Exquisitely Bored in Nacogdoches

March 7, 2006

I Love You, Alice B. Toklas! (1968) part 4

Let's review:

Let's get on with it:

What does one do after an Alice B. Toklas brownie binge?

Why, mini-golf, of course. It's much more fun that way. The angles suddenly seem easier to understand.

"Where's Harold?"

Harold seeks flower child, Nancy, at her place of employment--a hippie boutique. Perhaps there was a little Apple Boutique influence here?

The Beatles' Apple Boutique being "touched up" by The Fool.

Harold: I came to see you.
Nancy: Groovy!
Harold: You're very pretty.
Nancy: So are you.

"You should have told what was in those brownies."

"Thank Alice B. Toklas. It's her recipe. She wrote a freaky cookbook."

Seeing as it's 1968, and Los Angeles, the establishment is eager to let its freak flag fly.

"Excuse me, I'm looking for a skirt."

"Can you take up two inches?"

They head back to Harold's place, which is right around the corner.

Great icebreaker: "I have a butterfly."

"I know. Is it a monarch? I've never been this close to a butterfly before."

The "love sharing" is interrupted by Harold's mother, who calls to make sure she didn't go to the wrong bakery. The brownies she bought weren't nearly as good as Harold's.

The next day is the wedding-a, can you believe it?

Harold's little brother, and full-fledged hippie, Herbie, wears another type of Indian ritual suit to the wedding-a.

Poor Joyce, never a bride.

Harold, obviously, is having second, and third, thoughts.

It's a bad sign when the groom begins casually talking to the bride during the rabbi's shpeil. Harold tells Joyce she looks very pretty, and this must be very important to her.

"This is wrong. You don't really know who I am.I don't know me."

Ironically, Murray warns Harold: "Stop it, Harold. You'll never forgive yourself."

Harold: I'll never forgive myself if I ruin her life.

"Far-r-r out."

The runaway groom

We return to the Manson Family, down on Sunset Blvd.

"It's not in there. There's nothing to find in there. There are no people there. Only machines. Garbage disposing machines...

THE HIPPIEFICATION OF HAROLD F.

...Dish washing machines...

...Television machines being watched by people machines...

...We have left the machine, and by so doing, we are opting for survival."

Survival?

A full three years before John Lennon's "Imagine", and its message of forsaking material possessions, Harold Fine decides love is all he needs. Makes one wonder if life was imitating art when Lennon wrote it...

Life in a psychedelic Olds(?) Cadillac? Buick?

Wakey, wakey

Must keep up with the Stones.

Shavin'

Brushin'

Under arm deodorantin'

Jammin'

Lovin'

Later, at the beach...

I hate that book.

Harold's brainwashing begins:

"Flower in the crannied wall
I pluck you out of the crannies
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower--but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all
I should know what God and man is."

Why not? Tennyson worked on the chick from scene one.

"But how can you know what a flower is, HAROLD, if you don't know who you are? Who are you? Do you know who you are?"

Harold: I'm trying, guru, I'm really trying.

Hippie Rasputin: When you stop trying, then you'll know who you are.

Harold: Well, I'm trying to stop trying.

COMING UP IN PART 5 (the last one):

Harold begs Nancy to kiss his ankh.....and SHE DOES! What a trooper.

part 5

March 4, 2006

"All the Way"

"The Puppet Breaks"

Frank Sinatra made the film The Joker Is Wild in 1957. In it, Sintra plays the part of real life comedian Joe E. Lewis. This scene shows Lewis (Sinatra) performing at a 500 Club-ish place. He has broken an agreement with a mob-type organization, and is about to pay for it. There are two thugs waiting for him in the audience. He's 'bout to get his ass whupped. Badly. Sinatra played characters like this well.

The great actor Eddie Albert plays Lewis's pianist and pal. I love how he manages to pretend to play piano and look really angry at the same time. And Sinatra does a passable job of lip-synching. Still, it's a nice song.

There's a really good review of the film at TURNER CLASSIC MOVIES.

As you could see, I taped this off of amctv back when it was just plain old "AMC", and they never played commercials.

POSTSCRIPT:

I was in Galveston, Texas, from Thursday through Saturday. Little did I know, I was standing on the same land mass as Frank Sinatra, Jr., whose ex-wife isn't capitalizing on the famous name, or anything. No, she wouldn't do that:

"Sinatra makes last-second push for votes"

concentration camp clown

I'm a fan of Jerry Lewis. I happen to be one of those people who thinks he is a national treasure. Boing Boing has a link to this site, which has more than you could ever want to know about the unreleased Lewis film, The Day the Clown Cried.

Lewis was a pioneer. As far as I know, he was the first artist to attempt to bring even the smallest level of humor to the topic of the Holocaust, at least on a big scale. Surely Roberto Benigni was inspired by Lewis's unreleased film.

La Vita è bella (1997)

Jakob the Liar (1999)

The Pianist (2002)

March 2, 2006

I Love You, Alice B. Toklas! (1968) part 3

What's a stiff, uptight, stuffy bachelor to do when an unbelievably beautiful, sexy, free spirit crashes at his pad? Why, he offers her his bed and sleeps on the couch, of course.

After a long day dealing with frivolous lawsuits, even a guy like Harold Fine needs a glass of booze to unwind,

which he takes to his bedroom after Nancy says she'd rather sleep on the couch so she can watch TV.

Of course, hippies didn't drink booze.

Harold continues to unwind by massaging the shoulders of his suit coat.

Harold whips out the asthma inhaler--clearly an emotional crutch.

Nancy has her own crutch.

The sucking sounds he hears alarm Harold, as he must think he's having an asthma attack. Watch this amusing scene here (only 30 seconds; I couldn't do a movie recap without a YouTube video):

It's a good morning when you find a hot flower child sprawled out on your floor. Good morning starshine, the earth says hello! Gliddy glub gloopy nibby nabby noopy, la la la lo lo, indeed.

The "tattoos" were painted, on set, by Andy Warhol. How frickin' cool is that??

via Leigh Taylor-Young's website

Harold's such a good boy.

Nancy hears Harold as he's pulling out for work, and tells him she'll make him breakfast. Harold shushes her, and asks her not to answer the door or phone while she's there. Remember, Harold's engaged.