The Screengrab : adam west

Beatty vs. Tribune Syndicate: The Battle Over Dick Tracy

Phil Nugent — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 21:00:00 GMT

Warren Beatty is being sued over the rights to Dick Tracy, the square-jawed supercop who was created by cartoonist Chester Gould in 1931. Beatty, who bought the rights to the character in 1985, has had some kind of Tracy obsession for much of his career; he used to talk about his lust to don the detective's yellow hat and two-way wrist radio in interviews going back to the 1960s, when talk of a movie based on a comic strip automatically inspired talk about Pop Art and the kind of jolly, mass-market camp typified by the Adam West Batman TV show. When Beatty finally got around to making 1990's Dick Tracy, the film was released in the shadow of Tim Burton's Batman, and Beatty, said by some to be nervous that he was no longer a box office draw for young audiences, consented to a publicity campaign geared around Madonna's role as a singing femme fatale. (In addition to starring as Tracy, Beatty both directed and produced that movie.) In recent years, Beatty has been heard to kick around the idea of doing Dick Tracy II or maybe a TV special, and in 2006 he took Tribune Media Services, which syndicates the comic strip, to court to establish that he still has the rights to the strip. The latest developments stem from Tribune's charges that if Beatty wants to grind out a TV show for no reason except to extend his claim to the rights to the character. The rights may revert to Tribune if the court decides that Beatty has let ten years lapse without making any "productive use" of them.

Gould, who retired from the strip in 1977 (it would be kept alive by other hands) and who died in 1985, apparently not upon hearing that his creation had fallen into the hands of Warren Beatty, created a distinctively flinty world, characterized by what the comics critic R. Fiore called an "unforgiving Calvinism", in which the grimly moralistic Tracy did whatever it took to bring a semblance of order to an urban landscape populated by dupes, saps, and brutish monsters whose misshapen souls had turned their features into Halloween masks. Such characters as the hit man Flattop Jones and the Nazi agent Pruneface might have taken their cues from Richard III's opening soliloquy: "Cheated of feature by dissembling nature/ Deform'd, unfinish'd, sent before my time/ Into this breathing world, scarce half made up/ And that so lamely and unfashionable/ That dogs bark at me, as I halt by them.../And therefore, — since I cannot prove a lover/ To entertain these fair well-spoken days/ I am determined to prove a villain/ And hate the idle pleasures of these days." (The Screengrab: your one-stop on-line shop for comics rants and Shakespeare quotes.)

So far, no screen adaptation of the strip has really tapped into the fevered, hard-boiled nightmare quality of Gould's best early work, which after a long stretch out of print has recently begun reappearing in a series of hardcover volumes from IDW Publishing, beginning in 2006. (Volume 7, with Flattop on the cover, arrives late next month.) Republic Pictures, and later RKO, produced a string of Dick Tracy movies in the 1930s, most of which starred the colorless Ralph Byrd; in the 1960s, UPA produced a series of five-minute cartoons with Everett Sloane providing the voice of Tracy. These are best remembered for the supporting cast, a veritable United Nations of offensive ethnic stereotypes that included such worthies as Go-Go Gomez and Joe Jitsu. (These characters were voiced by Mel Blanc. I'd like to believe that he was high on something at the time.) The question of who may get to take the next crack at getting it right has recently taken on new significance with the bankruptcy of TMS's parent company, the Tribune Company, which filed for Chapter 11 protection late last year, while struggling under a debt load of some $13 billion. Having exclusive rights to Tracy again would be a major asset for a company that can't afford to be picky about where its next meal is coming from.

Unwatchable #42: Zombie Nightmare

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 19:30:00 GMT

Our fearless – and quite possibly senseless – movie janitor is watching every movie on the IMDb Bottom 100 list. Join us now for another installment of Unwatchable.

I don't like to feel sorry for myself when I'm writing up these Unwatchable entries. I took this task on voluntarily, and I'm determined to see it through, so there's no point whining about it. I'll just say this: nobody's life should have this many zombie movies in it. OK, maybe George Romero is an exception, but at least he's made a good living at it. Me, I've got at least one SXSW zombie movie on deck later this week, and now this...thing.

I'll give Zombie Nightmare this much: it's an old school, voodoo-based zombie movie, which makes it a change of pace from all the apocalyptic walking dead flicks we've been bombarded with of late. Jon Mikl Thor stars as Tony Washington, a hulking, heavily mulleted young man who favors ripped muscle shirts that flatter his well-oiled physique. If you remember the Barbarian Brothers, well, picture one of them. I'm not sure which.

