Leonard Maltin (Maltin's Movie Guide)

<v Speaker 1>How you doing out there?
<v Speaker 2>It's me Tiggert, I am Duc Wayne Duck. It's me
<v Speaker 2>Bunkers keep bobcat.
<v Speaker 1>All right, y'all, did it great?
<v Speaker 2>Your favorite firefly you desire? Hold the old knock guy.
<v Speaker 2>My name is Jim Cummings and welcome to tuned In.
<v Speaker 3>All right, Welcome back, everybody to another episode of Tuned
<v Speaker 3>In with Jim Cummings.
<v Speaker 2>Today.
<v Speaker 3>I'm joined as always Jim. How are you doing, sir?
<v Speaker 2>It's another day in paradise. Pl I'm proud to be here.
<v Speaker 3>And today we have a very special guest, Leonard Moulton,
<v Speaker 3>a very decorated film critic, film historian, among novelists, writer,
<v Speaker 3>I mean, the list goes on. Thank you so much
<v Speaker 3>for joining us. How are you doing today?
<v Speaker 1>I'm doing fine. I'm sitting here with but I greatly admire.
<v Speaker 2>Oh you stole my line.
<v Speaker 1>I'm happy to be here.
<v Speaker 2>Oh amen, Well, we're glad to be very happy that
<v Speaker 2>you're here. Truly, truly, I mean, you've been a voice
<v Speaker 2>of reason out there when it comes to uh, you know,
<v Speaker 2>stay away from this one. Don't miss this one. I
<v Speaker 2>was like, oh, you know, if he likes it, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>let's go see that I'm serious, you know, I think
<v Speaker 2>it's a First of all, you have the coolest job
<v Speaker 2>in the world. I thought, because I remember coming up
<v Speaker 2>as a kid and and you know, somebody would say,
<v Speaker 2>well this or that, whether movie critics say, well, well
<v Speaker 2>wait a minute, what do you mean to move crid. Well,
<v Speaker 2>you know, they'll let you know if if it was
<v Speaker 2>this or that, if it was good, and all I
<v Speaker 2>could think of when I when it first hit me,
<v Speaker 2>maybe I was like ten or so. So you get
<v Speaker 2>paid to go to and it just I couldn't couldn't
<v Speaker 2>put it my head around it.
<v Speaker 1>I see them, so you don't have to.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, well yeah, well that's true. Yeah, that's true. But
<v Speaker 2>but then it balances out with the good stuff.
<v Speaker 1>Well of course we'll have to. All it takes is
<v Speaker 1>one good movie every now and then. Yeah, one solidly
<v Speaker 1>good movie. Brighton's my outlook on life and uh oh
<v Speaker 1>interest does you know? Does what it's supposed to do.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, that's true.
<v Speaker 1>Went to see Twisters, you know, oh when it opened,
<v Speaker 1>just before it opened two weeks ago. It was just
<v Speaker 1>what I hoped it would be. You know, it's a
<v Speaker 1>it's a disaster movie. Yes, and uh, as all the
<v Speaker 1>earmarks of a disaster mode. Okay, all the ingredients, amped up,
<v Speaker 1>special effects and sound. Sure, oh god, yeah, you can
<v Speaker 1>forget about it since you leave the theater, but while
<v Speaker 1>you're there. While you're there, you have a good time.
<v Speaker 2>Hell of a movie. Yeah yeah, Well I call those
<v Speaker 2>candy bar movies. They're they're good while you're while you're
<v Speaker 2>chewing on them, but they're not all that nutritious.
<v Speaker 1>No, exactly like fast food in general.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, that's so true. Boy. So I you know,
<v Speaker 2>it's tempting to I don't want to ask this right away,
<v Speaker 2>but you know, in a historical way, what what would
<v Speaker 2>be like the top three movies that they made? That
<v Speaker 2>movie and then every movie that came after it was
<v Speaker 2>either tainted or enhanced or influenced because some of them.
<v Speaker 1>There are movies that are game changers.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. Yeah, that's a good way to.
<v Speaker 1>Put it, that they have that kind of influence. Yes,
<v Speaker 1>they don't come along very often.
<v Speaker 2>No, I wouldn't think not.
<v Speaker 1>Well, I mean, by nature, just to pick one two
<v Speaker 1>thousand and one of Space Odyssey, Oh boy, family who bricks?
<v Speaker 1>That was a game changer, yes, because visual effects didn't
<v Speaker 1>really amount to much before that.
<v Speaker 2>Right, and they were kind of hokey. Yeah, they were
<v Speaker 2>all Jason and the Argonauts.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, well, oh yeah, well that's right, Harry.
<v Speaker 2>Harry hows it. That's a classic in his.
<v Speaker 1>Own right stuff. But two thousand and one of Space
<v Speaker 1>Odyssey was yeah, well, in the in the parlance of
<v Speaker 1>the day, it was a trip.
<v Speaker 2>Uh yeah, yeah, you know, that's for sure.
<v Speaker 1>And it remains a trip, you know. I think it
<v Speaker 1>holds up actually remarkably well. It was an odd oddity
<v Speaker 1>at the time came out and remains unique. There's nothing
<v Speaker 1>else quite like it. No, And Kubrick was apparently that
<v Speaker 1>way overall as a filmmaker. He didn't want to repeat
<v Speaker 1>himself and he never did. He did something different.
<v Speaker 2>Every time out of Nashville, wasn't that No, that's Robert Altman, Robertman.
<v Speaker 1>That's another mind, Yeah, Altman. When Robert Alman came along,
<v Speaker 1>when Mash came out in nineteen seventy I believe sixty
<v Speaker 1>nine or seventy.
<v Speaker 2>And that being the movie, by the way, not the
<v Speaker 2>TV show.
<v Speaker 1>Well exactly, it's a movie that inspired the TV When
<v Speaker 1>that when that film came out, that was a game
<v Speaker 1>change that sort of set stage for the seventies, and
<v Speaker 1>you talk to any young filmmaker, almost almost any young filmmaker,
<v Speaker 1>they cite the films of that decade as their inspiration. Really,
<v Speaker 1>the films of hal Ashby, the films of Robert Altman,
<v Speaker 1>the films of Well Francis Coppola. It was the decade
<v Speaker 1>when Spielberg and Lucas came to the four the forefront
<v Speaker 1>of the movie world. So much creativity, so much originality.
<v Speaker 1>If you're going to pick role models, pick them from
<v Speaker 1>that period, you do.
<v Speaker 2>Well, yeah, yeah, that's true, isn't it.
<v Speaker 1>Boy?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, nothing but iconic movies. I mean a lot of
<v Speaker 2>and a lot of Jaws.
<v Speaker 1>A lot of Draws too, but there's always you know.
<v Speaker 2>Well, I got to take them bad with you nuts
<v Speaker 2>so good? Yeah, with the nuts anyway? Yeah, wow, jeesu
<v Speaker 2>o man.
<v Speaker 1>So if you had to, Charlie McCarthy said, oh, short,
<v Speaker 1>I think you're so. I guess Bergen really said it,
<v Speaker 1>but Charlie said it. You got to take the bad
<v Speaker 1>with the lousy.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, wow, that's true. And even though he was and
<v Speaker 2>you could see his lips moving all the time, that
<v Speaker 2>which drove me nuts. And because I wanted to be
<v Speaker 2>Paul Winchell inspired me to do this too, restless to
<v Speaker 2>be a ventriloquist. Well who didn't, and it just drove
<v Speaker 2>me crazy, just sit there and pretended, how are you
<v Speaker 2>doing there? Learn all pended it comes out in.
<v Speaker 1>And I think I bought a book on how to
<v Speaker 1>be a ventral question.
<v Speaker 2>Me too, I bought that book. Yep, I know that book.
