Crum on Showbiz

By Steve Crum

“People nowadays, they believe anything.” This quotation from a character in Spider-Man: Far From Home is both timely and telling. The believability factor, even in a Marvel superhero flick, needs to exist if for no other reason than to contrast reality with superhuman acts. That mesh of science and science fiction can be full of wonder and fun. So it is with this wonderfully fun Spider-Man escapade, a sequel to 2017’s Spider-Man: Homecoming, also directed by Jon Watts. 

The believability aspect is central to Far From Home’s plot, carried forward to the movie’s end, and even to the end credits’ finale. (Stay seated in the theatre, and you’ll get a double punchline.) Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers deliver a doozy of a story packed with visual surrealism and clever plot surprises. 

The plot involves a two-week high school class trip to Europe, wherein Peter Parker (aka Spider-Man) is traveling with a group of his fellow classmates from the Midtown School of Science and Technology. Fellow travelers include Peter’s best buddy Jacob (Ned Leeds) and MJ (Zendaya), Peter’s love interest. 

Once in Venice, the first tour stop, Peter is contacted by Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson, of course, for any knowledgeable Marvel Universe fan). Fury wants Spider-Man to aide a newly introduced superhero, Mysterio aka Quentin Beck (played by Jake Gyllenhaal), in defeating a group of literally stormy weather villains from destroying Earth. The villainy appear as gigantic hurricane-like beings, representing wind, fire, and ice. They are appropriately called the Elementals. 

The death of Tony Stark/Iron Man (see Avengers: Endgame) is acknowledged throughout the film, and becomes a major plot element due to a gift Tony has designated for Peter. The “gift” is the crux of much of the film’s laughs as well as violent action.  Speaking of the late Tony Stark, his long time head of security, driver, and bodyguard “Happy” Hogan (Jon Favreau) returns…as driver and bodyguard to Peter Parker. 

As usual, Peter Parker multi-tasks as both a “friendly, neighborhood” superhero and a regular high schooler, now more than ever on the make for MJ. He just wants to fit in, have a girlfriend, and see the sights of Europe. And when he’s not doing that, he’s helping save the planet with his new Marvel guy, Mysterio. What a vacation!

Storyline aside, bravo for the casting of the current Spider-Man franchise—or is it sub-franchise? Since there have been several Spidey movies as of 2019, with three actors portraying Parker/S-M over the years, it is awkward to call the series a franchise unto itself. What I am trying to say is that the current casting is THE best ever, with actors of old (Jackson, Favreau) perfectly jelling with the younger whippersnappers. (Yes, I just summoned the spirit of Gabby Hayes.) Besides superbly acting their roles, the current leads (Holland, Zendaya, Batalon) actually LOOK their high school parts—even though they are respectively 23, 22, and 22. 

Well worth mentioning are J. B. Smoove and Martin Starr, who portray the group’s chaperones. They help provide comedy relief, and remind me of myself when I chaperoned high schoolers on various trips. No doubt I was as dorky as these two guys. 

Finally, a note about the casting of Aunt May. In the comic books and early Spider-Man movies, she was always appropriately portrayed as a sweet, little ol’ lady with gray hair in a bun, and wearing a granny dress with long sleeves. Now we have the cute and sexy Marisa Tomei as Peter’s Aunt May Parker. (Tomei is a 54 year-old who looks maybe 40.) 

Va-va-voom for Aunt May! Now there’s a senior citizen reaction the late Stan Lee never originally envisioned.  

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GRADE, On A to F Scale: A

Published in The Kansan City Kansan July 9, 1999, my weekly column focused on three showbiz celebrities who had recently died.  

By Steve Crum

Life goes on. Life ends. Of course that applies to show biz celebrities as much as anyone. But few of us will have our deaths reported on the front page of the newspaper. When DeForest Kelley died last month, his Star Trek fame as Dr. McCoy made his death national news. The public has a fascination, albeit morbid, about the passing of famous people. Maybe it is because of images that are forever captured on film, tape, or disc. How long will Kelley’s work on Star Trek be viewed and re-viewed on TV alone? His shadow lives on, timelessly.

As fleeting as fame is, one’s celebrity is usually short-lived. That is why this column occasionally enlightens mass media fans about the deaths of the once famous. It is hoped that readers will warmly and nostalgically link with their own pasts while scrolling down this mostly unreported listing of recent celebrity deaths. Remember, reflect, and enjoy.

•SYLVIA SIDNEY (died July 1; 88 years old)—British actress Sidney made her film acting first impressions during the 1930’s, notably in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1935 thriller, Sabotage. A long career followed, later in supporting roles, in movies and TV. Small screen fans might recall her turn as Mama Carlson in the pilot episode of WKRP in Cincinnati. 

