BCB After Dark: Coming back stronger than ever

Welcome back to BCB After Dark: the boppin’ bar for night owls, early-risers, new parents and Cubs fans abroad. Come on in and drown your sorrows tonight. We’re happy to see you again. Let us know if we can get anything for you. If you’ve got a coat or bag that needs to be checked, let us do that now. There’s no cover charge tonight. A few good tables are still available. Bring your own beverage.

BCB After Dark is the place for you to talk baseball, music, movies, or anything else you need to get off your chest, as long as it is within the rules of the site. The late-nighters are encouraged to get the party started, but everyone else is invited to join in as you wake up the next morning and into the afternoon.

The Cubs got blasted by the Marlins, 10-3 tonight. I was out all evening and only caught the first few innings on the radio. I decided not to listen to the final few innings on the radio. If you stuck all the way through this one, I salute you. You’re a great Cubs fan. Or you’re a Marlins fan who got lost (but you are still welcome here). Or you are just a masochist.

Last week, I asked you who is the most important building block for the Cubs future currently on the major league roster. The vote was a runaway, with Nico Hoerner getting 66 percent of the vote. Seiya Suzuki got 17 percent and Justin Steele got 14 percent.

Here’s the part where I talk about movies and jazz. You’re free to skip ahead to the baseball question at the end. You won’t hurt my feelings.

Tonight we’re featuring a colorized video of a performance by saxophonist Charlie Parker and trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie on the DuMont Network in February of 1952. According the the captions provided with the video, this is the only-known video of Charlie Parker playing live. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I have no reason to doubt it.

I don’t often play Bird here because I think of this as a late-night relaxing place and for me, Parker on the sax is something that will get you up and get you moving. The same can be said for Diz on trumpet. But since I know that the majority of you read this column in the morning, I thought I could leave you all a treat for once.

The first two minutes of this video is an introduction and handing out awards from Downbeat magazine. If you want to go straight to the music, go to the 1:55 mark where they play “Hot House.”

This should be of interest not only to fans of great jazz, but of the early days of television as well.

When I started this feature, I tried to write a movie essay on Monday night/Tuesday morning and just ask a general film question on Wednesday night/Thursday morning. That’s because Mondays were relatively free for me on my schedule and Wednesday (and Tuesday) were much busier.

Since then, my schedule has changed. I’m a lot busier on Mondays, while Tuesdays and Wednesdays are not as hectic as they used to be. This is just a long way of saying I’m reversing the schedule. From now on, I’ll try to do a film essay on Wednesday/Thursday and I’ll just throw things open for discussion on Monday/Tuesday. I may flip things around if somehow I have a lighter Monday, but for the future, expect a full essay on Wednesday.

This also allows me to alert you to what I’m going to write about later in the week if you want to try to watch it before then. I may not always give a heads up, but I’ll try to do it as much as I can.

This week, I finally had a chance to see All Through the Night, a film I’ve wanted to see ever since I heard people talking about it on Turner Classic Movies. The 1942 film, directed by Vincent Sherman, was the first film starring Humphrey Bogart after The Maltese Falcon. Wikipedia categorizes the film as a “comedy-gangster-spy thriller,” which is all you need to know to tell you how bonkers it is. But I’ll say more about that later in the week.

So I thought I’d throw that out for discussion: What films have you not yet seen that you want to? For me, the easy answer is the forbidden fruit—the films I will never see. Convention City, a 1933 lost pre-code sex comedy starring Joan Blondell, Guy Kibbe, Dick Powell, Mary Astor and Adolphe Menjou is one. As far as I know, no one has seen it since 1942 and all copies of it are believed to have been lost or destroyed. But if you’ve got a copy, get it to a film preservationist immediately.

Two more are films that are technically available, but you can’t watch because the people who own the film don’t want you to see them. The Day the Clown Cried, Jerry Lewis’ 1972 Holocaust movie, is buried somewhere deep in Lewis’ archives. All you need to know is it’s a Jerry Lewis movie about the Holocaust. It was Lewis shooting for an Oscar, but as he was finishing it, he realized he had a disaster on his hands and buried it. Those few that have seen parts of it describe it as either an unmitigated horror show or not quite as bad as you’d think, but still bad.

Another one is a Rolling Stones 1972 concert tour documentary whose title I’m not allowed to publish here. For years you could see it if director Robert Frank was physically present, but since Frank died in 2019, that option is now closed. I’m guessing that this film will get released for wider viewing once Mick and Keith pass away. But that’s just a guess.

As far as films that I haven’t seen that I intend to, I’ve been meaning to watch Federico Fellini’s 8 ¹⁄₂ for a while now and I still have not. I also feel like I’ve barely seen any Indian or South Asian cinema and that’s a hole in my experience.

I’m sure there are many more foreign films that I haven’t seen but want to. I looked over the AFI Top 100 American Films and I’ve seen 84 of them. One of them, Forrest Gump, I absolutely refuse to watch, so I’ll never see all 100. I’ve seen parts of On the Waterfront on TV, but I’ve never sat down and watched it beginning to end. Same goes for All About Eve. Those are two I mean to sit down and watch one day. Eventually.

I actually never saw the last two movies of the most-recent Star Wars trilogy. I feel like I should just so I know what everyone is talking about, but honestly, I haven’t really been a big fan of any Star Wars film since The Empire Strikes Back.

It’s your turn now. What films have you always meant to get around to watching that you haven’t?

Welcome back to everyone who skips the jazz and movies.

Tonight’s question is simple. What Cubs player, currently on the 60-day injured list, will be the most productive player for the Cubs in 2023? I’m leaving Jason Heyward off this vote because the front office has already announced he won’t be back for next year. However, I am including Brailyn Marquez, who hasn’t pitched since that last game of the 2020 season.

The candidates are:

RHP Kyle Hendricks

RHP Codi Heuer

LHP Brailyn Marquez

RHP Alec Mills

OF Rafael Ortega

RHP Ethan Roberts

LHP Brad Wieck

So mostly pitchers.

So which of these players will bounce back and be on the Cubs and be the most productive in 2023?

Thank you so much for stopping by. If you checked anything, we’ll get it for you now. Please tip your waitstaff. Get home safely. And join us again tomorrow for another edition of BCB After Dark.