fantasy remake: "Born Free" with Julia and George

  Roberts and Clooney on the cover of the December, 2001 Esquire

A favorite parlor game - at least among movie geeks - is the fantasy remake. That's when you daydream aloud with friends about who you would cast in a remake. I've been playing this game for years and thought it might make a playful recurring feature on this blog.

Case in point: "Born Free," first made in 1966 by director James Hill and released by Columbia Pictures

Nearly everyone knows the story. Based on the book by Joy Adamson, the film chronicled how Adamson and her husband, George, a game warden in Kenya, save, adopt and raise a lion cub who they name Elsa.

As Elsa nears maturity and yearns for freedom, the Adamsons have a tough decision to make - releasing Elsa back into the wild, even though she has come to depend on them and love them.

More to the point, they've come to depend on and love her.

The decision to re-educate Elsa so that she can survive the wild is a painful one - and one that has touched just about everyone, but especially children and animal lovers, for years. The material also makes even animal lovers complicit in the incarceration/captivity, however thoughtful, of creatures who were born free - and deserve to be free.

"Born Free" screams out to be remade - a big remake, one positioned during the family-friendly Christmas holiday season.

The topping would be my cast.

In the '66 film, the real-life husband-and-wife team, Virginia McKenna and Bill Travers, played the Adamsons. My cast? Drum roll, please.

Julia Roberts and George Clooney.

Why?

Well, first, they work well together and would be extemely effective, both together and individually, in these roles.

Secondly, Roberts loves animals, as evidenced by her poignant turns on two episodes of the "Nature" TV series - "From Orphan to King" (2005) and "Wild Horses of Mongolia with Julia Roberts" (2000). Her feelings for animals in these episodes are downright palpable.

So, a remake of "Born Free" would not only satisfy Roberts' affection for animals, but would also put her in a hugely commercial story for family audiences, opposite a close friend and one of her favorite leading men.

I say, "Do it!"  End of fantasy.

i'm sick of it already

CBS's relentless promotion of its "Modern Family" wannabe personifies the adage, "Familiarity breeds contempt."

the summer of '62

credit © 1962 Bert Stern

Marilyn Monroe in late June 1962, six weeks before her death, as photographed by Bert Stern for Vogue magazine

Forgive me, but I plan to traipse down memory lane today (and seriously date myself).

Every year, as the summer movie season begins to wind down in August, I become nostalgic for the bittersweet season of 1962.  Ah, yes, 1962...

I vividly remember my father driving me to Mass on Sunday, August 5^th in '62 and picking me up an hour later with the announcement that Marilyn Monroe had died.  Marilyn.  MM. My first movie crush. Dead.

A profound loss that was very personal to me.

That summer, my parents enrolled me at Steelman's Business School to learn typing (because the Catholic school that I attended allowed only girls to take typing classes) and also signed me up at a Rick's Gym (because I was a skinny movie nerd).  I went to Steelman's at 8 a.m., the gym at 10 and then I'd have lunch at a cozy little place called Calico Kitchen.

My lunch was always the same - a Texas Tommy and a black-&-white milk shake. I believe that the Texas Tommy sandwich no longer exists, but it was fab-u-lous - a hot dog, split down the center with a strip of pickle and cheese tucked in, and then wrapped in bacon and stuffed inside a bun.

Plus fries.

I'm amazed that I survived puberty.

Then I'd go to a noon movie at one of two theaters in downtown Camden, New Jersey - the Stanley, a sprawling palace, or the art-deco Savar (which was conveniently next-door to Calico Kitchen).

On August 6^th, the day after Marilyn passed, instead of working out at Rick's, I spent most of my time there reading about her in all the local papers - The Philadelphia Bulletin, The Philadelphia Inquire, The Daily News and the Camden Courier-Post.  I clipped out the articles to keep.

I was heartbroken and reluctant to see a movie that day. I felt guilty. It seemed wrong. But the Savar was showing a Jack Lemmon comedy, "The Notorious Landlady," and, given that I loved Lemmon, I couldn't resist.  So I had my Texas Tommy and fries and spent the next two hours with Jack.

"The Notorious Landlady" remains one of my all-time favorite films, not just because it's a terrific, clever comedy but largely because of the situation, the time and the place, that embrace it.  It's a special movie that perhaps no one else views - or can appreciate - quite the way I do.

I binged-watched it that summer, seeing it multiple times.

But the summer of '62 also holds a special place in my heart because of the rich array of films that moved in and out of the local theaters - "The Music Man" ... "Lolita" ... "Advise and Consent" ... "Hatari" ... "Lonely Are the Brave" ... "Five Finger Exercise" ... "The Counterfeit Traitor" ... "That Touch of Mink" ... "My Geisha" ... "Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation" ... "David and Lisa" ... "Birdman of Alcatraz" ... "The Interns" ... Cinerama's "The Wonderful World of the Brother Grimm" ... the Hope-Crosby reunion comeback, "The Road to Hong Kong" ... Elvis' version of "Kid Galahad."

And Kim Novak had two films released within the same month - "Boys' Night Out," which her company Kimco produced, and a comedy directed by her then-significant other, Richard Quine, and co-starring her frequent screen partner, Jack Lemmon ... "The Notorious Landlady."

It's a film that I watch every August 6^th.

Note in Passing: The movie year 1962, in general, is arguably the greatest in film history, surpassing (yes) even 1939 - something which I addressed back in 2012 in this essay.

The Marilyn Artwork: Photographer Bert Stern had three sessions with Marilyn Monroe for Vogue magazine in late June 1962, six weeks before her death. These sessions, as evidenced here, produced extraordinarily beautiful and unique images of Marilyn.

façade: gary cooper (and his brothers)

It's a given.  Extroverts have always been well-liked, admired, even celebrated, while introverts remain unpopular and, quite often, suspect.  And social media has only exaggerated these extremes by simple virtue of the fact that it is more compatible with narcissism than with modesty.

I bring up the extroversion/introversion contrast because, to a degree, it applies to actors. Much like show "American Idol," whose participants predictably belt, shout and scream unmemorable songs to the rafters, acting in modern American movies has become a matter of overkill.

More is not enough.

For years now, whenever actors speak of what performer from the past they most admire, the usual suspect is invoked - that master of overacting, Marlon Brando. Every actor has delusions of being the next Brando or his itchy protégé, James Dean - men you can see "acting."

This is my roundabout way of honoring Gary Cooper, an actor often described as "laid-back," meaning that he largely underacted, never so effectively than in his 1941 Oscar winner, Howard Hawks' compulsively watchable, "Sergeant York." Given the heated acting climate today, where actors underline and italicize everything, it's difficult to image this particular Cooper performance commanding any respect from people who should know better (read: other actors and, yes, movie critics).

Cooper's quiet acting style represented an ineffable brand of manhood that's also gone missing: He effortlessly projected strong innocence and innocent strength. Yes, innocence - now an undesirable trait for men/actors to embody (as evident in the dubious acting choices of Tom Cruise, Liam Neeson, Robert Downey, Jr. and - well, I could go on).

Gary Cooper has had his on-screen heirs but they've also been largely underrated and dismissed. I'm thinking of Kevin Costner and his appealingly casual acting style (as well as his penchant for socially-conscious material), and Steve McQueen, who found stillness in his tough-guy roles and was even better in his atypical parts ("Baby, The Rain Must Fall," "Love with the Proper Stranger" and "The Reivers").

These are men you can't catch "acting."  Not for a second. Coop's boys.

Note in Passing: My friend and colleague, Carrie Rickey, wrote a compelling essay on this subject for her Flickgrrl site on 26 January, 2011 when she was reviewing for The Philadelphia Inquirer. In the piece, Carrie questioned, "Is the Oscar for Best Acting or Most Acting?," anchoring her query to the over-the-top, Oscar-winning work of Christian Bale and Melissa Leo in David O. Russell's "The Fighter."  It's an astute question, given that Mark Wahlberg's quiet title-role performance is actually the most satisfying one in that entertaining, if somewhat chaotic, film.

But few people acknowledged Wahlberg's work back in '11 - or his subtly comic performance in Russell's "I ♥ Huckabee" which, for my money, was arguably the best male performance of 2004.  Again, no-frills acting.

cinema obscura: The Director's Cut of Colin Higgins' "Best Little Whorehouse..." (1982)

Back in the day, I interviewed Burt Reynolds on the Charlotte, N.C. set of what would become (arguably) one of his lesser films, "Stroker Ace."

It was 1982 and Burt's "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas" had just opened. He was very high on it and, after the interview in his trailer, he put on a cassette of "Whorehouse" outtakes - all musical stuff, including a different song written for the opening credits by Dolly Parton- "Chick-Chick-Chicken Ranch" - in lieu of  the song that subsequently opened the movie, "20 Fans" (by Carol Hall who wrote all the songs for the original Broadway production) - and a soulful solo by Burt called "(Where) Stallions Run" which never made it into the truncated theatrical release. I've never quite grasped why studios "tweak" their musicals by editing out ... music.

You know, the reason musicals are made - the song and dance numbers.

Anyway, way back in 2002, when Universal released Colin Higgins' film on DVD, advertising "outtakes" among the bonus features, I fully expected those outtakes to be the amazing stuff that filled Burt's VHS tape. Wrong. The outtakes were the kind of blooper reels that Burt regularly screened for Johnny Carson's and Mike Douglas' TV audiences during the 1970s and '80s - you know, stuff of Charles Durning flubbing his lines, Dolly coming on like Mae West and Burt breaking up over some Dom DeLuise gaff. Strictly mundane. What the heck happened to all the missing musical goodies?

Surprisingly, not even "(Where) Stallions Run" made the disc - surprising because the song was reinstated for the film's TV broadcasts, presumably to fill it out after the more randy material was excised by the TV censors.

In his comments on the film on Amazon.com, Greg M. Pasqua reports that "over 30 minutes of film was cut from the Director's print" prior to its release in '82. (The release print of the film clocks in at 115 minutes.)

Among the missing numbers noted by Pasqua are two written for the film by Parton - "A Gamble Either Way" and "Stallions' Ways," both of which appear on Parton's "Burlap and Satin" album. Actually, the title of the song on Parton's album isn't "Stallions' Ways," but "A Cowboy's Ways,"
which, it turns out, is an alternative title for the aforementioned "(Where) Stallions Run," which was reworked for Reynolds by Parton. (Got that?)

Pasqua reports that an entire subplot from the play, involving the hiring of a shy girl (Andrea Pike) who grows into a woman during the course of the storyline, was elminated, along with one of the better-known songs from the stage production, "Girl, You're a Woman," inspired by that subplot.  

Other songs from Carol Hall's stage score that were eliminated from the film include "Watch Dog," "Doatsy Mae," "No Lies," "Good Old Girl," "Twenty Four Hours of Lovin'" and "The Bus From Amarillo."

 
"Also," writes Pasqua, "smaller roles from the Broadway show were cut, including the abbreviated role of Angel (played by Valerie Leigh Bilxer), the (prostitute) who wants to see her little boy for Christmas, and other scenes involving Dolly and the (ranch) girls. Longer cuts of the big musical numbers also exist ('The Aggie Song,' '20 Fans' and 'Little Bitty Pissant Country Place'). All of these would make for a pretty good Special Edition."

Agreed.  And, for the record, I like the film, always did - even at the time of its release when it was unfashionable for any critic to admit so.

And now that the 2002 DVD is out-of-print, it would be great if Universal finally releases the director's cut on Blu-ray - or at least include the deleted and unused musical numbers as outtakes.

My advice: Just call Burt.  He has them. Or once did.

Note in Passing:  Becoming a film was not easy for “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.”  Universal was reportedly so enthusiastic about the property that it rather hastily agreed that the movie version would be co-directed by two men who oversaw the Broadway production, actor Peter Masterson and song-and dance wiz, Tommy Tune (who also choreographed the stage show).  Burt Reynolds, the first star to be cast, was apparently fine with the idea, but matters seemed to change when Dolly Parton signed on as its leading lady and I guess Burt backed her up.

“Whorehouse” was Parton’s second film, following her debut in “Nine to Five” (1980), which was Colin Higgins's second film as a director (after having written the screenplay for Hal Ashby’s “Harold and Maude” of 1971 and directed Goldie Hawn and Chevy Chase in “Foul Play” in 1978.)

My hunch is that Parton felt connected to Higgins and preferred him to guide her in her second film, given that she did such memorable work for him in “Nine to Five.”  So, Higgins came on board as director. He would direct only three films, "Best Little Whorehouse" being his third and last.

Colin Higgins died in 1988 of AIDS.

indelible moment: "Strangers on a Train"

Hitchcock, working without the benefit of CGI