Robin Williams' First Starring Role

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Poopdeck Pappy (Ray Walston): Children. They cry at you when they're young, they yell at you when they're older, they borrows from you when they's middle–aged, and they leave you alone to die — without even paying you back.

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I remember watching Popeye cartoons when I was a child, but I don't think those cartoons ever told the story of how Popeye came to be in the coastal town of Sweethaven or how he met his future bride Olive Oyl. So I never knew how that happened — until the movie "Popeye" was released on this date in 1980.

Popeye was one of my favorites when I was a little boy. In fact, there was a time — when I was probably 4 or 5 — when I really believed that my muscles would grow like Popeye's if I ate my spinach. And I remember eating spinach and then flexing my muscles, and my mother would ooh and ahhh — not because my muscles really grew but probably because I was eating at least one of my vegetables. Like all mothers, she liked that idea.

Like most kids, I suppose, I didn't care for vegetables. I love spinach today — and not because I think it will make my muscles grow, either. I just honestly like it. But I can't eat spinach, even today, without thinking of Popeye. He has had a permanent influence on my life.

For those of us who grew up with Popeye, the movie was a treat. In his first starring role in a movie, Robin Williams played Popeye, which was something I struggled with before I saw the movie. In hindsight, I have to say it was the right role for him at the time. He was in his Mork from Ork period, arguably the most outlandish, off the wall phase of his career — and the role of Popeye gave him an opportunity to really spread his creative wings.

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I thought the casting of Shelley Duvall as Olive Oyl was positively inspired. Since the movie's debut 35 years ago, I have heard many people say that Olive Oyl was the role Duvall was born to play. I don't know if I would take it to that extreme, but I do think Duvall was the only actress in 1980 who could have been a plausible Olive Oyl.

Ray Walston, who was probably best known for his sitcom My Favorite Martian, was a little over the top as Poopdeck Pappy, Popeye's long–lost father, but he was only in the movie in its last half hour.

At the time I recall reading reviews of the movie that were rather lukewarm, but critic Roger Ebert said it was "lots of fun," and I agreed.

Ebert was one of those critics who said Duvall was born to be Olive Oyl. As I said earlier, I'm not sure I would go quite that far, but I can't argue with Ebert on this: "She brings to Olive a certain ... dignity, you might say. She's not lightly scorned, and although she may tear apart a room in an unsuccessful attempt to open the curtains, she is fearless in the face of her terrifying fiancé, Bluto."

I guess "Popeye" came along at the right time for me. John Lennon had been shot and killed only a few days before, and I badly needed something like "Popeye," a reassuring reminder of my childhood.

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Calling the comic strip (which of course was where Popeye began) "one of the most artificial and limiting of art forms," Ebert acknowledged that director Robert Altman's movie "suggests that it is possible to take the broad strokes of a comic strip and turn them into sophisticated entertainment. What's needed is the right attitude toward the material."

As I recall, Harry Nilsson's score was pretty well received, as it should have been. As Ebert wrote, the songs "fit into all of this quite effortlessly. Instead of having everything come to a halt for the musical set pieces, Altman stitches them into the fabric. Robin Williams sings Popeye's anthem, 'I Yam What I Yam' with a growling old sea dog's stubbornness. Bluto's 'I'm Mean' has an undeniable conviction, and so does Olive Oyl's song to Bluto, 'He's Large.'"

Nilsson's music was dripping with irony, which may well have been lost on younger viewers.

"Popeye" got a bad rap from the critics of the day. It was better than many thought and deserves to be seen again through fresh eyes.

'M*A*S*H' Laid Foundation for TV Series

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"This isn't a hospital, it's an insane asylum!"

Major Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan (Sally Kellerman)

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Forty–five years ago, it was fashionable to ridicule the armed services. Mostly in the movies. TV still had a certain reverence for the establishment in those days, but it was mostly in movies.

To be fair, the military was an easy target. The mismanaged Vietnam War had already forced a president to voluntarily withdraw from a campaign for re–election four years after winning the presidency by an historic margin. Things were going so badly for the United States in Southeast Asia that Walter Cronkite, the most trusted man in America, "Uncle Walter" to millions, made a rare editorial comment during one of his newscasts that the war effort was a lost cause. I knew many people who were skeptical of their government and the media, but they trusted Cronkite. I couldn't tell you how many times I heard, when I was a child, someone say, "If Cronkite says it, you can take it to the bank."

At times, it was true that the military leadership resembled the Keystone Kops.

But I guess the military has frequently been an easy target. Forty–five years ago today, the movie "M*A*S*H," which was adapted from a best–selling novel by Richard Hooker, directed by Robert Altman and later inspired a long–running TV series, made its debut. Its target was the Korean War.

If all you know of "M*A*S*H" is the episodes of the TV series that you've seen, you may want to adjust your thinking a bit before watching the movie. You'll recognize the characters — Hawkeye, Hot Lips, Radar — but the actors who played them (except for Radar) were nowhere to be seen on the TV screen.

In that sense, I suppose, it will be like a new experience. And, in truth, I guess it is a new experience. A different one, anyway. The TV series was great in part because it didn't try to do the work of a movie in 30 minutes. And the movie was great in part because it didn't try to be like a TV episode.

That seems so simple, but if you try to pack too much into a half–hour sitcom or too little into a 90–minute movie, you're setting yourself up for failure.

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Even so, film critic Roger Ebert wrote that "M*A*S*H" the movie worked because "it's so desperate. ... The surgeons work rapidly and with a gory detachment, sawing off legs and tying up arteries, and making their work possible by pretending they don't care. And when they are at last out of the operating tent, they devote their lives to remaining sane."

I never really thought of it that way, but I guess there is a lot of truth in that. There was more of a sense of desperation in the movie than there was in the TV series. The surgeons still had a flippant attitude, Hot Lips and Frank still embodied the military establishment, but both seemed more extreme in the movie than the TV series. Perhaps that was because the movie, having received an R rating, was shown to an audience that was assumed to be mature enough to handle the material. On TV, anyone of any age could be watching.

So things were toned down on TV. I suppose that was kind of problematic for the Frank–and–Hot–Lips affair.

As far as Hot Lips and Frank were concerned, their movie characters were similar to yet different from their TV characters. They were gung–ho in the TV series, but that really was mild compared to the movie. And their sexual relationship really had to be muted for the small screen — implied far more than it was actually shown.

They really were fighting a different war in the movie. And their holier–than–thou attitudes came through loud and clear.

"I wonder how such a degenerated person ever reached a position of authority in the Army Medical Corps," Hot Lips (Sally Kellerman) remarked at one point about Hawkeye (Donald Sutherland).

"He was drafted," replied Father Mulcahy (René Auberjonois).

For his part, Frank's religious zealotry was only hinted at in the TV series compared to his extremely overt religious behavior in the movie. The first time he was seen, Frank was teaching one of the mess hall boys how to read — using his Bible.

The next time he was seen, he was kneeling in front of his cot, reciting the Lord's Prayer, which he amended to include requests for God's blessing on the fighting men, the commanders in the field and the commander–in–chief.

"Frank, were you on this religious kick at home," Hawkeye asked, "or did you you crack up over here?"

I guess the TV series proceeded as if the movie never existed — or as if it was intended to function independently of the big–screen story. Otherwise, someone would have noticed that Frank Burns (Robert Duvall in the movie, Larry Linville in the TV series) was taken away in a straitjacket after punching Hawkeye in the movie, never to be seen again — until he showed up in the TV series. No one, not even Hot Lips, ever asked him about his time in custody.

You know, I guess Ebert wasn't far off the mark when he wrote of the frantic pace of the movie. In 1970, the makers of the movie most likely had no idea their movie would inspire a long–running TV series so the movie tried to tell viewers everything about those characters in a couple of hours — or, at least, everything that the original book told readers about them.

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The makers of the hugely successful TV series expected that the bulk of their audience would know the inside jokes about everyone, even though the TV cast was almost entirely made up of people who did not appear in the movie.

A few of the characters in the TV series — notably Corporal Klinger — were nowhere to be found in the movie. He was created for the TV audience.

Ring Lardner, Jr. won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Taking Short Cuts to the Truth

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"Short Cuts," which premiered 20 years ago today, is one of my favorite movies of the 1990s, in large part because it combines the work of two people (writer Raymond Carver and filmmaker Robert Altman) I admire — not to mention the talents of an all–star cast.

