At long last... ZOMBY!!! betrays his own people

Here sucks...

Let's get out of it.

At long last... ZOMBY!!! sort of endorses "Drabble"

And if you don't know what Drabble is, HERE'S A PRIMER.

ZOMBY!!! continues to antagonize the avian population

"Mr. Strangelove: A Biography of Peter Sellers" - A book review

Ed Sikov finds the man behind the characters in his Peter Sellers biography, Mr. Strangelove.

 
The last time we spoke about books, it was to discuss David Michaelis' gargantuan biography of Peanuts cartoonist Charles Schulz. That book must have gotten me on a "biography" kick because I followed it up with Mr. Strangelove, Ed Sikov's look at the life story of British comedian and actor Peter Sellers. 

Sellers first came to prominence as a cast member of an anarchic BBC radio program called The Goon Show in the 1950s before achieving international success as a motion picture star in the 1960s through his appearances in such films as Lolita, Dr. Strangelove and The Pink Panther. That last film provided him with his best-known role, that of bumbling Inspector Clouseau, whom he portrayed in a series of highly profitable sequels for pretty much the rest of his life. 

Sellers' weak heart, combined with a lifestyle of heavy drinking and drugging, led to his death at the age of 54 in 1980, not long after his triumphant Oscar-nominated performance in Hal Ashby's Being There, a personal project Sellers had been trying to get off the ground for about a decade.

It would be tempting to write a truly scathing, damning book about Peter Sellers. He had so many serious character flaws that it's almost impossible to tabulate them all. Spoiled rotten by his controlling and manipulative mother, Peg (who emerges as the second-most astounding character in Sikov's book), Peter Sellers grew up to be a temperamental and immature child-man, infamous for his tantrums and wild mood swings, marked by swift and terrible changes of heart. 

Married four times (with no success), Sellers was an alternately neglectful and abusive father to his three (possibly four) children. Materialistic and greedy to an absurd extent, Sellers used his movie money to buy cars, houses, and gadgets he simply didn't need and took roles in some truly godawful films strictly for the cash, despite the damage it was doing to his career. Sellers could be a terror during the production of a film, slowing down filming with his erratic behavior and having various cast and crew members fired for no good reason. Ed Sikov does not shy away from detailing all of Sellers' faults in this book.

However, the minor miracle of Mr. Strangelove is that the reader does not emerge from the book hating its subject. Sikov writes with genuine affection about Sellers' best screen work, and he makes the reader want to track down these films and watch them again. (I'm particularly keen to revisit A Shot in the Dark and The Party as well as Being There.) 

It helps that the interview subjects, i.e. Peter's friends, relatives, and coworkers, generally seemed to have liked the man despite his many, many flaws. Even after decades of inexcusable behavior (and, believe me, there's a ton of it in this book), very few of the people close to Peter Sellers seem to hold a grudge against him. They all recognize his talent, and they often speak fondly of the humor, charm, and generosity he displayed during his more-lucid moments. Instead of waiting for Sellers to get his much-deserved comeuppance, the reader will instead be rooting for the man to get his act together. (Spoiler: he never does.)

I guess since I read the Schulz book and the Sellers book back-to-back, there's a temptation to compare the two. There are several parallels between the lives of Schulz and Sellers. Both were stereotypical "mama's boys" whose relationships with their mothers defined their adult lives. Both fought in World War II, though Schulz with much more distinction than Sellers. Both had troubled and argumentative marriages that ended in divorce. Both were in the business of making people laugh but were surprisingly complex and moody men in their private lives. And both were gawky and unattractive as youths, but became rather dapper and distinguished (and, thus, more attractive to women) in middle-age. 

The two books are not much alike, though. Schulz and Peanuts is a much heavier read and offers plenty of food for thought on the nature of art and the relationship between an artist and his work. Mr. Strangelove is more of a page-turner, a well-written book with lots of splashy incidents about the life of an eccentric and well-known man. I recommend them both.

But I think I'm done with biographies for a while. One of the supporting characters in Mr. Strangelove is the American writer Terry Southern (who coauthored the screenplay for Dr. Strangelove), and I think it is high time I explored Southern's novels.

Before I go, I really must share with you this clip. Half of it was filmed during the making of Strangelove and half... well, wasn't. Either way, it includes a dazzling display of Peter Sellers' talent for regional accents. Enjoy.

Wayne can has Dolly Parton?

The Dolly Llama

Hello, all.

I promise that I'll get off this "I Can Has Cheezburger" kick soon, but for now I'm still occasionally submitting lolz to the site. Here's one that made the homepage. It's the Dolly Llama, get it? I'm actually a big admirer of Dolly's music, and this picture also kind of reminds me of the centaurs from Fantasia.

Vote here if you care to.

Either way, enjoy this:



And this:

At long last... ZOMBY!!! sells out

Zed Word's Confusing Cinema Challenge

How do you like your cinema. Hopefully, the answer is "confusing."

Today, Aaron of the estimable Zed Word Zombie Blog has been using the #confusingcinema hashtag on Twitter to post his proposed titles for baffling movies. He also offered this challenge:

If anyone can come up with plot synopses for my #confusingcinema movie titles, I'd be impressed

Well, as they say on the internets these days, CHALLENGE ACCEPTED! Let's get started. Here are some of Aaron's suggested titles with my plot synopses.

My Mom Was a Teenage Were-Car - It's 1957. High school cheerleader Betsy Lou Hoover undergoes TWO drastic physical changes when she makes an ill-advised decision to "park" with her quarterback boyfriend, Ron, behind the local nuclear power plant. First, she becomes pregnant. But also, and more incredibly, her DNA is altered and begins to take on the physical characteristics of Ron's beloved '57 Chevy. So now she has TWO terrible secrets to deal with. And will she give birth to a man or a machine? Think Cronenberg's The Fly (plus Cronenberg's Crash) meets Peggy Sue Got Married.

The Land of Percy Jones's Sweet Bad-Ass Ballad for the War of the Space Toad - A funky blaxploitation take on the typical sprawling sci-fi/fantasy epic. Basically, there's a race of peaceful, gentle aliens, the Salamandrites, whose most prized possession is a magical glowing icon called the Space Toad, which functions a lot like the Sampo in The Day the Earth Froze. It provides them food, energy, etc. The "war" begins when an evil warlike race called the Amphibulons swoop in and steal the Space Toad. It's up to a swaggering Salamandrite named Percy Jones (played by Samuel L. Jackson) to rise up against the oppressors and "take back what's mine." Think Avatar meets Shaft.

Look Whose Chainsaw Bakes Cauliflower - Heartwarming family comedy. Bumbling father and self-styled home handyman Ernie buys a chainsaw to assist him in his various do-it-yourself projects around the house. But it's no ordinary chainsaw! This one comes to life and turns out to have a personality of its own. You'd think a chainsaw would have a badass/tough guy personality, but this one's more of an easygoing hippie vegan type. Anyway, the saw gets into various hijinks and teaches the family to love again... until the government finds out about it and tries to take it away so it can be dissected and studied. Think E.T. meets Home Depot.