Mourning the loss of larger-than-life icons completely normal

Ever since Diana, Princess of Wales, died in a car accident in August 1997 at 36, I found it embarrassing to mourn the life of someone I didn’t know but only through news stories and the tabloids. Yet, the day of her funeral the following weekend in September, I called in sick. All the result of my being subjected to all the media and tabloid outlets reporting on her early untimely demise. I couldn’t function emotionally.

I felt the same way when attorney, journalist and magazine publisher John F. Kennedy Jr. died, along with his wife, Carolyn Bessette, and her sister Lauren Bessette in a plane crash in 1999. Both Princess Diana and JFK Jr. were lives unfinished. I still saw the 38-year-old JFK Jr. as the three-year-old son who saluted his father’s flag draped casket at President John F. Kennedy’s state funeral in November 1963. Even as I write this blog, I get teary eyed thinking about hearing the tragic losses of both JFK Jr. and Diana over twenty years ago.

Although I wasn’t a devoted fan of actor Malcolm-Jamal Warner, 54, best known as Theo Huxtable from “The Cosby Show” (1984-1992), heavy metal pioneer and Black Sabbath founder Ozzy Osbourne, 76, and professional wrestler Hulk Hogan, 71, who died last week I understood the emotional tributes devoted fans and other prominent figures in the entertainment industry expressed on social media.



I grew up with those entertainers in the early 1980s as did most everyone my age. They were a part of my generation. Their passings like so many others we’ve known half our lives leave a gaping hole. Like as though it’s ok if we leave this earth as we’re not larger-than-life figures whose works touched millions. Icons like Jamal Warner, Ozzy and Hulk Hogan, like countless notable figures whether it’s in entertainment, journalism, music, news, politics and sports are not supposed to die!

It’s bad enough when a revered icon like Diana and JFK Jr. go before their time when they had their lives still ahead of them. It’s another when a notable reviewer, news anchor and songwriter leave devoted followers with the promise they will return doing what they did best following medical treatment. Like as though they already knew the end was coming but didn’t want to leave fans without hope.

That’s how I felt when Chicago Tribune movie critic Gene Siskel announced his taking a leave of absence from “Siskel & Ebert” on Feb. 3, 1999, the film reviewing program albeit in different forms he had been cohosting with Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert since the mid-1970s. Siskel was diagnosed with a brain tumor and underwent treatment the year before. Even Ebert didn’t know how terminal his partner’s diagnosis was until Siskel died Feb. 20 that month at 53.



“I’m in a hurry to get well because I don’t want Roger to get more screen time than I,” Siskel said. I was counting on him to be back at the balcony later that year just in time to hear his thoughts on “Star Wars – Episode I: The Phantom Menace” (1999) in May. I didn’t care if he gave it thumbs up or thumbs down. I just wanted to hear his opinion.

I took ABC news anchorman Peter Jennings at his word that on his “good” days the “James Bond 007 of news” would be back on “World News Tonight” when he delivered what was his final newscast April 5, 2005, and would begin treatment for lung cancer. Jennings died on Aug. 7, 2005, ten days after his 67th birthday on July 29.



I thought Canadian songwriter, singer, poet and novelist Leonard Cohen was just suffering from writer’s block when the 82-year-old legend told the New Yorker he wouldn’t be able to finish his vault of unfinished songs and poems. He was even more uncertain he’d be able to do a follow-up to his 14th studio album, “You Want It Darker” released in October 2016, barely a month before the artist’s death of leukemia.

"I am ready to die," Cohen said. "I hope it's not too uncomfortable. That's about it for me."



It goes without saying that every time we learn the news some noteworthy personality has passed, fans flock to YouTube in hopes of listening to their music videos, watch clips from their shows and interviews or check the streaming services to see if their movies and television shows are available. I did that when Jamal Warner died at 54 from accidental drowning while on vacation with family in Costa Rica watching early clips of “The Cosby Show” on YouTube.

I watched the often-hilarious commercials Ozzy Osbourne did over the past twenty years that documented his mumbling ordering at Starbucks, telling a taxi driver where to go and complaining to a waiter about his dinner. None of them could understand him. It’s almost as if he was playing, if not parodying himself. Finally, his only way of communication in those clever ads was texting on his Samsung cellphone.



I found Osbourne’s appearance on Conan O’Brien Oct. 18, 2001, who was brought in to cheer up the Late-Night staff following the 9/11 attacks echoed what’s been missing from late night television for decades and why “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” was canceled. Late Night forgot how to be funny.



And finally Hulk Hogan. Most remember his days with the World Wrestling Federation and World Championship Wrestling. I remember him more for his first big screen appearance in “Rocky III” (1982) as wrestler Thunderlips who fights Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) in a charity match.

 

All these images and memories are frozen in time.

Sadly, there is no end. We’re not reaching that age. We ARE at the age now where life stops giving us things and starts taking them away. In the coming days, weeks, months and years and the rest of our lives we’ll hear of a number of household names who’ve gone to meet their maker. Death and mourning is a part of life. We’re all mortal no matter what your status is. At least we got plenty of memories of such celebrities to fondly look back on appreciating the God given talents they gave us.

©7/25/25

Appreciation: St. Louise de Marillac School (1976-1984)

“There are places I'll remember
All my life, though some have changed
Some forever, not for better
Some have gone and some remain”

-"In My Life" – The Beatles - 1965

Such were the lyrics from “The Fab Four” that came to mind upon learning that St. Louise de Marillac School (1958-2020), located in La Grange Park, Ill, that I attended from first to eighth grade (1976-1984) shut its doors for good in mid-2020.

