#Joe Pytka

[harrisonarchive]

Footage from interviews for The Beatles Anthology EPKs, and Today Tonight (Australia), 1995. Courtesy of YouTube. “It’s just some little magic that… you know, when you get certain people together, it produces — you know, it makes fire.” - George Harrison, EPK interview Q: “One of the songs, ‘Free As A Bird,’ that John recorded on mono. He’s playing the piano. How difficult was it melding the three surviving Beatles with John?” George: “Yeah. It was… it just took a little time, really. It was pretty tricky, because what we did was, at first, we took his cassette… because it was only a demo, and it was unfinished, it kind of — he was just plodding along and in some places he’d go quicken up a bit, and some places he’d slow down. And we put all the backing in, did all the singing, and Paul and I wrote some words to the middle part that John had never finished. And we did the totally new record, in fact. And then we just took his voice, and we dropped it in, every line where we needed it, until we built up, you know, the lead vocal part.”Q: “Sean Lennon said it was spooky having a dead guy as lead singer. Did you find it spooky?” George: “It’s not, it’s not spooky, but… if, I don’t know if this has ever happened to you — if you think that, you know, we all, when we’re alive, when you hear our music, you hear our voices, but the moment somebody dies, it’s suddenly eerie, you know. Whether it’s John Lennon or Ayrton Senna. You know, just the idea, when you hear him speak, it suddenly is… is very emotional.” - Today Tonight, 1995 “One of the things that’s a little bit heartbreaking is that the player at the end, the ukulele player, banjo, whatever you want to call it. George wanted to play that part and I resisted, saying that if I put him in I’d have to put some of the other Beatles in. I didn’t think we wanted to see contemporary Beatles in the piece. So I said, ‘No, no, no,’ and he said, ‘Okay.’ Thinking they had sampled an archival piece of music, and it turns out that George had actually performed that on the song. Had I known that, I would have let him do it because you only see him from the back anyway. But I’m heart — actually heartbroken about not letting him do that piece, especially now more than ever.” - Joe Pytka (director of the “Free As A Bird” video), The Beatles Anthology special features (x)

[littlequeenies]

English singer, songwriter and actor and former Beatles drummer Ringo Starr (aka Sir Richard Starkey MBE) is filmed sitting next to his daughter Lee Starr in an Oldsmobile Cutlass on the set of an Oldsmobile commercial at Culver City Studios in July 1989 in Culver City, California.

In the studio were also present Maureen Tigrett (photos 1-3), director Joe Pytka (photo 1, standing in black), and Ringo's stunt double.

Some other photos show that Ringo's birthday (July 7th) was celebrated there.

(Photo by Roxanne McCann/Getty Images.)

[90smovies]

[whynot-movies]

Space Jam (1996)

[mydarkapron]

SPACE JAM, 1996

Joe Pytka

[cinematitlecards]

"Space Jam" (1996) Directed by Joe Pytka (Animated/Comedy/Sports)

[mikyapixie]

28 years ago today Space Jam released in theaters!!!

When I was a kid & first saw this movie it blew my mind!! I was a huge Micheal Jordan fan & of course loved Looney Tunes!! It was actually the first time I saw so many athletes acting in one movie! Every time I watch this movie it fells like I’m watching for the first time all over again!!! I had the VHS tape too!!! 📼📼📼I’m glad I gave to charity!!! Their faces!!!😆🥰😆

[acmeoop]

The Tune Squad

A gym and court was built for Micheal Jordon to use during filming. He would regularly play pick up games with NBA players during his time there. (x)

Space Jam (1996)

[heartbreakfeelsgoodinablog]

Get ready to jam.

[coldrubies]

Grief cinema

My mom died at the end of 2019, right before lockdown. When covid hit, I was still in a foggy state. My reaction to everything delayed. I am supposed to stay home? Not go outside? Fine! Those were precisely what my plans were for the next mumblemumble years anyway.

