As of tonight, this is the totally tentative, aggressively flighty, and completely changeable track listing for Just Farr Another Laugh: More Of The Greatest Prank Phone Calls Ever!
1. Step Off My Brimley
2. I’m Looking To Upgrade My Cell Phone
3. Bleachy Wants To Watch “Murder, She Wrote.”
4. My Tight Bros Call Me ‘Ditchweed’….DON’T ASK….ok, go ahead and ask.
5. This Is Garfield The Cat
6. You’re Harshing My Trip
7. Loder’s Run
8. Some Of The More Authentic, Therefore Horrifying, Soul Food Establishments
9. Jazz Cigarettes
10. Man With Yet More Things To Sell (3 years later!!!)
11. Token Religious Prank Call (warning: Very Uncomfortable)
12. Mom
13. Nick Nolte Is Coming To Town
14. Big John And The American Bandstand
15. Bleachy’s Mom Deals With Gap Kids
16. Potato Mountain
17. Tackleberry
18. Michael Anthony’s Signature Jack Daniels Bass Guitar Is For Sale
19. A Table For One At Arby’s
This track listing does not include three as-yet-untitled calls.
These band names sound like proto-sprawl apartment complexes:
The Essex Green, Brownsville Station, Ashley Park, Charalambides, Chestnut Station, Clearlake, Huntingtons, Landing, Lillingtons, and Massive Attack.
In 2004, there is no movie less relevant than……
1986’s Murphy’s Romance, starring James Garner and Sally Field.
Perhaps you’ll notice that I no longer have an ass, that’s because the commissioner CHEWED IT OFF!!!! or….. Two Unforgettable Authority Figures or…..I Wrote This A Long Time Ago
Jackie Gleason The late great Gleason sadly played some less than dignifying roles (remember Nothing In Common? The Sting II anyone???) before his death in 1987. In 1977 he began his legacy as the unforgettable Buford T. Justice, sheriff extraordinaire in ALL THREE Smokey and The Bandit flicks. Part I was the first film directed by the amazing Hal Needham*, and it was of course the launching pad for the gum-smacking, aviator shades, wiseacre, woman-hungry persona that Burt Reynolds would ride for several years to come.
Dennis Franz Yes, yes, you know him as Detective Andy Sepowicz, the man who presented us with his big bare ass on the very successful series NYPD Blue, but there’s more. Um…there’s more cop roles that is, cuz cops are about all this man has ever played, big and little screen. Brian DePalma** seemed to fancy his pig renderings quite a bit, and cast him as a bumbling dumb fuck cop in The Fury , and as the Noo Yoke shit-talkin’ Detective Marino in Dressed To Kill . Then TV opened its needy arms to Franz in a big way. The first series was Chicago Story , which you probably don’t remember because it was a failure. The next venture was not. Added to the Hill Street Blues oeuvre in 1985, the character of Lt. Norman Buntz was so popular that it birthed an unwisely conceived spin off series when Franz left the show in 1987. That’s right, watch cocaine abuse do its magic as TV execs somewhere deemed Beverly Hills Buntz a “good idea.” Buntz moves to the sunny hills and opens a detective agency that gets enough clients to last just under one season. Predictably, I am going to end this summary with Franz’s greatest role. Directly prior to his N.Y.P.D Blue stardom, he starred in a TV movie called N.Y.P.D. Mounted , which has him pissing off the chief, getting demoted to the mounted force, acquiring an ex-jockey as a partner, and chasing an escaped Siberian tiger. No shit people.
*Hal Needham was a stuntman/stunt-coordinator who, largely due to a good relationship Burt Reynolds, went on to carve a little directorial niche for himself that can only be called The Hal Needham Genre. This makes sense when you take into account that, after debuting with Smoky…, he is responsible for bringing us the following:
Hooper – Reynolds plays an aging stuntman with a taste for pain killers and one last keerrazzee stunt to pull off before his prodigy (Jan Michael-Vincent!!) assumes the spotlight. This movie is really insane at times, and tries to pull the old Fellini “movie inside of a movie” trick.
Smokey and The Bandit Pt. II – Original cast returns and replaces bootlegged Coors with a pregnant elephant. See above for a synopsis of this devil-may-care romp.
Smokey And The Bandit Part III - So confusing. Burt sat this one out, but has a cameo by way of a flashback. Burt’s former sidekick, Jerry Reed, plays the Bandit. Buford and Son don’t seem to mind this wild inconsistency, as they chase “the Bandit” all over the country with a stuffed swordfish atop their squad car.
Cannonball Run parts I and II – Both of these vaguely rat-packish idiot carnivals had un-fucking-believable casts – you get highbrow to lowbrow in a lowbrow setting throughout. These are musts for the pop-culturally savvy.
Megaforce – A PG rated “Save the country from being overrun by commies” dungfest
Stroker Ace – Reynolds vehicle in which he plays a “wacky” stock car driver who plays jokes on his fried chicken mogul sponsor (Ned Beatty!!). Features a VERY effeminate Jim Nabors as Stroker’s sidekick.
It was at this point that things got slightly un-Needhamish, with movies like Rad (the BMX movie) and Body Slam.
He returned to form within the context of made-for-TV movies when he launched the B.L. Stryker series and feature lengths in the late-80’s. These actually featured Burt as a gumshoe private eye living on a boat, and at times, Loni “I’m Available” Anderson as his squeeze. They solved crimes. Lastly, Needham created FOUR Burt-less made-for-TV movies in 1994, Bandit: Bandit Goes Country, Bandit: Beauty and the Bandit, Bandit: Bandit Bandit (??), and Bandit: Bandit’s Silver Angel.
**DePalma also gave Franz two of his rare non-cop roles - as “Manny” in Blowout and “Rubin” in Body Double.