The elementary school, like so many private grade and high schools in the Chicago area and across the country, became a victim of low enrollment and unaffordable high tuition.

In short, the writing was on the wall as to the school’s future years before the Archdiocese of Chicago’s announcement in January 2020 that the campus, along with four other Catholic schools in the city would close in June.

The one thing I can say about St. Louise is I still remember all the administrators and teachers who taught me those eight years. While I don’t remember all their first names, I know all their last names – misspellings and all. I admit I even had a crush on a few of the women teachers' years before my first crush on the one who taught my freshman typing class at Bishop Lynch High School in Dallas, Texas named Mrs. Jennifer Walls in the fall of 84’.

What made all the administrators, nuns, teachers, who also included my band instructors, is all of them exhibited one trait or more that made them stand out from each other.

First – Third Grade

Sister Petronia was my first-grade teacher. Whenever she got upset with a student her comment to that person was always, “I’m ashamed of you!”

My second-grade teacher, Mrs. Kozen, who lived a couple blocks from the school walked to work every morning. I still remember the time when she asked me to read some paragraph aloud in class and I had trouble saying the word “pupils.” I kept saying the word, “pimples.”

For much of that 1977-78 school year Mrs. Kozen didn’t understand the hype some of us students had (it was likely ONLY me) over a costly $10 million sci-fi box office bomb that made zero money called "Star Wars" (1977) that spawned countless movie franchises and forever changed how Hollywood studios marketed them.

Sister Cresentine was also my second-grade teacher who taught us reading and math. On her good days, those days when either one student or all of us didn’t get on her bad side that is, she always joked with the class. On the days where she couldn’t get a student to solve an easy math problem, Sister Cresentine would exhibit her wrath throwing the textbook at the shocked classmate asking them to leave her classroom.

Of all the nuns I had at St. Louise, my third-grade teacher, Sister Bernadette, would have been the most attractive when not in her nun’s uniform. I can’t say that for certain since I never saw her in regular clothes.

Mrs. Dort’s Shoe Collection

My fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Melodie Dort, was a short attractive redhead who, for much of the 1978-79 school year, always wore high heeled open toed sandals. On some days she even wore an ankle bracelet. Looking back on her today, I wonder on a teacher’s salary if the money she spent most on was her high heels and if her closet resembled singer Celine Dion’s shoe collection filled with shelves of pumps. 

Mrs. Dort was one among the three teachers I developed a crush on. My grade school-boy crush on her was the result of my always being seated in front of her class. I was not a good boy that year when it came to grades, so it was hard not to notice what she wore five days a week!

The other fourth-grade teacher I had was Mrs. Bibly who taught us math class. She also played the piano and there were weeks when we had singing classes. The only song I remember her playing on the piano though was "Chattanooga Choo-Choo."

Ms. Collins’ Hiccups Cure

Whenever a student developed hiccups my fifth-grade teacher, Ms. Jean Collins, had an immediate cure for them. She’d take that student in the hallway during class. Within a minute that person would be back in the classroom minus any hiccups, though there were times I would see that student with a startled look on their face coming back. 

 

Like Mrs. Dort, Ms. Collins, like so many teachers, taught standing up from her desk. Because of being on her feet for several hours, Ms. Collins, in the early afternoons, would stand behind her desk taking one of her heels off, stretching her aching foot before putting her shoe back on, then doing the same with the other. I know people reading this would equate my comments with Oscar winning screenwriter/director Quentin Tarantino’s foot fetish trademark he’s incorporated in most all his ultra-violent movies. His much-known fetish is the ONLY reason Tarantino made "Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood" in 2019 in my opinion. 

When it comes to my interests, however, the older I get the less and less I give a damn what anyone else thinks. Again, in my defense, how the hell do you expect me not to notice what Ms. Collins did standing behind her desk those nine months when I was sitting in front of the class?

My other fifth grade teacher, Ms. Janice Walsen, taught us math and history and during the summers held remedial classes for those of us with continuing issues in mathematics in the basement of the school’s rectory where the parish priests resided. Of all the teachers I had there, Ms. Walsen was the only one who remained at St. Louise long after I graduated in May 1984. I think at one point she may have been the school’s principal.

St. Louise’s Classiest Dresser

Mrs. Violet Zetlitz (1932-2013), my other sixth-grade teacher, is ironically the one I remember more who, yes, was the third teacher I had a crush on. I had her for reading and social issues courses, but it was the afternoon social issues course I liked most. It was that class she taught that got me interested in Greek mythology which began with her telling us about the fall of Troy and the Trojan War.

Mrs. Zetlitz was never at the front of the classroom when the bell rang, however, at the beginning of class. She would enter the classroom from the back, slowly walking from behind – the clacking of each heel hitting the floor every few seconds the way a dominatrix slowly struts into a dungeon in preparation for a disciplinary session with some blindfolded tied-up submissive. I can still hear those slow clacking sounds she made wearing those pumps. For much of that 1981-82 school year she was always in heels and sporting business type suits and dresses. Of all the teachers I had at St. Louise, Mrs. Zetlitz was the classiest dresser.

Like Sister Petronia, Mrs. Zetlitz also had a saying when a student stepped out of line. She’d warn the person what would happen if they got out of line again uttering the words, “That is not a threat. That is a promise!”

