The Death Of OJ Simpson

Cancer is awful. It killed my mother. It nearly killed my Dad. And now, it has claimed another victim. Cancer just killed OJ Simpson.

Most people deeply affected by his crimes will understandably celebrate his demise. I certainly will not miss him. But cancer is an insidious disease. I’ve seen firsthand how it gradually destroys a life, how it painstakingly sucks all the joy out of even the most positive, upbeat person like my Mom. And how chemotherapy drained the energy out of my Dad. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy, even a murderer like OJ Simpson.

And make no mistake about it. He killed his ex-wife. He destroyed Ron Goldman. We’ve seen the photos. We know the evidence. Remove all the racial politics of the time. There’s no doubt what Simpson did.

There’s a scene in the original Barbershop where Cedric The Entertainer’s flamboyant character, known for his outspokenness, blurts out what everybody in Ice Cube’s shop is thinking but won’t say:

“We know OJ did it.”

Everybody knew.

The Simpson murder trial was a spectacle, not genuine justice. It was about misplaced loyalty towards a man who did not want to be seen as Black until he was in trouble. It was about a historically wronged community who picked the wrong champion to defend, one they knew deep down was completely unworthy of their support, all to stick it to a system of white supremacy that protected him the entire time and remains mostly unchanged.

To understand who OJ Simpson was and how he came to be, you only need to see one film, the Oscar-winning documentary OJ: Made In America, one of the greatest cinematic achievements of all time.

Over the course of eight gripping hours, we learn so much about one of the most consequential public figures in history, a man who grew up in a broken home and then went on to break two more of his own.

The story of OJ Simpson is the story of a man who grew up with no boundaries, who spent his dysfunctional childhood mostly left alone with his friends unsupervised because his exhausted, hardworking, divorced mother needed to take on three jobs just to keep him fed, housed and clothed.

His estranged father was gay, a revelation that had a profound impact on how he viewed masculinity and which his ex-wife Nicole Brown believed was a major factor in his horrendous abuse towards her.

Simpson came to fame, of course, as a young football star destined for the NFL where he would thrive as a running back despite never winning a Super Bowl. Although he hated the bitterly cold winters in Buffalo, the team he played for the most, it never affected his game. He retired a legend.

Coming of age in the 60s and 70s, Simpson was a shrewd operator and a moral coward. While other Black athletes were prominent in the civil rights movement putting their own careers on the line for racial justice and equality, Simpson calculatedly avoided being associated with them. He infamously asserted, “I’m not Black, I’m OJ.” And he openly used racial epithets against other African Americans he wanted nothing to do with.

Like many sociopaths, he was charming and likeable. It led to a pioneering and highly lucrative endorsement deal with Hertz rent-a-car. He was seen as completely non-threatening to white America who openly embraced him. As he ran through airport after airport in TV ad after TV ad, delighted honkies would shout, “Run, OJ, run!”

He made movies like Capricorn One and The Naked Gun Trilogy. His success on the field led to a second life as a sideline reporter for NFL broadcasts. He seemed to live a charmed life.

You had to read The National Enquirer to learn the truth like the time he beat up Nicole on New Year’s Eve 1989 which was not picked up by more respectable mainstream media.

It wasn’t until four and a half years later when he murdered her and Ron Goldman in a terrifyingly intense rage that we all learned what the Enquirer had uncovered this entire time. He was no hero. He was garbage.

OJ: Made In America offers another telling moment about Simpson’s treatment of Nicole right from the very start of their relationship. On their first date, he was so rough with her that her clothes were all torn and ripped. Try as she did to love him as he was, once that was impossible she tried even harder to leave him, finally divorcing him and moving on with a new partner.

We don’t know very much about Simpson’s first marriage to a Black woman which also ended in divorce. Did he abuse her, too? As far as we know, he didn’t which isn’t unusual, by the way. Toxic men don’t necessarily abuse all their partners.

But when it came to Nicole, OJ couldn’t let go. He began stalking her, even watching her be intimate with her new beau from outside her own window. After reaching his breaking point, Simpson successfully disposed of the murder weapon, a large knife, but left behind a trail of blood that sadly was not enough to convict him in the eyes of a mostly Black jury with a misguided agenda to keep him out of prison. Fuck you, Mark Fuhrman.

The OJ Simpson story is also one of uncomfortable irony, the story of a Black man who wanted to seamlessly blend in with white America, who wanted nothing to do with Black causes, who was actually good friends with a number of LAPD officers both white and Black.

While white America was enraged by his violence, Black America, for the most part, was in denial, hoping for once that one of their own would not be locked away. But he wasn’t one of their own. He was OJ. He was a wife beater and a double murderer, an obscenely wealthy star who basked in his own undeserved immunity. He was only Black when he needed outside support.

I will never forget October 3, 1995. I was in College at the time hanging out at our cable FM radio station. Someone came in saying they were about to announce the verdict so we all rushed out and hurried to the end of the hall where a staircase led to a lounge where students hung out in between classes.

There were no seats available so we had to stand and bend over uncomfortably just to see the TV. There was an impatient hush amongst the crowd. Surely, he’s fucked, I thought.

He wasn’t. As soon as the jury foreman stumbled out the not guilty verdict an offensive and collective cheer rang out like nothing I’ve ever experienced. I was so fucking disgusted.

We had a closed circuit TV station that had monitors all over the school. They usually broadcasted college sports when they weren’t showcasing computer graphics announcing college events and activities. But that day every monitor was tuned to the trial on CNN.

As I walked past one, Simpson’s obnoxiously smiling face was still on TV so I gave it the finger, a powerless gesture that didn’t change anything. But it was how I felt, how a lot of us felt including a number of dissenting Black folks who may or may not have been as vocal. It was a lonely position since it curiously felt like we were in the minority.

Three years later, Simpson would finally meet his match in court. He would lose a civil trial that was brilliantly litigated by Daniel Petrocelli who later co-wrote an excellent book about the experience. Snippets of his preliminary hearing testimony would later air in a terrific A&E doc that showed just how badly the Los Angeles DA’s office bungled their own prosecution.

There were a couple of things Petrocelli and his team uncovered that Marcia Clark and company missed. Simpson had written a book in the 70s where he bragged in his typical cavalier fashion that he was a very good liar, that it came easily to him.

And then, there were the shoes. Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman’s killer left behind bloody shoeprints at the murder scene just outside her house. The shoes turned out to be really expensive Bruno Magli’s that only a few hundred people were wearing at the time. When confronted by Petrocelli, OJ claimed he would never wear such “ugly-ass shoes”.

But the lawyer had an extensive amount of photos of him wearing them at numerous NFL football games as he was performing his duties as a sideline reporter for NBC. I’ll never forget the bewildered look OJ gave when Petrocelli showed him the photos. His eyes widened considerably. If only this had happened at the criminal trial.

Simpson wasn’t exactly warmly embraced following these two cases. No one in Hollywood would hire him for parts (his last legitimate gig, an early 1994 pilot for a cancelled series about navy seals, remains unreleased) so he would have to take whatever cheap, demeaning gig he could get.

The most memorable was a ghostwritten book bizarrely named If I Did It. Because he owed the Goldmans tens of millions from the civil case, they took ownership eventually re-releasing it with the If shrunk within the top of the next word I and adding the subtitle “Confessions Of The Killer.” Simpson asserted he had an accomplice named Charlie who tried to talk him out of confronting Nicole and that he conveniently blacked out during her actual murder so he couldn’t actually confess to anything specific.

Judith Regan, the book’s publisher, then sat down with him for a TV interview, the very idea of which completely pissed off so many people, including the Goldmans, the Fox network foolishly yanked it, effectively cancelling its broadcast. Regan was understandably furious. She said she did it hoping he would admit culpability. It would eventually be aired more than a decade later on the same network. The increasingly weird Simpson did not come off as innocent or credible.

And then over a decade later, after numerous screw-ups that in two instances led to a couple of light fines, he fucked up again in the dumbest of ways. OJ and a few of his goons decided to confront a sports memorabilia seller who was in possession of some of his artifacts. Claiming they were stolen from him, OJ decided to take them back by force. The FBI was paying very close attention.

He was soon arrested. The man who got away with committing a double murder would eventually be convicted on the 13th Anniversary of his wrongful acquittal, a point that was not lost on me nor one of his criminal defense lawyers in OJ: Made In America.

After nearly a decade in prison, he would charm the authorities into paroling him. That part of the story, his life after incarceration, inspired another great A&E doc that revealed disturbing things about Simpson like how he would talk to an invisible Nicole on a plane ride clearly feeling haunted by his actions, dark thoughts that went otherwise unexpressed publicly. (He never fully confessed.) Consider it a spiritual sequel to Made In America.

Simpson, who died two days ago surrounded by family at age 76, one year older than my Mom, had apparently been sick with prostate cancer since last year. It’s a terrible disease even when it affects someone as depraved and monstrous as him.

We need to find a cure for all cancers. We need a better justice system that stops protecting the rich and the terminally toxic. We need to stop disproportionately ruining the lives of so many far less privileged folks of colour, especially the innocent ones. And from the beginning of their lives we need to teach boys to be kind to girls, to respect everyone’s boundaries including their own.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Friday, April 12, 2024
3:17 a.m.

Oppenheimer Squashes Barbie At 96th Oscars

The bomb obliterated the toy. The doll with the blonde hair might have made more money back in the summer but that didn’t mean anything to the motion picture academy.

The three-hour historical drama Oppenheimer was the big winner at the 96th annual Academy Awards taking home seven golden gongs in total including the big one. Although disheveled Best Picture presenter Al Pacino seemed a little loopy during his unnecessarily oddball appearance at the end of the night, at least he was given the right envelope and said the correct title, a genuine worry since the La La Land/Moonlight debacle of 2017. (Where was Warren Beatty?)

As expected, Christopher Nolan was named Best Director. He thanked his wife Emma Thomas for not only producing all his films but all of their children as well. Oppenheimer also won for its cinematography, its original score and for film editing.

“Proud Irishman” Cillian Murphy was named Best Actor who was the first winner to actually acknowledge his fellow nominees (“I’m in awe of you.”), a practice that used to be routine but was rarely employed this time for some reason. Noting how we’re all living in the world that his title character unfortunately created, he dedicated this prize “to the peacemakers everywhere”.

His co-star Robert Downey Jr. was easily the funniest recipient as he collected his golden naked man for Best Supporting Actor. Already making me laugh when he tapped his once coke-filled nose during host Jimmy Kimmel’s typically uneven monologue, he facetiously thanked his “terrible childhood” and even got a solid dig in at co-presenter Tim Robbins who had a Freudian slip while kissing up to nominee Robert De Niro during the presentation. (He said “Oscar-winning” instead of “Oscar-worthy” which was funny in its own right.) Downey thanked his second wife and dedicated his win to his kids.

Yes, instead of showcasing clips from their respective movies, the Oscars brought back the ass-kissing gimmick that Roger Ebert would’ve loved but for me instantly inspires ridicule, although the delightfully weird Nicolas Cage didn’t disappoint. I mean I was amazed none of the acting nominees were thanked for their extraordinary farts and courageous dumps. Retire the sucking up and bring back the clips.

It was a surprise to me that Emma Stone secured her second Oscar for her lead role in Poor Things but not for those who were paying much closer attention to industry insiders. Briefly overwhelmed and concerned about a possible wardrobe malfunction, she was gracious in thanking her family and her fellow cast and crew members, correctly noting it takes a team to make a movie. Besides Murphy, she was the only other winner to acknowledge her fellow nominees, even going so far as to “share” her prize with Lily Gladstone who didn’t get to make history herself. Hollywood must still be pissed at Sacheen Littlefeather.

Poor Things won three additional technical Oscars for its costumes, its make-up & hairstyling and for its production design, taking away two more possible gongs from Barbie.

Da’Vine Joy Randolph was named Best Supporting Actress, the only award handed to The Holdovers which lost Best Original Screenplay to the critically acclaimed Anatomy Of A Fall, its only trinket. “God is so good,” she exclaimed multiple times as she went on to thank her mom for convincing her to be more than a singer and give theatre a try. Gracious and emotional, she once “wanted to be different” but ultimately realized “I just needed to be myself.” She also thanked her publicist which led to a couple of other winners, including Downey, making tongue-in-cheek references to this moment during their own promos. (Downey thanked his stylist and the guy who tried to get him insured during his darker days.)

