I used to have a projector and a six foot by eight foot screen in my loft. I had a film club every Sunday night. It was heaven. I loved that thing.

Then I got married. Don’t get me wrong, she is the best woman in the world and I thank God every day that I found her. The only thing is, once we got together I couldn’t use my projector any more. You see, she likes to read magazines at home--and TV shows and movies are mainly background music. If I turn out the lights so that my projector worked, it spoiled her whole night.

.I knew I could buy a decent flat screen TV and we’d both be happy, but I just couldn’t. My six foot by eight foot was sort of like a shiny red Mustang sitting out in the driveway on blocks. It was something I couldn’t give up even though I rarely used it.

Eventually I realized how dumb this was. I gave in, sold the projector and screen and got a Samsung and my first Blu-ray player. For the first time I was introduced to this whole Blu-ray deal that I was introduced to this whole thing everybody’s been talking about. After a few dozen discs I’m still not sure what I think of Blu-ray. I don’t know if I want to see so much detail. Does that always make it better? Is “The Godfather” better when you can see all those people in the edges of the screen who were in shadow before? Jury’s still out for me.

But I have been knocked out by the splendor of streaming Netflix movies on my TV. I’m watching more movies than I ever have in my life. It’s an obsession. And I really like that there is a limitation to what’s available. It focuses the mind.

But then…this week Netflix introduced an iPhone application. This is NUTS. While my wife was sleeping Friday night, I watched the subpar Japanese gorefest “The Machine Girl” while lying beside her. And last night when I came to bed after a few “Mad Men” Blu-rays, she was in bed watching “Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein” on her iPhone.

And Netflix just paid Epix a zillion dollars so that 1243 new movies will start streaming on Netflix in the next 30 days. That’s 1243 additional films next month on my TV, my laptop, my phone, and if I buy one, my iPad. Everywhere there is wi-fi.

This is going to kill me.

I haven’t seen John Lurie in years. There’s nothing out of the ordinary about that, as I’m out of touch with so many people I knew in the 80s. But when I read Tad Friend’s article in the August 16 & 23 New Yorker (subscription required), I realized almost no one has seen him lately: he has been in hiding since 2008. I could get into why that is so, but it’s such a good story that I can’t do it justice here. I recommend that you read it.

As the many dozens of people who read this blog know, I write about people that I’ve had personal contacts with—however fleeting. And therefore I have a bone to pick with Friend’s description of Lurie from the time I knew him, which started during the release of “Stranger Than Paradise” in 1984 and continued for a few years after. Here’ s how Friend describes the John Lurie of those days:

From 1984 to 1989, everyone in downtown New York wanted to be John Lurie. Or sleep with him. Or punch him in the face. Lurie, the star of the Jim Jarmusch films “Stranger Than Paradise” and “Down by Law” and the saxophone-playing leader of the jazz-punk group the Lounge Lizards, was intensely charismatic… He was young and cocksure and he wouldn’t truckle. Between Fourteenth Street and Canal—the known universe, basically—he was the man.

I would revise this slightly. “From 1984 to 1989, everyone who was in downtown New York knows the previous paragraph to be utter bullshit.” I mean, Friend is a wonderful writer and all, but he is around ten years younger than Lurie, and not to mention Jarmusch, Ann Magnuson, Kathleen Bigelow, Richard Edson, Richard Hell, Beth B, Lydia Lunch, Amos Poe and just about everybody else from those days, including me. This just wasn’t a time when anybody would say “he was the man,” let alone think it. Maybe young Tad Friend was lurking around the Mudd Club, and maybe there are people now who say that John was the man, but I doubt it.  Not that he wasn’t talented or good looking or anything. It just wasn’t that kind of culture.

And thank god John wasn’t an arrogant schmuck like that. What was endearing about John in those days was his vulnerability, his insecurity about the way people perceived him. I remember a Voice feature story that was written about John during the “Stranger Than Paradise” days. The writer said John had a propensity to pull a fish face all the time. He was really pissed off about that. What nerve saying he pulled fish faces, like he was some kind of poseur! It was just what came naturally to him. It was weird for John to realize that fame, even the modest fame that was starting to get, can have its drawbacks. People start picking away at things that are second nature to you, even the way you move your face.

