Just go to your local DVD retailer and ask for a copy! Hahahah! Oh Tom, you kill me! And THAT is the kind of writing that The Hollywood System is going to have to live without until this strike is settled!

But what am I referring to? Let me explain, dear reader. I picked up the movie HELP! the other day on DVD – it just came out after not being available for since forever. And holy moley I forgot how much I liked it! Not having seen it since I was a young child, I forgot how much the Monkees boosted from it (and none of the Beatles pollute the movie with a shitty Jimmy Cagney impression like Mickey ‘Hate Pit’ Dolenz!). And it looks sooooo amazing. The colors (colours?) pop off the screen. It’s also kinda funny to see them seek refuge in a marching band, holding brass instruments mockingly, when only a couple years later they’d be proudly sporting them on the cover of the forever-awful SGT PEPPER. I always assume that the mustaches did it – when in doubt, blame a mustache.

It’s almost too bad that the era of The Industry where musical acts would star in movies as themselves or versions of themselves six months after ‘making it’ is over. Sure, there are plenty of heavy documentaries of bands fighting and scraping. But instead of I AM TRYING TO BREAK YOUR HEART, imagine if the Wilco movie was all of those guys living together in that loft, then getting chased around by a cult in desperate need of a ruby that stumbled into Jay Bennett’s hands? Or if that Flaming Lips movie didn’t show Steven Drozd shooting up, but showed him shooting up a cult WITH A MACHINE GUN because they’re chasing after the Lips because a ruby fell into Michael Ivins’s hands? (I refuse to apologize for my love of rubies.)

Yeah, the Pet Shop Boys tried to do one. But they’re so deliberately drippy that it ended up as another one of their sick jokes. It makes you wonder how awesome it would’ve been if the Beastie Boys went ahead and made THE BEASTIE BOYS SCARED STUPID. But then again, I just remembered DISORDERLIES. Ugh. Who else am I missing? Who else should’ve made a band movie?

You know what? This sounds like A TOPIC FOR THE RADIO. Let’s talk about it tonight on the air!

Love and kisses to almost all -

Tom.