And hellooooooo, everybody! Time to go back down again to the VIDEO STREET VIDEO STORE — return some old tapes and pick up some new ones. This week, we’re doing something a little new. To celebrate the 4th of July, we’re showing a whole television movie, which I think, will really get you in the mood to shoot off some fireworks and scare some shell-shocked vets.
So sit back and enjoy! And if you’re new to this here Substack, feel free to go back and check out previous episodes of the VIDEO STREET VIDEO STORE, a regular feature that drops every Tuesday here at Mike’s Bonfire.
A new podcast drops every Saturday night!
Here’s what’s up this week…
VIDEO 1 — DON’T GET CONNED BY THE MILE BUSTERS
With the 4th of July coming up, and all the sales that are going on its honor, it’s important to stay up-to-date on all the latest flims and flams of the used car salesman variety. That’s why we’re kicking it off this week with a 60 Minutes report from September 1991 about “mile busters,” the shifty folks who crack odometers and roll back the miles to inflate a car’s value. It’s funny that such mile busters were played for laughs in movies like Used Cars and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, but correspondent Steve Croft is not laughing here at all!
Croft’s main target in this piece is Bill Whitlow, “the heavy-set fellow in the Boss Hog hat,” an auto wholesaler who Croft says is “the granddaddy of the Houston Mile Busters.” After rolling back miles on cars he buys from trade-in lots, he’ll turn right around and flip that car to a different dealer. Theoretically, I guess he can then re-buy that same car he just sold, and do the same thing all over again until the car’s value is totally depleted. Not a bad racket.
Of course, with the onset of digital odometers, it’s become ostensibly harder for Whitlow to mile-bust in the 21st century. Also, he’s most certainly dead by now, which makes it all the more difficult for him. Still, the grift goes on, and these days with much less hand shaking between the con and the mark. It’s odd that this piece makes me nostalgic for another time, when conmen still had to look you in the eye while they were screwing you.
VIDEO 2 — JEAN SHEPHERD’S “THE GREAT AMERICAN 4th OF JULY…AND OTHER DISASTERS”
A year before MGM released the film A Christmas Story, a blockbuster flop that would go onto become a pop culture phenomenon perhaps unlike any the world has ever known, writer and former radio host Jean Shepherd put together this small television movie based on some more of his humorous works he published in Playboy throughout the 60s and 70s.
Now, if you’re a long-time listener to THE MIDNIGHT CITIZEN podcast, you’ll know that Jean Shepherd is pretty much the whole reason I began doing the show. I’ve admired the guy since before I even knew who he was, and my mom and I would watch another TV movie he did in the mid-80’s, Ollie Hopnoodle’s Haven of Bliss. I just loved the way he was able hone in on the timeless minutia of suburban life. As most of us go through our lives with no grand adventures to relate to fellow conquistadors down at the Explorer’s Club, Jean Shepherd was our fellow traveler in the mundane. And in “The Great American Fourth of July and Other Disasters,” which aired on public television in 1982 and is hosted, in-person, by Shep himself, we see that with just a little bit of creative writing, anyone — even the town drunk — can be immortalized as Gods of a Forgotten World. With his trademark hyperbole, Shep elevated the nondescript block of Cleveland Street in Depression-era Holman Indiana into something akin to the Roman Empire, and the “Old Man” into a Caesarian figurehead.
For folks who have become cozy over the years with the pitch-perfect cast of Bob Clark’s A Christmas Story, it may be hard at first to get used to a whole different Parker family in this film — especially with the rosy-cheeked 10-year old Peter Billingsley swapped out for a teenage Matt Dillon. But I’d encourage you to put the classic Christmas flick outta your mind, just as the holiday itself is a distant memory when you’re lighting off cherry bombs and throwing them in the street. With this understood, a stand-out in this film is James Broderick — Matthew’s dad — as the Old Man. Like Darren McGavin in the 1983 classic, Broderick brings a similar sympathetic grumpiness to the role, but a different interpretation that is far more childlike, especially as he is raiding his brother’s fireworks stand.
As a final note, see if you recognize that music that runs through this film. Can you put it together with another 4th of July summer classic?
Well, that’s it for this week’s VIDEO STREET VIDEO STORE! Again, be sure to, ya know…
A new episode of the VSVS drops every Tuesday throughout the summer, and, of course, be sure to check out THE MIDNIGHT CITIZEN, your late night broadcast from Birmingham, AL, hosted by me, Mike Boody, every Saturday night. Keep your eyes open!
VIDEO STREET VIDEO STORE -- Episode 7