Sunday, July 02, 2017

Auteur Watch - Leonard R. Garner Jr.

When you have a résumé like the résumé of Leonard R. Garner Jr., well... I mean, look at this list!  LOOK AT IT!!!!!  All this classic TV that I never actually watched.  Well, I hung out with all the wrong people over the course of my life.  I saw a little bit of this sketch show that Jenny McCarthy had on MTV!  I saw that!  ...okay, here's another one.  Al Franken's "LateLine."  We saw most of those... they got three seasons out of that?  Wow!  Didn't know that.  And yet, Al never talks about that.  Of course, he mostly talks about senator stuff now.  : ( .  Dennis Miller was supposed to be the senator, damn it!
Anyway, back to the main topic.  So, you've got this long list of TV shows.  So, the question is: where's the theatrical venture?  Most TV directors have one or two, usually at the bottom of the list.  It's at that point that they either a) quit the business for good, or b) swallow their pride and move into a tenement on TV Director Street.  Generally, escape is impossible, unless you're Ken Kwapis.  So where on Garner Jr.'s long long list is it?  That theatrical release that went poorly and made him want to swear off the biz for good?  And... nope, doesn't have one.  No, in this instance, you have to go to the "Assistant Director" tab, and we find... The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington?  Okay, we'll just skip that one... interesting side note: this is one of those trilogies where a different actress plays the same character in each film.  The only other example I can think of is those two Atlas Shrugged movies... oh, it is a trilogy!  Wow.  Didn't even know that.  And there are three different Dagny Taggarts, and I'm just assuming that there's no consistency with any of the other parts in between the three movies.  Well, that's an Ayn Rand vehicle for you.  Every part's up to the highest bidder.  The free market makes the ultimate decision in all things.
Okay, back to the list... the Assistant Director list, mind you.  Well, there's a couple TV movies and... The BLUES BROTHERS????!!!!!!!!!!!!  Well, that does it.  Friends for life now.  And he ACTED in it too!  Lobby Guard #1.  Damn... okay, here we go.  I think he was the dude who tells Elwood "Down the hall, turn right, take the elevator 1102."  The Quotes page just has his second line, and... well, you all know what it is.  May you live to be a thousand years old, Sir.

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