Tag Archives: billy-joel

Sunday Morning Sidewalk #48

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This week for the Sunday Morning Sidewalk, we start a two episode documentary on HBO Max about Billy Joel called Billy Joel: And So It Goes. This is truly a first for the Sunday Morning Sidewalk because the first episode is almost 2 and a half hours long. Next week’s is about the same. We have never had an episode for the Sunday Morning Sidewalk as long as this was.

Honestly, I love Billy Joel, but, when the show first came out on HBO Max, the runtime of the documentary was something that put me off. However, the timing of this worked out perfectly as The Haunting of Hill House ended last week, and the next series would start over Christmas break from school. I have two weeks off from teaching and so anything that I did not get to watch on a Sunday because of the length of the documentary could easily be watched during the week. It was perfect.

I watched Part 1 today, and the doc was fascinating. It reveled a ton of details that I was unaware of pertaining to Billy Joel. The early career depression that led him to attempt suicide a couple of times was truly unexpected.

Many rock documentaries do not feature some of the worst times of the performer. They may gloss over things that they do not want to explore. I did not get that feeling about Billy Joel: And So It Goes. The cliché phrase “warts and all” seems to fit as the first episode talked about Billy’s drinking, his depression and suicide attempts, his attitude toward the record companies, just to mention a few. All of this came together to show us a cool portrait of this musician.

There were plenty of talking heads in the film including comments form Bruce Springsteen, Paul McCartney, John Mellencamp, as well as people closer to Billy. His wife/manager Elizabeth Weber was an essential character in the narrative of Billy Joel’s early successes, and she appeared through the entire episode. Of course, we also heard directly from Billy Joel in multiple settings and time periods.

The first episode ended just after the motorcycle accident that Billy survived and the split of his marriage with Elizabeth.

We will finish episode 2 next Sunday.

Moonlighting S3 E6

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“Big Man on Mulberry Street”

This was where I was introduced to Billy Joel’s hit “Big Man on Mulberry Street” in yet another classic Moonlighting dream sequence.

I love Billy Joel and I enjoy many of his songs. I would not be lying if I said that every time I hear this song, I think of the huge dance routine with Bruce Willis on this episode. 

Bruce Willis showed off his moves in this dance routine, and the director really highlighted his strengths while using the other experienced dancers to make the routine look great. Bruce may not be a great dancer, but they made him look like a million bucks.

Then, there was a story involving David’s ex-wife and the obsession that it created in the mind of Maddie. Who was this woman? What happened? Why had she never heard about this before? It took this relationship to yet another level as it all built to later in the season.

The episode did start off oddly as Maddie was meeting for breakfast with a client waiting for David to show up with the photos they had been hired to take. David slinked in, hungover and without the photos.

This, of course, led to an argument between David and Maddie, and, to be honest, most of the time I am with David when he is arguing with Maddie, but there was no excuse this time and his laissez faire attitude really felt like it was inappropriate. It was as if David could not accept that he was fully in the wrong and that what he had done was a betrayal.

This whole story aspect just went away completely when David had received a phone call telling him that his former brother-in-law had died. Meaning that there was, at one time, a Mrs. Addison.

There were several really strong monologues in the episode delivered by our two leads and it took a deeper look at the individual characters and the budding relationship with Maddie and David.