I still have my copy of Harry & Michael Medved’s “The Golden Turkey Awards,” a 23 year-old book I’m sure everyone’s familiar with.
On the back cover is a little box with the following text enclosed :
“WARNING–Over 425 actual films are described in this book, but one is a complete hoax. Can you find it?”
Okay–what was it?
I have this book too, and I have never found out, although at one time I had a pretty good idea (I forget which one I suspected, though). I don’t have my copy handy but it must be in the house somewhere.
Anyone? Anyone?
I Googled on “Golden Turkey Awards,” “Medved,” and “hoax” and came up with this page:
So it was the movie Him, mentioned on page 122 and 124 (at least in the edition that I have).
Thanks for solving the mystery, Wendell.
I just re-read the Medved’s description of “HIM” in the book–pretty lurid, ficticious stuff!
Bizarre. I always assumed it was the Trotsky one.
One minor, nagging mystery cleared up. Thanks!
Fenris
This stirs up old memories, doesn’t it? The Medveds were being clever by making their hoax film the “winner” of one of their awards, presumably assuming (and correctly) that readers would never expect them to do that.
I wonder if Michael, now point man for conservative movie critics, would create a hoax with this particular topic in his current incarnation?
Actually, he might. Even though he’s become pretty much a solid conservative, he’s given good reviews to many movies that the religious right would disapprove of, including a lot of gay-themed movies (he gave a rave to Russell Crowe’s “The Sum of Us,” for instance).
As for “Him,” that was such an obvious joke, I have a hard time getting outraged over it. But I’m sure there are people who’ve seen him on the Pat Robertson show who wouldn’t be as quick to laugh it off as I am.
Well, it wasn’t obvious to me at the age of 15, or whatever I was, but I haven’t sat down to really read that book in years. Maybe it would stick out more now. From what I remember, though, the book is filled with descriptions of actual movies that were equally poorly conceived, as well as badly written, crummily acted, shabbily edited. To me that movie didn’t stand out from the crowd any more than any of the rest.
I’ve read Michael Medved’s book Hollywood vs. America: Popular Culture and the War on Traditional Values. I thought it was a pretty poor piece of film scholarship. He frequently distorted the plots of the films that he discussed. His historical discussion of the effects of film in American society was frequently sloppy. I actually think that it would be a good idea for someone to write such a book about the expression of moral values in American film. It should be someone other than Medved doing it though, since he has a tin ear for morality. He gets worked up over trivial things and misses bigger things. The fact that that book got a lot of publicity bothers me. It’s a frothing rant that contributes nothing useful to the discussion of the moral effects of American film.
Is this possible?:
The Medved’s are writing their book and hear or read a description of a notorious movie called Him.
Without seeing the film–because it doesn’t exist–they include it in their book * believing* it to be real.
At the last minute, they find out it’s some kind of hoax, but instead of pulling the entry, they turn its inclusion into some kind of game–hey, folks, find the bogus flick!
Hmmmm. Naw I think the tounge in cheek attitude of that book and their other (can’t quite remember the title… Bigest Bombs or something like it) makes it plausible that they were deliberately out for a leg pull. I haven’t read it in years but I always thought it was the erotic adventures of pinnochio (“It isn’t his nose that grows”)
If I may post an alternate theory, take a look at “Dog of Norway” on pages 128-130. See the dog in the picture? Now go to page 6, where the authors are seen cavorting with that same dog. I’d been told that “Dog of Norway” was the fake, based on this evidence.
I seem to recall someone mentioning to me a film critic who took real umbrage with the Medveds, re: this book, because they “obviously” had not viewed all the movies they were lambasting. I’m going to have to check into that.
-Myron
I just did a search on the IMdb and neither Him nor Dog of Norway are listed. So…
My impression is that Dog of Norway is the official hoax film. As I recall, there’s a picture of the title dog included with the film description, and if you look at the author photo at the back of the book, you’ll see the same dog playing with the Medveds.
I suspect that the Medveds wrote about Him based on existing urban legends or rumors about a gay Jesus film, and didn’t intend for that to be the fake film. Sloppy reporting isn’t quite the same thing as a hoax. (It’s just par for the course with Michael Medved.)
I e-mailed Michael Medved about this once, but never received a reply.
When I was a kid, I thought Blackenstein was the fake, for no good reason that I can recall.
There is a good reason… it seemed to ludicrous to be true. Reminds me of a Simpson’s episode where Homer is Watching TV
“Stay tuned for Blacula followed by Blackenstien followed by the Blunch Black of Blotre Blame.”
Actually, I’m somewhat surprised. I knew Dog of Norway was the fake in the book but I didn’t think there’d be another one. And since 1970’s gay porno movies existed below the radar of popular culture, the average reader was unlikely to check up on it.
Michael Medved’s sudden transformation from a funny irreverent commentator on film schlock to a moralizing, self-righteous, right-wing ranter has been a mystery to me. I think that around the time he turned 40, he had a complete humorectomy.
If you’re looking for a book of this type written from a conservative perspective, “The View from Sunset Boulevard” by former Nixon speechwriter Ben Stein (yes, the Ben Stein of “Win Ben Stein’s Money” and “Bueller?” fame) might be worth a look. This book was written in the late 1970’s and, in many ways, is the touchstone work behind the whole “The entertainment industry is a hotbed of immoral left-wingers bent on indoctrinating decent patriotic Middle Americans” conservative mindset. However, I’m not sure if the book is still in print.
Medved’s a dingus.
That is all.
That was it. That was the movie I had pegged as the fake, for the reasons given above.
Medved seems to have a real problem with any movie that depicts Jesus. IIRC the section on “Jesus” movies in the Golden Turkey book just blasts all of them. One also recalls his foam-spewing diatribe against The Last Temptation of Christ from a few years back in which he criticized the color of Judas’ wig, among other inconsequential things. He just doesn’t seem to think the Messiah can or should be portrayed on film at all.
The film critic in question may be Bill Warren, author of Keep Watching the Skies!, the definitive survey of science fiction films of the 50s. He mentions the Medveds several times in that book, and never has a good word to say about them.
He does take them to task for lambasting films without seeing them, although that’s one of his minor complaints (which is why I say it might be him you’re thinking of). His main problem with them seems to stem from his attitude toward film. As far as I can make out, Warren feels that any film, no matter how badly it turned out, is the result of somebody’s hard work and creative effort. To approach a movie with the deliberate intention of mocking it, he seems to feel, is petty and mean-spirited.
While I take his point to some extent (and there may be a Great Debate lurking in this topic somewhere), Warren’s hatred of the Medveds seems to be way over the top. He calls them, among other things, “reprehensible,” “repulsively arrogant,” and “smug, merciless, and belittling.” Not their books, the men themselves.
Warren also seems like something of a hypocrite, since he is perfectly willing to make fun of some of the weaker movies that he’s surveying. His review of Cat Women of the Moon, for example, is quite entertaining. On the whole, I enjoy Warren’s writing. But the whiff of open hostility toward the Medveds makes some of his chapters a bit off-putting. On the other hand, some of Michael Medved’s recent screeds about morality in film are also off-putting to me. So basically, I guess I’m quite put off.
Back on topic, I too have always heard that the fake film is Dog of Norway.
If Mr. Warren died three or four years ago, then he was the one I heard of. It was in an obituary notice that I heard about the “feud.”
-Myron