I just found Biblia Wodehouseiana, a site that identifies Biblical quotations in the work of P.G. Wodehouse. The site was created (so the introduction claims) by a Benedictine Monk.
When he needed to make a literary allusion, Wodehouse, who wasn't a particularly enthusiastic reader (he spent most of his time writing, not reading), tended to draw on works he'd studied as a boy in public-school, which meant many quotations from the kinds of poems boys were forced to memorize -- Tennyson, Browning, Shakespeare -- and lots of Biblical quotations. Though the quotations would of course often be filtered through the unreliable memory of Bertie Wooster or some similar character.
I think my favorite Wodehouse quasi-biblical reference is: "The Lesson was one of those chapters of the Old Testament all about how Abimelech begat Jazzbo and Jazzbo begat Zachariah."
Runner-up, in the story "Lord Emsworth and the Girl Friend," when Lord Emsworth is besieged by young children: "There was only one man who could have coped adequately with the situation and that was King Herod, who - regrettably - was not among those present." Because the only thing in Wodehouse more consistent than his love of Bible references is his hatred of most young children -- but that's a topic for another post.
Monday, January 09, 2006
Rattling Some Cages
David Hurwitz of Classics Today is one of the few English-language classical record reviewers left who can really pull off a good old-fashioned panning. Today he gives a roasting to Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic in a recording of Schubert's "Great" Symphony. Not having heard the recording, I don't know if Hurwitz is being fair, but it's fun to read.
Simon Rattle seems to be a particular favorite target of Hurwitz, probably because the British press (which dominates English-language classical record reviewing, largely because most American music magazines abandoned serious classical record criticism years ago) considers him an irreproachable golden boy. For some reason, British record critics have a tendency toward national chauvinism; look at the "Penguin Guide" to classical recordings, by three veteran British writers, and you'll notice a strong but clear bias toward recordings by artists who either are British or led British orchestras. I'm not sure where this tendency comes from, but it's alternately infuriating and endearing.
The French, who probably have the largest amount of classical record criticism these days, don't appear to be as much in love with homegrown artists as the British. And the Americans, of course, are famous for their inferiority complex when it comes to home-grown classical artists (so that for many years almost no major American orchestra was led by an American, and American singers had to make their reputations in Europe before they could be taken seriously at home). Though the old High Fidelity magazine had a few chauvinists in there, like Robert C. Marsh, a Chicago-based critic; Marsh wrote a book about James Levine that is the most embarrassingly hagiographic book ever written about any musician, period.
Back to Simon Rattle, then: based on his recordings, I'm not precisely sure why his reputation is as big as it is, so that might explain why I'm receptive to Hurwitz's Rattle-bashing.
Simon Rattle seems to be a particular favorite target of Hurwitz, probably because the British press (which dominates English-language classical record reviewing, largely because most American music magazines abandoned serious classical record criticism years ago) considers him an irreproachable golden boy. For some reason, British record critics have a tendency toward national chauvinism; look at the "Penguin Guide" to classical recordings, by three veteran British writers, and you'll notice a strong but clear bias toward recordings by artists who either are British or led British orchestras. I'm not sure where this tendency comes from, but it's alternately infuriating and endearing.
The French, who probably have the largest amount of classical record criticism these days, don't appear to be as much in love with homegrown artists as the British. And the Americans, of course, are famous for their inferiority complex when it comes to home-grown classical artists (so that for many years almost no major American orchestra was led by an American, and American singers had to make their reputations in Europe before they could be taken seriously at home). Though the old High Fidelity magazine had a few chauvinists in there, like Robert C. Marsh, a Chicago-based critic; Marsh wrote a book about James Levine that is the most embarrassingly hagiographic book ever written about any musician, period.
Back to Simon Rattle, then: based on his recordings, I'm not precisely sure why his reputation is as big as it is, so that might explain why I'm receptive to Hurwitz's Rattle-bashing.
Sunday, January 08, 2006
The Stan Daniels Turn
In general, DVD commentaries don't introduce us to much "insider" slang that we showbiz outsiders hadn't already heard. I don't know whether this is because writers and producers deliberately leave out the slang when talking to us, or because we've all read so many inside-showbiz magazine stories that we are all, effectively, insideres now.
However, there was one term that I heard on a "Simpsons" DVD commentary that I hadn't heard before and that finally put a name to a familiar comedy-writing technique. Al Jean refers to something called the "Stan Daniels Turn." This is named for Stan Daniels, co-creator of "Taxi" and producer of the later seasons of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show." The term refers to a type of joke where someone says one thing, and immediately (but unconsciously) contradicts himself a moment later. The joke is based on the speaker's lack of awareness of the disconnect between the two statements.
Here's a classic example from "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," the episode "Chuckles Bites the Dust" (Daniels didn't write the episode, but he was one of the producers):
(Update: the clip I posted here is gone, so here's the script excerpt.)
(Situation: Ted is upset because Lou won't let him be grand marshal of the circus parade.)
TED
He treats me like a little child,
Mary. He bosses me around as though
I were ten years old.
MARY
Ted that isn't true. He may boss you
around but he doesn't think you're a
kid. He respects you as a mature
adult.
TED
(Anguished)
Then why won't he let me go to the
circus?
That's the Stan Daniels turn in its basic form: Ted says that he's upset at being treated like a child, and then, in his very next line, says something that a little child would say. The laugh comes from Ted's lack of self-awareness about this, and from the audience's pleasant surprise at realizing how the joke was set up.
The technique doesn't seem to have been very common, at least on sitcoms, before the '70s, which is presumably why it's named after Daniels (I doubt he invented it, but he seems to have popularized it). A lot of shows have used it since then; the show "Frasier" used it something like twice or three times an episode:
It's kind of a self-aware, almost meta-humorous type of joke, because it's sort of a game between the writer and the audience -- see if they can set up something and find a creative way to contradict it in the very next moment -- and because it often depends on something happening oh-so-conveniently on cue, as in the above joke. When it works, it works really well, though.
However, there was one term that I heard on a "Simpsons" DVD commentary that I hadn't heard before and that finally put a name to a familiar comedy-writing technique. Al Jean refers to something called the "Stan Daniels Turn." This is named for Stan Daniels, co-creator of "Taxi" and producer of the later seasons of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show." The term refers to a type of joke where someone says one thing, and immediately (but unconsciously) contradicts himself a moment later. The joke is based on the speaker's lack of awareness of the disconnect between the two statements.