After busting up a liquor store robbery with a baseball bat, Tony is unceremoniously flattened by a carload of joyriding teens. His grieving mother summons the local voodoo priestess, who reluctantly transforms the late lad into an undead vengeance machine. Zombie Tony makes the rounds, tracking down the unrepentent young people who caused his demise and returning the favor. The local police captain (Adam West) is content to pin the crimes on a scuzzy punk rocker, but the murders continue until the fresh-faced young cop tracks Zombie Tony down at the warehouse where he's cornered his latest victims.

Anyone nostalgic for slow zombies will find what they're looking for here, but sadly, Zombie Tony's sluggish pace has infected the entire movie surrounding him. Adam West fans shouldn't get too excited either, as TV's Batman has limited screen time (although he does eventually get dragged into hell). Those of you who can't get enough of '80s fashions, hairstyles, heavy metal (including incidental music by the star's band Thor as well as powerful synthesizer riffs by "Thorkestra") and Tia Carrere (the actress, not the band) may be able to salvage some entertainment value from Zombie Nightmare, but I wouldn't count on it.

Previously on Unwatchable:
43. American Ninja V
44. Leonard Part 6
45. Another 9 1/2 Weeks
46. 3 Ninjas: High Noon on Mega Mountain
47. Creepshow 3

Video of the Day: "Dark Knight", Schmark Knight

Leonard Pierce — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 15:45:00 GMT

While everyone sits around whingeing about whether or not the late Heath Ledger is going to win an Oscar for his portrayal of the Joker in Christopher Nolan's made-more-cheddar-than-Kraft The Dark Knight, we're all about honoring the past here at the Screengrab. And what better way to honor the past than to show the audition test that got Adam West and a classy young fella named Burton Gervis their gigs as Batman and Robin?

Just imagine if the runners-up, Lyle Waggoner and Peter Deyell, would have gotten the job! Uh...never mind.

Summer of '78: "Hooper"

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Each Thursday this summer we’ll hop in the Screengrab time machine and jump back thirty years to see what was new and exciting at the neighborhood moviehouse this week in…The Summer of ’78! I’ve been on vacation, so this week we’re catching up on the past few Thursdays.

Hooper

Release Date: July 28, 1978

Cast: Burt Reynolds, Jan-Michael Vincent, Sally Field, Brian Keith, Robert Klein, Adam West

The Buzz: “It just ain’t summer without Burt!” (That is, assuming Jimmy Carter is still the president.)

Keywords: Stuntman, Driving Backwards, Rocket Car, Bar Fight, Person on Fire

The Plot: Sonny Hooper (Burt Reynolds) is the greatest stuntman alive, but some fear he’s getting a little long in the tooth. His latest gig is doubling for Adam West, star of The Spy Who Laughed at Danger. (The notion that West would be headlining a big action movie as late as 1978 is one of Hooper’s more implausible elements.) During a barroom brawl at the Palomino, Hooper bonds with up-and-coming golden boy Ski (Jan-Michael Vincent), who is also working on the film. They develop a friendly rivalry on the set, with each trying to top the other with ever more outrageous stunts. This does nothing to help Hooper with his escalating dependence on painkillers, nor his deteriorating relationship with long-suffering girlfriend Gwen (Sally Field). Hooper’s doctor informs him that one more big jolt could paralyze him for life, but that doesn’t stop Hooper from taking on a risky rocket-car gag that could end his career. Take a wild guess if it does.

The Test of Time: Who knew what a cornucopia of embarrassing admissions this Summer of ’78 feature would turn out to be for me? I’ve already copped to owning novelizations of all the Omen movies as well as the Heaven Can Wait Fotonovel, but I can probably top all of that with the admission that I also had the Hooper soundtrack album. At least Smokey and the Bandit featured songs by Jerry Reed; the title track from Hooper is performed by someone named Bent Myggen and is perhaps the only song in recorded history to feature the line “Set him on fire, it will amuse him.” Of course, this latest revelation of mine comes as no surprise to the bazillions of you who keep copies of my book Hick Flicks within reach of your toilet seats. (And if you aren’t one of them, why not buy a copy today? Come on, people, I’m currently ranked # 1,090,823 on Amazon. Help me out here.) As far as the Burt Reynolds/Hal Needham southern fried ouvre goes, Hooper falls short of Smokey but finishes far ahead of Stroker Ace and the Cannonball Run collection. Allow me to quote myself from my magnum opus: “What sets Hooper apart is its insider’s view of a working class subculture within the motion picture industry. The stuntmen are a tight-knight group, clowning around on the set and playing bumper cars on the freeway en route to their favorite watering hole. They know they’re the workhorses of the picture, but even though they’re basically blue collar guys, they’ve got show biz hearts. They do impressions of stars like Jimmy Stewart and Gregory Peck to crack each other up, and get together to drink beer and watch their stunt reels for the thousandth time. There’s an improvisational spontaneity to such scenes; a “morning after” sequence in which Reynolds and Brian Keith slowly roust themselves from hangover oblivion is particularly well-observed.”

Quotable Quote: “I'm gonna find the guy who invented Zylocaine and kiss his ass on Hollywood and Vine!”

2008 Equivalent: This is a tough one, but I’ll give it to Hancock. Like Burt in the '70s, Will Smith is our current Mr. Summer, with a similar “It’s me, your buddy!” persona winking through every role. Plus Hancock is a two-syllable character name title starting with H – just like Hooper!

Previously on Summer of '78: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

Batman: The Lost Years

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 18:30:00 GMT

You kids today, with your sequels and remakes and instantaneous re-boots, you’re spoiled! Between The Dark Knight and Gotham Knight and umpteen animated Bat-shows on the tube, you’re up to your pointy ears in Batman. It wasn’t like this back in my day, let me tell you. Growing up as a Batman fan in the 70s and early 80s, I would have killed for just one Batman movie, any Batman movie, even one directed by Joel Schumacher. But between the end of the ABC television series in 1968 and the first Tim Burton movie in 1989, there was a long Bat-drought, broken up only by the occasional rumor and ill-conceived attempt at resurrection.

As far as the comic books were concerned, mind you, we had it pretty good. My childhood coincided with two of the most acclaimed eras of the Dark Knight’s career. The Denny O’Neil/Neal Adams reign of the ’70s is rightly credited with restoring some mystery and moodiness to the character after several decades worth of goofy gimmickry. Those issues weren’t “dark” in the Frank Miller psycho-Batman sense – they were still kid-friendly, but just gritty and grimy enough to open the doorway to the adult world a crack for a young reader like myself. In one of my earliest childhood memories, I am practically grinding the 1973 issue “The Joker’s Five-Way Revenge” into dust with repeated re-readings. (There are rumors that The Dark Knight draws heavily on that particular story.) Later that decade, Steve Englehart and Marshall Rogers collaborated on a brief but memorable run of Detective Comics; their noirish, atmospheric take on Batman was later collected in the trade paperback Strange Apparitions.

Those of us who wanted to see our hero come to life on the screen, however, were basically shit out of luck. There was the occasional rerun of the ’60s TV series, which was fun for a kid with no conception of the word “campy,” and there was a Saturday morning cartoon, but that was about it until an ad for an NBC show called Legends of the Superheroes appeared in the TV Guide one week in 1979. This seemed to come out of nowhere, and I couldn’t have been more excited; not only did it promise live-action Batman and Robin, but a bunch of my other Justice League favorites like the Flash and Green Lantern, as well as a passel of great supervillains. Then the thing actually aired and my heart sank. There were two episodes total, a “Challenge” and an Ed McMahon-hosted superhero roast, both shot on videotape and featuring a laugh track. This was not what I’d had in mind:

These things made the Star Wars Holiday Special look like The Sopranos by comparison, and were quickly, mercifully forgotten. Not long afterward, however, rumors began to surface of an impending big-screen version of Batman. Back then we didn’t have the Ain’t-It-Cools and Dark Horizons tracking every blip and fart out of Hollywood; no, we were reliant mainly on Starlog magazine to keep us abreast of such happenings. In 1980, a small blurb indicated that a Batman movie would be in theaters by Christmas of 1981, with rights-holder Michael Uslan announcing, “This film will be done straight.” An update in October 1981 indicated that the original timeline may have been a little ambitious. Despite continued claims by the producers that the movie would be truer to the dark origins of the character, Adam West was now angling to reprise the role. When asked if he would be willing to take on a smaller role – say, that of Bruce Wayne’s father – the man who was then starring in the likes of The Happy Hooker Goes Hollywood huffed, “If the character was important enough and handled well…I might consider it.” Even then, this made me laugh. Nonetheless, a whole “Put the Man Back in Batman” movement was launched, dedicated to restoring West to his rightful place under the cowl. There were ads, petitions and even a song, which fell on deaf ears.

A 1983 profile of Tom Mankiewicz revealed that longtime James Bond screenwriter was working on a script then titled The Batman. “We’re trying to return to the original concept – Batman as a dark avenger of the night,” said Mankiewicz. “The villains, while being outrageous, will be very cruel people.” While he wanted an unknown in the title role, his wish list for the supporting cast included Peter O’Toole as The Penguin, David Niven as Alfred, and…Jack Nicholson as the Joker. Of course, only the latter came to pass, and by the time it did I was past my Bat-prime. But it’s still possible to get a glimpse of the movie that might have been; the Mankiewicz script can be found here.