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Facing a sea of gray uniforms at the Citadel last week, Pat Buchanan was in his element--a venerated all-male corps of cadets under attack by a young girl and a bunch of misguided federal judges. Buchanan's rhetorical landscape is always filled with symbols of tradition and patriarchy, and his speech to the group didn't lack battlefields, American flags and brave soldiers. Then he described the current national menace: "the men in sandals and beads at the U.S. Department of Education who want to tell the Citadel how to teach history." The young men cheered and laughed...
...early '70s did not lack absurdities. It was a time when viewers were entertained by a flying nun, a buxom genie and a suburban witch who twitched her nose. Yet of all the ridiculous TV shows of the era, two stand out for their enduring, unfathomable allure: The Brady Bunch, the sitcom about an adage-spewing stepfamily cavorting on an Astroturf lawn, and Gilligan's Island, the tale of seven mismatched castaways on an island that seemed oddly close to Hollywood. Both shows had a goofy otherworldliness painfully out of step with their tumultuous times. Both spawned fanatical cult followings...
After a couple of decades in relative obscurity, Schwartz, 78, has suddenly resurfaced. He co-produced the current box-office hit The Brady Bunch Movie and has already started work on a sequel. He is in the midst of writing a big-screen version of Gilligan's Island. (No cast yet, but Schwartz has his wish list: Martin Short as Gilligan, John Goodman as the Skipper and Michelle Pfeiffer or Geena Davis as the improbably maquillaged starlet Ginger.) What's more, Schwartz is teaming with Ted Turner to create a chain of Gilligan-inspired amusement arcades. Among the attractions: Gilligan...
...Brady Bunch Movie was in some ways his most trying project. In one version of the script, the naive-to-their-knee-socks Bradys were turned into foulmouthed hellions. "It was vulgar," says Schwartz. "Instead of making it a gentle satire, it was written with an ax." Schwartz, who has four children and has been married to his wife Mildred for 54 years, fired off memos to Paramount chief Sherry Lansing, threatening to campaign against the film should it contain racy scenes or base language. He won. The film, which transports the Formica-loving clan to a '90s world...
Whether he's learned more from TV than from Harvard: Yeah, so far. I did learn some valuable things at Harvard, but you can't beat Beavis and Butthead. Missing the Brady Bunch episodes was missing an important part of my experience...