Sooooooo…we’re good with bigamy and illegitimacy then, right 20th Century-Fox’s Cinema Archives line of hard-to-find library and cult titles has released The Remarkable Mr. Pennypacker, the 1959 “comedy” from Fox, based on the Liam O’Brien Broadway play, and starring Clifton Webb, Dorothy McGuire, Charles Coburn, Jill St. John, Ron Ely, Ray Stricklyn, David Nelson, Dorothy Stickney, Larry Gates, and Richard Deacon. A bit of a head-scratcher when it comes to how this one passed the censors of the day, it’s a toss-up as to what’s most objectionable about this would-be comedy: its completely bogus central theme; its lethargic, sometimes even incomprehensible construction; its poor performances; or its paucity of laughs. Hmmm…let’s go with all four. It may not be anamorphic, but at least Fox letterboxed this for an okay (and extras-less) transfer.

The 1890s, Victorian America. Mr. Horace Pennypacker (Clifton Webb), progressive free thinker, iconoclast, suffragette-supporter, Darwinist, and the vice-president and manager of Pennypacker Prime Products (they’re meatpackers…please, insert your own joke here), oversees two sausage-making plants in Philadelphia and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. In Harrisburg, his wife, Emily (Dorothy McGuire), oversees his large brood of eight children, including his eldest, pretty Kate (Jill St. John), and young son Henry (David Nelson). Horace’s spinster sister, Aunt Jane (Dorothy Stickney), helps out at the house, while crotchety Grampa Pennypacker (Charles Coburn), the president of P.P.P., considers himself the true head of the household. Kate, enamored with strapping preacher-to-be Wilbur Fielding (Ron Ely), accepts Wilbur’s offer of marriage when news comes of his first parish assignment. However, “Ma” Pennypacker knows that Horace, free thinker that he is, still has to be at least notified of Kate’s unorthodox plan for a fast engagement and marriage, and that means Emily has to do something she’s never done before: contact the strictly-regimented Horace in Philadelphia, where he stays every other month at his sausage plant. Receiving Emily’s telegram, Horace decides to break his own rigid regimen and return home to Harrisburg, not realizing that a local Philly sheriff (Richard Deacon) is on his tail with a summons for a libel trial. What Horace also doesn’t realize is that a young man has heard this news, too, and he races to Harrisburg to warn Horace of the sheriff’s plan, meeting Horace’s wife, Emily, instead. That young man is Horace Pennypacker III (Ray Stricklyn), and he’s Horace’s son, one of eight more children that Horace has sired…with another woman in Philly.

What was everyone thinking when this was being made The Remarkable Mr. Pennypacker was based on the play of the same name which premiered on Broadway in 1953 (Burgess Meredith and Martha Scott were the leads), where it had a modest-at-best run of a little over 200 performances. I’ve never seen or read it (I understand it’s still a staple of local rep productions), so I can’t say how closely the movie follows it (is it intended as satire As social commentary). However, I can say that the movie version is an unconvincing mess, and apparently one that didn’t satisfy critics or the public when Fox released it to poor notices and business in 1959.

The movie certainly opens on a promising satirical note, as we’re introduced to the wholly ridiculous notion that fey bitch Clifton Webb is really a horndog of Nietzschian proportions, possessing enough Victorian chutzpah to sire the 17 children that pop up along the CinemaScope screen, with Webb proudly telling the viewer, “Well…you wonder why I’m called the ‘remarkable’ Mr. Pennypacker” (the original one-sheet poster wisely–and dishonestly–sells the movie on this one “safe” element of Webb’s procreation abilities alone…never mentioning on that those kids come from two concurrent wives). Distressingly, though, the movie almost immediately grinds to halt with an extended opening courting scene between Jill St. John and Ron Ely that’s positively deadly in its awkward flatness (hack director Henry Levin’s notion of widescreen composition is to put everything dead center and pray for something interesting to happen, while John and Ely do “young romantic comedy” the way an elephant dances a minuet).

Indeed, the rest of the movie is similarly fashioned: we get a brief glimpse or scene with Webb, who amuses us slightly with a by-now too-familiar, less-sharp take on his better-known Cheaper By the Dozen characterization, before he disappears for long stretches, supplanted by minutes and minutes of tedium with his boring wife and largely anonymous children (McGuire in particular, is annoyingly brittle and phony-sweet here–she was much better that same year as the proper-but-passionately horny cheating wife in A Summer Place). A few of the lines, either from O’Brien’s original or from screenwriter Walter Reisch, are funny (the title of Pennypacker’s proposed Philly lecture: Women Seem to be People…Let Them Vote), but the pacing is choppy and all wrong, with woefully extended, unfunny scenes that lead nowhere (Webb’s lame encounter with two cows), or are dropped in, without context, to show how “cute” Webb is (his brief rollerskating bit). If The Remarkable Mr. Pennypacker was intended as a comedy with a “message,” somebody forgot to take care of job one: getting the laughs necessary to fill in behind the sermon.

And what a sermon it is–you wives and mothers out there should find it particularly interesting, I would imagine! Keeping the Production Code timeline in mind, as the movie slowly progressed, I kept waiting for that certain technicality, that story “hook” that I assumed the moviemakers would employ (or were forced to employ) to make it clear that Clifton Webb’s character did not commit years-long bigamy, and in the process, sire eight illegitimate children with Dorothy McGuire. The censors couldn’t possibly allow that, could they Wouldn’t they have forced Fox to add something to the mix to clear Webb of that moral outrage After all, probably the single most popular story angle for screwball romantic comedy (which The Remarkable Mr. Pennypacker is decidedly not) is the discovery that a marriage ceremony was illegally wrought, thereby (delightfully) allowing and disallowing at the same time the sexual relationship of the two leads. I kept waiting for something like that here, or some other last-minute trick like adoption, or he didn’t love the other woman, or even some kind of weird inheritance scheme to explain his other family in Philly. But no: they’re all his children, and he lived with and loved both wives at the same time, and he’s proud of it (the Philly wife, never seen, is discovered to have died 8 years prior). That technicality, that Webb’s bigamy ended eight years ago, thus nullifying any potential legal problems, is the only “hook” I could find that might have mollified the censors…but I can’t imagine it was enough of a game-changer for women viewers to take to Webb, especially once they did the math: he’s been married to McGuire for 20 years; he married the other woman just one year into the first marriage, living with her, every other month, for 11 years, and fathering 9 children with her. Sound reasonable to you, ladies

To try and make all this palatable, Webb’s iconoclastic character is portrayed as a loveable old hoot whose qualities of positive-thinking, youthful vitality, and authoritative open-mindedness are inherently superior to all those grotesque fuddy-duddies like Grampa and Reverend Dr. Fielding who sputter on about morals while failing to understand why a man can’t have two wives. Frenzied rationalizations for Webb’s act abound, from David Nelson helpfully researching famous bastards, to all the little kids setting us up to hate the community that may make fun of them in the future…rather than hating their father right now for what he did to them in secret (it’s the same as if the writer wanted us to think that the potential symptoms of a disease are far worse than the actual disease itself). Webb brushes away the Reverend Dr.’s genuine concerns with an imperious wave of his hand and a stream of smug counter-assertions that are more flip than pertinent (it’s convenient for the scripter to have Webb’s character throw up other cultures’ acceptance of polygyny as a trump card…when he fails to mention how women are treated in those cultures, or to assert that Darwinism and free will and natural selection trump any kind of social/moral contract…while forgetting to mention that he’s deceived his loving wife in the most callous fashion).

When the time finally comes for Webb to fully clarify his bigamist actions to McGuire, a moment the increasingly wary viewer hotly anticipates, the explanation is simply incredulous: he blames her. You see, Webb asserts that McGuire gave him such a happy, fulfilling life in Harrisburg, that when he was forced to live alone in Philly to build up the family business, he could find no other way to occupy his free time than to marry another woman (that’s a classic). He states that had he lived like a bachelor, going to the burlesque and saloons, he would have insulted McGuire’s prior example, so taking a wife honored her. Ladies, how’s that one sound to you Had this nonsense been played outrageously here, as broad farce with an eye towards satire, it might have been hilariously funny, a ludicrous commentary on the ridiculous lengths that cheating men will go to to rationalize away their treacherous behavior. However, in The Remarkable Mr. Pennypacker, this junk is played dead straight by director Levin and Webb, resulting in a surreal, wholly unpalatable conceit that at first discombobulates the viewer waiting for the punch line that never comes…before turning them right off of the character when they see he really means all this, and the movie is backing him up. When the children are brought in as a “jury” for their father’s crime, the movie’s message turns truly abhorrent, with their verdict of “guilty” coming not because their father devastated their mother emotionally with a sustained, cruel act (cheating’s bad enough…but loving and marrying another woman and raising a huge family with her in secret is beyond the pale), but because this philosophical fascist failed to live up to his own selfish, self-centered worldview he taught them: do whatever you want to anybody, as long as you’re open about it (“I examined the laws, found them wanting…and invented my own,” he insufferably snips). The kids aren’t upset for Mom or themselves: they’re disappointed that Dad let himself down. Mindboggling.

The ending is the final straw…and I don’t care if I’m throwing out spoilers left and right, because this movie is vile. Webb, at the urging of the children, is compelled not to run away to Philly, and McGuire, after slapping his face, allows him to stay at the house…but they won’t be sharing a marriage bed. Regardless of how repulsive the Webb character is at this point (or how stupid we think McGuire is for letting him come back), we’re set up for some kind of act of resolution, some kind of plan hatched by a repentant Webb to win back the justly wounded McGuire. Well…you can forget that here in The Remarkable Mr. Pennypacker. The scene of McGuire locking Webb out of her bedroom is immediately followed by Kate getting married and McGuire inexplicably asking Webb to renew their vows…as if having him repeat them again will suddenly make him follow them (it’s not like he honored them the first time, did he). So…why is she doing that Why has she forgiven him How did she forgive him The whole point of the movie pretty much rests on answering those questions. Unfortunately, though, those are critical questions the screenwriter (and perhaps playwright) couldn’t or wouldn’t find answers for, so…let’s just end the movie abruptly on an unearned, completely incongruous happy ending. By this final infuriating fade-out, it’s difficult to know what’s more contemptible: The Remarkable Mr. Pennypacker‘s central message, or this inept, flatfooted movie itself.

The DVD:

The Video:
Well…at least it’s letterboxed. Considering the fact that most of these Fox Cinema Archives releases have been panning-and-scanning widescreen movies, it is noteworthy that they at least maintained the proper ratio with The Remarkable Mr. Pennypacker. Zooming in will make it fill your widescreen monitor frame correctly at 2.35:1…but you’ll bump up the grain and compression effects considerably.

The Audio:
The Dolby Digital English mono audio track is just serviceable, with some squelch and hiss noticeable on the track. No closed-captions or subtitles.

The Extras:
No extras.

Final Thoughts:
Vile, hopelessly contrived, incredulously rationalized claptrap, indifferently and incompetently done. A truly bizarre offering from a major Hollywood studio in 1959. Skip The Remarkable Mr. Pennypacker.

Paul Mavis is an internationally published movie and television historian, a member of the Online Film Critics Society, and the author of The Espionage Filmography.

