Tag Archives: Muppets

10.20.24
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Boomers, Batman, and Beetlejuice

Michael Keaton hosted Saturday Night Live this week and in his monologue he mentions that his new film, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, is out in theatres.

The theatrical film business being what it is – you might not know this.  But suffice it to say it is the sequel to what else – the 1980s megahit where he reprises his ghostly title role because, well, why not?  For once it makes sense and shouldn’t at all be seen like a cash grab.  If only because ghosts in heavy white makeup can believably go 35 years without showing their age. 

Works for me!

Especially if they remain as funny, trim and committed to playing a character and, thus, earning a laugh, as he is.

Keaton’s always been a really great actor – equally outstanding and believable in the broadest comedy and darkest drama (Note: On the latter score, rent the film he just directed and stars in, Knox Goes Away, on Amazon and you’ll see just how talented he really is.  Or watch his recent Emmy-winning turn in the terrific Hulu miniseries, Dopesick (2021) ).

Remember when Birdman won Best Picture?

It’s worth noting we’re sort of running out of these type of movie star/actors. 

The kind that maintain a career over forty years and whose work in iconic roles span multiple generations.  The self-deprecating stay-at-home dad from Mr. Mom,  the first and second modern-day, darkly tortured Batman, the crazed or not-crazed, depending on your POV, actor/bird in Birdman, even the straight down the middle newspaper editor in his other Best Picture Oscar-winning, Spotlight.

classically trained

Still, there’s something about Beetlejuice that was evident on Saturday night.  Keaton’s opening wasn’t merely a cheap promo for his new movie, but rather a moment that gave an opportunity for 2024 SNL cast member Mikey Day and former SNL cast member Andy Samberg (2005-2012) to both come out in the heavy white makeup, dressed in the bold white and black striped suit and wearing the crazy green wig, doing their best Beetlejuice doppelgangers. 

For the comics, who were aged 10 and 12, respectively, when the film came out, it looked like a fantasy come to life, and they couldn’t curtail their enthusiasm for getting to dress up as one of their childhood touchstones next to the guy who created/IS him. 

It’s a whole look

To that end, they confessed the tribute was really designed to goad him into once again at least doing the Beetlejuice voice, which the slightly embarrassed Keaton finally does, sort of, by the end of the bit.

The same way Jennifer Anniston did when former SNL cast member Vanessa Bayer did her Rachel from Friends bit in 2016.

The Rachel haircut is the cherry on top

The same way Nicholas Cage appeared to be when Samberg did his overwrought Cage persona on SNL in 2012.

The same way Jerry Seinfeld couldn’t help doing when then SNL’s Jimmy Fallon did his sing-song Seinfeld star/character in 1999 and…

The same way Joe Coker performed alongside one of SNL’s original Not Ready For Prime Time Players, John Belushi, when the latter sang as an impeccable, soundalike/lookalike Joe Cocker in 1976.

Which is to say nothing of all the real-life politico drop-ins.

There is a new four-part MSNBC documentary entitled My Generation running on consecutive Saturday nights covering the baby boomers (born 1946-64), Generation X (born 1965-1981), millennials (born 1981-1996), and Gen Z (born after 1997). The promo material states the eight-hour series “will document the iconic events, people, and media that shaped each generation” and describes it as “a dose of nostalgia for those who lived through these times and a primer for those who did not.”

I guess.

But I watched some of them and couldn’t help wondering — who makes up these categories anyway? 

Wait… right?

I can tell you as a baby boomer that there is a huge generational difference between those born in 1946, 1955 and 1963.  For instance, in 1948, only 1% of U.S. households owned a….TELEVISION.

It wasn’t until 1957 that the first passenger jets were in use.  And in 1964, The Beatles made their first stateside appearance on television, mere months after Pres. John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

I’m old enough to vaguely remember the debut of The Beatles but a world where almost no one had a TV or flew on a big airplane, well, that’s a product of someone else’s generation.

Embracing my inner Waldorf and Statler

Still, I do get I’m kind of old.   Which, if you get to be the age of any baby boomer, you will realize is really a privilege.

At least that’s what one old person told me some years ago.

This is all to say that if you really want to reflect on generational differences, just go to nbc.com or YouTube and watch a bunch of SNL clips through the years.  That will take you to what once was and you will also appreciate the passage of time AND get a few chuckles, or at least a couple of nostalgic, Oh my Gods, in the process.

And if you need a reference….

To that end –-  shameless self-promotion – VERY shameless – you can get a copy of: The SNL Companion: An Unofficial Guide to the Seasons, Sketches, and Stars of Saturday Night Live on Amazon.  Here’s the link: https://a.co/d/888Dhde

I wrote it, along with my better half, Stephen Tropiano, and, along with a bunch of fun history, quips and pithy historical observations, it has an episode guide where you can pick and choose your pleasure or…poison. 

Sure does!

What you will fondly relive and remember or what you will skip over, ignore or forever choose to deny.

Mere documentaries do not allow you to make that choice.

