Labor Day Weekend Entertainment

Before COVID-19, Labor Day was an excuse to share brews and BBQ with family and friends - or attend such annual events as the Telluride Film Festival or Cinecon. In 2020, nobody's working, everyone's staying home and on a tight budget, so we'll hit the over-used comfy couch and watch movies.



In this blogger's deep past, Labor Day Weekend meant a trip down to Hollywood for the Cinecon, four days of vintage movies. WAY back, many who contributed to classic silent and early sound movies in front of and behind the cameras were still living among us and turned out to be the Cinecon Classic Film Festival's special guests!

This year there will be a online version of the festival, presented via Zoom. Alas, we're late for the opening, which was last night, but there shall be plenty of classic movie programming on Friday and Saturday, starting at 6:00 p.m. EST, 3:00 p.m. PST. Especially look forward to the SATURDAY NITRATE FEVER program, beginning at 7:54 EST - nitrate prints of Leon Errol in Autobuyography (1934) and Speed In The Gay Nineties (1932) starring Andy Clyde. For more info, go to Cinecon.org.

After Cineconline's cornucopia of classic film rarities, we at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog shall, after enjoying episode 24 of The Silent Comedy Watch Party (featuring the great Harold Lloyd and a special guest - his grand-daughter Suzanne), not watch the 1978 labor drama Norma Rae, but instead opt for SCTV's wonderfully brutal sendup of it. Andrea Martin, one of the greatest comediennes of her (or any) generation, spoofs everything in sight, including well-meaning and ambitious but cheesy and dated 1970's movies. The then-trendy feature films An Unmarried Woman, Norma Rae, The China Syndrome and Kramer Vs. Kramer get skewered, deservedly, in the same sketch.



With the full understanding that strife-filled Labor Day themed movies covering the complex web spun between labor, management, business and American society must be on the bill, we shall revisit documentaries about labor by Barbara Kopple. In the process of producing/directing Harlan County U.S.A. and American Dream, the activist-turned-filmmaker risked her life by embedding her camera into real life labor-management donnybrooks. She scrounged up the shoestring budget for Harlan County U.S.A. by hook and by crook.



A prolific filmmaker and television series director (Homicide: Life On The Streets and Oz), Barbara Kopple brought the cinéma vérité observational approach, inspired by D.A. Pennebaker, Frederic Wiseman and the Maysles brothers, to a slew of documentaries on varied topics. Kopple's camera has a way of revealing the souls of her subjects.



And now for something completely different, but not that different, we think of Sylvester Stallone, who, while riding high with the success of his Rocky series, also starred in a drama patterned on the story of the beginnings of the labor movement - Jimmy Hoffa and the United Auto Workers - in the 1930's.



That would be the Norman Jewison - Sylvester Stallone - Joe Esterhas labor strife epic F.I.S.T. (acronym for Federation of Inter State Truckers).



While as ambitious and over-the-top as those 1970's movies that got the big time razz in the SCTV My Factory My Self sketch were, this nonetheless offers a "more substance (somewhat) less camp" version of Stallone within its enjoyable Hollywood-ized take on 20th century history.



Watching the larger-than-life 2 1/2 hours long Stallone vehicle on Labor Day Weekend invariably leads, the following night, to a viewing of the equally over-the-top Jack Nicholson as Hoffa. Tough to take your eyes of the screen when Nicholson's in command, supported enthusiastically by Armand Assante, J. T. Walsh, John C. Reilly, Robert Prosky, Kevin Anderson and director Danny DeVito. Over-the-top? Who cares!



One indie filmmaker/screenwriter who produced and directed terrific movies, several about historical events - including one, Eight Men Out, beloved by baseball fans such as this writer - is the novelist and jack of all cinematic trades John Sayles, whose 1987 opus about the coal miners' strike in 1920 in the West Virginia hills that would be known as the Battle of Matewan remains most gripping.



Matewan is distinguished by its strict attention to period detail and a refusal to sugar-coat and/or sanitize the subject matter. Sayles, an original presence in filmmaking (Baby It's You, Lone Star, ‎The Secret of Roan Inish, ‎The Brother from Another Planet, Passion Fish), has frequently spoken about the movie, which, unlike many efforts to blend cinema and history, avoids a simplistic "good guys vs baddies" approach.



Alas, we will NOT finish up the Labor Day Weekend entertainment with a ritual screening of the ultimate Labor Day movie, On The Waterfront, either (although Robert Osborne's TCM interview with Eva Marie Saint might be on the bill).



Instead, the gang at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog, always comedy-centric, shall finish the Labor Day weekend with SCTV's On The Waterfront Again sketch.