THE SHOW:
In some ways, it makes perfect sense. You want to a spinoff from the uber successful Family Guy (one of the few TV series, animated or not, that survived being cancelled only to comeback and thrive) and it has to be something more than a spiritual twin ala American Dad. You have a limited pool of characters to draw from, including the oversexed airline pilot Glen Quagmire (who, one could argue, easily anchor a Love, American Style spoof of such Me Decade morays in 2013 society), the handicapped cop Joe Swanson (not much we can do there) and divorced deli owner Cleveland Brown. Oh sure, you could stretch it a bit to have Mr. Herbert do a pedophilic take on his own King Friday and a certain ‘neighborhood’ or do an entire show involving Jewish stereotypes and the hideous Goldman family, but no, Cleveland made the most sense. The only major problem The voice actor responsible for the African American character is white. Oddly enough, it never was a concern previously, and surprisingly, it’s not one now. Apparently, only Charles Correll and Freeman Gosden had to pay for playing against their own ethnicity (Google them, kids).

All racial elements aside, the recently cancelled series, The Cleveland Show, is being offered up in a Complete Season Three box set which includes all 22 episode. The main premise finds Cleveland Brown (voiced by Mike Henry) leaving Rhode Island and Spooner Street to find his long lost love from high school, Donna Tubbs (Sanaa Lathan). Finally locating her in Stoolbend, Virginia, he marries her and brings his now obese son Cleveland Jr. (Kevin Michael Richardson) to live with them, her teenage daughter Roberta (Reagan Gomez-Preston) and her precocious preschooler Rallo (Henry again). Of course, there are new neighbors in this small Southern town, including the Bear family (who are actual bears), the redneck Krinklesac clan, as well as the Ritchers and the Chonis. Cleveland now works for Waterman Cable, where his boss (Bruce McGill) is a closeted homosexual. Donna works at the local high school, where a former classmate (Will Forte) is now principal and Roberta dates a Jewish rapper wannabe named Gabe (Jamie Kennedy).

That’s the basics. Unlike Family Guy, there are dozens of extraneous characters who seem to step in and then disappear at random. One of the best recurring players is the slightly dim bar owner, Gus, voiced by none other than the American auteur himself, David Lynch.

The breakdown of season three’s storylines are as follows:

“BFFs” – when Cleveland learns that old pal Peter Griffin came to town and didn’t call him, he plans a camping trip for his former buddies.
“The Hurricane” – a massive storm hits Stoolbend.
“Nightmare On Grace Street” – scary stuff abounds including a stay at a haunted house and a love triangle between a human, a vampire, and a werewolf.
“Skip Day” – Cleveland is embarrassed by his nerdy son.
“Yemen Party” – Cleveland disguises himself as a woman to infiltrate his wife’s support group.
“Sex and the Biddy” – Rallo tries to save one of Cleveland’s pals from an obvious golddigger.
“Die SemiHard” – it’s the holidays, and Cleveland describes his favorite Christmas film of all time.
“Y Tu Junior Tambien” – Cleveland’s son falls for a pretty girl, but his father is suspicious of her motives.
“There Goes El Neighborhood” – Cleveland tries to get used to Latino culture, and fails.
“Dancing With The Stools” – Donna wants to win the trophy at the annual dance contest, and recruits her stepson for help.
“Brown Magic” – Cleveland takes his stepson Rallo to a magic show for the first time.
“‘Til Deaf” – A hunting accident leaves Cleveland a bit hard of hearing.
“Das Shrimp Boot” – A necessary vacation turns into a nightmare when pirates attack Cleveland’s cruise.
“March Dadness” – Cleveland gets jealous when his buddy bonds with son.
“The Men In Me” – After being labeled “The Whitest Black Man in America,” Cleveland struggles to reclaim his roots.
“Frapp Attack” – a video of Cleveland and an attractive coffee shop worker goes viral.
“American Prankster” – Rallo’s latest stunt goes horribly, horribly wrong.
“B.M.O.C.” – Cleveland goes back to his alma mater, but his college days appear long over.
“Jesus Walks” – a young church going girl catches Cleveland Jr.’s eye.
“Flush Of Genius” – an accident in the bathroom causes Cleveland to lose his son’s respect.
” Mama Drama” – Cleveland tries to reunite Donna with her estranged mother.
” All You Can Eat” – after being ridiculed at school, Donna helps her stepson with a makeover.

As a marginal fan of Family Guy (and a huge supporter of Seth Macfarlane’s big screen debut, Ted), yours truly just doesn’t “get” The Cleveland Show. If it’s an acquired taste, it will forever remain avocado and tarragon for this particular palette (YEECH! to both of those). There are so many things that just don’t resonate – the white voice actor playing a man of color, the little kid named Rallo who’s such a borderline hate crime it’s amazing no one has taken the series to task for how the character is handled, the overall lack of subtlety. There’s also some minor continuity issues (how, exactly, did Cleveland Jr. get so fat) and a level of meanness and inappropriateness that often surpasses the limits set by Peter Griffin and his clan. In fact, if the Browns had a talking pet that pretended to be a thoughtful intellectual ala Brian, we’d have a carbon copy of the successful sitcom this was spun off from, just with more misplaced vitriol. Sure, some of the ancillary characters are a little more out there, but they also pale in comparison to a raging pedophile or a sex fiend without a moral compass.

