THE WAY IT WAS

Donald J. Trump has raised the specter of communism as the “greatest threat” that America has yet to face. Not the Russians, the Iranians, income disparity, the cost of living, nor the fact that most Americans cannot afford a home, let alone health care, but … communism. That is the threat. That is the thing about which we must all be wary. Well, I must say, if nothing else, that has a familiar ring to it.

I was in high school when then-Senator Joseph McCarthy claimed to have a list of communists who had infiltrated the State Department; that list was never produced, but remnants of that awful time cascaded into my undergraduate days at the University of Southern California during the late 1950s, as well as after that into my career in show business.

The so-called “Hollywood Ten” predated my tenure in “the business,” but I worked, and became friendly with, director Martin Ritt, writer Mel Levy, actors Lee Grant and Howard da Silva. All of them had lost some of their most precious years for building their careers and sustaining their families because of (as it turned out) the nonsensical rantings of one crazed member of the U.S. Senate. That one Senator, along with the nation’s subsequent “Red Scare” and the blacklisting that followed, was all it took. At this juncture, one can only wait and wonder at how impactful this current President’s message of singling out “the other,” will be. So far it hasn’t augured well for Hispanics, Muslims, Asians, LGBTQ, or Jews.

An interesting sidebar to all this is that McCarthy’s Chief Counsel for that Senate Subcommittee in the 1950s was Roy Cohn … later to become lawyer and mentor to a youngish Donald J. Trump who obviously learned a great deal at the feet of this “master.”

I bring all this up in what is normally a very non-political forum because of the happy coincidence of turning on Turner Classic Movies on a rainy afternoon in the tropics. There, I enthusiastically discovered The Way We Were on my television screen, presented on TCM, sans commercial interruption.

The movie may have been director Sydney Pollack’s film, the screenplay by Arthur Laurents is terrific as were the stars, Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford. An abundance of riches.

Once again, within minutes (more like seconds if you were there keeping track), I am captivated. The Award-winning Marvin Hamlisch score (with lyrics by erstwhile Hollywood friends, Marilyn & Alan Bergman) continues to enhance scene after scene, but it is so much more than that. The aggregate of the movie … the perfect casting of the two leads, the period, the settings, the wardrobe choices, the screenplay, and the music … intertwined with memories of my own life … all converging as I watch through tear-stained eyes.

If you haven’t seen it … is that a silly thing to ask? I mean, who among us has not seen it? (I know, I know, short shrift yet again for Gen X, Millennials, Gen Z, and beyond.) Well, for those who need a refresher for whatever reason, The Way We Were is more than a romance; it also accurately depicts … and makes comment on … the politics of the 1950s, heavily impacting the Hollywood of my youth.

I was late to the game, arriving at my first job in show business at MGM in 1959 months before my 22^nd birthday; it was more than a year later when director Otto Preminger and actor/producer Kirk Douglas publicly announced screenwriting credit to previously black-listed writer Dalton Trumbo for Exodus and Spartacus. Chalk that off as an anomaly? Need I define what blacklisting meant, where only the most brilliant of those accused of being communists could get work behind the scenes using a pseudonym or worse yet, a substitute … a character who would take the meetings (and the credit) for a black-listed/unfriendly/alleged communist sympathizer?

Folks, it took the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences twenty-five years after Douglas and Preminger’s singular act of courage to finally (in 1985) get around to posthumously award the Oscar for best screenplay to Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson for The Bridge on the River Kwai. They waited that long even though Foreman and Wilson were NOT part of the “Hollywood 10,” but simply two members of the show business community who refused to cooperate with the now infamous House Un-American Activities Committee.

People were all but ruined by those historical and awful events … some, losing not only their savings but their lives. I got through that period unscathed but I can (at least) begin to imagine how painful it would be for those who did not survive to be with me in the present day … watching the Pollack movie … revisiting those years.

Even thinking of those times, especially as I watched the film from the comfort of my lovely living room, brought about pangs of nostalgia as well as an abundance of emotional fodder.

There was my over half-century crush on the leading lady; the uncomfortable remembrance of being rendered literally speechless by a happenstance first meeting of the one and only BARBRA, while walking the very same sands of the Malibu Beach Colony depicted in the film; those Colony days I so longingly recall in my soon-to-be-released memoir, Before and After Cagney & Lacey. (Do I risk the stigma of too much self-promotion? Why not? Don’t trees have leaves?)

There, too, is the recognition that a great deal of the motion picture’s sum total resonated with memories of my own life in Hollywood … for despite whatever struggles I may have written about in my two (… count ‘em … two) memoirs …regardless of the fact that Redford was more athletic, and much better looking … was the epiphany that, not unlike his characterization of Hubbell Gardiner, that in retrospect … paraphrasing that fictional character’s first line in his first novel … most everything in life had come easily for me as well.

The fact that one of my wives looked a bit like Streisand, that I have … more than once in my life … been loved as unconditionally as Streisand’s fictional Katie Morosky adored Robert Redford’s more-than-beautiful Hubbell Gardiner, no doubt contributed to the mix of my emotional response.

The movie also recalled for me that evening, late in my second marriage and even later in Redford’s career … when he was no longer as handsome as he had been … my then-wife turning to me in that studio screening room saying, “… well, Barney, it has finally happened. You are, at long-last, better looking than Robert Redford.”

Meanwhile, back in my living room and The Way We Were: the total commitment of a woman for her man, that level of emotional allegiance … his wonderment at the depth of her devotion … knowing it was something he was somehow not capable of experiencing, coupled … at least at some level … with my own regret at not being able to evoke that kind of vulnerability. It is a thing that … at nearly 89 years of age … still resonates for me.

Sitting in my easy chair on this rainy day in the sub-tropics, thinking of loves past and present, worried about a government gone mad, I find myself reacting as I would bet Hubbell Gardiner would: is this a private diary entry (after the Dr. Fauci experience, is anything ever really private?) or is it something for my readers on Substack? You decide …

 

Barney Rosenzweig 

A NIGHT IN & ON THE TOWN

Nostalgia has been on my mind of late … it “comes with the dinner” upon reaching one’s eighties. First there was my extended weekend going down memory lane with my Emmy award winning television series Cagney & Lacey, then there was another Amazon Prime presentation of an old documentary favorite, Who is Harry Nilsson (And Why Is Everybody Talkin’ About Him?).

Those “everybodys” include, but in no way are limited to, Robin Williams, John Lennon, Jimmy Webb, Randy Newman, Yoko Ono, and Ringo Starr. And those are just a few of the folks who go on about the gent who may well be the most talented singer/songwriter of his (my) generation. The 20-year-old Harry Nilsson documentary contains a whole bunch of Harry’s singing, some of his shenanigans, and … even though it went on for the better part of two hours … I was sorry to see it (and hear) it end. Consider my thoughts on the piece an unqualified rave.

Not so the other evening … the subject of which also belongs under the general heading of what “comes with the dinner” for octogenarians … especially those of us who attempt a night out with a small gathering of much younger adults … on a Saturday night … at one of the town’s hipper eateries … in the Midtown District of Miami. There is little in life that will bring one to reflect on age or bring on the feeling (realization?) that a crossover has been made to that of the ancients.

It is not the food; it is the sounds that dominate the night. The pounding/repetitive beat, the redundancy of the din with nary a pause between numbers (note: I cannot go so far as to call them songs … or even tunes. It is most definitely not Harry Nilsson). The inability to have any sort of communication (let alone conversation) with anyone who would normally be considered as being within earshot, creates something distinct from what … in my experience … is known as an evening of dining out.

I wonder at the ability of these youngsters to withstand the onslaught of incessant noise. Could it be their hearing has been damaged by too much time at overamplified “concerts” so that they do not notice the clamor of their surroundings, or have they simply become inured to uproar?

It seemed to me apparent that the Gen-Z crowd, who compose the bulk of the establishment’s clientele, have been raised to believe cellphones at the dinner table are somehow the norm; the result: they do not appear to miss … (or, apparently) even expect … conversation as part of the night’s menu.

