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No. 89: My Favorite Year

An homage to the golden age of the small screen

by
Jody Rosen
December 05, 2011

1982, dir. Richard Benjamin. The rompingest big-screen homage to the golden age of the small screen, this comedy features Peter O’Toole as a debauched former matinee idol and Mark Linn-Baker as the nebbish charged with keeping him from drinking and whoring himself into oblivion before an appearance on a Sid Caesar-like variety show. O’Toole is delightful as swashbuckling star gone to seed, but it’s the period feel—the backstage glimpse at network television when it was just a step removed from vaudeville—that gives the movie its color. Linn-Baker gets the best line: “Jews know two things: suffering and where to find great Chinese food.”

Jody Rosen is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine.