Hail & Farewell.

Source: Wikipedia

In 1987 the novel Postcards From The Edge came out and I thought, I’d like to read that, even though at the time all I was reading was science fiction and a semi-autobiographical story of a recovering drug addict was about as far from that as I could get. Except it was by Carrie Fisher, and that intrigued me. Sure, in my mind she was and would always be Princess Leia, but it was fascinating to think of her as a real person, independent of the part she played. Unfortunately I didn’t read it then; maybe I should now.

Like a lot of my generation I was a Star Wars fan. Like a lot of my friends I had, among other things, all the action figures, including Princess Leia. Most of my friends were boys and while in those days it might have seemed a little strange for a boy to have a female action figure in his collection Princess Leia was cool. Part of that was the way she was written George Lucas is a director who’s known for not giving his actors a lot of direction at least part of it is what Carrie Fisher herself brought to the role.

In fact one of the most disappointing things about the original Star Wars trilogy is the gradual decline of Princess Leia. She starts off a sharp, sarcastic, laser-shooting warrior princess, but by Return Of The Jedi, even though it’s revealed she’s got as much Jedi potential as her brother Luke, her personality diminishes even as her outfits multiply. The irony of Star Wars is that a light fantasy film about the defeat of an empire would become a sprawling empire of its own, and the tough, witty, “Aren’t you a little short for a stormtrooper?” Princess Leia would be one of the first casualties.

I think I missed that partly because I was a guy and partly because I was such a Star Wars fan, but it hit me many years ago when one of the cable channels was running a marathon of what were, at the time, the only three Star Wars films. This was post-VHS, pre-DVD, and very definitely pre-Phantom. Between commercials there were segments of Carrie Fisher offering up comments. During a Jedi-break, just as Luke, Han, and Chewie were about to be tossed into the Saarlac pit, Fisher said on set she’d improvised a line: “Don’t worry about me guys! I’ll be fine!” She then smiled and said, “I’m really glad to see George left it in.”

That’s when I realized Carrie Fisher was funny. I should have realized it earlier. I remember staying up late to see her host Saturday Night Live–the only member of the main cast to do so. And I’d be reminded of how funny she could be when I heard about non-Star Wars things she was doing, like her one-woman show Wishful Drinking. The strong, independent, and funny Princess Leia from the first film seemed to be the closest to Carrie Fisher herself, and that would be the character who’d influence strong, independent, and funny women who followed, like Tina Fey who wrote a great tribute.

Even now I kind of have mixed feelings about it, and I wonder how she herself felt. She was extremely talented but nothing else she did ever matched that first success. And yet that amazing success is more than most actors will ever know. Princess Leia helped bring down an empire, but the woman who played her helped build one.

Hail and farewell Carrie Fisher.

I’m old enough that I watched Barney Miller when it first ran, although young enough that I didn’t quite get all the jokes. A decade or so it ran in late night syndication I watched it again and enjoyed it even more, but one thing remained the same throughout: Detective Harris, played by Ron Glass, was one of the coolest people ever. He was a dedicated cop but what stood out to me was he was also a writer. I have a lot of literary models but even before I knew I wanted to be a writer Detective Harris was my model for the kind of person a writer could be. He balanced his day job and his artistic ambitions–or sometimes didn’t always balance them. Barney Miller‘s opening credits for at least one season show him banging away at a precinct typewriter, using office supplies for his own personal pursuit. And in one episode he used an office phone to have a lengthy argument with his publisher. The lurid cover of his novel Blood On The Badge, which he described as “hemorrhaging”, made it look like a cheap thriller, not the serious work of fiction he’d written. It was the first time I understood the writer as more than just a storyteller. Detective Harris was passionate and thoughtful, an artist.

A few years later I was majoring in English at the University of Evansville with hopes of being a writer myself and learned that Ron Glass had also been a student there a few decades earlier. The irony was not lost on me, although it wasn’t really funny. It was more a feeling that he and I really did share something.

Others will of course remember Ron Glass from the tragically short-lived Firefly. I loved it too. Even though he was a very different character, gentler and more avuncular, I still felt like his playing a scholarly priest named “Book” was a nod to Detective Harris.

