter in the convenience store near the start of the movie summed up my feelings EXACTLY... just before he got blown away!

Anyway... every year, on Christmas Eve, I head for the Guilty Pleasures shelf of my film cabinet and pull out the beat up VHS copy of SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT for it's once a year showing. Then I grab a cold six pack, and settle in a chair.

When the theme music begins, the dog looks a bit apprehensive and slinks away with his tail tucked between his legs (he HATES this movie!), and the Old Lady busies herself elsewhere in the house (she hates it too) as I grab the remote control, pop a cold one, and Let The Good Times Roll!

This year tho things were slightly different; the old, worn out VHS copy of the film has been retired. I had a gift certificate from Amazon dot com that was about to expire... and just to use it up, I ordered a DVD copy of the new DIRECTOR'S CUT of the film! Since the intent was to restore the film to it's original length, this cut was apparently made by splicing two different circulating theater prints together. The sudden jumps in image quality caused by differences in film density and exposure are SO tacky that it perfectly complements this schlocky classic.

Anyone who survived the required basic psychology course as a college freshman will have a field day with the movie... this is one sick, warped, twisted mutha of a film from beginning to end. Suffice it to say that "politically correct" doesn't even BEGIN to enter into any aspect of it, and a lot of the script is downright Freudian in it's barely hidden implications as the director's most juvenile inclinations are given free rein.

This movie is SO far over the top that I'm surprised ANYONE could get upset over it; I find it hard to take this thing seriously. It's a gruesome, blood drenched PARODY of a horror film in every possible way. The producer took it so far that the results are absolutely ridiculous.

SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT is the cinematic equivalent of putting a brown paper bag of dog doodoo on somebody's porch, setting fire to it, and ringing the doorbell. I'm convinced the script was written by a high school kid who missed his Ritalin tablet today.

A child is witness to the shooting of his father and the attempted rape and throat slitting of his mother by a disgruntled stickup man who uses a Santa Claus suit as a disguise. Just before the attack, the child was told by his grandfather (who he visited at the State Psychiatric Hospital!) that Santa punishes "naughty" children!

That incident is followed by being raised in a Catholic orphanage run by a nun who apparently learned her child rearing techniques by reading THE STORY OF O... they include flogging naked children with a leather belt, and restraining their wrists and ankles to the bedposts, all the time chanting her mantra ("Punishment is necessary.... punishment is GOOD...") in that Marlein Dietrich (or is it Eva Braun?) accent.

All of this is being done by a NUN, mind you... complete with an accent worthy of an Erich Von Stroheim Nazi movie, and wearing a full dress Penguin Suit style habit!

Talk about REALLY getting down with your personal kinky hangups... this director told us MUCH more about himself than we really wanted to know!

After all of that strangeness, is it any wonder that after being forced by his employer to wear a Santa suit and drink booze (that he hates) at a Christmas party, the kid finally snaps and grabs a fire axe?

The festive modes of mayhem wrought are... shall we say, rather imaginative? How about garroting somebody with a string of Christmas tree lights? For a nice touch on this one... the lights were ON when he did it.

Or how about "decorating" the antlers of a mounted elk head... with a half naked blonde? The psychological symbolism in THIS scene are truly grotesque to behold.

Then again... how about decapitating a sled riding bully with a fire axe, and then rolling his severed head down the sledding hill, while his still erect and headless body goes coasting by on a toboggan?

Just in case you haven't figured it out yet, let me make one thing perfectly clear here... THIS IS NOT A Christmas FILM THAT'S SUITABLE FOR CHILDREN!!! In fact, I know a whole lot of ADULTS that I wouldn't show SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT to. And still others that I'd distribute airline air sickness bags to before starting up the DVD player!

I won't reveal any more of the on screen outrages here, except for one... a priest takes two pistol rounds in the back from a Santa hunting sheriff's deputy who ain't exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer.

This is a film for cynics who gave up on Christmas LONG ago... like ME! I give it 8 stars for sheer absurdity.

Along with the plaudits and praise, MAN OF LA MANCHA is getting a lot of bad reviews here. The reason is clear.

If you look at ANY work written for the stage that was transformed into a film, you're going to see exactly the same sort of wildly divergent opinions listed.

IT'S BECAUSE WE'RE COMPARING APPLES AND ORANGES. TO THOSE WHO SAW A LIVE STAGE PERFORMANCE, NO CINEMATIC VERSION WILL EVER COMPARE FAVORABLY! At the same time... for those who never saw the work on stage, the film can and WILL stand on it's own merits.

I'm of the generation that saw and emotionally connected with HAIR, and remember live performances well.

HAIR was interactive. In the opening number, "Aquarius", the cast literally converged on the stage from all parts of the audience and theater.

During the first act, protesters in the audience (actually cast members) disrupted the flow of the performance and interacted.

In the closing number (FLESH FAILURES / LET THE SUNSHINE), the cast literally returned to it's origin, leaving the stage and mixing in with the audience.

Over time, even the script itself evolved; periodically the worldwide casts received mimeographed sheets of changes to the script (sometimes, MAJOR changes to the story line).

How could a movie version of HAIR ever hope to compare favorably with that? A film HAS to look inadequate by comparison, because we're looking at the strengths and weaknesses of the particular MEDIA EMPLOYED, and not the productions themselves.

By comparison... the film version of HAIR looks pale and amateurish when placed beside the stage version. But in and of itself, the film isn't a bad representation of the script.

Film versions of Broadway productions DO serve a valid and valuable purpose tho.

Not every kid grows up in an urban area like New York City. Millions of youngsters never have the chance to attend a live symphony concert, an opera, or a Broadway play.

A film or video version of a play can expose them great literature.

I once saw a classroom full of high school freshmen in the north woods of extreme northern Wisconsin who were absolutely captivated and fascinated by a videotaped production of Thornton Wilder's OUR TOWN. I've seen live stage productions of it many times, and the video struck me as not nearly on a par with any of them... but these kids hadn't. The nearest theatrical company was over 300 miles away, so it was all new and unique to them.

Maybe that videotape will, sometime down the road, inspire them to actually attend a live performance.

MAN OF LA MANCHA has to be viewed in that same context. Take it for what it is... film making. Comparison with the Broadway stage is unfair and unproductive.

The first one is Jack Palance in CHE!, playing the part of Fidel Castro.

The other one is in THE LAST DAYS OF PATTON, when George C. Scott (as General Patton) makes his SINGING DEBUT by performing the the suggestively dirty little soldier's ditty "Lily From Piccadilly, The Blackout Queen".

Either of these performances is more than adequate induce hysterical laughter, projectile vomiting, or the blank, glazed eyed, frozen stare that only the total and utter disbelief in what your eyes and ears are telling you can produce.

Trust me on this one.

George must have done this turkey strictly for the money. Except for the singing, he could have mailed in his performance.

Turn on your radio in the 1960s... you'll get deluged with Surfin' Music from your favorite station.

The Beach Boys, Jan and Dean, and a dozen other groups were singing about surfing.

Go to the movies... There's Bobby Darren, Annette Funicello, and Sally Fields on the beach, soakin' up some rays (we hadn't heard about sun block or skin cancer yet...) and riding the waves in some quickie production whipped out for the Saturday night drive-in movie crowd.

Like everyone else I was vicariously into the Surfer culture... it was irresistible. We knew all about Riding Pipeline, and The Green Cathedral dropping the lid on ya. We knew that wave sets came in cycles of seven, and that seventh wave was the most powerful... we learned everything there was to know about surfing from Jan and Dean when they sang RIDE THE WILD SURF...

...It takes a lotta skill and courage unknown, To catch the Last Wave and ride it in alone...

There was only one thing wrong with all of this. Most of us "surfers" were in places like Nebraska, and we'd never SEEN the ocean, let alone ridden the waves. We wouldn't have known the skeg of a surfboard from our own butts.

The mindless fun of the Surfin' Craze died as the world moved on.

The ugliness of a war in Southeast Asia grabbed our attention, and the Summer of Love urged everyone to wear flowers in their hair in Haight Asbury.

Whatever happened to the Surfer culture in California after the attention of the rest of the world turned away? That's the question Big Wednesday answers.

As one character in the film says, "NOBODY surfs FOREVER".

This isn't a film like BEACH BLANKET BINGO... the beach party eventually ends and everyone has to grow up sometime. That's what Big Wednesday is all about.

The film follows three friends... Matt (Jan Michael Vincent), Leroy the Masochist (Gary Busey), and Jack (William Katt). They're among the top surfers around, and as The Bear (Sam Melville) puts it... "...THEY can be the ones who draw the line. They can distinguish themselves".

This is a Coming of Age movie... it gently and lovingly examines all of the mileposts in these three lives... the weddings, the acceptance of the responsibilities of adulthood, the paths through life that cause the three friends to go their own separate ways, the deaths. But all this time there's one point of commonality; the sea. Everything relates to it in the end... once a Surfer, always a Surfer.

Not to be missed is the sequence where Matt, Jack and Leroy are ordered to report for their Army draft physicals! Anybody who had to go thru that craziness during the Vietnam era will immediately relate to the clash of bureaucratic insanity that tries to induct these guys, versus the creative insanity of the prospective inductees who desperately tried to escape the Army's dragnet... "Gentlemen, follow the yellow line on the floor. And Gentlemen, I assure you... it does NOT lead to the Land of Oz!".

The most interesting character in the film is The Bear (Sam Melville). He's sort of a surfer's guru, the Wise Old Man who represents the old school surfers and passes on the lore and traditions of the past to this new generation. He makes their boards, and imparts the essence of the surfer culture.

In Bear's shop we see framed black and white photos of Bear in his younger days, surfing Rincon on the early 1950s. We also see a velvet covered frame on the wall that contains a Bronze Star; presumably, The Bear was part of the generation that was taken from the beaches to serve in Korea.

Whenever there's a moral or ethical question, it's The Bear that has the answers. At Bear's wedding, everyone drinks to the bride and groom, except Jack, who is a nondrinker. Bear urges him to break with tradition just this once... he points out that the toast is to friendship, and your friends are the most valuable thing you'll ever have.

When Matt neglects his responsibilities to his wife and daughter and is well on the way to becoming an irresponsible, alcoholic bum, it's The Bear who sets him straight again.

In a world of craziness and acting on impulse, The Bear is an anchor for them all... a role model that never changes or fails them.

We see the clash of cultures as the three surfers grow older... they're becoming part of the past as the new wave of druggies and the psychedelic generation replaced the surfers in the public consciousness.

Even in surfing the new generation has no respect for the old; in a surfing movie, a sequence featuring Matt is ridiculed by the audience; the old timers have been replaced by Jerry Lopez, the new generation's champion surfer.

The world moves on.

In the end... we see the final triumph. Legend talks about a big surf, so powerful that it'll wipe everything before it clean. Bear talked about it... and it's finally come, on Big Wednesday.

The new generation is there to challenge the power of nature, lead by Lopez... and the three friends come together for one last ride.

The water photographic unit got some amazing stuff, probably the best surfing footage ever shot. Frankly, I'm amazed that nobody died to get it.

The film has the ring of reality to it, as it should... the director, John Milius, was part of the '60s Surfer generation, so the film is sort of autobiographical.

Big Wednesday is work of love, executed with skill and intelligence.

Thumbs Up all the way.

I've been a fan of Robert Duval for a lot of years now... in both movies and TV performances he's been a major force among American actors for decades. He's at his best when he plays complicated characters with many layers to their personalities, and he's shown that a dozen times.

It seems like there isn't any kind of role that he can't handle; Bull Meecham in THE GREAT SANTINI was, until now, his masterpiece in my opinion, portraying the brash, natural born warrior along with the awkward, struggling man who doesn't know how to be a father and husband, clearly showed his greatness and mastery of his craft. As Hub in SECONDHAND LIONS, his portrayal of a crusty old Texan with an unbelievable past, a soft spot inside of him for a lost, lonely little boy, and a load of personal sorrow that would crush a lesser man, was magnificent.

Completely out of left field comes Sonny, his most unexpected role.

Who would have thought that hiding inside of this man was a completely believable Pentecostal preacher? Sonny is electrifying... a human dynamo of religious zeal that shares the body of a fatally flawed human being that contains the ingredients of his own destruction.

Duval's greatness comes not from an ability to play a character like he's putting on a jacket; he literally BECOMES the character. And that transformation affects everyone around him.

The church's congregation isn't a collection of actors playing a part, they REALLY ARE Sonny's congregation in a real church service. The collection of professional actors, real fundamentalist ministers, and local pick-up extras welded perfectly into a functioning unit, and real EMOTION comes roaring through loud and clear in the finished product.

