In article <tr2a9f$238kv$1@dont-email.me>,
Arthur Lipscomb <arthur@alum.calberkeley.org> wrote:

> On 1/27/2023 5:12 PM, Adam H. Kerman wrote:
> > super70s <super70s@super70s.invalid> wrote:
> >
> >> I caught Portnoy's Complaint on TCM late in the evening. I thought I
> >> might have seen it at least once but it must have been Goodbye, Columbus
> >> (which also starred Richard Benjamin).
> >
> > I was going to say something. When Ben Mankiewicz said "Richard Benjamin
> > starring in a movie adaptation of a groundbreaking Philip Roth novel!" I
> > was looking forward to watching Goodbye, Columbus. I like that movie and
> > haven't seen it in any number of years.
> >
> > Portnoy's Complaint is one of the worst movies every made and should be
> > transferred to nitrate film stock.
> >
>
> I've never heard of this movie before. What caught my attention is
> Richard Benjamin's name being mentioned in reference to starring in
> movies. Honestly it never crossed my mind he starred in anything other
> than the handful of movies I know him from. Off the top of my head I
> know him from Love at First Bite, Westworld, and Saturday the 14th. I
> also know him from "Quark" a short lived space comedy on TV series. I
> know the name, and his face, but outside of those few roles I never saw
> him in anything else.

The Sunshine Boys is memorable for its (Oscar winning) George Burns and
Walter Matthau collaboration (Benjamin plays the eccentric Burns's
nephew) and was directed by the great Herbert Ross, story by Neil Simon.

>
>
> >> Philip Roth wrote some great literature -- I remember my college
> >> freshman English teacher was a huge fan, made him required reading --
> >> but his stuff didn't translate so well onto the big screen.
> >
> >> Ben Mankiewicz in his outro remarked that many at the time thought
> >> Portnoy's Complaint would be particularly difficult book to make a movie
> >> from, indeed it was generally panned upon release and even though
> >> director/screenwriter Ernest Lehman scripted some awesome movies (a
> >> 6-time Oscar nominee for the likes of Sabrina, Somebody Up There Likes
> >> Me, The King and I, North By Northwest, West Side Story, The Sound of
> >> Music and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?), this was his only directoral
> >> effort.
> >
> > I had not remembered he directed this attrocious movie.
> >
> >> I can see why, if you ever see this movie once it's enough.
> >
> > Once is too many times.
>
> I scroll through the upcoming programs looking for shows to record. I
> pay particular attention to TCM. I must have scrolled past this without
> giving it a second thought. Had I checked the description and saw it
> starred Richard Benjamin I might have recorded it out of curiosity. I
> guess now I know to skip it.

super70s <super70s@super70s.invalid> wrote:

>>. . .

>The Sunshine Boys is memorable for its (Oscar winning) George Burns and
>Walter Matthau collaboration (Benjamin plays the eccentric Burns's
>nephew) and was directed by the great Herbert Ross, story by Neil Simon.

George Burns replaced Jack Benny as Lewis, who had been contracted for
but was too ill. He wasn't told he was dying of pancreatic cancer and he
was in significant pain for the last two months of his life. I've never
read about the literal timing about when he was cast versus when the
diagnosis was made.

Burns came out of his (involuntary) retirement. Unsourced IMDb trivia sez
he'd memorized the entire script before showing up at rehearsals to make
it more difficult for them to fire him.

But other unsourced IMDb trivia is crap, like the claim that Walter
Matthau, who played Clark, had replaced Red Skelton. Of course Skelton
was considered, given that he was the right age and had literally
performed in Vaudeville, but he was never actually cast as Jack Benny
had been.

In the 1972 play, Clark was Jack Albertson and Same Levene as Lewis.
Lewis J. Stadlen was the nephew.

In article <tr3sak$2bcu3$2@dont-email.me>, Adam H. Kerman
<ahk@chinet.com> wrote:

> super70s <super70s@super70s.invalid> wrote:
>
> >>. . .
>
> >The Sunshine Boys is memorable for its (Oscar winning) George Burns and
> >Walter Matthau collaboration (Benjamin plays the eccentric Burns's
> >nephew) and was directed by the great Herbert Ross, story by Neil Simon.
>
> George Burns replaced Jack Benny as Lewis, who had been contracted for
> but was too ill. He wasn't told he was dying of pancreatic cancer and he
> was in significant pain for the last two months of his life. I've never
> read about the literal timing about when he was cast versus when the
> diagnosis was made.
>
> Burns came out of his (involuntary) retirement. Unsourced IMDb trivia sez
> he'd memorized the entire script before showing up at rehearsals to make
> it more difficult for them to fire him.
>
> But other unsourced IMDb trivia is crap, like the claim that Walter
> Matthau, who played Clark, had replaced Red Skelton. Of course Skelton
> was considered, given that he was the right age and had literally
> performed in Vaudeville, but he was never actually cast as Jack Benny
> had been.
>
> In the 1972 play, Clark was Jack Albertson and Same Levene as Lewis.
> Lewis J. Stadlen was the nephew.

It was reported at the time the movie came out (I'm old, all right)
that it was supposed to have been Burns and Benny as Lewis & Clark.
They were great friends and had really wanted to do this film together.
I wish they'd been able to.

A Friend wrote:
>Adam H. Kerman <ahk@chinet.com> wrote:
>>super70s <super70s@super70s.invalid> wrote:

>>>>. . .

>>>The Sunshine Boys is memorable for its (Oscar winning) George Burns and
>>>Walter Matthau collaboration (Benjamin plays the eccentric Burns's
>>>nephew) and was directed by the great Herbert Ross, story by Neil Simon.

>>George Burns replaced Jack Benny as Lewis, who had been contracted for
>>but was too ill. He wasn't told he was dying of pancreatic cancer and he
>>was in significant pain for the last two months of his life. I've never
>>read about the literal timing about when he was cast versus when the
>>diagnosis was made.

>>Burns came out of his (involuntary) retirement. Unsourced IMDb trivia sez
>>he'd memorized the entire script before showing up at rehearsals to make
>>it more difficult for them to fire him.

>>But other unsourced IMDb trivia is crap, like the claim that Walter
>>Matthau, who played Clark, had replaced Red Skelton. Of course Skelton
>>was considered, given that he was the right age and had literally
>>performed in Vaudeville, but he was never actually cast as Jack Benny
>>had been.

>>In the 1972 play, Clark was Jack Albertson and Same Levene as Lewis.
>>Lewis J. Stadlen was the nephew.

>It was reported at the time the movie came out (I'm old, all right)
>that it was supposed to have been Burns and Benny as Lewis & Clark.
>They were great friends and had really wanted to do this film together.
>I wish they'd been able to.

That's different from what I've read that Benny had been cast as
Lewis and then recommended that Burns replace him. Matthau was cast
early on as Clark. I actually saw this in theater as a child.

In article <tr43u5$2ctq8$1@dont-email.me>, Adam H. Kerman
<ahk@chinet.com> wrote:

> A Friend wrote:
> >Adam H. Kerman <ahk@chinet.com> wrote:
> >>super70s <super70s@super70s.invalid> wrote:
>
> >>>>. . .
>
> >>>The Sunshine Boys is memorable for its (Oscar winning) George Burns and
> >>>Walter Matthau collaboration (Benjamin plays the eccentric Burns's
> >>>nephew) and was directed by the great Herbert Ross, story by Neil Simon.
>
> >>George Burns replaced Jack Benny as Lewis, who had been contracted for
> >>but was too ill. He wasn't told he was dying of pancreatic cancer and he
> >>was in significant pain for the last two months of his life. I've never
> >>read about the literal timing about when he was cast versus when the
> >>diagnosis was made.
>
> >>Burns came out of his (involuntary) retirement. Unsourced IMDb trivia sez
> >>he'd memorized the entire script before showing up at rehearsals to make
> >>it more difficult for them to fire him.
>
> >>But other unsourced IMDb trivia is crap, like the claim that Walter
> >>Matthau, who played Clark, had replaced Red Skelton. Of course Skelton
> >>was considered, given that he was the right age and had literally
> >>performed in Vaudeville, but he was never actually cast as Jack Benny
> >>had been.
>
> >>In the 1972 play, Clark was Jack Albertson and Same Levene as Lewis.
> >>Lewis J. Stadlen was the nephew.
>
> >It was reported at the time the movie came out (I'm old, all right)
> >that it was supposed to have been Burns and Benny as Lewis & Clark.
> >They were great friends and had really wanted to do this film together.
> >I wish they'd been able to.
>
> That's different from what I've read that Benny had been cast as
> Lewis and then recommended that Burns replace him. Matthau was cast
> early on as Clark. I actually saw this in theater as a child.