And in between he made an appearance on an ’80’s reboot of The Twilight Zone with the also amazing Sherman Helmsley that I’ve never forgotten. He played a very different character, showing his range, but still as cool as always.

Hail and farewell Ron Glass.

I learned about Kevin Meaney from Dr. Katz Professional Therapist where he was a “patient” so it’s fittingly ironic that I would learn about his passing from a bona fide therapist, the amazing Ann Koplow, who mentioned Meaney’s sudden loss on her blog The Year(s) of Living Non-Judgmentally. She’s also a regular visitor her which tickles me because she’s been lucky enough to know and work with some amazingly funny people, but that’s another story.

For many comedians of Kevin Meaney’s generation–he was born April 23rd, 1956–there was a distinct career trajectory: develop six good minutes of material, do Carson (later Letterman), get a sitcom. Movies and more fame would inevitably follow, but the idea seemed to be to get off the stage, out of the small dark clubs.

Was that Meaney’s ambition? Maybe. On his album That’s Not Right–which I was very lucky to find a copy of a few years ago in a music store–he impersonates his wife and mother, imagining both of them responding to some of his jokes with “That’s not right!” and his wife worrying that some of his jokes will alienate so many people “We’re going to lose the house!” He also talks about his hilarious and edgy Aunt Rose who I think was his inspiration for going into comedy. It seems like the stuff of a sitcom, but I prefer to think Meaney didn’t want to go that route. I hope he enjoyed working the clubs, alternately winning and alienating audiences.

He did briefly play the lead on the sitcom Uncle Buck which was panned and quickly canceled as well as working for several TV shows. He also did a really funny promo for Comedy Central, impersonating his mother saying, “Why do you have to do commercials for Comedy Central? Your brothers don’t do commercials for Comedy Central!” The promo ended with the tagline, “We’ve got every comedian and their mother.”

He also had a complicated personal life, openly admitting he was gay after he and his wife had been married for ten years and had a daughter.

I used to have That’s Not Right loaded on my iPhone and it would tickle me to play music on shuffle, to go from a song to Kevin Meaney yelling “I’m a dirty boy!” During some upgrade it slipped off and it’s been too long since I listened to it.

That’s not right.

Hail and farewell, Kevin Meaney.

There’s something special about character actors. Whether they’re deep background, doing cameos, or in supporting roles they add depth and color. And some of them stand out, like Jon Polito. Chances are you’re like me and don’t recognize Polito’s name but recognize his face. When I saw his picture I said, “Hey, it’s that guy who was in…that thing.” Lots of things, actually. He was a favorite of the Coen Brothers, appearing in Miller’s Crossing, Barton Fink, and The Big Lebowski as well as appearances on Seinfeld, The Drew Carey Show, and Modern Family. He also lent his voice–his distinctive voice–to several animated works.
And I was sorry to hear of his passing. I didn’t even know his name, I just knew him as that guy. Known for mostly playing tough guy roles, whether as a cop or gangster, the characters Polito played weren’t exactly people I’d like to know but there was something about him I did like. Like any great actor he inhabited every role completely, and even when he was only playing a cameo role, supporting the main cast, he was always more than just background.
Hail and farewell Jon Polito.

Source: Wikipedia

Are we born the person we become or are we made by the events that follow? I know that “a little of both” is waffling on the nature versus nurture question, but who really thinks waffles are a bad thing? Excuse me. There’s something I want to discuss but I’m trying to avoid it at the same time. Let me start over.

In different interviews, such as one he gave on Inside The Actors’ Studio or this one for PBS Gene Wilder credited his mother with turning him into an actor, although indirectly. She had a heart attack when he was seven or eight and her doctor told Gene that if he got angry with his mother it could kill her, “but try to make her laugh.”

Maybe that’s why he was so perfect for roles ranging from The Frisco Kid to The Waco Kid, and more than one generation grew up with Wilder as Willy Wonka. In his roles he was so often a man tap dancing on the edge, and sometimes he kept dancing even as he toppled over and went spinning into empty space. Then there were his collaborations with Richard Pryor, where the two played off each others’ weaknesses, turning them into strengths. But was Wilder made into an actor by the trauma he shared with his mother or was it simply the spark that ignited something that was already there?

