tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-79680541451641982272024-03-12T20:59:51.247-07:00CZO: CHUCK ZIGMAN OVERDRIVEYou've heard of "personal shoppers," right? Well, I'm "your personal blogger." Sit back and let me make your life a little easier. By blogging.CZO: Chuck Zigman Overdrivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01597949826304464382noreply@blogger.comBlogger22125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7968054145164198227.post-44102685303875186952016-03-13T21:46:00.001-07:002016-03-13T21:51:02.675-07:00Why Does the Digital World Leave Me Cold?Does anybody else besides me feel left out in the cold by the digital world?
I like it in a very limited way: I like my desktop computer because my screen is big and it’s easy to see, and I can send emails to my friends and keep up with people on facebook – and I guess my android phone is cool because it’s good if you’re driving somewhere to tell people if you’re going to be late. But outside of that – I have never learned how to use a laptop, which I find frightening in its design – my fingers are too big and I don’t like the look or feel of it – nor do I know how to use an iPad, and I don’t ever want to learn. I don’t want to look at screens all day. I don’t know how any of these things plug in and I get freaked out when people come over to my house with their laptops and ask me what my WiFi password is, because not only do I not know what my password is, I seriously don’t even understand what WiFi is and I’m not just saying it – I don’t know. And yesterday I heard somebody say “hot spot” for the first time, and I had no idea what he was talking about. The digital world makes me feel like I just got here from another planet. I tune it out, just like I tune out everything from the 21st century – all of the horrible movies and t.v. and fake/non-objective “news” and the screaming World Wrestling Federation-style political debates we have now. We really lost something when we became digital. If you’re not interested in the digital world, as I am not, the world makes you feel uncomfortable about yourself.<P>
I was sitting in the faculty lounge at one of the places where I teach last week, and I mentioned to some teachers that I have a desktop computer at home and that my landline attaches itself to my DSL and they started laughing, and I didn’t know why. When I apply for jobs, I have to spend all day filling out an online application which then goes into some black hole. Of course the digital world made a lot of things easier, but it also made the world cold. If you don’t believe it, go to the movies and see the emotionless, dark superhero movies and futuristic sci-fi set in a dystopian future which is actually today. Thanks to the digital world people – including me – can now only process information that comes in little soundbytes. I noticed that even with my limited use of digital things, I don’t have the patience for anything anymore. I used to write a lot -- screenplays and books -- but it’s been about three years since I wrote anything substantive and I can’t even pay attention to movies or t.v. – or people talking to me – anymore. My attention span is now completely shot. Thank you, computerized world. Does anybody else have this feeling? <P>
I recently got hired for a temporary job, and I went to the new faculty orientation. After sitting through three hours with the IT guy who told us all of the new programs and passwords we had to learn in order to do what otherwise was an easy job, I felt so overwhelmed (for real) that I felt numb and light-headed, and I had to get out of the room and breathe. I looked around the room and everybody else looked calm. Everybody was just accepting of this gibberish. Why are they accepting? I called the lady who hired me and (nicely) told her that she had to find somebody else, which she did.<P>
Is anybody else freaked out by computerized things or just me? I honestly hope the digital world will go away. I like organic things. I like the sunset, and books, and movies shot on celluloid that are made in 1933, and hand drawn animation and paintings. Thanks to the internet we can now get anything we want, but nothing is special anymore -- nothing is an event anymore. Anything that comes from ones and zeroes has nothing to do with me. My heart and my soul are not made from ones and zeroes. Are yours? <P>
That's all.
CZO: Chuck Zigman Overdrivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01597949826304464382noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7968054145164198227.post-79690461117748403492015-12-18T16:39:00.002-08:002015-12-18T16:39:09.367-08:00The One Guy in the World who Never Got into "Star Wars:" Me."The Force Awakens" was released today. Have fun seeing it. I won't be there. <P>
When I was eleven years old, the first “Star Wars” movie came out. My mom took me and my friend Mark Bernstein to see it at the General Cinema Theaters in Sherman Oaks.<P>
I was bored out of my skull. There was something very cold and distancing about it. I couldn’t follow exactly what was going on. I didn’t like any of the characters or care about any of them. It just seemed like a lot of things flying by and there was a lot of mumbo-jumbo. At the end of the movie, I had no feeling about it at all, because it was emotionless. At that age, I just wanted to see comedies – anything with Peter Sellers, Gene Wilder, Mel Brooks, and Woody Allen. Plus, I wanted to see adult dramas, horror movies, and even foreign movies, since they seemed mysterious. If I'm going to see something that takes place in an unfamiliar world, I'll take a movie set in a different country over one that takes place in outer space, anytime.<P>
It’s not that I didn’t like “fun” movies. Like any kid, I did like them! I enjoyed the first two “Superman” movies because they were full of warmth and humor, and recognizable human emotion. It wasn’t just explosions. (In fact, I saw "Superman" five times in the theater, the summer it came out.) I thought that Spielberg’s “Close Encounters,” which came out when I was thirteen, was just about the best movie I ever saw, because while there were spaceships in it, it was about a family. Two years later, I enjoyed “E.T.” for the same reason – there were aliens and spaceships, but it was about a real family, and it was also a film about brothers. “Superman,” “Close Encounters,” and “E.T.” were about hope, too. I also continue to enjoy the original “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” and what makes that movie great is that, at many points in the film, Harrison Ford actually looks scared in it – he does this really subtle stuff with his eyes – so you’re able to put yourself in his shoes, and that’s what makes the exciting parts exciting. In "Raiders," Harrison Ford looks genuinely engaged, but in "Star Wars" he seems like he's just trying to utter monotone written dialogue. I also like all three “Alien” movies, the “Matrix” movies (even the sequels that nobody else likes), and the first two “Terminators,” because they are full of emotions and human interest and jokes to go along with the action. <P>
In ’99, George Lucas made three new “Star Wars” sequels – “Parts 1 through 3,” I guess. I saw the first one, because my friend did some of the special effects, but I fell asleep in it. All I remember is that the characters were talking about trading posts on other planets or something, and it turned me narcoleptic. In the case of those three movies, everybody agreed with me that they were boring. But I thought the original one – the first one from 1977 – was almost as boring and too complicated to follow. <P>
What I want from any movie, is just a simple story where somebody overcomes something recognizable and wins. And if possible, I would like my movie to take place on earth, because we have a lot of problems here, and they’re more interesting and pressing than problems on a Death Star or whatever it is. If it takes place on another planet, that’s cool, but what’s happening in the movie should be an allegory for what’s happening here, and in the case of “Star Wars,” it wasn’t. It was just noise. (I did like the tie-fighters flying in the tunnels, though.) <P>
I never bothered to see the two original sequels to “Star Wars” – “Empire Strikes Back” and “Return of the Jedi.” Yesterday, a full thirty-four years after its initial release, I tried to watch “Empire Strikes Back for the first time.” I got about a half hour in before I turned it off. I sort of liked when Harrison Ford was trying to rescue Mark Hamill in the snow, but I was pretty non-plussed by the camel-looking thing he was riding that wasn’t a camel. And after they thawed Mark Hamill out, they started showing space ships and some space commander guys were talking about something bad that was about to happen, but it didn’t make any sense. The actors were speaking English, but I didn’t know what they were talking about. It seemed like they were speaking another language that is apparently understood by every other movie fan in the world except me, and so I turned it off, and what I also noticed about the "Star Wars" movies, is that nobody looks too excited in them. They are hollow. Guess I’ll never make it to “Return of the Jedi,” or to the new one that’s coming out today. <P>
In the case of the whole “Star Wars” phenomenon – I don’t want to be a dick. I don’t want to be a contrarian or a buzzkill. I don’t want to be the one guy in the world who doesn’t like “Star Wars.” There’s nothing for me to gain out of being a curmudgeon. I actually want to like it. I WANT to be on the bandwagon. I want to be excited by it. But for me, the “Star Wars” world is completely devoid of emotion, and an emotional experience is all I want in a movie. My initial idea, a few days ago, is that I would catch up with “Empire Strikes Back” and “Return of the Jedi,” and then I would be all ready for the new “Star Wars” movie. But I guess I won’t be making it to this new one, either. <P>
I always wonder if there's any other movie fan in the world who doesn't care for "Star Wars," just like me. But I think I'm the only one in the world. <P>
When I was in high school, I told my French teacher, a very nice/erudite older French-Moroccan lady, Mrs. Berman, about how I was bored by “Star Wars.” She told me: “You’re not supposed to like something like this. This is the kind of movie that, ten or twenty years ago, would have been considered a children’s matinee. They would show it once a day, at noon, to small children.” In this conversation, Mrs. Berman and I were actually anticipating the future. Today, grown-ups want to be stay kids forever. (When I was eight, I wanted to be an adult. I wrote an essay about how for me, the perfect summer camp, would be set in a luxury hotel, where all the kids got their own rooms, and you could just watch movies all day. And each room had a milkshake machine, and you had your own butler, and you had to be dressed-up in a tuxedo all day. Also, in a 2nd grade art class, I had to draw a picture of a man. I drew a man in a full business suit and brief case. In the world I would like to live in, that's what guys wear -- not jeans and an untucked shirt -- although on this particular point, I'm a hypocrite, because I just have one suit that I bought 20 years ago, and I wear jeans and an untucked shirt every day.) <P>
All I want in a movie is a nice, easy-to-follow story and no mumbo-jumbo. That’s it. I wanted that when I was a kid, and I wanted it now. And if the movie takes place on earth – so much the better. <P>
PS: To this date, I’ve never seen a single episode of “Star Trek,” or any of the movies. When I was a kid, I liked “Get Smart,” “All in the Family,” and The Three Stooges, and I liked the “Batman” t.v. series with Adam West, because it was full of funny jokes. <P>
PPS, nowhere in this little rant did I say that "Star Wars" is bad, so get off my jock. It's just not my thing. <P>CZO: Chuck Zigman Overdrivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01597949826304464382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7968054145164198227.post-87711161498912183912015-12-18T16:37:00.000-08:002015-12-18T16:37:21.816-08:00Share a Coke with Fuck You!
SHARE A COKE WITH FUCK YOU!
BY CHUCK ZIGMAN, OCTOBER 14, 2015
How about these new Coke cans? "Share a Coke with a Champ!" "Share a Coke with a Team-Player!" "Share a Coke with a Winner!" Why don't they have realistic Coke cans that say what people really are: <p> <p>
"Share a Coke with a Victim!"<p>
"Share a Coke with a Whiner!"
"Share a Coke with a Fraud!"
"Share a Coke with a Busybody!"
"Share a Coke with a Thief!"
"Share a Coke with a Racist!"
"Share a Coke with a Violent Abuser!"
"Share a Coke with Someone with No Self-Control!"
"Share a Coke with a Drop-Out!"
"Share a Coke with an Apathetic Person!"
"Share a Coke with an Intolerant Liberal or an Intolerant Conservative!"
"Share a Coke with Someone who Settled!"
"Share a Coke with a Paranoid!"
"Share a Coke with Your Unfulfilled Dreams!"
"Share a Coke with a Lemming who Lines Up to Buy the Newest Digital Junk!"
"Share a Coke with The People on the Bandwagon!"
"Share a Coke with Someone who Blames Other People!"
"Share a Coke with Your Sadness!"
"Share a Coke with Someone who Uses you to Get Something!"
"Share a Coke with a Liar!"
"Share a Coke with a Manipulator!"
"Share a Coke with an Entitled Person!"
"Share a Coke with Someone Who Brazenly Jumps in Front of you and Steals your Opportunity, but then it Backfires on Him, and you Didn't Get Anywhere, but he Didn't Get Anywhere, Either -- Ha-Ha!!!"
"Share a Coke with Somebody who Badmouths You Behind Your Back!"
"Share a Coke with an Ego-Maniac!"
"Share a Coke with People who Stand by and Don't Help When Somebody Gets Hurt!"
"Share a Coke with Empty People who Talk Your Ear Off and Completely Drain You, While They Give Nothing in Return!"
"Share a Coke with Disgusting Criminals who Sink the Economy by not Paying Back their Student Loans and not Paying their Taxes!"
"Share a Coke with Too-'Educated' People who Think that Things which are Actually Real are Really Just 'a construct.'"
"Share a Coke with a Delusional Person who Thinks his Obnoxious A.D.D. Kid that he and the Kid's Teachers Can't Control is Actually a Genius!"
"Share a Coke with Some Spoiled Roundheels College Girl who Thinks that My Tax Money Should Pay for her Birth Control!"
"Share a Coke with Our Leaders who go to War for Oil, but Decide not to Interfere in a Country in which Genocide is Regularly Committed Against Women and Children!"
"Share a Coke with Fast Food that's Giving Everybody Diabetes!"
"Share a Coke with the Guilt-Ridden!"
"Share a Coke with an Insomniac!"
"Share a Coke with Someone who Lives in Fear!"
"Share a Coke with an Enabler!"
"Share a Coke with a Lady who Thinks her Pet is her 'Kid'!"
"Share a Coke with an Addict who Trades One Addiction for Another, but nobody Calls him on it!"
"Share a Coke with the Impotent!"
"Share a Coke with your Genitals!"
"Share a Coke with Someone who has been so Systematically Beaten Down by Life, that he Can No Longer Bounce Back!"
"Share a Coke with Hitler!"
"Share a Coke with Kim Davis!"
"Share a Coke with Bill Cosby! (But don't let him near the Coke, or he will put a quaalude in it!)"
"Share a Coke with a College Shooter!"
"Share a Coke with ISIS!"
"Share a Coke with a Convict!"
"Share a Coke with People who Think that DJ's Spinning Electronic Dance Music is Actually 'Music'!"
"Share a Coke with Binge-Watching!"
"Share a Coke with a Tease!"
"Share a Coke with a Man that Turned into a Lady!"
"Share a Coke with a Twentysomething Trust Fund Kid who Wears Thrift Store Clothes and Pretends to be Poor -- Especially any White Person who Pretends to be 'Grungy' and 'Street.'!"
"Share a Coke with Someone who Probably won't Have Anything to Eat Tomorrow!"
"Share a Coke with Someone Who Lives in a Tent on Eighth Street!"
"Share a Coke with Anyone who has any Kind of Agenda or Angle!"
"Share a Coke with Ingrates who Use Profanity Around their Kids and Their Kids Use it Around them (ick! creeps!)!"
"Share a Coke with People who Push Their Kids to Succeed and Force them to Do Boring 'Extra-Curriculars,' Because When They Were Kids Themselves, They were Lazy Stoners and They Have to Make Up for It!"
"Share a Coke with Unhappy People who want to Bring You Down to their Level!"
"Share a Coke with Someone who Wasted Your Time!"
"Share a Coke with anybody who Develops An Offbeat 'Persona!'"
"Share a Coke with Someone who Self-Medicates!"
"Share a Coke with Someone who Thinks he Deserves a Fancy Career, Because of Her Culture or Gender!"
"Share a Coke with a Pretentious Academic who Lives Up in his Own Head and Loves Theory!"
"Share a Coke with People who Send You Mixed Signals Because they have Been Hurt by Life, and Now, on Some Subconscious Level that they Don't Even Understand, they are Going to Hurt You!"
"Share a Coke with a Big-Haired/Happy-Toothed Realtor who Puts a Sign with a Picture of his Face on Your Front Lawn! Wouldn’t you like to stab him through the fucking face with that sign?"
"Share a Coke with Bullying Labor Unions that Take Your Dues Money but Don’t Help You!"
"Share a Coke with Some Blowhard who Tries to Give You his 'Opinion.'"
"Share a Coke with a Spineless Person who Apologizes for his Opinion!"
"Share a Coke with a Person who Rationalizes his Behavior!"
"Share a Coke with a Plagiarist!"
"Share a Coke with a Hypocrite Boss who is Against Bullying in School, but who Happily Bullies His Adult Employees at the Same Time and he Probably Drives a Prius!"
"Share a Coke with a Jerk who Thinks the World Owes him Something!"
"Share a Coke with Your Rage!"
"Share a Coke with Your Crippling Shyness!"
"Share a Coke with Someone While he's Doing Coke!"
"Share a Coke with Your Food Stamps!"
"Share a Coke with Cancer!"
"Share a Coke with a Media that Creates Fear and Makes Us Feel Inadequate!"
"Share a Coke with a Passive-Aggressive Person!"
"Share a Coke with a Know-It-All!"
"Share a Coke with a Self-Deprecating Doormat!"
"Share a Coke with Your Inertia!"
"Share a Coke with Living in the Past!"
"Share a Coke with Your Shame!"
"Share a Coke with Those Real-Life Zombies who Want to Push their Made-Up Beliefs About Food or the Environment or Disease or Vaccinations on You!"
“Share a Coke with Someone who Tells His Kids not to Get into a Car with Strangers, but then he Takes Uber?”
"Share a Coke with Fracking!"
"Share a Coke with Global Warming!"
"Share a Coke with People who Tell You what you 'Can't' Do in Life!"
"Share a Coke with Soulless People who Married for Security Instead of Love and then, Years Later, Complain that they're not Happy and Fulfilled!"
"Share a Coke with People who Poison the Environment!"
"Share a Coke with People who Poke a Hole in Your Condom, to Trap You!"
"Share a Coke with a Blackmailer!"
"Share a Coke with an Aging Hippie Communist who Hates People that Make Profits, Because he is Actually Jealous that he wasn't Smart Enough to Figure Out How to Make a Profit!"
"Share a Coke with People who Donate to Charity Just Because It's a Write-Off!" "Share a Coke with a Dumptruck who Exclaims, 'I Don't Eat too Much! It's My Thyroid!'"
"Share a Coke with People who Pass Their Neuroses on to Their Children!"
"Share a Coke with Hairplugs!"
"Share a Coke with Wimpy, Chinless Adult Child-Men who Like to Go to Conventions and Dress-Up Like Superheroes Because they Feel Increasingly Powerless in a Castrating Neo-Feminist World!"
"Share a Coke with Those Copycats who Like to Use Today's Newest Catchphrase!"
"Share a Coke with Weak-Willed People who have Turned God into a Parent!"
"Share a Coke with Creepy Losers who Ask You if They Can 'Borrow' Money!" "Share a Coke with Vultures who Want to Ride Your Coattails!"
"Share a Coke with a Climber!"
'Share a Coke with a No-Talent Person with Nepotism!"
"Share a Coke with People who are Trying to Redefine Traditional Cultural Norms and Values that Were Actually Fine to Begin With!"
"Share a Coke with your Man-Bun and your Lumberjack Beard!"
"Share a Coke with the Unloved Family Black Sheep who Bleats, 'Your Friends are Your Family!'"
"Share a Coke with People who Waste Your Time!"
"Share a Coke with Your Type 2 Diabetes and Your Failing Eyesight!"
"Share a Coke with Someone who Says, 'Why Don't You Jews Just Forget About the Holocaust already?'"
"Share a Coke with the Greedy!"
"Share a Coke with People who Realize that Life is Long Enough!"
"Share a Coke with Cataracts!"
"Share a Coke with Your Wheelchair!"
“Share a Coke with Dialysis!”
"Share a Coke with a Delusional Person who Tells you About her Awful Screenplay Projects!"
"Share a Coke with Welfare!"
"Share a Coke with Viagra!"
"Share a Coke with Gluten!"
“Share a Cock with…” (Oh, wait, that shit is for Adult FriendFinder…)
"Share a Coke with Beggars who Raise Money on Kickstarter!"
"Share a Coke with a Pepsi!"
"Share a Coke with an Emotional Cripple!"
"Share a Coke with Anybody who Would Actually Deign to Hang Out with any of the Distant Acquaintances he 'Knows' on Facebook!"
"Share a Coke with Slow, Lingering, Painful Death in a Hospital with Nobody Around You!"
"Share a Coke with Eternity!"
"Share a Coke with a Snarky-but-Sweet, Lazy Narcissist with Low Self-Esteem" (ME!!)" <P><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-W5rkUTtLcmk/Vh6zAnsZdtI/AAAAAAAAARA/h7Yedh6WUu0/s1600/shareacokewiththeteam.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-W5rkUTtLcmk/Vh6zAnsZdtI/AAAAAAAAARA/h7Yedh6WUu0/s320/shareacokewiththeteam.jpg" /></a>
This, after all, is what human nature is “all ‘bout!” So why aren't we seeing it on our soda cans? As we all know, soda is completely delicious, especially when it's hot outside, and I know that I personally would definitely buy a lot more of it, if its cans told the truth! Wouldn't you?! Well, that's just something to chew on! Goodnight!
CZO: Chuck Zigman Overdrivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01597949826304464382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7968054145164198227.post-45740669675500976292015-06-05T10:39:00.000-07:002015-06-05T10:44:41.351-07:00HOW THE L.A. WEEKLY KEEPS COMMON SENSE OUT<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-kCdZKnt9VQc/VXHejSiPytI/AAAAAAAAAP4/UT70jpwiYOw/s1600/chuckBeard.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-kCdZKnt9VQc/VXHejSiPytI/AAAAAAAAAP4/UT70jpwiYOw/s320/chuckBeard.JPG" /></a></div><a href="http://www.laweekly.com/news/how-hollywood-keeps-out-women-5525034"></a>HOW THE L.A. WEEKLY KEEPS COMMON SENSE OUT
by Charles Zigman <P><P>
For my first new blog entry in two-and-a-half years (I'm super lazy when it comes to blogging!), I want to talk about the L.A. Weekly, my city's free weekly newspaper: <P>
On April 29th, 2015, the L.A. Weekly ran Jessica P. Ogilvie's cover story, "How Hollywood Keeps Out Women," and on February 25th, the Weekly published another cover story called "How Hollywood Keeps Minorities Out," and both articles are definitely keeping something out, and that's common sense.<P>
The authors of both articles are correct to a large extent: Women and minorities are definitely grossly underrepresented both behind, and in front of, the camera. That is very true -- we can all agree about that! But the Weekly is presenting the stories by suggesting that racism and sexism are the reason. Hollywood is a nutty place, full of the craziest/sleaziest/most entitled and unethical people you'll ever meet, but it's about 0% racist and -2% sexist. The fact is: Hollywood is kind of like the Corleone family. It's a tiny family business, and it keeps out EVERYBODY, including 100% of white males (and even 100% of white males who happen to be, as some people suggest, Jewish) who are not already part of this world. <P>
The movie business, not just now but always, has been a closed world that is not actively soliciting people from the outside -- white, black, or women -- unless it finds out that that person already, prior to entering the movie business, has a track record of already having made millions, or even billions, of dollars in another media -- for example, through graphic novels or a popular video game. If the person hasn't made money for a big entity but simply has millions of dollars lying around that can be invested in a movie, that person is invited into Hollywood gladly too, and the person's background or gender aren't even a factor. It's purely a business decision. It doesn't matter if you have a script that is the next "Godfather" or you made a no-budget indie that won first place in a festival. If you haven't already proven that you have a track record of making money for a publicly-owned company, or if you're not an independently wealthy person who can bring movie financing to the table, they're not letting you in, and it has nothing to do with your cultural background or your gender or the quality of your work. It isn't personal. <P>
And why should Hollywood let you in? In 2015, it costs $100 or $200 million to make a theatrically released studio movie. Why should the movie business let you in if you haven't already proven that you can make them at least several hundred million -- right? It's definitely not personal. If I owned a movie studio, and I were responsible to my stockholders, and I had to choose somebody to direct a film, would I go with the unproven person who wrote the best screenplay I ever read or someone who made a great indie documentary that I really loved -- or would I instead go with the "proven" person who already made the superhero movie that might be horrible but which has made $1 billion (or someone who wrote a ridiculous graphic novel that made millions). I'll hire the person who made the horrible $1 billion superhero movie or the multi-million-dollar-earning graphic novel even though, as a classic film enthusiast, I'm not actually interested in seeing a superhero movie or reading a comic book, and I think that superhero movies and graphic novels are ruining and dumbing-down our culture. Nevertheless, making them is exactly how you run a profitable business. <P>
Hollywood, for its myriad faults, is color-blind and gender-blind, and the only "color" it sees, and pardon the goofy cliche, is green. I'm tired of people saying they "can't get in" because of racism or sexism, because it's not true. Anyway: why would anybody want to write articles from the POV of a victim? The Weekly published two of them in the space of only eight weeks! If you want to "get into Hollywood" in a meaningful creative sense (in other words, in a position that's not "assistant" or "gopher"), just prove to the execs that you've already made somebody mega-bucks doing anything else in the entire world. It has zero to do with your background (or your talent, or "who you know"), either. I'm tired of people thinking they have the "right" to do something, just because of some reasons that have nothing to do with the real reason. Nobody's voice is being silenced who hasn't already proven to be a huge moneymaker. An investment banker who has never made a movie has more right to get into the movie business as a producer than an unproven screenwriter does -- and this is something that we see happening quite a lot -- because he has already proven that he can make sound, profitable business decisions. Producer Megan Ellison had no experience making movies prior to 2010, but she did have boatloads of cash to invest in movie projects, so the door opened for her pretty easily: she started Annapurna Pictures in 2011, and has made some of the greatest, most inspirational American movies in decades.<P>
In the article about "Women," Diana Ossana, the female producer of "Brokeback Mountain" bemoans that she had to fight for her producer credit because she's a woman, yet author Larry McMurty, who wrote the screenplay, didn't have to fight for his credit, because he's a man. She's all wrong. She had to fight because collectively, her work, prior to "Brokeback Mountain," earned Hollywood zero dollars, but Larry McMurty's books have been making millions and millions of dollars for more than forty years. It's a no-brainer. There is no reward for you just based on the fact that you are "talented" or because you "tenaciously spent years bringing a project to the screen." In a commerce-based world, that -- like all emotional 'feelings' -- is completely irrelevant.<P>
As I'm saying these things, please know that I -- just like you -- wish it could be otherwise. We're one hundred percent on the same page about that! I wish people could get into the movie business based on talent, and I wish that women, men, whites, and non-whites were making movies in equal numbers. In the 1970s, the average budget of a movie was $3 million, and if the movie made $6 million, it was a hit so, at that point in time, there were a lot of amazing movies, and Hollywood could occasionally afford to take chances on young outsider filmmakers with no proven money-making skills -- and of course, American studio movies from the '70s are some of the best American movies ever. But it's no longer like that in 2015! Studios, today, are only looking for people who can make big, epic 'tentpole' movies, and the production of these movies must, by necessity, be entrusted to people who have already proven themselves. And guess what: some of the most successful filmmakers of today's big-budget/big-earning "event" movies are women, and if you don't believe me, just take it up with Gale Anne Hurd, Kathleen Kennedy, and Kathryn Bigelow. Last time I checked, they've made some of the biggest and best movies of the last thirty years, and they're not men.<P>
When I hire a contractor to build a house for me, I'm not going to a hire a new, unproven contractor who just got his license. I'm going to hire one with years, or even decades, of proven results. When I want to hire a caterer for a party, I'm not going to hire somebody because he's a good cook. I'm going to ask, "Show me a list of fifty or a hundred parties that you have already catered." When you are hired for any professional job, the interviewer usually wants to know how you've already helped other companies earn money. <P>
What some people erroneously believe to be discrimination, is actually just good, old-fashioned nepotism and cronyism -- it's wrong, and it's not fair, but it's not discrimination. And now that I think of it, it's not completely wrong: If I owned a movie studio, and I had to hire a filmmaker to make a multi-million dollar movie, and I had to choose between somebody I know and somebody I don't know, assuming that both of them are equally talented, I'll probably go with the person I know, most of the time, because I already know what the person's work is like and what his track record is, and I'll also know whether he can bring the movie in on time, and on budget. Similarly, most of the time, I'm guessing that you will hire somebody you know to babysit your child, instead of leaving him with a complete stranger. How can women, or minorities, or the ACLU find fault with careful hiring practices? <P>
Not being able to make your own movie in Hollywood, or not being able to act in or direct a Hollywood movie, has nothing to do with your background or your talent. Prove to Hollywood that you have already made money, or even that you just have a lot of money, and the gates will swing open for you -- no matter who you are. Hollywood is very democratic that way. Nobody owes you anything and nobody owes me anything. <P>
I feel the frustration of the authors of these two well-written, but misguided, articles. I, too, wish I could "get into Hollywood" and get some of my own scripts into the pipeline! But from a very young age, I accepted that I can't, because I have not already made money for Hollywood, nor have I been able to figure out a way to invest in studio features. Nobody is being singled out for exclusion based upon race or gender. It isn't personal.<P>
See you in another two-and-a-half years with a new blog entry! :) <P>
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ABOUT ME:<P>
In 2008, my book "World's Coolest Movie Star" was published. It's a two-volume biography and filmography of the legendary French actor Jean Gabin, who is known to American audiences for films like "Grand Illusion" and "Pepe Le Moko." This coming July, Cohen Media Group is releasing a restored Blu-ray/DVD of the 1973 movie "Two Men in Town," starring Jean Gabin and Alain Delon, and I have written and recorded a ninety-minute audio commentary track for the DVD. In 2013, my first children's book, "The Belly Button that Escaped," was published. It's a funny kid's book in the style/tone of Roald Dahl or Shel Silverstein. Janice Phelps Williams illustrated my book. I have been Professor of Film and Television at Augusta State University, Georgia.<P>CZO: Chuck Zigman Overdrivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01597949826304464382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7968054145164198227.post-75345510513382080712013-02-26T07:03:00.000-08:002014-03-18T19:08:28.260-07:00My First Summer Job – La Reina Theater, Sherman Oaks, 1984
MY FIRST SUMMER JOB – THE LA REINA THEATER, SUMMER 1984.<P><P>
It's the Summer of 1984. The Olympics are coming to Los Angeles. I'm a gawky seventeen year old with a big afro, huge/thick engineer glasses and my pants hiked all the way up to my head (I am the polar opposite of a ‘Twilight’ kid!), and it's time for me to get my first summer job – and not because I want to work during the summer, but because, as my dad informs me, "You're seventeen. Time to go to work!" Content with sitting in my room drawing and writing stories – in fact, I will write my first feature-length screenplay when I am seventeen (it’s an awful, structureless, 180-paged mess caled "Up for Grabs," and it’s about two white teenagers who get deported to Mexico [don't ask]) – I am initially reticent to go to work, a feeling that I continue to have to this very day.<P>
I decide that, since I would like to someday be a part of the movie business (bad call!), it will behoove me to be where the movers and shakers are. So in May of '84, I show up at the La Reina Theater on Ventura Blvd. in Sherman Oaks, part of L.A.’s San Fernando Valley. The La Reina is one of the few remaining single-screen theaters left over from the halcyon days of Hollywood – the ornate structure was built in 1937. I am excited for my new job at a movie theater! Not only will I get to brush elbows with the people who make it all happen (union projectionists!) but, as the assistant manager Ms. Lewin (cute!) informs me during my interview, I will get to see all of the free movies I want. Of course, during the five months I work at the theater, only three movies will run, but I will get to see them over and over while I’m sweeping out the auditorium after each show. Little slice of heaven.<P>
I am issued my requisite blue polyester blazer and my own little nametag ("Mann Theaters: Chuck") and it's official. I now get to stand by the front door, tearing tickets and watching cars drive by, from 4:00pm to midnight, five days a week, for the next few months. There’s nothing like combining a big afro and huge/thick glasses with an ill-fitting polyester jacket. Suh-weet!<P>
Of course, being a movie theater doorman and staring out a door and watching cars drive by for eight hours a day is boring as hell. But when I think about this job now, twenty-nine years later, there are enough things about it that are fun to remember.<P>
The Manager, Mr. Hamilton, is an affable button-down guy from Chattanooga, Tennessee. He looks like somebody's dad in a sit-com and everybody likes him. The guy appears to have no edge at all – everything about him is completely benign – until one day, I’m standing outside the theater on the terrazzo floor that circumscribes the ticket booth, when a hot lady walks by the theater. Mr. Hamilton elbows me and grins, "Wow, Chuck. I’ll tell ya, boy! I'd have my head so far up her cooch, she wouldn't be able to walk for a week!" I kind of really like this bonding activity, even though I will be troubled for decades by the image of Mr. Hamilton sticking his head up people's cooches. On the extremely rare occasion today that I get to see an actual human cooch, I live in fear that Mr. Hamilton's head will pop out of there, like Porky Pig at the end of a Looney Tune, and grin, "Th… th… th… that's all, Chuck!" I love to learn that people who look nice, clean-cut responsible citizens have awesomely creepy dark sides! I'll have more prurient stories to share with you later, but I think I am going to spread them out a little bit, because if you want the X-rated stories, you have to read some clean ones first. To paraphrase Pink Floyd, 'If you want to eat my pudding, first you have to eat my meat.' (Wait, I just read that back! That doesn't sound very nice!)<P>
Moments like the one I have just described – “Mr. Hamilton and the Coochie Lady” – offset my boredom at having to stand by the door, waiting for customers to come in so that I can tear their tickets. Most of the customers are nice, but every once in awhile, I get a ne'er-do-well who tries to get in for free, and it's not teenagers or miscreants, as you may think. Mr. Hamilton gathers all of us employees together one day and tells us not to let anybody in for free, no matter how important he (thinks he) is, but it's hard to do this, when you get a customer like the completely unsavory Eileen Brennan, the character actress who is famous for playing the drill sergeant opposite Goldie Hawn in the 1980 comedy, "Private Benjamin." When she’s surly to Goldie Hawn, it sure is funny! When she’s surly to me, it’s not funny.<P>
Eileen Brennan comes to the front door of the theater and I greet her.<P>
"Welcome to Mann Theaters, ma'am. May I see your ticket?"<P>
"You have to let me in for free. The name is Brennan."<P>
"Ma'am, my manager informed me that I am not to let anybody in for free.<P>
"Would you like to speak to --"<P>
"Of course I don't want to speak to the manager. Don’t you know who I am?"
"Ma'am, I'm sorry, but you'll have to buy a ticket if you want to come in and see <i>Sheena, Queen of the Jungle</i>."<P>
Brennan yells at me for a few minutes, but then – I win! She storms off in a huff. As my maternal grandfather, Grandpa Carlin, used to say, “Good riddance to bad rubbish!”<P>
But not all celebrities are mean. Another day, Dyan Cannon walks into my theater lobby, not to see <i>Sheena, Queen of the Jungle</i>, but only to buy popcorn. While I'm normally at the front door tearing tickets, today I'm filling in behind the candy counter, and Dyan quizzes me for about ten minutes about what movies I've seen lately that I can recommend. She's really nice, and the next night, I turn on Johnny Carson, and not only is she a guest, but she's telling Johnny about how much she loves movie theater popcorn! So when I’m watching Carson, I feel like I'm part of Dyan’s anecdote. Gee, Ms. Cannon sure is nice – and pretty, too!<P>
A third celebrity comes in, too: During the eighties, everybody is talking about 'Luke and Laura,' a couple on the daytime drama, "General Hospital." On this particular evening, O.J. Simpson, ten years before he hacks his way through Brentwood, is running by the theater carrying the Olympic Torch. All of my fellow employees want to stand outside on the street and cheer him on and high-five him as he runs by, so they elect me to stay in the ticket booth and sell tickets, just in case anybody wants to buy one during this auspicious event. (It's the sixth week of <i>Sheena, Queen of the Jungle</i>, which is now playing to an empty auditorium, but the studio has made a deal to keep the film going for weeks and weeks after everybody has already stopped coming.) Sure enough, I get one customer: It's Laura from "General Hospital" – her real name is Genie Francis – and I recognize her, because my mom and my two sisters watch soap operas, and they talk about soap opera characters as though they are real people. Miss Francis asks me for one ticket to <i>Sheena</i>, but I have no idea how to use the ticket machine. I ask her politely if she'll wait for a minute until the regular ticket kid comes back, and, like everybody, she turns around and cheers with the amassed crowd on the street as O.J. Simpson runs by carrying the Olympic torch. So I am able to meet two smiling celebrities when I work at the La Reina: Dyan Cannon and Genie Francis.<P>
Besides celebrities, cops try to get into the movies for free, too, and Mr. Hamilton informs us not to let them in, unless they spring for full-priced tickets. In my five-or-so months working at the theater, four cops try to get in for free. I tell them that my manager won't allow it, but they're actually pretty cool about it. Instead of pressing the issue, they just buy tickets.<P>
As I said, most of the time, I'm standing by the front door and tearing tickets, but every once in awhile, I'll fill in at the candy counter. We employees can't eat any candy or popcorn, because each night, every popcorn container, every box of candy, and every soda cup must be inventoried – but we find a way to get around this stricture. When each theater employee becomes thirsty, he takes the first soda cup off the stack, fills it up, takes a drink, and sticks the polluted cup back onto the top of the stack. Maybe seven or eight guys will drink out of the same cup, each time returning it to its rightful place at the top. What's funny about this, and what’s gross about it too, is that the first customer who comes in each night and orders a soda invariably gets his soda in a cup that eight teen-aged geeks already drank out of! This never stops being funny. The first customer every night probably needs antibiotics!<P>
During the time I work at the La Reina theater, we show three movies. First, it’s <i>Greystoke: the Legend of Tarzan</i>, a very good Tarzan movie directed by the <i>Chariots of Fire </i>guy, Hugh Hudson. (What ass did I pull that name out of? I haven't thought about that guy in years -- nor has Hollywood!) The second movie is <i>Sheena, Queen of the Jungle</i>, a horrible movie which, nevertheless, stars Tanya Roberts from "Charlie’s Angels" riding a horse in a bikini and speaking broken English for ninety minutes. (Today, Tanya lives two doors away from my parents’ house in Laurel Canyon, but I’ve never met her.) And the third movie is the big one: It’s <i>Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom</i>. Opening weekend is so big for that movie – the line is around the block – that Mr. Hamilton has me go outside with a wooden box on a strap around my neck, shilling popcorn and soda to the people in line. To this day, I have a soft spot for <i>Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom</i>, because I get to see it dozens of times while I am in the auditorium mopping up all the sticky soda. (I hope it's soda!) And even though, to this day, I have never seen an episode of "Star Trek" in my life, because I abhor science fiction, I even remember the <i>Star Trek III: The Search for Spock </i>movie trailer that is shown before the <i>Indiana Jones </i>feature, because there’s a really funny part of the trailer in which the narrator intones, “The crew of the Enterprise will now be put to the TEST?” – and when he says the word “test,” his voice goes up an octave, and he ends the sentence like he’s asking a question. It’s hilarious. The guys and I get a good laugh out of it. (“The crew of the Enterprise will now be put to the TEST?!”) It sounds like, right as the guy is saying the word 'test,' somebody in the recording booth is punching him in the balls! It’s like the narrator doesn’t know whether the crew of the Enterprise will be put to the test or not.<P>
I get brownie points at the theater, because one day, Mr. Hamilton gathers us all in the foyer and tells us that he needs two guys to come in at five in the morning to clean the underside of all five hundred of the theater’s seats with a toothbrush. I immediately volunteer.<P>
I told you that I would get to some more prurient stories, so here they come, and this one is plenty dirty, so I sort of apologize in advance – but since I like this story a lot, I don’t completely apologize:<P>
One of my friends at the theater is a tall/stocky guy named Michael K., and he is, very obviously, not the sharpest tool in the shed; he is a big, good-natured oaf, a 1980s reimagination of Lenny from <i>Of Mice and Men</i>. (So I guess that makes me “George.”)<P>
“Heya, Chuckah!” Michael grins once, slapping me in the back, in his goofy singsong voice, “Yuh like wimmin?”<P>
“Sure,” I reply.<P>
Conspiratorially, he continues: “Yuh know how to tell if a girl has VD?”<P>
“Uh… no.” I’m seventeen. I don’t know anything about girls at all, except that, at that age, I am terribly frightened of them. (When I am sixteen and seventeen, I am so horned-up [ew!] that, some nights, I actually dream that I am in a video store, renting a VHS porno video. At the age of 17, this is about the farthest I will allow my imagination can take me. To this day, I try to keep my goals exactly this reasonable.<P>
“Well," Michael continues, "If you want to know if a girl has VD, first you stick your finger in your ear. And you have to get a big glob of ear wax on your finger.”<P>
“Really?”<P>
“Yeah! And then you stick your finger in her p---y. And if she screams, it means that she has VD!”<P>
This is the first and last sexual advice I will ever allow anybody to give me, and it has haunted me to this very day.<P>
Another day, Michael tells me that after work, he is going to take me to a dance club a few blocks away from the theater, “Le Hot Club,” so that we can boogie with some girls. I am, needless to say, really excited because I am 17 and full of more hormones than a Quarter Pounder. One needs to be twenty-one to get in to Le Hot Club, but somehow, Michael is able to secure our entrance: Even though Michael is seventeen just like me, he’s six-foot-three (which used to be considered tall in 1984!) and he sports a thick mustache which makes him look like he's about thirty. So we dance with a bunch of women who look like refugees from a Nagel print (spandex hair, feathered pants.) I dance with one mid-20s girl who looks like Dale Bozzio from Missing Persons and another who bears a striking resemblance to Terri Nunn from Berlin, so I’m happy. The place, as I remember it, has the funniest paisley/pastel ‘80s vibe you’ve ever seen; it looks like the Patrick Nagel poster from my sister’s bedroom has exploded and turned into a building.<P>
If you read my ear wax story, you might believe that some of the guys who worked at the theater with me needed some kind of sexual harassment training class – and I would concur. Another kid who works at the theater, whose name I can’t remember (but he has blonde, feathered hair and a bad attitude; he looks and acts like most of “The Bad News Bears”) continually lopes up to girl employees from behind, grabs their chests, thrusts his crotch into their butts, and brays, “Hey, Sweaty Betty Juicy Lucy!” I make a mental note that I will never try this move, nor will I ever attempt the ear wax thing.<P>
I have lots of good buddies at the theater. Michael is dumb but fun. There is also my friend Steve, with whom I’ve recently re-connected on facebook – he’s a great guy. (When I was in high school, my friends and I used to make our own little Super 8 movies and I starred Steve in a little effort called “The Armageddon Man,” a Reagan-era nuclear thriller. We used a sound Super 8 camera to make the film, but the sound was accidentally turned off at one point, so if I ever show this film to you, I have to tell you what the characters were saying, because half of the film is, accidentally, silent.)<P>
Another co-worker friend at the theater is a very nice girl who is the sister of a famous ‘80s movie actress – they could be identical twins, but the sister I work with has the worst acne I have ever seen, as opposed to her famous sister, who has clear, alabaster skin. (The sister I work with has so many pimples, she makes me think of the comic song I used to hear my dad sing while he was washing his car: “She has pimples on her, but[t]… I love her…”) And then there is my buddy Carlton. About 40 years old, Carlton is the smooth/groovy jazz musician who isn’t booking gigs like he used to, so he has to supplement his income by working in a movie theater. Carlton gives Yoda-like advice to us youngbloods. Once, we’re standing by the door together and we’re surveying a trio of young couples who are on their way in to the dance club across the street. Carlton sighs longingly, shakes his head, and sighs, “Chuck, my Disco Danny days are over.” I’m in my forties as I write this article, and I now understand what he is talking about. My Disco Danny days are over, too – not that I ever had any Disco Danny Days! (I never even had too many Waltz Waldo Days!)<P>
There’s also a cute Latina ticket booth girl that all of the guys in the theater are hot for – I think she’s in her mid 20’s and has a couple of small children – and she is always very friendly to me. One night, she asks me for a ride home – she usually takes the bus – and then she asks me if I want to come up. Cripplingly shy, I say no – and, of course, I kick myself about that for years. (I will drop the ball a few times in my teens and early twenties because, at that point in my life, I am absolutely terrified of people. To this day, I think people are pretty scary sometimes! Don't you?)<P>
Eventually, Mr. Hamilton leaves, and he is replaced by another manager, a humorless, Ernest Borgnine-looking guy who is always chewing on a toothpick, and who, reportedly, has been fired from his job at an old man steakhouse called the Lamplighter, on Van Nuys Blvd., for propositioning male employees. Once, one of my friends and I are behind the candy counter and we’re talking about one thing or another. The New Manager comes over to us and sternly admonishes, “If you got time to talk, you got time to stock.” (Meaning: If we have time to talk, our time might be better spent stocking the candy counter.) My friend leans over to me and, imitating the manager’s gruff voice, gigglingly whispers, “If ya got time to talk, ya got time to s—k c—k!” The manager spins around and bleats, “What did you two clowns just say? I heard that!” He storms off into his office, but we never get into trouble. Eventually this manager gets fired, as he had previously been fired at the Lamplighter because, as it turns out, he's also propositioning male employees in his office at the theater. (He never propositions me, though.)<P>
Finally, near the end of my summer stint at the La Reina, this manager is replaced by a third manager, Mr. English, who is all-business. Mr. English is only 20 – he looks like a Kennedy cross-bred with a Howdy Doody puppet – and it rubs me the wrong way that he demands we call him “Mr. English,” even though he is close to our age. Today he’s probably the balding manager of a Kinko's in Bakersfield or some low-level bureaucrat in LAUSD, and he’s probably got a mousy wife and some A.D.D. kids.<P>
During my eight hour shifts at the theater, I get a forty-five minute break, so, typically, I head out into the giant parking lot behind the theater and take a nap in the back seat of my first car, a used, purple Buick sedan that I have purchased for $500. (This car is huge – it’s like a hotel!)<P>
The following summer – the summer after my first year of college, when I am almost 19, I will work across the street from the La Reina Theater, at Tower Video. Nothing too interesting to report from Tower Video – I just remember that I’m bored there most of the time, as I stock the shelves with VHS cassettes of <i>Killer Klowns from Outer Space</i>. The twentysomething manager guy wears this horrible-smelling cologne which, I find out, is called Patchouli oil, and which, as a co-worker informs me, means that the manager is gay, and that he wears this scent as some kind of mating call to other likeminded hombres who might recognize it. Every time Patchouli Manager walks by, I gag – but this just leaves more girls for me (!), because, when am working the cash register, I rent videos to Talia Shire and Courtney Cox and, at one point, I try to lamely flirt with Courtney, and she just scowls at me. (Ten years later, when I see Courtney in a bakery in Beverly Hills, she accosts me, and smiles, and says “Hi!” – so that makes up for the scowl she gave me when I was younger!) And once, on July 4, 1985 – yes, I have to work on my 19th birthday, too – all of us employees want to leave the video store so that we can go and watch fireworks. So one of my co-workers gets an impressive idea: He tells us that if we phone a bomb scare into the corporate office of Tower Video, that our store manager should let us go home. So we phone up the corporate office of Tower, and we tell the guy who answers the phone, “There’s a bomb under the Tower Video in Sherman Oaks!” The corporate guy talks to our store manager who knows we’re full of shit. So, as our punishment, Patchouli makes us close down the store. But, for our punishment, we are ordered to stand out in front of the store and accept returned VHS cassettes from customers, curbside, as fireworks from nearby Universal Studio light up the sky overhead. Even when I win, I lose.<P>
Before long, it is time to say goodbye to the La Reina Theater, Tower Video, and working at jobs along Ventura Blvd.<P>
In my 20s, after graduating from college, I would work for some movie producers, five years of my life which made me decide that I never wanted to work in the movie industry again. (Horrible people! I wouldn't pee on them if they were on fire!) Today, I am, very happily, a teacher, and I have been so for seventeen years -- two on the college level and fifteen on the elementary school level. (And college kids are whinier than elementary school kids.)<P>
In 1986, two years after I finish working there, the single-screen La Reina Theater shuts down after a fifty year run, because it can't complete with the boxy multiplexes, and it is converted into a beauty supply shop for women. Today, in 2013, the theater is still standing, and it looks like it used to, but it is now the centerpiece of a block-long mini-mall that was built around the theater about ten years ago. The original theater marquee now advertises the name of the store, and the candy counter continues to exist, too – but instead of candy, it is now filled with bath beads and perfume. The doors on either side of the candy counter that used to lead to the auditorium have been sealed shut. The interior of the place has been decked out in a flowery, light blue color scheme and, in fact, the name of the place, is "Blue."<P>
There’s nothing like your first summer job! Hey: What was your first summer job, everybody?!<P>
PS: If you want to see the La Reina Theater in its full glory, get yourself a copy of the low-budget, and not at all horrible (Why am I making excuses? It’s hilarious!) drive-in comedy <i>The Happy Hooker Goes Hollywood </i>(1977). The film’s finale, which features Phil Silvers and Adam West, takes place at the La Reina theater! (There’s also a Dick Tracy serial, made in the ‘40s, that shows the front of the La Reina...)<P>
PPS: Now you can scroll down and read my really old blog entries from 2010! And at the bottom of that page, you can click on "older" entries and see my entries from 2009!
CZO: Chuck Zigman Overdrivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01597949826304464382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7968054145164198227.post-16680620086554925962010-12-04T10:02:00.001-08:002010-12-05T17:28:23.536-08:00A Blog About How Dumb Blogging Is!<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/TPqD7qpZLKI/AAAAAAAAAK4/isiz7dGUb5U/s1600/truman_capote.gif"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 255px; height: 320px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/TPqD7qpZLKI/AAAAAAAAAK4/isiz7dGUb5U/s320/truman_capote.gif" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5546890952143613090" /></a><br /><strong>Truman Capote: "That's not writing! It's just typing!"</strong><br /><br />You know how they say you shouldn't go to the market when you're hungry? They should also say, "You shouldn't blog when you're in a bad mood." Having said that: Here I go!<br /><br /><br />Some people tell me that if I want people to “know me as a writer,” I’m supposed to “blog every day.” <br /><br />Blog every day? Uh-oh! If that’s the case, I have to blog a whole bunch more, because my last blog on this site, prior to this one, was eight months ago – my last blog is dated May 29th!<br /><br />First of all – what on earth would I blog about? I like movies, but there are already ten million people who write about movies on line, and probably, they write better than I can write. I could write something political, but there are definitely people who do that better than me, as well -- not to mention that the fact that I hate liberals and conservatives (people who only see 'their own sides') alike. I guess I could write “curmudgeonly” pieces about my “pet peeves,” but I’ve already written a few of those – scroll down, and you can see ‘em – and when I read them back, they strike me as being more than a little creepy.<br /><br />When I started this blogsite about a year ago, I thought it was a good idea – and in a way, it is a pretty good idea once in a great while, because I can use it as a catch-all for some previously unpublished articles I wrote, which I have already posted – my interviews with Milton Berle and with a porn king, the weird screenplay I posted, and an article about what it was like to be a student in the legendary author Terry Southern’s writing class.<br /><br />But mostly, blogging, to call a spade a spade, is bullshit, an extreme form of impotently narcissistic navel gazing – which is the reason I won’t allow myself to do it that much. I have some friends who publish wonderful blogs which are truly moving and amazing, but this piece isn't meant for them -- this is for everybody else in the world.<br /><br />Blogging’s not new – there’s always been blogging, but it used to be called “my private thoughts that are not interesting enough to share with other people and which I should just keep to myself.” Thanks to the internet, everybody’s half-assed private thoughts, including my own, are now considered to be “writing.” But as Truman Capote once opined, correctly, when he was describing Jack Kerouac's excruciatingly rambling prose, “That’s not writing… it’s just typing.”<br /><br />The other problem with blogging, is that it has ruined journalism and strangled magazines and newspapers out of existence. Every sentient, mouth-breathing creature in the world has a blogsite, and all of these blog ‘articles’ are mixed in with the real journalism, and it has cheapened journalism – literally so, because, ten years ago, during the internet boom, before blogging, I would get paid $250 or $350 a piece to write articles for these early e-zines, and now that there’s a deluge of writing on the internet, those same artlcles that used to pay $350 are now paying $5 or $10.<br /><br />What everybody has to learn – and I’ve already absorbed this lesson – is that we should all keep our thoughts in our own heads. Unless you're John Steinbeck or Upton Sinclair, you have to realize that nobody can change the world by pecking at a keyboard. Just like you don't want to hear my problems, sometimes I don't want to hear yours. When you blog, you're telling the world, "Here I am! Look at me!" Well, guess what: The world is busy accumulating money and buying stupid computerized gadgets and taking its cracker-munchers to soccer practice. The world doesn't want to hear it. And I don't want to hear how your little genius did on his spelling test today, or how your azaleas or jacarandas are doing. Honest-injun, I don't! Your blog posting might feel therapeutic for you while you're writing it, but for me, it's like nails on a chalkboard. <br /><br />Plus, on a very basic level: Why on earth would anybody write anything for free? Does your doctor work for free? Your kid's teacher? The guy who fixes your car? Of course not. And writing is work, too. And here in America, writing equals money. I am continually amazed by anybody who would give anything away for free... unless, of course, you're doing a charitable act, which is of course great and ennobling and something that all of us could stand to do a little more of, most of the time. If you want recognition, go to Darfur and feed some kids, don't write a blog about some plastic surgery-case you saw on "Dancing with the Stars" last night. <br /><br />And: The same people who tell me I'm supposed to blog every day also tell me that I'm supposed to do it so I can "brand myself, on line," but I'm not a brand! I'm a person, a regular fortysomething man with a lousy attitude! If I were a brand I would probably be "Colgate with MFP," but I'm just me. Some people infuriate me to no end...<br /><br />Maybe tomorrow I'll wake up in a better mood and I'll decide that I like blogging, and I'll erase this and write fifteen new entries. But today I think blogging is dumb. In fact, it's so dumb, I had to write a blog about it because I am the world's biggest hypocrite! <br /><br /><br /><object width="560" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/lcFx06cBmbk?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/lcFx06cBmbk?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="340"></embed></object><br /><strong>In director Terence Malick's <em>Badlands</em> (1973), young mass murderers Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek, who know they are fated for a tragic end, make their way into a recording booth, in which they lay down an acetate of their voices as a way of demonstrating to the world that they were "here" and that they "mattered." That's what blogging is: Blogging is when disenfranchised or unimportant people want the world to know that they were here, so they make recordings of their voices. (I do it, too.)</strong><br /><br />-- 30 --CZO: Chuck Zigman Overdrivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01597949826304464382noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7968054145164198227.post-36745419580186016152010-03-28T18:37:00.000-07:002010-03-29T13:39:01.147-07:00Never Give a Racist a Ride<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/S7DQnIl9pxI/AAAAAAAAAKg/z98ro0Q2ciE/s1600/stop+racism.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 230px; height: 223px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/S7DQnIl9pxI/AAAAAAAAAKg/z98ro0Q2ciE/s320/stop+racism.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5454088519485859602" /></a><br />NEVER GIVE A RACIST A RIDE<br />by Chuck Zigman, 3/28/10<br /><br /><br />Life has, yet again, given me something to blog about.<br /><br />Last week, one of my friends was visiting Los Angeles from England. He’s an American, but he’s got a Ph.D, and he’s teaching Cinema Studies at a university in England.<br /><br />Anyway, my friend was in town, along with hundreds of other Cinema Studies professors from all over the world, to attend an academic conference in downtown L.A., at the historic Bonaventure Hotel.<br /><br />On the last evening of the conference, two Saturdays ago, I went out for drinks with my friend and a couple of our mutual friends, and my friend brought along five or six of his film professor colleagues from the colloquium, all of whom he, too, had just met for the first time that week. We all had a fun/robust time, drinking at the recently-restored Hotel Figueroa and discussing arcane old movies in the most esoteric/pretentious way imaginable.<br /><br />At about 2:00 am, it fell to me to drive five of the film professors back to the Bonaventure, since I was the only one with a car. I warned them, in advance, that my car, a convertible (my “midlife crisis convertible”), was very small, and that it might be a tight squeeze, but it didn’t seem to bother anybody, especially because everybody was pretty toasted.<br /><br />So here’s what happened:<br /><br />I’m driving these five film professors back to the Bonaventure. There’s three film professors in the back seat, I’m in the driver’s seat, and to my right, in the passenger seat, there’s a very strapping lady film professor from the University of Copenahgen. This lady film professor, a truly Amazonian doppelganger for Brigitte Nielsen, writes books about American action films, in both Danish and English. She seems to be a very agreeable/personable woman, and in fact, she is so agreeable, that my friend, the American guy who teaches in England, is sitting on her lap during the ride back to the hotel.<br /><br />At any rate, while I’m driving, Danish Film Professor Lady, who is about fifty sheets to the wind, exuberantly proclaims, “Hey, Chuck! Your small sports car is reminding me of my favorite joke about small sports cars!” Before any of us can stop her, she proceeds to tell her joke: <br /><br />“How do you fit two hundred and fifty Jews into a small sports car?"<br /><br /><em>Uh-Oh!</em> The other four of us know where this joke is going. We don’t really want to hear the punchline, but of course, she has to say it anyway, right? She can't leave us high and dry! This is the punchline:<br /><br />“Two in the front seat… two in the back seat… and <em>two hundred and forty-six in the ashtray!</em>” <br /><br />We all groan, and it has suddenly become very uncomfortable in my 2007 Mitsubishi Eclipse Spyder, because everybody in my car, save for the joke-teller, has already figured out that the driver (me) is Jewish.<br /><br />After this joke has been told – and it easily one of the most horrible/offensive/obnoxious jokes I’ve ever heard – I offer up to Danish Lady the fact that I’m Jewish. Well, either she doesn’t hear me or she doesn’t care, because she quickly follows suit by telling a second joke, and if you think that one is wrong, wait ‘til you hear the next one she tells. This one really ices the crowd:<br /><br />Danish Lady’s Joke #2: <em> “What’s the difference between a black person and a bowl of shit?” </em>Long pause for the punchline, which is only two words long: <em>“The bowl.”</em><br /><br />This Danish Film Professor Lady is easily one of the most horrible, nasty people I’ve ever met.<br /><br />And what this terrible person said in my car last week, about Jews and blacks, has been bothering me for a whole week. I have actually been so mad about this lady all week, I haven’t been able to sleep that well. I know there are people I’m supposed to call when I hear something like this, but I don’t know exactly whom I should be notifying! Should I call the Simon Weisenthal Center? The Anti-Defamation League? The NAACP? Is there an organization of professors in Denmark I can fire off a letter to? This vermin should not be teaching college students, and if I have my way she will not be teaching them for much longer.<br /><br />Now, I love humor – it’s my favorite thing on earth, and sometimes I can even enjoy an ethnic joke if it’s well-crafted. I’m a huge fan of freedom of speech, as well, and I even like Denmark; in fact, I spent the first ten years of my life religiously watching the Danny Kaye movie <em>Hans Christian Andersen </em>ten million times with my paternal grandmother, and I happen to know every single, solitary, wonderful song from that film ("Inchworm," "Wonderful Cophenhagen," the math song that goes, "2 and 2 are 4... 4 and 4 are 8...," etc.).<br /><br />But I believe that these two jokes that this disgusting, cackling pig/shrew told in my car went far beyond the realm of acceptable behavior.<br /><br />I just thought I’d use my blog site today to vent about my experience with this horrible, racist Danish Film Professor Lady. <br /><br />I hope she dies choking on her own blood, and I hope it’s painful.<br /><br />PS, This wasn't the first racist thing I've ever heard. Once, a smart, ivy league-educated woman actually asked me, very seriously, "Chuck, why is to so hard for you to get into the film industry? You're Jewish! Can't you just <em>get right in</em>?" (My answer was, "Oh, I can get in anytime I want to. I just haven't done the secret handshake yet." With gravitas, she asked me if I could show her the handshake!!!)... On another occasion, when I was in my mid-twenties, I had just starting dating somebody, and she kept saying horrible things about Jews right in front of me ("Let's not go into that restaurant... it looks too Jewish in there"), and after her third ethnic slur, I informed her, "Wait a minute! I'm a Jew!" She started to cry, because, as I expected, she didn't know I was <br />Semitic. She replied, through her tears, "If you're Jewish, why aren't you wearing one of those little hats?" I sure know how to pick 'em, huh!<br /><br />10-4<br /><br /><br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/fXi3bjKowJU&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/fXi3bjKowJU&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><strong>I don't like the nasty Danish lady who told racist jokes in my car last week, but I still like Denmark. To prove it, here's a scene from my favorite boyhood movie: Here is Danny Kaye singing "Inchworm," from 1952's <em>Hans Christian Andersen</em>.</strong>CZO: Chuck Zigman Overdrivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01597949826304464382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7968054145164198227.post-79986025838473511692010-02-23T13:32:00.000-08:002010-02-24T21:36:04.972-08:00The Guy Who Mugged My Dad on January 2nd<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/S4RMuQrAvyI/AAAAAAAAAJw/LVOgFDof14I/s1600-h/mugger6.bmp"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 146px; height: 172px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/S4RMuQrAvyI/AAAAAAAAAJw/LVOgFDof14I/s320/mugger6.bmp" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5441558607403466530" /></a><br /><strong>The Guy Who Mugged and Beat My Dad On January 2nd, 2010 in Los Angeles.</strong><br /><br /><br />Hi:<br /><br />I expected my new blog entry to be something about old movies or something; but life has just given me a topic, so let's call this posting a "special bulletin."<br /><br />As some people already know, my dad, Bob Zigman, was mugged and beaten on January 2nd, 2010 during his Saturday morning walk. The police now have photos of the mugger, but still don't have his name. This happened near the corner of Santa Monica Blvd. and Doheny Avenue, close to Beverly Hills.<br /><br />After the guy knocked my dad out and threw him in the bushes, he took my dad's wallet, and went on a shopping spree at a Walmart in Panorama City! The guy, all told, spent about $3,000.00 in more than ten stores. Weirdly: My dad's photograph was on the credit card; the people behind the counters must have been pretty dumb not to check the photo on the credit card against the guy buying the stuff. (This shows how dumb muggers are: If I stole somebody's credit card, I wouldn't waste it on Walmart; I'd go to a high-end place like Nieman-Marcus! But that's just me.)<br /><br />My dad needed thirty-two stitches in his forehead, and his cheekbone was fractured in three places. Two separate surgeries were required.<br /><br />Here are pictures of the guy, courtesy of Walmart's security camera, as well as a portion of the police report. If anybody's ever seen this guy before, let me know, or call the LAPD Tip Line (see below), because we still don't know his name. Pass this along.<br /><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/S4RLxIauOQI/AAAAAAAAAJQ/tIzcybJtCA8/s1600-h/mugger1.bmp"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 147px; height: 138px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/S4RLxIauOQI/AAAAAAAAAJQ/tIzcybJtCA8/s320/mugger1.bmp" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5441557557215639810" /></a><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/S4RL9N73kDI/AAAAAAAAAJY/6FXgiX67DwA/s1600-h/mugger2.bmp"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 161px; height: 179px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/S4RL9N73kDI/AAAAAAAAAJY/6FXgiX67DwA/s320/mugger2.bmp" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5441557764855271474" /></a><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/S4RMMZGHC_I/AAAAAAAAAJg/OG9VMAP3MOk/s1600-h/mugger3.bmp"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 185px; height: 149px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/S4RMMZGHC_I/AAAAAAAAAJg/OG9VMAP3MOk/s320/mugger3.bmp" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5441558025549057010" /></a><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/S4RMdxfkJrI/AAAAAAAAAJo/IzWirZVLnko/s1600-h/mugger4.bmp"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 197px; height: 189px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/S4RMdxfkJrI/AAAAAAAAAJo/IzWirZVLnko/s320/mugger4.bmp" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5441558324156049074" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br />If the police don't find this guy, I'll string his ass up myself.<br /><br />-- Chuck<br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/S4RN259bokI/AAAAAAAAAJ4/VZf-ta3WwHc/s1600-h/mugger5.bmp"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 261px; height: 145px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/S4RN259bokI/AAAAAAAAAJ4/VZf-ta3WwHc/s320/mugger5.bmp" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5441559855437161026" /></a><br /><strong>"I know I don't look like the guy on the credit card. Just give me my purchase, anyway!"</strong><br /><br /><br /><br />Submit a Web Tip<br /><br />Wanted As Of: 1/2/10<br /><br />Robbery Name: UNKNOWNAli <br /><br />Sex: Male<br /><br />Age:<br /><br />DOB:<br /><br />Height:<br /><br />Unknown Weight:<br /><br />Unknown Hair:<br /><br />Eyes: Unknown<br /><br /><br />Case: File #10-00027-09 INFORMATION WANTED - 211PC SUSPECT<br /><br /><br /> On Saturday, 1/2/10, at approximately 5:40 a.m., at the 9000 block of Santa Monica Blvd. in West Hollywood, a victim was taking his morning walk when a suspect approached him from behind and struck the victim in the head with an unknown object. The victim lost consciousness, and when he woke up, his wallet containing his California driver`s license and a credit card had been stolen.<br /><br /><br />Later that same day, the suspect was seen at a Walmart in Panorama City using the victim`s stolen credit card. Additionally, the victim`s credit card was used at other locations throughout Panorama City before the victim was able to cancel his card.<br /><br /><br />If you can identify the above individual or have any additional information to call Crime Stoppers at 800-222-TIPS (8477), text "TIPLA" and the message to 274637 or submit an anonymous webtip by clicking on the Submit a Webtip link located above.CZO: Chuck Zigman Overdrivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01597949826304464382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7968054145164198227.post-24454967442846050902010-02-04T15:57:00.000-08:002017-04-10T23:23:25.352-07:00Place of Honor: A Story of Passover, by Charles Zigman</strong><br /><br /><br />AUTUMN, 1939: In the town of Lodz, as in other cities in Poland, the residents of the Jewish community were hated. Considering what had been happening in the month since Hitler’s armies had invaded Poland, the Jews really hadn’t had things so terribly bad before: Daily, Jews from all parts of the country were being herded aboard long trains. To Treblinka; to Auschwitz; to Buchenwald; and, unbeknownst to them, to death.<br /><br /> A train consisting of forty-eight cars would today carry one thousand six hundred and sixty-eight of Lodz’s Jewish residents (thirty-six per car) to the Buchenwald concentration camp, which, they were assured, was merely a “work camp,” where they would be sequestered only temporarily, before being returned, in fine form and fettle, to their own town.<br /><br /> A black-uniformed SS Corporal (burgeoning belly; thick, greasy mustache) checked his list as the frightened-looking Jews boarded, each passenger calling out his own name. Mothers called out names of their children, as they lifted their little ones onto that too-high first step.<br /><br /> In contrast to the melancholy stares of those who were boarding, was that of a youngish, yellow-bearded man in a leaf-green tunic, who was humming an antiquated Jewish folksong with a cheeriness which was inappropriate to this unwanted exodus. The ones in front and in back of him in line shot angry glances at him.<br /><br /> “What is your name, Jew?” the Corporal inquired.<br /><br /> “My name is Eli, my brother,” he exclaimed, extending his hand in firm friendship. “What is yours, if I may ask?”<br /><br /> “Don’t you try any of your Jew tricks on me,” the Corporal grunted, stepping back. “What is your family name?”<br /> <br /> “My family name? Cohen… I am Eli Cohen.”<br /> <br /> The Corporal examined all five pages of his list.<br /><br /> “There is no Eli Cohen on this list. It isn’t your turn. You’re lucky—but it won’t last. Now go home.”<br /><br /> “All of these people are my associates,” Eli said. “I couldn’t feel comfortable in my home today, knowing where you are really taking them.”<br /> <br /> “Now, wait a minute,” the Corporal replied, in equally hushed tones, not wanting to create a panic, “What do you mean, ‘Where we are really taking them,’ hmm? We are taking them to work. And that is all we are doing.”<br /><br /> “Okay. Whatever you say, sir,” Eli winked, conspiratorially. “I won’t tell if you won’t!”<br /> <br /> “You are holding up business,” the Corporal growled nervously, sweat beading upon his cruel forehead. “Go home. When we want you, Cohen, you can be sure we will come and get you.”<br /><br /> Eli mischievously manipulated some dirt with the heel of his shoe.<br /><br /> “I don’t mean to be impertinent, but… do you have a waiting list? I’d really like to get on this train, if you please,” Eli grinned at the German.<br /><br /> “No! Now, will you go home!”<br /><br /> Eli’s smile widened. “In that case,” he said, “Your Fuhrer, Herr Hitler, is a pig. He is a disgusting vermin of the lowest order!” Eli began to canter around, in absurd burlesque of Hitleresque lockstep.