<v Speaker 1>And then you know who I got to know a
<v Speaker 1>little bit later on Jimmy Nelson, Oh farful, farful and
<v Speaker 1>any day and.
<v Speaker 2>Lesley makes the very best. Wow.
<v Speaker 1>He was a lovely guy. Yeah, he was a lovely guy.
<v Speaker 1>Although my daughter will never forgive me, apparently for taking
<v Speaker 1>her or dragging her as the case, maybe to a
<v Speaker 1>ventriloquist convention in Las Vegas, where I got to present
<v Speaker 1>Jimmie Nelson with with like a lifetime and get my
<v Speaker 1>picture taken with Danny o Dayan Farfel.
<v Speaker 2>Oh man ah.
<v Speaker 1>Everywhere we went there were people in their dummies.
<v Speaker 2>Oh yeah, she's still scarred to this day, still bears
<v Speaker 2>the scars. Oh my god. Well that's not a bad
<v Speaker 2>way to go.
<v Speaker 1>I came to appreciate Edgar Berghen later as I got older,
<v Speaker 1>and I realized forget the lips movie, which is hard
<v Speaker 1>to do. But he was a great comedy writer. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>he was writing a lot of that material and it
<v Speaker 1>was funny.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, you don't think about that day.
<v Speaker 1>You know. And I remember seeing him. He had a
<v Speaker 1>kind of a little final surge at the end of
<v Speaker 1>his life, towards the very end of his life, and
<v Speaker 1>they booked him in Vegas for the first time. I
<v Speaker 1>don't know if you'd ever played there before. And some
<v Speaker 1>people are saying, really, edgar Berg, I don't know how
<v Speaker 1>old he was then.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, he was no screen chicken.
<v Speaker 1>But he was re energized. And I saw him just
<v Speaker 1>before he went to Vegas for that final gig with
<v Speaker 1>Johnny Carson, and he killed. He came out, he was great, wonderful.
<v Speaker 1>And his daughter Candace has has talked about this too,
<v Speaker 1>and so that you know, that's kind of sweet thinking
<v Speaker 1>about it. But yeah, when you're a kid.
<v Speaker 2>Just like going out with a band, see your lips moving, yeah, deal,
<v Speaker 2>right right right? Yeah? Oh god, well they could see
<v Speaker 2>my lips move. But but I had to ask you
<v Speaker 2>about because I'm an animation guy and I'm just curious
<v Speaker 2>what your top No, I won't bug you about the
<v Speaker 2>top ten but maybe the top five or three of
<v Speaker 2>the animated movies of Oh God, oh here we go.
<v Speaker 1>Well, that's that's troublesome.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, good? And was I in it? Okay, there are
<v Speaker 2>a little caveat you can limit that'll in fact, that'll
<v Speaker 2>kind of down significantly, just the ones that I was in. Okay,
<v Speaker 2>go oh no, I'm just kidding. I mean, it's how
<v Speaker 2>do you do it?
<v Speaker 1>I can't. I can't do it because they're all segmented
<v Speaker 1>to me in different ways. I don't think of vintage
<v Speaker 1>Disney in the same way I think of a second
<v Speaker 1>Coming of Disney, you know, the starting with a little Mermaid. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>that's that's another Yeah, another bridge, another kind of Disney
<v Speaker 1>in my mind, not better or worse, just different.
<v Speaker 2>What would you say was the disembarkation point from one
<v Speaker 2>to the next, Well, there.
<v Speaker 1>Was a sallow period there, you know.
<v Speaker 2>Oh okay, black cauldron or something.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. Is that fair? Yeah, that's fair. They all say it. Ever,
<v Speaker 1>when it worked on it, you know, you know, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>they went through a little dark period.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>And if you if anyone listening to us hasn't seen
<v Speaker 1>the documentary Waking Sleeping Beauty by Don Han, oh yes,
<v Speaker 1>that's a must see. It goes through that period very uncomfortable,
<v Speaker 1>very difficult time because the older animators were retiring, yes right, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>and and and or dying off in some cases, and
<v Speaker 1>they weren't being replaced, not not right away. But there
<v Speaker 1>was this young contingent, most of them students at cal
<v Speaker 1>Arts who under well, yeah, Tim Burton, Tim Burton, you know,
<v Speaker 1>John Lassiter, all sorts of people who were just waiting
<v Speaker 1>for somebody to say, go do your thing or you know,
<v Speaker 1>merge your thing with our thing and create a new
<v Speaker 1>generation of a new generation of Disney. And and I
<v Speaker 1>lived through all that, and my daughter Jesse lived through
<v Speaker 1>all that too.
<v Speaker 2>Oh yeah.
<v Speaker 1>And so we still have a great fondness for for
<v Speaker 1>a lot of those films, and and then the coming
<v Speaker 1>of Pixar, you know, another whole new world. And then
<v Speaker 1>then then the whole explosion Sony in his works and
<v Speaker 1>dream Works animation.
<v Speaker 2>Yes, definitely dream Works. Oh gosh, when I was a kid,
<v Speaker 2>when I set to Disney.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, exactly, Jeffrey Katzenberg, right, it was. It was an
<v Speaker 1>odd period too, because suddenly animation was big business.
<v Speaker 2>Mm hmm.
<v Speaker 1>And Walt didn't he had that had that business all
<v Speaker 1>to himself for decades.
<v Speaker 2>From the beginning.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I mean Paramount, the unexpected, enormous successive Snow White
<v Speaker 1>and the Seven Dwarfs. Nobody saw that coming. Nobody saw
<v Speaker 1>the opposite. They thought this is going to be, you know,
<v Speaker 1>a white elephant, no pun intended.
<v Speaker 2>But you're thinking of dumb boat.
<v Speaker 1>When it became instead a smash hit around the globe.
<v Speaker 2>And it was during its time. Yes, it didn't have to.
<v Speaker 1>Yes. Then Paramount said to Max Schleischer, because Para distributed
<v Speaker 1>all the Fleischer cartoon shorts, the Popeye, Popeye, Yeah, Betty
<v Speaker 1>Boop and all that, they said, all right, you feel
<v Speaker 1>you make one of these now. So they were ordered
<v Speaker 1>to make Gulliver's Travels and which you know, it's a
<v Speaker 1>pretty good film, but yeah, I quite have it. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>mister bug goes to town.
<v Speaker 2>It's not bad kind of yeah.
<v Speaker 1>And then after that everyone gave up. They said, oh,
<v Speaker 1>that's Walt Disney's thing. Can't we can't do that. And
<v Speaker 1>so through the forties and fifties, except for an occasional import, hm,
<v Speaker 1>Walt Disney had that cornered. He had that market cornered.
<v Speaker 1>And then when again with the occasional exception. Then Ralph
<v Speaker 1>Bakshi came along.
<v Speaker 2>That's a whole new world there, you know.
<v Speaker 1>Fritz the Cat. And then yeah, I think his best
<v Speaker 1>film Heavy Traffic.
<v Speaker 2>Uh huh the Traffic was that with Brad Pitt was
<v Speaker 2>in that one.
<v Speaker 1>Or no, no, that's cool World, Cool World. That's a
<v Speaker 1>terrible movie.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, good, terrible movie.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, okay, id I was working at Paramount on Entertainment
<v Speaker 1>Tonight at the time, and they had a screening on
<v Speaker 1>the lot in one of the screening rooms. I sit
<v Speaker 1>through the credits. I don't leave the movie until I've
<v Speaker 1>been threatened with civil and criminal prosecution. That's when I
<v Speaker 1>leave the movie. It's over right. I was spring loaded
<v Speaker 1>out of my seat. I couldn't wait to get out
<v Speaker 1>of that room. I couldn't wait to get out. Oh cool,
<v Speaker 1>Yeah it was that Nobody, Nobody, that's a thousand you know.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, I have a I have a question for you,
<v Speaker 3>kind of a follow up to Jim's question. You know,
<v Speaker 3>he asked if you had five or three or five,
<v Speaker 3>you know, top films, top animation films. I'm going to
<v Speaker 3>ask you, do you have an all time favorite film?