Several of Carver's short stories were woven together in a narrative about roughly two dozen southern Californians whose lives intersect in often random ways before, during and after an earthquake.

As I say, the links between the stories are often random — and maintaining them is tenuous at best — but they are plausible enough to give some credibility to some already credible (if selfish) human foibles.

In one subplot, Andie MacDowell and Bruce Davison play the parents of a young boy who is about to have a birthday. His mother orders a special cake that requires a lot of extra work on the part of the baker (Lyle Lovett).

But the cake isn't picked up, and the baker, seething with rage, begins making harassing phone calls to the home. He doesn't realize that the reason the cake wasn't picked up is that the young boy for whom it was intended was hit by a car and lapsed into a coma.

He also doesn't know that Lily Tomlin, distracted by her problems with husband Tom Waits, was the one who struck the boy. She offered to take him for treatment, but, having been instructed by his mother not to take rides from strangers, he declined, insisting that he wasn't hurt, and walked home, unaware of how seriously injured he really was.

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The boy eventually dies, and the drama in the hospital set the stage for grandfather Jack Lemmon's monologue on fidelity, which just might have been the greatest dramatic performance in a career that included "Days of Wine and Roses."

In another subplot, three friends (Fred Ward, Buck Henry and Huey Lewis) go on a fishing trip and discover the body of a woman in the creek. They decide not to report their finding until the weekend is over — so as not to disrupt their plans.

In yet another, a new mother (Jennifer Jason Leigh) earns money by performing phone sex. Her husband, Chris Penn, doesn't like it, but he knows they can use the money.

Sex, of course, is a recurring theme. Amateur painter Julianne Moore and and her husband, played by Matthew Modine, prior to the arrival of some dinner guests, discuss for the first time her infidelity with another guest at a party a few years earlier.

The audience can only imagine, from what the two say to each other, what happened. Moore and the other guest were chosen to go get more liquor for the party but found that it was too late at night and most of the stores were closed. Modine's suspicions were aroused when the two were gone so long. Turned out the guest had propositioned Moore and, in an inebriated state, she accepted.

Apparently a simmering yet previously unexpressed issue for Modine, Moore is startled when he brings it up and spills her drink on her skirt. She takes off the skirt and tries to remove the stain, exposing the fact that she is wearing no underwear.

The husband observes it and, introducing yet another previously unexpressed (and unresolved) issue into the conversation, accuses her of trying to be like the subjects in her paintings, who always seem to be naked.

She ultimately confesses to him, but she attempts to excuse her infidelity by pointing out that she was intoxicated — and the man did not ejaculate.

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These were short stories originally, not one long novel, but I often wondered if Carver regarded them as parts of a whole. He died about five years before "Short Cuts" was released, and I don't know if he ever had a hand in the planning of the movie — or if that really began after he died.

It's just one of those things I wonder about, and there is no — excuse the pun — short cut to the answer.

'Bobby' Tried to Do Too Much

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I've known for a long time that Martin Sheen is a talented guy.

And he has fathered a bunch of talented children.

So it really is unfortunate that perhaps the least talented of the group, his son Charlie, has been the one who has been getting most of the attention lately.

It wasn't that way five years ago.

On this day in 2006, Charlie's older brother, Emilio Estevez, was the center of attention. He had written and directed a movie about the day that Robert Kennedy was assassinated called "Bobby." You can believe me when I say it was an ambitious undertaking.

Even though it was about a real event, it was a fictional story with an ensemble cast — not unlike the style one often sees in the works of Robert Altman, although Altman doesn't typically use actual events as the backdrops for his movies — and there were times, frankly, when I felt the story was a bit bogged down by all the characters and subplots that viewers had to follow.

Perhaps it should have been more like "Shampoo," a successful movie from the mid–1970s that used the contentious 1968 presidential election as its backdrop — fewer characters with, consequently, fewer plot lines.

It also reminded me, in some ways, of Oliver Stone's "JFK," which made its debut 15 years earlier. I had that sensation early in the movie.

