All posts by ERTorre

E. R. Torre is a writer/artist whose first major work, the mystery graphic novel The Dark Fringe, was optioned for motion picture production by Platinum Studios (Men In Black, Cowboys vs. Aliens). At DC Comics, his work appeared in role-playing game books and the 9-11 Tribute book. This later piece was eventually displayed, along with others from the 9-11 tribute books, at The Library of Congress. More recently he released Shadows at Dawn (a collection of short stories), Haze (a murder mystery novel with supernatural elements), and Cold Hemispheres (a mystery novel set in the world of The Dark Fringe). He is currently hard at work on his latest science fiction/suspense series, Corrosive Knights, which features the novels Mechanic, The Last Flight of the Argus, and Chameleon.
General

Tesla: Endgame Part Deux

A while back and in April I wrote about my thoughts on where Elon Musk wants to ultimately take Tesla and their electric vehicles (click here for the original post, Tesla: Endgame).

My feeling was that Mr. Musk is thinking farther ahead than most car makers in the sense that he feels we will eventually have self-driving vehicles and, because of that, we will have a version of the Uber/Lyft system where a company will have a fleet of self-driving vehicles roaming around a city (at first) and the company will make a lot more money on those vehicles while consumers will not need to actually buy cars. It will become more economical to order a self-driving vehicle, have it take you wherever you need to go, then when you’re done order another to take you back.

No more buying cars, no more insurance, no more monthly lease payments, and no more worrying about changing tires/servicing your vehicle.

A recent tweet over the weekend caused some consternation among folks when Mr. Musk was asked by “Disruption Research”:

Do consumers have limited time left to buy a Tesla car, since prices would have to go up severalfold to balance supply & demand once you solve FSD?

To which Mr. Musk replied curtly:

Yes

The consternation was due to the fact one could interpret Mr. Musk’s response to indicate Tesla might not sell cars at all once the self-driving thing was resolved. Mr. Musk, perhaps sensing a rising panic, offered the following elaboration:

To be clear, consumers will still be able to buy a Tesla, but the clearing price will rise significantly, as a fully autonomous car that can function as a robotaxi is several times more valuable than a non-autonomous car

In other words, once/if Tesla resolves self-driving and if you have a self-driving vehicle, you have a potential money maker, one that you could send out when not using it as a “robo-taxi” and make money off of it.

So Mr. Musk notes rather bluntly: Why sell a Model 3 for, say, $50,000 (or thereabouts) when you could make that much money on the vehicle -or more!- in a year by sending it out as a robo-taxi? If/when Tesla gets the self-driving realized, they aren’t going to be selling their vehicles at the current prices because they are now potential money makers.

And that dovetails nicely into what I wrote in my original Tesla: Endgame post.

Here’s the thing: Until full self-driving is realized, Tesla still has to sell vehicles and continue doing so to make money it needs to continue its research.

When I purchased my Tesla earlier this year, I invested in the “self-driving” feature. It was, I believe, something like $5000 or so and didn’t think about using the car as a “robo-taxi.” Frankly, I did so because I thought it would be fascinating to have a car that can drive itself.

Having said that, if there’s good money into making my car a “robo-taxi”, I might be tempted to let it be used as such!

Once again, this is something that depends entirely on when -and if– a fully functional self-driving feature becomes a reality.

Mr. Musk is optimistic it will happen, perhaps as soon as later this very year.

I don’t think it’ll happen that quickly, but in the next two or three years?

It’s certainly possible.

General

Too damn funny… July 4th, 2019 Edition

Last year there was this very funny (IMHO!) bit of news, now sadly forgotten, where right-wing “pundit” and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones stated liberals were going to use the 2018 Independence Day to launch a takeover/Civil War against the good ol’ conservatives. Much hilarity ensued as people wrote hilarious twitter comments about the so-called “second Civil War” (you can read about this here).

In what seems to be becoming an annual tradition …well, if twice in two years portends such things… there was something new which appeared this year which provoked some pretty funny comments.

I refer to Donald Trump’s Independence Day speech wherein he said the following…

Yep, you heard it right. When talking about the Revolutionary War, Donald Trump said:

Our Army manned the air, it rammed the ramparts, it took over airports, it did everything it had to do.

Oh boy.

I’ve made my feeling known before regarding Donald Trump: I have absolutely no love at all for him. Whether he stole the election with the help of Putin or not, in his time in office he has proved to be uniquely unqualified to be president. Further, he seems borderline illiterate and certainly uneducated. And that’s ignoring his obvious racism, sexism, and any other number of vindictive you want to give him.

Seeing this clip, he seems almost out of it. As if he’s under some kind of medication and having difficulties seeing/reading the teleprompter. Perhaps its because his reading skills aren’t great or perhaps the rain made it difficult for him to read the damn thing.

Regardless, I suspect he was adding in words here and there and the airport line, one would think, had to be an ad lib, right?

I mean, no one could have been stupid enough to write out that speech and actually put that line in there?!

Because if that line was in the actual written speech, then one can’t help but assume whoever put it there did so in the hopes he would read the line without thinking and make an ass out of himself as he’s done here.

And, continuing on that thought and continuing in the assumption that line was in the written speech, one has to wonder how much his own staff hates Mr. Trump and is willing to make him look absolutely ridiculous in a high profile speech!

Well, it didn’t take long for several smart asses to react to Mr. Trump’s latest verbal faux pas. Over on Huffington Post, Mary Papenfuss offers an article which examines how…

Trump Dive-Bombed in Tweets After Claiming Army Seized Revolutionary War Airports

There are some very funny tweets mentioned in the article above and I urge you to check them out. One of my favorites was this one by Jack W. Bower:

My Dearest Rose,

I’m afraid I must be the bearer of bad news. My flight has already been delayed a fortnight, and I fear it will be longer. The army has shut down the airport and the airplane will not be invented for 6 score and 7 years from now.#RevolutionaryWarAirportStories

Books/Literature

Sad… and yet expected

Yesterday came news that the venerable Mad Magazine, the satirical/smart-assed magazine published since 1952, was for all intents and purposes being cancelled.

Sure, there are a few “ifs” and “buts” to this news, but essentially the Magazine will be producing more and more “best of” editions and stopping the original stuff.

You can read more about this in this article by James Whitbrook and presented over on i09.com:

Mad Magazine is basically dead

To me, and as I wrote on the header above, this is sad but expected news. It’s been many, many years since I’ve read Mad Magazine, and likely well over twenty plus years since I’ve held an original newstand issue release.

But there was a time, back in the 1970’s and into the 1980’s, when Mad Magazine was one of my favorite publications. I loved it so much that I even had a subscription to them and got issues over the mail. Not before and not since had I ever done that, and I still recall the first issue I received in the mail…

Image result for mad magazine king kong

From 1977 and not one of their “best” issues, nonetheless I loved the parody of King Kong (the first remake film, which featured a very young Jeff Bridges and Jessica Lange).

I was fascinated with Mad and eager to pick up their earlier issues. Luckily, they would release “Best of” editions which often allowed me to get peeks at the long history of Mad Magazine parodies.

Many years later and at the dawn of the “digital” age, a beautiful CD Rom compilation was released which featured all the issues of the magazine up to that point. Even better, it included odds and ends found in the various “Best of” compilations, including songs and other silliness…

Image result for mad magazine cd rom

Loved it!

A few years after this release they released another up to the moment CD Rom set, but this one didn’t feature all those wonderful bonuses.

When I got the CD Rom edition, I tried to read some of the more recent magazines included in the set but found the humor… just wasn’t as good as before.

Worse, many of my favorite artists and writers were no longer there. Don Martin left the book amid a squabble over royalties with publisher William Gaines and eventually went to work for Cracked, did his own series, and passed away. Sadly, in reading the incidentals regarding Mr. Martin’s situation, I couldn’t help but feel that Mr. Gaines had taken advantage of not only him but many of the other artists he hired from the early EC days through Mad Magazine. Mr. Gaines made plenty of money reprinting older strips and, at least according to Mr. Martin, didn’t offer royalties to the talent who made the works.

Similarly, other artists and writers, such as Antonio Prohias, who created and wrote/drew Spy vs Spy, had also either left the book and/or passed away. What I saw with those later issues were works by people I neither knew nor found all that interesting.

Ah well.

Still, it’s incredibly sad to read that Mad may finally be shutting down. It had a good, long run, but today it competes with memes and comedians who are on TV nightly. The humor it brought forward is readily available in so many media and a magazine coming out bi-monthly simply didn’t have as much of a chance.

