One-Trick Pony

One-Trick Pony
October 3, 1980
Warner Bros.
Drama, Musical
VHS
B-

Although this is a melancholy, relatively realistic movie, it is no more the biography of Paul Simon than Can't Stop the Music is the biography of the Village People.  Yes, Simon wrote the script; yes, his nine- or ten-year-old son Harper plays his character in the opening flashback; and, yes, members of his real band play the movie band.  But 39-year-old Simon wasn't 34-year-old Jonah Levin; he wasn't a one-trick pony, a one-hit wonder who'd done nothing popular since the '60s.  This is more like a parallel-universe Simon, if he were unsuccessful but still needed to perform, in this case mostly on the road, despite the strain on his family life.  (The scenes with son Matty are all good.)  The negative view of the music-business world may be Simon's though.  Certainly he was at a crossroads then, although his songs, the title track and others, are under-rated in his portfolio.  There's a moment when we see the new wave of New Wave sweeping away Simon's relatively simple sound, when his band gets a tepid response and then the crowd goes wild for the B-52s performing "Rock Lobster."  (Their "Dance This Mess Around" was in Roadie.)

It's hard to make an entertaining movie about a protagonist who's depressed, and it doesn't help that the dialogue wasn't recorded with the same care and attention as the music.  It was a relief when always articulate 36-year-old Harry Shearer made a welcome return to my movie collection (27 years after Abbott & Costello Go to Mars), as Bernie Wepner.  Simon wasn't this subdued in Annie Hall, he was mellow but he wasn't mumbling.  I couldn't even hear Blair Brown half the time, except when she yelled at him.

This is obviously one of the 1980 movies where the '60s are reassessed, and there's a scene whose dark humor has only increased with time: Jonah and the band listing dead rock & rollers. When Jonah says there must be someone English on the list, it's like CStM not knowing about AIDS; OTP doesn't know who'd be shot a couple months later.  (Simon's "The Late Great Johnny Ace" would pay tribute to John Lennon, leading to a strange moment in the reunion concert with Art Garfunkel, which I'll discuss when we get there.)

Besides the B-52s, other musicians appear as themselves.  And Merv Griffin is one of the a cappella singers.

Annie Hall

Annie Hall
April 20, 1977
United Artists
Comedy, Romance
VHS
B+

This is probably my favorite Woody Allen movie, but not because I saw it at the time.  I mean, I was 9, so I didn't get very many of the jokes then and most remembered it for the Snow White parody.  I started to appreciate it as a teenager, although I obviously get different things out of it now in middle age, having gone through the good and bad of so many romantic relationships.  It's easy to see why Annie Hall and Alvy Singer are drawn together and why they can't last, and it's interesting that this was made after Keaton and Allen broke up.

The script by Allen and Brickman is strong, with many quotable lines.  And the direction by Allen is equally good, with even the more unbelievable characters, like the one played by Shelley Duvall, believable within the world of the movie.  Although the movie is about Alvy & Annie, it also is about New York vs. California and a lot of other things.  I like that, like novelist George Meredith, Allen is able (at least at this point in his career and life) to include himself in his laundry list of what to mock.  Diane Keaton is absolutely lovable and charming here, but Annie has flaws of her own.

The supporting cast, only some of whom I've tagged, hold their own, including Goldblum with his one scene-stealing line.  Tony Roberts is much more relaxed here than he was in Star-Spangled Girl six years earlier, probably because the dialogue is so much better.  Carol Kane gives a fine early performance, as one of the women that illustrate Alvy's quote of the Groucho line about not wanting to belong to a club that would have him as a member.  Marshall McLuhan shows up as himself-- "If life were only like this!"-- and delivers a line that still cracks me up because it makes no sense yet is meant to be a put-down of a pseudo-intellectual: "You know nothing of my work!  You mean my whole fallacy is wrong."

There's a lot of fourth-wall-breaking, especially but not exclusively by Alvy.  One of the old ladies giving him advice on the street is seventy-six-year-old Paula Trueman, who would be Stick-Up Lady in Can't Stop the Music, as well as Woman on Telephone in Zelig, while another, sixty-nine-year-old Loretta Tupper, would be the music store owner in The Purple Rose of Cairo.  Another "street stranger" is Lou Picetti, who was the beauty pageant MC in Sleeper.  

