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Funniest Isaac Hayes obit

August 11th, 2008 by Scott Marks

The legendary Anders Wright hipped me to this hilarious farewell to soul singer/Scientologist Issac Hayes.

“The best Isaac Hayes obit has to be from Warren Ellis’ Twitter feed: ‘Isaac Hayes: Xenu Awaits.’”

Hopefully the Black Moses is now working that big clay table in the sky.

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Dig A Hole: Isaac Hayes

August 10th, 2008 by Scott Marks

Who’s the black, 65-year-old soul singer that was found unconscious next to a still-running treadmill in his home? Hayes? We can dig it!

Forget about digging a hole, you’ll need a shaft to accommodate The Black Moses. Composer, arranger, singer, actor, Scientologist and cartoon voice artist Isaac Hayes was pronounced dead at Baptist Memorial Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee shortly after 2 p.m. today. Ironically, Hayes recently completed work on Malcolm D. Lee’s soon to be released Soul Men co-starring opposite Bernie Mac who just yesterday succumbed to pneumonia. Will Sean Hayes be next?

Isaac Lee Hayes, second child of Isaac Sr. and Eula Hayes, was raised by his grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Willie Wade Sr. Coming from an impoverished family, Hayes grew up picking cotton in Covington, Tennessee. A high school dropout, Mr. Hayes eventually earned his diploma at the age of 21. In 1964, the self-taught musician was hired by Stax Records to play in the studio’s backup band. He spent his early years playing alongside such “Memphis Sound” pioneers as Otis Redding, Johnnie Taylor, The Bar-Kays and a pre-M.G.’s Booker T. Jones.

He struck up a songwriting partnership with David Porter in the 60s and together they wrote Sam and Dave’s chart toppers Hold On, I’m Coming and Soul Man. This success led to a recording contract, and in 1969 he shot to fame with the release of his platinum album Hot Buttered Soul. Two years later, the theme from Shaft would go on to earn him an Academy Award. Believe it or don’t, Hayes was originally considered for the lead role in Shaft that eventually went to Richard Roundtree.

Hayes was the first African American composer to win an Oscar for Best Original Song. The song and the movie score also won Grammy awards for best original score and movie theme. Hayes won a third Grammy for pop instrumental performance with the title track to his 1972 Black Moses album.

After getting the shaft in the acting department, Hayes had to wait two years for a starring vehicle worthy of his performing skills. Jonathan Kaplan’s “black, bold and bloody mean” Truck Turner gave Hayes a perfect opportunity to play a badass in a film that is miles ahead of M.G.M.’s typically stodgy crossover attempt at blaxploitation.

In 1976, Hayes filed for bankruptcy.

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Dig A Hole: Bernie Mac

August 9th, 2008 by Scott Marks

Of all the members of Ocean’s 11, who’d have thought that Carl Reiner would outlive Bernie Mac?

In February 2005, the comedian revealed that he had suffered from sarcoidosis since 1983. He said the inflammatory lung disease, that produces tiny lumps of cells in the body’s organs, had no effect on his daily life and that it had gone into remission. Earlier this month, he was hospitalized for pneumonia and rumors that Mac was in serious condition began swirling. His publicist, Danica Smith, said that he was expected to make a full recovery. Sadly, she was wrong.

Chicago Sun-Times columnist (and heiress to the Kupcinet throne) Stella Foster received calls early Saturday morning from a close friend of the Mac family. Bernie Mac died from complications of pneumonia at Chicago’s Northwestern Memorial hospital. He was only 50.

Bernard Jeffrey McCollough was born on the south side of Chicago on October 5, 1957. He was raised by his mother Mary who died of cancer when Mac was just 16. In an interview with freelance writer Khari Shabazz. Mac claimed that as a child he had been whipped with a belt by both his mother and grandmother.

While attended Chicago Chicago’s Vocational Career Academy, Mac began putting on shows for neighbor kids. In 1977, at the age of 20, he decided to turn pro. His first job as a stand-up comic was at Chicago’s Cotton Pickin’ Club. His career began building steam when he won the Miller Lite Comedy Search at the age of 32. A performance on HBO’s Def Comedy Jam brought him national attention and before long he was opening for Dionne Warwick, Natalie Cole and the inimitable Redd Foxx.

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Dig A Hole: Screenwriter Luther Davis

August 6th, 2008 by Scott Marks

Photo Credit: Jeffrey Hornstein

Luther Davis, Tony Award winning playwright and author of fifteen screenplays, died July 29 in the Bronx a few weeks shy of his 92nd birthday.

Mr. Davis will best be remembered for milking the musical Kismet for all it was worth. He wrote the 1954 Tony Award winning best musical with Charles Lederer, The New York Times calls Kismet, “One of Broadway history’s more peculiar entries, a crossbreed of high culture and low. The music, which included the songs Stranger in Paradise and Baubles, Bangles and Beads, was adapted from the symphonic scores of Alexander Borodin, but the story, a florid fable set in Baghdad at the time of The Arabian Nights, was replete with groan-worthy double entendres and staged with grand spectacle and lots of leggy harem girls.” The Broadway production starred Alfred Drake, Joan Diener and Richard Kiley.

In 1955, M.G.M. forked over a whopping $125,000 for the screen rights and placed the production in the hamds of the best the studio had to offer: producer Arthur Freed and director Vincente Minnelli. The insufferable Howard Keel and Ann Blythe proved no match for Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse and in spite of a superb score and a supporting cast peppered with old chums (Sebastian Cabot, Mike Mazurki, Monty Wooley, Jay C. Flippen and Jack Elam), Kismet sinks under the weight of studio gloss and Minnelli’s obvious indifference. The film barely recouped it’s budget.

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Dig A Hole: Charles H. Joffe, Woody Allen’s loyal producer

July 15th, 2008 by Scott Marks

With Woody Allen off playing jazz, Jack Nicholson presents producers Charles H. Joffe (left) and Jack Rollins with their 1977 best pictures Oscar for Annie Hall.

Until today, I never knew what Charles H. Joffe looked like. His business partner Jack Rollins had a bit part in Broadway Danny Rose and frequent (hilarious) cutaways on Late Night with David Letterman, but until I stumbled across this photo on the LA Times website, Mr. Joffe’s face remained a mystery.

His name was anything but.

As with any good Hebrew student/retardate, repetition is the key to learning and I saw Mr. Joffe’s name appear on screen at least a hundred times. And that was just one movie!

That opening weekend screening of Woody Allen’s Take the Money and Run in the big Old Orchard Theatre was oxygen to my 14-year-old brain. It must have been a cheap rental for the film played on the bottom half of double-bills for years to come. No matter what theater, I was there and each one of my hundred-plus viewings came before home video.

Don’t ask how many times I saw Bananas.

More than Diane Keaton or Carlo Di Palma or Mia Farrow or even Jack Rollins, Charles H. Joffe’s name was synonymous with Woody Allen’s. Of the 44 films directed by Allen only four (two shorts, a made for TV feature and Tiger Lily) don’t include Charles H. Joffe’s name in the credits. He also produced two of Allen’s early non-directorial efforts, Play it Again, Sam and The Front.

I am saddened to report that Mr. Joffe died Wednesday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles after a long illness. He was 78.

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Dig A Hole: Dr. Michael DeBakey, the man who saved Jerry Lewis’ life

July 12th, 2008 by Scott Marks

In 1982 I was working the dispatch office for Cablevision in Oak Park, Illinois. The phone rang and instead of some irate jerk in Cicero shouting that his Playboy Channel was out it was my friend David Elliott. The call came in at around 7 am San Diego time, an unthinkable hour of the morning for the then childless Mr. Elliott.

My first thought was that a member of the family had taken ill and in a sense I was right. As soon as Dave heard my voice he hit me with, “Jerry had a heart attack.”

Dr. Michael DeBakey was Jerry’s personal physician. The two men met in 1970 when Dr. DeBakey joined the Muscular Dystrophy Association’s Scientific Advisory Committee. From 1972 to 1991 Dr. DeBakey served on MDA’s board and had stayed on as MDA national vice president since then.

Jerry and the Doc quickly formed mutual admiration societies, each man carrying pictures of the other in their wallets. It was Dr. DeBakey who first diagnosed Jerry’s addiction to Percodan. During a 1978 visit to Houston, Jerry collapsed and Dr. DeBakey’s first thought was that he had a heart attack. X-Rays revealed an inordinately large bleeding ulcer which were masked by the pain killer Jerry had been addicted to. After two grueling weeks of spinal injections the ulcer showed signs of healing and it was Dr. DeBakey’s nurturing words that helped Jerry kick the Percodan habit.

The attack that Jerry suffered in 1982 was so sudden that it prevented Dr. DeBakey from personally performing the open heart surgery, although he did act as a consultant. In 1992, sawbones DeBakey was once again called upon to help rid Jerry of prostate cancer.

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