Pairing wine with movies! See the trailers and hear the fascinating commentary for these movies, and many more, at Trailers From Hell. Just for laughs, let's get giggly with this week’s movies. Even the wine pairings for each film will seem laughable. When I was in college, the student center had a room where a different video was piped in and played continuously each week. I would plop down between classes, when we weren't drinking something horrible at the school newspaper office, and catch fifteen minutes or so of whatever they were showing. By the end of the week I had probably seen the whole feature, in bits and pieces out of sequence. I saw The Groove Tube that way.
The 1974 comedy satirizes television and its place in pop culture, with Chevy Chase and Richard Belzer starring in some of the skits. Much of the comedy takes aim at TV commercials and their memorable taglines. The Groove Tube is billed as hilarious, which is always subjective, but I remember laughing quite a bit during my sophomore year. Sometimes it was because of this film.
Washington's The Walls Vineyards has a red blend called Stanley Groovy. It's made largely from Portuguese grape varieties and sells for $35. Not funny, really, but I always think Touriga Nacional sounds more like a golf event than a wine grape.
The Kentucky Fried Movie is the 1977 sketch composite which launched the career of TFH guru John Landis, along with David and Jerry Zucker and Jim Abrahams. The poster for the film shows the Statue of Liberty wearing a sneaker with rocket engines on it. The shoe has a human tongue and legs. This image sets the tone for the series of sketches which are only loosely connected by TV ads for nonsensical products, fake newscasts, and lurid off-color gags. It's very adult, but not really for adults.
Aside from the laugh-a-line slapstick, there are a number of recognizable actors in the cast. The presence of Bill Bixby, Tony Dow, and Henry Gibson give The Kentucky Fried Movie instant boomer appeal, at least until all the boomers die off.
First Vineyard Winery, in Nicholasville, Kentucky, is credited as the first commercial winery in the U.S. Had winemaking not migrated west with the rest of the country, you might find First Vineyard's Chambourcin on the shelf at Ralphs for $32. Oh, sure, like you'd be buying a $32 wine at Ralphs.
The 1974 film, Pardon My Blooper, presents broadcast "misteaks" compiled by Kermit Schafer in his record albums of years previous. A blooper is a flub or misspeak by an announcer or actor. The term was probably popularized by Schafer all by himself. I had the Pardon My Blooper record in my teens, and was often amused by the entertaining cover art depicting a TV camera holding its lens, as if it had been punched in the face, and a radio microphone plugging its ears. I was easily amused in my teens. I don't think that even then, the film version of Blooper would have held my interest for ten minutes. It is amusing, though, to watch the staged segments in this movie. The bad lighting is the same in all of them, and I think it's even the same actress in about half of them.
Yes, Virginia, the bloopers are phony. Although Blooper is billed in the credits as a documentary, many of the gaffes were recreated in the studio. Oh, the humanity.
You'll need booze to get through this one. As it happens, one of the more famous bloopers from early YouTube days concerned Georgia's Château Élan winery. You can see it by doing an Internet search for "Grape Lady Epic Fail." The TV reporter was trying to foot-stomp some grapes and took a tumble while doing so. Château Elan has an eclectic vineyard full of interesting grapes. If you're feeling really adventurous, their Muscadine wines are only a little more than ten bucks a bottle.
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