Undertaker > Hogan

[jdw]

The other point I'll make before leaving this is Home Video and then DVD. You can't compare our generation's way of processing these things to people from the 1950s, for example. We were part of a generation sold on the idea of "take home and keep".

 

Many of these "old" films that are being talked about as if no one should give a shit about them 20 years after the fact received a second life once VHS became a thing. I wouldn't look at Godfather 1972 box office figures alone, I'd look at VHS and DVD sales and things like #number of magazine articles about it and #number of times it's in "Top 100 films ever ever" type lists. I feel like this whole concept of a canon of great films or whatever was very big in the 1990s and especially around 2000 when every publication under the sun wanted to make "best of the century" style lists. Right around the time we were all buying lots of CDs and VHS tapes and DVDs.

 

It is entirely disingenuous to pretend that there is no difference between certain "hyper-canonized" texts / films and films that just happened to come out in a given year.

 

Godfather is hyper-canonized. Most films from 1972 are not. This idea that "the young ones don't care because it's from 1972" is not entirely accurate. Godfather doesn't exist simply as a cultural artifact from 1972, it exists as something iconic. Or at least it did in 2000.

 

As I've been trying to articulate, I think the game has irreversibly changed since then.

Yeah... which is why I referenced Sinatra / Elvis / Beatles / Zep.

 

Elvis was hyper cannonized. His albums were wildly available at record stores when I was a kid. His songs played all the time on certain channels on the radio. His records where in the collections of a lot of parents (especially ones a few years younger than my folks who weren't "before" Elvis). Yet...

 

My generation didn't give a flying fuck about Elvis. He was a fat washed up guy who overdosed on his toilet seat.

 

We knew some of his songs, though I suspect for most kids it was Hound Dog and/or Hearbreak Hotel. We wouldn't know many riffs about him that our teachers would have made. We just didn't give a shit about him.

 

Elvis was hot shit a decade before I was born. His "comeback" was a couple of years after I was born. His death happened while I was alive, and was big news. But for most of my peers, Elvis wasn't a iconic cultural guy we cared about.

 

Godfather was 1972. You're dealing with kids that were born 1992 +/- 2 years. That's like Sinatra to me, who was even further removed from me as a kid than Elvis. Sure, I knew who he was because he would do Carson or some show like that. Folks would parody / impersonate him. But would I get Rat Pack riffs? Did I know any of the movies he'd been in? Many songs? Not really.

 

It's also why I mentioned the Bard. You don't get anymore hyper-canonized than the bard. People still "read" in the 70s and 80s relative to now, where they read tweets online. But not a one of my peers gave a flying fuck about the Bard. Romeo & Juliet they knew, simply because everyone was forced to watch it in Jr. High.

 

But 30-40 years prior to us? 80-100 years prior to us? Everyone with the level of education that we had would have known a decent amount about Shakespeare.

 

This isn't something new. It's been going on since Radio ruined the world... and Movies ruined the world... and TV ruined the world... and 100 channels of Cable ruined the world... and now the interwebs have changed everything.

 

Not. Really.

 

It's just a continuation of what we've seen over the past 90 or so years since radio came along and the movies took off.

 

For fun: try to recall what your friends thought of Mozart and LVB when you were kids. Then think about what people with our level of education would have thought of those two in say 1900, which was still decades past their death.

 

Our generation, relative to the one prior to us, were the same as kids today relative to us.

 

John

[ohtani's jacket]

As far as how over he was, it depends upon which Vince McMahon-like version of his bio you read. I've seen ones where he got a three-picture, $30M deal with Universal in 1983 off Vacation and Mom making $60M each that summer. Was he kicked off the production of them? Again, depends on the bio. In the end, he is the only person with a writing credit on either of then, which wouldn't be unique for someone getting the the boot for re-writes, but also we've seen plenty of movies where the rewriters are listed as well if it's a major rewrite.

According to Mr. Mom's producer, Lauren Shuler Donner, Hughes was fired and they brought in a group of TV writers. I know there were times when Hughes tried to fob off failures like National Lampoon's Class Reunion by saying they'd butchered his original script, which the director Michael Miller steadfastly denied and produced Hughes' script to prove it, but Hughes was pretty upfront about being fired for being a pain in the ass.

[Strummer]

with Rob Lowe I don''t think it can be underestimated how much Wayne's World and Tommy Boy helped his career. He was becoming somewhat of a joke by that time due to the sex tape and some terrible script choices. They led to a career resurgence in comedy that he is still reaping today

[pantherwagner]

Or are we about to side-drain into a discussion about the top entertainment acts of 1913?

This we should most definitely do. Who can forget that Canadian crooner Henry Burr or the irresistible Alice Joyce?

 

Bigger star? Hogan or Steve Guttenberg? Hogan or Al Bundy? Hogan or Kathleen Turner? The funny thing about Hogan is that outside of North America he was more famous than Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Joe Montana or Wayne Gretzky.

 

In Southern Europe in the 90s Magic and Bird were much bigger than Hogan (I imagine Central Europe too but I'd be only guessing). I think the difference is that your dad would know Magic, Bird and Hogan, but your grandpa wouldn't know Hogan.

 

Montana would mostly be known by teenage males as the guy on the NFL video game on the SEGA consoles. Gretzky is a total no name. I know he's a hockey player but I couldn't pick him out of a lineup.

 

Before satellite it was next to impossible to see NBA games. When satellite took off, it was Jordan who led the NBA boom. Bird and Magic were basically out of the picture after '92, though I'm sure they were a big deal in Barcelona that year. In their primes, they were basically inaccessible compared to wrestling unless Europe had some major NBA coverage I'm unaware of.

 

I was a child in the 80s so I don't remember how far back does the NBA on TV go in Spain but in 86 we had Fernando Martin there so it was a big deal to us (even though he barely played at all), and later Drazen Petrovic who was "our guy" even though he was Croatian, and the same thing with Arvydas Sabonis a few years later, so we had late night NBA matches on free TV once a week as far as I can remember. We also had at least two weekly basketball magazines. I don't know if there are any Italians or Greeks here but basketball was huge there too in the late 80s/early 90s, so I imagine they had similar coverage. Of course in Yugoslavia (which isn't southern Europe as my initial point) it also was the national sport for a while. I don't know how big basketball was in France pre-Rigaudeaux (I'm sure I screwed up that name).

 

I have no idea about how it was anywhere north of France but I can guarantee to you that Magic and Bird (even pre-Dream Team) were much bigger. The Olympics may have helped a lot too as for a while they were everywhere and those guys were the legends. McDonalds had a long promotion where a Happy Meal would give you toys and life-size posters of the Dream Team guys (I had Pat Ewing at 2.13 for years in my bedroom). And when PC computers starting making their way to the market around 1992, the NBA Lakers vs Celtics game was a huge deal with secondary school and high school kids, so there's a generation of people that know Kareem but don't know about Dr. J.

 

Barcelona, my hometown, such a wonderful place, we kind of set the wheels in motion to fuck up the life of two great legends: Diego Maradona (tons and tons of coke) and Magic (teh AIDS).

[cheapshot]

I think a good "acid test" of Hogan's current popularity versus other celebrities and "icons" would be to use http://www.google.com/trends/ to see how often he is searched for since google started recording these results in 2004.

 

Nb. He is searched more than Carrot Top

[SteveJRogers]

I think Tyson is the perfect comparison. Neither he nor Hogan are pop culture icons, but they both have near-universal name recognition that transcends their respective sports.

I'd love to see where both would be if they didn't stray from their "reasons for notoriety."

 

I.e. if Tyson hadn't become such a train wreck with the rape, the arrest and some of the batshit stuff he's done and said since, and being someone that TV show and movie producers would bring in as a cameo or whatnot (BTW, Mel Gibson was dropped from Hangover II because of his antisemitic and off the rails drunken tirades rubbed the actors the wrong way, which is fair, but they'd rather do scenes with a CONVICTED RAPIST?)

