Mannix

[Little Garwood]

Well, Two-Face is one of the most tragic/tortured and sombre villains in the world of Batman. Nothing at all like the clown that Tommy Lee Jones played in BATMAN FOREVER. Aaron Eckhart was much closer in THE DARK KNIGHT. But the ultimate Two-Face was of course in BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES in the 90s, voiced by NIGHT COURT's Richard Moll. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgwKMzZ7UFw

That said, since we're talking about the Adam West version then of course we're in camp territory. So I guess why not Clu Gulager? Or anyone else for that matter.

When he did Batman Forever, Tommy Lee Jones was riding his post-Oscar-winning, overexposure wave. He had no clue as to the character or anything related to Batman; his performance proved that. It's a shame, because he has oftentimes proven to be a brilliant actor.

Other than the superb Batman: The Animated Series, which I watched with enthusiasm at the time while in my early 20s, the 1990s must have been an awful time to be a kid, what with being in the line of fire of so much garbage and not being allowed to play outdoors without adult supervision. It was the complete opposite of what anyone's childhood was like in the decades preceding it.

[ZelenskyTheValiant (Ivan)]

Well, Two-Face is one of the most tragic/tortured and sombre villains in the world of Batman. Nothing at all like the clown that Tommy Lee Jones played in BATMAN FOREVER. Aaron Eckhart was much closer in THE DARK KNIGHT. But the ultimate Two-Face was of course in BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES in the 90s, voiced by NIGHT COURT's Richard Moll. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgwKMzZ7UFw

That said, since we're talking about the Adam West version then of course we're in camp territory. So I guess why not Clu Gulager? Or anyone else for that matter.

When he did Batman Forever, Tommy Lee Jones was riding his post-Oscar-winning, overexposure wave. He had no clue as to the character or anything related to Batman; his performance proved that. It's a shame, because he has oftentimes proven to be a brilliant actor.

Yep, there was the streak for Tommy Lee Jones which started in the early 90s -- JFK, UNDER SIEGE, THE FUGITIVE, BLOWN AWAY, THE CLIENT, BATMAN FOREVER, MEN IN BLACK (and later its sequel, the appeal of these films eludes me to this day), U.S. MARSHALS (a sequel to The Fugitive, which was inevitable and which I enjoyed very much), DOUBLE JEOPARDY, etc. Seems like he was everywhere at the time (compared to the 80s where he seemed to be a more obscure actor, even though he'd been acting since the late 70s). Like you said, he was a very good actor but perhaps there was a bit too much of him and certainly his casting for Two-Face was all wrong. Or I should say maybe he could have done the part IF anyone actually bothered to research what the character was all about. As it turned out, he was basically trying to out-clown Jim Carrey's Riddler - another awful casting choice! The Riddler is not a Joker-esque clown! It's like everyone in that film was trying to play the Joker for whatever crazy reason. I'll just blame Joel Schumacher for that whole debacle, as well as the next film. Yikes!

the 1990s must have been an awful time to be a kid, what with being in the line of fire of so much garbage and not being allowed to play outdoors without adult supervision. It was the complete opposite of what anyone's childhood was like in the decades preceding it.

Oh I don't know. We were certainly allowed to play outside unsupervised in the 90s. We were latchkey kids. Both parents were at work. We left for school on our own in the mornings and came home alone in the afternoons. Parents didn't come home until like 2 hours later or more. We could either stay inside and watch the afternoon cartoons (BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES was a must-watch for me!) or go play outside with the other kids. But you're right about some of the garbage that was fired at us. Remember POWER RANGERS???? Oh I hated that show! Ironically that was the time all the other kids on our street were inside watching that crap. I was the only one outside during that half hour. I just could never understand the appeal of that show. Even back then it seemed so stupid to me. Maybe I was ahead of the curve?