She is best remembered for her supporting work in two Tim Burton films: 1988’s Beetlejuice (she was the case worker who blows cigarette smoke out of her slit throat); and Mars Attacks! (1996), whose grandma character saves the world with her volume-blasting Slim Whitman record. There is an interesting sidelight to Sidney’s final film work in Mars Attacks! She played her scenes with a recently broken hip, suffered from a car accident that occurred just before filming began. Sylvia Sidney eventually died of throat cancer. 

•GUY MITCHELL (July 1; 72)—The 1950s pop singer really took off after Mitch Miller guided his career. Following some singing years with big bander Carmen Cavallaro’s Orchestra in the late 1940s, Mitchell was contracted by Columbia Records. Miller, then head producer-arranger at Columbia, successfully guided Mitchell much as he did Doris Day, Frankie Laine, and Tony Bennett. Guy Mitchell had million-seller hit after hit: “My Heart Cries for You” (1950—after Frank Sinatra turned down recording it); “Singing the Blues” (1956); “The Roving Kind” (1956)—remarkably the “B” side of “Singing the Blues”); and “Heartaches By the Number” (1959). Like me, maybe you remember the songs but had forgotten the name of the singer.

Apart from show business, Guy had cowboy aspirations, making saddles and riding horses. Often headlining in Las Vegas during his heyday, Mitchell died in a Vegas hospital after “complications following surgery.”

•DEFOREST KELLEY (June 11; 79)—Yes, it is old news by now, but maybe there are some career tidbits outside his Star Trek legacy. For one, are you aware that Kelley played Morgan Earp opposite Burt Lancaster’s Wyatt in 1957’s Gunfight at the O.K. Corral? Of course, we all know that Kelley was a support in a multitude of B-westerns and crime dramas throughout his pre-Star Trek days. 

But did you know his last known screen performance is as the voice of Viking 1 in the direct-to-video animated feature, The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Mars? Or that he might, just might, appear as Dr. Bones McCoy in Secret of Vulcan Fury, a rumored upcoming Star Trek movie? (Gossip says that the production is currently stalled due to lack of funds.) If I hear anything about that movie, I will let you know. If any readers know anything, please let me know.

Kelley died after a long illness at the Motion Picture-Television Fund Hospital in Los Angeles. Carolyn, his wife of 55 years, was at his bedside. Coincidentally, Mrs. Kelley just happened to be a patient in the same hospital due to her recently broken leg. 

Published in The Kansan City Kansan June 11, 1999, my weekly column focused on the co-directors of Disney’s animated ‘Tarzan’ as well as Bruce W. Smith one of the movie’s animators. I interviewed all three in Kansas City, Mo. After the interview, I asked Smith for the gorilla sketch he had drawn during a demo, and he did me one better. He drew a new one, and signed it for me. 

Since then, Chris Buck directed several Disney classics, including ‘Frozen.’ Kevin Lima has directed a number of animated movies too, including ‘102 Dalmations’ and ‘Enchanted’.

By Steve Crum

Watching his favorite cartoon show The Flintstones led to sketching and creating his own high school comic strip. That was a decade-plus ago. A vine swing to 1999, and a very grown up and gifted Bruce W. Smith is promoting Tarzan, Walt Disney’s animated version of the jungle man story. (Tarzan will be reviewed in next week’s column.)

Smith was animator of the “Kerchak” character. Kerchak, the adoptive-gorilla dad of Tarzan, is integral to the film and on-screen for a good number of sequences. Smith’s Kansas City visit earlier this week was the winding-down part of a countrywide press tour. Fellow travelers are Tarzan’s co-directors Chris Buck and Kevin Lima. (They also have a history of on-hand animating at Disney.) The three held a lively and insightful multimedia promo that included film clips, discussion, personal interviews, and an overhead projection of Smith’s live and on-the-sport drawing of the silverback gorilla, Kerchak. 

To achieve realism, Smith studied video footage taken over several months in Uganda by the Disney crew. This was a beginning step in the four year creation of the film. Since Smith’s sole character was the gorilla patriarch, he focused on the filmed gorilla leaders, including their manner of defending the family.

“The funny thing is,” Smith said, “we had no footage of any gorilla on the attack. It is actually rare that a gorilla does attack. He will bluff, beat his chest, and roar. Invariably, he will run away at that point.”

Or wait for the intruder to back off.

There was enough footage of gorillas charging and stopping to imply a full attack. Smith then added his own imagination in the full attack scenes depicted in the movie. The end product included jarring bursts of raw power—very effectively so. If it is not already clear, this Disney cartoon feature is not another Jungle Book. All the animals, except for two or for comedy added for comic relief, are National Geographic-authentic. 

