how not to...

 An article from page eight of the pressbook for "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying"

When David Swift's 1967 film version of the Frank Loesser musical, "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying," was in production, rumors were rampant that Cary Grant, of all people, would be making an appearance in the film.  Nothing was elaborated on; it seemed a tease.

When the unfortunate film finally materialized, Grant was decidedly not on screen - and the scribes that had written about the event apparently forgot all about it.  But United Artists didn't.  In what amounts to a massive (and typical) Hollywood screw-up, whoever put together the pressbook for the film - the pressbook in those days being an important marketing tool - included a reference to Grant, inviting newspapers to use the information.

You can read it for yourself above - and learn Grant's rationale for agreeing to do a turn in the movie.  It was on page 8 of the pressbook.

One can assume that Grand did indeed film his non-speaking cameo. But, naturally, it was never explained why it isn't in the complete film. The sequence in question - the "I Believe in You" number - ends with star Robert Morse seeing his own image in the mirror, not Grant's.

And one can only speculate what happened to the Grant footage. Knowing U.A.'s bad track record for retaining elements from its films, it's probably long gone.  Otherwise, some resourceful home-entertainment peon would have included it on VHS, LaserDisc, DVD or whatever.

Also filmed, discarded and still missing is the legendary "Coffee Break" number (see the still below) that, according to someone at IMDb, was "deemed unusable."  You could say the same about the entire film.

Turner Classic Movies will screen "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying" tonight at 9:45 (est).

For some reason, Turner canceled last night's screening of "How to Succeed," replacing it with Roy Enright's "Gold Diggers in Paris" (1938). It was an evening of Rudy Vallee films. -J.B. 6/16/2013

Note in Passing:  Billy Wilder who had a  track record with the Mirisch Brothers, the producers of the film, had expressed interest in directing "How to Succeed" and with Jack Lemmon as his star (just as Wilder had wanted to direct Lemmon in "The Odd Couple").  The project, however, went to Swift, who had directed Lemmon back-to-back in "Under the Yum-Yum Tree" and "Good Neighbor Sam" - but who opted instead for Morse, the play's original star.  Morse was great on stage, but on screen, and in extreme close-up, his mugging and facial tics are difficult to take.

who's afraid of antoinette perry?

"Can I have my Tom Hooper 'Les Mis' close-up, please? On Broadway, we don't need extreme closeups to prove that we're singing live."

-the supremely talented and affable Neil Patrick Harris, in tight close-up, as requested, and flashing his trademark smirk on The Tony Awards telecast

It seems to have become congenitally impossible for the Broadway community not to continually flaunt its contempt for the film industry.

Show-biz lore would have one believe that there's this mutual rivalry between the stage and film.  Not so.  It's really all one-sided.

As someone addicted to award shows (as every other American is), I religiously watch them all but have yet to see an Oscarcast with bad jokes aimed at Broadway.  In fact, the Oscars (and the Emmys, for that matter) seems to be blissfully oblivious to "The Theatuh," as Bill Sampson (Gary Merrill) so cattily calls it in Joseph Mankiewicz's "All About Eve" (1950).

Ah. "Oblivious."  There's the rub. Which may explain why Broadway types always seem so desperately outraged.  They can't take being ignored.

So Hollywood opted out of the cattiness. But in the case of The Tonys  (and, by extension, its acolytes in the media), the gloves are always off.

The anti-movie jokes continually fly among theater types, who fancy themselves "sophisticated," but who are glacially unaware of just how petty, insecure, combative and generally unattractive they appear.

And exacerbating matters, the two critics covering theater for New York's paper of record, the Times - that would be Ben Brantley and Charles Isherwood (neither of whom, incidentally, demonstrates any affinity for, or knowledge of, the film medium) -  more than occasionally join in the fun.

It's become a given that when a revival that was once made into a movie is reviewed in the Times, or is the subject of an essay, both  Brantley and Isherwood will remind their readers just what an offense it was.

One jaw-dropping Times essay was devoted to two recent filmed plays that were defiled by Hollywood. Who knew that either the jukebox musical “Rock of Ages” or Leslye Headland's “Bachelorette” was classic theater?

And it was Headland herself who defiled "Bachelorette" for the screen, given that she adapted and directed the film version. Go figure.

This habit, which has become drearily predictable, is never reciprocated by Brantley and Isherwood's film counterparts at the Times. Manhola Dargis, A.O. Scott and Stephen Holden always refer to the source of a film but none of them seems to feel obliged to whine about that source.

In the meantime, in the grand tradition of hypocricy, the Theatuh has become dependent on movies for both inspiration and material.

Dependent to the point of parasitism.

And in what could be called a reversal of fortune, Hollywood rarely, if ever, goes to the stage for material.  Those days are all but gone.

Once again, Broadway is ignored - and thereby rejected - by Hollywood.

Anyway, not surprisingly, it went unnoticed by the Tonys (and unmentioned by the press that covers it) that all four of the best musical nominees this year came from - you guessed it - movies: "Kinky Boots," "Bring It On," "A Christmas Story - the Musical" and "Matilda - the Musical" (the latter by way of Roald Dahl's book, of course).

"Kinky Boots" was the big winner of the night and not one of the people associated with it - that would be producers Hal Luftig and Daryl Roth, among others - bothered to invoke the names its movie creators.

That would be director Julian Jarrold and writers Geoff Deane and Tim Firth.

Remember when Broadway at least pretended to have breeding?

Not any more.

cinema obscura: Massy Tadjedin's "last night" (2010)

Thanks to the language barrier and locales that are more exotic than Anywhere, U.S.A., foreign films get away with a lot.

Especially French films which (full disclosure) I love.

Who couldn't swoon over one of Eric Rohmer's talky/sexy films from the '70s?  But even Rohmer's films can seem sightly ridiculous when you stop and try to re-imagine them as - gasp - American movies.

An excellent case-in-point is Massy Tadjedin's more-than-slightly-ridiculous "Last Night," a film which suffers mightily because of its lack of subtitles.

Set largely in New York and with a curious international cast, the film stars Keira Knightley who slouches around artily pretending to be a writer and Sam Worthington (that's him below with Keira) as her rather dull corporate-type husband.  Their marriage makes no sense, except that Sam's apparently handsome income has afforded Keira a magazine-ready loft/apartment that seems to be in either SoHo or Tribeca.

Even though she shows no interest in Sam herself, Keira becomes obsessed with a possible initmate relationship he might be having with coworker Eva Mendes, who accompanies Sam on business trips - the current  one to Philadelphia.  Sam is no sooner gone and being tempted by Eva, when Keira meets her former lover, a grinning Frenchman (no less) played by Guilaume Canet (that's him above with Keira).

There's a lot of drinking and smoking and darting eyes as the newly paired-off couples each anticipate hot sex.

Given that this is something of feminist screed, it's no surprise (spoiler alert here) that prim Keira doesn't give in to Guilaume (who stops grinning and starts agonizing when he realizes he's not getting any) or that Sam behaves like a pig and has sex (twice in one night!) with Eva.

Forty years ago, with Catherine Deneuve and Gerard Depardieu in the leads, "Last Night" might have been a sophisticated art-house must.

But today, in English, it's a sorry parody.

gatsby/ghastly

After having successfully mangled Shakespeare and the movie musical, Australia's One-Trick Wonder has set his sights on arguably the definitive American novel - F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby."

With results that are both expected and surprising.

The film's first 20 minutes or so - a graphic depiction of the parties hosted by mega-millionaire Jay Gatsby (who has the good sense not to attend any of his own soirées) - are suitably grotesque, as if they were staged by Busby Berkeley if Berkeley had access to Ecstacy.

But once the filmmaker gets all of the insistent noise and clutter out of his system, his film settles down - surprise! - and actually tries to tell Fitzgerald's classic cautionary tale of a life tragically misspent.

The problem is, this is where the actors come in and, unfortunately, this particular filmmaker is a bad director of actors.  Only Leonardo DiCaprio as Gatsby has any actorly power here, largely because he's Leonardo DiCaprio, the best of our young character actors and someone smart enough to know which directors and direction to heed.  Tobey Maguire plays Nick Caraway as a pubescent, while Carey Mulligan is just about a total washout as Daisy, her line readings jaw-droppingly unmemorable.  Meanwhile, poor Isla Fisher is in way over her head in the drastically watered-down role of Myrtle, who is now little more than a Kewpie Doll.  

That said, take a second look at Jack Clayton's sublime 1974 "Gatsby," with Sam Waterston as the real Nick Caraway, Karen Black doing wonders as Myrtle, and Mia Farrow reading Daisy's lines the way they're supposed to be recited. Farrow also plays Daisy as slightly unstable. Delicious.

I could go on but won't.  I've whetted my own appetite to watch Robert Redford and Farrow in a "Gatsby" that's actually watchable.

cinema obscura: Marc Klein's "Suburban Girl" (2007)

 
A sense of discovery, what used to be among the more simple pleasures in one's moviegoing life, has become such a rare and fleeting event nowadays that it is unappreciated and often misunderstood.

We've been conditioned to assume that any film - either a mainstream monstrosity from the studios or an indie darling from the festivals - that isn't hyped is suspect and must be bad. And must be avoided.

Marc Klein's first feature as a director, "Suburban Girl," went missing back in 2007 when it somehow fell off the fillm-fete assembly line and disappeared.  It played Cannes and the Tribeca Film Festival and all of the major markets in Europe but never quite made it back home.

Klein, a screenwriter whose credits include "Serendipity," "A Good Year" and, more recently, "Mirror Mirror," has fashioned a bittersweet relationship film (not to be confused with your standard romcom) about a young woman with some minor father issues who becomes involved with an older man with major daughter issues. He based it on two short stories, "My Old Man" and "The Worst Thing a Suburban Girl Could Imagine," from Melisa Bank's "The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing," which was the film's working title. ("Suburban Girl" is a most unworthy moniker.)

Set in Candace Bushnell's New York, Klein's film is what one would expect from an episode of  "Sex and the City" written and directed by Woody Allen:  It is observant, literate, occasionally witty and quite tart.

And in the lead roles, Sarah Michelle Geller and Alec Baldwin do alert, deeply shaded variations on the Carrie Bradshaw-Mr. Big duet, adding some fascinating new wrinkles to an all-too-familiar theme. 

Geller, a solid actress who operates too often under the radar, is Brett Eisenberg, an associate editor whose talent and ambition are being smothered by her new boss at the publishing house where she works. 

Baldwin is Archie Knox, the Mailer-esque author - part writer, mostly womanizer - who wants to seduce and mentor her at the same time, forgetting that Brett is neither his mistress nor his daughter, but his equal. 

While this is very much Geller's film, which she carries with exquisite, attractive ease, Baldwin is commanding, both suave and sexually intimidating - and also touching - as an older man who is also an aging lothario.  Baldwin, whose life as a promising leading man in movies self-aborted, found his second act in Jack Donaghy, a character that, for better or worse, has invaded some of his other recent performances.  But not here.  Archie Knox is a character/performance that stands very much on its own, free of any Donaghy/Baldwin, Baldwin/Donaghy tics.

The large supporting cast includes turns by James Naughton as Brett's beloved father, Maggie Grace as her BFF/confidant and Mirian Seldes (Mr. Big's mother herself!) as a tony literary critic.

My theory on why this film fell through the cracks:  It's not really an indie and it's not really mainstream either,  which poses a marketing problem.  Klein, I suppose, could have easily made this for a major studio, but it's doubtful if either Baldwin or Geller would have been the leads.

Which would have been a loss. 

The difficult-to-see "Suburban Girl"  can be found these days on the fringes of Showtime.  It airs again on Tuesday, May 21st @ 8:25 a.m. and on Thursday, May 30th @ 8:35 a.m. and also on ShoWomen on Thursday, May 23rd @ 7:30 a.m.  Check it out or (given these hours) record it.

You'll be suprised and gratified.  I hope.
 

irony

In his latest DVD column for The New York Times, the invaluable Dave Kehr details the recent output of Fox Cinema Archives, the one-year-old, manufactured-on-demand arm of 20th Century-Fox Home Entertainment,  questioning (and with very good reason) why Fox, of all studios, would eschew letterboxing for most of its wide-screen films.

In this particular case, for this particular studio, it frankly makes no sense.

Per Dave:  "...most galling of all, for the studio that fueled the wide-screen revolution of the 1950s with the introduction of CinemaScope, wide-screen films (are) presented in pan-and-scan versions reformatted to fit the televisions of the last century, with large parts of the image cropped out."

Yes, Fox was the driving force behind CinemaScope, the one studio that could be credited, without hyperbole, with introducing and nurturing wide-screen movies.  Whoever is making decisions at 20th Century-Fox Home Entertainment these days clearly is ignorant of his/her studio's august history.  Sad.  But rather typical. Fox should confer with Warner Bros., whose Warner Archive Collection repeatedly get things right.

Generally speaking, I don't learn much from modern movie reviews.  The days of great film journalism are gone.  But Dave is an exception.  I invariably come away from his essays enlightened about something.  And this particular observation jumped out at me. Bravo, Dave!

indelible moment: Wilder's "The Apartment"

 "I don't want people to think I'm an entertainer..."

From under the desk, C.C.("Bud") Baxter (Jack Lemmon) has produced a hatbox, and out of the hatbox a black bowler, which he now puts on his head.

Bud: It's what they call the junior executive model. What do you think?

Fran (Shirley MacLaine), the elevator operator on whom Bud has a crush, looks at him blankly, absorbed in her own thoughts. 

Bud (continuing): Guess I made a boo-boo, huh?

Fran (paying attention again): No - I like it.

Bud: Really? You mean you wouldn't be ashamed to be seen with somebody in a hat like this?

Fran: Of course not.

Bud: Maybe if I wore it a little more to the side - (adjusting the hat) is that better?

Fran: Much better.

Bud:  You don't think it's tilted a little too much.

Fran takes her compact out of her uniform pocket, opens it, hands it to Bud.

Fran: Here.

Bud (examining himself in the mirror): After all, this is a conservative firm - I don't want people to think I'm an entertainer...

His voice trails off. There is something familiar about the cracked mirror of the compact -- and the fleur-de-lis pattern on the case confirms his suspicion. Fran notices the peculiar expression on his face.

Fran: What is it?

Bud (with difficulty): The mirror - it's ... broken.

Fran: I know. I like it this way - makes me look the way I feel.

"(it) makes me look the way I feel"

the fascinator

By any kind of measure, "Bates Motel," the A&E series inspired by the Robert Bloch book and the Alfred Hitchcock film, simply shouldn't work.

Functioning as a prequel that's set in the present (what?), it sounds too much like a conceit. But only on paper. In performance, it's terrific - thanks to astute, clever writing and the performances of Freddie Highmore as the young Norman Bates and by Max Thieriot (currently of "Disconnected") as the hunky older brother we never thought he had.

But the titantic supporting structure of the series is its most delicate-looking element, Vera Farmiga who plays Mrs. Bates - that's Norma Bates, to be specific - with a wink and an appreciation of nuttiness. Somehow, Farmiga's rapturous beauty both clashes with and compliments the deep-seated troubled soul that drives the ever-lovin', ever-conivin' Norma.

"Bates Motel" started out pretty much as an ensemble piece (its supporting cast is flat-out excellent) but Farmiga has become more prominent every week.  She has slowly, shrewdly assumed control of the show in much the same way that the willful Norma insidiously dominates her poor Norman.

I never thought that being smothered could be so blissful.