<v Speaker 3>And then it's kind of a two part question. When
<v Speaker 3>you're reviewing or critiquing a movie, do you feel like
<v Speaker 3>there's any personal bias or does that ever creep in
<v Speaker 3>into your analysis of a film.
<v Speaker 1>There's bias because I'm biased every you know, like everybody
<v Speaker 1>you know, I have my likes and dislikes, my prejudices,
<v Speaker 1>my my fault face.
<v Speaker 3>I guess what I really mean is, is there is
<v Speaker 3>there any effort to keep that at bay or does it?
<v Speaker 3>Is it just part of the job.
<v Speaker 1>It's part of the job, and part of the job
<v Speaker 1>of the reader or listener if they want to give
<v Speaker 1>any credence to what I say, is to know what
<v Speaker 1>my likes and dislikes tend to be. So like I
<v Speaker 1>can't watch grizzly horror films. I cannot watch horror films,
<v Speaker 1>can't and won't. So if I say something about one
<v Speaker 1>of them, if I chance to see one, or there
<v Speaker 1>was a period when I was forced to see some
<v Speaker 1>of them, then they know that I have that bias.
<v Speaker 1>And you have to know the critic you're watching or
<v Speaker 1>listening to or reading, then you know, pay no attention
<v Speaker 1>to them. He doesn't like horror films, you know. So
<v Speaker 1>that's the way it goes. There's no objectivity. I just
<v Speaker 1>I am who I am, and if you tend to
<v Speaker 1>agree with me. But when people say they like my
<v Speaker 1>reviews means they tend to agree with my review.
<v Speaker 2>Yes, that there's no doubt about that.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. In other words, yeah, you were on the money
<v Speaker 2>with that Godfather. It seemed to work out for them.
<v Speaker 1>And it's it's it's all a matter of opinion, Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>it is. There's no right and wrong there, right, I mean.
<v Speaker 2>But there's a level of being informed.
<v Speaker 1>And yes and formed and uninformed.
<v Speaker 2>Yes, exactly right and uh and and it's nice I
<v Speaker 2>always have enjoyed over the years when when you would
<v Speaker 2>point something out that you'll say, well, there was a
<v Speaker 2>capra esque quality to this, you know, to this production,
<v Speaker 2>and it pays homage to you know, and and you
<v Speaker 2>would pick up on those things and that that's nice
<v Speaker 2>to me. I like that. We're talking about Princess and
<v Speaker 2>the froug at the end of of Anika and and
<v Speaker 2>uh Oprah singing her song almost oh she walks out,
<v Speaker 2>and it was an homage to singing in the rain.
<v Speaker 2>I guess the way they damp and damp and dap
<v Speaker 2>damp a damp and they slammed the door. And that
<v Speaker 2>was from a Debbie Reynolds movie that it was. It
<v Speaker 2>was a parody of that, and I thought, that's the coolest.
<v Speaker 2>I love stuff like that. Yeah, you know Easter eggs.
<v Speaker 2>I guess are those called? Yeah, I would think, and uh,
<v Speaker 2>I just you know. And and your critiques have always
<v Speaker 2>been revealed, they've been informative.
<v Speaker 1>Well, I think to be a good critic, you first off,
<v Speaker 1>you have to have a passion love oh yeah from movies.
<v Speaker 1>But you also ought to have knowledge. You also ought to.
<v Speaker 2>Be well schooled, you know what you're talking about?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, and not to recognize something like an homage to yeah,
<v Speaker 1>Frank Kappra or whoever, is to reveal your ignorance or
<v Speaker 1>the shallowness of your experience. Experience. And I teach a
<v Speaker 1>class at USC. I've been doing it twenty six years now.
<v Speaker 1>We have about three hundred students and they're from all
<v Speaker 1>over the university. They're not just film aspiring filmmakers. I
<v Speaker 1>have water polo players and economics majors and English majors
<v Speaker 1>and future filmmakers as well. And we watch new movies
<v Speaker 1>and we have guests there afterwards from the movie director producer, writer,
<v Speaker 1>composer's pretty in depth. Then, yeah, and so I'm never
<v Speaker 1>bored because I meet new people every week and yeah,
<v Speaker 1>that's great asking about you know, what they do and
<v Speaker 1>how they went went about it. And then the next
<v Speaker 1>week we begin with a discussing of the previous week's movie,
<v Speaker 1>and I ask for show of hands, how many people
<v Speaker 1>liked it, how many people didn't like it? How many
<v Speaker 1>people you know so so on it? And it's rare
<v Speaker 1>that there's a unanimity of opinion.
<v Speaker 2>It happens, I would imagine.
<v Speaker 1>It happens, but there's all sorts of feelings. And does
<v Speaker 1>that make you right and her wrong? No?
<v Speaker 2>No, there is no right and wrong.
<v Speaker 1>Who you are and how where you've lived, how you've
<v Speaker 1>grown up, how you've been weird. It's that old fashioned term.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, that is.
<v Speaker 1>What you've experienced in life, what you haven't experienced yet
<v Speaker 1>in life? Has there been a death in your family?
<v Speaker 1>Has you know? Did you move around a lot? All
<v Speaker 1>these different things make you an individual, are going to
<v Speaker 1>affect how you respond to this movie, including what other
<v Speaker 1>movies have you seen?
<v Speaker 2>M hm, that's so true, that's so true. Everything you
<v Speaker 2>see through your own filter. Yeah, you know. That's that's
<v Speaker 2>just the way it is, which it should be. That's
<v Speaker 2>you know, that's probably why I like gangster movies. I'm
<v Speaker 2>from Youngstown, so yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
<v Speaker 1>It's that close to Steubenville.
<v Speaker 2>Uh, not too far. That's where my grandmother was from.
<v Speaker 2>It's not too far.
<v Speaker 1>Dean Martin's, Yes, Dean Martin's from there. And apparently there
<v Speaker 1>was a strong undercurrent.
<v Speaker 2>Of of is this a gangster joke?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah? Okay, good, no joke.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, no, no, it was not.
<v Speaker 1>Really. When they were building Las Vegas, they recruited a
<v Speaker 1>lot of the croupiers from Stupinville. Really, if I remember correct,
<v Speaker 1>youngstownsh's great biography of Dean Martin.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, well, you know, Youngstown was very very much. In fact,
<v Speaker 2>it made it into one of my favorite Richard Pryor bits.
<v Speaker 2>Uh uh when he was live on the Sunset Strip
<v Speaker 2>when he was wearing the red outfit, he said he
<v Speaker 2>had this bit about uh now, I didn't know shit
<v Speaker 2>about the mafia until I played Youngstown, Ohio, and I
<v Speaker 2>played a little joint down there, and there was a
<v Speaker 2>strip club and they weren't gonna pay me in they go,
<v Speaker 2>They're gonna pay my ass and he gets back there. Now,
<v Speaker 2>usually a black guy was into a into a place,
<v Speaker 2>back back room like that, whip out the gun and goes,
<v Speaker 2>it's not give me my money and give me my money.
<v Speaker 2>Got damn right right now, he said. White guys usually
<v Speaker 2>shit they pants. These baskets could not stop laughing. Oh Rich,
<v Speaker 2>come back, come on, do the gun. Get calm on,
<v Speaker 2>come on, come in, little Rich. Ain't do the gun.
