#159 Bears and Street Gangs are all Crossing The Streams (Bonus Ep28) – Great TV binge watching suggestions!

CTS Announcer 0:01

Looking for your next TV show or movie to binge? Well buckle up, grab the remote and settle into your couch for this special edition of crossing the streams. We're here to help you tune in and get the most out of those 50 monthly streaming channels you're currently paying for. So without any further ado, here's your host of crossing the streams. Jeff Dwoskin

Jeff Dwoskin 0:30

Hey, oh, it is I Jeff Dwoskin your host from classic conversations bringing you this fantabulous bonus episode pulled from our live show crossing the streams which is live every Wednesday at 9:30pm Eastern Time crossing the streams answering the universal question what should I be binge watching next? I just finished something and now I gotta watch something else while you have come to the right place because we're about to feed three suggestions right into your ears. And if you need more, head over to YouTube over 83 hours of live crossing the stream shows chock full of binge watching suggestions await you so check that out. But right here right now we got street gang how we got to Sesame Street, the bear and dying laughing three fantastic opportunities for you to sit on the couch and binge these segments are pulled from our live show. Our live show is a collection of my friends sitting around talking about shows that we love. You're listening in. Hopefully you'll love it too. And then you'll check it out. All right let's check with frequent guest make Manhattan of the scene snobs. He's going to tell us a little bit about the bare eye. Let's go into hopefully a pick me up with the bear.

Ron Lippitt 1:52

That Barry Manilow in the picture that

Jeff Dwoskin 1:55

I don't think the bear is about Barry Manilow

Mick Manhattan 1:57

it's not a pick me up. It's it's in the vein of oddly enough because the main actor Jeremy Alan White is from shameless but sort of in that same vein where it's dramatic, it has dramatic elements but it can be funny comes off as a FX show. I swear to God it was on FX but I guess it was Hulu original, but I know they own FX now. So I guess that's why it came out that way. But it's this show. Jeremy Alan White who played lip on Shameless is in this he plays Carmi he was like a nationwide, like well respected chef in the best restaurant in the country. And he ran the chef, he ran it and he was that chef but his brother who ran like a beef sandwich shop in Chicago was like a famous beef sandwich shop in Chicago. That was kind of run down and just like family business, he kills himself. You do not see that that comes into play later. But Carmi inherits everything and goes to run it leaves the whole lifestyle behind and he goes back and he starts running it and he wants to do it differently. His brother never let them work there was always just kind of held him off. Like you never know why they never actually say it but it was his brother and his best friend running it. And his brother knew how to cook he was very good at it this thing but he wasn't a great business owner. And his best friend is a real knucklehead Scott Ritchie. So when he comes in, there's a lot a lot of he has a lot of adversaries going on in this kitchen going at him in this kitchen. Because everybody has been working there for a long period of time, he hires a brand new shoot sous chef who had a failed catering company, but she's very like brash and like kind of wants to run things like a real kitchen just like him. So he's trying to almost indoctrinate all these people into how the kitchen should work. He makes sure everybody calls each other chef, you know, he's doing his thing. And it's really well done. Because it's so realistic to handle everything really well. If you've worked in a kitchen, you kind of get it. The drama of it is all in the kitchen, they may go do a catering or something like that, but it's the business that you're following here. It's not the only family drama there is is between the brothers and their sister who own this place. And it's about this place they don't get into the whole thing. So it's like 10 episodes, say half hour each of each episode. I finished it in like a day and a half and I was in I wanted more i It's got like 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. So I'm hoping it's going to come back and be your first equal so second season I should say. But following their their mishaps and everything kind of trying to get this kitchen together and make it a respectable place and to see like how he's dealing with his brother's suicide. It's just everything really meshes well together. The comedy hits on all the right ways. But the drama hits all the right ways as well. Joe, John Bernath, all from walking dead, the Punisher, things like that he plays the brother so they'll do like flashbacks to him when the family was all together and stuff like that, so it's it's really well done and the cast of characters are realistic and a lot of fun to follow in this.

Jeff Dwoskin 5:10

AC Ryan Claude Salah and I it sounds it sounds interesting.

Ron Lippitt 5:14

And there have these are half hour episodes you said, yeah, that's why you're able to blast through them so quickly.

Jeff Dwoskin 5:20

There's something about food related shows what was the movie with John Fabra, where he was a chef truck, Chef. Oh my god. That was, that was one of my favorites. Something about food. I love food. You know, Iron Chef, they brought back on your stuff on Netflix.

