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

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

I don't have a lot to say about this week's album.  In fact, I had so little to say, I almost posted a random album that I happen to like and say something like, "Here's an album I like.  Hope you like it too."  One of these weeks, I'm sure I'll do that.  But I was reminded of something that happened a couple of months ago that I thought would make good fodder for one of these weekly "sermons" and I never got around to writing it.

About two and a half weeks after my recent surgery, I had a follow-up appointment with a nurse practitioner.  Everything looked pretty good.  I was getting around okay, sometimes even without a walker.  So I decided to try things I hadn't done in a few weeks.  The first thing I did was walk up and down stairs.  The morning after the appointment, I went for a drive.

I have one of those zippered leather folders that hold a whole bunch of CDs on the floor of my car--if you didn't live through the 1990s and early 2000s, you probably have no clue what I'm talking about (CDs?  What are those?)  Most of what's in there are random mixes and copies of my own CDs that I made for my parents a long time ago.  But I saw one particular disc I had made that I thought would be great to drive to.  It was a nice spring day.  I rolled down the window, turned up the volume, and put my foot on the gas.  The only way the experience could have been better is if my car had a manual transmission.

As a Hoosier, I was flooded with youthful memories of growing up in southern Indiana, around the same area where the artist grew up and still lives today.  I particularly remembered my classmates playing his tapes on the playground during recess.  The more I listened to his music as an adult, the more nostalgic I got.  The only time in my life I ever got homesick was when I lived in Cleveland and it was almost always triggered by the classic rock station playing one of his songs--usually "Jack and Diane."

Over the years, this week's album has become my favourite.  It doesn't hurt that it opens with my favourite song of his.  Please enjoy John "Cougar" Mellencamp (as he was known then) with his 1983 album Uh-huh.

Until next week, stay safe, be good to your neighbours, and forget all about that macho shit and learn how to play guitar!

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 probably should have saved this for a few weeks, but with the UFC fight on the White House lawn set to happen tomorrow to commemorate the country's 250th anniversary--just as the Founding Fathers intended, I have no doubt--I was reminded of something else that once demonstrated our superiority on an international level.  There was no major fighting, no body count, no... toxic masculinity.  And they made a movie about it to boot.

I love it when movies are based on a true story or, even better, "inspired by true events."  The screenwriters often have a lot of leeway to imagine what actually happened that was not really documented that led to actual events that were.  In many cases, these imaginings are probably a bit more dramatic and tense then they were in real life, but it makes for a good movie.  Sometimes I often find myself wanting it to have happened the way it was depicted in the film--even in films like The Right Stuff which was based on well-documented actual events.  (I certainly hope the origin of "The Shepard's Prayer" as depicted in that movie actually happened the way they show it, primarily because I say it every time I get behind the wheel of my car.  You can look that one up, if you're not familiar with the term.)

The facts are these--Steven Spurrier was a British wine merchant who was a champion of French wines.  He moved to Paris in 1970 and opened his own specialist wine shop.  Along with Jon Winwroth and Patricia Gallagher, he co-founded L'Academie du Vin, a private wine school, which taught students the finer points of oenology.  In 1976, around the time of America's bicentennial, Spurrier had heard about wine makers in the Napa Valley area of California and set up a blind taste test among French wine snobs to demonstrate France's superiority at wine making.  Spoiler alert--in what became known as "The Judgement of Paris," the California wines won the blind test and completely upended the wine industry.  After an article was published in Time, people all over the country were dying to try these wines, particularly the 1973 Chateau Montelena, the Chardonnay that won the white wine category.  Since, at the time, no one outside of Napa Valley was drinking wine from Napa Valley, they had a lot of difficulty finding it.

In 2008, a movie was made about the events leading up to the competition.  Alan Rickman played Steven Spurrier.  His one regular "customer" in his wine shop is American expat, Maurice Cantavale (played by Dennis Farina).  Maurice tells Steven that he's heard about some really good wines that are being produced in America, specifically in California's Napa Valley region.  Skeptical, Steven travels to California to check it out.  He meets Jim Barrett (played by Bill Pullman) who gave up his former life as a lawyer to buy a vineyard.  He and his slacker/stoner son Bo (Chris Pine) run the vineyard, trying desperately--well, Jim is the one really trying--to make the perfect wine.  Helping them out is Jim's friend Gustavo (Freddy Rodriguez) who, unbeknownst to them, is making his own wine on the side.  The film depicts a lot of tension between father and son regarding the present and future of Jim's seemingly hare-brained dream.

Watching this movie again made me wish I remembered the events depicted.  Although I was alive during the time, my earliest memories took place a week after the bicentennial.  Consequently, I had no real understanding of the larger world around me--certainly not when it came to adult beverages.  Watching it made me feel patriotic in a way.  I suddenly found myself proud to be an American... in the strictest, non-Lee Greenwood sense of the phrase.  (Dear God, I hate that song--always have.)  Overall, I think it's a much classier version of America than what can be presented in a UFC fight.... or any kind of fight, for that matter.

For his performance, Alan Rickman went on to win (and I swear I'm not making this up) the Golden Space Needle Award at the Seattle International Film Festival.  Featuring a rockin' 1970s soundtrack (a little heavy on The Doobie Brothers, but rockin' nonetheless), the film was directed by Randall Miller who also co-wrote it with Jody Savin and Ross Schwartz.  Co-starring Rachael Taylor, Miguel Sandoval, and Eliza Dushku, please enjoy Bottle Shock.

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 had an idea for a movie some years back.  It would star Hugh Grant, Hugh Laurie, and Anthony Head as brothers.  Honestly, that was it.  I had no real plot or story--I kind of pictured Hugh Grant as the black sheep of the family, but beyond that, I was never able to come up with anything.  Not working in show business, life outside of show business always seemed to get in the way.

I was reminded of this last Friday whilst looking at my Facebook memories before work.  Apparently, nine years ago, I posted this idea.  I remembered the memory and went to work giving it no more thought in the moment.  A few hours later, I got a text from my sister that read, "Sorry to hear about Anthony Stewart Head."  I hadn't heard or read anything yet so--figuring he either died or had been accused of sexuaul misconduct (frankly, I don't know which would be worse)--I did a quick Google search and discovered he had in fact died from complications of pneumonia at the age of 72.

Like most Americans, I was first aware of Head's work through his performance as Rupert Giles on the show "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."  I always say that I kind of wanted to be like Spike and I was more like Xander in real life, but, as the son of a librarian, I kind of identified with Giles.  I also enjoy cross-referencing.  Hell, given half a chance, I might have even slept with Buffy's mom.   I must confess, I watched it on DVD after it went off the air in 2003.  But as the series progressed, I realized what a good actor Head was, not to mention a musician--more on that in a bit.

(In the extra features on the DVDs, it was mentioned that Head first came to prominence in America in a series of commercials for Taster's Choice coffee in which a romance blossomed between Head and Sharon Maughan over a mutual love of coffee.  These actually aired when I was in high school and I do remember them as we would sit around as a family and make fun of them.)

In the twenty years since I first saw "Buffy" I would tend to notice when he appeared in something I liked, or even something I wanted to see or even still want to see.  I regret to say that I've still never seen "Little Britain" and his uncredited appearance in Tim Burton's adaptation of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.  And I would have loved to have seen his performance as Dr. Frank-N-Furter in the West End Revival of The Rocky Horror Picture Show in the early 1990s.

Also, like most Americans, I most recently saw him in the show "Ted Lasso," which my sister gave me as an early birthday present to enjoy while recovering from hip replacement surgery.  (Weirdly, she also gave me the first three seasons of "Buffy" when I had my previous hip replacement.)  I was delighted by the entire show, but Head's performance stood out to me.  Frankly, the character of Rupert Mannion was a bit of an asshole, which also quite delighted me.  I had never seen him play one before.  The closest I had seen--since no one else is bringing it up--was his appearance in the last four episodes of the sixth season of the highly underrated "Monarch of the Glen."  His character of Chester Grant was more of a prick than an asshole and he became relatively likeable by the end, but he was still not the reserved, charming Englishman to which I'd been overexposed in over 120 episodes of "Buffy."  But Grant was absolutely nothing compared to Mannion and I'm sorry he won't be around for the upcoming fourth season, which I assume will be dedicated to him in some way, shape, or form.

The one great thing that "Buffy" did was show me--show us all--that not only was Head a great actor, but he was also quite the impressive singer and musician.  During the show's seven-season run, there were a number of instances where we got to hear Giles sing and even play the guitar--most notably in the famous musical episode, "Once More, With Feeling."  The following year, he really showed off his musically creative side by releasing an album with musician George Sarah.  The two wrote the bulk of the songs (Head wrote the lyrics and Sarah wrote the music and produced the album).  I hadn't listened to it in a long time, but I felt compelled to do so after finding out about his passing (not to mention the passing of his long-term partner and mother to his children in January!).  Initially, I thought it was a little synth-heavy.  I still think that, but after twenty years, I've come to believe it's one of the album's strengths.  It gives the whole thing a nice ambient melancholy that may be best appreciated at certain times.  And who knew that Anthony Head could play the sitar?

