Jay Ward

The cartoons of Jay Ward are different from Looney Tunes in that there’s a higher premium on words. Not that Bugs Bunny and pals don’t engage in funny banter; they do, but with Ward his cartoons are all about the wacky wordplay: the ever-present narrator, the quickness of the delivery, the stronger sense of a plot as opposed to variations on a theme (Elmer tries to shoot Bugs, Wile E. Coyote tries to eat the Road Runner, etc.), perhaps as a means to compensate for the—let’s be honest—limitations in the animation. The scripts and the strong voice acting, shorn of the visuals, would make good radio plays.

Ward, a graduate of UC-Berkeley with an MBA from Harvard, was a television pioneer. In 1948, he and his longtime friend, animator Alex Anderson, made an animated pilot film for NBC, The Comic Strips of Television, featuring a variety of original characters. The only one NBC liked became the first animated series made for TV, Crusader Rabbit, debuting in 1950. Ward served as producer and business manager for the duo’s Television Arts Productions.

I watched some episodes for this post. The roots of later Ward shows are clearly visible: funny animals in a serialized show—squeaky-voiced “straight man” CR and dimwitted partner, in this case a tiger named Rags; villains, of a sort, who are equally silly; an omniscient narrator who interacts with the characters. The animation is very primitive, but the characters are endearingly cute and the serialized format makes one want to know what happens to them.

CR was syndicated nationwide, mostly at NBC affiliates including in New York and LA, until 1952, then a second series was commissioned in 1956 by new parent company Capital Enterprises, but Ward and Anderson lost a legal battle over ownership rights.

Next Ward packaged some more new characters in an unsold pilot, The Frostbite Falls Revue, set in the territory known as the North Woods, which covers northern Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan. It didn’t succeed, but two minor characters from the series did pretty well for themselves...

I suspect I knew, even as a kid, that Rocky & Bullwinkle were a little different from most cartoons. The fast pace, the number of jokes that flew over my head but seemed significant somehow, the humor that relied on bad puns and other turns of phrase—it wasn’t Scooby-Doo by any means. 

I was used to cartoons with, shall we say, a limited range of expression, but I wasn’t accustomed to cartoons this sharp-witted. I still preferred action-adventure shows overall, but I made time for R&B whenever they were on, in its various incarnations (like Looney Tunes, it appeared under different names).

The original show, Rocky and his Friends, aired on ABC in 1959 before switching to NBC as The Bullwinkle Show in 1961. After 1964, it aired in syndication. Ward created the show with Anderson and Bill Scott. Fun fact: Dudley Do-Right, one of the show’s feature characters, began life as part of the original lineup for The Comic Strips of Television. He went on to a spin-off series of his own.

Ward and Scott collaborated on two more series, George of the Jungle (a Tarzan parody) and Super Chicken (a superhero comedy), both from 1967. 

In addition to cartoon series,Ward is notable for his commercial illustration. I never ate kiddie cereals Cap’n Crunch, Quisp or Quake but he designed their mascots. Here’s the first Cap’n Crunch commercial from 1963, and it’s very much of a piece with Ward’s other cartoons: 

He also put together this bit of drive-in welcome/intermission filler.

Ward died in 1989 of renal cancer. DreamWorks Animation currently has the rights to his characters. We could use a little more of their kind of madcap humor, don’t you think?

A Jay Ward visual essay

The live-action movies

The Outlaw

The Outlaw
YouTube viewing

I was going to spend this post about The Outlaw talking about Howard Hughes, about the real Billy the Kid and Doc Holliday and Pat Garrett, but the truth is, this is such a bad movie that I can’t be bothered—and I was disappointed, too, because Walter Huston is in it and I had enjoyed every other film of his I had seen—even Kongo! And this is all before I get to Jane Russell.

No one in it acts like a normal human being. (Well, maybe the middle-aged Mexican woman does. Her I liked.) The major bone of contention between Billy and Doc is over a horse. I swear to god they fight over this horse for most of the movie. They fight over Russell, too—she starts out with Doc but ends up with Billy—but at one point, when offered the choice of Russell or the horse, Doc actually chooses the horse.

HE CHOOSES THE HORSE OVER JANE FREAKING RUSSELL.

Think about that.

Links out

I announced it on Twitter and perhaps you’ve already noticed the change here, but for the record: WSW now moderates comments. This is a change I had thought about doing before, but I didn’t believe it was truly necessary until the spammers started getting bolder. I don’t want this; we’ve gone this far without needing to moderate comments, but I believe it’s better this way, at least for now. You (and you know who you are) have always provided insight and wit to go along with my posts. You’re not the problem and never were.

