Bad Ideas in Television: Dusty’s Trail

Dusty’s Trail was a short-lived American sitcom that staggered through the 1973-74 TV season. Bob Denver played Dusty, the sidekick to a wagon-train leader on a journey across the Old West. When Dusty’s group is separated from the rest of the wagon train, he and his fellow castaways must struggle to survive, but in a goofy way.

The characters tagging along were a bit familiar: A rich man and his wife, a showgirl, an intellectual and a farmer’s daughter. Here, see for yourself:

I have very, very dim memories of this, because I think it was advertised in the comics I would have been reading around that time. Now that I’ve seen a bit of it, I know why it failed. It just isn’t funny, and it’s trying too hard to be Gilligan’s Island when it just couldn’t. Gilligan’s Island worked because Denver could play off the rest of the cast; this ensemble was weaker and his schtick just became tiresome and annoying.

Both shows were created by Sherwood Schwartz, so you can’t call this plagiarism. It’s one thing to adapt a popular idea — this was at a time when Gilligan’s Island reruns were dominating daytime TV — but it’s another to be so blatant about it. Schwartz went too far, became too derivative, and the show died as a result.

Gilligan’s Island had a strange kind of magic. It couldn’t work twice, and it didn’t.

What’s In A Name? Ask Louis Ferreira

If you’re Canadian, you know this face. This is Justin Louis, a Canadian actor who has starred in all kinds of things we remember. He was Victor Torres (aka Victor Malarek, nudge nudge wink wink) in the 1991 TV series Urban Angel. He was Pollock on 1-800-Missing, which we tend to apologize for a lot. All in all, he has appeared on more television shows than you’ve probably ever seen. It’s quite a career, and it’s a good one; he’s a decent actor, and has a reputation as being a real professional.

He’s currently headlining the new series Stargate Universe. But you won’t find his name in the credits. Instead, you will see, after lead Robert Carlyle, the name Louis Ferreira. Who’s that? It’s Justin Louis. He’s using his real name.

Why now? Why make that change 20 years into a successful career?

This has happened before. The character actor Ethan Embry used to be known as Ethan Randall, which is his real name, but he was in a movie with Al Bundy and clearly saw the writing on the wall. And a lot of other famous actors have changed their names, but that was a sign of the times. It used to be believed that an ethnic-sounding name was a hindrance in Hollywood. Albert Brooks was born Albert Einstein (you can see the issue there). Bob Hope was born Leslie Hope (Leslie was considered a lame name at the time). Boris Karloff grew up as Bill Pratt. And Charlie Sheen is really Carlos Irwin Estevez. So these folks changed their names professionally.

• Tangent: “Johnny Depp” is his real name. I always assumed it was phony. Meanwhile, Justin Louis was considered as Depp’s replacement on the Vancouver-shot 21 Jump Street back around 1990. Small world, eh?

Stars change their names all the time. Changing them back is rare. I can think of only a few other examples of this happening. And never after a long career like Justin has had. I mean Louis.

It doesn’t change my opinion of him. I’ve always liked his work; I loved the short-lived Urban Angel, because I was a young newspaper reporter at the time and I could relate, a bit, to a series about a crimefighting journalist. And I think I saw Battery Park, a U.S. show about New York cops, and thought it was pretty good, too. I’m liking Stargate Universe, and I think Louis is doing good work.

I just wonder about that name change. Was he trying to disguise his Portuguese roots? Consider this: his co-stars on Urban Angel included Vittorio Rossi, Vlasta Vrana, Arthur Grosser, Jack Langedijk and Jocelyne Zucco. Nary a WASP to be seen. Maybe he had other reasons. Maybe he just liked the way “Justin” sounded.

Hey, you know what? He’s had a solid career, but he’s never been a household name. So why not go with a new name now? Why not be honest about your name, Louis? It sounds better, anyway. I think I take people more seriously when I know they haven’t changed their name.

Oh, that got me thinking. Okay, I’m going back to my real name, as of now. Few of you know this, but I operate under a variety of pseudonyms. My real name is Sam Chico. Deal with it.

V

Click here to see the new V.

This is the first eight minutes of ABC’s new take on the classic V. It was put online, officially and above-board, as part of the network’s blitz of marketing for this new series, which premieres Tuesday night (Nov. 3).

I like what I see. There’s enough of the 80s original to please me and other decades-long fans of the concept, but it has been tweaked and sparked for a 21st-century post-9/11 audience. I particularly like the little nod-wink to Independence Day that’s tucked away in there. Cast-wise, I can say so far, so good; Elizabeth Mitchell was aces on Lost over the past three years, and that guy from The 4400 looks good in a priest’s collar. I have never been sure what to make of Scott Wolf, though; he’s always looked and acted a little too much like the love child of Michael J. Fox and Tom Cruise for my tastes.

I devoured the original V miniseries, and its followup a year later. I wasn’t as crazy about the ensuing series, because a premise like this can run out of steam pretty quickly. The 80s ongoing series, which had a weird kind of Dallas opening credits sequence, was just another action show, really. I have the comics, too, and they’re actually better than the TV series. Think about that for a second: I have the V comic books. Feel free to steal my lunch money.

There’s an opportunity here to take the lessons learned in long-form serial TV — Lost, 24, Heroes — and apply them to the V concept. I hope that’s what happens. So far, I can say this new version of V seems taut and thrilling, but that’s just based on eight minutes. If the producers can’t find a way to sustain that power without it turning into fight-the-Visitor-of-the-week, I can’t see this lasting.

But like I said: take a lesson from Lost. Originally described as a show about people stranded on a desert island, Lost became much, much more than that. V is described as “aliens land on Earth.” Been there, done that. Let’s hope the new V offers us more.

Hinterland Who’s Who: The Beaver

If you’re Canadian, you know these. They played in the background while you ran to the bathroom during commercial breaks on The Beachcombers.

I’ll show you some more some other time, but I have to go. Relic is about to steal Nick’s logs!

How Manly Am I?

I just found this quiz online, and decided to take it. For those of you playing at home, I have been accused of being not very manly. Let’s find out:

1. Have you seen the movies Slap Shot, Red Dawn, Weird Science, Clerks, Lost Boys, or High Plains Drifter in any combined order a total of 20 times? All of them more than five times each, so yes. How is Clerks a manly movie? Weird Science?

2. Do you ever find yourself saying “Go get your f@#king shine box” at the most inappropriate times? I have never said that. Or heard it.

3. Have you smoked a cigar during a game of Texas Hold ‘Em anytime in the past 2 weeks? No. I have not held any Texans.

4. Do you know who the team with the most victories in Monday Night Football history is? If you give me a minute to Google it, then yes.

5. Do you laugh aloud every time the giant rack of ribs flips the Flintstones car in the final credits? I laugh at every minute of the Flintstones.

6. Have you ever kissed the Stanley Cup? Yes. And more.

7. Have you ever drank Budweiser from an ashtray, shoe, or a rubber? How is this even a question someone would ask?

8. Do you religiously head bang to the ending of Bohemian Rhapsody? I bang my head to everything. I bang my head to the Skype ring tone.

9. Do you have a favorite Motorhead song? Over Your Shoulder, followed by Ace of Spades, followed by We Are The Road Crew.

10. Have you ever been drilled in the cubes with a street hockey ball? More times than I can count. I’m Canadian. But they ain’t cubes. Not anymore.

11. Do you find Paris Hilton a brutally skanky, bizarre oddity, yet you’d hit it just the same? Yes and no.

12. Are you a normal law abiding good citizen, yet you get off on anyone who is pummeled, maimed, strangled, curbed, or cut up into pieces on the Sopranos? I have never seen the Sopranos. I liked watching Ben beat Sawyer up, though. Does that count?

13. Do you have any sorrow whatsoever for Bill Buckner? Is that the guy who replaced Richard Dean Anderson on Stargate SG-1?

