The Best/Worst Moments of last night's show

[Christina]

I love that Tom brought up Moving Violations.  I've seen it about a half dozen times in my life and I cannot explain why.  It's not good, and it's kind of sad to watch John Murray try so hard to be Bill, but for whatever reason whenever HBO would run it, I would be compelled beyond all reason to sit there and watch ALL of it.

I saw it so many times I can remember how the theme song goes.

Moving violation -lations -lations -lations

I too have watched this movie several times.

[JesseFromVegas]

Should we start a support group?  And am I the only one of the three of us who also watched Caddyshack II roughly eleventy billion times as well?

[Steve of Bloomington]

I love that Tom brought up Moving Violations.  I've seen it about a half dozen times in my life and I cannot explain why.  It's not good, and it's kind of sad to watch John Murray try so hard to be Bill, but for whatever reason whenever HBO would run it, I would be compelled beyond all reason to sit there and watch ALL of it.

I saw it so many times I can remember how the theme song goes.

Moving violation -lations -lations -lations

I too have watched this movie several times.

Back in the 80s cable TV was kind of a new and exciting thing, but IIRC the same movie would be played over and over, and Moving Violations was one of these. I saw it many times also. All I can remember of it now though is them having sex in the zero-G chamber.

[Crusherkc]

I love that Tom brought up Moving Violations.  I've seen it about a half dozen times in my life and I cannot explain why.  It's not good, and it's kind of sad to watch John Murray try so hard to be Bill, but for whatever reason whenever HBO would run it, I would be compelled beyond all reason to sit there and watch ALL of it.

I saw it so many times I can remember how the theme song goes.

Moving violation -lations -lations -lations

I too have watched this movie several times.

Back in the 80s cable TV was kind of a new and exciting thing, but IIRC the same movie would be played over and over, and Moving Violations was one of these. I saw it many times also. All I can remember of it now though is them having sex in the zero-G chamber.

I saw it dozens of times on cable in 1986-87 then never again since.  This might have been the first time in 25 years I've heard this movie I've seen so many times mentioned.  Jennifer Tilly was only known as Meg's sister and the Where's the Beef? lady's in it. 

This episode's up there w/the Martin Short one.  Fave moment- along the Capturing the Friedmans stuff was the image of Mike sitting in the back of an near empty theater watching Cabin Boy "sitting in the back, laughing like an imbecile."

[Sashamak]

On the F for Fake Criterion DVD, there is a documentary called Orson Welles: One Man Band that covers most of his latter day career which is just fantastic and really interesting for all you Orson Welles-maniacs.



This Week's show was perfect.

[buffcoat]

Whoa, I didn't know that was Stacey Keach's brother.

[dutch]

I haven't seen Moving Violations yet but VICE magazine once hyperbolically stated that it was the greatest movie ever for what that's worth.

wikipedia: " It is notable for starring the lesser-known siblings of many famous actors..."

[JesseFromVegas]

I love that Tom brought up Moving Violations.  I've seen it about a half dozen times in my life and I cannot explain why.  It's not good, and it's kind of sad to watch John Murray try so hard to be Bill, but for whatever reason whenever HBO would run it, I would be compelled beyond all reason to sit there and watch ALL of it.

I saw it so many times I can remember how the theme song goes.

Moving violation -lations -lations -lations

I too have watched this movie several times.

Back in the 80s cable TV was kind of a new and exciting thing, but IIRC the same movie would be played over and over, and Moving Violations was one of these. I saw it many times also. All I can remember of it now though is them having sex in the zero-G chamber.

I saw it dozens of times on cable in 1986-87 then never again since.  This might have been the first time in 25 years I've heard this movie I've seen so many times mentioned.  Jennifer Tilly was only known as Meg's sister and the Where's the Beef? lady's in it. 

This episode's up there w/the Martin Short one.  Fave moment- along the Capturing the Friedmans stuff was the image of Mike sitting in the back of an near empty theater watching Cabin Boy "sitting in the back, laughing like an imbecile."

