Sam Antar has a fascinating post up on his White Collar Fraud website about Danny DeVito, and the recent demise of DeVito's efforts to create a movie on the rise and fall of the Crazy Eddie's electronics retailing chain. Here's a link to Sam Antar's take. Here, while I'm at it, is a link to the news story that instigated it. And here is a link to something I wrote in this blog on that subject almost three years ago. How time flies, eh?
The big question for me: who gets to play Jerry Carroll?
Anyway, it appears that Danny DeVito is trying to envision Eddie Antar as a Icarus-type protagonist, who flies too close to the sun and falls, but who should be the recipient of our sympathy. There are lots of such entrepreneurial rise-and-fall movies on that pattern. Consider The Aviator, where we see Howard Hughes' early years painted in glowing colors but we also see the creeping pathology that ends with Hughes a gloomy recluse in a hotel room. Or consider There Will Be Blood, for a more completely fictional rise-and-fall.
It does not appear that Eddie can be made to fit that mold without so much fictionalization that one is better off using new names. If DeVito wants to make a movie about an electronics retailing mogul who (to use DeVito's words) "started as a guy who loved making deals more than money" but who got carried away, cut some corners, was victimized by a "family dynamic" and suffered an "outrageously spectacular fall," ... well, go to it. Call the main character "Crazy Edwardo Antoine" or something though.
After all, Orson Welles never made a movie about anyone he called "Hearst." His movie was about some fellow named "Kane."
Showing posts with label Crazy Eddie. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Crazy Eddie. Show all posts
30 April 2010
07 August 2009
Friday's child is loving and giving
In the spirit of Friday's child, then, let me give you each a few links.
The task of a link farm is both to amuse and to instruct.
First, under amusement, The Onion explains that there is a way to wipe out the US national debt. Hail, Octavia! William Wolfrum finally settles the "birth certificate" matter exhaustively. And Comedy Zone collects some vintage Woody Allen quotes.
Second, under instruction. Sam Antar, the former CFO of Crazy Eddie and in that capacity a crook, has turned to warning about white-collar crime, on the principle that "it takes one to know one" or something. Here is what he has to say about the internet retailer, Overstock.com (NASDAQ: OSTK). Meanwhile, Rolling Stone tells us that Guitar Hero has a David Lee Roth dominated understanding of Van Halen. Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. lost about $3.4 billion in the first half of 2009, and Murdoch takes this as evidence that information wants to be more expensive.
Thirdly, some links both amuse and instruct in equal measure. The CJR explained back in June that reporters should not be content to live and die like gerbils. That was well in advance of the appearance of a movie establishing that gerbils are really spies. Finally, Doonesbury sets us right about politicans and their affairs.
The task of a link farm is both to amuse and to instruct.
First, under amusement, The Onion explains that there is a way to wipe out the US national debt. Hail, Octavia! William Wolfrum finally settles the "birth certificate" matter exhaustively. And Comedy Zone collects some vintage Woody Allen quotes.
Second, under instruction. Sam Antar, the former CFO of Crazy Eddie and in that capacity a crook, has turned to warning about white-collar crime, on the principle that "it takes one to know one" or something. Here is what he has to say about the internet retailer, Overstock.com (NASDAQ: OSTK). Meanwhile, Rolling Stone tells us that Guitar Hero has a David Lee Roth dominated understanding of Van Halen. Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. lost about $3.4 billion in the first half of 2009, and Murdoch takes this as evidence that information wants to be more expensive.
Thirdly, some links both amuse and instruct in equal measure. The CJR explained back in June that reporters should not be content to live and die like gerbils. That was well in advance of the appearance of a movie establishing that gerbils are really spies. Finally, Doonesbury sets us right about politicans and their affairs.
26 June 2007
Crazy Eddie
They weren't really insane. If they had been, they would have pleaded it as a defense.
Anybody of a certain age remembers the ads. The television actor who hopped about as if on speed and shouted "Our prices are innnn-sane" was Jerry Carroll. Since everything can be found somewhere in cyberspace, it probably won't surprise you to know that there's a tribute page for thos ads, at this address:
http://pocketcalculatorshow.com/crazyeddie/
When I moved to Bridgeport in 1984, to open a law office, there was a downtown cheapskate electronics store calling itself "Crazy Freddy." I doubt there was any intellectual-property litigation as a result, the knock-off store seems to have failed quickly simply because the whole downtown area was depressed.
Anyway, the founder of the chain was Eddie Antar. By the middle of 1990, the SEC was investigating him and his associates (including his cousin Sam Antar) on suspicion that they were manipulating their books.
Eddie fled, and showed up in time in Israel. He was extradited to the US in 1992, and after four years of legal manuveuring he pled guilty to conspiracy and racketeering and spent seven years in prison.
Why do I bring all this up now? Because Antar has started showing his face in public again. To some degree, at least, he seems to want to rehabilitate his image. This weekend the Wall Street Journal ran an interview with Reformed Eddie, in which he said that although what he did was wrong, the business wasn't entirely a criminal enterprise. Real products were sold, real money was deposited in bank accounts, etc.
He also said that he sometimes runs into a satisfied customer who'll say something like "I bought my first stereo from you!"
One of the cable TV shows will run a piece on Eddie Antar tomorrow evening, I understand.
In the meantime, if you're interested, you can read an entertaining account of the Antar rise and fall here: http://www.acfe.com/documents/antarsample.pdf
Anybody of a certain age remembers the ads. The television actor who hopped about as if on speed and shouted "Our prices are innnn-sane" was Jerry Carroll. Since everything can be found somewhere in cyberspace, it probably won't surprise you to know that there's a tribute page for thos ads, at this address:
http://pocketcalculatorshow.com/crazyeddie/
When I moved to Bridgeport in 1984, to open a law office, there was a downtown cheapskate electronics store calling itself "Crazy Freddy." I doubt there was any intellectual-property litigation as a result, the knock-off store seems to have failed quickly simply because the whole downtown area was depressed.
Anyway, the founder of the chain was Eddie Antar. By the middle of 1990, the SEC was investigating him and his associates (including his cousin Sam Antar) on suspicion that they were manipulating their books.
Eddie fled, and showed up in time in Israel. He was extradited to the US in 1992, and after four years of legal manuveuring he pled guilty to conspiracy and racketeering and spent seven years in prison.
Why do I bring all this up now? Because Antar has started showing his face in public again. To some degree, at least, he seems to want to rehabilitate his image. This weekend the Wall Street Journal ran an interview with Reformed Eddie, in which he said that although what he did was wrong, the business wasn't entirely a criminal enterprise. Real products were sold, real money was deposited in bank accounts, etc.
He also said that he sometimes runs into a satisfied customer who'll say something like "I bought my first stereo from you!"
One of the cable TV shows will run a piece on Eddie Antar tomorrow evening, I understand.
In the meantime, if you're interested, you can read an entertaining account of the Antar rise and fall here: http://www.acfe.com/documents/antarsample.pdf
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