John was something of a kvetcher, wondering whether he got his due. In his opinion, he was the author of “Stranger Than Paradise,” not Jim. Here was his argument: “Stranger” started out as a series of improvisations, which Jim would watch and take notes. In his opinion all his lines were invented by him. I said, “First of all, what you’re saying is nuts. There is so much more to writing a script than a few lines. But for the sake of argument, let’s say that Jim copied down a lot of things you said. But what would you have been doing that day when you did those improvs? Jim made it all happen. He got the money, made a brilliant movie and now you and your band are getting publicity, and you’re getting paid for the soundtrack.” John bought my argument and that was it. So John would definitely truckle if a situation was truckle-worthy.  He didn’t get in arguments for no reason.  (By the way I had to look up truckle in the dictionary. I learn something new every day.)

The last time I saw John was years later when I ran into him at a huge party for a Miramax movie. We were talking about the old days, when uber-publicist Peggy Siegel hurtled into our conversation, in breathless pursuit of a  photo op.

“Are you famous?” she asked John.

I readily admit that this is the oddest and most obscure video I have ever done.  Even if you were perplexed by my Sonya Thomas video, this has the most WTF of all.  

How did this come to be?  Basically, my friend Lee Levine is friends with novelist Gary Shteyngart, whose new book “Super Sad True Love Story” has just been published and is already on the NY Times Bestseller List. 

Mr. Shteyngart appears to be inordinately proud of his dachshund.   Felix is prominently displayed in his promo video for his book (as is James Franco).  Very funny video, by the way.  Check it out:

Felix is also pictured in the feature on Shteyngart in the current issue of The Atlantic. 

On his Facebook page, Mr. S. has written: "felix is generally considered the smartest dog on earth. but in this picture i can sense the pensiveness in his eyes. global warming, ongoing violence in uzbekistan, the stalemate in congress. it all takes a toll on this sweet, compassionate dachshund."

Anyway there has been Facebook correspondence about who will play Felix in a purported movie.  Somehow this connected with my love of Zach Galifianakis, and this video was the result.

Somebody left a DVD on my doormat this morning.  I realized immediately it was something too important to keep to myself.  So here it is, the video everyone has been waiting to see: 

Angelina Jolie in as “Acid Burn” in “Hackers” 

I had just flown back Saturday night from a week swatting mosquitoes on a movie set in Georgia, so I wasn’t  over-excited when a guy from my PR company called to tell me I was going to another movie set on Monday.

“What’s it called?”

“’Hackers.’ It’s about a group of young computer hackers, trying to stop a virus or something.”

“Who’s in it?”

“Mostly kids you’ve never heard of… Oh yeah, the female lead is Jon Voight’s daughter.”

The next morning at crew call I was upstanding in front of Stuy High waiting for things to get started. And then I saw her. She didn’t look like any computer hacker I’d ever seen.

My question to Andrew Morton, who has just written an unauthorized biography, “Angelina,” or to anybody, is: when did Angelina Jolie become Angelina Jolie? When did all the elements that make everyone so fascinated with her—her otherworldly beauty, her acting talent, her oddness, her instincts for marketing herself—when exactly  did all those ingredients stir up a superstar?

To put it simply, when did  this 14 year old

become this?

She was 19 years old when she made “Hackers,” but was very experienced in the world of showbiz by then.

She’d made her film her film debut at 7 in Hal Ashby’s “Lookin’ to Get Out,” which her dad co-wrote and starred in.

From ages 11-13 she studied at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute, and appeared in several stage productions. But at 14, she decided she dropped out of acting classes, starting dressing goth and dreamed of being a funeral director.  Later on,while she was at Beverly Hills High she was teased for being thin, wearing glasses and having braces. She collected knives and cut herself.  But you would think she’d gain some self-esteem by 16 from the modeling work she did.  Of course, who knows?  Just because you realize you can turn men into quivering Smuckers, doesn’t necessarily make you happy or give you confidence.

A few years later, she did this video with the 47-year-old Meatloaf.  I don’t know what you think, but  I think it’s kind of creepy.

She’d starred in this straight-to-video-movie:

And played a supporting role in this one (despite the repackaged advertising)

“Hackers” was going to be her first theatrical release. She’d meet her husband, the pre-“Trainspotting” Jonny Lee Miller on it.

But none of this meant she could act.  Beauty and connections only get you so far.  Did she inherit acting genes from her Dad?   Because she was around the world of acting from childhood?  Her Dad wasn’t part of her life after she was pretty young.  Was it because she had put the time in acting classes?  What about her freaking weirdness? Funeral Director?   Knives?  Where did that come from?

Look at that picture above from “Hackers.”  She looks like she’s in a Godard movie, half Jean-Pierre Leaud in “Masculin-Feminin” and half Anne Wiazemsky in “La Chinoise.”   I think she had it by then, whatever it is. 19 years old and I will argue that she already booked her ticket on the Monica Vitti express.   Show me one 19-year-old actress today who can pull off that kind of attitude.

Somewhere in her late teens, I don’t know exactly when, she had put it all together from her beauty, innate talent, the hurt of her childhood, and who knows what else, and invented herself.  

By the time I saw her,  she had that whipsmart thing about her like she’d seen it all knew it all and wasn’t telling. It was just something she owned, it was all there, and it was unnerving.  Most people take a lot longer to find themself before they are able to find success.  She had the package and she knew it.  Let success find her.

A lot of the film involved the hackers rollerblading around the city, pursued by bad guys. We were able to block off traffic for many blocks for some of these scenes. One day I had “Entertainment Tonight” on the set and it didn’t make sense for Angelina to take off her blades for the interview. But when she tried to do the interview with them on, she couldn’t stay still. A good publicist has to be able to improvise. I put my foot out so she could lean her wheel on it and I tried to prop her up with the side of my arm, or anything I could figure out to do to keep her in place without actually touching her. Some of you might think I’d enjoy being that close to her, but I couldn’t wait for the interview to be over. Yuck!  It made me think of too many things I’d rather not think about .  What would my life have been like if I was  her?  Thinking about myself at 19 was surreal.  She was so young, and she already knew so many things I would never know, and would experienced so many things I would never experience. Even if I was young, this is not the kind of girl I would ever have approached. 

A few years later, I was waiting to meet a client in front of the Mayflower Hotel. Shortly after I got there, Angelina came out and lingered by the door.  Maybe she was being picked up to go to the set of “Gia,” which was filming at the time.  It was just the two of us, standing there for ten minutes.  But she wasn’t all made up, in costume, an actor on the set--she was just an attractive young woman, the kind you see all the time in New York.  She was anonymous as a  prima ballerina strolling down Amsterdam Avenue in sweats, knowing she had that power within her.   I was real proud of myself, thinking, “she’s going to be  a huge movie star, but right now nobody’s paying any attention to her.”   And it was true, nobody knew who the hell she was.

But she did.  Hell yeah, I’m sure she did.

i can’t get a carton of milk in my Brooklyn neighborhood (aka Dumbo) without a hike, but there are 10 places where I can get ice cream within a few blocks. (I am not including anything that can be bought in a deli or bodega as that wouldn’t be a big deal.)

1

Probably the most famous place is the Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory, situated in a landmark former fireboat house on the pier at the corner of Old Fulton and Water Street.  Unlike the over-rated pizza up the street at Grimaldi’s, this is something worth waiting in line for.  If you have to stand in line, this is  a very scenic and historic place to be, as the Brooklyn Bridge hovers above you, the glories of Manhattan extend before you, and the flashes from Asian wedding photo shoots make every day and night sparkle.  It’s a great spot for people-watching.

2

And if you really enjoy people-watching, a few feet away is another stand  serving the same ice cream on the pier.  You can stand on your line and enjoy the sight of dozens of patrons as they order and finish their cones, before your line starts to move.

Personally I have never understood why people stand in that line when the fresh cones are beckoning so closely in front of them.  Maybe they think that ice cream tastes better if you wait?   

Just kidding. I know they are tourist losers.

3

Jacques Torres Ice Cream  (62 Water Street)  This is without question the best ice cream in the neighborhood, as it is part of the world-famous Jacques Torres gourmet chocolate empire, and next door to his factory and store. This is truly ice cream as a work of art. There is only one problem: they are almost never open, and the times when they are open are a carefully guarded secret. Pick any time when you think it would be a good idea to have an ice cream shop open. Say 7 pm on a Saturday night, or 12:30 on a nice Sunday afternoon. They’ll probably be closed. Even though the sign says they’re supposed to be open, they’ll be closed.  But if you happen to be walking down Water Street for some other reason, stop, because this is something you won’t want to miss.

4

At the southwest corner of new Brooklyn Bridge Park, to the left of the pier, you will often see a  lonely guy sitting next to his Blue Marble ice cream cart reading a book.  By the time anybody gets to him, they have probably already eaten their fill of ice cream elsewhere (although they do bang-up business when there is a special event in the park). That said, this is some of the best ice cream you can get in the neighborhood, and like most of the ice cream listed on on this page, it is MADE IN BROOKLYN, USA!

5&6

There is a war going on between two soft ice cream trucks on Old Fulton Street. Sometimes Mr. Softee has the spot and sometimes the fake Mr. Softee has the spot. If the fake Mr. Softee is there and you have a yen for this kind of thing, it’s worth heading a few blocks north until you find the real Mr. Softee, because the fake Mr. Softee blows.

7

Kosher ice cream at The Landing at Fulton Ferry, Old Fulton and Everitt.  When I  pass this sign every day, I always imagine a Rabbi with an apron scooping away , but this is just pre-packaged ice cream in a freezer, sold in a nearby courtyard, where hot dogs are offered for sale. For some reason, Brooklyn Bridge Park is very popular with Chasidim, who come in by the busload, so maybe that’s the reason for these products are being so prominently advertised in this way.

8&9

GELATO! There is excellent gelato in front of the new Italian restaurant /wine bar  at 7 Old Fulton Street and if you go a few blocks down Front Street to Rice (at 81 Washington) you can buy take-out gelato just like on Mott Street!

10

Maybe this is pushing it, but there is an unnamed tourist store across from our apartment called and they have a freezer full of stuff. It is no worse than what’s on display at the Kosher Ice cream store and they have gelato!

So tell me… anybody else have so many dfferent kinds of ice cream available within a few blocks of their house?  Comments???

Years ago, I wanted to make a documentary on the 105 pound competitive eater Sonya Thomas, aka “The Black Widow.” Here was a tiny woman who kept beating all these huge men in contest after contest.

Of course, the idea of me actually doing a movie about Sonya was preposterous. Who would ever give me the money to do it? And even if somebody did, I didn’t really want to spend a year or two of my life traipsing around to the world’s eating contests. But I felt there was a really good feature there if somebody else would do it.

But, believe it or not, I just made a short film about Sonya. Here it is:

Making films with no plans for festival play has liberated me. YouTube Cinema. The first one was my documentary on animator/artist Jeff Scher. I made that in a little over a week .

Early on in his career, producer Ted Hope used to say that the budget was the aesthetic. For me, my only aesthetic question is: are my subject and my treatment of it interesting enough for a ten minute video? So I don’t agonize over edits, picture quality, music, sound mix, etc. I have learned the hard way that you can spend months fiddling around with little details on films that ultimately suck.

Better, I think, to make more movies, and concentrate on who or what you choose to make films about and how you choose to do it, rather than striving for the kind of pristine polish required for festival play. Pursuing this has freed me.

Jean-Luc Godard once said that the Cinema is the truth 24 times a second. For me the cinema is now 640 x 480 and ten minutes or less. Please resist the button that makes the image bigger. See it in glorious Lo-Def! You don’t need to wait for the Blu-ray to come out.

Working quickly and cheaply means that I can make any kind of movie I want to. In this case, it is not intended as a bio of Sonya, although it has elements of that. I never tried to interview her although there is contact info on her website. I knew from the start it wouldn’t be about her so much as it would be about my thoughts about her and her world. A movie about the way I saw her world from outside, not the way she saw it from inside.

