Melvin and Howard
Melvin and Howard is a 1980 American comedy-drama film directed by Jonathan Demme. The screenplay by Bo Goldman was inspired by real-life Utah service station owner Melvin Dummar, listed as the beneficiary of $156 million in a will handwritten by Howard Hughes, discovered in the headquarters of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City. A novelization of Goldman's script was written by George Gipe; the film starred Paul Le Mat, Jason Robards and, in an Academy Award-winning performance, Mary Steenburgen. In the opening scene, Howard Hughes loses control of his motorcycle and crashes in the Nevada desert; that night, he is discovered lying on the side of a stretch of U. S. Highway 95; the disheveled stranger, refusing to allow Melvin to take him to the hospital, asks him to instead drive him to Las Vegas, Nevada. En route, the two engage in stilted conversation until Dummar cajoles his passenger into joining him in singing a Christmas song he wrote. Hughes suggests they sing his favorite song "Bye Bye Blackbird", they do.
The man warms to his rescuer and he is dropped off at the Desert Inn without revealing his identity as the reclusive billionaire. Most of the remainder of the film focuses on Melvin's scattered, up-and-down life, his spendthrift, trust-in-luck nature, his rocky marital life with first wife Lynda, his more stable relationship with second wife Bonnie. Lynda leaves him and their daughter to dance in a sleazy strip club, but returns, but she remains frustrated by her husband's futile efforts to achieve the American dream. Melvin convinces her to appear on Easy Street, a game show hybrid of The Gong Show and Let's Make a Deal, although her tapdancing is booed by the audience, she wins them over and nabs the top prize of living room furniture, a piano, $10,000 cash. Melvin agrees to invest in an affordable house in a new development, but while Lynda tries to keep their finances under control, he rashly buys a new car and a boat, prompting her to take their daughter and toddler son and sue for divorce.
Melvin is comforted by Bonnie, the payroll clerk at the dairy where he drives a truck, the two wed and move to Utah, where they take over the operation of a service station her relatives had owned. One day, a mysterious man in a limousine stops at the station ostensibly to buy a pack of cigarettes, but after he drives off Melvin discovers an envelope marked "Last Will and Testament of Howard Hughes" on his office desk. Afraid to open it, he takes it to Mormon secrets it in a pile of incoming mail, it doesn't take long for the media to descend upon him and his family, Melvin finds himself in court, admitting he once met Hughes but vigorously denying he forged the will that fulfills his dreams. Paul Le Mat as Melvin Dummar Mary Steenburgen as Lynda West Dummar, Melvin's first wife Pamela Reed as Bonnie Bonneau Dummar, Melvin's second wife Michael J. Pollard as Little Red Jack Kehoe as Jim Delgado Rick Lenz as Lawyer Dabney Coleman as Judge Keith Hayes Charles Napier as Ventura Jason Robards as Howard HughesThe real Melvin Dummar has a cameo appearance as a man behind a bus depot counter.
Parts of the film were shot in Salt Lake Willard, Utah as well as Las Vegas, Nevada. In his review in The New York Times, Vincent Canby called the film a "sharp, engaging funny, anxious comedy" and commented, "Mr. Demme is a lyrical film maker for whom there is purpose in style... Melvin and Howard is commercial American movie-making of a most expansive, entertaining kind."Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times described it as "wonderful" and added, "This is a slice of American life. It shows the flip side of Gary Gilmore's Utah, it is a world of mobile homes, Pop Tarts, dust and dreams of glory. It's pretty clear. Hollywood started with the notion that the story of the mysterious Hughes will might make a good courtroom thriller. Well, maybe it would have, but my hunch is that when they met Dummar, they had the good sense to realize that they could get a better – and a funnier – story out of what happened to him between the day he met Hughes and the day the will was discovered. Dummar is the kind of guy.