<v Speaker 2>Do the gun. And I swear to God, I know
<v Speaker 2>these guys. I know the actual guys he was talking about. So, uh,
<v Speaker 2>I don't know where that came from it, but it
<v Speaker 2>yanked it out of my Youngstown past. But uh, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>it was, Uh it was. It was interesting stuff. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>Stubenville and yeah it's I can't believe you were aware
<v Speaker 2>that Youngstown was like that.
<v Speaker 1>I was just guessing.
<v Speaker 2>Oh no, it was a very good guess. I mean, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>that was the hell of a guess. My cousins are
<v Speaker 2>all sitting back there going, yeah, he's right. It's pretty pretty,
<v Speaker 2>you know, but it's still a great place to be from.
<v Speaker 2>But you have to leave. Ye.
<v Speaker 3>Now, you were you were published at a very young age,
<v Speaker 3>and so did you know that you wanted to be
<v Speaker 3>a critic that young, or is it something you want
<v Speaker 3>to be a critic?
<v Speaker 1>You wanted to be a historian. I wanted to write
<v Speaker 1>about movie history, in Hollywood history, and that's that's what
<v Speaker 1>I did. As an adolescent. I started reading up, you know,
<v Speaker 1>about silent movies, Charlie Chaplin, Buster, Keaton, Laurel and Hardy,
<v Speaker 1>the ones that I so drew me into that that era,
<v Speaker 1>in that world. And the more I saw, the more
<v Speaker 1>I wanted to see, and the more I read, the
<v Speaker 1>more I want to learn. And I was lucky because
<v Speaker 1>I grew up born in Manhattan. Age four, my family
<v Speaker 1>moved to the suburbs Teeneck, New Jersey, first place of
<v Speaker 1>Ricky Nelson.
<v Speaker 2>Wow, and you were easy to travel.
<v Speaker 1>But we were just five miles over the George Washington Bridge,
<v Speaker 1>so it was an easy trip into the city. And
<v Speaker 1>then when I was about twelve, my parents let me
<v Speaker 1>go by myself or with a friend on saturdays, you know,
<v Speaker 1>during school, school breaks and all that. I spent a
<v Speaker 1>lot of time play hooky. Yeah with that bridge, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>And so I had access to the great revival theaters
<v Speaker 1>of that era and the museuma Modern Art which then
<v Speaker 1>as now as a show in a constant repertoire of
<v Speaker 1>classic films. So it was great, great place to be.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. Well, plus I kind of liked the old theaters also.
<v Speaker 1>Well, sure, you know they grew up. The New Yorker
<v Speaker 1>Theater at Broadway in eighty eighth Street was my home
<v Speaker 1>away from home, and most weekends there was a double
<v Speaker 1>bills of Mark's Brothers movie in a W. C. Fields movie.
<v Speaker 1>Oh wow, it doesn't get much better than that.
<v Speaker 2>That's as good as it gets, right there, Mark's Brothers
<v Speaker 2>and W. C. Fields. Wow, that's amazing. I used to
<v Speaker 2>think they would always come on at Saturday afternoons and
<v Speaker 2>they would just sit there and I was just glued.
<v Speaker 2>And I thought they were new because everything was black,
<v Speaker 2>right anyway, new to you, they were new to me, Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>And that was just I thought. I discovered gold, you know,
<v Speaker 2>with Stanton Ollie and my grandfather used to do bad
<v Speaker 2>impressions of of you know, and it was this good stuff.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>They really don't make them like that anymore, they literally
<v Speaker 2>do not.
<v Speaker 1>I'm thinking about Vaudeville too. Larry Gelbart, the great comedy writer, said,
<v Speaker 1>when Vaudeville died, television was the box they buried it
<v Speaker 1>in So when you and I were growing up, all
<v Speaker 1>these variety shows, Oh yeah.
<v Speaker 2>We're on from Ed Sullivan on down the line, Oh yeah, Jackie.
<v Speaker 1>And you got to see all these wonderful performers, and
<v Speaker 1>one of them wound up at Disney. Gene Sheldon. We
<v Speaker 1>played the mute Bernardo in Zorro and had that great
<v Speaker 1>routine with the banjo. Oh where his finger will get
<v Speaker 1>stuck in the Oh the pantomime routine just great.
<v Speaker 2>Oh man, I didn't know it.
<v Speaker 1>I guess the again.
<v Speaker 2>That was one of my favorite shows. Yeah, and I
<v Speaker 2>thought it was the greatest thing in the world. And
<v Speaker 2>then just like maybe eight ten years ago, I saw
<v Speaker 2>it and the whole thing it looked like it looked
<v Speaker 2>like somebody did it in their backyard. You know. There
<v Speaker 2>was a potted plant that was you know, you walk
<v Speaker 2>by and it doesn't sound it sounds like crinkling paper
<v Speaker 2>because it was, you know, and and you just realized
<v Speaker 2>that back then you just were so forgiving. Yes, you
<v Speaker 2>know your We weren't sophisticated.
<v Speaker 1>We were just please entertain me. I still love that show.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, me too. And do you remember Swamp Fox? Yes, okay, yes,
<v Speaker 2>I think I asked you. Now, I'm gonna ask you
<v Speaker 2>one question and uh, and it's about animation. And I'm
<v Speaker 2>the only person in the world that remembers this show.
<v Speaker 2>I kid you not, because I ask it at conventions. Again,
<v Speaker 2>I do a lot of you know, you're doing these
<v Speaker 2>comic cons and then notebook you have, they ask you
<v Speaker 2>the same eight questions and and so I asked the audience,
<v Speaker 2>I go, okay, now, uh, does anybody remember who amoson
<v Speaker 2>Andy were? And then every now and then someone will say.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, and you're going to ask about Calvin and the Colonel.
<v Speaker 2>And I'm going to ask you about Kevin and the Colonel. Yes,
<v Speaker 2>Leonard mout ladies and gentlemen. That's why he's Leonard Malton.
<v Speaker 2>And that's why we're all sitting listening to Lennon Maul,
<v Speaker 2>Calvin goose bumps again, Damn.
<v Speaker 1>Freeman Goslin and Charles Carrell who created Amos and Andy
<v Speaker 1>and portrayed them on radio for gosh twenty five years.
<v Speaker 2>And it was really hard to look at when he
<v Speaker 2>was in blackface.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, remember that one was Yeah, they only did it
<v Speaker 1>once or twice.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, And it was hard to look at.
<v Speaker 1>Whereas the actors they hired for the TV show were great.
<v Speaker 1>Oh yeah, Spencer Williams and Tim Moore played Kingfish. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>there was a funny one.
<v Speaker 2>Well no, hold on no, but they good commissioned.
<v Speaker 1>Their last Tarah was an animated version of essentially they
<v Speaker 1>called it Amis Standing the Calvin and the Colonel, but
<v Speaker 1>it was the same setup with their Yes, yeah, that was.
<v Speaker 1>That was a very brief window of so called grown
<v Speaker 1>up animation or adult animation in prime time?
<v Speaker 2>Is that what that was?
<v Speaker 1>The Flintstones and the Bugs Bunny Show. Yeah, and a
<v Speaker 1>handful of others. Uh, the Jetsons then and Johnny Quest.
<v Speaker 2>Shirley Temple had a show back then.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, Shirley Temple's storybooks. But the animated shows were in
<v Speaker 1>prime time. Flintstones, that's what. If you haven't seen it,
<v Speaker 1>go to YouTube and look up the Winston cigarette commercials, Barney,
<v Speaker 1>these are great.