Here's a classic example from "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," the episode "Chuckles Bites the Dust" (Daniels didn't write the episode, but he was one of the producers):
(Update: the clip I posted here is gone, so here's the script excerpt.)
(Situation: Ted is upset because Lou won't let him be grand marshal of the circus parade.)
TED
He treats me like a little child,
Mary. He bosses me around as though
I were ten years old.
MARY
Ted that isn't true. He may boss you
around but he doesn't think you're a
kid. He respects you as a mature
adult.
TED
(Anguished)
Then why won't he let me go to the
circus?
That's the Stan Daniels turn in its basic form: Ted says that he's upset at being treated like a child, and then, in his very next line, says something that a little child would say. The laugh comes from Ted's lack of self-awareness about this, and from the audience's pleasant surprise at realizing how the joke was set up.
The technique doesn't seem to have been very common, at least on sitcoms, before the '70s, which is presumably why it's named after Daniels (I doubt he invented it, but he seems to have popularized it). A lot of shows have used it since then; the show "Frasier" used it something like twice or three times an episode:
NILES: Well, I wish you'd at least think about it. A candidate like this doesn't come along that often. He's hard-working. He volunteers weekends at a soup kitchen. He really cares about people. Finally, a politician who believes in the things we believe in.
[A young boy approaches with boxes of candy.]
BOY: Buy a box of chocolates -- send a kid to camp?
NILES (angrily): Excuse me, can't you see we're talking here?!
It's kind of a self-aware, almost meta-humorous type of joke, because it's sort of a game between the writer and the audience -- see if they can set up something and find a creative way to contradict it in the very next moment -- and because it often depends on something happening oh-so-conveniently on cue, as in the above joke. When it works, it works really well, though.
The Last Days of Brisco
Bruce Campbell's official site confirms an upcoming DVD release of his series "The Adventures of Brisco County Jr.".
Among the many cult-favorite shows that only lasted one season, this may be one of the weirdest: a cross between Western, science fiction, magical fantasy, and comedy, sort of like "Wild Wild West" if it had been cross-pollinated with the Indiana Jones movies and Saturday Night Live. Worth checking out if you share my affection for lines like "I am Dr. Quintano, medicine woman."
Among the many cult-favorite shows that only lasted one season, this may be one of the weirdest: a cross between Western, science fiction, magical fantasy, and comedy, sort of like "Wild Wild West" if it had been cross-pollinated with the Indiana Jones movies and Saturday Night Live. Worth checking out if you share my affection for lines like "I am Dr. Quintano, medicine woman."
Typical Al Capp
The strip Li'l Abner wasn't at its best by 1953 (which is when the year comics.com is up to in their run of the strip), but the current run is pretty typical of creator Al Capp's working methods: it's been days since the birth of Li'l Abner and Daisy Mae's baby, but we only just found out what it looks like, and we still haven't found out whether it's a boy or a girl, since something always happens to prevent us (and Abner and Daisy) from finding out. That's Capp: Li'l Abner was a semi-parody of the serialized adventure strip, where every day they'd find some reason not to clear up the mystery or wrap up the story, and a lot of the humor of Li'l Abner came from the outrageous delaying tactics Capp would use.
The only problem was that sometimes he'd forget or not bother to wrap up the story at all; one time he spent an entire year on the story of Abner searching for a woman whose kneecap he saw in a Fearless Fosdick comic, and if he ever finished the story, I didn't see it. (He also introduced, during that year, a scene with Daisy Mae meeting a mysterious stranger who appears ready to marry her and take her away from Abner; we never found out who the stranger was or where that story was supposed to go.)
The only problem was that sometimes he'd forget or not bother to wrap up the story at all; one time he spent an entire year on the story of Abner searching for a woman whose kneecap he saw in a Fearless Fosdick comic, and if he ever finished the story, I didn't see it. (He also introduced, during that year, a scene with Daisy Mae meeting a mysterious stranger who appears ready to marry her and take her away from Abner; we never found out who the stranger was or where that story was supposed to go.)
Lovers of Crappy Hanna-Barbera Cartoons, Unite
"Hong Kong Phooey" (number one super guy!) is coming to DVD, as part of Warner Home Video's apparent attempt to make available every single cartoon that's ever been spoofed on "Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law".
I don't know what it is about the bad Hanna-Barbera stuff that makes it so appealing; I think I know more people who love their bad stuff -- "Scooby Doo," "Superfriends," "Josie and the Pussycats," "The Smurfs" -- than who love their early, funny TV cartoons like "Ruff and Reddy" or "Huckleberry Hound." If I had to guess, I'd say that for a kid growing up watching cartoons, the H-B cartoons, putrid as they were, had a certain strange integrity: they weren't trying to sell us products, they weren't about pro-social messages, they were just about trying to entertain us. The fact that the "entertainment" mostly consisted of Muttley laughing a lot or Casey Kasem freaking out for some reason or other -- well, that was a minus, but at least Bill and Joe really did seem to care about giving kids a good time. Anyway, it beats "Rubik the Amazing Cube."
I don't know what it is about the bad Hanna-Barbera stuff that makes it so appealing; I think I know more people who love their bad stuff -- "Scooby Doo," "Superfriends," "Josie and the Pussycats," "The Smurfs" -- than who love their early, funny TV cartoons like "Ruff and Reddy" or "Huckleberry Hound." If I had to guess, I'd say that for a kid growing up watching cartoons, the H-B cartoons, putrid as they were, had a certain strange integrity: they weren't trying to sell us products, they weren't about pro-social messages, they were just about trying to entertain us. The fact that the "entertainment" mostly consisted of Muttley laughing a lot or Casey Kasem freaking out for some reason or other -- well, that was a minus, but at least Bill and Joe really did seem to care about giving kids a good time. Anyway, it beats "Rubik the Amazing Cube."
Saturday, January 07, 2006
Someday, Everybody Will Have a Website...
...But for now, it's enough that there's an official website for The Jive Dudes from Airplane! (Al White and Norman Alexander Gibbs).
Friday, January 06, 2006
Lyrics: "Tall Hope" by Carolyn Leigh
As longtime (or even shorttime) readers of this blog will know, when I can't think of anything else to post, I fill up space by posting song lyrics I really like. This particular lyric is by Carolyn Leigh, one of my three or four favorite lyricists ever; it's the song "Tall Hope" from the musical Wildcat.
Wildcat was a star vehicle for Lucille Ball, a terrible singer (SCTV fans will recall Catherine O'Hara's parody of Ball's "singing" in the movie version of Mame); "Tall Hope," an ensemble number for the members of an oil drilling crew, was one of the few numbers that didn't involve Ball and therefore could actually get some decent singing.
The song itself is a great mixture of pastiche cowboy song, humor, and pathos; it shows off Leigh's combination of colloquial language and rhyming agility, along with her ability to come up with unusual turns of phrase. (Highlight of this one is the opening phrase, "Ridin' the tall hope.")
Wildcat was a star vehicle for Lucille Ball, a terrible singer (SCTV fans will recall Catherine O'Hara's parody of Ball's "singing" in the movie version of Mame); "Tall Hope," an ensemble number for the members of an oil drilling crew, was one of the few numbers that didn't involve Ball and therefore could actually get some decent singing.
The song itself is a great mixture of pastiche cowboy song, humor, and pathos; it shows off Leigh's combination of colloquial language and rhyming agility, along with her ability to come up with unusual turns of phrase. (Highlight of this one is the opening phrase, "Ridin' the tall hope.")
TATTOO
Right now
I'm ridin' the tall hope,
The ship that I call hope
Has me in the bow.
Come tell me tomorrow
To settle for small hope,
I'm ridin' the tall hope
Right now.
Come tell me tomorrow,
"Eliminate all hope,"
I'm ridin' the tall hope
Right now.
ONEY
There's a stripper in a joint in New Orleans
Just as faithful as a lady can be,
'Cause the told me she was spendin' her evenin's
Gettin' supper ready for me.
Enter Oney, cool as a breeze,
Flingin' diamonds at her dimply knees.
I can see my baby peelin' them peas
Right now.
ALL
Right now, right now.
Come tell me tomorrow
To settle for small hope,
I'm ridin' the tall hope
Right now.
SANDY
Wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa,
Wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa...
ALL
Wa-wa-wa-wa-what?
SANDY
I'm gonna buy me a slide trombone,
I'm gonna play me a tune so grand,
There'll be a ring on the telephone
And it's the boss man of the Promised land.
ALL
And what'll he say?
SANDY
What'll he say?
"How do you do?
Where have you been?"
ALL
You're in a spot!
SANDY
"Sinner or not,"
He's gonna say,
"Brother, come in!"
ALL
Why don't you come on in
And teach that Gabriel how?
Teach Gabriel how.
Come tell me tomorrow,
"Eliminate all hope,"
I'm ridin' the tall bright hope
Right now.
Come thunder, I don't shrink,
Come lightning, I don't scare,
Come mayhem, I don't think
I care
To wrinkle
My brow.
MATT
'Cause overhead the stars a-twinkle,
My two bare feet propped up in the bow,
Nothin' in the world to wrinkle
My brow,
Right now, right now.
Tomorrow find me grievin'
Or even in jail,
I'm in full sail
Right now.
ALL
Come tell me tomorrow,
"Eliminate all hope,"
I'm ridin' that tall bright hope
Right now.
Wednesday, January 04, 2006
It's Just Little Oscar
If it's really true that Jon Stewart will host the Academy Awards this year, he'll have the distinction of having less to do with the movies than any Oscars host since Johnny Carson.
The list of hosts shows that the normal practice is to pick a comedian with a strong presence in the movies: Bob Hope and Billy Crystal are of course the most frequent hosts, though Carson is tied with them for most consecutive years as host (four). Note that in the early '70s they went with four co-hosts instead of one host, leading to such weird hosting teams as Helen Hayes, Alan King, Jack Lemmon and Sammy Davis Jr.
The host I would most have liked to see was Jerry Lewis, who was part of a team of co-hosts in 1959 and let the show degenerate into sort of a free-for-all, letting everyone come up onstage at the end. When Dean Martin came up, Lewis said: "And they said Dean and I would never be on the same stage again!" They never let Lewis host again, and the show degenerated into its usual state of numbing predictability, with the occasional streaker to liven things up.
The list of hosts shows that the normal practice is to pick a comedian with a strong presence in the movies: Bob Hope and Billy Crystal are of course the most frequent hosts, though Carson is tied with them for most consecutive years as host (four). Note that in the early '70s they went with four co-hosts instead of one host, leading to such weird hosting teams as Helen Hayes, Alan King, Jack Lemmon and Sammy Davis Jr.
The host I would most have liked to see was Jerry Lewis, who was part of a team of co-hosts in 1959 and let the show degenerate into sort of a free-for-all, letting everyone come up onstage at the end. When Dean Martin came up, Lewis said: "And they said Dean and I would never be on the same stage again!" They never let Lewis host again, and the show degenerated into its usual state of numbing predictability, with the occasional streaker to liven things up.
Hop hop! Hop hop!
Terry Teachout has it right on Alban Berg's Wozzeck:
Wozzeck, a 20th-century opera based on the weirdest play of the 19th century (a play that, though written in 1837, reads like a work of the 20th-century avant-garde), is often considered the atonal opera for people who don't like atonal music. In fact, Berg is generally the most accessible of non-tonal composers. Even after Wozzeck, when he adopted Schoenberg's abtruse twelve-tone system, his music remained accessible; his violin concerto is as close to a popular concert staple as a twelve-tone composition can get, and his last opera, Lulu, is gorgeous-sounding despite its ugly subject-matter.
As to why Berg's music is easier to get into than most atonal music, I think it has to do with his understanding of voices -- instrumental voices and human voices. Many twentieth-century composers were cursed with an inability to write for voices and instruments in a manner that would sound attractive when performed. Schoenberg was often like that in his vocal writing, coming up with bizarre vocal lines that made a singer's voice sound unattractive. That, not the twelve-tone system itself, is what makes a lot of his music sound ugly: he had worked out the system, but he hadn't fully figured out what the music would sound like. Berg wrote for voices in a very challenging and difficult way; roles like Marie in Wozzeck and Lulu can kill a soprano's voice. But while music is hard, if the singer is up to the challenges, the music will sound great: Berg had a knowledge of the human voice that allowed him to write music that sounds beautiful when sung, just like Mozart or Verdi or either Strauss. His violin concerto is similarly good at making sure the music sounds right and appropriate for the violin.
A lot of the twelve-tone music that came after Berg (who died young) tended to be written by academics, like Milton Babbitt, who didn't have a lot of practical experience with writing for performers, and often wrote music that sounded better in theory than in practice. If twelve-tone music never became popular -- and it never did -- it may have more to do with that than any inherent problems of the twelve-tone system. It could be that if Berg had lived he'd have come up with the first genuine twelve-tone popular favorite; he could have done it if anyone could have.
As for the opera itself, regular readers know I’m no fan of Austro-German expressionism, but Wozzeck is one of the supreme masterpieces of twentieth-century opera, a work so overwhelmingly compelling as to overwhelm any possible objections.
Wozzeck, a 20th-century opera based on the weirdest play of the 19th century (a play that, though written in 1837, reads like a work of the 20th-century avant-garde), is often considered the atonal opera for people who don't like atonal music. In fact, Berg is generally the most accessible of non-tonal composers. Even after Wozzeck, when he adopted Schoenberg's abtruse twelve-tone system, his music remained accessible; his violin concerto is as close to a popular concert staple as a twelve-tone composition can get, and his last opera, Lulu, is gorgeous-sounding despite its ugly subject-matter.
As to why Berg's music is easier to get into than most atonal music, I think it has to do with his understanding of voices -- instrumental voices and human voices. Many twentieth-century composers were cursed with an inability to write for voices and instruments in a manner that would sound attractive when performed. Schoenberg was often like that in his vocal writing, coming up with bizarre vocal lines that made a singer's voice sound unattractive. That, not the twelve-tone system itself, is what makes a lot of his music sound ugly: he had worked out the system, but he hadn't fully figured out what the music would sound like. Berg wrote for voices in a very challenging and difficult way; roles like Marie in Wozzeck and Lulu can kill a soprano's voice. But while music is hard, if the singer is up to the challenges, the music will sound great: Berg had a knowledge of the human voice that allowed him to write music that sounds beautiful when sung, just like Mozart or Verdi or either Strauss. His violin concerto is similarly good at making sure the music sounds right and appropriate for the violin.
A lot of the twelve-tone music that came after Berg (who died young) tended to be written by academics, like Milton Babbitt, who didn't have a lot of practical experience with writing for performers, and often wrote music that sounded better in theory than in practice. If twelve-tone music never became popular -- and it never did -- it may have more to do with that than any inherent problems of the twelve-tone system. It could be that if Berg had lived he'd have come up with the first genuine twelve-tone popular favorite; he could have done it if anyone could have.
A Better Idea Than a Book
Maybe it's just the fact that my favorite book as a teenager was "A Semester in the Life of a Garbage Bag" by Gordon Korman, but I've always had a soft spot for a good young adult novel. And by "good" I mean something that's funny, unsentimental and fast-paced -- a novel for the young adult who doesn't like sappy or preachy stories.
That's why I had some high hopes for a novel I never got around to reading as a teenager, "The Grounding of Group 6" by Julian F. Thompson. The book has a great, dark, funny premise: five teenagers, each in one way or another a disappointment to his or her parents, are sent to a boarding school that specializes in killing troublesome teenagers and disposing of the bodies. The kids realize that their parents have put a contract out on them, and team up to foil the killers who run the school and turn the tables on their parents. The premise, bluntly stated by one of the characters, is that the only reason parents don't kill their kids is that they can't get away with it; but what if there was a place that would provide that service for them and let them get away with it?
That's a perfect premise for a young-adult story: it confirms the paranoid fears teenagers have about those twin pillars of authority, parents and schoolteachers, and it offers a revenge fantasy where they get back at them, but good.
Unfortunately, the book takes too long to get this plot into gear, and makes the dubious choice of adding an older character to the mix: Nat, a twentysomething who has been hired by the school to assist in disposing of the kids, but ends up joining them, helping them out, and even becoming romantically involved with one of them. To have a non-teenager at the center of the book sort of dilutes the appeal of the teen revenge fantasy.
The book is at its best in the scenes with the killer teachers, especially the leader, Doctor, who explains his philosophy in flowery, James-Bond-villain dialogue: "Sometimes, a person gets a lemon, even if the name is Cadillac or Rolls. And if you do, it doesn't seem to do a bit of good to take it back and back and...." And some of the violent deaths are pretty funny, particularly the character whose dying words are "you are a plecklerucker micklestitch." But all in all, the idea is more fun than the actual novel.
The novel was optioned for the movies but never filmed; a movie of it, rewritten without the character of Nat and with a less flashback-heavy structure, might work.
That's why I had some high hopes for a novel I never got around to reading as a teenager, "The Grounding of Group 6" by Julian F. Thompson. The book has a great, dark, funny premise: five teenagers, each in one way or another a disappointment to his or her parents, are sent to a boarding school that specializes in killing troublesome teenagers and disposing of the bodies. The kids realize that their parents have put a contract out on them, and team up to foil the killers who run the school and turn the tables on their parents. The premise, bluntly stated by one of the characters, is that the only reason parents don't kill their kids is that they can't get away with it; but what if there was a place that would provide that service for them and let them get away with it?
That's a perfect premise for a young-adult story: it confirms the paranoid fears teenagers have about those twin pillars of authority, parents and schoolteachers, and it offers a revenge fantasy where they get back at them, but good.
Unfortunately, the book takes too long to get this plot into gear, and makes the dubious choice of adding an older character to the mix: Nat, a twentysomething who has been hired by the school to assist in disposing of the kids, but ends up joining them, helping them out, and even becoming romantically involved with one of them. To have a non-teenager at the center of the book sort of dilutes the appeal of the teen revenge fantasy.
The book is at its best in the scenes with the killer teachers, especially the leader, Doctor, who explains his philosophy in flowery, James-Bond-villain dialogue: "Sometimes, a person gets a lemon, even if the name is Cadillac or Rolls. And if you do, it doesn't seem to do a bit of good to take it back and back and...." And some of the violent deaths are pretty funny, particularly the character whose dying words are "you are a plecklerucker micklestitch." But all in all, the idea is more fun than the actual novel.
The novel was optioned for the movies but never filmed; a movie of it, rewritten without the character of Nat and with a less flashback-heavy structure, might work.
Obscure Peanuts References
The official Peanuts site, which was previously reprinting strips from the early '70s and late '60s, has now gone back to the '50s strips that have already been reprinted in the Complete Peanuts books. This one has always kind of tickled me, since it's one of those strips that didn't usually get reprinted in the trade paperbacks -- Schulz or his syndicator tended to leave out the strips that had topical pop-culture references. And the particular cultural reference here, while obscure, is pretty funny: it plays on the fact that "Stardust" had, by the '50s, become such a standard that it hardly seemed like a pop song at all.
Correction: These strips are in fact from 1959, which will be reprinted in the next Complete Peanuts volume.