———————-

My third 5K run turned out well, but it didn’t feel that way. I beat my personal best time by perhaps three minutes, but the whole run felt tougher than usual. It was windy, but not gusty, the sky was mostly cloudy, and there was no hint of rain or snow. I just felt like the whole thing was a harder push than usual, like I was pushing harder than before. I slowed to a walking pace a lot, and I had to remind myself to not get comfortable. And once again, the presence of so many other people changed my mental approach, making me think of the competition instead of my own game... but I still set a personal record. I did something right.

———————-

Last month Virginia and I went to an unusual twin bill of Georges Melies films: A Trip to the Moon and Kingdom of the Fairies. Both silents were accompanied by original live scores by composer Kyle Simpson and his chamber orchestra, held at The Dimenna Center for Classical Music in Manhattan. A university professor, musician and conductor, as well as a composer, he briefly talked of his love for film in general and how with this project, he sought to create scores that would match the story and themes of these movies, and I thought he did. His scores made both films feel almost contemporary. In addition to the movies, there was an “undercard” of film scores by Phillip Glass and Alexander Borodin, performed by the Red Line String Quartet. I’ve always liked Glass’ music. I’ve seen it performed live before, but not like this. It felt different, yet recognizable as his work. Virginia loved the whole thing, of course.

Links on the other side.

Good Witch: Rediscovering Margaret Hamilton

The What a Character Blogathon is an event devoted to the great character actors of classic Hollywood and the often memorable supporting roles they played throughout film history, hosted by Once Upon a Screen, Outspoken & Freckled, & Paula's Cinema Club. For a complete list of participating bloggers, visit the links at any of the host sites.

She didn't scare me the most. The flying monkeys did; their faces were creepy as hell. Remember when they tore the Scarecrow apart while kidnapping Dorothy? And of course, the Great and Powerful Oz himself was total nightmare fuel. That scene where they're walking down that long hall and into his chamber still gives me a little chill. But I don't recall being that scared of her. Maybe she wasn't bizarre looking enough?

We'll come back to that role, and that movie, later.

A Letter to Three Wives

A Letter to Three Wives
YouTube viewing

A Letter to Three Wives was on my wish list for a long time, so I'm happy to have finally seen this one. It's a good premise, with an even better storytelling method: the titular letter is from Addie, the gal pal of the three wives, which says she's been having a secret affair with one of their husbands and she just ran off with him. The rest of the movie is like a whodunnit: through flashbacks, we get a closer look at the three marriages and how Addie figures into their lives, but get this - we never actually see her. To top it off, Addie is the one who narrates the movie!

Letter is another smart and lively drama about women and men from Joseph Mankiewicz. As such, I couldn't help comparing it to his masterpiece, All About Eve. The biggest difference is that Eve is way bitchier. There is no Addison DeWitt equivalent in Letter, for one thing. There are fewer betrayals and double-crosses. Most importantly, as capable as the three leads are overall - Jeanne Crain, Ann Sothern and Linda Darnell - none of them are Bette.

That said, Letter has merits of its own. I remember Darnell from No Way Out (another Mankiewicz film) and Unfaithfully Yours, but she really stood out here. She married into wealth, a calculated decision on her part to lift herself and her family out of poverty. Her hubby, Paul Douglas, is totally hot for her, but she won't let him get at her unless he puts a ring on it, but once he does, that leads to other problems. Darnell goes from femme fatale to bickering housewife; hers may be the deepest of the three lead roles and she carries it off well.

Kirk Douglas was a star on the rise prior to Letter; I think it's safe to say audiences of the day were familiar with him by this point. He's Sothern's husband here, and his is a meaty role: a teacher who's made to feel inferior because Sothern, a radio show writer, makes more money, puts on airs for her patrons and expects him to do the same. He has a great speech about the evils of advertising that, with a few minor changes, could've been written yesterday.

There's also a bit of an anti-intellectual bias against him I found peculiar. It was as if being a teacher was a job that should be beneath him somehow (because he's a man, perhaps?), but because he takes pride in his work and is a little better educated than his friends (just a little; it's not like he's a Nobel Prize winner), his wife and friends look at him funny. It's not unlike the way Ronald Colman's character is regarded in The Talk of the Town. Different times.

I was least interested in Crain's character, a farmer's daughter turned naval officer who clearly loves her man, Jeffrey Lynn, but initially, she was freaking out about making a good impression on his friends when they first met. I couldn't quite buy it somehow; her problems seemed less urgent than those of the other two wives, and Crain didn't strike me as that strong an actor compared to Darnell and especially Kirk Douglas.

