Oh, this thread isn't just for TV shows? If movies are on the docket, how about D.C. Cab? Mr. T, Otis Day, Whitman Mayo, Gary Busey, Bob Zmuda, Bill Maher...alright, so that one's not as black as I remember, but whatta cast! And that level of diversity is unfortunately rare.
I always loved Meteor Man, but for some reason it was a flop. Maybe it's my particular age bracket but there is nothing wrong with a superhero comedy. OK, it was a vanity project, and pretty corny. But again, talk about a cast!
Starring (and written by, and directed by) Robert Townsend, and featuring...Marla Gibbs, Eddie Griffin, James Earl Jones, Bill Cosby, Sinbad, "Tiny" Lister, Robert Guillaume, Don Cheadle, Lawanda Page, John Witherspoon, Faizon Love, Luther Vandross, Another Bad Creation, Naughty by Nature, Cypress Hill, Biz Markie, and Big Daddy Kane. Oh, and Wallace Shawn, naturally (because he's everywhere). Chris Tucker also made an uncredited appearance.
Speaking of Chris Tucker, John Witherspoon, "Tiny" Lister, Lawanda Page, and Faizon Love--and Ice Cube--we weren't, but he's the star--what about Friday? There's a movie that's up there in my view count. The Big Lebowski might be the only movie I have watched more times than Friday. So many quotable lines, this movie is hilarious and while it gets over-the-top at times, it feels so real. Like early seasons of The Simpsons, you can tell that the characters and jokes came straight from the writers' real lives. One of the ultimate "hangout" movies, where the characters just hang out a lot and you want to hang out with them.
tangspot2 wrote:
Mrs. stake you say some nasty on my threads. Dirty bitch
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Gotta give it to you SnS, you rocked the boat with "Friday". This is when I noticed that Ice Cube was everywhere, lol. His career took off in all directions at the same time.
Notice how movies all seemed to hit the "next level" in the 90's, amazing how Chris Tucker went from "Meteor Man" and "Friday" to "The Fifth Element" and "Rush Hour". But even more amazing was to see Tiny Lister on the big screen, not expecting to see him as President Lindberg in "The Fifth Element". And I was thinking about these guys just the other day!
And what happened to Robert Townsend? He made a big splash with "Meteor Man", then I lost track of him after "The Parent 'Hood". Like Bill Cosby, Robert Townsend liked control over his projects. He was most effective behind the camera.
D.C. Cab - that's going waay back to when Gary Busey was cool and still sane, LOL!
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"Major Payne" was funny, I liked him in "Blank Man" too.
I didn't know "D.C. Cab" had so many funny people in it. I remember imdbing Mr. T, that's how I found out about D.C. Cab, but never watched it. This movie has to be on Netflix, I may check it out when I'm in the 70's movie mood.
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Forgive me, I'm still happy that you guys remember Tiny Lister. So many people respond to me with, "Tiny who?", but more people remember him as "Zeus" from the WWE.
Anyway I'm still in my "Fifth Element" mood so it's time for a few words from Ruby Rhod - if such a thing is possible.
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I don't know if it's just my mind melding memories together, but I "remember" Zeus teaming up with The Million Dollar Man Ted Dibiase against Hulk Hogan and his crew on WWF. I also remember Zeus appearing as one of the bad guys in an early movie staring Hulk Hogan, "No Hold Barred". Boy was it an exiting time to be a wrestling fan!
The last episode of Martin played on TV1 last night. As I get older, I feel more sad when I see the final episodes of my favorite shows, Martin's seemed intentionally depressing.
I also caught an episode of Sanford and Son, Minus Fed Sanford. I give Whitman Mayo some credit, but "Grady" sure couldn't carry the show like Redd Foxx.
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As much as I love Grady, he was written as a supporting character. Most sitcoms can't turn someone like that into a main character. They're going to either stretch out the catchphrases, or fumble around in a hackneyed attempt to establish more background or history for them.
While it's a little trite, I do find The Family Man to be a pretty fine piece of television writing and performance. I haven't seen the concomitant Grady-focused series, which was another flop, but this episode did well at granting him some depth and characterization.
Far worse, IMO, are the episodes with Fred and Lamont, where they went to Hawaii. Talk about steamrolling the treatment of a show. But Fred Meets Redd does just that and happens to be one of my favorite episodes. So what can you say?
Sitcoms really are full of dreck. Because of that, we often give the writers less credit than they deserve. Not to say we should cheer for crap. But I think it's a hard job, a fine line, to maintain the spirit of the setting and characters, and at the same time keep them interesting, over the course of five years or more.
tangspot2 wrote:
Mrs. stake you say some nasty on my threads. Dirty bitch
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Now you guys know how I feel about "All in the Family" after Mike and Gloria left the show.
