Movie Review: 'Licorice Pizza' Nostalgic Look at '70s

Movie Review: ‘Licorice Pizza’ Nostalgic Look at ’70s

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Alana Haim and Cooper Hoffman in Licorice Pizza. (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures)

A nostalgic look at ’70s Americana

Paul Thomas Anderson’s most famous films, Boogie Nights and There Will Be Blood, cursed America. But Licorice Pizza lifts the curse with every seemingly spontaneous moment of young adult discovery. This is easily the American eccentric’s best film because his usual indie-movie flaws — obscure themes, cynical perspective, and technical showing-off — are mitigated by a rare, relatable narrative. The 1970s story about California youth on the margins of show business speaks to every American teen’s sense of belonging to a great, bountiful country. Gary (Cooper Hoffman) and Alana (Alana Haim) don’t exactly know how things work, but their determination to participate in the party makes them soulmates.

Gary pledges love to the slightly older Alana, who is not intimidatingly pretty but quirkily girlish enough for hormonal fascination. In this gender-stressed age, most filmmakers lack the cultural confidence to tell a love story, so Anderson, instead, has made a movie about the beauty of trust. In their wild exploits — pursuing business scams, teasing the entertainment industry and Hollywood icons looming over exurban Encino, and often just running — Gary and Alana scrape against the semblance of love. It satisfies our adolescent desire for camaraderie and acceptance.

Anderson needs a good pop-music soundtrack to pull this off and finds it. The authentic period echoes of “Stumbling In,” “Peace Frog,” and “Life on Mars” are uncanny reminders that such minor tunes were part of the cultural fabric. The background songs give definition to Anderson’s eccentric Americana.

How odd that this fantasy panoply of California/Hollywood life, the other side of America’s eternal gig economy, comes across through Anderson’s lo-fi indie aesthetic. He uses grandiloquent 70mm imagery for everyday frowziness.

Rejecting the visual splendor that Anderson saw in Robert Altman’s outsider/community films (California Split, Nashville, The Long Goodbye, 3 Women) is just plain perverse. But this wouldn’t be a PTA movie without perversity. In his drive to appear smart, Anderson treats each sequence elliptically: Gary’s run-in with Lucille Ball; his TV-interview effrontery with Art Linkletter; Alana’s encounter with William Holden (Sean Penn), Sam Peckinpah (Tom Waits) figures; her defiant trick on Jon Peters (Bradley Cooper) and brief venture into political work (Benny Safdie as a local pol). We lean in (as commercial movies rarely require) to infer details of his left-field storytelling.

Anderson’s nearly cinema-destroying impudence contrasts with Tarantino’s fan-boy romanticism in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. It compares to American indie music when grunge appeared after the exquisite flowering of ’80s pop — when groups such as The Smiths, ScrittiPolitti, New Order, Kate Bush, even The Cocteau Twins and The Blue Nile, explored savvy new routes of aural beauty. Anderson’s new, ugly aesthetic presumes superiority over the fake-pretty La La Land yet misses the emotional, life-affirming richness that distinguished Shoplifters of the World. In that, director Stephen Kijak absorbed the philosophy of Smiths songs that allowed out-of-step listeners to unite so deeply, then commemorated that historic cultural fact in a sexually sophisticated version of American Graffiti.

Licorice Pizza’s anti-beauty, indie arrogance explains the effrontery of casting Alana Haim, member of the Los Angeles pop trio Haim. (Anderson has directed several music videos for the group, and her two sisters do cameos playing funny, squabbling siblings.) Alana’s lovely, slender figure counteracts her lack of movie-star appeal, and Anderson flaunts his indie-movie defiance when an agent praises Alana’s features: “You have a very Jewish nose. You’re a fighter!” (Not the film’s only Barbra Streisand reference, it rhymes —subliminally — with Gary dressed up to resemble a pudgy Brian Wilson.)

But the deficiency of Anderson’s anti-aesthetic lies in the fact that jolie laide Alana never shows us the meaning of her feelings the way a real actress does — as when Léa Seydoux turns herself ugly in France. Alana’s resilience and resourcefulness, as in the bravura truck-driving sequence, could make her a gauche movie star, representing plain girls everywhere (she’s most likable when she grins). Still, this idea of celebrating the commonplace comes too close to how Anderson used Vicky Krieps as a cruelty fetish in Phantom Thread — it suggests a deliberately affected and unpleasant moral posture.

