Two Days In Another Town
April 18th, 2009 by Scott Marks
Traveling north, I found myself in sunny Malibu meeting with commcinema.com, California’s premier provider of outdoor cinema systems. Say hello to their new San Diego rep, but more on that in future columns.
From Malibu, I sailed east to the lovely city of Burbank to spend the night at brother Rick’s conclave celebrating with pizza from Casa Bianca (as good a thin crust pie as any in Chicago) and watching educational DVDs. Rick could not make it through more than thirty minutes of Emilio before his George C. Scott impulse kicked in and he began to scream, “TURN IT OFF!” Besides, with a suitcase filled with The Munsters and latter day Buster Keaton shorts directed by Jules White, who needed contemporary art house drivel?
En route to Casa Bianca, we made our loyal pilgrimage to Ledge & Riverside to visit the Toluca lake Branch of Planet Hope. As always, Rick’s car radio instantly turned to AM 1620, Bob Hope Airport Radio. Where else on earth (except my house) can you hear Bob Hope’s name mentioned at least once every minute?
There was a lot more I heard coming from Radio Free Hope. Things I dare not tell you.
Herman’s Sorority Caper was a revelation on Rick’s Hi-Def monitor. The cameo by Mike Ross (he prays for Fat Jack’s death in The Disorderly Orderly) looked so crisp that one could actually smell the wine on Grandpa’s breath. The image was was so lifelike, when Grandpa cast a spell on Herman to cure him of hiccups, I wound up in a trance!
Grandpa lays it on Herman!
The Jules White touch is unmistakable. Say what you will about the end results, the man was an auteur. I can spot a Jules White cutaway shot a mile away. The same goes for one of his lazy, trademarked cut-ins. (Begin a scene by placing the camera twelve-feet away from the action. Stop, move the camera in six-feet and resume filming.) Using the Stooge template, White directed ten Buster Keaton shorts for Columbia between 1939 - 41. The credit design, and many of those credited, are identical to the opening passages used in Stooge shorts from the same period. The shorts were scripted by longtime Keaton co-writer (Sherlock, Jr., The General) and then-current Stooge scribe (I’ll Never Heil Again, Brideless Groom) Clyde Bruckman. In one form or another you have seen every gag these shorts have to offer.
That doesn’t mean I failed to study ever foot of them, particularly the sound effects. The penultimate Stooge sound effect is the “UHH!” It’s the funniest god damned thing.The first recorded evidence that I have been able to track down occurred in the dance class scene in Hoi Polloi. It’s the same guy, who sounds nothing like any of the Stooges, saying “UHH!” a hundred times. They appear in literally dozens if not hundreds of Columbia shorts and features throughout the 30s and 40s. Each time I hear one I laugh, especially when they arrive unexpected.Next time a Blondie film is on, stick around for the inevitable scene where Dagwood collides with the postman. UHH!
By comparing shorts, you can actually see the methods to the sound effects editor’s madness. The “UHH!” is only brought out when the punishment fits the crime. Bumping into someone, having a door open in your face, or even falling off a horse is cause for an “Eeep,” not an “UHH!” Getting head butted in the stomach is immediate cause for an “UHH!” The same goes for when characters fall on top of each other, although in this instance it is almost impossible to determine just who emitted the sound. I am revealing too much information from my upcoming 7,000 page doctoral thesis on the semiotic use and application of sound effects at Columbia Pictures, 1935 - 1958.
The next morning I had to hop two Metros and one Big Blue Bus to travel from Burbank to Santa Monica. The #222 (Lloyd Haines wasn’t my driver) picked me up on the corner of Magnolia and Hollywood Way. Taking up all three handicapped seats at the front of the bus were a couple from Nashville whom your grandmother would describe as “good eaters.” There was some sleazy guy in his late 30s seated opposite them trying to sell them on taking one of his personalized tours of Hollywood. Here’s a red flag: If a guy has his own fleet of limos to chauffeur tourists around the city, what the hell is he doing on a public bus?