The Holocaust drama The Zone Of Interest was named Best International Feature and inspired the only direct acknowledgment of the ongoing genocide in Gaza as the film’s director actually mentioned the word “occupation” in his acceptance speech which was slightly undermined by him also seemingly knocking the resistance’s successful October 7 attack that caught an arrogant white supremacist army sleeping at the wheel. Both-sidesing a lopsided massacre just to make a point about dehumanization misses the point entirely. The film also won Best Sound over Oppenheimer.

The lone win for Barbie was for its hit song What Was I Made For?, the second songwriting Oscar for its creators, the whorephobic Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas O’Connell. They previously won for penning the Bond theme No Time To Die a couple of years ago.

Speaking of good nights for double winners, the Japanese anime legend Hayao Miyazaki, who wasn’t in attendance, received his second Best Animated Feature Oscar for The Boy And The Heron, 21 years after first winning for Spirited Away beating the likes of Elemental and Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse.

Cord Jefferson, the Best Adapted Screenplay winner for American Fiction, its only prize, made a good point about the “risk-averse” nature of Hollywood, how they’ll easily spend 200 million on a supposedly surefire smash (which lately hasn’t worked out so well) when they could make many more smaller budgeted films that would generate far more buzz and ultimately more profit. I don’t expect anyone to listen to him.

As for the broadcast itself, there were genuine moments of hilarity like Danny DeVito calling out Michael Keaton, his Batman Returns co-star, who responded with a perfectly stern deadpan; John Cena getting into an otherwise uneven argument with Kimmel over whether he should go through with a 50th Anniversary tribute to the infamous streaking incident and then slowly walking across the stage with a giant envelope across his crotch while humourously presenting Best Costume Design (not to mention him wearing a makeshift dress and then shaking hands with The Rock backstage); Steven Spielberg paying off a Kate MacKinnon joke about being sent “tasteful nudes” by simply nodding as well as selling a Kimmel reference to The Fabelmans with just a bemused look; and The Fall Guy co-stars Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt roasting each other and their respective movies over the whole Barbieheimer phenomenon.

I also enjoyed the fact that some presenters did two awards at once which greatly saved time. But what was with the In Memoriam segment? Because they never went to full screen, you had to strain your eyes to see some of the names. The camera was too far away, there were no close-ups at all. It was aggravating and insulting.

While it was wonderful that there will finally be a best casting director Oscar next year (MAY 5 CORRECTION: Actually, the award will be presented for the first time in 2026.), the best the academy could do for long suffering stuntmen was a clip package? Where’s their fucking Oscar category, you heartless assholes?

The complete list of winners:

BEST PICTURE – OPPENHEIMER

BEST DIRECTOR – Christopher Nolan (OPPENHEIMER)

BEST ACTRESS – Emma Stone (POOR THINGS)

BEST ACTOR – Cillian Murphy (OPPENHEIMER)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS – Da’Vine Joy Randolph (THE HANGOVERS)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR – Robert Downey Jr. (OPPENHEIMER)

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE – THE BOY AND THE HERON

BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE – THE ZONE OF INTEREST

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE – 20 DAYS IN MARIUPOL

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS – GODZILLA MINUS ONE

BEST SOUND – THE ZONE OF INTEREST

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE – OPPENHEIMER

BEST FILM EDITING – OPPENHEIMER

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY – OPPENHEIMER

BEST ORIGINAL SONG – What Was I Made For? (BARBIE)

BEST COSTUME DESIGN – POOR THINGS

BEST MAKE-UP & HAIRSTYLING – POOR THINGS

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN – POOR THINGS

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY – ANATOMY OF A FALL

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY – AMERICAN FICTION

BEST ANIMATED SHORT – WAR IS OVER! INSPIRED BY THE MUSIC OF JOHN & YOKO

BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT – THE WONDERFUL STORY OF HENRY SUGAR

BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT – THE LAST REPAIR SHOP

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Monday, March 11, 2024
4:05 a.m.

2024 Oscar Predictions

BEST PICTURE – OPPENHEIMER

A failing novelist with an unexpectedly ironic success. A Hitchcockian murder plot involving a wrongfully accused innocent. The life of a famous big-nosed conductor. The rise and fall of the father of the atomic bomb. A 20th Century massacre against Indigenous Americans. A couple living near a concentration camp. A grumpy teacher babysitting some stranded students at Christmas. Two old friends, once close, now drifting apart. A bunch of different girls named Barbie. Emma Stone with bad eyebrows.

These are the ten nominees in the race for Best Picture this year. But let’s be clear. There isn’t a race. It’s a foregone conclusion.

That means you can easily forget about American Fiction, Anatomy Of A Fall, The Holdovers, Killers Of The Flower Moon, The Zone Of Interest, Past Lives, Maestro and Poor Things. As Michael Cole would say, thanks for coming. The producers of these films ain’t getting called up to the stage.

Since July, the only two movies that generated any kind of significant Oscar buzz were Barbie and Oppenheimer. The shrewd marketing campaign of plugging both titles simultaneously with a single word brought large audiences back to the theatres, and not a moment too soon. COVID-19 shut down the business off and on for a significant amount of months starting four years ago as studios overly relied on streaming at times to try to make up for lost profits which ultimately didn’t work. (DVDs and Blu-rays are better, you knobs.)

With life more or less back to normal now despite the continued threat of these constantly evolving variants, few films in 2023 matched their cultural and financial impact. While the toy movie made more money, the three-hour black and white history lesson is the more traditional favourite. The Oscars are notoriously snobby towards comedies and that tradition will undoubtedly continue on March 10.

Director Christopher Nolan has been waiting for this moment his entire career. Now in his early 50s, although I haven’t seen all of his movies, I’ve yet to see him release a bad one. I liked Interstellar, really enjoyed his remake of Insomnia, marvelled at the inventive Inception and consider his Dark Knight Trilogy to be the best comic book franchise of all time.

Much like Steven Spielberg, the academy has been waiting to honour him with something outside the realm of fantasy. With Oppenheimer, they now have their opportunity.

BEST DIRECTOR – Christopher Nolan (OPPENHEIMER)

As Roger Ebert wisely advised year after year, the strongest indicator is the Directors Guild of America award. If you win that prize, nine times out of ten you’ll go on to win the Oscar, that is as long as you’re nominated for one, of course. (Ben Affleck won the DGA in 2013 for Argo, but curiously did not make the shortlist for an Academy Award.) This year, Christopher Nolan won for helming Oppenheimer. There is no need to discuss anyone else. It’s his gong to lose.

BEST ACTRESS – Lily Gladstone (KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON)

It’s the usual mix of newcomers and veterans vying for the top acting prize for women. Annette Bening’s been here five times since 1991. She left quite the impression in The Grifters, so much in fact that Warren Beatty cast her in Bugsy which left another but curiously did not result in another nomination. That wouldn’t come until another memorable turn as the dysfunctional, oblivious mom in American Beauty. After her nomination in the average Being Julia, she was also shortlisted playing one of the gay moms in The Kids Are All Right.

Which leads us to her lead role in Nyad about the famous open water marathon swimmer. Could she be a spoiler here? My guess is it’ll be 0 for 5 on Oscar night.

Carey Mulligan’s had a couple of shots herself. She struck out for An Education, her breakthrough performance, almost 15 years ago. She was last singled out for the controversial Promising Young Woman where her whining about one critic’s review of her may have cost her a golden trinket. Despite having no such heat this time around, her ongoing slump will still continue as well.

Emma Stone’s already won for La La Land and Sandra Huller will have to treasure being part of this rarefied company for what will probably be the only time in her career.

There have long been complaints about actors of colour not getting regular pushes at the Academy Awards. Lily Gladstone’s acclaimed performance in Martin Scorsese’s Killers Of The Flower Moon has been cleaning up on the awards circuit since the season began. Better leave some room on the mantle for the biggest prize of them all.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS – Da’Vine Joy Randolph (THE HOLDOVERS)

Speaking of that, here’s another opportunity to give someone, in this case a big Black woman, a significant mega push. Da’Vine Joy Randolph has been given award after award after award for her highly praised role as a grieving cook in The Holdovers.

Originally successful on Broadway where she was nominated for a Tony after playing the Oscar-winning Whoopi Goldberg role in the musical version of Ghost, she’s been in a bunch of films over the past decade including The Angriest Man In Brooklyn, which featured one of the last appearances of Robin Williams, the unfortunately awful Office Christmas Party, a couple of high-profile animated sequels and the recent Rustin where she plays the pioneering gospel legend Mahalia Jackson.

Emily Blunt, who plays Oppenheimer’s wife, could play a spoiler here but I’m thinking the academy will reward her for something else down the road. Jodie Foster has already won two lead Oscars for The Accused and The Silence Of The Lambs, and while it’s been a while since she was last handed a golden gong, her chance of a third is highly unlikely. First-time nominees America Ferrera and Danielle Brooks, also longshots, will cancel each other out.

It’s Miss Randolph all the way for Best Supporting Actress.

BEST ACTOR – Cillian Murphy (OPPENHEIMER)

The real and the fictional battle it out in the race for Best Actor this year. On the one side, you have the desperately mischievous author in American Fiction played by Jeffrey Wright who I first saw as the heel in the so-so 2000 Shaft remake, and Pig Vomit himself Paul Giamatti playing a teacher in 1970s New England in The Holdovers.

On the other, you have the famed New York conductor Leonard Bernstein as portrayed by frequent nominee Bradley Cooper, the Black closeted gay MLK confidant turned neoconservative Zionist Bayard Rustin as inhabited by Colman Domingo and the conflicted inventor of a horrific weapon J. Robert Oppenheimer, an assignment given to the Irish actor Cillian Murphy.

While Domingo is probably the one nominee who would get the most from an academy push since he’s the only one most viewers have never heard of (despite a long list of credits including a couple of Tony-nominated stints on Broadway), all signs are pointing to just one likely winner on March 10, one who has already had an equally busy high-profile career in the business.

I’ve been a Cillian Murphy supporter since I first saw him in Red Eye, a thrilling, tightly wound Wes Craven thriller mostly set on an airplane. As he delivers the heat in such a cold, detached manner for much of its running time, he meets his match in Rachel McAdams, his resilient hostage who knows how to think quickly and effectively in a crisis. The scene where she stabs him so hard in the throat he can’t speak inspired me to jump off my couch and shout, “Yes!” If only every movie villain left such a mark.

A longtime favourite of Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer marks Murphy’s sixth collaboration with him. (Rejected as a possible Bruce Wayne, he played Scarecrow in all three Dark Knight movies.) More than 20 years after he appeared as a survivor in the overrated apocalyptic zombie thriller 28 Days Later, his Oscar night will feel far more triumphant. In the recent past, there was another Colman who ended up taking Best Actress by surprise, but in this case, the result will be far more predictable.

Murphy’s got it.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR – Robert Downey Jr. (OPPENHEIMER)

Right away you can remove Sterling K. Brown and perennial nominee Mark Ruffalo from serious contention, the latter having already lost on three previous occasions. Another academy favourite, the great Ryan Gosling, whose best work in Blade Runner 2049 and First Man were both criminally overlooked, has also swung and missed twice before. His casting as Ken in Barbie was divisive which I suspect will be reflected in the voting.

Crotchety Robert De Niro, who recently lost a lawsuit to a former disgruntled employee he tortured and has been mostly wasting away as hardheaded fathers and creepy grandpas in one terrible comedy after another, is already a two-time winner. His latest Scorsese collaboration a rare critically acclaimed detour from his usual laughless fare. Although it’s been more than 40 years since he snagged a gong for Raging Bull, he ain’t winning a third.

Everyone loves a redemption story, how one falls from grace only to rise from the ashes and scale even bigger heights of success, if you’ll forgive my trifecta of cliches there. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Robert Downey Jr. was a mess. Despite a very fine supporting performance as Michael Douglas’s agent in the excellent Wonder Boys and strong reviews for his brief run on TV’s Ally McBeal, his addictions were killing him. Had he not finally cleaned up his act, who knows how long he would’ve carried on.

I wasn’t a big fan of the uneven Chaplin but he deserved that first nomination for playing the influential silent comedian. 15 years later, he had an incredible 2008, first playing Iron Man which became his signature role and getting a second nomination for playing an actor so desperate to win awards he employs blackface in Tropic Thunder.

