Talladega Knights in a Daytona Daze

 

I gotta say, I am NOT a NASCAR fan.  Next to tennis I find car racing the most boring thing to watch in sports.  I mean, it's just a bunch of guys making left turns... sure, left turns at well over 150 mph, but still... Which makes me probably the only man in the south that changes the channel when NASCAR comes on the TV. So, Stroker Ace, should be something I would avoid... right?

Well, without Burt in the lead role, that might be true.  I still have never watched Days of Thunder or Talladega Nights (of course, the fact that I don't like Tom Cruise or Will Farrell movies is a factor there..) But that also means I have never watched any number of movies that centered on NASCAR as it's basis, including the ones that came out eulogizing Dale Earnhardt.

Stroker Ace has a lot going for it besides the racing however.  I mean... Burt... what can I say?

Despite Reynolds' popularity, especially among those of us who like he-man type heroes with a healthy dose of humor, I have to admit his movies have never been Oscar material. Of course, he did get a nomination for his role in Boogie Nights, but that wasn't a Burt Reynolds movie.

Stroker Ace came along in the early days of the Razzies awards.  If it had been around in the 70's I have no doubt that Burt Reynolds movies would have been in contention for the award.  I am enough of a realist to admit that they aren't exactly the best movies of the year.  But they did often manage to make money, and that is one of the main points for movies in the first place, isn't it?

As far as the Razzies, Stroker Ace got 5 nominations for the award: Worst Picture, Worst Director (Hal Needham), Worst Actress (Loni Anderson), Worst Supporting Actor (Jim Nabors) and Worst New Star (Loni again). It won only one of those (Jim Nabors), and somehow Burt missed out on getting nominated for Worst Actor... I guess John Wilson et. al. doesn't hate Reynolds as much as they hate Sylvester Stallone (who somehow gets on the Worst Actor list every year he puts out a movie,,,)

Besides the headlining stars of the movie, Reynolds along with Loni Anderson, Jim Nabors and Ned Beatty, there is a plethora of cameos by real NASCAR drivers (circa 1983) that you might recognize if you are a NASCAR fan from the time, or you might at least recognize their cars. Even me, as an avowed non-fan recognized Harry Gant's Skoal Bandit car (I did watch sports coverage on the news, after all, even if I never watched a race...)

Among those famous drivers who appear are Dale Earnhardt, Terry Labonte and Kyle and Richard Petty. And those are just the ones I could recognize.  There are quite a few others, including Benny Parsons, Tim Richmond and Ricky Rudd, all playing themselves. In addition there are a few well known announcers who guest cameo as themselves.

Stroker Ace (1985):

Some background is given at the beginning of the film. We see a young Stroker (Cary Guffey) and his childhood buddy, Doc (Hunter Bruce), coming back from play where Stroker has pretty much wrecked a bicycle trying to some stunts with it that one probably shouldn't do with a bicycle. The boys are picked up by Doc's dad, (Frank O. Hill), who is a moonshine runner.  Dad is chased by Feds and thus inspires Stroker to develop a love for racing.

Fast forward to present day. Stroker (Burt Reynolds) is racing to make the start time at a race (in a car with only three wheels...), with his mechanic, Lugs (Jim Nabors). Stroker is a free spirit who doesn't like following the rules, which puts him at odds with his current sponsor, Catty (Warren Stevens).  He ends up crashing early in the race and Catty, tired of Stroker's irrepressible attitude, fires him.

Stroker needs a sponsor to finance his racing, so he ends up taking on a sponsor who is pretty much as irresponsible as he is: Clyde Torkle (Ned Beatty), the owner of a fried chicken chain. the Chicken Pit. Signing a huge contract, without even reading it (it's big enough to give War and Peace a run for it's money in length),Stroker now has his sponsor.

But the contract requires Stoker to do a lot of stuff that he isn't entirely willing to do, including having his car decked out with the slogan  "Fastest Chicken in the South" and making commercials where he has to dress up as a giant chicken. 

Needless to say, Stroker is not entirely happy with his situation, but his contract is iron-clad and he has no legal out for the deal.

