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EvRobert

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Posts posted by EvRobert

  2. Posted

    50 minutes ago, taylorannephoto said:

    Pretty much any time really. I made sure this weekend wasn't chalk full of photo related stuff because I'm EXHAUSTED lol!

    I had three weddings left in 2018 to DJ and this was my plan for this weekend. Then I got an emergency call asking if I could DJ this weekend. so I'm working the next three Saturdays. I'm so ready for wedding season to be over with.

    on a semi-related note, I worked as a "model" yesterday, filling in background shots, laying in a hospital bed, etc. for a marketing company who were taking pictures of a hospital remodel. I have so much respect for photographers who do this kind of work. All I was doing was sitting around for the most part and it was draining. I can't imagine trying to make pictures of a hospital look interesting LOL

    • Like 3

  3. Posted

    There's a (possibly apocryphal) story that when Edmund Gwenn (Santa Claus/Kris Kringle in Miracle on 34th St) was on his deathbed, a friend came to him and said "oh this must be difficult for you Teddy" to which he responded "not as difficult as dying", which is possibly a reference to something a Shakespearean actor named Edmund Kean had said, from which we derive "dying is easy, comedy is hard". 

    I think that is why so few comedies have won the Academy Award for best picture. We know what scares people, we know what thrills people, we know what makes people cry (for the most part) but what makes people LAUGH? I have friends that loath Family Guy but adore Kevin Smith movies. I have friends that HATE Kevin Smith movies but love South Park. I have friends that don't like South Park but love King of the Hill. I have friends that don't like King of the Hill but enjoy Bob's Burgers. Some people like Big Bang theory and some people like Community. 

    As someone who writes and performs mostly in theater and whose training is in comedic theater, comedy is DIFFICULT. That is why it is easier and faster for me to write a full dramatic play than it is to write a comedy. What I find funny others may not. I think this is also why you see so few comedies on "bad movie podcasts", it's easier to call out drama or horror or suspense that doesn't work or is crazy. Comedy is supposed to be a little insane.

    What that all has to do with Duck Soup? Well I think Duck Soup is deserving, in fact I would have it higher than 60. Of all the films I've seen I would actually place it easily top 10 maybe even top 3. Why? Because The Marx Brothers and specifically Duck Soup is still influencing me today. 
     

    One of my least produced (mainly because I don't know how to market it and so I don't), but favorite plays I've written, is a 3-man comedy called "The Way Out West Gang Rides Again" in which I steal the hat swapping bit from this movie and elements from The Marx Brothers Go West (they do something similar in that movie too, but with wallets I believe). But I also incorporate the rapid fire word play, the stopping and looking at the audience, etc. This comedy still works today. It's not just wordplay, it's not just slapstick, it's not just fast moving hands or mimicry (ala the Mirror scene). It is ALL OF IT plus there is a non-specific but slightly political message that can still be found, if you want to find it. Firefly could be an idiot who got promoted to power, but he could also Mussolini or he could be Donald Trump, or he could literally just be an idiot and there is no political connection there. That's what makes it smart comedy to me. The whole thing JUST WORKS. It influenced comedic filmmakers for generations and still does. The Beatles influenced their contemporaries and still influence people today that's what makes them great. Those that influenced The Beatles, you don't hear much about today. The Marx Brothers influenced contemporary comedians of their time and continue to influence modern  comedians.  You see their fingerprints on Hope and Crosby, on Woody Allen, on Mel Brooks, on Matt Groening, on Seth McFarland, on Monty Python, on H. Jon Benjamin and Loren Bouchard and on this writer. When I'm working on a comedy and I'm stuck, I don't watch Airplane or Caddyshack or Groundhog Day (as good as those are), I watch The Marx Brothers (and Jim Henson, Hope and Crosby)

    • Like 1

  4. Posted

    On 11/1/2018 at 9:18 AM, Cam Bert said:

    Quick aside, what comedies did our fathers show us when we were kids?

    I know my father made me watch Monty Python and their movies and George Carlin when I was far too young to fully get them.

