TCMFF 2019 – Top 5, So far

It's about that time of year. The TCM Classic Film Festival (TCMFF) held April 11–14, 2019, in Hollywood is about three months away. So far, TCM has announced about 20 films, about typical for three months out. For the last several years, I've done a post of Top 5 picks out of the first group of films. In a way, it's kind of a pointless exercise. Some of these Top Five films will drop off the list as other new films are announced. The one or two are still in my Top 5 when the full schedule is announced are quite likely to be playing opposite something I want to see more.

So why do I do it? Why not. It gives me something to focus on as the months wind down into TCMFF.

I do feel obligated to say something. I'm not tremendously psyched by the offering so far. Am I worried? Not at all. I know that once we have full schedule, there are going to be several spots, where there are two or three films that I am just dying to see all playing at the same time, and I can only see one. I also know that there will be surprises. Some film that I know very little about or wasn't even planning to see will turn out to be my favorite film of the Festival.

So why am I doing this again? Oh yeah, why not.

No. 5, Sunrise. I never seen Sunrise, but F.W. Murnau's silent classic is one of those top 100 films you must see before you die movies, and it's been on my classic film bucket list for years. I never knew why I hadn't watched it before. Now, I know why, so I can see it at TCMFF. I read the first couple of sentences of the description and stopped. I don't want to know anymore. I just want to watch it and let it take me where it needs me to go.

No. 4, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is a great Western and a great film. That said, I'm not a huge fan of Westerns and even then,  there are quite a few Westerns that I like better. What makes Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid remarkable is the absolute magic that Paul Newman and Robert Redford have onscreen together. So why doesn't it rank higher. Mostly, because I've seen it three or four times in the theater. 

Then, why mention it at all? Well, what if Robert Redford came? That would be a complete game-changer for almost anyone attending TCMFF. I'm sure that Robert Redford is very high on the short list of people TCM would love to have attend, and what better time than the 50th anniversary of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid? Didn't he name his film festival and foundation after  the character. He has to have strong feelings for the character and the film. I honestly don't know much about Redford, but I've always got the impression that he doesn't like Hollywood, doesn't like the fame, doesn't like talking about himself. But if he did come, how cool would that be? We can dream, can't we?

No. 3, Tarzan and His Mate. Tarzan and His Mate is possibly the best of the Tarzan series, and probably the best nude scene in Pre-Code. I guess if I took the time to do the math, I would say that the Disney animated Tarzan is a better film, but I hate math.

No. 2, Marty. Marty is the type of film the Hollywood doesn't make anymore. No, that's not right. They didn't make that type of film back then either. Sure, Hollywood loves a good romance, but they love a good romance but always ones that star good-looking people. You can take someone like Audrey Hepburn and make her look like a librarian, but underneath it's still Audrey Hepburn, and you know she's going to find love. For an actor like Ernest Borgnine, getting the girl onscreen isn't in the cards. Not unless there's a subplot from the romantic leads, where he ends up with the quirky, plain, homely, [insert adjective here] best friend of the woman the film is really about. That, or he already has the girl to start with, like being married to Stella Stevens in The Poseidon Adventure. Even there, the implication was she was a hooker he married to make an honest woman of her. That's right, actors like Ernest Borgnine not won't find love onscreen, they're going to need to pay for it if they do. That's why Marty is so wonderful. It's just an ordinary guy finding love and trying to navigate around the obstacles that society places on people who look like him.

No. 1, Holiday. Holiday is a wonderful film. It sounds like it should be a Christmas movie, but it's not. In fact, for years, I confused it with It Happened on Fifth Avenue. Cary Grant is a young man with a head for business and he's quickly amassed a small fortune. He wants to travel and enjoy life while he is young and has the means. His wealthy fiancee's family has other ideas. It's a great movie about what is really important in life, and one of Edward Everett Horton's best roles as Cary Grant's free-thinking mentor. 

Two Comic Legends, and a Clipboard

Last month, two giants in the comic-book industry died within a couple of days of each other. You probably heard about one of them, the other, probably not. The first, the one you didn't hear about, was John Rogers, the president of Comic-Con International. He passed away on November 10, 2018 of brain cancer. John was president of Comic-Con from 1986 until his death. As a Comic-Con department head and board member for the last quarter of a century, I was friends with John and knew him well. While Comic-Con and the comics industry was still reeling from the news on John's death, Stan Lee passed away two days later. Stan Lee was Marvel Comics writer, editor, publisher, and Hollywood celebrity, mostly from his cameo roles in numerous Marvel superhero movies.