Mick Manhattan 5:34

I saw that. And this one is like if you'd liked Kitchen Confidential the book or the series that they did for one series back in the day, if you liked anything Anthony Bourdain, or chef or anything like that, you're gonna love this.

Ron Lippitt 5:47

My opinion is that these cooking shows anything food related? I think a lot of it depends on the quality of the photography. Like, you know, like that chef with Jon Favreau. If you noticed the photography was gorgeous in that movie. Oh, gorgeous. So you know, I don't know is it does bear bears got to have great photography. I did a show a while back about samurai gore. May you may remember that, Jeff. And those were half hour is a Japanese show. And it's just beautiful photography. And that really makes the show with it.

Jeff Dwoskin 6:20

Very cool. Very cool. All right. All right. That was MC Manhattan in the bear. Everyone seems to be talking about the bear. So definitely check that one out. We got one more short and to the point recommendation and then street gang how we got to Sesame Street. Howard rosin is going to take us through a real in depth chat on that amazing documentary. All right. All right now dying. Laughing sounds sad, but it's really just about comedians not doing great on stage. How amazing would that be? Saudi Familia is gonna take us through this one. Take it away. So all right, we're gonna we're gonna lighten things up with dying laughing.

Sal Demilio 7:02

This is gonna be real quick, guys. There's not much to this. But it's very interesting documentary. It's a dark, a documentary about just famous stand up comedians talking about their worst experiences on stage, whether it was when they were starting out. Some of them talked about bombing when they're even famous a little bit. So it's just a very interesting documentary. It was entered in the 2016 Los Angeles Film Festival. And basically, that's what it is. I mean, obviously, me and Bob that do a lot of stand up here. I know, Jeff does one and a half shows a year and his president but no, I'm just kidding. But and Jeff, you can chime in on this too. You've maybe Bob and Jeff real quick.

Jeff Dwoskin 7:45

18 years of comedy I did.

Howard Rosner 7:49

You never bombed no job. So

Sal Demilio 7:52

it's true. That's true. But it's just

Jeff Dwoskin 7:54

no bomb a lot.

Sal Demilio 7:58

I've performed in Iraq many times. But basically, it's just these comedians. It's it's 90 minutes of just some of the most famous comedians that you'd love. Just talk about their worst experiences on stage. Jimmy Jerry Lewis is on there. I know Jerry Lewis was alive

Unknown Speaker 8:15

then. Literally every Jerry Lewis age appearance is my worst experience.

Sal Demilio 8:24

He's on there. Obviously. Jerry Seinfeld is on there a lot talking about his early days. Sarah Silverman. She told the father I gotta tell every story that these guys told Sarah Silverman told a really good story with shoes on stage one time at some New York club and it was pretty packed. And she is just not getting a laugh at all. Nothing like literally nothing. And all of a sudden one of the other comics she didn't say who in the documentary but all sudden you just heard just a guy with somebody whistling in the back. And then she said she heard that was the only thing that crowd heard. So just great stories like that from Kevin Hart. Russell Peters. Just it was really cool. 90 minutes of this. They also show a little clips of comedy clubs. Some of the ones we've all performed at us three, they showed actually the funny stop the one I'm going to be at this week at Cuyahoga Falls. Oh, look at that. It's your Joey's comedy club in Livonia. They show obviously Mark Ridley's, they show a bunch of obviously comedy, The Comedy Store and all that with you know, crowd shots, bartender shots, talking about some things and just a really cool documentary if you're into stand up comedy and you kind of want to see the other side of it instead of comics talking about how great they are. He's comics talked about how they bombed and it just as a comedian myself, and it just makes you kind of feel good to hear in these basically multimillionaire comedians talk about how their experiences on stage didn't always go well. So it's a great documentary. I highly recommend it if you'd like to know how

Unknown Speaker 9:57

I missed it. So I'm gonna it's great. Should Yeah, you can get it

Sal Demilio 10:01

right on YouTube or doesn't you don't have to stream it on a paying service you can just watch it on YouTube and it's a great I highly recommend I was went by quick. It's great

Jeff Dwoskin 10:13

for everyone listening to it's it's one of those things where it's more interesting to hear comics talk about bombing and the bad things that happen. Good things. It's like life but none of the all the train wreck stories are always better than the good ones.