The Female Mr. Hand Who Kept Up With the Latest Technology

I don’t know if seventh grade (1982-83) was the most controversial since our “Class of ’84” had developed a reputation of being the ones who got into the most trouble. During the fall of that year, our seventh-grade teachers Mrs. Joyce Allen and Mr. Wojecki, and perhaps the upper powers-that-be like our principal, Mr. Bob Winski, decided the “goodie-goodie” students should be separated from the troublemakers. Mrs. Allen would teach the troublemakers in spring 83’ and Mr. Wojecki would take the “goodie-goodie” students. I was not the least bit happy I got placed with the “goodie-goodie” crowd.

I wanted nothing to do with the “goodie-goodie” crowd that year and made attempts avoiding them at all costs if not getting into trouble with the rabblerousers during recess. Some of which was mostly my doing. It's always the “Quiet Ones” you have to watch out for, you know!

The two things I recall most about Mr. Wojecki was how he couldn’t stand it when students couldn’t sit still at their desks and utter the word “Um” which wasn’t a word in the English language. The other is the brief discussion we had in class in September-October that year about the still unsolved Chicago Tylenol Murders that occurred where less than a dozen people died from cyanide-laced capsules.

Mrs. Allen, who also doubled as the gym teacher, was like the stern grandmother who didn’t tolerate any crap from our class. There were moments if a student said something about how our parents allow us to watch morally corrupt trashy programs like "Three’s Company" (1977-1984) on school nights she’d get disgusted as that is not what she would allow her kids to watch. I saw her as the female equivalent of Mr. Hand, the high school teacher Ray Walston played in "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" (1982), who believed every student he taught smoked dope.

From what I remember Mrs. Allen was big on the latest technology. She didn’t own just one but two VHS recorders when they first came out in the early 1980s, which to me meant you were wealthy. Thanks to that knowledge knowing she could copy VHS movies from one VCR to the other I tried getting her to do a pirated copy of "Return of the Jedi" (1983) I got from another classmate during the 1983-84 school year. Mrs. Allen, however, said the recorded copy she made was worse than the one recorded in a movie theater on a video camera and wasn't worth giving me the pirated copy. I was thankful; however, I got her to dub me a copy of "Twilight Zone: The Movie" (1983) that "legally" came out on VHS that year.

Class of '84 graduate student Cheryl Granado
posing in front of Mrs. Allen's silver DeLorean.

Mrs. Allen returned to teaching us again in eighth grade during the 1983-84 school year as did Ms. Collins. In a way, the two of them teaching our class represented a finality for both as once we graduated in May, both were leaving St. Louise. That year, Mrs. Allen drove a silver DMC DeLorean to school before that car became a plutonium fueled time machine in "Back to the Future" (1985). As someone who was never die-hard fan of the time travel movie trilogy (1985-1990), the one and only reason I’d buy LEGO’s 2022 ultimate collector movie replica building set of the car today is because of the real one Mrs. Allen drove, minus Dr. Brown's flux capacitor.

Looking back on that final year with Ms. Collins, I think she was disappointed I had gotten so rebellious those nine months compared to how I was a good student when she taught me in fifth grade. That final year I saw myself (and to this day still do) as either a rebel without a cause, a rebel without a clue or a combination of Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde any day of the week. Yet in my defense that rebelliousness I displayed had a lot to do with the troublemakers I hung out with. At the same time, when my parents made the decision in January of '84 that we would move to Dallas, Texas in July that year once I graduated from St. Louise in May, as much of a hatred I had developed for “The Windy City” and how I really couldn’t stand most anyone else I came in contact that year, in my mind, I WAS ALREADY IN DALLAS!!!

All the rest…

There were close to a handful of others who either taught or scolded me throughout those eight years. 

The most I remember about my sixth-grade teacher, Mrs. Carolyn Hammerschmidt (1940-2025), is she was the most religious who often did the Gospel readings at Saturday masses. I don’t think there was a time when I attended 5 p.m. mass Saturdays or served as an altar boy on those days that I didn’t see her there. If she wasn’t there, I would have wondered why.

From 1976 to 1984 I had Mrs. Arlene Fencl (1933-2021) for science class. During seventh and eighth grade I, much like our whole class, participated in the yearly science fairs. I don’t remember what project I did for seventh grade but the one I did in eighth grade was a dud which was weather related about fog. I couldn’t get “the fog” to show up in a glass bottle. I should have sought horror director John Carpenter’s advice for the experiment. Of all the teachers who yelled at us, I think it was Mrs. Fencl’s whose voice was the loudest and could be heard down the halls of St. Louise on the second floor of Junior High. Fencl later served as St. Louise’s principal for 15 years.

“An excellent teacher and principal,” said Class of '84 alum, Michele Betti. “Never an agenda - just the subject matter of the day. A consummate professional. What all educators should strive to be. She will be truly missed.”

Then there was Sister Julitta who taught us religion classes during seventh grade and took charge of the altar boys for the parish. Like, Mrs. Allen, Sister Julitta, who I didn’t know until now doubled as St. Louise’s assistant principal during the 83-84 school year was also one who didn’t tolerate any crap from students. In the early years I swore I saw her discipline one of her students in the hallway physically striking them. Whereas the altar boys (and girls) of today who are allowed to wear trash clothes under their mass outfits like jeans and gym shoes during services, we had to wear dress shoes and dress clothes when serving mass. 

I wonder what Sister Julitta would think of all the changes the Catholic church has undergone the past few decades let alone the pedophile scandals involving hundreds of priests. The sex scandals forever put a stigma on the church and had a number of once devoted Catholics (me included) vacating choosing to either join other religious denominations or stop attending masses all together as a result.

My principal, Mr. Robert Winski, doubled teaching us computers all of which came from Radio Shack. A majority of us failed those classes as they involved us actually doing programming, none of which I understood.