When I first heard the news about Stan Lee, I was upset. Not because he died, I rarely take the death of a celebrity too hard, especially ones who live into their 90s. Stan Lee was 95. He was blessed with a long healthy life. John Rogers was only 57, a year older than me. I was upset that Stan Lee's death would steal the thunder of the death of my friend. Then I realized something. John was a very private person. I think he would have been fine with the news of Stan Lee's death eclipsing his own. That made me feel better about it as well.

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When Stan Lee took a job as an assistant at the newly formed Timely Comics in 1939, comics books were a relatively new commodity. Comics had been around for decades in the form of newspaper strips, but the idea of new stories being written and drawn specifically for the inexpensive small-format magazines known as comic books was still relatively new. Comic books were mostly aimed to children and adolescents. By the 1960s when Stan Lee and others started to re-vitalize the superhero genre, little had changed in the public's perception of comics. It was a childish medium, created for children, and the teens and adults who read them were delinquents, mentally deficient, or both.

In comic book production, it takes much much longer to create the finished artwork, than it does to write the content in that artwork. As a result, the artwork is traditionally broken into different tasks. A penciller draws all of the art of the artwork that appears on the page in pencil. An inker reproduces each line of the penciled art in India ink, so it will print properly. The letterer hand draws all of the panel and caption borders, word and thought balloons, sound effects, and all of the text on the page. Finally, a colorist lays out the colors on page. In the 1960s, Stan Lee was credited as writer, while the rest of the artistic team was credited with their respective tasks. It implies that the artists were only responsible for drafting what Stan Lee told them. In reality, Stan Lee would write a synopsis of the story. The penciller would often take a huge responsibility for the way the story played out. Then once the pencilled art was complete, Stan Lee would write the dialog and caption text to be placed on the pencilled art.

As a result, there tend to be two schools of thought when comes to Stan Lee and Marvel Comics. Either, Stan Lee created the Marvel Universe single handed. Or Stan Lee was a hack, who took all the credit for great artists like Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko. The truth is somewhere in the middle. What Stan Lee did do was revamp the superhero. Earlier superheros were near gods, who lived in a black and white world of good and evil, who dispensed justice and punished wrong-doers. Stan Lee introduced human frailty to superheros. Without his influence, I don't think the Marvel Universe would have thrived the way it did. 

Other than newspaper strips and the odd MAD Magazine, I didn't read comics as a kid. When my wife and I first started dating, she mentioned that she was really into comics. On a lark, I picked up some Silver Surfer comics at a swap meet. They had been written by Stan Lee in the late-1960s. Being Southern California born and bred, I figured a superhero, who surfs, now that's cool. Then I made the mistake of reading them. Silver Surfer had nothing to do with surfing.

The Silver Surfer was originally a humanoid alien. When another alien, Galactus, a gigantic being who lived by devouring the life force of entire planets, came to the Silver Surfer's home planet, the Silver Surfer gave up is humanity to save his planet and the woman he loved. He became Galactus' herald, searching the universe on a flying surfboard for planets for Galactus to devour. When the Silver Surfer came to Earth, he realized that the Earth's human inhabitants were very similar to the people on his home world, and he rebelled against Galactus to save the Earth. As punishment, Galactus imprisoned the Silver Surfer on Earth.

Yeah, I know all of this sounds kind of stupid, but all of that is the back story. When I started reading Silver Silver, he was stuck on Earth, and all he wanted was to escape. He knew that humans were capable of nobility, but they were also capable of incredible cruelty to each other. The humans set up societies where all were supposed to be treated as equal, yet they didn't seem to be able to live up to the ideals they set for themselves. I was hooked. If the Silver Surfer had been just a guy on a flying surfboard, beating hell out of bad guys, I would have lost interest. But whole inhumanity of man thing, that got me, and I think that was Stan Lee. Yes, he did have help from writer/artists who were not properly credited for the work they did. But I think Stan Lee brought humanity to superhero comics, and that might not have happened had he not been there to foster it. That opened the door for many others to do really interesting work in the genre. Without Stan Lee, I don't think comics would have been the same.

