Prime Time

Prime Time

Celestial Armpits

by Richard G. Walls

The divided column approach worked well enough last time, so I’ve decided to use it again. Besides, lately I can’t seem to maintain a train of thought for more than 300 words, tops. But don’t tell anyone

THE WAGES OF ICKEY-POO: Every weekend here in Detroit, after Saturday Night Live is over Saturday Night Dead comes on. “SND” is a showcase for wondrously bad horror films—it started with a batch of late period Hammer epics, post-’65 and mostly boring, except to the hardcore fan (like myself) who would watch Peter Cushing in anything and has a fondness for low-rent gothic excess. But recently they ran out of Hammers and started showing obscure grade-Z flicks, many of them domestic, which have never had much theatrical, uh, exposure—-things like Equinox (with a fine mute cameo by fantasy & SF writer Fritz Leiber), Astro Zombies (Rafael Campos lives!) and my personal favorite, Blood and Lace (Gloria Grahame and Vic Tayback and a ton of sleeze). And, as my friends and I watch this treasure trove of cheap disgusting movies, we start to feel cheated that they’re censored for TV—we talk about our favorite bloodletting scenes both current and past and we decry television’s inability to grow up.

It’s strange, the way things change and yet don’t. In the 50’s, the late 50’s when I was not yet 10,1 can remember going to the movies, hoping against hope for a glimpse of a bare tit and a little spilt blood. It seemed like a lot to ask for. ’Cause I knew that if a dress were to slip a crucial inch, if a heavy love scene did not fade to black, if the monster graphically drew blood before my eyes the heavens would open, celestial trumpets would sound and mankind would be magically, irrevocably lifted into the next stage of evolution, forever wise. And I just knew it wasn’t gonna happen.

But it did. Only without the trumpets, the golden age, the imparted wisdom. Imagine my disappointment.

WHITE DADA NIHLISMUS: As everyone knows, most commercials are either irritating or bland, but every now and then one comes along that dazzles with its obnoxiousness. A current one that makes me queasy goes like this—a white chick with a small head and toy features is getting out of a cab somewhere and runs into an old boyfriend who doesn’t recognize her at first supposedly because her hair looks different (she washed it?). They get together and wander aimlessly thru a park, smiling inanely and touching fingertips. In the park they come upon three harmless-looking Negro-types who are having a commercial-land jam with a flute and bongos and (I think) maracas. The-toy lady stops and smiles and points and sez “O' look at the subhumans, aren’t they precious” and then breaks into a grotesque ultra-white dance step that leads to a merciful freeze frame.

Well, maybe it doesn’t go exactly like that but the point is it’s very close. Did the people who made this commercial know what they were doing? Does anyone else see the commercial this way? When I pointed it out to a friend he just smiled and patted me on the head and said “sure.’

Snyder gets more facinating with each passing night. He’s gone way beyond the buffoonery that Danny Aykroyd aped so well, on into a blissfully carefree imbecility—you can get giddy just watching him.

AN AMOEBA IN HEAT: Rumors continue to abound that Tom Snyder may leave the Tomorrow show, that he’s fed up with the corny mechanisms of NBC’s Prime Time Saturday, that he’s gonna take his trains and go play with another network. And we all know that Snyder has evolved into such a gloriously eccentric talent that if he were to forsake his late night fans he’d be hard put to find and develop a new contingency at another time on another network, that most likely he’d just fade away. What a loss that would be! Some of the most gripping moments of post-surrealist chitchat occur nightly on the Tomorrow show as Snyder manfully struggles to communicate with his guests, One remembers fondly Snyder telling Pauline Kael that, gee, she sure knows a lot about old movies, Snyder asking the late Alfred Hitchcock, who’d just finished telling a string of anecdotes, if he had a sense of humor, Snyder admitting to a panel of political journalists that he hoped the ’80 presidential election would be thrown into the House of Representatives because he thought “it’d be fun”—this is great stuff.

NOT FUNNY: It just isn’t that ABC’s Fridays is imitative of NBC’s Saturday Night Live—that in itself is no big deal—it’s that Fridays is to SNL what the Cretones are to the Sex Pistols—too little, too late. It isn’t funny anymore to just be “naughty,” to break TV taboos (not to be confused with real life taboos) just for the sake of breaking them. It’s been done.

So often the Fridays people seem to miss the point, that satire should have a solid target.

Taking off from outre premises might engender some high energy hilarity but it’s facile, surfacey—a West Coast dilemma?—and seems aimed at giggly kids. In fact the whole Fridays venture seems aimed at a younger audience than SNL, and apparently they’ve found them. The studio audience, going bananas over the mouldiest innuendo, sounds too young to remember last week’s SNL program.

On the other hand, it was heartwarming to see the Clash in action and at least on of the regulars is a real discovery—Michael Richards, who has enough original comic moves to make Belushi look autistic (ah hyperbole—don’t ya love it?)

With his face a rapid succession of comic masks, he dpesn’t even need good material. Unfortunately, the others do.