No actor, especially one whose played such diverse roles as Gene Wilder, can be summed up by a single role, but in addition to being one of my favorite movies–one that always makes me laugh–Young Frankenstein, which was originally Wilder’s idea and co-written with Mel Brooks, seems to me the most personal of Wilder’s films. Frederick Frankenstein is born into an infamous family, seemingly fated by his decision to become a doctor to follow in his grandfather’s footsteps, and yet fate isn’t enough–a whole series of events and characters push or drag him to his destiny. And Gene Wilder runs the whole range, playing straight in one scene and funny in the next, going from morose to manic and around again, always terrified but focused on giving life.

Hail and farewell Gene Wilder.

Source: The Guardian

Another kid and I were arguing about Star Wars. This was the late ‘70’s and we were both kids so of course Star Wars was on our minds. If we weren’t talking about it we were acting out scenes and making up our own stories, and if we weren’t doing that we were arguing about it. I was telling him about an article I’d read about the special effects in Star Wars and how they were done. He was shocked that C-3PO and R2-D2 were played by people, that they weren’t real robots. He got pretty upset about it too and finally went off in a huff saying, “Well the spaceships didn’t have people in ‘em! They were real!”

I feel kind of bad for spoiling the illusion for him but for me, as much as I would have liked to be in a world of real robots and spaceships, there was something just as cool about knowing the robots were real people.

Kenny Baker, the very real person who played R2-D2 in the first six Star Wars films, passed away recently.

The funny thing is when I heard the news I didn’t think about Star Wars. My first thought was Terry Gilliam’s movie Time Bandits, which came out between the original Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back. I saw it in the theater and while there was a lot about it that stuck with me—I was just discovering Monty Python at the time—the main thing was Kenny Baker was in the main cast. I purposely looked for him in the film, always thinking, That’s the guy who plays R2-D2.

That seems strangely poignant now considering that Time Bandits is about a young boy who gets dragged into a fantastic adventure by a quintet of time travelers—one of whom is Kenny Baker. Fantasy in Time Bandits isn’t an illusion; it’s simply another layer of reality. And he helped make it real.

Hail and farewell Kenny Baker.

MAD Magazine was verboten at my house when I was growing up so the only chances I ever got to read it were when I was at friends’ houses. And while I treasured those brief chances in retrospect I realize I never got the chance to really study the incredible amount of detail that went into MAD’s parodies, especially in the art itself. MAD artist Jack Davis, part of the “usual gang of idiots”, recently passed away and it’s amazing to look at some of his work, such as this cover of It’s A World, World, World, World, MAD. As a kid I could have, and probably would have, spent hours going over pictures like this with a magnifying glass examining the details.

I feel like my childhood was deprived when it could have been depraved. Studio 360’s story on MAD Magazine’s influence highlights how the magazine created a generation of smartasses, or at least tried to. It was the preadolescent counter-culture, mocking the culture we knew—everything from TV sitcoms to Star Wars was fair game. MAD Magazine never talked down to kids. Instead it tried to raise us up—by taking everything else down a notch.

Here’s a portrait by Davis of MAD’s publisher William Gaines, fellow illustrator George Woodbridge, and writer Dick DeBartolo from the book Completely Mad by Maria Reidelbach.

Hail and farewell Jack Davis.

One year ago today I posted a happy birthday to Firesign Theater’s Phil Austin. I don’t check the Firesign Theater website as often as I should because I missed this note posted there a few months later.

[6/19/2015 – From Phil Proctor to all our Dear Friends and Firesign Fans:]

“Nick Danger has left the office.

Our dear friend and Firesign Theatre partner for over 50 years succumbed to various forms of cancer early this morning at his home on Fox Island, Washington, with his wife Oona and their six beloved dogs at his side. It is a tremendous and unexpected loss, and we will miss him greatly; but in keeping with his wishes, there will be no public memorial.

Rest in Peace, Regnad Kcin.”

I hope he won’t mind a belated hail and farewell. Here’s a great ensemble piece from Waiting For The Electrician Or Someone Like Him.