June 6, 2023 • 29 mins
1982's The Electric Grandmother, based on a teleplay/Twilight Zone episode/Short Story from Ray Bradbury, is a curiosity from the golden era of childrens movies/enternatinment in the early 80's. A long-forgotten TV project that gave Jeff distinct memories unlike any other. Strange how an otherwise throw away TV movie can stay with you. The early 80s were quite a different time. Jeff talks about Bradbury, the themes of the story, and more in the latest GenX Show!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:11):
You are tuned into the Genet Showwith Jeff Morton, your host, who
behaves like he's ten years older thathe actually is. We talk horror movies,
music and culture from the generation thatcouldn't be bothered to put its stamp
on society. And now here's yourhost me. I believe you're looking for
(00:48):
something, and a grandmother, adream merchant, provides the key to happiness
for this young family. With thiskey, you and you alone can bring
your Electric Grandmother to life and theshopping spree tunes into a reef dream.
My business is billing three Maureen Stapletonas the dream come true the Electric Grandmother
a thirty day trial. Offer usyour key. I need a real living
(01:11):
robot Quinston Robot. What is upeverybody? Thank you all for joining me
in the latest gen X show.And of course he goes Jeff Morton.
That was the HBO free weekend promoof The Electric Grandmother. I don't believe
you can find the trailer, theoriginal NBC trailer for this TV project that
(01:36):
was part of NBC's Project Peacock,that was done in nineteen eighty two,
not during Sweeps month, because Ibelieve this came out in January, so
Sweeps would have been February and Mayright around it back then when Sweeps was
a thing, and this is aninteresting movie. Top line here, I
(01:59):
had had a bunch of very vividedmemories about about certain scenes in this movie
because I saw this probably on HBO, I don't know, eighty three eighty
four right around there, and thisis I don't believe this got a video
release for a couple of years afterthat, and I didn't watch it on
video there. I watched it ona re airing on HBO. I vividly
(02:23):
remember that because I remember the oldminiature flyover thing Dadda da da HBO in
the eighties was a was an eventthing. And my memory of seeing the
Electric Grandmother is is extremely vivid tome. And I had, as I
(02:44):
said before, some top line memoriesof the of the movie. Once again,
people who are not familiar with thegen extra, I don't I don't
go beat by beat plot points here. I don't spoil the movie. I
try not to. I try togive my the the top line descriptions of
it. I encourage you to watchit and if you can find it before
(03:05):
they it's taken down. This currentlyon YouTube in full. It's a forty
seven minute long m A movie onYouTube, so I suggest you going there
to watch it before you see that. Before you discuss this, I will
get into some spoilers. I amnot going to spoil the whole thing.
(03:27):
It's it's short, it's well worththe time or visiting. Keep in mind,
it's a TV movie, so uheighties TV movies. The acting was
kind of ropey, so just keepthat in mind. But I had,
as I've been pointing out, andbeen very vivid memories of certain things in
this movie, and I when Iwatched it again, I just I will
it's stunned to me how crystal clearthey were in my head. I have
(03:50):
not seen this movie since the eighties, just flat out, I have not
seen it since the eighties. Butit has stuck with me in a way
that very few things that I havewatched have actually stuck with me, particularly
like that. I mean, wewent in my series kids Movies that Scared
Us. This is all in thatarea. From out eighty two at eighty
(04:12):
five, there was a bunch ofmovies that came out and projects and TV
stuff that came out that were reallythey were part of this more the kids
can handle more than we think kindof thing, which you wouldn't see right
now, by the way, youwould not see a movie like The Electric
(04:33):
Grandmother come out in twenty twenty three. It's because the themes of it are
a bit controversial, I would sayfor twenty twenty three. And we'll get
into that in a bit, butbefore I do, I want to talk
to you about Ray Bradberry. RayBradberry was a frustrated writer of movies and
(04:54):
TVs. The The origin, theoriginal idea, the concept of this dates
from nineteen sixty two. It wasa screenplay entitled from It that was taken
a screenplay title that was taken froma Walt Whitman poem called I Sing the
(05:14):
Body Electric, and it was turnedinto a Twilight Zone episode. It's still
up. You can you can,you can go if you go look at
the Twilight Zone if anyone has anycopies of the Twilight Zone is in season
three entitled I Sing the Body Electric, very similar to this movie. Um
In fact, the story itself,which which Bradbury then wrote into a short
(05:36):
story in nineteen sixty nine, whichwas part of a compilation a short story
compilation entitled I Sing the Body Electric, So if you can, if you
go look that up, go findit, you'll be able to read it.
Once again, very similar because it'sall based on the same source material,
which is this nineteen sixty two screenplaythat was turned into a Twilight Zone
(06:00):
episode. Raid. Bradbury, asI said before, is a was a
frustrated movie producer, writer and allof that. He very much, unlike
some of his his contemporaries, wasvery much um wanting to be part of
the Hollywood meat grinder. He hewas. But the Bradbury's problem, which
(06:23):
we will discuss in this and inthe next movie in this mini bradbury Uh
kind of run we're doing right now, is that he very much like Stephen
King was very was very wedded tothe written word, and really and much
like Nigel neil Um it was verywho conceived of the Quatermass series of movies
(06:46):
in England. Guys like that tendedto be very wedded to what they wrote
originally, So changes that are madeand anything like that or are almost anathema
anathema to them. So he hisrun of participating in with Hollywood really basically
ends with this next movie that I'mgoing to be covering at the end of
(07:10):
the week, which I'll get intoat the end of the podcast. But
Bradbury had this thing floating around.It was turned into a Twilight Zone episode.