Good things, as they say, eventually come to their end, and so too it appears to have happened to Mad.

Books/Literature, Comic Books/Graphic Novels, Movies

The dangers of buying digital things…

First, I have to be honest: I LOVE buying things “digitally”.

I LOVE not having the clutter of so many books and movies and the ease by which I can enjoy both through either my cellphone, tablet, or through my “smart” TV.

I LOVE IT!

…however…

Stories like these make me mighty uncomfortable. From Matt Novak and presented on gizmodo.com:

Ebooks purchased from Microsoft will be deleted this month because you don’t really own anything anymore

The title is self-explanatory: Microsoft sold eBooks starting in/around 2017. The service appears to have not done very well and the company decided they were going to stop selling books and, further, delete those that people bought.

Money will be returned by Microsoft to the people who bought these eBooks, just to be clear, and the service seems to have been a flop pretty much from the beginning so not that many people were affected.

However, this does present a sobering thought: What if this should happen with Apple or Amazon? How about VUDU? All my books/graphic novels -and I have a BUNCH of them- are on Amazon. Pretty much all my film purchases are currently being done through VUDU.

What if these services have a problem? What if suddenly all these many thousands of dollars I’ve spent will *poof!* be gone?

Again, I love the digital services. I love the fact that my home isn’t getting filled up with more books and movie boxes.

I love this!

But, seriously, there needs to be some kind of permanence created for these bought items yet I wonder if such a thing could be accomplished, other than downloading your stuff and saving it to increasingly full Hard Drives.

General

The firing of Michael de Adder…

Not familiar with the above name?

Mr. De Adder is a political cartoonist whose work appears in Canadian newspapers and who, last week, was let go (ie fired) from four newspapers that presented his work.

He suspects this may have been the result of the following piece:

As Mr. de Adder puts it:

…in the past 2 weeks I drew 3 Trump cartoons. 2 went viral and the third went supernova and a day later I was let go. And not only let go, the cartoons they already had in the can were not used. Overnight it was like I never worked for the paper. Make your own conclusions.

I must admit, when I saw this piece, it was like receiving a gut punch. This piece, if you’re not aware of it, shows the two South American refugees, a father and his months’ old daughter, who drowned trying to cross into the United States.

The actual photograph of these two is heartbreaking and, frankly, I feel uncomfortable presenting it here, just as I find the above cartoon also very uncomfortable.

Here’s the thing: Mr. De Adder did his job.

Tremendously well.

He presented a scathing indictment of Donald Trump and his priorities as well as his lack of empathy for migrants -and active attempts to make their already difficult situation even more difficult- as well as the end results of many that do try to make this trek.

Granted, migrant deaths have occurred throughout many administrations, not just this one, but the animus shown by Trump and company to these people is on a league of its own.

And the fact that Mr. de Adder was fired so soon after presentation of this piece shows the intersection between businesses and politics. It would seem the owners of the four Canadian papers have other business interests, and it doesn’t pay to have an employee piss off a potential partner, or impediment, to their business world.

You can take hits at politicians, but sometimes the hits may land a little too hard.

Books/Literature, General

it’s been a blur so far…

…at least for me.

I’m referring to the summer. Truly since the start of May, perhaps even the end of April, things have been on a whirl.

I mentioned a few of the things that have affected me already: The plumbing problems, followed by the AC problems, followed by moving my daughter, followed by getting the bathroom fixed up.

We’re still in the process of the later, but at least all the major stuff is done. There’s still painting to do and a shower door and cabinets to be made/installed but the dust is settling and my poor sinus is starting, at least a little, to relax.

Most importantly, in the last few days I’ve been able to devote more and more time -my regular time, stolen by the above- to writing.

The book I’m currently writing hasn’t quite gelled yet, though each day I can get to it (far too little since late April/early May), has proven a wonderful new adventure.

I’m adding in fascinating details and the overall plot, at least in general, is solid. But I’m a fussy guy and solid isn’t nearly strong enough for my taste.

I’ve mentioned it before but I’ve always tried to make every book I’ve written be as original as I can make it, with as intricate -but not overly complicated- story which will hopefuly shock as much as it entertains. I want people to feel the time they’ve given me was worth it, and I will not accept a work/plot that follows too many familiar or well-worn paths.

I’m not quite there yet but its coming along.

Stay tuned.

