For the last three years HE has been lamenting the rise of the Khmer Rouge, and pointing out parallels between cancel culture and the horrific prosecutorial atmosphere of the late ’40s and ’50s as far as Hollywood blacklists were concerned.
It is therefore…I wouldn’t say comforting as much as reassuring that The Telegraph‘s Tom Fordy has arrived at the same observation.
There’s a senior editor at a certain publication who’s actually accused me of being an alarmist with a persecution complex, and has stressed that in order to correct my ad situation I need to generate more alpha vibes and do more loving and sweet-talking.
I’ve actually been doing that all along. Hollywood Elsewhere believes in love and hugs, especially when it comes to Carey Mulligan, Billy Wilder, Lakeith Stanfield, Amanda Seyfried, Riz Ahmed, Cameron Crowe, Steve McQueen, et. al.
But we are living through a time of social terror and political repression, and it is the late ’40s and ’50s all over again, and the sooner people stop dismissing that face-palm reality and stand up to the purist nutters the better off we’ll all be.
If anyone was an auteur-level director from the ’40s to early ’50s, it was the great Billy Wilder. And yet he ducked out of the realm of personal filmmaking for a 4 and 1/2 year period in the mid ’50s. Call it his house-director phase in which he made five engaging, pro-level studio entertainments that nonetheless didn’t exactly have that distinctive Wilder stamp.
The films were Sabrina (’54), The Seven Year Itch (’55), The Spirit of St. Louis (’57), Love in the Afternoon (’57) and Witness for the Prosecution (’57).
During those 4 1/2 years, beginning with the release of Stalag 17 and ending when he began work on Some Like It Hot in early ‘58, Wilder apparently decided it would be better to stop being “Billy Wilder” for a while.
Was it because the studio chiefs (and perhaps even Wilder himself) had recoiled from the battery-acid tone and financial failure of Ace in the Hole? Was it the basic schmaltzy mood of the mid ‘50s, the era of Eisenhower-era conformity, the underlying mindset of Invasion of the Body Snatchers?
Was it some kind of twitch in his chest, something in the air that told him that it would be temporarily smarter to put away the acrid pen and sharp satirical impulses and just submit to the flow of the times? Did Wilder decide to just enjoy the money and be a successful director because there was nothing wrong with that?
Jarring social changes happened during these 4 and 1/2 years. Brando-ish rebellion (“Whadaya got?), Elvis, Little Richard & Jerry Lee, “Howl” and Neal Cassidy and Jack Kerouac, spiritual fatigue and ennui in your middle-class suburbs (No Down Payment), blacklisting & Commie witch hunts, H-bomb testing in the Pacific, monster and sci-fi movies, black leather juvies, Fats Domino, be-bop babies, The Blob.
Did Wilder feel thrown by all this? Was he amused by it? Excited? Energized? Confused?
Surely you raised these topics during your hours and hours of conversation with Wilder in the mid to late ‘90s. Did he ever give you a money quote or some kind of concise answer about any of this?
Mr. Crowe to HE: “I think there’s truth in the theory that the lack of success of Ace in the Hole gave him pause. He was very proud of that movie, he said, particularly with that wickedly dark tone that could hold a line like his wife Audrey pitched — ‘kneeling bags my nylons.’ While I was interviewing him, he heard that Spike Lee wanted to remake Ace. He was very pleased about that. He was a fan of Spike Lee and the sharpness of his voice. When I wrote other directors to ask if any of them had questions for Wilder, Spike wrote back in twenty minutes about Ace. This made Billy VERY happy.
“But in the ‘house director’ phase you are pinpointing, there are certainly movies that he was very proud of. He loved Sabrina, particularly the Holden performance. He really disliked Bogart, but was still proud of the movie and the filmmaking. Love in the Afternoon was his Lubitsch tribute, and he was proud of that, even with the age difference that kept Cooper in the shadows for many of the set-ups. And Witness had his favorite actor of all-time, Charles Laughton.
Set in Paris, Billy Wilder’s Love in the Afternoon (’57) is about an unlikely romance between a 20something cello student named Ariane Chavasse (Audrey Hepburn) and a 50something Lothario named Frank Flannagan (Gary Cooper). I’ve never seen it and am still reluctant. There’s a reason.
All my life I’ve felt that the 28 year age gap between the 55 year-old Cooper (born in ’01, film shot in ’56) and the 27 year-old Hepburn (born in ’29) was too much. In fact if you wanted to crank yourself up you could call Love in the Afternoon a late-arriving #MeToo lightning rod film….cancel Billy Wilder! He wrote and directed a “romantic” scenario in which Cooper preyed upon a naive and unsuspecting Hepburn!
