A Force to be Beckoned With

Growing up in San Diego, it was summer’s annual pilgrimage—waking up before dawn and piling in the car so we could arrive in Anaheim by the time the gates opened.  This was back in the time when you literally could do everything in one day, the era of “Mission to Mars”, the People Mover, Bear Country, and the E-ticket ride.  It was the "Happiest Place on Earth" and always represented not just one childhood siren song, but the whole Disney catalog we'd collected on LPs.  By the time I went to Disneyland for Grad Night (a tradition for SoCal high schools), all three Star Wars films had been released and the new ride at the Magic Kingdom was the motion simulator, Star Tours.  Little could I possibly know (or imagine) that 25 years later, I would be a fixture in the park myself, a minuscule part of these two pop culture legacies.

If you Google me, always one of the first things to pop up is my IMDB profile which includes one single acting credit: Rebel Pilot on Star Tours, The Adventures Continue (2011).  I’ve talked about my life on Skywalker Ranch before on this blog, and while many different highlights stand out (some of which I can talk about, some I can’t), that film credit is the one thing about me that the internet will likely remember the longest.  Today is the 40th anniversary of the release of the original Star Wars, so here are some thoughts on that day I spent on the green screen stages of “Kerner Optical” (ILM) in downtown San Rafael and the first time I saw the final product, many years later.

We were only given the sketchiest of outlines: we were in a hangar and we were welcoming back the patrons of the ride, who miraculously survived their thrilling adventure.  Because there were no corrective lenses “A Long Time Ago”, I had to hide my glasses inside my glove take after take, so I could only barely make out the camera as we all collectively whooped and hollered and applauded.  As is often reported, there’s a lot of down time on the set, so after multiple turns at that scene, we wore Hefty trash bag bibs while eating at the craft service tables (all our costumes were original artifacts from the first SW trilogy—see the Return of the Jedi still below).  Then there was lots of hangar B-roll footage: “I want you to walk from here across to there, but not in this area, because that’s where a big spaceship will be”, etc.  I also remember there was an actor from the prequels there (one of Padme’s guards) who had some lines to intro the ride, which we watched being filmed from the wings.  I asked if I could get a SAG card from my stint that day (I had no lines, so the answer was No) and then went back to my regular job the next day.

Years later, and just a few months after the ride opened, I left Lucasfilm.  And while the ride sounded cool (with its multiple randomizing elements, which made every experience a unique one), it hardly was convenient or practical to travel hundreds of miles to see myself for a whole 15 seconds.  But I’d hear from friends once in a while—none of whom had known I was on the new Star Tours but who could clearly pick me out among my rebel band.  I was intrigued but since the ride was in 3D, all the cel phone renditions that popped up on YouTube relegated me to a blur.  And that was part of my past anyway. Even when my mom asked to be taken to Disneyland one last time before leaving California for good, there were a lot of things I knew she wanted to do more (and with the randomizing element, there was no guarantee the herky-jerky ride which she wouldn’t enjoy would even pay off with an appearance from her son).

But then I heard there was going to be an expansion of Disneyland, which would include a huge new Star Wars section.  Would they move the ride?  It is just a flight simulator, easy to relocate.  Would it be closed for a while?  Would the now-expanding universe of new Star Wars films mean the need for constant revisions and updates?  I couldn’t be sure, but I knew I would feel like an idiot if I never saw myself on this thing.  The idea of going down seemed absurd since I had just been there recently (because a campus that big required me pushing her around in a wheelchair, Mom and I were able to go on everything she wanted).  But just around this time last year, I decided to drive down and go.

It only took two turns standing in line to see the module with me in it.  It’s a fun ride, cleverly done and entertaining.  No sign of any of the B-roll footage they shot; all the hangar footage on view as patrons wait in line is now much more CG-oriented.  No sign of Padme’s aide (C-3PO now took over hosting duties).  But sure enough, I was there in what one might call muted exuberance, welcoming myself home.  And the one module I'm in has my favorite music cue ("The Asteroid Field") from the entire series.  I found a single YouTube that shows all the original variations, so now I’m visible for the idly curious: my module (a hybrid of Eps 2 & 6) starts at timecode 19:51; I appear at 21:15.