Howard Rosner 10:29

Way more people stopped to watch a train wreck than they do to cheer someone on. And nobody wants to hear anybody talks about how much how they won big at the poker table. They want to hear about their horrible beat.

Sal Demilio 10:42

Yeah, exactly. Right.

Unknown Speaker 10:46

We're sick.

Howard Rosner 10:48

Yeah, Chris Rock. You just came out this week and for the first time publicly talked about the Oscars slapped with Dave Chappelle. Which Chappelle? Yeah. He said, he just said, Look, you know, I'm not a victim, you know, stop. He's like, I could take a punch, you know, and just talked around it a little bit joked about it. So yeah, it's pretty interesting. You got to look up the comments online. Well, he did talk about it.

Jeff Dwoskin 11:13

That's cool. Well, yeah, he's allowed isn't allowed.

Unknown Speaker 11:18

Yeah, anything he wants.

Howard Rosner 11:20

It's good to have some perspective of time, you know, not reacting just to the incident. He's had time to actually ruminate on it and provide some good perspective. Yeah. All right.

Jeff Dwoskin 11:33

Cool. All right. Well, thank you for that. And that's just a 90 minute documentary. Right? Correct. Correct. 89 minutes. Exactly. 89 minutes. I

Sal Demilio 11:43

guarantee it's just under 90.

Jeff Dwoskin 11:47

All right, getting right to the point with Sal de millio. And dying laughing pulled from Episode 82. We've already heard the bear from Episode 81. Now we're going back to Episode 55. Howard Rozzers going to take us through street gang. How we got to Sesame Street. Get ready for all the fields. Take it away, Rhys. All right. Let's move on to the next show. Three gang, how we got to Sesame Street. This actually looks fascinating.

Howard Rosner 12:16

Yeah, this is an HBO Max documentary. I will just start out the front by saying I really, really love this movie. Very informative, really informative, but also emotional. I cried at one point. And look, Sesame Street started in 1969. So all of us on this show are most of us at least on this show. We were raised on Sesame, we were the first generation raised on Sesame Street. Truly, there's so many moments in the show where it's just clips. And I went, oh my god, I remember that. It was just it was so the nostalgia that was so strong. But it's also so informative about how important this show was. So I think a lot of people still connect Jim Henson and the Muppets as the creative voice of Sesame Street. And while he was a huge part of it, from a creative standpoint, there were a couple of people that were more important. And really the woman who champion the show was a woman named Joan Cooney. And she was a TV executive. And she was approached in 1966 by the Carnegie Institute about wanting to have done studies about the educational system, especially of inner city or low socio economic children, and how how far they were behind like one study that they that they talked about was when they hit kindergarten, or first grade, at the start of the school year, they were three months behind kids from higher economic areas. By the end of that first year. They were a year, a full year behind in reading, writing and arithmetic. So the Carnegie Institute wanted to try and do something and TV had taken off, it came to her and said, Do you think TV can make a difference? And she said, I don't I don't know. She had approached the guy who became the primary director of the early seasons and executive producer guiding Johnstone, who was the driving force behind the creative innovate, they did something that had never been done. They pulled together a mix of TV and comedy writers and educators and sat them down in the room to do focus groups and studies and talk about it. And that became what we now know as the Children's Television Workshop. That's what it was. And the educators actually they showed this binder that was about yay thick that they didn't they had to explain to the writers like we're not trying to teach counting numbers. That's not what it is. We're trying to teach cognitive Association are all these actual terms and then give examples to them of what it would mean to teach a kid that how you would do it, and then what it would so that they could create this common language for creating the show. Johnstone was cynical because he had only seen up to that point, children's television shows that were there to sell something like they showed, you know, like how to do it. And you know, both of the clown, like every segment was like its own little team, kids, tell your mom and dad to get your whole team. They were there to entertain, but they weren't there to teach anything. So that was the challenge of the show. And they didn't know how to do it. And then they worked overtime to create that. The other thing was then they had the ideas for the show. They knew kind of how they wanted to approach it. But they didn't know the setting. And Johnstone happened to be watching shows that showed inner city and street activity. And he said, That's it. That's what it needs to be. It needs to be gritty and neighborhood and stuff that these kids can relate to. So that's where the Sesame Street came from. They show the actual videotape that they used to pitch and John Stone had known Jim Henson and Jim Henson had been around forever. So he brought in Jim Henson, he thought the puppets Muppets would be a great way to help get the message across the first couple episodes that they did the focus groups, they only would do the Muppets episodes. And then they would have all the episodes with the adults talking to the kids and the other things and they noticed that the kids did not pay attention. They pay the absolute attention to the Muppets, but when it was an adult talking to a kid, they tuned out, they said, Okay, well, we have to have the Muppets be part of the activity with the adults at street level. And that's how they made that change. The show began airing in 1961. Oh, I should also add the other major behind the scenes name, who you know, when we talked about get back I talked about how I was absolutely amazed at the ability for John Lennon and Paul McCartney. George with IV mine after you know, you watch the TV show a movie the night before and rightside me mine which is becomes a great song or you know, Paul's just doodling on his guitar. And in five minutes as the main chorus to get back. The man's name was Joe riposo. And he's who wrote the bulk of the songs on the show talked about writing one and probably the most iconic song from the show. It ain't easy being green with Kermit. And like he showed his writing process. It was like minutes that he sat down to write that song. And it's the genius level ability to be able to do that the show began airing in 1969. And it had a huge grant from the Department of Education. And they spent a lot of that promoting this in markets. So then people knew it was coming. They talked about how it was something that had never been done before. And it instantaneously blew up to huge proportions, like amazing proportions to the point that celebrities were talking about it. They were on talk shows, by the end of the first year they had Sesame Street Live where they were going around with a touring show. Amazing. One of the things they do talk about is in that first year, a huge controversy. Because the other thing about the show was not only groundbreaking in what they how they were reaching kids and teaching kids to read, teaching kids to write teaching kids the alphabet, multiplication tables, all those things. But it was the show was a champion of social consciousness. And the social revolution, there was no divination between race, gender, I mean, in 1969, that's crazy. And it didn't. So naturally, white kids and black kids on street level, talking to the Muppets, laughing and they didn't bring in actors for the kids. They brought just kids in to interact. And there was no, there was no concern. And it was so so ahead of its time in doing that, while the state of Mississippi refused to run it on public education and public broadcasting because of the integration. They didn't claim. It was because of integration. There's a great interview with the head of the TV and public broadcasting. And he says, Well, we just haven't had we haven't had seen the watch from our audience in the state of Mississippi to demand the show. If they demand it, we probably would do it. So private Leone TV stations decided that they would be the only privately on stations in the country to run the show. And within a small period of time, the demand was so great that they started running it on PBS. So the documentary really focuses it doesn't get too far into the history of the show. It's not that talk more about how they continued the challenge tough subjects and how the show grew to just the proportions that was one of the other moments that absolutely brought tears to my eyes was one of the first really tough decisions they made on the show was when the man who played Mr. Hooper, he passed away they are Originally, we're just gonna say I went on vacation, he moved to Florida, but they're like, that's just not honest. It's not honest. We can't do that. So really, really difficult. They wrote the episode. I didn't remember it until I saw the clips, but they did it through the lens of Big Bird created the scene or big bird had draw drawn all these pictures of all the humans on the show Bob and Gordon and Maria and Susan, and they showed Big Bird giving the pictures to him and he wanted to give it to Mr. Hooper. And they tried to have they had to explain to him that Mr. Hooper's his dad, he said, Well, he'll be coming back like now. He's not, you're gone forever, and you die. You know, it was so crying, thinking about it was so honest. And it was so real and endearing to teaching an important lesson to kids that you just didn't get otherwise. And they did it in such an earnest way that it was. It's, it's amazing. So they delve into the relationship between Jim Henson and Frank Oz, which is is amazing. That showed the two of them filming together and they were Ernie. And Bert, I think I knew that. But I didn't remember that. I knew Frank. I knew Jim Henson, Kermit and others. I knew Frank guys did Grover, Cookie Monster and others, but I didn't know. I didn't know that was the case that it was the two of them. They talked about how it was like a comedy. They were like a comedy team, you know, like Martin and Lewis or something like that. And it was, it's great. So again, it doesn't go you know, it doesn't even get into like, I freely believe that there's they have enough footage, I'm sure that there's probably a second documentary where they could go into into the ELMO era, because they don't really touch on any of that stuff. This is all like 60s and 70s. Era, maybe early 80s that they catch on. But there's so many characters, they just show clips of that I totally forgot about. They talk about the racial implications of Roosevelt. Franklin, you read it. If you remember, Roosevelt, Franklin. Roosevelt was created by the first court who by the way, HOLLY ROBINSON PEETE was heard the actress was her father was the original guardian, he left the show, he was a little more radical about black politics, and was maybe a little wanted to be a little too aggressive. And telling the mentioned like, there were several black organizations of black people who complain that Roosevelt Franklin was a little too heavy handed and maybe too stereotypical, or creating a negative stereotype or feeding into a negative stereotype. So he left the show and replaced I mean, they showed all the Bob McGrath and the woman who played Maria Luis, and yeah, it's so good. If you were raised on Sesame Street, please go watch this.

Ron Lippitt 22:46

So I have a couple of questions are First off, did they talk at all about the competition with Mr. Rogers Neighborhood? Or was that brought up at all?

Howard Rosner 22:54

They didn't mention there was a comment briefly show other shows focused on fantasy. And they showed, you know, fantasy land. But Mr. Rogers, got it. You know, they said this, this show is real. These were real kids that were interacting with the adults. It was great.

Ron Lippitt 23:10

The other question is, did they talk at all about how Ernie and Bert the names coming from the movie? It's a Wonderful Life. I've always wanted to know if that was confirmed, because there were the cop and the cop and the taxi driver from It's A Wonderful Life. And I just was curious if that had ever been confirmed in the documentary? I

Howard Rosner 23:29

don't think they mentioned that. I don't remember that. But I don't think they mentioned okay, maybe maybe it was really funny. They did show a bunch up, because, you know, it was a film show. It wasn't live. So there's some really funny clips of bloopers with the Muppets that are really fun shooting the shit about stuff and mess ups. And it's really, really so good. And again, heartwarming. It was literally a television altering show. I mean, it was it created a genre that never existed and legitimately changed the lives of millions of kids. You know, literally,

Ron Lippitt 24:06

it changed Sal's life. Yeah. So a

Jeff Dwoskin 24:09

couple of things. And it's a different documentary, but I watched one on Carol arrows. Yeah. Carol Spinney. Yes, many. And when the Challenger exploded, there was a teacher on board, Christine makalah. The original idea was to have him on the Challenger as Big Bird, but they couldn't get the costume to work with safety. Yeah, stuff. So that didn't happen. Can you imagine if that happened? We'd never have recovered from that. But here's an interesting thing about Sesame Street also is and this is from an article in 2008. When they came out on DVD, the early episodes of Sesame Street which you're talking about the 69 early 70s episodes, this is the warning that was on it, Volume One and volume into Sesame Street. Sesame Street episodes are intended for grownups and may not suit the needs of today's preschool child. Yeah, and it's really, life has changed in terms of the old Sesame Streets are no longer suitable for children view.

Howard Rosner 25:16

Interesting. Yeah. And you know, they showed some scenes like they had recurring again, I didn't remember this until I saw them like holy shit. Now I totally remember they had a thing that was hosted by cookie monster called Monster peace theater. The show was an absolutely dead on copy of Masterpiece Theater. And it's just it was, you know, the kid wouldn't know that that was designed for adults. And it was, it was such a brilliant creation. There were just other little things that I discovered in there like the you remember the counting pinball machine? 1-234-567-8910 11. That was the Pointer Sisters that did that.

Jeff Dwoskin 25:58

Sesame Street at all the best stuff? Oh, my

Howard Rosner 26:00

God, there's so many. There's so many good. There's a clip at the end of the documentary, again, showing how real it was. That's Paul Simon and a guitar doing me and Julio Dominguez schoolyard. And just one kid sitting on the stairs who's like clapping and singing her own lyric along with him. And it's just, again, it's just pure. It's just so pure, that it's just brilliant. So yeah, please, if you were in that era, that we were grew up at all on Sesame Street, go watch this documentary. There's no way not to come out of it feeling more knowledge about the show as well as just purely happy from having seen it.

Jeff Dwoskin 26:43

All right, that was street gang. How we got this Sesame Street with Howard Rosner guiding us through that documentary sounds like a must watch, along with the bear and dying laughing. Sounds like we have presented you tons of great binge watching suggestions. So here's what you gotta do. You got a lot of homework, grab your remote control, find your favorite spot on your couch, cross your own streams, and we'll see you next time.

CTS Announcer 27:14

Thanks for listening to this special edition of crossing the streams. Visit us on YouTube for full episodes and catch us live every Wednesday at 9:30pm Eastern time. Now turn this off and go watch some TV. And don't forget to tell your family yeah, I'll be busy for a while.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai