Does anyone know how Nancy Walker came to direct this movie? Seems a pretty weird gig for a 58-year-old dame who'd never directed a feature before!
sharenot sure, aside from her background in musical theater (she was a respected Broadway actress) and her friendliness to the gay community.
shareI dunno. Probably a friend of Alan Carr's and they got to talking one night. I think Nancy takes a lot of flak for this but it's actually fairly competently directed (they were intentionally going for a stage-like heightened comedy tone), it's the script that's appallingly bad.
shareHer manager happened to also be the producer of the movie and asked her to direct it. This same guy also handled many of the stars you see in the movie.
shareNancy Walker must have had a lot of gay male friends who urged her to direct this pile of crap.
I don't think she ever realized just how bad this film was.
Yeah, that explains it.
People, just because nepotism is easy and makes people like you, it does NOT make it right!
Who in their right mind would have had Nancy Walker direct a feature film?
The answer: No one! (In their right mind that is!)
From the imdb trivia section:
This film was promoted with a nationally syndicated one-hour TV special entitled Magic Night (1980) (TV) also directed by Nancy Walker and featuring a roller-skating Cher, a pajama-clad Hugh M. Hefner and a The Village People song cut from the film ("Ready for the '80s!").
[deleted]
[deleted]
Would love to see that! I remember seeing the promos for the special with Perrine and Jenner: "Get ready for Allan Carr's Magic Night!" Because I was 16 at the time, and it looked stupid, I skipped it. Now I'm praying someone will post it to Youtube. So far, no luck.
shareMust have been pure wheeling and dealing within the Hollywood gay community. Her short-lived tv show The Nancy Walker Show had the first out gay character in the regular cast (before SOAP) and she used to go on Merv Griffin and he'd fawn all over her like she was some kind of movie and tv legend. She reportedly told Randy Jones (Village People cowboy) that "movies are just little pieces of sh_t strung together to make something pretty." and that philosophy seems to be at work on this one. Reportedly, all the music numbers were really the creation of Allan Carr and his late 80s Oscar ceremony fiasco (Rob Lowe and Snow White) makes this seem true, so Walker's role must have been to supervise all the embarrassing bouncy dialogue between Perrine, Guttenberg and Jenner, and to goad the many "diva" characters in the movie (Marilyn Sokol, Altovise Davis, Tammy Grimes, Barbara Rush and June Havoc) into behaving more obnoxiously. Given that she was a fixture on many lame 70s sitcoms, one gets the impression that she expected the movie to have a laugh track.
share