Bob Newhart Writes

I get most of my comic timing from Bob Newhart. Filled to the brim with perfect pauses and natural stammering, Bob’s "button down mind" and deadpan delivery rarely fail to convulse me with laughter. His first book, I SHOULDN’T EVEN BE DOING THIS, is due to hit the stores any day now and it’s a great read. Part memoir, part career recap and part anecdotal musings, it offers a glimpse at some of his most successful moments and then a walk behind the curtains of those times. All the usual suspects associated with Newhart make appearances in his memories-Dick Martin, Suzanne Pleshette, Don Rickles, etc. From his success with his early sixties albums to his various attempts at a film career and his umpteenth TV series, reading the book is like spending a few hours with a very funny old friend. In fact, that’s exactly what it is! Much of the book is written in a typical conversational style and so it works best to read it with Bob’s voice in your head. You even get a few classic routines in their entirety including Abe Lincoln and Grace L. Ferguson. (I actually prefer the Sir Walter Raleigh sketch, myself). Seeing them on paper you come to realize that delivery really IS everything. Without Bob’s voice they just aren’t THAT funny!
I saw Bob Newhart onstage in Cincinnati in the late seventies and was surprised to find him doing a lot of blue material in his act. It wasn’t that it wasn’t amusing. It was just that one didn’t expect it from Bob. In fact even the title of this book comes from the punchline of an old dirty joke. Taken literally, though, I think it’s safe to say that yes, Bob, you SHOULD be doing this and we thank you for it! A very entertaining book! Perhaps you should do it again even!

Bijou Meets Mad

In my opinion, the Harvey Kurtzman comic book issues of MAD are probably the funniest things ever put in print. In their heyday, all of the other comics companies seemed to agree as they imitated the lampoon formula shamelessly only often without much of a sense of humor! For a time, I collected the MAD rip-offs--WILD, CRAZY, RIOT and a dozen others! The problem became so prevalent that EC began running ads warning readers against imitations other than their own, fully authorized imitation, PANIC.

In the sixties, along comes a whole generation of comics artists whose minds had been warped….err, I mean influenced by MAD (see early issues of BLAB for an oral history of MAD’s influence on undergrounds). They didn’t aspire to draw DAREDEVIL or AQUAMAN, they wanted to create satire and parodies and change the world the way Kurtzman inadvertently did. In Chicago, Jay Lynch, whose early cartoons had appeared in Kurtzman’s later HELP magazine, founded BIJOU FUNNIES in the wake of the success of ZAP in San Francisco.

BIJOU’s core crew consisted of Lynch, Skip Williamson, Jay Kinney and Robert Crumb himself. Beginning in 1968, the vast Bijou Publishing Empire (sic) put out eight issues of BIJOU FUNNIES over a period of six years, the later ones distributed and kept in print by Denis Kitchen, a sometime cartoonist himself but better known for his publishing contributions.

Spotlighting Lynch’s signature strip, NARD ‘N’ PAT about an Andy Gump-like man and his anthropomorphic cat with an attitude, Bijou also presented a wide array of strips and artists in its first seven issues (as well as in a few spin-off titles), many of which were collected in the book, THE BEST OF BIJOU FUNNIES in 1975 along with a history of the whole publishing venture.

Issue eight of BIJOU, however, was something special. For perhaps the only time in underground history, Lynch decided to go all out with the MAD influence. First of all, issue eight was printed in color at a time when nearly all undergrounds were in black and white. The cover was not only designed to be reminiscent of the original MAD’s layout but Harvey Kurtzman himself was recruited to do the illustration (I always thought it looked more like an unfinished thumbnail, myself, but, hey! It’s Kurtzman so I’m not kicking!) On the inside, various underground artists were instructed to do parodies of famous underground strips by others. The results were, for the most part, inspired.

