Two water bottles arrived for me today, with a movie camera on front and quotes on the back. This is one is, of course, a quote from my favorite actress, Mae West. The other water bottle quotes the “Fasten your seatbelts” line from Bette Davis in All about Eve, one of my favorite films.
Only my fellow classic movie fans will understand just how happy it will make me to carry these around.
Midnight (1939) is one of those rom-coms that by all rights should make best-of lists. Written by the classic comedy duo of Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder plus Edwin Justus Mayer, who penned the satire To Be or Not to Be. Packed with stars, including Oscar winner Claudette Colbert, scene stealer John Barrymore and Mary Astor. Even charming cameos by gossip columnist Hedda Hopper and Monty Woolley.
Given its pedigree, it should be no surprise that the film is hilarious, and director Mitchell Leisen, who also helmed Easy Living and Remember the Night, gives the outstanding script its due.
Why then, did I have to stumble upon it?
It’s true that Don Ameche is no Clark Gable, but he has a blustery, rough-hewn charm of his own. Plus, he’s not the focus. This is a rom-com that leans into the comedy, and the laughs are primarily thanks to Eve Peabody; the breathtakingly confident, unscrupulous heroine (Colbert); and her game sidekick, Georges Flammarion (Barrymore).
Eve has arrived in Paris with only the evening dress on her back thanks to her poor luck at a roulette table. She’s looking for a rich future — or as she puts it, a “tub of butter” — preferably in the arms of a wealthy husband, not those of the sweet taxi driver (Ameche) who picks her up. For reasons of his own, Georges (Barrymore), a man she stumbles into while crashing a party, abets her pursuit of a wealthy, suave player, Jacques Picot (Francis Lederer). Things are looking promising since Picot appreciates the newcomer’s beauty and cool assessment of his character. Only the taxi driver and the limits of her con-artist wiles can foil her plans.
Claudette Colbert would have been at home in the Ocean’s 11 franchise. The breezy assurance with which she pulls off her various lies and schemes as Eve is a joy to behold. Ernst Lubitsch surely erred in limiting his casting of her to a mistress teaching a wife to “jazz up your lingerie” in The Smiling Lieutenant and a put-upon mate in Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife. What a waste to not cast her as the schemer (Miriam Hopkins) in Trouble in Paradise.
The repartee between Georges and Eve when they are collectively spinning tales makes you wonder just how many takes it took before Barrymore and Colbert could keep their faces from crumbling into laughter at these Brackett-Wilder-Mayer lines. And Barrymore as a fairy godmother? His expressions alone crack me up:
I’m not giving anything else away. Just watch it. If you’re anything like me, it won’t be the last time.
This is part of the Classic Movie Blog Association’s Make ’em Laugh blogathon. Check out my peers’ funny takes on their favorite comedies at this link.
Today I’m starting a new series for this blog for all of us who haven’t slept in months and fear we won’t for some time: Gloriously Silly Scenes. We all need some sweetness and light right now, and luckily for all of you, I have been self-medicating on fluffy joy in movie form since two of my aunts, Betty and Ellen, introduced me to Teddy in Arsenic and Old Lace as a child. My two sisters and I would run around my aunt’s room, shouting “Charge!!” with one arm aloft as we watched the film, giggling hysterically.
My effort to seek silly films became a fully deliberate act due to two life-changing events in my teens: 1. My discovery of USA Up All Night. 2. The moment my good friend Carrie and I went to see Joe Versus the Volcano (1990) in the theater. To all of you who love cry-laughing in silent rooms, to all of you amused by what was never intended to be funny at all, and to all of you who embrace deeply weird and/or unabashedly ridiculous humor, you will understand that the impossibly grim opening credits of Joe versus the Volcano were a revelation to me. The choice of “Sixteen Tons.” The mud. The one flower. The evocation of old labor folklore (I kept thinking of John Henry). It wasn’t just silly. It was thrillingly so.
The whole film is a treasure. I could write a poem about the suitcase shopping sequence alone. But for this moment, I’d like to pause on comic gem Dan Hedaya, who would crack up an entirely different generation as the affectionate father/terrifying litigator/threatener of potential dates in Clueless. In Joe vs. the Volcano, he is the boss of three employees: one dour, but expressive silent man; the despondent Joe (Tom Hanks); and the almost deflated but somehow still chipper-while-sniffling assistant (Meg Ryan).
