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?