Ask 411 Movies for 08.30.09: The Column that Drives a Big Red Car

Posted by Leonard Hayhurst on 08.31.2009

Without a Paddle, the Pursuit of D.B. Cooper, the Wiggles, Broadway to Hollywood, Brain Donors and some sequels and remakes you’ll never see


It's the end of August and our last celebrity "Sesame Street" sing-a-long. Tully convinces Ben Stiller to warble the old "People in Your Neighborhood" song. Notice that they meet the cable guy and a mail carrier with something for Mary.



From the Wal-Mart dump bin I snagged this week Predator 2, Lethal Weapon 2, Commando, Jaws and The Man From Snowy River. I'm a dude, I like dude movies.

Q: How about Without a Paddle as underrated?
-The Great Capt. Smooth



A: Nope, it sucks about as much as people say. From 2004, three friends (Matthew Lillard, Seth Green and Dax Shepherd) reunite after the death of their buddy Billy (Antony Starr). Billy was obsessed with finding the missing $200,000 stolen by D.B. Cooper and had done plenty of research into finding it. As tribute to Billy, the other three take a canoeing trip in Oregon to find the money and wackiness ensues.

While we're here, let's go over the case of D.B. Cooper, which I find more interesting than the movie. On Nov. 24, 1971, a man who would become known as D.B. Cooper was a passenger on Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305. The plane was flying between Portland, Ore. and Seattle, Wash. Cooper slipped a note to a stewardess saying that he had a bomb and he would blow up the plane if he was not given $200,000 and four parachutes when the plane arrived in Seattle. The stewardess gave this information to the cockpit, who relayed it to Seattle. Northwest officials along with local police and the FBI were contacted.

The money and parachutes were delivered and Cooper allowed the plane to land and he released the passengers and some of the flight crew. He had the remaining flight crew take to the skies and head for Mexico. While in the air, Cooper parachuted with the money attached to him from the aft of the plane. The plane landed later in Reno with Cooper believed to have jumped out around the southern Washington area. The money, Cooper, two of the parachutes and the briefcase with the bomb were all gone.

Cooper was never found, although a child on the banks of the Columbia River found $5,800 from his haul in 1980. In 1978, a man hiking around Cooper's believed drop zone found a placard with instructions on how to lower the aft stairs of a 727 airplane. A movie The Pursuit of D.B. Cooper was made in 1981 starring Treat Williams in the title role and Robert Duvall as an insurance investigator trailing him.



Q: Hi Leonard!

As always, great column. My question this week is one that you may not have an answer to, but you would be the closest one to find out. My two-year-old son loves the Wiggles. We have some VHS and DVD shows that he watches constantly. However, I really know nothing about them, other than they are four guys from Australia, and the yellow-shirted guy was replaced a few years ago by an even dorkier looking guy. Any interesting stories or funny anecdotes or useless trivia about this group?

Thanks,
-Gozzz

A: I have three nieces ages seven, five and three; so I know about the Wiggles. Saw them live in concert once. For Play Your Guitar with Murray, he warmed up with "Freebird" and the older parents and grandparents in the audience went totally apeshit.

The current Wiggles are Murray Cook, 49, Jeff Fatt, 56, Anthony Field, 46, and Sam Moran, 31. Greg Page, 37, who Sam replaced, left the group in 2006 due to orthostatic intolerance made worse by a double hernia operation he had in late 2005. The disease can lead to chronic fatigue and poor balance along with other ailments. Page is a huge Elvis fan and even recorded an album with Elvis's former backup band. Page's collection of Elvis memorabilia is estimated to be about $1.5 million. The Wiggles equivalent to Pete Best is Phillip Wilcher. Wilcher left the group after their first album debuted. He says he was kicked out, they say he resigned.

As for Moran, he started out as the host of the Dorothy the Dinosaur Show, a traveling production that hit smaller venues than what the Wiggles were playing. He appeared as a few minor characters in the Wiggles TV show and videos before becoming Page's understudy in 2002. Moran is married to dancer Lyn Stuckey, who was a Wiggles dancer and Dorothy the Dinosaur.

The Wiggles formed in 1991 when the primary members met while studying early childhood education at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. They recorded an album and did some shows as a class project and kind of exploded from there. They have earned total 17 gold, 12 platinum, 3 double platinum and 10 multi-platinum albums for worldwide sales of 17 million DVDs and four million CDs.