Despite lively episodes of assorted unresolved interactions, Licorice Pizza’s entertainment value finally gets vague. Gary and Alana return to the undistinguished masses. No great filmmaker wants that — Altman didn’t, neither did Anderson’s other model, Floyd Mutrux, whose marvelous ’70s quotidian narratives (Aloha, Bobby and Rose, Hollywood Knights, and American Hot Wax) endowed his characters with wonder, using all the elements of beauty in a film artist’s arsenal.

Michelle Satter Tributes Indie Film Booster Jane Alsobrook

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Beloved for her warmth and generosity, Alsobrook used her marketing acumen to support the early Sundance and the indie films she loved.

The independent film community lost one of its own last month, Jane Alsobrook. Her close friend, Michelle Satter, Founding Senior Director, Sundance Institute Artist Programs, sent us a tribute, with contributions from Alsobrook’s husband, actor-writer Gerard Maguire, and IndieWire contributor Sydney Levine.

Jane Alsobrook, pioneering film executive, producer, mentor and breast cancer activist, died at her home in Sedona, Arizona, on Monday, December 13, 2021, mourned by her family, friends, and industry colleagues, who acknowledge her significant contributions to the independent film world.

For Sundance, Jane was there at the beginning. Early in February, 1981, she met with Larry Jackson, Jeff Dowd, and several others for brunch in Los Angeles, the Advisory Committee tasked with planning a weekend conference, during the launch of the first Sundance Institute Filmmakers Lab. At the Conference, titled “The Distribution, Marketing, and Exhibition of Specialized Films in the 1980’s,” film marketers, distributors, and exhibitors shared essential information about the state of the field and looked for opportunities to collaborate.

After that brunch, Jeff called me and asked: “Are you free in June to come join us at Robert Redford’s ranch in Utah to support filmmakers and help us organize this conference?” I was living in Boston with a job and a boyfriend, but my immediate answer was: “Yes, I wouldn’t miss it!” With that call, I began my enduring commitment to the Sundance Institute, supporting Redford in the design of the Labs and the many ways that we advanced the development of independent voices and visionary filmmakers.

Several months later I got on a plane to Utah, joined by Jane two weeks later. And when I moved to LA after the first June Filmmakers Lab, Jane took me in as a friend and mentor, with generosity and kindness, and made me feel at home. We shared long lunches at the Mustache Cafe in Westwood, dreaming big, talking, laughing, and planning a future inspired by Redford’s vision and commitment. Jane continued her work on the Advisory Committee to follow up on ideas coming out of the conference, including the publishing of David Rosen and Peter Hamilton’s seminal book, “Off Hollywood: The Making and Marketing of Specialty Films.”

Always humble about her accomplishments as a marketing executive, Jane was a trailblazer in indie film marketing. She wanted the films she promoted to bring audiences the joy of the film experience. Many films that Jane worked on exceeded box office expectations; Jane’s strategies and tactics were key takeaways for others in the development of the independent film business.

For years, Jane was an enthusiastic participant in the Sundance Film Festival. I cherish the times we sat together in Festival theaters and discovered exciting films by up-and-coming filmmakers. For Jane, Sundance was a time to be part of the growing community of artists and industry. Over these years, Jane introduced numerous artists to the industry and was always looking for opportunities to bring people together.

Jane’s involvement with film began in 1971 while she was doing her postgrad at USC. An academic career lost its appeal when she was recruited to help organize the Los Angeles Film Exposition, known as Filmex. She quickly became an important creative member of what became known as the “New Hollywood,” a group that included Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Brian De Palma, Robert Altman and George Lucas.

Michael Buckner/Variety

While working for indie maverick Roger Corman, Jane did marketing for Spike Lee’s “School Daze” and supervised the 1975 Academy Award campaign for Fellini’s “Amarcord” that resulted in four nominations and the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. In 1975 Jane moved to Music at ABC Records as National Publicity Director promoting such legends as Crosby, Stills and Nash, The Pointer Sisters, Steely Dan, and Chaka Khan.

Jane entered the studio world in the 1980s, when she ran Twentieth Century Fox Classics, which acquired “Eating Raoul,” “The Gods Must Be Crazy,” “Reuben, Reuben,” and “Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.” When Fox closed that division, she partnered with close friend Charles Lippincott on a marketing company. This was a productive time for Jane: she was the unit publicist on “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” “The Black Stallion Returns” and “Creepshow,” where she shared a desk with Steven King. Her music industry connections proved invaluable when she was responsible for bringing in The Ramones for “Rock and Roll High School.”

She moved back to the major studios when she was recruited by David Puttnam at Columbia Pictures as Senior Vice President of Marketing and Distribution, where she led the Academy Award campaign for “The Last Emperor” that resulted in nine Oscars, including Best Picture. After Columbia ousted Puttnam, Jane joined Greg Coote as President of Marketing at Island Pictures.

Sadly, her long battle with breast cancer began in 1992. During her healing, she helped found LABC, the Los Angeles activist group dedicated to educating, supporting and empowering women, raising public awareness and funding for research for Breast Cancer. In 1994 she was a leader of a delegation of alliance women who met with Hillary Clinton and Leon Panetta at the White House, which yielded over $200 million allocated for women’s cancer research, taken from the military budget.

Artisan Entertainment

Jane completed her treatments and returned to her always active life. In 1994, she moved with her husband Gerard Maguire to his native Australia, falling in love with the beauty of the wildlife and natural world. She soon accepted an offer to run distribution, marketing and acquisitions for the Becker Group. Her ability to select commercial, quality movies in the highly competitive world of indie acquisitions resulted in their acquisition of “Emma,” “ Brassed Off,” “Scream” and Cate Blanchett’s breakout film “Thank God HE Met Lizzie.” At the Sundance Film Festival, she heard young women talking in the streets about a documentary that terrified them. Without having seen the film, she took a DVD back to Australia to check it out. Against the advice of some at Becker, she acquired “The Blair Witch Project.”

During her six years in Australia, Jane refined her business sensibility. She encouraged talent, eagerly shared her knowledge about marketing and stressed the importance of honesty and fair dealing, something she was taught by her businessman father.

The events of 9/11 triggered her return to the U.S. at the end of 2001. She wanted to be near her aging mother in Sedona, and to watch her niece and nephew grow up. Film veteran Ira Deutchman introduced Jane to filmmaker Amy Waddell, who brought her on as co-producer on the film “Brothel,” shooting in the nearby ghost town Jerome.

Unfortunately, the threat of cancer was never far away. In 2020, the cancer returned. Like a seasoned boxer, she took on the challenge of several rounds of difficult treatments with energy and focus. But on December 13, 2021, the cancer overwhelmed her and she died in her husband’s arms, with her brother Allen, niece Isabella and nephew Forrest at her bedside. She was 78.

“As impressive as Jane’s career in films was,” wrote Maguire, “it was her warmth and wisdom that endeared her to everyone she met. As news of her passing spread, a common theme from tributes is her radiance from light that seemed to emanate from her. She was much loved and is heartbreakingly missed.”

Jean-Jacques Beineix: the French auteur who brought style and substance

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During Margaret Thatcher’s reign in the 1980s, British cinema was largely downbeat, caustic, political and oppositionist. But over the Channel in François Mitterrand’s France, the movies were glitzy and flashy, with a sexy if superficial neon sheen: the so-called cinéma du look. No director was more responsible for this than Jean-Jacques Beineix.

He became both famed and mocked for that colossal 1986 hit which launched the smouldering career of its star Beatrice Dalle: Betty Blue, a steamy drama in which an aspiring writer embarks on a passionate, destructive affair with Dalle’s impetuous siren, Betty. It was nominated for best foreign film at the Oscars, the Globes and the Baftas and got nine César nominations. But Betty Blue actually won just one César: the horribly appropriate award for best poster (an award discontinued a few years afterwards), the iconic image of the young Dalle looming beautifully up in the blue of deepening sunset-sky with the beach shack starkly picked out down below on a glowing horizon. It was a poster that adorned a million student bedroom walls and soon the movie, and Beineix himself, came to be looked down on as a callow 1980s taste: the legwarmers of French cinema.

