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Few figures throw a mightier shadow over the 20th Century cultural landscape than Groucho Marx (1890-1977), born Julius Henry Marx to assimilating German Jews in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. With three of his four brothers – Chico, Harpo and Zeppo – he created several of Hollywood’s greatest comedies, and, as a single […]
Delighted to share that SPIKED!, my first Young Adult novel, has been contracted by editor Rowan Thomas at Vulpine Press. Here’s a preview: Things are confusing for Thom Wilcox and they are not getting any simpler. Thom has lived next door to his best friend A.J. Lopez all his life. Ever since they were put […]
Film scholar extraordinaire Toby Roan has graciously asked me to appear on his second-ever episode of his new podcast, The Carbon Arc. We both love many of the same movies, and after some discussion selected one of my favorite comedies, The Son of Paleface, to be the focus of our talk. Son of Paleface is […]
Well … that was an unexpected delight! Last year producer and director Mary O’Leary asked me to write her upcoming documentary, Dark and Shadows and Beyond: The Jonathan Frid Story. Mary was just the person for the job; she is a multiple Daytime Emmy winner for her career producing soap operas. But … she also […]
I had so much fun reading American Cornball: A Laffopedic Guide to the Formerly Funny, by Christopher Miller, that I decided to briefly write about some of my favorite comedies. So it was a double bit of serendipity to learn that the 1968 cult hit The Party recently made its way to Blu-Ray and DVD. […]
American Cornball: A Laffopedic Guide to the Formerly Funny, by Christopher Miller came as a delightful surprise. Arranged alphabetically, Miller enumerates the countless tropes so frequent in American comedy circa 1900-1966, and why they were funny and what they tell us about Americans of old. Miller creates an artificial cutoff of 1966, citing anecdotally that […]
William McGuire “Bill” Bryson (born 1951) has written several amusing books on language, science and travel. He has also been a fixture on television and radio, and is one of the smartest and funniest men on the contemporary scene. However, the Bill Bryson that I enjoyed the most was the gentle memoirist who […]
It’s always a pleasure to be wrong for the right reasons. I had been under the impression that Hearts of the West, a truly wonderful western comedy from 1975, was unavailable on DVD. Now, I learn that it has been out there since summer of 2011. Having hoarded a poor-quality VHS for over a […]
