Hark! The Christmas Gabbers Sing

Werth: Merry Christmas, Wise!

Wise: Merry Christmas, Werth! What cinematic goodies do you hope to find underneath your tree?

Werth: This year the cinematic goodies will actually be in the movie theater because for the first time since 2009, they are releasing a big-budget movie musical on Christmas Day!

Wise: I assume you are referring to Les Miserables.

Werth: Oui! Tom Hooper's take on the trés populaire musical is sure to be on the wishlist of many a Holiday Musical fan.

Wise: But even if you can't make it to your local mega-plex this Christmas, Santa's little gabbers are here to suggest some other musicals for you to enjoy all snug in your bed.

Werth: If you like a little trannie glam-rock in your holidays, there is no better musical than the 2001 indie darling, Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Based on the successful off-Broadway play of the same name, Hedwig tells the life story of transgender rock goddess Hedwig (John Cameron Mitchell) whose national tour of the Bilgewater's restaurant chain smells like the end of the line. 

If performing on a small stage next to the all-you-can-eat seafood buffet wasn't bad enough, Hedwig's tour just happens to coincide with the sell-out stadium tour of her ex-lover, Tommy Gnosis (the eternally sketchy Michael Pitt).

Wise: I thought something smelled like fish.

Werth: Hedwig looks back over her life from her start as a young boy in Soviet East Germany to discovering Tommy in a trailer park in Junction City, Kansas with a mix of loving reverie and cocked eyebrow. 

Mitchell not only stars as Hedwig, but he also wrote and directed—which makes perfect sense when you realize that Mitchell has spent a lot of time in Hedwig's boots. He created the character in performances at gay rock club night "Squeezebox" at Don Hill's in Tribeca before expanding the character and creating the hit play. And Mitchell's mastery of this fascinating creature is evident as we watch Hedwig go through heartbreak, rock n' roll success, and the tragedy of a sex-change operation that got "botched." 

Mitchell plays for drag camp, but at the same time gives a depth and a sad irony to this character that makes this concoction of wild wigs, Eastern European lilt, and filthy excess feel real. 

Wise: At least more real than the Soviet gymnastics team in the early 80's.  

Werth: Visually Mitchell has fun transforming reality into a stage by blowing the walls off a trailer in "Wig in a Box" and turning a laundromat into an intimate cabaret in "Wicked Little Town," 

but the ending of the film is not as strong thematically as what was produced for the stage. Whether you're left with the urge to "pull a wig down from the shelf" or just confusedly scratch your head—Hedwig is a rock musical worth shoving in your holiday stocking.

Wise: In Cabaret (1972), Michael York plays Brian Roberts, a shy Englishman fleeing his stultifying homeland for the more decadent pleasures of Berlin in the final days of the Weimar Republic before Germany was overrun by the Nazis.  Once there, he takes a room in a boarding house where he meets Sally Bowles (Liza Minnelli), a singer at the tawdry Kit Kat Klub who has dreams of becoming a big star.  

The two become fast friends, occasional lovers, and eventually rivals for the affection of the same man, married playboy baron Maximilian von Heune (Helmut Griem).  

Werth: Tomorrow Belongs to Max.

Wise: The film is based on a stage musical of the same name which, in turn, was based on a play called I am a Camera adapted from the 1945 book The Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood.  Longtime choreographer Bob Fosse was determined to direct the film, but after his previous effort Sweet Charity (1969) disappointed at the box office, he was not exactly at the top of the producers' wish list.  

Still, he persisted, and through luck and hard work, he got the job and won an Oscar for bringing his peculiar and kinetic style to the project.  Most of the dramatic scenes employ the largely invisible camera work of classic Hollywood, 

but during the musical numbers the camera drops its disinterest and becomes a participant, nosing up to the dancers, zooming close to catch each jiggle and turn, then dashing around to capture the abstract shapes of the dancers' legs in strange poses that was part of Fosse' signature style.  

It's a far cry from the wall flower camera during Fred and Ginger's numbers. 

Werth: Art nerd alert—He also had some fun posing and dressing the Kit Kat Klub's audience to create living tableaux of works of German Expressionism from the era.

Wise: The film earned Liza Minelli an Oscar for Best Actress and catapulted her to stardom.  Her performance is exuberant and giddy, but with a core of tenderness that reveals an emotional frailty beneath Sally's high hopes.  Joel Grey is also excellent (and Oscar-winning) as the gender bending Emcee whose capers are both hilarious and unsettling.  