Looking impossibly boyish while approaching 60 as he continues to be one of the most well liked stars in the modern era, Downey has disproved Fitzgerald’s famous theory. He has survived long enough to thoroughly enjoy a second act. And it will be capped off with an Oscar for Oppenheimer.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY – THE HOLDOVERS

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY – AMERICAN FICTION

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE – THE BOY AND THE HERON

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE – 20 DAYS IN MARIUPOL

BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE – THE ZONE OF INTEREST

BEST ORIGINAL SONG – What Was I Made For? (BARBIE)

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE – KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN – BARBIE

BEST COSTUME DESIGN – POOR THINGS

BEST FILM EDITING – OPPENHEIMER

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS – MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – DEAD RECKONING PART ONE

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY – OPPENHEIMER

BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT – RED, WHITE & BLUE

BEST ANIMATED SHORT – WAR IS OVER! INSPIRED BY THE MUSIC OF JOHN & YOKO

BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT SUBJECT – THE ABCS OF BOOK BANNING

BEST SOUND – OPPENHEIMER

BEST MAKE-UP & HAIRSTYLING – POOR THINGS

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Wednesday, March 6, 2024
4:09 a.m.

Revisiting Hulk Hogan’s First Year As World Champion (Part Three)

In between his feuds with Orndorff, Studd and Schultz, Hulk Hogan would work short-term house show title programs with a number of other mid-card heels. He first wrestled Greg “The Hammer” Valentine in Cincinnati on April 21 where he only managed a DQ win. The following week in Baltimore, he had a more definitive victory by pinfall.

They would wrestle seven more times between June and October. Just like Dr. D, Valentine would be unable to even achieve a cheap victory. Hogan would win by countout in Niagara Falls in late June and pin The Hammer in every other match-up, although The History Of WWE website does not reveal what happened on August 28 in Glen Falls, New York.

Two of these pinfall victories were captured for posterity and aired on TV. On July 23rd, Hogan beat Valentine cleanly in Madison Square Garden as seen on the MSG Network and later beat him again at the Philadelphia Spectrum in a match that aired on PRISM and also appeared on the first Hulkamania videotape.

After Valentine won the InterContinental title from Tito Santana in September, the title was not on the line during a WWF title match in Ottawa on October 9. Unlike his latter matches with Randy Savage in 1986, Hogan never challenged The Hammer for the IC strap in title-for-title bouts, at least not in 1984.

But he did continue to defend the World Wrestling Federation Championship against a diverse group of opponents regardless of their standing in the company. 

Afa and Sika, the original Wild Samoans who were the first three-time WWF tag champs, each had their shot at Hogan’s strap, just before their collective face turns. Afa was pinned three times, including at a March 7 taping of All-Star Wrestling which was broadcast five weeks later, while Sika lost twice in the spring (April 2nd in Buffalo and May 20th in Hartford). Sika would challenge him again during his last solo run beginning a couple of years later but would remain unsuccessful.

During his last full year as a villain, George “The Animal” Steele would have a brief feud with Hogan that began in the summer and concluded in the fall. Two of their matches were taped in St. Louis at the Kiel Auditorium. Thanks to the interference of this then-manager Mr. Fuji, The Animal won by countout during an August 10th taping. But Hogan would get a DQ victory during their rematch on September 1st.

With the exception of a count-out loss on September 30th, also credited to Fuji’s underhanded tactics, in Chicago, Hogan pinned Steele in the rest of their matches (July 22 in Minnesota, October 16 in Oakland, and the 21st in their blow-off battle in The Windy City). Speaking of Fuji, Hogan defeated him on September 28 in St. Louis which wasn’t recorded.

Besides working squashes and title defenses, Hulk Hogan would also be booked in a few tag matches. The most famous one from this period was recorded on August 26 in Minnesota. During his feud with The Animal, for one time only he aligned himself with his favourite broadcaster, “Mean” Gene Okerlund, who he met during their time in the AWA.

To prepare for their tag match against Steele and Fuji, a humourous training segment was later included in the first Hulkamania tape along with the bout. It consisted of Hogan breaking into Okerlund’s house very early in the morning to make him drink raw eggs and forcing the considerably smaller announcer to do rigorous training like carrying his 300-pound body while walking on stairs in the Met Centre.

The training paid off handsomely, even though Hogan did most of the work, as the babyfaces went over the heels in their tag match, much to the annoyance of Jesse Ventura who complained to the referee after their win, as reported by The History Of WWE website, which was excised from Hulkamania. 

The Body would challenge Hogan himself in four different title matches, losing clean in three of them from September 8th to the 10th. He also wrestled a dark match on July 31st during a Championship Wrestling taping but thehistoryofwwe.com doesn’t reveal the result. 

Ventura was supposed to challenge him far more often but he developed life threatening blood clots during this period, which The Body blamed on his Vietnam experience, which required hospitalization. Therefore, he was substituted by a number of other heels including Steele. Real-life friends at the time (until he learned about a decade later that the champion cockblocked his union organizing), throughout his time as a colour commentator, The Body often threatened to come out of retirement to face Hogan one more time, referring to him as a “paper champion”.

Although it was never shown in its entirety on The Best Of The WWF, Vol. 1 cassette, Hogan teamed for the first time with Andre The Giant for a handicap match against Big John Studd and the tag champs, Adrian Adonis and Dick Murdoch on July 15 at the Meadowlands in New Jersey, another regular taping location in the 1980s. In a match that The History Of WWE says went over 20 minutes, Andre and Hogan would go on to win by pinfall.

Hogan would also team twice with Mad Dog Vachon. On September 23 in Minnesota, they beat George Steele and Big John Studd, who filled in for an ailing Ventura. And on November 12 in Chicago, they defeated Steele and Mr. Fuji.

In Japan on May 16, Hogan teamed with Studd’s tag partner Ken Patera who would later challenge the champion in 1985. They faced Antonio Inoki and Tatsumi Fujinami which ended in a double count-out. In a six-man match four weeks later during that same tour with New Japan, the WWF Champion aligned for one night with Adonis and the Masked Superstar beating three more Japanese stars including Fuji’s old tag ally Mr. Saito. He also teamed up with the third Wild Samoan Samula on three different occasions which resulted in zero wins.

The only time Hogan didn’t get along with a partner in Japan happened on January 4, 1985. Although his side would win in a six-man affair against a team that included Inoki and Fujinami, both future winners of two separate and now defunct WWF mid-card titles as part of a talent swap arranged by both companies, after securing the victory, he brawled with one of his allies. It would be the first time he would see red against his future WrestleMania 2 challenger King Kong Bundy.

Hogan rarely wrestled on the weekly one-hour nationally syndicated WWF shows that mostly presented squashes and hyped local live events in specific markets. In fact, in 1984 alone he worked about ten times, not counting a couple of additional matches weeks before he won the title at the start of the year.

On March 6th, he taped his first of three matches with Tiger Chung Lee which would air a month later on Championship Wrestling. Then, on April 30, he beat him again in Oakland, California which was not shown on TV. (While the CW match was clearly a non-title affair, it’s not clear if he defended the title in the latter match.) They would square off one last time on August 6 during a Maple Leaf Wrestling taping in Brantford, Ontario. The title was not up for grabs and Hogan would go over clean once more.

A month earlier in the same location, Hogan pinned Hamilton, Ontario native Jerry Valiant, the former tag team champion with kayfabe brother Luscious Johnny, in Brantford, Ontario in a match that aired on the suddenly hated Georgia Championship Wrestling, the once adored NWA show on TBS that Vince McMahon Jr. had taken over but would quickly abandon after Crockett loyalists complained en masse about the change of ownership and what they believed were weaker matches. On September 29, Valiant would put Hogan over again in St. Louis in a fight that aired a month later on All-American Wrestling.

Hogan also defeated another former tag strapholder, Moondog Rex, later the original Smash from Demolition who teamed with Bill Eadie, the formerly Masked Superstar, before being permanently replaced by Barry Darsow, on three separate occasions: June 24 in Jerry Lawler’s territory in Memphis, the 25th in Kentucky and during a Maple Leaf Wrestling taping on August 29th which aired roughly two weeks later. Like Tiger Chung Lee, based on his status as a jobber, it’s not certain if the title was only defended during the untelevised live events.

Rene Goulet, yet another former tag team champion, faced Hogan during another recorded non-title match in Montreal. The Number One Frenchman, later an onscreen authority figure usually brought out to break up brawls involving younger talent, would lay down his shoulders after taking the leg drop, according to The History Of WWE website.

Just before Christmas, Hogan would have two more non-title enhancement matches to end the year. In London, Ontario during an All-Star Wrestling taping, he pinned the veteran jobber Terry Gibbs on December 16th. The following day, he disposed of Johnny Rodz, another longtime enhancement talent, during a Championship Wrestling recording. Both matches would air two weeks apart in the first half of January 1985.

In the second half of 1984, Hogan was supplied with new villains to conquer like Cowboy Bob Orton (their second match on September 7 in Long Island aired on All-American Wrestling a month later) and Nikolai Volkoff who he both defeated on two different house shows apiece. Both would continue to challenge him in the years to come. 

He faced Kamala The Ugandan Giant three times. The only result listed on The History Of WWE website is a double DQ finish on August 30 in Hartford. They would also resume their title program two years later.

Over the Christmas holidays, Hogan would give his old friend and on-again/off-again tag partner Ed Leslie his first two shots at the belt. On Boxing Day, he beat him clean in Miami and again in St. Louis on the 27th. Long before he was The Barber, Brutus Beefcake would continue to get championship opportunities in the new year. He wouldn’t taste gold until teaming with Greg Valentine to win the tag straps that summer. Only bad luck would prevent him on two occasions from taking the InterContinental title, as well.

Another future ally who would never betray him would debut in 1984. Pretending to be a fan named Big Jim who sat at ringside for numerous weekly TV tapings, Hogan would give him a pair of wrestling boots and start training him for pre-taped vignettes. He would later be called Hillbilly Jim. They’d start teaming together the following year.

Besides working one-on-ones with Antonio Inoki in Japan (who defeated him for the IWGP Championship that he briefly held simultaneously with the consistently undefended WWF title) among other New Japan workers and a successful one-time title defense in Mexico against the 15-time Universal Wrestling Association champion and luchador legend El Canek, Hulk Hogan’s most important unbilled program would lay the groundwork for an explosive future during the last three months of 1984.

Having already encountered him as the mouthpiece for Big John Studd and “Dr. D” David Schultz at ringside, “Rowdy” Roddy Piper was now ready to step into the ring and challenge the WWF Champion himself. In vintage voiceover audio used in his recent A&E Biography, Piper declared that he wouldn’t “lay down his shoulders for anybody”. But that’s not true, according to thehistoryofwwe.com.

Piper and Hogan had six house show matches between early October and mid-November. During their first encounter on October 6 in the Boston Garden, Piper got a count-out win. But nearly two weeks later at the San Diego Sports Arena, Piper laid his shoulders down.

In Buffalo on the 30th of that month, Hogan would have to settle for a DQ win. In their return match at the Boston Garden on November 3rd, it was the champion who won by count-out, the same result he would achieve a week later at the University Of Utah.

In their final live event match of 1984 before taking a break and then starting the build to the crucial War To Settle The Score confrontation at MSG the following February, Hogan pinned Piper again on Veterans Day, appropriately enough, at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix.

While it’s true that Piper never did a televised job for Hogan, he most certainly did so at two unfilmed live events in 1984. After their famous MTV match that ultimately led to the main event of WrestleMania, Piper and Hogan would continue to work together throughout 1985. Incredibly in 1986, they even became unlikely and reluctant tag partners in matches that emphasized their awkward, tense history. And in 1991, after he was attacked by The Undertaker during Paul Bearer’s Funeral Parlour talk show segment which would lead to The Gravest Challenge at the Survivor Series, there was The Rowdy One, along with The Macho Man, coming to his belated rescue.

During the first 12 months of his first reign as WWF Champion, although not entirely undefeated in title matches thanks to numerous count-out and disqualification losses, The Incredible Hulk Hogan was never pinned in North America. Japan, of course, was a different story, one that remains unacknowledged by WWE since all those defeats of various types happened for a different company.

