Funny Guy
Since regular Shadowplayer Mark Medin reminded me of Billy Wilder’s swan song BUDDY BUDDY — a pitiably grating and unfunny farce about a suicidal TV censor and a hitman — I thought I’d share the one funny thing that came out of it. It doesn’t quite make up for the film’s disappointing status, a black mark on Wilder’s otherwise exemplary career, but what can you do? As Wilder’s near namesake William Wyler (“It’s like in painting: Monet, Manet, who cares?”) William Wyler told John Huston after an unsuccessful screening of BEAT THE DEVIL, “It’s the kind of picture that, when you make one, you want to make another picture right away.” Alas, Wilder was denied that opportunity.
Anyhow, Wilder’s filming with Lemmon and Matthau (that team! It ought to be good!) and Matthau has to slide down a laundry chute. A simple stunt, and there’s a crash mat at the bottom to catch him. But the mat is incorrectly positioned, and the poor man clips the base of his spine on a hard metal edge (are you laughing yet?). An ambulance is called, and Lemmon, an emotional man, is sobbing as he cradles his injured friend’s head.
“Can I get you anything?” he sobs. “Are you comfortable?”
And Matthau looks up at him with those big canine eyes –
“I make a reasonable living.”
March 17, 2010 at 1:08 pm
Buddy Buddy may be pitiable, but the French film on which it was based WAS very funny – L’emmerdeur (released in the UK as A Pain in the A*** – their asterisks, not mine) with Jacques Brel and Lino Ventura.
Haven’t seen the 2008 French remake (directed by Francis Veber, the original’s screenwriter) but by all accounts it was disastrous.
March 17, 2010 at 1:20 pm
Yes, I’ve heard the original’s good (the same talents made La Cage au Folles), and the material seems not unsuited to Wilder’s acerbic side. But for some reason all we get is the more abrasive qualities, without the human sympathy which lightens his other work — even Kiss Me Stupid has more charm and sweetness, although those are not words one associates with it.
March 17, 2010 at 1:44 pm
When I saw it, I was baffled by it. I saw enough Wilder by then to know he could tap into crude veins of humor and make them funnier than they should be, but here he didn’t. There was a point in the film where my brain kind of shut off and I didn’t laugh once after that. I’d have to watch it again to find where, but I’ve done fine not watching it again. The sad thing is that every good director is entitled to a dud, but once you get old, that dud may be your last film.
March 17, 2010 at 1:45 pm
Oh well I certainly do. Kiss Me Stupid, the Maudit de tout maudits is one of Wilder’s best — sweetest — films.
Sweet in a totally insane way, fo course.
March 17, 2010 at 1:50 pm
March 17, 2010 at 2:12 pm
Someone gave a VHS copy of this many years ago, seems he had a problem with Ray Walston. Not me. While I’m not his biggest fan, I think he’s just fine in this one. I too wouldn’t mind seeing the footage with Sellers as Orville J. Spooner, but unless you knew the backstory you wouldn’t think twice about it. I saw this in a darkened theatre in the midst of an audience, my initial encounter, and the people around me just ate it up, as did I. Has that classic double entendre (Orville to Kim Novak’s Polly: “It’s small, but I keep it clean”). Minor Wilder to some, but one of my favorites.
March 17, 2010 at 2:58 pm
In 1964 it was considered very shocking that Wilder would make a comedy about a man pimping out his wife.
Nowadays — in the post-Michael Jackson era — no one is shocked at the spetacle of parents pimping out their children. They just get indignant at customers like Roman Polanski when they don’t follow through with a contract for the little darlin’
March 17, 2010 at 3:00 pm
KISS ME STUPID is one of the all-time great films about the horrors of small-town America.
It should also be required viewing for anyone who needs proof that Kim Novak was a simply phenomenal actress. She is the heart and soul of that movie – as she is of VERTIGO, BELL, BOOK AND CANDLE, PUSHOVER, THE LEGEND OF LYLAH CLARE, or even Mike Figgis’s LIEBESTRAUM. Has that woman ever not been amazing?
Answers on a postcard please…
March 17, 2010 at 4:11 pm
I love Kiss Me, Stupid, though I do think Walston is the weak link. Novak is almost as affecting in it as she is as Judy in Vertigo.
And you know all the jokes Dean Martin is telling in his routine at the beginning? I saw him live in Las Vegas in 1986, and he was telling the EXACT SAME JOKES, and it was brilliant – best comic timing and delivery ever.
March 17, 2010 at 4:13 pm
I should also add that I used to have a gigantic crush on Matthau. I found him unbelievably sexy in The Secret Life of an American Wife, which is a film I’d love to see again.
March 17, 2010 at 6:45 pm
I think Cliff Osmond is the only weak link (Wilder thought he’d found the new Laughton, which baffles me completely). A bigger star than Walston would have helped it commercially, but I can’t actually picture Sellers in the role. Which makes it all the more appealing to see that footage. Since the deleted scenes from Sherlock Holmes were largely lost, I can’t imagine the Sellers out-takes surviving, but it would be fascinating if they did.
