Friday, September 05, 2014

Are You Me

All I really ask from life is that late at night some shopworn movie I didn't know existed with a weird cast will come on. So last night it was something called THE LAST MARRIED COUPLE IN AMERICA, starring George Segal, Natalie Wood, Richard Benjamin, Dom DeLuise, and TV's RHODA, Valerie Harper. That's so interesting if you are me! It's all about this set of couples who get together to play touch football every weekend! HUH! One of the guys is a patient from the Bob Newhart Show and one is the psychiatrist who helped Alan Alda realize that the chicken was actually a baby on M*A*S*H. Then Rhoda comes along with some startling sex talk! And some young dudes try to pick up Rhoda and Natalie Wood in a restaurant. I could have sworn one of them was Mark Hamill until his disturbing AUTO FOCUS grin made me decide it was a very young Greg Kinnear with a Mark Hamill shag and a premature Bob Crane leer. I even rewound it and convinced myself. But after extensive "internet" research (why, God?) I'm pretty sure it was this guy (pictured), Brad Maule. Hey, there was somebody in the cast named Edgy Lee. I thought that was a funny name! Well, I only made it 16 minutes in before I conked out. I think I was mad because there was no Paula Prentiss. She would have livened things up. I didn't even make it to Dom Deluise! Just saw his name in the credits. But I recorded the rest of it, so it's your lucky day. Valerie Harper's and Natalie Wood's costumes were designed by Edith Head. How long was her career? Is her name on every movie the way it seems? I think of her just locked in a room for a hundred years with a spinning wheel, like Rapunzel. At one point Natalie Wood was jogging and I was like, what, Edith Head made that jogging suit? I bet Edith Head was like, "I don't even know what world I'm living in anymore." 1980 was like a futuristic dystopia to Edith Head!