Kick-Back Friday: September 2008 Archives
Trouble in Paradise (1932): All's fair in love and con artistry when two thieving soulmates, Gaston and Lily, pair up to scam a perfume heiress, Madame Colet. There's plenty of naughty repartee in this early talkie, before the MPAA production code was duly enforced.
Gaston: Madame Colet, if I were your father, which fortunately I am not, and you made any attempt to handle your own business affairs, I would give you a good spanking, in a business way, of course.
Madame Colet: What would you do if you were my secretary?
Gaston: The same thing.
Madame Colet: You're hired.
Although the movie is considered an Ernst Lubitsch classic, just about anybody could imagine a Coen Brothers remake with George Clooney.
Poster image from Wikipedia and reproduced under fair-use law.
Martin Scorsese's After Hours (1985) is a wonderfully goofy, bad-dream homage to The Wizard of Oz and every anxious feeling I've ever had about Manhattan. Main-guy foil Griffin Dunne is great casting as a nerdish word processor (an obsolete job!) who ventures into SoHo to meet then it-girl Rosanna Arquette—followed by a whole string of women nut jobs.
The script dialogue, written by Joseph Minion, is still knee- and/or forehead-slapping funny.
Marcy (Arquette): My husband was a movie freak. Actually he was particularly obsessed with one movie, The Wizard of Oz. He talked about it constantly. I thought it was cute at first. On our wedding night, I was a virgin. When we made love—You've seen the movie haven't you?
Paul (Dunne): The Wizard of Oz? Yeah.
Who knew that f#%k-spewing David Mamet could pull off English period drama?
The Winslow Boy (1999)—a thinly veiled love letter from director Mamet to his wife, Rebecca Pidgeon—is the story of seemingly lost causes: the acquittal of the titular boy in a case of theft, women's suffrage, and a chauvinist's love for a feminist. The cast features many a rock-solid English actor, including Nigel Hawthorne and the splendiferous Gemma Jones.
Before Eric Bogosian needed real money, he was this performance artist/stand-up comic/monologuist/writer guy known mostly to New Yorkers. Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll (1991) is probably the best example of Bogosian's ability to fuse all of his scary talents into a spare one-man performance, but I've had a devil of a time finding the recording on DVD (Luddites can watch the show on VHS). The next best thing is the bluer Wake Up and Smell the Coffee (2001); however, I can only vouch for the live performance, seen at Chicago's Park West venue in the waning months of the 20th century.
A bonus funny: Bogosian gets uppity with a fan and reviews his own work at Netflix.
