Don't Pity These Fools

Here are a couple of talents we lost in the past month; one was an expert at detecting and exploiting the general public's cultural appetites, while the other introduced a new age of American film making.

Stephen J. Cannell

1941-2010

Writing seems a strange career for someone like Cannell, who struggled with severe dyslexia throughout his life. He was working for his father's furniture business in Los Angeles when he sold his first television script, in 1968, for an episode of It Takes a Thief. He attracted the attention of Universal, the studio which, at the time, was delivering much of the meat-and-potatoes programming for the three networks. He penned scripts on a free-lance basis for a short while before landing his first full-contract gig, as story editor on Adam-12. He claims to have been the lowest paid writer on the Universal lot, but a glitch in his contract promised him $70,000 for each two-hour pilot he wrote, and an additional $100,000 if the pilot was made. Obviously, he began to churn out the pilots.

By his estimation, he personally wrote over 450 television episodes in a career spanning three decades, and executive produced over 1500. He created at least 40 TV series, most of them crime/adventure dramas aimed at the male audience. He was one of the first American producers to recognize the financial wisdom of filming in Canada to avoid Hollywood-style labor costs, so he built his own studio in Vancouver. He furnished the fledgling Fox network with its first season hit 21 Jump Street, which incidentally launched Johnny Depp's career.

His tongue-in-cheek series about a reluctant superhero, The Greatest American Hero, provided a top-40 hit with its theme song.

He created the slightly lurid Silk Stalkings, and made a TV star out of future killer Robert Blake as Baretta. Baa Baa Blacksheep took a look at an air force squadron in the Pacific during WWII, and in Tenspeed and Brownshoe, he paired Broadway hoofer Ben Vereen with uber-geek Jeff Goldblum (even in 1980, the pairing of black and white leading men was unusual; the series failed).

Cannell is probably best remembered for the creation of two series which exemplify his male-centric point of view. In 1983, the first episode of The A-Team premiered after the Super Bowl, bringing this series about a group of misfit mercenaries to the attentions of millions of male viewers. The show was a top-10 hit for four of its five seasons, and turned a mohawked, former wrestler named Mr. T into a cult figure. The show had a cartoon feel to its over-the-top violence (it even inspired its own series of comic books); despite repeated explosions, car crashes, and the like, nobody ever seemed to get seriously hurt. The show continued to be popular during syndicated reruns, and remains an international hit. A feature film was released this year in an attempt to revive the franchise (it was not a success).

Cannell was also responsible for the creation of one of the most beloved of all television gumshoes in The Rockford Files. Jim Rockford, as portrayed by James Garner, was the antithesis of the TV detective of the time. He wore rumpled clothing and lived in a trailer at the beach; he handled only cold cases so as not to have to deal with the police, and often suffered money problems caused by his deadbeat clients. But Garner and Rockford were a match made in casting heaven, and The Rockford Files is considered one of the finest examples of the TV detective genre. And its theme song also hit the Top 40 music charts.

Honestly, I didn't watch any of the above shows. What a shocker. While Mr. T was creating a national catchphrase with "Piddy duh fool," I was watching The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd. But Cannell was responsible for one series which did appeal to me, Wiseguy. The premise concerned a cop who lives his life deeply undercover, spending many months on a single case. In a departure from the norm, Wiseguy's 4 seasons were comprised of long story arcs which took many episodes to conclude. Its brooding star, Ken Wahl, became such a sensation that he has since become a recluse, and the show can be credited with bringing attention to young character actor Kevin Spacey, whose multi-episode performance in season one, as a loony millionaire with a truly creepy sister complex, launched his career.

In recent years, Stephen J. Cannell has become a best-selling fiction writer, with a number of crime novels to his credit, including one which will be released posthumously. He was an occasional actor, and recently had a recurring role (as himself) on Castle. Each of Cannell's productions ended with his signature logo:

Cannell lost his battle with melanoma last month at the age of 69.

