Man on the Dark Side of the Moon
I agree about one thing, Bradley is one of the most compelling arguments for
the NBA's cancellation of the Old-Timers' Game. Actually, since the debate
occurred around twilight on this coast, I experienced most of it on the radio,
and I thought Bradley was responding to coaching that he be (slightly) more
punchy in his delivery. On the other hand, when the subject of religion came
up, he told precisely the same story, in precisely the same words, that he had
used on his one-on-one on MSNBC the day before. I know, that's my fault for
paying attention.
I'm an admirer of Jim Carrey and Milos Forman, I enjoyed Flynt as
well, but mother nature hasn't made enough wild horses to get me to see a movie
about Andy Kaufman. Having both seen him as an audience member and shared
stages with him, I became convinced that he was--how shall we put this
gently?--mentally ill, and that charging money to see him alternately irritate
and infantilize his audiences was the modern equivalent of Bedlam. Why the
posthumous cult of Andy in Hollywood? Here's a theory: Kaufman acted out, in
arguably "interesting" ways, the hostility toward the audience that most people
in show business feel but try (with varying degrees of success) to conceal. He
seemed to me to be part of the wave of people in comedy who learned the wrong
lesson from Albert Brooks. In his standup and Tonight Show work, Albert
demonstrated how you could delay the laugh, really prolong the suspense, and
get a much better laugh at the end. Andy and some of the SNL people took
this to mean you could postpone the laugh forever.
Man, did you open a can of worms. Now, as for Hollywood's penchant for
releasing the "classy" movies as close to Oscar time as the rules and the
calendar allow, I agree that the ravages of memory have a lot to do with it.
There's also the fact the industry has developed a code that you can't release
anything short on special effects in the summertime, so adults and movies that
appeal to them aren't welcome in the plexes until at least October.
Semi-serious (or intelligently funny, like Galaxy Quest ) movies around
the Christmas break is at least a better cultural tradition than the one in
Britain, where Christmases are rated by whether the BBC had a good slate of
specials and whose awful record made the Christmas No 1 list.
See you at Andy's ...
Harry