The Twilight Zone episode is very goodactually, but I said, it's
very similar to this thing that cameout in nineteen eighty two. It stars
Maureen Stapleton as the electric grandmother EdwardHerman, who a lot of people will
(07:32):
recognize from the seventies movie The PaperChase, but he was also much later
in life known as the Dad andGilmore Gilmore Girls, and Robert McNaughton,
who was the older brother in ET, which came out the same year as
this movie. Art McNaughton had avery and I do mean very brief run
(07:56):
as is the every Kid from likeseventy eight to eighty two eighty three.
Then he did a run a TVmovies and basically disappeared. You know,
I think he retired. He's stillalive, but he doesn't work anymore.
Um, there were, but MaureenStapleton was was the thing I remembered.
In fact, when I was watchingthis, I had forgotten that Robert McNaughton
(08:18):
was in it UH and Edward Herman, UM and and um the guy who
played uh um the Jefferson's neighbor whosename is for Escaping Me right now,
who was in the movie This isSpinal Tap a couple of years after this.
UM. There are's just there's certainthere are certain things that stick with
(08:41):
you as a kid. And Iand to be to go back to Ray
Breadberry, Ray Breadberry was very goodat a certain uh. I wouldn't say
coming of age, but I wouldcall it a kid's ability to grieve and
deal with trauma. UM. Andit was ahead of its time. Ray
(09:03):
Bradberry very much didn't write kids sciencefiction short stories, but they were relatable
in certain aspects to what a kidwho was experiencing some traumatic things of just
with childhood, UM would relate to. UM. There are there There's there's
(09:24):
some sadness to some of the thingshe wrote. And then obviously Bray Bradberry's
most life almost famous for Fahreneit forfifty one UH and the Martian Chronicles.
Those are his two most crowning things. But he also, like I said,
he wrote movies and he wrote,UM, the next movie I'm going
to be covering called a novella calledSomething Wi Something Wicked This Way Comes,
(09:48):
which once again was based on ashort a um uh screenplay that didn't get
made into a TV show or moviethat got turned into a short story which
got turned into a movie. Sothat's that's the that's the Ray Bradberry experience
for you. Um there, there'sjust things that have have percolated throughout the
(10:13):
experience of Ray Bradberry, who diedjust recently. You know, he was
there throughout the entirety of the twentiethcentury basically writing these these science fiction short
story um short stories or novellas umand a very they were very science fiction.
(10:33):
They are very um, I wouldn'tsay fantastical, but they always had
a moral to him. And inscience fiction stories tended to be moralistic people
that talk about how preachy, uhthe Star Trek was, and but that
was that was science fiction. Sciencefiction of the of the mid twentieth century
(10:54):
was very preachy. It always hadan idea greater than and what it was
the words on the page, youknow, high not high concept, but
it was high high ideal, okay. And part of this was Bradbury often
would communicate about stuff that families wouldgo through. Um It's something that very
(11:20):
much interested him. And this isvery much implementic in the two movies I'm
I'm covering this this month. Thereis a there is a shoot Me this
week. There's a sadness to it, and there is a trying to relate
and communicate with children aspect to it, and that is one of the reasons
(11:43):
I wanted to cover both of thesein the same week. One of the
through lines with the Electric Grandmother isthis need to be able to relate to
the kids that you have. Thisis very much a story about a father
dealing with his own shit but havinga complete inability to relate it to his
(12:07):
kids. And I will get tothe more of that in the second half
of the podcast, but there's thatthrough line going through. The interesting thing
about this is this movie was ineighty two, and eighty two is the
probably the crowning year for science fiction. Think of the movies that came out
in eighty two. I mean,in eighty one you had Dragonslayer coming out,
(12:30):
and I've covered that previously on thispodcast, but then you have Star
Trek two, The Wrath of Cohn, you got Blade Runner, you got
the Thing, you know, yougot et all these alien themed movies came
out. You got Poltergeist that cameout. It's just and then in eighty
three you got a Kroll coming out, and it was just a fertile year
(12:50):
for fantastical ideas. And this ison a much smaller scale than that.
This movie was obviously shot extremely quickly. Like I said, the acting,
even from Edward Herman and Marine Stapleton, is the big standout in this She
was obviously a very accomplished actress.Marine Stapleton had no relation to Jean Stapleton
from all in the family. Shewas a stage actress who dabbled in movies.
(13:18):
Most of people my age will probablyremember her from The Money Pit as
the grifting alcoholic who unloaded the giganticmoney pit to Tom Hanks. But she
was an accomplished actress, very good, very good, and you can tell
in this movie that she kind ofstands head and shoulders above everyone else,
(13:43):
regardless of the written word or thethemes. Her ability to translate this to
a movie that was very like Isaid, very obviously, very quickly shot.
These are only things that I thinkabout as someone who is in his
mid forties when I'm a kid watchingthis forty years ago. I don't think
about those things. Just think aboutthe theme and what it's communicating to me.
(14:03):
And I think that part is,you know, part of this uh
uvra of Ray Bradbury that we needto concentrate more on because the next the
very next year, he does thissomething wicked. This Way Comes, which
also deals with a kid who isand a and a father who can't communicate
it is there is a there isjust this through line coming through, coming
(14:28):
through line coming through. This isthrough line that just really permeates the the
big projects that Bradbury had at thismoment in time. Um, I will
once and on the other side,I'm going to talk a little bit about
the plot points, and that's someof the more problematic things that will emerge
and some of those But I highlysuggest if you if you in the next
(14:50):
you know, ten minutes of thepodcast, if you haven't seen The Electric
Grandmother, look it up on YouTube, watch it, and then listen to
the rest of this podcast, Ihighly suggest you do that. It's it
is, it is something that youneed to experience and then kind of think
about the way you would have consumedit if you were a kid, because
(15:11):
when I first saw this, Iwas very much a kid and going through
something. My parents divorced. That'sthe year that this came out, and
having that loss, and even thoughmy even though look my dad was always
there and quite frankly, he wasin a mornumous, enormous part of my
(15:31):
two older brothers and myself are liveshuge part. My dad is a bigger
part of my life than my mom. But there is this there's this grieving,
and there's this loss, and there'sall this stuff that's going through.
But I will get to that actuallyin the second half. Once again,
if you haven't seen it, goto YouTube, look at the Electra grammar.
(15:52):
Go watch it. Come back tothe end other half of this podcast,
which happens right after the break.As I said in the first half,
I had a this is the yearmy family fractured, and it doesn't
deal with the same thing themes thatthis movie does. The movie basically is
(16:17):
about a family who lost their motherand it results in this the circumstances that
come out of nowhere, by theway, where this quite crazy, wacky
inventor comes to them and says,I can help you with you help you
with your grief. I can makeyou an electric grandmother after dropping three parts
(16:41):
of a heart down and stuff likethat. It's it's wacky. I'm telling
you, there's no where I'm orreason to it. And then they go
and you know, and there's thisscene where they go to the factory where
these grandmothers are made, and itis creepy as hell. It is creepy
as hell. I did not Idon't not. I don't know how in
nineteen eighty three, when I waswatching this the first time, I do
(17:04):
not know how I didn't freak out, because there are some scenes in this
thing that are just freaking in away. The grandmother comes and it's always
as it's about this this this familydealing specifically this daughter who is dealing with
the loss of her mother, andthis father who decides that the best thing
(17:25):
to do is to give this surrogateto this family. It's a it's an
interesting concept. I don't know necessarilythat the overall lesson here is something that
is very effective or should be taught. But that is with the hindsight of
someone who is in his mid fortiesand it has been an adult for more
(17:47):
longer than he was a kid.Okay UM. I don't know if necessarily
the the ultimate moral of this issomething that is translatable to twenty twenty three.
In fact, I know it's not, but that is that is consistent
through the short story, the TwilightZone episode and this this this this hour
(18:12):
long UM project on NBC. UM. Did I say, NBC NBC UM.
So it's it really is about aboutseveral different things, you know,
And I rewatching it again. Iwas stunned, and I said this on
the first half of the podcast,remembering certain things, remembering the grandmother,
(18:38):
uh and the weird things that shewould do to try to impress this girl.
Her two other brothers were one downwith the electric grandmother, this girl
Agatha was not. And the thingsthat this grandmother does to trying to prove
herself to this girl, because ifshe had she doesn't prove herself, and
(19:02):
if she does, it's a satisfactionguaranteed UM scenario, which was big in
the eighties, by the way,so with it, if the satisfaction wasn't
complete after thirty days, the grandmotherwould be sent back to the scrap heap
and she could not get through tothis girl Agatha, which results in an
interest incident at the end of theh at the towards the end of the
(19:26):
story that is thoroughly ridiculous, butit results in Agatha. You know,
I'm not going to be breaking anynews here. This is a kids so
obviously the ending is kind of isgood. There is a wrap around.
It starts in media res and itbegins with this old man talking about his
(19:47):
electric grandmother, and then it endswith that same old man in her and
there's this that's it's supposed to betelling about this incident. You know.
How this got through to the greaterpublic is very fascinating to me because it
is not something that you would seeon TV. It is very science fiction.
(20:08):
This is extremely science fiction. Thegrandmother, when she's delivered to the
family, arrives in a giant sarcophagus, and when they open up the sarcophagus,
she has an Egyptian mask on her. There's no rhyme or reason to
any of that. She squirts hotchocolate out of her finger. She produces
(20:33):
a muffin to the dad with amessage inside it saying exactly what he said
about five five hours earlier, thething that I remembered the most and This
is something that I actually had dreamsabout in I while the kids are asleep,
this electric grandmother has to plug herselfinto a wall and is like downstairs
(21:00):
and she's just like doing all thesegyrations and stuff like that. I don't
know exactly why that was happening.That's It's one of the things in hindsight
when I'm watching it, it waslike, that's that's really weird. UM.
But it was. It kind ofit stuck in my mind and I
had I would this is so weird. I would have dreams about that scene,
(21:23):
um all the time, and theyweren't necessarily nightmares, but it would
just like it would pop into mybrain. This scene, UM, it
would pop into my brain. Thesarcophagus surviving UM, her on the rocking
chair at the beginning pop into mybrain and now also at the end.
UM. It was it was hardnot to relate to my own family breaking
(21:45):
apart at the time and dealing withthat UM. Because many of you know
who listened to this podcast, I'vealways been older. My brain is older
than my body. It's the bestway to put this. I've and if
you talk to people who are rightaround my age, so about mid seventies
to I don't know eighty. Weall tended to act older than we are,
(22:11):
and I don't know why that is. Maybe that's a function of how
we were raised. I tell peoplethis all the time. Gen xers were
very specifically people my age. Wewere left on our own to basically raise
ourselves. So not only was myfamily busted up, but I just there
was no one there. My momwas working, my dad was working,
(22:33):
stepdad was working. You know,everyone had their their different things, and
it was it's it's all this comestogether and something that you wouldn't think would
affect someone and make them look fondlyupon something as as unsettling as creepy as
(22:55):
this hour long TV movie from nineteeneighty two does. The interesting thing about
this was this movie came in ata time when they really needed to populate
HBO with things. The home videothing was burgeoning at this point, but
it wasn't huge. Home box officeaka HBO was the progenitor of everything basically
(23:22):
you see in streaming. I'll behonest with you, HBO was the was
the the big the Grand Pooba getthe genesis momentum. So they would do
these free weekend things which I'm Ifairly certainly still do in a different form.
I know NBA TV does this,but I remember we were watching this
(23:48):
was about nineteen eighty three, eightyfour. It was one of those free
preview weekends and it was during theday and this The Electric Grandmother came on
and I watched it, and wemissed it. We missed the opportunity to
record it onto our Beta Max.Yes once again, folks, we had
a Betamax, and we missed theopportunity to record it from the TV to
(24:11):
the beta. So I had tohope that we had access to it again
to watch it again. I thinkI probably only watched it in total about
two or three times during this initialnineteen eighties run. And it is amazing
the power of imagery. And Idon't think you know. Along with the
(24:33):
great the top line problematic area ofit, which is replace your your mother
with a never ending robot, basicallyit's it was. That's the other than
that, the themes of it werevery much more mature, and you don't
(24:56):
see that with Kids Fair anymore.Kids Kids Fair right now. It was
very infantalized, and I don't necessarilyknow if that is a function of everyone
having access to everything because we haveyou know, everyone has access to Wi
Fi and the Internet and everything isat the touch of your finger. Back
in nineteen eighty three, when Ifirst saw this, we didn't have that
(25:22):
at all, and even access tovideo stuff wasn't wide by that point.
I didn't really start taking off tillabout eighty five. And I think that
I think that when you when Ilook back at this, the fact that
this was able to stick into myhead as much as it was is either
(25:47):
the power of power of a hugelyaffecting imagery or it's the power of good
storytelling. And I don't know,and I'm trying to resolved it is maybe
it's a combination of both. Youknow, Ray Bradbury was a great writer.
He was a great writer for areason. But at the same time,
(26:07):
you know, watching it back again, it's like I said, the
acting Edward Herman, I'm sure youknow rip same thing with Marine Stapleton.
I'm sure if if they would Laverlook back on this and say that this,
you could tell this was shot realquickly, because the acting in this
is not tremendous, but it isvery much of the time. It's very
(26:32):
much TV movies of the time.No one I think was too embarrassed by
this. Edward Herman was in aBy the way, if you haven't seen
the movie The Paper Chase, thatis a wonderful movie. Hard to watch
movie, but it's wonderful. It'sreally well done. I just just I
can't recommend The Paper Chase enough.Timothy Bottoms is in it. But in
(26:56):
the grand scheme of things, TheElectrod, like the Electric Grandmother, was
a project that you won't see intwenty twenty three Four Kids. This was
four kids. It was marketed asfour Kids for families, and those of
you who've watched it, you know, after the break before and before we
(27:17):
got to this part, you'll knowwhat I'm talking about with It's just it's
really creepy. The whole aura aroundthe movie is extremely creepy. I was
talking to my brother about the electYour Grandmother, my oldest brother, and
he's like, oh, yeah,I remember that, And neither of us
had zeen it since the eighties,but it stuck with us. The imagery
(27:41):
was just so powerful. And asI come back to this, to to
what Steven Spielberg said in the earlyeighties, kids like to be scared,
And while this movie didn't scare me, it certainly probably wasn't a very unsettling
experience at the time, wrapped inan extremely sentimental story about a broken family,
(28:06):
and I think that part is justI don't know, you can't replace
those sorts of things. So anyway, I hope everyone has taken the time
to go watch it. It's onNBC or scooping outs on YouTube right now.
