Tom Sullivan | Through the Shattered Lens

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Thursdays, we will be reviewing Highway to Heaven, which aired on NBC from 1984 to 1989. The entire show is currently streaming on Amazon Prime, Tubi and other services!

Episode 4.8 “All the Colors of the Heart”

(Dir by Michael Landon, originally aired on November 18th, 1987)

This episode brings Jonathan (Michael Landon) and Mark (Victor French) to a summer camp for the blind, where they come into contact with two men. There is Frank Riley (Tom Sullivan), an athletic blind man with a great attitude who has high hopes of gaining his sight and being able to see for the first time in his life. In contrast, there is Scott (Peter Kowanko), a young man who is in the process of rapidly losing his sight and is in complete denial of his new reality. Jonathan and Frank, who also happens to be the man who started the camp, work with Scott in hopes of helping him to face both the physical and the emotional challenges of going blind. Will Frank actually be able to regain his sight? Will Scott be able to accept his condition and find a reason to embrace life again?

Our family watched HIGHWAY TO HEAVEN often during its run in the 80’s. My mom loved the series, and I remember its episodes going straight for the heart. I haven’t revisited it as an adult, and I must admit that I had an enjoyably nostalgic time when I watched this episode today.

While I personally had warm and fuzzy feelings based on the show’s connection to my youth, the content of the episode itself was quite serious. Scott, the young man who is going blind, is basically giving up on life, so much so that he contemplates killing himself. Peter Kowanko, who plays Scott and bears a striking resemblance to actor James Van Der Beek, is pretty good in the part. He spends most of his time screaming at people that they don’t understand what he’s going through. It’s not the most endearing performance, but I can’t help but wonder how I would react in the same position. Heck, I’ve had some of my own health issues recently, and the anxiety that has come along with that has definitely hampered my ability to put others first. I think Tom Sullivan is a little more successful in the role of Frank Riley, the man who has been blind since birth. Sullivan, who is blind in real life, receives a “Story By” credit for this episode, and is reportedly much like the man he portrays here. While some of his scenes do lean heavily into melodrama at the end, his inspiring sense of humor and overall outlook on life gives us glimmers of hope throughout the episode. I did want to point out that Kowanko and Sullivan do almost all of the heavy lifting in the acting department in this episode. While they had some fun interplay at the beginning, I was surprised by how little the characters played by Landon and French factored into the main storyline. I’m going to assume this is the exception and not the norm for the show.

Overall, I enjoyed revisiting this TV series from my youth. This specific episode contains a strong message about the importance of finding the joys in life under the most difficult of circumstances. I think we all need to be reminded of that from time to time, even when we’re not facing the types of challenges that these characters are being forced to deal with. Michael Landon, who directed this episode, got me at the end as I felt some moisture welling up in my own eyes. I’m definitely looking forward to taking a little deeper dive into the series in the near future.

Two million dollars worth of cocaine has gone missing in Long Island and Andy Warhol is on the case!

Believe it or not, that’s actually a fairly accurate summation of this 1979 film. The film does feature a plot about several people looking for a lot of missing cocaine and Andy Warhol does play himself. And Andy does discover what happened to the cocaine! He even leaves behind some helpful Polaroids of the cocaine’s location, all of which he signs, “Good Luck, Andy!”

But, here’s the thing. This is an 80 minutes film. Though Andy appears at different moments throughout the film, he really only has less than 10 minutes of screentime. He spends most of that time lurking around with a camera and muttering the occasional word of wisdom.

What’s goes on during the rest of the movie? Not much. While waiting to make it big with his band, Dustin (Tom Sullivan) has been making ends meet by smuggling cocaine. Even though Dustin and the rest of the band want to get out of the drug business, their manager (Jack Palance … wait, Jack Palance!?) sets up one last score. Unfortunately, while the cocaine is being flown out to Long Island, it falls out of the plane and lands in the water! Uh-oh! The drug dealers want their cocaine. Jack Palance wants the cocaine. The band wants to find the cocaine and they’re even willing to ride around to horses to look for it. Some other people want the cocaine but I’m not sure who they were supposed to be. Andy Warhol does not want the cocaine. He just wants to talk about Interview Magazine and take pictures of the band.

Almost everyone wants to find the cocaine but, interestingly enough, they’re all pretty laid back about it. Sure, the band might spend some time looking but they’re just as likely to be found performing a song. To be honest, the band’s not that bad. I went to the University of North Texas, which is famous for its music school, and the band definitely has a UNT sound to it. They’re good without being so good that you’d ever expect them to become stars. The band’s best song features Dustin going, “We’re cocaine cowboys,” over and over again.

According to The Warhol Diaries, the film’s star, Tom Sullivan, was a real-life drug dealer. This movie was his attempt to recreate himself as both a film star and rock star. It didn’t work. This was Tom Sullivan’s only film credit and he died two years later, at the age of 23.

So, maybe you’re wondering how Jack Palance and Andy Warhol ended up in this obscure little film. Well, I don’t know what Palance was doing there and, judging from his performance, he didn’t know either. Warhol was in the film because 1) it was filmed at his Long Island estate and 2) he was friends with director Ulli Lommel. Today, Lommel is best known for directing crappy true crime horror films but, at the start of his career, he was a protegé of both Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s and Andy Warhol’s.

(Lommel’s then-wife and financial backer, Suzanna Love, also appears in the film. Horror fans will immediately recognize her from her starring turns in Lommel’s The Boogeyman and The Devonsville Terror.)

Particularly when compared to Ulli Lommel’s later, better-known films (like the unwatchable Curse of the Zodiac), Cocaine Cowboys isn’t that bad. It’s pointless but it’s pointless by design. Everyone in the film is so detached and out-of-it that the film becomes a portrait of ennui. It’s a film that very much shows the influence of Fassbinder and Warhol, taking a popular genre — in this case, the drug rip-off film — and then tearing away at all of the artifice. “Really? The French Connection had a car chase?” the film seems to be saying, “Well, Cocaine Cowboys doesn’t have anything! Just like real life.”

Of course, that’s not totally true. Cocaine Cowboys does have something. It has Andy Warhol solving a mystery and that’s got to be worth something.