"The Silence":What Do Barry Van Dyke, Boxing, and "Jurassic Park" Have in Common?

Netflix already had a horror movie, Bird Box, about sight:  alien monsters compel anyone who sees them to commit suicide, so you have to walk around wearing a blindfold.

Next comes The Silence, about monsters attracted to sound, so you have to keep your mouth shut.

There are more senses.  Will we be getting monsters attracted to taste in 2020?  And smell in 2021?

The premise is patently ridiculous: blasting through an ancient rock formation releases millions of vesps (Jurassic Park-style flying raptars) into the world, who have eyes but prey on noise.

What have they been doing in that cave for 7 million years, with no food or air?

So the focus character, a deaf girl namedAlly (Kiernan Shipka), gets into a car and heads out of town.

The flying raptars will be attracted to the sound of the engine, you idiot!

She is accompanied by her father, the engineer responsible for the mess (Stanley Tucci channeling Walter White of Breaking Bad);  his best friend Glenn (John Corbett, top photo); Mom; kid brother; coughing, terminally ill Grandma; and barking dog.

They rush through a Walking Dead world, except with flying raptars instead of zombies.  There are casualties. They encounter a weird religious cult that has removed their tongues, led by The Reverend (Billy MacLellan). 

You can make noise in other ways,you idiot!

Eventually the last three surviving members of the family (Ally, Dad, and kid brother) make it to The Refuge, where Ally reunites with her boyfriend.  The two go hunting vesps.

The only redeeming features of this mess are:
1. Best friends are never included in "family fighting monsters" movies, so John Corbett's character is unique.  Maybe he's gay.  Of course, he's the first to die.

2. Dempsey Bryk, who plays the boyfriend, is an amateur boxer (Ontario Bronze Gloves).  He also received his IB and an OSSD diploma
and won an AEO scholarship at UWO.  I guess Canadians know what all of that means.

3. The screenplay was written by Carey and Shane Van Dyke, sons of buffed actor Barry Van Dyke and grandson of the great comedian Dick Van Dyke. But it's not their fault; they were adapting a young adult novel by British writer Tim Lebbon .

See: Barry Van Dyke; The Men of "Bomb Girls"

Was Mary Poppins Gay?

The Disney film Mary Poppins (1964) stars Julie Andrews as a magical, mysterious governess who introduces her young charges (and their parents) to the importance of having fun, a direct ancestor of such "servant brings joie de vivre to dysfunctional family" tv programs as The Nanny and the Professor, The Nanny, Who's the Boss, Gimme a Break, and Charles in Charge.

After seeing the movie, millions of kids sought out the original novels by P.L. Travers (the first two in 1934-1935, seven later), and were astonished by the original Mary Poppins: much more mythological, a sky goddess, sister to the stars, plus harsh, stern, condescending, demanding, a nasty piece of work.  How had this whimsy-hating sociopath been transformed into someone who says "supercalifragilistic"?

I just saw Saving Mr. Banks (2013), about the 20-year quest of Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) to convince the dour, whimsy-hating, jollity-hating,  Mickey Mouse-hating "my books have a serious purpose" Pamela L. Travers (Emma Thompson) into allowing a Disney film adaptation.  In desperate need of money as her book sales flagged, and desperate to present a hagiography of her father (Colin Farrell), an Irish storyteller saddled with a horrible job in a bank, she finally agreed, but with dozens of startlingly picky stipulations that straitjacket the screenwriter and lyricist (B.J. Novak, top photo)

1. Mr. Banks must not have a moustache (her father didn't), and he must be a positive, caring father.
2. The color red must not appear in the movie.
3. No animation.
4. Mary Poppins (never just "Mary") must not be attractive, must not smile, and must not dance.
5. There should be no hint of romantic interest between Mary Poppins and Cockney jack-of-all-trades Bert (Dick Van Dyke).

That last thing got me wondering: Pamela has no hetero-romance, in either her past flashbacks or in 1960s California.  Could she have been gay?

So I bought a recent biography by Valerie Lawson, Mary Poppins, She Wrote: The Lifeof P.L. Travers.

Travers did have some hetero-romances.  She tended to fall in love with men who were old enough to be her father, and in positions of authority over her, so she could move from disciple to lover.  One was poet and theosophist AE Russell, whose son Diarmund became her agent.

Aside from her hero-worship flings, Travers seemed to prefer the company of woman.  She lived with Madge Burnard, daughter of the editor of Punch, for over a decade.  The two took vacations together and photographed each other nude. "But that does not indicate that they were lovers," Lawson assures us.

Later Travers became an intimate friend of Jessie Orage.  They exchanged letters of "increasing intimacy," according to Lawson, and joined a lesbian social group in Paris.  "But that, of course, is not conclusive proof that they were lesbians," Lawson assures us.

Good grief!  What would be conclusive proof?  A notarized coming-out statement?  This is more evidence than we have for 90% of the lesbians in the world, including most that you  are personally acquainted with.  You have no way of knowing if they are actually having sex  (if that is, in fact, the requirement for being a lesbian, which is ridiculous; you're gay regardless of how often, or if, you have sex). 

Her literary creation, Mary Poppins, is obviously a lesbian, too.  She treats men as friends but has ecstatic, mystical relationships with female elemental spirits, fairies, crones, and stars.  A worshipper of the Divine Feminine.  What other evidence do you need?

Looking for Muscle on "The Dick Van Dyke Show"

The Dick Van Dyke Show won 15 Emmies during its five seasons (1961-1966), and is constantly praised today as one of the greatest TV shows of all time (TV Guide ranks it at #13).

It came on before my bedtime during its original run, but it was constantly being rerun during my childhood, often at lunchtime during the summer, so my brother and I watched while waiting for Mom to fry our  baloney or egg sandwiches

I know, it's a classic, and it won lots of Emmies, and all, but I didn't like it.

1. The premise: Rob Petrie (Dick Van Dyke) was head writer for a weekly comedy-variety show.  Stories alternated between work and home.  Father of beefcake actor Barry Van Dyke (but no relation to Philip Van Dyke), Dick was tall, gawky, and rubbery-limbed, not at all attractive.

Plus he was hetero-horny in that obnoxious eye-bulging 1950s way, although devoted to his wife, Laura (Mary Tyler Moore, who would get her own iconic tv sitcom in the 1970s).

2. Rob's writing staff included the unhappily single, man-hungry Sally Rogers (Rose Marie), who was desperate to get married, even though that would mean giving up her successful comedy-writing career.

And short, sarcastic Buddy Sorrell (Morey Amsterdam).  Cute, but in his 50s, a bit too old to be attractive to a preteen.

He was as hetero-horney as Rob, and married to a former chorus girl with the ridiculous name Pickles.

3. Buddy had a sparring love-hate relationship with Mel Cooley (Richard Deacon), the balding, stuffy producer of the tv show.  But it was mostly hate.  You have to push really hard to find an undertow of homoerotic attraction.

Richard Deacon was gay in real life, and a fixture in West Hollywood bars during the 1970s.  My friend Levi dated him.

4. Back home, Rob and Laura had a son, Ritchie (Larry Mathews), who was about my age.  But I don't recall him being the focus of any episode, except one where they explain how he got the feminine middle name "Rosebud."  He was mostly a non-entity.

5. The only regular cast member who was marginally attractive was next door neighbor Jerry Helper, played Jerry Paris, who starred in some sex comedies during the 1960s.  But he was married, too.

6. And maybe an occasional guest star, such as Jerry Van Dyke (left), Jamie Farr, and Jacques Bergerac.

No muscles, no buddy-bonding, a lot of hetero-horniness.  No wonder I didn't like it.

Besides, the episode "It May Look Like a Walnut" scared me to death.

My friend Levi claims that he dated one of the stars.

See also: Hip Workplace Sitcoms of the 1970s; Mary Tyler Moore and the Two Richies; Levi's Date with a Star of "The Dick Van Dyke Show"

My Mother the Car

I don't know why people think of Jerry Van Dyke as a failure.  Sure, he never reached the Emmy-winning tv-classic status of his older brother Dick, but he's had a 50 year-long career, starting with beach movies in the 1960s (Palm Springs Weekend) and going on to starring roles in at least a dozen tv series, including eight years on Coach (1989-1997) and five years on The Middle (2010-2015).













Besides, he was considerably more attractive than his gawky older brother.

Plus, in spite of his two long-term marriages to women, there's a.bigger gay subtext in his work than you can find in Dick's, such as a starring role on The Judy Garland Show, and the big brother-little brother acts

Maybe because of a few poor decisions, like rejecting the roles of Gilligan on Gilligan's Island and Barney Fife on the Andy Griffith Show.

The program he chose instead, My Mother the Car, is universally lambasted as ridiculous, although really, was the premise any more far out than Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, Mr. Ed, or for that matter, Gilligan's Island.

A man discovers that a car is a reincarnation of his mother (or maybe her ghost is trapped in the car -- it's really not explained in any detail).

Men obsessed with their mothers: 1960s code for gay.

Watching it today, it doesn't seem particularly terrible, for a 1960s sitcom.  The mother thing is kind of creepy, but the main problem is, it's just dull.  Mom doesn't provide the comedic foil that Mr. Ed did, and the main antagonist, an obsessed car collector, isn't chummy enough to provide a gay subtext or evil enough to provide any conflict.

Phillip Van Dyke

No relation to Dick Van Dyke or the muscular Barry Van Dyke of the show biz dynasty, Phillip Van Dyke was a popular child star of the 1990s, with guest spots on Picket Fences, Baywatch, and Step by Step.  His teenage roles lasted for only a few years: he starred in Safety Patrol (1998), as the leader of the bullies who bedevil Bug Hall, and in The Modern Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1998), as a Tom Sawyer whose best buddy (Adam Dior) is named Chuck, not Huckleberry.

Nickelodeon fans will also recognize him as the voice of "football head" Arnold on the animated teencom Hey, Arnold (1997-2000).  Fourth grader Arnold and his best friend Gerald negotiate a dangerous world full of menacing teachers, crotchety grandparents, neighborhood hazards, and girls with crushes on them, notably the female bully Helga.

Phillip had his own Nickelodeon teencom, Noah Knows Best (2000), which lasted for only 13 episodes.

But he's probably most famous for his role as Luke, the goblin-turned human who assists the teenage witch sisters in Halloweentown (1998) and Halloweentown 2: Kalabar's Revenge (2002).  Except for a few feeble flirtations, Luke displays no interest in girls.

He received massive media exposure for his blond hair, blue eyes, and massive biceps, which he showed off whenever possible, even while playing a goblin.

As often happens with teen stars, when Phillip moved into adult roles, his adolescent buddy-bonding dried up.  He played some aggressively heterosexual characters on Boston Public and NYPD Blue before retiring from acting. Today he lives in San Francisco with his second wife and works in the corporate world.

  He's getting a little gray around the temples, but obviously still has an amazing physique. And he's totally a gay ally.

Mary Tyler Moore and the Two Richies

The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961-1966) was before my time; I don't remember seeing any episodes when it first aired, although I saw some later on.  The first season is on Netflix.

It was a hybrid workplace-nuclear family sitcom:   Rob Petrie (Dick Van Dyke) had a job writing comedy bits for The Alan Brady Show, along with his coworkers (Morey Amsterdam, Rose Marie); meanwhile, he had a wife and son (Mary Tyler Moore, Larry Mathews) back home in New Rochelle.

Larry Mathews, born in 1955, played Richie Petrie.  He was less than ten years old during the show's run, so he didn't get any teen idol attention, that I know of.  Or many plotlines.  The only one I remember has his parents explaining why he got the gender-transgressive middle name of "Rosebud."

I'm sure they named the character of Richie after Mary Tyler Moore's son, Ritchie (Richard Carleton Meeker, Jr.), who was born in 1956.  Magazines of the era were fond of photos of Mary with her "two sons."

Here Ritchie is on the right, and Richie on the left.

Ritchie Meeker went to the University of Southern California, and took a job at CBS.  In 1980 he died in a tragic accident while cleaning his gun.

Larry Mathews retired from show business after 1966, although he has appeared in Dick Van Dyke reunion shows.  He graduated from UCLA in 1976 and went on to a business career.  I can't find any photos of him as a young adult, but here's one from 2004.

No evidence that either was gay, but Mary Tyler Moore was a strong ally.

See also: Looking for Muscle on the Dick Van Dyke Show

Barry Van Dyke

Speaking of show biz dynasties, Barry Van Dyke (shown here with Dick Van Patten on The Love Boat) is the son of comedy legend Dick Van Dyke and the nephew of sitcom standby Jerry Van Dyke.  His siblings, Carrie, Stacy, and Christian, are also performers (mostly in Dad's vehicles), and his kids, Shane, Carey, Wes, and Taryn have all made small-screen appearances (Philip Van Dyke is no relation).

The younger Van Dyke got his start at the age of nine, in guest spots on The Dick Van Dyke Show and The New Dick Van Dyke Show (naturally), but he soon struck out on his own, with a brief scene as a hunky volleyball player in Stalk the Wild Child (1976)   Soon he was playing square-jawed, muscular hunks, on The New Adventures of Wonder Woman, Tabitha, The A-Team, The Dukes of Hazzard, and so on (he was on the Love Boat four times).

He also had time for buddy-bonding roles, such as Lt. Dillon in Galactica 1980, who time-travels with buddy Captain Troy (Kent McCord of Adam 12). 

Or St. John Hawke on Airwolf (1987), MIA brother of Stringfellow Hawke (Jan-Michael Vincent).

And he often had time to take off his shirt, revealing enormous biceps and a tight, smooth chest.

Barry is most famous for Diagnosis Murder (1993-2002). He played Steve Sloan, a Manhattan detective whose physician dad (Dick Van Dyke, naturally) keeps stumbling upon murders.  They investigate, along with a team of doctors, detectives, and pathologists, usually of the young hunk variety: Charlie Schlatter, Scott Baio, Shane Van Dyke, and so on.

This was a gay-free Manhattan, so there weren't any gay characters, except for an episode which parodied Scientology and had a closeted gay actor as a suspect.  But the beefcake and buddy-bonding were enough.

More recently Barry starred (with his father again) in a series of Murder 101 movies.

See also: Looking for Muscles on The Dick Van Dyke Show