There are perfect scenes in movies but they are few and far between. This scene from Blake Edward’s adaptation of Tuman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s is one of my favorites. I may have seen it hundreds of times but I never tire of it. Paul Varjac (George Peppard) is in his apartment, typing away at a new story. Then a woman’s voice comes through the window, “Moon River, wider than a mile.”
Paul looks out the window. On the fire escape sits Holly Golightly (Audrey Hepburn). She strums her acoustic guitar, her voice filled with vulnerability, her voice that of a dreamer with “such a lot of world to see.” And I am smitten. I can’t think of another actress who could have pulled this scene off with the grace Audrey Hepburn does.
And it’s such a great song. Johnny Mercer has given us only ten lines to Henry Mancini’s music, yet it may be the best lyric he ever wrote. And he wrote some fine lyrics, among them One For My Baby, That Old Black Magic, In the Cool Cool Cool of the Evening, and the English lyrics toAutumn Leaves. A lot of folks love Irving Berlin, but I’ll take Mercer any day over Berlin.
I’ve come to imagine that Holly, and Mercer, are reaching across the years to twenty-two years earlier. They’re offering a hand to their “huckleberry friend”, a young girl in Kansas, singing a Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg song. After all, all music is a conversation as jazz musicians know.
I’ve heard Moon River by singers from Willie Nelson to Frank Sinatra to Barbra Streisand. The website, Secondhand Songs, says 917 versions have been recorded. Could be more. But no matter the performer, I never tire of it. And I keep coming back to that moment with Holly on the fire escape.
There are not that many real hippie movies. “Easy Rider” sure wasn’t one, and “Hair” was ten years too late. There are not many Thanksgiving movies either. Only “Home for the Holidays” comes to mind. If there ever was a Thanksgiving hippie movie, “Alice’s Restaurant” (1969) is it. It takes place in the mid-sixties.
Some movies have grand themes. Like love and war and power. Other movies have not-so-grand themes. “Alice’s Restaurant” is one of those not-so-grand theme movies. It is about taking out the garbage, a subject which I have some knowledge about. Who would believe you could get arrested for taking out the garbage?
In case you are wondering, “Alice’s Restaurant” takes its title from a song done by Arlo Guthrie called “Alice’s Restaurant Massacre”. He’s the son of Woody Guthrie. Woody was the Okie who hoboed around the country, writing and singing about the country he was hoboing around. He wrote lots of songs about his experiences, songs like “This Land is Your Land”. Woody had Huntington’s disease and is in the hospital when this movie takes place. But the movie is not about Woody. It’s about Arlo’s adventures. Arlo plays Arlo.
The movie starts in the Midwest where Arlo is going to college to get out of the draft. He gets in trouble for making folk music in his music class. He gets in trouble for having long hair. After getting kicked out of school and run out of town, Arlo heads east where he makes a brief stopover to see Woody. Then he makes it to Stockbridge, Massachusetts to stay with his friends, Alice (Patricia Quinn) and Ray (James Broderick, Matthew Broderick’s daddy). They live in a church. Alice has a restaurant in the town.
Well, this is where the movie gets real interesting. There’s a Thanksgiving dinner at the church. At the end of the feast, there is a ton of garbage. Arlo, being the friendly sort of fellow, volunteers to take out the garbage in his van. Now you’d think taking out the garbage would not be something that could get a person arrested. But that’s exactly what happens. It gets Arlo arrested. As folks say, “No good deed goes unpunished.”
Not only did this movie have Arlo, it also introduced Joni Mitchell to the world with her song, “Songs to Aging Children Come”. Pete Seeger and Lee Hays from The Weavers do a cameo performance and Officer Obie plays hisself. Directed by Arthur Penn (the same Arthur Penn who directed “Bonnie and Clyde”), “Alice’s Restaurant” was released shortly after Woodstock. Finally we had a movie that done us proud. It told the truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me Arlo.
Billy Wilder. Man, could that guy make movies. He made some of the bestest movies in the fifties. “Sunset Boulevard”, “Stalag 17”, “Witness for the Prosecution”, “Some Like It Hot” and “The Apartment”. But I got to tell you one of my favs of his is Seven Year Itch.
It’s got the sexiest woman in the world, Marilyn Monroe. You’d think Wilder would have matched her up with Clark Gable, Cary Grant or one of the other leading men of the time who could make the women swoon. He didn’t. Her opposite is the comic actor Tom Ewell, playing a mild mannered schmuck, Richard Sherman, a publishing exec.
It’s New York City in the fifties, it’s summer and the guys, who can afford it, are sending the wife and the fam out of town for the summer. So Mrs. Sherman and Junior are sent packing for the wilds of Maine. Mr. Mild Mannered is told to watch his weight, to not smoke and to not drink as wife and kiddie say goodbye at the train station. He is bound and determined to make sure he follows orders. It was what the doctor ordered; it is what he will do.
Now many of us think that vegetarianism was a recent invention. Not true. Right there in New York City, Mr. Mild Mannered has his first evening meal in a vegetarian restaurant. “Health food, that’s the stuff. The human body is a very delicate machine. A precision instrument. You can’t run it on martinis and Hungarian goulash,” MM says. It sounds like he is trying to convince himself.
Then MM goes home. No television for him. He is going to do some reading. This is when all hell breaks loose.
Instead of Kansas, Steven Spielberg gives us New Jersey in his latest film, The Fabelmans. Instead of Dorothy, he gives us Sammy Fabelman. Instead of Uncle Henry and Auntie Em, he gives us Burt and Mitzi Fabelman. And there’s a Wizard in the movie too. That’s Uncle Bennie. Instead of a tornado, it’s a train wreck that will transport Sammy to Oz. And not just any train wreck. It’s the circus train wreck in Cecil B. DeMille’s The Greatest Show on Earth. And it won’t be the Yellow Brick Road that will get young Sammy to Hollywood, but making home movies.
It’s 1952, and Burt and Mitzi Fabelman are trying to convince young Sammy that he’s going to love The Greatest Show on Earth. When he sees the train wreck on the big screen, he is hypnotized. Not by the movie or the train, but by the train wreck. He’s got to see that again.
When his father gives Sammy a toy train for Hanukkah, Sammy wrecks it the way they did in the movie. The train isn’t wrecked but his father tells him he needs to be more responsible.
Now we know that when a parent tells a kid in a movie to be more responsible, there’s going to be trouble. And sure enough Sammy sneaks around and does it again. Only this time, his villainy is aided by his mother. Mitzi Fabelman has turned into Glenda the Good Witch. Instead of a pair of red slippers, Mitzi gives the hero of this tale a camera. “If you film the train wreck, you can see it over and over again.”
And that is how Steven Spielberg begins his autobiographical film. Movie making is Sammy’s Yellow Brick Road to the Oz of the 20th Century and those childhood fantasies of wonder, Jaws, Close Encounters of the Tihird Kind, E.T., Jurassic Park, and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
But things aren’t all peaches and cream in the Family Fabelman. It’s like Professor Harold Hill sang in The Music Man. “There’s trouble right here in River City.” But the one thing that keeps Sammy going is making movies. It’s something that will lead him straight to a legendary filmmaker’s office.
As you can tell, I thoroughly enjoyed The Fabelmans. Enough to see it twice. And want to see it again. It reminds me of why I love movies the wayCinema Paradise did. When we can stream whatever movie or tv series we want, there is something that is missing for me. And that’s the WOW experience. The kind of experience I got when I first saw No Time for Sergeants, Ben Hur, Psycho, It’s a Mad Mad Mad World, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings and The Color Purple, and so many others on the big screen in movie theaters.
John Landis, director of “Animal House” and “The Blues Brothers”, directed “American Werewolf in London” (1981). It’s a horror movie. Not that “Animal House” and “The Blues Brothers” were not horror movies. It may be a stretch but I’d say those had a monster or two in them. Only this time Jake Blues and Blutarsky are no where to be found. Imagine how awesome this one would have been if Blutarsky had been slumming in the north of England.
You heard that right. Northern England. Can’t say there is a better place for a horror movie. Unless it’s the woods in Northern Michigan or a Gothic little Southern town. When someone drops you off in the middle of nowhere and says, “Keep off the moors”, wouldn’t you tend to keep off the moors. Even if you didn’t know what moors are. Unfortunately this is a horror movie and it is pretty well established that someone is going to end up on the moors. Especially if they are American tourists. In this case, David and Jack.
David Naughton plays David. He could have been a Tom, a Dick, or a Harvey. Perfectly good American names. Instead he gets to be a David. An actor can go his entire career and not play a character with his name. I mean, Richard Burton was a great actor and he never played anybody named Richard Burton. Maybe the director thought David Naughton had way too many lines and it would help to take the load off by giving him the name David. Jack is played by Griffin Dunne.
David and Jack are taking in some of the fresh English air before they go off to see the Colisseum in Rome. Our two tourists come to a small English town with a pub, The Slaughtered Lamb. If I came across a pub with a name like that, I’d tend to want to get out of Dodge real fast. Or, at least, off the moors.
In the pub, there’s a five-pointed star painted on the wall right out there for everybody to see. One of our two young Americans comments, “Maybe it’s to ward off monsters.” You think. The pub regulars give the two the very cold shoulder. As David and Jack leave, they are warned, “Keep off the moors.” We’ve already warned them, but they didn’t listen to us. You’d think they’d listen to the locals in a pub named The Slaughtered Lamb with a five-pointed star out there for everybody to see. But no. They’re Americans, and like Americans everywhere, they ain’t afraid of any moors.
Unfortunatley it’s a full moon night. As sure as this is “An American Werewolf in London”, the Americans fumble their way off the road and into the moors they were told to stay off of. But this would not have been a horror movie if they had stayed on the straight and narrow. Evidently these two may be the only two people on the planet who have not seen movies with moors in them.
Guess you can guess what happens next. And yes, you’re right. They encounter the Big Bad Wolf. Before you know it, the two young Americans are down to one. When the survivor asks “Where’s Jack?” it’s obvious he didn’t climb a beanstalk.
Next thing we know, David wakes up in a hospital bed. Within minutes, he is having himself some visions. And they are not of the Virgin Mary. They’re nightmares. Really bad stuff. If that isn’t enough, Jack shows up in bad make-up. I wonder why David doesn’t ask who did the whack job on your makeup. But he doesn’t. The two have a very normal conversation. If you call normal, being urged by Mr. Bad Makeup to kill yourself. Before Jack leaves, he’s doesn’t say, “Keep of the moors.” No, that one is way too late to say. Jack says, “Beware the moon.”
There is a consolation prize for all the bad stuff coming down. David gets to hang with Nurse Alex Price, played by Jenny Gutter. I’ve heard of a lot of pickup lines but the one he uses on her takes the cake. “I’m a werewolf” just won’t get you a second date 99.9% of the time. Unless she’s a werewolf too. Then the two of you can have a howling good time next full moon.
Evidently the werewolf bit works. Nurse Alex invites David to her apartment. Then she delivers one of the all-time classic romantic lines: “Perhaps you’d like to watch the telly while I take a shower.”
Yadda yadda yadda and it’s later. Jack corners David and urges him to kill himself. Otherwise there’s going to be trouble in River City. David will turn into a big bad wolf and kill people all over the place. David tells him to bug off. He’s not taking advice from a meatloaf.
David’s doctor, Dr. Hirsch, goes to check things out at Werewolf Central, The Slaughtered Lamb. He immediately notices the five-pointed star. The regulars boo him out of their home away from home. One of the men sneaks outside and meets the doc. “There’s something wrong with this place,” he says. Of course, there’s something wrong with the place. It’s got a five-pointed star in a pub named “The Slaughtered Lamb” and there are moors and there are folks bitten into werewolves. I’d say that’s enough wrong for two movies.
Nurse Alex is on night duty. She leaves David in the apartment. He goes for a walk. A dog barks at him. A cat hisses at him. That ought to give him a clue. Maybe, just maybe, David is a werewolf. You think.
Maybe this is England’s way of getting even for losing the American Revolution. The Brits every so often choose a young American tourist and turn them into a werewolf. Take that, you naughty Americans. And here I thought we’d made up.
Doctor Hirsch returns to the hospital. Nurse Alex is on duty. He tells her, “We have a werewolf problem.”
One thing is for sure. If, on a full moon night, you find yourself alone and you hear some growling a half block away, it’s obvious. You have a werewolf problem.
After your trick or treat extravaganza tonight, enjoy your treats and watch “An American Werewolf in London” tonight. It’s the Halloween thing to do.
Uncle Bardie's Stories & Such 