Behind the Camera: The Unauthorized Story of Three’s Company (2003, directed by Jason Ensler)

Posted on February 6, 2025 by Jedadiah Leland

Do you remember Three’s Company?

The sitcom was a big hit when it aired in the 70s and 80s and it still gets a lot of play in syndication today. Based on a British sitcom (and you would really be surprised to how closely the first season followed the original series), Three’s Company starred John Ritter as Jack Tripper, an aspiring chef who moved in with two single women, Janet (Joyce DeWitt) and Chrissy (Suzanne Somers). Because their impotent landlord (Norman Fell) didn’t want people of the opposite sex living with each other unless they were married, Jack pretended to be gay. Every episode centered around a misunderstanding, though it was Suzanne Somers’s performance as the perpetually bouncy and braless Chrissy Snow that made the show a hit. The show fell apart when Somers asked for more money, Ritter and DeWitt got angry with her, and the studio bosses lied to everyone. Today, the show is legendary as an example of how backstage tension can end even a popular series.

Behind The Camera: The Unauthorized Story of Three’s Company attempts to dramatize the success and eventual downfall of Three’s Company. Joyce DeWitt appears at the beginning and the end to talk about how important she thinks the show was. In the movie, she is played by Melanie Paxson. John Ritter is played by a lookalike actor named Bret Anthony while an actress named Jud Taylor plays Somers. Brian Dennehy plays ABC president Fred Silverman and other executives are played by Daniel Roebuck, Wallace Langham, Gary Hudson, and Christopher Shyer. The movie recreates all of the drama that went on during Three’s Company without offering much insight or really anything new to the story. Even though the movie was co-produced and hosted by Joyce DeWitt, Suzanne Somers is really the only sympathetic character in the movie. DeWitt comes across as being jealous while Anthony plays John Ritter as being a bland nonentity who chooses his own success over being honest with his costars. The network executives are more interesting, just because watching them provides a glimpse into how real producers and showrunners picture themselves. They just wanted to make a good show about a sex addict pretending to be gay so he could live with two attractive, single women but the agents and the network presidents just keep getting in the way! Won’t someone please think of the mid-level network executives?

Bland though this recreation was, it was enough of a rating hits that NBC went on to produce several more Behind The Camera films. Three’s Company was only the beginning.

The Eric Roberts Collection: The Savant (dir by Sherri Kauk)

Posted on May 1, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I swear, I will sit through the worst films for the promise of an Eric Roberts cameo.

Roberts is only featured in about two minutes of 2019’s The Savant. According to the credits, he was playing a character named Lonnie. At one point, he called the film’s hero, police officer Nick Tantino (Frank Giglio), and had a nonsensical conversation with him while he was arresting a random person. I’m not really sure who Lonnie was supposed to be and the scene had very little to do with the film’s story. In fact, the scene just randomly occurred. I’m going to guess that the film needed to be padded out and someone said, “Let’s call Eric Roberts and add another name to the cast.”

Eric Roberts is not the only familiar face to show up in the film.

Martin Kove plays a literature professor who is also a sensei. One of his former students, an evil District Attorney named Zane Carroll (played by Eric Etebari), calls him for advice.

Former TV actress Joyce DeWitt plays a detective. Her partner, who tells a lot of bad jokes, is played by comedian and former Howard Stern flunky, Jackie Martling.

Veteran genre actress Julie McCullough plays a judge, who screams at a defense attorney.

Thomas G. Waites, who was one of The Warriors, plays a police chief.

Robert Loggia shows up as Dr. Reno, a psychiatrist who bellows at everyone and who explains how the savant mind works. Of all the “names” in the film, Loggia gets the most screentime. Interestingly enough, Loggia died in 2015 and The Savant was released four years later. I’m not sure when The Savant was actually filmed but considering how messy the film is and how many plot points are brought up and then abandoned and also the fact that the characters often look totally different from scene-to-scene, I’m going to guess shooting went on for a while.

As for the film, it’s about an autistic savant named Anthony (Miguel Jarquin-Moreland) who beats up a bully. Nick, who has been assigned to work as a glorified security guard at Anthony’s high school, takes Anthony under his wing and trains him to be a MMA fighter. It turns out that the secret of communicating with Anthony is to speak to him in Spanish so we get several scenes of Nick calling him a “pendejo” in order to get Anthony to fight. The entire film builds up to a cage match between Anthony and his bully just for Nick to suddenly cancel the match and instead enter the ring to fight Zane, who is not just a district attorney but also the sensei of his own karate school.