In the "making of the film" addendum on the laserdisk version of THE APOSTLE, the viewer catches Duval's enthusiasm for this project. I wish I could have been there for the filming of the film's final sequence... Duval struggling to give what is probably his greatest performance, at 3:00 AM in a little church out in the rural Louisiana countryside... all the while knowing that his crew was running out of film! He HAD to be speeding up his sermon to get it all in the can, keeping his congregation stoked up and giving Their best for the film. He was a man racing against the clock at a rate of 24 frames per second... but you'd never know it. Sonny's final sermon is a MASTERPIECE of on screen realism.

We should be grateful to Robert Duval for this film... the film shows us a contrast of Americana. The slick, high energy, up to date church that Sonny loses is a direct, modern descendant of the small, simple rural church that he sets up in Bayou Boutte. That high power commercial church where we began the film is the direction where Pentacostal religion is going, while the small church Sonny puts together is a relic, disappearing swiftly into the past... and Duval has captured a small snapshot of that dying subculture on film for the future to see.

Ten Stars all the way... a unique movie experience.

At the time SHAFT was released, it was a startling film... and watching for the first time, it crossed a social line, and there was no going back.

Walls and conventions were crumbling in all of the arts. The biggest play in Broadway's history, the precedent breaking and iconoclastic Rado, Ragni and McDermott production "Hair", was playing in a dozen cities at once to sellout crowds. In the post Blacklist period, Joe McCarthy and HUAC were dead, and once again the films, books, and plays had a social message and tried hard to reflect the world as is really is. Sex and dirty words came springing triumphantly out of the closet, and it was anything goes.

On TV, Bill Cosby was costarring with Robert Culp in the breakout dramatic series I SPY. Dianne Carroll had her own integrated series, JULIA. Even in outer space Nichelle Nichols provided a Black presence as the competent communications officer Lt. Uhura aboard the Starship Enterprise in STAR TREK.

It was the time for Black talent to make it's presence known.

America was used to (and probably a bit bored with) the film noire private eye flicks we'd been watching since World War Two. They usually were based in New York City, and they were usually vehicles for hard boiled WHITE private dicks like Alan Ladd or Robert Mitchum. They were pure fantasy and they spun fantastic tales about a mythical underworld and thugs who came straight out of Dashiel Hammett novels. They were fun, but they never had the taste of reality, especially for Black audiences; there were virtually NO Black people in them, anywhere. The shadowy world of the private eye never rang true.

The first time I saw this film was in a theater with a totally Black audience. The effect on us was electrifying.

From the first fade-up when the lead guitar cranked up that Issac Hayes theme, SHAFT grabbed your attention! Tall, handsome Richard Roundtree in his leather coat, striding thru the big city traffic like a cowboy on horseback riding thru a herd of cattle... confident, comfortable, at home. This is HIS world, HIS city, and he OWNS it ALL... flip the finger to a cabbie who dares to honk at him! This isn't the film noire world of nightclubs, nondescript gangsters, and Dooley Wilson as the men's room attendant anymore... it's the REAL New York City, complete with the crowds, the traffic, the Harlem drug scene, Black revolutionaries, hip little bistros with Gay bartenders, and in the background an undercurrent of rising aspirations; of a Black man, running his OWN detective agency, and more important getting the RESPECT for his position from a White NYC police department detective.

Sorry Bogie... we still love ya, and tho Sam Spade was cool, there's no place for him in the world of John Shaft. Sam's day is over.

John Shaft isn't a lowly, subservient Steppin Fetchit darkie fumbling his way around in the White man's world, he's his OWN MAN... and he's big, bad, and bold enough to DEMAND that kind of respect! SHAFT was a detective for a new age... his message and image were aimed at Black Americans who were no longer content to be second class citizens who sat quietly in the back of the bus.

Today, SHAFT may seem commonplace and a bit boring. That's because this film, so explosive and revolutionary when it came out, did it's job and made the entire concept of a Black private eye seem completely plausible.

It's one of the best Blaxploitation films (as the genre came to be known). Well written and produced, even tho now it's a period piece, it can still hold it's own.

With all of the trashy, throw-away, so-called "stars" out there, a small handful of folks have always stood out on the basis of sheer acting talent. Richard Dreyfus is among them.

I first got turned on to him with THE GOODBYE GIRL, and something just clicked. THIS was the Real Thing! After JAWS, I started looking for more... and promptly found a quirky, offbeat offering, THE APPRENTICESHIP OF DUDDY KRAVITZ.

Three wildly different roles... and all handled to perfection. THIS MAN IS AN ACTOR! After a succession of other roles, Dreyfus hit THE role, the one he can always be proud of... playing Glen Holland, the reluctant music teacher who came to love the profession that life and circumstances had forced him into.

The greatest gift MR. HOLLAND'S OPUS gave to me was an appreciation for a person in my own life... for the first time in several decades, I thought of my personal Mr. Holland, band director Herbert Rifkind of Chicago Vocational High School. Mr. Holland and Herb Rifkind couldn't have been more different people; Herb had been part of the Marine Corps Band in Washington, and tho he'd moderated the military approach to one more suitable for dealing with high school kids, his band was a tight and precise machine, carefully trained with patience and love.

Holland's "marching buddy" practice, and the sound of the drummer's Street Beat winding up at the start of the parade instantly took me back across decades... during halftime in a football game in Soldier Field in Chicago, steering 40 pounds of reluctant brass Sousaphone through a high wind while maintaining precise marching interval and cadence in the ankle deep mud, all the while struggling for perfection on the bass obbligato of "The Stars and Stripes Forever"...

We didn't do it for glory, or even for ourselves... tho we'd have never admitted it back then, the band did it right to keep from letting Mr. Rifkind down. Holland and Rifkind were alike in that way; he was our best friend on the faculty, and the one that we now remember with a special fondness.

The Rifkinds and Hollands of this world probably have the most profound effect on their students of any high school faculty member; they give their kids something of VALUE that lasts a lifetime; an appreciation for music, and the self discipline that's needed to master a musical instrument or navigate life.

Holland and Rifkind are very special people... simple men, doing a job that they love, but a job that affects every student they ever encounter for a lifetime. It was time that somebody made a movie about these unsung heros.

Dreyfus did it RIGHT.

That title isn't meant to be a put-down... considering that Carl Stalling of the Termite Terrace cartooning unit at Warner Brothers did some of the music, and the sound effects track used a LOT of stuff from Bugs Bunny cartoons, I think it's a fair question.

A FAR better movie than Jack Benny claimed (for years afterward he did jokes about the film, wondering why he didn't get an Oscar), THE HORN BLOWS AT MIDNIGHT is simply a cartoon for adult audiences, staged with human beings instead of animated drawings. It uses all of the basic tools of a cartoon... an outlandish situation, a suspension of belief in reality, and a total disregard for physics and natural law.

A lot of posters here criticize the movie for not being funnier. It IS funny, very much so... but it's a much more laid back and understated humor than we see in today's films. Remember, film audiences in 1945 were not expecting to see something out of PORKIES or ANIMAL HOUSE; their tastes were a lot different than ours. This isn't a comedic style that beats you over the head; it's a platform that lets the considerable comedic talent employed show off it's best schtick... Margaret Dumont playing her trademark Upper Class Lady (as Mme. Traviata, the opera singer) and looking completely ridiculous in that role with her choice of music... Reginald Gardener using his facial expressiveness to indicate extreme pain at the mutilation of his music... Benny doing his stand-up jokes... and Franklin Pangborn, "The Master of the Slow Burn", displaying his best move again and again all thru the movie.

There IS over the top craziness here tho, in the final dream sequence where the battle for possession of the trumpet takes place. In good WB cartoon style they saved the insanity for the end of the picture. The cartoon sound effects show up in profusion here, and Stalling's cartoon musical scoring comes to the fore; THE MAN ON THE FLYING TRAPEZE being played in perfect Termite Terrace style to indicate drunkenness gets it's point across perfectly.

It's a FAR better movie than Benny ever let on in his radio show patter; he should have been PROUD of it, and I suspect that actually he secretly WAS.

Have you noticed that almost all of Bogie's very BEST and most gritty performances were when he played characters that were dedicated to a noble cause? Rick Blain in CASABLANCA goes without saying... even tho Rick doesn't admit until the end that he IS dedicated to ANY cause.

