peter boyle

The adage depressingly reminds us that all good things must come to an end -- and thus, being a good thing, the fate eventually befell Everybody Loves Raymond, the mega-popular sitcom that got out while the getting was good. After nine seasons of completely shark-free waters, the series wrapped with the shortest of seasons, clocking in at sixteen episodes.

But the wise man who depressingly reminds us about the temporal nature of "good things" didn't have a DVD player. Thanks to this nifty little device, we can enjoy some of the good things repeatedly, and whenever we want.

The ninth season opens with the unthinkable -- the possible deconstruction of the dynamic that made the show what it was. Ray's parents Marie and Frank (played by Doris Roberts and Peter Boyle) have found a retirement community that's just perfect for them, and plan to move out of their house across the street from Ray and Debra (Ray Romano and Patricia Heaton), leaving it to Robert (Brad Garrett) and his new bride Amy (Monica Horan). But in the end, the retirement home begs Ray and Debra to take them back, and Robert and Amy suddenly find they've given up their apartment only to move back in with Robert's parents!

As much as the season was packed to overflowing with comedy, there were a few tender moments this season as well. In "Boys' Therapy," Robert is seeing a counselor and -- through Debra and Marie -- force Ray and Frank into coming with him. But Frank decides to detour them to the racing track instead. To cover their tracks with their wives, the three must invent things they've discovered about themselves during their so-called therapy, which accidentally leads to them coming to grips with some of the elements of their growing up when Ray and Robert learn of the abuse suffered by Frank when he was a child.

All Together Now. The cast unites around the Romano table
as the camera pulls back at the end of "Finale."
In the finale episode, a trepidatious Ray enters the hospital to have his adenoids removed. Debra and Robert both tell Ray he's being a big baby about his fears -- but they both change their tunes dramatically when the nurse comes out and tells them they can't awaken Ray from the anesthesia, and they fear he may die. The threat lasts all of twelve seconds, but the family remains impacted. The only ones who don't know about the close call are Ray himself, and his mother who was in the bathroom at the time. The Oedipal hilarity that ensues when both parties find out is a memorable moment in television sitcom history.

Regular guest appearances this season came from Robert Culp and Katherine Helmond as Debra's divorced parents who find they're having a better sex life with each other now than they ever did when they were married. Fred Willard and Georgia Engel are also steady appearances as Amy's outwardly pious parents -- who reveal all their hidden vices when Robert catches one of them smoking. And what comic book and sci-fi geek can't relate at least on some level to Amy's terminally awkward brother, Peter (Chris Elliot), who's had to close up his comic shop and begin selling his wares out of his apartment -- which is where Ray finds him when Debra and Amy decide to hold a cocktail party for the express purpose of finding Peter a girlfriend.

There's a great mix of commentary on a number of these episodes, as well as deleted scenes (noted below). In addition, there are two featurettes on the fourth and final disc of the set that are well worth the money. The blooper and outtake reel is hilarious as it is more of a collection of alternate punch lines that weren't used. My personal favorite is the montage of lines used by Romano and Garrett as they list different brand names for the erectile dysfunction pills Frank is taking; when Ray declares the brand to be "Young Frankenstein," he catches Boyle by surprise, cracking up the veteran actor. This reel, like the season itself, was way too short.

The other featurette is the television special, "The Last Laugh," which took the viewers behind the making of the final episode of Everybody Loves Raymond. This featurette also comes with an optional commentary track, so if you saw it air on television you can now rewatch it with even more behind-the-scenes information.

And that's all folks. Some months after the show wrapped it up, Peter Boyle passed away. Brad Garrett has moved on to his new sitcom, 'til Death, and Patricia Heaton will co-starring this fall in Back to You. But whether in syndication or on DVD, fans will continue to love Raymond for a long time to come.

Audio options on this set include English 2.0, French 2.0 and Spanish 2.0, with optional subtitling available in all three languages. A new musical version of Young Frankenstein just closed its pre-Broadway run in Seattle; after the runaway success of The Producers on-stage, further musical mining of the Mel Brooks catalog was somewhat inevitable. I'm not sure I want to see the musical version of Young Frankenstein, though, even as it gets raves and well-qualified praise -- because, let's be frank ('...en-steen...'), the original is pretty much perfect, and easily the funniest film Mel Brooks ever made.

There are a lot of comedies that are full of funny people and funny ideas but nonetheless fall flat. The problem isn't the flesh and fat of laughs, but rather that they lack a skeleton to hang on and move with; without structure, all that funny often just lies limp and inert. You don't have to look far from Young Frankenstein for an example; Blazing Saddles, the prior film in the Brooks canon, begins as a spot-on parody of the Western -- but when its cowboys and bandits (literally) break out of the Old West and into Old Hollywood, the movie fractures a little.

But that never happens in Young Frankenstein; an inspired riff on Mary Shelly's Gene Wilder, who also co-wrote the script with Brooks; I don't think it's an accident that the end result was far superior to their other actor-director collaborations.) Young Frederick Frankenstein (Wilder) inherits his Grandfather's castle and soon takes up his work, trying to defeat death through science and re-animate a man made of various corpse bits with the help of his assistant Igor (Marty Feldman). The creature (Peter Boyle, wordless and hilarious) is brought to life, and Frederick must try and keep his creation in check even as the nearby villagers fear that he's, yes, 'vollowing in his Grandfaddah's foodschtops.' No matter where the jokes go -- an out-of-nowhere Glenn Miller one-liner, a brief drop-in with a blind monk (an unexpectedly hilarious Gene Hackman), a bizarrely inspired musical number -- the movie always comes back to the touching story of a boy and his monster.

Young Frankenstein's also artistically coherent in a way that most of Brooks' movies aren't -- it follows the black-and-white aesthetic and design of the original Frankenstein films right down the line. And that, bluntly, is how it seduces you: Part of your brain thinks you're watching a '30s black-and-white horror film, and then a Brooks joke -- anarchic, unexpected, stupid-smart -- rises out of the carefully-crafted monochrome tones and baroque set designs and slaps you silly.

And the performances are great, too; Wilder's tone swings between haughty reserve and harried mania as the scene requires it. Feldman mugs incorrigibly (and apparently it was he who came up with the moving-hump gag), but that's what you hire Marty Feldman for. And the trio of leading ladies -- Terri Garr as the lovely assistant Inga, Madeline Kahn as Frankenstein's frosty fiancee, Cloris Leachman as the original Dr. Frankenstein's confederate Frau Blucher (please feel free to make a horse-whinny sound, if you're reading at home) -- are all inspired in their roles. And as the monster, Boyle is magnificent -- it's easily one of the greatest physical comedy performances of all time, every muscle and sinew and expression in tune with the gags. And the entire cast -- in many cases performing on the same Universal Studios sets that the original Frankenstein films were shot on -- remain on-target, constantly moving the story forward along the spine of the plot, maintaining focus und
erneath all the funny.

The official film critic for Netflix from 2001-2005, is the film critic for San Francisco's CBS-5, and writes for Cinematical.com. When not sitting expectantly in the dark of a movie theater, Rocchi enjoys the Bay Area's natural wonders, the company of his cat Coaly and talking about himself in the third person. You can find Rocchi's Retro Rental every Tuesday at noon, right here on the Culture Blog. Born in Norristown, Pennsylvania, Boyle later moved to nearby Philadelphia.[3] Of Irish descent, he was the son of Peter Boyle, Sr., a Philadelphia TV personality from 1951-1963 who, among many other things, played the Western-show host Chuck Wagon Pete, and hosted the popular afterschool children's program Uncle Pete Presents the Little Rascals, which showed vintage Little Rascals and Three Stooges comedy shorts and Popeye cartoons.[4]

Boyle attended St. Francis de Sales school and West Philadelphia Catholic High School. After high school Boyle spent three years as a novice of the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, or De La Salle Brothers, a Catholic teaching order. He lived in a house of studies with other novices and earned a BA from La Salle University in Philadelphia in 1957, but left the order because he did not feel called to religious life.[5][6] After spending time in the navy and graduating from Officer Candidate School in 1959, he was commissioned as an ensign in the United States Navy, but his military career was shortened by a nervous breakdown.[7]

In New York City, he studied acting with famed acting coach Uta Hagen while working as a postal clerk and a maitre d'.[8] He went on to play Murray the cop in a touring company of Neil Simon's The Odd Couple, leaving the tour in Chicago, Illinois and joining The Second City improv comedy ensemble there.[8] He had a brief scene as the manager of an indoor shooting range in the critically acclaimed 1969 film Medium Cool, filmed in Chicago.

[edit] Screen and theater
His first starring role was as the title character in the 1970 movie Joe, in which Boyle played a bigoted New York City factory worker to wide acclaim. The film's release was surrounded by controversy over its violence and language. It was during this time that Boyle became close friends with the actress Jane Fonda, and with her he participated in many protests against the Vietnam War. After seeing people cheer at his role in Joe, Boyle refused the lead role in The French Connection (1971),[9] as well as other movie and TV roles that he believed glamorized violence. His next major role was as the campaign manager for a U.S. Senate candidate (Robert Redford) in The Candidate (1972).

Boyle had another hit role as Frankenstein's monster in the 1974 Mel Brooks comedy Young Frankenstein, in which, in an homage to King Kong, the monster is placed onstage in top hat and tails, grunt-singing and dancing to the song "Puttin' on the Ritz". Boyle said at the time, "The Frankenstein monster I play is a baby. He's big and ugly and scary, but he's just been born, remember, and it's been traumatic, and to him the whole world is a brand new alien environment. That's how I'm playing it".[8]

Boyle received his first Emmy nomination for his acclaimed dramatic performance in the 1977 television film Tail Gunner Joe, in which he played Senator Joseph McCarthy, who led the Communist witch hunts in the 1950s. Yet he was more often cast as a character actor than as a leading man.

Boyle portrays Oscar Zeta Acosta alongside Bill Murray in the 1980 film Where the Buffalo RoamHis roles include the philosophical cab driver "Wizard" in Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976), starring Robert De Niro; the attorney of gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson (played by Bill Murray) in Where the Buffalo Roam (1980); a corrupt space mining-facility boss in the science-fiction film Outland (1981), opposite Sean Connery; Boatswain Moon in the 1983 pirate comedy Yellowbeard, also starring Cheech and Chong, Madeline Kahn, and members of the comedy troupe Monty Python's Flying Circus; a mental patient who belts out a Ray Charles song in the comedy The Dream Team (1989), starring Michael Keaton; the title character's cab driver in The Shadow (1994), starring Alec Baldwin; the father of Sandra Bullock's fiancee in While You Were Sleeping (1995); the hateful father of Billy Bob Thornton's prison-guard character in Monster's Ball (2001); and Old Man Wickles in the comedy Scooby
Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed (2004). In cameo roles, he can be seen as a tough police officer in Malcolm X (1992), and as a drawbridge operator in Porky's Revenge (1985). In 1992, he starred in Alex Cox's Death and the Compass, an adaptation of Jorge Luis Borges' La Muerte y la Brujula. However, the film was not released until 1996.

His New York theater work included playing a comedian who is the object of The Roast, a 1980 Broadway play directed by Carl Reiner. Also in 1980 he co-starred with Tommy Lee Jones in an Off-Broadway production of playwright Sam Shepard's acclaimed True West. Two years later, Boyle played the head of a dysfunctional family in Joe Pintauro's less well-received Snow Orchid, at the Circle Repertory.

In 1986, Boyle played the title role of the acclaimed but short-lived TV series Joe Bash, created by Danny Arnold (Barney Miller). A comedy-drama that followed the life of lonely, world-weary, and sometimes compromised New York City beat cop whose closest friend was a prostitute played by actress DeLane Matthews.[10]

[edit] Later life and career
In 1990, Boyle suffered a stroke that rendered him speechless for six months. After recovering, he went on to win an Emmy Award in 1996 as Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series for his appearance on The X-Files. In the episode, "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose", he played an insurance salesman who can see selected things in the near future, particularly others' deaths. Boyle also guest starred in two episodes as Bill Church in Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.

Boyle was perhaps most widely known for his role as the deadpan, cranky Frank Barone in the popular CBS television sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond, which aired from 1996 to 2005. The show was shot in Los Angeles, to which Boyle commuted from his New York City home. He was nominated for an Emmy seven times for this role, but never won (beaten out multiple times in the Supporting Actor category by his co-star Brad Garrett), though fellow co-stars Garrett, Ray Romano, Patricia Heaton, and Boyle's TV wife Doris Roberts won at least one Emmy each for their performances.

In 1999, he had a heart attack on the set of Everybody Loves Raymond. He soon regained his health and returned to the series.

In 2005 and 2006 he made several appearances on the Comedy Central show Mind of Mencia as himself, mostly delivering "cranky old person" one-liners. Show host Carlos Mencia gave a short tribute to Boyle consisting of his most memorable jokes on the show at the beginning of its third season in 2007.

[edit] Death
On December 12, 2006, Boyle died in New York City at New York Presbyterian Hospital after suffering from multiple myeloma and heart disease.

At the time of his death, Boyle had completed the film All Roads Lead Home, and was scheduled to appear in the film Chatham.