As they started rolling out their first round of Coliseum Videos and extensive merchandising that year, Terry Bollea was front and centre in the WWF’s marketing scheme. In 1985, he made history as the first and only pro wrestler to make the cover of Sports Illustrated, a rare legitimization of a business then dismissed by the mainstream press as a deceptive joke.

But Bollea’s rapidly growing popularity was the real deal. And with MTV and NBC playing major roles in developing prime time and late night programming in the new year, not to mention the monster success of WrestleMania, his stock would skyrocket along with the WWF’s. In one year, despite rampant criticism from the likes of Dave Meltzer and others who were unimpressed with his in-ring work, Hulk Hogan was the face of pro wrestling. And it was only the beginning of an extraordinary ride as champion.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Thursday, January 25, 2024
11:52 p.m.

Revisiting Hulk Hogan’s First Year As World Champion (Part Two)

Of the near two dozen challengers Terry Bollea faced in his first full year as WWF Champion, only a handful or so would develop into serious rivalries, some of which would continue on beyond 1984.

Paul Orndorff would first square off against him for the title during a televised Madison Square Garden show on February 20th. In a surefire sign there would be at least one rematch, Bollea would retain the belt by count-out. As it turns out, there would be at least 24.

Two weeks later at the Baltimore Civic Centre, the champion would score another count-out victory. After a month-long break, their mostly untelevised house show series would resume on April 7 in Altoona, Pennsylvania. This time, The Incredible Hulk Hogan would achieve a clean pinfall victory, as he would again later that month in Niagara Falls.

Hogan would continue to get put over on June 15th during a taping at the Kiel Auditorium in St. Louis, the 30th in the Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles, on July 7th in front of the cameras for a Philadelphia Spectrum show, the 14th at the Boston Garden, the 29th at the Hartford Civic Centre, August 13th in Sacramento, the 17th in Pittsburgh and September 14th in Providence, Rhode Island.

The History Of WWE website lists two Hogan/Orndorff matches for September 15th which appears to be a typo. The one listed for a show at the University of Utah is counted as yet another pinfall win for the champ. (The other, for an event in Denver which probably happened on the 16th, resulted in a count-out victory for Hogan, the same result he achieved back on April 20th in Dayton, Ohio.) As far as is known, Hogan never wrestled twice in a single day, even during TV taping weekends where the hour-long syndicated shows were recorded four episodes at a time. In fact, he rarely wrestled on these shows.

Two months later, Hogan would pin Orndorff again during a November 2nd live event in Cleveland and six days later at another show in New Haven, Connecticut. After another long break, the champion would defeat the challenger cleanly yet again on Christmas Day at the Omni in Atlanta, then an important venue for the Crocketts in the NWA that the McMahons were openly intruding upon.

Finally, in the new year on what would mark the end of his first 366 days as the top guy in the company (1984 was a leap year), Hulk Hogan would pin Orndorff on January 23rd in Louisville, Kentucky, the first anniversary of his championship push.

On September 29th, Mr. Wonderful challenged the WWF Champion inside a steel cage at the Capital Centre in Landover, Maryland, another site where the company would for a brief period regularly record house shows. Much like their more famous Saturday Night’s Main Event encounter in early January 1987, Hogan would escape the cage first, although it would take two tries, following a declared draw when both men dropped down at the exact same time, during the later NBC broadcast. Unlike Main Event, however, the Maryland match doesn’t appear to have been recorded.

Hogan would pick up a couple of disqualification victories on May 6, 1984 at a high school gym in Pennsylvania and on January 19, 1985 in Indianapolis. On August 17, 1984 in what would be their only no-contest result, both men were disqualified during another Capital Centre event that also appeared to have been untelevised.

Orndorff would only manage two cheap victories over the champion during this period. He would win by disqualification in Pittsburgh on July 20 and eight days later in Landover, Maryland during another televised event that aired on the USA Network. According to thehistoryofwwe.com, the brass knuckles Mr. Wonderful was using on the champ which went undetected by the referee would also be used by Hogan who had the bad fortune of getting caught.

Hogan and Orndorff would eventually be on opposite teams in the main event of WrestleMania in March 1985 and shortly thereafter, they would resume their house show title series. This time, Mr. Wonderful was a babyface who would graciously shake Hogan’s hand after every loss, according to The History Of WWE. They would become tag team partners, have a famous split which led to a more high profile championship feud in the second half of 1986 and then incredibly become allies again leading up to being on the same good guy team in the main event of the Survivor Series in 1987.

In between his frequent encounters with Orndorff, Hulk Hogan would have almost as many title defenses against Big John Studd, another heel he would work with beyond 1984. Their first head-to-head matchup would be taped at the Kiel Auditorium in St. Louis on March 2nd which resulted in a double disqualification. A week later in Sacramento, another no-contest.

Three weeks later, during a taped rematch in St. Louis, Studd would achieve a count-out victory thanks to a significant distraction that kept the champion outside the ring beyond the 10-count. Seven months before their first battle in a WWF ring, “Rowdy” Roddy Piper was Studd’s then-manager and already a Hogan antagonist.

There would be a blow-off match between the two rivals, at least at the Kiel Auditorium on April 6. Locked inside a steel cage for a match that would later be included in the first Hulkamania videotape, Hogan would finally gain a proper victory over Studd.

After a two-month break, the two would resume their house show feud near the end of spring. On June 16th at the Sportatorium in Hollywood, Florida, the champion would pick up a DQ win. On July 2nd in Oakland, Hogan would win by count-out. The two rivals would both get counted out in the first ever WWF show in Chicago on the 13th, more than a year before The Wrestling Classic pay-per-view, albeit in a different venue. 

Back at the Sporatorium for a return match on July 21st, Hogan finally got a proper pinfall win. Hogan would pin Studd again in their return match in Chicago on August 11th. Studd would take a DQ victory the following night in San Diego. On August 14th, both men would be disqualified in their second match in Oakland.

Dusting off a rare gimmick during this period, Hogan would beat Studd in a lumberjack match in their third and decisive Oakland battle on September 17. While the champion would pin the challenger the next night in their San Diego rematch, the two would wrestle to another double DQ finish on the 19th at the Forum in Inglewood, California.

In a significant turn of events, after briefly being managed by Piper in early 1984, Big John Studd would acquire brand new representation the night of September 22nd. During another Madison Square Garden live event that would air on both the MSG and USA Networks, according to The History Of WWE website, the self-proclaimed “real giant” of professional wrestling would now be seconded by Bobby “The Brain” Heenan, his mouthpiece for the next two years.

The change paid off. Thanks to a quick thinking Heenan, Studd managed to beat the 10-count to claim another victory. Despite not winning the belt, the duo stole Hogan’s title while headed backstage, raising their heat levels with the fans.

October 1984 would be their busiest month as in-ring opponents. Of the seven matches they would have, Studd would only manage to win once on a measly count-out on the 12th in Pittsburgh. Hogan would win by pinfall three times, although one of those was controversial.

On October 13 at the Philadelphia Spectrum, which aired on PRISM, according to thehistoryofwwe.com Studd kicked out early during the finish. A No-DQ encounter at the LA Sports Arena on the 15th was more definitive as was a more traditional battle on the 22nd during another televised MSG show. In New York, after securing the win, Hogan even went so far as to belatedly accept Studd’s ongoing bodyslam challenge. But the big man demurred and walked away successfully avoiding additional humiliation.

Four days later, Hogan would pick up another disqualification victory in Kansas City. At the Met Center in Minneapolis on the 26th, both men would be punished by the referee in another no-contest result.

Studd would challenge Hogan two more times before the end of the year. On November 9th in Pittsburgh, the champion would get by with another DQ win. And a month later on December 10, during a taped match at the Meadowlands in New Jersey, Hogan would win by bodyslamming Studd outside the ring and making it back inside the squared circle before the 10-count. But he didn’t get the money for scooping up his challenger. Not that he would’ve gotten it if he had slammed him in the ring. Neither Studd nor Heenan ever honoured their word when numerous men including Andre The Giant and King Tonga achieved the same feat.

Studd would have far more success eliminating Hogan and his other major enemy Andre The Giant simultaneously to go on to win a couple of battle royals like the one at the first WWF show in Nashville on June 26th and the more widely seen match from February 10th, later included on The Best Of The WWF Vol. 3 videotape, the same show that saw Hogan defend his newly won title for the first time against the Masked Superstar.

Despite their year-long rivalry which was occasionally addressed on the weekly syndicated TV shows in order to sell live event tickets, Studd and Hogan would become an unlikely, one-time tag team in Japan for Antonio Inoki’s promotion. On May 14, during a New Japan show in Miyazaki, the odd tandem would be counted out along with their opponents, Inoki and Seiji Sakaguchi.

Besides Paul Orndorff and Big John Studd, Hulk Hogan’s other significant rivalry in 1984 was with “Dr. D” David Schultz, one of the most notorious figures in wrestling history. Billed as an intensely scary psychopath unapologetically oozing with toxic masculinity, like Studd he was initially managed by “Rowdy” Roddy Piper. Had he not gone off the handle on two separate backstage incidents, he may have become a major player during a pivotal point in the rise of the World Wrestling Federation.

Schultz challenged Hogan for the WWF Championship on 16 occasions between March and September. It all started on March 5th when Dr. D lost cleanly to the champion in Salisbury, Maryland. With the exception of a double count-out in White Plains, New York on May 2nd, as noted by The History Of WWE website, Schultz was otherwise pinned 14 times. (No result is given for a March 8th event in Pennsylvania.)

On an episode of Championship Wrestling that aired in syndication on May 12, Schultz cut a promo on Hogan declaring his intentions to dethrone him for the title, an ambition that was never realized. Unlike Orndorff and Studd, Schultz never even achieved a count-out or DQ victory. He was soundly defeated in match after match, only a few of which were recorded for TV.

One of those pinfall losses took place in Madison Square Garden on May 21st which aired on the MSG Network. In Montreal ten days later, Schultz and Hogan were the main event for an episode of Canadian Superstars Of Wrestling, as noted by The History Of WWE website, while another defeat happened at the first ever WWF show in the Met Center in Minnesota on June 17. That match first aired on Tuesday Night Titans in July, Vince McMahon Jr.’s version of The Tonight Show, before its later inclusion on the first Hulkamania videotape. After being defeated by Hogan, Dr. D started beating him down with his own title belt until the champion had enough and restored order.

After attacking John Stossel for daring to question pro wrestling’s legitimacy while being interviewed for ABC’s late night news show 20/20 and later getting into an altercation with Mr. T, both happening backstage during televised MSG live events, Schultz was excommunicated from the WWF. His career never recovered, despite working steadily in Japan for Antonio Inoki and in Calgary for Stu Hart right to the end of the 1980s. 

After being falsely accused of extorting money from the McMahons and then testifying against his former boss during the US government’s botched steroid trial, Dr. D has since made infrequent public appearances. It is highly unlikely he’ll ever be inducted into their imaginary hall of fame.

In 2018, he wrote a memoir. He called it Don’t Call Me Fake.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Thursday, January 25, 2024
4:26 p.m.

Revisiting Hulk Hogan’s First Year As World Champion (Part One)

On January 23rd, 1984, Terry Bollea got the push of a lifetime. As he walked out to Survivor’s Eye Of The Tiger, his entrance music at the time, the sold-out crowd at Madison Square Garden collectively and enthusiastically expressed their most fervent hope: that he would defeat The Iron Sheik, the despised anti-American heel, for the World Wrestling Federation Championship.

This was all unwelcome news to Bob Backlund, the former champion who reluctantly dropped the belt to Sheik at the previous MSG house show on December 26, 1983. Refusing to put him over clean that night, a compromise would be reached. Backlund’s manager, Arnold Skaaland, would throw in the towel – literally – when his protege found himself trapped in the dreaded Camel Clutch. The finish allowed Backlund to plausibly declare a decade later upon his surprise return that he never actually submitted.

After challenging the new titleholder in a few unrecorded rematches – a DQ win on January 14th in the Boston Garden, a double DQ finish on January 18th in Ohio and another DQ win the following night in a high school in Pennsylvania – Backlund was booked to face the Sheik again for the title on the 23rd in New York City. Or so he was led to believe.

