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Who knew a part on Happy Days could lead to cinema immortality? From Robin Williams to Sally Field, the list of Oscar winners who started as sitcom goofs is much longer than you might expect.

Here are five more Academy Award recipients who cashed their first showbiz paychecks on classic situation comedies…

1 Leonardo DiCaprio

DiCaprio was earning movie accolades early in his career, still a teenager when he was Oscar-nominated for Who’s Eating Gilbert Grape? But does he get that role without his breakthrough as Luke Brower, the homeless kid who gets taken in by the Seavers on the ‘80s sitcom Growing Pains? TV mom Joanna Kerns remembers DiCaprio always messing around between takes. “He was totally mischievous,” she told The Independent. When Tobey Maguire, a member of DiCaprio’s infamous Pussy Posse, came around the set, “They looked like they were really up to no good.”

2 Halle Berry...

Country artist Jelly Roll has never hid his criminal past. He was in and out of prison since he was 14. Does he keep in touch with his jail buddies?

Jelly Roll Reveals If He’s Still In Touch With Prison Buddies

Jelly Roll’s journey to country music stardom is unique, to say the least. He didn’t hit it big until he was in his 30s. He spent the previous two decades in and out of legal troubles. His trouble with the law came at the young age of 14 when he found himself in the Davidson County Juvenile Detention Center in Nashville.

His criminal activity continued into adulthood when he was arrested at the age of 16 for armed robbery. According to Us Weekly, Jelly Roll served one year in jail on that charge. But he was arrested again in 2008 on drug charges. After pleading guilty, the singer was sentenced to eight years in prison,...

Days of Our Lives (Dool) spoilers for Wednesday, May 15 indicate the proverbial poop is about to hit the fan in Salem! Someone finds a long-lost journal of a loved one, while working buddies continue to bond, and new evidence has someone hoping a case can be re-opened.

What is set to unfold during Wednesday’s show? Time to dive right in!

Days Of Our Lives Spoilers – Abigail Dimera’s Long-Lost Journal Found!

Dool spoilers for Wednesday, May 15 hint that Chad Dimera (Billy Flynn) will find Abigail Dimera’s (last played by Marci Miller) long-lost private journal. Will he sneak a peek? It’s very likely that he will.

Trending! Days Of Our Lives Spoilers: Abigail Dimera’s Returning & Fans Are Here For It

Still, what kind of insight will this journal offer and could this mean Abigail is making her way back to the little town? Sure, she “died” two years ago,...

Richard Roundtree, famous for his role as John Shaft, passed away at 81 after battling pancreatic cancer. He leaves behind an enduring legacy. Before his iconic role, Roundtree started as a model and participated in theater. He continued to star in various Shaft movies and other notable shows and movies. Roundtree's passing is a big loss to the entertainment industry. Tributes have poured in, highlighting his importance and influence.

Shaft actor Richard Roundtree has passed away at the age of 81. The award-winning actor who starred in numerous television and movie roles across his illustrious career that spanned about five decades, was born on July 9, 1942. His professional acting career kicked off around 1963, but he didn’t rise to prominence until 1971 when he took on the titular role of detective John Shaft in Gordon Park’s blaxploitation crime thriller.

According to Deadline, Roundtree reportedly passed away on the afternoon of Oct. 24, after a...

Richard Roundtree, known for his role as Shaft in the series of films, died at the age of 81. The actor has left a legacy in both film and television for generations to come.

Roundtree made his debut in film as John Shaft in Shaft about a private detective who is hired by a mobster to help rescue his daughter who was kidnapped by Italian mobsters. The actor would go on to reprise his role of Shaft in the sequels Shaft’s Big Score (1972) and Shaft in Africa (1973). A reboot of Shaft starring Samuel L. Jackson was released in 2000 with Roundtree appearing as “Uncle” Shaft. Roundtree also played the role in the short-lived CBS series.

Other films in which Roundtree appeared in include Embassy (1972), Earthquake (1974), Man Friday (1975), Diamonds (1975), Escape to Athena (1979), City Heat (1984), George of the Jungle (1997), What Men Want (2019) and The Haunting of the Mary Celeste (2020), just to name a few.

