Tuesday, February 7, 2017
038 - It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, 1963, United States. Dir. Stanley Kramer.
Stanley Kramer made serious movies. Important movies. Movies that had something to say. Movies that told a message. Movies that preached.
Here are a few of them:
The Defiant Ones, 1958 - Race relations in America; nominated for 9 Oscars, won 2.
Inherit the Wind, 1960 - The Scopes Monkey Trial; nominated for nominated for 4 Oscars.
Judgment at Nuremberg, 1961 - The war crimes trial of four Nazis; nominated for 11 Oscars, won 2.
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, 1967 - Race relations in America; nominated for 10 Oscars, won 2.
The public knew him as a director of dramas. Critics knew him as a director of dramas. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times claimed he was only a director of dramas, that Kramer could not make a comedy.
So Kramer had to prove him wrong. He had to make a comedy to prove to himself and to the world that he could make a funny movie.
He made the biggest comedy of all time.
One of the greatest epic films ever made, with the largest all-star cast ever assembled.
Someone on the supplemental materials claims that 114 comedians appear in this picture. Perhaps that is not even counting the dramatic actors.
The film is 3 hours, 17 minutes long, in our version.
It was filmed in Single-Panel Cinerama, also known as Ultra Panavision 70.
It was filmed on 70-mm film.
With 6-track stereophonic sound.
In glorious Technicolor.
It begins with a blank screen for 10 seconds, giving time for the Cinerama road show curtains to open.
It follows with a 7-minute animated opening credit sequence.
The titles were designed by the legendary Saul Bass.
The music is played by all 110 members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic orchestra. The score is composed by Ernest Gold.
The Ken Darby Singers sing the opening song.
It was shot by the legendary cinematographer Ernest Laszlo.
It took six months to film. It was shot on location as well as on sound stages. Sometimes they filmed in the desert, in temperatures reaching 120 degrees.
No movie has ever had this many stars in it, and it is hard to believe any movie ever will.
Everyone in Hollywood wanted to be in it.
It is its own film school on how to make a movie.
There are stunts galore, including synchronized car driving, car chases, car crashes, truck crashes, things flying off of trucks, a car sinking in the river, airplanes, airplane crashes, an airplane flying through a billboard, an airplane flying upside down, people hanging upside down, helicopters, people fighting, people flying, people falling, people landing on electric cables, people hanging by cords, people flipping over, the destruction of an entire gas station, a blow torch catching things on fire, dynamite exploding, too many men on a fire-truck ladder, and Ethel Merman slipping on a banana peel.
The story begins on California Highway 74, the Palms to Pines Scenic Byway cutting through the Palm Desert.
Four groups of motorists are driving through, each with his own purpose, each with a different car that matches his personality. Suddenly a fifth car comes racing by. He is in a hurry. He is speeding. He is going more than a hundred miles an hour.
It is Smiler Grogan. He is being chased by the police. He misses a curve. He goes straight off an embankment. His car goes flying through the air and careens, crashing down the side of the desert hill.
The four cars stop. Five men get out and go down the hill. They are Sid Caesar and Milton Berle; Mickey Rooney and Buddy Hackett; and Jonathan Winters.
At the top of the hill are the women: Edie Adams, Dorothy Provine, and Ethel Merman.
Jimmy Durante plays Smiler Grogan. He is lying on his back on the rocks. He tells the men that "There's this dough, see?" $350,000. Worth around $2,750,000 today.
Hidden under the Big W.
The Big W.
He talks for awhile, and then he kicks the bucket. Literally.
A couple of police officers come down the hill and questions the men. No one says anything. Finally, they are able to go back up the hill and return to their cars. Everyone plays it cool. They all get in their cars and begin driving. They look over their shoulders. Are the others thinking what we're thinking?
Yes.
Everyone is thinking the same thing.
Everyone wants the money.
Everyone wants to find the money.
Everyone wants to find the Big W.
For the next three hours we will see the wild, zany, madcap race of a group of people that grows from 8 to 15 and encounters hundreds along the way. As humanity loses its mind in search of instant wealth.
We will follow multiple story lines going through multiple adventures, as well as the folks at the police station following them.
Spencer Tracy is billed as the star. He is the chief detective, and he is watching the groups. Yet his home life is messy, and he wants the money too.
I first saw this film in the first grade. I could not stop laughing. The next day at school I spoke with a boy named Wendell during recess. He had watched it the night before also. (It was on television.) We talked all recess about it, about how funny it was, about all the things that happened, and about the Big W.
My sons first saw the film around the same age. They have now seen it about a dozen times. It still unveils new things with each viewing.
It has not gotten old.
It is fresh and alive and colorful and entertaining.
It is masterfully made.
* * * * * *
* * * * * *
I started writing up some notes on this one. They are incomplete, but this is a pretty good start. I'll add to it later.
When the airplane flies through the billboard, it really happens. The stunt pilot had to fly the plane at 200 mph with a 4-ft clearance on all four sides.
Buddy Hackett and Mickey Rooney spent seven days filming inside an airplane, and it takes up a minute and a half in the film. This includes having Hackett flip upside down, hanging by his seatbelt.
Radio Ad 1
While making Stanley Kramer's It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, the film's forty-seven stars managed to completely destroy 16 cars, 1 Jeep, 3 trucks, 2 airplanes, 1 restaurant, a pet shop, an airport, one hardware store, a state park, a small town, a granite statue, a condemned building, one billboard, 30 miles of California highway, and 700 yards of clothing material.
They also incurred countless bruises, abrasions, lesions, fractures, bumps, knocks, nicks, hits, humps, misses, concussions, cuts, scrapes, cracks, and boo boos!
THE SPEEDSTER SMILER GROGAN
Jimmy Durante- Smiler Grogan, 1957 Ford Fairlane, State Highway 74, Palm Springs
THE FIVE MEN AT THE CRASH SITE
Milton Berle - J. Russell Finch, owner, Pacific Edible Seaweed Company
Sid Caesar - Melville Crump, dentist
Mickey Rooney - Ding "Dingy" Bell, comedy writer, on vacation to Las Vegas
Buddy Hackett - Benjy Benjamin, comedy writer, on vacation to Las Vegas
Jonathan Winters - Lennie Pike, mover
THE THREE WOMEN WITH THEM
Ethel Merman - Mrs. Marcus
Dorothy Provine - Emeline Marcus-Finch
Edie Adams - Monica Crump
THE DETECTIVES AT THE SCENE
Norman Fell - Detective at Grogan's Crash Site
Nicholas Georgiade - Detective at Grogan's Crash Site
THE POLICE AT THE STATIONS
SPENCER TRACEY - Captain T. G. Culpepper
WILLIAM DEMAREST - Police Chief Aloysius
ANDY DEVINE - Sheriff of Crockett County
Stan Freberg - a police officer at Crockett County, cameo by the Composer of the film!
JERRY LEWIS - runs over the police chief's hat
John Clarke - Helicopter Pilot
Don C. Harvey - Policeman in Helicopter
AIRPLANES
Ben Blue - Biplane Pilot
Charles Lane - Airport Manager
Jim Backus - Tyler Fitzgerald, millionaire
1) Melville and Monica Crump
They are driving a sedan. Then they take the biplane. It tears apart. They arrive in Santa Rosita before anyone, but they get locked in the basement of a hardware store. They destroy the basement trying to get out.
SID CAESAR - Melville Crump
EDIE ADAMS - Monica Crump
Ben Blue - Biplane Pilot
JACK BENNY - Trouble? Having any trouble? / Yes, and we don't need any help from you. / Well!
Leo Gorcey - First Cab Driver
Doodles Weaver - Hardware Store Clerk
EDWARD EVERETT HORTON - Mr. Dinckler
SAMMEE TONG - Chinesse Laundryman
Bachelor Father (1957-1962)
PETER FALK - Third Cab Driver
2) Mrs. Marcus, J. Russell Finch, and Emeline Marcus-Finch
They are driving a convertible. Then they get in the Jeep with the Englishman Algernon. Then the women get in the tow truck with Lennie Pike, while the men are in a car. Then they are all together in the tow truck with Sylvester.
MILTON BERLE - J. Russell Finch
ETHEL MERMAN - Mrs. Marcus
DOROTHY PROVINE - Emeline Marcus-Finch
TERRY-THOMAS - J. Algernon Hawthorne
DICK SHAWN - Sylvester Marcus
Barrie Chase - Sylvester's Girlfriend
I say, what's that man doing honking his hooter?
3) Lennie Pike
JONATHAN WINTERS - Lennie Pike
He is driving a box truck. Then he drives a little girl's bicycle. He tries to hitchhike with Otto Meyer (Phil Silvers), who abandons him. Lennie finds him at Ray & Irwin's garage. Otto Meyer escapes. Lennie fights Ray and Irwin and destroys their garage. Then he takes their tow truck. He eventually picks up Mrs. Marcus and Emeline. They pull into a service station just as Russell and Algernon pull out to go back and get them. Eventually, they all end up together.
4) Otto Meyer
He is driving a convertible. He tricks Lennie Pike (Jonathan Winters) and drives off without him. He picks up the Miner and takes him to his home. The Miner's son leads him down the hill into the water. His car sinks. He hitches a ride with the Nervous Motorist (Don Knotts) and takes his car from him.
PHIL SILVERS - Otto Meyer
MIKE MAZURKI - Miner
Eddie Rosen - Eddie
DON KNOTTS - Nervous Motorist
5) Dingy Bell and Benjy Benjamin
"the little one and the one with the marbles in his mouth"
They are driving a red Volkswagon Beetle. Then they contract with the Beechcraft airplane. Then they take a cab.
MICKEY ROONEY - Dingy
BUDDY HACKETT - Benjy Benjamin
CHARLES LANE - Airport Manager
JIM BACKUS - Tyler Fitzgerald
THE THREE STOOGES - firemen
CARL REINER - Tower Controller at Rancho Conejo
EDDIE "ROCHESTER" ANDERSON - Second Cab Driver
Stop kidding, will you? Get back there and make us some booze! It's the only way to fly.
Now I'll make an Old Fashioned the Old Fashioned way, the way Dad used to. / What if something happens?! / What could happen to an Old Fashioned?
RAY & IRWIN'S GARAGE
Arnold Stang - Ray
Marvin Kaplin - Irwin
Chick Chandler - Policeman Outside Ray & Irwin's Garage
Roy Roberts - Policeman Outside Ray & Irwin's Garage
THE PLAYERS
Spencer Tracey (1900-1967) - nominated for 9 Oscars, won 2
Jimmy Durante (1893-1980) - star of Ragtime, Vaudeville, Broadway, Recording, Radio, Television, Film, known especially for his large nose (The Schnoz, The Schnozzola), gravely voice, cigar, ragtime piano playing, the songs "Inka Dinka Doo!," "Make Someone Happy," "I'll Be Seeing You," the catchphrase "Dat's my boy dat said dat!," silent films with Buster Keaton, his trio with Lou Clayton and Eddie Jackson, and for popularizing the phrase "the elephant in the room." In the Broadway show Billy Rose Durante led an elephant across the stage. A police officer asked, "What are you doing with that elephant?" He replied, "What elephant?" You may know him for narrating and singing for the animated Christmas special Frosty the Snowman.
Milton Berle (1908-2002) - child star of Silent Films, star of Vaudeville, Broadway, Radio, Television, Film, Las Vegas. Known as Mr. Television, he became a household name as the host of the Texaco Star Theatre Starring Milton Berle, The Buick-Berle Show, and The Milton Berle Show.
nominated for 3 Emmys, won 1, won 1 special Emmy; won the Guinness Book of World Records record for the greatest number of charity performances by a show business performer
Sid Caeasar (1922-2014) - writer, saxphonist, stand-up comedian, sketch comedian, pantomime, Television, known for Your Show of Shows and Caesar's Hour; gave writing jobs to Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, Larry Gelbart, Carl Reiner, and Woody Allen; made his television debut on Milton Berle's Texaco Star Theatre; nominated for 11 Emmys, won 2
Mickey Rooney (1920-2014) - star of Vaudeville, Broadway, Radio, Television, Film, and one of the biggest stars in Hollywood history; worked from 1926 to 2014, with a movie coming out in 2017; known for his Mickey McGuire shorts in the 1920s and 1930s, the Andy Hardy movies in the 1930s and 1940s, musicals with Judy Garland, and many other performances in film and television non-stop for nearly 90 years; nominated for 4 Oscars, won 2 special Oscars. Was the inspiration for the name Mickey Mouse. The Wikipedia article claims skeptically that Mickey Rooney made the claim for himself. However, we were told at an official Disney show at Walt Disney World that Mickey Mouse was in fact named after Mickey Rooney, suggested by Walt Disney's wife.
Buddy Hackett (1924-2003) - God's Little Acre, The Music Man, The Love Bug, Scrooged, The Little Mermaid
Jonathan Winters (1925-2013) - Mork & Mindy (TV), The Smurfs,
Ethel Merman (1908-1984) - Anything Goes, Alexander's Ragtime Band, Stage Door Canteen, There's No Business Like Show Business, Airplane!,
Dorothy Provine (1935-2010) - The Alaskans (TV), The Roaring Twenties (TV), The Great Race (He Shouldn't-A, Hadn't-A, Oughtn't-A Swang On Me!), That Darn Cat,
Edie Adams (1927-2008) - Here's Edie (TV), The Apartment, Up in Smoke
Phil Silvers (1911-1985) - The King of Chutzpah.
The Phil Silvers Show (TV, 1955-1959), The New Phil Silvers Show (TV 1963-1964), The Beverly Hillbillies (TV), You're in the Army Now, All Through the Night, Four Jills in a Jeep, Cover Girl, A Thousand and One Nights, Summer Stock, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,
Terry-Thomas (1911-1990) - The Private Life of Henry VIII, The Mouse on the Moon, Those Magnificent Young Men in Their Flying Machines, Those Daring Young Men in Their Jaunty Jalopies, The Abominable Dr. Phibes, Dr. Phibes Rises Again, Robin Hood, The Hound of the Baskervilles.
Dick Shawn (1923-1987) - The Opposite Sex, The Producers, Love at First Bite, Batman & Robin.
William Demarest (1892-1983) - worked from 1927 to 1976, Love and Marriage (TV), Tales of Wells Fargo (TV), My Three Sons (TV), nominated for an Oscar for The Jolson Story (1946)
Andy Devine (1905-1977) - worked from 1926 to 1977
Jim Backus (1913-1989) - I Married Joan (TV, 1952-1955), Mister Magoo (TV, 1960), Hot Off the Wire (TV), The Famous Adventures of Mr. Magoo (TV), Blondie (TV), Gilligan's Island (TV), The New Adventures of Gilligan (TV), What's New Mr. Magoo? (TV), Gilligan's Planet (TV), Father Was a Fullback, Ma and Pa Kettle Go to Town, M (remake), His Kind of Woman, Deadline U.S.A., Pat and Mike, Don't Bother to Knock, Androcles and the Lion, Angel Face, Francis in the Navy, Rebel Without a Cause, The Opposite Sex, Johnny Cool, Myra Brekinridge, Pete's Dragon,
Peter Falk (1927-2011) - The Trials of O'Brien (TV), Columbo (TV), Pocketful of Miracles, Robin and the 7 Hoods, The Great Race, Anzio, Husbands, A Woman Under the Influence, Murder By Death, Opening Night, The Cheap Detective, The In-Laws, The Great Muppet Caper, The Princess Bride, Wings of Desire, The Player, Faraway So Close!, Three Days to Vegas.
Eddie "Rochester" Anderson (1905-1977) - The Jack Benny Program (TV), Harlem Globe Trotters (TV), Jezebel, You Can't Take It With You, Thanks for the Memory, You Can't Cheat an Honest Man, Gone with the Wind, Topper Returns, Cabin in the Sky, Broadway Rhythm, Brewster's Millions.
Don Knotts () - The Steve Allen Show (TV), The Red Skelton Show (TV), The Andy Griffith Show (TV), Three's Company (TV), Matlock (TV), No Time for Sergeants, The Incredible Mr. Limpet, The Ghost and Mr. Chicken, The Reluctant Astronaut, The Shakiest Gun in the West, How to Frame a Figg, The Apple Dumpling Gang, No Deposit No Return, Gus, Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo, Hot Lead and Cold Feet, The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again, The Private Eyes, Cannonball Run II, Pleasantville, Hermie & Friends, Chicken Little, Air Buddies.
Carl Reiner (1922- ) - Caesar's Hour (writer) (TV), The Dinah Shore Chevy Show (writer) (TV), The Dick Van Dyke Show (creator, writer, actor) (TV), Good Morning World (exec. prod., dir.) (TV), The New Dick Van Dyke Show (writer) (TV), Lotsa Luck (writer) (TV), Good Heavens (TV), Hot in Cleveland (TV), Jake and the Never Land Pirates (TV),
Norman Fell (1924-1998) - Three's Company (TV), The Ropers (TV), Teachers Only (TV), Pork Chop Hill, The Rat Race, Ocean's 11, Inherit the Wind, The Killers, The Graduate, Bullitt, Catch-22, Airport 1975, For the Boys
Mike Mazurki (1907-1940) - The Shanghai Gesture, The Moon and Sixpence, Gentleman Jim, Thank Your Lucky Stars, The Canterville Ghost, The Princess and the Pirate, Murder My Sweet, The Thin Man Goes Home, Dick Tracy, Sinbad the Sailor, Nightmare Alley, I Walk Alone, Samson and Delilah, Night and the City, New York Confidential, Blood Alley, Kismet, Around the World in Eighty Days, Some Like It Hot, Pocketful of Miracles, Dick Tracy.
Eddie Rosen - Eddie, the miner's son
Charles Lane (1905-2007) - Dear Phoebe (TV), Dennis the Menace (TV), The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis (TV), Petticoat Junction (TV), hundreds of films
Jack Benny (1894-1974) - The Jack Benny Program (radio, TV)
Jerry Lewis (1926- ) - At War with the Army, Cinderfella, The Nutty Professor, Three On a Couch, The King of Comedy
Edward Everett Horton (1886-1970) - worked from 1922 to 1971; Ruggles of Red Gap, La Boheme, The Front Page, Alice in Wonderland, Design for Living, Easy to Love, The Gay Divorcee, The Merry Widow, All the King's Horses, The Devil is a Woman, Top Hat, Hearts Divided, Shall We Dance, College Swing, Holiday, Ziegfeld Girl, Here Comes Mr. Jordan, I Married an Angel, Springtime in the Rockies, Forever and a Day, Arsenic and Old Lace, Pocketful of Miracles, Sex and the Single Girl, The Perils of Pauline.
Leo Gorcey (1917-1969) - one of the Dead End Kids, one of the East Side Kids, and one of the Bowery Boys, Ethelbert "Muggs" McGinnis, Terence Alyosius "Slip" Mahoney
Zazu Pitts (1894-1963) - Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, The Little Princess, Greed, The Squall, No No Nanette (1930), All Quiet On the Western Front (1930), Sin Takes a Holiday, Ruggles of Red Gap, Eternally Yours, No No Nanette (1940),
The Three Stooges
Doodles Weaver (1912-1983) -
Sammee Tong (1901-1964) - Chinese Laundryman
Bachelor Father (TV, 1957-1962)
Buster Keaton (1895-1966) - The Great Stone Face
Terry-Thomas and Dorothy Provine were both in Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die (1963).
Terry-Thomas and Edward Everett Horton were both in The Perils of Pauline (1967).
Dick Shawn and Jim Backus (along with Joan Blondell) were both in The Opposite Sex (1956).
Dick Shawn, Peter Falk, and Jonathan Winters were all in Penelope (1966).
Phil Silvers and William Demarest were both in All Through the Night (1942).
Milton Berle, Phil Silvers, Sterling Holloway, William Demarest, Andy Devine, Mike Mazurki, Doodles Weaver (and Joan Blondell) all played in Won Ton Ton: The Dog Who Saved Hollywood (1976).
Mickey Rooney and Jim Backus were both in Pete's Dragon (1977).
Phil Silvers and Jim Backus were both in There Goes the Bride (1980).
Jonathan Winters and Carl Reiner were both in The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! (1966).
Zazu Pitts and (Joan Blondell) were both in This Could Be the Night (1957).
Milton Berle and Zazu Pitts were both in the silent film Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1917). Berle was around 8 and Pitts was around 23 at the time they made it.
Tuesday, February 7, 2017
Monday, February 6, 2017
037 - The Naked Kiss, 1964, United States. Dir. Samuel Fuller.
Monday, February 6, 2017
037 - The Naked Kiss, 1964, United States. Dir. Samuel Fuller.
Pulp.
This is the kind of movie where people talk to each other by grabbing them by the shoulders, shaking hard, and yelling in their faces at close range.
Or they just slap each other.
Or hit each other with hard objects.
Or shove wadded-up dirty money in people's mouths.
It opens with an explosion of angry violence.
The prostitute, dressed in her night set, is beating her pimp over the head with her purse.
They do not use the word pimp. Later in the film she shouts out, "He was my taut!" See if you can find the word taut in a slang dictionary. We are in the hands of a street writer.
Her wig comes off.
She is bald!
Somehow this is disturbing.
And cinematically memorable.
We are looking through the lens of an early hand-held camera. It is strapped to her. We see her hitting him. It is strapped to him. We see her hitting him.
We find out later that he was cheating all his girls. She found out and did something about it. He had her head shaved to shame her. She got a group of girls to leave him. He put out word that they were to have their faces splashed with acid whenever they were found. He found her. Before he could hurt her, she beat him.
Cash flies everywhere.
He owes her $75.
She takes only what he owes her. Or as she says, "what's coming to me!"
And stuffs it.
She leaves the rest. And leaves.
