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roger1 (2394)
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Anthony Perkins, Bruce Dern, and Karen Black -- Hosting SNL in the 70s and 80s
Only One Post? Ever?
Nicholson's Worst Major Movie? (Done for Money and To Relieve 9/11 Trauma)
The Trademark Cleverly Written Predictable Schmaltz of Aaron Sorkin
The "Amiable" Family Plot Has Something Terrifying In It
David Fincher to Direct Remake of "Strangers on a Train" for Netflix (FOR REAL THIS TIME?)
OT: David Fincher to Direct New Strangers on a Train for Netflix(FOR REAL THIS TIME?)
"A Woman is Just a Woman but...."
Kevin Costner...right before the "Yellowstone" Comeback
Buddy Ebsen in "Breakfast at Tiffany's"
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Donen lived for another 30+ years after these twin debacles (most of that happily cohabiting with my ideal woman, Elaine May).
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Interestingly, before being with Elaine May, Donen was MARRIED to the much younger and extremely hot Yvette Mimieux (who advertised a TV movie called "Hit Lady" in a bikini around the time of the marriage.) I suppose with Yvette as an ex-wife, Donen saw nothing wrong with Blame it on Rio.
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It's sad in a way that he didn't direct again except a little TV, but I'm pretty sure that most of Donen's biggest fans were glad that there were no more S3s or BIORs.
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Well, that's a corollary to "QT's rule," isn't it? If/when they STOP making movies...no embarrassment. And unlike Hitchcock...who literally worked on a movie until less than a year from his death....both Donen and Billy Wilder lived on and enjoyed life for DECADES after making their final film. I guess each had made enough money to retire comfortably -- and with the lovely Elaine May for Donen?(I did not KNOW that - he must have had his charms.)
BTW, three years after the big success of Charade, Donen made ANOTHER "pseudo Hitchocck' movie" -- Arabesque. Like Charade , it had a great Henry Mancini thriller score(with a BETTER credit overture) and it also had two big stars -- Gregory Peck and Sophia Loren -- ALMOST in the Grant/Hepburn tradition. But the supporting cast wasn't as good as in Charade and the 1966 release "went psychedlic" and is hence more dated today. Still' Arabesque is a lot better than Lucky Lady, Saturn 3, or Blame it On Rio.
There's some undeniably luscious teen nudity
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Yes, pretty much exclusively (less some Rio beach extras) by the woman -- Michelle was her name -- cast to play the teen seductress.
Folks may forget that playing CAINE's daughter was -- young Demi Moore. But she wore her long tresses strategically over her breasts. It was the OTHER gal who went all the way.
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but it all leaves you feeling pretty icky (and it makes the genuine teen sex-comedies that were around at the time seem pretty innocent by comparison).
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That's the real issue, isn't it? This was a remake of a French film, I think and arguments could be made "When the French do it, its sophisticated and adult..when an American studio tries to do it with mainstream stars...its dirty."
---And if you're there for Donen and Caine you can't help thinking something along the lines of 'What are we doing here?' and 'Thank god I didn't pay real money for this'.
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I watched it- on cable -- indeed because of Caine and Donen -- two favorites over the years. And I certainly thought it was better than Saturn 3. And personally, I just LOVE bossa nova music(hello, Sergio Mendes) and I found the movie quite colorful to look at, with its beautiful beach locations. And hell, Valerie Harper ("Rhoda") showed up. She wouldn't be in a dirty movie, would she?
But damn, it sure instilled then, and instills NOW, some serious unwanted guilt over the nature of the plot. I mean, as the kids say, that young woman was HOT. (Plus, if memory serves, Caine and the 'adult teen" only did it ONCE...he kept fending her off of the rest of the movie.)
Was this Donen's last film? If so, at least he went out with something more adult and sophisticated than Lucky Lady or Saturn 3.
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swanstep wrote:
While BIOR was more enjoyable and certainly more technically competent than Saturn 3
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Yes to both...including that "more enjoyable" part. That's what makes BIOR kind of dangerous. Caine IS a great farceur and so was the comic actor playing his more macho friend , Joe Bologna(who was vetoed as Spielberg's first choice for the Roy Scheider role in Jaws.)
The "joke" of Caine having a sexual affair with his best friend's Bologna's daughter and trying to hide it WAS funny, 'cmon...it was. But of course, the age thing created issues.
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it was evidently trying to be a kind of late-addition to the wave of middle-aged guy sex-comedies that began with '10' only with a downshift of lust to high-school age/daughters.
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Note in passing: just as George Segal walked off Lucky Lady forcing Gene Hackman into his part, Segal ALSO walked off 10,..forcing Dudley Moore into his part and making Moore a star for awhile.
Those "walk offs," plus a drug problem, ended Segal's movie star career. as a leading man.
Meanwhile, yeah, I'm guess it got worse and worse to "downshift"(Hah) from the woman in these middle-aged crazy pictrures from being 20-something into a teenager but..ah...that young woman playing the object of Caine's affection? I mean...va va VOOM. This comedy drove a very hard bargain in its fantasy(for men at least): If Marilyn Monroe was a teenager( and a late-age teenager at that) well...and CAME ON to you like that? Well? I guess I'm saying that the actress was carefully chosen for her "adult sexuality" and the excellent Caine was chosen to "reduce the dirty old man factor" with his Nervous Nellie comedy performance and trademark charm(that Cockney accent allowed Caine to get away with a lot.).
CONT
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s a result, I couldn't bring myself to pay money for Donen's final film a few years later, 'Blame it on Rio', notwithstanding that it had one of my fave actors, Michael Caine as lead. I did catch BIOR on vhs a few years later, however, and, my God it was awful.
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Yeah. Michael Caine is one of my favorite actors. He's literally been around in movies for most of my life. I saw Zulu(1964) ON RELEASE. At the drive-in with family. And then we all went to The Ipcress File the next year. I was forbidden to see "Alfie" but my "Caine love" was launched and there he's been across the 60's, the 70's(where he made his great R-rated movie Get Carter), the 80's(where he hung in and won his first Oscasr) the 90s(where he won his second Oscar) the 21st Century (where he got famous as Alfred in Batman movies AND worked with Batman director Chris Nolan all the time in other pictures, as a "lucky charm.".)
Caine is 90 now, yes? He finished one more movie but when he had to back out of Nolan's "Oppenheimer"("Enough's enough," Caine joked to the press) I figured retirement was imminent.
What a career. But it certainly has some bad movies in it. As Caine said at some event "I made all those bad movies for high pay so I could make good movies for free." Jaws 4: The Revenge is the worst I've seen, but I understand Caine also played the bad guy in a Steven Segal movie. That must have been bad.
Which brings us to Blame it On Rio...
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Charade had a great Peter Stone script and some great stars-to-be supporting Grant and Hepburn: Walter Matthau(soon to be a star), James Coburn(soon to be a slightly lesser star than Matthau), George Kennedy(soon to win an Oscar and do Airport movies.) Actually, Matthau, Coburn AND Kennedy all won Supporting Actor Oscars. (And I've moved Mad Mad World -- my favorite movie of all time as a kid -- to the Number One of 1963 slot. An era long gone. Jonathan Winters!)
Anyway, came the 70's, fond memories of Donen's past work indeed started to be betrayed. For a 1975 period action movie called "Lucky Lady," Donen had Gene Hackman and Burt Reynolds as "buddy stars" with briefly -hot(at the box office) Liza Minnelli in the female lead. It was a jinxed production. George Segal walked off the picture so Hackman had to be paid BIG bucks to come in quickly. The ending was re-shot(Hackman and Reynolds got killed in the original script and that WAS filmed, but they re-shot and brought the boys back to life..) Spielberg, coming off "Jaws" warned Donen not to make "Lucky Lady" at sea, but...no such luck. And frankly, Ann-Margret should have played Minnelli's sexpot role.
But "Lucky Lady" was Singin in the Rain compared to Saturn 3. Just as I have great memories of the movies I LOVED on first viewing, I have harsh memories of a movie like Saturn 3 that I hated on first sight. I recall that aging macho man Kirk Douglas looked too emaciated and saggy(including a naked butt scene) to be bedding sexy co-star Farrah Fawcett(Majors?) I remember an incoherent SciFi plot and terrible production values(I DON"T remember Harvey Keitel in it, but I guess he was.)
And I remember this specific disappointment: The title "Saturn 3" was meant by the studio to suggest a sequel of sorts to the surprise hit "Capricorn One" of 1978. I LOVED Capricorn One for what it was: a non-violent throwback thriller in the North by Northwest tradition, a lot of exciting fun. Saturn 3 brought NONE of that back.
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My biggest experience of this kind (and from the same period that seems to have burned QT) was with Stanley Donen. As a budding film buff I worshipped Donen but then I got to see my first hot-off-the presses Donen film: Saturn 3 (an ugly, plodding, embarassment). I vividly remember the feeling of a kind of hour-long, full-body-cringe in the cinema. You don't forget that sort of experience.
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Stanley Donen is a great example of QT's theory WORKING. I suppose it is a hit or miss theory -- and having just seen some passionate verbiage AGAINST QT's theory, I won't wallow in the "I told you so" rightness of Donen's career PROVING QT's theory. Perhaps the issue is: "sometimes directors can keep going strong to all ages -- sometimes they cannot."
I think the hidden reason taht modernly directors CAN go on longer -- other than my health rationale -- is they are surrounded by professionals who can make movies LOOK and SOUND great, by CGI that can do anything...its as if a modern movie is a perfectly made contraption which can make ANY director, ANY age, look at least competant.
