WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 516 - Leonard Maltin

Episode Date: July 20, 2014

A lot of things in Leonard Maltin's life were unexpected. He never expected to become a ubiquitous American film critic. He didn't expect to be entrenched in show business after spending his formative years revering it. And he definitely didn't expect to become a comedy podcast legend. Leonard and Marc talk about how these unlikely things came to be. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Take a closer look at how at calgaryeconomicdevelopment.com. It's a night for the whole family. Be a part of Kids Night when the Toronto Rock take on the Colorado Mammoth at a special 5 p.m. start time on Saturday, March 9th at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton. The first 5,000 fans in attendance will get a Dan Dawson bobblehead courtesy of Backley Construction. Punch your ticket to Kids Night on Saturday, March 9th at 5 p.m. in Rock City at torontorock.com.

Oh my God, let's do this. How are you, what the fuckers, what the fuck buddies, what the fucking ears, what the fuck nicks, what the fuckstables, what the fuckaholics. I am Mark Maron. This is WTF. I'm sort of sweaty. I don't know what's going on, man. I don't know what's going on with my ears. But if anyone can identify with the ears humming and popping, you know, sort of a lot, and a bit of sinus pressure, I'd like to identify with the ears humming and popping uh you know sort of a lot and a bit of sinus pressure i'd like to identify with you i'd like you to reach out to me and say yes i know what that is this is what i had see i will i will self-diagnose by consensus i'm not beyond that all right so let's move away let's move out of my sinuses and into the uh into what's at hand

which is uh today i talked to leonard malton yeah the Leonard Maltin, the guy with all the books, with the beard, the guy with the movies, with the rating system, the guy that is the barometer of the short-form review. We'll talk movies, but more like where does he come from? Where does the guy, you know, he's an older guy. What made him, man? He is a movie lover. It was not his agenda to become Pauline Kael or Andrew Saris. I had a few Cahiers de Cinemas. I had a few of those laying around. My grandma's neighbor was a huge film buff who had just 30 years of film magazines of all kinds. kinds. I was sort of fascinated with black and white films when I was very young. I didn't like the movies, but I liked looking at pictures of the actors. I could name most actors in black and

white films without having seen the movies. And I sort of attach that to my fascination with Hollywood in general, which as time goes on, erodes and fades, my friends. Yes. So Denver, fades my friends yes so denver denver holy shit denver comedy works denver colorado i'm back and god damn it you know i was not feeling great last week mentally i've been very on edge i've been very volatile uh the little things are bothering me i'm quick to explode i was just wrought with a a seething sort of discomfort and aggravation and anger and by the time i got to denver on friday i was like why am i even doing this what's going on you know and i the last time i was in denver it was just a parade of drunkenness and i remember that a couple of the late shows were tricky but here's what i forget here's what i forget when I enter.

A lot of times when I go out of town, I forget that I'm a fucking professional comic that's been doing this more than half my life and lives on fucking stage and can handle himself anywhere. Would actually prefer it to get fucking weird. Pow, look out. Just shit my pants.

Justcoffee.coop. Get that at wtfpod.com now there was a little bit of trouble uh friday night in between shows uh and also i know some people in denver got upset with me by saying that it's the drunkiest place i've been you know other than glasgow scotland i know some of you took umbrage with that uh but uh 7 30 show a woman had to be taken out of the club because she vomited. All right, so that doesn't happen to me. Let me think. Anywhere ever.

Denver. 7.30. Not even 9 o'clock show. 7.30, a grown person couldn't hold their liquor. I don't know the back story, but I'm not making fun of you if I make fun of your town, and I wasn't even making fun of Denver. If you're going to tell me it's not a drunky town, I'm going to tell you you're a liar. I'm going to be in Montreal Thursday through

Saturday. I'm doing a solo show up there on Saturday. I'm doing some televised gala. I think I'm doing Ari Shafir's show. I might do one of Vittel's midnight shows. I'm going to be up there at the festival if you're up and around. So what am I talking about? Saturday night. Saturday night uh chris

charpentier is opening for me first show's great everything's timing out i'm feeling good i'm feeling like a comic i'm feeling like a fucking rock star because the comedy works is so hot what a hot room and then then it happens yeah then it happens. They're loading the audience in, and I see some commotion. There's commotion out front. I go out front to get a soda. There's commotion. I'm like, no, no, no, no, it can't be. God, we've come so far.

We're three shows in, and they're all so good. Why? Why Bachelorettes now? I was almost out four for four it could have been bachelorettes bride wearing a goofy thing not a dick or a veil but something i don't remember there was like 10 of them and i'm like oh fuck no god damn it no why why do they come to the comedy clubs why do they come who set this tradition rolling when what is it ever okay why won't they learn oh my god i just turned defensive and horrible and i was like if they fuck this show up the problem is this right and i'm like i'm gonna

try to do a theater next time because i don't need this shit i said that out loud to the woman who books the place or with an earshot because here's my argument is that like you know i have fans they come to see me i want to do a good show for the fans i don't want to have to babysit a dozen dumb buzzed women who want nothing but attention who don't usually care who the comic is i don't know who made this a thing some comedian in the 80s must have just made an entire show about them in a positive way and that set this whole ball rolling. It's almost like it's in a

book of what to do at a bash for bachelorettes. A fucking bachelorette party. I was like living there. It was like 10 of them. It was huge and they paid extra to have these certain seats and the mother is with the mother of the bride is with them and she's the loudest of them all and they're sitting and it's before the show and they're already doing that thing like hey what are you guys

do you guys want to get shot so i'm fucking losing it but you know it is part of the job you know i'm a stand-up comedian i can do stand-up comedy anywhere that is what i that's what i've done with my life i've prepared i've played every situation and i don't know what kind of night they wanted to have, but I could make it a bad one. I'll make it memorable in the worst way possible. So the first guy goes up, and they're already fucking out of control.

And then the club shuts them down a bit, and they got a guy literally standing over them. And yeah, it's not the way I wanted it to be, but it was the way it had to be. So he kind of plows through his set. He does all right. And I'm like, what the way i wanted it to be but it was the way it had to be so he kind of plows through his set he does all right and i'm like what the fuck am i gonna do this has got to be good and i'm already like jacked up and i just got out there and i just eviscerated them for 10 minutes i got down on my hands and knees and said some of the most heinous shit possible to

preemptively destroy the possibility of these drunk needy women who care not for the rest of the audience to just feel the wrath of me but also give them attention i was relatively diplomatic i did get very heinous i did say some awful things but i was like oh what i meant to say was congratulations uh i did it was fun for everybody it was it was and you know what they behave themselves and i would engage with them occasionally and i think my fans had a good time i had a slight edge on i had a slight edge on i say some i said some things i could i can't take back but uh they uh they seemed to have a good time afterwards the bride came out to me she said that was really fun

and uh it was exactly what we wanted and and i thought like, oh my God, I must be losing my touch. How come she's not crying? I must be losing my edge. Why are they all so perky? And then I said, well, okay, well, I'm glad you had a good time in the club. You know, the club doesn't like to kick 10 people out. They need to make money too.

And then the bride said to me, she said, well, the one thing was they did kick my mother out. And I'm like, all right, so it's a win-win for everybody. There's your story. everyone had a good time i got to dump about you know 15 years of cynicism about marriage onto your lap and uh and your mother got kicked out i think everybody gets a good story and everyone had a good time and then after the show the woman who uh who booked the place says don't you tear tell me tell me you're going to go do a theater. I'm like,

I'm sorry. I didn't know what was going to happen. I was just being a diva. I was being a dick. I was being a, you know, a sensitive baby. And the,

and the honest to God thing about it is I love doing comedy clubs. You know, I know I waffle and I make myself crazy before I go on. But when you have a hands-on situation like that, that kind of pushes you to, to get into a, you know, a hostile mode,

which i used to be in all the time but sometimes now it's sort of a gift and just to go hands-on and improvise about you know 30 minutes of an hour and 15 minute show and just kind of ride it out and make it work and and ride the wave of hostility and charm and diplomacy and just how how is that not entertaining it was one of the best shows i got i got a partial standing over that one too and i'll never do anything but comedy works when i go to denver because i'm a club comic at heart and you know that's the job man sometimes you got to deal with a woman with a dick hat on even though this one didn't have one i mean i'm not happy about it and if you're a comic and you're listening to

this i mean don't get me wrong we all have the same reaction which is oh fuck bachelorettes god damn it how am i gonna get my work done now it's just gonna be a war it's gonna be a battle it's just gonna be me representing everything that's bad about men for them. But it worked out. It worked out, folks. Thank you for being concerned. Okay. All right.

Let's talk movies and let's find out who Leonard Maltin is. Let's get into Leonard Maltin. Because he's really just, he's almost like uh i don't know how many dimensions leonard malton has for you but now it's not just going to be on the screen now we're going to make him three-dimensional that's my hope and i believe i did that so let's talk to Leonard. It's a night for the whole family. Be a part of Kids Night when the Toronto Rock take on the Colorado Mammoth at a special 5 p.m. start time on Saturday, March 9th at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton.