And like I suspected, they had added a new module that included scenes from Episode 7: The Force Awakens.  Like George before it, the Mouse has the itch it can’t not scratch, this impulse to update, revise, and rebrand.  That’s particularly true of the park where I had so many childhood memories. I remember Nemo’s submarine ride when it was an homage to Jules Verne, Tarzan’s treehouse when it belonged to the Swiss Family Robinson, the Pirates ride before it was polluted by the movie’s score and uncanny valley Johnny Depp.  The reason I went in the spring was so I could ride the Haunted Mansion when it wasn’t taken over by The Nightmare Before Christmas (much as I love that film).  The one time I was on a ride that broke down and we all had to walk through it to exit outside, it was the now-long-gone miniaturization ride "Adventures thru Inner Space" which was in the same spot where Star Tours is now.

Another ride that’s no longer around is America Sings, this strange musical revue of early traditional American music, all performed by animatronic animal characters.  As it happens, most of those characters are now on Splash Mountain, in some ways an even stranger ride since it references a movie, The Song of the South (1946), that I’d wager few Disney visitors younger than I have ever seen.  There’s a perverse form of denial in the Mouse House about that controversial film since there’s no song you’ll hear more often in Disneyland than "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" (it is everywhere), but you won’t find the movie in their gift shops or the title referenced at all.  But it is a great ride and when I was on it, I had an epiphany: I’ll wager that Splash Mountain will be rebranded as a Zootopia variation at some point, since the rabbit and fox are already principal characters.  Plus, it's a safer, fresher property. Disney has little patience for the forgettable, so the regrettable seems even more likely to be casually swept away.

The one thing that made this Disneyland trip most unusual for me was that there was no urgency about lines or access or getting the most bang for my buck.  I had one mission, which I accomplished early, so the rest was active but oddly relaxing.  Some old favorites I revisited, but there was plenty of new stuff to discover: California Adventure is more serene, less congested.  The truly psychedelic Winnie-the-Pooh ride is audacious and bizarre, and the Monster’s Inc. and Little Mermaid rides are in the spirit of the old school Fantasyland storybook rides.  Cars-land is more entertaining than either of the actual movies.  I’m sure I would’ve enjoyed Toon Town as a kid (Who Framed Roger Rabbit? opened the same year as my grad night), but I did find this extraordinary little tidbit.  This is the mailbox outside Goofy's house.  Do you see the manila envelope?  Here's a close-up, upside down.

 

I love this inside joke.  The postmark date--July 17, 1955--was the date that the original park opened, back when Uncle Walt was alive.  And while we know a stork (voiced by one Sterling Holloway, a Disney regular) delivered the famous baby elephant in Dumbo, Roger Rabbit reminds us that in Toon Town, storks also deliver the mail.

 

Had any visitor even noticed that postmark before?  It’s the most incidental of grace notes.  But that’s what’s always been most amazing about the park: its meticulous attention-to-detail, embedding Easter eggs and hidden references everywhere—things you might never notice but whose cumulative impact is undeniable.  But I’ll admit it: it’s weird to be a childless single adult at the park.  It’s saturated In the cult of family and franchising and nostalgia and while it’s all impressive (almost to the point of overwhelming), I really have a hard time imagining myself ever going back.  I’ve seen everything there is to see, in some cases many times over.  Things will change, of course, but while I’ve been a lot of places across several continents, I hope to see much more out there before it’s all over.  The real world is my Tomorrowland.  And it’s even more true now than it was when I first heard the Sherman Brothers song: It is a Small World after all.  And an inviting one.

The day before I went to Disneyland, I hiked through Griffith Park and to the top of the Hollywood sign, something I’d always wanted to do.  I was in no rush, so it took a few hours of just me surrounded by nature, slowly working my way up to this gorgeous vista, a heavenly view of the City of Angels.  That hike was a bigger deal to me than what came the next day.  That was true magic. 

