Ask 411 Movies for 3.27.06: Free Wopat!
Posted by Leonard Hayhurst on 03.27.2006
Oscar ties, Tom Wopat gets arrested, Jack Nicholson plays Napoleon, Vincent Price loved charades and we take Joey Bishop to show
Around the 15th or 16th I received an email. There was no subject heading and the question was one sentence. In cleaning out my email account last week I accidentally deleted it. I couldn't remember the question until I saw a commercial for "That 70's Show." The reader wanted to know when Topher Grace would be returning to the series. The show is wrapping up its final season and both Grace and Ashton Kutcher are shceduled to make appearances on the series finale set to air right now on May 18th.
Tom Wopat, 54, was arrested Sunday March 19th for drunken driving in New Jersey. He was driving a Ford Bronco, that's trouble right there. Wopat reportedly knocked over some traffic cones and nearly crashed into a police car that was at the site of an unrelated accident. He was arrested after failing a breath analyzer and later released into the custody of his girlfriend. Free Wopat! I want shirts, hats, bumper stickers, coffee mugs, bath towels, curtains, blenders; all with the Free Wopat logo. It's a fortune waiting to be made.
Director Richard Fleischer died Sunday of natural causes. He was 89. Richard was the son of animation pioneer Max Fleischer. Richard made his name helming B-grade sci-fi and fantasy films that usually succeeded beyond their pedigree such as 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Soylent Green, Fantastic Voyage, Conan the Destroyer, Red Sonja, Tora! Tora! Tora!, The Vikings and Neil Diamond's version of The Jazz Singer.
Country Music legend Buck Owens passed away on Saturday at the age of 76. Cause of death was not released at the time of this writing, but he did survive throat cancer in the early nineties. Owens scored a string of hits including "Act Naturally," "I've Got a Tiger by the Tail," "Love is Gonna Live Here," "Together Again," "Waitin' in Your Welfare Line" and "Streets of Bakersfield" Dwight Yoakum. Owens along with Merle Haggard pioneered what became known as the Bakersfield sound. Owens owned a performing hall called the Crystal Palace in the California town and a few nearby radio and television stations. He co-hosted "Hee Haw" with Roy Clark for nearly 20 years. He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1996.
Frequent readers know that I sometimes have dreams that play like movies. Well, this one was an episode of the "West Wing." I was a secret service agent. If I looked as good in real life as I did in this dream I wouldn't be writing this column. A psychotic had targeted a member of the President's staff for assassination just to prove he could do it. It could be anyone from the chief of staff to a guy down in the mailroom. For some reason, and I'm not sure why, I was convinced that it was going to be Josh's personal assistant Donna. No one believes me, but I protect her myself and naturally we become involved. Jack Black was a reporter snooping around and it turns out he's the psycho. We wind up in the Watergate Hotel and he has Donna hostage. It's that classic pose where she's in front of him like a shield and he's daring me to shoot him. Donna tells me to take the shot, so I do…and then I woke up.
NETFLIX MOVE OF THE WEEK: STANDER
A reader recommended this last week. Based on a true story, Andre Stander (Thomas Jane) is a South African police captain. He's against police corruption, the idiotic bureaucracy and the use of the police to uphold apartheid. He asks to be taken off of riot duty. So he gets left behind while all the other cops are out and is disgusted that any number of crimes could go on without police involvement. So frustrated to the point of snapping he robs a bank. He gets away with it and starts to rob more. The kicker is that he's put in charge of the investigation of his own crimes. His partner Deventer (Ashley Taylor) finally figures it out and arrests him red handed. He befriends two career criminals in jail (David O'Hara and Dexter Fletcher). They bust out and form a successful gang. Stander tries to reunite with his wife (Deborah Kara Unger). Eventually things fall apart, but Stander escapes to the United States. Without spoiling it let's say he doesn't reach a happy ending. Although I found it funny that toward the end an American beach bunny thought he was David Soul from "Starsky and Hutch." Those who like films such as Boogie Nights and Blow will probably enjoy this as it as a similar visual composition and playing up of the time frame. However, unlike Wonderland, which I felt was a pale crib of this movie Stander comes off more straight forward with a lack of montages and heavy voiceovers. Jane gives probably the best performance I've seen out of him as he fills Stander with quiet resolve, yet a confused makeup. The script gives him little help in fleshing matters out. The viewer gets a sense for Stander, but not why the way he is. The line between his criminal actions and his opposing of apartheid isn't tied tight enough.
