If podcasts aren’t your thing, this may be the podcast to convince you otherwise. Dana Carvey and David Spade are the hosts of Fly on the Wall, a retrospective comedy tour back to the original years of Saturday Night Live in the 1970s. It picks through a handful of the late night comedy show’s best casts and hosts for a lighthearted chat, for anyone who wants to burst out laughing for one full hour each week. Twelve episodes are already ready and waiting for you right now. Featured guests so far include 15+ time SNL host Tom Hanks, original Not Ready for Prime Time player Laraine Newman, cast members Chris Rock, Jon Lovitz, Darrell Hammond, Weekend Update host and senior writer Tina Fey, former SNL writers Conan O’Brien and Sarah Silverman, and former SNL hosts Rob Lowe, Johnny Knoxville, and Jon Hamm.
When Oscar gets it right, it highlights something about the current zeitgeist, not necessarily a mirror image of the social, literary, artistic, political, or technological achievements of the day, but at least a taste of it. Do many of the nominees for the Academy Awards have that this year? Ford v Ferrari, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Jojo Rabbit, Joker, Little Women, Marriage Story, 1917, Parasite, or The Irishman? Did they last year? How about a story about a person trying to make a name for himself, barely getting by, trying to pay his bills, experiencing a tough go at it before he realizes his dream? Perhaps the biggest miss of this year’s ballot is one of those timeless stories of self-made success: Dolemite is My Name.
Dolemite is My Nameis a biopic and a classic underdog story. The seemingly ageless Eddie Murphy has his best leading role and best performance of his career, playing comedian, singer, actor, and film producer Rudy Ray Moore, who found his niche in cinema in the 1970s. Murphy as Moore is like Richard Pryor at his best. Murphy plays Moore as Everyman, pulling together his own outgoing nature from his 1980s stand-up performances and finessing them with the benefit of years of experience into a real, believable, even heroic character. This is the same character type we saw resonate so expertly last year with Brent Jenning’s lead character struggling to succeed after putting years into a failed career in TV’s Lodge 49. Murphy’s range of emotion, his subtlety, his depth of struggle and effort in every look and word is exactly why you have awards for acting in the first place. This film is a smartly scripted drama with comedy notes, written by dynamic writing duo Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski (Man on the Moon, Ed Wood, The People vs. Larry Flynt). It’s backed up with costumes, hairdos, music, cars, language, and an all-around fashion fest of 1975. If you didn’t know better you’d think this was a Quentin Tarantino film, because it gets the retro production design just right, as he has been able to do so well. Instead it’s Craig Brewer directing, the director of Hustle & Flow, the Footloose remake, and Empire series.
Supporting Murphy is a fantastic cast, beginning with Da’Vine Joy Randolph as Lady Reed, as an immensely entertaining and sympathetic single mom, brushing off her ex as Murphy’s Rudy Ray Moore watches and learns. Moore invites her into his partnership. He and his friends go to the movies for laughs and walk out nonplussed. Moore knows he can do better. So he tries to get financing and make a movie. His selected production staff, and the actors behind them, makes for a dream assemblage. Keegan-Michael Key(The Predator, Tomorrowland),Craig Robinson(Mr. Robot, Hot Tub Time Machine), Mike Epps (Resident Evil, The Hangover), Tituss Burgess (The Addams Family, 30 Rock), and Kodi Smit-McPhee(X-Men: Dark Phoenix, Let Me In), plus familiar faces Wesley Snipes, Chris Rock, and Snoop Dogg make for a top tier cast. When these people are working together in an old abandoned hotel converted to a film set, you witness the same kind of camaraderie as audiences witnessed in those barber shops in Do the Right Thing and Marvel’s Luke Cage.
Kansas City Comic Con 2017 has been an event full of fun for both visitors and the creative guests the attendees came to meet. One of the show highlights was a Green Arrow Quiver/Sounds of Violence reunion of writer Kevin Smith and artists Phil Hester and Ande Parks. The trio delved into the impetus for bringing Oliver Queen/Green Arrow back from the dead back in early 2001 after the character had been killed off and replaced with Connor Hawke as the Green Arrow for a generation of readers. “I was a big fan of the character going back to the day. I loved Grell’s Longbow Hunters and I loved the book that followed Longbow Hunters. It was like a Vertigo book, but wasn’t technically a Vertigo book, but it was very grown-up.” When Smith was visiting the DC Comics offices discussing a Superman screenplay back around 1996, Smith said he popped his head into Green Arrow editor Darren Vincenzo’s office and said, “Hey, man, if you ever want to put Green Arrow in the Top 10, let me write the book. I think I got a story.” A year later when Smith was working on Daredevil, Vincenzo recalled the conversation and asked if Smith was serious about Green Arrow.
Smith, Hester, and Parks had each worked with editor Bob Schreck, who had just moved to DC from Oni Press, where Schreck had been co-founder. Schreck wanted Smith for the Green Arrow project idea and asked who he’d like for his artistic team, and Smith suggested Hester and Parks in part because of their work on Swamp Thing. “I fell in love with it deeply,” Smith said. The team was solidified and they moved forward with the project. “Having these two dudes enabled me to go where I wanted to go,” Smith added. Already established artists at the time with a catalog of works, Hester and Parks expressed gratitude to Smith for selecting them for the project and Smith said the collaboration with Hester and Parks on the project helped cement his position in the comic book industry as a creator who is now regularly tapped for insight into the comics industry in documentaries on comics, among other things. “The only reason I get to be in that stuff is because I have credibility in the comic book community because of stuff like Quiver. Quiver was the one particularly,” Smith said, further noting the book won national awards.
And speaking of Mike Grell, Grell was also a guest at KCCC this year. Always great for a conversation, Grell was busy working on sketch commissions for attendees this weekend.
Smith also discussed working with Dynamite Comics to bring together later projects with Phil Hester and artist Jonathan Lau on Green Hornet and The Bionic Man. Hester said there was much back and forth communication in creating the story, and Smith emphasized the collaborative effort, “I used to be a guy that was like ‘oh, I just want to write it myself–I don’t want any input. And then one day you work with people who add something, and then it’s ‘God, that’s incredible!'” He used as examples contributions from Chris Rock in his film Dogma and Will Ferrell in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back–both actors who made contributions to the script but didn’t ask for or want any writing credits—and creator David Mandel in the animated Clerks. When fans reference great lines that Smith didn’t write he said he makes sure to credit the writer. “It’s important for collaborators to cite those people who are your collaborators.” The panel was hosted by the Worst Comics Podcast Ever’s Jerry McMullen (shown above after the panel with Hester, Parks, and Smith).
Lee Meriwether and Doug Jones at KCCC 2017.
In the celebrity autograph area at KCCC 2017, a reunion and momentous meet-up involved actress Lee Meriwether and actor Doug Jones. Both Meriwether and Jones worked together on the film The Ultimate Legacy, which also starred Raquel Welch and Brian Dennehy. Meriwether and Jones are unique in that they represent contemporaries in acting but also represent bookends of a sort for the 51-year Star Trek franchise. In addition to her many famous roles in series like Barnaby Jones, All My Children, and Batman, Meriwether played the character Losira in the original Star Trek series episode, “That Which Survives.” Jones, an actor who has performed both as creature characters where he is often unrecognizable–a Lon Chaney of today as one fan referred to him–as well as more standard roles, has performed in more than 150 films and TV series (from one of the creepy Gentlemen in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode “Hush” to the creature in next month’s new Guillermo del Toro release The Shape of Water). Plus Jones has appeared in 100 commercials, including as the classic McDonald’s moon-shaped mascot “Mac Tonight.” And Jones currently plays the alien leading character Lieutenant Saru on this year’s latest Star Trek incarnation, Star Trek Discovery.
Gary Fisher and his family meet attendees at KCCC 2017.
