This favorite keeps getting bumped down the list because I originally wanted to synopsize it in the style of Rick Polito’s 1998 TCM logline for The Wizard of Oz. I got it down to what I thought was a pretty witty one-liner, but A) my summary used some loaded political language that put me off, and B) these favorites—while primarily reminders to myself of all the beautiful things that make life worth living—are also intended to share these delights with others and I was giving too much away…so:
Watchmen (1986–7) was written by Alan Moore, imaged by Dave Gibbons, colored by John Higgins, and edited by Len Wein and Barbara Kesel.
Every time I revisit those twelve issues, they have something new to say. Like the best art, Watchmen whispers one thing to a teenager bouncing between high school and his first job, tells a young adult embarking on a career a totally different tale, and still managed to scare the hell out of a middle-aged man arriving at his mid-life crisis. It also offers the best take on omnipotence and omniscience I’ve ever encountered.
I saw the Mad Men (2007–15) pilot six months before the premiere and did my best to sell everyone I knew on the series, but despite my personal campaign’s success, it wasn’t as winning as the protagonist’s outlook on life:
“You’re born alone and you die alone and this world just drops a bunch of rules on top of you to make you forget those facts, but I never forget…I’m living like there’s no tomorrow, ’cause there isn’t one.” Donald F. Draper
From 2014 to 2017, WGN—the Chicago-based superstation that gave me Bozo in my youth—became a purveyor of original, scripted television as WGN America. Though short-lived, the experiment yielded a quartet of fascinating series: Salem (2014–7), created by Brannon Braga & Adam Simon; Manhattan (2014–5), created by Sam Shaw; Outsiders (2016–7), created by Peter Mattei; and Underground (2016–7), created by Misha Green & Joe Pokaski. Each had elements to recommend it, but my favorite was Manhattan, a fictionalized account of the development of the atom bomb, that reminded me of the works of Costa-Gavras, Gilliam, and Kafka.
Special Agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) in The X-Files Pilot (1993).
Rain appeals to my melancholic inclination, and makes me think of many things I love: seeking refuge from the storm in The Old Dark House; sheltering at the Rashōmon city gate to stay dry; the debate on the Declaration of Independence in 1776; seeking refuge from a different storm in The Rocky Horror Picture Show; Roy Batty’s last words in Blade Runner; Billy Kinetta’s revelation in “Paladin of the Last Hour”; Claudia comforting Lisa in the aptly titled “A Rainy Night”; the smell of a Labrador having shaken the rain off her fur; Rob McKenna in So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish; the pelting of Collinwood (and/or the Old House) in Dark Shadows; Mulder and Scully at any given moment in the first five years of The X-Files; Charles and Tommy’s talk in Four Weddings and a Funeral; Andy Dufresne’s freedom in The Shawshank Redemption; my first two rain-soaked short stories, “After the Fall” and “Last Night”; Billy Shipton’s last hour in “Blink”; and others that aren’t coming to mind.
Charles (Hugh Grant) and Tom (James Fleet) in Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994).
I used to love the rain, and it saddened me that I lived in place where it doesn’t happen as frequently as I’d like. But now, when it does happen—as it’s happening right now—I worry about something completely out of my hands, a vestigial obligation of friendship that will probably haunt me for the rest of my life. The once-pleasant melancholy inclines to inescapable despondency, and I wonder if a favorite has slipped away…
Last night, I was thinking about the television characters that have meant the most to me over the years. I made a list, off the top of my head, without too much thought, and was surprised to find that of the characters—all originating in on television, no adaptations from other media—almost all of the characters from the 20th century were male and most from the present millennium were female. I have no idea what that means about me, my taste, or television as a whole.
Lynda Day, is one of the outliers, and this is one of those cases where I’ve been somewhat arbitrary in selecting the character, because you can’t really divorce her from either the actor who breathed life into the role, Julia Sawalha, or the character’s context in Press Gang (1989–94) created by Bill Moffat and written by Steven Moffat.
I can’t imagine why a relentless workaholic with a one-track mind, an inability to acknowledge her own personal life or those of the people who work for her because a school forces them to, and a prickly demeanor to hide her own insecurities which she can articulate if necessary with the detachment of an over-achieving (and likely suicidal) doctor attempting self-surgery because she thinks every one else is incompetent would appeal to me.
The cast of Press Gang: (front row, left to right) Dexter Fletcher as Spike Tomson, Julia Sawalha as Lynda Day, Paul Reynolds as Colin Mathews, (back row) Kelda Holmes as Sarah Jackson, Mmoloki Chrystie as Frazz Davis, and Lee Ross as Kenny Phillips.
I received my Laserdisc player as an early birthday present in November 1994. At least, that’s how I remember it.
Are memories to be trusted?
Are they real?