I would have watched it if Cary Grant (whom Wilder tried to get) had played the Cooper role — he was 52 when the film was made in ’56, but looked mid to late 40ish. So we’d have been talking about an apparent 20-year age gap instead. That would’ve gone down pretty well.
If Cooper had better genes and looked younger (i.e., like he did in The Fountainhead, shot in ’48 when he was 47) he would’ve been a better fit for Love in the Afternoon. But Coop looked around 60 or 62 in Wilder’s film. If you squinted your eyes Love in the Afternoon felt like a thing about a guy wanting to diddle a woman who was young enough to be his granddaughter.
Wiki admission: “The film was a commercial failure in the United States. It did not resonate with American audiences in part because Cooper looked too old to be having an affair with Hepburn’s young character. Wilder himself admitted, ‘It was a flop. Why? Because I got Coop the week he suddenly got old’. However, in Europe, the film was a major success, released under the title Ariane.”
Recorded at the wedding of songwriter Peter Rafelson (son of director Bob Rafelson, a longtime Nicholson friend and collaborator), sometime in the early to mid ’80s.
Jack is speaking about an ancient toothpaste called Ipana, manufactured by Bristol-Myers Company. Infamous for its yellow color, the wintergreen-flavored toothpaste (0.243% sodium fluoride was its active ingredient) reached its peak market penetration during the 1950s. Marketing of Ipana used a Disney-created mascot named Bucky Beaver.
HE is about to watch Coming 2 America. Sorry for being the slow guy. I was going to watch it last night, and then…you don’t want to know. It’s streaming worldwide. I wasn’t a fan of the original 1988 film because I felt it was too wealth-porny, and I guess I’m not feeling today’s current because the C2A trailer makes it feel like more or less the same.
I was a huge fan of early, extra-nervy Eddie Murphy. Mr. T in a gay bar, that line of country. In ’81 or thereabouts I caught him live at the old Catch A Rising Star (1st Avenue between 77th and 78th). I saw him again at the Universal Amphitheatre in ’83…blew the roof off. His Rudy Moore in 2019’s Dolemite Is My Name was obviously a huge, historic comeback. but Craig Brewer’s film was as far away from wealth porn qs it could get.
Re-watching this poorly tinted Citizen Kane at 60 fps is (I have to be honest) arresting. My eyes are “telling ” me this. I’m sorry but increasing the frame rate energizes Gregg Toland‘s 24 fps cinematography. It’s too bad that the home-use colorizing software developed by Alexander Kozhevin isn’t more sophisticated. All it does is generate a brownish-sepia overlay. I’ll always prefer to watch black-and-white films in their original form, of course, but 60 fps conversion adds without distorting. You can’t say it doesn’t.
Congrats to Promising Young Woman‘s Carey Mulligan for being chosen as the recipient of the Cinema Vanguard Award at the 36th annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival (3.21 to 4.10). It always a favoring omen when a Best Actress contender is selected for this honor by Roger “Nick the Greek” Durling, longtime honcho of the SB festival. Mulligan will receive the award on Monday, April 5, so to speak. Hollywood Elsewhere has attended and reported on the beloved SBIFF for nearly 20 years, and it totally breaks my heart that this year’s gathering (March 31-April 10) will happen “virtually”.
Last night I filled out my final Critics Choice Awards ballot. All votes have to be in by tomorrow evening at 3 pm Pacific. The 26th annual Critics Choice Awards ceremony will be held on Sunday, 3.7, and will be broadcast live on The CW television network. Here’s how I voted…
BEST PICTURE: The Trial of the Chicago 7
BEST ACTOR: Riz Ahmed, Sound of Metal
BEST ACTRESS: Carey Mulligan, Promising Young Woman
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Paul Raci, Sound of Metal
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Olivia Colman, The Father
BEST YOUNG ACTOR/ACTRESS: Helena Zengel, News of the World
BEST ACTING ENSEMBLE: The Trial of the Chicago 7
BEST DIRECTOR: Chloé Zhao, Nomadland (spread it around)
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: Aaron Sorkin, The Trial of the Chicago 7
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: Christopher Hampton and Florian Zeller, The Father
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY: Hoyte Van Hoytema, Tenet
BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN: David Crank, Elizabeth Keenan, News of the World
BEST EDITING: Mikkel E. G. Nielsen, Sound of Metal
BEST COSTUME DESIGN: Trish Summerville, Mank
BEST HAIR AND MAKEUP: Mank (although I have to say I didn’t care for Gary Oldman‘s haircut)
BEST VISUAL EFFECTS: Tenet
BEST COMEDY: The King of Staten Island
BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM: Minari
BEST SONG: Io sì (Seen) — The Life Ahead
BEST SCORE: Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross, Mank
