Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone Parodied Studio Notes By Having Shakespeare Punch Burt Reynolds

 As I’ve noted here before, I was and am a huge fan of Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone. 

The TV series, now appearing on MeTV, offered tales of the supernatural, fantasy, horror and other dramas. One favorite episode was pure satire.

Rod Serling (seen in the above photo) wrote the clever and funny script which was based no doubt on his own negative experiences with TV studio executives and corporate sponsors. 

In The Bard, a talentless would-be-writer (Jack Weston, seen in the above photo with John Williams) conjures up William Shakespeare to help him write a television play. But when the great Bard visits the set and meets a famous stage method actor (Burt Reynolds doing a fine parody of Marlon Brando – which is perhaps why Brando hated Reynolds, who looked like the young Brando), he is none too pleased. 

Slash/Film.com offers a look back at Rod Serling’s The Bard.        

There's a piece of advice that every writer gets at some point in their career, and it goes like this: "Write what you know." 

It's not bad advice if you don't take it too literally. "Write what you know" doesn't mean that you should only write about your own autobiographical experiences, it means that when you do write from experience you'll probably be able to write more truthfully, more meaningfully, and in more detail than if you had to make it all up from scratch. Even if you write about strange new planets filled with creatures totally unlike anything found on Earth, you're probably better off finding an angle that speaks somehow to your personal interests, your beliefs, or your memories. 

The irony of course is that as writers keep on writing, eventually "what they know" the most about is being a writer. You may have noticed that a whole heck of a lot of Stephen King characters are novelists. And you may have noticed that Hollywood types love to make movies and TV shows about working in Hollywood.  

"The Twilight Zone" creator Rod Serling was no exception to this rule, so although he wrote a lot of different stories about a lot of topics that spoke to him in various ways, he wasn't above writing the occasional tale about why the entertainment industry is a terrible place. Sometimes it's a story about how Hollywood Westerns are insipid and irresponsible. And sometimes it's a story about how Hollywood studios would ruin the works of William Shakespeare if he were alive today. 

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

The Twilight Zone Parodied Studio Notes By Having Shakespeare Punch Burt Reynolds (slashfilm.com)

You can also watch The Bard via the below link:

Watch The Twilight Zone Classic Season 4 Episode 18: The Bard - Full show on Paramount Plus 

A Look Back At Ed McBain's 87th Precinct Film 'Fuzz'

I began to read and enjoy Ed McBain's 87th Precinct crime novels when I was a teenager in the 1960s. 

(Ed McBain is seen in the below photo). 

I also read his literary novels, written under his name Evan Hunter, such as The Blackboard Jungle, and A Matter of Conviction, a novel about New York street gangs that was made into one of my favorite films from the 1960s, The Young Savages. The film starred Burt Lancaster and Telly Savalas.

Evan Hunter changed his name legally from his name at birth, Salvatore Lombino. He died in 2005.

One of the 87th Precinct crime novels I enjoyed was Fuzz, written in 1968.

The crime novel featured the 87^th regular cops, such as Detective Steve Carella, and a reoccurring bad guy in the crime series, “The Deaf Man.”

I also watched and enjoyed the 1972 film Fuzz, based on McBain’s novel, which starred Burt Reynolds as Carella and Yul Brenner as “The Deaf Man.” McBain wrote the screenplay for the action-comedy.  

Lee Pfeiffer at Cinemaretro.com offers his take on the 1972 film Fuzz.

In reviewing "Fuzz" when it opened in 1972, Vincent Canby of the New York Times noted that the film looks more like a dress rehearsal than a finished movie and was obviously intended to appeal to viewers who had a limited attention span. In contrast, Roger Ebert said he was put off by the exploitive elements of the movie poster, but in the end called it a funny, quietly cheerful movie. I guess I land in the same ballpark as Ebert, although I'm not without criticism of the film, which was based on author Ed McBain's popular "87th Precinct" novels that explored the excitement and absurdities found in a modern, big city police department. The film has an impressive ensemble cast: Burt Reynolds and Raquel Welch (reunited after co-starring in "100 Rifles"), Tom Skeritt, Jack Weston and Raquel Welch, who appears rather fleetingly despite her prominent billing. Oh, and the bad guy is played by Yuel Brynner, who appears rather late in the film in a limited number of scenes.

The film is primarily played for laughs and it's scattershot plot jumps around at a dizzying pace. The action takes place in the aforementioned 87th Precinct in Boston, a run-down venue located in a troubled part of the city. The plot focuses on a harried group of cynical detectives who report to their equally cynical, burned-out boss, Lt. Byrnes (Dan Frazer). The precinct is depicted as decrepit and as worn-out as its inhabitants. There's a lot of chaotic action going on throughout the day with various local miscreants and eccentrics clogging up the works, much to the frustration of the burned-out cops.  The plot sees seasoned veteran cops Steve Carella (Burt Reynolds), Bert Kling (Tom Skerritt) and Meyer Meyer (you read that right) (Jack Weston) trying to cope with the chaos- as well as the arrival of a strikingly beautiful policewoman who has been assigned to the precinct, Eileen McHenry (Raquel Welch). Among the cases being investigated simultaneously are the identities of the creeps who have been setting local hobos on fire, a serial rapist, various petty crimes and a late-breaking, high-profile threat posed by an unknown man who phones in death threats aimed at local public officials. When the ransom he demands isn't paid, said officials are bumped off in a high profile manner despite intense efforts by the police to thwart the plots. The villain is known as The Deaf Man (Yul Brynner), a sophisticated brute with the persona of a Bond villain, who employs a small team of loyal and very competent crooks to help him carry out the various assassinations.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link: 

STREAMING REVIEW: "FUZZ" (1972) STARRING BURT REYNOLDS AND RAQUEL WELCH (SCREENPIX) - Cinema Retro

And you can watch the film via the below link:

Fuzz (1972) Burt Reynolds, Yul Brynner, Raquel Welch - Action, Comedy - YouTube

Burt Reynolds, Movie Star Who Played It for Grins, Dies at 82

Actor Burt Reynolds has died. He was 82.  

He showed he could be a true and good actor in Deliverance, but he often preferred to make “good ole boys” comedy-actions films. I didn’t care much for these films, but they were hugely popular. 

I liked Burt Reynolds in TV’s Gunsmoke and later in Deliverance, and I liked him in Shamus, Stick, Sharkey’s Machine and several other crime films and a few westerns.

You can read about his life and work in his memoir But Enough About Me. 

And you can read about Burt Reynolds in a Hollywood Reporter piece via the below link:

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/burt-reynolds-dead-deliverance-boogie-nights-star-was-82-831093

A Look Back At James Dickey's Novel "Deliverance"

As Steve King at todayinliterature.com notes, it was on this day in 1970 that James Dickey's novel Deliverance was published.

Although primarily a poet -- thirty collections by the time of his death in 1997, a National Book Award in 1965 for Buckdancer's Choice -- Dickey's first novel was a best-seller when it appeared, and the movie two years later (Dickey wrote the script and played the Sheriff) was a box-office hit. The tale of four suburb-dwellers on a manly descent into camping nightmare -- the human-nature horrors include rape and murder -- is described as "an allegory of fear and survival" and "a Heart of Darkness for our time" by the critics.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.todayinliterature.com/today.asp?Search_Date=3/28/2014

 

Note: I enjoyed James Dickey's novel and I enjoyed John Boorman's film as well. It was Burt Reynold's finest film.  

Elmore Leonard's Crime Thrillers On Film

The New York Post offers a  piece on crime writer Elmore Leonard's film adaptations.

You can read the piece via the below link:

http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainment/tv/leonard_on_film_uoYRw9u7uODUxxLfRUs4MN

The piece does not mention 52 Pickup with Roy Scheider, which I believe is one of the best films based on Leonard's crime thrillers. 

The above photo shows Jennifer Lopez as the shotgun-wielding U.S. Marshal in Out of Sight.