Tag Archives: Jerry Springer

Meet Wally Sparks (1997, directed by Peter Baldwin)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Wally Sparks (Rodney Dangerfield) is a talk show host with a program that is so raunchy that even Jerry Springer says, “At least this isn’t The Wally Sparks Show!”

Despite being a huge hit amongst teens and college students, the show is on the verge of being canceled by the head of the network, Mr. Spencer (Burt Reynolds, wearing a fearsome toupee).  He is tired of Wally’s antics and he tells Wally and his producer, Sandy Gallo (Debi Mazar), that they have a week to make the show respectable.

Wally doesn’t know what to do.  Wally Sparks act respectable?  Wally’s a guy who don’t get no respect, no respect at all.  Then Sandy finds a letter inviting Wally to attend a party at the home of Georgia Governor Floyd Patterson (David Ogden Stiers), a noted critic of the show.  Hoping to get the interview that will save the show, Wally and Sandy head down south.

At the party, Wally acts like Wally and scandalizes all of the politicians and socialites.  He also shares a bottle of whiskey with a horse and then rides the horse through the mansion.  The party is a disaster but, after Wally claims that he can’t walk because of a spinal injury he suffered when he fell off the horse, the Governor allows him to recuperate in the mansion.  Wally causes more chaos while also teaching the Governor’s wife (Cindy Williams) how to play strip poker and eventually exposing a scheme to blackmail the Governor into building  a Confederate-themed amusement park.

Rodney Dangerfield playing a talk show host sounds like a great idea and there are a lot of talented people to be found in Meet Wally Sparks.  Debi Mazar is an actress who should have appeared in a lot more movies and she and Rodney Dangerfield make a good team.  The movie actually gets off to a funny start, with a montage of actual talk show hosts talking about how much they hate Wally Sparks and his show.  Gilbert Gottfried has a cameo as a manic guest and Wally repeats some of Rodney Dangerfield’s classic jokes.

Unfortunately, the movie starts to fall apart as soon as Burt Reynolds threatens to cancel the show for being too lowbrow.  No network executive has ever threatened to cancel a show that’s bringing in the ratings, regardless of how lowbrow it might be.  Things get even worse after Wally goes to Atlanta and ends up staying there.  The movie tries to recreate the Snobs vs. the Slobs dynamic of previous Dangerfield films but the Governor comes across as being such a decent man that there’s no joy to be found in watching his life get turned upside down.  The movie has a surprisingly large number of subplots, including one about Wally’s son (Michael Weatherly) falling for the Governor’s daughter (Lisa Thornhill), but most of them go nowhere and just distract from the man who should have been the film’s main attraction, Rodney Dangerfield.  By the end of the movie, even the usually irrepressible Dangerfield seems to have been neutered.

Rodney Dangerfield was a national treasure but Meet Wally Sparks was not the best showcase for his persona or his style of humor.  Fortunately, Caddyshack and Back To The School are available to watch anytime that we need a good laugh and we want to show Rodney Dangerfield a little respect.

An Election Day Blast From The Past: Jerry Springer Isn’t Afraid Of The Truth

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today, we have a special election day blast from the past!

In 1982 (and not 1980, regardless of what the title of the YouTube video says), former Cincinnati Mayor Jerry Springer entered the race for governor of Ohio.  He was one of three major candidates to enter the Democrat primary.  During the campaign, Springer cut this memorable commercial in which he let voters know that, a few years earlier, he “spent some time with a woman (he) shouldn’t have” and that he “paid her with a check.”

Despite Jerry’s claim that “the nomination is finally within grasp,” he came in a distant third.  Of course, if Springer had won that election, America would never have had the Jerry Springer Show or any of the shows, like Maury, that followed its example.  So, Ohio, it’s all on you.  Elections have consequences.

A Movie A Day #13: Ringmaster (1998, directed by Neil Abramson)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

ringmaster-posterJerry Springer has been many things over the course of his long life.  Lawyer.  Anti-war activist.  Adviser to Bobby Kennedy.  Congressional candidate.  City councilman.  Brothel aficionado.  Mayor.  Journalist.  Commentator.  Talk show host.  Destroyer of culture.  Scourge of humanity.  Twice, he was a highly recruited candidate for the U.S. Senate but, both times, it was decided that there was no way a morally questionable television personality could actually win high political office in the United States.

(Yeah, about that…)

There is one thing that Jerry Springer has never been and that is a movie star.  However, that’s not for lack of trying.  At the height of his talk show’s popularity, Jerry Springer starred in Ringmaster.  Though he played a character named Jerry Farrelly and his show was retitled The Jerry Show, there was never any doubt that Jerry Springer was meant to be playing himself.

Who is Jerry Springer, according to Ringmaster?  He’s a sad and weary man who sleeps with his guests and worries that his raunchy show will be his only legacy.  After one show, he tells his staff that he will never again be elected to political office.  His staff laughs but Jerry didn’t sound like he was making a joke.  Why does Jerry do it?  Because he cares about America!  When a man in his audience starts yelling that Jerry and his guests are all going to Hell, Jerry gets in his face and let him know that his show is providing a voice for the people who live in the real America.

In Ringmaster, the real America is made up of people like trailer park nymphomaniac Angel Zorzak (Jaime Pressly) and her mother, Connie (Molly Hagan).  Angel and Connie appear on The Jerry Show after Angel sleeps with her stepfather (Michael Dudikoff, the American Ninja himself) and Connie gets revenge by sleeping with Angel’s boyfriend.  Also on the show is Demond (Michael Jai White), who cheated on his girlfriend with her two best friends and, the night before the show, cheats with Angel too.  Thanks to the show, Demond gets his comeuppance and Angel and Connie’s relationship is repaired.  The movie ends with mother and daughter back in the trailer park, talking about how their new neighbor has big feet.

Pressly and Hagan are the best thing about Ringmaster.  The worst thing is undoubtedly Jerry Springer.  For someone who has made a career in both politics and television, Jerry Springer turns out to be a terrible actor.  He sleepwalks through the movie with a please-kill-me look on his face, keeping his head down and muttering the majority of his lines.

According to Wikipedia, Ringmaster had a budget of $20,000,000 and grossed back less than half of that.  Why would people pay money to watch what they could see on TV for free?  Jerry Springer never became a senator or a movie star.  He continues to host his talk show and probably will until the end of time.

Let’s Talk About Sharknado 3!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Sharknado3Feature-1748x984

(This review contains spoilers because it’s impossible for me to imagine that you somehow have not already seen Sharknado 3.)

Last night, I watched and live tweeted Sharknado 3 and I’m still recovering.  After the first hundred, I lost track of how many tweets I devoted to Sharknado 3.  Of course, I wasn’t alone in that.  Last night, it seemed like the entire nation was tweeting about Sharknado 3 and it was a wonderful thing.  At its best, twitter can be the great equalizer, giving everyone an equal voice and last night was one of those moments.

In fact, I was tempted to just devote this review to posting the best Sharknado 3 tweets from last night.  However, if I did that, 90% of those tweets would be from me.  Out of the millions of Sharknado 3 related tweets last night, mine were definitely the best.

Over the past three years, the premiere of the latest Sharknado film has almost become an unofficial national holiday, a summer version of the Super Bowl.  On twitter, Sharknado 3 was trending for days before the film even premiered.  And, once Sharknado 3 did start, it seemed as if everyone in the country was watching and taking bets on which celebrity guest star would be the next to die.  (I’m very proud to say that I correctly predicted the bloody and prolonged death of Frankie Muniz.) Even the majority of the commercials were specifically meant to tie in with the Sharknado franchise.

maxresdefault

Fans of the first Sharknado will be happy to know that Nova returns!

But what’s amazing and admirable is that, even though the franchise has now become an international phenomena, Sharknado 3 stayed true to its SyFy roots.  Ignore all the hype and you’ll see that Sharknado 3 tells  a story that will be familiar to anyone who has ever watched any SyFy original movie.  The world is threatened by a flamboyant threat, in this case a bunch of tornadoes that happens to be full of sharks.  Only one man (Ian Ziering as Finn) can save the world but first, he has to deal with skeptical military jackasses.  As always seems to happen in these films, he’s separated from his wife (Tara Reid playing the role of April and sporting a truly badass robotic hand).  Meanwhile, their teenage daughter (Ryan Newman as Claudia) has gone off on her own and finds herself right in the center of the disaster.  It’s a plot that has been used in thousands of SyFy and Asylum films but director Anthony C. Ferrante directs with a lot of energy and writer Thunder Levin provides so many clever one liners that it doesn’t matter if the storyline is familiar.  Ignore all the hype and you’ll discover that Sharknado 3 is still a wonderfully fun film that features everything that we love about SyFy movies.

Of course, one thing that distinguishes Sharknado 3 from other Asylum film is that it is full of celebrity cameos.  Usually, I am weary of excessive celebrity cameos because they’re distracting and the celebs often turn out to be terrible actors.  But the celebs in Sharknado 3 all do a wonderful job.  (Add to that, the majority of them get eaten, as well.)  Then again, the same could be said for the entire cast.  Regardless of what they’re asked to do or say, Ian Ziering and Tara Reid both full commit to their performances.  Casting director Gerald Webb is indeed one of the unsung heroes of the entire Sharknado phenomena.

The film opens with a shark attack on Washington D.C. and it’s during this time that we meet President Mark Cuban and Vice President Ann Coulter.  And, oh my God, how certain heads on twitter exploded when Ann Coulter showed up.  But you know what?  After seeing Sharknado 3, I would totally vote for a Cuban/Coulter ticket.  I don’t care what their platform is, they know how to fight sharks and they seemed far more believable than anyone who is currently running for President.  At first, I assumed that Mark Cuban was supposed to be playing himself and I thought that Sharknado 3 had somehow managed to predict the presidential campaign of Donald Trump.  However, I then checked with the imdb and I discovered that Cuban was playing President Marcus Robbins.

sharknado-3-mark-cuban

The same people on twitter who were bitching about Ann Coulter weren’t much happier when Michele Bachman showed up, playing herself.  (For a few minutes, I was hoping that the movie would be full of cameos from former Presidential candidates.)  However, the political cameos in Sharknado 3 are bipartisan.  When the action moves down to Orlando, noted Democrat Jerry Springer shows up as a tourist and promptly gets eaten.  And then Carlos Danger himself, Anthony Weiner, shows up as a heroic NASA guy.  Eventually, for those of us who lean towards the libertarian side of the political spectrum, Penn Jilette and Teller eventually show up.  Personally, I suspect that Teller knew how to stop the sharks but, of course, he wasn’t going to say anything.

As for the cameos from various media personalities, Sharknado 3 never manages to top the moment from Sharknado 2 where Kelly Ripa stomped a shark with her high heels.  But no matter — it’s still fun to watch Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda get drunk while sharks fall around them.  And then Matt Lauer gets eaten by a shark so yay for that!

(Incidentally, whether intentional or not, the film was full of former contestants from The Celebrity Apprentice, with Ian, Penn, and Lou Ferrigno all showing up.  Personally, I would have enjoyed seeing Piers Morgan get eaten by a shark.)

Hoff-in-Sharknado-MAIN

However, of all the celebrity cameos in Sharknado 3, nobody could top the Hoff.  When David Hasselhoff first showed up as Finn’s father, it felt like a funny but obvious joke.  Of course, Finn’s father would be David Hasselhoff.  But you know what?  Give credit where credit is due.  The Hoff actually gave a pretty good performance and, during the film’s interstellar climax, he managed to do a pretty good impersonation of George Clooney as he looked out into space and said, “It’s a beautiful view.”

And yes, Sharknado 3 does go into space.  How could it not?  The film may have started out as an homage to the classic weather disaster films but, by the end of the movie, it turned into a delirious combination of Jaws, Gravity and Interstellar.  By the time Finn was exploring the stomach of a shark while it floated through the starry sky, Sharknado 3 had achieved a definite state of grace.

Incidentally, the film ended with a cliffhanger and we were asked to vote whether or not April would live.  At first, I voted to kill April because, quite frankly, I thought it would be fun to see a vengeance-obsessed Finn.  But then Tara Reid tweeted the following and made me feel totally guilty:

So, I’m changing my vote!  APRIL LIVES!

Of course, all this means that there will be Sharknado 4 and I can hardly wait!

Sharknado_hero_April_02