Some tidbits:

(from a book about werewolf movies): Donald Sutherland, George Hamilton and Gene Wilder were all considered for the lead in Werewolf of Washington. Sutherland was interested, but his girlfriend at the time, Jane Fonda, saw the director's previous movie (Coming Apart) being screened for him, and was like, "This is sexist. You can't do this movie." So he turned it down. The review in this book also calls out Dean for acting too much like a dog in the movie. I figured Dean took inspiration from the dog he owned at the time anyway.

(from ArtNews) 2006 review of Dean's exhibit at the Gerald Peters gallery. Sassies has another article about it, but I'll have to see if I can find this somewhere else. The snippet I can get reads, "Dean Stockwell's approach to photo-montage proved uneven. The 28 collages dating from the past four years demonstrated the ease with which artists working in this medium can slip from powerful communication into heavy-handedness."

For George Herms' artwork, he talks about Dennis Hopper, Dean Stockwell and Russ Tamblyn first, which seems unusual compared to most of the other entries. He usually talks about meeting the artist and his experiences with them, so it's interesting he also included Herms' friends in this. About Dean, Ruscha said he was a "quiet, smart and interesting man." He also went on a tangent about how people assume an actor's personality by the roles they take, how that's bullshit and how he shouldn't be curious about their private lives.

Ruscha met Herms a few times- in Topanga Canyon, at Herms' wedding and at one of Herms' various raffles.

Raffles? Well, I also got Herms' book The Prometheus Archives from the library, and in the chronology, it mentions he'd do raffles of his artwork once in a while to raise money. One in particular was called a "Roofle," and it was to raise money to fix his roof. The one Ruscha attended was to help them cover moving costs after dealing with rent increases.

Reading this chronology, Herms strikes me as someone who faced two paths at one point in time- one where he was a successful engineer and leader in his community and another where he solely focused on artwork. He took the latter path, but bits of the former path still show up in his life, like his listing PTA president on his chronology for example.

To recap:

• a bunch of guys strip down a guy, who isn’t wearing underwear, and then throw him into a dumpster. Except for the dumpster, this sounds like the beginning of a gay orgy porno.

• Al walks in while Sam is getting stripped down and watched him get thrown into the dumpster.

• Al also watches Sam, who at this point is naked except for socks, get dressed again.

• At the end, Sam and Al sing along to a romantic song on the radio, the same one that’s playing when Sam kisses Jill.

• Sam has to look to Al for permission- twice -to kiss the girl.

Well-intentioned social commentary that (usually) hits the mark

Sam having the worst day of his life

Another piece of Al's backstory is revealed; makes him sadder

The writers remembered that Scott Bakula can sing and dance

Sam suddenly finds himself in the midst of a family drama

Random historical figure appearance

Sam is dropped into the most second-hand embarrassment producing situation you've ever seen

I hope this doesn't awaken anything in me (Scott Bakula in drag episodes)

The Spooky Episode (one per season)

Some gifs from Checkmate episode S01E03 "The Cyanide Touch". Dean Stockwell plays an extremely intelligent but cocky college student determined to get to the bottom of a classmate's death. His 'the end justifies the means' attitude has Don, Jed, and Dr. Hyatt concerned he'll take things too far.