I love the idea of Dino recycling those gags for decades!
Matthau had sex symbol status there for a while… maybe that unmade bed of a face had its own erotic connotations…
March 17, 2010 at 7:34 pm
That’s what his wife Carol thought.
March 17, 2010 at 7:36 pm
Wilder used Cliff Osmond twice, he was a gendarme in IRMA LA DOUCE. The new Laughton? Now that’s a stretch.
March 17, 2010 at 9:07 pm
He was also featured in The Fortune Cookie as the detective out to unto “Whiplash Willie” ‘s plans.
March 17, 2010 at 9:20 pm
Gee, all this hating on Cliff Osmond, and I knew a pal of his (long dead now). Taught Method and was a stage actor. He had a SAG card, but I’ll be damned if I can see him listed in any film on IMDb.
March 17, 2010 at 10:13 pm
Does Paula Prentiss have a good moment or two in “Buddy, Buddy”? I would like that to be the case …
March 17, 2010 at 10:43 pm
One would certainly like to think so. But I seem to recall most of her scenes involve Klaus Kinski, who is not a natural comedian. Or at any rate, when one looks at him, one doesn’t feel like laughing.
I’m reminded of Art Linson’s story re casting Willem Dafoe in a comedy: he asked his wife if she thought Dafoe could make her laugh, and she said, “I don’t know, but I saw him smile once and I had nightmares for a week.”
Kinski is typically harsh in his autobiography. Wilder told him “From now on you shall do drama with Mr Herzog and comedy with me.” Kinski reflects that Wilder’s comedy is going to be as funny as a crutch, whereas Herzog’s films would be laughed off the screen if he, the Great Kinski, did not correct them with his performances and script amendments. Like everything else in Kinski Uncut this can be taken with a cellar of salt, but he’s sadly correct about Buddy Buddy.
I think Osmond’s good in small doses. I just don’t see any Laughton about him, asides from the girth.
March 17, 2010 at 11:28 pm
Re. Dafoe, and Linson’s wife: She saw him smile in WILD AT HEART. No doubt (those teeth).
March 18, 2010 at 1:14 am
That would do it. But I’m always impressed by Dafoe’s genius for arranging his face into surprising new structures undreamed-of by any sculptor. He’s like a kid with building blocks.
March 18, 2010 at 1:56 am
And speaking of lost footage, I would LOVE to see the original opening sequence of Wilder’s SUNSET BOULEVARD, with the exchange between Holden’s corpse and the others newly deceased. It may not have worked then, but it would be totally accepted now.
March 18, 2010 at 4:22 am
Hey, it ain’t often I get to name-drop. I didn’t think Osmond was another Laughton, either. My old friend was a pretty good acting teacher (meaning he got work for more of his students than I would’ve believed), and he convinced me I was better off not being on the stage, but being on the idea or technical side of it.
I could name-drop dating a gorgeous cousin of a horror star of the ’70s and ’80s, but I’ll leave that for another time, if her name ever comes up here.
March 18, 2010 at 5:01 am
Personally I’m with Kinski on Herzog…
March 18, 2010 at 5:05 am
In Ferrara’s New Rose Hotel, Dafoe and Chris Walken make a marvellous comic duo in some of their scenes together. So I can see him doing comedy.
March 18, 2010 at 5:49 am
I’m going to have to chew on that one awhile. Dafoe even smiling gives me the creeps.
March 18, 2010 at 1:33 pm
March 18, 2010 at 4:11 pm
Dafoe can certainly be funny, and he can work as leading man for sure, but the combination seems problematic. That’s what Linson found anyway — his film was shut down and written off before it was completed.
He has some very funny, creepy stuff in Shadow of the Vampire, even though it’s not a great film. Who else is offended that Murnau isn’t allowed to be gay, so they make him a junkie instead (with no factual basis), as if that was somehow equivalent? Otherwise, Malkovich is OK casting and Eddie Izzard actually gets to use his mime training.
March 18, 2010 at 5:33 pm
I’d say they “downplayed Teh Ghey” in Shadow of a Vampire, rather than eliminated it. There’s some dialogue about Murnau’ssexual kinkiness, he’s played by Malkovich (technically straight but iconographically polymorphouse perverse) and his chief assistant is Udo Kier (’nuff said.)
March 18, 2010 at 7:37 pm
Agreed, but I still found it obnoxious that they introduced a phony drug habit and were more explicit about that fictitious detail than they allowed themselves to be in dealing with Murnau’s factual leanings.
March 18, 2010 at 10:04 pm
..what a fun idea for a movie!…Malkovich as Murnau giving his directions during filming always makes me chuckle.
March 20, 2010 at 1:52 am
I once saw Cliff Osmond play Walt Whitman in a short bio-film by Lou Stoumen. Not bad at all.
March 20, 2010 at 10:55 am
Billy Wilder should have made Shadow of the Vampire.
Maybe my problem with Osmond is Wilder-related? Admiring him so much, perhaps Wilder over-indulged him somewhat, letting him run loose like Laughton when a tighter grip might have helped.