Shouts From the Back Row’s theme music was composed and performed by Vince Nitro!

I wish I had more context for this clip, but here it is! In 1986, back when he was just a stand-up comic, Jerry Seinfeld appeared on Dr. Ruth’s show to discuss sex and relationships. I find it pretty funny that Ruth criticizes Jerry’s bachelor lifestyle, which would become the basis for his character on the show that shot him to fame – Seinfeld – only a few years after this.

The inimitable Gene Wilder passed away yesterday at the age of 83, leaving behind a Willy Wonka shaped hole in all of our hearts. To honour the late, great actor, here’s an animated interview with him from the Blank on Blank series by PBS Digital Studios that gives a lot of insight into Wilder’s life and career. Rest in peace, sir.

I love the internet, media, and popular culture. I’ve been a movie buff my entire life, and I’ve loved TV and video games for at least as long. When social media had its boom in the mid-2000’s, I used Facebook to share all the weird and fun stuff that I found online. I’d post trailers, funny clips, and all manner of stuff, giving my thoughts on them as I did so. I can’t remember who said it first (I think it may have been Tom Lando), but along the way somebody suggested that I start a blog. And so I founded The Back Row.

My first post on The Back Row was in July of 2010, and at the time I had decided that if I was going to do this thing, I was going to do it for serious. I committed to posting multiple links every day, and actually stressed myself out quite a bit maintaining a regular schedule. But it paid off. Thanks to The Back Row, I’ve amassed a team of top notch writers who regularly contribute to the site, and it has become home to multiple podcast projects that I’m involved in – and I love every one of them.

Lately, though, my life outside the internet has started getting hectic, and as a result I’ve found myself unable to dedicate the time to The Back Row that I used to have. I guess it’s just a symptom of growing up and having a career. So after careful consideration, and discussion with Robin, who has become co-owner of the site over the years, I’m changing things up a bit. Here’s what The Back Row will look like from now on:

• I won’t be posting every day. I’ll still post the occasional video or link when I have something to say about it, and maybe I’ll write more Sunday Short Reviews once in a while, but I’ll be stepping back from my daily writing.
• All of the contributors to the site can continue to write their articles and reviews, and I will continue to post them. This means that while content will be a bit less frequent, it will also be almost entirely original material. I see this as a very good thing.
• TBR will serve as a hub for the multiple podcast projects that it is already home to – and maybe more! Shouts From the Back Row, our movie discussion podcast, will continue on a weekly basis (when summer isn’t drawing us out into the sunlight). Fakelore will resume later this month, and hopefully What the Quimp?! will too, schedules providing. The Trail Went Cold has become Robin’s primary creative project these days, and so his focus will mostly be on that, although he may still write on TBR once in a while.

These changes aren’t major, but I wanted to make sure all you lovely readers know what’s going on, and why there’s suddenly a lot less content being posted on the main blog of the site. I encourage you to subscribe to our various podcasts, which are all on iTunes, and I hope you’ll still make regular visits to this site to see what our wonderful writers have been cooking up.

Thanks for taking the time to look at this site. What was once just an off-the-cuff blog project to share cool media has grown into something much bigger and more fun than I could have anticipated when I started The Back Row, and I couldn’t have done it without all of you.

All the best,
Gill

I’ve done a lot of “Before They Were Stars” features on World Wrestling Entertainment superstars, but the official WWE Youtube channel recently released their own compilation of “Before They Were Stars” clips. Some of these clips have been featured on The Back Row before, but others came as a complete surprise to me.

Hey everyone! Gill here. I’m going to be on vacation for the next week and a half, so posts on The Back Row will be sparse until my return. I hope you’re all enjoying some time in the sunshine. Expect a big announcement about The Back Row when I return!

One week ago today, Dean Ambrose reached the top of the pro wrestling world and became the World Wrestling Entertainment World Heavyweight Champion. Quite an achievement for a guy who used to wrestle matches in which his forehead was sliced open by a Sawzall. Anyway, in 2008, Ambrose was still wresting under his former name, Jon Moxley, and got a tryout with WWE’s rival promotion, Total NonStop Action Wrestling, a.k.a. TNA. This is footage of him wrestling an untelevised “dark match” before one of TNA’s events against an opponent named Lamar Braxton Porter. In all their infinite wisdom, TNA decided not to offer Moxley/Ambrose a contract and he went on to much bigger things.

A true test for an aspiring stand-up comedian is how well they handle hecklers at their performances. In 2009, an up-and-coming comedian named Amy Schumer headlined a show in Atlanta in which an obnoxious drunk woman in the audience was heckling the performers all night. So Schumer decided to fire back…

Turner Barrowman isn’t just a comedian, he’s also a scientist, and in this experiment he wants to find out how many Ritz Bitz crackers he can hide around his apartment before he is discovered by his girlfriend. I’ll admit, Turner is kind of like me with this experiment. Just ask my wife about April Fool’s Day at my place…

You might remember the 1990 Academy Award-nominated drama, Awakenings, starring Robert De Niro and Robin Williams. If you watch the film, be sure you don’t blink during this particular scene or you’ll miss an aspiring young actor named Vin Diesel in the background (sporting a full head of hair!) in an uncredited appearance as a hospital orderly who shuts the gate behind John Heard when he enters the room.