English actor Roger Moore, best known for playing secret agent 007 in seven James Bond movies in the 1970s and 1980s, has passed away at age 89. A Genuine Maverick Before he took over the role of James Bond, and even before The Saint, Moore played the iconic TV role of Maverick on Maverick…sort of. […]
Saturday Night Live is drawing some of its biggest ratings of its 40-year-plus history, thanks in part to stars like Kate McKinnon, and Alec Baldwin’s impression of President Donald Trump. But SNL isn’t just an American phenomenon—the show’s format has been exported to other countries. In 2014, SNL came to French-speaking Canada in the form […]
Some amusing facts about the world’s angriest cartoon duck. First Appearance Donald’s first appearance was in the 1934 Disney short “The Wise Little Hens.” A take on the old children’s story “The Little Red Hen,” Donald and his friend, the now-forgotten Peter Pig, get too lazy while working on a farm and wind up with […]
Perhaps you know James Lipton as the pretentious, ultra-serious host of Inside the Actors Studio. (Or Will Ferrell’s impression of him on Saturday Night Live.) The bearded dean of the acting craft has lived a very colorful life, and here are some other ways he contributed to pop culture. Radio Actor Lipton is 90 years […]
It’s common knowledge that Japan has some of the weirdest game shows in the world…but these are all from the good ol’ U.S. of A. Repo Games (2011) It’s the spontaneous, surprise game show fun of Cash Cab…meets the exploitation of those affected by economic hardship. Repo Games was hosted by two repossession agents—or “repo […]
Product placement is when a character in a movie or on a TV show conspicuously picks up a name-brand product, or walks past a giant poster bearing the name of a company. It’s a form of advertising, and corporations pay big bucks to movie productions to have their wares prominently featured. Usually just a character […]
For nearly 40 years, Sesame Street has helped kids learn about the world around them, and themselves. To that end, the series has routinely introduced Muppet characters that reflected the big, diverse world out there. Aristotle Sporadically throughout the 1980s, Sesame Street’s resident worrywart Telly hung out with a friend named Aristotle. He was blind, […]
Not just anybody can play the Man of Steel. In fact, only a handful of actors have done it. But lots more came close, like these folks. Bruce Jenner The biggest new star of 1976 wasn’t an actor, but an athlete. Before identifying as Caitlyn Jenner, Bruce Jenner won the decathlon at the 1976 Summer […]
Filmmakers are good at making films. Sometimes they aren’t so good at coming up with names for those films, so somebody in marketing has to come up with a better one. Here are some early, working titles of major movies. Annie Hall: Woody Allen tried several different titles, including A Rollercoaster Named Desire, It Had […]
Here at the BRI we love game shows and classic TV, so we were saddened to hear about the death of game show creator, producer, and host Chuck Barris. Here’s a look at some of the lesser-known creations of the unique personality behind The Gong Show, The Newlywed Game, and The Dating Game. The $1.98 […]
Our latest installment of goofs from some of Hollywood’s most popular movies. The Big Lebowski (1998) Scene: In the opening scene, a bowler attempts to convert a 7-10 split. Blooper: A close-up shows the split being picked up with a different-colored bowling ball. Cast Away (2000) Scene: Chuck Noland (Tom Hanks) cuts his hand while […]
In 2016, Fox debuted a show called Pitch, a drama about the first female Major League Baseball player. It’s really not so far-fetched. Toni Stone Toni Stone landed a spot on the St. Paul Giants, a semiprofessional team, in 1936. Not only was she an African-American woman who landed a spot on a men’s team […]
On this day in 1933, the first ever American daytime serial, Marie, the Little French Princess, debuted on CBS Radio. “Soap operas,” as they came to be known on both radio, and eventually television, because sponsors were primarily cleaning products, have been a part of the cultural landscape ever since. Like “sands through the hourglass” […]
Some TV show titles make perfect sense—Friends is about some friends, and The Sopranos is about a family called the Sopranos, for example. Other titles are a bit harder to crack—like these. Dragnet Procedurals are a big part of TV today—formulaic crime shows in which police detectives dutifully go through all the steps they’re supposed […]
These pages were contributed by Larry Kelp, whose picture has been on the back cover since the first Bathroom Reader. He’s a music writer in the San Francisco Bay Area and was Uncle Jon’s neighbor. I Want My MTV! In 1981 Robert Pittman, a 27-year-old vice president in charge of new programming at Warner-Amex, came […]
Other than how the Oscar for Best Picture was handed out, we mean. Best Director winner Damien Chazelle is the youngest ever recipient of the award. The 32-year-old won for La La Land, which is only his third feature film. He beats the previous record holder, Norman Taurog, who won for directing Skippy way back […]
Each year, the Academy Awards recognize the finest work in movies. Sometimes the Academy’s voters make some really odd choices.
Winning an Academy Award is pretty special. Even more special is doing it in such a way that it’s the only time it’s ever happened. Only movie to win both an Oscar and a Razzie… The Oscars go to the year’s best achievements in movies. The Razzies, or “Golden Raspberry Awards,” are handed out to […]