Without giving away who the mystery philanderer is, I will say the film does a fake-out at the end; you think it's one guy, but it turns out to be another. He then reveals he started to run away with Addie, but he changed his mind. This is where the film's gimmick broke down for me. I think we needed to see [SPOILER] with Addie at the end, to see him commit and then decide no, it's not worth leaving his wife. To have him say it after the fact wasn't quite enough to sell me. I suspect the desire to tie everything up neatly and have a happy ending got in the way of telling a stronger story. Regardless, I liked this movie.

A word about my girl Thelma. The more I see her in films like this, the more convinced I am that Hollywood did her a great injustice by not letting her become a leading lady. Seriously, friends and neighbors, can you doubt for one second her ability to carry an entire film based on what we see of her here, and in Eve, Rear Window, Pickup on South Street, etc.? I feel like a golden opportunity was lost. Still, what we got of her was superb.

Mankiewicz eases us into the flashbacks in a weird way: a line from the lead actresses is echoed and mixed with a sound effect to produce a peculiar, synthesized noise, not quite voice, not quite sound. I thought I imagined it at first, but it's definitely there, for all three flashback scenes. (Sound on Letter is credited to Roger Heman Sr. and Arthur von Kirbach.) I'm not sure how much it adds to the story - my inclination is to think it calls more attention to itself than perhaps it should - but from a filmmaking perspective, it's impressive for 1949.

Finally, as a New Yorker who remembers their 80s TV commercials with fondness, I got a chuckle out of hearing a radio ad for a company called "Crazy Eddie."

Your movie poster sucks

I've been wanting to do this for awhile because someone should. I've talked before about how living in New York means being constantly surrounded by movie (and TV) posters. I get to look at them a lot, on a daily basis. As someone trained in the visual arts, I can't help sizing them up as works of art, as well as how effective they are in selling movies. I think you can guess what I think of most of them.

Yes, I understand many other factors go into making a movie poster, not the least of which includes what the studios think is most marketable. I'm sure it's a long, careful process that isn't approached lightly and I believe those who make them are professionals. That said, some of them could be better designed. So let's look at some recent ones.

Saul Bass

In high school, I took a class in advertising and graphic design. It was quite a challenge for someone unused to the rigors associated with the field. 

I came to think of it as something akin to making art with letters. 

There was an assignment in which we had to design a logo for a word that would illustrate its meaning at the same time - similar to what this guy does. The word I chose was "hydrant." In addition to freehand-ing the letters of a font I got out of a book, I substituted the "H" with an image of a dog lifting his leg next to a hydrant and it kinda sorta made the shape of the letter. 

When I got into making comics, I had to hand-letter word balloons and design sound effects and logos, before computer lettering became more common. The approach I took was what I thought was the simplest one: to leave space for the text at the top and bottom of each panel and use a T-square to rule each line of text evenly. I knew that it was important for people to be able to actually read my words, so I took the time to make sure it came out right. 

Sound effects and logos were harder. My first comic book series had two different fonts for the title (seemed like a good idea at the time) and I remember all the long hours spent at Kinko's trying to shrink them down to the right size, and then struggling to make them level with each other and with the cover. As you might imagine, this was long before I got the hang of Photoshop and how scanners work. 

All of this is my way of saying how much I appreciate the work of someone like Saul Bass. In a time where movie posters have become less and less imaginative and distinctive visually, his work, much of it made in conjunction with his wife Elaine Makatura, stands out now more than ever.

And of course, in addition to posters and title credits, he also designed some of the best known corporate logos in the world.

His work seems simple, but speaking as an artist, I can attest to the fact that you have to do a whole lot of drawing and sketching and playing around with images to get to that level of simplicity in the end. Don't be fooled by what you see on the surface.

The fact that Bass' influence is still felt in Hollywood today is a testament to his impact.

Next: Ruby Dee

---------------

Movies with titles and poster designs by Saul Bass:

Carmen Jones

The Man With the Golden Arm

West Side Story

One Two Three

The Shining

Previously:

Jack Lemmon   Jean Arthur
Edward G. Robinson   Rita Moreno
Frank Capra   Bernard Herrmann
Joan Blondell   James Dean
Ethel Waters   William Powell
Tod Browning   Edith Head
Joel McCrea   Thelma Ritter
Douglas Fairbanks   Gloria Swanson
Robert Wise

Love's labors, linked

Gonna have to cut back on posting this month in order to focus on my novel. I won't be entirely absent: I have a blogathon post in the works, plus another Battle Royal installment, and two more profiles, as per usual. I hope to also do one more Cinematic World Tour post; the movie I had planned to watch last month, Roman Holiday, was an outdoor movie held on a rooftop, and by the time I got to the venue, they had reached capacity and closed it off to any more spectators. A whole lot of people went to see that one. Anyway, last month's surge of activity was unexpected, to say the least, and next month will be devoted to classic horror, so now seems like the perfect opportunity to dial it back while I return to writing The Great American Novel.

A brief word about the late Wes Craven: The Elm Street movies were a part of my childhood, however small, and the Scream movies actually got me excited about the genre again, if only for a little while. I'm not as hardcore about horror as some, but if ever there were an auteur of the genre, Craven absolutely qualifies - and props to him for his forays outside the horror genre. Who would've thought, for example, that he'd make a movie with Meryl Streep? Or that she'd get Oscar-nominated for it?

Just a few links this month:

You MUST check out this poem Jennifer wrote about film noir.

Aurora files this report from the rare-film festival CapitolFest.

Will recalls the time he met the late Yvonne Craig.

Raquel reviews a book about a black actor with a difficult-to-appreciate career, to say the least: Stepin Fetchit.

Pam is astounded at the wacky commercials American movie stars and other celebs have made in Japan. (Warning: the Hulk Hogan one is an earworm.)

Ever wonder how the Marx Brothers got their nicknames?

To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird
seen on TV @ TCM
2.18.15

My copy of To Kill a Mockingbird looks like the kind you'd get in school. For one thing, it's got "Property of the Board of Education of the City of New York" stamped on the first page. I don't remember what grade I read the book in, but I imagine it must have made an impression on me if I kept it. Also, it's got a hardcover that binds the pages so tight, the gutter comes very close to swallowing the text, so I have to turn the book around a little in order to read. It goes without saying that I can't lay it down flat.

As I said, I don't recall when I first read the book. I imagine it was probably grade school. TKAM is a banned book - no surprise there - and as recently as 2011, the Office of Intellectual Freedom reported challenges against it. Throughout the book's history, it has mostly been banned in Middle America, but also in states like California and New Jersey, and even in Ontario, Canada.

In the wake of the recent news that an unpublished manuscript of TKAM author Harper Lee has been found and will be published later this year, I decided to revisit TKAM. I was going to write about the book and its legacy in a broad sense, until I saw that the film version was gonna be on TV and so I watched that again, too. I'll get to it later.

I had forgotten how much of a coming-of-age book TKAM is. For a long time, I had thought of it - and I imagine many people do as well - as a meditation on race through the eyes of a child, and it certainly is, but much space is devoted to Scout's world, rural Depression-era Alabama, which was inspired by Lee's own childhood. The case surrounding the Negro character, Tom Robinson, doesn't really get going for awhile, and after his fate is sealed, there's a good deal more to go before the finish. 

I admit, that kinda irked me a little bit, as if what happens to Tom doesn't matter in the ultimate scheme of things, but it's not his story. It's Scout's, and that's something I had to remind myself of on several occasions as I re-read the book. The civil rights movement, for instance, wasn't a thing in the time the story is set, but at the time Lee was writing it, it was alive and kicking, and part of me does kinda wish that the black characters in TKAM were a little more active... but it's easy to think that, over fifty years removed and after so many changes within society.

Then again, all that history shows us that some things never change. Though TKAM is a work of fiction, it is ridiculously easy to draw a straight line from Tom Robinson through Emmet Till to Rodney King and Eric Garner. Justice for a black man is still notoriously difficult to obtain in America, even today, and TKAM remains painfully relevant as a result.

As I re-read it, I also thought of Kathryn Stockett and The Help. Granted, these are two very different books, written from different perspectives in different time periods, but I wondered whether Lee would have gone through what Stockett went through if TKAM were released today? I suspect not: Lee doesn't attempt to speak for black people in any sense, an accusation that dogged Stockett during the successful run of her book. Though Atticus does tell Scout to try to step inside the shoes of another person in order to understand them, this applies as much to white characters like Boo Radley as to black characters.

In reading about the publishing history of TKAM, I couldn't help but think of my current struggle in trying to write a novel. Go Set a Watchman, the "new" Lee book, is actually an early version of TKAM that apparently reads more like a sequel now, since it features an adult Scout and a much older Atticus. (Shall we start speculating now on the cast for the inevitable movie? Anne Hathaway and Kevin Costner? Michelle Williams and Harrison Ford? Will Robert Duvall be involved?) Lee spent so much time writing and rewriting it, changing the flow and the narrative until it became what it became, and naturally she never expected it to succeed as wildly as it did.

Recently, I've hit a bad patch in my work in progress. My writing group came down kinda hard on a chapter I submitted for them to read, and I was bummed for awhile. Writing a novel is a huge leap of faith for one who has never done it before. You're investing a tremendous chunk of your time, your talent, and your faith in yourself on something that may never get anywhere, and even if it does, everyone will inevitably expect you to do it all over again. When I complained on Facebook about it, Vija advised me to think of Lee and to not take criticism personally. Just keep writing. That's what I'm gonna do, but damn, is it a scary prospect.

At this point, despite the huge demand for Watchman, we only have a general idea about how it compares to TKAM, and there has been speculation as to whether or not releasing it was Lee's idea at all. Even if it bombs, though, nothing can take away what she accomplished with TKAM.

Now, about that movie... 

I suspect that Gregory Peck probably clinched the Oscar on the strength of one scene. One excellent scene, but one scene nonetheless. That, and the fact that he was GREGORY PECK. I imagine one could make arguments either way for Peck or Peter O'Toole in Lawrence without ever reaching a satisfactory conclusion.

Some events are switched around, but it's a pretty faithful adaptation, with a number of scenes lifted verbatim from the book. I thought the trial played out better in the book, however. There's some stuff involving the Ewells that were left out of the film, which I would've liked to have seen. For instance, in the book, Mayella Ewell gets freaked out by Atticus upon taking the witness stand, after seeing him prove her father was left-handed. We don't see that in the film.

Neither book nor movie flinches in the use of the word nigger, nor should they. It's a bit shocking to see an innocent young girl ask whether or not her father's a nigger-lover, as it should be, but to omit the word would be to deny the reality of the world which Lee tried so hard to capture, one based directly on her own childhood in the American south during the Depression. I see so many works of art these days, in various media, that try to go for that same kind of truth yet pussyfoot around the word as if it were a landmine - and of course, you'll never see it in magazine or newspaper articles in an objective, clinical manner, one where it would provide some needed context. Individual artists of good will must do as their conscience dictates, but it bothers me that this is still a thing.

TKAM the movie still holds up. Not too long ago, I suggested that this would make a good movie to show on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Well, I can think of a much more appropriate one now, but it would still be nice if a movie like this aired on free TV on special occasions. It's the kind of film parents need to watch with their children - even if the marketing "geniuses" behind this poster didn't agree. (Seriously? A movie centered around children, with children RIGHT THERE ON THE POSTER, and it's still considered not suitable for them? Give me a king-sized break.)

One last thing: the previous owner of my copy of TKAM was someone named Alexandra Anglade, AKA "Alexandra the Great," as she wrote on that same first page. I actually looked her up on Facebook, but I got several different women by that name. If anyone out there knows her, ask her for me if she wants her book back!

Have I mentioned lately what an awesome artist Vija is?
Here's her portrait of Harper Lee.

Ninotchka

Ninotchka

seen on TV @ TCM

9.10.14

I think it was sometime in the mid-to-late 90s. At least, I'm fairly sure it was around then. I don't remember if I was channel surfing and discovered it by accident or if I knew about it in advance. I distinctly remember seeing it though: PBS aired a bunch of Greta Garbo silents. They may have been clips or they may have been full-length films; I don't recall. 

The point is that I remember watching them on TV and being mesmerized by them. Part of it has to do with the way silent films force you to pay attention to everything, because you'll miss the flow of the plot if you don't. Mostly, though, it was Garbo herself, a singular, rare beauty, timeless and exquisite, someone who belonged on a movie screen, more than most.

Modern movie stars, indeed, modern celebrities in general, can be and often are more down-to-earth and accessible, thanks to social media, than ever before. Garbo was different, though: the detached, distant superstar high up in her ivory tower, so to speak. Perhaps it was appropriate that she rose to fame as a silent star. There's something almost otherworldly about silent film stars. You can't hear their voices, or indeed the world in which they inhabit, so they seem less real, therefore, it's easy to project what you want onto them.

But then came the sound era, and hearing Garbo talk turned out to be no detriment to her career, to say the least. People today don't realize how huge a star she was. To pick one example: there's a poster for a sound movie she did called The Painted Veil, which doesn't sell the movie so much as it sells her. Not only is she above the title, her name - GARBO (no first name necessary) - is in huge letters, underneath a large, dominant shot of her. 

It's the tag line that's the real kicker, though: "The STAR whose flame fires the world!" It's breathtaking in its blunt, naked propagandizing. What is this movie about? Doesn't matter, GARBO is in it. Modern movie posters use large head shots to sell their stars all the time, even in this age of the non-movie star, but there's something about an image like this, used to sell a superstar like Garbo, that speaks to not only her fame, but her public's total adoration of her. Which modern star could you describe in such hyperbolic tones: Jolie? Streep? Depp?

And it's not even like she was that exceptional an actress, to be perfectly honest. She was good in the roles she inhabited, but it's not like she had the versatility of, say, Stanwyck or Hepburn, or the pure power of Davis. I think her appeal rested with her on-screen persona; the magnetism that her face radiated, which I experienced when I saw those silents of hers on TV. One look (preferably on a big screen) at her and you'd be willing to watch her do anything.