<v Speaker 2>These Winstead's a bonny passed me that lighter, you know,
<v Speaker 2>and the Flintstones are sitting there lighting up right. I
<v Speaker 2>like them filtered, fred I just you know, it's like wow,
<v Speaker 2>you know you see that now and it's whoa there
<v Speaker 2>was I think somebody one of them did a beer
<v Speaker 2>commercial too Ham's Beer. Maybe, yeah, I can't remember. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>but yeah, not anymore. No, no, not anymore. I'm so
<v Speaker 2>happy that you remember Calvin and the Colonel. I thought
<v Speaker 2>that was the coolest. Oh.
<v Speaker 1>I was a TV junkie when I was growing up. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>just me too. Couldn't take my eyes off the set. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>I even couldn't do this often when there was a
<v Speaker 1>movie that I hadn't been able to see. It's the
<v Speaker 1>New Yorker Theater that never seems to play revival theaters,
<v Speaker 1>but was on the Late Late Show at twenty five
<v Speaker 1>in the morning. I would it be a school night.
<v Speaker 1>I'd set my alarm and I'd wake up at two
<v Speaker 1>twenty five or two twenty and sneak out, sneak into
<v Speaker 1>the room. No, my parents knew I was doing this.
<v Speaker 1>Oh okay, but I had to keep the sound real low.
<v Speaker 1>Oh so I didn't wake up the household. And then
<v Speaker 1>I try to force myself back to sleep so I
<v Speaker 1>could go to school in the morning. But it's the
<v Speaker 1>only way I got to see some movies, and it
<v Speaker 1>was worth it.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I mean the access we have now to yeah, billions.
<v Speaker 2>Of Whole New World. Yeah yeah, yeah, Well that That's
<v Speaker 2>how it was for me. I learned all my stuff
<v Speaker 2>outside the classroom. Yeah, that's you know, monkey hour. They
<v Speaker 2>didn't teach in the Saint Columba. Yeah.
<v Speaker 3>When would you say in your career that you started
<v Speaker 3>getting like widespread I guess I want to say notoriety,
<v Speaker 3>but you already had notoriety, but like attention and kind
<v Speaker 3>of like the celebrity ism of being a film credit.
<v Speaker 3>You know, you've been featured and lampooned and a bunch
<v Speaker 3>of different series. Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>And uh, because my first book was published when I
<v Speaker 1>was eighteen. I was signed to do this book when
<v Speaker 1>I was seventeen.
<v Speaker 2>That's amazing.
<v Speaker 1>I had been publishing my own fanzine as we used
<v Speaker 1>to call them, just since I was thirteen, and each
<v Speaker 1>of those spheres I was reasonably successful, and some of
<v Speaker 1>my film books were pretty successful as books go. But
<v Speaker 1>that all pales comparison to the first Night It was
<v Speaker 1>on Entertainment Tonight in the spring of nineteen eighty two,
<v Speaker 1>comparing a spec of sand to the Mohave Desert. Oh boy,
<v Speaker 1>it's like my answering machine, which was then a real
<v Speaker 1>to real tape. Yeah, it was full relatives. I hadn't
<v Speaker 1>heard from years old friends people saw on TV last night. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>that's power of television.
<v Speaker 2>Way, that's amazing.
<v Speaker 1>And after I'd been on ET was on an upward
<v Speaker 1>curve finding itself, and they hired me unexpectedly, that was
<v Speaker 1>out of the blue. They'd seen me on someone had
<v Speaker 1>seen me on the Today Show where I was promoting
<v Speaker 1>a book I had written, and it was interviewed by
<v Speaker 1>Gene Shallatt and he and I had a very loose
<v Speaker 1>lively conversation, and somebody out here in La at Paramount
<v Speaker 1>Television saw it and called up the man they had
<v Speaker 1>just hired to save this fledgling show called Entertainment Tonight.
<v Speaker 1>The man they hired was the legendary newspaper editor in
<v Speaker 1>Jim Bellows. And they flew me out to do an audition,
<v Speaker 1>and they hired they they ran my audition tape on
<v Speaker 1>the air, not unlike yeah, yeah, and and then poof,
<v Speaker 1>you know, in one night we could be seen on
<v Speaker 1>a really good night, we be seen by eleven million people.
<v Speaker 2>Jeez, you know that's not bad.
<v Speaker 1>A book takes years to write. Yeah, and now I
<v Speaker 1>was doing not teaching few people, interviews and feature pieces
<v Speaker 1>and wow, next day is on the air, you know,
<v Speaker 1>and the day after that people are responding, whole new world.
<v Speaker 2>Wow.
<v Speaker 3>And you were on entertainment tonight for a how long
<v Speaker 3>thirty years? Thirty years?
<v Speaker 2>Thirty years?
<v Speaker 1>We stumbled into the job. No television. Well, I had
<v Speaker 1>television experience because I'd been on book promotion tours. So
<v Speaker 1>I go to a city a day and yeah, good
<v Speaker 1>morning Milwaukee, and right, yeah.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, that that kind of thing, but not on this level.
<v Speaker 1>And not talking to the camera, right, that's true. And
<v Speaker 1>writing my reviews to be heard, not read. Very different technique,
<v Speaker 1>different critter, yeah, different quitter altogether.
<v Speaker 3>Can you give us some insight in which way?
<v Speaker 1>Well, you know, if you're writing to be heard, you
<v Speaker 1>don't use parenthetical phrases.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, it makes sense.
<v Speaker 1>You have to be you know, straight direct. And uh.
<v Speaker 1>I think I got away with it because I was
<v Speaker 1>delivering my own copy.
<v Speaker 3>M hm.
<v Speaker 1>You know, so that's true.
<v Speaker 2>So that that was that was you knew what you
<v Speaker 2>were thinking?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, exactly. I was able to communicate that, I guess
<v Speaker 1>because they kept hiring me, except for the times they
<v Speaker 1>almost fired me. Hm. One week after my daughter was born, No,
<v Speaker 1>one week before my daughter was born. They said they
<v Speaker 1>were not going to pick up my option, and it
<v Speaker 1>came out of the blue. I'd had trouble. I went
<v Speaker 1>to five producers my first two years there, and each
<v Speaker 1>producer came on the show with a chip on their
<v Speaker 1>shoulder about the film critic. I wanted to work with
<v Speaker 1>their guy. I was not their guy. But I finally
<v Speaker 1>ingratiated myself with producer number two and producer number three,
<v Speaker 1>producer number four. It was a roller coaster.
<v Speaker 2>Rock you were getting practiced.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. I commuted from New York to LA for a
<v Speaker 1>year and a half. Ooh, because they didn't give me
<v Speaker 1>any sense of security or guarantee of how long the
<v Speaker 1>gig was going to last.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, so why would you?
<v Speaker 1>And they paid my way, you know, that's flights and
<v Speaker 1>hotels and rental cars. But then my wife, being a
<v Speaker 1>smart one, said this is no good. We're part too much.
<v Speaker 1>And we worked. We're used to being together all the time.
<v Speaker 1>I worked at home.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah a writer, sure, yeah.
<v Speaker 1>So she would come out with me every couple of trips,
<v Speaker 1>but not the same, not the same. So we moved
<v Speaker 1>temporarily in November of nineteen eighty three, and we're still here.
<v Speaker 2>Wow, you're temporarily still here?
<v Speaker 1>And our daughter Jesse is a native Angelino and so
<v Speaker 1>was her daughter Nice.
<v Speaker 3>And I have to ask you too. I saw that
<v Speaker 3>for some years you worked for Playboy, and what comes true?
<v Speaker 3>In what capacity was that?
<v Speaker 2>Was that?
<v Speaker 1>Well? They had had the same film critic for I
<v Speaker 1>think thirty years almost since the magazine started. And the
<v Speaker 1>gentleman who did that, I was having some health issues
<v Speaker 1>and was going to retire. And uh, the magazine was
<v Speaker 1>always headquartered in Chicago, That's where Hefner was from. I
<v Speaker 1>was from, And they asked Roger Ebert's opinion and he
<v Speaker 1>recommended me, which was a very generous thing to do.
