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Hey look — it’s another GLoP podcast! This week, we ponder why some movies don’t age well (and others do), do some Rank Punditry® on Bolton and Comrade Bernie, wish a fond farewell to a podcast sidekick, and generally act silly.
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I like American Housewife a lot.
Excellent TV comedy. The best.
Or maybe говнюк
Lucky for you, Max’s filter doesn’t have Russian words.
Worst late-night interviewer I ever saw was David Letterman.
Once I saw him congratulate a perplexed Jeff Goldblum on his Academy Award nomination. After several confused exchanges, an embarrassed Letterman realized he was thinking of Goldblum’s ex-wife, Geena Davis.
On another occasion, he took a dislike to his guest, actor Rutger Hauer, and I saw him intentionally ruin the story Hauer was telling (about getting lost in the desert during a movie shoot).
If there is such a thing as an interviewer’s code of ethics, he violated it!
For years, Larry King broadcast live from a booth at Duke Ziebertt’s Restaurant which was last at Connecticut Ave and L Street in DC. A long-time waiter and the bartender told me that King was fed and given free drinks for years and never tipped anybody–and made demands on staff to boot.
Do not re-watch Diner if you have fond memories of it.
I watched it about six months ago and thought it held up great. Period pieces tend to age better, I think.
I have it on my DVR waiting. Why?
It just didn’t hold up for me, but I guess @blueyeti disagrees. Might be a chick/dude thing.
I saw it once, maybe a year or so after it came out. Honestly, the only thing I remember about it is the guy who was engaged making his fiancee take a test on the history of the Baltimore Colts, and then walking into the room and saying “The wedding is off”.
Am I even close on that particular bit?
The story I heard about Letterman was that he treated his female staff as a harem.
Supposedly he took one of his mistresses along on a family vacation with his (common law?) wife and children.
In terms of humor, Letterman’s 11 years on NBC have about 2-3 times as much content as his 22 years on CBS, since ex-girlfriend/head writer Merrill Markoe and writers like Chris Elliott never made it to the CBS show (which drew its strength in it’s early days from Letterman’s anger at not getting the Tonight Show gig, but really was a going-through-the-motions dead show walking for its final decade, when the host set the template for today’s angry, political late night snark-fests that only play to a niche audience).
@jon1979 — Significantly, Letterman’s bitter, partisan approach was rewarded by the Hollywood elite with awards, while Jay Leno won in the ratings, decade after decade.
Leno even won during the writers’ strike, when Letterman made a separate deal with the union and got his writers back.
There was always a certain meanness behind Letterman’s humor, but it was softened in the early going by the creativity and the originality of upending the normal talk show apple cart. But by the time you get at least to the end of the 1990s, there was little new in terms of bits, and the meanness began to outweigh the comedy, even in the non-political areas. Once he decided by about 2004 or so he wanted to be CBS’ version of Keith Olbermann over on MSNBC, it really was just a death march to retirement over the next decade.
That was about when I quit watching.
And had been watching religiously since shortly after he went on the air in 1982. Taped it every night and watched later. Only episodes I missed were when something pushed the show back outside the window I had the VCR set up for.
I taped them starting when he moved to CBS, and still have the tapes.
We watched “The Magnificent Seven” last night -1960 film. I pointed out that, in addition to all the actors being now dead, they were in a lot of really great movies together… My son thought it was magnificent! then we watched the trailer for “The Seven Samurai”… we’ll now start a Kurosawa study and the occidental interpretations, not, of course, losing the irony of “Throne of Blood” when it comes to “cultural appropriation.”
When you watch Seven Samurai, be prepared to especially enjoy the character whose corresponding character was played by James Coburn: Extraordinary exercise of deadly skill followed by a nap as if it were another day at the office, indifferent to the awed perceptions of others.
In my youth, there was an annual Samurai film festival at the old Biograph theater in DC. Seven Samurai, the Yojimbo and Sanura films. All-day immersions. My media-spoiled kids and grandkids are appalled at the prospect of black and white films with subtitles and no CGI. They will always fail to appreciate the artistry of films from that era.
@oldbathos — One probably not for your kids is Masako Kobayashi’s Harakiri (1962).
I had the rare privilege of seeing this exploration of the dark side of the Samurai code, without knowing where the story was going.
So that when the shattering catharsis finally came, and we learned what was really going on all along, I was as stunned as the characters in the film. In his essay on the film, Roger Ebert called this “one of the great dramatic moments of all samurai films.”
N.B.: All these comments refer to the 1962 film, not the 2011 remake, which I didn’t know existed until today.
Hey guys, I think it’s time for a follow-up to the We Work episode.