Podcasts

When I jogged, back in the day, I was alone with my thoughts. I’d think about work. I’d think about what I was writing. I’d practice moving meditation. I’d occasionally trip and fall. This was before running shoes were available on the market and the toes of my Keds would wear out, causing the soles to droop in front and catch in cracks in the sidewalk.

Then came the transistor radio, and if a game was on, it took precedence over thinking.

Then came the Walkman, and thinking was dealt a mortal blow. AM/FM and tape cassette, on a belt. I kept a list of the books on tape that I listened to, just for fun. By the time that I lost the list, it had more than 500 titles on it.

And then came the nano, and iTunes. Books joined thinking as activities several clicks down in my hierarchy of cerebral activities in which to be engaged while out on the hoof.

I still want to think. I want to listen to books. I do listen to a little music. I’m out there for more than two hours a day. But, just as I’ve got a list of Web sites to surf to every day, I’ve also got a list of podcasts that I don’t want to miss. Naturally, the list changes, evolves. It includes 50+ titles.

Uh oh. Metaphor-for-life alert. Time misspent, observing rather than doing? Listening rather than thinking? Ironically, I’m thinking now, but only about thinking. Is that productive thinking? Rats. Now I’m thinking about thinking about thinking, and what you’re thinking. Or wait, am I just observing myself? I tell myself, Listen to yourself! What the hell are you talking about? But that’s not lving life, it’s just analyzing it. Whew. All of a sudden I understand why I like listening to podcasts.

My current favorites:

Sports: Baseball Today; Bill Simmons; Hang Up and Listen

Movies: Filmspotting; The /Filmcast; B-Movie Cast; Kermode/Mayo

Politics: To the Point; Slate’s Political Gabfest; Left, Right, and Center

Other: Slate’s Culture Gabfest; On the Media; Comedy Bang Bang

I’ve also been listening to David Blight’s Yale lectures on the Civil War (iTunes University).

My Favorite Blogging Topics

I was born and raised high up on the side of a mountain where the sheeps eat their grass. I was quite grown before I met other people. Because of this, my main interest has always been other people and their ways.

My first blogging topic was my family. I wrote all I knew. I got my Uncle Louie arrested and sent away. This was when my folks told me I was dead to them, but I could still live in the house.

My second blogging topic was the neighbors. I wrote a lot about them, until the police made me stop hanging around under their windows.

My third blogging topic was the other kids at school. I wrote a lot about them. When the tragedy happened, I was accused of “bullying.”

My fourth blogging topic was when I was in prison. I wrote about the prisoners, especially the men on death row and what I learned and heard about them. Three of them were executed early because of my blog.

My fifth blogging topic was my wife. Because of firewalls or government laws and regulations or church groups or some other reason, my writings about our sexual life caused protests about behavior “that shamed nature.” My service provider threatened my life.

At this time, I am looking for a new topic. In fact, I’d like to write about  you.

Women over 45 in the movies

From the reader: “Could you explain why there are almost no women over 45 in movies or in magazines that cover the film industry? Has there been an epidemic of some kind that’s wiped out only women over 45 and only in the Greater Los Angeles area? Is this happening to men over 45? And if not, why not? And if you were a woman over 45, where would you live?”

I’ve addressed these issues previously here and here. The reader’s premise is no longer accurate. Female stars are no longer consigned to the movie-star boneyard when they enter their 40s.  Back in the day, female stars lived hard and by the time they were 40, many of them could pass for 60. Today, female stars in their 40s, 50s, and 60s still look great (and of course, can still act, if they could in the first place).

What is true is that strong female parts can be hard to find, and women are less likely to carry a film in Hollywood than are men. Such is not the case in, for example, France.

Some female stars over 40 (I contend that those in the list who are between 40 and 45 will continue to work when they hit 45; there are many in this list who won’t see 60 again; a Sophia Loren or Ursula Andress still has credits in the 2000s):

