Gene Wilder: The Suspense Is Terrible, I Hope It Will Last

               I am going to take a quick break from the series about my mother’s favorite movies because a few days ago, a member of my family passed away.  I never met this man face to face and he never personally knew me.  However he was a part of the family, whether he would have liked it or not.  Oh and to be more confusing, he was not just one man.  He was The Waco Kid, Dr. Frederick Frankenstein, and Sigurson Holmes all wrapped up in single man, the now late but forever great, Gene Wilder.

            Now I rarely get worked up about celebrity deaths.  Yes, I’m sad with some and apathetic with most passings, like the majority of us is but would never really admit.  For instance, yes when I heard about David Bowie’s death I was sad (no, not really, but play along with me), but it didn’t make me wear sackcloth and ashes, mourning his passing as if Beethoven himself were being planted.  But never mind, people can mourn whomever they would like, however they would like, that’s not the point of this post.

            So I think the last celebrity that truly made me feel bad when they passed away was John Candy.  His films were an entertainment staple in my household for years.  I cannot recall the amount of time I watched Armed and Dangerous or Who’s Harry Crumb? as a child.  His work on SCTV, especially as Johnny LaRue or mayor Tommy Shanks, was always a welcome sight in our home.  I think of all the wonderful work he could have done over the past 20 years and it just depresses me even more.  His talent was huge and the loss was great.

            Wilder’s death is along similar lines.  When I think of Wilder, I think of my parents.  I remember my mother laughing at Young Frankenstein or my father trying to catch his breath while watching Blazing Saddles.  (Yes, it was the farting scene.  It nailed him every single time.  I’d like to say that I’m more mature, but no, I just watched it today and I was laughing my arse off.)  Some of my fondest memories are of my folks thoroughly enjoying Gene Wilder on the screen.

No, this is not edited.  That is a yarmulked Han Solo in a movie with the top-billed Gene Wilder.

 I remember being perched on my uncle’s knee witnessing the wonder of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory and wondered what I would do with flavored wallpaper.  I cannot count the amount of hours my brother and I spent watching an edited version of The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother that was taped off of TV.  We knew the commercials by heart.  Wilder became a member of the family, the same as Groucho Marx, the Zucker Brothers, and Mel Brooks.  (We also adopted some Gentiles too, but they weren’t as funny.)

Feldman, Kahn, DeLuise, and now Wilder are all gone, but are all great in this.

Gene Wilder had a terrific sense of timing.  His ability to get to a towering rage was substantial; nobody could ever scream like Gene Wilder.  His writing was smart, his directing was sure, and his acting was terrific.  Look at Blazing Saddles.  I bet you never knew he was a last minute replacement for a different actor that was cast but couldn’t physically do the job.  Yeah, The Waco Kid was a eleventh hour substitute and Wilder not only knocked it out of the park but also had some amazing chemistry with Cleavon Little to boot. 

Pay attention to Wilder in The Producers and see how he manages to hold his own amidst the larger than life lunatics that populate that picture.  Focus on Wilder’s segment in Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex and notice that he is truly convincing in portraying a man that falls in love with a sheep.  (Seriously I am not giving him the due that he deserves for that movie.  If Woody Allen bothers you for some reason, just watch Wilder’s part, you won’t regret it.)  Watch him in Silver Streak or any of the movies that he did with Richard Pryor and see the love that those two had for each other.  Even if the movies themselves started to get progressively worse, Wilder and Pryor were always a delight.

See?  I wasn't kidding!  But please, please see it!

 

Gene Wilder of course was married to the wonderful comedienne Gilda Radner up to her own untimely death from ovarian cancer.  This took on greater import in my own life when my mother was diagnosed with this very same disease.  Although it eventually took her life as well, I was inspired by Wilder when I saw how supportive he was of Gilda throughout the entire ordeal.  His partnership in founding Gilda’s Club in giving those battling cancer a place to interact with others who are or were suffering from the disease is an incredible legacy.

Way back when in the dim dark past of 2003 or so, I wrote a screenplay.  Now, it is a turd, but a turd that at the time was a labor of love to evacuate.  In fact, I was so proud of this, I once contemplated showing it to my wife, but decided against it.  Yes, it is that good!  However, there was a scene in the script that if it was ever produced, I would have wanted Gene Wilder cast in it.  Unlike any other role in the damn thing, I wrote it with him in mind.  Not that he ever would have accepted doing it, even at that point in his life, but it was there and hasn’t been reedited since 2004, so you know it is good!

Only Wilder and Pryor could pull this scene off and make it the absolute gem that it is.

