On PLANES, TRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES (1987)

 A couple of days ago, in my MOVIES FOR THANKSGIVING DAY post, I gave you viewing recommendations for your holiday entertainment at home on turkey day. Another film that's popular on that holiday is the 1987 comedy PLANES, TRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES. It was produced, directed and written by John Hughes. He's the filmmaker who became revered by a certain generation for his 1980s teen comedies SIXTEEN CANDLES, THE BREAKFAST CLUB, PRETTY IN PINK and FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF.

His 1987 comedy, starring Steve Martin as a short-tempered, stranded traveler in New York City trying to get home to Chicago in time for Thanksgiving dinner with his family, showed that Hughes could do more than teen comedies. The lovable, late John Candy had one of the best roles of his movie career as the sweet, chatty guy who becomes an unlikely traveling companion to Martin's character. Both are headed for Chicago. The Steve Martin and John Candy road comedy takes us from New York City to Wichita to St. Louis and, finally, Chicago. I like both stars in the comedy. However, it does have a similar trait I noticed in the John Hughes teen comedies that take place in or around Chicago -- no Black actors have featured roles.

I worked on TV in Milwaukee and spent a lot of time in Chicago in the 80s. I love Chicago. I love its diversity. In the 80s, we saw racial diversity just about every weekday when we looked at the audiences on Oprah's daytime talk show in Chicago. During the press junket for 1984's SIXTEEN CANDLES, I interviewed Hughes and asked him if we'd be seeing Black kids in his future teen comedies. He sort of danced around the question in his answer. When I saw 1986's FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF, I felt that he should've just said "No."

TCM host Dave Karger, mentions in a TCM promo that he's a big fan of the filmmaker who seemed to capture the teen spirit of the 1980s. Karger is a dapper, knowledgeable young man. I'd like to ask him if he can name one Black character from a Hughes teen comedy starring Molly Ringwald or Matthew Broderick.

Here's something to do. If you watch PLANES, TRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES on Thanksgiving Day, keep a notepad nearby and make a mark for every time you see a Black actor in the film who has 5 or more lines. There are counter clerks, cab drivers, bus drivers, motorists...all sorts of other characters in the story that -- as I wrote -- goes from New York City to Wichita to St. Louis to Chicago.

That's what I noticed about movies from filmmaker John Hughes. And that's an aspect I never, ever heard brought up by the weekly movie critics -- predominantly white males -- on TV in those days. 

This is why I push for more representation for people of color not only in the arts, but in the criticism and conversation about the arts. Here's a clip from the 1987 John Hughes comedy.

WEST SIDE STORY On Its Way

 "Something's Coming" is a song from the classic Broadway score and the 1961 Oscar-winning film adaptation of WEST SIDE STORY. To me, the 1961 movie is a work of film art. "Something's Coming" also applies to the soon-to-be seen new version of WEST SIDE STORY from famed director Steven Spielberg. It was scheduled to open last year, but was held back because of pandemic. The new version hits screens early next month. The extraordinary Rita Moreno, who won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her powerful performance in the original, is in Spielberg's remake. She does the role of the shop owner. He was "Doc" in the original, played by Ned Glass. Moreno is also one of the remake's producers. She had script input in sections that, from what I've heard, were a bit too Caucasian for Puerto Rican characters to be saying. Here's a trailer for Spielberg's WEST SIDE STORY.

Here's what the studio is calling a "sneak peek."

My wish is that Rita Moreno has such a good role and is so terrific in the remake that she gets a second Oscar nomination for WEST SIDE STORY. What wonderful Hollywood history that would be.

Steven Spielberg's version is scheduled to open on December 10th.

Movies for Thanksgiving Day

 For many years, when I lived in New York, I had an entertainment tradition on Thanksgiving Day. Before the big meal and after the watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, I'd watch Woody Allen's HANNAH AND HER SISTERS, a romantic comedy/drama that begins and ends with a turkey dinner. When I was still pretty new to the city, I worked on a local weekday show that aired on WPIX/Channel 11. On it, I interviewed veteran actress Maureen O'Sullivan and Barbara Hershey. The film hadn't opened yet and both ladies from the cast were extremely proud of it. I saw it in a private screening room packed with known film critics. The whole audience gasped with joy at the film's last line. We loved HANNAH AND HER SISTERS. For me, it's one of those films that makes me want to know why the hell Mia Farrow has never, ever been nominated for an Oscar. Not for ROSEMARY'S BABY, THE PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO, RADIO DAYS, ALICE, BROADWAY DANNY ROSE or HANNAH AND HER SISTERS. Farrow is excellent as the oldest of three grown sisters. She's so dependable and supportive that her needs are often overlooked by her sisters and her husband. It seems as though Hannah has blended into the wallpaper. I'm the oldest of three kids and I saw some of myself in Hannah.