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In 1970, a small group of San Diego comic-book fans decided to hold a convention to celebrate comics as a legitimate art-form. Okay, that's probably overstating things. They mostly wanted to buy, sell, and trade, old comics and anything else they thought was cool and be able to meet and hang out with the people who created them. That convention would ultimately became Comic-Con International.

John Rogers started working for Comic-Con as a volunteer while a student at University of California, San Diego. He had a vision for Comic-Con, that it could be run like a business while still maintaining it original purpose of providing a venue for comic fans to geek over the things that they loved. By treating Comic-Con as a business, Comic-Con saw unprecedented growth, from 6,500 in 1986 to 34,000 in 1995 to 103,000 in 2005, to what it is today, about 140,000, the maximum number you can safely fit in a very very large building. What I think John realized about Comic-Con (possibly before anyone else), it wasn't about comic books or cartoons or science fiction; it was about people coming together over their shared love of these things. 

I remember John telling me on a couple of different occasions that if we didn't show up, Comic-Con would happen anyway. In a way he was being facetious, but in a way he was not. He understood that Comic-Con was not just an exhibit hall with comic books and swag from movie companies, not just film clips in a programming room, not just a game room, a film room, an anime room, a whatever room, it was the people who came together because of their love for those things. Comic-Con is a gathering of the tribes. As custodians of the organization, we need to just provide a place for that to happen and make sure that everybody has a fair chance to participate. Like Stan Lee, John had help, but without John, I know Comic-Con would not be the same.

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Sometime, in the late-1990s/early 2000s, some changes happened in the film and television industry:

• Hollywood took notice of comics. A lot of film and TV adaptations of comics and graphic novels started being produced. 
• Hollywood took notice of Comic-Con. Stars, directors, and producers started coming Comic-Con in droves. 
• Stan Lee as an elder statesman of the comics medium became a celebrity through his cameo roles in Marvel comic adaptations.

Are the three things related? I kind of think they are.Would Comic-Con have ever come into being had Stan Lee not breathed new life into them in the 1960s? Maybe, maybe not. Would Comic-Con have become a cultural phenomenon without John Rogers putting a structure into place that allowed the event to grow and thrive? Maybe, maybe not. On this one, I would venture to say, probably not. Then again, I am biased on this one. Would Hollywood have taken notice of comics had they not seen throngs of people descending on San Diego every year? Maybe, maybe not. Would Stan Lee have become a household name without the success of the Marvel superhero movies? This one, I think I can say, probably not to as well.

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I didn't know Stan Lee, though I did meet him a couple of times. I do have two stories about him. What follows is the better of the two. It was at Comic-Con in the early-1990s, a good ten years before the Marvel Cinematic Universe made him a household name. At the time, he was a legend in the comics industry, but outside of microcosm of Comic-Con, not so much. I was working the program room he was appearing in. I honestly don't what the panel was about. I might have been covering the room for someone else. The room was crowded, about 80 to 100 people, definitely not overflowing. Back then, there was no Hall H. In fact, that part of the center hadn't been built yet. A hundred people for a comics panel was considered a good crowd at the time.

I had just shut down the panel and was trying to get the room clear, so the next panel could start on time. Twenty or thirty people came up to get autographs. Stan Lee obliged. He would have been in his seventies then. He sat on the edge of the stage signing very flimsy comic books on his knee. I had a clipboard and handed it to him. He signed it and gave it back. I told him, he could use it to sign on. He looked slightly sheepish, thanked me, and kept signing, faster now that he had a decent surface to write on. I quickly got the room ready for the next panel, throwing away empty water cups and name placards of the previous panelists. By this time, it was about a minute before the next panel was supposed to start. I asked if he could take it into the hall. He was gracious, finished signing the one or two he was already doing, and stepped out to sign for dozen or so people who were still waiting.

I got the next panel started only a minute or two late. When I stepped into the hall, he was just finishing. He shook my hand, thanked me, and gave me back the clipboard. I thanked him back and went on with my day. At the end of the con that year, I kept the clipboard.

