RIP Stephen Furst and John G Avildsen

Two more sad deaths from the entertainment world occurred on Friday; film and television actor Stephen Furst and Oscar-winning director John G. Avildsen.

Furst is perhaps best known for his role as Flounder in the hit 1978 comedy film National Lampoon's Animal House. He was a regular in the science fiction series Babylon 5 playing Centauri diplomatic attaché Vir Cotto. But for me personally, I will always have fond memories of his role in St Elsewhere as Dr. Elliot Axelrod. Alongside acting, Furst also worked as a director and producer. He died from complications with diabetes, something he has suffered with all his adult life.

RIP.

American film director John G Avildsen will forever be known as the Oscar-winning director of 1976's Rocky, but in a career that stretched back to 1970 with his debut feature Joe, Avildsen was responsible for many films including the stunning Save The Tiger, which earned Jack Lemmon a Best Actor Oscar and the first three films in the original Karate Kid franchise. He returned to the Rocky series with 1990's critically mauled Rocky V. Avildsen passed away following a battle with pancreatic cancer.

RIP.

The Presidio (1988)

"What's Vietnam?" asks one allegedly cute kid at one point in Peter Hyams' thriller The Presidio, to which I reply 'For fuck's sake, Julius. You're eight years old and it's 1988, what the fuck are they teaching you at school?!'

Julius subsequently asks whether America 'kicked ass' in Vietnam, to which I have to reply no, if we're being generous it was - as Kevin Kline's Otto points out in A Fish Called Wanda that same year - 'a tie'. 

The Presidio is a rather limp and uninspired thriller that sees civilian policing mix with military policing as both law enforcement agencies converge upon a murder which occurred on San Francisco's Presidio army base. Director Peter Hyams delivers a competent enough film with a few good set-pieces in the shape of its opening car chase, a frenetic foot chase through San Fran's Chinatown, and a daft but amusing barroom brawl which sees Sean Connery's gruff Colonel fight with only his right thumb (the left being too powerful for his opponent he claims) but there's no denying that the whole production is somewhat ill conceived and unsure of exactly what it wants to be, no doubt thanks to the several spluttering starts it actually had in getting off the ground. 

Originally The Presidio was to be helmed by Tony Scott, starring the tantalising pairing of Lee Marvin and Jeff Bridges as the Provost Marshall and his cocky former subordinate who is now a civilian and a cop with the SFPD. But when an ailing Marvin underwent intestinal surgery, the production started to fall apart. Gene Hackman was approached to replace Marvin but declined, leaving Bridges with no option but to walk away from the project. Don Johnson and Kevin Costner were then subsequently approached to replace Bridges, but the former was tied to Miami Vice whilst the latter ultimately backed out. Stepping into the fray was St Elsewhere's Mark Harmon, an actor who may have been awarded People Magazine's 'Sexiest Man Alive' in 1986 but who was nevertheless a TV actor whose appeal never quite transferred to the big screen in the way that his Elsewhere co-stars Denzel Washington and David Morse achieved. The shoes of Jeff Bridges are big ones to fill at the best of times but Harmon really struggles here, lacking the tough guy charm the role requires. Somewhere along the line Peter Hyams became attached to direct, and this safe pair of hands brought in his Outland star Connery for the Marvin role, re-writing his character to reflect his Scottish nationality so we don't complain about the stupidity of Connery playing every role he's given with his natural accent.

What we're ultimately left with is a bit of a glossy mess that struggles to find its place between serious, intelligent thriller and mismatched buddy buddy cop movie. Meg Ryan suffering the ignoble fate of carrying a romantic subplot as Connery's daughter who has the hots for her father's nemesis, Harmon, and portrays the very worst cliches of a woman the scriptwriters could conjure up (they're aiming for complicated, but their inherent misogyny seems to routinely land at prick-tease) and has to endure a cringeworthy '80s sex scene that sees Harmon bear down on her wearing the kind of unromantic look of intense concentration that is normally reserved for hooking a SCART lead into the back of your tele. 

