A Degree Absolute! episode thirty-five: "Kings and Desperate Men"

A movie for McGoohan die-hards that creator Alexis Kanner the Once-Boxed sued the makers of Die Hard over! Paddy McG and Kanner! Squaring off, with a Montreal radio show as their Thunderdome. A film with all the makings of a taut thriller involving hostages, a building wired with explosives, and McG in fine form: Rolling them Rs! Slamming them consonants! Playing drunk! Almost evincing sexual-adjacent desire! Features more overlapping dialogue than if you played Nashville, A Wedding, and McCabe and Mrs. Miller all at once!

Don't Fly With Me: Arena's "Catch Me If You Can," reviewed.

Hayley Podschun, Alexandra Frohlinger, Christian Thompson and Rhett Guter in Arena’s revised-but-still unsatisfying Catch Me If You Can. (Margot Schulman)

Catch Me If You Can, the Hairspray songwriters’ attempt to musicalize Steven Spielberg’s beloved 2002 film, didn’t take off on Broadway 11 years ago. The revised version now at Arena Stage doesn’t work, either. For the Washington City Paper.

A Degree Absolute! episode thirty-four — THE MOONSHINE WAR

Patty McG's first major project after The Prisoner wrapped up in early 1968 was The Moonshine War, for Sex and the Single Girl director (and title-song lyricist!) Richard Quine. Quine did not pen this film's remarkably concise and descriptive title song, "The Ballad of Moonshine," leaving that to Hank Williams, Jr.

The great crime writer Elmore Leonard adapted the screenplay of The Moonshine War from his own 1969 novel. No one will argue it's on the level of later, adapted-by-other-screenwriters Leonard translations like Get Shorty, Jackie Brown, Out of Sight, or the TV series Justified, but the seeds are here. 

Also here: Richard Widmark! A pre-M.A.S.H. Alan Alda! A pre-fame Teri Garr and a pre-billing Tom Skerritt! A pre-The Waltons Will Geer! Lee Hazlewood of Lee Hazlewood Industries as gun thug Dual Metters! Plus the Patty McG bedroom scene you've been dreading.

Here's the condescending and phony behind-the-scenes featurette we discuss on the episode.

The Moonshine War

Screenplay by Elmore Leonard, from his novel

Directed by Richard Quine

Released July 1970

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Our song: "A Degree Absolute!"

Music and Lyrics by Chris Klimek

Arranged by Casey Erin Clark and Jonathan Clark

Vocals and Keyboards by Casey Erin Clark

Guitar, Percussion, Mixing by Jonathan Clark

Bass by Marcus Newstead

Pop Culture Happy Hour: "Severance"

Tramell Tillman, Zach Cherry, John Turturro, Britt Lower and Adam Scott in the Apple TV+ series Severance.

I was thrilled to join my old pals Linda and Glen and my new pal Roxana Hadadi to discuss Severance, the marvelous and unsettling new Apple+ sci-fi drama.

A Degree Absolute! episode thirty-three — "THE THREE LIVES OF THOMASINA" with Josh Spiegel

Does Mister-not-Doctor Andrew MacDuhui (Paddy McG) hate pets? (He does not, no matter what his low-information neighbors in the fictional Scottish town of Inverinoch think.)

Did Walt Disney hate cats? (Our very special guest Disney expert, Josh Spiegel, makes a compelling case.)

Were animals harmed during the making of this motion picture? (Most certainly, regrettably.)

Our principled stand against pandering to the Internet's insatiable appetite for cat content crumbles as we pad, paw, 'n' claw our merryish way through...

The Three Lives of Thomasina

Written by Robert Westerby, from Paul Gallico's novel Thomasina, the Cat Who Thought She Was God

Directed by Don Chaffey

Released December 11, 1963

"BLOOD, SWEAT, AND CHROME" reviewed in the Washington Post

Zoë Kravitz and Charlize Theron in George Miller’s 2015 masterpiece Mad Max: Fury Road. (Warner Bros.)

Mad Max: Fury Road is one the wildest and most unconventional blockbusters ever made, and I’d like to think I did it justice when I reviewed it for NPR upon its release in May 2015.

I’m just as enthusiastic about New York Times reporter Kyle Buchanan’s new oral history about the movie’s genesis, production, and legacy, which I reviewed for the Washington Post. Anyone interested in filmmaking should read this book.

A DEGREE ABSOLUTE! episode thirty-two — THE SCARECROW OF ROMNEY MARSH with Margaret H. Willison

On February 9, 1964, Ed Sullivan introduced a band from Liverpool, England formerly known as The Quarrymen to an estimated 73 million viewers of his primetime CBS variety show. And down the dial on NBC, the anthology series Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color drew an audience of something less than 73 million for the first installment of its three-part The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh, an adaptation of Russell Thorndike and William Buchanan's novel Christopher Syn starring our man Patty McG as an 18th century man of the cloth* by day/masked-smuggler-by-night who helps the common people by... paying their taxes, we think? Using the funds he earns from smuggling brandy and tobacco. He also helps them elude the pressgangs who roam the marsh looking for reasonably able-bodied youngish men to abduct into King George III's Royal Navy.

*Specifically, a "fuckable vicar" in the estimation of our generously oversharing special guest Margaret H. "Hula Hoop" Willison, whose effervescent personality really ties the room together. (Dang. That's the wrong Coen Bros. reference.) 

The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh

Teleplay by Robert Westerby, from the novel Christopher Syn by Russell Thorndike and William Buchanan

Directed by James Neilson

Original airdates February 9, 16, and 23, 1964

A DEGREE ABSOLUTE! episode thirty-one — SILVER STREAK with Ronald Young, Jr.

Pop some vitamin E before listening, because it's gonna be hug 'n' munch all the way to Chicago! Solvable host Ronald Young, Jr. joins Glen and Chris to examine Silver Streak, ostensibly a hybrid romantic thriller / buddy comedy that gave the world the long-running Gene Wilder/Richard Pryor screen partnership and was a huge hit upon its release in 1976. America's bicentennial anum was a great a year for movies, more despite Silver Streak than because of it, but hey, the movie features a loveably smarmy Columbo-era Patrick McGoohan as the despicable villain. Along with a lot of trite and, by contemporary standards, deeply offensive comedy. Choo choo!

Silver Streak

Written by Colin Higgins

Directed by Arthur Hiller

Released December 8, 1976