The first 5,000 fans in attendance will get a Dan Dawson bobblehead courtesy of Backley Construction. Punch your ticket to Kids Night on Saturday, March 9th at 5 p.m. in Rock City at torontorock.com. Malton. malton leonard malton you are infamous now in in the world of podcasting you've been made a legend by uh by my my comrade doug benson yes who did he invent that game he invent that game? He invented that game and has made me cool. He's given me street cred that I never had before.

Finally. Yeah, you're waiting for that your whole life. You live long enough, Mark. Anything's possible. You got lucky. Anything's possible. I got damn lucky. People love that game.

Oh, they do. People come up to me all the time who don't know me from any other form of communication, but they love Doug's podcast and they love that game. That's hilarious. I don't feel that I'm very good at it, but I did have a miraculous poll on naming. Actually, the movie was The Wizard of Oz, but I had to name the top three billed names. Right. And it came down to, was it going to be Burt Lahr or was it going to be, who played the Tim and Haley? Jack Haley. Jack Haley. Right. And it came down to, you know, was it going to be, was it going to be the, it was going

to be Burt Lahr. Right. Or was it going to be, who played the Tim and Haley? Jack Haley. Jack Haley. Right. And, you know, I went with Burt Lahr as the third, you know, and I got it. Wow.

And it was astounding. Nobody, I mean, that wouldn't be a pull for you, but you know. No, no, I don't know this. I'm the world's worst player of that game. Oh boy. Don't ask anybody, including Doug. I am the world's worst player of that game oh boy don't ask anybody including doug i am the world's worst player of that game my mind doesn't sort information that way yeah because you wrote

this stuff down from research yeah it's not like you wrote the books from your memory yeah exactly and now we live in the age of google where you got to look things up yeah that's all or i mean you could actually go back to my book yeah if you you know old-fashioned enough to want to do that why think at all when you have the google that's right exactly but what interests me really is that uh you know i studied i minored in film criticism yeah in 1981 so you know there was a period in my life where uh yeah and growing up my my grandmother's next door neighbor in new jersey pompton lakes new jersey where you you're from jersey right north jersey teenacneck uh-huh well although born in manhattan yeah lived there till i was four yeah what where what do you come from exactly first immigrant first generation second generation uh-huh yeah very assimilated parents

uh-huh and where where did you where'd they live in manhattan on the upper west side on west 77th street and then when my wife and i got married, we moved to two blocks away from where I had grown up on 79th and Amsterdam. Really? On purpose? You knew it? No, not on purpose. I did know it, but it was just I liked the Upper West Side, and there was this new building

that had just gone up, and my wife and I were out apartment hunting, and here was this wonderful building, great location. Everything was new and ready to move know, and ready to move in. And we did it. And we could afford it. Even better, we could afford it. Back then? Then.

Then. Jesus, that was 39 years ago. Yeah, but you haven't lived in Manhattan in how long? 31 years. Oh, you left. You came out here. Well, I got this, you know, I got this freak incident in my life. I got a phone call about auditioning for Entertainment Tonight toward the end of the first season.

To go back a half a step, like every author, you want to get on shows to promote your books. Sure. And I got lucky. I got on the Today Show. Yeah. And then I got lucky again. They had me back. And I had just written a book about movie comedians from Charlie Chaplin to Woody Allen.

And Gene Shalit interviewed me. and he couldn't have been nicer. Gene Shalit. And he said, we don't have to stick to these pre-interview things. I said, no, talk about whatever you want. So we had this loose, lively, funny conversation. 3,000 miles away, somebody at Paramount Television saw this segment and said to the new boss of this new show, you're looking for a film critic, aren't you?

He said, yes. Well, you ought to check out this guy I saw on the Today Show. And my phone rang in New York. Yeah. The phone rang. Right. I pick up the phone. In your home.

I'm home, right? I'm typing on my typewriter. You remember those. Yeah, sure. And the guy says, would you be willing to audition? I said, yeah, sure. And they flew me out to LA to do an audition of a couple of movie reviews. I'm shortening the very long story.

Sure. And they used my auditions on the air. And they never officially hired me. It took a long time for them to hire me, but they just kept flying me out and having me tape stuff. So I commuted essentially for a year and a half from New York to LA. Weekly? No, every third week at first, which was sort of livable.

Yeah. I was always home on the weekend with my wife and then home for two full weeks. Right. And then back for a week. And then it got to be every other week. And that really took a toll. Oh, yeah. It's exhausting.

I was spending all my time planning. Who am I going to have dinner with? When am I going to see this film? Should I see this film in New York? No, maybe I'll wait and see it in LA. Wasted energy. Yeah. And my wife finally, ultimately, it's always my wife, Alice, said, enough.

Yeah. Enough already. So we sublet our apartment and moved out here temporarily. Sure. 31 years ago. And never left. Never left. Our daughter was born here.

She's a California girl. Well, what compelled you? Like, what did your dad do? What kind of household did you grow up in? My dad was an immigration judge. Wow. And my mother was a housewife who had been in show business. She sang in nightclubs when she was a teenager and played the accordion.

During the big band era? No, no. During the cabaret and nightclub era okay say and uh was she a novelty actor no no she was she was a singer she was vocalist she was she played accordion in earnest in company no no if you heard her play you would know it wasn't in earnest but she could accompany herself uh-huh and uh and so she still did occasional club dates when I was growing up, sang around here and there. But most of the growing up was in Teaneck. Yeah. And my dad, my uncle died when I was a year and a half old, and he had been a pianist and a songwriter. Never a great success, but he had songs published and recorded. And my father took over his ASCAP estate and membership and subscribed to Weekly Variety. Okay.

And as a kid, I found Variety just absolutely fascinating and exotic. Because of the movie stars? No, because of everything. Everything about show business, not just the movie stars. They used to have a column, Mark, that went NY to LA. Who was traveling that week from New York to LA? LA to London. Uh-huh. Who was traveling that week from New York to LA. LA to London. Uh-huh.

And, you know, NY to all these things. It's like, wow. So it was glamorous. Glamorous. Exciting. I would read nightclub reviews from Vegas. Right. Nightclub reviews. People I wish I could go and see. Like who? Who were your people then? Oh, this is old school

show business. You know, so. Like Ethel Merman? Well, no, no, well, Louis Prima and Keely Smith. Uh-huh. Loved them. Used to watch them whenever they were on the Ed Sullivan show. So you were a jazz guy. Yeah, jazz and pop. Uh-huh.

Yeah. Loved Mel Torme. Was that your first passion, was the music? I was always exposed to music, and I took piano lessons. Yeah. And there was always music going on in our household. Uh-huh. But did you go down to like

i don't know how old are you now i'm 63 but did were you uh were you in uh close enough to new york to go to like the village vanguard or go see shows oh well when i got when i got to be like 12 they let me go into the city by myself and mostly what i was doing amazing i remember when i went to my grandmother's house like i was 13 or 14 you take the bus in yeah you would never let a 12 year old kid oh no no of course not no one thought no one battled an or 14, you take the bus in. Yeah. You would never let a 12-year-old kid go in. Oh, no. No, of course not. No one thought, no one battled an eyelash. Just jump on the bus,

go to the Port Authority, right? Yeah. Either that, or I could go across to George Washington, where I was in North Jersey, take the bus across to George Washington Bridge

and then take the subway downtown. Yeah. Either way. Yeah. And a friend and I would spend the day in the city, but we'd be going

to the New Yorker Theater or the Revival Theater. It's the Thalia, the New Yorker, the Museum of Modern Art, which showed repertory films every day. That was what we were mostly doing. In high school. Yeah.

When I got a little older, I went to NYU, and it was around that time I really got seriously interested in jazz. And I did get to go to the Vanguard, and I did get to go to the Half Note and some other places like that. And then when I got out of college, parenthetically, and I was freelancing and actually trying to make a living at freelancing for the first time, I said to a friend, I would really love to write about jazz, but how do you sort of announce to the world, hey, I'm here to write about jazz? Yeah.

And he said, you know, the Village Voice takes freelance. I said, they do? He said, yeah. So I wrote a piece on spec, a review, and sent it into The Voice and they bought it. That's great.

On what? It was a review of a great pianist and band leader named Duke Pearson who was at the Half Note. Uh-huh. And I got a check

for 65 bucks and I think it was the most exciting paycheck I've ever gotten in my life. Was that the first time you were paid as a writer? No, no, no. I'd been published before. But it was The Village Voice, and it was...

Yeah, and it was about jazz, which I'd fallen in love with. Who was the only... What, Nat Hentoff? Was he writing yet? He was... Well, he did his column for many, many years, but he was a separate name byline. But Gary Giddens started writing for the voice at the same time i did and he has gone on to become one of the preeminent jazz writers of our generation well

when you say that you you went to nyu what were you what were you studying well at that time there was no undergraduate film study program that's how long ago this is right uh but film study is different than film production so right yeah and i didn't want to be a filmmaker you just wanted to write about film right so what i did was i was a journalism major turned out to be the right choice uh-huh and then they were very nice they let me cherry pick film courses i wanted to take for credit uh-huh so i got to to do some interesting stuff film wise there and a history of documentary and you know interesting stuff like that well what compelled you to to like to take that approach i mean i mean you say you were going to see these these movies as a kid

in revival houses so you were already you know kind of fascinated with going back to the silent era and going back to the beginning of film like i had to watch all those movies you know i had to watch you know dw griffith's intolerance i had to watch uh you know city lights i mean i loved watching them but there are movies that i wouldn't have seen otherwise hadn't I been in a film studies program. My teacher was actually a fairly renowned British film critic, I guess. His name was Roger Manvel. Oh, yeah. Very well known. And I took history of film with Manvel for a but I, I became sort of, I don't know.

