Hanna-Barbera

Once upon a time, Saturday morning was magical. Armed with nothing more than a bowl of sugary cereal, a spoon and a drink of some sort (it didn’t matter what), you could spend hours parked in front of the TV and commune with talking animals, monsters great and small, heroes both super and non-super, cavemen, aliens, teenagers, sentient cars and little blue elves in funny hats.

You could journey to the farthest reaches of outer space or go forwards or backwards in time; travel in race cars, spaceships, magic carpets or World War 1 biplanes; control giant robots or wear magic rings; go on tour with rock bands or solve mysteries, and all from the comfort of your home.

I’m speaking, of course, of children’s animation. Cartoons.

These days, entire channels are devoted to cartoons, whether from the glory days of Saturday morning or afterschool or newer, more modern material. One can call up one’s favorites on demand from video websites like YouTube and Vimeo, or buy box sets of them on DVD or Blu-ray. This is all well and good, but someone born in the last thirty years or so will never truly understand what Saturday morning meant to those of us who looked forward to it every week.

I’ve wanted to share my memories of Saturday morning in more detail for awhile, as well as show some respect to the people responsible for creating these characters or adapting them for animation. Now seems like a very good time. My focus will be on the creators, but I’ll also discuss their creations, naturally—and afterschool cartoons will be included in the mix where appropriate.

I will not discuss The Mouse and his friends. There is a mountain of information already out there about The Big D, its history, its role in shaping American pop culture (though these days, they buy it from other people and absorb it into their ravenous maw more than they add to it), and certainly plenty of fan tributes. I feel absolutely no need to pay any more homage. At least not now.

So let’s start instead with the company that, in many ways, is synonymous with Saturday morning for a generation of kids.

The short films of Andy Warhol

I’ve tried to understand what the big deal was about Andy Warhol. When I lived in Columbus, I went to a major Warhol exhibit and looked at his silkscreens, sat through a few of his films, read his history, but I can’t say I ever made a personal connection to any of it.

It’s easy to say, “You had to be there,” but in his case, I really feel that’s true. For all of the articles that testify to his importance to art history and pop culture history, I don’t grok any of it, and certainly not his films—I mean, who would want to sit through a static shot of the Empire State Building for eight damn hours? More to the point, who would feel such a film had value?

I get that Warhol was mostly pulling everyone’s collective leg with his work, but audiences of the 60s strike me as willing accomplices to the joke. I dunno. Still, his films have a relevancy because of who he was, if not for their content, so I will examine a few and try to appreciate the importance they may have. No promises.

Mondo Trasho

Mondo Trasho
YouTube viewing

It took fifty years or so, but the world has caught up with John Waters. Just turn on your TV and you’ll realize there can no longer be any doubt. Whether or not that’s a good thing, well, that’s up to you to decide... but I will say this:

As an artist, no matter who you are or where you come from, no matter what your intentions are—whether you wanna provoke or shock with your art or whether you wanna create beauty, however you perceive it, or whether you just wanna make a million dollars and retire to the south of France—you’re never, ever gonna please everybody, and attempting to try is an exercise in futility.

It’s something I wish I could remember more often. I struggle with the conservative mores I was brought up in, and at times I’ve wanted to push my art further, whether it’s my visual art or my writing, as I alluded to recently. To embrace “trash,” to find virtue in modes of expression that run far left of center and to be open about it, takes guts, because even in 2020, there’s gonna be somebody ready to hang you for it.

I suspect Waters realized this a long time ago.

Flash Gordon

Flash Gordon
seen @ The Museum of the Moving Image, Astoria, Queens NY

I think I saw Flash Gordon when it came out, but I would’ve been  only eight, so I’m not sure. It probably was on my radar then; I was aware of comparable movies from around that time like the original Clash of the Titans and Superman, so if I saw it advertised on TV, I would’ve begged my parents to take me to see it.

It seemed every sci-fi/fantasy film in the 80s wanted to be the next Star Wars, and Flash was one of many pretenders to the throne. It had elements of both: outer space and alien planets mixed with sword fights and kingdoms—and no one cared that much about scientific or historical accuracy or making everything look “realistic” because they were too busy having fun with the subject matter.

Everything in Flash screams over-the-top—the costumes, the props, the sets, and especially the performances—but watching it again for the first time in decades, at MOMI, I realized as unlikely as it seems, it’s still watchable. More than watchable, in fact, even in an age where we demand a certain level of “realism” in our comic book movies, to the point where they’re almost ashamed of their four-color origins.

Not Flash, though.

What’s so pure about entertainment?