About six months ago, we were cleaning out the garage at my mother-in-law's house, getting it ready as a rental, and I found the clipboard. I joked that I should wait until Stan Lee dies and put it up on ebay. Then Stan Lee did die and I actually did consider putting it up for auction but that seemed too mercenary. I mean, what is a decent interval to wait on a thing like this. The problem is I really don't have a place to display it. And to me, the story is better than the clipboard anyway. I figure if someone else wants it and will enjoy the object more that me, why not.

I told the story to a friend of mine, another Comic-Con person. She loved it. And asked if she could have the clipboard. She has done a gazillion favors for me and everyone around her over the years. She will give it a good home. And I don't have to feel like a mercenary piece of shit for selling it.

µ-Blog – Great Christmas Movie, Meh, Great Action Movie, Yeah Buddy

µ-Blog – Too long to tweet, too short to call a real post

Tonight, my wife, my daughter and I are going to see Die Hard at the La Paloma Theater. My wife and I haven't seen it in the theater since it first came out, roughly 30 years ago. Our daughter has never seen it. We missed the Fathom Events screenings last month. Me, I'm not going to see it because it's a great Christmas movie. I'm not going to see it because society has deemed it a Christmas classic. I'm going to see it because it's a really kick-ass action movie. But if calling Die Hard a Christmas classic means that I get to see a great action movie on the big screen at this time of year, I'm cool with that.

Die Hard, a Christmas Movie?

For years, I have maintained that the movie Die Hard was not a Christmas movie. Oh sure, it's set at Christmas, but it's an action movie that just happens to take place at Christmas. Don't get me wrong, I love Die Hard. It's a great action movie. But a Christmas movie, I don't know.

Sure there are a lot of Christmas things in it.

Bruce Willis with a ridiculously large stuffed bear for his daughter

Argyle, the limo driver, playing hip hop Christmas music,
okay, he's talking on the phone here but he does at some point.

Whole movie takes place at an office Christmas party

Now I have a machine gun, Ho Ho Ho.

Most of my favorite Christmas movies have the main character having a change of heart from being touched by the Spirit of Christmas. In A Christmas Carol, pick a version, Ebenezer Scrooge becomes a better person because of being visited by the Spirits of Christmas Past, Present, and Future. In How the Grinch Stole Christmas,  the Grinch's heart grows three sizes that day. In Miracle on 34th Street, Natalie Wood learns that Santa Claus is real.

At the end of the Die Hard, Bruce Willis does indeed have a change of heart and becomes a better person. He learns that what is important is not being a cop in New York, but his family out in Los Angeles. But how does he learn this? Does he learn it from the Spirit of Christmas? No, he learns it from his experience fighting terrorists. My logic was without the Spirit of Christmas, it's not a Christmas movie. Doing the math on this, you get:

Where

M_genre is a Movie of any Genre

S_xmas is Set at Christmas

X_spirit is the Spirit of Christmas

and

M_xmas is a Christmas Movie

But then I started thinking, do all of my favorite Christmas movies work that way? Hmm, I don't know. What about It's a Wonderful Life? It's definitely one of my favorite Christmas movies. Does anybody argue whether It's a Wonderful Life is a Christmas movie? No, of course not, that's ridiculous.

In It's a Wonderful Life, George Bailey is visited by a spirit of sorts, an angel named Clarence. Does Clarence come to teach George the meaning of Christmas? No. He teaches George that he had a wonderful life. Even though he never traveled the world or built bridges or any of the things he dreamed of as a kid, he built the community. And that community wouldn't be the same without him. So applying that definition, where does that leave It's a Wonderful Life?

If Die Hard is not a Christmas movie, but an action movies set at Christmas. Wouldn't that mean that It's a Wonderful Life is just a Frank Capra movie set at Christmas? That means that if I have to throw Die Hard out of the Christmas movie pool, I also need to throw out It's a Wonderful Life. And I just can't bring myself to do that. I guess that makes Die Hard a Christmas movie. 

Yippee-ki-yay motherf***ker. Umm, and Merry Christmas

µ-Blog – A Compliment

µ-Blog – Too long to tweet, too short to call a real post

A couple of weeks ago, I was getting the Sunday paper. Yes, I still read the Sunday paper. I don't have it delivered. I just go out on Sunday morning to 7-Eleven and buy it. As I was leaving, I got to the door and stopped.

I stopped because at the same time I got to the door, going out, a young woman got there, going in. We both stopped trying to figure out who was going to go first. Now, she was young, about 25 or 30 and pretty cute. After a second or two, I did the gentlemanly thing. I pushed the door open for her, even though it opened out, which makes it awkward holding the door for someone when you're pushing the door away from you. As she went past me,  she said something, "You have the most gorgeous eyes, ..."

I was feeling pretty good about myself. Here was this young cute woman giving me a compliment. It was an incredible boost my ego. Until she ruined it. She ruined it with a single word, "sir." So that boost my ego lasted all of about 0.25 seconds, the time it takes to get from, "You have the most gorgeous eyes," to "sir." Damn.

Ukulele in the Up and Down Lounge

So about three weeks ago, I had my first ukulele gig. Well, sort of. I was at Tiki Oasis. Tiki Oasis is a convention for people who collect Tiki stuff, but truth be told it's really just a good excuse for people to get rip-roaring drunk on fruity tropical drinks. Anyway, when I go to small conventions, I usually take my ukulele. I've been playing about three and a half years. I'm not great, but I can play some stuff that sounds pretty good. The problem is I make a lot of mistakes, especially when people are around. That's why I like to bring my uke to conventions. I'll find a quiet corner to play and if anyone wants to listen, they can, but there's no pressure. And I get a little practice playing in front of people.

Anyway, it was fairly late in the day, and I was thinking about leaving for the day. I had my ukulele in its case on my back. This couple, Rebecca and Dave, come up to me and ask if that is a ukulele. I say, yes.

"We need a ukulele player."

"Okay, I'm not really that great." I explain. I take it out and play something that I know I can make sound decent.

"That's perfect. What are you doing between 8 and 8:45?"

"I don't know?" I say trying to emphasize the question mark, so they would explain.

"We run this bar in one of the glass elevators here at the hotel, and we need a ukulele player. It's only about 45 minutes. It's really fun. It will be hot and sweaty, but a really good time."

I tell them to hold on. The parking situation at Tiki Oasis is really bad, so I had my wife drop me off in the morning. I gave her a call and asked if she wouldn't mind bringing me back a bit before 8 and picking me up sometime after 9. She said, okay.

"Okay, I guess I'm in. So what's going on again?"

####

I went home and grabbed some dinner. Then I picked up my uke to go through to go through the songs I wanted to play. I have about eight to ten songs that I know well enough to play in front of people. My plan was to get back by about 7:45, so I'd have time to find the right elevator. I ended getting there at about 7:55, which meant that I got to what I thought was the right elevator just a minute or two early. I still was a little fuzzy about the whole thing at this point.

There were about four or five women standing in front the elevator. "Are you waiting for the Up and Down Lounge?"

"Is that the bar in the elevator?" I asked.

"Yeah, so you're the entertainment?"

I nodded and took out my ukulele and started to play a little something. At this point, one of the women said that her boyfriend played ukulele, but only knew two songs. She then proceeded to sing one of them, a song I had never heard and had no clue how to play. So I'm thinking, God, I hope she doesn't keep singing some song I don't know, so I look like an idiot. Fortunately, she stopped after a verse or two. By this time, it was about 8:02 and still no sign of the couple that asked me to play, but at least I was reasonably confident that I was at the right elevator.

About 8:05, the elevator door opened, some people got out and there was they were, Dave and Rebecca. I got in and moved to the back and start playing. Dave stood behind a little teeney tiny bar and started handing out drinks. He had two and a half gallons of some Jungle Juice-looking drink in a container with a spigot on the bottom. Immediately, the elevator goes from almost empty to way way way over capacity. I'm sure that if I had taken the time to look, there would have been a sign saying that the elevator had a capacity of 12 people, and we were easily at like, 25.

The elevator starts to move and about every other stop, they have to tell people that they can't get on because if they have any more bodies, the elevator won't move. Of course, it's hot and oppressive with that many people in such a small space. I'm sweating and trying to play and probably making way more mistakes than I normally do, but everybody has a drink and is talking loudly to be heard over the other people who are talking loudly. I'm sure no one noticed when I hit the wrong notes, with all that was going on.