Vince McMahon Jr., the new owner of the WWF, ultimately dropped Backlund from the show and slotted Bollea in his place. (Backlund would resume his feud with Sheik on February 4 during a live event in Massachusetts as noted by the invaluable History Of WWE website. Ironically, during a televised event on March 31st at the old Philadelphia Spectrum, Bollea seconded Backlund but the new WWF Champion would interfere giving the Sheik a cheap DQ win.)

Backlund wasn’t the only disgruntled party regarding January 23rd. Although The Iron Sheik had no problem working with Bollea despite spending the rest of his life badmouthing him in the press, he wasn’t exactly thrilled about losing the title so quickly. Like Backlund before him, he’d hoped there would be a series of matches before the strap changed hands. The Sheik wanted a proper run as champion.

But McMahon wanted his new babyface at the top of the card immediately, less than a month since he returned to action on December 28, as acknowledged by thehistoryofwwe.com. He had grand ambitions to put every other promoter out of business. The sooner Bollea was pushed as champion, the sooner he could execute his grand, longterm scheme of global domination. 

Bollea already had some crossover Hollywood cachet for making a memorable cameo in Rocky III just a couple of years earlier (the very reason he was fired by McMahon’s father, ironically enough). He would be an easy sell to a rapturous New York audience, the biggest market for the northeast American territory. The real question would be would he get over nationally, and later, internationally?

Televised on The MSG Network and repeated later, on the weekly, nationally syndicated Championship Wrestling and All-Star Wrestling programs, the match wasn’t even the main event at that particular house show. (Andre The Giant and the WWF tag champions at that time, Rocky Johnson and Tony Atlas, defeated all three Wild Samoans in a six-man tag finale, according to The History Of WWE website.) It was the eighth bout of ten that took place that night.

Sometime before the match took place, Sheik was suddenly put under a lot of pressure. McMahon had convinced Bollea to leave the American Wrestling Association, where he had successfully transitioned from a monster heel to the number one babyface, just before his contract ran out.

According to Sex, Lies & Headlocks, a 2001 literary examination of the WWF’s history to that point, Bollea sent a succinct telegram to the company’s disbelieving owner, Verne Gagne, who initially thought he was being ribbed. When a second one arrived relaying the same message (“I’m not coming back.”), Gagne contacted The Iron Sheik. (According to McMahon biographer Abraham Riesman, the AWA chief had just put together a sizzle reel that heavily promoted Hogan for future shows on and off TV. He had also refused to make him his world champion which played a major role in his departure. McMahon had promised Hogan the WWF title and a 10-year run.)

As recounted in Sheik’s two-hour A&E Biography last year, Gagne had reminded his old friend that his wife had given him his new name, that he had trained him in his infamously humid barn facility, that he had even helped him get a side gig to pay the bills. And because of all of this, he owed him a big favour.

Gagne offered the Sheik one hundred thousand dollars to break Bollea’s gargantuanly tanned legs and therefore screw over Vince McMahon Jr.’s most important booking. Sheik was put in an uncomfortable position: do his loyal mentor’s bidding and get a hefty payday that most pro wrestlers could only dream of at that time or risk alienating his new boss who potentially could elevate his own career let alone the man he was tasked to putting over.

Much to the relief of everyone in the World Wrestling Federation, The Iron Sheik was willing to do business. Neither Bollea nor McMahon had anything to worry about. In less than six minutes, The Incredible Hulk Hogan, as Bollea had been billed for years (Vince’s father gave him his new last name), would become the first man to escape the Camel Clutch, drop the big leg after ramming the Sheik into the corner and then cradle the champion to become a champion of his own.

“Hulkamania is here!” declared an excitable Gorilla Monsoon, a former rival during Bollea’s earlier heel run, on commentary.

Four days later, Bollea was in Japan to begin a two-and-a-half week tour with Antonio Inoki’s New Japan Pro Wrestling, the first of many as noted by The History Of WWE. At no time did he defend his new championship. (He would eventually win that promotion’s world title, however.) When he wasn’t working one-on-one non-title matches with a number of different Japanese stars, he was booked to work a series of tag matches with two Canadian talents by his side.

“Iron” Mike Sharpe was a grunting, hairy-chested mid-card heel from Hamilton, Ontario, who wore a suspicious arm brace in the ring and declared himself Canada’s Greatest Athlete. And Bret Hart, who got over in his father’s Calgary Stampede territory, was still months away from debuting as a lower-card babyface in the WWF. He wouldn’t become “The Hitman” until the following year. Hogan would mostly team with Sharpe with Hart only being added for six-man matches.

After working with the likes of Inoki, Akira Meada (who would become WWF International Champion that year and even wrestle The Iron Sheik) and Tatsumi Fujinami, Bollea would return to the United States to begin his first full year defending the WWF Championship. On February 10th, he would tape his first title defense in St. Louis at the Kiel Auditorium, the first time the company had ever promoted a show here, as mentioned by The History Of WWE website. The match wouldn’t air for four months.

Bill Eadie had challenged Bob Backlund a number of times during his reign but the audience never knew what he looked like. Adopting the mysterious Masked Superstar gimmick, he would challenge Hulk Hogan on three occasions. Besides the match in St. Louis, Eadie would also face the new champion in another locally televised event on February 18 at the Philadelphia Spectrum. Both matches, each running a little over 10 minutes according to thehistoryofwwe.com, ended the same way. Eadie would get caught putting a foreign object in his mask which resulted in his disqualification.

A week later at the Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles, the heart of Gene LeBell and Guerrero territory, Hogan would drop the leg and get a clean pin on Superstar which was not captured by any video cameras. Although they would never wrestle against each other again, they would occasionally find themselves teaming up together in multi-man tag matches both in the Far East and here at home.

On May 12, 1984, during another New Japan tour, Hogan and Superstar would lose by disqualification to Riki Choshu & Mr. Saito, the former WWF tag champ and future AWA world titleholder. (Both teams were disqualified in a rematch nearly a month later.)

Five days later in Nagasaki, as listed by thehistoryofwwe.com, they would lose a six-man match to a team that included Antonio Inoki and Tatsumi Fujinami. The very next night in Hiroshima, Hogan and Superstar would face the then-reigning WWF tag team champions Dick Murdoch and Adrian Adonis and win clean. 

But according to The History Of WWE, not only were the belts not on the line, the champions didn’t even bring them to the ring. (Hogan would later team with Murdoch in a losing effort against Inoki and Fujinami on June 8, and then with Adonis as well in a six-man victory involving Inoki and different partners two nights later and again on the 12th.)

When Eadie became another masked character, this time a babyface named the Super Machine in 1986, along with the Big Machine (Blackjack Mulligan), Hogan would don a mask of his own calling himself The Hulk Machine for a few six-man matches against Bobby Heenan and his two biggest monsters. And at the 1989 Survivor Series, Eadie would be on his side once more, this time as the face-painted Ax of Demolition. That same year, Eadie appeared with Hogan in No Holds Barred where he wore far less make-up on his face and without the slicked back hair. He played one of his in-ring rivals, Jake Bullet.

On February 11, the day after his first match with the Masked Superstar in St. Louis, Bollea would have the first of his many rematches with The Iron Sheik, only a few of which would be recorded. In what was supposed to be another rematch with Bob Backlund, Bollea would take his place once more and defeat the Sheik in a no holds barred Texas Death Match in the Boston Garden. On February 24th, he’d pin him again in a more traditional title fight in Pittsburgh in front of a sold out Civic Centre.

For the next three months, Hogan would have to settle for cheap wins over the man he cleanly beat for the title in New York: two by disqualification (March 4 (at the Capital Centre in Maryland) and 10 (LA’s Olympic Auditorium)) and three by countout (April 3 (Erie, Pennsylvania), May 24 (Columbus, Ohio) and 28 (William Paterson College in New Jersey)).

The only no-contest was a double count-out on May 5 at the Philadelphia Spectrum which was taped for broadcast. Coincidentally, Hulk Hogan would get his first pinfall victory over The Iron Sheik since becoming champion on June 2 at the Spectrum which was also aired in that city. Again, according to The History Of WWE website, it wasn’t the main event. It was match five on an eight-match card. (Bob Backlund beat Wild Samoan Samula in five minutes in the show’s finale.)

Hogan would pin the Sheik seven more times in his first year as champion. With the exception of the Christmas show at the end of 1984 at Madison Square Garden (where the champion defeated the challenger in a match that was two-and-a-half minutes shorter than the title push on January 23rd and was the actual main event), all the other wins (December 29 at the Met Center in Minnesota, January 13, 1985 in Phoenix, the 14th at the University of Utah, the 17th at the State Fair Arena in Dallas and the Astro Arena in Houston on the 18th) were not recorded.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Tuesday, January 23, 2024
10:20 p.m.

The History Of The Mystery Track – You Oughta Know What Happened To 1000 Mona Lisas

When a song captures the zeitgeist of its era, when it excites just as much as it inflames, chances are it will survive beyond its moment. Its power, its vulnerability, its authenticity, despite the contrary view of its detractors, will resonate for the years and even decades to come.

One such track from the summer of 1995 stood out more than any other. Despite not qualifying for Billboard’s Hot 100 Singles Chart (there were no commercially available physical copies to buy domestically), its presence on radio and TV was ubiquitous. You could not escape it, no matter how hard you tried. It was simply everywhere.

Meant to exorcise some emotional trauma from a relationship gone very sour indeed, it caused such a sensation it even divided feminists, some of whom questioned the wisdom of releasing a song they argued reinforced the worst stereotypes of the unhinged, scorned woman.

Inevitably, when a track like this explodes into the mainstream, there are covers. In 1996, noted Toronto scenester Jaymz Bee and his band released a loungy cocktail version. That same year, Weird Al Yankovic included a snippet in his polka medley of recent alternative rock hits. 25 years after the original’s phenomenal debut, Beyonce slipped in an excerpt during her performance of If I Were A Boy at the 2010 Grammy Awards. Of the three, only Mr. Bee had the courage to not censor “fuck”.

Back in the summer of 1995, long before anyone else decided to take a shot, an up and coming punk band from Hollywood was game. What started as a lark led to an unexpected hit of their own, their only one to date. In the ultimate irony, their biggest success, covering someone else’s breakthrough song, became their own and unfortunately, unintentionally led to their undoing.

1000 Mona Lisas had stuck it out in the LA club scene for a few years in the early 90s (Weezer opened for them in 1993) when they finally caught a break. RCA Records was interested in signing them.

Rather than put out a full album right away, the band decided on a shorter release which they simply named The EP. Only five original songs were planned for inclusion. But at the last minute, a sixth cut, a Buried Song tucked away on track five, would ultimately be added.

“We were sitting at Bottom Of The Hill [a music club] in San Francisco,” frontman Armando Prado told MTV.com in November 1995, “and we were thinking, what can we do to mess with people…”

Alanis Morissette’s You Oughta Know, both the listed version and the hidden Jimmy The Saint Blend, had been blowing up huge that summer receiving extensive airplay on various radio formats. The video, featuring her touring band who didn’t play on either of the studio recordings, was in high rotation on MTV and MuchMusic.

“It was at the end of July,” Prado told MTV.com, “and she was starting to get popular.”

The trio started playing it during live shows and it received an “enthusiastic” reaction, according to Billboard Magazine in their January 20, 1996 edition. One fan in particular wanted them to record it for The EP.

In a little over a decade, Brian Malouf had already accumulated a remarkable list of credits. He was twiddling the knobs and adjusting the faders while Michael Jackson was demoing the Bad album. He discovered Everclear. And he ended up mixing Pearl Jam’s Even Flow among many other hit songs.

By the mid-90s, he was the A&R guy for RCA. Despite the reluctance of 1000 Mona Lisas, he insisted they include their version of You Oughta Know on The EP. They ultimately agreed to make it a mystery track. (Morissette and her producer Glen Ballard are properly credited as the songwriters in the liner notes.) You’ll find it with 2 minutes and 8 seconds left on track 5. (After the last listed song, Instilled And Lost, also listen for the occasional “wheeee!” from someone in the band (it sounds like Prado) which pops up at 2:10, 3:07 & 4:32.)

“I really just thought maybe a college radio station here or there might pick it up,” Prado told MTV.com, “but it’s been playing all over the country.”