Featuring appearances by "Buffy" costars James Marsters, Amber Benson, and Alyson Hannigan, this week--since no one else has seemed to mention it in all the tributes to him--please enjoy the newly late, great Anthony (Stewart) Head and George Sarah with their 2002 album, aptly titled Music For Elevators.

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!

"You can keep your Marxist ways, for it's only just a phase,

For it's money, money, money, makes the world... go... round!"

--Monty Python, "Money Song" (written by Eric Idle and John Gould)

I alluded to this week's film a couple of weeks ago when I wrote about films of the 1970s, specifically that week Albert Brooks's film Real Life.  Both films eerily predicted a lot of things that in the last half century have become so commonplace we don't even really give it much thought today.  The word "prescient" gets thrown around a lot, particularly when discussing this week's film.

I watched it again this past week.  I first saw it 20 years ago and I found it powerful and thought provoking then.  It resonated even more with me this week in the wake of "The Late Show" going off the air.

In the movie, news anchor Howard Beale (played by Peter Finch) is essentially fired because of bad ratings.  After making a spectacle on live television that draws in quite an audience, the network decides to give him his own show in which he tells a studio audience--and millions of viewers watching at home--exactly what's wrong with the world today and what they need to do to fix it.  After Beale convinces his audience to try to kill a business deal that his network is trying to secure, the network realizes that he might be a liability to their bottom line and devises ways of bringing him under control.

Since the film was released 50 years ago, we've pretty much erased the line between news and entertainment.  It is ostensibly a satire of media culture.  It's a biting critique about how corporate greed has taken control of everything.  In the movie, much like in real life, networks are being run by corporations with only one guiding principle--to make as much money as they possibly can, any way they can.  We saw that in Paramount's decision to axe Stephen Colbert.  They argue that it was financial.  A lot of people (myself included) think it was political.  Honestly, what's the difference at this point?  Paramount wanted to merge with Skydance and the administration needed to approve the merger.  The administration has made it clear they don't like Colbert.  Getting rid of him would definitely make the merger more appealing to the government.  Even from a political perspective, the move was still financially motivated.

Paddy Chayefsky's Oscar-winning script is a feast for the ears.  Watching the movie, you can tell that every actor was relishing their dialogue--especially the lengthy monologues.  Beale's speech about how "there's an entire generation that never knew anything that didn't come out of this tube," is even sadder to contemplate when you realize that this now encompasses at least three generations.  When Arthur Jensen (played by Ned Beatty) takes Beale to task for "meddling with the forces of nature," one really believes that there are no nations, just a list of corporations and conglomerations and an "international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet.  That is the natural order of things today."  Honestly, if this is what Chayefsky thought of television, I envy him for not living long enough to see what the internet has brought us.

The movie has proven to be quite prescient indeed.  In the commentary track on the DVD, recorded in 2006, director Sidney Lumet says that everything that is depicted in the film has since actually happened in real life with the exception of the end of the movie.  And he seemed pretty convinced that he would live to see that happen too.  (Lumet died in 2011 at the age of 86.  I'm glad to say it still hasn't happened.  However, who knows what will happen tomorrow?)  Even my favourite screenwriter, Aaron Sorkin, wrote, "no predictor of the future, not even Orwell, has ever been as right as Chayefsky was when he wrote Network."

The film went on to set a number of Academy Award records.  Peter Finch died before the Oscars were awarded in 1977 and became the first actor to receive one posthumously.  Beatrice Straight won Best Supporting Actress in spite of only being in two scenes with a total screen time of just over five minutes.  Hers is the shortest performance to win an Oscar.  (It should be noted that Ned Beatty also received a Best Supporting Actor nomination and he appeared in the movie for just under six minutes.)  Finally, with this film, Paddy Chayefsky became the only screenwriter to win three Oscars for solo writing.  (He also won in 1956 for Marty and again in 1972 for The Hospital.)

Even after half a century, the premise is still so relevant that it was adapted for the London stage in 2017 starring Bryan Cranston as Beale, opposite Michelle Dockery.  A year later, Cranston continued the role on Broadway with Tatiana Maslany and Tony Goldwyn.

Originally released in 1976, starring William Holden, Faye Dunaway, and Robert Duvall, and directed by Sidney Lumet, please enjoy Network.  It might make you mad as hell too.

As I said in my album "sermon," I'll be taking a couple weeks off because of family commitments.  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