With her wig on.
Who ever knew that putting on a wig could be an act of defiance?
She is putting on her helmet. Preparing for battle. Restoring herself. Standing tall.
The credits roll across her face.
This is Sam Fuller. He does not have time for establishing shots. Just get to the point.
Constance Towers, the film's star, recalled, "He wanted it to be like a screaming headline."
Fuller himself said, "We are using the camera as a typewriter."
As a teenager he wrote for a tabloid in New York City. This set the tone of his writing for life.
Before that he sold papers at age 12. Back then you bought papers from the circulation desk. "You could hear the presses. The earth shook."
A funny thing happened on the way to the presses.
He met the foreman of the press room, the boss. The foreman took him upstairs. Or as he recalls it, "I entered Paradise." It was The New York Evening Journal, "the biggest newspaper in the world." He saw what he considered all of human history contained in one great room.
The man asked him his age. He said 12. The man said you had to be 14 to work in New York City. He asked him his age again. He said 14. He got a job. He started as a copy boy.
Ernest Hemingway began as a newspaper reporter. It influenced his writing style. He influenced the writing of the world.
Samuel Fuller had a similar upbringing. He wrote for papers. He wrote for tabloids. He wrote for pulp magazines. He liked a good shocker.
He once said, "If anything irritates anyone, even for a minute, I enjoy it."
Kelly, our girl, moves away. She arrives by bus in a small town, Grantville, where she can start over, where she can be safe.
Shock Corridor, Fuller's previous film, which we saw yesterday, is playing at the movie theater where the bus drops her off.
A couple of men see her. They take notice. One is named Griff. Yeah, this is pulp. Griff says, "She's enough to make a bulldog bust its chain." Griff busts his chain. And follows her.
He sits down at the park bench next to her. She is reading a book written by Fuller years ago. (Yeah, he likes an inside reference.) She is a travelling salesman. She is selling champagne. She shows him her bottles. He wants a free sample. She refuses to give it. He says he is pretty good at popping a cork if the vintage is right.
They wake up in his room. She is dressing. He has placed a twenty-dollar bill on the table. He says he is paying her ten. She says she does not make change.
She knows he is a cop. He is impressed that she guessed it. He runs her out of town. He has to keep the town clean. But he recommends her to Candy's shop across the river. She can be a Bon-Bon for Candy.
Wait.
Did we just say he is a police officer and he is running her out of town to keep the town clean? After he just . . .
Yes. This is Sam Fuller. He writes about scandal, remember?
All the world's a stage, / And all the men and women merely players.
Maybe Shakespeare anticipated what the word player would come to mean.
He may be playing her, but she is sure about to play him.
She goes to Candy's shop. (Yes, Fuller beat 50 Cent by 50 years.) Candy is happy to have a new girl. She invites her back to set her up. Kelly beats Candy with her purse.
What?
Kelly's coming! Protect yourself!
Instead of becoming a Bon-Bon, Kelly becomes a nurse for handicapped children. She wants love. She wants to love and to be loved. She wants to heal.
Griff is angry. How dare you become a nurse! You are a prostitute! You are not allowed to change professions!
Wasn't Griff trying to clean up the town?
Maybe Griff has his own ambitions.
Kelly enters into the dream world. If you believe it, it can happen. She takes the children into that world. She dresses them as pirates. She tells them stories. They run and play.
A new man, Grant, will take her into that dream world. He is the son of the family for whom the
town, Grantville, is named. He will love her. He will marry her. Her life will be good.
Or as Towers sees it, "She found a man who loved her and offered her the life of her dreams."
She loves the poetry of Byron. He will take her to see where Byron wrote.
She loves Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. He will play it for her.
He quotes Baudelaire. She asks if it is Goethe. She pronounces it Goat-the. She is self-taught. "A sweetheart is a bottle of wine. A wife is a wine bottle." Grant is a real romantic.
Grant proposes to Kelly and she accepts. When he goes to kiss her, she hesitates. Something does not feel right. Something smells wrong. Something tastes wrong.
Something is wrong.
That is the "naked kiss." Prostitutes also call it an "iron kiss." It is a knowing, an intuition, an awareness that the person on the other end of those lips is not good. Not good, that is, in ways that are above and beyond those of her regular customers. In ways that are evil.
Is she right?
Or does she just have cold feet?
She will buy a beautiful wedding dress. And she will take it to show him. Even though Josephine, the dress maker, warns her that it is bad luck.
She will end up exchanging her purse for a hard telephone handle.
And will depend upon the kindness of others to help her. But will she find them?
Constance Towers observed later that Kelly is the true character in the film, the character that carries the truth with her wherever she goes. And she is in every scene.
After doing these two films with Samuel Fuller, Towers went on to Broadway, and she starred in Anastasia, The Sound of Music, and the revival of The King and I, with Yul Brynner. The Village Voice had fun with it, publishing a full-page picture of her bald head in The Naked Kiss in comparison with Brynner's bald head, joking that she was going to give him a run for the King role.
Earlier in our blog we spoke of family support. In 031 - Shadows (January 31), we talked about how John Cassavetes' father supported him when he told his father he wanted to be an actor.
Constance Towers' father supported her as well. He was concerned that she was going to play a prostitute, and he did not want it to hurt her image or her career. It took him three months to see the film when it came out. When he saw it, he said, "You know, it's a good film. And you're wonderful. And I like it."
That is what artists need to hear from their loved ones. If you are the father or parent or loved one of artists, let them know how much you believe in them. Tell them. Often.
The film features a song that Constance Towers introduced to Samuel Fuller. After Shock Corridor they went on a trip to Panama. On the flight, he watched her as she helped save a baby's life by giving it oxygen. This gave him the idea of having Kelly become a nurse of handicapped children. She also sang her song and he heard it and put it in the movie.
It was a French song called "Dear Father," and was sung by a boy to his father. Constance had it translated to English and changed it to "Dear Mother," where the boy sang to his mother. She sang it in her nightclub act.
Show me where, Mommy dear, and here's what I will do
I will take the dear bluebird and give it to you
When Fuller heard it, he tweaked it for her to sing to the children in return, and it became "Little Child."
Constance and the children sang it live on set. They did not go back and record it in the studio. So the sound is authentic and human.
Dear, the bluebird's the love in your heart, pure and true
And I found it the day heaven blessed me with you.
Fuller said he would "like very much to contribute one-billionth of a percent of a record of the customs and habits, a diary, of the United States."
He has contributed several.
037 - The Naked Kiss, 1964, United States. Dir. Samuel Fuller.
Pulp.
This is the kind of movie where people talk to each other by grabbing them by the shoulders, shaking hard, and yelling in their faces at close range.
Or they just slap each other.
Or hit each other with hard objects.
Or shove wadded-up dirty money in people's mouths.
It opens with an explosion of angry violence.
The prostitute, dressed in her night set, is beating her pimp over the head with her purse.
They do not use the word pimp. Later in the film she shouts out, "He was my taut!" See if you can find the word taut in a slang dictionary. We are in the hands of a street writer.
Her wig comes off.
She is bald!
Somehow this is disturbing.
And cinematically memorable.
We are looking through the lens of an early hand-held camera. It is strapped to her. We see her hitting him. It is strapped to him. We see her hitting him.
We find out later that he was cheating all his girls. She found out and did something about it. He had her head shaved to shame her. She got a group of girls to leave him. He put out word that they were to have their faces splashed with acid whenever they were found. He found her. Before he could hurt her, she beat him.
Cash flies everywhere.
He owes her $75.
She takes only what he owes her. Or as she says, "what's coming to me!"
And stuffs it.
She leaves the rest. And leaves.
With her wig on.
Who ever knew that putting on a wig could be an act of defiance?
She is putting on her helmet. Preparing for battle. Restoring herself. Standing tall.
The credits roll across her face.
This is Sam Fuller. He does not have time for establishing shots. Just get to the point.
Constance Towers, the film's star, recalled, "He wanted it to be like a screaming headline."
Fuller himself said, "We are using the camera as a typewriter."
As a teenager he wrote for a tabloid in New York City. This set the tone of his writing for life.
Before that he sold papers at age 12. Back then you bought papers from the circulation desk. "You could hear the presses. The earth shook."
A funny thing happened on the way to the presses.
He met the foreman of the press room, the boss. The foreman took him upstairs. Or as he recalls it, "I entered Paradise." It was The New York Evening Journal, "the biggest newspaper in the world." He saw what he considered all of human history contained in one great room.
The man asked him his age. He said 12. The man said you had to be 14 to work in New York City. He asked him his age again. He said 14. He got a job. He started as a copy boy.
Ernest Hemingway began as a newspaper reporter. It influenced his writing style. He influenced the writing of the world.
Samuel Fuller had a similar upbringing. He wrote for papers. He wrote for tabloids. He wrote for pulp magazines. He liked a good shocker.
He once said, "If anything irritates anyone, even for a minute, I enjoy it."
Kelly, our girl, moves away. She arrives by bus in a small town, Grantville, where she can start over, where she can be safe.
Shock Corridor, Fuller's previous film, which we saw yesterday, is playing at the movie theater where the bus drops her off.
A couple of men see her. They take notice. One is named Griff. Yeah, this is pulp. Griff says, "She's enough to make a bulldog bust its chain." Griff busts his chain. And follows her.
He sits down at the park bench next to her. She is reading a book written by Fuller years ago. (Yeah, he likes an inside reference.) She is a travelling salesman. She is selling champagne. She shows him her bottles. He wants a free sample. She refuses to give it. He says he is pretty good at popping a cork if the vintage is right.
They wake up in his room. She is dressing. He has placed a twenty-dollar bill on the table. He says he is paying her ten. She says she does not make change.
She knows he is a cop. He is impressed that she guessed it. He runs her out of town. He has to keep the town clean. But he recommends her to Candy's shop across the river. She can be a Bon-Bon for Candy.
Wait.
Did we just say he is a police officer and he is running her out of town to keep the town clean? After he just . . .
Yes. This is Sam Fuller. He writes about scandal, remember?
All the world's a stage, / And all the men and women merely players.
Maybe Shakespeare anticipated what the word player would come to mean.
He may be playing her, but she is sure about to play him.
She goes to Candy's shop. (Yes, Fuller beat 50 Cent by 50 years.) Candy is happy to have a new girl. She invites her back to set her up. Kelly beats Candy with her purse.
What?
Kelly's coming! Protect yourself!
Instead of becoming a Bon-Bon, Kelly becomes a nurse for handicapped children. She wants love. She wants to love and to be loved. She wants to heal.
Griff is angry. How dare you become a nurse! You are a prostitute! You are not allowed to change professions!
Wasn't Griff trying to clean up the town?
Maybe Griff has his own ambitions.
Kelly enters into the dream world. If you believe it, it can happen. She takes the children into that world. She dresses them as pirates. She tells them stories. They run and play.
A new man, Grant, will take her into that dream world. He is the son of the family for whom the
town, Grantville, is named. He will love her. He will marry her. Her life will be good.
