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Posts tagged as the monkees

Heroes

The Comedy Innovations of Michael Nesmith

by | April 9th, 2012

To me, as a kid watching The Monkees, it was all about Michael Nesmith. Sure, the others all had their appeal: Davy Jones was the pretty boy teen idol, Micky Dolenz was the funny one, and even Peter Tork had his own dimwitted charm. But none could compare to Nez.

With his string bean physique, slight Texas drawl and his twelve string Gretsch, he was the unspoken leader of the band, oscillating between acting as straight man and ringleader to group's cartoon antics. His sense of humor was a little bit smarter, a little dryer, a little more adult. And it goes without saying that he is the only [...]

History

The Monkees, The Old New Monkees, and New Monkees: How to Destroy A Beloved Franchise

by | November 2nd, 2011

The Monkees was one of the greatest, hippest, most forward-thinking sitcoms ever, if not the first modern-day, non-cheesy sitcom. Which is remarkable, considering that it existed as an Americanized, TV rip-off of the Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night starring a completely prefabricated band that didn’t write its songs and only later learned how to play their instruments. The cynical, corporate, the-lil’-bastards-oughta-like-this should have bled through every frame and every note. But it didn’t. Because producer Columbia Pictures and its TV wing Screen Gems didn’t care too much about micro-managing this thing, they let the cast, producers, and writers, all of them inexperienced, do whatever they wanted. The result was [...]

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