Ask 411 Movies 08.09.10: The Column that Knows When to Hold ‘Em and When to Fold ‘Em

Posted by Leonard Hayhurst on 08.09.2010

Kenny Rogers, No Holds Barred, Transylmania, Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor movies, Andy Kaufman, “Sherlock,” They Live, Strange Invaders, mind-altering movies and Hanson, who are also mind-altering


August from YouTube will be music videos that parody movies. This week, Hanson spoofs the Blues Brothers for "Thinking ‘Bout Somethin'" with a special guest appearance by Weird Al Yankovich as Murph. I actually really dig the song.



NETFLIX MOVIE OF THE WEEK: TRANSYLMANIA

A group of college kids spend a semester abroad in Romania where they are beset by vampires, mad doctor midgets and hunchback hot girls. Playing like a weird version of "Three's Company," the whole movie is based on misunderstandings and mistaken identities. You have a set of twins, one of the guys who looks like a vampire king and another girls is possessed by the soul of a witch; so that gives you three sets of crazy mix up possibilities. You get some boobs, but it's not as over the top as it should be on sex and gore to get over with the college crowd it's aiming for. I did enjoy the opening credit song "One Way Ticket to Hell and Back"



I took my mother recently to see Kenny Rogers at an outdoor amphitheater. There were about 5,000 people there and we were in line for about 45 minutes just to park. He did about 80 minutes and was in pretty good voice. Pretty decent face too from his plastic surgery debacle. He was funny and talked a lot in between songs. He did most of the hits. I was disappointed he didn't sing "Just Dropped In," but I didn't think he would anyway.



Q: Hey there! You talking bout Richard Pryor last week and I hope you help me with the other Pryor/Wilder movie. It was out round the late 80s early 90s.It was not well received I think but I honestly can not remember.

Also whets your opinion on Andy Kaufman and his style of stand up? I can see where there is a fanbase for him and I do like him, but I watch of some of his stuff and think its not really that funny. What you think?

The Hulk Hogan movie No Holds Barred,how well did that do? Was it considered a finanical success? Plus what would be Hulk Hogan's most successful flim ,if it was not No Hold Barred.

Thanks, keep up the good work
-Conor

A: Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor made four movies together. Pryor was also a co-writer on Blazing Saddles and was originally going to star as Bart, but Warner Brothers balked at Pryor and wanted director Mel Brooks to use Cleavon Little who they had under contract. Wilder as a favor to Brooks came on to replace Gig Young as the Waco Kid at the last minute as Young showed up the first day of shooting drunk and not having read the script. Brooks at one point asked John Wayne to star as the Waco Kid, but his people said no.

Silver Streak (1976): Wilder stars as a book publisher who meets up with Jill Clayburgh on a train. He sees a man killed and thrown off the train, but no one believes him. Wilder himself is tossed off the train a couple times and the last time he steals a cop car to find Pryor sleeping in the back. Pryor is a small time hood who helps Wilder save the girl and reveal the plans of bad guy Patrick McGoohan.



Stir Crazy (1980): Wilder and Pryor play two buddies who are mistaken for bank robbers and sent to a tough prison. They try to get by acting weird, but the warden (Barry Corbin) finds use for Wilder when he discovers his natural bronco busting ability. Directed by Sidney Poitier, believe it or not.



See No Evil, Hear No Evil (1989): Wilder is the deaf proprietor of a newsstand and hires the blind Pryor for extra help. Together they ‘witness,' more or less, a murder and the killers (Kevin Spacey and Joan Severance). Wilder went to the New York League for the Hard of Hearing to study for the role and met his future wife Karen Boyer.



Another You (1991): Wilder stars as a pathological liar fresh out of the loony bin placed in the care of conman Pryor. When Wilder is mistaken for a lost millionaire, Pryor gets him to play along so they can cash in.



Andy Kafuman was not so much a comedian as he was a performance artist. Kaufman wanted to entertain audiences, but at the same time wanted to challenge them not in just what was funny, but their perception of reality. Take for instance his famous foreign man bit. He runs through all of these terrible impressions and just when the audience thinks they get the joke he busts out a magnificent Elvis impression. I think what was his trouble was that audiences eventually caught on and it became harder and harder to fool them or challenge them. It became more about the gimmick than the entertainment. He got into things like Tony Clifton and the wrestling stuff and it all seemed more focused on him and just getting people's goats than anything else. Kaufman had a brilliant mind for thinking outside the box and even if you don't like him I think you should respect his willingness and tenacity to over and over again change and shape by sheer will what was funny and acceptable. If we learn anything from Kaufman, it's question everything.



No Holds Barred from 1989 starred Hulk Hogan as a thinly veiled version of himself named Rip. Brell (Kurt Fuller) wants Hogan to join his network and fledgling exclusive wrestling league, but Rip refuses. Brell sends a corporate spy (Joan Severance, a second reference in the same e-mail) to seduce Rip and finds his own champion in Zeus (Tiny Lister). The climax of the film is a no holds barred match between Zeus and Rip.

Hogan and Vince McMahon produced the film and didn't like the original script, so they held up in a hotel room for 72 hours and rewrote the movie. They didn't even have Red Bull back then. The movie grossed only a little over $16 million. Wikipedia states the budget was about $8 million and with marketing and everything factored in, WWE broke even. Rumors have it that if the film was successful Hogan vs. Zeus would have been the main event as Wrestlemania VI. Instead, WWE packaged the pay-per-view debut of the movie with a match in order to increase buy rates. The storyline was that Zeus was upset over losing to Hogan in the film and knew he could beat him in real life, considering that Zeus was a character played by non-wrestler Lister.



Hogan's most successful movie by far would be Rocky III. Of movies with him as star only a few scored theatrical releases. Suburban Commando earned $6.9 million, Mr. Nanny made $4.3 million, 3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain made just $375,000. Hogan also had cameos in Gremlins 2, Muppets from Space and Spy Hard.

Q: " A: I thought you had a more reasoned argument than the guy who called me an idiot. My question to you would be how many current 13-14 year olds know who Beavis and Butthead are? And if they do know who they are I bet they think the shows are lame. I'm not saying you couldn't do new shows and have new situations, but I don't think they can garner new teen fans or satisfy the old ones. They were very much of their time and place, as much as you could adapt them for the current times. "

- You're out of touch if you think that teenagers don't know or have never heard of beavis and butthead, most of them were young kids when do america came out, I'm pretty sure they also did one of those dvd collection sets aswell.
-offended17yearold

A: I would say any 17-year-old watching "Beavis and Butt-Head" is out of touch. Beavis and Butt-Head Do America came out in 1996. So, if you're 17 now, you were three when the movie came out, still crapping your pants and watching Barney. When the show debuted in 1993 you were just a twitch in you daddy's pants. The series has had several DVD releases and I even reviewed volume one of the Mike Judge collection here for 411. I think what probably hurts is the fact that the series has been rarely shown in syndication. Teens have more access to free TV than plucking down money for a DVD, but, of course, a lot of the stuff is available online. So, have some current teens heard of the show and like it, yeah, but not all. I'm a fan of the original show, but I still think a new take on it wouldn't really be successful.



Q: Love the Ask 411Movies!! Holy Crap!! Dude, that casting for a new Cannonball Run is pretty awesome. But who would you look to get to direct, write, & produce it?
-Galen H.

A: With all of those big names in the cast, you know guys like Clooney and Smith are going to want producing credits. Then if you bring in the "Saturday Night Live" people Loren Michaels gets a producing credit. Judd Apatow has his hands in everything. Original director Hal Needham would probably want to be involved, so you would have a laundry list of producers.

My pick for director would be Jay Chandrasekhar of Broken Lizard, because the only recent comedy car chase movie I can think of his Dukes of Hazzard adaptation. However, I think he's not a bad comedy director and is smart enough to just let everybody do their own thing and just try to hang it together as best he can. As for a script, you can bet it would be just a bunch of ad-libbing and I wouldn't be against just letting it be mostly improvisation with Jay doing a loose outline. Another idea, how about making it more of a mockumentary and letting Christopher Guest and his people do it.



Q: You should check out the new Sherlock Holmes that the BBC have now.You can go on the BBC website and watch it.
-Muta Mark

A: "Sherlock" is an updating of the Sherlock Holmes mythos to present day and is currently running on BBC as a three episode miniseries. Benedict Cumberbatch plays Holmes with Martin Freeman as Dr. Watson and Rupert Graves as Lestrade. The series was created by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, who got wind of a proposed Holmes update while there were working on "Dr. Who" and put their names into the hat for it. You can also find the episodes on YouTube.



Q: I am trying to figure out a movie from my childhood. I know this is very little to go on but:

A movie that was played often in the mid to late 80's on HBO. (To me it feels like it was on every other day for a year)

It had the same vibe as the original "V" series from 1983.

The aliens were disguised as people (as in V) but instead of being green reptiles they were brown and creepy.

The setting was a dusty small town, probably in the southwest.

That's all I have. I just know it creeped me out and HBO must have played it during the daytime hours when I would have watched at such a young age.