The office scene opens with the clatter of a typewriter and the buzz of failing overhead lights. The whole scene is bathed in sickening shades of yellow and blue. As you take in the comically awful office, with decor that brings back my impressions of “break rooms” in fast food restaurants in the 80s or those airport smoking lounges when the bans started taking effect, you hear the boss (Hedaya) in the background, talking on the phone:
“I know he can get the job, but can he do the job? Harry. Yeah, Harry, but can he do the job? I know he can get the job, but can he do the job? I’m not arguing that with you. I’m not arguing that with you. I’m not arguing that with you. I’m not arguing that with you, Harry! Harry, Harry, yeah Harry, but can he do the job? I know he can get the job, but can he do the job? I’m not arguing that with you….Who said that? I didn’t say that. If I said that, I would have been wrong….I’m not arguing that with you. Yeah, Harry. I know he can get the job….”
As his boss talks, Joe walks in and tries to hang his hat on the coat rack, but it breaks. He attempts to make coffee with that awful chalky powdered creamer, empty cups everywhere.
The boss’s infuriating refrain (awesomely comic, thanks to Hedaya’s delivery) couples perfectly with Joe’s return from his lunch break, where he received dire news about his health. We aren’t surprised that Joe finds his workplace repellant afterward (he describes it as a “sink”). What’s ridiculous is that it took him four and half years to recognize it.
After he quits and the boss belittles him in response, Joe says, “I should say something,” the catalyst for the film. The fact that Joe says this aloud, the fact that anyone who spent five minutes in that room would need a moment of insight to leave, the boss’s and assistant’s befuddlement that anyone would quit–any one of these things would be hilarious. In concert, they are genius.
There really is nothing like Tom Hanks in breakdown mode, as anyone who has seen The Money Pit knows. And after Joe decides to quit, he begins a funny rant about his job, claiming that the fluorescent “zombie” lights are “sucking the juice” out of his eyeballs and that the coffee “tastes like arsenic.” His transition from lethargy to energy is exhilarating, as is his combination of giddy physical comedy and dry, understated truth-telling.
In case you don’t have time for the whole film and need the laughs, here’s the start of the scene and the moment Joe quits. This was my pre-Office Space bad job film, and it has never been supplanted in my affections.
If you can, watch the whole film. It’s an oddly philosophical story (written by the man who penned Doubt). The Ossie Davis cameo is amazing. It’s that rare film that lets Ryan flex her full comic muscles instead of making her ride on charm. And the film reveals Hanks at his comic best.
As for the rest of the film, airtight suitcases, orange soda, and brain clouds. What’s not to love?
(If you have any gloriously silly scene requests, let me know!)
Episode 2 of the femme fatales season of Nobody Knows Anything is up!! Dangerous Liaisons, a film that pits the dueling wits of Glenn Close and John Malkovitch against each other in a fight over love and power . . . . and also, Keanu Reeves is there, being strangely perfect in eighteenth-century dress. We ask this critical question: Can the femme fatale ever win? (Just why Close didn’t get the Oscar for this is a big mystery.)
See the link in the image above!
In no particular order except for #1, my favorite to rewatch:
1. The Ref (1994). The non-sentimental xmas movie I love most. The real question is who is the funniest here: Denis Leary, who has taken a family hostage? Judy Davis and Kevin Spacey, as The War-of-the-Roses-worthy combatants who make us feel sorry for the criminal? Christine Baranski as the outrageously funny sister-in-law? Or Glynis Johns, the mother-in-law from hell?
2. A Christmas Story (1983). It’s brilliant. It’s beloved. And it’s a great translation of a witty author’s style (Jean Shepherd) with excellent performances all round.
3. The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942). A grumpy, hilarious, ba-humbug house guest (Monty Woolley) treating his host family like serfs. Shenanigans with Ann Sheridan. Bette Davis playing a normal woman and still enjoying herself. Get this set of writers: Julius and Philip Epstein (yes, of Casablanca fame) adapting a play by George Kaufman and Moss Hart. What’s not to love?
