Well, my son is on the mend, and I’m back in the saddle. I hope you all had the best Holiday season ever!

Firstly, a fond farewell to a man who was known primarily for having no face. Earl Hindman, the elusive ‘Wilson’ on the sitcom “Home Improvement” died of cancer at his home at the age of 61. Hindman appeared in many movies in his career, and I had the treat of working with him in the original, “The Taking of Pelham 123” and he was a delightfully funny man. He will be missed.

Also, the passing of a cultural icon whose gentle demeanor enriched several generations. Bob Keeshan, better known as “Captain Kangaroo”, died at his home in Vermont after a long bout with cancer at the age of 76. Oddly, he was only 31 years old when he began playing his signature role in 1955. The show won six Emmys, three Gabriels, and three Peabody awards, and ran from 1955 to 1984, when Keeshan suffered a heart attack and had to retire. Keeshan also played the title role in a short-lived spin-off series, “Mr. Mayor” for two years. Also noteworthy, his sidekick, Mr. Greenjeans, (played by Hugh Brannum,) was the father of seventies rock icon, Frank Zappa. Captain Kangaroo pioneered children’s educational television be including guests who explained everything from simple physics, to how to build various projects for school and for fun. But, fun was always the main focus of “Captain Kangaroo”, with the Captain dealing with such beloved characters as Mr. Moose, Bunny Rabbit, and the narcoleptic Grandfather Clock. For those of us who spent our mornings watching the show before school, we’ll most likely never be able to watch a ping-pong game again, without a lump in our throats.

I apologize profusely for not being able to warn you all of the most appalling con-job in movie history. To wit, the totally misleading title of the new Steve Martin movie, “Cheaper by the Dozen”, touted as a remake, yet not even barely resembling the movie or the book it claims to be based upon. Granted, the movie manages, (barely,) to capture the farmished pace and frantic confusion of the original, but the post-gilded age charm is farblondzet, as is the glamour of the era, replaced with typical Steve Martin ineptitude and buffoonery. The innocent, endearing comedy of Papa Gilbreth, (the 275 pound, mustachioed patriarch upon which his character is said to have been based,) is replaced by a Don Knotts clone who is no more a strong father figure than Michael Jackson. The kids are typical sitcom fare, alternately disgustingly cute and obnoxious. But I do not blame the actors for this unforgivable waste of celluloid. It is the writers, like those who bastardized the 1995 version of “Miracle on 34th Street”, who took a classic maise and turned it into a combination of “Who’s The Boss?” and “With Six, you get Egg rolls”! Their pathetic attempt to update and make ‘hip’ an American literary icon, as always, falls depressingly short, and gives us just another lame, dysfunctional family who means well but has the cohesiveness of a cup of corn meal. How sad it is that people in Hollywood will leap at any attempt to make a buck, even if it means ripping off a time-honored title and putting it atop such a load of scented treyf!

I received an interesting letter the other day, asking me why I seem to be the only writer of my genre who doesn’t address the impending awards shows as do all my cronies. Well, the answer is simple. The various academies are made up of self-appointed experts, (although what makes them experts, I have no idea,) who feel they’re qualified to decide definitively, what is are and what isn’t. These Academies are very exclusive, ( Roddy McDowell denied membership to Rodney Dangerfield on the grounds that Dangerfield had not made enough of “…the right kinds of films”) much like the country club in “Caddyshack”. These organizations serve two basic purposes…one, to set themselves above the rest of us, both culturally and artistically, and two, to give bad films a safety net. If a movie is bad, and bombs at the box office, (which is after all, the final arbiter of success or failure,) they give it an illustrious award which says, in effect, “The ticket-going public are bulvans and nokschleppers, and don’t know true art when they see it!”

If you study the history of film, you will find that, the biggest grossing films of all time, those which have lasted through generations, were panned egregiously by the critics and never even mentioned for an award of any meaning. While “Schindler’s List” was an artistic triumph, it made nowhere near the money that “E.T.” made, despite the critical acclaim and academian hoo-haa. “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “The Wizard of Oz” were also dogged by the so-called ‘experts’.

What the average person doesn’t realize is that these people are in this business for one reason…to make money. Okay, so it’s crass, but it’s also true. And regardless of how many awards an actor or director receives, if their films don’t make money for the studios, they’re history. But the Snobs Elite of Hollywood don’t want to face that, so they create their own little Xanadu where they can look down their noses at us, and say, “What do the great, unwashed masses know? We’re the Gods of Show Business Olympus, and we’ll show them!”

And that, my dears, is why I never offer up my picks for the Oscars or Emmys. Because quite honestly, I don’t give a rat’s hat what they think. My job is to bring to my readers my honest impressions and opinions, uncluttered with a lot of pseudo-scholarly dreck. If my forty plus years in entertainment taught me anything, it’s that my opinion is just that…my opinion. No better or worse than yours, and the fact that I have made movies doesn’t make my opinion any more valid than yours. What I give a movie a bad review, it is to say, “Go, see for yourself!” Don’t ever take my word for it! If you want to see it, go see it, and if you hate it, don’t say I didn’t warn you. If you like it, write me and call me an ignorant shmendreck! It won’t be the first time!

That’s all for now m’dears. Take care ‘till next month!