{"id":325,"date":"2012-11-28T16:28:32","date_gmt":"2012-11-28T21:28:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/?p=325"},"modified":"2020-12-06T21:30:21","modified_gmt":"2020-12-07T02:30:21","slug":"ten-questions-with-josh-mills","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/?p=325","title":{"rendered":"Ten Questions with Josh Mills"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Josh Mills celebrates an early Christmas with mom Edie Adams.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Film fans probably don’t know the name of Josh Mills, but it’s a name I’ve known for a long time. \u00a0His mother, Edie Adams, was a hero of mine. \u00a0 Edie was a preservationist when it wasn’t fashionable to be one. \u00a0She saved film that people said was worthless. \u00a0She testified to Congress about it. \u00a0You can’t be more of a hero in my book than that.<\/p>\n

Josh has done a lot to forward the film preservation that his mom started. \u00a0Full disclosure: I did some work on both the Kovacs DVD sets that will be mentioned here, because I had some rare and unique footage. \u00a0I’m not being paid in any way for this, however. \u00a0What I contributed is minuscule in comparison to what Josh and Ben Model did on these sets. \u00a0We have them to thank for a legacy of Kovacs… and Edie Adams, as you’ll see…<\/p>\n

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Edie Adams portrait from the 1950s (Ediad Productions)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Q1:
\nYour mom was singer\/actress\/preservationist Edie Adams. \u00a0She’s known and loved for a lot of things she did. \u00a0I know most guys of a certain age remember her for her commercials for Dutch Masters, but I’d like to talk about some of her preservation work. \u00a0She was singlehandedly responsible for saving most of Ernie Kovacs’ work. \u00a0I’ve often called her the patron saint of film preservation, because she went out on a limb to buy up film and tape of Kovacs to keep it from being destroyed. \u00a0Can you talk a little about that aspect of your mom? \u00a0Was this always a part of your discussions as you grew up?<\/p>\n

A: If I was 14 and not 44, I might shy away from my mom\u2019s \u2018Why-dontcha-pick-one-up-and-smoke-it-sometime\u2019 allure. As a teenager, I was at a baseball game where she sang the national anthem and the guys behind me didn\u2019t know she was my mom and there was a lot of, \u2018When I was a kid and she came on TV….\u2019 hubba hubba…..but at 44, I am a little more comfortable talking about it. She was my mom, but she was a good looking woman \u2013 I get it.<\/strong><\/p>\n

As far as her preservation efforts are concerned, we can all look back and say in 2012 that indeed she was way ahead of her time in saving the Kovacs material from being destroyed by short sighted \u00a0television executives. But really, my mom was more of the mind-set in 1964 of \u2018Ernie was doing something unique. This just has to be saved.\u2019 Frankly, I don\u2019t know how she had the forethought. There was no VHS. There was no Ipad. There was no cable TV! Most shows barely had a life after they aired on the East and West Coast. They maybe got a repeat somewhere down the line but that was it. My mom just knew Kovacs was doing something genius and knew it had to be saved. She (now I) had been paying the bills to store this material for 50 years so she really knew it had to be special to take on that expense. Not to cheapen it by any means but \u2013 it ain\u2019t cheap to store this material for half a century.<\/strong><\/p>\n

And might I just add my mom did not throw away ANYTHING. It\u2019s amazing the scripts, photographs, contracts, memorabilia and more that still exist. It might be time to open a Kovacs museum in Trenton.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Marty Mills<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Q2:
\nYour dad was the amazing photographer Marty Mills. \u00a0I’ve seen a number of great photos he took on your Facebook page<\/a>. \u00a0Can you tell us a little about your dad? \u00a0Some of our readers may not realize that you were born some years after Ernie died when your mom had remarried.<\/p>\n

A: Ernie died in 1962 and I was born in 1968. Evidently, my mom had known my dad for years prior to Ernie\u2019s passing because he was an agent at MCA who was best friends with her (and Ernie\u2019s) agent, Marty Kummer. They knew each other socially and sta<\/strong>rted dating in the early-sixties and married in 1964. My parents got along so well because they had a lot in common. They were both in show business and my mother knew all about classical and popular music which my dad did as well. My grandfather was Jack Mills who founded Mills Music which published some of the biggest hits of the first half of the century. My dad worked as a song plugger at Mills, trying to get DJs across the country to play the songs they published and was quite successful. Mills Music was the la<\/strong>rgest independent publisher in the world from about 1920 \u2013 1960 when it was sold. They published Duke Ellington, Fats Waller, Hoagy Carmichael and tons of other great songwriters out of the Brill Building. In some ways my grandfather\u00a0was\u00a0<\/span>Tin Pan Alley.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Sheet music from Mills Music<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Anyway, m<\/strong>y dad ran with a pretty hip crowd\u00a0<\/strong>in his youth \u2013 he was great friends w\/ Mel Torme, Buddy Rich, Patti Page, Sammy Davis Jr. It was the fifties in New York and my dad would tell me they would go see double and triple bills of movies in Times Square and would have squirt gun fights in the balcony and cause all sorts of mayhem. He once told me an insane story about having to hide out from the Chicago mob after a bender w\/ Shecky Greene due to a bar fight that turned out to be mistaken identity.\u00a0<\/strong>My dad became a photographer in about 1965 when my mom went to Rome to shoot, \u201cThe Honey Pot\u201d (aka \u201cAnyone for Venice\u201d) w\/ Rex Harrison and Cliff Robertson. They were on location shooting at Cinecitta studios when an outbreak of something terrible hit the set like Typhoid or meningitis which brought the shooting to a halt and suddenly they were in Rome with nothing to do. What\u2019s more, they couldn\u2019t leave because they might shoot anytime. So my parents moved out of the hotel the studio had them in and moved to an apartment on the Spanish Steps for 6 months. I ask you, who wouldn\u2019t kill to be stuck in Rome in the mid-sixties for half a year. My dad learned how to cook Italian food and picked up the camera\u00a0<\/strong>for the first time. He came home with a new skill and began to shoot for Look Magazine, Sports Illustrated, TV Guide and others.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Dean Martin sings! (Martin Mills Photography)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

He was entirely self-taught but he had a great eye. And because he knew many celebrities socially, he was able to get some great shots. Dean Martin called him while shooting the film \u201cBandalero\u2019 in Mexico and asked him to come down and hang out because he was bored on the set. So my dad brought his camera and took some amazing shots of Dean \u2013 on the set, golfing, making pasta. They are mind bogging. He ended up shooting 3 album covers for Dean as well. My dad lived a pretty cool life too if I may say so myself.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong>Q3:
\nWhen your mom passed away, the preservation baton was passed to you. \u00a0Since I knew your mom, I knew she was working on a Kovacs DVD set for some time that never materialized, and you made it happen. \u00a0Now, there’s a volume 2. \u00a0You’ve released recordings and lot of other stuff. \u00a0You seem to take preservation very seriously. \u00a0What does all this mean to you? \u00a0Most of this stuff was made before you were born, and Kovacs was a guy you never met.<\/p>\n

A: My mom was fantastic in not only her preservation efforts but her instincts. However, my mom also missed some opportunities because\u00a0<\/strong>she would say, \u201cKovacs always skips a generation,\u201d meaning that he might not be hip in 1960\u2019s but the 1970\u2019s comedians rediscovered him. Same thing in the \u201880\u2019s \u2013 not a lot of action until the 1990\u2019s when another round of comedians popped up talking about Kovacs. Still, I could see that as we got to a digital age and black and white was a tough sell to anyone under 30, she was holding on too tight.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Ben Model (L) and Josh Mills (R)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When she passed away in 2008, I really wanted to make sure Kovacs was\u00a0<\/strong>reinserted in the conversation. At about that time, the Conan\/Leno T<\/em><\/strong>he Tonight Show<\/em> passing of the baton\/debacle was going on and no one (!) even mentioned Kovacs as a regular guest host of \u00a0The Tonight Show<\/em>. \u00a0It killed me. And shortly thereafter, PBS did a special on the history of comedy and Kovacs wasn\u2019t in that either. Thankfully, at about that time, Jordan Fields at Shout! Factory approached us about working together on what eventually became \u201cThe Ernie Kovacs Collection<\/a>\u201d (Volume 1) and that was our vehicle to get Kovacs back into the conversation. Without Shout! Factory and Ben Model, who has been an invaluable archivist and curator of the Kovacs material these past 5 years, I don\u2019t know where we\u2019d be.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Q4:
\nI visited your mom in 1999, and she showed me a some material I’d never seen before. \u00a0It was from her own show\u00a0Here’s Edie,\u00a0<\/em>which was made immediately after Kovacs died. \u00a0These shows are amazing, very different from Kovacs, much more arty and serious, but great material. \u00a0Her guest stars included just about anyone who was famous and in the music business at the time. \u00a0Even if those shows were boring, they would be an amazing historical record. \u00a0But they’re not boring at all. \u00a0They’re really wonderful. \u00a0I chided her at the time that she was better at promoting Kovacs than she was at promoting her own work! \u00a0Tell us a bit more about those shows and how you feel about them. \u00a0Is there any chance that they will be released again?<\/p>\n

A: I\u2019m really happy you asked me about this. My mom was amazingly talented but because she was saddled with debt after Ernie\u2019s passing, she literally just had to bring in the bucks to pay off the I.R.S., ABC Networks and Kovacs\u2019<\/strong> gambling debts. There was a guy at Consolidated Cigar (now Altadis) who ran Dutch Masters and got along famously with Ernie named Jack Mogulescu. Jack was responsible for getting Consolidated to get behind Ernie\u2019s shows \u2013 and they paid off not so much in ratings but in sales. When Ernie passed, he came to my mom and asked her if she wanted to be the spokeswoman for Muriel Cigars. Muriel was a poor-selling brand and they thought my mom might be able to help sales. Everyone remembers her as \u2018the Muriel girl\u2019 because her commercials were so iconic but they also sponsored her shows, Here\u2019s Edie<\/em> and The Edie Adams Show<\/em> which ran every other week opposite Sid Caesar\u2019s show.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Like Kovacs shows, Consolidated didn\u2019t care if my mom\u2019s shows got ratings, as long as sales increased and she did promotion and publicity for the brand. So not only did the sales go through the roof (and got my mom a contract that paid her until 1992) but they let her produce her own show. That\u2019s unheard of! Being a Julliard student, my mom approached her show like her stage act at the time. She wanted to bring \u2018high art\u2019 to the masses. That\u2019s why you see Duke Ellington, Stan Getz, Count Basie alongside Sammy Davis Jr., Bobby Darin. That and she tried to tape on Sundays when crew and performers got double time and golden time so they were more than happy to be well-paid to come on her show. This she learned from Kovacs.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Look for a nice Edie Adams Show DVD package to come out in 2013 with more bells and whistles than my mom got walking past a construction site in midtown!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Q5:
\nI know you’re involved in the music business yourself. \u00a0You work with a lot of bands and have your own publicity firm. \u00a0Tell us about that, and explain a bit on how you got into it.<\/p>\n

A: I do but I\u2019m not that interesting. I manage a Cambodian\/American band Dengue Fever (www.denguefevermusic.com<\/a>) who are fantastic and unique and do PR for many bands and projects. I was hoping to be a screenwriter and went to college to get into film but when I got out and sat down to write something \u2013 I realized I had nothing to say at 22 years old. So I realized that I loved music and thought would look into that. Here I am 18 years later. Truth be told tho, I can see the Kovacs and Edie material becoming a full-time job down the line a bit.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Q6:
\nYou’re doing a series of roadshows promoting the material you have in the Kovacs\/Adams collection. \u00a0Tell us about those shows and where they have been. \u00a0Do you have any more coming up?<\/p>\n

A: We are working on upcoming events in Los Angeles, New York (and perhaps) Indianapolis in 2013 but in the last two years, we have done events at the Paley Center and Museum of the Moving Image in New York, American Cinematheque in Los Angeles and AFI and the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. Essentially, the goal is to bring Kovacs and his admirers together for a live event. And the venues we have found most receptive have been amazing places to help get the word out. It\u2019s been gratifying to help promote the Kovacs and Adams brands with panels including entertainers: Keith Olbermann, George & Jolene Brand Schlatter, Robert Klein, Hal Prince, Alan Zweibel, Harry Shearer Jeff Greenfield, Bob Odenkirk, Joel Hodgson and Merrill Markoe talk about their love of Ernie. I always loved comedy as a kid and to be in the same room with Robert Klein or Jeff Garlin, I become like a shy little kid. I can\u2019t believe I helped bring them to these events. \u00a0And I actually do become a little kid \u2013 I had Harry Shearer sign my Credibility Gap CD and Robert Klein sign his \u201cChild of the Fifties\u201d LP. I\u2019m as much a fan as anyone.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Q7:
\nAre there any “holy grails” out there for you? \u00a0By this I mean projects that Kovacs, or your mom or dad did that you know were produced, but that you can’t find?<\/p>\n

A: Well we are always on the lookout for more material. Ben Model, our curator, always talks about hoping someone will find Kovacs Unlimited (CBS 1952-54) in an attic or someplace. It\u2019s happened before. People approached my mom all the time to\u00a0buy back her own shows<\/em>! That infuriated her. In fact, she is on record at the Library of Congress talking about this very subject. She always talked about some guy who found something that \u2018….fell out of the back of a truck\u2019 when it came to Kovacs.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Finding the long lost Kovacs comedy record, \u201cPercy Dovetonsils…Thpeaks<\/a>\u201d was cool and we have a fantastic partner in Omnivore Recordings who released that this year on CD & lavender vinyl. We are also plowing through some audio airchecks my mom had made of \u201cKovacs Unlimited\u201d. So although no video exists, it\u2019s a daily record of television in the 1950\u2019s. We culled my mom\u2019s CD \u201cEdie Adams Christmas Album<\/a>\u201d from material she sang on the show.<\/strong><\/p>\n