Stanley Donen was famous for musicals -- co-directed on key occasions. Singin' in the Rain is the big one (with Gene Kelly as co-director and star.) Damn Yankees -- my favorite of 1958 --(with George Abbott) is another. (I'll concede Rain as the much more important classic than Damn Yankees but my Number One for 1952 is High Noon; Singin' in the Rain's probably Number Two that year.)
My favorite Donen movie -- which I have downgraded from Number One to Number Two for 1963 -- is Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn in "the greatest Hitchcock movie Hitchcock never made" -- Charade. (To which Donen angrily replied in the press: "Who says only Alfred Hitchcock can make a mystery-suspense picture?" )In the same interview, Donen noted that he liked North by Northwest ONLY as far as the auction scene. He felt all the Rushmore business went on too long. Nah.
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I think, yet again, that QT seems to have "locked in" on a handful of American directors who sort of ran out of gas in the 60s and 70s
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I suspect that that's what happened too, and, to be fair to QT, if you're a big fan of some director (or other artist) to see them suddenly producing genuinely inferior work is shocking, galling, gutting, traumatizing, a betrayal, pick your epithet.
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Take Howard Hawks. His Rio Bravo of 1959 is truly classic in a great way: a laid back, very warm, very upbeat "hang out movie" that takes time to take its Western plot seriously, but plays perhaps better as a buddy comedy(with a buddy woman, Angie Dickinson.) 8 years later, Hawks pretty famously reworked El Dorado into Rio Bravo remake. John Wayne with Robert Mitchum instead of Dean Martin. James Caan instead of Ricky Nelson. Arthur Hunnicutt instead of Walter Brennan -- and it worked AGAIN (but a little more soundstagey, a little less "big.")
Then 3 years later -- Rio Lobo. Wayne again, but the studio wouldn't pay for another star this time. Weirdly, they cast a Mexican actor as a "former Rebel" after the Civil War, and it just didn't work, and the movie seemed(to me at the time I saw it in 1970) terribly basic and derivative. Third time WASN'T a charm. That was Hawks final movie. 1970. Two years before Hitchcock did Frenzy -- with Family Plot 6 years away, too.
One thing I read: Working on Rio Lobo, the aged Hawks lost track of the days (as we all do sometimes) and thought it was Saturday so went to hang out by his pool. But it was really a WEEK DAY ,and the entire cast and crew of Rio Lobo was waiting for Hawks to show.
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Dern's in his 80's now and highly respected. He was great -- and Oscar nominatd -- in Alexander Payne's "Nebraska." And QT used him to fine effect in "The Hateful Eight" and "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood." I hope he's got one a few more performances left.
And there is this irony: Dern's daughter with Diane Ladd -- LAURA Dern -- would seem to be the most famous and highly paid of the Dern/Ladd acting family now. Jurassic Park helped put her on the map. And she has won an Oscar. Just like Jamie Lee Curtis has. It is the "Hitchcock star babies" who have succeeded after their parents paved the way.
BTW, I think it sounds like a good monologue gag for Dern to have him effectively chastise the audience for not going to see his good, serious films where he's often a good guy. It's funny to think of films as well-thought-of now as Silent Running and Kings of Marvin Garden not being seen by many people on release.
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Yes. I think whoever wrote that for Bruce Dern "got him." He worked hard to position himself for some solid dramas(The King of Marvin Gardens) and he played genuinely nice guys in Smile and MIddle Aged Crazy(where he was given Ann-Margret as his wife! That's coming up in the world.) He's argumentative with girlfriend Barbara Harris in Family Plot, but in key scenes he shows love for her and he rescues her in the end.
But the REST of the time: bad guys. psychos. Certain sneering personality traits that fought against his stardom chances.
I recall reading of estalbished star Kirk Douglas directing Dern in a Western called "Posse." Kirk had the lead AND directed. Dern emerged from a building to walk out onto a street and Douglas yelled "Cut!" and then said, "Bruce, you're a leading man now. You need to walk out that door onto the street with your head held high! Project your authority!"
Who knows? Sounds like effective direction to make someone a star. Douglas had shot down Bruce Dern in a walk on(for Dern) in The War Wagon (with John Wayne) back in 1967. Dern's star had risen on a long hard climb.
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Oh, yeah, wait:
Hitchcock wasn't all that famous for encouraging other people to direct, like, say Spielberg or Scorsese later on.
But he should have been.
That TV show was the training ground(along with other shows) for William Friedkin(The Exorcist), Robert Altman(MASH, Nashville), Sydney Pollack, and James Bridges (The Paper Chase, Urban Cowboy.) Plus for any number of young working directors who stuck to TV.
And Hitchcock seems to have had to meet and interview and oversee them all. He chided Friedkin for not wearing a necktie. Sounds like Inspector Oxford.
And years later when he was super successful, Friedkin saw Hitchcock at a black tie event -- Freidkin was wearing one -- snapped the tie and said "how do you like the tie?"
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