What’s wrong with the modern American cinema? Out of the top twenty films in 2015, why were twelve rated R, six rated PG-13, and not one rated G? The reason for these depressing statistics is a simple one: films are merely rated but not censored. In other words, all obscene content is allowed as long as audiences are warned of it. Many people complain about the shocking content of nearly every film released in this country, and moral Americans dream about times in the past when they could go to the theater and see good films. Not even all senior citizens remember a time when every film was decent.

This is the opening passage from a post on a blog begun in 2016 called the Pure Entertainment Preservation Society, originally written as a research paper by the blog’s creators, Tiffany and Rebekah Brannan. I first heard of the blog a few months ago, when I saw some bloggers taking part in one of the Brannans’ blogathons. The subject was the Hays Code, one about which the sisters know plenty: the bulk of their paper discusses the origins of the Code and its effects on Hollywood.

The Brannan Sisters are on a mission to not only educate their readers about the “benefits” of the Code on the American film industry, but to try to bring it back. They have a petition with which they hope to lobby modern Hollywood into making today’s movies more like those of the 1930s and 40s. To further quote them, “With films getting worse every year and the immorality in America rising to terrifying heights, something must be done to regain order. If America is going to change, Hollywood must change first.”

Friends and neighbors, I’ll be blunt. These women are severely misguided and wrong.

Here’s how.

Metallica: Some Kind of Monster and Through the Never

Metallica: Some Kind of Monster
Netflix viewing

Metallica: Through the Never
YouTube viewing

One of my Spotify playlists is called “Headbangers Ball.” It’s for metal and punk bands: Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, AC/DC, Black Flag, The Sex Pistols, etc. Generally, I have anywhere between three to seven songs for each band, for a total of over three hundred.

I have over twenty songs on the playlist for Metallica alone.

I don’t recall when I first discovered the San Francisco quartet, but I do remember buying their album And Justice For All on cassette, when it came out in 1988, around the time I seriously got into metal. I might’ve learned about them from my friends, or from the radio, maybe even from MTV—this was also around the time I first got cable.

Like lots of metal bands, Metallica writes songs about abstract concepts: war, violence, death, fear, politics, religion—you get the idea. Unlike lots of metal bands, they perform with a ferocity and a virtuosity unmatched in all of rock. If you’ve ever seen or heard them live, it’s like they operate at another level. Historically, despite changes to the band through the years, there have only been four active members at any one time, yet they engage the crowd and make them part of the show like few bands are capable of doing. It helps that their fans know the words to their most popular songs: “Enter Sandman,” “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” “Creeping Death,” “One,” and of course, “Master of Puppets.” When band and audience combine, the music becomes almost alive.

Easy links

About Peter Fonda: I saw Easy Rider during my video store days but I didn’t understand its significance in movie history until later, reading about how it heralded the youth movement in Hollywood during the late 60s and 70s. He was part of a cinematic revolution that led to some outstanding movies, and for that we should all be grateful.

In Peter Biskind’s New Hollywood tell-all Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, Rider director Dennis Hopper, who was high as a kite for much of the film’s production and fought Fonda constantly, said this about the film:

...”When we were making the movie, we could feel the whole country burning up—Negroes, hippies, students,” he said. “I meant to work this feeling into the symbols in the movie, like Captain America’s Great Chrome Bike—that beautiful machine covered with stars and stripes with all the money in the gas tank is America—and that any moment we can be shot off it—BOOM—explosion—that’s the end. At the start of the movie, Peter and I do a very American thing—we commit a crime, we go for the easy money. That’s one of the big problems with the country right now: everybody’s going for the easy money. Not just obvious, simple crimes, but big corporations committing corporate crimes.”

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I need your advice. A couple of weeks ago, I read that Morgan Spurlock’s latest film, Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken had been shelved for months on account of the revelation that the documentary filmmaker had sexually harassed a co-worker, cheated on his wives and girlfriends for years, and had been accused of rape back in college.

I haven’t talked about the “Me Too” movement much here because I think it’s pretty damn self-evident that sexual harassment is wrong, full stop—and if there’s a line of women out the door saying So-and-So took liberties with them, well... innocent until proven guilty and all that, but I’d say the case doesn’t look too good for old So-and-So. I just don’t want it to turn into a witch hunt for molesters.

Spurlock, however, was different: he confessed. No one outed him; he came forward of his own free will to admit to his wrongdoing and vowed to be a better man. Now you can say, oh, he was coerced into this by someone ready to come forward, as opposed to him having a crisis of conscience he could no longer live with. Maybe. That’s certainly possible... but given the fact that this sort of thing has affected all walks of life and has consistently been news for months, which he mentions in his confession, I’d rather give him the benefit of the doubt. Someone has to—we’ll probably never know for sure one way or another.

