Quote of the Day: Short People

 

Walter Matthau, as Kendig, in HOPSCOTCH, to a photograph of Myerson, played by Ned Beatty.

“Hello, Myerson, you short person.”

I liked this film, lightly. I always sort of wondered what it was doing in the esteemed Criterion Collection. Always sort of assumed it was just somebody’s perverse favourite. And I still suspect that’s the case. But as I say, it’s likeable, and there’s room for a certain chance element in a (supposedly) well-ordered universe. A nice little film like this turning up amongst all those world classics kind of makes me feel warm inside.

Footnote: Ronald Neame is still very much alive. He’ll be ninety-seven in April. Good show!

I heard about somebody once whose answering machine message was a plummy, “Hello, this is Ronald Neame.” But IT WASN’T.

Footfootnote: Glenda Jackson does have real screen chemistry with Walter Matthau. But I still don’t want to see them touch each other in any way.

Footfootfootnote: several supporting characters are named after crime/espionage writers: Follett, Ludlum, Westlake. The mention of Donald Westlake brings me back to my oft and loudly stated contention that Walter Matthau should have played Westlake’s doleful criminal mastermind John Dortmunder.

I’m currently reading The Road to Ruin, which pits Dortmunder against an Enron-style corrupt executive with a valuable car collection. Fun!

Euphoria #24: O, Superman!

Contains ONE BIG SPOILER: 

This climactic sequence from THE IRON GIANT is suggested for its euphoric, nay, CATHARTIC qualities, by comic book guy Mike Cavallaro. That Riding to the Rescue moment is something we haven’t seen that much of here at Cinema Euphoria, but it must be one of the earliest euphoric feelings we experience as kids-at-the-movies (since kids get exposed to adventure movies A LOT).

Sadly, my first cinema outing was less than joyous — I was taken to see DR. DOLITTLE as a tot (Sexy Rexy, not Eddie Murphy), and began to cry as soon as the lights dimmed. Nobody had told me it would get dark.

But soon enough I was thrilling to Richard Lester’s THE THREE MUSKETEERS and FOUR MUSKETEERS (I can still recall a boy behind me gasping “Cor, right through him!” as D’Artagnon impales his foe at the end), James Bond and Godzilla (how we cheered at those Saturday matinees, as perspiring Japanese extras slugged it out at 100fps across destructible Tokyo dioramas) and, treasured memory, the 1933 KING KONG, revived at Edinburgh’s late-lamented Odeon, Clerk Street.

I like Brad Bird. His humans can be kind of bland sometimes, but each of his features has had surprising virtues (great use of props in RATATOUILLE), and they provide alternatives, at least to a degree, to the Disney tradition which has dominated and stagnated for too long. I especially like the fact that B.B. writes and directs solo, an almost unheard-of thing in animated feature films. Yet his movies are more dense with ideas and gags and plotlines than most of the other ‘toons whose writers and directors work in teams, “like piano movers”.

I also like, at a safe distance, the powerhouse ego working away in the man. Asked about T.I.G.’s box-office failure, Bird shrugged it off by observing that DUMBO had been a box-office disappointment too. That kind of self-confidence must be fun to have!

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However — time to re-explain the mission statement here: little moments that make you happy. No more climaxes, big action sequences and cathartic triumphs (although there are some already suggested which may run). Let’s keep some mystery to it! All suggestions are welcome, however — let’s hear from some lurkers.

Pinter Kills

 

If you ever wondered what a HAROLD PINTER ACTION MOVIE would be like (and which of us has not?) this short extract from his screenplay VICTORY (adapted from Joseph Conrad for director Richard Lester) may provide the answer.

EXT. THE CLEARING Ricardo, standing, holding his head. Jones comes out of the shadows. 

RICARDO

Guv’nor! I thought he’d done for you. He nearly had me just now. 

JONES

No, it wasn’t him. It was me. 

RICARDO

Eh? 

JONES

It’s me now, too. 

He shoots him. Ricardo falls.

This project was set to go in the early ’80s, at a modest budget, when another production company announced a version of the same (out-of-copyright) book. Lester’s funding collapsed.

Mark Peploe made a version of the Conrad classic in 1995, but apparently thought he could do better than Pinter and wrote his own script. The film was barely released.

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Well, now I know — pasting from Word into this blog really messes up the formatting!