Field and Fatt met as members of the pop group the Cockroaches, which also included Field's brothers Paul and John. The group disbanded when Paul's daughter died of SIDS. The first Wiggles album is dedicated in her memory. Field united with Wilcher, Cook and Page for the aforementioned class project and asked his old band mate Fatt to join them because they needed a keyboardist.

Among supporting characters are Henry the Octopus, voiced by Fatt, Wags the Dog, Dorothy the Dinosaur and Captain Feathersword. He has been played by Paul Paddick since 1993. Originally Field played the character, but he asked Paddick to fill in for him as Feathersword and the Blue Wiggle in 1993 while he was recovering from a hernia operation. Paddick is also married to a former Wiggles dancer, Charmaine Martin.

As for the others, Cook has a collection of over 30 classic guitars and was named the sixth best guitarist in Australia in a 2008 pole. Makes you wonder who the top five were. Fatt is of Chinese dissent. He enjoys surfing and photography. Field married Michaela Patisteas in 2003 and they have three kids. He has several tattoos including the names of his wife and children, the Virgin Mary and a heart. He likes to breed miniature fox terriers, but then again who doesn't.

Witness the Wiggles doing a cover of "You Make Me Feel Like Dancing" with Leo Sayer (not Richard Simmons). This is my proof that God doesn't exist.



Q: Hey Leonard,

Have you mentioned Brain Donors as an underrated comedy before? My brother and I quote that movie all of the time!

John Turturro- "And that spells cash with a capital..."
Bob Nelson- "K!"
JT- "You should go back to school"
BN- "I hated teaching!"
-Gozzz

A: 1992's Brain Donors is a comedy from director Dennis Dugan of Problem Child and Happy Gilmore. Dugan started out as an actor and is probably best remembered as Richie Brockelman from "The Rockford Files." And if that's the best remembered role you have as an actor it's a good idea to get into directing. Dugan is a self confessed lover of old comedy teams like The Three Stooges, The Marx Brothers and Abbott and Costello and that really comes out in this film. John Turturro is a lawyer who teams up with a cab driver (Mel Smith) and a handyman (Bob Nelson) to start a ballet company based on the stipulations of an eccentric millionaire's will. They get opposition from the man's widow (Nancy Marchand) and her lawyer (John Savident). It's another movie that is entertaining on a level, but very derivative of material that has come before it. Although slapstick comedy is slapstick comedy, you don't need to raise a fuss about it being unoriginal.



Q: Here's a question that you may have answered already, but it's one that really irks me...

Why do certain seasons of TV shows get the .5 treatment, cutting the releases of said season into two sets. For example, I am just now working my way through the new Battlestar Galactica. Seasons 2 and 4 both were released in two sets. Is this merely a move to make more money or is there another reason behind this?

And, if you need an underrated comedy, look no further than The Wrong Guys. Classic, but you don't hear that much about it.
-Mario

A: We've already covered The Wrong Guy as an underrated comedy. That's how long we've been on this damn subject, people can't remember what we've already done.

Why some shows have their seasons divided into two sets could be for a variety of different reasons. One, could be a money grab as you said. Two, could be a high number of episodes and/or extras that releasing it all together would be too expensive for what its believed the market would bare. Three, could be some rights issues that still need to be cleared up with various episodes. Four, could be that they put the first half of the season into DVD production while the second half was still being worked on in order to get the DVDs out quickly to maximize profit. Sometimes shows are still shooting while new episodes are airing.

Q: Obviously you didn't have enough questions to answer - so let's throw out a few random movie sequel ideas and tell me which do you think would have legs.

1. Smoochy Goes to War. A network executive wants to place his son into Smoochy's place, so he sends Smoochy to some random location in Afghanistan to bring joy to the children there. Of course the place ends up being a hidden terrorist's camp and they take him prisoner. He ends up escaping and somehow turns the kids of Afghanistan against the terrorists.

2. A cartoon parody of Shawshank using criminals or figures from recent history. OJ as Red, Bernie Madoff as Brooks and Perez Hilton as Boggs. Can't think of someone for Andy though.

