In Reference To...

From time-to-time customers would approach the counter looking for movies with only vague recollections of what the film was called or about. Someone once asked..."Do you have the one where the guy with a fast car likes the girl who is being chased by the cops?" Well, with such little to go on, a little cross-referencing was necessary to find the answer to the customer's question. Back in the days before online databases like IMDB.com, several different books were needed to do this. In our store three books were extremely helpful in helping customers identify movie titles they were looking for. First among them was Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide. Originally published in 1969 as TV Movies and then annually in 1988 as Leonard Maltin's Movie and Video Guide, the book is one of the most impressive listings of movies and reviews that can be found. The earlier printings boasted well over 7,000 titles including made-for-tv films, and star and director indexes. But as each year's volume got bigger and bigger, the indexes and tv movie listings were dropped. Maltin, who has been seen on the syndicated Entertainment Tonight television program for the last 24 years as it's resident film critic, edits the book annually, providing reviews along with other critics like USA Today's Mike Clark. What made the Maltin book indispensable, was it's listing of all movies including those that were not available on home video. In the early 1990's a similar reference book would be published called VideoHounds Golden Movie Retriever. A larger book in size, but not necessarily in volume, the retriever restricted itself to movies that were only available on home video. But what made the VideoHound so valuable was it's plethora of indexes. Cross-referencing with the VideoHound was a breeze. There are indexes by actor, director, composer, cinematographer, writers and a whole lot more. Like the Maltin guide the VideoHound is also published and updated annually.
The last of the books we used in our video store was The Film Encyclopedia originally published in 1979 by filmmaker, Ephraim Katz. Katz, who also updated his book annually until his death in 1992, was a film critic and documentary filmmaker. The Katz book is not an index of film titles, but rather an alphabetical listing of actors, producers, directors, composers, writers and their biographical information as well as a dictionary of film jargon and industry terms. The Katz book, which is still published annually today, was a great help coming up with weekly trivia questions for our store. (See earlier posting Trivial Pursuits 6/13/06) So in the end I'm happy to report that we did find the film the customer was looking for about "...the guy with the fast car who likes the girl." It was Smokey and the Bandit of course!

Bruno Kirby 1949 - 2006

Bruno Kirby was a busy character actor over the last 30 years. For me, if he hadn't made any other movies besides The Godfather, Part II, I still would have been saddened to hear of his passing last week at the young age of 57. As the Young Clemenza in Francis Ford Coppola's brilliant 1974 sequel to The Godfather, Kirby was perfectly cast as the younger version of Richard Castellano's Clemenza from the original film. Having grown-up in a large Italian family (on my mother's side) The Godfather films were like home movies for us and the Clemenza character could have been one of my uncles. The scene where Kirby and Robert De Niro (as the young Vito Corleone) steal a carpet for the Corleone family is one of the film's few truly hysterical moments. Kirby often played scenes for laughs in his films. His roles in films like When Harry Met Sally, City Slickers and Tin Men were all memorable. But his scene-stealing scenes as the Sinatra-loving chauffeur in This Is Spinal Tap, and the D.J. wannabe in Good Morning, Vietnam are righteously funny. Kirby would later spoof the Godfather films along with Marlon Brando in 1990's The Freshman. His few dramatic turns were in TV films and on the Broadway stage, but his work in Donnie Brasco, Sleepers and as the creepy coach in The Basketball Diaries were all testament's to the depths of his abilities. Had he had more years ahead of him as an actor we would have seen so many more memorable characters to come. So his death this past Monday in Los Angeles from complications related to leukemia was a tragic loss and a sad surprise.

Bruno Kirby Movies

Saturday Nights with Mr. T!

Saturday nights were often the busiest night of the week in the video retail business. Customers craving the latest releases crowded the aisles looking for the hottest titles. It was always the same last minute customers who would show up shortly before closing and take their time choosing a movie. I was all for providing quality customer service, but when we realized it was the same people each week who were taking up our time, I had very little patience for them. Of course I couldn't tell these slugs what I was truly feeling about them, but in time we did find the perfect way to deal with these last minute time bandits. Enter Mr. T! Yes, the very same "I pity the fool!" Mr. T of 1980s A-Team fame! In the early days of home video the educational video was a popular new tool for marketing legitimate lessons for the home. But as with all things popular, abuses would soon follow. Our educational video section was full of titles dealing with childbirth, foreign language lessons, cooking videos, computer instruction and auto repair. We had our share of celebrity driven instructional videos including titles like; Playing Bridge with Omar Sharif, Swayze Dancing (with Patrick Swayze), and an all-star fiasco called The Celebrity Guide to Entertaining. The guide consisted of personal testimonies by the likes of Jackie Collins, Merv Griffin, Rod Steiger, Dudley Moore, Henry Winkler, Steven Seagal and many many more on tips for fine entertaining. It was just one of the many videos of the time that falls under the category of "having to be seen to be believed!" But the granddaddy of all celebrity educational or instructional videos has to be Mr. T.'s Be Somebody... or Be Somebody's Fool! Made in 1984 during the height of Mr. T's popularity, this 60 minute feast for the eyes and ears has become something of a cult classic through the years. In what can only be described as truly bizarre, Mr. T (Laurence Tureaud) dressed in his trademark gold chains and Mohawk haircut, teaches kids of all ages about the dangers of drugs, dealing with peer pressure, and being somebody. It is one of the strangest motivational videos ever conceived. New Edition, the vocal group featuring a young Bobby Brown are on hand to supply cheesy musical interludes between each of Mr. T's lessons. One of these lessons is about "Roots!" declares Mr. T. "You can't know where you're going if you don't know where you're from!" Continuing..."My folkses come from Africa! And they was from the Mandinka tribe! And they wore they hair like this," referring to his famous Mohawk. I fully understand where they were going with this, but was Mr. T and his peculiar use of the English language the right messenger for the job?
When pointing out the gold chains around his neck he tells the kids, "And these gold changes I wear, they symbolize the fact that my ancestors, they was brought over here as slaves!" Changes? Did he mean Chains? Wow! Despite countless examples like the one I just mentioned, the highlight of the video are the musical numbers. Songs about love, peer pressure and T's rap-like tribute to his own mother are why we played this little gem from the 80s during the last hour on Saturday nights at the store. Most people stared at the screens in disbelief. Some got the joke and as for the intended targets, the time bandits, well they eventually grew tired of the same songs every week and soon stopped coming in at the last minute. So in the end just like Mr. T's lesson on anger presented in the video, I didn’t let my frustrations towards the time bandits get the best of me. As in the immortal words of Mr. T... "The best way of dealing with ang-uh is to think nice thoughts! That way, you challenge all negative energies into something useful!" I couldn't have said it better myself.

Mr. T Movies