But that doesn’t do justice to his audacity, energy and exuberance, and to the movie that made his name in 1981: Diva, a film with a residual new wave ethos but with something less political. A young postman zooming around Paris on a moped (that key New Wave vehicle) is obsessed with an opera singer, played by Wilhelmina Wiggins Fernandez; he accidentally comes into possession of a cassette tape containing a confession which incriminates a top cop, which gets muddled up with his own illicit bootleg cassette of the diva singing the passionate soprano aria from Alfredo Catalani’s opera La Wally, Ebben? No andrò lontana, with its window-shattering high note.

Beatrice Dalle in Betty Blue. Photograph: Moviestore/Rex/Shutterstock

Beineix single-handedly made this stunningly dramatic aria famous among non-opera fans (to the irritation of hardcore opera buffs) like a smash hit single from an otherwise little-known album. Undoubtedly, Diva inspired the 1987 portmanteau film Aria, in which directors including Jean-Luc Godard, Robert Altman, Derek Jarman, Julien Temple and Nicolas Roeg each created a short piece to the accompaniment of a famous aria. Aria was flash and brash, but some felt it to be a glorified arthouse version of the pop videos that were becoming popular through MTV in the same era. Beineix was not, however, involved.

After Diva, Beineix made what both admirers and detractors felt was his key auteur piece, The Moon in the Gutter, starring Nastassja Kinski as a wealthy, predatory woman whose destiny collides with a smouldering dock-worker played by Gérard Depardieu. His fans stubbornly insisted this was Beineix’s brilliantly playful, colourful, visually creative French spin on the American noir genre. The naysayers said it was unendurably pretentious and preposterous; Beineix was deeply hurt to be booed at its Cannes premiere.

But, last year at Cannes, I thought of The Moon in the Gutter as the festivalgoers were going wild for Leos Carax’s film Annette, his indulgent, madly ambitious musical fantasia composed by Sparks and starring Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard. Who can possibly doubt that Carax was influenced by Beineix’s anti-puritan flourish? Both Carax and Luc Besson owed a huge amount to Beineix, although it was Beineix’s sad fate to have neither Besson’s enduring commercial clout nor Carax’s highbrow reputation.

In the 90s, Beineix’s star waned, perhaps due to his characteristically heartfelt but inauspicious movie IP5: The Island of the Pachyderms, which was coolly received critically and in which his iconic star Yves Montand unfortunately died immediately after filming his character’s death.

Beineix was often said to be style over substance. But is that fair? He had just about as much substance as any working director of his time, but a lot more style, and in fact a sensuous love of style. His Diva and Betty Blue deserve to be known as more than fashion accessories: they were vivid, vibrant movie-making. And amazing to think of Altman, Godard, Jarman et al effectively bowing the knee to Beineix in that Aria collection.

In Memoriam : Steve Schapiro : Then And Now

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Archives 2013

Steve Schapiro is the photographer behind countless now-classic portraits of rock stars, film stars and politicians from the 1960s and 70s. He is also an accomplished documentary photographer who recorded many of the greatest political and social upheavals of our times. While working as a ‘special photographer’ for the film studios, he designed several iconic film posters, most notably for Midnight Cowboy, Taxi Driver and The Godfather III. His extraordinary access has been the hallmark of an illustrious career.

A retrospective of Schapiro’s work opens at the Kunsthalle Rostock, Museum of Modern Art in Germany is on view until May 5, 2013. The show, which is curated by Dr. Ulrick Ptak, presents 160 photographs, many of them recently published for the first time in Schapiro’s critically acclaimed retrospective Steve Schapiro: Then and Now (Hatje Cantz). The exhibition and companion book look back at Schapiro’s diverse half-century career spanning 1961 to 2011. They portray the celebrities and politicians who shaped a generation, as well as new and unseen documentary work focusing on the marginalized and unidentified people on the street.

Then and Now includes whimsical portraits of the stars: Robert De Niro in full Taxi Driver combat costume, posed in front of his cab with a Mohican and an improbably chirpy smile; Jack Nicholson, nose bandaged, tongue out at the camera on the set of Chinatown; and Marlon Brando, grinning with theatrical devilishness while being made up for The Godfather.

Also gathered are portraits that include artists René Magritte, Nico, and Andy Warhol; film directors Robert Altman, Woody Allen, Francis Ford Coppola, and Martin Scorcese; film stars Drew Barrymore, Mia Farrow, Jodie Foster, Dustin Hoffman, Sophia Loren, Paul Newman and Robert Redford; and musicians David Bowie, Ray Charles, Simon and Garfunkel,

Diana Ross, Ringo Starr, Frank Sinatra, Barbara Streisand, and Ike and Tina Turner.

When Schapiro started shooting in the sixties, it was the golden age of photojournalism. Schapiro’s extensive work in this genre include his depiction of migrant workers in Arkansas, drug addicts in East Harlem, freedom bus riders, the Selma March to Montgomery, Alabama with Martin Luther King, Jr., and presidential campaigns, most notably that of

Robert F. Kennedy. Among his most striking works is a triptych that presents photographs Schapiro took in Memphis in 1968 the day after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. while on assignment for Life. Schapiro was the only photographer to capture the ominous handprint of King’s assassin on the wall above the bathtub in the boarding house bathroom from where the fatal shot was fired.

The thread that connects all of Schapiro’s photographs is his humanistic approach to his work. Whether shooting a celebrity or an anonymous person he is searching for that iconic moment. In his essay in the book, curator and author Matthias Harder writes that Schapiro’s work reflects “the spirit of the times. It is not only his famous individual photos and groups of works from his engagement with Hollywood that ensure him a firm place in the history of photography of the twentieth and twenty first centuries, but also the diversity of his subjects and the sovereign, continuing mastery of them over such a long period of time.”

Born and raised in New York City, Steve Schapiro started taking photographs at age ten while at summer camp. He attended Amherst College and graduated from Bard College, and studied photography with the legendary W. Eugene Smith. As a budding photographer, he got an early break: an assignment from Life magazine. He has never stopped working since. His work has been published in prestigious magazines and on numerous covers around the world, including Life, Look, Vanity Fair, Paris Match, People, and Rolling Stone. Schapiro’s photographs were included in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s 1968 exhibition Harlem On My Mind. His work can be found in the collections of the Smithsonian, The High Museum of Art, and the National Portrait Gallery. Schapiro’s recent solo shows were in

Los Angeles, Amsterdam, London and Paris. The Fotografiska Museum in Stockholm, Sweden presented a retrospective of his work in the spring of 2012. An exhibition of his work entitled Schapiro: Living America opened at the Center for Photography Lumiere Brothers, Moscow in the fall of 2012, and included 180 images.

Exhibition

Steve Schapiro: Then And Now

From March 24th to May 5th, 2013

Kunsthalle Rostock

Hamburger Strasse 40

D-18069 Rostock

Germany

Telephone: 0049 381 7000

Book

Steve Schapiro: Then And Now

ISBN: 97837757344264

Hbk, 9.75 x 12.25 inches

240 pages; 174 photographs

(128 black & white; 46 color)

$70 US

Screen Time: Following in the footsteps of ‘The Night Stalker’

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Earlier this week — Tuesday, Jan. 11, to be precise ¡ marked the 50th year anniversary of the premiere of “The Night Stalker.”

Produced by Dan Curtis (best known for the gothic soap opera “Dark Shadows” and the horror classics “Trilogy of Terror” and “Burnt Offerings,” both starring Karen Black), “The Night Stalker” chronicled the exploits of a seasoned investigative reporter hot on the trail of a modern-day vampire draining the blood out of his unsuspecting victims on the Las Vegas strip.

First airing as part of ABC’s “Tuesday Movie of the Week,” “The Night Stalker” stabbed a stake right in the heart of the Nielsen Ratings, becoming the highest-rated original TV movie on U.S. television up to that point.

“The Night Stalker” was excellent. The teleplay was written by Richard Matheson, the same man who wrote “I Am Legend,” which has been adapted for the screen three times, including “The Last Man on Earth” (with Vincent Price), “The Omega Man” (with Charlton Heston, one of my personal favorites) and “I Am Legend” (with Will Smith). Matheson also wrote “The Twilight Zone” episode “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” (with William Shatner) and “Duel,” which was one of Steven Spielberg’s early directorial triumphs.

