Feet to the fire, yeah, I'll go for wordplay over slapstick, but I appreciate slapstick more now than as a kid. Chaplin wasn't just giving us some good laughs, he was able to put over this genuine human being with depth and resonance - all through his body. I'm less likely now to go for The Three Stooges, but it's not about method; it's purpose. Chaplin and Allen have real purpose behind their comedy. It's not just that they're getting slapped or saying a quippy one-liner, it's why.
Your assessment of Brooks is a bullseye. Although I really like History of the World Part I. It's underrated.
The waiter in The Party is brilliant! Traipsing through the water feature is classic. But you know, the first thing I think of about that film is the satirical commentary on all these people dismissing this guy who's the nicest guy at the party, and Bakshi is a great guy. It's the sweet moments I loved the most.
Plus, who doesn't love a '60s film that ends with a giant bubble scene?
I think I laugh a little less these days, too. I wonder if that happens to everybody?
Theatres will come back. Some will close, others will open. There will always be a call for seeing classics and arthouse films on the big screen. It's like records. Turntables are still big for audiophiles. Cinephiles will keep the movie houses open. Unfortunately, most theatres - especially in smaller towns - will probably just be running constant MCU crap. Frankly, though, I think the last cinemas will be arthouses. Disney et al. are pushing for the at-home thing. I think they'd rather just have Disney+. But we who love movies will always want to watch Casablanca on the big screen one more time.
Directors deserve a tonne of credit, too. I just see them getting all the credit, and people forget film is collaborative. Editors have it even worse than writers. I've heard it said that films are made three times: written, shot, edited. John Q. Public tends only to credit the guy responsible for the middle bit. I know the director guides scripts (and edits), but I still think writers and editors get shafted for glory.
I also think it's not nice how easily producers, directors, and others can just callously alter the writer's scripts. I think that sucks.
You're right, though: directors have a major part played, too.
I think Woody's films have more of that one voice feel because he gets involved at all levels. He picks music, sets up shots, is in the editing room. He he's always guiding. I think this is why people think his films are all "the same", even though Crimes & Misdemeanors doesn't feel like Annie Hall at all.
Ultimately Woody oversees, but he's famous for having a light touch. I think that's why there are so many good performances in his films. He relies on his cast and crew, even if he's all over the movie.
I attribut that '70s goodness to the European thing, too. Directors like Scorsese grew up on foreign cinema and brought that true Art thing to Hollywood.
I love Star Wars, but I kinda blame it for the end of that era. Star Wars gave the studios a clear direction: toys. That's when you can hear the little, cash-register CA-CHING gears turning in their little, executive heads.
Every era of movies has its greatness (and its dreck), so I don't want to start going, "Oh, the '70s were the last of the great movie eras!" but there was something special there, and it definitely died (as opposed to just phasing into different sensibilities).
Chinatown, yes. I think I could watch that movie on a loop and it'd take me three days to get bored.
Jerks-as-heroes.. Movies have always had jerks, but the interesting thing is when they're the hero. I love a good, classic hero archetype, too, but there's something so, so fun about jerks. Larry David on Curb Your Enthusiasm? Don Draper? Jerks give great story possibilities.
There is a wisdom to knowing when to fold 'em (that's Kenny, not Lenny). But it's bad to dissolve the marriage after 5 days; I'm not letting Lenny off the hook. It's not because it's bad to cut his losses - that's good. The mistake is barreling in with so little regard for one's partner or oneself that the marriage is doomed before it starts. The callous attitude Lenny (or Hollywood celebs) have towards romance and marriage is what I find deplorable, mockable - not knowing when it's time to get out.
Commitment is good. That's the other reason we cock our eyebrows at people pulling the parachute that quickly into a marriage: they clearly aren't trying at all. See a counsellor. Put in a little effort.
funny (in spite of himself) is how much effort he's willing to put in to the dumb decision. If he worked half as hard at his marriage (and finding a good partner to begin with) as he did at leaving her, he'd have been happy.
I feel like we've dissected M*A*S*H*, Animal House, and other "frat bro" movies before… I seem to recall a very, very in-depth conversation on the subject.
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Ace_Spade (9544)
3 years ago
M*A*S*H* is mean, but not unconscionably so. I'm with you: it's about war. You think Hawkeye's mean? Try the Viet Kong. Try invading a country. And, of course, that's the whole point, are these people responding to the nihilistic realities around them. He's mean, and the paradox is that he's funny.
I did think Hotlips' transition to the cheerleading bimbo was done rather quickly. Maybe a flaw in that gem.
Liberal guys are just as sexist as conservative ones: yes. Jerks are everywhere.
Lenny gets his biggest pushback from Corcoran, yes. So they are the most adversarial. I'll agree with that.
The Godfather hopping Pacino to Best Supporting was a bit of bet-hedging shenanigans because they didn't want him competing with Brando. They should've been reversed; Pacino's clearly the lead.
"The movies help us mirror our real life trials…"
"…to hold, as 't were, the mirror up to nature…" Yes. That's what I was trying to get at up there with the comedy stuff: the best comedy shows us something of ourselves and life, whether slapstick or repartee.
I think we're in total agreement on The Heartbreak Kid.
I've got no problem with giving a family member a role; it's only nepotism when the family member didn't deserve it. Berlin 100% did.
I don't think there's a father in the remake. I'm just going off the trailer. That whole plotline wouldn’t work as well these days, anyway. I saw a production of The Importance of Being Earnest once, and the bums had set it in the modern era. Suddenly Cecily needing Jack's permission to wed, because she's his "ward", doesn't make a lick of sense. A large thread of the plot just unravelled from sweater back to skein.
It's a good fantasy. Us averages can get perfect 10s…
Yeah, it might be the case that the studio approved of A New Leaf always intending to wipe out that final murder…
I don't know if May is retired now. A Crisis in Six Scenes was the last thing I've seen her in. That was six years ago or thereabouts. Maybe seven.
I'll probably see if I can track down that bit from California Suite. Sounds like a ten minute hoot.
Lila "aging well" would be hilarious.
I'm meaning to check out Licorice Pizza, too. I have yet to see a Paul Thomas Anderson movie that didn't deliver the goods.
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ecarle (14979)
3 years ago
Feet to the fire, yeah, I'll go for wordplay over slapstick, but I appreciate slapstick more now than as a kid.
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That's interesting. I suppose one(I) shouldn't consign slapstick to "childhood laughs."
I do know that as hard as I laughed at The Party as a kid..."something happened internally" where the guffaws just didn't return decades later.
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Chaplin wasn't just giving us some good laughs, he was able to put over this genuine human being with depth and resonance - all through his body.
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True confession: I'm not all that "into" Chaplin and Keaton. Its a double-edged sword. Critics of 1963 found "Its a Mad Mad World" to be nothing much compared to the classics of Charlie and Buster, and objectively, I'm inclined to agree. I KNOW my classics.
Still, Jonathan Winters' slapstick destruction of that gas station AND his one liners in Mad World are just more connected to my life and my growing up and my peers. I ACKNOWLEDGE Chaplin as more important in film history...but he's "back there," and of course, invested in a very real pathos and heartbreak ethos, too.
I liked Keaton a bit more. All that deadpan. All that ACTION (The General ,and the "hundreds of brides" chase in Seven Chances -- which became an unfunny modern movie just a decade or two ago.)
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ecarle (14979)
3 years ago
I'm less likely now to go for The Three Stooges, but it's not about method; it's purpose. Chaplin and Allen have real purpose behind their comedy. It's not just that they're getting slapped or saying a quippy one-liner, it's why.
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Very well put.
The Stooges became a "thing" in my high school years -- watching the shorts with other guys, making fun OF them as we laughed WITH them.
A bit in college, too -- a shared laugh among students from all over the country, when one would be shown BEFORE a student showing of The Longest Yard or some such.
Watching The Three Stooges today, I sense a "lower class thing" to them...like they were kinda "down and dirty and from the streets" in an era of more elegant comedy. And that was in their FAVOR. A bit like a Troma film, or porno(without the porno, just the bad production values.)
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ecarle (14979)
3 years ago
The waiter in The Party is brilliant!
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THAT scene (with the door opening and closing, opening and closing, on the two waiters in conflict) is where I truly almost died laughing. Steve Franken as the drunk waiter, Blake Edwards regular James Lanphier as the "mean" other waiter.
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Traipsing through the water feature is classic. But you know, the first thing I think of about that film is the satirical commentary on all these people dismissing this guy who's the nicest guy at the party, and Bakshi is a great guy. It's the sweet moments I loved the most.
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Yes, there's a weird vibe to the piece. Sellers -- doing a SWEET Hindu accent (dialect humor is now OUT) nonetheless wrecks the movie set in the prologue, and wrecks the party thereafter. But its just the way he is.
I do like how the Cowboy Star(kind of Clint Eastwood before Clint was Clint) is the one guy who likes "the little buddy." And Sellers is liked by the prettiest girl there, of course (Claudine Longet, so sweet herself -- eventually to survive a manslaughter charge for shooting a boyfriend in real life.)
BTW, The Party shows us that the whole '"me too" thing was there in 1968, with any number of powerful middle-aged and unattractive moguls lording over pretty women. It was ever thus. Gavin McLeod captures the type perfectly here.
Of course, some women gladly accepted...
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Plus, who doesn't love a '60s film that ends with a giant bubble scene?
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With Mancini rock and roll! And a baby elephant!
(The kid I was liked that, like Disney or Hatari).
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ecarle (14979)
3 years ago
I think I laugh a little less these days, too. I wonder if that happens to everybody?
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I dunno. People don't scream at violence in movies anymore much either. I guess we got jaded. Too cool. Perhaps too knowledgeable about the real traumas of life.
Also...do we really HAVE a lot of filmic comedy "names" anymore? After Judd Apataow, who? And is he that great?(Like a lot of today's comic writer-directors, he sure doesn't like a lot of people "on the other side." We have a lot of very rich, very powerful, and very ANGRY comedy filmmakers these days.
Back in the days: Jerry Lewis, Dean Martin(separately), Billy Wilder, Jack Lemmon, Neil Simon, Bill Cosby(yep), Walter Matthau, Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, Richard Pryor, Steve Martin, Chevy Chase, John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Dan Ackroyd, Bill Murray, Eddie Murphy...Adam Sandler? Will Ferrell?
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ecarle (14979)
3 years ago
Your assessment of Brooks is a bullseye. Although I really like History of the World Part I. It's underrated.
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Thanks.
Its a matter of some study with me. For a year or two(but only that) in the 70's "Mel Brooks and Woody Allen" were IT for comedy. It would seem that the whole SNL/National Lampoon squad knocked them both out -- suddenly we had a LOT of new "young" talent out there.
Mel Brooks hit big with the gritty indie NYC movie "The Producers," struggled for a few years (The Twelve Chairs wasn't much of a hit) and then hit BIG -- in ONE YEAR -- with two major studio movies: Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein.
The descent was rather sudden and steep -- Silent Movie(with some BIG movie star cameos) was too much of a "Dom DeLuise joint", High Anxiety didn't work (Brooks couldn't do Hitchcock justice)...it just rather fell apart. I attribute it to Mel Brooks losing those writing collaborators. Alone, he was kinda silly.
History of the World WAS funny and does have fans. But it was like the 80's wanted nothing to do with Mel. The summer of 1980 had had Airplane, The Blues Brothers, Caddyshack and a sleeper I love called "Used Cars" -- Mel Brooks just seemed as passe as the Borscht Belt.
..and Woody went and got serious(in the main.)
(More later. Ran out of time to respond.)
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ecarle (14979)
3 years ago
Theatres will come back. Some will close, others will open. There will always be a call for seeing classics and arthouse films on the big screen.
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Oh, I agree.
Us amateur film historians know that "the movies" were supposed to die many times:
When b/w TV came in in the 50s. (Solution: big color movies.)
When color TV came in in the 60's. (Solution: R rated movies.)
When the studios started closing down in the 60's. (Pauline Kael predicted no more movies, just TV.)
And so forth and so on.
COVID brought down quite a death blow, but only for a year or so. I personally(as an older person) have been to the movies about 10 tens in the last two years.
We're waiting for more movies to get cleared for release. Then the theaters will do even better.
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It's like records. Turntables are still big for audiophiles. Cinephiles will keep the movie houses open. Unfortunately, most theatres - especially in smaller towns - will probably just be running constant MCU crap. Frankly, though, I think the last cinemas will be arthouses. Disney et al. are pushing for the at-home thing. I think they'd rather just have Disney+. But we who love movies will always want to watch Casablanca on the big screen one more time.
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All agreed. There was a temporary cut back, but in the US, there are at least three "movie series" programs cycling " a classic a month" through modern multiplex screens. I've seen Psycho and MASH and Jaws and North by Northwest and Butch Cassidy and To Catch a Thief(THAT one got a full house; the glamour, I guess), and Monty Python and the Holy Grail...etc ect. Casablanca , too.
Plus you got your Big Lebowski (newer but "old") out there in rotation on the big screen, too.
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ecarle (14979)
3 years ago
Directors deserve a tonne of credit, too. I just see them getting all the credit, and people forget film is collaborative. Editors have it even worse than writers. I've heard it said that films are made three times: written, shot, edited. John Q. Public tends only to credit the guy responsible for the middle bit. I know the director guides scripts (and edits), but I still think writers and editors get shafted for glory.
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Well, that's a leftover , I think, from two eras. Golden Age -- Ford, Hitchcock, Hawks were SOLD as stars(and Hitch with his TV show was the biggest of them all.)
Then, in the early 70's, a new breed of "film school critics" worked on overtime to promote "an auteur a week" -- some lasted (Scorsese, Spielberg, DePalma) some did not(Bogdonovich, Freidkin...even Coppola and Altman I'd say, and Peckinpah fell from grace and died young.)
Modernly, our auteurs often prove themselves such as "writer-directors" -- QT, PTA, and recently Aaron Sorkin(upgrading from just writing to directing.)
Film editors? Well, Verna Fields supposedly really "made" Jaws from Spielberg's mess of footage(but HIS POV is always there) and it is believed that QT's movies lost some tightness and edge when his editor Sally Menke died young.
So we CAN find these credits.
Still, I use my story of Ernest Lehman (NBNW -- great; The Prize -- lousy) to remind us all that a truly GREAT director is a "boss" -- cuts bad lines, perfects good performances, supervises the overall project...
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I also think it's not nice how easily producers, directors, and others can just callously alter the writer's scripts. I think that sucks.
You're right, though: directors have a major part played, too.
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Ace_Spade (9544)
3 years ago
I tried saying wordplay is sophisticated and slapstick is fun, and every time I did, I'd recall something physical, funny, and moving, and I changed my position.
Chaplin's just an example. I'm sure there's somebody that you resonate with more, even if that's not a movie. Maybe you've seen a physical clown performer live or something.
My confession is that I haven't seen a tonne of Keaton. I'll also confess that, although it's on my List, I haven't seen It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. I'm a huge fan of Jonathan Winters, though. Just because something's more important to "film history" doesn't mean it's better. Sometimes obscure stuff is better than what's remembered. I think I'm one of the only people on this planet who will remember the novel Puckoon by Spike Milligan. But darned if that book didn't make me laugh so hard I nearly peed.
I respect the Stooges. They're great at doing their thing, but they weren't going for "deep".
Sellers and he did a great job with Bakshi.
One thing I never understood with the #metoo stuff was the "How could this be happening!?" sentiment. Casting couch jokes for decades, and nobody figured out that Hollywood execs were abusing their power to engage in sexual abuse? Come on.
It's weird to think that our entire culture might be jaded. Can that be true? We scream less, but every Pixar film that comes out, seems like there's somebody crying at how moving it was. I wonder if it's just with how much media we consume. Time once was, theatres were it for entertainment. Then radio, TV, cable. VCRs and DVDs let us watch our favourites ad-nauseum. Now we've got instant access to whatever we want in HD and content pours from youtube and the rest. Maybe we're just deadened to it all.
That's another reason I miss live arts. It's less passive, more powerful, and there's something so magical about knowing, "This is it; this happens tonight and never again."
Big name comedy? Yeah, you're right. Not so much anymore. We have a lot of action-comedy hybrid stars - another bi-product of the MCU's formula. We don't have Jack Lemmon, we get Robert Downey Jr. or The Rock. That kind of thing.
I did a quick search for best comedies of the 2010s, 2000s, and 1990s. The results were very interesting, and require a LOT more analysis than I can sum up here. I noticed that there were indie films across the board (low-budget works with puns, I guess), and there were action-comedy hybrids in all three as well. But in the 90s, there were a LOT more "big" comedy movies, heavily promoted. There also seemed to be a lot more iconic films, like The Cable Guy and The Big Lebowski. 2020s lists didn't have as much agreement, either, like critics and list-voters can't figure out what the big comedy films of the last decade even were.
Comedy is in the cracks. Because of the "we're offended" crowd, a bit; I've read articles about how China is a huge movie market and comedy doesn't translate. The other important thing is proximity: maybe it's just that we don't remember what the brilliant films of a decade truly were until time passes. I think it's a hybrid of factors.
I can't think of any actors who are mostly known for laughs. A lot of the comedy guys are getting out. Todd Phillips talked about that in a Joker interview. I do think we have a lot of comedians, though. And they've got BOLD work coming out. Dave Chappelle is maybe the biggest. That dude swings for the fences. I know he's kinda from a past era, but he's still doing exciting work. Other comedians on Netflix do impressive stuff - Bo Burnham, for instance. That's where a lot of the funny is these days: as I said, in the cracks.
In some ways, I think this is almost where Comedy belongs. It's subversive. It's punk rock with a bulbous, red nose.
There's a great Mel Brooks/Woody Allen debate on Siskel and Ebert show. They represent the two branches of comedy we've been talking about, the "basic" yuks (Brooks) and the stuff that seeks depth with its laughs (Allen).
I'm looking up Used Cars on your recommendation; you've got good taste.
Woody did get serious, but still knows how to do comedy. To Rome with Love, man… Woody's reaction to shaking the funeral parlour guy's hand had me in stitches. People say Woody's lost it, but I think that's just what people say. I still love his stuff. Magic in the Moonlight is funny and sweet. Midnight in Paris is wonderfully inventive. Wonder Wheel and Irrational Man get me thinking again and again. I can't tell you how stupid I think Amazon are for trying to put a lid on his recent works. And I think every, single employee of Hachette that threatened to quit over Woody's memoires should've been taken up on their kind offer.
(CONT.)
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Ace_Spade (9544)
3 years ago
It's funny which classic films sell out the house, isn't it? Sometimes I go to classic film screenings and it's almost empty, and I'm a little sad because people aren't interested in this brilliant movie, but I also like that I kinda feel like I'm in on a secret.
The auteur director as god also feeds into our psyches' need for simplicity. It's too much information to go, "Who made this brilliant film?" and hear a list of thirty names. If you can just go, "Steven Spielberg," it's easier.
I've watched a few videos about Marcia Lucas and her editing team on Star Wars making that picture work. I think that's probably true a LOT. The editors make the movie work. Not to diminish the director, but the way films are made means, intrinsically, that editors will be key players.
Sally Menke's early death explains a lot, actually. Django Unchained was the first movie of QT's that I watched and thought, "I think he's at his most self-indulgent here." So, maybe it was Menke all along… I still love Django and Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, but those films are cut differently.
The key is that all cast and crew on a film have a job and they have to do it extremely well. And, yes, to give directors their due, they are the boss and everything gets filtered through their lens (literally and figuratively), so ultimately that credit does lie with them. I just like to try and remember the writers and editors and others.
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ecarle (14979)
3 years ago
I think Woody's films have more of that one voice feel because he gets involved at all levels. He picks music, sets up shots, is in the editing room. He he's always guiding.
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Very much so. I think critics tend to forget to include Woody Allen among the "70's auteurs" who also included Scorsese and Spielberg(and for awhile Bogdanovich and Friedkin.)
The reason: in the 70's in particular, Woody Allen was a very big MOVIE STAR. He was THE comedy template for a generation(starting in the 60's, when he did TV in the main.) That voice. That manner. That nebbish appeal -- and, I think, oddly enough, his ability to project a certain virility AND even a bit of rebel macho.
After being in some expensive 60's movies like What's New Pussycat and Casino Royale, in the 70's (and starting with 1969's Take the Money and Run) Woody was really making low budget indiefilms. He sold them as "straight comedies," (and usually as absurdist ones) but got more and more serious as time went on.
I've always been intrigued by how Bananas and Sleeper had the same political plot and same political message: Woody joins the revolutionaries and helps them defeat the tyrants -- and then the revolutionaries take over and BECOME the tyrants. Woody got that. Its a life lesson, I think. But those themes were in his "early funny movies." From Annie Hall on, Woody became a "thoughtful" filmmaker and for the most point absurdity was out. "Airplane" and it ilk would handle that in the 80's.
Woody in the 80's became rather an "Upper East Side NYC" guy a chronicler of a specific place and time and people. (As diversity issues impact film production in this era, one wonders -- what do we do with the films of Woody Allen and his muse Ingmar Bergman? Could their subjects be any more white?)
Like old time filmmakers before him, Woody tossed out a movie a year with ease and the "major ones" sort of came out every few years -- Hannah and Her Sisters, Crime and Misdemeanors -- movies ABOUT something beyond Woody's usual intellectual doodles. Crimes and Misdemeanors has a great subject, I think - how SOME people can get away with ANYTHING, and OTHER people get away with nothing.
Woody's been working for decades now, his sex scandals HAVE hurt him, but he keeps making movies. Now with foreign funding. One just came out starring -- Wallace Shawn and Gina Gershon? Its come to that. Good actors, but not major.
Still, his heyday is long behind him: the 60s, the 70's(especially), the 80's.
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I think this is why people think his films are all "the same", even though Crimes & Misdemeanors doesn't feel like Annie Hall at all.
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Agreed. Different things on his mind, over a decade apart. Annie Hall is like a bridge between "the early funny ones" and the more intellectual later ones -- and established NYC as his near permanent turf -- until his scandals drove him to Europe.
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I attribut that '70s goodness to the European thing, too. Directors like Scorsese grew up on foreign cinema and brought that true Art thing to Hollywood.
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A lot of directors in the 70's "copycatted" the movies they love. Bogdanovich gave us Whats Up Doc as a remake of Bringing Up Baby. DePalma loved remaking Hitchcock movies with more blood and sex. Lucas went for Buck Rogers and movie serials.
But an entire contingent loved Eurofilm and brought it to the American 70's film: Coppola, Ashby, Rafelson Mazursky, Altman, Scorsese.
And of course Roman Polanski WAS Eurofilm.
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ecarle (14979)
3 years ago
I love Star Wars, but I kinda blame it for the end of that era. Star Wars gave the studios a clear direction: toys. That's when you can hear the little, cash-register CA-CHING gears turning in their little, executive heads.
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I was there, and you could FEEL it. Two things at once: a RETURN to entertainment, and something new and BETTER in terms of the quality, the effects, the writing (hell, even the stars -- Sir Alec Guiness was a BIG DEAL to be in Star Wars.)
And the toys.
From my readings it seems that the movies had generally been an "OK" source of income -- movies made a little money, stars and directors were well paid, but blockbusters were few and flops were many.
Then, once the 70's saw The Godfather, The Exorcist, Jaws and Star Wars make BIG money -- the corporate raiders came in and pushed most of the artists OUT. and many of the movie moguls of the 80s had been TV moguls in the 70s.
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ecarle (14979)
3 years ago
Every era of movies has its greatness (and its dreck), so I don't want to start going, "Oh, the '70s were the last of the great movie eras!" but there was something special there, and it definitely died (as opposed to just phasing into different sensibilities).
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Well, the period 1967-1977 is almost a cliché now as "a Golden Age" (it starts with Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate in 1967 and ends with Star Wars in 1977) but its a little overrated.
Failing studios put out a LOT of cheapjack looking dreck: The Omega Man, Skyjacked; Soylent Green and Airport 75(sorry, Charlton)...most Charles Bronson movies.
Meanwhile, the well reviewed major artists started making movies nobody but critics saw: Altman and Rafelson and Dennis Hopper are in this category.
Even Chinatown wasn't a HUGE hit in 1974. Too much of a downer. Too R-rated for big crowds.
I think the 70's glow mainly because a lot of directors were allowed to make "great art, bad box office" films.
By the way, I think 1957 to 1967 is a great era, too. You get Hitchcock at his best, Wilder at his best, Preminger at his best, Lean at his best; you get Stanley Kubrick AND Blake Edwards, you get "meaty" movies for big stars like Paul Newman and Steve McQueen to appear in, etc.
Every era's pretty good. Maybe even this one....
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ecarle (14979)
3 years ago
Chinatown, yes. I think I could watch that movie on a loop and it'd take me three days to get bored.
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A great one. I think this is interesting: it was a SUMMER movie, and it pretty much dominated the summer of 1974 as Jaws would dominate the next summer of 1975. Except with this difference: Chinatown was NOT a big blockbuster, it was just covered all the time in the papers and magazines. It was NOT what "a summer movie" was going to be.
And yet, it kinda was. It was "genre." It was a mystery movie. It had a historic bloody act of violence(Nicholson's nose gets sliced and he wears a bandage or stiches for the rest of the movie.) It has a couple of murders, a couple of shoots, a good fight.
And it has a great big 1974 R-rated secret to change movie history a bit. Incest. And NOT rape.
And it has an overlay of politics to keep it "smart" and and overlay of tragedy to keep it Shakespearean.
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ecarle (14979)
3 years ago
Jerks-as-heroes.. Movies have always had jerks, but the interesting thing is when they're the hero. I love a good, classic hero archetype, too, but there's something so, so fun about jerks. Larry David on Curb Your Enthusiasm? Don Draper? Jerks give great story possibilities.
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There's this really elastic phrase called "anti-hero." I've never felt it has been really defined well enough. Is an anti-hero a "good guy" who fights the system? Or is an anti-hero a "bad guy" whom we can't help but root for?
I think in TV terms, the anti-hero dates back to smilin' Larry Hagman as "JR" on Dallas. His brother Bobby was a real nice guy, right?(I barely watched the show) but JR was "the bad guy" who got away with everything. And folks loved him. Or loved to hate him. Or something.
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ecarle (14979)
3 years ago
The modern cable anti-hero starts with Tony Soprano I'd say. We already kinda liked Michael and Sonny Corleone, but this guy was even better: a family man, a leader, very sexual (as MIchael Corleone was NOT), very funny. And he had a wife and two kids and a McMansion -- and he strangled people with his bare hands and a garrote.
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ecarle (14979)
3 years ago
Tony Soprano "opened the flood gates' on "likeable bad guys": Breaking Bad and Man Men are quality. I'm afraid a few later models are more broad -- The Americans and Ozark(which feature evil WOMEN) and...well, everything.
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ecarle (14979)
3 years ago
Larry David on Curb Your Enthusiasm?
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Curb Your Enthusiam did something really stunning, I felt: it revealed that Seinfeld wasn't really SEINFELD's baby...or life view, at all.
Seinfeld's stand-up on the show never really fit the nastiness (and laughs) of the episodes that followed...we came to realize that this was the "vision of Larry David." Larry didn't look all that great as a young comedian, but he aged into a pretty impressively middle-aged grouch, with the sex appeal of a very rich man(with a very pretty wife --with the face of a "sexy duck" said one critic) and...Larry gave voice to ALL of our daily frustrations and the realities of absurd day to day life.
A great show. At least in the beginning. I don't watch it anymore. 11 seasons was enough.
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ecarle (14979)
3 years ago
Speaking of jerks as heroes:
I give you Jack Nicholson in As Good as It Gets. They gave him an Oscar for that one but it was like Larry David gone totally sour. The story "excused" Jack's madness as mental illness. But he was made very rich which(a great moral) allowed him to get away with everything.
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ecarle (14979)
3 years ago
There is a wisdom to knowing when to fold 'em (that's Kenny, not Lenny).
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A return to The Heartbreak Kid (though Lenny is surely a "jerk predecessor" to Larry David).
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But it's bad to dissolve the marriage after 5 days; I'm not letting Lenny off the hook. It's not because it's bad to cut his losses - that's good. The mistake is barreling in with so little regard for one's partner or oneself that the marriage is doomed before it starts.
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Yes. I think someone said that in a perfect world, getting married would be as hard as getting a divorce.. to put some real weight on it. (Of course, these days divorce can be pretty quick, too.)
Still, I know of lots of marriages -- mainly of my parents generation -- where whirlwind courtships led to marriages in a matter of days or weeks. (Men going off to war often impacted this.) And many of THOSE marriages lasted. Let's be romantic: if it is time, and you are of age and you meet "the one" -- why not commit all the way? Nice when it happens.
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The callous attitude Lenny (or Hollywood celebs) have towards romance and marriage is what I find deplorable, mockable - not knowing when it's time to get out.
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OK..I understand that. Put another way: if you are ready to quit that quickly in to it, you never put much thought to it in the first place.
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Commitment is good. That's the other reason we cock our eyebrows at people pulling the parachute that quickly into a marriage: they clearly aren't trying at all. See a counsellor. Put in a little effort.
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Well, there has always been a "societal" reason for marriage on top of the romantic reasons: to create stability, promote reproduction, establish family units, reduce a trend towards "lustful non-commitment." Some of that is out of style, but some of it is a good thing.
When you are in a marriage, it sure hurts to find out that your 'soul mate" could just as well be with another person ..and sometimes they make the change. Hurts. The "societal bond" thing is overcome. As Woody Allen said about HIS moves: "The heart wants what it wants."
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funny (in spite of himself) is how much effort he's willing to put in to the dumb decision. If he worked half as hard at his marriage (and finding a good partner to begin with) as he did at leaving her, he'd have been happy.
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Yep. But I guess he found Cybill to be more worth everything than Jeannie. (Me, I don't; beautiful Cybill is, but to her determent, she never came off as a woman that a man could really TRUST.)
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I feel like we've dissected M*A*S*H*, Animal House, and other "frat bro" movies before… I seem to recall a very, very in-depth conversation on the subject.
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I'm sure we have. I tend to have certain favorite films and I like to link them and discuss them, and I'm sure we have...
...but its no biggie to revisitt the issues or to introduce other readers to them.
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