 

 

First, the Disney stamps.  You'll note the California Adventures card has all 5 different Mickeys (one per issue over 5 years).  Note that those postmarks are all Anaheim or Orlando (home of Disney World, which I've never visited).  To summarize:

Mickey, Donald, Goofy - Scott #3865

Bambi - #3866

Pinocchio - #3868

Mickey, Pluto - #3912

Alice in Wonderland - #3913

Snow White - #3915

Mickey, Minnie - #4025

Cinderella - #4026

Fantasia Mickey - #4192

Peter Pan - #4193

Dumbo - #4194

101 Dalmatians - #4342

Steamboat Willie - #4343

Sleeping Beauty - #4344

The two California statehood stamps are #997 and #3438.  The X-wing fighter is #4143m and the planet Neptune #5076.  Joel Chandler Harris wrote the Uncle Remus stories; his stamp (on the Splash Mountain card) is #980.  The Jack-o-Lantern is #5137.  

And at the time the Muppet stamps were released, they had a 3D show at California Adventure (though it's not there now).  The Scott #s are Jim Henson (#3944k), Kermit (#3944a), Fozzie (#3944b), Statler & Waldorf (#3944e), the Swedish Chef (#3944f), and Dr. Honeydew & Beaker (#3944h).

I Only Have Four Eyes

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My friend Brian does the “I Only Have Two Eyes” series annually on his blog (the title of which I’ve revised for my bespectacled self), about the best of archival screenings in the Bay Area.  And since 2016 was the first year in ages that I actually logged every film I saw in a theater (final tally: 229 features & 256 shorts), it made compiling a list of my own 10 indelible experiences much easier to do.

We’ll start with Dumbo (Sharpsteen, 1941) at the Paramount in Oakland, on absolutely stunning 35mm.  Although the emcee called it original (which it couldn’t have been, because that would have meant nitrate stock), it certainly was a crisply struck print that had not seen much circulation.  Combine the divine “Pink Elephants on Parade” sequence with the most gorgeous Art Deco palace in the Bay Area, and it was a great way to start the year.

Also in January were some memorable titles at Noir City at the Castro, and for me, the highlight was a first viewing of Mickey One (Penn, 1965), a glorious jazz-tinged fever dream of a film, with an assist from legend Stan Getz.  Disjointed, bizarre, singularly unique and punctuated by a live dance routine from burlesque goddess Evie Lovelle.

Soon after, the PFA had an excellent Maurice Pialat series, but I suspect that the power of his Under the Sun of Satan (1987) was magnified by it being bookended (quite by coincidence) with two other contemporary films I saw the same week that also explore religious faith, fanaticism and hypocrisy: Pablo Larrain’s The Club and Avishai Sivan’s Tikkun.  In Pialat’s fantasy-fueled acid bath Passion Play, he posits the possibility that religion may be the most oppressive to the truly devout.  Overall, a provocative accidental trilogy.

Some fun Gothic films ran their course at the Yerba Buena Arts Center that summer, and the highlight was my first time seeing The Beguiled (1971) on the big screen.  Still Don Siegel’s best, Clint Eastwood plays a Yankee fox trying to subvert and seduce a Dixie henhouse.  The thick hothouse atmosphere and sexual tension played beautifully through Siegel's lighting and the insidious plotting and character power plays.  Still a remarkable film (soon to be remade by Sofia Coppola).

Though a relatively recent movie, I have to include the Triplets of Belleville (Chomet, 2003) screening at the Taube Atrium in the SF Opera House because Benoît Charest was there with a jazz combo to perform his exquisite score live, including saws, bikes, and trashcans as percussion instruments.  A terrific experience.

2016 was the first year the Alamo Drafthouse in the Mission was open, and the best part of their programming is the late night Mon-Wed screenings.  My first dip into that pool was a packed show of Two-Lane Blacktop (Hellman, 1971), which I’ve seen several times in the theater, but never tire of the gearhead culture, the meditative structure and lack of urgency (for a racing film!) and Warren Oates’s phenomenal turn as GTO.  My year was relatively short on roadtrips but this went some way to sating my wanderlust.

