Mark Evanier's Blog, page 78

More About Mike

Since I've been writing about Mike Schlesinger here, I thought I oughta post this photo that was taken on September 29, 2019 at the Cinerama Dome Theater. That was the theater in which It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World opened — a theater literally built to show it — and a bunch of us were there that day to see it for the umpteenth time on that amazing screen. The pins we're wearing were to commemorate whatever anniversary it was.

Dave Woodman is a fine cartoonist and Mad World historian.  The other three are Mad World historians who are heard on the commentary track for the Criterion DVD and Blu-ray of that movie.  Paul Scrabo is a producer and jack-of-all-crafts in the TV and movie businesses.  Collectively, the four of us have probably seen this movie three jillion times.  After the film, my lady friend and I left but Mike stayed around outside for an hour answering questions about the film for all who had just enjoyed it.

Today's Single Feature

Last night, we showed you our pal Mike Schlesinger talking about a favorite movie, 1776. Mike noted how in its initial release, the film endured some unfortunate cuts because of pressure from the administration of Richard Milhous Nixon, a man who no longer holds the title of being our most sinister president. This morning, I awoke to this message from Steve Bacher…

I'd like to know if the version of the movie 1776 currently available on YouTube (at 2 hours and 45 minutes) is the restored version or the one with the Nixon-mandated cuts as described in the trailer.

It's the restored version and here it is…the whole thing, including the song "Cool, Conservative Men," which was the main thing Nixon wanted out. The cut version runs 148 minutes. As is the case with these YouTube uploads, they are sometimes free, sometimes free with ads and sometimes they cost money to watch and some of them change back and forth. Don't ask me why.

Today's Video Link

My friend Mike Schlesinger was a frequent contributor to Trailers From Hell, a series of videos which use the trailer for a movie as an excuse to discuss the movie. Here's Mike talking about one of our favorite films, 1776…

Good Blogkeeping

In the next day or four, we'll be doing some of the software upgrading that your generous donations helped pay for. You don't notice any difference on this blog from your end but you may notice it being offline for five or ten minutes now and then. Do not panic. The changes will prevent longer outages.

Michael Schlesinger, R.I.P.

My pal Mike Schlesinger died this morning…and movies have lost one of the best friends they ever had. I'm not sure I ever met anyone who loved them more…or knew more about them…or got so angry when they were mistreated.

When I first met this boy from Dayton, Ohio, he was an executive at Sony out here and was very much responsible for liberating many films from their vaults, restoring them, getting them released for home video or to revival cinemas, etc. We bonded over our shared love for It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World — and with Paul Scrabo, did the commentary track for its Criterion release. We agreed on that film but debated — always friendly — when our tastes differed. Mike actually was heard on a lot of home video commentary tracks and I was honored that he asked me to join him on several.

He was a fixture at a wide number of film festivals, screenings, lectures, interviews of stars and filmmakers (often, he was the interviewer) and he also made movies. After he left Sony, he wrote, directed and produced the Biffle & Shooster shorts and had recently made his first feature length comedy — Rock and Doris (try to) Write a Movie. It was a semi-remake of George M. Cohan's play Seven Keys to Baldpate, updated all the way to the sixties, starring Marilu Henner and Joe Regalbuto. It is, so far, unreleased. The last few times I talked to Mike, as he complained about various medical problems he was having, his biggest concern seemed to be that not feeling well was getting in the way of him hooking up with a distributor.

Then the medical problems got worse, he was hospitalized…and this morning, cancer took him at the age of 74. His friends (and he had many) owe a special thanks to his friend Catherine Dickerson who took so much loving care of him, especially in his last weeks. I am so very sad to lose a good friend like Mike…and like I said, movies never had a better one.

To My Friends…

Please stop sending me photos and videos of burned-out houses, people crying because they lost everything, wide-spread destruction, the Magic Castle ringed in flames, etc. I'm not watching the news because it only saddens me to see this stuff. I know it's happened and if I want to look at such images, I have access to this thing called "The Internet" that has almost as much of that as it does of porn. It's almost like some people are thinking, "This horrifies and depresses me…I'd better send it to other people so they can be horrified and depressed, too!"

While we're at it: If you injure yourself, I will believe you injured yourself. You don't have to post bloody/bruised photos. Thank you.

ASK me: Keeping One's Phone Charged

Micki St. James wrote to ask…

You posted at 8:09 AM that you had no electricity and then at 9:03 PM that you were posting by thumb-tapping on your iPhone. What I want to know is, since you couldn't plug your phone in to recharge it, how did it manage to keep its charge for more than 12 hours? Mine doesn't last that long.

Mine doesn't either so I bought a couple of those portable phone chargers and I keep them charged so I can charge my phone with them. Also, there's this wonderful invention…

You see that thing there? That's the Duracell 2000 Lumen Tri-power Lantern and mine came in so very, very handy during my recent power failure here in L.A. "Mine" in this case is plural because I have several of these and I was glad I did.

What does it do? It's an LED light and you can set it to various levels of brilliance or make it blink. You can also plug a cell phone or other small electronic gizmo into it and recharge that gizmo. And how, you may ask, do you charge your Duracell 2000 Lumen Tri-power Lantern? Well, you can plug into the wall to recharge it or you can stick four "D" cell batteries into it or you can leave it outside in the sun and the little solar panel on top will charge it.

I got a batch of these from Costco and they still have them…for $21.85 and they occasionally go on sale for around fifteen bucks. The last time they were fifteen, I bought a dozen or so and have been giving them out to friends but I had five left — one opened, four unopened. They come fully charged so I opened 'em all up and put them to good use when my house went dark. By the way: Amazon sells them for $29.95 and Walmart sells them for $34.50.

Thursday Morning

There's less wind this morning, at least in my area and — according to the National Weather Service — most. Hopefully, all the fires will soon be controlled and then extinguished…but we're going to be moaning and shivering about this for a long time. And no, I don't know what you say to someone who lost everything.

With sadness usually comes anger and there is — and there should be — plenty of anger at the folks trying to make bogus political points off a tragedy like this. I'm trying to not read or watch a lot of the news coverage because it depresses me to no good purpose. But I came across Elon Musk's stupid statements and I also came across Kevin Drum debunking everything Musk is saying. This is the kind of thing we'll be seeing even more of in the next four years.

Empowered

I may have underestimated the Department of Water and Power. They said my electricity would be restored by 10 PM and it came back on at 9:53. Wish it could be that simple for everyone.

Wednesday Evening

It's a terrifying night in and around Los Angeles…and please forgive any typos in this as I am thumb-typing on my iPhone in a house that has been sans electricity for almost 24 hours. Soon, they say, there will be light, "they" being the L.A. Department of Water, Power and Questionable Time Estimates.

The fire is still far, far from me. I should say "fires, plural" as they keep popping up like new Shake Shacks. The latest new blaze is currently threatening our beloved Magic Castle and I'm hearing of too many friends who are evacuated and huddling somewhere, wondering if they'll have homes to return to. A couple of friends already know they will not. There's a very scary sky filled with smoke in many directions and so is the air in every direction. It's cold, it's windy, it's smokey and it's all around us. A day or two ago, all it was was cold…then outta nowhere, all this happens.

And here we were all hoping 2025 would be a better year.

I'm not sure why I'm posting this…maybe to show friends and acquaintances that I'm fine. And I am if you can be fine with feeling that your face looks like Edvard Munch's painting of "The Scream." Or maybe to let folks who feel that way know that they're not alone and that things will get better. They'd kind of have to.