Word: laughingly
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...class,/ Ain't got no mother,/ Ain't got no father,/ Ain't got no culture." The generation that let down its Hair in 1968 and sang those lyrics gave birth to forms that still shape popular music, literature, film and television. Laugh-In begot Saturday Night Live. Julia paved the way for The Cosby Show. 2001: A Space Odyssey has metamorphosed into Star Wars. Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix spawned Heavy Metal. Big Bird wanders down Sesame Street, still a hippie innocent, a naive, ever hopeful thing with feathers...
Rowan and Martin's TV Laugh-In domesticated chaos into snippets. It flashed absurdities, like vaudeville on amphetamines -- Goldie Hawn dancing in body paint, Tiny Tim tiptoeing through the tulips. Laugh-In gave the nation "You bet your sweet bippy!" and "Sock it to me," a line that Republican Candidate Richard Nixon, among other celebrities, recited in three seconds of network time in September. (In deference to his dignity, Nixon was spared the customary dousing with a bucket of water.) The Rolling Stones snarled about the Street Fighting Man. Never before had an annus mirabilis transpired before the television cameras...
Take on Johnny Carson? Don't make us laugh. Failed challengers to the Tonight show king have piled so high in recent years that noting them has become an exercise in sadism. The surprise last week was that Pat Sajak, whose late-night talk show on CBS debuted to friendly reviews and better-than- expected ratings, proved instantly that he is the man to beat as Johnny's spiritual heir...
...Mississippi Burning. His FBI agent bears traces of early Hackmen. Anderson, like Buck Barrow, repeats favorite anecdotes and plays dumber than he is; like Popeye, he wears stumpy ties and catches bad guys on his own obsessive terms. And at the end of each sentence you hear the Hackman laugh: nervous, infectious, conspiratorial and, at bottom, lethal...
Hackman can laugh all the way to the bank; at almost $2 million a picture, $ the money adds up. But even a workaholic must hear the ticking of a gold watch in his future. "There's a big part of me that wants to quit," he says, "and I'm listening more and more to that voice. But I tried pulling back before, after Superman in 1978, and found out there wasn't much else I was suited for." That's O.K. Hackman's job -- and his capstone role as Anderson -- fits him as snugly as the gray suits...