directing versus filmmaking

On paper,  the proposed remake of “Carrie” is nothing short of fabulous, what with Kimberly Pierce as director, Chloë Grace Moretz and Julianne Moore, as her well-cast stars, and writer Lawrence D. Cohen recruited to update the lean script that he wrote for the Brian DePalma original in 1976.

But, in execution, the completed film is something else, and part of me would like to point to Marvel Comics wunderking Roberto Aquirre-Sacasa, brought in as co-scenarist and to seemingly mess up Cohen's model script, specifically the ending. Seemingly (I hasten to stress). 

Whatever the reason, a mess it is.

While DePalma’s “Carrie” is unusually painterly for a horror film, Pierce’s is blunt and, frankly, crass, qualities in full view in the film’s gross and gratuitous opening sequence – in which Margaret White (Moore) is a frantic, demented bystander to the blood-spurting birth of her own daughter, Carrie.  While Piper Laurie was almost ethereal as the religious-nut mother in the first film, poor Moore is presented as a perspiring, smelly hag. As for the gifted Moretz, she does little else here than walk around with her shoulders squeezed up to her ears.

It’s a hunched performance in more ways than one. Sissy Spacek, twice Moretz's age when she starred in the original, somehow seems years younger - a permamently, fascinatingly stunted child, if you will.

Pierce, whose first two films (1999’s “Boys Don’t Cry” and 2008’s “Stop-Loss”) I admire, may be a case of someone who was prematurely lauded by the critics.  Aside from being hardly prolific, she seems to lack a feel for the camera’s eye.  Pierce inarguably knows a solid story when she sees one and she’s a good director of actors, but she simply isn’t a filmmaker. And that’s what sets her apart from Brian DePalma who is.

And it’s what makes her film so wildly different from – and inferior to – the original.  The new “Carrie” underlines Kimberly Pierce’s few strengths as a director, as well as her major weaknesses as a filmmaker.   

cinema obscura: Charles Walters' "Ask Any Girl" (1959)

Michael Gordon's "Pillow Talk," released by Universal in October of 1959, is largely regarded as something of a first - "the fluff sex comedy," a modern subgenre of the time-tested battle-of-the-sexes romps. It was a huge hit, both a turning point in Doris Day's career and an on-going source of references for subsequent comedies trying to be just like it.

But predating it by a few months was Charles Walter's "Ask Any Girl," a working-girl lark released by Metro in May of that year. Shirley MacLaine, in a role that Day would patent, plays a career woman and romantic naif caught between two men - her bosses who also happen to be brothers. She's interested in nabbing dashing Gig Young, see, and leans on his older brother, stuffy David Niven, for pointers and guidance, not realizing that he's really the guy for her and that, in fact, he's interested.

On the sidelines is Rod Taylor, delightfully on the prowl.

"Ask Any Girl," a bit of wispy fun with a distant relationship to "Pygmalion," doesn't have the legendary reputation of "Pillow Talk." It virtually has no reputation at all and, for the most part, is almost impossible to see. But it's worth searching out, if only for the ace supporting cast - Elisabeth Fraser, Dodie Heath (fresh off "The Diary of Anne Frank"), Jim Backus, Claire Kelly, and the inimitable Carman Phillips.

There are a couple interesting connections here: MacLaine previously appeared with Niven in Michael Anderson's "Around the World in 80 Days" (1956) and with Phillips in Vincente Minnelli's "...Some Came Running" (1958). Niven would play opposite Day a year later in Walters' "Please Don't Eat the Daisies" (1960), and Young, of course, was something of a Day staple, appearing with her in Gordon Douglas' "Young at Heart" (1954), George Seaton's "Teacher's Pet" and Gene Kelly's "Tunnel of Love" (both 1958) and Delbert Mann's "That Touch of Mink" (1962).

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"

thursdays with kim

At long last, Turner Classic Movies showcases Kim Novak as its Star of the Month, starting tonight @ 8 p.m. (est) with a repeat of Robert Osborne's recent sit-down with the enigmatic star, an excellent Q-&-A session in which Novak proves, as she invoked in her final line in Quine's "Bell, Book & Candle" ('58), that "I'm only human."  No, there's no star turn here.

 Just some good revealing conversation.

Novak was Columbia's atypical answer to Fox's resident blonde, Marilyn - atypical in that Novak was always rather remote and reserved, compared to Monroe's playfulness, and her blondness wasn't fixed but often morphed from color to color, ranging from stark white ("The Eddie Duchin Story") to something resembling smoke ("Bell, Book & Candle").

Like Monroe, Novak had a relatively brief film career, but of her own accord, and she worked with some fascinating filmmakers - Hitchcock, Preminger,  Quine, Wilder, Logan, Medak, Figgis, Hemmings.

The 16 titles selected by Turner provide a good glimpse of her often unnoticed versatility, but conspicuously missing are her haunting work in Quine's "Strangers When We Meet" ('60) and her game take on Doris Day in Gordon's "Boys' Night Out" ('62).  Hitchcock's "Vertigo" ('58) is, of course, the pick of the litter, but this time out, pay close heed to her palpable melancholy in Sidney's wrenchingly funereal "The Eddie Duchin Story" ('56) and her perfect duet with Jack Lemmon (that's him above paying homage) in Quine's faux Hitchcock romp, "The Notorious Landlady," ('62), masterfully written by Blake Edwards and Larry Gelbart.

