The Reverend Will the Thrill Presents the Film of the Week!

Sometimes I think it's important to re-evaluate things in our lives--especially when it comes to things like film and music.  Opinions change with time and age, and we may see something that was not necessarily visible to us before.

In 1998, the American Film Institute (AFI), I believe to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the birth of motion pictures, made a list of what they believed to be the 100 greatest American movies.  They broadcast the list in a big prime time special featuring interviews with actors, writers, directors, and other famous people in the industry.

Being the film nut that I am, I watched the special.  At 24, I was quite proud of myself for having seen a number of the films on the list that pre-dated me.  The whole thing, as fascinating as I found it, was a bit anticlimactic because I knew, even at that age, that #1 and #2 were going to be Citizen Kane (1941) and Casablanca (1942)--I just didn't know which film would be in which position.  Lo and behold, at the end of the broadcast, Casablanca was #2 and Citizen Kane was #1.

(That's not to say that I wasn't pleasantly surprised by other titles and their respective positions, particularly The Godfather (1972), which I had only just seen for the first time the previous year, which came in at #3.)

A couple of years later, I happened to be in a Sam's Club and found a VHS copy of Citizen Kane for all of four bucks.  As much as I had read about it, I had still never seen the movie.  So I bought it in an effort to find out what film scholars had been raving about for nearly 60 years at that point.

My initial thought was that it was a good movie.  I don't think I would have called it the greatest American movie ever made.  I certainly wouldn't have said it was better than Casablanca.  But it was enjoyable enough, even though I think it was rather overrated.

It was about a year after that, that I started upgrading everything to DVD.  For one reason or another, I didn't get around to upgrading that particular film.  I also didn't watch it again, even though I've kept a working VCR the entire time, because I just kept figuring I would be upgrading it in the near future, which never happened.

After making more film lists--including 100 Greatest Love Stories, Heroes and Villains, and Film Quotes--in 2007, the AFI revisited their original list of the 100 Greatest American Movies, this time re-evaluating it.  A lot of movies had come out during that time and opinions changed on others.  (Apparently, no matter how technologically groundbreaking it might have been in 1915, a film that glorifies the Ku Klux Klan is problematic in the 21st century, so Birth of a Nation--which was on the 1998 list--suddenly went bye-bye.  Not to worry, though--Gone With the Wind (1939) still remained in the Top 10.)

What was interesting to me is that many films just changed positions on the list.  Raging Bull (1980) actually jumped up 20 positions in nine years and was suddenly ranked #4 on the list.  In fact, The Godfather and Casablanca just switched positions making them #2 and #3 respectively.  And yet somehow, Citizen Kane still remained at #1.

By this point in my life, I had seen many more movies and had what I like to think are educated opinions of them, including Citizen Kane.  And while I was able to genuinely appreciate the "Saturday Night Live" sequel, Citizen Kane II, I still thought the film was overrated.

This feeling was reinforced a couple of years ago when I read my grandmother's diary.  She wrote in 1942 about seeing the film and not being that impressed with it, which delighted me in a snobbish kind of way.

This year marks the 85th anniversary of this landmark film.  It played at my local theater, so I decided it had been roughly 25 years since I'd seen it--maybe I should watch it again on a big screen (the way films are best appreciated) and maybe I could see what critics and scholars saw that eluded me in the past.

I did come away from it with a deeper appreciation than I did when I first saw it nearly half my life ago.  The basic themes of the film seemed timely in a way they didn't 25 years ago.  Or maybe they always were and I just wasn't aware of it.  I feel like I can find contemporary analogs of most of those characters in our present-day society.

What genuinely impressed me about the film was the "arrogance of youth" that I referred to in this week's album "sermon."  Orson Welles turned 26 around the time the movie premiered.  He co-wrote, directed, and starred in this film alongside actors from his Mercury Theatre, many of whom were making their film debuts.  From a technical and even a technological standpoint, he did some impressive things with camera angles and focus that had not really been done at the time, which does make the movie stand out, especially among other films from that time.  Watching him age over the course of the movie from his mid-20s to his late-70s required some impressive makeup.  I wonder if Welles would have--or could have--attempted to make a movie like this later in his life. 

Don't get me wrong--I still think Casablanca, The Godfather, and even Raging Bull are all better movies--or, at the very least, I enjoyed them more.  And I still think, to a degree, Citizen Kane is overrated.  But I don't think it's as overrated as I once did.

Co-starring Joseph Cotten, Dorothy Comingore, Ruth Warrick, Ray Collins, and Agnes Moorehead, please enjoy what the American Film Institute deems the greatest American movie ever made, 1941's Citizen Kane.

Until next week, stay safe, be good to your neighbours, and please remember that if at first you don't succeed, then skydiving definitely isn't for you.

Yours in peace, love, and rock 'n' roll!

The Reverend Will the Thrill

The Reverend Will the Thrill Presents the Album of the Week!

I was going through some old posts recently and discovered some technical issues with enclosed links which I will attempt to rectify starting here.  I'll probably even try to go back and fix those old posts, although that may be an undertaking.  We'll see.

I stumbled upon this week's album last summer and I've been wanting to write about it ever since.  On one hand, it's very much a product of its time--on the other, I think it transcends that period with its satirical, even subversive, nature, something I've always been intrinsically drawn to.  Frankly, I wish someone would release something like this today.

The album itself is apparently supposed to sound like a broadcast from Radio London, a popular pirate radio station in the UK (also known as Wonderful Radio London and The Big L), which had actually stopped broadcasting a few months before the album's release.  It even features station identification plugs and fake ads for real products.  In fact, a lot of companies actually filed lawsuits after the album came out because allegedly no one got permission to use their products, either within the album or for its cover art.  And as much as I enjoy the subversion, I totally get that.  After all, I have not consciously eaten Heinz Baked Beans since I first saw Roger Daltrey on the album's cover sitting in a bathtub full of them.  In fact, I can't even see them on a grocery store shelf without thinking of that picture.

And while I'm sure we still have a few odd "pirate" radio stations in this country, I've never had the good fortune to hear them.  So when I first listened to this week's album, it seemed more to me like a satire of a licensed broadcast station, right down to the fake ads.  It reminded me a lot of radio stations that I would tend to listen to on a Saturday night when I was a teenager.  It was a weird mix of making fun of certain institutions as well as a sense of nostalgia for those institutions.

In retrospect, I think this is an album that could only be made with the arrogance of youth.  And even though Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey failed to die before they grew old, I wonder if they--or anyone over the age of 35--could make an album like that today.  But if anyone could, they would be the ones to do it.  Featuring their classic hit "I Can See For Miles" (the album's only single), from 1967, please enjoy The Who Sell Out.

Until next week, stay safe, be good to your neighbours, and please remember that if at first you don't succeed, then skydiving definitely isn't for you.

Yours in peace, love, and rock 'n' roll!

The Reverend Will the Thrill

The Reverend Will the Thrill Presents the Film of the Week!

This week's film marks a first for me.  I normally try to shake things up from one week to the next, but I felt compelled to continue the focus on one of my favourite directors that I began last week.

I was reading an article in the New York Times this past week regarding Mel Brooks's 100th birthday and it lists 100 reasons to love him--all of them valid in my opinion.  And even though I didn't need the encouragement from the article, I did sit down and re-watch a few of his movies that I hadn't seen in awhile.  Watching some of these again, I really began to marvel not only at Mel's comedic genius, but also what he was able to actually accomplish--things that, frankly, I don't think any other director would have had the balls to attempt.