This time, he was right."Variety said, "Jonathan Demme's tour-de-force direction, the imaginative screenplay and top-drawer performances from a huge cast fuse in an unusual, original creation."Pauline Kael gave the film a positive review in The New Yorker: "Jonathan Demme's lyrical comedy Melvin and Howard which opened the New York Film Festival on September 26, is an flawless act of sympathetic imagination. I doubt if Jason Robards has been greater than he is here. Mary Steenburgen's Lynda Dummar has a soft mouth and a tantalizing slender wiggliness, she talks directly to whomever she's talking to – when she listens, she's the kind of woman a man wants to tell more to. Demme shows a finer understanding of lower-middle-class life than any other American director."Melvin and Howard holds a 90% "fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 20 reviews. Dennis Bingham's Whose Lives Are They Anyway? The Biopic as Contemporary Film Genre cites Melvin and Howard as the first film in the subgenre "biopic of someone undeserving," or "BOSUD,", popularized by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski with Ed Wood, Man on the Moon, The People vs.
Larry Flynt, Auto Focus. Paul Thomas Anderson has cited the film as one of his favorites. Robert Ridgely, who played the host of the fictional "Easy Street" game show in this movie, would be cast as Colonel James in Ander
Cadillac Man
Cadillac Man is a 1990 American comedy film directed by Roger Donaldson, starring Robin Williams and Tim Robbins. The plot of the film centers around car salesman Joey O'Brien whose life is consumed by turmoil, which all comes to a head when his dealership is taken hostage by Larry, a crazed motorcyclist; the film received mixed reviews from critics and performed poorly at the box office, grossing $27.6 million against its $15 million budget. Queens car salesman Joey O'Brien must deal with the ever-increasing pressures in his life: he has an ex-wife demanding alimony, a daughter, missing, a married mistress and a single mistress who are both in love with him, a two-day deadline to either sell twelve cars or lose his job. In addition, he has an outstanding loan to a Mafia don which he must either repay, or lose his life. On the day of the big dealership car sale, the car dealership is taken hostage by an AK-47-toting motorcyclist who believes his wife is cheating on him. Joey manages to talk the man out of doing any harm to the other hostages, as police surround the dealership.
Without realizing that the assailant's gun is not loaded, the police wound him after most of the hostages have been released which prompts Joey to promise to remain with him while he recovers. The crisis solves all of Joey's problems: his mistresses learn of each other and dump him, his daughter returns, his job is secure, the Mafia don forgives his debt, he begins to reconcile with his ex-wife; the film was not a box office success. Cadillac Man has a score of 55% on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes based on 11 reviews. Metacritic gives it a score of 50 out of 100 bases on 21 critic reviews. Critic Roger Ebert had mixed feelings about the film, giving it a two out of four stars, stating, "My problems with Cadillac Man were inspired more by false expectations than by anything on the screen, maybe if Robbins had come crashing in through the window in the first scene I would have liked it more." Cadillac Man on IMDb Cadillac Man at AllMovie Cadillac Man at Rotten Tomatoes Cadillac Man at Box Office Mojo
Passed Away (film)
Passed Away is a 1992 American ensemble comedy film directed and written by Charlie Peters. Jack Scanlan is a union leader, his son Frank arranges a welcome back surprise party for Jack, which more than surprises him, as he has a heart attack and dies. His large, dysfunctional family is brought together and finds themselves dealing with all of their emotional baggage. Everybody's assorted issues are brought to light; the relatives include his children: eldest son Johnny, a tree surgeon who wants more adventure in his life. There are unfamiliar faces too, like a woman named Cassie who turns up at the funeral and may or may not have been their late father's mistress, it is a chance for everyone to get acquainted or reacquainted, it's all in the family. The movie received mixed reviews; the film's first weekend generated $700,000. Passed Away on IMDb Passed Away at Box Office Mojo Passed Away at Rotten Tomatoes
Why Do Fools Fall in Love (film)
Why Do Fools Fall in Love is a 1998 American romantic drama film, directed by Gregory Nava and released by Warner Bros. Pictures; the film is a biographical film of R&B/Rock and roll singer Frankie Lymon, lead singer of the pioneering rock and roll group Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers for one year. Moreover, the film highlights the three women in his life, each of whom claim to have married Lymon and lay claim to his estate. Written by Tina Andrews, Why Do Fools Fall in Love stars Halle Berry, Vivica A. Fox, Lela Rochon, Larenz Tate, who portrays Lymon. Little Richard appears in the film as himself. Lymon was 13 years old when the teenage group Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers erupted from radios and jukeboxes with their 1956 hit "Why Do Fools Fall in Love?" and appeared in the movie Rock, Rock. After Mr. Rock and Roll, Lymon started a solo singing career. Lymon's career was over by the time he was 18 years old, he died of a heroin overdose seven years later. Jumping from the 1950s to the 1960s, the film traces the rise and fall of Lymon in a series of flashbacks as courtroom claims on Lymon's royalties are outlined by three women: Zola Taylor of the R&B group The Platters.
