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Reviews
Hombre (1967)
Awful Predictable Cliche.
How do u take a solid Elmore Leonard novel and jui Jitsu it into an awful Hollywood cliche? Well watch this movie and you'll learn. The screenplay writers took a good book and reworked it to add every stupid Indian movie trope. This thing had everything but a singing cowboy. Despite that, there are one or two good scenes. But it's an overall disaster from the puffed up hairdo's to the 11th hour bad guy requested parley where the good guys cite the marquess of queensbury rules and refuse to kill the lead murderer when he's standing right in front of them. Paul Newman could have made this watchable, instead he's given the star treatment and it just gets worse from there. Watch Valdez is Coming. Now that's a western. Thank you.
Andy Kaufman Plays Carnegie Hall (1980)
The Apogee of Performance Art
Andy and Bob Zmuda pull off an extraordinary show, unique on so many levels yet weaving in seamlessly, classic showbiz tropes that have worked since the Greeks. It is so creative and so well executed here, that they should have been given a special Tony award if you're into prizes for art, which I'm not. Love the Tony Clifton opening and how Tony threatens to launch into the mother in law paen. It is all simple genius and delightful entertainment. The cookies and milk finale works perfectly, yet knowing that Andy hadn't long to live makes any behind-the-scene footage precious and riveting watching, like the Zapruder film. I was almost waiting for some drugged out hippy in the crowd to bump off Andy while boarding the buses! A fascinating show. Just great. Thx Andy and Bob Z!
Late Night with David Letterman (1982)
NBC Years Amazingly Creative. Unmatched.
Nothing in my lifetime has resonated as deeply as this show during the first 6 years that it was on and that I watched it (82-88). I've never enjoyed any tv show as much. For my generation it was the thing to watch, the place to be every night; you felt at the time that this was where the party was and every other place paled by comparison. The combo of Letterman's extraordinarily facile wit and warm leadership with Steve ODonnell's genius writing, Calvert DeForest and Chris Elliott's unique talents, Paul Shaffer's amazing musical abilities and Hal Gurney's creative stewardship as director, made this show magical. For years I tried to get on the writing staff to no avail. I lived 4 avenues away at 50th and 2nd Ave during this time and would BS a kindly woman named Kathy Vasipoli who worked there that I was a famous publicist and she'd unfailingly reserve me last minute tickets to shows (she later married Paul). For some reason I just stopped watching one day, then eventually moved to Los Angeles and that ended that. And the times I tuned into the subsequent CBS show it was apparent that the bloom was off the rose; no more O'Donnell or Calvert or Elliott or Bill Wendell; everything about it slick and shiny and over produced, from the segment graphics to the musical jingles to the announcer to the forced character stage hands, to, sadly Letterman's evolution into a somewhat cynical and neurotic guy who you sensed longed to get out of there, but had no other life plan of what to do. But all fires burn themselves out, and for a short glorious stretch Late Night w David Letterman was the apogee of all that mattered.