It began when I discovered all sorts of terrific web video on Sonya in every format you can imagine: on phones, home video cameras, local TV stations, shot off TV screens, etc. So I thought, “okay, I’ll just sling a few of these wonderful things together and I’ll have another one-week movie.” But as I got into it, I broke my rules and it became a massive three-week undertaking. In the future I’ll try not to go over my time allotment on my zero-budget movies.

I’d like to thank Melissa for not blinking when she  encountered me at  one a.m. singing “Black Widow, Sonya’s the Black Widow” into a microphone.

Postscript:  I sent the link to Sonya via her website and she loved it!  It turns out that today is her birthday and she saw it as a nice gift. 

I’m bewildered by all the bad press the iPhone 4 has been getting lately. Holding the phone in a certain way means that you get less reception? Less bars? It means absolutely nothing to me and I doubt that many iPhone owners give a damn either. Apple is offering a full refund to iPhone 4 owners who aren’t satisfied--let’s see how many people take them up on that offer.

I have never relied on my iPhone as a phone. Usually I can’t make or receive calls on it and if I have been lucky enough to get a connection, it cuts out right away. Once my wife and I were shopping in different parts of a store and she wanted to let me know she was ready to leave. So she called me. She would have had better luck tossing a paper airplane. When she finally found me and we left the store, she was pretty pissed off, but not as much as she was when my iPhone booped and told me I had received some calls. Using the iPhone’s amazing visual voice mail feature, I could listen to her calls in any order I wanted: for example, I could start with the angriest one first.

The iPhone does have email and it works serviceably. I’m sure that anybody who never owned a Blackberry would be very happy with it. But if you have had a Blackberry, the iPhone is a Ford and the Blackberry is a Lamborghini. My trained Blackberry thumbs could fly like the wind. I could type on my old Blackberry at a speed slightly slower than thought. Using my hunting and pecking skills on my iPhone, I am back to second grade, written communication-wise.

But I looooooove my iPhone. Next to my musical instruments computer and TV set, it is the object I get the most use out of and enjoy the most. To my mind it’s one of the most amazing devices ever invented. It tells me the weather, it helps me from getting lost, gives me news, information about movies, reminds me when I have appointments, records interviews, plays me music through Pandora when I’m exercising, takes excellent photos and videos, among of course, tens of thousands of other things. Of course I could probably get everything I need on an Android, but that would mean that people could reach me on my cell and I’d never get any peace.

With my iPhone I can go shopping any time I want and not spend a penny. There are tons of games and apps of all sorts that are free. And as soon as I “buy” something, Apple sends me a receipt so I will remember about the nothing I just spent. This makes me feel really good—like I got away with something.  I keep all of these receipts in a special folder so I can budget for more free purchases in the future.

My iPhone is so pretty that it makes me happy just to look at it, something I do often. I am so moony over it that my wife gets jealous sometimes, so I buy another fart application so she will recognize that there is something for her in it too. My iPhone reminds me of the vintage Rickenbacker bass guitar I once owned. I never played it much, as I have never liked the raspy way a Rick bass sounds. But I got a lot of pleasure just opening the case. Oh God, it was a great looking guitar! And after I finally sold it, I got much more than I paid for it. Likewise, I sold my iPhone 3G on eBay last week and got $190 for the phone I paid $199 two years ago for. Not as good a deal as the Rick, but still pretty sweet.

Anyway, as I said before, all this talk about bars disappearing when you hold the phone a certain way flummoxes me. Bars? I don’t need no stinkin’ bars!  I swear to God I never looked at the damned bars until everybody started making such a to-do about them.

In some places I have read that the iPhone 4 is better phone than my old 3G, as long as you hold it properly. A case too. People should stop whining and get a damned case!  One tech blogger said that he had used his for three hours, something he had never done since the first one went on sale. And I admit that I got a call from somebody at a doctor’s office when I was at my podiatrist this week. I thought it was one of the alter kockers who worked there. They had been extremely confused about my appointment, so I thought they might have been calling me from the other room to confirm. But it turned out it was a receptionist from a gynecologist’s office. I was able to stay on the line long enough to tell her I was a man. She wanted to know if that meant I wanted to cancel, but eventually we sorted it out. Mission accomplished! So maybe I shouldn’t be so negative about my iPhone. Maybe I will start getting lots of calls. But at this point they will be limited to wrong numbers, until I build up my confidence.

