In 2o13’s The Internship, Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn play Nick and Billy, two longtime salesman who, having lost their jobs, apply for an internship at Google. Despite there not being any logical reason for either one of them to be given a spot, Nick and Billy are accepted. Suddenly, these two middle-aged guys who know next to nothing about programming or the Internet find themselves at the Google campus. Teaming up with a group of much younger outcasts (albeit very smart outcasts), Nick and Billy compete for a job at Google.
(Personally, the only job I would want at Google would be designing the Google Doodle.)
At first, no one is happy about having to work with Nick and Billy. Nick and Billy are adults, the type who still use landline phones and wonder why the kids are so obsessed with looking at a little screen. They’re loud. They make crude jokes and they don’t understand stuff like safe spaces. They fall for obvious pranks, like being sent to a college campus to track down “Professor Charles Xavier.” This leads to them both getting knocked out by a bald man in a wheelchair. “Professor Xavier’s a total dick!” Billy gasps.
Eventually, though, Nick and Billy start to win everyone over. Their old school competitiveness comes in handy during a game of Quidditch. They know how to talk to women at bars. They know how to appeal to someone running an old-fashioned business. But will that be enough to win them a job at Google?
Back when the Onion was funny, one of their best headlines was ‘The Internship’ Poised To Be Biggest Comedy Of 2005! The joke, of course, was that the film was coming out in 2013. The headline worked because it was true. The film felt very much out-of-place in the world of 2013. The majority of the film’s humor came from Nick and Billy not really knowing what Google was but, by 2013, even the most cranky of boomer grandparents were using Google to search for their Facebook password. Nick and Billy were not boomers. They may have been older than the other interns but still, it’s hard to believe that two guys in their mid-40s would be that clueless about everything from the Internet to the identity of Charles Xavier. I mean, the X-Men movies were kind of a big deal.
The other thig that dated the film was its portrayal of Google as essentially just being a fun playground full of nerdy prodigies who just needed someone to teach them how to party. By 2013, everyone knew that Google was a powerful and somewhat intimidating company. Indeed, at its weakest, the film basically feels like a 2-hour commercial for Google. Never mind that, by 2013, Google was so big and omnipresent that it really didn’t need to advertise.
So, with all that in mind, why do I find myself watching this movie whenever I happen to come across it? First off, as uneven as the movie is, it is funny. The Quidditch scene did make me laugh. John Goodman’s and Will Ferrell’s unhinged cameos made me laugh, almost despite myself. The scene where Nick and Billy annoy the group by misinterpreting what is meant by “coding” made me laugh, if just because of how bizarrely enthusiastic Nick and Billy were when they convinced themselves that their internship director was a Jeff Goldblum fan. (It makes no sense but just go with it.) Most importantly, Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn made me laugh. There was absolutely no way to make it plausible that Nick and Billy would be that clueless about technology but Wilson and Vaughn really threw themselves into their roles and, as a result, I’m always willing to forgive some of the film’s missteps. The mix of Vaughn’s overage frat boy goofiness and Wilson’s mellow spaciness always makes me laugh more than it probably should. They’re a good comedic team and they’re both just so damn earnest in this movie that it works a lot better than it really should. In the end, you do find yourself rooting for them. They’re two hard-workers who like to play hard and who have the courage to reinvent themselves. What’s more American than that?
(Even more importantly, when you come across the film on cable, you’re free to pretend that it actually came out in 2005, back when the plot would have actually made more sense.)
If any film lives up to the term guilty pleasure, it’s The Internship.
Hey, remember Tahj Mowry? He was the star of Smart Guy, that WB show that ran in the late 90s. On Smart Guy, he played 10 year old prodigy who goes from being in Elementary School to being in High School. Towards the end of the show’s three-season run, there was an episode in which the smart guy had to decide whether or not to give into peer pressure and drink. The commercials were like, “Tahj Mowry, in a performance that you have to see.” I never saw the episode but, decades later, I still remember the commercial.
Well, in Get Off My Lawn, Tahj Mowry is all grown up. He’s playing Jason Moss, who is not a particularly smart guy. When he and his wife, Jackie (Camila Banus), move into a new house, they find themselves being harassed by a teenager named Alex (Jonah Hwang). Alex grew up in the house and he’s obsessed with making sure that Jason and Jackie “follow the rules.” Because Jason and Jackie are still in the process of buying the house and Alex is the son of the house’s actual owners, all of the old furniture is still sitting inside the building. When Alex notices that Jason and Jackie have moved a chair, he loses it. It turns out that it’s pretty easy to make Alex lose it.
Jason spends a lot of time trying to be a tough guy when it comes to Alex but, even grown up, he’s still Tahj Mowry and it’s a little bit hard to take him seriously doing anything. It’s like when Jaleel White occasionally shows up in a Lifetime film and he’s trying to play a detective but he still basically looks and sounds just like Urkel. Jason comes across as being kind of a wimp and it’s not always easy to sympathize with him. It doesn’t help that Alex is obviously unstable from the minute that he meets Jason and Jackie. This film’s main lesson would appear to be that you don’t have to be nice to everyone who introduces himself to you. That’s actually not a bad lesson.
As far as I can tell, Get Off My Lawn premiered on Tubi in 2025 and then it was recently aired on Lifetime. The film is obviously meant to be a satire of the typical Tubi/Lifetime formula but it’s a little bit difficult to satirize something that is pretty much a self-parody to begin with. That’s not to say that there aren’t funny moments. In the role of the clueless local policeman, Ben Zelevansky made me laugh several times. He gets the final line of the film and he delivers it so well that it actually made feel bad that the rest of the film didn’t always live up to his performance. Watching the film made me long for the cleverly played humor of A Deadly Adoption.
But here’s the odd thing about it all. For all of my complaints, the movie held my attention. It really did. Alex goes so overboard in his attempts to harass Jason and Jackie that I found myself watching just to see what he could possibly do next. On the one hand, the film is flawed. On the other hand, a character pulls out his own eyeball in slow motion. That’s not something that you regularly see, at least not on Lifetime.
I guess my point is that it’s an uneven film and Tahj Mowry is miscast. But, that said, it’s almost compulsively watchable.
With the 250th birthday of America approaching, here’s a rather odd but charming blast from the past (1948, to be exact) called Make Mine Freedom. It’s a cartoon about why America rules and the rest of the world sucks.
This cartoon was produced by Arkansas’s Harding College and there is some debate over who actually directed it. Some sources claim that this was one of the first projects on which Joseph Barbera and William Hanna ever worked. Others insist that this film should be properly credited to either Fritz Freling or Fred Moore.
The important thing is that the film did a good job of exposing Dr. Utopia and his empty promises….
A lot of people might not automatically think of Haven Hamilton as being one of the heroes of Robert Altman’s 1975 masterpiece, Nashville. In fact, one could argue that there really aren’t any true heroes to be found in Nashville. No one in the film lives a perfect life. Everyone has their selfish moments. Even an otherwise sympathetic character like Lily Tomlin’s Linnea Reese still cheats on her husband. That said, I would argue that, at the end of the film, Haven Hamilton proves himself to be a far better person than anyone was expecting.
Played by Henry Gibson, Haven Hamilton is first seen recording a patriotic song about “how we must be doing something right” to last 200 years. He’s one of the elder statesmen of Nashville, an obviously vain man who is instantly identifiable due to his white suits and his sideburns. He’s a figure who represents what the majority of the film’s viewers would consider to be the past. He sings about and sells a vision of an idealized life. He sings a song about how he can’t leave his wife because he loves his children too much. Meanwhile, in reality, he’s carrying on an open affair with Lady Pearl (Barbara Baxley) and barely seems to acknowledge his loyal son, Bud (Dave Peel). Bud has a nice singing voice but Haven has made it clear that the Hamilton family only has room for one singer. Instead, Haven sent his son to Harvard and then put him in charge of his business affairs. It’s easy to dismissive of Haven. He’s vain. He’s old-fashioned. He looks down on the younger talent that’s coming into Nashville. He’s a celebrity but he’s only a Nashville celebrity. An awkward scene in which he meets Elliott Gould and Julie Christie (both playing themselves) captures the contrast between Nashville and Hollywood.
And yet, at the film’s conclusion, when the gunshots ring out and Barbara Jean (Ronee Blakely) collapses on stage, Haven is the one who tries to shield her. Even after he takes a bullet to the arm, Haven is the one who shouts that “This isn’t Dallas, it’s Nashville!” Haven Hamilton is the one who cries out for someone to sing and, when Albuquerque (Baraba Harris) does so, it unites the panicked crowd and prevents a riot. While everyone was too stunned to act, Haven Hamilton took charge and he said exactly the right thing. After spending the film being viewed as an out-of-touch blowhard, Haven Hamilton is the one who risked his life in an unsuccessful attempt to save Barbara Jean. And, in the end, Haven is the one character who truly understands the power of music to bring people together. “This isn’t Dallas!” Haven shouts, a demand that his city, his kingdom, will not give into the madness that seems to be afflicting the rest of the country. At that moment, the viewer sees that, regardless of what the film may want us to think about the character, Haven Hamilton was right. We must be doing something right to have lasted 200 (or 250) years.
And, for that reason, Haven Hamilton — for all of his flaws — is today’s Hero of the Day.
Today, it’s best-remembered for the fact that Richard Nixon carried 49 states and won 60.7% of the popular vote. Nixon’s victory came after the Democratic nominee, George McGovern, dropped his running mate, Thomas Eagleton, from the ticket after it was revealed that Eagleton had undergone electroshock treatment for depression. McGovern was also, at that point, one of the most liberal candidates to ever be nominated by a major political party. Much as with the earlier Barry Goldwater campaign, many of McGovern’s campaign volunteers and aides went on to have long careers in politics but their enthusiasm did not translate into votes for McGovern. Today, Nixon’s victory is seen as being such a foregone conclusion that people still wonder why a group of campaign operatives and White House aides even felt like they needed to break into the Watergate hotel to win.
1972 was a bit before my time but, if you look at the number of candidates who ran for the Democratic nomination, it’s obvious that, despite how thing ultimately turned out, quite a few people originally thought Nixon was vulnerable in 1972. Over 20 Democratic office holders competed for the right to run against Nixon. Sen. Edmund Muskie was the early favorite but, in the end, George McGovern won the nomination as the result of a largely grassroots effort. McGovern became the first Democrat to win the nomination through the primary system as opposed to making deals with political and labor bosses. McGovern’s campaign was fueled by opposition to the Vietnam War and an earnest idealism that got on the nerves of just about everyone outside of the campaign. One of McGovern’s rivals, Sen. Henry Jackson, said that McGovern was the candidate of “abortion, amnesty, and acid.”
McGovern’s campaign manager was a Colorado lawyer named Gary Hart. Hart would later be elected to the U.S. Senate and would twice run for president himself. (Hugh Jackman played Hart in the rather forgettable film, The Front Runner.) However, before Hart first ran for the Senate, he took the time to write a book about the McGovern campaign. That book was called Right From The Start. I ordered a used copy off of Amazon about ten years ago. It cost me about twenty dollars. If I ordered the book today, it would only cost me $16.00.
The book is an interesting historical document. Hart writes about the day-to-day operations of the McGovern campaign. He does a very good job of showing how McGovern came from behind to win the Democratic nomination. Hart writes about how the campaign recruited people who were new to politics but who were passionate about the issues. He writes about how Morris Dees (yes, the Southern Poverty Law Center guy) spearheaded the campaign’s fundraising. He writes about the day that Governor George Wallace was shot in Maryland. He shows how a group of committed activists were able to bypass the party bosses and win their candidate the nomination. Where Hart struggles is with explaining why McGovern lost the general election. Hart puts a lot of the blame on Thomas Eagleton and perhaps that’s justified. But McGovern still lost 49 states. To me, that would indicate there were even bigger problems then picking a bad running mate. But, because Hart was on the same side of McGovern, it’s perhaps understandable that he would struggle to admit that the electorate simply didn’t respond to what McGovern was selling.
(Ironically, in 1984, Hart and McGovern would both run for the Democratic presidential nomination.)
The chapter where Hart discusses the process that led to Thomas Eagleton becoming, albeit temporarily, McGovern’s running mate is the book’s highlight. As Hart explains it, he and the rest of McGovern’s aides had been so busy winning McGovern the nomination that none of them had really bothered to consider who McGovern should run with. McGovern had his own preferences but they all declined to join the ticket. A bunch of exhausted men ended up sitting around and tossing out names like CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite and Boston Mayor Kevin White. Someone suggested that, since the convention was being held in Miami, the second spot should go to New Orleans Mayor Moon Landrieu just so the next day’s paper would read “MOON OVER MIAMI.” In the end, Thomas Eagleton was picked not because anyone feels strongly about him but instead because he was the only one that nobody felt any passion about whatsoever. He was serviceable and inoffensive and, when he was asked if there was anything in his past that might embarrass the campaign, he replied that they’re wasn’t. A few weeks later, Eagleton’s psychiatric history was leaked to the press and the McGovern campaign imploded. Maybe they should have just asked Cronkite.
Right From The Start is an compulsively readable and interesting campaign memoir, perfect for history nerds like you and me.
Harry Shearer narrates the story of Leslie Edwards (Matthew Perry) and Bathowlemew Hunt (Chris Farley), the leaders of an expedition that competed with the more famous Lewis & Clark expedition to see who could first to reach the Pacific Ocean. Edwards is foppish and naive. Hunt is illiterate and loud. Included in their expediton is French pirate Fontenot (Eugene Levy) and Fontenot’s Indian wife, Shaquinna (Lisa Barbuscia). The journey leads the expidition to multiple whorehouses, an angry Eagle, and a group of arrogant conquistadors led by Hidalgo (Kevin Dunn). Edwards tries to teach Hunt how to read but Hunt gives up after learning “A.” Hunt, however, gets a chance to not only prove his worth but also to get a haircut from a taxidermist.
Given the talent involved, it’s too bad that this is neither a good comedy nor a good movie. Christopher Guest directs with none of the wit that had made his improvised films so memorable. Apparently, the film was originally envisioned as being an ensemble piece but, once filming began, the studio insisted on just focusing on Farley and, to a lesser extent, Perry. This was also Farley’s last leading role, with the film itself being released several months after his death. Today, if the film is remembered for anything, it’s for featuring two comedic actors who struggled with similar demons and who both died too young. Unfortunately, neither Farley nor Perry are really at their best in this film. Farley yells but with little of the energy that made Tommy Boy a hit. Matthew Perry resorts to playing Chandler Bing in the 1700s. For that matter, this film also features what may be Eugene Levy’s worst performance. It’s a disappointing effort all around. (Would the film have worked better with Farley’s usual foil, David Spade, in the role of Edwards? Probably not. I don’t think any combination of actors could have saved the script.)
What is unfotunate is that the premise had promise. The early years of the United States was full of eccentric characters, quite a few of which were involved in exploring the still-largely uknown continet. Christopher Guest really does seem like he should have been the ideal director for a project liket this but instead, Almost Heroes is overly broad and features its two leading actors giving performanes that fill more appropriate for a sitcom than a motion picture. Almost Heroes was a misfire all the way around.
With the 4th approaching, let’s celebrate the romance of the American frontier with these covers from Romantic Range. Romantic Range was a pulp magazine that ran from 1935 throughout the 1940s. The magazine featured love stories that took place on the range and the covers provided a break from the gunplay and deadly rattlesnakes that dominated most western magazines of the era. The covers are notable today for being romantic but surprisingly chaste, especially by the standards of the pulps.
Here’s a small sampling of some of the most innocent covers in the history of ranch romance.
1986’s The Right of the People takes place in the small town of St. Lawrence, Kansas. It seems like a nice enough town, perhaps the ideal place to start a family. The people are friendly. The streets appear to be safe. It’s about as mid as Middle America can get.
Or, at least, that’s the case until a group of armed gunmen attempt to hold up a restaurant. They enter with their guns drawn and their masks pulled over their faces and they demand that everyone give them their money. When one person in the restaurant makes a sudden move, one of the thieves open fire. Soon, all of the thieves are firing and everyone in the restaurant is dead. Among the victims is the family of District Attorney Christopher Wells (Michael Ontkean).
Wells was a liberal on most law-and-order issues until it was his family that was victimized. He leads an effort to legalize open carry in the small town of St. Lawrence. At first, the mayor (M. Emmett Walsh) opposes the effort but, when it becomes apparent that Proposition G (G for Guns!) is going to pass, the mayor switches over and becomes an advocate for the Second Amendment.
The majority of the citizens are happy that they can now carry guns pretty much anywhere. Less enthused are a handful of cranky liberals who insist that everyone carrying a gun will make the streets less safe. When a man uses his gun to thwart a robbery at a grocery store, he is hailed as a hero. However, nobody talks about the poor cashier who was shot when he tried to use his own gun or any of the innocent people caught in the crossfire.
The Right of the People is an interesting artifact. On the one hand, it doesn’t hide its own position when it comes to gun control. The pro-gun rallies and the posters that decorate them are meant to be ominous and reminiscent of various fascist moments throughout history. At the same time, Christopher Wells is a sympathetic character. He’s someone who lost his entire family because no one was able to stop the criminals who randomly selected a restaurant to rob. One would have to have a heart made of stone to not understand how Wells would go from being a bleeding heart liberal to someone who isn’t exactly concerned about the rights of criminals. (At the same time, Wells is a bit like the fundamentalist who has no problem believing in God when bad things happen to other people but who turns into a rabid atheist as soon as something bad happens to him.) Michael Ontkean gives a strong performance and he gets good support from M. Emmet Walsh and Billy Dee Williams. The film starts out strong but, unfortunately, it falters a bit once everyone in town turns into a caricature of a gun nut. The even hand is tossed out for a heavy hand and the entire film suddenly starts to condescend to the character that it previously treated with such fairness.
What makes this film interesting to me is that I live in an open carry state. The film’s argument that open carry would lead to people eagerly looking for any excuse to start shooting feels rather false after you’ve spent a lifetime surrounded by responsible gun owners. The film was obviously made at a time when open carry wasn’t as common as it is today and it’s vision of a trigger-happy town ultimately becomes so over-the-top that it stops being effective. Fortunately, the film’s vision of the future did not come true.
1969’s They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? is a film about many different things.
On its simplest level, it’s a film about a group of people who, during the Great Depression, take part in a brutal dance marathon in hopes of winning a $1,500 cash prize and maybe the chance to be spotted by a Hollywood talent scout. It’s a film about the desperation of being poor and forgotten, and it’s all the more effective because it was based on a novel that was actually written during the Great Depression. There’s an authenticity to the characters in They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? The original 1935 novel, which I read a few years ago, was written by Horace McCoy, a hard-living Dallas journalist who sometimes supplemented his income by working as a bouncer. McCoy knew the world about which he was writing.
The film is also about the power and allure of fame. The dancers may be exhausted, but they have fans who sit in the stands and who, in return for a smile and a kind word, will sometimes buy them new shoes or a decent meal. At one point, Hollywood director Mervyn LeRoy appears in the audience, and all of the dancers make a point of smiling as they pass in front of him. Meanwhile, the grueling derbies, in which the dancers tandem race in circles around the dance hall, predict the humiliation rituals of reality television. In its way, They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? is just as prophetic a film as Network.
The film is also about memory. The film is full of flashbacks and flash-forwards, giving us a portrait of the life of Robert Syverten (Michael Sarrazin), a homeless man who wandered into a dance marathon in Santa Monica. In a flashback, young Robert watches as his grandfather euthanizes a horse that has broken its leg. In a flash-forward, we watch as Robert talks to the police about a crime. And, in what we assume is the story’s “present,” we watch as Robert is partnered up with Gloria Beatty (Jane Fonda), a weary woman who continues to dance even though she no longer believes any of the hype that emcee Rocky Gravo (Gig Young) spouts about how the marathon can be the start of a brand new life.
It took me a while to get used to the flashbacks and the flash-forwards. At first, I thought they were a mistake. They seemed like a gimmicky addition to an otherwise straightforward story. But as the story played out, I came to appreciate the film’s nonlinear structure. Ultimately, the film is about Robert trying to come to terms not only with his actions but also with the actions of everyone involved with the marathon. I also came to realize that the film’s present was actually Robert in the police station and that the scenes of Robert at the dance marathon were his own memories of the vent. The film becomes less about the Depression and more about one person, a lost soul in a cold world, trying to figure out how his life eventually led to him sitting in an interrogation room, accused of a terrible crime.
The entire cast does a good job. Susannah York, who plays an aspiring actress, has an intense scene in which she breaks down when she can’t find the dress she wants to wear. Bruce Dern and Bonnie Bedelia are sympathetic as a young couple. Veteran tough guy Michael Conrad rolls around on roller skates and barks at everyone to keep moving. When Red Buttons shows up as a kind-hearted veteran dancer, your immediate response is to smile because, as a lover of classic films, you immediately associate Buttons with comedy and optimism. In The Poseidon Adventure, he was the one passenger who never gave up hope. But even his character is soon dwarfed and consumed by the ominous atmosphere inside the dance hall. At first, I thought Michael Sarrazin was a bit too stiff as Robert and Jane Fonda was too brittle as Gloria, but as the film progressed, I warmed to both of their performances. Say what you will about Jane Fonda’s political activism (and I personally think that many of her actions during the Vietnam War and her subsequent claims that American POWs were lying about being tortured were and are unforgivable), she was one of the best actresses of her generation.
Though Robert and Gloria may be at the center of the film, the narrative’s diseased heart belongs to Rocky Gravo. Rocky is the emcee and the promoter, the one who implores the crowd to applaud as their favorite dancers attempt to keep moving on the dance floor after weeks of little sleep or food. “Yowzah, yowzah!” Rocky exclaims, hyping up the audience and promising everyone that good times are right around the corner. Of course, since Rocky is also the event’s promoter, the longer the dancers suffer, the more money he makes. Whenever Rocky is on screen, the viewer can almost smell the gin and the cigars and the flop sweat. Gig Young won an Oscar for playing Rocky Gravo, and he undoubtedly deserved it. At times, it seems less like a performance and more like Young trying to exorcise his own demons. Ten years later, he would murder his fifth wife and then shoot himself.
They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? received a total of nine Oscar nominations. Sydney Pollack received his first nomination for Best Director, and Jane Fonda her first for Best Actress. Susannah York was nominated for Supporting Actress. The film received nominations for its screenplay, its editing, its art direction, and its score. The only winner was Gig Young. At the time, the film set a record for receiving the most Oscar nominations without also receiving a nomination for Best Picture. It’s tempting to say that the film was too dark and too depressing for the Academy, but then you have to consider that the Academy’s pick for Best Picture for that year was Midnight Cowboy.
(Interestingly enough, Michael Sarrazin was also a top contender for the role of Joe Buck in that film.)
It’s not a happy film or a particularly subtle film. But it remains a powerful film, one that truly sticks with you. The film haunts the viewer, as surely as Gloria will always haunt Robert.
Through the Shattered Lens 