The song "Springtime For Hitler" from 1967's The Producers as well as the infamous campfire scene in 1974's Blazing Saddles cemented his reputation for audacity.  But he took it a step further with his next film, Young Frankenstein--also released in 1974.  As he told Jimmy Kimmel in 2014:

"We had a deal with Columbia [Pictures].  We had a deal and we shook hands, we're going to make the movie for $2,000,000.  This is in 1973.  And on the way out of the meeting, I poked my head back in the room and I said, 'Oh, by the way, it's gonna be in black and white,' and I left.  Down the hall, you heard thundering Jews... 28 Jews chasing [me], 'No!  Peru just got colour!  No!'  So Columbia wasn't going for it.  But Alan Ladd, Jr.--Alan Ladd's son, 'Laddie'--just took over Fox, and my producer, Mike Gruskoff, knew him well, got the script to him, and he said, 'It should be in black and white!  And I'll give you $100 more to make it."

If you've seen Young Frankenstein, you probably can't imagine it in colour any more than you can picture James Whale's 1931 classic horror film in colour.  It just wouldn't work.  It had to be in black and white.  Mel and Gene Wilder were genius enough to know that going in.  Lo and behold, the film was a hit and 50 years later, it's still regarded as one of the funniest movies ever made.  Eh--Columbia's loss.

But Mel still had one trick up his sleeve that he wanted to try.  This became the gimmick, for lack of a better word, of his next film, which, clearly, Alan Ladd, Jr. didn't object to.  After watching it again for the first time in many years, I felt it deserved to be highlighted in my weekly "sermons."

Once sound was developed in the late 1920s, movies were changed forever.  Now, rather than having to read sparse dialogue on interstitial title cards between shots, we could actually hear actors speaking their characters' lines.

And along comes Mel Brooks nearly 50 years later and, after making a movie in black and white, he decides he wants to make a silent movie as a tribute to that era of moviemaking.

In the movie, Mel Brooks plays Mel Funn, a legendary director who had so many drinks on the rocks that now his career was too.  Mel's former studio, Big Pictures, is on the verge of being taken over by the greedy corporate conglomerate Engulf and Devour (a not too subtle swipe at the actual conglomerate Gulf & Western, which had taken over Paramount Pictures).  Mel pitches an idea for a silent movie to the studio chief (played by Sid Caesar) telling him that if he can get some of Hollywood's biggest stars to be in this picture, it'll be a hit and save the studio.  Mel then goes out with his associates Marty Eggs (Marty Feldman) and Dom Bell (Dom DeLuise) to get the stars to agree to be in his movie.

Normally, when I watch movies at home, I'm doing something else--catching up on email, folding laundry, writing these weekly missives, whatever.  You can't do that with a movie like this.  You actually have to watch it without distractions.  The film is mostly sight gags and if you take your eyes off the screen for even a moment, there's a good chance you'll miss something.  In that respect, it's almost better appreciated in a theater than at home.

Brooks not only directed and starred in the film, he also co-wrote it with Ron Clark, Rudy De Luca, and Barry Levinson.  (Brooks would go on to work with them again on his next film, a send-up of Alfred Hitchcock, High Anxiety.)  The film co-starred Harold Gould, Ron Carey, and Bernadette Peters, and features cameos from Burt Reynolds, James Caan, Liza Minelli, Paul Newman, Anne Bancroft (Brooks's wife), and legendary mime Marcel Marceau who--SPOILER ALERT--utters the only word of dialogue actually heard in the film.  From 1976, please enjoy Silent Movie.

I'll be taking next week off to spend time with family.  Until I return, stay safe, be good to your neighbours, and please remember that if at first you don't succeed, then skydiving definitely isn't for you.

Yours in peace, love, and rock 'n' roll!

The Reverend Will the Thrill

The Reverend Will the Thrill Presents the Album of the Week!

"America isn't easy.  America is advanced citizenship--you've gotta want it bad.  Because it's gonna put up a fight.  It's gonna say, 'You want free speech?  Let's see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil who is standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours.  You want to claim this land as the land of the free?  Then the symbol of your country cannot just be a flag.  The symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest.  Now show me that!  Defend that, celebrate that in your classrooms!  Then you can stand up and sing about the land of the free."