Michael York was not rewarded by the Academy, although his work as what amounts to a male ingenue, though muted, exhibits enough gravity to anchor the flamboyance of his co-stars.  Plus, his bee-stung lips and elegant neck are super dreamy. 

Werth: While we're left with visions of Michael Yorks dancing in our heads, we wish all of our faithful Film Gab readers a Merry Christmas—

Wise: —And come back next week for our New Year's edition of  Film Gab! 

Re-Maker's Mark

Werth: Say, Wise?

Wise: Yes, Werth?

Werth: Which of us is going to call our cable operator to subscribe to HBO so we can watch the new mini-series version of Mildred Pierce?

Wise: I assumed you were going to boycott it because they didn’t CGI Joan Crawford into it.

Werth: Well... as good as Joan would be in the new version, I am confident that Todd Haynes is going to do a beautiful job on it.

Wise: Beautiful—but not better?


Werth: Oh I’d never go that far. First of all, I don’t think that these two projects should even be compared. They are from two TOTALLY different eras and directorial styles and, to be honest, Haynes is going to be more faithful to the James M. Cain novel that was the source material for both films. Secondly, the original 1945 Mildred Pierce is a masterwork of filmmaking and performance that casts a long and unmatchable shadow.

Wise: Kate Winslet has big eyebrows to fill.

Werth: Exactly. When shooting began on Mildred Pierce in December of 1944, the film’s star, Joan Crawford, was in a very precarious position. Her reign as the queen of MGM had unceremoniously concluded a year earlier because she had been labeled box-office poison and even worse, she was approaching Tinseltown’s unacceptable feminine age of forty.

Wise: You’re going to be unacceptable soon.

Werth: Hopefully blogs are more forgiving than Hollywood. Crawford signed a deal with rival studio Warner Brothers and waited for the script offer that she hoped would put her back on top of the Hollywood heap. Crawford read Mildred Pierce and saw her opportunity, but director Michael Curtiz was initially not so keen on working with the notorious diva. He even made her audition for the part. Legend has it he ripped the shoulders of her dress from her body as he railed against shoulder pads, only to find, those were Crawford’s actual shoulders.

Wise: Curtiz would have hated 80’s fashions.

Werth: Despite Curtz’s initial doubts, after seeing the film it’s impossible to imagine anyone but Crawford in the role. Mildred Pierce tells the story of a hard-working, single mother who busts her hump as a waitress while climbing the rungs of the culinary ladder to success—all so she can provide everything she didn’t have for her daughter Veda. Played by actress Ann Blythe, Veda is like a tall, cool glass of acid. The ultimate social climber, Veda wants the finer things in life and is willing to step on anyone to achieve them, even if that means trading bitchslaps with her blindly adoring mother.

Wise: I'm gonna name my first baby Bitchslap.  

Werth: Curtiz expertly blended the drama of a woman’s film with the visual styling and plot of film noir (there were no murders in Cain’s novel). The film plays a riveting tennis game between the past’s bright, sunlit kitchens and the present’s starkly shadowed police station and is full of wonderful volleying from Blythe, slimy Jack Carson and fresh as paint Eve Arden. But without a doubt, the titan that stands out in this film is Crawford. She often played determined, come-from-nowhere shopgirls who had to fight their way to the top with nothing but raw ambition—

Wise:  After all, that was how Lucille LeSueur became Joan Crawford.

Werth: But something about this role is different. Crawford added nuances of vulnerability, naive motherly love, and worldly regret that made Mildred a complex and unique film character. She wasn’t just a bitch. She was a victim of social constraints and her own myopic love for her daughter. No matter how many critics, historians and feminists write about this role, Crawford defies easy definitions of the Post-WW II woman. There she stands on the steps of the courthouse at the end of the picture, a symbol of failure and possibility. Getting the last laugh at “box-office poison,” Crawford won the Academy Award for Best Actress that year and kick-started another fruitful period in her career.

Wise: You might say that Todd Haynes’ Mildred Pierce is a re-make of a movie that re-made Joan Crawford.

Werth: I’m guessing that’s your intricate segue into your favorite re-made movie.

Wise: I do love elaborate transitions, especially this week when I’m not just talking about one re-make, but two, plus the play that the original film was based on.  So it’s almost like a re-make to the fourth power.  

Werth: I might need a drink just to understand that. 