This observation of mine was to be “good naturedly” belittled by my tablemates … my views of the dinner attributed to either my unwillingness to go with the evening’s “flow,” the inefficiency of my aging ear drums, or both. The words of the Harry Nilsson version of “Everybody’s Talkin’” goes on … “I don’t hear a word they’re sayin’” … on this evening I could certainly relate to that.

The idea that … just maybe … what I was observing was society’s evolution into something more dependent on a collection of cell phone apps than any human need for convivium, was not up for discussion. But then, an absence of discussion … certainly at  this restaurant … seems to be de rigueur.

My apparently antiquated view of aspiring to be an interesting dinner conversationalist fell on … for all intents and purposes ... deaf ears. As to what meets the eye, the clientele of the restaurant is pure Miami. Women dressed in the latest fashions… often beautifully, if somewhat scantily, clad … while the fewer men in attendance were, as is often the norm in the Magic City, wearing jeans and tee-shirts. So much for that.

Was the food good? Yeah… I guess, but it is not the accentuation of the positive one takes away from the evening. Besides the cacophony of sound, the close-to-$200 per person price tag might have seemed objectionable if not for the fact that the arrival of that piece of reckoning signaled a merciful close to the evening.

Outside the restaurant, the neighborhood traffic in the mid-NW 20s of Miami… both on foot and by car … has one wondering, can the era of the rickshaw be far from the new reality? Call me old-fashioned but having to pay $45 to the valet for one’s automobile, then having to wait for nearly a half hour for it to arrive, did little to balance out the evening. Is “Everybody talkin’” about that? If not, they certainly should be.

Perhaps it was this octogenarian’s sense that the gestalt of the restaurant and the neighborhood was that of an adolescent’s playground on acid, coupled with the feeling that if there was anyone there born before the 21^st century, they were doing a good job at keeping that simple fact under wraps. I only know the evening … and I … were getting old … older… very fast.

“One” (is the loneliest number), another Nilsson hit made even more famous by the 70s rock group Three Dog Night comes to mind, not in a morose way, but with the realization there is absolutely no social stigma attached to someone my age simply saying no to evenings such as these … and meaning it.

It is, after all, me and my Arrow.

Barney Rosenzweig

The Weekend That Was

 An understandable supposition by any reader is that there is a certain amount of objectivity, if not expertise, in this pundit’scomments or reviews of movies, theatre, and television shows.

Lots of luck with that. 

As you should have by now concluded, I have my own biases, pet peeves, and firmly held opinions about all sorts of things. The fact that I have been involved with productions in the world of New York theatre, both on and off Broadway, as well as major and independently financed motion pictures, along with at least 300 hours of prime-time television, has only solidified my prejudices as to what is worth watching and what is not.

My standards often reflect those of my generation, which for the most part must be older than that of any collection of readers (as often noted, I have shoes older than most of my readers). It is simply the fact of my being born nearly 90 years ago, and the concurrent disappearance from planet earth of most of my contemporaries.

So, take it or leave it for what it is as I now must tell you that one of my favorite weekends of television viewing was recentlybinge watching something like a dozen episodes of my own Cagney & Lacey television series starring Sharon Gless and Tyne Daly.

It has been forty years since I have seen this oft referred to “ground-breaking” series of mine, and folks … I gotta tell you: it is good. Still. Very good.

Admittedly, I cherry-picked through the 125 episodes, selectingtitles I remembered as either Emmy winners for me as the producer or for Tyne Daly or Sharon Gless. But I also looked at a few I only vaguely remembered and, there too, I was impressed by the uniformity of the show’s quality of performances, the writing, and the overall presentation. 

It is understatement to say it was a most welcome break, especially after the hard and tedious work of editing and submitting my second memoir, Before and After Cagney & Lacey (due to be released by McFarland & Co. Inc. publishers on September 30 but available now for presale on their site and through Amazon).