Stroker has one nemesis that rivals even his animosity towards his new boss: Aubrey James (Parker Stevenson). Often the race comes down to either Stroker or Aubrey winning a race. (And this despite the fact that there are some real-life NASCAR racers in the race...)

Aubrey drives the #10 car, and one of the best lines in the movie, for me,  is when Stroker is being interviewed by a sportscaster. When asked to sum up NASCAR in a few words, Stroker says:

"Go down to the end of the straightaway and turn left.  Unless you're #10. Then you turn right."

(Needless to say, Aubrey was not amused...)

But Stroker, if anything, is not one to just give up and go along with the flow. He starts doing things that are designed to embarrass Torkle enough to fire him. But Torkle is also not one to give up, and he takes everything that Stroker dishes out, because, after all, Stroker is his meal ticket to the big time; I.e. a nationwide status instead of just a regional chain.

Pembrook Feeny (Loni Anderson) is Torkle's marketing assistant and she tells Stroker he basically has to follow the rules.  Initially she is just interested in Stroker as a client.  She is a goody-goody, doesn't drink and is a virgin Sunday School teacher. so at the outset, Stroker, a ladies man, is at a loss as to how to get her to be another conquest in his side interest: that of bedding the next beautiful girl.

Stroker continues to race for Torkle while trying to figure out how to get out of his contract. Enter Doc (John Byner) who shows up with dad. Doc is now a wannabe actor. Thus Stroker and Doc and dad come up with a plan. Doc poses as an executive for Miller Brewing and makes an offer to buy out the Chicken Pit franchise, but with the stipulation that the deal will only go through if Torkle fires Stroker.

Torkle falls for the ruse hook, line and sinker.  But he tells Stroker that he will back out of the deal if Stroker becomes this year's NASCAR champion.  Stroker, whose ego is bigger than the national debt, has to make a choice: either win and be committed to stay with Torkle for the rest of the contract, or throw the race and lose.

There is only one problem with losing... if he loses it is likely that Aubrey will win. So the only way that he can win and still get out of the contract is if, somehow, he can get Torkle to officially fire him before the end of the race...

Hey, if you don't like Reynolds' typical character in comedies (and let's face, to be honest, his comedic roles were virtually the same), then this one is not going to be a top 10 movie.  Even Reynolds fans, for the most part, couldn't get on board.  It currently holds a 4.9 rating on IMDb, and if you know IMDb you know the fans can skew those ratings much higher than would normally be accorded it.  They certainly didn't come out in droves for it.  It only grossed a little les than $12 million on a $14 million budget... ouch.

The movie, needless to say was not a hit with the critics. It currently stands at 19% on the Tomato-meter, which to the uninitiated, only 19% of the reviews were favorable.  Roger Ebert, who may be one of the least likely people to like this kind of movie has one of the more humorous takes: "To call the movie a lightweight, bubble-headed summer entertainment is not criticism, but simply description".  Phhht, Roger!

I would not rank it in the top 20 of Reynolds movies, and I would probably go with Smokey and the Bandit or The Longest Yard before I would watch it, given the choice.  As far as racing movies, either Cannonball Run or Cannonball Run II are miles ahead of it.  But it is miles ahead of that corker Cop and a Half. And it's a bit better than City Heat (another target of Roger's snarky reviews..) 

This is one of those many movies I saw at a drive-in as opposed to in a walk-in theater, and, personally, when it comes to movies involving cars or motorcycles, I think a drive-in is the best venue. 

Well, folks, the old Plymouth is nowhere near in shape enough to compete in NASCAR.  Hell, it would probably break down if I even tried to get it up to 80, much less 180... But it is time to head home.  Drive safely. (Meaning don't try to pretend you are in a NASCAR race).

Quiggy

Risque Happenings

 

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This is my entry in the Seventh Broadway Bound Blogathon hosted by Taking Up Room

 

 "Rumors spreadin' 'round

In that Texas town

About that shack outside La Grange.

(You know what I'm talking about.)

Just let me know

If you wanna go

To that home out on the range.

(They got a lot of nice girls there.) 

