When I was in Las Vegas in November for live broadcasts of Whoopi Goldberg’s radio show, I shared an elevator ride with comedian/actor Jay Mohr one night when we were returning to our respective rooms. He stars in one of my favorite unsentimental holiday films, Go. That movie could be called It’s a Blunder-ful Life — a group of young adults get involved with a drug buy for a Christmas rave in L.A. He plays a closeted and confused actor doing community service by helping cops on an ecstasy bust. He plays a undercover cop on a TV series and the actor who plays his partner is really his partner off-screen and they’re trying to keep it on the down-low. He’s hysterically funny in it. Jay Mohr reportedly married Nikki Cox, an actress from the NBC series Las Vegas. The wedding took place in the Hollywood area. At some point, at least one couple must have approached a doorman and said, “We’re here for the Mohr-Cox reception.” I love Hollywood.
Archive for December, 2006
Hollywood Marriage
Sunday, December 31st, 2006Keep In Touch
Sunday, December 31st, 2006I know it’s stale to hear “time just flew by” but it does seem like only yesterday I was on VH1 and introducing music videos by Tina Turner, Fine Young Cannibals, Swing Out Sister and Rick Astley (what ever happened to him?). It’s already New Year’s Eve and, again, I want to thank and send big blog hugs to you regular readers and to you new ones — especially the hipsters in Sacramento. Groovy! Thanks to global warming, we haven’t had one flake of snow in New York City this December. We’re going for a sunny high of nearly 50 today and there may be some light rain tonight. That means Times Square will be packed tonight. (Polar bears in the Arctic have been losing weight to such an extent that they’ve started looking like Kate Moss in a winter coat but our president still didn’t think we had an enviromental problem for most of this year. Don’t get me started.) Yesterday, a longtime friend and I got together and had brunch. We hadn’t seen each other in months. She brought up the big brouhaha beween Rosie O’Donnell and Donald Trump. “I can’t believe she made fun his comb-over on live TV,” she said. I said, “Look…I love her work but she shouldn’t do that. I shared a small office with her at VH1 back in the day. Rosie has a comb-over too.” It was fun to catch up and to let her know how special she is to me. That’s my New Year’s Resolution — to let those who’ve been good to me know I appreciate their friendship, support and kindness. Like I wrote in my blogs about the late President Ford, we should’nt save all the words of deep affection and regard for when the person is gone. So that and kicking up the amount of employment I have are my resolutions.
Oh…and I’d like to date again before the end of this decade. It’s been awhile. (The last time I had pillow talk, we discussed what a good job Clinton was doing in office.) Whether you’re at a big blow-out or a small celebration tonight, have a ball y’all. Play safe and the best of luck in the New Year. Keep in touch.
So Long, 2006
Saturday, December 30th, 2006Is it just me or did this year go by faster than Mel Gibson driving while intoxicated? What a year. After months and months of unemployment, I landed ten groovy days of work at the Windy City’s Taste of Chicago festival. I hosted a booth for FiberSure®, a food product represented by the Momentum agency. The agency has offices here in Manhattan, in Chicago and in Milwaukee. By hiring me, that agency helped me pay the rent. Those ten days in Chicago were more like a summer vacation than a job. I fell in love with that town. Back here in Gotham, I booked a role in one episode of CBS’ Guiding Light. I played a high school principal, trying to keep sex out of the prom night. When the prom was over, I got a job working with Whoopi Goldberg as the Friday film reviewer on her new syndicated radio show. Like minimum wage manna from heaven! For 2007, I need to book work for the other four weekdays.
2006 ended with a busy news week. Saddam Hussein has just been executed. Funeral services are being held here in the States for singer James Brown and former President Gerald Ford. The network remembrances of the former president have been warm and touching. Politicians, reporters and Washington insiders across the board talked about how decent, kind, gracious and accessible Gerald Ford was. They talked about the challenges he faced when he assumed the presidency and how he tried to take on those challenges with fairness. Why didn’t they talk like that while the man still had a pulse? He’d been out of office for two decades and didn’t get nearly as much press attention as Paris Hilton, Star Jones getting fired by ABC or American Idol. In fact, I bet there are some contestants on that show who didn’t even know we had a President Ford and that he was still alive when they sang for Randy, Paula and Simon. It just irks me that now all those network anchors have such high regard for him and his work. When people matter to you, let them know it while they’re still here.
