Pop Quiz theme, celebrities obsessed with a certain charity. Today, name the celebrity obsessed with Rights to Fight, a movement about allowing gays in the military. Is it Tom Selleck, Sean Penn, Lady Gaga or Jennifer Lawrence?
It’s Friday and there is a movie coming out today that I can not recommend strongly enough, my favorite film of the year, however I have a personal connection to the subject matter, Stan & Ollie.
When I was a small child, my grandmother would take me to an old drive-in theater and they would always show a short film of Laurel & Hardy instead of cartoons. I loved them back then and love them just as much now. They were funny without trying to be. Always turning normal situations into hilarious outcomes. Just a couple guys who made people laugh during the 20’s, 30’s and 40’s, and even to this day through their shorts and movies. They even won an Oscar for the best short subject movie for The Music Box in 1932. Listen, to me this is the funniest 26 minutes in the history of film. It involves the problems the boys have delivering a piano up a flight of 151 outdoor steps to a mansion. The film was so fascinating to me, I found those stairs, they are still there, on a vacant lot at 923 Vendome Ave in Silver Lake, one block off Sunset Blvd, and 1 mile from Dodgers Stadium. Don’t believe me, go see for yourself. I’ve driven by it 100 times, even stopping at the stairs for a memory of The Music Box.
And while working my first radio station, only 18 years old, I had the opportunity to interview a very sick, 75 year old Stan Laurel at his tiny Santa Monica Apartment, where he died a month later. As for the film opening today, it is set in the 1950’s when the two attempt a comeback and they flashback on the good, bad and ugly of the 40 year friendship, and how it was obviously coming to a sad end. Steve Coogan is great as Laurel, but John C Riley is Oliver Hardy, who gained 80 pounds for the role. (PG) – (97 Minutes) – (5 Stars)
Answer – Lady Gaga.
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