 

Another way that Wilder has left an imprint in my life was that I gave one of his character’s names to a child of mine.  My firstborn son’s middle name is Frederick, after Wilder’s character in Young Frankenstein.  And yes, I didn’t tell my wife until well after the birth certificate was printed where the idea for the name came from.  She just thought it sounded nice and then I had to go ahead and ruin it.

There are few of my entertainment inspirations that are still upright among the land of the living.  Most of my favorite film and television stars passed away long before I was even born, let alone a fan of their work.  But Wilder was different.  He became a member of our family.  He is sorely missed, but with his catalog of work available at my fingertips, he is not far away.  

Fare thee well, Dr. Frahnkensteen.  

A Time To Pause...So Let's Watch A Movie!

            Thank you for joining me once again, dear reader, as I once again traverse and travel and travail and into the wonderful land of bloggerisms.  I would like to thank those that decided to join me on this post and if you’ve already clicked to something else because you found out that a Pokémon is located inside of the local nuclear reactor and you’ve just got to get it, then Godspeed on your journey!
 

            ESPN every year holds a fake gala that they call the ESPY awards.  ESPY of course stands for “Ewww, Sports Performers? Yuck!” which is an immature acronym and I admittedly didn’t think it through whilst fabricating it from the ether whatsoever.  Aside from self-aggrandizing sports figures, who don’t get enough attention already through their lucrative contracts, their lucrative endorsement deals, their lucrative side investments, and their lucrative percentages from their lucrative commercials, the ESPYs are crucial because they fill the one day of the year where there’s no real sports going on and they need to put something on the air in Bristol.  (Hey, anything’s better than putting on a repeat of a WNBA game, right?  Right?!  Ahem.)

 

            However there is a bright spot to the ESPYs and that is the day long auction and awareness given for the V Foundation for Cancer Research.  The V Foundation has to date given over $150 million towards cancer research and is a very worthwhile organization.  It was set up by Jim Valvano and ESPN while Valvano was fighting his own battle with cancer.  Sorry for taking a serious note all of a sudden, but ESPN’s support of the V Foundation is one of the nobler things about the network and I applaud them in their efforts.

 

            So as I was listening to the ESPN radio auctions and stories about those who had survived cancer, those who had succumbed to cancer, and those who were afflicted by cancer in their families, I realized that the anniversary of my own mother’s death from cancer is coming up.  Perhaps with that mindset, the stories I was hearing on the air affected me more than normal.  I was immediately transported back to 2000 and watching my mother fight, struggle, and ultimately yield to the cancer that had taken over her body.

 

            She fought that disease with ultimately great faith and with great humor given the circumstances.  I will always be influenced by her ability to handle something that physically, emotionally, and spiritually draining.  How she and my father were able to even cope was amazing in and of itself to me.  If and when I ever have to face similar situations, I only pray that I will be able to have just a tenth of the courage and resolve that they displayed.

 

            But rather than dwell on those final days, I want to use this as a moment to remember one of my mother’s great legacies in my life: her love of movies.  My mother thoroughly enjoyed film and introduced me to the classics that she enjoyed.  My parents would set up the VCR (look it up, kids) and would tape movies from whatever the local network affiliate would air during their Late Late Show (look it up again, kids).  We got most of the films of the Marx Brothers this way and this is how I became the only 2^nd grader at Gethsemane Evangelical Lutheran to quote Groucho lines and appear to be far wittier than I ever would be.  Hey, if you have to steal, then steal from the best! 

 

             Now with such a large introduction being said, I hope that you would indulge me further as I start a series of posts that will look at some of my mother’s favorite films.  I never tire of watching these particular movies and constantly find something new and interesting within them.  I will dive mostly in the pool of classic movies because frankly they are classic for a reason.  By the way, yes I know that a couple of them are in icky black and white, but suck it up buttercup, you’ll be just fine.  Besides, these films should be given a looksee if you’ve never had the chance to watch them.  And if you have watched them, take a moment to think about a mother and her son bonding over movies and watch them again. 

Ghostbusted!

            Once again we must traverse into the land of fake outrage and make believe problems that magically come along every 12.7 minutes in today’s society.  Some are angered so much by these pseudo-issues that they dare to show their solidarity by retweeting a blog post based off an Instagram meme that was originally part of a Facebook share that originated from a DOS file found on a 3.5 floppy disk back when dinosaurs ruled the earth and the Lakers ruled the court.  As you might divine from my subtle cues, I find social media to be nothing but a whiny mob that can’t wait to light their torches chasing down the fabricated Frankenstein monster of the week.  This whole time they could be reposting and sharing these blog posts of mine instead.  Priorities, people!

            One such cause celebre amongst the clinically indignant revolves around the Ghostbusters reboot that is coming out this summer.  I haven’t seen a frame of film beyond two lackluster trailers, but heaven forbid I dare to criticize or have a bad feeling about it or just have overwhelming apathy that might just lead to vehement indifference at best.  Yep, at the end of the day, I just don’t really care.

Here is Dan Aykroyd with his storage cabinet for the Ghostbusters 3 scripts.

            (Well, I care enough to bother you all with this drivel, so that must ultimately mean something, and if not to you personally, then perhaps to science in general.  The research team from the University of St. Copious of Western East Prussia has yet to reveal their findings to me, despite the voluminous grants.  When I queried their team leader as to the results, I was given the following phrase which I shall translate from the original German, “Back off man, I’m a scientist.”  So my hopes are high.)

Anyway, somehow by not endorsing this film that I have not seen, this makes me out to be a sexist misogynist dinosaur, a relic of the Cold War.  Oh, wait.  No, that is M’s description of James Bond in GoldenEye.  Hm.  Nevertheless, I’ll take it.  Pierce Brosnan is above all one damn charming human being, which is more than I can say about the critics that demand one needs to take a hyperbolic stand on this reboot.

            This dynamic surrounding this Ghostbusters noise is interesting because it ultimately shows a contrived war between fanboys and social justicers.  The fanboys are just plain irked because this is not the movie they signed up for and have waited since 1989 to see.  The social justicers are taking any kind of criticism as being an affront towards women as the reboot has recast the original roles with female characters.  The nerds and the slacktivists are going at it and frankly it is rather astounding to watch.  Both groups have so much in common: an aversion to sunshine, an immeasurable amount of time spent in front of a screen of some variety, and an unwillingness to enjoy actual life outside of their mom’s basements.

            Do I have a dog in the fight?  Not really, as any hope for a Ghostbusters movie that I might have conceivably wanted to see ended with the death of Harold Ramis.  The studio hemmed and hawed way too long in-between movies and could have restarted this franchise with the original cast back in the mid-1990s through mid-2000s…but didn’t.  Bill Murray’s acting star continued to rise despite movies like Larger than Life, Dan Aykroyd kept carrying on the fight with multiple drafts in development hell, Harold Ramis kept directing other movies, Rick Moranis became far more selective, Sigourney Weaver kept doing progressively worse Alien movies, and Ernie Hudson just wanted a phone call.     

Sometimes, one just wants to be the Keymaster.  And yes, I know Sigourney is the Gatekeeper.

            However, everything became moot when Ramis died.  Without his participation, I just didn’t care about any kind of new Ghostbusters movie.  I might have been possibly slightly interested at best had the surviving cast gotten together, but at the end of the day, far too many remakes, reboots, reimaginings, sequels, and prequels elsewhere have sucked my interest well completely dry.  Besides, Ghostbusters in 1984 worked because it had an original idea and an original script and great casting.  Ghostbusters in 2016 is anything but original beyond the novelty of casting the roles with women.  The bottom line: preying on my nostalgia is not an original thought whatsoever.

He once had part of a Slinky, but he straightened it.  Yeah, I miss him too.

            That first trailer was such a downer as well.  The footage was meh, the jokes were mostly hackneyed with just a hint of racism, and the theme song was a lone melody line slowly played by an obviously sad pianist.  And I’m not a complete elitist snob when it comes to the nostalgia factor a trailer can bring if done properly.  Was I happy to see Indiana Jones in a trailer when Kingdom of the Crystal Skull came out?  Oh, yes.  Was I overjoyed and kind of misty-eyed when I saw Chewbacca and Han in The Force Awakens trailer?  You bet!  Were there any non-Harrison Ford related trailers that made me take notice in the past decade?  Not really.  Perhaps if they cast Ford as Indiana Solo in the new Ghostbusters movie, I would’ve taken notice.  (Can’t you just imagine Harrison Ford with a proton pack?  The mind boggles!) 

            Do I even care about the gender aspect of this movie?  You could have recast this with the Seth Rogan/James Franco/Judd Apatow cast of male faces that seem to permeate every single new comedy of the past decade and I would have just as much ennui.  Even if they had a good script, a new cast was placed in a no-win situation regardless of gender because of the love of the original film that has existed for over 30 years. 

              Is character of Walter Peck in the reboot?  As he doesn't have a dick either, he'd fit right in.

Are there some that use the female cast as a reason for a preconceived dismissive attitude towards this movie?  Yep, but that is such a mindlessly easy low denominator.  Why grasp at such imbecilic low hanging fruit as a reason in hating this project when there are so many other good reasons to not like this.  What reasons, you say?  Well, I’m glad I had me ask this question for you!

  

For instance:

·         Again, the trailers haven’t dazzled me for the aforementioned reasons.  Beyond that, swirly CG ain’t enough to impress/frighten/humor me.  Why are the effects from 1984 or even from the 1989 sequel looking way better to my ever-increasingly elderly eyes than this new stuff?

·         I’ve heard nothing but turmoil was involved behind the scenes including fights among the main cast.  (No, thank you, North Korean email hackers!) This never results in an awesome final product.

·         According to reports, the script never really came together for the director and stars.  Certain cast members realized this wasn’t the movie they signed up for in the first place.

·         The cast really haven’t come out endorsing this movie even as the release date looms ever closer, aside from feebly attacking individual tweet trolls.

·         The promotional items have been met with irrelevance if you can even find them.  Compare that attitude with the new Star Wars movies or Batman Vs Superman.  Mark Hamill’s face was on posters back in 2013 and the new Batman was seemingly being pushed on the public back when Jimmy Carter was in office.  Yes, Affleck is that old.

·         The original cast from 1984 was apparently threatened with legal action if they didn’t film cameos for this movie.  Yeah, that brings a lot of good will when you have to subpoena Annie Potts to show up.

·         Ramis is still dead.  This is still the saddest aspect of this whole thing.  It feels as if the dirt was still fresh on the coffin and studio greenlights suddenly appeared out of the woodwork.

·         Ivan Reitman has been completely screwed out of the process, despite being a producer and director of the original movies.   

·         And the franchise opportunities appear to have been whizzed down the respective legs of the now-removed studio brass that created this nonsense in the first place.  Damage control is in full effect.  Batten down the hatches.  Seal the bunker.  Find that pill we gave to you should you be captured.

On the flipside, I refuse to say that I’m all for this movie just because it has an all-female group of Ghostbusters.  Sorry, but just because you switch a cosmetic aspect of the original for your remake, doesn’t automatically engender my wholehearted support.  Let’s say just as a hypothetical example, there was a remake of The Honeymooners but they just changed the race of the protagonists.  Oh, wait.  That did happen?  Was it any good?  Oh, really?  Yikes.  Let me rethink and change the scenario, but what movie?  I got it! 

What if there was a reboot of Caddyshack II but they changed the race of the protagonists?  There, that would be a foolish endeavor to say the least!  Hm?  What’s that you are saying in this fictional one-on-one conversation?  Who’s Your Caddy?  Nah…really?  Not again!  Not that I’m against the idea of remaking a bad movie in trying to make it good, but human beings actually went ahead and remade this thereby making Happy Gilmore a more original golf movie idea at the end of the day?  Should we really give Adam Sandler these kinds of accolades for originality?  Is this where we’ve finally ended up?  Argh.

       It hasn't been cheap, but in order to ensure that no one will ever have to watch Caddyshack II again, I've transferred all existing copies over to Betamax.

          (And yes, don’t tell me that Who’s Your Caddy? was a pastiche on the original Caddyshack, because it wasn’t!  Al Czervik never bought Bushwood, he only threatened to buy it.  The final tournament in that movie was for cash, not the country club.  However, Jack Hartounian in the sequel did actually buy Bushwood via Ty Webb’s stock in the club.  So the parallels are closer to the second movie rather than the first.  And yes, I thought about this more than I should have and yes, this is my logical way to remove the original Caddyshack away from having anything to do with this.  Ahem, moving on…)

Now could this Ghostbusters surprise everyone and be actually funny and actually make money?  Stranger things have happened.  No one really knew if the original movie was even going to be a hit, let alone break even.  From that film alone, aside from making a boatload of cash, we got a best-selling soundtrack, tons of merchandising, a couple of cartoon series, a unfairly bashed sequel, toy figures, model cars, and a lot of fond memories. 

Ah, to be back in the day when the only person ticked off about Ghostbusters was Huey Lewis.

So far the best thing I can say about this rebootmakemagining is that it should push the fans back to appreciating Ghostbusters 2 as being a quite funny movie and a worthy sequel.  That was the best thing about the Star Wars prequels: it gave fans a newfound gratitude for Return of the Jedi.  The best thing about Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: going back to show some much-belated love to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. 

