Watch the documentary Turn Blue: The Short Life Of Ghoulardi

Phil Hoffman's Turn Blue doc tells the story of influential Cleveland TV personality Ghoulardi aka Ernie Anderson. 

Here's the scoop...

For northeast Ohioans who grew up in this area in the 1960s, the new TV production Turn Blue: The Short Life of Ghoulardi is an entertaining blast from the past. Ernie Anderson, who played Cleveland's counter-culture media celebrity Ghoulardi, hosted WJW-TV's late-night horror movies from 1963 to 1966 and was an incredible influence locally.

Turn Blue is the work of award-winning producer/director Phil Hoffman, Ed.D., who also teaches radio and television courses at The University of Akron. It is the latest in a series of local history productions that Hoffman has created in cooperation with Western Reserve Public Media.  The program has also aired on WGTE Public Media in Northeast Ohio.

"The process of creating this film began with my discovery of a book 'Ghoulardi: Inside Cleveland TV's Wildest Ride,'" Hoffman said. "Authors Rich Heldenfels and Tom Feran do an excellent job of making the case for Ghoulardi's place in the pantheon of local TV hosts who had an impact on a generation of young minds weaned on TV during the 1960s." 

At WJW-TV 8, Ernie Anderson was working as an announcer when the station asked him to don a fright wig and serve as the host of a late-night horror movie series. Ghoulardi was born. Within just a few short weeks, Clevelanders were shouting phrases including "knif," "Oxnard" and " blue." Anderson's Ghoulardi would begin a local TV tradition that would continue with Hoolihan and Big Chuck and Little John Rinaldi well into the first decade of the new millennium.  

Turn Blue chronicles Anderson's wild ride on Cleveland TV and includes interviews with Heldenfels, Feran, "Big Chuck" Schodowski, Dick Goddard, Mark Dawidziak and many other colleagues and witnesses to the Ghoulardi phenomenon. 

The world premiere of the production was held in 2009 at the annual Ghoulardifest, and the one-hour production was first broadcast on Western Reserve PBS that same year. It earned two Emmy Awards, for directing and editing for producer Phil Hoffman. Check it out below. 

The Sadies get a shout-out in Jim Jarmusch's zombie flick The Dead Don't Die

While trapped in a hardware store, Bobby Wiggins and Hank Thompson discuss the guitar playing skill of The Sadies' Dallas & Travis Good. 

Since Jim Jarmusch started making feature films, the part-time musician and full-time music fan has sought to sneak in cameos of his favourite artists. Beyond the starring roles frequently played by his longtime pals John Lurie and Tom Waits, Jarmusch always finds clever ways of getting some screen time for artists he loves, whether it's having underground NY rapper Rammelzee portraying "man with money" in his 1984 breakthrough Stranger Than Paradise, Screamin' Jay Hawkins serving as a hotel night clerk in 1989's Mystery Train, Butthole Surfters' frontman Gibby Haynes playing "man with a gun in alley" in 1995's Dead Man, Wu-Tang Clan's RZA and GZA discussing the finer points of alternative medicine with Bill Murray in 2003's Coffee and Cigarettes.

In Jarmusch's latest The Dead Don't Die – a cautionary tale about the hazards of fracking and consumerism run amok which opens this weekend), he's got regular collaborators Iggy Pop playing a coffee zombie, RZA appears as a WU-PS delivery man while Tom Waits has a key role as Hermit Bob, a mysterious forest-dwelling loner who provides Rod Serling-esque commentary. Alt-country star Sturgill Simpson is name-checked frequently as the singer of the film's title song whose CD of "The Dead Don't Die" serves as a prop throughout and Simpson himself later appears as a guitar-dragging zombie.

In a similar multi-level reference, there's a scene set in a zombie-surrounded hardware store where Bobby Wiggins (Caleb Landry Jones) and Hank Thompson (Danny Glover) talk about the awesome guitar skills of The Sadies' dynamic brother duo of Dallas and Travis Good after seeing a brief cameo which fans of the Toronto twangers won't soon forget. You'll need to see the film for that entertaining sequence but in the meantime, watch the trailer below followed by a video for Sturgill Simpson's title track.

Ginger St. James has invited The Sadies to play The Casbah (306 King St. West) in beautiful downtown Hamilton on Sunday (June 16) – Check the venue's page right here for more info and tickets – before they head to Saskatchewan for the Long Day's Night Festival with Reverend Horton Heat in Swift Current (June 20-23) and then continue on a Western swing through July before hitting Buffalo's Cobblestone Live Music & Arts Festival (49 Illinois St) August 2-4.
 

Listen to the new Black Keys' tune Fever

Akron's Black Keys salute Ghoulardi with their new album Turn Blue due May 13. Check out "Fever" below.