  Lyrics to "La Grange" by Z Z Top

It was featured in a movie.  Before that it was in a hit Broadway play.  Before that it was paid homage by a boogie band from Texas, Z Z Top (see above).

And before that it was a REAL place. 

"The Chicken Ranch", as it was known, operated from the early 1900's until 1973. Quite a bit of the folklore behind the actual place became a part of the play (and subsequent movie) that was eventually produced.  Local constabulary were indeed involved in keeping the place open and there was also a crusader, Marvin Zindler, who was behind it's eventual closing, in 1973.

Vintage icon

 

The historian (and general "in your face" provocative person) in me thinks the place ought to have been made a state treasure and kept as a historical site. To his credit, the owner has been trying to get a historical marker for the site. The building itself is in such disrepair that it's nothing to look at. Part of it was used to build a bar in Dallas and the rest is in shambles.

Breaks the heart, don't it?

The city of La Grange would like to have visitors come for more than just the "less than reputable" historical site, but there are some memorabilia available on their city website which feature "The Chicken Ranch" on it, so it's not exactly like they are trying to sweep the past under the carpet.

Shop La Grange  (just in case you're interested...)

In 1978 a Broadway musical was produced based on the place and the events surrounding it's eventual closing, written by Peter Masterson and Larry L. King (no relation to Larry King, the radio talk show guy, as far as I know...).  The name of the town was changed from La Grange to a fictional town of Gilbert, but the story was basically the story behind the real place. 

In the play, Miss Mona and the local sheriff, Ed, kept the place running on the up-and-up (so to speak), but pressure from an investigative journalist, Melvin Thorpe, caused the place to come under scrutiny. And eventually causes it to have to close down.

The play garnered some Tony Award attention. (The Tony Awards are the Oscar equivalent for Broadway shows.) It won Best Actor and Best Actress (for Henderson Forsythe and Delores Hall, respectively).  It was also nominated in the categories of Best Musical, Best Book of a Musical (the story), Best Direction and Best Choreography.

In 1982, the play was produced as a film, with Dolly Parton as Miss Mona and Burt Reynolds as Ed, with Dom DeLuise as the crusading Melvin. The movie also added a new song (which wasn't exactly "new", as Dolly Parton had first recorded it years earlier) "I Will Always Love You" (later to be recorded by Whitney Houston for The Bodyguard). Note: I always thought "Hard Candy Christmas" was an original Dolly song, too, due to the fact that her version is the one I always hear, but it turns out that it was written for the original musical.

The film version had the production team of Miller-Milkis-Boyett. Who are they, you might  be asking (especially if you don't pay attention to the credits)?  Well, under various incarnations of those three we got a plethora of TV shows of the past.  Those three together were behind the Tom Hanks / Peter Scolari TV show Bosom Buddies. But under Miller-Milkis, we got Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley and Mork Mindy. And under the Miller-Boyett production label we got Family Matters, Full House (and Fuller House), Perfect Strangers and Step By Step. Surely you've seen one or more of those. (Of course they also gave us Joanie Loves Chachi , but don't hold that against them.) 

This time around, the story was not quite the boffo event that the play had been.  It only made about double it's budget back in ticket sales. Impressive, maybe, but that's only $69 million against a $35 million budget. Musicals, by the early 80's, had become passe', so it's not entirely surprising. I went to see it in it's original theatrical release (mainly for the story; even then I wasn't big on musicals.) But there was also another reason...

Dolly at 36

 

(Hey, what were you expecting from a 20 year old [at the time] male?) 

The movie did garner some notice in the awards community.  Charles Durning as the Governor got a nod for Best Supporting Actor at the Oscars.  And the Golden Globes committee gave noms for the picture and Dolly for Best Picture and Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical. 

 

No. I'm serious... 36...

It was rated R, of course.  I mean, what were you expecting in a movie about a whorehouse? Eight course dinners? But there are no overtly explicit scenes in it.  Of course, late in the movie there is a raid on the place and many in attendance are caught in flagrante delicto. But it's pretty tame for the most part.  Of course, you wouldn't want to watch it with the young 'uns in the room, but if I have to warn you of that, you didn't read the title of the movie...

So, was it a good film?  Read on.

The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982):

Note on the pictures: If the caption has "" on it, the caption is the title of the song being sung in the scene.

The film opens with a shocker.  Deputy Fred looks through an old -fashioned stereoscope and then turns and breaks down the fourth wall and addresses you, the viewer:

 

It was the nicest little whorehouse you ever saw

And if you can get past Gomer Pyle touting a house of ill repute, you 're halfway home...

The background is told about the original madam and the original sheriff, both of whom moved the base of operations from the back of the town feed store to a place on the outskirts of town.  And through two world wars, and thick and thin, the place managed to survive.  With sometimes other ways of paying the piper when money was tight. Which included trading chickens for services (thus explaining how the place became know as "The Chicken Ranch"... cute, huh?)

"20 Fans"

The action moves to present day (1973), where the whole plot takes place.  The original madam has passed away, leaving the house and it's environs to Miss Mona (Dolly Parton) who runs the house, with the blessing of the town sheriff, Ed Earl Dodd (Burt Reynolds), where everything is under control by Mona, keeping the place on the up-and-up (more or less).

"Little Bitty Pissant Country Place"

Mona and Ed have a romantic relationship outside of the professional relationship, even though Ed sometimes gets on Mona's nerves, due to his unwillingness to actually be romantic about it. And at this point we get Dolly and Burt (Burt sings???) singing about their relationship.

"Sneakin' Around"

The get together is interrupted by Deputy Fred who tells Ed earl that the mayor is looking for him. Business before pleasure... Trouble is brewing.  The mayor (Raleigh Bond) and town bigwig C. J. (Barry Corbin) inform Ed that a Houston news personality, Melvin P. Thorpe, who has an expose' program called The Watchdog Report, is planning an expose' on the Chicken Ranch.  Not exactly the kind of publicity that the town wants. (although it's intimated in the beginning that the existence of the place is already a known quantity, so you'd think it wasn't that big a deal).

But Ed decides to take matters in his own hands and goes to Houston to take care of the "little peckerwood". Melvin (Dom DeLuise) is not a man to shy away from controversy, especially if it means ratings.  Despite Ed's polite democratic chat, Melvin goes on the air anyway.

"Texas Has a Whorehouse in It!"

And that ain't the worst of it.  Melvin takes his show on the road and sets up a live broadcast in front of the county courthouse.  But he may have bit off more than he can chew as Ed runs his oversized butt out of town, with a few choice words to go with him.  But then again, maybe Ed misjudged the power of an egotistical self-righteous publicity hunter like Melvin P. Thorpe.

Ed and Mona go out camping and (Product placement warning) drink Schlitz beer.  Now, why, in God's name, are they not drinking Lone Star?  It is Texas, after all... oh, well...  Anyway, that night Melvin runs the video of Ed chewing him out. Shoulda been a little more discreet, there, Ed.

The city leaders convince Ed to have Mona shut down the place for a couple of months until the storm blows over and Mona agrees.  But she forgot about the annual celebration.  See, after every year's Texas / Texas A&M football game the seniors of the winning team get treated to a party at the Chicken Ranch.  And we can't be breaking tradition, what would we be if we broke tradition...? Savages, that's what!

So she goes back on her promise, but it's only going to be for the football celebration, so things should go all right if she waits until tomorrow. And with A&M the victors, the team is highly anticipating their celebration.

"The Aggies Song"

(Just a side note: it's supposed to be a winning present but it's also supposed to be only the seniors. If that's the case, then when this class graduates, A&M may have trouble next year... Because it looks like the whole team is in attendance.)

And, of course, as luck would have it, the Watchdog crew goes through town on it's way out to the Ranch.  And Fred gives Ed the bad news.  Miss Mona is not closed down entirely. Melvin and his crew arrive and take pictures which includes one of the district's Senator (Robert Mandan). Ed arrives just a little too late to put out the fire before it starts. Mona and Ed have some harsh words, and he leaves. 

He leaves town to go to Austin to discuss the situation with the governor. And finally, an hour and 20 minutes into the movie we finally get to see The Governor (Charles Durning).  

"The Sidestep"

Why do I say finally?  Because Durning was nominated for Best Supporting Actor at that year's Oscars.  While admittedly there have been nominees with less screen time in a film (his on screen time only amounts to about 10 minutes, 6 of which is his song and dance number...), I would hazard a guess that it was the latest in a movie for one of those who garnered that nomination to make their appearance.  (And, BTW,  I'm not going to speculate on who SHOULD have won. Louis Gossett, Jr actually took the award for An Officer and a Gentleman, but also in the running were Robert Preston for Victor/Victoria, John Lithgow for The World According to Garp and James Mason for The Verdict. Based on those, I'm guessing that Durning was possibly lucky if he came in fourth in the voting.)

Ed tries to get the Governor to use his power to keep the place open, but being a politician, he refuses to do anything before knowing which way the wind blows. Once he gets the results of a poll that has a majority in favor of closing it, however, he tells Ed he has to shut it down.

Ed calls to break the bad news to Mona, who has to break the news to her girls.  And she finds out about Ed's trip to Austin to try to get the Governor's help in keeping it open.

"Hard Candy Christmas"

The ending of the movie has Ed showing up and repairing the damage as best he can.  He tells Mona he wants to marry her.  Mona, for her part, tells Ed he would be better off, since he has a future in politics, to do without being married to a former prostitute.

"I Will Always Love You"

But Ed is nothing if not determined. He takes Mona's stuff off the truck she had packed to leave town and throws it in his own truck.  And they drive off into the sunset.

So it occurs to me that this movie quite possibly could be rated as a "romantic comedy". If so, it is one more in a very relative few in that genre that I like.

If you made it this far into the review, and haven't decided it offends your sensibilities, I'm going to leave you with a final few tidbits of trivia. All courtesy of IMDb, so take them as you will, depending on your trust in the authenticity of the site:

First, the part of Ed Earl went to Burt, but there were several others who had been considered for the part including Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson and Gene Hackman.  Miss Mona had her own list of candidates, including Crystal Gayle and Barbara Mandrell. And by the way, does anybody else besides me think Lois (Dulcie Mae) Nettleton looks a lot like Mandrell? I actually though she was until I watched the credits...

And also, in the role of The Governor, Mickey Rooney was considered.  It was Burt himself who suggested that Charles Durning be given a shot at the role.

At the end of the movie Burt picks up Dolly and carries her to his truck.  He supposedly suffered a double hernia as a result.

Despite the prurient subject matter, this movie is a fun movie to watch. 

Really... 36!!!

Well, folks, time to get the old Plymouth on down the road.  I'm going straight home.  Really.  I am NOT going to route a detour through some little pissant country place.  Honest!

Quiggy

Hot in the City

 

 

 

 

 

In the 70's Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds were at the top of their game as far as box office draw and popularity.

Clint Eastwood from 1970 to 1980 made Dirty Harry Callahan a household name with Dirty Harry and The Enforcer, as well as one of his classic (in my opinion) westerns, The Outlaw Josey Wales and even his first stab behind the camera (directing himself) in Play Misty For Me.

Burt Reynolds, although not making as big an impact on the critics, was still a big box office draw.  Smokey and the Bandit and the original The Longest Yard made their debut during this period.  He also made one of his most memorable dramatic roles as the lead in Deliverance.

Surely someone in that time period thought "Wouldn't it be great if we could get Eastwood and Reynolds together in a movie?  Well, it took until 1984 for that to happen.  I'm sure the bigwigs in the back room were counting the millions up in their heads that this match-up would surely draw. And on paper, just for the star power, it probably seemed like a sure bet.

The thing is City Heat comes off like a parody, even though I don't think it was meant to be a parody.  Of course, Richard Benjamin, the director, made most of his career as an actor as a comedy actor and his only movie directing output up to that point had been comedies (Where's Poppa?, Racing with the Moon and My Favorite Year).  And the script was written by Blake Edwards who had his finger in the pie in a number of great comedies (The Peter Sellers run of The Pink Panther, S.O.B., The Great Race).  So maybe it was supposed to be a parody after all.

