"Eddie Cackler" is a parody of Eddie Cantor. The "boy wanted" sign and the five hatching eggs were references to all five of his children being girls, which was a running joke on his radio show. Then along comes a chicken resembling Bing Crosby, whose (then) four children were all boys. (Crosby later had a daughter and two more sons from his second marriage, long after this cartoon was made.)
The staff of The ACME Eagle Hand Soap Radio Hour are getting ready for yours truly's birthday weekend. So we thought it would be great to catch an episode of Mythical Kitchen's Last Meal. Let's watch the episode featuring Hugh Jackman
If you haven't seen The Sheep Detective, we absolutely recommend it.
We’ve selected another entry from the excellent reference book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, edited by Steven Jay Schneider. Today’s film is the 1991 drama My Own Private Idaho directed by Gus Van Sant and starring River Phoenix, Keanu Reeves, James Russo, William Richert, Rodney Harvey, Michael Parker, Flea, Chiara Caselli, and Udo Kier The film is considered a landmark film in new queer cinema, an early 1990s movement in queer-themed independent filmmaking.
This film was the result of three projects coming together. The first was a modern adaptation of Henry IV called Howling At The Moon, about street kids in Portland, written entirely in Shakespearean verse. The second was In A Blue Funk, about two Spanish cousins living on the streets of Las Vegas, who decide to go to Spain after seeing their last name on a Spanish map, and find out about themselves and their family. The third, titled My Own Private Idaho, and was about a hustler who gets picked up by a German auto parts salesman and "kept" at his house. Gus Van Sant had trouble finishing the scripts, so he merged them together.
While writing, Gus Van Sant was inspired by Stanley Kubrick. "I'd heard stories about Kubrick, how he'd always re-write his scripts into a different format. These were reading scripts, of course, not shooting scripts. But he'd write one version as a play, and another with, like, all the directions in a column down the middle of the page and the dialogue off to the sides. It made the project fun to work on, but confused the hell out of the studios. If it's not in twelve point courier font, they can't imagine it'll ever be a movie. I made sure to fix that by the final shooting draft, and everything was okay."
Van Sant was very pleased that his movie was being produced, and would be distributed by New Line Cinema, a major studio. He wanted the movie to have a wide release and "play in shopping malls." Just after production, New Line created Fine Line Features, its special "art house" label. This resulted in the movie having a very limited number of prints struck, and only playing in select art house theaters. Van Sant says he might as well have made the movie independently.
Please find a very comfortable chair, dim the lights, and join us here at The ACME Eagle Hand Soap Radio Hour as we watch this important movie: My Own Private Idaho.
Gus Van Sant gave copies of John Rechy's novel City Of Night to River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves to help get them into the mindset of street hustlers. Keanu found the book very useful, and went on to read five other Rechy novels. River reportedly stopped reading after the first paragraph. "He had his own background to draw on," Van Sant later said. "I think River had an entire youth spent traveling with his family, no connections to society, no roots, no permanence. He crafted that character himself."
Demand Euphoria!