In fact, The Cleveland Show follows the lead of its central character in that it’s too sedate, to easy with the obvious racial joke to genuinely explore the varying issues within same. Granted, this is a TV comedy, not some debate on the African American experience, but if someone like Tyler Perry finds a proper balancing act, why can’t MacFarlane and the gang But the main complaint that can be leveled against this show is that it’s not very funny. Granted, it took years for Family Guy to grow on audiences. It had to be cancelled and then celebrated on home video before people took the time to explore the series’ many toilet humor nuances and satiric scatology. Cleveland the gang don’t have such luxuries. Instead, everything is bludgeoned with a sledgehammer filled with obviousness which renders any potential wit worthless. Of course, there are moments of pure guilty pleasure, as when the Latino family of “Y Tu Junior Tambien” starts exhibiting some rather blatant behavior, but it’s a truly crass and culpable level of enjoyment.

Other highlights include the Die Hard spoof, the ventriloquism act of “Brown Magic” (anyone old enough to remember Willie Tyler and Lester) and the horror oriented “Nightmare on Grace Street.” Of course, any time David Lynch is featured it’s fascinating. One has to wonder how the show managed to get such a high profile and provocative artist. Granted, anyone whose seen the auteur’s aggressively stupid DumbLand cartoon understands his kinship with someone like MacFarlane, but this is David-Friggin’-Lynch for F’s sake! The man is a moviemaking genius! (Apparently, they asked and he said, “Yes.” Simple as that.) Other guest stars like Kayne West, Bruno Mars, Questlove, Craig Robinson, Johnny Bench, and Florence Henderson pale in comparison. Overall, the rest of the cast is quite capable, doing their best to invest their lines with the necessary sass to make them work. Unfortunately, the show seems out of tune with its overall intentions. If they wanted to take on race and the realities of same, The Cleveland Show doesn’t even attempt to tackle them. Instead, it finds targets all over the place, with equally uneven results.

THE DVD:
First things, first. There are no bonus features offered here. None. Not the best way to win fans over to the old digital format, eh Anyway, the image and audio elements are excellent – but then again, wouldn’t they be This is a show broadcasting in the heady days of 2013, HD, and similarly superior transfers. The 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen is colorful and crisp and the Dolby Digital 2.0 mix (what No 5.1 Huh) does a great job of balancing between the dialogue heavy show and the bass-thumping backdrops.

FINAL THOUGHTS:
So, what is one to make of The Cleveland Show, especially now that it’s been relegated to also-ran status as part of Fox’s famed Animation Domination block on Sunday nights Season Three sure supports a Rent It recommendation, since so much of the series is hopelessly hit or miss. If you already adore this eccentric spin on The Cosby Show, you’ll lap up every episode in this tiresome third season. If you don’t, there’s no reason to get behind it now. It will be gone from the airwaves soon, and Cleveland Brown will be back in Quahog (Macfarlane has confirmed he will). Frankly, he should have never left in the first place.

Want more Gibron Goodness Come to Bill’s TINSEL TORN REBORN Blog (Updated Frequently) and Enjoy! Click Here

The Movie:
The slasher film is a well-worn genre staple. But still, there’s surely some fresh perspective or take that can be tried, some new way of making the old formula work. Everyone Must Die is the latest attempt to recharge the indomitable killer with a knife film, and though its creators are enthusiastic and even inventive at times, it doesn’t quite work.

The film runs through a fairly large cast pretty quickly, and as you might guess from the title, most of them die. We start off seeing what amounts to the last three minutes of a previous story, with the final confrontation between a black clad, masked killer and a young woman. She’s stabbed to death, but her boyfriend is finally able to dispatch the killer with a lawnmower.

In the aftermath, the young woman’s brother Kyle (Nick LaMantia) isn’t convinced that the killer is really dead, even though Detective Jordan (Scott Lewis) assures him that he has personally seen the body. Kyle sees a paranoid reporter on the news who declares that the killer is in fact not dead. Further discussion reveals that the reporter has been tracking mass killings that are moving across the U.S., even continuing after the killer is seemingly deceased.

This is followed by a succession of well executed murder set pieces, including the death of the obnoxious white rapper MC Pink (Seth Joseph), who even when not rapping only speaks in rhyme. (Though, to the producers’ credit, there is a fun bit where they subvert the viewer’s expectations about the sexual relations of hapless teens going camping in horror movies.) And then we get to the final group of victims, who have come together to drink, eat, and mourn the loss of their musical hero, MC Pink.

This group consists of dumb jock Guy (Zoltan Zilai, making this a One Zoltan film, in my Balkan Names in the Credits rating system), the girl he’s after Jenny (Nicole Beattie), Jewish golfer John (co-writer Derek Rothermund), student body presidential candidate Pete (director and co-writer Steve Rudzinski), his girlfriend Wanda (Aleen Isley), stuck up rich girl Kat (Erica Benda), and probably a couple of others I’ve missed, including a guy who only talks about eggs. (No, really.) Soon, they too are victimized by the black clad killer, who isn’t dead at all. Kyle, who has been following them for some reason, intervenes to save Jenny’s life, after which they are pretty much trapped in the house.

And it goes on from there. There really is some innovation in Everyone Must Die, and the twist is intriguing, though I won’t spoil it here. The kills are for the most part very well done, with copious blood and convincing stabbing, chopping, etc. A little CG blood is used here and there for enhancement, but it works pretty well. But that’s about the only unreservedly positive thing that can be said about the film. The story is too disjointed to fully engage the viewer, constantly jumping from character to character, some we only see for a few minutes before their death. Kyle is the only link between the disconnected stories, and he’s not enough to maintain tension or any sense of identifying with or caring about these people.

The humor, while occasionally effective, is much too broad, always aiming for the lowest common denominator. Whether it’s Guy confusing Tiger Woods with Tony the Tiger, or MC Pink’s goofy rhyme speak, the humor isn’t sharply written enough to work in this kind of film, or at least to give folks who enjoy more sophisticated fare a morsel or two to enjoy. The acting, with a few notable exceptions such as Nicole Beattie as Jenny, isn’t great. It’s played broadly as well, so perhaps it’s just a problem of interpretation, but they come off as awkward and stilted a lot of the time. Of course, on super low budget films like this one, there often isn’t the luxury of multiple takes to get it exactly right. And they put a lot on the screen for what they had to work with. The movie isn’t horrible. It just isn’t better than fair.

The cast and crew all seem quite enthusiastic and passionate about making this a great movie, but they can’t quite get there. I hope they continue making movies, and keep getting better, and I’ll certainly check out their next effort. Rent it.

The DVD

Video:
The video is 1.78:1 widescreen, and looks good, but not great. The colors are a bit dull and the image isn’t very sharp, but it’s good enough not to detract from the viewing experience.

Sound:
Audio is Dolby digital 2 channel, and sounds fine. Dialogue is always audible, and no hiss or other problem can be heard. No subtitles or alternate language tracks are included.

Extras:
There are a few extras included. They are:

Bloopers
Just over five minutes of flubs, missed takes, and screw ups. Fairly enjoyable.

About EMD!
At 22:37, this functions as a behind the scenes featurette, and has interviews with director Steve Rudzinski, writer / actor Derek Rothermund, actors Zoltan Zilai, Seth Joseph, Aleen Isley, Nicole Beattie, and others. They all talk about favorite scenes, struggles of independent filmmaking, and other topics.

Trailer
At 1:16, this is actually a pretty slick trailer.

EMD! Music Video
This is a heavy metal song written and performed by Carson Mauthe, set to stylized shots from the film. It’s actually quite cool.

Cockfight Music Video
This is MC Pink rapping about an erotic encounter with a police officer, if you like that kind of thing.

Alternate Pete Takes
Several takes of Pete (Steve Rudzinski) coming out of a door and screaming. This is funny.

Cast and Crew Commentary
One of two commentaries on the disc, this one features Steve Rudzinski, Seth Joseph, Aleen Isley, and Scott Lewis. They are all excited and passionate filmmakers, and seem like quite enjoyable folks. They discuss filming in the oppressive heat, creepy basement locations, and effects troubles. Fairly interesting.

Writer Commentary
This commentary features Steve Rudzinski and Derek Rothermund, who co-wrote the film. They talk about the origin of the story and the characters. They actually made up lists of characters they wanted to kill, and cast themselves in parts to save money. This is also interesting.

Final Thoughts:
Everyone Must Die isn’t an awful movie, but it doesn’t succeed in being as successful of a film as it wants to be. It’s haphazard, being enjoyable at times and annoying at others. The splatter and gore elements are very well pulled off, but much of the rest could use improvement. These people love film enough that I’m sure they’ll continue, and improve every time. I’ll keep an eye out.

The Movie:

What’s the purpose of art

Olympia Stone’s casual 2012 documentary The Cardboard Bernini attempts to answer that loaded question. Mostly, however, the film serves as an easygoing portrait of one such artist, the affable James “Jimmy” Grashow, as he works on a monumental version of a Baroque Italian fountain, its imposing gods, horses and fish rendered entirely in glue and common cardboard.

Despite its lightweight appearance, The Cardboard Bernini grapples with a lot of questions that artists ask themselves. Things such as: how do we reconcile our creativity with making money Is art any more meaningful if it has an audience of one, or 1,000, or millions And: what can we leave that will last Here, we follow Grashow as he spends untold hours on a project that will ultimately be seen by a few hundred people at most in a gallery, then transported to an outdoor setting where the wind and rain ultimately turns the sculpture into a soggy mess. Grashow’s jokey, hippie-dad vibe seems to say this is all a big farce, but in reality it’s a touching gesture that is often beautiful to behold.

Besides getting into the nitty gritty of constructing the cardboard fountain, the film spends a lot of time simply getting to know Grashow and his family. With the funky demeanor of that favorite college art professor you once had, Grashow retraces the events in his life that brought him to where he is today. Growing up in 1950s Brooklyn informed the urban funkiness of his work, a deliberately disheveled cross between Red Grooms and Claes Oldenberg. He was active in the ’60s avant garde scene in Greenwich Village, and yet his insanely detailed woodcut style was accessible enough to allow a decent living as an illustrator (doing work for The New York Times and album covers for the likes of Procol Harum). His wife of 40-plus years is on hand to share a few stories, along with his daughter, who discusses the dichotomy between her dad’s cheery exterior and the pain in his work.

The impetus for the cardboard fountain is revealed when Grashow shares an anecdote about visiting the home of his longtime dealer, Allen Stone, shortly after he died. It was then that he learned of the fate of several giant-sized papier maché figures he constructed for a 1970s art installation – Stone took them home and dumped them in his backyard, where they were exposed to the elements for several years. Instead of being upset, the weathered beauty of the figures came as something of an epiphany to Grashow. The fact that art is always in a state of transformation, whether intended or not, now informs Grashow’s work – especially the fountain. The process is well-covered, going through the months of construction (“It’s the back of the fish scales, which nobody’s gonna see.”), through a joyous gallery showing in which patrons are encouraged to write wishes on cardboard coins and toss them onto the piece, and finally the emotional journey as it’s moved outdoors to be battered by rain and wind outside an art museum in Connecticut

Director Olympia Stone, who is the daughter of Grashow’s late dealer, has an intimacy with her subject that shows throughout the film. Although her filmmaking technique is somewhat plain and home movie-ish at times, Grashow’s casual ease with the filmmakers during every step of the process is obvious. Absorbing as it is, the film is padded out by about 20 minutes with needlessly drawn-out montages. The choice of backing many scenes with distracting, generic sounding bluegrass music could also be called into question. Still, the accessibility of Grashow’s work (he’s definitely not an abstract or conceptualist kind of guy) makes this a diverting watch even for those who don’t particularly care for contemporary art.

The Cardboard Bernini certainly counts as a breezy doc which can be enjoyed on its own low-key, PBS-like merits. There were also some profound passages in this film, however, that reminded me of “Finishing the Hat,” Stephen Sondheim’s poetically observant song from Sunday in the Park with George. It really comes down to art being a solitary passion – in my case, I do sketching (for fun) and occasional illustrating (for money), along with running an online store of literature-themed screen prints which sells just enough to buy the supplies needed to make more prints. I also maintain a tumblr blog, 4 Color Cowboy, in which the subtle continuation of Western-kitsch imagery is likely unnoticed by anyone but me (Is it art I think so.). The point, as this film plainly makes clear, is that the success of art isn’t measured by gobs of money or a huge audience. The spirit of sharing, and the artist’s own satisfaction with his/her own handiwork, is what really counts.

The DVD:

Buyer alert: the packaging doesn’t mention it, but Microcinema’s disc edition of The Cardboard Bernini is not a regular, commercially pressed DVD. It’s a made-to-order product pressed on a blue DVD-R disc. The process doesn’t affect the quality of the film, but those who avoid m.o.d.s ought to know.

Video

Umm, not so good. The 16:9 anamorphic letterboxed image has pleasant color and a nice light/dark balance, but the scenes filmed in Grashow’s studio (about 75% of the film) have a pronounced pixelization. While it’s unknown whether the shoddy image is due to bad mastering or sub-standard video equipment being used during production, the blocky image is distracting and gives this disc a cheapness that the subject matter doesn’t deserve.

Audio

The Cardboard Bernini‘s stereo soundtrack is a plain, decently mixed affair with surprisingly not too much echo or distortion. No subtitles or alternate audio are present.

Extras

In addition to a brief Trailer and Production Photos, there’s about six minutes of bonus footage of Jimmy explaining his techniques and philosophies.

Final Thoughts:

Accompanying artist James Grashow as he constructs an elaborate cardboard sculpture designed to wither away in the rain, The Cardboard Bernini has the ability to charm while sneaking in some profound thoughts about permanence and the purpose of art. The documentary (and the disc it’s burned on) is a little scrappy around the edges, but creative types would enjoy it. Recommended.

Matt Hinrichs is a designer, artist and sometime writer who lives in sunny (and usually too hot) Phoenix, Arizona. Among his loves are oranges, going barefoot and blonde 1930s movie comedienne Joyce Compton. Since 2000, he has been scribbling away at Pop Culture weblog Scrubbles.net. One can also follow him on Twitter @4colorcowboy.

Dr. Gannon, I have a pain…right down here. Warner Bros’s fun Archive Collection of hard-to-find cult and library titles has released Medical Center: The Complete Third Season, a six-disc, 24-episode collection of the hit CBS’s series’ 1971-1972 season. Starring Chad Everett and James Daly, Medical Center‘s patients almost never died, never had to pay their bills (which weren’t even mentioned), and inevitably had their dysfunctional family dynamics cured right along with their cancers, brain tumors, and broken hearts (the last ones brought on by Dr. Intensely Handsome, Chad Everett). Fans of vintage medico television, as well as polished TV drama, will be the best bet for Medical Center: The Complete Third Season. No extras for these generally good-looking transfers.

Los Angeles, California, 1971, B.O.C. (Before ObamaCare). At the state-of-the-art Medical Center, strapping, square-jawed, tastefully mutton-chopped, 100% insured-against-malpractice Dr. Joe Gannon (Chad Everett) strides through the now beige-colored halls like an Olympic god, dispensing pithy bromides and lightning-fast scalpel incisions with eerie aplomb. In Room 447, there’s Bradford Dillman, suffering from impotence. In Room 443, there’s Stefanie Powers, artificially inseminated. In Room 441, there’s Suzanne Pleshette with lung cancer. And in Room 439, there’s Howard Duff with a heart attack. And calmly, calmly, Dr. Joe moves from one room to the other, working slowly and carefully through his diagnosis before whipping out a number 10 Dermatome and striking like a cat, much to the consternation of flibbertigibbet parents, joy-boy scalpel jockeys, and administrators who don’t know their catheters from their elbows. Usually offering sage backup is Chief of Staff Dr. Paul Lochner (James Daly), who knows Dr. Joe is the best surgeon around; who knows Dr. Joe is almost always right; and who knows Dr. Joe is certainly the best-dressed cat on his staff. That doesn’t mean they don’t scrap and spark a little over procedure, or over diagnoses; however, their relationship is basically sound: Dr. Joe gets the sighs from adoring female patients, and Dr. Paul has board meetings and drinks a lot of coffee. Into these halls come the sick, the broken, and the dying, and they leave…healed.

 A few years ago I wrote about the first season of Medical Center, so I’ll try not to cover too much of the same ground here. Suffice it to say, Medical Center, like fellow Nielsen smash Marcus Welby, M.D., was just a hipper, trendier reworking of earlier medico hits Dr. Kildare and Ben Casey, only with more up-to-date social issues underpinning the various diseases and accidents on weekly display. If Medical Center‘s discussions and “treatments” for those social and interpersonal issues seem quaintly outdated today, that’s to be expected for a “with it” show from over 40 years ago (watch a couple of episodes from the insufferably smug, “ultra-realistic” E.R. from just a few years back, and you’ll readily see signs of the varnish cracking and fading already…). And since Medical Center largely used its hospital/doctor/patient framework to more fully explore plots and characters that could be found in any drama anthology structure (a son hating his father can happen in a hospital, in a detective’s office, or out on the western plain), its entertainment value (or dramatic validity and “truth”) isn’t lessened or compromised by what some more modern (and inpatient) viewers consider “antiquated” approaches to the subject matter.

