INTERVIEW - The Golden Turkey Awards with Harry and Michael Medved

The Important Cinema Club

Justin Decloux and Will Sloan

Tv & Film

4.7 • 576 Ratings

🗓️ 6 February 2025

⏱️ 60 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

With their books The Fifty Worst Films of All Time (1978) and The Golden Turkey Awards (1980), brothers Harry and Michael Medved crystallized the idea of "so bad it's good," made Ed Wood famous, and created "bad movie" fandom as we know it. In this special interview episode, Will Sloan talks to the Medved Brothers about the making of the books, the movies they got wrong, and whether Plan 9 from Outer Space is REALLY the Worst Movie of All Time. PLUS: Harry Medved and producer Harry Pallenberg talks about their new show LOCATIONLAND, where they visit the filming locations for Plan 9. Check out Harry Medved's LOCATIONLAND: Official LOCATIONLAND website: https://www.pbssocal.org/shows/locationland GREASE Road Trip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aLpBO24qQw (live now) Ed Wood’s PLAN 9 Adventures: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9IBP_1v13M (launches Feb. 10 at 6pm) Behind The Hollywood Sign: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeHpsiSxFVs (launches Feb. 13th) PBS SoCal YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@PBSSoCal

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, everyone. Your old friend Will Sloan here with a special report about a subject of great
0:05.8	personal interest. Without Harry and Michael Medved, there would be no Mystery Science Theater
0:12.1	3,000, and no Elvira. Tim Burton would never have directed Ed Wood. There would be no
0:18.9	institution called the Razies, and the Chinese restaurant
0:22.7	episode of Seinfeld would be very different. By any standards, that's a palpable legacy.
0:29.2	With the swiftness of a deadly cosmic ray, the earth is invaded by indestructible moon monsters.
0:35.5	Their ghastly mission, death for all humans.
0:39.0	In the late 1970s and early 80s, about 15 years after Susan Sontag popularized the term
0:46.1	camp, the medveds wrote four books that crystallized another idea, so bad it's good.
0:53.6	They celebrated bad movies. Their readers were the boomer kids
0:58.0	who grew up watching monster movies on TV and were now old enough to start finding them funny.
1:04.5	It was their second book, The Golden Turkey Awards, that crowned Plan 9 from Outer Space,
1:10.4	the worst movie of all time, and its
1:12.7	O'Tour, Ed Wood, the worst director of all time, titles that still live on in the popular
1:18.9	consciousness today.
1:21.0	The Medved's first book was called The 50 Worst Films of All Time, and it was exactly that, a compendium of information and humorous
1:29.7	essays about 50 bad movies. When it was published in 1978, Michael Medved was a 29-year-old author.
1:37.9	His book, What Really Happened to the Class of 65, had been a bestseller, and he had also
1:43.5	served as a speechwriter and consultant
1:45.6	on various Democratic Party campaigns. Harry Medved was a budding movie buff of just 17,
1:53.1	and became the public face of the book. His older brother was uncredited. Here's a clip of
1:58.7	Teenage Harry on an Australian talk show. The other guest is no less
	...

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