RANDOM WEIRD MOVIE OF THE WEEK I JUST HAPPEN TO HAVE WATCHED: THE 5000 FINGERS OF DR. T
From 1953, Dr. Seuss wrote this live action musical, including the songs and he even helped design the sets. His hand is very clearly on the piece, giving a very surreal and trippy quality especially for the early fifties. Bart Collins (Tommy Rettig) has only one enemy in the world, his piano teach Dr. Terwiliker (a brilliant Hans Conried). His mother (Mary Healy) wants him to learn the piano, but her plumber (Peter Lind Hayes) thinks he's a scam artist. Bart falls asleep at the keyboard and has a strange dream where Dr. T has him locked in his soon to open institute where 500 boys will play a massive piano he's built for all eternity. See 500 boys with ten fingers each makes 5000 fingers. His mother has been hypnotized by Dr. T to help him and he has plans to marry her.
THE GREATEST MOVIES NEVER MADE: NAPOLEON
Following the success of 2001: A Space Odyssey director Stanley Kubrick launched into extensive research for his next intended project, a lengthy and detailed biopic of French general and emperor Napoleon. Several hundred books on Napoleon were shipped to his London offices. An Oxford professor who had studied the emperor for over thirty-five years was made Kubrick's special consultant. He had a painting of one of Napoleon's battles blown up so he could count every soldier and know how large the army should be. Kubrick began scouting locations in Europe. Primarily he needed a country that could field the seventy five thousand extras he wanted for battle scenes. Forty thousand gallons of flu vaccine was ordered to stop any shooting shutdowns due to sickness. Twenty thousand gallons of fake blood was ordered. As you can tell this was going to be a huge project. One so huge that United Artists simply couldn't afford it. Kubrick basically needed the gross national product of a European country to film the movie the way he wanted. It also didn't help that the competing Waterloo was in production at the same time and taking away a lot of Kubrick's resources. That film starred Rod Steiger in the title role. Who did Kubrick want for his film? Jack Nicholson.
Q: You mentioned the rumor that Marisa Tomei getting the Oscar was a screw up by Jack Palance.
My question is: Has the Oscars ever admitted to a screw up?
-Postma
A: The Oscars have never admitted to a screw up because they have never committed a screw up. Get it? The closest I guess you could say was the tie between Frederic March for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Wallace Beery for The Champ in 1932 for best actor. The only other nominee was Alfred Lunt for The Guardsman. March was given the award during the ceremony. Then at the end of the night Paramount's BP Schulberg took the stage. He was in charge of over seeing the voting tabulations. He confessed that they were still double checking the tallies during the ceremony and discovered that Beery had only lost by one vote. During that period a margin of error of three votes was allowed. So Beery was given a statue too. That rule was later changed. March would win again in 1947 for The Best Years of Our Lives. Beery never got close again. The only true tie in Oscar history came for best actress in 1968 between Katherine Hepburn for The Lion in Winter and Barbara Streisand for Funny Girl.
We've got column to burn as you can see. So with the recent passing of Peter Tomarken we will revisit a past column filler. Strange game shows! Information on the programs has been taken from The Encyclopedia of TV Game Shows, 3rd Edition by David Schwartz, Steve Ryan and Fred Wostbrock.
"Pantomime Quiz" (1950): The series started out as a local show in LA in 1947 and actually became the first program to ever win an Emmy in 1948. The host was Mike Stokey who actually developed the series all the way back in 1939 on an experimental station while a student at Los Angeles City College. The show is one of the few to have played on all four major networks of the period in NBC, CBS, ABC and Dupont. It usually aired as a summer replacement series, but did get some major runs and was actually brought back in 1979 as "Celebrity Charades." Charades was pretty much what the game was. Viewers would send in words and phrases and celebrities would act them out. If what you sent in was used the viewer won $100, if the panel couldn't guess it they won $200. Many top names and future stars who loved charades appeared on the series frequently including Vincent Price, Carol Burnett, Dick Van Dyke, Tom Poston, Robert Stack, Angela Lansbury and Jackie Coogan.
"The Greatest Man on Earth" (1952): In this weekly series women would present five men who they thought had really huge cocks. They would compete against each other in various stunts and games. The overall winner was made Crown Prince. After five weeks the past winners would compete on the sixth week to be crowned the Greatest Man on Earth. Not only did they claim the title, but you won a brand new car and a trip to Switzerland. Because that's what real men want out of life.
