haines his way

02/13/2002:
"THE WAY WE WERE"

Well, dear readers, we had part two of our trip down the Nudie Musical memory lane yesterday and, again, it was a lot of fun and totally surreal. We had Vern Joyce (he plays the assistant director), Alan Abelew, John Kirby, Jeff Harlin and Greg Finley. They were all charming and had fond memories of the experience, some of which I hadn't heard before and which were really sort of lovely. Then came my turn. Now, I like to talk as much as the next person, but I must tell you, dear readers, that I did not shut up for six hours. The first thing we did was my interview for the documentary, and my friend Nick Redman (who is directing the documentary) did the interview - he took me through the entire process from the time I got the idea to now. I talked and talked and then for a change of pace, I talked and talked, and then for a bit of variety I talked and talked. After I'd talked and talked I talked some more. Finally, we finished the on-camera interview, and then we went in to do my solo commentary track with Nick - so, we sat and watched the film from start to finish while, as a novelty, I talked. And talked. I have no idea what I said at any point yesterday, but whatever it was Nick has a lot of it. Now he begins the task of editing all this into some kind of shape. Thankfully, I will be home resting my voice.
This flu, or illness or whatever the hell it is, just hangs on. I haven't gotten really sick, but I haven't gotten really better. Just when I think I'm almost really better, I'm really not. And so it goes.
Something else very interesting happened yesterday and it happened right here at haineshisway.com. It was a first really, and I was totally thrilled to see it happen. Just what was it that happened at haineshisway.com yesterday? Well, perhaps we should all click that Unseemly Button below and find out.
What happened here at haineshisway.com yesterday is something I've been hoping would happen. Someone posted an Unseemly Comment. Then someone responded to it. Then another. It became a dialogue and suddenly we had a little message board going. I love that. Let's have more of that. It was an interesting discussion about 70s television movies of all things, because apparently I'd mentioned that in a past Notes. From my point of you, the 70s were the Golden Age of the tv movie. They were simple, direct, and some of them were quite brilliant. They weren't afraid to be different - in fact, they were rather like some of the great "B" movies of the forties and fifties, you know, the ones that played the bottom half of double bills but that were sometimes better than the "A" feature. I remember some with great fondness indeed, including A Cold Night's Death with Robert Culp and Eli Wallach (a great scary movie), Isn't It Shocking? with Alan Alda and Louise Lasser, directed by John Badham, of course the brilliant Spielberg tv movie, Duel, with Dennis Weaver, a Michael Crichton movie I can never remember the name of with, I think, E.G. Marshall, Brian's Song, Brotherhood of the Bell (with Glen Ford, score by Jerry Goldsmith), Dr. Cook's Garden with Burl Ives, from the play by Ira Levin, How Awful About Alan with Tony Perkins, some wonderful little thing with Richard Kiley and David Opatashu (something with San Francisco in the title - a great score by the very underratied Pat Williams), well, I could go to the imdb.com and look up all these things, but I leave that to others.
In any case, it was a great decade for tv movies, especially the first five years. Someone mentioned the theme from the ABC Movie of the Week show, which, of course, was Nikki by Burt Bacharach (how many of you know that Nikki actually possesses a set of lyrics by Hal David). Another great show back then was The Name of the Game, which had a revolving cast of leads, including Anthony Franciosa and Gene Barry (who was the third? Robert Stack or someone like him?) - each episode was like a movie, ninety minutes, and there were some terrific ones, including at least one directed by a very young Spielberg.
The Oscar nominations are out and are as baffling as usual. I was sad but not surprised to see A.I. snubbed in just about every category (it's up for score and special effects, I think), and especially sad for Haley Joel Osment, who was simply extraordinary in it. And how do you nominate Moulin Rouge for Best Picture without nominating Baz Luhrmann as director? As you know, I was not a huge fan of the film, but if you're going to think that's a film that should be up for Best Picture then how on earth can you not nominate it's director, especially for this particular film. This film is about its director as much as its about anything. Baffling. I haven't really seen that many films from last year to know what other snubs were baffling. Let's make that the topic of discussion for the day.
Have I mentioned that I talked for six hours yesterday? I feel like I've been hit by a truck. When I got home, I spoke to a singer I've worked with many times, and this singer had some very very interesting things to say to me. Very interesting. So interesting that I wrote them all down and passed them along to the people who needed to see them.
This morning my phone rang six times (starting at seven o'clock), and each time I picked it up, it went dead at the other end. I *69d the first time, and it said the number was busy, but that it would ring me when it wasn't. It did ring me several minutes later - I got a ring, the call connected and I was greeted by silence and then a disconnect. Then, five minutes later it rang, silence, disconnect. And again, and then again. It hasn't happened in the last half-hour, so maybe it's done. Isn't that just too too annoying? Perhaps we should all wish a pox upon whoever is doing it. Yes, let's all wish a pox upon them. And after the pox let's eat some lox whilst wearing our socks. If the pox doesn't work, perhaps we should throw rocks, or at least send whoever is doing it to the school of hard knocks. What the hell am I talking about? And why am I talking at all? Didn't I talk for six hours yesterday? Wasn't that enough?
Well, dear readers, perhaps I shall go relax and do things and then perhaps I shall do things and relax. Don't forget to post your Unseemly Comments and chat with each other. That way we can have our very own pretend message board without really having a message board.

Replies: 9 Unseemly Comments

Okay, okay, I went to the imdb and found the missing tv movie titles I referred to - the Michael Crichton is called Pursuit, and the Richard Kiley is called Incident in San Francisco (I knew it had SF in the title).
Posted by bk @ 02/13/2002 10:27 AM PST

Name of the Game had a superb theme by the equally underrated Dave Grusin, later recorded, believe it or not, by Jean-Luc Ponty on an album produced by Frank Zappa. If you can get your hands on Pat Williams' AMAZING LP Mr. Smoke (re-released on CD for about 90 seconds as Threshhold), get it. Pat Williams literally changed my life when I heard his band live in SLC at a High School and College Jazz Meet.
Posted by JMK @ 02/13/2002 10:39 AM PST

Well, strangely enough, I was thinking about the Oscars this very morning. I just saw "The Conversation" (with...yes...Cindy Williams) for the first time last night, and it is extraordinary. As great a film as it was, and as glad I was that I was seeing it, I was also filled with a kind of melancholy because I am convinced that America will never again make films like it, or "A Woman Under the Influence," or "The French Connection," or any one of the many countercinematic films that briefly flourished here in the late '60s and into the mid-'70s, again.
"The Conversation" is about paranoia and isolation, its protagonist is ineffectual and helpless and its plot unfolds with a slow implacability that makes glaciers look like whimsical, flittering hummingbirds. And it's brilliant.
It was not a financial success when it was released, but it did receive much critical praise, three Oscar nominations (sadly, not one win), and oh yes...the Golden Palm at Cannes.
I can't respond specifically to the Oscar picks this year, simply because I haven't paid them any mind at all for years. It's too depressing. I'm not old, but I am truly a fogey.
Old stuff is better. 'nuff said.
-Lulu
Posted by Lulu @ 02/13/2002 10:39 AM PST

I agree that a movie that gets a Best Picture nominee should have a Best Director nod to go with it- but at least the Director's Guild got it right by nominating Ridley Scott. Too bad the rest of the Academy didn't have Black Hawk Down a Best Picture nominee. Talk about robbed!
Posted by Dave in the Valley @ 02/13/2002 03:18 PM PST

