DISQUS

Y'know, I love Wilder, but for perhaps completely subjective reasons this is one of my least favorite films of his. I've just never been able to get over what I can only call "the skeeve factor". I agree with Dave Ehrenstein that this may be Wilder's most European film, and somehow I think I would find it easier to take if it were a German or French movie from the late 30s, and not a German/French movie queasily transplanted to 1960s Manhattan. And I love Jack Lemmon but he's just way too "busy" for me in this. My favorite part of the movie oddly enough is Fred MacMurray, who I think plays the part coldly and brilliantly, so refreshing opposite the near-terminal cutesiness of Lemmon and MacLaine. Watching the movie again the other night I was reminded of an interview in a film rag (the lamented "Take One") I read back around 1972 or so with the great Jean-Pierre Melville. The interviewer asked him who his favorite actor was and he said: "Fred MacMurray."

Good point, Fuzzy. But, still, I wish those two just weren't so damn dull!

The singer was the Nat Cole soundalike Earl Grant.

Thanks for the offer! I don't have a scanner, but when I get one that would be a nice thing to do.

Sorry, Lance, took a break to do some of my own stuff.

Is Nichols misogynistic? Who the hell knows? It seems like he's pretty rough on the male gender too, but on the other hand I just read your addendum post on "Charlie Wilson" where you talk about how he (or Sorkin, or both of them in cahoots) tossed some pretty weak-sister female parts into that movie.

You know what I saw in the fairly recent past and really hated? And this is gonna get me in trouble because a lot of people think it's great, but I couldn't stand "Virginia Woolf". The movie, not the writer. It's been too long since I've read the play for me to say if I would now hate the play, too, but I suspect I wouldn't be too crazy about it. I just thought the movie was so unbelievable, and unbelievably tiresome, and I didn't think the fault lay with the actors. I thought the problem was the script. But when I saw that movie as a kid I thought it was great, God knows why, maybe because everyone said it was great.

On the other hand I'd be interested in checking out "Catch-22" and "Carnal Knowledge" again. After twenty years or more I can still recall some of Nicholson's line-readings in "Carnal". God he was good. And I remember Art Garfunkel being quite acceptable in that and in "Catch-22".

Sometimes an entertainer who's not really a trained actor can be pretty good if the real actors in the show help them out. Classic example: Frank Sinatra and the great Monty Clift in "From Here to Eternity". Slightly less classic example: Dean Martin and Monty Clift in "The Young Lions". Some artists are so good they make everyone else look good.

I couldn't quite bring myself to get off my ass and watch the movie again, which I haven't seen in many years, but after this discussion I confess i might give it another shot. One thing that made me reluctant to rent it was the fear that I would find it hopelessly dated and obvious, although I love Bancroft and Hoffman as artists (much more so than I admire Mike Nichols).

Isn't it funny that Dustin Hoffman's first two starring movie roles ended with him sitting in a bus with someone?

That ending of Midnight Cowboy is just classic.

About Robert Wagner, Siren, I know, I know! It's more than passing strange. I mean this dude was married to Natalie Wood not once but twice! He is the great Mack Daddy of Hollywood and I want to know his secret. Unless of course it's just "size".

Yeah, it must be size.

Dear Siren, once again you prove that you are one of the finest writers on movies in the English language.

I grew up on the two 50s Titanic movies, and now I am almost ready finally to sit down and force myself to watch the Cameron flick, which I have been snobbishly avoiding for a decade now.

Oh, but how about a tiny bit of love for Robert Wagner. "Prince Valiant"? "A Kiss Before Dying"? "Fine Young Cannibals" (so bad it's good)? "The Pink Panther"? The Austin Powers movies? Um, "Hart to Hart"? Okay, so he's no Monty Clift or James Dean, nor even a Michael Parks. But if there hadn't been a Bob Wagner then we would have had to invent one.

So many of the great 60s groups that made rock 'n' roll into rock loved and learned from Bo Diddley.

How many groups covered "Who Do You Love?" Damn, I remember "Happy Trails" by Quicksilver, where they covered it for a whole album side.

So, like, I'm the only one around here who watches "Robin and the Seven Hoods" once a week?

Quite simply, a great American writer.

I wish we had him around today.

Chekov, who had the brilliant idea of writing plays about groups of people who are all more or less dissatisfied with their lives. In other words: real life.

