Semiquincentennial Movie Project #33: The Long Riders

 

 

The Semiquincentennial  Movie Project is an ongoing celebration of the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. During the course of this project your humble blogger is choosing a movie a week to represent each of the 50 states in the Union, as well as a movie scheduled for 4th of July weekend that will represent the nation's capitol, Washington D.C. The order of the weekly entries will coincide with the order of each state's entry into the fold (although, not necessarily coinciding with the date of their entry into said fold).

 

Week #33: Minnesota -

 

A note on the state flag: The above design was adopted in 2024. For much of my life it was different:

 

 

The state of Minnesota was established on May 11, 1858 

Details about Minnesota:

State bird: common loon

State flower: lady slipper

State tree: red pine

Additional historical trivia:

(The obvious first fact I have to include...): A local Minneapolis station was the first place we saw the classic TV series Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K).

The L.A. Lakers basketball team originally played in the "Land of 10,000 Lakes" (thus explaining the origin of "Lakers").

Minnesota is the origin point of the Mississippi River and runs 681 miles or so through the state. (Compare that to Mississippi which only has about 400 miles of the river... so why not Minnesota River?)

The first pop-up toaster was invented in Minneapolis. It cost $15. (In 1920 the average wage was about $40 a week...)

The former stadium called the Metrodome in Minneapolis is the only place where there has been held a Super Bowl and a World Series and a NCAA Final Four. 

Famous people born in Minnesota: Prince, Judy Garland, Bob Dylan, Charles (Peanuts) Schulz, F, Scott Fitzgerald, J. Paul Getty, Roger Maris and Vice-President Walter Mondale.

 

 

The Long Riders (1980):

A unique film in the annals of Hollywood film history, The Long Riders brought together not one, not two, not three, but four sets of brothers on screen. Not only that, but it brought together actual acting brothers to play the roles of the brothers in the film's story. 

 

Over the years there had been numerous attempts to bring the story of the James-Younger gang to the big screen. Beginning in 1921, with the real son of Jesse James playing his legendary father, Jesse had been played by the likes of Tyrone Power, Audie Murphy and Robert Duvall. His brother Frank had been played by the likes of Henry Fonda, Jeffrey Hunter and Bill Paxton. The Younger brothers had been played by, among others, Alan Hale, Jr and Frank Gorshin (which, despite the familiar comedic names, was NOT a comedy) and Cliff Robertson. 

But in 1980, one of my favorite directors, Walter Hill, managed to bring together four acting families of brothers together to play characters that were actually brothers themselves. The Carradine family, three guys, David, Keith and Robert (whose father, John Carradine, was an acting legend himself ) played Cole, Jim and Bob Younger. James and Stacy Keach played Jesse and Frank James. Dennis and Randy Quaid played Ed and Clell Miller. And to round out this family outing, Christopher and Nicholas Guest played Charley and Robert Ford.

The Keaches as the James brothers

 

The Quaids as the Miller brothers

The Carradines as the Younger brothers

 

 

 

 

 

 

The result was this film, which was Hill's follow up to what is what I unabashedly claim as my second favorite movie of all time, The Warriors.  Continuing a theme of making "heroes" out of outlaws, the movie delves into the lives of the James - Younger gang in the late 1880's. The story begins, as is fitting, with the James boys, Frank (Stacy Keach) and Jesse (James Keach), along with the Younger brothers, Cole (David Carradine), Jim (Keith Carradine) and Bob (Robert Carradine) robbing a bank. With them are the Millers, Ed (Dennis Quaid) and Clell (Randy Quaid).

During the robbery, Ed, who is a bit of a loose cannon, shoots one of the tellers, for no apparent reason other than he thinks the teller is lying when he tells Ed the bank doesn't have a safe. Even though Ed is told by Cole that the teller is not lying. In the end, after the robbery, Jesse is disgusted with Ed and kicks him out of the gang. (At this point, I, for one am disappointed, not because it is not historically accurate... it is. What I am disappointed in is that it looks like I won't be seeing Dennis Quaid any more in this picture, and I like DQ...)

 

There are several long (and sometimes seemingly interminable)  scenes that involve what is basically character development. The lives of several of the characters become intertwined with relationship struggles as the robbers try to develop romantic entanglements with female counterparts. Of course, these guys being robbers, "good girls" are not part of it. There is Cole's love relationship with Belle (Pamela Reed), for instance. Belle is a prostitute, but maybe that's the best Cole could ever hope for, given his line of work. He even tells her that's the main reason he loves he, because she is a fallen woman. 

Jim doesn't have much better luck. He's kind of hooked on Beth (Amy Stryker), who is a much more reputable woman.  But it turns out that Ed (who wasn't just an early "one scene and done" character after all... thank God...) has stolen her from out of Jim's world.

 

In between the several opening sequences of character studies we do get some of the action that was the initial draw for people like me, who look to the western as a good old shoot-em-up. The gang rob a stagecoach, with a humorous scene involving the boys taking the clothes of a high and mighty character leaving him standing there in his skivvies with his wife. They also have a train robbery sequence. 