[Little Garwood]

After graduating high school in 1989, I remember riding my bike around the olde childhood neighborhood and noticing how there were none of the younger kids out and about like how my generation used to be. It was a blast of cold water to the face how things had changed and continue to be. It's refreshing to learn that you and your friends were able to enjoy the great suburban outdoors, but it never happened in my neck of the woods (now known as DeSantis country!) by the time I was a teen.

Tommy Lee Jones is a great actor, but he was everywhere in the '90s, and not always to the best of his ability. I share your enthusiasm for US Marshals, though it's no classic. The film does sport a fine Jerry Goldsmith score, though.

[ZelenskyTheValiant (Ivan)]

It's refreshing to learn that you and your friends were able to enjoy the great suburban outdoors.

Well, actually it was the city outdoors. We weren't in the suburbs back then. Not exactly inner city, but still the city. There was a park nearby so it wasn't all concrete jungle, luckily.

Tommy Lee Jones is a great actor, but he was everywhere in the '90s, and not always to the best of his ability. I share your enthusiasm for US Marshals, though it's no classic. The film does sport a fine Jerry Goldsmith score, though.

Oh yeah, everything Goldsmith touched back in the day was just great! It's funny but even his "lesser" scores (considered lesser because many of them belonged to generic action films of the day) stand head and shoulders above the "popular" or Oscar-winning scores of today. The scores of today are just sooooooo bland. Just ambient sounds which are supposed to convey some type of mood, but in reality they do nothing. Can't hum it, can't enjoy it, can't even recollect it.

Just pick a random Goldsmith action score from the 90... say... EXECUTIVE DECISION and you're bound to enjoy it. Just because it's Goldsmith. He just had that touch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_7WfjXOUII
I'm not even talking about the more well-known or more popular action scores he did like AIR FORCE ONE or the RAMBO films, which are classics.

[Little Garwood]

Jerry Goldsmith and Mannix composer Jerry Fielding imo did some of their best work for TV. On Mission: Impossible, Fielding even managed to sound like himself while simultaneously creating cues adhering to the musical template initiated by Lalo Schifrin.

[ZelenskyTheValiant (Ivan)]

I just finished season 1 of MANNIX a few weeks ago. It only took me a few years. I started the series a few years back and somewhere along the middle of season 1 got sidetracked by other stuff. Didn't return to pick up where I left off until this summer. It's a fine show which I enjoyed a great deal. I understand the show only gets better going forward, with Joe Mannix working solo and not for the high-tech Intertect corporation. I have seen the later episodes here and there (the Joe flying solo + Peggy episodes) and enjoyed them a great deal as well. 3 episodes in particular that I must point out can hang high with some of the best episodes of any 70s TV detective/cop series. "The Silent Cry" opens the second season with a deaf-mute witness to a crime (played by a real-life deaf-mute actress), "Cold Trail" has some great skiing action on the slopes along with a kidnapping and car chase that can rival any big-screen car chase of the 70s, and "The Empty Tower" has Joe and Bill Bixby trapped by criminals in an empty building on a Sunday, with a great twist at the end and a shocking fall from a great height (basically this episode is a precursor to the classic DIE HARD).

I look forward to seeing more of this fine detective series. Of course I've already seen a few of the episodes where Joe faces an old Korean War buddy from the past who comes back as a psycho to kill Mannix. I think this plot line is a running gag in this series. How many of these psychos did he serve with??? The other running gag is Joe always coming across some sleepy unfriendly town which seems to be harboring some secret. Season 1 had one ("Huntdown") and I've read that there are dozens more like this one. Which is fine by me because I've always liked that type of story. Also I saw the one where Joe's car breaks down in the middle of nowhere and he stumbles onto a hideaway for killers/assassins. Frank Langella and John Hillerman are baddies in that one. That was also an excellent later episode.

[Luther's nephew Dobie]

I decided to post the below here as it offers valuable background for Mannix and in the It Got By The Censor/In-Joke thread as it also describes an elaborate in joke.