Charlie Allnut in THE African QUEEN once again became dedicated (at the insistence of Kate Hepburn) to the cause of sinking the Louisa.

Tho his cause was a twisted one born of psychosis, Lt. Commander Philip Francis Queeg was utterly committed to the cause of making the USS Caine acceptable to his impossible standard of perfection.

In his last film THE HARDER THEY FALL we again see the cynical, world weary Bogie who seems to be part of the problem, but who in the end lets his conscience and character win out; he does what he sees as RIGHT, no matter what the personal cost.

Even in his most underrated performances in the cheap, throwaway films like BATTLE CIRCUS, Bogie was at his hard boiled best as a dedicated MASH surgeon. Alan Alda probably took a lot of his character Hawkeye from Bogie's performance.

Playing the crusading newspaper editor Ed Hutchinson in DEADLINE USA Bogie gives us a tour de force performance, clothed in the utter, incorruptible purity of an honest man who is fighting naked evil in the form of corruption by a gang boss who controls a city's underworld... as well as some of it's most prominent public institutions.

In this one I'm strongly reminded of Jimmy Stewart's hard boiled, cynical reporter in CALL NORTHSIDE 777; Stewart was another actor who really got his teeth into a part where he was on a crusade of some sort.

Bogie hated phony movie tough guys, but oddly he came off as one in a lot of non-gangster roles; his demeanor was so imposing that without violence he could radiate strength and integrity... along with a world weary cynicism that made him seem all the more powerful. In DEADLINE USA we get it FULL STRENGTH and undiluted as he opposes Tomas Rienzi. Violence directed AT him makes him appear all the stronger; the sequence in Rienzi's car where Bogie gets struck across the face with the newspaper shows it; Hutchinson never even flinches at the blow. He only smiles and sneers "THAT'S the Rienzi I like to see".

Bogie's at his BEST in the final scene in the press room... there's BEAUTY in the utterly cynical contempt in his voice as he answers Rienzi's phone call with "Hello Baby..." . We KNOW that Bogie has all the cards in his hand now, and Rienzi's threats are meaningless when Bogie says "That's the PRESS, Baby, the PRESS... and there's NOTHING you can do about it. Nothing". That line makes us want to stand up and CHEER... no matter what may happen to Bogie, he's left us a gift. Right has triumphed.

This is one of his BEST films. It's a great example of why Humphrey Bogart is still, 50 years after his death, one of Hollywood's brightest shining stars.

I've always been impressed by the performances of British screen actors... Jack Hawkins, John Mills, Roger Livesley, Sean Connery, even Rita Tushingham... have ALL, at one time or another shown the uncanny ability to not ACT a part, but actually BECOME the characters they portrayed.

The all time grand prize for this sort of transformation goes to Alec Guiness, both in BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI, but even more so in TUNES OF GLORY.

The final officer's briefing that Guiness, as Colonel "Jock" Sinclair, gives concerning the funeral arrangements for Colonel Barrow, is ELECTRIFYING! In five minutes of screen time we see a man completely change from a self confident military officer to an emotionally disturbed wreck of a human being. It's FRIGHTENING, and the ne plus ultra of the actor's craft.

The film itself is EXCELLENT, but Guiness's performance is the capstone.

In the small Kansas town that is home to Fort Baxter (Bilko's post), the local radio station goes out of business. Bilko contacts a buddy of his in the Signal Corps, and they appropriate an Army radio transmitter. As soon as the local station signs off, Bilko takes to the air as the station's new replacement! Programming is, to say the least, unusual. An early morning exercise program for the Ladies in the audience is provided when Bilko hides a microphone on the drill field where the troops are being given their daily calisthenics at 5 AM by a platoon sergeant... complete with abuse and obscenities! If anyone out there remembers the END of the episode, please post another message!

Plot was a case of Art imitating Reality.

About the time this episode aired, Elvis Presley was inducted into the Army. It wasn't a stretch for the Sgt. Bilko writers to capitalize on it; they had a Rock N' Roll idol (Melvin Pelvin) being drafted, and assigned to Sgt. Bilko's motor pool platoon.

Behind Spelvin's back, Sgt. Bilko sets up a concert for him and sells out the house. Before the concert, Bilko has one of his men (Private Doberman) talk to Spelvin within the range of a tape recorder microphone to get a recording to use on the local radio station for promotion.

On the recording, Spelvin talks about how much he LIKES Ernie Bilko, and how Bilko is different from his manager... Bilko doesn't want anything from him... and he sings a song that he's composed (to the tune of Elvis's "Love Me Tender") talking about his BUDDY, Sgt. Ernie Bilko! On hearing it, Bilko finds that he can't carry out his plot to use Spelvin for his own profit, and destroys the recording that he'd worked so hard to get.

Most everything about this neat little movie has been said by previous posters, except this.

The motivation for making it was, of all things, the US State Department! The US was deeply involved in fighting World War Two. At this point in time the average American knew almost NOTHING about South America, and the Nazi government was busy making business and political connections there, especially in Paraguay... there, transplanted Germans were a well established colony. They were aiding Hitler's war effort with the operation of industrial concerns, as well as providing espionage support.

South America promised to become a new battlefront if German successes and infiltration continued. The region produced vital strategic raw materials, key among them rubber.

Our strongest ally in the region was Brazil. The US Navy had a number of installations there, both sea and air. The Brazilian Navy worked closely with US forces in hunting U-boats in the Atlantic narrows; a number of US Navy vessels were transferred to them. American air bases (the largest of which was at Recife) provides home base for American aircraft, both fixed wing and lighter than air blimps, to provide air support coverage to trans Atlantic convoy operations.

The State department felt it would be a good idea to familiarize Americans with the land, people, and way of life of South America, and called on Disney to produce THE THREE CABALLEROS. The movie was, first and foremost, a TEACHING TOOL for both military forces and the general public during a global war.

BTW... I love the crazy little bird too! HE'S the best part of the film!

There are two other Disney films made for the Government that I'd LOVE to find copies of.

One is VICTORY THROUGH AIR POWER, another WW2 product.

The other is one that I saw back in Basic Training in the 1970s. Believe it or not, the Walt Disney studios produced a military training film on the prevention of VENEREAL DISEASE!!! The unfortunate Lady dispensing said commodity bore a VERY striking resemblance to Snow White!

Because of that film I can never view SNOW WHITE in quite the same way ever again!

It was the early 1950s. J. Parnell Thomas of The House Unamerican Activities Committee was accusing everyone in sight who had any measure of public visibility with Communist allegiance. He went after Hollywood in a series of highly publicized hearings, resulting in the arrests and convictions of the Hollywood Ten for invoking their Fifth Amendment rights against self incrimination... just before Thomas himself was hauled before a Grand Jury to answer fraud charges. In a moment of high irony Thomas himself invoked the Fifth Amendment before he was convicted and imprisoned.

It was the time of "Tail Gunner Joe" McCarthy, who charged that Communist influence in the State Department and Army had caused us to "give away" China. He recklessly charged that Communists had infiltrated nearly every aspect of American life... strictly in the name of enhancing his own political power base. In the Army hearings McCarthy was finally unmasked as an unprincipled charlatan by Army counsel Joseph Welch, and he was subsequently censured by the Senate for unethical conduct. Joe McCarthy subsequently died of alcoholism.

Besides these men... Richard Nixon, J. Edgar Hoover, Roy Cohn, and many others in positions of power shrieked the gospel of anticommunism, demanding that Americans surrender Constitutional rights in the name of defeating this new enemy.

It was a time of fear where American opinion could be easily manipulated. Partly for financial gain, and partly to spare itself from further attacks by the Thomases and McCarthys, Hollywood became a willing tool for the use of politicians, a propaganda machine that produced a number of sensational films that capitalized on the anti Red hysteria.

Some of the more notable Hollywood efforts were the major studio film BIG JIM MACLAIN, starring John Wayne and James Arness, and a B-movie effort, THE RED MENACE, whose opening credits graphic showed an octopus wearing a hammer and sickle logo using it's tentacles to embrace the entire world.

Pretty heavy handed stuff, but it was effective for the political manipulation of a frightened American populace. It kept McCarthy off of the studio's backs... as well as made a few B-movie bucks.

Along with these heavy, ideological films came INVASION USA, a mythical war and adventure movie. Of the whole lot, THIS is the most interesting of the Red Scare films, and it's the ONLY one that's ANY fun at all! Ed Wood must have LOVED this film; it clearly taught him the cinematic techniques he was to later make famous. As a cost cutting measure the film makes GENEROUS use of stock footage, mostly Public Domain stuff from military sources.

