Movies Til Dawn

When I was a young'un growing up in LA in the mid-seventies I was a serious radio-head. I loved all forms of audio entertainment--live radio talk shows, old vintage comedy shows, KJOI (elevator music non-stop) and even the stray TV channel that you could accidentally find on an obscure frequency. (I listened to a San Diego TV station that played old TV sit-coms that for some quirk-of-technology reason you could pick up on the bottom of the FM dial). So it was with great interest that I learned one day in 4th grade from a long-forgotten friend that you could listen to comedy on the phone if you dialed 213-836-5566. The pre-recorded routines emanated from a 'station' called 'ZZZ-ZZZ, the last listing in your telephone directory!' Once dialed, the line was invariably busy but I would persist for what seems in memory to have been hours at a time, occasionally getting through. Once I got a taste of the little radio phone-plays that Z put on, I began taping them. The...

Here's a real weirdie. It's Diana Ross and the Supremes performing a tribute medley to Fats Waller on Ed Sullivan (of course). I'm not sure I've ever seen them in this kind of performance style--they're like a really good, nicely dressed upscale cruise act. Four minutes into this five minute clip they briefly become the Supremes that we know (for a whole ten seconds) before snapping back into Tin Pan Alley/Andrew Sisters/Opening-Act-for-a-Comic-In-Vegas mode. Strangeness aside, it's really quite lovely and interestingly square, especially given the hipness of the act that we know lays underneath. And each one of the ladies was more gorgeous than the next. Indeed, my favorite Supreme is always the last my eyes have fallen upon. Wait, can I say that? Is that allowed? Did I just end my career?   Subscribe in a reader

Here's five minutes of Humphrey Bogart forgetting his lines (or 'going up' as the English say). Like all blooper reels, the fun is not the mistakes themselves but the opportunity to be, as viewers, part of the movie set experience of the long, dead past. We hear the offstage voices of directors assuring the actor that it's okay, that they can 'pick it up' (i.e. not have to begin the scene from the top but instead resume from shortly before the line was dropped) and, in some cases, we hear a bell go off when an actor screws up. This suggests to me an on-set running gag--somebody (probably the prop man) rang a bell when an actor forgot his lines, causing a brief burst of hilarity from all which was probably thought to lesson the tension on the set. (They sure as hell wouldn't be welcome with their funny little bell on my set, that's for damn sure). Perhaps the most interesting part of seeing Bogie breakdown is studying his own reactions. Unlike many ac...

My love for Howard Stern dates back to an afternoon in the early 80s, when I was driving upstate to my college and turned the radio dial accidentally to WNBC. I heard a man discussing the differences between Jewish men's penises and Chinese men's penises and, when the shock wore off, found myself parking on the shoulder of the highway as laughter overwhelmed me. There is no longer anything shocking about the subject matter and I can't remember exactly what was said that I found so exhilaratingly funny. It must of been the whooshing of a long-closed door being opened--the complete subjugation of normal entertainment to wildly inappropriate and heedless hilarity. (Or, as a billboard put it when Stern was first syndicated to Los Angeles, 'Four Hours Of Sixth Grade Every Morning!') Early Stern (or 'old-school Howard') remains, for me, the best Stern--anywhere from the NBC years through around 2000 (the departure of Jackie Martling being the significant facto...

In February 1934, something called the 'Motion Picture Ball' was held at New York's then rather newish Waldorf Astoria Hotel and the Fox Movietone sound cameras were there to capture the event. I don't know what the hell the purpose of the ball was but it brought out a heavy duty crowd of 'swells' who, from appearances, seem wildly untouched by the great depression that was then raging just outside the doors. It feels rather like a scene you'd find in 'My Man Godfrey'--fat balding men in evening clothes, fat stuffy wives on their arms. The announcer appears to be the person that inspired Jackie Gleason's Ralph Kramden voice. For seven minutes we watch as a cascade of long-dead people enter an unseen room as the announcer names names, cracks wise etc. The boredom of the shot becomes mesmerizing (for me anyway). At seven minutes or so in, we cut to the actual ball itself. The band is playing 'Wonder Bar' (the movie had just been released)...

Meet Harry Rosenthal. He was a silent film piano accompaniest who later became a movie-score conductor due to the fact that his first career was phased out of existence when talking films phased out silents. In 1930 he made the above Fox Movietone short film demonstrating the quite fascinating technique of adding music 'on the fly' to a movie being projected. The end of this specialty act came two years or so before this demo film was made. Synchronized music scores, however, first came about in 1926 with Warner Brothers 'Don Juan' starring John Barrymore, though that film was still mute as far as dialogue goes. Imagine the advent of a symphonic score against picture being a sufficient enough novelty to be cause for a billboard like the one pictured below? Yes, in fact, I can. The reason that I'm posting this at this particular moment is that I'm sitting in a sound mix and marveling how much a great score can elevate a movie. Many thanks to the mysterious YouT...

Last week we recorded ADR (Additional Dialogue Recording) for my movie 'Stano'. I am no fan of this process as I can almost always tell, while watching a movie, when it's been done. Even well performed and well-mixed ADR never quite sits realistically for me and actor's performances are rarely improved by asking them to stand in a recording studio, stare at themselves on the screen and attempt to fit dialogue into their on-screen mouths in precisely the right rhythm so as to achieve 'perfect' lip sync (and somehow act at the same time).  Some actors don't mind doing it, some hate it. The only actor I've ever heard of who demands to ADR his whole performance is Al Pacino. He claims it gives him a second chance at improving his performance. I can't imagine his first pass is in need of this tune-up but who knows? Perhaps his performance actually is better, though I think it might be safer to say that its a bit different. I generally only re-record l...