Or as Towers sees it, "She found a man who loved her and offered her the life of her dreams."
She loves the poetry of Byron. He will take her to see where Byron wrote.
She loves Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. He will play it for her.
He quotes Baudelaire. She asks if it is Goethe. She pronounces it Goat-the. She is self-taught. "A sweetheart is a bottle of wine. A wife is a wine bottle." Grant is a real romantic.
Grant proposes to Kelly and she accepts. When he goes to kiss her, she hesitates. Something does not feel right. Something smells wrong. Something tastes wrong.
Something is wrong.
That is the "naked kiss." Prostitutes also call it an "iron kiss." It is a knowing, an intuition, an awareness that the person on the other end of those lips is not good. Not good, that is, in ways that are above and beyond those of her regular customers. In ways that are evil.
Is she right?
Or does she just have cold feet?
She will buy a beautiful wedding dress. And she will take it to show him. Even though Josephine, the dress maker, warns her that it is bad luck.
She will end up exchanging her purse for a hard telephone handle.
And will depend upon the kindness of others to help her. But will she find them?
Constance Towers observed later that Kelly is the true character in the film, the character that carries the truth with her wherever she goes. And she is in every scene.
After doing these two films with Samuel Fuller, Towers went on to Broadway, and she starred in Anastasia, The Sound of Music, and the revival of The King and I, with Yul Brynner. The Village Voice had fun with it, publishing a full-page picture of her bald head in The Naked Kiss in comparison with Brynner's bald head, joking that she was going to give him a run for the King role.
Earlier in our blog we spoke of family support. In 031 - Shadows (January 31), we talked about how John Cassavetes' father supported him when he told his father he wanted to be an actor.
Constance Towers' father supported her as well. He was concerned that she was going to play a prostitute, and he did not want it to hurt her image or her career. It took him three months to see the film when it came out. When he saw it, he said, "You know, it's a good film. And you're wonderful. And I like it."
That is what artists need to hear from their loved ones. If you are the father or parent or loved one of artists, let them know how much you believe in them. Tell them. Often.
The film features a song that Constance Towers introduced to Samuel Fuller. After Shock Corridor they went on a trip to Panama. On the flight, he watched her as she helped save a baby's life by giving it oxygen. This gave him the idea of having Kelly become a nurse of handicapped children. She also sang her song and he heard it and put it in the movie.
It was a French song called "Dear Father," and was sung by a boy to his father. Constance had it translated to English and changed it to "Dear Mother," where the boy sang to his mother. She sang it in her nightclub act.
Show me where, Mommy dear, and here's what I will do
I will take the dear bluebird and give it to you
When Fuller heard it, he tweaked it for her to sing to the children in return, and it became "Little Child."
Constance and the children sang it live on set. They did not go back and record it in the studio. So the sound is authentic and human.
Dear, the bluebird's the love in your heart, pure and true
And I found it the day heaven blessed me with you.
Fuller said he would "like very much to contribute one-billionth of a percent of a record of the customs and habits, a diary, of the United States."
He has contributed several.
Sunday, February 5, 2017
036 - Shock Corridor, 1963, United States. Dir. Samuel Fuller.
Sunday, February 5, 2017
036 - Shock Corridor, 1963, United States. Dir. Samuel Fuller.
Who killed Sloane with a butcher knife in the kitchen?
No, this is not Clue. This is Shock Corridor. And Johnny Barrett really wants to know the answer.
He wants to know the answer so badly that he is willing to spend a year training himself to appear insane in the eyes medical health professionals. His goal is to be institutionalized so that he can live among the patients of an asylum and query them to find out who committed the murder.
Then he can write about it and win the Pulitzer Prize.
At the very least he can write about his experiences under cover. He can write articles, books, and screenplays. He can become rich and famous. He can be important.
Johnny wants it really badly.
To go along with him you may need to suspend your disbelief. Willingly.
This is the third movie we have seen where a character is named John and is called Johnny. The first was Alfred Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent (1940), where John Jones (Johnny Jones) went undercover as Huntley Haverstock. The second was Charles Laughton's The Night of the Hunter (1955), where the boy John Harper was called Johnny by his sister Pearl. Here John Barrett is called Johnny by his girlfriend Cathy.
His girlfriend Cathy.
She thinks his idea is nuts. She is trying to save up to have a normal life with a normal journalist. She does not want to be away from him for so long. He might be in the institution for a solid year. Who knows what will happen?
Meanwhile, she is "singing in her skin" to make ends meet. This means she is singing and dancing in a cabaret. They call it stripping, but this is 1963. She wears a modest, somewhat classy, bikini. It is not what she wants to do. It is not who she really is. It is simply what she has willingly conceded to do to get by until Johnny can get established as a journalist and they can buy their starter home and begin their lives together.
Johnny succeeds in passing himself off as mentally ill, and he gets placed in the institution.
He will engage in interviews with three different patients. Each will talk to him through the mind of whom he believes himself to be. Then he will have a moment of clarity and provide Johnny with a clue. Then he will fall back into his former state. In other words, the characters are somewhat like the characters in Awakenings, where they go from their usual state to a short period of awakening and back to their usual state. In this case, they are not catatonic but rather they believe they are someone they are not.
These are the three patients who prove to be "witnesses," as described in Johnny's voice-over directly to us:
Witness No. 1. Stuart. Farm boy from the Bible Belt. Hobby: Playing Civil War games. Believes he's General Jeb Stuart, Confederate hero of the Civil War.
Witness No. 2. Trent. Only Negro student in a southern university. Hobby: Collecting pillowcases.
Witness No. 3. Dr. Boden. American physicist, Nobel Prize winner. Worked on the atom bomb, the H-bomb. The most brilliant scientist alive today. Went insane working on nuclear fission--missiles and rockets to the moon. Hobby: Drawing. Now has the mentality of a child of six.
Each one takes up a section of the film.
James Best plays the character of Witness No. 1, Stuart. Best is best known for playing Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane for seven seasons on the hit television series The Dukes of Hazzard. He appeared in more than 70 movies and more than 100 television shows, and in nearly 300 episodes of those shows. He also played in The Caine Mutiny with Humphrey Bogart. He was an acting teacher in the 1970s and had quite a roster of students. (Look them up.) But it is for The Dukes of Hazzard that people remember him. There is a good side to being in a situation like that: it established him in the public's mind and made him a household name. But there is also a limiting side to it. People may begin to think that is who you are and that is all you can do.
But is that accurate?
Consider a couple of other cases.
Remember when Greg Kinnear was getting started? He hosted the shows College Mad House and Best of the Worst. Then he was the host of Talk Soup for a few years, and people began to know who he was. Then he was the host of Later with Greg Kinnear. In his first movie role he played a Talk Show Host. The public saw him as a talk show host and not an actor. Then he played David Larrabee, the William Holden role in the Sabrina remake opposite Harrison Ford and Julie Ormond, but people did not consider that too big a stretch from the high-personality pretty boy persona he had come to be known for as a host. After a couple of movies that lost money and nobody saw, he burst onto the scene as Simon Bishop in the James L. Brooks surprise hit As Good as It Gets. He played opposite Jack Nicholson, Helen Hunt, and Cuba Gooding, Jr. His character was an artist, gay, a dog owner, vulnerable, sensitive, intelligent, and a member of the new ragtag, semi-functional family together with Nicholson's OCD, prejudicial writer Melvin Udall and Hunt's burdened single mother of a sickly boy Carol Connelly. The film was an international sensation, grossing more than $310 million on a $50 million budget, and was nominated for seven Academy awards, winning two (best actor for Nicholson and best actress for Hunt). The writing of Mark Andrus and Brooks was taut and vital. The story was different from anything anyone had scene. The characters were individual and complex rather than stock. I saw the film when it came out, in the theater. The place was packed and the audience was fully engaged from beginning to end. It is the best way to see a film--on the big screen, with great sound, socially, in a room full of strangers, who are giving energy back to the screen. It was an intelligent film for intelligent people, and the people showed up and made the experience memorable. It launched Greg Kinnear's career.
So what did people say about Greg Kinnear, who was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor? (He lost to Robin Williams for Good Will Hunting, who was also outstanding and playing against people's expectations.) Of Greg Kinnear people said, "Who knew that this Talk Show Host was such a good actor?"
Who knew?
I will tell you who knew.
Greg Kinnear knew. His acting teachers knew. His agents knew. The casting directors who believed in him knew. The directors and producers who believed in him knew. And his fellow actors knew.
An actor is an actor. An actor can act.
We are talking here about people who train, people who work in the medium of film and television, where authenticity is key, where actors dig into the depths of the character's soul and play the role as though they are really living it. Actors know each other. They know who the others are and they know what the others can do. And they do not ask, "Who knew he could do it?" They already know he can do it. Give him a chance and you will see.
Someone gave Greg Kinnear a chance.
Celebrities get to choose the roles they play, but most actors do not. Most actors audition for everything or nearly everything their agents send to them. They book some of those roles. Then the public decides that whatever it is that they know them for is who they are and what they do. But this is not necessarily accurate. What if an actor gets started by booking Host roles. Is that all he can do? Or is that all you know him for?
Let us take another example. How about Ned Beatty. Beatty's case is different in that people who knew him already knew he was a great actor. He started his film career with Deliverance. What a way to begin! Then he did sixteen more movies before playing Otis on Superman. These include The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean, The Thief Who Came to Dinner, Nashville, All the President's Men, Network, Elaine May's Mickey and Nicky, the part-Mexican, part American Alimbrista!, and Gray Lady Down. His credentials were amazing. So when he played Otis in Superman, those who knew him were not going to wonder if he were any good. But many people did not know him. Consider the kind of movie Superman was--a summer blockbuster, one of the biggest films of the year, a movie for the masses. There were many people who saw Superman who had never seen the other films I just listed. It would be easy for them to think that Otis was who Ned Beatty was and represented what he could do--a dumb, bumbling, mindless minion of Lex Luther. On top of that, he was surrounded by stellar talent, with Marlon Brando, Gene Hackman, Christopher Reeve, Jackie Cooper, and Glenn Ford making up the cast. He could easily look one-note next to them in this film.
Might people think of James Best in a similar way? His character on The Dukes of Hazzard has some similarities to Ned Beatty's character on Superman. He is the follower of the villain, in this case Boss Hogg. His job is to be obsequious, shallow, incompetent, bumbling. He is not allowed to think for himself. He is not allowed to have feelings, personal desires, individual human qualities, or vulnerabilities. He is not allowed to love or be loved or even to desire love (except for maybe in a couple of episodes). He is not granted the opportunity to develop a complex character. He is there to be the foil of the leads, played by Tom Wopat and John Schneider, in order to make them look good. His acting tasks are to project a limited amateurish physicality, to make faces, and to say a few anticipated (and loved!) catchphrases: "Fifty percent of fifty percent," "Freeze!" and "Git git git git." And to lose every battle every time.