Wise: Me too.  But let’s try to figure this out together.  First there was 1940’s The Shop Around the Corner with James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan, directed by Ernst Lubitsch from a Hungarian play called Parfumerie.  Nine years later it became a musical vehicle for Judy Garland and Van Johnson called In the Good Old Summertime directed by Robert Z. Leonard.  Finally, in 1998, it became You’ve Got Mail directed by Nora Ephron and starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. 

Werth: The ending of You’ve Got Mail literally caused me to stand up in the theater and shout out to Meg Ryan, “Stab him!”

Wise: While The Shop Around the Corner and In the Good Old Summertime share more plot points, all three films focus on the central couple who secretly exchange anonymous love letters while they unknowingly bicker with each other in their everyday lives.  What’s so interesting, though, is that despite the similarities, all three of these movies are decidedly different and they each showcase their stars in wildly different ways.  

Werth: Which is a big contrast to Mildred Pierce because no matter how great Kate Winslet is in the role—and I don’t doubt she will be—she’ll never be synonymous with the part the way Joan
Crawford is. 

Wise: Exactly.  The Shop Around the Corner is a rueful film, something of a love letter itself to the charms of European life that were rapidly disappearing under the heels of the Nazis during WWII.  Stewart and Sullavan both give tender, elegant performances under Lubitsch’s direction while preserving an undercurrent of bleakness that suggested that even the most star-crossed lovers had a chance of missing one another.  

Werth: Like me and Hugh Jackman.

Wise: Summertime has a much more rollicking tone.  Judy belts out some tender and fun numbers, all while keeping an eye on Johnson’s flimfalmmery.  It also features a fantastic tumble from the prince of silent pratfalls, Buster Keaton, the sweetly amusing love story between Spring Byington and S.Z. “Cuddles” Sakall, plus the screen debut of three-year-old Liza Minnelli.  

Werth: I’m surprised she didn’t get her own number.  

Wise: You’ve Got Mail was the third onscreen pairing of Ryan and Hanks and a lot of the plot simply vanishes to make room for their patented, and very marketable, sparring, and yet it shares a certain melancholy with Lubitsch’s original film.  Ephron gives a plum role to New York’s Upper West Side, bathing it in golden light and lamenting the loss of its neighborhood feel.  Ephron even does the unthinkable by closing the central shop, Ryan’s bookstore for children, even though the gift shop in Around the Corner and the music store in Summertime both survive.  


Werth: It’s a tough world out there for bookstores... and books.

Wise: What makes up for it, in my mind at least, is the fact that life-long Oz fan Ephron prominently features a number of L. Frank Baum’s books in the set design.  

Werth: I knew you’d bring it back to Oz somehow.  

Wise: Does this mean you don’t want to hear about the planned Wizard of Oz remake?

Werth: Let’s save that for when we re-make Film Gab next week.

12 Step Gab

Wise: Hi there, Werth!

Werth: Please, stop typing so loud.

Wise: Did someone celebrate his faux Irish heritage too much last night?

Werth: There’s some Irish on my Grandfather’s side... and yes.

Wise: You know the best cure for a hangover?

Werth: Four Tylenol washed down with a fifth of Cointreau?


Wise: Alcoholic Movies!

Werth: Ah! The hair of the Hollywood that bit you.

Wise: Indeed. When I’m getting my fix of over-imbibing on the silver screen, I like to serve it dry with a twist of old Hollywood glamor and a splash of 80’s bitters.  

Werth: Sounds like you’re going to dunk Joan Collins’ “Dynasty” shoulder pads into a mug of Old Grandad. 

Wise: Close, but actually I’m thinking of Postcards from the Edge, Mike Nichols’ film version of Carrie Fisher’s thinly veiled roman a clef about the excesses of an actress as she struggles with addictions, a turbulent love life, and the unending and unhelpful razzmatazz of her screen legend mother.  

Werth: Razzmatazz that will drive a body straight to Jenny Craig.

Wise: Meryl Streep plays Suzanne Vale, an effervescent actress with a few hits under her belt and a few bumps up her nose.  After a stint in rehab, and before the insurance company will allow her to start her next film, she moves in with her mother and is forced to negotiate both her recovery and her complicated maternal relationship.  Of course that relationship is even more difficult when your mother is played by Shirley MacLaine in Debbie Reynolds drag.  

Werth: That would make a great Halloween costume. 