SNL Michael Keaton Monologue (10/19/24)

11.25.11
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The Talented Mr. Ginsberg

A very famous actor once told me that although he did study, acting was something he could always do.  It came natural.  Almost easy.  That is not to say it didn’t take effort.  And an emotional toll at times.  But it bears repeating,  from a very early age he knew it was something he could do.

My path as a writer was similar.  It’s not as if I thought as a kid I could make my living putting words together.  When I was young there were three professions being offered a. doctor b. lawyer 3. accountant.  Well, we can scratch a. and 3 right off the bat.  I skipped high school chemistry and I was not a numbers man.  That left me and my mouth – so lawyer would seem like a perfect fit.  You’d think.

But one business law class (yes, it was at 8am every Tuesday and Thursday but still…) changed all that.  I always thought there were at least 2 or 3 right answers under the law because isn’t life all about shades of gray and spinning a tale to prove your point?  Uh, no.  Being a lawyer was more than arguing.  It was also about memorizing.  Well, screw that.

Thankfully that left me with only this thing I could always do – write.  But geeez – how do you get paid for this?  Uh, if anyone still knows the answer to this question please email me back?  PLEASE?

I’m only half-kidding for dramatic effect about the paying part (sort of).  If you have talent and really want to, you can find a way to get paid for it in some form.  It might not be in the arena you prefer (at least not yet) or you might not be using it in the exact form you had in mind, but what you learn as time progresses is that no matter how screwed up things or people are, no one can take away your innate ability at what you can, almost instinctively, do well.  (Note: This is not to say that you don’t need to practice or that you even have to pursue payment for your talent – talent is just the raw material.  But both of these are subjects of another discussion).

Guess the famous "raw" talent?

Insecurities, comparisons and the infernal American system of rating who is the “best of” in any category of life (from the Oscars to nursery school certificates) convince many people to believe that they have no real talent.  In a word – WRONG.

My belief in my soul of souls is that everyone has a talent, especially those who are convinced they don’t.  It might not be your preferred one, or perhaps it is but you don’t know it because you don’t think of it as a talent.  Well, why would you if it’s something you could always do?  That’s not talent, if it comes so naturally is it?  Uh, yeah, it is.

I truly marvel at anyone who is mechanical and can put together something without it immediately collapsing or eventually falling apart. ( I used to think this was a nerdy, Woody Allen-ish Jewish thing until I became friends with a Jewish best friend in college who proved this theory very and quite wrong).  I also don’t understand how someone invents something, anything.  And how does a television work?  Yeah, I’ve read how countless times.   But sound waves?  What about electricity?  I just don’t get it.  I can wire a sound system if the wires are color-coded but that’s about it.   How about fixing stuff?  Plumbing?  A car?  Or why would anyone take the chance of surgically opening something or someone up, even after 10 years of schooling?  What if you’re having a bad day?  And — how about raising a child?  Uh, no thank you.  I don’t have the patience and would surely screw them up worse than myself.  Thankfully, there are others who want to do all of that.  Yet I teach.  And I’m good at that.   And then they even say, those who can do, and those who can’t teach – as if it takes no talent to teach?  Oh please, give me a break.  Try going through a time machine and sitting through my 9th grade social studies class and see if you don’t agree with me and disagree with that.  But I digress.

The other funny thing about talent is how easily it can be misused.  As Glinda asks Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, “Are you a good witch, or a bad witch?” and it too bears repeating.  For example, I’ve always been wary if my actor friend is being real with me in conversation, if he’s that good at pretend.    As for me, I can write my way out of anything I don’t want to know.  Why acknowledge it’s real if I can make it into my own story and change it (or at least fix the ending?).  It took me a very long time to recognize this because, truly, in my heart this wasn’t an ability but simply a way of being.  And anyway, this wasn’t a talent.   If I were talented it would be something else.  Because the talent I really wanted was to sing.  Like, really sing.  Broadway, movies, Carnegie Hall.  I’m not kidding.

Yet at some point it becomes apparent that there is both talent and destiny and that John Lennon was right – “Life is what happens when you’re making other plans.”  If you’re lucky enough, at some point you begin to not give up learning new stuff but also begin to embrace all that you can do really well.  At first it might feel like you’re settling for the next best thing, especially when you want to star in Hugh Jackman’s one-man show.  But I can acknowledge what is real if I can make it into my own story and change (or at least fix) the ending.

But when it becomes apparent what your personal destiny is calling you to, you slowly (or for some, quickly) begin to recognize, enjoy, hone and appreciate it.  It takes work but in my case I’m grateful that I can, well, do something.   And though it took me awhile, I finally got the point to where I wouldn’t trade it because, well, then I wouldn’t be me.   Besides, how happy can Hugh Jackman be anyway — singing and dancing on Broadway in a one man show with his name over the title.  Or, actually, as the title.

I hate him... I love him... I want to be him!

Thanksgiving is a time where you’re supposed to appreciate/look at what you have and give thanks.  But this is difficult when you don’t appreciate it or don’t honor it.  I think we’re taught not to value something that is natural and that achievement is only about when something is (or seems) impossible.  It’s kind of backwards, if you think about it.  Give thanks for the talent.  Own it.  Love it.  And appreciate what you have.  And then – try to make it better.

Unless you can sing – then all bets are off.