What's Up, Docs?: Electric Big-Bird-Kareem-a-Loo...

Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films (2014)
Dir.: Mark Hartley
TC4P Rating: 7/9

In the mid-1980s, after I had become a legitimate member of the working class and was sitting not so comfortably in my place at the bottom rung of the ladder, I still held starry-eyed dreams of film glory; of someday being discovered for my obvious but unrecognized talents, and that I would someday be feted as a great writer and director. That I didn't have the actual drive or knowledge (let alone talent) to become that person didn't matter. I was going to be the next Spielberg simply by the fact that I was just as much a movie nut as he was. I was compelled by the same obsession... who needed to do the leg work? 

In my day job at a news agency, I found out early on that we carried in our chain of bookstores, but only a particular couple of locations, the film industry journal, Variety. Not the daily version; we were in Anchorage, Alaska after all, and our pubs at the time were already so delayed by shipping woes that daily sales of the publication would have been ridiculous. But we did carry the weekly version, a thick chunk of tall newsprint that was still a couple of weeks behind when we carried it. 

For a few years, I would purchase my weekly Variety faithfully, and then play the absorbed media fanatic as I sat in hot dog shoppes and fast food restaurants perusing every single page of every single issue, scanning each ad, blurb, obituary, and chart, in trying to figure out the industry and exactly how I would make my inroad. I became wise to the Zack Norman mentions in each issue, an actor mostly known now for his supporting role in the Romancing the Stone movies alongside Danny De Vito, who laboriously purchased his own ads in Variety for many years to promote himself. (As MST3K would mock at one point, "Zack Norman is 'Sammy' in 'Chief Zabu'!) But mostly, from those bygone days reading through Variety in the '80s, I remember Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, two Israeli producers who ran (mostly amok) promoting the "achievements" of their film studio named Cannon Films. It was hard to miss their ads in Variety. Like their movies, the ads for Golan-Globus productions practically screamed for attention, even when the product was a complete junker. But Golan-Globus at least knew how to get their movies made.

As a young film fan of that time, I was prone to seeing just about every big (and even low) budget action, science fiction, martial arts, and horror flick that happened across the big screen. And the Cannon Group was behind a whole hell of a lot of those flicks. Sly Stallone, Lou Ferrigno, Charles Bronson, Chuck Norris, Sho Kosugi, Jean-Claude Van Damme, John and Bo Derek... they made 'em with Cannon. Masters of the Universe, Bloodsport, The Wicked Lady, Sahara, The Delta Force, Invasion U.S.A., Street Smart, Alien from L.A., and Cyborg? All Cannon. Hell, even Highlander started out as a Cannon production. Many of them were shitty, most of them were overrated, but all of them were crammed down the world's throats relentlessly by Cannon Films. 

Cannon started in the late '60s -- making their first huge American hit with Joe in 1970 -- drifted through the '70s making tons of making churning out low budget hits loaded with sex and horror, and then finally achieved its full terrifying form in the coke-fueled spit take that was the '80s. (My personal favorite of the Cannon oeuvre is Tobe Hooper's nekkid vampire opus, Lifeforce; in second place, Barfly) By the time they produced Runaway Train in 1985, they found they finally had an Oscar-nominated film on their hands, and for a short period, Cannon had a little cachet to pull in bigger name actors and talent. The ride went until the flops overcame them in 1988 (Superman IV: The Quest for Peace being a particular noticeable problem) and the money ran out. There was the threat of bankruptcy, a corporate sale, and the team of Golan and Globus finally broke apart over creative and monetary differences. (The pair even had competing films based on the lambada dance craze in production at the same time, one from Cannon with Globus as a producer, and the other based on a story by Golan and distributed by Columbia.) With its two frenetic leaders no longer together, Cannon sputtered along until it died quietly in the mid-'90s, releasing its last theatrical film, Chuck Norris' Hellbound, in 1994.

Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films is a perfect encapsulation of that time. It is just as wild and over the top as the films of Cannon themselves, punctuated with hard to believe (but very true) stories and perfectly timed film clips from Cannon's still very impressive arsenal. The tale behind every would-be massive Cannon masterpiece is detailed, especially when those would-be hits turn into flop after flop after flop, and yet Cannon would not die. I wish it played with the currently popular documentary form a little more, and I wish the final result were a bit more slapdash, as the doc betrays a smoothness you could never apply to a Cannon film. But it is still a marvelously fun portrait of exactly how you can get films (and money) made if you don't really care about the end product. 

And it was chiefly because of the "never die" spirit of Cannon's two chief architects, Golan and Globus, relentless pushers of film mediocrity who didn't care so much if a movie made any sense as long as it had the potential to blow open people's wallets. Or care if they were actually making films that Americans want to see. (Most of the time, we didn't.) Thoroughly lacking in taste, a factor absolutely missing in the makeup of its two heroes, Electric Boogaloo (named after the second of the Breakin' series that, yes, Golan and Globus foisted upon the public) is a very American dream brought to life (and brought down eventually) by two out-of-towners who never truly connected with the public's interests.

There is an interesting postscript to this documentary where they mention that Golan and Globus, who never appear personally, turned down the filmmakers because they decided to make their own film about Cannon. The tag says their version -- titled The Go-Go Boys: The Inside Story of Cannon Films -- beat Electric Boogaloo to theatres by three months, but of course, the film is not available online or on Region 1 DVD as of yet. I doubt that I would ever shell the necessary bucks out to get their Region 2 import disc, and so my relationship with Cannon remains the same: I might watch it for kicks, but who wants to spend money on that crap?

I Am Big Bird: The Carroll Spinney Story (2014) 

Dir.: Dave LaMattina and Chad N. Walker

TC4P Rating: 7/9

As an amateur puppeteer -- and a lifelong puppethead besides -- it is no surprise that I love the Muppets. Jim Henson and Frank Oz are personal heroes, and I watched Sesame Street far, far beyond my need to watch such a show. While others moved on with their Muppet love to The Muppet Show once they grew up (and I certainly watched it fanatically myself), I still stuck with Sesame Street, if only because most of my earliest memories of Jim Henson's genius stemmed from that show. Somewhere along the line, Elmo became too abrasive a factor, the original Muppet characters were relegated to smaller and smaller roles, and I started tuning in less and less. But I still return time to time (even in the new HBO version) to see how the Street is being maintained and to see old pals. Two of those pals still continue to appeal to me: Oscar and Big Bird.

I had known for years, like many of course, that Oscar and Big Bird were played by the same actor, Carroll Spinney. There since the start of the show in 1969, Spinney was recognizably the voice of both characters; even when he was never seen at all, as kids we knew the same person played each one. While the characters were miles apart in temperament and voice, there was a sweetness in the portrayal of each that came through to the viewers, which probably is a large reason why they have made such a lasting impact of children and adults over a couple generations. But Spinney's beginnings on the show set him somewhat apart from Henson's other puppeteers, not having the years of developing the Muppet style the others did as a team.

I Am Big Bird: The Carroll Spinney Story does a glorious job of letting us finally get to know the man inside the feathers... or the trash can, as it were. Also a lifelong puppet fan, Spinney worked as a cartoonist and animator before he joined Henson's corps, and maintained his fiercely independent spirit slightly apart from the rest of the team as his eight-foot, two-inch tall bird character ended up becoming the true heart and soul of Sesame Street. Through Spinney's talent, Big Bird became one of the most iconic characters in the world, even eventually serving as a cultural ambassador to China, a story related in fascinating detail in I Am Big Bird.

Of the two main Spinney creations, I must admit that I have always preferred the prickly Oscar the Grouch many times over the sweeter, more childlike Big Bird. That is probably more reflective of my nature than anything, but for many years, I kind of bristled anytime that I was stuck with a Big Bird segment. Not because the result was bad, but simply because I preferred the funnier, more manic Muppet moments. I would probably just have been just as happy if this film was titled I Am Oscar the Grouch, and I likely would have thought little of it.