SSM2 is finally getting a theatrical release this month. Despite its mediocre reviews (a 56 on Rotten Tomatoes so far), I’d like to see it because I loved the first SSM movie, and it’s set in Columbus, my former home, which I still miss. I totally understand the desire to boycott and shun those who have been tarnished due to similar allegations, but assuming he’s sincere and that he didn’t have a gun to his head when he made his confession, I think Spurlock coming clean like he did counts for something. And again, assuming he’s sincere, which I truly hope he is, forgiveness has to start somewhere.

Therefore, my question to you is: should I see Super Size Me 2?

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Next month is the Murder She Wrote Cookalong at Silver Screen Suppers, and this week, I plan to buy the ingredients for the recipe I’ll cook for the event, chicken paprika. When it comes to choosing what to cook, I rely on three criteria: can I afford it, can I make it, and will I like it? I’ve never had chicken paprika before, but I’m guessing I’ll find it agreeable, and I have some of the ingredients already. I often take pictures of the finished dish to post on Facebook, but never of the dish in progress, but I’ll have plenty of light, and though none of you will be able to sample it, I hope it’ll at least look appetizing.

More after the jump.

Furry links

So what do I think about that Cats trailer? Now that you’ve heard everyone else’s opinion...

Back in the 90s, I saw on VHS a production of the Broadway show, so I’m familiar with it. I always thought it was peculiar. This, though, is on another level. The trailer didn’t freak me out as much as it did some people—I stayed up half the night watching “reaction” videos on YouTube—but yeah, turning the cast into CGI human-cat hybrids may not have been the wisest decision. (On the other hand, we now know a Thundercats movie is possible!) It’s doubtful the fans of the show would have accepted an animated version, though, so this is what we’re left with, not that anybody was clamoring for a Cats movie in 2019 to begin with. Plus, while I can hardly object to Jenny Hudson’s rendition of “Memory”—easily the best thing about that trailer—from the looks of her, I couldn’t help thinking she’s just reprising her role from Dreamgirls.

Still, it is Cats, and because it’s Cats, people will turn out for it, especially at Christmas. It’s one of those things where if you love it, you adore it wholeheartedly. I know; I was the same way with Rent, but that didn’t have CGI human-cat hybrids. So I guess between this and the Lion King remake, this will be remembered as (with apologies to Al Stewart) the year of the cat.

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Don’t have too much else to say at the moment, so let’s jump straight to the links:

Why does Paddy love westerns?

Who was “the Marilyn Monroe of Bollywood”? Ruth has the answer.

Ivan discusses a film written by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett that has become quite relevant in 2019.

Hugh Jackman in concert is quite spectacular, as Hamlette will attest.

Jacqueline looks at which movies were playing the weekend of the moon landing.

Fritzie shows off shampoo ads with silent film actresses.

Judy Garland’s daughter Lorna Luft reflects on her mother’s legacy as a gay icon, fifty years after her death.

Also, a crowdfunding campaign is under way to restore Judy’s birthplace.

What would TS Eliot have made of the Cats movie?

That casting a black girl as the Little Mermaid is still a matter of controversy in 2019 is frankly, embarrassing. But there’s historical evidence that suggests such a thing isn’t that unusual.

The long-term implications of the virtual technology of The Lion King 2019.

Paul McCartney will write the music for a stage musical version of It’s a Wonderful Life.

84-year-old Sophia Loren is working on a new movie directed by her son.

These pics from the demolished site of the former Sunshine Cinema will depress you.

Long before he joined the cast of In Living Color, Jim Carrey appeared in this Playboy Channel movie. (NSFW)

Celebrity memorabilia and the people who buy it.

Yesterday

Yesterday
seen @ Kew Gardens Cinemas, Kew Gardens, Queens, NY

I have a friend named Joan who’s plenty old enough to remember the Beatles, but she never liked them. She’s no sourpuss who hates everything modern and gripes about the way things used to be; she’s quite nice, in fact. Now I don’t know her that well, so I’m fuzzy on what kind of music she prefers; I just remember being gobsmacked when she first told me that... though it is difficult to imagine her as a screaming teenager with a poster of Paul or John on her bedroom wall.

At the other extreme, the summer I worked at a sleepaway camp in Massachusetts was the summer The Beatles Anthology came out. I’m sure you remember the massive hype surrounding that event. Well, there were little kids at camp—six, seven, eight years old—who were as familiar with the most popular Beatles’ songs as they were with their times tables. That amazed me too.

Fifty years after they broke up, the greatest rock and roll band of all time remains a highly influential and polarizing cultural force in the world. In the digital age, experiencing their music as a young person is plenty different, but the devotion, from what I can tell, is the same.