Ninotchka came at the tail end of her career, and in re-watching it last week, it occurred to me that this may be one of, if not the most romantic movie I've ever watched. Making an ice queen melt is a rarely-talked-about guy fantasy, an old-fashioned one. There's something about reaching the heart of a woman who seems cold on the surface that represents an almost irresistible challenge, because we guys like to believe that we're creative enough and witty enough to see beneath that cool exterior. Plus, in this case, there's the added bonus of the chick in question being from a foreign culture. More to discover, more to learn.

Melvyn Douglas' character, of course, believes himself up to the task, but it's not until he's caught in an unprepared moment with egg on his face that the object of his affection finally cracks a smile, and indeed, that's a telling moment. Only by letting oneself be exposed and vulnerable, with one's defenses down, we're being told, can one connect with another, and all the pick-up lines and bad jokes can't change that. It's a very human moment, and a very real one.

Once Douglas and Garbo hook up, though, all bets are off. (Does anyone else ever confuse Douglas with William Powell? I used to, but not anymore.) Theirs is a very chaste romance, something else I noticed in watching it last week. Ninotchka and Leon get loaded and stumble back to her hotel room, playing around with the movie's Macguffin, the disputed jewelry, but when she falls asleep, he simply puts her to bed and quietly slips away. It's more than just not wanting to take advantage of her, it's a loving gesture. Ninotchka's not just an infatuation for Leon. By this point in the movie, he genuinely adores her and he wants to do right by her.

Ninotchka is Lubitsch and Wilder (and Brackett), of course, the first Ernst Lubitsch film I ever saw, long before I knew and appreciated who he was, especially in relation to Billy Wilder. In Cameron Crowe's book Conversations with Wilder, Wilder cited the French hat in this movie as an example of the "Lubitsch touch": each time we see Ninotchka and that hat, her attitude towards it changes slightly, from contempt to curiosity to acceptance. Wilder called it a "superjoke," though to me it's less a joke than a shorthand way to define character. The hat in itself is not as important as Ninotchka's perception of it.

As Europeans, Lubitsch and Wilder were in a prime position to examine Soviet Russia and Communism in general in this movie, not just in the culture-clash jokes, but in the contrast between Garbo's Ninotchka, who represents the "new," post-Revolution Russia, and Ina Claire's Grand Duchess Swana, who represents the "old." Claire's is a terrific role, and she gets some great scenes, such as the one where she meets Ninotchka and Leon at dinner and Ninotchka's wearing that stunning evening dress for the first time. 

Swana, as a former member of the aristocracy, wears her sense of entitlement like the jewelry she's fighting to get back, and in this scene she keeps trying to bait Ninotchka, a true believer in the "fairer" world offered by Karl Marx and Communism, who won't fall for it. It's more than a battle of wills, it's a battle of ideologies, and as such, it's not easily resolved.

I can easily watch Ninotchka again and again, even though it kinda drags a little bit after she returns to Russia, and I was pleased to find new things about it to appreciate while watching it last week. (Brief aside: in searching for pics for this post, I had the misfortune to see a few stills from a colorized version, and they look absolutely awful! May that version never see the light of day again!)

William Castle and his gimmicks

The William Castle Blogathon is an event honoring the life and career of horror film director William Castle, hosted by The Last Drive In and Goregirl's Dungeon. For a complete list of participating bloggers, click on the links to either website.

I had probably heard of director William Castle somewhere within the past three years of doing this blog, though I doubt I could've told you much about him aside from "He was the horror director with the funny gimmicks." Last Halloween, I had the great privilege of seeing one of his films, Homicidal, at a theater, the fabulous Loews Jersey City, that recreated the gimmicks used upon the film's original release. As a result, it greatly increased both my awareness of and appreciation for the man. Besides, he comes across as such a kindly, lovable (if slightly unhinged) old coot, in an Addams Family kind of way, doesn't he?

As I alluded to in my post on the movie, Castle's huckster promotions may seem corny now (and they probably seemed corny then), but give the guy credit for understanding that movies are entertainment and don't need to be taken quite so seriously all the time. That's something I fear gets forgotten quite often these days within not only horror movies, but genre movies in general. Many of them strive for what they consider a greater sense of "realness" that they forget the reasons the audience pays their money: they want a good time. The best genre movies, I believe, find the right balance between legitimate thrills and playfulness.

Castle's Wikipedia page lists eleven different gags that he used over the course of his career. Here are five examples of his most memorable ones. Granted, these probably should be experienced within the context of the movies instead of separately, but how often do Castle's movies get shown at all, much less with the accompanying gags?

- Mr. Sardonicus. Punishment or mercy for the title character? The audience decides thanks to a bunch of glow-in-the-dark cards that they hold up, and presumably, the projectionist would run the ending they choose. Of course, it doesn't help that Castle himself tended to encourage punishment when he appears on screen to explain this poll. Supposedly there was a "mercy" alternate ending, but historians are unsure.

Test screenings, of course, are common in the industry and have been for a long time, and they can lead to changes in the movie itself. When I went to a private screening of the Steve Martin comedy The Big Year, they gave us cards to fill out afterward, asking us what we liked, what we didn't like, what we'd change if we could. I didn't care for the movie much, and my comments reflected that (though I tried to be kind), but I suspect the filmmakers tinkered with the film for a long time, because it was almost an entire year before it was released.

Castle's gimmick isn't quite along the same lines; it's got more of an instant-gratification vibe to it, which perhaps suits this modern generation better. Who knows - if the talk of a possible "Choose Your Own Adventure" movie is true, maybe this kind of gimmick is poised for a comeback.

Castle's "punishment or mercy" poll

- Homicidal. The "Coward's Corner" is something I could easily see being abused even back then, but again, it's about entertainment. If I had been around for this on its initial release, I would see the movie once, then see it again with friends just so we could make asses of ourselves and run out of the theater and get our Coward's Certificates. In fact, this was likely the sort of thing me and my high school friends might've engaged in if we knew about this movie and were in on the gag.

When I saw this at the Loews, there was an obvious plant in the audience who ran screaming out of the theater just so someone could do it. It got a lot of laughs; everybody realized it was all in good fun. Unfortunately, the tenor of many horror movies these days seems completely at odds with such a gag. The metaphysical, self-aware nature of the Scream films come close to capturing that spirit. Maybe there are other recent horror films that do the same. Not being a big horror fan, I wouldn't know.

The Homicidal "fright-break"

- Macabre. The first of Castle's movie gimmicks, he claimed to offer attendees a certificate for a $1000 life insurance policy from Lloyd's of London in case the film made them die of fright. There were also "nurses" in the lobbies and hearses parked outside the theaters. This sounds pretty cool. If it were done today, though, they'd have to be sexy nurses, of course - I'm sure lots of guys would fake a heart attack just so they could get some mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, if you know what I mean...

In our litigious society, however, I wonder what would happen if someone really did get a heart attack? Sure, this can easily be made to come across as being tongue-in-cheek (especially with sexy nurses), but all it would take is one person with no sense of humor to sue the studio and there goes the gag. Studios are risk-averse enough as it is these days.

Director John Waters talks about Macabre

- House on Haunted Hill. Inflatable glow-in-the-dark skeleton? Excellent! If the remake used this, it would've made way more money. I could easily imagine this scaring the pants off of me in 1959... if I could imagine living in 1959. It's not much of a scare today, especially after seeing it in action in this video, but it's still a great idea, especially for a midnight screening. (Come to think of it, most of these films would make for excellent midnight screenings!) Bonus points for the name "Emergo" and of course, for Vincent Price. Apparently the Loews did this gag too, a couple of years ago. I wish I had been there for it! 

I realize there are only so many ways to make a skeleton scary-looking, but I keep thinking there should be more to this gimmick somehow. If it were a surprise, that'd work, but thanks to the internet, it's next to impossible to keep anything a secret for long. Still, I like the idea of it. I just wish it could be jazzed up somehow for maximum scare potential, in a way that didn't involve modern 3D!

Emergo in action

- The Tingler. Oh my god, are you kidding me? Vibrating motors hidden under the seats that go off during the scary moments? This kinda reminds me of how they recently tried to install some kind of seats in select theaters that moved around and did crazy stuff to simulate the action scenes in movies. It didn't catch on, obviously, and if it did, they'd probably charge extra for it like they do now for 3D movies. But if I had been there for this back then, I'd have been screaming my head off like a lunatic. Once again, cool name ("Percepto") plus Vincent Price equals WIN.

This seems like the best of the gags to me. There's an element of surprise (will the Tingler be under your seat?), a physical reaction that one can't prepare for, and a full level of audience involvement. But I can also see the drawbacks: people figuring out where the Tingler seats are and bogarting them, or worse yet, posting the locations online; fights over Tingler seats, which could lead to them getting damaged. In the end, it might be more trouble than it's worth.

Castle's introduction for The Tingler

It's kind of sad that there's no interest in this kind of filmmaking and promotion in modern film, don't you think? By the same token, though, because modern audiences have become savvier and more aware of what goes on behind the camera, it's harder to lose oneself to the gags and the innocence of the spirit in which Castle made these gags. 

If Castle were around today, he'd likely be embraced by the Ain't-It-Cool and Comic-Con and SXSW type fanbase, but he'd have to work a hell of a lot harder to maintain their interest. The marketing of a film like The Blair Witch Project was a huge part of its success, but gimmicks like that are difficult to maintain over a career, which is why one only sees something like that once in a blue moon, if even that. Castle was fortunate to have made his movies when he did, I think.

Living with movie posters... EVERYWHERE

Colossal movie murals that take up entire sides
of buildings are fairly common in NYC.

This is a topic I've wanted to write about for awhile now, because while it's an intrinsic part of living in a major media capital like New York, it's also something that many people tend to take for granted, and that's the near-omnipresence of movie and television posters.

Advertising in general dominates the environment of most major American cities, and New York and Los Angeles in particular are prime examples. Who can think of Times Square without the giant Coca-Cola display, for instance? Still, movie and television posters in particular are different, I think, because even if you don't drink soda or wear a certain brand of jeans, chances are you care about movies and TV shows, to one degree or another.

For me, movie posters and murals and billboards are a double-edged sword. As a movie fan, I can't help but love seeing them. The quality of the images themselves aside, simply seeing a poster for an upcoming movie that I'm excited about is always a bit of thrill, because it means that opening day is that much closer. This tends to apply more towards the summer blockbusters than the fall awards contenders, mainly because the former captures the imagination to a greater degree...

Movie posters and other ads in odd locations generate
more revenue for the cash-strapped transit system.

...which can lead to more creative posters. In advance of Roland Emmerich's Godzilla remake, for example, there were monumental billboards all over town that emphasized Godzilla's size, saying things like "His tail is longer than this bus," or "His foot is wider than this building" or things like that. And to my eternal shame, these posters worked on me. Not only did I go see the film, I went to a Tuesday night advance preview, one of the only times I've ever done that. The movie sucked, of course, but there was no doubt that those posters generated a certain level of interest.


That said, however, seeing them all the time, everywhere, can get old quick. I used to believe that the worse a movie is, the more posters of it you'll see. Now I know that this isn't always true, but sometimes it seems that way, such as a few months ago when posters for Identity Thief dominated the subway stations. The unimaginative and just plain stupid poster (doofy head shots of stars Jason Bateman and Melissa McCarthy) was a turn-off in and of itself, but when the movie improbably opened at number one despite atrocious reviews (20% on Rotten Tomatoes), that made it even worse.

Then there are the ever-popular variant posters, which isolate individual characters - quite popular for animated movies. In the past month or so, the TV show Game of Thrones has bombarded NYC subway stations and buses with character headshot posters in advance of the new season. The show is an ensemble, so there's no one dominant star, like in Mad Men or Dexter. I have no doubt it's a great show (I've never seen it but I've read the books), but the ubiquity of even these posters, which are not very imaginative either, has begun to wear on me.

The different shape of a movie bus poster
presents its own challenges.

Another curious aspect of movie posters throughout New York is what happens when they're reformatted for the bus. I'm not sure what the exact ratio is for bus posters, but they're at least four times as wide as they are high. Sometimes a different image is used for bus posters, but often times the original image is either cropped or expanded in some fashion to fit the format.

Sometimes formatting problems go in the opposite direction. The poster for the upcoming Jackie Robinson biopic 42 fits the "landscape" bus format perfectly - an image of star Chadwick Boseman sliding into a base. What they did for the upright, or "portrait" format, however (seen on bus shelters), is flip the image onto the right side of the frame, so it now looks like Boseman's falling instead of sliding. It looks very awkward.

It's the subway stations in which movie and TV posters tend to dominate most. In recent years here in New York, we've seen movie posters and other ads displayed in more unconventional spots, like support pillars, stairways, and even turnstiles, all in an increased attempt to generate more revenue for the financially-weak transit system - which has taken some serious getting used to. One thing that hasn't changed, however, is the opportunity for playful vandalism. For example, when Clint Eastwood made his perhaps-ill-informed speech last fall at the Republican National Convention, addressing an imaginary President Obama in an empty chair, I spotted a subway poster for his film Trouble With the Curve altered to reflect current events.

There's a lot to like and dislike about an environment dominated by movie and TV ads. I suppose I like it more than I hate it, though if I wasn't such an avid film fan I might feel differently. Yes, one can argue that advertising in general clutters the landscape and we'd all be better off without it, though I think that argument holds more water when applied to more rural areas. Here in the city, it's simply a fact of life, and always has been - and I'd rather look at a creative, cleverly-designed ad, for movies or anything else, than a boring, unimaginative one.