Yeah, for the few minutes I was there.
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Pumaman
We all had fun watching
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That would be the hope, and there’s a lot of great potential movies for that surgical enhancement treatment!
Also also, welcome to the forums!
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Apologies, but I’m not going to read through 1600 comments today. Just wanted to chime in on a few things, on the off chance anyone is interested.
In particular, Matt asked for our thoughts on the “surgical enhancement.” Personally… It honestly doesn’t make much difference to me? I was happy with the episode as it originally aired, and the difference in quality isn’t big enough to change my experience. Maybe it’s partly that I’m away from home and watching on my laptop screen. But I never felt the original print of this one was that bad, and any problems with it just sort of fade into the overall poor quality of the movie as a whole. Or, to put it a little more tactfully, it’s part of the charm.
I did love the new short. Several of the riffs just… well, it made my day, and that’s much appreciated right now. I liked the new extra host segments, as well.
But that post-show interview… Thank you for sharing it. I’m glad I watched it. But Walter did not come off very well. What I heard was:
This got long
“I had a steady job at a law firm with a cushy government contract, but I decided that I should be a partner even though it was a sole ownership business and the owner wasn’t interested in ceding half the company to me. So I quit, even though I had no other prospects at the time. Some actor friends convinced me to try acting classes, and I actually got hired at a nationally-recognized soap opera which would have given me a full-time job for years to come. But being on TV wasn’t good enough for me, so I went to LA.*”
*This actually worked for Sarah Michelle Gellar, who started out with a recurring guest role on that same soap opera in the 90s, but left there for LA and got cast as the lead in Buffy.
“Working on Pumaman? Well, it was just a superhero film, but I’d hoped it would be a springboard to better. People told me they wished they could have auditioned me for Superman. What a missed opportunity.* Anyway, everyone on set was incompetent and/or barely spoke English, so I did what I could to make up for their lacks. Except Donald Pleasance, who was cool. I mean, he’d been in much bigger and better movies, so I guess he was just there for the easy paycheck. But he gave it his all, and sometimes I got to hang out with him and his much younger girlfriend.”
*I’m sorry, Walter, but if you think you’ve got half the stage presence, charm, and charisma of Christopher Reeve, you’re kidding yourself. Besides, they spent 2 years trying to cast that role, trying out everyone from Robert Redford to the producer’s wife’s dentist, before they lucked out with Christopher Reeve.
“The love interest? The actress was married. Oh well. I thought we had good chemistry, although it didn’t really come across on film as well as I’d have liked. I think she had some name recognition already, and was trying to build up more of a career. (In exactly the way I just said that I was, but I’m still going to throw some shade on her for it.) I don’t think it really went anywhere, but I’ve never bothered to look her up.”
(Possibly because she’s got a lot more acting credits to her name than Walter does.)
"As for MST3K, well, the movie had already aired on TV on its own merits. But I suppose if a few more people got to see it because of the show, that’s nice. I understand they’ve got their little thing making their snide wisecracks, but I didn’t care for it at all.
“What can I say, though? I got into acting too late. I missed out on Superman and some other very impressive-sounding roles, and Pumaman just wasn’t made well enough to get any serious attention. So I quit acting and went back to working as a lawyer. These days, I’m an ambulance chaser personal injury & malpractice attorney. A friend very generously gave me a much better job than I was expecting at his firm, but I left him and now I have my own firm. I do not have any partners. (In fact, I recently had to drop the ‘& Associates’ from the firm’s title because it’s just me.)”
I try not to be too harsh with people or to judge them based on one interview, but… The whole thing just boils down to various ways of saying “I’m great, I deserve way better, other people just aren’t good enough (unless they’re more famous than me), and I don’t like it when people make jokes about my work.” That last I can understand, even though some people have been fantastic about the show. But it just seemed like he went straight from talking about how terrible the movie was (awful costumes, low budget, language barriers, a director who couldn’t fulfil his own vision, superhero movies are just lowbrow junk anyway, the whole thing was campy, and even TV Guide panned it) to complaining that the show was making fun of it because it bruised his ego.
What’s funny is that I’d read (and the movie’s dialog makes it clear) that Pumaman isn’t supposed to be flying. Which is the whole reason for the pose he’s in, and likely the reason the director kept telling Walter to move his arms and legs around. I’d guess it’s also the reason for the oddly-angled rear projection shots. Just as Superman originally traveled by jumping great distances (explained as the result of Krypton having much stronger gravitational pull than Earth), Pumaman gets around by jumping like a cat (leaping high into the air, walking along narrow perches, occasionally rebounding off walls, etc.). But, as they eventually discovered with Superman, jumping is much easier to draw or describe on the radio than it is to film. (Even the 2001 Spider-Man film had a lot of trouble with their CGI Spidey’s jumps looking awkward and cartoonish, and they had much better resources to work with than Pumaman.) I don’t think Walter got the message that that’s what he was supposed to be doing.
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Welcome aboard!
[sigh] Your little friend Buffy isn’t responsible for everything that happens in the world, Rocket.
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Is that a reference I’m missing? It’s been a while since I watched the show, and Google isn’t bringing anything up.
If Walter was on All My Children (IMDB doesn’t list it), it would have been in the 70s.
Sarah Michelle Gellar (who already had a few acting roles prior to AMC) was on the show starting in 1993.
I just thought it was interesting that they had both taken the same step from AMC to LA, except she had enduring roles and a movie career, whereas he felt TV wasn’t good enough for him, got a couple of roles in minor films, left unsatisfied, and went back to being a lawyer.
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Sorry. I was thinking about the bit in Alien From L.A. where Wanda keeps calling for her father.
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Haha, yeah, in several places the interview reminded me of Zaphod in the Total Perspective Vortex. But good on Walter George Alton for sharing his views from his relatively brief experience of the strange and crazy world of acting. I appreciate it.
Too bad we didn’t see visuals of that original pink Pumaman costume with “little crazy boots”, though. My imagination runs wild.
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Total Perspective Vortex is perfect.
And, yeah, I was really hoping they’d somehow have an image of the original costume. Sounds like parts of the costume were carried forward to the version we saw, so I’d guess that the shirt with the bedazzled mask and the sarape cape were in the first version, and the khaki slacks were not. He also said tights/spandex weren’t the plan. So I’m imagining… The top half we saw paired with pink shorts and pixie boots?
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There are some that maybe it should be kept away from. Two words: “He’s lactating!”
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That part was especially creepy.
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Walter was just… Kinda insufferably smarmy. Enjoyed the movie, but I really don’t think I’d willingly spend any more time around Walter than I absolutely had to.
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Why? What was so creepy about it? 
Married people in showbiz aren’t exactly rare, and a lot of them end up doing love scenes with people to whom they aren’t married.
I don’t know, “she was married” seems like an odd thing to say about a romantic co-star unless you had intentions.
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I… am just not seeing and hearing what so many people are in this interview. 
Like I said, perhaps that’s the logical outgrowth of me being around lawyers all the time.
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I’ve worked for quite a few lawyers before and whew, I’ve yet to meet a lawyer that doesn’t at least have a smidge of that kind of self aggrandizing boast-y air about 'em. I’m gonna put $5 on you’re probably just around it so much it doesn’t bug ya. 
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I’m related to a few lawyers. For the most part, they don’t talk/act like that. I mean, one can be pretty self-absorbed and all about his own ego and accomplishments, but not to that degree. Not to the point where he doesn’t consider anyone else and sees jobs most people would be lucky to get as being patently obviously beneath him.
As for the “married” comment… Her marital status was completely irrelevant. Note that he didn’t comment on anyone else’s relationship status except for his admiration of Donald dating someone so young. (And even then, he brought up Donald’s girlfriend because the three of them were hanging out off-set. Note too that he doesn’t mention socializing with anyone else. But Donald is a known actor who has had a major recurring role in the James Bond movies. So of course Walter wants to associate with him.) The only reason to bring up that she was married is that it meant/explained she wasn’t interested in dating him. And yet he immediately pivots to talking about how their on-set romantic chemistry was way better than perhaps was evident on film. And finishes by saying he never kept up with her or looked her up and assumes she faded into obscurity.
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I really think you’re picking apart something that was likely not pre-scripted and also had to be edited down to fit a certain time frame. The adage about murdering when you dissect might be applicable here.
This… is all starting to have the feel of someone obsessively carving an entire modern cityscape onto a single grain of rice. Points for the effort it takes to zoom in that close, but… not something I personally would spend the time and effort on. And that’s gonna’ be my last word on the subject. Thanks.
I hear you. I don’t like jumping to conclusions of an entire person based on a single interview, either. It’s a good point. (And one I went out of my way to bring up in my original post.)
It wasn’t my intention to dissect it or obsess over it. I’m also usually not one to just drag someone, especially someone I’ve never met. It’s just that the more I watched, the more it consistently came through at every turn. (Also, general warning: If you ask me to clarify something or tell me you don’t understand why I’ve come to a certain conclusion, I will expand on it. It’s just how my brain works.)
Anyway, I don’t mean to drag you back in, and I don’t feel the need to rehash the subject. I had my impression. It nagged at me. I shared it. We discussed it. I’m good. I just felt like I needed to respond to the image of me maliciously obsessing over minutia.
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