Silent Movie 1976 A Movie A Day Day 34

I saw every Mel Brook's movie that ever came out. After Blazing Saddles, Mel Brooks was the hottest movie maker in Hollywood and his movies are usually cited by comedians around the world as an inspiration. I think Mel is hit or miss. Hit or miss not from movie to movie but from scene to scene. In some movies there is a huge amount of consistency but in others there is not That doesn't mean they are not funny but it does mean that they do not always hold together that well and they may have some flat spots. Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles are both solid every single bit. High Anxiety is about 75 percent. Space balls is maybe 25 percent. To me, Silent Movie falls right in the middle.

This is a funny concept, film makers with a script for a Silent Movie to be made in contemporary Hollywood. Then you do the movie in a style similar to the old silent classic comedies. You populate it with popular stars of today and then let them loose on the screen. The big problem is that none of the movie is about the Silent Movie and how it comes out. It is all about the process of trying to get big stars in the picture, but we never see any of the script as the director finally put it together. That means that at best this film is going to be a series of vignettes, with thin plot to hold them together. So here is how I felt about most of those scenes.

The opening, with the three film makers picking up a pregnant woman and having the car tip up in the air falls flat. It looks like a one joke bit stretched over a couple of minutes, finished off with a payoff that has nothing to do with what came before. I have not seen a lot of silent comedies, but the ones I have seen hold together better than this. Here they are, fifty years after the introduction of sound and the movie has less narrative and pacing than a movie from 1920. The guys mug and there is one good joke about the dialogue not matching the caption cards. Then it is on to the set up of the plot. I like Sid Caesar, but there was no punch to any of the jokes in his scenes. He makes some funny faces that have very little context to the events on the screen and then we move on. The best bit here had to do with contagious crossed fingers, but why it is unique to a silent movie is beyond me. There are also two scenes in the film that clearly would not play in these politically correct times. The punchline involves three old ladies yelling the word "Fags".

On the other hand, the Burt Reynold's segment actually comes out pretty well. Burt make some fun of himself, there is an hysterical shower scene and then a classic old school comedy bit that falls a little flat involving a steam roller. I think this section works because Burt Reynold's knew how far to go in mugging for the camera. A little wink and a smile in the mirror is enough. James Caan on the other hand, overplays and then underplays the comedy bits he is in. Liza Minelli, is mostly lost in a bit that simply has her observing the antics of the three stars in Knight's Armour. Maybe this would have worked better with the clanking of the armor added in. As it was, it was maniacal without being funny. Paul Newman plays all of his part, sitting down in a motorized wheelchair, and it works really well, but not because it is Newman, but because they choreographed some good jokes in the chase. The payoff on the other hand works exactly because it is Paul Newman. Mel Brook's wife Anne Bancroft is in the film, playing herself, the best face joke is hers as she does a spot on Marty Feldman impression. There are also a couple of good visual jokes featuring the board of executives responding to a sexy image of Bernadette Peters.

I think the main problem with the film is timing. Brooks has a good ear for a funny joke and a good eye for a sight gag, but they do not flow smoothly or quickly. A keystone cops comedy should be paced like the race scene with Paul Newman, but the Three Stooges and Laurel and Hardy, had dialogue to help set up the jokes and that is missing here. For a movie that is supposed to be light and bouncy, it feels slow and methodical. Those few scenes that are planned, take a long time to play out, the frenzied stuff just seems a bit random and goes on too long. I saw this movie with Dan Hasegawa, when it first came out and we liked it well enough then. I have not watched it in the thirty four years since it's release until today. I've seen "Life Stinks" more times then this, and to be honest, I now know why.

Jaws 1975 A Movie A Day Day 33

This is the granddaddy of all summer movies, which seems strange since I am including five years worth of summer movies on this blog before this ever came out. How can a movie that is younger than all the summers before it be considered the granddaddy of summer movies? The answer is simple. JAWS re-framed the way we viewed movies, all movies, but especially summer movies. JAWS is the standard that we will use to make comparisons of our film experiences and impressions. It is the prism through which we see our own history. Those of us who lived through the phenomena that was and is JAWS, can never look back without thinking how it changed us. Those who came after, can never live in a world where JAWS did not influence the way movies are made and marketed. Any one who lived before JAWS, knows how it changed the movie world, and looking back on summer movies will be a nostalgia of a different order because JAWS is in your world now.

Some might think that this is hyperbole but the number of films, filmmakers, academics, marketers, and film-goers, who have been influenced by this movie is undeniable. I have actually read on line comments that dismiss JAWS and suggest it is somehow just a footnote in film making history. If editing is a footnote, if the addition of sound and color to films are footnotes, if the study of film as an artistic medium is a footnote, then maybe they are right. (BUT THEY ARE NOT!!!) The combination of story, director, script, acting and especially marketing created the modern world of film. There may be some negative consequences (like Shrek 4 opening on 4000 screens), but the variety of stories and film-making that have resulted from JAWS is just undeniable. This is the gold standard.
The Shark is Still Working

I saw JAWS on opening day in the Summer of 1975, with my friend Dan Hasegawa. We went without Art that day because he was taking a girl to a different movie. Dan and I went to the Hasting's Ranch Theaters, three moderately sized screens located just north of the big Pacific Theater Hasting's Theater. We knew next to nothing about the film except what was shown in the trailer. The trailer gives you a good impression of the action and adventure that is coming your way, but I think it undersells the horror aspect and that is what we were most surprised about. From the beginning cello strokes and underwater POV shot, we are creep-ed out. It still did not prepare us for the intense opening sequence that everybody held their breath through. Later in the movie, I literally saw 500 people sink into their seats in dread and then jump out of the seat,simultaneously. I am not exaggerating, the audience levitated at least a foot out of their seats when Ben Gardner appears. There have been gotcha moments in films for years; Alan Arkin's dying leap for a blind Audrey Hepburn or Carrie grabbing poor Amy Irvings arm, are those kinds of jumps. This made them all look quaint by comparison. I had seen the Exorcist a couple of years earlier, after it had been talked about and described to me for months. It was still frightening and made me jump, but that was despite what I knew was coming. Here, we did not know what was going to happen, and after that first scene it seemed like anything was possible. Amanda has seen this movie maybe more than other movie in her life and she still covers her eyes for a few scenes.

The movie is so much more than a horror film however. This is a struggle of a family man to cope with the inadequacies that plague him, it is the story of a place that defines itself as a paradise, suddenly being stripped of it's self concept. Most of all, it is the story of a quest by an Ahab like character for vengeance against the monsters that have defined him for the thirty years since his own encounter with the Great White Whale. Quint is the greatest movie character ever prior to 1980. He is memorable for his tics,and dialogue and the performance of a great actor who's work in this movie was not properly recognized by any critics groups of the time. If you were to ask people, what great supporting actor role performance they remember from any time in the 1970's Robert Shaw in JAWS will be mentioned. I'll bet that none of the five other actors nominated for Academy Awards that year would make the top fifty mentions on that standard. The monologue that Quint delivers on the Orca, about the U.S.S. Indianapolis is without a doubt one of the greatest scenes in movie history. It stands beside Micheal's kiss in Godfather Part 2, Kane's rage in Citizen Kane, and even the Airport scene in Casablanca. Robert Shaw re-wrote the dialog for himself, and his delivery, starting off with a self knowing smirk, transforming to a terrified memory and finishing off with a self-deluding smile and bit of panache is something I would imagine every actor now looks at with awe. I am not an expert on performance, but this whole scene seemed real, every bit of it, and it was created by the film makers.

There are a hundred things about this movie that people should look for or notice when they watch it. Sometimes it is a bit of comic dialog delivered by a character that has a single line; it might be the framing of a shot that makes key information jump out without writing a big sign to signify it; maybe you should be watching the clever way that the shark is hinted at, without being shown or the wondrous shooting stars in the night time scenes on the Orca. I just watched this movie for what is probably the tenth time in the last year (including two big screen theater screenings) and I found something new about the main character. He is new at wearing glasses. It is hinted at, spoken of but never obvious, and I just got it today. Of course my kids will say I am not all the observant to begin with, just ask them about the tires in the trees if you want their insight. What kind of movie is it when you can watch it dozens of times, still be sucked in and find something new every time you watch it? I'll tell you what kind of movie it is, PERFECT!

Monty Python and the Holy Grail 1975 A Movie A Day Day 32

OK, I admit it, I'm an intellectual midget and I like giggling, so this movie is for me. This has always been, from the moment I first saw it, the funniest movie I ever saw. I have laughed at this movie for thirty-five years. Every time it comes on, all I have to do is see a small section of a single scene and I start cracking up. The silliness of the production, the clever language and the stupid sight gags are chuckle inducing, and if you disagree, your mother was a hamster and your father smells of elderberry.

Speaking of your father, as strange as it may sound, I saw this with my father. I have written before that my Dad would sometimes give me a hard time about movie going, but some of the best memories I have of him are those times we went to a show together. A family outing was special, but going to the movies, just my Dad and I was usually a big treat. My Dad did not fish, hike, play golf, watch baseball, or any other activities that fathers and sons have enjoyed over the years. We sometimes watched football together. Both of us rooted for the Rams and the Trojans. Sundays, in Southern California meant checking out the football game on TV. Often there was no game because of the blackout rules of the day. When that happened we would watch an old Sherlock Holmes movie or some classic Warner Brothers film that was on the Sunday Matinee. My Dad was not much of a TV guy though, and if I could find something to talk him into, we would go to the movies together.

We saw this movie at the Century Theater on Las Tunas, in San Gabriel, on a rainy overcast day. This must have been a weird summer, because in So Cal you don't get a lot of those kinds of days in the summer. I had heard about the movie from someone, but I don't remember who suggested it. We could barely get PBS on the TV so my knowledge of Monty Python was next to nothing. The only UHF channels I remember seeing as a kid, were Mexican stations that carried the bullfights. My Dad seemed to really enjoy stories about bullfighting, I think he must have read Death in the Afternoon. Anyway, I somehow got him to go with me to see Holy Grail. The poster for the movie at the theater looked really cheap. I remember it was basically a line drawing and the title, but my Dad did laugh at the tagline comparing the movie to Ben Hur. It was a double feature and we first sat through a George Segal comedy called "Where's Poppa?". We both laughed at some of the broader bits of that forgotten gem and hoped we would enjoy the feature that brought us there in the first place.

Then the movie started, and the opening titles begin to give credits to moose, their handlers, make up artists etc. The music was pompous and somber and the juxtaposition of music and silly title credits began my father's laughter. Now I had heard him laugh before of course, but not like this. There were deep guttural chortles and higher pitched guffaws that I never remember hearing from him before. When King Arthur and Patsy come over the hill, feigning horseback riding using coconuts, well the phrase "gut buster" was created for that. I was laughing really hard, but I was still worried because my Dad could hardly catch his breath he was laughing so much. We had a tough year in 1975, my older brother Chris had died in April and none of us was anywhere near over it. My Mom practically became a recluse and the only thing that finally got her out and about was having to drive me to USC in the fall for school. Monty Python and the Holy Grail, was the start of my Dad's recovery. Maybe he just needed something to push himself out of the funk. I would never have guessed he would like this movie, with it's strange British humor and funny looking men playing women. Something in it set him going and I was grateful for that and happy that we were sharing something between just the two of us.

"Holy Grail" is revered by geeks everywhere. Kids were doing the Knight's who say Nee at lunch time for their friends. The insults hurled by the French soldiers are classic lines that will be cited as if they were Shakespeare, by people a century from now. Two years ago we spent an evening in Vegas at Spamalot, the Tony Award winning Best Musical that is based on, or ripped off from Holy Grail. Entertainment is a resource that is scarce and to be valued, you deny yourself that resource if you don't see the musical play. And if you have never seen and do not intend to see Monty Python and the Holy Grail, then I fart in your general direction.

July Fourth Preview

A little set up for the July 4th Blog


And an Addendum from the Expert