In my backyard at the Parkway, there was an irresistible double bill of the cuckoo-bananas conspiracy theory documentary Room 237 (Ascher, 2012) followed by a screening of the focus of its subject, The Shining (Kubrick, 1980) itself.  Rarely does a year go by when I don’t see some Kubrick on screen (I also revisited Paths of Glory and Spartacus at the Smith Rafael Film Center for Kirk Douglas’s 100th birthday), but a bonus this year was an excellent exhibit on Kubrick at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in SF with some amazing artifacts from his career, including the typewriter and hedge maze model from this film.

Also at the Smith Rafael was a Sam Fuller weekend (with his widow and daughter in attendance), where the biggest revelation for me was his Tokyo noir House of Bamboo (1955), a beautifully stylized genre piece whose gangster trappings and compositions appeared to anticipate the marvelous Seijun Suzuki, whose career was starting around the exact same time.  As you’d expect, Robert Ryan is in top form and the climax on a rooftop amusement park is a standout.

And finally, two silent films, both firsts for me.  At the Silent Film Festival at the Castro, Destiny (1921), the earliest film I’ve seen by Fritz Lang and a glorious anthology of stories where Love must face down Death.  It was wonderful seeing Lang’s visual imagination in bloom, anticipating the superb special FX and supernatural wonders of his next few years in Germany.  Months later, over at the Niles Essanay Film Museum, the buoyant energy of underrated actress Bebe Daniels was on full display in the fizzy comedy Feel My Pulse (La Cava, 1928), about a hypochondriac heiress looking for rest at a health sanitarium which is actually acting as a front for bootleggers (led by a very young William Powell).  A hilarious comedy and secret gem.

So that’s 10 features, but since I saw over 60 archival shorts in the theater last year, I’ll give an honorable mention to two with Buster Keaton, still silent in the autumn of his career.  I saw The Railrodder (Potterton, 1965) at an Oddball Film Archive screening, featuring Buster traveling across Canada on an open-air mini-railcar, a playful reminder of his other great train film The General, but in sumptuous color.  And around the same time, the Smith Rafael Film Center played Film (Schneider, 1965), one of Samuel Beckett’s few forays into film and a wonderful existential metaphor with Buster showing that age had not changed the expressiveness of his body in motion.  A sublime pairing.  Here’s looking forward to another year of familiar films and new discoveries.

The Walt Disney stamp is Scott #1355 and Buster Keaton #2828. Dumbo is #4194 and Steamboat Willie #4343.  The Ringling Brothers stamps are #4901 & 4904 while the other circus stamps are, sequentially, #1309, 2750 & 2751.  The Pontiac GTO is #4744 and the Ford pickup #5104.

One Kool Kat

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Kirk Douglas was never really known for comedy.  Brawler, tough guy, a hero who was often tortured, if not physically (which was often), then psychologically—his films are typically serious stuff.  When he did smile, it was often wolfish, or as if the cat ate the canary.  What humor he showed in his characters would often be wry, acerbic, cynical.  The most playful he ever got—his Ned Land in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954)—was in a fantasy adventure, but even his films that had a comedic bent (There Was A Crooked Man... (1970), for example) would have a dark undercurrent.  While this changed towards the end of his career (1980 and beyond), it was mostly in the service of forgettable films, the best of which was Tough Guys (1986), his final pairing with long-time screen partner Burt Lancaster—another actor, in fact, who rarely did comedies, though his screen charisma had far greater natural buoyancy.  Even when Kirk wasn’t fighting, he was always like a coiled spring, ready to pounce at any time.  It’s what made him a great villain in his early years and such a suitable anti-hero as his career blossomed, this authentic intensity.

But we know from various interviews he’s done that he is a funny, warm, charming guy in real life—a trait that didn’t fade an iota even after his debilitating stroke in January 1996.  So on the occasion of his 100^th birthday, I thought we’d talk about the best, overtly funny thing he was ever in, his guest appearance on The Simpsons which aired just a few months after the stroke: “The Day the Violence Died.”

In it, the famous Itchy & Scratchy cartoon pair are celebrating their 75^th anniversary, commemorated by a parade through downtown Springfield.  It’s here that Bart meets the bum Chester J. Lampwick (Douglas), who claims to have created Itchy, only to have it stolen by Roger Meyers Sr. (a Walt Disney proxy in the world of the Simpsons).  The ensuing court case and rags-to-riches storyline for Chester is packed with a ton of fun references to animation tropes from a variety of decades.

Of course, Kirk is no stranger to exposés on the cutthroat character of Tinseltown.  He played a merciless producer in The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) and a washed-up actor in Two Weeks in Another Town (1962), and his real-life political courage in the face of enormous industry pressure during the Blacklist era is the stuff of legend (his Spartacus storyline is the best thing about the otherwise tedious Trumbo).

So it’s fun to see his irascible Chester go up against the craven, money-grubbing system.  But Chester doesn’t care about art.  He only cares about restitution.  So It’s no skin off his nose when the studio goes bankrupt.  In this way, he’s a kindred spirit to Grandpa Simpson (one of the most reliably hilarious characters on the show).  A funny running gag is that various Springfield characters have a history with Chester, contracting him to do odd jobs he never completed for food he insists was terrible.  Invariably, each of these ends in a roll-on-the-floor fist fight.  He’s a crank, and the tough guy hasn’t softened a bit with age, though he also plays a good piano accompaniment to his silent short.  Throughout, Douglas plays it straight, but still sounds like he's having fun.  And in the end, he gets his just reward: his solid gold house and rocket car.  And eventually, the studio finds an unexpected cash flow, so that means for the last 20 seasons, Chester has been getting residuals on all the new Itchy & Scratchy cartoons that are made.  A suitable happy ending.

What is the origin of Itchy & Scratchy?  Certainly the most famous cat vs. mouse dynamic in film history is Tom & Jerry, a pair that has yet to earn a USPS stamp but which earned more Oscars for their shorts than either Mickey Mouse or Bugs Bunny.  But a more obvious progenitor is Krazy Kat by George Herriman, most famously a comic strip for over 30 years but also the subject of some very early animation efforts.  In the strip, Krazy Kat is a soft-hearted character who is constantly trying to woo Ignatz the mouse.  The latter always responded by throwing bricks at Krazy’s head.  Similarly, Scratchy is always depicted as a sweet or sentimental soul, with Itchy the brutal aggressor, blessed with a limitless imagination when it comes to inventive ways to murder his nemesis.  Chester also says, "Before I came along, all cartoon animals did was play the ukelele."  One of Krazy's signature traits was strumming a makeshift guitar or banjo.  So even though Krazy Kat is hardly known at all anymore, it holds striking similarities with the Simpsons’ incarnation.

In the show, we learn that Chester first created Itchy back in 1919, long before his “official” debut in 1928’s Steamboat Itchy.  The first Krazy Kat cartoon was in 1916, and while I’ve never heard any allegations to Disney using Krazy Kat as a model for Mickey, it’s a different story with the design elements of his famous mouse and Felix the Cat (also stampless) who debuted in 1919 in Feline Follies and became incredibly popular thereafter, with more than 150 shorts between 1919 and 1928.  When we see footage of Itchy’s debut Manhattan Madness, it’s a fun lampoon of the visual style of the time, as well as a satire of the unfortunate tendency to use ethnic or racial stereotypes back then.

Other animation references in this episode:

·       Mickey’s Steamboat Willie (also 1928), of course, as well as Roger Meyers Jr. no longer being able to afford the cryogenic chamber where his father was being stored (another allusion to one of the dafter Walt Disney rumors).

·       Chester’s last name Lampwick is also the name of Pinocchio’s juvenile delinquent friend in the 1940 Disney feature.  His terrifying transformation into a donkey (fated for a life of animal servitude) remains one of the most horrific moments in the studio’s history.

·       The unnamed Itchy & Scratchy cartoon featured at the end has the familiar southwest landscapes used in all the Warner Bros. roadrunner cartoons, as well as the rocket skates by Acme (Wile E. Coyote’s favorite brand).

·       Itchy & Scratchy Meet Fritz the Cat, another animated feline, this time created by R. Crumb and featured by Ralph Bakshi in his infamous 1972 feature film.

·       Perhaps the most blistering lampoon is that of Schoolhouse Rock, with the Amendment-To-Be song that acts as a gross perversion of the original Saturday morning civics lessons.  They even got Jack Sheldon (who sang the original “I'm Just a Bill”) to perform this number.  Check it out.

At 100, Kirk has had a wonderful run, and he’s managed to outlive several of the other guest actors from his episode.  Terrible lawyer Lionel Hutz (who actually manages to win his case here) was played by frequent guest, the late Phil Hartman.  And Alex Rocco did recurring bits as Roger Meyers, Jr. on the show before passing away last year.  At least Sheldon and other guest actor Suzanne Somers are still with us.

One other bit that makes this a particular favorite episode for film buffs: When Bart uses the school projector to screen Chester’s copy of Manhattan Madness, the film catches fire and incinerates just like a movie made from the old nitrate film stock would.  The former film archivist in me values this moment a great deal (though the less said about how much I resemble Milhouse at that age, the better).  And the philatelist in me appreciates how the Itchy & Scratchy studio becomes solvent again once it’s revealed the United States Postal Service plagiarized Roger Meyers with its Mr. Zip icon (a real cartoon brand in the 1960s, used to publicize the importance of the newly introduced Zip Codes).

One other bit of Simpsons trivia.  At exactly 100, Kirk still isn’t the longest-living person to appear at one time on the show.  Bob Hope lived to 100 years, 2 months.  So it won’t take long to beat that record.   Another curiosity: Even though the Stanley Kubrick references are prolific throughout the series's lifetime, there has never been a Spartacus spoof, unusual for a film with such iconic possibilities.  Maybe one day.  But Kirk's legacy on the show is secure.  Look at the postcard below and you’ll see Chester in the upper left-hand corner, nestled between Dr. Nick and Nelson Muntz.

Kirk isn’t eligible for a USPS stamp yet (thank goodness) but he has appeared in stamps from other countries, like the Mali one depicted at the top.  The Walt Disney stamp is Scott # 1355.  Other Scott #s for the Disney issues: Mickey w/friends (3865), Pinocchio (3868), Mickey & Pluto (3912), Mickey & Minnie (4025), Dumbo (4194), Fantasia (4192) Steamboat Willie (4343).  Homer, Bart, and Lisa Simpson are Scott #s 4399, 4401, and 4402 respectively.  The cartoon cat stamp on the Fritz the Cat poster is part of the Bright Eyes series, Scott # 3232.  The Stanley Steamer stamp is Scott # 2132, Krazy Kat # 3000e, and Roadrunner # 3391.  And the pet stamps from this year included cat (# 5122) and mouse (# 5117). 

For more entries in the Kirk Douglas Centennial Blogathon, go here. 

       My Top 10 Kirk Douglas films

• 1. Paths of Glory (Kubrick, 1957)
• 2. Out of the Past (Tourneur, 1947)
• 3. Seven Days in May (Frankenheimer, 1964)
• 4. Champion (Robson, 1949)
• 5. Lonely Are the Brave (D.Miller, 1962)
• 6. Spartacus (Kubrick, 1960)
• 7. Detective Story (Wyler, 1951)
• 8. The Man from Snowy River (G.Miller, 1982)
• 9. Lust for Life (Minnelli, 1956)
• 10. A Letter to Three Wives (Mankiewicz, 1949)

Like Silver

Happy Birthday to Lily Tomlin, who turns 77 today.  One of my favorite films of hers is also the best stamp film from the 70s, Robert Benton’s underrated neo-noir, The Late Show (1977).  In it, washed-up private eye Ira Wells (Art Carney) forms an unlikely alliance with new-agey flake Margo Sterling (Tomlin) after the case of her missing cat leads to blackmail, adultery and the murder of his former colleague, Harry Regan.