Damn. I saw it in a theater, too; I think I was stuck in New Jersey
for a weekend. I'd graduated from high school not long before.

In article <280120231701014945%nope@noway.com>,
A Friend <nope@noway.com> wrote:

> In article <tr43u5$2ctq8$1@dont-email.me>, Adam H. Kerman
> <ahk@chinet.com> wrote:
>
> > A Friend wrote:
> > >It was reported at the time the movie came out (I'm old, all right)
> > >that it was supposed to have been Burns and Benny as Lewis & Clark.
> > >They were great friends and had really wanted to do this film together.
> > >I wish they'd been able to.
> >
> > That's different from what I've read that Benny had been cast as
> > Lewis and then recommended that Burns replace him. Matthau was cast
> > early on as Clark. I actually saw this in theater as a child.
>
>
> Damn. I saw it in a theater, too; I think I was stuck in New Jersey
> for a weekend. I'd graduated from high school not long before.

Yeah it was one of my '75 movies too, along with Cuckoo's Nest, Dog Day
Afternoon, The Hindenburg, Aloha, Bobby and Rose, The Eiger Sanction,
The Great Waldo Pepper, The Prisoner of Second Avenue and Three Days of
the Condor (my roommate at the time saw Jaws and had such a visceral
reaction I couldn't summon up the courage, lol).

On 1/28/2023 5:14 AM, A Friend wrote:
> In article <tr2a9f$238kv$1@dont-email.me>, Arthur Lipscomb
> <arthur@alum.calberkeley.org> wrote:
>
>> On 1/27/2023 5:12 PM, Adam H. Kerman wrote:
>>> super70s <super70s@super70s.invalid> wrote:
>
>
>>> Portnoy's Complaint is one of the worst movies every made and should be
>>> transferred to nitrate film stock.
>>>
>>
>> I've never heard of this movie before. What caught my attention is
>> Richard Benjamin's name being mentioned in reference to starring in
>> movies. Honestly it never crossed my mind he starred in anything other
>> than the handful of movies I know him from. Off the top of my head I
>> know him from Love at First Bite, Westworld, and Saturday the 14th. I
>> also know him from "Quark" a short lived space comedy on TV series. I
>> know the name, and his face, but outside of those few roles I never saw
>> him in anything else.
>
>
> Richard Benjamin and his wife, Paula Prentiss, starred in a 1967-68
> sitcom called He & She. They lived in an apartment that was next door
> to a firehouse, and fireman Kenneth Mars would walk across a board
> every so often and enter the apartment through a window to visit. He &
> She might be best remembered for having introduced Jack Cassidy to a
> national audience.
>
> He & She was unusual for the time because the couple had a sex life and
> slept in the same bed. They shared a pair of pajamas, too. The series
> was well thought of but didn't find a big enough audience. CBS tried
> rerunning it a few summers later, with the same disappointing result.

Never heard of this show before. But it was well before my time so not
surprising. I was able to catch "Quark" and other short lived comedies
on Comedy Central, back when it was called "Ha" (at least I think that's
what it was called) they would rerun short lived comedies that only ran
a handful of episodes. There really needs to be a network that runs
long cancelled short lived forgotten shows and unaired pilots. Then
again between streaming and youtube people can probably track a lot of
that stuff down on their own. The thing is, if you don't know the show
exists, how can you know to look for it?

On Sat, 28 Jan 2023 07:29:53 -0800, BTR1701 <atropos@mac.com> wrote:

>In article <tr2bj3$23etq$1@dont-email.me>,
> "Adam H. Kerman" <ahk@chinet.com> wrote:
>
>> Arthur Lipscomb <arthur@alum.calberkeley.org> wrote:
>>
>> >Law & Order - "Almost Famous" - The team goes after YouTube more or less.
>
>> There's another teenage boy, a social influencer, who had talked him
>> into taking the "kick in someone's front door for laughs" challenge
>> because he wanted to help make him famous on social media.
>>
>> They then find their way to this "influencer house", where an adult is
>> some sort of Fagin of teenagers who are estranged from their parents and
>> want to be famous on social media. He takes a huge chunk of their ad
>> revenue and somehow the kids' portion is "held in trust" 'cuz their
>> underage.
>>
>> Turns out the teenage social influencer who talked the dead boy into the
>> stunt worked for Fagin on some sort of contract. His mother and
>> stepfather left him there while they moved to Florida because that's
>> what you do with your underage son.
>
>Did anyone notice that the kid was Asian and parents weren't? Was that
>just Hollywood casting people for 'diversity' which had nothing to do
>with the story or was that supposed to indicate that the kid was adopted
>and kind of explain why the parents were so willing to throw him under
>the bus for money?
>
>> Cosgrove and Shaw know the teenage boy has video of the stunt that went
>> wrong, so they go to Fagin's place to serve it. They have a search
>> warrant to obtain the video. They make all sorts of threats (We have
>> lots of cops downstairs ready to carry out all the electronics), but then
>> don't actually execute the search. Fagin arranges for the teenage boy's
>> arrest and tells him to ask for a lawyer so Cosgrove and Shaw stop
>> questioning him.
>>
>> Somehow this means the search doesn't get carried out. It makes
>> absolutely no sense.
>
>Not only doesn't it make sense, it also muddles up the subsequent scene
>where the video gets suppressed (mid-trial!) because the defense argues
>it wasn't the defendant's phone so he had no right to turn it over.
>
>But that shouldn't matter because the cops had a warrant for the phone
>so they legally had the right to seize it regardless of who owned it.
>
>And who the hell has suppression hearings mid-trial, FFS?!?! You don't
>wait until the prosecution attempts to introduce a video of the crime in
>front of the jury to suddenly object to its validity as evidence. All of
>that is done in open court before a jury is even called and seated. For
>the defense, it's a particularly bad move because even though the jury
>didn't get to see the video, now they know there *is* a video which the
>defense is trying to keep them from seeing, which will factor into their
>deliberations.
>
>> Turns out the teenage boy had the video he shot. Price tells him to turn
>> it over to police, not directly to him. I'm not sure why.
>
>Has to be booked into evidence. That's a cop thing. The police are the
>custodians of all evidence.
>
>> The case goes particularly poorly as the superintendent gets portrayed
>> as a sexual predator in love with the dead boy (who was kicking down his
>> door to confront him about being a victim or something) because she
>> found a photograph of him with the boy at the boy's father's funeral
>> with his arm around the boy.
>>
>> Price keeps making objections that the judge overruled. It made no sense
>> at all.
>
>Yes, there was no foundation for any of that. The judge was making one
>bad and baseless ruling after another for no reason except plot.

I think that's been as feature of L&O from the beginning.
>
>

Arthur Lipscomb <arthur@alum.calberkeley.org> writes:

> On 1/28/2023 5:14 AM, A Friend wrote:

>> He & She was unusual for the time because the couple had a sex life
>> and slept in the same bed. They shared a pair of pajamas, too. The
>> series was well thought of but didn't find a big enough audience.
>> CBS tried rerunning it a few summers later, with the same
>> disappointing result.
>
> Never heard of this show before. But it was well before my time so
> not surprising. I was able to catch "Quark" and other short lived
> comedies on Comedy Central, back when it was called "Ha" (at least I
> think that's what it was called) they would rerun short lived comedies
> that only ran a handful of episodes. There really needs to be a
> network that runs long cancelled short lived forgotten shows and
> unaired pilots.

I've said for years that one or more channels should run a _DVR Theater_
in the wee hours of the morning to go through the back catalog of old
English-language series that don't get any play on the retro channels.
Those neglected series aren't doing their owners any good just gathering
dust and fading from living memory.

> Then again between streaming and youtube people can probably track a
> lot of that stuff down on their own.

I decided to test that theory, and sure enough, there are a number of
episodes of _He & She_ on YouTube, at least one of them with original
commercials (although that one's lost its color). Standard definition
at best, though, and I know that's a deal breaker for some people.

> The thing is, if you don't know the show exists, how can you know to
> look for it?

There's the rub. If all you had to go on were the retro channels, you'd
think that the same 30 shows were all there were before cable came
along.

I binge-watched some of the _He & She_ eps. on YouTube. I found it to
be an agreeable time capsule from a year in my childhood. I'm not sure
if younger people who don't remember that time would like it as much,
but it's at least better than the more well-known _That Girl_, which
seems to have been the inspirational stepping-off point for _He & She_
(as in, "What if 'She' were more grown up and had already tied the knot
with a more grown-up 'He'"). The season 1 opening titles of _He & She_
have familiar notes from the season 2 opening titles of _That Girl_
(with 'He' inserted, of course), e.g., 'She' cavorting in Central Park
and sporting that big dark hairpiece in the back, but they aired only a
day apart, so I guess it's unlikely either stole from the other.

-Micky