Favorite scene

Did you have a favorite scene in "Sweet Smell of Success"? I'm partial to the scene in the theater where all the main characters are present and J.J. and Sidney are tag-teaming Steve (and Susie runs off to cry). I also liked the scene where Sidney was trying to blackmail the married man in front of his wife and the guy was so disgusted that the consequences of his wife learning about a sexual dalliance were preferable to — more comfortable to his conscience than — giving slimy Sidney what he wanted.

Help me out, Ricky

DW is skipping town for a month, starting Monday, so I want him to weigh in on the movie "Climates," which he recommended a while back. I have to say I was disappointed in the film, but I'm reserving final judgment. DW has a gift for making me see when I'm dead wrong about something, and I 'm hoping he'll use it now.

Have a cigarette

I just thought I’d draw attention to the cigarette girl. We first see Sidney interact with his secretary. She is trying to show some compassion for his problems, but he brushes her off in annoyance. So right off you realize that he must be a bit limited on compassion himself, but maybe he’s not a bad bloke—just tired and preoccupied. But then we get the cigarette girl. She seems to truly like Sidney and thinks they have something going on. He had no doubt been flirting with her to develop her as a source and she has taken it seriously. I think the scene that reveals Sidney’s true colors is the one in his apartment where she has been waiting eagerly for him in expectation that he can help with her problem. But for Sidney, her problem is nothing but a business opportunity, and he has no remorse in throwing her to the wolves, or wolf, as it were. From that point on, we see that Sidney isn’t just a guy on the make willing to cut a few moral corners. He’s bad to the bone.

Rush's pick: TransAmerica

I saw this about a month ago and just loved it. I think that there's a lot to discuss!

http://www.transamerica-movie.com/

You can check out this site, but just know that pretty much the entire dang movie is in the preview. So I'd suggest not watching it.

Felicity Huffman is amazing.

Square Steve

Steve Dallas showed gumption by standing up to J.J., but I never thought of him as the hero (nor Susan a heroine) so much as a square. He also seemed miscast as a musician. Within the means of the script, his character served a purpose: a competitor for Susan's affections, a chance to pit integrity vs. deceit, a means to introduce New York's music scene. But the actor himself seemed washed-out next to larger-than-life Sidney and J.J.

I wonder whether anyone else had the same impression, and if so, what might be behind it. Was he not to compete with the film's big names, especially (as in Tony Curtis' case) when some thought playing villains was a risky career move? If the audience felt more in touch with Steve and Susan, would J.J. and Sidney's actions been more turn-off than intrigue?

Time to decide!

AEL, it's your turn to pick the next movie, which we will begin discussing on Monday, April 9. If you pass, the turn goes to Amy Rush. Please dazzle us with a selection, girls.

The writer back from exile

Clifford Odets, on whom the character Barton Fink was based (doesn't he look like him?!), was called in to polish the screenplay for "Sweet Smell of Success" following director Alexander MacKendrick's disappointment with the original screenplay. Odets had been mired in Hollywood by then, like Fink, and had even been blacklisted by McCarthy as a Communist. He was supposed to "doctor" the script in a couple of weeks, but he ended up taking months, completely redoing it, and he wasn't even finished by the time the movie started shooting in New York. From Wiki: Odets had to accompany the production to Manhattan and continued rewriting while they shot there. Returning to the city that had shunned him for going to Hollywood made him very neurotic and obsessed with all kinds of rituals as he worked at a furious pace with pages often going right from his typewriter to being shot the same day.

Gosh, that does sound like Fink.

My question: Do you get any sense that the movie was actually thrown together in this way? My own view is that it doesn't show, but I'd like to hear what you think.

Sidney's opposite

I had read that Tom Cruise modeled his "Jerry McGuire" press agent on Tony Curtis' Sidney Falco. And yet the movie I keep thinking of is "Broadway Danny Rose," one of my favorite Woody Allen comedies (and my favorite Mia Farrow role) — and one that he did in black and white (maybe to resemble the classic New York movies of the '50s, like "Sweet Smell of Success.") In it, Woody plays a Broadway press agent, but he's the polar opposite of Sidney. If anyone wants to watch this as a companion piece, I'd be thrilled to discuss it.

Another movie that comes to mind is "Good Night and Good Luck," about journalist Edward R. Murrow's quest to topple Sen. Joe McCarthy. It's set in the same era, black and white, about journalism and gossip-driven hysteria. But the thing that reminds me most of "Sweet Smell" is the tight, tight focus of the film. "GN&GL" is about one thing and one thing only. There are no subplots, no gratuitous love interests, no side "color." It's relentlessly about what it's about: one episode in a life. Similarly, "Sweet Smell" takes an isolated incident (the attempted breakup of a relationship) and turns it into a stark statement about a whole era.

The cause of all the commotion

Did you think J.J.'s relationship to his sister was "unnatural"? Did you find yourself rooting for Susan? Did you find her likeable, or did you see weaknesses in her that made her less sympathetic? And did you find her realistic? Would it be possible to grow up in the shadow of such a monster and still be so innocent and darling?

The source

I just read an article by a journalism professor who was shocked to discover that not a single one of his students had ever heard of Walter Winchell, the inventor of the gossip column, on whom the character J.J. Hunsecker is based. Apparently, Winchell pulled a similar stunt with his daughter (rather than his sister as in the movie). I don't think familiarity with Winchell is essential to enjoying the film, but it really enhanced the experience for me. I sometimes had difficulty following J.J.'s speech or sometimes found it a little contrived, but then I read that Winchell had a really peculiar, snappy way of speaking: Winchell had a style that others found impossible to mimic. He disdained the flowery language that had characterized newspaper columns in the past. Instead, he wrote in a kind of telegraph style filled with slang and incomplete sentences. Creating his own shorthand language, Winchell was responsible for introducing into the American vernacular such now-familiar words and phrases as "scram," "pushover," and "belly laughs." I think Lancaster pulls this off really well. And apparently the Broadway press agent, played by Tony Curtis, was a real common type and was the source for much of Winchell's material. Also of interest: Winchell often had no credible sources for his accusations. He had no real incentive to be accurate, because for most of his career his contract with his newspaper and radio employers required them to reimburse him for any damages he had to pay, should he be sued for slander or libel. Whenever friends reproached him for breaking confidences, he responded, 'I know—I'm just a son of a bitch.'"

And all that jazz

Something I often like about late ‘50s movies are the brassy jazzy scores. Such music was even more apt for this film since there is a jazz band in it. I thought it was a bit unfortunate that there was a longish spell in the middle that reverted to sappier generic movie mood music. It would have been better to stay loud and brassy straight on through. No?

The lesser evil?

Did you have any sense that one of these characters was more evil than the other? Neither of these characters could have wielded the power that he did without the backdrop of a hungry-for-gossip, mean-spirited public. Do you think more attention should have been given to that aspect of the story, or is it proper to just treat it as a given?

A success?

A simple question to begin: Did you like this movie?

Little Edie's obit

Well, I found something when I was searching for which of Edie's costumes I should wear on Friday. It's her obit from North Hampton Star.

Warning: it's a little sad. But enlightening.

http://www.obitpage.com/obits/b/beale_edith.html

Grey Gardens party!

I'm invited to a Grey Gardens birthday party this Friday! Want to come, too? It's in an Atlanta suburb.
You can stay at my place and sleep on the La-Z-Boy.
How can your resist it?

I'll try to remember to bring my camera and will take some photos.

Check out the funny evite my crazy friend Jeffrey (kc met him) wrote.

http://www.evite.com/pages/invite/viewInvite.jsp?event=PMQRBLSMQVLROZFPYNBH&inviteId=ZFCBDDGUIMRERVPTYUTE&showResponse=&sortOrder=&responseToExpand=yes

Broad — pun intended — appeal

The subject matter of this film has gone from cult to mainstream. Why do you think the Edies appeal so damn much to people?

Old Stuff

http://stuffodreams.blogspot.com/2007/03/old-movie-endings.html

Ok, this is off-topic since our current film wouldn’t be counted among these “old movies”, but I thought you all might be interested in this post.

Broadway. Really?

Can you imagine seeing Grey Gardens: The Musical - or whatever it is they're calling it - without having watched this documentary first? I mean, could you really appreciate it?
This song about the best coshtume for the day does not hold a candle to Little Edie's original, revolutionary explanation.

Found this on YouTube:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=JDS8tkdT_-E

Gay Gardens

Being the gay one, or the only gay one speaking — Amy! Hello! Come on, sista! — I have to point this out:

Mommie queerest: three gay men have turned the cult documentary Grey Gardens—about a high-society mother and daughter reduced to living like hermits—into a stage musical.

"Big Edie and Little Edie were honorary gays," exclaims composer Scott Frankel. "They were gutsy, those ladies," says Frankel, who, along with two other gay men — lyricist Michael Korie and playwright Doug Wright — has written a musical based on the film. Frankel recalls being initiated into the Grey Gardens cult by gay friends who could quote lines from the movie verbatim. The film's particular appeal for gay viewers is not hard to explain, he says. It's mostly about Little Edie, with her utterly captivating and idiosyncratic wardrobe and her thwarted ambition to be a dancer. "Even though she experienced tremendous loss and disappointment in her life she was still able to face every day of her life with this huge amount of energy and style," says Frankel, who came up with the idea to turn the film into a stage musical. The Beale women, he adds, "stuck to their fierce individuality their whole lives at great financial and personal cost, and then at the eleventh hour they were celebrated and mythologized. They were rewarded ultimately for their very otherness."

Korie adds, "You can't but admire Little Edie's courage, her staunchness, which is the word she uses. And her sense of fashion almost borders on drag."

"It's a very singular film," Frankel says. "It has so many levels as these women go from these fantastic bons mots and witty quips to a completely self-deluded comment, to a song and a dance, to screaming."

The musical's first act was shaped in part by the writers' discovery that Little Edie had been briefly engaged to John F. Kennedy's brother Joe, who was killed in World War II. "It's such a historical near miss, it's just delicious," Frankel says. In the movie the ladies themselves offer contradictory versions of what precipitated their exile, with accusations flying back and forth between them — exchanges that may have been amplified by the presence of a film crew.

"It just energized them both with a third party present," Frankel speculates.

The men behind the curtain

Erin mentioned that she liked the moments when the filmmakers talked to the Edies. I did, too, but that got me thinking about the filmmakers' presence in their own film. (Unrelated: I just read that the Maysles wore flea collars around their ankles during the filming). They not only talked to the Edies, but sometimes filmed themselves in mirrors or walking by; often you could see the microphone. What do you think the purpose of this self-inclusion was?

Mummy dearest

I had the impression that maybe some bad things happened to Little Edie at home — abuse? neglect? — something that might explain her negative attitude toward her father. And I also had the impression that maybe Big Edie turned a blind eye to some bad stuff (vs. dealing with it) or that she was jealous of her daughter in some way at some point. Did anyone else have that impression?

The persistence of memory

Did you have the impression that the Edies remembered the past more or less correctly?

the story not told

One of the aspects I liked about "Grey Gardens" was that it was not exactly about what I expected. Because of the big-name ties to the Kennedys, I thought there would be more focus on Jackie and Aristotle stepping in to clean up the property, or to dig up dirt on the Kennedys. And the Beales' mental states suggested to me that they could easily have been manipulated into doing the latter. Either there were solid ground rules going in, or these filmmakers showed taste and restraint by leaving the famous family ties in the background. Or, of course, in time spent with the Beales, they recognized they had a better story to tell.

Kim's pick

Beware these "gentlemen" of the press.

This 1957 film, starring Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis — ack! as a bad guy! — is based on an incident from the gossip columnist Walter Winchell's life. It was written by American playwright Clifford Odets, on whom the Barton Fink character was loosely modeled.

Has anyone seen it?

I was actually going to pick another Burt Lancaster film, "Elmer Gantry," but reading about that led me to this, which sounds more up my alley.

Society women

From an online review:

In 1972, in their January 10th issue, New York magazine published a personal essay by Gail Sheehy recounting her strange encounters with the ladies who lived at Grey Gardens. Events that are only hinted at or briefly mentioned in the film are detailed in Sheehy’s piece. For those of you who wonder why Mrs. Beale described her daughter’s younger days as wild (when it seemed Edie only wanted to be on her own for a while), Edie regales Sheehy with the tale of how she ran away from home three times before Mr. Beale abandoned her mother. And what of that abandonment? Apparently Mrs. Beale was so bored with the strictures of society that she hired an accompanist and started singing in New York nightclubs. This simply wasn’t done, especially by a woman from a prominent family with a husband and children. Instead of reining her in, Mr. Beale threw up his hands and moved out to his hunting lodge. Mrs. Beale’s father was less aloof. After threatening several times to disown her for her bohemian behavior, Major Bouvier finally cut her out of his will after she showed up, outrageously dressed, halfway into her own son’s wedding. Upon Bouvier’s death, she received the sum of $65,000 in a trust fund to be administered by her sons. Needless to say, the money was long gone by the time Sheehy or the Maysles got to Grey Gardens. The tragic fable of the Beale women is this: by turning their backs on society, they paid the price of their freedom by having society turn its back on them.

Where are they now?

After the filming (from imdb.com):

Filmmakers David Maysles and Albert Maysles returned to Grey Gardens and filmed Little Edie talking about what happened after the initial filming; some of this footage appears in "The Beales of Grey Gardens." Edith Bouvier Beale passed away two years after Grey Gardens premiered, in February 1977. Lois Wright, who briefly appears in the film's birthday party scene, moved into the house after the film was made and wrote a book, "My Life at Grey Gardens," about her experiences there, including the death of Big Edie. Many fans wonder if Jerry Torre moved into the house, but according to all accounts other than his own, he did not. Little Edie had a cabaret act at Reno Sweeney in New York City, and, true to Big Edie's predictions, lived in the house for two years after her mother died and then sold it (to Ben Bradlee and Sally Quinn of the Washington Post). Following this, she lived in New York City, Montreal, Oakland, and Florida. She passed away in Bal Harbour, Florida, in 2002.

The New Yorker ran a short article last year about finding Jerry driving a taxi in New York.

Crazy ...

Clearly Big Edie and Little Edie were a bit "off." But do you think they were mentally ill?

And in a semi-related question, do you think the film was exploitative?

First reactions

People seem to have greatly varying reactions to "Grey Gardens," finding it disturbing, humorous, sad, fascinating, intrusive. What did you think upon first viewing?

Make believe

If I'm your eighth-grade English teacher and ask you who the protagonist and antagonist in this movie are, what do you say?

March 16: "Climates"

Here’s your reminder, kc!

That film by Nuri Bilge Ceylan, “Climates”, that I put up a post about a month ago will be starting at the Tivoli on March 16. I don’t know how long the run will be, but don’t miss it.

We were talking about films where the landscape is a character? Well, in “Climates” seasons play that role. This film is a probing look at a relationship without much talk about the relationship. I am so glad I drove down to the Bay to see this on screen since the visuals were stunning and carried a lot of the film.

sounds in "Barton Fink"

Per DW's instructions, I paid more attention to sound in this movie pick, so it was interesting that in the very first scene, we watch a sound man do the "fishmonger" bit for Barton's play. Though much of the film scenes, especially in the hotel, made great visuals, I thought this was supposed to be a "sound" movie, too. There were a lot of audial effects like the wind tunnel sounds in the hallways and pipes, the deliciously icky peeling paper and especially that lingering bell noise when Barton Fink checks in. In some respects it made me feel like I was watching a play where Barton Fink was trapped on a stage with colorful characters and creepy sets.

Picnic or Fink?

For me, both of these movies were intriguing (and ultimately irritating) because of the multitude of possible interpretations, no single one of which was very compelling or satisfying (I am still open to a hard sell). I mean, I appreciate that movies can be lifelike in that there is no ultimate, coherent explanation, but it seems to me that a piece of art should have a very strong vision behind it — the artist should know what she's about (that, to me, is the difference between Masterpiece Theater and Reality TV)— and if the vision is that this thing is "unknowable" or "incomprehensible," then I think that is perfectly fine but the artist shouldn't really dangle a bunch of competing visions in the mix.

"Fink" struck me as a deliberately insoluble mystery that gave you the illusion of almost making sense, if you could just find the key, but as with "Picnic at Hanging Rock," I suspect there is no key.

"Exotica," by contrast, was a mystery to me in the end, but not one that seemed essentially insoluble or troubling, maybe because I found the message of compassion and empathy at the end so profound that I didn't feel like I was being teased to find a lost key to all the clues.

What do you think?

Barton or Boulevard?

Joe from "Sunset Boulevard" and Barton are both blocked writers. Both are trapped in a creepy house/hotel. Both are fairly unsympathetic male leads. Both fall victim to their own ego in a sense. Both get chewed up and spit out by Hollywood. Max and Audrey are both trying to prop up someone's vanity by making him or her feel like they still have a career. Nora, past her prime, is lost in a world of paranoid delusion; and Mayhew, past his, is lost in a world of alcoholic delusion. In both films there's a murder because someone felt their needs were being ignored. Both films touch on the notion that Hollywood studios can make or break you, that Hollywood loves nothing more than a scandal. Both films have an "unnatural" twist: Joe telling a story after he is dead, Barton walking out of the flaming hotel and finding his fantasy girl on the beach.

Which do you think was a more compelling indictment of the movie-making culture?

Everyday men

Another episode I can't really figure out, although I found it poignant, was when he goes to the dance to celebrate the completion of his script and he ends up drawing the hostility of a soldier, then an all-out army/navy battle ensues. What is this supposed to mean? Is it just more of the notion that he is wildly out of touch with the common man? Is there some idea that intellectual theorist types ultimately divide rather than unite the common man? Does it play into the rise-of-fascism allegory that some suggest as a reading of the film?

It just occurred to me that maybe Lipnick's telling Barton that he will remain under contract but that nothing he ever writes will see the light of day is not consigning him to hell, but rather to the life of the everyday man, who toils and toils in anonymity for little reward. Thoughts?

Cherchez la femme

What was so captivating about the bathing beauty in the picture? He notices the picture on the wall and loses himself in it from time to time. And of course the movie ends with his meeting her at the beach and asking her if she's in pictures, and she says no like it's the most ridiculous thing one could imagine. What's your take on this?

ACK! (to quote Christy)

Oh dear. I just read something very alarming in the big film book. The entry on the Coen brothers:

"Raising Arizona" was, for me, close to unwatchable; unfunny, technologically impelled, showy, and not just empty but condescending. "Barton Fink" was show-off time again, a dash of Nathanael West, a pinch of sophomore surrealism, numb satire, another kid's film — yet much more promising whenever John Goodman was on-screen, and fearsomely beautiful in the burning corridors, as if at last the Coens were on their way.

This raised my hackles, in part because I have generally agreed with everything this writer says. When he described Hugh Grant as "an incipient sneeze waiting for a vacant nose," I wanted to offer myself in marriage.

But this! Oh dear. What do you think of this wicked assessment?

"For a Day or a Lifetime"

I opined earlier that "Barton Fink" sometimes had the feel of a horror film, and that's because of the atmosphere of Hotel Earle. Was it supposed to be an Overlook Hotel, a place that drove its inhabitants to varying degrees of madness? Any thoughts on the repeated themes with the pipes and heat/fire?

St. Audrey

Audrey Taylor is the one character who shows compassion and understanding. And she recognizes the importance of understanding too. She tells Fink that he doesn’t understand Mayhew, and when fink cannot write, she tells him that all he needs is a bit of understanding, which turns out to be love—or at least sex.

So should we see Audrey as a New Testament saint offering love and forgiveness as against the old Hebrew religion of a terrifying and capricious God represented by Lipnick and Meadows? After all, Audrey tells Fink not to judge her and Mayhew. Kc, your comment about Lipnick fits in here.

So perhaps we have one opposition between Lipnick and Mayhew, and another between Audrey and jealous Meadows?