My brightest, most vivid memories would have been of the movies that I saw anyway, because movies are special to me and I am always watching them. But the way they informed my grieving process surprised me. One does not necessarily expect, in the moment, for anything to really make it better.

But the day of my mom's death—maybe the day of, maybe the last day that I saw my mom—I watched MIDSOMMAR for the first time. I didn't know the plot and was a little concerned about it but a lot unable to do anything about the way that I felt; the DVD was already in the DVD player, and I knew my mother was dying/dead. Florence Pugh's portrayal of grief was a real gift. I felt held by it. It was miraculous to me, frankly, how much it lifted me into a state of feeling able to engage with what was going on and how I was feeling. There is a rant in me—and it is in there pretty shallow; you can get at it easily—about how acting is a vital service. I feel about actors the way that THE OFFICE's Dwight Schrute feels about his urologist. It is something I cannot do myself all the time, validate my own feelings about life; I need someone to do it for me, and I am grateful.

Also right around the same proximity to my mom's death, I saw the "Original Cast Album: Co-op" episode of DOCUMENTARY NOW! in the midst of watching that season. It was funny, I loved it, it took me out of my troubles, and the milieu was so novel and fascinating to me—this is how a cast recording (something I had never thought about) is/was made?—that I looked up which real documentary the episode was based on.

Before addressing ORIGINAL CAST ALBUM: COMPANY and all it's done for me, a word on Stephen Sondheim:

I will pick up practically any biography of an artist. An all-time choice was the biography of Wendy Wasserstein by Julie Salamon. I didn't know her or her work, and it was such an absorbing book, I think about returning to it all the time. Ditto Michael Schulman's Meryl Streep biography. I love to get a feeling of people in time. The choice to buy Stephen Sondheim's biography was not totally random, but it happened to be on my person when, immediately after my mother's death, I was hit by a car! It wasn't fatal—here I am—it just tipped me over. But I was in a fragile state, I did cry a lot, and I explained to the driver that my mother had just died, and that was why I was crying, and that would be the only reason I cry about anything for a while, regardless of what it seemed like I ought to be crying about. Eventually, I got to a hospital that night to make sure nothing had happened to me, and I was stranded in a room for more than an hour, and all I had was this book about Stephen Sondheim.

I can't remember—I'm sure I could figure it out—whether I had the book before I saw the documentary, whether I'd already seen it by the time I started reading it—but it all feels like it happened more or less at once that I went from not knowing* who Stephen Sondheim was to knowing, you know, the reams of tedious details that a fan knows (how many lines he preferred to have on his yellow legal pads; his go-to chord structure).

As all of this is going on, I've been writing a novel about musicians since 2018, and I made a promise to myself that, once I finished the first draft, I would prioritize learning about music. I never did when I was in school, I always wanted to, and the novel would never be done if I did not understand what my characters are supposed to be doing. I finished the first draft at the very end of 2019, and how fortuitous for this guide to show up, again, more or less all at once (just in time for me to be truly knocked out when he died two years later, more or less exactly from the time of all of this).

The extent to which I've clung to that gift as a life raft during this time is best demonstrated by the fact that, at the end of 2019, I had no knowledge of anything pertaining to music other than liking it, and now I have been composing music since the spring of 2022 (composing was the very long goal, and I still can't get over the fact that I met it). Have I neglected other parts of my life? Big time. But this is still impressive to me considering I would have liked very much to simply pull a blanket over myself and be sad quite ongoingly.

(*- On the subject of "not knowing who Stephen Sondheim was," my only frame of reference was seeing his name in the credits, mostly on item descriptions online, for, like, CDs of the WEST SIDE STORY, INTO THE WOODS, and ASSASSINS cast recordings, all of which I happened to see randomly over the years, but it is the kind of coincidence that would leave one who doesn't know anything about musical theatre to wonder if, maybe, Stephen Sondheim has written every single musical ever.)