So to paraphrase Kovacs in his Mr. Question Man, \u201cIt\u2019s a common misconception. People are falling off all the time.\u201d We\u2019re coming up with new stuff all the time too.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Q8:
\nYour mom was an intense “force of nature” personality. \u00a0I’ve told people that I’ve never known anyone who could talk so fast and so long without stopping. \u00a0(I really did have to buy a new answering machine because she would call and fill up the one I had.) \u00a0She was driven and focused on what she wanted to do. \u00a0I also know that she was very proud of you, because she always spoke highly of what you were doing. \u00a0I don’t want to get too personal, but can you tell us a little what it was like growing up in a whirlwind like that? \u00a0Every once in a while I find articles about her buying and almond farm and such and I just think, wow… that must have been a roller coaster.<\/p>\n

A: She was a force of nature. She made (and lost) lots of money but I think she had a pretty good time. She dated Eddie Fisher, Peter Sellers, comedy writers after Ernie passed \u2013 why not? She taped her shows in Las Vegas, New York and London. She knew everyone \u2013 I have a photo of myself, my best friend Josh Davis and his brother Tony dressed as the Marx Brothers WITH GROUCHO on Halloween. It blows my mind she could just call him up and we came over.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Left to Right: Josh Mills, Tony Davis, Groucho, Josh Davis.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But you know what? My mom was also a truly sweet, kind woman too who had her feet firmly planted on the ground. She was a great mom. She was away a lot doing musical shows when I was a kid and she felt a lot of guilt over that but it paid the bills. She had to do it. But she always worked the snack stand at my little league baseball games, came to all my school functions, made sure I was with her for at least a week when she was on the road working and worked her butt off to keep climbing back into the ring again and again. She lost Ernie to a car accident in \u201862, her daughter in a car accident in \u201882, lost a great friend to AIDS and yet she still could laugh. I mention this in my liner notes to her Christmas CD but she was a pretty terrible cook. And yet after college, she always had a huge Thanksgiving party at her house for all my friends and those friends still talk about how great those times were. That\u2019s immensely satisfying. Above all, she was a funny, fantastic woman who happened to introduce me to Gore Vidal, spent Christmas nights at Jack Lemmon\u2019s house every year but still was my biggest supporter (with my dad). They always told me they loved me and always told me how proud they were of me. What more couldn\u2019<\/strong>t you want, really? I couldn\u2019t have asked for better parents at the end of the day.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Q9:
\nYou’re a well-known food connoisseur, and you’ve lived in a number of places. \u00a0I love that stuff myself. \u00a0Can you give us a short list of eateries that are “don’t miss” places?<\/p>\n

A: I was just in Washington D.C. and Ben\u2019s Chili Bowl (\u00a0http:\/\/www.benschilibowl.com\/ordereze\/default.aspx<\/a>) and the Florida Avenue Grill (\u00a0http:\/\/floridaavenuegrill.com\/<\/a>) are just fantastic, real places that should be on your short list. Arthur Bryant\u2019s (http:\/\/www.arthurbryantsbbq.com\/index.htm<\/a>\u00a0) in Kansas City serves perhaps what can only be described as a psychedelic meat experience and the best BBQ I have ever had.<\/strong><\/p>\n

My mom loved Frankie and Johnnies in New York from her theater days (http:\/\/frankieandjohnnies.com\/steakhouses\/frankieandjohnnies.html<\/a>) and Patsy\u2019s (\u00a0http:\/\/www.patsys.com\/<\/a>\u00a0) is also a favorite. My dad and my grandfather were major foodies \u2013 both highbrow and low brow. Every year we\u2019d visit my dad\u2019s family on Long Island, it was a ritual \u2013 we had to get White Castle and Sabrett hot dogs. It wasn\u2019t even a question \u00a0– you just made it a point to go. I still do. My 2 and a half year old took down 2 Sabrett\u2019s a year ago and I couldn\u2019t have been more proud!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Q10:
\nI have done enough interviews that I get frustrated about people asking me the same old questions and missing important things. \u00a0What question should I have asked you that I didn’t? \u00a0How would you answer it?<\/p>\n

A: If you could be any sandwich in the world, what would you be? A knuckle sandwich of course.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I’d like to thank Josh Mills and Ediad Productions for all the photos used in this post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Film fans probably don’t know the name of Josh Mills, but it’s a name I’ve known for a long time. \u00a0His mother, Edie Adams, was a hero of mine. \u00a0 Edie was a preservationist when it wasn’t fashionable to be one. \u00a0She saved film that people said was worthless. \u00a0She testified to Congress about it. … Continue reading “Ten Questions with Josh Mills”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"powered_cache_disable_cache":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[207,4],"tags":[123,121,124,87,122,125],"class_list":["post-325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film","category-views-and-reviews","tag-ben-model","tag-edie-adams","tag-ernie-kovacs","tag-film-preservation","tag-josh-mills","tag-martin-mills"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=325"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1921,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325\/revisions\/1921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}