    Not a movie, but Hogan's Heroes and Get Smart, every Saturday morning before cartoons

  6. Posted

    Not a parent, but I'll be honest, as a single person, who isn't in any kind of relationship, in his 40s, I have lots of married friends, but I spend almost no time with them. Even my D&D Group, our DM just had a kid in..Feb or March and we had one or two sessions after that but none since because new baby! (they have 3 kids under 5). I get it, no one is complaining (at least that I know of), For my birthday, I usually go out for breakfast (birthday Breakfast was always a big thing for me as a kid), go to work, respond to some texts.

    • Like 1

  11. Posted

    3 hours ago, Cinco DeNio said:

    Absolutely.  See the Payola scandal in the 60's.

    From Urban Dictionary:

     

    When I was working as a radio DJ back in the mid 90s-early 00s, my radio station never got money, but we'd get so much free stuff in the mail to try and entice us to play Band X on Label Y's music. I got tee-shirts, CDs, hats, concert tickets, backstage passes. We never had to disclose because it wasn't "cash" it was "promotional material"

    • Like 5

  12. Posted

    1 minute ago, grudlian. said:

    As a huge Gilmore Girls fan, I was super glad to hear Jason mention them the first time (and I out loud shrieked when Jason showed up in the revival).

    Me too! I was like "JASON!" I can't remember a show I've been happier to see him on with the possible exception of The Good Place

    • Like 3

  13. Posted

    What was your first episode of HDTGM?

    The Punisher with Patton Oswalt and Lexie Alexander. I was part of a different message board (Oleg Rules! If you get that you're one of my peeps) where we bonded over bad 80s and 90s action movies. One day this crazy (I say with love) German guy recommended that ep and I loved it, but I wasn't quite on the podcast train yet. Sometime later, I discovered it again (I'm not sure how, probably due to my love for The League and my own [and continued involvement in] Fantasy football and the joke that I was the Andre of our league) and I listened to their ep on Cobra and totally fell in love. 

    Favorite catchphrase?

    Give me your baby

    A clip or moment that you'll always remember? (timestamps are nice )

    I don't remember the episode, but Jason talking about his love of Gilmore Girls for the first time. That lead me to the Gilmore Guys podcast and now Good Christian Fun.

    The episode you revisit the most

    Cobra

    The movie that you loved or hated watching

    Confession, I rarely watch the films unless I know them already and want to revisit or something really grabs me, but I do listen to every episode. Hudson Hawk made me realize how much i love that movie. Same with Rad

    How HDTGM fits into your weekly routine

    I'm a wedding DJ mostly, and that means I spend a lot my Saturdays traveling, sometimes for hours, to get to a wedding job plus an hour or two to set up. Knowing I have an hour or two of Paul, June, and Jason to keep me company every other week is a...well it's almost a blessing.

    What the show has meant to you after all these years or any  sappy stuff

    I don't talk about this a lot, but from May 2016 to May of 2017, I was homeless. I was working two jobs, trying to get back on my feet but as I'm sure many of you know it's hard to get back on your feet. I was living mostly in hotels, but sometimes in my car. And knowing that I had HDTGM, Paul, June, Jason, and their guests helped get me through some dark times. I remember sitting in my car, in a parking lot of a Wal-Mart waiting for my job at a restaurant to start and listening to Rad I believe it was, and just founding so much joy in that episode.  Thanks to Musical Mondays, I joined the board (Just before the High School Musical week, iirc). Thank you Paul, June, Jason, and all the behind the scenes crew of HDTGM. 

    • Like 9

  15. Posted

    Yeah I think they wanted to establish Paul as the “Simon” of GBBO but he just comes across as a slightly disappointed dad. But the season with just him, where is he almost cast in the “good judge” role doesn’t quite work either (I may also miss Mary and Sue and Mel. And while the new hosts are good they don’t compare to the joy Sue and Mel had). 

     

    Hi im EvRob and I will talk Batman, Star Wars, Harry Potter and Great British Bake off. Who wants to fight me. 

    • Like 5

  17. Posted

    Since we're talking about Bryan Adams' Heaven, let me regale you with DJ FACTS with DJERob 

    I've been DJing since 2012. I play Heaven a LOT. I grew up on this song. I never knew it was from this movie. I never even heard of this movie. So I did some research. Apparently, Adams wrote it in 82/83 while opening for Journey and was inspired by Journey's Faithfully. it was released in 83 on the A Night In Heaven Soundtrack and then subsequently re-released in 84 on Adams' Reckless album. It was released as the THIRD single off that album. It hit the #1 spot on the Billboard top 100 in June of 85, so about a year and a half after appearing on the Night In Heaven soundtrack. 

    So, they either renamed the club/movie and added in the "Baby you're all I need" lines when they stumbled upon this Bryan Adams song or they lucked into finding a Bryan Adams song that just happened to have the same name and lyrics or both. I can't find any evidence that he wrote it for the movie specifically. 

    Fun Fact, Journey's drummer Steve Smith played the drums on this album

     

    ETA: A correction, according to Heaven co-writer Jim Vallance, they were asked to write the song for the movie A Night In Heaven. From jimvallance.com (thanks to the internet archive)

    "In 1983 Bryan and I were asked to write a song for the film "A Night In Heaven" starring Lesley Ann Warren. It was a dreadful film that flopped at the box office. The soundtrack album, which included our song "Heaven", suffered a similar fate.

    Very few people saw the movie, and even fewer purchased the soundtrack album, so for all intents and purposes "Heaven" was still a "new" song. Regardless, Bryan didn't think it was suitable for "Reckless", the album he was then recording. His decision may have been partly influenced by producer Jimmy Iovine, who Bryan was using as a "sounding board" at the time. I'm not sure who changed Bryan's mind, but at the very last moment he decided to include "Heaven" on "Reckless". It emerged as the album's flagship single, eventually reaching the top of the US and Canadian charts in the summer of 1985"

    • Like 4

  18. Posted

    4 minutes ago, The_Triple_Lindy said:

    OK ... I only had two goals for my pick this time around: I wanted to pick something that 1. I have never seen (I’m losing steam on the homestretch of my DLM challenge), and 2. is free somewhere on the internet.

    First, although this film is not hailed as a triumph of musical cinema, its legacy upon the world is enduring. I remember this film from my History of Rock 'n' Roll class. It stars and features music from the likes of Little Richard, Fats Domino, The Platters, Eddie Cochran and others. When this movie premiered in Great Britain in 1956, it marked one of the first mainstream introductions of early rock ’n’ roll music to the British public. As such, many future rock legends who were part of the British Invasion of the 1960s cite this film as a major moment of inspiration on their ensuing careers. John Lennon and Paul McCartney, for example, tell stories of how they first bonded as musicians by playing their favorite tracks from the movie for each other. Then, in 1960, they formed the Beatles and the world was never the same.

    Secondly, the star of the flick, Jayne Mansfield, is an underrated musical talent. This film plays up the idea that she is an “all looks, no talent” bombshell bimbo, but Mansfield only got started in movies after a fairly successful stint in Broadway musicals. She’s trained at both the piano and violin. Furthermore, she has become a sort of punk music icon. There are bands named after her and a several volumes of songs that reference her life and death.

    I give you: 

      Hide contents

    p1863_v_v8_aa.jpg

    You can watch the whole thing on YouTube.

     

    You can watch the whole thing here on YouTube.

     

    image.png

    Oh this is going to be fun! 

    • Like 5

  24. Posted

    re: The Cakewalk

     

    That's interesting, I didn't know the connotations of that. When I was a kid, the church I grew up in used to have cakewalks (usually around the holidays) it would be like 6 or ten even squares and there would be 6 or 10 cakes. You would walk around to the different numbers like musical chairs. There would be a "caller" who would draw a number and when the music stopped, whoever was on that number won a cake. 

    • Like 3

  25. Posted

    8 hours ago, Cam Bert said:

    As a non-American my knowledge of St. Louis is very limited. I was not even sure where it is really. The main thing I know about it is that outside of the arch it's not so nice and has a high murder rate. So at the end of the film when they have the "The sun will never set on St.Louis" type ending it made me laugh a little. We already found out that the fair stuff didn't stick around so when did things for St. Louis really start heading south? 

    St Louis is about a 10 hr drive from where I live, in the middle of Missouri, which is near the middle of the United States. I've visited a few times over the  years but always as a tourist, so I can't really say when things went "south" but Missouri has always been a...unique state. I could get into some of the history, but it's historically been a state pretty rife with racial tensions.

    • Like 4
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