Ollie

The song is lip-sync'd at the very end of YELLOW SUBMARINE, and is available on its soundtrack CD.

I apologize to those who find this topic offensive, but for the last decade, I've been among those silently wondering but never speaking this question out-loud.

In BLAZING SADDLES, Gene Wilder yanks Cleavon Little out from behind a boulder so he can ask some Klansmen, "Where are the white wimmen?!!" I want to know "Where are the black women" and, more specifically, where are the dark women? They sure aren't in Hollywood films, TV or marketing campaigns. I don't know the ratio of dark African-American males being employed in film, TV and ads compared to dark women, but it could be - what? - 5000-to-1? 100,000-to-zero? I can't remember the last contemporary film, TV show or ad (commercials or print-ads) where a woman darker than the man is employed. What's happened to dark women? Have they been outlawed? I still see them in real-life...I believe I do, at least. But is Hollywood and Madison Avenue trying to propogandize them out of existence? And where is the outcry from this segment (and all others) of the population? The silence is as deafening as their Hollywood/Madison Avenue absence. By excluding these people from public embodiment, what signal is this sending? "You're not right for this..."? "You're not the market we're interested in"? "You're not attractive enough?" "You're just flat-out wrong for living"? Oh boy...I can hardly wait for these standards to be applied to everyone. Steve Buscemi and many, many others may never see another dollar, much less daybreak.

My first viewing of the film left me humming some of the tunes. But after seeing it again and again, I was reminded that this is a film that has three great sililoquoys - one, you mentioned, is where Harold gives her the diamond ring. And Maude throws it into the bay {"...so I'll always know where it's at"). The other one is Maude's speech about Dreyfuss on Devil's Island, where Dreyfuss is remarking on the beautiful birds he sees on the beach at sunset. Some pal tells him they're only horrible ol' seagulls, but "to Dreyfuss, they were always beautiful birds." The third is her "go out and love someone else" speech at the end. Also, the very young Tom Skerritt gets one of his first on-screen performances as the ultra-macho motorcycle cop who's quite befuddled after his 2nd encounter with H&M. I'm just glad that Cat Stevens waited 25 years before offering to pay killers to murder a certain author. That event still leaves his music on store shelves instead of on mine.

The dearth of actor-competitors to Clint's musical skills has always been surprising. While his PAINT singing isn't great - nor has his other efforts - they're still there for all to listen. Yeah, maybe you're right - that's not saying much! ha ha Like Woody Allen, however, he is one filmmaker that has taken a huge personal interest in his films' scores. And frankly, his tribute film BIRD is far and away the better realized effort compared to Woody's unpleasurable SWEET & LOWDOWN (I realize that everyone supposedly wants to be in a Woody Allen film, but jeepers, Sean - maybe you could have waited for a story where you weren't displayed as such an obvious technical dufus...your guitar mimickry would have been more realistic if you'd used your feet). (With your shoes on.) Anyway...I think the comparative lack of actors with a broad range of musical, dance and acting skills is because of the loss of the studio system where 'forced training' occurred. However, I wouldn't vote "for" the studio system based on its other terrible facets.

While I don't believe many professionals or fans decry the end of the 'studio system' (where pros were under contract to one studio for years), the studio system did provide a lot of skill development other than acting - singing, dancing, playing musical instruments. Even if actors didn't use those skills often, they would come back to 'haunt' audiences later. (I'm watching John Wayne sing in THE QUIET MAN - the little bar-room ditty - not a big stretch, but thar he goes!) During the '60s, '70s and '80s, I can't really name too many of that era's film stars that demonstrated a range of skills - dancing, singing or playing the piano. I'm thinking of Jack Nicholsen, Paul Newman, Marlon Brando's one singing role. There were stars of musicals (Julie Andrews etc) that did, of course, but mostly not. I get the sense that, during the '30s into the early '50s, the studio system was raining just about everyone. Just in case...("There was a wild colonial boy, Jack Duggan was his name...") But it's not like James Stewart relaxing at a piano in ANATOMY OF A MURDER. Or Jack Lemmon thru out several films. At least, not until Clint Eastwood did the same in IN THE LINE OF FIRE. In the past 10 years or so, I've seen a spate of actors who've done quite a bit with music. (Of course, Belushi and Ackroyd as The Blues Brothers, but also John Goodman, Justine Bateman, even Michael J. Fox, Bruce Willis and Kevin Bacon.) Are we going to see another generation of actors that have dancing and musical skills? Would the modern Boy/Girl "bands" (InSync, Spice Gogs, Christina-Brittany, etc.) be considered products of a studio-like system? Of course, we'll have to wait to see if they turn into so many other one-hit wonder types or if they have any staying power. After all...I'd hate to think Madonna ends up being the standard bearer for singer-dancer-actor types of these last 20 years...but I fear she is.

Pink, I don't get to see this film off of TV often, but it was on a local summer filmfest schedule and I forgot how powerful the chariot race's sound was. And then, on today's modern sound systems, it was even more thundering. This is one of those films that explode on the big screen. This was a strong Heston performance, but I also like his EL CID and MAJOR DUNDEE performances, too (both of which oddly end up with Heston's impalement...hmmm - I wonder if these influences his preferences for guns being used to kill people? ha ha).

(After reading the PAT GARRETT and HOW I WON THE WAR threads, I was thinking that HAROLD & MAUDE might be an interesting movie to recommend.) This film showed up in 1971 and reviews called it 'one of the best scored films'. When I saw it, I realized how great contemporary music could make a film all the more potent. This is a pretty quirky film, but I would still nominate this film as Best Scored Film and Best Film Editing, particularly because of the climactic final scene, which splits the screen into 3 time viewpoints (a "before", a "during" and an "after" view, all side-by-side). Then to match this climax with Cat Stevens' TROUBLE and that closing montage becomes indelibly linked. But with happier results than David Lynch and "Blue Velvet"! There were five or six popular films in the few years preceding H&M that used split screens to impress viewers, but many of those were masturbatory - I can't imagine anyone but the film-maker getting much pleasure from them. (I'm thinking of ZABRISKI POINT, HOTEL and STANLEY SWEETHEART.) At about the same time (1970?), the concert film MAD DOGS & ENGLISHMEN used exploding splits far better than even WOODSTOCK to achieve the many-persons-in-crowd viewpoint. I'd recommend HAROLD & MAUDE for the final 10-minutes alone, but I think the film's entire score mates just about perfectly with its hosting scenes. This was a film that stayed in local theatres for more than a year on its initial release. Just a very different age for the theatre business - flop-films routinely stuck around for weeks to see if they'd catch on. HAROLD & MAUDE did, as did its Bud Cort predecessor, the even quirkier BREWSTER McCLOUD which was Shelley Duvall's intro.)

Pink, I was thinking "Lennon in his round glasses" were introduced to the public in this film. Short hair, too. This was the first appearance of a Beatle in something other than their trademark locks, all of which had been growing longer during those previous two years. Up to that point, the few photos of Lennon In Glasses were the Foster Grants (a short clip in HELP! and behind the scenes photos from their '64-'65 insanity. Then somewhere during this film's work schedule (1966), he shaved down and donned the WWII-type specs, and never got away from them. I remember his shorn appearance got more attention than the film did. I saw this film again in the late '70s and remembered why I couldn't remember it well from its original viewing. It's not that memorable! Check out this Amazon link's "release date" of "January, 2010". Gee...I was thinking Stanley Kubrick would be involved in THAT one! ha ha: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000059H97/imdb-adbox/102-3830975-9270539