If Both Hugh O’ Connor and Harry Perzigian Were Still Alive Today, They Would’ve Died of Coronavirus of the Cock and Other Highlights From My Criterion Movie Collection

You fucking trollmongers in the midwest, still harping on the drug dependent vanity of a deceased actor who would have absolutely no reverence in today’s pandemic world.

Look at you mongoloids thrusting blindly into the manure pile in road apple carts for this loser drug addict, Hugh O’Connor, especially on the April 23rd date: 95 clicks and reads. 75 on April 20th, 76 on April 21st, and 79 on April 22nd.

Fucking why??

You assholes up in the Appalachians drowning in moonshine and licking tainted testicles like there were no tomorrow – who the fuck is Hugh O’Connor or Harry Perzigian to you?

What fucking purpose does it serves in clicking on the same articles over and over and over and over to ad nauseam to read the same unedited and never to be edited content over and over and over and over to ad nauseam??  Do you think you’re going to wave a magic wand to transform the contents of “Hugh O’Connor Was A Piece of Shit Nobody Loser Who Never Amounted to Anything” to your liking? Sorry, pal – but no such fucking magic wand exists.

Loser

The truth still remains – Hugh was a worthless piece of shit ham actor who never went through life studying his craft and was only handed jobs through the auspices of his racist father, Carroll O’Connor so he could upkeep his manor up in Pacific Palisades of which daddy paid for. If it hadn’t been for Daddy handling the mortgage in the first place, Hugh and his costume designer wife and baby by all rights should have been holed up in a condo in Tarzana. As a two bit actor, working on a low budgeted show such as In The Heat of The Night, they weren’t pulling million dollar salaries per episodes.

And the readers trolling on my comments sections. You fucking jizz jabbers need fucking lives.

For example – this missive from a mjh1384@aol.com out in butt fuck West Chester, Pennsylvania.

Wow this is one of the angriest, most hate filled blogs I have ever read, written by a very bitter and pathetic excuse for a human who has nothing better to do than whine I mean blog about some drug addict named Harry. Who cares! I only clicked on this because I’m a fan of Hugh and wanted to see what this was all about. The mentally unstable dude who wrote this is Donald Trump’s twin. Has nothing better to do than to respond to each and every comment on a blog he wrote years ago using 4th grade insults, curse words and threats if someone says something he doesn’t like. This individual is nothing more than a bully with a very limited vocabulary. Coming across blogs like these and realizing individuals like this exist, reminds me of why I hate humanity.

Or better yet, break out the sour piss moonshine from this daddy daughter diddler who goes by the handle redtail@usa.com out in Johnson City, Tennessee.

If Hugh had not been an addict he would be alive today. He went through cancer and beat it.If beating cancer was the only thing he ever did it was an awesome feat. Are you an addict? I doubt it. I am a 100% Disabled Veteran and recovering addict that served my country’s call so people like you have the freedom to write such garbage. Your day will come.Your hour will come. Your minute will come. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you? 

And this just in from grammatically challenged (and most likely mentally) Tom Gartner from Minneapolis, Minnesota. Believe me, It’s too good not to share :

Who ever wrote this toxic spew karma is a violent death that follows. You how these SATANIST that run these internet sites. Should be in prison for life or real just and redemption and. Put in front of a firing squad swift and inexpensive justice. You never watch the news and see the media exposing the. Injustices such as this yet they the media news stations. And people will report on how wrong it is when the “victims” exercise their. God given right and proceed to do all of humanity a great. Favor by sacrificing theirselves by showing bravery and courage. In the put the wicks of evil people out for eternity as it. Should be with no doubt’s ps also a quick reminder of fact. These “people” get away with committing these crimes especially on the web. Because of the “anti-Christ” politics and the so called “people”. That vote them in every year and the “MONSTTA”. This evil ass backwards system we live in that designed to enslave and destroy.  

Jeez – anyone got a comb dipped in cyanide to separate those run on sentences apart? It should be against the law for someone this fucking demented to even be in possession of an e-mail account.

I might invest sometime later to write thomasgartner1966@gmail.com a personal post it note to remind him of what little mind his marble mouth has left in his lease of that space he rents between his ears.

Yeah, I know what you’re all talking about – you’re all fucking losers that this blog’s intended audience is not meant for. So I get these little love notes and more sent to my e-mail account on a nearly daily basis and when after I’ve done my research, I find that the majority of these lame ‘cry me a river’ about wooden actor Hugh O’Connor are all from flyover states like Kansas, rural areas of Texas, West Virginia, joke boy from Tennessee above, etc; etc, – all areas that have zilch to do with Hollywood production or as little knowledge of the Los Angeles culture of which the majority of people across the country don’t understand that is entirely made up of cynicism.