Arthur Penn

1922-2010

As a director, he had substantial success with both stage and screen, and is remembered as a pioneer of the New American Film movement of the early 1970s. His career, in retrospect, looks a lot like a badminton match, with Penn as the birdie, flitting back and forth between stage and screen work.

While serving in WWII, he met producer Fred Coe, who would become a longtime collaborator on many of his early projects. Coe set Penn up as a director of 1950s television, and their collaboration included a William Gibson teleplay about Helen Keller. The live program won Emmy nods for Penn and for star Teresa Wright, but more importantly, it cemented a strong working relationship between Gibson, Coe, and Penn. The trio turned to Broadway, providing Henry Fonda and Anne Bancroft with a substantial hit in Two for the Seesaw in 1957. On a roll, Penn headed to Hollywood, helming the first of his many underrated flops, The Left-Handed Gun, a Gore Vidal story starring a moody Paul Newman. As with most of his under-performing films, this one has received better reviews in retrospect than it did at the time, and it failed at the box office.

Arthur returned to Broadway to direct William Gibson's stage adaptation of the teleplay which had put both of them on the map. The Miracle Worker was a smash, earning Tonys for Penn, Gibson, and star Anne Bancroft. It was director Penn who suggested that Bancroft's character, Annie Sullivan, sport an Irish brogue. Bancroft was just coming off a year in Two for the Seesaw, in which she used a thick New York accent, and the actress was having trouble getting rid of it. Arthur sensed that, if Bancroft could replace the accent with another one, she would have no trouble, so Annie Sullivan's Irish accent was born. The role is now traditionally played with a brogue, though the historical Sullivan had none. (I offered that story and others when I wrote my obit for playwright William Gibson a few years ago, go here if you wish to read a bit more).

Arthur Penn became one of the go-to Broadway directors of the early 60s, providing the comedy team of Mike Nichols and Elaine May with their Broadway debut, as well as guiding Lillian Hellman's Toys in the Attic. He also influenced the presidential election of 1960, when he directed the third television debate between JFK and Nixon. He advised Kennedy to keep his answers short and pithy, and to directly address the camera, advice which is commonly thought to have swung the election in Kennedy's favor.

By 1962, Hollywood was begging for Penn's return. He was the logical choice to direct the film version of The Miracle Worker, earning Oscars for his stars Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke, and nominations for himself and for Gibson's screenplay.

He clashed with the star of his next film, Burt Lancaster (don't get me started on his phenomenal lack of talent); Lancaster had more clout, and Penn was sacked after a few days of shooting. His luck with Mickey One, starring Warren Beatty, and The Chase, starring Marlon Brando and Robert Redford, was not much better (the latter film was taken out of his hands and re-edited by the producer). Both films reflected Penn's admiration for the French cinematic techniques which were misunderstood in Hollywood at the time.

Our hero retreated to Broadway (again), where he guided Lee Remick and Robert Duvall in Wait Until Dark, turning it into one of the all-time great stage thrillers. When Francois Truffaut declined Warren Beatty's offer, Penn was approached to direct what was to become his best known, most influential film.

Arthur had to be persuaded by Beatty to direct Bonnie and Clyde, who offered him complete autonomy on the set, and approval of the final cut of the film.

American films of the 60s, until that time, had been unable, or unwilling, to reflect the tumultuous civil unrest, the violence, and the new sexual freedom of the period. The studio contract system had collapsed, but the studios themselves were still attempting to deliver the mainstream product which had worked for decades. Bonnie and Clyde's mix of screwball comedy, sexual explicitness, and shocking violence (set to an upbeat bluegrass score composed by Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, who also wrote The Beverly Hillbillies theme) paved the way for the new wave of American films of the 70s. Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Hal Ashby, and Robert Altman all point to Penn's work as an inspiration for their own.