Lynch is up front with a dead on parody of Gilbert Shelton’s FREAK BROTHERS (as well as FAT FREDDY’S CAT), smoothly drawn but with lots of Elder-style chicken fat in the backgrounds. Even WONDER WARTHOG gets a cameo.
Bil Stout’s very MAD-like parody of Williamson’ s SNAPPY SAMMY SMOOT (as SNAZZY MELVIN SNOOT!) is next and the artist seems to channel both Elder and Wally Wood.
Williamson himself appears next with his Crumb lampoon, MELVIN NATURAL. Crumb gets his own digs in later on with a spot on version of Lynch’s NARD ‘N’ PAT. Other artists appearing and desecrating other sacred underground cows include Kitchen, Kinney, Bill Griffith, Willy Murphy, Kim Deitch, and Cincinnati’s own (these days anyway) Justin Green. Other characters parodied include the checkered demon, the toad, Zippy the Pinhead, Trashman and Hungry Chuck.
The highlight of the issue, though, has to be the parody of Vaughn Bode’s CHEECH WIZARD by one Pat Daley, an artist I had never heard of then or now. With absolutely beautiful art and a lot of attention given to parodying not just content but design and layout style also, it works its way, in true MAD style, to the very twisted ending seen here.
Finally, the back cover offers an extremely amusing and clever variation on the ads EC used to run about MAD rip-offs. Former Wally Wood assistant (and an underrated cartoonist in his own right) Ralph Reese showcases no less than 32 underground titles in ad showcasing BIJOU FUNNIES as the real thing. Unfortunately, issue eight, probably my all-time favorite underground, turned out to be the final issue of BIJOU FUNNIES.
The now legendary Jay Lynch can be found on the Web at: Jay Lynch.

Kim Recommends # 1-Serendipity

In my continual enjoyment of classic motion pictures and eclectic exploitation films, I find that I sometimes miss the more mainstream gems that still trickle their way out of the studios in this brave new world of ours. That’s when my young friend Kim, herself at times a walking sitcom, clues me in to the best of the best. Her tastes are generally not mine. They’re nowhere near mine. In fact they’re so far apart, they’re in a different state…literally! Still, with keen perception and a sometimes surprisingly astute understanding of your humble librarian, she almost unerringly (with the exception of her Julia Roberts fetish) points me toward winners. Over the last two nights, she forc…err…kindly shared with me yet another mainstream movie I had missed and I found myself just loving it! Thus, today, we begin an occasional feature on Kim’s Recommendations.


Let’s not start with last night’s entry, though. No, let’s go back to one of the first films I let her convince me to watch. Let me think back now. It was about two years back. As I recall, in spite of my protests, she tied me to a chair…


As I’m certain you all know, any movie with a good snow scene and a good ending is a great movie. That’s really all you need. By this fair but exacting standard, such fare as DEATH WISH with Charles Bronson and Frankie and Dobie’s SKI PARTY version of SOME LIKE IT HOT are, in fact, great movies. It’s true! Try it, yourself! The promise of a snow scene is what got me to watch SERENDIPITY, a seeming "chick-flick" that stars John Cusack (whom I liked in GROSS POINTE BLANK) and some woman I’d never heard of named Kate Beckinsale. It’s about two people who meet serendipitously on a snowy day and instantly connect, spending a magical and quite romantic evening together in Manhattan. Each plants their phone number in an unusual place for the other one to find if they’re truly meant to see each other again. They then spend the next five years thinking about each other every day as their respective lives move on. At a pivotal point for both, just before marriage to someone else, each decides that they have to find the other, even though they have no earthly idea where to look.