Attention, dog lovers! Disney+ wants to inspire you to wag your tail by bringing the Air Bud movie collection to the mouse-eared streaming service! The sports comedy franchise featuring the beloved golden retriever and his animal friends has been a staple of family entertainment for over 20 years. Now, a new generation of fans can enjoy the K-9’s hijinks on Disney+! The Air Bud movie collection arrives on Disney+ on Sunday, October 1.

Charles Martin directs Air Bud from a script by Paul Tamasy and Aaron Mendelssohn. The original comedy revolves around Buddy, an athletic golden retriever with an uncanny knack for sinking baskets and dribbling circles around his opponents on the court. The story focuses on a young boy named Josh Framm (Kevin Zegers) who is having trouble making the basketball team. However, when he meets a stray golden retriever with mad basketball skills, the duo boosts the team and makes it to the finals!

Vacation Friends 2 is a sequel to the hit 2021 comedy of the same name directed by Clay Tarver. The comedy film picks up the story of our two main couples as they head to an all-expense paid vacation to the Caribbean, but when Kyla’s incarcerated father gets released from San Quentin, things get crazy very fast. John Cena, Lil Rel Howery, Meredith Hagner, and Yvonne Orji reprise their role in the sequel. So, if you loved Vacation Friends 2 here are some similar movies you could watch next.

Vacation Friends (Hulu) Credit – Hulu

Synopsis: In this raw and raunchy comedy, straight-laced Marcus and Emily are befriended by wild, thrill-seeking partiers Ron and Kyla at a resort in Mexico. Living in the moment, the usually level-headed couple lets loose to enjoy a week of uninhibited fun and debauchery with their new “vacation friends.” Months after their walk on the wild side,...

We ranked the 100 best movies of the ‘80s, and listed our favorite performances, scores, and anime of the decade. We interviewed Charles Burnett about his compromised masterpiece “My Brother’s Wedding,” Susan Seidelman about bringing a new kind of woman to the big screen, “Buddies” actor David Schachter about the first movie to tackle AIDS head-on, and went deep with Hal Hartley on the making of “The Unbelievable Truth.” Michael Giacchino waxing poetic on “Raiders of the Lost Ark?” Griffin Dunne reflecting on “After Hours?” The story of the Sundance Institute from the people who brought it to life? A true Day One exclusive.

We ran essays about the synth invasion of Hollywood scores, the uncomfortably comedic role that consent played in ’80s comedies, the birth of the steadicam, the ending of “Fatal Attraction,” and — of course — why “Streets of Fire” should’ve been the biggest rock musical of our lifetimes.

If you looked to the 1980s for representation of the HIV/AIDS epidemic on mainstream screens anywhere, you’d be staring into a void.

Hollywood, much like the reigning political administration of the time, ignored the crisis as it grew that decade — and certainly did not know what to do with it once ignorance was no longer an option. It wasn’t until Rock Hudson, once a glimmering fawned-upon pillar of quote-unquote masculinity, collapsed in the summer of 1985 and died that fall from AIDS complications that the film industry was finally forced to respond at all.

That same year, just a few months before Hudson’s death, porn-director-turned-activist filmmaker Arthur J. Bressan Jr. released the first narrative theatrical feature devoted to the gay plague that the likes of Reagan and Thatcher otherwise preferred to keep far away from legislation and policy.

Bressan died two years later from his own complications from AIDS,...

Full House star John Stamos appeared on the latest episode of Hot Ones, where he admitted to being upstaged by his former child co-star to the point where he almost quit. Stamos, who starred in the lead role as Jesse Katsopolis on the ABC sitcom, explained how Jodie Sweetin, who played Stephanie Tanner, stole the show during a table read. “We did a table read of it, and I was the star. I was coming off of General Hospital… big shot, you know, that kind of thing,” the actor explained. “And we sit down, and we start reading. And Jodie Sweetin, who plays Stephanie, reads her lines, and people are dying laughing, I mean screaming. I was like, ‘What’s happening here?’” Lorimer Telepictures / Courtesy: Everett Collection This came as a shock to Stamos, who said that the show was initially pitched to him as a more singular focus on his character,...

John Stamos recalls wanting to leave Full House because he was upstaged by a child actor. Playing Uncle Jesse in the cult family sitcom in the late '80s to the early '90s, he reprised the character in Netflix's spin-off sequel, Fuller House. As one of the beloved characters from the franchise, it's difficult to imagine Stamos not being attached to Full House, but as it turns out, he almost pulled out of the project.

