Billy Crystal in "Before"

[edwin drood]

Billy was on . Morning Joe last week, and this dramatic role looks fascinating. I've long thought that comedians make some of the best serious actors - see Robin Williams in "August Rush" and "Good Will Hunting", Jackie Gleason in "The Hustler", Jerry Lewis in " The King of Comedy", Jonathan Winters on Twilight Zone.

Crystal plays a child psychiatrist who has recently lost his wife to suicide. A young boy dhow up at his home, literally scratching at the door. The boy's mysterious background slowly begins to emerge, as do aspects of his wife's demise. The Guardian calls it "brilliant, The LA Times liked it, Time says it sucks. On Apple TV.

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radi ... l-apple-tv

[Pink Freud]

Billy was on . Morning Joe last week, and this dramatic role looks fascinating. I've long thought that comedians make some of the best serious actors - see Robin Williams in "August Rush" and "Good Will Hunting", Jackie Gleason in "The Hustler", Jerry Lewis in " The King of Comedy", Jonathan Winters on Twilight Zone.

Just wait until you see --- if you even ever can --- Jerry Lewis in "The Day The Clown Cried". YIKES***. He would not allow it to be screened anywhere while he was alive.

I bet our younger readers would be surprised to learn Michael Keaton and Tom Hanks were accomplished comedy actors long before they took serious, Oscar-worthy dramatic roles.

The book "The Devil's Candy: The Anatomy of a Hollywood Fiasco", about the absolute debacle that was "Bonfire of the Vanities", focuses partly on the then-bizarre idea that Hanks, known for "Bachelor Party", "Splash", "The 'Burbs"; "Volunteers"; "Turner & Hooch", and the TV series "Bosom Buddies", could portray the New York "Master of the Universe" Sherman McCoy....with echoes of today's headlines all over the place.


*** From imdb.com: "Helmut Doork (Lewis), a once great and famous clown in Germany, is fired from the circus. Getting drunk at a local bar, he pokes fun at Hitler in front of some Gestapo agents, who arrest and send him to a prison camp. Helmut angers his fellow prisoners by refusing to perform for them, wanting to preserve his legend. As times passes, Jews are brought into the camp, with fraternizing between them and the other prisoners strictly prohibited. Eventually, Helmut is forced by the others to perform or be beaten. His act bombs and he leaves the barracks depressed, trying the routine out again alone in the prison yard. He hears laughter and sees a group of Jewish children watching him through a fence. Happy to be appreciated again, he makes a makeshift clown suit and begins to regularly perform. His audience grows, but a new prison Commandant orders Helmut to stop. When he refuses and continues to perform, he's beaten and thrown in solitary confinement. But the Nazis soon come up with a use for Helmut, keeping the children quiet as they are loaded into a boxcar to be sent to another camp. Helmut complies, but is accidentally locked in with the children and arrives the next day at Auschwitz.