Greased Lightning A Movie A Day Day 7

http://videodetective.com/titledetails.aspx?publishedid=973


This is a pretty straightforward biography picture, featuring Richard Pryor in a non-comedic role. He is solid and the movie is competently put together. I thought the opening section with a young bike riding Wendall Scott was a terrific st up for what is to come, and the bus ride home from the war when Wendall returns as an adult to his home town was sweet. As I was watching the credits I was interested to see the number of people that were in the movie that I recognized but did not recall being in the film.

I have never been a big racing fan, to me it was always watching someone go in circles for hours. I am in the minority because I know that NASCAR is huge and that the world is full of people that think cars are the greatest thing ever. I remember hanging out with my friend Don Hayes, he was a gearhead that spent a lot of time tweaking his car (A Chevy Vega). I actually helped him and his Uncle paint a couple of cars. We worked on the Vega and his Uncle's 1968 Camero. We painted both of them Nassau Blue. There was a lot of wet sanding involved and we used a lot of masking tape. They wanted a really deep look, so I think they did at least five coats on each of the cars.

Anyway, this is a movie that will play well for people that love car racing. It is actually a better film for showing the progress of civil rights and the way the world changed. There are some ugly moments of racism in the film, but none was as dark as the lynching scene in "The Great Debaters". Most of the scenes in which race reared it's head involve name calling and a few Jim Crow laws. The "N" word is used a lot more than anyone nowadays would be comfortable with, of course it was Richard Pryor, so you know it is part of the vocabulary. The racing was actually shown from some interesting perspectives. The background with bootlegging also was accurate as a lot of the origins of this type of racing had to do with Moonshiners trying to get away from the cops.

We happened to have watched Vincent Gardenia in "Moonstruck" yesterday, and he plays a cheating Italian Husband, in "Greased Lightning" he is the redneck sheriff that turns politician. His character is actually a pretty good illustration of how attitudes changed. It was less about having an open mind then it was about facing the reality that the world is a different place then it once was and that you need to move on with your life and roll with the changes. He is a little comic in the first part of the movie, and more realistic in the last sections.

Pryor is fine,as is Pam Greer,as Wendall Scott's wife. They are the figures that move us through the story but they are not the characters that you will remember. I liked Clevon Little, doing his jive from "Blazing Saddles" in a different time period. Beau Bridges is actually second billed, but he is only in the middle section of the film for any amount of screen time. Whereas I thought he was stiff and over the top in "Swashbuckler" a year earlier, in this movie he is natural and charming without trying to hold the screen. Exactly the kind of supporting performance you want with an actor like Richard Pryor in the lead. For some reason, Julian Bond and Richie Havens are in the movie. As President of the NCAAP, Bond might have been appropriately cast, here he is in only two scenes. He sticks out like a stiff piece of wood in both of them. The second scene he is in is a view of the Grandstand at the big final race, he has no lines, but still is unconvincing as a human being. Richie Havens was underused, but seemed pretty natural in his part. His biggest contribution was to the soundtrack, where he performs a song that narrates transitions from one period of time to the next in the film. He is basically a musical montage layered on top of the visuals.



The movie was directed by Michael Schulz, one of the rare African American film directors in the 1970s. He directed "Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band", the year after this. We of course are some of the few people that treasure that movie despite it's clunkiness. It will come up later in the summer blog. So a year before John Travolta made the phrase "Greased Lightning" synonymous with his dancing and singing in "Grease", Richard Pryor owned the idea with this charming, simple film.

Soylent Green A Movie A Day Day 6

This is the best movie I have watched so far in my blog project. There are films that have higher production values, and maybe a few greater performances, but this is exactly the movie that the makers set out to produce and film. This is a classic example of how a good Science Fiction Idea was caught and made into a good Science Fiction film, without having to reinvent the wheel. There are no dramatic visual effects, there is not an amazing display of technology, there is a simple idea executed well by people who knew what it was they wanted.

A great many clever SciFi movies came out of the seventies. Obviously Star Wars started off a big trend of visualizing the future and making it part of the story. Soylent Green is from the same mold as "A Boy and His Dog", "The Omega Man", "Damnation Alley" and a dozen more; movies whose ideas are the selling point of the story, not just the production design and special effects. Oh, and buy the way, here is the Greenhouse Effect used as a plot device, nearly forty years ago. This is before all the nonsense that the last 10 years are the hottest on record, or that the Himalayan glaciers will be gone in 20 years. In other words, this boy has been crying wolf for a long time. Chicken Little is going to need to show us that the sky is falling and not just ask us to trust him. Skipping past the dispute over whether this is a real concern, the film simply presents a vision of the world as if it is going to come out this way. I did not find it moralizing and pedantic like so many "message" pictures, I found the ideas intriguing and the sadness of the film very convincing. It does not point a finger at anyone and say, "it's the oil companies fault" or "we need to stop the developers" or "the political system is against saving the planet". The story just suggests that a Malthusian nightmare is upon us, without getting political.

Surrounding the plot are references to environments disaster, the usual Big Company conspiracies, technical breakdowns, blatant sexism, but at it's heart are a couple of great ideas. That we don't know what we have till it's gone, and that people should matter. If that is political, then you might see this film in political terms. I thought it was a well made detective story with a fascinating setting, that makes the characters involved much fresher than they would otherwise be. The relationship between Charlton Heston and Edward G. Robinson is the love story in this movie. That Robinson's character Sol, remembers what the world was like is the moral center of what takes place. And the journey, Heston makes to see the world in a more humanitarian way, both thru the environment and through people is the point of the story. Most people remember the final line of the movie and use it as a punch line. They say it out loud as if they are revealing the twist in a Twilight Zone episode or telling you that Darth Vader is...you know. What they are ignoring is the individualism that this movie is really about. We humans are something that should matter. We just saw the movies moral center turned into a product, anyone who ignores that doesn't get the movie. Like the sucker punch at the end of "Planet of the Apes" this is a film that is about ideas not action.

I have loved Edgar G. Robinson as an actor, even before I knew who he was. The Bugs Bunny cartoons that used his likeness as a gangster, created the stereotypes that most of us have of mobsters in the 1920s and 30s. This is his final performance and he is as far from a tough guy as you can imagine. It is not hard to see him as the intellectual "Book" that assists the detective in investigating his case load. In essence what he is playing is the equivalent of an internet search engine without the technology. He has two great scenes in the movie, one where he shares a meal with Heston, featuring food that the detective will never have seen before, but that Sol can remember and pine over as the past that is lost. He knows what we have lost, and Heston doesn't, until he shares, with Sol this decadent pleasure. It is Sol's trip home however, that really shows to Thorn, what he is losing and what we have all lost. The trip home is the second great scene and it features the biggest art production of the movie, the L.A. Sports arena. That's about as futuristic as anything gets; OK there is a brief image of a computer video game, that was probably dated two years after the movie came out. Like the rest of the film, the Sports Arena is just background for a story, it is not the feature that everyone should be focused on. As a result, the need for "futurism" stays unobtrusively in the background, while the ideas stand out.

Lots of good actors are in the movie, Joseph Cotton shows up for two scenes, Chuck Conners is one of the bad guys, Brock Peters is Heston's boss. I recognized a lot of character actors in the movie that I have seen a million times over the years; Leonard Stone, Whit Bissel, and Paula Kelly are names most people won't remember, but I have always tried to give credit to the no name, credit after the film performers.

This movie came out in 1973, if I saw it with anyone, it was with a my friend Mark Witt, who I have not seen or heard from since the summer of 1975. Mark was not a big movie fan, but he liked some science fiction stuff and I seem to remember that he and I went to the El Rey Theater on Main in Alhambra to see this. It is also possible that this is one of those movies I saw by myself. I am certain that I saw it more than once in a theater. I had no reservations about going to a movie alone, I guess I still don't. Before I got hooked on Gene Hackman as an actor, Charleton Heston was probably my favorite. In the 1970's I pretty much saw everything he was in. Soylent Green stands out as one of the best movies he made. It was not one of the classic epics that he was a part of, but it was one of the three really smart science fiction movies he made. If I can't get the video to post, here is a link to the great title sequence.



http://www.artofthetitle.com/2008/11/25/soylent-green/

At The Earth's Core-A Movie A Day Day 5

Ok, get out the chips and jalapenos, the cheese has arrived and there are gallons of it. This is a good example of how undiscriminating I was as a film consumer, when the weather was hot, I was bored and the theater was air conditioned. At the Earth's Core brought me in because of the name Edgar Rice Burroughs, and the fact that it was sort of science fiction based. Even at the time I knew what crap this was, but that did not mean that I did not enjoy it. There were in fact two other movies from the same producer and stars, that came out in the mid-seventies. I think they are both on this list so you may be reading about them later. I remembered the People that Time Forgot much better than I remembered this (I guess that would be ironic).

This movie has a couple of things going for it that might make it worth your time. First, there is a Victorian setting for the scientists making this journey, and the production design emphasizes that era. I'm a sucker for that early "Steam Punk" type of design. I loved the Nautilus from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and the digging machine in this movie is an echo of that design. The costumes of our two heroes are simple but say everything about the fussy professor and the dim but rich and stalwart muscleman that is our lead. A suit like the one Doug McClure wears in this movie would be at home in 1880 England or 1960's or 70's San Francisco.

A second reason to see the movie is the lovely Caroline Munro, a Penthouse Pet that broke thru to B movie stardom in the 1970's. She did several of these cheapo films and had a nice following among male film goers. She is best remembered for a nice part she had in the James Bond film, "the Spy Who Loved Me". I did not have any posters or pictures up on my walls but I have a recollection that she had a nice selling poster like Linda Carter and Farrah Fawcett. That was the last I remember of her although I'm sure she had a fine career that I was just not aware of.

The movie has exploding bird people, giant turtle like dinosaurs, ape like creatures with misshapen skulls, primitive tribal people that don't speak (until after a confrontation scene that would be rendered unnecessary if someone simply said hello and answered) and then they do speak , English (if a bit Tarzanese). The production of the special effects is so cheap that the wires are visible on flying creatures, and the sets are repeated endlessly as our protaganists move through tunnels and jungle that all look the same for a reason.

I can't recall the circumstances of my seeing the movie, I doubt that Dee and I were together, we had just started dating seriously and this would not be a film to impress a date with; although she did make me take her to see Mahogany. The movie is a relic that was creaky when it came out, 34 years later, it has not improved. Still, a lazy evening at a Drive in would be just about right. I can't believe I missed that opportunity with the hot girl I was dating. I'm sure I would remember even less of the movie then.

Meatballs A Movie A Day Day 4

This was not too much of a surprise when it comes to expectations. It is exactly as I remebered it, a rather gentle summer comedy with a vivid Bill Murray and a cast of unknowns. This came out in the Summer of 1979, which as far as I was concerned was one on the great summers of my life. I had graduated from USC, was getting ready to go back for grad school and did not have or need a job. I had some money saved and I decided to spend most of the summer in the pool. Dolores had a new job and I picked her up after work most of the summer, but that meant that my afternoons were my own and this movie was one of those lazy summer afternoons in 1979. I probably swam in the morning, saw the movie in the early afternoon, went back home and got in the pool, then picked up Dee and went to get food.

Bill Murray stars in his first movie and plays the character that he played in a dozen films since. He is a smartass, quickwitted slouch, who doesn't fit in but everyone looks to as a leader(Stripes, Ghostbusters). This movie has a very genial feel to it. It is a couple of years away from the 80's and the need for nudity to sell even mainstream comedies. There are a few references that are risque, but I have heard much worse in a single episode of Two and a Half Men.

There is not a lot of plot, kids and councelors at a summer camp for eight weeks. They learn about each other, they bond, hijinks ensue and there is a underdog sports theme to boot. No one is out of control and the pranks play as normal practical jokes rather than the kind of actions that demand hideous revenge. There are two or three great scences between Bill and the kid played by Chris Makepeace. These display a nice understanding of what counts for warmth that is not maudlin. Actually all the actors get a couple of good bits. The difference between yesterday's disappointment and todays little jewel is not the caliber of actors but the tone of the story. This movie meanders it's way to the conclusion also, but it is a pleasant walk thru a forrest compared to Nashville's nightmare trek down an urban alley at night with money hanging out of your back pocket. No one is going to get mugged by Meatballs, it won't change the world, just your foul mood.