Appearing on First We Feast to promote his upcoming memoir, If You Would Have Told Me, Stamos talks about how Full House was pitched to him, and how he didn't expect that a big part of being on the show was working with kids.

He shares the story of wanting to exit the series after being upstaged by Jodie Sweetin who played Stephanie Tanner. Read his full quote below:

Full House, I hated that show.

This year, more than 1,000 people participated in the 24th Annual Best Buddies Challenge: Hyannis Port presented by Shaw’s and Star Market Foundation and The Tjx Companies, Inc., a cycling, run and walk fundraiser from Boston to Hyannis Port, on June 2-3.

The Challenge raised close to $4 million in total donations for Best Buddies International, a nonprofit dedicated to creating opportunities for one-to-one friendships, integrated employment, leadership development, and inclusive living for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (Idd).

The weekend’s festivities commenced with an intimate cocktail reception at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston. The reception included a guided museum tour and performances by Best Buddies Ambassadors Christina Hundley and James Keith.

On Saturday, June 3, hundreds of riders took to the 100-mile start line at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, led by professional cyclist Cam Wurf, Current US Pro Women’s Road Champion Emma Langley,...

In 2023, anti-drag laws are being debated in at least 14 states, including Tennessee, the first to officially ban “adult cabaret performances” — which includes male or female impersonations — in public spaces or in the presence of children. But in 1980, drag formed the centerpiece of a new ABC sitcom.

Bosom Buddies is notable for being the first big break for Tom Hanks, then 24, and paired him with relative newcomer Peter Scolari, then 25. They played Kip Wilson and Henry Desmond, respectively — two pals who assume female alter-egos named Buffy and Hildegard in order to live in an affordable women’s hotel in New York City. The show was conceived almost by accident by Thomas L. Miller and Robert L. Boyett, the duo behind a raft of 1970s hit sitcoms including Happy Days, Mork & Mindy and Laverne & Shirley.

Buddies was pitched to ABC as a male version of the latter, reminiscent of “a sophisticated Billy Wilder comedy.

After decades of toiling in relative obscurity, Jenni Olson is finally receiving the industry recognition she deserves. Her collection of rare 35mm and 16mm queer film prints was acquired by Harvard’s Film Archive last summer. Her films “The Joy of Life” (2005) and “The Royal Road” (2015), which both premiered at Sundance, recently became available on the Criterion Channel alongside her many short films. She was a 2018 MacDowell fellow, and is in development on her third feature-length essay film, “The Quiet World,” which received funding from the Catapult Film Fund and Field of Vision.

Now, she’s the latest recipient of a special Teddy Award from the Berlinale, which recognizes a figure “whose work has made an exceptional contribution…to queer perspectives in art, culture and the media.” Past recipients include Tilda Swinton, Christine Vachon, John Hurt, and Udo Kier.

Anyone involved in queer film over the last three decades will know Olson.

Back-to-back weeknight CNN anchors Chris Cuomo and Don Lemon will debut a new weekly podcast called The Handoff, CNN Audio announced Tuesday.

The show was unabashedly inspired by the on-air banter between the two hosts during handoff on many key issues of the day.

“Each night during the primetime hours of CNN’s television programming, viewers witness the deep love, honest candor, and respect that these two anchors—and friends—have for one another in their unscripted “handoff” conversations between shows. Now, with no broadcast clock to hold them back, they are stepping out from behind their anchor desks to come together and ignite even more personal and hot topic conversations. Nothing is off limits,” CNN said.

The Handoff will be available exclusively with a subscription to the CNN channel on Apple Podcasts when Apple Podcasts Subscriptions debuts later this month.

Chris Cuomo is the brother of New York Gov.

Frank Turner and Jon Snodgrass have reunited after 10 years for a new collaborative album, Buddies II, teasing the project with a new song, “Bad Times, Good Vibes.”

Turner and Snodgrass wrote and recorded the album while working remotely during the Covid-19 lockdown, and “Bad Times, Good Vibes” is very much a product of the pandemic. It’s a delightfully raucous pop rock track — stuffed with a clever country mid-section, with pedal steel courtesy of Todd Beene — that finds Turner listing all the things he has and hasn’t done in quarantine: “Every groundhog morning,...