4. National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989). I’m a huge fan of the Griswalds. Clark’s (Chevy Chase’s) xmas lights alone keep me in stitches.
5. Bad Santa (2003). Because Billy Bob Thornton does surly so very well.
6. The Bishop’s Wife (1947). Cary Grant plays an angel as well as Thornton plays a grump. The angel’s methods are so charming and funny. My favorite scenes include watching everyone (realistically) falling over themselves in Grant’s presence, and his magic liquor-filling skills with Monty Woolley.
7. Christmas in Connecticut (1945). We have a double-charm offensive in Barbara Stanwyck and S. Z. Sakall (aka Cuddles). And Sydney Greenstreet adds some nice bluster. I could lose the smarmy love interest (Dennis Morgan), but who cares? Give me Stanwyck tossing pancakes with her eyes shut every time.
8. Die Hard (1988). As a Gen Xer, I couldn’t leave this out. Also, I adore Bruce Willis’s humor.
9. It’s a Wonderful Life (1946). Nearly a perfect film. As many heartrending as comedic scenes, but funny all the same.
10. Remember the Night (1940). Another dramedy with an empathetic heart that doesn’t sell out. Plus, Preston Sturges’s writing and dynamic duo Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray without a corpse.
Almost Made the Cut: Elf (2003). Cute, but not an annual viewing for me.
Bonus: Home for the Holidays (1995). A Christmas-vibey Thanksgiving movie, so it counts. Hilarious and true family dynamics, and Holly Hunter at her most adorable.
If I could bring any film characters with me to the Barbie movie, this crew would come along. We would shout, complain, and advise (quite loudly), and so an empty theater–and an earlier viewing by me–would be critical. But just try to imagine with me, how perfect this party would be….(Mild spoilers ahead.)
1: Megan (Melissa McCarthy) from Bridesmaids (2011)
This confident, hilarious, non-nonsense woman needs to give Barbie a pep talk. I did love Gloria (America Ferrera)’s speech, but Megan’s would be one for the ages.
2: Ida (Eve Arden) from Mildred Pierce (1945)
What Megan can do with yelling and pounding, Ida can do with an eyebrow. Ida’s dry, blistering one liners about Ken’s power grab would be epic.
3: Oda Mae Brown (Whoopi Goldberg) from Ghost (1990)
I’ll be honest–this may be just because I want her to say, “Barbie, you in danger, girl,” when the doll puts on fluorescent rollerblading gear.
4: Tira (Mae West) from I’m No Angel (1933)
Tira’s running commentary on Ryan Gosling’s abs and what she’d do to his character on the beach would have everyone in the theater howling with laughter. I’d love to hear her tell Barbie to keep relishing that many Kens in her life. And how much I’d anticipate her reaction to the ending!
5 & 6: Stage Door (1937) Roommates Terry (Katharine Hepburn) & Jean (Ginger Rogers)
Obviously, I’d want the ENTIRE Footlights Club to accompany me, since there simply is no wittier all-female repartee on film (the famously catty The Women ensemble can’t compare). Don’t believe me? Lucille Ball is in the supporting cast. These sexual-harassment-fighting, badass feminists would be FABULOUS commentators, and I’m so sad I can’t follow their pop culture podcast right now.
7 & 8: Adam (Spencer Tracy) and Amanda (Katharine Hepburn) from Adam’s Rib (1949)
What could be better than to hear a brilliant couple with perfect dialogue critique the work of screenwriting couple Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach? And with the way Amanda just slays in arguing women’s rights in the courtroom, I long to hear what she’d say to those fools in the Mattel boardroom.
There you have it. My eight favorite Barbie movie companions. Who would yours be?
I’ve now watched the Jon Hamm-helmed remake of Fletch three times. This may surprise those of you who adored the original Fletch series–and Chevy Chase’s performance in it–as much as I did. But the film is a different animal and defies comparison; it also contains enough quirky humor to create nostalgia for those earlier films while making you eager for a new franchise with Hamm in the lead–one that would resemble the original novels more than Chase’s version did.
