Word: odd
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...first they seemed to be an odd pair-the introspective President, a cold-minded engineer with a passion to get every detail right, and the Bunyanesque extravert (the front license plate of his limousine on Inauguration Day proclaimed BERT; the rear one, LANCE), who cheerfully mangled facts in his haste to paint the big picture. But there were deep bonds between the two opposites. At 46, Lance was closer in age to the President, who is 52, than most of the young Georgians who made up the White House's inner circle. Like the Baptist President, Lance-a Methodist...
Nelson, 44, is a survivor of the Nashville Country & Western mill who has become a near deity to fans of his gentle country rock. He broke into the honky-tonk circuit 20-odd years ago, playing broken-bottle clubs like the County Dump and the Bloody Bucket outside Fort Worth, where chicken wire protected the performers from airborne bottles. In 1960 he moved to Nashville and spent the next twelve years writing hits for other performers: Crazy for Patsy Cline, Hello Walls for Faron Young and standards like Funny How Time Slips Away...
...best known for his poignant portrayal of Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof; of a heart attack; in Philadelphia, where he was about to open in a new play. The son of a rabbi, Samuel Joel Mostel decided to be a painter, but supported himself with a number of odd jobs, including working as a $5-a-night stand-up comic at neighborhood parties. When he was 27, he made his professional acting debut with a series of impressions at a café and within the year was in Hollywood. Like the character he portrayed in Woody Allen...
...different, though, is what makes him want to do all that manipulating in the first place--not money, not power, but instead the glory and satisfaction that come from being a winner. The modern businessman, it seems, is driven not by a work ethic, but a win ethic, an odd philosophy that seems to reduce life to an endless string of fourth-down goal-line stands. The book brings to mind Vince Lonbardi's famous benediction to the Green Bay Packers' "Winning isn't everything--it's the only thing". The thought is not a soothing...
Richard Benner's Outrageous! does have a way of standing out from this year's usual film fare, but the protagonists' quirky personalities are only part of the story. Odd-couple films are nothing new to American audiences, and--if one can hazard any generalizations about such movies--they tend to have a built-in pitfall. Few directors can resist the temptation to dwell on the most obvious differences between the two principals and milk every embarassed chuckle and nervous giggle out of the gag. This is acceptable for the first 15 minutes or so, but the jokes wear mercilessly...