The whole thing you look up theElectric Grandmother, go see what I
see is imagine yourself as six sevenyear old Jeff watching this for the first
time. So anyway, thank youall for joining me latest Gen next show.
(28:30):
I'm going to be back in acouple of days with something wicked.
This way comes say that
You are tuned into the Genet Showwith Jeff Morton, your host, who
behaves like he's ten years older thathe actually is. We talk horror movies,
music and culture from the generation thatcouldn't be bothered to put its stamp
on society. And now here's yourhost me. I believe you're looking for
(00:48):
something, and a grandmother, adream merchant, provides the key to happiness
for this young family. With thiskey, you and you alone can bring
your Electric Grandmother to life and theshopping spree tunes into a reef dream.
My business is billing three Maureen Stapletonas the dream come true the Electric Grandmother
a thirty day trial. Offer usyour key. I need a real living
(01:11):
robot Quinston Robot. What is upeverybody? Thank you all for joining me
in the latest gen X show.And of course he goes Jeff Morton.
That was the HBO free weekend promoof The Electric Grandmother. I don't believe
you can find the trailer, theoriginal NBC trailer for this TV project that
(01:36):
was part of NBC's Project Peacock,that was done in nineteen eighty two,
not during Sweeps month, because Ibelieve this came out in January, so
Sweeps would have been February and Mayright around it back then when Sweeps was
a thing, and this is aninteresting movie. Top line here, I
(01:59):
had had a bunch of very vividedmemories about about certain scenes in this movie
because I saw this probably on HBO, I don't know, eighty three eighty
four right around there, and thisis I don't believe this got a video
release for a couple of years afterthat, and I didn't watch it on
video there. I watched it ona re airing on HBO. I vividly
(02:23):
remember that because I remember the oldminiature flyover thing Dadda da da HBO in
the eighties was a was an eventthing. And my memory of seeing the
Electric Grandmother is is extremely vivid tome. And I had, as I
(02:44):
said before, some top line memoriesof the of the movie. Once again,
people who are not familiar with thegen extra, I don't I don't
go beat by beat plot points here. I don't spoil the movie. I
try not to. I try togive my the the top line descriptions of
it. I encourage you to watchit and if you can find it before
(03:05):
they it's taken down. This currentlyon YouTube in full. It's a forty
seven minute long m A movie onYouTube, so I suggest you going there
to watch it before you see that. Before you discuss this, I will
get into some spoilers. I amnot going to spoil the whole thing.
(03:27):
It's it's short, it's well worththe time or visiting. Keep in mind,
it's a TV movie, so uheighties TV movies. The acting was
kind of ropey, so just keepthat in mind. But I had,
as I've been pointing out, andbeen very vivid memories of certain things in
this movie, and I when Iwatched it again, I just I will
it's stunned to me how crystal clearthey were in my head. I have
(03:50):
not seen this movie since the eighties, just flat out, I have not
seen it since the eighties. Butit has stuck with me in a way
that very few things that I havewatched have actually stuck with me, particularly
like that. I mean, wewent in my series kids Movies that Scared
Us. This is all in thatarea. From out eighty two at eighty
(04:12):
five, there was a bunch ofmovies that came out and projects and TV
stuff that came out that were reallythey were part of this more the kids
can handle more than we think kindof thing, which you wouldn't see right
now, by the way, youwould not see a movie like The Electric
(04:33):
Grandmother come out in twenty twenty three. It's because the themes of it are
a bit controversial, I would sayfor twenty twenty three. And we'll get
into that in a bit, butbefore I do, I want to talk
to you about Ray Bradberry. RayBradberry was a frustrated writer of movies and
(04:54):
TVs. The The origin, theoriginal idea, the concept of this dates
from nineteen sixty two. It wasa screenplay entitled from It that was taken
a screenplay title that was taken froma Walt Whitman poem called I Sing the
(05:14):
Body Electric, and it was turnedinto a Twilight Zone episode. It's still
up. You can you can,you can go if you go look at
the Twilight Zone if anyone has anycopies of the Twilight Zone is in season
three entitled I Sing the Body Electric, very similar to this movie. Um
In fact, the story itself,which which Bradbury then wrote into a short
(05:36):
story in nineteen sixty nine, whichwas part of a compilation a short story
compilation entitled I Sing the Body Electric, So if you can, if you
go look that up, go findit, you'll be able to read it.
Once again, very similar because it'sall based on the same source material,
which is this nineteen sixty two screenplaythat was turned into a Twilight Zone
(06:00):
episode. Raid. Bradbury, asI said before, is a was a
frustrated movie producer, writer and allof that. He very much, unlike
some of his his contemporaries, wasvery much um wanting to be part of
the Hollywood meat grinder. He hewas. But the Bradbury's problem, which
(06:23):
we will discuss in this and inthe next movie in this mini bradbury Uh
kind of run we're doing right now, is that he very much like Stephen
King was very was very wedded tothe written word, and really and much
like Nigel neil Um it was verywho conceived of the Quatermass series of movies
(06:46):
in England. Guys like that tendedto be very wedded to what they wrote
originally, So changes that are madeand anything like that or are almost anathema
anathema to them. So he hisrun of participating in with Hollywood really basically
ends with this next movie that I'mgoing to be covering at the end of
(07:10):
the week, which I'll get intoat the end of the podcast. But
Bradbury had this thing floating around.It was turned into a Twilight Zone episode.
The Twilight Zone episode is very goodactually, but I said, it's
very similar to this thing that cameout in nineteen eighty two. It stars
Maureen Stapleton as the electric grandmother EdwardHerman, who a lot of people will
(07:32):
recognize from the seventies movie The PaperChase, but he was also much later
in life known as the Dad andGilmore Gilmore Girls, and Robert McNaughton,
who was the older brother in ET, which came out the same year as
this movie. Art McNaughton had avery and I do mean very brief run
(07:56):
as is the every Kid from likeseventy eight to eighty two eighty three.
Then he did a run a TVmovies and basically disappeared. You know,
I think he retired. He's stillalive, but he doesn't work anymore.
Um, there were, but MaureenStapleton was was the thing I remembered.
In fact, when I was watchingthis, I had forgotten that Robert McNaughton
(08:18):
was in it UH and Edward Herman, UM and and um the guy who
played uh um the Jefferson's neighbor whosename is for Escaping Me right now,
who was in the movie This isSpinal Tap a couple of years after this.
UM. There are's just there's certainthere are certain things that stick with
(08:41):
you as a kid. And Iand to be to go back to Ray
Breadberry, Ray Breadberry was very goodat a certain uh. I wouldn't say
coming of age, but I wouldcall it a kid's ability to grieve and
deal with trauma. UM. Andit was ahead of its time. Ray
(09:03):
Bradberry very much didn't write kids sciencefiction short stories, but they were relatable
in certain aspects to what a kidwho was experiencing some traumatic things of just
with childhood, UM would relate to. UM. There are there There's there's
(09:24):
some sadness to some of the thingshe wrote. And then obviously Bray Bradberry's
most life almost famous for Fahreneit forfifty one UH and the Martian Chronicles.
Those are his two most crowning things. But he also, like I said,
he wrote movies and he wrote,UM, the next movie I'm going
to be covering called a novella calledSomething Wi Something Wicked This Way Comes,
(09:48):
which once again was based on ashort a um uh screenplay that didn't get
made into a TV show or moviethat got turned into a short story which
got turned into a movie. Sothat's that's the that's the Ray Bradberry experience
for you. Um there, there'sjust things that have have percolated throughout the
(10:13):
experience of Ray Bradberry, who diedjust recently. You know, he was
there throughout the entirety of the twentiethcentury basically writing these these science fiction short
story um short stories or novellas umand a very they were very science fiction.
(10:33):
They are very um, I wouldn'tsay fantastical, but they always had
a moral to him. And inscience fiction stories tended to be moralistic people
that talk about how preachy, uhthe Star Trek was, and but that
was that was science fiction. Sciencefiction of the of the mid twentieth century
(10:54):
was very preachy. It always hadan idea greater than and what it was
the words on the page, youknow, high not high concept, but
it was high high ideal, okay. And part of this was Bradbury often
would communicate about stuff that families wouldgo through. Um It's something that very
(11:20):
much interested him. And this isvery much implementic in the two movies I'm
I'm covering this this month. Thereis a there is a shoot Me this
week. There's a sadness to it, and there is a trying to relate
and communicate with children aspect to it, and that is one of the reasons
(11:43):
I wanted to cover both of thesein the same week. One of the
through lines with the Electric Grandmother isthis need to be able to relate to
the kids that you have. Thisis very much a story about a father
dealing with his own shit but havinga complete inability to relate it to his
(12:07):
kids. And I will get tothe more of that in the second half
of the podcast, but there's thatthrough line going through. The interesting thing
about this is this movie was ineighty two, and eighty two is the
probably the crowning year for science fiction. Think of the movies that came out
in eighty two. I mean,in eighty one you had Dragonslayer coming out,
(12:30):
and I've covered that previously on thispodcast, but then you have Star
Trek two, The Wrath of Cohn, you got Blade Runner, you got
the Thing, you know, yougot et all these alien themed movies came
out. You got Poltergeist that cameout. It's just and then in eighty
three you got a Kroll coming out, and it was just a fertile year
(12:50):
for fantastical ideas. And this ison a much smaller scale than that.
This movie was obviously shot extremely quickly. Like I said, the acting,
even from Edward Herman and Marine Stapleton, is the big standout in this She
was obviously a very accomplished actress.Marine Stapleton had no relation to Jean Stapleton
from all in the family. Shewas a stage actress who dabbled in movies.
(13:18):
Most of people my age will probablyremember her from The Money Pit as
the grifting alcoholic who unloaded the giganticmoney pit to Tom Hanks. But she
was an accomplished actress, very good, very good, and you can tell
in this movie that she kind ofstands head and shoulders above everyone else,
(13:43):
regardless of the written word or thethemes. Her ability to translate this to
a movie that was very like Isaid, very obviously, very quickly shot.
These are only things that I thinkabout as someone who is in his
mid forties when I'm a kid watchingthis forty years ago. I don't think
about those things. Just think aboutthe theme and what it's communicating to me.