In other world matters, who would’ve thought that Osama bin Laden would become Terrorist Threat #3 — following Spinach and Taco Bell? While we’re on the subject, why can’t we find him? Why can’t we find a man who’s well over six feet tall, has a long beard, needs kidney dialysis and dresses like a giant Q-Tip? The fact that he hasn’t been captured is a big disappointment.
Personally, I had a couple of career disappointments. My screenplay about the first Pakistani big band in the New York City of the late 1930s didn’t sell. Producers felt that “Singh! Singh! Singh!” had some great elements, but today’s audiences wouldn’t be interested in music from the Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington era. Publishers rejected my guidebook for modern relationships called “Straight Men Are From Mars, Gay Men Circle Uranus.” Too many advice books are already on the market, they told me. I took some of my own advice and gave one more attempt to take my years of friendship and warm feelings for one special guy one giant step further. We had dinner this holiday season and I told him how I felt. He was flattered but, basically, our friendship is just like Heather Mills McCartney with restless leg syndrome. It’s not taking one giant step anywhere. Oh, well. At least I was brave enough to express my affection. Like I wrote before — from Thanksgiving to the last minute of New Year’s Eve, for us single people, getting through the holidays is like walking an emotional tightrope made of tinsel.
I have no plans for New Year’s Eve. But I did get a bottle of something festive as a Christmas present. So I think I’m going to roll up my sleeves like Hortense Daigle in The Bad Seed and make myself a cocktail while I watch the Times Square revelers on TV. I’m going to toast myself on having made it through a rough and tough with the help of heaven, good friends and dear relatives who kept in touch to give me confidence. And thanks for your attention. Happy New Year. Cheers!
Gay Man Saves Ford
Thursday, December 28th, 2006If you watched some of the respectful network news coverage yesterday on the passing of former President Gerald Ford, you learned or were reminded that there were two blessedly unsuccessful assassination attempts on his life in September 1975. The second one happened outside the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco and the person who pulled out a .38 was a middle-aged woman named Sara Jane Moore. There was another person in the crowd who decided to blend in when he was walking to Fishermen’s Wharf, saw all the people and discovered that the President Ford would be making a live appearance. He was a shy, stocky, 33-year old former high school football star and ex-Marine named Oliver “Bill” Sipple. He was also gay and kept quiet about his personal life — like Jack and Ennis in Brokeback Mountain. As soon as he saw the gun in Moore’s hand, his military training kicked in and he was credited with saving the life of our Commander-in-Chief. Sipple knew Harvey Milk, San Francisco’s openly gay politician who himself would become a casualty of America’s gun culture and homophobia. Milk leaked to a local newspaper reporter that Sipple was gay. What that news hit, Bill Sipple’s strict Baptist mother in Detroit refused to speak to him. Reportedly, other relatives shunned him too. He served his country and saved Gerald Ford’s life, but the news of his being gay made him an outcast. Should Milk have “outed” him? Probably not. Sipple wasn’t the type to seek a spotlight and he spent years dodging reporters. In those later years, he turned to drink and drugs and sadly took his own life.
When some of today’s ultra-conservative Republicans have voiced their anti-gay rights stands, I’d often wished some sharp reporter would bring up the fact that a gay man saved a Republican president’s life — and an openly-gay man fought the terrorists on that doomed Sept 11th flight that may have been headed for the White House or the Capitol Building. Gay people are good enough to do that but not good enough to get financial benefits with a loved one? I don’t mean to get preachy and political, but you know what I mean.
I’ve often felt that Bill Sipple’s heroism and subsequently tragic life would make the basis for a good TV or feature film script.
Season’s Greetings
Sunday, December 24th, 2006Jake Gyllenhaal as a Marine dancing in just a Santa hat, boots and a thong during a Desert Storm holiday party in the JARHEAD — does that qualify it as a Christmas movie? Oh, well. Just in case, I also rented IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE and WHITE CHRISTMAS.
If you celebrate it, have a sensational Christmas. May Santa bring his big, swingin’ sack into your living room loaded with something special and may you get a warm embrace from someone who makes you feel safe, secure and significant. Now get off the computer and go play.
Love/Hugs/Peace
“Elf”
Saturday, December 23rd, 2006I’ve got a new holiday favorite. Elf would not have worked with any actor in the lead other than Will Ferrell. As some of you regular readers know, when I get the gumption to go out and try to meet someone, my back-up plan is to resort to using lines from Will Ferrell movies — mainly Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy. I have left many a trail of confused faces in many a Manhattan bear bar because of being the only guy saying things like “You have an awesome hiney” or “I love Scotch. Scotchy, Scotch, Scotch. Here it goes — down into my belly.” Inevitably, drunk and ignored, I’ve shouted at patrons “Go back to your home on Whore Island!” I didn’t have such outburst this holiday season. At Thanksgiving dinner with friends, I was asked to say grace. I said the grace I learned from Ricky Bobby in Talladega Nights. I thanked Baby Jesus and all his little Baby Jesus magic powers.
I never saw Elf until my slacker pal clerk at the video store recommended it to me. Take a spoonful of Miracle on 34th Street, a spoonful of Big and a dash of the animated TV special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, mix with a clever new screwball comedy script and you’ve got Elf. Just like little Natalie Wood dealing with a department store and Kris Kringle in Miracle on 34th Street, he’s seeking a father figure. He’s a human elf, which is why he’s the largest one on the North Pole. Santa knows he’s going to New York City to find his birth father. It’s the kind of movie you can play to keep the kids and grown-ups entertained during this stress test time of the year. The video store guy described it as “charming” and that’s the perfect word for it. What really made me fall in love with it was pairing up Zooey Deschanel with Farrell as his love interest. You know she’d rather have root canal than have to dress up like a department store pixie during the holiday season to earn rent money. In the 40s, it would’ve been a Jean Arthur or Ginger Rogers role. Deschanel played Anita, the supportive stewardess sister to the young rock journalist in Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous. If you rent Elf, you MUST sit through the end credits. Singer Leon Redbone does voiceover work in the movie. In the credits, he does a duet of the classic 1940s movie song, Baby, It’s Cold Outside, with Zooey Deschanel. Sweet! She can sing! I want the soundtrack now for that cut.
I’m thinking of going back to some of those bars tonight dressed like an elf and saying “Hi! What’s your name? I’m Buddy!” like Will Ferrell did. I dunno. What do you think?
Judy Garland + Twisted Sister
Saturday, December 23rd, 2006“…through the years, we all will be together, if the fates allow. Until then, we’ll have to muddle through somehow. So have yourself a merry little Christmas now.”
Yesterday I was dialsurfing on the FM radio side and heard a woman singing one of my all-time favorite holidays songs, “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” It was on the NPR show called “Fresh Air with Terry Gross.” She has an annual holiday show and invites musicians and singers on to perform. Near the end of the broadcast was a segment that just about made my film geek jaw drop. She had an interview with composer Hugh Martin. He’s in his early 90s and he’s the surviving half of the team that wrote all the songs from the Judy Garland 1944 classic that introduced that yuletide tune, Meet Me in St. Louis. Martin is one of those folks who makes 90 sound like the new 70. He was alert, witty, honest, sharp and he has that kind of sweet Southern accent that brings you in like a warm embrace. Since so much time has passed since Garland introduced the tune and there is no longer a Hollywood studio system guarding its production secrets, he could be truthful about how the song came to be. In the MGM film’s original score, that song he wrote alone — words and music. His partner urged him to work on it. Garland ordered him to change the original somber lyrics. When it’s played on radio this time of the year, he gets royalites. Bam! He always gets copies of versions done by contemporary artists. He said that the weirdest one he got was by Twisted Sister. When’s the last time you heard someone over 70 (besides Dick Clark) who even knew that Twisted Sister was a musical act? The host asked him to play a sing a bit of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” which he did. Beautifully. I hope www.NPR.org puts that audio up on the show’s website. Terry Gross also informed us that Hugh Martin has a new CD out. At 90something. Hugh Sings Martin is out thanks to the Library of Congress. He performs that classic and others he wrote for hit Broadway shows back in the 40s, shows that have seen many revivals.