Is this terrible? Not necessarily. How many actors long for a role that will bring them to the attention of the American public, make them a household name, make them money, potentially secure them for life, and gave them a certain degree of recognition and caché when they go out in public. On the other hand, no one wants to get stuck in the minds of others, especially casting directors, directors, and producers.
His performance here in Shock Corridor is strong. While it may be a Southern character, Stuart, who thinks he is Jeb Stuart, it is layered and complex. Best plays it straight and he plays it through his mental illness. He has a moment of lucidity and then relapses. He acts with his body, his mind, and his heart.
On another note, Samuel Fuller uses the great cinematographer Stanley Cortez for this film and for tomorrow's film. We first met Cortez a few days ago on Sweet Smell of Success, where his darks were dark, his lights were light, and his edges were sharp as a paper cut. Fuller does not have him shooting in quite that high contrast of a style. Here we are more in the middle, with more grays and softer edges. It may be the genre. It may be the director's style. Or it may be influenced by the budget.
But it still looks good.
They used special effects to extend the apparent length of the corridor. They cast progressively shorter people, including little people, to work as extras in the hallway, creating a perspective which made the hall look longer than it was.
Fuller carefully planned all of his shots. He storyboarded everything. He knew exactly what he was going to shoot before he arrived on the day. This made for some efficient and cost efficient filmmaking. The film was shot in only 10 days!
Constance Towers gives an interview in the supplemental material on the disc, and her insights are satisfying. She is a refined, intelligent woman, and she tells stories about how she was cast from meeting Fuller at a party and how they continued to be friends for life. She will go from being a supporting player in this film to being the lead in tomorrow's film, and her range will be demonstrated. Before working with Fuller, she had worked with John Ford in period films starring John Wayne, so she had been used to wearing long, conservative, period clothing. Now she is a singer and strip-tease artist. Tomorrow she will be a prostitute-turned-children's nurse (and bald!). In the interview, she is elegant. She had quite a range.
Samuel Fuller is a special kind of director. Sometimes he worked independently, and sometimes he worked with the studios. He and John Ford were friends, and since Constance Towers worked with both of them, Ford would come to set and watch Fuller direct her. From what I gather it does not appear that Samuel Fuller tried to be iconoclastic but rather that he was practical. He pursued such a strong, singular vision that sometimes he had to work outside the studios to get his movies made. He made Westerns, action films, war films, films noir, psychological thrillers, and dramas. He directed around 25 films, all of which he wrote all or in part, and he wrote around 20 films which someone else directed.
So how does Shock Corridor end?
Does our hero Johnny Barrett learn who killed Sloane? Is he able to communicate with his newspaper? Does he win the Pulitzer Prize? Does he marry his girlfriend? Does she quit stripping and settle down as a wife and mother, as she desires?
Watch and see.
036 - Shock Corridor, 1963, United States. Dir. Samuel Fuller.
Who killed Sloane with a butcher knife in the kitchen?
No, this is not Clue. This is Shock Corridor. And Johnny Barrett really wants to know the answer.
He wants to know the answer so badly that he is willing to spend a year training himself to appear insane in the eyes medical health professionals. His goal is to be institutionalized so that he can live among the patients of an asylum and query them to find out who committed the murder.
Then he can write about it and win the Pulitzer Prize.
At the very least he can write about his experiences under cover. He can write articles, books, and screenplays. He can become rich and famous. He can be important.
Johnny wants it really badly.
To go along with him you may need to suspend your disbelief. Willingly.
This is the third movie we have seen where a character is named John and is called Johnny. The first was Alfred Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent (1940), where John Jones (Johnny Jones) went undercover as Huntley Haverstock. The second was Charles Laughton's The Night of the Hunter (1955), where the boy John Harper was called Johnny by his sister Pearl. Here John Barrett is called Johnny by his girlfriend Cathy.
His girlfriend Cathy.
She thinks his idea is nuts. She is trying to save up to have a normal life with a normal journalist. She does not want to be away from him for so long. He might be in the institution for a solid year. Who knows what will happen?
Meanwhile, she is "singing in her skin" to make ends meet. This means she is singing and dancing in a cabaret. They call it stripping, but this is 1963. She wears a modest, somewhat classy, bikini. It is not what she wants to do. It is not who she really is. It is simply what she has willingly conceded to do to get by until Johnny can get established as a journalist and they can buy their starter home and begin their lives together.
Johnny succeeds in passing himself off as mentally ill, and he gets placed in the institution.
He will engage in interviews with three different patients. Each will talk to him through the mind of whom he believes himself to be. Then he will have a moment of clarity and provide Johnny with a clue. Then he will fall back into his former state. In other words, the characters are somewhat like the characters in Awakenings, where they go from their usual state to a short period of awakening and back to their usual state. In this case, they are not catatonic but rather they believe they are someone they are not.
These are the three patients who prove to be "witnesses," as described in Johnny's voice-over directly to us:
Witness No. 1. Stuart. Farm boy from the Bible Belt. Hobby: Playing Civil War games. Believes he's General Jeb Stuart, Confederate hero of the Civil War.
Witness No. 2. Trent. Only Negro student in a southern university. Hobby: Collecting pillowcases.
Witness No. 3. Dr. Boden. American physicist, Nobel Prize winner. Worked on the atom bomb, the H-bomb. The most brilliant scientist alive today. Went insane working on nuclear fission--missiles and rockets to the moon. Hobby: Drawing. Now has the mentality of a child of six.
Each one takes up a section of the film.
James Best plays the character of Witness No. 1, Stuart. Best is best known for playing Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane for seven seasons on the hit television series The Dukes of Hazzard. He appeared in more than 70 movies and more than 100 television shows, and in nearly 300 episodes of those shows. He also played in The Caine Mutiny with Humphrey Bogart. He was an acting teacher in the 1970s and had quite a roster of students. (Look them up.) But it is for The Dukes of Hazzard that people remember him. There is a good side to being in a situation like that: it established him in the public's mind and made him a household name. But there is also a limiting side to it. People may begin to think that is who you are and that is all you can do.
But is that accurate?
Consider a couple of other cases.
Remember when Greg Kinnear was getting started? He hosted the shows College Mad House and Best of the Worst. Then he was the host of Talk Soup for a few years, and people began to know who he was. Then he was the host of Later with Greg Kinnear. In his first movie role he played a Talk Show Host. The public saw him as a talk show host and not an actor. Then he played David Larrabee, the William Holden role in the Sabrina remake opposite Harrison Ford and Julie Ormond, but people did not consider that too big a stretch from the high-personality pretty boy persona he had come to be known for as a host. After a couple of movies that lost money and nobody saw, he burst onto the scene as Simon Bishop in the James L. Brooks surprise hit As Good as It Gets. He played opposite Jack Nicholson, Helen Hunt, and Cuba Gooding, Jr. His character was an artist, gay, a dog owner, vulnerable, sensitive, intelligent, and a member of the new ragtag, semi-functional family together with Nicholson's OCD, prejudicial writer Melvin Udall and Hunt's burdened single mother of a sickly boy Carol Connelly. The film was an international sensation, grossing more than $310 million on a $50 million budget, and was nominated for seven Academy awards, winning two (best actor for Nicholson and best actress for Hunt). The writing of Mark Andrus and Brooks was taut and vital. The story was different from anything anyone had scene. The characters were individual and complex rather than stock. I saw the film when it came out, in the theater. The place was packed and the audience was fully engaged from beginning to end. It is the best way to see a film--on the big screen, with great sound, socially, in a room full of strangers, who are giving energy back to the screen. It was an intelligent film for intelligent people, and the people showed up and made the experience memorable. It launched Greg Kinnear's career.
So what did people say about Greg Kinnear, who was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor? (He lost to Robin Williams for Good Will Hunting, who was also outstanding and playing against people's expectations.) Of Greg Kinnear people said, "Who knew that this Talk Show Host was such a good actor?"
Who knew?
I will tell you who knew.
Greg Kinnear knew. His acting teachers knew. His agents knew. The casting directors who believed in him knew. The directors and producers who believed in him knew. And his fellow actors knew.
An actor is an actor. An actor can act.
We are talking here about people who train, people who work in the medium of film and television, where authenticity is key, where actors dig into the depths of the character's soul and play the role as though they are really living it. Actors know each other. They know who the others are and they know what the others can do. And they do not ask, "Who knew he could do it?" They already know he can do it. Give him a chance and you will see.
Someone gave Greg Kinnear a chance.
Celebrities get to choose the roles they play, but most actors do not. Most actors audition for everything or nearly everything their agents send to them. They book some of those roles. Then the public decides that whatever it is that they know them for is who they are and what they do. But this is not necessarily accurate. What if an actor gets started by booking Host roles. Is that all he can do? Or is that all you know him for?
Let us take another example. How about Ned Beatty. Beatty's case is different in that people who knew him already knew he was a great actor. He started his film career with Deliverance. What a way to begin! Then he did sixteen more movies before playing Otis on Superman. These include The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean, The Thief Who Came to Dinner, Nashville, All the President's Men, Network, Elaine May's Mickey and Nicky, the part-Mexican, part American Alimbrista!, and Gray Lady Down. His credentials were amazing. So when he played Otis in Superman, those who knew him were not going to wonder if he were any good. But many people did not know him. Consider the kind of movie Superman was--a summer blockbuster, one of the biggest films of the year, a movie for the masses. There were many people who saw Superman who had never seen the other films I just listed. It would be easy for them to think that Otis was who Ned Beatty was and represented what he could do--a dumb, bumbling, mindless minion of Lex Luther. On top of that, he was surrounded by stellar talent, with Marlon Brando, Gene Hackman, Christopher Reeve, Jackie Cooper, and Glenn Ford making up the cast. He could easily look one-note next to them in this film.
Might people think of James Best in a similar way? His character on The Dukes of Hazzard has some similarities to Ned Beatty's character on Superman. He is the follower of the villain, in this case Boss Hogg. His job is to be obsequious, shallow, incompetent, bumbling. He is not allowed to think for himself. He is not allowed to have feelings, personal desires, individual human qualities, or vulnerabilities. He is not allowed to love or be loved or even to desire love (except for maybe in a couple of episodes). He is not granted the opportunity to develop a complex character. He is there to be the foil of the leads, played by Tom Wopat and John Schneider, in order to make them look good. His acting tasks are to project a limited amateurish physicality, to make faces, and to say a few anticipated (and loved!) catchphrases: "Fifty percent of fifty percent," "Freeze!" and "Git git git git." And to lose every battle every time.
Is this terrible? Not necessarily. How many actors long for a role that will bring them to the attention of the American public, make them a household name, make them money, potentially secure them for life, and gave them a certain degree of recognition and caché when they go out in public. On the other hand, no one wants to get stuck in the minds of others, especially casting directors, directors, and producers.
His performance here in Shock Corridor is strong. While it may be a Southern character, Stuart, who thinks he is Jeb Stuart, it is layered and complex. Best plays it straight and he plays it through his mental illness. He has a moment of lucidity and then relapses. He acts with his body, his mind, and his heart.
On another note, Samuel Fuller uses the great cinematographer Stanley Cortez for this film and for tomorrow's film. We first met Cortez a few days ago on Sweet Smell of Success, where his darks were dark, his lights were light, and his edges were sharp as a paper cut. Fuller does not have him shooting in quite that high contrast of a style. Here we are more in the middle, with more grays and softer edges. It may be the genre. It may be the director's style. Or it may be influenced by the budget.
But it still looks good.
They used special effects to extend the apparent length of the corridor. They cast progressively shorter people, including little people, to work as extras in the hallway, creating a perspective which made the hall look longer than it was.
Fuller carefully planned all of his shots. He storyboarded everything. He knew exactly what he was going to shoot before he arrived on the day. This made for some efficient and cost efficient filmmaking. The film was shot in only 10 days!
Constance Towers gives an interview in the supplemental material on the disc, and her insights are satisfying. She is a refined, intelligent woman, and she tells stories about how she was cast from meeting Fuller at a party and how they continued to be friends for life. She will go from being a supporting player in this film to being the lead in tomorrow's film, and her range will be demonstrated. Before working with Fuller, she had worked with John Ford in period films starring John Wayne, so she had been used to wearing long, conservative, period clothing. Now she is a singer and strip-tease artist. Tomorrow she will be a prostitute-turned-children's nurse (and bald!). In the interview, she is elegant. She had quite a range.
Samuel Fuller is a special kind of director. Sometimes he worked independently, and sometimes he worked with the studios. He and John Ford were friends, and since Constance Towers worked with both of them, Ford would come to set and watch Fuller direct her. From what I gather it does not appear that Samuel Fuller tried to be iconoclastic but rather that he was practical. He pursued such a strong, singular vision that sometimes he had to work outside the studios to get his movies made. He made Westerns, action films, war films, films noir, psychological thrillers, and dramas. He directed around 25 films, all of which he wrote all or in part, and he wrote around 20 films which someone else directed.
So how does Shock Corridor end?
Does our hero Johnny Barrett learn who killed Sloane? Is he able to communicate with his newspaper? Does he win the Pulitzer Prize? Does he marry his girlfriend? Does she quit stripping and settle down as a wife and mother, as she desires?
Watch and see.
Saturday, February 4, 2017
035 - Opening Night, 1977, United States. Dir. John Cassavetes.
Saturday, February 4, 2017
035 - Opening Night, 1977, United States. Dir. John Cassavetes.
With Opening Night we have another movie about a play, or life in the theatre. This is a special type of film. Watch these films and enjoy them.
With blog entry number 016, we discussed The Last Metro (1980) by Francois Truffaut. Take a moment to go back and read it. It is an excellent movie.
In that blog we mentioned other films about plays, or life in the theatre, including All About Eve (1950), Noises Off (1992), Being Julia (2004), and Birdman (2014).
Now we have Opening Night (1977) by John Cassavetes.
John Cassavetes must have really loved his wife Gena Rowlands, considering the way he continued to create opportunities for her as an actress.
It is lovely to see.
Here she is Myrtle Gordon, the star of a play, and a star. The public loves her. She has fans. One fan, a young woman, comes to see her and presses in to touch her in the crowd. The girl gets Myrtle's attention, and Myrtle is touched by her.
When they leave the theatre, they witness a car crash behind them. The same girl was crossing the street and was hit by the car.
She dies.
Myrtle is troubled by the incident. Greatly troubled. Her troubled thoughts seep into her work as an actress and into her life. She drinks. She obsesses about her age. She sees spiritualists. She grows erratic in rehearsals. She tries to rewrite the play.
People are patient with her. They love her. Do they enable her? Or are they simply doing the best they know how under difficult circumstances?
The show must go on.
Her scene partner is supposed to slap her. During rehearsal he fakes it. He misses by several feet. You could ride a horse between his hand and her face. Yet she falls to the floor as if mortally wounded. And stays there. The others--her co-star, the director, the writer, and the producer--deal with it the best they can, but she has effectively ruined the rehearsal.
Her co-star is played by her husband, John Cassavetes. How great to see our fearless director, himself a Hollywood actor, stepping in to act in his own film. He had done it before in his 1970 film Husbands, and he would do it again in his 1984 film Love Streams, but this is the only time he does it in the five films we are watching. It adds to the film. He is a good actor and he has a special chemistry with his own wife.
The play's director is played by Ben Gazzara, and we are grateful for it. We have just seen Ben Gazzara as the star of our previous film, strip club owner Cosmo Vittelli in the crime drama The Killing of a Chinese Bookie. Now we see him as a theatre director. I like it when writer-directors return to the same actors. They create a company. They explore the ranges of their talent. They flesh out the nuances of similar but different characters.
Meanwhile, the writer of the play, Sarah Goode, is played by Hollywood veteran Joan Blondell.
This is important.
Joan Blondell worked prolifically in the 1930s and 1940s, and she continued to work steadily until her death in 1979. She was a star.
She was a star in the star system, a member of the dream factory at Warner Bros., a staple in the stable of talent. Something that actors today, who must work freelance, can only imagine in their dreams.
In 1931 alone she starred in ten movies. Ten! Three of them were for legendary director William Wellman, including gangster classic The Public Enemy with Jimmy Cagney and Jean Harlow, and Night Nurse starring Barbara Stanwyck and Clark Gable. Two were with Roy Del Ruth, one with Archie Mayo and one with Michael Curtiz. These are major directors.
She played in gangster pictures, musicals, dramas, films noir, and romantic comedies throughout her career. Here are just a few: Blonde Crazy (1931), The Crowd Roars (1932), Three On a Match (1932), Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933), Footlight Parade (1933), Dames (1934), Broadway Gondolier (1935), We're in the Money (1935), Bullets or Ballots (1936), Gold Diggers of 1937 (1936), Topper Returns (1941), A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945), Nightmare Alley (1947), The Blue Veil (1951), and Desk Set with Spencer Tracey and Katharine Hepburn (1957).
But here in the 1970s she is continuing to work steadily, in films such as Support Your Local Gunfighter with James Garner and The Champ with Jon Voight, Faye Dunaway, and Ricky Schroder.
But what you know her for?
You know her for playing Vi in Grease.
Grease featured three older stars coming back to play strong characters: Joan Blondell as Vi, Eve Arden as Principal McGee, and the one-and-only Sid Caesar as Coach Calhoun.
Make it a point to follow the careers of actors as they get into their older years. They still have life in them, and they do great work. If you are a filmmaker, look for opportunities to cast them. Consider what Quentin Tarantino has done for the careers of actors who had been big years ago, and he brought them back to attention. This is a good thing. In the case of Joan Blondell, there were not any gaps. She kept working. But her presence in this film helps to anchor it. And she plays it with vitality and wisdom.
Now consider this.
Gena Rowlands was born in 1930. She turned 47 the year this film was released. Joan Blondell was born in 1906. She was 24 years older than Rowlands. She turned 71 the year this film was released.
With that in mind, imagine the conversations the characters are having. The actress Myrtle Gordon is obsessed with her own aging. She goes to the writer Sarah Goode to complain about ways that her character is portrayed, and she jockeys for changes in the script that will make her look younger, fresher, and more alive.
The 47-year old is complaining to the 71-year old about aging!
On the one hand, there is some truth in it. The older woman is writing out of her own experience, and she is imbuing the character with her vision of the world, even if she is trying to write the character younger. On the other hand, the younger woman is the one undergoing the existential crisis while the older woman is comfortable in her own skin. The older woman is full of life and energy and untroubled by her age. The younger woman allows her thoughts to paralyze her and stifle her art, while the older woman uses her thoughts to empower her and continues to create art that is new and vital.
Is there a lesson here?
Rowlands plays states well--mental states, emotional states, physical states, physiological states. Her breakdown here is not the same as her breakdown in A Woman Under the Influence. In this film, she is troubled by the death of her fan, by her own aging, and by her steadily increasing drinking. These things are present in her mind and in her body in varying and increasing ways as the film progresses.
The scenes with the spiritualists are classic Cassavetes.
The scenes with Rowlands and Cassavetes together are a gift.
The scenes that solve the central problem are clever and entertaining.
It is now opening night.
It is time for the show to begin.
Our actress is absent. Late. Drunk. She can hardly stand up. She cannot remember her lines. She has been changing them on purpose anyway. She does not follow the blocking. She is erratic and unpredictable. She is making it up as she goes. The audience is in on it.
What are we going to do?
The Show. Must. Go. On.
It does.
Enjoy the show.
035 - Opening Night, 1977, United States. Dir. John Cassavetes.
With Opening Night we have another movie about a play, or life in the theatre. This is a special type of film. Watch these films and enjoy them.
With blog entry number 016, we discussed The Last Metro (1980) by Francois Truffaut. Take a moment to go back and read it. It is an excellent movie.
In that blog we mentioned other films about plays, or life in the theatre, including All About Eve (1950), Noises Off (1992), Being Julia (2004), and Birdman (2014).
Now we have Opening Night (1977) by John Cassavetes.
John Cassavetes must have really loved his wife Gena Rowlands, considering the way he continued to create opportunities for her as an actress.
It is lovely to see.
Here she is Myrtle Gordon, the star of a play, and a star. The public loves her. She has fans. One fan, a young woman, comes to see her and presses in to touch her in the crowd. The girl gets Myrtle's attention, and Myrtle is touched by her.
When they leave the theatre, they witness a car crash behind them. The same girl was crossing the street and was hit by the car.
She dies.
Myrtle is troubled by the incident. Greatly troubled. Her troubled thoughts seep into her work as an actress and into her life. She drinks. She obsesses about her age. She sees spiritualists. She grows erratic in rehearsals. She tries to rewrite the play.
People are patient with her. They love her. Do they enable her? Or are they simply doing the best they know how under difficult circumstances?
The show must go on.
Her scene partner is supposed to slap her. During rehearsal he fakes it. He misses by several feet. You could ride a horse between his hand and her face. Yet she falls to the floor as if mortally wounded. And stays there. The others--her co-star, the director, the writer, and the producer--deal with it the best they can, but she has effectively ruined the rehearsal.
Her co-star is played by her husband, John Cassavetes. How great to see our fearless director, himself a Hollywood actor, stepping in to act in his own film. He had done it before in his 1970 film Husbands, and he would do it again in his 1984 film Love Streams, but this is the only time he does it in the five films we are watching. It adds to the film. He is a good actor and he has a special chemistry with his own wife.
The play's director is played by Ben Gazzara, and we are grateful for it. We have just seen Ben Gazzara as the star of our previous film, strip club owner Cosmo Vittelli in the crime drama The Killing of a Chinese Bookie. Now we see him as a theatre director. I like it when writer-directors return to the same actors. They create a company. They explore the ranges of their talent. They flesh out the nuances of similar but different characters.
Meanwhile, the writer of the play, Sarah Goode, is played by Hollywood veteran Joan Blondell.
This is important.