Arthur followed up Bonnie and Clyde with the subversively gentle Alice's Restaurant, the epic Little Big Man, and the existential thriller Night Moves. His films were not as well-received by the mid-70s, so he once again headed to Broadway, where he placed George C. Scott in Sly Fox, an updated adaptation of the Elizabethan comedy Volpone, and re-teamed with William Gibson for Golda, another vehicle for Anne Bancroft. In his later years, Penn executive produced Law and Order, with his son as director, and delivered a surprise cult hit with Penn and Teller Get Killed.

His final work for Broadway, the 2002 adaptation of Turgenev's Fortune's Fool, won Tonys for both Frank Langella and Alan Bates. He died last month, a day after turning 88.

Friday Dance Party: Horde of Goyim

This week's Dance Party is particularly apropos, I think, as it illustrates the skewed view Christians sometimes have toward Jews. This has been on my mind lately, as I've been working on a project which reflects that theme. A Modest Suggestion wrapped filming yesterday, and I bet I'll be writing about our final two days on set, before I can properly put the project to bed. I can already feel that letdown actors usually feel at the end of a project, though this is the first time I have felt it for a film gig. But this is also the first time I have felt part of a film team, rather than just a hired gun, so I guess I should not be surprised to be feeling the blues a bit.

But for today, I have a Dance Party to explain.

I mentioned in a previous entry that A Modest Suggestion has already generated a bit of controversy, and one particularly vivid bigot bemoaned the fact that one of our Jewish stars, Mendy Pellin, was surrounded by a "horde of Goyim." Looking back on the weeks of the shoot, I have to say I wear that title, as a member of the horde of Goyim, with some pride. It has been enlightening for this Presbyterian WASP to interact with this group of Hebrews so intimately. Our director, Arnon, is what we used to call, when I was growing up in the lily-white suburbs of upper-middle class Atlanta, an orthodox Jew. I imagine there is a better, more politically correct moniker these days, for a gent who always wears his yarmulke (in Arnon's case, always color coordinated with his coat, sweater, and/or tie) and who observes the sabbath...well...religiously. It has been one of the surprising, but not unwelcome, aspects of our shoot, that we could always count on being released from the set early on Friday, and would have every Saturday off, to accommodate any who were celebrating shabbos.

Gotta mention the flip side of that, though. It only occurred to me after a week or so, that this group of very sensitive artists and producers, who were so careful to respect the Jewish Sabbath, never asked any of the Christians in the company if they wished to observe their Sabbath. I don't imagine any actor would ever expect to have all his Sundays off, that would severely limit his ability to work, but it still seems odd that, in this production which always observed the Jewish Sabbath, there was no expectation that the Christians might wish to do the same.


It's all part of the chronic misunderstanding that these two religions have always had, and still have, of each other. It is a primary theme of A Modest Suggestion. Our film makes light of such misunderstandings, with the Gentiles convinced Jews don't eat bacon, while the Jewish writers of our film seem sure all goys are obsessed with donuts.

This culture clash leads (finally) to this week's Dance Party. The clip is from one of my guilty favorites, the movie musical from 1967, Thoroughly Modern Millie. (This film has already provided a previous Dance Party, in which stars Julie Andrews and Mary Tyler Moore negotiate a quirky elevator.) The scene, even to my goyish eyes, doesn't seem to follow Jewish tradition, and the number is clearly placed here to provide Andrews with another song (and to give the film's choreographer more to do). When Thoroughly Modern Millie was adapted for the Broadway stage, this sequence was the first to get the ax, and rightly so, as it has absolutely nothing to do with the plot. But you gotta love this 1967 Anglo view of what a Jewish wedding must be like. Julie Andrews belongs with me in the Horde of Goyim:

Fried Brains

We've got plenty of that delicacy, fried brains, on the set of A Modest Suggestion, but they're not on the catering table next to the kosher sandwiches from Subway. They are in the exploding heads of the actors, or at least, this one.


We've completed four more days of shooting since my last update in these pages; two of those days were relatively easy, and two were monsters. Is that a good average?

