Fade to Black - Michael Jackson

When I was a kid, I loved Michael Jackson. Before his descent into madness, me and my friends thought he was not just the King of Pop, but the King of Everything.

I have a few very distinct memories of Jackson back in the day: me, Phil, and Sean, choreographing a routine to Billy Jean for the elementary school play. I think I remember rousing applause. Then there was me, Timmy, and Sandy choreographing more than a dozen routines in Timmy and Sandy's backyard. We were playing "music video," complete with a director (Tim), choreographer (all three of us), and an audience (Sandy's dog and - for thirty seconds - Sandy's older brother).

We didn't have a malt shop when I was kid. Instead we had a variety store that held two video games. We used to go there, hang out, and play video games all the time. There was this one guy who was the best video game player in town. He was a few years older than me, had a beard, wore a leather jacket and ripped jeans, sported an earring, drove a dented Camaro, and looked mean. His last name was Roc and it wasn't made up. He scared the hell out of me. One time I was watching him play Galaga or Pac Man and we got to talking about music. He told me, "You know who my favourite entertainer is? I bet you'll never be able to guess."

I tried the usual skid suspects ("skids" were people with long hair that listened to heavy metal; I don't know if they're still called that): Black Sabbath, AC/DC, Judas Priest, so forth. He said, "Nope. My favourite entertainer is Michael Jackson."

I was floored. This was heavy stuff. Not only did he like Michael Jackson, but he was willing to admit that he liked Michael Jackson. To give you an idea of why this was a big deal, fast forward a few months. I was hanging out in the smoker's pit of the high school. Someone brought up Roc. I was stupid enough to say that Roc's favourite entertainer was Michael Jackson. One skid girl told me that Roc was going to kick my ass for saying that, and another guy threatened to do it himself. For a week I walked around wondering when Roc was going to descend and beat me to a pulp. Never happened. That's character.

It occurs to me now that I think that was the first time I heard someone described as an "entertainer" in the true sense of the word. Roc had brains. He knew the difference between heavy metal entertaining and pop entertaining, but he knew that they were both entertainment. I wonder if Roc became a critic.

One other childhood memory: Sandy and Timmy were the first kids in the neighbourhood that had a copy of the Thriller video. I waited and waited for them to invite me over to see it. But, like kids with a pool, they knew they had a trump card. They would mention the video now and then, or talk about their favourite parts, and I would be left standing there, wishing.

Two or three weeks went by. I wished and I wished. This was in the days before 34505 channels on TV, and the only showbiz show was Entertainment Tonight. So I had probably seen only three or four Thriller previews and commercials, leaving the thing a big mystery rolling around in my head. I wanted to see it so damn bad.

Finally they showed me the video. They sat on the couch and feigned boredom while I watched in wide eyed wonder. It scared me. It thrilled me. I loved it.

Everybody did. Anyone who said that they didn't like Thriller was a liar. And Roc was right: Jackson was a great entertainer.

I lost touch with Jackson and his music after that. Black or White was the last song I really paid attention to, and that one only because an English teacher wanted to dissect it during a writing class. Jackson had begun to turn weird. Freaky weird.

Years later I was watching a Michael Jackson concert on DVD. I had wandered into a girl's room and she and her friends were loving it. I didn't get it. He was a freak. His face was a mask, his body a stick. He looked ill. While watching the video I made some comment that he looked like a freak. I got kicked out of the room. So Jackson still had it, but he didn't have me.

It takes a lot to overcome child molestation charges. Jackson settled out of court with a teenage boy to the tune of millions, but people still loved him. So who's more weird? The fans that were ready to line up for his "comeback tour," or Jackson? American Idol recently had a "Michael Jackson night," where the singers had to perform Michael Jackson songs. You kept hearing the word "legend," as in, "Michael Jackson's a legend, so it was hard to pull that song off."

Legend? Really? I don't think so. Not anymore. If his career had ended at Thriller, his legendary status would be undeniable. Instead, I think his legacy will be one of a strange celebrity that couldn't handle it. Endings mean more than beginnings. Jackson's ending sucks. A man that liked to sleep with teenage boys, wear surgical masks everywhere he went, and had his face chopped into something unrecognizable to a mother. He didn't release any studio albums in the last eight years, leaving the public to judge him not by his music, but by what he did with his life. Over the past decade, the music stores have been flooded with Jackson "greatest hits" albums, the last of which was the "Celebrating 25 Years of Thriller." Man how the time flies. 25 years since he looked normal. 25 years since I thought he ruled the world.

