Richard Grieco: Hot 'n' Cool

Did you miss me last night?

Don't worry--I haven't abandoned my post.  You didn't hear from me last night because when I'm usually blogging, I was doing my homework. By which I mean, I was reading this (so you don't have to):

As far as I've been able to find thus far, this is the only book ever published about Richard. It was rushed out in the summer of 1990, when Booker was on the air and If Looks Could Kill was a speculative possibility for the future.  In addition to being wildly outdated, it's pretty bad.  So bad that I kind of want to write a better one.  Don't laugh--it wouldn't be my first book.

Assuming that the information in this book is accurate (and that is a big assumption given the way these books are produced), I did learn a few interesting things, a few things that made me say, "Awww" and a few things that made me wonder what went wrong in the couple of years following Booker and publication of this book.

I'll share a few.

Interesting tidbits:

• Richard apparently started getting fan mail at 21 Jump Street after a commercial aired introducing him--before he'd ever appeared on the show.
• According to the book, Grieco's fan letters during his single season on 21 Jump Street far outnumbered those received by Johnny Depp.

Things that made me say, "Awww":

• During Booker, Richard says he had a list of about 35 fans facing serious crises like cancer whom he called once a month to check in and ask how they were doing.
• He hired his mom to answer his fan mail, but asked her to pull out letters from teenagers writing to him about their problems in case he might be able to help.

Things that made me kind of sad:

• Grieco was already in his mid-twenties when this book was written and claimed that he didn't drink and had "never done any drugs".  But in the late nineties, he admitted to entering rehab.  Clearly, something slipped seriously off track in the relatively few intervening years.
• He talked about turning down multiple scripts because he "took his acting seriously" and would never do movies like Attack of the Killer Tomatoes vs. the Green Squash because he "just didn't believe in them."  Looking at some of the movies he ultimately appeared in, I find myself wondering whether he expected more from them in the draft stages or was simply so eager to work that his standards had fallen dramatically.

I'm taking it all with a grain of salt, given what I know about the mill that creates this kind of book.  Most of it, though, I want to be true.  The whole picture painted made Grieco seem much more likeable than I'd ever anticipated.

Can Richard Grieco Act? Part 2b

Since I started the great Quest to Figure Out Whether Richard Grieco Can Act, I've watched:

Mobsters (1991)
Tomcat: Dangerous Desires (1993)
It Was Him or Us (1995)
Against the Law (1997)
Captive (1998)
A Night at the Roxbury (1998)
Blackheart (1998)
The Apostate (2000)
Final Payback (2001)
Sexual Predator (2002)
Dead Easy (2004)

That's 11 movies spanning 13 years, in addition to 21 Jump Street and Booker, so you'd think it would be enough to draw some conclusions from.  And mostly, I think that my conclusion is akin to what a reader said in a comment recently--he's not a bad actor, but he's not "masterclass", either. In a lot of Grieco's movies, I don't notice his acting one way or the other, and I think that's how most movies are.  On rare occasion, someone will be so good that it will jump out at you; more often, if you notice the acting it's because it's awful and takes you out of the story.  For the most part, I think if an actor is doing his job, his acting isn't making an impression on you--you're thinking about the story.  That's how most of Grieco's performances have been for me so far.

But here's why, after a couple of seasons of television and 11 movies, I'm not quite ready to commit.  First, some of these movies were bad.  And some of them just didn't seem like good vehicles from which to judge.  Here's a quick rundown:

In Mobsters, I thought Grieco was pretty good and he got decent reviews, but his part was relatively small. Tomcat: Dangerous Desires was (no exaggeration) one of the worst movies I've ever seen from a writing, direction, acting and production standpoint.  That Grieco was considerably better than his co-stars wasn't enough to bring the performance up to "good."

I've already talked at some length about It Was Him or Us, in which I found Grieco quite convincing.  Against the Law was a weird movie and, again,  not otherwise staffed with a lot of talent.  From there, we hit a good streak:  I thought Captive, Blackheart, The Apostate and Final Payback and Dead Easy were all decent. They're all movies I would probably have watched if I weren't studying Richard Grieco, and probably would have come away saying, "That wasn't bad."  I skipped over A Night at the Roxbury because Grieco was playing himself, and although he created a stylized version of himself for the film, it wasn't entirely acting. 