So things are going along just fine, I'm playing trying not to screw up too bad. About 10 or 15 minutes in, the woman standing next to me decides she needs to show her boobs. Now, I have to say, I'm old. When I was in my prime boob viewing days, women didn't just show their boobs. You had to kind a work on it. Since then, when I've been in situations where women show their boobs, I always just happen to be in the wrong place and the wrong time. Now, here it was happening right next to me. Awesome. Well, it turns out, the sight of boobs right next to me made me completely forget how to play the ukulele. I forgot how to play. I forgot what songs I knew. What songs I'd already played. I got through it somehow. It's actually kind of a blur.

After about a half hour, most of the drinks were gone and people start putting bills in Dave's shirt pocket. When the last drink was poured, the elevator emptied out and Rebecca and Dave said they were getting off at the fourth floor, where their room was. I got out too. I was hot I was sweaty. I just needed some air. Well, Dave took all of the bills out of his pocket and stuck them in my pocket. I said that we should split it or something, and he's like, naw, don't worry about it. I think I made about fifteen bucks on the deal.

So they invited me to their room for a drink. I'd been playing the whole time, so I hadn't had any. It turns out the woman who who showed her boobs and her friend were friends of Rebecca and Dave, so we all went to the went to the room for a drink.

The boob woman said she has a Facebook page, TITTY (Tits in Tikibar Toilets, Yo). She said she takes booby pictures in the bathrooms of tiki bars, but always does it in such a way that you can't see nipples. I swear I've tried to find that page about eight times. No luck. Anyway, Rebecca had taken pictures of the boob flash and was sending them to the woman. Rebecca says, "Wait, that's a nipple." And she hands the phone to the woman.

"That's not a nipple. That's my thumb." She had been holding two drinks in front of her-- umm, self.

I said, "You mind sending those to me?"  Doesn't hurt to ask. Rebecca handed me her phone to put in my number. I did, taking extra care to make sure I didn't transpose any numbers. 

After a while, Dave said they needed to change clothes. We took that as our cue to leave. I asked for a drink for the road, and we left. I ended up watching some swing band for a while before calling my wife to pick me up. In the car, I told my wife the story. She said, "You realize that you're lucky, for two reasons."

"Yeah, first, that it happened. And second, you're not pissed off about it."

"Right."

Of course, I kept checking my phone for the pictures. Nothing. Damn. The next day I had a Comic-Con meeting, and I couldn't go back to Tiki Oasis. About 1:00 in the middle of the meeting, I got a text message from an unknown number. The pictures. Woohoo!

The best of the two pictures she sent

I sent a quick thank you text to Rebecca and told her that it was a lot of fun. Then of course I told the story and showed the pictures to anyone who would look. 

Post Script

So I am very bad with names, not only did I not get the woman in the picture's name. I didn't remember Dave and Rebecca's names either. The next day sent her another note:

This is Chris, the ukulele guy. By the way, I forgot you and your huband's names. If you are doing the Up and Down Lounge again next year, I'd love to play again.

About 20 minutes later, I got a response:

We are Dave and Rebecca. Would love to have you do it again next year.

So it looks like I have a recurring gig. It's only up from here. Or down, depending of what floor gets pushed.

It's Walking

I started walking. I'm trying to lose some weight. I think I'm doing okay foodwise, but I must be eating exactly the right amount of food. I'm not gaining any weight, and I'm not losing any weight. I figured that if I started walking that might kick my metabolism in the butt. Because I'm walking, I'm noticing other people walking, and I think people are getting way too serious about their walking. It's walking. 

You don't need any special clothes to go walking. It's walking. You don't need special shoes. Okay, you probably don't want shoes that hurt your feet. But you probably don't want shoes that hurt your feet anyway. You don't need a sports drink. It's not working out. It's walking. You don't need a sports bottle. Sure, I guess if you think you're going to get thirsty you could bring a bottle of water. But I honestly don't think you're going to get seriously dehydrated on your walk. You could just as easily have a drink when you get done.

I'm not trying to bash walkers or walking. Okay, I guess I am. a little bit. If you're like me and haven't exercised in a while, walking is a great place to start. It's simple. It's low impact. But it's also just walking.  Let's not get carried away.