Thank you for any idea's you may have.
-Molly

A: Thanks to Clore 2 of the imdb I Need to Know boards for pegging your movie as Strange Invaders from 1983. Charlie (Paul LeMat) has his ex-wife disappear and he returns to the small town of her youth to look for her. However, nobody has heard of her or her family, the Newmans. Charlie eventually runs afoul of aliens and while the FBI doesn't believe him, the tabloids do. Also with Nancy Allen, Michael Lerner, Ken Tobey, June Lockhart, Wallace Shawn, Louise Fletcher, Charles Lane, Diana Scarwid and Fiona Lewis. It's available on DVD and can be bought from my friends at creepyclassics.com.



Q: @Molly:

sounds like "They Live" with "Rowdy" Roddy Piper and Keith David.

I would be down for the Cannonball Run remake. That is really a concept that works in every generation.

Never was a fan of Beavis and Butthead and thought they were gross and stupid even when i was younger. However seeing the nonsense that is on TV these days, they could do worse than put that back on.

Looking up "They Live" i saw an entry for a 2011 version. Any info on that?
-Mats from before

A: I don't think They Live quite fits Molly's description, but we'll see what she says.

A couple different websites reported in Dec. 2008 that Strike Entertainment was in talks to acquire the rights to They Live for a remake. Marc Abraham and Eric Newman were announced to produce, who previously had done Children of Men, Slither and Dawn of the Dead remake. No director, writer or cast was announced at that time and nothing new has been announced about the project sense. Tons of stuff get announced every year that never see the light of day, but get an imdb page anyway. My picks to star in a remake, Jason Statham and the Rock.



Q: What do you think are some of the best "mind-freak" movies? (Because Eraserhead is clearly one of the worst.)
-Guest 3838

A: Funny you should ask as mind altering movies was going to be the topic of the movies podcast before we went on hiatus with it. We were doing it in honor of Inception, which I haven't seen yet, but I'm interested to.

Head (1968): Thanks to the success of A Hard Day's Night, the Monkees were formed as an American version of the Beatles and given their own television show. By the time the show was canceled the boys were rebelling against their manufactured image and the control exerted on them by producers and handlers. Director Bob Rafelson hooked the quartet up with struggling writer and actor Jack Nicholson. They hammered out a script in a drug induced weekend by throwing ideas into a tape recorder that resulted in a trippy, surrealistic, heavily symbolic, self referential rejection of mainstream popular culture. Nicholson has claimed to have seen the movie 158 million times.



Dark City (1998): John Murdoch (Rufus Sewell) awakes in a bathtub in a seedy motel to find that he has no memory of who he is or what he's doing there. He receives a mysterious phone call from a Dr. Schreber (Kiefer Sutherland) telling him to get out of there fast. The dead hooker on the floor only convinces him further that something is seriously wrong, as a dead hooker is ought to do. Inspector Bumstead (William Hurt) takes over the case of a serial killer from the insane Walenski (Colin Friels) with John as his primary suspect. Meanwhile, John follows a trail of random clues to not only find out who he is, but who are the pasty faced, trench coat clad psychos following him. As the story unravels, we find out that a group of aliens known as The Strangers have abducted several humans (we can only assume from Earth as it is not directly stated) and built a city for them to live and interact in in order to learn what makes them tic. They take random memories and personalities, "mix them like paint" as Schreber says and "imprint" them on people. This basically overrides any previous memories or personality they had. The people are basically clean slates that get erased and redrawn on from time to time, nothing of their ‘real lives' still exist in them. Occasionally someone ‘wakes up' and realizes what's going on, like Walenski and now John who has also developed the same powers the Strangers have and must use them to take the group down.

It's very avant-garde and stylistic, owing a lot to German expressionism of the silent era and the more psychological 1940's film noirs. While many fans of the movie decry Sutherland's opening narration, I think it's key in setting up the film and keeping the viewer engrossed. If you don't know the overriding plot element of The Strangers from the start it can become too complicated and incomprehensible to stick with. I say this all the time about movies: it's not where you're going, it's how you get there. Dark City is very well put together and written. It's actually not hard to follow at all the way it's presented. Everything is revealed bit by bit, as the viewer needs to know it and flows logically given the world of the film. For a flick like this, that's all I ask for. The acting is superb with Sutherland and Hurt really getting into their characters and exploring them. Sewell is a pretty bland everyman, which works perfectly for the part and he comes across with more intelligence and drive than say Keanu Reeves in the similarly themed The Matrix.



Memento (2000): Leonard (Guy Pearce) suffers from short term memory loss after an incident that resulted in the death of his wife. He is now attempting to find the murderers, without knowing who to trust and is the least reliable of narrators for viewers to follow. The movie is viewed backwards in small intervals, about the same time increments that Leonard can remember. It's the best way for the viewer to relate what Leonard is going through and keeping them off kilter. When even the main character doesn't know who he is, how can we trust anything we see or believe through his eyes? It's an experiment in non-linear storytelling that rivals Pulp Fiction in that regard.



Waking Life (2001): I enjoyed Waking Life on a metaphysical plane. As a movie, it's not so entertaining or easy to watch, as a feat of mental gymnastics it is utterly fascinating and thought provoking. The key is that there is movement to the piece. It's just not random blabbering. As the film progresses we move from the main character being an observer to an active participant. We move from him dealing with the questions of existence to questions of the dream state as opposed to perceived reality to this notion that he is dead and exploring the infinity of his mind in that ten to twelve minutes of brain activity following death that is discussed in the film. There is also talk of how time is a moot concept and that the only moment is now and now is an infinity so there really is no twelve to ten minutes and the main character is in this infinite dream state that becomes his perceived reality as the self awareness of the dream state gives not only lucidity, but weight and conscious to that said state. To most of you I'm just talking in circles. To you philosophy majors sipping coffee at Starbucks and working at Waldenbooks I am making perfect sense, even though I don't really understand what I'm talking about myself. Visually, yes, it was stunning. It wasn't just rotoscoped, but reconceived with a certain energy and style. For instance, when the main character is talking to the man in front of the fish tank his body waves and flows as if being viewed through the fish tank. In the very beginning when the musicians are playing the animation of the room around them pulses to the beat. And just because this is a film about random connections, my mother used to work in a diner that had the pinball machine that the guy (played by director Linklater) is playing at the end of the film and I used to play it all the time.




Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004): Upon reflection it really wasn't a movie. It was a film exercise in the exploration of certain social and human behavioral themes. Chiefly, it's the good and bad that make a meaningful relationship. You can never fully forget someone you love. There is someone for everyone and you will always find that person. Director Michael Gondry does a good job of clearly relating these themes through the basic film structure and visuals. A procedure that would erase selected memories is ludicrous in and of itself and there are so many plot holes inherent in that. Many of which the film itself hits upon. I also felt that you didn't get a great feel for the characters of Joel and Clementine and their relationship to each other. You saw scant moments, little memories, and I think the concept was that the everyday little memories are the most important and they add up to a whole, but they didn't really for me. Clementine is a little more fleshed out than Joel, she seems like the type of girl I would wind up with and I don't know if that's a good thing or not. It's a very fascinating and entertaining film. It actually reminds me of an episode of the mid-eighties version of "The Twilight Zone" where a man sells off his memories and then wants them back. Oddly, Jim Carrey's Truman Show also always reminded me of another episode from the series.



Q: Hey Leonard.
I was just curious about the current whereabouts of some child actors that either made one movie or a few, before they dropped out of acting. Those that I have in mind are the little boy that played Barry in Close Encounters, Newt from Aliens, Gage in Pet Semetary, The kids from Jurassic Park, the girl from The Crow, plus any others that you may think of. Thanks.
-Ben Piper

A: Cary Guffey, 38 (Barry from Close Encounters of the Third Kind): Acted until the mid-eighties then led a pretty normal life. According to imdb, he's a financial planner for Merrill Lynch and coaches girls soccer in Birmingham, Ala. His wife is a newspaper reporter.

Carrie Henn, 34 (Newt in Aliens): According to imdb, she's a schoolteacher in Stanislaus, Calif., and is married with one child.

Miko Hughes, 24 (Gage in Pet Cemetery): According to imdb, he's living in Apple Valley, Calif, where he's a DJ at night and still pursues acting parts in the daytime. He's also an amateur beekeeper. He's now working on The City of Shoulders and Noses with Frankie Muniz, Sean Astin, Brad Dourif, Lou Ferrigno, Moira Kelly, Robert Carradine, John Saxon, Ruth Buzzi, Connie Stevens and Mick Foley. Wow, that sounds like they had a lump sum of cash for the cast and they wanted to see how many fairly name people they could get for that amount.

Joseph Mazzello, 26, (Tim in Jurassic Park): Is still a working actor and was last scene in "The Pacific" miniseries as Eugene Sledge. He'll also play Dustin Moskovitz in the upcoming The Social Network about the founding of Facebook.

Ariana Richards, 30, (Lex in Jurassic Park): She lives in Oregon and works as a painter. She recorded an album in 2008 and last acted in 2007 with a part in 77, according to imdb.

Rochelle Davis, 30 (Sarah in The Crow): I found a MySpace page for her and she lives in Philadelphia. A bunch of conflicting reports on the internet about how she's doing and how the death of Brand Lee affected her, so hard to say what's real or not here.

No one else immediately comes to mind, but if any readers are wondering about some old child stars, just ask.

Don't die.

"Yes I'm a short son of a bitch, my daddy was a short son of a bitch, my mother was shorter than him, and my brother, my brother was so short we couldn't even see him."