The Movie (and TV show) Watching Thread

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Saw Avalon (the 1990 film by Barry Levinson). Connected deeply with it but it did hit a bit too close to home for me to laugh too much at it. Very engrossing. 10/10.

[Pouring Rain and Blairing Music]

Rewatched Down Periscope. Can’t believe the schmucks on Letterboxd only give it 2.7 stars. They wouldn’t know good comedy if it bit them on their tattooed dicks.

[Benjamin Frank 2.0]

A couple historical programs are now available on Youtube.

1.Turn-On was a program that aired briefly in 1969 (one episode.) It is arguably the first television show cancelled after just one episode. There are people who sensationalize even that to claim that it was cancelled before the first episode had even finished airing, because supposedly most west coast stations refused to broadcast it, but as far as I can tell, it was actually just two or three.

The program was a knock off of the very popular Laugh In and had a number of people involved with Laugh In, however Turn-On was more high tech involving a great deal of taped segments. I haven't yet watched it but many of these taped segments were experimental generally being sped up or with other technical effects. In this way, the show presaged MTV and other programs.

Apparently the show was cancelled due to complaints mostly from older and conservative television viewers who either found the taped segments physically off putting (hard on the eyes) or they didn't like the humor. If accurate, that's probably the most interesting party from a political perspective because apparently much of the show's humor was meant to appeal to 'alpha males' (or maybe the 'tech bros' of the late 1960s) so, it's likely many younger males now would likely have embraced the show and would have called any attempts to take it off the air 'cancel culture.'

Although only episode aired, because it was mostly taped segments, three episodes were mostly filmed although only two are on Youtube. However, each episode was to have a live guest host, so the second episode is a couple minutes shorter. The first host was comedian Tim Conway who was apparently both right wing and a big backer of the Vietnam War, which also would fit with the idea that these days right wingers would have embraced the show.

Episode One:

Episode Two:

2.Columbo: Enough Rope
No politics here. The Columbo character was first introduced in an anthology television series called The Chevy Mystery Show in 1960. It was one hour and aired live. This is a remaster. Bert Freed played Columbo. The script for this was turned into the first pilot Columbo movie and renamed 'Prescription Murder.'

For some reason, this doesn't start at the beginning here.

[Benjamin Frank 2.0]

Having now seen the first episode of Turn-On, I thought it was actually at least partly feminist, however I can see where 'Tech Bros' would like the show as well. The biggest criticism most people would have these days, which was apparently in a lot of the the reviews at the time, is that the verbal part of the show was not of the same interesting/experimental quality of the visual, that is to say it was mostly bad pun. So, of course, I liked it.

One line went something like 'the body politic says we need to address the cleavages in society.'

There is an S.I. Hayakawa reference early in the the episode.