Back to the documentary:

Between my discovery of ORIGINAL CAST ALBUM: COMPANY and now, the Criterion Collection has issued an edition of it on DVD and Blu-ray that is beautiful, a dream come true, and it features the DOCUMENTARY NOW! parody episode—magnificent. At the end of 2019, though, my only option for owning it was as a Quicktime file. This is fine—whether or not I have internet access, I have access to ORIGINAL CAST ALBUM: COMPANY.

I have so much to express about ORIGINAL CAST ALBUM: COMPANY, but I will restrict myself only to how it has intermingled with my grieving process. It is, of course, a pleasure to see people lost in work that is demanding but, compared to grieving a loved one's death, a load of cake. In the moment, the first many times I saw it, it came with a fresh, invigorating spray of curiosity-provocation. I love to be curious. Curiosity can do a lot for me. And there is a lot to be curious about for the completely uninitiated when it comes to the byzantine, idiosyncratic, union-forged business practices of Broadway theatre. Knowing how much he loved rules, watching him in this documentary, I am so moved and so happy for Stephen Sondheim that he was from and dwelled in a land that loved rules so much.

I could go on and on and on about how cathartic it is to watch someone be difficult, a ruthless artist, rigid, upholding a high standard as a method of care. I could introduce the subject of Stephen Sondheim and mother issues and we would be here all day. One of the conditions of my loving a thing is that I just go on about it. But when I first saw ORIGINAL CAST ALBUM: COMPANY right around the time that my mother died, the big thing that it did for me was show me, in case I felt like allowing my grief to interfere with my plans, that working on music was going to be good, nice, and right, which in this case were all the same thing.

It's been comforting to rewatch MIDSOMMAR since the end of 2019 and, to be honest with you, I rewatch ORIGINAL CAST ALBUM: COMPANY on a basis so routine that, on second thought, to be honest with you about it would embarrass me too greatly, but the other movie that did something for me in the bewildering swirl that was right-around-the-time-my-mother died, maybe the day it happened, isn't one I revisit, but it is worth noting. I was not going to prepare any food that day, which I barely incentivize myself to do when I'm not pulverized by the cruelty of fate, so I bought, I think, a poké bowl (spicy tuna, etc.) and a Mediterranean-style grain bowl (ancient grains, spicy feta cheese, etc.), and ate them both promptly and simultaneously. I felt sick. I could not do anything lest I risk throwing up. I watched SPACE JAM (I did not throw up! A small miracle).

I am I-saw-SPACE-JAM-in-the-theatre-and-it-was-age-appropriate years old. The soundtrack was a presence in my home. I have no tender feelings about it, but, watching it for the first time as an adult, its ludicrousness did completely take me out of what was happening to my soul and body. That's not nothing!

Maybe more happened then and it isn't coming to me now, but this is how I remember it.

[nbasource]

MICHAEL JORDAN Space Jam (1996), dir. Joe Pytka

[acmeoop]

Silly, Aren’t They? “Hare Jordan” (1992)

Looney Tunes Original Production Drawing: Bugs Bunny

MEDIUM: ​Original Production Drawing IMAGE SIZE: 12 Field PRODUCTION: Looney Tunes SKU: IFA5041

[90smovies]

[that-rackin-frackin-varmint]

#57 — 08/03/2022 12:03 AM

Space Jam movies are movies that toons can watch in this world.

Space Jam 1 follows the looney tunes who, in meta, are acting in the movie. Lola was added in as a one time character.

Space Jam 2 is another movie the looney tunes do. But the story’s weirdly inconsistent. Lola’s personality had a jump to what’s commercially sound at the time of early 2020s. But it’s possible it doesn’t speak to her character out of set.

Back in Action is slightly more true to the character portrayals of the looney tunes and their state out of set. But some level is fictitious due to it being technically Bugs’ movie…

Present day thoughts:

Properly addressing this, I stand by my interpretation that Space Jam is regarded as an acting gig to the tunes, mostly corroborated by an obscure "live commentary track" where Bugs and Daffy live react to the movie alongside their vas Billy West and Dee Bradley Baker, as well as the director, Joe Pytka.

