(1958, France) starring Jacques Tati, Jean-Pierre Zola, Adrienne Servantie, Alain Bercourt; directed by Jacques Tati; music by Franck Barcellini and Alain Romans. Seen on TCM, July 21, 2013. Available from these sources.
The story:Five years after his first appearance, Jacques Tati’s M. Hulot returns with MON ONCLE, a film set along the dividing line between Paris’ past and its future. Aligned (as is the film) with the former, Hulot lives in a colorful, overpopulated Parisian neighborhood and, lacking employment, spends his days waiting to pick up his adoring nephew from school, and subsequently escorting him to his parents’ ultra-modern house. Filled with gadgets, some turned on only to impress the neighbors, the house seems designed specifically to frustrate Hulot, who unwittingly disrupts its operations at every opportunity. Concerned about his future, Hulot’s relatives attempt to find him gainful employment and pair him off with a neighbor, with little success on either front.
– – –
Lindsay:
IN MON ONCLE, there is a silver fountain shaped like a fish that has so much screen time that it is practically a co-star. It belongs to the Arpels—Monsieur Hulot’s sister, brother-in-law, and young nephew. They live in a house so obsessively modern that it has turned them into clowns.
When Hulot’s sister switches on the fountain, which she is forever doing for visitors, it gives a strangled gurgle and spouts straight up like a geyser. You see that fountain far away, in close up, and from every conceivable angle. Is is as if Tati can’t get over how funny it is, and neither will you after about an hour.
M Hulot lives a dreamy, impractical life in a city neighborhood full of color. He tries to do what his modern relatives want—the problem being that even they cannot do what they want. They cannot be colorless for the life of them. They own a red bicycle, green plants, blue pillars, a vivid yellow rocking chair. We first see Hulot’s sister wearing a pea-green caftan and matching turban.
She buys a silver garage door with an electronic eye that terrifies the maid. But her husband buys a green, pink, and lavender car with fat white sidewalls. These are anniversary presents.
This movie hasn’t got one mean-spirited moment, because Tati never invites you to look down on these people. It’s the human comedy, he says. Look at the colors of that.
– – –
Dave:
A CHIRPY, CATCHY FRENCH TUNE is playing. Stray dogs scurry, enjoying boundless freedom on these cobblestoned streets of a town somewhere in France. Precisely where, I don’t know, but I loved the two hours I spent there.
Mr. Hulot (director/star Jacques Tati) is like those dogs. He’s a happy, harmless fellow, taking pleasure in the little things. Such as manipulating a window reflection just enough to cause a nearby canary to warble. As with the carefree pooches who delight in finding morsels in the garbage, it doesn’t much to make Monsieur Hulot cheery.
Like the seaside resort in Tati’s previous film, MR. HULOT’S HOLIDAY, this is a very real-seeming place. I was immersed in the setting and its quirky, flawed inhabitants with all their very human characteristics.
There’s a street sweeper who’d rather do anything but sweep. A sweet, pretty young girl who seeks out the older Hulot’s approval. There’s a ridiculously fussy fussbudget whose prized possession is a horrid, metal fountain she activates only for worthy, impressionable guests.
There are the boys who pass the time by either making pedestrians have head-on collisions with street lamps, or causing drivers to think they’ve had collisions when they actually haven’t.
Then there’s Hulot. He lives on the very top floor of an impossibly intricate building that resembles a Joseph Cornell box. He tries, but modern gadgets and appliances make life too complicated. So what job does he take on? Well of course in a factory filled with nothing but dials, switches and complex machinery. Falling asleep at his desk on his first day, he throws the entire operation into minor chaos. But the side effect is that Hulot brightens the up-till-now dull and monotonous life of his co-workers.
At the movie’s end, the dogs are romping through the streets again. Life goes on. As with HOLIDAY, I’m sad to leave. I miss it already.
*Also recommended: Tati’s PLAYTIME and MR. HULOT’S HOLIDAY, as well as the recent, animated adaptation of a Tati screenplay, THE ILLUSIONIST.
– – –
Gloria:
WHEN I WATCH a Jacques Tati film, I feel as if I’ve been invited to be part of a clever, conspiratorial event.
“Come watch,” his work seems to say. “Let’s have some fun.”
So I’m drawn in, expectant, and hunkered down with an incessant grin on my face, periodically surprised by the laugh-out-loud moments. I can’t wait to see — and hear — what happens next. Visual treat after visual treat appears, accompanied by perfectly calibrated silence and perfectly hilarious sound effects. Who knew that the bzzzz of an entry buzzer or an on-again/off-again fountain gurgle could humor me for two hours? I’m still whistling the theme song.
What I love about MON ONCLE is the sense of intimacy. I’m totally in for the ride, peeking over fences, down halls, and into windows. I see what and how Tati sees, mesmerized by his sight gags and clever points of view, those long, extended shots that give me time to look around, and each masterfully composed frame that can stand alone as a piece of art.
When the characters bring their über-contemporary chairs out of doors to look into their house to watch television, I feel as if I am pulling up my own chair to sit quite happily and watch them while they watch tv.
The contemporary world that Hulot’s sister and brother-in-law inhabit is monochromatic steel gray and full of new fangled complexity. Regardless of its symmetry, it’s a world consistently off-kilter, dysfunctional, and just plain kooky. Hulot’s counterpoint neighborhood is in stark contrast, lived-in and richly toned, as comfortable as his moccasins and overcoat. It’s not a perfect world either, but people have gotten used to how things work (and don’t work) there. Hulot replaces a brick in a pile of rubble because that’s where it goes. Humans are amusing that way.
I could watch over and over again when the neighbors try to follow the curved path of the sidewalk and teeter across the paving stones in the yard, but I bet that one day they’ll start cutting straight across and make their own path, the same way Hulot’s brother-in-law veers from the standard gray option and buys a car that’s painted pink, lavender, and green.
The world keeps changing, and we figure out how to live in our particular place in time.
“C’est la vie,” Hulot says. He’s absolutely right.
Lindsay Edmunds blogs about robots, writing, life in southwestern Pennsylvania, and sometimes books and movies at Writer’s Rest. She is the author of a novel about love in the age of artificial intelligence: Cel & Anna.
Dave is a graphic designer, and proprietor of movieLuv.
Gloria Bowman is a writer, storyteller, blogger, movie lover, freelance editor, and author of the novel, Human Slices. Access her blog at www.gloriabowman.com; on Twitter @GloriaBow.
No, it’s a not a rock band. They’re the nine surviving masterpieces from Alfred Hitchcock’s silent years, and they’re coming to a theater near you.
The Herculean restoration project by the British Film Institute required a series of daunting tasks — from reintegrating lost footage to tinting restoration. Hitchcock once said, “The silent pictures were the purest form of cinema.” The release of these films offers audiences a remarkable opportunity to experience his force of genius in full glory, instead of on old, damaged prints.
The Hitchcock 9 includes:
THE LODGER (1926)
THE PLEASURE GARDEN (1926)
DOWNHILL (1927)
EASY VIRTUE (1927)
THE RING(1927)
THE FARMER’S WIFE (1928)
CHAMPAGNE (1928)
THE MANXMAN (1929)
BLACKMAIL(1929)
To add to the drama, live accompaniment, including some new scores, will be part of the screenings.
