Well, dear readers, to paraphrase The Beatles – It was thirty years ago today. Yes, you heard it here, dear readers, it was thirty years ago today when I drove onto a motion picture lot and began co-directing and starring in my very first motion picture, which I also scripted and did the songs for. I was twenty-seven years of age at the time. The film, of course, was The First Nudie Musical. As I look back, it is still hard to imagine that we pulled off the difficult feat of raising the money (even though it was low budget, raising the money was not easy), getting a wonderful company of players, and somehow managing to bring the film in exactly on budget and on schedule, a rather amazing thing considering it was a musical comedy being shot in 35mm in eighteen days. Could I, in my wildest imaginings, have foreseen that thirty years later this film would be a well-loved cult film that influenced many other film projects that came after, that pushed the ratings envelope further than it had ever been pushed regarding how much nudity and profanity could be used in an R rated film? No. At that time, I couldn’t even imagine that we’d actually get through the editing of the film, let alone anything else. Whether it was actually going to be funny, or whether it was actually even going to resemble a movie was not even in my head while we were trying to get a decent cut of the film. Could I have predicted that at our very first preview of the film, which I believe was somewhere in Glendale or Pasadena (I have no memory of which theater it actually was and I’m guessing that it was one of those cities), that we would have had a sell-out audience (not filled with that many friends – ninety percent of the audience had no idea what they were going to see, and at that point we were still screening the film in interlock – separate picture and sound elements), and that that audience from the first frame of the film to the last would be screaming (and I mean screaming) with laughter at every point of the film? No, I could never have imagined it. I sat there in shock, and every time a huge roaring laugh occurred I just looked around me to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. When the Joy Full scene came up the people sitting in front of me were laughing so hard and stomping their feet on the ground so hard I thought they were going to die. When Susie sang her song on Hollywood Boulevard, it got an applause. When John Smithee had his first scene (believe me, this was a moment of sheer terror for me) and he did the pulling up the chair bit, the laughter was so loud you couldn’t hear the next two minutes of the scene. John’s speech to the cast, moments later, received laughs so loud I thought the walls of the theater were going to crumble. And so it went, the whole evening. I say this because so many people have only seen the film on video or DVD or cable. They think it’s very funny, and it does hold up well, but if they’d seen it in a movie theater with a full house they would truly know just how funny the film was, and, in its own way, what a groundbreaker it was. I say this with no ego whatsoever – we just got lucky. After that preview, we had several others, and at each one the story was the same, the laughs were the same and the cheers at the end of the film were the same. Two things were clear from those screenings: Thing one was that as much as I loved the way Where is a Man was filmed, the audience didn’t like the number – they literally left to buy popcorn, and then loved the film again as soon as the number passed. That was an important lesson – that two-thirds of the way through a movie you couldn’t give a significant solo number to a character who wasn’t important enough to warrant it. You can get away with doing that on the stage, but not so much in films. The other thing that was clear was that about forty minutes into the film we had about a six minute pocket where there were no laughs. And we were worried about it! Can you imagine a comedy today that had laughs in every place but six minutes? Today you’re lucky if you get six minutes that are funny, and if those six minutes deliver the comedy is a hit. Boy, have times changed. At about our sixth preview, in Westwood, with Love and Death (we got more laughs – I kid you not), Paramount attended and we had an offer the next day (we’d already had two independent offers, one of them a very serious one from Roger Corman). Could I have imagined in my wildest dreams that I’d be walking around the Paramount lot as a filmmaker? No. But, there I was, attending meetings, being told I was the next big thing in comedy, and being wined and dined. Paramount didn’t like that there were six unfunny minutes so they told me to go shoot something funny to replace them. That is how Dancing Dildos was born, and boy were they right to push me to do it. As those who’ve seen the documentary on the DVD know, the end of the story was not quite so happy, and at that time it was a devastating situation, what with Paramount suddenly having their brand new family-hour prime time star, Cindy Williams, in this curious and very R-rated movie. Bad timing. I used to rail on about the injustice of it all. The film should have made me a star, it should have made me a writer/director – should have, but it didn’t. It actually harmed my career. That such a positive could have turned into such a negative was astonishing and a bitter lesson learned. But, you know what? Here we are, thirty years later, the film is still with us, it’s still beloved, and people still write me about it all the time. I’ll tell you when I realized that we’d made a little tiny cult classic – there were two events that happened almost simultaneously: The first was when I received a letter from a group of people in Chicago or somewhere around there. This group had formed a John Smithee Fan Club – they watched the film endlessly and they all “did” John for their friends and family. The second thing involved my darling daughter. She’d moved to Seattle some years ago and had made a bunch of new friends and was really enjoying her life there. One night, she went to the home of two of her new friends. They’d invited her over for dinner and a movie – they wanted her to see their all-time favorite film, one they watched over and over again. I’m sure you’ve guessed the punchline – the film was Nudie and when she told them that her father had written and directed it, as well as played John, well, she told me they just about fainted dead on the ground. So, nothing about the film retains any negativity for me at all. We made something funny and it has stood the test of time – how many people do that? I’m proud of the film, I’m proud of everyone who worked on it, and I’m proud it has such a loyal legion of fans around the world. So, this is my long-winded way of saying Happy Anniversary everybody!