Mrs. Jeri Kolack, the school secretary, ran the school plays and the bowling league, and Mrs. Rosicky taught a book reading class (I confess I NEVER read any of the books assigned) after school during the 83-84 school year and sometimes logged scores for the students during the weekly bowling leagues.

Michael McLynn (1929-2021) doubled as both the head of maintenance for the school and as a Deacon who lived behind the campus off 31st and for several decades conducted masses with the parish priests.

When McLynn passed away in 2021, St. Louise alum from my 1984 graduate class, Michele Santiago (1970-2022) posted on the Graduates of St. Louise de Marillac School, La Grange Park, Il Facebook page, writing “Where do you find the words to describe the people that helped you become the person you are today? My fondest memory of Mr. McLynn was when he taught our gym class. I’m wondering where I can find a 45 RPM record of his warm-up's routine" called "Chicken Fat" (1962).

Lastly, there was Mr. Ed Ward (1941-2023) and Ms. Louise Thorson (1952-2018), the band instructors I had from fourth to eighth grade. The two were like your best friends during those years so long as there was no concert coming up, which on those days, the question was who was more stressed out. Them or the band students?

I still remember the four priests who officiated over the masses during the years I was there. Father Mark Simpson ran the altar boys for a year before leaving the parish with Sister Julitta taking over. Father Zimmerman was another who left the parish before 1984. By the time I graduated the only priest St. Louise had on a full-time basis was Edward J. Borisewicz (1925-1990).

Father John Keating (1934-1998) served at St. Louise from 1975-1983. Keating became Bishop of the Diocese of Arlington, Virginia in 1983. Our class chose Keating to do our confirmation in spring 1984. Keating was among the few priests who advocated having only male altar servers doing masses.

All these individuals had something that made them stand out and yet, every one of them had one thing in common. I can’t speak for anyone else but they served as our second parents who were not afraid to discipline me or the class when the time warranted. Sure, they joked with us every now and then, but all made sure we knew who was in charge.

St. Louise class of '84 alums at a reunion.

While the parish remains open with churchgoers still attending, the question begets as to what becomes of the school other than being an empty building. I still know the locations of the administration office, teacher's lounge, the library and all the classrooms on the first and second floors, the band room and Colonnade Room where gym class, concerts, plays and talent shows were held. I wouldn’t need to fly up there to break into the school to take pictures of what the place looked like. I know it all from memory.
 

I have heard of schools closing but I never would have expected St. Louise de Marillac to join the list. I’ve always thought the school would be around long after I’ve left this mortal world.

Which brings me back to the ending lyrics from "In My Life" that summarizes my time at St. Louise over forty years ago.

“Though I know I'll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I'll often stop and think about them
In my life, I love you more”

©7/16/25

My Personal Best Films: Apocalypse Now (1979)

Apocalypse Now ««««
R, 147m. 1979

Cast & Credits: Marlon Brando (Colonel Walter E. Kurtz), Martin Sheen (Captain Benjamin L. Willard), Robert Duvall (Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore), Frederic Forrest (Jay ‘Chef’ Hicks), Sam Bottoms (Lance B. Johnson), Laurence Fishburne (Tyrone ‘Clean’ Miller), Albert Hall (Chief Phillips), Harrison Ford (Colonel Lucas), Dennis Hopper (Photojournalist), G.D. Spradlin (General Corman). Screenplay by John Milius and Francis Ford Coppola. Directed by Francis Ford Coppola.

1980 Academy Award
Nominations

Best Picture

Best Director
Francis Ford Coppola

Best Supporting Actor
Robert Duvall

Best Art Direction/Set
Decoration

Best Cinematography - 
Winner

Best Film Editing

Best Writing, Screenplay
Based on Material from
Another Medium
Francis Ford Coppola
John Milius

Best Sound - Winner

“This is the way the world lives. Not with a bang. Whimper.”

That was what Dennis Hopper’s doped up, hippie photographer thought about life in war torn Cambodia during the Vietnam War while hanging out with a group of natives led by a once highly decorated Green Beret colonel named Walter E. Kurtz (Marlon Brando) in "Apocalypse Now."

If you change the first sentence to read, “This is how the film ends,” you’d have my opinion of what I thought of Oscar winning director Francis Ford Coppola’s original 1979 Vietnam war epic after watching it for the first time in its entirety in 1987.

Up until then the most I had seen of "Apocalypse Now" was the first hour on network television back in the early 1980s, though edited for adult content, the movie still came with a parental advisory warning.

As a young kid who was still astounded by visual effects, or “movie magic” as it was called thanks to "Star Wars" (1977) I never felt guilty being awed viewing scenes of death and destruction on the big or small screen. I didn’t care if the film was a science fiction movie taking place “in a galaxy far, far away” or a fabled war epic that uses the Vietnam War as its subject matter. I saw "Apocalypse Now" as escapist entertainment.

Such is the reason why for my sudden interest in the film during that early first hour seeing a young Harrison Ford as Colonel G. Lucas, whose name role was a homage to director George Lucas who gave Ford his start in "American Graffiti" (1973) before becoming a household name as smuggler Han Solo in "Star Wars" (1977).

Ford was in only one scene in "Apocalypse Now" whose character feeds background information to Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) on Kurtz, the green beret Willard is assigned to assassinate for military crimes against American forces. Ford was among the less than a handful of cast members whose screen time was less than fifteen minutes and likely consisting of less than a dozen pages of dialogue. Others in the cast whose appearances and dialogue lasted just as long included Robert Duvall as Col. Kilgore (who received an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor) and the hefty Brando who doesn’t show up until the last half hour when Willard meets his prey.

