Yow! We’ve made it to the 50-episode mark! Thanks so much for your support; we couldn’t have done it without you.
Today we’re looking at a pair of films that bear a very strong resemblance to a pair of television shows, but (on paper, at least) there’s no official connection between the two productions.
We start with 1953’s Stalag 17, directed and co-written by Billy Wilder. This film stars William Holden in an Oscar-winning performance. The film also stars Don Taylor, Robert Strauss, Harvey Lembeck, Peter Graves, Neville Brand, Richard Erdman, Michael Moore, Sig Ruman, and Otto Preminger. It’s worth noting that Strauss and Lembeck appeared in the original Broadway production.
Stalag 17 almost certainly inspired the 1965-71 CBS comedy Hogan’s Heroes, which was also set in a German POW camp and had several other elements in common. (Claude says during the episode that Hogan’s Heroes also took place in Stalag 17, but his memory failed him; Hogan’s Heroes was set in Stalag 13.)
From there we jump forward, to 1992. Cameron Crowe’s Singles, starring Bridget Fonda, Campbell Scott, Kyra Sedgwick, and Matt Dillon, among others.
Despite the film being about a half-dozen young adults making their way in the world, and most of them living in the same apartment building, this is not connected to the NBC television series Friends, which is about a half-dozen young adults making their way in the world, most of whom live in the same apartment building. And Friends debuted nearly two years after Singles. However, it was green-lighted only a short time after Crowe turned down Warner Brothers’ offer to adapt Singles into a series. But you can be the judge of that one.
COMING ATTRACTIONS:
Over the next several episodes we’ll be taking you around the world. And we start South of the Border, down Mexico way. We’ll be reviewing Y tu mamá también, a wild little coming of age road film from 2001. Then we’ll be looking at Roma, a story about the life of a housekeeper in Mexico City. Both of these films were directed by Alfonso Cuarón, who chose to release Roma only to Netflix to ensure the largest possible audience.