Jon Hamm is BRILLIANT in this new version of Fletch, and I will watch the film again. And again. And again. The opening–which begins with a shocking discovery of a dead body–is magic thanks to Hamm’s deadpan delivery. But it’s the scene with Annie Mumolo that I find myself watching on repeat.
You may not recall Mumolo’s name, but you’ll know you’ve seen her somewhere. You have. She’s the nervous plane passenger from Bridesmaids.
She’s also the co-screenwriter of that film with Kristin Wiig, and has a host of other credits. And as in that short but indelible plane scene, this woman cannot say an unfunny line.
In my favorite Confess, Fletch scene, former investigative reporter, now art-journalist Fletch is asking his neighbor, Eve (Mumolo), about her relationship with his landlord/a murder suspect. Standing in her kitchen, Eve proceeds to create a blizzard of poor hygiene, kitchen appliance hazards, and ill-advised confessions, all with zero awareness of the consequences of her actions. Fletch looks on and responds to Eve with various levels of repugnance, politeness, and shock.
The scene is a master class on comic delivery from both actors, and if you don’t watch it, you’re missing out.
That’s just one scene in SUCH a fun film, one that didn’t receive enough fanfare from its studio, and therefore escaped everyone’s notice. Cameos abound, including an appearance from Hamm’s former Mad Men buddy, John Slattery; Marcia Gay Harden in an unexpectedly daffy role; and the always game Lucy Punch as an influencer who could use a dictionary.
Spoil yourself; we could all use a little Confess, Fletch time right now.
I watched a tragedy the other day. It got under my skin. Its characters wouldn’t let me be. But I was also a bit sorry I’d seen it. A friend used a perfect word for it: grim.
The film, The Banshees of Inisherin, is being called a black comedy, and some strange critics are calling it hilarious.
Hilarious?????
I love black comedies. I will howl at Shaun of the Dead and Serial Mom and Dr. Strangelove. But what Martin McDonagh’s new film makes me want to do is weep.
Have we forgotten Yorick in Hamlet? Or the dying Mercutio’s quip in Romeo and Juliet, “Ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man”? Moments of humor do not make a tragedy a comedy. They highlight and accentuate the tragedy, make us feel for those who’ve suffered and make our sense of their losses heavier, more acute.
If you want to tell a story about a friend dying in the hospital, you don’t ONLY show that friend in the hospital. You show her lively and funny and nimble—help us see the distance between her then and now. Otherwise, all we audience members feel is a kind of generic sadness. We don’t think of your friend as an individual. We don’t understand the extent of the loss of this one amazing human being.
The Banshees of Inisherin is—on the surface–about the demise of a friendship for trivial reasons. But what it shows is how little it takes for one simple, everyday man’s life to spiral, for his days to go from easygoing to heartbreaking. And how that change brings out the worst in him. (The story is also a rather obvious metaphor about pointless warfare.)
I find Martin McDonagh’s work fascinating. I agree that many of his films are black comedies. But not this film. It’s not ridiculous and theatrical or over the top in the way Seven Psychopaths or In Bruges or even Three Billboards and other black comedies are. The story is too simple, and the pain of Padraic’s (Colin Farrell’s) now broken life is far too minutely and intimately told for the humor to do anything but make us feel for his losses. (And yes, his friend’s actions are over the top, but so are Romeo’s.)
If you want to see just how talented Farrell is, watch the movie. If you’re in the mood for a sad tale about the destructiveness of poor decisions, watch.
But don’t view this film on one of your vacation days, like I did. And stop listening to those critics who think a few jokes make something a comedy.
If you want to weep afterward, it’s not a comedy.
I just watched “The Funnier Sex,” an episode from CNN’s The History of Comedy. The segment features numerous current comediennes celebrating their groundbreaking predecessors. They highlight the sexism that marred their predecessor’s progress—especially that ridiculous view that women can’t be funny—and expressed how much harder it was for an attractive woman to also be considered funny. Lucille Ball—as usual—was singled out as the pretty woman who changed that for everyone.
Sigh.
Look, I love Lucy—we all do—and I get that most people’s sense of history is as developed as an ant’s. But are we going to ignore the vaudevillians entirely? Those women who used their sexiness to get away with cultural commentary? Who—like the standup artists who followed them—used live audience’s reactions to fine-tune their jokes, over and over again? You know, like STAND-UP COMICS??
