Episode 007: "Punchline", "Cannon", and a Facebook story

In this week's episode, Frank is reminded of a movie called Punchline from 1988 that has a substantial amount of stand-up comedy, but wasn't that funny overall.  Punchline  was soon forgotten as a film, which is perplexing to this day given who stars in it (think Forrest Gump primarily) and that it is still well-liked as a lighter drama.

His favorite actress, Priscilla Barnes, was not in Punchline but she was in the classic CBS detective show Cannon in 1976.  She only appears in the first scene with another young actor known for Airplane!, and then William Conrad does his thing to solve the crime.  Frank summarizes the episode called "Bloodlines".  Hmmm...Punchline to Bloodlines!

Finally he tells a recent story where he posted on a Facebook tribute page for another classic TV show.  After a fan posed a simple light-hearted question about the stars of one show guesting on this show, Frank's comment was removed quickly.  But they still thanked him for posting this first time.  Frank points this out as another social media issue and one that may not be helpful for building podcasts, at least with no  explanation given.

The theme song is called Retro Funk by SoulProdMusic and can be found at pixabay.com.

Punchline is available on DVD and Blu-Ray, Amazon Prime, and Pluto TV.
Cannon is available on DVD and had recent availability on MeTV.

--The best way to contact is:
Twitter: @frankwebertx
Web:  frankwebertx.com
Email:  frankoweber@hotmail.com

Transcript

Frank: 0:02

Well, in this episode, I started off talking about a movie that I had just been reminded of recently called punchline that I saw in 1988 with. Sally field and Tom Hanks. And then we get into another Priscilla Barnes review with. Classic TV show cannon from the seventies. And then I end with a little Facebook story that I feel is pretty appropriate To the show So stay tuned. I think you're really going to enjoy it. Well, hello, once again to Frank Weber's party. This is your host, Frank Weber. I'm so glad that you could join me once again today. You're always invited. Always welcome here. I'm so glad that you stopped by for a little bit. Hopefully you find things a little fun and entertaining here. As always, please tell your family and friends about us. Hit that subscribe button. Download if you like to download. we depend on your, feedback and your interest here to keep going with this. And, I'm so appreciative of you. So today we're gonna do things a little bit differently. I'm actually going to, Semi review another movie before we get into a review of a Priscilla role in the show Canon from 1976, and then I'll end with a little bit of a Facebook story that I wanted to tell you that I find to be pretty important. I find all these segments to potentially be humorous and I'll try to entertain and inform you all at the same time. The other night I've been thinking about this movie for a couple of weeks. You know, I'm kind of nostalgic and I think about some random things, and occasionally I even watch some productions that don't starve. Priscilla Barnes. I know that may come as a shock to some of you. but, uh, there was a movie that I saw when I was about 11 years old. This has been almost 35 years ago. 1988 called Punchline it came out on October 7th, 1988, and I saw it in the theaters. I had some interest back then as I do now in all kinds of comedy, including standup, and so I was curious about what had happened to this movie. Why has it not really been on at all in many years, or at least it seems like that? It seems like it was relegated to the dust benefits of, Hollywood. I don't really know why certain movies and shows get forgotten after a while, I wouldn't say it's the best movie ever, but it does have a lot going for it. So I decided to spend about$4 and rent it on Amazon to check it out again. All these years later. It stars Sally Field first gets top billing, and of course he was already a very versatile actress in Hollywood at that time. And then next billing is Tom Hanks, who throughout the eighties was primarily in comedic roles, but was becoming a versatile actor and, I don't really know why it fell off the map. If you want a comparison, those two of course would meet up again almost six years later in Forrest Gump. this movie was long forgotten by the time that had come out in 1994. So really punchline had, its little 15 minutes of fame in the theater and it was on cable, like HBO for a little while. And then it faded into obscurity. I could never really figure it out. But it was marketed as a big laugh out, loud side splitting comedy about standup comedy is what it's supposed to be. but then when you watch it, it really winds up being more. Of a drama about two people who are trying to find a path for themselves and their lives is really what it amounts to. a drama. With the backdrop of standup comedy. And the movie incidentally did reasonably well at the box office. It wasn't a blockbuster, but. it did enough to, make a little money. I think the 60% on Rotten Tomatoes is primarily due to its dramatic effect rather than comedic effect. And, the setting is this comedy club in New York City. Sally Field and Tom Hanks team up, Sally Field's character, learns comedy from Tom Hanks and she almost gets the part at the end of the contest to hit the big time. and they almost fall in love despite of the fact that she's married. and you may be able to glean a little bit about. The standup business and certain techniques from it. But for the most part, it's a drama. And I think that's why a lot of people were disappointed. the movie didn't really, I promise, what it was marketed as. I think that was part of the complaint that I had a couple of weeks ago on License to Kill movies. Don't. Go exactly like they're expected or they're marketed as something else, and then people are disappointed in'em. You know that movie? I told you that could have been over in 15 minutes. You know, the wedding would've been a perfect Hollywood ending, but they decided to throw a wrench in there and last another two hours, And so this movie, if you're into drama with a little comedy in it, it's gonna be great. If you wanted side splitting silly comedy, that maybe could have been useful as far as building a comedic career, it's not as good in that regard and a lot of comics were not, real pleased with this movie, from my understanding and then it's got a lot of star power. I already mentioned Tom Hanks and Sally Field. Tom Hanks, by the way, plays a. Medical student who has just flunked out and apparently he's smart and he can do the work, but he never really applied himself or he spent too much time at the comedy club where he was mood lining, many nights of the week. And then Sally Field plays a housewife and she is trying to impress her husband. Who's played by John Goodman and maybe her kids as well, that she can do this and that. She's funny. one of her kids is played by Candace Cameron who's probably barely 12 years old, and Candace was on full house at this time. John Goodman was about to start on Roseanne. One of the comics that I recognize is played by Damon Wayans and he and his family were about to do in living color within the next year or two, I believe. But, I think that may be why it was kind of relegated to the dust bin. Expectations of a comedy turned out to be more of a drama. But I do think it's worth