Ending credits shows the real Frankie Lymon singing his song "Goody Goody." Little Richard makes a courtroom appearance, while Miguel A. Nunez Jr. portrays Little Richard in scenes set in the 1950s. The film ends with Emira winning Frankie's estate, although Elizabeth was named the legal surviving spouse of Frankie Lymon; the screenplay of the film, written by actress-turned-screenwriter Tina Andrews, took fifteen years to be produced. Director Gregory Nava used most of the technical staff from his prior film Selena. Filming locations include: Jacksonville, Florida; the film was first presented at the Urbanworld Film Festival, New York on August 8, 1998. The film opened in wide release on August 28, 1998 and sales the opening weekend were $3,946,382. Why Do Fools Fall in Love ran for 8 weeks domestically and grossed $12,506,676 in the United States. At its widest release the film was shown in 1,377 screens, it holds a 54% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Roger Ebert, film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times, was disappointed in the screenplay and Nava's direction of the film, wrote, "There are several angles this material might have been approached from, director Gregory Nava tries several without hitting on one that works.
By the end of the film, we're not left with anyone to root for. He wrote, "Why Do Fools Fall in Love is a fresh, enlightening example of how to take a tragic American show-business story and make it funny and terrifically entertaining... brims with joyful spirit and raucous comedy... deftly juggles a surprising number of elements, but they all work." Wins ALMA Award: Outstanding Latino Director of a Feature Film, Gregory Nava, 1999. American Black Film Festival: Black Film Award. Nominations ALMA Awards: Outstanding Actor in a Feature Film in a Crossover Role, Miguel A. Núñez Jr.. American Black Film Festival: Black Film Award. Two soundtrack albums were released for. Why Do Fools Fall in Love: Original Versions from the Movie, released on September 8, 1998 by Rhino Records, contained fourteen songs, including five of Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers' original recordings. Included are original hits by Little Richard, The Platters, The Shirelles, Otis Redding and others. Why Do Fools Fall in Love: Music from and Inspired by the Motion Picture was released on the same day as Original Versions from the Movie, but on Warner's East West Records label.
Save for one vintage Little Richard song, it features new hip-hop and contemporary R&B recordings more or less unrelated to the actual film. Produced by Missy Elliott and Timbaland, this soundtrack album features songs by artists such as Elliott, Busta Rhymes, En Vogue, Destiny's Child, Coko and, making her solo debut, Spice Girls member Melanie B. "I Want You Back" by Melanie Brown featuring Missy Elliott peaked at number-one in the UK Singles Chart. Why Do Fools Fall in Love at the American Film Institute Catalog Why Do Fools Fall in Love on IMDb Why Do Fools Fall in Love at the TCM Movie Database Why Do Fools Fall in Love at AllMovie Why Do Fools Fall in Love at Rotten Tomatoes Why Do Fools Fall in Love film trailer on YouTube
Stellaluna
Stellaluna is a 1993 children's book by Janell Cannon about a young fruit bat. A young bat, becomes separated from her mother and finds her way to a nest of birds where she is adopted and begins to act like a bird. Stellaluna finds other bats and reunites with her mother, she learns how to behave like a bat, she introduces the birds to her bat family. Stellaluna and the birds decide. Cannon was interested in writing a story about bats because of the negative perceptions that many have of them, as well as because not many children's books featured them, she created the illustrations first. The art for the book was made with wax-based pencils, as well as airbrushed acrylic paint; these illustrations in particular were praised for their scientific accuracy, as well as for making the bats appealing. Themes in Stellaluna include friendship, overlooking differences to find common ground, the universality of feeling like a bat in a bird's world. One philosopher interpreted the book as showing that children are not either good or bad: children with non-conforming behaviors may be expressing their abilities and needs.