“The buzz on 1000 Mona Lisas began late last summer [1995] as their version of ‘You Oughta Know’ started lighting up playlists from KROQ Los Angeles to WXEG Dayton, Ohio,” reported Billboard in its January 20, 1996 issue, “often in close proximity to Alanis’ original. RCA didn’t promote the track as a single; demand for the tune built by word-of-mouth while the band was on the road.” The song was also put into heavy rotation on CFNY, Toronto’s modern rock station, which had already been playing Alanis for months.

With just a minimalist piano accompanying him, Prado earnestly sings the opening lines. Then, after one last piano flourish, the rest of the band suddenly thrashes into the mix jacking up the volume and quickening the pace. Prado maintains his deadpan delivery until things are slightly slowed down as he and his bandmates scream out the chorus.

“I didn’t change the gender in the lyrics,” Prado revealed to MTV.com, “because I wanted to stay true to what it was, I didn’t see any reason for messing with her lyrics, it’s her song. I definitely respect what she’s done.”

In the second verse, Prado does make a slight alteration at the top. “You seem very well” is replaced with “you look peaceful”. (It sounds like he mixed up the lyric with the next line “things looks peaceful” and just decided to keep it in.) And after another shrieked out chorus, instead of a solo followed by another set of words, the band simply repeats the chorus one more time and everything ends cold.

So, what did Alanis herself think of this tighter, faster, punkier reworking of her most famous song? According to Billboard, she was mixed.

“For her part, Morissette says it feels funny to hear 1000 Mona Lisas sing ‘You Oughta Know’ ‘because the song is so personal to me….[1000 Mona Lisas] obviously like the song, and they’re passionate about what they do, so God bless ’em.'”

But according to Prado himself, as noted in the July/August 1996 edition of Impact Magazine, she was more complimentary when she met the band backstage:

“She came to our show in Salt Lake City [in November 1995] and said she liked it…I told her we’d do ‘One Hand In My Pocket’ [sic] next and she cracked up!”

The gig took place at the Zephyr Club. In mid-April 1996, Prado told Deseret News that playing her song right in front of her was a trip:

“It was good for the adrenaline.”

Like he told Impact Magazine, their backstage encounter was a highlight of the evening:

“It was cool meeting her.”

Morissette had every reason to be flattered by the band’s rendition. Despite doing the song just for fun, it’s one of the best mystery track covers of all time. Morissette’s unvarnished contempt and bitterness towards Dave Coulier was pure punk rock anyway, even if the slick, superior Chili Pepper arrangement suggested otherwise. It took 1000 Mona Lisas all of two minutes and eight seconds to fix this.

While talking to MTV.com in November 1995, Prado let slip another secret. 1000 Mona Lisas had recorded another mystery track, this one for their first proper album.

Three months later, New Disease debuted. Four minutes and thirty seconds into track 14, the band revs it up again, this time for a hit song from the mid-70s.

Around the same time Martha the sheepdog was frolicking around on their Scottish farm, Paul & Linda McCartney had also adopted a feisty puppy.

“We’ve got a Labrador puppy who is a runt, the runt of a litter,” McCartney told a reporter while promoting his third Wings album. “We bought her along a roadside in a little pet shop, out in the country one day. She was a bit of a wild dog, a wild girl who wouldn’t stay in. We have a big wall around our house in London, and she wouldn’t stay in, she always used to jump the wall.”

Frequently escaping her owners to go prowling around town, when she returned from one such excursion, the McCartneys were surprised to learn how busy she’d been:

“She came back one day pregnant. She proceeded to walk into the garage and have this litter…Seven little black puppies, perfect little black Labradors, and she’s not black, she’s tan.”

They named one of her newborns Jet, which also happened to be the name of one of his ponies he also had at the time.

While making Band On The Run, as McCartney later revealed to Australian radio in 2017, some of the lyrics were inspired by his first wife’s Dad:

“It was kind of – a little bit about the experiences I’d had in marrying Linda. Her dad [the entertainment lawyer, Lee Eastman, McCartney’s longtime manager for decades who died in 1991] was a little old fashioned and I thought I was a little bit intimidated, as a lot of young guys can be meeting the father figure. And if the dad’s really easy-going, it makes it easy. It wasn’t bad but I was a bit intimidated, probably my fault as much as his.”

Mixing fact (“I can almost remember their funny faces/That time you told them that you were going to be marrying soon”) with Lennonesque surrealism (“with the wind in your hair of a thousand laces/Climb on the back and we’ll go for a ride in the sky”), the song is catchy enough to forgive the deliberate, and in this case, literal flights of lyrical fancy.

Initially, there were no plans to release Jet as a single. But the album Band On The Run was underperforming on the sales chart compared to what McCartney had accomplished more easily with The Beatles. Struggling for the critical respect John Lennon was easily garnering for his own solo work, the LP needed a belated, added push.

It took Capitol Records’s promo man Al Coury to convince him to put Jet out as a 45. In the end, two versions were issued: the full-length album cut and a three-minute single edit. The song would peak at #7 on the Billboard singles chart, #2 in the UK. And Band On The Run would ultimately become a multi-platinum smash, the biggest record McCartney would release with Wings.

Jet became a concert highlight for decades. During McCartney’s tour in support of the 1993 album Flowers In The Dirt, it was one of the only Wings songs regularly played during shows.

“We mastered `Jet’ off a cassette we recorded a few years ago,” Armando Prado told Deseret News. “It’s a song I’ve always wanted to cover.”

“We don’t want to be known as a cover band,” Prado declared to MTV.com, “so we may be ending that pretty quickly. This one cover [You Oughta Know] has gotten us more notoriety for doing covers than we care to have, but it’s also really gotten us where we are.”

As expected, this unlisted take of Jet is much faster than the original. No slowed-down reggae detours in this version. There’s a quick guitar break but no melody-mimicking keyboard solo, no vocal improvs popping out of the background and certainly no saxophones.

Prado also makes subtle lyric changes. “That time you told them that you were going to be marrying soon” now reads “How come you told me that you’re going to be marrying soon?” which changes the whole dynamic of the song. Instead of a worried fiance concerned about what his future wife’s father thinks of him before their wedding, this Jet is about a guy who belatedly realizes he’s the side piece.

And for some reason, the opening line of the last verse – “With the wind in your hair of a thousand laces” – loses the L in the last word. Either he made another mistake and left it in or maybe he’s a poker fan, I don’t know.

When I reviewed New Disease for my college newspaper in 1996, I found the record hit and miss. As for Jet itself, following the more substantive You Oughta Know, it felt “disposable” by comparison. And truthfully, I don’t remember ever hearing McCartney’s original until much later on. But today, it’s a rollicking, affectionate mystery gem that deserves to be rediscovered.

Unlike what happened to Wings in 1974, Jet would take 1000 Mona Lisas no further, despite being given a big push in the band’s accompanying bio sent to radio stations with New Disease. It failed to match or eclipse the surprise success of You Oughta Know. The frustration of not being able to generate hits through their own material also took their toll. Modern rock radio wasn’t buying what they were selling anymore. Nu metal was becoming the new thing and they couldn’t compete.

In the May 23rd, 1998 edition of Billboard Magazine, there was an article about their label RCA Records which was going through its own creative and commercial struggles. In a brief notice midway through, there was a short paragraph focusing specifically on the unrealized potential of 1000 Mona Lisas:

“With internal and external stress,” Billboard vaguely concluded, “the band eventually broke up.”

In 1997, Prado recorded another song under a different name, B.U.G.S., for a benefit album entitled Generations I – A Punk Look At Human Rights. And then he left the music business altogether. After successfully completing medical school, he has since become a nurse. (When contacted for comment through his public Facebook account, there was no response.)

Hopefully, the stress of being in a rock band helped him prepare for the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Tuesday, September 5, 2023
3:36 a.m.

The History Of The Mystery Track – Our Lady Peace, Ray Kurzweil & Molly

Mike Turner was looking for something to read. It was 1999 and his band, Our Lady Peace, were on an American tour in support of their third album, Happiness…Is Not A Fish You Can Catch. Riding long hours on a bus in between gigs can be tedious. So one day the guitarist stepped into a bookstore and found something that caught his eye.

The Age Of Spiritual Machines was written by Ray Kurzweil, an eccentric inventor, among other things, who firmly believes that death can be overcome once humanity fully merges with technology. Not an original idea by any means but few have taken the time to conceptualize such a radical line of thought outside the fantasy world of science fiction. Diagnosed with type 2 diabetes at age 35, there’s no question such a depressing diagnosis would profoundly motivate an already highly driven philosopher and computer scientist with considerable wealth to prolong his life by any means necessary.

As he read, Turner became mesmerized by Kurzweil’s often far-out ideas (“I picked it up, read it and went mental,” he told Chart Attack in 2000) and as soon as he finished the book, the lead guitarist passed it on to the band’s singer Raine Maida. He had the same reaction.

Despite the fact they had just made their third album, even before Turner bought The Age Of Spiritual Machines, the songwriting process for the next collection of songs had already begun.

“It ended up being a concept record,” bassist Duncan Coutts told the Pop Matters website in 2010, “but it certainly didn’t start that way.”

Just over a year after the release of Happiness…Is Not A Fish You Can Catch, Our Lady Peace unveiled Spiritual Machines. Hoping to get Kurzweil’s blessing for the project during its difficult production (the drummer got mugged while walking his dog and some of his parts had to be played by Pearl Jam’s Matt Cameron), not only was the author thrilled about the album, he also volunteered his services to help participate in the recording. He even gave the band one of his specially designed keyboards, the Kurzweil 350, which was implemented constantly.

Officially, Kurzweil appears on six tracks spread out throughout the record. With the exception of his voice buried so deep during an instrumental break on the single In Repair it’s basically indecipherable, the author is more clearly heard reading mostly word-for-word quotations from his book in brief snippets all set to moody electronic music and tucked away between proper songs.

But 12 minutes and 7 seconds after the final song, The Wonderful Future, concludes on track fifteen, there’s a seventh appearance, one of the weirdest mystery tracks of all time.

On page 37 of The Age Of Spiritual Machines, Kurzweil engages in a conversation with an unknown person about the future. Ten pages later, there’s another dialogue. These exchanges continue on at various points throughout the book, usually at the end of a subsequent chapter. Starting with Chapter 10, we jump ten years into the future, and then another ten years in 11 until the final engagement seven decades later in 12. We begin in 1999 and ultimately conclude a full century later.

It isn’t until the very beginning of Chapter 7 that we even learn this mysterious person’s name.

“I’M MOLLY.”

Molly is not real. She’s a fictional character Kurzweil created in order to fantasize about communicating with an immortal cybernetic being in his idealized future. He gives her a back story. She’s married with children but there’s complications. (Her husband, an inventor, uses virtual reality to cheat on her and see other women naked without their knowledge.) She’s an overachieving intellectual/artist who lets the author know how many of his theories and predictions, organized by decade, prove correct which feels more than a little self-serving. (And contrary to his later assertion that 86% of his guesses came true, he got a lot of shit wrong. His math is clearly off.)

Unlike most of the spoken word segments on Our Lady Peace’s Spiritual Machines which are all under a minute each, this unlisted piece buried at the end of track 15 goes on for roughly three and a half minutes.

What ensues, following the introduction of some simple, ongoing, echoey piano playing and what sounds like electronic reproductions of whales moaning, is a peculiar, somewhat awkward and cheesy imaginary conversation between Kurzweil and Molly. In fact, the track is appropriately entitled R.K. and Molly.

Before each line of dialogue, Kurzweil calls out the name of the communicator about to speak which is heard at a lower decibel. He plays himself, of course. And he plays Molly but with his voice artificially raised to a helium-like pitch. Put simply, it doesn’t sound right. She doesn’t sound hot.

Divided up into three separate speaking segments, with that mood music playing on uninterrupted during the slight silences, the first segment involves snippets taken from pages 235 and 241 of Chapter 12 entitled 2099. Instead of starting right from the beginning of what is the longest conversation from the book, he picks it up for the hidden track nine lines into it, jumping right back into his odd flirtation with a made-up android:

“Ray: Anyway, you do look amazing.

Molly: YOU SAY THAT EVERY TIME WE MEET.

Ray: I mean you look twenty again, only more beautiful than at the start of the book.

Molly: I KNEW THAT’S HOW YOU’D WANT ME.” (p. 235)

“Ray: Okay, you were an attractive woman when I first met you. And you still project yourself as a beautiful young woman. At least when I’m with you.

Molly: THANKS.

Ray: …are you saying that you’re a machine now?

Molly: A MACHINE? THAT’S REALLY NOT FOR ME TO SAY. IT’S LIKE ASKING ME IF I’M BRILLIANT OR INSPIRING.

Ray: I guess the word machine in 2099 doesn’t have quite the same connotations that it has here in 1999.

Molly: THAT’S HARD FOR ME TO RECALL NOW.” (p.241)

After a five-second break, with the piano and fake whale noises still going strong, the conversation continues as Molly talks about her kids and a project she’s working on. At the tail end of page 238 in the book, Kurzweil asks her “what else” is she up to as they catch up after a long break from communicating. She responds, “JUST FINISHING UP THIS SYMPHONY.”

He asks, “Is this a new interest?” Her response begins the second portion of R.K. and Molly on the Spiritual Machines CD and can be found at the start of page 239:

“Molly: I’M REALLY JUST DABBLING, BUT CREATING MUSIC IS A GREAT WAY FOR ME TO STAY CLOSE WITH JEREMY AND EMILY.

Ray: Creating music sounds like a good thing to do with your kids, even if they are almost ninety years old. So, can I hear it?

Molly: WELL, I’M AFRAID YOU WOULDN’T UNDERSTAND IT.

Ray: So it requires enhancement to understand?

Molly: YES, MOST ART DOES. FOR STARTERS, THIS SYMPHONY IS IN FREQUENCIES THAT A MOSH CAN’T HEAR, AND HAS MUCH TOO FAST A TEMPO. AND IT USES MUSICAL STRUCTURES THAT A MOSH COULD NEVER FOLLOW.

Ray: Can’t you create art for nonaugmented humans? I mean there’s still a lot of depth possible. Consider Beethoven–he wrote almost two centuries ago, and we still find his music exhilarating.

Molly: YES, THERE’S A GENRE OF MUSIC–ALL THE ARTS ACTUALLY–WHERE WE CREATE MUSIC AND ART THAT A MOSH IS CAPABLE OF UNDERSTANDING.

Ray: And then you play MOSH music for MOSHs?

Molly: NOW THERE’S AN INTERESTING IDEA. I SUPPOSE WE COULD TRY THAT, ALTHOUGH MOSHs ARE NOT THAT EASY TO FIND ANYMORE. IT’S REALLY NOT NECESSARY, THOUGH. WE CAN CERTAINLY UNDERSTAND WHAT A MOSH IS CAPABLE OF UNDERSTANDING. THE POINT, THOUGH, IS TO USE THE MOSH LIMITATIONS AS AN ADDED CONSTRAINT.

Ray: Sort of like composing new music for old instruments.

Molly: YEAH, NEW MUSIC FOR OLD MINDS.” (p. 239)

What in the hell is a MOSH? It’s an acronym Kurzweil made up to differentiate generic human beings from their technologically enhanced successors. As explained to him by the imaginary Molly on page 237, it stands for Mostly Original Substrate Humans. On page 306 of The Age Of Spiritual Machines, Kurzweil himself defines it thusly:

“In the last half of the twenty-first century, a human being still using native carbon-based neurons and unenhanced by neural implants is referred to as a MOSH. In 2099, Molly refers to the author as being a MOSH.”

A few seconds later, we come to the last segment. You’ll find the portion with Molly on page 252 which ends Chapter 12. The last section where Kurzweil loses contact with her is actually the opening lines of Epilogue: The Rest Of The Universe Revisited found on page 253:

“Ray: Maybe we should kiss goodbye?

Molly: JUST A KISS?

Ray: We’ll leave it at that for this book. I’ll reconsider the ending for the movie…

Molly: HERE’S MY KISS….NOW REMEMBER, I’M READY TO DO ANYTHING OR BE ANYTHING YOU WANT OR NEED.

Ray: I’ll keep that in mind.

Molly: …THAT’S WHERE YOU’LL FIND ME.

Ray: Too bad I have to wait a century to meet you.

Molly: OR TO BE ME.

Ray: Yes, that too.” (p.252)

“Ray: Actually, Molly, there are a few other questions that have occurred to me. What were those limitations that you referred to? What did you say you were anxious about? What are you afraid of? Do you feel pain? What about babies and children? Molly?…” (p.253)

The unorthodox backing track eventually grinds to a halt and slowly fades out as the CD shuts off.

The full final conversation between Kurzweil and his imaginary cybernetic plaything in Chapter 12 of The Age Of Spiritual Machines goes on for 18 pages, 19 if you count the start of the Epilogue. In some of the portions excised for the mystery track, Molly throws out random quotes from famous figures, there’s a brief discussion about government intrusions into privacy, human rights applying to humanoids, quantum computing, virtual food in place of the real thing, imagining your own body and bringing it to life, and of course, Kurzweil constantly hitting on a married robot. (In real life, he too is married with 2 kids.)

R.K. and Molly is also heard, but not in its complete form, on the credited enhanced portion of Spiritual Machines, a rare acknowledgement of a CD Extra on a Sony Records release. (In most cases, this is normally not indicated on the outside packaging.)

When you put the CD in the CD-ROM drive of your computer, the track starts playing as you watch a crude animation set in a hospital. At any time while R.K. and Molly plays, you can click that snail in the upper right hand corner which takes you to another screen. (If you let the animation play out, you’re taken there automatically.) It’s here you’re encouraged to create a login name in order to visit an Our Lady Peace “secret site”. (Unfortunately, it doesn’t exist anymore (it was discontinued by 2003) but cached portions have survived.)

Six years later, Our Lady Peace released their first compilation of hits entitled A Decade. The two popular singles from Spiritual Machines appear midway through the CD.

Before In Repair begins at the 15-second mark of track 10, against another sparse electronic mood arrangement, Kurzweil makes the following prediction:

“The year is 2029. The machines will convince us that they are conscious, that they have their own agenda where they have our respect. They’ll embody human qualities. They’ll claim to be human. And we’ll believe them.”

This quick clip, entitled R.K. 2029, is also from Spiritual Machines and unlike its secret placement on A Decade, it’s properly credited and given its own track number separate from In Repair on the earlier album. As before, it’s sequenced right before the song begins.

None of these specific lines appear in The Age Of Spiritual Machines, but similar sentiments are expressed in much longer form on page 153 in the following paragraph. The heart of the book’s premise, which feels heavily influenced by Blade Runner, is found in these words:

“Just being–experiencing, being conscious–is spiritual, and reflects the essence of spirituality. Machines, derived from human thinking and surpassing humans in their capacity for experience, will claim to be conscious, and thus to be spiritual. They will believe that they are conscious. They will believe that they have spiritual experiences. They will be convinced that these experiences are meaningful. And given the historical inclination of the human race to anthropomorphize the phenomena we encounter, and the persuasiveness of the machines, we’re likely to believe them when they tell us this.”

Just like the rebellious replicants who easily pass for human unless you test them for emotion.

A more succinct assertion awaits on page 280 of the Timeline section. At the very end of the summarized 2029 predictions, Kurzweil writes:

“Machines claim to be conscious. These claims are largely accepted.”

Right at the start of track 11, we don’t hear Life right away. Instead, with Turner gently noodling in the background, Kurzweil returns. Using another fictional character to illustrate the conviction of his basic theory that cybernetic humans are simply superior versions to their mortal predecessors, he presents the following scenario in 19 seconds:

“Have we lost Jack somewhere along the line? Jack’s friends think not. Jack claims to be the same old guy, just newer. His vision, memory and reasoning ability have all been improved. But it’s still Jack.”

In Chapter 3, Of Minds And Machines, Kurzweil introduces a hypothetical situation involving the made-up example of the aforementioned Jack beginning on page 52. Near the start of paragraph three, he writes:

“Our friend Jack (circa some time in the twenty-first century) has been complaining of difficulty with his hearing. A diagnostic test indicates he needs more than a conventional hearing aid, so he gets a choclear implant…This routine surgical procedure is successful, and Jack is pleased with his improved hearing.

Is he still the same Jack?

Well, sure he is. People have cochlear implants circa 1999. We still regard them as the same person.”

After opting for “newly introduced image-processing implants”, having already acquired “permanently implanted retinal-imaging displays in his corneas to view virtual reality”, near the bottom of page 52, Kurzweil writes:

“Jack notices that his memory is not what it was, as he struggles to recall names, the names of earlier events, and so on. So he’s back for memory implants. These are amazing–memories that have grown fuzzy with time are now as clear as if they had just happened.” Even the bad ones.

“Still the same Jack?” Kurzweil asks at the top of page 53. He eventually answers, “yes, it’s still the same guy.”

And then, in paragraph four on that same page, you’ll read a slightly different version of what Kurzweil recites uncredited on A Decade. The first two lines of the mystery track are exactly the same. But starting with the third line, there are slight changes. (I’ve highlighted them in bold.)

“Jack also claims that he’s the same old guy, just newer. His hearing, vision, memory and reasoning ability have all improved, but it’s still the same Jack.”

In the book, following this passage, Kurzweil goes on and on about Jack, his enhancement possibilities and the constant questioning about whether “new Jack” can still creditably be seen as the “old Jack” despite seeing dramatic physical improvements that aren’t human, for another two pages in that chapter.

On page 126 of Chapter 6, Building New Brains…, he brings up Jack again, summarizing the ethical dilemma of whether a person who downloads themselves, or rather, gets “scanned” into a new and improved cybernetic body can still be the same human being they once were:

“Subjectively, the question is more subtle and profound. Is this the same consciousness as the person we just scanned?”

Kurzweil gives a conflicting answer:

“If he–Jack–is still around, he will convincingly claim to represent the continuity of his consciousness. He may not be satisfied to let his mental clone carry on in his stead.”

R.K. Jack is an uncredited, exclusive outtake since it did not appear on Spiritual Machines.

More than two decades after being wowed by Kurzweil’s thought provoking, yet now somewhat discredited and often overly rosy “futurism”, Our Lady Peace revisited the subject for an unexpected sequel.

In 2022, the band released Spiritual Machines 2 and launched an unusual tour to promote it. Once again, Kurzweil provided voiceover narrations, this time bragging about his supposedly accurate predictions from the previous century (something he also does in The Age Of Spiritual Machines when referring to the first book he wrote, The Age Of Intelligent Machines). He even offers new ones. Everything is properly listed and in the right order.

Mike Turner, the founding guitarist responsible for initiating the original project and who left the band after their 2002 American breakthrough Gravity, was brought back just to help spearhead the follow-up.

Molly, the fake humanoid Kurzweil lusted after in print and on record almost a quarter century ago, doesn’t appear on Spiritual Machines 2 but was brought back to life for The Wonderful Future Theatrical Experience, Our Lady Peace’s tour in support of the album, which also featured her creator in holographic form.

Five years after her first appearance in The Age Of Spiritual Machines, Molly was also revived in Kurzweil’s 2004 book, The Singularity Is Near. 15 years after their last fake conversation, not only does he talk to her from the year 2104, bizarrely he also converses with her 2004 version at the same time. In fact, the two Mollies talk to each other.

Although, there is an extensive conversation about the supposed future of virtual sex (which hasn’t really exploded yet, ahem), I’m happy to report Kurzweil no longer has a raging boner for Molly. It’s true what they say. We really do slow down when we’re older.

Molly, on the other hand…

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Friday, September 1, 2023
2:56 a.m.

2023 Academy Awards Wrap-Up

At the end of the 95th annual Academy Awards, there was a funny concluding sight gag. Host Jimmy Kimmel, having just wrapped the three and a half hour ceremony, calmly walked off-stage and as he passed by a woman with a donkey and someone in a bear costume, he made a slight change to a sign. It’s now been one year since an “incident” happened at the Oscars.

Judging by how dull the show was this year, that wasn’t a good thing. Maybe Will Smith and Chris Rock should’ve opened with a Falls Count Anywhere match. (The booking possibilities would be endless.) Although Kimmel, who was typically hit-and-miss as MC, did manage to squeeze some good zingers in, some of which were at the expense of Smith himself, perhaps it’s a sign of serious institutional decline when the funniest moment involves Hugh Grant comparing himself to a ball sack.

As for the awards themselves, as expected, it was a big night for Everything Everywhere All At Once. Released exactly a year ago this month, the sci-fi ensemble snagged seven golden gongs including the big one, Best Picture. With Harrison Ford booked to present that final award, I’m sure some were thinking, uh oh, are we gonna see an upset like Shakespeare In Love? But that did not materialize.