Call me self-promoter … label me as non-objective … what can I tell you? I cried, I laughed, and even my housekeeper … who was supposedly busy doing other things … let me know how much she enjoyed what I was streaming on my living room TV.

It was not a sudden surge of sentimentality nor a morose need for nostalgia that motivated this binge-worthy weekend. UCLA has selected Cagney & Lacey to honor with a screening of episodes to be moderated by Ms. Maya Montanez Smukler, author of the book Liberating Hollywood: Women Directors and the Feminist Return of 1970s Cinema; I was asked to select the episodes to be screened and to be present for that screening.

I could probably have picked two from memory but there were a couple of “issues.” To begin with, the episodes had to either be written, and/or directed, by a woman. Okay, easy enough since many of our best shows fell into that category. Secondly, because of the size of UCLA’s Billy Wilder Theatre at the University’s Westwood campus, pristine prints of the episodes were necessary for proper projection to the anticipated 300 to be in attendance.

Good news/bad news: Cagney & Lacey was filmed … not videotaped. 35mm negatives exist that are in the vaults of the underlying rights holder of the series … no less than the vaunted MGM studios. 

There is no question that great prints could be provided. In fact, back in the day, I remember renting a motion picture theatre for a week at a multiplex in Santa Monica, California, screening three episodes a night for five nights while inviting the audience to vote for which one we should submit for that year’s Emmy consideration. 

That was in the mid-1980s … we had lines around the blockevery night, the pictures looked terrific up there on the big screen, and we got great national publicity at the time for the stunt.

That week was more than a personal triumph … it was a thrillfor me to sit in that darkened room, listening to an audience laugh at the jokes and react to the performances on screen. It is not something a producer of television gets to do very often … if ever. A special memory.

Here’s the bad news part: MGM’s archival vault is in some undisclosed (to me at least) western state, probably deep under a mountain where my series is in the good company of all those late/great MGM movies of the past.

I was advised by the powers that know of all this that if I want two episodes, I would be wise to pick six … that way I could be assured that they could (most probably) come up with two from that batch.

Okay … six episodes. The challenges were not only to pick what I thought were among our best, but I needed to be sure Sharon Gless and Tyne Daly (who would both be on that UCLA stage with me) would be equally served along with the aforementioned requirement of Ms. Montanez … that the episodes shown be either ones that were written or directed or both by a woman since that was … more or less … the major underlying reasons for the evening in the first place.

Good news, again: women such as Emmy winners Karen Arthur and Sharron Miller had directed a number of our best episodes. Ms. Terry Louise Fisher (also an Emmy recipient along with Georgia Jeffries, Patricia Green, and Shelly List) had writtenmultiple episodes.

If you are of a mind to re-create my weekend’s experience, with some small effort you can find Cagney & Lacey on Amazon Prime and “purchase” each episode for $1.99. You will have to navigate past the four reunion movies we made some years after the series. They were successful in the ratings … and memory is… these were also worthy, but I have not seen them since the mid-1990s, and they were not the shows on which we built our reputation, so take that for what it is worth. 

Unless you are a true Cagney & Lacey junkie, I would also avoid season one since it was not until season two that Sharon Gless came on board and it is those 118 episodes, where she played Christine Cagney, that are the ones most of the world “knows” as the real Cagney & Lacey. It also is worth pointing out that during the six years those 118 episodes were on CBS, no other actress won an Emmy as the lead in a television drama but Tyne Daly with four wins or Sharon Gless with two. Overall, the series accumulated more awards than any CBS drama in history up to and including to this day. 

You want my picks? From season two: “Open and Shut Case,”one of the first co-written by Terry Louise Fisher, “Burnout,” co-written by Chelsea Nickerson. Season three: “Choices,” directed by Karen Arthur, written by Terry Louise Fisher. Season four: “Heat,” directed by Karen Arthur, “Who Said It’s Fair?” parts one and two, written by Patricia Green. Season five: “The Gimp,” directed by Sharron Miller, written by Cynthia Darnell. Season six: “Turn, Turn, Turn” parts one and two, directed by Sharron Miller written by Georgia Jeffries, Shelley List & Jonathan Estrin. Season seven: “Friendly Smoke,” co-written by Shelley List, and “Don’t I Know You?” directed by Sharron Miller, written by Kathryn Ford.

What? You counted more than six. Call them a producer’s half-dozen. For what it is worth, my first book features some interesting details about the making of a few of these episodes … you will have to read Cagney & Lacey … and Me to find out which. Shameless enough? 

The UCLA evening will be October 7, Ms. Gless, Ms. Daly, and I will be on hand. Rest assured, this old man of many prejudices will be sure to bring it up again before the end of September in case any out there want to attend.

 

Barney Rosenzweig

ME AND PONCE

 

In writing something recently about Ted Turner, Turner Classic Movies (TCM), and Gone With The Wind, I was reminded of my earliest days here in the subtropics of South Florida as a refugee from Hollywood.

It was very early on, even before I had developed my formula for success as a then newly retired individual … an accomplishment on which few, who knew me as a Type A Hollywood personality, would have bet money.

I did not know then, nor had I come to fully appreciate, that if one were a truly compulsive individual, it would be possible to be as driven about doing nothing as it was to be equally possessed about doing something.

The year was 1995 … a little more than 12 months after TCM had made its debut …  initially not making too much of a dent. I had just moved to Miami, and like Ted Turner before me, I believed in the potential of the public’s interest in the classic movie genre. I posited I could capitalize on that concept and make a little money, while indulging my ego by hosting and moderating nights at the movies for subscribers at an appropriate local venue.

I thought I found such a place on Arthur Godfrey Road in Miami Beach … an abandoned neighborhood movie house, shuttered for years, that was a mere 10-minute commute in those less trafficked days from my Island paradise.

True, at the time there was zero parking connected to the property, but what put the kibosh on the whole thing was the outrageous rent being asked for the venue. It has been thirty years and the place still has never been rented … proof enough, one would think, that I was right to believe the landlord was/is not a motivated individual.

My idea for hosting old movies and mining my expertise on the subject, giving what I thought might be interesting tidbits about the creation of those films, was put on hold; and then my own Fisher Island township suggested I contribute my time and expertise to such an evening, on the Island, once a week … gratis.

Well, money isn’t everything; my stock market holdings were doing all right and, I reasoned, massaging my ego by harkening back to my days as a guest lecturer at various California colleges, just might be payment enough.

It worked for a while but in one Q&A session after screening Casablanca I heard a neighbor ridicule the film because of the obvious phony airplane model used in the movie’s title sequence.

I had no rejoinder. If that is what was deemed memorable… or even worthy of mention … after watching one of the finest motion pictures ever made … then … I dunno, something about pearls and swine came to my thoughts and I decided, right then and there, to (once again) leave “show business” and remand myself to the beach.

Now and then, I am asked to repeat my Barney’s Nights at the Movies; it is flattering … a nice compliment, but the fact is that there is really no longer any need for those evenings whatsoever. Turner Classic Movies has caught on. It is a great success, proving Ted Turner’s adage that “if you live long enough, you cannot overpay for a library of motion pictures;” and it is right there … for free … as part of your basic cable package.

The movies on TCM run 24/7 without commercial interruption and (often) with great commentary and insight from the various hosts. I hereby fold my tent and defer to their winning recipe.

As to the formula that got me adjusted to retirement, I resort to a metaphor aligned with my upbringing as the producer of something like 300 hours of prime-time television:

“All my wires were plugged in to a television monitor … then one day I detached them all and plugged them all into a Fisher Island monitor instead. The secret? No loose wires.”

Once I discovered that the way this retirement thing was going to work was to fully commit to this lifestyle and not be half in and half out; I found the bliss in an unscheduled life. I am 88 going easily into my 90^th year, fully convinced that a health scare I had sixteen years ago at age 72 would have killed me if I had still been following my early life’s career plan.