The initial success of “The Night Stalker” inspired a TV movie sequel “The Night Strangler” (featuring Richard Anderson as a Civil War Union Army surgeon-turned Jack the Ripper-type serial killer who hides in the Seattle Underground) and a 20-episode series called “Kolchak: The Night Stalker,” which ran on ABC between 1974 and 1975.

Not only has it been cited by Chris Carter as the inspiration behind “The X-Files” (especially in the show’s monster-of-the-week variety episodes), “The Night Stalker,” more specifically, Carl Kolchak (as played by veteran character actor Darren McGavin), was my chief inspiration to become a newspaperman. No kidding.

However, the show was doomed from the start. Not only was it put on the ratings death hour of 10 p.m. Fridays, the premiere episode was pitted against CBS airing for the first-time on television broadcast of Robert Altman’s “MASH.”

You have to realize back in the ‘70s there was no streaming, no Blu-Rays, no DVDs, no VHS, no Beta. HBO was fairly new (launching in November 1972) and first-run movies were usually a year-and-a-half to two years old by the time they got on the premiere premium (and pricy) channel. So back then, a cut-up, commercial-interrupted theatrical movie on television was a big deal.

So that night I was huddled in my room with a portable black-and-white TV the size of a shoebox watching “Kolchak: The Night Stalker” while everyone else in the house was watched Donald Sutherland, Elliott Gould and Sally Kellerman in the den.

“Kolchak: The Night Stalker” was a good show. Yes, there were a few episodes that were clunkers, but McGavin and company always sold the material, and some of the scripts were top-notch, especially the six co-written by David Chase, the creator of “The Sopranos.”

My favorite of the Chase-scripted episodes is the “Zombie” episode, which actually had an underlying mob plot. Not only was it spooky, it had one of the best pieces of dialogue — a hilarious, three-way conversation with Kolchak talking, in person, to the local coroner (aka Gordy the Ghoul, play by character actor John Fiedler) at the morgue while talking to his editor Antonio Albert “Tony” Vincenzo (the always great Simon Oakland) on the phone.

However, my favorite scene pops up in “The Ripper” episode when fellow INS reporter Ron Updyke, filling in for Kolchak (who has to ghost-write the newspaper’s popular “Miss Emily” advice column), has to do lead on a crime story. In the scene, Updyke (who Kolchak nicknames “Up Tight”) shows his press badge at a crime scene (which happens to be a seedy massage parlor), strolls right in, trips over the victim’s body and excuses himself before he abruptly vomits, totally contaminating the crime scene. This is something that would never happen in real life.

But it wasn’t the horror or the monsters that I liked as much as I liked Kolchak, or should I say, McGavin’s portrayal of the character.

Wearing a blue seersucker suit with a straw porkpie hat, square dark tie and a pair of sneakers (a must to run away from the monsters), McGavin had a look and swagger all his own.

I loved the fact that that Kolchak was a police scanner junkie who often arrived at a crime scene before the police.

I loved that he would go to great, life-risking lengths to uncover the truth of a story, no matter how fantastical and unbelievable and unprintable it sounded.

I loved that he was always equipped with a bulky Sony TC-55 cassette recorder, Rollei 16S Submini camera with a blinding flash and interchangeable arsenal of weapons that included crosses, wooden stake with matching mallet, holy water, candles, salt, needles and thread, incantations and what have you.

And I loved how he bribed coroners for autopsy reports and butted heads regularly with law enforcement authorities and his editor who was always forced to squash the story. The banter was priceless.

Not only did “Kolchak: The Night Stalker” make being a reporter look dangerous and cool, it made me want to become a reporter uncovering the big story, no matter how thankless and Sisyphean the task. You could hold your head up high as you rode out of town (and you would be arrested if you ever returned) after uncovering the truth and stopping an unconceivable evil from killing again, even though no one would ever know or read about it.

I always wanted a true Kolchak moment to call my own. But there are only so many vampires, zombies, werewolves, killer robots, invisible aliens, devil dogs, prehistoric primates, humanoid lizards, witches, medieval knights with anger management issues, headless motorcyclists with axes to grind, succubae and Spanish moss murderers to uncover.

Then, in the summer of 2017, it looked like was going to have my first, full-fledged Carl Kolchak moment, when the grisly discovery of three dead baby Nigerian Dwarf goats (one in North Brookfield and two in West Brookfield) put the good, God-fearing people of the Brookfields in fear, while the local authorities searched for answers to no avail.

Not only were the three baby goats’ necks snapped, the animals were found on the back porch and twisted around to face anyone coming out of the house. All evidence pointed to a very sick individual, not an animal, killing the pets. You think? Or maybe an evil, so unthinkable, and older than time itself.

In full Kolchak mode, I started poking around for the dark truth and prepared to butt heads with local police at an expected press conference. And like any good Kolchak premise, it started with an opening voiceover as I drove into town.

“If by chance you wander into the Brookfields on August 7 of this year and your name was Billy or Nanny or Scape, you would have had good reason to be terrified. During this time, the Brookfields were stalked by a horror so frightening, so fascinating, that it ranks with the great unsolved mysteries of all time. It’s been the fictional subject of films, plays, even an opera. Now, here, are the true facts of the Jack the Goat’s Neck Snapper.”

Not only did I have an opening voiceover, I had my list of questions ready to shoot off to the local authorities. First, I would start sheepishly with my questions, none of which were based in fact.

“Chief, do we have a serial goat killer on our hands?”

“Is it true that all the goats’ necks were snapped from the inside out?”

“Isn’t it true that the three goats were drained of every drop of blood and the goats had two puncture wounds on the back of the neck (pointing with two fingers) that were made by the fangs of a vampire?”

“Isn’t it true that the goat killings are part of a voodoo ritual that the board of selectmen have been conducting for centuries to combat the ravages of time?”

“Isn’t it true that there was a series of unsolved ritualistic goat killings strikingly similar to these 117 years ago done by the same neck snapper?”

Then, I would become more accusatory with my questions, like I was the big, bad wolf.

“Chief, you have two choices — admit you have a serial goat killer on your hands or keep telling the public that the goats died of self-inflicted wounds and poised themselves in provocative poses, post-mortem, by themselves?”

“How many goats’ necks have to be snapped before you take your head out of your (expletive)?”

Then I would end with the big finish.

“The goat killer will kill again and keep killing unless you equip your police force with crosses, stakes, hammers and a pocketful of hay. Take your hands off me," I said as I abruptly ran out of the station and we broke to commercial.

To my chagrin, the press conference didn’t happen, which, in the long run, is probably a good thing as far as my job is concerned. But, I so wanted that Kolchak moment.

Last year, in the heart of the pandemic, I decided it was time to show my everlasting kinship with Kolchak at the only place you can dress up as a fictional character and not get ridiculed for it.

No, I’m not talking Provincetown. I’m talking at a comic con, in this case Rhode Island and the NorthEast comic cons.

And, unlike the others dressed in costumes of super-heroes, time lords and extraterrestrial creature, I would bet that I was the only one who dressed as a fictional character from pop culture who actually followed that career path,

To my surprise, a lot of people realized who I was dressed as, even a woman in her early 20s who needed to take a picture with me to show to her father, who turned her onto “The Night Stalker.”

Finally, my Kolchak moment.

‘To Sir, with Love’

One thing the last two years has made me is very nostalgic, very nostalgic of movies, television and music of my youth that were so much better written, acted and sung than most of the pop culture being offered today.

And while I usually try to celebrate NOT to lament someone who lived a long, productive life, the loss of Sidney Poitier, 94, has made a personal impact on me.

Easily one of the greatest actors to ever live, Sidney Poitier lives on with the great body of work he produced over the years, including “Blackboard Jungle,” “The Defiant Ones,” “Lilies of the Field,” “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” “In the Heat of the Night” and my personal favorite, “To Sir, with Love.”

Everything Poitier was ever in is a bona fide classic and he always gave a larger-than-life performance even when he was subtle and showed nuance. Poitier said more in his telling eyes than most actors say in loud gestures. Truly, a one of a kind actor.

Do yourself a favor. Watch “To Sir, with Love” or any of the above mentioned classics again. Better yet, watch it with someone who has never seen a real Sidney Poitier movie before and watch the magic of Sidney Poitier unfold in their eyes.