 

And if Hogan hadn't been bitten with that acting bug after Rocky III that really put him in "the popcorn pop culture" spotlight more so than being the right guy, right place when WWF went national/mainstream. Or if he went more low key with his acting roles (like Piper did and like Austin does) where he wasn't putting his name out there as a potential "big action/comedy star."

[SteveJRogers]

as was the star of Ghostbusters (though he kind of pissed away that stardom)

WHAT!?

 

Is that your opinion of Murray's post-Ghostbuster work (which is quite substantial quality wise) or is that based on, like the Hughes/Ringwald/Cusak/Brat Pack flicks being held to higher esteem in the home video market/retrospect?

 

If its Danny-Boy and/or Harold Ramis you are talking about...eh, okay, I can see Aykroyd and Ramis as examples of people who just had their careers go a different trajectory for whatever reasons and feeling comfortable with never reaching the heights again.

[SteveJRogers]

I don't know what you can draw from this. It's anecdotal and unscientific, but these are different classes of different people from different places from the same age bracket. Seems like more kids know who Hogan is that have seen the Godfather. The Bill Murray thing was totally fucking shocking to me. But at this point I am beyond the stage of being disgusted or even surprised by these things. My honest view is that that generation of people don't care about pop culture in the same way as the 80s generation (most of us) do.

Here is something odd that I wonder about though, there is a podcast (non wrestling) hosted by two Brits (one early 30s, and one early-mid 40s) who love dropping the Airwolf theme song into their show every now and then. Thing is, Airwolf is an AMERICAN show (IIRC its Knight Rider, only a sophisticated helicopter (and I don't think it talked) that lasted about two seasons in the early 1980s.

 

Could just be odd quirks about American entertainment. What is your record when it comes to more UK based stuff, besides Who and Potter of course?

[JerryvonKramer]

Murray has done a lot of indie films directed by Wes Anderson in the past 20 years, so you could make the argument that choosing to do smaller critically acclaimed films is akin to blowing one's stardom. I don't agree though. He almost won an Oscar for Lost in Translation which made over $100,000,000 . And a case could be made that 2003 was Murray's peak year as a marquee star. I recall his cameo in Zombieland being raved about at the time.

 

But Steve, why bother getting into this? It's what happens when you engage with tedious people, you get into tedious debates where you're somehow trying to prove Bill Murray was still a star after Ghostbusters. Do you like being punched in the face over and over again by a poisonous and criminally boring dwarf? It's easier to just say "go fuck yourself". Which is what I've done and will continue to do forever more concerning that particular member of this forum.

[SteveJRogers]

Murray has done a lot of indie films directed by Wes Anderson in the past 20 years, so you could make the argument that choosing to do smaller critically acclaimed films is akin to blowing one's stardom. I don't agree though. He almost won an Oscar for Lost in Translation which made over $100,000,000 . And a case could be made that 2003 was Murray's peak year as a marquee star. I recall his cameo in Zombieland being raved about at the time.

 

But Steve, why bother getting into this? It's what happens when you engage with tedious people, you get into tedious debates where you're somehow trying to prove Bill Murray was still a star after Ghostbusters. Do you like being punched in the face over and over again by a poisonous and criminally boring dwarf? It's easier to just say "go fuck yourself". Which is what I've done and will continue to do forever more concerning that particular member of this forum.

So it'd be like a classic post-Ghosbusters Murray outing, Groundhog Day?

 

=

[JerryvonKramer]

I don't know what you can draw from this. It's anecdotal and unscientific, but these are different classes of different people from different places from the same age bracket. Seems like more kids know who Hogan is that have seen the Godfather. The Bill Murray thing was totally fucking shocking to me. But at this point I am beyond the stage of being disgusted or even surprised by these things. My honest view is that that generation of people don't care about pop culture in the same way as the 80s generation (most of us) do.

Here is something odd that I wonder about though, there is a podcast (non wrestling) hosted by two Brits (one early 30s, and one early-mid 40s) who love dropping the Airwolf theme song into their show every now and then. Thing is, Airwolf is an AMERICAN show (IIRC its Knight Rider, only a sophisticated helicopter (and I don't think it talked) that lasted about two seasons in the early 1980s.

 

Could just be odd quirks about American entertainment. What is your record when it comes to more UK based stuff, besides Who and Potter of course?

 

They showed both American and British shows here. We had Airwolf, A-team, Quantum Leap, Knight Rider, this show called "Highway to Heaven", Murder She Wrote, Baywatch, ummmm ... lots more.

 

Guys in their 30s and 40s would probably remember watching all that stuff in the 80s with nostalgic fondness.

 

There are lots of UK shows too of course, but I guess there is no point naming them. Where the disconnect has come with the 18-22s is in the comedy shows. There's a grouping of shows the BBC has re-run almost constantly: Dad's Army, Open All Hours, Steptoe and Son, Fawlty Towers, Only Fools and Horses, Blackadder, quite a few others, and you could now add The Office to that list as the last sitcom "the nation" kind of enjoyed together. That stuff is just a cache of stuff that "everyone knows". But not now, because they don't watch TV in the same way. There are fewer shows of this kind.

 

I entirely reject the idea that this is just "the same" as the generational gaps between other generations. Why? Because there aren't any new ones being made. There aren't any new shows of this "type" -- that EVERYONE knows -- and by everyone I mean everyone, people of all ages. The Office was 2001 now. I can't think of a sitcom since then that has had any sort of cultural purchase.

 

I know a guy who is 22 who has told me before he's never watched a single episode of Friends. I mean what the flying fuck? How? Where's he been? What's he been doing? I'll tell you what's he's been doing, he's been on the internet.

 

The shift from TV to internet is entirely different from other shifts (e.g. radio to TV). Radio and TV were both mechanisms where everyone would watch or listen to broadly the same stuff at the same time. The internet is a mechanism where people watch and do different stuff at different times.

 

I don't expect the nuances of that to get through certain thick skulls, but as I've said, I think that difference is plainly self-evident and we are still seeing the consequences of it of play out.

[Childs]

I think Tyson is the perfect comparison. Neither he nor Hogan are pop culture icons, but they both have near-universal name recognition that transcends their respective sports.

I'd love to see where both would be if they didn't stray from their "reasons for notoriety."

 

I.e. if Tyson hadn't become such a train wreck with the rape, the arrest and some of the batshit stuff he's done and said since, and being someone that TV show and movie producers would bring in as a cameo or whatnot (BTW, Mel Gibson was dropped from Hangover II because of his antisemitic and off the rails drunken tirades rubbed the actors the wrong way, which is fair, but they'd rather do scenes with a CONVICTED RAPIST?)

 

Train wreck was part of the deal with Tyson from early on. The Robin Givens interview came when he was still clearly the No. 1 boxing star in the world. There was never a version of him that wasn't headed down that path.

 

I was thinking last night about whether Tyson is clearly bigger than Hogan. He probably is, because he was such a huge figure both for straight sports fans and in tabloid culture. Particularly surreal is his third act as a beloved old crazy, touring the country with a one-man show. That I did not see coming, though perhaps I should've, because Mike was always super-engaging in doses.

[Matt D]

They showed both American and British shows here. We had Airwolf...

Yes, but how big was Airwolf. That's the question. Did you get Alf? I bet you would have liked Time Trax and Kung Fu: the Legend Continues.

[BrickHithouse]

Is Steptoe and Son superior to it's American knock-off Sanford and Son?

[JerryvonKramer]

I could write pages and pages about Steptoe, but can't imagine it in an American setting.

 

Like many British sitcoms it's ultimately quite dark: all about class, confinement, dashed dreams and crushed hopes. Harold and the old man are chained to each other and trapped by desperate and grim poverty. I can't imagine how that would play, as comedy, to the American sensibility.

[BrickHithouse]

Fred Sanford would have made a great heel coward champion. Epic promos.