The old line says that poor people are crazy, rich people are eccentric. Jackson certainly proved that. If he had been a door-to-door salesman, nobody would have wanted to be within 100 yards of him. But he was a celebrity, so dangling babies from windows and sleeping with boys wasn't such a big deal.

Weird. That will be Jackson's legacy. I'd say it's sad, but it's not. Again, if a door-to-door salesman acted the way Jackson did in the latter part of his life, you'd shed no tears for him. So I guess I'll give you a very slight pass if you say, "It's about the music," but you won't get much from me if you say it's about the man. Or what was left of him.

Fade to Black - Peter Zezel

I was watching Zezel last year when he was filling in as a co-host for the Hockey Central show on Sportsnet. I remember thinking that he sounded like a gentleman.

I don't know if I ever heard a bad word about Zezel from anybody. He was a good player (underused as a Leaf, but I'm not a Leafs fan, so what did I care?), and a class act. After retirement he ran a hockey camp for teens and he did a lot of charity work. The only knock I had on him back in the day was the hockey hair mullet he carried around.

I remember the controversy surrounding his retirement. His niece was dying of cancer and he asked to be traded from Vancouver to an eastern team so he could be closer to her. Instead, the Canucks traded him to Anaheim, as far west as the NHL can get. So he retired. I like that story.

It's hard to believe that the disease he was diagnosed with was still with him. Last year on the TV shows he looked healthy, with the post-retirement fat of an athlete that's found the joy of not working out three hours a day. Alas, hemolytic anemia had kept its grip on him for a decade. Recently it took a turn for the worse. He had surgery a few days ago and ended up on life support. He died on Tuesday, aged 44.

More here.

Fade to Black - Mark Fidrych

I never got to see Fidrych play. I was too young. But my brother used to talk about him, and every so often you'd see highlights of "Big Bird" on the sports shows.

He died today in an apparent accident while working on his truck.

The Freep has a good write-up on him. A taste:

He had a no-hitter through seven innings in [his] first start, won nine of his first 10 starts, started the All-Star Game and even had Howard Cosell genuflecting at his feathered feet before a national television audience – all in a span of two months.

The rest is worth reading.

Baseball players never die. They just turn into black and white photographs.

Fade to Black - Sydney Pollack

I'll never forget the scene in Jeremiah Johnson where Robert Redford is in front of a lonely campfire deep in the Rocky Mountains. Snow is knee deep, and Redford is bearded, scarred up, and quiet. He's been fighting Crow for years, and the battles are taking their toll.

In the distance, an old man rides up. We watch him from a long way off, trudging through the snow. When he gets to Johnson's fire, we recognize him as Bear Claw, the old man who helped train Johnson in ways of the Mountain Man.

During their brief, slow conversation, Johnson looks at Bear Claw and asks, "Would you have any idea what month of the year it is?"

I always loved that scene, and Jeremiah Johnson is one of my favorite movies. Sydney Pollack directed it, and it was one of his best.

Over Pollack's career, he had a lot of successful pictures as a director and producer. He also helped make Oscar nominees out of a ton of actors (though Harrison Ford is rumored to have never wanted to work with the man again, after the strange debacle that was Random Hearts).

Pollack's lifelong friend Robert Redford appeared in seven of his films, almost all of them good ones. Three Days of the Condor and Jeremiah Johnson are my top two Redford/Pollack flicks; Out of Africa comes in last, though the ladies and the Academy liked it.

He was acting in more films and television lately, and I thought that he'd be around for a lot longer. He was quite a good actor, and his turn in Michael Clayton led me to believe that he might start taking bigger roles. This was wishful thinking on my part, as Pollack had been sick with cancer a while before his death.

If you're interested in looking at some of Pollack's stuff, here's my picks for this weekend: Jeremiah Johnson, Absence of Malice, They Shoot Horses Don't They, and Tootsie. If you're more the tear-jerker type, scratch out Malice and re-run The Way We Were instead.

Whatever you decide, watch Tootsie last, and let Pollack leave you with a few laughs.

Photo: Hollywood Film Festival

Fade to Black - Charlton Heston

I always had a spot in my heart for Charlton Heston. He wasn't so much an actor as he was an icon, a symbol of an era.

My favorite story about him comes from Burt Reynolds. Reynolds was at Florida State University. He was a student and football quarterback with aspirations of becoming an actor. He was in the auditorium when Heston arrived to give a speech.