Well, that was the longest paragraph in the history of this site, wasn’t it? That just tuckered me out, that paragraph did. Why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below because even though it was thirty years ago today, there are other things to talk about.
Last night I watched two count them two motion pictures on DVD, but I’ll save one report for tomorrow’s notes, since these here notes are already the War and Peace of notes. So, I’ll just tell you a little about Blue, starring Mr. Terence Stamp, Mr. Karl Malden, and Miss Joanna Petit, along with Mr. Ricardo Montalban. I can’t even tell you the plot of the film, so obtuse is it. I can tell you quite simply that it instantly goes in the pantheon of bad what-were-they-thinking movies. Blue is one of those late sixties counter-culture westerns that isn’t a western, with a sullen, semi-psychotic, neurotic anti-hero. And as that anti-hero, let me tell you that Terence Stamp gives one of the weirdest and worst performances in the history of cinema. He plays a blonde-haired blue-eyed faux Mexican (he’s not really a Mexican, but he lives with the Mexicans, kills with the Mexicans and has surrogate Ricardo Montalban as a father – for the first fifty-three minutes of the film, he speaks not one word. Then he never shuts up for the rest of the film, and you wish he’d go back to not speaking because his “accent” is so horrendous it’s jaw-dropping. So, you’ve got a Brit trying to sound southern and failing miserably who is also a faux Mexican. The film also has a completely neurotic score by Manos Hadjikas. I think you’re beginning to get the picture. The director was Silvio Narazzino, who gave us the delightful Georgy Girl. I believe Blue basically ended his career. The one are where Blue succeed masterfully is the cinematography by Stanley Cortez. Mr. Cortez was a bit of a genius (he did the incredible camerawork for The Magnificent Ambersons) and his photography on Blue is nothing short of brilliant. It helps that the DVD transfer is one of the most stunning things I’ve ever seen – fantastic color, every inch of the frame sharp as a tack – I mean, this is what a DVD should look like.
What am I, Ebert and Roeper all of a sudden? Shouldn’t we also be celebrating Cinco de Mayo or Cinco de Mustard? I think I shall don my serape and do so.
Speaking of celebrations, they continue unabated because we’d all better put on our pointy party hats and our colored tights and pantaloons, we’d all better break out the cheese slices and ham chunks, we’d all better dance the Hora or the Frug because not only do we have a thirtieth anniversary and Cinco de Mayo or Cinco de Ketchup to celebrate, we’ve got us a birthday to celebrate, too. And that birthday belongs to dear reader George. So, let’s give a big haineshisway.com birthday cheer to dear reader George. On the count of three: One, two, three – A BIG HAINESHISWAY.COM BIRTHDAY CHEER TO DEAR READER GEORGE!!!
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must write, I must celebrate, I must hopefully sleep late, I must do errands, I must, perhaps, dine with Mr. David Wechter, and I must hopefully pick up a package or three. Today’s topic of discussion: What are your all-time favorite cult films – those outré, out-of-the-way titles that you and maybe only you love and adore? That seems to me a reasonable topic given what we’re celebrating today. Also, keep your eye on the discussion board throughout the day – there will be a series of Nudie Musical trivia questions, and there will be a few sparkling prizes to give out to those who guess the answers. Timing will be everything, so I’d keep haineshisway.com up on your computer screen all the livelong day and night. Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, on this amazingly amazing day of celebration.