Tag: tribute

SubscribeStar Saturday: Celebration of Life for Bob Gunn – Remarks

The Portly Politico2 Comments

Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.  For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

Earlier this year one of my dear colleagues, Bob Gunn, passed away after suffering from a stroke.  He had worked at my school since its founding in the mid-1990s, and was an integral part to its operation, its culture, and its legacy.

Tonight (Saturday, 22 June 2024), my school is hosting a celebration of life service in honor of Bob, his legacy, and his memory.  I’ve been asked to say a few words, which I have included in this post.

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Monday Morning Movie Review: Rest in Peace, Roger Corman (1926-2024)

The Portly Politico17 Comments

Legendary “B” movie director and producer Roger Corman passed away last Thursday, 9 May 2024, at the age of 98.  His career spanned an uncountable number of films (estimates vary wildly; even Corman didn’t know how many he’d made), and he launched hundreds of careers.

Readers most likely know Corman from The Little Shop of Horrors (1960), which spawned a Broadway musical and a popular film adaptation of the musical in 1986.  His influence reached even broader than that one bit of comedy horror genius, and Corman worked with some of the greatest actors in Hollywood.

Last month I reviewed A Bucket of Blood (1959), a kind of proto-Little Shop featuring a would-be Beatnik stumbling into a career as a sculptor with a rather lethal methodology.  The trope of the homely nerd staggering blindly (and often painfully) into stardom and/or super powers would be repeated time and again, including in Troma Entertainment’s The Toxic Avenger (1984)  Corman was not involved with that film, but his influence is evident nonetheless.

Corman was one of the greats.  Hey may have had a reputation as a purveyor of trash, but he never lost money on a film (with the exception of a personal art film, which ultimately did make money about twenty years after its release!).  He used every method at his disposal to cut down on budgets, even cutting films to 78 minutes so they could be mailed to theaters in four film canisters instead of five.

Rest in Peace, Roger Corman.

Paradise By the Dashboard Light: Rest in Peace, Meat Loaf

The Portly Politico27 Comments

On 20 January 2022 Heaven added a powerful new voice to the Heavenly Choir:  Marvin Lee Aday, better known by his beefy stage name, Meat Loaf.  Meat Loaf passed at the age of 74 surrounded by family.

Celebrity deaths don’t usually hit me all that hard, but Meat Loaf left his mark on me.  My older brother played “Paradise By the Dashboard Light” for me when I was in high school—and I initially didn’t like it!  But a friend reintroduced me to Meat in college, and by then I’d come to appreciate the cheeky melodrama of Jim Steinman’s songwriting combined with Meat’s gospel-drenched vocals.

As one of the early members among the ranks of Obese-Americans—now a protected class, I think—and a young man with ambitions to bring panache and humor back to rock ‘n’ roll (which in the early 2000s was moving from angsty grunge to angsty new rock), Meat Loaf left a big—no pun intended—imprint on my musical imagination.  His powerful, sweaty vocals and Broadway-meets-rock-meets-gospel style really spoke to me:  a perspiring, fumbling mass of dough and latent musical ability.  I don’t go in for all that “representation” stuff, but if a dude like Meat Loaf could make it, so could I.  Fat White Guy Solidarity!

The songwriting of his frequent collaborator (and legal rival), composer Jim Steinman, also captured my fervent imagination.  The ironic lyrics (“but there ain’t no Coupe Deville hidin’ at the bottom of a Cracker Jack Box”), the hilarious titles (“Life is a Lemon (and I Want My Money Back)” and—of course—“I Would Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That)“), the bombastic composing techniques.  Suddenly, Broadway, rock ‘n’ roll, and even Southern gospel fused into this incredible music that elevated doughy teenaged ennui and youthful passions to Wagnerian heights.

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