After an early gunfight in front of his home leads to the death of a small-time crook, Ira discovers a wallet-size album of stamps on the corpse and starts to process the clue with Margo and his lowlife tipster contact Charlie (Bill Macy). 

Margo: What’s that? Stamps?

Ira: The Whiting job

Margo: Who? Whiting? I’ve never heard of anyone named Whiting...

Ira: About 10 days ago, some place out in the valley.

Margo: Who is that?

Ira: That guy Whiting had a collection worth almost 50 grand.

Margo: Who is that? Who’s Whiting?

Ira (to Charlie): There’s a Murder One tied to it, right?

Margo: OK, don’t tell me, what do I care?

Ira: Two guys broke into a house out in the valley. They tied up Whiting and his wife and started to lift the stamps.  And then something must’ve gone wrong because they beat up Whiting and killed his wife.

Margo: Oh how disgusting, I don’t want to hear any more.

Ira: That’s what Harry was on to, right?

Charlie: How should I know? He didn’t say.

Margo: I don’t wanna hear anymore, you guys are too much!

Ira: Oh come on, Charlie, Harry knew about the stamps—what’s more, he told you about it, that’s why you knew what to look for on the bum!

Charlie: Kid, I swear, he didn’t tell me anything.  (sirens)

Ira: Hear that?  That’s the cops.  They’ll be here in a coupla minutes.  Now either you start to play it on the square with me, or I’ll feed you to them.  Which considering your record...

Charlie: You wouldn’t do that.  (beat)  OK, here’s the house number.  Harry is tailing this guy Brian, looking for Margo’s cat.  Then Brian and this pal of his pull off the Whiting heist.  The next day Harry comes to see me and lays out the whole thing, wants me to check out the reward angle.  I nose around, and sure enough, Continental Insurance is offering fifteen grand for the goddamn stamps. 

Ira: You guys were gonna split it.  Just the kind of cheap grift Harry would go for.

Soon after, the trail leads Ira to fence and underworld kingpin Ron Birdwell (Eugene Roche), whom he confronts:

Ron: What’s your business?

Ira: The Whiting job.

Ron: Postage stamps, right?

Ira: That’s right!

Ron: What’s that got to do with me?

Ira: The word is it could be tied in with you....Now stamps are a specialty item.  Not just anybody can move them.  So usually when a guy pulls a heist like that, he’s got the fence lined up in front.

As it turns out, the stamps are a red herring and the plot corkscrews out in other directions and they're never mentioned again.  And the stamps we see--all US--really aren't very special.  They are (as pictured from top to bottom):

• Abraham Lincoln (1958, Scott #1113)
• Forest Conservation (1958, #1122)
• Wheels of Freedom (1960, #1162)
• Employ the Handicapped (1960, #1155)

All four examples are in blocks of four and are taken from the original plate block (which I explained in a previous post), since you see the edge portion still intact.  But that still wouldn't make them particularly valuable.  What would make them valuable is if there were a perforation error, or if the image was off-center of the cut, or if there was an ink shift in the printing of the images.  Obviously, these we see in the film were just mocked up for some production design without any real concern about philatelic details.

And like the plotting itself, those details aren't what matter.  What counts is that Carney and Tomlin’s odd couple are an inspired pairing: he’s practical but crotchety, she’s quirky and deeply empathic and their oil & water chemistry add a lot of comic fizz to what is really a meditation on aging and loneliness.  Like one of my favorite noirs, The Big Sleep (Hawks, 1946), the plot is labyrinth-like but the real story is not the mystery but rather the character dynamics.  And while that film is saturated with sex, this one is grounded in melancholy as two perpetual misfits gradually find that trust and connection can appear under some of the most bizarre circumstances.  Robert Benton would go on to win an Oscar two years later for Kramer vs. Kramer, but I think this remains the best film he ever directed.  Go check it out.

My name is Sterling Hedgpeth and I’ve discussed the origin of my name, briefly, in a previous post, but it is a name I don’t encounter often—in real life or in pop culture, so whenever I see it (like Lily Tomlin’s character in The Late Show), I tend to remember it.  Of course, the greatest cinematic Sterling was Sterling Hayden who, whether in supporting or leading parts, made indelible marks in such classics as Dr. Strangelove, The Godfather, The Long Goodbye, Johnny Guitar, and The Asphalt Jungle.  He always brought an air of worn-down fatigue or coiled, violent energy to every film he did.  Definitely from the less-is-more school of Mitchum and Marvin, he died in Sausalito 30 years ago, just a few miles from where I go to work every day.  And aside from Sterling Morrison (the guitarist of the Velvet Underground), he may be my favorite Sterling to whom I’m not related.

Another great Sterling was Sterling Holloway, the indelible character actor with the gentle high-pitched voice, most famous for his contributions to the Disney canon: the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland, Kaa in The Jungle Book, and four shorts as Winnie the Pooh.  And although I’ve never known anyone personally whose last name was Sterling, the movies have offered us Oscar-nominee Jan Sterling (terrific 50s actress with ice in her veins in Billy Wilder’s An Ace in the Hole) and ever-present comic actress Mindy Sterling, best known as Frau Farbissina in the Austin Powers films.  And while his work has mostly been limited to TV, Sterling K. Brown did win an Emmy for his role in The People vs. O.J. Simpson, which I may get around to catching one day.

The only Oscar-winner with my name Is Stirling (with an i) Silliphant for the screenplay of In the Heat of the Night (Jewison, 1967).  Quite bizarrely, he also wrote the screenplay for The Liberation of L.B. Jones, whose main character is named Moan Hedgepath.  That movie even came out the year I was born!  This is one of only two variations of my last name I’ve ever seen in a movie (the other being Paul Mantee’s small role in The Great Santini) and my last name has always been misspelled like these variations.  While I’ve never seen Liberation, its cast (Lee J. Cobb, Anthony Zerbe, Lola Falana, Lee Majors, Barbara Hershey, Yaphet Kotto, Chill Wills, and Roscoe Lee Browne in the title role) intrigues me no end.

So here's a list of my 10 favorite characters named Sterling (first or last) in movies or TV

1. Roger Sterling (John Slattery in TV's Mad Men)
2. Whit Sterling (Kirk Douglas in Out of the Past - Tourneur, 1947)
3. Nat Sterling (Denzel Washington in Courage Under Fire - Zwick, 1996)
4. Margo Sterling (Lily Tomlin in The Late Show)
5. Tony Sterling (Donald Woods in Fog Over Frisco - Dieterle, 1934)
6. Sterling (Patrick Stewart in Jeffrey - Ashley, 1995)
7. Sterling Archer (H. Ron Benjamin in TV's Archer)
8. Tim & Lionel Sterling (Ray Milland & Edmund Gwenn in The Doctor Takes a Wife - Hall, 1940)
9. Robert Sterling (Roger Moore as James Bond's alias in The Spy Who Loved Me - Gilbert, 1977)
10. Jim Sterling (Mark Sheppard in TV's Leverage)

The Marilyn Monroe & Bette Davis stamps are Scott #2967 & 4350 respectively.  John Huston is #4671 and the Cinematography stamp from the American Filmmaking series is #3772g. Bambi, Alice in Wonderland and Dumbo are #3866, 3913, & 4194 while The Jungle Book (#4345) is a stamp I used on a card which I then forgot to send in to USPS, which is why it's missing the first-day-of-issue postmark.  The Sport of the Gods stamp (#4337) was part of the Black Cinema issue and the quilled paper heart love stamp (#5036) was issued earlier this year.