 Besides…that’s one of the strongest appeals of vintage TV: seeing how things used to be in TVland. You may call it ridiculous that not one episode here mentions a patient’s bill or their ability or inability to pay it, or that even the most dire medical situation is 8 out of 10 times resolved, but I don’t–that’s just a mile marker for the “Big Three’s” numero uno Commandment at that time: thou shalt not bum any viewer out. Of course, CBS’s sitcom ground-breaker, All in the Family, was almost single-handedly abolishing that decades-long edict at the very moment Medical Center was glossily enforcing it, a fact that only makes something like Medical Center so endearing to watch today. It may have aimed to be “edgy” and “realistically modern” when it first aired (as it indeed it was compared to those earlier shows it followed), but it still had that early “Big Three” network patina of reassuring, illusory positiveness to it that marked so much of pre-70s television…the television history, not so coincidentally, that continues to have the most fervent, sustained fandom (a lesson today’s networks have utterly failed to re-learn, to their continued smaller fraction of the audience pie: too much self-involved, self-satisfied bumming out, and not enough true entertainment).

 It’s a little difficult to chart the evolution of the series up to this third season when I missed reviewing the second, but a few changes did seem apparent from the first go-around. Is that a new arrangement for Lalo Schifrin’s theme Because if it is…it’s incredible, with a spaced-out, insane synth intensity to it (that screaming siren sound) that rocks your soul until it splits apart (or at least that’s what they were shooting for). Minor tweaks like Jayne Meadows’s and Jane Dulo’s “comedy relief” nurses infrequently popping in and out here (and Everett’s once-potential romantic partner, Dr. Corinne Camacho, inexplicably showing up for a cameo), or that big, snazzy, wonderfully fake new studio set representing the hospital’s parking lot, front entrance, and emergency drop-off, jumped out at me (I live for this kind of obvious trickery). As well, James Daly’s role seems to require even less screen time (if that’s possible) as Everett eats up 90% of the available face time (Daley’s pretty much reduced to 2 or 3 minutes per episode of shaking his head sagely at Everett as he offers up wise-yet-wholly-uncommitted advice on Chad’s latest case), while story lines seem less interested in the technical aspects of the medical cases, and more on the personal dynamics of the patients (and this season, those patients are just as likely to be the staff, as they are people off the street, with troubled nurses and failing doctors headlining more than a few plots here).

 Several recurring themes and conventions make themselves known this season, with “a sudden illness or injury that provokes an already troubled relationship’s crisis” the most obvious. In the season opener, Blood Line, on-the-lam crook William Windom’s son, Vincent Van Patten, develops a life-threatening disease that forces the father to come to terms with his dreamer lifestyle. In The Corrupted, Dr. Steve Lawrence’s (what No Eydie) harried, assimilated physician-on-the-make, doesn’t have the time to take care of his soon-to-be-paralyzed immigrant father, David Opatoshu, while in Double Jeopardy, Stephanie Powers risks alienating her immigrant father-in-law Jack Kruschen when it’s discovered that husband Scott Marlowe isn’t the father of her child…and a therapeutic abortion may be the difference between Powers living or dying (tough stuff back in ’71). In Idolmaker, TV evangelist Pamela Payton-Wright is asked by her manager/husband Roger Davis to stay on the circuit despite a potentially fatal condition, to maintain her celebrity status. Circle of Power sees shaky-hands Dr. Barry Sullivan emotionally blackmailing protege Jessica Walter to keep her close to him, so she can back him up on operations he can no longer perform (Chad’s usual sartorial expertise is seriously called into question this episode when he shows up at the tennis courts in French cuffs before 6:00pm–jesus what the hell!–but then he recovers nicely when he leaps out of his black-on-red Challenger wearing a cream-colored belted leisure suit safari jacket with brown suede accents. Score!). And in The Martyr, Jo Van Fleet deliberately stays in a wheelchair for years, just to keep son Michael Larrain at home with her…so he won’t marry and pass on his unknown malady: Huntington’s disease.

 0Sex rears its ugly head a few times here, straddling the extremes between impotence and rape (a nice, quiet, normal love story doesn’t make for good drama, apparently…). In The Shattered Man, Bradford Dillman can’t get it up for either wife Collin Wilcox-Horne or potential girlfriend Beverlee McKinsey, and it’s all because his controlling father-in-law/boss David Wayne has emasculated him (can you imagine this story on Dr. Kildare ten years earlier). In the potentially rough The Suspected, Dr. Earl Holliman is falsely accused of molesting Louise Latham’s (perfect as a frustrated, scheming witch) daughter–a charge made weighty by Holliman’s conviction for child rape 20 years before (the episode goes a long way towards excusing away Holliman’s behavior, blaming it on youth and an endocrine tumor…and thus dissipates most of the interest in what could have been a truly challenging episode). And in The Loser, cash-strapped and ill Susan Strasberg (always good) gets raped by Greg Mullavey in exchange for seeking another student credit loan, causing her husband Tom Ligon to brand her a tramp.

1 2Kids and quackery are dependable story hooks here, as well. In Conspiracy, Suzanne Pleshette keeps her lung cancer diagnosis from fiance Leslie Nielsen, so as not to scare him off from taking care of her son, Lee Montgomery (yes…he’s as annoying here as he was in Ben and Burnt Offerings). And in The Nowhere Child (classic 70s episode title), Ed Nelson can’t forget his dead son long enough to concentrate on potential adoptee, Willie Aames, even when wee Willie takes a header down a massive seaside cliff. Bogus doctors also pop up this season, including country doc Forrest Tucker in The Imposter, who’s caught out when runaway Joy Bang–the single greatest name for an exploitation actress ever–insists he operate on her (how about Dr. Chad’s Medical Center Mobile Unit One RV, like Evel Knievel’s Scramble Van!). George Maharis, in The Pawn, is drilled by an outraged, impoverished husband who resents, to say the least, Maharis’ goofball, phony examining room theatrics. Would-be sawbones aren’t the only recipients of malpractice suits, though; Dr. Chad Everett is seemingly threatened with a suit in almost every episode. In the Panic in the Streets knock-off Terror, Dr. Chad is threatened with legal action by Public Health Inspector Dr. Larry Blyden, if Chad goes ahead and operates on bubonic plague Patient Zero (hippie single mom Kathy Lloyd delivers this season’s single greatest line when she thusly describes, with a completely straight face, her babbling infant son: “Sam is a really groovy person,”). In Confession, indolent flop Ted Broder rapes and kills a nurse, confesses it to Dr. Chad, recants, and then sues him for defamation of character while wife Tisha Sterling wrings her hands. And in Conflict, Dr. Chad is threatened first by Senate candidate Howard Duff, and then his neurotic, lying wife Ida Lupino, when Dr. Chad refuses to stop treating their dying daughter Meg Foster (spookiest eyes in movies, hands down).

3 4There’s not a clunker in the bunch of the episodes detailed above, while a handful of standouts–for good and not-so-good reasons–are especially noteworthy. Awakening avoids the pitfalls of having Barbara Rush “EMOTE” by concentrating instead on the interesting complications of having Dr. Craig Stevens wake up from a coma three years after a car accident, discovering his wife has left after he killed their daughter in the crash. “Backdoor pilot” The Choice may have been a good series had CBS bought it, with an interesting dynamic created between dropping-out hospital administrator/doctor Monte Markham (he even gets his own title card in the opening credits) and completely dropped out motorcycle racer Clu Gulager (Markham, an underrated actor, never got that breakout role he needed). In Deadlock, a suspenseful outing, Dr. Michael Tolan has to decide whether or not to accede to his wife Susan Howard’s kidnapers’s demand: let patient/co-drug thief Jo Ann Harris die or else. Certainly the most enjoyable outing this season is the two-parter Shock, an old-fashioned, intricate mystery featuring angel-of-death nurse Sheree North delivering her usual solid turn. A rare glimpse into Dr. Chad’s private life comes in Fatal Decision, when Thunderball‘s Dr. Claudine Auger (I’m feeling faint…) resumes her love affair with Dr. Chad, only to see it doomed by her own cowardice in the face of an emergency (gorgeous Auger’s subtle thesping here is in sharp contrast to some of the season’s more, um…broad turns). And speaking of broad turns, two central performances this season give unintentional delight for those seeking out misguided acting. In The Albatross, John Ericson is paralyzed when his mentally challenged younger brother, Michael Douglas (yes, that Michael Douglas), causes him to crack up their car. When you’re watching Ericson constantly grimace in pain, just remember that’s not acting…that’s reacting to Douglas’ downright embarrassing attempt at conveying a character with special needs. Even worse (and therefore better) is Michael Callan’s hideously overwrought turn as an alky doctor in Secret, complete with a hilariously awful scene where he rolls around on the floor, crying and whining, to truly revolting effect. It’s a mesmerizingly bad performance from a good actor–a real anomaly among the usually spot-on turns from Medical Center‘s distinguished roster of supporting players.

5 6After the second season’s series’ high Nielsen ranking as the eighth most watched TV series for the 1970-1971 season, this third outing saw Medical Center take a small dip to 13th for the 1971-1972 year–a downward trend that would continue for the following two seasons. Hopelessly, hapless ABC threw up against Medical Center no less than three series…to absolutely no avail: Henry Fonda’s misfire, The Smith Family, The ABC Comedy Hour (I admit to watching The Kopycats), and The Marty Feldman Comedy Machine (which I loved that summer). There’s no question that direct competition over on NBC at 9:00pm was the cause for Medical Center‘s ratings erosion: the premiere of the iconic The NBC Mystery Movie, featuring Columbo, McCloud, and McMillan and Wife was an instant smash hit, coming in right behind Medical Center for the year at 14th in the Nielsen’s. Medical Center‘s lead-in was strong (steady performer The Carol Burnett Show remained solid 23rd for the year), but The NBC Mystery Movie‘s was better, the 8th-rated Adam-12, and that proved too enticing for viewers to just switch on NBC at 8:00pm and leave it there…until 10:00pm, when everyone switched back to CBS for the 7th-rated Mannix.

7 8The DVD:

The Video:
Unlike the first season, a couple of episodes of Medical Center: The Complete Third Season looked a bit iffy, with off-color and print damage (The Nowhere Child, in particular, and the season opener, Blood Line). Otherwise…these looked as good as the first go-around, with solid color, a sharp image, and little if any anomalies.

The Audio:
The Dolby Digital English split mono audio track was acceptable, with light hiss, some squelching from time to time, and relatively clean dialogue. No closed-captions or subtitles available.

The Extras:
No extras for Medical Center: The Complete Third Season.

Final Thoughts:
Another solid season for the beautifully produced medico series. Who cares if the treatments for the diseases seen here are outdated Medical Center is more concerned with how all those guest stars feel, rather than how they feel anyway. James Daly is barely there, but groovy Chad Everett, his mutton chops perfectly trimmed, is quietly intense and surprisingly subtle every step of the way (when he lasers in with the baby blues, and growls, “Trust me,” I faint to the floor…). A must for lovers of vintage medico shows, Medical Center: The Complete Third Season comes highly recommended.

Paul Mavis is an internationally published movie and television historian, a member of the Online Film Critics Society, and the author of The Espionage Filmography.