criterionforum.org

I thought it was terrible, almost painful to watch and felt like I could sense their discomfort with one another through the screen.

Black Hat wrote:I thought it was terrible, almost painful to watch and felt like I could sense their discomfort with one another through the screen.

It was terrible, but at least Wayne Knight ate up his screen time.

Gotta hand it to 80sTees, they've really dug deep for their shirt inspirations:

My first thought was they were referencing Tomb Raider 2, but wikipedia has shown how wrong I was...

"No, no, it's a joke! Don't you remember that Seinfeld episode, the one where George tries to get the apartment... No? Oh, c'mon, you remember!"

Interesting. Re: guns in comedy, for what it's worth, "The Cartridge Family" is one of my favorite Simpsons episodes.

Salesman: Sorry, the law requires a five day waiting period. We've got to run a background check.
Homer: Five days? But I'm mad now! I'd kill you if I had my gun.
Salesman: Yeah, well, you don't.

There's also the forgotten Robin Williams/Walter Matthau film The Survivors which loosely dealt with guns

Try Elmer Fudd and Yosemite Sam for early gun nut social commentary.

I'm with Larry Charles in that it might have been something that would have worked later when the show was running full-steam rather than when it was just beginning. I think you can make nearly any topic funny, it just depends on a lot of things the trickier the subject is.

domino harvey wrote:Oral history of a lost episode of Seinfeld the cast and crew refused to film

Wasn't this part of one of the special features on the Seinfeld DVDs? I can't remember which one. Could have been an easter egg.

When the series was ending, Entertainment Weekly had a special all-Seinfeld issue and they had a sidebar feature with storylines from the writers that were eventually rejected. It may have come up there, I don't recall. The two I remember were: Kramer rehabilitates a skeleton for medical display and George gets in trouble for saying, "I've never seen a black person eat a salad."

Also, Jason Alexander got quite angry at The Pen, an all-time great episode, but one with literally no lines or appearances from George. They never repeated that by having an episode lacking any of the big 4 again. It managed to get filmed, but I'd imagine it was pretty confrontational around the set at the time.

TBS allegedly speeds up its broadcasts by 7.5% to fit in more commercials. Video evidence

7.5% of nothing is still nothing.

UCB troupe writes and performs an entire new episode of Seinfeld-- it is surprisingly dead-on

I saw Billy Wilder's Kiss Me, Stupid today, and while diving into its convoluted history of casting hopes/changes, I found out for the first time that Mariska Hargitay is Jayne Mansfield's daughter. Absolutely had no idea - then I remembered she has a small but key role in "The Pilot", and another bit of trivia is how two episodes that season (including "The Pilot") both make the same joke while referencing her mother the first time then Kim Novak in "The Pilot." When Marilyn Monroe died, Mansfield was given the role in Kiss Me, Stupid only to be replaced by Novak when she became pregnant with Mariska Hargitay. Too inconsequential and complicated to be anything more than a coincidence, but one that I found amusing.

Also, I want to say Jack Lemmon (who had scheduling conflicts) and Marilyn Monroe would've been the ideal Orville and Polly in Kiss Me, Stupid, but Walston and especially Novak still do a fine job in those roles.

Walston is the MVP, which is saying a lot since everyone is so good. I like Lemmon, but Walston's role is very difficult to pull off in the way it needs to (the entire film hinges on his ability to resiliently cope with his own insanity, his paranoia becoming a reality of circumstances) and Lemmon's screen presence would likely overshadow a lot of the nuance with a blubbering naive nice-guy shade. The part is more complex than it lets on, and I can't conceive of anything matching a fraction of Walston's darker, demented take

What was weird was seeing stills of Peter Sellers in that role. Normally I'd take Sellers over Walston in an instant, but it's hard to imagine what magic he could've done with the role under Wilder's direction, especially when they clashed over the approach Sellers should take. (Supposedly Wilder didn't talk much about the film afterwards, but I wonder if he took Sellers's leave of absence as an opportunity to recast rather than a necessity?)