 

 

Starrcade 83 - Greensboro, NC - Coliseum - November 24, 1983 (15,447; announced at over 16,000)

The Cage Match between NWA Champion Fred G. Sanford and Ric Flair never took place as Sanford claimed he was unable to compete due to his arthritis

[NintendoLogic]

More faked heart attacks: Fred Sanford or Kevin Nash?

[JerryvonKramer]

They showed both American and British shows here. We had Airwolf...

Yes, but how big was Airwolf. That's the question. Did you get Alf? I bet you would have liked Time Trax and Kung Fu: the Legend Continues.

 

Yeah we had Alf, and also Big Foot and the Hendersons, and Dinosaurs. See my Duggan guest spot confusion from before.

 

To answer your question ...

 

Other Brits may give you a different answer here, but my sense is that I don't know how "big" any of these shows were. Rather, they were "just on". You could pick up an audience of 4-8 million just by virtue of being in a certain slot. Four channels only, not much else to do.

 

This goes back my main point: I don't think shows can be relatively popular now through being "just on". People cherry pick a lot more. So you get shows like Breaking Bad that are big (not even on a channel in this country!!! Netflix) and people go out of their way for.

 

But incidental "just on" type viewing must have declined drastically.

[goodhelmet]

I could write pages and pages about Steptoe, but can't imagine it in an American setting.

 

Like many British sitcoms it's ultimately quite dark: all about class, confinement, dashed dreams and crushed hopes. Harold and the old man are chained to each other and trapped by desperate and grim poverty. I can't imagine how that would play, as comedy, to the American sensibility.

All the same except coming from an African-American which holds its own weight in American history.

[SteveJRogers]

I could write pages and pages about Steptoe, but can't imagine it in an American setting.

 

Like many British sitcoms it's ultimately quite dark: all about class, confinement, dashed dreams and crushed hopes. Harold and the old man are chained to each other and trapped by desperate and grim poverty. I can't imagine how that would play, as comedy, to the American sensibility.

It did lead to a running gag in A Hard Day's Night that went over any American's heads. Paul keeps referring to his "grandfather" as being clean. The actor was Steptoe and was always referred to as a dirty old man.

[evilclown]

It's easier to just say "go fuck yourself". Which is what I've done and will continue to do forever more concerning that particular member of this forum.

This is particularly funny as you address him multiple times in this very thread! He owns a space in your head quite clearly.

[JerryvonKramer]

I could write pages and pages about Steptoe, but can't imagine it in an American setting.

 

Like many British sitcoms it's ultimately quite dark: all about class, confinement, dashed dreams and crushed hopes. Harold and the old man are chained to each other and trapped by desperate and grim poverty. I can't imagine how that would play, as comedy, to the American sensibility.

It did lead to a running gag in A Hard Day's Night that went over any American's heads. Paul keeps referring to his "grandfather" as being clean. The actor was Steptoe and was always referred to as a dirty old man.

 

Yeah this is very funny.

[JerryvonKramer]

I could write pages and pages about Steptoe, but can't imagine it in an American setting.

 

Like many British sitcoms it's ultimately quite dark: all about class, confinement, dashed dreams and crushed hopes. Harold and the old man are chained to each other and trapped by desperate and grim poverty. I can't imagine how that would play, as comedy, to the American sensibility.

All the same except coming from an African-American which holds its own weight in American history.

 

Wow, I didn't know Sanford and Son had a racial element. I've never seen it, only ever heard about it.

 

British sitcom is traditionally all about characters being trapped in certain situations and seemingly destined never to break free of that situation. I don't know if the American sitcom has the same conventions, the ones I know well don't seem to. I might watch Sanford and Son to see what they did with it, this has perked my interest.

 

In case anyone is interested in Steptoe and Son, this is not a bad summary I found written by someone on IMDB:

 

Harold is the middle aged son, frustrated with his boring job as a "totter" and being constantly tied down by his irritating and manipulating father.

 

Harold is a dreamer, a person who sees himself as an intellectual, a poet, an classical actor, a gentleman, a ladies man and sucessful businessman....and yet this is just his little dream, the kind of dream we all wish for. But in Harold's mind only his father is really holding him back from making those dreams a reality.

 

Albert, on the other hand, has seen it all. He is a bitter old man who was brought up in a poor family and life was tough, especially having to suffer going through two world wars. He also realises that he never made a success of his life in a business sense. After decades of being a rag & bone man he is still no richer than his own father was.

 

But to add to this bitterness, he is also scared of being left totally alone in an uncaring modern world. He no longer has a wife, no daughters, hardly any family at all to fall back on. The only person he can really trust & depend on is his son, Harold. And Albert will do anything to ruin Harold's chances of either bettering his own life elsewhere or making sure he never leaves him to fend for himself.

The old man's manipulations and the lengths he goes to to stop Harold leaving (and the extent to which he ruins his plans) can be heartbreaking as much as they are funny. It's a very bitter-sweet show.

 

On the flip side, Harold is sometimes quite mean to his father and ... probably isn't even close to being able to achieve what he thinks he can. This guy put it well:

 

There's this old miser and this middle-aged failure, his son, living together in a slum. The son hates the father because he blames him for clipping his wings. The father pities the son because he knows he has no wings to clip.

We're a long way from Hogan at this point.

[Mad Dog]

I think Tyson is the perfect comparison. Neither he nor Hogan are pop culture icons, but they both have near-universal name recognition that transcends their respective sports.

I'd love to see where both would be if they didn't stray from their "reasons for notoriety."

 

I.e. if Tyson hadn't become such a train wreck with the rape, the arrest and some of the batshit stuff he's done and said since, and being someone that TV show and movie producers would bring in as a cameo or whatnot (BTW, Mel Gibson was dropped from Hangover II because of his antisemitic and off the rails drunken tirades rubbed the actors the wrong way, which is fair, but they'd rather do scenes with a CONVICTED RAPIST?)

 

Train wreck was part of the deal with Tyson from early on. The Robin Givens interview came when he was still clearly the No. 1 boxing star in the world. There was never a version of him that wasn't headed down that path.

 

I was thinking last night about whether Tyson is clearly bigger than Hogan. He probably is, because he was such a huge figure both for straight sports fans and in tabloid culture. Particularly surreal is his third act as a beloved old crazy, touring the country with a one-man show. That I did not see coming, though perhaps I should've, because Mike was always super-engaging in doses.

 

I think Hogan is a little bigger now. I've had to explain to more than one younger coworker about just how huge Tyson was at his peak.

[ohtani's jacket]

I don't know what you can draw from this. It's anecdotal and unscientific, but these are different classes of different people from different places from the same age bracket. Seems like more kids know who Hogan is that have seen the Godfather. The Bill Murray thing was totally fucking shocking to me. But at this point I am beyond the stage of being disgusted or even surprised by these things. My honest view is that that generation of people don't care about pop culture in the same way as the 80s generation (most of us) do.

They have their own pop culture. I haven't watched a TV series religiously since the Sopranos, in fact I haven't even owned a TV for the past few years. People my own age ask me whether I watch numerous types of shows but I don't watch new movies let alone TV. I grew up in the 80s, but I'm also a product of the internet. I watch 1950s movies, read 70s comics books, watch old wrestling and listen to everything from 50s jazz to 70s funk, all of which I discovered through the internet. I have no grasp on modern popular culture. I'm basically stuck in the past, but if I were lecturing I don't think I'd make jokes about ALF. I don't see any reason why these kids should be overly familiar with the pop culture from my generation when I'm not overly familiar with the pop culture from theirs. One day these kids are going to be surprised that someone younger doesn't know a meme that was big in their youth, etc.

 

I think you're downplaying the generational divide. My younger sister's generation remember 00s shows more fondly than I do. For me they were rubbish compared to the 80s and 90s stuff that I grew up on. If pop culture were this ubiquitous thing that we all experienced at the same time we'd never lose touch with it, but it's obvious that it's something we're most closely attached to in our youth.

 

And I don't see how you can be disgusted about people not knowing Bill Murray. Bill Murray is a brilliant actor but he's only iconic in the minds of cinephiles. He's not Bogie or Cagney or Jimmy Dean.