S.O.B.

I saw S.O.B. at the Plaza East Cinemas when it first came out.  It was at that point the funniest film I had ever seen.  It’s easily still in my top 5.  S.O.B. was different from most other comedies I had seen.  The humor was dark slapstick with some of the most wonderfully quotable dialogue.  It was silly and incredibly intelligent at the same time, often in the same scene.  I was reminded of the special type of humor found in this film when I decided to pop it in the DVD player on Wednesday.

I know the film’s every twist and turn.  I can quote much of the script from memory.  Yet there was this moment where Stuart Margolin quietly walks in while Julie Andrews as Sally Miles is playing the piano and very casually informs her that her husband, producer/director Felix Farmer (played by the hilarious Richard Mulligan) has just tried to kill himself.  The line is not inherently funny, but the delivery of the line as pure matter of factness, nothing out of the ordinary made me crack up even after multiple viewings. 

S.O.B. is another one of those films where there is not a bad performance in the entire motion picture.  In addition to Mulligan there are hilarious performances from Robert Preston as the doctor and Robert Webber as the press agent.  When the two of them are on screen together there is hardly a scene that can fail to produce a laugh or at least a smile.  William Holden as Cully, an old friend in the business that is called in to keep an eye on Felix as he recovers from his suicide attempt after the failure of his latest film, os the perfect straight man.  Holden helps keep the film grounded without stamping on the comedy.  His role could have very easily sank the film if he had played it too over the top or too serious, but Holden walks the razor’s edge with the precision of a high wire performer and delivers what should have been an Oscar winning performance.  Sadly he wasn’t even nominated.  Apparently Hollywood doesn’t like having people make fun of its vanity.

Watching S.O.B. right after watching Network provides an interesting comparison.  Network satirized network television and television news but with an orderly flow of carefully paced dialogue.  S.O.B. is a satire of the motion picture business, but the dialogue is delivered in rapid fire volleys.  A perfect example is the scene where Robert Preston refers to another character as a “nervous Jew” and Robert Webber fires back while pacing and indicating himself , “That’s not a nervous Jew.  This is a nervous Jew.”   Preston’s doctor doesn’t miss a beat before remarking, “Funny, you don’t look nervous.”  It’s such a multi-layered joke and the physical nervousness of Webber’s character coupled with Preston’s relaxed calmness just makes it comedy gold.

S.O.B. was famous for Julie Andrews topless scene.  A situation that is mirrored in the movie itself as Andrews character is described as Peter Pan and America’s G-rated sweetheart.  The fact that the topless scene in Night Wind, the film within the film, is for all intents and purposes totally gratuitous is another case of a multi-layered joke.  Since the scene is not truly necessary to Night Wind, it could also be argued that the scene is gratuitous to S.O.B. as well.  However since the point of the scene is the fact that it is a shock effect scene designed to sell tickets masquerading as an important and integral element of the film, its inclusion in S.O.B. is valid and necessary.  This is the wonderful complexity of S.O.B.

Once again S.O.B. held up remarkably well and easily rates the same 4 stars I would have given it on first viewing.  I hadn’t seen it for several years and watching it again brought back many a fond memory.

Network

I mentioned in another post that I was going to revisit some films I had watched before, but hadn’t watched on DVD.  I wanted to see how some of my old favorites stack up today.  I decided there was no better choice to start out with than Network.  I first watched Network on HBO back when I was in junior high.  I’m not sure what it was that caused this movie to be so well received by a 13 year old boy, but I loved it.  I do remember when the film aired on network television for the first time I watched it then as well because I wanted to see how badly it would get edited.  I was especially interested to see how they dealt with a major plot point, Howard’s first on-air rant where almost every other word was “bullshit”.  The network airing gave Howard one unedited “bullshit” before cutting each subsequent utterance to simply “bull”.

Another reason I chose Network is that I wanted to see if the satire still held.  The Howard Beale Show as featured in Network was a news show unlike anything that had ever been seen when the film came out in 1976.  Today it could sit almost unnoticed on any of the 24 hour news channels.  The satire does still hold up, even if it doesn’t seem as over the top as it once did. 

There is one thing in Network that seemed incredibly dated however, and that was the way dialogue was delivered.  Network was written by Paddy Chayefsky and has some amazing dialogue.  Howard’s rants, especially the “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore” speech are all gems, but what surprised me was the way no one interrupted anyone.  Every character speaks in monologues that are answered by another character’s monologue.  This was particularly glaring during the argument between William Holden’s Max Schumacher and his wife played by Beatrice Straight.  I have never seen an argument where someone is allowed to deliver a long speech that starts with yelling and rage and then ends on calm, but hurt resignation without the other party saying a single word.  I could only imagine what this film would have looked like if Robert Altman had directed instead of Sidney Lumet.

