Late night nostalgia

Well, this sure puts my blog to shame...

People ask me all the time if I'd been happier had I been born a generation before my time. The short, simple answer is yes.

Honest answer, though, is no. I feel like I get the best of both worlds -- plenty of nostalgia, but with modern technology and convenience. I'd hate to think about putting together our newspapers without desktop computers, for example.

Anyway, to my point. Discovered last night while looking for something else classic clips from Dick Cavett's old late night ABC television show. Very quickly for those who don't know, Cavett was ABC's early '70s competition to Johnny Carson's beloved, ever-popular NBC program. Cavett was intelligent, quirky, and tended to attract eclectic guests -- everybody from Norman Mailer to John Lennon.

Found out, too, that Cavett writes a funny, erudite blog for the New York Times. It can be found at http://cavett.blogs.nytimes.com. Treat yourself to it for a few minutes.

A few days after the Swedish director Ingmar Bergman died, TCM played an entire interview Cavett did with him in the early '70s. I think it was Bergman's American TV debut. Happened to catch it one night when I couldn't sleep. It was fascinating stuff, light-years away from the drivel you'd get on Letterman or Leno.

Surely there's room for such intelligent talk on TV today. Oh, I think Charlie Rose comes close, even if he doesn't ask hard questions and lacks, or at least doesn't display, Cavett's offbeat sense of humor. But you'll never see anything like this (or even what's on Charlie Rose's engaging show) on the Big Four, at least not in the late night time slot.

Take a few minutes and perform a "Dick Cavett" search on YouTube if you get time. If you're a movie buff, be sure and watch the interviews with Orson Welles. That guy was a genius, I don't care what anybody says.

OK, that's enough for now. Peace out. Gotta get back to work.

'Jeremiah Johnson' and other great Sydney Pollack flicks...

So I never got around to saluting Sydney Pollack, a favorite director who passed away May 26.

Pollack helmed one of my all-time favorite westerns, "Jeremiah Johnson," as well as the hilarious Dustin Hoffman comedy "Tootsie" and the mid-70s spy thriller "Three Days of the Condor." He'd often show up in his films -- somewhat to his regret, or so he said -- most memorably as Hoffman's long-suffering agent in "Tootsie."

(Hilarious line: "Nobody's going to pay $20 to see two people move next door to solid waste -- they can see that in New Jersey!")

"I do that only when I can't find the right actor for the part," he later said.

I saw Pollack a few times while watching Charlie Rose's show on nights I couldn't sleep. He seemed like the type of guy you'd like to have a beer with and talk about life. In addition to making movies, he was a world traveler, a producer, and a humanitarian in the best sense of what that means.

I've got "Jeremiah Johnson" sitting on top of the DVD shelf at home. With a little luck, it's getting watched tonight. Only thing is, I usually want to drop out of society and live in the mountains after screening it...

Oh, well. That's good movie making, I guess.

Godspeed to you, Sydney Pollack. Thanks for making some great little flicks.