And who the fuck is Hugh O’Connor to all you 99 or so a day tubesteak gaggers anyway? Did he rescue your cat from a tree? Paid him off as a hitman to kill off your gay jealous boyfriend? Dared him to jam his hand up your dead grandmother’s rectum to retrieve a stuck rare Romanoff jewel that she wasn’t successful of emptying through her bowels when she was alive? Or maybe he was meant to be your ghost companion that was supposed to cheer you on while you were injecting Clorox up your anus (I hear they’re also available in chewable tablets) like your orangutan god was commanding you to do? Where was all this adulation while he was alive? Maybe if you had offered him some help while he was his dad’s personal second banana and fluffboy on the set of In the Heat of The Night, maybe he would still be alive today instead of channeling your stupid anger upon a guy who’s just chronicling his dead best friend’s anger in prose from.

But we can’t help either them EVER, can we?

However, I DO enjoy little jewels like this that come through once and a while. Claudia45@hotmail.com from Baltimore, Maryland certainly gets the gist of what this blog is all about and what I continue to strive for:

This blog is very strange. Feels like reading a black and white notebook held in the underpants of a bipolar patient in the midst of a manic episode. 

See? Someone gets me.

Winner

Go ahead, harp on Harry Perzigian some more. But here’s another skill that loser Hugh O’Connor never had in his possession: a knowledge or history of his ‘so-called’ profession. One thing is for certain, Harry Pezigian knew more of how the system of Hollywood worked better than Hugh O’ Connor ever had: a history of the craft and knew what a good movie was and how bad a movie sucked.

During all my brief six month tenure in 2009 living with Harry, either the guy was writing songs on his guitar or he was watching old movies on TCM or many of the Encore channels that were running film noir, westerns, or war films, especially the Revolutionary War or any movie dealing with colonial times. Sometimes, he would be prone to doing both subconsciously.  Harry did not appreciate anything else on his living room television other than old movies and would constantly chastise me if he caught me watching the latest episode of Smallville (however Batman: The Animated Series was cool with him because it reminded him of the old Superman cartoon shorts of the 40s.) I think during the remaining summer months I was living in his Brentwood apartment, I got the opportunity to sit down with him after much coaxing and belittlement to see perhaps one of the best movies he considered ever made: “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” produced in 1948 and starring Humprey Bogart and directed by John Houston. It was unlike anything I ever seen; so compelling that even while Harry passed out (from whatever unknown barbiturate he was pacifying on at the time) from trying to narrate from his comfy couch, I became heavily engrossed in it. By the time the movie concluded, I was absolutely in awe to discover that the movie did not end on a happy note. It ended on a tragic and cynical note. And I love movies that end that way.

Family members while growing up weren’t major movie buffs like I was in as a kid. Only one film stands out that my stepfather loved held an impression on me through my entire life (and I’ll get to that in a minute), so in a sense, Harry renewed my passion for old films. But I didn’t see them all chopped up with commercial breaks, I wanted to see them uncut and remastered.

So one of the thing that make me reminisce this year of the sixth anniversary on the passing of Harry Perzigian was how he definitely influenced and instilled upon me the love for the classics of a Hollywood of yore. HOWEVER my idea of classic films may differentiate what his idea of classic films were. While Harry loved films from the 30s’, 40s’ and 50’s eras. I’m a product of the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s eras.

Since I now possess the hardware of a magnificent 5.1 surround sound system, a halfway decent 4K blu ray player and a SmartTV, I have evolved beyond the memory of Harry Perzigian pagan watching habits:

For I am now a newly minted child of The Criterion Collection remastered in glorious 4k pictures and sometimes remixed in 5.1. Movies as they were intended to be seen. These are really spiffy packaged editions. AND they should costing nearly a arm and a leg at $40 a pop. Usually I wait until Barnes and Nobles has biannual sale that has them at 50% off and then I really start to stock up.

The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home video distribution company which focuses on licensing “important classic and contemporary films” and selling them to film aficionados. Criterion is noted for helping to standardize a number of ideas, such as performing film restoration, using the letterbox format for widescreen films, and adding bonus features and commentary tracks for home video. To make a long three hour long plus feature short – that well spent $40 is in essence, a film school in a box.

Here’s just a taste of the first six films in my collection: First Up, 1957’s Paths of Glory

I’m sure Harry probably watched this early film by Stanley Kubrick a few times on cable. I’ve only seen it one time myself before acquiring this edition. I had a collection of all the Kubrick’s films that Warner Bros had a hand in distributing and this was included in the package. It can be considered a no-brainer that Sam Mendes used this as a blueprint for this year’s multiple Oscar winner 1917.  What I find remarkable today that a handful of years before Kubrick passed, that the film was deemed “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant” by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. On the Criterion edition, there is bonus footage of a German news report that of the French soldiers that were put before a firing squad on charges of desertion and treason were completely exonerated. I recently purchased this as a tribute to the passing of Kirk Douglas.

Another film in my Criterion collection that promptly displays the ingenuity of Kubrick as a master filmmaker is his 1975 adaptation of the 1844 William Makepeace Thackeray literary classic, Barry Lyndon and I wish I had brought it to Harry’s attention for discussion this film with its’ intricate blend of Classical music and colonial times. Kubrick’s use of natural light only cinematography and focused attention to 18th century costume period detail is like jumping into a time machine and stepping out of a William Hogarth painting. The film recounts the early exploits and later unraveling of a fictional 18th-century Irish rogue and opportunist who marries a rich widow to climb the social ladder and assume her late husband’s aristocratic position. It was a time when all dire matters were settled by walking ten paces (in these pandemic times, it would now count as six) from each other and get to see who survives a buckshot to the heart.

Kubrick won a total of 4 Oscars for this movie for Best Original Score, Costume Design, Art Direction, and of course for Cinematographer John Alcott. Irish folk group, The Chieftains supplied a big majority of the uilleann pipes and piccolo pieces and The National Philharmonic  Orchestra provided the classical renditions of Handel, Bach and Schubert – although if Harry would around he would’ve argued that that baroque music was the wrong period of music to use during this film.

I remember when I was eleven years seeing the ads for this blasted all the television networks, but never displayed much interest in it back then. The first I ever watched this movie was on a commercial cable station out in Kansas City when I was visiting my grandmother on my father’s side and I think it took four damn hours to plow through (it’s 3 hours and change without commercial interruption). Later on, I re-watched it on VHS and now with a phenomenal remix in 4K and 5.1 surround sound, it more than plays for itself with the thousand dollars I took and invested in a home entertainment system that rivals the Pioneer system that Harry owned (of which his last roommate, scumbag Randy made off with before Harry was officially declared dead). The special features on this 2 disc special are spent mostly on the restoration process and the re-mixing into 5.1.

On a side note: one of the most daunting tasks that I had to undergo for Harry’s family after his passing was packing three giant moving boxes that were stuffed to the rim with nothing but classical music CDs and DVDs to be delivered to his mother out in Las Vegas. That’s how much of classic music fanatic he was. And he would’ve loved this new deluxe edition and I’m sure he would’ve speed dialed Ryan O’Neil to come over to do his personal audio commentary. O’Neil and Harry became bitter rivals over Farrah Fawcett-Majors, when O’Neil accused him of fooling around with her. When I had came back from a work trip to Vegas during the time when Michael Jackson and Majors passed away on the same day, I took a call from Ryan at Harry’s house to invite him to Farrah’s memorial service, but Harry without a moment’s hesitation, declined the invitation.

However sparse Criterion’s treatment of animation may be, this one certainly sticks out like a shining soul gem. 1973’s Fantastic Planet.

I believe this was my very first Criterion edition that I purchased from Barnes & Nobles. I have very many fond families of watching this for the first time (albeit many commercial interruptions) on Cable USA’s Friday late night programming block until dawn called Night Flight. Other than Ralph Bakshi, (Wizards, Lord of the Rings, Cool City) there was no other master animator who treated science fiction as a serious subject for animated films, there had never been quite a film like this and nor will there ever be another one of its’ kind in this lifetime or the next.  French animator Rene’ Laloux passed away fifteen years ago (his writer and collaborator on this film Roland Topor, is also deceased as well). Laloux  went on to produce only two more science fiction theme movies with Jean Giraud Moebius in Time Masters in 1982 and Gandahar in 1987 with French science fiction author Jean-Pierre Andrevon which was later butchered and fistfucked over by the Weinstein Brothers when it was distributed in America.

The film made in 1973 was an international co-production between companies from France and Czechoslovakia. The allegorical story, about humans living on a strange planet dominated by giant humanoid aliens who consider them animals, is based on the 1957 novel Oms en série by French writer Stefan Wul.  It was the first animated film to win the Special Prize Award at the Cannes Film Festival. Notable special features are a few of Laloux’s animated short features that he did in the 1950’s.

Gritty looking movies shot in New York during the 1970’s was my childhood forte. It was mainly the genre my stepdad would take us to Parsippany, NJ Drive-In to see. The first Godfather features prominently in my mind when I got scared shitless after seeing someone waking up to a horse’s head in a bed. Both French Connections and the Seven-Ups were others I seem to recall)  I’m sure I seen this one in a theater with the entire family being dragged in by my stepfather’s usual unscrupulous choices for movies and this particular film was probably the first time the work ‘fuck‘ (uttered masterfully by Jane Fonda during her Barbarella heyday) ever entered my vocabulary. That was always a fun word to bring to my mom to look up in the dictionary when one is about to embark on writing a book report.