The two Daniels were collectively named Best Director and also won for collaborating on the film’s original screenplay. The movie also won for Best Film Editing.

Even more impressive were the three acting victories it claimed. In the best speech of the night, Ke Huy Quan was named Best Supporting Actor. Abandoning the profession to focus on work behind the camera, the ever boyish middle-aged man was grateful for having a second chance at following his dream which became a major theme of his promo. “Keep your dream alive,” he joyously exclaimed at one point. His excited reactions to seeing and reuniting with his Temple Of Doom co-star Ford were delightfully amusing, all but assuring his cheerful face will forever be an Internet meme.

Michelle Yeoh was named Best Actress and in a major surprise for me, Jamie Lee Curtis won for Best Supporting Actress. I liked how she thanked her first and most loyal fanbase, the horror community, for putting her over during her early years. Acknowledging her late Oscar-nominated parents in a tearful conclusion was the closest she came to admitting she’s a Nepo Baby.

Brendan Fraser was his usual blubbering mess as he accepted his Oscar for Best Actor. The Whale also won for its make-up and hairstyling. Not bad for a film that wasn’t a critical fave.

Speaking of unloved films, how in the hell did All Quiet On The Western Front win four Oscars? The German production snatched trophies for Best Cinematography, Best Production Design, Best Original Score and for Best International Film.

Those hoping for some viral moments this year, like The Slap or the streaker, probably tuned out long before the broadcast ended, unless they decided to endure that weird David Byrne performance. With ratings in serious decline during the COVID era, I’ll be surprised if the number is 15 million.

With the news media and politicians long over keeping us continually informed about the ongoing spread of a terrible death virus, there was Oscar winner Jessica Chastain, the only one in the audience wearing a goddamn mask. Pandemic denial will doom us all. At least Robert Blake wasn’t forgotten. But as Entertainment Weekly pointed out, why no love for Anne Heche or Tom Sizemore?

The complete list of winners:

BEST PICTURE – EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE

BEST DIRECTOR – Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert (EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE)

BEST ACTRESS – Michelle Yeoh (EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS – Jamie Lee Curtis (EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR – Ke Huy Quan (EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE)

BEST ACTOR – Brendan Fraser (THE WHALE)

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY – EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY – WOMEN TALKING

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE – GUILLERMO DEL TORO’S PINOCCHIO

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE – NAVALNY

BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE – ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT

BEST FILM EDITING – EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE

BEST COSTUME DESIGN – BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE – ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT

BEST ORIGINAL SONG – Naatu Naatu (RRR)

BEST SOUND – TOP GUN: MAVERICK

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS – AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN – ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT

BEST MAKE-UP & HAIRSTYLING – THE WHALE

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY – ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT

BEST ANIMATED SHORT – THE BOY, THE MOLE, THE FOX & THE HORSE

BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT – AN IRISH GOOD-BYE

BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT SUBJECT – THE ELEPHANT WHISPERERS

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Monday, March 13, 2023
3:50 a.m.

2023 Oscar Predictions

BEST PICTURE – EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE

Populism vs. the art house. Major moneymakers competing with smaller scale dramas. This year’s Best Picture category is packed with enough audience pleasers and critical faves to quiet down the usual grumbles about too many unseen nominees. In the annoying age of streaming, anyone with a decent service and time can now get caught up without even leaving their house.

As someone just recovering from a terrible flu bug, who is also currently caring for two parents with cancer, movie screenings have not been a priority in quite some time. Signing up with a streamer would not change that. (Strictly DVDs and Blu-rays for me, thank you very much.) And so I haven’t seen any of the ten films singled out for recognition.

That said, I think we can pretty much eliminate 80% of the contenders. The original Avatar was defeated by The Hurt Locker 13 years ago. Its follow-up, The Way Of Water, is not going to fare much better. The second Top Gun received far stronger reviews than its entertaining predecessor but it’s not going to win, either.

The European war remake All Quiet On The Western Front is this year’s Don’t Look Up, a film too divisive to generate substantial Academy support. Character pieces like Tar, Women Talking, Triangle Of Sadness and The Banshees Of Inisherin each have the Herculean task of trying to not cancel each other out while somehow individually rising to the top of the list in a very crowded category. Strong reviews won’t be enough to pull any of them ahead. In the case of Banshees, there’s been some very public tut-tutting about its supposed lack of authentic Irishness. The Weinstein smear campaign legacy never dies, does it?

I would also cross out Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis as a potential spoiler. Despite raves from reviewers and audiences, I just don’t see it happening.

When the nominations were first announced, only one title came to mine as a potential winner. And it wasn’t The Fabelmans, Steven Spielberg’s attempt to recreate the origins of his young burgeoning love for filmmaking in the midst of his parents’ disintegrating marriage, although there was a brief period where I wondered if maybe it would belatedly rise in stature.

Unfortunately, despite mostly positive notices, the film was a commercial flop which doesn’t help its prospects.

Since its release a full year ago, Everything Everywhere All At Once has been literally everywhere. Movie theatres, film festivals, streaming services, the Internet, DVD & Blu-ray, year-end Top 10 lists, award shows. Making three times as much money as The Fabelmans but a 20th of Avatar 2’s two billion take, it continues a remarkable recent trend of Asian-oriented films with widespread appeal that the Academy can’t say no to. When the envelope is opened, Everything Everywhere All At Once will be read off the card.

BEST DIRECTOR – Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert (EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE)

I haven’t been as consistent on this in the past. But it only takes one burn to wise up.

The year The King’s Speech beat out The Social Network for Best Director, I had forgotten Roger Ebert’s edict. If you win the Director’s Guild Of America award, nine times out of ten you go on to win the Oscar. David Fincher didn’t win the DGA so I fucked up.

You’ll note I haven’t really made that mistake since. This year’s shortlist is all-male with Spielberg being the only previous winner. It’s been almost 25 years since he last snagged the golden gong for Saving Private Ryan. His drought will continue Sunday night.

Forget about everybody else. Because the two Daniels won the DGA for helming Everything Everywhere All At Once, hearing any other name being called out would be a genuine shock. Don’t expect it to happen.

BEST ACTOR – Brendan Fraser (THE WHALE)

A mix of familiar and unknown faces make up this year’s race for Best Actor.

I don’t hear a lot of outright enthusiasm for Paul Mescal securing his first big win. The same goes for longtime character vet Bill Nighy and one of my personal faves, Colin Farrell, still a lovable rascal after all these years. They’re just happy to be invited to the party.

From the beginning, this has been strictly a two-actor competition. Austin Butler has his fans being the latest young man to portray The King Of Rock & Roll on the big screen. Even the late Lisa Marie Presley vouched for him.

But look at those tearful speeches Brendan Fraser’s been making for his lead performance in The Whale. They always bring the house down. On Sunday night expect more of the same for the Canadian star who’s come a long way from the egregious Encino Man.

BEST ACTRESS – Michelle Yeoh (EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE)

One of the more unusual stories of this year’s Oscars is the nomination of Andrea Riseborough for Best Actress. Her film, To Leslie, went mostly unnoticed by audiences. But her fellow actors, some of the biggest stars in the business, in fact, very publicly gave her a major, collective push resulting in her surprise admission to this exclusive short list.

The academy thought something was up but a very quick investigation, if you can even call it that, didn’t reveal anything that warranted her being rescinded from the category. So she stays. Barring some unforeseen circumstance, I just can’t foresee her winning, though, certainly not when you consider her competition.

The great Cate Blanchet who deserved her gongs for The Aviator and Blue Jasmine could play a spoiler here thanks to her latest acclaimed performance as the troubled real-life conductor who isn’t too pleased with the cinematic version of her story. Blanchet’s been compensated plenty in her career so I don’t think she joins the three-timers club, at least not yet.

Perennial bridesmaid Michelle Williams, now on her fifth acting nomination, probably thought she’d be a shoo-in for playing a thinly disguised version of Steven Spielberg’s mom in The Fabelmans. Honestly, she could still pull off an upset but she’s young and talented enough to give the academy more options to reward her in the future.

The gorgeous Cuban star Ana de Armas, so great as Ryan Gosling’s loyal, paid electronic plaything in Blade Runner 2049, is hoping to do what Williams couldn’t do eleven years ago. Win a golden gong for playing Marilyn Monroe. It would be a stunner if this happens but I highly doubt it.

That leaves Michelle Yeoh who first popped up on my radar in Supercop proving she was as credible an action star as her collaborator Jackie Chan. Those athletic chops paved the way for even better films like Tomorrow Never Dies and of course Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.

Seemingly lost in hopeless dreck like Last Christmas, she seemed rejuvenated by taking the lead in Everything Everywhere All At Once. Her Oscar win on Sunday will feel as much a career achievement as a historic milestone.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS – Angela Bassett (BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER)

It’s white privilege vs. women of colour in the race for Best Supporting Actress. History’s been overly generous to the former but that won’t mean a damn this year.

2023 marks the 45th Anniversary of the original Halloween, the brilliant indie horror behemoth that sadly birthed far too many inferior sequels including the recently misguided revisionist trilogy. It’s the movie that put Nepo Baby Jamie Lee Curtis on the map and afforded her so many other jobs far less connected performers would kill for if they could get away with it.

It’s the high she’s been chasing every since and while I’ve liked her in other films over the years (including a decent cameo in the Veronica Mars movie), nothing she’s done has ever topped it. Let’s be real, she wouldn’t even be here were it not for Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh.

All that said, despite being nominated in the most decorated film at this year’s Oscars, Curtis can forget about cutting a victorious promo. It ain’t happening. Fellow white lady Kerry Condon doesn’t have a prayer, either.

Curtis’s co-star Stephanie Hsu, who actually plays two roles in Everything Everywhere All At Once, will sadly see her vote split preventing a full fledged triumph. And when it comes to The Whale, who remembers Hong Chau over Brendan Fraser?

Almost 30 years after missing out for her excellent portrayal of Tina Turner in the unflinching What’s Love Got To Do With It, it’s finally Angela Bassett’s moment. After the death of Chadwick Boseman, the future of the Black Panther franchise seemed bleak. But rather than recast the role, the filmmakers came up with a sequel that still managed to mostly satisfy the insatiable Marvel audience. When Boseman was shockingly upset by Anthony Hopkins a couple years ago in a category that should not have been the last one presented, many were irate about the unexpected snub. Here’s a small way to make up for that.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR – Ke Huy Quan (EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE)

It’s young vs. old in the competition for Best Supporting Actor. You’ve got longtime character legends like 67-year-old Brendan Gleeson and 87-year-old Judd Hirsch each probably thinking it’s now or never to snag a golden gong after all this time. (Hirsch was last nominated in 1981 for Ordinary People.)

Then there are the much younger first-timers: Barry Keoghan who’s 30 and 40-year-old Atlanta regular Bryan Tyree Henry.

Unfortunately, not one of them will be called to the stage. That’s because the winner will be Ke Huy Quan. I had forgotten until I started looking it up that he was the annoying Short Round in The Temple Of Doom, the least appealing Indiana Jones adventure from the original series. Of course, he was also in The Goonies, which has aged so poorly I’m wondering why I ever liked it as a kid.

Frustrated with the lack of non-stereotypical roles available in his youth, Quan switched to fight choregraphy sometime in the mid-90s. But now in his early 50s, yet still looking impossibly boyish with his trademark glasses and short hair, he’s back working a more regular acting schedule.

Sunday night is looking like a pretty strong night for former cast members of Encino Man.

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE – MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE – A HOUSE MADE OF SPLINTERS

BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE – ARGENTINA, 1985

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY – EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY – TOP GUN: MAVERICK

BEST ORIGINAL SONG – Lift Me Up (BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER)

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE – THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN

BEST FILM EDITING – EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS – AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER

BEST COSTUME DESIGN – EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE

BEST MAKE-UP AND HAIRSTYLING – THE WHALE

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY – ELVIS

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN – ELVIS

BEST SOUND – TOP GUN: MAVERICK

BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT – LE PUPILLE

BEST ANIMATED SHORT – MY YEAR OF DICKS

BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT SUBJECT – STRANGER AT THE GATE

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Saturday, March 11, 2023
12:46 a.m.