stephen's folly

My wife and I spent a pleasing afternoon recently in Princeton, New Jersey - specifically at the campus movie house, the Garden Theater, where we saw the National Theater Live screening of the current London revival of Stephen Sondheim's hugely creative one-act musical, "Follies," from 1971.

I had seen the original - in another lifetime - at the Winter Garden Theater in New York and remember it as an unusually singular, once-in-a-lifetime musical experience. James Goldman's book for the show ostensibly deals with the reunion of former showgirls from decades earlier who performed for Dimitri Weissmann at his eponymous theater which, in 1971, is in the throes of being razed. There are dozens of characters but "Follies" is interested largely in only two of the women, the unpretentious Sally and the imperious Phyllis, their respective husbands, Buddy and Ben, and - here's where the show gets tricky - their former selves as young people.

There is no "plot," per se, as Sondheim himself has been quick to point out, just two pseudo-storylines of bits and pieces running parallel to each other. As the older Sally, Phyllis, Buddy and Ben circle each other, making bitter accusations, their younger selves shadow them, like ghosts, and often, the young and the old characters intermingle. It's quite intricate and, as such, camouflages the fact that "Follies" really has no heft as a story or that, at best, it's a cliche about mismatched, unfulfilled partners.

Still, it's transfixing. And those Sondheim songs!  "Broadway Baby", "I'm Still Here", "Too Many Mornings", "Could I Leave You?", "In Buddy's Eyes," "Waiting for the Girls Upstairs," "The God-Why-Don't-You-Love-Me Blues," "Losing My Mind" and "The Right Girl." Sondheim wrote a whopping 20-plus songs for the show and, reportedly, tossed just as many more.

I could go on.

The original production was one of the costliest stage musicals ever mounted. Sondheim has referred to it often ( and with a sense of humor, I gather) as a "pastiche" - yes, but a rather expensive pastiche, I'd say. It  was an artistic/critical success but not a financial one.

Given that, it came as something of a surprise when, in the late 1970s, rumors circulated that Fox wanted to film "Follies" with Doris Day as Phyllis and Debbie Reynolds as Sally, terrific, spot-on casting of those two roles. One can only imagine what the film would have been like, but it was never made and my hunch is that what Sondheim, Goldman and director Hal Prince achieved on the stage was simply resistant to any kind of adaptation - an effective film that would work on its own terms.

Because of its scale, "Follies" has been rarely revived. In 1985, it was staged by Herbert Ross in concert form at Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall, with Lee Remick as Phyllis and Barbara Cook as Sally, as well as Carol Burnett, Mandy Patinkin, George Hearn, Elaine Stritch, Phyllis Newman and Adolph Green and Betty Comden. There was a full 2001 Broadway revival with Blythe Danner as Phyllis and Judith Ivey as Sally - and Treat Williams, Gregory Harrison, Betty Garrett and Polly Bergen.

But I still have dreams about what might have been with Day and Reynolds in a film version and I believe that a '70s filmmaker with a great imagination (Altman perhaps?) could have conquered the adaptation, especially considering that "Follies" on stage was already quite cinematic. 

But, for all intent and purposes, the taped version of Britian's National Theater revival is the film version of "Follies." Dominic Cooke's staging brings a filmmaker's eye to the material and the work of the director who filmed Cooke's staging, Tim Van Someren, heightens everything with visuals that swoop and sway, moving in tandem with the performers and often zooming upward and looking down at the activity on the proscenium.

It is certainly the definitive "Follies," with Imelda Staunton bringing an exciting new dimension (and a movie intimacy) to the role of Sally.

The National Theater version also preserves the original's free-flowing structure. All of the subsequent revivals inserted an intermission break.

It runs two hours and thirty minutes without pause.

Stephen Sondheim and movies have always been an uneasy mix, despite his enthusiasm (often misplaced and too generous) for the few films made from his work. Only the films of "West Side Story" (1961) and "Gypsy" (1962) - his collaborations as lyricist with Leonard Bernstein and Jule Styne, respectively - are faithful renderings of their stage counterparts.

"A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum" (1966), his first solo show, was given an art-film, European feel by director Richard Lester and is fun to watch - but, on film, is not much of a musical anymore.

What happened to all the songs?

A decade later, a truncated movie of "A Little Night Music" (1977) - filmed by its stage director Hal Prince, no less - came along and ... ditto. Where are the songs? One can almost see scissors clipping the songs "The Miller's Son" and "Liaisons" out of the film (and, yes, they were indeed filmed).

There have been filmed stage versions of "Pacific Overtures" (1976), "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" (1982), "Sunday in the Park with George" (1986), "Into the Woods" (1991), "Passion" (1996), "Putting It Together" (1996), "Company" (2007) and "Merrily, We Roll Along (2013), all faithful and all of which went to TV (usually PBS).

Both "Sweeney Todd" and "Into the Woods" were made into feature films that, for some bizarre reason, Sondheim endorsed. "Sweeney" (2007), filmed by Tim Burton, deleted some precious songs, including the necessary "The Ballad of Sweeney Todd," and completely eliminated the show's chorus. This meant that the song, "God, That's Good!," no longer included those words among its lyric. As for "Into the Woods" (2013), directed by Rob Marshall, one watches it and wonders why it was such a sensation on stage.

Currently, Sondheim is represented on screen by Greta Gerwig's marvelous "Lady Bird," in which her teenage characters elect to perform "Merrily, We Roll Along" as their annual school musical. One of its best - and most eclectic - moments in the film comes when Saoirse Ronan auditions for the show by singing Sondheim's "Everybody Says Don't!" from 1962's "Anyone Can Whistle," sung by Harry Guardino in the original. Just fabulous.

Regarding Comments: All comments are enthusiastically appreciated but are moderated before publication. Replies signed "unknown" or "anonymous" are not encouraged. Please sign any response with a name (real or fabricated) or initials.  Be advised that a "name" will be assigned to any accepted post signed "unknown" or "anonymous." Thank you.

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~images~

(from top)

~Gloria Swanson, in a photo that inspired "Follies," posing at what once was New York's Roxy Theater in October of 1960.

~Photography: Eliot Elisofon/Life magazine 1960©

~One-sheet poster for the original 1971 Broadway production of "Follies"

 ~Doris Day and Debbie Reynolds at a studio event in the 1950s; they were once considered for a film version of "Follies" 

~Photography: MGM 1958©

~Imelda Staunton in the 2017 London revival of "Follies"

~National Theater 2017©

~Stephen Sondheim, circa 1990

~Saoirse Ronan singing Sondheim's "Everybody Says Don't" in "Lady Bird"

~A24 2017©

cinema obscura: Allen Funt's "What Do You Say to a Naked Lady?" (1970)

My second position as a movie critic was for a scrappy Philadelphia tabloid affectionately known as the Dirty News. When I arrived there, porno was riding high, thanks to the crossover success of "Deep Throat" and "Behind the Green Door," titles that made it easy for married suburban couples to go to dirty movies, and the makers of those dark blue movies, apparently feeling emboldened, actually screened them for professional critics.

So during my first few weeks in Philly, I found myself sitting across the aisle from my friend Ernest Schier of The Philadelphia Bulletin, watching things with titles like "Meatballs" (starring the ubiquitous Harry Reems) and "Sweden - Between Heaven and Hell." Ernie would snort comically through these movies (that's when he wasn't snoring) as I wondered how the hell I was going to construct a credible review of what I was watching.

I was 21 and feeling panicked. I still can't quite believe that I actually wrote a review of a porno titled "Meatballs" and that it ran in a daily newspaper as if it were perfectly normal. The new normal then.

Concurrently, perhaps inspired by their lowly relatives, Hollywood studio movies also became sexually liberated. Suddenly, the dormant X rating was being utilized for major movies made by estimable filmmakers - Haskell Wexler's "Medium Cool," Stanley Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange," Ken Russell's "The Devils," Sidney Lumet's "The Last of the Mobile Hotshots," Sam Peckinpah's "The Wild Bunch," Bernardo Bertolucci's "Last Tango in Paris," Ralph Bakshi's animation "Fritz the Cat" and, of course, John Schlesinger's "Midnight Cowboy," Oscar's Best Picture of 1969.

Some of these titles were re-edited to qualify for the R rating, while other films, threatened with the X, voluntarily went under the knife before their release. That was the fate a couple decades later for two by Paul Verhoeven -  "Flesh + Blood" and "RoboCop." It was around this time that the movie industry belatedly noticed that porno had appropriated the X rating (and its progeny, the XX rating and the XXX rating) and invented NC-17 in response. "The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover" anyone?

Anyway, all this is in preamble to my recollection of the most curious Hollywood X movie of all - Allen Funt's "What Do You Say to a Naked Lady?," which opened in Philadelphia on Wednesday, March 11th, 1970 and at one-half of a twin called The Duke (the other being The Duchess), at 1605-1607 Chestnut Street. (Thanks to reader Jimbo for the heads-up.)

Funt was like a family friend or relative at the time, due to the popularity of "Candid Camera," a novel idea which he expanded with  "What Do You Say to a Naked Lady?," the first of only two movies that he made during his long career.

The idea behind the film is Funt's curiosity about the public's true feelings about X-rated movies. He approached this question by making an X-rated film himself. Funt took advantage of the new permissiveness of the era, employing nudity from every possible angle, including full-frontal. And his shots aren't stingy but lengthy. His film leaves nothing to the imagination as his hidden cameras leer at naked bodies and attitudes towards sex.

The reactions of the average American to these shots and Funt's questions are very funny and, not surprisingly, revealing. He tells one of his unsuspecting subjects, a middle-aged woman, about how many students are "matriculating" and asks how she feels about that word. Not good, she says, obviously thinking that Funt is talking about masturbation. There are other words invoked, all innocent, but they're also deemed filthy.

But most of the film is about Mr. and Mrs. American being confronted by naked strangers in office buildings and on city streets and even highways.

After the film opened, Funt visited Philaldephia to promote it and I joined him for breakfast at a hotel called the Warwick, worried that I would also be caught in the act of being myself. It was one of my most satisfying interviews, with Funt being absolutely candid (no pun intended) as he noted how unhappy he was that his movie was being sold as "a Candid Camera film by Allen Funt." "Trademarks can hurt you," he shrugged.

And he talked enthusiastically about future movies that he never made - one a documentary following children as they age from two to five (shades of Richard Linklater here) because "children lose their innocence during this period." Another was a narrative about "ghetto furniture dealers who keep their poverty-stricken patrons in debt, with one merchant teaching his son the tricks of fraud by filming, Candid Camera-style, actual hoodwinking transactions." Funt's passion was transfixing.

While Allen Funt would go on to make a second film, the 1972 PG-rated hidden-camera documentary, "Money Talks" (about how people, including celebrities, relate to money), I've no idea why he never got to make the two that he described so enthusiastically, but they seemed promising to me and I felt compelled to share these missed opportunities with you today. And re-reading my "Lady" review and interview with him, I also feel this yen to experience Funt's little film again,arguably the most curious X-rated movie ever made. And perhaps even the most relevant.

Regarding Comments: All comments are enthusiastically appreciated but are moderated before publication. Replies signed "unknown" or "anonymous" are not encouraged. Please sign any response with a name (real or fabricated) or initials.  Be advised that a "name" will be assigned to any accepted post signed "unknown" or "anonymous." Thank you.

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~images~

(from top)

~One-sheet movie poster for "What Do You say to a Naked Lady?"

~Publicity shot of Allen Funt

~One of the more discreet shots in "What Do You Say to a Naked Woman? (the only kind newspapers and magazines could run)

~photography: United Artists (1970)© 

façade: Carl Reiner

Back on October 14th, in an essay titled small screen, big screen, I celebrated those TV personalities who moved into feature films during the 1980s, seemingly in tandem, and who turned out some pretty impressive movies - among them, Danny DeVito, Penny Marshall, her brother Garry Marshall, Rob Reiner, Leonard Nimoy and, of course, Ron Howard.

In response, Mike Schlesinger gently reminded me that I had overlooked Henry Winkler, but my defense was that while Winkler did direct two (and only two) amiable features - Billy Crystal's "The Memory of Me" and Burt Reynolds' "Cop & 1/2" - his work did not have the impact of, say, DeVito's "The War of the Roses," Penny Marshall's "Awakenings," James L. Brooks' "Terms of Endearment" and "Broadcast News" or anything by Howard.

Mike's comment stayed with me and I thought about who else I might have forgotten. One name came to mind - Carl Reiner. True, Reiner predates his television peers by a good decade - he emerged as a film director in the 1970s - but he certainly deserved to be referenced in the piece as something as a trailblazer, one of the first to make the transition.

Reiner, who is now a spry 95, has a rich, enviable comic history in television, having worked with both Sid Ceasar and Mel Brooks. After these internships, he struck out on his own, with the invaluable help and support of producer Sheldon Leonard, and created "The Dick Van Dyke" show in 1961, the template for every sophisticated sitcom that followed. 

Not unlike several other sitcoms that became fabulous successes,"The Dick Van Dyke" show was an accident. Reiner had originally written it with idea of starring in it himself.

In a pilot film  titled "Head of the Family," produced in 1959 for CBS, he played the TV writer Rob Petrie and Barbara Britton and Sylvia Miles co-starred in the roles that would subsequently be played by Mary Tyler Moore and Rose Marie when Van Dyke, then a hit on Broadway in the 1960 stage version of "Bye Bye Birdie," came on board as the star.

Now a success on TV without being in anyone's shadow, Reiner moved into film, writing his first screenplay - the astute, acerbic jab at advertising, "The Thrill of It All" (1963), directed by Norman Jewison and starring Doris Day and James Garner (and featuring Reiner in a series of witty cameos).

The same year, his semi-autobiographical novel, "Enter Laughing," was adapted for the stage by Joseph Stein and opened at Henry Miller's Theater on March 13th, 1963 with Alan Arkin in the lead role (playing Reiner's alter ego). This leads to a string of fascinating connections (or coincidences): Reiner would work with Jewison two more times - writing the script for "The Art of Love" (1965) and then acting for Jewison in the once-popular "The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming" (1966). One of Reiner's co-stars in "The Russians Are Coming..." - a hilarious all-star lark barely regarded these days - was ... Alan Arkin.

A year later, Reiner made his big-screen directorial debut with the film version of "Enter Laughing" (1967), another terrific comedy that's been unaccountably forgotten, starring José Ferrer, Elaine May and Reni Santoni in the role played on stage by Arkin. (Arkin looked youthful enough on stage but couldn't pass for a twenty-something actor on screen.)

Reiner wrote his own adaptation. Of course.

In 1969, he directed Van Dyke and Michelle Lee in "The Comic" (originally titled "Billy Bright"), a tiny, charming but ultimately forgettable vaudeville-based film, but a year later, in 1970, Reiner made something of a splash with "Where's Poppa?," an envelope-pushing comedy aimed  at the counterculture "youth" audience of the time. This was not your grandma's Sid Ceasar comedy, but it is close to the films that Mel Brooks would successfully make.

The subject of "Where's Poppa?," starring Ruth Gordon and George Segal as mother and son, was momism, and it was greeted with controversy when its jaw-dropping fade-out scene was deleted at the 11th hour, following a testy New York press junket. (The sequence was subsequently restored for home entertainment.) I attended the aforementioned junket and remember Reiner announcing to the media the morning after the screening that the scene in question was determined to be "offensive."

To which a joker in the crowd shouted, "The whole film's offensive!"

By today's (lowered) standards, "Where's Poppa?" would be rated PG.

The film, which had its supporters and still has a cult following, put a damper on Reiner's movie ambitions. After that, he worked largely in TV again, although many years later, he directed the popular George Burns-John Denver film, "On God!" (1977), and  Henry Winkler's "The One and Only" (1978).

It took ten years before Reiner's film career would truly kick back into action. The movie was "The Jerk" (1979) and it was the first of a fruitful collaboration with Steve Martin. Suddenly, Carl Reiner was trendy.

Each film that Reiner made with Martin got better - "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid" (1982), "The Man with Two Brains" (1983) and "All of Me" (1984).

By now, those other directors from television were active and prolific, including his son, Rob Reiner. Having led the way (and having parted from Martin), Reiner started to slow down.

He directed an esoteric little film with the British comic, Robert Lindsay, called "Bert Rigby, You're a Fool" (1989) and a promising comedy with Kirstie Alley and Bill Pullman, "Sibling Rivalry" (1990) which seems to have the fingerprints of studio tampering. Its flaws notwithstanding, I like "Sibling Rivalry," as well as the last movie that Reiner has directed to date, "That Old Feeling" (1997), a refreshingly old-fashioned comedy that pairs Bette Midler perfectly with the much-missed Dennis Farina.

As an actor, Reiner was pleasing company, a quality that came through in the handful of films that he directed. He had a good run as a filmmaker and, now that he's seemingly returned to acting (Steven Soderberph's "Ocean's Eleven" trilogy), his friendly face is a most welcomed presence.

Regarding Comments: All comments are enthusiastically appreciated but are moderated before publication. Replies signed "unknown" or "anonymous" are not encouraged. Please sign any response with a name (real or fabricated) or initials.  Be advised that a "name" will be assigned to any accepted post signed "unknown" or "anonymous." Thank you.

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~images~

(from top)

~Carl Reiner on the set of "The Thrill of It All" with stars Doris Day and James Garner
~photography: Universal-International 1963© 

~Publicity shot of the writer at work

~photography: CBS 1960©

~Reiner's opening credits for "Head of the Family" (precursor to "The Dick Van Dyke Show")
~photography: CBS 1959©

~Reiner in "The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming" 
~photography: United Artists 1966© 

~George Segal and Ruth Gordon in Reiner's "Where's Poppa?" 
~photography: United Artists 1970© 

~Reiner on the set of "The Jerk" with Steve Martin 
~photography: Universal 1979© 

~Martin and Lily Tomlin in "All of Me"
~photography: Universal 1984©