HANNAH AND HER SISTERS brought Oscars in the Best Supporting category to Michael Caine and Dianne Wiest.

Nowadays I include the delightful 2009 feature from director Wes Anderson that's based on a novel by Roald Dahl. It's FANTASTIC MR. FOX featuring voiceover work from George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Willem Dafoe and Bill Murray. Even though life on land in the outside world has grown darker and more perilous, these underground critters learn to take joy in just being together for Thanksgiving. They make each other feel appreciated, despite some differences. I love this film. Humans need to learn from these talking animals.

Wes Anderson's new film, currently out, is THE FRENCH DISPATCH.

Another turkey-centric movie is a 2000 comedy that totally entertained me. I reviewed it for ABC News on Lifetime TV. This comedy did not get a lot of press, but it truly reflected the Los Angeles I know with its racial and sexual diversity. I grew up in Los Angeles. Gurinder Chadha directed and co-wrote this look at four different families in L.A. gathering for Thanksgiving dinner. Her comedy stars Alfre Woodard, Joan Chen, Lainie Kazan, Julianna Margulies, Oscar winner Mercedes Ruehl, Dennis Haysbert and A Martinez. It's a sweet movie called WHAT'S COOKING?

Director Gurinder Chadha grew up in London but she got the L.A. tone just right. She went on to direct the very popular BEND IT LIKE BECKHAM (2002).

There you have it. Three films to keep in mind for your home entertainment on Thanksgiving Day.

About WE'RE HERE on HBO

 "You are a product of some strong-ass people." That is a quote from a reality show episode that truly moved me. It's a show in its second season on HBO, a show that -- at first -- you'd think would be solely about three openly gay male entertainers on the road with fashion and make-up tips. Well, it has those tips while also blending in powerful moments of social acceptance and social issues. The show is called WE'RE HERE and the hosts are professional -- and talented -- drag queen performers. They are Bob the Drag Queen, Shangela and Eureka! Here's a short taste of the series.

True, this is a show that came through the door opened years ago by the calculatedly festive QUEER EYE FOR THE STRAIGHT GUY, the show that made Carson Kressley a celebrity, For the majority of that show's network TV run, there was no queer Black guy in the group. On the hit sitcom, WILL & GRACE, there was no regular or semi-regular gay Black character even though the show was set in an area of New York City below 23rd Street that had gay Black folks galore. I know because I lived a few blocks away from where Will and Grace did. When both shows were rebooted, you just knew we'd be seeing Black representation to make up for the lack of it in the shows' original runs. And we did. There is a Black member of the QUEER EYE group in the Netflix reboot. (Wait till the SEX AND THE CITY reboot airs. I bet columnist Carrie Bradshaw will have discovered that there are lots of upscale Black people in Manhattan. She didn't seem to know any 20 years ago.)

QUEER EYE, the original and the reboot, are driven by marketing. Essentially, the shows sell top-notch product -- hair care, clothing, home accessories, cookware and such. Some of the products can be pricey. WE'RE HERE goes to towns and visits people -- straight, gay, bi, etc. -- who are working class and would go to a barbershop or neighbor beauty parlor instead of a ritzy salon. The WE'RE HERE trio goes to towns and, at the end of each episode, put on a drag show that includes some of the local folks they've met. They talk to people about the personal emotional and/or public social barriers they've had to break through to establish a true sense of themselves. The three drag queens are extremely funny. They also draw people out with their down-home, real people charm and compassion. They really give their attention to people with broken hearts. They listen, They help where they can. That quality hooked me into the first season. I did wonder if the COVID crisis would cancel a second season.

I was happy to see that it did not. The WE'RE HERE trio visits cities that may not be on the list of fabulous vacation travel sites, but that adds to the gravity of the show. They reach out to and find a common bond with strangers. They meet and talk to folks who prove that some of the most extraordinary poets in the world are the ordinary people around us. The second season shows that. The queens travelled to a Texas border down and introduced us to the queer Mexican son of a very macho, very loving father. Their story put tears in my eyes. The episode took place in Del Rio, Texas.

I really cried watching the trio's visit to Selma, Alabama. We're reminded that the Black Civil Rights Movement and the LGBTQ fight for acceptance have a definite kinship. The trio met Black women who were foot soldier in the famous "Bloody Sunday" Selma to Montgomery marches of 1965. From that episode came the opening quote of this blog post. It is a moving, memorable episode.

There's fun and frivolity in the last act of each episode. There's surprise and substance before the fabulous last. WE'RE HERE is a show worth watching. Visit the show's website. You can meet the queens and find a clip from the Selma, Alabama episode. Click onto this link:    www.hbo.com/were-here.

On COLIN IN BLACK & WHITE

 Last month on October 30th, I blogged a post about the first two episodes of the Colin Kaepernick biopic, a limited series, on Netflix. Last night, I finished watching the entire series. Wow. Kaepernick's "Trust your power...Love your Blackness" letter at the end of the final episode had me in tears. It was that moving and motivational. Not in a chronological order but imaginatively presented, we get the story of the NFL athlete's life from being a baby adopted by a White couple in Wisconsin through his high school years as a good student and stand-out athlete in Northern California. In addition to his young life story, which he introduces and narrates, the athlete/activist gives us history, serious history about race in America. Race and racial images. 

Those factors play heavily in his young life. Actors Mary-Louise Parker and Nick Offerman are excellent as his parents who love him but don't really help him connect to his Black identity. Notice the inside of his home. There's evidence of Black culture upstairs in Colin's room but not in the living room -- and definitely not in the kitchen. The parents gently try to sway him to invite a White girl to the homecoming dance. Dad points out the cute girl in the crowd that Bruce Springsteen brings onstage to join him in the "Dancing in the Dark" music video of 1984. That girl, we'd all learn later, was Courteney Cox who became a member of the FRIENDS cast. Colin is not interested in her. I used to present that music video during my on-air shift when I was a VH1 veejay in the late 80s. What I always noticed was there were no Black kids in Springsteen's crowd of fans. I think young Colin noticed the same thing. He invites a lovely Black girl to the dance. The scene where he goes to her house to pick her up and meets her sweet family is classic. When he sees the down-home food they have on a dining room table, Colin looks at it as if he just discovered a pot of gold. And when he's asked "Can I make you a plate?," he's in heaven. And he gets his first taste of sweet potato pie. Colin's Caucasian mom, bless her heart, cannot and does not cook like that.

Young Colin has his own dreams for his athletic future and his social life. However, there's a constant tug-of-war in those areas with his White parents and White coaches, They want him to follow their dreams.

COLIN IN BLACK & WHITE struck a nerve in me and touched my heart. Although I have never been an athlete, I did get that "Lord, I have been there" feeling especially in the episodes that touched on "White Privilege" and the "Acceptable Negro." Colin Kaepernick co-created this achingly relevant limited series with director Ava DuVernay. Newcomer Jaden Michael is amazing as teen Kaepernick. Simply amazing,

COLIN IN BLACK & WHITE is one of the finest, most stirring features I've seen this year.

On BURT LANCASTER

 Mom and Dad were Burt Lancaster fans. I picked up the Lancaster appreciation from them. I have great memories of going to The Compton Drive-in movie theater in Compton or The Vermont Drive-in to see a new Burt Lancaster film. With my parents in the front seat while my little sister and I were in the back seat -- wearing our pajamas underneath our street clothes because we'd be sleepyheads when we got home a little after midnight -- we saw ELMER GANTRY and SEVEN DAYS IN MAY. I was a Black Catholic kid in Los Angeles who'd done some time in parochial elementary school when we saw ELMER GANTRY. First of all, Burt Lancaster's head in close-up on a drive-in movie screen looked so enormous that it should've been annexed as a state.

I was too young then to understand everything that was going on in ELMER GANTRY but the visual, the energy of the performances and the religious imagery held my attention. It held my attention with such strength that when ELMER GANTRY aired on CBS years later, its network premiere, I felt that a couple or more minutes were missing from the opening. I was right. TCM host, Robert Osborne, confirmed that decades later in one of his host segments.

Burt Lancaster won the Best Actor Oscar for 1960's ELMER GANTRY. To this day, I feel that his leading lady, Jean Simmons, should have been a Best Actress Oscar nominee for her riveting performance as the traveling evangelist who falls for con man's Gantry's religious hypocrisy yet holds on her to spiritual beliefs with a Joan of Arc-like fierceness.

 My parents urged me to watch JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG with them when it aired on local TV. They saw it as an important history lesson I needed to learn at a young age, a lesson of "Never again" should that bigotry and atrocity on trial happen, Lancaster has a major role in the film. As a teen, during summer vacations, I stayed up several times to see Burt Lancaster kiss Deborah Kerr in FROM HERE TO ETERNITY on Channel 2's The Late Show. I used to imitate the way he bellowed "Rain!" in the final scene of THE RAINMAKER. Mom coaxed to watch Burt Lancaster in BIRDMAN OF ALCATRAZ when it aired on network TV. She used that film to teach me a lesson for when times got tough. She told me that, if ever I was in an environment in which I was made to feel unwanted and unimportant, to go to that place of freedom and expression in my soul and take comfort there -- like the prisoner Lancaster played in BIRDMAN OF ALCATRAZ did.

When I see a movie, I like to give it my full attention. If seeing a movie for work purposes, I will sit through the closing credits. I sat through 1985's KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN multiple times. I have a deep love for that movie. I always noticed that Burt Lancaster received a special thank you in the end credits. He was not in the film. Was he a producer? I interviewed William Hurt, who'd won the Best Actor Oscar for his performance as the drag queen in the prison drama, why Lancaster received a special credit. Lancaster was more than supportive of the film project that earned Hurt his Oscar.

The rest of the Lancaster involvement comes up in the clip of Raúl Julia when he was a guest on my 1988 VH1 talk show. The clip is in this demo reel of mine:

Here's a great New York City movie memory. A friend and I saw 1989's FIELD OF DREAMS with a preview audience at the Ziegfeld Theater. The place was packed. When Burt Lancaster appeared onscreen, the whole audience instantly burst into enthusiastic applause. Burt Lancaster. He was one of Hollywood's best. I'm so glad my parents introduced me to his films when I was growing up in South Central L.A.

A Mankiewicz on Hitchcock

 If you're a frequent viewer of cable's TCM (Turner Classic Movies), you know that prime time host Ben Mankiewicz and actor/comedian Mario Cantone were partners every Sunday night in October. Together they discussed and presented scary movies. They were fabulous together, For Halloween night, they presented the 1960 Alfred Hitchcock masterpiece, PSYCHO. 

 Ben mentioned that PSYCHO, although old, feels modern because Hitchcock opens the film with graphics that slide into view to tell us where we are, when and at what time: "Phoenix, Arizona," "Friday, December the Eleventh" and "Two Forty-Three P.M/" Then the camera pans over to a hotel room window. We peer in on two lovers who just enjoyed some afternoon delight. Secretary Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) is lying on a bed. She's wearing a brassiere and a half-slip. Her boyfriend, who wants a divorce from his money-hungry wife, is shirtless. Ben mentioned that seeing two characters like that in 1960 was pretty bold. And it was.

Ben should take a look at Hitchcock's 1946 classic, NOTORIOUS. It stars Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman and Claude Rains. This film opens with a graphic telling us we're in "Miami, Florida," "Three-Twenty P.M." on "April the Twenty-Fourth, Nineteen Hundred and Forty-Six."

Then we're introduced to the patriotic Alicia Huberman whose German father has just been convicted of treason against the United States. Alicia (Ingrid Bergman in one of her best Hollywood roles) is very independent, She likes cocktails and she likes older men. She definitely is not a virgin. She is, however, open to true love and she's deserving of true love. She's approached by a handsome but occasionally caustic government agent (Cary Grant). With her knowledge, beauty, sophistication, connections and her past, she's of interest to Uncle Sam. Devlin, the handsome federal agent, becomes her main contact for what U.S. federal officials will ask to do for her country.

The government office, dominated by older men in charge, recruits her to do spy work in Rio. The government wants her to infiltrate a nest of Nazis in the home of one of her late father's Nazi friends. The Nazi friend (Claude Rains) lives with his Nazi mother. He's an unmarried man who once had deep romantic interest in Alicia. The interest was not at all mutual. Alicia did not testify on her father's behalf. She loves America and hated his political views. Patriotic Alicia accepts the espionage assignment, an assignment that puts her life in danger.

 The U.S. government officials essentially ask Alicia Huberman to go to bed with a Nazi to uncover secret new plots against America. She does all the dangerous hard work -- vertical and horizontal -- while those male officials back in the safe, comfortable office make snide remarks about her not being a virgin. This angers the handsome agent who's her contact.  THAT sexual aspect was pretty bold for 1946 -- and it would've been bold for 1960 too.

Tell Ben.

Hitchcock's NOTORIOUS was not-so-loosely remade by director John Woo as the Tom Cruise thriller, MISSION: IMPOSSIBL 2 released in 2000. Key scenes from the original were recreated. Thandie Newton starred as the woman with a "notorious" past who's approached to help the Mission Impossible team root out a villain with a deadly German item. She learns that the handsome guy she's initially attracted to (Tom Cruise) is a secret agent. She discovers this like Alicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman) does during a high-speed vehicle chase in the first 20 minutes of NOTORIOUS. Newton's character accepts the dangerous mission to re-establish contact with the villain, a man once romantically interested in her. In another key scene, a famous one in the 1946 original with Hitchcock's three stars, she attempts to pass information to her contact (Cruise) at a racetrack while the villain is present. Anthony Hopkins makes a cameo appearance playing the role Louis Calhern had in NOTORIOUS opposite Cary Grant. Thandie Newton's character, like Ingrid Bergman's, will get a poison in her system. In both versions, the "notorious" woman/spy will be saved by the handsome contact agent.

The NOTORIOUS screenplay by Ben Hecht was not noted in the opening credits of MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE 2. It should have been, in my opinion.