Zane is determined to not only defeat Nick in the ring but to also destroy Nick’s career by telling the police about the time that Nick killed two men in Italy. The murders are not in the record because, according to Zane, they happened “before we had international law.” What? Anyway, Zane decides to create a false criminal record for Nick because Zane is jealous over the fact that Nick is falling in love with Anthony’s sister, a defense attorney named Cassy (Suzy Kaye). Zane even sleeps with Nick’s ex-wife to get revenge. Seriously, I love the fact that Zane is both a prosecutor and a sensei. I mean, how does he find the time?

There’s a lot of plot in this movie. None of it really makes sense but it’s hard not be amused at just how incoherent it all is. The film is full of random and seemingly unrelated scenes, like a lengthy sequence where a defense attorney argues that his client, a doctor, was performing euthanasia when he shot three heroin addicts in the head. “Free Dr. Clark!” the courtroom crowd chants. (Of course, Dr. Clark is never again mentioned after this scene. The shouts of “Free Dr. Clark” brought to mind the “Free Hat!” episode of South Park.) The Savant plays out like a fever dream, one that dares you to try to make sense of it all.

Well, good luck with that. I could sit here and spending hours write about all of the film’s plot holes. But what’s important is that this film featured a lot of Robert Loggia yelling and about two minutes of Eric Roberts. Plan accordingly.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

Retro Television Reviews: The Love Boat 3.5 “The Scoop/The Audit Couple/My Boyfriend’s Back”

Posted on September 6, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Wednesdays, I will be reviewing the original Love Boat, which aired on ABC from 1977 to 1986! The series can be streamed on Paramount Plus!

Today, the IRS takes a cruise. Agck!

Episode 3.5 “The Scoop/The Audit Couple/My Boyfriend’s Back”

(Dir by Jack Arnold, originally aired on October 6th, 1979)

Captain Stubing is being audited!

Damn the IRS! What a bunch of money-obsessed fascists!

The IRS agent, Viola Penny (Phyllis Diller), has booked a room on the cruise so that she can look through Captain Stubing’s records and….

Wait a minute. If you’re an IRS agent, you get to go on a luxury cruise and also look through someone’s private information? That sounds like fun! Sign me up!

Anyway, Viola originally seems to be tough-minded and determined to toss Capt. Stubing in jail. But then she gets drunk at dinner and, when she wakes up in the captain’s cabin, she’s convinced that she and Stubing are now lovers. She decides to go easy on the audit but then she comes across $50,000 hidden in an ice bucket and she becomes convinced that Stubing is cheating the government and that he seduced her to keep her from finding out. But then she discovers that the money is actually the crew emergency fund and she falls in love with Stubing again….

Yeah, it’s hard to keep track of how Viola feels from scene to scene. At the end of the episode, she declares her love for the captain and leaves the boat. Stubing realizes that he forgot to ask her what the results of his audit were but he also orders Gopher not to call her back to the boat. If there’s a new captain next week, I’ll just assume Stubing’s in USP Marion.

Meanwhile, caddish Jay Cavanaugh (Lyle Waggoner) is really excited when he sees his ex-girlfriend, Patricia Lucas (Jennifer Salt), on the boat. Jay is determined to get back together with Patricia, despite the fact that Patricia is on her honeymoon with her new husband, Danny (Richard Kline). Danny is instantly jealous of Jay, who has a perfect smile and a perfect tan. However, he needn’t be insecure because Patricia is totally in love with him. Still, Danny keeps walking in on Jay flirting with Patricia and soon, he declares that the marriage is over.

Patricia tricks Jay into stepping up on a stage in the Acapulco Lounge and announcing that he’s in love with Patricia. Patricia then announces that Jay has no idea what love is and declares, in front of all the crew and passengers, that she’s in love with Danny. Danny and Patricia’s marriage is saved but seriously, Danny was kind of wimpy about the whole thing. It seems like Patricia deserved better than both Jay and Danny.

Finally, Simon Scott (Ray Buktenica) is a tabloid reporter who is on the cruise because he’s been assigned to discover who the famous actress, Jackie Landers (Joyce Dewitt), is traveling with. It turns out that Jackie is not traveling with a romantic partner but instead with her autistic son. At first, Jackie pretends to be in a relationship with Doc Bricker but eventually, Simon discovers the truth. However, Simon refuses to write a tabloid-style story about her child so Jackie falls in love with him and hires him to help her write her own non-tabloidy story about her son.

This episode was a mixed bag. The IRS storyline was frustrating, largely because it featured a lot of complications that could have been prevented by people just not jumping to conclusions. The newlyweds story felt anticlimactic because there was never any question about who Patricia would choose to be with. But the storyline with Jackie, Simon, and Jackie’s son was actually pretty sweet. Ultimately, this was a pleasant but forgettable cruise.

Val’s Movie Roundup #4: Hallmark Edition

Posted on July 21, 2015 by Valerie Troutman

Recipe For Love (2014) – The movie begins with Lauren (Danielle Panabaker) as a kid writing a food blog about cafeteria food. She is told that’s a no no by the school. Then we jump ahead to when she’s an adult working in a kitchen. Suddenly, an opportunity falls into her lap. She is asked to ghostwrite a cook book for a television chef named Dexter Durant (Shawn Roberts). At first there is a little friction, but it doesn’t last long. The two open up to each other pretty quickly. We see behind the facade Dexter puts on for the audience and Lauren genuinely wants to make this cookbook happen. It’s not like this is a story about a woman whose voice is hidden behind a man’s. And it’s not about tearing down this fake personality to see Dexter fall from grace or watch him give up this thing he was only doing for fame. They work together, fall for each other, and both come out of the process better then when they began it. They both still love cooking and want to continue to do so with each other. I really liked that she wasn’t bashing against a wall that finally comes down in the end. Both of them begin to deal with each other as real people early on. I liked this Hallmark movie better than most I have seen.

Catch A Christmas Star (2013) – I swear if it isn’t a dog movie, it’s a bible movie, otherwise it’s a Christmas movie. In fact, director John Bradshaw has made eight of them. This film introduces us to a family that has a little girl who likes a singer named Nikki (Shannon Elizabeth). She shows up at a record signing and wouldn’t you know it, turns out Nikki knows her Dad from the past. There’s no sense in spelling out the rest of the plot because you already know it. I didn’t like this one. I didn’t feel any chemistry. Shannon Elizabeth doesn’t act well. She certainly can’t sing. And while she is probably the nicest and sweetest person I could ever meet in real life, she looks like a plastic doll to me in this movie. I just couldn’t push past that. I’ve only seen four Hallmark Christmas movies, but I would go with A Royal Christmas (2014) instead.

My Boyfriends’ Dogs (2014) – This year I replaced my desktop PC with a Mac. I kind of regret the choice of going with a Mac because the software is lousy. The hardware is giving me some problems too. But I’m going off on a tangent. My point is that while the computers have given out over the years, the monitors still work fine. As a result, I have the monitor that comes with the all in one Mac and two monitors from previous computers attached for a three monitor setup. This movie is like that. It follows Bailey (Erika Christensen) as she goes from one boyfriend to another, picking up their dogs along the way. It’s actually quite funny to see two of them show up on her doorstep with a dog for her to adopt. At the center of this series of dates is the guy at the pet shop cast because we can instantly tell he’s a good guy. Now all of this is told in flashback. At the beginning of the movie, Bailey wanders into a cafe wearing a wedding dress where she recounts her story to a some guy and Joyce Dewitt of Three’s Company fame. Turns out the final boyfriend almost became her husband before she ran out, dogs and all. I won’t spoil the ending, but it will have you yelling, “Oh, come on!” This one’s okay, but Recipe For Love is the best of the four in this roundup.

For Better or for Worse (2014) – This one is a Romeo and Juliet style story. You have the mother who does weddings. You have a father who does divorces. Their children decide to come together, become vegans, and organic farmers. Obviously, that doesn’t go to well with the parents. What follows is the parents getting closer while trying to drive the kids away, only to figure out that as weird as it seems, the kids are actually pretty happy together. The two parents also turn out to be happy as well with each other. Wait, I just realized something. I know it’s a little wishy washy, up for argument, and they did it in Clueless, but that smells a little like incest. A little weird for a Hallmark movie. Oh well, is it worth your time? You can do worse. It’s a decent 90 minutes or so without commercials. I wouldn’t seek it out, but if it’s on, then just enjoy it to pass the time.