Kate is beautiful and quirky with an amazing smile and an absolutely delightful British accent. John is rather deadpan and brooding but then he often is and it often works for him as it does here. Eugene Levy (once Jesus onstage in GODSPELL and now making a fortune with those awful straight to video AMERICAN PIE sequels) does a typically scene-stealing comic turn as a department store clerk. Cusack’s lifelong friend Jeremy Piven is charismatic and ingratiating in the male sidekick role while SNL’s Molly Shannon struts her considerable comic chops better here with Beckinsale than she ever did at NBC. For most of the film, Cusack/ Piven and Beckinsale/Shannon are the couples. After the great romantic tease of the opening scene, Cusack and Beckinsale don’t get back together until (SPOILER ALERT!) the end. While this may seem a cheat on the surface, the feelings of longing, frustration and unconsummated love permeate the later scenes, fostering a very different atmosphere that builds and builds. When the snow returns at the end, it is gentle but now seems so very, very cold after all the characters have been through. By that point, all hope seems lost. When they finally do (ANOTHER SPOILER ALERT!) see each other again, the warmth just pours into the screen and into the viewers’ hearts, too! The message of the film seems to be that fate cannot be denied. If you are meant to be together, you will be, no matter the odds! Since the main characters barely spend any time at all together, it might seem odd when I name this unique little comedy as one of the most romantic films in recent years but I do so anyway. It was such a feelgood, funny movie that after she made me si…err…hehe!…I mean, after Kim shared it with me, I had to go out and buy a copy for myself! I knew I was meant to have it. It was fate. It was SERENDIPITY.

Movies That Fell Through the Cracks # 16

Italian actors Mario Girotti and Carlos Perdersoli have teamed in almost twenty light-hearted movies since the mid-sixties. Nearly all of them were huge international hits. Maybe you know them better as Terence Hill and Bud Spencer. I first encountered them in the comic spaghetti western, THEY CALL ME TRINITY which was their only major splash in the US market. TRINITY IS STILL MY NAME was released a few years later and endlessly double-featured with the original. Needless to say, the greedy US market wanted more so anything the duo touched was dubbed and touted as "starring those ‘Trinity’ boys!" There was a collective sigh from the US market.
Such was not the case in Europe and elsewhere, however. After teaming with screen legend Henry Fonda in Sergio Leone’s production MY NAME IS NOBODY, the handsome, ingratiating Hill in fact became so popular that major film producers cast him in MR. BILLION opposite Jackie Gleason and MARCH OR DIE opposite Gene Hackman. This is when the not too swift US market found out he had an Italian accent in real life. Having lived in the US for nearly a decade by that point, the clever actor took his international box office receipts and opened his own film studio here where he turned out profitable small scale films such as SUPERFUZZ.
In the meantime, there were still films with Bud Spencer to be exploited and one was 1974’s WATCH OUT, WE’RE MAD, a modern day comedy (with dune buggies!) in which the car racing pair outwit gangsters (and English actor Donald Pleasance) at every turn. As always, Spencer was the giant, bull-headed, soft-hearted tough guy and Hill the devilish, good-looking, unflappable hero. The longtime friends were usually cast as brothers, rivals or both but always worked together in the end. To read the reviews on IMDB, WATCH OUT, WE’RE MAD is either the best or worst thing the pair ever turned out. I wouldn’t know. It only played drive-ins around here so I missed it as I was too young to drive.
Spencer went on to star opposite MIAMI VICE’s Phillip Michael Thomas in the title role of the EXTRALARGE series while Hill became the personification of the comic strip favorite LUCKY LUKE in a series of Trinity-like TV westerns. There’s still about twelve of their film team-ups I’ve yet to see but given the chance, I’ll catch them whenever possible. Terence Hill and Bud Spencer have a great, fun chemistry on-screen no matter what the vehicle. In fact, I’d have to say that they rank as one of the great unsung comedy teams of movies!

Christa Helm Tidbits

I’m pleased to announce that I have been asked by author John O’Dowd, currently completing a biography of starlet Barbara Payton for BearManor Media (publishers of IT’S THAT TIME AGAIN 3 in case you’ve forgotten!) to collaborate with him on a magazine article about Christa Helm and LET’S GO FOR BROKE. He has already amassed quite a bit of information and I’m working on a few leads myself. I’ll keep you informed.

