DISQUS

Glad to be of help.

It's the perfect romantic fantasy for fag-hags of all ages. He's young, he's beautiful, he's "sentitive," he's "not like the other boys," because he "respects" you. For it's "too dangerous" for him to "go there" (ie. "YOU COULD GET AIDS!") But isn't it lovely to think about it and NOT do it?

It's Frank O'Hara Day

I don't think Don has an identity at all. He is "The Man Without Qualities" personified. He can be a successful businessman and a good husband while being a slick operater and neurotic pussyhound at the same time. Neurosis is the key. Tony Sopranao was a psychotic. I don't think there's any danger of Don actually killing anyone -- though a trace of Tom Ripley does waft through the air about him.

The film makes no sense because Rosanna Arquette has always been cooler than Madonna and always will be. They shoudl have switched roles.

Outside of that I overhwelmingly prefer the original: "Celine et julie von en bateau/ Phantom Ladies Over Paris."

Oh I couldn't disagree more. What's most interesting about the show is the number of "sides" the long-form narrative allows for characters. Don and his wife are both a Golden Couple AND flaming neurotics. One doesn't cancle the other out. See also Todd Haynes' <i.Far From Heaven

There's a lot more to Newman than meets the eye. He harnessed his star status in many interesting ways. And by that I'm not talking about the wildly overpraised Cool Hand Luke. The Newman films that interest me the most (outside of The Hustler) are The Long Hot Summer, Harper, The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean<.i> and Mr. and Mrs. Bridge.

Don Draper would want to be Paul Newman, but underneath it all he's George Grizzard.

Melville said MacMurray "invented underplaying." You can se that quite clearyl here as he's a complete monster, but if we're cued to that fact right away the film falls apart. he hides his rattiness perfectly. I don't agree about "the skeeve factor." Lemmon's Baxter is for the most part a sad and lathetically lonely man. I ove the way he hanngs all over Hope Holliday in the bar is sensational. And there's nothing "cute" about MacLaine's suicide attempt.

In many ways "The Apartment" conveys the true spririt of Christmans just as "Christmas Holiday" does. It's suicidal depression to the Max!

Sorry I wasn't in here last night. This is one of my favorite Wilders. The Big Moment is right in the middle when Lemmon's C.C. Baxter gets his bowler hat and ask's MacLaine's Miss Kubelik if she has a mirror, and when she hand him the cracked mirror of her compact he learns EVERYTHING. It's a perfect visual and dramtic idea. In ertain ways this is Wilder's most German film. The view of office politics and Big City Living is very Weimar. I could easily see Fassbinder making a variation on this had he emigrated. Yes this is "Mad Men" territory but "The Apartment" was a contemporary film and "Mad Men" is a period piece. All the difference in the world. The climax of the film is MacLaine ditching McMurray in the Chines restaurant and running down the street with a big smile on her face as the music rises. I never fail to burst inot tears every time I see this. Happy endings get to me that way. And Woody Allen TOTALLY rips it off in "Manhattan." But that film doesn't so much as raise a sniffle.

"Shouldn't you be in church?"

"Kneeling bags my nylons."

"I've seen hard-boiled egss before but you, you're 20 minutes!"

The greatest dialogue exchange in the American cinema bar none!

To my mind "Ace in the Hole" is the most German of Wilder's films, its world connected to that he knew in Berlin as a reporter. And the last shot of Douglas falling over dead is one Rainer Werner Fassbinder would have been proud to call his own.

Thanks so much for this. I consider myself extremely lucky to have seen the great Broadway revue "A Thurber Carnival" the week that Mr. Thurber appeared in it. I shall never forget it.