Movies

Batman (1989) at 30…

That’s right, thirty years ago and on June 19, 1989, the Tim Burton directed, Michael Keaton/Jack Nicholson/Kim Basinger Batman film was released to theaters and became a monster hit. It is not exaggerating to say this film, released 11 years after the Richard Donner Christopher Reeve/Marlon Brando/Gene Hackman Superman may well form the alpha and omega of superhero films and explain why such films are so popular today.

When Superman came out in 1978, it was released a mere 10 years after the last episode of the Adam West/Burt Ward Batman TV series was cancelled.

Certainly not a terribly long time!

I suspect part of the reason that Gene Hackman’s Luthor -or at least his henchmen- are played mostly for laughs is because Donner and company were hedging their bets, hoping that after the very somber first and second acts of Superman (for those who have yet to see the film, I’m referring to the Krypton and Smallville segments) they needed to not only provide something a little lighter and “fun”. They likely drew some inspiration from the Batman TV show and its more silly portrayal of the villains but made the villain’s plans all that much more deadly.

Superman ushered in what I call the first wave of superhero films and, for the most part, they weren’t all that good. There were some very cheap Marvel Comics character releases that are viewed today as cult artifacts rather than legitimately great films and while Superman II (1980) did quite well Superman III (1983) and especially Superman IV: The Quest For Peace (1987) proved that even with the earnest acting of Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder, the script is everything and in the case of these later two films, they had miserable scripts/stories.

After Superman IV, one could be forgiven for thinking the superhero film was done and over with.

A mere two years later and with the release of Tim Burton’s Batman, the genre would prove to be very much alive.

Back in those pre-internet days, I recall vividly being extremely excited to see this new Batman film. Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns was a current thing and, along with Alan Moore’s Marvel/Miracleman and Watchmen, an almost morbid sense of “reality” was permeating comic books and their heroes.

It was very much hoped by me -and I’m certain many others!- at that time that Tim Burton would deliver a dark and grim Batman, one that would bury the then viewed as ridiculous Adam West TV show of nearly two decades before.

I distinctly recall Entertainment Tonight one day offering an exclusive “preview” of Batman and me setting the (*cough*) VHS to tape it.

What I saw totally turned me on. Unfortunately, I can’t find that particular clip but check this out, a preview of the summer films for 1989 (see how many have become lost in the flotsam!)…

Somehow a friend of mine and I snagged a “sneak preview” showing of Batman way back then and, along with a rowdy crowd of people like us, were thrilled to see the film a few days (maybe even a week) before its formal release.

I remember being so damn excited to see the film and was in rapt attention as the credits rolled and the film went on. For the first half of the film, I felt it was everything I hoped for. Right up and until this sequence…

Alas, from that point on, the film in my humble opinion went downhill. It seemed to be paying tribute to the Adam West Batman but with a darker palette (the museum sequence, in particular, could have easily fit into that show).

And the ending… well… it was weird, to say the least. Batman seems to be in such a superior position with his fearsome Batwing yet gets taken out by a ridiculously big Joker gun. (Oh, and for those who hated the Snyder version of Batman, you do remember in this film Batman uses the machine gun on his Batwing to try to kill the Joker, right?).

The conclusion in the Cathedral was visually lush and reminded me of Neal Adams drawn comics, but the ultimate fate of the Joker felt incredibly morbid, even as I strongly suspect Tim Burton knew there was no way Jack Nicholson would return as the Joker in a sequel film and decided the best thing to do was end the character right there, something he would do in the sequel to this film with Danny DeVito’s Penguin.

When I left that preview showing, I have to admit I was dejected. I felt this movie was so close to greatness but the script had gotten away from Burton and company. Curiously, I read the novelization of the film…

…before seeing the movie and the second half of the novelization was quite different from what appeared in the movie. I suspect Burton and company essentially jettisoned the script after the “wait ’til they get a load of me” scene and went their own way.

Still, the film was a HUGE hit and I suspect it helped revitalize the superhero movie genre just when the Superman films -at least III and IV- were indicating the genre was running out of steam.

Thirty years.

Wow.

Where does the time go?!

Movies

2019 Summer Movies…

What in the world happened this year?

By this time, there’s usually a number of films out there doing decently and/or getting people’s attention but this year…

…I dunno.

Many consider May 1st as the official start of the Summer Movie Season but one should consider Avengers: Endgame, released in the last week of April, as the start of the Summer Movie Season.

That movie did very well, of course, but I’m rather surprised by the fact that only a month or so later it seems like… it’s kinda/sorta in the past. Not forgotten, mind you. There are still people I find online posting positives about the film (I haven’t seen it yet) but I’ve also found a surprising number of people who feel the movie wasn’t all that.

Not that they hated it, mind you, but there are some who feel the film was something of a wiff… that it could, indeed should have been much better than it was. There are even some who offer a far more scathing view, that the film was a lot of “fan service”, ie. a bunch of sequences designed to make fans happy but which ultimately didn’t make the overall film all that great.

Again, I don’t know. Haven’t seen it yet.

But at least Avengers: Endgame did great at the box office!

At least for the time it was out. Again, it seems like the film did really well and all those that wanted to see it saw it and then… that was it.

What followed, however, were films that didn’t seem to catch on quite as well.

Over at this site found on firstshowing.net…

2019 Release Schedule

…you can check out the films that have been released to date along with those upcoming.

I did a quick check of some of the films that were hoping to get movie-goer’s interest/money over the Summer Season and was surprised by how many of them to date did only so-so.

Among others you had Pokemon Detective Pikachu (looked cute in commercials and the idea of Ryan Reynolds voicing the character was a plus, but the film sure did seem to come and go). There was John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum, which, granted, benefited enormously with the good feelings people have regarding Keanu Reeves and, given what I’m sure is a smaller budget, did very good business. But again, it sure seemed to come and go.

What about Aladdin? Terrible early trailers had everyone doubting the film, but once it was released the critics were kind yet the film was another one week (if that) wonder. Brightburn? Low budget horror “take” on Superman produced by James Gunn had certain audiences intrigued, and given the movie’s low budget I’m sure it recouped its investment and then some. But, again, a one week wonder and out.

Godzilla: King of Monsters had decent reviews but under-performed. Dark Phoenix had pretty poor reviews and also didn’t do all that well. Last week we had two new morsels: Men In Black International and Shaft. Sadly, it appears neither of these films is drawing much interest and appear to be slipping away from theaters after only a week.

All, however, is not lost. There are still some interesting films to come. Child’s Play and Toy Story 4 are being released this coming week and while I suspect the later will do well, the former… we’ll see. Either way, I personally am not to interested in either.

Looking further ahead, July 2 sees the release of Spider-Man: Far From Home. I’m not all that interested but because its a Marvel film, I’m sure it’ll do good business. July 26 brings us Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. I’m intrigued with the film though I know very little about it other than the setting (Hollywood in the late 1960’s and immediately before -and I’m guessing during/after the Charles Manson horrors). Given how much I hated (no pun intended) his last film, though, I don’t know if I’m going to catch it during its initial release.

Looking over the list of films coming in the next months, there is only one film that currently has me intrigued: Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw. That film looks beyond silly but in a good way.

Otherwise, I dunno. This could be one of the weakest summer movie seasons I’ve seen in a very long time… and, it would appear, for a few others as well.

If I do go see Hobbs & Shaw in theaters, it might well wind up being the only Summer film I see this season in theaters.

A stunning thing to admit!

Books/Literature

A writing update, of sorts…

This is a difficult one for me. I’ve faced incredible frustration with the time available for my writing, to the point where in the past month or so I’ve done very, very little.

If you’ve been reading these posts, you know that a large part of this is due to the catastrophes I’ve faced at my house. First, the plumbing problems which led to having to virtually change all the water exit lines on the east side of my house. This resulted in completely tearing up the yard on that side (they had to bring in a digger to create the trench for the new pipes), then, a grand total of two days after the pipes were laid in, my central AC went down and I had to spend even more money on getting that replaced.

Then, my daughter moved and I spent a week with the wife driving to her home, helping pack up her stuff, then spent two days on the road moving her stuff to her new home. Then, another two-three days unloading and unpacking then flying back home…

…and now I’m knee deep in fixing the bathroom that initiated the whole fiasco. See, that bathroom, our guest bathroom, had trouble getting the water out, whether when flushing the toilet or using the shower/bath. We brought in some people, they used a snake, but no result. Then they brought in cameras and determined that the old exit lines, which were metal (a popular choice when our house was built in 1959), had corroded and plugged themselves up to the point they had to be replaced.

Ah well.