Even Tarzan is realistically drawn as lean and lanky. His demeanor is often calculating; and he crouches in tree tops with penetrating eyes, steadying himself with adaptively large feet and hands. He is faithful to the ape man that author Edgar Rice Burroughs created more than 70 years ago. 

Chris Buck shared a copy of a letter that Burroughs wrote to his son in 1936. In it, Burroughs speaks fo bringing his creation in animated form to the screen. Prior to that time, numerous live action Tarzans, including Johnny Weismuller’s, had been produced. (This version marks Tarzan movie No. 48). It is interesting that Burroughs even considered an animated feature at all, since the first full length cartoon, Snow White, would not be released until a year later. 

“The cartoon must be good,” Burroughs writes. “It must approximate Disney excellence.” Now THAT is an endorsement way before its time.

Co-director Lima was part of the safari team that studied the gorillas, observing aspects of their family unit. Since gorillas have a system of responsibility, respect, and specific duties for each member, the family structure made for a built-in theme.

“The family theme of belonging,” said Lima, “is central to the Tarzan story.” In it, for those two or three readers who do not know, the baby Tarzan is found by gorillas in the jungle when his parents are killed. He is then raised by Kala (voiced by Glenn Close), who had recently lost her own child.

Yes, there is also a Jane in this version, including a “me Tarzan, you Jane” bit. There is also Tarzan surfing through the trees, a fabulous Tarzan versus hundreds of killer baboons sequence, and Rosie O’Donnell as the voice of Terk, a gorilla friend of Tarzan’s since childhood.

To tree-top it all off, a heard-only Phil Collins sings five of his original songs. 

Published in The Kansan City Kansan June 25, 1999, my weekly column focused on potty references in a variety of films and TV programs up to that time.

By Steve Crum

Flash! Let’s rephrase that: Flush! It is a dirty job, but someone has to write about it. Even though most decent, clean cut moviegoers tend not to discuss what goes on behind the closed bathroom door in our homes, moviemakers increasingly are setting up widescreen cameras focused on toilet bowls. It is a trend, particularly in comedies, that addresses the basest of adolescent humor.

In the past five years, exemplified in Austin Powers, The Spy Who Shagged Me, potty jokes have been written into screenplays with double-ply consistency. Why? They get laughs—huge laughs—from a vast number of ticket buyers.

No surprise that the current No. 1 movie (no potty pun intended), Austin Powers, is laced with bathroom one-liners and sequences. This is not saying that Austin’s appeal is totally john jokes; there are also plenty of sexual innuendo bits and parodies to round out the film. But Le Toilet is a definite co-star.

Movies never used to acknowledge that a toilet even existed. While Marilyn Monroe catches her toe in the bathtub faucet in 1955’s The Seven Year Itch, try to locate a toilet bowl in the scene. (Of course, why would I be looking at anything but Monroe?) That goes for the dozens of bubble bath scenes in movies since silent film days. 

Some low/highlights in the media history of bathroom humor:

•I LOVE LUCY—The legendary 1950s sitcom not only never acknowledges a bathroom in the Ricardos’ apartment. Not only that, but most of the time had the couple in separate beds. 

•JACK PAAR—On Feb. 11, 1960, the emotional Tonight Show host left the show while on air after NBC censors snipped his “water closet” joke from his previous day’s opening monologue taping. The word itself, British slang for bathroom, was deemed offensive. 

•PSYCHO (1960)—The famous shower scene does include a toilet. However, director Alfred Hitchcock never really focuses on the bowl even when a torn up note is later retrieved from inside the bowl. 

•ALL IN THE FAMILY—A breakthrough in restroom humor occurred in the early 1970s. For the first time on TV, the sound of a flushing toilet was heard, and only heard, as Archie Bunker pulled the handle upstairs and out of sight. 

•FUN WITH DICK AND JANE—1977 caper comedy with Jane Fonda and George Segal includes a heretofore no-no sequence. While talking to her husband, played by Segal, Fonda unabashedly walks into the bathroom, drops her pants, and sits on the toilet. The camera stays on her in medium close-up throughout, although never graphically. She never misses a beat talking to Segal, who stands opposite her as they continue their conversation.

•CLINT EASTWOOD—How many westerns and good ol’ boy flicks did he make that included a sequence where some redneck no-good turns up beaten and passed out with his head in some bar’s toilet?

•DANNY GLOVER—It was perhaps the funniest scene in the Lethal Weapon series: Glover sitting on a rigged-to-explode toilet and unable to move. Mel Gibson, of course, saves the day. The year was 1989, and Lethal Weapon 2 featured dynamite potty humor—literally. 

•THE NUTTY PROFESSOR (1996)—The most memorable sequences in Eddie Murphy’s film are the ones where his family sits around the dining room table, taking turns passing gas. Envision Mickey Rooney’s Hardy Family getting away with that. On second thought, don’t.

•THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY (1998)—Blame the directing Farrelly Brothers for lacing this hit with an abundance of once unmentionable laughs. Note Ben Stiller’s getting caught in his zipper during a urinating scene, and his bathroom masturbating scene, among others. Might as well give the Farrellys credit for potty jokes in their other hits too: Kingpin and Dumb and Dumber. Call them the Lewis and Clark of the Hollywood Potty Trail.

•BIG DADDY—Opening today at a theatre outside of Wyandotte County is this Adam Sandler vehicle in which previews show him and a 6 year-old co-star publicly urinating (backs to camera) on the side of a building. Pure comic genius. 

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Where is Hollywood aiming with all this? Last week’s premiere of Comedy Central’s The Man Show featured the two hosts blowing up dog feces with a large firecracker on camera. They were covered in the stuff, and the studio audience roared in delight. 

Still don’t see the trend? It was recently announced that Mr. Whipple, the toilet paper-squeezing grocer, is returning to commercials. 

That really tears it. 

Published in The Kansan City Kansan Feb. 26, 1999, my weekly column focused on the Feb. 20 death of film critic Gene Siskel. 

By Steve Crum

Gene Siskel’s death last week at 53 disturbed me more than I expected. The man was neither a superstar nor a childhood idol—I am only a couple of years his junior. I make the latter reference because of the personal effect of last year’s passings of Buffalo Bob Smith, Roy Rogers, and Gene Autry.

Yet moments after hearing of this movie critic’s death I was stunned. That reaction surprised me until I thought about it. First there were the dozen calls from friends and relatives telling me about how shocked they were. Never in any previous phone conversation had Siskel ever even been mentioned. Yet now he was newsworthy, and spoken of as if it were a distant relative who had died. Then I thought about it some more.

Undoubtedly the calls I received were in part prompted by the fact that I am also a film critic—a media kinship link, perhaps. But that was not the all of it. My callers felt as I did: Gene Siskel, even more than his TV partner Robert Ebert, talked about movies in ways we could all understand. And most of the time. we agreed with him over Ebert. Most of us enjoy movies, and many of us savor them. 

Siskel’s joy and passion was evident in each and every broadcast and column, and viewers and readers loved him for it. That does not mean that we always agreed with him. And that does not mean he was the first movie critic ever. But Siskel could be called the first people’s film critic. He was always interesting, incisive, sensitive—be the movie a Mel Brooks farce, a fanciful George Lucas space adventure or a serious Schindler’s List. Conversely, like any critic, when a movie was turkey, he was quick to take the first carving. 

He and his colleague Ebert and franchised the art of movie opinions into a vastly popular TV series that ran in similar forms for 24 years. Their chemistry clicked, and now we know that a friendship and brotherly love developed. Sometimes, especially in the early days, their critical barbs often lashed at each other in addition to the targeted films. In recent years, though, that softened to good natured, highly opinionated discussions. 

The last time I watched Siskel & Ebert, three weeks ago, Roger Ebert was soloing. Siskel was absent, having already announced that he was taking some time off to recuperate from brain surgery. Ebert ended the broadcast with: “And Gene, I want you to know that it is awfully lonely up here in the balcony without you. Get better soon.”

Sadly, that was not to be, and Gene Siskel soon passed. Now Roger Ebert’s future as a TV critic is unknown. For a time he will experiment with alternating guest co-hosts, probably hoping that a similar Siskel and Ebert spark will occur. We all know that like any original, no substitute will ever be like Gene Siskel. No one has to reveal that fact to Roger Ebert. 

Even in his final days, post surgery, Siskel’s vision and fervor for the motion picture is evident in a Chicago Tribune  column he wrote on Dec. 20, 1998. In it, he speaks of the year in films that had ended, and lauds the future years. An excerpt:

“1998 was a magnificent year for movies, the best of the decade, perhaps the best of two decades, fueled largely by advanced use of computer-generated images, which at the conclusion of the first century of filmmaking now must considered a major force akin to someone discovering the use of actors to tell a story.

“Indeed as we move toward a cinematic centenary, what we shall see is truly, more than ever, limited only the imagination of a filmmaker. Most limits are off now.” 

If only Gene Siskel could have lived to experience that future, and we could hear about it through him.