Wise: Postcards isn’t a perfect film, but it is loaded with great performances and some genuinely funny jokes made at Hollywood’s expense.  Annette Bening, Richard Dreyfuss, and Gene Hackman all have small but pivotal roles, and their presence gives the movie a kind of insider-y feel.  It’s fun to watch the fictional world of movie-making bleed into Suzanne’s real life, just like it’s fun to play a guessing game of how much of the story is based on Carrie Fisher’s own experiences.  

Werth: I liked seeing Conrad Bain get some post-“Diff’rent Strokes” work.

Wise: Both Streep and MacLaine get to sing a couple of numbers which adds extra zest to the affair.  Plus Dennis Quaid does a lot of shirtless smirking while causing a lot of trouble for Suzanne.  He’s at the height of the golden, good-time boy era of his career and he cheerfully lures Suzanne into and out of the bedroom before eventually dumping her at the emergency room after an overdose.  

Werth: I find that the best way to cure a Dennis Quaid overdose is to hit rock-bottom with the drunkenly delightful Dudley Moore in 1981’s Arthur.

Wise: Not to be confused with the Russell Brand re-make that comes out April 8th.

Werth: Of course not. Arthur is a wealthy, lovable, ne’er-do-well lush who spends his nights at the Plaza eating dinner with lycra-clad street walkers and his days waking up in a bedroom with a trainset.

After taking a bath wearing a top hat, he can be found traipsing through New York department stores with his British-ly acerbic manservant, Hobson, played with hilarious elan by the Oscar-winning John Gielgud.

 

Wise: Isn’t that how you spend your days?

Werth: Just Saturdays. Arthur’s boozey life gets a wake-up call from his father, however, when he is told he has to marry heiress Susan Johnson (a pre- L.A. Law Jill Eikenberry) or be written off without a sou. 


Wise: There are worse things than marrying an heiress. 

Werth: Only Arthur has just found love in the Bergdorf’s tie department care of sassy shoplifter, Liza Minnelli.

Wise: What’s a drunk millionaire to do?

 Werth: What really makes this movie work is its total devotion to its lead character. Dudley Moore waltzes effortlessly across the screen as a winsome drunk. His pathetic-ness is charming, his social faux pas endearing, his care and love for Hobson heart-touching. The film doesn’t make us pity Arthur’s drunkenness. In fact, we wait anxiously for his next bender. But it also doesn’t glorify his drinking problem. As grand a caricature as Arthur is, he feels utterly human. And with spot-on supporting performances from Gielgud, Minnelli, Barney Martin and Geraldine Fizgerald, Arthur’s life doesn’t make us want to run to an AA Meeting, but to the arms of someone we love.

Wise: It sounds like you got caught between the moon and New York City.

Werth: And if any theme song could give you a hangover, Christopher Cross’ could.

Wise: No worries. You and our faithful readers can just put an ice pack on your heads and tune in next week for more intoxicating Film Gab!

Happy Liza Day!

We here at Film Gab just wanted to take the opportunity to wish you and yours a very happy Liza Minnelli Day! Whether you watch Cabaret, walk around with jazz hands all day, or just wear giant eyelashes, we hope you enjoy celebrating the 65th birthday of this Hollywood/Broadway icon.

Momma & Poppa Can You Hear Me? Part Deux

Werth: So Wise, what did you think of Robert Osborne's interview with Liza on Turner Classic Movies?

Wise: Well, at first I was worried that someone had slipped me a mickey, but then I realized the focus was just incredibly soft.  

Werth: Not as soft as those layers of pancake makeup they were both wearing. 

 Wise: Liza has always impressed me with her ability to assess the talents and the failings of both her parents.  She’s respectful of their privacy, which maybe doesn’t allow film historians as much access as they’d like, but she’s also frank about the kinds of creative and personal pressures they were under.  She must understand that because, unlike a lot of celebrity children, her talents are on a level equal to those of her parents. What did you think?  

Werth: I think that the premise of showing her as the girl next door who puts on her flowing bell-bottoms one leg at a time just like the rest of us was misguided. We don’t watch Liza to see someone we could run into at Gristedes. We watch Liza to see her explode with quirkiness and lust for life in ways that only a Hollywood legend can. But it is nice to see her alive and kicking.

Wise: The interview did make me want to watch Cabin in the Sky which was her father's directorial debut and a film I had never seen before. 

Werth: I know it well. What did you think?

