Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter present Learn Your Lesson...About Being Different - Shockucational Acceptance, the eleventh in a series of programs highlighting the most ridiculous, insane and camptastic shockucational films and TV specials of the collection. This time, we're celebrating our differences with mime bullies, wheelchair musical numbers, homophobic jocks and even Michael Jackson singing about self-acceptance. Michael Keaton stars in A Different Approach (1978), an all-star musical comedy benefitting disabled workers' rights (with cameos by Two Golden Girls!). In the Captain Kangaroo cartoon The Most Important Person: I'm the Only Me! (1972), a shaggy alien thinks all human children look alike, but can a rainbow of kids teach him how wrong he is (in song)? Schoolhouse bullying always goes better with rhyming mimes, as we find in People: Different But Alike (1970). Homophobic nerd bullying turns to acceptance and appreciation after a good talking to from coach in Who's Different? (1984). Learn that there's nothing "wrong" with your neighbor, it's just that He's Mentally Retarded (1975). Michael Jackson and Roberta Flack act as children accepting their physical shortcomings in the musical number "When I Grow Up" from Free To Be...You and Me (1978). Kristy McNichol has a different kind of family in her foster home with her wheelchair bound foster brother in an excerpt of the ABC Afterschool Special The Pinballs (1977). Leigh McCloskey (Dallas) tries to impress a blind girl by donning blind goggles in another extra special Afterschool Special Blind Sunday (1976). With more special surprises, it's time you learned your lesson!
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In picturesque suburbia, there’s a new boy on the block, Craig. Craig is a special boy, but his unsympathetic neighbor thinks “there’s something wrong with him.” Will he learn the error of his ways and grow to accept, and possibly even love Craig? Do you know anyone like Craig?
ABC After School Special starring 70s tomboy icon and Dynamite Magazine cover girl Kristy McNichol in a heartwarming tale of a tough-skinned foster kid who is bounced from home to home. Fresh from her success playing Buddy on the Family TV show, Kristy was just three years away from her peak in the teen sex comedy Little Darlings. Since the early 90s, she is firmly in the “where are they now” category. “Me an’ Harvey and Thomas J., we’re like pinballs. Somebody came along with a dime, put it in, pushed a button and out we came, ready or not. You don’t see pinballs helping each other now do you? Because they can’t, they’re just things.” Scores an 8 out of 10 stars on kristymcnichol.net.
Blind Sunday (Color, 1976)
Another ABC Afterschool Special, directed by TV-movie staple Larry Elikan and starring soap opera stud Leigh McCloskey. This tender tale of puppy love was directly lifted for the Comedy Central show Strangers with Candy. It's love at first sight when High-Schooler Jeff sees the beautiful Eileen sitting poolside. After he learns she's blind, he goes about trying to impress her by "understanding what it's like to be blind" by strapping on blinding-goggles. Sometimes love makes you learn your lesson, the hard way.
Our films are almost exclusively drawn from our collection of over 50,000 16mm prints of animation, commercials, educational films, feature films, movie trailers, medical, industrial military, news out-takes and every genre in between. We’re actively working to present rarely screened genres of cinema as well as avant-garde and ethno-cultural documentaries, which expand the boundaries of cinema. Oddball Films is the largest film archive in Northern California and one of the most unusual private collections in the US. We invite you to join us in our weekly offerings of offbeat cinema.