It wasn't disillusion, but I became fascinated with the dialogue of criticism, which I don't know exists as much as it used to at all anymore. So when you got into it, what was it that really kind of, you know, compelled you to write about film? Well,

it was film history that really got me hooked. I never thought of myself becoming a film critic at all. Right. I didn't think I was smart enough to do that, or erudite enough to do that. Were there film critics around at the time? Oh, sure. Well, that was the era of Andrew Sarris and Pauline Kael. So, Cahiers de Cinema was happening.

Yeah, yeah. I remember reading Sarris' original essay about the auteur theory. Right. When it came out, which was, you know. That was Cahiers de Cinema, right? Yes. Earth Shattering. Right.

And then he published his paperback on the American cinema, which sort of collated all of that material together. Andrew Saris, that's right. And then there was Sight and Sound, that magazine. British magazine, yep. And, you know, see, when I started, so that was already happening. So you're looking at that stuff. This is high-minded shit, man.

Yeah, but that was kind of above my head. What were they trying to do, did you think? I mean, when you were taking that in, you know, as somebody who spent the life writing about film, I'm just asking you from a personal point of view because I read this stuff too. And there's a moment there where, or what's his name? Jury Lottman's piece on semiotics in cinema. And there are these, Peter Wolin, his stuff on semiotics. I couldn't do that.

I couldn't either, but it seemed so important to me. I was so upset that I couldn't understand. I never got as far as semiotics. It's hard. No. But what does it mean? I fell in love with movies largely at first because of TV.

Because as a child of the first TV generation, TV was a living museum of movies. Right. Every day I watched Laurel and Hardy. Every single day. How great was that? Was it Channel 11? Channel 11, exactly. In Jersey.

Right? Yeah. And every day I would watch- Bowery Boys. The Little Rascal. Yeah, Three Stooges. I would watch the Stooges when they came on. I would watch an endless, endless old cartoon.

Yeah. Thousands, hundreds a week. Couldn't get enough of them. And unlike a lot of my friends, I was curious about them. The difference between me and normal kids was I wanted to know more. Right. And I went to the library. And of course, I watched Walt Disney every week.

I came home, watched the Mickey Mouse Club every day. I watched Walt Disney on his weekly TV show. And he would often delve into his own history. You were obsessed. Yeah. I got hooked. Some kids get hooked on baseball or something. And I got hooked on movies and then movie history. And I went to the local library where I spent a lot of my youth. And there weren't that many books to take out at that time. There was one book on Disney. It was a good one, but it was just that one. Yeah. There was one book on Chaplin.

Was it Manville's book? No, it was Theodore Hough's book. Okay. Which they then had a discontinued copy I was able to buy for 10 cents. That was the first movie book I ever bought at a library sale, overstock sale, 10 cents. Good deal. a wonderful deal and I just I gobbled all this up a book on Laurel and Hardy came out when I was 10 or 11 years old took it out from the library read it returned it took it out again read it again read it twice returned it took it out again read it again and then and then you became sort of, you yourself wrote on these film comedians.

Well, when I was 12 or 13, I started writing about all this stuff in my own little homemade magazine, what we used to call in those days a fanzine. And what were you writing about? What was your approach? Well, at that time, I was just, you know, trying to simulate what I'd seen in print already,

writing on the career of Buster Keaton. Sure. Okay. The career of Douglas Fairbanks. But you were 12. Yeah. Okay. Right.

Yeah. Trying to imitate a grownup, essentially. Uh-huh. And publishing myself. And then I found out that there was a whole world of these fanzines. And I offered my services to two of them in particular. At 12? At 13.

You were 13? Yep. Did they know you were 13? Only after they accepted the articles. Uh-huh. Once they took, and there was no money involved. This is all labor of love. These are all amateur publishers and editors.

But I was just thrilled to see my byline, and it was very exciting. They published them even though they knew you were 13. Yeah. And what do you think, because it's interesting that later, punk rock culture sort of kind of built itself out the same way through zines and local scenes. So what was the community of film fanzines driven by? Was it just film nerds?

Was it people that were, was it an ongoing discourse about certain no there was nothing there was nothing that you could even uh remotely call a discourse it was a bunch of guys who loved old movies okay and i i was on the young end of the curve i wasn't the only young person but i was a rarity uh-huh and what was nice was that the grownups took me in. They were very kind to me and accepted me. Well, what was your, sort of at that young age, I imagine it's hard to remember to really discern that,

you know, an obsession with old movies is, there was a lot of those guys around for a while. You know, I don't know how many of them are still around, but there was a period there, I think, that the nostalgia for silent films or musicals it sort of it seemed to have peaked out during you know after uh jack haley jr made that that's entertainment and and some of those movies that there was a heightened appreciation uh for for the film silent film comedies and for for some of that stuff that that seems to be almost gone now. Well, actually, the silent comedies are alive and well. Are they?

There are a surprising number of showings all over the country, all over the world with live music, sometimes with full orchestras. Didn't they just release a Buster Keaton box? Oh, well, they've reissued it. Yeah, it was Blu-ray now. On Blu-ray. How is that? Great.

Yeah? I need to get one. Oh, they're fantastic. You know, nothing is quite the same as seeing it in person with live music. But do you think, I guess my question is, you know, in looking at the nostalgia for that, is that, you know, once the 60s come around and once the auteur theater is established and once you have this new understanding of film, that it seemed to me that there was people that really held on to the purity of what,

the simplicity of film at that time. And I think there was a fear that it would just be steamrolled and disappear or something. But it mattered so much. This is not an original thought. But in that era of Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris, we're talking about mid-60s through the 70s, people debated film. People were passionate about film. People talked about the new films. It was a big deal.

The way people talk now about Breaking Bad or about House of Cards or about The Walking Dead. But it was a smaller group of people. It was a much smaller group of people. Now the dialogue consumes the entire planet. We all have access to each other. We have access to each other.

Unlimited access to it. Unfettered access to each other. Unfettered 140-character access to everybody. Exactly. I mean, when I tell people what I used to have to do to publish my fanzine, first, I started with a mimeograph machine. This was when you were 13? Even before, actually.

But like the ones you just gave me from the 70s. Well, by that time it was professionally printed. Right. From a local printer. Uh-huh. But when I started- Film Fan Monthly. Right.

March, it was, okay. Did it for nine years. I edited and published that magazine. Well, it's interesting. So this is 1972, Leonard. It's 1972. Yeah. And on the cover of these two that you gave me, you know, you have, is that Gable and

Lombard? Right. No, Harlow. Harlow. Gable and Jean Harlow from Wings? What is that from? No, that's from, I'm not sure which film that's from. That could be from Hold Your Man.

Okay. And then you got Will Rogers. Yep. Now this is 1972, Leonard. Yes. This was not the discourse. No, this was not the discourse, which is why this was always an oddball magazine for a very specialized niche,

we didn't call it that then, niche audience. For people that like those old movies. People like those old movies, yes. And even then, even when I was publishing this, having Will Rogers on the cover was not a good commercial idea. No, no. It doesn't look like you were setting out to make not a good commercial idea. No, no.

It doesn't look like you were setting out to make a fortune with this magazine. No, no. But even then, if I'd put Bogart on the cover, that would have been a better idea. I have to assume that you had a Bogart cover at some point. No, don't assume. You didn't have... No. I had a Nigel Bruce cover.

Uh-huh. You know, played Dr. Watson to Basil Rathbill and Sherlock Holmes. Okay, so this wasn't just you. You an editor i was an editor publisher i licked stamps stuffed envelopes my dad helped me take care of the business end of it you were driven and you know by this point by 1972 i uh easy rider is out yes uh five easy pieces is out yes uh you know what the uh what the maybe the longer not the long goodbye but uh altman is starting to flourish and coppola i mean the early 70s you know the great flowering of american cinema of new americans new american cinema the american auteurs right and you've got

which are now the touchstone for all young filmmakers that i meet they look to that period as as the the high point point for their role model. Sure, the anti-hero and the existential character. But what I'm looking at is that you've got Gable and Harlow on the cover of your... What were you avoiding, Leonard? Swimming against the tide. Is that what you were doing? No, not deliberately.

I saw Easy Rider. I saw Five Easy Pieces. I absorbed all of that, too. What was your feeling? I loved it. I loved all God. Alt saw five Easy pieces. I absorbed all of that too. What was your feeling? Oh, you did love it. I loved all. Oh, God. Altman was just too much.

McCabe and Mrs. Miller is a masterpiece. I hated it the first time and fell in love with it the second time. I've watched it like nine or ten times. I mean, look, I love them. They're ones I have problems with. But the Long Goodbye doesn't work for me. Not my favorite. It's not my favorite

nashville great pure heaven pure heaven absolute pure nash and i got to and i got to meet him i got to chat with him a couple times uh but what was the intention so you you go from this you're not writing you're not writing movie criticism no you're you're you're writing uh what would you call it movie history okay and then interviewing as as many of the veterans of that era as I could. Who'd you interview at that time? Well, see, I mean, again, offbeat. When I made my first journeys out here to La La Land in 69 and 70. What were you coming out for then?

