Come And Knock On Our Door...

... we'll be waiting for you.

There's just something so very, very wrong about a poster for a film noir where the woman looks like one of Jack Tripper's sexual triumphs (did he have any?) on Three's Company. From the 1978 remake of The Big Sleep with Robert Mitchum and Sarah Miles. I haven't actually seen it since I was but a youngin' and at that time the look probably didn't strike me as odd but now it stands out. Of course, Altman's The Long Goodbye revels in the seventies look but I consider that film a masterpiece, not only of filmmaking in general but of noir re-invention as well. Go figure.

And the reason I'm posting this is because I stopped by Adam Ross' DVD Panache and read this terrific post, The Blog Sleep, on the demise of movie bloggers. Now if you are growing weary of reading about the state of film blogging I should tell you that you need not worry - Adam writes the post in the fashion of the pulp fiction dime novel with a surpise ending. It's an enjoyable read even if he doesn't make me look too good in it - I appear to be one of the underworld characters but then so is Dennis so I guess I'm in good company. Hope I didn't spoil anything with that. Nah, I didn't, trust me.

Hey wait a minute. Underworld character? Damn you Ross! I'll get you for this.

It's Official: The Damn Thing's Ubiquitous

Old Jonathan Lapper's daughter was only six years old. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate (to borrow a phrase from Charles Dickens).

So on Saturday I had to drive the six year old Little Miss Lapper and her six year old friend to her soccer game. It's a fascinating weekly event in which six year olds wander aimlessly in circles and oblong formations attempting to kick a ball with some sense of purpose. Occasionally, if the planets are aligned correctly and the universe engages in a brief quantum flux, the ball rolls into one of the goals. The planets do not align correctly often.

On this past Saturday we arrived to find the game had been cancelled due to the muddy field from the previous day's rain. Being the responsible and resourceful father that I am I decided the perfect alternative to a vigorous and healthy workout on the soccer field was a trip to the ice cream shop. Besides, I had a hankering for a malted. So I packed up the two little ham balls into the car and drove across town to a nice little locally owned ice cream shop for a bit of creamery delight.

The six years olds confirmed their age by ordering the oddest combination of flavors and toppings available. Maybe I'm too unimaginative but in my book gummy bears don't go with Dulce de Leche flavored ice cream very well. But who am I to judge? I got my malted, paid and we all took a seat.

Upon sitting down it wasn't long before Little Miss Lapper inquired as to the deliciousness of my malted. I told her it was indeed delicious. She (and this should be no surprise to anyone with children) immediately wanted some. I gave her the malted for a taste. She took it in both hands, as children are want to do, and that's when it happened. She looked me squarely in the eyes, furrowed her brow and said:

"I drink your milkshake. I drink it up!"

"Wow," I thought, "it's official. That goddamn line is now known by every human being on the planet."

Now obviously, movies are discussed quite a bit in my household and if I may brag for a moment, the Little Miss Lapper, at the tender young age of six, can identify by face or name most of the big stars of the thirties and forties, which places her far ahead of most casual moviegoing adults. She loves "old movies", as she says, and indeed The Awful Truth is one of her favorites, with the scene of the cat holding back the door against Cary Grant guaranteed to crack her up every time. And it's not just classics but older movies in general. Last year for a playdate she wanted to bring a DVD and picked Murder Ahoy with Margaret Rutherford. Not wanting her to face the rejection of this choice we explained that other children might not appreciate Miss Marple on the same level that she does. But at home we've watched all four of Rutherford's Marple series many times over. Margaret Rutherford fascinates the Little Miss Lapper.

But There Will Be Blood? I saw it in the theater. I still don't have it on DVD. And yet there she was, quoting Daniel Plainview to me at the local ice cream shop. Amazing.

What is it about certain movie lines that they are immortalized almost instantly? Why do some lines become ubiquitous while others go unnoticed? Casablanca is famous for it's wealth of quotable lines from "shocked, Shocked!" and "hill of beans" to "here's looking at you kid" and "round up the usual suspects." Hell, it's got so many memorable lines people even remember lines that weren't there ("Play it again, Sam"). In keeping with the classic Hollywood film theme of this comparison, Citizen Kane has a screenplay filled with great lines as well, including one of my favorites, "You know Mr. Bernstein, if I hadn't been very rich I might have been a really great man." But what's the one Kane line that everyone knows? "Rosebud."

I don't have the answer for why some lines become immortal while others do not. Some are understandable. For instance, "May the Force be with you" is not only a simple statement along the lines of "Good Luck" or "Break a Leg", it also has the fortune of being spoken in a film seen more times by more people than most other films in history. Same goes for "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn." Outside of the obvious advantages of that line (spoken by Clark Gable, appearing in generationally popular movie) there's also the context: It's being said to someone who connives and schemes by someone who is, to quote an old internet joke, just so tired of all her shit. It provides the audience with a "finally!" moment that they love.

So is it context that makes a line immortal? The context of the milkshake scene in There Will Be Blood could certainly fall into the same category as the Gone With the Wind line in the simplest of comparisons in that one character is telling another character off, a character the audience has been waiting to see get told off. Only in There Will Be Blood the character doing the telling off, Daniel Plainview, is decidedly less likable than Gable's Rhett Butler. But what about those famous lines that have practically no context like "Yeah Baby!" from Austin Powers that people started saying because they didn't know how to be witty or clever on their own. Or "I'm the King of the World!" from Titanic? It's not a particularly deep line or containing any kind of clever play on words but for whatever reason it became famous. A seemingly coke-addled James Cameron even yelled it out when he won one of his many Oscars that night, acknowledging it's ubiquity.

Is it quality? Doubtful. There are many lines from many a bad film that are utterly immortalized. But quality films do seem to have the advantage. More people know "I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse" from The Godfather than "muzzled by army brass" from Plan Nine from Outer Space (or it's almost orgasmic description of Solaranite, one of my favorite scientific explanation movie moments in film history) but Plan Nine does have its share of famous lines nonetheless.

The thing with immortal movie lines is you never know which ones are going to become immortalized and which ones aren't. So maybe it's the mood of the country or the world at any given time. I've often thought that despite its cleverness as a line, one of the reasons that "We're gonna need a bigger boat" caught on so well was due to the sinking ship feeling all over the world in 1975. Gas shortages, meat and sugar prices shooting up, the Yom Kippur War of 1973, Watergate, the drawn out end of the war in Vietnam, recession and so on and so on. It was a mess and nobody had the answer. But in that movie, Jaws, Chief Brody saw the problem and addressed it succinctly, honestly and appropriately. I think everyone in the seventies felt like we needed a bigger boat.

So what's the zeitgeist now? Why is the milkshake line so ubiquitous? Is it because it uses the word "milkshake?" Seriously, is that why? If he had said "water" instead would it have stuck? I don't think it would have so the wording definitely goes a long way in explaining its popularity.

Or is it the internet? It seems more movies have memorable lines now than ever before if only because we can watch clips from them over and over at our leisure. And that goes for television shows too. Most people can quote episodes of The Simpsons or South Park liberally and with ease so maybe it's just the access we have now. Maybe if There Will Be Blood was released in 1957 the line would've disappeared without a trace.

And this technological advantage of the internet and DVDs has helped out smaller movies immeasurably. The ability to watch the movie on DVD or online again and again has helped movies that would've fallen down the memory hole just a couple of decades before become cult classics. Take The Big Lebowski. It had a lukewarm reception in the theatres during it's opening run. It got mixed reviews and seemed destined to be one of the lesser known Coen brothers' films. Then it was released on video and took on a brand new second life as a cult classic. With its release on DVD it became even easier to go to favorite scenes over and over. And the price didn't hurt either. The Big Lebowski was one of the first DVDs I ever bought, partially because I liked the movie and partially because it's price point was around seven bucks. Today its fans (and most cinephiles in general) can quote the movie endlessly even though many of the quotes are only funny within the context of the film and don't stand out as anything special on their own. The line on the phone, for instance, when the Dude tells Walter that, no, he didn't think the kid was about to crack, is hilarious, but only if you've sat through the astonishing homework interrogation scene before it.

So will there be more out of context quoting of 'R' rated movies by six year olds in the future? Almost assuredly. We have entered the golden age of movie quoting, aided by technology, that allows moviegoers the world over to connect with each other on the basis of shared knowledge. In this case, shared knowledge of movie or television dialogue. When people unfamiliar with each other can recite a scene from a favorite movie together or knowingly laugh when the other says, " I don't roll on Shabbos!" we've entered a new age; the age of quote conversations, as I like to call them. I've had many quote conversations with people I would have otherwise had nothing to say to. Usually it ends there, but sometimes it goes further and who knows, with all these quote conversations going on, some of them may end up as the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

I think I heard that in a movie somewhere.

He's a Serious Mister, Shake His Hand and He'll Twist Your Arm

I'm referring to Arbogast, of course. We all know Arbogast (real name: Jed Leland). Well he tagged me and since I've been busy and running kind of dry with blogging I agreed to participate. So here's the meme thingy:

1) Pick up the nearest book.
2) Open to page 123.
3) Locate the fifth sentence.
4) Post the next three sentences on your blog and in so doing...
5) Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged me.

So here goes.

"Balderdash," said Smethels as he furiously inhaled the green essence emanating from the discarded pantaloons he had discovered in the alley, "We cannot go back in time and successfully mate a pterodactyl with Cheops."

"Ha!" snorted Phineas as he bounced about on one elbow in a futile effort to keep his shoes dry, "We shall do just that and can do that as long as we have just these three items: the bark of a twelve-year-old Cyprus tree, a cylinder of Caruso performing 'Rigoletto' and a medium sized horn filled with sweet cream unsalted butter churned from the milk of a nursing jackal."

Hortense leapt to her feet: "The butter is vital!"

Nah, that book sucks. Okay, one more try.

"Oh I know I oughtn't to be taking it like this, but... Honestly, Jim, it does get you down, the whole thing. I feel so fed-up with it all. I don't even want to bash his brains out any more."

There, that's better. Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis. Oh yeah, and I cheated. I started after the sixth sentence instead of the fifth because the sixth was a long-ass run-on and I didn't feel like typing it and I wanted to actually go with the first book I grabbed. And now for the tag.

I tag you. And you.

And YOU!

UPDATE: What a stroke of luck that I posted from two books, the first of course being The Amazing Fantabulous Adventures of the Crazy Upside Down Dr Phineas' Travels Through Time! because I just discovered that the incomparable Kimberly Lindbergs of Cinebeats tagged me for this as well. And she's a serious sister. That means I must tag more people. This time I shall tag YOU.

Yes,YOU!

Welcome to Palm Beach

So a few folks have asked me, "Where's Larry?" For my answer I went straight to the source, Larry Aydlette, and discovered, to my relief, that he's doing just fine. But he's done with blogging.

The thing with Larry is he's a professional in the business so the blog seemed superfluous to begin with. Most of us would stop blogging because we got a job on a paper whereas Larry started blogging even though he already had a job at the paper. Kind of like working by day as a pilot and by night, as a hobby, you... uh... fly planes. Is entertainment writing in Larry's blood or what?

For those who didn't know he's a writer for and Entertainment Editor of the Palm Beach Post. So if you can't do without Larry's writing and opinions ( and I for one don't want to do without them) just link t0 the Palm Beach Post instead of the now defunct Welcome to L.A. It's that easy.

Fred and ... Adele?

I ran this photo of Fred Astaire and his sister, Adele, back in December but figured now would be a good time to run it again (what with a danceathon going on and his birthday coming up and all). Unfortunately I am not at home right now so I don't have the book from which I scanned it in front of me and can't for the life of me remember who the photographer is or what the year was in which the photo was taken. It's an entire book of just this photographer's work. I'll update it later. And I didn't mention it in my original posting of it so that didn't help either.

Fred and Adele danced as a team for 25 years (starting when Fred was only seven). In 1932 she went off to England and married a British Lord. He went to Hollywood when the team split and had a career in the movies. I think. I can't remember exactly.

This has been a part of the Ferdy on Films Invitation to the Dance Blogathon.

Beyond the Routine: Choreography and Dance

Formal dancing isn't easy. Everyone's gone on the dance floor, swung wildly and moved their hips to the beat but try doing a perfect waltz. That's a different story altogether. I did a play years ago in which I was taught to waltz. It was, unfortunately for me, necessary for a scene in the play. It wasn't difficult to learn but it wasn't easy either. While it didn't require extraordinary athletic ability or magisterial grace it did require discipline. And it taught me what a discipline dance is.

For one thing I never understood "leading." I'd seen dozens of movies and television shows where the man jokes that the woman is leading but I didn't really get that concept until a dance instructor taught me to waltz for that part. The man places his hand squarely on the small of the woman's back and forcefully pulls her along. Where she spins and turns and moves is not her choice. She is led by the man.

The instructor was a diminutive woman and told me how to do this. I placed my hand on her back and with all the firmness of day old milquetoast gently limped along. She told me I was not leading properly. And then, playing Delbert Grady to my twin Grady daughter, she "corrected" me. This five-foot-two tall woman placed her hand on my back and effectively turned me into a marionette. I moved where she wanted me to and when she wanted me to. It was forceful to say the least. And I got it. From that point on, I led and led well.

So in a superficial way, I had become a dancer but only by the thinnest of definitions. I knew the basic moves and knew where to go but only because someone was telling me so. I would've never figured it out on my own. She choreographed, I danced. And those are two very different things.

Many people make the mistake of lumping choreographers and dancers together as if one were the other. They are not. The problem with film dance is that when one is asked, "Who are the greatest dancers the screen has ever produced?" the answer usually has more to do with choreography than dance. Russ Tamblyn, for example, was an incredibly gifted athletic dancer, but without Michael Kidd or Jerome Robbins telling him what to do he was just some guy doing back flips off a wooden beam or spinning around inner-city basketball courts.

So back to the question, "Who's the greatest dancer in film?" We all know the familiar names: Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Eleanor Powell, The Nicholas Brothers, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Ann Miller, Cyd Charisse, etc. But when most people provide the answer they're usually thinking choreography, not dancing.

Let's take three athletic dancers to make the case: Gene Kelly, Fayard Nicholas and Harold Nicholas. All three were superb athletic dancers but all three suffered from criticisms lobbed against them that there were more gymnastics involved than dancing. Kelly was particularly irked by this and incorporated ballets and graceful duets throughout his films to counter the charge. The Nicholas Brothers also heard this but had no directorial power to change it. Years ago I watched a documentary on the Nicholas Brothers in which a choreographer complained that the problem with the Nicholas Brothers was that once you saw them do a number you had seen all their moves. The routine was, so to speak, routine: Jump down into a full split, leap over each other, tap, spin, repeat.

To be sure, it is one hell of an impressive routine and wows audiences every time they see it. But the charge remains: the Nicholas Brothers are great dancers, but not great choreographers. As such they don't have the variety that an Astaire or Kelly has to assist in evaluating their legacy. They've got that one routine, transplanted to a different set for each new film. But is that really because they weren't good choreographers? I say, "No."

The Nicholas Brothers were given one number per film at best. So let's engage in a thought experiment. Let's say Gene Kelly had only one number per film. That's it, just one. And he had no directorial power or say to change that. Now, if given only one number to show what he could do, and instructed by the producer to make it a showstopper, do you think he would do a piece where he does a graceful ballet with Debbie Reynolds on a soundstage at a fictional studio? Do you think he would do a sweet little number with a bunch of French children on a sidewalk in Paris? Would he even bother with that umbrella and puddle-filled street? Or would he leap and bound and flip over backwards every chance he got to burn his talent onto the mind of the viewer? I vote for the last one on the list. I think he contorts and twists and turns and jumps like a frog from Calaveras County every chance he gets. And his talents as a choreographer? Well, quite simply, we never discover them.

Only we did discover them and I'm glad we did. His famous stroll down the wet streets in Singin' in the Rain is a beautifully and deceptively simply choreographed piece of dance art. His big dance finales in Singin' and An American in Paris are also wonders to behold. And even his simple little piece with the Nicholas Brothers in The Pirate is nice to look at, although one suspects Kelly made it a little too simple so as to not be shown up by his extremely physical partners.

So when the question is asked and the answer is delivered it more often than not involves dancing on the ceiling or a sailor cutting the rug with Jerry the mouse. In other words, great choreographed numbers performed by great dancers. The Nicholas Brothers never got to do those numbers and that's a shame. But that shouldn't distract us from the fact that they were extremely talented dancers, even if a lack of choreographic variety didn't allow us to see many different aspects of their talent.

The fact is, I don't know who the greatest dancer in the history of film is. For all I know it might be some dan