June 13, 2025 • 10 mins
Dr. Bob Thompson has the latest entertainment news including the premier of the live action movie "How to Train your Dragon, and the Netflix reboot of Little House on the Prairie
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right to do on the Legacy Retirement Group dot
(00:01):
com phone line. It's been a minute since I've spoken
with doctor Bob Thompson, Professor of Pop Culture at Syracuse University. Bob,
I think you're on vacation, and then I was on vacation,
and it's been a couple of weeks.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
How are you? How you been? I'm doing pretty well.
And I don't know if you knew this, but I'm
a big fan of Mike Kemp Petti as well. Be years.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
There's two see that it's growing. By explanationing, it just
doubled the fan club. It's amazing.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
I was for a while president of the Northeast Regional
Fan Club, but that seems to have fallen apart.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
I think we need to, yeah, need to get the
membership dues reduced, so maybe you get some people involved there, Bob.
A couple of things I want to get to real quick.
I don't want to spend too much time in the movies.
This weekend, You've got the live action How to Train
Your Dragon. This is after the live action Lelo and
Stitch has been number one at the box office. It
seems like Hollywood has sort of hit on something with
(00:53):
these these live action versions of successful movies from the past.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Yeah, there's been a few that is not done as well,
but yet lately, I mean Lelone Stitch breaking all kinds
of records, and the drum roll for this How To
Train Your Dragon has been has been huge. So, yeah,
this seems to be a thing. And of course it's
part of that. You take some intellectual property and you
(01:18):
make Broadway musicals about it, and then you make movies
based on the Broadway musicals that were based on the
animated movies. And I think part of it is that
some of these things just have such beloved the worlds
that they created, and people keep wanting to, you know,
you loved Harry Potter so much that you want to
go on the amusement park ride, or you want to,
(01:41):
you know, do the new TV series or whatever. And
there are millions of people out there for whom How
to Train Your Dragon the first time around was a
really important part of their childhood.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Yeah, and I watched it with my boys when they
were younger a few years ago. And it's a good story.
And that's I think what all of these have in common.
It's got to start with a good story. And good
characters and I don't know, I might go see How
to Train Your Dragon. It was was a cute movie
the first time around, so nothing to suggest that it
wouldn't be this time around. One of the big stories,
(02:12):
of course, the passing of Brian Wilson Beach Boys. Brian Wilson,
I mean it can be described with one word, and
that is genius and absolute musical genius, Bob who really
revolutionized the way music is produced. He was one of
the very first people to use the recording studio sort
of as an instrument itself, and you can hear some
(02:33):
of that in the pet Sounds Beach Boys album, and
it just I mean, just listen to good vibrations and
everything that is going on in that song. It's just
all the arrangements in the strange sounds I mean Brian Wilson,
and the tributes have been pouring out for this guy
and unbelievable.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Career they have, and it's not just I mean. One
of the upsides, if you could even call it that,
whatever any famous person passes, is that you get a
brief history lessons. All of these obituaries, of course, not
only remind us of what these people did, but introduce
what they did to generations of people who knew very
(03:10):
little about them. And with Brian Wilson, it's not just
hearing the and of course we're hearing the clips of
all the Beach Boy hits and everything, but they are
really digging into this fact that Wilson was Perhaps most
his greatest legacy is as a producer, as a manipulator
(03:31):
of sound within what was available technologically. Hard to believe
that Pet Sounds was first released as a monaural album
what he managed to do in that before we had
all these multi channel stuff and all that kind of thing.
And the very bringing up of that album, which I
think now after this last couple of days everybody realizes
(03:54):
considered one of the great not only technological achievements in
American recording history, but one of the great concept albums,
you know, up there with the Beatles and those kinds
of places. And I had a student actually bring up
Pet Sounds. This is probably, I don't know, twenty twenty
(04:17):
year old, twenty one year old.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
And this is an album of course that was released
to what nineteen sixty six, if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
And then when you look at some of like I
mentioned good vibrations, it's sung most people are familiar with.
And his use of an instrument called the Thereman.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
Oh yeah, and if you.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
Don't know, it's largely believed to be one of the
first electric musical instruments. And you don't actually touch it.
It's got two metal antenna and it creates an electromagnetnetic
field or something like that, and you use your hands
to make that so that eerie sound. And I mean,
so this guy's making pop music using these obscure instruments.
(04:58):
It just it just goes to show you how really
he actually was.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Yeah, and of course the theorem and when you describe it, it
sounds like science fiction, and we most associated with science
fiction movies and television series and that kind of thing,
but that's not how he was using it. He used
that in a completely different and I agree fascinating kind
of way. For all of the Beach Boys, including the
(05:23):
title of their group, being associated with that beach music,
I think they're real masterpieces. Were in fact after they
quit doing that.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Yeah, it's an amazing I'll probably be listening to some
Beach Boys this weekend. And you know, a Mike Love
by the way, Mike Love and Al Jardine, two of
the non Wilson family members, are the last remaining Beach Boys.
I'm sure they're well into their eighties by now. And
another there is a version of the Beach Boys that
I think is still going on tour. Do you know
(05:54):
anything about that? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Yeah, well I know that it's not too long ago
they still were. I haven't seen anything really recently, but
they remained. When was Kocomo eighty eight?
Speaker 1 (06:04):
That was the late eighties. And I don't think Brian Wilson.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
Was involved though, Yeah, I don't think so either.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Yeah, yeah, but anyway, he shall And we haven't even
talked about sly Stone. I mean, we lost sly Stone
from sly and the Family Stone earlier I think maybe
over the weekend, and then now Brian Wilson. So what
happened with Terry Moran over at ABC? He had some
critical tweets of the president and some of his administration,
(06:30):
and he was swiftly let go from his job after
what twenty eight years?
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Yeah, they suspended him and within them I think like
forty eight hours they fired him. And he's been with
ABC News since Niety ninety seven. You're right, twenty eight
years as chief foreign correspondent, senior national correspondent, co host
of Nightline for several years. But as you recall, ABC
has just had to settle a I think what sixteen
(06:57):
million dollars settlement with Trump over that whole Stephanopolis business.
So they are really really, I think, hyper sensitive. And
Moran had done one of these midnight tweets another reason
why you should never tweet at midnight, and you know,
(07:18):
called Stephen Miller a world class hater and called Trump
a world class hater, and that kind of thing, I mean,
by the standards of rhetoric today, seemed pretty uh, seemed
pretty tame. But they came right out and said they
don't condone subjective personal attacks and they fired him. Compare
(07:38):
that to several years ago when oh, I'm thinking, remember
Brian Williams fabricated a bunch of stories on a late
night talk show and he was suspended, but then they
brought him back and he eventually got his own show
again and all of that. These are very very different.
(08:00):
I think these these network operations are really really worried.
And this would have happened twenty years ago, Terry Moran
would have maybe been suspended, flapped on the wrist, and
that would have been the end of it. But they're
really worried, I think, ultimately about lawsuits. So he's out,
but no, sooner was he suspended than we get the
(08:22):
announcement that he like seems anybody else that gets fired
from anything these days, is going to be on substack
with his own show there.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
So yeah, they do their own things. They get their
podcasts going, and so on and so forth.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Talking about how it's a new love Boat. When you
left your show, you ended up on love Motor Murders.
You get the guest.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
The guest host Bob Thompson, professor of pop culture from
Syracuse University. Something we kind of went down a rabbit
hole earlier this week, Bob is Production is underway on
the Netflix reboot of Little House on the Prairie And
as a kid in the in the early seventies, I
mean that was a show that I loved. I would
wait up to watch, you know, Michael Landon and Laura
(09:06):
and Mary Ingalls and you know the mean girl Nellie
Olsen and that show. And I don't know who's going
to be in this, if it's anybody that we know,
but kind of looking forward to seeing what they do
with the Little House in the Prairie reboot.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Yeah, I think they're shooting it up in Canada already.
I think it's mostly cast if I'm not mistaken, But
we'll find out soon enough. But you know, that was
one of a pair of shows, one NBC Little House
and the other was a CBS show that played during
the seventies, which we kind of make fun of as
being corny and old fashioned, literally old fashioned. Both were
(09:39):
set in the previous era, at a time when we
had things like All in the Family and Mash and
all that stuff. But Little House in the Prairie, like
its companion show, The Waltons, were really finally executed programming. Yes,
they were kind of sappy, and you know, you occasionally
(10:01):
need the Kleenex by the end of the episode. But
I think that Michael Landon was really really good at
what he did both in Little House and then of
course in Highway to Heaven, which he was in charge of.
And I think Little House in the Prairie deserves to
be put up there as one of the great American
television shows of that era. How it's going to work
(10:24):
as a reboot, I'm not sure that was a program
that was so much of its time, but I'll reserve
judgment till I see it
All right to do on the Legacy Retirement Group dot
(00:01):
com phone line. It's been a minute since I've spoken
with doctor Bob Thompson, Professor of Pop Culture at Syracuse University. Bob,
I think you're on vacation, and then I was on vacation,
and it's been a couple of weeks.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
How are you? How you been? I'm doing pretty well.
And I don't know if you knew this, but I'm
a big fan of Mike Kemp Petti as well. Be years.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
There's two see that it's growing. By explanationing, it just
doubled the fan club. It's amazing.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
I was for a while president of the Northeast Regional
Fan Club, but that seems to have fallen apart.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
I think we need to, yeah, need to get the
membership dues reduced, so maybe you get some people involved there, Bob.
A couple of things I want to get to real quick.
I don't want to spend too much time in the movies.
This weekend, You've got the live action How to Train
Your Dragon. This is after the live action Lelo and
Stitch has been number one at the box office. It
seems like Hollywood has sort of hit on something with
(00:53):
these these live action versions of successful movies from the past.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Yeah, there's been a few that is not done as well,
but yet lately, I mean Lelone Stitch breaking all kinds
of records, and the drum roll for this How To
Train Your Dragon has been has been huge. So, yeah,
this seems to be a thing. And of course it's
part of that. You take some intellectual property and you
(01:18):
make Broadway musicals about it, and then you make movies
based on the Broadway musicals that were based on the
animated movies. And I think part of it is that
some of these things just have such beloved the worlds
that they created, and people keep wanting to, you know,
you loved Harry Potter so much that you want to
go on the amusement park ride, or you want to,
(01:41):
you know, do the new TV series or whatever. And
there are millions of people out there for whom How
to Train Your Dragon the first time around was a
really important part of their childhood.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Yeah, and I watched it with my boys when they
were younger a few years ago. And it's a good story.
And that's I think what all of these have in common.
It's got to start with a good story. And good
characters and I don't know, I might go see How
to Train Your Dragon. It was was a cute movie
the first time around, so nothing to suggest that it
wouldn't be this time around. One of the big stories,
(02:12):
of course, the passing of Brian Wilson Beach Boys. Brian Wilson,
I mean it can be described with one word, and
that is genius and absolute musical genius, Bob who really
revolutionized the way music is produced. He was one of
the very first people to use the recording studio sort
of as an instrument itself, and you can hear some
(02:33):
of that in the pet Sounds Beach Boys album, and
it just I mean, just listen to good vibrations and
everything that is going on in that song. It's just
all the arrangements in the strange sounds I mean Brian Wilson,
and the tributes have been pouring out for this guy
and unbelievable.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Career they have, and it's not just I mean. One
of the upsides, if you could even call it that,
whatever any famous person passes, is that you get a
brief history lessons. All of these obituaries, of course, not
only remind us of what these people did, but introduce
what they did to generations of people who knew very
(03:10):
little about them. And with Brian Wilson, it's not just
hearing the and of course we're hearing the clips of
all the Beach Boy hits and everything, but they are
really digging into this fact that Wilson was Perhaps most
his greatest legacy is as a producer, as a manipulator
(03:31):
of sound within what was available technologically. Hard to believe
that Pet Sounds was first released as a monaural album
what he managed to do in that before we had
all these multi channel stuff and all that kind of thing.
And the very bringing up of that album, which I
think now after this last couple of days everybody realizes
(03:54):
considered one of the great not only technological achievements in
American recording history, but one of the great concept albums,
you know, up there with the Beatles and those kinds
of places. And I had a student actually bring up
Pet Sounds. This is probably, I don't know, twenty twenty
(04:17):
year old, twenty one year old.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
And this is an album of course that was released
to what nineteen sixty six, if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
And then when you look at some of like I
mentioned good vibrations, it's sung most people are familiar with.
And his use of an instrument called the Thereman.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
Oh yeah, and if you.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
Don't know, it's largely believed to be one of the
first electric musical instruments. And you don't actually touch it.
It's got two metal antenna and it creates an electromagnetnetic
field or something like that, and you use your hands
to make that so that eerie sound. And I mean,
so this guy's making pop music using these obscure instruments.
(04:58):
It just it just goes to show you how really
he actually was.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Yeah, and of course the theorem and when you describe it, it
sounds like science fiction, and we most associated with science
fiction movies and television series and that kind of thing,
but that's not how he was using it. He used
that in a completely different and I agree fascinating kind
of way. For all of the Beach Boys, including the
(05:23):
title of their group, being associated with that beach music,
I think they're real masterpieces. Were in fact after they
quit doing that.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Yeah, it's an amazing I'll probably be listening to some
Beach Boys this weekend. And you know, a Mike Love
by the way, Mike Love and Al Jardine, two of
the non Wilson family members, are the last remaining Beach Boys.
I'm sure they're well into their eighties by now. And
another there is a version of the Beach Boys that
I think is still going on tour. Do you know
(05:54):
anything about that? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Yeah, well I know that it's not too long ago
they still were. I haven't seen anything really recently, but
they remained. When was Kocomo eighty eight?
Speaker 1 (06:04):
That was the late eighties. And I don't think Brian Wilson.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
Was involved though, Yeah, I don't think so either.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Yeah, yeah, but anyway, he shall And we haven't even
talked about sly Stone. I mean, we lost sly Stone
from sly and the Family Stone earlier I think maybe
over the weekend, and then now Brian Wilson. So what
happened with Terry Moran over at ABC? He had some
critical tweets of the president and some of his administration,
(06:30):
and he was swiftly let go from his job after
what twenty eight years?
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Yeah, they suspended him and within them I think like
forty eight hours they fired him. And he's been with
ABC News since Niety ninety seven. You're right, twenty eight
years as chief foreign correspondent, senior national correspondent, co host
of Nightline for several years. But as you recall, ABC
has just had to settle a I think what sixteen
(06:57):
million dollars settlement with Trump over that whole Stephanopolis business.
So they are really really, I think, hyper sensitive. And
Moran had done one of these midnight tweets another reason
why you should never tweet at midnight, and you know,
(07:18):
called Stephen Miller a world class hater and called Trump
a world class hater, and that kind of thing, I mean,
by the standards of rhetoric today, seemed pretty uh, seemed
pretty tame. But they came right out and said they
don't condone subjective personal attacks and they fired him. Compare
(07:38):
that to several years ago when oh, I'm thinking, remember
Brian Williams fabricated a bunch of stories on a late
night talk show and he was suspended, but then they
brought him back and he eventually got his own show
again and all of that. These are very very different.
(08:00):
I think these these network operations are really really worried.
And this would have happened twenty years ago, Terry Moran
would have maybe been suspended, flapped on the wrist, and
that would have been the end of it. But they're
really worried, I think, ultimately about lawsuits. So he's out,
but no, sooner was he suspended than we get the
(08:22):
announcement that he like seems anybody else that gets fired
from anything these days, is going to be on substack
with his own show there.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
So yeah, they do their own things. They get their
podcasts going, and so on and so forth.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Talking about how it's a new love Boat. When you
left your show, you ended up on love Motor Murders.
You get the guest.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
The guest host Bob Thompson, professor of pop culture from
Syracuse University. Something we kind of went down a rabbit
hole earlier this week, Bob is Production is underway on
the Netflix reboot of Little House on the Prairie And
as a kid in the in the early seventies, I
mean that was a show that I loved. I would
wait up to watch, you know, Michael Landon and Laura
(09:06):
and Mary Ingalls and you know the mean girl Nellie
Olsen and that show. And I don't know who's going
to be in this, if it's anybody that we know,
but kind of looking forward to seeing what they do
with the Little House in the Prairie reboot.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Yeah, I think they're shooting it up in Canada already.
I think it's mostly cast if I'm not mistaken, But
we'll find out soon enough. But you know, that was
one of a pair of shows, one NBC Little House
and the other was a CBS show that played during
the seventies, which we kind of make fun of as
being corny and old fashioned, literally old fashioned. Both were
(09:39):
set in the previous era, at a time when we
had things like All in the Family and Mash and
all that stuff. But Little House in the Prairie, like
its companion show, The Waltons, were really finally executed programming. Yes,
they were kind of sappy, and you know, you occasionally
(10:01):
need the Kleenex by the end of the episode. But
I think that Michael Landon was really really good at
what he did both in Little House and then of
course in Highway to Heaven, which he was in charge of.
And I think Little House in the Prairie deserves to
be put up there as one of the great American
television shows of that era. How it's going to work
(10:24):
as a reboot, I'm not sure that was a program
that was so much of its time, but I'll reserve
judgment till I see it
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