Teri Polo, William Baldwin, Mena Suvari, and Robert Pine have been tapped to star in Fourth Grade B, a comedy-drama written by Marcelo Galvão. The indie is an American remake of Galvão’s 2005 Brazilian feature Quarta B. It’s described as a satirical portrayal of a private school’s emergency meeting filled with accusations and intrigue, as each parent tries to protect their own child and the uproarious chaos that follows the decision to light up a joint. Pamela Dunlap, Roland Kickinger, Ben Begley, Challen Cates, Taja V. Simpson, Boti Bliss, Rob Norton, Kelli Daniels, Jamison Jones, and Jiu-Jitsu celebrity trainer Rigan Machado co-star. Galvão produced the Wolf in a Pack production pic with Gabriela Kulaif and executive producers Giordano Biagi and Caio Vecchio. Galvão’s credits...

"Possibly the most important film you've never heard of." Peccadillo Pics in the UK has released an official trailer for a digitally restored re-release of 1985 film titled Buddies, written and directed by the late Arthur J. Bressan. Buddies was the first feature-length drama about AIDS when it was released. When 25 year-old David (David Schachter) volunteers to be a "buddy" to an AIDS patient the community center assigns him to Robert (Geoff Edholm), a 32 year-old politically impassioned gay California gardener abandoned by his friends and lovers. "Bressan did a simple yet radical thing: He told the story of one such friendship and, in the process, made the first feature-length drama about AIDS. Shot on 16mm film in nine days, [it] earned respectful reviews and a few festival prizes, but has faded from view over the years. Bressan died of AIDS in July 1987; now, thanks to the efforts of his sister Roe Bressan and film historian Jenni Olson,...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSEdith Scob by Christophe BeauregardThe prolific actress Édith Scob, a frequent collaborator of George Franju and Raúl Ruiz, has passed away. Scob first gained widespread attention for her role as the masked and disfigured daughter in Franju's 1960 Eyes Without a Face, to which she would later pay tribute in Leos Carax's Holy Motors.Guan Hu's war epic The Eight Hundred has been pulled from Chinese theatres and the Shanghai Film Festival, joining Zhang Yimou's One Second as yet another title affected by increasingly strict Chinese film censors. Recommended Viewingh. Paul Moon analyzes every appearance of Walt Whitman in cinema and television, from Intolerance to Breaking Bad, on the occasion of the poet's 200th birthday. Recommended READINGKenneth Anger's Scorpio Rising.“When you do find a version of yourself, or many, a tectonic change occurs.

Arthur Bressan, Jr.Queer cinema in America is not without a sense of loss. In trying to bridge a period of censorship and queer coding (whether in compliance to censors or deliberately transmitting some kind of film language that reads queer without explicitly stating so) to New Queer Cinema and post-New Queer Cinema of today, there is an acceptance and resignation that what pervades a considerable period of queer cinema history is absence, something missing. It is the what could have been: art that was not made because it could not be made, as those who would have were dead. The lost lives and lost potential of HIV/AIDS among artists in the 1980s eidolically looms over queer cinema. But there was still art being made and artists to celebrate. Predating the AIDS epidemic, there was the post-Stonewall art, art of queer liberation that was highly political, a lot of...

One year before the release of Parting Glances and four before Longtime Companion, Arthur Bressan Jr. wrote, produced, directed and edited Buddies (1985), one of the first narrative feature films to put AIDS front and center as a subject. It might be the first, but the television movie An Early Frost aired at around the same time, and in any case, I’ve learned not to make claims for anything being the absolute first when it comes to film history since there are inevitably obscurities that elude even a guy like me who spends every waking hour watching and thinking about […]...

One year before the release of Parting Glances and four before Longtime Companion, Arthur Bressan Jr. wrote, produced, directed and edited Buddies (1985), one of the first narrative feature films to put AIDS front and center as a subject. It might be the first, but the television movie An Early Frost aired at around the same time, and in any case, I’ve learned not to make claims for anything being the absolute first when it comes to film history since there are inevitably obscurities that elude even a guy like me who spends every waking hour watching and thinking about […]...

Get ready to do battle with Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Wile E. Coyote, Yosemite Sam, Tweety Bird and other Looney Tunes characters — complete with plummeting Acme anvils, exploding presents, and giant space lasers.

Mobile game “Looney Tunes: World of Mayhem,” slated to be released this fall, will bring together more 70 characters from WB’s Looney Tunes franchise to wage prank-combat and cause other mischief. In the role-playing game, users collect and battle with characters that have ridiculous, unique abilities to fight against each other in different game modes. Players also can build personalized “Toon Towns” in the app.

The game is being published by Scopely under a pact with Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, and it’s developed in partnership with Brazil’s Aquiris Game Studio.

“The Looney Tunes are literally timeless, and the originators of over-the-top, animated slapstick comedy,” said Tim O’Brien, Scopely’s chief revenue officer. “‘World of...

Over here at The Playlist, we admittedly don’t spend as much time on new home video releases from the boutique labels as much as we should. We always highlight the upcoming Criterion Collection releases, the new Arrow Video releases are mentioned as a sponsor on our Adjust Your Tracking podcast, and we’ve highlighted a few on episodes of The Playlist Podcast (such as Kino Lorber’s release of Andrey Zvyagintsev’s “The Return” and an upcoming episode on Severin Films’ release of “The Changeling”).

Continue reading Home Video Highlights: Vinegar Syndrome Releases AIDS Drama ‘Buddies’ and ‘The House of the Dead’ at The Playlist.

Gay fests are currently showing a restoration of the late Arthur J. Bressan Jr.’s “Buddies,” a microbudgeted drama that arrived in 1985 as the first-ever narrative feature about the AIDS crisis, one resolutely from the viewpoint of the already hard-hit gay community. A few months later network TV waded in with the acclaimed “An Early Frost,” which like most early mainstream treatments of the subject took a perspective designed to soften up AIDS-phobic Middle America — that of “respectable” parents coming to terms with their sons’ homosexuality as well as probably terminal illnesses.

Bridging the two 30-odd years later is Yen Tan’s fine “1985,” which expands on ideas first explored in his short of the same name two years ago. This excellent drama presents an ’80s flashback perhaps even more uncomfortably familiar to many gay men who survived that era than the stricken Manhattan of “Buddies” or the upscale suburbia of “Frost.

Since any New York City cinephile has a nearly suffocating wealth of theatrical options, we figured it’d be best to compile some of the more worthwhile repertory showings into one handy list. Displayed below are a few of the city’s most reliable theaters and links to screenings of their weekend offerings — films you’re not likely to see in a theater again anytime soon, and many of which are, also, on 35mm. If you have a chance to attend any of these, we’re of the mind that it’s time extremely well-spent.

Film Society of Lincoln Center

Before encore screenings return in mid-July, the Visconti retrospective breaks out the restored Ludwig print for daily shows.

Anthology Film Archives

Essential Cinema will screen multiple Robert Bresson films this weekend.

Museum of the Moving Image

Hoping to understand Putin’s Russia? This massive, month-long series will bring you as...

Before Philadelphia won two Oscars, a set of smaller films dealt with the pandemic and those involved talk about the battles they faced getting their stories on screen

In the space of nine days in the summer of 1985, film-maker Arthur “Artie” J Bressan Jr made a low budget drama called Buddies. It was a small film, an intimate two-hander that received a muted showing at a handful of cinemas just months after it was completed, a speedy release that was reflective of the urgency behind its conception and rapid shooting schedule.

It has been unavailable ever since, a hushed legacy belying a ground-breaking significance because Buddies is quite possibly the most important film you’ve never heard of.

Walter Driver, CEO and co-founder of Scopely, doesn’t describe his company as a mobile games publisher.

Instead, he says Scopely is a next-generation mobile entertainment network — one that delivers dynamically priced interactive entertainment experiences in a model with the potentially to far exceed traditional Hollywood.

Seven-year-old Scopely is now valued at more than $700 million, after it raised an additional $100 million as part of its Series C round. It announced $60 million in Series C funding in June of 2017, but the round was heavily oversubscribed. The company subsequently raised $100 million from Greenspring Associates, a fund-of-funds that is a limited partner in several venture-capital funds, and Horizons Ventures, the fund of Hong Kong magnates Li Ka Shing and Solina Chau.

With that money in the bank, Scopely is now looking to make acquisitions and investments in game studios and intellectual property to build on its existing network of more than 165 million users,...