I came out to do a bunch of interviews for my magazine. For this magazine? Right. Film Fan Monthly? Yep, yep. Now, what was the readership uh about 1500 people all over the world and uh uh and you know and it was very personal i mean the kind of mail i got in those you remember mail sure yeah with stamps right yeah i used to get mail uh-huh no people people who loved it loved it like what

kind of mail like i'm so glad you're keeping the spirit of this alive. Yeah, yeah. Or sending additional thoughts or corrections or saying, oh, you should have mentioned his performance in this film. That was a great one too. Yeah. But I came out here and I interviewed Ralph Bellamy. You did?

Yeah. Is he still around? No. No, they're all gone. But he worked late. He worked well into his career. He's in- Trading Places?

Trading Places with Eddie Murphy. You know that story? Uh-uh. This is apparently a true story. And in fact, John Landis told me it was true. And he directed the movie. Eddie Murphy is in a makeup trailer one morning. Yeah.

Ralph Bellamy and Don Amici, two long-time movie actors, are sitting there. And they're all getting made up. Yeah. And Ralph says, you know, long time movie actors are sitting there and they're all getting made up. Yeah. And Ralph says, you know, Don, I figured out this is my 98th movie. How many have you made? And he says, gee, I think I've made about 50. Yeah.

And Eddie Murphy says, hey, between us, we've made 150 movies. Anyway, so I interviewed Ralph Bellamy. I interviewed Joan Blondell. I interviewed character actors like Grady Sutton, who played W.C. Field's idiot nephew in The Bank Dick, who was a wonderful guy. And you were thrilled to do it. Thrilled. Thrilled beyond words.

And when you sat with these people, who I even imagine at that time were getting on in years. Yes, indeed. You know, what were the type, what would you ask W.C. Field's sidekick? Well, I mean, I asked him how he got started. Right. And he had interesting stories of, you know, coming out and breaking into the movies in the 1920s.

I mean, I'm talking to somebody who was out here in the 20s, Mark. You were completely immersed in the myth of Hollywood. Oh, yes, absolutely. You loved it all. The realities, too, you know, but, I mean, but it was wonderful.. Oh, yes, absolutely. You loved it all. The realities, too. But it was wonderful. Fields liked him. Fields used him.

His name was Grady Sutton. And Fields used him several times because he played off him well. He knew he was a good foil. And he wasn't trying to steal a scene. And so they were simpatico. to steal a scene. Uh-huh. You know, and so they were simpatico.

I interviewed Mitchell Lyson, who was an art director turned director in the Golden Age. He directed two scripts by Billy Wyler and Charles Brackett. And Wyler always said it was watching what Mitchell Lyson did wrong with his screenplays that made him want to direct. Uh-huh. But I interviewed Mitchell L Eisen. It was a very interesting guy. So I couldn't get enough of this stuff. I just loved it.

You said you wrote, you talked to Gene Shallott about the great film comedians. Yeah. Again, I mean, you call yourself a historian, but there must have been, what was your insight into, who did you cover? You, who'd you, you cover Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, all the people you can imagine,

W.C. Fields, Laurel and Hardy, W.C. Fields, Harold Lloyd, Mae West, Harold Lloyd, Harry Langdon, the Three Stooges, uh, Abin Costello, Jerry Lewis, uh, Danny Kaye, Bob Hope. You did all that. Red Skelton. Yeah. That's that whole book, which I'm preparing now to revive as an e-book on Kindle. And that book sold well? It did pretty well.

And was this, again, history, or did you go deeper into the ideas of the types of comedy these people did? Well, I tried to bring some perceptivity. Is that a word? Sure. Insight. Insight. Insight. Yeah.

Into what they did and how they did it. Who was your favorite? And I also got to interview people who'd worked with them to give some insight into their MO. Fatty Arbuckle? Fatty Arbuckle, there's a chapter on him, on Mabel Normand, you know, the great comedian who worked opposite Chaplin. Did you read Jerry Stahl's book, I, Fatty? No. You should read it. I heard it was good it's heavy yeah i mean it's a it's a novelization from the first from fatty's point of view right right you know that focuses on his drug addiction and his troubles yes but uh but you but it doesn't seem like it seemed like your entire uh not agenda

but you you were not a tabloid guy you you didn't oh no no i was not looking for dirt but but but you were not as fascinated i i i tend to think that there are people that are equally as fascinated in in in hollywood for the dark reasons yeah that you are for the for the light reason that's true kenneth anger covered that that turf rather well another name another name that nobody gives a shit about anymore you know what i mean like i i mean is hollywood babylon even in print i mean he started it is i'm sure it is he started it yeah i know he invented a lot of that the glorification of it the elevating of it yeah i mean obviously tabloid had been around forever right but confidential was in the 50s right and

that was the right the really seedy is semis them all. Did you like L.A. Confidential? I did. I re-watched it. I'm very critical of modern noir, and I didn't quite process it as honoring the form as much as I didn't realize it did, but it's a pretty spectacular movie.

Curtis Hanson's a very, very savvy guy. It's smart, man. And he knows films as well as anybody alive. Uh-huh. So, yeah. So, who were your favorite film comedians? I know there's a big book. Everybody I just mentioned.

All of them. But you must have had one that really moved you. Chaplin is my god. Is he? Chaplin is kind. It all starts with Chaplin, it seems to me. You know, and I find him endlessly fascinating. Endlessly fascinating.

For what reason? Well, if you've ever seen Kevin Brownlow and David Gill's great documentary called Unknown Chaplin, they found all of his raw footage from a certain period in his career. Yeah. And so he shot everything. He rehearsed and worked out his ideas while the camera was rolling. Right. They figured this out, organized all this footage, and collated it into a documentary

that is just mesmerizing. Uh-huh. organized all this footage right and collated it into a documentary that is just mesmerizing you see him develop an idea and refine it right and get it better and get it better and then get it even better and then finally get it perfect and you know he he was he was unique he was he was truly a genius one of a kind well there was a you know in my recollection the the sort of uh celebration of chaplain a lot of it revolved around his characterization of the underdog and his incredible empathy for people who were downtrodden. Right. But remember, too, that he was the first real superstar, a word they didn't coin in those days. Yeah.

But he started working exactly 100 years ago, actually. This is his centenary year in film. Uh-huh. It was 1914. Max Sennett signed him at the very end, I think December 1913. Uh-huh. Started making films in 1914. Now, picture this.

There's not only no internet and no cable and none of that. Not only is there no television, there isn't even radio yet. Right. Okay? All there is is newspapers and magazines. That's communication. Within months of his screen debut, he was a star. And by the end of 1914, he was a worldwide phenomenon. Not just a star, a phenomenon. They put these standees of him outside theaters and say, he's here today.

People would flock. There were suddenly, there were Chaplin imitators. There were Charlie Chaplin costume contests. There were Charlie Chaplin comic strips and animated films within another year or so. Truly a phenomenon. And it all happened before modern communication. That's how potent he was.

And then he started United Artists with what, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks and Griffith yep uh-huh amazing history amazing history yeah I was like I was obsessed and fascinated with pictures of old movie stars like I it was weird because I never made it because my grandmother you know sort of was into it and then yeah I just I could probably identify more stars than i would know their work it's weird the pictures to me were very moving for some reason like i couldn't tell you that i'd seen a douglas fairbanks movie but i know exactly what he looks like and well there was an awareness you see before the era of narrow casting uh-huh you know before this everybody

running their own channel everybody running their their own communications industry in miniature, there was more of a consensual or consensus popular culture. Yeah. You know, if I... Everyone's on, you know, when there were three networks in a few studios, everybody... Three networks, right. We all got the same shit.

So if you wanted to see The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show, you had to sift through Sophie Tucker sit through Sophie Tucker or Myron Cohen. Myron Cohen on the Ed Sullivan Show. Yes, exactly. Or Senor Wentz's, God bless him, who I got to meet. A rare non-Yiddish performance from Myron Cohen. So you were exposed to these other forms of show business just by accident or osmosis. Everybody was.

Right. No one didn't know who Senor Wences was. That's right. In 1962. Right. Or 1965. Sure. He was ubiquitous.

Yeah. And we should explain that he was one of the great ventriloquists in show business history. Who used, among other things, his hands. Johnny was the little guy in his hand. Yeah, yeah. He had Pedro in the box. Oh, that's all right. That's all right. That's all right. That's all among other things, his hand. Johnny was the little guy in his hand. Yeah, yeah. He had Pedro in the box. Uh-huh. Oh, that's all right.

That's all right. That's all right. Yeah, that's all right. Great, great actor. Yeah. And he lived to be 101. Mm-hmm. Amazing man.

I got to interview him. What was his real name? Wenceslas, I forget his last name. Moreno. Wenceslas Moreno. Uh-huh. I met him and his wife. They were lovely.

Uh-huh. I have a picture of me with Wences and Pedro in the box when my beard was very dark. Uh-huh. And his wife said I looked like Pedro. So I have a picture

of us together. Oh, that's sweet. So the point being that for you, Chaplin represented the birth of the power of film. Yes.

And the birth of screen comedy, really. Uh-huh. And the individual screen comedian. But there were comics before him him but he really set the standard and but most of it was slapstick because they you know there was no sound

right but he within again within just a year or two he starts finding more to it than simply knock about stuff to simply kicking somebody in the rear end and then running well yeah there's sort of heavy-hearted moral tales yes well i mean some of them subtler than that there was more nuance in like what well a lot of his early films the immigrant is a wonderful tour he did these 12 short subjects yeah he's being paid a fortune of money for mutual comedies mutual films within two years time they're called the Mutual Dozen. And these dozen films, Easy Street, The Immigrant, The Rink, 1AM, The Cure, they're all great little films. They're little models of perfection, of storytelling in the comedic form. And when you see that documentary, you see how hard he

worked to make it look so easy. So he was sort of, you know, not only a gifted storyteller, but, you know, these meticulous physical craftsmen. Oh, yeah. But, you know, he definitely had a vision and his heart was in the right place. And he developed a vision. Yeah. He developed a vision and it kept growing. And when he started to include elements of pathos and wistfulness in his film, not everybody liked that. But where did that start?

In the features? He approaches it in the shorts, but then when he made The Kid with Jackie Coogan, that's a real tearjerker. And it still works as a tearjerker because Coogan is such a natural, adorable kid. And his relationship with Charlie is so endearing yeah that it tears your heart out and it's just wonderful the gold rush is pretty gold rush is wonderful yeah what was that heavy set guy that played max max wayne yeah when they're eating the shoe you know that name yeah you know max wayne i do know max wayne yeah i mean it is part of me i don't have the time to do like i i don't tend to get completely obsessed with things, but during a period in my life, I was very interested.

Like Keaton was astounding. And when you have teachers that are really telling you that, to sort of contextualize it historically, which I think is a big problem because of the internet now and because of where culture is, is that everything sort of floats without context. Everything sort of floats. I'm afraid so.

In a sort of an ever present now. Right. So where's the relative importance of things? Well, yeah, it's getting lost. You know, that there's no way to realize like, well, not only is this great if people are like, well, I don't get it. It's like, well, no one had ever done it before. Yeah, exactly.

When my daughter was in middle school, I think she was in 10th grade, maybe it was high school, one of her teachers was doing a film course and asked if I would come by and speak to the kids because they were watching Citizen Kane. Okay. So I stopped by one morning. It's high school, right? So they can't watch a two-hour movie during a class period. Right. They're watching it in 20 minute chunks. That's crazy. Sitting at desks in a room where the light is spilling in through the so-called blackout curtains and they're kids. Yeah. And he hasn't told them anything about what else was going on in the world in 1941. They haven't seen what other films looked like in 1941. They have no context. Right. I mean, this is like the world's worst way to watch a great movie. You couldn't invent, or maybe on an airplane. If they'd done all that and it was on an airplane, that could have been worse. Right. But that would be the only way. Right. And it's like, what are you going to say

to these kids? And then of course you're saying to them, okay, here's the world's greatest movie. Watch it. Yeah. Appreciate it. Well, what did you do? I tried. I tried to give them a little background, a little background uh-huh a little context to say how revolutionary it was for its time it's not an easy movie no no i i think it's a compelling movie no matter what but you the only way to really appreciate it fully is to get what he was doing that was so different that was so unusual at that moment well i mean but you know for me that the one thing that resonated with me in in the orson welles canon was uh was tolan cinematography yes that you know

that you know you know you got this genius i think it was the first time i realized like you know there's a genius but then there's the other genius yeah whoever they who's the genius behind the genius well i know well see when i was a kid there was another place in Manhattan I used to go to that was the Huntington Hartford Museum. The millionaire had dedicated a museum on Columbus Circle. And they had a film program. And they brought in guests. And one day they had a tribute, one month, they had a tribute to the director Ruben Mamoulian. I'd never heard of him. And I'd never thought about directors. I was only interested in the stars. I was like 15, him, and I never thought about directors. I was only interested in the stars.

I was like 15, 16, and I heard Mamoulian speak. Well, Mamoulian, who was the original director of Porgy and Bess on stage and Oklahoma on stage and then did landmark movies. He did the most revolutionary early talking musical. He did the first film in Technicolor. Had many milestones to his credit. Well, he was so enchanting and so articulate and so amusing and interesting. I said, oh, there's somebody behind the camera.

Same as you're saying. Right. The actors don't just get up and make this up. Yeah. Somebody's guiding, somebody's really thinking about this. Those are amazing moments where your mind gets blown. That was it. Yeah. That was it for me.ens it opened a door so wait let's go let's go through your i want to go through the you know some specific questions about what you've written

about because you've written about a lot of stuff let me tell you my uh emblematic story i'm 17 years old i'm in my senior year of high school at a Teaneck High School in New Jersey, right? And I'm publishing my fanzine now, which will now get professionally printed by a guy in the next town over. I don't have to run a mimeograph machine anymore. And a woman who's an English teacher in my school, who I don't have for any classes, but she's a nice lady, stopped me in the hall one day and she said, I really like what you're doing with your magazine. And I have a friend who's an editor at Signet Books in New York.

And I think the two of you would really hit it off. Here's his number. I want you to call him. You're 17. Yeah. I want you to call him and go meet him after school one day. Okay.

So I call him and we make an appointment. Yeah. And one day I take the bus into Manhattan and I bring a couple of copies of my magazine with me. Yeah. And in my head, of course, ideas are gurgling. Yeah. Oh, maybe I'll get to write a book.

Yeah. Maybe I'll write a book about Humphrey Bogart. Right, right. Goodness knows. Yeah. I get there. He's very nice. We're breaking the ice in this little meeting.

And he says, what'd you bring along? I said, well, this is this magazine I publish. He said, oh, I love your magazine. I said, how do you know it? He said, well, I used to subscribe to it, which I didn't remember. I didn't put his name together at all. He'd been in a different publishing house. He said, do you know this book that's out called Movies on TV? And there was a paperback edited by a guy named Stephen Shorer. That was the only book of its kind. A paperback book with little capsule reviews of thousands of movies. And I knew it backwards and forwards. I

used it every day. He said, you know that book? I said, I know it really well. He said, do you like it? I said, I like it as far as it goes. He said, what would you do different? I said, well, I'd put in more cast names. He only lists like two cast names. He doesn't list the director.

I'd put in the director. I'd put in the running time so you know if the local TV station is chopping it up. I'd say whether it's in color or black and white. I rattled off all these things that I would do. He said, how would you like to do it? I said, what do you mean? He said, I've been looking for somebody to do a rival book.

I want to do a competitive book to that. You want to do it? I said, yeah, I guess. Yeah. He hired me at age 17 to take on this massive assignment of doing a book of capsule movie reviews. And, and he said, I'm going to give now, you know, we're going to give you a lot of money. He said, try to have some of it left over when you're done, because you're gonna have to hire people and it's going cost you money be careful and it was good advice and uh i ended up with some yeah and uh the first thing i bought was an ibm a used reconditioned ibm selectric tie burn with the ball yeah right and uh and so this book came out when i was 18 years old. The first one. Yep. What was it called?

It was then called, terrible title, TV Movies. Yeah. Because the other book had taken the only title for it, which was Movies on TV. Right. So at that time, there was no home video. There was no premium cable. There was none of that stuff. But they were running movies during the day.

Every local station, all day long, all night long. You remember the late show, the late, late show, the late, late, late show. So there were lots of people who stayed home and just watched movies all the time on TV. You didn't have to go to Turner Classic Movies to see old movies. Old movies were everywhere. They were the only movies. That's right. You turn the dial and that's all you saw.

There were no infomercials in the middle of the night. There were old movies. It was programming. Yeah. Not advertising, but programming. And so you didn't have to be an expert or an old movie buff to know who W.C. Fields was. Right. Because you just knew him.

He was part of the landscape. Yeah. So I got to do this book, and I hired people to help me because it took a lot of work. And when it came out, all I saw were its flaws, imperfections, shortcomings. Yeah, sure. But it did okay. Yeah. And five years later, they called and said, maybe it's time to update it. Okay. Yeah. So I did okay. Yeah. And five years later, they called and said,

maybe it's time to update it. Okay. So I did a second one. Then four years later, they called and said, maybe it's time to update it again. Okay. And then we did it on every other year. And then eventually, in the 80s, when home video came along,

they said, I think we need to do this every year. And so I've been doing it every year for 30 years. That's the leonard malton movie guide yeah but but outside of that i mean you know that to me there's an important resource and you know it's limited to the length of these reviews yes of course uh i always thought somebody would do like the real book a real encyclopedia book this was just a fingertip i used to have what was it fm cats oh sure fm cats was was just a fingertip guy. Well, I used to have, what was it, Ephraim Katz? Oh, sure. Ephraim Katz was a good film.

Standard source. Everybody used him. What's that other one? That one there, the... Oh, David Thompson's Biographical Dictionary of Film. That's difficult. Yeah, but another widely admired resource. But he's more along the critic line. Yes, and he's writing critical essays,

and he's very opinionated and unabashedly opinionated in assessing people's careers. And you don't do that. Well, everything we do, we're like the Twitter of film reviews, these very capsule form film reviews. It seems to me that your love of the business remains intact. Yes, it does. And that what you're bringing to the world

is not to sort of take it down a notch or to assess it in a way that would challenge it. No, I'm not gunning for anybody or anything in particular, except stupidity. I hate stupid movies, and I hate insulting movies, and I hate movies that are just ripping off other movies instead of doing something fresh and original. But when I see something like Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel, that gives me happiness and joy.

And I don't get that feeling often enough. Well, I think that's what he's in the business of doing. He's so meticulous. Everything looks like- Well, sometimes his meticulousness turns me off. I was not a fan of Moonrise Kingdom, for instance. Right. A little too precious for my taste.

But just in a mise-en-scene way, the way he loads up a frame is pretty stunning. Yes, it is. It's almost like he's a jewelry maker. Yeah, exactly. Exactly, right. You know. Yeah. But you wish he'd work on the story a little more than the intricate movements inside the mechanism.

But like in the larger books you did, I mean, and I haven't read a lot of them, but I'm looking at the titles. What was Movie Comedy Teams? That was my first real book that wasn't just a collection of these mini reviews. I had my foot in the door now at Signet Books at New American Library. They said, what do you want to do next? So I submitted three ideas. Two I thought were commercial.

One I thought was just something I wanted to do that wasn't commercial. And that's the one they bought, which is a book about comedy teams. And at that time, and it was about all the teams, starting with Laurel and Hardy and coming up to the Stooges, Eben Costello. And it was about all the teams, starting with Laurel and Hardy and coming up to the Stooges, Eben Costello, obscure ones like Wheeler and Woolsey from the 30s, Clark and McCullough, who had been a big stage act, who made some movies, the Three Stooges, of course, the Ritz brothers, all of these acts. And I just had the best time writing this book, screening these movies, doing the research. No one had ever compiled a list of everybody's films.

You couldn't look up all the Three Stooges movies. You couldn't do it. had ever compiled a list of everybody's films. Yeah. You couldn't look up all the Three Stooges movies. You couldn't do it. Yeah. No one else had printed that. I did. Uh-huh. Now no one cares because you turn out, you know, you open your iPhone and you got it.

Yeah. But at that time, it was an achievement. And the phenomenon of that book was that it was published, again, before the mall, the mauling of America, and before the chain bookstores came along. And in those days, books, paperbacks were sold in most cities in the drugstore and the Woolworths. That's where books were bought and sold, except in big cities where there were stores.

So this book came out, it cost a dollar and a half to buy. And it was in spinner racks in drugstores and in Woolworths and places like that, and I have had more people to this day come up to me and say, that's the first movie book I ever bought. Wow. Because it was mostly guys, guys like Abbott and Costello, you know, whatever,

in those days, you know, in those days. The first movie book, though, but at that time, you were also functioning as an important archivist well yeah well there the the field was i kind of had the field to myself in a way i wasn't the only one but it seems to me that you sensed a threat that if you didn't put this information out in the world that it would be lost forever well i don't know if i go that far but no but i i mean to say that like no one had ever you know written down the full list of movies. But that was the excitement of it.

Yeah. That was what was so invigorating about it. What did you learn about comedy teams? I mean, what did they all share? Well, a lot of the ones that didn't socialize off screen lasted longer. Really? Yes. Who were they?

Well, Laurel and Hardy led separate lives. They liked each other, fine. But they led separate lives. They were entirely different men who respected each other completely as performers. And that's why they worked together so harmoniously. And Oliver Hardy, who was a consummate comedian, for him it was a job. When the job was over, he wanted to play golf. Yeah.

That's what he cared about. Yeah. He liked to eat, obviously. Yeah. He liked to play golf. Yeah. And Stan Laurel lived and breathed comedy when he wasn't marrying a lot of women, which he did also.

But so that was one thing. Abbott and Costello were wildly popular when they came on the scene, when they came to movies in the early 40s. They were sort of emblematic of what America was looking for during World War II. They wanted brash comedy. They were brash. Yeah. And funny.

I mean, their routines are still funny. Yeah. Who's on first is a funny, funny routine. And the variations they did are very funny. Costello is hilarious. Lou Costello is a great gifted comedian. He really was. But they never really developed anything more than just surface characters.

And so when their vogue passed and they kind of lost their initial momentum, it was hard for them to sustain the careers, except by revisiting their old routines, which they did on their TV show. I got kind of obsessed with the Niagara Falls routine, which I didn't realize had been done by many people. Which was out of burlesque. Yeah. A lot of their best routines were right out of burlesque, and that's where they started. And there was no crime in that at that time. Oh, no.

Burlesque was a form of entertainment. I'm in that at that time. Oh, no. Burlesque was a form of entertainment. But the idea that if you could bring yourself to a bit that was a standard. Yes. It was almost like songs. That's a standard.

Yeah. How are they going to do it? Right. I watched the Three Stooges do it, and I watched Abbott and Costello do it. Yeah. And I guess a lot of people had done it live. Yeah. And that's sort of fascinating to me, that there was no one made a question of, well, who wrote the material? It's like, well, how do we make it our own?

Right. Then there was a team called Olsen and Johnson, who were very big on stage and made a handful of movies in the 40s. They were often accused of stealing people's material. The way Milton Berle was sometimes, they used to call Milton the thief of bad gags. And he would make jokes about it. Because he did, right? sometimes you know they used to call milton the thief of bad gags uh-huh you know and and uh and and he would make jokes about it uh-huh because he did right because he well well i don't know apparently i don't know yeah steve allen used to say about milton that in a cutting contest no one could beat him because while somebody was trying to think of something funny to say milton would

remember five other things that he'd already said that were funny and just spill them out. Yeah. Did you ever meet him? Oh, many times. Yeah. Fascinating guy. He lived a long time. Why was he fascinating?

Because he was a walking history of show business and he had a steel trap mind. My uncle had written a song with him in the 30s. And one time my dad was out visiting and I used to do pledge breaks at KCET, our public radio station. And it was fun to do because you never knew who else would be on that night. And one night they told me Milton was going to be there. So I brought my dad along, and my father said, you won't remember this, but many, many years ago,

my brother Bernard wrote a song with him. He said, Bernie? Yeah. I hadn't heard the name in 50 years. Immediately he says, Bernie? Yeah. He was amazing. Uh-huh.

He was amazing. And funny, too. Always funny. Yeah. Always, always funny. Uh-huh. And what compelled you to write an entire book on the Little Rascals?

Oh, well, I grew up, as I say, watching them every single day of my life. On Channel 11 with Officer Joe Bolton. Uh-huh. Little Rascals. Oh, well, I grew up, as I say, watching them every single day of my life. On Channel 11 with Officer Joe Bolton. And you couldn't read a word about them anywhere. Go to the library, try to find a book. This is, again, long before the internet. Couldn't find anything about them.

I said, well, I've got to write about that. And I wrote a book called The Great Movie Shorts and I did a chapter in that book about blabbering rascals and printed the first filmography of all of their films as they did for a bunch of other people then and then I met a guy who knew more about them than I did

and I said we should pool our resources and do a book together and we did and it's been in print for 35 years because people are still interested in them. It didn't end well for a lot of them. No, but that's a kind of a tabloid headline. You didn't focus on that.

Well, it's not just I didn't focus on it. It's not entirely true. For everyone, you can tell me that ended badly, like Alfalfa, who had a miserable home life and uh you know as usual it's if you don't have parents who who are who have their feet on the ground and they treat you like a normal kid uh you're gonna have a hard time yeah and that's that was his story and and he wound up being shot of in a bar you know that's a sad story right but uh but buckwheat had a had a good life spanky had some rough times and then a very good life a good marriage wonderful daughter who i met uh

you know there wasn't robert blake one of them he was yeah he was in the later years and jackie cooper too jackie cooper yeah dickie moore who had a good career as a child actor and scotty beckett who had a good career as a child actor, and Scotty Beckett, who had a good career as a child actor. And you just loved them. Couldn't get enough. Yeah. Loved them. And when my daughter was young and I started showing them to her, she loved them too.

Uh-huh. They're irresistible. So outside of the guides and outside of the encapsulations and the shorter reviews, it's just interesting to me that, you know, you did movie teams, comedy teams. You did the our gang thing you wrote you also did a book on carol lombard yeah that was part of a series there was a paperback series and uh uh they were sort of slim books that were uh fairly perfunctory bio um bio film career books uh not very it was a series that net was written by several different people oh they printed about 50 different uh so you just kind of a i just i just yeah it was okay so it

wasn't a passion i needed the money okay but i love carol lombard yeah and i had a good time watching all of her films in order to write write this book but then i wrote a history of animated cartoons and again no one had done it before uh-. And so that was the part of the joy of it was not only getting to do the research, I met, I mean, I talked to Walter Lance.

Walter Lance started in animation in the teens. In the teens. He's part of the creation of animated cartoons. I talked to so many guys who worked in the silent film era. I talked to people

who worked alongside Walt Disney in era i talked to people who were worked alongside walt disney in his earliest earliest days and what'd you learn from them about walt disney well frizz freeling who worked with him who later became one of the mainstays of the warner brothers cartoon yeah department had no uh sentimentality about walt at all not at all in the early days he said because they all quit him at one point in very, very early on. Why? Because they were hired away by a producer, by a somewhat conniving producer. And they said they had no personal attachment or affection.

But Walt was a very ambitious guy. Yeah. He and his brother were trying to succeed. And then they weren't getting rich on other people at that point they really weren't they're putting all the money back into the production right but they needed everybody to work like crazy and some of them said you know well this isn't what we want to do people who build empires aren't generally boring no and he came from nothing he came from you know I came from, you know, I mean, genteel poverty, you might say.

You know, he was not dirt poor, but he, you know, it was a hard scrabble life that he had as a kid. Well, so now, like, looking back on, so you don't consider yourself a film critic. You consider yourself a film reviewer? Film historian who makes a living as a film critic. And a film critic, but not in the sense, like, is there a difference between a film critic. And a film critic, but not in the sense like, is there a difference between a film reviewer and a film critic? Well, to me, a critic is somebody who can write a somewhat lengthy, thoughtful, provocative essay

about a film. You still read those in magazines like The New Yorker. And The Times. And The Times publishes good writing about film. Both Times, New York and L.A., they both have good writers. And a critic uses intellectual resources to bring to...

I think so. And tries to hold films to a standard. You know, what is an accepted standard of quality. And takes the reader to task sometimes if they're falling down and supporting sloppy, crummy movies. Right. So that's what you do. Well, I do it on a once-over-lightly basis.

I'm not a deep thinker. I'm the last person to claim that. I'm a middle-brow critic, I would say. Yeah. But I have my opinions and they're formed from a lot of experience and I try to write from the heart and I post my reviews on my

website every Friday and hope somebody reads them and gets something out of them. Well, I mean, you sort of created this sort of, you and Cisco and Ebert seem to create that particular area of television,

you know, the encapsulated review. Right. Well, the problem with that is when I got hired by Entertainment Tonight, they said, we want you to do a scale

of one to ten. You know, rate every film. I said, oh, I hate it. I hated doing that in my book, too. And when I started doing

the movie guide, my editor said, you got to do a star rating system, like four stars. And you got flack for that. No, never got flack for that. People would argue with the ratings. Sure. But that's what my editor said they would do. He said people like that kind of shorthand.

They respond to that. And Cisco and Ebert had the thumbs up, thumbs down. Exactly so. And so on AT, I used to rate films one to ten. And I never enjoyed doing it. But people would stop me on the street and say, you know, I can tell from your review whether you're going to give it a six or a seven or an eight. And I thought, well, I guess that's a good thing. Sure.

It means they're paying attention. It means I'm communicating clearly. Yeah. So I guess that's good. Were you friends with Ebert? I was friendly with him. I was never close. You know, we lived in different cities were you competitors did you ever have conversations we had conversations yeah as i did uh more briefly with gene i didn't get to know

gene as well as i got to know roger especially in later years uh-huh uh the the problem is that so many people who knew roger and Jean only knew them from the TV show. Uh, and as some people only knew me from entertainment tonight, but now with the internet where you have the opportunity to go back and read Roger's reviews and he's posted his whole inventory online, you see what a wonderful writer he was. Yeah. Just a terrific writer with a highly individual voice.

Yeah. Who managed to personalize film reviewing. He has all the attributes of a great critic, but on top of that, he integrates his life, his point of view, his experiences. It's a very tough thing to do, but you know who's writing that review. Yeah.

You know who that guy is. Oh, he definitely had a point of thing to do. But you know who's writing that review. Yeah. You know who that guy is. Oh, he definitely had a point of view. Yeah. Yeah. And in terms of, you know, where do you think, you know, what is the difference then? Because it seems like a lot of people take jobs, you know, on television and on the Internet just to sort of, you know, there's a hackneyed quality to a kind of encapsulation of a film. There's a very big difference between someone who sits there and just goes,

this happened, this happened, I thought this was good, and somebody who draws from what you're calling experience and stuff. It's very hard to sort out, but it seems like there's a lot of almost meaningless voices out there about film. Well, you said that, and I won't strongly disagree. There used to be more meaningless voices, but there are fewer people who are putting critics on the air now.

Very few, in fact. Why is that? Because we're in the age of YouTube. Everybody's a critic. Everybody's a critic. And when people talk about Rotten Tomatoes, Rotten Tomatoes is a fun idea that works, but I tell people- That's crowdsourced, right?

Well, no, half crowdsourced and half critic sourced. Yeah, because I don't go to any of them. I just listen to people I respect. But the point is, every tomato represents a critic. If you fire all the critics, there won't be any tomatoes left. Rotten Tomato tomatoes is an aggregate. It's an aggregate of critical reviews. But it's like saying you're in the buggy whip business. It doesn't have a bright future right now because everybody is content to spout their own opinions. Were you ever approached by studios to carry water? No. And amazingly, when I came out here to work for et uh within a year we moved onto the paramount pictures lot i was a movie critic at a movie studio i worked in the middle of a movie

studio and no one ever tried to bribe me or persuade me or strong army never ever i mean they could buy me a coke wouldn't kill him you know but uh uh no i never i never had any any issues with that which i'm very happy about okay so i i want to talk about the when i read a lot of that that sort of high-minded intellectual criticism when i was in college i really didn't know you know who it was really for like it seemed to be an academic exercise for people who were who were who were i don't even i imagine it might have inspired some artists and it might have you know gave people a richer or deeper understanding of film but it was still it was still speculative

and it was still sort of invented and it seemed to be an academic uh uh pursuit but you know what what we were just talking about in terms of, you know, what is criticism for? I know. Well, for some people, it's just a consumer guide. Okay. Should I go? Should I not go? Right.

That's all people want, a lot of people want, from so-called film criticism, which is not really criticism. Right. It's a superficial review. And that's fine. Yeah. There's nothing wrong with that. Right.

It's valid. Yeah. As far as it goes. Yeah. But I don't want to say to somebody, don't go to see this movie. Yeah. I'd rather say, look, here's what the movie is. Here's what I thought of it.

If you like Johnny Depp, if you find him interesting as an actor, you should go and see this movie. Right. Don't let me stop you from seeing this movie. Right. That's not my job. Right. Well, I mean, I think that's fair. Yeah.

And I think at least you say like, eh, but, you know, make your own choice. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But make an informed choice. Sure. Make a smart choice, but make a choice on your own. Yeah. And it does become a financial choice at this point.

Unfortunately, yes. You know, the other thing that I've always, and I'm going to ask you as a historian, because I have this idea in my head that not unlike the archetypes of Comedia Della Arte, that film has certain roles to fill that have been there since the beginning of film. Do you see that as possible? That there's a certain type of movie star that fills the James Dean hole, that fills the Cary Grant hole, that there are these types of leading men, these types of character actors, these types of leading women that sort of repeat themselves throughout the

history of film yeah i think that's true to a very real degree i mean we the world seems to always want an action star uh-huh you know and and and stallone and schwarzenegger are still trying to do it right because people will still pay money to see them but but where does that go back to douglas Fairbanks? Yeah. It does, right? Sure. He really was the first action star, and he did most of his own stunts to boot.

And then when you go back to the clown, you have a wide array of different types of clowns that sort of fit that role. Exactly. And then when you have the sex pot, you go back to Rudy Valentino or some sort of version of that. Right. That sex pot is used for women. But Clara Bow was a very sexy woman.

Well, yeah. And then there's also the women with sort of brass and different. But it just seems to me that they're always sort of moving around a very familiar configuration that's existed throughout the history of cinema. Right. Just as people primarily still go to the movies for escape. It's always been the case. It's still the case. And of course, the problem that Hollywood's having now is that fewer and fewer people

seem to be going to the movies for something other than escape. And it's hard to sell them a serious movie or a serious-minded movie, which is why so many people are being, so many writers and directors and performers are being drawn to cable TV where they can do some serious work. Wow, there's some great stuff going on. Exactly. And they're stealing movies' thunder

because movies have allowed them to steal their thunder. And you have to turn to the indie films and the foreign language films and even the documentaries to get stimulating entertainment in a theater. Provocative. Yeah. Yeah. Now, in each era, because, you know, I'm curious about how this evolves. With somebody like yourself, you know, who's had this passion of movies, for movies, going back to the beginning of movies,

and you dedicated, you know, the first part of your life towards, you know, keeping the spirit of those movies alive, you know, what are the movies from each era for you that never stop giving? Oh, gosh. Well, my all-time favorite movie is Casablanca. Why? It's a perfect Hollywood movie. Okay. Perfect.

Great storytelling that embraces suspense, topicality, romance, humor, and drama. I mean, all the ingredients in this one film seamlessly woven together. And politics to a certain degree. Very much politics and a point of view. Global politics. It has a point of view. And made by a master craftsman, Michael Curtiz, from a great screenplay. And every part of that film is perfectly cast.

Not just the lead actors, who we know are great. And the supporting actors, like Sidney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre. We know are great. But every face, every person who has just a line, a bit in that film is a colorful face an interesting face Rick help me Rick you have to roll the arm

or Rick yes just you know it's a wonderful film and I never do tire of it I always see something I didn't notice before

okay so let's go up 20 years like let's let's take it to the... Well, I mean, again, when you get to that, what they now call the Silver Age, the late 60s into the early 70s. I mean, I remember seeing Bonnie and Clyde when it was new.

Just, you know, knocked you off your feet. Why? Because you'd never seen the romance and the violence and the anti-hero all in one thing. All in one thing. And told with such dynamism. I mean, you know, it was a really, it was, I think it's not unfair to say a revolutionary movie.

Sure. And the same year, The Graduate. Uh-huh. You know, revolutionary. Yeah. Revolutionary American film. Uh-huh. And so those films had a deep impact on me.

film. And so those films had a deep impact on me. And then you move into the 70s where we're talking about Altman and Coppola and Lucas and Michael Ritchie and so many- Hal Ashby. The Landlord. The Landlord's a film I'm crazy about. I don't know that one. Oh, that was Hal Ashby's first film as a director. Because I love The Last Detail. Well, it's a great film. I mean, there's so many great films of that period. And again,

I was lucky. I got to hear some of them speak in person when they were out promoting their films. I got to interview some of them. Are you a Peckinpah guy? Yeah, I am a Peckinpah guy. I'm not a Peckinpah... I'm not a rabid Peckinpah fan. There's about five there that...

But, you know, you look at The Wild Bunch. Wow. Wow is right. And I love Westerns. John Ford is just about my favorite director. Sure. But I love The Wild Bunch. The Wild Bunch is great and Straw Dogs.

The Getaway is pretty potent. Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia is one of the most, the weirdest fucking movie. What a bizarre movie that is. He's talking to that head. Yeah. In the car. Yeah.

Well, he was a wild guy. Yeah. Woody Allen. Love Woody Allen. Crimes and Misdemeanors, I think, is one of the greatest movies ever. Well, you know, again, I have to explain to people that I remember Woody Allen as a stand-up comic. You saw him.

That's what I, not in person, unfortunately. But I saw him, he did a lot of TV work, a lot of TV appearances, guest shots. He was on What's My Line as a panelist. You know, he did all sorts of television. Well, that was, I thought that that documentary about him was very revealing. Yeah, done by a friend of mine, Bob Widen. But just in terms of just how calculating he is, how ambitious he is, how much of his shit he has together, and that how contrary to the, in a lot of ways, to the character of Woody Allen he is, how ambitious he is, how much of his shit he has together,

and that how contrary to the, in a lot of ways, to the character of Woody Allen he is. And by the way, you know John Turturro's film Fading Gigolo, with a part tailor-made for Woody Allen, which he helped shape with Turturro, and he gives the most sublime comedy performance in it. Fading Gigolo is a really good movie, and Turturro's great in it too. He wrote it for himself, and then tailored this part for Woody Allen. And Woody in it. Fading Gigolo is a really good movie. And Turturro's great in it, too. He wrote it for himself and then tailored this part for Woody Allen. And Woody did it. Woody did it. And the great story behind it, how?

They have the same barber. Turturro said to his barber, would you be willing to mention to Woody Allen that I'm thinking of putting him in a movie? Would he be interested? And he did. Oh, that's hilarious. And that's how they got together. That's more a Hollywood story than a New York story. But it happened in a movie. Would he be interested? And he did. Oh, that's hilarious. And that's how they got together. That's more a Hollywood story

than a New York story, but it happened in New York. Uh-huh. And it's a, he's so good in it. Uh-huh. He's just so good and I've always loved him

as a comedic performer. So even though a couple of his most recent films where he's been on camera, the films maybe haven't been great. I just love him spouting one-liners. He's still got it. Sure.

He's still got it, 100%. Yeah. And what do you, like the new batch of directors, what did you think of Spike Jonze's movie?

I was not crazy about her. I like a lot of Spike Jonze's work. Adaptation, I think, is a brilliant movie. He's got a hell of a feel for a cameraman.

Yes, he does. Yes, he does. Like, I've never seen anything like it. And even where the wild things are. That car accident, Adaptation. adaptation oh i'll never forget that scene as long as i live i don't know how the hell i think about that scene a little too often yeah as i'm backing out of where the wild things are that was i think people miss i mean that's really an art film it is an art film

yeah and not again a flawed movie right with some wonderful beautiful heartfelt stuff in it david o russell uh i like a lot of his stuff too he's another one like where the hell didn't like the new one so much oh which one american hustle i didn't i didn't either i thought it was a little flat i wasn't sure what he was trying to do a lot of it was like seeing a band with a lot of great soloists what seemed to me you know what he was trying to do was create one of the there was a period in the 70s where they did comedies that were gritty. If you look at movies like Freebie and the Bean or stuff like that where people were

actually getting killed in comedies. Yeah, yeah. It seemed like that was sort of the tone he was playing with, but there didn't seem to be anything really at stake. Silver Linings Playbook, wonderful. Genius. Wonderful. And The Fighter, too.

And The Fighter, too. Absolutely. But I liked his early work. I liked Spanking spanking the monkey great three kings is a masterpiece three kings you know really good stuff unbelievable paul thomas anderson uh at times uh mind-blowingly brilliant yeah absolutely i mean you know boogie, one of the great American films, I think. Right up there with Pulp Fiction. Yeah, Tarantino. You know, a great, great film. And I didn't love everything about The Master, but boy, I couldn't take my eyes off the screen.

Right? You know? Yeah. And so, I mean, again, even if a film may not be, you know, 100% perfect, if it holds me and grabs me and shows me things I haven't seen before. Yeah. Yeah, I'm there. Some films demand you

to reckon with them even if you don't get it. Yeah. Like the Coen brothers. I mean, like those guys seem to be doing their own thing and I think that

obviously they are hit and miss as well but I've not seen a more consistent cinematic vision in a long time. No, no, absolutely. And yet

what was funny is I liked everything about Llewyn Davis except the movie. I mean, I loved the look at the movie, the feel of the movie, the casting of the movie, the performances in the movie. Oscar Isaac was just extraordinary. And they love faces.

They cast their bit parts. So, not since Fellini, I think. Yeah. Somebody who's that kind of fondness for oddball faces. And they put them all in just the right parts. But the film just didn't do it for me. I admired it, you know?

I can admire it without liking it. It felt a little flat. I couldn't tell if it was intense or not because some of their movies require a few viewings. Yeah. And it seemed to me that it was sort of like a very sort of brief kind of picaresque journey through, you know, the changing of music.

Yeah. That like there seemed to be the John Goodman character. Like when the Cullens are so sparse and, you know, when something feels flat the Coen's are so sparse and, you know, when something feels flat and so, but yet so utterly intentional, you know,

I have to read into it. And it seemed to me that, you know, that there's not a poor and a frame in their film that is intentional. Yeah. So it just seemed to me that, you know, what was being driven there,

you know, he was being driven across country by really the death of, of, of bebop and Beatnik America. Yeah. That I kept trying to read stuff into it. Yeah, yeah. I'm very perceptive of you.

And I think that their movies require that. Yeah. What about, who was I just going to bring up? Oh, Alexander Payne. Love him. Yeah. He's got his own thing going too, huh? And he's a humanist.

I mean, he's a satirist and a humanist. That's a rare combination. That really is a rare combination. It's a tricky business. And some people have criticized him for being too harsh on the people he supposedly celebrates. That he ridicules them. He ridicules the very Midwesterners he supposedly venerates. But that's what makes him so interesting.

And does Citizen Kane loom large with you? Yes, it does. It kind of has to or it does? Not because it has to, because it does. Because it does. And when I was a kid, I was too young. I didn't like those kids I lectured. I didn't get it either.

It took me time. You know, you can't absorb certain things when you're 12 years old or 14 years old and i think it's also one of those movies that that continues to reveal itself as you get older and again and again that's true and and you relate to your from your own life experience in different ways and then that's that's the real sign of the masterpiece is that sure with is something that grows with you yeah exactly and as you revisit revisit it, you seek deeper wisdom from it. Precisely so. And there are, you know,

too few films that do that. Did you see the Italian film, The Great Beauty? Mm-mm. Which was the Oscar winner this year. A really moving film that's kind of like a modern-day update

of La Dolce Vita by Paolo Sorrentino. A really moving film that works on several levels and hard to describe actually as a movie, but very beguiling. You liked it? Yeah, very much. We could probably do this all day, huh?

Yeah. Well, I tell you, man, it was great talking to you. Same here, same here. And I think we covered a lot, do you? Well, I sure hope so. I think we did. You feel good about it? Yes, I do.

And thank you for bringing me the books. You're welcome. And thank you for your insight. I appreciate it. See? That was interesting. I like Leonard Maltin. We had a nice chat.

And he left me a bunch of books. I have an entire library of Leonard Maltin material right now alright well that's our show folks go to WTFpod.com for all your WTFpod needs the comment section is later no more I thought about it I waited out

it wasn't a community it was barely used I'm going to take away the platform for the 10 trolls and the 5 douchebags and the seven people that enjoy the show. I'm sorry to you people. Yeah, it's gone. It's gone. You can still use the Facebook.

The reason I left that is because you can't be anonymous on that, you pussies. You know who I'm talking to. But anyways, wait, what am I doing? Why am I using that tone? It's the end of the show. Let's do end of the show tone. Go to WTFpod.com, which I just said.

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