From the obituary for Marshall Brickman, "Marshall Brickman, Woody Allen’s Co-Writer on Hit Films, Dies at 85/The duo won an Oscar for 'Annie Hall.' Mr. Brickman went on to write Broadway shows, including 'Jersey Boys,' and make movies of his own" (NYT).
Also, he was a UW alum: "Marshall... attended the University of Wisconsin, a school he chose casually because a friend was going there and seemed to like it."
And: "In 1964, Mr. Brickman played banjo as a member of the New Journeymen, a trio with John Phillips and Michelle Phillips. When Mr. Brickman left the group, the couple took on two new partners and created the Mamas & the Papas. That may have seemed like bad timing, but a few years later he and a friend were invited to Sharon Tate’s house in Beverly Hills and decided at the last minute to go to Malibu instead. It was the night of the Manson family murders."
In the late 1960s, Brickman was a writer on "The Tonight Show," and he created Carnac the Magnificent!
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21 comments:
Sometimes 100% of success is not showing up.
Jesus Christ, what a life! And I mean that in the best possible way. I love reading about people who have had so much success in so many ways, and touched on- or almost touched on- so many important events and people. We all have hits and near misses, but most of us cannot claim to have just missed both the Mamas and the Papas and Charles Manson. All that aside Carnac the Magnificent was one of my favorite things from those years. Sometimes laugh out loud funny. And, of course Annie Hall, Jersey Boys...jeez.
Apart from the costume, Carnac the Magnificent was a version of Steve Allen's The Question Man.
LOL- carnac:
Bungee jumping and Geraldo.
A: Name two things that end with a jerk on your leg.*
Marshall Brickman was practically the real-life Forrest Gump.
The man who said “Every morning a truck loaded with fresh compromises pulls up.” Rest in Peace.
I will live and die without ever having seen a Woody Allen movie. I'm not sure they were even screened in the rural Arizona of my youth.
One of the things that surprised me about the entertainment industry was that I learned that "talent" was quite real, and made huge differences in the quality of the product. Brickman was very talented.
My favorite Carnac: Answer: Thorny. Question: Dethcribe a thailor at thea. This was 1972 when the networks had Standards & Practices departments. Hey-oh!
According to IMDB he co-wrote annie hall, sleeper, manhattan, and manhattan murder mystery. All 4 co-star Diane Keaton. His credits without woody aren't impressive.
"Annie Hall" and "Manhattan" are among my top 50 favorite movies.
Of the movies he directed, I have only seen "Manhattan Project" which isn't a terrible movie though it has a kind of contrived ending- the first half of the movie is worth it, though.
Hassayamper,
There's plenty in Allen's output worth passing up, but please don't miss Crimes and Misdemeanors
I had something to say, but then I found out that Marshall Brickman and his contemporary Marshall Efron weren't the same person. Efron was less accomplished, but he was in front of the cameras sometimes, rather than behind them.
Hannah and Her Sisters is a beautiful film. I love it to this day.
My comment from my movie book...
66 Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) It’s a movie about three sisters. And Michael Caine goes from one sister to the other sister and back to the first sister. And Woody Allen goes from one sister to another sister. The men in this movie really love those sisters. That’s what family is in this movie, the sisters. And the men in this movie are on the outside, isolated from intimacy and love. Woody Allen is a doubter, an infidel, the master of infidelity, trying to get in, trying to believe. He jumps from faith to faith like he jumps from sister to sister. He’s a bad man but he wants a family, he wants to believe. And then at the end of the film there’s a miracle. What a beautiful, beautiful film.
For light entertainment, I enjoyed Midnight in Paris and Magic in the Moonlight. Not as rewatch able as Annie Hall, but clever.
His best.
There's plenty in Allen's output worth passing up, but please don't miss Crimes and Misdemeanors
Thank you, perhaps I will suggest it to my wife when she wants to see something new, and I may listen to it as background noise. I will not make the effort to sit down and watch it though.
I mentioned here last week that I know nothing at all about music and don't really give a shit about it. The same is actually true of pretty much all entertainment, honestly. Entertainment and fiction and I have the same relationship that Althouse has with travel and men's shorts.
The last time I went to a movie theater was in 2015 or 2016 and I don't recall what I saw. I haven't watched a movie start-to-finish at home for three or four years. There is a very long list of critically acclaimed and popular TV shows of which I've never seen a single episode, from MASH to Seinfeld to Friends to Sopranos to Lost to Breaking Bad. I haven't read a book of fiction for a couple of years either.
If I have time to kill, I much prefer to read history or biography, go for a hike and forage for mushrooms or berries, listen to a political or historical podcast, or go to my microscopy desk and examine the teeming life in a drop of pond water. Or speaking of pond water, I'll come here and spill bile about the worthless pond scum who presume to rule us.
Answer: El Passo.
What a Mexican Quarterback does, when he can't do the El Kicko or the El Runno.
The appearance of Marshall McLuhan in Annie Hall was one of the great moments in cinema.
Crimes and Misdemeanors is the only Woody Allen film that achieves Bergman impact. In "Persona" Bergman didn't have to murder anyone though. He achieved the same effect with a cut foot.
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