Joan Blondell worked prolifically in the 1930s and 1940s, and she continued to work steadily until her death in 1979. She was a star.
She was a star in the star system, a member of the dream factory at Warner Bros., a staple in the stable of talent. Something that actors today, who must work freelance, can only imagine in their dreams.
In 1931 alone she starred in ten movies. Ten! Three of them were for legendary director William Wellman, including gangster classic The Public Enemy with Jimmy Cagney and Jean Harlow, and Night Nurse starring Barbara Stanwyck and Clark Gable. Two were with Roy Del Ruth, one with Archie Mayo and one with Michael Curtiz. These are major directors.
She played in gangster pictures, musicals, dramas, films noir, and romantic comedies throughout her career. Here are just a few: Blonde Crazy (1931), The Crowd Roars (1932), Three On a Match (1932), Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933), Footlight Parade (1933), Dames (1934), Broadway Gondolier (1935), We're in the Money (1935), Bullets or Ballots (1936), Gold Diggers of 1937 (1936), Topper Returns (1941), A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945), Nightmare Alley (1947), The Blue Veil (1951), and Desk Set with Spencer Tracey and Katharine Hepburn (1957).
But here in the 1970s she is continuing to work steadily, in films such as Support Your Local Gunfighter with James Garner and The Champ with Jon Voight, Faye Dunaway, and Ricky Schroder.
But what you know her for?
You know her for playing Vi in Grease.
Grease featured three older stars coming back to play strong characters: Joan Blondell as Vi, Eve Arden as Principal McGee, and the one-and-only Sid Caesar as Coach Calhoun.
Make it a point to follow the careers of actors as they get into their older years. They still have life in them, and they do great work. If you are a filmmaker, look for opportunities to cast them. Consider what Quentin Tarantino has done for the careers of actors who had been big years ago, and he brought them back to attention. This is a good thing. In the case of Joan Blondell, there were not any gaps. She kept working. But her presence in this film helps to anchor it. And she plays it with vitality and wisdom.
Now consider this.
Gena Rowlands was born in 1930. She turned 47 the year this film was released. Joan Blondell was born in 1906. She was 24 years older than Rowlands. She turned 71 the year this film was released.
With that in mind, imagine the conversations the characters are having. The actress Myrtle Gordon is obsessed with her own aging. She goes to the writer Sarah Goode to complain about ways that her character is portrayed, and she jockeys for changes in the script that will make her look younger, fresher, and more alive.
The 47-year old is complaining to the 71-year old about aging!
On the one hand, there is some truth in it. The older woman is writing out of her own experience, and she is imbuing the character with her vision of the world, even if she is trying to write the character younger. On the other hand, the younger woman is the one undergoing the existential crisis while the older woman is comfortable in her own skin. The older woman is full of life and energy and untroubled by her age. The younger woman allows her thoughts to paralyze her and stifle her art, while the older woman uses her thoughts to empower her and continues to create art that is new and vital.
Is there a lesson here?
Rowlands plays states well--mental states, emotional states, physical states, physiological states. Her breakdown here is not the same as her breakdown in A Woman Under the Influence. In this film, she is troubled by the death of her fan, by her own aging, and by her steadily increasing drinking. These things are present in her mind and in her body in varying and increasing ways as the film progresses.
The scenes with the spiritualists are classic Cassavetes.
The scenes with Rowlands and Cassavetes together are a gift.
The scenes that solve the central problem are clever and entertaining.
It is now opening night.
It is time for the show to begin.
Our actress is absent. Late. Drunk. She can hardly stand up. She cannot remember her lines. She has been changing them on purpose anyway. She does not follow the blocking. She is erratic and unpredictable. She is making it up as she goes. The audience is in on it.
What are we going to do?
The Show. Must. Go. On.
It does.
Enjoy the show.
Friday, February 3, 2017
034 - The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, 1976, United States. Dir. John Cassavetes.
Friday, February 3, 2017
034 - The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, 1976, United States. Dir. John Cassavetes.
Cosmo likes to gamble.
That's a problem.
He has just paid off his last debt, and he is finally free.
So he goes out to celebrate.
And gambles.
And gets himself into more debt than ever before.
$23,000.
In 1976.
Nearly $100,000 today.
From a game of poker!
What is he going to do?
His creditors offer him a way out.
Kill a Chinese bookie for them.
What is a bookie? A bookmaker. A person who takes bets, calculates odds, and pays out winnings.
What will Cosmo do? How will those actions affect what happens afterwards?
That is the skeleton plot. The movie is about more than that.
With this fourth John Cassavetes film we are watching, we now leave the drama of home life and enter into a world where people go out and do things.
Cosmo owns a strip club. He seems to care for his girls. They are like a big family. They put on shows that feel like local elementary-school talent shows, but without the talent. They are still entertaining because they are so earnest and full of heart. They ask you to use your imagination to travel with them to Paris (pronounced as if in French, with a silent s). They carry cardboard cutout props. They sing. Or try to.
The show-stealer is Mr. Sophistication, played by screenwriter Meade Roberts, a man with heavy eye make-up--including drawn-on eyebrows and moustache--and the world's most ridiculous comb-over. He wears a cheap tuxedo and sometimes a tall top hat. He performs the shows as though he is sleepwalking. He does not seem to be aware that the girls are on stage with him, or that an audience is present. He sings as if he is trying it out for the first time. You wonder how he got to this place in life, and to this place. Yet he performs with such a focus and determination that you cannot help but watch and smile. Backstage he complains that he puts up all the talent and hard work while the girls get all the attention for doing essentially nothing. Nobody seems to pay attention to his complaints. He is one of the family.
When Cosmo gets into trouble, they all do. They are in it together. However, no one else knows about his secret mission. And while he is gone, they change the routines. While attempting his assignment, he phones back to the club to find out what is going on and to give direction.
Ben Gazzara plays Cosmo Vittelli with a grounded center and emotional restraint. More is going on beneath the surface than what you see.
This is a fun film. It is a crime drama, so it contains moments of tension and suspense. Yet it is also a Cassavetes film, so it contains moments of human interaction that seem unscripted. And it focuses on relationships.
They may be a ragtag group of people.
But they are a family.
034 - The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, 1976, United States. Dir. John Cassavetes.
Cosmo likes to gamble.
That's a problem.
He has just paid off his last debt, and he is finally free.
So he goes out to celebrate.
And gambles.
And gets himself into more debt than ever before.
$23,000.
In 1976.
Nearly $100,000 today.
From a game of poker!
What is he going to do?
His creditors offer him a way out.
Kill a Chinese bookie for them.
What is a bookie? A bookmaker. A person who takes bets, calculates odds, and pays out winnings.
What will Cosmo do? How will those actions affect what happens afterwards?
That is the skeleton plot. The movie is about more than that.
With this fourth John Cassavetes film we are watching, we now leave the drama of home life and enter into a world where people go out and do things.
Cosmo owns a strip club. He seems to care for his girls. They are like a big family. They put on shows that feel like local elementary-school talent shows, but without the talent. They are still entertaining because they are so earnest and full of heart. They ask you to use your imagination to travel with them to Paris (pronounced as if in French, with a silent s). They carry cardboard cutout props. They sing. Or try to.
The show-stealer is Mr. Sophistication, played by screenwriter Meade Roberts, a man with heavy eye make-up--including drawn-on eyebrows and moustache--and the world's most ridiculous comb-over. He wears a cheap tuxedo and sometimes a tall top hat. He performs the shows as though he is sleepwalking. He does not seem to be aware that the girls are on stage with him, or that an audience is present. He sings as if he is trying it out for the first time. You wonder how he got to this place in life, and to this place. Yet he performs with such a focus and determination that you cannot help but watch and smile. Backstage he complains that he puts up all the talent and hard work while the girls get all the attention for doing essentially nothing. Nobody seems to pay attention to his complaints. He is one of the family.
When Cosmo gets into trouble, they all do. They are in it together. However, no one else knows about his secret mission. And while he is gone, they change the routines. While attempting his assignment, he phones back to the club to find out what is going on and to give direction.
Ben Gazzara plays Cosmo Vittelli with a grounded center and emotional restraint. More is going on beneath the surface than what you see.
This is a fun film. It is a crime drama, so it contains moments of tension and suspense. Yet it is also a Cassavetes film, so it contains moments of human interaction that seem unscripted. And it focuses on relationships.
They may be a ragtag group of people.
But they are a family.
Thursday, February 2, 2017
033 - A Woman Under the Influence, 1974, United States. Dir. John Cassavetes.
Thursday, February 2, 2017
033 - A Woman Under the Influence, 1974, United States. Dir. John Cassavetes.
This movie begins with a baptism.
Or so we thought. It is actually a group of construction workers wading in the river.
To the sounds of hopeful music.
Nick loves his wife Mabel.
He plans a date night with her. He fights for it. When the water main breaks and his supervisor makes him stay all night, he fights for it. He argues with his boss. He mopes all night thinking about it. His construction worker friends see it. He calls her and tries to explain.
The next morning he hurries home to see her.
What he does not know is that she went out last night, without him, lonely, walking the streets, entering a bar, and picked up a man. The man, Garson Cross, spent the night with her, on the pull-out couch in the dining room, where she and her husband also sleep.
She might not know it either.
The next morning she sees Cross and calls him Nick. She has repressed the memory. She believes she slept with her husband. Cross is gone before Nick comes home. He never finds out.
When he does come home, his construction buddies come with him, and they all eat together. She entertains the men. They sing. Does she get too friendly?
Nick blows his top. His mother calls to tell him about her ailments. He cannot take it. He sends everyone out. Mabel is crushed. He assures her she has done nothing wrong. She has just been acting strangely.
She has a birthday party and invites the neighbor kids over. She presses a dad, Harold Jensen, to stay. She scares him with her behavior.
When Nick and his mother come home, the house is in chaos. Children are running around with and without clothes. He blows his top. He throws out Harold Jensen. He calls the doctor.
When Doctor Zepp comes over (He makes house calls!), she grows suspicious.
Nobody here needs a doctor. I had the hiccups, but I took care of 'em.
Do you take pills?
Does morphine count? . . . Vitamins! I take vitamin pills. . . . Uppers, downers, inners, outers.
Her mother-in-law brings up alcohol.
They all fight.
Nick finally places her in an institution.
He is so high-strung that he blows his top at the construction site. He shoves one man over the side of a steep hill, and we hear later that he "broke every bone in his body."
He tries to spend time with his children. He wants to get to know them. He picks them up from school. He takes them to the beach. He lets them drink his beer.
Things are not going greatly.
Life is hard.
This is the third movie we have seen in our list so far this year that deals with mental illness or mental breakdown.
The first was Repulsion (1965, Roman Polanski). The second was Bigger Than Life (1956, Nicholas Ray).
John Cassavetes made it clear that he was not making her crazy.
She is frustrated, pressed in, trapped. And it takes its toll on her.
It takes its toll on him as well. Several times throughout the film he loses his temper just when things seem to be going OK. They love each other deeply, but they are struggling with the pressures of life.