            At the end of the day, I am not the biggest Ghostbusters aficionado on the planet.  Bill Murray did some of his best work in Groundhog Day and Caddyshack.  Dan Aykroyd was great for bringing us The Blues Brothers and starring in 1987’s underappreciated Dragnet and The Great Outdoors.  Harold Ramis gave us Caddyshack and National Lampoon’s Vacation, co-wrote National Lampoon’s Animal House, and was hilarious in Stripes, which National Lampoon had nothing to do with.  Rick Moranis on SCTV was incredible and he was the soul of the Spaceballs.  Sigourney Weaver will always be Ripley to me. 

Ghostbusters is not holy ground for me.  I am a fan, but not a diehard one.  However, I think an opportunity was lost and a maligned reboot now exists.  Think I’ll watch Ghostbusters 2 again to cheer myself up, which you all should do anyway.  Right?  Promise me.  Go give it another whirl.  Seriously, Bill is firing on all cynical cylinders in that one.

P.S.

The saddest part of all this nonsense aside from the passing away of Harold Ramis: the fact that they are bringing back Hi-C Ecto-Cooler as some sort of cross-promotional item, thereby leaving more shattered memories in their wake.  Damn you Sony, because you are now affecting the children.  And by children, I mean me.  Haven’t you any sense of decency? 

Hey, I wanted it back too...but not at such a pop-cultural price.

C'mon Mel, Let's Get Spaceballs 2 Going Soon!

            Every once in a great while, my wife and I manage to get out of the house sans children.  Usually it comes in the form of one of us taking the garbage out whilst the other one gets the mail.  We treasure these moments of sheer unadulterated bliss.  But soft, the dawn comes in the form of the pups we have brought forth on the earth and our encounters like this must be extinguished quickly. 

            But in ever rarer circumstances, we actually get someone to watch the children for extended periods of time.  This is a task not for the faint of heart or even the heart of faint, but after throwing fistfuls of cash at the sitter and leaving plenty of goldfish snacks in our wake, we can go out!  My wife and I even decided to try something that I’ve heard is recently trending among the twittering young folk or “twits” for short: dinner and a movie.

            What should catch my wandering eye at the cinegoogleplex?  Well, I heard that there was a new film from a fledgling young filmmaker that might need my assistance at the box office.  After all, I want nothing but bonhomie for this struggling little cinematic enterprise and golly, I just want to help in any way that I can.  Oh, all right we went to see Star Wars: The Cash Register Awakens.  Take my money now, here just take it.

 

This is more of Mark Hamill than you'll ever see in the movie.

 

            No, we weren’t part of the herd of zealots that were camping out weeks in advance, dressed up in their 4-LOM outfits as sad looking jedis hide their paunches while staging lightsaber fights for the ever smirking local news cameras filming a fill-in for the night broadcast.  Instead we waited a couple of weeks later in the hopes that the crowds had dimmed somewhat…and there still was an almost sellout crowd.  Ye gods people, really?  Is there such a dearth of entertainment in your life that you’re still going to see this thing?  Actually, for us it almost came down to our seeing The Hateful Eight instead, but as Tarantino manages to fill approximately 3 hours with chatty cowboys, we took a pass to go see X-Wing fighters mindlessly shooting things in a shorter runtime instead.  Hey, babysitters with nerves of steel ain’t cheap!

 

Okay, here's 4-LOM, as if you didn't remember him from Empire.

 

            So what about this Star Wars: The Bottomless Sack Of Cash Awakens?  Well, let’s get the positives out of the way first and no, as I am not 8 years old, I don’t bother with spoiler alerts.  Suck it up buttercup, I’m going in full throttle and that ought to keep those whiners off my back.

            The two actors that were brought in to play our two new heroes aren’t bad and I actually grew to like them as the movie continued.  This says a lot in our day and age and the fact that I have a heart of granite when it comes to new faces on the screen.  But actually I wasn’t angered by them and am willing to give them a chance.  Of course I won’t bother to look up their names but British Girl and Black Ex-Stormtrooper Dude, you were both just fine!

            I’d pay just to see an hour of the Millennium Falcon fly in space and shoot things.  No, really, just have that ship fly all over the screen and the only complaint I’d have would be that the movie ended and there was no more Falcon footage.  I’m actually ticked off that there wasn’t any screen time devoted to that ship in the Captain America: Civil War trailer that preceded the movie.  C’mon you’re all Disney now, let’s get some damn parsecs run in the Marvel U! 

The single greatest toy in the history of the world.  Although I only had one Stormtrooper, which made invasions hard.

 

            Always willing to see more banter with Han Solo and Chewbacca too, so this was a welcome sight.  Why we never got a side movie just based on their adventures, I will never know.  A missed opportunity.  Wait, there is the Holiday Special, isn’t there?  Well, that’s fun too!  Yay!

