The Lobbyist and the Swede

Admit it, you've spent more than a few moments browsing your life away on IMDB.com. Yeah, yeah, you started trying to find out who directed Casablanca. But you ended up looking at what the spawn of Joe Piscopo is working on. And that's ok.

This feature will compile those utterly useless tidbits of information for you, so next time you're having a conversation with someone, you can say, "Did you know someone made a documentary about Stephen Tobolowsky?"

Episode One: The Lobbyist and the Swede

As anyone is wont to do on a boring weeknight, I found myself browsing through Dolph Lundgren's film credits on IMDB. After all, from Rocky IV to Masters of the Universe and Showdown in Little Tokyo, his films had a profound influence on my youth. Given his 6'4" frame, blond locks, "foreign" accent (he's Swedish), and place in time (the 1980's), Lundgren's lot was to play bad-ass Russkies. As I discovered that night, he played such a character in 1989's Red Scorpion, along with IMDB stalwart M. Emmett Walsh.

But wait... who was responsible for this mess? Believe it - Jack fucking Abramoff. Sure, it's the only movie Jack-O ever made, but what a way to be remembered! Too bad he had to go off and get involved with political scandals and Tommy D - otherwise, we might be able to remember him for being the man to bring together Dolph Lundgren and M. Emmett Walsh - in Africa!

I would love to write a 10-page article for those of you that would like to know more about this piece of Reagan-era film history. But the truth is, Salon already quite ably did.

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