I was born after they broke up, but not by much. When I grew up, I could still hear Paul and George on Top 40 radio. I have vague memories of when John died, though I didn’t completely grok what it all meant at the time. The Millennial Generation doesn’t even have any of that—but it doesn’t matter. The Beatles are eternal in an industry whose product is ephemeral and has always been easily disposable.

But what if everyone, young and old people alike, woke up one day and completely forgot who they were?

Rolling Thunder Revue

Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese
seen @ IFC Center, New York NY

I opted to see Rolling Thunder Revue with Virginia at the last minute because I was afraid it would rain on Sunday (it did) and Toy Story 4 wasn’t out yet (though she doesn’t have much interest in that), but when I realized this is a Netflix film getting a theatrical release, I felt funny about paying money to see it.

With Roma, the big attraction in seeing that theatrically was Alfonso Cuaron’s beautiful visuals and deft compositions on a wide screen — not to mention the excellent story. That was worth paying for, and I did, twice in fact. Nothing about Revue screamed “See this on a big screen”; I doubt most documentaries “need” to be seen that way. Martin Scorsese’s next film, The Irishman, will also come out theatrically and on Netflix simultaneously, and at this point I’m not sure if I’ll make the same choice.

So. Bob Dylan. I told Virginia after the film that it was difficult for me to truly appreciate what a cultural icon he was during the 60s, as much as I’ve read about him, watched videos about him, and listened to his music. Revue helped, but for someone who wasn’t there during his creative peak, what he meant to people still strikes me as peculiar, especially now that songwriting skill in general feels devalued these days.

In 1975, Dylan organized a tour with Joan Baez and other folkies, plus counterculture figures like Allen Ginsberg, in which he played small towns in smaller venues, riding around in a bus which he drove himself. It was called the Rolling Thunder Revue. Concert footage from that tour, plus new interviews with Dylan and others, comprise this doc, continuing a streak of concert films Scorsese has pursued on and off for years, including The Last Waltz (The Band), Shine a Light (the Rolling Stones) and George Harrison: Living in the Material World. It also captures some of the zeitgeist of the era.

And it includes material Scorsese simply made up.

Why? He comes close to explaining his rationale in this interview, though if you look at the film on its own, you could easily be fooled into thinking the whole thing was genuine. Theories abound — here’s one — but ultimately this doesn’t bother me as much as it probably should. Dylan always struck me as this enigmatic, almost mythical figure. The pompous subtitle kinda implies there’s more going on here than what lies on the surface, something that feeds into the myth of Dylan — and Scorsese’s not the first filmmaker to recognize this. Remember that Todd Haynes “biopic” of Dylan, I’m Not There, in which “Dylan” was played by, among others, a black child and a woman? Something about Dylan seems to inspire reinterpretation... but I’m not the one to explain why.

Virginia really dug this movie. She had wanted to see it before I off-handedly suggested it, and not just because she did live through the peak Dylan era. She knew peripherally a couple of people in the film from musical performances she was part of in the past — a fourth or fifth degree of separation, I think. She kept telling me about it during the film.

Watching it with an audience, I felt like everyone else understood Dylan and his career, not to mention the people involved in this story, better than me: there was knowing laughter in spots I didn’t think was funny, and even Virginia made “mm hmm” noises to herself in recognition, as if she was having a conversation with the film to which I wasn’t privy. I half-expected this sort of thing. Every time I think I’ve gotten a handle on 60s culture (Dylan is of the 60s, and this movie feeds off that vibe), something new comes along — like this.

Avengers: Endgame

Avengers: Endgame 

seen @ Cinemart Fiveplex, Forest Hills, Queens, NY

I was gonna pass on this. One friend said on Facebook he was gonna go watch a French New Wave movie playing in his town instead of Endgame (I believe he said it was Cleo From 5 to 7). I was willing to wait until it came to cable, at the very least. Then I rewatched Infinity War and Guardians 2 and Thor: Ragnarok on Netflix out of boredom (not all at once) and decided I needed to tell my grandchildren I was there for Endgame, or some such bullshit excuse. And in all seriousness, I truly wanted to know what would become of the Guardians.

As little kids, we would dream about our favorite Marvel comics becoming movies, but we never conceived it would happen by turning civilization into fans. Fans of the characters, mind you; the kind who would wear a Captain Marvel t-shirt or write a college paper about the Black Panther or eat Pez from a Groot dispenser but not buy the actual comics. Then the movies came: Blade, Spider-Man, X-Men, etc. Some were cool, some sucked, but none of it prepared us for the era that began in 2008 with the first Iron Man film and culminated this year with Endgame. Props to Kevin Feige and everyone at Marvel Studios for creating a series of movies that captured everyone’s imagination — and in so doing, conquering the world.

Bird Box

Bird Box
Netflix viewing

I first heard about Bird Box on Facebook. Friends would discuss something called “the Bird Box Challenge” and I, naturally, had no clue what they were talking about, nor did I care. I’m not the type to pursue every trend on social media. Then I discovered Bird Box was a movie, and I kept seeing memes of a blindfolded Sandra Bullock in a rowboat. Why hadn’t I heard of this movie that apparently has quite a bit of buzz?

Oh. Of course. It’s on Netflix.

These days, serialized television dramas drive social media discussion more than any one film, so to see this film not only generate talk, but to develop a life of its own beyond the film — especially a movie only available through a streaming service — says volumes about how movies have changed, and are changing. I seriously doubt the filmmakers anticipated how big a hit this would become, and it’s not like it was connected to a gimmick, like The Blair Witch Project, or spoke to a bigger social movement, like the recent gay romance Love, Simon, or was an overhyped genre blockbuster.

It was just this Sandra Bullock horror movie.

Adventures of Captain Marvel chs. 7-9

Chapters 1-3 Chapters 4-6

At his peak, Captain Marvel was huge. He appeared in Whiz Comics and Captain Marvel Adventures, and by 1944, sales reached a staggering 14 million copies.

All those sales also meant merchandising. A recent book catalogues the vast depth of dolls, figurines, toys, costumes, and other items made to promote CM and the Marvel Family of characters.

CM had, and has, a devoted fan following, and among the biggest fans included none other than Elvis Presley! Specifically, he dug Captain Marvel Jr. and modeled himself after him. Here's a detailed history of the Elvis/CMJ connection.

Vintage TV fans will remember Gomer Pyle and a certain catchphrase of his. Did you also know Jim Nabors cut a record called Shazam!, in character as Gomer?

CM has been referenced in songs, other TV shows, other films, books, and more. To pick one example among many: the 1950 film The Good Humor Man (which co-starred TV Superman George Reeves!) has a CM fan club as part of the story line, which Fawcett took advantage of with a promotional tie-in comic.

When the Shazam! movie comes out, I'll talk about CM on television. For now, let's return to the serial:

Excelsior!

His name was always at the top of every Marvel comic book when I grew up. The first page would have a small box that briefly described the character, in a sentence or two, and then the words: "Stan Lee Presents."

I knew who he was because he was on TV, sort of. He would do voice-over introductions to The Incredible Hulk and Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends on Saturday mornings.

It was comforting, in its way. To my mind, it was like he was the caretaker of the Marvel Universe, a constant, active presence who acted in its best interests, though I couldn't have phrased it that way back then.

I met him at a convention once. He autographed for me some comics he had written, including a special issue of my favorite comic, Fantastic Four.

Marvel Comics used to have a newsletter-type page in every comic. Sometimes he would say a few words in it, usually reporting from Hollywood about the in-roads Marvel was making: a new TV show here, a new video game there, that sort of thing. It was exciting.

Those in-roads laid the foundation for the Marvel kingdom of today: a subsidiary of the mightier Disney empire, true, but his creations — in collaboration with Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, John Romita, and all the rest — have never been more popular. (Whether or not this has translated into higher sales of the comics themselves is another story.)

Recent years have not been kind to him: embroiled in one lawsuit after another, not to mention a contentious relationship with his daughter. I can only hope he made peace with her before he went to that great bullpen in the sky.

Today is a sad day for Fandom Assembled, but we will never forget him and his great gift to American popular culture. I have distanced myself from the comics; they no longer mean to me what they once did. Still, if it weren't for them, my life — the friends I've made over the years, the passion I have for visual art in general — would be quite different.

Face front, true believers.

Bohemian links

Big news! Some of you are familiar with The Dark Pages, the newsletter (as in actual paper, not an e-newsletter) of the film noir website All That Noir. The December issue is a year-end, oversized special, and guess who got an invitation to contribute a guest article?

The theme for this special issue is "great couples of noir," and after watching so many of his noir films back in 2015, I decided to take on director Anthony Mann, along with his DP, John Alton. The issue will come out December 20. It's sure to make a nice last-minute Christmas gift for the noir fan on your list.

My thanks to Kristina from Speakeasy and TDP editor Karen Burroughs Hannsberry for the opportunity.

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By the time you read this, the Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody should be playing in theaters everywhere. If you like Queen and the movie, I'd like to give a plug here for a graphic novel by my friend Mike Dawson called Freddie and Me.

It's a memoir about when Mike grew up a Queen fan, in England and America. He's a very good artist, and he infuses this story with a lot of love for Freddie Mercury and 80s pop music in general. Check it out; you won't regret it.

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The novel rewrite is close to done, and once it is, I'll have to edit it, which means checking for grammar and spelling, not to mention any other minute changes I may want to make (and I will want). In the new year I'll go shopping for an agent and we'll see what happens.