Still I am happy about this whole “losing bars” deal. Because of the phone’s antenna issues, Steve Jobs is going to send me a “Bumper,” a piece of colored plastic that costs him a nickel and he was selling for $30. More free stuff! Not only that, I get to choose the color.

After I get my Bumper, I hope Steve sends me a nice receipt.

I’ve been reading a lot of snarky blog posts and articles lately about my favorite film critic. I’ve heard these comments before: he’s just a knee-jerk contrarian who gets off on having the opposite opinion as everyone else; he can’t possibly believe what he writes; he’s just looking for attention, etc. One writer went to the trouble of going through nearly every paragraph in one of his reviews, searching for some nitpicky way to trick him up. Talk about snarky.

What threatens these haters is the possibility that he just might be right. If there’s anything we have learned from history, it’s that the conventional wisdom of today isn’t necessarily the way things will be perceived in the future. Who’s to say? Maybe recent buzzeroonie movies of the moment like “Toy Story 3,” “The Kids Are All Right,” and “Inception” will end up in the trash can of cinematic history, whereas “Marmaduke” will fascinate film scholars for eons to come. I’d be willing to wager that a lot of the people who are making these snap judgments haven’t even seen “Marmaduke.”

Why can’t an American critic write a great review without getting beat up?

His review of “Marmaduke” came out on the 4th of June, 2010, a day that I will never forget. The outraged response from the serious film academy—including nearly every member of “Rotten Tomatoes” who hadn’t had computer privileges taken away by their moms—was so virulently negative that it reminded me of an event that had happened six days and 97 years prior: the premiere of Stravinsky’s “Le sacre du printemps” at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées  on May 29th, 1913.

His first paragraph stirred my soul with its erudition, rigor and authority:

Unlike over-hyped time-wasting piffle like “L’avventura,” “Tokyo Story,” “Yi Yi,” “The Godfather,” “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu,” “The Hurt Locker,” “The Son,” “The Bicycle Thief,” “Grand Illusion,” “Citizen Kane” “Lawrence of Arabia,” “Psycho,” “Raging Bull,” “Metropolis,” “Shoah,” “2001,” “The Searchers,” “Children of Paradise,” “Pather Panchali,” “The Seven Samurai,” “The Thin Blue Line,” “The Passion of Joan of Arc,” “The Rules of the Game,” “Breathless,” “Pulp Fiction,” “Caché,” “Talk to Her,” “Spirited Away,” “There Will be Blood,” “In the Mood for Love,” “Mulholland Drive,” “Taste of Cherry,” “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” “No Country for Old Men,” “Blade Runner,” and “Stranger Than Paradise,” “Marmaduke” is a real film, a film for the ages. Tom Dey has reinvented the lovable Great Dane comedy. I must admit I didn’t think that Dey could ever surpass his work on the unjustly maligned “Failure to Launch,” but he has done it! (Matthew McConaughey gave the performance of his life in that film.)

I would like to reprint more and even offer a link, but his review has been taken down, and I only memorized the first paragraph.

Go ahead and scoff. I bet a lot of you haven’t even seen “Marmaduke.”

I enjoyed Tad Friend’s piece in the July 5^th issue of The New Yorker, “First Banana,” about Steve Carell and the new improvisatory process of film and TV comedy. In a nutshell, it’s about how contemporary movie comedies—made by filmmakers like Judd Apatow, Adam McKay, Nicholas Stoller, and Jay Roach, and featuring actors like Carell, Will Ferrell, Jonah Hill, Jason Siegel, Seth Rogen, and Paul Rudd—often find their biggest laughs through the adlibbing of the actors rather than through their scripted punchlines. So much so that it’s inconceivable that these kinds of movies could exist in their present forms if they were made any other way. In essence, the method of their creation equals the style of the comedy.