 

All this does is really piss off the Pinkerton men, the hired law enforcement group, led by a man named Rixley, played by James Whitmore, Jr. (Whitmore, Jr is the son of James Whitmore, whom many of you will probably remember as the trustee Brooks in The Shawshank Redemption). Rixley is almost as much a villain as the outlaws in this outing, exhibiting an obsessive drive to capture the James - Younger gang.

 

The story includes some memorable scenes, one of my favorite being when Cole Younger goes head to head in a knife fight with the half-breed that Belle had married while Cole was out doing his thing. The actor who plays Sam Starr is vaguely recognizable, but it was only when I read the credits that I found out it was James Remar. Remar is a veteran of Walter Hill films. His first big role was as Ajax in the previously mentioned The Warriors, and would be the bad guy that Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy were trying to track down in 48 Hrs. 

 

Eventually we get to what is the ultimate downfall of the gang when they try to rob a bank in Northfield, Minnesota.  (Note: this is the reason this film is counted as my Minnesota entry in the Semiquincentennial Movie Project, even though much of the action occurs elsewhere...sue me...) The problems mount during the robbery as nearly everything goes wrong, including the fact that the Pinkertons had been aware of the planned robbery and set up an ambush.

 

The appearance of the Guest brothers as the Ford brother, Charley and Robert, is minimal, at best. I think the only reason they were even included was to set up the final denouement as (spoiler alert, but is a part of history, so you may already know...) Charley shoots Jesse in the back a few years later.

And Christopher hardly even resembles the character some of would remember, Count Rugen, "the six-fingered man" from The Princess Bride...

The Long Riders was not a huge success. It budgeted at $million and only managed to pull in $15 million during it's initial run. But then, the number of movies that were financial boons for Walter Hill as director were not that many. And the big successes, financially speaking, involved the fact that major box office draws were cast in the leading roles; 48 Hrs. and Another 48 Hrs. (Eddie Murphy), Red Heat (Arnold Schwazenegger) and Brewster's Millions (Richard Pryor). Hill still had enough success that he continued (and still continues) to make movies, of varied success. As I stated in my review of The Warriors and Streets of Fire, I consider him to be one of the best directors for what I call "guy movies".

The film has an 81% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It got mostly positive reviews upon it's release. Roger Ebert has referenced it as "as a prime example of Hill’s strong visual energy, atmospheric tension, and mastery over kinetic action and male camaraderie."  Ebert's counterpart, Gene Siskel, gave the movie 3 ½ stars, saying  "the Western will live as long as directors make Westerns as fresh and exciting as The Long Riders, which tells an oft-told story uncommonly well."

My personal view is that the action makes up for those frequent, rather dull, character establishing scenes involving the gang's trials and tribulations with their female counterparts. Could the movie have done without them? Maybe not. The point of these scenes is to present the characters as some kind of "anti-heroes", I think, and probably are needed so we don't have a film of an entire cast of unlikable characters. It goes without saying that the Pinkertons are not exactly presented as paragons of justice. But the James - Younger gang has very few really sympathetic members, either. Even Frank, who is probably the most likable candidate for the guy you want to root for is not entirely without his bad side.

Overall, I like this film. Not nearly as much as those gang films mentioned above, but still it is an entertaining piece.

Until next time, drive safely, folks!

Quiggy

 

  

Semiquincentennial Movie Project #32: Car Wash

 

 

The Semiquincentennial  Movie Project is an ongoing celebration of the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. During the course of this project your humble blogger is choosing a movie a week to represent each of the 50 states in the Union, as well as a movie scheduled for 4th of July weekend that will represent the nation's capitol, Washington D.C. The order of the weekly entries will coincide with the order of each state's entry into the fold (although, not necessarily coinciding with the date of their entry into said fold).

 

 

Week #32: California -

 

 

The state of California was established on Sept. 9, 1850.

Details about California:

State bird: valley quail

State flower: golden poppy

State tree: redwood

Additional historical trivia:

The name California came from a novel by Garci Rodriguez de Montalvo about a fictional island.

It's the only U.S. state to ever host a summer AND a winter Olympics. 

Fortune cookies originated in either Los Angeles or Chinatown area of San Francisco.

California has an official state "ghost town". It's Bodie and it's an official state landmark.

California has a bigger population than many independent countries in the world.

San Bernadino County clocks in as the biggest county in the whole country.

Famous people born in California: U.S. President Richard Nixon, Steve Jobs, Tiger Woods, Robert Redford, Ray Harryhausen, Madonna, Sammy Hagar, Randy Rhoads and way too many more to name...

  

Movie (1976): 

Note: In my previous reviews of Dazed and Confused and 200 Cigarettes I took a different approach to reviewing the films because, like today's film, those other two didn't really have a coherent straight forward plot. Each of these movies is more along the lines of a series of character studies. Therefore, instead of a review of the plot I chose to focus a brief overview of some of the characters that show up throughout the film (which, BTW, takes place over the span of only one day, much like those other two films).

The setting for the film is the Dee-Luxe Car Wash in Los Angeles. I did a little research, out of curiosity. The car wash that was used to film the movie was one located near MacArthur Park. Unfortunately it was torn down in the 80's and there is a strip mall on the site. (See? OCD does have some uses...)  And notice the buildings in the background... still the same 50 years later.

circa 1976

circa 2026

So the cast includes these. And these are listed in order of my favorites, not necessarily the order of their appearance in the film.  I also include a smattering of what I call Check Him Out In, which is a list of some other films in which to find the actor, as well as a favorite line from the film for each.

T.C. (Franklin Ajaye):

T.C. is a free spirit who sports an afro that the local planes flying in to the airport must have to have clearance warnings for. T.C. has only two abiding interests; disco music and Mona, a waitress at a local dive. His main goal, at least today, is to combine them both. That is he wants to win free tickets to a disco show that the local radio station is giving away, and then get Mona to go with him.

Best line (in response to Mona telling him the special at the restaurant for the day is ribs and wings):

"I've always been a breast and thigh man, myself." (Me too, T.C., me too...)

Check Him Out In: (Convoy, The Wrong Guys)

 

Lindy  (Antonio Fargas):

 

Lindy is the token "gay" character of the film. In as much as he is a caricature of what was typical at the time, Lindy may be problematic for the homosexual community, I don't really know for sure.  I think it's done with at least a modicum of taste. Lindy is always looking good, somewhat like Klinger did when he wore women's clothes on M*A*S*H*.

Best line (in response to a disparaging remark about his masculinity from Abdullah):

"Honey, I'm more man than you'll ever be and more woman than you'll ever get."

Check Him Out In: (The Starsky and Hutch TV series, Foxy Brown, Across 110th Street)

 

Abdullah (a.k.a. Duane) (Bill Duke): 

 

Abdullah is a new convert to Black Muslim theology, and is the essence of a disgruntled black man who has nothing but hostility towards the white race, and by association, anyone of the black race that he thinks of as an "Uncle Tom". As such Abdullah doesn't get any respect from his coworkers, except maybe Lonnie. I like Duke's performance here more than the character he is playing, and I think that is a credit to Duke. He stands out as one of the more memorable characters. And it was Duke's film debut!

Best line (to Daddy Rich):

"You talkin' just like a pimp!" 

Check Him Out In: (Predator, Menace II Society, Payback) 

 

Daddy Rich (Richard Pryor):

 

Daddy Rich is a local bigwig preacher, but not the kind of preacher that spouts hellfire and brimstone. Daddy Rich is a black version of someone like Joel Osteen, a preacher who spouts an entitlement theology (take the money because it's a God-given right to take the money). Except for Abdullah most of the employees look up to Daddy Rich, because he is successful (monetarily). 

Best line:

"There is a good place in this world for money and I know where it is. It's right here in my pocket!" 

 Check Him Out In: (Seriously? There are lots. But just to name a few. Silver Streak, Stir Crazy, Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life is Calling, Uptown Saturday Night)

 

Scruggs (Jack Kehoe):

 

 

Ostensibly the "token white guy" in an all-black comedy, Scruggs is adorable. He plays a guy who is stressing out over the previous night's festivities. Apparently he had stayed out all night partying, failing to show up at home. He still hasn't shown up and is sick to death over what his wife is going to do. And apparently he participated in some extramarital adventures and is now worried he has a memory of the night he'd prefer not to have. (If I have to be more explicit, you are in the wrong theater...)

Best line (while on the phone to a clinic):

"Well, it's just kinda hangin' there, lookin' sick..." 

Check Him Out In: The Sting, The Untouchables, Serpico. 

 

Car Wash is replete with other characters who don't get enough screen time to really make an impact. I particularly like Geronimo (Ray Vitte). Vitte had a very short career. He died at age 33 from, I think, sickle cell anemia. But he was memorable whenever he showed up in film and TV. He was a friend and band member of Pedro (Cheech Marin) in Up in Smoke and he played a DJ in Thank God It's Friday. Lloyd and Floyd are pretty good as a pair of wannabe singers. Lloyd, BTW, was played by De Wayne Jessie, who had a separate career as a singer with Otis Day and the Knights. Otis and the band were created for a couple of scenes in Animal House, but went on to perform for real (much like Spinal Tap). Richard Brestoff is pretty good as the son of the car wash owner, who would rather be a Communist following Mao than be the son of a member of the white establishment. But even the people he really wants to connect with, the black working men, don't take him seriously. And I can't forget to mention Ivan Dixon as Lonnie. Ivan was most memorable as Kinchloe in the TV series Hogan's Heroes. He had retired from acting by this time to direct and produce films, but came out of retirement specifically for this role.

There are numerous other cameo roles throughout the film. Lorraine Gary, who played Chief Brody's wife in the Jaws movies, has a bit part as an overly hysterical upper crust woman worried more about what damage her Mercedes is going to take as a result of her kid throwing up on it than she is about the kid himself. Carmine Caridi, whose biggest impact was as gangsters in movies like The Godfather movies and Bugsy, shows up as a rather loser of a father who leaves his Doberman in the car, apparently just to mess with the attendants.

There is one minor complaint as far as it goes. I think they underused George Carlin, who makes several appearances in the film. But his sole purpose is kind of lame. He plays a cab driver, and his sole impact is he's just wandering around trying to find a girl who ditched him mid cab ride without paying her fare. That fare girl, as well, is not entirely all that interesting. The movie describes her character as a hooker. She hides out in the restroom changing her outfit for most of the movie and doesn't really have much to do once she finally comes out of it.

Car Wash made a pretty decent profit at the box office, bringing in $14 million against a $2 million budget, and currently holds an 86% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Our old buddy Roger Ebert actually liked the movie, giving it 3½ out of 4 stars, and his cohort Gene Siskel granted it 3 out of 4 stars. 

Interestingly enough (and here's a shocker for you highbrow readers who think Citizen Kane is high art and movies like this are only for the lowbrow masses...), Car Wash was actually a candidate in the final running  for the Palme d'Or  in the 1977 Cannes Film Festival, To be considered along the likes of Paolo and Vittorio Taviani's Padre Padrone, the winner of that year's prize, as well as Wim Wender's The American Friend, Robert Altman's 3 Women and Ettore Scola's A Special Day I think is pretty significant. It even won two awards, for Best Music and the Technical Grand Prize.

From an interesting video I found on Car Wash:

If you saw this on commercial TV,  you saw a slightly different version. There were deleted portions, that focused on the gay character, Lindy, taken out, and instead inserted scenes that had been originally deleted from the theatrical release. These involved, believe it or not, Danny DeVito and Brooke Adams as a couple who owned a diner next door to the car wash. I couldn't find any clips online of the deleted scenes, so I don't even really know how DeVito made out in the role, but I bet he was pretty good.

Another interesting fact in that video. The producers created the soundtrack prior to actually filming the movie. Thus, when the characters are on screen dancing and jigging to songs on the soundtrack they actually ARE dancing and jigging to the actual songs, not just faking it to a music that would be added later. This was at the time a new development. Most movies would only add the soundtrack AFTER production had wrapped. This created a scene that was real, as opposed to just having the people dance to a song that wasn't even there.

And finally: this movie was originally written to be a stage play for Broadway. The writers envisioned a full blown stage play, complete with some working stage props to give it an authentic look. (Imagine all those people in the first few rows getting wet from the on stage action... I don't know about you, but it sounds somewhat like being front row for a Gallagher concert. Google "Gallagher" if you don't get it...) 

Well, folks, that's it for this time. Drive safely. And preferably in a nice clean car... 

 Quiggy

 

Stranger Things Have Happened

 

This is my entry in the It Grew On Me Blogathon hosted by Taking Up Room

 

 

Note: This is actually a stretch for the theme of the blogathon, but I have Rebecca's OK for it...

I don't like Will Ferrell movies. I gave him a shot with Anchorman, which I thought was just stupid and not at all funny. I tried again with A Night at the Roxbury. Still no go. Old School was just a waste of my time, as I didn't even crack a smile. When he was on Saturday Night Live, he was only slightly funny. I admit I like the Jeopardy! parodies, but his Alex Trebek persona had help or it wouldn't have worked for me either. (Darrell Hammond as Sean Connery and Norm MacDonald as Burt Reynolds both saved his ass from being a one and done character in the role of Trebek). I like the Austin Powers films, but only the parts where Ferrell isn't on screen. In fact I came to a conclusion that Farrell needs to have somebody of far greater talent to blur out his lack of such.

In 2006, when Stranger Than Fiction was released on home video, I was having a conversation with an employee, Mark, at my local video rental place and told him that the concept of the movie intrigued me, but I was reluctant to take the plunge since I thought it would end up being the same old same old stupid output that I had seen in previous Ferrell movies. Mark said something I will never forget, and something that I am grateful to him for saying. He said that I ought to check it out because he had discovered that "people who like Will Ferrell don't like this movie, but people who don't like Will Ferrell have been saying they like it."

Based on just that I decided to give it a whirl. And what do you know? I actually found a Will Ferrell movie that I can stand, nay, even like. A lot of that has to do with the fact that Ferrell wasn't trying to be funny, at least not in the usual sense of his attempts when he was doing his standard comedies. So, no, the movie doesn't necessarily qualify, in the strictest terms of this blogathon. I didn't hate the movie at the outset, and then gradually change my mind about it on repeat viewings. And I still will avoid most movies which Will Farrell is the star. But, given that fact, I guess you could say Ferrell "grew on me" in one respect, since I will recommend Stranger than Fiction, especially if you are, like me, rather dismissive of his usual output.

 

 

 

Stranger Than Fiction (2006):

Do you hear strange voices?

Unless you are David Berkowitz (the infamous "Son of Sam"), it's probably not a serious problem if you do.

But for Harold Crick (Will Ferrell), this voice he hears is somewhat problematic. It is not telling him to go out and kill random strangers like the voice that spurred Berkowitz, but it is infringing on his sanity. 

The premise of the movie is that Harold, who works as an auditor for the IRS, begins hearing a woman's voice who seems to be narrating his life, as if he is a character in some novel rather than a normal functioning human being. So how would you react if suddenly it seemed like someone was writing your life? This bizarre story plays out as Harold tries to discover just what the hell is going on.

 

It is complicated by the fact that only Harold hears this voice. Everyone around him reacts as if he is just some nutcase talking to himself. But hearing this voice is indeed happening, even if Harold is the only one who realizes it.

 

It turns out that somewhere else in the city is a frustrated writer who is going through a case of writer's block. Karen Eiffel (Emma Thompson) has written several novels, most of which ended with the death of her protagonist. 

 

But she has been struggling with her current novel, because she really has no idea how to kill him off. The character in her novel?

Harold Crick. 

Eiffel: "Little did he know that this simple, seemingly innocuous act would result in his imminent death." 

Harold ends up going to a psychiatrist who diagnoses him with schizophrenia. But Harold insists that he is NOT schizophrenic. For some reason, possibly just to get him out of her office, she suggests he see a literary professor, since Harold thinks he is somehow involved as a character in someone's novel.

 

He goes to see Professor Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman), who takes him seriously (or maybe just tries to humor him). Hilbert runs through various scenarios and determines that he is not Hamlet, or a golem or any of the various literary characters that might possibly be a solution. He even tries to determine whether Harold is in the middle of a comedy or a tragedy:  

Harold: "I just met a woman who told me to get bent."

Prof. Hilbert: "Well, that sounds like a comedy..." 

 

The woman that Harold is referring to is a woman. Ana (Maggie Gyllenhaal), who is currently under investigation for not paying enough taxes. She is initially openly hostile to Harold (as probably any one who is trying to skirt regulations on their taxes with the hope of getting away with it would be). But Harold finds Ana intriguing, even if he is a bit reserved in his development of a relationship.

 

Eventually Harold figures out that Karen is the culprit behind it all and tracks her down. Needless to say she is just as shocked as Harold is that the situation exists, that Harold is a real person, not just a figment of her writer imagination.

 

She ends up giving him a copy of the novel she has written, which he takes to Hilbert. Hilbert tells him that it is the greatest novel he has ever read, but that Harold's death at the end of it is the only way the novel could end with a satisfying conclusion.

 

I won't tell you how this all wraps up. I will tell you that, aside from Old Yeller, this is only the second movie that has ever brought me to tears at the end. And, despite the fact that I think Ferrell is still a subpar comic actor, he pulls off what I think is his absolute best ever performance.

Ferrell was recognized in the critical community for this role, which in my mind goes a long way in redeeming himself as an actor. Ferrell was nominated for a Golden Globes Award in the category of Best Actor in a Motion Picture: Musical or Comedy (which he lost to Sacha Baron Cohen for Borat). He was nominated for a Satellite Award for Best Actor- Musical or Comedy (which he lost to Joseph Cross for Running with Scissors). And, once again, he was nominated for a Best Actor Saturn Award (and that one he lost to Brandon Routh for Superman Returns). 

Could he also have qualified at least for a nomination for an Oscar? Hard to say. With the competition that year I find it difficult to find a spot for him. His competition would have included Forest Whitaker (the ultimate winner for Last King of Scotland), Peter O'Toole (Venus), Leonardo DiCaprio (Blood Diamond), Will Smith (The Pursuit of Happyness) and Ryan Gosling (Half Nelson). I don't say he would have won that either because, if you haven't seen Whitaker's performance, it was outstanding. But like Jim Carrey's performance in an earlier role in  The Truman Show, I think Ferrell's role at least deserved a nod. (Maybe substitute him for Ryan Gosling...)

Whether it was because Ferrell was playing against type, or there were other factors involved, the movie only did moderately well at the box office. With a budget of $30 million it only pulled in $54 million in ticket sales. It got some good reviews, however. It has a 73% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. My old standby critic Roger Ebert gave it 3½ out of 4 stars, saying it proves that "he has dramatic gifts equal to his comedic talents". (Obviously Ebert had a better opinion of his comedy than I do...)

So, to sum up, I will leave you with this. Perhaps it is a good idea to take my friend Mark's advice: if you like Will Ferrell then approach this film with an open mind, but be expecting a different Ferrell, and if you don't like him, by golly, you are missing out by NOT watching.

Time to fire up the old Plymouth and head back to the house. Drive safely.

Quiggy

  

Selling America: Iconic Commercials (Pt 1)

 

If you are a child of the 70's, like me, you probably watched a hell of a lot of TV. These days, with DVR and the like, you can fast forward through the commercials, but in the 70's (as well as earlier, in the 50's and 60's, and later into the 80's and 90's) commercials were a part of the experience when watching TV shows.

To be honest, there wasn't a big attraction to most commercials. They were, after all, only designed to sell a product, and often not a whole lot of thought went into making them anywhere remotely "memorable". 

And yet... Every so often one commercial would crash the gate of just being an unwanted nuisance in the TV watching experience.  One that became a sort of cultural phenomenon in itself. Surely any child of the 70's remembers such classic commercials as these, proof that even commercials could impact the viewer if they could reach that plateau.

Note: After coming up with the idea for this post I realized there were WAY too many memorable commercials for just one post, so I decided to keep it smaller by just focusing on a specific topic for each of what will be several entries. This one will focus just on soda pop commercials. Future commercial memories will cover other products. 

The inspiration for this post came as a result of a couple of guys (both of us in our 60's now, BTW) sitting around reminiscing about our childhood when the topic verged into classic commercials of the day. Whenever I start discussing memorable commercials from the 70's, one in particular always comes up. And, once again, if you grew up in the 70's you will remember this one.

(A preface for the videos included here: I made an effort to try to find good examples with quality reproduction, but many of them look like they were recorded off a TV broadcast, and even then a TV broadcast circa the 70's. My apologies for the quality).  

Hey, kid! Catch! (for Coca Cola): 

 

This classic commercial first aired during a Monday Night Football game in October of 1979, a game between the Green Bay Packers and the New England Patriots. It aired several times over the next few months. 

But it probably really gained recognition when it aired as one of the commercials during Super Bowl XIV (which featured Mean Joe and the Steelers pitted against the Los Angeles Rams). The producers wanted to use someone from the then current Super Bowl winners, since that would be the freshest football celebrity to the public.  

Interestingly enough, in an interview I watched, the creator of the spot, Penny Hawkey, admits that she was unfamiliar with Greene's nickname, but upon hearing he was called "Mean Joe", immediately decided that he was the football player she wanted to use. The commercial made its way into the zeitgeist.

I remember seeing a blooper reel on a special of America's Funniest Videos, hosted by Dick Clark and Ed McMahon. Outtakes from the filming. One of them you can find in some videos of the filming, in which Greene guzzles the Coke as per the script. He is supposed to do the "Hey, kid! Catch!" line and throw his jersey, as it shows in the above video, but he inadvertently burped, blowing the take. In another outtake, which I can't find, he throws the jersey but it lands on the kid's head.

The commercial won a Clio Award, given out to the best commercials of the year. (An award for "best commercials"? Go figure...) It has continued to impact the zeitgeist over the years. There was a parody/homage of it not long after, during an episode of Sesame Street, in which one person, playing a football player called "Big Murray" gives another character a towel with the number 7 (the segment was about teaching kids about the number 7).  And the theme has cropped up in episodes of Newhart, The Simpsons, Family Guy and Futurama. There was even a made-for-TV movie which featured Greene taking on a father figure role for a kid the Steelers adopted.

No one who has seen the original will probably ever forget it. And even newcomers to the clip, people who weren't even born at the time of it's production, can't come away from watching it without it having some impact. Which only goes to show that not all commercials are a waste of time. And Greene, who wasn't necessarily the biggest name on the 1979 Steelers team (those would be quarterback Terry Bradshaw, Lynn Swann, Franco Harris and John Stallworth), became a much bigger presence as a result of this commercial.

But that one wasn't the only time Coca-Cola managed to work it's way into the culture...

 

Hilltop (for Coca-Cola):

The original song, believe it or not, started out as a jingle for Coca-Cola. The writer, Bill Backer, jotted down the line "I'd like to buy the world a Coke, and keep it company" on a napkin while stuck at an airport during a flight delay. The tune for it was based on a previous melody, but the original song we 70's kids remember is this one. (I certainly don't remember that original song, which BTW, was called "True Love and Apple Pie". You can google that title if you want. It is somewhat different from the song that dwells in your memory). 

The commercial features a crowd of young people on a hilltop (thus the title of the commercial), singing "I'd like to teach the world to sing, in perfect harmony. I'd like to buy the world a Coke, and keep it company." The jingle was so popular, according to legend, that folks would call up radio stations requesting the jingle (as if it was a literal song being played on radio stations). The powers that be saw it's potential as a valid song and released a version sans the Coke reference. It was performed by The New Seekers and even made it into the AT40, topping out as the #7 song, and lasting in the top 40 from December of 1971 to February of 1972.

I think it might even be a case of what is called the Mandela Effect for some. Even I am guilty of that, because I thought the radio song came first and the jingle was created later. But, in fact, the jingle came first. The thing that really made this commercial memorable was the message that it presented. At a time when the youth of America were advocating the end of a very unpopular war (Vietnam) and having instead worldwide peace, the commercial focused on an event that featured 100 young people gathered together, representative of the world since it was supposedly a multinational group:

"On a hilltop in Italy,
We assembled young people
From all over the world...
To bring you this message
From Coca-Cola Bottlers
All over the world.
It's the real thing. Coke."

Despite the fact that it is in essence a ploy to sell a product by using the "peace movement" as it's marketing strategy, I think this commercial ultimately had a good underlying message. And that's what makes it stand out in my memory. (As a side note, I was just 9 years old at the time, so all I really knew about the signs of the times came from whatever I managed to see on the local news programs. I wasn't involved in any active protest movements of the era; hell, I probably would have just ignored any if they had even happened around me... for all I know, maybe they did and that's exactly how I reacted).  

 

I'm a Pepper (for Dr. Pepper):

From the late 70's into the early 80's the face of Dr. Pepper would undoubtedly have been David Naughton. The commercials that Naughton made were memorable because of his happy-go-lucky demeanor as he danced and sang his way through the jingle: "I'm a pepper. He's a pepper. She's a pepper. We're a pepper. Wouldn't you like to be a pepper, too?" It was a catchy jingle. (And having been a devotee of Dr. Pepper since the mid-60's, I was a "pepper" along with him).

Unfortunately this situation became a subject of controversy in 1981. See, David Naughton had committed an unpardonable sin in 1981. He had appeared naked in a film, An American Werewolf in London. Well, that's the legend. And it turns out to not be true. But I believed it when I first heard it, because after all, there is no bugaboo greater in my own catalog of "unpardonable sins" as censorship and moral judgement. It turns out that Naughton just left Dr. Pepper so he could focus on his acting and musical career. (To that musical side, he did have a one-hit wonder with a song titled "Makin' It"...)

As far it's effect on the public, these spots are credited as helping Dr. Pepper become a bigger name in the soda pop industry. The jingle itself was catchy. Unlike the previous commercials it wasn't all that impactful on the horizon, but people of my generation are bound to remember them.

 

And, finally, this post would be incomplete without mentioning Geoffrey Holder.

 

The Uncola... aah hah ha! (for 7Up):

Geoffrey Holder, a much more exotic voice and je ne sais quoi  than his contemporary James Earl Jones, made watching 7Up commercials worth watching just by his presence. Always snazziily dressed, Holder came on screen extolling the virtues of not going with the standard of using cola nuts in the drink called "7Up". 

There was nothing about the presentation of a 7Up commercial that one would think of as iconic. Holder never sang about the virtues of the soda, although he did have a musical background. That was mostly as a dancer and choreographer, however. But then, as far as I remember, he never did a dance during his commercials, either.

No, Holder just showed up and promoted the difference between those less than exquisite "normal and boring" cola drinks in favor of the uncola of a lemon-lime concoction. But what sold the commercial was his delivery, and it almost always ended with the what I think of as "iconic" chuckle. A 7Up commercial with Holder probably would have been memorable anyway just because of his delivery of the sales pitch, but I think what makes them really good is they always ended with that "aah hah ha". 

Try it some time with a friend who grew up with the commercial. Just ask "What commercial was this from?" and then do your best "aah hah ha!" I'll bet at least 75% of your friends, assuming they were around during the commercial's heyday, will immediately respond with the right answer. Just goes to show you don't need a dramatic subplot of some starstruck kid and a sports icon or an elaborate chorale group or a song and dance number to be memorable.

So, which of these was your favorite? For me it will always be the Mean Joe one. I might add here that if the producers had gone with Randy White or Hollywood Henderson or any of the rest of The Devil's Favorite Team (which they could conceivably have done, since that team had also been in the previous year's Super Bowl)  I wouldn't be so near enamored of it, but fortunately they went with Greene.

 

Commercial break over. Now back to our features.

Quiggy 

 

 

 

 

 

Semiquincentennial Movie Project #31: The Giant Spider Invasion

 

 

The Semiquincentennial  Movie Project is an ongoing celebration of the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. During the course of this project your humble blogger is choosing a movie a week to represent each of the 50 states in the Union, as well as a movie scheduled for 4th of July weekend that will represent the nation's capitol, Washington D.C. The order of the weekly entries will coincide with the order of each state's entry into the fold (although, not necessarily coinciding with the date of their entry into said fold).

 

Week #31: Wisconsin -

 

 

The state of Wisconsin was established on May 29, 1848.

Details about Wisconsin:

State bird: robin    

State flower: wood violet

State tree: sugar maple

Additional historical trivia:

Two Rivers is the birthplace of the ice cream sundae. Note: this claim is contested, but the city does date the invention of the sundae at it's earliest date here.

The iconic cheese head you see at Green Bay Packers games actually debuted at a Milwaukee Brewers game.  

You can thank John J. Blaine, a senator from Wisconsin, for introducing the bill that finally repealed Prohibition, making it legal to sell alcohol again.

Quite possibly an intentional marketing ploy if you ask me, but for a brief time in 2009 an exit sign in Wisconsin had every word on it spelled wrong except "exit".  (Might not have even been exit #185, for all I know...)

 

On the "beware your neighbor" side, both Ed Gein and Jeffrey Dahmer, two infamous serial killers were from Wisconsin. 

 The iconic TV shows Happy Days and Laverne and Shirley were set in Milwaukee. (Additionally, That 70's Show was set in a fictional town in Wisconsin.) 

Famous people born in Wisconsin: Orson Welles, Gene Wilder, Laura Ingalls Wilder (of Little House on the Prairie fame), Liberace, astronaut Deke Slayton, Oscar "Happy" Felsch (one of the infamous "Black Sox" who threw the 1919 World Series) and Bob Uecker.  

 

The Giant Spider Invasion (1975): 

What's scarier than a little spider?

A bigger spider.

And what's scarier than a bigger spider? 

A spider that's grown to gigantic proportions, of course.

But you know what's not scary?

A Volkswagen Beetle decked out with legs to look like a giant spider....

I honestly don't know if this movie was meant to be taken seriously as a horror movie or not. After all, in the opening scene, we witness a cheesy shot of what is supposed to look look like a UFO (but actually more resembles a blue PEZ pellet) flashing across space. 

 

we zoom in on a small town where the sheriff, Sheriff Jones (Alan Hale, Jr.) is working at his desk, when in walks Dave (Kevin Brodie). The Skipper (I mean "the sheriff") greets him with a "Hi, little buddy!" and Gilligan (I mean "Dave") and he talk about a revival going on later.

It's nice to finally be off that island

 

Dave has a date with Terry (Diane Lee Hart). The Sheriff warns him that fooling around with Terry might not be a good idea because her brother-in-law Dan (Robert Easton), is not one to get on the wrong side of. But Dan is a good guy... he actually went to a revival. Ummm... no he didn't. But that's what he told his wife, Ev (Leslie Parrish).

Not tonight, honey. I have a bug...

 

When he comes back home, Ev doesn't believe his story.  But Ev has been doing exactly the same thing that Dan has been doing... fooling around with someone else. While they are discussing their fictional evenings the UFO from the opening sequence crashes in their back forty. But Dan says whatever it was will wait until morning.

Dan and Ev are not the typical happily married couple. Some of the best lines come from one or the other during this film.

Ev: "Sometimes the only way I know you're alive is when I hear you flush the toilet!" 

Dan: "You're so dumb, you wouldn't know rabbit turds from Rice Krispies."

 

These Rice Krispies taste funny, Ev...

Meanwhile a physicist at the nearby observatory notices some peculiar increases in gamma radiation in the area. Dr. Langer (Barbara Hale) calls in help to investigate this mysterious phenomenon. NASA sends out Dr. Vance (Steve Brodie, who, BTW, is the father of the actor playing Dave, in case you were wondering...). 

Just a typical family get together

 

Out at the farm Ev and Dan check out where the crash occurred. They don't find a UFO, but they find a couple of mutilated cows, which the unscrupulous Dan plans to chop up and sell to the owner of the local diner. They also find a bunch of meteorites. When Dan opens one up he finds... diamonds! (And a tarantula, but he doesn't see that). And quicker than you can say Spider Robinson Dan gets $$$ in his eyes.  

Later, when searching for more meteorites, Dan finds a dead body. He secretly buries the body, but he tells Ev they can't tell the sheriff because he'll find  out about the meteorites and diamonds. Of course, he'll also find out that one of their cash crops is a kind of grass that the sheriff would find not entirely orthodox...

The movie trudges along as just a normal spider movie (well, as normal as a "spiders from space" can hope to achieve. But the problem is we have a movie called The GIANT Spider Invasion. So, unless there are thousands of meteorites, that invasion is going to be pretty tame, don't ya think?

But (finally)  40 minutes into the movie we get some larger spiders. And the jump scares for this portion are worthy of pushing this movie from the "laugh riot" side of film into horror/monster film, as Ev is attacked in her farm house by a couple of big bear sized spiders. 

Meanwhile our intrepid doctors are scoping out the area and theorize that a miniature black hole crashed into Earth outside Dan's farm. (And every real scientist watching this movie is about to have a brain hemorrhage.) The whole theory is that that is where this invasion of spiders is coming from; essentially this miniature black hole opened a rift in the space-time continuum, I guess. What it looks more like to me is that the scriptwriters just did a scan of a few scientific articles and took words that sounded "science-y" and molded a story around it.

(Now, I will interject here that some scientists theorize that the Great Tunguska Fireball was the result of a miniature black hole falling to Earth, but to date no one has seen gigantic spiders in the region).

It takes 50 minutes before we see the really large spider come out of the ground. At first, the spider looks halfway decent. But as hinted in the introduction, eventually the film has to give us some long shots of the spider, and despite some fairly decent music to enhance the scare tactics of this "spider from Mars" (or wherever it's supposed to be from), it basically looks like what it is; a car with spider legs attached to it.

Well, a "beetle" and a spider are both insects, anyway...

 

Of course, when it becomes known that there is a giant predator on the loose, every redneck in town with a gun or a slingshot starts thinking, "hell, that's nothing we can take it", despite the Sheriff trying to convince them to let the authorities take care of it. And then, from out of nowhere, there's a....

CARNIVAL!

You heard that right, folks! Smorgasbord for the giant spider made to order, I guess....

Panic at the carousel

 

Ultimately the scientists decide that the solution is to set up some kind of device that will (hopefully) seal off the black hole so that nothing else can come through, and in the process kill any of the creatures that already have come through.

This movie is absolutely bonkers. The highlight for me is the preacher (Tain Bodkin). Remember the revival that Dan was supposed to be going to? Well, that preacher keeps popping up now and then spouting end of the world predictions. The final line from the film is the preacher expostulating:

"When pharaoh refused the children of Israel their right to exist, the heavens opened up and deluged the land with flies, frogs, lice and locusts! It happened before and it will happen again!" 

 Believe it or not, this film actually made a profit. Not entirely unreasonable since it was made for only about $300,000 (and most of that was probably spent on the spiders...) It made, by different accounts, either $3 million or $15 million at the box office. It doesn't have enough reviews to receive a rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but another website, the Popcornmeter, rates it at 14%. One review quoted on wikipedia calls it "self-subconsciously ludicrous". 

For entertainment value, it's a hoot (if you look at it as a comedy). But since I think it was actually supposed to be a serious horror movie I'd have to say, except for a serious sufferer of arachnophobia, it's not all that scary. The music does try it's best to enhance the scary parts, but even then it's sometimes lacking. However, give it a try. 

Until next time folks, drive safely.

Quiggy