I also fondly remember the ABC movie of the week and I lived in Canada at the time.
Some of them other than those mentioned by BK were The Victim. This was the first post-Bewitch film for Elizabeth Montgomery.
The cheesy Satan School For Girls with Kate Jackson and Cheryl Ladd (Althought the later was a Ladd then. Then again it may have not been that cheesy. Didn't they recently remake it?)
Steven Spielberg's first TV movie Something Evil with Sandy Dennis, Darren McGavin and Johnny Whitaker. Some real spooky moments for a boy just starting his teenage years.
And talking of Darren McGavin. What about his two Kolchak films? The Night Stalker and The Night Strangler? Both of this were written by Richard Matheson and produced by Dan Curtis.
There was the great Susan Hayward's last film, Say Goodbye Maggie Cole.
Then all star cast (for a TV film that is) for Happy Mother's Day Love George (which I believe was retitle at one point to Run Stranger Run) In the cast were Patricia Neal, Cloris Leachman, Ronny Howard, BOBBY DARRIN!,Simon Oakland, Thayer David.
Speaking of Cloris Leachman there was Death Sentance where she was the lone jurror who thought a young Nick Nolte was innocent. She would escape at night from being sequesteres to invetigate on her own and discover that the killer is her husband Laurence Luckinbill.
She also did a Brand New Life playing a woman ovre 40 who gets pregant. I think she won an Emmy for this.
Along those lines there another film she did called Someone I Touched. A woman learns that her husband has been unfaithful and that he has acquired a venereal disease. Then she learns that, after years of trying, she is finally pregnant
Memories! Memories! Films keep coming back to me.
There were also a bunch of remake of classic films like A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, Miracle on 34th Street (a semi-musical if memory serves.
Then of course there were the movies that were pilots for potential tv series. Etc Etc
I also remember The Adventures of Freddy (I think thre was another name for this film but I am not sure.) with Micahel Burns. (Also liked him. Where is he now I wonder?) Keene Curtis, Jane Connell, Conrad Janis, Tom Poston, Susan Sullivan, Loni Anderson, Harry Morgan, Susan Blanchard. Not a bad cast!!! The plot was more Disney films like The Computer Who Wore Running Shoes with Kurt Russell. This plot was: A nerdy inventor accidentally discovers a way to make a force-field that could completely revolutionize the industrial world. His boss and a greedy millionaire plan to steal the formula and use it to make themselves even richer.
Sorry for such a long post....
Anyone remember these or others?
PS
Was the pilot for Tabitha a movie? I remember a certain person who contributes here was in that.:-)
Posted by Michael Shayne @ 02/13/2002 05:38 PM PST

I find it hard to believe that Michael brings up the pilot The Adventures of Freddy with Michael Burns. If it's just coincidence, then be sure to tune into tomorrow's notes for amazing revelations about that long ago pilot (and yes, it did have another name - The Mystical Magical Magnet of Santa Rosa). Michael Burns is a professor of history, I believe, at a midwestern college, and wrote a critically acclaimed book on the Dreyfus Affair.
Posted by bk @ 02/13/2002 06:45 PM PST

I was TV movie junkie. I thought of one movie and that would could connect with another. There were a lot of Cloris Leachman and Darren McGavin movies in there. As for Liz Montgomery there were others but I can't remember if they were ABC movie of the weeks. The Liz Montgomery film made me think of a film I think called Home For the Holidays with Sally Field, Eleanor Parker, Julie Harris, Walter Brennan. Brennan invites his daughters back for the holidays and believes one of them is trying to kill him. Harris is the housekeeper. Parker the killer. Which makes me think of another film with Harris did with Anthony Perkins. They play brother and sister. Some is trying to drive Perkins crazy. (A Variation on Norma Bates I guess.) And then I can go on. But I won't
Posted by Michael Shayne @ 02/13/2002 07:19 PM PST

The Night Stalker rules! I even love the TV show, although most people seem to only like the movies. Gotta love that byplay between Kolchak and Vincenzo.
Satan's School for Girls is not one of the best examples of the Golden Age of TVMs, but it is essential simply because of the coincidence that two future Charlie's Angels star in it (along with Roy Thinnes).
Much better (imo) is a late '70s entry entitled "The Initiation of Sarah." This one's a "Carrie" ripoff starring Kay Lenz and Morgan Fairchild and Morgan Brittany (isn't there something in Revelations about MOWs with two women named Morgan in them, and fish raining from the heavens as a result? No? Oh, then it's just me) and (this is the good part) Shelley Winters. Oh, my, my. That one is pretty tasty.
I'd love to see "Mr. And Mrs. Bo Jo Jones" starring Desi Arnaz, Jr. and Christopher Norris (Nurse Ripple on Trapper John) as teenage newlyweds (she's pregnant) in the 1950s. Never have seen it, but I've seen the promo for it. Lots of dialogue along the lines of "Why me? WHY??"
My brain is just one big simmering pot of TV memories. Pretty sad that this is my cultural heritage but then again, it's all I've got.
Posted by Lulu @ 02/13/2002 07:27 PM PST

I for one am thrilled that Peter Jackson is being nominated for Best Director. This is especially thrilling because he once made a truly disgusting and disturbing muppet movie called "Meet the Feebles" that everyone should see immediately.
On another note, if that moron Russell Crowe wins one more award I will toss my cookies. Then I will catch my cookies and maybe get around to eating them.
Posted by Matt @ 02/14/2002 08:53 AM PST

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