Circa 1987, Criterion released the international theatrical cut of Blade Runner on Laserdisc, a version without any unicorn dreams or nagging ambiguity.
Because I bought the LaserDisc the week of Christmas, Blade Runner (1982) became my Christmas Eve movie. The DVD of the Director’s Cut supplanted the LaserDisc at the turn of the millennium and was succeeded by the Final Cut on Blu-ray and 4K. I missed a few years early on, when family gatherings in far away places robbed me of the necessary technology, but there’ve been no years without Deckard since I left home.
Rachael (Sean Young) in Blade Runner (1982).
It’s probably weird to spend Christmas Eve questioning the nature of humanity, or maybe not.
“It’s too bad she won’t live. But then again, who does?” Gaff
Connor MacLeod (Christopher Lambert) and Iman Fasil (Peter Diamond) in Highlander (1986).
Highlander almost works…as a movie, a television series, a media franchise. Almost; not quite, but I love it nonetheless. (Spoilers for a 1986 movie and 1992-9 tv series below…)
In general, Highlander concerns immortals secretly living among mankind, periodically dueling to decapitation, their only means death, in pursuit of an ambiguous Prize. More specifically, the 1986 film concerns itself with the life of Connor MacLeod (Christopher Lambert), a 467-year-old Scot who’s eschewed love since the death of his wife (Beatie Edney) but becomes the object of a police forensics specialist (Roxanne Hart) obsessed with sword-making while he tries to kill an ancient barbarian (Clancy Brown) who slew his mentor (Sean Connery).
Hey, it’s a kind of magic!
Juan Sánchez-Villalobos Ramírez (Sean Connery) and Connor MacLeod (Christopher Lambert) in Highlander (1986).
I prefer Peter Bellwood and Larry Ferguson’s re-write of Gregory Widen’s UCLA screenplay to the movie—which doesn’t quite capture the magic on the page—but I appreciate that the script, rendered fully on screen, would lack energy of Russell Mulcahy’s direction. The movie’s mood and tone are perfect, the transitions between present-day and flashbacks superb, and the casting mind-boggling; yes, we’ll have the legally blind Frenchman who doesn’t speak English as the titular highlander and get the world’s most famous Scotsman—who plays all nationalities with his native brogue— to play an Egyptian pretending to be a Spaniard.
(Gary Kilworth’s novelization [written as by Gary Douglas] is also quite good, salvaging much of what was lost from script to screen.)
Duncan MacLeod (Adrian Paul) and Methos (Peter Wingfield) in Highlander (1992-9).
Ignoring the sequels, we come to the television series, concerning Connor’s younger clansman, Duncan (Adrian Paul), because Lambert wouldn’t commit to tv and wasn’t doing a terribly good job of not aging. Under the auspices of David Abramowitz—who took over in the midst of a muddled debut season—the concept became a meditation on morality with a 400-year-old sword-wielding arbiter of right and wrong. Major conceptual innovations like the Watchers, who are meant to observe and record the activities of the immortals with objective detachment— represented by MacLeod’s decidedly partisan observer, Joe Dawson (Jim Byrnes)— and Methos (Peter Wingfield), the oldest-living immortal add dramatic wrinkles to the format and long-form explorations of the possibilities and varieties of immortal life (almost) make up for the show completely dropping the methodology by which immortals live in an increasingly computerized world and the element of the police procedural that grounded the movie (but was, arguably, one of the bigger casualties of the cuts).
I am almost certain my first exposure to A Christmas Carol (1843) came via the televised broadcast of the film adaptation starring George C. Scott. I can’t be certain, but I believe I might have seen the debut broadcast on CBS the night of 17 December 1984. I can be certain that whenever I saw it, Frank Finlay’s Jacob Marley scared me senseless…and I still get the creeps from Finlay whatever role he plays, even as Van Helsing in Count Dracula (1977).
I’d seen several other adaptations before I finally read A Christmas Carol in a Charles Dickens omnibus with eye-achingly small print while riding back to Texas after spending Christmas morning with relatives in Louisiana. That Christmas—now more than twenty years gone—was the last time I saw three close relatives whom I’d known my entire life. So many ghosts.
Illustration by John Leech from the 1843 edition of A Christmas Carol.
In the course of reading his Creativity: A short and cheerful guide (Crown, 2020), I realized two things about John Cleese:
1) His approach to creativity is exactly the same as David Lynch’s.
2) He would have been as brilliant a philosopher as Douglas Adams.
BERLIN, GERMANY – SEPTEMBER 13: John Cleese attends the 55th Rose d’Or Award at Axica-Kongress- und Tagungszentrum on September 13, 2016 in Berlin, Germany. (Photo by Clemens Bilan/Getty Images)
“The trouble is that most people want to be right. The very best people, however, want to know if they are right. That’s the great thing about working in comedy. If the audience doesn’t laugh, you know you’ve got it wrong.”