One Lacey party guest, William Callaway, would be an intern in Rabbit Test.  Gary Muledeer, who's a man at the health food restaurant, would be Gary in The Gong Show Movie.  The two men who bother Alvy outside the theatre are Bob Maroff, who'd be a bartender in I Wanna Hold Your Hand, and Rick Petrucelli, who'd be a penny pitcher in Purple Rose.  "Coke fiend" John Doumanian would be a Greek waiter in Zelig and a Thanksgiving guest in Hannah and Her Sisters.  Hy Ansel, who's Joey Nichols, would play Mr. Waldbaum in Radio Days, which would feature Martin Rosenblatt, who's Alvy's uncle here, as Mr. Needleman.  One of the schoolteachers, Gary Allen, would be a board member in The Hudsucker Proxy.

The Graduate

The Graduate
December 22, 1967
Embassy
Drama, Musical
DVD
B-

Thirty-six-year-old Anne Bancroft seduces 30-year-old Dustin Hoffman, who then pursues 27-year-old Katharine Ross in this generation-gap comedy that's actually a drama.  Confused?  I think this movie has confused a lot of people over the decades.  Is Hoffman's character Benjamin a hero or an antihero?  Neither?  Is he a stalker, and if so, why is Elaine encouraging him somewhat?  Is Mrs. Robinson sexy or deranged, or both?  Neither?

Watching it this time-- and I did buy the DVD specifically for this project, although I had it on VHS-- I was most struck by how joyless the three main characters are.  The only moments of delight are when Benjamin "carries Elaine off" from her wedding, and when Benjamin is amused by the details of Elaine's out-of-wedlock conception in a Ford.  (Honestly, they couldn't come up with a funnier car?)  Is the message that upper-class suburbia is unsatisfying?  If so, why are Ben's parents and most of the other characters generally content?

I review the 1963 book here:  http://rereadingeverybookiown.blogspot.com/2012/07/graduate.html.  I just want to add a few things.  One, I do consider the movie superior, although not great.  (I'd probably give it a B if not for the last half hour, when everyone goes off the rails.)  We do see more of the emotions of the characters, including Mr. Robinson's.  The soundtrack isn't as good as I remembered, mostly due to the songs being repeated too often, although they're integrated well, especially the way the beats and scatting of "Here's to You, Mrs. Robinson" are used for humor when Ben tries to find the church and his car runs out of gas.

Aside from its relatively explicit sexual themes for its time, and the way it shows alienated youth, I think the film is most remarkable for its cast.  Even if you're bored (which I don't think you will be), you can at least have fun spotting familiar faces.  Buck Henry cowrote the script and has a nice little cameo as the desk clerk in what's probably the funniest sequence, showing Ben's nervousness about checking into the hotel.  Later, that's director Mike Nichols's comedy partner Elaine May as the girl bringing Elaine's note to Benjamin.  Mike Farrell plays one bellhop, while little person Buddy Douglas plays another.  (Douglas would go on to Pufnstuf, the show and movie.)  Two Bewitched ladies appear in a reception line, Alice Ghostley (Esmeralda) and Marion Lorne (Aunt Clara).

Arthur Tovey was an onlooker at the soap factory in Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number, is a hotel guest here, and would be a club patron in The Love God?  Another hotel guest, Frank Baker, was Bearded Gentleman in Bank in Mary Poppins.  Walter Brooke, who plugs plastics as Mr. McGuire, would be Haskell Wax in How Sweet It Is!  Brian Avery, who plays Elaine's WASPy groom Carl Smith, would be a more ethnic Herald Cohen in Sleeper.  Elizabeth Fraser, who plays Second Lady, would do 9 to 5.  Elizabeth Wilson, who plays Ben's mother, would still look young enough (at almost 60) to play Roz in that movie.  William Daniels, most famous for St. Elsewhere, I think doesn't show up in any of my other movies until The Blue Lagoon.  As Norman Fell would point out on It's Garry Shandling's Show a couple decades later, Fell was not only Jack & Janet's landlord but Dustin Hoffman's.  One of his other tenants, the one who suggests calling the cops, is 20-year-old Richard Dreyfuss, who would have a much larger and sillier role in Hello Down There.

Hoffman, Dreyfuss, Fell