The Hitchcock 9 opened at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival last week, goes bi-coastal this week in L.A. and New York, and then moves on to Seattle, D.C., and points beyond.
I know where I will be in August when The 9 shows up at Chicago’s Music Box Theatre.
Nestor Studios, the first film studio in Hollywood, 1913. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Would anyone be surprised by a huge implosion in the film industry?
As reported by FirstShowing.net, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg recently predicted a list of dramatic adjustments, from pricing to distribution and competition from the networks. Hollywood is not immune from the upheavals that technology brings to every industry. Their presentation was held June 12 at the University of Southern California.
I’ll predict that there will be home theaters in every house in the country — and as costs go down and business models change, lots of community theaters or at least community watching events where people can gather and pick their own programming. What fun! Cheaper popcorn too!
SOMETIMES A MOVIE SURPASSES its source material, as PSYCHO does.
Sometimes a movie uses its source material as a launching pad, as CABARET does.
Then there’s James Joyce’s short story “The Dead” and John Huston’s movie THE DEAD.
Rarely are a movie and its source material such well-met equals.
My God, this movie is good.
The Book (1914)
“The Dead” is the closing story in a collection by James Joycecalled The Dubliners. This collection had a long strange trip to publication, being rejected eighteen times by fifteen publishers. One time it was accepted and then rejected because the printer found one of the stories objectionable and refused to set it. Another printer burned the proofs.
The story starts with guests arriving at a party given by two unmarried sisters, Kate and Julia Morkan, on January 6, 1904—the Feast of the Epiphany. It ends in a Dublin hotel room, where the nephew of Kate and Julia, a college professor named Gabriel Conroy, sees himself suddenly as “a pitiable fatuous fellow.”
His wife Gretta has just confessed a passionate affair in her youth with a boy named Michael Furey, who died for love of her. What stirred Gretta’s memories is a song she heard at the party, “The Lass of Aughirm.” Her lover used to sing it to her.
As he watches Gretta sleeping, Gabriel perceives that he does not know her, this woman with whom he lives and with whom he has had children. He never felt toward any woman the passion that Michael Furey felt toward her.
Snow continues to fall. Gabriel imagines the death of his aunt Julia, who is frail, and the death that comes to all. He feels his soul approaching “that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead.”
“The Dead” has the reputation of being one of the finest short stories ever written. It does not seem to be doing anything remarkable as it goes along—it is difficult to pinpoint its artistry. But it builds upon itself and ends in a way that you know is brilliant, even if you cannot explain why.
The Movie (1987)
John Huston directed 37 movies over a 46-year career. THE MALTESE FALCON was the first. THE DEAD was the last. He mostly had to direct the movie from another room, speaking to the actors through a microphone. He strong-armed the angel of death all through filming and did not live to see it released.
John Huston had Irish citizenship and lived in Galway, Ireland, for twenty years. He lived a rich and colorful life. In 1987 he was eighty years old, used a wheelchair, and needed oxygen. All these made him the perfect director to bring this Irish story about passion and death to the screen.
The opening shot is of a Dublin street in blue winter light. There is a soft, welcoming glow in the windows of a tall townhouse—the place where the guests gather. At the party, they have easy, polite conversations, except when the subject of music comes up. Music calls up another life entirely—more emotional, less amenable to reason.
A guest recites a poem called “Broken Vows.” (“You have taken the East from me. You have taken the West from me.”) It brings all conversation to a stop and prefigures Gretta’s encounter with the melancholy song that reminds her of the lover who died.
The movie has a delicate, beautiful score by Alex North.
Where it is going
Toward the end of the film, Gretta Conroy (Anjelica Huston) stands on the stairs listening to a tenor named Mr D’Arcy sing “The Lass of Aughirm.” She listens as if in a trance. Her husband Gabriel (Donal McCann) stares at her, not understanding.
Later that night in their hotel, Gretta tells Gabriel about her first love, Michael Furey. The scene, which plays out via two monologues, first hers and then his, is a powerhouse.
Where you can see it
Netflix, Amazon, iTunes, and Vudu, and YouTube have it for sale or rent. Amazon Prime members can watch it for free.
The story of the movie
YouTube has several clips available, including “The Lass of Aughirm” scene (another powerhouse). Here is the official trailer.
But there is another trailer, a commentary by Dan Ireland. He was head of acquisitions for Vestron Pictures, which produced the movie after initially passing on it. Ireland talks about how the movie got made and why he thinks it is great. (“It’s a tea party, but it’s John Huston’s tea party.”)
Lindsay Edmunds blogs about robots, writing, life in southwestern Pennsylvania, and sometimes books and movies at Writer’s Rest. She is the author of a novel about love in the age of artificial intelligence: Cel & Anna.
What a score for film fans: The discovery of the talkie version of HIGH TREASON (1929). It was thought that only the silent version survived.
Kudos to the Northwest Chicago Film Society for its June 5 screening, “only the second showing since 1930, outside of the Library of Congress.” The sound restoration of this gem was completed by the Library of Congress in partnership with the Film Foundation, Chace Audio, and the Alaska Moving Image Preservation Association.
It would be nearly treasonous if this piece of cinema history wasn’t readily available one day.
Directed by Maurice Elvey, “the most prolific film director in British history,” HIGH TREASON takes us to an eccentric, Metropolis-like, and very contemporary future vision of 1940.
The United States of Europe and the Empire States of the Atlantic are at the tipping point of declaring war. In the mix are national pride, terrorists, squabbling border patrols, a split war council, and greedy munitions industrialists. The President (Basil Gill) seeks the fight. He doesn’t expect that the leader of the Peace League, the virtuous Dr. Seymour (Humberston Wright), will commit murder to change the course of events.
Regardless of the threat of mayhem, there’s always time for love and romance. Dr. Seymour’s lovely daughter Evelyn (Benita Hume) is not only beautiful, vivacious, charming, and fashionable — but she’s also willing to stand down an entire army in the name of peace, even if it threatens her relationship with her suitor, Michael Deane (Jameson Thomas), the commander of the Air Force. His troops, by the way, have a very cool black leather fashion sense.
Regardless of Evelyn’s moral fortitude, we get to watch her ready for a shower and dry herself off, not with a towel, but with an impractical handheld blow dryer while she maneuvers behind a peekaboo screen. Women can hold their own in this future world, but they are indeed vulnerable to being exposed in various states of undress when being rescued from rubble and inducted into public service.
In and around the politics and cheesecake, what amazing technology there is! Blade-Runner-esque public projection screens. A one-man orchestra with automated instruments. Electronic scoreboards tallying up peacenik enrollment numbers (like the National Debt Clock in Times Square).
The lovers chat and woo through their retractable Skype machines, albeit with a bit of difficulty in a humorous, modern-day “Can you hear me now?” situation.
My favorite scene in the film is set in an Art Deco nightclub where glitzy couples take to the dance floor, alternating between a traditional twirl and a kind of Vogue, simultaneously freezing for breaks in the music. I’m still wondering why there is a floor show with a fencing demonstration, but maybe it’s a comment on the art of conflict, better that it be practiced as entertainment and a demonstration of skill rather than as a real battle to the death.
A compelling piece of cinema history, HIGH TREASON addresses a conundrum of human existence: We are capable of such powerful and wondrous things — like being in love and creating grand cityscapes with skies full of floating dirigibles. Unfortunately, we are also capable of justifying our self-destruction.
Fun facts about HIGH TREASON: Raymond Massey makes his first film appearance here. Basil Gill, who plays the President, was renowned as one of the finest voices in early cinema.
Gloria Bowman is a writer, storyteller, blogger, movie lover, freelance editor,
and author of the novel, Human Slices.
Access her blog at www.gloriabowman.com; on Twitter @GloriaBow.
When I saw the clip below from THE GREAT LIE (1941), I had to see the entire movie right away.
Why is Davis SO hell bent on monitoring Astor’s intake of booze and sandwiches?
After all, Sandra, Astor’s character, is HUNGRY. “I’m not one of you anemic creatures who can get nourishment from a lettuce leaf — I’m a musician, I’m an artist! I have zest and appetite — and I LIKE FOOD,” Sandra rails. “I’ve been lying awake in there thinking about FOOD!”
With an almost nonchalant grace, Davis’s Maggie pulls off one of the most striking double slaps in cinema history.
What fun these actresses must have had creating this scene. I can imagine them on set, sharing a satisfying cigarette after filming, as if they just had sex. (Together, Davis and Astor rewrote much of the original script, and Astor won the 1942 Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her performance.)
All in all, THE GREAT LIE is a treat, full of goofy plot twists and turns. Watching Davis play the “good girl” counterpoint to Astor’s paryting diva is worth the entire 108 minutes. The drag on the whole movie is George Brent’s dud character and wooden performance. The character of Pete, played by Brent, doesn’t deserve one iota of either women’s attention. Every time he appears on screen, he does something worthy of a big sigh and a dose of disdain, like demanding that Sandra cancel her piano concert to marry him — even though they could probably go to City Hall after her concert, right?
In a nutshell (spoiler alert), both of the gals love Pete. He’s dumped Maggie to marry Sandra, then finds out that their marriage isn’t legal (due to Sandra’s delayed divorce). He has regrets, sees a way out, reconnects with Maggie, and goes off to the jungle. When the women think that he’s died in a plane crash — and Sandra realizes she’s pregnant and on her way to ruining her career as a concert pianist — the women conspire: Sandra will have the baby and give it to Maggie who will raise it as her own.
Hence, THE GREAT LIE.
But there is a GREATER, BIGGER, JAW-DROPPING LIE in this film. It’s a simple statement spoken by the doctor who is tending to Sandra as she goes through labor. While Sandra writhes and moans, Maggie waits outside, pacing, looking much like the traditional expectant father. On a break, the doctor says to Maggie: “A woman without a baby is like a man without a right arm.”
WHAT??? That’s SO not true, Doc! And could you come up with a worse metaphor?
Not only does the doctor imply that a man without an arm is worthless and devoid of all prospects (pity his poor patient in that sticky situation), but in his position of authority, the doc also gives voice to a big ball of hooey.
Certainly, being a mother may be one of the most fulfilling roles of a woman’s life.
But is a woman without a baby crippled? dysfunctional? broken? useless?
Of course not.
And that’s the BIG, BIG LIE in THE GREAT LIE.
To be sure, cultural messages upholding and reaffirming the positive role of motherhood resonate in film. On the opposite side of the spectrum, we all know about the cold-hearted and childless spinsters and stepmothers who appear in everything from traditional fairy tales to contemporary cinema. But I’ve not often caught such a specific line in a movie that so directly carries the message of “Procreate or Fail.”
Can you cite any other specific lines like that in movies? I want to make a list of them. Bad metaphors, big lies, and all.
Gloria Bowman is a writer, storyteller, blogger, movie lover, freelance editor,
and author of the novel, Human Slices.
Access her blog at www.gloriabowman.com; on Twitter @GloriaBow.
IN THE MOVIE CABARET, several people get writing credits:
Jay Allen, the screenwriter.
Joe Masteroff, author of the book of the 1966 play CABARET.
John Kander, composer of the music for the play and the movie.
Fred Ebb, the lyricist for the play and the movie.
John Van Druten, author of the 1951 play I AM A CAMERA, on which CABARET (the play) was based.
Based on the stories of Christopher Isherwood.
It is right that Isherwood is mentioned last, because all the others are standing on his back. That collection of stories has a name: GOODBYE TO BERLIN.
If not for Isherwood, Liza Minnelli would not have won an Oscar for her portrayal of Sally Bowles in CABARET in 1972. Bob Fosse would not have achieved a triple crown in 1973: a Tony for Pippin, an Emmy for the TV special Liza With a Z, and an Oscar for CABARET.
Neither would I AM A CAMERA exist. It was a play first (1951), then a movie (1955), just as CABARET was. Both play and movie starred Julie Harris as Sally Bowles.
Isherwood thought Julie Harris was “more essentially Sally Bowles than the Sally of my book, and much more like Sally than the real girl who long ago gave me the idea for my character.”
Goodbye to Berlin consists of six semi-autobiographical stories. Judging by his writing, Isherwood did not think life was a cabaret. At least not in the 1930s in Berlin.
A surprise is that Sally is not much of a singer:
She had a surprisingly deep husky voice. She sang badly, without any expression, her hands hanging down at her sides—yet her performance was, in its own way, effective because of her startling appearance and her air of not caring a curse what people thought of her. Her arms hanging carelessly limp, and a take-it-or-leave-it grin on her face.
What did she look like? Like this:
Her fingernails were painted emerald green, a colour unfortunately chosen, for it called attention to her hands, which were much stained by cigarette smoking and as dirty as a little girl’s. . . . Her face was long and thin, powdered dead white. She had very large brown eyes.
There was a real person behind the fictional Sally Bowles. Her name was Jean Ross, she was English, not American, and she refused all invitations to see CABARET. Her children disputed Isherwood’s portrayal of her, but that is the nature of stories. They may begin with reality, but never end there.
Cabaret (1972)
Although Liza Minelli’s performance is the spectacular one, all the actors are excellent. When I saw the movie again, I noticed how good Michael York is in the difficult role of Brian Roberts, a gay man trying earnestly to deny that he is gay, and failing. Sally catches on faster than he does.
The relationship between Sally and Brian is an invention. In GOODBYE TO BERLIN, she and the narrator, Chris, are not lovers. This is because Chris’s sexual orientation is not in doubt.
The reimagined Sally Bowles resembles a more worldy version of Pookie Adams, a character Liza Minelli played in her first movie: THE STERILE CUCKOO. Like Sally, Pookie overpowers a nice guy (though in THE STERILE CUCKOO he isn’t gay). She has self-esteem issues related to feeling unloved by her father.
None of these qualities belong to Isherwood’s Sally. His Sally has no particular issues with her father or family. She astonishes them—that’s all.
Elements from Goodbye to Berlin that survive more or less intact are: Sally’s emerald green fingernails and her fondness for prairie oysters; her abortion (though the circumstances and the probable father are different); her obsessive desire to be a famous actress and her willingness to sleep with any man who might be a position to make that happen; Brian’s job as an English tutor.
In both book and movie, the Nazis slither around Berlin like poisonous snakes. Isherwood wrote:
People laugh at them, right up to the last moment. . . .