But I would have been wrong. Spinney's very private nature would seem to lend difficulty to getting to know him intimately, but he is also more than open once the cameras get on him, and we feel his pain as he struggles hard to keep up the pace of filming new segments as he continues to play the characters now into his eighties. We ultimately get to see that he is very much both Oscar and Big Bird, but that no matter how guarded he may be, the bird's characteristics win out overall. He is Big Bird after all.


Kareem: Minority of One (2015)
HBO Sports
TC4P Rating: 6/9

Kareem: Minority of One makes one major mistake in my opinion: It stops too early. 

I grew up knowing not just about Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, but also the basketball legend's birth name that he dropped upon his conversion to Islam in 1971. I was a sports nut as a child, and delighted in memorizing trivia bits from all of sports history and then spewing them back out, whether requested or not. One that I learned early on was the name Lew Alcindor. A few years later, when I got the chance to snag a couple of Kareem's early Topps basketball cards before the name conversion, I leapt at the opportunity.

Kareem never played for a team for whom I held a rooting interest. I was a SuperSonics and 76ers fan early on in my life, and then when Larry Bird, Robert Parrish, and Kevin McHale came into the equation, I became a Celtics fan for life. And Kareem was always there battling those teams that I loved. That did not mean that I disliked him. I knew people who were solid Lakers fans that, for whatever reason (possibly mostly racist), hated Kareem. Not me. I kind of admired him and his drive. His need to be his own person who operated solely on his deeply held convictions was well-documented in the media, and I rather liked that as well. He also had that infuriating, unstoppable skyhook, a shot that my friends and I loved to spoof when we played ball. He tried acting and even showed up on a favorite show of mine in my youth, The Man from Atlantis. And when he showed up in the comedy classic Airplane!, perhaps not doing a great job of acting but perfectly willing to satirize his image in the media (and pick on his critics at the same time), I kind of grew to love him.

Kareem: Minority of One sticks to the standard ritual of the bio film, and never veers far from that path. It is what you expect from a sports bio; no more, no less. It shoots from childhood to school to college to the pros in swift succession, never pausing too long at any one place, allowing us to know the man in increments, while also tracing his personal history in the expected ways. In the interview segments, we get to see an inkling of his mind at work and we fully understand his unwillingness to kowtow to idiots, his intellectual development, his spiritual strength, and his need to always speak his mind. Like all public figures -- and indeed, all of us -- Kareem has his pluses and minuses, but you could do far worse in finding someone to admire than Kareem. (And believe me, people are finding some terrible inspiration in recent months...) 

But then the film falls far short of what I was expecting. Following his retirement at the end of the 1988-1989 season, in which the Lakers failed to repeat as NBA champions, Kareem fails to get the coaching jobs he was expecting to be offered, and so he frustratingly shifts away from basketball towards the next stage of his life. And this is where the film failed me, stingily closing off the subject where I wanted more about the man and what continues to make him tick. I was hoping to find out more about what Kareem has been up to in the intervening years, beyond the handful of public forays and statements he has released in the interim. In a narrative type of film this would not be a bad thing, but here the dearth of new information is frustrating. If the film's title is meant to convey, beyond the obvious racial implications, that Kareem is not just in a class by himself, but also an unceasingly private individual, it also left me feeling that way: disconnected from the subject, and wanting far more than I've been given.

Or maybe Kareem is just someone we are never meant to know fully...

Pull the String! No, Not Bela's String... King Kong's! [The Ballad of Kong Pt. 9]

[This is the ninth part of an ongoing (and resurrected) series called The Ballad of Kong. To read the previous parts, start with Pt. 1 from December 2005.]

In once again picking up my multi-part memory slideshow regarding the early years of King Kong's influence in my life, I have encased in amber within my stupid brain a prehistoric notion of Kong that far precedes any viewing of a Kong film or video, or any reading of a book or magazine on monsters, or any sneakily clandestine ogling of Jessica Lange on Topps trading cards. It is a vivid memory of my playing with a King Kong puppet as a small child. Not just a generic, stuffed gorilla that some money-grubbing opportunist says is King Kong, but rather an actual merchandising tie-in to a late 1960s television cartoon that I most certainly have viewed on Saturday morning television when I was a child, but I truly have no actual recollection of the show. I only remember the toy.