Klute released in the summer of 1971, tells the story of a high-priced prostitute who assists a detective in solving a missing persons case and was a major win for Fonda at 1972 Academy Awards when she snagged the gold hand jobs down for Best Actress.

Interesting feature is a short documentary on the production of the film in New York in 1971. I always enjoy watching rare little screen documentary footage like this.

My stepfather’s favorite movie: It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World originally released in 1963. It was produced and directed by Stanley Kramer and starred Spencer Tracy with an all-star cast of 47 of the world’s greatest comic actors about the madcap pursuit of $350,000 in stolen cash by a diverse and colorful group of strangers

It’s an apt movie title for our times.

A couple of things that need to be said about this film that I’ve known since childhood. Or do I? Because this will mark the first time I’ve seen this film without commercial interruption and beautifully restored in brilliant 4K.

Throughout my childhood, this was a must that my crappy mostly drunk as a skunk stepdad would force me to watch. And I kinda liked it too. It was funny. AT seven years old my stepdad would force me to watch All in the Family -which at that age bored me to ad nauseam, but this movie, which I swore aired every year on ABC more damn times than CBS ran Wizard of Oz (which was more my half-sister’s movie at the time) could have the power to make one laugh to ad infinitum.

Of course if you didn’t know OF WHICH I NOW KNOW since living in Los Angeles for nearly thirty years- this is the first movie to have had grand opened the legendary Hollywood Cinerama Dome for of which until this day I have only seen one lousy movie there which was Director Ang Lee’s Hulk in 2003. Sadly, since the pandemic crisis, I probably won’t hanging out that much on the corner of Sunset and Vine, since it was recently announced, that The Cinerama Dome’s immediate next door neighbor, Amoeba Records has now closed its’ doors forever.

There are officially four different versions of this film of which two are available on this collection: one, the original 163 minute cut – AND the extended cut that runs for a whopping 197 minutes (which I believe portions were used in the television when it would run for two nights). My memory is rather hazy on that. So I’m going to be watching the original cut first and then table the longer version for perhaps over the weekend.

 A little David Lynch has never hurt anyone. Of all the three films that I have in my Criterion Collection, (the other two being Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me). I feel this restoration is the best out of the whole lot.

Mulholland Dr. is a 2001 American neo-noir mystery film written and directed by David Lynch and starring Naomi Watts, Laura Harring, Justin Theroux, Ann Miller, Mark Pellegrino and the recently deceased Robert Forster. It tells the story of an aspiring actress named Betty Elms (Watts), newly arrived in Los Angeles, who meets and befriends an amnesiac woman (Harring) recovering from a car accident. The story follows several other vignettes and characters, including a Hollywood film director (Theroux).

In revelations throughout the special features of the disc, Lynch admits that Mulholland Drive was originally pitched as a parallel companion piece to Twin Peaks (i’e: it was supposed to take place with the same universe as Twin Peaks) but network heads at ABC ripped the VCR tapes of the intended show’s pilot straight of their DVRs and stomped them to smithereens before Lynch’s very eyes, leaving the project to languish forever in limbo until it was rescued out of obscurity by a friend of Lynch’s from France, Pierre Edelmann who got the rights from ABC and took it to Studio Canal + in Paris where it was refunded as a major motion picture. The main actors listed in the previous paragraph involved in the movie weren’t even auditioned, they were handpicked by Lynch simply based the looks of their headshots alone.

As for the Criterion editions of Lynch’s work, they do have a few caveats I feel that need addressing: This movie (along with Blue Velvet) are the only editions that do not live up to the hype. The picture may be sharp, but their boasting of being re-mixed in 5.1 leaves a lot to be desired. A 5.1 re-mix in monoaural soundtrack is not my idea of a subversive home movie experience. I was really pissed off when I discovered I couldn’t change the audio settings to accommodate my system and had to resort to playing everything in mono 2.1 which only the sound coming out of the side speakers.

But to make up for the dismissive faux pass, the Lynch editions score with superlative package design equipped with informative booklets and a vast array of artistic insights into the creation of the film as seen below.

So in conclusion, you wouldn’t see a man of such acting limited capacity such as Hugh O’Connor to expand the horizons of his loser acting abilities in trying to achieve the caliber of what these films reached for: complete excellence in a display of experienced craftsmanship. Hugh O’Connor’s so-called body of work was reduced to nothing but ridicule and plenty of up the rectum jokes for the entire to snicker at.

But for Harry Perzigian – he endeavored to write more great songs until his Hugh’s small cocked minded adopted father took those rights away from him. And Harry drew a lot of influence for writing songs from watching great films.

NEXT: THE FREE COMIC BOOK DAY THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN