Monday, September 14, 2015

Robert Osborne, this is your life

Tomorrow morning at 6:30 AM, TCM is rerunning Robert Osborne's 20th Anniversary Tribute. This was recorded at the 2014 TCM Film Festival, and is host Alex Trebek surprising Robert. What was supposed to be -- so Robert thought -- a simple sit down interview with Alex turned into a surprise with a bunch of people from Robert's life and career showing up to congratulate him on 20 years at TCM.

It's moderately interesting, but to be honest, it could be better. I don't think there's a whole lot new here. At least, there's not much you wouldn't already know if you've seen the Private Screenings interview where Alec Baldwin interviewed Robert Osborne, an interview that had a lot more meat to it than this fluff piece. Not that there's anything wrong with fluff pieces.

And it's also nice to see who is still alive, or at least who was still alive at the time this was made. (I don't think anybody in this has died since it was recorded, but I can't recall off the top of my head everybody who was in it.) It's nice to see, for example, Robert Wagner and his wife Jill St. John come out to congratulate Osborne. Nothing against Osborne's nieces, but they're just of less interest to us since we've never met them before and it's not as if they were a big influence on him in the way that, say, somebody's first agent might have been in an old episode of This Is Your Life.

So enjoy this one, but don't expect much particularly edifying.

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