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fr_defenestratoThough both Charles Nelson Reilly's MySpace space and the volunteer coordinator for the Reel Affirmations Film Festival (Tim Evanson, who wants me, yea, even unto drooling) suggested as much, Mr. Reilly did NOT show up for the screening of his movie, Save it for the Stage: The Life of Reilly, on Saturday night. Which was a shame. The movie itself—a filmed version of his one-man autobio stage show—was vastly entertaining. At 75, apart from moving a little slower, Mr. Reilly is precisely the character he always was on Match Game, Hollywood Squares, etc.: by turns brash, suave, subdued, sly, histrionic; and always a big, funny, wonderful fag. If he is a reliable narrator of his own life—and you really want to believe he is—he is also an immensely warm and lovely person beyond the laughs. Throughout the show he's casting his own life as a movie from contemporaneous movie stars ("My mother, who will be played tonight by Barbara Stanwyck," etc.); and when he gets to the part where he's studying acting in NYC under Ute Hagen, he says very grandly, "The role of Ute Hagen will be played by ... UTE HAGEN!"
Elsewhere he relates a delightful anecdote re one of this (112?) appearances on The Tonight Show (Johnny Carson's watch) where a snooty director of a Shakespeare troupe belittles him by saying, "What would someone like you know about Shakespeare?" Of course, Mr. Reilly did study under Ms. Hagen (in a class with Steve McQueen, Hal Holbrook, Robert Culp, Anne Meara and Jerry Stiller, etc.) and while you'd never know it from his TV sitcom and game show appearances he really did know his acting chops. So in response to this pointedly disrespectful question, he rose from Johnny's couch, asked Doc Severinson for some somber chords, asked the house manager to dim the lights, and performed the latter part of Hamlet's Mousetrap-plotting soliloquy ("I'll have these players play something like the murther of my father..."), at the end of which he sat back down next to the snoot, saying "Anything else you wanna know, lady?" Ah, beautiful.
I volunteered a shift at the Goethe-Institut (German Cultural Center), which hosted Reel Affirmations' "Documentary Saturday" so as to get a free pass to the screening. There was little to do: with the 5 p.m. film in progress (in an auditorium of 93 seats) and with me as the third volunteer to arrive (followed by three others! two of whom were dismissed pretty much immediately), I spent most of my time reading the festival program and Metro Weekly's film reviews. I did direct one gentleman to the bathroom, and I tore one ticket. A sweatshop!
And but so I'm sitting in the lobby at the Goethe-Institut and I'm thinking the other three volunteers present are roughly in the same age group as me, give or take a handful of years. I guess I'm aging faster than my perception of the people around me, because when Charles Nelson Reilly came up in conversation, one of these volunteers said to another, "Yeah, he used to be on game shows, apparently. Plus I think he was in M*A*S*H... not the movie, but you know there was a TV show called M*A*S*H? I think he played that guy that nobody liked..." From additional adjectives about his M*A*S*H antagonist ("arrogant" and "rich") I deduced, and informed him, that he was talking about David Ogden Stiers playing Charles Emerson Winchester. But I'm just appalled that somebody I thought to be roughly my age had to say "you know there was a TV show called M*A*S*H too..."—a show that only ran for eleven friggin' years!
Elsewhere he relates a delightful anecdote re one of this (112?) appearances on The Tonight Show (Johnny Carson's watch) where a snooty director of a Shakespeare troupe belittles him by saying, "What would someone like you know about Shakespeare?" Of course, Mr. Reilly did study under Ms. Hagen (in a class with Steve McQueen, Hal Holbrook, Robert Culp, Anne Meara and Jerry Stiller, etc.) and while you'd never know it from his TV sitcom and game show appearances he really did know his acting chops. So in response to this pointedly disrespectful question, he rose from Johnny's couch, asked Doc Severinson for some somber chords, asked the house manager to dim the lights, and performed the latter part of Hamlet's Mousetrap-plotting soliloquy ("I'll have these players play something like the murther of my father..."), at the end of which he sat back down next to the snoot, saying "Anything else you wanna know, lady?" Ah, beautiful.
I volunteered a shift at the Goethe-Institut (German Cultural Center), which hosted Reel Affirmations' "Documentary Saturday" so as to get a free pass to the screening. There was little to do: with the 5 p.m. film in progress (in an auditorium of 93 seats) and with me as the third volunteer to arrive (followed by three others! two of whom were dismissed pretty much immediately), I spent most of my time reading the festival program and Metro Weekly's film reviews. I did direct one gentleman to the bathroom, and I tore one ticket. A sweatshop!
And but so I'm sitting in the lobby at the Goethe-Institut and I'm thinking the other three volunteers present are roughly in the same age group as me, give or take a handful of years. I guess I'm aging faster than my perception of the people around me, because when Charles Nelson Reilly came up in conversation, one of these volunteers said to another, "Yeah, he used to be on game shows, apparently. Plus I think he was in M*A*S*H... not the movie, but you know there was a TV show called M*A*S*H? I think he played that guy that nobody liked..." From additional adjectives about his M*A*S*H antagonist ("arrogant" and "rich") I deduced, and informed him, that he was talking about David Ogden Stiers playing Charles Emerson Winchester. But I'm just appalled that somebody I thought to be roughly my age had to say "you know there was a TV show called M*A*S*H too..."—a show that only ran for eleven friggin' years!