Natalia, book and movie
In CABARET, the decadence of 1930s Berlin is counterbalanced by the love story of Fritz and Natalia. This relationship, which is a play/movie invention, sweetens the movie and makes it poignant in a way it would not be otherwise.
In Goodbye to Berlin, Natalia flees to Paris and marries a French doctor with whom she is very much in love.
Casting
In CABARET, Natalia was played by Marisa Berenson. In I AM A CAMERA, Natalia was played by Shelley Winters. Imagine that.
A Story Turned Loose
There is a theory about stories: that writers do not write them so much as turn them loose. Once committed to print, they develop a life of their own. Readers complete a story in their own way (an unread story is never finished).
The movie CABARET is not Christopher Isherwood’s story. It is Bob Fosse’s story; Liza Minelli’s, Joel Grey’s, and Michael York’s; John Kander and Fred Ebb’s; cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth’s; and the screenwriter’s story, too.
This is as it should be. After watching rehearsals for the play I AM A CAMERA in the 1950s, Isherwood wrote:
Watching my past being thus reinterpreted, revised and transformed by all these talent people upon the stage, I said to myself “I am no longer an individual. I am a collaboration. I am in the public domain.”
Lindsay Edmunds blogs about robots, writing, life in southwestern Pennsylvania, and sometimes books and movies at Writer’s Rest. She is the author of a novel about love in the age of artificial intelligence: Cel & Anna.
In Otto Preminger’s 1968 film SKIDOO, actor Austin Pendleton talks Jackie Gleason through an LSD trip and smokes pot with Groucho Marx.
What a mind-blowing way to start his film career.
“Here’s a movie that was made all those years ago, and it’s still controversial and being talked about. That’s sort of amazing,” Pendleton said in a recent interivew with HOME PROJECTIONIST.
“I mean, the majority of movies you make are just forgotten. People don’t even know what you’re talking about when you bring one up.”
Madeline Kahn with Pendleton in What’s Up, Doc? (1972), Warner Bros. Photo: movieactors.com
If you bring up Pendleton’s name, some moviegoers will respond, “Oh, I loved him in WHAT’S UP, DOC?” — or fill in the blank with another title in the long list of his films.
Others will say, “Austin who?”
“Oh, that’s all right,” Pendleton said in his self-deprecating style.
Over the years, it would have been hard to miss seeing Austin Pendleton on the silver screen. He’s brought his distinctive presence and talent to more than 40 feature films — plus stage and television — during a prolific career that’s still going strong. He’s kind of a national treasure. (See below for more on Pendelton’s career.)
AN INAUSPICIOUS BEGINNING
Austin Pendleton Photo: Steppenwolf Theatre
As soon as Pendleton settled in at his dreary motel near Paramount Studios to start work on SKIDOO, all he wanted to do was turn around and go back to the stage in New York.
“SKIDOO was the first time I ever played a part of any size at all in a film,” Pendleton said.
“When we first began to shoot, I thought, ‘Oh, I don’t know how to do this.’ I mean, for the first week I would call my agent in New York and I would say, ‘I gotta get outta here. I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know how to function in front of a camera.’ And my agent would say, ‘Well, dear, you just can’t get out of a film.'”
With no easy escape route, Pendleton continued to endure Preminger’s demands and tirades. “You’re an amateur,” Preminger railed to the struggling actor one day.
“We were about a week into filming,” said Pendleton, “and at that point, I just agreed with him. I said, ‘Yes, I know I’m inexperienced, Mr. Preminger. I really don’t know what to do.'”
Pendleton’s words of resignation instantly transformed the difficult director. “From then on, Otto took me under his wing,” Pendleton said. “He taught me just about everything I know about film acting. ”
“He was very kind and patient. Before each scene was shot, he would talk to me, mainly about how every take was like an opening night in the theatre, and I found that very helpful, since that was what I was most familiar with. He talked about how important simplicity was. He told me to just keep it small, to talk and listen, essentially, not to act too theatrically.
“He would repeat these things over and over to get them into me. And it meant so much that he was taking the time to do that. As an actor, I still call upon what Otto taught me.”
With Preminger’s coaching and support, Pendleton created the memorable SKIDOO character of Fred the Professor, an endearing, low-key, mastermind hippie whose stash of LSD changes everyone’s lives…for the better.
A LOVE IT OR HATE IT THING
Critics and movie fans have called SKIDOO all things scathing — a train wreck, a hot mess, a hatchet job.
It’s also been praised by its evangelists as being one of the most delightful, must-see films of all time.
“You know,” Pendleton said, “I sort of still don’t know what I feel about it. I certainly am happy I made it because I got to know Otto Preminger. That was wonderful. But there are two schools of thought about SKIDOO. One is that it’s a total disaster, an embarrassment, infamous, and all of that.
“On the other hand, there are a lot of people, either I know or know of, and who I’ve read on the subject who seem to be very intelligent, who just love that movie. It has a real following.”
Once you see SKIDOO, you can’t ever forget it. It’s a comedy that’s not a comedy, a spoof that’s not a spoof. Literally, it’s a “trip” — enigmatic, to be sure, blundering and odd, yet also rich with well crafted and executed scenes that will feed your head for a long time.
You’ll be asking yourself: “Did I really just see Carol Channing dancing in her underpants and see-through bra? Did I really just watch Jackie Gleason ingest LSD and hallucinate a vision of mathematics?”
In a nutshell, the plot is wacky. Tony (Jackie Gleason) is full of existential angst because he’s wondering if his wife Flo (Carol Channing) has been untrue and if he is really the father of his daughter Darlene (Alexandra Hay).
He’s also been called upon by God (Groucho Marx), the head of his old mob outfit, to knock off Blue Chips (Mickey Rooney) in Alcatraz because of an upcoming investigation in which Chips is going to testify. Tony doesn’t want to do the hit, but he finally agrees after discovering his friend Harry (Arnold Stang) in a car wash with a bullet hole right through his head.
How’s that for a comedic setup?
Tony has other trouble brewing as well. The hippies have come to town, and daughter Darlene has taken up with Stash (John Phillip Law) and his crew of dope-smoking, body-painting anarchists.
As an incognito prisoner, Tony sneaks into Alcatraz to do the hit. He befriends his cellmate, Fred the Professor (Austin Pendleton), a long-haired draft dodger. When Tony realizes he won’t be able to get to Blue Chips because of tight prison security, he and the Professor devise a scheme to escape from prison in a makeshift hot air balloon, oh yes, while all of the guards and the other convicts are happily hallucinating.
In the meantime, Carol Channing, dressed in a Napoleonic admiral suit, bugaloos and breaks into the SKIDOO theme song (by Harry Nilsson), leading a flotilla of hippies to rescue her daughter from God, who is hiding out on his yacht in the Pacific Ocean.
Most hilarious — and historic — is the closing shot where we find Pendleton and Groucho, now serene as Hare Krishnas, making their getaway in a psychedelic sail boat. After Groucho takes a hit off a joint, he utters what will end up being his last line ever in a movie: “Mmmm…pumpkin.”
“Doing that scene,” Pendleton said, laughing, “was one of the most delicious parts of the whole experience, you know?
“We were on location, by the ocean. We had dinner the night before, and everything Groucho said was funny, in a relaxed and inviting way. We talked about all kinds of things, mostly related to the acting profession.