Thursday, September 5

8 p.m. – Kim Novak: Live from the TCM Classic Film Festival (2013)

10 p.m. – Vertigo (1958)

12:15 a.m. – The Man With the Golden Arm (1955)

2:30 a.m. – Pushover (1954)

4:15 a.m. – Five Against the House (1955)

Thursday, September 12

8 p.m. – Picnic (1955)

10 p.m. – Pal Joey (1957)

Midnight – The Eddy Duchin Story (1956)

2:15 a.m. – Jeanne Eagels (1957)

Thursday, September 19

8 p.m. – Bell, Book & Candle (1959)

10 p.m. – Kim Novak: Live from the TCM Classic Film Festival (2013)

11 p.m. – Kiss Me, Stupid (1965)

1:15 a.m. – The Notorious Landlady (1962)

3:30 a.m. – Phffft! (1954)

Thursday, September 26

8 p.m. – Middle of the Night (1959)

10:15 p.m. – Of Human Bondage (1964)

Midnight – The Legend of Lylah Claire (1968)

2:15 a.m. – The Great Bank Robbery (1969) – TCM Premiere

4 a.m. – Kim Novak: Live from the TCM Classic Film Festival (2013)

cinema obscura: Norman Jewison's "Gaily, Gaily" (1969)

Based on Ben Hecht's autobiographical novel (in which he named himself Ben Harvey), the endearing "Gaily, Gaily" was supposed to be a huge year-end hit for United Artists, director Norman Jewison and star Beau Bridges in 1969.  It was designed as a big Christmas pic with Oscar pretentions. Sadly, it didn't turn out that way.

Perhaps the best piece of Americana produced by a Canadian filmmaker, "Gaily, Gaily" was a willfully old-fashioned entertainment that had the misfortune to be released smack-dab in the middle of the New Wave of American filmmaking.  Audiences - and critics - who had lost their cherries to "Midnight Cowboy" and "Where's Poppa?" (both also from U.A.) greeted "Gaily, Gaily" with smug indifference.  It was viewed as corn/cornpone, something decidedly square,  and, as the song goes, "How you gonna keep them down on the farm after they've seen Paree?"

You can't. Audiences stayed away.

Jewison had scored an Oscar-style bullseye with "In the Heat of the Night" and was rewarded with a bigger budget. "Gaily, Gaily" was made on the scale of an old roadshow film.  Bridges, after a stint doing TV, attracted at lot of attention with his break-out role in "For the Love of Ivy" and was considered the Next.  Big.  Thing.  So Jewison nabbed him for both "Gaily, Gaily" and his next film for U.A., "The Landlord," based on the Kristin Hunter novel.  Also, Bridges sort of resembled Jewison and I'd like to think that Jewison was so entranced by Hecht's novel that he wanted the young hero to look like him.  Just a thought.

Jewison never got to direct "The Landlord."  By then, he was deep in pre-production on "Fiddler on the Roof," another year-end prestige/Oscar holiday film.  Instead, he turned the project over to his house editor, Hal Ashby, who made a most auspicious directorial debut.  Rumor has it that Bridges was the original choice to play Oliver in "Love Story," but turned it down in order to honor his committment to "The Landlord."
 
In terms of art, it was a wise and honorable move.  In terms of commerce, however, it was a disaster.  "Love Story" went on to be a bigger hit than it should have been, while it took decades for "The Landlord" to earn the respect and admiration that it eventually received.

Essentially a series of breezy skits set in 1920s Chicago and its earthy newspaper culture, "Gaily, Gaily" is driven by the apparent love for the material and the city that Jewison and his scenarist Abram S. Ginnes share with Hecht.  It basically consists of a lot of colorful characters banging and bumping into each other and slamming their way in and out of rooms and newsrooms. Bridges plays Hecht/Harvey as a young would-be writer aching to be a reporter, who is taken under wing by Melina Mercouri's brothel madam (Queen Lil is her name and she is) and by the invaluable Brian Keith as a star columnist who becomes Ben's mentor and bad example (Francis Sullivan is his name and he's as Irish as he sounds).  This may have been Keith's best film role, and few scenes are as memorable as when Keith grabs on to a disreputable doctor (Charles Tyner) and, as Pauline Kael pointed out in her review of "Gaily, Gaily," shouts, "You quack!"  It's worth sitting through the movie just to hear that.

The supporting cast consists of the great character actors Hume Cronyn, George Kennedy, Wilfred Hyde-White, John Randolph and, most especially, Roy Poole, as a movie city editor to end all city movie editors.

Also, this was the film in which Margot Kidder (Jewison's fellow Canadian) made her debut - as an innocent young prostitute, natch

Tom Peters has a small but indelible bit as Carl Sandburg who attends one of Queen Lil's soriee's and regales everyone with a rough draft of his poem, "Chicago":  

    "Hog Butcher for the World,
     Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
     Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
     Stormy, husky, brawling,
     City of the Big Shoulders..."

Heaven.

"Gaily, Gaily" airs tonight @ 6 p.m. (est) on Turner Classic Movies.

Note in Passing:  Released concurrently with "Gaily, Gaily" was another big year-end production set during the same time period - Mark Rydell's "The Reivers."  Unlike "Gaily, Gaily," however, Rydell's film was a hit and is still fondly remembered.  Of course, the difference is, "The Reivers" had a major star in the lead - Steve McQueen.