            Also the new droid is cute, I get it.  Yet I wasn’t annoyed.  I should have been, truly.  But I wasn’t and I’m not sure if I like that aspect of my usually cynical hide crumbling like stale bread when confronted with an adorable basketball that beeps.

            Okay, that should just about wrap things up with the rainbows and puppies!  I have a feeling that this movie is just going to end up being another one of those “Hmmmm…on second viewing…this isn’t that great” movies.  Sure, people are just wetting themselves over seeing a new Star Wars in the theater, but the prequels and the special editions got the same reaction.  Let’s face it: we haven’t gotten a good Star Wars movie since 1983 and that is only because we rewrote history regarding our responses to Jedi because the prequels were far worse.  This means that we haven’t really had a great Star Wars movie since 1980.  Nineteen hundred and eighty.  Yeah, that’s a while.

            Now, is this movie great?  Nope.  Sure, I was entertained, but I was never pulled into this story like I was in the originals.  Yeah, I know that I was in single digits and there will always be a feeling of nostalgic magic with the original trilogy, but all I ask is to be drawn into these movies and I always had a feeling of disconnect with this latest one.

            Too many plot holes would be one big problem I had.  So this Rey character who has never even bothered with the force before going on this adventure, suddenly knows that she can mind control like the wizened Ben Kenobi and fully trained Luke Skywalker could?  Ahem, how exactly?  I can believe that perhaps she taps into the force in a moment of emotional chaos like when she was being attacked or something, but being able to nonchalantly control the weak-minded?  Uh, no.  Also she never picked up a lightsaber before and she can successfully fight someone who has received training?  Uh, no again.  I’m sure this was supposed to raise questions for later movies, but instead I’m just an angry theater patron at that point.  Just say she’s Luke daughter and be done with it, okay?

            The First Order never learned from the Empire did they?  Still making huge laser beams from places with known weaknesses.  Also they just made their Death Star a Death Planet and harnessed a sun’s energy to create a planet-destroying beam of energy.  This is exactly the power that was talked about in Plan Nine from Outer Space.  Yep, this means that Ed Wood’s plot points were stolen by J.J. Abrams.  Just plain awesome.  Oh, and thanks for tacking on the Episode 4 & 6 “do or die space mission to blow up the Death Star” ending here too.  I guess when you can’t think of a finale other than staring at Mark Hamill, this is the safest route to go.

Old Han Lego figure.  Nothing is more depressing.
 

            Also don’t think that I wasn’t going to notice there was no explanation as to how Poe Dameron got back to the Resistance forces after crashing that TIE fighter with Finn on Jakku.  Yeah, there was quite the hubbub to get off of that planet with Rey and Finn, but Poe just managed to hotshot his way out of there?  Somehow?  I cannot believe I’m remembering these characters names.

            Speaking of which, as they were heavily marketed with their toys and nonsense before Christmas, Captain Phasma and Kylo Ren, I’ve got a bone to pick.  Phasma apparently is all shiny, was featured heavily in promos, and is at least voiced by a woman.  Beyond that we know that she is shiny and gets a blaster pointed at the back of her head during her amazing 6 minutes of screen time.  Oh, and I guess she’s evil.  I think.

            As for the delinquent son of Han and Leia, yeah, you’re a brat, that’s all.  Then again with Anakin as your grandfather, I suppose whiny tantrums run in your family.  Do I believe for a second this little wanker killed Han?  No.  Do I believe a contract where Ford didn’t want to do more of these?  Yep.  So as contracts dictate plot, contracts for the win!  Also, your voice modulator thingy is amazingly grating.  Stop using it.  Please.

            Why are there the remains of Star Destroyers and the like on Jakku?  Is this ever explained?  Why is there so much to scavenge?  Was there a terrific battle that we never heard about?  I mean the trailers just hammered this footage home every single time, I had hoped that it was plot-related…but nope.  Is Jakku the planet that Endor was a moon for?  Did Kylo Ren slaughter ewoks to get his grandfather’s melted helmet?  Agh.

            You go the trouble of dragging Max Von Sydow into this movie and you kill him in the first ten minutes?!  Max Von Sydow played chess with death and this is what you do to him?  You also drag John Williams to score this thing and you don’t let him create anything memorable in it.  Also, Chewie wouldn’t walk with Rey up the stone steps to see his good friend Luke at the end of the movie?  I can understand R2 and 3PO not making the trek, but the Wookiee can’t make it?