I've decided not to self-publish after all. After giving it some thought, I don't think I have the resources or wherewithal to commit to that route at this time. Maybe I'd do it in the future.

With all due respect to people like Jacqueline, from what I can tell, it's not like self-publishing comics, where it really is as easy as folding and stapling some Xeroxed photocopies and selling them at your local con, or better yet, scanning those pages and posting them online. It costs more, for one thing. And the truth is, I really do wanna see my book in a bookstore. Queens has seen the birth of two new independent bookstores within the past year. (Yes, it's possible to get your self-published book in a bookstore, but my understanding is it's rare.)

I have a couple of ideas for what to write next; it's just a matter of deciding on them.

Links after the jump.

Too Many Husbands

The Fred MacMurray Blogathon is an event in tribute to the life and career of the actor, hosted by Phyllis Loves Classic Movies. For a complete list of participating blogs, visit the host site at the link.

Too Many Husbands
YouTube viewing

Fred MacMurray is best remembered as a comedic actor and a good guy, but I tend to think of him, in cinematic terms, as a bad guy. It's all Billy Wilder's fault, for casting him in two dramatic films, Double Indemnity and The Apartment, where he plays scumbags.

The latter film in particular is a good example. He takes advantage of both Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine, less as a sneering villain and more with a deceptive charm. He uses them to serve his own ends and he comes across so reasonably in the process; his perpetual nice-guy image is turned inside out. Double may be his most popular film role, but I think The Apartment is his best.

And then there's My Three Sons. The early TV sitcom gave MacMurray's career a second wind, lasting twelve seasons. There's little more than snippets of the show on YouTube, but I watched them for this blogathon. The impression I get is Sons was warm and gentle. The kids seemed unrealistically well-behaved, but gosh, maybe MacMurray's character was just that good a father. A single one, no less.

Perhaps you know MacMurray played the saxophone. He played in a few bands while attending college in Wisconsin. He also sang a little. Here he is in 1930, singing with Gus Arnheim and the Coconut Grove Orchestra.

And I would be remiss if I forgot the comics connection. Remember Captain Marvel? Little kid says "Shazam," turns into an adult superhero? (Perhaps this trailer for the forthcoming Shazam film will jog your memory.) Co-creator CC Beck modeled CM on MacMurray. Once you see it, you can't un-see it.

Today's subject, Too Many Husbands, is an early MacMurray comedy that's more of a vehicle for the delightful Jean Arthur. Drowned at sea and believed dead, MacMurray survives and returns home a year later only to find Arthur, his wife, moved on without him and married his best friend, Melvyn Douglas.

Tom Hanks and Helen Hunt needed less than ten minutes to settle this problem in Cast Away. Arthur and company take an entire movie, though in fairness, the whole thing is as fluffy as a pillow.

It's watchable, thanks to Arthur; MacMurray and Douglas just bicker and make goo-goo eyes at her. Would you believe Irene Dunne and Cary Grant made essentially the same movie, My Favorite Wife, in the same year, 1940?

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Other Fred MacMurray movies:
Remember the Night
Double Indemnity

The Oscars and the art vs. commerce debate

Okay, I read all about this lame new Oscar category for "Best Popular Film" or whatever it'll be called, and I've given it some thought. I get that the Academy and ABC felt they needed to do something to make the Oscars relevant again, and I get that it's called show business for a reason, but this was not the answer. Columns like this reflect my position well. That said, I wanna examine this from a more personal angle.

In my former life, within the comics industry, I had begun my activity at a time, the early 90s, when what was popular truly was mediocre at best. I was in college, and my classmates and I were frustrated at this because we were getting lessons in the fundamentals of art and comics storytelling from industry veterans who didn't fall prey to trends.

Movies like Black Panther would be
a shoo-in for this new Oscar category.

Some of us young turks worked within the system, at Marvel and DC, to help bring about change. Most of us, like me, worked from outside by self-publishing our work or hooking up with small press publishers.

I didn't want to compromise my art by being a slave to trends, but you can bet your ass I still wanted to make money. I believe in the 21st century, it's rare, though not impossible, to find creative people who don't want or expect compensation for their work, but much depends on the audience and what they (think they) want.

"Best Popular Film" could have
benefitted recent blockbusters like Avatar.

With movies, a lot of the time they settle for what's most easily available, true, but these days, it's not uncommon to see a popular indie film playing alongside the latest blockbuster at the multiplex. (Over the past few weeks, I've seen Three Identical Strangers playing in small town, three-screens-or-fewer cinemas.)