<br /> <br /> The Jews looked away, embarrassedly – at their feet, at one of the two, nearby water towers; anywhere. They knew they were not in a favorable situation, and that this supposed ‘co-religionist,’ a man whom none of them had ever seen before today, was going to raise the already-boiling water to a more volatile temperature.<br /><br /> “That’s it,” the Corporal screamed, his eyes narrowing into a scowl. “On the train, kike. Or I will shoot you this minute!” He patted the Lugar in his pocket, driving his point home.<br /><br /> “Thank you, sir!” Eli said, as he leaped aboard the train. “By the way, I should like to commend you to your superiors. Won’t you tell me your name?”<br /><br /> But the Corporal, who was busying checking off other names, ignored Eli, who disappeared into the recesses of a boxcar that was about one-third of the way down the line, a car which was only identified by a large, yellow number – “18.”<br /> <br /> The boxcar to which Eli had admitted himself was dark and dank and, after two more villagers were admitted – an elderly, rheumatic man and his wife – the Officer shut the door behind them, bringing the number of passengers in the car to thirty-six.<br /> <br /> They were all so very tightly packed in the humid chamber, none could sit down, and the four children in the car began to cry. One’s mother wiped her child’s tears away with the red scarf she had worn about her head.<br /><br /> Eli smiled a smile incongruous with the confused looks of the other passengers.<br /><br /> “That’s a smart thing you did, fellah,” a scruffy-faced man mumbled to Eli, his tone conveying that he meant exactly the opposite. “What kind of an idiot gets on voluntarily? For all we know, we might be going to our deaths.”<br /><br /> The other passengers, who had never entertained that thought, and merely had it in mind that they were being transferred to a work camp, hushed up all at once, including their children, one of whom, a tow-headed girl, now frightened, hugged at her misty-eyed mother’s voluminous thigh.<br /><br /> “In fact, you are right,” Eli answered him, an amusing smile radiating outward from his gentle countenance. “That is exactly where we are going.”<br /><br /> That comment, expressed dispassionately enough, begat pandemonium, to which each passenger contributed at least one horrified look or blood-curdling scream. The scruffy man grabbed Eli by the collar of his greasy tunic, and Eli laughed.<br /><br /> “What do you mean, scaring them like that?”<br /><br /> “I didn’t mean to scare anybody,” Eli said, pushing the man’s hand away from his neck. “I’m just not a terribly good liar, that’s all. You’ll all excuse me.”<br /><br /> “We’ve never seen you in Lodz before,” an elderly woman with enormous vocal range, who Eli thought (knew?) must have, at one time, worked on the Yiddish theater circuit as chanteuse, screamed. “You’re a Nazi spy!”<br /><br /> “I am Jewish, as you are,” Eli said. “And, in response to the other part of your charge, you have not, any of you, seen me before in your town, that is true. But each and every Passover, you set a place for me at your Seder table.”<br /><br /> The passengers all looked at each other, and all each could hear, besides his or her own thoughts, was the metallic cacophony of the train, as it scraped over each square of track.<br /><br /> “You mean to tell us that you’re Elijah, the Prophet?” the scruffy-faced man asked, facetiously.<br /><br /> “Very good,” Eli said, patting the man’s back. “You have attended shul – and not just the local tavern, as your whiskey breath would indicate.”<br /><br /> The scruffy-faced man instinctively reached for a bottle in his overcoat pocket, as he would do whenever he heard something odd like that. He wanted to throw it out the window, even though there was neither a bottle in his pocket, nor a window in the car.<br /><br /> “You can’t be Elijah,” the elderly woman shouted.<br /><br /> “What is your name?” Eli asked her.<br /><br /> “Shulamit Rosenberg.”<br /><br /> “You can’t be Shulamit Rosenberg,” Eli returned. “Does anybody have some food? A speck of bread – or perhaps a morsel of cheese? I’m famished.”<br /><br /> Although Eli smelled roasted meat from one of the ladies’ satchels, nobody offered him a solitary bite.<br /><br /> “I thought not,” he answered, and he next proceeded to pull a plate of baked chicken from mid-air. “Will anybody join me? The children all look very hungry.”<br /><br /> People waved him off. “We’re not falling for your magic tricks,” the chanteuse said. (The adults agreed with her.)<br /> <br /> None of the adults would take chicken and, though there was scarcely room, Eli knelt and presented the steaming platter to the four small children aboard. Each grabbed a savory piece of chicken, devouring it, rapturously, despite admonishments from the parents that the man before them was the Devil and that, in effect, they were eating <em>The Devil’s Chicken.</em><br /><br /> “These sweet children know who I am, instinctively,” he said, looking up at the adults as he knelt, with his plate, in front of the children. He lifted the chin of a shy girl, gently, between thumb and forefinger. He looked her eyes, pleadingly:<br /><br /> “Darling, would you tell the grown-ups who I am? You know who I am, don’t you?” <br /><br /> The girl nodded affirmatively, and looked to the adults, reciting something she had probably, and preternaturally, always known:<br /><br /> “This man is Elijah the Prophet, who is said to come and tell the Children of Israel when the Messiah will deliver us back to the Promised Land.” <br /><br /> She then looked at Eli for an approving glance, which he doled out to her as easily as he had the chicken.<br /><br /> The girl’s obese mother pushed her against her breast and cackled at Eli<br /><br /> “You are the Devil!” She underscored her malediction with a gob of spit, volleyed in the direction of his eye. He erased it with his green sleeve.<br /><br /> The other adults, too, began to shower Eli with curses, but the children suddenly rallied to his side, affirming that, in fact, he was the Prophet.<br /><br /> Eli passed a finger in front of his lips, for as much as to tell the children, “Let them find out for themselves.”<br /><br /> When the children began to shoot disappointed glances at their parents – the Unbelievers – the adults all started to look guilty.<br /><br /> “Assuming you are Elijah, which I doubt very strongly,” the scruffy-faced man lectured, “why wouldn’t you try and get us off this train?”<br /><br /> “I am a Jew like you, with a moral compunction to follow my people unto what awaits them. In this case, I am sorry to say that it is death.”<br /><br /> He found a small nook on the floor and settled into it, apologizing for the legs he was bumping.<br /><br /> “You can’t do anything?” a blonde woman asked him, the red-cheeked daughter of the chanteuse. “You won’t try and help us?”<br /><br /> “You don’t believe who I am, anyway. What difference would it make.”<br /><br /> But there seemed to be a sudden, general consensus that Eli was, in fact, Elijah, based on the fact that people who are tempered by fear are sometimes very likely to believe in anyone who is immediately sympathetic to their cause.<br /><br /> “If you are Elijah…” The scruffy-faced man began to ask his question, but stopped, fumfering for the right words.<br /><br /> “If I am Elijah, yes?”<br /><br /> “If you are Elijah, why is it that, for centuries, Jews have been leaving a place of honor for you and a glass of wine at the Seder, and yet, you have never shown up to honor the invitation?”<br /><br /> “It’s like with anything else: If you accept one invitation, you have to accept them all, right? I know I should go into these people’s homes, but to me, it would be tantamount to my having accepted charity, and I would feel embarrassed.”<br /><br /> “We, your people, who you say you are following to the grave because you feel so much for us – we embarrass you?” an elderly man interjected. “Explain, please!”<br /><br /> “Well, it’s like this: Did you ever sit at a table and watch other people, as they’re watching you eat? It’s embarrassing, isn’t it. It’s something I try to avoid, whenever I can.”<br /><br /> “So you mean to say that you will never honor a single invitation to a Seder?”<br /><br /> Eli felt the fits and starts of the train with his behind.<br /><br /> “Sure, one day I’ll have to do that. But if I did it now, people would ask me when the Messiah is coming, which I would feel obliged to tell them, and I haven’t even found out when it is, myself. The ‘Home Office’ is a little slow these days – as you’ve probably already figured out.”<br /><br /> The seventeen others in his car seemed to be disappointed in Eli, but he proceeded to ameliorate the situation by telling a little story:<br /><br /> “I have actually ‘come down’ during each of the periods in which Jews have been threatened, to comfort them in their times of need. The last time was thirty-five years ago, in the little Jewish area in the South of Russia – the Pale of Settlement. It was during the Pogroms. Those wretched Black Hundreds were flying Jews up flagpoles everywhere I looked, and I thought, since it was such a time of despair, it would be a good idea to take the Seder with some of my people, again. Jews at the time, of course, had to hold their Seders surreptitiously, in their basements, to avoid being seen – just as they do now, of course.”<br /> <br />“Some things never change,” the elderly woman interrupted, with that quintessentially-resigned Hebrew shrug which had been passed up through the ages.<br /><br /> “You’re right. Anyway, I visited every family in the Pale, occupying the place that each had set for me, each family expecting that I wouldn’t show up. In each household, I drank my cup of wine, and reassured each family member that the Pogroms would soon be over.<br /><br /> “Never having done this before – going from house-to-house, I mean – you can imagine that, by the tenth cup of wine, I was so shikker, I didn’t know where I was. The lady of the house, in the last apartment I visited, threw me out into the street, bellowing that if a man as sorry as I were the Prophet, there would never be any hope for the Jewish people.<br /><br /> “So I wandered the streets for hours, sick from drinking far too much wine. And just as I was about to pass out onto the cobblestone street, I heard the hooves of a horse, and was soon in plain sight of a horse-drawn carriage, out of which two huge Cossacks, wielding muskets, stepped.<br /><br /> “’Jew,’ they began, ‘in the name of Czar Alexander the Second, we sentence you to be hanged to death tomorrow morning in the Public Square!’<br /><br /> “I told them about how important I am. But I don’t think it mattered, because they shoved me into the carriage and took me down to the police station as though I had committed a crime – which, apparently, I had, just by being Jewish.<br /><br /> “The next morning, they hanged me, and fifty other Jews, by the neck, in the most massive Pogrom ever. Because of who I am – naturally – I was brought back to life. And I’m here with you now, ready to go through it all again, in this New Pogrom.”<br /><br /> Everybody was a little reticent in commenting on this adventure. Eli shrugged his shoulders, as if to say that this is really what transpired, and that it was their prerogative not to believe him, if they didn’t want to.<br /><br /> Night soon fell, and the thirty-six cramped souls slept standing, because they were packed too tightly to fall.<br /><br /> The metal door was then, rather boisterously, thrown open by a blonde-haired, youngish SS Private, a sound which woke them all.<br /><br /> “We have another three hours until we reach our destination,” the Private intoned, the same message being simultaneously transmitted by other guards to the passengers of other boxcars. “You have five minutes to relieve yourselves. Anyone who wishes to abuse the privilege will be shot on sight.”<br /><br /> The forty-eight boxcars suddenly began to disgorge one thousand six hundred and sixty-eight cramped Jews into the night air. They stretched and breathed deeply.<br /><br /> In front of them, lay an endless field of ripe corn, and the passengers were told to use this area for a bathroom, much to the consternation of the bewildered farmer who, at this moment, was being acquiesced by a couple of SS guards, who were telling him that it was for the good of the Reich, and that the Fuhrer would probably give him a medal.<br /><br /> Four other Officers patrolled the circumference of the field, making sure nobody got out of line.<br /><br /> A little tow-headed boy from Boxcar 18 stood, releasing a thin stream of urine onto the green stalks, laughing as he made the stalks ‘wave.’ When he was finished, he watched to see that nobody saw him, and he began to boisterously chew on a clean ear of the tender corn.<br /><br /> A stocky Officer with a limping gait walked up behind the boy, who was so engrossed in his meal, that he didn’t hear the crunch of the Officer’s boots grinding against some arid, fallen husks. He pointed the barrel at the back of the boy’s neck and fired. Both the boy and the corn-ear, which had been gnawed clean, hit the ground simultaneously.<br /><br /> The others looked up from what they were doing to see what had happened. The sight of her lifeless boy, blood oozing from the back of his skull as he lay in the corn, caused his mother to faint.<br /><br /> “If any of you get it into your heads to eat any of the corn, it will be our pleasure to mete out the same punishment which this young man has just received,” croaked an elderly guard over his bullhorn. He laughed, heartily, too.<br /><br /> Eli and the scruffy-faced man, whose name, he had learned, was Moshe Sturman, had befriended each other, both of them having been about the same age. They glanced, coldly, at the sight of the little boy’s body being carried away.<br /><br /> “Those pigs,” Moshe whispered, aiming his own stream in front of him.<br /><br /> “Listen, if it wasn’t the boy, it would have been someone else,” Moshe replied, firing his own stream.<br /><br /> “What are you two conspiring about?” an Officer asked them. Eli recognized him as the ample-bellied Corporal with whom he had to plead to be allowed on the train.<br /><br /> “You can still leave, if you want to,” the Corporal snorted at Eli. “You’re still not on the list, you know.” To Moshe, he continued, “Your friend, here, is a very stupid man. He is with us voluntarily.”<br /><br /> “You’re joking,” Moshe said to Eli, even though he knew it to be true. “You’re here with us voluntarily? You actually chose to be here?”<br /><br /> Moshe buttoned up his pants.<br /><br /> “If it had been me, I’d be out of here so fast,” Moshe continued, “I’d leave a trail of burning corn in my path!”<br /><br /> “Well, don’t you two worry about leaving, because neither of you is going anywhere,” the Corporal railed at Moshe. “Now hurry up. You’ve got two minutes to finish your business.” He walked away to bother someone else.<br /><br /> “I sure would like to get out of here,” Moshe said, a tear welling up in his eye. “Is it true what you said about us going to our deaths?”<br /><br /> “Unfortunately,” Eli answered, not as worried as he probably should have been in such a situation.<br /><br /> “If there were a way to get out of here…”<br /><br /> Moshe couldn’t finish his sentence, because he was now sobbing violently.<br /><br /> “I’m going to get us all out of here,” Eli clicked, dispassionately, in the same monotone in one would speak if inquiring about the weather.<br /><br /> Moshe froze.<br /><br /> “How are you going to do that? You said, yourself, that you are no different than we are.”<br /><br /> Eli winked. Then, he removed a cloth from his coat and passed it over his own face. His long, blonde beard was suddenly gone, like magic, leaving a thirty-five-year-old with a remarkably Aryan-looking face. He then passed the same cloth over Moshe’s face, and Moshe’s black, three-day-old beardlet was gone, too.<br /><br /> Just as an astounded Moshe was about to ask Eli how he had performed that neat trick, Eli feigned a stomachache and began to moan. Two thuggish-looking SS Officers approached, just as Eli had thought they might, to see what the problem was, and Eli and Moshe promptly knocked them both unconscious. <br /><br /> Eli indicated to Moshe that they should switch clothes with the two Officers, and it was time, presently, to herd the Jews back onto the train again. Eli and Moshe, now thought to be SS Officers, were placed in charge of making sure the passengers in Boxcar 18 were safely aboard once more. (The other passengers did not recognize their former companions, Eli and Moshe, because of their “new looks.”)<br /><br /> As Eli was about to close them in, the girl who had previously recited his virtues spoke, not immediately recognizing him:<br /><br /> “Wait, sir! We had two others in the car with us.”<br /><br /> Eli winked at the little girl, who then smiled, suddenly beginning to recognize him.<br /><br /> “Keep your chins up,” Eli grinned, and he and Moshe shut the door. Inside the closed boxcar, the two could hear applause – applause which, luckily, none of the real SS Officers could hear.<br /><br /> “What are you going to do now?” Moshe asked him. <br /><br /> “That’s what I was about to ask you,” Moshe smiled, placing a gentle arm on his new friend’s shoulder.<br /><br /> “Why ask me? You’re Elijah!”<br /><br /> “Who else should I ask? You see, I am Elijah the Prophet – that is true. But you, David, I have a surprise for you. You actually ‘pull-rank’ on me, so to speak: You happen to be the Messiah!“ (At this point, Moshe’s mouth dropped, just like your mouth would drop if somebody just told you that you were Moshiach.)<br />Eli continued, “You see, Moshe, one of the reasons I was sent down, at this point in history, was to make this fact known to you. I see you’re amazed, and that you’re having a problem breathing; but you have a few minutes to regain your composure, and to help me decide where we should redirect this train. So just try to relax, okay?”<br /><br /> Moshe was speechless (you would be, too!) and he next rejoined Eli in Eli’s gallop up to the front car, because the train was now, once again, on the move. Upon reaching it, they jumped aboard. The surprised Engineer, not expecting the arrival of what he believed to be two SS Officers, was jolted.<br /><br /> “Is it all right for us to sit up here with you?” Eli asked, now, suddenly speaking fluent German. Indicating Moshe, he continued, “My friend, Officer Klingensmith here, and I, have always wanted to sit up front with the Engineer!”<br /><br /> “You’re the boss,” the multi-chinned Engineer answered. “You can sit wherever you want!”<br /><br /> “Tell me,” Moshe asked the Engineer in German, “My friend Corporal Frauenfelder, here, and I have never seen Buchenwald before. Is it really as efficient in exterminating that Jewish rabble as we have heard?”<br /><br /> “Oh, a thousandfold,” the Engineer grinned, becoming excited by the thought. “Do you know that the Jews are the Fuhrer’s greatest chemical resource? Why just this morning, I cleansed my gouty toes with a bar of soap made out of hoary Jew gristle! Isn’t that absolutely fantastic?”<br /><br /> “Oh, yes,” Eli agreed, becoming violently ill at the thought, as was Moshe. The train was now careening along the tracks at full speed.<br /><br /> Eli motioned to Moshe to look under his seat, which he did, spying a metal pipe, which he handed to the Prophet. While the Engineer continued to mumble, Eli stood behind him, raising the pipe behind his head, bringing it down onto the Engineer’s thick skull with a dull thud, the obese man expiring after a few quick, motor-induced paroxysms.<br /><br /> Moshe hurled the disgusting Engineer from the train, and watched his head effortlessly split on a rock. He then rejoined Eli at the controls.<br /><br /> “Since I’m the Messiah,” Eli said, breathing deeply,” I guess I’m supposed to make the announcement that we are diverting our course, from Buchenwald to the Promised Land. But I’m afraid that such thing as a proper ‘State of Israel’ won’t be existing anytime soon.”<br /><br /> But Moshe had a better idea about where they could all go.<br /><br /> The train switched tracks.<br /><br /> Moshe, who was the Messiah, peeked into the plush, adjoining dining car, where he and Eli suddenly saw ten SS men slumped dead over their plates, and most assuredly, this was not a result of the greasy bratwurst which they had just consumed!<br /><br /> When the doors of Boxcar 18, and of the other forty-seven boxcars, were thrown open, all at the same time, and all, seemingly, by themselves, the light that penetrated was so intense, the passengers were all temporarily blinded. As pupils began to adjust, the Prophet and the Messiah, now both adorned in flowing, white robes, greeted them and helped them off the train, which, once it was emptied, immediately vanished into thin air, right before everybody’s eyes – all forty-eight cars of it. And it goes without saying that the passengers, who were also suddenly adorned in similar white robes, were silent and confused.<br /><br /> “My friends,” Eli exclaimed, “as I told you, I am Elijah, the Prophet, and this man,” he continued, indicating Moshe, “is Moshiach – our Messiah. Now,” he said, gesticulating, “I want to show you all something. All follow me, if you please.”<br /><br /> The one thousand six hundred and sixty-eight representatives of God’s Chosen People, including Moshe and Eli, followed the Messiah and the Prophet to an endless dinner table, upon which an infinite amount of settings had been placed, a full glass of wine before each.<br /><br /> “My friends,” Elijah began, “Welcome to Heaven… which, believe me, is a great deal friendlier than the place where the Germans were going to take you! What you see in front of you, is a table set for the Passover Seder. My brothers and sisters, just as you set a place of honor for me at every Seder, hoping that I will join you at the table, so I have always set a place of honor for each and every one of you. Will you all now join me for the kiddush?”<br /><br /> The 1,668 Lodzians complied, happily. When all, including the Messiah and the Prophet, were seated, everyone noticed that the seat at the far end of the table remained unoccupied. Since the Prophet was seated at the head of the table, nobody could imagine for whom the empty place was reserved.<br /><br /> Then, suddenly, the little tow-headed boy from the cornfield, now adorned in a white robe of his own, assumed the place of honor at the head of the table – but only after giving Elijah the Prophet, and his mother – who was “worried sick” – big hugs.<br /><br /> It may have been hard to be a Jew on earth, but here – it was no problem at all.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />THE END.<br /><br /><br /><br /><strong>Charles Zigman is the author of WORLD'S COOLEST MOVIE STAR: THE COMPLETE 95 FILMS (AND LEGEND) OF JEAN GABIN (www.jeangabinbook.com, 2009) and the 2013 children's book THE BELLY BUTTON THAT ESCAPED -- http://bit.ly/2nzDzGs </strong>CZO: Chuck Zigman Overdrivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01597949826304464382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7968054145164198227.post-79564634839593235602010-01-07T21:40:00.001-08:002010-01-08T20:02:28.569-08:00The Guy Who Wanted to Date My Sister<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/S0bPxwzGjrI/AAAAAAAAAI4/7q6Jo39a9Eg/s1600-h/guido.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 214px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/S0bPxwzGjrI/AAAAAAAAAI4/7q6Jo39a9Eg/s320/guido.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5424251255034121906" /></a><br /><strong>I don't have a picture of the guy who tried to pick up my little sister on New Year's Eve, but based upon how she has described him to me, he seems to be in this general ballpark. Which isn't exactly true, because Al Pacino and Steven Bauer were cool in <em>Scarface</em>, but the guy I am about to write about is not cool.</strong><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Hi, Everybody! (Hello to all five readers of my blog site.) Hope everybody is having a fine New Year, so far. Happy 2010.<br /><br />It's been about three months since my last blog entry; even though my friends continually tell me that I'm supposed to be blogging every day, "so that people will learn about me, as a writer," I couldn't figure out what to write about for the last twelve weeks, and I didn't want to fall into the trap of writing a lame movie review ("Wow, <em>Avatar</em> was good, but <em>Crazy Heart </em>sucked"), or some stupid, uninformed political rant.<br /><br />But today, life gave me a blog entry, and to be more accurate, my charming/industrious/beautiful little sister (we're grown-ups, but she'll always be my little sister) told me about a guy she met at a party on New Year's Eve. She immediately pegged this poseur as a dork (he was, apparently, a muscle-bound Hollywood promoter-type) and, in fact, the first thing this guy tried to do, was to curry favor with her by informing her that his father produced <em>Debbie Does Dallas</em>. When my appropriately grossed-out sister asked this strutting cock, quite hesitatingly, what he himself did for a living, he replied "business," and he actually winked and made the fingers of his two hands into 'quote signs' when he uttered the word 'business.' <br /><br />Reluctantly, my sister gave Guido Greaseball her cell number (which she did mostly to get rid of him) and, of course, he proceeded to text her a bunch of times, yesterday. She read their text 'conversation' to me this afternoon, and even though I thought I would never write about something corny like 'dating experiences' on my blog, I asked her if she could please transcribe their entire text conversation and email it to me, so that I could publish it.<br /><br /><br />A couple of hours ago, my sister transcribed her text conversation into an email, which she begins as follows: "This is an actual transcription of a text conversation with a guy I met briefly on New Year's Eve. It may explain why I'm still single." Here is the entire text conversation between my sister and this goofy narcicist, <em>in toto.</em> I have made a few very slight corrections for clarity -- the brackets and italics are mine, the happy face-emoticon at the end is my sister's, taken from her transcription. Mostly, though, I have tried to preserve most of the silly text-grammar/syntax/lingo. It's short and sweet and, as you read, you'll notice that this preening, sister-stalking creep actually believes that Santa Barbara is "wine country." He also happens to be the only straight man in the world who utilizes the word "yummy" in a serious way. Anyway, Enjoy:<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Guy: So! Museum? Drinks? Dinner?... Car wash?<br /> <br />My Sister: I do need a car wash.<br /> <br />Guy: I am pre-paid at the car wash in Sherman Oaks anytime you'd like. Any other choices?<br /> <br />My Sister: A drink?<br /> <br />Guy: Now you're talking. You, me, and truth serum. Yummy! When?<br /> <br />My Sister: Sunday?<br /> <br />Guy: Hmmm. You are more popular than I imagined! I <em>could</em> be available. How about the Getty Museum, overlooking the ocean, and a glass of wine. 1 hr before sunset? Or, you suggest.<br /> <br />My Sister: My birthday is next week, so I have a busy week.<br /> <br />Guy: To me, "birthday celebration" means I take you to Santa Barbara, and we drink wine in wine country. For that, I need you Saturday and Sunday. Ride bikes on the beach, nice dinner, get toasted. We will ride up the coast in my convertible Jag.<br /> <br />Guy [2 minutes later, when my sister didn't respond to his previous message]: But if it's too soon for that, why don't you give me Saturday night and I take you to fancy dinner and music and drinking. When is your birthday?<br /> <br />My Sister: A week from today.<br /> <br />Guy: Can I assume you don't have a boyfriend? You know, I liked you from the moment I saw you. Why don't you take a little chance with me and let's meet for something right away.<br /> <br />My Sister: Let's stick to drinks on Sunday.<br /> <br />Guy: <em>Yes, I am sexual</em>, but that is not my agenda. <em>I have options.</em> I liked you and we should get to know each other more. I would love to make your birthday special, but we should meet up first. Can we meet sooner than Sunday??? What about drinks tonight? What about Friday or Saturday? I will move things to see you!!!!<br /> <br />[Five minutes later, after my sister does not respond to the guy's previous text:]<br /> <br />Guy: ????????????<br /> <br />My Sister: You seem like a nice guy, but I don't think we're a match. Take care.<br /> <br />Guy: Wow, you are bipolar!<br /> <br />THE END :)<br /><br /><br /><br />Chuck Zigman, the owner/operator of this blog, fancies himself to be a fancypants screenwriter, and he is also the author of a new book, the entertainment biography WORLD'S COOLEST MOVIE STAR: THE COMPLETE 95 FILMS (AND LEGEND) OF JEAN GABIN (www.jeangabinbook.com). He has written articles for <em>New Times Los Angeles, Hollywood Stock Exchange.com, Tribe.com,</em> and <em>Cult Movies </em>Magazine.CZO: Chuck Zigman Overdrivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01597949826304464382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7968054145164198227.post-7200225422823197612009-10-05T17:56:00.001-07:002009-12-24T20:36:52.469-08:00UNCLAIMED ASSETS OF THE RICH AND FAMOUS: WHY DON'T CELEBRITIES WANT THEIR FREE MONEY?!UNCLAIMED ASSETS OF THE RICH AND FAMOUS<br /> BY<br /> CHARLES ZIGMAN<br /> October 5, 2009<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SswFY2GqDHI/AAAAAAAAAH4/DivqnOSv9LI/s1600-h/dannyandrhea.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 206px; height: 320px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SswFY2GqDHI/AAAAAAAAAH4/DivqnOSv9LI/s320/dannyandrhea.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5389688778454076530" /></a><br /><strong>Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman have an old bank account sitting around with $71,451.99 in it -- and they might not even know it exists!</strong><br /><br /><br /> During these unusually harsh economic times, wouldn’t it be great if each of us had some extra money coming to us – money we didn’t even know we had? Well, many of us do – and I’m not just talking about those tax refunds we’re not going to be getting.<br /><br /> About a decade ago, I was watching one of those no-longer extant magazine-format shows in which local television used to specialize – “2 on the Town,” “Eye on L.A.” or one of their ilk – and one of the shows featured a story about Unclaimed Assets.<br /><br /> Basically, the Treasury Department, or the State Controller’s Office, of every state has a website – in California this happens to be the California Bureau of Unclaimed Assets, led by Controller John Chiang (http://scoweb.sco.ca.gov/UCP/) and in New York it’s the New York State Office of the State Comptroller (http://wwe1.osc.state.ny.us/ouf/oufSearchAction.cfm).<br /><br /><br />You can go to these websites – you’ll need to pick websites corresponding with states in which you’ve lived or worked – type in your name, and find out if the state you live in, or used to live in, is holding some money for you. Maybe you overpaid on a bill at a store, or possibly you’re due a refund from a utility company. <br /><br />Maybe you thought you had closed down a bank account years, or even decades, ago, but you didn’t, and some interest has accrued over the years; possibly, you might have some dividends coming to you from a stock that you’ve forgotten about, or maybe you were even part of some class-action lawsuit and there’s a little settlement check with your name on it; in another scenario, maybe you didn’t know about this money, because you changed your address and nobody could find you, or they misspelled your name or address on your paycheck. Basically, when any financial institution or former employer has been unable to contact you, it turns your assets over to the state’s treasury department. <br /><br />What you can do – and this is actually kind of fun and mesmerizing – is to go to one of these websites, type in your name, and find out if, per the song lyrics, there are “pennies from heaven, for you and me.” If you see your name on the website and you learn that you’re owed some money, you mail in the form with a copy of some ID – the Controller’s Office will need copies of your driver’s license and your social security card – as well as the specific claim number (it’s available on the website), and you’ll get your check. It might take several months or even a year, but eventually you get it, and you get it, <em>in toto</em>; you can say what you want about the government, but they don’t subtract any fees. (In fact, beware of other, “third-party” websites, which are not the official government websites I’ve mentioned above; these sites offer to collect these monies from the government on your behalf and, in exchange, they help themselves to a rather hefty commission. But why not find your money yourself, the “official” way, with no fees, and keep all of that beautiful scratch for yourself?)<br /><br /> While I didn’t happen to come across any money which was owed to me, personally (my luck, in this life, is very consistent), in a moment of extreme ultra-boredom, and because the information on the State Controller’s website is available to the public, I typed in names of every single one of my family members, and I found out that my father, for example, is due a couple of thousand dollars from interest which accrued on a bank account which he thought he had closed in the early 1960s, and I also found out that my sister was due $75.00, for over-payment at a clothing store.<br /><br />Next, I began typing in names of deceased relatives, and I quickly discovered that many of them have unclaimed assets, too. (If you’re the family member of a deceased person, and you can prove it by mailing in the appropriate paperwork – I’m assuming that the State Controller’s Office will want a copy of the death certificate, as well – you are entitled to receive your dearly departed’s money, as well.) <br /> <br />Anyway, now I was in the groove: I next began typing in names of celebrities – <em>the shmancy people!</em> – and you wouldn’t believe what I came across. There are a great number of celebrities who are due royalties, residuals, and unpaid wages from movies and t.v. shows – earnings which they’ve never tried to collect, either because they didn’t know about them, or maybe because such “paltry sums,” many being in the thousands of dollars, are unimportant to them, so the movie studios and record companies turned them over to the government. (Celebrities blow their nose in $100 bills, right? If I were one of <em>the fancy people</em>, that’s what I would do!) Also, most celebrities have business managers who handle their money for them, so they don’t even know what they have, anyway; in other words, a lot of this might be attributed to carelessness on the part of “somebody else.” Anyway, here is what I uncovered, and all of this information is in the public record, which is to say that all of the information in this article is available to anybody with internet access.<br /><br /> I’ve tried to mention every celebrity I could think of, dead or alive: I had my t.v. on in the background while I was writing this, and each time a celebrity passed across my purview, I performed a search for him or her on the California Controller’s Office website. If you see a super-famous celebrity you like and he or she is not on this list, it’s either because he or she has no assets to collect (Tom Cruise, Will Smith, Jim Carrey, The Judd Apatow/Seth Rogen people), or it’s an omission on my part – or, it’s probably because I’m pushing 40 (okay, the truth is, I've already pushed it!) and, as I freely admit, I have no idea who a lot of the newer, younger celebrities are. My frame of reference for pop-culture figures mostly stops, at the very latest, around 1996 – although I did, with the help of some helpful younger family members, attempt to add a few “current/new” celebrities, in the hopes of attaining for myself, if not “street cred,” than, at least, “sidewalk cred.” I have not included reality t.v. “stars” on this list, because reality t.v. gives me both the willies and the heebie-jeebies, nor will you see any mention of any prominent sports figures, because I am, very proudly, not a sports fan. I’d rather get waterboarded than watch any team sport.<br /><br /> All of the following names and claims are courtesy of the California website and I have verified them all. I have not listed, for example, most celebrity names which are common – that is to say, I have not mentioned any name which a celebrity shares with a lot of other people, because it would be difficult for me to verify if it is the right person; for example, the California State Controller’s website shows twenty full pages of different Californians who happen to be named “Cher,” a boatload of people with the surname “Jonas,” and between one and five pages each of various people named “Michael Jackson,” “James Cameron,” “Michael Douglas,” “Jennifer Lopez,” “Brian Wilson,” “Dennis Wilson,” “George Lucas,” “George Lopez,” “Michael Mann,” “Michael Moriarty,” “Maureen McCormick,” “David Morse,” “Samuel Jackson,” “Mary Hart,” “Robert Reed,” “Robin Williams,” “Paul Williams,” “Jerry Garcia,” “Joan Crawford,” “Paul Harvey” (the syndicated newsman-guy!), “Randolph Scott,” and “Dick Powell.” There is even an entire page of different “Glenn Campbells” – yes, there are loads of “Glenn Campbells” in Southern California; don’t worry, it surprised me, too. There are even a couple of completely unrelated “Harrison Fords” and “Jack Nicholsons” on the list. (I know they are not the “celebrity” Ford and Nicholson, because these Fords and Nicholsons live in Fresno, Bakersfield, and Saugus.) So, all of the celebrities I have listed herein are the correct people – they’re the real celebrities, and this is really the money that they are really due. I could have gone on making this list forever but, at a certain point, I just had to pull myself away – before they put me away! I sent this article to both The Los Angeles <em>Times</em> and <em>Los Angeles Magazine</em>, thinking that this content might be amusing for Hollywood readers, but since I never heard from either publication, I decided to post this myself, on my blog site.<br /><br /> Here you go. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />A:<br /><br />-- <strong>Willie Aames</strong>, from great t.v. shows like “Eight is Enough” and formidable movies like <em>Zapped,</em> is owed $65.98 in royalties, from an unnamed company;<br /><br />-- "American Idol’s" <strong>Paula Abdul </strong>is 'straight-up' entitled to receive $723.75 (listed as “group policy benefits”), $533.30 (Tiffany and Company.), $41.00 (unpaid salary), and $375.00 (unpaid salary);<br /><br />-- The late, beloved <strong>Forrest J. Ackerman</strong>, who kept the spirit of sci-fi cinema alive for decades, is due $159.19 in salary from an unnamed company, $59.50 as a bank refund, $53.25 from AT&T. He and his also departed wife Louise are due $10.80 from Bank of America;<br /><br />-- <strong>Amy Adams </strong>is owed $593.50 by the State of Minnesota, $404.74 by Studio Payroll Services, $76.00 and $51.46 by News Corp. (20th Century Fox), and $99.00 from Delta Dental Insurance;<br /><br />-- “Sorry about that, chief:” <strong>Don Adams</strong>, the Late Maxwell Smart himself, is owed $302.01 by Disney;<br /> <br />-- Anybody who introduces the world to Cheech and Chong is okay in my book: Record impresario <strong>Lou Adler </strong>is owed $65.03 by Warner/Chappell Music;<br /><br />-- <strong>Ben Affleck </strong>is due the princely sum of $2,154.84 from Paypal;<br /><br />-- <strong>Christina Aguilera</strong>: Before she was famous, Christina attended an Oscar party at my sister’s apartment, on Hayworth Ave.; she thought she was going to one of the “real” Oscar parties, so she got dressed-up in a fancy ball gown, and it turned out to be a bunch of working stiffs in a small apartment, eating Cheetos from a bowl! Too make up for this, I now inform her that she is due $1,434.77, which is listed on the Unclaimed Assets website, as “insurance claim checks;”<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Steve Allen </strong>(hi ho, Steverino!) is due $798.00 in wages, from an unnamed company;<br /><br />-- <strong><strong>Tim Allen </strong></strong>is due $775.00 in salary from an unnamed production company, and he might even have more claims than that (there are a lot of “Tim Allens” listed on the California Unclaimed Assets website);<br /><br />-- <strong>Herb Alpert</strong>, but not his Tijuana Brass, is owed $61.52 by Pacific Bell. Herb’s charity, <strong>The Herb Alpert Foundation</strong>, is owed $2,547.26;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Robert Altman </strong>and his company Lions Gate Entertainment (the original Lions Gate, not the current one) continue to be due $2,058.78 by the State of New York;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Don Ameche </strong>played Alexander Graham Bell in 1939, and he was ‘Mortimer Duke’ in 1983’s <em>Trading Places</em> when he was older, and while he is no longer with us, the $462.30 he is owed, from an unnamed production company, is;<br /><br />-- Comedian <strong>Louie Anderson </strong>is due $122.14 from a court settlement;<br /><br />-- Sony owes <strong>Pamela Anderson </strong>royalties of, $212.89, $42.56, $141.92, $32.08, $30.06, $32.22, $21.15, and $7.18. Studio Payroll Services owes her royalties of $12.77, $26.03, $21.06, and $12.75;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Dana Andrews</strong>, from 1946’s Best Picture winner <em>The Best Year of Our Lives</em>, is due $56.95 from Disney;<br /><br />-- <strong>Adam Ant </strong>(Stuart Goddard) is due $58.43, $35.28, and $28.83 from court settlements. (My sister asked me to look him up.)<br /><br />-- <strong>Gabrielle Anwar</strong>, the “sophisticated hottie” from <em>Scent of a Woman </em>(“hooh-ahh!”) is due $605.39 from NBC/Universal, $375.16 from Warner Bros., $312.58 from MGM, $263.31 in salary from an unnamed company, and a $263.31 refund from the Mercury Casualty Insurance Company;<br /><br />-- When people think of director <strong>Alfonson Arau</strong>, they think of his movie <em>Like Water for Chocolate</em>, but I always think of another great movie he directed, <em>Picking Up the Pieces </em>(2000), and I also think about when he played the gangster, El Guapo, in <em>Three Amigos!</em> And I also tend to think about the twelve separate claims he has, on the Unclaimed Assets website;<br /><br />-- "SNL's" <strong>Will Arnett</strong> (who’s listed as “William Arnett,” in his claims) is due both $375.95 and $363.95 from unnamed production companies;<br /><br />-- <strong>Adam Arkin</strong>, son of Alan (who, himself, is not owed any money), is entitled to receive $58.00, $50.00, and $4.79, in unpaid salary;<br /><br />-- “Saturday Night Live’s” <strong>Fred Armisen </strong>made me laugh so much when he played Lawrence Welk, I must return the favor by telling him he’s got three unpaid salaries to collect, in the amounts of $408.24, $401.24, and $419.78.<br /><br />-- Ba-ba-loooo!!! The late <strong>Desi Arnaz, Sr.</strong> is due $969.36 and $91.09 from UMG Recordings, $318.69 and $40.26 from MCA Records, plus $48.58 from Sony. Lucy, I’m home! (PS, the Sony one for $48.58 could possibly be for Desi Arnaz, Jr. I’m not sure…)<br /><br />-- <strong>Tom Arnold </strong>and his company Two Dog Productions are due $418.00, from unnamed production companies;<br /><br />-- <em>Desperately Seeking Susan’s </em>scrumptious, but never bumptious, <em>Rosanna Arquette</em> should be Desperately Seeking the $50.48 which she’s due, listed as a “court settlement;” <br /><br />-- The late <strong>Fred Astaire’s </strong>dependents are due $389.29, accumulated interest on his terminated life insurance policy;<br /><br />-- One of my all-time-favorite t.v. personalities, <strong>John Astin </strong>(Gomez Adams from “The Addams Family”), he of the mischievous eyes and expression, has bukku claims: $61.38, $162.80, 61.50, and 50.00 (all from Disney), $17.50 from Sony, and $33.44 from NBC/Universal;<br /><br />-- It’s time for <strong>Sean Astin </strong>to emerge from Middle Earth and collect the $189.19 which he is due, from a court settlement;<br /><br />-- <em>Grease</em> is the word! <strong>Frankie Avalon </strong>is due three cents in residuals from BMI Music!<br /><br />-- <strong>Dan Aykroyd</strong>: One of my all-time-favorite “Saturday Night Live” comedians and a true counter-culture hero, Aykroyd is owed $762.54 in royalties from Universal Music Corp; $456.55 from Disney; $153.41 from an unnamed production company, and $97.52 from Quest Diagnostics. (Quest Diagnostics is one of the companies which handles those insurance physicals for movie industry people.)<br /><br />-- Hollywood Golden Age matinee idol <strong>Lew Ayres, </strong>the star of 1930’s Best Picture winner <em>All Quiet on the Western Front</em>, has been dead for over a decade, but the government is still holding onto the $47.50 that Republic Pictures has owed him, from many years ago!<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />B:<br /><br />-- What the world needs now is <strong>Burt Bacharach </strong>receiving the $221.53 he’s owed from Disney, as well as the $1.36 and $1.30 due him for his stock in Nike. Additionally, Burt and his ex-wife Carole Bayer Sager are, together, eligible to receive $463.17 from an ancient court settlement which was decided in their favor;<br /><br />-- <strong>Catherine Bach</strong>, the original 'Daisy Duke,' could use the $6.30 she’s owed by Disney to buy a new pair of little tiny bluejean shorts;<br /><br />-- <strong>Max Baer, Jr</strong>. (aka, 'Jethro') is due $46.40 from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and $35.93 from ABC;<br /><br />-- <strong>Joan Baez </strong>is owed $177.29, $143.25, $79.96, and $717.73 by Warner/Chappell Music, plus $290.27 from a court settlement, plus $4.00 from the State of Missouri;<br /><br />-- <strong><strong>Alec Baldwin</strong></strong>, the leading man who’s aged into the finest comedic character actor, is due $974.41 from Time-Warner;<br /><br />-- The headstrong <strong>Christian Bale </strong>might be a little nicer to cinematographers, when he finds out he’s owed $116.59 by Disney and $78.70 (a refund from State Farm, for auto insurance);<br /><br />-- <strong>Fairuza Balk </strong>is owed $125.71 in unpaid salary from an unnamed company, $73.94 from Disney, and she’s also entitled to three separate residual payments, each in the amount of $59.20;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Lucille Ball </strong>is owed both $1,145.25 and $370.01, from insurance settlements;<br /><br />-- The very good actress from the t.v. sensation “Mad Men,” <strong>Talia Balsam</strong>, daughter of Martin, is owed $146.57 from the bank that used to be known as Home Savings and Loan. She can pick up her check, from the guv’mint;<br /><br />-- “Jaye P. Morgan, why did you do that:” “Gong Show” host and “Newlywed Game” creator <strong>Chuck Barris </strong>is entitled to $2,911.56 from First Interstate Bank;<br /><br />-- He gave hope to small people everywhere. The late <strong>Billy Barty </strong>is owed $221.72, $103.58, $155.00, $129.52, and $101.19 by Disney, as well as $92.56 from Paramount and $62.49 from Universal;<br /><br />-- The striking and intriguing <strong>Priscilla Barnes</strong>, one of the Suzanne Somers replacements on “Three’s Company” (she was ‘Terri’) has 18 separate claims to look into;<br /><br />-- <strong>Mischa Barton </strong>might stay out of trouble, when she learns that Sony owes her $278.98;<br /><br /> -- <strong>Gene Barry </strong>is due $21.58 in residuals;<br /><br />-- <strong>Drew Barrymore </strong>is owed $84.66, by MCA Records. (I remember the late ‘80s when Drew, in between E.T. and her adult comeback years, was working behind the counter at a record store in Studio City called Music Plus, and she actually sold me some MCA Records!) Anyway, Drew must have changed addresses, so MCA Records turned her earnings over to the government, and this is exactly where she can collect them from. MCA Records no longer exists, but her money does;<br /><br />-- <strong>Kim Basinger </strong>is due $310.24 in a court settlement; the contents of a Safety Deposit Box; $504.00 from “Mighty Wind Productions” and $23.82, $7.03, and $2.38, all from Sony Pictures; <br /><br />-- The late <strong>Alan Bates </strong>(try to see him in 1966’s <em>King of Hearts </em>if you get the chance) is due $2,047.33 and $184.24 in salary;<br /><br />-- <strong>Michael Bay </strong>is owed $178.52 by Disney;<br /><br />-- <strong>Orson Bean </strong>is due $6.23 from an unnamed production company;<br /><br />-- <strong>Sean Bean </strong>is due the staggering (to me) figure of $21,622.55 and $1,054.31, both from Disney, as well as $4,144.49 from an unnamed production company;<br /><br />-- <strong>Ned Beatty </strong>might even “squeal like a pig,” when he discovers that he’s due $258.29 and $148.35 in residuals from unnamed companies, $103.42 from Universal, $81.05 from Spelling Entertainment, and $56.04 from “News Publishing, Australia” (20th Century Fox);<br /><br />-- <strong>William Beaudine, Jr</strong>., the masterful auteur who directed such seminal classics as <em>Billy the Kid vs. Dracula </em>and <em>Jesse James vs. Frankestein’s Daughter</em> is gone, but the $56.10 he’s owed is still here;<br /><br />-- <strong>Beck</strong> (Beck Campbell), musician and hipster, is owed $1,874.77 by the State of New York, and $140.00 by UMG Recordings;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Noah Beery, Jr</strong>. is owed $6.06 by Sony and thirty-four cents from his mutual funds;<br /><br />-- <strong>Kate Beckinsale </strong>is owed $803.34 by Disney, $194.37, $129.57, and $37.01 by NBC/Universal $37.01, and seventy-three cents by Warner Bros.;<br /><br />-- <strong>Ed Begley, Jr.</strong> is entitled to $127.50 and $50.00 from unnamed production companies, as well as the undisclosed contents of a safety deposit box at a bank. I saw him in a little restaurant in the valley a few evenings ago, but I didn’t go up to him and mention it. He could probably use that much scratch to develop one of his energy-saving flying bicycles; <br /><br />-- Producer/Screenwriter <strong>Jerry Belson </strong>is owed $291.70 from an insurance company and $166.65 from Smith-Barney;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Joan Bennett </strong>is due both $2,284.37 and $1,712.25 from the Spelling Entertainment Group;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Edgar Bergen</strong>, ventriloquist <em>extraordinaire</em>, is still entitled to receive $250.00 from the Texas Oil and Gas Company;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Ingrid Bergman </strong>is due $90.67 from Warner Bros. “Here’s looking at you, kid!”<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Milton Berle </strong>(“Mr. Television”) and his living son ,William, are together owed both $279.00 and $187.21 in stocks from Hasbro Toys, plus Milton, on his own, is still owed $106.19 in unpaid wages, courtesy of Paramount Pictures;<br /><br />-- Wouldn’t it be great if life were like that great sit-com, “Blossom?” (Wait! What am I talking about!) <strong>Mayim Bialik </strong>is owed residuals in the amounts of $9.81, $9.81, $6.03, $5.25, $5.25, and $5.25;<br /><br />-- <strong>Barbara Billingsley </strong>(‘June Cleaver’) is owed $142.41 by Warner <br />Bros. and $112.23 by Disney;<br /><br />-- <strong>Richard Blade,</strong> the seminal 1980s L.A. disc jockey (on KROQ), is due $650.00 in wages;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Betsy Blair </strong>(‘Jason Voorhees’s mother' in the original <em>Friday the 13th </em>movie) is owed $75.00 by Amtrak;<br /><br />-- Classy <strong>Cate Blanchett </strong>has six big claims from Disney, in the amounts of $3,106.24, $3,049.79, $1,772.99, $1,698.47, $774.11, and $667.00;<br /><br />-- Karate-choppin’ <strong>Billy Blanks</strong>, movie star and exercise studio honcho, is due $214.62 from Universal;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Ray Bolger </strong>('the Cowardly Lion') is still due $234.48 from a court settlement and $228.85 in stock dividends. Ray and his wife Gwendolyn are also due both $201.50 and $87.50 in dividends;<br /><br />-- Blue Cross owes <strong>Chastity Bono </strong>$269.54, $52.92, and $54.48;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Sonny Bono</strong> left behind $522.00 and $31.32 from stocks, and $53.20 in residuals;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Sorrell Booke </strong>('Boss Hogg!') is due $666.88, $346.25, and $137.82 in residuals from unnamed companies, plus $73.14 from Studio Payroll Services;<br /><br />-- <strong>Tom Bosley</strong>, one of the world’s most beloved t.v. dads, is owed $88.55 from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and $18.23 from Sony;<br /><br />-- Every movie from the 1970s features a great performance by <strong>Joseph Bottoms</strong>, who is owed $80.00 from an insurance company, $39.75 and $29.81 from NBC/Universal, and $56.04, $7.36, and $7.35 from unnamed companies;<br /><br />-- <strong>Lara Flynn Boyle </strong>is due $418.00 in unpaid wages;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Peter Boyle </strong>(no relation to Lara Flynn) is due $617.00 in unpaid wages;<br /><br />-- When I was in third grade at Wonderland Avenue Elementary School in Laurel Canyon, in 1975, <strong>Ray Bradbury </strong>came and spoke to my class. (I have no idea how the school attained his services, but I remember being impressed with this, even when I was very young). Mr. Bradbury got me interested in writing that day, when he offered my class the following nugget: “Imagine there’s a trap door. What’s beneath it? That’s what’s up to you to discover – that is what a writer does.” His words have stayed with me for more than thirty years. Ray Bradbury is owed $193.56 and $76.61 by Universal Pictures, and $53.45 by Time Warner Cable;<br /><br />-- <strong>Kenneth Branagh </strong>wrote his autobiography when he was in his twenties, but he didn’t include the part about he’s owed $569.00 in unpaid salary by ABC;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Marlon Brando </strong>is owed $1,845.00 by the “State of Oklahoma,” which his dependents are permitted to claim;<br /><br />-- It’s the summer of 1984. I’m in high school, and I’m the doorman of the La Reina Theater in Sherman Oaks. The very good actress <strong>Eileen Brennan</strong> asks me to let her in to see the movie for free, citing a seemingly unassailable fact: “Don’t you know who I am?” But I’m torn, because the theater manager, Mr. Hamilton, has already told me that I can’t let celebrities in, free of charge. Upshot: I don’t let her in for free but, to make it up to her now, twenty-five years later, I would like her to know that there are two pages of claims to which she’s entitled – far too many to list here. Good for her – Brennan finally gets something for nothing;<br /><br />-- <strong>Jordana Brewster</strong>, from <em>The Fast and the Furious</em> (and also from my dreams!), is due $500.00 in unpaid residuals;<br /><br />-- <strong>Paget Brewster </strong>is due $62.31 in unpaid residuals;<br /><br />-- <strong>Fanny Brice</strong> died in 1951, but the Unclaimed Assets website still lists her as having never collected $114.95 in residuals, from Capitol Records;<br /><br />-- <strong>Jeff Bridges</strong>, 'Lebowski' himself, is owed $9,200.00 by the Bank of New York/Mellon Corporate Trust;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Lloyd Bridges’ </strong>family – Lloyd picked the wrong day to stop sniffing glue!!! – is due $798.73, $250.62, $242.44, $553.33, and $259.58 in court settlements, plus $69.00 from the Transamerica Life Insurance Company (interest which has accrued on Lloyd’s terminated policy);<br /><br />-- <strong>Danielle Brisebois</strong>, aka, ‘Little Stephy’ from “Archie Bunker’s Place,” is owed $461.65 by Disney, and $500.00 from a bank;<br /><br />-- In 1986, I went to the movies with my two sisters. We saw a movie called <em>Haunted Honeymoon</em> with Gene Wilder and Gilda Radner. Gene and Gilda don’t have any unclaimed assets coming to them, but when my sisters and I saw the movie, <strong>Todd Bridges </strong>was sitting in the row behind us, with two dates. (I was impressed!) We couldn’t hear the movie because, for the entire ninety minutes of the film, Todd kept chanting “Who farted?” to make his dates laugh – and they did. Todd Bridges, even though I couldn’t hear the movie on account of your incessant talking, I am duty bound to inform you that you are owed $43.69 by Sony;<br /><br />-- Amazing musician and film composer <strong>Jon Brion </strong>is due $1,625.28 from an escrow company;<br /><br />-- The late, great <strong>Charles Bronson </strong>is owed $78.67 in “bond interest” from Cannon Films, and Bronson and his equally-late wife, <strong>Jill Ireland</strong>, are together owed $836.71, from American Modern Home Insurance;<br /><br />-- Gone are the days when one could play a “funny drunk” – doing so is now considered quite impolitic – but the late <strong>Foster Brooks </strong>made a specialty of it, especially on those old Dean Martin Roasts. Foster’s family is entitled to receive the $640.69, $603.14, and $68.89 which UMG Music owes him;<br /><br />-- <strong>Blair Brown</strong>, great as William Hurt’s long-suffering wife in the 1980 movie <em>Altered States</em>, is due $18.60 from MGM;<br /><br />-- Legendary movie comedian <strong>Joe E. Brown </strong>(at the end of <em>Some Like It Hot</em>, Jack Lemmon exclaims, “I’m a man!” and Brown goofily replies, “Nobody’s perfect!”) passed away in 1973, but he’s still due $45.10 in stock dividends from AT&T. Also, Joe and his beloved wife Kathryn left $60.51 behind, in an old bank account;<br /><br />-- <strong>Dave Brubeck </strong>is owed $203.65 by Broadcast Music Inc.;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Yul Brynner </strong>still has a bank account with $133.23 in it;<br /><br />-- “Designing Woman” <strong>Delta Burke</strong> is owed $648.00 by Disney, $77.50 by Paypal, and $58.37 from Time Warner Cable;<br /><br />-- <strong>Carol Burnett </strong>has $1,239.95 coming to her from The State of Delaware. (Maybe she started a company there, or something?)<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Raymond Burr</strong> (“Perry Mason,” “Ironside”) is due $184.55 from a court settlement;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>George Burns</strong>, who is listed on the State Controller’s Office website as “George N. Burns,” has $107.65, $101.56, $100.05, $111.03, $88.68, and $51.48 from the Hillcrest Beverly Oil Company, plus $79.34 from Time-Warner Cable. I know that Burns used to be a member of the Hillcrest Country Club, so I’m guessing that oil was discovered underneath it, and that Burns invested;<br /> <br />-- <strong>Ruth Buzzi</strong>, from “Laugh-In,” will not hit me with her purse, when I tell her that she’s owed $149.52 by the Monsanto Corporation. (Monsanto used to run that little “voyage through a microscope” ride at Disney’s Tomorrowland.)<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />C:<br /><br />-- <strong>Michael Caine </strong>is owed $655.00 and $354.19 from unnamed production companies;<br /><br />-- When I was in high school in the early ‘80s, and working at the La Reina Theater in Sherman Oaks – the movies we showed that summer were <em>Sheena Queen of the Jungle, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom</em>, and <em>Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan</em> – <strong>Dyan Cannon </strong>came in, not to see the movie, but just to buy popcorn from me and chat. The next night she was on “The Tonight Show,” telling Johnny Carson how much she liked popcorn! Dyan was so gracious and nice, it’s my honor to tell her that she’s owed $412.38 and $324.00 from unnamed production companies, plus she’s got $31.60 sitting in a forgotten savings account, somewhere;<br /><br />-- <strong>Kirk Cameron </strong>can raise money so he can hand out some of his annotated Darwin books, with the $192.00 he’s due from a court settlement and the $27.80 he’s due from Disney;<br /><br />-- <strong>Neve Campbell </strong>is entitled to both $610.00 and $250.66, from unnamed companies;<br /><br />-- Director <strong>Jane Campion </strong>(<em>The Piano</em>) is due both $79.11 and $67.27 from Disney;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Judy Canova </strong>is due $780.23 from MCA Records, $377.93 from the Occidental Oil and Gas Company, and $12.11 from Studio Payroll Services;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Eddie Cantor </strong>is owed $129.71 and $52.10, both from MCA Records;<br /><br />-- “Merry Christmas, movie house! Merry Christmas, skating rink! Merry Christmas, Unclaimed Assets:” The late <strong>Frank Capra </strong>has one who page of claimed on the California Unclaimed Assets website. Additionally, his producer-grandson <strong>Frank Capra, III</strong> has his own page of claims;<br /><br />-- The omnipresent <strong>Steve Carell </strong>is owed unpaid residuals in the amounts of $756.00, $379.19, $313.50, $241.95, and $233.79;<br /><br />-- “Like sands through the hourglass, these are ‘The Days of Our Lives.’” The late <strong>MacDonald Carey </strong>is owed $64.12 by Warner Bros.;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>George Carlin </strong>is entitled to $5,000.00, $667.00, and $336.91 from Disney, plus $775.00 from an unnamed company; <br /><br />-- <strong>Belinda Carlisle</strong>, should ‘Go-Go’ to pick up the three bucks which she is due;<br /><br />-- <strong>Leslie Caron </strong>is owed $172.56 by Tiffany and Company;<br /><br />-- <strong>Barbara Carrera </strong>is owed $165.00 and $58.00 from an insurance company, plus $15.97 in unpaid salary. Plus, she’s got some stuff in a safety deposit box;<br /><br />-- <strong>Tia Carrere </strong>is owed $1,317.44 in mutual funds, $648.00 and $332.80 in residuals from unnamed companies, $162.12 from Paramount Pictures, $143.41 from ABC, and $58.50from a a bank;<br /><br />-- The family of the late <strong>Johnny Carson </strong>is owed $206.17 from Southern California Edison, and $88.20 in interest on his terminated life insurance policy, from Pacific Life Insurance;<br /><br />-- <strong>Aaron Carter </strong>is due $120.05 in residuals from an unnamed company;<br /><br />-- <strong>Dixie Carter</strong>, from “Designing Women,” is due $126.20 from Paid Prescriptions, Inc., and $1.38 from Disney;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Nell Carter </strong>would never say “Give Me a Break” to the $76.40 she’s owed from a court settlement, the $50.01 she’s due from Nestle Waters, the $30.61 she’s owed by Sprint, and the $26.94 that she left in a bank;<br /><br />-- <strong>T.K. Carter</strong>, the always likeable character actor, is owed $3.95 by Studio Payroll Services;<br /><br />-- <strong>Nancy Cartwright</strong>, the voice of Bart Simpson, is owed $25.00 by the Allstate Insurance Company;<br /><br />-- <strong>David Caruso </strong>is owed $1,491.26 from NBC/Universal and $381.13 from an unnamed company;<br /><br />-- <strong>Dana Carvey </strong>is due $1,557.00, $324.00, $519.00, $250.19, and $222.00 in unpaid salary and/or residuals from unnamed companies, plus $811.11 from Universal Pictures. (“Well, isn’t that special!”)<br /><br />-- “Groovy” <strong>David Cassidy </strong>is owed $20.02 by NBC/Universal;<br /><br />-- “Groovy” <strong>Shaun Cassidy </strong>is owed $25.38, $12.69, and another $12.69 by Lucent Technologies;<br /><br />-- The late showman movie producer <strong>William Castle </strong>is due from $128.37 from his Coca-Cola stocks;<br /><br />-- <strong>Dick Cavett </strong>is owed $278.44 by Time Warner Cable;<br /><br />-- <strong>Cedric the Entertainer </strong>(aka, Cedric Kyles) is owed $1,719.00 in unpaid salary from an unnamed company, $271.48 from Disney, and $100.00 from T-Mobile;<br /><br />-- The late great <strong>Marilyn Chambers</strong>, and her estranged husband <strong>Chuck Traynor</strong>, are together owed $52.39, by Pacific Bell;<br /><br />-- <strong>Geraldine Chaplin</strong>, daughter of Charlie (she’ll be on view next year, as Maleva, the gypsy woman, in Universal’s new Wolfman remake) is due $707.98 from Studio Payroll Services;<br /><br />-- <strong>John Cho</strong>, from <em>Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle While They Escape from Guantanamo Bay</em>, is owed $451.32 in unpaid salary;<br /><br />-- The eminent <strong>Tommy Chong</strong>, of Cheech and Chong, is due $1,290.00 and $335.50, in unpaid wages from an unnamed company, plus $252.40 and $34.65 from Sony; <br /><br />-- <strong>Shelby Fiddis-Chong</strong>, Tommy Chong’s wife, who happens to be a great comedian in her own right, is owed both $479.67 and $142.00 in uncollected royalty payments;<br /><br />-- She’s a perennial: <strong>Julie Christie </strong>is owed $1,089.42 by Paramount Pictures and $788.08 from a bank;<br /><br />-- <strong>Chuck D.</strong> from Public Enemy (aka, Carlton Ridenhour) is due $13.88 from an unnamed source, and he’s also due $7.65 by NBC/Universal;<br /><br />-- "Saturday Night Live's" hilarious Ellen Cleghorne is due $1,403.43 from an escrow company;<br /><br />-- <strong>George Clooney</strong>, a man who stares at goats, is unaware that he has $648.00 coming to him, via royalty payments;<br /><br />-- George Clooney’s aunt, the late <strong>Rosemary Clooney</strong>, is due $1,285.06, $614.24, and $425.69 from MCA Records, $369.03 from Talent Partners, $298.86 from UMG Recordings, Inc., $120.49 from Warner Bros., and $107.00 Paramount Pictures. Thanks to the movie industry’s incredible propensity for putting either “Mambo Italiano” or “Come on to My House” in every movie ever made, there will never be a hungry Clooney; <br /><br />-- Emmy-winner <strong>Glenn Close </strong>has $1,402.00, $1,049.46, and $402.75 coming to her, all courtesy of Time-Warner Cable;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>James Coburn’s </strong>heirs have $554.00 coming to them, courtesy of some unpaid residuals from Disney;<br /><br />-- “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit!” The late <strong>Johnnie L. Cochran </strong>is entitled to $2,600.00 from a “matured CD,” a bank account with $1,058.57 in it, plus $200.48 and $53.23 from the Plains Exploration and Production Company;<br /><br />-- <strong>Susie Coelho </strong>is entitled to receive $7.76 from Sony and $16.35 from an unnamed company;<br /><br />-- <strong>Mindy Cohn</strong>, who played 'Natalie' on the ‘80s sit-com “The Facts of Life,” is due both $852.00 and $568.00 from unnamed production companies. I sat next to her once on a flight from L.A. to NYC;<br /><br />-- Even though the late <strong>Nat King Cole </strong>is “unforgettable,” he “forgot” to collect the $289.10, $126.00, and $66.40 which he is still owed by insurance companies;<br /><br />-- <strong>Natalie Cole</strong>, daughter of Nat, who has done duets with everybody in the world but me, is owed $441.17 from an escrow company, plus she’s got two safety deposit boxes to look into;<br /><br />-- <strong>Dabney Coleman </strong>is due $305.95 and $73.16 from News Publishing, Australia (20th Century Fox), $191.47 from the Navajo Refining Company, $116.40 from MGM, $59.17 from NBC/Universal, and thirty-six cents from Charles Schwab. I wish this guy would make more movies again;<br /><br />-- <strong>Fritz Coleman</strong>, erstwhile L.A. t.v. weatherman, is owed $168.13 in unpaid wages (unnamed source) and $60.78 in dividends. I thought about him because I sat behind him at the Ahmanson a few weeks ago, when I saw “August: Osage County;”<br /><br />-- <strong>Gary Coleman</strong>: “What you talkin’ about Willis?” I’m talking about the $46.94 you’re owed from an unnamed source, and the $9.78 you’re owed by NBC/Universal;<br /><br />-- <strong>Gary Collins </strong>is owed $319.07 by an insurance company, $65.00 by Universal Pictures, and $34.76 listed as “mutual funds or money market;”<br /><br />-- <strong>Jackie Collins </strong>is due $667.00 from Disney;<br /><br />-- <strong>Joan Collins </strong>is owed $629.00 by Disney, $162.00 in salary from an unnamed company, and $80.70 by Tiffany and Company;<br /><br />-- <strong>Jeff Conaway </strong>(‘Bobby Wheeler’ from t.v.’s “Taxi,” ‘Kenickie’ from the big-screen’s Grease) is due $239.19 from MTV, $60.75 and $60.29 from Disney, $131.25 from Paramount, plus $288.25 and $80.00 from the Chubb Group;<br /><br />-- Writer/director <strong>Bill Condon </strong>is due $67.19 from Universal and $67.11 from MGM;<br /><br />-- <strong>Sean Connery </strong>will be shaken, and not stirred, when he discovers that he is owed $49.45 by Universal, $28.35 by Sony, and $58.96 by the Chubb Group;<br /><br />-- Brit funnyman <strong>Steve Coogan</strong> is owed $75.78 by Paramount;<br /><br />-- Producer <strong>Cis Corman</strong>, legendary Hollywood casting director and producer, is owed $462.99, as reported by the Screen Actors Guild;<br /><br />-- Legendary low-budget movie producer <strong>Roger Corman </strong>is on the books for three refunds from Pacific Bell, in the amounts of $160.50, $160.50, and $150.00, plus he needs to apply for the $197.31 which will come to him from Radio Shack. (I knew his movies don’t cost much, but I didn’t know he gets the equipment from Radio Shack!) His wife Julie is due nineteen cents from the Anadarko Petroleum Corporation;<br /><br />-- <strong>Francis Ford Coppola</strong>, who seems to be eternally in bankruptcy, might brighten when he learns that he is owed $96.80 by McDonald’s (stock dividends);<br /><br />-- The legendary comedian <strong>Tim Conway</strong> is owed $50.00 in unpaid royalties;<br /><br />-- <strong>Bud Cort</strong>, star of the 1971 cult-comedy <em>Harold and Maude</em>, is entitled to $81.56 from California Federal Savings and $26.00 from Allstate Insurance. (There are two pages of claims for various “Ruth Gordons” – Ruth played ‘Maude’ in Harold and Maude – but I’m not sure any of these is the right one.)<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Joseph Cotten</strong>, ‘Jedediah Leland’ from <em>Citizen Kane</em>, is owed $774.20 in stocks and $49.68 in dividends. Plus he’s owed money from court settlements, in the amounts of $261.73, $115.02, and $69.42;<br /><br />-- <strong>Simon Cowell </strong>might be a little nicer if he learns that he has two separate claims to which he’s entitled, in the amounts of $486.00 and $485.10 (unpaid salary from unnamed companies), plus $199.02 from NBC/Universal;<br /><br />-- Hey, hey, hey! <strong>Bill “Jell-O Pudding” Cosby </strong>is due $383.00 in securities from Hilton Hotels, plus $260.45 from the State of Massachusetts. Plus, Bill and his wife <strong>Camille </strong>are, together, due $711.00, from the State of North Carolina;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Broderick Crawford</strong>, who had more testosterone in one his fingertips than all of North America has in its entire population, is still due $211.40, $55.20, and $42.19 from Universal Pictures, $106.91 from an insurance company, and $39.51 from the Gas Company;<br /><br />The very missed <strong>Jim Croce </strong>is owed $63.13 by the Screen Actors Guild;<br /><br />-- The Late <strong>Bing Crosby </strong>is owed $592.89 in court settlements. (I dig both his singing and his “not-too-tart, not-too-sweet” Minute Maid Orange Juice.)<br /><br />-- <strong>Cathy Lee Crosby </strong>is owed $84.19 from a court settlement;<br /><br />-- <strong>David Crosby </strong>is owed $279.87 by the State of Colorado;<br /><br />-- Everything’s ‘Ducky’ for <strong>Jon Cryer</strong>, because he’s owed $54.31 by Universal, and $410.00 in salary from an unnamed company. Additionally, Jon and his writer/actress mom, <strong>Gretchen Cryer</strong>, are together owed $2,268.20 by a bank;<br /><br />-- <strong>Alfonso Cuaron </strong>didn’t just direct <em>Y Tu Mama Tambien</em>! He’s also the guy who’s owed $54.50 by the New York Telephone Company;<br /><br />-- The late great bandleader and restaurateur (La Cienega Blvd.’s erstwhile Casa Cugat) <strong>Xavier Cugat </strong>has six separate claims, in the amounts of $4,322.43, $1,911.92, $699.44, $644.54, $131.97, and $74.19, all from MCA Records;<br /><br />-- <strong>Macaulay Culkin</strong> will slap himself in the face with both hands and exclaim, "Ahhhhh," when he discovers that he is owed $1,080.00 by Delta Dental;<br /><br />-- <strong>Whitney Cummings</strong>, one of our funniest new comedians, is due $2.11, $1.99, $1.25, $1.39, $1,38, ten cents, seven cents, seven more cents, six cents, and six more cents, in unpaid wages;<br /><br />-- Former scream-queen, now America’s greatest fiber yogurt-eater, <strong>Jamie-Lee Curtis</strong> is owed $822.00 in salary from Disney and, separately, she’s owed $662.00 in royalty payments, from an unnamed company.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />D:<br /><br />-- <strong>Beverly D’Angelo</strong> is owed both $63.99 and $58.32 in royalties, from UMG Recordings;<br /><br />-- The Late <strong>Rodney Dangerfield’s </strong>descendants should look into this: He will finally get some respect, posthumously, when they find that he is owed $489.75 from Delta Dental, $143.62, $11.79, and $76.39 from MGM, and $50.00 from Readers Digest Magazine;<br /><br />-- <strong>Ted Danson</strong> is owed $38.54, from Paid Prescriptions, Inc.;<br /><br />-- The late director <strong>Delmer Daves </strong>(he made <em>Dark Passage </em>with Humphrey Bogart) is due thirty-five cents from the State of Kansas;<br /><br />-- The “estranged” <strong>Larry and Laurie David </strong>are, together, owed $7,940.00 by the State Farm Insurance Company;<br /><br />-- <strong>Lolita Davidovich</strong>, who actually appeared with Larry David on a recent episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” is due both $1,337.13 and $3.63 from Studio Payroll Services, and $120.09 from an unnamed company;<br /><br />-- <strong>Billy Davis, Jr</strong>., of the Fifth Dimension, is entitled to $174.54, as reported by the Musicians Credit Union;<br /><br />-- One of our finest actors, <strong>Judy Davis</strong>, is due $1,259.80, $1,201.82, and $620.54 from Disney, $545.17 from Time Warner Cable, and $229.58, $141.45, and $307.27 in unpaid wages from unnamed companies;<br /><br />-- You always get a smile on your face when you watch the fantastic performances of the late <strong>Ossie Davis</strong>. Disney owes Ossie $616.00, which his family is free to collect;<br /><br />-- <strong>Viola Davis</strong>, a regular on “Curb Your Enthusiasm” this season, is owed $147.47 by an unnamed company;<br /><br />-- <strong>Pam Dawber</strong> (aka, 'Mindy' from “Mork and Mindy”) is owed $618.45 in salary, plus $729.78 from a court settlement;<br /><br />-- I remember when the movie <em>Purple Rain </em>came out in 1984. <strong>Morris Day</strong>, Prince’s rival in the film, was on the Letterman show and, without a trace of irony, he uttered the line which has remained with me to this very day: “Dave, I’m a very sexual person.” For this gutsy admission alone, it is my honor to let Morris know that he is due $522.00 in residuals from an unnamed company, $99.13 from the Household Finance Corporation, $117.16 and $90.73 from Time-Warner Cable, $201.80 and $76.75 from court settlements, $58.13 from “Paid Prescriptions, Inc.,” and $14.30 from Charles Schwab;<br /><br />-- <strong>El De Barge </strong>is due $1.34, $1.35, $6.06, and $7.32 from NBC/Universal, plus $8.14 from Sony, and $2.75 from Studio Payroll Services. (Not to be confused with El Brendel, the Swedish movie comedian from the early ‘30s, who popularized the phrase, “Yumpin’ Yimminy!”)<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Yvonne de Carlo </strong>is due $29.94 from Bank of America;<br /><br />-- <strong>Ellen Degeneres </strong>will dance, when she discovers that she is due $590.00 from Disney;<br /><br />-- French superstar <strong>Alain Delon</strong>, who briefly lived in Los Angeles in the ‘60s, when he was making movies for American studios, had a joint bank account in the amount of $327.99, at Bank of America. He and his ex-wife, the actress <strong>Nathalie Delon</strong>, are still entitled to receive this money;<br /><br />-- “Wolfman” <strong>Benicio del Toro </strong>will howl with delight when he finds that he’s due $1,075.00, in unpaid wages;<br /><br />-- <strong>Johnny Depp </strong>has $2,159.06 coming to him from Beverly Hills Porsche;<br /><br />-- <strong>Dino De Laurentiis’ </strong>production and music companies have 12 separate claims;<br /><br />-- The Late <strong>Bob Denver</strong>, everybody’s favorite 'little buddy,' is due $25.83 in royalties from Disney;<br /><br />-- <strong>Brian De Palma </strong>is owed a refund of $110.00 from “Rollins, Inc. and Subsidiaries;”<br /><br />-- <strong>Bruce Dern</strong>, the actor who, for me, has always “out-Nicholsoned Nicholson,” is owed $115.70 by Time-Warner Cable, $96.98 from Paramount Pictures, and $58.24 from Chase Manhattan Bank;<br /><br />-- <strong>Portia De Rossi </strong>is owed $616.50 by Disney;<br /><br />-- <strong>Donna D’Errico</strong> from “Baywatch” is due $27.82 in unpaid wages;<br /><br />-- Cute-as-a-button indie princess <strong>Zooey Deschanel </strong>is owed $50.00 by Motorola;<br /><br />-- The unqualified winners in the Unclaimed Assets Sweepstakes are <strong>Danny De Vito </strong>and wife <strong>Rhea Perlman</strong>: For some reason, they forgot that they have a joint checking account with (get this!), $71,451.99 in it. Holy cow! Hey, guys, if you don’t want it, send it over to me!