I skipped over Sexual Predator because, frankly, I don't quite know what to do with it.  I saw a lot more people having sex--many of them not especially attractive--than I wanted to.  And the story was definitely edgy.  But it had that "down the rabbit hole" feel where someone makes one bad decision after another and things slide out of control, but you can kind of understand it. And Grieco was convincingly both seductive and enigmatic--no clear good guy or bad guy here.

But the primary reason that I'm undecided isn't any of that, and it isn't that there's so much I haven't seen.  It's a couple of episodes of old television shows.

A review I read suggested that The Apostate might have been the best performance of Grieco's career, but I don't think so. Though it defies reason, I think the best performances of Grieco's career may have come during 21 Jump Street and Booker.  Each of those series features a single episode in which Dennis Booker is, for lack of a better description, mentally disintegrating.  And in each of those episodes, Grieco's transformation is jarring and dramatic.

Had I watched those television shows in the 80s, those two episodes would have left me expecting great things from Grieco; even though I haven't seen that level of performance in any of the films I've picked and chosen, they gave me a different perspective on what he might be capable of.  So even at this point, I'm reserving judgment a bit, waiting to see whether a later role comes along that rivals those performances.

Seriously?

I mentioned before that I've been getting some pretty interesting search traffic to this blog, but today's new entry definitely takes the prize so far: "What kind of woman does Richard Grieco like?"

My initial reaction was to say something snarky.  I mean--and no offense to the person who asked Google this question, because I don't know anything about your attributes--if Google is your best source for this information then chances are it's not really relevant to you.

But I decided to be helpful instead.  Who knows?  Maybe it is you. And if not, you might as well know now, before you blow a bunch of money on a plane ticket to LA or Vegas or wherever the hell Grieco lives to try your luck.

So, here's what he told OK! Magazine a few years back: "I want a girl with a mind of her own, good sensibilities about her, she’s gotta be pretty hot,” he laughs. “Just a cool chick."

Just so you know what you're up against in the "pretty hot" assessment, Grieco has dated Christina Applegate, Yasmine Bleeth and French actress Adeline Blondieau.  Model Kimber Sissons is the mother of his teenage son.  And the most recent long-term relationship I can find listed was with Stephanie Niznik.

Upside if you want to think you might be in the running:  Grieco doesn't seem to have a strong "type" in terms of hair color or ethnicity or that type of thing.  As long as you'd make the cut for the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition, you might have a shot.

Upside in terms of general character assessment and taking him seriously as a person: all of the women I've seen him linked with appear to be close to his age.

Upcoming Richard Grieco Movies

I've written quite a bit about AE--at least, given the small amount of official information available about the film.  But that film just caught my attention because of the odd sprinkling of information about it and that camouflage-painted woman.  While I've been speculating about AE, I've been entirely ignoring two other upcoming films. 

One of them, A House is Not a Home, is slated for release some time this year and actually has a trailer.  You'll have to pay close attention to catch Grieco in this trailer; I don't think he's one of the good guys.  Here's the official synopsis:

A House Is Not A Home: Ben (Webb) and Linda Williams move the family into a dream home in a last ditch effort to save their troubled marriage. Despite the good intentions, they can't shake the feeling that they're being watched by something. Their unimaginable fears are realized when things inside the house take a supernatural and sinister turn. Ben and his family flee for their lives but it's too late. The house isn't finished with them trapping the family in its labyrinth. The Williams must come together as never before to fight for their family, their lives and escape.
 

One thing that interested me about this film is that Grieco is listed as a co-producer in the IMDB credits.  I'm not entirely sure what that means, but I hold out some hope that it bodes well for the relative quality of the movie compared with some past endeavors.

IMDB also shows Coachella Massacre in pre-production status with an undetermined release date.  Since this one is still classified as "in development," very little information is available.  IMDB isn't revealing anything and FestivalFocus doesn't seem to know anything.

The one source of information I've been able to find is Director Dan Frank's Twitter account.  He mentioned the film, which is apparently centered around the annual Coachella Music Festival, quite a bit back in the fall.  According to Frank's Tweets, Grieco will be playing the role of Danny Thorn who is "pretty bad ass." Frank said the role was perfect for Richard and he was excited to have him on board.

I'm sure we'd all be excited about that, too, but Frank's Tweets about the film die out in the late fall, not long after he announced Grieco's participation. The last mention is in mid-November, when he responds to a question saying that he is still working on funding and "working out the cast for the budget he has."  It's not clear what that means for the project's future:  I can't tell whether Coachella is moving forward at all, whether there's any timetable in effect or whether the cast announcements from last October will hold in view of the funding issues.

I've inquired and will update if I learn anything more concrete.

Richard Grieco is Captain Sam Crowe in AE

At least, that's what the AE Facebook page is telling us.  So far as I can tell, that page remains the only source of official information about the film. There are some updates since I last checked, including some shots of editing work in progress.  We can hope that means it won't be too long before more information (or a release date/plan) is forthcoming.

For the moment, I know nothing about the story beyond what I've mentioned before; it's shot in jungle-like terrain in Costa Rica.  A new photo on the Facebook page shows Adrian Paul and the camouflage-painted woman I previously mentioned in the water in a "climactic scene". 

Here's Captain Sam (the military-like designation doesn't seem to explain his Dharma Initiative get-up):

Method in My Madness

You know that I started this blog because I was sick, off work and bored out of my mind.  While I had nothing to do, I spent a lot of time thinking about Richard Grieco naked watching old television shows on DVD.

But a funny thing happened.  In real life, I'm kind of a marketing guru, and I have a fair amount of experience in public relations and Internet marketing, so from time to time I took a look at the stats.  I was surprised when I started getting search traffic after less than two weeks, and even more surprised when I started getting daily traffic on Grieco's name without modifiers in under a month.

This made me curious about the celebrity realm, which I would have expected to be highly competitive.  So I started a blog about Matthew Perry, and another one about Mark Hamill. (Lynda Carter coming soon.)  And an ever crazier thing happened--traffic started arriving within just a couple of posts.

So here's what I'm thinking: perhaps, during my convalescence, I'll become an accidental celebrity blogger. Perhaps it will become a little sort of side business that I'll keep up when I go back to work  Perhaps you will all FORGET that I've watched Sexual Predator twice, even though I had to wait until my kid was asleep to do it because it's millimeters from porn.  Or, maybe you'll think, "Well, that's her job--rough though I'm sure it is."

And maybe, when we've all recast me in our minds as a woman with a plan, my daughter won't roll her eyes at me when a padded envelope arrives in the mail and say, "Will this be a Richard Grieco movie?"

Sound good? Okay, let's do that.

Here's a gratuitous screen cap from Final Payback just because I think it's pretty (and if you're reading this blog, you probably will, too.).  But remember:  this is strictly business.

10 Things You Should Know about Richard Grieco Movies

Since I set out on the quest to determine whether or not Richard Grieco can act, I've watched...well...several of his movies.  I haven't reached a definite conclusion on the initial question yet, but I have uncovered a few trends that I wanted to share. 

1. No matter what the movie seems to be about in the beginning or what kind of character Grieco plays, he will probably get shot. Often, he'll be as surprised by this as you are.

2. Usually, there will be a distraught woman standing by when he gets shot. More often than not, the shooter will be his lover, or hers. Or both.

3. Ice picks are disproportionately represented in Grieco's movies.

4. Richard seems to be under the impression that there's something sensual and sexy about taking a sharp, deadly weapon and running it slowly over a woman's body. I warn you about this because if you're not prepared, there's a better than even chance that he will--at least temporarily--make you think that, too.

It's not even an ice pick this time.

5. A tip for the men: If you're not being portrayed by Richard Grieco, "I kill people" is VERY unlikely to be a successful pick-up line.

6. All women, regardless of age or walk of life, wear lace demi-bras.

7. No matter what the context, there is always time (and a reason) to take off your shirt.

 

 

8. Grieco and his characters share clothes.  I guess this isn't really something you need to know about his movies, but I thought it was interesting.

 

 

 

9.  If Grieco is wearing glasses, that's your signal that he's playing an ordinary guy and we should not think of him as especially hot.  Pay no attention to the fact that he looks magificent in the glasses (which appear to be the same pair from film to film).

 

 

 

10.  It is always the woman's idea to videotape sex.



It Was Him or Us

Last night, I watched an old television movie called It Was Him or Us on YouTube.  Yes, I watched a whole movie on YouTube.  I'm unemployed and paying more than $500/month for medical insurance, and YouTube is free.  Having to watch a movie in three pieces is a small price to pay.

Richard Grieco was not at his most attractive in this movie.

 

 

Okay, this may be a little unfair.  It wasn't his best moment in the film, happening as it did moments before (spoiler upcoming only if you've never seen a movie before--otherwise, you see this coming as soon as you read the one-paragraph description) Ann Jillian shot him multiple times to save her family.

 

It wasn't a great movie, to be sure, but honestly it put a mark in the slightly-plus column in my Quest to Figure Out Whether Richard Grieco Can Act.  I have quite a bit of experience (professional) with abusive men, and he was convincing in his charming moments and when he snapped with little warning and when he totally lost control. 

 

I'm still reserving judgment, though, because a) I haven't seen enough of his work and b) this movie didn't call upon him to do anything but be charming and seductive and then crazy violent.  I'm pretty sure that at least two of those things come quite naturally and I don't know about the third, so I'm not sure how much acting was actually taking place.

 

Time (and more viewing) will tell.  I watched The Apostate this evening, and I'll tell you about that tomorrow. Meanwhile, if you want to watch It Was Him or Us yourself, here's the first installment:

 



Can Richard Grieco Act? Part I

I know I said yesterday that my next post would assess this burning question, but I'm not ready to make my own analysis yet.  I decided that I simply haven't seen enough of Grieco's work.  I ordered a few more movies yesterday (Amazon Trade! I'm not spending money!) and and am going to hold off on my own assessment until I've seen them.  Of course, since I wanted to maximize the number of films I'd seen, I went for the cheap ones, so that may skew things a bit.

Before jumping into what I think, I decided to check out what others have to say. Thus far, it's a very mixed bag.

I read reviews on both IMDB and Amazon across a range of time and genres. 

Raiders of the Damned (2007):

"Richard Grieco gives the worst acting performance of his life, and thats saying something as I've seen him in a film about giant spiders."

"Richard Grieco was terrible."

"If Richard Grieco isn't on drugs, then he needs to be. His performance was terrible. I hope he ran to the bank to cash his paycheck before the producers demanded it back."





Dead Easy (2004):

"A minus is Richard Grieco, who walks through his role like he's sedated."

"The two main leads (Richard Grieco and Joanna Pacula) were okay but for me the best acting was done by Thandi Puren (Kate Johnson)."

"I'm not sure Richard Grieco ever has or ever could play anything other than Richard Grieco and that's all he is in this film."

"In any case, if you're a Grieco fan, give this one a shot. He's purty and he does a good job."



Fish Don't Blink (2002:

"Richard Grieco is good in this, as a nice, sensative, and all-around good guy. His chemistry with the "girlfriend" and Lea Thompson, makes this movie worth seeing."

"The performances are a mixed bag, Grieco and Duncan are solid..."

“I thought Grieco and Thompson brought a lot to roles that weren't written to be as deep or shaded as they could have been."

“I'm ashamed to say that I did not recognize Richard Grieco, who plays Pete in the movie. I know him now, and already have his films on my must see list."

Mobsters (1991):

"I must say I was very impressed with the performances of Richard Grieco and Lara Flynn Boyle. Richard clearly shows he can do a lot more than just being the pretty boy. He was probably the best choice for the part. Violent and sensual. He even manages to do a quite funny scene, when his character gets angry, because someone tells him he does not kill with style. I did not know what to expect from him, as I had only seen him in "21 Jump Street", but give him a chance, because he will not disappoint you."

"Richard Grieco as Bugsy Siegel is very good, you can see the genesis of Warren Beatty's character when he played Siegel in his film, Bugsy."






The way the reviews break out suggests some things to me, but I'm going to hold off on commenting until I've seen a few more films for myself.

I know if you're reading this blog, you've seen more of Grieco's work than I have, so please..share your thoughts!

Harry Potter Meets Richard Grieco

Last night, I saw this video in which a kid dressed as Harry Potter for some reason intercepts various celebrities at a golf event:



It's mildly amusing, but doesn't quite come off the way I think he intended because the adult celebrities he's approaching seem kind of indifferent. It's not even obvious whether they recognize that he's not Daniel Radcliffe or think he's Daniel Radcliffe and don't care, but none of them (at least in this segment) seem to care one way or the other.  David Anders does tell him he can tag along in his cart, but his attitude is very "what the hell?"

But, of course, none of that explains why I'm talking about this video on this blog.  Yes, "Daniel" encounters Richard Grieco on the golf course.  Their interactions aren't especially significant (though Richard does offer to cause a distraction so the boy can steal some golf clubs), but when the cameraman spots Grieco he asks "Daniel" whether he knows who Richard Grieco is.  The fake wizard says he doesn't, and his coach follows up with something like "Bad actor.  Really bad actor."

When I conjectured (is that even a verb?) that acting wasn't really what Grieco was all about, I was careful not to make any qualitative assessment. But I think I'm ready.  Thanks to the fake Daniel Radcliffe and his camera-wielding friend, my next post will answer the burning question "Is Richard Grieco a bad actor?"  But first, I'd like to hear what you think.

Time to Get Serious

I've been putting this post off almost from the beginning, because it doesn't really fit the tone of this blog, but it's time to talk about Richard Grieco's painting.

It turns out that standing around and looking pretty is not the man's main talent. And I say that with no intended slight...he's just really, really good at standing around and looking pretty.  But he's better with a paintbrush.  Errr...a paintsomething.  I'm not at all sure that he's using brushes--certainly not exclusively.

I expected Grieco's artwork to be decent. In my experience creative people are...well...creative.  I don't know many artists who have just one talent.  I didn't, however, expect to think, "Hey, I need that in my living room...I could buy a black couch. And, you know, replace the wood with something in lacquer or chrome. Yeah, that would go better." 

This is not a biased view.  I know that for sure because while I was looking at the paintings--and I looked at every one--I sort of forgot how I'd gotten there.  I forgot that I was stalking Richard Grieco and became entirely immersed in the work.  I do not believe--and I was surprised by this--that these paintings are selling for tens of thousands of dollars because Richard Grieco painted them. I think they're selling because they're the kind of art people want to acquire.

 

You should check them out yourself, if you haven't.  But here are just a few of the things that intrigued me:

 

Most of my favorite pieces feature masses of fine lines more or less obscuring the canvas.  Aesthetically, they're attention-catching, but what really caught my attention about these pieces is that many of them give the sense of having something else underneath.  Maybe the something else is abstract, maybe it's only an idea--hell, maybe it's only an idea in my mind and I'm reading too much in.  But I get a sense of layers, of something buried beneath those tangled lines.  It makes me want to look more closely, to catch a glimpse of what it is, even though I'm not at all sure that it's really there.

 

I also found the titles more interesting than I do most, because so many of them could easily be taken two ways, and the painting feeds the interpretation of the title and vice versa.

 

Grieco describes these paintings as unfiltered emotion, and I don't disbelieve him.  However, there is at the same time an element of subterfuge about them, as if someone has written his secrets on a page and then scrawled over them so that they're fully expressed without being fully understood.

 

 

 

 

 

 

What's Just Below Rock Bottom?

Remember when, less than a month ago, I announced that I'd hit rock bottom because I was sitting up alone late at night watching 21 Jump Street on DVD? 

If so--if you've been following along--then quite possibly you began to suspect for yourself that I'd sunk a little lower when you found out that I'd managed to obtain Booker on DVD.  But I'd convinced myself that way okay.  I mean, I'm sick.  I don't have a lot to do.  And let's face it: we all know I wasn't watching Booker for the writing.

But in the past couple of days, there have been some disturbing developments.  First, in the last few episodes of the series, I began to develop an attachment to Dennis Booker. I'd always liked the character

 (and his eyes,

 and his jawline,

and his arms)

but near the end, I started to like him. And then, I reached the last episode and...well...I started to think that certain episodes might bear rewatching.

So, that 21 Jump Street thing?  That wasn't the bottom.  And this is a pretty slippery slope--I may not even be there yet.

Richard Grieco's Against the Law in the Running for the Worst Movie I've Ever Seen

Could just be personal preference. For many years, The Three Amigos held that place of honor, and I know that many people enjoyed that one.  It did, in fact, have three funny scenes--which puts it three virtues ahead of Against the Law. 

Possibly the company that put together the DVD for this movie recognized the fact that it didn't have a lot to offer for real, because the cover is a bit misleading.  For example, it's got two pictures of Grieco on the cover.  This one is the largest photo on the cover and prominently displayed in the upper left-hand corner:

It's a pretty picture and probably one that catches a certain number of eyes even if the browser doesn't recognize Richard Grieco.  There's just one problem:  it's not from this movie. In fact, I'm pretty sure (couldn't swear to it) that this photo is actually the same one that appears on the cover of the Booker television series on DVD. 

Maybe it's not actually from Booker--maybe it's just a press photo of Richard Grieco and it's as fair game for this movie as it was for the after-market low-budget production company that put out Booker. 

Thing is, it LOOKS like Booker.  This picture doesn't look the slightest little bit like Richard Grieco in this movie.  In Against the Law, he looks more like this little photo to the right here.

It's a little blurry because I had to enlarge it quite a bit to post it here.  It's at the bottom center of the cover and even in its original size and format, it's not a very clear photo.  Not to be too cynical, but I do somewhat suspect that they didn't WANT us to know before renting or buying this movie that Richard Grieco looked a bit like Keifer Sutherland in his puffy drug days throughout this film, or that he had some high, square hair going on that would have done Elvis Presley proud.

They also seemed to want us to believe that the variety of hot blonds pictured played a much larger role in the movie than they did.

It's not all about looks, though.  The characters were, across the board, downright odd. There was no one to get attached to. In fact, by the end of the movie when Rex (Grieco's character) faces the other main character for a shoot-out, it's not at all clear whom we're supposed to be rooting for.  In fact, I was largely indifferent as to the survival of either.

Possibly the most interesting thing about this film was that Rex had a southern accent some of the time.  I spent much of the movie trying to decide whether Richard was slipping out of character or Rex as faking the accent and inconsistent with it.

Richard Grieco and Adrian Paul in AE

About two weeks ago, I posted about Thunder Levin's upcoming movie, AE.  The movie had just wrapped filming at that point, but I wasn't able to find a lot of information about it.  Apparently, I wasn't alone in that.  Over the past several days, I've received a steady stream of search traffic on terms like:

ae richard grieco
ae movie 2013 richard grieco
richard grieco ae
richard grieco costa-rica
richard grieco highlander

Obviously, I'm not the only one looking for information about this film.  Unfortunately, I don't have much new to offer you--information online is so sparse at this point that I currently hold the number one search result for "Thunder Levin AE". 

The film does have an official Facebook page, and though it only has 80 followers at the moment and not a huge amount of information, there are photographs posted.

The photos will probably only add to your curiousity: what I've seen so far involves Adrian Paul looking vaguely like he's on safari, some Costa Rican jungle, some exploration of caves, at least one scantily clad woman painted in jungle camoflage and Richard Grieco in clothing that indicates he might be one of the janitors from the Dharma Initiative.

I'll keep you posted as I find more information.  If you have any better links, please share them in the comments.

Booker Bares All

So, I'm watching Booker.  No, I didn't cave in and buy it.  A wonderful friend of mine ordered it for me on Amazon.  I know she was laughing at me as she did, but I appreciate it nonetheless and I'd totally call her out and link to her awesome blog and thank her for it here, except that with all the information I've already given out about myself, a tie to a real-life friend would probably make you go, "Oh!  I know who you are!  Oh.  Wow.  You know, I always thought you were...I mean...I wouldn't have expected..."

And none of us want that, right? 

Plus, she doesn't even read this blog (or maybe know about it), so what's the point in thanking her here?

Anyway, I'll get to the point.

Booker takes his clothes off a lot.  Mostly, this occurs in situations in which a normal person would remain fully clothed.

My daughter remained in the room for approximately the first half of the first episode. This is the first scene that troubled her:

Teenager:  WHY is he changing clothes in his office?

Me:  I don't know. And why is his secretary peeking through the blinds at him while he does?

Allegedly Disinterested Teenager:  Well, that part is obvious...but why is it happening?

I had no response.  I went back to watching.  I mean, probably I don't have to tell you that secretly I knew exactly why those women were gathering outside Booker's office window.


The kid went on with her life and the show went on.

A few minutes later, she looked up to see Booker working a case from his bed in his underwear.  That seemed perfectly normal to me, but she said, "This whole series is just an excuse for Richard Grieco to get naked!" And she went upstairs.

And that, you know, would have been entertaining enough.  But not more than a minute after she walked out of the room (as Booker was pacing around the room talking with some urgency on the telephone, still in those now-familiar baby-blue boxers), someone kicked in the door to his apartment, threw him to the floor, pointed a shotgun at him and said, "Get dressed!"

Dead Easy...Was

Last night (thanks to my Best Buy gift card and enhanced search efforts), I watched Dead Easy.  The reviews I'd read conflicted, and it seemed that whether or not someone liked this movie depended entirely on whether or not that person was a big fan of either Richard Grieco or Joanna Pacula.  One IMDB user review said, "Was it bad, not at all.  Was it good, not at all."  I think I could go along with that.

I honestly didn't care much about any of the characters except Grieco's, and although he was a more fully-developed and somewhat sympathetic character than his wife or his mistress, I can't honestly say whether I'd have formed any attachment to him if he'd been played by an unknown. 

One of the viewers who reviewed this movie said that they didn't like it because the message seemed to be that crime paid.  I don't think that was the intended message of this movie.  I think the intended message was "people in their late thirties and forties can still be hot".  Grieco's Jump Street six pack was in pretty good form (and I don't think they were spraying them on in 2004) and Joanna Pacula, at 47, was a beautiful woman.  But that's pretty much all this movie conveyed to me.

Richard Grieco is Not an Actor

That's my theory, anyway.  I'm intentionally writing this post now, before I've seen many of Grieco's movies, so that it's clear that this isn't an assessment of his acting ABILITY.  I don't have much of an opinion about that at this point.  I liked him on 21 Jump Street and I've seen very little else--one bad movie and another in which he played himself.  So let me be explicit:  what I'm saying here isn't "Richard Grieco can't act." 

No, what I'm saying is that there are people who are actors the way I'm a writer or my daughter is a musician--because it's buried deep in their souls and it's part of the way they breathe, the way they process the world, the way they maintain their sanity.  In short, it defines them.

I don't think Richard Grieco was ever that guy.  Now, I have only been aware of the guy for a matter of weeks and I've seen very little of his acting, so maybe I'm entirely wrong.  Bios online certainly want us to believe that he aspired to act from childhood, but I just don't buy it.

First, he went to college in Connecticut.  Does a guy trying to break into acting head for Connecticut in the prime of his youthful beauty?  And what did he do there?  Played football and majored in Political Science.  A guy whose dream is to act can go one of two ways:  he can major in theater or film or some other relevant area, or he can give himself a fallback by majoring in something practical like business or engineering.  Political Science isn't either of those things (trust me on this...I have a Poli Sci degree of my own).  There are basically three reasons to major in Political Science:  you want to go to law school, you want to run for political office or you're just very interested in the way the world around you works. It's not a degree that generates income when your acting career doesn't work out.

By all reports I've seen, he didn't start studying acting until after he'd done some high-profile modeling, and his Gone Country bio says his first audition landed him his recurring role on One Life to Live...when he was 20 or 21.  Who really has the dream and waits that long to go on a single audition?

I know Grieco's done a lot of movies over the years, but is "actor" really who he is, the thing that was in his blood from childhood? I don't see it.  And maybe that's why he seems to have such a sense of humor about the state of his acting career--because maybe it's more of a hobby or a job that just happens to be fun than it is a thing that lives at his core.

I don't know the guy.  I haven't read a lot about him.  I haven't seen many of his movies. But still, that's what I think.  I think the thing that makes Grieco who he is is something else entirely.  Maybe it's music. Maybe it's painting.  Maybe it's something we don't know about. But I don't think it's the thing we know him for.

Best Buy Does Not Hate Richard Grieco

Contrary to my previous post, it appears that Best Buy hasn't really managed to avoid stocking any picture Richard Grieco ever appeared in--apparently, they just have a crappy search engine.

I hate to tell you how I discovered this, but I'll refrain from recapping the whole "temporarily-disabled-bored-out-of-my-mind-broke-but-with-a-Best-Buy-gift-card" story and just cut to the chase:  whatever my excuse, I resorted to using Richard's IMDB page for reference and searching for all a few of his movies by title. 

When I searched that way, I discovered that even though a search for his name turns up nothing, Best Buy does in fact stock several old Richard Grieco movies.  I ordered Against the Law ($5.99!) and Dead Easy (a few bucks more) and discovered that I could also obtain Mobsters and If Looks Could Kill ($19.99?  Really?  I'm not that far gone yet.) and some crazy movie I've forgotten the name of that features an eyeball in a teaspoon on the cover.

I also discovered that our boy has devoted a disturbing portion of his career to playing rapists and serial killers and such.  So that should be some nice, relaxing stuff to watch while I'm recovering.

Surprising Discoveries about Richard Grieco

Last night, I watched A Night at the Roxbury and learned that I'd been pronouncing Richard's last name wrong.  That shouldn't have been a big surprise since I'd only heard it spoken a few times a couple of decades ago, but it actually came as a shock to me.  I've always thought it was pronounced "Grecco". Then, suddenly, those SNL guys were calling him "Greeko" and it sounded all wrong to me.

Of course, the movie didn't entirely clear it up for me.  It WAS a comedy after all.  The guys who were calling him "Greeko" weren't getting much of anything else right.  A mispronunciation could have been part of the humor.  I was actually kind of hoping for that.  I like "Grecco" better.  Plus, you know, I've had nearly three weeks to get used to it.

This morning, I decided to check out a couple of interviews on YouTube and get the real scoop and...damn!  Apparently, they weren't kidding.

In researching that, I also learned that Richard usually prefers to watch the Oscars at home, thinks pizza is more for football games and was only supposed to be on 21 Jump Street for one episode. 

But I'm finding the name thing surprisingly disconcerting.  I'm thinking about sticking with my original pronunciation.  After all, how often does Richard Grieco come up in conversation?  And it's not likely that I'm going to have occasion to address him directly. 

A Night at the Roxbury was somewhat better than I expected. I'm not a Will Farrel fan at all, and though I do think SNL has produced some real talent (including Molly Shannon, who had a smallish role in the movie), the main characters were just a little too blech for my tastes.  There were some moments of humor,though, including Grieco's role.  He wasn't looking his best, but I'd read in advance that that was intentional.

All in all, not a bad experience except for the trauma of the name thing.

Googling Richard Grieco - It's More Common than You Think

I've mentioned before that my daughter recently demanded that I stop Googling Richard Grieco, but before she intervened I ran across this old post on Grubzilla.  The post itself is from 2009, but a year later the blog author posted a comment asking, "Who are you and why are you Googling Richard Grieco?"  He said that he was receiving at least one search hit to that post per day.  That in itself might have seemed a bit surprising more than 20 years after Richard's peak in popularity, but it's even more impressive when you consider the competition.  I have no idea what the online Richard Grieco landscape looked like in 2009 when that post went up on Grubzilla (or in 2010 when the author added that comment), but currently a search for Richard Grieco's name returns about 800,000 results.

In addition, this blog has only existed for 17 days and I'm already starting to get steady traffic on Richard Grieco-related search terms.  I'm not ranking for the name alone, of course, but more specific searches are landing here every day.

So, I'll join the author of Grubzilla (if only to show my daughter that I'm not alone) in asking:  If you arrived here by searching "Richard Grieco" or some related term, what are you looking for?  Unlike that other guy, I'm not knocking you--hell, if you've read any of the rest of this blog you know that I surreptitiously watch bad old Grieco movies when I'm home alone like I was sneaking porn and it's only fiscal responsibility that's kept me from buying Booker on DVD to keep me company in my convalescence.  No one's judging you here! 

But do tell me...what brought you here?

My (Undoubtedly Unpopular) Take on 21 Jump Street

So I've now watched all five seasons of 21 Jump Street.  As I mentioned in the first post on this blog, I'd never seen 21 Jump Street until recently.  When the series was at the peak of its popularity, I was transitioning from college and political activism to law school and if I ever stopped to flip on a television set it was to watch the news coverage of the Supreme Court ruling in Webster or something like that.

But in my weakened condition over the past couple of months, I've watched a lot of DVDs, and a couple of dozen of them were the complete 21 Jump Street series.  Despite feeling a little sheepish about that, I'm glad I watched the whole series--and not just because I met Booker there.  I'm glad I stuck it out because, for the first time I can ever remember, I liked the new guys they brought in as the series was dying out better than the original stars.

By the last season, Judy Hoffs (Holly Robinson) was the only original undercover operative left in the department. That should have been the kiss of death for me, because Hoffs was the only member of the original team that I actively disliked.  It bugged me that the only female regular was so damned dumb, and it bugged me even more that everyone kept talking about how smart she was while she was bumbling through every operation, telling everyone she met on every case that she was a cop twenty seconds after being introduced.

But things started to change in the last couple of seasons.  They may have brought in new writers, because the glaring gaffes we'd seen before in terms of shifting backstory, departures unmentioned and such dropped off considerably.  So, it may have been the writing and not the actors that made Mac and Joey more appealing to me than Johnny Depp and Peter DeLuise had been in their leading roles. Michael Bendetti, I'll admit, was exceptionally pretty, but more in an "aww, what an adorable kid" Kirk Cameron on Growing Pains kind of way than a "check out that hot guy" Richard Grieco as Booker kind of way. 

Anyway, I don't think that played much of a role.  These kids were just more likable.  And, whether through that dynamic or improved writing, Judy stepped up in their presence and became a much more likable, competent character herself.  Overall, I liked the show better with the substitute cast that signalled the beginning of the end. I have nothing against Johnny Depp and he's obviously done amazingly well since the Jump Street days, but after finally watching it I'm clueless as to why he's the one who walked away with the accolades and seems to be the only actor anyone remembers from this series.