When I pictured it it had an added Cape Fear element of Mike stalking Werner Herzog while he's trying to watch it.

[cavorting with nudists]

Time for some pedantry!

Re: Orson Welles' War of the Worlds broadcast, the public panic really did happen, though it wasn't a matter of millions of people rioting in the streets. Simon Callow's biography of Welles devotes 10 pages to it. Context: Every day Europe was coming closer and closer to war, and Americans were highly conscious of the fact that we had at the time no system of defense from an air attack. Also, several million people tuned into the broadcast 12 minutes into it--because across the radio dial the extremely popular Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy show cut from comedic hijinks to some operatic songbird yodelling away. A lot of people, in pockets scattered across the country, did take the program literally, but in most cases realized the facts fairly quickly. Here and there somebody would leave their building screaming or run into a public place yelling "We're all going to die!"--stuff like that.

Welles himself had a fairly intense experience of the furore, so it may have looked bigger to him than it would to you and me. First off, there were a slew of angry calls to CBS including death and bomb threats. Then, in the aftermath, the newspapers--already feeling very touchy about losing readers to the competitive medium of radio--were scathing. Many very intemperate words slung about CBS, the Mercury Theater, and Orson Welles. Turned out in the end to be good for his career, though.

One way in which Welles would have been slinging the blarney later in life is if he made out that he deliberately set out to prank the public.  He tried to make his adaptation of the H. G. Wells book as realistic as possible, but it never occurred to anyone that it would be taken literally.  As usual, the broadcast was cut into ay intervals with the reminder that you were listening to the Mercury Theater of the Air, etc. etc.

So, Welles wasn't fibbin' when he said that there was a clusterfuck, but if he ever tried to claim it gave him his bona fides as Master Prankster, he was just being Orson Welles. One thing the Callow biography makes clear that he did consistently throughout was career was lie, lie, lie his bulky ass off.

[not that clay]

That was pretty cool pedantry.

[Greggulator]

Listening to the show now and Chris and Resnick talking about The Friedmans is literally making me cry. "Salt of the Earth"

"What do you think of Garry Schandling?"

On another note, I love The Larry Sanders Show as much as the next guy. This episode is pretty reminiscent of some of the themes of The Larry Sanders Show in terms of the insecurities that are a regular part of the entertainment industry.

What I mean by this: Chris and Adam Resnick spent the first part of the show talking about Cabin Boy and Get A Life, and how their careers didn't elevate beyond cult status because a lot of gatekeepers and executives didn't understand their particular form of genius. And then Tom at the end talks about how he now believes he's the guy that makes a product that a lot of people who get paid love.

It's pretty great that Tom's discussion at the end of the show was launched because of the whole feud with Schandling. It's this whole weird full-circle thing that's really brilliant and oddly poignant.

Great stuff. One of the best episodes ever, and in a completely different way than how The Best Show usually rules.

[crumbum]

Re: Orson Welles, does anyone else remember a story told on a podcast a few years back by either Henry Winkler or Ron Howard (can't remember which), about encountering late-era Welles at the Brown Derby in Hollywood? Apparently Happy Days was filmed more or less across the street. One day either Winkler or Howard was waiting to be seated for lunch when he heard angry grunting and swearing and turned to see the very obese Welles literally stuck in the narrow hallway leading into the restaurant.

I can't help but think I only dreamed hearing this. Nevertheless it wasn't so much the punchline as the strange cultural mashup implied by the story that stuck in my mind.

[YuriDedman]

[Steve of Bloomington]

On a very small scale and many years later I experienced the War of The Worlds hoax myself. My parents had a book about it on the shelf along with a lot of their old college books. The cover had a crude silhouette of a spaceship on it. I picked it up and opened to the middle and started reading a transcript of the broadcast, and for a little while I thought, woah, we got attacked by aliens, this is really scary and I hope that doesn't happen again.

[BadGuyZero]

There's a nice little WOTW moment in Woody Allen's Radio Days.