Ray Pride

You never heard of Stanley Ralph Ross until you heard of Stanley Ralph Ross. Then you'd know why no matter how fast and good and productive you were in your chosen field, there are some wondrous polymaths who would be even better, and in a half-dozen other fields to boot.

A renaissance raconteur, Ross had written more than 250 TV shows, from "Batman" to "The Monkees" to "Columbo" and "Love American Style"; created or developed seven TV series, including "Wonder Woman" and "The Electric Company"; and with Chicagoan Jay Robert Nash, wrote and published "The Motion Picture Guide," a fifty-six-million word, pre-Internet encyclopedia of reviews of almost every film produced before the book's first edition. "Babe 2: Pig in the City" was a showcase for his voice-over talents -- a rich basso that I can hear as I type these words -- voicing a Henry Kissinger Doberman and a wiseguy pit bull. But he also voiced hundreds of commercials and animated shows (such as "Superfriends"). Then there were the dozens of songs he wrote... the character parts on more than 100 TV episodes, including a recurring role on "Falcon Crest"... the charities he supported... the marriages he performed... the jokes you'd tell that he would only improve in retelling them to you.

Spend any time in Los Angeles, the Hills, the Ralphs, the Vons, any other supermarket, are alive with larger-than-life characters like this who never make a splash in the pages of People. But Ross, an acquaintance of several years, was simply the life force, a prolific showbiz whirlwind. He died March 16 at 64, but as more than one friend put it, "We didn't think Stanley was bigger than life, we thought he was bigger than death." Stanley and I talked more than a few times, and exchanged many e-mails, with him adding immeasurably to my glossary of "Man Walks Into A Bar" jokes for a project I still haven't finished. Stanley would have many times over already.

A second go-round seeing "High Fidelity" in a sold-out late Friday screening charmed me more than my friends, but they were also recent readers of Nick Hornby's book. (Incidentally, Landmark's Century Centre Cinema had the highest gross in the country for "High Fidelity" this weekend, taking in $49,485 on two screens.) The biggest laughs of the evening came during the coming attraction for the John Travolta-starring "Battlefield Earth," with risible dialogue, incomprehensible special effects and a reference to the movie's source being one of the world's great science fiction writers... without offering up this master's name. (It's L. Ron Hubbard, founder of the Church of Scientology). Amusingly, Travolta, done up as some sort of "Hee-hee-hee!" bad-guy monster, appears, on the modest evidence in the trailer, to have broken totally free of any constraints, such as direction and career advice.

(04/06/2000)


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