For anyone not familiar with the storyline, Howard Beale (Peter Finch) is being fired as the network news anchor of the UBS network.  He decides to announce that he will finish his last show by blowing his brains out live on the air ala Christine Chubbock.  He is yanked off the air, but allowed to go back on to make a more dignified farewell speech.  This time he starts to rant about how he was being forced out because he was simply sick of all the bullshit.  All of a sudden the UBS news is making news and the ratings are going up.  A young female programming executive (Faye Dunaway) sees a golden chance and puts Howard back on the air as a modern day prophet yelling bullshit and tapping into the audience’s rage and aggression.  His audience grows, but soon takes a slight dip.  That’s when Howard walks in late, drenched from walking around in the rain, gets on the air and tells the audience to stick their heads out the window and yell “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore”.  The audience takes the hook, a catchphrase is born and the nightly news becomes The Howard Beale Show.

Network is brilliantly written and incredibly prescient.  The acting is phenomenal with every character perfectly realized and the actors firmly inhabiting them.  There is not a single bad performance in this film for my money.  Faye Dunaway and Peter Finch are just the two stand outs in this fine cast.  William Holden and Robert Duvall also do stellar jobs.

I watched Network several times while it was on HBO and later when it came out on VHS.  The last time I can recall watching it was about 1985 while I was living in Huntington.  I wondered if I would still love Network after rewatching it for the  first time in 25 years.  I did.  Some of the scenes strike a different chord in a 46 year old married father of two than they did in a 21 year old out on his own for the first time or a 13 year old learning to love cinema, but also snickering at Howard yelling bullshit and studying Faye Dunaway’s topless scene (and now I know why she was breathing so hard in that scene).

There is a 2 disc special edition of Network that I am still looking for at my price.  The copy I watched came from a Big Lots $3 Warner DVD promotion.  The extras on this one are incredibly light, but the movie is 4 star gold.  It’s impossible for me to believe that this lost best picture to Rocky.  I can only believe that the other nominees syphoned off votes.  The other contenders were All The President’s Men, Bound For Glory, and Taxi Driver.  That the Academy chose Rocky still amazes me.

Eminem: Live From New York City

I like Eminem’s music.  I know I’m “too old” to be listening to Eminem, but I don’t buy that.  I listen to all kinds of music.  In fact my CD collection is about half as large as my DVD collection and it’s even more varied.  I have rap, hard rock, country, punk, reggae.  I have an entire CD of Elvis songs sung in Latin and a CD called Oink, which is a chant CD in pig latin.  I don’t discriminate when it comes to music. 

I purchased the first three Eminem CDs and enjoyed them.  Encore came out in a special edition and since I couldn’t find it, I ended up not getting it.  Then I didn’t pick up Curtain Call or Relapse since I had missed Encore.  That’s not to say I wouldn’t buy them if I ran across them at a yard sale or flea market or pawn shop, but I just can’t pay retail for them until I pick up Encore, preferably in the special edition.

The Live From New York City DVD was originally filmed as a live special for Showtime on December 3, 2005.  I never got around to watching it on Showtime, but I found the DVD at KV Fine Jewelry and Loan in St. Albans and added it to the collection.  Tuesday night I decided to pop it in.  The concert has a series of back stage skits that play out as well.  They all deal with Eminem getting ready to commit suicide by shooting himself.  Em’s music can be a little dark, but these bits just suck the fun out of the disc every time they come on.  As for the music, many of the songs are chopped down to a shortened version so that he can fit in as many songs as he can in the 79 minutes.  You might get one verse and the chorus and then he starts on the next song.  I found this disappointing, but what was even more disappointing is that instead of performing more of his greatest hits, at least a third of the show is performances by D12 and guest artists Obie Trice and Stat Quo.  That would be fine if they were opening for Eminem or if the show was billed as Eminem, D12 and other rappers, but it’s not.

One other thing that irritated me about the show was the way they went about trying to get the audience to sing.  I know it’s a staple of the live show to let the audience belt out a phrase or two here and there, but Eminem seems to do it on almost every song and multiple times in every song and most annoying of all, he would have the audience sing part of the sample tracks he uses as backing.  The drop out of the music so that the audience can sing Toy Soldiers for example is just jolting and incredibly distracting from the music.  Let the audience sing over the sample, turn the volume down slightly on the samples vocal track if you must, but don’t drop out everything for two lousy words.

I may have been the only person with these complaints as the camera at the event showed an audience having a great time.  One girl that they kept cutting to was so excited that she literally cried through the entire show.  Every time they showed her, she looked like she had just watched her entire family get slaughtered in front of her.

At 79 minutes, Eminem: Live From New York City is too long for me to rate on the Night Flight scale.  On the 4 star scale I’m afraid Eminem only gets 1 3/4 stars.  I wanted more of the songs, more of the hits, and less D12 and guests.