"It's in the Bag" (1952): The set was a grocery store and contestants won cans of food by answering questions correctly. After four questions correct in a row the contestant won a small kitchen appliance. Correct questions also had cans of food and appliances put into the Boodle Bag. Contestants won the Boodle Bag by answering the final question correctly. Well, ninety percent correct. For example the question on the first show was what time was the sunrise in New York City that morning. You could be a couple minutes off either way and still win. Only in the fifties could you have a series where people viciously competed for creamed corn.
"County Fair" (1958): It was one of the most elaborate game show sets of all time. NBC's famous 8H studio was converted into a huge fairgrounds. Miss America host Bert Parks served as the Fairgrounds Impresario and chose contestants from audience members wandering about the set. They took part in various games and stunts like one would find at a county fair. Occasionally celebrity guests would drop by such as football player Frank Gifford, boxer Rocky Graziano and actor Gene Barry. One of the most popular running games was "Punch Your Way Out of a Paper Bag." It's self-explanatory. Contestants were dropped into an eight-foot tall paper bag and had to punch their way out within a certain time limit. Only two people ever did it.
"Golf for Swingers" (1972): I like this one for the pun and that it was hosted by golf pro Lee Trevino. Two guest celebrities played three holes of golf with Lee Trevino. They won the right to say they played three holes of golf with Lee Trevino. Since tons of celebrities are golf crazy it was easy to fill the slots with the likes of Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Sammy Davis, Jr., Dean Martin and Joey Bishop.
"Celebrity Sweepstakes" (1974): Celebrities were treated as little more than horse flesh in this show that would probably do well in this age of famous people gambling on anything. Six celebrities sat on a dais in ‘starting gates' much like you would find at a racetrack. A question was asked by host Jim McKrell and then the audience would ‘bet' on who they thought would know the answer. From their picks odds were assigned. The two contestants would then pick a celebrity and if they got the answer right they would win money based on the odds. So if Joey Bishop's at 1:1 and gets it right you earn a lot less than if you go with say Dan Rowan at 99:1. The perfect show for dumb blondes with big tits to make them appear dumber than we already think they are.
"The $1.98 Beauty Show" (1978): This Chuck Barris production surprisingly lasted two seasons on NBC with Rip Taylor as host. A panel of C-list celebrities would judge six female contestants in a spoof of beauty pageants. Categories were beauty, swimsuits and talent. Contestants ranged from 18 to 80 and were not your usual Miss America faire. Comedian Sandra Bernhard appeared on the show and didn't win I don't think.
"Hit Man" (1983): This was the first game show hosted by the late Peter Tomarken. Three contestants were shown pictures and read a story, like how to make a proper brisket or the story of Richard Nixon's first senate campaign and then asked questions about it. If you got the answer right you were given a ‘hit man' and I don't mean a guy in fancy shoes with a sniper rifle. If you got the answer wrong you were eliminated from the next question. The first two people to answer six questions correctly moved onto the next round and faced the winner from the previous day's show. Another story was read and pictures shown. This time a correct answer allowed you to knock out one of the hit men of an opponent. Lose all your hit men and you're out of the game. The winner would then play the Triple Crown bonus round for a chance at $10,000. Doesn't it just sound like they came up with random terms?
"Studs" (1991): The granddaddy of naughty dating game shows and an early entry into what we call trash TV. It was "Love Connection" filtered through the Penthouse Forum. Two men would go out on a date with three women. The women were then asked questions about the date and the men in general. The ‘studs' would then try to match answers with the women and if they were right they received a ‘heart.' The man with the most hearts at the end would then write down which woman he wanted to go out with again, if she also wanted to go out with him then they won an all expenses paid second date. Where this show became infamous at was the contestants were mostly dumb sluts and dumber womanizers who talked about tight butts and hard rods.
"Ready…Set…Cook!" (1995): In this precursor to "Iron Chef" two top chefs were paired with members from the studio audience. The teams were called the Red Tomatoes and the Green Peppers. The audience member was given $10 to purchase ingredients with and then the chefs had to take these random elements and make a dish out of them in twenty minutes. They did have a fully stocked kitchen to aide them. The audience would then vote on what they felt was the best dish. On a special celebrity edition Dom DeLuise competed against Jo Anne Worley.
