My old high school chum Leonard Maltin is celebrating 25 years with Entertainment Tonight...
...having even gotten mega-stars like George Clooney, Cameron Diaz, Leonardo Di Caprio and Dustin Hoffman to offer him on-camera tributes.
And to think it all started because of a Teaneck teacher's terrific hunch.
"I was about to graduate from Teaneck High when an English teacher there said, 'I really want you to meet this old friend of mine who's an editor at Signet Books. I just think the two of you would hit it off," Maltin recalls, on the phone from Newark Airport, where he was about to board a flight back to Los Angeles after a trip East to promote this month's 25th anniversary.
"And we did hit it off. He asked me if I was interested in doing a rival to an existing [movie reference] book, [then] the only one of its kind. ... I was 17 when I was signed to do it. It's unbelievable, like the script of a B movie."
Four decades later, the noted film critic and historian is still going strong. So is his annual guide. The 2008 edition will be out in late August.
You can read the rest of the article (from the Record in Hackensack, NJ -- still the Paris of the Tri-State Metropolitan area) here
Lenny was editing a self-published movie magazine back when he was in Junior High, actually, and he was probably the only kid in America with a row of theater seats in his basement. Many's the evening my brother and I spent down there watching 16 millimeter versions of Warner Bros. cartoons and Roger Corman films. "Bucket of Blood" is still my favorite B-movie ever as a result.
Thanks, Lenny!!!!
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Many's the evening my brother and I spent down there watching 16 millimeter versions of Warner Bros. cartoons and Roger Corman films.
Man, you are definitely showing your age!
I remember when you could buy "silent" 8mm versions of sci-fi and horror films from the back of "Famous Monsters" magazine.
The only other way you could see those was to hope one of the three or four TV stations in town had some sort of "Chiller Theatre" show...
Ah, I was lucky to live close enough to pick up Pittsburgh stations where you could get 'Chilly Billy" Cardille's Chiller Theater.
He made a cameo appearance as himself in "Night of the Living Dead."
Kid Charlemagne --
I'm probably the only other living person not from Pittsburgh who knows that.
He's the TV guy at the end who interviews the crazy rednecks.
The Zacherle of Pittsburgh....
When I was very young, I lived in Fresno, where one of the stations had a "Science Fiction Theatre" show every Friday at 6:00 pm. Where I first saw such classics as "Amazing Colossal Man," "Invasion of the Saucer People," and "Beginning of the End," among others.
Later, we moved to a spot directly between Sacramento and San Francisco, and I got to catch one of the greats: Bob Wilkins, who began at one of the Sacto stations with a show he called "Creature Features." Wilkins was the complete antithesis of the "Uncle Creepy" horror hosts - he looked like a young college prof, wore a suit and tie, and knew all the trivia and minutae of every movie he showed, movies which, for the most part, he treated with a certain level of success (I remember he showed a lot of Hammer films). He later moved on to SF, where he hosted the same show.
The same SF station that pioneered the showing of "Star Trek" reruns also had a Saturday afternoon Japanese monster movie show. Man, those were the days!
Sorry - that should be "certain level of respect"...
For a second I thought you meant Michael Medved, and I feared you were off your meds, buddy.
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