Jeff Ellis: It's Impossible To Start A Fire If You Have No Desire To Burn

The Person Of The Year

Time Magazine has announced their "Person Of The Year."

A lot of us thought (and were dreading that possibility) that Time would slavishly give the title to Barack Obama.

Well, amazingly enough, Time did not jump at another excuse to put Barack Obama on the cover.

But seriously -- Ben Bernacke?

Perhaps the only thing positive thing that Bernacke has brought to this year is evidence that occasionally, Republican senators can find common ground with Bernie Sanders.  Sen. Sanders, the only self-acknowledged socialist in the U.S. Senate, has recently joined with conservative Republicans Jim Bunning and Jim DeMint in opposing Bernacke's nomination to another four years in charge of the Fed.

Honestly, the person of the year was Michael Jackson.  His death and the subsequent circus that has surrounded it has come to represent the current state of the world.  If 2009 played like a heavy-handed satire, nothing was more heavy-handed than the death of Michael Jackson.

Greetings From The Streets of New York City

To see the entire image, click on it.

Emmy Thoughts

The 2009 Emmy Nominations were announced two days ago.  Because of other commitments, I haven't gotten a chance to really think about and comment on them until now.

The Emmys have traditionally suffered in comparison to the Oscars.  They're not taken as seriously (which is interesting when you consider the quality of some of the films and performances that have been honored at recent Academy Award ceremonies).  A lot of this, of course, is because movies have one chance to be named Best Picture.  Actors have one chance to win an Oscar for a particular performance in particular film.  When L.A. Confidential lost to Titanic, it didn't get a chance to win the top award the next year.  Time (and film) moved on.  Whereas, with the Emmies, it sometimes seems that everyone gets another chance.  If a tv series loses an Emmy to another show, it only has to wait until the next television season.  Chances are that the series that previously bested it won't even be on the air anymore.  As such, the Emmys have gotten a reputation for, more or less, being the same thing year after year.

This really isn't quite fair because, in recent years, the Emmys have broken out of the trap of automatically nominating the same shows and actors year after year.  Yes, it is true that -- until these latest nominations -- James Spader seemed to have a bizarre lock on the Best Actor in a Drama trophy.  But, on the whole, the Emmys have shown a willingness to nominate outside of the usual suspects in recent years.  As much as I hate to use the term, the Emmy voters have been willing to nominate outside the box.

(Though, it should be noted, that often times these off-beat selections simply have to be content with a nomination.  As much as I hate to seem critical of James Spader -- who is an excellent actor -- his winning streak serves as proof of this.)

Here's a few thoughts as I look over the major nominees.

Best Series (Drama)

This year sees seven shows nominated for best drama.  Those nominees are Big Love, Breaking Bad, Damages, Dexter, House, Lost, and Mad Men.  There's not a single nominee that I can really find fault with though, out of this group, the only shows that I watch on regular basis are Dexter, House, and Lost.  Of those three, I'd probably give the Emmy to Lost.  This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who has read this blog in the past.  However, I can also easily understand why this previous season of Lost-- with all the time jumps and talk about free will and destiny --will probably annoy just as many viewers as it excites.  So, what do I think is going to win?  Hmm...let's say Big Lovebecause it gives Emmy voters a chance to feel like they've been exposed to dark underworld of religion.  Which TV drama do I wish had been nominated?  24, if just because it pisses off liberals.

Best Comedy (Series)

Again, we have seven nominees.  And those nominees are 30 Rock, Entourage, Family Guy, Flight of the Conchords, How I Met Your Mother, The Office, and Weeds.  Out of this list, I am most excited to see that nomination for Flight of the Conchords.  I would say that this nomination shows that the Emmy voters have finally become a truly cool group of people except for the fact that it is nominated alongside Family Guy.  Family Guy is the epitome of a show that gets by on pretending to be funny as opposed to actually being funny.  It's a show that essentially has taken every successful element of the Simpsons, King of the Hill, and South Park and has then proceeded to strip those elements of  everything that made them interesting in the first place.  It's dumb humor that not only pretends to be smart but, even worse, actually believes itself to be smart.  But enough of that.  Out of these shows, who would I give the Emmy too?  Well, again, the answer is obvious to anyone who has read this blog in the past.  I'm a huge Office fan and that's the show I would go with.  That said, I suspect that the actual award will actually go to 30 Rock if just because Emmy voters can watch it and say, "Hey, that's me!"

Best Actor (Drama)

I'm a bit disappointed to see that Keifer Sutherland didn't receive a nomination as he actually did some of his best work on the latest season of 24.  However, even more distressing is the fact that Bill Pullman's name appears nowhere on this list.  As the befuddled, likable, and kinda creepy head of Big Love'sfamily, Pullman is really the key to that show's success.  Unfortunately, for Pullman, his performance largely consists of providing a center for all the more far more flamboyant characters to orbit.  Like almost all good television performances, it's the type of work that frequently get overshadowed and ignored.

As for the actual nominees, they are:

Bryan Cranston for Breaking Bad

Michael C. Hall for Dexter

Hugh Laurie for House

Gabriel Byrne for In Treatment

Jon Hamm for Mad Men

Simon Baker for The Mentalist

Honestly, I have yet to actually make it through an entire episode of The Mentalist but I would take away Baker's nomination and give it to either Sutherland or especially Pullman if just on the basis of how much Baker's character annoyed me in the commercials leading up to The Mentalist's debut episode.  ("You love India but you've never been...Psychic?  No, just observant."  SHUT UP!) 

As for the winner, there's no question in mind.  Give it to Hugh Laurie or explain why not.

Best Actor (Comedy)

Our nominees are:

Alec Baldwin for 30 Rock

Tony Shalhoub for Monk

Jim Parsons for The Big Bang Theory

Steve Carrell for The Office

Charlie Sheen for Two and A Half Men

Jermaine Clement for Flight of the Conchords

Carrell's going to have to win the award at some point, just so Emmy observers can take bets on how many times he mentions Jon Stewart and Steve Colbert in his acceptance speech.  (Seriously, these three are into each other to an almost creepy degree.)  And, he certainly gave a good performance this season.  He fell in love, quit his job, tried to start a new company, fought with his boss.  There was a lot of pathos in his comedy and that plays well with voters everywhere.  So, maybe this will be his year though I have a feeling that Baldwin will end up winning again.  Just a feeling.

As for me, I'd give the award to Jermaine Clement just because I want to hear his acceptance speech.

Best Actress (Drama)

This is actually a bit close to a usual suspects list.  Not many surprises to be found and, to be honest, it's a bit of a dull list.  Our nominees:

Sally Field in Brothers & Sisters

Glenn Close in Damages

Mariska Hargitay for Law and Order: SVU

Holly Hunter in Saving Grace

Kyra Sedgwick in The Closer

Elisabeth Moss in Mad Men

And the winner is .... oh, how about Holly Hunter?

Myself, I'd give the award to Kyra Sedgwick for ably proving herself to be the American version of Helen Mirren.

Best Actress (Comedy)

Our nominees:

Tina Fey for 30 Rock

Christina Applegate for Samantha Who?

Julia Louis-Dreyfus for The New Adventures of Old Christine

Sarah Silverman for The Sarah Silverman Program

Mary-Louise Parker for Weeds

Toni Collette for The United States of Tara

Personally, I hope Collette wins if just because it will cause a lot of people to say, "What show is she on?" at the same time.  Indeed, it speaks well for the Emmys that this category is almost equally divided between actresses on "traditional" sitcoms (Applegate and Louis-Dreyfus) and those on more quirky (and more unconventional) shows.  While I think either Parker or Silverman deserves the award, I imagine that the winner will be Fey as she is the only actress on the list to appear on a show that is both traditional and quirky.

And now, let's move on to the supporting nominees.  This is where things get fun since the supporting actors are usually the main reason why we choose to watch one show over another.

Best Supporting Actor (Drama)

William Shatner for Boston Legal

Christian Clemenson for Boston Legal

Aaron Paul for Breaking Bad

Michael Emerson for Lost

John Slattery for Mad Men

William Hurt for Damages

Out of this list, I'd probably go with either Emerson or Slattery.  If I really had to choose, it would be Emerson is just because I've only occasionally caught Mad Men whereas I saw every episode of Lost last season.

Speaking of Lost, it's a bit of disappointment (though not a shock) to see that it only scored one acting nomination.  If anyone from the show deserved a nomination this season, it was Josh Holloway whose criminally underrated performance as Sawyer really proved to the heart and soul of the show.

Speaking of criminally underrated, Carlos Bernard has never gotten the credit he deserves for his performance as Tony Almeida on 24.  If he deserved a nomination for any season, it was this one.

Who will win?  Shatner for being Bill Shatner?  Let's hope not.  I'm going to flip a coin and go with John Slattery.

Best Supporting Actress (Drama)

Rose Byrne for Damages

Hope Davis for In Treatment

Chandra Wilson for Grey's Anatomy

Sandra Oh for Grey's Anatomy

Dianne Weist for In Treatment

Cherry Jones for 24

Honestly, as much as I enjoyed 24 this season, I never really bought Cherry Jones as the president of the United States.  Indeed, I felt she was perhaps the weakest President since Wayne Palmer.

None of these nominees really inspire me, to be honest.  Indeed, the Grey's Anatomy nominees seem to be the equivalent of the Boston Legal nominees.  But a winner must be selected!  So, the Emmy goes to ... Elizabeth Mitchell for Lost.  How good was her performance?  So good that she doesn't even need a nomination to take the award.

Best Supporting Actor (Comedy)

Kevin Dillon for Entourage

Tracy Morgan for 30 Rock

Neil Patrick Harris for How I Met Your Mother

Rainn Wilson for The Office

Jon Cryer for Two And A Half Men

Jack MacBryar for 30 Rock

Let me make one thing clear.  Rainn Wilson is a genius.  Every week, he manages to make Dwight Shrute not only insane but oddly poignant as well.  However, at times, so much praise is given to Wilson that equally deserving performances are overlooked.  Case in point: John Krasinski and especially Ed Helms.  I could easily give the award to any three of these performers.

I have a feeling Neil Patrick Harris might win this year.  Why?  Everyone seems to love Neil Patrick Harris and, quite frankly, he deserves an Emmy for managing to overcome being typecast as Doogie Howser, M.D.

(Remember that episode where Doogie first had sex?  *Shudder*)

Best Supporting Actress (Comedy)

Our nominees are:

Kristin Chenoweth for Pushing Daisies

Kristen Wiig for Saturday Night Live

Amy Poelher for Saturday Night Live

Jane Krakowski for 30 Rock

Vanessa Williams for Ugly Betty

Elizabeth Perkins for Weeds

And the winner is ... Mindy Kalling for The Office!  For the exact same reason that Elizabeth Mitchell won Best Supporting Actress (Drama).

 

Karl Malden, R.I.P.

Actor Karl Malden has died.  He was 97 years old.

For members of my generation, our first real exposure to Karl Malden came when he was president of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences and, as a result, always got to deliver the show-stopping "mission statement" at a handful of Oscar ceremonies.  Even in that somewhat colorless role, he always came across as a genuinely decent, blue collar guy.  If nothing else, he was certainly a good deal less pompous than Arthur Hiller.

(Malden later contributed to one of the biggest Oscar controversies in recent years when he spearheaded the effort to award name dropper Elia Kazan an honorary award.)

Malden, however, had a long career an actor.  For much of his career, he was the urban everyman, an often-overlooked, hardworking figure who, more or often than not, ended up becoming a figure of moral authority simply based on the fact that you could simply look at Malden's face and tell that he had spent every day of his life making an honest living.  Indeed, it was this innate sense of decency that made it all the more devastating when his weak-willed Mitch in A Streetcar Named Desire finally ended up rejecting Vivian Leigh's Blanche.  This sense of decency actually tempted one to overlook the fact that his crusading priest in On the Waterfront is essentially used to justify "naming names."  Just try to imagine sitting through Patton without Karl Malden's practical-minded Omar Bradley there to balance out the megalomania of George C. Scott's Patton.