3. My Favorite Year with a Reality TV show as the setting.
-Bobby C

A: I don't think there will ever be a sequel to Death to Smoochy, but your idea certainly fits the social commentary and dark humor that the original was aiming at, but didn't quite hit. There's also some Wag the Dog in the there. I have this image of Smoochy carrying a flag with like a thousand screaming children behind him charging a tank and the tank driver just shits himself, literally, because it's so damn weird.

If VH-1's "Acceptable TV" was still on the air or MTV's "Liquid Television" or just some random animated shorts series I could see such a parody as an animated Shawshank Redemption, but it might be a bit too obtuse for most to get their minds around. For Andy, how about Jack Abramoff?

I really, really like your third idea. Hell, we could even get Peter O'Toole still. Have him play basically himself, like in the original version just a different character, in a "Surreal Life" type situation. So you have this classic, older than dirt British actor hanging out with like a dirt bike racer, a Playboy model, some reality show whore, a former boy band singer; just basic quasi-celebrity stereotypes young enough to be his grandkids. Let's make Mark-Linn Baker the producer of the show.

Q: So your a thespian? OK - here's a few questions on the subject of theater and movies.

In your opinion, what were the best movies (non-musical) that were originally plays. Maybe we should limit this to 1970 and later because you could include so many (Streetcar Named Desire, Twelve Angry Men were the first two to come to mind).

Conversely - what plays would work as movies that haven't been done? For this - maybe we can include musicals and include plays written in any era (this one may be tougher).

Finally - what were the worst movies that were originally well-received plays?
-Bobby C

A: Thespian is way too strong a term for what I did. I said my lines and didn't bump into the furniture.

Amadeus and Driving Miss Daisy are two Oscar best picture winners since 1970 that aren't musicals. From this past year you had Frost/Nixon, which was nominated for best picture. On Golden Pond won best adapted screenplay and it was originally a play. For me, the best plays turned into movies are ones that are able to shake the conventions and limitations of the stage and are able to embrace the greater visual storytelling capacity that film allows. Amadeus was heavily rewritten from the stage version, so I'll go with that as my pick for best.

For musicals not turned into films yet I would say Jekyll and Hyde, which I saw a traveling road show of several years ago and enjoyed. Think Sweeney Todd and it could work. Wicked I think could work too, because you have that built in Wizard of Oz fan demographic. It's a known commodity, Hollywood loves that.

The theater I was just working at for Christmas will be doing "The Trial of Ebenezer Scrooge." It's set a year after A Christmas Carol and Scrooge has returned to his old ways and is suing the ghosts for harassing him the year before. It's supposed to be very funny. Again, it's based on a known commodity and with all the of the different versions of the original out there, including the new one with Jim Carrey coming out later this year, it would be cool to get a different take. Not a whole lot else comes to mind really. Let's just look at some successful plays that have not been turned into movies: "Cats," "Miss Saigon," "Avenue Q," "Pippin" and that's when I started feeling gay and stopped looking.

For me the worst movie that was a successful play would be Butterflies are Free. As I mentioned above, I like plays turned into movies that don't feel like plays and this feels and looks just like a filmed version of the stage play. It's looks and sounds very stodgy and stagy. Eileen Hackert and Paul Michael Glaser are in the movie from the original play cast, Keir Dullea and Blythe Danner are replaced by Goldie Hawn and Edward Albert. The story is based loosely on the life of lawyer Harold Krents. A blind man falls for his hippie neighbor, but his overprotective and overbearing mother disapproves.



For musicals, I would probably go with The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. It's a musical staffed with people who can't sing like Burt Reynolds, Dom DeLuise and Charles Durning and the one guy that actually has a great voice in Jim Nabors doesn't get to sing at all. Of course, Dolly Parton is a great singer and not a bad actress and has the perfect look and star text to play a smart and sassy Texas madam. It's based on the real Chicken Ranch brothel that operated in Texas for years. In the play and movie, Miss Mona has inherited the ranch from the previous owner and keeps the wolves away by having an affair with the local sheriff. A local watchdog activist gets wind of the set up and decides to make it part of his show with political ramifications following. The play was a satirical send up of politics and sexual morals, but the movie is just dim and dumb while going for lowball humor.



Don't die.

"Know dogs? Sure, I used to be a chef in a Korean restaurant."