Simple Tricks and Nonsense

Running down the list more or less in order:

• Sydney Pollack, who died of cancer on May 26 at the age of 73, is probably more familiar to average movie-goers for his acting roles in films like Michael Clayton, Eyes Wide Shut, and A Civil Action, in which he always seemed to be playing an attorney, an executive, or some other variety of wealthy, powerful, and/or urbane man, than for his work behind the camera. (Most of the tributes I've read to him inevitably link to this clip of him arguing with Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie; Pollack plays Hoffman's agent, who is breaking the news that no one will work with an actor so notoriously difficult that he couldn't even play a tomato without arguing about it. Rumor has it the scene was greatly informed by real-life tensions between Pollack -- who directed Tootsie -- and Hoffman, who in his younger days had much in common with the character he was playing.) Pollack was always good in his acting roles, very natural and often with a warm screen presence that he could subvert to great effect when playing a bad guy. But I personally found him more valuable as a director than an actor. He wasn't one of the great auteurs -- there's no recognizable "Pollack style" that I've ever noticed -- but he was an old-school craftsman in the mold of Michael Curtiz, a studio man who could be counted on to put out a quality-made, intelligent movie. Not a flashy movie, just a reliably good one. Several of the films he made with Robert Redford, in particular -- The Electric Horseman, Three Days of the Condor, and Jeremiah Johnson -- hold fond places in my heart, because my mom likes them, and I remember first watching them with her. These days, it seems like filmmakers all want to be Scorsese or Tarantino, but few of them have the chops to pull it off, so their would-be epics inevitably end up lacking; I think we could use more Pollacks, myself.

  There's a lengthy LA Times obit here.

• Next up, the Emmy-winning composer Earl Hagen passed away the same day as Sydney Pollack, May 26, at the age of 88. If you grew up as I did, in the 1970s watching syndicated re-runs of TV shows from the 1960s, then you'll know the man's work. He wrote the titles and incidental music for scads of programs, including what is probably his most famous, most beloved tune, the bouncy, impossible-to-feel-grumpy-when-you-hear-it theme from The Andy Griffith Show, always a favorite program in the Bennion household. Interestingly, he also wrote a jazz piece way back in 1939 called "Harlem Nocturne" -- here is a version of it by Ray Anthony -- that would become the theme for Stacy Keach's Mike Hammer TV series decades later, well after Hagen had retired. I remember watching Hammer fairly regularly, but the details of the show are fuzzy, all except for that haunting theme. That came back to me almost instantly when I found the Ray Anthony clip. I never knew it had a life outside of television. Hagen's LA Times obit is here.

• From the Star Trek family, we lost Joseph Pevney, the director of many of the most honored episodes of the original series, including "The City on the Edge of Forever," "Amok Time," "The Trouble With Tribbles," and "Journey to Babel." Like Sydney Pollack (notice how I'm tying these guys together as best I can?), Pevney worked as both an actor and a director -- he appeared in many early noir flicks before moving behind the television camera, where he worked on everything from Wagon Train in the early '60s to Fantasy Island and Trapper John, M.D. in the '70s and '80s. He died May 18, at the age of 96, according to his obit.

• Bob Justman was a producer on both the original Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation as well as the co-author of the best behind-the-scenes book I've ever read on the original series (and I've read quite a few!), Inside Star Trek, which he wrote with Herbert F. Solow, a studio executive who also worked on the show. The book is refreshingly honest, lacking the official whitewash and the veneer of legend that has descended over most recent publications on the subject, but it's not gossipy or tawdry. You don't get the impression that Justman or Solow have any axes to grind; they're just telling you how it was to work in a very stressful environment filled with creative, ego-driven people. It's a fascinating read for fans or anyone who's interested in how a television show gets made. Or at least how it did get made back in the '60s; I imagine things are somewhat different now.

  Justman died on May 28, age 81. His obit is here; Wil Wheaton, who worked with him on Next Gen, shares some personal memories and feelings here.

• Alexander Courage had a great name, didn't he? Sounds like a pulp hero, right up their with Professor Challenger and Doc Savage. And it sounds like he had a pretty good life, too, based on this obit from The Film Music Society, composing, arranging, and conducting music for dozens of significant movies and television shows. But like Earl Hagen, Courage will forever be tied to one single theme song, which contains what some have called the eight most famous notes in the world...

  I know it's fashionable these days to mock anything that's too earnest or blatantly emotional or "cheesy" (whatever that means), or just plain old, but I gotta tell you, the fanfare that accompanies the first appearance of the starship Enterprise in the original Star Trek opening still brings a smile to my face and raises the hair on my arms. It is to Courage's credit, I think, that he only scored a couple of the earliest episodes of Star Trek, but fragments of his music -- including, of course, that famous fanfare -- made it into nearly every incarnation of Trek that followed.

  Courage died May 15 at the age of 88.

  (One technical question: can someone out there explain what the article means when it says he "orchestrated" scores written by others? Is that like arranging?)

• This next one really hurt, because Harvey Korman was one of those guys that seemed like he'd be around forever. He's appeared in many movies, of course, including Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles, one of the most honest -- and funniest -- movies about race issues ever made in this country. But I of course remember him most from the old Carol Burnett Show, which was practically required viewing in my home back in the '70s. Every week, my parents would just roar as Korman's friend, partner, and tormentor Tim Conway tried like hell to crack him up... and usually succeeded. One of the better remembered examples is the "dentist sketch". A few years ago, I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to see Korman and Conway live on stage here in SLC; The Girlfriend and I took my parents, and the four of us laughed until we couldn't see straight. Harvey died May 29, at 81 years of age. His obit is here.

• And last but certainly not least, we come to another performer who seemed like he's just always been out there in our culture and always would be, the guitarist Bo Diddley. I first learned about Diddley through the music of another man, George Thorogood, who recorded a really smokin' version of Diddley's "Who Do You Love" that I played a lot in my younger days as I bombed around the south end of the valley in my big old '63 Ford Galaxie. As with a lot of music I loved in my teens, I eventually figured out the Thorogood song was a cover and I sought out the original and loved it, too. Of course, Diddley's visibility around the same time was greatly elevated by that Nike ad he made with various sports stars of the day.

  Bo left us just this past Monday, June 2, at the age of 79. but his trademark shuffling rhythm will live on in true rock and roll music. Obit here; there's a pretty cool tribute video featuring Thorogood's "Who Do You Love" here; and just for comparison, here is the original. If those tracks don't get your heartrate up, medical science can't help you...

And on that note, let's call it a night, shall we? It's been a helluva week all the way around...