Anyway, the original plumbers had to break the ground under the toilet and, since then, the bathroom was unusable. Realizing that simply fixing the floor would be, at best, a patch up job, we decided it was best to refresh the entire bathroom and that’s where we are now.

We’re on day three of this process and I anticipate we’ve got another three days -at least!- to go before being done.

At that point, I very much hope –and pray!– all these time sucking calamities will be done and I’ll be able to finally get back to writing my latest book, which I’ve found an intriguing work to this point.

What is it about?

Well, my intention is to create a good suspense/horror novel which is set in the Corrosive Knights “universe”.

While before I stated my next novel would be an “Epilogue” to the Corrosive Knights series, I’ve reconsidered that thought.

It boils down to this: There are more areas I want to explore in this universe and if I finish off the Epilogue book (the first draft is pretty much done), I fear that it may serve as closure to the Corrosive Knights series and I’m not quite ready to do that yet.

So stay tuned. I’m very, very eager to pounce on the current novel and finish it up as quickly as possible… provided all these other problems are finished up and my focus can return to my work.

Soon.

Hopefully!

Movies

What’s Up Doc? (1972) a (incredibly) belated review

A while back TCM played the 1972 Peter Bogdanovich directed screwball comedy homage What’s Up Doc? Here’s the movie’s trailer/behind the scenes:

I had warm memories of the film but, frankly, hadn’t seen it in at least twenty plus years. I wondered if it was as good as I recalled. The DVR was set, the film recorded, and then a couple of months later and with my wife and daughter sat down to see it.

It wasn’t easy getting those two to sit in!

After some twenty minutes, my daughter bailed. She doesn’t have a lot of patience for “old” films and, frankly, I can’t totally blame her. Nowadays films have a quicker pace to them, and this film certainly started “slow” compared to more recent works.

My wife found at least some of what she saw humorous enough and held on, but I think during those early minutes she too was “touch and go”.

But then, once the movie’s finished with the preliminaries and into the story proper, as well as the slapstick that’s to come, What’s Up Doc? becomes a truly wonderful comedy and very worthy of my pleasant memories.

The plot is complex but never complicated: There are four identical traveling bags held by four different characters.

Two of the suitcases carry totally innocuous items: Judy Maxwell (Barbara Streisand, equally sexy and off the wall as a walking hurricane of a character) has a suitcase of clothing. Howard Bannister (Ryan O’Neal doing his best to emulate a stuttering, stuffy Cary Grant who, along with his fiancé –Madeline Kahn in her film debut- is headed to a music convention in the hopes of getting a grant to study… Neanderthal music?) carries igneous rocks.

The two other cases contain something far more interesting: Mr. Smith (Michael Murphy) carries a suitcase full of top secret documents. He’s being pursed by a U.S. agent. The last suitcase, owned by Mrs. Van Hoskins (Mabel Albertson), contains a treasure in jewels.

The jewels catch the eye of the shady Hotel Clerk and equally shady Hotel Detective who plan to steal it. The U.S. Government agent, who Mr. Smith quickly gets wise to, wants to retrieve the top secret documents. And all four suitcases wind up, with their owners, in four separate rooms on the 17th floor of the Hotel they are staying at. This results in mass confusion and considerable hilarity.

The movie plays out, for the most part, like a slapstick stage play, with characters talking in and around each other while the identical suitcases move from room to room and character to character while Judy Maxwell takes a liking to her opposite, character-wise, in Howard Bannister.

The set pieces wind up working terrifically, each bigger and better than the other, followed by a breather before getting into the next comedic set piece. I feel the final big set piece, involving Liam Dunn (I won’t give away too much here, for fear of SPOILING a …gulp… 47 year old film) is a perfect climax and the proverbial cherry on top of the pie. Mr. Dunn, best known for appearances on Mel Brooks films, is but one of the people who would go on from this film to work in two of Mel Brooks’ most famous films. He, along with Madeline Kahn, Kenneth Mars, and John Hillerman would go on to appear in Blazing Saddles. All but Mr. Hillerman would also show up in Young Frankenstein.

In conclusion, if you don’t mind seeing “old” films and/or can put up with a few slow minutes in this movie’s opening act (assuming you’re spoiled on the more speedy pace of modern films), What’s Up Doc? is a no-brainer. A hilarious, albeit strangely forgotten, film that stands up quite well with some of the better comedies out there.