The Other Side of the Other Side

No Hollywood auteur casts a longer shadow than the late, great director/actor/writer Orson Welles. His movies are spoken of with a reverence that borders on the obnoxious. His larger than life persona (and waistline) became the stuff of late-night talkshow and wine commercial legend. But during his lifetime, Welles' movie-making career suffered from extended bouts of un-studio cinematic ventures that ended in box office failure. "When's he gonna top Citizen Kane?" echoed through the head offices of Hollywood until he became a misunderstood genius who couldn't secure a sheckle to create his art.

By the end of his life, Welles failed to finish several movies- one of which was The Other Side of the Wind which was in production/legal purgatory from 1970 to well past the maestro's death in 1985.  But thanks to Netflix's deep pockets and urge to be taken seriously as a film studio, a team of editors using Welles' scripts and editing notes was able to put together the Welles film that almost wasn't over 40 years years after it was started.

Wind takes place on the final night of the life of  revered/despised director Jake Hannaford (a thinly-veiled version of Welles played with gruff relish by director and Welles pal John Huston.) Hannaford's latest movie is in big trouble, and the desert screening party that is planned to help him get the movie some much-needed buzz (and funding) quickly devolves into a drunken morass full of cameras, critics, directors, dummies, and midgets.

Intertwined with the party dementia, the film-within-a-film unspools in a riot of '70's counter-culture color and quick takes. Seemingly without plot, a nude-most-of-the-time woman (Welles muse Oja Kodar) is followed by a not-nude-enough  man (Robert Random) through a variety of abandoned MGM sets. (One of them is the train set Fred Astaire reminisces in front of in That's Entertainment! (1974).) The movie screening concludes at a drive-in movie theater where Hannaford leaves the assembled Hollywood menagerie to drive into the sunrise for the last time.

If this plot summary sounds befuddling, don't worry! Along with the film, Netflix has produced a documentary about the making of Wind called They'll Love Me When I'm Dead (2018). Filled with footage of Welles and many of those who worked on the film, I found that They'll Love Me helped turn Wind from a middling experimental film into a fascinating peek inside the impish mind of Welles.

What immediately made my little film nerd antennae jump while watching Wind was seeing wunderkind filmmaker and cineaste Peter Bogdanovich playing wunderkind filmmaker and cineaste Brooks Otterlake. Otterlake is a preening sycophant who loves to show off by doing imitations of his favorite Hollywood idols and yes-anding and speaking for Hannaford at every opportunity. So basically, Bogdanovich isn't acting. Welles was filming their friendship.

So why then, does the relationship between acolyte and mentor in the film combust in an outburst of spite and cruelty? The dynamic of the student that becomes too much like the teacher for the teacher's liking is not new in storytelling- but Welles is either prescient or sending Bogdanovich a message. In They'll Love Me, Bogdanovich cries as he speaks about the very public break between him and Welles that happened a couple years after the filming of Wind. Bogdanovich blames Welles' belittling of him on The Tonight Show with new friend Burt Reynolds cackling along. Other theories abound, but either way, art became life.

Welles is no more kind to Bogdanovich's then girlfriend Cybill Shepherd. Despite the fact that Welles was living in Bogdanovich's house with Shepherd, in Wind he gives Hannaford a young, blond, dim-witted girlfriend allegedly to express his opinion of Bogdanovich's younger movie star paramour. Even for the mercurial Welles, it's a mean touch to a movie whose fictional characters are all unflattering stand-ins for a coterie of Hollywood notables- a who's who of people Welles felt betrayed him. At it's heart, Wind is an arsenic-laced break-up letter to Hollywood signed, "Fuck you, Orson. P.S. Fuck you some more."

From that perspective- it makes Wind worth watching.