Their commentary mainly operates like any regular commentary track where actors/director(s) react to the movie they made, with Bugs and Daffy watching it as actors. So I treat it as proof that the looney tunes regard Space Jam as an acting gig, rather than some "canonical" event where they competed against aliens in a basketball match.

For more accessible proof that Space Jam was an acting gig to them, check out the Looney Tunes' Elvis tribute album:

At 10:06, Bugs remarks on Pepe's melodramatic ballad of heartbreak, saying: "Oh brother, I never seen this many tears since he lost a lead in Space Jam"

And in 37:25, where Bugs goes: "One more for the king! And uhh Lola Bunny, if she's listening..."

As for Space Jam 2, there's enough promotional material treating the tunes as actors, to the point of not actually putting the vas' names in promotional art, aside from Lola Bunny's va, Zendaya -- which was pretty infamous back then. So I don't feel like I need to make a deep case for why SJ2 shouldn't be considered as non-performance, than any other film featuring the looney tunes.

And I stand by my stance on Back in Action.

[hannahleah]

Joe Pytka's 1992 Pepsi Ad with Cindy Crawford. David Yarrow photography

[dankusner]

Castillo del Lago 

"christopher ciccone"

When Madonna bought the place in the 1993, she undertook a renovation that cost $3 million and transformed the house from Spanish Colonial to Italianate. 

(The renovation still irks her neighbors, who claimed she “ruined” the house by painting the wall and replacing the original tiles with cheaper ones.) 

Perhaps because of the extensive renovation, the mood of the house lifted somewhat, though strange things still happened. 

According to Jacobson and Wanamaker, “Madonna confided to a friend that on occasion she felt a force throughout the house, a force that was not safe.” 

Her caretaker reported that doors closed and locked behind him whenever he stepped outside it. 

And when he was alone there at night, he could hear a man calling his name.

In 1997, Madonna sold Castillo del Lago at a huge loss to Joe Pytka, the commercial director and restaurant owner (of Bastide, now defunct), who presumably gave any lingering ghosts the boot. 

(Disclosure: I was socially acquainted with Pytka in the early 1990’s, well before he bought the house.) Pytka, who bought the house for $5.3 million,

MADONNA’S HOUSE? LOOK FOR A RED, YELLOW CASTLE

ByJuly 4, 1993 at 4:00 a.m.

Madonna’s Hollywood neighbors say the diva of controversy has struck again, turning a beloved 1926 neighborhood landmark into a circus tent with a bizarre color scheme.

Featuring horizontal stripes along a retaining wall and prominent tower, it’s a paint job that only Tommy Trojan could love – cardinal with yellow stripes.

But where the mascot for the University of Southern California would see his school’s colors, Madonna’s neighbors in exclusive Beachwood Canyon only see red.

“It’s just unbelievable,” said Christine O’Brien, who is active in the local homeowner’s association. “It looks like something out of Barnum & Bailey.”

O’Brien said she has received numerous calls from residents, urging the area’s homeowners association to take a stand against the paint job on the Spanish revival castle called Castillo del Lago, which once belonged to gangster Bugsy Siegel.

But she has concluded the organization is powerless to force Madonna to change the paint scheme.

Madonna’s brother, Christopher Ciccone, said in early May that the color scheme was only temporary.

“There’s no cause for alarm,” he said. “The red and yellow are merely test colors for an undercoating that eventually will make the house look like a rustic Italian villa. . . . If it wasn’t Madonna, nobody would care.”

But since then, the paint job has been completed, and some residents were told that it was anything but temporary.

The criticism contrasts sharply with the enthusiasm that originally greeted Madonna’s purchase of the castle for a reported $5 million. 

Madonna has yet to live in the home, which scales nine levels and covers 20,000 square feet.

Originally Published: