Skidoo

Saturday is traditionally "Take Out the Trash" Day...and they don't get much more trashy than this one...

Skidoo (Otto Preminger, 1968) Legendarily off-kilter comedy by that "master" of comedy, Otto Preminger, who, in his effort to make a movie that was "with it" perpetrated a film so far without "it," that one wonders why nobody told him it might be a bad idea...for any director. 

 

It might have been because there wasn't anybody at Paramount Pictures who had the power or the industry knowledge to be credible to a movie veteran like Preminger. Paramount had been "acquired" by Gulf and Western in 1966 and its chairman Charles Bluhdorn had made his mark in auto parts, zinc mines and manufacturing and was furthering his mint-making by buying up properties and tinkering or selling them off. Preminger was making films for Paramount and was a "studio property" who'd had a history of making edgy films that would challenge taboo's, but whose recent films were considered both artistic and financial failures.

This did nothing for the fortunes of Paramount, which, if you look at the films being released in that period (before bringing on Robert Evans as head of production) betrays of a long line of losers with the odd hit—usually a foreign acquisition, like Alfie and films that might be interesting (Seconds) but didn't attract an audience. The industry itself was seeing a downturn in receipts with more color TV's in homes and a calcified audience that wasn't getting any younger. Preminger thought he had a solution—make a movie that would appeal to "the kids."

Retired hitman Tony Banks (Jackie Gleason) has his evening of television interrupted by a pair of mobsters, Hechy (Caesar Romero) and son Angie (Frankie Avalon), who have orders from their boss "God" (this will be revealed as Groucho Marx, his first film appearance in eleven years) to knock off "Blue Chips" Packard (Mickey Rooney) who is due to testify before a Senate committee on organized crime. Banks begs retirement, but when a buddy (Arnold Stang) is found dead, he goes along with the plot for the safety of his wife Flo (Carol Channing) and his daughter Darlene (Alexandra Hay).

The idea is to have Banks smuggled into the same prison as Packard and then whack him—or "kiss him" in the mob parlance used in the film. He is incarcerated with Leech (Michael Constantine) a psychopath and "The Professor" (Austin Pendleton) a technical wizard arrested for draft-dodging. Meanwhile, Darlene's new boyfriend Stash (John Phillip Law) and his gang of "hippies" are being hassled by the police for their anti-establishment ways and Flo, being a bit of a free spirit herself, helps them from being arrested for living in the streets and invites them into her home.

Tony already has guilt feelings about whacking "Blue Chips" but when he mistakenly takes a tab of acid provided by The Professor, he gives up on the idea and instead tries to find a way of breaking out—involving lacing all of the food in the prison with LSD and escaping by makeshift balloon when everybody is high as kites.

The movie's heart might be in the right place, but it's mind is utterly lost. Maybe they were thinking they were making an all-out all-star comedy like It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World—a favorite of writer Mark Evanier, and who takes the opportunity to trash Skidoo every time it comes out of hiding. Sure, there are grudging pleasures: it features performances by the Big Three Batman TV villains with Romero, Frank Gorshin and Burgess Meredith, all acting, as does everyone in the film,in a manner that would charitably called "broad." Small parts with Richard Kiel and Slim Pickens. The notion that they filmed part of it on John Wayne's yacht. The score by Nilsson is harmless—he sings the End Credits—but it's not exactly good, either.

Nor is the film by any stretch of the imagination, even stretched pharmaceutically. There are sequences—a musical number with dancing garbage cans for instance—that are so badly thought out and executed that it is doppler-shifted into inscrutability in post. There is a cold-sweat chill of desperation over the whole enterprise. Sometimes even that can be cruelly funny. But not here. Even the casting of grizzled—if professional—veterans can't remove the stink of mercenary pandering and witless and dull-edged stabs at satire.

It's a mess. And not a funny one. Not even the knowledge of incompetence—as with the films of Ed Wood—can save it. One can only look at it with the hope that the bottom of the barrel has been reached. But even that hope gives no comfort. 

 

Bad trip, dude. 

Ernie Pyle's Story of G.I. Joe

"Ernie Pyle's 'Story of G.I.Joe'" (William A. Wellman, 1945) One of 2009's films designated to be preserved by the Library of Congress—and boy, does it need it, the current DVD displaying scratches, bad splices, and scenes truncated in the middle of dialogue—"The Story of G.I. Joe" was an uncommon war movie, especially for one produced in the middle of the conflict it portrayed, showing a less-varnished portrait of war and the soldiers fighting it. Done with the co-operation of the military and advice from an office-load of war correspondents, the film is an unglamorous, non-propagandistic look at the life of the common infantryman. In it, the grunt's are grimey, muddy, ass-scratching, spitting dog-faces, who get exhausted, make mistakes, leave behind fallen comrades, but keep slogging.

But then, it had to be. Ernie Pyle, a Scripps-Howard correspondent covering the European theater took the tough route with his reportage, staying out of the clean briefing rooms and jumping into the fox-holes with the entrenched common soldiers. Through the course of his work, he became a beloved go-between for the soldiers and the folks back home aching for something other than the Big Picture and the Campaign—there were plenty of other Corona jockeys to do that—but on the soldiers following orders, following dirt roads, punching through entrenched enemy forces—their kids. Pyle's writing was clear-eyed, unsentimental and just discreet enough for the censors, written usually with the help of a bottle. He won the Pulitzer for his correspondent work in 1944, and had a hand in shaping the film.

And he was the one to get William "Wild Bill" Wellman to direct the film.Wellman was an inspired choice, as he was the one who insisted on the weather-beaten look of the film. But the director was a fighter pilot in World War I, and was subject to the same inter-corps squabbling of most servicemen, and had a low opinion of the infantry, only strengthened by his run-ins with a recalcitrant Army adviser on his film "Wings." And the film has several instances of "mea culpa's" from the director,* extolling the scrappy courage of the guys with boots on the ground, as opposed to the guys with their heads in the clouds.

Burgess Meredith got a deferment to play the part of Ernie Pyle—he was picked over other actors because he wasn't well known and had an odd home-spun quality and a crusty voice that could make the tough joshing resonate with warmth. Every war film has a cuddly troop mascot, but not every film has someone ask (in humor) "Haven't you eaten this dog yet?" As the Captain in charge of the men, Robert Mitchum plays his role in the manner he used to the end of his days, looking authentic and undramatic, like he shipped in with the other ringers—only a lot taller—and hadn't slept in days, born with the weight of the world on his shoulders, but still balanced on his aching feet. Or maybe it was the mud that was holding him up.

It was the only time he was nominated for an Oscar for his acting.

Pyle never saw the movie. Two weeks before the premiere, he was killed by a sniper on Ie Island off Okinawa in the Pacific. He was still with the troops, reporting their struggles.

* Besides a couple of on-the-nose comparisons between Army and Air Force—that seem to come out of nowhere—one of the various character arcs is for an infantryman dubbed "Wingless" (played by John R. Reilly), who starts the film depressed that he was drummed out of the Air Corps but soon comes around to a respect for the common foot-soldier.

A Big Hand for the Little Lady

A Big Hand for the Little Lady (Fielder Cook,1966) This entertaining little gambling drama came out of a television presentation—its director, Fielder Cook, was one of the pioneer directors of live television, and one of the few to stick to the medium, only occasionally making a film for the movie studios, finding them more restricting. The source was a drama for "The Dupont Show of the Week" entitled "Big Deal in Laredo" and starring Walter Matthau, Teresa Wright and Zachary Scott. It was written by Sidney Carroll who wrote the screenplay for The Hustler, and knew a thing or two about the mind-games while playing games.

It is the day of the "big" poker game in Laredo, Texas. The richest men in the state all gather on this particular day for a high-stakes game that is legendary throughout the state, having taken place over sixteen years. Undertaker Benson Tropp (Charles Bickford) careens through the Texas territory in his horse-drawn hearse, picking up the participants: lawyer Otto Habershaw (Kevin McCarthy), who abandons a closing argument in a murder trial to make the game; cattle-baron Henry Drummond (Jason Robards) skips out on his daughter's wedding. When the three get to Sam's saloon in Laredo, they are joined by Jesse Buford (John Qualen) and Dennis Wilcox (Robert Middleton) and convene to the backroom of Sam's, leaving the bar-flies to hang out and conjecture about what might be happening behind the door of the invitation-only exclusive "big game."

Not much it turns out. The millionaires all know each other and the game proceeds without many changes except the heighth of the chips.

Then, as they are wont to do, a stranger comes into town. Meredith (Henry Fonda) is moving with his family—his wife Mary (Joanne Woodward) and son Jackie (Gerald Michenaud)—to buy a house and property in the neighboring county, but a busted wagon wheel keeps them put in Laredo until the blacksmith can repair it. They come to the crowded saloon to pass the time until they can get on the trail again.

The prim and proper family makes an odd contrast to the rough and tumble saloon dwellers, but Meredith seems more comfortable in the honky-tonk, and is genuinely interested in the poker game going on in the backroom when he gets wind of it. He gets "the gambler's itch" and pretty soon, he's eyeing the families' stakes for the $500 to buy in. Mary argues with her husband that they've scrimped and saved for a long time for the stake and she doesn't want him risking it. Then, there's his gambling addiction, which he's resisted long enough for them to get that stake. But, that wagon-wheel needs fixing and if they just get a little more...

The regulars at the poker table, particularly Drummond, object to Meredith joining, but Habershaw, taken with Mary, presses the others to let Meredith join the game. 

Things start out okay—Meredith is only a passable poker player—but pretty soon, he's hooked and he starts to lose. He becomes increasingly agitated and starts looking the worse for wear. While Mary frets in the saloon, Meredith is sweating through some mediocre hands until he gets a hand that he knows he can win, but he doesn't have the money to meet Drummond's raised bet. The strain causes Meredith to collapse, stricken.

The town doctor (Burgess Meredith) is called, and he orders Meredith taken out of the room and back to his office for examination, leaving Mary in the situation to play the hand and either lose or keep the family farm. It does not bode well when she turns to Drummond and asks politely "How do you play this game?" 

How does she get out of it? How does she play the hand without the collateral funds to make a bet? How will she buy the farm...without buying the farm?

This is where A Big Hand for the Little Lady really gets interesting...and entertaining. Everything that has gone before is merely a set-up for the rest of the movie and how "the hand she is dealt" plays out.

A Big Hand for the Little Lady crosses a couple of genres. It is, on the surface, a western, that form that allows the problems of today to be seen in a silvered mirror of the past, making the issues complicated in today's world, simpler and deconstructed and standing out in fine relief. It is, in some instances, a comedy, in how it sets up a male-female tension. And it is a satire of how men can be "played," especially by forces that may be outside of their comfort zones.

But, it is also something of a feminist tract (Don't run away, boys, the film is entertaining) and might serve as an audio-visual aid to "The Feminine Mystique," illustrating the secret power of women (not so much hidden, but societally repressed) in a world dominated by subjugating men. It is fascinating to behold not only in a western, but also in something so light (when its equivalent is present in the darker, more resolute—and, one has to admit "camp"—Johnny Guitar). That is part of the delight of the construction and the big pay-out for A Big Hand for the Little Lady.