If you've seen "JFK," you know that it opens with period film footage of President Kennedy while President Eisenhower's famous warning about the "military–industrial complex" was played in the background. In "Bobby," archival footage was seen while recordings of Robert Kennedy giving speeches — his announcement of his candidacy for president, his speech the night Martin Luther King was assassinated — played in the background, and I couldn't help wondering if Stone's film had inspired "Bobby," to any extent.

Perhaps Estevez was inspired by both Stone and Altman.

And maybe the Altman approach was necessary, given the many conflicts in American society at that time. But I felt that "Bobby" became top–heavy with all the individual story lines — not, it can be plausibly argued, unlike life.

On the morning of September 11, for example, everyone was busy with his or her own life — until airplanes were hijacked and crashed into buildings. Then people stopped what they were doing, and everyone's attention was riveted to the same thing.

It is the same with any other big event in modern times. The technological advances of the 20th century have that power over us — to force us to re–focus on a dime. The things we were doing or that demanded our immediate attention didn't go away. They just got put on the shelf.

It was an admirable effort, though, and it was one in which Estevez was able to enlist the assistance of his distinguished father (who played a campaign donor married to Helen Hunt). The cast also included Anthony Hopkins, Laurence Fishburne, Harry Belafonte, Christian Slater, Sharon Stone, Demi Moore and others.

My advice would have been to pare it down a little. One or two of the subplots could have been discarded, allowing the film to focus more on the unifying event. Besides, the film already had plenty of star power.

Father and son share a high regard for Robert F. Kennedy — even though Estevez, like me, was only a child when Kennedy was killed. He may have relied, to an extent, on his memories of that time, but he was barely 6 when Kennedy was assassinated so his memories can't be that great. My guess is that most of what he knows of that time is actually what he has been told by others.

But be that as it may ...

In spite of its drawbacks, "Bobby" told a tale of a time that young Americans have never known and many older Americans seem to have forgotten. And perhaps, as I say, so many characters were needed to provide a vivid portrait of that time in American history.

It effectively re–created a period when events seemed to be spiraling out of control. With an increasingly unpopular war dominating the headlines and a new generation of leaders being gunned down on what appeared to be a regular basis, there was an unmistakable sense that no one was in charge.

(The closest example I can think of in modern times was the waning months of the George W. Bush administration.)

"Bobby" did tend, as I say, to get bogged down by the many subplots — which I concluded, even before I had completed my first viewing of the movie, were designed to illustrate the many levels on which the great divide existed.

There was a racial divide, as illustrated by the apparently racist attitude of the kitchen manager (Christian Slater) who wouldn't permit his minority employees to take time off to vote.

There was a gender divide. Sometimes it was shown in heroic and self–sacrificing stories, such as the one in which a young girl (Lindsay Lohan) was marrying a friend (Elijah Wood) to keep him from going to Vietnam. Reportedly, that was based on a true story — Estevez said a woman told him, while he was writing the movie, that she actually married two friends for that purpose.

Other times, it was much more self–serving, even surprisingly so. At points, it gave the appearance of a soap opera.

The hotel manager (William H. Macy) was cheating on his aging but still attractive wife (Sharon Stone) with a young hotel switchboard operator (Heather Graham). Sheen's middle–aged campaign donor and his much younger wife struggled to overcome the issues in their marriage. Estevez himself played the part of the husband/manager of a boozy lounge singer (Demi Moore) intent on launching a comeback of sorts in Las Vegas.

There was the alienation of the young — the "never trust anyone over 30" crowd — who sought answers to problems from their contemporaries rather than older authority figures. In the 1960s, such answers were often said to be found through drug use, and two campaign workers (Brian Geraghty and Shia LaBeouf) were seen experimenting with acid with the help of a drug dealer (Ashton Kutcher).

They were all going about their lives — until the climactic moment when Kennedy was shot — and the audience could see all the characters gathered in one place, some of whom were injured, others were tending to their wounds, overcoming their differences — not unlike the many stories that were told of the heroic deeds that took place in the Twin Towers or the Pentagon or aboard Flight 93.

Above it all could be heard the inspirational words spoken by Bobby Kennedy after Martin Luther King's murder — made all the more poignant by the realization that Kennedy himself would die a violent death only two months later.

It was clear that Estevez had a passion for his subject. Perhaps he learned from "Bobby" that it's true what they say.

Less is more.