The way Reynolds tells it, Heston looked magnificent when he came onto the stage. Tanned. Tall. Brilliant white teeth. Stunningly handsome in a camel skin coat.

Thought Burt, "I'll never be an actor."

Then Heston tripped and almost fell flat on his face.

Heston made over-the-top acting cool. I can't think of any other actor from his era that could pull off the parts of Moses, El Cid, and Ben-Hur, without looking like a pompous ass. Heston relished the high-drama act of lifting a fist to the air, cursing the heavens, tasting every consonant in each spoken word.

As a private citizen, he marched for civil rights, headed the Screen Actors Guild, and later the National Rifle Association. It was the latter that put him in the sights of those with differing politics. That's unfortunate. From now until the end of time, his name will be on the same page as Michael Moore's, though Moore only met the man once, briefly, in an ambush interview.

That's all right. Compared to that footnote, Heston's library of work stands tall. In any documentary on the history of film, you'll find shots of Heston riding a chariot, sobbing before the Statue of Liberty, parting the Red Sea, or saying one of the most famous lines in film history: "Get your stinking paws off me, you damned, dirty ape."

Maybe he should have saved that one for the interview.

Photos: Star Pulse

Fade to Black - Anthony Minghella

I thought Anthony Minghella's movies were on the boring side, but they had a sweeping beauty that couldn't be ignored. He would reach for David Lean majesty, and I admired him for that.

It is a shame that such a good filmmaker died so young. Only 54, Minghella checked into the hospital for a neck operation and died of a brain hemorrhage.

I wasn't a fan of The English Patient or Cold Mountain, though both of them were beautifully photographed.

The Talented Mr. Ripley stands out in my mind as Minghella's masterpiece. Every time I see the film, I get the itch to move to Italy and just hang out in cafes and jazz bars. The pure warmth of that film gets into your bones, and the sheer cold of its ending is fine, gutsy filmmaking.

Not only a director, Minghella penned or adapted most of his own movies. He was damn good antidote to the smash-and-bang Hollywood of today. He'll be missed.

Photo: Yahoo Movies

Fade to Black - William F. Buckley Jr.

I always feel like a bit of an idiot writing "Junior" after someone's name, especially when they died at the age of 82. But whatever. Born in 1925, Buckley made conservatism something cool, and his TV show Firing Line is a program I'll always remember.

I was a kid back then, and I thought he was some Limey snob, but he was fun to watch. His mouth was a scar that ran off his face, he talked high and mighty, and his eyes were quick and bright. He wrote tons of articles, over 50 books, and was the founder and editor-in-chief and, later, editor-at-large of the National Review. When he died yesterday morning, he died at his desk while writing a new book about Reagan.

It was interesting watching the news of his death. All of the anchors and reporters kept calling him "conservative." A "conservative commentator," or "conservative writer," or "Bill Buckley, the conservative writer of the conservative National Review who used to host the conservative Firing Line."

I can't remember the last time the media told me about a dead liberal. For them, there is "normal," and "conservative," which shows their bias more than any poll.

Buckley's writing was famous for being high-brow, and I guess he really was the embodiment of Yale intellectualism given center stage, swaggering at being so smart and so right.

My favorite story of Buckley doesn't involve his politics.

He swore the following story was true, and that he was there:

Buckley and David Niven are at a party, talking to another man. Two women come down the stairs.

Niven says, "Look at that ugly woman."

The man says, "That's my wife."

Niven says, "I meant the other one."

The man says, "That's my daughter."

Niven says, "I didn't say it."

Buckley wrote scads of spy novels and, according to him, about 1500 words a day when working, which seemed to be always.

Here's an interview between Buckley and Charlie Rose, after the death of Reagan. Watch it if you have the time and you'll get a good sense of Buckley.



Photo: Sam Falk/New York Times

Fade to Black - Roy Scheider

"You're going to need a bigger boat."

With that line, Roy Scheider cemented his place in movie history. The line is a beautiful piece of writing and acting, and it helped Scheider make Jaws the smash hit that it was.

Scheider died yesterday after fighting a battle with myeloma.

I always loved Roy Scheider. When I was a kid, Jaws made him the king of cool. Who else could climb the mast of a boat, face an oncoming great white shark, and blow it to smithereens while believably muttering, "Smile, you sonofabitch." For years I thought the line was, "Smile, you sonofa--" KA-BOOM. Later, with the miracle of VHS, I could rewind the scene, turn the volume way up, and find it. The missing "bitch."

