Happy New Year even though we don't celebrate it until tomorrow. In the meantime, here’s a meme that’s going around the screenwriters' blogs. I’ve been tagged.
ONE (1) earliest film-related memory:
Seeing TEN COMMANDMENTS as a mere tyke and being scared shitless. Not by the special effects or torture to the Jews but by the bad over-acting. Charlton Heston and Yul Brynner in the same movie? Even Cinemascope couldn’t contain them. Both had me diving under the seat. And incredibly, they weren’t the worst offenders. That dishonor would go to Ms. Anne Baxter. She gave maybe the single worst most overblown performance in the history of film…rivaling Butty Hutton in THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH. Even Nathan Lane would say, “Whoa, bring it down.” I still haven’t recovered.
TWO (2) favorite lines from movies:
And any line from TOOTSIE.
THREE (3) jobs you’d do if you could not work in the “biz”:
Teacher
Cartoonist
Morning man at W.O.L.D.
FOUR (4) jobs you actually have held outside the industry:
Amway salesman (Hey, that detergent really works)
Record store clerk
Comic strip artist
Teaching broadcasting
THREE (3) book authors I like:
Philip Roth
John Kennedy Toole
Kurt Vonnegut
TWO (2) movies you’d like to remake or properties you’d like to adapt:
VOLUNTEERS. They never did justice to our script. When the movie came out I wanted to stand in the lobby and just hand out screenplays.
The other movie that I’d like to remake is THE PRODUCERS. Come on. It’s time.
ONE (1) screenwriter you think is underrated:
Steve Gordon. Wrote ARTHUR then tragically died. No one wrote better funnier witty dialogue than Steve. I've written about him before.
He also wrote a movie starring Henry Winkler and Kim Darby called THE ONE AND ONLY about a TV wrestler, directed by Carl Reiner. It might be available on Netflix. Or, if you know Kim Darby, see if she'll invite you over to watch it.
And TV freaks might vaguely remember a show in the late 70’s called THE PRACTICE starring Danny Thomas as a crusty neighborhood doctor in the Bronx (Becker meets Uncle Tanoose). Steve created and wrote that show and it just crackled. I’m hoping that someday it will resurface on DVD or at least on the Lebanese channel.
Steve Gordon was…and is…an inspiration to me.