<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Frank De Vol </strong>who composed every ‘60s t.v. show theme ever, is owed $3,250.00 by Capitol Records, $543.75 in bond interest, $355.00 from an insurance company, and $71.38 from Universal;<br /><br />-- <strong>Neil Diamond </strong>will say “Hello, my friend, hello” to $248.04 he’s owed from a court settlement, $277.14 to which he’s eligible from National Benefit Life Insurance Company, and $100.00 which he forgot about, from a bank;<br /><br />-- <strong>Andy Dick </strong>is owed $563.00, $196.99, and $184.46 by Disney; $414.64 by Warner Bros.;<br /><br />-- <strong>Disney</strong>: The Disney Family, Disneyland Resorts, and Disney Pictures have lots and lots of claims listed on the website;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Ivan Dixon</strong>, the great t.v. director who played Sgt. James 'Kinch' Kinchloe on “Hogan’s Heroes,” is owed $5.61, $5.75, and $5.73 by Sony, plus he’s owed $34.62 by Warner Bros., and he’s got a $15.00 checking account he never closed at the Bank of the West;<br /><br />-- Rapper <strong>DMX</strong> (Earl Simmons) is owed $382.96 by Warner Bros.;<br /><br />-- <strong>Placido Domingo </strong>needs to drink a lot of water, and that’s why Nestle Waters, makers of Arrowhead Water, owes him $50.05;<br /> <br />-- The late <strong>Brian Donlevy </strong>is still due $335.40 from MCA Records;<br /><br />-- <strong>Donovan</strong> (Donovan Leitch, Sr.), “The Hurdy-Gurdy Man” himself, is due $257.68 and $454.00 from insurance companies;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>William Dozier</strong>, one of the producers of t.v.’s “Batman,” who was also the show’s uncredited narrator (“Same Bat-time! Same Bat-channel!”) is owed $171.48 in residuals and $92.99 from the “General Credit Corp.;”<br /><br />-- <strong>Dr. Phil </strong>(Phil McGraw) will “keep it real” with the $648.00 he’s due from Disney;<br /><br />-- <strong>Robert Downey, Jr.</strong>, “the man with the mannerisms,” is due $208.00 from an insurance company, $166.35 from NBC/Universal, $79.00 from Studio Payroll Services, $18.68 from Disney, and $128.11 from BMI Music. (Note: One or more of these claims might actually be for his dad, the legendary underground filmmaker, Robert Downey, Sr.)<br /><br />-- <strong>Fran Drescher </strong>is owed $640.79, $592.72, $94.08, and 67.32 from Disney. Sounds like somebody didn’t get her royalty checks for those “ancillary” screenings of <em>Beautician and the Beast</em>?<br /><br />-- I was at a movie theater in Beverly Hills once, and I saw <strong>Julia Louis Dreyfus </strong>using a tissue to open the ladies room door. I guess she doesn’t like to touch doorknobs, but she is eligible to touch $7.41 from Disney and $5.87 in dividends from General Electric, if she wants it;<br /><br />-- <strong>Michael Dudikoff</strong>, who starred in those <em>American Ninja </em>movies in the ‘80s, has twenty-three separate claims;<br /><br />-- <strong>Charles Durning </strong>is due $1,295.57 from Disney;<br /><br />-- An insurance company owes <strong>Fred Durst</strong> $818.00;<br /><br />-- The late film noir stalwart <strong>Dan Duryea </strong>left $44.24 behind in a bank;<br /><br />-- <strong>Nancy Dussault</strong>, who played the mom on the ‘80s sitcom “Too Close for Comfort,” is owed $129.40 and $61.40 from the Chubb Group. The reason I remember her name, is because once, during a run of her sit-com, she appeared as “herself” on a t.v. variety show, and she had to gleefully sing her own name, like this: “I’m Nan-see Doo-salt!”<br /><br />-- The great <strong>Charles S. Dutton </strong>is lucky today: He’s due the sums of $15,602.09 and $12,559.42 in unpaid wages (separate claims, from unnamed companies), plus $571.00, $538.00, and $616.00 from Disney, $576.00 from an unnamed company, and $28.45 from ABC. Also, he’s owed 82 cents, 37 cents, and 83 cents in residuals, from other unnamed companies;<br /><br />-- Movie history’s most famous consigliore <strong>Robert Duvall </strong>can take an extra salsa-dancing lesson with the $73.08 which he is due from AT &T;<br /><br />-- Does anybody else beside me ever mix up those two fine character actors <strong>Richard Dysart</strong> and Richard Basehart? It’s an easy mistake to make, because both of these two fine character actors with similar names appear in major roles, in Hal Ashby’s seminal 1979 film, <em>Being There</em>. But the late Richard Dysart is the only one with a claim – he’s due both $322.56 and $12.84, from Warner Bros.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />E:<br /><br />-- <strong>Clint Eastwood’s</strong> day will be made, when he discovers that he’s due $300 from MGM (royalties; four claims which together total $300), plus an additional $50.00, from MCA Universal;<br /><br />-- <strong>Nicole Eggert </strong>is due a $25.00 refund on an escrow check;<br /><br />-- The never-to-be-forgotten <strong>Anita Ekberg </strong>is owed $100.92 and $96.94, both by the Marbella Club Hotel;<br /><br />-- One of the great character actors, the late <strong>Dana Elcar</strong>, continues to be owed $628.22, $70.07, and $26.22 by Universal, plus $27.86 by Sony;<br /><br />-- She kissed Henry Thomas in <em>E.T.</em> and, many years later, when she grew up and posed for "Playboy," I kissed her layout pages: <strong>Erika Eleniak </strong>is owed $116.85 by the Gas Company and $26.50 by Sony;<br /><br />-- The amazing movie composer and Oingo-Boingo frontman <strong>Danny Elfman</strong> is owed $2,455.17 by News Corp. (Fox) and he’s also entitled to $201.15 from a court settlement;<br /><br />-- <strong>Omar Epps</strong> is due a $50.00 refund from Sears Roebuck;<br /><br />-- <strong>R. Lee Ermey</strong>, the greatest movie drill instructor of all time (<em>Full Metal Jacket</em>), is due $174.91 from Paramount Pictures;<br /><br />-- The soulful/great <strong>Melissa Etheridge </strong>has $26.97 coming to her from NBC/Universal and $58.85 from Disney;<br /><br />-- <strong>Bob Eubanks</strong>, host of t.v.’s original “Newlywed Game,” will be making whoopee with the $598.00 and $257.85 he’s owed, in unpaid salary;<br /><br />-- Supermodel <strong>Angie Everhart </strong>is due $50.00 from the Cellco Partnership.<br /><br /><br /><br />F:<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Percy Faith </strong>is owed $611.02 by UMG Records;<br /><br />-- Jane’s Addiction/Porno for Pyros ethereal front man <strong>Perry Farrell </strong>is owed $7.42 in unpaid wages;<br /><br />-- <strong>Corey Feldman </strong>can moonwalk his way right into the $402.00 court settlement he’s due, plus the $50.00 which he’s owed by Sears Roebuck;<br /><br />-- The Late Great funnyman <strong>Marty Feldman </strong>is owed $637.39 by Universal, most likely royalties for the one film which he made for the studio, <em>In God We Trust (All Others Pay Cash</em>);<br /><br />-- <strong>Sally Field</strong> will say “You like me! You really like me!” to the $250.00 she’s owed by Universal;<br /><br />-- Eternal sexpot <strong>Barbara Feldon </strong>has a safety deposit box to look at;<br /><br />-- <strong>William Fichtner </strong>is due $998.00 from Disney;<br /><br />-- <strong>Kim Fields</strong>, ‘Tootie’ from “The Facts of Life,” is due $89.70 and $52.87 from Disney, and $14.89 and $7.89 from Studio Payroll Services;<br /><br />-- <strong>Mike Figgis</strong>, the very talented director of <em>Leaving Las Vegas</em>, is due $190.75 from a court settlement;<br /><br />-- Hollywood whistleblower <strong><strong>Nikki Finke </strong></strong>is owed $6.95 from stocks;<br /><br />-- The memorably-bespectacled <strong>Joe Flynn</strong>, who used to irascibly yell, “McHale!” on “McHale’s Navy,” and who starred in all of those great Disney movies in the ‘70s (<em>The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes, The Strongest Man in the World, Superdad</em>, etc.) passed away many years ago, but he is still owed $354.10, $100.00, $50.00, and $40.00 by Disney;<br /><br />-- <strong>John Fogerty </strong>keeps on chooglin’ with the $142.24 he’s owed by Paid Prescriptions, Inc. and the $67.00 he’s owed by the Auto Club;<br /><br />-- <strong>Bridget Fonda </strong>is entitled to $41.86 from Union Bank;<br /><br />-- <strong>Milos Forman </strong>is due $94.00 from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center;<br /><br />-- <strong>Frederic Forrest </strong>is owed $28.63 by MGM, $50.34 from the Gas Company, $77.61 from a court settlement, $28.00 from the Auto Club, and $358.41 from the State of New Hampshire;<br /><br />-- <strong>Jodie Foster </strong>is due $603.67 from a court settlement, $142.69 from Bank of the West, as well as a $61.37 refund from Tiffany and Company;<br /><br />-- <strong>Vivica A. Fox </strong>is due $101.51 and $73.76 in residuals, plus $53.66 from General Mills;<br /><br />-- The actor <strong>Robert Foxworth </strong>is entitled to $5,000.00 from “International Game Technology,” plus $134.46 and $629.41 in dividends, and $74.28 from Sears Roebuck;<br /><br />-- The cinematographer <strong>William A. Fraker </strong>is owed $126.99 in a court settlement;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>James Franciscus</strong> is due $50.00 from Time Warner Cable;<br /><br />-- Senator <strong>Al Franken </strong>-- $11.00!<br /><br />-- The late director <strong>John Frankenheimer </strong>is due $224.34 from an escrow company, $76.69 from First L.A. Bank, and $56.00 is interest that accrued on his “terminated life insurance policy;”<br /><br />-- The late <strong>William Frawley </strong>(‘Fred Mertz’ from “I Love Lucy”) is due $52.00 from an insurance company;<br /><br />-- Comedy album genius <strong>Stan Freberg </strong>is owed $459.79 by Universal… plus, he’s also owed one penny, by BMI Music!<br /><br />-- What would the ‘80s have been without “Max Headroom?” Max’s alter-ego, <strong>Matt Frewer</strong>, is entitled to $1,031.75 from Disney;<br /><br />-- <strong>Daisy Fuentes</strong> is owed $667.00 in unpaid wages from an unnamed company, plus $6.57 from Sony.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />G:<br /><br />-- Once upon a (Hungarian) time, <strong>Eva</strong> and <strong>Zsa-Zsa Gabor</strong>, and their older sister <strong>Magda</strong>, pooled in some money and jointly invested together. Together, they are owed $147.20 and $141.19 in stock shares;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Eva Gabor</strong>, on her own, is due $1,696.00 from “Interinsurance Exchange of the Automobile,” $832.13 from Disney, $382.15 from a court settlement, $88.13 from<br />some mutual funds, $244.52 from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, and $9.12 and $6.15 in dividends from McFarland Energy;<br /><br />-- <strong>Zsa Zsa Gabor </strong>is due $129.35 from Time Warner Cable, $141.19 from stock dividends, and an additional $147.20 Dividends. (I hope that German “prince” character doesn’t get his mitts on it!) I remember when David Letterman once said that the worst ice cream flavor in the world might be “Zsa Zsa Gab-oreo,” and that is probably true;<br /><br />-- Charlotte Gainsbourg is due $515.66 from Bank of America;<br /><br />-- The late, never-to-be-forgotten <strong>Marvin Gaye </strong>wouldn’t have needed any “sexual healing,” if he knew that he was, and that his heirs still are, entitled to $6,004.46, $2,952.62, and $41.87 from Security Pacific Bank, $4,093.93, $360.71, and $338.72 from Pharmacia, Inc., $3,400.00 from First Interstate Bank, $1,441.17 from Transworld Bank, $172.68 from General Electric Stocks, $24.00, and $31.68 from his stocks in the Upjohn Company. Marvin’s heirs are also eligible to receive the $402.50 in interest which has accumulated on his terminated life insurance policy;<br /><br />-- <strong>Mitzi Gaynor</strong>, the 1950s sexpot whom “this author” recently enjoyed in a great classic comedy from 1956, <em>The Birds and The Bees </em>(her legs go all the way up), has five separate claims from MCA Records, in the amounts of $104.81, $60.85, $128.71, $57.04, and $41.94;<br /><br />-- <strong>Ben Gazzara </strong>(“Jackie Treehorn” from <em>The Big Lebowski</em>), who’s been cool for decades, is owed $762.30 by Universal;<br /><br />-- <strong>David Geffen </strong>is due $3,006.61 from a bank, $100.67 from a court settlement, $72.65 from Verizon, and $66.00 from Universal Pictures;<br /><br />-- <strong>Lynda Day George </strong>is due $489.09 and $66.58 in dividends, plus $78.29 from Paramount Pictures;<br /><br />-- The now-deceased UHF crackpot <strong>Wally George </strong>is owed $127.64 in salary;<br /><br />-- Kick-ass <strong>Gina Gershon </strong>is owed $104.35 by Spelling Entertainment;<br /><br />-- The ‘80s would not be complete without the song-stylings of <strong>Debbie Gibson</strong>, who is owed $138.88 by Time Warner Cable;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Henry Gibson</strong>, from t.v.’s “Laugh-In” and Altman’s Nashville, will never get to see the $4.04 he’s owed from Warner Bros. “Oh, Mergatroyd!”<br /><br />-- <strong>Cornelia Guest </strong>is due $599.35 in salary from an unnamed company, plus $57.87 and $38.00 from Warner Bros.; <br /><br />-- <strong>Vince Gill</strong> is due $121.35 in “vendor payments,” plus $98.58 from Broadcast Music, Inc.;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Robert Ginty</strong> (<em>Exterminator and Exterminator II</em>) is due a $75.35 refund from The New York <em>Times</em>;<br /><br />-- Remember those great Golan-Globus productions from the ‘80s – those supercharged B-movies that breathed new life into the careers of Chuck Norris and Charles Bronson? Israeli super-producer <strong>Yoram Globus</strong>, one of the two men who made these movies happen, is entitled to receive $1,863.89 from Countrywide Home Loans. He is also owed $110.79, which a now-defunct savings bank has turned over to the government;<br /><br />-- The truly inimitable <strong>Crispin Glover </strong>is owed a $100.00 refund from the Auto Club, plus $588.13 from a court settlement;<br /><br />-- I was a contestant on <strong>Bobcat Goldthwait’s </strong>short-lived USA network game show “Bobcat’s Big Ass Show” about ten years ago, and I had to dress up as a fireman and save a “lady” from a fire in order to win a watch – and the lady was actually a man, dressed as a lady. (And incidentally, the watch I won never worked.) Bobcat has $629.00 that he’s due in unpaid salary from an unlisted company;<br /><br />-- <strong>John Goodman </strong>has so many claims (at least 35 claims, by my own count) that it would take me a long time to itemize them. John, go to the Unclaimed Assets website and check them out!<br /><br />-- <strong>Leo Gorcey</strong>, “boss” of the “Dead End Kids” (who were subsequently resurrected as both “The Bowery Boys” and “The East Side Kids”) died forty years ago, but there’s still $120.00 waiting for him from an old bank account that he never closed down, as well as $2.30 from Studio Payroll Services;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Frank Gorshin </strong>(he was the original 'Riddler' on t.v., not to mention the best Kirk Douglas-impressionist, ever) cashed out of life, before he cashed in on the $100.00 which he is owed;<br /><br />-- Actor/evangelist <strong>Marjoe Gortner </strong>is owed $132.64 and $73.14 by MGM, plus $140.00 and $119.00 from Allstate Insurance;<br /><br />-- <strong>Heather Graham </strong>('Rollergirl') is due $160.64, which the Unclaimed Assets website lists as being a “vendor payment;” <br /><br />-- “Judy, Judy, Judy, you owe me $258.91:” That’s the amount of the refund which the late, dapper <strong>Cary Grant </strong>is owed by an unspecified vendor;<br /><br />-- <strong>Hugh Grant </strong>is owed $441.00 by Disney and $330.75 by NBC/Universal;<br /><br />-- <strong>Linda Gray </strong>from “Dallas” is due $598.00 from ABC and $142.04 from Universal Music, Inc.;<br /><br />-- Funnyman <strong>Tom Green </strong>(where’d that guy go?!) is owed $78.40 by MTV, plus he’s got two residual checks, each in the amount of $734.25 (from unnamed companies), to pick up;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Lorne Greene’s </strong>family has a bonanza coming to them: He’s owed $553.50, $170.15, $123.00, and $50.17 in wages, plus $1,908.62 from the “Woodmen of the World Life Insurance Company;”<br /><br />-- “Oooh!” The late <strong>Merv Griffin </strong>owned the Beverly Hills Hotel, so he probably didn’t need the paltry $21.51 which he’s still due, from NBC/Universal;<br /><br />-- Don’t have a cow, <strong>Matt Groening</strong>: Pacific Bell owes you eighty bucks!<br /><br />-- Producer <strong>Peter Guber</strong> is owed $365.61 by ADT Security Services. Peter’s co-producer Jon Peters might have some claims of his own, as well: The Unclaimed Assets website shows claims for various people named Jon Peters, but I wasn’t sure which one was the “producer” one, so I haven’t listed any; <br /><br />-- The company “<strong>Guber-Peters Songs</strong>” has six different claims listed, in the amounts of $1,375.94, $1,039.66, $901.81, $691.94, $195.09, and $166.15;<br /><br />-- Global warming is probably fiction, but here's some truth: <strong>Davis Guggenheim</strong>, who directed the 2006 documentary <em>An Inconvenient Truth</em>, is owed $8.91 by Sony;<br /><br />-- <em>Spinal Tap’s </em>own <strong>Christopher Guest </strong>(aka, 'Nigel Tufnel') has $254.34 in unpaid royalties/residuals coming to him.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />H:<br /><br />-- <strong>Shelly Hack</strong>, one of t.v.’s original "Charlie’s Angels," is due $11.25 in unpaid royalties;<br /><br />-- <strong>Gene Hackman’s </strong>crustiness would fall away if he received the $243.14 and $130.91 he’s due from Time-Warner Cable;<br /><br />-- <strong>Larry Hagman </strong>is eligible to receive $14.24 from NBC/Universal, $94.70 from the Chubb Corporation, and $218.92 from Citibank;<br /><br />-- Cult favorite <strong>Sid Haig </strong>is owed $253.85 by Disney, $34.77, $29.63, and $6.07 by NBC/Universal, and $8.59 by an unnamed company;<br /><br />-- <strong>Corey Haim </strong>is due $96.15 from Sony;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Jack Haley, Sr.</strong> (the “Tin Man”) and his wife Florence are owed $283.50 in dividends. Jack, on his own, is owed $91.02 from Disney and $50.48 in interest which has accrued on his terminated life insurance policy;<br /><br />-- The equally-late producer <strong>Jack Haley, Jr</strong>., is due $349.22 from Warner Bros. and $288.71 from an insurance company;<br /><br />-- Woop! Woop! Woop! <strong>Arsenio Hall </strong>is due both $37.00 and $102.00 in refunds from Allstate Insurance. Hmm, “Makes you think.” (Or whatever his catch-phrase was. I forgot!)<br /><br />-- He fought scorpions in the original <em>Clash of the Titans</em>, and for that, <strong>Harry Hamlin </strong>definitely deserves the $106.74 which is coming to him from Verizon!<br /><br />-- <strong>Marvin Hamlisch </strong>is owed $155.00 by ABC. I love his score for the new movie, <em>The Informant!</em><br /><br />-- <strong>Sam Hamm</strong>, who wrote the first <em>Batman </em>movie, has 23 separate claims, mostly from Universal with a sprinkling of Disney. There are too many for me to list;<br /><br />-- <strong>Earl Hamner, Jr.</strong> created “The Waltons,” and when I was a little boy, my dad, a contractor, was remodeling Hamner’s house. My dad told Hamner that I liked writing, so Earl showed me the little shed and portable typewriter where he wrote each episode of the show, and then he gave me a glass of apple juice. This is one of my fondest boyhood memories. Earl is owed $244.70 from a court settlement;<br /><br />-- The luminescent <strong>Darryl Hannah </strong>is owed $2,801.71 by Warner Bros.;<br /><br />-- <strong>Alyson Hannigan</strong>, from the American Pie movies, is due $1,040.82 from an escrow check, $41.00 in salary, and $3.04 from Tiffany and Company;<br /><br />-- The understated and underrated <strong>Tess Harper </strong>played Robert Duvall’s long-suffering wife in the great 1983 film <em>Tender Mercies</em>, and this year, she’s featured on the Showtime series “Crash.” She is due $582.00 in salary, from an unnamed company;<br /><br />-- <strong>Valerie Harper </strong>(“Rhoda”): $925.00 in stocks from Tiffany and Company;<br /><br />-- <strong>Woody Harrelson </strong>is owed $1,364.57 by Disney, $614.90 by Disney, and $157.50 by MGM – that would buy a lot of hemp!<br /><br />-- <strong>Melissa Joan Hart </strong>is owed $1,669.00, $648.00, $629.00, and $736.00 in residuals;<br /><br />-- <strong>Jackée Harry </strong>(whatever happened to her?) is owed $36.79 and $2.63 by Studio Payroll and $149.73 from an insurance company; <br /><br />-- The underrated performer <strong>Dennis Haysbert </strong>is owed $382.85 in royalties from an unnamed company, plus $29.26 from NBC/Universal;<br /><br />-- <strong>Nina Hartley</strong>, the pre-eminent female-empowering porn star and activist, is very deservedly due $291.98 in royalties;<br /><br />-- The late, mega-great <strong>Phil Hartman’s </strong>dependents will be happy to learn that he is due $2,325.00 in wages, plus $537.00, $337.00, and $139.50 in royalties;<br /><br />-- <strong>Rutger Hauer </strong>is due $89.64 and $57.35 from the Gas Company;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Sessue Hayakawa </strong>(the intimidating 'Colonel Saito' from <em>The Bridge on the River Kwai</em>) passed away in 1973, and he never closed down his Bank of America account, which had $2,523.79 in it;<br /><br />-- <strong>Sean Hayes </strong> from "Will and Grace" is owed $769.68 and $537.00 by NBC/Universal;<br /><br />-- <strong>Patricia Hearst</strong> can claim the $475.25 she’s owed by Pacific Capital Bank without using a machine gun to get it!<br /><br />-- <strong>Joey Heatherton </strong>(“mee-ow!”) is due $106.76 from NBC/Universal;<br /><br />-- <strong>Anne Heche</strong> and her estranged husband <strong>Coleman Laffoon </strong>are together entitled to retrieve $6,367.00 from the Utah Division of Finance Distribution. Additionally, Anne, on her own, is entitled to $68.46 in unpaid salary;<br /><br />-- <strong>Tippi Hedren </strong>is owed $12.68 by NBC/Universal – and that’s not for The Birds!<br /><br />-- <strong>Katherine Heigl</strong> (from Heatherton to Heigl in one sentence!) is owed both $65.17 and $330.75 by Disney, and $279.57 in residuals from an unspecified source;<br /><br />-- <strong>Marg Helgenberger</strong>, who adds sass – and class – to every t.v. show and movie she’s in, deserves the $418.00 and $214.25 salaries which are owed to her company, “Don’t Call Me Marge Productions;”<br /><br />-- <strong>Jerome Hellman</strong>, who produced 1978’s <em>Coming Home </em>and a lot of other great movies, is due $37.04 from a court settlement;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Margaux Hemingway </strong>is listed on the California State Controller’s website, because she’s due $1,154.45 in municipal bonds and $280.32 from the State of Idaho;<br /><br />-- <strong>Mariel Hemingway </strong>is eligible to receive $629.00 and $270.00 in royalties (or residuals) from unnamed companies, $492.80 from ABC, $260.87 from Verizon, $46.85 from AB Cellular Holdings, and $21.67 from MGM;<br /><br />-- The late great comedian <strong>Shirley Hemphill </strong>– she played 'Shirley' on “What’s Happening!” – is due from $48.40 from Universal;<br /><br />-- T.V.’s legendary 'George Jefferson,' <strong>Sherman Hemsley</strong>, has 13 smallish claims which together equal $800.00;<br /><br />-- <strong>Florence Henderson</strong>, t.v.’s 'Carol Brady,' is owed $130.99 by BMG Music;<br /><br />-- <strong>Marilu Henner</strong>, “Taxi’s” sultry redhead, is due a royalty payment in the amount of $822.00; <br /><br />-- <strong>Pamela Hensley</strong>, who used to brighten up my teen-age years on the t.v. show “Buck Rogers,” is due $38.86 from Universal;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Jim Henson </strong>is owed $522.00 by Time Warner Cable;<br /><br />-- <strong>Barbara Hershey </strong>is due $129.15 from NBC;<br /><br />-- <strong>Jennifer Love Hewitt </strong>is due $299.40 from Warner Bros.;<br /><br />-- <strong>Cheryl Hines</strong>, always good as Larry David’s wife on “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” is due $300.37 from an unnamed production company, $216.57 and $82.71 from Warner Bros., and $10.49 from a credit union;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Gregory Hines</strong>, talented actor and dancer, is owed $360.00 from an insurance company and $212.96 from the State of New York;<br /><br />-- “Good e-vening, Unclaimed Assets!” The late <strong>Alfred Hitchc</strong>ock, and his daughter <strong>Patricia O’Connell </strong>are together due $500.00 in dividends from the Singer sewing machine company and $240.00 from the State of Illinois; <br /><br />-- <strong>Dustin Hoffman’s </strong>notoriously “difficult personality,” which he lampooned in the classic comedy Tootsie, will disappear when he discover that he’s due $572.08 from Delta Dental, as well as $286.04, reported as “insurance claim checks;”<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Bob Hope</strong> thanks us for the memory of $524.41 his family is due from an unnamed production company, plus $13.41 in stock dividends;<br /><br />-- Sir <strong>Anthony Hopkins</strong> will enjoy the $462.00 in unpaid royalties he is due, with some fava beans and a nice chianti;<br /><br />-- <strong>Dennis Hopper</strong>: Hey, “man,” here’s $53.64 for you! Far out!<br /><br />-- The late <strong>John Houseman </strong>(he made money the old-fashioned way: he earrrrrned it) is owed $280.67 from the Occidental Petroleum Corporation;<br /><br />-- When I was a kid, growing up in the ‘70s, I used to love a game show called “The Liar’s Club.” The host, <strong>Larry Hovis</strong>, is owed $227.53 from the Mercury Casualty Insurance Company;<br /><br />-- <strong>Vanessa Hudgens </strong>is due $894.00 from Disney;<br /><br />-- <strong>Kate Hudson </strong>and her company Birdie Productions are due $610.00 from an unnamed production company;<br /><br />-- The Late <strong>Rock Hudson </strong>left a bank account with $261.90, and didn’t live to collect the $119.21 which he is still due from MCA Records;<br /><br />-- Desperate Housewife <strong>Felicity Huffman </strong>might be less desperate, when she finds out that she is entitled to $323.38 and $149.80 from an unnamed production company, and that she’s also due a bank refund in the amount of $60.68;<br /><br />-- <strong>Helen Hunt</strong> cleans up! She’s due $3,306.55, $1,285.03, and $1,002.95 from various banks, $1,567.00, $648.00, and $444.00 in unpaid salaries, plus $1,129.99 from stocks; <br /><br />-- <strong>William Hurt </strong>should stop brooding for just long enough to collect the $617.00 he’s due from an unnamed production company;<br /><br />-- <strong>Angelica Huston </strong>is owed $187.00 from a bank;<br /><br />-- The Late <strong>John Huston </strong>is owed $832.04 in residuals from Time-Warner Cable;<br /><br />-- "Saturday Night Live's" <strong>Melaine Hutsell</strong>, who did a mean 'Jan Brady' imitation, is due $208.41 in residuals from an unnamed company, plus $59.51 and $15.30 from MGM.<br /><br /><br />I:<br /><br />-- <strong>Ice Cube </strong>(O’Shea Jackson) is owed $466.59 by NBC/Universal;<br /><br />-- <strong>Ice-T </strong>(Tracy Marrow) is owed $365.83 and $20.70 by Disney, $115.26 in unpaid residuals from an unlisted company, and $721.33 from a bank; <br /><br />-- Ka-ching! <strong>Rhys Ifans </strong>has never collected the $4,664.41 which he’s due from Disney, nor did he ever pick up the $47.15 which he’s due from Warner Bros;<br /><br />-- The first record album I ever owned, when I was three years old, was “Burl Ives Sings ‘Little White Duck’ and Other Songs.” The late <strong>Burl Ives</strong> is due $102.24 from stocks and $39.00 from an insurance company;<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />J:<br /><br />-- <strong>Hugh Jackman </strong>can dance on over and retrieve the $590.00 which he’s due, from Disney;<br /><br />-- <strong>Jermaine Jackson </strong>is due $1,696.70 from an insurance company, $738.20 from a court settlement, $4.32 from Sony, and $2.24 in residuals from an unknown company;<br /><br />-- <strong>Kate Jackson</strong> has the contents to a safety deposit box to contend with;<br /><br />-- <strong>Tito Jackson</strong> is due $910.88 from stocks;<br /><br />-- <strong>Mick Jagger </strong>is owed $552.57 and $315.00 by Disney, plus $50.47 in residuals from an unnamed source;<br /><br />-- Director <strong>Henry Jaglom’s </strong>characters contemplate their belly-buttons. Henry should contemplate the $135.73 which he’s owed by an insurance company;<br /><br />-- <strong>Thomas Jane </strong>is due $2,981.71, from Talent Partners;<br /><br />-- I met <strong>Allison Janney</strong> at a party once. She was talking to three guys named Steve at the same time, and I told her my name was Chuck, and she said, "Look! Three Steves and a Chuck!" She is owed $471.75 in residuals, from an unnamed company;<br /><br />-- <strong>Conrad Janis</strong>, the excellent actor and jazz musician, is owed $125.59 by AIG Insurance Co.;<br /><br />-- The late (and badass) <strong>Waylon Jennings </strong>is owed $23.15 and $8.83 from Studio Payroll Services, and $8.85 from Sony;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>George Jessel</strong>, the “Toastmaster General” himself, is owed $998.15, $500.00, and $230.54 from BMG Music;<br /><br />-- <strong>Scarlett Johansson </strong>is owed $97.49 by Studio Payroll Services;<br /><br />-- <strong>Elton John</strong> is due $1,244.04 by Disney (probably from something related to “The Lion King”);<br /><br />-- T.V.’s <strong>Arte Johnson </strong>used to pop up from behind a plant on “Laugh-In” and say, “Very interesting!” Very Interestingly, he’s owed twenty-two cents by Sony!<br /><br />-- <strong>Angelina Jolie </strong>is owed $659.01 in royalties from Disney;<br /><br />-- <strong>Catherine Zeta-Jones </strong>is due a refund of $962.77 from American Airlines;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Spike Jones</strong>, king of the novelty record, is owed $27.50 from his Coca-Cola stocks;<br /><br />-- The American Olivier, <strong>James Earl Jones</strong>, is owed $34.07 in royalty payments;<br /><br />-- <strong>Quincy Jones</strong>: The musical genius whose friends call him ‘Q’ makes our ears feel good in every possible musical genre. He is due $1,780.51 from a court settlement, $650.00 as a refund from an unspecified company, $60.92 (listed as a “vendor payment”), and $29.34 from Universal. ‘Q’ might have some more claims, as well, because there are various Quincy Joneses listed on the Unclaimed Assets website;<br /><br />-- Film director <strong>Spike Jonze </strong>(Adam Spiegel) is owed $92.92 by Disney.<br /><br />-- <strong>Laurence Juber</strong>, a fine musician who was a temporary member of Paul McCartney and Wings (Juber played on the 1979 Wings album “Back to the Egg”), is owed $181.75 from a court settlement. I’m mentioning this to thank him, because in the ‘80s, he played a lunch time concert at my high school (North Hollywood High).<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />K:<br /><br />-- <strong>The Kardashian Family</strong>, including <strong>Kim </strong>and lawyer dad <strong>Robert</strong>, have two pages of claims to “keep up” with;<br /><br />-- <strong>Richard Karn</strong>, from “Home Improvement” is due $154.70 from Disney;<br /><br />-- <strong>Vincent Kartheiser</strong>, from “Mad Men,” is due $616.50 and $97.10 in wages, plus refunds of $144.90 and $26.88 from a recreational equipment store;<br /><br />-- <strong>Chris Kattan </strong>is owed $272.08 from an unnamed production company;<br /><br />-- <strong>Jeffrey Katzenberg </strong>is due $42.53 from the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company;<br /><br />-- <strong>Lainie Kazan </strong>is due $248.97 from Time Warner Cable, $109.98 and $54.99 from Lucent Technologies, $164.84 from NBC/Universal, $75.40 from MGM, and $41.40 in stock shares;<br /><br />-- <strong>Stacy Keach</strong> is owed $1,288.46 from a bank, $154.00 from the State of Illinois, and a $61.94 refund from an unnamed company;<br /><br />-- <strong>George Kennedy </strong>is due $100.00 from Universal Pictures and $20.49 from Sony Pictures;<br /><br />-- <strong>Jayne Kennedy</strong>, one of the sultriest heartthrobs of the ‘70s, is due $6.05 from Warner Bros.;<br /><br />-- <strong>Leon Isaac Kennedy</strong>, Jayne’s ex-husband, with whom she starred in a 1981 remake of the ‘40s classic Body and Soul, is due $53.16 from an old savings account;<br /><br />-- <strong>Ken Kercheval </strong>(‘Cliff Barnes’ from “Dallas”) is due fourteen cents from Studio Payroll Services;<br /><br />-- <strong>Joanna Kerns </strong>is due $4,556.94 from Disney;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Persis Khambatta</strong>, the bald lady from the first <em>Star Trek </em>movie (and she was also a former Miss India) is due $601.00 in residuals from Paramount Pictures;<br /><br />-- <strong>Margot Kidder </strong>has the contents of a safety deposit box to look at;<br /><br />-- <strong>Val Kilmer</strong> is due $9.69 from Disney;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Mabel King</strong>, better known as “Mama” from “What’s Happening,” is owed $100.00, $148.56, $50.00, and $100.00, all from Universal;<br /><br />-- <strong>Greg Kinnear</strong>, a fine actor (check out his 2008 movie <em>Flash of Genius</em> to see his stellar performance), has both $56.74 and $65.33 coming to him from Sony;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Klaus Kinski</strong> is due $77.96 from a court settlement;<br /><br />-- <strong>Nastassja Kinski</strong>, daughter of Klaus, has to unwrap that big python from around herself and collect the $177.63 that her company, Cardamom Productions, is owed, plus the $108.22 in refunds which she is owed by Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance;<br /><br />-- <strong>Sally Kirkland </strong>was, of course, great in the movie for which she won Best Supporting Actor, 1987’s <em>Anna</em>, and she was also good in director Tom O’Horgan’s counter-culture epic, <em>Futz</em> (1969). She’s due $30.83 from Sony and a $67.65 refund from Verizon;<br /><br />-- <strong>Tawny Kitaen </strong>has 38 separate claims! She can buy me a small Coke!<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Werner Klemperer </strong>(a great conductor, who also happens to have been Colonel Klink from “Hogan’s Heroes”) is owed $70.00 by the Standard Fire Insurance Company;<br /><br />-- <strong>Jack Klugman </strong>is due $150.01 from the State of Massachusetts;<br /><br />-- <strong>Don Knotts </strong>would have cured his eternal sniffle, had he known that he had $876.75 coming to him from Delta Dental and $194.00 from Security Pacific Bank;<br /><br />-- The late, beyond-great <strong>Harvey Korman</strong> (“That’s Hedley…!”) is owed $52.00 by Allstate Insurance and $50.00 by Disney, as well as $80.96, from a court settlement;<br /><br />-- <strong>Sho Kosugi</strong>, who starred in a fun little actioner called <em>Enter the Ninja </em>in 1981 (the Wachowski Brothers pay tribute to Kosugi by including him in the cast of their new 2009 movie, <em>Ninja Assassin</em>), has an old savings account with $672.56 in it;<br /><br />-- <strong>Yaphet Kotto </strong>is due $1,000.00 from an escrow company;<br /><br />-- MTV owes <strong>Lenny Kravitz </strong>$1,191.02!<br /><br />-- <strong>Kris Kristofferson </strong>will not be “busted flat in Baton Rouge,” when he learns that he’s entitled to a $250.00 refund from a hospital;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Stanley Kubrick</strong> famously had control over everything – but apparently, he didn’t know about the five royalty payments he continues to be due from “Payroll Services,” in the amounts of $189.62, $116.29, $154.97, $238.26, and $392.52.<br /><br />-- <strong>Nancy Kulp</strong>, Ms. Jane Hathaway from “The Beverly Hillbillies,” is owed $475.29 and $109.45 from Disney, and $80.45 from Sony.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />L:<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Fernando Lamas </strong>(“you look mah-velous!”) has $787.49 that he never picked up from Universal Pictures;<br /><br />-- <strong>Lorenzo Lamas</strong>, son of Fernando, is due $182.11 from the Progressive Casualty Insurance Company, plus $19.67 and $22.15 from MGM;<br /><br />-- <strong>Martin Landau </strong>is owed $250.00 by News Corp. (Fox). Martin and his ex-wife <strong>Barbara Bain </strong>(they were great together, on “Space 1999”) are owed $366.88 in SBC stocks, $16.70 from AT&T, and $11.15 from Comcast;<br /><br />-- <strong>Diane Lane </strong>has $648.00 coming to her from Disney (if she applies to the Unclaimed Assets website for it), plus $55.13 in an old savings account, plus $41.39 in residuals from an unlisted company;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Hope Lange</strong>, from t.v.’s “Ghost and Mrs. Muir” and the big screen’s <em>Death Wish</em>, left behind stock dividends of $429.80;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Charles Laughton</strong>, “Captain Kidd” himself, has four claims from MCA Records, in the amounts of $1,226.38, $201.67, $199.99, and $169.21;<br /><br />-- <strong>Lucy Lawless</strong> ("Xena: Warrior Princess") is due $542.79 and $421.61 from 20th Century Fox (aka, News Publishing, Australia), $465.00 and $265.56 from unnamed companies, and $96.00 from the Auto Club;<br /><br />-- <strong>Carol Lawrence </strong>always enjoys a nice cup of General Foods Café Suisse Mocha, and she might also enjoy the $902.43 she is due from an unnamed production company, the $220.00 she’s due from the State of New York, and the $49.70 she’s due from Delta Dental Insurance. She’s also got $330.75 sitting in an old savings account;<br /><br />-- <strong>George Lazenby</strong>, who played James Bond once, in 1969’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, is due $219.96, from a court settlement;<br /><br />-- <strong>Shia LaBeouf</strong> is owed $401.84 by News Corp., Australia (aka, 20th Century Fox);<br /><br />-- 'Billy Jack,' himself, <strong>Tom Laughlin</strong>, and his wife <strong>Delores</strong>, are together due $78.91 from a court settlement and Delores, on her own, is due $85.33 from the American Reserve Insurance Company;<br /><br />-- <strong>Cloris Leachman </strong>is due a refund of $69.95;<br /><br />-- <strong>Jennifer Jason Leigh </strong>is owed $305.01 in unpaid wages, by Paramount;<br /><br />-- <strong>Michael Lembeck </strong>is owed $1.02 by the Chicago Title Company;<br /><br />-- Here’s one of the big winners in the Celebrity Unclaimed Assets Contest: <strong>Jack Lemmon’s </strong>family is due to collect the princely sum of $21,423.39 in Life Insurance, from Sun Life Insurance of Canada. Lemmon’s dependents are also entitled to his five claims from ASCAP, the music publishing company, in the amounts of $258.50, $146.47, $127.71, $71.96, and $71.16, plus they are entitled to $481.35 which he is owed by Universal Pictures;<br /><br />-- <strong>Julian Lennon </strong>is owed $1,647.53 from a bank, plus $264.00, $241.00, and $34.24 from insurance companies;<br /><br />-- Character actor <strong>Ted Levine </strong>is due $413.98 from Time Warner Cable;<br /><br />-- <strong>Kay Lenz</strong> is due $28.46, $6.54, and $7.18 in residuals from unnamed production companies, $36.00 from the Auto Club, $38.62 from MGM, and $11.09 from NBC/Universal;<br /><br />-- Producer <strong>Avi Lerner </strong>is entitled to $396.00 from the West Coast Escrow Company and $23.89 from the Gas Company;<br /><br />-- Live from New York, it’s <strong>David Letterman</strong>, who is owed $196.24 in stock dividends;<br /><br />-- <strong>Hal Linden</strong>, “Barney Miller” himself, is owed $602.14 from Tiffany and Company;<br /><br />-- <strong>Art Linkletter</strong>, still going strong in his nineties, is owed $775.60 from a production company;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Larry Linville</strong>, 'Major Frank Burns' from t.v.'s "M*A*S*H," is owed $365.13 from an insurance company and $77.90 in residuals, from an unnamed company;<br /><br />-- <strong>John Lithgow’s </strong>wife, Mary, was my economics professor at UCLA – so why didn’t she clue him in to the fact that he’s owed $10.33 in residuals?<br /><br />-- <strong>Little Richard</strong> (Richard W. Penniman) has two full pages of claims that he needs to check out;<br /><br />-- <strong>Lucy Liu</strong> is due a refund of $196.00 from overpayment on an escrow check;<br /><br />-- That very good character <strong>Tony Lo Bianco </strong>is due $585.97 from Universal Pictures;<br /><br />-- <strong>June Lockhart </strong>is due $30.21, from “Waste Management Services;”<br /><br />-- <strong>Lindsay Lohan </strong>is frustrated about how her career has been going of late, but she would not be frustrated if she knew that she is entitled to receive two payments, in the amounts of $1,100.00 and $459.80;<br /><br />-- <strong>Shelley Long </strong>is owed $213.52 by MGM;<br /><br />-- <strong>Tina Louise</strong>, 'Ginger' from “Gilligan’s Island,” is due $43.24 from Republic Pictures, $56.00 from “Paid Prescriptions, Inc.,” and $11.65 from stocks;<br /><br />-- <strong>Courtney Love </strong>is owed $566.62 by NBC/Universal and $2.57 by Paypal;<br /><br />-- <strong>Jon Lovitz </strong>is owed $775.00 by an unnamed production company;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Myrna Loy</strong>, so memorable in <em>The Best Years of Our Lives </em>and dozens of other classic movies, is due $827.76, $300.96, and $288.90 from California Federal Savings and Loan, and $325.50 from Universal Pictures;<br /><br />-- The very good actor <strong>Laurence Luckinbill</strong>, husband of Lucie Arnaz, is due $318.09 by Disney;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Ida Lupino</strong>, who was not only a terrific actress but also one of the first, and best, woman directors, is owed $139.40 by Providence St. Joseph Medical Center, $50.00 by ABC, and $30.00 by Chevron;<br /><br />-- <strong>Paul Lynde </strong>was a comedy genius. And if he were here, he could collect the $204.65 he is still owed, in unpaid salary.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />M:<br /><br />-- The late (and hilarious) <strong>Bernie Mac’s </strong>heirs are eligible to receive the $41.00 which Disney owes him;<br /><br />-- Hilarious <strong>Norm MacDonald</strong>, the most deadpan human being who’s ever lived, is due $272.08 from an unnamed production company. I think he didn’t get the money, because the claim is misspelled as “McDonald;”<br /><br />-- <strong>William H. Macy </strong>is entitled to $570.00 from Disney, as well as $242.76 in other payments;<br /><br />-- <strong>William H. Macy </strong>and his wife <strong>Felicity Huffman </strong>are, together, entitled to $1,048.42 courtesy of a disputed escrow check;<br /><br />-- <strong>Madonna </strong>is due $4.72 from Charles Schwab and, separately, she is due another two cents (.02) from Schwab! Don’t spend it all in one place, Madge;<br /><br />-- Film critic <strong>Leonard Maltin </strong>would presumably give a “four-star” rating to the fact that AARP owes him $2,500.00. Additionally, he is owed $85.61 and $85.61, both listed as “vendor payments,” and he is also due $288.77 from a court settlement;<br /><br />-- <strong>Michael Madsen </strong>is due $546.67 (unpaid salary), $4.00 (cashiers check), $3.56 (stock in Harley-Davidson), the contents of a safety deposit box, $27.49 (American Reserve Insurance Company), $241.49 (Mercantile National Bank), $335.25 and $162,50 (from Delta Dental), and $139.63 (from the State of Nevada); <br /><br />-- <strong>Virginia Madsen </strong>has $501.00 coming to her from Disney, $131.25 from Delta Dental Insurance, $83.20 from an insurance company, two checks in the amount of $27.10 from the State of Illinois, $40.93 from an unnamed company, and $148.40 from Warner Bros. <br />Additionally, Virginia and her ex-husband Antonio Sabato, Jr. are together entitled to receive both $39.11 and $6.75 worth of stock dividends, from Walgreens;<br /><br />-- <strong>David Mamet </strong>has $208.88 in securities, $912.00 in miscellaneous outstanding checks, and $38.98 from Quest Diagnostics;<br /><br />-- Here’s $460.36 for <strong>Costas Mandylor</strong>;<br /><br />-- <strong>Chuck Mangione </strong>is due $59.32 by Warner/Chappell Music;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Ilene Mankiewicz</strong>, of the famous Hollywood <strong>Mankiewicz </strong>family, has two whole pages of claims;<br /><br />-- <strong>Aimee Mann </strong>and <strong>Michael Penn</strong>, two great musicians, are due $21.00 from L.A. State Dept. of Revenue. Penn could buy a pair of “black jeans” with that money;<br /><br />-- The Doors’ <strong>Ray Manzarek </strong>will break on through to the other side and receive $104.02 which he’s owed, in Disney stock;<br /><br />-- The late character actor <strong>John Marley </strong>(he played 'Woltz,' the producer who woke up with the horse-head in his bed, in <em>The Godfather</em>), is owed $83.59 by NBC/Universal;<br /><br />-- <strong>Steve Martin </strong>is owed $155.15, $132.52, $40.70, and $25.99 by Universal, $32.64 by MGM, and $88.08 in royalties from T/Q Music;<br /><br />-- “What we have here is a failure to communicate!” <em>Cool Hand Luke’s </em>late <strong>Strother Martin</strong>, he of the white suit and big attitude, is due $131.20 from Paramount Pictures;<br /><br />-- Eternal crooner <strong>Tony Martin </strong>is owed $2,534.40, from the Western Digital Corporation;<br /><br />-- Producer <strong>Frank Marshall </strong>is due $2,400.00 in unpaid wages, plus $43.29 from an insurance company. (There are also two pages of claims for various people named “Kathleen Kennedy,” but I’m not sure which is the right one.)<br /><br />-- <strong>Garry Marshall </strong>is owed $5,222.30 from overpayment on an escrow check;<br /><br />-- A great musician: <strong>Hugh Masekela </strong>is owed $297.38 by an insurance company;<br /><br />-- <strong>Jackie Mason </strong>is owed $50.00 by Universal;<br /><br />-- The late “Superfly” himself, <strong>Curtis Mayfield</strong>, never closed his $14,894.96 checking account!<br /><br />-- One of my favorite filmmakers of the ‘70s, <strong>Paul Mazurksy</strong> (“the American Fellini”) is due $94.91 from Warner Bros. and $250.00 from the Mercury Insurance Company. Paul, when you’re sitting around with your friends at Farmer’s Market chatting about world affairs, be sure to tell them about your good fortune in the Unclaimed Assets World;<br /><br />-- <strong>Kent McCord </strong>(“One Adam-12!”) has the contents of a safety deposit box to check out;<br /><br />-- <strong>Marilyn McCoo</strong> is entitled to $635.25 in salary, from an unnamed company;<br /><br />-- “Love means never having to say you’re sorry:” <strong>Ali McGraw </strong>, who is appearing in a current Macy's commercial, is owed $100.00 by the State of New York;<br /><br />-- Whatever happened to the great 1980’s actress <strong>Elizabeth McGovern</strong>? She left show biz without collecting the $1,234.00 and $576.00 she’s still owed in back salary, plus the $357.22 refund she’s due from Tiffany and Company. When I was in high school and I worked in that movie theater – the one where I wouldn’t let Eileen Brennan in for free, and where I sold Dyan Cannon popcorn – Elizabeth McGovern’s lookalike sister Cammie worked there with me, and she was nice. (Today, Cammie is a published author!)<br /><br />-- <strong>Rose McGowan </strong>is due $59.50 in royalty payments. (I wish I could deliver it in person!)<br /><br />-- Sir <strong>Ian McKellen </strong>is owed the Lordly sums of $667.00 from Disney and $454.36 from Universal;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Butterfly McQueen </strong>is owed $291.71 by Disney; <br /><br />-- Nobody will ever be as cool as <strong>Steve McQueen</strong>, and nobody will ever be entitled to the $3,149.28 he’s owed by Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, the $159.07 he’s owed by Home Savings and Loan, and the $50.00 he’s due from Time Warner Cable, except for his living family members;<br /><br />-- The late and mega-cool <strong>Ralph Meeker</strong>, star of the ultimate film noir, <em>Kiss Me Deadly</em>, has four claims from Universal Pictures, in the amounts of $140.37, $80.00, $84.79, and $36.39;<br /><br />-- <strong>Eva Mendes </strong>is owed $411.11 from Studio Payroll Services and $356.06 from Paramount Pictures. Probably, she didn’t know about these claims, because they are listed on the Unclaimed Assets website under a misspelled last name – the incorrect “Mendez” with a “z,” instead of the correct “Mendes,” with an “s;”<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Ethel Merman</strong>: $2,000.00, $355.21, $169.86, $169.86, $145.05, $145.05, $93.24, and $39.65 (stocks and salaries). Some or all of these claims might also be earmarked for Ethel Merman’s daughter, who has also passed away, and whose name was also – you guessed it – Ethel Merman…;<br /><br />-- <strong>Dennis Miller </strong>is owed $159.05 and $66.00 from Turner Network Television, $58.35 from Universal Pictures, and $79.99 from a court settlement;<br /><br />-- <strong>Alyssa Milano </strong>is owed $68.28 by Paypal;<br /><br />-- <strong>Yvette Mimieux</strong>, a 1960’s favorite, is owed $94.35 by Warner Bros.;<br /><br />-- <strong>Kylie Minogue </strong>is due $420.21 from an unnamed company;<br /><br />-- <strong>Helen Mirren </strong>is owed $39.76 by Pacific Bell, $126.98 by NBC/Universal… and thirty-eight cents by Disney!<br /><br />-- The very good actor <strong>Sasha Mitchell </strong>(I went to elementary school with him) is due $183.59 from Time Warner Cable and $111.06 from Warner Bros.;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Robert Mitchum</strong>, King of Cool, is owed $931.71, $169.61, and $59.54 by T/Q Music, Inc, $253.60 by Time Warner Cable, and $69.93 from a court settlement. He’s also got $744.03 worth of stocks. (That would buy a lot of weed – I mean, medicine!)<br /><br />-- <strong>Matthew Modine</strong>, currently saving the alpacas, is due $285.17 from Medco Health Solutions. Matthew and his wife Carrie are together due $63.04 from an old bank account;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Elizabeth Montogmery </strong>is owed $3.60 by Sony. (There are a lot of other “Elizabeth Montogmeries” with claims on the website, but I’m not sure they are her.) <br /><br />-- <strong>Soleil Moon-Frye</strong>, owner of the world’s trippiest name, is owed $180.13 by Disney;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Agnes Moorehead</strong>, one of Orson Welles’s Mercury Theater players, who might be better known as Endora from “Bewitched,” has three claims from MCA Records, in the amounts of $138.05, $49.45, and $73.45;<br /><br />-- Maestro <strong>Ennio Morricone</strong>, possibly the greatest movie composer of them all (<em>The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly; Once Upon a Time in America; Once Upon a Time in the West</em>) is due $3,205.43, $2,524.61, $730.14, and $78.16, all in unpaid wages from Universal Pictures. Morricone will be at the Hollywood Bowl on October 25, to play his first-ever concert in Los Angeles, so maybe somebody can tell him about it!<br /><br />-- One of my favorite character actors, <strong>Roger E. Mosley</strong>, has an old Wells Fargo bank account with $115.85 in it;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Pat Morita</strong>, “Mr. Miyagi” himself, is owed $745.80 by Disney, $137.43 by Paramount. Also, his family can obtain $73.32, the interest that has accumulated on his terminated life insurance policy;<br /><br />-- <strong>Garrett Morris</strong>, from the original “SNL,” is due $32.17 from Universal;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Vic Morrow</strong> is owed $279.03 by Glendale Savings and Loan;<br /><br />-- <strong>Donny Most </strong>(“Ralph-Malph!”) is owed $44.50 and $29.10 from Disney;<br /><br />-- Late actor <strong>Richard Mulligan </strong>(from t.v.’s “Soap”) is due $552.00, $244.50, $210.24, and $210.23 from Disney, plus $238.40 and $54.00 from unnamed companies;<br /><br />-- <strong>Dermot Mulroney </strong>doesn’t miss the $260.80 that an insurance company owes him and the $262.81 refund he’s owed from the San Jose Medical Center.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />N:<br /><br />-- <strong>Graham Nash </strong>is owed $130.12 by Blue Cross and $52.73 from a court settlement;<br /><br />-- ‘Subliminal Man’ himself, the super-funny <strong>Kevin Nealon</strong>, is owed $213.08 by the Mercury Casualty Insurance Company, and $5.81 by MGM;<br /><br />-- <strong>Harriet Nelson</strong>, of “Ozzie and Harriet,” is owed $156.26 by Sony and $127.95 by the Spelling Entertainment Group;<br /><br />-- “You can’t please everyone, so you’ve got to please yourself:” The late <strong>Ricky Nelson</strong> is still owed $7.44 in residuals from an unnamed company and $2.27 from Sony;<br /><br />-- <strong>Michael Nesmith</strong>, from the Monkees (he’s also a superior film producer, and his mother invented Liquid Paper!), is owed $199.25 in residuals from an unnamed company, plus $59.22 from an insurance company; <br /><br />-- Producer <strong>Mace Neufeld </strong>(The Hunt for Red October) is due $165.47 from a bank;<br /><br />-- "I don't know much, but I know I have unclaimed assets. That may be all I need to know:" <strong>Aaron Neville </strong>is due $1,209.69 from General Electric and $61.72 from Warner Bros.;<br /><br />-- <strong>Bob Newhart </strong>(he’s listed on the Unclaimed Assets website as ‘Robert Newhart’) is owed $3.79 by NBC/Universal;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Alfred Newman</strong>: Composer of many fine film scores, as well as of the famous “20th Century Fox” logo music and the uncle of Randy Newman, the late Alfred Newman is owed $209.78 and $54.74 by MCA Records. Alfred’s son, David Newman, is a contemporary film composer, and he might have some claims of his own, but it’s hard to tell, because the Unclaimed Assets website lists four pages of “David Newmans;”<br /><br />-- <strong>Laraine Newman </strong>from the original “SNL” is owed $32.80 in payroll from an unnamed company;<br /><br />-- <strong>Paul Newman </strong>cashed out before he could cash in on the $1,271.71 he’s owed by British Airways and the $2,687.52 to which he and his long-time agent, the late <strong>Irving Axelrad</strong>, are entitled, courtesy of stock dividends from AT&T;<br /><br />-- <strong>Randy Newman </strong>loves ‘short people,’ but does he also love the $724.00 salary he’s back-due, the $104.00 he’s due from an insurance company, the $65.06 he’s due from Verizon, and the $16.05 he’s due from a bank?<br /><br />-- <strong>Leslie Nielsen </strong>(I saw him shopping in Vons market in Studio City, once) has two separate claims of $553.00, listed as “unpaid wages;”<br /><br />-- <strong>Lisa Niemi</strong>, a very good dancer and actress who was also Mrs. Patrick Swayze, is due $6.63 in residuals;<br /><br />-- <strong>Leonard Nimoy</strong> will prick up his ears when he finds out he has $212.00 coming to him, in from a court settlement;<br /><br />-- The late great singer/songwriter <strong>Harry Nilsson</strong>, a great favorite of John, Paul, George, and Ringo, still has $41.22 coming to him – or to his heirs, anyway – via Capitol Records/EMI;<br /><br />-- The late and very missed <strong>David Niven</strong> is still entitled to receive $318.80 from Universal and $153.40 from Studio Payroll Services, plus he’s got two claims of $50.00, each one being from Disney;<br /><br />-- <strong>Nick Nolte</strong> is owed a great deal of money by various movie studios, and he might be too cool to care! He is owed $1,830.85, $1,331.11, and $1,540.61 by Disney, $1,157.55 by Universal, $79.71 by Union Bank, and $50.00 by Time Warner Cable.<br /><br />-- When 20th Century Fox felt that Marilyn Monroe had become unreliable, they were going to “replace her” with the late <strong>Sheree North</strong>, who went on to have a fine career of her own, in movies and television. The late Ms. North is entitled to receive $477.44 from St. John’s Hospital, $36.89 from Studio Payroll Services, and a number of claims from NBC/Universal, in the amounts of $36.89, $34.73, $16.48, $27.85, $23.65, $17.65, and $5.06.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />O:<br /><br />-- Who’s cooler than the late <strong>Warren Oates</strong>? His heirs can pick up his Unclaimed Assets of $100.00 from Universal Pictures and $50.00 from NBC/Universal;<br /><br />-- <strong>Ashley Olsen </strong>is due $1,068.82 from a bank, plus $123.51, $100.05, $55.60, and $27.80, all from Disney;<br /><br />-- <strong>Mary-Kate Olsen </strong>is due $1,068.82 from a bank, $123.51 from Disney, $62.53 from a court settlement, and $56.175 from Broadcast Music International;<br /><br />-- <strong>Emily Osment </strong>is due $10.71 in stock dividends;<br /><br />-- <strong>Haley Joel Osment </strong>is due $107.90 from Paramount Pictures;<br /><br />-- <strong>Mike Ovitz</strong> will have his foot-soldiers walk up and down Wilshire Blvd. and blow everybody’s brains out, if he doesn’t get the $64.63 he’s owed by Tiffany and Company, plus the $65.00 in salary he’s owed by “Museum Associates,” plus the $125.53 he’s due from a court settlement;<br /><br />-- <strong>Clive Owen </strong>could be part owner of the Disney Corporation, because Disney owes him back wages of $2,658.18, $907.35. $540.09, $316.07, and $230.15. Also, he’s owed $12.32 from an unnamed company;<br /><br />-- <strong>Frank Oz</strong>: This great filmmaker and Muppeteer is owed $898.39 and $860.34 by Disney, as well as $180.65, $69.27, and $55.45 in residuals from unnamed production companies.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />P:<br /><br />-- The late, great <strong>Lawanda Page </strong>from “Sanford and Son” (Esther!!!) has 23 separate claims, and we’re talking big bucks for this famously groundbreaking comedienne;<br /><br />-- Nothing listed on the Unclaimed Assets website for <strong>Jack Palance</strong>, but his striking daughter Holly Palance, a very fine actress in her own right who used to host the “Ripley’s Believe It Or Not” ABC show, is due $32.93 from Studio Payroll Services;<br /><br />-- <strong>Hayden Panettiere</strong> is due royalties of $1.58 and forty-six cents from unnamed companies… and one penny, from Disney!<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Fess Parker</strong>, t.v.’s legendary “Daniel Boone,” is due $480.53 from News Publishing, Australia (Fox), $287.58 from a hospital overpayment, $203.81 and $162.71 from an oil refinery, and $181.11 from the Textron Financial Corporation;<br /><br />-- I ain’t afraid of no ghosts! <strong>Ray Parker, Jr</strong>. is entitled to $259.01 from Disney and $157.83 from Universal;<br /><br />-- Producer <strong>Walter F. Parkes</strong> is due $928.35, $786.73, $697.02, and $200.84 from the State of New York, $777.00 and $180.07 from Universal Pictures, and $204.00 and $104.00 from Delta Dental Insurance;<br /><br />-- The great character actor <strong>Michael Parks</strong>, whose career, of late, has been resurrected by Tarantino, is owed $6.61 by MGM, the studio for whom he starred in the 1969 cult t.v. series, “Then Came Bronson;”<br /><br />-- “SNL’s” super-funny <strong>Chris Parnell </strong>is due $121.93 from Warner Bros.;<br /><br />-- Director <strong>Simon Pegg</strong> makes Zombies funny. He’s due $210.00 from Disney and $39.36 from an unnamed company;<br /><br />-- <strong>Kal Penn</strong>, of <em>Harold and Kumar </em>fame, can buy a lot of White Castle burgers with the $1,732.35 and $673.52 he’s owed by Warner Bros. and the $6.85 he’s owed by Sony;<br /><br />-- <strong>Sean Penn</strong>, brother of Michael Penn (see above), forgot to pick up the $3,346.00 that Universal continues to owe him. He’s also due $698.13 and $39.30 from unnamed production companies. (“Mr. Spiccoli, what are you doing?” “Whoa, Mr. Hand! I’m learnin’ about Cuba… and having some unclaimed assets!”)<br /><br />-- The late great <strong>George Peppard </strong>is owed $153.50 in court settlements, $84.73 in court settlements, and $46.00 by the state of Illinois;<br /><br />-- The late great <strong>Anthony Perkins </strong>(“Norman Bates”) is owed $342.71, $89.81, and $406.53 by Universal – no doubt relating to the <em>Psycho </em>franchise – and $7.71 from another source;<br /><br />-- <strong>Ron Perlman</strong>, '<em>Hellboy</em>' himself, has $1,589.57 coming to him from stocks, $491.26, $399.29, and $72.50 from Time Warner Cable, and $114.25 from an unnamed company;<br /><br />-- <strong>Valerie Perrine </strong>is due $55.07 in salary from an unnamed company and $29.78 from NBC/Universal, plus she’s got two separate claims in the amount of $31.39 each, which are listed as refunds from an insurance company;<br /><br />-- <strong>Tom Petty </strong>is owed $143.46 from a court settlement;<br /><br />-- <strong>Mackenzie Phillips </strong>might be slightly less troubled if she knew she was due $115.00 from NBC/Universal;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Walter Pidgeon </strong>is due $56.34 from a court settlement, $26.99 from Universal Pictures, plus $4.61, $3.44, forty-three cents, and thirty-one cents from the Plains Exploration Company;<br /><br />-- The tragic, late <strong>Dana Plato</strong>, from the t.v. series “Diff’rent Strokes,” would perhaps not have turned to crime, had she known that she was due $386.40 (or, four claims of $96.15 each from unnamed production companies), plus $55.96, $55.97, and $27.05 from Studio Payroll Services. In addition, Dana and her mother Florine, who has also passed away, together left stocks in the amounts of $275.91 and $32.43;<br /><br />-- The late director <strong>Sydney Pollack </strong>is due $105.41, $75.04, and $65.66, all in court settlements, $299.30 from Warner Bros., and $65.04 from an unnamed production company;<br /><br />-- <strong>Sarah Polley</strong>, the fine actress and director, is owed $546.00 by Studio Payroll Services;<br /><br />-- That little sparkplug <strong>Parker Posey </strong>is owed both $38.13 and $19.39 from MGM; <br /><br />-- <strong>Pete Postlethwaite </strong>has $5,110.86 in a forgotten bank account and $467.54 that he’s owed in residuals;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Tom Poston</strong> is owed $22.98 in residuals;<br /><br />-- <strong>Annie Potts </strong>(she was great opposite Mark Hamill in 1978’s <em>Corvette Summer</em>, and of course, she was also one of the "Designing Women") is owed $51.83 by a bank;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Tyrone Power </strong>left $50.65 behind, in a savings account;<br /><br />-- The late (tyrannical) filmmaker <strong>Otto Preminger </strong>never made his exodus to Paramount Pictures to pick up the $61.19 he was owed. His heirs can pick it up from the website of the State Controller;<br /><br />-- <strong>Ed Pressman</strong>, one of the finest independent producers, is due $116.20 from Tiffany and Company and $50.00 from the Alta Health and Life Insurance Company;<br /><br />-- As (I think) he says at the beginning of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller, ”Whomsoever shall be found with the soul of getting down:” The late <strong>Vincent Price </strong>is owed $300.54 from a court settlements;<br /><br />-- Will it go 'round in circles? The late <strong>Billy Preston</strong>, who the Beatles considered to be “The Fifth Beatle,” is due $92.37 from Capitol Records;<br /><br />-- <strong>Kelly Preston </strong>(Mrs. John Travolta) is owed $141.70 by the U.S. Trust Company, $1,778.87 by Warner Bros, and $1,301.95 by Warner Bros;<br /><br />-- Reality show kingpin <strong>Jeff Probst </strong>is owed $241.66 from an insurance company, plus twenty-nine cents in back salary from an unnamed company;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Richard Pryor</strong> is due $50.00 from NBC Universal plus another $2.00 (eight bits!) from Disney;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Denver Pyle </strong>(‘Uncle Jesse,’ from “Dukes of Hazzard”) is due $408.34 from Warner Bros., $73.96 from Disney, and $17.25 from NBC/Universal.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Q:<br /><br />-- <strong>Queen Latifah </strong>(Dana E. Owens) is the Queen of Hip-Hop, and she’s also The Queen of This Article, because she’s owed $4,143.61 and $233.70 by Time Warner Cable, $995.32 by NBC/Universal, and $100.85, $84.42, and $96.80 by Warner Bros.<br /><br />-- <strong>Evi Quaid</strong>, wife of Randy, might be able to use the $50.58 she’s due from AT&T to pay off a delinquent hotel bill;<br /><br />-- The Mighty Quinn himself, the late <strong>Anthony Quinn</strong>, is due $163.00 from an insurance company;<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />R:<br /><br />-- <strong>Charlotte Rae</strong>, who played ‘Mrs. Garrett’ on the sit-com “The Facts of Life,” is due $153.73 from MGM;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>George Raft </strong>loved to flip coins; he could have flipped the $258.25 which he’s still due, courtesy of the Occidental Oil and Gas Company;<br /><br />-- <strong>Steve Railsback</strong>, a completely underappreciated actor (he definitely holds his own against Peter O’Toole, in 1980’s The Stuntman), is due $50.00, which is listed as a “refund on a money order;”<br /><br />-- <strong>Brett Ratner </strong>is owed $150.93 by Quest Diagnostics;<br /><br />-- <strong>The Rat Pack and Their Families:</strong> <strong>Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr.,</strong> and <strong>Peter Lawford</strong>, individually and through their corporations and foundations, have a multitude of claims, too many to mention, and their heirs have some claims of their own, too. In fact, these guys have enough claims for a second, stand-alone article;<br /><br />-- <strong>Nicholas Ray</strong>, the late, venerated director of <em>Rebel Without a Cause</em> and many other fine film noir efforts, has twenty separate claims that his heirs need to check out;<br /><br />-- <strong>Gene Rayburn</strong>, the no-longer-living host of “The Match Game,” says, “I wish ‘Dumb Dora’ had a blank,” and of course by blank, he must mean the $380.16 which he, and not ‘Dumb Dora,’ is owed, by NBC/Universal;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Martha Raye </strong>(“The Big Mouth”) is due $72.00, $16.24, and $11.58 from NBC/Universal, plus $15.48 from Sony;<br /><br />-- Years ago, when <strong>Keanu Reeves </strong>used to live in an apartment on Hayworth Avenue, and I can confirm this, because my sister moved into the same unit after he moved out, and she and her roommate used to open – and drunkenly answer – his fan mail! Pacific Bell owes the K-Man a refund of $85.60 dating to when he lived on Hayworth, and he is still entitled to receive it. As Keanu himself might say: “Whoa!”<br /><br />-- “Bad girl” <strong>Tara Reid </strong>is entitled to $624.78, $620.31, and $611.00 in salary, plus $82.07 from “Paid Prescriptions, Inc.,” plus she’s got $208.26 sitting around in an old checking account;<br /><br />-- <strong>Burt Reynolds </strong>will always be cool, and he’s owed $195.20 and $73.48 in Disney stock, $49.43 in Hormel Foods stock, plus $50.00 in Time Warner Cable stock;<br /><br />-- <strong>Giovanni Ribisi </strong>is due $172.63 from Universal;<br /><br />-- <strong>Marissa Ribisi </strong>is due $147.78, 146.72, and $9.67 in wages from unnamed companies, plus $54.82 from Warner Bros.;<br /><br />-- <strong>Don Rickles </strong>can’t be too much of a hockey puck, because he’s owed $371.19 by the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company;<br /><br />-- <strong>Diana Rigg</strong>, “The Avengers’” original Emma Peel, is due $30.34 from the Bank of America;<br /><br />-- <strong>Carl Reiner </strong>is due $616.50 (Disney, royalties);<br /><br />-- <strong>Lionel Richie </strong>had a dream… he had an awesome dream… that he was entitled to $6.74 from Sony;<br /><br />-- <strong>Molly Ringwald </strong>is owed $1,140.84 by the Chase Manhattan Bank;<br /><br />-- <strong>Lisa Rinna</strong>, who should have a whole holiday dedicated to her lips, has $57.28 coming to her from Tiffany and Co. and she also has a $42.84 refund from So. Cal Edison;<br /><br />-- <strong>Robbie Rist </strong>(“Cousin Oliver” from “The Brady Bunch”) is due $68.87 and $8.37 from Sony, $52.93 from Disney, $5.72 from MGM, $105.99 from an unnamed company, and $69.25 from the Auto Club; <br /><br />-- The late <strong>John Ritter </strong>has $4.72 due him, in wages for his company Adam Productions; <br /><br />-- <strong>Smokey Robinson </strong>is due $1,761.03 from the Callaway Golf Company;<br /><br />-- <strong>Tanya Roberts</strong>, my all time favorite of the original “Charlie’s Angels” (all that, plus, to this day, she continues to live next door to my parents – awesome!) has both $175.00 and $111.00 coming to her;<br /><br /> -- <strong>Cliff Robertson </strong>is owed $5.30 and $5.73 by Sony… and he’s also owed $173.27 from Bank of America, from a savings account;<br /><br />-- <strong>Alex Rocco </strong>('Moe Green' from <em>The Godfather</em>) is owed $1,940.65 plus another $314.00 by Disney, plus $488.50 in residuals from an unnamed production company, plus $81.94 from Paid Prescriptions, Inc.;<br /><br />-- <strong>Chris Rock</strong> is owed $50.00 by Paramount;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Ginger Rogers </strong>is due $74.35 from the Spelling Entertainment Group, plus $29.38 from MCA Records;<br /><br />-- <strong>Mimi Rogers </strong>is owed $54.56 by Tiffany and Company;<br /><br />-- One of Hollywood’s best cinematographers, <strong>Owen Roizman</strong>, is owed $64.00 by Pennzoil!<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Roxie Roker</strong>, from “The Jeffersons” (and the mother of Lenny Kravitz) is owed $135.19 in residuals. Lenny can collect it on her behalf;<br /><br />-- “Everybody Loves <strong>Ray Romano</strong>,” but does Ray love his residual checks in the amounts of $500.00 and $97.10 enough to try and collect them?<br /><br />-- <strong>Cesar Romero</strong>, t.v.’s original ‘Joker,’ was entitled to $84.44 in unpaid salary, but he never knew it. Did you know that when he played the Joker on “Batman,” they put the clown make-up over his mustache, since he wouldn’t let them shave it?<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Ruth Roman</strong>, film noir legend, is due both $5.01 and $4.91 from Studio Payroll Services;<br /><br />-- <strong>Mickey Rooney</strong> has $237.50 coming to him from Chris-Craft Television (“securities”) and $80.00 (“residuals from Universal”);<br /><br />-- Eternal diva <strong>Diana Ross </strong>has a $1,125.80 refund coming to her, from a purchase at Neiman-Marcus and $203.43, which is listed as “bond interest;”<br /><br />-- 20th Century Fox chairman <strong>Tom Rothman </strong>is the proud winner of $7.70 in dividends;<br /><br />-- Sing along: “Who’s the cat that won’t cop-out when there’s $179.29 in residuals from an unnamed company plus $50.00 from Universal lying about? Shaft! Damn right!” <strong>Richard Roundtree</strong> is owed these amounts. Right on!<br /><br />-- <strong>Meg Ryan </strong>is owed $1,219.63 from Time Warner Cable and $644.07 from a court settlement'<br /><br />-- <strong>RZA</strong> (Robert Diggs) is entitled to receive $398.94 in wages;<br /><br /><br /><br />S:<br /><br />-- Heirs of the late <strong>Boris Sagal</strong>, one of television’s great directors (he turned in a lot of the best episodes of “Rod Serling’s Night Gallery”) are due $1,650.22 and $62.50 from Universal, $1,264.60 from an unnamed company, $178.48 from the American Reserve Insurance Company, $165.66 from NBC, and $62.50 from Universal;<br /><br />-- Daughter of <strong>Boris Sagal</strong>, Katey Sagal, of “Married with Children” and “Futurama” fame (she’s also a great vocalist), is due a $5,685.00 refund from the American International Insurance Company, $146.10 from the State of Mississippi, and $48.00 from Medco Health Services;<br /><br />-- <strong>Tony Sales</strong>, son of Soupy, part of David Bowie’s short-lived ‘80s band Tin Machine (remember them?) is owed $14.57 by BMI Music;<br /><br />-- Producer <strong>Elie Samaha </strong>is owed $293.00 from Pacific Bell;<br /><br />-- <strong>Michael Sarrazin</strong>, that great movie actor whose only crime is that he looks like Peter Fonda – only he’s Canadian – is owed $200 from a bank;<br /><br />-- <strong>Diana Scarwid</strong>, Christina Crawford from <em>Mommie Dearest</em>, is owed $32.13 from auto insurance;<br /><br />-- The late director <strong>Franklin J. Schaffner</strong> (<em>Patton</em>) is owed $228.07 in a court settlement;<br /><br />-- <strong>Roy Scheider’s </strong>dependents can help themselves to the $361.00 he continues to be due from Universal, and the $210.52 he’s owed, by Southern California Edison. They’ll definitely need “a bigger boat” to carry away that much cash!<br /><br />-- <strong>Rob Schneider</strong>: Rob, “You can do it! You can collect the $594.00 in wages that Universal owes you!”