Helen Mirren, Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Geneviève Bujold, Charlotte Rampling, Nicole Kidman, Lucy Liu, Laura Linney, Demi Moore, Julia Roberts, Holly Hunter, Meg Ryan, Mary-Louise Parker, Elizabeth Perkins, Mary McConnell, Felicity Huffman, Teri Hatcher, Alfre Woodward, Geena Davis, Stockard Channing, Frances Conroy, Glenn Close, Bette Midler, Susan Sarandon, Goldie Hawn, Angelica Houston, Lily Tomlin, Sarah Palin, Debra Winger, Catherine Deneuve, Signorney Weaver, Isabella Rossallini, Juliette Binoche, Isabelle Adjani, Lili Taylor, Jane Curtain, Janeane Garofalo, Julie Delpy, Sharon Stone, la Streep, Renee Zellweger, Parker Posey, Maggie Cheung, Michelle Yeoh, Dianne Weist, Blythe Danner, Adrienne Barbeau, Ana Belen, Ann-Margaret, Blythe Danner, Cheryl Ladd, Cheryl Tiegs, Betty White, Ann Savage (sadly deceased, but she made it into My Winnepeg), Cristine Rose, Concha Velasco, Cybill Shepherd, Diane Keaton, Faye Dunaway, Fionnula Flanagan, Gemma Jones, Jaclyn Smith, Helena Rojo, Jacqueline Bisset, Jane Seymour, Jean Smart, Jane Badler, JoBeth Williams, Karen Allen, Kirstie Alley, Linda Gray, Lynda Carter, Mary Kay Place (sister wife!), Morgan Fairchild, Olivia Newton-John, Pam Grier, Peggy Lipton, Raquel Welch, Sally Field, Shelly Long, Sonia Braga, Sophia Loren, Vanessa Redgrave, Ursula Andress, Wendie Malick, Renee Russo, Lena Olin, Jane Fonda, Fanny Ardant, Julie Christie, Tina Turner, Tanya Roberts, Shirley MacLaine, Shannon Tweed, Nancy Sinatra, Sela Ann Ward, Rita Wilson, Phylicia Rashad, Mia Farrow, Madonna, Melody Thomas Scott, Melanie Griffith, Kim Cattrall, Julie Newmar, Katie Sagal, Kathy Bates, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jennifer Tilly, Jessica Phyllis Lange, Joan Allen, Gena Rowlands, Grace Jones, Cloris Leachman, Debbie Morgan, Debbie Harry, Diahann Carroll, Ellen Rona Barkin, Emma Thompson, Andie MacDowell, Angela Bassett, Annette Bening, Kristin Davis, Emmanuelle Beart, Jennifer Beals, Mariska Hargitay, Carrie-Anne Moss, Mädchen Amick, Marisa Tomei, Madeleine Stowe, Sela Ward, Linda Fiorentino, Tia Carrere, Kristian Alfonso,Teri Hatcher, Sandra Bullock, Julianna Margulies, Ashley Judd, Gina Gershon, Famke Janssen, Caitlin Keats, Phoebe Cates, Kate Walsh, Courteney Cox, Elizabeth Hurley, Sophie Marceau, Salma Hayek, Patricia Valasquez,
Kari Wuhrur, Ayelet Zurer, Maria Grazia Cucinotta, Julie Dreyfus, Sofia Vergara, Monica Bellucci, Brooke Langton, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Brooke Shields, Lauren Graham, Vanessa Marcil.

Life in Hollywood: prosecuted compelling equivocal removal favorable

There is a producer, Isaac, with whom I have worked at Universal for years. Isaac has prosecuted a successful career in the industry, with many compelling films to his credit, and few that were equivocal. He’s never faced abrupt and ignominious removal from his office and from the lot, like so many of his peers. His  future prospects are favorable, if not sparkling.

Isaac called me into his office the other day and asked me to do a treatment of an idea he had. Or he had had. Or that he had had. He paced behind his desk.

“The nation is filling up with geezers,” he said. “Even I am becoming a geezer. Let’s cash in on the demo.”

“Sure,” I said.

“E. T.,” Isaac said. “His race, out there in space, they age faster than us. He comes back to Earth, he’s old. He’s a wizened little f**ker. He comes back to find Drew. You remember that other movie Drew was in, where some guy has a Barrymore fan club and he just wants to have lunch with her, and when she finds out, she has lunch with him? Well, with E.T. in this movie, I’m thinking, she doesn’t find out that he’s back and she doesn’t have lunch with him. See, E.T. always had a yen for Drew. Anyway, Universal lets him stay on the lot but he can’t get a meeting, not with Drew, not with Spielberg, not with nobody, nothing, nada, zilch. He’s old news. Nobody cares from this guy. Eventually, he gives up with a broken heart, or whatever he has in there, and walks out the gate. Or gets kicked out. He ends up on the street with Will Smith in that homeless violin movie. Or was that Jamie Foxx? So then E.T. has some street  adventures, you dream up something for him, and meanwhile Drew hears what’s happened and she goes out looking for him. She’s depressed. Maybe she’s not over that breast-reduction she had. She didn’t realize how much she was going to miss them.”

“Geez, Isaac, I don’t know about this.”

“Shut up. Put in a little sex. Howard the Duck got it on in his movie, didn’t he? Did Spielberg show the little guy’s thing at all? E.T. comes back, he’s old, but he’s still human, you know what I mean?”

“Couldn’t he be regular age, maybe six feet, like in Avatar?”

“What, are you crazy? Nobody wants to see Drew shtup a six-foot lizard. What are you thinking? But now, if he’s old and creaky, it’s a Mother Teresa thing. And even old, he could be hung. The geezer demo can still operate. Don’t make this Coccoon. It’s more like The Wrestler meets Thelma Schoonmaker.”

He opened his desk drawer and pulled out a personal checkbook. Scribbled me a check.

“Keep it to yourself,” he said. “These sharks around here, they’ll steal your balls out of your boxers, you let them.”

Life in Hollywood: upset, “ho stroll,” common, money, house keys

It has never upset me to learn that a woman I am seeing is a whore. Over the years, some of my best friends have been whores.  That doesn’t mean that I want to see my current squeeze out on Sepulveda or down on a ho stroll in South L.A. Hey, I’m a script doctor. I’ve got a lot in common with my friends the whores. They need money, I need money, but we’re all a little short right now. Probably more than one woman with my house keys still in her purse is selling it as we speak.

Having said that, there was Tivona. Tivona did a little work in costumes but a lot more with the crew. She didn’t service the stars; she handled all those names you see in the crawl at the end of the movie. Tivona and I liked to share a drink or two, or a toke or a line or a pipe once in a while when we were both free. I liked Tivona and Tivona liked me. We spent some quality body time together too and it didn’t hurt that she was flexible in mind, body, and morals. She also darned a couple of socks for me.

What happened with Tivona was, she was so well liked around the studio that eventually some producer offered her a bit in a summer blockbuster. All she had to do, naturally, was sleep with a couple of executives and the star. So I congratulated her and invited her out to dinner to talk about it.

“I don’t think I should go,” she says.

“What?”

“Well, you know. I’m sort of going with the top line now. I’ve got my ticket. I’m not sure that I should be, you know, consorting with the crew anymore.”

“Tivona. You’re screwing a couple of rich sleazeballs to get a part in a movie. It’s no different than what you’ve been doing around here for months.”

“Please don’t talk like that, Honey. I’m an actress now.”

“You’ve been acting for years, if you know what I mean.”

“Don’t be coarse. I’ll get you tickets to the premier.”

“I don’t want the premier. I want your rear.”

But I didn’t get it. Tivona (not her real name, by the way) is a real star now, with the public romances and the adopted babies and the home in Malibu and the fancy wheels. All I get from her on the set is a wink.

Life in Hollywood: moment, woman, grand, reassembled, misunderstand

Harry likes to call me on the spur of the moment. He’ll have a woman and his poker buddies waiting for him in Vegas at the MGM Grand and I’ll drive him over from L.A. When we arrive, I’ll find the boys reassembled in Harry’s suite, ready for action, and the girl sitting at his wet bar. I always grumble when he asks, but don’t misunderstand. I never regret helping him out.

Just to be clear, Harry is not Willie Nelson. Harry is an older, grizzled star like Willie. Harry sings like Willie. He spends time in Hawaii like Willie (who lives there). Harry smokes cigars and a lot of weed. He loves poker, like Willie. Willie, however, focuses on life and poker in Paia with the other members of his rat pack there: Don Nelson, Owen Wilson, and Woody Harrelson. Harry lives up on Mulholland Drive. The poker rooms in their homes, Willie’s  and Harry’s, aren’t so very different, though.

Harry doesn’t like to fly and he doesn’t like to drive his own car. I’ve been his gofer on a number of movies over the years and he’s happy to ride shotgun with me behind the wheel. He insists that I be sober both ways, so our little road trips provide me with an opportunity to dry out a little. When the traffic is reasonable, the trip takes five hours, more or less. On this latest occasion, I told Harry that I had to be back on set in two days, no matter what. Harry said we wouldn’t be gone that long.

He seemed unusually excited this time around. He ran off at the mouth all the way to Nevada. His arch enemy Sid was coming to the game, and Sid always got Harry going. Harry and Sid are the best of an excellent group of poker players. They’ve taken a lot of money off the others in the group, and Sid has taken a lot of money off Harry. This time, Harry said, he had a secret weapon. He wouldn’t say more.

We checked into the Grand and in no time at all Harry had a blond bimbo on his arm, his girl for the trip. He squired her around, showing her off to hotel staff and punters he knew from all over. Harry’s wife never made the trip.

The poker game, once it started, progressed as it often does when Harry and Sid are after each other and in top form. By the time the sun came up, after no more than twelve hours of play, the two of them were alone at the table in the suite. The rest of us were spectators. Once head-to-head, they switched to seven card stud exclusively. Old school. After an hour of play, Harry was already on the rocks. He sat back in his chair.

“I don’t feel so good,” he said. He gestured toward the house phone. “Get the doc down here.”

A young Asian physician appeared, gave Harry a onceover, and told him to stop playing.

“I won’t stop,” Harry said.

“Don’t be an idiot, ” Sid said. “I’m not playing a sick man.”

“Then forfeit your chips,” Harry said.

“You ain’t that sick.”

Harry rubbed his face. He groaned.

“Let my girl take over for me,” he said. “Just until I get myself back together.”

Sid’s eyebrows shot up. He looked over at the bimbo. He looked back at Harry.

“Who is she?” he said.

“That’s Reba,” Harry said. “Reba, come over here.”

Reba came over. I pushed a chair forward and she sat down at the table next to Harry. Sid stared at her.

“Harry, you dog,” Sid said. “You’re throwing in a ringer. You think she’s better than either of us? Or is she a mechanic?”

“Look at her,” Harry said.

She was not prepossessing.

“Take off the dark glasses,” Sid said to her.

She took off the glasses.

“Take off the wig,” he said.

She looked at Harry.

“Go ahead, Baby,” he said.

She took off the wig. She had a mousey little noggin.

“You know her?” Harry said.

Sid shook his head.

“If she were any good, you’d know her?” Harry said.

“Sure.”

“Well, then. Play cards.”

“Watch her hands,” Sid said to the rest of us. “Watch her like a hawk.”

Mort had been dealing for Sid and Harry. Sid tossed his ante into the center of the table and motioned to Mort.

“I’ll explain the rules to you,” Harry said to Reba, “but then I’ve got to get my feet up on the couch for a little bit.”

Sid barked a laugh.

“Right,” he said. “She don’t know the rules.”

Apparently, she didn’t. The game progressed in fits and starts. Reba truly seemed ignorant of the game, not to mention of any strategy or tactical subtleties. She played a conservative game and Sid took her money slowly, shaking his head and rolling his eyes as he did so.

Harry had moved back to a sofa from which he watched the action. And slowly, strangely, Reba began to win. The pots got bigger. Mort handed over the cards to Jacob, but Sid’s luck did not change. By lunchtime, he was wiped out. Reba was modest in her success but Harry wasn’t. He crowed and then he crowed some more.

“I know I’ve been snookered,” Sid said. “Tell me how and it’s worth it to me. She didn’t cheat. I’d bet on that.”

“She didn’t cheat,” Harry said. “She’s a sweet kid and a freak of nature. I’ll let you stew until next time and then I’ll explain what happened.”

Sid fussed, but he had a story to eat out on and a revelation to look forward to. On the way back to L.A., Harry told me about Reba.

“Did you ever  play that game with a little kid where you put your hands behind your back and put a penny in one of them, and then you hold your hands out in front of you and the little kid tries to guess which hand has the penny? Sometimes they get it and sometimes they don’t but if you want them to get it, you can sort of move that hand closer to them and they’ll pick it. And then it’s their turn and they hold their two hands out and you start to point and they’ll sort of move the empty hand toward your finger, so you always choose the empty hand if you’re not a complete schmuck? You ever do that?”

I shrugged.

“Well, if you play that game with Reba, she’ll always pick the hand with the penny and you never will. It’s not telepathy. She can read body tells by instinct, without thinking, instantly. You hold your hands out and if you want her to pick the empty hand, she can tell just by your tiny movements which hand you want her to pick. Like you were that little kid. We keep doing the same thing when we grow up, only just, you know, a tiny little bit. Of course you’ve got to care or it doesn’t work. When she holds out her hands, you’ve got to want to pick the hand with the penny, and if you do, she’ll get you to pick the empty hand, again, sort of like the kid does, by signalling which hand is empty, and then you go along without even knowing it. Or if you want to pick the empty hand in the first place, to score point with her by letting her win, because you’ve got designs on her, you’ll keep finding that damn penny every time she opens her hand, with her grinning at you and saying My aren’t you the lucky fellow, I guess I just can’t win. Do you follow me?”

