A 19-year-old Alan Cumming makes his first television appearance in a BBC TV Director’s training course in 1984.
Never intended for broadcast, this is probably Alan’s first performance in front of a camera, though he did have a very fleeting appearance in episode 6 of Traveling Man the same year. However, he is billed here, along with his fellow performers, Forbes Masson and David Lee Michael, as final year students at Glasgow’s Royal Academy of Music and Drama.
Here Cumming is cast as one of 3 dead (or possibly war-weary) soldiers, where he lip-synchs pop songs and recites a poem by Wilfred Owen. This was Justin C Adams’ Final Project for his director’s course. Adams went onto a career as a director of quiz shows at BBC Scotland, before establishing his own highly successful production company.
It’s well-known to be the only weekly TV series that President Obama watches with his daughters and on Tuesday, Ann Romney told Entertainment Tonight that Modern Family is her favorite show, too.
Modern Family co-creator Steven Levitan responded on Twitter:
“Thrilled Ann Romney says ModFam is her favorite show. We’ll offer her the role of officiant at Mitch & Cam’s wedding. As soon as it’s legal.”
Thrilled Ann Romney says ModFam is her favorite show. We’ll offer her the role of officiant at Mitch & Cam’s wedding. As soon as it’s legal.
Etsy shop TheAllSeeingCat makes these one-of-kind handmade and hand-painted “Hello Aleister Crowley Kitty” sculptures from polymer clay and acrylic. Who wouldn’t want this?
In celebration of the Cindy Sherman retrospective at the SF MOMA, SFBG online asked “four of San Francisco’s premier drag performance artists” Lady Bear, Fauxnique, Boy Child and Lil Miss Hot Mess to re-enact some of Sherman’s iconic self-portraits.
I was never much of a fan of Annie Hall. I couldn’t honestly believe anyone would want to spend time with someone who seemed to be so alienated from their own feelings. I sat in the cinema thinking “Get oan wi’ it. Dae something”. But all that happened was introspective discourse and humor as deflection. Sure it had funny moments, but it seemed a million miles away from my life and the lives of those around me. And it seemed indulgent.
Yet, Annie Hall marked the turning point when Allen’s unique brand of humor conquered the world, and changed film and TV comedy for the next 3 decades, right up to Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Allen was suddenly everywhere - from the covers of Newsweek and Time, to lengthy interviews on French TV and the South Bank Show. He was the pin-up of geeks and the bourgeoisie, and Annie Hall was a lifestyle choice.
Still, none of that takes away from the fact Woody Allen is a comic genius, and a brilliantly talented writer and director of films.
This fascinating documentary captures Allen not long after his Oscar success with Annie Hall and the release of his follow-up movie Interiors. Made for French TV in 1979 by Jacques Meny, and actress/journalist, France Roche, this documentary takes the neurotic King of Comedy through his childhood, early career, and success as writer filmmaker. Though the voice over is French, Allen’s interview is in English.
I had so much fun reading the comments posted over the past few days in response to my piece on Billy Squier’s unbelievably bad video for “Rock Me Tonite” that I couldn’t resist sharing another video. This one I’ve actually posted on DM before. It features blue-eyed soulsters Hall and Oates singing “She’s Gone” while in what appears to be a shared drug-like stupor. Pre-dating MTV by almost a decade, this “promotional video” for the album Abandoned Luncheonette was made in 1973 and not released until years later. It’s a real jaw-dropper.
The clothes, the glazed expressions, the parade of women passing in the foreground, the red-sequined devil costume, the guitar solo with flippers…it’s all so ridiculously strange that it had to be a parody, right? A punk-style “fuck you” to the music industry?
When I originally shared this vid on DM a couple years ago, I didn’t know its history. As it turns out, the video was an elaborate joke with very little sub-text. A “fuck you” of sorts. In a 2009 interview with John Oates, the truth came out:
Well, I’ll give you a little background about what happened with that “She’s Gone” thing. First of all, it was 1973. There was no MTV, there was no outlet for anything like this. You know, it might be one of the first music videos ever made. I really couldn’t say, honestly, but it definitely would be a contender. What happened was, we were asked to lip sync “She’s Gone” for a teenage TV dance show broadcast out of Atlantic City, New Jersey. And we really didn’t want to do that; we didn’t want to pretend to sing the song. It was supposed to be shot in a television studio in Philadelphia. So we thought, with the mindset that we were in at the time – and I won’t say more on that, either -
We showed up at the television studio with a chair from our living room. The woman who’s walking through the picture – that’s Sarah…
Oh, wow.
And the devil who comes through was our road manager at the time. And we brought Monopoly money, and those weird instruments, and they thought we were nuts. They really thought that. My sister directed that video.
They thought we were completely insane. They actually didn’t air it; they wouldn’t air it. But we had it this whole time, and eventually I leaked it out to the internet, ’cause I just thought the world should see it.
A pair of soiled and stained underwear worn by The King of Rock and Roll himself, Elvis Presley, will be going up for auction next month at Omega Auctions. Elvis wore this particular pair of undies beneath one of his flashy white jumpsuits back in 1977.
It’s expected that The King’s fecal-stained briefs could fetch up to £10,000.
Omega Auctions will be live streaming the auction on its website September 8.