He contrasts this new approach to comedy with the “written” style, as exemplified by more classical writer/directors like Billy Wilder (who he reports as bewildered by an act of improvisation on his set) and Woody Allen (who actually encourages every actor to improvise freely, although few do). But I admit I was a little pissed off when he used this example to illustrate the stodgy old ways:

Traditional comedies have a sleekness that calls to mind the typewriter. Consider the moment in the 1980 film “Airplane!” when two passengers chat before takeoff: “Nervous?” “Yes.” “First Time?” “No, I’ve been nervous a lot of times.”

For one thing, I thought it was weird that he would use the movie that was such a dramatic break from the past in its day, and ultimately led to “Saturday Night Live” and ultimately the movies that Friend is describing. And the other thing, is as I mentioned last week, I worked on “The Naked Gun” and have a real soft spot for the guys who made that film as well as “Airplane!” and “Top Secret!”

But yeah, they were guilty of writing funny stuff, and staging it exactly as they wrote it. On the other hand, unlike Billy Wilder or Woody Allen, they were a team of three, brothers David and Jerry Zucker and Jim Abrahams. In fact there were four of them if you counted producer Robert K. Weiss, who was an equal player in the posse that constantly engaged in a Talmudesque debates about what was funny and what was not. Like the comedies described by Friend, it was very much a collaborative approach to making movies.

I remember one day we were shooting a scene where the film’s clueless policeman, Sergeant Frank Drebin, Detective Lieutenant Police Squad (played by Leslie Nielson), stuck on the high ledge of a building, slips and grabs onto the penis of an ornamental statue to break his fall. Numerous variations of the stunt were tried, as the team wrangled over the best way to execute the gag. The stuntman was tiring. Finally David shouted, “I’m the director, I’m the director! Two hands isn’t funny! One hand is funny!”

They were very influenced by Mad Magazine and in particular the little pictures that would be hidden in the magazine, funny stuff you might not notice the first time around. They wanted people to find things on second viewing that they might miss the first time. For example, Drebin’s cop car said “To Warm and Serve.” On each episode of “Police Squad!,” the cult TV series that “The Naked Gun” was adapted from, Drebin would stop his car and knock over a bunch of garbage cans. The number of garbage cans he hit corresponded to the episode number. Needless to say, he was hitting a lot of garbage cans by the time the movie came along.

There were rules. Driving home every day from work I would pass this sign that said “dip,” and it gave me a dumb idea for a joke. I asked Abrahams if he thought it would be funny if Drebin stopped at the sign, and dunked a corn chip in a jar of salsa conveniently waiting there. “We have found that there can only be a limited amount of puns in our movies,” he intoned earnestly. He wasn’t making any value judgment about my idea; it was just over the limit. On the other hand, I remember driving to a location for a week or so and passing a pair of odd-looking industrial silos. They looked like a giant brassiere. And sure enough, when I saw the movie, they turned up on-screen, underneath Drebin’s voice-over, “Everything I saw reminded me of you.”

While I don’t remember much improvisation on the set, their method was to shoot a lot more material than they planned to use. They’d see how funny it turned out to be at dailies. The final test was to screen the movie. If people didn’t laugh at a joke, I don’t think it made it in.

I have many warm memories of working on that movie: rich conversations with Ricardo Montalban, George Kennedy about their careers; many laughs with the late Nancy Marchand (so brilliant years later as Livia Soprano); hanging out with Reggie Jackson on the field of Dodger Stadium; going to Priscilla Presley’s house for a photo shoot. Leslie Nielsen had a piece of rubber that he kept in his pocket to make fart noises. He said that it changed his life; it made everybody think about him in a different way. He sure had that right. When my family came to visit the set, I tried to nudge him into action. “That Mexican food we had for lunch, Leslie… I don’t know…”

But O.J. Simpson? There wasn’t much depth to him, as far as I could tell. Generally he would say stuff like, “I hope shooting doesn’t go on too long tonight. I have a golf tournament I want to get to in Palm Springs.” Believe it or not, when he exploded onto the front pages of the media, I got calls from many major media outlets. Journalists were scouring for anybody who had any contact him and I suppose they thought, he’s a publicist. I told them all, “I spent a lot of time with the guy, but there is no one in the world who knows less about O.J. Simpson than me. He never said a single thing that was interesting.”