Wise: Well, for a long time, I had always thought of Cabin as the movie that used a couple leftover effects from The Wizard of Oz.  It was hardly ever shown on TV and a lot of the books I read praised it, but dismissed it as less important and less accomplished than Minnelli’s later work.  So I was surprised by how immediately engaging it is.

Werth: It’s really a primer to the whole Minnelli style.  You can see the root of all his fanciful touches, the decor, the costumes, the sweeping camera moves, and his two favorite motifs—mirrors and stairs.

Wise: Plus he’s already great with actors.  Before watching it, I had a dim feeling that Cabin, being an all-black musical from 1943, would be full of the regrettable stereotypes of the period.  And they are there, no question, but Minnelli clearly has such respect for both the actors and the characters  they’re portraying.  Ethel Waters and Eddie “Rochester” Anderson play a couple whose marriage nearly breaks apart because of his philandering and gambling.  Minnelli emphasizes their physical interactions—caresses, embraces, even punches—which gives the characters a heft they wouldn’t have had if another director, perhaps, had pushed the cartoonish eye-rolling and shuffling that was seen as comic during this time.  

Werth: It’s funny you should say that because when I saw Cabin in a film class this semester a number of the students were offended by it.  

Wise: Sure, there are a couple cringe-worthy moments, but I think that’s mostly due to some of the actors playing to type.  It was unavoidable at the time—Clark Gable had a type, Bette Davis had a type, Vincente helped create Judy’s type—but an actor playing to persona could sometimes allow for more creative risks.  

Werth: I know you don’t want to leave our discussion of Cabin without mentioning Lena Horne playing Georgia Brown, the bad girl temptress sent by the devil.  

Wise: Gorgeous, beautiful voice, funny, electric.  It’s just a shame that the culture didn’t allow us to see more of her talents on screen.

Werth: Since you’ve dealt so brilliantly with Vincente, I’m going to handle Judy.

Wise: Is that what Vincente said?

Werth: That depends which biography you’re reading.  But Wise, even though I hate to do this, I’m going to fly in the face of Werth & Wise tradition—

Wise: All four weeks of it?

Werth: I’m going to talk about… Television.

Wise: Should we change the name of the blog to Media Gab?

Werth: Hells no. We’re all aware how great Judy was on the big screen, but not everyone knows as much about her on the small screen. From 1963-1964 Garland hosted her very own musical variety show on CBS. Sunday nights opposite Bonanza, Judy would sing, dance, joke and chat her way through an hour-long entertainment extravaganza complete with guest stars and comic sidekicks.

Wise: Sounds a bit all over the place.

Werth: It was. The main problem was that the TV execs had no idea what to do with Judy. They tried giving her Dick Van Dyke’s brother Jerry to enhance the comedy. He wasn’t funny. They tried Judy serving “tea” to certain notable guests who would banter with her and tell stories. Censors yelled at her for touching her guests too much. They finally got on the right path when they decided to just turn the show into a weekly concert special where Judy would do what she did best—sing. But by then Judy was exhausted from a floundering marriage, the assassination of friend JFK, and the renewed influence of pills and white wine. So brand new CBS head honcho, Hunt Stromberg, Jr. (who’d never liked her to begin with) sent her a bouquet of flowers with the card, “You were great. Thanks a lot. You’re through.”

Wise: Ouch.

Werth: Despite all of that, Judy’s performances in these shows are, for the most part, marvelous. Her voice is powerful; her stage presence equal parts warm, charming and sad; and her interpretation of the songs insightful. She sings standards from her famous concerts and others like “Old Man River,” “Shenandoah” and a Porgy and Bess medley (with Vic Damone) that she would never have gotten the chance to sing in a movie. “Old Man River” in particular is so resonant with genuine pathos that you don’t question why this skinny white lady is singing a song written for a black man. Judy’s stint as a Hollywood laborer scarred her in a way that makes her performance of this song emotionally credible.

Wise: It always feels like she lived the lyrics of her songs.

Werth: True. True. But the shows aren’t all gloom and doom. The sets and the costumes have that early 60’s look. It’s a rare treat to see Judy perform with guest stars like Lena Horne, a tipsy June Allyson and ingenue Barbra Streisand. It’s a reminder how great the now-extinct variety show genre was.

Wise: If you want to bring the variety show back, we could start juggling flaming pins on the blog.

Werth: But then we’d have to change our blog name to The Werth & Wise Media Variety Hour.

Wise: Tune in next week for Film Gab with Werth & Wise.