            Okay, now I’m getting nitpicky.  But I should hope that after all the time and effort that the product would be better.  Is this worse than the prequels?  Oh, no, not at all.  But almost anything is better than the prequels.  Even Star Trek V is better, oh yes it is.  But perhaps the most glaring thing I noticed with Star Wars: My Empty Wallet Awakens, is that the movie seemed rushed and the ending was just tacked on.  It is almost like Abrams took so much time developing the new characters and then clocked the runtime, noticing that he had to get to blowing stuff up/Han dying plot moments.

            We left the theater realizing the sum didn’t add up from the parts and decided to go home.  Sure it was a Star Wars movie, but it wasn’t really that either.  I am hoping that a lot of Lawrence Kasdan’s ideas were thrown aside, because I expect better from him too.  But it could have been worse.  This movie could have been Spectre.  I don’t think I could have taken it, if it were.

            Oh and would it have killed you to get 20^th Century Fox’s fanfare for this one?  It would have been worth the money.  At least the Disney logo was nowhere to be found but their presence was felt, being the dark empire as it is.  Perhaps the next movie would have a bunch of X-Wings fighting Disneyland.  Now that’s a great plot idea!  Where’s J.J.?

Isn't this the most chilling image you've ever seen?

If All The World’s Indeed A Stage, Where Are The Dressing Rooms Again?

            Yes, dear sweet, voluminous, voluptuous reader, I have once again decided to peer into the murky depths of my factual inaccuracies and reveal even more of my downright illustriously fabricated stagebound past.  I am retreading the boards so to speak to use a phrase per se and together we shall all grow as people, as carbon based lifeforms, and as expert salesmen of vinyl all-weather siding.  Well, perhaps I have exaggerated.  We are definitely made up of more than just carbon.

             Given the figurative volumes that have attempted to compile my vast stage background, I have once again decided to take everyone on a Poseidon Adventure of sorts into the Towering Inferno of my past heights and down through on a Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea of my past depths so that the Swarm of memories can overtake each of us up until the moment When Time Ran Out.  Yes, through these memories we can all get Beyond the Poseidon Adventure of my past stage experiences.  Now if all of those Irwin Allen references aren’t enough of a clue that I don’t know what I’m talking about, then I don’t know anything about The Story of Mankind. 

            The year was 1988 and my parents, determined to scar my fragile emotional make-up decided to move from the “City of Brotherly Love” also known as Milwaukee, WI to the “Biggest Moderately-Apportioned City in the World of Washington County”, also known as Hartford, WI.  Hartford is of course known for three things: 1) W.B. Place, where you can tan your hides, 2) The Mineshaft restaurant and bar, where you can hide your tans, and 3) the ability to cruelly disprove the comedy rule of threes.

             My new school was Peace Lutheran School and upon entering 5^th grade there, the only thought I had was fixating on escaping back to my old life.  This was going to prove difficult as I didn’t know even rudimentary German.  My brother’s ability to make a fake passport for me proved to be a dead-end as he was more interested in beating Super Mario Brothers.  Lightbulbs for my tunnel proved to be difficult to smuggle out past my eagle-eyed father in mass quantities.  My parents, showering me with love and concern probably in an effort to distract me in my efforts, had shown themselves to be more than worthy opponents.  I was broken, dejected, and despondent.  In a word that I created through my distraughtness, I was disconsolable.

            Despite the world weighing my little ten year old shoulders down, I could take comfort in a tiny glimmer of hope.  One infinitesimal light in the gloomy darkness could lead me out of this doom and gloom.  Peace Lutheran happened to have some really cute girls in attendance.  Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Man, does this guy drone on in a shallow and sad way!”  However I would counter with the clever bon mot of “Oh, you think so?!  Well, you ain’t read nothing yet!”

             Now what in the name of all that is moderately sacred has any of this to do with relaying      my past stage experience?  I’m glad that someone like me had the nerve to ask myself this very question that I asked moi.  What draws people to the stage?  Is it the passion for acting? Maybe.  Is it the drive to portray wonderful well-written characters?  Eh, sure.  Is it the wanting to become rich and famous?  I think this is closer to the mark.  Is it to meet ladies?  Yes.  There I said it.  Yes, this is the reason to act.  “But wouldn’t being a football player be a better route to gaining the attention of toothsome lasses?” you might assuredly inquire.  Sure, if you have a modicum of athletic ability.  But the gridiron attracts the manliest of male men and the stage, well, doesn’t.  For someone like me, who is enchanted with the concept of being surrounded by ladies without any testosterone laden buffoons in shoulder pads to compete with, the stage is a perfect setting!  Sure in a locker room I wouldn’t get a second glance from the opposite sex.  But when I’m surrounded by other guys that can best be described as “noodly drama nerds”, I am a demigod by comparison.

