First of all let me say
maybe I was a little too hard on IF A MAN ANSWERS yesterday. I mean, if I didn't find
the image of the big white pie arresting would I have spent so long searching the "internet" for it? Like J. Hoberman said in the
New York Times today, "'
The Nutty Professor' both depicts and manifests inadvertent disclosure," and I'm certainly no better than
Jerry Lewis in that regard. And how snobbish of me
to suggest that the film could not be put into conversation with LA CHINOISE. The palette of the fantasy pie sequence is pretty close to Godard's, and who knows? Godard might get a kick out of that big white pie. It's not hard to imagine an entirely white pie in a Godard movie. That big white pie might have put Godard in mind of his man
Tashlin. And anyway, when Godard was making LA CHINOISE he wrote this on a big poster, according to
the book I have about Godard: "It is the rich who create languages and who endlessly renovate them from top to bottom... A school that selects, destroys culture." Know what I mean? Because I don't. I sort of do. I think I do. Besides, the big white pie makes me think of a line I like from
a recent New York Times obituary. It's for the original "Miss Subways," upon whom "Miss Turnstiles" was based in
my sister's favorite movie ON THE TOWN, and it tells how a later Miss Subways "was said to have received 258 marriage proposals, at least 182 orchids and, from a lovelorn bakery worker, a vast lemon meringue pie." I've watched a couple of
Will Rogers movies in my
Lonely Film Festival. "He's like
Brando!" I yelled, but
I yell that about everybody. This one Will Rogers movie, STEAMBOAT ROUND THE BEND, has a musical saw in it, which reminded me of when
Megan and
Jimmy got so excited about
Marlene Dietrich's ability
to play the musical saw. In the movie, Anne Shirley goes to see her betrothed in jail (he's set to be hung for murder!) and he shows her how he's been spending his time learning to play the musical saw. He plays "There's No Place Like Home" and all the other prisoners hum it with intricate harmonies and
lugubrious pathos. (The book that came with
my John Ford box set [Ford directed STEAMBOAT ROUND THE BEND] quotes Darryl Zanuck poking fun at "the kind of thing John Ford does when he is stuck and has run out of plot. In these cases, somebody always sings and you cut to an extreme long shot with slanting shadows.") This movie also has a wax museum in it, which is, as we know,
something Megan Abbott generally enjoys. Anne Shirley's character's name in STEAMBOAT ROUND THE BEND is Fleety Belle, which is the kind of thing Jimmy and Megan might like too.