But the toy was not played with in Alaska, where we lived for most of my childhood. I remember playing with the puppet, but I did not possess the thing. I am a tad fuzzy on the details from here on out, but I do dredge up a picture of Kong belonging to a cousin, or a friend of a cousin, in Wisconsin in the early '70s. The locale might even be my Granny's house. I do have slight memories of playing at other houses in Wisconsin in that period, but my memory of the Kong puppet incident is set somewhere between the organ and the big stone fireplace setting at Granny's wonderful house. This leads me to believe that the Kong puppet might have belonged to a cousin. 

Since I still possess a great many of the toys that I owned in my youth, I find it hard to believe that it belonged to my brother Mark or I, though that is not out of the question. Perhaps it was a toy purchased but left behind in the trip before we headed back to Alaska? It's sad if it is so, because that puppet is worth a mint now.

The King Kong Talking Hand Puppet, sold by Mattel, was bright blue and yellow in color, while his face was made of a hard rubber. Why he was blue and yellow doesn't make sense to me since in every picture that I see from the TV series, Kong is clearly black or blackish brown in coloration, with a lighter tannish color on his underside. The puppet had a string imbedded in the cloth comprising the sleeve for one's hand. A steady, long tug of this string (using what the box calls a "Chatty-Ring," would cause Kong to say many assorted phrases -- such as "I'll swat that airplane! or "Hang on! Here we go!" or "Let's leapfrog over a mountain!" Bobby's squeaky kid voice (far squeakier than in the cartoon, where he seems a bit older) also comes out of the puppet, which is a big strange sounding if Bobby is no longer attached to the toy (he comes buttoned on Kong's arm, but can be easily removed). For Kong himself, a thunderous voice emanates from deep within the bowels of the plush simian, a sound which must have passed for crystalline clarity in those days but has that slight echo that seems to come with most pull-string toys. [Note: What Kong spoke, or rather, roared is beyond my memory, and is entirely unimportant to that memory. I have relied on the internet for that information.] The Kong that I actually grew to love did not speak somewhat like a human, and it is proper that my earliest memory of the creature is similarly bound in a lack of English.

The show that the puppet was based on was called The King Kong Show, and ran for three seasons starting in fall of 1966. I would have just turned two when it came on the air, and five when it went off, so I fell into the target audience of the show eventually in that span. If indeed I had seen the show as a child, I am not sure if I would have made the connection between the show and the puppet, since the colors of the different Kongs are so different from each other. And yet, the puppet did come with a boy character named Bobby Bond, whom I do not recollect in my memories of the puppet, and he is the same boy who has adventures with Kong in the cartoon show. The other confusing thing about the talking puppet is that Kong does not actually talk in the show (at least the few episodes I have found online). He grunts and makes other sounds back to Bobby and the other humans who converse with him, but does not actually talk as we do. 

If I would have remembered anything about this cartoon from my childhood, it would have been the theme song. But even here, my memory is negligent. I was able to find people singing the song on Youtube, and even a clip or two of the song with its cartoon opening, and it is pretty catchy. Here are the lyrics...

"King Kong!
You know the name of
King Kong!
You know the fame of
King Kong!
Ten times as big as a man!

Throughout the land,
you've heard about this wonder!
Listen closely and
you will hear the thunder
of this mighty ape,
and he's a friend of man!
So goes the legend...
the legend of..

King Kong!
You know the name of
King Kong!
You know the fame of
King Kong!
Ten times as big as a man!

One day, a boy
too young to know the danger,
Made a friend of
this giant fearsome creature,
and the life they led
on their island home
became a legend...
the legend of . . .

King Kong!
You know the name of
King Kong!
You know the fame of
King Kong!
Ten times as big as a man!"

One other note... The King Kong Show was produced by Arthur Rankin, Jr. and Jules Bass, whom you may know better as the creators of such stop-motion animated specials as Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Santa Claus is Coming to Town, and The Year without a Santa Claus. They co-produced a feature film with Toho (the studio of Godzilla and his pals) in 1967 called King Kong Escapes [Kingu Kongu no Gyakushū]. The film had its roots in this show, which does have an episode featuring a battle between Kong and a mechanized double, a plotline directly used in the film version. I saw King Kong Escapes as a teenager, but had no idea of the connection with the older cartoon show. I just thought it was a direct sequel to 1962's King Kong vs. Godzilla, also co-produced by Toho. From the beginning, though, it was easy even then to tell the similarities in design between the robot Kong in the film and many other characters designed for Rankin-Bass productions, of which I was a fanatic since a wee child.

Getting back to the King Kong Talking Hand Puppet, this memory may explain why I have been so drawn to puppets over my lifetime, even becoming a puppeteer for many, many years within the Moorish circus my friends and I performed in annually at our local renaissance faire. I still own many, many puppets in my personal toy collection, retain a perfectly happy relationship with all things Muppet even nearing middle age, and am fascinated anytime that I find old puppets in antique stores and even new ones in toy shops. If I had indeed owned the King Kong Talking Hand Puppet when I was a kid vacationing in Wisconsin, then it is a very sad thing that it didn't survive the transition back to Alaska.

So it had to be an accident if it was mine. I would have never parted with it willingly. Not King Kong. A boy and his gorilla need to be together.

RTJ

*****

To see an episode from The King Kong Show for yourself, check this out...

And to see the King Kong Talking Hand Puppet talk, watch this video...

[Editor's Note: The pictures in this piece were found on a French King Kong fan forum -- http://king-kong.fansforum.info/t193-THE-KING-KONG-SHOW.htm -- and also on Ebay, where a King Kong Talking Hand Puppet (or even the stuffed doll that looks very similar) in fine condition will run you a few hundred dollars. So it is very doubtful I will ever get one of my own. But if I ever win any size portion of the lottery, that puppet is mine.]

There's a Monster in the Surf! (Yeah, Yeah, Yeah!)

A short clip from the ultra low-budget monster/beach mashup, The Beach Girls and the Monster, directed by former matinee idol Jon Hall in 1965. The puppet is Kingsley the Lion, voiced and operated by the late Walker Edmiston, who you may know better as the voice of Ernie the Keebler Elf, Orson the Vulture from H.R. Pufnstuf, or my favorite, Enik the benevolent Sleestak on the original Land of the Lost TV series.

I had already seen The Beach Girls and the Monster a couple of years ago, and while it is a pretty dismal affair, I also found it to be enjoyably schlocky in only the way that a cheap guy in a monster suit movie can be. At 3:30 a.m. this morning, as I awoke to start what was to hopefully be a 24-hour period of monster movie watching, I ran into this TV print of the film, known as The Monster from the Surf, on one of the nostalgia channels cramming up cable TV these days.

The song reminds me of a tune my brothers and I used to sing when we were young (having created it) called The Monster's on the Loose, which is structured pretty similarly with a simple repeated chorus featuring the song's title, though our long lost verse lyrics (I can only remember a couple of lines) were a bit more complicated than these.

The cutie-patootie with the squeaky voice and the pert you-know-whats is Elaine DuPont, for whom this would be her final acting credit. (She had a lot of uncredited roles in films like Jailhouse Rock and I Was a Teenage Werewolf, amongst others.) I think she is adorable in this film. This film was also Jon Hall's final feature role, after launching to stardom with John Ford's The Hurricane in 1937. Hall not only directed The Beach Girls and the Monster, but also served as the cinematographer (and maybe even wore the monster suit to boot, but I'm not going to tell you that).

I sort of ended up loving this movie all the more after seeing it this morning, and even knocked it up a tick in my rating system, having found enough to make me believe I had graded it too harshly the first time. It's still a really low rating (a 3 out of 9), but when a film makes you smile as broadly as it did to me as I watching it in the pre-dawn haze, you have to give it a little dap.

FEED ME!!!! Redux

Longtime Alaskan pals of mine will immediately recognize the puppet above as Audrey III, who not only was used in a costume contest about 20 years ago, but also took part in various dirty puppet shows over the years at the Three Barons Faire in Anchorage. As for that costume contest, my attempt to portray myself and Audrey III as the Rick Moranis version of Seymour Krelborn and Audrey II from the 1986 musical film of Little Shop of Horrors was only slightly brought down by the fact that a couple of votes for us were actually for "Buddy Holly carrying a plant." Fucking idiots...

I spent a large proportion of time this weekend finally digging into my many boxes of various and sundry Halloween folderol, practically taking up most of Saturday sorting through items at which I had not given five seconds glance over the five-plus years I have been in California. Dozens of monster action figures, playsets, cars, decorative objects... you name it, it's there. After a half-decade of only carving a pumpkin or three and watching a lot of horror movies, I decided to take back a little bit of Halloween for myself (hence my joining the Countdown to Halloween cycle of blogs celebrating the holiday). Along with this came the task of finding a few small items that I could sneak into the workplace so I could Halloweenize my office a tad.

Audrey III with new pals Forever Yeti and Googly Vern

Gojira and King Kong are always present in my office, but what I really needed in the place to give it some class was a plant. But not a real one... no, no, no! I have already killed (astonishingly enough) two bamboo plants in the past year, so my thumb is really more of an "amber alert" for the plant world than green in any measure. Then I was reunited with Audrey III, and I immediately knew that she was going to have to grace the bookshelf in my cramped little office. Besides, she requires no actual food nor water, just imaginary blood (or so I have been led to believe).

She is really a fantastically designed puppet, and even comes with a velcro tongue to which a fat little fly accessory can be attached. The top of her trap accommodates the four fingers of your hand, and has individual pockets so she doesn't operate as a simple open-and-close style hand puppet. You can get some interesting expression out of her at times.

I couldn't believe how much I missed having Audrey III out in public, but she is definitely back to stay as long as she decides to stick around.

Audrey III messin' with Gojira

TPCC Halloween Finger Puppet Update: Who Got Whom? or Whom Got Who? or Which One Did I Get?

Googly Vern with new office mate Totoro

I got the one I wanted, that's who...

Marv

After 46 rounds of divisional playoff action and a series of tie-breakers (actually, there was just a round of a modified version of the old shell game), it has finally been decided. The secret [not-so-secret] members of the TPCC (the initialism a secret [not so secret] itself) have received their Halloween finger puppet doppelgangers.

I had been hoping to win the mummy, and had announced he was going to be called Victor E. Mummy, but since we have a Victor in the office (though he prefers to be called Manny) and because I have a couple of other friends/acquaintances named Vic and Victor in my life, I switched his name to the physically appropriate Googly Vern.

Mrs. Rai Rai Sis-Boom-Bah Ferghetti-Pantz chose Marv (pictured above) for her Frankenstein's Monster, and The Man With No Nickname (which would be a good nickname for him) chose Jefferson for his vampire puppet. (I know The Man With No Nickname took pictures of Jefferson, but I have yet to see any of them.)

Contest over! Congratulations to the winners, and don't forget to pay the tax on your prizes!

Which Member of the TPCC Will Get Which Halloween Finger Puppet at Work This Morning?

Questions you might be asking:

1) What is the TPCC?

An initialism.

2) Who are the TPCC?

The members that make up the organization.

2) What does the "C" stand for?

Which one?

3) How do I become a member?

You don't... well, maybe you could... on second thought, no.

4) How come there isn't a werewolf finger puppet?

Don't ask me. There was a witch in the box, but I didn't like her that much. And absolutely zero werewolves, which I felt was odd given the current cultural zeitgeist for the little furry suckers. (For the exact same stupid reason as the much larger zeitgeist for bloodsuckers...)

5) What is the first rule of the TPCC?

To not be self-involved douches like those whiny babies over in Fight Club...
Second rule is: always talk about the TPCC, but remain obscure at the same time.

6) Which puppet are you hoping to get?

I apparently have mummy issues, so...