            Now did this ever help me achieve a legendary reputation with the lovely ladies of the stage?  I can answer with a clever and resounding “Nope!”  Oh sure I gave some wonderful backrubs to some very lovely shoulders indeed, but most if not all of those ladies did in the end enjoy the company of those linebackers who ultimately thought that Shakespeare was something you drank and Molière was something you had a dermatologist examine.

            Ah but this bitterness was the result of future dramatic enterprises on the stage, not necessarily whilst in my remaining halcyon grade school years.  In fact from fifth through eighth grade I never was in a school production.  Oh sure there were many offers from all throughout the extensive Lutheran parochial grade school drama circuits for me to return, but I declined all offers, imagined or fictional.  Why this vacancy of my presence from the stage?  I like to think that as I was being mandatorily encouraged to take up a musical instrument by my parents, my dedication to being a mediocre at best saxophone player was my driving, albeit at slow to moderate speed, focus at the time.  However, upon some research I discovered that this was hopelessly inaccurate and in fact libelous to me, whom I didn’t want to sue in the first place.  Upon further review I believe that laziness combined with apathy made a wonderful cocktail that I downed liberally at the time and this was in fact the reason.

            Yet I was in two forensics competitions at the time of 7^th and 8^th grade however, so my instincts remained sharpened by that experience.  In 7^th grade, I handpicked a fellow student to give me straight lines as I delivered an Abbott and Costello routine that I had transcribed from a worn cassette tape.  This of course is shocking to most readers that will grudgingly admit that I am their acquaintance.  I of course have incredible disdain for Bud & Lou.  Sure, there are some funny moments in Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein and Who’s On First is a routine that if performed correctly shows that you have incredible comic timing.  But beyond that, I have always viewed them as lower rung Three Stooges mimics that appeal to the lowest common denominator, which is why their films made money as brighter talents such as W.C. Fields and the Marx Brothers withered and died, but not that I’m bitterly angry about that.

            I had heard this routine on tape many times and as it wasn’t Who’s On First and as I knew it more or less from memory already, I could dazzle the judges and blow away the competition at the Lutheran grade school forensics meet with my mad verbiage skills.  I handpicked my straight man Jeff from a literal crowd of 4 other guys in my class and after a smidgen of rehearsal and a practice run in front of the class, we went into the throng of competitors a few weeks later.

            I don’t know if you’ve ever had what some would call the agony of having to sit through a classroom filled with grade school forensics presentations, but allow me to dissuade your fears and apprehension and tell you the truth.  It is appalling in its badly applied mediocrity.  Ye gods.  Oh sure, the parents were gleaming with pride for their little moppets that were all most certainly going to be the next lighting stand-in for the next Haley Joel Osment, but for the rest of us it was a trial by badly memorized fire.

            However, I knew that we were going to amaze with our shocking maturity and comic timing.  So the moment had come and we proceeded to go through the routine, beat for beat, laugh for laugh.  We followed the same technique that Bud & Lou had and knew where the laughs were and it all fell into place.  I thought we had a lock for a first place blue ribbon of achievement and wonder.  And then the judges came back with their results and the red ribbon of a second place, the first place for failures, was handed to us.  I was stunned.  My ego is not that terrific to begin with but I thought we were a lock.  When I asked a judge what we could have done differently, she said “It was just great and funny but then you swore, so I had to dock you.”

            What?  I swore?!  When was that?  She said that it was when I said someone did something just for the “hell of it”.  I then reminded her that as the entire performed piece is a collection of bad fish puns and fish-related jokes, I actually and truthfully did say the person in question just did it for the halibut.  HALIBUT!  A bad fish pun.  Not a cuss, mild as it would have been IF I actually said it.  So we weren’t being graded on performance but on single misheard pun?  Alas, she couldn’t be swayed and as this was being held at a Lutheran grade school forensics competition at a Lutheran high school, the self-righteous nonsense from the religiously indignant cloth-eared buffoon judges held firm. 

           (Not that I’m still bitter, mind you.  I’ve come to realize that the level of humor needed to amuse most Lutherans hovers somewhere between an off-color joke from the late 1700s about Catholics and the mid-1990s masterworks of Sir Adam Sandler.  Sadly even Abbott and Costello must be Bollinger compared to the stale Bud Light of Mike & Molly they’re used to imbibing.)

Did this setback set me back?  Not at all!  For I knew I would be back that next year and perform yet again.  I most certainly would show them and go out in a blaze of glory that would rival anything that Jon Bon Jovi sang about Emilio Estevez playing a cowboy.  But that is another story that I need time to enhance with dramatic fiction.  You’re welcome as always and stay tuned for the thrilling penultimate conclusion!