Does that mean we, the audience, have become conditioned to choose the popular over the unpopular? Probably. If TCM is on, I'd sooner watch a Jack Lemmon flick over some B-movie starring actors I've never heard of. If I'm in the supermarket, I'd sooner buy a familiar brand name product than a generic version of the same thing. I think it's an inherent aspect of consumerism: the product that advertises better sells better.

As I learned with comics, however, popular doesn't always equal better, a mentality I had adopted for years and have found difficult to shake. In the mid-90s, I watched more indie films, in part, because that's what my video store co-workers, whom I was trying to emulate, watched. They tended to scorn Hollywood and I copped that attitude too.

Will future films like the new Star Wars
films profit from this category?

Most moviegoers, though, aren't like that. If they were, films like Spotlight and Lady Bird and Won't You Be My Neighbor would each make $100 million — and it's not like these films are inaccessible, artsy-fartsy meditations for aesthetes.

The Academy continues to honor these "art" films with Oscars over the "commercial" ones, though, and while we may wish this false dichotomy didn't exist, it does — and not just within the film industry.

Can the playing field be leveled so that all films, large- and small-budgeted alike, compete as true equals? Online streaming could hold the key to the answer. It may mean tearing down the old distribution model, which would make me sad — I enjoy seeing a movie in a theater — but maybe that's what it'll take. In the meantime, I don't see the art versus commerce struggle changing much.

Avengers: Infinity War

Avengers: Infinity War
seen @ Cinemart Fiveplex, Forest Hills, Queens NY

It never occurred to me I could see Avengers: Infinity War with anyone else. Not that I was so psyched to see it, like I would have been twenty years ago, but even now, after the new wave of superhero movies have broken the bank time and again, I still thought of this, however unconsciously, as a niche pleasure, not something "ordinary" people would dig.

So when I told Virginia I was gonna see it — alone, by implication — there was this awkward pause for a second. We had seen Black Panther together, but even that almost didn't happen: when we tried to pick out a movie, I had said to her something like well, you're probably not interested in an action movie... are you? 

Turned out she was willing. She didn't grow up a superhero geek, you see. She had no sentimental ties to BP or any other long underwear types, so why would I think this might interest her — or so my logic went.

Five movies about musicians who died young

I hope you don't mind; I gotta talk about Chris Cornell for a minute. When I think of Soundgarden, I think of John, who first introduced me to them (though I do remember hearing them on the radio in the early 90s). He's always two or three steps ahead of me musically. He was the one who first told me "Smells Like Teen Spirit" wasn't some Weird Al-like novelty song. John believed SG was the real deal. I figured he was probably right.

The first SG album I bought was Badmotorfinger, on cassette. I had initially thought the "grunge" sound was something akin to metal. Indeed, SG used to get played on MTV's Headbangers Ball. I'm still not sure what exactly defines grunge musically other than being from Seattle. Ultimately the labels don't matter. As far as SG was concerned, I was hooked right away.

Superunknown came out in 1994. Hearing the apocalyptic "Black Hole Sun" puts me in mind of the sleepaway camp I worked at in the blissful, glorious summer of '95: A-frames, canoeing in the river, hot chocolate on those cold nights in the Adirondack mountains of Massachusetts. I remember organizing a "band" of 10-year-old campers to lip-sync to "Outshined" (a cut from Badmotorfinger) on talent night. I wore a wig of fake dreadlocks as I "sang" lead.

Audioslave was a better fusion between Chris and Rage Against the Machine than I could've imagined. As for his solo stuff, it wasn't as intense, but I liked most of it, the highlights including the James Bond song "You Know My Name" from Casino Royale, and a dirge-like cover of Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" that's almost as good as the original.

When I was much younger, the whole rock-star-dying-young concept had more... I don't wanna use the word "glamour," but it's true, in a way. Yeah, it sucks that they're dead and all, I had thought, but that made them larger than life. It added to their legend and made their music immortal. I don't think that way anymore. Chris' death was a suicide, just like his Northwest contemporary Kurt Cobain, just like way too many rock superstars over the years.

Maybe rock has lost its standing in American pop culture. Maybe it's only for old fogeys like me. God knows I hardly ever hear it anywhere near as much on the radio anymore. All I know is another of my favorite singers is dead before his time, by his own hand, and it doesn't feel cool or glamorous.

The movies have given us a number of biographies of musicians who died young. Not all of the deaths in the following examples were by suicide, but they were as shocking at the time. These films are how we remember them.

- La Bamba. The day the music died, it took Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper along with Latino guitarist Ritchie Valens in that fateful 1959 plane crash. He was a mere babe at 17! I was in eighth grade when this movie came out. The Los Lobos soundtrack was all the rage, and even if I didn't understand the words to the title track, it still rocked. Lou Diamond Phillips personified Valens perfectly, and that ending... Omigod, that ending.