Inactivity = longevity. Seems to resonate. Especially when you realize that Ponce de Leon searched for the “Fountain of Youth” in Florida and not Southern California … it all begins to come together.

At least it “works” for me.

 

Barney Rosenzweig

EXCUSES, EXCUSES

 

There are any number of reasons for the inordinate amount of time that has passed since my last communique from this Island paradise, but only one that matters: it is the book.

I know, I know, I wrote that Before and After Cagney & Lacey was “done,” but done … it turns out in the world of publishing … can be something of an oversimplification.

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers has laid the book out … “designed” it if you will. The photos look great … not always where I wanted them in terms of the book’s narrative … but (oops) I found I was looking at the book as a vertical … reading the document on a computer screen one page at a time. I mean, who in real life does that? The book … like most books … is a horizontal thing with two pages each side by side, which, when actually … and finally … a book, may be turned page by page. Simple, right? Trust me if you have been writing and proofing on your computer screen for years it is easy to make this mistake before realizing that the photos just might work fine where they were placed by the “designer” in the first place.

Having finally come to that realization, I began to bury myself with the challenge presented by my publisher … proofing the entire document for errors in spelling, punctuation, facts, hyphens, and typos. And, while doing that, I was charged with creating an index; finding and listing not just every proper noun, but every word, phrase, or term of art which, as the author I believe might be worthy of a reader being interested enough to rummage through that ever-growing index to locate where they might find the discussion of that word or subject within the pages of my book. Those words then need to be alphabetized and then listed by page number(s) as to where they reside in the book’s latest incarnation. Of course, as the author of all this, I think everything I have written is interesting, with the result being that damn index continues to grow.

It is a lot to do and, truth to tell, although Before and After Cagney & Lacey is most generally referred to as “my book,” there is no way this process would now be complete … or be nearly as well done … without the major contributions made by my best pal, lawyer, and (now more than ever) editor, Debra Weiss Goodstone and her technologically adroit (and most gracious and willing) daughter, Marissa. I cannot thank them enough.

(It may well be you will wind up thanking Debra as well since I have left it to her to whittle down the lengthy index as she … as an objective reader … sees fit.)

The book will be released September 30. Pre-sales have commenced (available directly from McFarland or on Amazon).

That is the good news. The bad is that there has been a paucity of television programs worthy of comment. I mean, c’mon, have you seen The Buroughs?

Never mind what the New York Times reviewer has written, I am here not only to contradict that rave, but as a cautionary warning against junk TV. I will not squander any more space on this series, save to inform you that it is on Netflix, boasts a decent cast, and has … way too kindly, I might add … been labeled the Stranger Things for seniors. They should live so long (but won’t).

Larry David’s homage to America’s 250^th anniversary, Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness, is on HBO and it is so uneven as to be unworthy of the capabilities of this talented writer/performer. It is a sorry waste of time, not unlike watching a documentary featuring a collection of nothing but the strikeouts of Babe Ruth.

The Tom Hanks documentary series, The American Experiment, is very good (surprise, surprise) and this Netflix presentation should not be conflated with the two previously mentioned entries. I found it informative and entertaining and was duly impressed with narrators such as Al Gore, Hillary Clinton, Mike Pence, Kamala Harris, Ted Cruz, and Nancy Pelosi.

No more excuses … but maybe a slight delay as I binge the fifth and final season of the just released The Bear (FX and Hulu). Back ‘atcha soon with more notes from this warm Island.

 

Barney Rosenzweig

THE KID’S STILL IN THE PICTURE

When I yanked myself out of Hollywood … both the place and the career … I was 58 years old. I migrated quickly to Florida … Miami Beach, to be specific … it was the only place in America where they still called me “kid.”

There was some truth in that quip; the friends I so quickly made in my adopted community … the men I gravitated to and whose company I so enjoyed … were an eclectic group. The conversations with them were animated, interesting, and much to my joy, never about show business.

It didn’t dawn on me at the time that these half-dozen guys, who within a matter of months dominated my contact list, were not only older, but much older; each was at least 12 to 15 years my senior. It didn’t matter then. I never noticed it … and I have no recollection of any of them ever making anything of my age or theirs.