I shrugged again.

“Sid cared. On every hand,” Harry said. “He wanted to take her money.”

“But wouldn’t she still make dumb bets?”

“That’s the beauty of it! In the beginning, with small bets, she could afford to play like a beginner, which she was, because that allowed Sid to judge her ability and informed his behavior in subsequent hands. After that, Reba didn’t play her cards. She played Sid, always doing the opposite of what he wanted her to do or hoped that she would do. Sid kept trying, harder and harder, raising the bets higher and higher, but he was actually beating himself by telling Reba how to bet the opposite of what he wanted. Because he’s a hell of a player and if she bet his way, he was going to win for sure.”

“How’d you meet her?” I said.

“She’s a shrink at a rehab clinic in Woodland Hills. Spend a week with her and you’re off your jones for a month. A week for a month. Keep her in mind. Sooner or later, you’re going to need her.”

Movies I’ve decided not to see

Movies are loved, some by God, some by Satan, all by the director’s mom. If you decide not to watch one, you better have a good reason, because you’re bound to piss off somebody with your decision.

Some years ago, I embarked on the task of watching all of the movies on the IMDB Top 250 list, as it was constituted at the time (it changes a lot). I completed the task, with the exception of nine films, all of which I watched part of (all of which I watched in part). I propose to list those nine films, which I desperately wanted to watch but on some level decided not to (but decided not to on some level), plus Titanic. Perhaps by studying this list, I can form a general rule about the movies that I watch and the movies that I don’t watch.

1. Titanic

2. The Lion King

3. Scarface

4. Grave of the Fireflies

Hmm. The rest of the nine are gone, bumped off the list by other films. Running my eyes over the current 250 entries, I’m reminded that it’s a profoundly silly list (#76, Raging Bull; #75, The Green Mile).

Plan B… I’ll fill out my list with films from the 250 that I don’t suppose I’ll ever see.

5. Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring

6. How to Train Your Dragon

7. Black Swan

Still need three more. Ok, first three I can think of:

8. That Robin Williams movie about the doctor in a clown suit

9. Sex in the City, 1 & 2

10. The Passion of the Christ

I thought I’d never watch Howard the Duck and Death to Smoochy, but then someone turned me on to them and I did watch them and I liked them. I was never going to watch the second or third Transformers, but I just read a review by a woman who liked them both, so… This list of ten is fungible. No, fungible means that I could swap in ten other movies easily, so it’s fungible in that sense, but also, the ten entries here could change polarity at some point, after being praised by someone on /Filmcast, for example, and move to that other list of movies, that I desire to watch.

Basic reasons I don’t want to watch these movies:

1. Titanic – The boat sinks and almost everybody drowns. Cameron tries to sneak around this by showcasing a survivor up front. Doesn’t help. I don’t want to put in two hours watching only to have everybody drown on me. At least with The Poseiden Adventure, you got to guess who would make it and who wouldn’t.

2. The Lion King – I’ve got nothing against lions. A guy down the block kept a lion in his house til it killed him.

3. Scarface – Pacino. Did he have the scar? The part I watched, I can’t remember the scar. Did anybody call him Scarface to his scar, I mean, to his face?

4. Grave of the Fireflies – I only got 1/3 of the way through this one before my unsuccessful suicide attempt.

5. Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring – This might be a great movie, but there are so many Chinese movies that I haven’t seen, that if they passed me at the rate of one per minute, and in that minute I could watch the whole movie, I’d never come to the end of them because they are being made and are entering post-production even faster than that.

6. How to Train Your Dragon – I was going to say something about a young dragon and her training bra but this is a family blog.

7. Black Swan – I saw a swan the other day. If you notice, all the other birds give swans a wide berth, because they really are crazy, black and white. Maybe not as crazy as a loon, but they’ll spring a hissy fit in a heartbeat if the bread that you throw them is even half-stale.

8. That Robin Williams movie about the doctor in a clown suit – When I was in the fourth grade, we took a tour of a funeral home and the embalmer was dressed as a clown. This was supposed to make us laugh when they showed us the corpse they were working on. It didn’t.

9. Sex in the City, 1 & 2 – False advertising.

10. The Passion of the Christ – I was going to watch this one with my Sunday School class, but instead I had a chance to see a private screening of a phone video clip of Mel Gibson, drunk,  beating his wife with a Torah yad. That seemed sufficient.

Gary Busey and Charlie Sheen at Thunderdome

Gary Busey and Charlie Sheen are friends of mine. I’ve spent more time drinking and whoring with Gary and Charlie than I have with my own dad, we’re that close. I was at the Thunderdome at Burning Man when the two of them got it on. No, Mel Gibson wasn’t there, but Tina Turner was. This was the night that Busey almost bit off Sheen’s pecker pardon my French. We paid a friend a lot of money to keep his trap shut after he had sewed it back on. This didn’t happen at Thunderdome, though. It happened later when we were just clowning around.

I’ve worked with both men as a dialog coach. I’m Gary’s age and Charlie is twenty years younger than us, so when we’re roistering, there’s always a lot of banter and ragging about our age and his youth, relatively speaking. Charlie just needs one glimpse of gray pubes to set him off on a rant, whereas whenever Gary or I see him pitch face-first into his bag of blow or the ta tas of one of his strumpets because he’s too drunk and/or high to sit up any longer, we’ll hoot at him and badger him until we’re sure he’s totally out and can’t hear us any longer.

Anyway, the three of us were at Burning Man sitting alone at a campfire out on the flats and Gary and Charlie were arguing about which one of them was a bigger asshole than Mel Gibson. Naturally, they both claimed that honor. And then, there next to us in the firelight, stood Tina Turner. Tina, who was born in Nutbush, Tennessee, I kid you not, is five years older than Gary and me. She’ll never see seventy again. She’s dressed in her leathers with the thigh-high boots and bare skin above and by God, whether it was the drugs or the firelight, she didn’t look half bad.

“Why don’t you boys come on over to the Thunderdome and we’ll have this out,” she said.

We all got up and staggered over there and sure enough, there were fifteen or twenty young women inside from a Southern Cal Jewish sorority, and they were wearing t-shirts to prove it.  Gary and Charlie charged in and started abusing them with anti-semitic rants that would have shamed Goebbels, not to mention Gibson. By the time the girls ran out sobbing, Tina had the boys by the hands and was ready to raise one in victory. Before she could do it, though, just to prove a point, the two started in on her, from the standpoint of the N word. She tolerated about sixty seconds of that and then clocked them both hard enough to stretch them out motionless on the sand.

“I’ve spent time with Mel Gibson,” she said to me, “while we were making our Mad Max movie. When he’s sober, he’s a gentleman. I have yet to encounter either of these two motherf**kers in that state, so I can’t make a fair estimation, but I’m inclined to agree with them that they’re both worse than Mel, and award them a tie.”

Have there always been “summer movies”?

Summer Glau was born in 1981, so in that respect, no.

If time is a construct introduced by humans because they don’t have the ability to see the totality of action in an absolute universal sense, then yes. Everything has always been and will always be, including summer movies.

In the more limited sense of U.S. cinema, my thoughts before turning to Google:

Before television, movies were produced and released in a constant flow. There were seasonal inflections caused by the advent of holidays such as Christmas. Whether release considerations went beyond that, I don’t know. But I doubt it.

With television came the concept of TV summer reruns. It may be that the studios regarded this fallow TV period as a time to introduce especially attractive movies. No data in my memory bank on this.

Also, in the late 50s and early 60s, the first baby-boomers entered their teen years. Hence, movies like Where the Boys are (1960) and the Funicello/Avalon beach-blanket movies, such as Beach Blanket Bingo (1965), were made. Perhaps these youth-targeted movies were introduced in the summer months. Could be wrong.

The summer movies that I’m considering here are seasonal offerings aimed at a youthish demo. Summer blockbusters are a whole different animal, from both marketing and genre perspectives, targeted even more tightly at the teen demo, with, also, the world market in mind. Summer blockbusters were invented with Jaws in 1975.

Finally, off the subject, I’m thinking of adults who are recently out of school and in the workforce and who now no longer have a clear concept of “summer,” as their year blends together for them with a vacation or two thrown in at arbitrary times – as opposed to youth free from school for several hopefully halcyon months. For such adults, if there were summer movies, perhaps now there aren’t, at least until kids of their own come along.