- Lady Sings the Blues. Cirrhosis of the liver took the life of jazz legend Billie Holiday at 44, a life defined as much by drugs and drink as by her distinctive voice. In 1972, Diana Ross gave an Oscar-nominated performance as Lady Day in this biopic. If IMDB is to be believed, co-star Richard Pryor coached her in how to act like a drug user. I guess she couldn't have asked for a better teacher...

- Beyond the Sea. Multiple-genre crooner (and Oscar-winning actor!) Bobby Darin died of a heart condition at 37. He was portrayed by Kevin Spacey in this recent biopic. I didn't see it, but Pam did. In fact, she's a really big fan...

- Sid and Nancy. One hesitates to put the Sex Pistols' bassist in the category of "musician," but there's no doubt he contributed to the punk movement of the 70s before his death of a drug overdose at the age of 21. Truly, one of Gary Oldman's finest moments in film was as Sid in a biopic that was equal parts tragic, comedic, and just plain surreal.

- Amy. The latest member of the infamous "27 club," contemporary jazz/blues singer Amy Winehouse, was the subject of this recent Oscar-winning documentary. I've discovered more of her music through Pandora. She could've easily been one more pop diva, but she followed another path, one which gave her a much more individual sound. Like Holiday, however, Winehouse battled with inner demons before drinking herself to death, in 2011.

I've probably depressed you big time. Sorry. Here, listen to some Puffy AmiYumi. You'll feel a million times better, I guarantee it.

---------------
Related:
Marley
Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story

Hidden Figures

Hidden Figures
seen @ Kew Gardens Cinemas, Kew Gardens, Queens NY

Math was probably as intimidating to me as it was to most people in high school. I remember taking pre-Calculus in my freshman year because I actually did fairly well in math in junior high. This, however, was entirely different. I don't remember a thing I learned in the class. I struggled with it the entire semester. I don't know how I passed with a 65 but I did, and once I was done, I never wanted to see it again. To this day, I don't know why I had to take that class.

When I was an upperclassman, I had a scheduling snafu one semester and I was stuck in a class called Computer Math. It might have been the first class in which I used a computer (it was probably a Mac), but it was a remedial course. I clearly didn't belong, but as much as I tried, I couldn't get out, so I made the best of it. The teacher knew I didn't belong there, too, and was sympathetic. There was even a cute girl I helped out within the class. All things considered, I didn't have too bad a time there.

Basic math is easy once you grasp it, but the really tough stuff, the material involving square roots and fractions and letters, well, that requires an exceptional level of intelligence. I mean, I have to have a chart taped to the inside of my kitchen cabinet to remind me of measurements and half-measurements. There's no way I could nail down all those fancy algebraic equations.

For a long time, those who can were mocked as nerds. That's changing, though; we're starting to see more stories, across multiple media, in which that kind of intelligence is well-regarded, even glamorized, to an extent.

Hidden Figures is the latest example, and it is particularly noteworthy because it involves black people, black women, to be precise. It's the true story of a trio of mathematicians who were instrumental in helping put the late John Glenn into outer space during the height of the Cold War.

Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughn and Mary Jackson are not presented here as what you might call "nerds." The movie, in fact, goes to great lengths to present them as ordinary women in spite of their great skill with numbers, albeit women who had to live with institutional racism on a daily basis, like all black Americans in the early 60s.

The whole nerd stereotype almost never included black people when I was growing up, except perhaps for Urkel from Family Matters. That never bothered me back then. Nerds were uncool, after all. During my years in the comics industry, I met a number of black creators and fans who probably wouldn't object to the term now, not because they're exceptionally intelligent, but because of a change in the zeitgeist.

As a result, though, I became a little more aware whenever I saw an above-average smart black person in the movies, especially when race wasn't a factor. The Martian had one, for a recent example. Joe Morton in Terminator 2 is another one. The character Theo in Die Hard is yet another. In addition, someone like Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson is a surprisingly popular real-life figure.

As a movie, Figures was pretty conventional and by-the-numbers. It was easy to figure out what would happen and how, and once again this was a movie in which the editor had way too much of a free hand. That doesn't matter as much, though, as the subject. Knowing these super-smart black women existed, and made a difference, is more important. Now they, too, are part of the cultural zeitgeist.

Vija came out to Kew Gardens in the snow to see this with me, although we had gotten all the white stuff the previous day, a Saturday. By Sunday, the roads had been cleared pretty good and the trains had no abnormal delays (relatively speaking, of course). The Kew wasn't nearly as crowded as it was the last time I went there for a Sunday matinee, to see Manchester by the Sea, but by the time Figures ended, the lobby was much busier, so I guess the weather wasn't much of a deterrent.