“Looking back, I guess I was relieved that the last scene was being shot. But more than that, I was having a wonderful time at dawn with Groucho Marx. It was heaven, actually, exactly what you’d think it would be like.
“As soon as I got back to New York, I told everybody about that scene. In fact, I still tell everybody about it.”
CHANGING SCRIPTS & VISIONS
Preminger needed a film in 1968. He was facing a contractual obligation to get a movie completed by the end of the year. He chose the SKIDOO script, which was written by screenwriter Doran William “Bill” Cannon. Cannon asked the director to cast his friend Pendleton in the role of Fred because he had written the part specifically for him. Preminger met Pendleton and agreed.
“I think the script of that movie was pretty good,” Pendleton recalled. “I think Otto was not exactly the right director for it. It should have been somebody like Brian DePalma, who was very young then and who was making those counterculture movies. It should have been directed by somebody like that. On the other hand, Otto is a very original director, you know. What he does is very striking.”
Script changes were relentless. Cannon had written a “love, peace, and sunshine” script, and Preminger ended up making it something else, something still indefinable. He contributed to the jumble himself with his own script changes and brought in other writers as well, including Mel Brooks, Rob Reiner, Elliott Baker, and Stanley Ralph Ross, who was the writer for the BEACH PARTYmovies and several episodes for “The Monkees” and “Batman” television series. The film certainly shows his influence.
[Trivia buffs like to note that the SKIDOO cast includes Batman villains The Riddler (Frank Gorshin); The Penguin (Burgess Meredith); and The Joker (Cesar Romero). Otto Preminger himself played Mr. Freeze.]
Once Preminger established a relationship with Pendleton, he expanded his role as Fred the Professor. “That kind of knocked me out,” Pendleton said. “I wanted to be done with the whole thing. Although Otto was brilliant, there was this sense of despair on the set. What was happening didn’t seem to be really igniting.”
Pendleton said he learned from his later film experiences that there is often a sense of anxiety and fear during filming, and it doesn’t necessarily impact the success of a movie.
“I mean, it was true of the first few films that I did after SKIDOO. CATCH-22and WHAT’S UP, DOC? are both terrific films, but difficult in the making. On the other hand, sometimes the set is heaven and the film just sits there in the end.”
Certainly Preminger wasn’t trying to fail or crank out a meaningless throwaway piece of work. In addition to the star-studded “old school” Hollywood cast of Gleason, Channing, Rooney, and Marx, Preminger added Frankie Avalon, Fred Clark, Michael Constantine, Peter Lawford, Slim Pickens, Richard Kiel, and George Raft. For cinematographer, he opted for Leon Shamroy, an 18-time Oscar nominee. He chose avant-garde designer Rudi Gernreich for costumes, newcomer Harry Nilsson for original music, and renowned Saul Bass for titles.
But what in the world was he trying to do?
“One of the most interesting things about SKIDOO,” said Pendleton, “is that it’s a comedy with a dark, even sad, pull under it. Jackie’s got a comic persona and everything, but he’s depressed. So these comic and serious qualities are pulling against each other and pulling together. That’s what creates something distinctive to Preminger, I think. He was no fool, you know. A different director would have emphasized the comedy.
“That’s Otto’s specific contribution to it. I think that combination of feelings is what gives SKIDOO a quality all of its own and why people want to see it again and again and again.”
A YEAR LACED WITH ACID AND UPHEAVAL
Preminger produced SKIDOO during a monumental crossroads in time. Old Hollywood was still hanging on while it tried to figure out what to do with the growing influence of the counterculture on everyone’s daily lives and the film business itself.
“It’s important to remember that SKIDOO was filmed in that momentous spring of 1968,” Pendleton said, setting the stage for the film’s place in history. “In the middle of our shoot, Martin Luther King was assassinated, and before that was the withdrawal of LBJ from the presidential race and the primaries and all of the Viet Nam protests.
“We shot on the Paramount lot, and at the end of each day Otto would invite a few of us to his office and pour some vodka, and we would talk politics. Otto would lead the discussions; he was a famous liberal. Well, everyone there was a liberal, and that spring of 1968 was at once exhilarating and sobering, a mixture strongly reflected in Otto’s office on those evenings.”
That same mixture of exhilaration and sobriety is apparent in the film. While there were riots in the streets from Memphis to Paris, there was also an emerging counterculture of hope and new horizons.
The hippies intrigued Preminger. He was a 63-year-old classic Hollywood director turned hipster in a Nehru suit, and he was sympathetic to their cause. Straddling a cultural divide, Preminger had one foot grounded in his own history and generation while the other struggled to find a place in a groovy and cool world gone crazy with change.
Maybe he could find a bridge with lysergic acid diethylamide.
LSD’s appearance as a driving force in a movie certainly wasn’t strange in 1968. As TCM’s Millie de Chirico summarized in The Gist, “1968 in fact was a big year for acid movies. PSYCH-OUT, WILD IN THE STREETS, ALICE IN ACIDLAND, MANTIS IN LACE and others were released in the wake of Roger Corman’s THE TRIP (1967) and EASY RIDER (1969) was just around the corner.”
SKIDOO was created in the middle of them all. In preparation for the film, Preminger dropped acid with Timothy Leary (who appeared in the movie’s trailer). Likewise, Groucho Marx enjoyed a trip with Paul Krassner. All accounts tell of wondrous rides. (See reference links below.)
What made SKIDOO so different from the other acid movies of its time is that Preminger portrayed the LSD experience as a positive, liberating, empowering, and cathartic experience.
The movie still seemed “square.”
THE WILL TO SURVIVE
Paramount released SKIDOO in 1968 as part of a double bill with UP-TIGHT!
“On the set, even though I thought the film wasn’t quite working, I didn’t think it would be a catastrophe,” Pendleton said.
Nonetheless, due to scathing reviews and lackluster box office receipts, the film disappeared within weeks of its Miami premiere, sunk, buried, its memory erased, and it appeared that Paramount and the Preminger estate liked it that way. The film stayed out of view for many, many years.
“Oh, I remember the premiere very vividly,” Pendleton said. “People were walking out. And I remember thinking that they were wrong. I thought, ‘No way, it’s not a film you walk out on.’ We’ve all been in those and we’ve all seen those. It’s just not right.”
No one even talked about the movie at the gloomy after party. “It was so awkward and unpleasant,” said Pendleton. “I thought they were underrating the movie, but it was just the way it went.
“I put it behind me, flew back to New York, and kind of forgot about it. And it wasn’t too long after that that I did CATCH-22. The SKIDOO premiere was in late 1968, and I was shooting CATCH-22 in early 1969.”
Olive Films
SKIDOO was out of distribution for decades, a scarcity that increased demand and created a kind of mythology and mystery around it. It was a movie of its time whose time didn’t come until appropriately aged on the shelf.
Movie buffs coveted and shared bootlegs of it. In the late ’70s, it periodically showed up on cable and special screenings. New audiences appeared when TCM featured it, along with THE LOVE-INS, as part of its 2008 Underground Series.
At last, in July 2011 SKIDOO was released on DVD by Olive Films, followed by the Blu-Ray release of The Otto Preminger Collection in November 2012. The collection includes SKIDOO, SUCH GOOD FRIENDS (1971), and HURRY SUNDOWN (1967), which claims a spot in the book, TheFifty Worst Films of All Time.
PENDLETON AND SKIDOO: TOTAL ORIGINALS
“I saw SKIDOO again recently, ” Pendleton said. “I hadn’t seen it since it came out essentially, except once in 1997 at the Dallas Film Festival where they were going to have a midnight screening of it and they invited me down. I was in Los Angeles so I went there. SKIDOO was in a category called “Films You Love to Hate,” and I thought, ‘Wait a minute. I’ve flown all the way down here for that?!’
“They had me do a Q&A before it started. I told the audience, ‘Well, I haven’t seen the movie in years, and I’m looking forward to seeing it again.’ I said that I thought Otto was one of the great film directors, and they thought I was joking.
“Now that’s ridiculous. I mean the man made several classic movies, LAURA, ANATOMY OF A MURDER. Even the ones that aren’t classics, there are a lot of them that are, you know, very well made. Otto was much admired by a lot of people who are knowledgeable about the movies. A lot of actors do some of their best work in his movies. He’s very supportive and thorough with actors and he’s also difficult, so you get the pull of those two things.”
The festival audience still had to be convinced that Preminger was one of the greats.
“But then as I watched SKIDOO that night, after the Q&A,” Pendleton said, “I thought, ‘God, no, it doesn’t work.’
“But what’s good about the movie is that there isn’t anything else like it. It’s totally original. I just don’t think it works, that’s all. I don’t think it’s either this undiscovered classic or a disaster. I just think it’s this weird thing that doesn’t work.”
Pendleton paused and thought for a moment about the crazy movie that launched his film career.“And although SKIDOO‘s this ‘weird thing,'” he said, “it’s a film that still has its moments.
“That’s what I kind of love about it.”
_____________________
Postscript: Even the harshest critics of SKIDOO give high marks for Nilsson’s singing of the closing credits. It’s good in the movie, but it’s even better when Nilsson does it with an introduction by Otto Preminger in a “Playboy After Dark” segment.
MORE ON PENDLETON’S PROLIFIC CAREER
Pendleton has brought his inimitable presence to more than 40 feature films, including THE FRONT PAGE (1974); THEMUPPET MOVIE (1979); MR. & MRS. BRIDGE (1990); A BEAUTIFUL MIND (2001); and BAD CITY (2009) aka DIRTY CITY. His voice-over work includes Gurgle in FINDING NEMO (2003).
A long, long list of television appearances includes “Tales from the Crypt,” HBO’s “Oz,” “Law & Order,” “The Cosby Show,” “The West Wing,” and going way back, “Love, American Style.”
“I also direct,” Pendleton said,”so that keeps me busy a lot of the time. I do plays in attics. I’m kind of like a moving target,” he said. That’s a bit of an understatement. In the world of theatre, Pendleton is a well-respected and award-winning actor, playwright, and director whose presence is vast and still going strong.
In 1964, he originated the role of Motel the Tailor, singing the wonderful “Miracle of Miracle” in FIDDLER ON THE ROOF with Zero Mostel. He was nominated for a Tony for directing Elizabeth Taylor and Maureen Stapleton in the THE LITTLE FOXES.
Today he is still garnering rave reviews, currently starring in and directing the off-Broadway premiere of THE LAST WILL, by Robert Brustein. He recently directed Harold Pinter’s THE BIRTHDAY PARTY for Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre, where he’s been a member of the ensemble since 1987, and concurrently, a New York Mississippi Mudd production of SUDDENLY, LAST SUMMER. He’ll be back at Steppenwolf next season to direct TRIBES.
In addition to all of that, he teaches acting and directing at The New School in New York.
“Well, I do a whole lot of things,” Pendleton said. “I take a lot of work, and so that kind of keeps me going, and I try not to worry whether a role is going to promote my career or destroy it because you just simply can’t ever tell. But sometimes you can’t help worrying.”
Pendleton attributes his longevity and success to always being available and open to new work. “I think you have to follow your instincts and just go. That opens you up to a lot more things than if you tried to figure everything out. I guess thick-skinned and curious are the words I’d pick to describe myself. Sometimes I don’t pull off the thick-skinned part, though. I think everybody falls down with that one in this business sometimes.”
With support from an Indiegogo fundraising campaign, his students are producing a tribute to the man and his work with a new documentary, THE AUSTIN PENDLETON PROJECT: WHERE THE WORK IS. Set to be released this year, it’s described as Pendleton’s “five-decade journey…the colorful and dramatic life of this unsung artist…a portrait of the most famous actor you have never heard of.”
“You know,” he said, “I don’t know that much about it. It started out when two students of mine wanted to tape some of my classes. I sort of said ‘O.K.,’ although I got kind of nervous about it, but then it turned into this thing where they interview people.”
So far, the film includes interviews with the likes of Meryl Streep, Natalie Portman, and Laurie Metcalf, to name a few of Pendleton’s colleagues and biggest fans.
“I haven’t really seen any of it. I don’t think I should interfere with it because I would start trying to shape it in ways. I would start even if I resisted it,” he said, laughing.
IN THE QUEUE
Of all his movie performances, Pendleton’s favorites include: MR. AND MRS. BRIDGE (1990) with Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman and BAD CITY (2009), aka DIRTY WORK, where, Pendleton said, “I play the worst human being you can imagine.”
A special thanks to Austin Pendleton
for his time, kindness, and attention
and to Jeffrey Fauver of Steppenwolf Theatre
for making it happen.
Gloria Bowman is a writer, storyteller, blogger, movie lover, freelance editor,
and author of the novel, Human Slices.
Access her blog at www.gloriabowman.com; on Twitter @GloriaBow.
Like Brigadoon, the 2013 TCM Classic Film Festival arose as a dreamlike haven for movie lovers, and now, this morning, begins to fade away, not to appear again for another year.
During the four days it lived, fest goers were thrilled, enchanted, and happy. They (including yours truly) were also sleep-deprived, hungry, and sometimes frustrated. But I feel safe in saying that almost every one of us is sad that it’s over, and would be ready to do it again next week, after a brief food and rest break.
Sunday was just as much fun as the previous four days, but also presented even more tough choices. I would like to have caught Debra Winger at GILDA, or Norman Lloyd at THE LADY VANISHES, Tippi Hedrin/Melanie Daniels at THE BIRDS, or a film I’ve never seen, SCARECROW–Gene Hackman’s favorite of the ones he’s worked on.
However, the double, wide screen features of CINERAMA HOLIDAY and IT’S A MAD (etc.) WORLD were just too compelling. The former, a very corny but fascinating 1955 travelogue, had the two female co-stars discussing the production. IAMMMMW was preceded by a discussion with Mickey Rooney, Barrie Chase, and demolished gas station co-owner Marvin Kaplan. On stage was an empty chair, in tribute to the late Jonathan Winters, who’d been a scheduled guest.
Dashing out of the fabulous Cinerama Dome on Sunset Blvd., I made it safely to SAFE IN HELL, a little pre-code gem from 1931. Dorothy MacKahill plays a vamp and accused murderer on the lamb, fleeing to a Carribean isle crawling with degenerates—and centipedes. The son of director William Wellman spoke afterwards.
Then it was on to the final screening, Buster Keaton’s amazing Civil War picture, THE GENERAL. It was a new, beautifully restored print. What made it extra special was The Alloy Orchestra’s live accompaniment as well as our surroundings, the lovely, historic Graumann’s Chinese Theater.