a look. it's good for nostalgia's sake. Know where we came from, know where those actors came from, and that they would be together in another production pretty soon. But I got really curious about it because of the interest in comedy and I looked at it again. just a couple of scenes here. I just wanted to tell you, there was an older comic in the movie, because most of the troop there was pretty young. this guy, apparently later in the movie, they had the contest at the very end where somebody was going to be in front of a panel of judges and they were going to get a comedy contract or something. I don't think it was the ability to go on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, but the winner would get a contract and, there was an older comic there. who didn't make the cut to be on the show for these judges. And, Tom Hanks and Sally Fields' character, near the end of the movie, found him sitting in a corner. They thought something was physically wrong with him, but he was just broken up at not making this contest. And he reveals to the fact that he, at one point, had apparently made it big time in comedy. said he had been on the Ed Sullivan show four times, and apparently had been in decline and fallen from Grace back to a point where he's doing local comedy clubs only, kind of like the musicians that at their peak. Do arenas and stadiums and then they wind up falling back down and then they're just doing, casinos and lounge acts and it just shows a side of show business because it's very difficult to get into comedy. You may starve for a while. That's true in a lot of the other arts. And then you may have your time of fame, and then most people, but not all experience a decline where they're back to where they started. And so that was one of the more dramatic moments in the movie. a lot of the comedy scenes, a lot of the lines that the standup guys delivered were not funny. primarily because there was no context to them, no context to their stories or what they were doing. The funniest part came when Sally Field and John Goodman and their three girls were hosting, a couple of ministers that they were trying to impress for some reason. And one of the little girls, not Candace, wanted to tell a joke and used the word cocksucker in it. And that caused people to choke on their food. Not just the ministers, but of course the parents. And, they had this eighties saxophone music throughout the movie, almost like a sexy music that they used to play when there was a good looking woman on tv, like a sex symbol or whatever. But this movie was really pretty clean. they said fuck her fucking three or four times maybe, which back in that day would get you an R rather than a PG 13. I think they probably could have done PG 13 today. But, I just wanted to bring that to your attention. this movie was so forgotten that there's a lot of people. Younger people, but I think some older people, possibly even my age, who didn't even know this movie existed. And I do think it's definitely worth a look. I wouldn't say it's the best movie ever made. just don't expect to go into it thinking that you're gonna laugh really hard and that it's, a pure comedy because it's not. It's available on Amazon, is where I got it from, and. Possibly another side or two, Hope you're enjoying the show so far. I'm gonna take a quick break and then we'll get into Priscilla's role, her first credited role, in fact in an old TV show called Cannon, and we'll be right back. All right, next I'm going to discuss an old TV show from the early and mid seventies called Canon. One of the many detective shows that have been on in that era, as well as, really all time. ran on CBS from 1971 to 1976. Five seasons, started to decline during the last season, which is when this show takes place. It stars the Port Lee William Conrad Since this happened slightly before my time, my generation is going to know him better as the fat man from Jake and the fat man. And he passed away not too long after that show ended, but in this show, he's playing a very tough detective. apparently a Korean War veteran was a member of the L A P D, and quit that. And then he has gone out on his own to be a private detective, pretty serious, has a very unique voice to him. not really a lot of comedic humor in the show, but it was very popular in its first few seasons, and then ratings started to decline precipitously during this 75, 76 season. This episode is called Bloodlines from February 25th, 1976. And it's the next to last show. In that series, they did go ahead and make a return movie Return of Frank Cannon. That was in 1980. But this show, as well as William Conrad, received a lot of awards. It was very popular. It was a very smart detective show. I would almost put it on the same level as Colombo. that we reviewed several weeks ago. there was pretty good writing to it. I know people will say, well, most writing in Hollywood is eighth grade level, but there's certain nuance and certain twists that you have to be able to write into a show. And this show did a very good job of that I thought. Conrad's character. Frank Cannon had a very unique combination of street smarts. And book smarts that made him essentially unstoppable in this show. Essentially the ideal detective And, so we'll get into this show called Bloodlines. That sounds like a wrestling storyline that I've been keeping up with lately. A group of people called the Bloodlines. Anyway, so I, the show starts out in Acapulco, which by the way, was a very popular tourist destination in Mexico, especially in the seventies and eighties. people gave vacations out. To that place all the time. The price is right. You know, the love boat went there. It seemed like the love boat went there more than half the time. And then it started falling out of favor in the nineties. Apparently there's a lot of trouble there now with drug cartels and