To make American planes into enemy ones, they just printed the stock footage BACKWARDS, so that UNITED STATES AIR FORCE on the planes came out REVERSED, and it looked sort of like Russian Cyrillic lettering.

In newly shot scenes where stock footage couldn't be used, set decoration relied heavily on the local Army-Navy store! There are literally TONS of military surplus equipment on the sets.

The fact that enemy troops were dressed in American military surplus uniforms was explained neatly by saying that they were infiltrating in disguise! As another cost cutting measure, the cast is ENTIRELY made up of B list "talent" who would work for Actor's Equity scale. The amount of over the top, hammy acting has to be seen to be believed! To throw in a touch of sex, a drunken enemy soldier tries to ravage a blonde American beauty, who chooses instead to kill herself by diving out of a window!

The script is absurd, but for frightened audiences of the time it was plausible... it bore out all of the dire threats that politicians had been making. Hedda Hopper's review of the film said "It will scare the pants off you!", and so it did. Bombing raids on San Francisco, the Hoover Dam destroyed by a missile attack, and New York City hit with an atomic bomb were enough to scare the pants off of ANYBODY.

For sheer kitsch value I give it a ten.

As a warning of what propaganda feeding the political hysteria stirred up by unethical politicians can accomplish, it ALSO gets a ten.

As movie-making, it gets a four.

Thirty-odd years ago I went to a little hole in the wall school called Northland College, up in extreme northern Wisconsin just east of Duluth. It was in the middle of nowhere, and the winters were horrendous.

While I was there I got addicted to a radio station, WSCD in Duluth, which happened to be the outlet for a brand new program on Minnesota Public Radio called "A Prairie Home Companion". It was done by an eclectic dude named Garrison Keilor. When he wasn't doing PHC, he was the early morning drive time guy on MPR.

He was DEFINITELY different. Imagine sitting around a fraternity house drinking your first cup of coffee at 7 AM, getting ready for an 8 AM class after a night of poker, beer, and grainy 8 millimeter stag movies. You're listening to Garrision talk on the radio about Lake Woebegon, a mythical little town in Minnesota and he's doing absurd commercials for nonexistent products between playing chunks of Mexican mariachi music. Outside, the wind and snow of a full blown blizzard are howling in from Lake Superior, the sleet on the windowpanes is providing an obligato to the Mexican mariachis.

Weird, but somehow it all worked and fit together and made perfect sense at the time.

That's the kind of serendipitous strangeness Altman manages to catch in the film... a sort of disjointed and laid back version of reality.

A lot of folks are complaining that the film has a weak plot. Well guess what, folks... LIFE doesn't HAVE a plot. And the film is a slice of life as Prairie Home Companion's been serving it up for the last 30 odd years.

When I first heard that the movie was being made I knew one thing immediately; unless you knew about Prairie Home Companion and you were at least an occasional listener, you JUST WOULDN'T GET the movie. Looking over the comments posted here, I guess I was right about that.

Prairie Home Companion (the movie) is a classic example of the old saying, "Ya had to BE there". For those of us who WERE there, Robert Altman got it RIGHT.

One special treat in the movie for me.

Back there at Northland College I went to school with a folk singer on campus name of Pops Wagner. Pop used to hang with another folkie named Charlie McGuire. They did a LOT of good music together. I don't think either of them graduated... they both had other, Woodie Guthrie kinds of things to do instead, and both became occasional performers on the radio show.

Pops is in the film. I got a good, long look at him backstage, sitting in the background while Garrison talked to Meryl Streep. He's the dude with the cowboy hat and generous mustasche... the SAME mustasche he had 30 years ago! In case Pops Wagner should read this... HOWDY Pops! Remember how you blew the college President's mind (and confused the Board of Trustees) with your unexpurgated performance of Jelly Roll Morton's song "Windin' Boy"? I don't think they understood what the lyrics were saying... or trying hard NOT to! They're the type of folks who post here about how BORED and confused they were by the movie. They're NEVER ganna get it.

And Pops... after seeing you on the DVD, I can honestly say that you haven't changed a bit after 30 odd years. Just like A Prairie Home Companion.