Duvall’s Kilgore is a loud authoritative military leader with a deep interest in surfing (he has his own personal surfboard) who during battle asks a soldier and fellow surfer if he prefers using a light or heavier board when riding the waves.

"Apocalypse Now" featured a number of memorable big-bangs during that first hour like the opening shot of military helicopters flying above the Vietnamese jungles dropping napalm bombs; all of which I saw but didn’t hear. What I heard instead was the haunting lyrics from The Doors’ Jim Morrison singing “The End.”



On those unsettling scenes of impending death and destruction, however, is another shot that caught my eye within that first hour other that got me excited. The clip is an early battle sequence where a group of military helicopters descend on an enemy village taking out the Vietcong with the music of Richard Wagner’s "Ride of the Valkyries" blaring from a chopper’s sound system.

Like I said earlier, seeing military servicemen dying in battle didn’t phase me as when a Vietcong woman drops a hand grenade in a chopper full of American military servicemen as they worked to get their wounded airlifted killing everyone aboard. I was awed by the visual effects.

That was enough for my dad though who watched the film with me and served in the U.S. Air Force in Vietnam from 1968-69 (he came home in 1970) to reprimand me for citing how cool I thought that scene was. No matter how I looked at it, the shot still showed soldiers dying in combat. For anyone like my dad who served in Vietnam (though he never saw combat but was almost injured and could have been killed during an attack on the base he was stationed at), such a disturbing scene could be enough to dredge up unpleasant memories of the real thing for those there who went through such an experience.

I don’t believe dad’s reason for seeing "Apocalypse Now" on the big screen in the late fall of 1979 had anything to do with him serving in Vietnam, however. I think the one and probably only reason for seeing the controversial much talked about war epic is because it starred his favorite actor, Martin Sheen, in the lead role. 

Even before I saw the movie on network television I remember watching "Sneak Previews" (1975-1996) where Chicago film critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert discussed the film on their show. The pair’s divided opinion was one of the top disagreements the two would have throughout their twenty plus years together. Siskel didn’t like it while Ebert listed the film among the best movies he’d seen that year. The two wouldn’t disagree on another controversial Vietnam war epic until 1987 when Stanley Kubrick’s "Full Metal Jacket" was released.

I wasn’t impressed when I finally saw the film in 1987. Siskel’s dislike of the picture back in 1979 only justified my reasons for not embracing it either as I understood where he was coming from. As the ominous plot of the original 150-minute film progressed (Coppola released two extended three-hour director’s cuts  in 2001 and another in 2019)  so did the look of the picture, which was almost pitch black.

The climax was so dark that about the only thing visible aside from Brando’s menacingly bald shaved head were the explosions going off throughout his compound. I found watching the picture decades ago to be a long and tedious exercise after that first hour- as long and sometimes uneventful as the Nung River Willard and his boat crew travel to find his prey where the only thing to break up the monotony were the sudden bursts of combat violence.

I have since developed a more positive opinion of the film now. The script, written by Coppola, John Milius with the narration by Michael Herr, made me want to become a screenwriter, not Quentin Tarantino.

“Everyone gets what he wants. I wanted a mission. And for my sins they gave me one. Brought it up to me like room service,” says Sheen’s Col. Willard.

There is no doubt Kilgore’s line “I love the smell of napalm in the morning” is likely found in some book listing several memorable quotes from movie’s past. Since my diabetes diagnosis in 2006, I’ve jokingly used that quote on social media when giving myself injections replacing the word “napalm” with “insulin.”

Having watched the ’79 theatrical version again recently I finally got what the film’s message attempted to convey about the Vietnam War which is best summarized early on by a G.D. Spradlin’s General Corman.

“You see, Willard, in this war, things get confused out there. Power, ideals, the old morality, and practical military necessity. But out there with these natives, it must be a temptation to be God. Because there's a conflict in every human heart, between the rational and irrational, between good and evil. And good does not always triumph. Sometimes, the dark side overcomes what Lincoln called the better angels of our nature.”

"Apocalypse Now" was all about various soldiers’ attempts to stay sane in an insane world. Examples include Sheen’s Captain Willard in his Saigon hotel room drinking heavily smashing a mirror and injuring his hand in the process as he awaits his next assignment. There is Duvall’s Kilgore who turns the ravaged Vietnamese shores into a California surfing beach parties where American servicemen guzzle down beers and eat barbeque around a night campfire following a day of fighting.

"The more they tried to make it just like home, the more they made everybody miss it," Willard says of Kilgore's method to his madness.

The reason behind the soldier's behaviors exhibited by Kilgore and the less than a handful of servicemen who accompany Willard down the Nung Valley was to keep them going off the deep end in a world that had already gone mad; a path Brando’s Kurtz had already taken.

"Apocalypse Now" may be a fabled war movie loosely based on or inspired by Joseph Conrad’s classic novel, "Heart of Darkness." The one thing this picture got right was that most every soldier who lived through, fought, served and died in Vietnam was scared out of their wits. Why else would some of them go to great lengths to keep themselves from getting shot like sitting on their helmets to keep their testicles from getting blown off while exchanging gunfire with the enemy.

Now over forty years after its original release the most hauntingly memorable line that comes to my mind instead of Hopper’s photojournalist are the last words of Colonel Walter E. Kurtz.

“The horror...the horror.”

