Photograph by Michael Amsler

Bucking Authority

Comedian Tom Smothers on censorship and the squandering of free speech

Writer David Templeton takes interesting people to interesting movies in his ongoing quest for the ultimate post-film conversation. This column is not a review; rather, it’s a freewheeling, tangential discussion of life, alternative ideas, and popular culture.

TOM SMOTHERS is annoyed. And he appears to be enjoying it. We’ve just seen an afternoon matinee of Outside Providence, a charming, funny little coming-of-age story in which the teenage protagonists swear like angry sailors and smoke more pot than a whole convention of California asthma sufferers. Set in the early ’70s, Outside–written by Peter and Bobby Farrelly (of There’s Something about Mary fame)–is a profanity-fueled homage to recreational authority bashing; it’s The Catcher in the Rye for stoners.

“It’s basically one pot-smoking scene after another,” pronounces an elegantly goateed Smothers, eager to offer his energetic critique. “And I’m not square on that subject, but it got to be so redundant.”

As we amble from the theater and set our trajectory toward the nearest cup of coffee, Smothers–the 62-year-old, yo-yo-twirling, elder half of the infamous Smothers Brothers comedy duo–concedes that he is not the film’s target audience.

“I was never a stoner in high school–so I can’t identify with all that pubescent drug stuff,” he says. “I didn’t get high until I was 21.”

That would have been around 1958, just before Tom and his comic bass-playing brother, Dick Smothers, hit it big with a string of irreverent comedy albums. Their success as recording stars eventually led to television. After a goofy 1965 sitcom–with Tom playing an inept guardian angel–the brothers hit their stride in 1967 with The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. An immediate, top-rated, prime-time sensation on CBS, the variety show quickly became a major censorship battleground, as the Smothers’ increasingly progressive political views–they were outspoken opponents of the Vietnam War, for one thing–threw the network’s censors into overtime.

THE BROTHERS RESISTED all attempts at censorship, balking loudly when CBS pulled co-star Pat Paulsen’s mock presidential campaign speeches–“If nominated, I will not run. If elected, I will not serve”–and when the censor clipped the remarks of singer Joan Baez. (While she was dedicating a song to her then-husband and convicted draft resister David Harris–she straightforwardly explained that he was about to serve a two-year prison term for resisting the Vietnam draft. CBS cut Baez’s speech right after the word prison, denying the public her explanation of why her husband was jail-bound.)

The controversial show finally was canceled, still performing in the Top 10, during the summer of 1969. Other TV shows soon followed (on other networks) for the Smothers, and the duo has enjoyed a tremendously fruitful touring career. Tom, also a successful Sonoma winemaker, can frequently be seen on Bill Maher’s late-night Politically Incorrect program–but history will best remember the Smothers Brothers as those brilliant TV troublemakers from the ’60s.

WE HAVE OUR COFFEE. Squeezed into the corner of a quiet local cafe–Smothers lives on a vine-covered mountain in nearby Kneed–the comic is still grousing playfully at the sheer number of “objectionable phrases” that were crammed into Outside Providence, the tale of a blue-collar kid (Shawn Hates) with a redneck dad (Alec Baldwin) who always calls him Dildo. After being transferred to a highbrow “prep school,” the kid locks horns with the school’s sociopathic administration.

He does this mainly by lighting up joints and swearing a lot.

“It was a nice little movie, but man, every other word was ‘fuck,'” Smothers marvels. ” ‘Fuck’ this, and ‘fuck’ that. It’s the Farrelly brothers,” he surmises, targeting the film’s writers, a very different pair of envelope-pushing siblings. “That kind of language is indulgent and unnecessary.”

Wait. Is this Tom Smothers–the former free-speech poster boy–talking? “Let me tell you something,” he laughs. “There’s a great illusion that we now have more freedom merely because people say ‘fuck’ more often. So here we are, the language in movies and on TV has gotten raunchier, the subject matter has gotten sexier and more explicit–but there’s no content to it.

“People come up to me and say, ‘Man, don’t you wish you were on TV today? Look what people get away with saying?’ And I answer, ‘Really? What are they saying?’ It’s all jack-off jokes and narcissistic reference to bodily functions. There’s practically no real political satire or social commentary. And as we get further along with these media conglomerations owned by major corporations, you won’t see a single word of political satire on prime-time TV.

“But, wow, we’ve got ‘freedom of speech,’ so we’ll still have Hill Street Blues, with its dirty words and naked behinds,” Smothers adds evenly, managing to reveal his obvious passion while remaining entirely calm.

“When we were censored,” he continues, “it wasn’t four-letter words we were fighting for. It was ideas. We were censored for talking about the war, about voter registration, about Martin Luther King. If we were on the air right now we’d be talking about how our government is up for sale to the highest bidder. We’d tell how all these politicians, busy playing the money game, have turned America into the most corrupt country on the planet. We’d talk about how American arrogance has damaged country after country, all around the world.

Shaking his head, he adds, “We sure wouldn’t waste what ‘freedom of speech’ we have, trying to pass off a few four-letter words.”

WHICH BRINGS US BACK to the movie. “I was thinking,” Smothers says, “The kid in the movie handles every confrontation by telling the authority figures to just shut up. It gets him in more trouble.

“He reminded me of me,” he says with a smile. “I got into so many screaming matches with network presidents. ‘How can you tell me to calm down when people are dying in Vietnam!’ But I know now that I handled it all wrong. I was ‘bucking authority.’ I was behaving inappropriately. I know that, and I know I’d do it differently now.

“But,” he adds, grinning widely, “It doesn’t mean I wasn’t right.”

Tom Smothers will perform yo-yo tricks at a kids’ variety show that also features BMX riders, teen mariachi sensation Mayra Carol, mimes, hog callers, and lots more. Wednesday, Oct. 6, at 6:30 p.m. Luther Burbank Center, 50 Mark West Springs Road, Santa Rosa. Tickets are $7-$10. 546-3600.

From the September 23-29, 1999 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Dogs of War

‘Return with Honor’ tells harrowing tale of American POWs

By Nicole McEwan

THEY CAME from the cornfields and metropolises of America, nascent Supermen borne on patriotic dreams, their ideals of manhood nurtured by their World War II-hero fathers and uncles and further sanctified by Saturday afternoon matinees with John Wayne, a 30-foot-high celluloid hero who blazed the path to glory.

Some were seduced by the sky itself–its boundless vistas a potent lure to those whose civilian lives were grounded in poverty. Others were driven by logic: if one had to go to war, then why not travel in style, soaring high above the pestilent jungle, encased in a suit of armor with wings?

Young, impossibly innocent, they began their careers as Air Force pilots with strenuous indoctrination and discipline–and ultimately these were the qualities that saved them.

Oscar-winning filmmakers Freida Lee Mock and Terry Sanders (Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision) document these heroes in Return with Honor, a gripping profile whose straightforward presentation belies the complex ideas it evokes. Eschewing voice-of-God style narration, the husband-and-wife team uses interviews with almost two dozen former POWs to illustrate an epic of isolation, torture, and hunger.

And when these men’s often understated memories fail to bring such hell to life, the directors rely on an arresting array of found footage culled from Vietnam-era TV news–and, more remarkably, agit-prop imagery shot by the North Vietnamese and donated to the production. The result is a film that will have you pondering the acute dichotomy between past and present ideas of patriotism and “manliness.”

Witness the segment showing the emaciated airman (including Arizona Sen. John McCain) being marched through Hanoi (which suffered much from American bombers) in their underwear as angry villagers pelt them with rocks and sticks.

The incident supported the canny prediction of the POWs’ chief interrogator, who warned the prisoners about their flawed ideology: “You know about the war as a matter of weapons. In reality, it’s a matter of national will. We will win the war in the streets of New York.” Footage of anti-war protesters provided by their captors drove that point home. Yet the pilots endured, bolstered by a faith and brotherhood that may seem foreign to contemporary eyes.

Though such historical footage is effective, it pales compared to the netherworld brutally depicted in a series of pen-and-ink drawings by Lt. John McGrath, whose salvation came in the form of artistic expression. Covered with boils and open sores, McGrath used his own pus and blood to paint portraits on his cell walls and committed images to memory that would later spill out onto blank pages.

SEVERAL DEPICT the Vietnamese Rope Game, which involved being tied, arms and legs to back, until joints dislocated. The harrowing vision is made complete with cutaways shot in the actual Hanoi Hilton (ironically, a building built by the French to house the Vietnamese), which show the iron manacles and tiny windows that substituted for decor throughout years of imprisonment. The effect is chilling.

Even more affecting, however, is the uncompromising stoicism of men like Cmdr. Jeremiah Denton, who famously outwitted his captors by blinking the word torture in Morse code during a staged TV “confession.” Equally inspiring are interviews with the wives who waited at home and fought for the truth even as the U.S. government struggled to cover up the extent of the POWs’ suffering.

Ultimately, Return with Honor goes against the ingrained stereotype of the Vietnam vet as a broken man, delivering a portrait that is neither nihilistic nor accusatory. By focusing on the words of the flesh-and-blood men who were there, Sanders and Mock travel beyond rhetoric, successfully crafting an ode to the human spirit that surpasses politics and simply celebrates life. And who is better equipped to guide us on that journey than a group of men who lived so little for so long?

‘Return with Honor’ screens Thursday, Sept. 23, at 6:40 and 9:25 p.m. at Sebastopol Cinemas, 6868 McKinley St. (829-3456), and Wednesday and Thursday, Sept. 29 and 30, at 6:40 and 9:25 p.m. at Washington Square, 219 S. McDowell Blvd., Petaluma (762-0006).

From the September 23-29, 1999 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Mumford.

Whine Harvest

‘Mumford’ is a promising black comedy that ends up tattle-tale gray

By

LIKE the similarly misfiring American Beauty, Mumford is a black comedy that bleaches out to oatmeal-gray by the last reel. Mumford is a more promising tale than the already overpraised Beauty, which is why it’s even more of a pity that it gives up the ghost in the last hour.

The film–much of it shot in Petaluma–stars Loren Dean as a psychologist named Dr. Mumford who is treating several neurotic types in an imaginary Sonoma County town, also named Mumford.

Dr. Mumford’s patients include a wealthy lady named Althea (Mary McDonnell), who has a major compulsive-shopping habit–a habit easily traceable to neglect by her awful husband, Jeremy (played by Ted Danson in a one-scene cameo). Mumford’s other patients include an obese pharmacist with an uncontrollable sexual fantasy life (Pruitt Taylor Vince, the lead in Heavy); a self-hating teenager named Nessa (Zooey Deschanel); and the lonely billionaire “Skip” Skipperton (Jason Lee of Chasing Amy), a computer hardware mogul, owner of Panda Modems.

Among these many sufferers, Dr. Mumford’s favorite patient is Sofie (Hope Davis), purportedly stricken with Epstein-Barr, but apparently only in need of some male attention.

It’s an interesting cast, but these characters are only types, whose eccentricities are contrasted with the inhuman smoothness of the doctor. It would take some master plotting to weave these characters into a neurotic’s version of Our Town. Dean’s infuriating calm helps keep the movie from falling apart, for a time. His face is like a police composite sketch, and he has the reserved, bland menace of the flat-faced ’60s movie villain Henry Silva, whom he resembles. Mumford hooks you with the doctor’s sinisterness and then lets you off–far too early in the story–when it explains who Mumford the man is and how he arrived in Mumford the town. At first Mumford seems like a story of Ripley, novelist Patricia Highsmith’s talented wolf who feeds on the rich, silly sheep of the world. Then Dr. Mumford turns into a good shepherd: a practitioner who may not have a degree but has lots of heart.

Lawrence Kasdan, screenwriter and director, creates a town ripe for the plucking. That the townsfolk all turn out to be nice guys, including Mumford, seems a disappointment.

WHAT’S GOOD about the film? Danson, oafishly blowing his cigar smoke in a balloon snifter, in which a pint of brandy floats; as he slurps the smoke back up, he quotes his philosophy of life: “Like the Zen say, ‘Be here now.’ ”

I always enjoy seeing the pointed, foxy face of Hope Davis–the smartest blonde in the movies today–her alertness giving her pale-lady role an arrogant kick. (Mumford offers her a place on his therapist’s couch, and she replies, “I’d better not, because I’d fall asleep. I think it’s too soon to start sleeping with you.”)

The first appearance of Martin Short, as a nasty lawyer, is a promise of fun to come, although Short turns sweet and obsequious as a bellboy later.

Still, a promise is a promise, even if it’s broken.

From the September 23-29, 1999 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.