Scheider made an excellent everyman. In Marathon Man he was great as Babe's older brother, and in French Connection he was superb as Popeye Doyle's partner. In 1979 he tried his hand at playing Bob Fosse, in the semi-bio-pic All That Jazz, and it got him an Oscar nomination.

My favorite scene in Jaws is when Drefuss and Shaw are comparing scars from the old days, showing off their machismo. There's a cut to Scheider, and he pulls up his shirt a little and looks at his belly, rubs at it, then sheepishly pulls the shirt back down. Stab wound? Bullet hole? He never says.

All That Jazz
Scheider never made it to superstar status. The big hiccup came when he had to turn down the choice role of Michael in The Deer Hunter. That one gave De Niro his uberactor moniker, while Scheider had to keep his contract commitment to film Jaws 2. It would be an understatement to say that Scheider got the short end of the stick on that deal, and I've often wondered if it stunted his career. From then on he was a very good character actor, and a leading stage man, but movie superstardom never arrived.

In his later years, he contented himself with TV, and much later, the odd anti-war demonstration. I never watched him much during this stretch. Seeing the star of Jaws act as a nice guy in SeaQuest just didn't do it for me. His post-80's films were just so-so, and I felt a little sorry for him. No need to, since he was crying himself to sleep in a big bed full of cash, but I just thought his career could have been more, leaning towards Gene Hackman or Morgan Freeman.

Not to be, but no matter. From now until the end of entertainment, somewhere on late night TV, you'll hear those magic words: "You're going to need a bigger boat."

Photos: Yahoo Movies

Fade to Black - Heath Ledger

Heath Ledger was found dead in a NY apartment this afternoon. He was 28. Reports indicate that he was found by a housekeeper who was trying to inform him that a massage therapist had arrived for an appointment.

Instead, the housekeeper found Ledger in bed, naked and unresponsive. Prescription and non-prescription pills were on a night table beside him.

USmagazine.com filed this report:

"This is terrible and I'm in shock," a close friend of Ledger's tells Usmagazine.com. "But to tell you the truth... we saw it coming."

"Heath has gone though a rough road of trying to get sober," the source tells Us.

"Things were very dark," the source says. "His one joy was Matilda." Matilda is his 2-year-old daughter with ex-wife Michelle Williams. They split in September.

"Everything else was misery for him," adds the source. "Unfortunately he was too late in getting help."

What a horrible thing to die a celebrity. If a nobody swallows pills and ends it all, he gets three lines in some hometown obit. If a celebrity dies, everyone hears how a maid found him drugged out and bare-assed.

It will take a while for the cops to come out and say whether it was a suicide or not. Either way, it's a terrible waste, first for his family, second for film. We tend to forget that these larger than life individuals have families. Right now, there's a French teacher named Mrs. Ledger crying for the loss of her little boy, and a two-year-old Matilda Ledger that doesn't know she will never see her father again.

Ledger was a very good actor. I saw him in his first Hollywood role, the loverboy in 10 Things I Hate About You. The movie was crap, but Ledger was good. He skyrocketed to fame in big pictures like The Patriot and Brokeback Mountain, and his place as a Hollywood superstar was affirmed with a turn as The Joker in this summer's The Dark Knight, which finished shooting last year.

Ledger as The Joker

The Dark Knight just got a whole lot darker, perhaps as dark as the mood of the producers that made the film. They must be wondering about the future of their project. It will be interesting to see how fans react to it. If Ledger did kill himself, then every crazy, eye-rolling, twisted gag of the Joker's will seem very dark indeed. Too dark? We'll see.

I wasn't a fan of Brokeback Mountain. It was a story about two gay shepherds that was much over-hyped and is now nearly forgotten. Ledger did a good job with it, and got an Oscar nomination for his role, but I will remember him more for his part in Monster's Ball. In that film, he showed a vulnerability that may have been more than merely acting.

Photos: Yahoo Movies

Fade to Black - Ingmar Bergman

One of the greats is dead.

Ingmar Bergman died in Sweden today. He will be hailed as one of the most influential filmmakers of the 20th Century. I buy that, and I also don't. Mark Twain defined a classic as a book which everyone praises but nobody reads. Bergman probably falls into this category. I doubt that many of the movie buffs that whisper his name as if it were a vesper have seen too many of his films, if any.

In any event, happy trails Ingmar Bergman. My pick for a Bergman film you must see before the week is over is The Seventh Seal. Watch it, if only to sound cool at the weekend party when a movie junkie mentions Bergman's name.