--Michael Douglas as President Andrew Shepherd in The American President, 1995

What with our country's semiquincentennial occurring this weekend--which is just a fancy way to say that the country is 250 years old--I, like a lot of Americans, have been reflecting on what it means to be American and my/our place in it.

Without getting too political, I've often said that America is not a country.  It's an ideal.  It's something we strive to be every day.  We don't always live up to that ideal.  Our country's past is full of vile and repulsive moments from slavery and later Jim Crow to the slaughtering of indigenous peoples to Executive Order 9066.  We still try--and even frequently succeed--in passing laws throughout various regions of the country designed to repress anyone who's "different" from the majority or those in power, frequently citing God and religion as reasons for that repression, even though one of the reasons for founding this country was to escape religious persecution.

And don't get me wrong--there are plenty of things to be proud of in this country from the beauty and majesty of our national parks to our culture which includes film, television, jazz, blues, rock 'n' roll, baseball, and hot dog eating contests on the 4th of July.  This country has always been referred to as a "melting pot."  Immigrants come from all over the world to make a better life here, bringing elements of their culture with them and weaving it into a larger cultural tapestry that is unique and special and... well... American.

"We're all very different people.  We're not Watusi.  We're not Spartans.  We're Americans--with a capital A!  And you know what that means?  Do ya'?  That means that our forefathers were kicked out of every decent country in the world.  We are the wretched refuse.  We're the underdog.  We're mutts!... But there's no animal that's more faithful, that's more loyal, more loveable than the mutt."

--Bill Murray as John Winger in Stripes, 1981

For all of its faults--and we do have them--I would probably find it difficult to live in any other country.  Our nation's founding documents alone make it worth my while.  As long as I'm not harming others, where else can I legally criticize my country's leaders, peaceably assemble, and even pursue something as intangible as happiness?

Yes, we can be loud and boorish and jingoistic.  We have a tendency to oppress others who aren't like us.  But we're constantly working on it.  We're constantly trying to be better, whatever that may entail, whether we admit it or not.  But I would rather have the right to stand up and exercise my right to refer to our President as a loud, boorish, jingoistic snowflake and the Less-Than-Great Pumpkin than live in a "perfect" country.

We're a complicated nation with a complicated past and a complicated citizenry.  Personally, I think that's worth celebrating as much as anything else.  At least we're not boring.

Around this time of year, I always reflect on what may have been the most American thing I ever did over Independence Day.  In the summer of 2000, my father and I took a cross country road trip.  We drove the length of Route 66--what's left of it--from Chicago to Los Angeles.  We left on Saturday, 1 July, and basically traversed a state a day until we reached California.  We saw many wondrous things, both natural and man-made from the Petrified Forest and the Grand Canyon to Mother Jones's grave and the Will Rogers Museum.  I can even say that I once stood on a corner in Winslow, Arizona.  We ate in local diners and restaurants and stayed in local motels.  All in all, not a bad way to spend a couple of weeks at the start of the new millennium.

We spent the 4th crossing the Texas panhandle which is--and I mean this as a tremendous compliment--the most eccentric place I've ever seen.  There's a leaning water tower--which is exactly what it sounds like.  You can see what is purported to be the largest cross in the western hemisphere.  It's a giant cement cross that's visible for easily 20 miles in each direction.

Perhaps my favourite attraction is the legendary Cadillac Ranch outside of Amarillo--ten Cadillacs lined up and buried to their front windshields in the ground.  Tourists visit to take pictures next to the cars and even spray paint them.  It's one of Route 66's--I would even say one of America's--most endearing attractions.

This year not only marks our country's 250th anniversary, it also marks the 100th anniversary of the famed highway, also known as "The Mother Road."  So this week, I wanted to celebrate both of those things with what I think is one of the most American albums ever made.  I actually feel like this album is a perfect reflection on what it's like to be a citizen of this country.  Please enjoy Bruce Springsteen with his 1980 double album The River featuring his first Top 5 single, "Hungry Heart," as well as such timely songs as "Independence Day" and "Cadillac Ranch."

I'll be taking next week off to spend time with family.  Until I return, stay safe, be good to your neighbours, and please remember that if at first you don't succeed, then skydiving definitely isnt' for you.

Yours in peace, love, and rock 'n' roll!

The Reverend Will the Thrill

The Reverend Will the Thrill Presents the Film of the Week!

I'm rather excited in a geeky sort of way this week.  One of my heroes is celebrating a landmark birthday.  You know you want to say and even sing some of these with me:

"It's good to be the king." 

 "What's the matter, Colonel Sandurz?  Chicken?"

"We're men.  We're men in tights--TIGHT tights!"

"It's twue... it's twue, it's twue!"

"Don't be stupid, be a smarty.  Come and join the Nazi Party."

 "If you're blue and you don't know where to go to why don't you go where fashion sits... (snap fingers twice and insert incoherent bellowing here)."

"Non!" (spoken by Marcel Marceau)

Writer, director, actor, EGOT winner, World War II veteran, and cultured, sophisticated man about town Mel Brooks turns 100 this Sunday.  As someone who tends to gravitate toward movies that make me laugh, his films have probably meant more to me over the years than just about any other filmmaker.  I've been a fan most of my life.  When I'm down or sick, watching one of his movies always makes me feel better.

Having grown up during the golden age of Hollywood, Brooks has an appreciation for all different genres of film.  Most of his movies are parodies or spoofs of other movies or specific genres, and virtually every one features a musical number of some sort--usually written or co-written by Brooks himself--regardless of whether or not the film is actually a musical.

Aside from making me laugh hysterically, even with repeated viewings, watching one of Mel's films (and even though I've never met him, I do feel like I'm on a first-name basis with the man), makes me want to watch other films that aren't his.  Because his films are typically spoofs, when I watch one, I want to view the movie or movies that inspired it.  For example, when I watch Young Frankenstein every October, I also feel compelled to watch the original 1931 Frankenstein as well as its 1935 sequel The Bride of Frankenstein.

In honour of his pending centennial, I felt compelled to watch one of his movies the other night that I don't watch as often.  It's different from his other films in that it's not a parody of something else, but rather based on a Russian novel.  It was only his second movie, after the original version of The Producers which won him the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.  It wasn't a huge hit when it was released in 1970--Brooks joked that The Producers made a penny, while this film made half a penny.  But with the development of home video, new generations have come to not just view, but appreciate this underappreciated movie.

Set in 1927 in the relatively recently developed Soviet Union, a dying woman tells her son in law, Vorobyaninov (played by Ron Moody), a former Russian aristocrat, that during the revolution she hid her jewels inside the seat of a chair that was part of a set of twelve.  Moments before telling him, she also told the local priest, Father Fyodor (an almost unrecognizable Dom DeLuise).  On a return trip to his former stately home, Vorobyaninov teams up with Ostap Bender, a con artist (Frank Langella in what IMDB says was his film debut) and is reunited with his former servant Tikon (Brooks in what I think is the finest acting he ever did).  Together, they try to stay ahead of Fyodor and hopefully find the jewels first in what becomes a madcap chase across the country.

Brooks shot the movie in what was then Yugoslavia and wrote the screenplay based on the novel Dvenadstat Stulyev by Ilya Ilf and Yevgeni Petrov and translated by Elizabeth Hill under the title Diamonds To Sit On.  In honour of Mel Brooks's 100th birthday, please enjoy what Brooks has said is his favourite of his own movies, The Twelve Chairs.  Thanks, Mel, for all the laughs.  Keep 'em coming.  Looking forward to Spaceballs: The New One next year.

Until next week, stay safe, be good to your neighbours, and please remember... be good to your parents.  They've been good to you.

Yours in peace, love, and rock 'n' roll!

The Reverend Will the Thrill

 

 

The Reverend Will the Thrill Presents the Album of the Week!

I don't think I would make a very good professional critic of either music or film.  I tend to look at and appreciate things subjectively as well as objectively.  As I say, there's a difference between what I like and what I think is good.

I had a discussion once with a friend of mine over Beatles music.  I said my favourite album of theirs--in fact my favourite album of all time--is Abbey Road.  He started immediately wondering why and dissing my choice.  He gave me all sorts of reasons why it was a bad album... or at the very least not their best.  (I don't even remember what his pick was--probably Revolver or something.)

Now, I will disagree with him over whether or not Abbey Road is a good album.  Objectively speaking, I think it is.  Most actual critics seem to agree with me.  The album frequently appears on lists of the greatest albums of all time.  But the reason it's my favourite has little to do with how objectively good I think it is.  It's my favourite because of how it makes me feel.

The older I get, the more nostalgia plays a part in what I listen to.  As you might guess if you read these "sermons" regularly, music has always been a major part of my life.  Most of my memories, good and bad, featured some song or another playing in the background.  I'll frequently hear a song and remember where I was when I first heard it or recall some fond memory in which it played in the background.  A song doesn't have to necessarily be good to evoke those memories--it just had to be playing when the memory formed.

By that standard, I feel it's necessary this week to share an album that is universally derided, but still brings me a lot of pleasure when I listen to it.

The album is considered by many to be not just the worst album the band ever released, but one of the worst albums of the 1980s.  I'll be the first to admit it's not their best--I certainly wouldn't give it any Grammys or anything.  But I still get a nostalgic glow when I listen to it.  I first bought it on vinyl on 18 April, 1992--the eve of both Easter and my eighteenth birthday.  It was the last vinyl record I ever bought before owning my first CD player.  I couldn't tell you how many times I played that record during my last month of high school and I'm frequently transported back to that era when I hear it.

Okay... I have to take this moment to actually defend the album objectively.  I disagree with many who regard this as the band's worst album.  I believe that their previous album--Undercover, released in 1983--is actually their worst album.  And I certainly don't believe it's one of the worst of the entire decade.

When the album was released in March of 1986, the band was kind of in a state of chaos.  Principal songwriters Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were often having heated disagreements about the direction of the band after nearly 25 years.  Jagger had released a solo album in 1985 that did not sit well with Richards and the rest of the band recorded the bulk of their contributions separately.  Guitarist Ronnie Wood once said that you can tell it's a bad album because he got a co-writing credit on four of the songs.  Most critics had written them off as... well, frankly, old.  With the exception of Wood, they were, after all, in their forties at the time.

That being said, I actually believe that tension made the album a lot better than it gets credit for being.  It certainly adds to the emotional feel of many of the songs on the album.  Richards sang two songs on the album--"Sleep Tonight" is an amazing ballad and the cover of "Too Rude," originally recorded by the Jamaican artist Half Pint, allowed him to explore his love of reggae.  I also think the group's cover of Bob and Earl's "Harlem Shuffle" is, in my opinion, one of the greatest covers ever recorded in spite of the cheesy video.

The album features musical and vocal contributions from Jimmy Page, Don Covay, Tom Waits, Patti Scialfa, Bobby Womack, Kirsty MacColl, and Ivan Neville, and is dedicated to original bandmate and longtime pianist Ian "Stu" Stewart who passed away in December of 1985 (a 30-second "hidden track" of him playing Big Bill Broonzy's "Key to the Highway" closes out the album).

Given the state of the band at that time, it's almost amazing to think that not only did they manage to persevere through that period as a band, but here we are forty years after that and they will be releasing a new album in a couple of weeks.  After nearly 65 years, the Stones are still rolling.  Who says that rock 'n' roll is a young person's game?

So this week, I submit a humble defense of and encourage a re-examination of their 1986 album Dirty Work

Until next week, stay safe, be good to your neighbours, and please remember that if at first you don't succeed, then skydiving definitely isn't for you.

Yours in peace, love and rock 'n' roll!

The Reverend Will the Thrill 

 

 

The Reverend Will the Thrill Presents the Film of the Week!

It's kind of a circuitous path to explain why I chose this week's film, so please bear with me and/or enjoy the ride.

With Father's Day this weekend, I get a little sentimental remembering my own dad.  He died ten years ago this past May, which seems difficult to believe--but, as I say, time has been a blur to me since about August of 1985.  On 18 June--Father's Day weekend--we had a memorial service for him in my aunt's living room.  Only my father could get me to eulogize him the day before Father's Day.

I told a few what I hope were entertaining stories, but one thing still stands out to me.  The day before, 17 June, I was at work.  Noticing what day it was, I walked into the breakroom and wrote on an easel that I was declaring that day to be Frank Wills Appreciation Day.  As expected, I got the inevitable question, "Who's Frank Wills?"  I would just encourage people to look him up.  From the moment I did that, I've always questioned whether I did it of my own volition, or if I was channeling Dad--right down to my smug response to "look it up" when someone asked me about it.

That was just the sort of thing Dad would have done--latch on to some obscure historical detail and make a big deal about it.  I remember him telling me that there was a lot of Islamophobia in his workplace after 9/11.  After hearing so much of it, he made some comments about how he too had stopped trusting Mormons after 9/11.  When his colleagues would say something like, "You mean Muslims, right?," he pointed out that, no, in fact he was referring to Mormons.  Fun bit of history--in 1857, Utah settlers who were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints committed a series of attacks against the Baker-Fancher party who were part of a wagon train moving west from Arkansas.  At least 120 members of the party were killed in the attacks which started on 7 September and ended on 11 September of that year.  Now unless you have an extensive knowledge of American history--and, sadly, most Americans don't seem to--you've probably never heard of the Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1857.  I have to admit, I had never heard of it.  It certainly wasn't brought up in any American history class I took in high school or college.  But Dad had read about it and took note of the dates that it happened allowing him to screw with people later on down the road.  Admittedly this was a favourite pastime of his.

Shortly after Dad died, a very dear friend of mine lost her own father.  We got together for lunch one day that fall as a tribute to them.  Over pizza and (really good) root beer, we determined that the best way to remember those we've lost is to find something about them that we've always admired and try to emulate that in our daily lives.  I realized that Dad's propensity for "taking people's brains out and playing with them"--to use my mom's phrasing--was one of those things that I admired in him most.  In the decade since, I've tried to do likewise where and when I could.

So, every 17 June, I declare it to be Frank Wills Appreciation Day.  It's still not a national holiday but hope springs eternal.  As I always say, if you see a security guard on that day, thank them for their service--maybe even give them a hug just to see the look on their face.

There are certain periods of twentieth century history that have always fascinated me for one reason or another.  One of the big ones was the Watergate scandal.  Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, two reporters from The Washington Post, followed all sorts of leads in what was supposed to be a "third-rate burglary" investigation that eventually brought down Richard Nixon's presidency.  More than 50 years later, it's still considered one of the greatest detective stories of the twentieth century.  The two wrote a book about their investigative experiences and the perils they endured along the way.  In 1976, two years after Nixon resigned from office, screenwriter William Goldman adapted their book into a movie.  It starred Robert Redford as Woodward, Dustin Hoffman as Bernstein, and Jason Robards as editor-in-chief Ben Bradlee.

The film went on to be nominated for eight Oscars including Best Picture, Best Director (Alan J. Pakula), and Best Supporting Actress (Jane Alexander).  It won four including Best Adapted Screenplay (Goldman) and Best Supporting Actor (Bradlee).  Co-starring Jack Warden, Martin Balsam, Hal Holbrook, Ned Beatty, Frank Wills, Stephen Collins, Meredith Baxter, and F. Murray Abraham, please enjoy All the President's Men.

Until next week, stay safe, be good to your neighbours, and please remember that if at first you don't succeed, then skydiving definitely isn't for you.

Yours in peace, love, and rock 'n' roll!

The Reverend Will the Thrill