In other words, WHERE IS MAE WEST?
West was not, of course, the first female comedienne in America. But as someone who starred in vaudeville, broke out in film, made appearances on TV, and then produced a live Vegas show with Chippendale-like men, she was hardly an invisible influence on the comediennes who followed her. And her humor was MUCH more like that of the stand-up stars celebrated in the series than Lucy’s ever was—and far more risqué.
And Mae wrote her own material, managed to be a rom-com star into her 40s, and even saved a studio. Mae peddled and exploited her own attractiveness in her jokes. She was known as a bombshell, even if some of her snarky male contemporaries—and ours—use their own sexist views of curvy women’s bodies to question it.
Let’s review just one incident—on the smash second day of her play Sex in 1926, which she records in her autobiography, Goodness Had Nothing to Do with It: Only 85 people appeared for the first performance, disappointing the star and the manager, who blamed the scandalous title for ticket sales. But at the next day’s matinee, Mae observed lines of men from the naval base “two and three deep.” The house manager was scrambling for extra seats for his theater. “And you said it was a bad title,” noted Mae. And he replied, “I forgot about the sailors.”
Sound like a woman who wasn’t using her sex appeal for humor?
I understand that standup is not the same as vaudeville, but the latter was clearly a forerunner, certainly more than scripted TV.
Look, I enjoyed the episode from The History of Comedy. It featured some of my own heroes, including Joan Rivers and Rachel Bloom. But why, after all these years, are TV historians still ignoring the extraordinary impact of Mae West?
What other comedian wrote lines we still repeat 100 years later, such as one of the all-timers?:
“It’s not the men in my life that count, it’s the life in my men.”
I suspect I know the reason she’s bypassed—the same reason early groundbreakers are so often forgotten: Because the wave of female comediennes would take years to follow in her wake. Because she was so ahead of her time that she wasn’t even part of the same generation who would supposedly “change everything.”
But all the more reason to own her. All the more reason to celebrate her. All the more reason, CNN, to give the sexy, groundbreaking, hilarious woman her due.
You have to hand it to Dan Stevens. Two years after his dramatic Downton Abbey exit, he starred in the camp treasure, The Guest, putting behind him one type of ponderous silliness for a decidedly lighter-weight version.
The Guest bears all the hallmarks of Lifetime fare in the first half: a mysterious, ridiculously attractive stranger. Hints that his motives—and past—might not be as innocent as his southern charm and “ma’am” courtesy would suggest.
A young woman who suspects him despite her parents’ trust (and her dad’s overeagerness to have a drinking buddy). And a young brother too pleased by the stranger’s help with his bullying problem to fear the degree of the man’s violence. Had that been all that The Guest was, I would have been happy enough.
But oh no, The Guest is much more. Because halfway through, it takes an abrupt 90 degree turn into campish horror/slapstick, without bothering to clarify basic character motives or anything else. In so doing, it gave me the best burst of unquenchable laughter I’ve experienced in some time.
Dan Stevens just OWNS this film, reveling in his goofy role as only an actor with a deep-seated love for black humor could do. His tiniest gesture is hilarious. The film even pays tribute to a famous scene in one of my favorite noirs from the 40s—which I’ll link to, but won’t reveal. Because to give anything away in the second half would be a mistake. Instead, I’ll just give you the basic premise:
David (Stevens) visits the parents of his dead army buddy. They ask him to stay. Because of course they do. The mother (Sheila Kelley) plays Debbie Hunt in Singles, and she has always expected the best.
Soon, David’s actions become suspicious, and then the plot turns downright bonkers. Because of course it does. The actor playing the father, Leland Jones Orser, starred in the (deeply dark) black comedy Very Bad Things, which should have foretold it for me.
The viewing pleasure isn’t hurt by just how sexy Dan Stevens is in the role. He has clearly spent a lot of gym time in preparation, and his lean, beautiful body is a nice complement to those riveting blue eyes. One can hardly blame the daughter/heroine (Maika Monroe) for waiting until his behavior goes truly off the rails to seek help.
And one can hardly blame you for enjoying every minute of this eye-candy-filled, ridiculous romp of a film.
