It also has the greatest epitaph I’ve ever read: The book takes the young man all over Southern California, through wrecked mansions and studio backlots, to a decadent Europe, and it witnesses his own parents’ rise and fall and fall and hilarious fall. Murnau’s great silent film Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans. It’s an autobiographical novel–O’Brien truly was the son of actors George O’Brien and Marguerite Churchill, the former the star of F. Maybe my Grandpa styled the hair of a character actress or two, or some aging starlet from the lost years of silent film.ĭarcy O’Brien’s novel is about a teenager who endures two parents, divorced, who used to be stars in the silent era. In 1978, I visited him, watched a Dodgers game, and got an autograph from a clearly irritated Tom Bosley. He used to style the hair of Kay O’Malley, who owned the Los Angeles Dodgers. I love to read about Los Angeles and Hollywood because my Mom is from that area, near Pasadena to be more specific, San Gabriel to put the pin in the map, so I often wonder what it might have been like to grow up there, with her teaching and us visiting my Grandfather, who had a posh hair styling salon in San Marino. There are some books that you just can’t get enough of, and this splendidly sordid and short tale of a Hollywood upbringing matched my own true love of Eve Babitz’s similarly sexy and wayward Southern California Bildungsromans. But I like to read, and last summer, during the pandemic, came across a magnificent little confection by Darcy O’Brien called A Way of Life Like Any Other. In fact, I hate those movies–the first is really misogynist (like, that’s a strong theme) and Reaganistic, the second just dumb nostalgia with shite music. I can’t say I like Saturday Night Fever or Grease, because I don’t. ![]() But who thought to take Lily Tomlin, so great in Nashville and other films (not to mention theater and TV) and pair her with that dancing heartthrob John Travolta? I remember the film being in the background of my cinematic consciousness in 1978, for I was in Southern California (where Moment takes place) that year, Grease was huge, kids I know were batty about Travolta and then… this? I get the appeal of making a piece of shit like 1967’s Doctor Doolittle–a popular, albeit racist children’s “classic” gets the bloated musical roadshow treatment, and voila! Money in the bank, usually. Moment by Moment has always intrigued me simply because its very existence seems so strange. So how did I end up watching, with my friend Tom, the wretched Moment by Moment, starring Lily Tomlin and John Travolta? As someone who does not find any pleasure in watching “they’re so bad it’s good” flicks or enduring the rarely funny (to me) Mystery Science Theater 3000, I usually end up avoiding these turkeys. ![]() ![]() We tend to avoid terrible books and TV shows–perhaps books are too long (though you could read The Bridges of Madison County in two hours, and it’s up there with the worst) and TV shows date too quickly? Maybe it’s because there are so many terrible films–every year bombs that are dropped from Hollywood’s zeppelin onto a (usually) suspecting public: only the greatest gluttons for punishment endure The Conqueror, Doctor Doolittle, At Long Last Love, Clan of the Cave Bear, or John Carter from Mars, to name but a few. I’ve always found it baffling how much people love awful movies. Moment by Moment (1978), written and directed by Jane Wagner.
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