Last week, we spent the lion's share of a day shooting inside a limousine. It was a drab, chilly, rainy day, and though we were filming under cover, in a giant warehouse, the air was dank and depressing. I was coming down with a cold (which I think I ultimately avoided, thank you Zicam and Airborne), so it was not a fun-filled day. The scene, which takes place in the limo between the Fab Four, plus a bound and gagged hostage, was one of the shortest in the screenplay, only 6 pages or so. We've been tackling more than double that daily, so we looked forward to a bit of a relaxed shoot that day, but the logistics of the filming proved uncomfortable. The car was one of those older models (no TV! no bar!), and I assume its use was donated to the production; otherwise, we got rooked with a lousy limo. The windshield wipers didn't work, nor did the windows in the rear. The car's battery ran out of juice early in the proceedings and had to be jumped, just to keep the interior lights on. If A Modest Suggestion paid any money for the car, they should expect a refund.


The action took place in the back of the car, where two leather seat/benches faced each other. So, two actors faced two other actors, or at least, that will be the impression in the finished product. During filming, two actors faced a cameraman and a sound operator, who were crammed into the opposite seat. It must have been a comical sight, to watch Michael and me interacting with our imaginary cohorts, while those cohorts stood outside the car and delivered their lines through the windows. After an hour or so of this, the process was reversed. This was the only logical way to film inside the car, but it proved to be a bit claustrophobic. But I have to compliment our Director of Photography, who is also running the camera (welcome to Ultra Low-Budget) and our Sound PooBah, who also operates the boom (ditto above "welcome"), as they spent many hours scrunched into that car. These guys have been very impressive in their ability to give the director what he wants, under circumstances which I'm sure neither consider ideal.



The majority of the cast was released at mid-day, as the evening was to be comprised of a location shoot using only two actors. The following day, we completed filming various pickup shots of the climactic scene of the film, which included an unexpected moment of violence, carefully choreographed by our stunt coordinators.


Our past two days were the monsters. I'm told we covered 30 pages of script, and it certainly felt like it. The action sequences were all completed, so these were 30 pages of dialogue, all delivered by the four leads and our guest star.

Arnon, our director, had meticulously planned a detailed shot list, based on a lot of storyboard work he had previously done (he writes a bit about that here, if you are interested). It was a big challenge for the actors, as we spent both days leaping all over the text, often attempting to recreate a single line or moment buried in an avalanche of words. This is always the challenge of the film actor, which is why it is not my favorite type of work; leaping from moment to moment, out of chronological sequence, is the norm in the film world, but it wreaks havoc on an actor's ability to organically create believable moments.

Our final push to complete the film begins tomorrow, and we hope to wrap things up Thursday. The only scene which remains to be filmed is the first one, and includes about 25 pages of dialogue. The Fab Four will be working alone on this one, our two Guest Stars having completed their individual scenes earlier in the shoot. Perhaps it was smart to place the filming of this critical scene last; after several weeks of working together, Jason, Michael, Peter, and I are very comfortable with each other. The scene will have to introduce the audience to these rather loony corporate guys, and must prepare them for the dark comedy which will follow.


When we finish, the piece will move out of our hands and be placed in the care of the editor. I hope he and Arnon can whittle this mountain of footage into a cohesive piece, and turn our performances into something resembling human behavior!

One Hit Obits

I've been a bit too busy to keep up with all the deaths in recent weeks, but I'll try to catch up, beginning with these three actresses. They all had successful careers lasting decades, but each is best remembered for a single, signature performance which seemed to define her career.

Gloria Stuart

1910-2010

"When I graduated from Santa Monica High in 1927 I was voted the girl most likely to succeed. I didn't realise it would take so long."

It did indeed take a long time for Stuart to gain star status. She was spotted in a production of The Seagull in 1932, and was courted by both Paramount and Universal. She took the contract offering the most money, a decision she was to regret for the rest of her life. Universal, at the time, was the home of the lower budgeted films, and they worked their contract players mercilessly. Stuart was deeply unhappy with her working conditions, which lead to her early involvement with the formation of the Actors Guild (which would later become SAG). The films she made in her youth were largely forgettable; even the more well-known of them were star vehicles for someone else. She played opposite James Cagney, Eddie Cantor, and Shirley Temple, though you'd be hard pressed to recall much about those performances. She enjoyed a nice working relationship with one of the only star directors on the Universal lot, James Whale, for whom she made The Old Dark House and The Invisible Man.

The title of her autobiography, I Just Kept Hoping, is a good illustration of her attitude through most of her career; she never graduated to celebrity status, even when she was playing the female lead in her films. She finally abandoned Hollywood and appeared in only a handful of projects for the next 50 years, until a casting director from Titanic called to see if she was still alive. She later reflected that she landed the role because she was the only star of her generation still ambulatory, lucid, and free of alcohol dependency. Her character narrated Titanic, and her performance as Kate Winslet in the future earned a sentimental Oscar nomination in 1997. She died last month at the age of 100, and will be remembered as the oldest person to have ever been nominated for Hollywood's top award.

Barbara Billingsley

1915-2010

Everybody who worked with her claimed she was a far superior comedic actress than was evidenced by her signature role, the wise and gentle June Cleaver. She had numerous TV credits before landing the matriarch on Leave it to Beaver, a role for which she would become so well-known, she had trouble finding substantive work afterward. The show was cancelled by CBS after its first season in 1957; ABC snapped it up, and it became one of the iconic family sitcoms of the late 50s-early 60s. Her appearance in the series, doing housework in pearls and heels, is often mocked these days. The pearls were her idea, as she was self-conscious about a hollow in her neck which the jewelry kept hidden, and the high heels were added to her wardrobe in later seasons when the actors playing her sons started to tower over her.

Barbara reprised her role in several sequels to the series, and also made cameo appearances as June Cleaver on Spielberg's Amazing Stories and on Roseanne. She can be seen to good effect in the parody hit Airplane!, in which she translates some "jive talk:"

Barbara Billingsley died yesterday at the age of 96.

Billie Mae Richards

1921-2010

She was a Canadian variety artist and voice actress, whose career on radio lasted longer than her American counterparts, as Canadian radio continued to produce fiction programming long after the USA had abandoned such concepts. It was for this reason that producers Rankin and Bass went to Canada to cast their TV special based on a hit holiday song, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Richards's ability to sound like a boy landed her the voice of the title character, a role she reprised in a number of sequels. The special is now a Christmas perennial, though Richards (who was billed as "Billy Richards" in the credits) received residual payments for only the first three years of the show's airing. The fact that star Burl Ives received continual residuals for his work was a particularly sore subject for our gal.

Billie Mae also voiced several Care Bear movies, among other vocal work, and was a proud graduate of the Lorne Greene Academy of Radio Arts in Toronto. I did not make that up. Richards died last month at the age of 88.

Friday Dance Party: Groovy Motorbike

This week's Dance Party is brief, grainy, and a little kookie. It's from the old television series Shindig, a variety show aimed at teenagers which ran for a few years on ABC in the mid-60s. Shindig! and its competitor on NBC, Hullabaloo, were attempts to bring the teen audience from American Bandstand to primetime. The house band for Shindig! included Glen Campbell, Billy Preston, and Leon Russell, and the back-up singers included Bobby Sherman and Jackie DeShannon. The teen audience supported these shows for only a few years, during which time just about every pop act (including The Beatles, if you can believe it) appeared on the program.

In the following clip, the guest band is The Rondells, and as they are singing about Hondas, naturally, their appearance includes a dance number on motorcycles.

In addition to having a house band and house singers, Shindig! had their own troop of dancers. Though the age of this week's Dance Party has caused some focus problems, keep an eye on the blond girl on the far right (the one without the glasses). She's clearly having some balance issues, as she lip-syncs the backup vocals, but she's about the only interesting thing in the clip. It's Teri Garr.