Monthly Archives: October 2023

A Tribute to Mathew Perry

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Ironically it was about a year ago when Mathew Perry went on the road to promote his new book Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing: A Memoir. In this biography, Perry went into great detail about how bad his addiction to pills, drugs, and alcohol has been almost throughout his entire life. Some years ago, Perry had an intestine that ruptured and was given a 2% chance of surviving. Perry was in intensive care for 10 months. At his worst, Perry was drinking Vodka in excess and taking as many as 50 Vicotin pills a day. Perry went to rehab 15 times and detoxed 63 times in his life.

One day ago, on October 28, 2023 Mathew Perry died in his hot tub and at first his death was listed as an accidental drowning. In a few weeks, when the autopsy is released, the odds are high that Perry died of a heart attack from so many years of weakening his heart from drug abuse, or he was either drunk or high from drugs and slipped into the water and drowned.

From all of us who appreciate the unique talent and comic timing that Mathew Perry had, it is clear to me that 80% of the success and best parts of the series Friends, which ran from 1994-2004, is because of the talent of Mathew Perry, playing Chandler Bing. From the comments of grief-stricken fans of the series Friends, I have read and seen many fans agreeing that while everybody on this series was great, the character Chandler was always the funniest of the six actors for the entire 10 years.

The problem with a great comedy series or a great comedy movie is that they are so rare. It is highly unlikely that any actor will get two series as great as a series like Friends, Seinfeld, All in the Family, or the Mary Tyler Moore show. For someone like Perry who was one of the all-time greats in the history of situation comedies, longing for those highs performing in front of millions of people has always been part of the problem. What do you do, when you are the best at something, but the opportunity to do what you love is rarely available. With a talent like Mathew Perry having great ability with comedic timing is half the battle, the other part of the equation is about being cast in the right part, with the right comedy writers.

Perry went on to star in several comedy movies over the years, many of which were very good, including “Whole 9 Yards”, “Serving Sara”, “Three to Tango” and “Fools Rush In”. Perry’s other mostly successful sitcom was a reboot of the “Odd Couple” that ran from 2015-2017. It would have been great if Perry got another giant home run in his career at a level of the series Friends, but that is not how things work in Hollywood.

Along with Michael J. Fox, Bea Arthur and Betty White, Mathew Perry will be known as one of the greatest actors in the history of situation comedy.

The videos below show some of the best moments of Chandler Bing on Friends and some of the comments from his cast members.

Netflix Movie Review: Pain Hustlers

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With outstanding series like Dopesick (Hulu) and Painkiller(Netflix) currently streaming, it is no surprise that the new movie “Pain Hustlers” the true story about the salespeople of Insys Pharmaceutical who lied, bribed doctors, and sold dangerous pain-killing drugs that killed so many people has been released on Netflix.

Pain Hustlers stars Emily Blunt as Liza Drake a down-and-out single mother with a daughter, living in the garage of her sister with her mother. Liza seems to have no chance to lift her life out of the hole it’s in until she interviews with a failing Pharmaceutical company named InSys. Even though Liza is completely unqualified and has no college degree, she is hired by her interviewer Pete Brenner, played by Chris Evans himself, adding made-up qualifications to Liza’s resume. At the beginning of this true story, nobody can blame Liza from trying to escape from her poor squalor nowhere life into trying to sell doctors a highly effective pain killing cancer drug and making commissions that eventually became 600 thousand for one year.

The problem with situations like this is greed. Within this true story, it was also the insanity and greed of the CEO of the company Dr. Neel, played by Andy Garcia. As soon as sales flattened for the pain-killing drug that was only created for cancer patients, Neel demanded that they “go off the label” and bribe doctors to prescribe the drug for all pain. Soon after this, some people started to die of overdoses. What is most amazing about this true story is the blatant disregard to the rules set by the FDA, with the desire for so much money that all involved ignored the possibility of going to jail for many years because what they were doing for so long was against the law.

The other player in this opioid pain killing disaster is the company Purdue Pharmaceutical, the subject of the great Hulu series Dopesick (reviewed in this blog). Due to the greed of this now-bankrupt company, tens of thousands of Americans died from drug overdoses caused by Purdue’s main painkilling drug OxyContin. Purdue is now bankrupt as of 2022 as is Insys in 2019 and this also included jail time for the CEO and all the executives of this company.

For reasons unknown, the critics on Rotten Tomatoes are rating this very good Netflix movie only 22%. This is dead wrong, with my rating of 80% for a solid look at the reality of what people will do for money.

Movie Review: Freelance

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The new movie “Freelance” starring John Cena, seems like a grab-bag of action movie ideas that were either used in previous films or just thrown away. The story is about a former Army Veteran, now bored with his life, who goes back to his life as a mercenary, running in the jungle, dodging helicopter fire, trying to save a reporter and the leader of some Latin American company under attack by other hired mercenaries – already who cares.

Everything in this movie has been produced 100 times before in much better action movies. There is nothing new in this screenplay that was written by Jacob Lenz – that according to IMDB is his first. This production could be another example of a favor bank gone bad because Freelance is one of the few movies receiving a zero on Rotten Tomatoes. If this is not a favor bank movie it is hard to believe money was spent to produce a screenplay this bad and convince several named actors to make this film. I often think about so many very great screenplays that will never made or even seen by a producer, and a movie like this is made during a time when the best movies of the year normally are released.

The story of a frustrated lawyer returning to his “more happy life” of fighting battles around the world stars John Cena as Mason. He finds himself in a Latin American country protecting a famous reporter Claire Wellington played by Alison Brie. What follows is gunfire, chase scenes, downed helicopters, and attempts at very subtle humor mostly by Cena that fails almost every time. There is a continuing attempt at humor involving a back problem with John Cena’s character, which is another unnecessary part of this alarmingly bad movie. Actress Alice Eve plays Mason’s wife, in a small part, that is a harsh reality of being an actress in Hollywood – sometimes you have to take a small role in a bad film, hoping something much better might someday come along. I hope this movie is not too much of a setback for all involved.

The solution with this movie is to just find any other current action film on Netflix and watch that instead. This one rates about 20%, and is a big time miss.