Malden was such a reliable actor that he was also quite often a rather underrated actor.  Though it happened very rarely, occasionally he was cast against type and allowed to show that he had a good deal more range than one might suspect.  A prime example of this came in Marlon Brando's sole directorial effort, the western One-Eyed Jacks where Malden was a chilling and believable bad guy. Legend has it that the film's original director -- the legendary Stanley Kubrick -- walked off the film because he felt that Malden's casting was a mistake and that Brando (who also played the film's lead role) would easily dominate Malden.  (Reportedly, Kubrick hoped to cast Spencer Tracy in the villainous role.)  In the end, however, it was Malden's performance that dominated the final film and Brando who often seemed to be miscast.  

Allow me to mention one final underrated Malden performance.  As an unabashed fan of the old school Italian giallo, this one is a personal favorite of mine. In Dario Argento's 3rd film, The Cat O' Nine Tales, Malden is cast as a blind, retired journalist who -- along with James Fransiscus -- is drawn into a rather complex murder mystery.  It is, admittedly, a rather cutesy role but Malden plays it with just the right balance of genuine pathos and enigmatic menace.  Indeed, by the end of the film, the audience can't help but feel rather ambiguous toward Malden's nominal hero.  The film's finale -- in which Malden, incorrectly believing that his granddaughter has been murdered, ruthlessly kills the bad guy just to then hear his granddaughter's anguished scream of "Papa!" -- is a lot more effective than it has any right to be and this is largely because of Malden's performance.

Like many of the great film character actors of the 40s and 50s, Malden eventually ended up turning to television.  His most famous role was as the lead detective in The Streets of San Francisco.  I must confess that, during the rare times that reruns turned up in syndication, I have never been able to sit through an entire episode of The Streets of San Francisco.  This is through no fault of Malden's.  It's just that the show is as resolutely a symbol of its time as the various CSIspin-offs are today.   As a result, the show has not aged well.  Everything from the theme music to the announcer informing us that the show is "A Quinn Martin Production" has taken on an element of camp.  Everything except for Karl Malden.

A few years back, I read an interview with Malden in which he was asked about his role on the Streets of San Francisco.  Malden reflected on the irony of the fact that this by-the-book cop show starred two of the most resolutely liberal actors in Hollywood.  The reason why I remembered Malden's comment is because it was delivered without apology.  He neither apologized for being liberal nor did he apologize for giving a sympathetic portrayal of a conservative.  In these partisan times, there's something comforting about discovering that there actually were accomplished, professional people who were capable of being politically-minded without succumbing to stridency.

(Malden was, for his entire career, an outspoken Democrat.  Though, it should be noted, he was a member of the Democratic Party that gave us Eugene McCarthy and Hubert Humphrey and not the Democratic Party that has since produced Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama.)

For me, Malden's best television role was in the true-crime miniseries, Fatal Vision.  Playing the antagonistic father-in-law of convicted murderer Jeffrey McDonald (played, in a truly chilling performance, by Gary Cole), Malden once again embodied something that was both uniquely American and uniquely blue collar.  To his efforts to convict that man who killed his daughter, Malden brought a compelling determination and a palpable pathos that distinguished both this movie in specific and Karl Malden's career in general.

Karl Malden, R.I.P.

A Calm, Classy Post About Al Franken

It's official.

Al Franken is now a U.S. Senator and the Democrats are pretty much unstoppable.

What to say about this?

Well, it sucks, doesn't it?

Still, there is a silver lining.

The more powerful you are, the more Americans are going to fantasize about seeing you fall.

As for Al Franken...

Oh, Al Franken can go fuck himself.

Farrah Fawcett, R.I.P.

Two pop cultural icons died today -- actress Farrah Fawcett and the self-declared "King of Pop" Michael Jackson.  As of right now, Jackson is commanding the majority of attention.  A lot of this is due to the fact that Jackson's death was unexpected whereas Fawcett had been battling cancer for more than a year now.  Fawcett's death was expected.

There's a lot that can be said about the strange and disturbing life of Michael Jackson.  Unfortunately, very little of it is positive and quite frankly, it's nothing that really needs to be discussed within the hours of his (or anyone else's) death.  This is the time for Jackson's family to mourn and they deserve to have this time (as any family would) before one considers the exact path that may have led to Jackson's death.

So, I am going to take this time to remember Farrah Fawcett because, unfortunately, she's already being forgottenand overshadowed.  There was nothing in Fawcett's early career that gave any indication that she would eventually become one of the better actresses working in American television and film.  She made her film debut with an insipid role in an insipid movie, 1970's Myra Breckenridge.  A few years later, she had either the luck or misfortune to end up as the break-out star of Charlie's Angels.  It's always tempting to cite Charlie's Angels as a TV show that was exactly what it claimed to be, just an hour a pretty girls and campy fun.  Unfortunately, that's really not true.  Charlie's Angels was, even for its time, an amazingly insipid show and the reruns, other than when being played in the background during a Butthole Surfers concert, are dull to the point of being unwatchable.  It was during this time that Farrah posed for the famous pin-up that decorated every boy's bedroom in the 70s.  It was also during this time that she appeared in a small role in Logan's Run, a flawed but enjoyable sci-fi film.

Simply on the basis of this early work, one might be justified in dismissing Farrah Fawcett as an actress.  Indeed, when Farrah left Charlie's Angels, most people assumed that she would be forgotten.  And, at first, it seemed that she would be.  Then, she appeared in a devastating TV movie entitled The Burning Bed.  The Burning Bed was based on a true story about an abused woman who ended up burning her lout of a husband alive as he lay in bed.  Playing an abused, victimized woman, Fawcett brought an appealing earthiness to the role that she was never allowed to show in her previous glamour roles. 

After the Burning Bed, Fawcett was a regular presence in TV movies and occasionally appeared in film.  She gave another shattering performance as another victimized woman in the film version of Extremitiess.  The film itself is a bit of trial to sit through but Fawcett gave one of her best performances. 

However, to me, Fawcett's best performance was as Robert Duvall's unfaithful yet undeniably sympathetic wife in The Apostle.  If there was ever a performance that should have won an Academy Award nomination for Farrah Fawcett, it was this one.

Farrah Fawcett, R.I.P.

David Carradine, R.I.P.

Actor and author David Carradine is dead.  Initial reports are that he was found in a Bangkok hotel room, hanging in a closet.  He was 72 years old.

For me and for a lot of other people in my age group, David Carradine epitomized cool.  Whether you rememberhim as Caine in Kung Fu or as Bill in Kill Bill or as Woody Guthrie in Bound For Glory, Carradine seemed to personify that elusive quality of Zen.  Zen is a lot like pornography in that you know it when you see it.  And for many of us, watching David Carradine was seeing Zen.

That's why, from a fan's perspective, it's so hard to accept the current speculation that Carradine's death was a suicide.  It simply does not jibe with the image that we have of the man.  If true, it serves as a morbid reminder that the image is not the man and that we, as fans, will never truly understand our "heroes" as much as we might think. 

For what it's worth, Carradine's family and his agent have both been very firm in their comments that Carradine was not suicidal and that his death was an accident.

But regardless of the circumstances of Carradine's passing, he was a great actor and that is what should be remembered at this time.  Though he's best known for Kung Fu, I personally feel that Carradine's best performance was in 1980's The Long Riders.  This was the revisionist western (from director/genius Walter Hill) in which the James Brothers were played by James and Stacy Keach, the Fords were played by Christopher and Nicholas Guest, and the Millers were played by Randy and Dennis Quaid.  Needless to say, the Younger Brothers were played by the Carradine Brothers, Keith, Robert, and, as Cole Younger, David Carradine  And while The Long Riders might have, ultimately, been another retelling of the life of Jesse James, the film belonged to David Carradine.  In his hands, Cole Younger became the ultimate western outlaw, struggling to maintain his way of life even as the 20th Century relentlessly approached.  Who can forget his knife duel with James Remar?

And, of course, Carradine will always be Bill.

David Carradine, R.I.P.

Everybody Wants To Rule The World

As of late, there's been a lot of Democratic snickering over the idea of actor Gary Sinise emerging as the savior of the Republican Party in 2012.  It's really not that crazy of an idea.  Sinise is an outstanding communicator, hasn't been scared to be open about his politics, and, at the very least, a President Sinise might give a cabinet post to John Malkovich.

 

This Democratic expression of disdain for Mr. Sinise as a political leader usually leads to another round or two of petty Reagan bashing (i.e., Reagan was a B-actor, Bedtime For Bonzo, and all the rest).  One has to wonder how President Obama feels about this since he spent so much of 2008 assuring America that Ronald Reagan was his personal messiah.

As I read the various Democratic responses to Sinise's potential future in politics, I have to wonder about how they feel about Val Kilmer?  After all, according to Lloyd Grove, Kilmer is on the verge of jumping into politics himself by running for governor of New Mexico. 

Grove doesn't clarify just which party Kilmer would represent as a candidate.  Back in the early '90s, perhaps as a result of his role in Top Gun and his well-publicized reservations about playing Jim Morrison in The Doors, it was often assumed that Kilmer was some sort of closet Republican.  However, Grove does mention that Kilmer campaigned for Obama in 2008.  My own instincts are that Kilmer would probably run as an Independent. 

Why?

It's probably because I've always found him to be as annoying as an actor as I previously found Ross Perot and Ralph Nader to be as presidential candidates.

(Though, in all fairness to Mr. Kilmer, he deserved an Oscar nomination for The Doors and probably one for Heat as well...)

Many people would say that this is a natural result of Obama's election.  After all, Obama's entire campaign was based on the power of his celebrity as opposed to any actual qualifications for office.  As a result, we are now seeing quite a few celebrities openly talking about running for office.  For instance, Ben Affleck has talked about running for governor of Virginia and Joe Piscopo is mentioned as a candidate for office in New Jersey.  And, of course, if Obama is the one who made it acceptable for a celebrity to be the nation's leader, he was simply building on the foundation that was laid down by Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2003.

The problem with this theory, of course, is that it assumes that Val Kilmer is a celebrity.  Seriously, can you name Val Kilmer's last movie without looking it up on Wikipedia?  Apparently, it was something called The Chaos Experiment.

Val Kilmer's one of those strange cases where an actor becomes known as a star despite not really having any fans.  Indeed, despite being a talented actor, his screen presence seems to have the effect of generating a strong feeling of nausea in audiences.

Remember him in the Saint?  That was the movie that would have us believe that Kilmer was a master of disguise and that Elisabeth Shue even knew how to spell "cold fusion" let alone create it. 

Or how about his sweaty, mumbling turn as John Holmes in Wonderland, a film that literally had absolutely no good reason for existing? 

Or what about The Island of Dr. Moreau?  It's been 13 years since that movie came out and his presence in that film is still not within the realms of human comprehension.

Still, the idea of Val Kilmer as governor of New Mexico is an intriguing one.  After all, this is the same guy who has continually been labeled either "crazy" or "insane" by a steady stream of disgruntled directors and co-stars.  This is the same actor who allegedly stubbed out a little cigarette on Moreau director Richard Stanley's face.  Whether that story is true or not is not important.  What's important is that it is so easy to believe.

Perhaps if Val Kilmer can actually win an election, other actors will be even more inspired to take the plunge.  After all, if you're a politically outspoken thespian like Alec Baldwin, wouldn't you be a bit annoyed to discover that Val Kilmer has a state of his very own and you don't?

Perhaps in the future, actors will no longer compete for bigger roles but for bigger states.  No longer will they steal scenes, instead they'll embezzle tax funds.

Hopefully, Texas will elect Powers Boothe.

 

Marilyn Chambers, R.I.P.

 

Actress Marilyn Chambers has died.  She was 56 years old.

In 1972, Chambers shot to fame when she went from appearing on the new Ivory Snow box to starring in Behind the Green Door, a ground-breaking pornographic film directed by Jim and Artie Mitchell that -- along with Deep Throat -- set off the short-lived phenomenon known as "porno chic."  To a large extent, the success of Behind the Green Door was due to the fact that Chambers always came across as the approachable "girl next door" even when she was having sex on a trapeze.  It also helped that Chambers -- who had appeared in the mainstream Owl and The Pussycat before Behind the Green Door -- was a far more capable actress than Deep Throat's Linda Lovelace.

For a while, it appeared that Chambers might make a move into mainstream film but, other than playing the lead in David Cronenberg's underrated Rabid, it didn't happen.  It's been rumored that Chambers was forced on Cronenberg by Rabid's producers and Cronenberg himself has said that his choice for the role was Sissy Spacek.  Regardless, Chambers was perfectly cast in Rabid and the film's success (and it is a far more succesful film than even Cronenberg seems to be willing to admit) has a lot to do with her.  Playing a biker babe who, as the result of a motorcycle accident, ends up turning a good deal of Canada's population rabid, Chambers is totally convincing as a powerless Typhoid Mary.  By the film's end, Chambers has earned the audience's sympathy if not a happy ending.  In retrospect, her character seems to almost be a prophecy of "Patient Zero," the promiscous flight attendant who, some claim, managed almost single-handedly to launch the AIDS epidemic. 

(In all fairness, I should add that the Patient Zero Theory has proven to be a gross simplification.)

After Rabid, Chambers returned to appearing mostly in adult films and even ended up married to Linda Lovelace's ex-husband (and manager), the infamous Chuck Traynor. 

Politically, Chambers was a Libertarian and in 2004 and 2008, she ran for vice president on tickets headed by Charles Jay.  In 2004, she was the candidate of the Personal Choice Party.  In 2008, she ran under the banner of the Boston Tea Party.  She won my lonely protest vote in 2004.

Marilyn Chambers, R.I.P.

The Wall Of Sound

 

First, O.J. Simpson gets sentenced to 33 years in prison for armed robbery (though, of course, we can guess for which crime Simpson was actually being sentenced).

Now, legendary music producer Phil Spector has been convicted of murdering actress Lana Clarkson.  Spector is now facing the prospect of spending the rest of his life in prison.

(Though quite a few people -- like me -- feel that Spector should have been put away 28 years ago for attempting to murder the Ramones with the End of the Century album.)

What this means, of course, is that out of the Trinity of 70s Celebrities Accused Of Murdering Light-Haired Women In California, only Robert Blake has so far managed to avoid prison. 

(That said, it should also be noted that out of that trio, Blake's probably the only one who was actually wrongfully accused.  Ever since Blake was first arrested, I was always a member of the "Christian-Brando-Did-It" contigent.)

Is it possible that we are now entering an age where celebrities actually can be convicted in a court of law? 

In all seriousness, one of the unfortunate side effects of celebrity murder trials is that the fame of the accused often ends up overshadowing the tragedy of the victim.  In most of the stories I've read concerning Spector's trial, Lana Clarkson has been described as a "B-movie" actress and this isn't quite fair to her.  Lana Clarkson was not a B-movie actress.  Instead, she was a talented actress who happened to appear in a lot of B-movies.  To dismissively refer to her as a "B-movie actress" diminishes the fact that -- regardless of the quality of the film she was appearing in -- Clarkson was one of those likable, energetic actresses who was always better than the material she had to work with. 

Most stories mention that her best known role was in a film called Barbarian Queen, as if Clarkson were some type of Troy McClure-type hack whose life could be judged solely on the basis of the titles of the films that she appeared in.  What those stories don't mention is the fact that she actually gave a pretty memorable performance in Barbarian Queen.

(Though the Clarkson performance I would recommend would have to be her performance in a film called The Haunting of Morella.  The film itself is pretty bad but Clarkson's performance is very good.)

And who could forget her as the improbable wife of Vincent Schiavelli in Fast Times At Ridgemont High?

Rest in peace, Lana Clarkson.

You deserved better.