safety issues and whatnot, even though I believe they still accept guests and people still try to vacation there. But the show opens in Acapulco, they're showing, something called the Acapulco Dive, which is basically a cliff dive by professional cliff divers. And Priscilla, who apparently in this show is named Linda. We don't know that until the actual closing credits. I don't really know how we're supposed to know her as Linda before then, she's having a drink with this guy, and they're just observing this cliff diving and lo and behold, The great Robert Hayes, who is known of course as Ted Stryker from Airplane comes into the scene. apparently Priscilla and Robert Hayes had the same acting coach. Hayes walks into the scene. His name is Michael. in this show, so Linda and her boyfriend are marveling at this cliff diving and. Michael comes in and says, oh, anybody can do that. And then the boyfriend says, yeah, anybody can do that once. And Michael's talking up a tough game and saying, yeah, I think I'm gonna go ahead and do that right now. and then Linda says, oh, he'll be killed. And the boyfriend says, oh, he's just drunk. And then she. Says and beautiful. So the dialogue isn't the best at that point, but that gives you a little brief background. But anyway, Michael goes over to the cliff diving platform and takes off his clothes and, the guy up there says you're not supposed to be up here. And he goes, well, I don't care. I'm gonna jump anyway. And then he jumps to his death. And then Priscilla lets out of very loud scream. And that's all we see of Priscilla for the rest of the show is basically William Conrad as Frank Cannon going around, collecting information, finding out what actually happened. and I don't want to go scene by scene and go into a huge amount of detail on this, but. Essentially what happens is that we find out a lot of things about Michael on the way and the people and family members that he's associated with. He's married to a very attractive Hollywood starlet who apparently goes back to work the day after she buries him. I don't know how that would've worked in real life, but I found that to be an oddity in this show. But, what happens is that Michael has a father and a cousin, which of course would be the father's nephew as well, who are very prominent in this show. The father is not very happy for some reason with Michael. he doesn't trust his wife Charlotte, to do the right thing and believes that she may have murdered him and it wasn't really a suicide, but canon. INVESTIGATES eventually believes that she had nothing to do with it, that she really loves him. She didn't force him to use alcohol. she didn't force him to use drugs like tranquilizers, which apparently she had. And so the thought was that he was drugged and, and such a despondent state that he would've committed suicide by himself. That turns out to not be the case. And so what happens is that the father and his nephew, called Andres. And by the way, Andres really looks a lot like Jason Bateman. Jason Bateman had to have been really, really young for this, by the way. but the father decides, Hey, I don't like this daughter-in-law of mine, Charlotte. We need to frame her. We don't want to murder her, but we want to torture her with psychological trouble for the rest of her life. You know, rotting in prison or whatever. And at first the nephew is not real wild about the idea. He seems to have a little bit of a moral compass to him. And then the father says, well, my only heir, my son Michael, is gone. I'm going to give my fortune to you if you carry this out and blackmail her and frame her for his death. whether you are able to do that by planning drugs on her, or causing the murder of somebody else they wound up murdering this nice young man who seemed pretty moral, pretty ethical, who was a hotel worker in Acapulco. And, apparently the nephew botched that because Cannon was on the scene and the nephew didn't dump the gun near her window. And then they had another scene at the very end where they somehow got her to put her hands on the gun, trying to get her fingerprints on the gun. Like she was the one who killed, This hotel worker outside her home. And of course Cannon was there during both scenes, of course, to break the whole thing up and cause a happy ending. and then of course at that point the nephew has gone crazy. Wanting this fortune and this price. And, he grabbed onto Charlotte and of course, cannon shows up just at the right time and shoots the nephew and, at the end Cannon as a lot of. Shows back in the day, they tried to give a moral to the story and even though he winds up going back and talking to the father, they may be able to implicate you with conspiracy and trying to knock people off, frame people for a murder and you may have enough money to buy yourself out of it, but ultimately it's the father who is the real killer. because he deals with the psychological, motivations to other people. he obviously psychologically made the nephew Andres go crazy. Apparently he did that as well for his son, Michael. he was disappointed that Michael married Charlotte. because the father didn't trust Charlotte, but apparently Michael also, as it was reeled, at one point in the show, he had a gay lover who was a basketball player whose last name happened to be Carson. And somehow or another, they both got into women after that and there was no chance of them getting back together. And so there was some kind of quarrel between Michael and Charlotte in Acapulco. And then there was also a quarrel between. Michael and his former gay lover Carson. nobody could satisfy each other at the time, and apparently that, and his trouble with his father is why he jumped. So that may be a little bit of a confusing explanation for it. one other note I wanted to point out is, Also starring in this show as Charlotte's agent is a guy named Frank er, or a letter, I don't know how you pronounce it, but, was known for being in Priscilla's third threes company episode called Professor Jack, which is full of double entendres and misunderstandings. I think Terry was about to move out in that episode, in fact. but I thought that was interesting to see him there. Overall, it was a very good show. I would recommend it, checking it out. I give the show an A minus. give Priscilla probably a B minus. You know, this was one of her first acting gigs. I was satisfied watching the show and I think you would be too. Anyway, so let me take one more break and then I'm going to get into one last story for you. So stay tuned. So the last story I wanted to tell you, obviously I want to grow this podcast. I'd really like for it to become something big and I don't want to. Beat you over the head with this again, But always love your feedback and welcome your feedback and I hope that you'll provide that for me. there's obviously other techniques for growing it as well. Like I would like to be a guest on some other podcasts would be a great way to do it. And there's also Facebook pages for classic TV shows that I can join. And comment in them and make some connections that way. And I just wanted to tell you a story that illustrates the potential with that. But also some of the pitfalls with that, last week I also, talked a little bit about Twitter and some of the drawbacks of social media. you got a lot of great potential there to connect and meet other people, but then you've also got, a lot of cons and things don't always go as they want to. Facebook, of course, has been known as well as Twitter, maybe some others of censoring certain people. And I don't think it's always, something that comes from the top. I think it may actually come from some of these groups for reasons that I am not sure about. But back in May when I was still very new to social media, I think I've been on there about three months now. I joined a love boat. Facebook group, where they talk about old love boat shows and the series and what have you. And there was a guy who posed a question. let me give you a little backdrop here. Everybody who was on the main cast of Three's company. I'm sure there's some other shows that were like this as well. Every single one of them appeared on the Love Boat at least once, and of course several of them, multiple times. Priscilla was on there three times. and I also will point out that they had everybody listed except Anne Wedgworth, who was in nine episodes as an older neighbor. I believe that was in season four. They did not include her for some reason, but I know that she was in at least one love boat episode as well. the question that was posed was, which of these stars from three's company do you think had the best episode ever on the love boat? And of course, me being me. I said, I think Priscilla had the best episode. And of her three, I would say I really enjoyed the second one. it was very amusing and not particularly dramatic. that was the one where she worked for a rival princess captain that was played by Ted Knight. And, in fact she played a Swedish woman. I think fell in love. Perhaps with Tom Bosley and then with Doc, and hopefully we'll review that one pretty soon. but I made the comment that's my favorite episode. And then I put my comment in and they gave me some credit, for making my first comment on the side, congratulations But then I soon looked for my comment back in the thread, and it wasn't there anymore, and I never said anything. Political or social or controversial in the least. I just made my opinion and I suspect that it was the runners of that side who actually took down my comet for some reason. I don't know why that was. Maybe the survey was over, or maybe they had a weird bias against Priscilla. even though Priscilla has a tremendous number of fans, actually, it may not be as many as Suzanne's. I'm not really sure, but I have nothing against Suzanne playing Chrissy. She played a very fine, Chrissy. So the point of the story is if that's not amusing, at least, it gives you some illustration of the pitfalls of just trying to join groups, giving honest and harmless opinions about what you think about a particular question that was posed. and granted it, takes nothing away from the other actors that were on the show. I think Jenna Lee Harrison was on at least four times. I wanna say Richard Klein was on that much as well. A lot of memorable episodes. I haven't even seen all of them. I'm also a big fan of the Love boat, but, I don't really know what happened there, but it is one of the pitfalls of trying to connect with people and, make connections in the social media world to where you can go out there and get your name out there. And so that's one of the big difficulties that I'm having right now. You know, haven't gotten on any of the other podcasts to promote things, but that's basically where I'm at with this episode. this show at this point, Some of the metrics have been going down and I have some suspicion as to why that might be, but I don't have a real concrete idea as to why that is. So, that's why I really appreciate your feedback on the show right now. I have ways that you can contact me in the show notes and I'm really glad and grateful that you've stopped by One more time this week. I really look forward to doing this with you. I put a lot of effort into it. And, before we go here today, I wanna say one more time, just continue to tell your friends and family about me. hit subscribe. Hit download. just tell him what kind of. kind of show I have here, what kind of party I have here. I would really appreciate that. So I'm gonna wrap it up a little early today. It's not too much earlier, and sign off. We'll see you again next week. Thank you for joining us. See you then. The theme song is called retro funk. Bye soul prod music and can be found@pixabay.com.