At the recent WGA Awards, Joshua Brand and John Falsey won the Laurel Award for Television. Among the shows they created was Northern Exposure, a series I dearly loved. It's one of the few TV programs I never missed an episode of. I even got my dad to watch it, halfway through, and my dad did not watch series television. Seriously. I don't mean he "didn't watch a show weekly," I mean he didn't even watch even single episodes. He watched sports, the news and PBS, but at that point, the only other network series I recall him watching -- ever -- was Columbo. And that was really more a collection of individual movies. But he and my mother (who watched TV series almost as rarely as he did) fell in love with Northern Exposure and watched it every week. (I had an additional connection to it. I got written into the series. When my friend Jeff Melvoin worked on Northern Exposure, he decided to write an episode that brought back a character named 'Cal' who had a bizarre obsession for a violin owned by the character of 'Maurice.' But Jeff needed a name for the sanitarium where the patient broke out of, and a town where it was located. He decided on "The State Home for the Criminally Insane, at Ellisberg." Jeff felt that having two l's made it look more like a town name. I recall in that episode, the violinist was asked what the institution was like. "They're a mean and vindictive lot at Ellisberg," he said. The episode proved so popular that they brought the character and Ellisberg back several times. And in the second to last episode of the series, in fact, one of the sub-plots was Cal getting over his obsession after having broken out, yet again, and so he decided to serve out his sentence and therefore the recurring line was that "I have get back to Ellisberg.") While thinking about the series, one thing came to mind -- as it always does. The last sequence of the last episode. It's one of the finest endings of a concluding episode as there's ever been on television. Even if you've never seen the show, it's easy to fall in love with it, because it's like a near-perfect music video. But if you did watch the series, it's heart-wrenching in it's beauty. Underneath it all is the song "Our Town," written and performed by Iris Dement. Watching the sequence, it's hard to believe that the song wasn't commissioned and written specifically for the show and the closing of the last episode. It's that spot-on perfect. But it wasn't, the song (which co-producer Martin Bruestle remembered and suggested) had been written years before. But the way it fits, and the editing is flawless. Jeff was co-executive producer of the series at that point and since the ratings were falling, he told me that he figured they should start planning for a final episode, not expecting that the show would be brought back another year. If they had returned for another year, then they'd just figure out another ending. But Northern Exposure got its cancellation notice. There's good and bad about the show getting cancelled and not coming back. The bad is that -- well, it didn't come back, there were no more episodes. The good is that it got to go out like this... UPDATE: The last time I check, the video for the last scene of Northern Exposure was blocked by NBC Universal, the rights holder. That's fine, it's their right. If it remains down, however, here's the official music video for the song by Iris DeMent which stands in appropriately.
64 Comments
Despite initially getting slammed beforehand by the far right, Nate Silver once again ended up getting great praise for his uncannily spot-on predictions of the 2012 presidential elections.
Well, now, he turns his attention to...the Oscars. Here's an article with his predictions, along with his rationale on how his movie predictions are made. It's not all random, he says, since many Academy voters already have voted in other awards. Whether or not...oh, let him explain things himself. For starters, though, it's Argo for Best Picture, and Steven Spielberg as Best Director... In honor of the start of Spring Training baseball, this is a charmingly wonderful song from the later, reunion-part of Peter, Paul and Mary's career. A song by Noel Paul Stookey, "Right Field." I actually crossed paths in the oddest way with Paul Stookey when a wee kidling. One Sunday when I was probably around eight, my folks took my brother and me for a day jaunt to O'Hare Airport. (Yes, there was a time when a family might go to the airport simply to watch the planes and see the bustle of people.) As we were wandering through, my brother (he was probably about 11) said, "I think that guy we just passed was Jerry Lucas." Not many people would have recognized Jerry Lucas, though he was a fairly successful professional basketball player. He had been an All American forward on Ohio State and was now a pro, though his professional career didn't reach the renown of his college days. Anyway, we wandered on and ignored it. But a little while later, it was still bugging my brother. He was sure it was Jerry Lucas and wanted to go back and find out. So, he headed off to search, and like a good little brother, I followed. Now, consider two things: 1) That this was a time when parents were fine letting their two kids go running through an airport, and 2) my brother actually thought he'd be able to find one person he thought he might have spotted five minutes earlier in O'Hare Airport, the busiest airport in the world. And we found Jerry Lucas. It was him. He was surprised and pleased to be recognized, we got his autograph, and then headed back to find our parents. Very excited, we were a bit tired, so we found some chairs and all four of us sat down to rest. And sitting down, we turned our heads and noticed a guitar case and bass case next to us. There was a tag on both of them with a logo that said, "Peter, Paul and Mary." It will not surprise you that we chose not to go anywhere for the time being. We had no idea what would turn up at the other end of this adventure, but we were going to find out. Eventually, the owners of the instruments showed up. One was Paul Stookey. The other, if I can recall correctly, was their longtime bassist, Dick Kniss. We got the autographs. It was, as yo might guess, a swell day at the airport. And memorable. (I even kept both autographs for a very long time, but alas they are no more.) By the way, consider one more thing: This was a time when a major musician felt no qualms about leaving his instruments unattended at the world's busiest airport. Years later, as I mentioned elsewhere, I worked on a Stephen King movie in the town of Ellsworth, Maine. One day I saw a flyer in town for a concert that very night with Noel Paul Stookey, who lived a few miles down the road in Blue Hill. I showed up, but it was all sold out -- however a father and son had a spare ticket to sell, so I got in. The concert was wonderful, and I was tempted afterwards to go back stage and say, "Hi! Remember me?!" Anyway, in honor of baseball, here's "Right Field." By my good buddy, Noel Paul Stookey. (By the way, much as I love this song, my favorite moment might be the look of knowing recognition from two women 49 seconds in. The cameraman and director lucked out big time.) We interrupt this website to celebrate the first radiocast of the Chicago Cubs this season for Spring Training.
Yes, it's true, I actually listen to Spring Training baseball games for the Cubs. (Not the whole games, usually. I'm not that loopy. After all, around about the fifth inning, teams start replacing the starters and second-stringers to see get a look at the minor leaguers even I've never heard of.) This might not mean much to most people, but when you listen to part of around 150 games a year, it's always a good sign to get the first game in. And hey, we listeners need Spring Training ourselves to get our ears and enthusiasm in shape. Thank the heavens for GameDay Audio on the Internet. Oh. The Cubs beat the Angels 11-2. This means nothing. But it's better than losing, which is less than nothing. Especially when your team lost 101 games last year and hasn't won a World Series in 104 years. You can any win you can. Even those that don't count. As mentioned, it's running now on Turner Classic Movies. As the opening credits came on, I was reminded that it's written by Walter Newman and Frank Pierson.
Why is this noteworthy? Walter Newman, you may recall, is the writer of the aforementioned Harrow Alley, "The Greatest Screenplay Never Made." He received an Oscar nomination for it, as well as for co-writing, Ace in the Hole. Newman also wrote two classics, but took his name off them both -- The Great Escape and The Magnificent Seven. (In his interview with William Froug for the book, The Screenwriter Looks at the Screenwriter, Newman relates the story of getting into an argument with John Sturges, director of The Magnificent Seven, ultimately telling him to remove his name. "If that's the way you want it," Sturges said. "You're being a damn fool." Newman replied, "All right. I have a right to be a damn fool.") Frank Pierson was no slouch in his own right. A former president of the WGA, he also wrote the screenplays for Dog Day Afternoon, Cool Hand Luke and Presumed Innocent. But here's how highly he thought of Cat Ballou. For all his many acclaimed credits, his email address was "Ballou33." It's also worth noting that Catherine Ballou's father is played by the actor John Marley. If you saw The Godfather, you will definitely remember him. He was the Hollywood movie producer who has a bit of a problem with his horse. And one of the two rustlers -- the older one, the uncle -- is played by Dwayne Hickman. He came to fame as a young man starring in the title role of the TV series, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. (Years later, after I'd gotten out of graduate school at UCLA, I had a meeting with an executive at CBS Television City, and one of his fellow executives came by to chat -- it was Dwayne Hickman, who by that time had gotten out of acting. However, he jumped back in a few times, notably for two Dobie Gillis reunion movies. He also became a TV director for sitcoms.) Nat King Cole, one of the balladeers with Stubby Kaye, was actually quite ill during production. It was his last appearance, and he passed away before the film opened. The movie is based on a novel by Roy Chanslor, whose title is The Ballad of Cat Ballou -- which in turn is the name of the Oscar-nominated song. It's hard not to imagine that the book's title is what gave the filmmakers the idea to use a song and troubadours as narrator throughout the movie. "If you have a jury, the jury is supposed to be a reflection of society. Under the laws of our land, you've got to have a jury that is a reflection of society as a whole, and on an Indian reservation, it’s going to be made up of Indians, right? So the non-Indian doesn't get a fair trial."
-- Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) on why he's against the Violence Against Women Act, because of a part of the bill that gives tribal courts the authority to charge non-Native American men in abuse cases on tribal lands. Except it turns out neither Mr. Grassley nor his staff bothered to check with...well, tribal law. As John Dossett, general counsel for the National Congress of American Indians (who probably knows a thing or two about tribal law and likely has a cell phone that someone in Chuck Grassley's office could have called), said, Sen. Grassley's charge is "simply wrong," Among the various reasons that the senator is wrong, Mr Dossett noted, is that juries on tribal lands, in fact, represent a "fair" cross-section of a reservation and therefore they include non-Indian people who live there as part of the community. Whether Mr. Grassley now says, "Oh, okay, I see. Okay, I'm for the bill now" -- or whether he sets his staff out looking for some new, nebulous and erroneous excuse, we wait to see... |
AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
Archives
May 2024
Categories
All
|
© Copyright Robert J. Elisberg 2024
|