<br /><br />-- “Brady Bunch”/”Gilligan’s Island” creator <strong>Sherwood Schwartz</strong>, and his daughter <strong>Hope</strong>, are together entitled to receive $1,098.09 and $195.25 in Mattel Stocks, plus $43.20 in stocks from an unnamed company. Schwartz and his late wife Mildred have a check for $376.40 from an escrow company. Schwartz and his son Lloyd together have $26.90 to collect from a law firm;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>George C. Scott</strong>, one of our finest actors, is owed $138.75 by Studio Payroll Services;<br /><br />-- <strong>Ridley Scott </strong>should pick up his $6,374.84 in unpaid wages, from NBC-Universal;<br /><br />-- <strong>Sean William Scott</strong>, aka “Stiffler,” is entitled to receive $150.03 from Indymac Bancorp Inc.;<br /><br />-- <strong>Tony Scott </strong>is entitled to $305.43 in unpaid wages;<br /><br />-- <strong>Ryan Seacrest </strong>is due $174.89 from Pacific Bell;<br /><br />-- <strong>Steven Seagal </strong>and his ponytail have $87.28 in royalties that he can collect, as well as a $50.00 check from another source;<br /><br />-- <strong>Neil Sedaka </strong>is owed $55.04 from a court settlement;<br /><br />-- Zillionaire <strong>Jerry Seinfeld </strong>clearly doesn’t need the money, but he ever wants to hand out a good tip at Coi on La Cienega, he’s due $458.25 from Disney;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Selig J. Seligman </strong>was an executive at ABC in the 1960s, and he’s owed $17.16 in ABC stocks. I know you’ve never heard of him, but he’s on the list because he is the owner of the world’s coolest name;<br /><br />-- The stage director <strong>Peter Sellars </strong>(not to be confused with the late comedian Peter Sellers) is owed $3,000.00 by the J. Paul Getty Trust;<br /><br />-- About ten years ago, I almost went on a date with the niece of <strong>Tom Selleck </strong>(Sierra-Dawn Selleck!) but, at the last minute, the date didn’t happen, because my own sister – who was supposed to be on my side!! – informed Sierra-Dawn that I was in my 30s, and Sierra Dawn was 19 at the time – S. Dawn thought I was younger, but when she found out I was “old,” the date never happened. Anyway, Tom Selleck is owed $1,100.00, $775.00, and $610.00 in unpaid salary from unnamed companies. And I never got to go on that date;<br /><br />-- <strong>Lorenzo Semple, Jr</strong>., a writer and script consultant on t.v.’s “Batman,” is owed $566.20 in dividends (with his wife Maria), $144.07 from Universal Pictures, $93.95 from a now-defunct cable t.v. operation that turned its unclaimed assets over to the government (“Directv!”), and $52.04 from a bank; <br />-- Doc Severinsen has a safety deposit box to look at;<br /><br />-- <strong>William Shatner </strong>is due $959.20 (payable to his company Melis Productions), plus $78.20 in residuals;<br /><br />-- From <em>Spinal Tap</em> to “The Simpsons” to his own radio show, <strong>Harry Shearer </strong>must be the hardest working man in show business – all that, and he’s owed $421.69 from Disney, $350.00 from the New York Times (it’s listed on the Unclaimed Assets website as, “securities exchanged for cash”), and $50.00 from the District of Columbia;<br /><br />-- <strong>Ally Sheedy </strong>is eligible for two refunds from Pacific Bell, in the amounts of $122.11 and $67.83;<br /><br />-- <strong>Charlie Sheen</strong> is owed $560.12 from a court settlement and $60.81 from Paypal;<br /><br />-- <strong>Martin Sheen</strong>, Charlie’s dad, the man who said we should allow homeless people into our hearts, but not into his home, is entitled to $1,008.00, $736.15, and $6.40, from unnamed production companies;<br /><br />-- <strong>Sid Sheinberg </strong>and <strong>Lorraine (Gary) Sheinberg</strong>, both of them no longer with us, have $454.00;<br /><br />-- <strong>Talia Shire</strong> (“Yo, Adriane! Here’s some money for ya!”) is owed $49.22 by Disney;<br /><br />-- <strong>Elisabeth Shue</strong> is due $4,526.61 from News Corp., Australia (Fox), and I’m guessing the reason she didn’t get it, is because they spelled her first name wrong in the claim (they spelled it as ‘Elizabeth,’ with a ‘z’ instead of as ‘Elisabeth’ with an ‘s’);<br /><br />-- <strong>Sarah Silverman </strong>(aka, “My first ex-wife;” are you listening, God?) is owed $321.00 by NBC/Universal and $352.66 by MGM;<br /><br />-- <strong>Gene Simmons </strong>is owed $170.00 in a court settlement;<br /><br />-- <strong>Lori Singer</strong>, the world’s sexiest violinist – plus, she was the lead in the original Footloose – is due $68.46 and $57.27 in residuals;<br /><br />-- Now that’s acting: <strong>Gary Sinise </strong>is owed $697.00 from an insurance company and $35.80 in residuals;<br /><br />-- <strong>Nikki Sixx </strong>from Motley Crue is due $7,500.00 from the State of North Carolina, $912.30 from a court settlement, $220.96 from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, and a $205.00 check from the Fallbrook Mortgage Company;<br /><br />-- <strong>Slash</strong> (Saul Hudson) is due $242.43, $80.82, and $80.81 in royalties, from an unnamed company;<br /><br />-- Louis Prima has no Unclaimed Assets on the California website, but <strong>Keely Smith </strong>sure does: She’s owed $1,110.47 in salary by “Talent Partners,” $146.08 by Capitol/EMI, $78.71 by ASCAP, and $81.39 by an insurance company;<br /><br />-- <strong>Yeardley Smith</strong>, the voice of Lisa Simpson, is owed $99.00 by Manulife Financial, Inc.;<br /><br />-- <strong>Dickie Smothers </strong>is owed $69.31 in unpaid wages;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Dinah Shore</strong> is still owed $1,000 in royalties;<br /><br />-- <strong>Christian Slater </strong>is owed $356.15 by MGM, $359.62 by Disney, $133.52 by NBC/Universal, $170.46 and $22.49 by an unnamed company, plus $106.00 from the Tenet Healthcare Corp.;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Anna Nicole Smith </strong>is due $143.53 and $68.85 from Paramount Pictures;<br /><br />-- <strong>Wesley Snipes </strong>and his company Amen Ra films are owed $2,963.72 in wages;<br /><br />-- <strong>Elke Sommer </strong>is owed $1,086.59 in unpaid salary from an unnamed source, and $50.00 and $64.51 by Universal. <br /><br />-- <strong>Suzanne Somers </strong>is owed a $209.50 refund from Tiffany & Company;<br /><br />-- <strong>Aaron Sorkin</strong>, author of <em>A Few Good Men </em>and creator of "The West Wing" is entitled to receivew $973.67 from "Caremark PCS" and $73.61 from "NYT Sales;"<br /><br />-- <strong>James Spader </strong>is owed $94.11 from a court settlement;<br /><br />-- Now that he’s in the big house, <strong>Phil Spector </strong>has no need for the $625.00 he’s due from a bank, and the $420.00 which he’s due from an insurance company;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Aaron Spelling </strong>is due $246.80 from a court settlement;<br /><br />-- <strong>Candy Spelling</strong> is owed $795.00 by Cedars-Sinai Hospital;<br /><br />-- <strong>The Spelling Entertainment Group </strong>is owed $526.81, $437.20, 105.33, $75.31, and $70.00 by AT&T, a refund of $114.54 from the Los Angeles Times, and $114.97 by “Delage Laden Operational Services;”<br /><br />-- <strong>Spelling Television </strong>is owed $438.75 (listed as “vendor payments”);<br /><br />-- <strong>Steven Spielberg </strong>and <strong>Kate Capshaw</strong> are due $7,127.00 from the Utah Division of Finance Disbursement, listed as “Miscellaneous Outstanding Checks;”<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Dusty Springfield</strong> would have had “The Look of Love” for the $49.04 she’s owed, in royalties;<br /><br />-- <strong>Paul Stanley</strong>, from KISS, is owed $110.48 and $106.38 from Tiffany and Company;<br /><br />-- <strong>Harry Dean Stanton</strong>, who’s been cool for longer than most of us have been alive, is due $75.97 and twenty-seven cents, from BMI. That should buy him a drink at Dan Tana’s;<br /><br />-- Hollywood’s classiest actress, the late <strong>Barbara Stanwyck</strong>, is owed $133.10 by Warner Bros. and $12.65 by Universal;<br /><br />-- <strong>Connie Stevens </strong>is entitled to receive $13.58 in residuals;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Rod Steiger</strong>, an incredibly underappreciated actor who is as great as Brando, Pacino, and De Niro (sorry for the editorializing!) has $34.35 in unpaid royalties, from MGM;<br /><br />-- <strong>Jean Stapleton</strong>, aka, 'the one-and-only Edith Bunker,' is due $108.00 in royalties;<br /><br />-- <strong>David Ogden Stiers</strong>, from t.v.’s “M*A*S*H,” is owed $397.99 from a court settlement;<br /><br />-- <strong>Stephen Stills</strong> is owed $32.01 from a court settlement;<br /><br />-- <strong>Sting</strong> (Gordon M. Sumner) is tantrically entitled to receive $3,826.37 from Universal Music Group and an additional $141.65, from a court settlement;<br /><br />-- <strong>Oliver Stone</strong> might see this as a conspiracy, but he was never paid the $1,349.31 he is still due from an insurance company, and the $53.25 in interest which has accrued in an old bank account;<br /><br />-- <strong>Sharon Stone</strong> is owed $667.00 by Disney;<br /><br />-- <strong>Peter Stormare </strong>is due a refund of $1,659.80 from an insurance company;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Susan Strasberg</strong>, daughter of Lee, star of the amazing 1978 horror flick <em>The Manitou</em>, has a lot of claims from Universal Pictures, in the amounts of $180.40, $31.79, $36.61, $21.89, $21.67, $28.90, and $43.57, plus she’s got one claim from MGM, in the amount of $33.53. She also has two claims from Universal Pictures which she shares with her daughter Jennifer Jones (whose father is the late actor Christopher Jones), in the amounts of $30.37 and $96.88;<br /><br />-- <strong>Sally Struthers </strong>is due $695.30 from a court settlement. I was in the check-out line next to her when she was buying a whole bunch of cat food at Vons in Studio City, and she was very nice and apologetic to me when the cashier had to leave to do a price-check;<br /><br />-- <strong>Rod Stewart </strong>has two payments coming from Disney, in the amounts of $822.00 and $1,644.00. If he thinks he’s sexy and if he wants his own body – then he should try to collect; <br /><br />-- “Mad T.V.’s” mirth-making cutie <strong>Nicole Sullivan </strong>is due $798.00 in salary, plus she’s got an old savings account with $57.47 in it. I stood behind her in the ice cream line at the CVS drug store on Fairfax!<br /><br />-- <strong>Kristy Swanson</strong>, the original “Buffy,” is entitled to $614.00 from Disney, $105.20 from a store called Esprit de Corp, and $86.25 from Delta Dental.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />T:<br /><br />-- Mr. Sulu himself, <strong>George Takei</strong>, is owed $141.63 in “vendor payments,” $63.00 in unpaid wages, and $69.55 from Pac Bell. “Klaatu barata nikto,” dude! (I’m no sci-fi buff… so I hope that reference works.)<br /><br />-- <strong>Amber Tamblyn </strong>is due $50.00 from Motorola;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Ned Tanen</strong>, studio head, producer, and talent agent, is owed $3,000.00 by Universal Pictures;<br /><br />-- <strong>Quentin Tarantin</strong>o is due $70.99 (“payment for goods and services”);<br /><br />-- Here’s a sad one: The late <strong>Sharon Tate</strong> left $150.00 in a Bank of America checking account, more than forty years ago;<br /><br />-- <strong>Meshach Taylor</strong>, from “Designing Women,” is owed $86.92, $44.38, and $39.12 by Paid Prescriptions, Inc., $61.00 from the Mercury Casualty Insurance Company, and he is also entitled to receive $8.95 from Sony, plus $8.64, $5.94, $4.77, and $3.06 from unnamed companies;<br /><br />-- <strong>Charlize Theron</strong> is owed $209.00 by NBC/Universal;<br /><br />-- <strong>Henry Thomas</strong>, from <strong>E.T.</strong>, is due $1,985.04 from Studio Payroll Services and $114.63 from Paramount Pictures;<br /><br />-- <strong>Emma Thompson </strong>is owed $364.55 by an unnamed company;<br /><br />-- When I was a kid, everybody had his Farrah Fawcett poster, and I did too, but I mostly treasured my <strong>Cheryl Tiegs </strong>poster. Cheryl is due $163.67 from Tiffany and Company;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Lawrence Tierney</strong>, the great film noir tough guy who might be most famous to younger audiences for having appeared as the chrome-domed crime boss in Reservoir Dogs, is entitled to $313.67 from NBC; <br /><br />-- <strong>Marisa Tomei </strong>– she does a body good! – is owed $45.66 by State Farm;<br /><br />-- 'Mini-Me' himself, <strong>Verne Troyer</strong>, is due $406.00 from Disney, $287.10 from Warner Bros., and $532.83 from Studio Payroll Services;<br /><br />-- <strong>Tom Tryon </strong>(<em>The Longest Day, In Harms Way</em>) $524.47, $178.63, $56.18, $29.11, all from Warner/Chappell Music; <br /><br />-- <strong>Robin Tunney</strong>, so good in the 2002 indie <em>Cherish </em>and on the current show “The Mentalist,” is due $554.78 from Time Warner Cable, $304.92 from Universal Pictures, and $121.31 from Warner Bros;<br /><br />-- <strong>Kathleen Turner</strong>, who was very good on a recent episode of Showtime’s “Californication,” is owed $665.11 and $652.52 by Disney and $836.18 by Warner Bros.;<br /><br />-- <strong>Tina Turner</strong> is owed $154.54 from a bank;<br /><br />-- <strong>John Travolta </strong>is entitled to $48.00 from Allstate Insurance;<br /><br />-- If you had been embalmed, and you didn't have any blood, <strong>Shannon Tweed </strong>would still make your blood boil. She's owed $252.27 by the Auto Club and $119.02 by Bed Bath and Beyond.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />U:<br /><br />-- <strong>Tracey Ullman </strong>is owed $370.08 in residuals from an unnamed company;<br /><br />-- The late, great <strong>Peter Ustinov</strong> (they don't make 'em like that anymore!) didn’t live long enough to collect the fifty bucks which Disney still owes him.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />V:<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Vivian Vance </strong>(‘Ethel Mertz’ from “I Love Lucy”) is due $30.00 from Disney;<br /><br />-- <strong>Dick Van Dyke</strong>: When I was about four years old, I was standing in the candy aisle of Thrifty drug store in Studio City, which is now a CVS. Dick, who was whistling cheerfully, needed to walk by, and instead of asking me to move over, he lifted me up and carefully placed me out of his path. This is one of my weirdest moments, but a great one. Dick is owed $137.77 in unpaid wages. (Plus: His initials are “DVD!”)<br /><br />-- <strong>Jerry Van Dyke</strong>, Dick’s brother, so good on that sit-com “Coach,” is entitled to $677.60 from Fox; <br /><br />-- <strong>Eddie Van Halen </strong>and his ex-wife <strong>Valerie Bertinelli</strong> have to find an amicable way to split the $625.00 they are due, a refund from an insurance company;<br /><br />-- <strong>Van Halen Productions </strong>has a $381.52 savings account lying around;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Nina Van Pallandt </strong>is owed $75.11 in residuals;<br /><br />-- <strong>Dick Van Patten </strong>is owed both $768.34 and $336.64 by E! Entertainment Television;<br /><br />-- Multi-talented <strong>Ben Vereen </strong>(‘Chicken George’ in “Roots,” ‘O’Connor Flood’ in All that Jazz) is owed $616.50 from Disney, $95.81 from the Bank of America, and $48.40 in stock dividends;<br /><br />--<strong> Kate Vernon </strong>is due $55.04 from Universal, $36.40 from Sony, and $35.54 from “Paid Prescriptions, Inc.;”<br /><br />-- The late stand-up comedian <strong>Jackie Vernon</strong>, mostly remembered to people my age for having performed the voice of Frosty the Snowman in the eponymous 1969 Rankin-Bass special, is due $116.78 from an insurance company;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>John Vernon </strong>(“Dean Wormer” from <em>Animal House</em>: “Mr. Blutarski: Zero point zero!”) is owed $100 by Universal and $63.95 by Sony;<br /><br />-- <strong>Abe Vigoda </strong>(yup, he’s still alive, at least at the time I’m writing this) is entitled to receive $105.37 in salary. I’m old enough to remember his sit-com, “Fish;”<br /><br />-- Sometimes life isn’t too kind to the groovy <strong>Jan-Michael Vincent</strong>, but Vincent is due $49.30 and $25.00, both from Universal Pictures.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />W:<br /><br />-- <strong>Natasha Gregson Wagner </strong>is owed $50.00 (“miscellaneous checks”). Her dad, Robert Wagner is luckier, though (see the next entry):<br /><br />-- <strong>Robert Wagner </strong>is a great investor, and he’s so cool, he’s not even impressed by the fact that he is due (get a load of this, folks) $23,085.08 (!) in shares of Exxon/Mobil (wow, he’s an oil czar!), $11, 249.88 in stock shares from an unspecified company, both $7,262.73 and $1,354.32 in dividends from AT&T, $1,623.01 by Paramount Pictures, $2,478.30 and $4,451.80 in dividends from an unspecified company, and $1,032.32 in dividends from Chevron/Texaco;<br /><br /> -- The late <strong>Ray Walston </strong>('Mr. Hand!') is owed $27.56 by NBC/Universal. I was in an elevator with him once;<br /><br />-- Smoky-voiced <strong>Rachel Ward </strong>is due $257.04 from Disney;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Jack L. Warner</strong>, has a savings account with $61.75 still in it;<br /><br />-- <strong>Dionne Warwick </strong>knows the way to San Jose, but she doesn’t know that she’s entitled to $592.47 from Topa Insurance Company, $460.70 from Studio Payroll Services, and $251.87 from the State of New Jersey;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Carol Wayne</strong>, who bodaciously aided and abetted Johnny Carson when she co-hosted the semi-regular sketch, ‘Art Fern’s Teatime Movie’ on “The Tonight Show,” is due $32.33 from MGM;<br /><br />-- The late, yet timeless, <strong>John Wayne </strong>is due $325.73, $308.13, and $114.41 from MCA Records, $6.17 from Studio Payroll Services… and four cents from Sony!<br /><br />-- “And a one and a two:” The late <strong>Lawrence Welk</strong>, king of champagne music, is owed $1,500.00 from stocks, $108.40 and $47.12 in dividends, and $265.17 from Warner Bros.;<br /><br />-- The Voice of the 20th Century, the late <strong>Orson Welles</strong>, is owed $1,400.00 from MCA Records (he’s got eight claims, totaling $1,400);<br /><br />-- <strong>Kanye West</strong>, through his company Konman Entertainment, is owed both $423.50 and $127.05 in salary, from unnamed sources;<br /><br />-- <strong>George Wendt</strong> is owed $258.19 by Disney;<br /><br />-- What Friar’s Club Roast would have been complete without the humor of the late <strong>Slappy White</strong>? “Sir Slappington” has two claims, in the amounts of $6.03 and nineteen cents;<br /><br />-- Red-haired1960s/’70s moptop <strong>Johnny Whitaker</strong>, from “Family Affair” and all of those Disney movies, is still owed $63.71 by Disney, plus $9.87 and $9.53 by NBC/Universal;<br /><br />-- The always dependable leading man of the ‘50s and ‘60s, <strong>Stuart Whitman</strong>, is due $50.00 from “Vision Service Plan;”<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Richard Widmark’s </strong>dependents are entitled to his $318.00 court settlement;<br /><br />-- Funny women are hawt, especially <strong>Kristen Wiig</strong>, who’s owed $146.38 from municipal bond earnings and $50.00 from AT&T;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Billy Wilder</strong> is owed $149.36 from a court settlement;<br /><br />-- <strong>Jobeth Williams </strong>is entitled to receive $129.55 from Disney, $121.16 from NBC/Universal, and $24.25 from an unnamed company;<br /><br />-- <strong>Katt Williams</strong>, who makes me laugh ‘til milk is coming out of my nose, even when I’m not drinking milk, is owed $723.30 in unpaid wages, by Disney;<br /><br />-- <strong>Treat Williams</strong>, “The Prince of the City” himself, will get a real treat, when he discovers that the Bank of America in Toluca Lake owes him $800.81;<br /><br />-- <strong>Flip Wilson </strong>is no longer among us, but the contents of his safety deposit box are. Maybe he thought Geraldine was keeping abreast of them?<br /><br />-- <strong>Rainn Wilson</strong> is due $872.25, $772.47, and $29.61 from NBC/Universal;<br /><br />-- The late t.v. puppeteer (and creator of the artificial heart!)<strong> Paul Winchell</strong>ll has five claims from Disney, in the amount of $980.42 and $98.52, plus three separate claims, each in the amount of $93.80;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Paul Winfield </strong>(<em>Sounder</em>, one of the best children's movies ever made) is due $142.48 from an insurance company;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Shelley Winters </strong>never collected the $2,776.45 is due from “JP Morgan Chase Bank N.A.,” $183.39 from Universal Pictures, or the $78.75 she’s due from Delta Dental;<br /><br />-- Aayyy! The Fonz – <strong>Henry Winker</strong>! – is owed $9,046.02, which he never collected from Hancock Savings and Loan; plus, he’s also owed $5.57 in stock dividends;<br /><br />-- <strong>Owen Wilson </strong>will feel much happier about life when he learns that he’s due $1,619.34;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Marie Windsor</strong>, film noir firebrand, is owed $83.92 by Warner Bros.;<br /><br />-- <strong>Reese Witherspoon </strong>is due $97.42 from Tiffany and Company;<br /><br />-- <strong>Stevie Wonder </strong>is blind, yet he sees more than the rest of us: He needs to collect the $2,759.00, $1,170.98, $436.77, $169.26, $136.06, 128.24, $86.41, and $2.04 he’s owed by Disney, the $432.14, $97.96, and $4.78 he’s owed by NBC/Universal, and the $693.76 he’s owed by Creative Artists Agency (CAA);<br /><br />-- <strong>Bokeem Woodbine </strong>is owed $764.50 from an unnamed company, $664.23 from Warner Bros., $278.92 from NBC/Universal, $358.45 and $71.23 from Pacific Bell, $170.57 from MGM, $72.56 from News Publishing, Australia (Fox), and $25.26 from Studio Payroll Services;<br /><br />-- The fine actress who was also Mrs. Paul Newman, <strong>Joanne Woodward</strong>, is due $617.00 in unpaid wages;<br /><br />-- One of our finest directors, the late <strong>William Wyler</strong>, together with his wife, Margaret, is due $3,605.70 (“securities exchanged for stocks”). William, alone, is due $550.00 from the Entenergy Corporation.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Y:<br /><br />-- <strong>Amy Yasbeck</strong>, the very fine actress who was married to John Ritter, has $600.41 coming to her from an unnamed production company, plus a $50.00 refund from Sears-Roebuck.<br /><br />-- <strong>Neil Young </strong>can keep on rockin’ in the free world with the $3,000.41 he’s still owed by MTV, plus the $500.25 he’s owed in salary from an unlisted company. He’s also got two claims of $40 each, from Chevron, probably for stocks;<br /><br />-- The late <strong>Roland Young </strong>(“Cosmo Topper” himself, from the great 1937 classic comedy, <em>Topper</em>) passed away in 1953, but he still due $457.24 from MCA Records.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Z:<br /><br />-- Various members of the <strong>Zanuck Family </strong>have claims;<br /><br />-- The <strong>Zappa Family</strong>: Oodles of claims. Way too many to mention. Frank, Moon, Diva, etc.;<br /><br />-- <strong>Ian Ziering</strong>, from the original “90210” cast, is due $147.99, listed as “customer overpayment,” and $576.00 in unpaid salary;<br /><br />-- Composer <strong>Hans Zimmer </strong>has to collect his $98.31 in uncollected wages;<br /><br />-- <strong>Daphne Zuniga</strong>, from the original “Melrose Place” and Spaceballs, is due $210.42 from a court settlement and $26.33 from Sprint Communications.<br /><br /><br /><br />Additionally, the New York Treasurer’s Office lists a few Unclaimed Assets of the Rich and Famous, too, but the New York State website doesn’t list the monetary amounts, as we do, here in California. When I peeked at the N.Y. website, I discovered that <strong>Robert De Niro</strong> has one claim, <strong>Al Pacino </strong>has four claims, and <strong>Martin Scorsese </strong>has three.<br /><br />If any of the abovementioned celebrities feels like he doesn’t want his “free money,” I hope he will donate it to charity. Also, if any of these notables wants to personally thank me, he or she can take me to lunch. I’m a charming luncheon companion, and I promise I won’t “talk about my script.”<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/StiPzINhuVI/AAAAAAAAAII/nB8RssfJK2A/s1600-h/gabinonefrontcover.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 224px; height: 320px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/StiPzINhuVI/AAAAAAAAAII/nB8RssfJK2A/s320/gabinonefrontcover.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5393218662316489042" /></a><br /><em>Charles Zigman is the author of the new book WORLD’S COOLEST MOVIE STAR: THE COMPLETE 95 FILMS (AND LEGEND) OF JEAN GABIN, VOLUMES ONE AND TWO (Allenwood Press, www.jeangabinbook.com). He takes great pleasure in reuniting celebrities with their money… one celebrity at a time.<br /><strong></strong><strong></strong></em>CZO: Chuck Zigman Overdrivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01597949826304464382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7968054145164198227.post-9558980025264661482009-09-15T17:38:00.001-07:002009-09-16T21:16:29.807-07:00"Carry on Laughing" with The World's Coolest International Movie Comedians<em>It's been over one month since my last blog entry, so I've tried to make this a "good one." I can't guarantee it is, but I hope so...</em><br /><br /><br /><br />CARRY ON LAUGHING WITH<br />THE WORLD'S COOLEST INTERNATIONAL MOVIE COMEDIANS<br />by Charles Zigman, September 15, 2009<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SrBfnSyKVhI/AAAAAAAAAHg/uNsdn8ocEw4/s1600-h/fernandelandtoto.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 214px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SrBfnSyKVhI/AAAAAAAAAHg/uNsdn8ocEw4/s320/fernandelandtoto.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5381906683369510418" /></a><br /><strong>Left to right: French comedy superstar Fernandel and Italian comedy superstar Toto', together, for the first (and only) time, in <em>The Law is the Law </em>(1958)</strong><br /><br /><br />On July 20, 2008, my first book was published, WORLD’S COOLEST MOVIE STAR: THE COMPLETE 95 FILMS (AND LEGEND) OF JEAN GABIN, VOLUMES ONE AND TWO. (The Second Edition -- aka, "The 2009/2010 Edition," revised and expanded, has just arrived, and you can buy it on Amazon.com). It is a combination of biography and filmography, and it concerns itself with Gabin, one of Europe’s pre-eminent movie stars of all time. Gabin is known in the United States only for seven classic movies which he made in the 1930s (<em>La Grande illusion, Pepe Le Moko, La Bete humaine, Le Jour se leve,</em> and <em>Le Quai des brumes</em>) and maybe two additional films in which he starred in the 1950s – <em>Touchez pas au grisbi </em>and <em>French Cancan</em>. The point of my book, is that Gabin starred in ninety-five movies during an illustrious career which spanned the years between 1930 and 1976, and most of his other films are either just as wonderful, or almost as wonderful, as the abovementioned “acknowledged classics.” Sadly, more than sixty of the actor’s films were never released in the United States, so the point of my book is to introduce American readers to this actor’s other great movies. It took me seven years to write and research the book. <br /><br />And since I've already introduced you to Jean Gabin, I'd now like you to make the acquaintance of a few more notables -- The World's Coolest International Movie Comedians. If I ever write a second book (I hope a forward-thinking publisher is reading this!), this will be the subject, and this blog post is a "preview of coming attractions:"<br /><br />When Americans think about classic movie comedians from the Golden Age, invariably, our minds turn toward American comedians – Laurel and Hardy, the Marx Bros., Abbott and Costello, and W.C. Fields. However, there are a lot of fine international movie comedians whom we don’t know about, just because most of their films were not released here, and I would like to devote a book to them. (Outside of Jacques Tati, whom I think of as being more of a surrealist than a comedian, American cineastes are uniquely ignorant of foreign film comedies.)<br /><br />There are five international movie comedians – or, more specifically, four individual movie comedians and one ensemble cast of movie comedians – who I think really deserve special recognition in the United States: <br /><br /><strong>1. FERNANDEL </strong>(From France, 3/8/1903 – 2/26/1971): France’s reigning #1 movie comedian of all time is the beloved Fernandel, an exceedingly funny, sharp, fast-talking man with a long “horse face” who always makes sure his characters are poignant and human. Like many great movie comedians, Fernandel is equally adept in comedies and dramas and, in fact, Fernandel appeared in seven beautifully heartfelt Marcel Pagnol pictures. The most appealing thing about Fernandel, is that, in his films, no matter what life hands him, he always smiles. To wit, in a great French comedy from 1932, director Maurice Tourneur’s <em>Les Gaietes de l’escadron </em>(<em>Fun in the Barracks</em>), a superior officer hands “Private” Fernandel a broom and makes him sweep out the barracks, as punishment for having committed some sort of a very minor infraction. Rather than fighting or pouting about his dusty fate, as anybody else in the world might do under similar circumstances, he takes the broom, and not only does he sweep, but he looks ecstatically happy as he’s doing it; in <em>Gaietes</em>, as in each of the more than one hundred and thirty feature films in which Fernandel appeared, between 1930 and 1971 (I’ve only seen twenty-five so far, so I have a long way to go), he looks eternally heavenward, to thank his Maker for having given him the opportunity to do anything – even sweeping. Just about all of the Fernandel movies I’ve seen are wonderful: He’s the kind of actor who has few bad movies in his catalog, because his fun personality elevates the material of every film, in the sense that you always want to watch what he’s doing – you’ll happily go anywhere with Fernandel. If you have Netflix, you can see Fernandel in the five-film <em>Adventures of Don Camillo </em>series, a French/Italian co-production which was produced between 1952 and 1965, in which the comedian plays a good-hearted small-town priest who mostly deals with local government, usually in the form of the Italian actor Gino Cervi, who portrays Peppone, the Communist Mayor in each of the films or. In the case of the fifth film in the series, 1965’s <em>Il Compagno Don Camillo,</em> our clergyman is forced to put up with a group of stiff-necked visiting Soviets who are completely against religion. <br /><br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Kgl0YzRoBfw&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Kgl0YzRoBfw&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><strong>Fernandel as Don Camillo (with Gino Cervi as his eternal nemesis, Mayor Peppone).</strong><br /><br /><br /><strong>2. CANTINFLAS </strong>(From Mexico. 8-12-1911 – 4/20/1993): The second comedian in my book will be Cantinflas. For my entire life, I always heard about this comedian’s movies, but I never watched any until a couple of years ago because, first of all, until about five years ago, none of these films were available with English subtitles, and secondly, in my mind, I had already pre-determined that I would not like them: I believed, based upon nothing at all except for my own cynicism, that the humor in Cantinflas’s films might be immature – probably along the lines of the guy dressed in the bee costume on the Mexican t.v. perennial, “<em>Sabado Gigante</em>.” Anyway, about two years ago, Columbia Pictures finally released a group of Cantinflas’s films on DVD, for the first time with English subtitles. As it turns out, I shouldn’t have pre-judged the man: Cantinflas, like Fernandel, is fantastic, and you can see why he continues to be considered Mexican cinema's premiere comedian of all time. He's very sharp – kind of a "card," usually a slum dweller who gets confused with royalty or with some kind of visiting bureaucrat. (Invariably, while he’s initially “getting in, over his head,” he winds up doing a better job than the real king or bureaucrat would do, and then the “real” man gives him his eternal thanks.) The best way I can describe Cantinflas’s persona, is to say that it is very much like Bob Hope’s, in Hope's classic movies. Cantinflas’s characters, like Hope’s characters, usually think they’re smooth and suave, but they’re really "bumblers." Like Fernandel, Cantinflas can also be poignant, in a sweet/real/non-mawkish way.<br /> <br />The American movie studio Columbia Pictures, always having an eye toward the “bottom line,” even back in the ‘40s through the ‘60s when Cantinflas made his movies, knew that the Spanish-language market throughout the world was a major one, and that’s why Columbia actually produced thirty-four of Cantinflas’s fifty movies, releasing them only in Spanish-speaking countries, and never with English subtitles. Columbia made millions from the actor, even without ever having released a single one of his movies in an Anglophone market. (Here’s a profound statistic I just discovered on Wikipedia: In the year 2000, nine years after Cantinflas’s death, Columbia Pictures made, in that year alone, $4 million from of the sale of his old movies on DVD, throughout the world.) <br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/i6-26mNNq6Y&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/i6-26mNNq6Y&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><strong>Cantinflas in <em>Ahi esta el Detalle (You're Missing the Point)</em> (1940).</strong><br /><br /><br /><br /><strong>3. TOTO’ </strong>(from Italy. Real name – you’ll love this one – Antonio Focas Flavio Angelo Ducas Comneno de Curtis di Bisanzio Gagliardi. 2-14-1898 – 4-15-1967): The third comedian I would like to write about in WORLD’S COOLEST INTERNATIONAL MOVIE COMEDIANS, Toto’, made, like Fernandel one hundred and thirty movies, and only around ten are presently available on DVD with English subtitles, and the ten Toto’ pictures which I have already seen are stupendous. Toto’ has a really strange crescent-moon shaped face, owing to a serious accident which he survived as a teen-ager, and you’ve seen Toto’ before (even if you don’t know you have), because if you’ve seen director Guiseppe Tornatore’s 1988 film, <em>Cinema Paradiso,</em> you know that the film is based around a famous sequence in which the townspeople are watching a movie which is being projected onto a building in the town square, and the film they happen to be watching, is a Toto’ comedy. (“Serious” Italian directors sometimes used Toto’ in their own “art” films, hoping that his trademark hilarity would, like “a spoonful of sugar,” help the often socialistic message of their films to go down smoothly. To wit, Toto’ appears in Vittorio De Sica’s <em>Miracle in Milan, </em>Pasolini’s <em>Hawks and Sparrows</em>, and Vittorio de Sica’s <em>Big Deal on Madonna Street</em>.) Toto’s <em>shtick,</em> like most great movie comedians, seems to be that he can talk his way out of anything with an out-of-control super-confidence which betrays his outward awkwardness (of which he does not seem to be aware), and his mannerisms directly paved the way for his fellow countryman Robert Benigini, whose big-screen persona is directly inspired by Toto’s; if you see Toto’s movies and Benigini’s movies, you can see that Benigni is channeling Toto’, in a very direct way.<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/i2VSV9Zlfl8&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/i2VSV9Zlfl8&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><strong>After the success of <em>Pepe Le Moko </em>with Jean Gabin, Toto' starred as Pepe's cousin in a comedy remake -- <em>Toto' Le Moko! (1949)</em></strong><br /><br /><br /><br /><strong>4. GEORGE FORMBY </strong>(England, 5-26-04 – 3/6/61): This man, whose movies are in English, began on stage, in the music hall, and he’s been making Brits laugh for six decades, based upon the great comedy features in which he starred in the '30s and '40s, and not only does this “shy” comedian always get the girl, he’ll frequently entertain her by singing and playing the ukulele. He starred in twenty great comedy features which were made between 1934 and 1946, and he will be appreciated in England forever, because his movies helped the Brits laugh their way through World War II. In fact, all four of the Beatles admired Formby so much, they even paid tribute to him at the end of their 1994 music video, "Free as a Bird:" At the very end of the video, we’re treated to eight seconds of Formby, who’s seen from the back, on stage, playing his “uke.” (Another Formby fanatic is Ridley Scott, who likes George Formby so much that he used a Formby song, "Leaning on a Lamppost," in his 2003 Nicolas Cage movie, <em>Matchstick Men</em>.) <br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/sfmAeijj5cM&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/sfmAeijj5cM&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><strong>George Formby sings his hit "When I'm Cleaning Windows," in the 1936 feature film, <em>Keep Your Seats, Please</em>.</strong><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><strong>5. THE ENSEMBLE CAST OF THE THIRTY-ONE-FILM <em>CARRY ON </em>MOVIE SERIES </strong>(Great Britain, 1958 – 1992): For my entire life, I have always heard British people talking animatedly about a series of ensemble features called the <em>Carry On </em>series. Ninety-percent of the <em>Carry On </em>movies weren't released in the United States so, in my mind, I believed that they were probably "too English," or worse, that they might be juvenile, but I was wrong. Between 1958 and 1992, producer Peter Rogers, director Gerald Thomas, and screenwriters Norman Hudis and Talbot Rothwell, teamed-up for thirty-one <em>Carry On</em> movies, and this past summer, I managed to see every single one of them, courtesy of a boxed-set of imported DVDs from England. I began watching the <em>Carry On </em>films in chronological order, beginning with the first one, <em>Carry on Sergeant </em>(1958) and finishing with the final entry in the series, <em>Carry on Columbus </em>(1992), and I became instantly enthralled, in the same way in which I was enamored of Marx Bros. movies or Abbott and Costello movies when I was a small boy. Just based on sheer brilliance alone, I would put the <em>Carry On </em>films head-to-head with Monty Python’s movies, and in terms of sheer belly laughs, the <em>Carry On </em>movies are about a million times funnier than some of the British comedies with which we are already familiar in the United States – the world-renowned Ealing comedies of the ‘50s and ‘60s, including <em>The Ladykillers </em>and <em>Kind Hearts and Coronets,</em> films which I, too, admire, but which I have always found to be a bit mild – a bit slow and staid, and too “polite.” Each of the <em>Carry On </em>films is exceedingly well-made, owing to the fact that the same director, producer, and writers were involved with all of the films. <br /><br /><em>Carry On </em>movies are about as ‘bawdy’ and ‘naughty’ as any random episode of “The Benny Hill Show,” but the ‘saucy’ double-entendres are, by today’s standards, very mild, and are all offered up with a sly wink. Some of the <em>Carry On </em>pictures are set in the “contemporary” world of “swingin’ London,” in hospitals and offices, while others in the series are lavishly produced period pictures, which look fantastic, in spite of having been produced on miniscule budgets: <em>Carry On: Don’t Lose Your Head </em>takes place during the French Revolution; <em>Carry On, Henry </em>is set in the world of Henry the Eighth; <em>Carry On Up the Khyber</em> is a “piss-take” on the British ‘Raj’ in India, and <em>Carry On Cleo </em>sends up Joseph L. Mankiewicz's <em>Cleopatra,</em> in top form. In fact, every entry in the series is uniformly well written and directed. (I could go on forever: In <em>Carry On Cowboy,</em> from 1966, the cast of regulars brilliantly lampoons the American western; another great entry is 1964’s <em>Carry On Spying,</em> a sharp, smart James Bond/Third Man spoof.) <br /> <br />The same ensemble cast of between six and eight performers appeared in every <em>Carry On </em>vehicle, although every once in awhile, one performer or another would “sit one out” to “re-charge the batteries,” after which time he or she would return, to appear in a subsequent film. Of the principal performers, the true standout in the bunch (every <em>Carry On </em>fan has his particular favorite of the group) is the beyond-brilliant Kenneth Williams: If you’re an American, you have probably seen Williams’ face at some point in your life, even if only in a photograph: Williams was lucky enough to be born with the most comedically stereotypic aristocratic/“to-the-manor-born” facial features you’ve ever seen – his hallmark, flaring nostrils make him look like he’s turning his nose up at everybody else in the cast when they’re behaving “bawdily,” so he typically played the uptight bureaucrat in every film, although, in the end, his characters always managed to convey a great sweetness. I decided, after I watched all thirty-one <em>Carry On </em>pictures, that Kenneth Williams is as brilliant as Peter Sellers. Everybody already knows this to be <em>de facto</em>-true in England, and if you don’t believe me, grab any English movie-lover over the age of thirty, from any social stratum, and ask him if he knows who Kenneth Williams is; he’ll light up like a Christmas tree. But because Williams’ movie roles were mostly relegated to this one particular film series, which was screened mostly only in England, and because Sellers played a variety of characters which became famous in movies that were screened throughout the world, nobody outside of England, even today, knows about Williams like they know about Sellers – which is a dirty shame.<br /><br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/E221ioJs-nA&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/E221ioJs-nA&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><strong>In <em>Carry on Teacher (1959),</em> Shakespeare instructor Mr. Milton (Kenneth Williams) gets flustered by his students' questions!</strong><br /><br /><br />Kenneth Williams’ counterpart in the <em>Carry On </em>series, “socio-politically,” is a “working-class” type, Sid James (né, Sidney Cohen), a South African-born comedian who’s more than reminiscent, with his pockmarked proboscis and surly mien, of Walter Matthau. (Kenneth Williams’ aristocratic gentility and Sid James’s rough-hewn surliness are a match made in character-conflict, not to mention class-conflict, heaven.) The <em>Carry On </em>movies aren’t really about social class though, although many prominent British critics have always read them that way. For me, the <em>Carry On </em>movies are about having fun.<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/onap0Wou5Lg&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/onap0Wou5Lg&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><strong>Sid James as a randy Henry VIII, "having it off" with Barbara Winsdor in <em>Carry On Henry </em>(1971).</strong><br /><br /> <br />The three main actresses, throughout the run of the series, are the incredible comedienne Barbara Windsor, a sexy Judy Hollady/Betty Boop type, Hattie Jacques (pronounced “Hattie Jakes”) who usually plays the overweight matron figure – her job, in most of the films, it seems, as with Kenneth Williams, was always to reprimand the other characters for the their “naughtiness” – and Joan Sims, who is all-purpose, a la Tracy Ullman. In the various <em>Carry On </em>productions, Sims plays a wife, a nurse, or even the Queen of England, and she can do it all with great dexterity.<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/ATDJe87hia0&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/ATDJe87hia0&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>l<br /><strong>Dr. Jim Dale gives Barbara Winsdor the once-over in <em>Carry On Again Doctor </em>(1969), much to the chagrin of matron Hattie Jacques. This is one of three <em>Carry On </em>films set in a hospital. Saucy!</strong><br /><br /> <br />Another principal in the <em>Carry On</em> series is Charles Hawtrey, a brilliant “reactor” who is accorded less dialogue in the series than are the other actors, but who looks like a human sight gag: If Harpo Marx were hit by lightning, and he weighed one pound and grinned all the time, even in the face of adversity, he'd be Charlie Hawtrey, who looks, physically, like the American comedian, Wally Cox. (Hawtrey is the <em>Carry On </em>series’ equivalent of those little Sergio Aragones cartoons hidden away in the corner of <em>Mad Magazine,</em> a Where’s Waldo-figure who’s always grinning mischievously – that is, if you can find him!)<br /><br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/oEGeqO3JUF8&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/oEGeqO3JUF8&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><strong>Charles Hawtrey has fun "in hospital" (as they say in the UK) in <em>Carry On Nurse (1959).</em> He's kind of a British version of the American comedian, Wally Cox.</strong><br /><br /><br />If you’ve never seen Charles Hawtrey before, and you’re an American baby-boomer, you have heard Hawtrey’s name before, even if you’ve never seen a single <em>Carry On </em>movie, if you own the Beatles’ “Let It Be” album: At the beginning of the track "Two of Us," as you know, John Lennon goofily vamps, "'I Dig a Pygymy,' by Charles Hawtrey and the Deaf-Aids [“deaf-aid” is Brit-speak for “hearing aid”]. Phase One, in which Doris gets her Oats." I never knew what this rather cryptic phrase meant until this past summer, when I saw the <em>Carry On </em>movies for the first time: John Lennon loved Charles Hawtrey and the <em>Carry On </em>movies so much, that he paid improvisational tribute to the comedian at the beginning of the song. (In fact, Lennon's trademark "humor," which the musician exhibits in his '60s books like A Spaniard in the Works and In His Own Write, is very specifically inspired by the humor of the <em>Carry On </em>movies.)<br /><br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/s8zDLMBAqks&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/s8zDLMBAqks&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><strong>John Lennon pays tribute to <em>Carry On </em>star Charles Hawtrey, during the opening of "Dig a Pony" from the <em>Let It Be </em>album (1970).</strong><br /><br /><br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/ZxX7YW_97QU&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/ZxX7YW_97QU&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><strong>One of the most famous sequences from any <em>Carry On </em>movie. In <em>Carry On Up the Khyber (1968)</em>, which deals with the British Raj in India, Governor Sid James and members of his party have dinner while the Indians (including Kenneth Williams, in a turban!) wage war outside; with stiff upper lips, they ignore it, even until the last moment.</strong><br /><br /><br />Aside from John Lennon, another admitted fanatic of the <em>Carry On </em>movie series is none other than Austin Powers himself, Mike Myers. When Mike Myers used the phrase "cheeky monkey" in a famous SNL sketch called “Simon,” in which he appeared in a bathtub alongside Danny DeVito, this was Meyer’s direct homage to Kenneth Williams, who famously-improvised that line in one of the early <em>Carry On </em>movies, 1961’s <em>Carry On Regardless</em>. In <em>Regardless,</em> Williams, much to his own embarrassment, but because he’s been paid to do it, is forced to buy a bus ticket for a chimpanzee that he’s escorting around London, and he improvises the “cheeky monkey” line. Mike Myers has also paid direct tribute to the Carry On movies in <em>Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me </em>(1999): There’s a bit in that film, which you may remember, in which Myers and Heather Graham are ensconced in a tent, and we see them only in silhouette; as you might recall, it looks like Graham is yanking things (telephones, pineapples) out of Myer’s posterior and doing “dirty things” to him, even though she’s really not, and this is Myers’ direct homage to the most famous sequence from <em>Carry On Camping </em>(1970).<br /><br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/lFGWrL5FJ9Q&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/lFGWrL5FJ9Q&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><strong>Here's the whole gang in fine form and fettle, in the trailer for the hilarious <em>Carry On Camping</em>(1969). Mike Myers "borrowed" the silhouetted tent sequence for his own movie, <em>Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.</em></strong><br /><br /><br />Not only have Mike Myers and John Lennon been influenced by this almost-completely-unknown-in-the-U.S. <em>Carry On</em> movie series, but Ivan Reitman who, like Myers, grew up in Canada, where <em>Carry On </em>movies were regularly televised, must have enjoyed them, as well: In the third act of the new-recruits-in-the-military comedy <em>Carry On Sergeant </em>(1958), the drill instructor is injured, and the slovenly/happy-go-lucky platoon members (Kenneth Williams, Sid James, Charles Hawtrey) are forced to train themselves without him, for the following day’s big graduation exercise, and Ivan Reitman seems to have “borrowed” this trope for his own goofs-in-the-military comedy, 1981’s <em>Stripes</em>, starring Bill Murray. Also in <em>Carry on Sergeant</em>, during a scene in which the soldiers are rehearsing themselves for their graduation exercises, the score-music composed by Bruce Montgomery, sounds very suspiciously like Elmer Bernstein's "original" (cough, cough) score for <em>Stripes.</em><br /><br /><em>Carry On </em>films are now so respected in Britain, they are even shown at museums: At the Barbican cinema, in 1998, new prints of all thirty-one <em>Carry On </em>films were struck, and the theater showed every single film.<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/0phJGVh1mM0&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/0phJGVh1mM0&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><strong><em>Carry On Abroad </em>(1972) is so funny, it might make milk come out of your nose -- even if you're not drinking milk!</strong><br /><br /><br /><br />Fernandel. Cantinflas. Toto’. George Formby. The <em>Carry On </em>Players. What all of the International Movie Comedians I’ve just mentioned have in common, is that they are all inherently likeable, sympathetic and hilarious at all times – unlike some of today’s contemporary movie comedians (Adam Sandler, Seth Rogen, Ben Stiller, Jim Carrey, Jack Black), who sometimes come across, for this author, as being angry and sarcastic. Like the best of the American movie comedians from the Golden Age – Marx Bros., Abbott and Costello, Laurel and Hardy – when you watch movies featuring these great international comedians, you really feel like you “know them,” and this is exactly what I want to communicate to film fans. Part of being an American is that, sometimes, we’re too lazy to look outside of our own culture to discover interesting people (“Jean Gabin or “Fernandel” or “Toto’” or, for that matter, “anybody”), and I’m just as devoutly guilty of this sin as is anybody else. Fernandel, Cantinflas, Toto’, George Formby, and the Carry On ensemble are great inroads into any formal, or informal, study of “comedy from other lands,” and all of the movies I have mentioned herein, are timeless and completely free of cynicism, unlike today’s movie comedies. <br /><br />P.S.: “Combo Plate:” Cantinflas and Fernandel actually appeared together in a film which was a rare American-made/English-language outing for both of them, producer Mike Todd’s 1956 epic, <em>Around the World in 80 Days,</em> the film in which Cantinflas, in one of his two American films, plays second lead to David Niven, in the role of Niven’s majordomo, Passepartout.) In 1958, Fernandel and Toto’ appeared together in a French/Italian co-production called <em>La Legge e Legge </em>(<em>The Law is the Law</em>), and the French and Italians lined up at the box-office in droves, to see their favorite comedians together, for what turned out to be the first and only time.<br /><br />P.P.S. I know that there are other “international” movie comedians whom people really enjoy as well: From England there’s the vaudevillian <strong>Norman Wisdom </strong>who starred in more than thirty movies and <strong>Will Hay </strong>who starred in nineteen movies; a lot of French people enjoy the shrill/Jerry Lewis-like <strong>Louis de Funes </strong>who appeared in one hundred and fifty-two movies; and in Japan there’s the forty-eight film <em>Tora-san </em>series, starring <strong>Kiyoshi Atsumi.</strong> I can appreciate Wisdom, Hay, De Funes, and Atsumi, but comedy is a subjective business, and Widsom, Hay, de Funes, and Atsumi simply don’t make me laugh as hard as the other people I’ve mentioned in this article, which is why I haven't mentioned them.<br /><br />P.P.S. This has nothing to do with International Comedians, but here's one more thing that Ivan Reitman "may have" (cough, cough) plagiarized, aside from the third-act of <em>Carry On Sergeant</em>: In 1984, when I was in high school, my friends and I were invited to the Warner Bros. lot, in Burbank, to see a rough-cut recruited screening of Reitman's <em>Ghostbusters</em>. Because the theme song had not yet been finished -- Ray Parker, Jr.'s "Ghostbusters Theme" -- Reitman used a temp track for the evening's screening: He used "I Want a New Drug" by Huey Lewis and the News. When <em>Ghostbusters</em> was finally released, Huey tried to sue Columbia Pictures, stating that the Ray Parker "Ghostbusters Theme" sounded substantially like "I Want a New Drug," but Reitman maintained that the Huey song was not even in his thinking when he commissioned the Parker, Jr. song -- and yet, there was Huey Lewis's "I Want a New Drug," playing over the beginning credits of <em>Ghostbusters</em>, during that fateful preview screening. <em>What a tangled web we weave, right, Ivan?</em>CZO: Chuck Zigman Overdrivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01597949826304464382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7968054145164198227.post-63713859862317234162009-08-07T18:03:00.001-07:002009-12-31T11:17:32.623-08:00New Faces Not to Watch: The True Story About What Really Happens After Film School (Nothing!)<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/So826gx3k1I/AAAAAAAAAFY/m7gLo_IZj_Q/s1600-h/Hollywood.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 165px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/So826gx3k1I/AAAAAAAAAFY/m7gLo_IZj_Q/s320/Hollywood.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5372573259335701330" /></a><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/So82tf49YeI/AAAAAAAAAFQ/Uv_66yvYrXg/s1600-h/Closed_sign_.gif"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 214px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/So82tf49YeI/AAAAAAAAAFQ/Uv_66yvYrXg/s320/Closed_sign_.gif" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5372573035758707170" /></a><br />NEW FACES NOT TO WATCH, OR: MY SOUR GRAPES ARE SOMETIMES SWEET. A TRUE STORY OF WHAT REALLY HAPPENS AFTER FILM SCHOOL. (ANSWER: NOTHING!)<br /><strong>(The article for everybody who pukes when he hears a new/larval twentysomething nepo-jizm case screenwriter/filmmaker say, "It's true, my name got me in the door... but it's my talent that pushed me over the top...")</strong><br />By Charles Zigman, August 7, 2009<br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SpcIZc_3TgI/AAAAAAAAAF4/nTjwe5G26xs/s1600-h/scorsese.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 176px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SpcIZc_3TgI/AAAAAAAAAF4/nTjwe5G26xs/s320/scorsese.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5374773913663786498" /></a><br /><strong>Here I am, graduating from Columbia University's Graduate Department of Film in 1993. And look who's sitting on the extreme left applauding me: It's our guest speaker, Martin Scorsese! Little did I know that two years later, I would begin my lifetime career as a substitute elementary school teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District. (Next week, I begin my 13th year as a substitute teacher. Well: Easy come, easy go!) P.S. Click on the photo to enlarge it. </strong><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />During the past week, I was choking down a cup of Kaffay O'Lay at my local Starbucks. Some very well-appointed ladies in their fifties were sitting at the table next to me (they’re drinking lattes while there husbands are busting their humps at work all day – <em>so, nu?</em>) and I happened to eavesdrop upon their conversation. One of these "ladies-who-<em>almuerzo</em>" was excitingly chirping that her son, age 21, is going to be starting graduate-level film school this coming fall, at New York University. “He is so talented,” the proud lady exclaimed. “He is going to have such a fabulous career." At this point, the other yenta could no longer contain her excitement: She, next, blurted out, “And he’ll have a leg-up in the business – because he’ll have a <em>master’s degree! </em>A master’s degree makes you <em>invaluable!</em>”<br /><br />When I heard this shit, milk came out of my nose. And, yes, I wasn’t even drinking milk.<br /><br />Broadly speaking, I feel sorry for this broad. She and her husband are about to shell out upwards of $100,000.00 -- including three years of tuition, three years of housing in NYC, and the cost of a student film -- to educate their kid in a business which doesn’t actively solicit people from outside the business. The movie business, as we all know, has always been completely closed, unless, you’re directly related to somebody who’s already important in the business.<br /><br />I, myself, graduated with my Master of Fine Arts Degree from Columbia University’s Graduate Department of Film sixteen years ago, in 1993, and guess what: For the last thirteen years, I’ve been a substitute elementary school teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District, making $23k per year (gross), and that’s probably what I’ll be doing for the rest of my life. All of my friends with whom I graduated also have crappy jobs, jobs which one doesn’t need a master’s degree to get. (I guess two or three people are successful, but those are people who already had "connections" before they went to film school, so they don't count.)<br /><br />It was at this moment, while the moms were going berserk with near-orgasmic delight, that I decided I should write an article about film school, and that I should call it, “What Really Happens After Film School: Nothing.” But I don’t have to write it, because, as it turns out, one sleepless night ten years ago, I already did! Yes, if this is possible, I'm even smarter than <em>myself!</em><br /> <br />Here’s <em>l'article.</em> I’ve spent the last week updating it, but I didn't update it too much, because when I wrote it, I think I really caught something in a bottle (my own unmitigated disgust), and I didn’t want to dilute my "original anger" too much, even though, to tell you the truth, I’m probably not as angry as I was when I originally wrote it -- now I'm more circumspect and more resolute: Ten years after having written the first draft of the following article, I now realize that life sucks not just for me, but for everybody, and that nobody ever gets anything he wants in this life, unless you've got some kind of "nepotism" or "connection." My article is called, “NEW FACES NOT TO WATCH."<br /><br /><br /><em>Here it am, suckas!:</em><br /><br />At the beginning of each year, the Los Angeles <em>Times</em> movie section, as well as every movie magazine and entertainment website you can shake a stick at, presents a column which is, invariably, entitled something like, “New Faces to Watch.” Beneath this in-your-face title ("we <em>dare</em> you not to love this talented bunch of newcomers!") is an article about the current crop of hip/new/young filmmakers and performers who are just beginning their exciting careers in the entertainment industry.<br /><br />Whenever I, a graduate of both Columbia University’s Graduate School of Film and UCLA’s undergraduate film department, read these articles, an involuntary bout of gagging normally ensues, which finishes with some heavy-duty/balls-out projectile puking. Where do these hip/exciting/new/fresh/automatonic faces come from? Is this some kind of annual joke that <em>Calendar </em>and <em>Premiere Online </em>and <em>Cinematical</em> and <em>People</em> and <em>US Weekly </em>are perpetrating on the world? Don't these publications know the movie business is, and always has been, completely closed to new people who aren't directly related to other people who are bigwigs in the business? <br /><br />My friends and I stare at these articles, bemusedly shaking our heads. Look how fresh and vital all of this new, up-and-coming movie larvae look. Nobody I know looks "fresh" like that! The “real” people I know -- those of us who have been struggling along, trying to get into the historically un-open movie industry for years, well -- we all look like crap! We have soul-killing jobs as temps, waiters, personal assistants, and substitute teachers. (Do you know what it’s like to be a thirteen-year substitute teacher when you’re forty-three years old, making 23k/yr. while you’re watching the friends you grew up with – the ones who chose "safe professions" like law, medicine, and business -- buying their first homes and squirting out little copies of themselves? Hint: It doesn’t feel too great!) <br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SpS0y8AAHXI/AAAAAAAAAFg/dRYLBdgdplc/s1600-h/homeless1.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 226px; height: 320px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SpS0y8AAHXI/AAAAAAAAAFg/dRYLBdgdplc/s320/homeless1.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5374119042552438130" /></a><br /><strong>This is what a typical film school student looks like a decade after graduation. This guy is only 35 years old!</strong><br /><br />When we, the <em>real</em> former film students, and not the silver spoon-cases portrayed in these movie magazines, mail our newly-completed scripts out to producers and literary agents, our material is always summarily rejected out of hand, even when the material is good, and even, ostensibly, when it is "commercial." (I had one producer actually tell me, just a few months ago, “I love your script, but <em>who are you? </em> I only work with <em>known</em> talent.”) So my question is: What are we – and by "we," I mean, my friends and I who are still unable to get anybody to produce our scripts, even sixteen years after having received our MFA degrees in film from highly-priced universities – doing wrong? Are we sucking up to the wrong people? (And: Does anybody ever really "help" anybody else? And: Does one ever really finish "paying one’s dues?" And: If so, when are those "dues" finally "paid off?") I guess the most important thing I want to know is: How can my friends and I be more like those cool/lucky people we read about in those “Fresh New Faces” articles which appear each year?<br /><br />My personal “odd-yssey” is as long as this article will be long-winded. As I’ve mentioned, I’m forty-three years old, and I’ve been “trying to get into the film industry” (stop laughing!) since I wrote my first feature screenplay at the age of 17, which means that I’ve been sealing my scripts -- I told you to stop laughing, fucknut! -- into 10 x 13 manila envelopes and sending them out to literary agents for the past twenty-six years and, in that entire quarter of a century, not a single agent or producer has ever taken a bite. In terms of my ‘progress,’ I’m sad to say that I am exactly where I was at the age of seventeen, even in spite of the fact that I’ve done all the things you’re supposed to do: I attended both undergraduate and graduate film school; I completed three-years worth of those eighty-hour-a-week unpaid internships for movie producers. (Yes, you heard me right: I said <em>unpaid internships</em>: While slavery was abolished in the south 144 years ago, it has risen again in Hollywood because, apparently, white kids -- including me, back when I was in my twenties -- love being abused and working for no money!) As part of my internships, my job seemed to consist of taking in various producers’ dry cleaning, washing their cars, making deliveries ("Hey, Chuck... on your way home to <em>Hollywood</em>, from our office in <em>Beverly Hills</em>, we need you to drop this script off in <em>Malibu</em>" [producers have a bad sense of direction: Malibu's not on my way home!). In one case, I was even ordered to drive one lady-producer to a sperm bank, but it was all for nothing because, apparently, she was so mean, <em>the choad never took</em>! <br /><br />Besides doing internships, I also did all of that other stuff that's supposed to help ease your way into the film industry: I volunteered at film festivals, and I even entered scores of those bullshit screenwriting contests that receive ten thousand entries, in which entering is tantamount to throwing your screenplay – and the required $40 entry fee – into a black hole. (I wish I could come up with a scam like that!) <br /><br />It’s not that people didn't like my screenplays; it's just that, in seventeen years, I have never really been able to get anybody to give any of them more than what is commonly called a “courtesy read” (For whom is a courtesy read a courtesy?!) In the one of the few instances where people did take a liking to my writing – when I was nineteen – my script was actually plaigarized and made into a t.v. movie, scene-for-scene; the movie-of-the-week hack who stole my script is now a prosperous director who directs both Academy Award-winning theatrical features, as well as the occasional Academy Awards broadcast on ABC. Subsequently, I spent five years (ages 25to 30) writing a screenplay for a producer with one prior indie feature under his belt who promised me that my script would be a "director's piece," and that I would be directing it, as well; how nice that, after I finished five years of free work for this guy ("We'll pay you the day we go into production!") and thirteen drafts, including three "page one re-writes" (that means, I started from scratch three times over), the producer brought in another "director" without informing me that he was doing that... and how much even nicer it was that this "director," as well as the producer, put their names on the byline of my script. (But at least they didn't take my name off of the script completely; I received third-billing on my own script.) Anyway, this producer and director burned so many bridges, the project never happened, even though it was set up, for a time, at New Line Entertainment with Brett Ratner -- who never heard of me, even though he owned my script -- set up to executive produce! I also spent six years, when I was between 32 and 38 years old, writing a different script with a friend of mine from undergrad film school at UCLA. When I asked this guy, one of life's consummate dreamers, why it had to take us six years (writing on my own, I usually finish feature length screenplays in only a matter or weeks or, at the very most, a few months), he replied, "We have to go through the process!" Very nice guy, and he kept me going with promises that he would be directing and I would be producing (I was like Lenny in <em>Of Mice and Men</em>: "Tell me 'bout the rabbits, George!"), and he told me how "connected" he was but, ultimately, nothing happened with this script effort. Lots of people get their "big breaks" from people who can help; my "breaks," none of which ever came to any sort of fruition, came from wannabes who couldn't do anything for themselves, much less for me. I wasted about 12 years writing free screenplays for characters like this, under the guise that they would help me and get me a produced credit.<br /><br />While I was a student at UCLA’s Undergraduate Motion Picture-Television School, I often came across my wild-eyed classmates creating, for their major class projects, letterboxed science fiction and action shorts, along the lines of stuff they had seen on late night cable t.v. the previous night; I didn’t have anything in common with these poor souls, as my own writing always tended – and tends – more toward “personal” expression (don’t laugh!). After I graduated with my BA from UCLA, and because I must be some kind of a masochist, I moved to New York and began attending graduate film school at Columbia University. My bizarre rationale at the time, was that if a BA in film school would get me noticed in the biz, then an MFA would be – even better! After doing these unpaid internships that didn't lead anywhere, I thought that an MFA might be a better way of getting into the movie industry than just working in a mailroom at an agency; I thought that earning a master's degree would be better than "working my way up," but I guess I was wrong.<br /><br />My Columbia University Years did have some good things about them: All of the people I met at Columbia University's Graduate Department of Film were interesting and we have all become very close-knit over the years, united by the fact that we were all duped into thinking that film school would help us to achieve brilliant careers. Columbia University students, as opposed to the UCLA students whom I had observed, seemed to have interesting things to “say” with their student shorts. All of us thought we would change the world with our films one day. But today, sixteen years after graduating from Columbia University’s Graduate Department of Film with my MFA diploma (read: toilet paper; actually, it’s not fair to compare my diploma to toilet paper, because toilet paper is useful), I am, as I said, a substitute elementary school teacher, and I will continue to be one, for life. My Columbia friends and I will be paying off our film school loans for the rest of our lives and, in that respect, and in that respect only, film school can best be described as “the gift that keeps on giving.” (Having to pay off your film school degree when you can't get into the film business is the same thing as those backwards countries where they kill you, and then they make your family pay for the bullet.) <br /><br /><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SpS1DptabaI/AAAAAAAAAFo/KHpJoZ_ochQ/s1600-h/homeless3.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 242px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SpS1DptabaI/AAAAAAAAAFo/KHpJoZ_ochQ/s320/homeless3.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5374119329700408738" /></a><br /><strong>This is where ex-film school students sleep. We don't have the luxury of having "homes," like people who went to other professional schools do. Ex-film school students are lucky when it's not raining.</strong><br /><br /><em>Sometimes I think I’ll just start calling myself Charles Scorsese… or Charles Coppola… or Charles Spielberg… just so I’ll be able to “get in to the movie business.” My personal family tree is completely bereft of nepotism – and nepotism, of course, is the coin of the realm in Hollywood, especially if one wants to “get in,” in a “non-underling” position. Yup, there aren’t any movie industry bigwigs in my own family: My father is a very successful building contractor here in Los Angeles and, interestingly, he has stopped doing construction for most movie business people because, historically, show-folk are the only people who won’t pay for their finished work, or else, they try to get out of paying for it. </em>When I was a little kid, I remember that my dad once compared flighty movie people to “circus people.” I have spent the last two decades learning that this is, in fact, true. When I moved back to my hometown of Los Angeles from New York, in 1993, after having finished up at Columbia U., I was ready to take on the world. I had my student short under my arm – the short master’s thesis film which I had directed – and my will to succeed. The first thing I tried to do, was to try and get any kind of "grunt" job in the hip-but-tawdry movie industry while I was waiting for someone to buy my scripts. I found out that having a master’s degree was threatening to all of the producers and directors and executives who read my resume, and I learned, as you can tell from how "dumbed-down" all of today’s movies are, that Hollywood definitely has a major anti-education bias. (“I never went to film school to get where I got today,” I heard, more than once, from different bloated, self-satisfied producers whom I was trying to get to hire me for day-jobs as their assistants – jobs which, I guess, I didn’t really want, anyway.) Snotty comments of this nature were made not just to me, but to everybody I know. I was told by innumerable producers, over the course of innumerable job interviews, that if I wanted to “make it in Hollywood,” the first thing I needed to do, would be to remove the MFA degree from my resume. (I have met other wannabes along my journey – people in the same sinking boat that I am in – people who have, with pathetic glee, pointed out to me that they have five and, sometimes, even ten different versions of their resumes – different resumes for each kind of showbiz employment opportunity which they might be offered. Hearing that nonsense gives me tachycardia: Why the fuck would I dumb-down my own <em>curriculum vitae,</em> removing my accomplishments, each of which has been hard won, just to make some neurotic, undereducated, film-hating/prestige-loving, pansexual, twelve-stepping, greedy, living-beyond-his-means, leasing-everything-he-or-she-has, Hollywood executive types feel better about their own pathetic paucity of formal education? <br /><br />And while I’m ranting senselessly away, I have to add that some of these producers I met, when trying to get a "regular day job in the entertainment biz," are like caricatures of producers, only they don’t know that they are exhibiting caricatured behavior, and they’re not “in on the joke:” When I was in my early twenties, as I have already mentioned, I endured those crappy, unpaid internships, making script deliveries at two o’ clock in the morning because I deluded myself into thinking that this kind of serfdom/manumission on my part would one day help me be successful in the movie biz, but I couldn’t have been more wrong: I found out that doing whatever insipid errands egomaniacal movie producers tell you to do (another good errand I did, was: taking a producer's three-year-old grandkids to Beverly Hills "baby gym") just makes you a doormat/scullery maid whom they will never be able to take seriously and, conversely, putting your foot down – getting a pair of “training balls” as it were, and telling them that you won’t do their menial, taking-in-the-dry cleaning b.s. will get you fired, <em>plus vite. </em> (One lady producer I worked for almost thrashed me within an inch of my life because, during her meeting with a director, I went into her office to ask her a question, and she actually called me “stupid,” because I walked behind her "closed door" -- even though she had asked me to interrupt her meeting and bring her something only a moment before! Another producer for whom I selflessly toiled, for no pay, used me to re-outline all of the projects he had in the pipeline, promising me an "associate producer credit” on a “future project.” (Promise of the elusive “associate producer credit” is The Big Lie producers tell interns and other underlings to get them to do all the lame, “gofer” stuff.) While this particular producer, a slick Israeli guy in a long black coat who, apparently -- in his mind, anyway -- had been pretty high up in the Mossad years before, was friendly to me while I was doing the free re-outlining on his scripts (he even showed me how to break "The Club" off somebody's steering wheel, by spraying it with Freon!), the second I was done, the mood around the office changed: The second I was finished giving this guy the free writing he wanted, I was history, and the guy quickly brought in another fresh-faced kid to brain-pick.<br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SzRB-TS0TwI/AAAAAAAAAIg/j7C0lw5kyhg/s1600-h/newfaces2.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 234px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SzRB-TS0TwI/AAAAAAAAAIg/j7C0lw5kyhg/s320/newfaces2.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5419028790220443394" /></a><br /><br /><br /><em>Just had another good brain-fart: It’s not just nepotism that’ll get you into the movie business in a creative, non-slave position. One can also get into the movie business and make a feature film of one’s own by dating/marrying/fucking/sucking someone with an important movie job, even if you don’t really love them – I know more than a few people who have done that. Or, I guess, one can “get in” by being obnoxious, like the guy with the huge chin and acromegaly face who makes those horrible three-hour “post-modern” action movies where all of the actors talk to each other about their favorite sit-coms while they’re "whacking" their victoms; in the film business, more than anywhere else, it’s “the squeaky wheel who gets the grease.” Well, it’s too bad for me, then. I’m a “nice, quiet wheel” and I was raised to be a gentleman, as old-fashioned as that notion may seem. I’m also, as you’ve noticed, by reading what you've read so far, an incredibly passive-aggressive gentleman. But, you know what: When you’ve got nothing, brother -- or, I guess, "<em>bro-ham</em>" as they now say it in all of these horrible "bro-mances;" Lee Marvin and Charles Bronson would never get caught starring in a "bromance!" -- you’ve got nothing to lose! </em><br /><br />So, okay: If you can’t get a job after film school, should you still go to film school? In spite of everything I’ve just said, I think: Yes. You should absolutely go to film school. But here's the qualifier: Just use film school for other things that you couldn't get if you weren't in film school, and don’t ever expect anything after you graduate. What I mean by that, is that if you go to film school just for the sake of having fun, it’s incredibly worth it. I mean, where else do you get to watch movies all day on the big screen and talk about them, while fucking and sucking on all the hot/bohemian grad school art-quim you can choke down? And here's a word about the hot sex you get in film school: All film school students are in the same boat, in the sense that nobody is famous yet, and everybody's on the same level -- everybody's a student, so in film school, everybody "fucks on faith," the idea being that, one of these days, somebody you fuck while you're in film school might turn out to be famous, and then maybe, just maybe, if you fuck her well enough, that person might get you a job. Another good thing about film school is that you might get to meet and work with one or two legends in the movie business, like I did. This won't help you get in to he movie business, but it’s a whale of a lotta fun:<br /><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SpS2IGqmjfI/AAAAAAAAAFw/bH4u8pXToQo/s1600-h/homeless5.gif"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 250px; height: 320px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SpS2IGqmjfI/AAAAAAAAAFw/bH4u8pXToQo/s320/homeless5.gif" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5374120505704353266" /></a><br /><strong>Here's a former film school student having dinner. "Hey, Kurosawa, how's the soup?!"</strong><br /><br /><br />My fondest memory of residing in New York for three years and being a student in Columbia University’s Graduate Department of Film, besides the fun-filled sexual encounters, is that I was able to co-write my master’s thesis short, a twenty-five minute film which I directed, with the late, great counterculture guru Terry Southern, the reclusive genius-scribe behind <em>Dr. Strangelove </em>and <em>Easy Rider, </em>who was my writing instructor and thesis advisor. I thought that collaborating with this acknowledged “great master” would definitely help me to get “my break in Hollywood” especially in view of the fact that Southern hadn’t worked on a screenplay in more than twenty-six years at the point during which we worked together, and people were wondering "if he'd ever write again." Instead, when I returned to L.A. after graduating from film school, and asked agents and producers if they wanted to watch my student film, gleefully announcing to them that I had co-written it with a legendary writer, the younger agents just asked, “Who’s Terry Southern?” and the older ones just shook their heads: “Oh, Terry Southern? You wrote something with that <em>old</em> guy? [AUTHOR'S NOTE: Ageism is more rampant than ever in Hollywood. As I heard somebody say while I was touching up this article prior to posting it, in today's 2009 Hollywood, "forty is the new dead."] Is he even still around?" And not a single agent of producer would even watch my film. (Well, shee-it, there’s thirty thousand bucks of my dad’s money down the drain. Sorry, <em>papi!</em>)<br /><br />What I regret that I didn’t see coming is that, in 1992, while I was shooting the short film which became my thesis project, the whole concept of people using short films as “calling cards” to get into the movie business was on its way out (it's back again now, in 2009), because instead of making shorts, people, at that time, had begun to, instead, make low-budget features, such as Kevin Smith’s <em>Clerks,</em> as calling cards, but I couldn’t afford to make a feature then, just as I can't afford to make one now. <br /><br />I should have known while I was making my short film that I nobody would watch it, because when I was interviewing sound editors to cut the soundtrack for my film, one girl turned up her nose and told me, “I would never work in <em>the short film ghetto</em>.” Of course, now, sixteen years later, in 2009, as I've just mentioned, short films have made a comeback, due to the fact that one can now make them cheaply on video and show them on YouTube. I was in the right place at the wrong time -- which is a very common thing in my life.<br /><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SzRBtOsSYvI/AAAAAAAAAIY/ObN0OxO4gOo/s1600-h/newfaces1.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 213px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SzRBtOsSYvI/AAAAAAAAAIY/ObN0OxO4gOo/s320/newfaces1.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5419028496927318770" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><em>Truth be known, and as you've already guessed, I’m secretly jealous of those people I like to make fun of, the ones who get to make independent features. There will never be any way I can afford to make my own independent feature. I have no rich uncle to give me money, like most of the dilettantes out there who don’t have to substitute teach, as I do, to pay the rent. And getting investors is not as easy as everybody makes it seem at those lame, $500-tutition “How-to-Get-into-Showbiz” seminars where everybody walks around in their sunglasses and talks about “their projects” while woofing down the obligatory lunch of dry chicken. My curse (and my joy) is that I have been raised to be so pragmatic about money, that I would worry about not being able to pay investors back, even though most other young(ish) artists don’t seem to let a triviality like “being responsible with money” bother them all that much -- you kind of have to be a bit arrogant and sociopathic to be in the movie business, which I am not (or: "which I am not in the approved way," since I am a kind of arrogant sociopath -- I'm so arrogant and sociopathic, that I don't want anybody getting near me.) Wish I was more sociopathic in the correct, prescribed way, and that I didn’t care about stuff like paying investors back. Well, as Frank Norris wrote, “such is life for McTeague…”</em><br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SzRDixtGLqI/AAAAAAAAAIo/xYH6Mn5osz8/s1600-h/newfaces3.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 190px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SzRDixtGLqI/AAAAAAAAAIo/xYH6Mn5osz8/s320/newfaces3.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5419030516370648738" /></a><br /><strong>Film school graduates don't "do lunch." They have to find it, in dumpsters.</strong><br /><br />Still, in spite of my bitching and moaning (I always hate when other people bitch and moan – and now I’m doing it! Sorry!), if I had to “do it over,” I would, as I have already said, go to film school again – not only because I got to work Terry Southern and get some good quim, but also because I learned about one hundred-percent more about movies than I knew before I went to film school, even though neither UCLA's undergraduate film school (now it's called T.F.T [Theater Film and Television]; it used to be called M.P.T.V. [Motion Picture Television], but they may as well call it B.U.L.L.S.H.I.T., for all the good it does) nor Columbia University's Graduate Film School did anything to help me or my friends after we graduated: If you go to law school or medical school, they help to “place” you in a job after you graduate, but after film school is over, you’re on your own forever, bucko. Weirdly, although Columbia’s ex-Chairperson has never helped a student to get a job, she is always there to take credit on the ultra-mega-rare occasion that one of her graduates has actually made a feature film. <br /><br />The most ironic thing about the whole film school experience, I think, is that all of us graduates will be paying off thousands of dollars worth of student loans for the rest of our lives, even though we will never be hired to write and direct our own movies. So in that way, film school has definitely been “the gift that keeps on giving.” And even though I learned a lot in film school, I also continue to feel like it's a pretty fraudulent enterprise, to the extent that film schools are bilking people out of their parents’ hard-earned money by playing on the romance of getting into what has essentially always been a “closed" business.<br /><br />Besides substitute teaching, I have spent the last sixteen years since I graduated from film school, meeting every shady “fringe” type of person on the extreme periphery of the film industry – people who seem to be right out of <em>Get Shorty. </em> What’s amazing about Los Angeles, is that everybody thinks he or she is a producer, and I always wonder, on that same level: How come nobody just happens to “think” he’s a surgeon or a lawyer or an architect? (“I have three surgeries in the pipeline and one in development.”) A few times a year, I'll still get calls from these putative “producer” types who call me and ask me to write scripts for them for free, and they always proceed to tell me how honored I will be to work with them for no remuneration! Why would anybody expect anybody else to work for free – not just in movies, but in any profession? For a few years, I’m ashamed to say, I was flattered by the fact that people wanted me to write for them at all, paycheck or no, but after getting burned a couple of times – the paycheck never comes, the movie doesn’t get made and, more often than not, the producer actually “disappears” – I’ve learned my lesson. Now, when the would-be “producers” call me and ask me to write scripts for them, and I tell them that they have to pay me some money up front – just a couple of hundred dollars, as a token of the fact that the deal is on-the-level and real – the conversation is always, instantaneously, over. If they don't have two hundred bucks to pay me at the beginning of the project, why would they eve pay me a big <em>chunka change </em>on the day the movie goes into production, as they are always promising to do?<br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SzREIKApAzI/AAAAAAAAAIw/oo5omJu1tO8/s1600-h/newfaces4.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 213px; height: 320px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SzREIKApAzI/AAAAAAAAAIw/oo5omJu1tO8/s320/newfaces4.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5419031158550233906" /></a><br /><strong>Film school graduates don't get wives and careers like medical school and law school graduates do. But we do get to jerk off like monkeys, sometimes upwards of 20 times a day. This film school grad jerked it so much, the government gave him a wheelchair.</strong><br /><br /><br />So we – my ever-hopeful friends and I – will all continue to plug away. (Even Sisyphus probably got his rock up to the top of his hill, but, sadly – we will not.) As listless and dejected as I always feel now (at 43 I’m physically heavier than I was during my kind-of handsome film school days, and my hair, at this point in my life, would rather be in the shower drain than on my head; women, so blissfully prevalent in my 20s, have now mostly deserted me for the “professional” doctor/lawyer types who can take care of them -- sigh-a-roony -- and help them pound out the puppies, while I continue to live hand-to-mouth and hand-to-my-genitalia, watching internet porn, napping, and eating fast-food all the livelong day). And yet, in spite of how depressing post-film school world is and how hopeful it is, guess what: I will continue to make my furtive little attempts at getting into the closed film industry for the rest of my life. Yes, it's true: I’ll keep on writing the screenplays, sealing them into the 10 x 13 envelopes, sending them out, and getting the “rejection” letters. And why will I keep doing this: I'll do it because I can’t think of anything else to do. If I have to be a substitute teacher for another thirty or forty years while I’m writing my crappy, unproducable screenplays, then so be it, that's exactly what I will do. And substitute teaching isn't the worst thing in the world because kids, at least, are nice and not back-stabbing and hateful and paranoid and freakishly competitive and threatened by others, unlike every “adult” I have ever come across in my years of trying to break into the closed film industry. (Sometimes, to get through the bad days, I tell myself that even though I’ll never be able to afford to have a family and children of my own, it’s okay, because, as a substitute teacher, <em>I have all the kids in Los Angeles</em>, and that’s a great gift which many people – people who are more successful than I am – will never be able to experience. So I guess that, in this one particular respect, I’m lucky… or, at least, I can try and convince myself that I’m lucky, right?)<br /><br />And, fuck it, maybe I’m just not meant to get into the movie business – and maybe it isn’t even a complete loss; I mean, the kind of movies I grew up liking, when I was a kid growing up in the seventies (everything was so realistic and documentary-like back then) – well, they don’t even make movies like those anymore. Now all we get, are either these big, noisy, overproduced blockbusters with robots or sarcastic CGI barnyard animals who have Brooklyn accents, films where you need about a thousand Advils after they’re over, or else you get these rancid “faux independent films” made by studios, these whiny, talky, cutesy things about “hip” people who are actually totally un-hip. (Actual independent films are not shown in multiplexes, because movie studios, in an effort to keep the little guys out won’t book their films in a movie house that’s showing real independents. [Read the great book <em>Down and Dirty Pictures</em> by Peter Biskind for more 411 about this!) <br /><br /><br />You might think from what I’ve written that I enjoy griping, whining, suffering, and playing the victim and, to a certain extent, you're right. Suffering and griping and whining and feeling victimized are not the purest of emotions, but they are the only things that we – the film school graduates of the world – have got. These are four emotions which truly belong to us, emotions which nobody can take away, emotions which no man, or no screaming producer-lady who throws staplers at us and calls us “stupid” when we walk into her closed-door meeting, even though she just told us five minutes earlier to please walk into her meeting and bring her something, can ever hope to tear asunder.<br /><br />Suffering can be fun when it’s all you know. Speaking for myself, and for myself alone, may I please say this: “My sour grapes are sometimes sweet.”<br /><br />When these goofy on-line movie publications publish these humiliating (to me) “Fresh Face” articles each year, it just makes my friends and I feel really badly about ourselves, and I want to end this piece by saying that yesterday, I got to feel badly about myself for a whole new reason: Yesterday, I received an envelope in the mail from UCLA’s Film and TV Alumni Association, with a small donation envelope inside, and I've received similar mail from Columbia University's Graduate Department of Film in the past. The letter from UCLA actually said something along the lines of, “Now that you’re prospering in your film career [!], would you like to <em>give something back </em>to UCLA’s Film Department by helping the next generation of young student filmmakers?” (Did UCLA's Film Department skip a generation? Why did they not help my generation, the people who have never been able to get into the movie business in the first place?)<br /><br />Well, you know what? There is, now that I think about it, something that I would like to “give back” to all film schools and all university "film study" (faux degree) programs:<br /><br /> The middle finger.<br /> <br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SpwNzsJQDkI/AAAAAAAAAGA/1XOsE4T0kv8/s1600-h/finger1.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 284px; height: 320px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SpwNzsJQDkI/AAAAAAAAAGA/1XOsE4T0kv8/s320/finger1.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5376187236847980098" /></a><br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SpwOTSOmhII/AAAAAAAAAGQ/TmXhIo4OxGc/s1600-h/finger3.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 258px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SpwOTSOmhII/AAAAAAAAAGQ/TmXhIo4OxGc/s320/finger3.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5376187779646915714" /></a><br /><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SpwOgt0MREI/AAAAAAAAAGY/XKMQZX9-Q7U/s1600-h/finger4.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 268px; height: 320px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SpwOgt0MREI/AAAAAAAAAGY/XKMQZX9-Q7U/s320/finger4.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5376188010390635586" /></a><br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SpwOxqHjPmI/AAAAAAAAAGg/E9QUcVpE9l0/s1600-h/finger5.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 319px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SpwOxqHjPmI/AAAAAAAAAGg/E9QUcVpE9l0/s320/finger5.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5376188301455867490" /></a><br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SpwO8IuNloI/AAAAAAAAAGo/9mYjOlKPXlc/s1600-h/finger6.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 289px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SpwO8IuNloI/AAAAAAAAAGo/9mYjOlKPXlc/s320/finger6.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5376188481469781634" /></a><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SpwPINUU1SI/AAAAAAAAAGw/6xS1SdxgR90/s1600-h/finger7.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 255px; height: 320px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SpwPINUU1SI/AAAAAAAAAGw/6xS1SdxgR90/s320/finger7.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5376188688861812002" /></a><br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SpwPbIvjUJI/AAAAAAAAAG4/vVRWmEBgPWY/s1600-h/finger8.bmp"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 294px; height: 320px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SpwPbIvjUJI/AAAAAAAAAG4/vVRWmEBgPWY/s320/finger8.bmp" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5376189014051344530" /></a><br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SpwPsznaBkI/AAAAAAAAAHA/BWeFcMdqO1g/s1600-h/finger9.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 250px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SpwPsznaBkI/AAAAAAAAAHA/BWeFcMdqO1g/s320/finger9.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5376189317617681986" /></a><br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SpwP6Ik3i1I/AAAAAAAAAHI/SPMlqxT8VAI/s1600-h/finger11.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 318px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SpwP6Ik3i1I/AAAAAAAAAHI/SPMlqxT8VAI/s320/finger11.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5376189546582477650" /></a><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SpwQONh1JWI/AAAAAAAAAHQ/sTpQIgraWVc/s1600-h/finger12.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 182px; height: 261px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SpwQONh1JWI/AAAAAAAAAHQ/sTpQIgraWVc/s320/finger12.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5376189891509298530" /></a><br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SpwQYtOf8sI/AAAAAAAAAHY/499F4vHJwCA/s1600-h/finger10.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 226px; height: 320px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SpwQYtOf8sI/AAAAAAAAAHY/499F4vHJwCA/s320/finger10.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5376190071816843970" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Copyright 2009 by Charles L. Zigman. All Rights Reserved.<br /><br /><em>PS: Just because I couldn't get into the movie business -- it dont mean I couldn't get inna book bidness! Check out www.jeangabinbook.com, and read my new book<br />WORLD'S COOLEST MOVIE STAR: THE COMPLETE 95 FILMS (AND LEGEND) OF JEAN GABIN (featuring a foreword by Brigitte Bardot)!</em>CZO: Chuck Zigman Overdrivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01597949826304464382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7968054145164198227.post-59489207953704267072009-08-06T10:35:00.001-07:002009-08-12T23:47:33.007-07:00Happy Birthday to Elisa Evans, The Comedy World's Best-Kept Secret<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SoI8tIwQTsI/AAAAAAAAAFI/_2EeE7RgwSw/s1600-h/elisahot.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 214px; height: 320px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SoI8tIwQTsI/AAAAAAAAAFI/_2EeE7RgwSw/s320/elisahot.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5368920451920711362" /></a><br /><strong>This is Elisa Evans, American Humorist. If you know what's good for you, you'll start knowing her right now.</strong><br /><br /><br />Usually, I use this blogsite, on the rare occasion that I actually add something to it, to put up random articles/interviews/stories which I've written. But today, I have decided to crawl out from under my rock of insane self-absorption and shift the focus over to another person -- namely, to my friend, Elisa Evans, whose birthday happens to be today, August 7th. (Happy Birthday, Elisa!)<br /><br />Elisa is, basically, the entertainment world's best-kept secret. She's a great actor and writer, and she's "the comedian's comedian." Honestly, I can't figure out why she's not on t.v. every week, because she's about ten million times funnier than any of the people on "Saturday Night Live," "MAD TV," or "Hannity." I'm not Elisa's manager or agent, and she doesn't owe me any money. I'm just her friend and I decided that, because I have my own blogsite, it falls upon me to introduce you to her, if you don't know her already. And shame on you if you don't.<br /><br />Here is Elisa in two sketches of her own devising, and she is both the writer and the star. If you want to see more of Elisa's work, you can go to her website, http://elisaevans.com, or you can visit her blogsite, http://estherrandolph.blogspot.com, or you can loiter around on her YouTube page. (Or: Because she's friendly, you could probably go to her house, as well, but I wouldn't advise it.) <br /><br />First, let's enjoy Elisa in one of her six already-completed sketches (you can see the other ones on YouTube) in which she plays "ESTHER RANDOLPH, PSYCHIC:"<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/RQR133Zh-7w&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/RQR133Zh-7w&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /> <br />"Esther Randolph, Psychic: Aries" is Written by Elisa Evans, Directed and Edited by Joshua Taback, Photographed by Dave Ramos, and the Music is by Paul Oehlers.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />And now, let's laugh it up with Elisa, in "THE SCHNEGEES FAMILY INTERVENTION:"<br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Sg9a_DCfBNk&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Sg9a_DCfBNk&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />"The Schnegees: Family Intervention" is Written by Elisa Evans. It stars<br />Giselle Anthony (www.giselleanthony.com), Junko Goda, Joshua Taback, and Philip Newby. It's Directed by Dyer Evans, Photographed by Dave Ramos, and Edited by Josh Taback.<br /><br />See? I told you. Elisa Evans is Utterly Brilliant.<br /><br />Happy Birthday, Elisa!<br />http://elisaevans.com<br />http://estherrandolph.blogspot.comCZO: Chuck Zigman Overdrivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01597949826304464382noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7968054145164198227.post-71593779164428790282009-07-28T18:11:00.000-07:002010-10-03T01:16:07.892-07:00MY DRUG IS ME: My Never Before Published Interview with William Margold, Adult Entertainment Business Legend<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/TKg7tb1mfRI/AAAAAAAAAKw/g03GKDdCSFY/s1600/Margold2.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 204px; height: 320px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/TKg7tb1mfRI/AAAAAAAAAKw/g03GKDdCSFY/s320/Margold2.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5523730594722643218" /></a><br /><br />WILLIAM MARGOLD,<br />INTERVIEWED BY CHARLES ZIGMAN on July 10th and July 18th, 1999,<br />and on July 14, 2009.<br />Published on August 5, 2009.<br /><br /><br /><em>A few weeks ago, when I started this blogsite, which is designed to be sort of a 'catch-all' in which I can publish anything I feel like publishing from my files (articles I've written, short stories, reviews) the second piece I "put up" was my never-before published interview with the late, great television legend, Milton Berle. I had interviewed Berle ten years ago, in July of 1999, for possible inclusion in a Crown/Random House book called <strong>Gig: People Talk About Their Jobs at the Time of the Millennium,</strong> edited by John Bowe, Marisa Bowe, and Sabin Streeter. Because of the length of my Milton Berle piece (it was about 25,0000 words -- much longer than the 1,500 words I was supposed to turn in), <strong>Gig</strong> decided not to use it, so I waited a decade and published it myself, in its complete and unexpurgated version, right here at Chuck Zigman Overdrive.<br /><br />There is another great interview I conducted at the same time (July 1999) for the same book, which was also never published, and for the same reason – as in the case of my Berle interview, it was deemed to be simply "too long," and there was no way to do it justice by cutting it. I interviewed the legendary William Margold, who is not only a true legend of adult entertainment world, but also the "voice," "unofficial publicist," and “patriarch” of that business. (He's also a magnificent cheerleader of his own accomplishments, breathlessly exclaiming, in a pre-interview phone conversation we had, "My drug is me!")<br /><br />Since my interview with Bill Margold has never been published, here it is right now, and I want to thank Bill for sitting down with me this past month, on July 14, 2009, to update and correct the piece, which I will now begin, with my original 1999 introduction.<br /><br />Here it is:</em><br /><br /><br />Bill Margold is, quite simply, the most entertaining orator I have ever heard. He's, quite possibly, even greater than Abraham Lincoln or "The Two Big Juniors" (Martin Luther King, Jr. and Will Rogers, Jr.).<br /><br />Bill started off in the adult entertainment business in 1971, as a journalist. 1971 was the period where sex movies were still 'softcore;' this was the period right before they made the transition and became 'hardcore,' in 1972. So Bill was right there at the birth of hardcore cinema.<br /><br />At roughly the same time as he was acting, from 1973 to 1982, he was also an agent, working alongside Reb Sawitz, porn's first and greatest talent agent.<br /><br />As a teenager, in 1956, Bill spent some time in juvenile hall for being 'incorrigible,' and later, in the sixties, before his entrance into porn, he returned to the same juvenile facility to become a counselor. He also majored in journalism, at Cal State Northridge, and spent a few years as a journalist.<br /><br />Today, Bill is one of the adult entertainment business's leading counselors/activists/crusaders. To many, he is also one of the leading "voices of the industry." While Bill very occasionally, at the age of 55, continues to act in adult films, he now toils selflessly, on a full-time basis, as a crusader for three not-for-profit organizations, two of which he stgarted. All three of these organizations are dedicated to making life more bearable for an industry that, even he admits, can be pretty unusual most of the time; Bill refers to his business as the "Playpen of the Damned."<br /><br />Through his primary Organization, PAW (Protecting Adult Welfare), Bill counsels young actors and actresses in his business from the more mercentary types who might seek to take advantage of, or abuse, them. <br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SnmcJH0cUPI/AAAAAAAAAEo/TtkWoJYi68Q/s1600-h/PAWlogo.gif"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 211px; height: 254px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SnmcJH0cUPI/AAAAAAAAAEo/TtkWoJYi68Q/s320/PAWlogo.gif" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5366492111520420082" /></a><br /><br />Through the second organization which Bill started himself, FOXE (Fans of X-Rated Entertainment), Bill protects our sacred, God-given right to watch adult entertainment by holding several fundraising events each year, including, but not restricted to, nude bowl-a-thons, currently known as "Bare Bowling." <br /><br />Bill also happens to be the trade show coordinator/board member for a third organization, the Free Speech Coalition [authors note: Bill ceased to be involved with the organization in 2006]. This is the only job for which Bill receives any kind of remuneration, besides writing reviews of mainstream Hollywood movies for the <em>L.A. X-Press </em>(one of L.A.'s longest-running free weeklies), and he receives only a nominal salary for both of these jobs.<br /><br />In this interview, Bill states, "There is no dollar sign in the word 'cause.'" He calls himself, "The Not-for-Profit Panderer." In this interview, he talks about how people in his business sometimes "don't like him," but he is one of the most eminently likeable/cool/avuncular people you'll ever meet. <br /><br />As Mother Teresa is to India, so William Margold is to his world. (Plus, he's the biggest Detroit Lions fan you've ever seen!)<br /><br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/javQhkYJB24&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/javQhkYJB24&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><strong>Bill and actress/producer/<em>High Society </em>magazine-publisher Gloria Leonard, two adult entertainment industry legends, being inducted into Larry Flynt's Hustler Hall of Fame, on January 17, 2002. This six-minute video, for some reason, features three minutes of beginning credits, which you can fast-forward through, like I did.</strong><br />************************************************<br /><br />BILL, YOU’VE BEEN IN THE PORN INDUSTRY FOR TWENTY-SEVEN YEARS, SO SET UP FOR ME WHAT IT IS, FROM YOUR PERSPECTIVE.<br />The essence of my industry, is that it is a masturbatory catharsis for the masses, and why shouldn’t it be? Viper [a porn star Bill dated for five years until 1991, the one great love of his life, whom he will refer to innumerable times in this interview] said she made movies so she could have sex with ten thousand men at a time. When I starred in an X-rated movie, I was having sex for ten thousand men at a time. I’m the surrogate, the vessel, for the men in the audience. And look at me! I’m the most ordinary person you’ve ever seen – I’m an oafish, teacher-type looking person. I was very lucky. If I considered this “work,” I never would have done it. It’s been recess twenty-four hours a day for the last twenty-five years. <br /><br />One of my favorite quotes: After the HIV incidents of [1998, in which some porn stars had succumbed to AIDS], I said, “Recess is over.” I call my business “The Playpen of the Damned” – which will eventually be the name of the book written about me – because that’s what it is. We porno people are sociologically damned. Society jacks off to us with their left hand and pushes us away with their right. We are the quintessential essence of what everything hypocritical in society is all about. This is a multi-billion dollar business, so somebody out there is spending the money, but nobody admits to watch it.<br /><br />EVEN THOUGH YOU OCCASIONALLY ACT IN MOVIES, YOU ARE MOSTLY NOW THE VOICE OF YOUR INDUSTRY. YOU TALK ABOUT CENSORSHIP A LOT, ESPECIALLY THROUGH YOUR POSITION AS ONE OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS FOR THE “FREE SPEECH COALITION.” SO, FOR YOU: WHAT IS CENSORSHIP?<br />The adult entertainment industry has, wisely and widely, started to censor itself. Of course, we have a twenty thousand-dollar bounty leading to the arrest and conviction of anybody involved in child pornography. So immediately, that’s off the table… And we do not deal with animals. And we do not deal in violent sexuality. We deal in certain aberrational sexuality of the fetish variety. <br /><br />AS ONE OF THE MAIN VOICES OF YOUR INDUSTRY, YOU’RE THE HEAD OF – OR YOU'RE ON THE BOARD OF – THREE ORGANIZATIONS DEDICATED TO THE WELFARE OF PERFORMERS WHO ENTER YOUR INDUSTRY. WHAT WOULD SAY IS YOUR JOB TITLE – IN OTHER WORDS, IS THERE AN ALL-ENCOMPASSING TITLE, ENCOMPASSING EVERYTHING YOU DO?<br />“I’m an asshole.” Everybody always calls me that. But it’s like I’ve always said, “It’s better to be an asshole than a whole ass.” I thrive on my honest enemies and my dishonest friends. I have no real title. “Renaissance Man” was dubbed on me many, many years ago by <em>Playboy</em>.<br /><br />I’m also called “Papa Bear,” because I watch over all the cubs – all of the younger people in the industry. I watch over all the cubs in “The Tree of X.” I like the Papa Bear mentality. I’m a patriarch to this industry, some people say I’m the godfather. My life operates on that level, in the sense that I’ll never ask anybody for something twice. I only ask once, if I don’t get it, I can really just eliminate that person from my life and go on. I do tend to shed relationships and even friends, like skin. I’m very snake-like in that respect. I go through a molting period and I eliminate people from my life who are draining. I’m drained on a twenty-four hour a day basis. My emotional system is one gigantic battery. One of my relationships – one of my friends – said I “use people.” And I analyze that I do use people. I use them by helping them, and that allows me to continue to validate myself. By doing things to help people, I’m continually, uh, I guess, feathering my own nest. So just in case I have to fall down, it’s going to be considerably soft.<br /><br />My major concern now, is to keep this industry free of kamikazes [women who come in, take drugs, live hard, and often commit suicide]. I just can’t have crash-and-burn people. And again, we’ve had suicides in this business. It’s getting to the point where the phone rings – I have an 800 number for PAW – 24 hours a day, and I expect the worst every time the phone rings.<br /><br />A lot of it is attributed to the fact that, the women in this business sense that, while they’re jacked off-to, there’s derisional attrition. They know they’re doing something that people are getting off to, but they’re held in a despicable light. And it’s just tragic.<br /><br />See, for me, the perfect, prototypical adult performer would be what I’ve termed, a “sterile orphan:” a person with no family, no kids, no underbelly, no past – absolutely pure, untouched by any vulnerability. Then I would adopt that person, make them strong, insulate them from within, rather than have them battered from without. But I can’t get that many “sterile orphans.” And it’s very depressing. I don’t like to see people come into this business and, when I ask them what they’re going to do, they go, “I don’t know.” I say, “Do you understand that you’re going to be seen by people you don’t know?” They go, “Yeah, I guess so. But they might not see it.” Then I go, “What about your kids coming home from school ten years from now? What are you going to do when their friends bring over a magazine with a picture of you with a candle shoved up your ass? Will they think you were playing the part of a birthday cake?” And some of the women go, “I don’t really think about the future.” And that’s a tragedy, because your past will catch up with you. In 1972, when I started doing this – and that’s twenty-seven years ago. I knew exactly when I walked into this thing what I wanted.<br /><br />WHAT DID YOU WANT?<br />I wanted, when I first got into the adult business, to be the George Plimpton of pornography. I have a great affection for the Detroit Lions. I have read, of course, <em>Paper Lion</em>. I figured, well, if I’m not going to play for the Lions, I might as well get into porn! And when I finally met Plimpton a few years ago, I gave him my card and I said to him, “I have been ‘you’ in the X-rated film industry for the last twenty-five years.” And he said, “That’s very interesting.” He called back, August of ’97. We talked a lot about the Detroit Lions. And he said, “You know, son, there’s a book in you. Why don’t you write it?” Plimpton has a sort of melted elegance. I’m the X-rated version of him and he’s the real-world version of me. At one point in time, Plimpton was approached to be in an X-rated movie, but he wouldn’t do it. I think he realized the damnation.<br /><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/Snjts0tlAfI/AAAAAAAAAEg/YaN5iy9fXSI/s1600-h/detroit-lions-2.gif"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 234px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/Snjts0tlAfI/AAAAAAAAAEg/YaN5iy9fXSI/s320/detroit-lions-2.gif" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5366300310331785714" /></a><br /><br /><br />Because while, indeed, you have guys in the business like Ron Jeremy, they haven’t lived the diversification that I have. I’ve been in gay movies, but I haven’t done anything homosexual. In all the gay moves I’ve been in, I’ve gotten strangled, I’ve gotten crushed to death in one of them, I’ve gotten shot. I did a jack-off scene in one of ‘em. The best orgasm I ever had was a six-hour masturbation scene. It was incredible. It was voluminous! My left hand’s always been my best friend, anyway.<br /><br />WHAT’S THE GREATEST THING ABOUT THE PORN BUSINESS?<br />You can’t get fired from it. <br /><br />IS THAT RIGHT FOR EVERYBODY? NOBODY GETS FIRED IN YOUR BUSINESS?<br />Well, unless you do something obviously wrong. I’m not going to work with kids. I’m not going to work with animals – one of them might bite off my dick. So I’m not going to do anything that vile. But I finally found a place where I can’t get kicked out of – the porn business. And I like it.<br /><br />DO ACTORS EVER GET KICKED OUT OF THE X-RATED BUSINESS FOR ANY REASON? IS THERE ANYTHING YOU A PERSON MIGHT DO THAT WOULD BE CONSIDERED SO REPELLENT THAT HE OR SHE COULD JUST GET KICKED OUT?<br />Well, there are people who are relegated to other areas of the business. Let’s say – just hypothetically, although it’s happened – certain men come into the business and, while indeed they’re good heterosexual studs, they dally in a “gay mentality.” Once they do that, they are somewhat labeled. Because now, with all of this fear of AIDS and all that, they’re sort of relegated into another area where it’s tougher for them to regain their marginal foothold on the ladder of respectability. <br /><br />There is a caste system in the adult entertainment business. You can look at it as a football team. There’s a quarterback, maybe two. Perhaps a handful of running backs. A handful of ends. But mostly, for all intensive purposes, most of the people are linemen. They are day players and they are the functional mentality of this business, the life blood of the industry. Because the prima donnas/the running backs/the pompous peacocks – they take themselves a little too seriously. And they’re just adult performers. That’s the whole thing, they’re just actresses. They’re like children. But I will put them in their place if they get out of hand. What I gained out of this, is that while a lot of them hate me, they respect me. I thrive on their respect far more than their affection, because their affections is transitory, but I’ve earned their respect. Maybe a sort of love. I’ve punished them, but I’ve never hurt any of them.<br /><br />YOU SOMETIMES “PUNISH” YOUR KIDS? THAT’S SO OMINOUS. HOW DO YOU DO THAT?<br />Oh, of course I punish my kids. I punish my kids by telling them the truth. I punish my kids also, by setting them free. I think it gets to a point in a person’s life where you can only keep the kid in the cocoon for so long. Then you burn the cocoon and you make the kid fly off. I have eliminated people from my life, and I don’t know whether that’s punishing them or just doing the right thing at the right time. I have shed people like a snake sheds skin, because I can’t keep all of these skins on my body at the same time and there are people who no longer need me. And there are people who simply need to be on their own and need to be sent off in whatever direction they’re going to go in. Viper, for example, spiritually outgrew being Viper.<br /><br />HOW DOES A WOMAN WHO SENSES THAT SHE’S IN TROUBLE GET IN TOUCH WITH “PAW?”<br />If you have a problem within our industry, you call me, and we meet about it – perhaps at my office -- and I would try to rectify that problem. A problem with a job that you’ve had, a problem with a relationship. Just a problem. If you want to talk, call me up and that’s what I do. <br /><br />LET’S TALK MORE SPECIFICALLY ABOUT “PAW.” WHAT HAPPENS IN A COUNSELING SESSION THERE<br />In a counseling session, but more in our classes, which we also do, we play out roles. We see how people would deal with a crisis. It’s all confidential, as far as we don’t tell stories about real people. Five years ago, I found a wonderful woman named Diane Kelly, a psychiatrist in Beverly Hills, and she handles the classes for me. She said to me, quite insightfully, she’s never missed a single class because she’s so concerned about some of the people at the meeting – she’s concerned about their welfare, I mean. Again, the X-rated industry is a huge tree. When a cub falls out of the tree and lands on its head, I put it back on the tree.<br /><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/Sm-oYR5OW8I/AAAAAAAAADA/E6oE7tM-kBA/s1600-h/margold4.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/Sm-oYR5OW8I/AAAAAAAAADA/E6oE7tM-kBA/s320/margold4.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5363690816295295938" /></a><br /><br />HOW DID YOU MAKE THE TRANSITION FROM PERFORMER IN ADULT MOVIES TO COUNSELOR FOR ADULT ENTERTAINERS? IN OTHER WORDS: WHAT IN YOUR LIFE PREPARED YOU FOR WHAT YOU’RE DOING NOW?<br />No transition. I’ve always been a counselor my whole life, even before I was in the adult business. That’s based on my background, living in juvenile hall as a kid [1956], and working there thirteen years later [1969-1971] as a counselor. <br /><br />June 30, 1956, I went to the dining hall in Unit R. I was twelve years old. A kid was actually talking to his breakfast! I didn’t know what the hell he was doing. A counselor – we called the counselors ‘sirs’ – said to me, “It was nice of you to talk to him.” They told me that nobody else wanted to deal with him in any substantial way. The kids all liked me when I was a counselor there. I didn’t want to make the kids prisoners. I became one of them. I would dress down to their clothing. The only thing that separated me from being one of them, was that I had a lanyard with keys on it. On the football field, when I played with the kids, they would say, “You’re not going to punish us if we accidentally hurt you on the field?” And I’d say, “No, I’m not going to punish you. And you’re not going to report me if I accidentally hurt you.” <br /><br />I’d go eat dinner with the kids, in the mess hall, and the cooks actually thought I was one of the inmates and not a counselor. One of them yelled at me, “Get back in line, what are you doing here?” And I would allow myself to be treated exactly like the kids were being treated, because that way, the kids respected me more than they respected the other counselors. I was the one who wouldn’t talk down to them.<br /><br />I would spend certain Saturday nights locked in, “being” one of the kids. And the kids thought I was so great because I was treated with the same scorn by the night crew that they were. The night crew had no idea I was a counselor, they just thought I was an older kid! They wouldn’t let me out at night; they wouldn’t give me water; they made me piss out the window. And I was in prison! And I couldn’t tip my hat at who I was to the night crew, because then I’d get in more trouble. Then the morning crew would come and let me out, and the kids would applaud, because they knew I went through a night of being one of them. And I wanted them to understand that I was one of them, that I empathized with them. And in the two-and-a-half years I worked in juvenile hall, not one of the kids ever raised a hand to me in hostility. If kids sense you’re sincere and you’re not going to hurt ‘em, they open up to you. I’d walk them to solitary, to Unit X. If a kid said to me, “What the fuck do you know about this place, motherfucker,” I would just tell him, “I lived here for three months, in 1956, in Unit W.” And then I’d say, “Let me show you where Unit W is.” <br /><br />When I went back to juvey to be a counselor in 1969 it was a shame because – well, a month before I got there, they tore down the unit I lived in when I was a kid. I had a great affection for juvey. When I was a teenager, I cried the day they made me leave juvenile hall. I had to be dragged down the hall to leave.<br /><br />I was forced to take care of myself at an early age. To avoid taking care of myself, I always thought, I’d just take care of other people. You asked me what I did to prepare for this, but everything I do prepares me for everything else. It was pre-destination when I got to work in Reb’s office as a manager [1973-1982]. <br /><br />The other reason that I started doing the counseling and the activism in this business, is that, in the eighties, I realized that nobody else in the business could talk about the business in ways that I could. And I assumed the position – as I assumed the position of being trade-show coordinator – of being spokesman for the adult industry. The Meese Commission came along and somebody needed to go talk to them. I felt that I needed to tell the truth about my industry. I thought it would be really cool to tell them – on my terms – what I had lived for that thirteen years (at that time I had been in the business for about thirteen years). And I went down there and spoke to them. <br /><br />As far as protecting people – as far as being “Papa Porn” – that probably starts years and years before PAW, as early as 1973, when I started running Reb’s office, and I started “adopting kids” [bringing new talent into the business], the first one being Serena, uh, and then I started watching kids, and protecting them, and listening to them, and caring about them. Being on-call for them, being available to get phone calls from them when they had problems or even if they just wanted to talk to somebody. And just being there and being a security blanket for them. So, there’s no transition, it’s simply an evolution from one level of the business into another level of the business into yet another level of the business. Now I’m involved in doing everything.<br /><br />I started as a writer, then an actor – if you want to call it acting – then I was an agent. I still do some agenting – if somebody new needs help, I’ll manage them and advise them, without taking any percentage. After we got busted in Las Vegas in ’93, people said, “How much money did you make putting on that show?" and I said, "None.” I referred to myself as “the not-for-profit panderer.” Also, [I was] “the not-for-mercenary-gain-manager.” I do it because I believe in it; I do it because I know the right connections for these people; I do it because I think it’s going to be good for them, and if they trust me, I can try and create them into something bigger than they are. The whole purpose of PAW, is to try and give them some type of stability. I’m Peter Pan and I go through a whole series of Wendys. And my current “Wendy” is [a young starlet named] Marin Beaute.<br /><br />So I don’t think I’ve “transitioned,” as you put it. I don’t think I’ve transitioned into anything. I’m currently attempting to put together a production company. I want to go back into making movies one of these days. Not acting in them – certainly, I don’t think I’ll be doing any more penetrational sex, in fact I know I won’t. Whether or not I do an occasional blow job scene, I don’t know; I’m not even sure I’ll do that. I think that I have been relegated to masturbation. However, I think that essentially, I’m jacking off for the masses, so how much am I really losing? I’m really giving to the audience what I believe in the most. And that’s sexuality. And whether it be penetrational, oral, or masturbatory, my orgasms are their orgasms. They can join me in jacking off. <br /> <br />LET’S GO BACK TO YOUR MISSPENT YOUTH FOR A MOMENT. WHAT DID YOU DO TO WIND UP IN JUVENILE HALL AS A TEENAGER?<br />I was sent there for incorrigibility. I just said no to everybody – mostly, to my mother.<br /><br />WHEN YOU’RE COUNSELING A PORN STARLET THROUGH “PAW,” THE WOMEN COME TO YOU WITH THEIR PROBLEMS. HOW MUCH DO THEY BRING ON THEMSELVES? AND HOW MUCH ARE THEY JUST OVERWHELMED BY WHAT THEY’RE DOING?<br />A lot of the women in the porn business are in relationships with guys who don’t approve of what they’re doing for their living. These guys take their money, but they damn them for making the money. So I spend a lot of time counseling them. The toughest part of all of this is that it’s a crowded business full of lonely people. And it hurts me.<br /><br />I have a roommate – you’ll meet her. I’ve had a series of roommates in my life – platonic roommates, women who are new to the adult world. The latest one is a five-foot-tall German girl named Marin Beaute. I gave her her last name. [pronounced “Boot-ay”] It’s like having a puppy in the house. She does massive anal scenes, and she’s a little tiny person! She speaks German, and she speaks English with a German accent, and it’s so cute! She’s naturally humorous. And she twists the language around, so you have to sort of laugh when you listen to her. She’s just really fun to have around.<br /><br />The greatest of all the roommates, and really my favorite “kid” of all time – and it hurts the other “kids” when they hear me say it – is a woman who lived with me in ’97, a woman named Anita Cannibal. Cannibal is just my all time favorite “kid.” I’ve lived with a lot of depressing people.<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/Sm-niHkWGAI/AAAAAAAAAC4/dTUFRqxCOW0/s1600-h/margoldcannibal.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/Sm-niHkWGAI/AAAAAAAAAC4/dTUFRqxCOW0/s320/margoldcannibal.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5363689885810432002" /></a><br /><strong>Bill Margold with Anita Cannibal.</strong><br /><br />Most of the actresses in this business are depressed and, more than that, they’re depressing. I keep having to try to infuse humor and vitality in them and give them a reason for existence. But Cannibal came to me as this wondrous human merry-go-round. She simply lit up my life for a year and I still speak to her a lot. I just adore her. She was into this blonde, brassy persona, which is not what I like sexually. On a sexual level, I like a bone rail-thin, titless tomboy. Give me a six-foot-tall woman with an ironing board for a chest and I will be ecstatic!<br /><br />EVEN THOUGH YOU RUN THESE ‘BENEVOLENT AGENCIES,’ DO YOU EVER GET IN TROUBLE FOR THINGS YOU DO THERE?<br />Back in ’93, we got arrested in Las Vegas for putting on a live sex show, where we raised fifteen thousand dollars, in four hours, for the Free Speech Coalition. We went to jail. Nina Hartley [legendary porn star] was there and so was Miss Sharon Mitchell [another legendary porn star].<br /><br />I hold Sharon Mitchell in great reverence, but I now know exactly how the Titanic felt; because when you hug Sharon Mitchell, there’s no warmth. “That woman,” Nina Hartley has said, “has been dead for years, she just sort of exists.” The woman should have been dead a long time ago. Heroin addict. She’s probably taken every drug known and unknown to man.<br /><br />WHO ELSE IN THE BUSINESS IS RUNNING NOT-FOR-PROFIT AGENCIES TO PROTECT PEOPLE IN THE BUSINESS BESIDES YOU? IS THERE ANYBODY ELSE?<br />Sharon Mitchell just started AIM [an AIDS testing and counseling service for porno stars, as well as for the general public] as redemption. She’s not a very warm person; and she started it, I think, to make people like her more. I don’t begrudge her. She said something very cryptic to me once. She said that she’ll only be doing this – that she’ll only be running AIM – for awhile. I said, “No, no, you don’t do something like this [something altruistic] ‘for awhile,’ Mitch. This is forever.” And she just said, “Couple years from now, I won’t be doing this.”<br /><br />WHAT’S THE TRAINING YOU’VE HAD?<br />Self-training. <em>AVN</em> [<em>Adult Video News</em>, the adult industry’s largest trade publication] was not getting the job done. They were standing there and handing out insignificant pieces of paper. I thought of concepts that could make money. Adult Industry Stars’ birthdays. “If-Your-Birthday-Coincides-with-a-Stars”-calendars. Calendar cost a dollar and a quarter. From that, I spawned Video Vixen Baseball Cards, posters, tee-shirts, hats. Candy, bumper stickers. I fight for your rights to watch adult entertainment. I want to give you a tangible item. People are like children, they want something in exchange for a donation.<br /><br />FOR HOW MUCH LONGER DO YOU THINK YOU’LL BE ABLE TO KEEP ACTIVE, DOING YOUR ‘JOBS?’ <br />To be honest, I think I’ll continue to work with the Free Speech Coalition as long as it exists. When it no longer exists, I’ll go to the other ones I’ve spawned – FOXE, which has its own prospects and PAW, which will have its own product. So overall what I do is preserving freedom of choice on the island of X for consenting adults by consenting adults. It’s all predicated on the following statement I made to the Meese Commission in 1985. “With a society that is drug infested, violence racked, and polluted by chemical greed, nobody has ever died from an overdose of pornography.” Of course, I think a lot of my trade show coordination and selling comes from the fact that, I was a sales person – of dog food and magazines and other items door to door while I was in college. I believe in what I’m selling here a lot more than the dog food and the magazines.<br /><br />WHAT’S A TYPICAL DAY FOR YOU LIKE?<br />Well, today, you’re going with me to help me set up my Free Speech Coalition anti-censorship booth at the Convention Center [adult industry trade show for merchants and video distributors to display their wares, featuring personal appearances by autograph-signing porno stars], so we can talk about that. My day begins around seven, because I get calls from New York, where it’s ten. They think that just because it’s ten there, it happens to be ten everywhere, which I’ll never understand. I have so many conventions I’m responsible for now, that it’s a twenty-five hour a day job. I’m already planning a sex toy show three days after this one]; I’m also involved with the Fan Fare convention, the East Coast Video Show, and more.<br /><br />I also have created a lot of materials to raise money for the Free Speech Coalition: I’m already planning new product, including “Hot Date Book 2000,” my latest calendar, featuring the 52 legends of erotica [fifty two men and women from the Golden Age of Porn 1970s and 1980s]. The most famous calendar date in the whole adult industry is the date when The King was born – John Holmes. Interestingly enough, my roommate now, Marin Beaute, was born on the same day as John Holmes! So my day, basically is… whether I’m at a trade show for the Anti-Censorship Coalition, or whether I’m with PAW, my lifeline to the world is the phone. I handle all of this on a multitude of levels. Oh, yeah, and I also make this “anti-censorship candy.” [He gives me some little hard candies, the kind you see at a coffee shop, next to the cash register; they’re cinnamon-flavored and have little American flags on them.] They’re pretty tasty!<br /><br />DESCRIBE A TYPICAL DAY FOR YOU WHEN YOU’RE NOT AT A TRADE SHOW. PRINCIPALLY, DESCRIBE A DAY AT “PAW” – BUT ALSO MAKE SURE TO TELL ME EVERYTHING ELSE YOU DO, BILL!<br />If I were to give you another typical day, I would say that it begins with the most important thing – finding out what’s happening in the world of sports! I have my coffee, I answer my e-mail. Then, invariably, I work on projects that will go on in my booths at different conventions. By noon, I go to my office in the valley. All of the organizations I run or work for, I deal with out of my PAW office. But all of my “lives” are dedicated to coordinating to promoting things, to asking people in the industry if they need help… I don’t get vacations and I don’t get weekends. I might go to review a movie. Or I watch t.v. “Simpsons.” “Law and Order.” “The Practice.” “X-Files.” I love “X-Files,” but I want it to end. Somebody should put a bullet in it. I love “The Sopranos.”<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/Sm-nPwt_mGI/AAAAAAAAACw/DAES2vifq7g/s1600-h/margold2.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/Sm-nPwt_mGI/AAAAAAAAACw/DAES2vifq7g/s320/margold2.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5363689570439239778" /></a><br /><br />My job as Trade Show Coordinator is the only thing I get paid for, as well as for writing movie reviews. The other things I don’t get paid for. Everything else I do is non-profit. [Bill’s telling the truth; he lives in a modest, but very nice, apartment.] I never really wanted to be paid, because, as I see it, there’s no dollar sign in the word “cause.” It got to a point that people got greedy and whined that they wanted to be paid for working in my organizations. We now have a lobbyist for the Free Speech Coalition. We have a secretary, whom I refer to as a “sixty thousand dollar paperweight.” I decided, at a point in time, that while there is no dollar sign in the word “cause,” there was certainly a dollar sign in the word “survival.” So I do allow myself to get paid solely for my jobs as Trade Show Coordinator and movie critic.<br /><br />I used to be paid to write columns for <em>AVN</em> [<em>Adult Video News</em>], which is the <em>Daily Variety </em>of the porn business.] I don’t like them. I got stigmata from them. My hand bled. The problem with AVN, is that they don’t care about the welfare of the people in the business, which is what I’m most concerned about. They’re just out to make money. As I said, I wrote some columns for them for awhile, but I had to stop because I can’t accept money for something I don’t believe in. I believe in the Free Speech Coalition, for example. That’s the only one I get a small salary for, the others I do for free. I mean, I need the money, to be perfectly honest with you. I have to feed two hungry cats.<br /><br />I don’t charge for a whole lot of what I do, because I have autonomy. The price of sometimes spending your own money, is to buy your freedom. So I’m not overly disappointed in the way I operate my situation. I will ask for another raise soon. Two thousand a month, to be trade show coordinator for the Free Speech Coalition. And my van eats some of it. I have health and dental insurance now, which I didn’t used to be able to afford, although I’m terrified of the dentist. My teeth hurt more now than they did before I went to the guy. The man’s building the Sistine Chapel in my mouth!<br /><br />At night, I’ll have to answer phone calls. Sometime around eleven, I’ll get to go to sleep. I’ll wake up around seven o’ clock. Today’s the convention, so I’ll take awhile to get ready to go downtown at the Convention Center. And I like to be in my booth an hour before the convention opens because I like to make sure everything’s in place. Today, I listened to people whining, which is typical. They’re infringing on my territory.<br /><br />WHAT MAKES A GOOD BOOTH AT A TRADE SHOW CONVENTION?<br />A good booth at a convention only works if you have incredibly attractive females in the booth with you, who are vibrant. A booth does not work with a bunch of men in suits who are incredibly boring. I wear slogan tee shirts that I’m selling, tennis shoes. I drink water all day long when I work a booth. Camel-like, I never leave the booth because, if I leave, I feel that everything will stop. I hover over my booth with a great, great affection… Not that I’m irreplaceable, but my energy is irreplaceable.<br /><br />WOULD YOU SAY THAT YOU’RE THE LEADING VOICE OF ANTI-CENSORSHIP IN YOUR BUSINESS?<br />I’m the staunchest supporter of our industry and I’m also its severest critic. And I’m not anti-censorship to the point where I think that anything is tolerable, because I think that many things are intolerable. I’m a firm believer in what I call “common sense-orship.” I think that anything two consenting adults want to do together is cool. But no killing each other; no snuff films; no kids; no aberrational violence; no scatology movies – you know, pissing movies – even though I was just recently involved in one. But that was just apple juice.<br /><br />I’VE ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW SOMETHING, SO I’LL ASK YOU, BILL: HOW MUCH DO PEOPLE REALLY LIKE TO WATCH THAT ABERRATIONAL STUFF? I MEAN, I JUST GOT THIS CATALOG IN THE MAIL, AND I SWEAR, THEY HAD THIS VIDEO THEY WERE SELLING WHICH WAS CALLED SOMETHING LIKE, “PEEING ON DWARVES!”<br />Absolutely. We’re a jaded society.<br /><br />WHAT’S YOUR WORKPLACE LIKE?<br />My workplace is between my ears. Even though I have a physical office that I go to over in the valley, for PAW, I would have to say that my mind is my office. My home – this apartment – is known as “the cave.” As you can see, it’s teddy bear/adult video/Detroit Lion-oriented [his apartment is fully of teddy bears, adult videos, and Detroit Lions memorabilia]. And of course, I’ve got my two cats. My workplace is my mind. My mind is constantly creating sound bytes and products over and over again. I also have a little home office here, with a computer. My PAW office in the valley is interesting. There’s nothing sexually-oriented there. That’s where you go to talk, if you have a problem. I never turn the lights on, because we sit and we talk, and I have teddy bears and candy for the women who come in. And the starlets sit across the room from me. And eventually they’ll grab a teddy bear and they’ll open up and talk. And they tell me whatever’s wrong with them – or whatever’s right with them. I have so many teddy bears down there – as well as here in my apartment, as you’ve noticed – and they really like these teddy bears. It brings them back into the security of being a child, and it relegates them back to the innocent time. And the room is very blue and cool and tranquil and womb-like. And that means a lot to me. It means a lot to me that I can work with these “kids.” <br /><br />YOU SAID THAT ADULT PERFORMERS ARE CHILDLIKE?<br />Not so much childlike as they are “juvenile delinquent-like.” The great adult female performers, are the ones where the little girl hasn’t died inside of them.<br />When the camera goes on, the little girl hops out and runs around and lifts her dress and gets away with things.<br /><br />HOW DID YOU START PAW?<br />Protecting Adult Welfare was created five years ago. It rose from the misery of this business and the suicide of Savannah [popular porn actress], on July 11, 1994. On that date, I received a phone call from Ron Silva, a director of adult material. And I swore at that time there would be no more Savannahs. And the rest is history. I started the organization. I went and got a person who counseled us on how to counsel. And I challenged the Free Speech Coalition – what I did, rather cutely, was I made a call to a friend of mine at the L.A. <em>Times</em>. We talked. I told them I was putting together PAW and, lo and behold, on Saturday, the story ran. On Tuesday, I was at a board meeting of Free Speech. They said, “What’s this?’ I said, it’s something we have to do, because it’s in the L.A. <em>Times</em>. So this is where my famous quote came up. They said, “We’ll give you an office but we won’t pay you for it.” And that’s where I said “there is no dollar sign in the word ‘cause.’” From that, Free Speech II became PAW, an offshoot of Free Speech Coalition.<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/iZSH6VZgaXg&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/iZSH6VZgaXg&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><strong>Here's Bill Margold back in 1980, being interviewed by the late Wally George, Uber-Conservative UHF crackpot (and father of Rebecca De Mornay).</strong><br /><br /><br /><br />Ultimately, we’ll want to be able to start the “PAW House,” where the actresses can go to live for a little while when something wrong happens to them. I see it as a place where they can get away without anyone pressuring them or beating them up, mentally or physically. They need a safe haven, the PAW house. But, in general, yeah, PAW is all based on teddy bears and hugging and concern.<br /><br />I was the first person to do the counseling like this. PAW was going along happily and I was given Miss Sharon Mitchell to be the AIDS matron. I figured, she’s a legend, I couldn’t say no. We set up shop. Then people got sick. PAW was involved in testing. But then Mitchell wanted more power and wanted her own medical domain. She created a petition to get rid of me. Instead of getting rid of me, I came up with AIM Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundations, in May, 1998. I gave it to her and said, “Welcome to Hell. Now you have a business.” I moved AIM away from PAW at the end of August, 1998.<br /><br /><em>Adult Video News </em>proceeded to give Sharon Mitchell an award for AIM just months after I created it for her – which, to me, is like giving Lamar Hunt an award for creating the AFL before you give George Hallis the award for creating the NFL! I wouldn’t take an award from the <em>AVN</em>. They don’t have enough orifices for me to stick their award up. [laughs] But I just felt that you just don’t award somebody for something before it’s even a year old. <em>AVN</em> doesn’t really care that AIM is helping anybody’s health, they just want to be associated with “a cause” because they think that just being associated with it is cool. The AVN magazine is a bad read, but it’s a good doorstop. And if you perforate it and soften it, it has another function, too! [laughs]<br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SnBhlnHHZtI/AAAAAAAAADQ/GvIUq9dVFrI/s1600-h/marine-fatigue-jacket-bill.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 214px; height: 320px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SnBhlnHHZtI/AAAAAAAAADQ/GvIUq9dVFrI/s320/marine-fatigue-jacket-bill.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5363894454980142802" /></a><br /><br /><br />WHY DO YOU HATE <em>AVN?</em> It has no humanity in it at all. It’s the Bible for a godless industry. It’s godless because it’s only totem is the almighty dollar sign. And there is nothing holy about a dollar bill. The <em>AVN</em> is purely an advertising orifice. Anything can be bought at <em>AVN</em>. They will totally sell out on Marilyn Chambers. [The legendary porn star Marilyn Chambers, in 1999, made her comeback movie, which also happened to be her first X-rated movie in fifteen years; Chambers would pass away in 2009.] People want to remember her from <em>Behind the Green Door,</em> they don’t want to see her looking like a green door! I’m not a big fan of the publication. There’s no humanity in that magazine, they don’t care about people. It’s all about selling things and making a buck.<br /><br />HAVE YOU SEEN OUTCOMES FROM PAW? HAVE WOMEN YOU’VE HELPED COME BACK AND THANKED YOU?<br />I’ve had victories and losses, in equal amounts. I’ve had a lot of genuinely heartbreaking moments. PAW was born, I would say, not really the day Savannah died – as I said earlier – but, as I think about it, probably even earlier than that, with the death of Shauna Grant in 1984, and continuing with the death of Megan Leigh in 1990. And we’ve had other deaths in the business, too).<br /><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/Snjre3JdhJI/AAAAAAAAAEY/eRmsOBJaJus/s1600-h/savannah.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 292px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/Snjre3JdhJI/AAAAAAAAAEY/eRmsOBJaJus/s320/savannah.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5366297871444182162" /></a><br /><strong>The pornstar Savannah died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in 1994.</strong><br /><br /><br />In fact, six weeks before Savannah died, in ’94, I got a phone call at three am, from another actress whose name I can’t really say. She said: “Uncle Bill, Uncle Bill. Please, I need to talk to you. Please I need to talk to you.” When I get a call like that in the middle of the night from a girl and she’s distressed – which I do more often than I’d like – I can kind of mentally transfer myself into her place so that, in a way, I’m right there beside her when she’s talking to me. She said that Megan Leigh was right, when she said that the industry has no soul. I talked this girl all the way home on her car phone and then, when she got home, her cat got in her lap, and she said everything was okay. I told her I loved her and I hung up.<br /><br />I didn’t realize that I had cried so much during the conversation. There were puddles in my collarbones. Later on, Nina Hartley, in a public announcement, said that my talking on the phone to this one girl saved the life of one of her best friends. And then, six weeks later, Savannah died, and that’s when I decided that the adult performer needs to be hugged rather than screwed. These women are all fragile panes of stained glass and they need to be held and assured that everything is going to be okay. And, the fact is, everything is not going to be okay – that’s the problem. There’s a lot of problems in this business, and a lot of people in the business hurt my kids, and I just won’t tolerate that. These are my kids and I will protect them, even the ones I don’t like, the ones I call my “bad children.” But I protect all of them. There are a few who, after a point in time, wear out their welcome, and then they have to go on their own. I won’t help them anymore because they keep making the same mistakes many times. But if they really, really, really need me, I will not deny them. And I’ve had enemies at the door that I’ve taken in. Because I have no choice. Right now I’m lucky to have somebody really great, Marin Beaute, living in my guest room, but after she leaves – and she will – another “kid” will come and need the room, whether it’s for a night, a week, a month, or a year.<br /><br />WHAT ARE SOME MORE SPECIFIC PROBLEMS THAT THE WOMEN COME TO YOU WITH, IN PAW?<br />Well, it ranges from peer-pressure, to work problems, to boyfriend problems, to a certain amount of drug problems. But now that AIM is up and running, I refer the drug problems to AIM, because Miss Sharon Mitchell likes to deal with those things. She has a background in it. Sharon’s done her time in Hell. And I say, “If you’ve been in Hell, you might as well handle Hell!”<br /><br />DO YOU EVER INTERCEDE ON A GIRL’S BEHALF, IF SHE SAYS THAT SO-AND-SO (BOYFRIEND, OR A PERSON IN THE INDUSTRY) IS THREATENING HER OR NOT TREATING HER FAIRLY? DO YOU EVER GET PERSONALLY INVOLVED TO THE POINT OF CALLING THE PERSON WHO’S HURTING THE GIRL AND DEALING WITH HIM YOURSELF?<br />Yes, I will make calls – which makes me even more hated by the people I’m calling. But, hopefully, if I make the call and get involved, it gets done. People will not say no to me, because they recognize that one day, they may need me. And they know it’s not really wise to deny me something when it’s not for me – it’s for the person I’m calling about. I can’t keep reiterating enough that I don’t want anything out of anything I do. The kids that I bring into the business, the kids that I watch over, the kids that I help in this business, I want nothing. Perhaps what I really would like, is if they’re ever asked who helped them, who led them in the right direction, who was their patriarch so to speak – their “daddy” – uh, I think that’s cool when they say it was me. I like that very much.<br /><br />DO YOU EVER SEE WOMEN YOU’VE HELPED OUT OF PROBLEMS TURN AROUND AND HELP NEW WOMEN WHO ARE COMING INTO THE BUSINESS IN THE SAME WAY THAT YOU’VE HELPED THEM OUT?<br />Oh, absolutely. I don’t have a lot of disciples, but I have people who have learned from me that it’s wiser to help, that it’s better to give than take, because you can only take so much. And you get a better feeling out of giving what you have and what you’ve learned, rather than simply taking – because I know I want nothing. There’s really nothing in this world that I would like, outside of helping people in this business, except maybe the Lions in the Super Bowl. I have everything else. Whether or not I ever have another relationship, like I did with Viper, is really questionable. You don’t make your own plans for that. If it happens it happens.<br /><br />PAW is not a job. It’s my cause. Of the three organizations I’m with, it would be the one I would hang onto the most tenaciously at the expense of the other two. If I was told I could only do one “job,” channel all of my energy into one thing – which I can’t do, because everything is a by-product of everything else, I would just stay with PAW. But, realistically, I can’t really do one thing because all three of my organizations are like a hydra. You cut off one head, it’ll grow back, because the other two will pump life into it. My organization “FOXE” [Fans of X-Rated Entertainment] is exactly that. The fans are the lifeblood of the industry, the industry’s money source. It’s in third place, only because it’s ten years old and it’s become marginally self-sufficient without me working on it day to day, like I do with the other ones. <br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SnHo0NvoO4I/AAAAAAAAADo/f6O1QtvFrgo/s1600-h/taylorwane.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SnHo0NvoO4I/AAAAAAAAADo/f6O1QtvFrgo/s320/taylorwane.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5364324614915242882" /></a><br /><strong>Bill and the magnificently proportioned Taylor Wane.</strong><br /><br /><br /><br />YOU’VE BEEN SAYING THAT PEOPLE IN THE BUSINESS DON’T LIKE YOU. WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO RUFFLE FEATHERS?<br />I tell the truth. People don’t want to hear the truth, in any way, shape, or form. They don’t want to hear the facts of life, or even their own facts of life. Needless to say, way back in 1979, when I was still acting as my mainstay, Rona Barrett interviewed me, she asked me if I had [natural] children. I said, “Yeah, anyone can have kids, that takes no talent.” She said, “Would you allow your daughter to be in the X-rated business?” I said, “Yeah, I really don’t care what she does. It would be hypocritical of me to tell her what to do when she turns eighteen. In fact,” I told her, “I’ll work with her myself!” <br /><br />She was amazed! I said, “Well, no, I’m not really going to fuck my own daughter.” I basically tapped into her own uneasiness and the uneasiness of the culture as a whole, as well as her own misery. It finally got to the point where I was supposed to apologize to the business for saying that one little comment – so that whole comment has been held against me to a certain extent for the last nineteen years, even though I was only joking when I said it. That’s the only incident where I overextended my bounds.<br /><br />I think that I have been able to redeem myself to my critics and enemies in the industry, in 1985, by going in front of the Meese Commission and saying my most famous quote, the “…nobody has ever died from an overdose of pornography” line. I established myself, at that point, as someone to reckon with when it comes to talking about this business. And that’s where I realized that, for better for worse, I would become one of the spokespeople for the industry.<br /><br />It’s funny, because sometimes the people who hate me the most in this business respect me the most. Often, my enemies call me to help a girl who’s in trouble because they know I’m the only one who can do it. It’s far more important for me to be respected than liked. I’ve earned their hate and they hate me so much they respect me. Because I tell the truth. One of my enemies, an actress, said to an interviewer, “I hate Bill Margold.” And the interviewer said, “Why?” And she said, “I don’t know.” And one of my enemies said he wanted to be me, because I’ve done everything he’s ever wanted to do but didn’t. And they also know I’m one of the honest people in the business.<br /><br />WHO ARE THE OTHER SPOKESPEOPLE FOR YOUR INDUSTRY BESIDE YOURSELF?<br />There are other spokespeople for the industry, but most of them have no right to speak for it, especially the lawyers. Only if they’ve been in the trenches [been in the movies, as performers or as creative people] do they have a right to talk about it – the Nina Hartleys; the Gloria Leonards; the Jane Hamiltons. These are actresses. Anyone who speaks about this business has to have lived this business on the vulnerable level, before they can have any kind of credibility, in any way, shape, or form. <br /><br />YOU TALK ABOUT NEEDING TO HAVE “BEEN IN THE TRENCHES” TO BE A SPOKESMAN FOR THE ADULT BUSINESS. CAN YOU TALK ABOUT HOW YOU GOT STARTED IN THE PORN BUSINESS BACK IN THE SEVENTIES – CAN YOU TALK A LITTLE BIT ABOUT YOUR ACTING AND WRITING AND MANAGING DAYS?<br />Sure. I started in this business in 1971, as a journalist, covering it. I wanted to write about the business and report on it and I wanted it to be, as I told you – because of my affection for the Detroit Lions – the George Plimpton of pornography. I wanted to live this business on whatever levels I could. I began to interview people and I began to meet people in the business through a publication called “Spectrum West.” And one day, in 1972, I met [the porn talent agent] Reb Sawitz. <br /><br />I hung around Reb’s office. He was the center of attention in the business, in the early seventies. It was totally illegal at that point, so he was sort of dodging the vice cops and I said to him, “I’d like to run your office.” He’d already had legal problems, and he was wearing thin. And I said, “I want to act in an adult movie, so I can write a story about being in an adult movie.” It was arranged that I would be acting in a softcore movie called <em>The Goddaughter</em>. I would write about the making of the movie, as a journalist, and I would not be paid for being in the movie. And Reb told me this would be my only appearance in adult movie, that it would be a one-shot deal. When I got down to the set – my very first day of being on an X-rated movie set – I felt, “This is where I belong.”<br /><br />There is a cute story about this movie: I played a character called ‘Dummy’ who had no lines, because I wasn’t a very good actor. So I just lumbered around in the scenes and did what I had to do. The last night, at 4:30am, now I’m – or should I say “poor Dummy is,” rather – trapped in two sex scenes. I’m with this woman named Diana Hardy, and I’m supposed to have two simulated scenes with her. Remember, this is soft core, so we weren’t showing actual genital penetration. One of the scenes goes all right. But by the time the second scene starts, Diana starts playing with me. I get an erection and she’s playing with it! And the cameraman is pissed, he says, “I can see his dick.” And this is softcore, so we couldn’t show erections yet. So the cameraman said to me, indicating my dick, “Either cut that damn thing off or hide it.” This is not the kind of thing I want to hear. It’s not good for me, it’s not good for my dick. So Diana says, “Okay, Dummy, you can stick it in. But don’t enjoy it.” After, she says, “You didn’t enjoy it, did you?” and I said [sarcastically], “No.”<br /><br />Anyway, it was frustrating for me, because I never got off during those scenes. When I pulled out of Diana, I was still rock hard. Twenty years later, I was doing a lecture at Orange Coast College, and a student says, “Tell me about what it was like to film simulated sex.” And I said, “What?” And the whole nightmare came back. I forgot about that scene for twenty years. I was ashamed that I had been hard and that my dick wouldn’t behave. Diana Hardy eventually died of an overdose. Gorgeous woman. I didn’t really like her, she was sort of a bitch – a mean-spirited woman, like a high-strung Persian cat. She never did hardcore in her career, only softcore. <br /><br />I wrote the story about the movie and it was cool. At the end of the movie, everybody was signing everybody’s scripts and saying goodbye; it’s like graduation from high school. I felt so adopted into a family of all these cool people, that I drove home and I began to cry because I knew that, essentially, this was my one shot at being in an adult movie, and they were just letting me be in it as a favor, because I asked permission to write an article about what it was like to be on the set. Driving home, I said to myself, “I have to do this forever.” I wanted to do it permanently.<br /><br />My next great benefactor after Reb, was Titus Moody, one of the first hardcore directors. I told him I want to do hardcore. He said, “You write it, you can be in it.” So on October 1, 1972, in a garage in Venice, Calif. I performed my first act of hardcore with a woman named Sue Kay. It was a blow job scene, it went off very nicely, and I got off on her face. I was all warm and sweaty and I said to myself, this is really cool. Then I noticed this cat looking at me. I said, “What the fuck’s that about?” It turns out, I was lying on this rug, which happened to be this cat’s piss box. Then, the cat pissed on the rug, and I said, “Not good for me.”<br /><br />Next, I had sex with a black girl, for a book, for a still photo shoot – it wasn’t a movie. I’m not really attracted to black women. I like my football players black and my women white. That day, I fucked a black woman, two white women, and then Sue Kay again. It was my birthday, October 2nd. I went off five times in seven hours! And the director of the photo shoot said, “Hey, Margold, how come you came so much?” And I said, “Because nobody told me I couldn’t.” That evening, I go to my motel, there’s a knock on the door, and it’s Sue Kay. I said, “Oh, no! Not more sex!” And she said, “No, I just want to sleep next to you.” She wore a little nightie. She did give me a blow job the next morning, too, which I didn’t even ask for.<br /><br />YOU MENTIONED THAT YOU LEARNED, THROUGH COUNSELING WOMEN IN PAW, THAT WOMEN IN THIS BUSINESS WANT TO BE LIKED AS PEOPLE AND NOT AS OBJECTS.<br />They do want to be liked first. But what I’ve also learned in my life, is that they’ll use sex as a way to avoid being liked. Because being “liked” means more emotional involvement. If they can avoid the emotional involvement, they’ll avoid it by allowing you to fuck ‘em and then they’ll have no use for you. They think that fucking is a validation, and to a certain extent, it is. But in a reality, sex is also way of eliminating you [a man] from their life on a serious basis. It’s a paradox, because the people who deal in sex, use sex to avoid relationships and it’s amazing. I discovered very early when Serena [1970s porn star], my first great love –and my spiritual ‘adopted sister’ – came into my life. <br /><br />When I first met Serena, I was overwhelmed with her. She came to Reb’s office, which I was managing in mid-1973, and she just came into my arms. I hugged her and she started to purr like a cat. I thought, “This is wonderful.” She just nuzzled. For years, she has called me ‘Brother Bill,’ and we never really worked together, until we made <em>Disco Dolls in Hot Skin in 3-D,</em> in 1977.<br /><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SnjgWjFixUI/AAAAAAAAAEI/OwSIIZjiQcw/s1600-h/hotskin.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 186px; height: 300px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SnjgWjFixUI/AAAAAAAAAEI/OwSIIZjiQcw/s320/hotskin.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5366285633992181058" /></a><br /><br /><br />RIGHT. THAT’S THE MOVIE WHERE YOUR CHARACTER UTTERS MY FAVORITE LINE IN MOVIE HISTORY. IN FACT, PARTIALLY, WHY I AM EXCITED ABOUT INTERVIEWING YOU, IS BECAUSE YOU SAID THAT LINE. IF YOU COULD SAY IT NOW, I WOULD BE GREATLY HONORED!<br /><br />Right: “A day without my dick is like a day without sunshine.”<br /><br />I had known Serena for four years and she starts crying. She says, “We can’t have sex [in this movie]. We’re like brother and sister.” And I said, “No, you’re ‘Jennifer’ and I’m ‘Harry Baulls,’ and those are our characters in the movie. They’re having sex, we’re not. Among the five hundred sex scenes I’ve had in my career, sex with Serena ranks in the top twenty-five. The best sex I ever had in this business, to this day (I’ll never do penetrational sex again in a movie; I might do an occasional blow job) was a woman named Danielle Martin, who was like having sex with an oven. Never before have I ever been in anything that hot, or that sensual and arousing and overwhelming. It’s the only time, I’ll tell you, that it was so good, that the next day, in an orgy scene we filmed out in a barn, I said to her, “Mind if I fuck you for a little while we’re waiting for the [camera] set-up?” And she said, “Sure.” And I said, “Oh, thank you!” So we screwed for two hours when the camera was off. That was the only time I ever really did that, because I never wanted to take advantage of who or what I was in this business. It’s not wise to do that a lot – to take advantage of somebody – because you can’t take it back. You can’t remove the stigma of what you’ve done.<br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/Snjq2C-HX-I/AAAAAAAAAEQ/7-uyKQRCLrE/s1600-h/serena4s.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 211px; height: 144px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/Snjq2C-HX-I/AAAAAAAAAEQ/7-uyKQRCLrE/s320/serena4s.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5366297170243182562" /></a><br /><strong>Serena, Bill's friend and occasional co-star</strong>.<br /><br /><br />NOW THAT YOU’RE THE FATHER FIGURE/THE COUNSELOR, YOU HAVE TO BEHAVE, RIGHT? YOU CAN’T HAVE SEX WITH THEM AS MUCH.<br />Right, I have to behave. I put myself in a very interesting position now, with PAW, of being in a situation where I have become the father confessor/patriarch to many of the young women in the business. I’m not allowed to have sex with them, because it would be taking advantage of my own “children.” So I’m in a very strange position, in that I’m in a business that deals in sex, and now I’m not allowed to have it anymore. I don’t really know what to do about that, and I don’t think I really care. I’m really not missing anything. Masturbation is a very cheap and pleasant and functional release. I have a certain amount of affection for a woman in the business now named Fiero, but I'm worried that if it’s overt affection I might be taking advantage. One night, she came over here, to my apartment, and we had an amusing oral sex adventure that felt very good. But that was about it with her.<br /><br />But I don’t know, I’m sort of waiting to see if I’m ever swept off my feet again, if anybody can sweep me of my feet again, as I had been swept away by Viper. I think if anyone ever swept me off my feet again, they would get knocked over, first by the industry itself, which would hold me in contempt for taking advantage of who I am, and them for being in the relationship with me. Anyone who gets in a relationship with me is affected as much as they are helped. Because people who know that I’m allied with certain people, then try to hurt those people to get back at me. So I warn those people coming into my life that they’re entering in a very dangerous area where they can get as much out of it as they can get hurt by it.<br /><br />IS THERE MORE BACKBITING IN THE ADULT FILM BUSINESS THAN IN THE REGULAR HOLLYWOOD MOVIE BUSINESS OR THE MUSIC BUSINESS?<br />Well, I always say, “in a business predicated on screwing, you’re gonna get fucked.” That’s the nature of what it’s all about. It’s as simple as that. It’s the nature of the beast, and people use any form of sexual divisiveness to get people back one way or another. I try to protect them, but nobody wants to listen even marginally moralistic because, to a certain extent, it’s an immoral business. As I said, AVN is the Bible of a godless business.<br /><br />My last hardcore scene was a blow job in ‘95. [When I sat down with Bill ten years after the initial interview, in July 2009, he updated me on this: He subsequently received an on-screen blowjob in a film made in 2000.] Since ‘95, I’ve done tangenital scenes. Mostly now I’ve relegated myself to masturbation scenes – coming in a woman’s face. I really think that’s cool, because people can live vicariously through me jacking off into a woman’s face, as if they’re jacking off into a woman’s face. I’m not doing it for any kind of sexual thrill, per se. If I was doing it for a sexual thrill, I would get laid or get a full blow job. It’s so cute, because I was working with Montana Gunn [1990s’ porn actress] in [a film called] <em>Anal Ball</em>, and she said, “I’ll suck your dick.” And I said, “No you won’t.” And she said, “What do you mean?” And I said, “First of all, I’m not tested. Not that I have anything to be tested about; I was tested once last year. And I also said, “I shouldn’t be doing this because I’m a patriarch.” She said, “You’re ‘Papa Porn.’ I would be honored to blow you.” Finally, I did jack off in her face and she said, “I’m so honored to be jacked-off upon by Papa Porn. You’re the legend.” I laughed. <br /><br />My most recent jacking off scene was this thing I just did for a movie called <em>Cybergardens.</em> It’s an S&M scene, where I’m subjugated in domination by Mistress Morgan Fairlane. And I’m tied up and I’m blindfolded and I’m tortured. And then I’m forced to jack-off on her boot and eat my own come shot, which is something I invented in 1979. It’s called “The Margold Shot.” It’s mine. I get full credit for it. I’m very proud of it.<br /><br />SO, UH, IT SOUNDS LIKE YOU’RE THE EVEL KNIEVEL OF THIS ONE PARTICULAR SHOT WHICH YOU’VE “INVENTED.” DO YOU THINK ANYBODY WILL BE BREAKING YOUR RECORD?<br />There are people who are doing it now! But when I first ate my own come shot, in 1979, the men on the set went, “Ewwwww!” But the woman who wrote the movie came over and said, “That was the most romantic thing I ever saw.” I said to the men who were scorning me, “Haven’t you ever kissed your lady after she sucked your dick? Got off in her mouth?” And they said, “No way.” So I said, “Well, then you have no right to get your dick sucked.” And also, since I know where my come comes from, what do I care? It’s just putting protein back into my system. So what the hell is all this repellence about it? I created “The Margold Shot” and I’m proud of it. There wasn’t a time when Viper blew me, when I didn’t kiss her after she blew me.<br /><br />On Saturdays I have always played football. And when I lived with Viper, after I played football and came home, she always wanted me to come on her face and then she’d rub it in to her skin. Then she’d just leave it on and peel it off. And if you look at Viper’s face in one of her movies, it’s perfect. No pimples, no impurities. See, it’s because what’s inside of me – because I’ve never done drugs – is pure; it was good for her. When I first met Viper – she later told me -- she had a yeast infection, and after fucking me she never had a yeast infection again for five years! I have so much acid in my system, just naturally, that I kill all bacteria and viruses on contact! There’s a scene in <em>Intimate Lessons </em>[a movie Bill acted in, in the ‘70s] where I take K.C. Valentine [70’s porn actress] into a sauna bath and I beat her across the face with my dick – and I have a fairly big dick. She’s in virginal white, I’m all dressed up in black leather. I snapped my dick in her face a few times and I heard this weird sound, but I didn’t think anything of it. And then, I jacked off on the hot coals, right there in the sauna bath. And I heard a weird sound there, too.<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SnBioPgTtEI/AAAAAAAAADY/0fIm6l64sWU/s1600-h/viper.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 232px; height: 320px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SnBioPgTtEI/AAAAAAAAADY/0fIm6l64sWU/s320/viper.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5363895599694591042" /></a><br /><strong>The luminescent Viper, a porn actress who was also a former ballerina, was the one true love of Bill Margold's life. Bill told me, re: 'true love,' "You only get one, kid," and Viper was his. Viper and Bill were together between 1986 and 1991, and she then disappeared.</strong><br /><br />The next morning, I went into the sauna bath – I don’t even know why I went there – and I look at the rocks, and I’ll be damned if there aren’t these little grooves cut into the rocks from my come! Like, the acid in my come had seared the rocks! And then I went into the barn to have the orgy scene, and I see K.C. Valentine there, and she has black marks under her eyes. And I said, “What the hell is this?” And she said, “You broke my nose with your dick yesterday!” And I said, “Wow, am I sorry!” She said, “Oh, no! I loved it! I came like you wouldn’t believe!” She said, “Oh, it was really good, I enjoyed it.”<br /><br />IT SOUNDS LIKE YOU HAVE MAGICAL FLUIDS THAT YOU CAN SELL TO WOMEN AT ‘THE BATH AND BODY SHOP!’ MAYBE YOU CAN ADD THEM INTO LITTLE ‘BATH BEADS’ OR SOMETHING!<br />No, it’s true, Chuck, that women call me if they have stretch marks or little wounds. I jack off on them and, mystically, things on their skin start healing themselves. In 1973, I went to Texas to make a movie, and I woke up the next day, and I was pissing fire. And I saw this doctor when I got back home to L.A. The guy said, “What have you been doing with that dick, buddy, digging a ditch?” And I said, “Well, no, I was doing these sex scenes in a movie, and I had to stay hard for a few hours at a time.” At the time, hardcore was so new, the doctor had never even heard of it – he had never heard of having to stay hard for hours at a time.<br /><br />He said, “Do you understand how things work and why it’s dangerous for you to do this?” I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “Well, you have your urethral lining. It’s lubricated and, after awhile, you run out of lubrication and it starts to break down and you can get a situation known as ‘non-specific urethritis,’ which is irritation of the urethral lining. He said, “You’re wearing-out the brake lining.” He also said, “You know, you have an awful lot of acid in your system. What’s that all about?” He decided that I could never get any venereal diseases because anything that goes into my system will just die on contact – and I thought that was kind of cool. So I’m lucky. I’ve never had a venereal disease, I’ve had non-specific urethritis three times. But I never had to fuck too hard to get what I needed to get.<br /><br />I always preferred, when I did my scenes, to “get myself up” – spit in my left hand; or else, I had this stuff called bear oil. But beside that, I just wanted to be left alone. I never let anyone touch me until I went to work. I screwed as little as possible off the set, because I didn’t want to take advantage of these peoples’ good graces. Blow jobs were sort of amusing but, even there, I let them suck on my dick just enough to get whatever footage they wanted. I wasn’t in it for the sex, I certainly wasn’t in it for the money. I was in it absolutely, totally for the glory. Always. Glory, glory, glory, glory, glory. I just dig glory.<br /><br />IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT FROM YOUR ALTRUISTIC WORK WITH PAW AND YOUR OTHER CHARITIES? GLORY AND RECOGNITION? YOU SAID YOU DIDN’T WANT ANYTHING FOR YOURSELF…<br />No, for my causes, that I’m running today – PAW and the others – I just want to help people. I said that. I want nothing for myself. But for my acting career, I do love the recognition factor and I always have. I’ve had a wonderful series of experiences in my life lately, where I’ve had standing ovations for scenes I’ve done, from audiences who didn’t know I was standing in the back of the theater. And you can testify to this, because you saw <em>Hot Skin in 3-D,</em> when they revived it just recently…<br /><br />[I met Bill at a screening of this 1978 3-D porn film, at the New Beverly Theater, a great L.A. repertory house, a few months earlier, where, based on the popularity of <em>Boogie Nights, </em>it was screening as a cult film/midnight movie to mainstream/college-educated audiences who were really loving it.]<br /><br />… and you heard the audience get off behind what was I doing when I was fucking that woman from behind and I drowned her in that giant vat of chicken soup! And when, after the woman bit my dick off, I took the stake and jammed it into her! And the audience was cheering. They’re not laughing, they’re cheering! That’s so cool. That, to me, is music on notes that nobody can create – except for the sincerity of somebody being appreciated for what they do.<br /><br />ISN’T IT GREAT WHEN A MOVIE THAT WAS MADE TWENTY YEARS AGO, ESSENTIALLY TO BE SHOWN TO AN AUDIENCE OF HORNY GUYS IN A DILAPIDATED PORN HOUSE, IS NOW, TWENTY YEARS LATER, BEING SCREENED IN AN ART THEATER TO AN AUDIENCE OF YOUNG, ‘HIP’ PEOPLE, WHO ARE JUST HAVING FUN WITH IT, AND ENJOYING IT AS A FUNNY ‘CULT MOVIE?’<br />It’s cool, because the people from your generation, or younger, are giving me back all of the recognition of what I’ve done over the years and now, whole new generations are getting off behind it. And it’s a wonderful thing, for me and for them. They get to see the history of this business, they get to see these twenty-year-old movies coming alive again. I don’t think these kids were too upset by what they were watching. They knew it was all tongue-in-cheek, so to speak.<br /><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/Sm-o6rfjGEI/AAAAAAAAADI/04K5MpgSsxI/s1600-h/margoldchristycanyon.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/Sm-o6rfjGEI/AAAAAAAAADI/04K5MpgSsxI/s320/margoldchristycanyon.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5363691407282477122" /></a><br /><strong>Bill with Christy Canyon.</strong><br /><br /><br /><br />YOU’RE THE MASTURBATION SURROGATE FOR THE WORLD!<br />Sure. It’s the cheapest date in the world. There’s no guilt involved. A release is a release is a release is a release. What’s the problem?<br /><br />WHO ARE THE MAIN ACTRESSES YOU DISCOVERED WHEN YOU WERE AN AGENT/MANAGER?<br />Serena. Kelly Nichols. Seka. Pat Manning. Jennifer West. Tiffany Clark. Lee Carroll. Drea. Bunny Bleu. Desiree Lane. Kimberly Carson. Amber Lynn. Brandy Alexandre. Of course, Viper. And Anita Cannibal. To a certain extent, Danielle Cheeks, I helped her a lot. Alex Jordan. And now I have Marin Beaute. Cannibal was my ’97 find, Marin was my ’98, and now I have a brand new ’99 one, Cativa. She does need, very much, a breast job, and then she will get that and then, hopefully, everything will be okay. And she will go off and, if she wants to pursue a hardcore career, she will. But I told her something last night that may have disturbed her. I told her that she may not need to do hardcore. She might be able to survive in the business just by doing “pretty girl” modeling and just doing non-penetrational sex. Although she had already done a blow job scene before I got to her.<br /><br />WHAT’S “PRETTY GIRL MODELING?”<br />Magazines. Wide-open splits. No hard core penetration or any sexual situations. That might work for her and, if it does, more power to her. Uh, we’ll see what she really wants to do. She’s very grown-up, very attractive. She’s stunning. Like I said, her breasts are kind of small.<br /><br />WITH PAW, ARE THERE ANY PEOPLE WHO EVER COME TO YOU FOR COUNSELING WHO YOU DISCOURAGED FROM BEING IN THE INDUSTRY? MAYBE YOU FELT THEY DIDN’T HAVE THE CONSTITUTION TO BE IN THE BUSINESS?<br /><br />Oh, yeah. Well, way before PAW – when I ran Reb’s talent agency from ’73 to ’82 for nine years, it is said that I discouraged ninety percent of the people who walked into my office. I had a line that I would use: First of all, as I’ve said, the perfect person for this business is what I refer to as the “Sterile Orphan” – which means, no kids, no family, no underbelly, no vulnerability. As a talent agent, I would tell most women who came into my office wanting to be in the porn business to think about the future; to think about what would happen when their kids came home from school ten years later and asked them about what mommy used to do. I would warn them it was illegal, which it was, at that point, in the seventies and early eighties. That would usually get rid of most of these women. I would explain that to them that they could go to jail. Some of them already had kids, and they would just expect to leave the kids alone at home and come to work on the set. I explained to them that their own natural children are not pets – that you can’t leave a bowl of food on the ground and expect to come home and find the kid there. And after my whole speech, most of them would excuse themselves and never come back. And I was very pleased about that. I – if I can get to a person and talk to them seriously, I can probably talk them out of being in this business. I’ve tried. It’s not as easy these days, because these young women are starving and they want this money and all this kind of crap. But, uh, I’m pretty good at it talking people out of being in the business if I don’t feel they’re strong enough to be in it.<br /><br />ARE THERE ANY PEOPLE IN THE BUSINESS WHO HAVE BEEN IN IT FOR A LONG TIME, AND MAYBE THEY’RE REALLY FLUSTERED OR JUST TIRED OF IT? AND AT THAT POINT, DO YOU EVER TELL THEM TO TAKE A BREAK?<br />Oh yeah, I tell ‘em, “get out.” I tell ‘em, “Leave the business.” I tell ‘em this business is not for them. I always tell them that if they think it’s time for them to walk away, that they should just walk away. <br /><br />BILL, BE HONEST WITH ME. AREN’T YOU ATTRACTED TO SOME OF THE YOUNG WOMEN WHO COME INTO YOUR OFFICE FOR COUNSELING? COME ON! I MEAN, THEY COME IN, YOU COUNSEL THEM, THEY HUG A TEDDY BEAR AND THEN THEY LEAVE? ARE YOU SURE THAT’S ALL THAT HAPPENS? <br />[laughs] Look, I’m not a saint. None of us are pure in this business. There were times when I took advantage of who I was, but I don’t anymore. This business is a candy store. But I have always been in a very unique position.<br /><br />I’ll give you two stories: Tiffany Clark [actress] came into see me. She’s really a nice girl, a very odd-shape-nosed-person. She said, “Let’s fuck!” And I said, “No.” And she said, “What?” And I said, “Okay, I’ll tell you what. Call me in about a week or so, and I’ll be able to fuck you, and I’ll get paid more than what you’re probably going to get paid [to have sex in a movie].” She laughed and I said, “Oh, yeah!” So about a week later, lo and behold, I’m bangin’ away with her in a factory, nd she said, “What are you getting paid?” I told her what I was getting paid, and she said, “Oh, that’s about twice what I’m getting paid.” And she wrote a story in High Society about it.<br /><br />The other story is one I’m very proud of. An Oriental girl came to see me. I don’t remember her name and, quite honestly, I don’t think I’m supposed to. And it’s a Friday. And she said, “I want to be in the business.” And I said, “This is not something you need to be doing. Particularly as an Oriental woman,” I said, “you know, this is not really in your culture’s set of beliefs and it’s not good for you.” And she said, “I gotta do it.” So I said, okay, and I took some Polaroids of her – you know: The standard front shot, the looking-over-her-shoulder shot; no really wide-open crotches or anything. I mean, I knew they had vaginas, so I didn’t need to see ‘em. I knew they were there. So, uh, I didn’t think much of it. Monday this girl comes back to my office, tears in her eyes. And she says, “You have my soul. I don’t want to do this.” She’s crying. So I took out the Polaroids and I burned them both. And she said, “Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.” <br /><br />What was interesting about this woman, is that almost every Friday, after I burned the Polaroids, she would show up with some form of meal for me. I guess it was homemade. She was so grateful to me for “releasing her soul,” that she would show up and feed me. And then she went to broadcasting school and I wrote a little skit for her to shoot for a class. That was the last I ever saw of her. I was so delighted that I could make her happy for something as seemingly insignificant as burning her Polaroids. But she was happy, because I didn’t “have her soul” anymore.<br /><br />I’ll tell you another story that’s somewhat similar to this – well, you can use your own discretion about who the person was. It’s the mid-seventies and this is in my capacity as agent. This woman and her husband show up and the husband is a roly-poly man, and he says to me, “I’d like to be in the business.” And I said, “Why? This is crazy? What do you want to take your clothes off for? Do you understand that once you do this it doesn’t go away?” He said, “I gotta do this. I gotta make some money.” I said, “No you don’t. This is not something you need to be doing. Hopefully you’ll go out and have a real career in the real world.” He told me he really wanted to be an actor and a comedian in mainstream Hollywood movies, but that he couldn’t get any work. <br /><br />I talked the guy out of it. He never made an X-rated movie. Couple of years later, he showed up in a movie that I think has probably made a hundred million dollars. I’ll give you this much of a hint: He was one of the woebegone fraternity brothers in <em>Animal House</em>, and it was not John Belushi. And I was very happy that this guy did not do X-rated material, because he didn’t need to do it.<br /><br />I had another instance recently [in his home], where the most worshipped of all the strippers, the world famous Venus Delight, showed up with her husband. And she said to me that she wanted to get into the hardcore industry. And I said, “No you don’t.” And she said, “Well, what are you talking about?” I said, “You are the fantasy for a million people’s wet dreams. They want to think about you ‘doing it,’ but they don’t ever want to see you doing it. She said, “What are you talking about?” Also, she said she only wanted to do it on camera, with her husband. So I said, “What if he fails?” She said, “Well, why would he fail? He doesn’t fail at home.” I said, “This ain’t home. You have no idea.” It took three hours or so for me to talk some sense into them, and they thanked me for help. To this day, she still thanks me for talking her out of it.<br /><br />SO YOU REALLY DO SPEND A LOT OF TIME TALKING PEOPLE OUT OF BEING IN THE BUSINESS. INTERESTING.<br />I know the damage my business can do, even though I have no disdain for my business. Particularly when you’ve already become a legend in your own right for doing something else [stripping], why do you now need to do something that you’re not known for, something which is only going to detract from the legend that you’ve already set up for yourself? So these are some of my stories where I’m a hero!<br /><br />When I meet someone who’s determined to be in the business, as Cannibal was, I really work with her. She’s my most favorite of all.<br /><br />But it was good being an agent in Reb’s office. Reb became Bre’er Bear and I became Bre’er Rabbit. And the ‘foxes’ were, basically, the women. Or, should I say, the foxes were the vice cops we had to stay away from.<br /><br />DO YOU SPEND ANY SIGNIFICANT TIME NOT WORKING ON THE JOB? AND IF SO, WHAT DO YOU DO DURING THAT TIME?<br />Well, again, I go to movies. I see movies, I review films [mainstream Hollywood movies]. There was a time when I played a lot of football. Watching my favorite t.v. shows, watching sporting events. I’m sure your editor will not be thrilled that we’re watching a Yankee game while you’re interviewing me, but it hasn’t broken my train of thought too much. Sports, movies, and television are ways I try to get mind away from something that I’m living.<br /><br />THE NEXT QUESTION I ASK EVERYBODY IS, “DESCRIBE YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH YOUR BOSS.” BUT THAT’S NOT REALLY APPLICABLE IN YOUR CASE, BECAUSE YOU’RE THE BOSS.<br />Nobody tells me what to do. My conscience is my guide. There’s a certain “be-true-to-yourself-mentality” that I follow. I have nobody who’s really dictating to me anything because, the whole trick of – anyone who knows me has to understand that if anybody tells me what to do, I probably won’t do it. But if I’m allowed to do virtually whatever I want, invariably, not only do I get it done, but I get it done better than any of them could ever do it. So I really am my own master – and masturbator! I am in charge of my own destiny when it comes to anything I’m going to do.<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SnmdNNfB4AI/AAAAAAAAAEw/TK-yW5cpEjs/s1600-h/tera_patrick-bill.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SnmdNNfB4AI/AAAAAAAAAEw/TK-yW5cpEjs/s320/tera_patrick-bill.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5366493281272324098" /></a><br /><strong>With Tera Patrick.</strong><br /><br /><br />HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT YOUR CO-WORKERS?<br />Well, my co-workers are sort of my “family.” I don’t think I have any co-workers. I have people who are involved with me in certain situations on certain projects. And I have a certain circle of friends and relationships and associates within this industry. Um, I’m impatient with imperfection. I’m intolerant of stupidity. I just, I’m irritable if things don’t get done my way. Because I know that my way is the most expeditious way. My way is the most utilitarian way. And in some ways, my way is the most economical way. I don’t like to wait for anybody else to catch up to me. I would sooner do everything myself, and blame it on myself, than give somebody else the responsibility and then not have them rise to the moment. And then blame myself for choosing that person and having them fail. My intolerance has caused a lot of grief and there are those who just cant handle it. <br /><br />In general, I’m not easy to get along with. I’m impossible to live with, because I’m a series of volatile emotions that are all over the thermometer of emotionality. So the best company I’ve ever had in my life is me – with the exception of Viper. But even to that point, there are points where she was on the road and I sort of enjoyed being alone. I also liked our relationship because there was at least a six-hour period of time where I was alone, and I had that part of the day to be to myself. I just, I know that I’m impossible in that respect. I’m absolutely intolerable at moments, because if things are not getting done the way I want them to get done, I get very irritated, very angry. And downright – I’m an asshole. I admit that I’m an asshole. But as I’ve told you, “It’s better to be an asshole than a whole ass.” <br /><br />EVEN WHEN YOU WERE ACTING?<br />Well, now, that’s different, because they weren’t co-workers, they were co-performers, co-stars. I’ve directed, and I think people have always had fun on my sets because I set up nice times for them. I have a history of not getting along with my peers. With my “kids,” I get along better than I do with my peers. I can’t wait for my peers to catch up to me. I excuse the performers because I don’t expect anything out of them, except just to totally do their job. I don’t have time to excuse my peers.<br /><br />SO, IN GENERAL, YOU RUN EVERYTHING, IN ALL OF THE WORK THAT YOU DO. IN FACT, IT SOUNDS LIKE YOU JUST HATE AUTHORITY FIGURES.<br />Let me put it this way. I don’t like adults. I get along much better with over-age juvenile delinquents who remember how to be kids, than I do with people who have grown up and forgotten how to be kids. I tell a story – when I lecture in classes at colleges: I tell them, “You know what? Thirty years from now, you will become the same calcified assholes you perceive your parents to be now.” And they go, “Oooooh.” And I go, “Right now, you’re liberal, you’re tolerant, you’re open-minded, you’re happy. Life is just wonderful and you wouldn’t tell anyone else what to do. But as you grow up, you’re going to become intolerant, you’re going to become, basically, what you hate.”<br /><br />I’ve always known that I don’t respond well to rules. I don’t respond well to the order of things, so to speak. I like to sort of ‘drop boulders in bird baths’ and make trouble, rebel, go against the grain. And when I got out of high school, I wanted to be a Marine. I’d read <em>Battle Cry </em>and it became my Bible. I really just wanted to write the next great novel about the military. And I thought by joining the Marines it would help. I knew it would be good because the Marines would break my spirit a little bit. I hadn’t been an ‘ornery child, but I had been a rebellious child. In my last semester in high school, I had an English class where I had written a review of <em>Battle Cry</em>, in fact. And I had written it beautifully. And the teacher accused me of plagiarizing, because she said it was ‘too professionally written.’ And I really knew I was in trouble, because I happened to write well, and she was saying I couldn’t write that well, because I was a 12th grader. So then, for a term paper, I did a term paper about the history of the New York Yankees. And she said that this was an insignificant topic. So I showed it to another teacher, I took it to him – and it was annotated, footnoted, bibliographed, everything – and he gave me an A. So I went back to [the original teacher] smoldering, and I told her, “You are a prejudiced old bitch who doesn’t want to read these papers. You want papers that are so dry, they’ll choke in your throat. And I gave you something that was alive and vibrant, and you killed it with an F.” I had never received an F before on anything. By the time I got to college, I got away with rebelling, because I had teachers who adopted me. But this high school woman teacher reported me and I spent the rest of the semester in the principal’s office for calling her a bitch. <br /><br />From the time I was a kid, I always knew I was a bit of a jerk, so I thought the Marines would be good for me, and when I got out, I could go to college on the G.I. Bill. Well, I go down to the Marine Corps. They process all the paperwork, and everything’s good. And then they decide, lo and behold, they’re not going to take me because of my juvenile record. I said, “Well, you people knew about my juvenile record. You knew what I had done. Why is this happening?” They said, “We can’t take you because you’re incorrigible.” And I said, “Well, isn’t that what you’re supposed to knock out of me?” They said, “Oh, no, we don’t want to bother.” So, no Marines for me! So I just went and caddied on a golf course. Which is okay, because I got to walk there and walk home and I was built like iron at that point in time – and being a caddy was a good exercise. But then I get bored, so I figured, “Well, the Marines don’t want me, maybe I’ll try the Navy.” This is 1961. And the Navy said, not knowing what the Marines had said, “Well, sure we’d love to have you.” And the day after Roger Maris breaks the record, sixty-one home runs – my birthday, October 2, 1961 – I go down to the induction. They go, “Yeah, we’re not going to take you, you have a juvenile record.” I said, “Wait a minute. You knew all about this. What in the world is wrong with you people?” So they don’t take me. So I’m not going to serve my country. I just went back to caddying and then sold dog food for awhile. I had two other jobs where I get fired, too. I never seemed to get along with anyone who told me what to do. I worked in the Faculty Center at UCLA for awhile, and the guy who ran it was a jerk. I just didn’t want to listen to rules and order. Had I gotten into the service, I probably would have wound up in the brig.<br /><br />But I have never really been interested in having anybody tell me what to do. And when I worked at Juvenile Hall, after I wrote for the Santa Monica <em>Outlook,</em> I asked for a ten-cent raise and they fired me. But for the last 27 years, I’ve been writing for <em>L.A. X-Press</em>. (Free local L.A. newspaper.)<br /><br />I just don’t get along with anyone who tells me what to do, and what happened in juvenile hall, when I was working there as a counselor, was that they had all these rules. And I said, “You can lead the probation officer to the rule book, but he doesn’t necessarily have to follow it.” But I survived there for two-and-a-half years, because even though I didn’t get along well with the other counselors, I did the work of three or four people. The other counselors just sat around and played dominoes. And I did the work for all of them because I just wanted to be left alone to do my job. The kids adored me. And they never raised their hands to me in hostility and they never got away with anything, because, as I would tell them – particularly on Fridays when I was working the weekends – I would take ‘em into the Day Room – it would be three o’ clock or three-thirty, some of them had never met me before, they were new – and I would say, “All right. We’re going to be getting to know each other. It’s going to be a long weekend. And if one fails, all go down. So you people are all here to take care of each other. And if anyone comes and tells on anybody else, I will punish that kid.” And then I would have these wonderful moments where I’d say, “Just for good measure, I might take you out at six in the morning and shoot you.” [laughs] And then I’d walk out of the room. And the kids went, “Ooh, I don’t want to be shot at six in the morning, what’s that all about?” And the other kids would go, “Oh, Mr. Margold’s crazy, don’t worry about it. And then we’d all have a good weekend and have a lot of fun. I really had a good time with a lot of these kids.<br /><br />I just don’t get along. I fully realize that I don’t fit into any world that I don’t make myself. I’m allowed to just exist on my own little tiny island and do whatever I want. And I think people realize… well, some of the wisest people in the business have just said, “Just leave Margold alone. He gets the job done.” And I, in fact, get the job done. And what better curriculum vitae than to have “gets the job done.” Which also sort of, essentially, validates the other part of my career, which would be, “He got it up when it counted.” Because I could get up, get in, get out, and get off, on cue.” So I get the job done. And why would anybody begrudge someone who gets the job done?<br /><br />HAVE YOU EVER HAD ANY DREAMS ABOUT WORK?<br />My whole life has been a dream. I just sometimes wonder if I’m ever going to wake up. However, let me tell you the most famous of all the dreams. Which again relates to PAW, but which also relates to XRCO, an organization we haven’t even talked about – the X-Rated Critics Organization. In 1984, this is a pretty complex story – no 1982 – in 1982, I was flown into San Francisco to perform in a movie called,<em> The Young Like It Hot</em>. I was to play a character named Big Dick. Nothing more than a phone call masturbation scene. On that set, in San Francisco, I met a woman named Shauna Grant [one of the industry’s most well-known casualties]. I was introduced to her. Shauna Grant, who’s real name was Colleen Applegate, had the presence of a baby lamb. Beautiful. I had watched her do a sex scene. I went into the makeup room to say hello to her. She was standing there naked; and there are women who when you stand in front of them, your knees get weak, and your mind gets hard and other parts of your body get sort of interested. And I told her who I was and she said, “Yes, I know who you are. I’ve been told I can’t talk to you because I’ve been told you’re a very bad man.” I was somewhat taken aback by all that, and I figured, well, one of my enemies had gotten to her and was protecting her from me. So I said, “Okay, but if you ever need me…”<br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SnjZjZUsLQI/AAAAAAAAADw/4cU0digGVLU/s1600-h/shaunagrant.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SnjZjZUsLQI/AAAAAAAAADw/4cU0digGVLU/s320/shaunagrant.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5366278158128262402" /></a><br /><strong>The late, too-fragile Shauna Grant, a 1984 casualty.</strong><br /><br />WHAT DO YOU THINK THEY TOLD HER ABOUT YOU?<br />Who knows? She had a lot of problems, and I may have tried to talk her out of the business. This is pretty close to the thing I said on Rona Barrett about sleeping with my own natural daughter – which I was just kidding about – and people still hadn’t forgiven me for that. So, uh, the next time I saw Shauna was in 1984 at one of the last AFAA [the Adult Film Association of America] Awards – the third to last one, the last one happened in ’86. It was at the Coconut Grove and she was given an award for something and there were a lot of real-world people in the audience that day. And I’m sure a lot of people promised things to her and none of them delivered. So I remember looking at her there, and she looked like she had lived an awful lot of life. And I didn’t think much about it. But two days later she died. She killed herself. And I was very unhappy about it. I knew it had very little to do with the business. She had been promised a lot by real [Hollywood studio] people and nobody delivered to her on that level.<br /><br />I didn’t think much more of it, but by 1984, we’re creating an organization called the XRCO, [X-Rated Critics Organization] to be a kind of more humane and honest version of the AFAA, not just something that would hand out meaningless awards. We wanted our organization – we wanted our awards – to promote truth and honor in the X-rated industry. So into the teeth of the establishment we went, creating the XRCO. The AFAA didn’t want us to create another organization that would hold awards ceremonies for the movies, an organization which, they thought, would be competing with them. So after meeting with Dave Friedman [legendary 1960’s softcore filmmaker], the head of AFAA, and genuflecting at the mountain for about five hours – smoking a cigar with him, seeing some old photos of the old days of ‘nudie’ movies from the ‘50s and ‘60s, Friedman said, “The XRCO will go on.” What helped, is that I told Friedman that he would be one of the people who would be inducted into our new Hall of Fame for distinguished people in adult entertainment. Dave Friedman, who started out making nudie movies, was another one of my first mentors in the business.<br /><br />Anyway, you asked me about dreams I’ve had, and the whole Shauna Grant thing and the XRCO thing together, produced a really vivid dream that I had the night before the XRCO show, which I will always remember: The dream is so vivid, I can see it while I tell it to you. In the dream, Shauna Grant and I are in kind of a haunted house. She’s wearing cut off jeans and a white blouse cut off at her midriff. I can’t remember what I’m wearing, but we’re both barefoot, for some reason. And all of these men in the house are chasing after her. I take her in my arms and I jump out the window with her, to save her, and I put her down in the grass. And I can feel the moisture of the grass on my toes. And she leans over to me and says, “Thank you. Do it right.” <br /><br />I wake up. At this point, Drea [pornstar] is living with me – I haven’t even mentioned her yet; she’s the one I married just so she’d leave – and I’m just covered in tears. And Drea said, “What’s going on here?” And I said, “I just dreamed about saving Shauna Grant.” She said, “Oh, you’re foolish, she’s been dead for a year.” That night, we were over at Gazzarri’s [big night spot on the Sunset Strip from the sixties through the early nineties] for the very first XRCO show. And they’re filming it for posterity. About ten minutes into the show, transformers blow out and everything goes dark. And our enemies go, “Ha ha ha. Fuck you people.” The establishment in the business, who didn’t care about truth and honor in porn, were hoping for us to fail – in fact they were there, you might say, to watch us fail. So we all go out in the parking lot. I remember it was still sort of light outside. We’re all walking around in the parking lot, and people come up to me and go, “XRCO is over. It’s not going to happen.” And I said to them, “Shauna’s on our shoulder. We’re gonna do it. And we’re gonna do it right.” And they said, “What are you talking about?” And I didn’t tell anybody. I just said, “Shauna’s on our shoulder.” Two hours later the lights go back on, everybody goes back inside, the show is held. Probably the most emotional moment I’d ever had in the business was when we inducted the first five men into the Hall of Fame: The King [John Holmes], Eric Edwards, Harry Reems, John Leslie, and Jamie Gillis. When we inducted John Leslie, John got up on the stage and said, “I will not accept this award until the most important person in the history of the business comes up one more time.” John Holmes got up on stage and I turned to my friend Jim Holliday, and I said, “Now we are legend. Now they’ll never get us.”<br /><br />SO THE XRCO WAS STARTED TO BE A MORE CARING VERSION OF THE AFAA.<br />That’s right. The XRCO was born into that state of emotional furor that the AFAA could never, ever, ever create. And I think this all evolved from the dream of the security that Shauna gave us. I know that that incident [the suicide of Shauna Grant] has essentially incident has haunted me because I feel that her death was really the main reason that PAW came into being. More than any other dream I’ve ever had. I’ve never really had dreams about this business, but that dream set into motion more of what I’ve done than anything else, because in the name of Shauna, in the name of Megan Leigh, in the name of Cal Jammer, in the name of Alex Jordan, Trinity Loren, and the five people with HIV and the other ones – Stagliano, who has HIV, and Barbara Doll may or may not have HIV and the other ones who are suspected of having HIV – all of the fallen soldiers, all of the battered puppies – the “three-legged puppies” as I refer to them are the reason that I go on to make sure they have equal standing in this business. And that we never, ever forget them. Again, part of this ties in to my incredible affection for history. “There is no future if, in the present, we fail to pay homage to the past.” I think that statement sort of sums up an awful lot about me. I’ve created a past, I’ve created a present, and I want to be here for the future, but I want the future to reflect on the fact that there was a past. And the past is in the names of the fifty-two were inducting. When the people come up to get their medallions, I will cry, because they will be so overjoyed to go up to that stage and get the medallion around their neck, because they were being ‘knighted.’ I got a call from the most pompous of all of them – Paul Thomas [male porn actor/director], who[m] I refer to as ‘the postman,’ because he mails his life in; he does his lungs a favor by breathing. He’s a very, very stuck-up man. And he knows I say this about him, so it’s nothing that can’t be printed. In fact, please don’t cut anything, because I don’t care what people read that I’ve said about them. <br /><br />And Paul called me, it was like two in the morning, and there was only one message on my machine. And he very simply said: “Now I know what it is to be famous.” And it was so human of Thomas to say that. I was so moved by that, I was so moved that I had moved him. I don’t know if we are going to be able to duplicate that night again.<br /><br />I’m a fan of the people in the industry who were there in the Golden Age, in the ‘70s and ‘80s. I wanted to create a Hall of Fame award for them to give them tangible recognition.<br /><br />The AFAA started in about 1974 or 1975. Every industry needs an organization. It gave out its first awards in 1977. <em>The Opening of Misty Beethoven </em>won for Best Picture. I went to the first awards show. I stayed outside – this is at the Wilshire-Ebell Theater – and I was wandering around on the sidewalk. I was confronted by a guy protesting the show, a religious-right zealot called Arthur Blessit, who was in front of the theater carrying a huge, giant wooden cross on his back! He says to me, “Jesus is coming.” I said to him, “If he can come twice, I’ll put him to work!”<br /><br /><br />DO YOU THINK THE ADULT INDUSTRY WILL BE IMPORTANT IN THE 21ST CENTURY? <br />I opened up our conversation this morning with the sentiment that we’re becoming ordinary, we’re becoming normal, we’re becoming tolerated, we’re becoming accepted [by mainstream America]. Complacency creates stagnation, stagnation – eventually – creates extinction. We used to be illegal, and now we’re legal, and we’re the biggest industry around. We used to be “the Island of X” and you had to come to us [to watch X-rated movies in a theater]. But now we come to you, via video [and the internet], in your home. <br /><br />I don’t want to be absorbed by the masses. I want to absorb the masses. I still – even though I’m on all these boards and in all these organizations – I still sort of like the idea that I’m on the outside looking in, rather than on the inside, trapped and looking out. I haven’t completely capitulated to their way of thought. I don’t know if that if answered the question. <br /><br />ARE THERE ANY NEWER ACTRESSES IN THE INDUSTRY WHO WILL BECOME BIG STARS IN THE FUTURE, IN THE WAY THAT SOME OF THE OLDER STARS HAVE BECOME LEGENDS? IN OTHER WORDS, ARE THERE ANY NEW MARILYN CHAMBERS OR JANE HAMILTONS?<br />Danielle Cheeks and Leena are contenders. Janine. Jenna Jameson, who’s a public relations genius. But mostly, today, the new performers are what I call “cro-magnon men and marshmallow women.” Faceless, soulless, they only care about the present. They don’t care anything about the past of this industry. They are Barbie and Ken dolls, with the emotional range to match. <br /><br />WHAT ARE THE PERKS AND PRIVILEGES OF WHAT YOU DO? <br />Well, with PAW, the perks are just satisfaction, and knowing that you’ve done something to help somebody. It’s not any kind of tangible perk, it’s a mental satisfaction that you go to your house justified. It’s a famous line from [Sam Peckinpah’s] <em>Ride The High Country</em>: “I want to go to my house justified.” And I’ve always thought about that. PAW has allowed me to give it all back. Being interviewed allows me to give it all back in another way, because I get to validate who I am and what I am. 95% of what I do in PAW will never be known, because it’s “caring and confidential,” as it says on the [PAW] business card. And that can never be taken away from me. So if checks and balances are equated in one’s life, I have a lot more credits than I do demerits. And that’s sort of cool, I’m storing them like nuts. So if I ever need them, I can roll them out and play dice with my future, and get a lot of boxcars instead of snake-eyes. And I don’t think that’s all together self-serving. I think, If I’m in a position to help people, why not be able to help them? And I help them in many, many different ways. Maybe in some cases just by being there, because I am “the eternal bear.” I’m around when somebody calls – you notice I screen a lot of my calls. There are certain calls I don’t want to deal with, because they’re not too severe – they’re not too necessary to deal with. But PAW is my way of giving back to the industry everything that’s good that the industry has given to me.<br /><br />ARE THERE ANY SPECIFIC JOB-RELATED HAZARDS RELATED TO PAW, OR TO ANYTHING ELSE THAT YOU DO?<br />Yeah. Because who helps the person who helps? I continually have to absorb all this pain, through PAW, which I don’t mind doing. But where do I dump all of this absorbed pain? What do I get to do to unload my pain on somebody else – which really, they wouldn’t want to have to deal with, anyway. So I have to swallow a lot of it. But I am extemporaneous and I can get rid of a lot of my pain, just by sounding off against the world. For example, if I’m driving up and down Laurel Canyon and somebody ahead of me is going too slow, I scream at the drivers. I’ll tell them to go and die on their own time! So I will exact my fiendish form of catharsis on innocent parties that happen to be in the way when I need to explode. I don’t keep very much in me. If I need to get something out, it comes out, and I don’t really care who gets in the way of it. I don’t watch my tongue; I don’t – I am the least tactful person I’ve ever met in my whole life. If I need to say something, I say it. I don’t mince words. And I don’t know if that’s a detriment to me. You asked me if I get along with my coworkers before and I don’t. I don’t consider people in the industry my peers. I think I consider people in the industry my children. If I considered them my peers, I’d probably be in a lot of trouble. Because I probably wouldn’t like ‘em. I think that the downside to helping people is: Who helps the person who helps? And I analyze that, and I sometimes wonder about the pain that I go through. But I figure, somebody has to feel somebody else’s pain because that’s what we’re designed to do, as humans. And I was designed – I was put in the right place at the right time, as far back as juvenile hall, to be there to help people. And if I can’t help ‘em, who’s gonna help ‘em? Who’s gonna care about my kids?<br /><br />WHAT DO YOU THINK YOUR JOBS ARE PREPARING YOU FOR OR LEADING YOU TO?<br />Well, at fifty-five years old, if I haven’t already been “led” to where I’m supposed to go, I don’t think there’s much ahead of me on my path, other than maybe I’m still learning a little bit more about how to help people, I’m learning things that I can impart onto other people. And yet, you can’t teach other people how to help people, because you simply do it or you don’t do it. It’s absolutely instinctual. You are born to do it, you’re not taught how to do it. People did not teach Jesse Owens how to be a great athlete, he was born to be a great athlete. Jim Brown was born to be the greatest runner in pro-football history. Derek Jeter has been born to be the superstar to lead us into baseball in the next century, in the same lineage as Pete Rose – a guy that little boys and girls can idealize. You don’t train somebody to help. You just say, there’s a fire, and you stick your hand in, and if you get burned, you get burned.<br /><br />WHAT’S THE BEST DAY YOU’VE EVER HAD DOING WHAT YOU DO?<br />Well, the happiest incident of my life was when Viper won her Best Supporting Actress award from <em>Adult Video News.</em> And I loathe <em>Adult Video News,</em> it’s an advertising orifice. But what she got, for the first time in her life, was that she got the recognition she deserved. Now the happiest moment in my life, is when I met Viper. I worked very hard, in our relationship, to make her more important than me. It was the only time I ever sacrificed my own ego – to subvert it, subordinate it – to someone who meant more to me. I knew she needed the attention more than I needed it. I said once that Viper tempered the bowie knife of my soul. I didn’t consider myself human before I met Viper, and she made me human.<br /><br />As far as happy moments in this business, as far as PAW is concerned, is that I guess it’s that most of the people I’ve spoken to haven’t died.<br /><br />WHAT’S THE WORST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED TO YOU IN THE BUSINESS?<br />I’ve had people who’ve died. I’ve had people who’ve died questionable deaths, ones in which I’m not sure if it was suicide. I’ve had a few marginal disasters in this business. One of the problems was more personal than work related, but you’ll see how they go together: My worst thing was the Viper situation. Viper went crazy. You get one great person in your life – one great romantic relationship – and I knew it from the day I met her. I knew what I was in for. She, rather cryptically said to me one day, “I’ve ruined you for anyone else,” and I said, “Oh, man.” But I just, I just treasured every day of the five years and two months we were together. She left on the last day of May in 1991. And… in many ways I was relieved, and in many ways I was completely shattered, and I’ve been picking up the pieces ever since. And it’s kept me, essentially, away from any other serious relationship because – well, first of all, nobody’s going to be Viper. And second, relationships are something that you have to maintain or it’s over. And I have so many people that I have to take care of, especially through PAW, that I have to have someone totally self-sufficient who would just simply put up with my taking care of everybody else. Viper did that. Viper was so wise and empathetic. And she allowed me to watch over other people, and she sort of helped out as well. She would bring people into the house and talk to them. She would absorb their pain and she would cry when they left. Viper helped me out a great deal way before I established PAW.<br /><br /><br />IS THERE ANYBODY WHERE YOU THOUGHT, MAYBE THIS GIRL – MAYBE THIS ACTRESS – IS FINALLY ON THE ROAD TO RECOVERY, BUT THEN SHE SURPRISED YOU AND WENT DOWNHILL?<br />Nothing surprises me. To be honest with you, I’m surprised that more of them aren’t dead. Because they wake up one morning and they realize that nobody cares. And a lot of them don’t have the wherewithal to keep on going. And I feel sorry for them, in that respect. And they won’t reach out, because they don’t have the faith that anybody cares about them at all. These are extremely fragile panes of stained glass and they just need to be hugged and watched over. And I’m told about some of them now, who are in dire straits. And I try to reach out to them, but they don’t want to be helped. And you cannot help somebody who doesn’t want to be helped. <br /><br />If a person wants to die – of course, you don’t get to choose when you die. That’s all set up for you before you’re even born. But if a person is really determined, there’s nothing you can do to keep that person from ending their life. There’s a reason they’re ending their life: Because what souls are transmigrating into that person need to get out, to go into another person who’s about to be born. So there’s a [cosmic] necessity to “keep on moving;” you know, sort of a strange version of, “Herd ‘em up, move ‘em up, move ‘em out, Rawhide” of the souls. There are some restless souls out there who need to be freed up to go into somebody else. Because I firmly believe that I am not just one soul. I am a whole series of souls and they keep pulling me around, in a merry-go-round fashion. <br /><br />SO WHAT YOU’RE SAYING IS, YOU’RE SCHIZOPHRENIC? YOU’RE A BIFURCATED PERSONALITY?<br />I’m not bipolar. I always thought a bipolar person was a bisexual polar bear! <br /><br />WHAT’S THE STRANGEST DAY YOU’VE HAD IN ANY OF YOUR JOBS?<br />I don’t think strange is a fair question, because the whole business is strange. I guess the most against-the-grain day is, in the ‘70s, when the vice cops came looking for me, so I dodged them for the entire Monday. I always thought they could have found me right away if they wanted to, but they were just going by old records. They wound up at my old address at six in the morning. One guy’s name is Lloyd Martin and the other guy’s name is Peters. My [real daughter] Elizabeth answered the door, she was six years old told then. She told them, truthfully, “I don’t know where my daddy is.” These people are so concerned with busting me, they don’t care that this kid is all alone in the apartment at 3611 Watseka Drive. Vice Cops are basically ‘Javerts’ and we are ‘Jean Valjeans’ and our loaves of bread are between our legs. Anyway, the cops couldn’t find me the first day. And the second day, I just walked into the police station and I said, “Okay, I’m ready.” And they said, “What do you mean?” So they put the handcuffs on real tight even though I had a football injury on my wrist and I told them not to. I said, “When this whole thing’s over and you’ve lost, I will salute you with a broken wrist. I will salute you like a downed World War One pilot.”<br /><br />I don’t consider what I’ve done normal, but I also don’t consider it strange.<br /><br />YOUR REAL DAUGHTER, ELIZABETH – WAS HER MOTHER IN THE ADULT BUSINESS?<br />No, well only in a very limited way – she had done a scene or two and I wasn’t even married to her at that time. Her name was Penny. I wasn’t living with her at the time. I was living with another woman named Linda at the time, who[m] they didn’t even know about.<br /><br />YOU TOLD ME ABOUT THE DATE WHEN THE ADULT BUSINESS ACTUALLY BECAME LEGAL, AND I’D LOVE TO KNOW MORE. I’M REFERRING TO THE DATE WHEN PORN MOVIES STOPPED BEING CONSIDERED PROSTITUTION/PANDERING, AND YOU GUYS STOPPED GETTING BUSTED AND IT BECAME LEGAL TO MA00loKE THE MOVIES.<br />August, 1988. What provoked it, was a movie called <em>Caught from Behind</em>. The director got busted, and he appealed it all the way to the California Supreme Court. He told them that he was a filmmaker and not a panderer. They dropped the pandering charges and the rest is history. When we were busted in Las Vegas in ’93, that was not for a movie, that was because we put on a live sex show on stage that got a little out of hand. So our shoots don’t get “busted” anymore. We’ve been legal for eleven years.<br /><br />WHAT PERSONALITY TYPE IS BEST FOR YOUR JOB?<br />You can’t type it. In order to do what I do, you have to have lived what I’ve lived. You can’t just walk in and do it without knowing where the danger signs are, where the “bear crossings” or “deer crossings” are. Each entity is a separate and unique problem within this business and you just have to be there for them.<br /><br />I was in a room full of the major people in the industry once and I said to them, “You know, if I tried real hard, I could be any of you in this room. But no matter how hard any one of you try – or no matter how hard any of you try collectively – none of you can ever be me.” They nodded and they wished me Merry Christmas. <br /><br />HOW DOES YOUR PERSONALITY HELP YOU WITH YOUR WORK AND HOW DOES IT HOLD YOU BACK?<br />I’m my own worst enemy. I have a streak of rebellion, a streak of ornery, a streak of against the grain, and an overwhelming desire not to be ordinary, normal, or tolerated. I don’t want to be tolerated. I want to continually be a boulder in a birdbath. I want to make waves any way I can. I’m not happy unless there’s turmoil. I’m not happy unless I have a definitive enemy that I can set my sights on. I’m not happy unless I’m making trouble. But the trouble I’m making is all corrective. I just cannot behave because rules are for corpses. So I channel my incorrigibility toward helping people. The way that I help people, by the way, when a person comes to me with a mental wound, I do what I call invasive curing. I go into the wound and make it deeper, cleaning it out with words. I cauterize them, I “bleed” them. I love blood. I love to clean out their systems. I’m jealous because women have periods and we don't. I like to make a person ache the most they can ever ache. Because then, when they know what extreme pain is, then I can start working on it. But if I just cover it up with a placebo, and dump some bubble gum in there and some jelly beans, the problem will just fester beneath the surface. There will be a lot of things happening underneath the jelly beans that I don’t want to deal with. So I go in and I cure them invasively. I go into the hole and make it deeper and look at it and play with the nerve endings and, and wallow in the blood. And then I start to heal them from the inside out. And by the time I’m done, I think I’ve done a fairly good job. I’ve won a lot more battles than I’ve lost. I’ve helped a lot more people than I’ve failed. As I told you, one of my friends I’m estranged from told me, “You use people.” And I said, “Yeah, I use people by helping them.”<br /><br />CAN YOU ALWAYS BE DISPASSIONATE ABOUT THE GIRLS YOU’RE HELPING IN PAW – CAN YOU STEP BACK FROM WHAT YOU DO?<br />Yes. That’s what I’m trained to do. If I allow myself to become vulnerable, I won’t be able to help anybody else, because I’ll be wallowing in my own self-pity. I would be of no value to anybody else. I allowed myself to be vulnerable once, when Viper left, in ’91, but never again. And, weirdly enough, that was also the only time the Lions won the Playoff Game!<br /><br />HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN WHAT YOU DO TO YOUR FAMILY AND FRIENDS?<br />They’re not my friends unless they know what I do. Uh, they’re not my associates unless they know what I do. I have no wife at this point. The last wife I had was Drea, who was in the business. She left me in ’85 and she left the business in ’86 and ’87. But as far as my [natural] kids, Juliette – who I call “Goldie Bear” – and Elizabeth-Anne. In 1990, when Viper was starting to disintegrate, I had a meeting with my real kids at a Chinese restaurant on Washington Blvd. – on Washington and Centinela. I told them that I would not be able to pay attention to them anymore. I explained to them that I was completely involved with what Viper was going through and that I could not, in any way, shape, or form, rationalize giving any attention to anybody else but Viper.<br /><br />YOUR OWN CHILDREN?<br />However, I told them, “If you ever need me for anything, you know where I’m at.”<br /><br />WHAT WAS THEIR REACTION WHEN YOU TOLD THEM THAT?<br />Well, they had been estranged from me for a long period of time, anyway. Anyway, Elizabeth is living with Linda, and Goldie Bear, who is Linda’s kid, sort of felt that I was not doing a job as a daddy. And I admitted I wasn’t doing a job as a daddy. I was not a good daddy. I didn’t have the time to be a daddy. I’m a daddy to the kids in this business. I can’t be daddy to my own real kids. To be honest with you, I never wanted my own children. One of them was an accident.<br /><br />HOW WAS YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH YOUR KIDS WHEN THEY WERE LITTLE? WAS THERE ONE AT ALL?<br />Well, it was never consistent. With Elizabeth, I never really lived with her for any great length of time. Penny wanted a kid and I didn’t want a kid – that was the accident. But Penny – I tried, in the sixties to be a father; I tried to live with her. But I just couldn’t handle it. I don’t like anybody being the center of attention except me. With Elizabeth, I never spent that much time with her. I tried and failed, tried and failed. I wound up with Liz, ironically, when Penny went into the hospital, in ’79, from a car accident. Liz came to live with me and Linda and Goldie-Bear, Linda’s half-sister. Now how Goldie Bear was born – I came to live with Linda, I started to live with Linda in 1972 – she was not in the business, she was a social worker – and four years later, she wanted a kid. And I said, “I will not take any responsibility for this kid,” and she said, “No, you don’t have to.” Now Linda had been through an incestuous relationship with her own father. And sex between Linda and I was always by her request. She said, “I want to be pregnant.” And I said, “Okay.” So in December of 1975, I knocked her up. It takes no talent to get anybody pregnant, I’m very good at that. I lived with her until 1980, and after that, I saw them on occasion. Goldie Bear and Liz would come here occasionally when Drea was here and even when Viper was here. It was unfair because Viper herself had a kid. And it wasn’t fair of me to force my own kids down Viper’s throat. And really, Viper and I were quite content by ourselves.<br /><br /><br />WHAT’S NEXT? ARE YOU THINKING ABOUT EVER MAKING MOVIES AGAIN – IN TERMS OF GOING BACK TO WRITING, DIRECTING, AND ACTING<br />Yes, I’m working on starting my own company in the fall and making movies again. I have a lot of ideas. I, myself, just appeared in a movie, for somebody else, which should, hopefully, be marginally controversial, called <em>Anal Ball</em>, where I play a deranged court jester. And Montana Gunn [porno starlet] pisses in a big goblet above me… and then I pretend to drink it, although it’s really apple juice. Then I spit it back on her and then I say horrible things to her and I wind up jacking-off in her face. I say very odd things and I kind of bounce around. It’s the kind of scene that pushes what’s left of a very worn and very tired envelope. <br /><br />I also starred in a series of bondage movies where I play one of ‘The Bruise Brothers.’ Fetish videos are very, very popular.<br /><br />IF YOU COULD LIVE YOUR LIFE OVER AGAIN, WHAT OCCUPATION WOULD YOU PURSUE?<br />Had my father not died, and everything had gone correctly , I probably would have wound up at Harvard Law, but then I also wanted to be a journalist, which I have done, and which I still do for the <em>L.A. X-Press</em>. When I first saw my byline as a journalist, before I got into porn, I realized that I had a backbone. The byline is all-powerful. It is the supreme thrill.<br /><br />I WRITE A LOT OF SCREENPLAYS FOR MAINSTREAM HOLLYWOOD, BILL – USUALLY, FOR THESE CLOWNISH ‘INDEPENDENT PRODUCER TYPES’ – AND IT SEEMS THAT IT’S A WASTE FOR ME, BECAUSE NONE OF THE SCRIPTS PEOPLE HIRE ME TO WRITE EVER GETS MADE!<br />Never consider writing a waste, kid, because you can regurgitate your entrails. I’ve been living off certain pieces that I’ve written years ago, and I keep rewriting them and rewriting them and people keep running them over and over as if they’re brand new.<br /><br />WHAT’S WAS THE BEST THING ABOUT YOUR WORK AS AN ACTOR AND A WRITER BACK IN THE ‘70S AND ‘80S?<br />Recognition, recognition, recognition. But for my charitable work I do, with PAW and my other causes, I’m just doing it to help people. I want no recognition for that.<br /><br />I’m at the point in my life – which sounds horribly egotistical, but I am horribly egotistical – where I would prefer to have people write about me rather than to write about myself. I don’t have the time or patience, or the manners or the mentality, to sit down at a computer for twelve hours a day. I’m not salivating at the idea of going into a bunker and start knocking something out. I can’t get away to write. I have too many demands on my time, and without the demands, I wilt. So without people calling me, wanting something, I’m useless. I don’t feel good unless I can do something. So sometime, somebody might come along and say, “Hey there’s a book in this guy.”<br /><br />A lot of people try to edit what I have to say and they try to protect me, for some reason. And I don’t want to be protected! Every single thing I say to you, I’m sure that you’re not going to use it all, but what you’re going to use must be unexpurgated. I do not want some kind of mollifying intonations, “Oh, you shouldn’t have said this. You’re going to get in trouble.” I don’t give a shit if I get in trouble. How can I get in trouble in a business that is the definition of trouble? You can’t throw anybody out of the litter box. And I also refer to this industry as “the litter box.”<br /><br />WHEN THE MOVIE <em>BOOGIE NIGHTS </em>WAS RELEASED IN 1997, YOU WERE PRETTY VOCAL IN THE MEDIA ABOUT HOW YOU FELT ABOUT IT. YOU DID NOT LIKE THAT MOVIE AT ALL.<br /><em>Boogie Nights </em>was wrong. That’s not what it was like in the seventies at all. We were underground. This was a community unto itself, the “Island of X.” The way it was presented in the movie, is that the people were out there and flourishing and dancing and having fun. We didn’t do that. We were looking over our shoulder for the vice cops for a decade-and-a-half.<br /><br />HOW DO YOU THINK EVERYTHING YOU’VE DONE IN THE BUSINESS HAS AFFECTED YOUR VIEW OF THE WORLD, OR YOUR VIEW OF PEOPLE?<br />HAS IT CHANGED YOU?<br />I’m not jaded. I think I’m still vital. I think I’m amazingly creative. That’s something I’m very thankful for. All of creativity is, basically, a tube of toothpaste. You just have to know how to squeeze it. If you grab the damn thing in the middle, eventually, nothing’s going to come out. But if you roll it very carefully and then after you’ve used it, you let it sit in the corner of the sink, it replenishes itself. It loads back up and it’s ready to go again. I’m constantly trying to create. I’m constantly in the “competing with myself” mode.<br /><br />HAS WHAT YOU’VE DONE MADE YOU A BETTER PERSON OR A WORSE PERSON? I MEAN, YOU SAID THAT VIPER MADE YOU – OR, YOU FELT SHE MADE YOU – A BETTER PERSON.<br />Oh, what’s a “better person?” But… it certainly has not made me a worse person. It’s made me even more fascinating than I was when I came into the business!<br /><br /><br /><strong>NOTICE:<br />On Sunday, September 6, 2009<br />Bill Margold and Protecting Adult Welfare (PAW)<br />invite you to participate in<br />BARE BOWLING 2009 <br />in the San Fernando Valley.<br />For more information, contact Bill at<br />(818)501-6139 or bmargold@aol.com.</strong>CZO: Chuck Zigman Overdrivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01597949826304464382noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7968054145164198227.post-7164837848894563502009-07-27T16:44:00.001-07:002009-07-28T07:40:27.343-07:00Open Message to the Farrelly Brothers: David Paymer IS Larry Fine<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/Sm8La2Z7uRI/AAAAAAAAACo/96N28jDQmhE/s1600-h/three_stooges.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5363518237130340626" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 234px" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/Sm8La2Z7uRI/AAAAAAAAACo/96N28jDQmhE/s320/three_stooges.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><div>I didn't set this blogsite up to be about comedy movies or comedians (two previous blogs on this site are about Joe E. Brown and Milton Berle) but here's something interesting:<br /><br />Nobody loves The Three Stooges more than I do. If you're a guy, and you don't like the Three Stooges, you've got to turn in your guy-card, because for men, the Stooges are as necessary as breathing, eating, and sleeping. (And when I say sleeping, of course, I mean sleeping in a bed with two other people and snoring like this: "Heep heep heep heep heep!")<br /><br />Over the last few years, I've been reading that the Farrelly Brothers, Peter and Bobby, will be producing and directing a Three Stooges feature film for Sony and MGM. While I'm not exactly in favor of other actors 'playing' the roles of Moe, Larry, and Curly, I'm sufficiently a fan of the Farrellys to give this endeavor a chance. I've never been the biggest fan of <em>There's Something About Mary,</em> which I thought was over-rated, but I love some of their other pictures, especially <em>Kingpin, Shallow Hal, Say It Isn't So, Outside Providence, </em>and <em>Stuck On You,</em> which are genuinely hilarious. The Farrelly brothers are the only people in Hollywood who consistently make funny/sharp movies, and I would absolutely, without any hestitation, place them up there in that same pantheon as the great comedy directors of the past -- Billy Wilder, Ernst Lubistsch, Preston Sturges, and John Landis. (Yes, you've read every single word of that sentence correctly.)<br /><br />As you know, if you've been checking out the IMDB and the various entertainment rags, the Farrellys, several months ago, announced that their Stooges feature had been cast:<br /><br />Benicio Del Toro was hired to play Moe;<br />Sean Penn inked to play Larry;<br />Jim Carrey would fill the role of Curly.<br /><br />I thought that was pretty inspired casting, because you can really "see" it. Del Toro can probably do that bossy thing and he's got Moe-esque bags under his eyes; Penn has a pronounced proboscis and other Larrycentric features that could be accentuated if you poofed his hair out on the sides of his head; and Carrey, if he bulks up and shaves his head might be a great Curly. (I saw him on "In Living Color" once, doing a spot-on Curly impression, so I know he can handle it.)<br /><br />About a month ago, however, Sean Penn dropped out of the project, possibly due to family complications. Ed Norton and Paul Giamatti have been suggested as replacements for Penn.<br /><br />The reason for my writing this blog today, is that I'd like to suggest a completely different actor to play Larry. Nobody has ever suggested the person I'm about to suggest, and since I have absolutely no idea how to contact the Farrelly Brothers -- and if I did, they wouldn't listen to me, anyway -- here it is.<br /><br />There is, walking this earth, one man who looks, and can sound, one hundred-percent like Larry Fine. This guy, if this is even possible, may have been cloned out of Larry Fine's DNA. He's not a big star like Ed Norton or Sean Penn, but if the Farrellys want to go for accuracy in their movie, the guy I'm about to recommend IS Larry Fine.<br /><br />I'm talking about the wonderful character actor David Paymer, the guy whose made a pretty nice career in comedy features, usually playing either Billy Crystal's buddy (<em>City Slickers</em><em>, Mr. Saturday Night</em>) or sniveling/low-level government functionaries (<em>The American President</em>).<br /><br />David Paymer IS Larry Fine, and since a picture is worth 1,000 words, check out the video that proves it:<br /><br /><object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/CZi8oBCeWAs&hl=en&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><br /><br /><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/CZi8oBCeWAs&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />Above, you have just seen David Paymer (he's on the left) in director Tony Bill's underrated 1990 Dudley Moore/Daryl Hannah comedy, <em>Crazy People.</em> I can't remember too much about the movie, since I haven't seen it since its initial theatrical release nineteen years ago (this movie is about an ad executive who has a nervous breakdown and winds up in a mental hospital), but I remember that I thought it was funny, and I also remember watching it and thinking, as I also happen to be thinking right now, "Wow! David Paymer looks exactly like Larry from the Three Stooges."<br /><br />Let me qualify my suggestion appropriately: I don't know David Paymer. I'm not affiliated with Paymer in any way, Paymer's not a relative, I've never met Paymer I'm not Paymer's manager, and Paymer doesn't owe me any money. I'm writing this blog entry just because the guy looks and talks like Larry Fine and, to me, he is really the <em>only</em> choice to play Larry in the Three Stooges movie, if the Farrellys are interested in going for accuracy.<br /><br />If anybody who's reading this wants to forward this blog to Peter and Bobby F., please do, and you don't even need to give me any credit (because that's generally the way it's worked out, anyway; people like my ideas, but they don't really care for me, which is fine, because it's mutual)! Ed Norton and Paul Giamatti are fine actors, but ultimately, when it comes to a Three Stooges movie, what's going to bring people into the theater isn't huge stars, but reverence for the subject matter. A Three Stooges feature won't create "new" Three Stooges fans, it's really only for people who already like them, and the way to get the fans excited about this movie, is to be accurate. David Paymer is, as the cartoon bird used to say on that Continental Airlines commercial in the '70s, "the only way to fly."<br /><br />That's all!