Correction: These strips are in fact from 1959, which will be reprinted in the next Complete Peanuts volume.
One More Thing Where I Mention "Batman"
Those of us who grew up watching Saturday morning cartoons in the '80s can remember all sorts of truly deadly clichés. There was "just be yourself." There was "it's so crazy it just might work!" There was the phrase "here goes nothing" and, of course, the ending with all the characters laughing. But the worst cliché of all, the one every kid dreaded, was "If you do _____, you're no better than he is." I cannot tell you how many episodes of every freakin' cartoon show ended with a situation where a character has a chance to do something mean to the villain, and is told that this will make him "no better than he is."
Now, even a kid knew this was silly. I mean, if we do something wrong, that makes us bad, but it doesn't automatically make us as bad as Gargamel. The line came off as an attempt to infuse moral sophistication into shows that portrayed all morality as totally black-and-white for the other 21 minutes, and thereby rang false. But even if it didn't ring false, it sure sounded that way after it was used again and again and again and again....
I think the death of this particular phrase came in an episode of "Batman: The Animated Series" in 1995, wherein Batgirl teams up with Catwoman. At the end, Catwoman is about to let the villain fall into a vat of boiling oil:
Sure, the villain didn't actually die -- nobody died onscreen, by order of the Fox censors -- but Catwoman's line was true catharsis for all of us who had heard that line 97.5 times growing up.
Rumor at the time was that the original script had the "no better than he is" line played straight, and somebody added the line "Oh, grow up" to make fun of the cliché. Don't know if that's true.
"Duckman" also had a riff on this trope:
"Tiny Toon Adventures" also slammed Sat-a.m. cartoon clichés on occasion:
Now, even a kid knew this was silly. I mean, if we do something wrong, that makes us bad, but it doesn't automatically make us as bad as Gargamel. The line came off as an attempt to infuse moral sophistication into shows that portrayed all morality as totally black-and-white for the other 21 minutes, and thereby rang false. But even if it didn't ring false, it sure sounded that way after it was used again and again and again and again....
I think the death of this particular phrase came in an episode of "Batman: The Animated Series" in 1995, wherein Batgirl teams up with Catwoman. At the end, Catwoman is about to let the villain fall into a vat of boiling oil:
BATGIRL: Stop! If you let him fall, you're no better than he is.
CATWOMAN: Oh, grow up.
(She lets him fall.)
Sure, the villain didn't actually die -- nobody died onscreen, by order of the Fox censors -- but Catwoman's line was true catharsis for all of us who had heard that line 97.5 times growing up.
Rumor at the time was that the original script had the "no better than he is" line played straight, and somebody added the line "Oh, grow up" to make fun of the cliché. Don't know if that's true.
"Duckman" also had a riff on this trope:
CORNFED: In a way, we were no better than Duckman. Actually, I'm speaking metaphorically; we were a lot better than Duckman.
"Tiny Toon Adventures" also slammed Sat-a.m. cartoon clichés on occasion:
BUSTER: We have to help the flea family. But what can we do?
(A sign appears: "Cartoon Cliché # 1: Shrink Yourselves.")
BABS: It's so crazy it just might work!
(Sign: "That's Cartoon Cliché # 2.")
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
Thanks A Lot, But No Thanks
Warner Brothers Home Video has a bunch of lesser MGM musicals coming out on DVD this April.
Of these titles, I'm fondest of It's Always Fair Weather, the last of the Gene Kelly/Stanley Donen musicals, and a surprisingly dark and cynical followup to On the Town: three old military buddies re-unite after leaving the service, only to find that they dislike each other and that they hate their own lives. The cast is great -- Kelly, Dan Dailey, Michael Kidd, Cyd Charisse, Dolores Gray -- and it's one of the few early CinemaScope musicals to make effective use of that awkward screen shape. (The previous year, Donen had dealt with CinemaScope by filling it with Seven Brides and Seven Brothers; here he divides the frame into three and gives one section each to the three guys.) Basically it's a great musical in every way except the important one: the score, which was the first of many times that André Previn would demonstrate his total lack of ability as a songwriter. A terrific musician, but a real dud as a melodist. So the weak songs drag the film down, as does the lack of a good romantic number for Kelly and Charisse, but I still like it better than On the Town -- which also has score problems (namely the bland new songs written in place of Leonard Bernstein's).
Three Little Words is also worth a look; a biopic of two lesser-known songwriters, Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby (best known for their superb songs and scripts for the Marx Brothers), it's more enjoyable than most biopics, since it's unpretentious and doesn't try to inflate the importance of its subjects. Jack Cummings, who produced this and Seven Brides For Seven Brothers, had lower budgets than MGM's other musicals producer, Arthur Freed, but compensated for it by producing films that were less overblown than some of Freed's, and often had better songs and more opportunities for the performers. Vera-Ellen in particular gets more to do than she usually did with Freed. And any movie with Arlene Dahl is, by definition, a good movie.
Of these titles, I'm fondest of It's Always Fair Weather, the last of the Gene Kelly/Stanley Donen musicals, and a surprisingly dark and cynical followup to On the Town: three old military buddies re-unite after leaving the service, only to find that they dislike each other and that they hate their own lives. The cast is great -- Kelly, Dan Dailey, Michael Kidd, Cyd Charisse, Dolores Gray -- and it's one of the few early CinemaScope musicals to make effective use of that awkward screen shape. (The previous year, Donen had dealt with CinemaScope by filling it with Seven Brides and Seven Brothers; here he divides the frame into three and gives one section each to the three guys.) Basically it's a great musical in every way except the important one: the score, which was the first of many times that André Previn would demonstrate his total lack of ability as a songwriter. A terrific musician, but a real dud as a melodist. So the weak songs drag the film down, as does the lack of a good romantic number for Kelly and Charisse, but I still like it better than On the Town -- which also has score problems (namely the bland new songs written in place of Leonard Bernstein's).
Three Little Words is also worth a look; a biopic of two lesser-known songwriters, Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby (best known for their superb songs and scripts for the Marx Brothers), it's more enjoyable than most biopics, since it's unpretentious and doesn't try to inflate the importance of its subjects. Jack Cummings, who produced this and Seven Brides For Seven Brothers, had lower budgets than MGM's other musicals producer, Arthur Freed, but compensated for it by producing films that were less overblown than some of Freed's, and often had better songs and more opportunities for the performers. Vera-Ellen in particular gets more to do than she usually did with Freed. And any movie with Arlene Dahl is, by definition, a good movie.
His Ridiculous Mask and Gadgets!
Following up my post about the final episodes of "Batman: the Animated Series", I found this page with excerpts from the comic book "Mad Love,", which was adapted into one of the best episodes of that last "Batman" season. The comic was written by Paul Dini, who more or less created Harley Quinn and used the longer comic story to explain her origin and her sick relationship with the Joker; the artwork, by series producer Bruce Timm, is a cross between the style of the TV series and the work of Mad's Harvey Kurtzman. The fantasy sequences -- which the TV adaptation didn't have room for -- are very Kurtzmanesque:
Note the in-joke of Buster and Babs Bunny (from "Tiny Toon Adventures," which Dini and Timm and many of the other "Batman" people worked on) hanging from nooses.
The direct-to-video movie Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker hinted at a resolution to the Joker and Harley's relationship; without giving it away, we see that her wacked-out desire for a perfect sitcom-style family finally sort of meshes with the Joker's obsession with finding a way to get Batman's goat. But it didn't really deal with it the issue in any detail, because the sequence was only a ten-minute flashback within a Batman Beyond movie. Good as that movie was, I wish someone would go back and make that sequence into a movie of its own; it just has more resonance than the story of the teen futuristic Batman.
Note the in-joke of Buster and Babs Bunny (from "Tiny Toon Adventures," which Dini and Timm and many of the other "Batman" people worked on) hanging from nooses.
The direct-to-video movie Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker hinted at a resolution to the Joker and Harley's relationship; without giving it away, we see that her wacked-out desire for a perfect sitcom-style family finally sort of meshes with the Joker's obsession with finding a way to get Batman's goat. But it didn't really deal with it the issue in any detail, because the sequence was only a ten-minute flashback within a Batman Beyond movie. Good as that movie was, I wish someone would go back and make that sequence into a movie of its own; it just has more resonance than the story of the teen futuristic Batman.
Monday, January 02, 2006
So Sit Back And Relax...
I've linked to the Animaniacs series bible before, but Ron O'Dell has some additional information on the development of the "Animaniacs" series and the differences between the series bible and the final series. Of particular interest are the characters who were supposed to have their own recurring series of cartoons on the show but never actually made it -- such as a comedy team called "Nipsey and Russell" and a soap-opera parody about amoebae.
The Good Old Days of Politically Correct Westerns
Watching and loving Budd Boetticher's Seven Men From Now, one little scene stood out for me as a scene that couldn't be done in a movie today -- not, at least, quite in the way it was done in 1956.
It's a short scene between Randolph Scott, as the grizzled hero, Stride, and Stuart Whitman, as a young Cavalry officer. The officer advises Scott to turn back, as the Chiracahua Apaches are in the area:
The scene is short, brusque and elliptical, like most of the scenes in the movie, but the dialogue -- and Scott's sardonic attitude toward the Lieutenant -- conveys the clear point that Scott is a Western hero who doesn't think much of the military or their treatment of the Indians.
The reason I say you couldn't do this scene this way is that if you did it today, it would come off as a "politicized" scene, or something that has a particular point of view on history or the military or various other things. People would wonder what its agenda is. But Boetticher and the writer, Burt Kennedy, don't seem to attach that kind of meaning to the scene; they're just matter-of-factly using some points about the military and American Indians to make a larger point about their lead character.
A lot of Westerns from the golden age of Westerns -- which I date roughly from My Darling Clementine in 1946 to The Wild Bunch in 1969 -- have this quality, of matter-of-factly making negative points about America's history without ever seeming to become politicized. Look at Fort Apache (if it ever comes out on DVD, I mean). The producer, Merian Cooper, and the director, John Ford, made the movie as a patriotic tribute to America that would act as a counterweight to Communist propaganda, and indeed, it's a stirringly patriotic movie. It's also a movie that deals bluntly and forcefully with the mistreatment of Indians, the fact that complete nuts like the Henry Fonda character can be appointed to positions of leadership, and, at the end, the fact that a country's history and self-image is often based on lies (the John Wayne character lies about the Fonda character to create a better story). We sometimes think of patriotism as interchangeable with jingoism -- the difference between them being the difference between "my country right or wrong" and "my country is never wrong" -- but Fort Apache isn't at all jingoistic; it's as though Ford is so secure in his love of the Cavalry, and of the Western genre, that he can afford to show us the bad stuff too.
Now, it would certainly be possible to do a movie like that today, but it would be severely complicated by the fact that points like the ones I've described above would mark a movie as having an agenda, in a way that it didn't in 1948 or 1956.
Look again at the scene from Seven Men From Now and try to imagine how a director would approach a similar scene several decades later. It would be longer, for one thing. But for another thing, in an era when audiences are more conditioned to look for ideological messages in movies, the director would inevitably be conscious that the scene would be interpreted ideologically. If a movie did this scene in the early '90s, when one kind of political correctness was ascendant, it would inevitably take the anti-military subtext and turn it into text. Today, when a different kind of political correctness is more potent, such a scene would come under fire as an example of Hollywood's anti-military bias. No matter what kind of political correctness is in play, the filmmakers would have to worry about the scene offending someone, and walk on eggshells to avoid giving offense.
Could you go back to making movies the way Boetticher and Ford did, that is, just being matter-of-fact and concentrating on character without worrying about ideology? It's possible, but to a certain extent it's now inevitable that we will view movies, especially historical movies, through an ideological lens; I think we're more vigilant about trying to spot "preachy" messages and to resent anything that smacks of preaching. When media discussion of a Spielberg movie mostly revolves around whether he's sending the right message, I don't think a John Ford -- who offends political correctness on both sides of the aisle -- would have much chance of escaping without a big discussion of whether he's got an unacceptable slant on the topics he deals with.
An example of how things have changed: The original stage play and film of Annie Get Your Gun has a character saying, after finding out how smart the character of Sitting Bull is, "How'd we ever get the country away from those guys?" The line is a good exit punchline that simply uses a known fact (we took the country away from someone else) as grist for the mill. In the '90s, a rewritten, '90s-politically-correct Annie Get Your Gun played Broadway; much of the dialogue had been rewritten to make it more ethnically sensitive, but the "how'd we ever get the country away from them?" line remained. An acquaintance who saw the show -- to my left politically, but very resentful of all forms of political correctness -- complained about that line and how PC and hyper-sensitive it was. I explained that the line was in fact lifted from the original show. In 1946 that line was a symbol of how unpleasant facts about a country's history were more or less acknowledged and accepted as facts of life; fifty years later, the same line came off as an attempt to pander to the PC police. For all I know, maybe ten more years later it now comes off as a taboo-breaking piece of bad taste (un-PC is the new PC, as I never tire of pointing out). But one way or another, lines like that, and scenes like the Seven Men From Now scene, will probably never again come off as non-ideological. Maybe we are all benign Zhdanovites now.
It's a short scene between Randolph Scott, as the grizzled hero, Stride, and Stuart Whitman, as a young Cavalry officer. The officer advises Scott to turn back, as the Chiracahua Apaches are in the area:
LIEUTENANT: We've been dispatched from Fort Crittenden to make a wide sweep south in an attempt to contact any and all Chiracahua in the area. Reports indicate they may be massing along the border.
STRIDE: Can't be more than fifty of 'em left in the whole territory.
LIEUTENANT: Oh? According to our scouts, there's well over a hundred.
STRIDE: That including the squaws, Lieutenant?
LIEUTENANT: I take it you don't think the Indians are dangerous.
STRIDE: They're worse than that -- they're hungry. Nothing as deadly as a half-starved Chiracahua.
LIEUTENANT: Well, then, we agree.
STRIDE: Do we?
The scene is short, brusque and elliptical, like most of the scenes in the movie, but the dialogue -- and Scott's sardonic attitude toward the Lieutenant -- conveys the clear point that Scott is a Western hero who doesn't think much of the military or their treatment of the Indians.
The reason I say you couldn't do this scene this way is that if you did it today, it would come off as a "politicized" scene, or something that has a particular point of view on history or the military or various other things. People would wonder what its agenda is. But Boetticher and the writer, Burt Kennedy, don't seem to attach that kind of meaning to the scene; they're just matter-of-factly using some points about the military and American Indians to make a larger point about their lead character.
A lot of Westerns from the golden age of Westerns -- which I date roughly from My Darling Clementine in 1946 to The Wild Bunch in 1969 -- have this quality, of matter-of-factly making negative points about America's history without ever seeming to become politicized. Look at Fort Apache (if it ever comes out on DVD, I mean). The producer, Merian Cooper, and the director, John Ford, made the movie as a patriotic tribute to America that would act as a counterweight to Communist propaganda, and indeed, it's a stirringly patriotic movie. It's also a movie that deals bluntly and forcefully with the mistreatment of Indians, the fact that complete nuts like the Henry Fonda character can be appointed to positions of leadership, and, at the end, the fact that a country's history and self-image is often based on lies (the John Wayne character lies about the Fonda character to create a better story). We sometimes think of patriotism as interchangeable with jingoism -- the difference between them being the difference between "my country right or wrong" and "my country is never wrong" -- but Fort Apache isn't at all jingoistic; it's as though Ford is so secure in his love of the Cavalry, and of the Western genre, that he can afford to show us the bad stuff too.
Now, it would certainly be possible to do a movie like that today, but it would be severely complicated by the fact that points like the ones I've described above would mark a movie as having an agenda, in a way that it didn't in 1948 or 1956.
Look again at the scene from Seven Men From Now and try to imagine how a director would approach a similar scene several decades later. It would be longer, for one thing. But for another thing, in an era when audiences are more conditioned to look for ideological messages in movies, the director would inevitably be conscious that the scene would be interpreted ideologically. If a movie did this scene in the early '90s, when one kind of political correctness was ascendant, it would inevitably take the anti-military subtext and turn it into text. Today, when a different kind of political correctness is more potent, such a scene would come under fire as an example of Hollywood's anti-military bias. No matter what kind of political correctness is in play, the filmmakers would have to worry about the scene offending someone, and walk on eggshells to avoid giving offense.
Could you go back to making movies the way Boetticher and Ford did, that is, just being matter-of-fact and concentrating on character without worrying about ideology? It's possible, but to a certain extent it's now inevitable that we will view movies, especially historical movies, through an ideological lens; I think we're more vigilant about trying to spot "preachy" messages and to resent anything that smacks of preaching. When media discussion of a Spielberg movie mostly revolves around whether he's sending the right message, I don't think a John Ford -- who offends political correctness on both sides of the aisle -- would have much chance of escaping without a big discussion of whether he's got an unacceptable slant on the topics he deals with.
An example of how things have changed: The original stage play and film of Annie Get Your Gun has a character saying, after finding out how smart the character of Sitting Bull is, "How'd we ever get the country away from those guys?" The line is a good exit punchline that simply uses a known fact (we took the country away from someone else) as grist for the mill. In the '90s, a rewritten, '90s-politically-correct Annie Get Your Gun played Broadway; much of the dialogue had been rewritten to make it more ethnically sensitive, but the "how'd we ever get the country away from them?" line remained. An acquaintance who saw the show -- to my left politically, but very resentful of all forms of political correctness -- complained about that line and how PC and hyper-sensitive it was. I explained that the line was in fact lifted from the original show. In 1946 that line was a symbol of how unpleasant facts about a country's history were more or less acknowledged and accepted as facts of life; fifty years later, the same line came off as an attempt to pander to the PC police. For all I know, maybe ten more years later it now comes off as a taboo-breaking piece of bad taste (un-PC is the new PC, as I never tire of pointing out). But one way or another, lines like that, and scenes like the Seven Men From Now scene, will probably never again come off as non-ideological. Maybe we are all benign Zhdanovites now.
In Which I Am Easily Amused
Noticing that a DVD release has been announced for the show "Police Woman," and not remembering the show very well, I decided to look at the episode guide and remind myself of what kind of stories they did.
Based on the following plot descriptions, all from the first season, it seems there's a pattern here:
There's nothing like a '70s cop show. It's like the plots were created through mad libs: "Pepper goes undercover at a ___________."
With real shows like this, who needs Kresky?
Based on the following plot descriptions, all from the first season, it seems there's a pattern here:
Pepper [Angie Dickinson] and Crowley pose as bank employees to nail a particularly vicious gang of bank robbers.
Pepper investigates a school for modeling to which many young runaway girls are attracted.
Pepper and Bill go undercover to catch a rapist/killer who is targeting the wives of patients at a hospital.
Pepper goes undercover as an Airline Stewardess when her snitch is shot before he was able to tell her about the drug deal.
Pepper goes undercover in a woman's prison after a convict is slain who could have helped put away a mobster.
Pepper goes undercover as a nurse in a retirement home to find out who murdered a elderly woman.
Pepper goes undercover as a bored housewife when a blackmailer is found murdered the next likely victim is the suspect's husband.
Pepper goes undercover at a high school as a teacher to hunt down a group of drug pushers.
The deaths of a prominent politician and a nightclub dancer in a car explosion send Pepper to work as a go-go dancer for the club's owner, a one-time poor boy with a powerful yen for the finer things in life.
There's nothing like a '70s cop show. It's like the plots were created through mad libs: "Pepper goes undercover at a ___________."
With real shows like this, who needs Kresky?
"Well, That's That"
Has anyone ever made a list of all the Bugs Bunny cartoons where he says "Well, that's that?" You can't help but notice, watching a bunch of Bugs Bunny cartoons in succession, that there's a whole bunch of cartoons where he says "Well, that's that" after avoiding some peril or defeating some enemy.
Of course, as soon as he says "Well, that's that," something else comes along instantly to threaten him. The line "Well, that's that" is Bugs Bunny's equivalent of "It's over" in a horror movie; as you know, once the survivors in a horror movie say "It's over," the killer, apparently dead a few seconds ago, will spring up and try to kill someone.
Another cartoon variation on the "Well, that's that" principle was "Batman: The Animated Series" and the line "It's over, [fill in name of villain]." There must have been something like twenty episodes where Batman would tell the villain "It's over, Joker/Scarecrow/Penguin/Other Guy in Silly Costume," only to be hit on the head with something half a second later.
The moral: if you hear a character say it's over, it is never over.
Of course, as soon as he says "Well, that's that," something else comes along instantly to threaten him. The line "Well, that's that" is Bugs Bunny's equivalent of "It's over" in a horror movie; as you know, once the survivors in a horror movie say "It's over," the killer, apparently dead a few seconds ago, will spring up and try to kill someone.
Another cartoon variation on the "Well, that's that" principle was "Batman: The Animated Series" and the line "It's over, [fill in name of villain]." There must have been something like twenty episodes where Batman would tell the villain "It's over, Joker/Scarecrow/Penguin/Other Guy in Silly Costume," only to be hit on the head with something half a second later.
The moral: if you hear a character say it's over, it is never over.
Sunday, January 01, 2006
Sind Sie En Americanischer Spion?
For those of you in New York the week of January 13, Film Forum is screening a new 35-mm print of Billy Wilder's One, Two, Three, one of the fastest and funniest movies ever made.
Some of Wilder's officially-sanctioned masterpieces don't hold up that well for me: Some Like It Hot just doesn't seem all that funny to me any more, with its rambling storyline and some surprisingly lame comedy lines. But One, Two, Three just keeps looking better and better: a movie so timely that an opening narration had to be added to cover events that happened after it was filmed (at the time of filming, there was no wall between East and West Berlin; the border was sealed off just after the movie wrapped), it holds up because it's a perfect distillation of the culture and concerns of the early '60s. Two continents' worth of politics, pop-culture, marriage and business are contained and dissected within one movie.
It's also a catalogue of pop-culture references. Wilder was one of the first filmmakers to load his movies with references to older pop culture, as witness the many movie references in Sunset Blvd. and Some Like It Hot. One, Two, Three has all kinds of references to pop culture of the time, and to older stuff, including the work of star James Cagney: in one scene, he imitates the grapefruit routine from The Public Enemy, and Red Buttons (in a cameo) does an impression of Cagney's Angels With Dirty Faces shoulder-hitch.
The movie is carried almost entirely by Cagney, of course, though Pamela Tiffin (one of my favorites of the "Lost Starlets of the '60s") does a fantastic job with a character who shouldn't have been interesting at all. Wilder, never generous to his female characters, has nothing but contempt for Tiffin's southern-belle-ditz character, but Tiffin manages to convey the impression that her character isn't so much stupid as deeply weird. (Luanne on "King of the Hill" is a somewhat similar character.) Her line readings make Scarlett into a more sympathetic and likable character than Wilder probably intended her to be.
And anyone who's seen the movie can quote a lot of lines that are hilarious in context and not so much out of context:
And most memorably, the use of two songs: "Yes, We Have No Bananas," and "Itsy-Bitsy-Teeny-Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini." I will not give away what Wilder does with those two songs, but suffice it to say, those are the two moments everybody seems to remember most.
Some of Wilder's officially-sanctioned masterpieces don't hold up that well for me: Some Like It Hot just doesn't seem all that funny to me any more, with its rambling storyline and some surprisingly lame comedy lines. But One, Two, Three just keeps looking better and better: a movie so timely that an opening narration had to be added to cover events that happened after it was filmed (at the time of filming, there was no wall between East and West Berlin; the border was sealed off just after the movie wrapped), it holds up because it's a perfect distillation of the culture and concerns of the early '60s. Two continents' worth of politics, pop-culture, marriage and business are contained and dissected within one movie.
It's also a catalogue of pop-culture references. Wilder was one of the first filmmakers to load his movies with references to older pop culture, as witness the many movie references in Sunset Blvd. and Some Like It Hot. One, Two, Three has all kinds of references to pop culture of the time, and to older stuff, including the work of star James Cagney: in one scene, he imitates the grapefruit routine from The Public Enemy, and Red Buttons (in a cameo) does an impression of Cagney's Angels With Dirty Faces shoulder-hitch.
The movie is carried almost entirely by Cagney, of course, though Pamela Tiffin (one of my favorites of the "Lost Starlets of the '60s") does a fantastic job with a character who shouldn't have been interesting at all. Wilder, never generous to his female characters, has nothing but contempt for Tiffin's southern-belle-ditz character, but Tiffin manages to convey the impression that her character isn't so much stupid as deeply weird. (Luanne on "King of the Hill" is a somewhat similar character.) Her line readings make Scarlett into a more sympathetic and likable character than Wilder probably intended her to be.
And anyone who's seen the movie can quote a lot of lines that are hilarious in context and not so much out of context:
"In the old days, when I ordered them to sit, they would sit. Now it is a democracy, they do what they want, and what they want is to stand."
"Call Dean Rusk, Dean Acheson, Dean anybody."
"Das is kuckucksur."
"We will give you Chinese cigarettes! Armenian rugs! Bulgarian yogurt?"
"Two out of three! Deal is on!"
"I will have you know that I am distantly related to Ex-King Farouk of Egypt."
And most memorably, the use of two songs: "Yes, We Have No Bananas," and "Itsy-Bitsy-Teeny-Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini." I will not give away what Wilder does with those two songs, but suffice it to say, those are the two moments everybody seems to remember most.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