The movie was universally panned at it's premiere. Roger Ebert's comment illustrates the problem that critics had when he wrote "almost every scene in the movie seems to have been a separate inspiration, thrown in with no thought for the movie as a whole. "

My personal opinion is that it is a pretty entertaining movie, even though you can get lost in all the double crosses that is at the center of the movie.  The movie generally appears on lists of the worst movies of all time, probably because of that incoherency. Steve Miller in his book 150 Movies You Should Die Before You See says that we have here is "a convoluted story, flashes of absurdist humor that are out of place, and every actor but Burt Reynolds is underused."

So why should you watch?  Well, because it is Burt and Clint, obviously, even if they don't seem to connect as a pair like you might expect.  It is all you're ever going to get, though, as they never paired together again and Reynolds has gone on to film movies in that great movie studio in the sky.

City Heat (1984):

The film starts off pretty well.  Lt. Speer (Clint Eastwood goes to a diner to get a cup of coffee.  Two thugs show up looking for Mike Murphy (Burt Reynolds), who shows up a few moments later (driving a beat up roadster with no top, in the rain, forcing him to drive while holding an umbrella, one of the funnier parts of the movie.)

 

 

 

Murphy gets into a fight with the two thugs while Speer calmly drinks his coffee, watching as Murphy gets his ass kicked.  That is until one of the hoodlums jostles Speer and makes him spill his coffee.  He then joins the fight.  At this point we discover that Speer and Murphy were once compadres but they don;t like each other much now.  It seems Murphy was once a fellow police officer before he left the force to form a private detective business.

Murphy has a partnership with Diehl Swift (Richard Roundtree) .  Diehl is out on his own, running a scam to make a buttload of money.  Apparently he has come into possession of some ledger books for a crime boss named Coll (Tony Lo Bianco).  He has a deal with a rival gangster Primo Pitt (Rip Torn) to turn over these ledgers for $25,000.

 

 

 

But Diehl is trying to play both ends off each other and tries to make a deal with Coll to give him his ledgers back for $50,000. (What rival gangster Pitt wants with Coll's ledgers is a mystery.  Also why gangsters keep ledgers of their illegal activities is a bit confusing to me.  It was one of the things that brought Al Capone down in The Untouchables but I never really understood it then either.)

Anyway, Pitt gets wind of the double cross and ends up killing Diehl in front of Diehl's girlfriend, Ginny Lee (Irene Cara).  So now Ginny Lee becomes a key in the story.  And Ginny Lee is no idiot.  She's hiding out and no one knows where she is.

 

 

 

So while Speer is seeking Ginny Lee as a witness and Murphy is looking for the ledgers and both Pitt and Coll and their respective henchmen are trying to get their hands on these ledgers we get treated to a couple of (somewhat) humorous encounters.  Twice more Murphy finds himself in a dire situation as the various gangsters zero in on their prey, and Speer, who just happens to be in the neighborhood, sits idly by.  The running gag is Speer is willing to let the hoods have their way until they intrude on his own private space.

One in particular I find hilarious is both gangs end up in a shootout at Murphy's apartment.  Speer sits in his car watching the proceedings until a stray bullet hits his car window.  An angry Speer then grabs a shotgun and proceeds to mow down the hoods while Murphy is trying desperately to hide from the onslaught.

Since a trope of these kinds of movies involves a love interest being put into a dangerous situation, you have Murphy's girlfriend, Caroline (Madeline Kahn) kidnapped by Pitt and held hostage for the goods.  And Murphy's secretary, Addy (Jane Alexander), a would-be girlfriend of Speer, kidnapped and held hostage by Coll.

 

 

 

 The movie is pretty fun, in my opinion, despite whatever flaws the critics might have found in it.  Is it Oscar worthy?  Hardly.  But then, if you have seen most of my posts over the years, you know that Oscar material is hardly a criteria for what I like.

Drive safely, folks.

Quiggy

 

A Yard in the Yard

This is my entry in the 1st and 10 Blogathon hosted by hosted by Dubsism and Me

Football.  My favorite sport.  And a contender for America's favorite sport.  Yes baseball is considered "America's Pastime" and maybe rightly so, but you don't see kids playing baseball in the middle of November.

In Texas football is almost a religion.  I remember some time ago there was an attempt to change the high school traditional Friday night football games to Saturday.  You would have thought they were trying to make churches change from worshiping God to worshiping Allah.  For the most part football remained the same through that todo. 

I could watch football all day long (and sometimes do).  So the uncultured female at the beginning of this movie thinks "only a moron can sit and watch two football games, one after the other" and football fanatics like myself can't help but feel a little vindicated when Crewe shoves her on her hoity-toity ass.

But, as much as this movie is about football, it's also about a guy who refuses to bend over when the man tells him to.  And Burt Reynolds is probably the only man who can pull that off with panache.  (Forget Adam Sandler and his punk-ass remake of this film.  Sandler couldn't shine Burt Reynolds' shoes...)

The Longest Yard (1974):

Paul Crewe (Burt Reynolds) is a renegade.  And a rebel.  And a misogynist.  He does what he wants, when he wants and to hell with what anyone else has to say about it.  But it gets him into trouble when he takes his girlfriend's car for a joyride after shoving her into a wall.  Which gets him arrested and sent to prison.

Warden Hazen (Eddie Albert) pulled every string in the book to get Crewe sentenced to his prison.  Because Crewe was a former NFL star and Hazen thinks Crewe could be an asset in getting his amateur prison guard team into shape.

Unfortunately, Chief Guard Capt. Knauer (Ed Lauter) doesn't want Crewe's help and uses force to convince Crewe to decline Hazen's offer.  Which leads to a battle of wills.  Hazen gives Crewe every crappy work detail he can think of to convince Crewe to change his mind.

Eventually they come to terms.  Crewe doesn't take the job of coaching the prison guards.  Instead he offers the warden an opportunity for a warm-up game.  Crewe will enlist a group of prisoners to form a team.  But Crewe is up against something else on that respect.  You see, as an NFL player he was involved in a gambling scheme in which he shaved points of off games to help win big bucks for the gamblers.

Caretaker (James Hampton): "All I'm saying is that you could have robbed banks, sold dope or stole your grandmother's pension check and none of us would have minded.  But shaving points off a football game?  Man, that's un-American."

Crewe does manage to get a few recruits by using the promise that they could kick the crap out of the guards and exact some semblance of revenge for past indiscretions put on them by the guards.  But his team is not all that good, mainly because the black prisoners refuse to play with him.  All except one.  Granville (Harry Caesar) joins the team, despite the fact that his fellow black inmates accuse of him of being a sort of "Uncle Tom".

Eventually, however, Granville helps to recruit the others after the way he is treated by the racist members of the guards.  So Crewe has a team that can play.  And they are pretty good.  So good in fact that Hazen tries to convince Crewe to throw the game.  Initially Crewe agrees because the warden has promised that after a sufficient lead he will have his guards relax on their brutish play.  But Hazen has no intention of keeping his promise.

So Crewe is forced to show up Hazen and his guards.  Leading to a final 15 minutes of some great football play. 

A whole slew of then current and former NFL players appear on both sides of the field in this movie.  If you were a football fan in the late 60's and early 70's you will probably recognize quite a few of them:  Ray Ogden, Ernie Wheelwright, Pervis Atkins, Joe Kapp, Mike Henry, Joe Nicholson and of course the great Ray Nitschke, one of the players instrumental in helping the Green Bay Packers win the first two Super Bowls.

The Longest Yard was remade in the 2000's with Adam Sandler in the Burt Reynolds role. Don't make the mistake of confusing the two.  The Reynolds movie is the real deal.  Burt actually played football in college.  Sandler probably couldn't even have made the team as the waterboy.

Time to fire up the old Plymouth and head home.  Drive safely, folks.

Quiggy

 

Shakespeare as Television Writer

This is my entry in the We Love Shakespeare Week hosted by Hamlette's Soliloquy.

William Shakespeare was one of the most prolific writers of the late 16th / early 17th century. (Or, if you are a conspiracy theorist, the unwitting stooge of Sir Francis Bacon.  Personally, I believe he wrote the plays credited to his name, however).  Over a span of just 25 years or so, he wrote 39 plays, as well as a slew of sonnets and poems.  (The guy must have suffered from insomnia...)

Shakespeare has made his way into the cultural zeitgeist of Elizabethan history.  Ask most people to name the most important person to have lived in that time period, and like as not, you'll get "William Shakespeare" in at least the top 5, if not the most commonly named persona.  He has had so many biographies written about him it is impossible for me to count.  (The best one I've read, by the way, is Bill Bryson's Shakespeare: The World as Stage, which, if not necessarily comprehensive, at a mere 200 pages, certainly won't tax your time and Bryson is definitely not boring.)

Shakespeare's plays have not only been performed on stage and in film, but there are several "modern" setting movies which use the theme from a play to tell a tale.  Akira Kurosawa, the legendary Japanese director, adapted at least two of the Bard's plays, moving the setting to feudal Japan;  Throne of Blood is a retelling of "Macbeth", and Ran was based on "King Lear".  In other realms, the classic science-fiction film Forbidden Planet derives much of its theme from the Shakesperean play "The Tempest". And most people know that West Side Story was basically a re-telling of "Romeo and Juliet". (And that's not all, just the ones I've seen...)

Shakespeare himself has also made his way into film media.  Best Picture Oscar winner Shakespeare in Love, featured Joseph Fiennes as the Bard.  A BBC television sitcom, Upstart Crow, features Shakespeare and his trials and tribulations as an aspiring writer.  And then there's the classic American TV show, The Twilight Zone, which during it's fourth season aired one of it's rare comedic outings with an episode called, appropriately enough, "The Bard"

Twlight Zone "The Bard"  (first aired May 23, 1963):

Meet Julius Moomer (Jack Weston).

Julius is a former streetcar conductor who desperately wants to be a television writer.  Except Moomer hasn't got the writing chops to pull it off.  (Given some of the more recent output on TV these days, maybe he was just born in the wrong century...)  Rod Serling in his opening monolgue to the show states that "if talent came at twenty-five cents a pound, [Moomer] would be worth less than car fare".  Anyway, Moomer tries and tries, and his agent, Gerald Hugo (Henry Lascoe) does his best to convince Moomer he ought to try some other outlet.  But Moomer isn't listening.

Fortunately for Moomer, Hugo has the patience of a saint, and agrees to take Moomer's script for an upcoming series on black magic.  But Moomer knows absolutely nothing about black magic.  So he goes to a bookstore where a ditzy baseball nut owner ends up giving him the only book on the subject she has in her shop.  The book, it turns out, is full of black magic spells.

Bumbling as he is (he substitutes feathers of a pigeon for the called for feathers of a falcon, sand from the local beach for sand from Egypt and the legs of an ant for the legs of a spider), Moomer is able to call up the flesh and blood body of William Shakespeare (John Williams ), complete with Hollywood's version of period attire..

Moomer has big dreams almost immediately.  Instead of getting Shakespeare to write the pilot for the black magic series, he instead gets him to write a full-fledged original teleplay.  Which of course becomes a potential television movie, because, after all, it wasn't Moomer's writing, it was Shakespeare's.  But Shakespeare becomes exasperated with Moomer who is taking all the credit for what was Shakespeare's original work.

Shakespeare decides he will go to the studio to see just how the rehearsal is progressing.  And he his shocked, to say the least.  Firstly, Rocky Rhodes (Burt Reynolds, who seems to be channeling Marlon Brando; and doing an excellent job of it, I might add) is not the young boy of 18 that Shakespeare had envisioned.

Neither is the "young"  girl who was to be his love interest.  And whole parts of the play have been subjected wholesale changes.  Not being used to such things, Shakespeare goes into a rant and storms off.  But not before giving Rocky a sock in the chops.

Of course, the play doesn't go off as planned.  but Moomer is not discouraged.  Wait until you see his next inspiration.

Drive home,safely, folks.

Quiggy