Top 5 Comedies

It's April Fool's Day- and while I don't suffer fools, I do love comedies. But comedy is probably one of the most subjective of the movie genres. I mean, we don't judge dramas by how hard you cry. But comedies- you better be laughing the whole way through. What makes someone laugh is as diverse as the human experience. For instance, I and the rest of my family think farting is hysterical. It's totally a sound thing. But even try releasing so much as a "toot" around my boyfriend and he will roll his eyes and act like you just disgraced the family name. So different people find different things funny... it's the only explanation for the careers of both Seth McFarlane and Adam Sandler.

Here are my five favorite classic film comedies:

1.) Young Frankenstein (1974)

A lot of people talk about this film as a Mel Brooks comedy- and he did direct it. But what many people don't realize is that it was written by its star Gene Wilder. Mel Brooks is one of the great spoofers of our time with Blazing Saddles (1974), High Anxiety (1977), Spaceballs (1987), Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993), and Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995) in his filmography.

But Young Frankenstein feels different from these films- mainly because it's not so much a spoof, as it is a loving homage to the original Frankenstein films. The characters here do not just make jokes about former iconic characters, they develop their own unique, hysterical personae.

Case in point- Igor. In the hands of googley-eyed Marty Feldman he is not a pitiable, deformed hunchback- but a smart aleck who refuses to even recognize that he has a hump. Frau Blucher is not just some creepy, soothsaying gypsy, but a passionate, widowed girlfriend who can't understand why the horses neigh everytime her name gets mentioned. (Blucher is German for gluehouse.)

Perhaps the greatest evidence of something more than spoof is The Monster himself. Peter Boyle elevates this character beyond square-headed, neck-bolted parody. The Monster is a creature that desperately wants to be loved, so much so that he will attempt a song and dance routine with his overeager creator played with such wonderfully manic tenderness by Wilder.

Rounding out this top-notch comedy cast is Terri Garr, Madeline Khan, Kenneth Mars, and an unforgettable cameo by Gene Hackman. While there are a million quotable one-liners ("Put ze candle back!") this movie never stops being funny because the characters are so much more than just punchlines.

2.) The Palm Beach Story (1942)

Preston Sturges is known as one of the great comic filmmakers of the early 1940's- and as far as I'm concerned, this insane relationship comedy is his funniest. Gerry Jeffers (the impeccable Claudette Colbert) is tired of living the not-good life because her inventor husband (the uber handsome Joel McCrea) can't get his landing strip of the future off the ground. (Literally. His idea is to stretch it like a net over cities.) So she leaves him for greener pastures where she can get him the money to seed his project by romancing rich men. But Tom won't let her go and follows her down the coast by train and by boat to Palm Beach, Florida where the air is thick with millionaires.

The script is wacky and the pratfalls a delight- but again- what makes this stand above the comedy crowd is the wonderful characters that jump in and out of the story: The Wienie King (Robert Dudley) a "deef" hot dog magnate; Toto (Sig Arno) a vaguely Eastern Euorpean tagalong who speaks in a made-up language that nobody fully understands; and my favorite- Mary Astor as the Princess Centimillia, a man-hungry heiress who has slept and married her way across the world looking for love.

Palm Beach Story is light and silly and such a product of its time with a Pullman Car full of a travelling quail hunting club (Sturges favorite William Demarest whoops it up with a shotgun and some crackers) and sight gags involving pince-nez glasses. The Princess gives the advice, "Nothing is permanent in this world... except for Roosevelt, dear." It's a reminder that a month after this movie's release, the country was plunged into the Second World War and laughter on the screen would be a much-needed escape.

3.) Bringing Up Baby (1938)

Hollywood legend portrays Bringing Up Baby as a flop when it was first released. It did not make the Top 20 movies of the year in box office- but some sources show it almost making its money back. Critics were rumored to have hated it- Frank S. Nugent's New York Times review would seem to support that. And Katherine Hepburn was placed on a dubious "box office poison" list after the film came out. So how is it possible that such a sparkling movie did so poorly?

Bringing Up Baby was practically born with a silver spoon its mouth. Hepburn was joined by box office golden boy Cary Grant (their second film together) and successful director Howard Hawks for this romantic screwball comedy. David Huxley (Grant) is a paleontologist who is trying to finish a brontosaurus skeleton, fundraise for his museum, and get married. Along comes flighty socialite Susan Vance with a pet leopard to mess it all up. The Hawks dialogue is fast, witty and furious and the pratfalls are classic vaudeville- all adding up to what I consider a fun time.

What I enjoy most is how Grant and Hepburn play against their typical screen types. Grant eschews his erudite charm for an awkward academic who is so focused on bones, little else seems to make his radar. Hepburn- used to playing smart, no-nonsense women- twists her uppercrust persona by playing Susan as a flighty "million thoughts a minute" gal who gets leopards as pets. The chemistry between these two stars is undeniable and you can't help but feel sorry for any love interest in a Hepburn/Grant romantic comedy that isn't Grant or Hepburn cause they are bound to be left at the altar.

Maybe Baby was ahead of its time. Maybe film history revisionists have painted its performance more negatively than it actually was. Maybe- who cares? It's considered a great comedy now- and that's good enough for me.




4.) What's Up Doc? (1972)

Another fan of Bringing up Baby was Peter Bogdanovich. Bogdanovich was raised on the bible of the Cahiers du Cinema and started his career by writing about film and interviewing the directors and actors he so idolized. So it makes sense that once he became a director himself, the films of the past would influence his work- and nowhere is that influence as obvious as in What's Up Doc? To try and condense the plot of Doc is not only difficult- but probably useless. The fun in this film feeds from its madcap non-sensicalness.

There's a meet cute story, a scientist with a bag of musical rocks, a jewel heist, a car chase through the streets of San Francisco, lots of mistaken identities, and even a lively courtroom scene. It's as if Bogdanovich wanted to cram every screwball comedy trope into one film.
And running through this comic Garden of Eden are two of the Seventies biggest stars, Barbra Streisand and Ryan O'Neal.

Streisand is fresh and quirky here- her not-all-together schtick working perfectly as a well-intentioned girl who leaves disaster in her wake.

O'Neal follows Cary Grant's lead by playing against the romantic lead type and going full-on nerd- albeit a well-toned nerd who has a couple scenes in boxer shorts that will remind you why he was one of the lead hunks of the day.

Rounding out the cast are such wonderful character actors as Kenneth Mars, Sorrell Booke (who would go on to later fame as Boss Hogg), Mabel Albertson (formerly Derwood's mother on Bewitched,  doing one of my all-time favorite pratfalls) and in her first film, Madeline Kahn. Watching Kahn is like watching an astronomical event- no matter how many times you see her- she always dazzles. What fun it must have been to see her for the very first time.

5.) Dr. Strangelove (1964)

Most people don't think of comedy and director Stanley Kubrick together, but Kubrick's films are full of his dark sense of humor. His most completely comic movie Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb takes the rather ominous topic of nuclear annihilation, and makes it laughable.

When loony general Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden) falls off his fluoride rocker and orders a nuclear attack on Russia, a chain of events is triggered that threatens to destroy the world. Sounds hilarious, right? Well maybe after I list some of the character names, you'll get Kubrick's drift: President Merkin Muffley, General 'Buck' Turgidsen, Maj. 'King' Kong, Col. 'Bat' Guano, and the titular Dr. Strangelove.

Kubrick fills this Cold War thriller with outlandish characters to show the ridiculousness of nuclear proliferation. The President oohs and coos into the red phone connected to the Soviet Premier like a cuckolded husband. One of the lead generals acts like a spoiled teen when someone comes into his War Room. A lead scientist has an orgiastic Nazi breakdown at the thought of being able to start all over again with a better master race.

The book that the film was loosely based on was a thriller called Red Alert, so all credit goes to Kubrick and co-writer Terry Southern for twisting the material into something we could laugh at. I mean, if the world's gonna end, why not go out whoopin', "Yee-Haw!" from the backside of a nuclear warhead?

So those are my favorite comedies. What are yours?