<v Speaker 1>And uh, and they saw some of my writing and
<v Speaker 1>half liked it, and I signed on and I was
<v Speaker 1>there six years, six or seven years. No, no, no, I
<v Speaker 1>was reviewing, you know, mainstream movies, all right.
<v Speaker 3>And no, I'm assuming it was like articles in the magazine. Yeah, yeah, No.
<v Speaker 1>Admittance to the Grotto came along.
<v Speaker 3>Did you meet Half here?
<v Speaker 1>Though?
<v Speaker 2>Oh?
<v Speaker 1>Well, subsequ quick to that, my wife and I became
<v Speaker 1>friendly with Half and we went to screenings there on
<v Speaker 1>old movie Night. He used to show new movies on
<v Speaker 1>some show.
<v Speaker 2>You saw Chuck McCann there a lot, of course, good
<v Speaker 2>old Chuck, old buddy of mine.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, well I grew up with Chuck. Yeah, and then
<v Speaker 1>again as you know an adult out here, yes, indeed, yeah.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, he was. He was on the very first show
<v Speaker 2>that I ever did. He was. He was on it,
<v Speaker 2>and he was in Gummy Bears. He was in, he
<v Speaker 2>was in it. Seemed like he was in and out
<v Speaker 2>of any show that I was on for like twenty
<v Speaker 2>some years. And and he you know, we used to
<v Speaker 2>do Chuck McCann impressions. You know, I was telling Conway
<v Speaker 2>when I told him, I said, you know, when I
<v Speaker 2>invented comedy never mind, never mind?
<v Speaker 1>You know, Chuck was great.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, that's oh god, that's that's good. Yeah. I didn't
<v Speaker 2>mean to derail your story there, but I no know,
<v Speaker 2>it just occurred to me that you had to have
<v Speaker 2>run into Chuck. Of course, yeah, in the grotto or
<v Speaker 2>somewhere or wherever they Chuck was allowed in.
<v Speaker 1>Well, what was funny was when we started going to
<v Speaker 1>the Playboy Mansion for these screenings. It was not a bacchanal.
<v Speaker 1>It was regular Friday night ritual. And the regulars who
<v Speaker 1>were there were Chuck and his wife Betty and Robert
<v Speaker 1>Kulp and Mel Tormat and Ray Anthony and ah, you know.
<v Speaker 1>Sometimes sometimes there would be a playmate around, but mostly not.
<v Speaker 1>And it was a bunch of middle aged people enjoying
<v Speaker 1>the old movies together.
<v Speaker 2>Wow. Yeah, sounds like fun.
<v Speaker 1>It was, Yeah, it was. And he was the most
<v Speaker 1>gracious host. Mm hmmm, just just very kind and very generous.
<v Speaker 2>In his smoking jacket.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, exactly. We went to one Halloween party there and
<v Speaker 1>that was something of a buccanal Yeah. And there was
<v Speaker 1>a young woman painted silver head to toe. Yeah, she
<v Speaker 1>was absolute vodka a little signed yes, and we found
<v Speaker 1>half to say hello, and Alice said, my wife said,
<v Speaker 1>what do you do? What do you hear? As tonight?
<v Speaker 1>He fumbled in his smoking jackets found his pipe. Ah,
<v Speaker 1>you're half.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, well that's that's a pretty good gig.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>I bet that was a very good gig. Okay, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>I can't imagine. I was there. I was in this
<v Speaker 2>crazy movie for Mark Hamill, a long time ago comic
<v Speaker 2>book the movie, and there was there was a scene
<v Speaker 2>or two that was there, and uh we I was
<v Speaker 2>in it. Uh different people, Roger Rose of course, Mark. Anyway,
<v Speaker 2>we're all there and and we're just kind of milling about.
<v Speaker 2>And and it was a it was the Playboy mansion.
<v Speaker 2>It was a party. It was you know, all these
<v Speaker 2>girls were there, and and there's four girls were walking
<v Speaker 2>up and they were just mingling. And I had seen
<v Speaker 2>them earlier in the day and they were they were
<v Speaker 2>in costume, and and the one guy that I had
<v Speaker 2>spoken with her up she started talking to me, and
<v Speaker 2>I realized and it took I can't believe it took
<v Speaker 2>me a while, but she was absolutely stark naked. She
<v Speaker 2>was wearing a grin and body paint and and I said,
<v Speaker 2>and so I just hi. Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>So anyway, I was a challenge, nice party, right, I
<v Speaker 1>mean a challenge not to go.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. It was like, what are you two doing down there?
<v Speaker 2>What you know? What do you do? You just it's like, oh,
<v Speaker 2>my gosh, I have to look at the time. You know,
<v Speaker 2>you gotta go home and feed my kids or my
<v Speaker 2>dog or at least something. But what a what a scene.
<v Speaker 2>My gosh, Nothing like that anymore, is there. No, you can't.
<v Speaker 2>You can't explain it either, No, not really.
<v Speaker 1>We were lucky to get in on the tail end
<v Speaker 1>of it.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it's a nice thing to be able to say
<v Speaker 2>you did. Yeah, I can't imagine living like that. But
<v Speaker 2>you know what, more power to him.
<v Speaker 1>What the hell he made his own rules?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, he sure did. Yeah, kind of like you. Right,
<v Speaker 2>that's amazing.
<v Speaker 1>Well, I did follow my own path, but I didn't
<v Speaker 1>know where it was going to lead when I graduated.
<v Speaker 1>When I was hired to do my first book, which
<v Speaker 1>was the first movie guide, big paperback, it was eight
<v Speaker 1>thousand capsule film reviews. And the man who hired me
<v Speaker 1>to do it, who didn't dare tell how many eight thousand.
<v Speaker 2>A film reviews?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah?
<v Speaker 2>Are there eight thousand films?
<v Speaker 1>And many more than that? Wow? The last edition had
<v Speaker 1>sixteen thousand films.
<v Speaker 2>Geezz okay, all.
<v Speaker 3>Right, well just with those numbers, I just need how
<v Speaker 3>many movies a day do you watch?
<v Speaker 1>Oh? Well, in my prime, yes, I would watch three
<v Speaker 1>to five a week.
<v Speaker 2>Oh that's oh that's all. That's not bad.
<v Speaker 1>Sometimes i'd watch three in a day, but not every day.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, but uh, you went, there are allowed of notepads?
<v Speaker 1>Yes, when he hired me to do this book, and
<v Speaker 1>he didn't tell his bosses at New America Library that
<v Speaker 1>he was hiring a minor. I'm a high school senior
<v Speaker 1>to do this this book.
<v Speaker 2>Well, you must have been good and.
<v Speaker 1>He said, he said, what are you going to do now?
<v Speaker 1>I said, well, I've been accepted the n YU this fall.
<v Speaker 1>He said, what are you going to do that? Frisday,
<v Speaker 1>I just hired you, give you a job. I said, well,
<v Speaker 1>I'm supposed to go to college.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, you know in the rule books.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, exactly. I wasn't gonna I'm a rule follower, sure,
<v Speaker 1>you know, so not about rule. So I went to
<v Speaker 1>n y U and I majored in journalism, which was
<v Speaker 1>great because all all those courses were taught by working
<v Speaker 1>journalists in New York. Wonderful experiences. And then I worked
<v Speaker 1>on the daily newspaper, had a Monday to Thursday, very
<v Speaker 1>professional newspaper, and that was a great experience too. But
<v Speaker 1>when I finished with the four years, I know what
<v Speaker 1>was next. I'd already published a couple of other books.
<v Speaker 1>But you couldn't make a living just doing that. And
<v Speaker 1>so maybe I'll teach. Maybe I'll teach somewhere. And someone said,
<v Speaker 1>not with only a bachelor's degree. Oh yeah, we try
<v Speaker 1>to crack that market. You're going to find it's full
<v Speaker 1>of people with masters or even PhDs. So I was
<v Speaker 1>discouraged about that, and then things sort of fell into place.
<v Speaker 1>I started getting freelance writing gigs.
<v Speaker 2>Well, if you're good, you're good, and.
<v Speaker 1>Things sort of fell fell my way. And then I
<v Speaker 1>got very lucky and met the woman who I'm still
<v Speaker 1>married to after forty nine years, and she completed me.
<v Speaker 2>That's wonderful. Not everyone can say that.
<v Speaker 1>No, very our first marriage, both of us.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. Yeah, So it's working out.
<v Speaker 1>It's working out out. And now we have a wonderful
<v Speaker 1>two and a half year old granddaughter who lives with us.
<v Speaker 1>Our daughter and son in law live with us, and
<v Speaker 1>we have a very hectic but happy household.
<v Speaker 2>Oh that's good. Never a dull moment.
<v Speaker 1>No, no, no, no, that helps. She gets into everything. Yes,
<v Speaker 1>I've had to put a lot of stuff away and
<v Speaker 1>hide things from her inquiring hands, including a piece that
<v Speaker 1>I got to the DISNEYNA convention many years ago of
<v Speaker 1>Donald Duck swinging the gong from the beginning of the
<v Speaker 1>Mickey Mouse Club. Oh oh yes, remember he had a mallet.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>And then something would happen. Every day, something different would happen.
<v Speaker 1>Confetti would come out, or it would explode. There'd be different.
<v Speaker 2>Gags, nobody knows what's going to happen.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, remember anything can happen to this.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, the day is the day. Don't you read all
<v Speaker 2>about it, know about it and knows what's going to happen.
<v Speaker 2>By those the music just sticks with me. I mean
<v Speaker 2>it's just like like glue, you know, from from the
<v Speaker 2>early I guess I was there at the very very
<v Speaker 2>first Mickey Mouse Club, you know, with Cubby and Karen
<v Speaker 2>and Sharon Baird. Who Sharon Baird, You'll be incredibly interested
<v Speaker 2>to know, was the person inside of Lion or the Lion.
<v Speaker 1>Uh.
<v Speaker 2>She was the person inside the costume for Dumbo Circus.
<v Speaker 2>It was my first Disney job and Sharon Baird and
<v Speaker 2>I said, well, you mean Sharon Baird, like Bobby and
<v Speaker 2>Karen and Sharon and Annette and they go yep. And
<v Speaker 2>I thought, man, this is the coolest thing in the world,
<v Speaker 2>you know, because it was. It was kind of like
<v Speaker 2>a direct link, if you will, to Disneyana or whatever
<v Speaker 2>the world however you say.
<v Speaker 1>That, how kind of it was?
<v Speaker 2>Oh yeah, yeah, I guess it was. Yeah, I mean
<v Speaker 2>the very first I mean, be like meeting Zoro, you know,
<v Speaker 2>guy Madison Williams got Williams. Got william I have said that.
<v Speaker 1>Before Madison was wild Bill Hitcock. That's right, sponsored by
<v Speaker 1>Kellogg Sugar Pops shot.
<v Speaker 2>Shot with sugar exactly, Collog Sugar corn Pops.
<v Speaker 1>Sugar Pops are tops.
<v Speaker 2>Oh man, Yes, life is good. Now I'll be sitting
<v Speaker 2>at thinking of old terrible jingles on after these messages,
<v Speaker 2>we'll be right back. And that was Saturday morning. Oh
<v Speaker 2>my gosh.
<v Speaker 3>I have another question for you. What I'm not sure
<v Speaker 3>which was first, but when you get approached by the
<v Speaker 3>say like Gremlin's two or the Simpsons or Futurama to
<v Speaker 3>play yourself, what's your reaction to that? And what was
<v Speaker 3>your first time playing yourself? And something like that.
<v Speaker 1>Gremlins two came about for a very specific reason. I
<v Speaker 1>don't know. I'm not friendly with very many filmmakers, and
<v Speaker 1>I like to keep it that way because it's hard
<v Speaker 1>to critique critique. You know a friend, but I happened
<v Speaker 1>to know Joe Dante since we were teenagers and another
<v Speaker 1>Jersey boy, but not from the same part of the
<v Speaker 1>state as I. It was closer to Philadelphia, but we
<v Speaker 1>knew each other and he came out with another friend
<v Speaker 1>from NYU worked for Roger Corman and started editing trailers
<v Speaker 1>and got a chance to make a first feature film,
<v Speaker 1>And then he made a film called Gremlins for executive
<v Speaker 1>producer Steven Spielberg, and he filled Gremlins with in jokes
<v Speaker 1>for his film Buff Pals. I went to see it
<v Speaker 1>and I didn't really like it that much. I thought
<v Speaker 1>it was a little too mean, too mean spirited.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, the one the bad guy was he was a nasty.
<v Speaker 1>I said, what am I going to do? I have
<v Speaker 1>to review this now on national television show Entertainment tonight,
<v Speaker 1>I thought was on a newspaper staff. I we accused
<v Speaker 1>myself and passed it on to the other critic. You know,
<v Speaker 1>I was the only guy, and this was a big
<v Speaker 1>movie had to be covered. I said, well can I
<v Speaker 1>can I maybe, you know, hold back on my criticism.
<v Speaker 1>I said, no, I'm not being honest. All I've got
<v Speaker 1>going for me is my integrity. So I said what
<v Speaker 1>I thought about the film, and it caused a rift
<v Speaker 1>between us, which I understand. No one likes to be criticized,
<v Speaker 1>including me. But a couple of years went by and
<v Speaker 1>I got a call from Joe's producing partner, Mike Fanell
<v Speaker 1>and well, we're doing Gremlins too, and the Gremlins is
<v Speaker 1>gonna invade a TV network and go into the different
<v Speaker 1>studios and create mayhem. And we don't want there to
<v Speaker 1>be a movie review show, and you should be the
<v Speaker 1>critic on it. And I said, well, I think I
<v Speaker 1>owe you that much.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>So that's how I came to be on a stage
<v Speaker 1>at Warner Brothers on a set being directed by Joe
<v Speaker 1>and by that time they had a VHS set of
<v Speaker 1>the movie. He said, just use your own words, so
<v Speaker 1>he directed me to give a bad review to Gremlins
<v Speaker 1>again in Gremlins two. So the Gremlins came and throttled perfect.
<v Speaker 1>And this got me on two gum cards of the
<v Speaker 1>story of the movie, two tops. Oh, really collectible cards,
<v Speaker 1>which I've signed for many fans. That's great, that's my
<v Speaker 1>Biffer Immortal immortality.
<v Speaker 2>Wow, that's not bad gramblets too.
<v Speaker 1>Oh. So I've said no to a lot of others,
<v Speaker 1>not a lot of other a handful of other people.
<v Speaker 1>I said no, no, I don't want to do that.
<v Speaker 1>But I did play myself on oo Jack Horseman and
<v Speaker 1>I think when they gave out the Multi Awards, Oh,
<v Speaker 1>that's nice, and I had my name dropped by Marge
<v Speaker 1>Simpson and nice, Oh south Park is, Yes, South Park was.
<v Speaker 1>And someone asked me if I gave him permission for
<v Speaker 1>them to caricature me, and you know I said, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>the same permission Barbarus streisand gave in that episode where
<v Speaker 1>we tackled the Mecca streisand but but they they didn't
<v Speaker 1>disc make because I played the heroic characters. Yeah, that
<v Speaker 1>was pretty cool.
<v Speaker 2>I think you did better than Barbara.
<v Speaker 1>I would think, Yeah, I think so.
<v Speaker 2>I think, yeah, man, that's that's really when you kind
<v Speaker 2>of made it though well to me, very flattering. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>I the closest I ever came to that. I did
<v Speaker 2>the tas Mania Show and you know I was Taz
<v Speaker 2>and uh there was always a scene where Taz was
<v Speaker 2>ripping and roaring and all the animals would flee through
<v Speaker 2>through the UK ahead of him, you know, because tas
<v Speaker 2>me and the Devil was coming, and they drew me
<v Speaker 2>into the I was I was the last little guy
<v Speaker 2>going and I had long brown hair back then and
<v Speaker 2>it looks just and it unfortunately looks just like me.
<v Speaker 2>So so that was my one claim to almost.
<v Speaker 1>Well, I did get to play myself an episode of Freak. Oh,
<v Speaker 1>I found myself in a room. You were the only
<v Speaker 1>one who wasn't there.
<v Speaker 2>I was the only one that wasn't there.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, Mary slam Marsh, Tress McNeil. Yeah, I was sitting
<v Speaker 1>between Ed Asner and David Warner.
<v Speaker 2>Oh boy. Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>And the guest villain that week was Tim Curry and
<v Speaker 1>that was fun.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, that's for sure.
<v Speaker 1>It was really fun. Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>I just saw Tim Curry maybe a month or so ago.
<v Speaker 2>He's seen better days, but God bless him, he's still
<v Speaker 2>going God, you know. And Ed Asner he was I
<v Speaker 2>knew him rather well.
<v Speaker 3>He was.
<v Speaker 2>He was a nicer guy. And She's It's amazing, you know,
<v Speaker 2>some of these people that you know, you get to
<v Speaker 2>work with them occasionally when they're slumming, you know. All right,
<v Speaker 2>I'll do a cartoon, you know, and then then then
<v Speaker 2>I get to meet him, you know. Let's same way
<v Speaker 2>with Rita Moreno. You know, I got to meet her
<v Speaker 2>because of Bonkers the cartoon, and it was like, okay,
<v Speaker 2>this is great, you know. And if only we had
<v Speaker 2>cell phones then that could take pictures I would have.
<v Speaker 2>But yeah, that's just wonderful. I'm just glad that people
<v Speaker 2>like that go slumming every now and then and do
<v Speaker 2>animation because you get to hang with them. It's good stuff.
<v Speaker 2>I love it.
<v Speaker 3>So going forward, is there anything that you want to
<v Speaker 3>promote or publicize or what's next and new for Leonard Well?
<v Speaker 1>I have a website Leonard Malton dot com, which leads
<v Speaker 1>you to my weekly podcast which drops on Fridays. I
<v Speaker 1>host Malton on Movies. It's called of Course.
<v Speaker 2>Yes.
<v Speaker 1>Jesse is my co host and co producer, and we
<v Speaker 1>interview people, interview show business people as were just with
<v Speaker 1>you this afternoon, and we have fun. We get to
<v Speaker 1>meet and talk two wonderful, talented, interesting people, everyone from
<v Speaker 1>mel Brooks to Amy Adams to Wow al Pacino. Mm hm,
<v Speaker 1>that's awesome, you know, to some unsung heroes, people who
<v Speaker 1>aren't household names perhaps but've done and continue to do
<v Speaker 1>good things. And then we do a live stream every
<v Speaker 1>Sunday from our living room and it's it's astonishing how
<v Speaker 1>communications have changed. We sit there and get a live
<v Speaker 1>scroll of of comments and so hello from Abu Dhabi.
<v Speaker 1>We're greeting from Ireland. Really, no kidding, really and truly. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>So that's fun.
<v Speaker 2>That's ture is that's that's got to be fun.
<v Speaker 1>That's that keeps us pretty big.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, knowing that you're reaching out like that too.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, make sure to check out that Malton on movies,
<v Speaker 3>check out his podcast something.
<v Speaker 1>It's there to be had. I was very lucky I
<v Speaker 1>got to meet Dick Cook around the year two thousand HM.
<v Speaker 1>He was then the president Walt Disney Company, a thirty
<v Speaker 1>seven year.
<v Speaker 2>Better.
<v Speaker 1>And yes, he started as a jungle cruise operator, as
<v Speaker 1>many people did, and they graduated running to Mono Rail.
<v Speaker 2>Oh wound up being the graduated to Montoreel right, and.
<v Speaker 1>Then wound up being president of distribution for the company
<v Speaker 1>was called Buena Vista, a recent company, and then became
<v Speaker 1>the head honcho. And he seemed very approachable and he
<v Speaker 1>was I pitched him an idea of doing a series
<v Speaker 1>of DVDs from the vault and put him out uncut, uncensored,
<v Speaker 1>and we give special introductions to the stuff that might be,
<v Speaker 1>you know, politically incorrect or that you might want to
<v Speaker 1>discuss with your children before you let them see it,
<v Speaker 1>so that we could.
<v Speaker 3>Just do it.
<v Speaker 1>And we did thirty seven volumes of Walt Disney Treasures Wow,
<v Speaker 1>including the nine lines of all Fagobaka and Robert Logia
<v Speaker 1>came to our studio we're using at the time and
<v Speaker 1>brought his gun belt that Walt had let him take
<v Speaker 1>home as a souvenir. Oh wow, and he was great.
<v Speaker 2>That's great.
<v Speaker 1>We tried to get Leslie Nielsen for Swamp Fox but
<v Speaker 1>didn't work out.
<v Speaker 2>Oh gosh, that was I used to love that show.
<v Speaker 1>But we entered an awful lot of great people who
<v Speaker 1>are no longer here, and it's all the more valuable,
<v Speaker 1>you know, and precious to me that we got We
<v Speaker 1>got them on camera.
<v Speaker 2>No, yeah, that's right. Wow, you're a true historian. I know.
<v Speaker 2>That's just wonderful. You've got the stories. Huh, you've got them,
<v Speaker 2>got a lot of them, got a lot of them,
<v Speaker 2>a lot of good ones. Well, thanks for sharing with us.
<v Speaker 2>I just it's wonderful.
<v Speaker 1>Happy to be here.
<v Speaker 3>Yes, thank you very much.
<v Speaker 2>Leonard Malton. Ladies and gentlemen, the one and only except
<v Speaker 2>Noah substitutes. God bless you, sir. Thank you so much.
<v Speaker 1>Thank you for having me here.
<v Speaker 2>Oh my pleasure.
<v Speaker 3>Ladies and gentlemen, thank you again for watching another episode
<v Speaker 3>of Tuned In with Jim Cummings. Today. We were joined
<v Speaker 3>by Leonard Malton. Thank you so much for being here.
<v Speaker 3>Be sure to check out his podcast, Malton on Movies,
<v Speaker 3>and we will see you in the next one. And
<v Speaker 3>don't forget to like and subscribe. Almost forgot the most
<v Speaker 3>important part. Don't forget to like and subscribe. We're almost
<v Speaker 3>at eighty thousand subscribers and thank you so much, and
<v Speaker 3>a special thanks to all of our subscribers on Patreon.
<v Speaker 3>On Patreon you can find bonus content. You can find
<v Speaker 3>extended interviews and interviews that don't even air on YouTube
<v Speaker 3>or anywhere else. And of course, if you just want
<v Speaker 3>to listen to the podcast, you can listen anywhere where
<v Speaker 3>you get your podcasts. Jim, Leonard, thank you so much
<v Speaker 3>for today, and we will see you in the next one.
<v Speaker 2>All Ray