Quotes
Ice Castles/Same Time, Next Year/Caravans/American Graffiti/Movie Movie/Beyond and Back/The Late Great Planet Earth
Sneak Previews
- Himself - Host: [Roger on 'Beyond and Back'] It wants to prove that there is live beyond the grave but I've got very bad news for you; I'm afraid that it doesn't. Instead it gives us very bad actors playing people who have allegedly died and departed from their bodies and taken an all-expenses-paid trip around the universe and then once again to Earth but what I wanna know is, if these people really made it back how come they aren't in the movie? Well, pseudo-scientists stand around narrating the film but the real hero is whoever designed the intensive TV ad campaign. 'Beyond and Back' is a good example of something called a Four-Wall Movie. That means a distributor comes into town and rents a lot of theaters, all four walls for a flat fee, and then plows a fortune into advertising. The idea is to suck in a lot of people before the word gets out that this film is a turkey. The only good thing about most Four-Wall Movies, Gene, is that the walls have doors so you can get out!
- Himself - Host: [Gene on 'The Late Great Planet Earth'] My dog is another fast-buck affair with a big advertising campaign, it's a depressing hangdog film, a shallow would-be documentary 'The Late Great Planet Earth' which interprets current world crisis like the oil shortage, famine and air pollution as signs that the world is coming to an end much as has been prophesized in the book of Revelations. In other words, you can pay up to four bucks to see this movie and walk out of the theater feeling thoroughly depressed. Orson Welles serves as narrator but even he can't sell this bilge which speculates that we're all headed toward the end of the world with the signals being the founding of Israel and the European common market. What a lot of nonsense!