Stephen Bowie wrote about Mannix's - first year - origin story in the May 27, 2014 issue of the AV CLUB Newsletter. Below is an excerpt.
Bowie has own Classic TV blog about television which is superb. For my money he is the best -

Titled "The long-running private eye series Mannix was brutal, stylish comfort food"

But Mannix began as something much less high-concept: an intellectual take on the private-eye genre from William Link and Richard Levinson, the creators of Columbo.
During its first season—so different from what followed that it was usually excluded from syndication—Joe Mannix worked for a large, efficiency-oriented private-detective firm, whose operatives
were valued less than the firm’s gigantic crime-solving data center.
Mannix, an ex-cop, took an intuitive, old-school approach that put him at odds with the head of Intertect, Lew Wickersham (Joseph Campanella).
Man versus machine: Joe Mannix was John Henry and the steam hammer was a computer.
Intertect, as Link and Levinson originally titled the show, was meant as an allegory, in which the familiar cloak of the mystery genre would conceal a critique of soulless, modern corporate life.

Wickersham’s name was a pun on that of Hollywood mogul Lew Wasserman and also Lankershim Boulevard, where sat the main entrance to Universal Studios.
In 1959, Universal had been acquired by MCA, a talent agency with a reputation for ruthlessness.
Its agents, many of whom became Universal executives, wore uniform black suits and ties, and MCA president Wasserman was known for his scary bursts of temper and his always-empty
desk (paper was for underlings).
By the late ’60s, Universal was the biggest television factory in the industry; it conducted business out of an ominous glass-walled slab nicknamed “The Black Tower,” and was the first
studio to keep track of its employees using computer punch cards.
Link and Levinson, who had written for Alfred Hitchcock Presents there, incorporated all of these details into the original format of Mannix, making Intertect a rich inside joke.

[ZelenskyTheValiant (Ivan)]

I decided to post the below here as it offers valuable background for Mannix and in the It Got By The Censor/In-Joke thread as it also describes an elaborate in joke.


Stephen Bowie wrote about Mannix's - first year - origin story in the May 27, 2014 issue of the AV CLUB Newsletter. Below is an excerpt.
Bowie has own Classic TV blog about television which is superb. For my money he is the best -

Titled "The long-running private eye series Mannix was brutal, stylish comfort food"

But Mannix began as something much less high-concept: an intellectual take on the private-eye genre from William Link and Richard Levinson, the creators of Columbo.
During its first season—so different from what followed that it was usually excluded from syndication—Joe Mannix worked for a large, efficiency-oriented private-detective firm, whose operatives
were valued less than the firm’s gigantic crime-solving data center.
Mannix, an ex-cop, took an intuitive, old-school approach that put him at odds with the head of Intertect, Lew Wickersham (Joseph Campanella).
Man versus machine: Joe Mannix was John Henry and the steam hammer was a computer.
Intertect, as Link and Levinson originally titled the show, was meant as an allegory, in which the familiar cloak of the mystery genre would conceal a critique of soulless, modern corporate life.

Wickersham’s name was a pun on that of Hollywood mogul Lew Wasserman and also Lankershim Boulevard, where sat the main entrance to Universal Studios.
In 1959, Universal had been acquired by MCA, a talent agency with a reputation for ruthlessness.
Its agents, many of whom became Universal executives, wore uniform black suits and ties, and MCA president Wasserman was known for his scary bursts of temper and his always-empty
desk (paper was for underlings).
By the late ’60s, Universal was the biggest television factory in the industry; it conducted business out of an ominous glass-walled slab nicknamed “The Black Tower,” and was the first
studio to keep track of its employees using computer punch cards.
Link and Levinson, who had written for Alfred Hitchcock Presents there, incorporated all of these details into the original format of Mannix, making Intertect a rich inside joke.

Yep I heard about that swipe at Wasserman with the whole Intertect/Wickersham thing. Wonder what he thought about all this? Did he hate the show?