Chuck Schumer's Imaginary Friends!

Plus today's cartoons, two upcoming films, new music from Sarah McLachlan.

My award-winning film “The Atomic Bowl” started streaming on PBS.org and PBS apps last week and via Vimeo (you can easily watch it via links here), plus it is airing over many PBS stations—and there is now a companion e-book. In addition, my previous film, “Atomic Cover-up,” is receiving free PBS showing here in its “short” (28 minutes) version. You can still subscribe to this newsletter for FREE.

Funniest thing we’ve seen all week—all the more so since we had never heard about this previously—was John Oliver’s short HBO segment on Sunday on Sen. Chuck Schumer’s “imaginary friends,” known as “The Baileys.” This is an alleged, typical, Middle American couple (from Long Island) old Chuck has cited, described and even quoted for many years, in books and speeches, as his daily inspirations. Turns out they are wholly fictional.

The Oliver segment is not posted on You Tube etc. but you can and should watch it via, for example, Mediaite (which has many quotes).

Throughout his career, Oliver continued, Schumer has assigned them a detailed backstory, from Joe singing the national anthem at Islanders games to Eileen’s church clothing drives, their preferred fast-food orders (“Kung Pao chicken”) and favorite TV shows. But, as Oliver repeated in his Sunday monologue: “They don’t exist.”

“Seriously, he invented them,” the comedian said, mocking Schumer’s Bailey lore by adding: “That is a J.R.R. Tolkien-level of gratuitous backstory, and I don’t say that lightly.”

Food for thought from Tim Noah in The New Republic:

The only reason we don’t see Trump referred to regularly in print as a convicted felon is that the word felon offends civil libertarians; the nation’s most powerful scourge against wokeism turns out, preposterously, to be its greatest beneficiary. Recall that Steve Bannon, convicted of federal and state felonies, is presently running second to Vance in opinion polls for the 2028 GOP presidential nomination.

Seems like a good time for football-related films (ahem, see my “Atomic Bowl”), and now my buddy Rod Lurie has a new film coming out next month, “The Senior,” starring Michael Chiklis. It is based on the true story of Mike Flynt, who at age 59 returned to his college to play football after being kicked off the team decades earlier. Rod, of course, is a longtime movie director, from the much-honored “The Contender” to the recent hit Netflix war movie “The Outpost.” Trailer here:

Quite differently:

ABC News Studios has acquired the new documentary “Lilith Fair: Building a Mystery.” It’s a film about the famed music festival starring women (e.g. Sheryl Crow, Jewel, Tracy Chapman, Natalie Merchant, the Indigo Girls) that existed for several years starting in the 1990s, created by Sarah McLachlan. It will premiere at Toronto Film Festival on Sept. 17 before debuting on Hulu Sept. 21. Here is a fun commercial not for the film but for the original tour back in 1997.

And here is a brand new cut from the upcoming Sarah McLachlan album:

From Tunes to Toons for Tuesday

Ann Telnaes: