October 2009 Archives

The Time Has Come: I'm Grounding Myself Until My Room Is Clean

October 26, 2009 10:02 AM

The Best Bets will continue daily, but I'm taking a few days from writing a blog because I just can't stand it any more. Not the blogging -- the mess. My basement office, and everything in it, desperately needs some attention...

When I launched TV WORTH WATCHING in November 2007, I posted a picture -- seen at left here -- of what my basement office looked like then. What you can't see in the photo are the 12 TV sets attached to various satellite and cable systems, or the shelves of old Movies Unlimited display cases filled with VHS and DVD offerings.

What you can see, though, is that it was a manageable environment.

No longer. Writing The Book saw to that.

The picture at the top of this blog is what my office looks like now. It's only the tip of a very messy iceberg -- for two years, every neat pile of research material turned into clumps of used references, and soon I couldn't even get to the desk without crab-walking, tiptoeing and sliding. Now the place looks like Pompeii after the volcano exploded, except instead of ash everywhere, there's just a mess.

My phone message banks are full, and haven't been emptied in months. My computer needs defragging, and so, I suspect, do I. And yet, at this moment, I'm still teaching full-time, and doing Fresh Air, and assembling video materials for use with publicity appearances for Dangerously Funny: The Uncensored Story of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, which -- hint, hint -- comes out December 1.

So basically, I need to take a few days from blogging to focus on getting things back to normal. When I was writing the book, I called these rare but much-needed breaks "Smothers Days." I don't know what to call them now. Maybe you can tell me.

But keep coming back for the Best Bets, and smiling at the mess I have to clean up. Sigh...

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Postseason Baseball Delivers Drama, If You Can See It, Find It -- Or Stay Awake for It

October 21, 2009 11:31 AM

A friend called Monday night, knowing I was a big Phillies fan, to share in the joy of Philadelphia's bottom-of-the-ninth, two-out comeback victory over the Los Angeles Dodgers, right after Jimmy Rollins hit the game-winning two-run double. The phone call woke me up. I'd passed out on the couch the inning before, after a long teaching day...

Thanks goodness for TiVo, which let me rewind instantly and see the dramatic victory, albeit without the live-action drama.

TiVo also allowed me, since I had that evening's House on my Record list, to catch the final overtime innings of Fox's coverage of Monday's New York Yankees-Los Angeles Angels Game 3. That afternoon game had gone 13 innings -- long enough for the final 45 minutes to play in prime time. Next week, when the weekly ratings are released, that'll be a big unexpected boost for Fox.

It also meant both the American and National League games, for more than a half hour, were televised simultaneously, a definite TV rarity. Of course, the Phillies-Dodgers game was on TBS, available only to cable subscribers, which some of my Philadelphia friends have grumbled about.

But tonight at 8 ET on TBS is Game 5, which could send the Phillies to the World Series, and tomorrow night at 8 ET on Fox is the Yankees-Angels Game 5, which could do the same for the Yankees. Those and any subsequent games in both division series, except for a Saturday afternoon AL game should a sixth game be necessary, will have the same 8 p.m. ET starts, making for late nights, bleary eyes -- and, for me, maybe another unexpected but welcome wake-up call.

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Back from Mister Rogers' Neighborhood -- And What a Warm, Inspiring Place It Was

October 19, 2009 3:23 PM

I just spent a few glorious days at the Fred Rogers Center, an inspiring facility at Saint Vincent College in Latrobe, PA. It's a place devoted to the development of children, and worthwhile children's media, and it's populated by employees, executives, fellows and advisors that leave no doubt that Mister Rogers' mission is in the best of hands...

For one thing, they didn't name the place the Fred Rogers CENTRE, with snooty spelling. Fred would have wanted things plain and simple, and the Center is a warm and unstuffy environment indeed...

Much of what we were shown, or discussed, during the days of presentations was off the record, or left to the Center itself to announce and publicize. But one thing that knocked me out was a touch screen exhibit that allowed you to select and watch clips from Rogers' amazingly long and influential TV history.

I saw one clip I've never seen before, and from this point on will never forget: a scene from a prime-time special in which he and his puppets react to the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.

That one clip, that one chilling moment of pure honesty and genuine concern, drove it home, all over again, why Fred Rogers was unique, and invaluable, as a children's TV host.

If you have any personal memories of watching Fred Rogers' TV shows, as a child or parent, I'd love you to share them.

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New Monty Python Mega-Documentary: And Now for Something Completely Entertaining

October 16, 2009 7:36 AM

[Bianculli here: The hotel system crashed, so this blog's initial posting was incomplete until I returned to Philadelphia and a friendlier online access system. Here's the full deal, complete with photo, link, etc. Sorry.]

Beginning Sunday night at 9 p.m. ET, The Independent Film Channel presents a six-day, six-hour documentary series honoring the 40th anniversary of Monty Python's Flying Circus. You can expect new details, big laughs, fresh insights and, yes, you can even expect the Spanish Inquisition...

Monty Python: Almost the Truth (The Lawyer's Cut) is presented in one-hour nightly installments beginning Sunday. It's a fitting, funny tribute to a groundbreaking comedy troupe, and it's a special you'll want to record as well as watch, to enjoy on repeated viewings.

You can read, and hear, my full Fresh Air with Terry Gross review of this new IFC documentary by clicking HERE. And plan ahead, because IFC is pairing these nightly hours with other treats from the Python vault: series, specials and movies. Enjoy it all. Forty years later, it remains mind-bendingly fresh, and odd, and funny.

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Taking a Travel Day -- To Mister Rogers' Neighborhood

October 14, 2009 7:54 AM

Today I'm heading out over the Ben Franklin Bridge and deep into the western part of Pennsylvania, heading for Latrobe, PA, for the annual meeting of the Fred Rogers Center Advisory Council. This year, for the first time, I'm a member of the council...

What I'll be able to provide, other than comic relief and emotional support, I have no idea. But I'm honored to be a part of anything associated with the late Fred Rogers, whose influence on children's television -- and on millions and millions of current and former children -- is incalculable.

I'll report from the other end of the conference about the wonderful ideas being bandied about there, to use TV and new media to encourage and educate children, rather than exploit and distract them. But if I don't get on the road soon, I'll be late arriving to Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, and I wouldn't want that.

Can you say "rude," boys and girls?

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What a Blast: Two Blasts from My Distant Past Check Back In

October 12, 2009 7:47 AM

When I teach my film and TV courses at Rowan University, I tell my students that I started writing, as a TV critic for a daily newspaper, when I was about their age. This weekend, I heard from the newspaper editor who gave me that opportunity -- as well as from a college professor who made me want to be one myself...

The editor is Ed Johnson, who ran Florida's Gainesville Sun when I was a college senior at the University of Florida, majoring in journalism. During an Applied Journalism course just before I got my degree, I was assigned to the features department, where I was allowed (thanks, Diane Chun!) to write a review of a brand-new NBC series aimed at college kids: Saturday Night Live.

After the review ran (see visual proof above), Ed called me into his office (a first for me, and just about the only time, over my career, that a summons to the editor's office meant good news) and made me an offer. Would I be interested in writing four more reviews, as a tryout, at $5 a pop? I said yes instantly, and not only because of the whopping payday. That was my "in" -- and I've been a TV critic ever since.

So when Ed posted this note to TV WORTH WATCHING last week, I was thrilled:

"While searching Amazon for a copy of The Bianculli Name in History ($29.95), I ran across reference to Dangerously Funny. The description sounded so much like the book you claimed to have been working on since the last century I was compelled to order a copy, hoping it is that effort's result. Surely it must be so, and I offer congratulations. Also, best wishes for happy and prosperous holidays. -- Good Old Ed"

So thanks, Ed. Send me your address, and I'll send you a book. You can give the copy you ordered to someone else. Call me!

And speaking of calls, this weekend I got a call from Mickie Edwardson, who taught one of my absolute favorite courses at UF, when I stuck around to get a Masters (while still writing a TV column for the Sun, as did Mickie: She was the film critic, while I covered TV). It was an advanced scriptwriting course, and those of us in the class learned so much and enjoyed it so much, we kept it going unofficially afterward by meeting occasionally at Mickie's house.

This is a woman who was respected and feared in equal measure by most students -- she had a similar reputation to that of John Houseman's Professor Kingsfield from The Paper Chase -- but I adored her instantly, and still do. I couldn't have smiled any more widely when she told me, over the phone, she still remembered one of the things I said in one of her classes. "Today," she said to open the session, "we're going to talk about redundancy." I shouted out, "Again?"

Great to hear from you, too, Mickie. You taught me to write more crisply, to analyze scripts for flaws, and generally to be a better critic. Good luck on YOUR book -- and if you can finagle a way to get me down to UF for a guest-lecture appearance somewhere, go to it.

Dinner, with you and Ed, is on me.

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Great News: My Smothers Brothers Book Arrives In Time for the Holidays

October 5, 2009 9:17 AM

Due to advance interest from at least one major bookstore chain, the publication date of my Smothers Brothers book has been moved up. Instead of arriving the first week of 2010, the book now will be in stores December 1, in plenty of time for holiday gift-giving. For me, that's a great Christmas gift already...

Dangerously Funny: The Uncensored Story of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, will be published in hardcover by Simon & Schuster's Touchstone. The cover, which I've shown here once before, looks like this, except for a last-second addition of part of a blurb by filmmaker Ken Burns.

Here's the part of the blurb the editors and designers decided to add to the cover:

"This is a superb, at times moving, portrait of an entire age -- seen through the dramatic careers of two endlessly interesting entertainers." -- Ken Burns

On the back cover, there also are blurbs by Mason Williams and David Steinberg, both of whom were integral parts of the original Comedy Hour. And while a lot of what Mason sent was used, a portion was cut for length, but I liked it so much, I'm presenting it here:

"This book does a first class job of reporting the icebergian facts. The tip of the iceberg (the show itself), the mass of corporate and government intrigue/maneuvering underneath (CBS and Washington), and the eventual meltdown (firing/cancellation) that gave rise to the sea of change that saturates TV today." -- Mason Williams

I love the way Mason thinks, and writes. The description of the book as "icebergian" is especially amusing to me, perhaps because I wrote the book at what some might consider a glacial pace. Fifteen years from first interview to final manuscript. That's why I'm so happy Dangerously Funny finally is coming out, and, thanks to recent politics and policies, is dealing with a subject that's as topical and meaningful as ever.

So here's the big push, and the big news. Dangerously Funny is now available for pre-order, and will arrive in plenty of time to give, and even mail out, as gifts. Amazon has the book available at a substantial discount, which you can order by clicking HERE. Or, if you're a Barnes & Noble loyalist, you can order HERE, and members get an even deeper discount.

Wish me luck -- and, if you want, please order a copy or two. Remember, ordering from Amazon by linking through this site gives a small kickback to TV WORTH WATCHING, so buying the book that way as a gift actually makes it three good deeds in one. I sell a book and get royalties, the site gets a small percentage, and you get to give someone the book for the holidays.

So act now, or soon. Publication day is less than two months away, and counting. At least I'M counting...

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Imagine, If You Will... The 50th Anniversary of "The Twilight Zone" Goes Largely Unnoticed

October 3, 2009 11:13 AM

Friday -- October 2, 2009 -- was the 50th anniversary of Rod Serling's classic CBS anthology series, The Twilight Zone. Yet neither CBS nor Syfy bothered to make a big deal of it. Or even a small one...

This weekend, for example, Syfy is showing a couple of early-morning showings of the original series, including (at 5:30 a.m. ET Sunday) Billy Mumy and Cloris Leachman in "It's a Good Life," the 1961 episode about a kid with the power to control the world around him. And the Chiller network is showing a small gaggle of episodes of the 1980s remake series on Sunday, including (at 1:30 p.m. ET) a remake, starring Terry Farrell, of the classic "After Hours" episode, starring Anne Francis as a woman trapped in a department store.

But that's it. CBS, the network that spawned the show half a century ago, did nothing. Not even a prime-time retrospective special, which would have been a Friday night natural.

But here at TV WORTH WATCHING, we try not to forget the classics. My own Zone favorites are legion: Telly Savalas being terrorized by a taking doll in "Living Doll"; the studies of relative beauty in "The Eye of the Beholder" and "Number Twelve Looks Just Like You"; William Shatner terrorized on a plane in "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet"; Burgess Meredith as the last man on Earth in "Time Enough at Last"; the rampant paranoia of "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street"; and so many more.

Of them all, "Living Doll" creeped me out the most.

"My name is Talky Tina," the little doll told the frightened father, "and I'm going to kill you!" The voice of Talky Tina, I learned years later, was provided by Jone Foray, the same woman who provided the voice of Rocky the Flying Squirrel.

When I teach TV history at Rowan University, to students in their late teens and early 20s, there basically are three shows from TV's Golden Age that most of the class -- yet by no means ALL of the class -- has seen before signing up for class. I Love Lucy, The Honeymooners and The Twilight Zone. And that's it. That's the Holy Trinity of Vintage TV.

Our correspondents, though, have longer memories, and share them here:

A Less Experienced Brioux, On An Early TV Writing Assignment, Feels Like a Deadhead

By Bill Brioux

My most vivid Twilight Zone memory was almost worthy of a Rod Serling script. On that signpost straight ahead could have been written, "Warning: Clueless journalist."

It occurred in the mid-'80s, when CBS tried to revive the series. It was an uneven revival, featuring scripts from writers like Stephen King, Arthur C. Clarke and even an aborted attempt by Harlan Ellison. Bruce Willis and Morgan Freeman got a little face time on the revival; one episode, featuring Sid Caesar as a past-his-prime magician, stands out in my memory.

I was living in LA at the time, and as a photo editor and writer for TV Guide Canada was just starting to get into this racket.

A photographer I knew back then introduced me to her boyfriend, an amiable Texan who knew this guy who was re-doing the music for the series. He figured he could get him on the phone if I wanted to interview the dude. Why not, I thought, looking to fill space in the TV magazine's front page "Grapevine" column.

The call came through, and we talked about staying true to the original melody, so closely identified with the old black and white series. This guy was a guitarist, and said he tried to add a bit of a rock edge to the iconic theme. He was a pleasant gent on the phone and seemed happy to talk about being pulled into the Twilight Zone.

It wasn't until I sent the short piece back to the office in Toronto that an editor asked if I knew who the hell I had just interviewed. It was a name I was not, at the time, that familiar with. It lay somewhere between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. Submitted for your approval: Jerry Garcia of The Grateful Dead, a rock icon now found only in... The Twilight Zone.

--

Brinkmoeller's Most Memorable 'Zone' Episode, But for A Surprising Reason

By Tom Brinkmoeller

Having watched nearly every Twilight Zone episode during its network run, many more than once during syndication, it is amazing that only one has stayed in this Boomer brain so long. "Time Enough at Last," starring Burgess Meredith as book-loving Henry Bemis, never was completely completely erased from my memory.

Miniscule recap: Bemis loves reading more than almost anything, making him a ridiculed person by those who know him. He works at a bank and takes his book and his lunch into the vault one day so he can be alone. The vault shields him from a nuclear blast, and he learns he's the only one spared from the bomb. Initial reactions of fear are replaced when he realizes he now has all the time in the world to read. He surrounds himself with books, prepares for a feast, then breaks the glasses on which he is so dependent.

My adolescent brain was at first sucked into the horror of being totally alone. Then, as I thought about it over weeks, I realized it wasn't such a horror story after all. And I got a bit angry with the previously perfect Mr. Serling. Bemis had books, he had food, he had a neutron-bomb world in which most things survived, though people didn't. Even though semi-blind, I was sure he just didn't sit down and give up. I was certain he eventually stumbled over a magnifying glass, another pair of glasses, an optical store.

It was a clever ending, very Republican by my way of thinking, but way short of reality. Few people, when facing a high wall, don't look for another route. That's why this episode stayed with me, I believe. Buying into another's vision of gloom and despair without examining the situation on your own is so simple-minded it's plain stupid.

--

Ed Martin Surveys the Entire 'Zone," From Original Series to Remakes and Marathons

By Ed Martin

The highest compliment I can pay to The Twilight Zone is to admit that after decades of enjoying this classic series I still look forward to Syfy's annual marathon during the New Year's holiday. Not that I sit and watch every episode on December 31st or January 1st, but I happily dip in and out to briefly savor some of the finest television ever produced, not to mention the work of dozens of wonderful actors, most of them very early in their careers.

I can't say that I have a favorite episode -- seriously, how can you choose a single gem from dozens? But the one that first comes to mind whenever I think about the show is "The Invaders," in which a hardscrabble, axe-wielding woman who cannot speak (played by Agnes Moorehead) desperately seeks to defend her isolated home from two small robot-like aliens after they land their ship on her roof.

After fearing for the woman through much of the episode and breathlessly watching as she smashed their ship and killed them, I was completely thrown by the shocking reveal that the aliens were actually American astronauts that had crashed on a planet populated by giants. It was a lot for my young mind to wrap itself around and I still get a chill when I think about it.

An episode I am thinking more about now more than I did then is "To Serve Man," about seemingly benevolent aliens who come to Earth and declare their intent to help mankind. The visitors leave behind a book written in their language after a meeting at the United Nations, the title of which translates to "To Serve Man," which convinces everyone to trust them and accept their outsized generosity.

They cure diseases, turn deserts into farmlands and offer free passage to their home planet -- a Utopian world, they claim, that would be the ultimate vacation destination for harried humans, thousands of whom excitedly decide to make the trip. All that big love turns instantly to terror when the people working to decipher the tome realize that it's an alien cookbook featuring humans as a tasty ingredient in its many recipes! As I reflect on this episode I can't help but wonder how nasty the seemingly benevolent aliens will turn out to be in ABC's upcoming sci-fi thriller V. Will they also be hungry for human flesh?

There are three other episodes I watch for during those Syfy marathons: "Long Distance Call," "It's a Good Life" and "In Praise of Pip," all three featuring a very young Billy Mumy at the start of his career.

Mumy was one of the biggest child stars on television during much of the Sixties, and was best known as one of the stars of Lost in Space. (I'm a big fan because I looked a lot like Mumy when I was that age, which earned me the grade school nickname Will Robinson. That was a cool nickname to have back then, because Mumy was one of the coolest kids on TV.)

In keeping with his television persona, Mumy played a good kid in "Long Distance Call" and "In Praise of Pip," but he went unforgettably against type in "It's a Good Life," as a malevolent brat who could alter reality to suit his spontaneous desires.

The one and only Cloris Leachman played Mumy's terrified mother in this memorable 1961 tale, which was remade as one of the three features in the regrettable 1982 Twilight Zone movie. The story continued in 2003 in a sequel episode on UPN's short-lived Twilight Zone, with Mumy and Leachman both reprising their long-ago roles.

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Letterman's Surprise Admission: An Unexpected Late-Night Time Bomb

October 2, 2009 8:03 AM

The expectations and predictions regarding Jay Leno's move to prime time, and Conan O'Brien's inheritance of NBC's Tonight Show, were thought to be the biggest moves regarding the late-night TV wars of 2009. All of that might be eclipsed, though, by what happens next after David Letterman's surprising Thursday night admission...

What are we to make of all this? On CBS's Late Show with David Letterman, Letterman delivered his "story" candidly, unemotionally but incompletely: For the past few weeks, he's been blackmailed by someone threatening to expose Letterman's sexual encounters with certain female staff members. The inference, though nothing was made clear, is that at least one of these took place after Letterman married his long-time girlfriend earlier this year.

A grand jury has gotten involved, and a sting that caught the blackmailer in the act -- but what does this do to Letterman's image, and audience, and program, and reputation?

Show business is so weird and unpredictable, the only accurate prediction is to guess that one of three things will happen. One, the controversy, as it develops, will have no measurable effect. Two, Letterman will lose viewers, just as he was gaining substantial ground opposite O'Brien in the 11:35 p.m. ET time slot. Three, the controversy, because of America's fascination with all things prurient, will bring Letterman even more viewers.

My guess is that this is an unexploded bomb that may or may not go incendiary, depending upon what happens in the next few weeks, how Letterman handles things, and how it's received. But no one saw THIS coming. And I wonder: Among the late-night comics, who will consider this fair ground for humor?

Will Leno or O'Brien, who got the Tonight Show though Letterman did not? Will Craig Ferguson, whose paycheck is SIGNED by Letterman? And will Letterman himself return to the topic, or avoid it assiduously?

Who would have thought that, in looking for a reason to make the late-night TV rounds this fall, the most compelling reason would be provided by a Letterman scandal? Stay tuned. Definitely.

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