The political and social opinions of actors do get a little too much attention.

I'm reminded of that bit from The Producers, and I'm quoting from memory, so, scholars, please be gentle:

Max: I know, we'll kill the actors!

Leo: We can't kill the actors! They're human beings!

Max: Did you ever eat with one?

They not only broke the mold when they made Bette, they took the pieces of the mold and they threw them in the river.

One of a kind.

Ah, hell, give me the first three Stones albums on scratchy vinyl and I'm happy. I don't think I'd be able to stand actually going to see these ancient lizard kings perform nowadays though.

I mean, what's next, are they gonna dig up Edith Piaf's corpse and shoot her up with adrenaline and stick her on a stage?

On the other hand I wouldn't mind sitting around someone's spliffsmoke-filled kitchen listening to Keith jam on an acoustic. Especially if I could go back in time and it was the old pre-dental work Keith.

Who can ever forget the immortal words of Widmark's Tommy Udo:

"Ya know what I do to squealers? I let 'em have it in the belly, so they can roll around a long time, thinkin' it over."

Now that shit is noir, baby.

I plan on watching Grand Hotel tonight!

Oh, and so true about Garbo not looking like a ballerina -- unless ballerinas looked like Garbo back in the old days...

As usual after reading the fabulous Siren I now have the urge to re-watch a movie I haven't seen in ages, in this case Grand Hotel. Maybe there's something wrong with me as a supposedly straight male, but I also love Joan Crawford. Her vitality just surges through even the most absurd and obscure 4:15 AM Turner Classic Insomniac Specials.

Or maybe poetry is an occupational hazard of a nation of drunkards.

I'll never forget the time Father Murray stopped Xmas Eve Midnight Mass in mid-service because all the drunks in the back were making too much noise (St. Helena's, Olney, Philadelphia). Ah, those were the days, young bucks getting flagged en masse from Midnight Mass...

Rip Torn is just brilliant in this movie. I like the way he sings in it too. Behind the sentimental lyrics there's just the littlest hint of "Fuck all y'all, goddammit."

Bob, I got through the first page and quit.

Remember when Esquire was a pretty good magazine? About forty years ago?

Steve: and thank you for the boxing metaphor; I wanted to use one but couldn't think of the appropriate bout. It's the case of the good boxer, the man who has the skill, who can just jab, jab, hook, jab, and then right-cross the other guy, the other guy who looks good and who has the flashy moves but who doesn't have the heart and is finally gonna hit the canvas and stay on the canvas if he knows what's good for him.

As Dennis Perrin pointed out in his blog, Chomsky methodically takes Buckley apart here.

One of Buckley's debating methods was to roll over the opponent with long, slow, meliifluous but somniferous and not necessarily well-thought-out periods. In this case the method failed.

But as I've said ad nauseam (Latin phrase inserted as tribute to WFB) I too miss those days when you could turn on even Merv Griffin or Mike Douglas and see the likes of Norman Mailer, Capote, Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal.

Here's a clip of Buckley and Vidal back-to-back (not the famous crypto-Nazi one):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXLTDUPJqsU

Gore's the last lion standing.

Speaking of Raymond Chandler, another movie that brilliantly uses voice-over is Double Indemnity. But let's be grimly realistic: that narration was written by Chandler and Billy Wilder, based on a book by James Cain, spoken by Fred MacMurray. Giants trod the streets of Hollywood in those days. And speaking of Billy Wilder, how about Bill Holden's great post-mortem voice-over in Sunset Boulevard? That noir era (including movies that weren't noirs, like All About Eve) had some great voice-overs, but they were written by real writers, spoken by some great actors.

Hey, Lance, to try to answer your little parenthetical question to me: I haven't read the book version of Gone Baby Gone, so I can't say how much of the narration comes from the book. But it wasn't the narration that bothered me about that movie, it was the completely implausible plot. Y'know, Two Days in Paris aside, I think some French movies have done narration well. Like Jules and Jim. The whole trick is to have your narration add a whole other rich layer to your movie, otherwise don't bother. Y'know what I loved? Dick Powell's voice-over in Murder My Sweet. Brilliant. I also find that with a lot of so-so movies I actually prefer listening to the director's or actor's voice-over commentary to the actual humdrum dialogue of the movie. But what they never say is why they were dumb enough to spend all that time and energy making a movie with a bad script.