(14:03):
And I think that part is,you know, part of this uh
uvra of Ray Bradbury that we needto concentrate more on because the next the
very next year, he does thissomething wicked. This Way Comes, which
also deals with a kid who isand a and a father who can't communicate
it is there is a there isjust this through line coming through, coming
(14:28):
through line coming through. This isthrough line that just really permeates the the
big projects that Bradbury had at thismoment in time. Um, I will
once and on the other side,I'm going to talk a little bit about
the plot points, and that's someof the more problematic things that will emerge
and some of those But I highlysuggest if you if you in the next
(14:50):
you know, ten minutes of thepodcast, if you haven't seen The Electric
Grandmother, look it up on YouTube, watch it, and then listen to
the rest of this podcast, Ihighly suggest you do that. It's it
is, it is something that youneed to experience and then kind of think
about the way you would have consumedit if you were a kid, because
(15:11):
when I first saw this, Iwas very much a kid and going through
something. My parents divorced. That'sthe year that this came out, and
having that loss, and even thoughmy even though look my dad was always
there and quite frankly, he wasin a mornumous, enormous part of my
(15:31):
two older brothers and myself are liveshuge part. My dad is a bigger
part of my life than my mom. But there is this there's this grieving,
and there's this loss, and there'sall this stuff that's going through.
But I will get to that actuallyin the second half. Once again,
if you haven't seen it, goto YouTube, look at the Electra grammar.
(15:52):
Go watch it. Come back tothe end other half of this podcast,
which happens right after the break.As I said in the first half,
I had a this is the yearmy family fractured, and it doesn't
deal with the same thing themes thatthis movie does. The movie basically is
(16:17):
about a family who lost their motherand it results in this the circumstances that
come out of nowhere, by theway, where this quite crazy, wacky
inventor comes to them and says,I can help you with you help you
with your grief. I can makeyou an electric grandmother after dropping three parts
(16:41):
of a heart down and stuff likethat. It's it's wacky. I'm telling
you, there's no where I'm orreason to it. And then they go
and you know, and there's thisscene where they go to the factory where
these grandmothers are made, and itis creepy as hell. It is creepy
as hell. I did not Idon't not. I don't know how in
nineteen eighty three, when I waswatching this the first time, I do
(17:04):
not know how I didn't freak out, because there are some scenes in this
thing that are just freaking in away. The grandmother comes and it's always
as it's about this this this familydealing specifically this daughter who is dealing with
the loss of her mother, andthis father who decides that the best thing
(17:25):
to do is to give this surrogateto this family. It's a it's an
interesting concept. I don't know necessarilythat the overall lesson here is something that
is very effective or should be taught. But that is with the hindsight of
someone who is in his mid fortiesand it has been an adult for more
(17:47):
longer than he was a kid.Okay UM. I don't know if necessarily
the the ultimate moral of this issomething that is translatable to twenty twenty three.
In fact, I know it's not, but that is that is consistent
through the short story, the TwilightZone episode and this this this this hour
(18:12):
long UM project on NBC. UM. Did I say, NBC NBC UM.
So it's it really is about aboutseveral different things, you know,
And I rewatching it again. Iwas stunned, and I said this on
the first half of the podcast,remembering certain things, remembering the grandmother,
(18:38):
uh and the weird things that shewould do to try to impress this girl.
Her two other brothers were one downwith the electric grandmother, this girl
Agatha was not. And the thingsthat this grandmother does to trying to prove
herself to this girl, because ifshe had she doesn't prove herself, and
(19:02):
if she does, it's a satisfactionguaranteed UM scenario, which was big in
the eighties, by the way,so with it, if the satisfaction wasn't
complete after thirty days, the grandmotherwould be sent back to the scrap heap
and she could not get through tothis girl Agatha, which results in an
interest incident at the end of theh at the towards the end of the
(19:26):
story that is thoroughly ridiculous, butit results in Agatha. You know,
I'm not going to be breaking anynews here. This is a kids so
obviously the ending is kind of isgood. There is a wrap around.
It starts in media res and itbegins with this old man talking about his
(19:47):
electric grandmother, and then it endswith that same old man in her and
there's this that's it's supposed to betelling about this incident. You know.
How this got through to the greaterpublic is very fascinating to me because it
is not something that you would seeon TV. It is very science fiction.
(20:08):
This is extremely science fiction. Thegrandmother, when she's delivered to the
family, arrives in a giant sarcophagus, and when they open up the sarcophagus,
she has an Egyptian mask on her. There's no rhyme or reason to
any of that. She squirts hotchocolate out of her finger. She produces
(20:33):
a muffin to the dad with amessage inside it saying exactly what he said
about five five hours earlier, thething that I remembered the most and This
is something that I actually had dreamsabout in I while the kids are asleep,
this electric grandmother has to plug herselfinto a wall and is like downstairs
(21:00):
and she's just like doing all thesegyrations and stuff like that. I don't
know exactly why that was happening.That's It's one of the things in hindsight
when I'm watching it, it waslike, that's that's really weird. UM.