There's also the hard-sell of  the eternally paunchy, seemingly always middle-aged  Jack Warden playing a man who supposedly carried an injured Sean Connery through a Vietnamese jungle, saving the Bond star's life. On the whole, The Presidio smacks of the kind of generic military thriller that could serve as a proto-Jack Reacher plotline, but suffers worse miscasting than even Tom Cruise's appearance as Lee Child's eponymous hero. It's the kind of film that should be so much better than it actually is, but when you consider the hurdles it had in getting made you can perhaps see why it's such a duffer.

Theme Time : Stu Phillips - Knight Rider

Knight Rider was Glen A Larson's take on a modern day The Lone Ranger with a sci fi twist. It ran from 1982 to 1986 and was a global hit. It also made perma-tanned perm haired smarm bucket David Hasselhoff a star. Unfortunately.

But the car was really the star, KITT was an AI near indestructible customised 1982 Pontiac Trans Am voiced by veteran actor William Daniels (who was starring in St Elsewhere at the time)

The quality of the show was indifferent to corny but the music was brilliant. Stu Phillips, take a bow

It would later go on to influence the Panjabi MC bhangra track Mundian To Bach Ke

Knight Rider is a franchise that never seems to want to go away, no surprise really considering the germ of the idea is quite a strong one. The show was cancelled in 1986 but a pilot for a new series entitled Knight Rider 2000 appeared in 1991, there was a 1994 film entitled Knight Rider 2010, a new spin off series in 1997 called Team Knight Rider which lasted for one season, followed by the latest guise, a 2008 pilot and subsequent series entitled simply Knight Rider. Since 2002 been talks of a cinematic feature film with names like Ben Affleck and Orlando Bloom being attached over the years. As I type the latest word is Danny McBride and Chris Pratt are in talks for a comedic take on the series in a similar vein to the recent 21 Jump Street movie.

But comedy and Knight Rider has already been done, by Frankie Boyle in his series Tramadol Nights...

Theme Time : Dave Grusin - St Elsewhere

Dave Grusin's great score for the great St Elsewhere

Many of the original cast reunited last year, here's a rather nice piccie from the event...

87th Goes To The Movies

Beyond the rather wacky poster (which for some reason decides to paint in/cash in on that year's infamous Burt Reynolds Cosmopolitain nude spread - this time with towel - as if it were part of the film) 1972's Fuzz is an ok enough, rather Altmanesque, mix of police procedural and light hearted farce which relocates Ed McBain's 87th Precinct in the fictional city of Isola, a thinly disguised New York to Boston (with a score by Dave Grusin, who would later soundtrack Boston's St Elsewhere)

Ultimately though, it's a somewhat unmemorable affair, which is a shame considering the novels are far more memorable and were ground breaking in their way, certainly the earlier ones from the late 50s.

The cast is interesting to say the least, all solid 70s heavyweights but seemingly a little at sea with the material (though they handle the serious elements better than the slapstick) Reynolds isn't really anyone's idea of Steve Carella, Jack Weston isn't bald or Jewish to be Meyer Meyer, Tom Skerrit, an actor I normally don't mind at all, seems to sleepwalk his way through the film as Kling; baffling when you consider the script has him writhing around on top of Raquel Welch in a sleeping bag! and Yul Brynner is...well, Yul Brynner. Still, the aforementioned Welch looks amazing as usual.

Frankly, the excellent TV series Hill Street Blues would tread similar ground far more successfully a decade later.

Why 1980s US TV Was Better

Don't get me wrong, US tele of recent years has had some absolute gems like The Wire (one of the best ever TV shows - so damn fantastic it cannot be grouped with anything) Deadwood and Curb Your Enthusiasm (HBO is just amazing clearly - and less US centric stuff like Rome and Game Of Thrones to that too and just, wow) as well as enjoyable successes like Sons of Anarchy, Justified and House and even stuff that were really rather good but unfortunately not deemed successful enough like The Riches, Lie To Me and The Chicago Code

But, the following surely triumph over anything currently made on US TV because a) they were bloody brilliant and stand the test of time and always will and b) they're nostalgia and c) God, they're good themes!

So yeah when it comes to US TV in the 80s compared to now, you could say for the 80s....

Falling On Deaf Ears

A couple of months ago Channel 4 began to repeat in the wee small hours one of the all time greats of US television (and perhaps television full stop) St. Elsewhere

St Elsewhere was a medical drama that ran for six seasons from 1982 to 1988. A stablemate of MTM's groundbreaking police drama Hill Street Blues, St Elsewhere was similarly innovative, witty, irreverent, realistic, thought provoking and dramatic. It's safe to say that without it, there would be no ER, Gray's Anatomy, Scrubs or House. It even helped inspire our very own Casualty in 1986.

Surprisingly and downright criminally for such a monumentous show, only one season has been released onto DVD, which I have in my collection. As I was only a young boy growing up in the 80s I have only vague memories of the show but after purchasing the DVD it swiftly became one of my favourites and an inspiration to my own writing.

Imagine how chuffed I was then to hear that Channel 4 would commence repeats from series 4 (random I know) towards the end of last year. I quickly set the Sky planner, series linking it to capture each post 3am-sometimes even 4 or 5am broadcast-and would happily sit down to watch it and record for posterity onto DVD-R the following day.

Imagine my relief too when, unlike Hill Street Blues, Channel 4 disposed with the in vision signer for hard of hearing viewers! I could watch without distraction!

Now, imagine my surprise and disappointment after a couple of happy months to find that from New Year's Day and the commencement of Season 5, they have now employed a signer! For a viewer with good hearing this is an infuriating presence and automatically makes watching the show impossible. What I'm about to share with you may sound harsh, but I wrote an email complaing and querying the decision to Channel 4.

Now, I wish to make it clear, I am not prejudiced and I feel my letter went to great lengths to prove that I am not. In it, I detailed quite clearly my disappointment in having an in vision signer accompanying the repeat....but I also asked a question. A question I feel perfectly valid and proof that I am not prejudiced towards viewers with hearing issues. I explained that I am all for the inclusivity for all, the ability for everyone to watch and enjoy a TV station's input and then I asked the question that backed up that statement; Surely, I asked, in this day and age there should be an opportunity to have a Red Button option for the hard of hearing that would automatically conjure up a signer for them for every programme, whatever the time of day? Not just a near 30 year old repeat at 4am in the morning, but every single TV show. That would be real inclusivity, that surely is what people should have now isn't it?

They replied to my email fairly swiftly. In fact within two working days. Here is what they wrote;

Thank you for contacting Channel 4 Viewer Enquiries regarding ST ELSEWHERE.

We are sorry to hear that you find the signer to be distracting.

Ofcom (Office of Communication) require us to sign, in British Sign language (BSL), a proportion of our programmes for the benefit of deaf viewers whose preferred or first language is BSL.  This is to enable them to gain a fuller understanding of the verbal content of a programme or film than they would from subtitles alone. Choosing which programmes to sign in order to give a choice whilst minimising the disturbance to the hearing viewer is not an easy task and therefore, as a rule, we only select programmes or films which are repeats or for which an omnibus version is made.

Please be assured your complaint has nevertheless been logged and noted for the information of those responsible for our programming.

Thank you again for taking the time to contact us. We appreciate all feedback from our viewers; complimentary or otherwise.

Regards,

Jack Gladney
Channel 4 Viewer Enquiries

As you can see, there isn't an answer at all to my query about a Red Button option. Nor is there an answer to an alternative I suggested, namely that instead of wasting money on pointless channels such as Channel 4+1, E4, E4+1, More4 and More4+1 they introduced an exclusive 4Deaf channel (quite a good title that too, I'd let them have it, haha) to run concurrently with their output but with an in vision signer at all times.

My questions fell on deaf ears.

It really baffles me that in this day and age with technology so advanced, with a television that can allow you to watch what ever you want at whatever time you want and in HD to if need be, the corporations still refuse to cater to a viewership who happen to be disabled.

And that's the real tragedy. Not that I can't watch a show I really like, but that if you happen to be hard of hearing you can't watch so many shows and the ones you can watch are rigidly set out for you at deeply unsociable hours.

And if you wish to know more about St Elsewhere check out its in depth Wiki page.