by Hank Brockett
“It’s a matchup of fantazmonious proportions! Two serpents, one segment. The Rampaging Republican versus the Deal-making Democrat. The Viagra vixen versus the smooth sexaholic! Dole versus Clinton ... only on pay-per .... eh, before Andy Rooney!”
What are former political superstars to do? The spotlight shines so bright for so many years and then you get the call. “All right, that’s a wrap. We’ll work on getting a library for you.”
All politicos would relish another chance to wrestle in the realm of politics, the ultimate old man’s game. And who wants to bet FOX isn’t already on the phone to Ollie North, a few Kennedys, Gary Hart and maybe Michael Dukakis for some sort of Election Island sweeps stunt? Political science classes will never be the same.
The whole thing reeks of a great Saturday Night Live sketch where “The Oprah” brings back all the major players from the Monica Lewinsky scandal years later for some laughs and some reminiscing. Who knew it might be so true.
That faint babble you hear is a gaggle of social psychologists, talking from somewhere other than their mouths about how the country will tune in to yearn for a simpler time. Yes, let’s go all the way back to the days when stained dresses provoked more fear than any foreign power.
Never mind that this was a scant few years ago. I mean, the Casey Kasum Top 40 probably still plays songs from that era. But the 60 Minutes move joins a long line of remakes, retreads, returns and rematches. And it smells of the same pathetic nature known only to boyfriends who call up old flames from long ago.
Michael Jackson gets more press now than when he actually sold records. Movie studios are remaking franchises like Starsky and Hutch or just calling the same movie a different name (case in point, the Benicio Del Toro flick The Hunted looks like the long-lost sequel to Sylvester Stallone’s First Blood). 60 Minutes has a sequel, 60 Minutes II. And worst of all, Hall and Oates just put out another album.
If we don’t watch out, boy, this trend will chew us up. So the Word of Mouth makes a solemn pledge to only report on the most original and brand-spanking-new developments in pop culture and news.
For instance, take this nugget from the Illinois news wires. Peoria school officials suspended a bus driver who stranded Woodruff High School’s girls basketball team and coaches in Bloomington after a supersectional loss last week.
It turns out the bus driver dropped the players off for the game and just rode right on back as Woodruff lost to Champaign Centennial.
Bill Francis, the great Free Press sports columnist, always takes care to mention the long, hard bus trip home players must make after a painful road loss. They should be so lucky.
See? That wasn’t hard. It’s a new news item (well, at least we hope this doesn’t happen too often) and not once in reading such a tale do we long for the killer sharks of 2001 or wonder, “What would Elian Gonzalez do?”
I’m sorry to say I can’t include the film Swimfan - just released on DVD - in this list of new and improved media. Although the teen thriller stars the quality actress Erika Christensen, it plays like a Fatal Attraction with the psychotic female some sort of superhuman stalker. Not taking her medicine allows her to run thousands of yards in a single second and to overpower muscular swimmers at every (kick) turn.
And as much as I’d like to have a healthy crush on Christensen, she’s now played two characters who degenerate into crazed lunatics. Her outrageous turn in Traffic meant devolving from a nice and rich daddy’s girl to a coked-out, sex-selling addict in two hours. That has to be some kind of record, even in Hollywood.
Maybe self-proclaimed movie critic and brother Neal Brockett said it best. “This would be a good movie to someone who’s never seen a movie before,” he proclaimed.
To the rest of us, it’s a sad gag with about as many surprises as a connect-the-dots. Don Hewitt (with his impending 2004 retirement after 35+ years in the business) and 60 Minutes will know the feeling soon enough, when novelty gives way to that familar feeling - it’s all been done before. Just don’t forget to confirm that ride out of town, Mr. Hewitt.