It has been 30 years since that cross-country move. I am now 88, and all those great pals of mine have passed on. They are missed, but also missing is the energy I once had to make those friends in the first place.

Socialization still occurs … albeit infrequently. I am no longer a feature on the Fisher Island grass tennis courts, instead, my days are spent avoiding an inordinate number of spam phone calls and writing these notes from my warm Island. It could go without saying, but will not, that there is also the recently completed and soon-to-be released memoir number two … Before and After Cagney & Lacey … which, as you might imagine, follows the already out there memoir number one, Cagney & Lacey … and Me.

One of the oft-mentioned players in that second memoir is my great friend, Daniel C. Cassidy. We met in 1954 at an inter-league high school conference and became great pals a year later when we discovered we were both entering freshmen at the University of Southern California. By our senior year we were roommates.

It has been over 70 years since our college entrance, and I am now back in California to eulogize my college roommate of that other century. His widow has arranged a memorial service at our alma mater and I have been asked to speak. Not as easy as it sounds.

I have long known that I am not as warm and fuzzy as my erstwhile roomie. Everybody loved Danny, and I had the honor to be his best friend.

The reality is that most everyone who will be at that memorial service held on the USC campus believes that they were his best friend. That is how Danny made people feel.

So, me … the best friend? At best, a maybe. In truth, Danny and I could not have been more different.

Danny was generous, gregarious, outgoing, loving, and interested in pretty much everything and everyone. All qualities I admire but few, if any, that I truly possess.

And I have not gotten better at acquiring these positive attributes with age. I am, basically, a solitary man who revels in the bliss of solitude … who does not reach out … who, more often than not, is socially remiss, who doesn’t do Facebook or Instagram, one who forgets to return phone calls, and rarely responds to emails. Danny and I were very different.

The preparations for the memorial by Danny’s widow have spurred familial conversations closer to home as to what I might want when the time comes for my own eternal internment.

Incredulity is my initial response, for if it is true (as I sometimes imagine) that I have created my own reality … that I made up the entire thing … that nothing of this world will remain once I am gone … when that proverbial tree falls in the forest and I am not there, not only is there not a sound … I am none too sure there is even a tree, let alone the requisite greenery it takes to make up a forest.

Beyond that disconcerting thought, as far as anything like a memorial service is concerned, is the simple fact that, now with Danny gone, most anyone who would have anything nice to say about me has long ago gone on to their maker … which should more than justify why there is memoir #2.

Did I mention that book (Before and After Cagney & Lacey) is nicely complimented by memoir #1, Cagney & Lacey … and Me …? And that both can be ordered through Amazon or just about anywhere such things are sold?

Give this some thought. Consider the possibility that there is truth in the supposition that I have, indeed, “created this reality.”  Weigh the age factor of the author (88 and counting) ... perhaps, then, you will see the efficacy in moving quickly on to Amazon while that company … and my books …  still exists on this planet of mine.

 

Barney Rosenzweig

 

SEND IN THE CLONES

 

Yellowstone … the gift that just keeps on giving. Dutton Ranch is the latest incarnation and it most definitely qualifies as one of those semi-guilty pleasures. It looks almost as pretty as its paternity would indicate but takes place in Texas … not Montana … and for sheer beauty, it is tough to compete with the more mountainous “Big Sky Country” of the “Treasure State.”

There is more than one reason they call Montana “the Last Best Place”… sorry, Texas, “Remember the Alamo” says it all as a concession in any beauty competition.

Like Yellowstone, the actors who play the cowboys and gals in this modern-day western really know how to mount and ride horseback and it is so noticeable that in the unlikely event I would ever make a western of my own there is no way I would do so without making every effort to get the wrangler who has done such a great job of teaching his craft to the thespians on the Taylor Sheridan troika of Yellowstone, Marshals, and now, Dutton Ranch.

All these can be seen on Paramount + but pretty and pleasurable though they be, none of them are as good as the other two Taylor Sheridan series, Landman, and The Madison, proving once again that really good actors can definitely enhance really good writing. Who woulda thunk it?

It should also be noted that although Dutton Ranch owes its lineage to Taylor Sheridan, he is not the writer on this series … and it shows. The format owes its allegiance to melodrama and a pretty heavy-handed version at that. “Creator” Chad Feehan really has a hard time creating a scene or a character that isn’t fraught with possibilities of an ugly back-story, a birth defect, or both … but then, with folks, scenery, and photography pretty enough… that is sort of what goes into the basic makeup of a guilty pleasure.

And it is pretty to look at, as are Kelly Reilly and Cole Hauser who reprise their Yellowstone roles and are well suited to the parts and each other. Ed Harris is as grizzled and semi-folksy as you could ask, while Annette Bening has one of those thankless roles that sorta make you wonder why she said “yes” to her agent’s phone call.

It could be she had a yen to channel Barbara Stanwyck in her waning years, but I don’t think so. If that was her motivation Ms. Bening would be having more fun than she exhibits here.

I have seen three of the episodes which will now start popping up one a week on the aforementioned Paramount + which will provide you with plenty of time to switch over to Amazon Prime Video and The Boys … one of the best series I have seen in a long while.

I have come late to this outlandish political satire and have now completed two of the five seasons. Each episode is worthy and the cast is beautifully assembled. The language is rough as are the sexual and action sequences and you will (I think) be amazed, despite the show’s grounding in the world of superhero fiction, how true to life and how real the human condition can be, even in this outlandish, garish, and gory series.

I cannot recommend it highly enough and find it disconcerting that something this good has been shown for five seasons with so little buzz… at least in my limited social circle.

Research shows that season 1 received high praise from critics and Rotten Tomatoes and was (correctly in my view) praised as sharp, irreverent, and great satire. Season 2 got even better reviews. Where have I been? And, what’s your excuse? This is good stuff, no matter how over the top violent. A wonderful cast, terrific writing, and a show remarkably well-produced. You really have to see it. The Boys on Amazon Prime.

The critics are all aglow over the final episode of Hacks on HBO but I am not one of their number.

Please … I do not want any misunderstanding … I am a Jean Smart fan and felt she reached something like career perfection in her role as Deborah Vance on the outstanding comedy series that has just completed its fifth season comprised of 47 episodes having already won multiple awards, including Ms. Smart’s four consecutive Primetime Emmy Awards.

But, as far as a final episode goes, this one does not even make entry level points in the Happy Endings Hall of Fame.

The Homeland finale almost always heads my list, but there are those who will tell you with some solid reasons that it is VEEP that is the all-time champ. The Newhart Show was one of the most talked about conclusions ever and The Americans and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel have to be in anyone’s top five.

The most costly (to the owners) endings are usually attributed to The Fugitive and Gilligan’s Island as back in the days of yore and heavy syndication, catching the one-armed man and getting off that Island in the final episodes were decisions that were regretted by anyone who held stock in the outcome of those shows as audiences turned away in droves once their hero found the one-armed villain of his existence and Gilligan and his shipmates were rescued.

Seinfeld, The Sopranos, and Game of Thrones … three of the best series ever made, are generally credited with the most disappointing endings unless you count Deadwood, which years after the fact, came back with a two parter to end that prematurely cancelled classic in very poor fashion.

Others that received great notices at the time or, conversely enormous backlash were M*A*S*H, Six Feet Under, Breaking Bad which all came out on the positive end of this while Dexter, and How I Met Your Mother joined the aforementioned list of great disappointments. Which brings us back to the present day. 

All hail Jean Smart and her fellow actors and the creators of Hacks. A wonderful series, with a very nice (and, lest it go unsaid, incredibly lush) finale. Goodbye, and amen.

The reference to a Cole Porter lyric is doubly appropriate, as in this case the Hacks finale was fun, but …. in the pantheon of good-to-great endings  “… just one of those things.

 

 

Barney Rosenzweig