Passages

[Matt]

Downey was the worst of a bad bunch, but so awful it seemed like an extended performance art piece.

Donahue was memorably satirized by the great Phil Hartman on SNL.

And a couple of Donahue’s most memorable shows were his “Club Kids” episode and the appearance by 2 Live Crew.

[domino harvey]

Sad to say I don’t think I realized he ruled, he just blended in to the other talk show hosts of the time for lil me. If I’d have had to guess, I’d have thought he was in line with Maury Povich or Jenny Jones

[hearthesilence]

Can't believe I remember this, but I watched one and only one episode of Donahue as a kid. Questlove memorialized Donahue on his IG account as someone kids watched when they were home, sick from school, so for a moment I thought that was the reason I saw it, but thanks to the magic of Google, not only did I find the episode in question, I found out it was a highly popular episode that set a record for most transcript requests - with that in mind, it's possible my family got a videotape copy from a friend and I saw them watching it after the fact, otherwise it would seem extremely lucky that I would've caught that particular episode of all the ones they made. Anyway, blew my young mind that you could make Reese's Pieces at home. This was what Donahue was reduced to in order to compete in later years.

But per the obits, he established his name doing shows on serious topics, and making them hinge on audience participation. (The fact that they decided to have no desk, i.e. have Donahue roam around with a microphone the entire time, was considered innovative.) It was mostly spurred by necessity - no celebrity was going to fly to Dayton, Ohio to do a talk show, so discussions on hot topics in the news seemed like a viable way of getting people to watch, especially if audience members could be involved.

The topics alone show how conservative the culture used to be (and what unfortunately the GOP seems hellbent on pushing on us again): debates on school prayer, premarital sex and what's now very dated views on homosexuality. But it was groundbreaking and could very well have helped steer the culture in a better direction.

EDIT: Here's an excellent example given by the New York Times:

In November 1982, Donahue used his show to elevate a quickly growing and widely misunderstood illness called AIDS, making him among the first to discuss the crisis on a public stage.

Instead of adding to the early fearmongering and confusion of the time, he set out to inform his audience about the then mysterious ailment by interviewing Philip Lanzaratta, who had AIDS; Dr. Dan William, who practiced in New York and diagnosed AIDS patients; and Larry Kramer, a screenwriter who helped found Gay Men’s Health Crisis and who had at that point already lost 17 close friends to AIDS.

“We’re two years into this illness now, and I’d venture to say that most of your audience still hasn’t heard about it,” Kramer said.

The episode, which was filmed in Chicago, tackled the crisis from numerous angles. Donahue and his guests, sitting around a table onstage, addressed the increasing number of cases; high-risk groups; symptoms and medical treatments; the possibility that a virus might be causing AIDS; the gay community’s response; and discrimination against gay people.

“Let’s make this point,” Donahue said early in the broadcast. “When the gay community has a problem, it does not get immediate, enthusiastic establishment support for whatever might ail it. We do live in a homophobic nation.”

Otherwise, besides that SNL parody above, most of what I know about Donahue came from old Letterman reruns, as memorialized here on their official YouTube channel. As mentioned in that clip, he was based in Chicago for a while but moved to NYC in 1985, so I never knew him as a local institution - Oprah took his place in that regard in a big way.

[Godot]

I suspect many of you are too young to have watched his daily talk show, but he always brought a sensitivity and desire for understanding even to the most sensational subject. ... Donahue was always a real one, a classic one-big-world liberal.

And ... he's in the Collection! In Dressed to Kill, spine #770, Dr. Elliott and Liz are each (separately, in split screen) watching the 1979 Donahue episode featuring transsexual Nancy Hunt, a clever exposition clip De Palma inserts to explain the basics for unaware audience members.

I remember watching various Donahue episodes in the late '70s-early '80s, having grown up near Chicago in a Cosmopolitan- (and Ms.-, and the occasional scandalous Playgirl-) reading household of mostly women. As Matt noted, he was considered groundbreaking for his sensitivity and fairness, and far ahead of more traditional news shows in addressing AIDS and gay community topics.

[brundlefly]

I suspect many of you are too young to have watched his daily talk show, but he always brought a sensitivity and desire for understanding even to the most sensational subject. ... Donahue was always a real one, a classic one-big-world liberal.

And ... he's in the Collection! In Dressed to Kill, spine #770, Dr. Elliott and Liz are each (separately, in split screen) watching the 1979 Donahue episode featuring transsexual Nancy Hunt, a clever exposition clip De Palma inserts to explain the basics for unaware audience members.

Was tempted to mention this, and I think De Palma cited it as one of the inspirations for the film, but I wonder at the decision to license the footage to him and allow its real-life figure to be subjected to his warped context.

[hearthesilence]

Jazz guitarist Russell Malone according to social media. Shocking news as he was only 60. I just saw him perform three months ago.

[Aunt Peg]

Russell Stone from R&J Stone best known for their big 1976 hit 'We Do It', His wife Joanne passed away in 1979.

https://soultracks.com/rj-stone-singer- ... tone-dies/

[dadaistnun]

Catherine Ribeiro

[hearthesilence]

Announced on social media, Patrick Auffay (Patrick Jeffries-Britten) who played René Bigey in Truffaut's Antoine Doinel series, most prominently in Les quatre cents coups.

[pistolwink]

Catherine Ribeiro

Brilliant musician. A film connection is that Patrice Moullet, brother of filmmaker and critic Luc Moullet, was a mainstay of her bands. He's discussed briefly in Nick Pinkerton's conversation with Luc Moullet in the 2nd issue of Bombast.

[Aunt Peg]

Writer/director Jean-Charles Tacchella 98 probably best known for Cousin Cousine (1975).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Charles_Tacchella

[MichaelB]

Playwright Roy Minton, best known for multiple collaborations with kindred spirit Alan Clarke in general, and the two versions of Scum (1977 and 1979) in particular - a rare instance of the same script being filmed twice in quick succession by the same director with more or less the same cast.

(Although this isn't unique - indeed, at pretty much the same time Andrei Tarkovsky was shooting Stalker twice over, although in this case the 1977 version had been suppressed thanks to a lab fuck-up rather than BBC censorship.)

[colinr0380]

There is also Mike Figgis with Timecode, although that was 14 'versions' (arguably 'rehearsals') of the same material to work out and smooth out timings for the camera and actors for the single-take production before the final "Version 15" run through that became the final film. The US DVD contains both "Version 1" and "Version 15" for comparison purposes (the biggest difference aside from the rougher timings is that Laurie Metcalf is playing the therapist counselling Saffron Burrows' character in the opening section of "Version 1", whilst Glenne Headley was playing the role on the final day)

[MichaelB]

That's not really the same thing as two entirely separate productions made at least a year apart.

[GaryC]

Playwright Roy Minton, best known for multiple collaborations with kindred spirit Alan Clarke in general, and the two versions of Scum (1977 and 1979) in particular - a rare instance of the same script being filmed twice in quick succession by the same director with more or less the same cast.

(Although this isn't unique - indeed, at pretty much the same time Andrei Tarkovsky was shooting Stalker twice over, although in this case the 1977 version had been suppressed thanks to a lab fuck-up rather than BBC censorship.)

Woody Allen with September, though he recast three of the roles.

Interesting to hear that the script was the same for Scum as the cinema version has a lot of strong language which isn't in the TV version and which wouldn't have been allowed to be, the strongest word there being "effing". Other differences are due to BBC edits (e.g. the other suicide) or Ray WInstone being uncomfortable with Carlin having a "missus".

[Forrest Taft]

Way off topic for this thread, but one of the more fascinating recent examples of this is Paolo Genovese's 2016 film Perfetti sconosciuti, which to date has been remade 25 times. Most European countries have done a version (the Spanish one was directed by Álex de la Iglesia). I remember the Norwegian one being heavily promoted at the time of it's release, but the trailer didn't tempt me to check it out. But I was surprised when I looked it up, and realized was from a script that had already been filmed 15-20 times in only a few years.

[GaryC]

Australian playwright Jack Hibberd, sometimes billed as John Hibberd, aged 84. His best-known play, Dimboola, was filmed in 1979, directed by John Duigan, for which he wrote the screenplay. Another play, Three Old Friends, was adapted into a 1974 short film directed by Tim Burstall.

[charal]

I still remember our class reading his play WHITE WITH WIRE WHEELS in English class in the 70s. The B & W TV version of DIMBOOLA was an extra feature on the 2-disc Umbrella DVD. Unlike the film it stays closer to the original text.

[hearthesilence]

George French, renowned New Orleans jazz and rhythm & blues bassist and singer

[Fred Holywell]

Actor James Darren, at age 88.

[fdm]

Sergio Mendes

[hearthesilence]

Dan Morgenstern, per Loren Schoenberg who posted the following:

It breaks my heart to write this, with the family's permission.
More thorough obituaries and reminiscences will be sure to follow, sooner rather than later.

Dan Morgenstern

Born: October 24, 1929, Munich, Germany
Died: September 7, 2024, New York, New York

Dan Morgenstern has left this earthly vale after a lengthy illness. He leaves a void for his family (wife Ellie, sons Adam and Josh) and friends and the untold numbers around the world who valued his words on jazz and life. Dan's footprint on our culture also went way beyond words.

It’s not just musicians who have influenced the ecology of jazz during its century of ascendency. Although neither a grandstander nor a bandstander, Dan Morgenstern deserves a special place in the history and continuing evolution of this great American art form.

Dan was at root a mentor and a humanitarian: through his voluminous writing, pioneering leadership of the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University, and stewardship of major jazz publications, Dan always remained far above the partisan battles that mar what is known as the “critical community”. He championed the cause of so many artists paying no heed to the fads of the day, while never attaching himself like a barnacle to their careers, as so many “critics” have. He sat on innumerable arts foundations panels, always as an advocate for deserving talent and sensitive to the proper respect for the art form.

He saw the glass as far more than half full.

Dan was not a “jazz critic”, oh no. His purview was far wider. He survived the ascent of Nazism in his native Europe and, by the time he arrived in New York at the age of 18, had the ability to appreciate jazz and its makers for what they truly were. Dan told the harrowing story of those years in his indispensable book LIVING WITH JAZZ.

Legendary trumpeter Hot Lips Page picked up on Dan’s essence right away, and took him under his wing. Under Page’s patronage, the 18 year-old Dan was able to hear/see/meet Art Tatum, Billie Holiday and untold others in the Harlem after-hour spots. Like a moth to the flame, Dan soon wound up in Louis Armstrong’s sphere, where he gradually became a member of the family. His major achievement was to translate the essence of that music and those lives into his life’s work, no matter what professional hat he wore.

Dan’s true peers are the great jazz musicians he has lived among all these years.

Who else do you know who was beloved by Alban Berg, Louis Armstrong, Randy Weston, and Ornette Coleman, to name just a handful of his friends, and also by so many of us today as mourn his loss?

I find solace in imagining the look on his dear departed friends’ faces as Louis plays a fanfare welcoming Dan into eternity.

[GaryC]

Herbie Flowers, aged 86. A leading session bassist, mainly in the 1970s, he was also at times a member of T. Rex, Blue Mink and Sky. His best known performance is undoubtedly for Lou Reed's "Walk on the Wild Side" (a double bass and an electric fretless, so he had a double session fee for playing two instruments), but there are plenty of other standouts, including David Bowie's "Space Oddity", David Essex's "Rock On" and Harry Nilsson's "Jump into the Fire". He also co-wrote Clive Dunn's UK number one single "Grandad".

[GaryC]

Norman Spencer, producer and production manager, working frequently with David Lean, for whom he also co-wrote the screenplay of Hobson's Choice, on 16 August, three days after his 110th birthday. He was the UK's second-oldest man at the time of his death.

Somehow he missed this forum's centenarian list. There are very few people with IMDB entries who went on to reach supercentenarian age, other than actual supercentenarians appearing as themselves in documentaries, and Jeanne Calment playing herself in a Canadian film called Vincent and Me at the age of 114. In fact I know of only three others, all women - Frederica Sagor Maas (screenwriter), Mabel Richardson (actress, with two uncredited roles on IMDB) and Ruthie Tompson (animator, mostly for Disney).

[beamish14]

Norman Spencer, producer and production manager, working frequently with David Lean, for whom he also co-wrote the screenplay of Hobson's Choice, on 16 August, three days after his 110th birthday. He was the UK's second-oldest man at the time of his death.

Somehow he missed this forum's centenarian list. There are very few people with IMDB entries who went on to reach supercentenarian age, other than actual supercentenarians appearing as themselves in documentaries, and Jeanne Calment playing herself in a Canadian film called Vincent and Me at the age of 114. In fact I know of only three others, all women - Frederica Sagor Maas (screenwriter), Mabel Richardson (actress, with two uncredited roles on IMDB) and Ruthie Tompson (animator, mostly for Disney).

Goddamn, he even produced Vanishing Point