14. Would you stop for a sack of White Castle Sliders even though you were on your way to your mom’s for Thanksgiving dinner? No, because we don’t have White Castle in Canada. But I did go to KFC in the middle of a wedding reception at the club where they filmed Happy Gilmore, only to be pissed off later when the B.C. salmon steak dinner was awesome, and I was full of KFC.

15. Have you ever given nicknames to any of your farts? Who thought these questions up? My six-year-old?

16. Do scenes of John Travolta dressed in drag in the movie Hairspray give you convulsions or seizures? I didn’t see Hairspray because I am a manly man.

17. Have you ever spent more than 30 minutes trying to delete pop-up windows during a random porn surf? No, but I did have to explain to a wife once — forget which one — that Netscape Communicator came pre-loaded with singles websites, and I didn’t bookmark them.

18. Three Stooges episode or Obama / Clinton debate? Stooges. STOOGES. In other words, both.

19. Does the thought of having a Corvette, a Harley, and a Hummer in your driveway make you giddy? Yes, yes and no. Hummers are for guys with little weenies who can’t accept the awesomeness of minivans.

20. Do you own more than three humidors? Sure. I use them to store my comics.

21. Do you soil yourself each time Col. Jessup barks “YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH?” If you soil yourself at that point, you have bigger issues than whether you’re a manly man.

22. When flipping through TV channels, do you pause each and every time on the Spanish station while trying to convince your significant other that it’s for educational purposes? I’m Canadian. We have the French channel. Same thing, though.

23. What do you think is heavier: Trying to figure out the meaning of life or Rosie O’donnell’s lunch bag? This quiz just dated itself.

24. Have you ever watched Das Boot and felt bad for the Germans? Sure. But I feel bad for the Germans pretty much daily.

25. Should cheeseburgers have their own box in the food pyramid? Yes. Yes, yes, yes and this quiz just earned its keep.

26. Do you wish you could be Mikey from American Chopper for just one day? I don’t know what this question means.

27. Do you find it to be offensive when a woman displays major rack then covers up when you stare? Stare at what? Shelving?

28. Do you still get awkwardly tense each time you hear Tommy DeVito ask, “What do you mean, I’m funny?…You mean the way I talk?…What’s funny about it?…What the f@#k is so funny about me? Tell me?” Yeah, I love that scene. I once got a Rod Stewart impersonator to do that scene with me.

29. Do you feel Harvey Fierstein should be held accountable for the gerbil shortage in French Guiana? I think whoever wrote this quiz wanted to ask if anyone wanted to feel Harvey Fierstein. In other words, he wanted to feel Harvey Fierstein.

30. Bill & Ted, Harold & Kumar, or Jay and Silent Bob? J&SB all the way.

31. If it was ok with your significant other, would War Pigs be your wedding song? No. It would be Iron Man.

32. Did you swear like a psycho drunken sailor and throw shit at your TV when the screen went to black during the Sopranos finale? I was busy having a life, thanks. Hey, my mother and her wife loved the Sopranos.

33. If Dr. Phil, Simon Cowell, and David Spade were killed in a mine shaft explosion would your immediate response would be, “huh, looks like rain today.” Yeah, actually. Could you throw in that guy from the Slap Chop?

34. Do you admit to drinking a glasses of E. coli laden raw eggs after you saw ROCKY for the first time? I probably had chocolate milk. I was a kid.

35. Who’s on first? Batman.

Final score: Sorry, I was using my power drill to trim my moustache, and lost count.

Where The Wild Things Are: A Statement From The Bull

WEATHER STATION 1 EXCLUSIVE, MINOR SPOILERS

The following is the text of a presentation made to assembled media representatives on October 27, 2009 by The Bull, one of the cast members of the new film Where The Wild Things Are, in response to recent media coverage.