Stellaluna's behaviors, though discouraged by mother bird, were not "bad behaviors", but rather an expression of her identity as a bat. Stellaluna was a New York Times bestseller, appeared on the National Education Association's list of "Teachers' Top 100 Books for Children", won several awards, including the 1996 Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for Children; the book has been translated into thirty languages and was adapted into a short film, a puppet show, a musical. Author Janell Cannon grew up in rural Minnesota, she stated that she was a "free-range kid, able to gain an appreciation for animals like frogs, salamanders and bats." She empathized with bats. She said, for bats to be "misunderstood and mistreated by humans, out of fear affected me." When working at a library in California, Cannon noted that only three books in the children's section featured bats, of which two were removed. Cannon took a trip to Thailand, where she felt that she belonged despite not knowing the Thai language.
The connection she felt to the Thai people despite their differences in language and culture caused her to ask herself, "How can we be so different, yet feel so much the same?" This question lead her to consider writing a story where the theme was "overlooking differences in order to find common ground." When she returned to California, she began to create a children's book with this theme that featured bats. She credits the work of bat scientist and photographer Merlin Tuttle as part of her inspiration for Stellaluna, she referred to Tuttle's 1986 National Geographic article, "Gentle Flyers of the African Night", about epauletted fruit bats. Cannon's characters were Gambian epauletted fruit bats, which she chose for their dog-like qualities and friendly-looking features. Cannon signed with a literary agent, Sandra Dijkstra, who placed Stellaluna with the now-defunct publishing company Harcourt Brace Jovanovich in 1993. In a forest far away, a mother fruit bat had Stellaluna. One night, an owl attacks the bats, knocking Stellaluna out of her mother's embrace, she falls into the forest below.
Soon the baby bat ends up in a sparrow's nest filled with three baby birds named Pip and Flap. The mother bird will let Stellaluna be part of the family only if she eats bugs, does not hang by her feet and sleeps at night; when the birds grow, they learn to fly. When Stellaluna and the birds are out playing, it gets dark and the birds go home without her because they will not be able to see in the dark. Stellaluna keeps flying; when she does, she hangs by her thumbs. Soon another bat comes to ask; as she tells the other bats her story, Mother Bat reunites with her and Stellaluna understands why she is so different. Excited about learning how to be a bat, Stellaluna returns to Pip and Flap in order to share her new experiences, they agree to join Stellaluna and the bats at night, but find they are unsuited to flying at night and nearly crash. Stellaluna rescues them and the four of them decide that while they may be different, they are still friends and family. Cannon created the illustrations in Stellaluna herself, painting the illustrations before she wrote the story.
The art was created with Prismacolor wax-based pencils, as well as airbrushed Liquitex-brand acrylic paint. The illustrations were created on Bristol board. In the 1996 publication Children's Literature, the authors state that Cannon "put so much character in Stellaluna's face and body that the bat comes alive for the reader"; each full-page illustration is accompanied by a page of text. At the top of each page of text is a small, black-and-white ink illustration of Stellaluna's mother searching for her. Once Stellaluna and her mother are reunited, the ink illustrations portray Stellaluna for the rest of the book. Kirkus Reviews emphasized the appeal of Cannon's illustrations, calling them "exquisite", they said, "The appealingly furry, wide-eyed, fawn-colored bats have both scientific precision and real character. The illustrations were praised for their accurate portrayal of bats, with one educator stating it is "one of the most beautiful s
Tacoma, Washington
Tacoma is a mid-sized urban port city and the county seat of Pierce County, United States. The city is on Washington's Puget Sound, 32 miles southwest of Seattle, 31 miles northeast of the state capital, 58 miles northwest of Mount Rainier National Park; the population was 198,397, according to the 2010 census. Tacoma is the third largest in the state. Tacoma serves as the center of business activity for the South Sound region, which has a population of around 1 million. Tacoma adopted its name after the nearby Mount Rainier called Takhoma or Tahoma, it is locally known as the "City of Destiny" because the area was chosen to be the western terminus of the Northern Pacific Railroad in the late 19th century. The decision of the railroad was influenced by Tacoma's neighboring deep-water harbor, Commencement Bay. By connecting the bay with the railroad, Tacoma's motto became "When rails meet sails". Commencement Bay serves the Port of Tacoma, a center of international trade on the Pacific Coast and Washington State's largest port.
Like most central cities, Tacoma suffered a prolonged decline in the mid-20th century as a result of suburbanization and divestment. Since the 1990s, developments in the downtown core include the University of Washington Tacoma. Neighborhoods such as the 6th Avenue District have been revitalized. With over $1 billion having been invested in downtown Tacoma alone, private investment has surpassed public investment by a ratio of 4:1. Tacoma has been named one of the most livable areas in the United States. In 2006, Tacoma was listed as one of the "most walkable" cities in the country; that same year, the women's magazine Self named Tacoma the "Most Sexually Healthy City" in the United States. Tacoma gained notoriety in 1940 for the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, which earned the nickname "Galloping Gertie"; the area was inhabited for thousands of years by American Indians, predominantly the Puyallup people, who lived in settlements on the delta. In 1852, a Swede named Nicolas Delin built a water-powered sawmill on a creek near the head of Commencement Bay, but the small settlement that grew around it was abandoned during the Indian War of 1855–56.
In 1864, pioneer and postmaster Job Carr, a Civil War veteran and land speculator, built a cabin. Carr hoped to profit from the selection of Commencement Bay as the terminus of the Transcontinental Railroad, sold most of his claim to developer Morton M. McCarver, who named his project Tacoma City, derived from the indigenous name for the mountain. Tacoma was incorporated on November 12, 1875, following its selection in 1873 as the western terminus of the Northern Pacific Railroad due to lobbying by McCarver, future mayor John Wilson Sprague, others. However, the railroad built its depot on New Tacoma, two miles south of the Carr–McCarver development; the two communities grew together and joined, merging on January 7, 1884. The transcontinental link was effected in 1887, the population grew from 1,098 in 1880 to 36,006 in 1890. Rudyard Kipling visited Tacoma in 1889 and said it was "literally staggering under a boom of the boomiest". George Francis Train was a resident for a few years in the late 19th century.
In 1890, he staged a global circumnavigation ending in Tacoma to promote the city. A plaque in downtown Tacoma marks the finish line. In November 1885, white citizens led by then-mayor Jacob Weisbach expelled several hundred Chinese residents peacefully living in the city; as described by the account prepared by the Chinese Reconciliation Project Foundation, on the morning of November 3, "several hundred men, led by the mayor and other city officials, evicted the Chinese from their homes, corralled them at 7th Street and Pacific Avenue, marched them to the railway station at Lakeview and forced them aboard the morning train to Portland, Oregon. The next day two Chinese settlements were burned to the ground." The discovery of gold in the Klondike in 1898 led to Tacoma's prominence in the region being eclipsed by the development of Seattle. A major tragedy marred the end of the 19th century, when a streetcar accident resulted in significant loss of life on July 4, 1900. From May to August 1907, the city was the site of a smelter workers' strike organized by Local 545 of the Industrial Workers of the World, with the goal of a fifty-cent per day pay raise.
The strike was opposed by the local business community, the smelter owners threatened to blacklist organizers and union officials. The IWW opposed this move by trying to persuade inbound workers to avoid Tacoma during the strike. By August, the strike had ended without meeting its demands. Tacoma was a major destination for big-time automobile racing, with one of the nation's top-rated racing venues just outside the city limits, at the site of today's Clover Park Technical College. In 1924, Tacoma's first movie studio, H. C. Weaver Studio, was sited at present-day Titlow Beach. At the time, it was the third-largest freestanding film production space in America, with the two larger facilities being located in Hollywood; the studio's importance has undergone a revival with the discovery of one of its most famous lost films, Eyes of the Totem. The 1929 crash of the stock market, resulting in the Great Depression, was only the first event in a series of misfortunes to hit Tacoma in the winter of 1929–3
CBS
CBS is an American English language commercial broadcast television and radio network, a flagship property of CBS Corporation. The company is headquartered at the CBS Building in New York City with major production facilities and operations in New York City and Los Angeles. CBS is sometimes referred to as the Eye Network, in reference to the company's iconic symbol, in use since 1951, it has been called the "Tiffany Network", alluding to the perceived high quality of CBS programming during the tenure of William S. Paley, it can refer to some of CBS's first demonstrations of color television, which were held in a former Tiffany & Co. building in New York City in 1950. The network has its origins in United Independent Broadcasters Inc. a collection of 16 radio stations, purchased by Paley in 1928 and renamed the Columbia Broadcasting System. Under Paley's guidance, CBS would first become one of the largest radio networks in the United States, one of the Big Three American broadcast television networks.
In 1974, CBS dropped its former full name and became known as CBS, Inc. The Westinghouse Electric Corporation acquired the network in 1995, renamed its corporate entity to the current CBS Broadcasting, Inc. in 1997, adopted the name of the company it had acquired to become CBS Corporation. In 2000, CBS came under the control of Viacom, formed as a spin-off of CBS in 1971. In late 2005, Viacom split itself into two separate companies and re-established CBS Corporation – through the spin-off of its broadcast television and select cable television and non-broadcasting assets – with the CBS television network at its core. CBS Corporation is controlled by Sumner Redstone through National Amusements, which controls the current Viacom. CBS operated the CBS Radio network until 2017, when it merged its radio division with Entercom. Prior to CBS Radio provided news and features content for its portfolio owned-and-operated radio stations in large and mid-sized markets, affiliated radio stations in various other markets.
While CBS Corporation owns a 72% stake in Entercom, it no longer owns or operates any radio stations directly, though CBS still provides radio news broadcasts to its radio affiliates and the new owners of its former radio stations. The television network has more than 240 owned-and-operated and affiliated television stations throughout the United States; the company ranked 197th on the 2018 Fortune 500 of the largest United States corporations by revenue. The origins of CBS date back to January 27, 1927, with the creation of the "United Independent Broadcasters" network in Chicago by New York City talent-agent Arthur Judson; the fledgling network soon needed additional investors though, the Columbia Phonograph Company, manufacturers of Columbia Records, rescued it in April 1927. Columbia Phonographic went on the air on September 18, 1927, with a presentation by the Howard L. Barlow Orchestra from flagship station WOR in Newark, New Jersey, fifteen affiliates. Operational costs were steep the payments to AT&T for use of its land lines, by the end of 1927, Columbia Phonograph wanted out.
In early 1928 Judson sold the network to brothers Isaac and Leon Levy, owners of the network's Philadelphia affiliate WCAU, their partner Jerome Louchheim. None of the three were interested in assuming day-to-day management of the network, so they installed wealthy 26-year-old William S. Paley, son of a Philadelphia cigar family and in-law of the Levys, as president. With the record company out of the picture, Paley streamlined the corporate name to "Columbia Broadcasting System", he believed in the power of radio advertising since his family's "La Palina" cigars had doubled their sales after young William convinced his elders to advertise on radio. By September 1928, Paley bought out the Louchhheim share of CBS and became its majority owner with 51% of the business. During Louchheim's brief regime, Columbia paid $410,000 to A. H. Grebe's Atlantic Broadcasting Company for a small Brooklyn station, WABC, which would become the network's flagship station. WABC was upgraded, the signal relocated to 860 kHz.
The physical plant was relocated – to Steinway Hall on West 57th Street in Manhattan, where much of CBS's programming would originate. By the turn of 1929, the network could boast to sponsors of having 47 affiliates. Paley moved right away to put his network on a firmer financial footing. In the fall of 1928, he entered into talks with Adolph Zukor of Paramount Pictures, who planned to move into radio in response to RCA's forays into motion pictures with the advent of talkies; the deal came to fruition in September 1929: Paramount acquired 49% of CBS in return for a block of its stock worth $3.8 million at the time. The agreement specified that Paramount would buy that same stock back by March 1, 1932 for a flat $5 million, provided CBS had earned $2 million during 1931 and 1932. For a brief time there was talk that the network might be renamed "Paramount Radio", but it only lasted a month – the 1929 stock market crash sent all stock value tumbling, it galvanized Paley and his troops, who "had no alternative but to turn the network around and earn the $2,000,000 in two years....
This is the atmosphere in which the CBS of today was born." The near-bankrupt movie studio sold its CBS shares back to CBS in 1932. In the first year of Paley's wa
