mirok

My World and Welcome to it was a cult classic of the late 1960's, at a time when home computers and the Internet were still things of the future. Videos and DVD's, likewise, were still distant dreams. And you would have thought that, when these formats became available on a mass scale, shows such as this would inevitably become available to the general public. However, My World and Welcome to it remained overlooked for a long time and, as several reviewers have noted, it just wasn't available on DVD.

Until now, that is. I was writing to some friends about this series and decided to check something at the Internet Movie Database (IMDb.com), which always shows the availability (or lack thereof) of movies, TV shows and the like on DVD, VHS and CD (soundtracks). Lo and behold, Amazon.com is now carrying the short-lived My World and Welcome to it on DVD. Thurber fans, rejoice.

Ever wonder where that episode, "Tuttle," came from in the middle of the first season of M*A*S*H? Well now the cat's out of the bag: they got it from this Soviet film, a satire on how dumb the Tsar is, due to the slip of a pen (rendering the phrase "the Lieutenants, though ..." into "Lieutenant Kizhe" which has no meaning) and nobody being honest or gutsy enough to contradict him and just tell him the truth -- Kizhe doesn't exist and never did. So they make up an imaginary life for him and eventually kill him off. And 40 years later, David Ketchum and Bruce Shelly borrowed this zany plot and gave us essentially the same story, only on the other side of what had become the Cold War, proving that people in high positions can be equally dumb no matter what their loyalties may be!

First let me tell you -- Spalding Gray was a man who could mesmerize, as his numerous one-man shows are evidence of. This is a "short movie" -- only about 90 minutes instead of a full 2 hours -- but it's positively compelling and makes you wonder why you didn't hear about it, why it didn't get that much publicity in your neck of the woods, etc. until you were lucky enough to stumble across it.

One thing I adore finding are movies that can be paired up as a double feature. An example would be Ed Wood's last film, Plan 9 from Outer Space, together with Tim Burton's homage work, Ed Wood. Watch them together and it's just great. I would also recommend watching The Killing Fields, in which Gray plays a minor role (as the U. S. Consul in Phnom Penh) and this movie, in which he talks about the making of said movie.

Remember that this is a topical movie because it was made in 1987. By that time the infamous "killing fields" were gone and Pol Pot's regime had been driven out of Cambodia by rebels supported by the Vietnamese. However, the Heng Samrin regime was far from democratic and for some strange reason the UN continued to recognize the Khmer Rouge regime -- the one led by Pol Pot -- as the legitimate government of Cambodia in one of history's craziest throws of the cosmic dice. It was not until the early 1990s that peace and democracy finally came to that troubled country.

For quite some years this movie was available only on VHS. I wondered when it would ever come out on DVD. Finally it's available on DVD so I say there's no excuse not to go out and get it.