Carl Reiner: A Film Babble Blog Tribute

Yesterday, after the word spread online that comedy legend Carl Reiner had passed, it was very moving to see many people post tributes via photos, classic clips, and memories of the actor/writer/director. Reiner’s colossal career touched many people and it was interesting to see what works that people knew him from best. 

For me, it’s an amalgam of his highlights. My introduction to the man came from four classic comedies he made with then up and coming comedian Steve Martin: THE JERK, DEAD MEN DON’T WEAR PLAID, THE MAN WITH TWO BRAINS, and ALL OF ME. Reiner, who I think I only knew as Rob Reiner’s father (Rob, I think I only knew as “Meathead” from All in the Family as he yet to make his directorial debut with THIS IS SPINAL TAP), appeared in cameos in two of Martin’s movies – in THE JERK, he was credited as “Carl Reiner, The Celebrity,” and in THE MAN WITH TWO BRAINS he played a Nazi, Field Marshall VonKluck. 

But my real education into Reiner’s comedic genius came from reruns of The Dick Van Dyke Show I first saw in the mid ‘80s. Reiner created the show, originally as a vehicle for himself as comedy writer Ken Levine (M*A*S*H, Cheers, Frazier, The Simpsons, Everybody Loves Raymond) put it in his RIP post on his blog yesterday:

“He wrote the first 13 episodes on spec. A pilot was even filmed. It didn’t get on the air. Producer Sheldon Leonard told him the project had tremendous potential except for one thing - Carl was wrong for the part. How many actor/writers would be insulted and just junk the project? Not Carl Reiner. Not only did he agree to recast his part, but he even named the show after the actor who replaced him. That’s humility.”

Much of The Dick Van Dyke Show focused on Van Dyke’s character Rob Petrie working as a writer on the fictional TV show The Alan Brady Show. Reiner played Brady, the blustery and vain host who would often stress out his staff. In one extremely memorable episode, Petrie’s wife Laura (Mary Tyler Moore) let it slip on live television that Brady wore a toupee, and was summoned to her husband’s boss’s office:

This hilarious scene, from the fifth season episode “Coast to Coast Big Mouth” is considered a classic TV moment of the era, and was one of the bits that a lot of people posted in tribute in the last day.

The Dick Van Dyke Show was largely based on Reiner’s experiences working as a writer on Your Show of Shows starring Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca. This wasn’t in syndication (at least where I lived) when I was kid, but its legacy was well known, and later I caught up with a fair amount of its material through clips on Comedy Central. 

In 1950, Reiner met Mel Brooks on Your Show of Shows, and the duo would be best friends for the next 70 years. Brooks and Reiner created a sketch involving a 2000-year old man (Brooks), being interviewed by a reporter (Reiner). The improvised bit spawned five 2000-Year Old Man record albums, the last of which won a Grammy. 

Another crucial comedy from my youth that Reiner helmed was the 1977 film, OH, GOD!, which starred George Burns in the title role. In 2007, I wrote about the movie in this post: 

10 Reasons The 30th Anniversary Of OH, GOD! Should Be Celebrated (Film Babble Blog 10/3/07)

Throughout the last seven decades, Reiner has appeared in tons of shows including Night Gallery, The Carol Burnett Show, The Larry Sanders Show, Mad About You (in which he reprised the character of Alan Brady, The Bernie Mac Show, Parks and Recreation, Family Guy (!), and many, many more, but my favorite has to be when he and Brooks showed up on Jerry Seinfeld’s Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee (available on Netflix).

The episode, very little of which takes place in a car, makes me feel like I have an inkling of what it’s like to hang with Brooks and Reiner as they dine on a feast of take-out food, tell ancient jokes, and discuss their quintessential canons – well, mostly Mel’s.

Reiner’s filmwork as an actor includes roles in IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD, WORLD, THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING, THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING, THE END, FATAL INSTINCT (which he directed), the OCEAN’S ELEVEN trilogy, and TOY STORY 4, in which he voiced Carl Reineroceros (Brooks also appeared as Melephant Brooks). 

Along with the Grammy, Reiner won eleven Emmys, and was given the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in 2000. Okay, now I feel like I’m just re-writing his Wikipedia entry so I’ll leave you with this compilation of three of Reiner’s appearances on Late Night with David Letterman in 1983 in which he was billed (most likely by himself) as “one of the best talk show guests ever”*:

* There is a wealth of great clips of “one of the best talk show guests ever” on YouTube. It would be very easy, and not at all a waste of time, to fall far down the Reiner rabbit hole - take it from me.

R.I.P. Carl Reiner (1922-2020)

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Film Within A Film Follow-up Fun!

"Life is like a movie. Write your own ending." - Kermit The Frog in THE MUPPET MOVIE (Dir. James Frawley, 1979)

Looks like I made some serious ommisions according to the many many readers who wrote in about my 10 Definitive Films Within Films (07/01-07/08) post last time out so here's some of the best suggestions, picks, and oversights:

Tony Ginorio suggests: SOMETHIN’S COOKING

It's the cartoon that opens WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT (Dir. Robert Zemeckis, 1988). An excellent pastiche of a 1940s Tex Avery short, with Roger and Baby Herman unleashing mayhem as only animated characters can. Halfway through, however, the director yells “Cut!”, and what at first seems like a mere cartoon suddenly becomes a live set, with a flesh-and-blood director chewing out his ink-and-paint actors, completely up-ending our preconceived notions of what is “real” and what is movie magic. 

Not only does this clever device introduce the film’s main concept – that animated characters are real – it also foreshadows the way characters and events in the main story are not what they seem: how a simple infidelity case turns out to be a cover-up for something far more sinister, and how a certain femme fatale turns out to be “just drawn that way.” 

Mike Weber writes: Billy Bright (Dick Van Dyke) watching his old movies on late-night teevee in THE COMIC (Dir. Carl Reiner, 1969) - which I swear was a major part of the inspiration for Firesign Theatre's "Don't Crush That Dwarf" album, which came out the next year and ends with an identical setup.

SEE YOU NEXT WEDNESDAY: in any number of John Landis films (and the"Thriller" video) - but best in AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON (1981). *

Peter Bogdanovich's TARGETS (1968), which uses outtakes from THE TERROR (1963) as the latest film from star Byron Orlok (Boris Karloff), at whose drive-in premiere the ultimate confrontation takes place. 

The whole setup for KISS KISS BANG BANG uses an actual film from1987 (DEAD AIM) that featured one of the cast (Corbin Bernsen). Footage from DEAD AIM was used as a film called "Johnny Gossamer", in which the character played by Bernsen is used as part of the McGuffin. * 

Though we never actually see any of it, the fictional film "See You Next Wednesday" (based on a quote from 2001 : A SPACE ODYSSEY) is like Mike remarks above a running gag through-out just about every John Landis movie (including KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE, THE BLUES BROTHERS, & COMING TO AMERICA) it even warrants this Wikipedia entry.

Mike also wrote back : "I completely forgot the double feature from the marquee of the theatre in the beginning of GREMLINS (Dir. Joe Dante, 1984) - "Watch the Skies" and "A Boy's Life" - the working titles of CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (Dir. Steven Spielberg, 1977) and E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL (Spielberg, 1982).

A lot of people emailed me that DRIVE-IN (Dir. Rodney Amateau, 1976) should have been noted but Jon Futrell made the case best : As a fan of drive-in movie theaters, I'd have to say my favorite movie within a movie is "Disaster '76" from the 1976 release DRIVE-IN. 

A production of the equally fictional Executive Pictures (complete with Mount Rushmore logo), "Disaster '76" plays on the screen at the Alamo Drive-in one Friday night. A jumbo jet is bombed on a New Year's Eve flight, knocking out the entire crew except for stewardess Margo. A ship's captain (in full uniform no less!) takes the control and tries to land. Instead, he crashes into a high-rise skyscraper creating "a tower of an inferno". Somebody actually said that in "D '76". While the folks at the drive-in have their own romantic and criminal issues at the theater, there's floods, sharks and an overturned cruise ship on the screen. It's almost a shame that Irwin Allen didn't make a similar "all disasters in one" type of film. 

Film Babble sadly notes that DRIVE-IN is not available on DVD at the present time - sigh. 

J Campie a film critic from Managua, Nicaragua (Confidential.com) agrees with many of those who wrote in when he writes: Please include in your list "El Amante Menguante" (you can translate it as "The Shrinking Lover", although it loses the poetic bent of the original spanish title). This is a fake silent movie that Benigno watches in TALK TO HER (Dir. Pedro Almodovar, 2002) In it, a man shrinks so that he can actually enter his complete self inside the woman he loves. I know it sounds....strange and icky to say the least, but on the movie it looks lovely, and works wonderfully to highlight the central themes of the best Pedro Almodovar film ever made. 

Jeff Beachnau states : You forgot the two (well, 3) greatest movies shown in Christmas classics - "The Night the Reindeer Died" starring Lee Majors shown at the beginning of SCROOGED (Dir. Richard Donner, 1988). *

And the greatest movie within a movie of all time (which I didn't even know until I grew up that they weren't real movies), "Angels with Filthy Souls" and "Angels with Filthier Souls" shown in HOME ALONE (Dir. Chris Columbus, 1990) and HOME ALONE 2 : LOST IN NEW YORK (Dir. Chris Columbus, 1992). * It's a TV movie but I'll allow it. 

Other films within films that multiple movie lovers wrote in: 

"Devil's Squadron" in THE STUNTMAN (Dir. Richard Rush, 1980) “Living In Oblivion” in LIVING IN OBLIVION (Dir. Tom DiCillo, 1995) SILENT MOVIE (Dir. Mel Brooks, 1976) Was the first major silent feature film in forty years that Mel Funn (Brooks) and cohorts Dom Deluise and Marty Feldman were trying to make actually named SILENT MOVIE? It's been decades since I've seen it so - anybody know the answer? Anybody?



"O Brother, Where art thou" from SULLIVAN'S TRAVELS (Dir. Preston Surges, 1941) This of course is notable because it was a fake movie within a movie that became a real movie almost 60 years later thanks to the Coen Bros. “COVEN” in AMERICAN MOVIE (Dir. Chris Smith, 1999) Another film within that is a film itself on its own - though COVEN is only 40 min. long. "The Spy who Laughed at Danger" from HOOPER (Dir. Hal Needham, 1978) “The Old Mill” from STATE AND MAIN (Dir. David Mamet, 2000)

This one I felt truly ashamed as a hardcore Python fan to have not noted - "The Crimson Permanent Assurance" from MONTY PYTHON'S THE MEANING OF LIFE (Dir. Terry Jones, 1983) 

Notable for many reasons but to break it down to the principles - A: Terry Gilliam's tale of elderly anti-globalization office clerks commandeering their workplace structure and turning it into a pirate ship was originally supposed to be inside the movie but it became such an entity itself at over 15 minutes it cost much more than the rest of the production. B: - Matt Frewer (Max Headroom) makes his film debut in it. And C: - It comes back to disrupt the movie from within - an announcer even says "we interrupt this film to apologise for the unwarranted attack from the supporting feature..." 

Okay! Next time out actual film reviews of movies in theaters and movies out recently on DVD -so please stay tuned.

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Comedy Isn't Pretty: Steve Martin's Fall From Funny

The DVD release of CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN this week has been a huge seller. My guess is that it was an impulse buy Dad bought for the kids while picking up MATRIX REVOLUTIONS. Whatever the case, CHEAPER is a horribly unfunny family film that will surely soon collect dust as its target audience moves quickly on.

Kind of like Martin's last film, BRINGING DOWN THE HOUSE, which was an exercise in commercial blandness despite some funny moments courtesy of Eugene Levy, CHEAPER is throwaway family fluff that further removes Martin from his former famous funniness.

There is possible redemption ahead with the prospect of Martin's excellent book Shopgirl's film adaptation but unfortunately that's overshadowed by the news that he is set to start filming a new PINK PANTHER movie next month. That news is met with much concern and doubt from me.

Very few, myself included think it is a good idea to try to revive a series that is over 20 years dead with 3 failed awful attempts to revive it since long buried. Maybe Martin can pull off playing the famous part of Inspector Clouseau defined by the late great Peter Sellers (which was #67 on Premiere's Greatest Movie Characters list in their latest issue, Martin's Navin Johnson, a.k.a. THE JERK is #66 interestingly) but judging by his strained slapstick work and the forced physical comedy that dominates CHEAPER I wouldn't put money on it.

In my estimation the last truly good Steve Martin comedy was BOWFINGER. It had a good premise: aspiring filmmaker scams a cheapie sc-fi movie out of a actor (Eddie Murphy) who doesn't know he's being filmed. It had a funny screenplay with moments like when starlet Heather Graham flirtaciously offers - "I love Smashing Pumpkins" and Martin's Bowfinger excitedly responds - "I love to do that!" And it has a good nature to it even with the bit about the self-promoting lesbian that Graham's character becomes which made everyone think Martin was taking a swipe at former lover Anne Heche.

But to get to that comic gem though we had to suffer through SGT.BILKO, THE OUT OF TOWNERS, and MIXED NUTS. Hiding behind those flops was a little seen David Mamet movie THE SPANISH PRISONER which featured a rare mannered dramatic performance by Martin.

Another failed foray into this direction was the thriller NOVOCAINE which was silly, but I have to admit I enjoyed.

For the record, here's Film Babble Blog's pick for the best Steve Martin comedies. It's an unsurprising but essential list : 

10 GREAT STEVE MARTIN COMEDIES:

  1. THE JERK (Dir. Carl Reiner, 1979)

  2. THE MAN WITH TWO BRAINS (Dir. Carl Reiner, 1983)

  3. ALL OF ME (Dir. Carl Reiner, 1984) 

  4. DEAD MEN DON'T WEAR PLAID (Dir. Carl Reiner, 1982)

  5. ROXANNE (Dir. Fred Schepisi, 1987)

  6. PLANES, TRAINS, & AUTOMOBILES (Dir. John Hughes,    1987)

  7. L.A. STORY (Dir. Mick Jackson, 1990)

  8. BOWFINGER (Dir. Frank Oz, 1999)

  9. PARENTHOOD (Dir. Ron Howard, 1989)

10. LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS (Dir. Frank Oz, 1986): Just a cameo, but his song "Dentist" steals the whole show.

SPILLOVER: 

11. ¡THREE AMIGOS! (Dir. John Landis, 1986)

12. THE LONELY GUY (Dir. Arthur Hiller, 1984)

13. MY BLUE HEAVEN (Dir. Herbert Ross, 1990) 

14. LEAP OF FAITH (Dir. Richard Pearce 1992)

15. DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS (Dir. Frank Oz, 1988)

5 BAD STEVE MARTIN MOVIES:

 1. MIXED NUTS (Dir. Nora Ephron, 1994)

 2. SGT. BILKO (Dir. Jonathan Lynn,1996)

 3. THE OUT-OF-TOWNERS (Dir. Sam Weisman, 1999)

 4. LOONEY TUNES - BACK IN ACTION (Dir. Joe Dante, 2003) 

 5. SGT. PEPPER'S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND (Dir. Michael Schultz, 1978): Just a cameo but still!

5 WORTHWHILE NON COMEDIC STEVE MARTIN MOVIES:

 1. PENNIES FROM HEAVEN (Dir. Herbert Ross, 1981)

 2. THE SPANISH PRISONER (Dir. David Mamet, 1997)

 3. NOVOCAINE (Dir. David Atkins, 2001)

 4. GRAND CANYON (Dir. Lawrence Kasdan, 1991)

 5. AND THE BAND PLAYED ON (Dir. Roger Spottiswood, 1993) (HBO telefilm)

We haven't given up on you Steve - we're all hoping you can do some good with SHOPGIRL (now in post production) and that you will prove us wrong on the PINK PANTHER deal.

We all loved when in your only bearded role as a schlock movie producer in Lawrence Kasdan's GRAND CANYON you said to Kevin Kline: "That's part of your problem: you haven't seen enough movies. All of life's riddles are answered in the movies." 

And if you don't agree with that or any of this, well EXCUSE ME!!!!

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