©5/21/25

My Personal Best Films: Airport (1970)

Airport ««««
G, 137m. 1970

Cast & Credits: Burt Lancaster (Mel Bakersfield), Dean Martin (Vernon Demerest), George Kennedy (Patroni), Jean Seberg (Tanya Livingston), Jacqueline Bisset (Gwen Meighen), Helen Hayes (Ada Quonsett), Van Heflin (D.O. Guerrero), Maureen Stapleton (Inez Guerrero), Barry Nelson (Anson Harris), Dana Wynter (Cindy), Lloyd Nolan (Harry Standish), Barbara Hale (Sarah Demerest), Gary Collins (Cy Jordan). Written and directed by George Seaton.

1971 Academy Award
Nominations

Best Picture

Best Actress in a 
Supporting Role - 
Helen Hayes - Winner

Best Actress in a 
Supporting Role -
Maureen Stapleton

Best Art Direction
Set Decoration

Best Cinematography

Best Costume Design

Best Film Editing

Best Music - Original Score
Alfred Newman

Best Sound

Best Writing - Screenplay
Based on Material from
Another Medium

Anytime I hear nothing but either accolades or negative opinions from everyone and their dog about how great or bad a movie was and how I should either see or not see it, I get very skeptical.

When that happens the comment real estate agent Ricky Roma (Al Pacino) said in "Glengarry Glen Ross" (1992) comes to mind. Roma said he subscribed to the “law of contrary public opinion.”

“If everyone thinks one thing, then I say bet the other way,” Roma said.

I apply that train of thought to "Airport" (1970) which ushered in the disaster movie sub-genre that lasted almost ten years during the 1970s before audiences tired of the same formula of big-name stars typecast in perilous situations and what eventually became cheap feeble attempts to wow viewers with special effects eye candy. "Airport", the film, received almost as much negative press from movie critics as author Arthur Hailey’s 400-plus-page novel got from literary reviewers when it was published in 1968 according to an article on Wikipedia.

Literary reviewer Martin Levin wrote in The New York Times saying "Mr. Hailey is a plodding sort of writer, but he has just the talent to suggest the crashing ennui of airport routine, where only a mortal disaster can provide color." When commenting Hailey’s workplace type informative style of writing, another NYT book reviewer, Eliot Fremon-Smith, asked the question “With 'Hotel' and 'Airport' successfully absorbed, can 'Shopping Center,' 'Parking Lot' and 'City Dump' be far behind?"

Chicago Sun-Times film critic, Roger Ebert, opened his 10/18/74 review of "Airport 1975" writing that although the original "Airport" was never one of his favorite movies, he admired the slick, competent way it worked viewers over for two hours.

“Its clichés were ancient and its typecasting was relentless, but it didn't bore us,” Ebert wrote.

Notable film reviewer Pauline Kael who was never one to shy away from voicing her scathing opinions of movies she loathed called "Airport" “An empty reshaping of Grand Hotel, held together by disaster in the sky.”

Even executives at Universal Pictures who distributed the film expressed no hope in seeing it blossom into the unexpected box office hit it became. Like Hailey’s mammoth read which spent 64 weeks on the New York Times best seller list, "Airport" – the film grossed over $100 million at the box office on a $10 million budget in the United States and Canada according to Wikipedia.

Much to everyone’s surprise in particular critics and executives at Universal Pictures who expected the movie to flop, writer/director George Seaton’s screenplay adaptation of Hailey’s novel received one of ten Oscar nominations in 1971 that included Best Picture and a Best Supporting Actress win for Helen Hayes for her kindly portrayal of 80-year-old stowaway, Ada Quonsett. More on her in a moment.

If I had been in my late 20s or early 30s when Hailey’s book and the film adaptation were published and released in 1970, the deal breaker that would have sent me to the box office would have been the ten Oscar nominations the film received. I have no doubt critics who loathed the disaster picture expressed their displeasure at the news saying the only reason for the nominations was because it was a hit with audiences and saw it as another attempt to draw television viewers when the Academy Awards aired.

The picture is the kind of movie that could be touted as an overhyped weekly nighttime soap opera in the tradition of TV’s "Dallas" (1978-1991) for one of the big three prime-time networks in the day (CBS, NBC, ABC). Yet, such a suggested workplace drama series would be short lived. Viewers would find the situations so mundane that having a disturbed passenger and an 80-year-old stowaway as recurring characters would be a last-ditch effort to increase the series’ low ratings.

What makes "Airport" stand out from the less-than-a-handful of big budget catastrophic star-studded spectacles released ("The Poseidon Adventure" – 1972; "The Towering Inferno – 1974) soon after is it plays out more like a workplace soap opera. The subplot involving a desperate out of work husband and father (Van Heflin) with nefarious plans to blow up a jetliner is not the film’s selling point.

I can summarize the story with barely a complete sentence calling the film “a night in the life of an aviation supervisor (Burt Lancaster) who battles multiple crisis inside and outside the workplace.” When Lancaster’s Mel Bakersfield isn’t stressed out wondering if TWA’s top airline mechanic, Joe Patroni (George Kennedy), can get a stuck Boeing 707 off his only runway during the city’s heaviest snowstorm, he is warring with his soon-to-be ex-wife (Dana Wynter) on their disintegrating marriage. As the saying goes, it's always something. Bakersfield must put up with the criticisms from his sister’s husband –veteran pilot Vernon Demerest (Dean Martin) who never wastes a moment citing Bakersfield’s ineptness on how he runs one of the nation’s busiest airports calling the agents and ground crews “penguins.”

