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Post by I Love Melvin on Mar 6, 2023 1:05:27 GMT
I'm late to the game here but this one's a lulu and, if you haven't seen it, you owe it to yourself. It apparently squeaked into 31 Days of Oscar because it had two nominations, for Costume Design and Art Direction. Whatever. It's all about an Oscar race and what a nasty piece of work (Stephen Boyd) will do to win the prize. There are some real-life celebrities sprinkled in for "authenticity" (Edith Head, Hedda Hopper, Frank Sinatra, Merle Oberon, etc.) but not much of it corresponds to any recognizable reality, especially the dialogue, a miasma of purple prose. You'll know if you have the proper mindset to watch it. (Bad = Good) It's a rare treat so I wanted to get the word out, albeit at the last minute.  ![]() |
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Post by Lucky Dan on Mar 6, 2023 1:34:38 GMT
( The Oscar is) a lulu and, if you haven't seen it, you owe it to yourself. ... especially the dialogue, a miasma of purple prose. You'll know if you have the proper mindset to watch it. (Bad = Good) It's a rare treat ...
The parody is on You Tube in two parts and this is the second, but it's enough to give you the flavor. Instead of the Oscar, it's the Nobel. I'd forgotten how well Dave Thomas captures Boyd (he does his Bob Hope here too!) and Joe Flaherty performs his part better than Tony.
** Spoiler **
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Post by I Love Melvin on Mar 6, 2023 14:04:26 GMT
That's funny; you're right about Flaherty nailing Tony Bennett. Without having seen part one, it looks like it could be a mash-up of The Oscar and The Prize, maybe using Catherine O'Hara as Elke Sommer as the common thread. Both movies were ripe for satire.
There aren't many clips on YouTube but this one gives a little of the flavor of the dialogue and the general vibe. This is him on the way up; he gets his revenge later. Vengeance is kind of a theme and it could leave a bitter aftertaste if it all weren't so laughable. Hollywood "taking stock of itself" is generally good for giggles and The Oscar has plenty.
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Post by Lucky Dan on Mar 6, 2023 21:19:38 GMT
That's funny; you're right about Flaherty nailing Tony Bennett. Without having seen part one, it looks like it could be a mash-up of The Oscar and The Prize, maybe using Catherine O'Hara as Elke Sommer as the common thread. Both movies were ripe for satire. |
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Post by I Love Melvin on Mar 7, 2023 0:30:12 GMT
TCM definitely got stiffed on the print, though I'm not sure a good print even exists. This one was VHS-era and showed some of the image "shimmering" you used to get with that format, as well as being cropped to the 4:3 aspect ratio. It seems like people all along the line have given up on this particular movie, at least in terms of preservation. No biggie, but it would have been fun to see it as it was originally foisted on audiences. I love that it has the nerve to steal from earlier movies like All About Eve and The Bad and the Beautiful. It starts at the big awards ceremony with all the people he's crossed staring daggers at him, then plays out as memory as we see how he messed with their lives. Seeing it again I was also reminded of one of the other low points in the history of Hollywood's self-examination, Clifford Odets' The Big Knife (1955), where Jack Palance also bellowed his way through an impossibly dense thicket of language. There's something compelling about excess in all its forms and I was happy to have this new opportunity to bask in this shameless exhibition. Not everyone's cup of tea for sure, but lots of fun for those who go for this kind of nonsense. As a point of interest, it also features this Ghost of Hollywood Past:  |
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Post by Lucky Dan on Mar 7, 2023 1:26:09 GMT
I love that it has the nerve to steal from earlier movies like All About Eve and The Bad and the Beautiful. It starts at the big awards ceremony with all the people he's crossed staring daggers at him, then plays out as memory as we see how he messed with their lives. |
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Post by I Love Melvin on Mar 7, 2023 14:13:51 GMT
I love that it has the nerve to steal from earlier movies like All About Eve and The Bad and the Beautiful. It starts at the big awards ceremony with all the people he's crossed staring daggers at him, then plays out as memory as we see how he messed with their lives. I checked Wiki after you and Ellison is quoted as saying "My work is foursquare for chaos." So....the right guy for the right job, I guess. "Toxic masculinity" gets thrown around a lot these days; it's reductive but it's a solid concept. Stephen Boyd's treatment of the Elke Sommer character (and all the women) easily qualifies. Yes, we're not supposed to like Boyd but the writer(s) seems to know a little too much about the outer fringes of the male psyche. It reminded me some of the movie version of Norman Mailer's An American Dream, also from 1966, in which poor Eleanor Parker gets set up again as a hysterical (So it's her fault, I guess?) ex-wife who gets dispensed with (over a balcony yet) early on. I'm now realizing how this will sound to people who've seen me say what a hoot The Oscar is but, just as Hollywood's awkwardly narcissistic self-reflection can be laughable, so can tough guy writers exploitatively toying with baring their souls. Hard-hitting? Yeah....in the funny bone. |
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Post by Lucky Dan on Mar 7, 2023 21:58:26 GMT
I just read the wiki page on it and found Harlan Ellison is credited as co-screenwriter. Now there's a guy who knew something about how to be a butt. "Toxic masculinity" gets thrown around a lot these days; it's reductive but it's a solid concept. Stephen Boyd's treatment of the Elke Sommer character (and all the women) easily qualifies. Yes, we're not supposed to like Boyd but the writer(s) seems to know a little too much about the outer fringes of the male psyche.
Toxic masculinity went by other names in the old days, all less social sciency sounding and none of which I want to print here, but they all describe a mixture of ambition, narcissism and entitlement. Such personalities are still among us - and they ain't all masculine.
Then too, consider, we have a script about ambition and dirty dealing by Ellison and a pair of writers, Clarence Greene and Russell Rouse, who made their money writing noir. (They also wrote the story for Pillow Talk, which isn't such an outlier when you remember Rock's character, Brad Allen.) The outer fringe of the male psyche seems to have been Ellison's comfort zone, and a world Greene and Rouse visited often enough.
But you and the SCTV boys have got me interested. I see there is a DVD available from Kino Lorber since 2020. I'm already talking myself out of tapping buy. |
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Post by I Love Melvin on Mar 7, 2023 22:55:48 GMT
I've seen the Kino Lorber disc, which was why I was so surprised to see the inferior print TCM showed. It was apparently filmed in the 1.66:1 ratio, which wasn't too common by 1966, though I understand it was still in favor in Europe, so Joseph E. Levine may have had a hand in that choice. The disc doesn't have any kind of documentary bonuses, but it has two audio commentary tracks, one including Patton Oswalt(??) and one with three film historians. There's a thank-you in the cover notes to an Ellison archivist who wasn't part of the panel but who apparently contributed information for the discussion. Unfortunately, I couldn't get the commentary tracks to play so I can't tell you what value they have or if there were any gems.
That was a good point about Pillow Talk. There was so much they could get away with back then under the guise of comedy and "the battle of the sexes" could be awfully one-sided without a lot of blowback. And, yeah, the script of The Oscar has a gritty, noir-ish feel, which on one hand kind of works, but on the other hand the too-clever hipsterish phrase-mongering drags the movie down.
Edit: And speaking of noir, you also made a good point that not all toxicity is male.
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