“Ladies and gentlemen and that guy back there — what are you, a turtle with wings? — I would like to thank you for coming to this press conference on such short notice. My name is The Bull, and you may have seen me in the new film Where The Wild Things Are, or in the book of the same name, or in toy form, currently available at quality retailers near you.

“I stand before you today as a representative of the Wild Things and of the film’s cast and crew. We have learned of recent statements made by an old friend, statements that may serve to cast this film in a negative light. It falls upon my shoulders to address these concerns.

Jeff

“You may have read some of the coverage of our old friend’s Jeff’s claims that he was shut out of the film. Nothing could be further from the truth. Jeff was a crucial part of our original modelling sessions nearly 50 years ago, and he remains a key member of the Wild Things family. His exclusion from the film was based solely on his own actions.

“Some of you may know that an attempt was made to create an film version of our story in the 1980s. Test footage (see below — editor) was created, and we were all called in as consultants and to help develop the look of the film. During this period, Jeff was going through a difficult breakup with Heather Locklear and had begun hitting the bottle pretty ferociously. We weren’t sure where he was living. I, myself, received several late-night phone calls from him, stripper music in the background, him begging for a loan.

“Later, we learned he had landed a role in a pilot, but by the time it aired, he had been replaced by Mr. T, and The A-Team made television history. Jeff’s behaviour became more and more erratic. He was dropped from a lot of the merchandising programs, which is why you rarely see him in sticker books.

“He now claims that nobody contacted him about the new film. On the contrary, every effort was made to reach out to him, but he refused to return phone calls and answered emails with strange rants about Hillary Clinton being an alien.

“We, the Wild Things, stand behind our film, and we stand behind our friend Jeff, should he choose to return to the fold. That may take some changes on his part, but we have faith in him. In the meantime, Where The Wild Things Are is playing at a theatre near you. Thank you for your time. Questions?”

• Question: “A lot of people are complaining that this movie is too different from the book.”
• Bull: “Of course they are, and of course it is. This is a full-length movie. The book is very short. Changes had to be made. People will always complain about these things, but we had faith in the ability of our director to take the tiny gem that was Maurice Sendak’s book and cultivate it into a huge sparkling jewel, and he did that.”
• Question: “You don’t say much in the film, yet today you’re very outspoken. Why is that?”
• Bull: “That’s called acting. I also wear clothes in real life.”
• Question: “I saw the movie and didn’t get it. Why would you make a movie that’s confusing for adults and scary for kids?”
• Bull: “You have to go back to the source material. Maurice Sendak wrote the original book as an exploration of a child’s fantasy of independence. He gave children a taste of adult life, and told them they would find it wanting. When Spike Jonze set out to make this film, he chose to keep that message, that motif, but expand on it by also reminding adults what it’s like to be a child. Children yearn to grow up, and adults yearn to be young again. It’s a harsh fact that we are never content with what we have, and this film was an attempt to not only capture that, but prove it.”
• Spike Jonze: “Yeah.”
• Question: “Are you saying this whole thing is story about childhood?”
• Bull: “Absolutely. The Wild Things are children. They’re the playground archetypes, and Max is the new kid in town. Go back to the first scene, where his sister tells him to go play with his friends, and watch Max’s face. That’s the story there. And later, when Juliet chastises him for mimicking her, we’re reminded that the Wild Things see Max as their parental figure. This helps him understand his mother’s position back in the real world.”
• Question: “What does Weathereye think? Enquiring minds want to know.
• Bull: “He loved it. He took his kids and they were all caught up in its magic. He thought it had a few slow parts that younger kids might not get, but the action scenes were spaced perfectly and kept children’s attention while delivering the message I was talking about earlier. In fact, Weathereye texted me right after he saw it and said it was one of the best films of the year, and also that he likes my horns.”
• Question: “This all sounds pretty heady for a movie that also includes a dirt-clod fight and a talking goat. Aren’t you worried people won’t take it seriously?”
• Bull: “The trailer had music by The Arcade Fire for a reason, you know. To show we’re serious.”

… Jeff’s side of things …