I won’t argue that much of the dialogue the characters speak are what I would come to expect from actual supervisors and employees in any workplace. Despite headlining the film Lancaster called  "Airport" "the worst piece of junk ever made" and only took the role because Universal promised to finance upcoming film projects the Oscar winning actor was interested in according to IMDB. 

What makes Airport’s characters entertaining, however, in a daytime soap opera kind of way is how they deliver their lines so convincingly that not once did I get the impression they only chose this project for the money.

A few like George Kennedy’s Patroni act like they know everything about the world of aviation mechanics and don’t make the role look as though it is just another acting job. In one scene when he gets disgusted at a captain’s hesitancy to apply full power to get the stuck 707 out of the snow, Patroni lectures him on how much he knows every inch of the plane.

“Take the wings off this and you could use it as a tank,” Patroni says. “This plane is built to withstand anything except a bad pilot.”

A majority of the characters exhibit a brief moment of emotional weakness that make them believable. Martin’s Demerest - in a role the actor said was one of his favorite characters he played according to IMDB, develops moral scruples, if not, a sense of urgent responsibility, at the unexpected news he gets from a stewardess (Jacqueline Bisset) he has been having an affair with. 

Even Heflin’s’ Guerrero, who despite being the villain I almost felt a small twinge of sympathy for the guy when he lets his guard down for a few seconds upon learning the folks on the ground are onto his plans to blow up the jetliner he is on as a means for his wife to collect the insurance money. His role reminded me how I’ve often heard that the only way an actor would sign on to play the bad guy is if the character exhibits one or two positive traits that might him slightly likable.

As for Helen Hayes Ada Quonsett, while I have yet to read Hailey’s book which is still available in print and not just online through Kindle, I wouldn’t be surprised if Hayes interjected some of her own dialogue for her character.



When an airline representative asks Quonsett how she got caught sneaking aboard a flight, the stowaway disdainfully blames a fellow passenger she confided her secret to who turned her in.

“They really should wear their security uniforms otherwise how is a person supposed to know,” Quonsett says.

While I’ve seen most all the disaster movies made since the 1970s I don’t consider myself a fan of the sub-genre. What attracted me to "Airport" and the laughably bad sequels the original inspired in 1974, 1977 and 1979 before directors Jim Abrahams and David and Jerry Zucker parodied the franchise in "Airplane" (1980) was my fascination with any mid-air disaster movie that featured crews and passengers in distress. Quality never mattered to me. If the movie featured a jet I’d be interested in seeing it whether the film as is gripping and hard-to-watch like "United 93" (2006) or as bad as "Snakes On A Plane" (2006) where the most memorable line comes from Samuel L. Jackson’s law enforcement character that’s filled with a couple “f” words I won’t write here despite being my own editor of this blog.

In the five decades since Airport’s release I’ve often asked myself if the film can be remade today. The answer is yes and no. No from the standpoint of studios not wanting to risk boring audiences with a soap opera like drama that "Airport" was even if it does headline today’s top stars.

Like the 70s sub-genre that lasted barely ten years, audiences today have tired of the same formula. The catastrophic box office honeymoon that was "Twister" (1996), "Independence Day" (1996), "Titanic" (1997), "Armageddon" (1998) and "2012" (2009) that brought crowds to theaters dwindled in the wake of director Roland Emmerich’s latest 140 million sci-fi disaster release, "Moonfall" (2022) that was gone from movie houses before the month of its theatrical release ended. 

From a personal standpoint as someone who has tried his hand at screenwriting, I’d find it easy for me to adapt "Airport" to today’s times. I’d have my version take place a year after 9/11 with the aviation industry still reeling from the nation’s terrorist attacks. Much has changed in the five decades since the film’s release. There’s no smoking aloud on flights by passengers and flight crews as seen in the 70’s drama. The jets today are so technologically advanced with computer software they can practically fly themselves. The pilots are only needed to take off and land. Whereas the Boeing 707 in "Airport" was the star of the film, the known multimillion jetliner manufacturer is no longer seen as the corporation that prided itself on airline safety in the wake of two crashes involving their 737 MAX that killed a combined 346 passengers and crews in 2019.

There is one thing, however, I would keep in my updated screenplay that Hayes’ Ada Quonsett uttered in the 70’s film. When Quonsett is given a lifetime of first-class tickets on any Transglobal flight, the elderly lady takes note of how adventurously easy it was for her to break the law. In my remake, as my Ada Quonsett hands the agent her first-class ticket she’d sadly glance at the long lines of perspective passengers waiting to be screened at the security gates before they are allowed to check in taking into account how much things have changed since 9/11 and tell the travel agent, “You know, it was much more fun the other way.”

"Airport" is streaming on Netflix in May.

©4/30/25

My Top 10 Christmas Songs I Can’t Stop Listening During December (IN MY OPINION – NOT YOURS)!

Every year around this time ever since youtube’s birth in 2005 I’ve always uploaded several Christmas videos to listen to throughout the month of December until Christmas Eve.

In what is probably my second shortest blog post since the one I wrote in 2015 about what I’m thankful for on Thanksgiving here are ten holiday songs I never tire of hearing that help keep me to some extent from morphing completely into Ebenezer Scrooge. (Still waiting to be visited by three ghosts on Christmas Eve).

Alex Khaskin - "It's Christmas Eve" from "A Christmas Horror Story"



Vince Guaraldi Trio - "Christmas Time Is Here"



Barenaked Ladies, Sarah McLachlan – "God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman/We Three Kings"



Michael Bublé – "All I Want For Christmas Is You"



Josh Groban – "Ave Maria"



Josh Groban – "O Holy Night"



John Lennon – "Happy Xmas – (War Is Over)"



Barry Manilow & Exposé – "Jingle Bells"



Dean Martin – "I’ve Got My Love To Keep Me Warm"



Trans-Siberian Orchestra – "Christmas Canon"



©12/11/2024

What Lionsgate’s AI generated “Megalopolis” trailer finally proved about film critics

If there’s one thing Lionsgate’s latest trailer that promoted director Francis Ford Coppola’s controversial $120 million pet passion project he’d been working on since 1977, “Megalopolis”, using reported AI generated and fabricated quotes from notable reviewers of decades past bashing the filmmaker’s previous classics, it is that movie critics don’t matter.

Even if the negative pull quotes from notable reviewers Vincent Canby, Roger Ebert, Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris among them featured in the trailer were truthful critiques of the filmmaker’s classics “The Godfather” (1972), “Apocalypse Now” (1979) and “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” (1992) doesn’t mean everyone agreed on their assessments.

I don’t listen to the film critics. Not once in my over five decades on this planet had I ever read a review hoping the supposed know-it-all reviewers would like a movie I was planning to see.

What attracted me to the reviews from such renowned writers Richard Corliss (1944-2015) of Time, Roger Ebert (1942-2013) of the Chicago Sun-Times, Pauline Kael (1919-2001) of The New Yorker and Bruce Williamson (1927-1998) of Playboy (there was more to the risqué periodical than just the pretty pictures) was their unique writing styles.

Same reason why today the only two critics I read on occasion are Stephanie Zacharek of Time and contributor Ross Douthat of National Review.

If I had paid attention to the vitriol the critics spewed out in their columns about the following the past five decades, I’d have avoided "1941" (1979), the Airport disaster movies of the 1970s, "Alexander" (2004), "Armageddon" (1998), "Beyond the Poseidon Adventure" (1979), "Cannonball Run II" (1981), "Christopher Columbus: The Discovery" (1992), "Dune" (1984), "Eternals" (2021), "Event Horizon" (1997), "Firestarter" (1984), "Gigli" (2003), “The Invasion” (2007), “The Island of Dr. Moreau" (1996), "Last Action Hero" (1993), "The Marvels" (2023), "Police Academy" (1984), "Porky’s" (1981), "Raise the Titanic" (1980), “Rhinestone” (1984), "Snakes On a Plane" (2006), the Star Wars prequels (1999-2005), "The Swarm" (1979), “Toys” (1992), and just about everything director Zack Snyder’s churned out before entering and exiting Warner’s DC superhero franchise known to what either fans or the fantasy filmmaker himself calls the “Snyderverse”.

Oh, how my mind wonders on the mass amounts of man hours I wasted watching what critics considered celluloid junk when my time could have been spent elsewhere. It’s enough to make me wake up in a cold sweat!

No. Not really.

Seeing movies is not only all about being entertained but also in my case following the “law of contrary public opinion” Ricky Roma spoke of in "Glengarry Glen Ross" (1992)

“If everyone thinks one thing, then I say, bet the other way,” Roma said.

I don’t regret watching any of the atrocities the critics loathed. Some I liked. Some I didn’t. The ones I didn’t they at least managed to be bad enough to the point it was a fun bad movie I loved to hate. Others were guilty pleasures.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sat through movies the top reviewers and audiences couldn’t stop raving about only to find myself, whether at home watching such overhyped pictures on the flatscreen or at the theater that made me want to scream at the top of my lungs the minute the credits rolled shouting, “Da f--k was this s--t?!?!”

You want examples? Here’s a few: "2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968), "The Crying Game" (1992), "Howard’s End" (1992), "The English Patient" (1996), “Avatar” (2009), “Deadpool” (2016), "Black Panther" (2018), "Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood" (2019), “Avatar: The Way of Water” (2022),"Top Gun: Maverick" (2022), "Everything Everywhere All at Once" (2022), "Barbie" (2023), “Oppenheimer” (2023) and "Poor Things" (2023).

Coppola shouldn’t be upset by the false advertising Lionsgate used to promote what I and most everyone assumed at the time would be his swan song (he’s reportedly at work on two more films). The clever marketing ploy was the studio’s attempt to prove how wrong the critics have been on their opinions. They succeeded.

I, for one, loved Lionsgate’s promotional misfire which is still accessible on other YouTube channels but not from the distributor who pulled the trailer the same day it aired on the net Aug. 22. I haven’t been able to get enough of the “Megalopolis” trailer’s first 40 seconds as the falsified pull quotes raced across the screen to the tune of an updated instrumental version of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s “Lacrimosa” as longtime actor and collaborator Laurence Fishburne narrated the preview’s opening with the words, “True genius is often misunderstood.”

Rest assured I will not be reading, let alone relying on what the know-it-all critics say about the film, good or bad. I will not even be upset if the picture is not another triumph like “The Godfather” and is instead another commercial failure equivalent of the 85-year-old filmmaker’s 1981 musical, “One from the Heart” and the troubled mobster production/musical want-to-be “The Cotton Club” (1984).

I’ll decide for myself when I see “Megalopolis” on IMAX opening day Sept. 27 if the directing legend’s latest “fable” inspired by the fall of Rome is “A sloppy self-indulgent movie,” “a spectacular failure”, “a beautiful mess,” or “a triumph of style over substance.” Pull quotes seen in the trailer the critics wrote about in other movies they didn’t approve of but not Coppola’s.

“Megalopolis” may not be, as Fishburne narrated in the trailer, “an event nothing can prepare you for” but seeing it on the big screen will nevertheless be an event independent of itself.

©8/28/24