Turning to Google:

So much for my thoughts above. “Where the Boys Are” is a classic movie about summer, but its release date was three days after Christmas. “Beach Blanket Bingo” was released in April. So movies about summer and movies released in summer are two different things. Wet Hot American Summer (2001) came out in the summer. Random? Endless Summer (1966) was released in August in Japan. Ok. I know nothing about the relationship between “release” and “opening,” or why a movie would be released first in Japan. You can explain all this to me in a comment or guest post. Or not.

Now I’m thinking that there is no special seasonal-release category for summer movies (movies released in the summer), only for “summer blockbusters.”

There have not always been summer blockbusters. “Jaws” represents a change in Hollywood’s business model. Gone with the Wind (1939)  was released in January. Ben Hur (1959) in December. Old-fashioned blockbusters.

So, bottom line, there have not always been movies about summer  that were released specifically in summer; but there have always been movies about summer – a summer-movie genre. Let me see if I can turn up some titles from the 30s and 40s.  Blondie Takes a Vacation (1939). Summer Bachelors (1926). Say, here’s a summer-camp movie rated 8.9 in IMBD: Thrill of a Lifetime (1937), with Ben Blue, Judy Canova, and Betty Grable. Uh oh. Frank Nugent in the NYT: “You have, in point of accuracy, an insipid concoction of sour japes and flat romantics which Fanchon (of Fanchon & Marco) has strung together like one of her old stage shows at the Roxy.” Oh, well. Would movies about county fairs count?

Who could have guessed, back in the day, that the drive-in would go away. Sitting out under the stars on the benches in front of the concession stand, we automatically classified whatever we were watching as a summer movie.

Which brings me to a treasure trove of summer-movie lore: the page that is displayed when you Google “summer movie memories.” For example, seven New Yorker essays on the subject. Based upon this veritable landslide of summer-movie nostalgia, to mix my metaphors, there have always been summer movies.

No subject is terrible if the story is true and if the prose is clean and honest

“You can’t prove a negative.”

Some guy said that. Plato? Jesus? Einstein?

Whoever it was, I’ve got to believe it, whatever it means.

Is the title of this post a negative? It’s got a “no” right at the start. Sounds negative to me.

But hang on. “You can’t prove a negative.” That’s got a “can’t” and a “negative” in it. So you can’t prove that either. QED, as my old Economics teacher would say. What a nut that guy was. He got hit by a car in the student parking lot, but he was OK. That could have been a terrible subject if he’d been killed or something.

Do you ever think that some of these wiseguys who dream up stuff like “No subject is terrible” are just sitting around bullshitting us? Go have a drink in a bar around Bunker Hill in L.A., the financial district, and the bullshit just piles up. These guys. “In a pig’s eye,” Mickey Spillane liked to say.

Hey, I don’t have to prove anything. Name me one terrible subject where the story is true and the prose (writing, that means) is clean and honest, and don’t name my wife haha.

I’m thinking of about ten terrible subjects right now, but they’re not clean, if you know what I mean. You keep them clean, you’ll come up with a million boring subjects, but that don’t make them terrible. You might have a terrible time reading them but that’s your problem, moron. I’ll give you an example. You’re sitting in church and the reverend is going on and on, you think you’re going to lose your f**king mind. So you pull the program out of the hymnal holder in the bench in front of you and you start to read the announcements on the back of it. These things are worse reading than the side of a cereal box but the deal is, you’re so f**king bored that the terribleness of the program somehow helps cancel out the terribleness of the sermon. Get it? It’s the silver lining in the cloud.

Let’s go right to the source of terrible: Hitler. You’ll read or hear that the first person to mention Hitler in an argument loses. Wrong. Think of something terrible that Hitler might have done. He kicks his dog. He’s doing it with Eva Braun and he gets off and leaves her unsatisfied. Something like that. Then you write about it, using some big words like “kudgel” or “rectified” to make it prose. How terrible is that? The Bible’s got Judas and the soldiers who crucified Our Lord a la Mel Gibson. That’s terrible and it’s in the Holy Scriptures. What with all the Jews and Muslims around these days, I should also provide examples from the Torah and the Koran, but my Hebrew and Arabic are non-existent. I do know a kid studying for his Bar Mitzvah, but he’s too busy with that to help me, even if I throw a couple of shekels his way.