<br />"Love, Chuck" </div><br /><br /><div><a href="mailto:chuckzigmanisthebest@gmail.com">chuckzigmanisthebest@gmail.com</a></div>PS, Read my book about a great French actor:<br /><br /><div><a href="http://www.jeangabinbook.com/">http://www.jeangabinbook.com/</a></div><br /><br /><div></div></div>CZO: Chuck Zigman Overdrivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01597949826304464382noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7968054145164198227.post-91410078041156285352009-07-24T18:19:00.000-07:002009-07-26T15:38:57.770-07:00Joe E. Brown: Turner Classic Movies Honors The Great Depression's Greatest Movie Comedian, All Day, Tuesday 7/28/09!<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/Smyk3p21PaI/AAAAAAAAAB4/BUKCgIkFe8g/s1600-h/wideopenfaces.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5362842532327013794" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 217px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/Smyk3p21PaI/AAAAAAAAAB4/BUKCgIkFe8g/s320/wideopenfaces.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><div><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SmxoiA0wFQI/AAAAAAAAABw/ePpCOPAf2H8/s1600-h/JoeEBrown.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5362776189837513986" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 259px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SmxoiA0wFQI/AAAAAAAAABw/ePpCOPAf2H8/s320/JoeEBrown.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><div>I feel like blogging today, because I've just found out that something really great is going to be on t.v. this coming week, on Tuesday, July 28th, and I want to call your attention to it. If you have Turner Classic Movies and a TiVo, and you love classic comedy movies, I'm about to make your whole summer.<br /><br />Like every good Classic Movie Buff, I have a special place in my heart for old comedy movies from the 1930s and 1940s. Like you (I hope), I grew up racing home from school to catch "the hilarious antics" of Laurel and Hardy, The Three Stooges, the Marx Bros., and Abbott and Costello.<br /><br />Well, there is one additional classic movie comedian from the same era (‘30s and ‘40s) whom I really enjoy, and while he's fallen off of the radar over the last six decades, the programmers at Turner Classic Movies are trying to put him back on the map, by dedicating a full day each year, on his birthday, to presenting all-day festivals of his movies. In fact, I didn’t know that much about this “mystery person” until around three years ago, which is when TCM began programming annual tributes to him, for the first time.<br /><br />You’ve seen this great movie comedian before, only, you don’t know it:<br /><br />Everybody loves Billy Wilder’s great 1959 comedy, <em>Some Like It Hot.</em> Remember the final scene of the movie? Jack Lemmon is on the motorboat with the lecherous old millionaire Osgood Fielding, III. Believing the cross-dressing Lemmon to be a woman, Osgood informs Lemmon (“Daphne”) that he wants to marry him, to which Lemmon incredulously replies, “I’m a man!” Osgood’s smiling reply, “Nobody’s perfect,” the last line of the movie, is one of the funniest punchlines in American movie history, a zinger that’s been bringing down the house for fifty years. Osgood is played by the great American movie comedian, Joe E. Brown, Warner Bros. #1 Box Office Star of the early 1930s (1929 to 1936), and this coming Tuesday, on July 28, 2009, Turner Classic Movies will be presenting an all-day/ten-film birthday tribute to Brown, who was born 117 years ago, in Holgate, Ohio, on July 28, 1892. (He passed away in California, in 1971.)<br /><br />In the first years of “talkies,” between 1929 and 1936, the amazing Joe E. Brown, who began his career as a circus clown and on the vaudeville stage, starred in more than twenty movies for Warner Bros., and during this seven-year period, Brown was the studio’s #1 Box-Office Draw. (Warner’s #2 draw was James Cagney, who appeared in all of those great pre-Hays Code gangster dramas for Warners, like <em>Public Enemy</em>)! In the Depression era of the early ‘30s, when a down-on-its-luck America needed to laugh (sound familiar?), Brown was the original “go-to” guy for laughs, even before the incipient arrival of the Marxes and the Stooges and Abbott and Costello, who would arrive on the scene directly after him.<br /><br />The eminently likeable Brown, a favorite of grown-ups and kids alike -- kids responded to his wide-eyed innocence and innate kindness, the main hallmarks of his onscreen persona -- was often called “The Big Mouth” because his huge, always-smiling (even in the face of adversity) mouth was his most distinctive feature, and sometimes his movie titles reflected this facial feature – two of his movies were entitled <em>The Big Mouth</em> and <em>Wide Open Faces</em>. Brown was movie history's first "rubber-faced" comedian, fifty years before Jim Carrey and, for the record, Joe E. Brown is "Hilariously Funny" and Jim Carrey is "Incredibly Not Funny and Annoying," although if a biopic were ever to be made about Brown's life, Carrey, who's better in 'serious' roles than he is in comedic ones, would probably be perfect to play him.<br /><br />Like a lot of great comedians, Brown, in his movies, covered up his shy, self-deprecatingness by performing overly-confident acts of bravado in front of women he liked – usually, right before falling down the manhole he didn't see, which was directly in front of him. (Bob Hope borrowed this <em>shtick</em> from Brown, and Woody Allen borrowed it from Bob Hope.) When Joe E. Brown gets threatened in his movies, or when he's in panicked distress, he opens his yap wide – it stretches so that his whole head turns into the Grand Canyon – and makes the funniest/strangest/most captivating noise you’ve ever heard. Here's that noise right now:<br /><br /><object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/OXu3X0y9LzM&hl=en&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/OXu3X0y9LzM&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br /><br /><br /></div><br /><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div></div><div><br /><div align="left">Brown was a huge sports fan, and a lot of his movies center around weaklings who are thrown into the sports world (baseball, football, polo, <em>etc</em>.) and triumph, even though you think they will fall flat on their faces. (I myself am not a huge sports fan, but I enjoy Brown's sports-themed movies anyway, because the guy is non-stop hilarious.) In fact, three of Brown's best movies – <em>Fireman Save My Child, Elmer the Great, </em>and<em> Alibi Ike</em> – center around baseball and are often referred to, in film history books, as Brown's "Baseball Trilogy." All three of these movies will be on TCM, on 7/28/09.<br /><br />Here is Tuesday, July 28th’s schedule of Joe E. Brown movies on Turner Classic Movies. I promise that if you don’t like these movies, you never have to read my insufferable blogs again. All of the films which TCM will be broadcasting on 7/28 are from Brown’s 1929-1936 Warner Bros. catalog. WB is where Brown made his best and funniest films, and when his WB contract was up, and the studio wouldn’t up his salary commensurate with the huge profits his movies were taking in at the box office, he left them and became a free agent. The movies in which Brown would star after his tenure at WB (mostly, at Columbia and Republic) aren’t as good for the reason that the Marx Bros.' earlier movies were better than the later ones -- in the case of both the Marx Bros. and Joe E. Brown, the early films were 100% centered around them, while in the later pictures, the studios, in an effort to bring 'comedy-averse' women into the theaters, often added insufferable romantic subplots featuring blandly-good looking couples who crooned to each other, <em>ad nauseam.</em></div><div></div><br /><div>TiVo as many of these hilarious Joe E. Brown movies as you can, and then feel free to post a response to this blog and tell me what you think of them. Turner Classic Movies will be presenting ten of Brown’s Warner Bros. pictures in the order in which they were released theatrically.<br /><br />Here is the schedule, which I’ve listed in both PST (Pacific Standard Time) for people on the West Coast and EST (Eastern Standard Time) for people on the East Coast.<br /><em>ON WITH THE SHOW</em> (1929) (3:45 AM PST, 6:45 AM, EST);<br /><em>THE TENDERFOOT</em> (1932) (5:30 AM PST, 8:30 AM, EST);<br /><em>FIREMAN SAVE MY CHILD</em> (1932) (6:45 AM PST, 9:45 AM EST);<br /><em>SON OF A SAILOR</em> (1933) (8:00 AM, PST, 11:00AM, EST);<br /><em>ELMER THE GREAT</em> (1933) (9:15 AM PST, 12:15 AM EST);<br /><em>A VERY HONORABLE GUY</em> (1934) (10:30AM PST, 1:30PM EST);<br /><em>THE CIRCUS CLOWN</em> (1934) (11:45 AM, PST; 2:45PM EST);<br /><em>ALIBI IKE</em> (1935) (1:00PM PST, 4:00PM EST);<br /><em>POLO JOE</em> (1936) (2:15PM PST, 5:15PM EST);<br /><em>SONS O’ GUNS</em> (1936) (3:30PM PST, 6:30PM EST).<br /><br />If you want to read about Joe E. Brown, check out the book about him, <em>Joe E. Brown: Film Comedian and Baseball Buffoon,</em> by Wes D. Gehring (MacFarland, 2006). Gehring doesn't really capture Brown's personality, so if you've never seen Brown before, you won't really "get what he's about" from reading his book; however the author has done a very admirable job of researching Brown's life, to completion. It's available on Amazon.com.</div><br />Why did Brown fall off the radar? Who knows. Pop Culture is weird, in the sense that we remember some people from the past but, at the same time, we forget other people who are equally as valuable. But I guess that's why Turner Classic Movies and "bloggers like me" are here: (maybe) to redress past mistakes...<br /><div><br />Anyway, that’s all! Please give these Joe E. Brown movies a chance when they appear on Turner Classic Movies this week. I promise you will love all ten of them. Each film is hilarious from beginning to end.</div></div>CZO: Chuck Zigman Overdrivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01597949826304464382noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7968054145164198227.post-49214891857292776542009-07-13T21:41:00.000-07:002009-07-13T21:46:14.827-07:00Turn Off Your Gadgets! Day is Sunday July 19, 2009<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SlwNPDUgncI/AAAAAAAAABo/J5vxCB_IhwM/s1600-h/cellphone.png"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5358172208904576450" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SlwNPDUgncI/AAAAAAAAABo/J5vxCB_IhwM/s320/cellphone.png" border="0" /></a><br /><div>Hi!</div><br /><div></div><br /><div>Like most people, I am addicted to gadgets, but I am equally bothered by them. It seems like we are continually surrounded by the white noise of our digital age. What if there were just one day where people around the world didn't need cellphones and computers and blackberries and Ipods and GPS and T.V. and video games. (Seriously, if you're over 12 and you're playing a video game, you need to re-think your life, anyway!)</div><br /><div></div><br /><div>My "dream" is that for one Sunday, during the summer, everybody will join me in turning off their computers, cellphones, blackberries, Ipods, GPS systems, video games,, and t.v.'s for an entire day, from 12:00am to 11:59pm. Instead, you can hang out with your family and friends... go on a picnic... explore a place in your own town that you've never experienced... and (here's my weirdest idea!), you can read a book (a real book, not a digital book). Please forward this and help me spread the word. Let's see if everybody around the world can do without all of these things for just one day.</div><br /><div></div><br /><div>(PS, I don't want to be a jerk about it! On this day, you can use your cellphone or computer for an extreme emergency... and, of course, you can keep the lights on and drive your car, and you can use a real phone -- a land-line -- and cook food... and, also: please bathe, because that's the most important thing of all.) </div><br /><div></div><br /><div>I guess I would love to see one day where everybody can be together, completely unfettered by digital devices -- just like in "the old days."Thank you for listening! Forward this to everybody you know and even everybody you don't know!</div><br /><div></div><br /><div>Please forward this to everybody you've ever met in your life.</div><br /><div></div><br /><div>This coming Sunday is Turn Off Your Gadgets! Day</div><br /><div></div><br /><div>Chuck Zigman</div><br /><div><a href="http://chuckzigmanoverdrive.blogspot.com/">http://chuckzigmanoverdrive.blogspot.com/</a></div><br /><div>Los Angeles</div><div></div><div>Also: Be sure to join the Facebook group for Turn off Your Gadgets! Day</div>CZO: Chuck Zigman Overdrivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01597949826304464382noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7968054145164198227.post-73105811195258241712009-07-07T15:54:00.000-07:002009-07-08T18:58:17.862-07:00Terry Southern: Adventures of an Ultra-Fab Prof<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SlVBkPAO1MI/AAAAAAAAABg/RGOfP9IkFjQ/s1600-h/southern.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356259422585672898" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 250px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SlVBkPAO1MI/AAAAAAAAABg/RGOfP9IkFjQ/s320/southern.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><div align="center">“ADVENTURES OF AN ULTRA-FAB PROF,</div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><div align="center">OR: What It Was Like to Be One of Terry Southern's Writing Students at Columbia University, </div><div align="center">in the Early 1990s."<br /><br /><br /></div><div align="center">by CHARLES ZIGMAN<br /></div><br /><div align="center">July 9, 2009</div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><div align="left"><br />Terry Southern, who passed away fourteen years ago, in 1995, is the Father of Contemporary Black Comedy. Period. And if you don’t like it, or if you don’t agree with it, then I can’t help you out, because it happens to be true. <p></p></div>Terry was the peerless genius without whom there would be no "Saturday Night Live," no <em>National Lampoon,</em> and probably (definitely), no Howard Stern. Beginning in the 1950s, he wrote, or co-authored, some of the sharpest black comedy of our time, in both film (<em>Dr. Strangelove, Easy Rider</em>) and literature. He first gained notoriety from the publication of his novella <em>Candy,</em> which he co-authored with poet Mason Hoffenberg, a hilarious satire of porn which some ‘too-literal-minded’ people misconstrued to be actual porn itself – Terry’s irony was so subtle, it was frequently misunderstood. He was an admired part of that ultra-cool pantheon of counter-culture denizens who included his good friends William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg. <p></p><br /><br />But then, suddenly, starting in the seventies, something happened to Terry, or I guess, as I should say more accurately, nothing happened. The world, for the most part, stopped requiring his unique services as hipster laureate. It’s not that Terry stopped writing, though, because he didn’t. It’s just that, his counter-culture style, which was so popular in the turbulent sixties, could no longer find a home in a 1980s-1990s world in which, increasingly, there was no counter-culture, and in which even the most liberal of people had become members of the establishment. (Terry spent these years writing many great screenplays which never came to fruition, due to the vagaries of the increasingly commodified film industry.) So, for the most part, Terry just lived out his last twenty years quietly. Nobody knew what became of him, and almost nobody asked… except, thank Jehova, for Columbia University’s Graduate Department of Film, in New York City. <p></p><br />I was amazed to find, on that morning in the Spring of 1991, that the famously reclusive Terry Southern would be teaching the Wednesday afternoon screenwriting course I had signed up for at Columbia, and I became fortunate enough to know this writer, whose literature and films I had enjoyed from the time I was very young, for the last four years of his life. And I’m happy to report that this ‘grand guy’ (as Terry himself used to call his friends) was sharp and hilarious, right up until the very end.<br /><p> </p><p align="center"><br />“MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS WEDNESDAY.” Writing class. One of our more earnest classmates stands up. She reads the class a short screenplay she has written, a feminist retake on the Mary, Queen of Scots legend, featuring Mary and her same-sex lover. (!) This student prattles on for upwards of half an hour. We, her peers, are supposed to listen to this incredible boorishness, and to make comments when she is finished, but she is just so incredibly boring, that we are all dropping off like flies. People who are not wearing watches start, absently, checking their arms. When the student finishes laying down her never-ending monologue, she gazes at the class triumphantly; ready for the admiration that she knows she deserves.<br />She asks us, “What did you think?”<br />Terry, who has been nodding off during the reading, answers gracefully: “Why don’t they just get stoned and fuck?”<br />The young woman runs out of the classroom, never to return. Our whole class takes Terry out for a well-deserved beer.<br /></p><br /><br /><br />To borrow the opening phrase from the beginning of Terry’s 1970 novel, <em>Blue Movie</em>,<br /><em>Now dig this</em>: <p>Fall 1991. Orientation day for the new semester arrives. All of the teachers congregate on stage, pontificating wildly about what their courses will involve. Most of these professors have never worked in the film biz proper (one guy edited an episode of “Sea Hunt”), so this assortment of intimidated students is probably the largest audience most of them will probably ever get. I notice, as I listen to these teachers droning on incessantly, that the mythic Terry Southern is nowhere in sight; his chair, on stage, is unoccupied. Moments later, Southern is introduced… but where is he? </p><br /><p></p>In the front row of the audience, hidden anonymously among the students, an unassuming gentleman stands, wearing a simple, and food-stained, work shirt. This is Terry Southern. Staring at his shoes, shyly, he lays out his whole plan for the semester: “I just want to help people write screenplays.” Then he sits down again, as fast as he can. He’s too frail-looking, obviously, to make that Everest-like climb up to the stage. <p></p><br />Days later, when Terry arrives in our classroom for the first time, always out-of-breath for the first few moments, he thanks us graciously, and we assist him in placing his cane against the wall and getting himself seated. This is not the dark-haired, Ray-Ban-wearing, swingin’ sixties Terry Southern who was immortalized by the Beatles on the jacket of the “Sergeant Pepper” album. (Southern was Ringo’s favorite author.) The Terry Southern in our classroom is the rumpled model, twenty-five years hence. He’s obviously teaching just because he “needs the bread,” which he’ll admit to a few of us students a few months later, but we know the score nevertheless, because his tweed jackets and shirts are old and stained. He is sixty-eight, although he appears to be ten years older, due to many years of mistreatment at the hands of a Hollywood which has shunned him, and also to the fact that he has steadily mistreated himself over time, even admitting to us, when our class once went out for a beer after class, that he’s “just an old drinker.” The Terry in our class has weathered strokes, heart attacks, stomach surgeries – you name it. <p></p><br />The irony of the brand-name on this always tired-looking guy’s backpack – the label reads, “Active Sack” (!) – is not lost on him; Terry always takes pleasure in showing us the label, instantly becoming years younger as laughter lights up his face. He relishes the attention that our class pays to him. We realize, even if the majority of the world seems to have (somehow) gone out without him, that we are more than lucky to be in his presence. <p></p><br />What was Terry Southern like in class? Well, he was absolutely like Guy Grand, the main character of his absurdist novel <em>The Magic Christian</em> (1959) always gleefully ‘putting everybody on,’ (as he always said), but always good-naturedly so, and with no offense intended. While he didn’t exactly teach screenwriting in the strictest sense of the word – he never, for example, lectured about anything arcane, like “story structure” – he would take students’ screenplays home in his Active Sack and make really copius, and hilarious, handwritten notes on them, mostly, on yellow post-it notes. (In a screenplay I wrote in his class, a transvestite prostitute asks an aroused client, “Want to smell my tasty feet?” Terry crossed out my too-innocuous line, and replaced it with the even more mellifluous-sounding, “Want to shit on top of my head?”)<br />All of Terry’s students got nicknames – usually monosyllabic versions of our real names – so, for example, a student named Evan became “Ev;” ‘Colin’ was ‘Col’; a corpulent guy named Marco became “Big Marco;” and on and on. And, as far as my name was concerned, because ‘Chuck’ was already one syllable, I became an amalgamation of all of my names plus my nickname: (“Hello, is Charles ‘Chuck’ Zigman there?” Terry would ask, when he once rang me up.)<br />Sometimes, Terry would absently doodle on one of his omnipresent yellow legal pads, while students read their script pages aloud. I pilfered one of the drawings he had generated – for posterity, of course – and while I can’t make out exactly what’s happening in the sketch, to this day, Terry at least had the good sense to entitle his line drawing, “Gus and the Doll.” Terry would also smack his dry lips many times during an average class session, which, in my nice Jewish boy naïveté, I would later learn to be classic dry mouth. (He would have a few beers between classes quite often and we, his students, would sometimes bring him his treasured Heinekins, becoming his most dedicated ennablers.) <p></p><br /><br />On other and other Wednesday afternoons, when lazy students didn’t bring in any script pages to read, Terry screened videos of his old films: We watched his funeral industry satire, <em>The Loved One</em> right along with him, as well as <em>Dr. Strangelove</em>. He really beamed when we laughed at the films, and he always carried videos of the films which he had written in his Active Sack ‘for,’ as he would say, ‘ just such an eventuality.’ Terry even showed us a short film that some young filmmakers at another college had recently fashioned out of one of his short stories, “You’ve Gotta Leave Your Mark.” He seemed to be as proud of this little student film as he would have been if it had been a major studio film, which is something that we found to be very poignant. You see, T.S. had been disappointed by movie industry people for so long, that he was excited whenever someone was interested in filming his work at all, whether it was Twentieth Century Fox or Twenty Worshipful Film Students. And that was the cool thing about Terry: Even though he wrote very black comedy, he was always modest and self-deprecating.<br />One Saturday, Terry happened to be appearing at a Greenwich Village coffee klatch, reading some of his old short stories, in tandem with Allen Ginsberg who was reading poetry. He didn’t bother to tell his students about it. <p></p><br /><br />“Terry, why didn’t you tell us you were doing a reading?” we asked him. “We would have come to see you.” Modestly, he mumbled, “Oh, you wouldn’t have wanted to waste your time with that. It was nothing.” He was always diminishing his accomplishments like that. (And The Modesty Goes On: Terry found out, in his third semester with us, that he would only be teaching a beginning-level screenwriting class during the upcoming semester, and that he would no longer be able to have us – his ‘advanced’ students – in class anymore. He wanted to have our class back for another semester, but was too shy to go and find out if this was a possibility, so he asked a few of us if we would go down to the administrator’s office with him to help plead his case. We did, and it worked.) <p></p><br />Anecdotes about Terry Southern at Columbia are legion and, recently, many of his ex-students gathered to recount our favorite “Terry stories.” I have compiled a “top twelve list” of the most bizarre ones; these are odd incidents, all, and each one seems to be right out of a Southern novel or film. In no particular order:<br /><br /><br /><p align="left"><br /><strong>1.) “INNOCUOUS HARRASSMENT DAY:” An attractive brunette in our class asked if she could meet Terry later for a consultation about her new screenplay, since she was on her way to the gym for an aerobics class. Terry perked up immediately, obviously imagining the girls’shower room, and inquired, “Can I look through the keyhole?” (Terry’s female students would never get mad at him when he occasionally unleashed ‘dirty old man’ utterances, because everyone knew that he was just playing on the conventions of being a dirty old man, more than he was actually being a real-life dirty old man – even though he was definitely both, and in the best sense of the word.<br />2.) “BATHROOM FUN DAY:” On this day that will live in infamy, Terry dismissed himself from class and departed for the men’s room. He emerged five minutes later, grinning lopsidedly. A few other students and I went in there on a reconnaissance mission, to discover that Terry had drawn a huge penis on the bathroom wall in black ink. Underneath, he had scrawled, “Let’s all dive into some ultra-fab clit!” We confronted our brazen teacher.<br />“Hey, Terry, did you just write on the bathroom wall?” we asked.<br />“Oh, Good Lord, no,” he said. (Terry had the coolest speaking voice. In spite of being raised in Texas, he had bewilderingly cultivated a strange British accent.)<br />3.) “TRES GAY DAY”: Terry cancelled our class one Wednesday, so that we could all go into our student screening room and catch <em>Swoon,</em> a new gay-independent film version of the real-life Leopold and Loeb crime spree.<br />“Film in Room 511,” Terry told us excitedly. “Let’s all fly to Room 511!” Terry chuckled all the way through the homoerotic flick. During the movie, he leaned over to anyone who could hear and whispered, “This is tres gay, no?”<br />4.) “GEORGE BUSH HOLOGRAM DAY:” 2:00am. Terry called me up during the rebroadcast of a George Bush (Sr.) press conference, not realizing how late it was. I didn’t pick up, so he told my answering machine that George Bush did not exist, and that the sitting president was, in fact, merely a hologram which was being projected from some kind of combination mental hospital/observatory, high atop a mountain! (One can only imagine what Terry would have said about Bush, Jr.!)<br />5.) “’MIRACLE IN MONTAUK’ DAY”: Once, our whole class decided to write a “group screenplay,”each person churning out five pages until it was finished. We called it Miracle in Montauk. On the last day of class, Terry turned in his five pages of “Montauk” (the script no longer exists), which were awesome, even though they had nothing to do with the story which we were telling:<br />“How’s your ultra-fab clit hanging?” one lesbian (!) asks another at the beginning of Terry’s pages.<br />“Hanging?” the other lesbian replies. How’s it hanging? Glimmering in the sun, maybe. Shimmering, yes, granted. I’ll give you that. But hanging, never.”<br />After Terry read that to us, we were silent. There can be no words to follow something like that up properly.<br />6.) “HEROIN DAY”: One student in our writing class was in the hospital, and Terry wrote her a very sweet letter, making sure that she was “in fine form and fettle.” He recounted to her the fact that he, himself, had been in the hospital on numerous occasions, and that the nurses would always give him a tray so he would have something to write on. He also sent the same student a postcard, which addressed a problem he thought that I may have had: Apparently, because I was so quiet in Terry’s class for the first several weeks, he mistook my silent awe of him for drug addiction! The picture on the postcard Terry sent the hospitalized girl, was that of an anthropomorphized hypodermic needle – it had legs and a happy face – being chased by two cherubic-looking children. On the reverse of the card, Terry scrawled a terse note: “GET ZIGMAN OFF HEROIN! FROM A CONCERNED FRIEND, IN EAST CANAAN, CONNECTICUT.”<br />7.) “THE AMAZING DISAPPEARING SCRIPTS DAY”: It’s a spring day, and Terry has come up to Columbia, looking really depressed. He’s afraid to look anybody in the eye, and I’m sitting on a bench reading, when he shuffles by, staring down at his shoes.<br />“What’s wrong, Terry?” I ask him. “Man, I just had a heavy scene,” he says, stopping in his tracks, looking guilty.<br />“What happened?”<br />Apparently, on Terry’s way up to Columbia in a cab – he made the journey by himself that day and not with his excellent companion Gail Gerber, as he usually did – he had lost our entire class’s screenplays in a cab. We all assured him that it was okay. He looked really relieved.<br />8.) “KEYHOLE DAY”: Terry couldn’t get into his classroom to teach his 1:00pm course. The door was locked, because the class that was in there before hadn’t let out yet. He freaked.<br />“What’s going on in there,” I asked.<br />Terry peered through the keyhole and then offered me a relatively simple explanation:<br />“Some form of sexual excess, I should think.”<br />9.) “REVISIONIST HISTORY NIGHT:” Terry attended a screening of student films one night at Manhattan’s tony National Arts Club on Gramercy Park Place, a garish establishment in which well-heeled, octogenarian patrons-of-the-arts drink vermouth and feed their poodle dogs filet mignon, right at the table . Terry was given a tour of the century-old venue, which included a brief history lesson about the building. I arrived late, so I asked Terry to recount the history of the century-old National Arts Club and he told me that it was “designed in 1975 by Ken Russell.” 10.) “MARLON BRANDO ZYGOTE DAY:” Terry electrified our class when he told us about a party at Marlon Brando’s house in the sixties. To this day, none of us knows whether this actually happened or not (most probably, it did not) but Terry really made us see it:<br />“Bud Brando’s housekeeper miscarried his baby, right there at the party – this right-rave up. So, dig, Marlon scoops the [stillborn infant] into a coffee cup, and he proffers this mug to all of the guests, instructing them to ‘taste the zygote.’”<br />11.) On the first day of class, during Terry’s second year with us, the film school administrator encountered Terry in the hallway. “Hi, Terry,” she chirped, cheerfully. “Did you do some writing this summer?’ With a fake smile, he replied. “Heh –heh- heh. [long beat] No.”<br />12.) Terry told us the same joke every week, and we would all pretend we had never heard him tell it before, since he would take such pleasure in laying it down, and then breaking himself up; hearing the joke became something we looked forward to every week. The joke, roughly, is that Little Red Riding Hood is skipping down the path. The Big Bad Wolf pops out of some brambles and growls, “Little girl, I’m going to fuck you!” Little Red replies, “Stick to the script, Grandpa, it just says you’re supposed to eat me.”<br /></strong></p><br /><br /><br />One of my very favorite things about being a student in Terry Southern’s class, is that he used to do nice things for every single one of his students. He wrote, and posted, humorous letters to each of us, just as he had done for our hospitalized classmate. (In a letter to one student, Terry recounts an episode of “Beavis and Butthead” which he had particularly enjoyed, and for no reason, about halfway into the letter, he reverts into fluent French); he tried to help get another student the film rights to Leonard Cohen’s novel <em>Beautiful Losers</em>; he sent all of us books and CD’s which he thought we would like; and he phoned all of us, too, late into the night, not only to speculate on George Bush, but also to make sure that we were not too overwhelmed by our schoolwork. Terry freely gave students his home phone number, demanding that each of us would call him, too, and often. (When we called Terry, he would routinely answer the phone with a gleeful shout of, “Pronto!” When Terry would call us, and our answering machines would pick up, he would, invariably, keep yelling, “Mayday!” until we picked up the call.) <p></p><br />I often think that Terry felt sympathetic with young people who were trying, unsuccessfully, to get breaks in show business, because it was so difficult for him to get his own projects going in his later years. He, better than anybody, knew how cruel, unethical, and how downright creepy, Hollywood was. He did something especially nice for me – something which I will never take for granted: <p>Going back to that very first day of class, Terry’s instructions were simple: Everyone around the room was supposed to read a few pages of a screenplay that he or she had written during the previous summer vacation, and he would critique them. After each person read, Terry offered really sharp, incisive comments. I was the last one to go. After I read, he made no comments at all. He just stared at me as if I were something out of a petrie dish and uttered, “Next.” I wanted to crawl into a corner. My favorite writer hates my guts! <p></p><br />One week later, a priority mail package arrived at my 530 West 113th Street #3C apartment, return addressed from East Canaan, Connecticut, Terry’s home since the sixties. The envelope contained a copy of a short story which he had written for George Plimpton’s <em>Paris Review,</em> “Heavy Put Away or, A Hustle Not Wholly Devoid of a Certain Grossness, Granted.” Along with the manuscript came this note: “I thought this might make a nice film for you.” Terry knew that, like all film students, I was supposed to start production on a short film that would serve as my master’s thesis, and he felt that this would be a good story for my film. When I encountered Terry in class a few days later, he asked if I’d like to co-author the script for “Heavy Put-Away” with him. <p></p><br />Naturally, it was the happiest day of my life. After years of Hollywood people telling me to get lost – practically throwing out me out of their offices because they felt my writing was too “weird” – here is the validation I needed. An offer of collaboration, from my all-time favorite writer! <p></p><br />Terry and I spent three or four lunch breaks hammering out the adaptation. His original short story is set in a tavern, where a con man details his shady exploits to a Mickey Spillane-type writer. Terry and I discussed how to open the story up and make it more cinematic; how to show characters which had only been described in the story; and, most of all, how to make this twenty-five minute film funny. <p></p><br />We wrote at some of the taverns up near Columbia. I’d fuel Terry with ham sandwiches and Heinekins (“We’re getting a bit thirsty, Charles, yes?”), and watch his imagination take flight. The always-great Gail Gerber, a dance instructor who was Terry’s dutiful companion for many years (always taking his arm and walking him to school each week), would give me ballet-tinged instructions for watching Terry carefully when I walked him down Broadway for lunch: “Don’t let Terry do any plies across the street,” she would admonish; not to mention, “Watch Terry at the traffic lights!” Many times, Terry and I would be followed up the street by homeless men, who would hit on the avuncular-looking Terry for a few bucks, greeting him with cries of, “Yo, Professor, how about a dollah?!” <p></p><br />It was also during these writing lunches that I got my first taste of how badly Terry must have felt about his decline in the entertainment world, in the nineteen eighties and nineties. At a sushi place near campus, where he and Gail ate from a huge wooden plank full of Jules Verne-like delicacies, one of which I think may have even been some kind of a starfish, and washing it all down with endlessly flowing sake, I asked him about a project which he had co-authored with songwriter Harry Nilsson, <em>The Telephone</em>. This low-budget film, released in 1985 and starring Whoopi Goldberg, was Terry’s first filmed feature screenplay in fifteen years. Terry said that he and Nilsson had penned the script for Robin Williams, but that it was impossible for him and Nilsson to get it to the fast-talking megastar. <p></p><br />“Yeah, Robin’s scripts have to go through his wife, and she wouldn’t give it to him,” Terry mumbled, downing one more in his series of sakes. <p></p><br />I felt so awful. The genius scribe of <em>Dr. Strangelove</em> and <em>Easy Rider</em>, and he couldn’t get a script to fucking MORK? The horror! The horror! (Terry’s friend Rip Torn directed <em>The Telephone</em>; in fact, the grand Mr. Torn always makes sure, whenever he is interviewed, even to this day, to always put in a plug for his late, great friend. <p></p><br />Terry told me more of his troubles: In the eighties, he scored a gig writing for “Saturday Night Live,” through his friend, the satirist Michael O’ Donoghue, but he was soon replaced, because his sketches one of which, he told me, was called “The Disgusting Gyno,” were deemed improper for network television, even though the program aired at the late hour of 11:30pm. I learned, at roughly the same time, through a network of fellow film geeks, that a strapped-for-cash Terry had written a hardcore Desiree Cousteau picture, <em>Randy, the Electric Lady</em>, under a pseudonym: Eventually, I would get ahold of the video – research, of course – and found out that in between the hardcore sex acts, the film was peppered with acerbic/literate dialogue, the likes of which I had never seen in a porn flick, much of the dialogue simply consisting of Southern archly sending himself up. (In the film, a doctor at a Masters and Johnson-like sex clinic barges in on two other scientists who happen to be <em>in flagrante delicto</em>. He tells them, “No fucking in here. This is the sex room”—a joke on the “No fighting in here, this is the war room” line from <em>Dr. Strangelove</em>.<br />While Terry’s writing style, which was sometimes dark but never mean-spirited, may not have been in vogue in the Hollywood of the nineties, at least, he never gave up. Between classes, when he wasn’t being treated to lunch by his students, he would sometimes sit alone in the classroom, huddled over pen and paper. Once, I peeked at what he was writing; it was something about Slim Pickens, who rode the rocket in <em>Strangelove</em>, an anecdote, apparently, for his memoirs. (Terry did have a biographer, Lee Hill, who accompanied him to class, on a couple of occasions.)<br />Terry always looked a bit pallid, and sometimes more than at other times. He came to school on the days when he wasn’t feeling quite up to snuff, as well, always afraid to miss a class, and needing every bit of the meager money which Columbia paid him; once, he even walked into the film school office and asked if there was any such thing as a “faculty loan,” just as a strapped student might often need to take out a student loan. <p></p><br />My career as a student at Columbia University was soon over. I graduated from film school in 1993 and moved back to my hometown of Los Angeles. I saw Terry once more the following year, when I returned to New York for a visit. Terry always liked to hear about what was going on in L.A., because he had not spent too much time there since the early ‘70s. When I walked into his class, which was stuffed to the rafters with all-new, fresh-faced students, he beamed, “Zigman! What news from the Coast?” <p></p><br />The following year, I became a Professor of Film myself, at small Augusta State University, in Georgia. (Augusta’s a sleepy Bible-belt/bedroom community which wakes up once a year for the Masters Golf Tournament.) I wrote Terry a letter, telling him that I would be teaching a course called ‘Literature into Film,’ and that I would concentrate, for a few weeks, on his own novels and films (and this turned out, by the way, to be the most popular part of the class). He wrote me back immediately, and it’s a letter which I will always treasure. The letter was printed on the back of an invitation to an Independent Film Project awards dinner in NYC, where Terry had been honored that week (finally!) along with such other silver screen luminaries as Joel and Ethan Coen, Sigourney Weaver, Jane Campion, and Harvey Keitel. This missive reads as follows:<br />“Dear Chuck: Delighted to hear from you, and doubly delighted to hear of your good fortune there among the Georgia Peaches. If memory serves, teeny bop Georgia poon tastes almost exactly like peaches and cream – and is lined with little puppy dog tongues which know (is this instinct or what?) how to deal with a man’s throbbing johnson. Am I right???<br />“Anyway, please keep me posted. Quite a bash the other night, the prestigious IFP Award Dinner. Was obliged to do the hang with Bobby, Marty, and Harve and finally, of course, to drop on Sig Weaver. (‘P&C,’ [peaches and cream] Chuck, but def[initely] yum yum!)”<br /><br />The letter came in an envelope, return addressed from “Tonya Harding, East Canaan, Connecticut.”<br /><br />I talked to Terry one more time, in the fall of 1995, about a month before he passed away. I was responsible for finding a keynote speaker for Augusta State University’s yearly get-together of scribes, the Sandstone Writer’s Conference, which happens to be the largest annual convention of writers in the south. I suggested that Terry should be the ‘grand marshal, a move which thrilled my fellow faculty members who didn’t know what had become of this famous recluse. The college’s literature faculty was fascinated by the idea that Terry, whom they too recognized to be a great icon, would be spending a whole weekend with students. When I asked Terry if he and Gail would like to fly down to Georgia, his enthusiasm was tempered by matters pecuniary:<br />“Any bread,” he asked? (He said he’d do it for five hundred dollars. Apparently, money was now ultra-ultra-tight in Terry’s house; in a rare interview Terry had given to the Washington Post a few months earlier, the interviewer found, on Terry’s mantle, a stack of past due notices and a rifle.) <p></p><br />I was buoyed up by the idea of squiring Terry and Gail around the historic south, but it never came to be. For soon after I had spoken to him about it, Terry collapsed on the stairwell, on his way to teaching a class at Columbia, and he passed away four days later. <p></p><br />In the sixties, Terry Southern was one of the most prominent members of thesame Mt. Rushmore pantheon as Kerouac, Ginsburg, Burroughs, Leary, etc. But due to the vagaries of a film industry which had wasted his time, and no longer brokered in his type of humor, he soon – inexplicably – “slipped off the list,” except to his diehard fans. But those of us who were his students will never forget him.<br /><br /><br />Terry’s friend William S. Burroughs (the two appear together in the documentary Burroughs, where they hilariously try out a Reichian Therapy ‘orgone energy tank’ together) once said of this grand guy, “Terry Southern knows how to write.” And the ancient Egyptians said something that was pretty cool, too. (Since I know I have to end a hagiographic/sycophantic article like this in the most pretentious way I can, I won’t disappoint): Those wily Egyptians said that if you utter a person’s name three times, that person will live forever. In that case: Terry Southern. Terry Southern. Terry Southern. <p></p><br /><br /><strong>Post Script</strong>: Currently in July 2009, too, all of the sudden, after an absence of many years, dark/sharp/smart/out-there/frequently gross comedies are suddenly back in vogue again at the local multiplex (<em>The Hangover</em>; <em>Bruno</em> and <em>Borat</em>; anything with Seth Rogen). If Terry were still here, I'll bet Hollywood would take notice...<br /><br /><br /><br /><p align="left"><br />Copyright 2009 by Charles L. Zigman. All Rights Reserved. None of this article may be re-printed without the expression permission of the Author.</p><br /><p align="left">Read Charles Zigman's New Book,</p><div align="center">WORLD'S COOLEST MOVIE STAR:</div><br /><br /><p align="center">THE COMPLETE 95 FILMS (AND LEGEND) OF JEAN GABIN (<a href="http://www.jeangabinbook.com/">http://www.jeangabinbook.com/</a>)</p>CZO: Chuck Zigman Overdrivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01597949826304464382noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7968054145164198227.post-65913643052643345042009-07-03T12:57:00.000-07:002009-07-05T09:35:48.062-07:00MILTON BERLE XXX: MY NEVER BEFORE PUBLISHED, "ADULTS-ONLY" INTERVIEW WITH THE KING OF TELEVISION<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/Sk5mP3XwkaI/AAAAAAAAABA/GAca2D8pPzk/s1600-h/Berle1.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5354329429737771426" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 243px" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/Sk5mP3XwkaI/AAAAAAAAABA/GAca2D8pPzk/s320/Berle1.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />"MR. TELEVISION – XXX! MILTON BERLE, UNCUT”<br />A Never Before Published Interview with a Legend<br /><br /><br />By Charles Zigman, July 4, 2009<br /><br />Milton Berle, Interviewed by Charles Zigman at<br />The Friar’s Club, Los Angeles, July 22 and 27, 1999.<br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Ten years ago: July, 1999.<br /><br />Fresh out of graduate school, I was trying to drum up some freelance writing gigs (some things never change), and the one that fell into place was for a book which was actually entitled <em>Gig</em>: Two friends of mine from Columbia University’s Graduate Film School, Sabin Streeter and John Bowe, and John’s sister, Marisa Bowe, were editing a book for Random House, called <em>Gig: Americans Talk About Their Jobs at the Time of the Millennium.</em> The idea behind the book is that interviewers scattered throughout the country, including me, would interview people from all walks of life – ranchers, teachers, chefs – on the subject of how they felt about their jobs or careers, and to that extent,<em> Gig</em> was a kind of unofficial continuation, or updating, of Studs Terkel’s landmark 1974 tome, <em>Working</em>. No matter what an interview subject did for a living, we, the hired interviewers, were instructed to ask them the same twenty or so questions about their jobs, and Sabin, John, and Marisa had developed the questions in an incredibly scientific way, such that the answers people would give were almost always witty and incisive, no matter whom you talked to. These were interview questions designed to get great answers.<br /><br />John and Sabin gave me carte-blanche to interview anybody I wanted to – any person from any profession – and that’s exactly what I did. On one summer afternoon, I found myself at the Friar’s Club here in Los Angeles, the social club which Milton Berle founded in 1955 (it closed down in 2007, although the main, NYC-branch still survives), where older entertainers (Berle, George Burns, Steve Allen, Red Buttons) would go to have lunch, play cards and <em>kibbitz</em> (<em>kibbitz </em>= ‘break each other’s balls,' in Yiddish). I was there to interview a family friend, Buddy Arnold, who happened to be head writer for Milton Berle’s “Texaco Star Theater” (1948-1949), television’s very first live variety show, which lasted for 153 episodes, and which premiered during the nascent days of the medium. During my interview with Buddy Arnold, Milton Berle, who had just turned 91 (Berle, of course, would pass away three years later, in 2002), came up to the table where Arnold and I were sitting, and he asked me what we were doing, and I told him about the <em>Gig</em> project. Berle, still feisty even in his ninth decade, became incredulous: “Hey, kid! Why aren't you interviewing me?” I told him that I didn’t think he’d be interested, but he didn’t want to hear it. He proclaimed, “Meet me back here tomorrow afternoon at 2:30 – and bring your tape recorder.” And so I did.<br /><br />I knew fully well that any interview I would conduct with Milton Berle would not be used in the book – <em>Gig</em> trafficked mostly in people who were unknown. But I just couldn’t turn down the opportunity to interview television’s first great comedy legend, the first man to ever have his own live t.v. variety show. (I let Sabin have a look at the interview. He liked it, but allowed me to keep it, to use on my own.)<br /><br />I was born in 1966, so Milton Berle’s “Texaco Star Theater” program was before my time. And even though I knew Berle very well from his appearances on other people's t.v. specials in the '70s, I had never seen Berle's own show before, so when "Uncle Miltie" gave me the go-ahead to interview him, I ran out and rented some DVDs of the show, so that I would be familiar with it when I talked to him. This is how I learned that Berle and his program were just as sharp and sophisticated and hilarious as any of the best material from the earliest, "good" years of "Saturday Night Live," of which "Texaco Star Theater" was The Big Progenitor. (When I'm talking about "the good years" of "Saturday Night Live," I'm talking about that program's first five seasons, when it was truly hip, radical, and counter-cultural, and not the subsequent thirty years, during which time the show has, of course, devolved into the dumbed-down, "SNL" incarnation it is today -- yeppers, the producers of "Saturday Night live" have tried to make their unhip show hip by re-naming it with initials, but OMG, that never works.)<br /><br />This is the first time my interview with Milton Berle has been published anywhere, and what you’ll see, as you’re reading it, is that while Berle was in his early nineties when he spoke with me, and while he had weathered a small stroke two weeks prior to our sit-down, he was still in top form, ready to answer anything that I asked him, or anything that he felt like talking about it. Berle, whom I was warned could be “prickly” to interviewers, was nothing but gracious with me, and he had so much fun answering my scientifically-generated <em>Gig</em> questions, that our interview ultimately became two sessions, spread over two days, and each of these two days totalled about two-and-a-half hours each. (Berle even gifted me with one of his trademark cigars, which he instructed me to smoke with him. A fervent non-smoker, I told him that I’d rather take it home and keep it as a souvenir, but he wouldn’t hear of it: “Nonsense! Smoke this one with me now, and I’ll give you another one to take home.” I smoked Cigar #1 with Berle – how can you refuse an offer to inhale toxic carcinogens with a legend? – and I took the second one home to keep; I wish I could say that I still have Cigar #2, but I do not: Having no real understanding of how to preserve a cigar properly, I stuck in a jar, which I labeled, "Milton Berle’s Cigar,” and over a period of about five years, it disintegrated into dust. All things, it seems, must pass.)<br /><br />The great thing about this interview, besides the fact that everything coming out of Berle’s mouth was eminently fascinating, is that ninety-nine percent of the material which he divulged to me during our time together has ever been repeated anywhere else – not even in Berle’s 1974 autobiography, co-authored with Haskel Frankel, which is an outstanding read. (I think the only information that my interview and Berle’s book share in common is a story about how Berle’s beloved mother was a security guard at some New York department stores.) In other words, this interview is, I think, a nice complement to Berle’s book.<br /><br />One word of warning: While Berle often inveighed, in public, about how much disdain he had for comedians who utilized profanity and 'blue material' in their shows, in his private life – with his friends, in interviews, and in the ‘roasts’ in which Berle often took part at his beloved Friar’s Club – his vocabulary, as you’ll see, might even shock Andrew “Dice” Clay. As you’ll see when you read this interview, Berle starts out trying to shock me with some triple-XXX rated anecdotes, and then, as the interview continues, when he figures out that he can’t shock me, and as he ‘gets into it’ more, he switches gears and his comments become more poignant – ultimately, this interview is a great overview of the trials and tribulations of producing early television.<br /><br />I know, I know: This was too much set-up. But I wanted to place the following interview into perspective. If you’re a fan of Milton Berle, or of legendary comedians, or of great television (and even if you miss your grandparents, or any of those older people who were great storytellers, if you were lucky enough to be able to sit down with them for any length of time), I think you will really appreciate my July 1999 interview with Milton Berle. Here it is:<br /></span><br /><br /><br /><div align="left"></div><div align="left"><br />I turn on my tape recorder, and it begins:<br /><br />CZ: Mr. Berle, first of all, I appreciate your time. Thank you so much.<br /><br />MB: What’s your name?<br /><br />CZ: Chuck.<br /><br />MB: What? Irving?<br /><br />CZ: No, it’s “Chuck.”<br /><br />MB: Chug?<br /><br />CZ: It’s “Chuck.”<br /><br />MB: When you interview other people, do they lie to you? Like, if a guy’s gay and he lives with a priest? He wouldn’t tell you?<br /><br />CZ: I don’t know. I don’t think so.<br /><br />MB: Do you add up your summation if they’re telling you the truth? You could surmise if they’re lying?<br /><br />CZ: I don’t know. I just go on what they tell me, I never thought about it. I don’t know why anybody would lie to me – some of the people I interview are just engineers and stuff.<br /><br />MB: Who did you interview?<br /><br />CZ: Well, for example, about a week ago I interviewed a big-wig in the porno industry.<br /><br />MB: When you talk to a porno actress, you should ask her – because I’ve seen a lot of this, but I don’t know how to word it – you should ask her, “When you have sexual intercourse [in a movie], are you an Academy Award-winner, or do you really have an orgasm?” They’re all shouters. They say, “Oh, that’s the largest penis I ever saw.” Now, you know how a woman – how old are you now?<br /><br />CZ: I’m 25.<br /><br />MB: You’ve had experiences. I don’t know if… Are you married?<br /><br />CZ: One of these days…<br /><br />MB: You know how, when a woman wants to make a man feel good, she – can I use four-letter words?<br /><br />CZ: Sure.<br /><br />MB: She flatters the guy who’s balling her. She says, “That’s the greatest fuck I’ve ever had;” “What a beautiful cock, it’s so big.” Don’t tell me they [porn stars] didn’t give blowjobs their whole lives. They’re hookers! They’re classy, or maybe not classy. They pull maybe eight-to-ten tricks a day. You can’t come twenty times! But they make a customer feel good.<br /><br />CZ: When I came in, you were talking about some of the showgirls you knew in vaudeville. That sounded pretty interesting.<br /><br />MB: I was in love with a chick for a long time and I was balling her. I was in my late twenties. Her name was Evelyn. [coughs] It was for over a year. We broke up. The following week, I had another chick in the hotel – I was pretty wild in those days. You’re horny, you’re young, you get a hard-on pretty quick, you come pretty quick. So all the sudden, I can’t get Evelyn out of my mind. So I say [to myself], “Fuck her, I’ll find someone else that’ll be just in good in bed as Evelyn.”<br /><br />So I find a chick – not a hooker – she’s a showgirl in a nightclub. And we got together. This is a few days after I broke up with Evelyn. And I’m in a hotel room and I’m fucking her. The most embarrassing, threatening – not threatening, but horrible – thing happens. She’s on top of me, I’m in and out, balling her, she’s hot, I’m fucking her. We men are pretty good actors before we pop! I accidentally called her ‘Evelyn,’ because that was the woman I had just been with for eight months. So I get a whack in the face. She hit me a shot, a punch in the mouth. I didn’t call her ‘Evelyn’ again. I was so used to [being with] the other one, I couldn’t stop it. That’s not embarrassing, it’s disgusting. And it’s a, well, it’s a put-down to the girl; I was maybe going down on her and I looked up and I said, “Oh, Evelyn this is wonderful.” And she pulled away from me and she said, “You dirty Jew son-of-a-bitch, you prick.” Then I had another experience:<br /><br />I was a hotel. There was a girl. This was not a gang bang. She gave me a blow job. About twenty minutes before, she said, “Gee I’m thirsty.” I said, “Well, let me send for a drink for you.” She said, “I want some scotch.” I got her a drink. She put in on the dresser next to the bed. Do you want to hear what happened? She took a sip of the scotch, she held it in her mouth – she was getting a little <em>shikker</em> [Yiddish for ‘drunk’]. She put my dick in her mouth. The alcohol went down my dick!<br /><br />CZ: Ouch.<br /><br />MB: They took me to the fucking hospital. I pulled her hair. I hit her, not a punch – I smacked her. I said, “Get out, you fucking cunt. Put on your [clothes].” I’m yelling! Remember, there’s no 911 at this time; this is years ago. This is about forty-five, fifty years ago. I had to go to the hospital. Talk about embarrassing moments! Well, that’s no good to print. I don’t want to get dirty. She had liquor in her mouth, my penis in her mouth. Talk about embarrassing moments!<br /><br />CZ: I want to ask you more about that, but I have to start asking you the serious stuff first. Mr. Berle, what would you say your job title would be, if you had to make one up for yourself?<br /><br />MB: Making people laugh.<br /><br />CZ: How did you know you wanted to be a comedian?<br /><br />MB: At the age of five, I appeared with Charlie Chaplin in silent pictures. That was the first shot. He made me laugh, he made the world laugh – I wanted to be like him.<br /><br />CZ: Who did you play in the Charlie Chaplin movies?<br /><br />MB: I played an urchin, a child. Five years old, 1913. The name of the picture was <em>Tillie’s Punctured Romance. </em>And the leading lady for Chaplin was Marie Dressler. And I was an urchin who sold newspapers. I won a “Charlie Chaplin contest” in 1913, because he was the rage. And the prize was a silver loving cup, worth about sixty cents.<br /><br />CZ: How long do you think you’ll be able to keep performing?<br /><br />MB: For as long as I can stand on two feet.<br /><br />CZ: What was your training? Was it observing other vaudeville comedians?<br /><br />MB: My training started in 1913, watching the greats, the great comedians of that period and that era. I think it was self-training, that’s all I can say. In 1918 – World War One – Irving Berlin was the hero in the music world. And Irving Berlin was the first one to set up a caravan of stars of that era. They traveled around all over the United States to all the camps – Camp Upton, Camp Dix – to all the bases around. And he was the first one to put a caravan together with stars of that era who sang, danced, told jokes. That’s when he wrote, “Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning.” So I met him for the first time – this is a long, three-part story – when he had this music company called Wattison, Berlin, and Snyder. And I was singing songs at that age in 1916, ’17, and ’18 and I met Irving Berlin personally. And he liked me and that’s the time – I’m repeating now – when he wrote, “Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning.” So when he played the camps, he took the caravan around. Now, he had an idea: I didn’t know what he wanted to do, but he asked my mother if I could go and perform with him. And my right name [real last name], at the time, was not Berle, but Berlinger. The name Berlinger was, of course, derivative from Berlin, since my father was [of] German ancestry. My mother and father were both born in New York, though.<br /><br />Anyway, Irving Berlin took me around and he said to my mother, “I want the kid with me.” So in his uniform of khakis during World War I – 1917 and ’18 – he sang, “Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning.” And I came out and he pointed to the wings and said, “Come here, young man!” And I was a kid, of course. And instead of wearing a khaki uniform like a soldier, I wore my Boy Scout Uniform, because I belonged to the BSA – Boy Scouts of America. And he sang the first chorus of “Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning.” And he pointed to me and I sang the second chorus.<br /><br />CZ: Describe a typical day for Milton Berle.<br /><br />MB: If you’re talking vaudeville, it varied. In one place, you’d do two shows a day, another place three shows a day, another place four shows. Then I was in Atlantic City where I did twelve shows a day at the Steel Pier. When you write it, spell it like this: “S-T-E-A-L” pier. [This is a reference to the fact that Mr. Berle and other vaudeville comedians would sometimes good-naturedly ‘steal’ jokes from each other to use in their own shows.] My mother traveled with me all the time and the typical day was just a lot of work. Every day was work. Every day, I was changing the jokes and the material to try to find myself. Right? I was a youngster, I was a baby. Then, I appeared, in 1920, in a show called, “Floradora.” And if you recall – you won’t recall, but maybe your readers will – the song from “Floradora” was [sings]: “Tell me pretty maiden are there any more at home like you?/ There are a few, kind sir.” Well, they had two versions [of the song] in the show I was in. They had the 1920 version – no, they had the 1910 version and then they had the 1920 version. Then, they had the Future Sextet version and I was in the Future Sextet. And that was my first big so-called Broadway show – ‘off-Broadway,’ by the way, because it was on Central Park West. And I was a chorus boy – a child chorus boy.<br /><br />CZ: What was a typical day for you specifically in live television?<br /><br />MB: All the shows we did were live. There was no tape. There was no ‘taking it over.’ In those days, they saw what they got and they got what they saw. And if you made a mistake, that was it, baby! They saw it.<br /><br />CZ: If one of the performers who was in a show with you made a mistake – in live t.v. – you were able to cover it up, right?<br /><br />MB: That experience comes from vaudeville, doing live shows to an audience. And ad-libbing and improv-ing and all that. I could say whatever I want. And no four-letter words in those days, never, never. We had signs – which might be interesting – when you played vaudeville in Scranton, Pittsburgh or Crapville, Missouri, I don’t know – there was always a sign backstage. Now get the difference between those days and these days: The sign said, “Anybody Saying ‘Hell’ or ‘Damn’ Will Immediately be Cancelled.” That was terrible. Couldn’t even say the word ‘toilet.’ Couldn’t say ‘pregnant.’ Well, what’s going on today is different: They use every four-letter word you can think of, and they don’t need to.<br /><br />Anyway, a typical day in a [television] studio: We never had a big studio. We were from Rockefeller Plaza – sixth floor, [stage] 6B. They turned the little radio station into – I helped design the [t.v.] studio. So between that and [being a] jack-of-all trades – or, should I say, a ‘jerk-of-all-trades’ (if they had put a broom up my behind, I would have swept the stage, too) – I was doing everything. Because, actually, the first thing that we started on television was a vaudeville show, which was my experience. So we put that in front of the cameras with different variety acts.<br /><br />CZ: So when you did “Texaco Star Theater,” which was television’s very first variety show, you were just taking what you had done in vaudeville for years and adapting it to the new medium.<br /><br />MB: Of course. We had a big job every week [in terms of writing]. What are we coming up with? We had to come up with something new and it was live. And if you made a mistake, [it was] all over. There were so many mishaps during the 153 shows – 153 hours – I did for Texaco. But being that it was a comedy show, it worked better when they [the performers] made bloopers and they couldn’t remember their lines. Or when I couldn’t remember the lines. We told the audience that, and they were in on it.<br /><br />CZ: So the audience went along with whatever happened.<br /><br />MB: Florence Desmond, who was British, was the show’s announcer. We’re doing a scene, I’m playing Noel Coward. She accidentally referred to the show not as “Texaco Star Theater,” but as the “Lux Theater” in her announcement. [Lux soap sponsored another show, not Mr. Berle’s show!] I had to dress while Florence was doing the announcement. Instead of saying, “The Texaco Star Theater Presents the Texaco Players,” she said, “Lux Theater Presents.” Where that came from, I don’t know! So [from] backstage I said, “Are you kidding?” The audience heard it! “What do you mean, ‘Lux?’” I said, “It’s Texaco, you dummy!” Then we did a scene together, Florence and I. And the whole scene went to pieces, ‘cause I was playing the piano like Noel Coward. [Mr. Berle now starts singing, a la Noel Coward]: “Mad Dogs and Englishmen go out in the English Rain.” Now, what she made a mistake on, I worked on [turned into a joke] for the next scene – I made it part of the scene. I said lines to her with my mouth closed like, “Yes my darling, you’ll never work with me again.” Then the thing is, I made up puns playing the piano, bouncing off her, off the mistakes she made. I said, “My darling, I’d sing a song for you, but ‘Lux’ is against us.” And every time I said, “Ah, my darling, look into my eyes, what do you see,” she said, “You were up late last night?” And I said, “No more work for you in America. You’re all washed up.” [another reference to Desmond’s Lux<em> faux-pas</em>.]. I punned it and punned it.<br /><br />It became more hysterical when the audience knew that it was ad-lib and improv. And mistakes, I made into very big laughs. And that’s why the show was good, because it was loose and I never knew what was coming next. We didn’t use cue cards. There was nobody up there telling me what to read. I had to remember. I looked at a little piece of paper: What’s next? This joke, this line, this joke, this line – and I had to remember. No cue cards. And the actors had to remember their lines. Well, some of them forgot them: Charles Coburn forgot his own name! And Edward G. Robinson, he said, “I want to tell you something, are you listening to me?” I said, “You can’t remember the lines, huh? You’re supposed to be tough. You’re not tough. You should be wearing a dress.” That was a funny line, it still is. It was all improv.<br /><br />And the time with the Pallenberg Bears [a performing bear act]: While I was on, in front of the curtain, doing a monologue, they were setting up the bears for the next sequence. And I heard farts!<br /><br />CZ: Did the audience hear that?<br /><br />MB: Sure, the mike was open. On top of that, I said, “Here are the Pallenberg Bears – they’re dying to get on!” Little did I know that the trainer forgot to take them out for their doody before the show. And little did I know that the trainer, who used the whip on the bears – the bears stood on top of each other and did all those poses – was kind of loaded with booze. When we opened up the curtain, there was a mass of manure on the stage. The bears crapped all over the stage!<br /><br />The next act after the bears was Jack Cole and the Kraft Sisters, in bare feet, doing Indian dances. That was the next act! And the stage was loaded with bear crap! Now, as I went offstage, and I said, “Here they are,” and Jack and the girls did their act, I had to step over each pile. Now the audience is screaming with laughter. They could see the shit, it’s all over the place. I took a long broom and I swept the shit off the stage, as much as I could. Unfortunately, Jack Cole and the Kraft Sisters worked in bare feet and bells, Indian-style. They were sliding all over the stage! Their costumes were turning brown! And they did their finish, where Jack ran in all the way from the back and slid on his knees right to the camera – right in the crap!<br /><br />CZ: That’s hysterical. Did the people at home see it, too?<br /><br />MB: Oh, what are you talking about? It was a live show. We capitalized on a mishap. Aww, but the payoff was wonderful. You don’t know! I never heard such language in my life. Cole was a great performer. In fact, he did the choreography – I got him the job for “A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum.” But he was so mad at me. He said, “How could you let this happen?” I said, “It’s not my fault, Jack.” But his outfit, his hands, and it was such a – the odor was the worst! My sister [Mr. Berle’s sister, Rosalind, was costumer on the show] threw him right in the shower and all the girls had to take showers, too. He used – not four-letter words – but he said, “Don’t ever, ever, ever ask me to appear on this show again. I’ve never been so embarrassed in my life.” I said, “Jack, it’s not my fault, not my fault.” He said, “Never again will I appear on your show.” Four weeks later, I get a call from Jack Cole. He said, “We’re available [to be on your show again],” because there was so much talk about his appearance following the bears. He knew it was so popular that he wanted to come back.<br /><br />CZ: I didn’t know that your sister worked on the show. Did she work on other t.v. shows as well?<br />MB: She costumed the show. So she worked backstage, making me breakaways and quick changes. She only worked on my show.<br /><br />I could be so loose with the show because it was a variety show. They don’t have variety shows on today. This is before Ed Sullivan and all that shit. Well, my sister Rosalind made quick-changes. I was standing there balls-naked – bollocks-naked – and my sister was there and everything. She knew she had to make me Velcro breakaway suits, because I didn’t have too much time to change.<br /><br />You’re talking about the trials and tribulations: In one scene, Red Buttons was in it with me. I was supposed to grab Red’s suit that he was wearing and pull it from the neck down, so that he would only have on [long] red underwear. So by mistake – live, on the air – I grabbed too much of the collar, including the underwear. I tore everything off Red Buttons and he was standing there completely nude in front of the camera, before the whole audience, with his dicky out! So I jumped in front of him and I said, “Here’s the next ‘little’ act – big laugh, right away. But the [studio] audience saw him nude!<br /><br />CZ: Did that make news the next day? It must have been controversial to have a guy nude on t.v. like that.<br /><br />MB: Oh, sure.<br /><br />CZ: I know that at least one of your brothers was in show business, as well.<br /><br />MB: My brother, Phil, produced a Three Stooges pilot ["Jerks of All Trades," an unaired pilot the Stooges made for ABC in 1949, never shown at the time, but now available on DVD]. And they wanted to buy it from him just a couple of years ago. They gave him twenty-five thousand for it and they wanted to give him more, because it’s a relic. Phil never fuckin’ worked in his life. He directed it and produced it. I put him with ABC for that show. We got the studio because I hired it for him. It [the show] was a test. He wanted to be – may he rest in peace – me. </div><br /><br /><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">CZ: Back to your own, show, though: You supervised every aspect of it.<br /><br />MB: I did everything. Like I said, if they put a broom up my tushy, I would have swept the floor, too. I wrote the show with Buddy Arnold and Hal Collins. They were the only writers. We couldn’t afford writers. Just Buddy, myself, and Hal. And Buddy wrote the Texaco Song, which you know [sings]: “We are the men of Texaco…” And he did a lot of writing, boy.<br /><br />And I also was involved in the construction of the set – where this should go, where that should go. We conferred on that. Costumes were a big part of the show. We had a visual show. You see, what they’re showing today, in this era, uh, with <em>Tootsie </em>and all those movies in dress – in drag – I started it. But I started it on television. So there’s nothing I didn’t touch. It was like having a whip. I was all right, but I wasn’t too nice. Wanna be honest? It was because I was fighting the clock. Sometimes – most of the time – we didn’t even finish the run-through and dress rehearsal. The people were coming in to the see the show. We weren’t ready yet. But we had to go on at 8:00. Sometimes, we didn’t even have time for a dress rehearsal.<br /><br />CZ: Not only were you the first person to have a variety show on national t.v., but I’ve also heard that you were the first person to allow black entertainers on a network show.<br /><br />MB: There was an agency called The Kudner Agency – I had to get their permission, their OK on who I booked. I had to give ‘em the list of who we were going to have as guests on the show that week – that was my agreement – until it changed after the story I’m about to tell you: So I booked four black – what do you call ‘em now, that new ‘black saying?’ – oh, yeah, ‘African-American’ – tap-dancers, the Step Brothers. They were wonderful. I had worked with them onstage before I ever did the [t.v.] show.<br /><br />And they were booked. Then, suddenly, I got a call from the Kudner Agency. And they said I couldn’t use the Step Brothers. So I inquired why. They said, “We don’t have to tell you.” I said, “Well, it’s my show. I would like to know why.” They wouldn’t tell me. But in my mind, I knew what the reason was. Now this is late ’48. And I worked with them in vaudeville and I danced with them – great hoofing/tap dancing acrobats. Four wizards. And the Kudner Agency declined me, they said “they are out.”<br /><br />“You’re cutting out the Step Brothers?” I said. “Why? They’re really wonderful.” I also said, “Look, I’m producing the show, I’m directing the show, I’m the star of the show, I know what’s good. And these performers, the Step Brothers, are tried and true, they’ve done it before. They’ve appeared with me in vaudeville. They’re just wonderful.” They said, “No, no.” Well, I had to put two and two together. I thought, I can play the same game! See, it was all about color. It was ‘the color barrier.’<br /><br />What I did, on the day of the show, when the Agency said they couldn’t appear – well, let’s just say, I knew what to do! I said to the Step Brothers, “Put on your suits, put on a little pancake make-up, and I want you to be dressed in time for the show. And I want you in the wings. Because I’m going to do the opening monologue and then I’m going to introduce you!” So I said this to them. I didn’t tell the Agency I was going to put them on the show anyway!<br /><br />It was the agency representing Texaco, and not Texaco itself, that didn’t want the Brothers on the show. So I said to the Brothers, “Put on your make-up and I want you down there at ten minutes-of-eight in the wings, with your make-up on, ready to go on.<br /><br />Now: We’re through rehearsing, they go their dressing rooms, I put on my suit and my make-up. But I left the room and nobody could find me! Because I left the building, the NBC building. I left word with the man from the Kudner Agency who was backstage, and I also left word with the stage manager. I gave the Agency an ultimatum. I said to them, “If the Step Brothers don’t go on, I will not appear tonight.” Now it’s only twelve minutes before I go on. They’re looking for me, they can’t find me. I was hiding! The point is, I gave ‘em an ultimatum. I said, “If the Step Brothers don’t go on, I will not appear.” I was the star of the show.<br /><br />They finally found me at about five minutes before eight-o-clock. I came in. They said, “What happened?” The guy from the Agency said, “It’s okay, the Step Brothers can go on.” So I broke the color barrier. The Brothers only did about six minutes. And they were great in starting the show off, after I did my monologue.<br /><br />CZ: So that kind of cleared the road for you to feature other African-American performers on your show after that.<br /><br />MB: Oh, yeah, we had Lena Horne after that, and we had a lot of black stars. But the Step Brothers started it all off. The Agency wouldn’t let this poor opening act on! Not “poor” – I mean, this “great” opening act, on. And I fought them on it.<br /><br />CZ: Were the Step Brothers only on your show once, or did you have them on again?<br /><br />MB: Oh, I had ‘em again. I had ‘em maybe four or five times after that. With different styles, different dances. I worked with them, I danced with them. They became popular with the public.<br /><br />CZ: So it was an eight-day-a-week job. If you ever had any significant time not working, what would you do?<br /><br />MB: I’d be at the racetrack. Or I’d be shooting billiards. Sports. Baseball games. I was very close to the baseball stars. Babe Ruth.<br /><br />CZ: You had a lot of famous sports figures on your show.<br /><br />MB: You know that show they have now [“The 100 Greatest Athletes of the Century,” a t.v. special which aired in 1999, at the time I was interviewing Mr. Berle]? I had all the fighters. I had Dempsey. All the big name fighters in those days. Boxers.<br /><br />CZ: I also know that you had a lot of people who were on your show who never appeared on any other t.v. shows, right? They recognized it as a quality show.<br /><br />MB: I’ll tell you one person who was never on television, who appeared on the “Texaco Star Theater:” Cole Porter. Never appeared on any other show, only mine. Let me just say something. He was one of the world’s greatest. I booked him.<br /><br />I also had Jim Thorpe [the football player] on the show – the greatest. His first appearance on television was with yours truly on “The RCA-Whirlpool Series,” in the fifties, [which we taped] on the back of an aircraft carrier. That was another series I did, thirteen specials.<br /><br />CZ: Elvis was on that special, the aircraft carrier one.<br /><br />MB: Elvis gave me something and I lost it. [He gave Mr. Berle a tie, as a gift.] My show was Elvis’s first appearance. After that, he went on “Sullivan” and created the big furor about his hips.<br /><br />CZ: Was it insane when Elvis was on your show? Were there fans and girls around?<br /><br />MB: No. This is before he was famous. He was just about starting out then. He just had his accompaniment behind him and he was so handsome, so good-looking, so cute. And I did a sketch with him: “I want you to meet my brother, Pelvis,” he said. I was dressed like him, with a guitar, and we were supposed to be brothers. I was awful, but he was singing. But he was doing stand-up with me, which I have on videotape here. That was a taped show at that time, it was the beginning of tape – tape was ’54, this was ’55. This was what they called “live on tape.” It was unedited. There was no ‘stop and go,’ but it was on tape. Elvis was adorable. He had all the girls crazy about him. Colonel Parker [was] his manager – too much! So, uh, what was the next question?<br /><br />CZ: Where was the aircraft carrier that you did that broadcast from?<br /><br />MB: It was based in San Diego. We did a show on the deck of the aircraft carrier. I’ll tell you who we had on the show: Harry James’ Band; Joe Williams; Buddy Rich on the drums; a big-band sound. Then Elvis came in with one piece of paper, with his music written on it, on one sheet. Not only that, but Harry James looked at Elvis and he said, “Can I see your orchestration?” Elvis says, “This is it.” One sheet. I looked at Buddy Rich. And Buddy Rich was kind of brash – world’s greatest drummer, but he was listening to Elvis strumming and singing. After the show I said to Buddy Rich, “Watch out for this kid. He’s going to be one of the biggest stars we ever had. His style and his look.”<br /><br />CZ: Speaking of Buddy Rich, somebody just gave me a CD where Buddy Rich is cussing out his whole band. He didn’t know he was being taped. It’s pretty funny.<br /><br />MB: He was the greatest.<br /><br />CZ: The next question they want me to ask you – since I’m asking questions about ‘the workplace’ – is: “Describe your relationship with your boss.” But in television, especially, you were the boss.<br /><br />MB: I got along very well with me!<br /><br />CZ: I’m supposed to ask you – “Do you think your boss knows what he’s doing?”<br /><br />MB: I got along with Milton very well! [laughs] I get along with “Mr. Television” very well. I got along with “Mr. Berle” very well. You can use [write] any one of those!<br /><br />CZ: How did you get along with your crews in television?<br /><br />MB: I thought they all did a very excellent job. The writers, the assistant producers, the director, the stagehands – everybody encompassing the whole group. And in those days, we had the beginning of the unions – AFTRA, all those – but the salaries were not as big as the future that came after them – I mean, the latter part. But the employees worked hard and they created a lot of things. And they were very helpful and I’m very thankful to them. They were all very good. Because they knew we had a new medium. And they wanted to make good in the new medium. And I think all of us learned something from each other. All I can say is praise. I got along very well with them.<br /><br />CZ: Are there behind-the-scenes people – crewmembers from “Texaco Star Theater” who are still around? Anybody that you keep in touch with?<br /><br />MB: Yup. Name is MacNulty. His sister is nearly my age, ‘cause I went to school with her, and she is Penny Singleton [Penny Singleton played <em>Blondie</em> in the 1940’s series of Columbia Pictures’ feature films based on Chic Young’s comic strip]. I went to school with her. Her right name [real last name] is MacNulty, so her brother’s name is Barney MacNulty. And I still see him, and I’m still pals with him. He’s still living, he’s still fine. And he’s still in the business. He’s in the – I put him in the cue card business. But I didn’t use the cue cards.<br /><br />CZ: So you never used cue cards at all?<br /><br />MB: Never. Until, I don’t know, the 1970s or 1980s, I never used cue cards at all. Of course, I made a lot of motion pictures, too. And those are longer parts, and you’ve got to learn them. You can’t wing that. You know, like, “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” [1963] and “The Oscar [1965].”<br /><br />CZ: I just watched you in <em>The Loved One </em>[the bizarro-great 1965 MGM feature, based upon an Evelyn Waugh novel about the similarities between L.A.’s movie industry and funeral industry]. You’re hilarious in that.<br /><br />MB: It’s funny about <em>The Loved One</em>. That was based on the Evelyn Waugh [novel]. I think that picture, if I may comment on it, was ahead of its time.<br /><br />CZ: I know. Terry Southern, who co-wrote <em>Dr. Strangelove</em>, co-wrote the script for that. It’s in that same weird/dark vein as Southern's <em>Strangelove</em>.<br /><br />MB: Brilliant. Tony Richardson directed it. That movie was ahead of its time. Remember the scene I did with the dog? Hilarious. But way ahead of its time.<br /><br />CZ: Have you ever had any dreams about work?<br /><br />MB: Sure I did. I didn’t always dream about show business. I dreamed about my youth, my family, my mother, my late father, my late brother. My dreams turned into nightmares. Around the corner, dangerous things. Getting into fights when I was younger. And I used to be a boxer. But I’m talkin’ street fights – you know, when someone curses you and uses four-letter words, uses anti-Semitic remarks. And then I’d whack ‘em right away. I wasn’t an angel at all. And I had to learn how to fight, ‘cause – I mean, learn how to protect myself. And my mother, may she rest in peace, was a cop. Did you know that?<br /><br />CZ: No.<br /><br />MB: And Ruth Berle – my late wife – was a Captain in the Army in World War II and she taught the girls how to fight dirty. She went overseas and she was a judo champ. So I stayed away from her when she swung or chopped me, which – she never did that, but I’ve seen her do it to women. And, uh, she was very bright. She was a newspaper woman, a press agent, and she was loved by everyone. What was the question again?<br /><br />CZ: I asked you if you’ve ever had any dreams about work.<br /><br />MB: What is the most obvious work that I would dream of? Show business!<br /><br />CZ: Overall, you loved your job in television.<br /><br />MB: Sure I did. Let me tell you something. I don’t know if this fits or where you want to put it: I liked my job and anything that I did where I made people happy and made people laugh. Right? And I performed, I sang, I danced, whatever you wanted. And the word that I use all the time – and I tell this to the new youth that are coming up – the word is, “dedication.” You have to be dedicated to the work that you want to make a career out of.<br /><br />CZ: And those are the most successful people, the ones who are dedicated to their jobs.<br /><br />MB: If you’re not dedicated to your job, then maybe you’d better get out of it!<br /><br />CZ: If there were any days that you didn’t like your job, what would you do to make it bearable?<br /><br />MB: How do I word this… I like the opposite sex. To make it bearable, I would have a very sexy day, a day off, so I could forget that maybe the [Kudner] Agency screwed me. But I would relax. I never played cards. I gambled a lot, I was a big gambler. Lost a lot of money. Played the horses. Vegas. I would gamble on a cockroach who’d win. Anything, as long as there was action. See, [there’s] another kind of action when I was not working! And the other action would be the opposite sex – or just say, “sex.” Or: I would – I’m a sports fiend. I would go to a ball game, a football game, whatever was in season. Soccer, we didn’t know. Then, I was a very good pocket billiard player and I had the best teachers from – well, even though you don’t know their names, you put ‘em in there [in this piece]: Ralph Greenleaf, Willie Hobby. You’ll call me back another day and say, “Mr. Berle, how do you spell Willie Hobby?” All the great billiard, three-cushion players, I learned from them. And you’re talking about relaxing when I’m not working.<br /><br />CZ: What do you think were the main perks about your job?<br /><br />MB: When you say perks, what do you mean?<br /><br />CZ: What are some good things about being known, or about being a celebrity?<br /><br />MB: Well, there’s good and bad. Some things are good and some are bad.<br /><br />CZ: What was good?<br /><br />MB: Well, the popularity. The feeling of being seen. Then it came in later years with the paparazzi – it’s pretty bad. They know you so well, or they think they do, that they, like, call you their brother. Or they take advantage, they go overboard.<br /><br />MB: Everybody thinks they know you.<br /><br />MB: Well, not only that. It’s very good to be flattered. But then it gets, with all the work that’s around it, of appearing and doing a club date or a benefit or going to somebody’s house and go out to dinner… the popularity’s fine. But now that we have the overflow of paparazzi, it’s murder. You can’t walk along the street. So there’s good and there’s bad. When I say “bad,” I don’t mean bad bad. I mean, it’s too much to think of, so you can’t relax.<br /><br />CZ: I went to a screening of this new movie a few weeks ago, and the star is a young actress, Liv Tyler. At the party afterwards, the real Liv Tyler was there, but I also noticed a look-alike – an exact Liv Tyler double. I thought that was probably done by her management, to somehow deflect the attention away from the real Liv, so she could relax without being followed by the media.<br /><br />MB: Oh, sure, sure. They’ve done that. Not with me. Who the fuck wants to look like me? Write it in caps, it’s funnier: WHO WANTS TO LOOK LIKE ME?<br /><br />CZ: I’m supposed to ask you: “What were some of the hazards of your job?”<br /><br />MB: Danger of my job?<br /><br />CZ: Yeah. It could be physical danger, or whatever.<br /><br />MB: In the earlier days of nightclubs, in Chicago and in New York, the owners of nightclubs were usually “The Boys.” You know what I mean by “The Boys?” But they were always nice to me in the key cities. In New York, Chicago, San Francisco, L.A. But when I got into Pittsburgh, places like that, where they new me, there were supposedly the so-called “tough guys,” which I didn’t like. But I faced them and I talked with them in their talk – in their lingo; with as many words as they used, I used the same kind of words. I was never frightened of them, because, Thank God – not right now, because I’ve [just] had a stroke – in my younger days, from my twenties on, I defied anybody. They could weigh 280 and if I hit them right, or if I “dirty-fighted them” right…<br /><br />CZ: So you and “the boys” had a mutual respect for each other.<br /><br />MB: I’ll tell you what happened. They liked me so much, because they felt that I was one of them, not just an actor who put on make-up and lipstick. They all were rooting for me. And they used to come over – even the prize fighters, Rocky Marciano and all the fighters who could handle themselves. And especially the boys – the gangs; Chicago; Capone – they liked me. And they used to come up to me and say, quote, “How are ya, baby, kiss me!” And I said, “I hope that’s not the kiss of death” – that’s all I said. Don’t kiss me again!” Joke! But it really happened.<br /><br />And I said – inevitably, each one said to me, “How are you today, Milton?” “Fine,” I’d say. And they used to say, “Anybody bodderin’ ya? Not ‘bothering,’ but ‘bodderin.’” And I said no. Because if there was somebody who put a touch on me or touched me, and it got out of hand, all I had to do was to say to them the next day, “Yeah, somebody did the other night. I was having dinner and some guy came over to me, said something very bad in front of my wife and I got into an argument and so and so. And the guy started to threaten me.” “Oh, yeah, what did he look like? Where did this happen? How old do you think the guy was?” And I gave ‘em a description, told ‘em where I thought they could find ‘im, and they took care of ‘im. I don’t know what they did, but they took care of him.<br /><br />CZ: You don’t have to say the names – but you knew some of the famous “boys,” right? You mentioned Al Capone.<br /><br />MB: Capone. Yeah, sure. I was a big gambler. I played with Arnold Rothstein. Did you ever hear of him? Well, I was at a hotel in New York, playing [with him] for table stakes. Do you know what table stakes are?<br /><br />CZ: No.<br /><br />MB: Seven card stud. A very rich game. And they made as much as they wanted – a hundred, two hundred, three hundred, four hundred, five hundred. A thousand. But when it comes to the last down where you only have three guys left that’ll stay in the pot, it becomes table stakes. And, uh, I used to play in those games. This is – I was young, too. It must be fifty years ago, fifty-five years ago. I was a big gambler, I lost a lot of money, and I’m not proud of it. I gave away a lot of money to charities.<br /><br />CZ: I know you’ve done more charity performances than any other performer.<br /><br />MB: In the “Guinness Book of World Records,” I’m told, under my name – in the index – it says, “Milton Berle has done” – which is a record – “the most benefits that any actor, any comedian, ever did.” Appearances for a wedding, a briss, a Catholic benefit. The [religious] denomination meant nothing.<br /><br />CZ: I sometimes read about other performers who do benefits and they take money for it.<br /><br />MB: I never took any money for benefits.<br /><br />CZ: What’s the strangest thing that ever happened to you in your entire career?<br /><br />MB: This is funny. I made a date, about fifty-five, sixty years ago, with a girl – an actress. Her [act] was [called] 'One-of-Those-Exotic-Names-and-Her-Snakes.’ A snake-charmer. She had trained snakes all around her. We go to her room. This is true. And before you know it, we’re embracing – I want to clean this story up for you. All of the sudden, I said, “Where’s your snakes?” “Oh, they’re in the other room, they’re locked up,” she says. The snake comes right up there on the bed! Isn’t that the strangest? I’m right in the middle of a kiss, and I feel a snake run across my chest, and I got my hat and coat and ran out. It’s funny and it’s true.<br /><br />CZ: You’ll love this question: I’m supposed to ask this question of everybody I am interview for this book: “What do you think this is job is leading towards or preparing you for?”<br /><br />MB: Well, after being in this business of show business and making people laugh for eighty-six years, since I was five years old, I’ve tried to make people happy by making them laugh, ‘cause laughter is a great release. I’d like the job to lead me to… [he pauses to reflect] I’ve made them laugh, my audiences for years. Now for the rest of my life that I can breathe, I’d like people to make me happy, too, and I’d like to make me laugh.<br /><br />CZ: What’s the best thing about being a comedian?<br /><br />MB: There’s quite a few things. Putting make-up on. Appearing in front of audiences. Making people laugh. That’s my favorite thing. One of the ingratiating things about it, is meeting old friends that I can sit and recollect with, and talk about what happened in the past.<br /><br />CZ: What’s your least favorite thing?<br /><br />MB: At ninety-one, it’s getting out of the bed and working – not like I did before. In this era of my ninety-first year and my eighty-sixth year in show business, the least thing I like at this present time is getting out of bed. That’s the truth about getting out of bed. Because I paid my dues. Let me rest now!<br /><br />Also, I don’t like being invited to dinner by somebody – they don’t have to be in show business – but somebody that doesn’t understand my craft and I don’t understand their craft. What do we have to talk about? We can talk about our relationship with our wives? I’m saying, I like to have somebody who’s on the same wavelength as me, somebody who can talk my lingo and understand me and I can understand them with their lingo. I’m not saying anything about a person being hip. But what’s the most boring thing, is to be invited to a dinner, and to sit at a table at a big hotel with a lot of people who know me, even though I do not know them, and to talk about subject matters that do not interest the both of us. If they want to talk about sports, then I’m going to make an appointment to have dinner with someone who knows about baseball, soccer, football – whatever it is.<br /><br />CZ: So it’s easier for you to talk to someone who’s in your same field, so you can understand what they’re going through.<br /><br />MB: Or so they can understand what I went through. Now [Milton points to a prominent L.A. hospital owner who comes and sits at the table with us], he’s a hospital man. He’s very interesting – but I don’t want to know who has the clap or who’s sick! In other words, getting out of your element is not too good. It’s a fuckin’ boring evening. [He indicates me]: You’re a newspaper man, you know all the jokes. You’re twenty or thirty, but you’re very hip. I gotta be in the company of people that I’m comfortable with, people who understand me even though I’m not performing or telling a joke. I don’t have to tell a joke every time. Let’s just have a good conversation! I just lost my good friend, a sports writer for the L.A. <em>Times</em>. Now, in his company, I could talk sports to him. He was so fuckin’ bright. I could talk sports with him, I could talk songs with him. He goes back to 1916 or 1917, so he’d mention a song. He’d say, “Did you write…” or [he’d say], “You know what song I like – ‘So-and-So!’” And he sang it. And he loved life. He was a brilliant fuckin’ writer.<br /><br />CZ: I know you want to go have dinner, Mr. Berle, so I’ll try to finish the questions as quickly as I can.<br /><br />MB: Get it over with, you <em>schmuck</em>!<br /><br />CZ: What was the worst moment in your career?<br /><br />MB: You don’t want to put any sadness or death in here [in this piece], do you?<br />The most sad moment I ever had was when I lost my mother. Okay. When that happens, that’s the human thing. But it’s really true. Because she was my right arm, my advisor, my biggest plugger. And she loved me so much. And I adored her. She was a great woman. And when she passed on, that was my saddest moment.<br /><br />CZ: Your mother guided you through your career.<br /><br />MB: She used to laugh in the audience at the questions. Not at the fuckin’ jokes, at the questions – “Hahahahahaha.” And then I said, “Which joke are you workin’ on, lady?” You know, that kind of shit. And then I’d hear another laugh a little later from the other side of the theater. I said, “Did that lady move?” They never knew it was my mother!<br /><br />CZ: If you could pick the greatest moment in your career, what would it be?<br /><br />MB: There are two great moments that I can think of: When I was on the cover of <em>Time</em> and <em>Newsweek</em> the same week, at the beginning of my television career, is one.<br />But the greatest moment I ever had – or the most thrilling moment I ever had – was just last year [1998]. New Orleans, at the Mardi Gras. I was the King of Mardi Gras and my wife, Lorna, was there. And it was a big thrill!<br /><br />CZ: What kind of a personality type is best to do what you do?<br /><br />MB: I think that that’s a very rough question!<br /><br />CZ: What quality do you have that’s made you successful?<br /><br />MB: I think it’s very hammy if I tell you, and it’ll look hammy written, even though it’s very essential. Let me put in very personal terms: As low as your comedy can get, like Chaplin, right? Or pies in the face, or slipping on the piano… [The telephone on the table rings, and Mr. Berle kibbitzes with the person on the other end for a few moments.]<br /><br />What did you ask me? What attributes [have made me successful]? Quite a few. My energy. My performance. It’s hammy to say this, but no matter how funny somebody is, or no matter how hard somebody tries to be or is funny, a certain thing has to go with it, and I saw to it – and my mother was the one to advise me on it – that there has to be a likeability about the person, and a rooting interest from the audience or from somebody who’s watching you. And, most of all, you have to have a certain amount of charm, even though you’re the lowest comedian in the world. And you have to have what you call (now, you’re talking about me; but I’m talking about ‘the third-person’) you have to have, from an audience – I’m talking show business now – if the audience is not rooting for you in the predicament you’re in, in a comedic way or a dramatic way, then you can’t beat them. You have to have a certain charm. And one thing that I have, that I’m proud to say I have, is that, well… people might say about me that “even though he was a stand-up comedian and also a great actor and he played a character, he had what they call charm” -- as well as all the elements I just told you. “And he also had one thing more that everybody should have if they want to be entertainers: And that is humility.” Which is far in distance from my character of being brash and flippant and ad-lib and a wise guy and doing the put-downs. Right? But, the most important thing is: I don’t care how low the comedian is. Even with the lowest thing he does visually, he’s got to have charm. I don’t care if the charm is this small. A certain amount of charm where the audience can look at a man is important – I’m giving you a whole thing here now – and it’s called “rooting interest.” If you haven’t got that – if you haven’t got a beginning, middle, and end to your act, then you’re really in trouble.<br /><br />I told you… Did I tell you what Harold Lloyd said to me? I asked him, when he was doing <em>Safety Last</em> and all those pictures – remember him? Wonderful guy. Great comedian. I said, “Harold, where would you like to eat? I’ll meet you for lunch.” He said, “Oh, good, I like salami, I like pastrami and all that shit.” So we go to lunch and I said, “Harold, look, I’m just new in the business.” He said, “What do you want to know, Milton?” I said, “What are the elements you need to make a good comedy act, or to make a good play or a good motion picture or a good short? What are the most important elements?” “Well,” he said, “there are three: You need an opening, a middle, and an end.” He said, “I work in three stages.” And he told me what those stages were, and I ate it up and I remembered it – it was his formula. He said, “It isn’t a formula. It just came from my mind and maybe, now, it is now publicized as a formula.” He says, “Number One, get your hero up a tree. Number Two, throw Rocks at Him. Number Three, try to get him out.” Now you got an audience rooting, either way. That goes for every good motion picture, every good drama. <em>Death of a Salesman</em>: The guy’s in trouble. Then he gets to a point where they’re throwin’ rocks at him and now they try to ‘get him out of the tree’ and, all of the sudden, he dies and all that stuff. It has a triple ending, quadruple ending. Harold Lloyd told me that. What was the question you asked me?<br /><br />CZ: Oh… I asked, What was the quality you have that you think has made you the most successful?<br /><br />MB: Well, I tell ya. As brash as I was, with the flippancy, and with being a smart-ass, and with my put-downs, I started that seventy years ago. Which is all right. Fine. But that flippancy – they never had too much [before me]. Now, a lot of people didn’t like it at first, they had to get used to it, the way I worked. But that was my style, right?<br /><br />And that’s the name of the game: Style. It’s like I said to Rich Little one night at a party here [at the Friar’s Club]: He was wonderful. He did all of his impressions, and he killed ‘em, and they stood up and cheered. And right in front of the audience, I had the chutzpah and nerve to say this – but I meant it, honestly, for his own good, I meant it for his future – I said, “Gee, Rich, you were wonderful tonight. Wasn’t he, ladies and gentlemen?” They said, “Yeah!”<br /><br />I says to Rich Little, “There’s only one unfortunate thing I’ve got to tell you. Your impressions of these different stars and people are fantastic! There’s only one problem you have: When you find out who you are, you’re going to be terribly disappointed. In other words, he was doing every imitation – [his] Jimmy Stewart [impression], brilliant – but I took him off to the side, and I said, “Hey, you do your impressions very well. But you want to do something bigger than your impressions, don’t you? You want to be in motion pictures, you want to be in a Broadway Show? Drop them [the impressions]! Try to find your own style.” In other words, I said to him, “Ask yourself: ‘Who am I,’ ‘What am I doing here,’ and ‘Why?’ ‘Who are you?’”<br /><br />Jack Benny knew who he was. Even though he was acting and he said [at this point, Berle goes into a letter-perfect, rambling Jack Benny imitation, replete with hand on his chin:] “Well, you see, you know, I… I don’t know how to tell you this, I really shouldn’t, you see, you know” – he always said talked like that! I’m not doing a Benny impression for an audition with you, but I’m giving you an example [because] you’re talking about me.<br /><br />CZ: So you were the first comedian to be flippant? The first ever?<br /><br />MB: No, I think… When I came around, in my earlier days, in my teens, I must have seen other people that were flippant. We had a guy [early vaudeville comedian] named Jack Osterman who was flippant, wise, ad-lib. Very funny. A few guys like him were around in the early teens and the twenties. And I watched them. I kept my eyes and ears open and I wanted to be like them, or to be part of them, and I put them on a pedestal, right? And no doubt, it rubbed off on me and it gave me my style of flippancy, or what you might call “insulting,” at the time. But I’m not an insult comedian the way [Don] Rickles is. He’s my pupil. He went to the “Berle School.” That sounds very hammy, but you ask me honest questions, I’m gonna tell you honest answers. So they had to get used to my style. [Mr. Berle gives a sample ‘insult joke’]: “Oh… your face belongs on a bottle. A laxative bottle.” A put- down, right? And they laughed, right? Yeah. They had to get used to it. So I had been in the business for so long, they accepted it. I think that’s the difference. Is that the answer to your question? It’s been twelve hours since you asked me the question!<br /><br />CZ: So the bottom line is that the people who get remembered in show business, are the ones who have the most distinctive styles.<br /><br />MB: Well, right. Remember what I told you: The name of the game is – the three questions every successful comedian has to ask himself are: ‘Who am I?’ ‘What am I doing here?’ and ‘Why?’” Three stages. Now, Jack Benny – if you knew Jack Benny, he smoked cigars and he said, “Hey, listen, Milton, I don’t like football games.” He talked about everything except his own work. But I knew when he worked, I could see him. I studied him, and he had a certain way, a style. If you haven’t got style and you’re interested in being a comedian, you should look in the mirror and think, “What kind of jokes will work for me?” If you’re obese, rotund jokes’ll work for you. Jack E. Leonard – remember Jack E. Leonard? ‘Fat Leonard?’ He used to come out with a panama hat and he danced and he’d take off his hat and take a bow. Bald-headed from here on up. His opening line was, “What’d you expect, feathers?” Right? Now he worked on his own “look,” on what he looked like.<br /><br />Now, Jack Benny was a very handsome man. He didn’t always wear glasses. And when he spoke, he spoke [Berle speaks in Benny’s voice for a moment] like this. I wasn’t handsome, but I had a style. Today, style is the thing. What makes you tick? What do they like about you the most? They liked Jack because he had charm. At Hillcrest [Country Club], we were playing a [tennis] foursome, Jack, George Burns, another gentleman, and myself. So I’m talkin’ to Jack, and I said, “Jack, I found out what makes it work for you.” And he said, “What?” And I said, “Number One: You’re charming, you’re easy going, and you don’t perspire.” That’s number one! And the other thing I told him was, I said, “Unlike me – which I hope I can control later on when I get as old as you are – you’re a genius in what you’re doing, and I’ll tell you why.” And he said to me, “Why?” And I said, “Because you’re not afraid of silence.”<br /><br />You got guys today on television, even doing commercials or promos. Now they got to get it in for the twenty or thirty seconds, and they talk so fast. How can you plant a joke if you rush your set-up? Right? [joke]: “Guy is drowning. And a woman comes up, runs over to where the water starts and she says, ‘Oy Vey’… Whatever that means!!” Right? Now those kind of jokes are hip – or not hip – if they heard it. Now, there are no new jokes. Nothing that’s new is old, nothing that’s old is new. Everything’s been done before by different people in different styles.<br /><br />CZ: It’s like people say with movies – there are only seven or eight stories and they keep getting told over and over again.<br /><br />MB: That’s bullshit. They’re formulas. Don’t you stay “stories.” Formulas. How to get the laugh, how to go to the laugh, how to set it up – that’s the formula. Do you put the punch line on the end, or do you put it in the middle and ruin the punch line at the end? Or is it too long before the lead-in, before you get to the punch line? I’ve written quite a few books on this shit and if you want to print it, you can pay me some money. Where’s my fuckin’ money for this?<br /><br />In my book, <em>Milton Berle’s Private Joke File</em>, there’s chapters in there about what to say. This is for guys who want to read the book. No show people. I get more laymen reading that book. They use it to spike their speeches. What’s his name, the Governor of California?<br /><br />CZ: Gray Davis.<br /><br />MB: Yeah, Gray Davis. I knew his name was a color. Anyway, on his desk – he told me personally – he has the Milton Berle joke book, a book I wrote, and all of the jokes are in there alphabetically, jokes about garages, weddings, you name it. Gray Davis has got my book on his desk for similes, if he ever wants to spike a speech. If he’s doing a speech about something clever, you know, he wants to put in one of my jokes, like: “He got married in a garage and he couldn’t back out.” I’ve got garage jokes in there! Now he’d take that one-liner to spike his speech.<br /><br />I even wrote for Harry Truman. I mean, when I say ‘wrote,’ I spiked their speeches. They sent me their speeches. Now do you know who’s a great after-dinner speaker? Before dinner, I don’t know how good, but after dinner he’s great: Arnold Schwarzenegger. I wrote for him before I turned him over to [another writer] because it was too much for me. [Berle now does a Schwarzenegger imitation, complete with the Austrian accent]: “Milton, vould you help me out? I need some funny lines!” Well, coming from him, right? So I spiked [his speeches]. You know what ‘spiking’ means?<br /><br />CZ: You punch up other peoples’ speeches.<br /><br />MB: Yeah, I used to punch up screenplays with Billy Wilder privately, too.<br /><br />CZ: Didn’t you do some punching up on the screenplay for <em>Some Like It Hot?<br /></em><br />MB: Well, thank you very much! You can thank me for the biggest laugh they got in the picture, when they’re on that boat [the final line in the film]: Joe E. Brown says, “We’re going to get married.” Jack Lemmon says, “I can’t marry you, I can’t.” He says, “Oh, yes you can.” Jack says, “I’m a man.” Joe E. Brown says, “Nobody’s perfect.” I never heard such a laugh in a fucking theater in my life. Nobody’s perfect. Two words. It’s a wonderful picture. The last line. And they – Jesus, they worked on that picture for four months and then I was with them, down in Ensenada when they were doing it. And then I said, “I got it.” And I gave them that last line: “Nobody’s perfect.”<br /><br />It’s just like <em>It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.</em> I wrote two of the biggest laughs in that picture, do you know what they were? Did you see <em>Mad World</em>?<br /><br />CZ: That’s one of my favorite movies.<br /><br />MB: Well, when Jimmy Durante’s dying at the beginning of the picture – we’re all on the cliff there asking him, ‘where’s the money?’ And he dies. And I said to [director] Stanley Kramer, “Stanley, see if you can get a bucket, and see if you can put a bucket at the edge of the cliff where Durante’s kicking. See that when he kicks, he kicks the bucket and you pan down all the way. So he [literally] kicks the bucket! His character dies! A [visual] pun!<br /><br />And in the last part of the picture, where each one of us are being chased – and this is all done on teeter-boards with doubles, the doubles did it. Boom, boom, boom, they make the cut and they flew there. I said to Stanley, “I got an idea. It’s just a statement, but I think it would be clever.” “What is it, Milton, what is it?” he asked me. I said, “When Eddie Anderson [African-American character actor in <em>Mad, Mad World</em>, most remembered for playing Rochester on “The Jack Benny Program”] bounces on the trampoline and he goes up in the air and he goes out of the [frame], I said, ‘Why don’t you have him land on the lap of an Abraham Lincoln statue?’ Is that a political statement! Black guy! That got applause from the audiences at the time, and it wasn’t just a laugh. It was like – it’s so clever that the black man is with the man who freed the slaves!<br /><br />CZ: Well, it seems like it was perfect timing for you to have come up with a political joke like that, because <em>Mad, Mad World</em> was 1963 – that’s right during the Civil Rights Movement.<br /><br />MB: Sure! This was the sixties.<br /><br />CZ: If you had to live your life over again and you weren’t a comedian, what else would you have done? When you were a kid, did you ever want to do anything else besides make people laugh?<br /><br />MB: No way. Quick answer!<br /><br />CZ: How do you think your personality has helped you in your job and how do you think it’s held you back?<br /><br />MB: I think my personality – my style, my way of living – helped me. It didn’t hold me back. And I’ll tell you why. Not that you asked. Not that you’re going to print it. And not that it’s a novelty, because there are so many people like me. I never smoked a cigarette. [Mr. Berle says this while he’s holding a giant cigar in his hand!] I always took care of my health. I don’t know what beer tastes like. I never had hard liquor. And, uh, those are very great elements. And I always tried to get my rest no matter what I did, with the kind of work that I did. Was that the answer to your question?<br /><br />CZ: How would you have described your job to your family and friends? How interested would they be? You know, what would you say if somebody asked, “What did you do today?”<br /><br />MB: I’m very talkative. Here’s proof. They’d ask me, “What’d you do today?” I’d tell them. Outright, no lies. If they asked me, did I work hard today and I didn’t, I would say, “Not too hard today, I’m taking it easy.” I always tell the truth.<br /><br />CZ: Has your job made you a better person or a worse person?<br /><br />MB: Bad and good. Good and bad. Well, I was very, very tough – and I knew it – on myself during my early, early days in everything that I did theatrically. Especially vaudeville. And especially every show that I was in, every place that I appeared. And especially television. I was very hard on myself. In television, I worked sixteen hours a day. I was very tough on myself. Why? They called me a pain in the ass. The responsibilities that I had in the early days of television, where I did 153 hours of live television for the Texaco show, as I told you, were great. All in all, they counted the hours I did in live television – it comes to 436 hours. I think that’s a record. I was very hard on myself. And to this day, I’m still very tough on myself. And as tough as I’ve always been on myself, I was always equally tough with my stage hands and performers and even with the lights and microphones and everything. I learned from that. But in some ways, I didn’t learn… I mean, I learned how to be nice after a certain length of time, but I was very tough to work with because… I hate the word ‘perfectionist.’ You know why? ‘cause you take the blame for everything. Whoever is the head of the show takes the blame. But I’ve always been very hard on myself, very hard, very tough. Are we through?<br /><br />WE CONTINUE THE INTERVIEW FIVE DAYS LATER:<br /><br /><br />CZ: What did you do in your leisure time, when you weren’t working?<br /><br />MB: I played tennis until I was in my seventies. Killed the fuckin’ net. I was playin’ when I was seventy-five, tennis. I’m now ninety-one, [so that’s] sixteen years ago.<br /><br />CZ: Now you spend a lot of time here at the Friar’s Club.<br /><br />MB: George Burns used to come to the Club. Every day of his life, he had a scotch and soda with a beer chaser – two or three of them – lunch time, dinner time. He smoked twenty, twenty-five cigars a day. Bad cigars, cheap cigars. He didn’t pay for them. They were <em>yennims</em> [Yiddish for ‘free promotional giveaway’]. He always smoked a cigar and they [cigar companies] supplied him. Once, he said, “How old are you, Milt?” I said, “Oh, eighty-six, eighty-seven.” He said, “Get me a glass of water, kid.” Great sense of humor!<br /><br />Burns was a cooze hound. I’ll give you another one, you won’t believe it : So was his pal, Jack Benny! I’ll tell ya something. Who was Benny’s girl on the road (Because his wife, Mary, was a bitch): Her name was Giselle MacKenzie. She traveled with Benny when he did his concerts. That was his girl.<br /><br />CZ: What was the most dangerous thing that ever happened to you onstage? I know you wanted me to ask you that one.<br /><br />MB: I was playing a place [a vaudeville house] called the RKO-Jefferson. You from the East?<br /><br />CZ: No, I’m from L.A.<br /><br />MB: I was doing four shows a day. I had a bit: I was sitting down and, all the sudden, there was a song that I wrote with someone, “Let a Smile Be Your Umbrella.” [He starts singing]: “Let a smile be your umbrella, on a rainy, rainy day.” And purposely, I had a plan – that the trumpet player, in the pit, would play a sour note. And I looked down, and he kept playing another sour note, another, and I said, “Stop it,” I said to the leader in the pit. “Where’s that sour note coming from? Oh, it’s you. Stay right where are you are.” I walked off the stage, I grabbed a two-by-four and I stepped over the footlights and I went like this [to swing at him] and I fell. Fell in the pit. I cut my leg. My mother was in the audience. And I’m down there [in the pit] and the orchestra leader says to me, as I’m laying there bloody, “Should I play an introduction?” You don’t get that? [The orchestra leader thought that Mr. Berle’s falling was part of the act.]<br /><br />Well, they brought me backstage, my mother’s back there, she says, “send for a doctor.” The fuckin’ manager of the theater, after the first show, said to me in the dressing room, “Are you all right?” No, he didn’t say that. He said, “Where’s that young fella, where’s Milton?” My mother says, “I’m Mrs. Berle, what do you want?” And I’m layin’ there. He said, “You were wonderful. You were very funny. That bit that you did when you fell in the pit…” That manager was a fuckin’ asshole. He thought – he says – he didn’t know it was an accident, he thought it was terrific. He said, “We wanna keep that bit in the show.” My mother said, “You asshole, that wasn’t on purpose. He slipped.” And she really whacked him. See, my mother – this is very interesting: My mother was a cop. She was a policewoman. She was the first or second policewoman in the NYPD. And she was also a store detective – Wanamaker’s, Gimbel’s, Saks – and she also took care of the family. Six flight walk-up in Harlem. Three brothers and my sister Rosalyn. We’re all crammed in there. And I was the breadwinner, because they didn’t work. They went to school. And my father had a bad heart. And in those days, we had to walk six flights in the tenement building to get to the apartment. Unlike today, they made my father stay in bed. They don’t do they today. Today, if you have a heart attack, you have open-heart surgery, they make you walk. It’s walking, today.<br /><br />If you want to ask me what was the most humorous thing that ever happened: My mother took care of the kids, she was traveling with me, looking for jobs. Did you ever hear of Buster Brown Shoes? I was the Buster Brown Boy. 1913. [Berle’s five-year-old face, to this day, is the little boy’s face on every box of Buster Brown Shoes.] My mother was a stage mother. She took me around to modeling jobs. And I was in silent pictures. Did I tell you that? Chaplin. Fairbanks. Pickford. When I was five.<br /><br />I’m about fourteen, I’m back in New York. I said, “Mama, you’re doing too much.” My mother is holding down three jobs – private detective, she’s in the NYPD, and she’s a store detective – Gimbel’s, Wanamaker’s Saks, picking up shoplifters. She was strong. Not strong physically, but… did you ever hear of Ju-Jitsu? My mother – I didn’t know this, but in 1911, 1914, she was the Ju-Jitsu champ! She could fly over your head!<br /><br />CZ: When you were a kid, did you know that your mother was special, that other mothers weren’t like her? Did you realize, at the time, that she was doing more than other mothers?<br /><br />MB: She did more for me than the other boys [for Milton’s brothers]. They all slept together, three in the same bed. Not me. I had to have a special bed in a special room because I was the breadwinner. So I had said to my mother, I said, “Mama, I love you, but you’re working too hard. You’re holding down three jobs. Get out of one of the jobs.” About a week later she said to me, “I took your advice. I was at Saks and I told the head guy on the floor that I couldn’t handle it anymore, and they said they didn’t want to lose me. So I said, “What did they do, Mama?” She said, “They gave me an easier job.” I said, “How is it easier?” She said, “They put me in the piano department [to watch the shoplifters].” My mother said one of the funniest lines [about this experience] and she didn’t mean to be funny: She said, ” Who’s gonna steal a piano?” Well, that’s the funniest line I’ve ever heard. And it’s so natural! She didn’t mean it as a joke. But that’s where they put her.<br /><br />CZ: Did you get your sense of humor from your mother?<br /><br />MB: No, but I got my drive from my mother. She wanted to be an actress. And in those days – in the [early] 1900s, in 1895, 1896 – it was terrible for a young girl to be an actress. So being that she couldn’t do it, she put all of her energy into me. Because I won a Chaplin contest [Berle won a contest to appear in a Charlie Chaplin movie], I was the Buster Brown Boy, and I was making faces and telling jokes. I was making faces in the mirror at home. [At this point in the interview, Berle starts mugging, and makes some hilarious faces!] So my Uncle says to my mother – who was his sister – he says, “Sarah, get the kid away from the damn mirror. He’ll turn out to be an idiot!”<br /><br />Well, about six years later, my uncle is still living with us. And I was earning money then. Silent pictures, and I was a boy model. And she says to him, “This is the young little boy that you said was going to be an idiot.” She said to my uncle, “You’re the idiot.” My mother let me do what I want to do. [Milton makes funny crying sounds.] All that shit. Making faces. She says to him, “Leave him alone, let him do what he wants.” She [took me to] an agency that was booking kids. She said, “Make faces for the man.” They laughed. The agent said, “He’s funny. I don’t know what he’s doing, but it’s funny.” My mother was a stage mother. She made Gypsy’s mother [Gypsy Rose Lee’s mother] look like Esther Schwartz. She fought for me.<br /><br />CZ: So your mother pushed you into show business, because she wanted to be in it herself?<br /><br />MB: Sure. Because she wanted to, but her parents wouldn’t support her [desire to be in show business]. She turned all that particular energy into me and watched out for me. She was a heavyweight.<br /><br />CZ: What about your dad? You mentioned him only very briefly.<br /><br />MB: Well, he was sick. He worked at [names the founder of a chain of still-operating housepaint stores. [The founder] was a Jew-hating cocksucker.<br /><br />CZ: That’s funny that you say _____ was anti-Semitic, because I’ve heard that [a famous car-paint store magnate] was anti-Semitic, too. I guess that, back in the day, anybody who had anything to do with paint was anti-Semitic!<br /><br />MB: You want to hear about some anti-Semites? First we’ll go back: Walter Brennan. Then we’ll go back to a guy I put in the hospital for four months. [Note: Berle was only thirteen years old, a child performer on vaudeville, when the event he is about to describe, happened]: I was working in Brooklyn. We had a star who was just one of the great performers with his own style, Frank Fay. He did “Harvey” on Broadway. Funny man, but biggest Jew-hater I ever met in my life. When he got drunk, he called me, “Kike, Jew-prick.” I was working with him Brooklyn. I was on fourth. He was closing, because he was the star. I was on fourth and he was on seventh. I had heard about him, but I had never seen him. So I finished my spot in the matinee – we did two shows, matinee and evening. And I change my clothes. And I’m watching him from the wings. And he couldn’t see me, because I was way behind the curtain. And there was a stage manager calling the shots. As Fay comes off – he did about twenty minutes, which was long in Vaudeville days – he’s very sharp, very hip. He was only a hit in big towns, he was too chic for small towns. This fellow, he never told jokes, he told stories. A monologist. Very believable, very honest. He comes off to take bows, I’m standing backstage behind the stage manager – this is after the first show – and he says to the stage manager, “I don’t want that little kike Jew bastard standing in the wings watching me.” How old was I? Thirteen. This happened in 1922. This is 1999. And I felt awful. And I went back to my mother and I told her what Frankie Fay said to me, that he said Jew-bastard and Kike. My mother tried to calm me down. She said, “Are you sure he said Kike? Maybe he said ‘tyke’ – meaning, a little kid.<br /><br />She said, “I’ll tell you what to do. You go back tonight and stand in the wings again. Then you’ll know if he says something derogatory, if he does it again.” He comes off raging and I was standing in the back behind the stage manager, and he said to the stage manager, “I told you this afternoon to keep that little Jew-bastard off the stage.” I went backstage further, where the cyclorama is. You know what a cyclorama is? It’s a backdrop. I went behind the cyclorama and I took a stage brace that holds a piece of scenery up – you know how big that is [it’s a large piece of lead]. As he passed me to go to his dressing room – I took no shit and I couldn’t stand that anti-Semitic business – I weaved and I went [makes a motion like he’s whacking Fay with the stage brace]. Like a javelin thrower! I whacked him in the face and I opened him from his lips down to here, down to here, down to here [all over]. And I put him in the Brooklyn hospital for four months. I was only thirteen.<br /><br />CZ: Did Frank Fay learn his lesson?<br /><br />MB: No. They’re all the same. Anyway, Fay was so funny with his dry humor. After that, he appeared in “Harvey” in the forties or fifties on the stage. And Jimmy Stewart did the same role on the screen. And Fay got into a tiff again in 1932. Some guy sued him because Fay hit him and called him a Kike. But the guy [a vaudeville entertainer named George Green] sued him. In those days, fifty thousand dollars, which is what the guy sued Fay for, was like millions. But Fay’s lawyer, two days before, called up Fay at his home in New York and said, “Look. Your trial is tomorrow. But I want you in here today in my office, because I want to speak to you, about the do’s and don’t’s for the jury. When you’re asked questions I only want you to give three answers: ‘Yes,’ ‘No,’ and ‘to the best of my recollection.’”<br /><br />Next day, the trial: The Judge says, “George Green defendant, Frank Fay [plaintiff].” Fay’s on the stands, he sits in the chair. The Judge said, “Your name is?” He said, “Frank Fay.” Judge said, “What’s your occupation.” Fay said, “I’m the world’s greatest comedian!” Fay came back to the table, his lawyer said, “When they asked you what your profession is, why did you say, “I’m the world’s greatest comedian?’” He said, “I was under oath, wasn’t I?” It was funnier then. I heard that he said it, because I wasn’t sitting there [in the courtroom], at the time. He had to say he was the world’s greatest comedian because he was under oath! He said some funny things, but he was a Jew- hater. [A famous late-night talk show host who hosted his popular show from 1963 to 1992] was not too nice to Jews, either.<br /><br /><em>Note: At this point in the interview, I’m introduced to a friend of Mr. Berle’s whose nickname, like mine, is Chuck, and Berle jokes, ‘two chucks don’t make a chock.’ Chuck #2 has come to inform Mr. Berle that the actor Eric Roberts, and Roberts’ friend, the cauliflower-nosed character actor Joe Vitirelli (“Jelly” from</em> Analyze This<em>; Vitirelli passed away in 2004) will be up to visit him in a few minutes. Young actors come up to greet Berle at the Friar’s club nearly every day.<br /></em><br />CZ: That’s nice, Mr. Berle. Eric Roberts is coming up to visit you.<br /><br />MB: Eric Roberts. Good actor. Nice guy. So I asked him, off the record, why did your sister Julia marry that ugly guy [Lyle Lovett]? Was he a good lay? Was he hung? [Was it] the schlong? He must have had a big cock! He must have been a good lay or something. When you see a beautiful woman with a plain guy, I don’t know – but it happens sometimes in our business. Anyway, did you see that picture, <em>Analyze This</em>? I loved it. [At this point, Eric Roberts enters the room with Joe Vitirelli. Eric greets Milton with a smilingly-offered propitiative: “This must be the Milton Berle Room!” ] After Roberts and Vitirelli leave, the interview continues:<br /><br />CZ: I just read a biography of Bob Hope, where the author talked about how you used to steal jokes from Hope, and from other comedians.<br /><br />MB: It’s true. They called me “The Thief of Bad-Gags.” The question has always come up, “Is it true that you stole jokes, Milton? I would tell the truth. In those days [in vaudeville], I couldn’t afford writers. If I saw Bob Hope or Jack Benny, and they had a good joke [in their own vaudeville shows], I couldn’t afford to pay for material then. I was young, I was sixteen or something. And I saw the heavyweights at that time. I would give them… See, Walter Winchell named me “The Thief of Bad-Gags.” It was a pun on The Thief of Baghdad, or a play on words. So it stuck with me so much, it became so popular that I was supposed to be stealing other peoples’ jokes. It tagged me with a characterization… or [with] a realism.<br /><br />It’s worked for me for my whole career, because I always say, “That’s a funny joke, I wish I would have said that!” And the other guy always says, “Don’t worry, Milton, you will.” You follow me? Because I was “The Thief of Bad Gags.” But it was Winchell who started it. So I’m talking about truth. It was truth, but there was humor to it. Well, in those days I had to steal jokes, I couldn’t afford writers. If I heard a good joke from Burns or Benny I would take it and use it. Now the funny thing is, the new regime of kids who are in the kids in the comedy clubs, they take from each other.<br /><br />CZ: I know, from my personal experience, that screenwriters get material stolen, too!<br /><br />MB: Now, I don’t know if you know this, but… What’s his name? [Berle mentions the name of a fast-talking movie/t.v. star whose initial popularity came on a sitcom, when he played a transplanted space alien, in the late ‘70s.] Now [this guy] is the most disliked, hated – this is off the record; I don’t care if you use it, but you shouldn’t quote me saying it – by young comedians that are starting now at the comedy clubs, because he goes and he’s got a good memory, and he’ll hear a line, and it’ll come up some time when you think he’s doing ‘improv,’ and he says it. But it’s not his line. Now. Example: Well, I’ll go back to Al Jolson and all those people who were really heavyweights in their day. Oh… nobody knows this, you won’t interview anybody who knew Jolson, but Jolson was a big star, the biggest. The greatest star was Jolson, it’s been proven. But when he was in a Broadway show, “Mambo” or any of those shows, this is in the early twenties – he had scouts – “schleppers” – that he sent over to a small time Loew’s theater to see a comic and then come back and tell Jolson, and Jolson had it in his own show that night. Then the comic got a letter from Jolson’s lawyer saying, “You’re doing material from Jolson’s show and if you don’t take it out, you’re going to be sued.” And it was the comedian’s joke, in the first place! But Jolson was so big, they accepted anything from Jolson. He had scouts going around copying jokes from vaudeville comedians. And he would do it and send them a letter. But… you should [interview] someone who knew Al Jolson, or somebody who knew his tactics…. He would steal the jokes.<br /><br />Now I wrote a parody [song] called “Sammy Made the Pants Too Long.” I was in the Borscht circuit [Jewish vaudeville circuit] – I wrote it in 1930. The real song that it was based on, was called, “Lord, You Made the Night Too Long.” But I made it “Sammy Made the Pants Too Long.” And that helped every young Borscht comedian that are now big names to start their careers. They stole from me. Now, [this young comedian] – he’s got a wonderful memory, he’ll see an actor in a comedy club and do his whole act and they all dislike him, they hate him. But when he’s on the stage, he’s so flippant and fast – he’s got a good memory – and whenever the time comes, he’ll come up with a joke that he heard another comic do. He plays it impromptu, ad-lib, and the audience thinks that he ad-libbed it. Well, that’s not new, because a lot of us have ‘prepared ad-libs.’ I mean, I wrote books on what not to say to a heckler, how to put down a heckler. And [these books] are now standard after forty-five years. [Milton offers a sample joke to say to an annoying heckler in the audience]: “That’s a lovely suit. Who shines it for you?” Or: “A guy who said to his wife, “Tonight, you’re really going to get it, sex-wise,” and she says, “who’s coming over?” Now, he [the young comedian] could hear that joke and he has a photographic mind and a good fast mind, and it would come out like it’s an ad-lib because he would do it. You never saw me live on a stage, Chuck?<br /><br />CZ: Well, just here at the Friar’s Club, at a few roasts.<br /><br />MB: I can say something [tell a joke], but I gotta be honest and play it real, like I just thought of it. Right? Like I own it. But I didn’t just think of that, it’s way in back of my head. This is hammy, but I defy anyone to get up on stage and ad-lib with me, because I’ll bury them. Why? Because I’ve got all the jokes in my mind, I know every one-liner. I do it with a style. When I tell a line, I tell it with honesty, because I’m also an actor. And the greatest story is when I was doing a picture called,<em> It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World</em>. Did you see it? Spencer Tracy, it was one of his last pictures before <em>Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner</em> – he was very sick at the time. And we’re sitting back, waiting for our shot in the picture, on the sound stage. Some kid comes over, he’s sixteen. We’re talking sports, he didn’t talk about show business, not Spence. He said the greatest line I’ve ever heard. This kid came over – a tall, skinny kid came over – and interrupted us. He says, “Mr. Tracy,” and Tracy looked up. He said, “Mr. Tracy, you’re a great actor.” Then the kid had the nerve and the chutzpah to ask Tracy, “What does it take to be a good actor, like you? A total heavyweight star?” Tracy looked at him and said, “Young man, acting is the easiest thing in the world. Just don’t get caught doing it.” Now you can tell – you’re hip – you can tell if somebody’s overacting, ‘cause the camera’s in there. [You have to be] natural. Now, that’s how I tell jokes. When I tell jokes, I don’t tell ‘em like jokes, I tell ‘em like incidents that happened. Less is better than more; that’s the best thing I ever heard.<br /><br />One thing that a comedian can’t be afraid of, is silence. Now you hear guys going out, and they think they have to talk fast. And they talk so fast, you don’t understand [what they’re saying].<br /><br />CZ: Do they talk quickly like that because they’re nervous?<br /><br />MB: No.<br /><br />CZ: I read an interview with Jack Lemmon: He was on a set. Billy Wilder said to him, “Do less, Jack, do even less.” And then Lemmon said, “I’m not doing anything” and Wilder said, “Perfect.”<br />MB: I know! I was there [on the set]! <em>Some Like it Hot</em>, with Marilyn. Less is more. Like the other night, I did five minutes. But less is more. Meaning, if you do less, maybe they’ll want more. Don’t stay on too long. Jan Murray – wonderful comedian, he did a whole resume on me the other night at the party [Berle’s 91st Birthday party happened two weeks prior, at the Friar’s Club, and he endured one of the establishment’s traditionally-bawdy “roasts.”] Murray went on way too long, for about twenty minutes. You should do six good minutes, and have a beginning, middle, and end. Less is more. Less can be more. Can be.<br /><br />CZ: I met you once before, Mr. Berle, and I mentioned to you that I think that comedians sometimes make the best serious, dramatic actors. I mentioned that I had seen you in a serious role, in a t.v. movie from the ‘70s called <em>Family Business</em>. You played the patriarch of a Jewish family and you were great. Talk about less-is-more: You really underplayed it and it was a very powerful performance.<br /><br />MB: That was less instead of more. It was a cameo. But I played it right. I played a character. Anyway, ask me whatever you want, like, “Mr. Berle, I heard you were a good friend of Groucho Marx.”<br /><br />CZ: Well, I love Groucho, but I want to ask you a question about Woody Allen. What was it like working with Woody on <em>Broadway Danny Rose</em> [1984]? You played yourself in that movie.<br /><br />MB: That was the most unthrilling experience I ever had. Because I had a very big part in that picture and when I saw the picture, I was totally embarrassed. Because I had Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau with me, over here to see the show – the preview. [Before the movie started] I said, “Jesus, Woody was terrific to me. He gave me so much to do.” I had no idea that he mostly cut me out of it.<br /><br />CZ: In the finished film, you’re in only one or two scenes and we never get to hear your voice. It’s Woody, narrating in voiceover, during your scenes.<br /><br />MB: With Woody Allen, he’ll never tell you what he writes. He will never let you see the script. And he won’t let you see the edit. But I got a letter from him after I did the show, the picture: “How wonderful you are in it, you’re going to love it, Milton.” He’s full of fucking shit. I mean that. I was too strong in the picture and he cut me way down, so I only did narration, voiceover. [Note: In the completed film, Berle has a small part with no dialogue, not even any voiceover.]<br /><br />CZ: Why is that? Because he wants to be the only funny guy in the film?<br /><br />MB: Only him. He only thinks of himself. Except when he’s not in the picture, when he’s directing <em>Lady of Spain</em>, or whatever the fuck it is. [Berle is referring to <em>The Purple Rose of Cairo</em>.] He won’t show anyone the work. In fact, I got a call – I was in New York for the picture. I’ll tell you how much he paid me – two hundred thousand, just for that fucking little picture. Now listen. Every day from California I’m asking him for the script. [His people say,] “Don’t worry, we’ll have it for you. Woody’s not through writing it.” A million fucking excuses. Finally, I got the script four days before I arrived in New York, sent to me airmail, or whatever – Federal Express. I’m on the plane reading the script and I say, “Hey, this is pretty good. I have a fairly big part. Woody was very nice about it.”<br /><br />Four days later, I’m staying in the hotel, I get a call from the A.D. – the assistant director: “Tomorrow morning, we’re going to pick you up at 8:30, we’ll send a make-up man at seven.” Get a load of this. I never saw the [final] script, I never got it. It’s all right to do improv, because I can do that very easily from being in show business. We went to 53rd Street and Broadway and they take me around the block and I’ve got my topcoat on with my hat like this, with a cigar in my hand. And they’ve got the whole set up, with extras there and everything. I said, “Where’s Woody?” They said, “Oh, he’s behind the camera over there, looking at shots.” So he comes over to me and he says, “Hello, Milton, how are ya?” I said, “I don’t know what to say because I didn’t get a script.” So the whole thing, where he meets me on the corner, he tells me about the interview he has…<br /><br />CZ: In the scene you’re in, it’s just Woody’s voiceover, right? We don’t even hear your voice at all in the scene.<br /><br />MB: No, no. Yeah, after he cut the picture. Just a minute. Let me finish. I’m standing on the corner smoking a cigar and there’s people passing. Now, he had extras passing. And each one said – they said didn’t know I was making a picture – “Hello, Uncle Miltie! Hello, Mr. Berle! Can I have your autograph?” “Can you wait a minute,” I said, “We’re shooting a picture.” “Oh, I’m sorry, we didn’t know.” Then [the A.D. says], “Will the extras leave the set, please?” And then in comes Woody. He says [in character, as Danny Rose]: “Mr. Berle, I don’t think you remember me.” Now, I had to ad-lib. First I had to ask him what his [character’s] name was, ‘cause it wasn’t in the script! And now we’re in a two-shot – the camera’s here, this sort of an angle. I said, “I remember you. You are…” He says, “Danny Rose, don’t you remember me? The agent?” I said, “Yeah.” Now, we’re throwin’ lines around. “I can’t forget your face,” I said. And he said, “Oh, thank you.” I said, “Hey, you look fine, you been working?” Now I’m starting to ad-lib. “Oh, here and there,” he said. Now, don’t forget, [Woody’s character was] an actor [before he became an agent]. Now here, I go, “Oh, I thought you were down in the Village doing [your stand-up act or] whatever – Beekman Street or someplace.” And he answers back: “No, I gave that up.” Now, we’re ad-libbing with each other, so real, so honest, no rehearsal – which is good. Could have been better, but… So he bought it. And I’m saying, “Uh, how are you doing?” And he said, “Oh, the same grind.” I say, “I like you, you’re a very nice kid. What can I do for you.” He says, “Well, I don’t know how to ask you.” All ad-lib. “You were going to ask me to do a benefit?” I said. “Well, will you be around next week Thursday?” This is the date he makes for me.<br /><br />I didn’t see the cutting of [the film]. I had a big part in it and Woody cut me out except for two scenes. I go to the preview of the movie at the Writer’s Guild Theater on Doheny, and I bring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau with me. We watched the fucking picture. I go like this: I start sliding down in my seat to get out of sight. I don’t want the audience to see me. It was so embarrassing. So Walter is very funny he says, “I saw the fuckin’ picture just now. Where are you? You in Newark?” And Jack Lemmon says, “Well, what fuckin’ picture were you in?” They only showed the opening scene, the rest was Woody’s voiceover and the [Macy’s Thanksgiving Day] Parade. They cut the shit out of my part. Why? I found out why. Why do you think? Turn off the tape recorder and I’ll tell you: [Berle, satisfied that the tape recorder is off, whispers: “‘cause Woody doesn’t like any other comedian except for him in the picture.”] Okay, turn it back on!<br /><br />Sid Caesar did languages. He used to do it, he still does it. It’s the only six-and-a-half minutes he’s got. Now I’m ashamed of him. He was after me. “Your Show of Shows” was a wonderful show. It was built very nice. Because they had more money than we did. And more experience. After my years of slaving over hot klieg lights – no wonder my fuckin’ eyes are bad. We had bad lights. After all the work I’ve done and riding a unicycle and boxing with Jack Dempsey and doing all that shit live. For me, to end up in the golden years of life. [after a beat:] Did you know, when you get a stroke it comes from the head and goes to a certain part?<br /><br />CZ: When I started talking to you the other day, Mr. Berle, you were telling me a story about this snake-charmer girl. I had a feeling you were cleaning the story up a little bit for me. Can you tell me the full version? Please!<br /><br />MB: Ok. [smiles, happy to tell it]: We’re makin’ love in the bed. And I said, “Where are your snakes?” She said, “In the other room, locked up.” Bullshit. So I’m going down on her, with her legs up there. Fuckin’ snake comes up on the bed, nearly bites me in the ass. Isn’t that the strangest? They were trained like a railroad train. But that’s not [even] the truth, because the snake – it went up my ass! I shit in my fuckin’ pants. I didn’t have any pants, how could I shit in my pants?<br /><br />CZ: If you had to live your life all over again, what would you do?<br /><br />MB: I’d be a cocksucker!<br /><br />CZ: Well, thank you very much, Mr. Berle. I’m done. You can go eat now.<br /><br />MB: You’re a very good interviewer. Of course, that’s because you have the fucking questions in front of you!<br /><br />CZ: It was nice of you to let me interview you.<br /><br />MB: If I find out you were playing this tape for your friends, I’ll break your fucking glasses. And then I’ll kick you in the balls!<br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Copyright 2009 by Charles L. Zigman, All Rights Reserved.<br />May not be re-printed without the express permission of the author.<br /></span><a href="mailto:chuckzigmanisthebest@gmail.com"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">chuckzigmanisthebest@gmail.com</span></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br /><br />CHARLES ZIGMAN is a screenwriter/journalist and author. His new book</span></div><div align="left"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">about the legendary French movie icon, Jean Gabin,</span></div><div align="left"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">WORLD'S COOLEST MOVIE STAR</span></div><div align="left"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">is available now at Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com,</span></div><div align="left"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">or go to </span><a href="http://www.jeangabinbook.com/"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">www.jeangabinbook.com</span></a></div><div align="left"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">to learn more.</span></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><div align="left"><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;"></span></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><div align="left"></div>CZO: Chuck Zigman Overdrivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01597949826304464382noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7968054145164198227.post-89427091971541785132009-06-30T17:52:00.000-07:002009-11-12T17:05:01.059-08:00Michael Jackson: All Aboard the Bandwagon<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/Skq_dImiopI/AAAAAAAAAAU/X9fExGaaRyw/s1600-h/jackson.bmp"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5353301614329504402" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 271px" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/Skq_dImiopI/AAAAAAAAAAU/X9fExGaaRyw/s320/jackson.bmp" border="0" /></a><br /><div>So, here's my second blog, and it has something to do with Michael Jackson, but that's just a starting-off point.</div><br /><div></div><br /><div>Michael Jackson was undeniably very talented. The first two record albums (I'm old) I ever bought, when I was five years old, were a Jackson 5 album, and the soundtrack to the movie "Ben" (which is still a great movie, and so is the sequel, "Willard;" anything with killer rats is good.) In fact, on a September Saturday in 1971, I remember waking up my grandmother, who lived with us, to tell her that the inaugural episode of the "Jackson 5" cartoon show was about to begin on ABC -- and I'm sure she was seriously underwhelmed, although I did bring her orange juice, in an orange glass with a clear stem, when I went in her room to impart this world-shaking information.</div><br /><div></div><br /><div>Having said that, I'm a little gobsmacked, as English people say (or, at least, as English people say in my mind, when they're not saying "Hellllo, guv'nah!" and "Cor, blimey!" and "Crikey!") about what happened after Michael Jackson passed away. After fifteen-or-so years of everybody in the world believing Jackson to be a creepy, child-molesting freak with a chimp and a kid named 'Blanket' and a white glove and a surgical mask and a hyperbaric chamber, suddenly, four days ago, in a period of just under five minutes -- everybody in the world started to love him again. You saw it happen, and so did I. </div><br /><div></div><br /><div>Now, I've been known to shake my dimpled can every time I hear something from "Thriller" and "Off the Wall" just like everybody does (it must be jelly, 'cause jam don't shake like that) -- but, crikey! Those records were more than twenty-five years ago.</div><br /><div></div><br /><div>May I remind you that, back in the '80s, nobody liked Ronald Reagan either (I still know some Republican crackpots who get off on everything he did -- it takes all kinds, I'm afraid), but after he died, everybody started talking about how, in retrospect, he was a really great president, because, under his reign, Communism ended and the Berlin Wall fell. (He was directly responsible for neither of those two things.)</div><br /><div></div><br /><div><em>What is it with people, anyway? </em></div><br /><div></div><br /><div>How can everybody change his opinion about a person on a dime like this? Jackson (and Reagan) are either creepy OR you like them -- but for God's sake, everybody, stick with one opinion about a person, will you? Would a woman ever say, "That man raped me... but I like him, anyway!" Would a Holocaust survivor say, "Hitler killed my family... but I loved his paintings." Of course not.</div><br /><div></div><br /><div>I already know the answer to the question I'm asking -- my "what is it with people?" question.</div><br /><div></div><br /><div>In the case of Michael Jackson, I think that most people, in private, still believe that he was a creepy freak. But everybody is afraid of telling the truth, because everybody wants to be liked. And if all of your friends are posting on Facebook that they love Michael Jackson, then you'd better say the same thing too, or you might face the slings n' arrows of being "unfriended."</div><br /><div></div><br /><div>People -- not just with Michael Jackson, but with everything -- love to be on the bandwagon. It's comforting to like what your friends all (pretend to) like, whether it's Michael Jackson, or "American Idol," or reality t.v., or "The Hangover," or today's "music," or big, bloated CGI movies full of sarcastic animals and transforming robots, or Marriage (antiquated ritual), or Obama, or whatever it is, because there's no argument that way, and you'll always have somebody to watch your dog when you go on vacation. There's safety in numbers, and whoa to anybody in this world who dares to have his own opinion, or her own taste. (After the Lakers won the playoffs, here in L.A., every dillweed in So. Cal suddenly, within the space of eight hours, suddenly had a goofy Lakers flag jutting from the top of his SUV.) In the movie business, producers won't even 'green-light' a movie, unless it reminds them of something else. ("It's <em>Forrest Gump</em> meets <em>Speed</em>: This time, the retard's driving the bus!")</div><br /><div></div><br /><div>Everybody, since the beginning of time, has always wanted to like the same things that his friends liked, because doing so is very comforting -- hence Organized Religion. Today, in our 21st-century age of too much stimuli, there's more white noise -- more 'content,' more shouting, more Instant Analysis of every world event, more loud haircuts shilling stuff on t.v. --than ever, but there's also less information, and as a result everybody feels cut off and impotent and nobody has anything to grasp onto, and nobody feels anything. So when we all can get "together" as a "group" and revise history to make it that Michael Jackson is the greatest entertainer who ever lived, well then, so mote it be. Now we can feel all warm and toasty inside. (Ahhhhh!)</div><br /><div></div><br /><div>BTW, I'm not a total curmudgeon: I was fourteen years old when John Lennon died, and that was one of the worst days of my life. In school, the day after it happened, we all stood around Mrs. Giacomazza's 9th grade American History class and talked about how meaningful John Lennon was, and many kids -- including me -- were practically in tears. What I'm trying to say, is that I'm perfectly willing to be on the bandwagon if the person, or thing, being honored, merits such attention. John Lennon, a simple man who celebrated peace and love, whose music was mostly unhyped, deserved such adulation and deification. Michael Jackson, a once-upon-a-time talented guy who devolved into a bizarre freak of nature, does not.</div><br /><div></div><br /><div>So let's all take a cleansing breath. Let's remember that me, you, and everybody we know is an individual, and that all of us are allowed to like our own movies and music and politicians even if our friends don't share our opinions. Anyway, even if you don't agree with me, I'll still let you watch my dog.</div><br /><div></div><br /><div>-- 30 --</div>CZO: Chuck Zigman Overdrivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01597949826304464382noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7968054145164198227.post-76833449108921455992009-06-30T10:20:00.001-07:002009-07-04T23:51:27.891-07:00CHUCK ZIGMAN OVERDRIVE: FOR SOME REASON, IT'S NOW HERE!<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SkpM7LxcDzI/AAAAAAAAAAM/cctzKjXdGis/s1600-h/chuckBeard.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5353175686739398450" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 142px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_f1ulbR_C9lo/SkpM7LxcDzI/AAAAAAAAAAM/cctzKjXdGis/s320/chuckBeard.JPG" border="0" /></a><br /><div>Hey, everybody!<br /></div><br /><div>I'm Chuck Zigman -- I'm a screenwriter (oh, God!) and a journalist and a published author (<a href="http://www.jeangabinbook.com/">http://www.jeangabinbook.com/</a>) and I live in Los Angeles, USA, the place that Peter Fonda affectionately refers to as "Smell-A," and I happen to agree with Fonda... although I kind of like L.A., too. (I'm from here, so maybe that's why I like it.)</div><br /><div></div><br /><div>For the past few years, everybody I know has been telling me that I should blog -- and I've been terribly resistant to it, because there's already so much writing on the internet (the internet has really de-valued writing, in my jaded opinion) and I always worry about adding more gibberish to the already over-stuffed 'net. </div><br /><div></div><br /><div>Anyway, I started to think about it: I already post little "Status Updates" on Facebook anyway, so I'm already part of the 'system,' even though I pretend I'm not. So I guess it hasn't been such a big stretch for me to start my own blog.</div><br /><div></div><br /><div>I guess I'll use this space to talk about anything that means something to me, and that means I'll do whatever everybody else does -- I'll rant about movies or politics or just "things that I experience/observe."</div><br /><div></div><br /><div>Who am I? (Not that you asked.) Born in Los Angeles (on the 4th of July), I attended undergrad film school at UCLA, and then I moved to NYC and attended graduate film school (two fun-filled degrees) at Columbia University. Spent two years as Professor of Film and TV (!) at Augusta State University in Georgia. For the past decade I've been back in my hometown of La-La Land, writing articles and researching writing my book, WORLD'S COOLEST MOVIE STAR, which was released in 2008. My book is about a famous French movie icon named Jean Gabin, who's kind of considered to be the French Bogart, or the French Spencer Tracy, and you can find it on Amazon. (At two volumes, 2 pounds per volume, it's heavy -- you can use it to weigh-down an area rug.)</div><br /><div></div><br /><div>More about me in another posting. This posting is just me dipping my long, hairy toe in the cesspool of blogging (yuck!), and so -- more later! </div><br /><div></div>CZO: Chuck Zigman Overdrivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01597949826304464382noreply@blogger.com1