And it is not yet clear who is going to win. Them? Or the pressures?
Mabel is played by John Cassavetes' wife Gena Rowlands. In all they made eight films together. He wrote the script for her as a play, but she was concerned about going to such extreme places emotionally night after night. So he converted it to a screenplay.
You may know Gena Rowlands from the movie The Notebook (2004), where she plays James Garner's wife Allie, who suffers from dementia. She herself wrote the story of their love in a notebook, with the note, "Read this to me, and I will come back to you." He does. She does.
The love expressed in that movie is not unlike the love expressed in this movie, made thirty years before. No matter what happens to your mind, I will stay with you. Even if you forget me, I will stay with you. And I will love you.
It is fitting that The Notebook was directed by John Cassavetes' and Gena Rowlands' son, Nick Cassavetes.
In all, Nick has directed his mother in four movies, including Unhook the Stars (1996), She's So Lovely (1997), and Yellow (2012). Meanwhile, her daughter Zoe has directed her in one, Broken English (2007). What a family.
You may also know Gena Rowlands from Woody Allen's 1988 film Another Woman, where she overhears a psychiatrist's sessions through the walls of her own apartment, and how those sessions change her own life. You can clearly see the influence of Cassavetes in Woody Allen's work.
Mabel's husband Nick is played by Peter Falk.
If Peter Falk is in it, we want to watch it. He is an actor's actor's actor. He had been on Columbo for a few years by then, and John Cassavetes had appeared in an episode a couple years earlier, and they had become friends.
Peter Falk wanted the movie to be made, so when no studios agreed to make it, he put up half-a-million dollars of his own money to get it made. That says something about how much people loved John Cassavetes and believed in him.
The supporting players turn in strong performances.
George Dunn as Garson Cross is natural and believable. He does not seem to be acting. You hear ambient noises in the bar.
And Cassavetes keeps it in the family.
Gena Rowlands' mother, Lady Rowlands, plays her mother, and John Cassavetes' mother, Katherine Cassavetes, plays Peter Falk's mother.
One of the children, Angelo, is played by Matthew Labyorteaux, who would go on to star as Laura Ingalls' adopted brother Albert in Little House on the Prairie.
This film is touching.
The music is moving.
The action can be heart-breaking.
Their love is healing.
And the love persists.
To the end.
033 - A Woman Under the Influence, 1974, United States. Dir. John Cassavetes.
This movie begins with a baptism.
Or so we thought. It is actually a group of construction workers wading in the river.
To the sounds of hopeful music.
Nick loves his wife Mabel.
He plans a date night with her. He fights for it. When the water main breaks and his supervisor makes him stay all night, he fights for it. He argues with his boss. He mopes all night thinking about it. His construction worker friends see it. He calls her and tries to explain.
The next morning he hurries home to see her.
What he does not know is that she went out last night, without him, lonely, walking the streets, entering a bar, and picked up a man. The man, Garson Cross, spent the night with her, on the pull-out couch in the dining room, where she and her husband also sleep.
She might not know it either.
The next morning she sees Cross and calls him Nick. She has repressed the memory. She believes she slept with her husband. Cross is gone before Nick comes home. He never finds out.
When he does come home, his construction buddies come with him, and they all eat together. She entertains the men. They sing. Does she get too friendly?
Nick blows his top. His mother calls to tell him about her ailments. He cannot take it. He sends everyone out. Mabel is crushed. He assures her she has done nothing wrong. She has just been acting strangely.
She has a birthday party and invites the neighbor kids over. She presses a dad, Harold Jensen, to stay. She scares him with her behavior.
When Nick and his mother come home, the house is in chaos. Children are running around with and without clothes. He blows his top. He throws out Harold Jensen. He calls the doctor.
When Doctor Zepp comes over (He makes house calls!), she grows suspicious.
Nobody here needs a doctor. I had the hiccups, but I took care of 'em.
Do you take pills?
Does morphine count? . . . Vitamins! I take vitamin pills. . . . Uppers, downers, inners, outers.
Her mother-in-law brings up alcohol.
They all fight.
Nick finally places her in an institution.
He is so high-strung that he blows his top at the construction site. He shoves one man over the side of a steep hill, and we hear later that he "broke every bone in his body."
He tries to spend time with his children. He wants to get to know them. He picks them up from school. He takes them to the beach. He lets them drink his beer.
Things are not going greatly.
Life is hard.
This is the third movie we have seen in our list so far this year that deals with mental illness or mental breakdown.
The first was Repulsion (1965, Roman Polanski). The second was Bigger Than Life (1956, Nicholas Ray).
John Cassavetes made it clear that he was not making her crazy.
She is frustrated, pressed in, trapped. And it takes its toll on her.
It takes its toll on him as well. Several times throughout the film he loses his temper just when things seem to be going OK. They love each other deeply, but they are struggling with the pressures of life.
And it is not yet clear who is going to win. Them? Or the pressures?
Mabel is played by John Cassavetes' wife Gena Rowlands. In all they made eight films together. He wrote the script for her as a play, but she was concerned about going to such extreme places emotionally night after night. So he converted it to a screenplay.
You may know Gena Rowlands from the movie The Notebook (2004), where she plays James Garner's wife Allie, who suffers from dementia. She herself wrote the story of their love in a notebook, with the note, "Read this to me, and I will come back to you." He does. She does.
The love expressed in that movie is not unlike the love expressed in this movie, made thirty years before. No matter what happens to your mind, I will stay with you. Even if you forget me, I will stay with you. And I will love you.
It is fitting that The Notebook was directed by John Cassavetes' and Gena Rowlands' son, Nick Cassavetes.
In all, Nick has directed his mother in four movies, including Unhook the Stars (1996), She's So Lovely (1997), and Yellow (2012). Meanwhile, her daughter Zoe has directed her in one, Broken English (2007). What a family.
You may also know Gena Rowlands from Woody Allen's 1988 film Another Woman, where she overhears a psychiatrist's sessions through the walls of her own apartment, and how those sessions change her own life. You can clearly see the influence of Cassavetes in Woody Allen's work.
Mabel's husband Nick is played by Peter Falk.
If Peter Falk is in it, we want to watch it. He is an actor's actor's actor. He had been on Columbo for a few years by then, and John Cassavetes had appeared in an episode a couple years earlier, and they had become friends.
Peter Falk wanted the movie to be made, so when no studios agreed to make it, he put up half-a-million dollars of his own money to get it made. That says something about how much people loved John Cassavetes and believed in him.
The supporting players turn in strong performances.
George Dunn as Garson Cross is natural and believable. He does not seem to be acting. You hear ambient noises in the bar.
And Cassavetes keeps it in the family.
Gena Rowlands' mother, Lady Rowlands, plays her mother, and John Cassavetes' mother, Katherine Cassavetes, plays Peter Falk's mother.
One of the children, Angelo, is played by Matthew Labyorteaux, who would go on to star as Laura Ingalls' adopted brother Albert in Little House on the Prairie.
This film is touching.
The music is moving.
The action can be heart-breaking.
Their love is healing.
And the love persists.
To the end.
Wednesday, February 1, 2017
032 - Faces, 1968, United States. Dir. John Cassavetes.
Wednesday, February 1, 2017
032 - Faces, 1968, United States. Dir. John Cassavetes.
Faces is another 16-mm grainy black-and-white experimental film from John Cassavetes. It requires concentration to watch it. The scenes consist of people hanging out, drinking, singing, interacting, and engaged in laughter. Lots of laughter. Lots of empty, hollow laughter.
The plot is simple. You might say it nearly follows the classic unities of time, place, and action. It takes place in the course of one night, in about three or four locations, with people doing a lot of the same things.
A man stops at a prostitute's place on his way home from work. She and her roommate and some men are there. He joins them in hanging out and drinking and laughing. Then he goes home and he and his wife hang out and drink and laugh. Then he announces he wants a divorce. He goes back to the woman and her friends and they hang out and drink and laugh, while his wife goes out with her friends and they bring home a man, and they all hang out and drink and laugh.
Everyone is miserable.
The hanging out and drinking and laughing is a cover for their empty lives.
We get it.
Apparently in 1968 this was a revelation.
In 2017 it is a cliché.
On December 19, 1968, Roger Ebert published a lovely review of this movie. When you read his review, you will want to watch the movie. When you watch the movie, you will wonder what happened to his review.
Maybe he was watching a different movie.
Or maybe he just lived in a different time.
Or maybe I am just being unfair.
I felt I understood the sermon after a few minutes and did not need more than two hours to drive the point home.
In some ways it feels as though we are watching The Cassavetes-Lane Drama Workshop Showcase.
The actors are given situations, and they are exploring their characters and relationships within those imaginary given circumstances. They are doing good, authentic work. They are having an improvisational feast.
The young Seymour Cassel is especially exceptional in his performance.
But the others are great as well.
But did you press play to watch an Improv Showcase? Or to watch a movie?
Would you watch this film in a movie theatre? Or in a film school?
How about a museum.
Or maybe a time capsule.
At some point I'll give it another try. I'm sure it will grow on me.
032 - Faces, 1968, United States. Dir. John Cassavetes.
Faces is another 16-mm grainy black-and-white experimental film from John Cassavetes. It requires concentration to watch it. The scenes consist of people hanging out, drinking, singing, interacting, and engaged in laughter. Lots of laughter. Lots of empty, hollow laughter.
The plot is simple. You might say it nearly follows the classic unities of time, place, and action. It takes place in the course of one night, in about three or four locations, with people doing a lot of the same things.
A man stops at a prostitute's place on his way home from work. She and her roommate and some men are there. He joins them in hanging out and drinking and laughing. Then he goes home and he and his wife hang out and drink and laugh. Then he announces he wants a divorce. He goes back to the woman and her friends and they hang out and drink and laugh, while his wife goes out with her friends and they bring home a man, and they all hang out and drink and laugh.
Everyone is miserable.
The hanging out and drinking and laughing is a cover for their empty lives.
We get it.
Apparently in 1968 this was a revelation.
In 2017 it is a cliché.
On December 19, 1968, Roger Ebert published a lovely review of this movie. When you read his review, you will want to watch the movie. When you watch the movie, you will wonder what happened to his review.
Maybe he was watching a different movie.
Or maybe he just lived in a different time.
Or maybe I am just being unfair.
I felt I understood the sermon after a few minutes and did not need more than two hours to drive the point home.
In some ways it feels as though we are watching The Cassavetes-Lane Drama Workshop Showcase.
The actors are given situations, and they are exploring their characters and relationships within those imaginary given circumstances. They are doing good, authentic work. They are having an improvisational feast.
The young Seymour Cassel is especially exceptional in his performance.
But the others are great as well.
But did you press play to watch an Improv Showcase? Or to watch a movie?
Would you watch this film in a movie theatre? Or in a film school?
How about a museum.
Or maybe a time capsule.
At some point I'll give it another try. I'm sure it will grow on me.
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