News

Once upon a time in late night television, it was customary for talk shows to fill up their couches as the evening's episode progressed. The first guest would do their segment and then move down a spot on the adjacent couch, making room for the next guest to yap with Johnny Carson, Dick Cavett or whoever. What with the barnacle presence of sidekick Ed McMahon, Carson's couch could get especially crowded some nights. Sometimes this got tense (like the time Burt Reynolds inexplicably went after "Double Dare" host Mark Summers on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno"); sometimes it was chaotic comedy bliss (which is what happens when you ask Carson to rein in the irrepressible duo of Robin Williams and Jonathan Winters); and sometimes it was just plain surreal.

This tradition started to fade out of fashion in the 1980s when "Late Night with David Letterman" introduced its one-guest-at-a-time approach.

I started my new essay film, It’s a Zabriskie, Zabriskie, Zabriskie, Zabriskie Point, with an attractive if patently absurd proposition. I was convinced that one could seamlessly edit together Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point with Stanley Kramer’s It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. Imagine situating Daria Halprin, Mark Frechette, and their “dirty hippie” friends in California desert landscapes next to Milton Berle, Ethel Merman, Jonathan Winters, Buddy Hackett, Mickey Rooney, and the rest of that legendary cast.

One narrative universe, with just a little editing room hocus-pocus!

There are lots of highlights, but to whet your appetite: University radical Mark Frechette flies his stolen aircraft right past the one piloted by Mickey Rooney and Buddy Hackett as they spin out of control. Daria Halprin ignores a hitchhiking Jonathan Winters. Milton Berle leaps right into a cascade of amorous sand-covered bodies. Spencer Tracy and Daria Halprin in a torrid extramarital affair.

Rod Taylor dead at 84: Actor best known for 'The Time Machine' and 'The Birds' Rod Taylor, best remembered for the early 1960s movies The Time Machine and The Birds, and for his supporting role as Winston Churchill in Quentin Tarantino's international hit Inglourious Basterds, has died. Taylor suffered a heart attack at his Los Angeles home earlier this morning (January 8, 2015). Born on January 11, 1930, in Sydney, he would have turned 85 on Sunday. Based on H.G. Wells' classic 1895 sci-fi novel, The Time Machine stars Rod Taylor as a H. George Wells, an inventor who comes up with an intricate chair that allows him to travel across time. (In the novel, the Victorian protagonist is referred to simply as the "Time Traveller.") After experiencing World War I and World War II, Wells decides to fast forward to the distant future, ultimately arriving at a place where humankind has been split...

(Dick Cavett, above.)

(Note: This article is currently appearing in Venice Magazine. Talking with Dick Cavett was one of the true pleasures of my time doing these printed Q&A's, as I was getting to conduct an interview with one of the all-time great interviewers, about doing interviews. Below are the highlights of our talk.)

by Terry Keefe

During the varied runs of his television talk show, Dick Cavett arguably conducted in-depth interviews better than anyone in the media before or since.

From 1968 to 1975 on ABC, and then later from 1977 to 1982 on PBS, “The Dick Cavett Show” hosted a literal who’s who of both America and the world. The guest list included Marlon Brando, Woody Allen, Groucho Marx, John Lennon, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie, Noel Coward, Salvador Dali, Mel Brooks, Katherine Hepburn, and Ingmar Bergman, to name just a few.

The show was unique in its time,...

Michelangelo Antonioni's "Zabriskie Point" (1970), one of the most controversial and notorious flops in Hollywood history, is getting another chance on DVD.

The most spectacularly unsuccessful attempt by a studio to cash in on the "youth market" it thought was created by "Easy Rider," this indictment of American society was savaged by critics and returned just $900,000 on MGM's $7 million investment.

Antonioni, an Italian director who had tapped into the zeitgeist with "Blow-Up" to the tune of a (then-huge) $20 million gross, cast a pair of unknowns, Mark Frechette and Daria Halprin,...