The young couple, in town for the weekend in order to attend a religious convention, had never before ventured into this part of the world. They were actually very nice people and everybody instantly got in on the conversation. I am always nice to tourists and will go out of my way to make sure they know how to arrive at their intended destination. Let them go back to Tennessee and tell everyone how nice Southern Californians are and entice their friends to come west and spend their vacation dollars.
“So where do you think the best place is for us to see some movie stars,” he asked in his best Jethro Bodine. I told them either The Ivy or the Von’s in Burbank where I saw Bob Hope. Others had better suggestions. I pointed out the seven little houses on Hollywood Way that Uncle Walt built for the seven lead animators that worked on Snow White. Even the so-called tour guide never heard that one before. He quickly pointed at the building with the name Warner Bros. writ large across it’s side and said, “that’s Warner Bros. Clint Eastwood has an office there.” Rounding Alameda he announced, “that’s NBC where they tape the ‘Leno’ show. It starts taping at five, but people line up for hours before.”
A light bulb went off over the young Tennessean’s head. “Wait a minute,” he said. “That’s why when you see them talking to audience members before the show, it’s always daylight instead of nighttime.” I was thrilled to witness his epiphany. His wife looked at him as though he just discovered electricity. “You’re right, honey,” his wife said, “I always wondered that myself.”
The Guido guide got off three stops before the couple, who both shook hands with everybody before de-bussing. They invited me to their Friday night prayer party, but I told them I was heading back home to San Diego. He had as much chance of seeing me at one of his meetings as I did asking him to remove his hat during an Ozu festival.
I got off at Hollywood and Vine and while waiting for the #780 it suddenly dawned on me just how jaded I had become. When I first visited Hollywood in 1968 I purchased a map of the Walk of Fame to search out Groucho and the Three Stooges. Today, it took about ten minutes before looking down and realizing that I stood somewhere between two Ernies: Kovacs on my left and Ford on my right. The Tennessee connection continued.
The corner also produced a pair of Gomers. There was a guy in his late 60s flashing a crap-eating, ear-to-ear grin and staring a hole through me. It must have been “Mental Patients Ride Free” day. Right behind him stood what appeared to be a Vietnam Vet, his filthy shoulder length hair spilling from beneath his baseball cap, using his iPod to listen to music and receive imaginary telephone calls. Guess who were my seat mates?
The bus was crowded and I wound up sitting on one of those bench seats that face north while the bus is moving west. The gawking jackal sat down leaving a seat between us never once taking his eyes off me. I didn’t look to my left once during the entire ride. For about a mile, everything was tolerable. Even though it was approaching noon, I got to see The Frolic Room and its outstanding neon sign. I also noticed that Topol would soon be appearing at the Pantages in Fiddler on the Roof. Too bad his tooth paste company went belly up and he’s reduced to endlessly recycling Tevya.
Before I knew what hit me, the disenfranchised vet took the seat between us. The gawker stopped looking in my direction for fear the vet might think he was trying to strike up a conversation. His ramblings continued non-stop for however long it took to reach Santa Monica and Fairfax. He spoke of everything from Bird Flu to Procter and Gamble industrial strength products. At one point the back door opened to reveal a small dog on a leash waiting with its master for the light to change. He pointed his finger and began waving and yelling “Hey, Soapy! How are you boy? You miss me?”
Credit Soulfull @ Flickr
While passing the Chinese I noticed the couple from Tennessee having their picture taken with “Jason” from Friday the 13th. Memories are made of this. Across the street there was a two block line of 15-year-old girls waiting to get into the El Capitan to see Hanna Montana: The Movie. I should have been arrested for what I was thinking.
Considering that it was not yet noon, the Boulevard was particularly turned on. My seat-mate didn’t notice. His eyes were locked on a sign that read “Mahalo,” the Hawaiian word for “gratitude.” “Mahalo,” he grumbled. It was his Niagara Falls. In an instant the topic changed from how Britney Spears could help unblemish her tarnished past to how people suck for not giving him a chance, right, and how the effing Mexicans are stealing jobs from Americans, right? It began to get ugly when he attempted to make eye contact with several Latino passengers, all of whom looked anywhere but in his direction. A young woman got up and stood at the rear exit. “Do you know me,” he asked several times. The woman never looked back especially after he began hurling homophobic slurs and telling her that he hopes she falls on her face and hurts herself.
It was at that time I got up and assumed the woman’s vacant seat. As luck would have it, he got off at the next stop. This allowed the gawker to reposition his gaze in my direction. It seemed an eternity, but eventually the bus pulled up at Santa Monica and Fairfax. Looking around, the coast appeared to be clear of any mental patients. There was a Hispanic girl who looked to be no older than 16, an elderly African American gentleman with a pearl handled cane, a boy in his late teens and a mother with her two kids. The #704 pulled in right on time. The teenage boy spread his legs across the seat between me and the Hispanic girl while the African American dude assumed his position across the aisle.
All was fine until the young woman got up to leave. The black man smiled, tipped his hat and said, “Goodbye, miss.” This put the teenage Klansman off his breakfast. “F you,” he yelled across the aisle. It took a few seconds to register who the insult was aimed at. The black man turned his finger towards his chest and asked, “Me?” “Yeah you. F you!” The exchange of “F yous” started flying so fast, it appeared that both men were at a casting call for Observe and Report. “She’s only 16-years-old and you’re some old f’ing dude with a cane.” The gallant white knight appeared to believe that slavery was alive and well and that black men were still not allowed to address let alone look at white women in public. The black man reached for his cane and began to stand. The kid quickly pulled the call string, threw out a few more “F yous” and fled at the next stop.
I arrived at my destination with time to spare. It had been a long time since a cup of coffee and a cigarette had such a pharmaceutical effect on me, but they helped to calm my frazzled nerves before addressing a class of thirty or so lethargic, hopelessly disconnected ninth and tenth graders. It actually wasn’t so bad. My inadvertent recognition of a Two Girls One Cup seemed to have been the trick. They actually appeared to get into Kane’s “News on the March” sequence and I didn’t hear one peep from them during the Keaton short. (Would it have been any different had I shown them one of the Jules White fiascoes instead of One Week?) The same goes for Duck Amuck and Bugs Bunny Gets the Boid, although there were moments where I felt I was losing them during Disney’s The Flying Mouse. They were much more vocal during the discussion. The sex obsessed, One Cupkid loved repeating Girls Gone Wild and Deep Throat to the point of surrealism. A couple of students bothered to write down the names of the shorts. If I steered so much as one kid in the direction of Keaton, my mission was accomplished.
Tags: Al Lewis, bus, Buster Keaton, California, Hollywood, hollywood blvd., hollywood boulevard, jules white, los angeles, Metro, The 3 Stooges, THE MUNSTERS, The Three StoogesShare: 
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6 Responses to “Two Days In Another Town”
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You didn’t have a copy of Bobby Clampett’s “Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs” to show the students? That may have brought up an interesting discussion to drown out One Cup kid.
There’s enough in that cartoon to hang us all!
So basically a typical day here in my neck of the woods. You should’ve had a drink at the Frolic Room, though.
I’m cracking up because I think that girl in the red boots is one of John’s clients. I’m not even kidding. Is that her, Schultz? I think they’re all standing there discussing their managers.
Matt: Yup, that’s Jennifer all right.
Scott, are you stalking my clients? Had I had known you were in town, I could’ve introduced you to her.
Funny we both recognized her from behind.
You should get a piece of that “hanging out in front of Mann’s Chinese” money!
I was over at her house yesterday and she is roomies with her editor and he was editing a webisode she did, and it was stopped at a shot where she was lying face down on the floor, and I said, “That’s you. I know that butt anywhere.” :)
No, I should not get a piece of her Mann’s Chinese money.