Off the Wall: The Newspaper Columns of Ted Gardner - Hardcover

Gardner II, Theodore Roosevelt

9780962729775: Off the Wall: The Newspaper Columns of Ted Gardner

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0962729779 ISBN 13: 9780962729775

Publisher: Allen a Knoll Pubs, 1993

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Book by Gardner II, Theodore Roosevelt

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"Play It Anew, Sam"

With all the fuss over the rerelease of a film called Casablanca, I was suckered into seeing it. Though I had a potful of film classes at the institute of higher learning in South-Central Los Angeles, I don't remember seeing Casablanca. Of course, my memory may not be what it used to be - I couldn't say, because I don't remember what it used to be.

Anyway, if you haven't seen Casablanca, save your money. The thing is about fifty years old and believe me, if this is any indication, they had no clue about making movies then.

First of all it wasn't even in color. How much better this might have been if we could have seen Ingrid Bergman's rosy cheeks. But what am I talking about? We hardly saw anything of Ingrid Bergman. There wasn't one nude scene in the entire picture.

Sure, there were a couple of bright lines, but this is the MOVIES not radio. Not one of the women even held a gun in her hand. Car chases were nonexistent. No one ran through the city sewer system. Nobody was built like Schwartzenegger, nobody climbed walls or walked through them. A rain scene was as dangerous as it ever got.

A good movie today will give you a smack of violence every three minutes. Not here. There wasn't even one of my favorite scenes where the lead goes into a room and tears it apart, pulling things from the shelves, smashing glass, you know the bit. It gets more deliciously exciting every time you see it. Why, there's more excitement in the average modern preview than in all of Casablanca.

Movies sure have come a long way in 50 years. And as movies get older, the protagonists get younger. Ask any Hollywood producer today and he'll tell you if you don't appeal to the kids, you're dead in the water.

The only hope for Casablanca is a remake. Humphrey Bogart is no longer of this world, so you get Sylvester Stallone, the Italian Stallion, for his part. For Bergman's part, Julia Roberts and her body double for the nude stuff.

From Scientific American:

If you like to laugh, you'll love this book. Ted Gardner has been plying his outrageous wit in his newspaper column for eight hilarious years.

He takes on everything from life at Euro Disney to death, with stops for family vacations, celebrity spotting, shameless begging for raises, and answer machine antics along the way.

Moscow McDonald's, his mother, his pseudonymous daughters, his wife, his father's funeral - all are fair game.

Read all about Jack Nicholson, the pickup artist; Clint Eastwood, the author's protoge. Did Andrew Lloyd Webber plagiarize Ted Gardner's wedding song for CATS? Was T.S. Eliot a comparatively minor poet? Did Michael Keaton try to attract Gardner's attention to get a part in a move of his novel, or was he more interested in his 25-year-old daughter?

Should Sylvester Stallone and Julia Roberts remake Casablanca?

And so many questions of the same ilk are explored. Everything is right OFF THE WALL.

Nothing is sacred to this bozo. He laughs at everything.

You will too.

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