In the meantime, just a few tidbits I’ve recently come across regarding the ill-fated Ms. Helm:


In a January, 1974 newspaper piece, Broadway columnist Leonard Lyons noted that "Christa Helm, Frank Raiter and Chitra, the three stars of the new movie, GOING FOR BROKE (sic and perhaps the film’s working title) were discussing a voodoo sequence in the story in a Miami restaurant near the location. A patron overheard the descriptions of the strange, secret rites and called the police. The next day the set was visited by police officials who briefly watched the scene being filmed. They laughed—and left."


Further back, a September ’73 wire service filler paragraph proclaimed that "GO FOR BROKE will introduce Christa Helm in the title role as a New York television reporter who uses James Bond tactics to uncover an international kidnapping ring."


A 1975 piece by Earl Wilson has Christa herself describing yet another film with which she was associated! According to her she and film producer "Joseph Middleton" wrote and produced the movie, ILLUSIONS OF A LADY together. They were a couple at the time and broke up, said Christa, over his insistence on shooting hardcore scenes for the picture. "He said ‘I’m shooting it hard’ so I got in my car in my bikini and drove home," Christa said. "He sat there and let me carry out my own bags. I was livid." ILLUSIONS OF A LADY was actually written, produced and directed by one "Jonas" Middleton and starred future disco superstar Andrea True and porn legend Jamie Gillis.

Holy Liberation, Batman!-1978

Here’s one of those wire service reports where the writer seems not to have looked at a comic book before in his life until writing this article. Clicking on the sections should make them readable.This one is from 1978 and is on women’s liberation in then current comics. It’s not as fun to pick apart as most of its kind but it has its moments such as when he refers to "Katar the Hawkman." I particularly like the condescending reference in his statement that the Hawks’ marriage "is envied by everyone in super land, even those with curious relationships such as Batman and Robin."
There are some nice quotes from Jenette Kahn, at just 30 years old then still a young woman herself but running DC rather well I thought. The gist of the article is that more and more positive female role models were appearing in comics. Unfortunately, one of the prime examples given is Ms. Marvel who would become a rape victim in a future issue of AVENGERS. The NOW representative seems surprised that little girls actually look up to Wonder Woman (then big on TV which probably accounted for that) but Ms. Kahn herself admits to always relating more to Batman. TV’s BIONIC WOMAN is tossed into the discussion of comic book heroes for no apparent reason.
I don’t know. The comments from the Comics Code’s Leonard Darvin seem a tad sexist to me as he goes on about heroines with large busts and adds that "…Wonder Woman isn’t so bad either." He also seems a little too excited when he adds that as long as their nipples, pubic areas and buttocks are covered, women in comics "…can be as nude as the day they were born."
Even the main accompanying illustration, rather than come from the comics themselves, is drawn by one John Rodak. You see three women. The one on the left is most likely supposed to be Black Canary, the one on the right might be womens liberation poster girl Gloria Steinem (an avowed Wonder Woman fan) or perhaps Ms. Marvel who is described as resembling Ms. Steinem in the text. The thrust (pardon the expression) of the illustration, however, is clearly Wonder Woman’s breasts! Talk about a double standard.
It was all an illusion anyway as 1978 soon gave way to the modern age of comics "artists" tracing heroines in explicit positions from skin mags and then drawing tiny costumes on them that would undoubtedly shock and/or delight Leonard Darvin!
I can be as sexist as the next guy but women deserve better. Every time you have a strong female comic character some writer has to screw it up. To me, the ultimate female role model in comics is probably Sue Richards. She is a mother figure, a lover, a nurturing, caring heroine and quite frankly the most powerful member of the Fantastic Four. So what happens? Well, right off the top of my head, there was that time Marvel made her into a whacked out dominatrix figure with split personality issues or that time when she decided to have an affair with Prince Namor... And they continue to wonder why girls don’t read comics!

Kings Island Revisited