But it was. It kind ofit stuck in my mind and I
had I would this is so weird. I would have dreams about that scene,
(21:23):
um all the time, and theyweren't necessarily nightmares, but it would
just like it would pop into mybrain. This scene, UM, it
would pop into my brain. Thesarcophagus surviving UM, her on the rocking
chair at the beginning pop into mybrain and now also at the end.
UM. It was it was hardnot to relate to my own family breaking
(21:45):
apart at the time and dealing withthat UM. Because many of you know
who listened to this podcast, I'vealways been older. My brain is older
than my body. It's the bestway to put this. I've and if
you talk to people who are rightaround my age, so about mid seventies
to I don't know eighty. Weall tended to act older than we are,
(22:11):
and I don't know why that is. Maybe that's a function of how
we were raised. I tell peoplethis all the time. Gen xers were
very specifically people my age. Wewere left on our own to basically raise
ourselves. So not only was myfamily busted up, but I just there
was no one there. My momwas working, my dad was working,
(22:33):
stepdad was working. You know,everyone had their their different things, and
it was it's it's all this comestogether and something that you wouldn't think would
affect someone and make them look fondlyupon something as as unsettling as creepy as
(22:55):
this hour long TV movie from nineteeneighty two does. The interesting thing about
this was this movie came in ata time when they really needed to populate
HBO with things. The home videothing was burgeoning at this point, but
it wasn't huge. Home box officeaka HBO was the progenitor of everything basically
(23:22):
you see in streaming. I'll behonest with you, HBO was the was
the the big the Grand Pooba getthe genesis momentum. So they would do
these free weekend things which I'm Ifairly certainly still do in a different form.
I know NBA TV does this,but I remember we were watching this
(23:48):
was about nineteen eighty three, eightyfour. It was one of those free
preview weekends and it was during theday and this The Electric Grandmother came on
and I watched it, and wemissed it. We missed the opportunity to
record it onto our Beta Max.Yes once again, folks, we had
a Betamax, and we missed theopportunity to record it from the TV to
(24:11):
the beta. So I had tohope that we had access to it again
to watch it again. I thinkI probably only watched it in total about
two or three times during this initialnineteen eighties run. And it is amazing
the power of imagery. And Idon't think you know. Along with the
(24:33):
great the top line problematic area ofit, which is replace your your mother
with a never ending robot, basicallyit's it was. That's the other than
that, the themes of it werevery much more mature, and you don't
(24:56):
see that with Kids Fair anymore.Kids Kids Fair right now. It was
very infantalized, and I don't necessarilyknow if that is a function of everyone
having access to everything because we haveyou know, everyone has access to Wi
Fi and the Internet and everything isat the touch of your finger. Back
in nineteen eighty three, when Ifirst saw this, we didn't have that
(25:22):
at all, and even access tovideo stuff wasn't wide by that point.
I didn't really start taking off tillabout eighty five. And I think that
I think that when you when Ilook back at this, the fact that
this was able to stick into myhead as much as it was is either
(25:47):
the power of power of a hugelyaffecting imagery or it's the power of good
storytelling. And I don't know,and I'm trying to resolved it is maybe
it's a combination of both. Youknow, Ray Bradbury was a great writer.
He was a great writer for areason. But at the same time,
(26:07):
you know, watching it back again, it's like I said, the
acting Edward Herman, I'm sure youknow rip same thing with Marine Stapleton.
I'm sure if if they would Laverlook back on this and say that this,
you could tell this was shot realquickly, because the acting in this
is not tremendous, but it isvery much of the time. It's very
(26:32):
much TV movies of the time.No one I think was too embarrassed by
this. Edward Herman was in aBy the way, if you haven't seen
the movie The Paper Chase, thatis a wonderful movie. Hard to watch
movie, but it's wonderful. It'sreally well done. I just just I
can't recommend The Paper Chase enough.Timothy Bottoms is in it. But in
(26:56):
the grand scheme of things, TheElectrod, like the Electric Grandmother, was
a project that you won't see intwenty twenty three Four Kids. This was
four kids. It was marketed asfour Kids for families, and those of
you who've watched it, you know, after the break before and before we
(27:17):
got to this part, you'll knowwhat I'm talking about with It's just it's
really creepy. The whole aura aroundthe movie is extremely creepy. I was
talking to my brother about the electYour Grandmother, my oldest brother, and
he's like, oh, yeah,I remember that, And neither of us
had zeen it since the eighties,but it stuck with us. The imagery
(27:41):
was just so powerful. And asI come back to this, to to
what Steven Spielberg said in the earlyeighties, kids like to be scared,
And while this movie didn't scare me, it certainly probably wasn't a very unsettling
experience at the time, wrapped inan extremely sentimental story about a broken family,
(28:06):
and I think that part is justI don't know, you can't replace
those sorts of things. So anyway, I hope everyone has taken the time
to go watch it. It's onNBC or scooping outs on YouTube right now.
The whole thing you look up theElectric Grandmother, go see what I
see is imagine yourself as six sevenyear old Jeff watching this for the first
time. So anyway, thank youall for joining me latest Gen next show.
(28:30):
I'm going to be back in acouple of days with something wicked.
This way comes say that
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