A call from Jeff McNeil today: first he wished to remind me of the imminent airing of UNDER THE YUM YUM TREE on TCM. Next he made some corrections to my recent account of the McNeil's Movie Korner Film Festival. McNeil contends that we made it through 40 minutes of SALT AND PEPPER, not 20 as previously reported. He also told me that he watched the next 20 minutes - that is, the last third of the first hour of the film - today, and he reports significant improvement. "Remember how we stopped the DVD when they got in Sammy Davis Jr.'s little yellow car?" McNeil inquired. "Well, the next fifteen minutes were nothing but them riding around in the car pushing buttons. One button released an oil slick. Another button put up a bulletproof windshield. I think there were about fifteen buttons, and they pushed all of them. It was a lot better than the first forty minutes." McNeil went on to report that Leonard Maltin, with whom the "blog" has feuded in the past, awarded ZERO stars and "BOMB" status to the SALT AND PEPPER sequel ONE MORE TIME but two and a half coveted stars to SALT AND PEPPER itself - rankings which, McNeil and I agreed, we would have reversed. (Pictured, Peter Lawford, the titular Pepper.)
