Talk Radio

So there was this one Saturday Night Live sketch that pitted Eric Bogosian against Spalding Gray. It was an epic battle of wits, and a rather clever one at that. There in the ring sat two thespians trading barbs, spinning yarns, and vying for the illustrious title belt. Who will be the Master...of...the Monologue?!?

At least we think it was pretty clever. We can't remember much more than the premise. And by "not much more" we really mean the only thing we do remember is how stoked we were to be high school freshmen getting such an erudite bit. Thinking back on it right now, we're still pretty impressed with ourselves. Guess some things never change....

Now if only NBC would archive all o' them SNL skits on the YouTube. That way we'd know for sure if this thing was anything at all like what we've made it out to be. If nothing else, at least we could spend every night refreshing Eddie Murphy's "Hymietown" sketch just like the good Lord intended.

The Dead Zone

We've yet to see M Butterfly, but this one here just has to be Cronenberg's worst. Now you all know that if there's one thing we love it's fawning over Big Davey Crones, so of course you've gotta understand that our hands are really tied here. We can't do anything but jam our fingers in our ears and look the other way with this flick. See, we're throwing all rationality out the window and refusing to believe that The Dead Zone's faults 'n failures belong to Canada's gloppiest Cartesian auteur. Now who's to blame you ask? Why, Stephen King of course. Sure, his book might be good. He may have an interesting premise about soothseeing and political intrigue, but, c'mon Stevie, you know we don't want to see anything on the big screen that's even inspired by you unless it's got some flying Coke cans in the treatment!

The Cinema suggests that if you're wanting something Croney or Kingy you direct your attention over to The Brood or Pet Sematary. Maybe even try Firestarter or that Anthony Michael Hall show on for size. But whatever ya do, just remember that no matter how intrigued ya are by Chris Walken's signature mugshots or how badly you wanna see Tom Skerritt in a policeman's uniform for the hundreth time, The Dead Zone is hardly acceptable even when ya've stumbled home from an all-night bender.

Heartworn Highways

For a bunch of drunks they sure play some good tunes.

M*A*S*H

A Dad Movie if we ever saw one. We can just hear Pops and his buddies quotin' Sutherland's lines and talking about that really stupid football game that sucks all the energy outta the end of this flick. There's the old man laughing 'bout Elliott Gould hitting the links and that part where the whole army doc camp listens in on Bobby Duvall's late-night romp in the sack. Ha! How great. Can't ya just hear your old man too?

The weird thing is, and the thing we couldn't stop thinking about while watching this, was how when we say this is a "Dad Movie" we're picturing Dad as we knew him: a middle-aged dude with a mustache and kids. We're thinking of Little League Dad and waiting for the PGA tournament to end so he can clip the hedges Dad. But when M*A*S*H hit the big screen, Dad was just a young man who still couldn't buy his own twelver of Olympia. So when we imagine him and his other mortgage-havin' pals recountin' these scenes at the Fourth of July barbecue it's really like the Cinema jawin' on and on about Fight Club or the time we saw that Enemy of the State/Faculty double feature. Isn't that weird? Dad was a dumb kid just like us, and here we are watching all these Dad Movies thinking it was Adult Dad who liked all this stuff instead of Wild and Crazy Dad out on a double date. In fact, maybe Young Dad didn't even like these here '70s movies anyway. Maybe he just liked the '70s.