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Congrats Joe! You've always seemed like one of the cool guys around here (even if you are quick to pull the angry liberal trigger sometimes). Good on ya.

Congrats Master Leydon. Looking sharp.

I offer you my heartfelt congratulations, Master Leydon. I hope you don't leave us all and get a real job now...

Congratulations, Joe. It takes a ton of will to get through grad school while you've got a day job.

Something tells me that a visual motif occupying the center of the photograph wasn't around 33 years ago...

That is impressive. Congrats to you Master Leydon.

Congratulations Joe!

Congrats.

Congratulations Master Leydon!

But a question...are those pants you are wearing cutoffs?

I've seen Porky's Revenge you know.

Santa lost some weight and graduated?

Just kidding! Congrats, Joe!!! I'm about to finish the first half of my MA as well and I know it's not easy so...way to go!

Congratulations, though my Hornedfrog alum/copy editor friend highly disagrees with your future assessment of the Texas Bowl.

Congrats, Joe!

aww, way to go Joe! You seriously need to go all Sir Ben Kingsley on everyone's arse and demand to called "Master Joe Leydon"

Congratulations Joe! Great pic - very happy for you mate!

Congratulations (and wonderful potential "about the author" photo)!

I'm thinkin' Burl Ives in HORSE FEATHERS!

Many congrats!

Congrats to you, Joe.

But how good could Houston be if their coach thinks coaching at Baylor is a step up? :-)

Congratulations, Master Leydon. I enjoy your contributions but will think twice now that your degree trumps mine.

Thanks to one and all for the kind comments. I thought you might be amused by what happened later the same day: I had to give a final exam to my film history students over at Houston Community College on Friday afternoon, and I thought they might be amused by seeing their professor in a cap and gown. (I had previously warned them that I might be late because I was graduating that morning.) I expected a lot of laughs and wisecracks when I walked into the classroom. Instead, I got a burst of applause. I was, to put it mildly, moved.

As some of you likely have guessed, and one or two of you already know, I sought a master’s degree in the first place because I hope to eventually get a full-time teaching gig somewhere. After seven years of adjunct professorships at HCC and University of Houston – and almost 40 years of writing for professional publications (yeah, I was a hopeless nerd: I started free-lancing while I was still in high school) -- I can honestly say that I get a bigger rush from introducing students to Citizen Kane, The 400 Blows, His Girl Friday, City Lights and other classics than I get from reviewing most contemporary films. There are obviously exceptions, of course – I admit, I got pretty damn psyched when I wrote one of the first reviews of Knocked Up -- but there’s nothing like hearing a student tell you how grateful he or she is for a first exposure to Dr. Strangelove or Metropolis or The General or….

OK, before this turns into Joe Leydon: The Lion in Autumn, I’d like to ask: Anybody else out there have stories about turning people – friends, relatives, significant others, students, whatever -- on to classic films?

Gotta ask, Joe, did you write a thesis? If so, what about? And, of course, congratulations. As someone who's been there, I know what a mighty fine feeling it is. And you got your paper the same day. That makes me jealous. Mine always came in the mail. [Insert diploma mill jokes here.]

Actually, the real diplomas are mailed out in January. But the "props" are pretty effective, aren't they?

As for my thesis, the title is -- take a deep breath -- "Gatekeeping for the 'New Hollywood' Revolution: Agenda Setting and Diffusion of Innovation at Paramount Pictures Under Robert Evans, 1966-1974."

OK, again I ask: Anybody else out there have stories about turning people – friends, relatives, significant others, students, whatever -- on to classic films?

Joe: Do you mean particular classic films or just classics in general?

I've managed to convince a few people of the greatness of my favorite movie, Leo McCarey's 1935 Ruggles of Red Gap. I doubt that any of them would rank it in their top ten, but they seemed to really enjoy it (or lied to me convincingly).

I don't know that I've ever converted any "non-believers" though. Some folks just don't get why anyone would want to see anything made prior to their own generational favorites.

Hmm...along the lines of:

I was walking across the UT campus at some point talking to my friend Andres and was so flabbergasted that he had never seen "Blazing Saddles" that I forced him to cut class, go borrow the library's copy and go back to our co-op to watch the thing (ahem - stoned)?

Or that famous comic book writer Ed Brubaker runs a sort of "recommendeds"-list on his blog or somewhere and told everybody that they should really, really hunt down "Blast of Silence" on VHS as it was an unseen gem. Hundreds of nerds did just that and, just recently, Criterion put it out on DVD with a comic book version of it in the case, written by Brubaker and drawn by one of his regular collaborators Sean Phillips?

Or how a French director I'm writing a screenplay for walked me into the Virgin Megastore on the Champs-Elysee a month ago to stock me up on movies he thought I should watch for our project and they were all obscure AMERICAN films that he - and the French - loved (a handful of which aren't on DVD in the States) including Delmer Daves' "The Hanging Tree," John Ford's "Two Rode Together," Richard Sarafian's "Man in the Wilderness," Richard Brooks' "Bite the Bullet," Sidney Lumet's "The Hill," etc. I really, really thought I knew movies, but standing in the Virgin Megastore DVD section as he was like, "You've NEVER seen 'The Hanging Tree?'" in that kind of, "What's wrong with you, you culture-less bastard?!?" tone made me realize I should see more movies. Seeing Sean Connery's performance in "The Hill" was a real shock to my system, frankly. I feel it may be one of his greatest perfs.

Or the fact that my friend Mike - a producer - tells anyone who will listen that Gary Sherman's "Raw Meat," "Dead & Buried" and "Vice Squad" are pretty much the greatest movies ever and he'll send you a copy of each any time you claim you don't believe him.

Or from me - after I saw "Brotherhood of the Wolf," I became so obsessed with it that I spent weeks and weeks organizing through the website I was a reporter for, dozens upon dozens of "promotional screenings" of it throughout the United States. This meant putting out the word, getting hundreds and hundreds of peoples' home addresses to be sent free passes and interviewing Mark Dacascos over and over and over again at a number of different functions because I thought the movie was the greatest thing ever and should be seen on the big screen. This all came to a head when I got a buddy of mine with great taste in movies - who was always turning me onto new shit - into a screening here in L.A. Afterwards, he dismissively said, "Well, I see why YOU like it..."

SJR: Did you by any chance present the Brotherhood of the Wolf screening at the Arclight Hollywood a few years back? I was there. I had already seen the film upon first release, but my girlfriend, a huge Dacascos fan, had not. So we went and had a great time. I got her photo with Dacascos and he autographed her Cradle to the Grave soundtrack CD.

Vice Squad is indeed an excellent B picture (shot by Kubrick's frequent DP, John Alcott!). I'm kicking myself that I missed Raw Meat when it aired on Turner Classics just a few weeks ago.

VICE SQUAD OWNS.

WINGS HAUSER!!!!

That was shot by Alcott? Cool. For other overqualified Alcott jobs, see also TERROR TRAIN, the Roger Spottiswoode slasher movie with Jamie Lee. It would be a pretty effective example of its genre anyway, but the SHINING-esque framing and lighting, combined with the creepy masks? Awesome.

Raw Meat is pretty terrific (and available on DVD).

Will keep an eye out for Raw Meat.

Vice Squad's been popping up a lot lately on the premium channels, in correct aspect ratio yet. And Hauser does indeed OWN. His character, Ramrod , is without question one of the most brutal scumbags in film history, and his every move is performed and filmed with relish. He even neuters Fred "Rerun" Berry (out of frame, thankfully), though that's not quite as scary as Hauser's throat-shredding rendition of the closing theme, "Neon Slime."

Yeah, THE SQUAD seems to be a late-night Showtime/Flix perennial, after being mostly MIA before its not-too-long-ago DVD release.

That song is something else. And it's also a Pepe (Scarface) Serna tour de force.

Now the pay channels need to unearth DEADLY FORCE from whatever Avco-Embassy VHS box purgatory it's been passed out in for the last 21 years. (Speaking of WINGS HAUSER starring vehicles.)

Lex: Believe it or not, Wings Hauser actually was sent out on tour to promote Vice Squad. I had a long lunch with him in Dallas -- I was working for the Dalllas Morning News at the time -- and he was a hoot and a half. I mean, he was on fire, occasionally cracking up me and the Avco-Embassy publicist by lapsing into a reprice of his scary performance while brandishing cutlery at the table. (Maybe that's why the waiters avoided us.) I assume you've seen Hauser's memorable work during his heyday as King of Direct-to-Video Cinema. But have you ever seen him in this:

http://www.movingpictureshow.com/archives/mpsToughGuys.htm

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