TCM’s Robert Osborne—a rock star to Festival attendees—thanked us all for coming, and received a standing ovation. He had some sad news for us though. Graumann’s new owners plan to close the palace for some time, while they convert it into an IMAX theater with stadium seating. This announcement was followed by a loud chorus of boos from us classic film fans, but Robert was diplomatic, saying that change can be good, but also asking us to take a good, long last look at the place where movies like CASABLANCA and so many other classics had their premieres. And so we did.
And thus ends TCM’s fourth annual Classic Film Festival. Disneyland is said to be “the happiest place on Earth”. But for four days in April, we movie lovers borrowed the phrase. See you next year!
Tomorrow I may have tears in my eyes when I say goodbye to the Festival and sunny Hollywood. Yesterday though, I had tears of laughter. I was a kid again at the Saturday morning screenings of about a dozen Bugs Bunny animated shorts. It was Bugs’ 75th anniversary bash, hosted by Leonard Maltin. A sold-out audience showed their appreciation for the bunny’s irreverent sense of humor.
Immediately after that, it was time to paddle downstream with Jon, Burt, and Ned at DELIVERANCE. The guys were hilarious, as was the film’s director, John Boorman.
On to Nicholas Ray’s first feature film, THEY LIVE BY NIGHT. A sweet and tragic film noir starring Farley Granger, with a tone that later would be evident in his REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE.
TALL TARGET, at 6:30 pm, was a mystery aboard a train, much like THE LADY VANISHES and MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS. Dick Powell is a detective in 1861, attempting to thwart a would-be assassination of president-elect Lincoln.
My final movie was that old Joan Crawford, tear-up-the-scenery classic, MILDRED PIERCE. Co-star Ann Blythe, looking very young, discussed her experience beforehand.
This bright Sunday morning we are off to CINERAMA HOLIDAY and IT’S A MAD, MAD (etc.) WORLD–both at the CINERAMA Dome. Later, it’s a live orchestra playing along with Keaton’s THE GENERAL.
Going out with a flourish here on the Festival’s final day.
Some guys enjoy an early morning round of golf. Me, I prefer a swim. Namely, Burt Lancaster in the unique and remarkable movie aptly named THE SWIMMER. This “allegorical picture”, as it was described by Roger Ebert, is one that will stay with me for a long time. Set in the 1960s, upper class, materialistic and snobbish, outlying suburbs of Connecticut, the atmosphere will be very familiar to any Mad Men fans. The 9 am screening truly afterwards as though I had dived right into the deep end.
Next up, leaving on Track 2—er, the Egyptian Theater—was a terrific film noir set within the small confines of a train, THE NARROW MARGIN. Co-star Jacqueline White charmed the audience with her recollections of this low-budget, three-week shoot, including how impressed with it RKO Studio head Howard Hughes was. Great dialog like Marie Windsor’s, “There’s another train… The gravy train!”
I skipped the next block of films entirely to indulge in some food and sun. But I was up and around for the early evening’s IT, starring an amazingly contemporary Clara Bow, and a live orchestra performing a newly-composed score.
Capping off the day was yet another unique experience: HONDO, with John Wayne, in 3-D. This Western was part of the very short-lived, 1953 fad. But the effects were, with a couple of exceptions (such as an arrow shot right into the audience) downplayed, the main focus being on the story–particularly Wayne’s relationship with Geraldine Page.
And so today brings more Gunfight at the OK Corral moments. Which movies win out? Most likely we begin with DELIVERANCE and an appearance with the cast and director. Then a choice between GIANT, THE BIG PARADE or THE TRAIN. Followed by SHANE, or THE LADY EVE, or TALL TARGET? Later it’s a choice between FLYING DOWN TO RIO, MILDRED PIERCE, LE MANS, or AIRPLANE.
Beloved TCM on-air host Robert Osborne added a special guest to the Festival at the start of its second day: the Sun. After a cloudy, damp Wednesday, it was wonderful to soak up some warmth prior to entering the often too-chilled theaters.
On Thursday, pass holder gift bags were dispersed, Club TCM opened at the Hollywood Roosevelt, more feast goers arrived, trivia contests were played, a red carpet screening of FUNNY GIRL was held at Grauman’s (now TCL) Chinese (special pass required) and–most importantly–the first two blocks of films kicked-off. Which, of course, required some decision-making.
I was set to watch SOUTH PACIFIC poolside, but made a last-second switcheroo and, coffee in hand, bolted over to Stanley Kubrick’s THE KILLING. Co-star Colleen (pronounced KO) recalled receiving no direction at all, and suggested we pay special attention to actor Tim Carey’s teeth.
Next at 9 pm was my first-time seeing David Lean’s 1955 SUMMERTIME. Absolutely mesmerizing, for the amazing views of Venice as well as Katherine Hepburn’s face and touching performance. Lean certainly had a thing for trains, and for love’s bittersweet moments.
The Festival kicks into full-metal gear today, with a 14-hour schedule and dozens of movies. Among personal choices I must make: Burt Lancaster in THE SWIMMER vs. Bette Davis in LIBELED LADY, Jean Gabin inLA TRAVERSEEÉ DE PARIS or RUGGLES OF RED GAP, a discussion with Mel Brooks at THE TWELVE CHAIRS up against a live orchestra at Clara Bow’s IT and, last but no less difficult, there’s ON THE TOWN at the beautiful Egyptian theater, or a 3-D HONDO, or Billy Wilder’s A FOREIGN AFFAIR.
HERE IS SOMETHING you don’t know about Norman Bates if you have seen the movie but not read the book:
Along with his collection of pornography, he owns copies of A New Model of the Universe, The Extension of Consciousness, and Dimension and Being.
Something you don’t know about Sam Loomis, Marion’s boyfriend:
In the back room of his hardware store, he keeps a tiny FM radio to listen to classical music. (“But there was no one in Fairvale who would recognize either the music itself or the miracle of its coming.”)
Something you don’t know about Marion Crane (Mary Crane in the book):
Lowery, the man from who she stole the $40,000, once tossed a hundred dollar bill on her desk and suggested she take a little trip with him to Dallas (“three days’ rental privileges of the body of Mary Crane”). She did not do it.
The Book (1959)
Poor Robert Bloch. His agent sold the movie rights to PSYCHO for $9000. After the publisher, the agent, and the IRS took their share, Bloch got about $5000. For comparison, Bernard Herrmann was paid $34,501 to score the movie; Saul Bass, $3000 to design the title sequence.
It was a blind bid. Bloch and his agent did not know until too late that the buyer was Alfred Hitchcock.
Bloch writes in a monotone: everyone sounds like everyone else. (The exception is Norman Bates, for whom Bloch writes long interior monologues.) But the novel enjoyed good sales and good reviews, and won a major prize in 1960 from the Mystery Writers of America. It has slipped down in status to cheap pulp, a status it doesn’t quite deserve.
Its theme is the unknowability of another human being. This is Sam speculating about Marion:
Once you admitted to yourself that you didn’t really know how another person’s mind operated, then you came up against the ultimate admission—anything was possible.
The Movie (1960)
The movie and the book have the same plot. Even that peculiar coda in the mental institution came from the book, although in the book Sam talks about a conversation he had with the psychiatrist, and in the movie, the psychiatrist speaks for himself. Both book and movie have the same last line: “Why, she wouldn’t even harm a fly.”
However, Hitchcock and screenwriter Joseph Stefano made two big changes relating to the characters:
They made Norman Bates young and handsome rather than middle-aged and fat.
They turned up the heat under the relationship between Marion and Sam. That opening scene with them in the hotel room is not in the book—one of few places where the movie veers away.
That Shower Scene
The shower scene is not a Hitchcock invention. Marion’s death comes at the same early, disorienting point in both book and movie—and in more or less the same way.
A difference: in the book, Norman cuts off Marion’s head. As we all know, Hitchcock didn’t play it that way.
Another difference: Hitchcock waited, proportionately, almost twice as long as Bloch did to kill her off. In the 175-page paperback copy, the murder occurs on page 41. In the 109-minute movie, the murder occurs 47 minutes in.
Genius vs Talent
Hitchcock was the major talent; Bloch, the minor. That is why PSYCHO the movie made history, and PSYCHO the novel is remembered today mainly because the movie did make history.
The scene where Marion sells her car shows the difference between Hitchcock and Bloch.
In the movie this scene is tense. When Marion’s frightened, defensive behavior makes a highway trooper suspicious and he follows her to the used car lot, his presence symbolizes her guilty conscience. It is at that point that she starts to regret stealing the money. This scene sets up the later one at the motel when she decides to abandon her plan and go back to Phoenix.
Bloch handles this scene dismissively, in a single paragraph. Marion does not appear nervous or frightened. No trooper follows her. There is no emotional payoff. As if bored by the whole thing, Bloch has her trade her car not once, but three times in that single paragraph.
I wonder what Hitchcock saw in the novel. In his book Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho, Stephen Rebello offers various explanations. Hitchcock owed Universal a picture and thought PSYCHO would get the commitment out of the way quickly and cheaply. Hitchcock had competitors who were making scary, successful movies on small budgets and he wanted to show them he could, too.
Rebello speculates that “the fifty-nine-year old suspense maestro felt bullied by his brilliant present and past.”
Lindsay Edmunds blogs about robots, writing, life in southwestern Pennsylvania, and sometimes books and movies at Writer’s Rest. She is the author of a novel about love in the age of artificial intelligence: Cel & Anna.
For its recommendation algorithms, Netflix uses something called “pragmatic chaos.”
“I kid you not,” John wrote. “I had rented a Godzilla movie and I got, ‘Since you liked GODZILLA VS. MOTHRA, you might also like YENTL.'”
David countered: “Since you liked I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE, you might also like GIGI.”
Algorithms may be emerging as a powerful force in our world, but they sure aren’t as clever or as funny as Home Projectionists…and they can’t expand your movie horizons like our community of Home Projectionists on Facebook.
(We define Home Projectionists, by the way, as film fans always on the search for great things to watch … and who love the opportunity to be program directors in their own homes.)
We started the What Are You Watching?group on Facebook during last year’s winter holidays while we took a sabbatical from the Home Projectionist blog. The group now has more than 100 participants, all savvy and smart cinephiles who share, discuss, joke, and connect — and most importantly, make compelling recommendations for movies to add to your list.
Hundreds of films have already been talked about — from current popular releases like THE SESSIONS(2012) to the obscure, like the early Technicolor THE TRAIL OF LONESOME PINE (1936). As a result of the Home Projectionist group, my must-see list is on super-growth hormones, like some crazy beanstalk I will never be able to conquer. It’s a better kind of “pragmatic chaos” than the algorithms provide.
wikipedia.com
In addition to the direct recommendations and reviews, What Are You Watching? conversations go into all kinds of movie territory.
John didn’t recommend THE YESTERDAY MACHINE (1963) but at least we all know the movie includes “the world’s longest monologue by a mad Nazi scientist about how time travel works.”
While her family was sleeping, Gwen seemed to tell us quietly that she “was watching NOTORIOUS (1946) for the bizillionth time…I think it’s the most romantic movie ever created.” Jay agreed with her, “Not even a bizillion viewings can weary the charms and virtues of his artful masterpiece.”
Kelli, Andy, and Steve recently had a discussion about THE YOUNG GIRLS OF ROCHEFORT (1967) and the power of watching big movies on the big screen, and when you can’t, they agreed, sharing them with a group of friends is the next best thing.
wikipedia
Eric reported that he had watched DINAH EAST (1970) and spotted Tara from GONE WITH THE WIND in a backlot scene.
Aaron told us about the fabulous terribles he picked up in a $5 bin.
There was a multi-day dialogue about everyone’s favorite Susan Hayward movies. And we discovered that Dark Shadows super fan Harold put together a tribute to Joan Bennett.
Joseph cited one of his favorite lines from CROSSFIRE (1947): “Tonight was a long time ago.”
To make me laugh when I’m feeling a bit down in the dumps, I recall the day Daniel deadpanned, “Electricity is kind of a big deal,” when commenting on the famous dance from DeMille’s MADAM SATAN(1930).
I don’t think there could be a better crew of film fans. The Home Projectionist What Are You Watching?Facebook group is open for your viewing pleasure and participation. Go to http://www.facebook.com/groups/homeprojectionist and join in today.
Gloria Bowman is a writer, storyteller, blogger, movie lover, freelance editor,
and author of the novel, Human Slices.
Access her blog at www.gloriabowman.com; on Twitter @GloriaBow
Born on March 23, 1904, in San Antonio, she left us with a legacy of movies and a larger than life legend.
One of my favorite viewing parties ever included QUEEN BEE (1955) and STRAIT-JACKET(1964). We sat around on a hot summer day wearing improbable wigs, drinking beer, and staring at the screen. When Joan is on, you can’t look away.
Not long ago, we revisited FEMALE ON THE BEACH (1955). I had forgotten that Joan’s legs co-starred as much as hunky Jeff Chandler. Oh, yes, and this movie has some of the best snarky dialogue ever. Someone in the room proposed a drinking game: a sip of your libation of choice every time there was a gasp-worthy line. We had to stop just minutes into the movie because we couldn’t drink that fast.
Lines like —
“You’re about as friendly as a suction pump. ”
“I’d like to ask you to stay and have a drink, but I’m afraid you might.”
And the classic: “I wouldn’t have you if you were hung with diamonds, upside down!”
I’m sending Joan a BIG birthday wish through the cosmos and thanking her for her talent, her audacity, the memories, beauty, and pleasure she’s given to us all. She was a force, a one in a billion force.
"The hero of my tale, whom I love with all the power of my soul, whom I have tried to portray in all his beauty, who has been, is, and will be beautiful, is Truth." Leo Tolstoy
IN THE MOVIE 
Goodbye to Berlin consists of six semi-autobiographical stories. Judging by his writing, Isherwood did not think life was a cabaret. At least not in the 1930s in Berlin.
Although Liza Minelli’s performance is the spectacular one, all the actors are excellent. When I saw the movie again, I noticed how good Michael York is in the difficult role of Brian Roberts, a gay man trying earnestly to deny that he is gay, and failing. Sally catches on faster than he does.
HERE IS SOMETHING you don’t know about Norman Bates if you have seen the movie but not read the book:
Home Projectionist 