There was no point to continuing with "Sanford and Son", without Sanford and Son! The short-lived replacement series "Sanford Arms" only lasted about five episodes before NBC pulled the plug.
I'm with you bklynbren, I really enjoyed watching pro wrestlers invade TV and movies, especially as walk-on characters. Seems to me there was a former pro wrestler that got into politics, lol.
Don't forget, I was a big fan of MadTV. The show quickly became as popular as In Living Color. As a matter of fact, MadTV gave SNL more competition than they could handle, imo.
Take a look at this opening monologue by Orlando Jones:
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Jones, Orlando Jones!
We watched Pirates of the Carribean the other night and Mrs stake told me "that's Orlando Bloom." I was thinking, "I thought he was black." So there's more than one Orlando, that's it!
I'm pretty good at remembering actors' names, but learning them in the first place, that's a little harder.
tangspot2 wrote:
Mrs. stake you say some nasty on my threads. Dirty bitch
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You're reading my mind SnS, when I was in high school the favorite passtime in my homeroom was TV/Movie trivia. I was constantly challenged because I could never remember anybody's name. That's when I decided to keep a list of shows that I liked, including names of actors and production staffers.
It didn't take long before writing things down became unnecessary as my memory for details became stronger. That's why I spend most of my webtime searching for stuff I remember instead of asking questions in the hope that someone else knows what I'm thinking about.
One of my older sister's best friends was a lot of fun to talk to. Her name was Gwen and she advised me a long time ago, "when you watch a show or movie that you really like, ask yourself why you like it and seek out people that both agree and disagree with you".
In the years before the internet, it was that disagree part that truly saved me. Trying to convince someone else about a show is a lot of fun, while drawing on as much of my memory as I could muster.
Of course, the web changes everything!
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"when you watch a show or movie that you really like, ask yourself why you like it and seek out people that both agree and disagree with you".
That is a cool thing to do. It helps you develop your pop culture opinions and have substantial things to say more than just "I don't/like it."
You're right about the internet, for sure! In my post about movies above, before the world wide web...well, if I wanted to name all the people in those movies, it would take a couple of days to compose such a post. I would have to go to the video store and look at the box and take notes on the cast. Maybe rent it, because you know the box doesn't have everything. Or if I had my own copy recorded from TV, I could take notes by putting the tape in the VCR and watching the credits! Maybe I would even fast forward to the end to watch the full credits to make sure I didn't miss anybody. (And I still wouldn't get Chris Tucker in Meteor Man. Apparently he had one line and wasn't on screen. I just checked this out.)
Then, if I wanted a conversation larger than my living room, I would have to type it all up and mail it to a zine or something, lol
Now, I'm not saying I don't miss the classic video stores (especially the pre-Blockbuster Inc. variety) but instead of doing all that, all I had to do was type IMDb.com and enter a few queries.
tangspot2 wrote:
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It was the same for me too. And I'm still floored when I look up an old movie and discover that my detail memory is in error. I get actors wrong, movie studios wrong and, of course, release dates wrong.
I have a cousin that likes to ask me stuff like, "what did Bill Shatner do before the Original Star Trek?". And I would mention an old movie that I saw him in. But I didn't know that Shatner's first film was "The Brothers Karamazov", about the same time he started working with Rod Serling on the Original "Twilight Zone".
Now it's so much easier to search out the filmography of famous actors and see clips of films I didn't know they were actually in!
And as for MadTV, do you remember Keegan-Michael Key?
Here he's doing a parody ad - the dude is good!
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Nope. I grew up reading MAD magazine, obsessively. I subscribed to it and read all the issues I got dozens of times. I made sure to pick up every super special from the newsstand, those were my first completely independent purchases, where I went to the store all by myself and spent my own money.
So I did watch MAD TV once. It was nothing like the magazine and I was pretty turned off. There was this preconceived expectation that wasn't met. I went back to SNL and never gave it another shot.
I've heard some good things about MAD TV lately, though. I should have a look. That Levitol skit is pretty funny. But I don't think I will ever understand Mrs stake's unending amusement at "Uh Oh Hot Dogs".
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Amazing, You must be channeling me! When MadTV first started I didn't like what I was seeing because the show didn't follow the magazine at all. Why call it MadTV when it's nothing like MADmagazine?
Then Artie Lange did his "white mama" thing, and I just fell on the floor laughing. Still, that first season was kinda weird for me.
Did you know that many of the people involved in television production today are all fans of MAD Magazine? The influence of MAD can not be overstated. It looks to me like the TV show will remain a curious video series that may always cause fans of the magazine to scratch their heads.
MadTV was on its final wave when Bobby Lee kinda took over the show. I waited for him to show more depth to his characters, but Bobby never broke out of the "asian guy" persona. Like couldn't he get a laugh some other way?
From me, I guess Bobby counts as bad color comedy, lol.
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